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pedros-mustache · 3 years

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frankie tears up and kisses you senseless when you ask if you can be maria's mama officially send tweet

ahaha—i’m in pain. frankie and nanny forever own me. 😩 also: this kicks off my follower celebration requests! from now until march 6th, anything sent in will fall under the “#1.5k celebration” tag!

1.5 follower celebration! (this is part of the rose between two thorns universe)

“hey, baby, can i ask you sumthin’?”

across the kitchen table, frankie lifts his head. his wire-rimmed glasses slide down the curve of his nose, and he adjusts them with his knuckle, a habit he’s formed now that he wears his glasses in the evenings. he says he’s getting to be an old man; you say he just looks smarter while cutting coupons.

“yeah. what is it?”

you hesitate. a heavy weights settles on your chest, squeezing your heart tight. hidden beneath the table, that same weight lies in your lap. you smooth your palm across the manilla envelope and fiddle with the metal prongs along the seal.

straightening your shoulders, you exhale through pursed lips.

now or never.

“we’ve been together awhile, right?”

frankie arches an eyebrow. he blinks slowly, long eyelashes skimming his cheekbones. “yeah.” the agreement falls from his lips in a long drawl, his uncertainty evident in the way he extends the monosyllabic word.

“about two years, if you count the first three months or so before we really got together.”

“uh-huh.” he leans back in his chair, arms folded over his chest, and the pinch in his brow deepens. “what’s this about?”

“well, i got to thinking about maria. to be honest, i feel like she’s my own flesh and blood. i know i didn’t give birth to her, and maybe it’s weird, but i see her like my own. i love her like my own. and now that we’re married—” sighing, you shake your head as you slide the manilla envelope out from under the table. “i’m not good with words. what i’m trying to say is in here.”

frankie eyes you as he takes the envelope from your outstretched hand. you’re surprised he hasn’t caught on, but he gets tired when the hustle-and-bustle of the day settles. maria is a handful; he’s started taking night classes while juggling his job at the construction site; and then there’s you and your needs and desires. despite his best efforts, he falls asleep nearly every night when you snuggle into bed beside him, reruns of an inane sit-com flashing across the tv. he insists he’s paying attention when you rouse him with a kiss to the cheek, but you both know it’s a boldfaced lie. your frankie works hard, loves even harder, so you don’t fault him for his frequent yawns or sleepy stares. if anything, that boyish, dazed look he gets on his face when he’s half-awake, half-asleep during yet another movie makes you love him all the more.

he opens the orange-yellow packet with a quick tug, ignoring the prongs entirely. you wince and hope the envelope holding one very important, very legal document was the only thing to tear in his haste.

sitting forward, frankie removes the single sheet of paper from inside the envelope. his eyes scan the words, his mouth moving in time with his race to the end of the document. your heart slams in your chest, your hands wet with nerves.

his gaze flicks up, and you swallow hard. his mouth opens, shuts, opens again. the hand holding the document drops to the table with a thud.

you lean forward. “well?”

“are you serious?”

of all the things you expected him to say in response to a set of adoption papers are you serious was not one of them.

you frown on a scoff. “yes, i’m serious! as serious as a heart-attack! i may not be maria’s birth mother, but i’ve raised her since she was practically a newborn. i know she calls me mama, and i love that, but i want to be her mother for real. i don’t want anyone to tell me that she’s not my daughter and that i’m not—”

launching across the table, frankie grabs your cheeks and smashes his mouth against yours. the words on your tongue, primed and ready for a fight, surrender to the smooth pull of his lips. you startle, but soon composure yourself, your hands coming to rest on his forearms. he kisses you well—long and deep and intent. he kisses you like he’s trying to drink you in, to make you one with himself. like you, words don’t come naturally to frankie, but actions do. you can feel his love, his admiration, his joy in the scruff that brushes your jaw and the tongue that skims yours and the lips that mark you as his own. when he pulls away, rolling his forehead over yours, still awkwardly stretched across the expanse of the table, you gasp for breath.

“is that...” you swallow hard, eyes fluttering open. “are you gonna sign it then?”

frankie laughs and kisses you again—three short pecks against your lips—before falling back to his chair. his cheeks are flushed, and the grin on his mouth is captivating, shining like the veritable sun. you’ve never seen him glow so radiantly.

he points to the pen sat beside an unpaid bill in your stack of mail. “hand me that.”

“okay.” your hands shake as you slide frankie the pen. his fingertips brush yours, and he grabs your wrist, giving your pulse point a gentle squeeze.

“you’re sure?”

you nod without hesitation. “aside from marrying you, i’ve never been more sure about anything in my life. sign the adoption papers, frankie.”

he scrawls his signature on the dotted line alongside yours.

then he looks up, and the air in your chest stills.

“she—” he clears his throat, runs his hand through his hair, sets the pen aside. “i don’t think she ever wanted to be a mom. i think that’s why it was so easy for her to leave.”

you remain quiet. in all the time you’ve known frankie—worked for him, cared for him, loved him—he’s only ever spoken of his former wife once.

“i think that maria was made for you, and you for her.” he shakes his head, and the tears in his eyes reflect in the lens of his glasses as he looks up toward the ceiling. “sometimes i can’t believe how lucky she is. how lucky i am.”

slipping out of your chair, you walk around the table to perch yourself in frankie’s lap. he meets your gaze, and you brush a stray tear off of his cheek with the pad of your thumb. he leans into the touch.

“to think this all started with that horrible ad on the university bulletin board.”

with a chuckle, he squeezes your hip. “to think i considered hiring benny as a last resort.” he sobers and brushes his fingertips behind your ear. “i mean it, though: maria is lucky to have you as a mom.”

though you preen under frankie’s words, you brush it off with a shrug. “i’m lucky to have her. we’re a good pair.”

he huffs, his hand tightening on your hip. “yeah, spoiled to death! the both of you! i saw that target receipt. i know how much you spent on clothes last week.”

“oh shit!” tumbling from frankie’s lap, you skid across the linoleum as you race for the living room. “you weren’t supposed to know!”

frankie is quick to catch you. he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts your feet from the floor, his voice a deep rumble in your ear when he says, “well, i know, mama. now how exactly are you gonna pay that debt?”

if you are stunned by the sudden shift in mood, in the way you clench under frankie’s innuendo, you don’t let it affect you. you play along because this is your life: you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t fool around with your husband as much as you’d like, you work too much, and there is a never-ending list of household chores calling your name.

but at the end of the day, it’s you and frankie. you and frankie and your daughter and perhaps one day a few more pairs of feet running through the halls.

and at the end of the day, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

#frankie 'catfish' morales #frankie morales x reader #pedro pascal x reader #rose extras

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cupcakemolotov · 3 years

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Happiness Looks Like You

So I think I have been poking at this thing for two years now. Anyway, its done, I am kicking it out of my WIP files, and y’all get lots of fluff.

Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Fluff and Humor; Drinking; Drinking & Talking; Drunken Flirting; (Only Somehwat Drunken);New Year's Eve;New Years; Caroline Forbes Travels the World;Ignoring TO;Ignoring Anything Canon I Don't Like;Happy Bonnie Bennett;Everyone deserves better

You can read it here on A03:

Caroline felt a bit silly that it took her so long to realize what her nose was trying to tell her. She wasn’t even really that drunk, just kind of tipsy. It'd been a really long two days of moving, after all, even for a vampire, and she’d totally deserved those Bloody Mary’s. And that shot of whiskey. The bottle of gin. She’d turned down the vodka, hadn’t she?

It was New Year’s Eve, and she was maybe an itty bitty, tiny bit drunk.

The sage, potent and familiar, had helped to throw her off. Spells were common on this night, the need for private conversation and so she’d merely wrinkled her nose as she moved away from the exit she’d been pushing towards, wondering if another drink would suffice for the next half hour or so. Witch business on New Years was not something she wanted to be involved in.

Been there, done that, used Enzo as bait.

Really, it was an evening she just wasn’t up to repeating. Bonnie would have kittens, and the lectures had been bad enough the first time. Better to just find a safer spot even if it meant food options would be limited. She didn’t need blood, and the craving for something deep fried could wait. Turning on her heel, she just started to move when a different, old and recognizable scent teased her nose. It was familiar and intricate, something she’d never been able to fully name but knew well.

Hybrid.

With that single breath came a deluge of memories her alcohol induced haze couldn’t quite block, and she exhaled on a rush of air. Ignoring the jostling around her to rise up on her toes with her heart in her throat, she’d barely caught a glimpse of tousled curls she’d know anywhere, the arrogant set of a pair of broad shoulders moving deeper into the crowd she’d just left.

Klaus.

Caroline landed back on her heels with a thud. It’d been nearly a century since she’d walked away from Mystic Falls, and a series of noisy, converted warehouses in Amsterdam in the midst of a New Year’s Celebration was the last place she’d have thought to find him. Once or twice over the years when she’d allow herself to think of him, she sometimes wondered if it’d really be centuries before the next time they’d talk. Some nights, that seemed like a very long time.

But for all her occasionally morous musings, she knew Klaus wasn’t one to fade quietly into the background. In the back of her mind she’d known it had always just been a matter of time before they’d run into each other. The world had become much smaller and much bigger than she could ever have imagined back in Mystic Falls, and now her feet felt frozen to the floor.

Did she follow him?

Did she say hi?

Behind her, someone cursed and stumbled drunkenly into her, and it broke her out of her daze. Post-ball drop, the converted warehouse around her was a madhouse and for a moment she weighed the chance that he’d seen her and chose to avoid her, and immediately discarded it. It wasn’t Klaus’ style. If he’d seen her, she knew down to her bones he’d have taken the opportunity to say hello.

Her lips curled at the realization that for once, she’d have the chance to surprise him. It seemed fitting, in the early hours of the new year. Decided, she moved through the crowd in the direction he’d gone, hoping she could catch him. Reaching up smooth curls turned frizzy from hours dancing, Caroline was thankful she’d chosen to dress up.

She almost hadn’t.

The last two weeks had been a chaotic mix of boxes and paint samples, arguing with Enzo via VC as he complained about her ditching him and Bonnie in London. Her witchy best friend had mostly ignored their bickering, her fond exasperation clear in the commentary she ran from the background. She hadn’t managed to buy more than a few of the basics, it was seriously going to annoy her until she found the perfect headboard, but at least the mattress was off the floor and she’d found a pair of super cute side tables with pretty motifs that brought in the colors she wanted.

Decorating agreed with her.

So did living outside of the US.

Leaving had been hard, but it hadn’t been lonely, not with Enzo and Bonnie with her. They’d all changed, the way she’d been told she would, but they hadn’t lost themselves, the way had worried her. Bonnie might have learned to accept her friend’s choices, but she was still Bonnie. Dangerous, opinionated, and a lovelier friend you couldn’t find. She was also a witch madly in love with a vampire who was totally pro-murder. Enzo had no regrets about who and what he was, and he’d been so good for her friend who had packed enough hurt and troubles in her late teens and early twenties for ten lifetimes.

And once she had been surrounded by fewer judgements and no expectations, Caroline had finally found the balance between the vampire and girl that made her happy. It had taken time, she’d needed to outgrow the parts of humanity she’d held onto for all the reasons that had never been her own, but she’d never felt so steady in her own skin. She suddenly found she wanted to know if it was something Klaus would notice. She rather thought he would; he had always seen her better than anyone else, sometimes even better than she saw herself.

Amsterdam was her recognition of that, the first place she'd picked to be hers. Just hers. And hours before, when she’d sat in her first house, if not her first home studying two days worth of work, it had been done with a sense of pride. The urge to go out, to celebrate, had sunk into her bones and she’d dug a dress out of her closet, found her favorite heels and gone dancing.

She’d never really been able to turn down a New Year’s Celebration in a new city.

And now here was Klaus, brushing back up against her life just as she was opening for new opportunities, letting herself go after she wanted because she wanted it. Caroline wondered if she should take it as a sign and if Klaus put any stock into New Year’s traditions. She’d make a point to ask him, she decided.

Nerves fizzed along her skin as she realized when she caught up to him she was going to talk to him, and her steps almost faltered. She pushed aside that unease, refusing to balk now. She wasn’t a quitter. Talking with Klaus had never really been her problem, really, and even if the last time she had seen him his mouth had still been wet from her arousal as he’d murmured his last goodbye, that was a long time ago.

And that thought wasn’t going to help her play this cool, at all. Rising back up on her toes, she scanned the crowd with narrowed eyes. If he’d moved to the VIP floor she was likely going to be out of luck, but there was another bar on the back wall that held all the overpriced booze. He might’ve headed there. Impatience had her moving people out of her way with a little more force than was advisable, and the crowd finally parted in front of her and she caught her first real look at him.

He looked good.

Klaus wore a pair of dark slacks, but if he’d had a jacket, he’d already discarded it. The crisp white sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled nearly to his elbows, and the hint of leather cords at his throat were tantalizing. He was holding a tumbler of whiskey, and for a moment he left her breathless. The last of her buzz disappeared under a surprising rush of feelings she didn’t want to look at, and her teeth sank into her lower lip.

He stood parallel to the bar, expression mildly bored as a witch spoke to him with a nervous face, the flush of his cheeks young. Amusement bubbled as she realized she was watching someone hit on Klaus even as something like jealousy coiled low in her belly at the realization, good taste or no. The idea that she was interrupting something was surprisingly sharp in her throat. Caroline considered leaving, even as the sudden hesitation annoyed her.

She was saved from having to make a choice when his shoulders suddenly straightened, his head coming up sharply as he clearly caught her scent even in the mosh of people. A half a heart beat later, and his head turned, eyes finding hers unerringly in the dim light.

Really, his hybrid senses were just unfair.

Dark and intent, the flicker of surprise behind his gaze that she’d always privately delighted in melted quickly into something hotter. His mouth curved slow and tempting, and she inanely lifted a hand in a small wave. His smile widened, and clearly the witch didn’t matter, because Klaus sat aside his drink immediately and cleared the distance between them in mere strides.

“Caroline,” Klaus murmured, dimples peeking through the scruff of his beard. “This is a surprise, love. A delightful one.”

She arched a brow, unable to help her own answering smile, and finding that she really didn’t want to. “Hi, Klaus. I’m not interrupting, am I?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Can I interest you in a drink?”

Around them, the music blasted at the whim of the DJ, the crowd surging, and Klaus threw a glare over her shoulder as someone bumped into her. Unbothered, she stepped closer to the heat of him, amused by the way his brows arched a little but he made no move to put distance between them. Assured that she was welcome, Caroline shrugged and moved by him. “Sure.”

He beat her to the bar by half a step, but she’d expected that. The witch had disappeared, and as Klaus moved to catch the bartender's eye, she took the opportunity to skim her gaze along the picture he made now that she was closer. She really liked that he’d forgone a tie, the open collar showing off the line of his collarbones beneath his usual tangle of necklaces. His eyes were amused when she glanced back at his face, but she was hardly embarrassed.

Particularly when he didn’t bother to mask the flicker of heat in his gaze as his eyes dipped along her body in a perusal that was anything but casual. The tip of his tongue flickered across his lower lip, eyes warm when they met hers again. “What brings you to Amsterdam, Caroline?”

Grinning, she lifted a shoulder and dropped it, knowing exactly what the motion would do for her boobs. Flirting with Klaus wasn’t new but having no rules against it was and, she realized, fun. “I live here.”

Interest sparked on his face. “Do you?”

Letting out a low hum, she bit the edge of her lip when a bottle of champagne and two glasses appeared. It would never cease to amaze her that the most deadly monster in any room he entered was such a giant cheeseball or how much she liked it. “What about you? Please tell me you're not stirring up trouble. I just finished renovations and would like to actually live in my house, Klaus.”

“Not this time,” he said easily as he poured the champagne and handed her the first glass. “I am here for a bit of business that has now been concluded, and I thought I’d visit an old friend or two. It’s been some time since I spent any time in this city.”

Caroline sipped her drink, letting it fizz on her tongue for a moment as she considered that. “Friends…” she said skeptically. “You have those?”

His eyes gleamed. “Of a sort. Though my current company is far more charming.” She scoffed, ignoring the way she could feel her cheeks heat. Klaus was undeterred by her skepticism. “Why Amsterdam, love?”

She considered his question, all the questions he hadn't asked. “I’ve been in Europe for a few decades now. When we left the states, well. Europe wasn’t our first stop, but Enzo kept insisting, and he’s amazingly persistent. And annoying. London is lovely, he might have been right about that, but I loved it here more.”

“Enzo?”

A hint of something dangerous flickered behind his eyes and she deliberately moved closer to nudge him with her hip. “Nope. Enzo is my friend and happily married to Bonnie. You break his neck and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

His lashes hid his gaze for a moment when she didn’t bother stepping back into her previous space, the heat of him pressed firmly against her side. His gaze held the tiniest flecks of gold at the edges of his eyes when his lashes parted and her pulse skipped. “And have you enjoyed making your home here, Caroline?”

“Yup. I have a few apartments I’ve bought, here and there. But I decided I wanted a house of my own, you know?” It had been an urge that she hadn’t satisfied with her tiny apartment in Cape Town or her flat in London. But Amsterdam was her first house. It’d felt bigger, more significant somehow. “And sometimes a girl just needs a bit of space from her friends, but not too far so, Amsterdam.”

Buying her home had been a touch of serendipity, mixed with careful planning and maybe some online stalking. When she had finally found the home she wanted, she might’ve shamelessly used a teeny tiny bit of compulsion to ensure her offer was accepted, but Real Estate was cut throat and she liked to win. Besides she'd done her research, and she knew exactly what the property was worth. But not even compulsion could make the buying process run completely smooth.

“I’m glad,” Klaus murmured, eyes warm.“I can see how this place would suit you.”

His words settled something in her chest and she took another sip of the excellent champagne to hide it. This monster who only wanted her to fly. Head tipping, Caroline studied his face curiously. “And you? What have you been up to? The PG-13 version, please.”

Pleasure and amusement flickered across his face at her question. “Less murder and mayhem than you’d imagine, sadly, as it does liven up the occasional bit of boredom. But there is always an idiot or two who has decided eternal life is just not the existence for them. I’m generally happy to oblige.”

Her lips pressed together to hold in a smile at his mock exasperation, and his eyes gleamed at her. “That can’t be all you do. Surely.”

Klaus reached up and tucked a loose curl behind her ear, fingertips lingering. “I’ve spent the past few years moving through parts of Europe, but not much to report that would surprise you. The occasional sibling idiocy to correct, a painting here or there.”

She was willing to bet there was a lot more to that statement but she didn’t push. She’d heard rumors of what had happened in New Orleans and had no desire to bring that up here and now. “And how long will you be in Amsterdam?” Caroline asked, making no move to step away from his touch. “Visiting your… friends.”

“I suppose that depends on my welcome,” he replied lightly, but his eyes were dark. His mouth tilted in a small smile before he took a drink of his champagne.

Caroline rolled her eyes at the hint of coaxing in his voice. “I am not inviting you to my house, Klaus. It’s mostly empty and boring and my grandmother would roll over in her grave.”

“Ah,” he agreed mock-seriously, the glimmer of amusement behind his eyes also lingering in the dimple in his cheek. “We can’t have that, can we?”

She pushed at his shoulder with no real force, trying not to laugh. “No, we cannot.”

Klaus didn’t budge, she hadn’t expected him too, if anything he leaned into her space with an amused little noise. “Invitation or no, I’d be delighted to hear of your plans. I have set up a home or two myself, and have a few contacts should you have trouble finding a piece you want. Dining room tables for instance, can be quite vexing.”

“Pretty sure I don’t have your budget, but I’ll probably take you up on that,” Caroline said. A lot could be said about Klaus’ home that she’d seen in Mystic Falls, but his taste, while a little stuffy, had been impeccable.

“Excellent,” he murmured. “You’ll also have to let me know what you consider an appropriate housewarming gift as well. Such things have changed over the years, and I haven’t had a reason to brush up on that particular etiquette.”

Something warm tugged at her chest and she shook her head to cover it. “And here you were just trying to tell me you had friends.”

Before he could reply, and the glitter of mischief on his face told her he had a response, the music skipped, jarring the crowd. All around them, the lights that had been dimmed started to turn on. Klaus scowled murderously, and she laughed once her ears stopped ringing.

And realized she wasn’t ready for this to be over.

Looping her arm through his, she tipped her head towards the exit, stomach a sudden tangle of butterflies. “I was actually on the hunt for food when I saw you and decided to say hi. We’ll probably have to fight the crowds now, but any interest in joining me?”

He had gone carefully motionless when her arm had taken his, but at her words, her admittance that she’d come back to see him, his smile left her breathless. It was such a delighted, boyish thing. Picking up the half full champagne bottle, he handed it to before stepping next to her. “I’d be delighted. I might even have a suggestion or two on a location that will be open this time of night and willing to find us a table.”

She took a long swig of the bottle, letting him start her through the crowd before offering it back. “Pancakes, Klaus. I want pancakes.”

Klaus ignored the bottle, his hand lifting so his thumb could trace her wet lower lip. Bringing it to his mouth, he licked the champagne from his thumb and her body immediately heated, her body becoming intensely aware of everywhere they touched. “Hmm, I’m sure we can find a place to meet those exacting standards.”

Taking a calming breath, she narrowed her eyes at him in warming and he seemed entirely unrepentant. “Uh huh. Pancakes or I won’t show you any of the pictures on my phone of my house.”

His laugh was soft and he started moving again. The crowd never quite pressed close, and people moved out of their way as soon as they got a look at his face. He looked human, the monster tucked away by the amusement and indulgence of him, but his presence was hardly affected by either of that.

“A tragedy, but one we can avoid.” He glanced at her, that dimple tugging at his smile. “Should I warn you that I might have a… suggestion or two?”

She snorted. “By suggestion, you mean opinion. And as long as those opinions are that my taste is flawless and I’m absolutely correct about everything, you may have as many as you want.”

Another laugh, this one deeper, and he led her through the crowd out into the darkness of pre-dawn. The air was cold, she hadn’t bothered with a jacket, but with Klaus next to her she didn’t feel it. Taking another long drink of the last of the champagne, she knew it wasn’t just the booze that fizzled in her veins.

She might not have kissed him at midnight, but she knew in her bones that this night was changing things. Klaus would take her to breakfast, would keep to whatever boundaries she set between them, boundaries she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted anymore, but she’d invited him back to her life. Klaus wasn’t the type to ignore that kind of opening.

Sliding her hand down his arm to link their fingers instead, she found herself smiling widely as his palm pressed tightly against hers.

Happy New Year indeed.

#my fic #klaroline #klaroline fanfic #klaroline drabble #part of my Caroline Travels The World #Because I Hate TO & TVD Endings

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elsewhereuniversity · 3 years

Text

About Face

“Do you have any questions about your prescriptions today, uh…m-miss?” The pharmacist’s question is laced with assumptions about who you are. It’s not great, of course, but it’s also not worth your time to fight about today.

“No, I’m good,” your smile and voice are sugary-sweet, but your eyes are daggers as you take the bag and turn back towards the door. The heat and humidity are already staggering at 8 am and you are immediately made sticky by the brief walk to your car. As you start it up, there’s a brief chime of email-receiving from your phone, but you ignore it. Then there’s another ding, this time your lab-mate, Valerie, texting you.

Hey, u almost in? In like 30min. had to stop by pharmacy

K. Jill was looking for u. Also ugh that paper for tomorrow, I’m not even a birdsong person lol

Lol get over it, I had to read one of your fancy neuro papers last time. Did jill say what she needed me for?

Whatever lol. She didn’t say.

Ughhhhhhh

Jill, Dr. Dominguez, is your advisor, and you know you need to get her some figures and sections of your thesis soon, but these damn stats…well. There’s a reason you prefer spending your time traipsing off-trail through the wilderness over sitting in front of a computer all day. Not that this part isn’t interesting and important too, but come on.

Traffic is moving at a sluggish pace, of course, so you’re lost in contemplation and dread of the analyses you need to attempt running today, and the inevitable conversation with Dr. Dominguez that will have to happen at some point. As the traffic finally begins to move, you grit your teeth. Maybe it’s time to consider actually asking for help. I have no fucking clue how to do multivariate shit…You stare ahead as you inch forward, before a frustrating, jolting stop at a red light. Your eye is drawn to a kid crossing the road, wearing a grey hoodie. They look forlorn, for some reason you can’t entirely enumerate, and you glance back at them as the light finally turns.

The sun isn’t very high yet, so there are still some odd shadows stretching across the sidewalk, but you could’ve sworn that the kid had no face.

****

You manage to put the pharmacist and your grandma and the obviously-just-a-trick-of-the-light-I-mean-how-else-could-that-be faceless kid out of your mind for the rest of the morning and actually get some results you can work with from the analyses you’d been worried about. And when Dr. Dominguez pops into lab to talk to you, she is actually impressed at both the pace and quality of work you’ve delivered thus far. In fact, you’re feeling pretty damn good about everything, despite the earlier unpleasantness, so you decide to grab some lunch and hang out with some of the other grad students and lab techs.

Lunch-special sushi in hand, you plop yourself down at one of the rundown old tables in the work room. Valerie is there, along with Raul, one of the grad students from a micro lab down the hall, and Jackson, one of the general lab techs. Everyone says hi, but you’re only vaguely following the conversation as you dig into your spicy tuna roll. Something something TA stipends being cut. Which is such bullshit, of course, but nothing new. You’re just about to jump into the discussion when you get a Facebook notification. It’s your cousin, who tagged you in a post. You stare for a good five seconds at your phone.

Just remembering the good times with my cousin before he decided to be a transsexual.

And then a picture from when you were 14, a picture you’d thought you’d deleted from every conceivable online location. A picture that highlights pretty much every single aspect of your body that made staying in the closet completely untenable. Everything just always happens at once, huh.

“Fucking asshole,” you mutter, and are surprised to feel the hot prick of tears in your eyes.

“Becca, you alright?” Valerie asks, and you belatedly realize that everyone at the table heard you and is now staring. They think you were talking about one of them, or responding to something they said.

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Just something my cousin posted. She’s—she can be such a jerk. Don’t worry about it,” you say as you hastily wipe away the tears.

“What’d she do?” Jackson asks. Valerie glares at him so fiercely that he rolls his eyes and holds up his hands, “Just, like, if you wanna talk about it.”

You sigh. You’re not precisely going stealth, but you also don’t just talk to everyone about being trans. Have you actually come out to Jackson? Valerie knows, and Raul, but you don’t think you’ve ever directly talked to Jackson about it.

“It’s—it’s fine. Just, she posted a picture of me from before I came out, and I really hate thinking about any of it.” You speak with a bit more force than you intend.

“Why is that a big deal?” Jackson asks, taking a bite of his pasta. Valerie glares at him again and Raul just shakes his head.

“It’s just…it took me a long time to figure it out, and I don’t particularly like being reminded of that. And it’s not great for dysphoria, either.” You say this distractedly as you go to the post and untag yourself.

“That’s really rough,” Raul says, frowning.

“Sorry, what’s that word?” Jackson asks with a raised eyebrow, “I guess I just don’t get it? It’s just a kid picture of you, what’s it matter?”

And that does it. You stand abruptly, “I need to get back to the lab.” You hear Valerie and Raul berating Jackson as you walk away, but you’re just so very done. You toss the empty sushi container in the trash at the corner of the hallway, near one of the windows overlooking the main walkway through campus. And you nearly trip over your own feet as you swivel to double check something down below. A gray hoodie. A child with no face looking over their shoulder as they turn a corner.

****

You don’t mean to take the wrong street. It’s already been far too long a day between all of the inanity with your extended family and Jackson. And everything you tried to run after lunch was a bust, making you feel like Dr. Dominguez’s praise earlier was completely undeserved. Given all of that, you decided to get takeout again, even though you really should be cooking, so you’re walking to pick up your order. It is early evening, the shadows having elongated to embrace nearly everything, and while debating whether it’s even worth confronting your cousin about the jab, your feet simply take you the wrong way. You don’t even notice, until you’re standing in front of an empty park that’s three blocks over from where you should be. Or, wait.

Not empty. One lone figure, sitting quietly on one of the swings, wreathed in shadow.

You’ve been walking quite quickly, but over the course of a few steps have come almost to a stop. With a shiver, you glance around the area, but no parents or adults are in sight, and the figure looks young, even from a distance. 12, maybe? Maybe the kid lives in one of the nearby houses? Probably. Should you call someone? Who? Not the cops. They’d just as soon arrest or hurt the kid as help them. It isn’t that late, leaving the kid be is probably the most prudent course of action.

But. The kid feels…familiar. Even from a hundred meters, you can see that their shoulders are hunched, their hands are tight on the chains of the swing. The gentle creaking as those chains move with the slight shifts of the kid’s body is despondent in a way that is known to you, somehow. So, against your better judgement, you leave the sidewalk and walk across the damp grass to the edge of the playground. When you step onto the sand, the kid’s head jerks up and their shoulders tense further, raising almost to their ears. You stop walking and from the new angle a streetlight throws the kid’s grey hoodie into stark relief.

“Are-are you okay?” you have to clear your throat to get the words out and your voice sounds weak and tinny in the still, silent park.

The shoulders shrug. The kid is also wearing jean cutoffs, their scuffed sneakers unlaced.

“Do you need me to call someone?”

A sharp shake of the head, and then their hands release the chains and fall into their lap.

“Don’t need anything,” the kid’s voice is low, you can barely hear what they’re saying. Gingerly, you take the last few steps to the swing set and awkwardly settle into one of the worn rubber seats. Only after you have already done this do you think to question why you are so compelled to talk to this child who—maybe? how?—has been dogging you all day.

“I said I don’t need anything,” the kid says in an emotionless voice. Their face is still completely shadowed by their hood and shaggy hair.

“I just—look, kid, I think I’ve been where you are, and—”

The kid cuts across you, “I tried to tell them today. But I…couldn’t, I didn’t know how to, so I just ended up saying I like girly shoes and wanted some or whatever.”

Oh. So you were right. You know exactly what’s going on. In fact, you’re pretty sure you had that precise conversation, once.

“That’s tough,” you acknowledge, slowly pushing back in the swing, which creaks beneath you, “It took me a long time too.”

There’s silence. Then:

“That’s what I was worried about.”

You start and quickly glance over at the kid, who has finally turned to face you.

She doesn’t have a face, which, you suppose, really shouldn’t be a surprise. You weren’t seeing things, earlier. There’s just a smooth expanse of dark olive skin. The featureless head tilts to one side and she speaks again.

“I thought you might recognize me.” The voice is plaintive. With every word, you feel a sense of vertigo, like there is a mouth, somewhere, that is making those sounds, that it’s right in front of you, but you cannot perceive it.

You are breathing very rapidly, “I thought—how do you know me? What’s, I mean—”

“This?” the kid gestures at her face, “I don’t know, I can see but I can’t see myself, I dunno what’s going on. All I know is I was walking to the park and then I was here, or I mean, on the road this morning and saw you and I followed you and I just want to go home or just sleep or just melt away but I can’t, okay? There’s just nothing.”

Without noticing, you have sprung to your feet and are backing away from the faceless girl, the faceless girl who can’t tell her parents who she is. Who you are.

“I didn’t want to think about it,” you whisper. Why are you even responding to this? This is a hallucination, or a dream. You’re just reacting to the whole bullshit situation with your cousin and Jackson and that fucking pharmacy tech. Did you fall asleep back in the lab, is that it? You pinch yourself, but no luck, “I came out and that was what I needed. Okay? Why dwell on, on, on all of that shi—stuff that happened before?”

The girl is still sitting placidly in the swing, though her hands are once again clenched around the chains.

“I knew you were me, I guess. So I followed. I don’t think anyone else notices me either, not that that’s anything new,” The note of bitterness in her voice cuts you to the bone, “I thought maybe you—me, future me, whatever—would be able to…fix me? But nothing’s changed, has it?”

You’re backed up to the slide now, “Why are you doing this? What even are you?”

You slump against the side of slide, your knees suddenly weak, “This cannot—this is bullshit, I don’t know how you’re doing this, but—”

The faceless girl is in front of you now, hands jammed into the front pocket of her hoodie. She stands there, contemplating her future self, “I just want to understand,”

The kid, proto-Becca, or whatever or whoever she is, sure sounds like a kid desperately trying to make sense of something, and not some ghoulish nightmare creature.

“Just stop,” you say in a hoarse voice, “I just don’t want to think about it, I shouldn’t have to think about it, I just want to move forward.”

“Yeah,” proto-Becca abruptly falls to her knees, and draws them up to her chest. It takes a few seconds for you to understand the sounds that the kid is making are sobs.

You hug your own knees and contemplate getting up and running away and just forgetting about all of it: this faceless phantom of your childhood self, your relatives’ inability to accept your reality, the absurd, useless, pointless stats and analyses. You’re crying too, desperately trying to refocus on the here and now, instead of being drawn down into the rabbit hole of loneliness and regret and fear that always consumes you when you think too hard about those years in which it felt like your whole body was turning against you and you couldn’t find any satisfactory explanations for what you were feeling.

But the sounds of proto-Becca, of proto-you, sobbing into her knobbly knees bring you back to the present. Ironic, that. No matter what else, however she got here, whatever happened to her face, she’s a kid. She’s a kid. She’s. A. Kid. You were a kid.

You furiously wipe your eyes and nose and sit up, scooting a bit closer to proto-Becca.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” you say in as steady a voice as you can manage, “I was scared, and, and, and I lashed out. It’s not your fault, kid.”

She doesn’t lift her head, but the sobs are quieter.

“I mean, kid, no offense, but you don’t have a face. And somehow you’re me, right?” Okay, that came out meaner than you meant it to, “The truth is that I’ve done my best to forget pretty much everything that happened back when I was…you, I guess. But I can’t.”

She sniffles, “I’m trying to tell them, I am. But the boys at school, every time I try to talk to Mom or Dad I see those boys laughing and yelling and coming at me and I can’t, I don’t—know how I ended up here, or what to do about this or anything. I just want things to be normal.”

And, finally, you get it. Not why she’s here, or how, or what any of this means, but, at least, what to do. You’ve tried to help kids who were like you before. You’d never have told them that they needed to keep their feelings concealed, that they needed to not do anything so as to avoid reminding you of your own past. So why, then, are you doing it to yourself?

“Is it okay if I come sit next to you, maybe give you a hug?” you ask, as gently as you can.

You get a glimpse of the faceless face from behind the curtain of hair, “I—I think so?”

You get to your feet, a task far more laborious than you feel it should be, and cross to her. When you plop down by her side, she twitches, but it’s toward you. Slowly and carefully, you wrap an arm around her narrow shoulders, and hold her close. She’s still crying, and the hood has slipped from her dark curls.

“It’s okay that it’s taking time,” you say, “It’s really, really hard. I meant that. There’s…nothing out there. No one to explain to you, to, uh, us, what these feelings mean, really. I remember. I remember how much it feels like you’re just stuck in the same looped computer program. Endlessly completing the same actions with no idea why, only feeling like something isn’t right. And so scared of what happens if you do anything that breaks that loop.”

“That’s pretty much it,” she says with a note of wait, that wasn’t completely in my head???, “I don’t see how I can explain to anyone, especially Mom and Dad.”

“I think all you can do is be honest. There are some resources out there, although maybe they aren’t published yet,” you glance sideways at her, “But if you just…elucidate those feelings you’ve been sitting on, it at least opens the door to them comprehending.”

“I guess so,” she sighs, and then giggles, “But also, like, no offense, that was, like, a really freakin’ pretentious way to say that.”

You snort and ruffle her hair, “Whatever. Something for you to look forward to, then.”

She’s quiet for a bit and then, quick like a bird, she wraps her arms around you too, “So I’m gonna tell them, then?”

You shrug, “When you’re ready. Whenever that is. And I promise, you are no lesser if it takes a while. Okay?”

“But you’re still going to hate thinking about me, right? I mean, about how long it took me, you, to finally do it?” her head tilts.

You sigh, “I don’t know. It’s hard, I won’t pretend it isn’t. But I think I can at least say that it’s okay. That it’s not my, or your, fault.”

When you look up, her face appears. Smile first. Broad and full of braces, her quick and nervous brown eyes darting to your face and then back to her knees.

“You’ll be fine,” you say, giving her one last squeeze, “I’m the living proof, right?”

Her laugh lingers in the air as she fades away.

#transroadwarrior #stories #long post #about face #body horror #of the faceless variety #trans #transphobia #briefly #becca #proto becca #submission

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beholdme · 3 years

Text

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 18

Chapters: 18/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can’t help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

They cook, they feed him, they chat away about inane things. Their presence soothes Martin and their voices fill him with the warmth sucked away by his unexpected encounter.

Gerry helps him make tea after dinner, and they all sit at the table together, even the cats sleeping nearby, cuddled up into one big, grey and black fluff ball.

"I think," Martin begins, voice croaky, "That I would like to tell you now."

"We're ready to listen if you're ready to tell us." Jon offers softly. Gerry reaches over to take one of his hands, turning it over to kiss the palm sweetly.

Martin talks, voice quiet and even.

"In the beginning, it was just a normal relationship. Except for the fact that he was almost twenty years older than me, and about a million times richer. I didn't know that at first, of course. He was just a middle-aged man I met in a gay bar, who didn't seem to mind that I was trans. I felt secure in our relationship, if not exactly nurtured or adored. I had never felt very secure before, and it seemed like enough, you know?

"He took me out, brought me a few things in the beginning. He was very dominant, sexually, but I was a lot less sure of my own preferences back then and I thought it was fine. He never even blinked at my trashy flat or cheap clothes, and I didn't even realise just how much money he had for a long time. Maybe I just can't really comprehend that much money, even now.

"When I was twenty-two, my mother died, and…" He huffs out a shaky, emotional laugh. "Well, I was a real mess. I lost my job, and almost my flat. Peter started paying for things, my rent, clothes, meals. He said that I needed somewhere to live and had to eat and look presentable, and it was his pleasure to provide those things for me. It made me feel a bit gross, but I struggled to find another job, and so I accepted it."

Martin hesitates here, before continuing. "The problem started when I wasn't interested in sex one night."

"He forced you?" Gerry interrupts to ask dangerously, threat explicit in his quiet words. His eyes seem to glow faintly in the growing dark of the room, as the sun sets. He wishes, more than ever, that he had helped Jon kick the shit out of Peter Lukas, instead of stopping him.

Martin sighs, eyes pressed tight closed for a second. "Not exactly. He simply pointed out that he paid for me to exist. So I made myself interested."

Gerry's hands tighten into fists and he moves them under the table where Martin can't see them anymore. Jon suddenly looks very pale. They share a look, neither able to see much difference between 'forcing' and what sounds a lot like financial abuse to them.

Martin pulls his legs up to his chest, curling around them as he goes on. "Our relationship became a lot more transactional after that night. I disengaged whatever feelings I had left for him and simply drew all my emotions down deep into myself. I wasn't ashamed to be getting paid for sex, but I felt like I had lost my own consent in the matter. Peter honestly seemed like he had gotten exactly what he wanted. Money was nothing to him, and he had someone to take out on his arm or shag whenever he wanted, without the work of a real relationship, or the complications of unfortunate attachments.

"So, if I needed something, I told him. He set a date, took me out, fucked me. He gave me however much I needed."

Martin shrugs, looking down at his hands. "I honestly hated it. Not because of the prostitution itself, sex has always been very nurturing for me, and I sometimes caught the idea that it was only another way to care for people, and being paid for that is perfectly fine, if you're doing it for the right reasons. The real issue was Peter himself. He had this way of making me feel… bereft and hollow, even before the money came into it."

A few tears track down his face, although his face remains rather blank, in a numb way. It's only as he admits the next words that his voice breaks and the heartbreak works its way out again.

"I was very foolish. Looking back, I can see that I was still a child in a lot of ways. I put myself into a situation that damaged me, but I accept the consequences of those actions, both then and now. I- I-"

"Martin," Jon whispers, warm love clear in his voice. It's nothing but an offer of support, one that he desperately needs right now.

He presses his eyes shut, forcing away the stutter and the lump of tears. "I knew I wasn't going to be able to get out of it, even if I got a crap, minimum wage job that I was qualified for. So I started applying for any work that was available. I made every application exactly what they wanted, and I hoped for the best. When Elias offered me the job at Magnus, I took it happily. Since then I found out that Peter knows him, and probably arranged the job for me, but at the time I had no idea. Looking back, I know that it's a miracle that I got out of it at all. Peter could have chosen to make my life a living hell. Instead, he accepted the several firm rejections I offered him.

"He promised me that we weren't done, that I would be back, but he left me alone. I was done. I moved on with my life, even if I had to lie to do it." Martin sighs, shakes out his shoulders, the most difficult part over now.

"I had always planned to be open about it with my next relationships, but they were so fleeting that it never even came up. By the time I fell for Jon, it had become a secret, one I was loathed to dig up for a relationship I was convinced wouldn't last. I thought to myself, 'Why ruin something that makes me happy?' I assumed it would fall apart anyway, and it was easier to allow it to be in the past.

"But I am sorry. I'm sorry that I never told you. I'm sorry you had to find out from him. I'm sorry that we've been together for more than a year and we basically live together, and I've put you in this position. I love you both, very very much."

"When did you eventually decide that our relationship was going to last?" Jon queries, genuine curiosity in his voice.

There's a beat of hazy silence at the abrupt change in tone and topic.

"Oh, ah-" Martin stumbles over his words, unsure how blatantly honest to be. He chooses the real truth, no matter how unfortunate. "The day that I got Luna was the first time I really accepted that you both loved me."

Jon simply raises an eyebrow, completely unconcerned. "What about you, Gerry?"

"With you," Gerry responds easily, "at the hospital in Morden, when I was so panicked that I couldn't decide if I wanted to kill you or handcuff us together for the rest of our lives. With Martin-"

He breaks off with a laugh, colouring slightly. "It was the day we dyed my hair purple."

"The first time we had sex?" Martin asks, surprised at such a hedonistic answer.

He laughs again, more confidently this time. "No, actually, although that was spectacular. It was afterwards, when you braided my hair for the first time. That was the first time anyone had ever braided my hair. It made me feel so… So honoured. Like I was the most precious thing to you."

"Gerry, you are the most precious thing to me. You both are." Martin whispers, tears creeping back into his voice.

"Good, because the feeling is mutual, and we desperately need you around to keep us in line," Jon tells him, voice unusually firm and confident.

"What about you?" Martin remembers to ask him, at risk of floating away in his post confession haze. "When did you know?"

"With Gerry, it was when we were teenagers. I kissed him for the first time, and he laughed at me. I just knew he was my soulmate." Jon rolls his eyes at this, but his voice is full of blatant affection. "With you, Martin, it was- Well, to be quite honest with you, there was no one special moment. It was a million tiny moments, all of them special and perfect to me. Every cup of tea, every frown while you were writing poetry, glasses pushed haphazardly up into your lovely hair. The easy, glorious look on your face the day you met Gerry for the first time, as if you weren't even capable of not falling in love with him, just as I hadn't been. It was especially the days that I would come out of the library and find you waiting for me after work. This weight of total surety would fill my chest and leave me gasping, needing you."

Jon sighs, his own eyes a little bright. "I suppose it was really the night you kissed me in the rain, and every soft moment since then has only affirmed the way I knew you were it for me."

Jon smiles at Martin so beatifically that he forgets to breathe for a moment.

"We love you too, Martin," Gerry tells him, reaching out to grasp a hand. Jon takes the other. "And we wouldn't want you any other way."

***

The next morning, Martin wakes to find Jon eyeing his phone intently. Gerry is asleep on his other side, and he feels warmly cocooned between them. Gentle cloudy light fills the space, encouraging the comfortable cozy atmosphere of their bed.

"What's wrong, love?" Martin asks sleepily, snuggling into his side.

"I got-" Jon pauses, utterly flummoxed. "I got paid a bonus."

"What?" Equally perplexed, Martin takes his phone, squinting as he tries to read the screen.

The banking app is open, and there is indeed a deposit there, Jon's normal salary amount, but on completely the wrong date.

In the purpose box, it simply reads 'Entertainment Value'.

"You don't think," Jon starts, hesitant, "that Elias paid me…"

"For hitting Peter Lukas?" Martin finishes, "His own husband."

They blink at each other, bewildered.

"Does that seem… slightly cursed, to you?" Jon whispers as if Elias might hear him. Even worse if Elias could hear them, and would probably enjoy being accused of having a cursed relationship.

"Yes, completely cursed. What is up with those two?" Martin looks as if he's smelled something bad.

"We absolutely cannot spend this money, right?" Jon asks. "Lest we are cursed with their relationship dysfunction."

"Correct," Martin responds firmly, shuddering. "Can we donate it to the animal shelter?"

"I think that's a wonderful idea." Jon's relief at this resolution is palpable.

He does it straight away, as if even having the money in his bank account might ruin their lives.

They let out a simultaneous sigh as the transfer goes through.

"That is wild," Martin mutters as he snuggles back down.

Jon tosses his phone away, no longer interested in it. Instead, he wraps his arms around Martin, burying his nose in his lover's hair. It smells of bergamot and tea leaves and the ocean in winter, just like Martin himself, and Jon luxuriates in the moment.

"I love you, Martin K. Blackwood." He whispers into the soft air.

"Even if I don't actually have a middle name?" Martin whispers back.

"Especially because of that." Jon chuckles.

They lay together, the gentle moments of the morning flowing around them. Later, they get up and shower together. They drink tea in front of the big windows in the living space. Martin reads a book from Gerry's shelves, his own books still packed, and Jon wanders off to play his piano where it is randomly set up, right in the middle of Gerry's typical painting area.

Gerry himself appears downstairs, still sleepy and bleary-eyed. He curls up with his head in Martin's lap, listening to Jon fill the flat with gentle music.

It's the soft sort of moment that each of them had been wishing for all their lives, full of love, and family, and a home of their very own.

#the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #gerry keay #jongerrymartin #fic #also on ao3

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letitrainathousandflames · 3 years

Text

There Was No Father

Rating: Mature/18+

Warnings: force pregnancy, forced pregnancy, force rape (technically), sith mind tricks, foreshadowing, slavery, sexual slavery mention, childbirth, ask to tag

The atmosphere is hot, stifling. The black-haired woman squints at the sunlight, standing in line with other slaves, some human like her, others from different species.

The only thing she carries from the life she had before slavery is the name her mother had given her. Shmi. If she closed her eyes, she could still picture her mother’s face, feel the scent and warmth of her embrace back when she was only a child.

Now Shmi is twenty-eight, and her mother is long gone, worked to death as a slave at a mining planet. Her current owner, an angry-looking Rodian, pokes a nautolan slave with a shock staff. The nautolan screams.

“Fix that posture!” The slave master barks “We have a very important client arriving! If any of you wanna be purchased by this rich looking fellow, you better look decent and get me a good deal!”

The slave master walks away, most likely to greet the new customer.

Shmi sighs heavily, squaring her shoulders as best as she can with little hope. She doubts any new master will be much different from this one, of the one before. Being a slave is always a nightmare and all she could hope is that this one wouldn’t be amused by hitting her or not allowing her to eat.

She hears her master approaching and keep her eyes low on the dirt. She knows better than daring to look a potential buyer in the eyes without permission.

“-sure you don’t want to take off that cape? It’s very hot out here, sir. I hear the only place hotter than this is Tattooine, a couple of sectors away. If this one sun is nearly baking me alive, can’t imagine what two of ‘em must be like. By the way, where did you say you were from?”

Shmi hears a voice that is somehow soft spoken but at the same time carries a coldness that’s sends shivers down her spine.

“That is none of your business.”

Her master seems displeased at that.

“Now, listen, there is no need to-”

Shmi could feel the temperature drop, which would be pleasant any other day in this scorching planet, but all she could do was shiver, her entire body tensing up.

“I have crossed several systems looking for something that is in your possession. I do not have time to exchange inane words with an ignorant creature in this speck of uselessness you call a planet. You will show me your slaves, now."

The slaves held their breath, already anticipating their master's explosive outburst. Instead, he spoke in a dazed tone:

"I will show you my slaves now..." at the corner of her eye, Shmi could see the master and a man clad in a black cloak stand before a lean, battered wookiee "This one's mighty strong, good for hefting heavy stuff, can work for hours on end-"

"No. This isn't what I'm looking for."

"Well, then there is this human here, he's good at fixing stuff, got a couple droids back in business when-"

"This is not the one."

They kept going through the line quickly, approaching Shmi at every step and every discarded option. Shmi swallowed down, setting her jaw. At their steady approaching, she felt colder and colder, shivers creeping down her spine. Her breathing was shallow, her chest feeling tight.

The man in the cloak stood right in front of her, and Shmi felt like she was being engulfed by the cold, her body sweaty from the weather but every hair on her body standing up with her shivers. Her eyes were still on the ground, and she could notice the expensive material of the man's cloak and the robes underneath it, everything black, a strange choice of clothes for such a hot environment.

"...this one. Where did you find her?"

"Ah, I bought her off at an auction in Saleucami. Don't be fooled by her frail looks - this one is strong, can work all day long even without food."

The man's sharp tone shifted into a much softer, gentler one.

"Look at me, young one."

"Ah, sir, don't bother talking to the slave, I can tell you everything you need to know-"

"You will stop talking now." the man spoke harshly to the master "I can appraise her worth myself."

Once again, unexplainably, the master merely nodded, taking a couple of steps back and standing in silence. The man in the cloak spoke again, in a low, gentle voice:

“I said look at me, young one.”

Shmi forced herself to raise her face, looking up at the man in front of her. His face was partially hidden in the shadow of his hood, but with the closeness she could make him to be a man in his late forties or early fifties. His eyes gleamed at her, yellow irises surrounded by a red rim shifting into a gentle blue so quickly she wondered if she had seen it wrong.

The man brought a hand to her face, thumb stroking her cheekbone. His touch was strangely cold and unwelcome but Shmi tried her best to stay perfectly still. However, she swallowed down tensely, taking the risk of stating her limits, even though she knew that doing so might’ve warranted a slap across the very face he caressed.

“Sir, I am not that kind of slave.”

The man clicked his tongue dismissively, moving his hand to tuck his pointer finger under her chin and making her face him properly.

“How old are you?”

Oh, moons, he was looking for a bedchamber slave. Shmi gulps down, trying to keep the disgust off her features. Her master would often tell her to lie and take about five years off her actual age, but since he was being so complacent and Shmi would rather work to death like her mother rather than losing the very last shred of dignity she still had, she said the truth:

“I’m twenty-eight, sir. Will be twenty-nine in a few rotations. I-I am good with crops. A-and droids, I’m not as good as Jayden there, but I can fix a wiring or two. I’m strong, as my master said, quite used to heavy work.”

She raised her hands between the two of them, showing the scrapped and chipped nails and the dry, calloused fingers of a worker. Most men were put off by this, and Shmi would purposefully have her disheveled hair tied up in an unflattering low bun to warrant off any advances. At twenty-eight she was still a virgin, and she had no interest in laying with men, masters or otherwise, without any kind of connection, of love between them.

“Twenty-eight…” the man repeated, sizing her up with a gaze that swept up and down her form “Pity. A tad too old, I’m afraid.”

Shmi was simultaneously offended and relieved, lowering her hands at her sides; did that mean the man wasn’t interested in keeping her as a bedchamber slave?

“However, I cannot let this go to waste. Such power… If only you were young enough to be trained.”

Suddenly, Shmi could feel her entire body stiffen, as if she was being held by invisible ropes that tied every inch of her from head to toe. The man tilted his head to the side, smirking, and he brought his hand to her middle, right over her lower stomach.

“Hey!” her master shouted “Hands off the merchandise!”

The man ignored him, and Shmi could only whimper, trying to break free from the power holding her still.

“This will be very interesting.” The man muttered, and Shmi could feel a sudden warmth in her stomach, her skin tingling and her abdomen tightening; the feeling was as unwelcome as the cold that preceded it

Get your hands off me! Shmi thought, her face cringing in disgust, Stop touching me!

The man released her with a smirk, pulling his hand away. Shmi felt the power restraining her finally release her body and nearly collapsed, struggling to stay on her feet. Her body felt strange, and the warm sensation in her stomach did not cease.

“I believe this will be all. Goodbye.”

The man turned and left, leaving Shmi unsettled and her master furious, screaming at her to never say her true age in a sale ever again, but Shmi wasn’t really listening, her hands falling over her stomach. Something had happened, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t understand what it was.

A month later she had long forgotten about that particular incident, finding it very strange that she missed her period. On the following weeks, she would start feeling nauseous every morning. Two months later, she would notice her stomach swelling despite her poor diet. Several months later, on one late night of work all alone in a tool shed, she would collapse on the floor with the pain of her stomach contractions, muffling her screams in a cloth not to wake up her master and struggling for hours until she gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby.

“There was no father”, she would say, and no one would believe her.

#shmi skywalker #sheev palpatine #THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC IN THE LEAST FOR FUCK'S SAKE #PLEASE DONT TAG THIS AS SHIP EW!!!

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makeste · 4 years

Text

BnHA Chapter 275: YAAAAY but Also AHHHHH

Previously on BnHA: Endeavor was all “I’M FIGHTING TOMURA AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME” and set everything on fire. Unlike SOME people, however, it turns out fire is NOT Tomura’s weakness, so he basically just shrugged it off. But before things could progress any further, AFO was all “psst, go get One for All” and Tomura was all “? One for All?” and Endeavor was all “?? One for All?” and Deku and Kacchan, who were listening in on their earpieces, were all “!!!” Having thus realized that Tomura was targeting him, Deku sped off to lead him somewhere away from the civilians... accompanied by his good friend Bakugou “274 chapters of character development have all been leading up to this” Katsuki. Because like hell are you going to have an EPIC BATTLE with the FINAL VILLAIN without him, you damn nerd. Who’s he going to heroically sacrifice himself for if you’re not there?? Hahh!?

Today on BnHA: Deku and Kacchan fly off to battle Tomura after confusing Endeavor into giving them his location (which wasn’t very hard lmao). En route, Deku finally thinks to ask Kacchan why he’s tagging along, and Kacchan is all “DON’T GET ME WRONG, IT’S JUST BECAUSE I WANT REVENGE ON TOMURA, AND DEFINITELY NOT BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT YOU AT ALL, HOW DARE YOU, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN SAY THAT”, which is super convincing and didn’t make me roll my eyes at all. Anyways so then Tomura shows up and is all “EYO TIME TO KILL YOU NOW” and Deku and Kacchan are all “OH SFFKDFK”, but fortunately Gran shows up to save them in the nick of time, because BnHA is literally the only shounen manga in which grown-ups will see kids trying to lead a battle and be like “lol wtf” and actually try to stop that shit instead of being all “what are your orders, children.” The chapter then ends with the heroes doing EXACTLY WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING??Namely, having the guy who can TURN OFF QUIRKS battle the guy with the ultimate death quirk! I’m so proud. But also I swear to god, if Tomura so much as breathes suspiciously in his direction...!! What the fuck. HORIKOSHI.

y’all what in the fresh hell is this bs

not yet there isn’t son but if you keep trolling like this I can give your nervous system something to actually be nervous about

anyway. this was his comment from last week’s issue of Jump, and I have absolutely no idea what it’s referring to, is the fun part! did he cry because of something he was working on in a chapter that’s coming up? or is he just tired from a combination of stressful mangaka schedule + 2020 in general?? or hell, for all I know he just recently watched Titanic or some shit

(ETA: KILLING AIZAWA SHOUTA WOULDN’T MAKE SOMEONE CRY OUT OF JOY, THOUGH. RIGHT?!)

anyways I guess it’s time to read and see if I feel like sadly happily crying for two hours afterward

-- oh shit I just realized there are two scanlations out for this?? one from readjump.com, and one from readheroacademia.com. lol now what. uhhh

lulzes. I guess I’ll go with RHA for now and keep checking back to RJ after each page and I’ll go with whichever translation I liked better

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, OUR MILLENNIAL VILLAIN

or would he actually be gen z. he was already in his twenties when this manga started like six years ago, so I’m going with millennial. but on the cusp though I guess. anyway, he plays video games though is the point

and I see he’s already decided to contradict me and my inane speculations not two panels in! I GUESS I AM JUST A FOOL. that’s really interesting though. I wonder if it’s just Monoma’s quirk that doesn’t take the accumulated “save data” from the people he copies from, then? guh. how many of my AFO/OFA theory notes do I have to scrap now

and there’s a little quirk blurb about Search, which is fairly useless given that we already know how it works (actually in even greater detail than shown here), but at least it comes with a cute little picture of Ragdoll in her hero costume, to make us all sad and stuff

so anyways Tomura who are you looking at?? this was a topic of some contention last week! also why were you only seeing nine people then. Ragdoll had seen everyone in 1-A along with Aizawa and her fellow Pussycats at a minimum, so is this confirmation that Tora and Mandalay and Pixie-Bob are all really dead then, because I CAN AND WILL HUNT DOWN A MAN AND MAKE HIM CRY FOR A GOOD DEAL LONGER THAN TWO HOURS IF THAT’S REALLY THE CASE. was Kouta not traumatized enough already?? LET’S JUST ORPHAN HIM AGAIN WHY NOT THAT’S A GOOD PLAN

(ETA: I really hate that we are still up in the air regarding this? and I mean, sure, why not, we only had like a dozen lady heroes to begin with, so why not just kill off two more of them, offscreen, in one fell swoop??)

WHAT IS A SHAME. TOMURA. DAMN IT

(ETA: ??)

-- well hello there

OR MAYBE I WAS NOT A FOOL AT ALL?? lol guys. please do not tell me my hobo husband is flying his vengeful ass over to where Tomura all heedless of the danger because I really do not need that just yet. CAN MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS PLEASE FUCKING TAKE TURNS BEING IN TERRIBLE DANGER INSTEAD OF ALL AT ONCE

sob we’re cutting back to Endeavor and Deku and Kacchan. ACTUALLY THAT’S GOOD THOUGH why am I complaining. I’m just gonna have to get used to the fact that no one is going to truly be safe for the next god knows however many chapters, and make my peace with that. hahaha. yeah right

lmao Deku. “HEY WHAT’S UP, ME AND MY FELLOW CHILD HERE ARE GONNA LURE SHIGARAKI TOWARDS US, BUT WE’LL EXPLAIN OUR REASONS FOR THAT LATER. IF YOU SEE HIM MAKING ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS PLEASE INFORM US SO AS TO AID US IN THIS PLAN.” Endeavor if you just go along with this I will lose so much respect for you lmao

lol he is trying to argue a bit but then he’s suddenly cutting off. so in hindsight I don’t know why I said “lol”, really. I’M JUST NERVOUS OKAY

btw in the other translation Deku straight up asks if Endeavor can redirect Tomura towards them. “sure no problem bucko, let me just tell the walking apocalypse exactly where he can find you, my two sixteen-year-old interns whose safety I am responsible for. I was just thinking to myself that I hadn’t had my fill of crazy ill-thought-out plans with a high risk of death today”

holy --

okay I have not the SLIGHTEST clue what’s going on here, even after analyzing both scans, except that someone, probably Tomura, either just went CRONCH or just GOT cronched just now lmao. let us read on to find out who was cronched and who did the cronching

the rest of this page is not really much more helpful

but I am becoming increasingly suspicious that those were in fact Tomura’s new, improved and ridiculously thicc legs doing the cronching as he did a Marvel Superhero Landing from the most RIDICULOUS ANGLE POSSIBLE

LMAO NOW WHAT

so he just cronched onto the ground and fooshed Endeavor and then went flying off again huh

LMAO AT EVERYTHINNNNNG

THANK YOU ENJI. HE’LL LURE HIM AWAY. lols WHY THE FUCK DID YOU TELL THEM WHICH WAY HE WAS HEADED YOU BOOB

he really just fucking hung up on him afterwards too. just, “got it thanks amigo just leave everything to me, [CLICK]”

OH MY GOD

BECAUSE WE CAN’T HAVE ANYONE ELSE CONVENIENTLY INTERFERING WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR LITTLE THROWDOWN OF DESTINY HUH. THAT WOULD JUST BE TERRIBLE

-- oh shit

that’s just. a SLIGHT change in meaning, there. silly me. thinking “get rid of them” meant “get rid of their communications as opposed to FUCKING KILLING THE ONE YOU’RE NOT ACTUALLY AFTER. hmm. well that’s not good

(ETA: never have I been so happy that a translation was wrong lmao.)

so now Endeavor’s shouting at everyone else that Tomura is heading southwest and that he has “SUPER REGENARTION” (sic) and is no longer THE SAME THUG HE WAS BEFORE and yeah RHA you have officially won me over, flaws and all. listen up boyos. this ain’t your granddaddy’s Shigaraki Tomura. this one regenars

also “that damn kid...” like why the hell did my son have to go and befriend two protagonists. why is this my life now

AHAHAHAHA

“MIDORIYA IS IN DANGER...!!” STORY OF THIS MANGA. AHAHA. KACCHAN HE’S COMING. HE’S COMING, KACCHAN. for you two. someone please help me I am both terrified and thrilled beyond all recognition and my body doesn’t know how to handle the conflicting emotions. honestly crying for two hours is starting to sound more and more appealing

oh my god I forgot they didn’t know, though

fff. Kacchan especially didn’t know, because unlike Deku he doesn’t have random bits of other people’s souls going “heyyyyyyy... transcendent being at 12 o’clock.” what has this kid so bravely and stupidly gone and gotten himself into

look at them go

damn Deku can you really not float yet?? that’s going to be really inconvenient if that’s the case

(ETA: my boy really would have just straight up died. he would have died so hard.)

OH MY GOD

NOW YOU WANT TO ASK HIM LMAOOOO. well it’s because of all the character development!! if you must know

THAT’S NOT AN ANSWER BLASTY MCANGERTY

you’re not as smooth as you think you are, you know. we all know why you actually followed him. but fine, be that way

okay so now he’s giving a real-er answer though

“understand the situation”, the situation being that your best friend and his secret-trump-card-in-the-battle-against-evil quirk were being targeted by the guy who just obliterated this entire city. got it. you put it quite succinctly

and Deku is all

and Kacchan is all

love how he throws that protagonist crack in there too. because we all know that Deku absolutely is the protagonist lol, and so if that part’s obviously not true, we can make some inferences about the rest of what he’s saying too now can’t we

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh snap

YOU SURE DO!! and he does with you too!! :) it’s gonna be one big happy reunion! :) :) :) oh gosh golly

OH NO KATSUKI WHAT ARE YOU DOING

what are you doing to me, I should clarify. please be considerate of my feelings. you can’t just DUMP sudden Kacchan Kamino Angst on me without any warning, you have to let me know in advance so that I can buy some thank you cards

THERE’S MOREEEEE???

YOU REMEMBER TOO, DON’T YOU DEKU. HE WAS ALL CRYING AND STUFF. IT WAS A LOT. IT’S POSSIBLE THAT I HAVE NEVER PERSONALLY GOTTEN OVER IT

AND IT LOOKS LIKE HE NEVER QUITE GOT OVER IT EITHER

:’)

by the way in the other translation he says “I’ll make up for what I did that day.” so yeah. BOOM. right to the heart. shot of me collapsing to the ground in slow motion

but it’s interesting though that he still can’t admit to having selfless motives yet! even after everything he’s been through and all his character growth! he’s still all GET RID OF THE REFERENCES TO ME CARING ABOUT YOU, WE CAN’T LET PEOPLE KNOW WE HAVE FEELINGS

but even his Kamino feels are notably first and foremost about him feeling responsible for failing All Might. so yeah, buddy. where does that leave you? even your feeble excuses are still rooted in selflessness, JUST GIVE IN AND ADMIT YOU’VE BEEN SECRETLY GIVING A SHIT BEHIND EVERYONE’S BACK. and honestly he might be better off at this point if he didn’t! BUT HE DOES. and that’s that

anyways Deku I sure hope you and your big hero brain can see right through this nonsense

god. you’re both in so much danger though, do you even have any idea?! of course you fucking don’t. god

HELLO BAKUGOU NARRATION!?!

well that’s one hell of a rare sight!! all fresh and chock full of shrewd observations about his best rival’s current skillset. ah what a time we’re living in

ooooh

gonna hold off commentary until I read the next part of this lol

OOOOOH

goddamn. Horikoshi really went off this week. just a whole chapter’s worth of Stuff Makeste Really Likes, goddamn is it my birthday or what

so do you guys think he’ll be able to keep pace all the way up to 100%? I can see this part being interpreted in two totally different ways if I’m being honest. on the one hand we have the more pessimistic (some would say realistic) view that Bakugou is desperately trying to convince himself that he’s still on the same level as the rival he so desperately wants to surpass, but with the sinking feeling that he’s actually not going to be able to keep up for much longer. and then on the other side of the coin we have the more glass-half-full perspective that he actually is capable of keeping up with him right to the bitter end. that even as Deku grows stronger, he’ll continue to push himself and use that as motivation to keep getting stronger too. that Deku isn’t out of reach; that his goal isn’t out of reach

and I’m not completely sure which way this is leaning myself! I personally would like to lean more towards the second interpretation, because y’all know I love me some rivals. and also because imo one of the most commendable things about Bakugou’s development has been how he hasn’t once been envious of Deku’s strength or of his position as All Might’s chosen heir since he learned about OFA. he hasn’t once shown any kind of resentment towards him for it, or doubted whether or not he deserves it. and as minor a detail as that may seem to some people, I cherish it. and I don’t want that to change! but I guess we shall see

so now we’re getting the clearest shot we’ve had yet of the new AFO holes in Tomura’s palms as he gets ready to combine some more quirks. also! more information about the quirks he has and is using! fucking thank you, where was this last week

so “radio waves” is clearly going to be used here to disrupt the heroes’ communication, which is a shame for them, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved given the alternative! the RJ translation is clearly just a hot mess lol. but I still adore that one “I’ll make up for what I did” line though

WOW

THE DISRESPECT. LOL DID YOU JUST FUCKING KILL HIS ASS

(ETA: I just realized he’s nowhere to be found after this, though, so... did he?? or is he now lying somewhere now all wounded and waiting to be found by one, or, dare I say, two of his sons? ...)

LKDFJLSDKGHOSIDGHOISDflkwejfdfsdklggdflgnfdlgndakgalkgldfdfkwlfwiowelKLDSGKSL:DKGJL:DKFM?G?SGSDLKG?SDFSDF??LKJ@L!

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

even if you ask him nicely??! somehow I just can’t help feeling that he probably shouldn’t oblige you, though!?!?!

anyways. THAT AIN’T SAFE. and what the hell is happening in that bottom left corner ahhhhhh

AHHHHHHH

GRAN DM ME YOUR ADDRESS I WANT TO SEND YOU SOME FLOWERS AND A BASKET OF FRUIT AND CRACKERS AND SOME LITTLE CHEESES AND SAUSAGES

jesus christ it completely slipped my mind that there was one other person currently in the vicinity who knows about OFA. my good sir, maybe you would like to introduce these two dunderfucks to the concept of a “plan.” and maybe you can also find the single shared braincell they apparently dropped and lost somewhere back there in all the city rubble

oh fuck me

(ETA: does Kacchan look so rattled here because he is being lectured, or because he just saw a vision of his own death and is now having it explained to him just how close he came to being decomposed. you decide! I’ll just sit here and bask in the angst.)

fuck. main character gods were really working overtime here. anyways so how are you all doing this fine Friday afternoon. me, I’m just sitting here wrangling with the knowledge that Tomura’s quirk is even deadlier than I realized, and that my two little boys came within inches of dying horrible deaths just now. but anyways it’s not as humid today as it was yesterday so that’s really nice

anyways so now Gran is continuing to lecture the mayor of Dumb Ideas Town here, along with his friend the deputy mayor who still thinks he outranks the actual mayor

SHH NOW AND LISTEN TO YOUR GRANDPA

-- ohhhh shit son are they mounting a counterattack?? don’t tell me!!

also is Gran seriously faster than Tomura. that makes no fucking sense, and yet these two are only alive now because of it so I’M SURE NOT GONNA QUESTION IT

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

AND IS AIZAWA ON HER BACK THOUGH???

AHAHHAHAHAHAHA

AH, BUT IT AIN’T GONNA WORK THOUGH, IS IT!!! AHAHAHA YESSSSSS

excellent question sir. the short answer is “they’re idiots”, and the long answer is just a longer version of “they’re idiots” but with some more complicated BakuDeku feels mixed in. I’ll tell you all about it if you just promise me that you’ll actually live through this, all right?

“is he after the two of them?” listen boy if you don’t finally put two and two together after this I’m gonna be fucking beside myself lol. (though honestly, Deku and Kacchan have been targeted by the League so many other times already that he might just simply accept “yeah they’re after them again” without any further explanation)

my dear gentlefolk would you fucking look at how the lord has blessed us on this day

Aizawa Fucking Shouta and the motherfucking dramatic intro to end all dramatic intros. finally this man gets his moment

someone please teach me how to cast a force field. teach me how to reach into the manga and slap this man and tell him to stop talking about how everyone’s noble sacrifices to protect him and his eraser quirk have led him to this day and to this one encounter. my guy. my fucking dude. THERE HAD BETTER BE SUBSEQUENT ENCOUNTERS AFTER THIS

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

ISN’T HE THOUGH??? Tomura I love you sweetie but you better BACK THE FUCK. OFF

well FINE THEN! BE THAT WAY. it’s not like my life revolves around you and your stupid manga anyway!! it’s not like I’m obsessed with it or anything!! I have other hobbies!! well I actually do have other hobbies, so that doesn’t really work as sarcasm, so let’s see though. maybe something more like, “this isn’t by far my favorite out of all my hobbies!!” I don’t spend 80-90% of my free time on any given day either actively or passively daydreaming about this series and writing essays in my head and reading fanfic and scrolling through art on tumblr!! etc.!! whatever!! enjoy your break!! have fun living your life!!

please don’t kill Aizawa

#bnha 275 #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #shigaraki tomura #aizawa shouta #endeavor #gran torino #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #well then #now that I have 'fixed' this post and am playing by tumblr's rules #I wonder if it's too late to get it unhidden from the tag search :/

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drarrymybeloved · 3 years

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Last Line Game

Rules: Share your favorite closing lines from 10 of your stories (if you have less than 10 then list them all!). Feel free to skip any that might be too spoilery. Notice any patterns? Pick your #1 and tell us why you love it.

thank you for the tag @floydig 💓

1. bloom- Purple hyacinths bloom in his vision.

2. magical creatures and where to find them- Right here in his arms, familiar and dear.

3. polaris- Draco swears, right at that moment, Harry's eyes shine brighter than Polaris.

4. return- Harry won't be left on the doorstep tonight.

5. before you go- “I know, Harry. It was always you.”

6. miracle- And Draco thinks he might just believe in miracles after all.

7. blanket fort- Later, they have dinner in the fort as well.

8. fire and all its forms- Curling up in Harry's arms and falling asleep right there, watching some inane film or just listening to his warm cadence, while blue flames flicker above them— love.

so, not quite 10 because although i have 14 works as of now, i'm not a fan of all of them. which isn't to say i'm not proud of them, because i am (even the ones i really struggled with rip). nonetheless, the last line doesn't stand out in all of them.

in most of these lines though, i convey some emotion or othe other or i attempt to evoke one in the reader— which remains in line with my writing style thus far, although i've no doubt a month or so from now it will be different. #7 is a bit difficult to interpret without context, and technically so is #1 if you're unfamiliar with the language of flowers (which most of us are so, yes). but the rest, especially #4, are relatively easier to interpret with respect to the rest of the story.

my favourite though, is #5. the duality of that sentence gets me everytime, and it's not accidental either. 'it was always you' is not just meant to convey draco placing the blame of their break up on harry, but it's also conveying that despite the fact that draco's choosing to leave harry, he's reminding himself (or harry, depends on how you wish to interpret it) that it was always harry for him. and that makes the break up that much more heartbreaking.

#4 is also one i'm fond of, a hopeful ending was a new experiment for me, something i'd like to play with more.

i'm not sure who's already done this and who hasn't, but i'm tagging @wheezykat @proboscidea-althaeifolia @rockmarina @april-thelightfury115 if you guys want to!

#tag games #last line game #the way these get me to analyse my writing is actually quite useful ngl

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ryosei-hime · 3 years

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Writer Tag Game

I got tagged by @ernmark

I’m terrible at tagging people in these so if you see this and want to do it, go for it!

How many works do you have on AO3?

I’m gonna start by saying that I have a larger chunk of fics on FF.net because I wrote more back when I used that instead. I also had a very long hiatus from writing fics at all due to mental health and life stuff.

Also I realized recently that a lot of my RvB fics didn’t end up on AO3 and I just left them here on tumblr which was the last time I was super active with fanfic back in 2014.

So, long way around to say, only 20 that are housed on AO3 specifically.

What's your total AO3 word count?

49,141

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Naptime is Best Time which was my most popular RvB fic. A little humorous Grimmons.

Stolitz Week Oneshots - Some of my most recent work since that event only ended recently. Very specifically I got a lot of those kudos after posting Confession which seems to be well-liked and makes me very happy.

Personal Space which is a HuskerDust chapter fic that deals with Husk’s insecurities regarding his demon form.

Sex and Therapy - An OCxRobo Fizz story in which an imp therapist buys a busted up second hand Fizzarolli Personal Companion with intents to help him professionally but uh. *points at the title* This one was very surprising to me because I don’t expect much if any attention to be given to my OC focused things. So that this one got enough to be on the top five makes me really happy.

Apologies - An Alix/Chat Noir fic that I did for a rare pair exchange. Another one that surprises me. : P Especially as I only watched the first season of Ladybug and often forget I even wrote it.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to and if the comment is longer, I definitely do. With shorter comments, it depends on my mood. I’m socially awkward and whether or not saying just thank you feels inane and unwanted as a response will vary with how I’m feeling. I definitely appreciate all comments! Even one word comments. : P But responding will vary based on my own mental processes and has nothing to do with the commenter or my appreciation for the comment. Some comments will make me particularly happy and I’ll read them over again but still not respond because I don’t have anything specific to say in response. It’s mostly a series of noises that can’t be conveyed in text.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Oh! That’s definitely Don’t Cry Usagi. A short fic speculating the long term effects of Naru's role as victim in Sailor Moon's crime-fighting life. I don’t do character death a lot but I had this idea and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I think I end up with a lot of happy endings. Like there’s probably suffering along the way but in the end things work out more often than not. So, I don’t think that I can say any one fic has a happier ending than another, really.

Do you write crossovers? If so, What is the craziest one you’ve ever written?

I was probably more prone to that when I was younger. I did have one that I never posted anywhere that involved Doctor Drakken from Kim Possible attempting to use a device to access a universe in which he had been successful in taking over the world (I think this was before a Stitch in Time came out) and learn how he did it. But of course the device malfunctions and sort of scatters universes. I used pretty much all the cartoons I was particularly interested in at the time.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I wouldn’t say hate. I’ve definitely received some weird responses though. And all on FF.net.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I only very, very recently starting doing so! Because you can only write a character that’s a sexbot for so long without it coming up. It was important that the second occurrence of full on sex in Sex and Therapy (I fade to blacked the first) actually be written because there was a lot of emotion and bonding involved in it that needed to be shown. Which is why I said fuck it and did the shorter one right before it as well. I had to accept I couldn’t tell that story without sex. It’s in the title! But now I’m more comfortable writing it, so I may be more prone to do so going forward.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I’m pretty sure I had a few snatched up by bots grabbing a bunch all at once. But not by a person that I am aware of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I’m aware of.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I attempted to do so once with a 9/Labyrinth crossover. I failed you @ernmark. Forgive me. Actually, there was one other time where I was slightly more successful but it also never got posted anywhere or made it beyond a couple of rough drafts. It was a DBZ fic and I remember a much more talented writer was working with me and I was super grateful for their input and help because this was when I was like *maths* 13? I was super young. We were using yahoo chat to work on it together. And this much better/older writer treated me so nicely and wasn’t condescending at all. It was really nice of them. I will always remember you stranger from yahoo chat.

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

That definitely depends on the fandom. Since these are the two fandoms I’m active in right now: Stolitz is my favorite Helluva Boss ship and HuskerDust is my favorite Hazbin Hotel ship.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay, there are two fics I started a million years ago that I think about rewriting and finishing constantly. I even started to rewrite one of them more recently before Helluva/Hazbin took over my brain. One was Foutley’s Phone Buddies which was an As Told By Ginger fic focused on aged up Carl/Blake. The other Was Crouching Tigger, Hidden Rabbit which was a Tigger/Rabbit fic. That’s right. I ship the fuck out of Tigger and Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh.

What are your writing strengths?

Characters and dialogue. I’m someone with very low self-esteem or it used to be very low. I guess it’s gotten better but it’s still hard to say outright nice things about myself. But I’ve never had a problem saying I’m good at characters. Confessions is kind of a point of pride for me right now with that because of how much attention it’s received for being in character.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot and structure. I write primarily by instinct. And my instinct is primarily character driven. What makes it easy for me to just churn out character interactions without thinking makes it difficult for me when I have to stop and slow down long enough to figure out what’s actually supposed to be happening in the story and in what order for the best pacing. The more my wheels have to actually turn, the harder it is for me.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’ll do it poorly with flagrant disregard for poor native speakers. I’m so sorry native speakers. I used bacha galupe for Angel in one recently. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it. And I’m pretty sure I learned that from the Golden Girls so how accurate it is or if it’s even spelled right is beyond me. But it’s out there now. I really only do this for words here and there though. If someone’s gonna do more than that, I’ll just write that they speak in the language.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The Animorphs! I typed up Animorphs fic in like comic sans size fucking 30 or something and printed it out. I’ll never forget. That was in the late 1990s and my grandfather had just moved up from the printer that had the edges you had to tear off. So it was on this impressive pure white straight sheet of paper. So fancy and it had my giant ass fic on it. Only the best for my Andalite OC.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I’m still very fond of Naptime is Best Time after all these years. I think Sex and Therapy is gonna be special to me for being one of the longest chapter fics I’ve ever finished (I’ma finish it) because I’ve always been more of a oneshot person until recently. And Confessions will probably stay a favorite for a long time. So, yeah, I’ve just been happier with my recent stuff and being able to write fanfic again after so many years.

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ythmir-writes · 4 years

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Fictober 2020, Day 02

Prompt: “that’s the easy part” Fandom: Obey Me! Fea: Barbatos Audience/Tags: general / good and warm feels

Five.

That was the number of attempts I’ve made to strike up a conversation with Barbatos in the last two hours that ended up with me being absolutely ridiculously tongue-tied. The number of attempts where I had gathered enough courage to walk up to him first to, you know, just talk. About anything. Maybe even everything. For so long as he had free time, and I wasn’t in the way of his service to Diavolo in this party.

I mean, it is party. Attendees talk at parties, right?

It’s embarrassing, to be completely honest. Pretending to not have seen him when Satan told me it was all but obvious my eyes had never left Barbatos. Pretending I needed to speak to Diavolo about a thing or other. Pretending I was out of drinks and Mammon appearing with two champagne bottles. Asking him if we still had that assignment due Friday. Honestly admitting I found the palace a labyrinth and needed to find Solomon (for a pep talk; he need not know).

“You really do have it that hard, huh.” Solomon placed a hand on his chin.

A statement, not a question, I realized. One I knew Solomon was not waiting for any reply for either. “Nice talk,” I said instead.

“You could always just ask him.”

“I’m out of ideas on how to even approach him.”

Solomon hummed a tone. “How about something entirely natural?”

I tried not to sweat out the slight implication that none of my earlier attempts had been entirely natural.

Of all the Demons in Devildom, Barbatos was the most approachable; something most of Hell’s citizens would agree on. If it were not for the fact that he had horns and a tail, you’d think he was anything else. Maybe even human.

Sure, I’ve met a few kind and genial Demons in the course of my stay here. For all that we’ve thought them to be malicious, some are just tricksters, with a need to distract and fiddle and interrupt. They can’t help it. Don’t get me wrong, you should never trust a Demon to draw up a contract for anything – devil is in the details and all that – but look past their basic instinct to wreak havoc, you may just find yourself a friend.

Barbatos was that kind of Demon.

Say what you will about his near blind loyalty to the First House, or the rumoured power he controlled that made him formidable even to the Eldest Sin, but Barbatos is a kind and reliable friend. The kind you’d want to have your back when things got dicey.

Besides, centuries of service should account for something, right? And even if in the first few times he had helped me, they were all just because Diavolo had instructed him to help the poor human along, Barbatos hadn’t needed to stay with me as I struggled with the demonic alphabet.

Barbatos hadn’t needed to give me extra macarons when he made them. Barbatos hadn’t needed to accompany me to the library whenever we passed each other on the way to the student council room. Barbatos hadn’t needed to give me extra souvenirs when he accompanied Diavolo in Earth. Barbatos hadn’t needed to check up on me that one time I was too sick from trying to out-eat Beelzebub (that was entirely my fault, I should have known better but sushi has always been my favorite).

Call me a fool, call me an idiot, call me a hopeless sap who doesn’t know any better – but when you notice that small oh in your life, you’ll agree with me.

Solomon had been the first to notice my infatuation. But Solomon was sharp, and an even a sharper sorcerer, so I had not given his notice much thought. Much to my horror, unfortunately, everyone in House Lamentation had seen the same thing and had only barely kept quiet about it.

Until Diavolo and Barbatos had visited that one time. And I pretty much stammered their entire stay. There was no going back from that. Especially with Asmodeous and Satan.

“The party is winding down,” Solomon suddenly said, nodding to a few emissaries who seemed to be congratulating Diavolo.

“So?” I asked, sullen. I’d missed my chance again.

“Don’t pout.” Solomon patted my head, which is appalling as we were nearly the same height. “As per usual, there will be a few moments when one of the brothers will do something inane and Lucifer will have to handle it.”

I made a face. The brother always made a scene. “I don’t see how this is going to help me.”

“Diavolo will be entertained for a few minutes, leaving Barbatos a few moments to stand idly by.”

As if on cue, something broke. Quickly followed by Mammon swearing on all his past mistakes that this one was not specifically his fault alone.

Solomon gave me a slight push on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

You take the help you can get, I guess.

Using the barely felt momentum from my only human friend in this plane of existence, I made my way towards the brothers, trying to pick out the words to say. It doesn’t have to be grand, doesn’t have to woo every Demon who heard them.

They just have to let me secure a date with the Demon I liked.

I watched the scene play out as I made my way through the tables. Sure enough, Lucifer was looking as if the gates of Hell had re-opened. Sure enough, Diavolo was all grins and reassurances that the vase was only seven centuries old and Lucifer didn’t have to pop a vein about it.

And sure enough, Barbatos was stood a good distance away from them putting down what looked like a service tray with tea in his hands to the table beside him.

Satan spotted me approaching. I picked up the pace before his knowing look could break my resolve.

“They’re at it again, huh?” I said as I neared the butler. Act natural. Act like you did not make ridiculous attempts at conversation earlier.

Barbatos turned to acknowledge me. “It seems a party is never truly complete without something exciting happening.”

I felt a pang of sympathy. Not just for Mammon, who was going to be upside down the front door again tonight, but also for Barbatos who was probably going to be in-charge of clean-up. “I’m going to apologize for Mammon. I know he won’t be sorry for the mess.”

“There’s no need, my dear,” Barbatos chuckled. “These little incidents are nothing. I’m glad for them, really.”

“You are?”

Barbatos nodded. “They bring reprieve to the Young Master. I am not the only servant of the First House glad to see him smile the way he does now.”

“Oh.” I said, lost already in the small smile unfurling on Barbatos’s lips as he looked on.

And I realized I had nothing to say anymore. One smile from this Demon, and all thoughts are simply gone. Ka-poof.

I don’t know how long I had been staring, but as soon as I realized I was, I shook myself into action. “You’re not mad you have to clean?”

“That’s the easy part.” Barbatos turned his smile at me and my stomach did flips at the sight. “Or you could say, it’s a small price to pay in exchange for the joy.”

I bobbed my head. “Right, yeah. For Diavolo, of course.”

“Not entirely.”

I raised my brows in question.

Barbatos seemed to hesitate, then asked. “May I be honest?”

“Always.”

“I was worried,” He said, looking away for a moment. “That you would not go for a sixth conversation.”

I did not know whether to want to combust or have the rest of Hell swallow me from where I stood as I realized that Barbatos knew the times I have talked to him from this party alone. Did he know? Had he felt whatever shred of dignity I have suddenly just collapse? Was he aware of all my failures at attempting to ask him out, and that I would settle for fifteen minutes of tea with him if it meant even just a shared moment alone?

I closed my eyes, the only way I knew I could technically hide from him, and also to stop my train wreck of thoughts made worse only by the mad beating of my heart.

“Barbatos, may I be equally honest?”

“Of course.”

I could not even look him in the eyes. I was that weak. “I would gladly wrestle Cerberus and put three collars on all his heads, if it meant I could spend afternoon tea with you.”

There, I said it. Not the confession I had hoped it would be, but Solomon was right. I do have it hard for this Demon.

Sputtering is what made me look at Barbatos, surprised, and I almost missed the faint blush on his cheeks. Or perhaps, I was mistaken and did not really see them, because Barbatos was opening a hand towards me and my heartbeat skyrocketed to impossible heights.

“My dear, I assure you, you don’t need to go to those lengths. I will have gladly have you, if you will have me.”

#fictober20 #obey me!#obey me! Barbatos #a little late but it's here !!!#ythmir fanfics #obey me #obey me barbatos

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dicedungeons-and-dragons · 4 years

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Scales

Note: As most of you know my campaign has well as truly taken over my life and I’ve been writing little (and not so little) stories based around it. And I’ve decided to post them from time to time, they’re going to be tagged ‘cotd fics’ if you want to blacklist them, I’m also sticking them under a ‘read more’ but I know they glitch a lot so sorry if it doesn’t take. Here’s a little one because I’ve been plagued by the fact that dragon bloodline sorcerers canonically have scales.

His mother noticed when he was five.

She found little patches of pebbled skin on his shoulders, along his elbows and knees, and running along his spine. The skin wasn’t red, or itchy, or like any rash she’d seen but she’d been worried and taken him to the local physician anyway. The older man hadn’t known what to make of the tough little bumps either and had given them a special lotion. Waylan got in the habit of putting it on the patches every night and morning, but the pebbled skin never went away.

***

His father takes notice of it when he’s nine.

His mother has been dead for eleven months and things are different now. There’s no more music constantly drifting through their home, his father works longer hours, and Waylan is silently expected to care for himself. The expectation is distant. His father doesn’t call him a burden, doesn’t scoff or roll his eyes when he asks for something, but he makes a point of showing Waylan how things are done in the house and where things are so that he doesn’t have to ask for them again. So Waylan learns how to make and tend fires around the house, for warmth and cooking, how to do his laundry, and eventually, where the first-aid kit is.

He burns his hand on the fire poker, not having realized that he’d left it resting too close to the roaring flame he’d brought to life. His father heard his scream from across the house and he’d come running. The sharp red line already had two blisters bubbling up inside of it and his father had picked him up and taken him straight to the bathroom, setting him on the edge of the tub before rooting around in the small dresser that sat beside the door. He’d put a thick cream on the raw skin, wrapped it, and warned Waylan to be more careful.

When he’d taken the bandages off a few days later the blisters were gone, but a distinct line of that pebbled skin had risen in their place.

***

Waylan figures it out when he’s fourteen.

After his hands catch fire, after he can suddenly hold a piece of wire and talk to someone over a hundred feet away, after he realizes he has magic. And once he realizes it he starts to research, finding scant moments to slip away from his father when they’re in Creta so that he can buy as many books as his bag can hold about the arcane. And when they’re home he reads. He learns about the different sources people have for their abilities. There are people who use words and songs to pull their magic from the strings of the universe, people who through their own means and study are able to learn the craft like a science, people who draw power from the natural world, and people who are just born with arcane magic. Though his mother had taught him to play piano when he was still little he doubts his fumblings there are the source of the fire he can feel burning under his skin. So he figures he must have just been born like this.

And there are plenty of records of other born sorcerers. There are some who can’t contain their magic and strange, sometimes destructive, things happen around them. But he understands what Sabroth and Dojhan say when they speak draconic and he’s never been taught. And he thinks that maybe he should be more surprised to find out that there’s dragon blood somewhere in his family line. But he’s more relieved just to find some answers. He reads the chapter on mages with dragon blood four times that night. And when he goes to bed he traces his fingers lightly over the raised rough skin along his shoulders and the backs of his forearms.

Scales. Thin and flesh colored, not the metallic (or dare he think, chromatic) color of his ancestor, but another remnant of them. Something left behind to protect him.

He stops using the strange lotions from his childhood.

***

Gadreel doesn’t notice them until after they start to date.

That’s not a surprise really. The protective patches blend in with his skin, they’re pretty nondescript until they’re felt. Gad’s fingers twitch where they’re curled around his hips, his calloused fingers taking note of the unexpected tough texture.

“Scales,” Waylan mutters against his throat. He wants to try and press himself closer into Gad’s lap, but he’s still unsure and off balance. The stump of his arm aches and it would really kill the mood if he fell over because he couldn’t catch himself.

“Scales?”

“Dragon blood.” He says in draconic, nipping sharply along the edge of his jaw. He taught Gadreel the tongue he’d been given by birthright. “Now fuck me.” Waylan adds in the orcish Gad had taught him.

He doesn’t comment on the patches of scales he finds as he runs his hands along the rest of his body.

***

Ray finds out shortly after.

She is their resident healer, though both Lugh and Vani can make due in a pinch, and he is the resident torture victim. He’s got a lot of healing to do. Ray chatters away at him when he seeks her out to take a look at his arm. She healed a lot of the damaged, closed the bone over the marrow and stopped the bleeding when they’d found him. But the damage to the muscles and nerves required a check-up. So he lets her chatter and waits patiently as she finishes unwrapping the bandages to get a better look.

“Oh,” he doesn’t look at her or at the rough stump of his arm. His stomach twists and sinks. That wasn’t a bad sound necessarily, but he doesn’t like the idea that she’s surprised by some new development with the injury. “Does this always happen when you’re hurt?” Teeth clenched, he finally glances down at the stump.

The scales are thicker, thicker then he’s ever seen them anywhere on his body, almost as defined as Dojhan’s. They’re an unhappy, flushed raw color where they’re swelling around the stitches Ray’s supposed to be removing.

“Never been hurt like this before.” He grunts in response. Ray mulls that over for a second. He wonders what inane thing she’ll come up with this time and half wants to yank away from her touch. He’s not half bad with a medical kit himself, he could probably take care of this on his own the slow way.

But instead Ray just says, “Tell me if anything hurts.” And starts trimming away the black thread. When she checks the bandages on his chest as well they find a similar line of rough thick scales.

***

He notices after a few more months of traveling with the party that the scales don’t go back to the way they were before.

The ones around the stump of his left arm are still thick and rigid, a protective insulation against the potential discomfort of his mechanical prosthetic when he manages to procure one. As are the ones tracing the wound left by Gadreel’s axe. But he starts to notice the scales growing thicker in other places. Along his other arm, down the front of his chest and thighs, spider webbing out from the slash the Crimson Sign left across the hollow of his throat. The more they fight, the more his magic grows, the more scales he feels on his skin. They’re still invisible save for the pink tinged ones that line his scars, but Waylan can’t help but note the changes.

The scales are for protection and the gods know he could use as much as he can get traveling with this lot. And when he leaves them, leaves Gadreel, only a few days after the winter solstice to travel to one of the most isolated and dangerous places in the world, he's grateful to carry that protection on his skin.

***

He tells Corzaren.

They’re in the ruined castle, and after weeks he’s finally persuaded the undead creature to remove his armor. Seeing what two hundred years of decay has done to the knight is strange, but in a different way than he’d expected it to be. Waylan had known that Corzaren would be nightmarish. But the skeleton in front of him with red coal bright pinpricks of light burning in its eye sockets isn’t frightening really. Though he wonders if he’d feel differently if he didn’t know Corzaren as well as he does.

“Can I?” He raises his flesh hand.

“Of course.” Corzaren leans forward, still far taller than him even without his thick armored boots and helmet, and lets Waylan carefully cup his fingers over the bones of his face. It is strange to see the mandible part and hear the words slip out with no assistance from lips or tongue. The bones are rough under his fingers and the heavy thrum of necrotic energy that keeps the knight’s soul bound and animating his corpse makes Waylan’s hand start to go cold and numb after a few moments.

“Can you feel this?” He asks, drops his fingers down to the creature’s neck so he can carefully touch the interlocking pieces of his spine.

“Vaguely. I mostly note the pressure. I imagine I feel your touch as much as you can feel this.” He reaches out and runs his fingers along the metal arm. And the magic and machinery that keep the prosthetic going does transmit some of that sensation to him. Mainly a whisper of pressure, and a slight twinge that he suspects is the arm’s magic reacting to Corzaren’s necrotic energies. But no registration of texture or temperature.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“I am content being as close to you as I am able.” That makes his heart do a funny thing behind his ribs so Waylan just settles for tracing careful fingers along the thin bones of Corzaren’s instead. They feel brittle, like even he could break them without much effort, but when he does press a little more roughly he finds them solid as steel under his hand. Corzaren doesn’t even acknowledge the attempt, and to be honest Waylan wouldn’t have even tried if he thought for a second he’d actually do the other man harm.

When Corzaren’s touch moves from his prosthetic to his cheek he doesn’t say anything, just leans in to the touch slightly as he continues his inspection of the knight’s skeleton. There’s no flesh left on him, and Waylan’s a little grateful for that. He thinks this would be a lot more unpleasant if Cor looked like some of the bodies mouldering away on the lawn. Instead the old bones are clean, and scarred. A deep gouge in his rib here, a nick along his vertebrae there, and notably a crack, long and thin a few centimeters from his sternum on the left side of his ribcage. When Way’s fingers hesitate there Corzaren says,

“When Westly finished the ritual he asked me to fall on his blade. He was too far gone to sever his own soul from his body, but if I was willing then he could sever mine. Spare me the fate that was coming for everyone in the castle.”

“And avenge him and his mother?”

“No, Westly was a kind man, I don’t think revenge would have ever crossed his mind.”

Waylan doesn’t say anything when Crozaren’s fingers drop to his throat. He’s not wearing his necklace, and the pale pink scar smiles along his throat. “Same person who did almost all the rest of it.” Is all he offers in explanation. He hasn’t told Corzaren about the Sign yet. He’ll get around to it eventually. He doesn’t flinch as the thin bones run over the scar, but they make a loud rough sound in the quiet room despite the soft touch. The undead creature pauses and then does it again, as if he doesn’t know quite what to make of the discordant and unfamiliar sound. “I grow scales over my deepest scars.”

“Were you anyone else I would think that was a metaphor.”

“Good thing I’m not then.”

***

Terran knows he has scales after the first five minutes they speak.

Which is fair, he supposes, considering the man is a real dragon and an old one at that. He’s been around long enough to have seen other sorcerers.

(“Do you have any kids?” He asked one day when the thought crossed his mind.

“Absolutely not.” The other had replied with such an air of disgust Waylan couldn’t be sure it wasn’t intentionally exaggerated as a joke. “I have far more important things to do than contend with offspring or run around spreading my seed like a base animal, unlike some.”)

Waylan doesn’t realize how nice it is not to have to explain himself until he suddenly doesn’t have to. When they start sleeping together and Terran’s hands find the patch of scales running along his sternum, Waylan's mouth automatically opens to speak. But Terran doesn’t hesitate, just scrapes the whisper of claws between the interlocking pattern before continuing on. He doesn’t even blink. And the thing is Waylan never thought he was particularly self-conscious about the patches, but having them treated as if they are no more interesting than any other piece of skin loosens a coil of tension that he hadn’t even realized was taut in him. Terran neither pays them special attention nor ignores them. And that bland acceptance is something Waylan didn’t even know he wanted.

Over the course of the next few months that treatment has Waylan not thinking about them as if they’re anything strange or special either. It’s just his skin. Not his skin and the patches of scales. It’s all just him, and it’s no more worth acknowledgement than his eyelashes or fingernails.

So maybe that’s why he’s so confused when Terran starts muttering, voice low and angry, one rare sunny afternoon as they’re laying tangled in a pile of furs together. He feels the dragon’s fingers on his spine, pressing and pulling at his skin, it’s not painful, but the skin is still tight. The draconic letters he’d had Terran carve into his skin finished healing a few weeks ago, but it’s still tender.

“What’s got your tail in a twist?” He mumbles into the cradle of his flesh arm, reaching back with the metal one to push Terran’s probing fingers away. “If you wrote it wrong I’m going to kill you.”

“Oh no pet, it’s worse than branding you incorrectly.” He hisses, smacking Waylan’s hand away in response and putting his fingers back on his skin. “You’re marked correctly, and I’m afraid I’m debating the merits of killing you.”

A few months ago a statement like that would have actually frightened him. Now, “If you’re going to break up with me at least wait until Corzaren comes back so he can sooth my heartbreak.”

Terran swats him on the ass. “I’m being quite serious, brat.”

“Sure, why are you dumping me?”

“Because your scales are coming in.” Terran half snarls.

And that does give him pause. “My scales? You’ve already seen my scales.”

“Not these,” to accentuate his point he grinds his thumbs along the inner curve of his shoulder blades. Waylan makes a surprised sound in the back of his throat, the scales there must have gotten more pronounced because Terran puts a fair amount of pressure when he touches them and they ache as he draws his hand back.

“Ow.”

“Suck it up I have bigger problems.”

“You know what, you’re a jackass, I’m dumping you.” He makes precisely no move to extract himself from the furs and go find his scattered clothes.

“Your wing plates are starting to grow.” Terran finally says.

“What?”

“They serve as a place for you to focus your magic and manifest your wings once you’re able to sustain that kind of power.” Waylan considers this for a moment. He knew that sorcerers like him could eventually learn how to create wings and fly, he didn’t know there would be a physical change to accompany the magical one.

“Okay, so why are you mad?”

“Because your skin is pink.”

“Yes. Sorry I can’t be as sallow and pale as you.”

Terran pinches the back of his neck this time and Way yelps. “You are my blood,” he hisses in draconic. “And we do not come in pink.”

Ah. So that's it. “So you’re saying you won’t love me anymore if we clash colors?”

“I should have known from your affinity with fire.” He laments. “But with your eyes and hair I had hoped. A metallic would be better than--” He lets out a string of curses, mostly in draconic, but Waylan thinks he hears the rough incomprehensible sounds of abyssal thrown in as well.

“Would you rather I be green?” Like you.

“That was never a possibility, pet,” Terran finally says, huffing out a sigh before pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. “You’re far too terrible at manipulation and subterfuge for starters.” He doesn’t bother taking it as an insult. “But really? Couldn’t you have been gold? Brass even?”

“I can’t control my blood.”

“Have you tried?” They’re quiet for a few minutes. And eventually Terran’s hands return to his shoulder blades and he runs his fingers over the scales again and again.

“When do you think I’ll be able to fly?” Waylan finally asks.

“I’m not sure, it’ll depend on how quickly you develop your gifts. But I think you’ll enjoy it.” He makes a soft sound of agreement in the back of his throat. “It will be torture to fly that slowly, but when you can perhaps I can teach you a thing or two.”

“You’re going to still want to be seen with me if I am red?”

“I suppose, and if I change my mind swatting you out of the sky will be a very efficient way of solving that problem.” Waylan huffs, but doesn’t say anything. After all, Terran doesn’t stop pressing soft reverent touches to the forming wing plates.

He’s twenty-one when he learns he’s going to have true scales and the wings to match. And he’s greatly looking forward to showing them off.

#call of the divine #cotd fics #waylan #dnd fic #dnd character #ray #corzaren #terran #oc: waylan #oc: corzaren #oc: terran #oc: gadreel #my writing

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myusualnerdyself · 4 years

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After the Sun sets (Ethan x F!Mc)

Book: Open Heart

Word Count: 1.1k

Warnings: None

Song recommendation: ‘Crowded Room’ by Selena Gomez

A/n: It’s just a little idea that popped into my head after watching the ‘Before’ trilogy. Needless to say, it’s inspired by it. It’s my first fic so I am really nervous about it. Let me know how you guys like it. Please enjoy!

Ethan Ramsey hated the yearly doctor’s convention, trying to avoid them at all costs. According to him, they were a waste of money and time, precious time that could have been better utilized towards patient care instead of schmoozing with other doctors and pharmaceuticals companies’ executives.

But this year was something different, he was excited about this year’s convention, probably as much as his first convention or maybe more. The reason for his excitement was the keynote speaker, the speaker who had made a path-breaking discovery in the medical world, a discovery which was going to help so many patients around the globe, everyone was gushing about it but nobody more than him.

She was probably the youngest person to ever give the key address. He was so proud of her, his rookie had finally achieved her life goal, the one she told him about years ago in this very same hotel. How fitting for the event to be held here tonight, he thought.

Even after eight years, he remembered that night very vividly, and why not, something about that night had changed him, made him feel things with such passion that he was blown away by the intensity of it all.

Time is a funny concept, sometimes things that happened a month back felt like a lifetime ago and sometimes things that happened years ago felt like they happened yesterday. And looking at her now, making her appearance, he felt like that fateful night in Miami happened only hours ago because he was yet again blown away by the force of his feelings for her, the feelings that had resurfaced with full might after actually seeing her in person after four years. She looked spectacular as usual, the dark green off-shoulder dress complimenting her pale skin and emerald eyes perfectly, her red curls were swept back into a side bun for the occasion, leaving her neck and collar bones exposed, the sight was enough to make him weak in the knees.

She was crowded with doctors, everyone wanting a piece of her, he could tell she didn’t like it much, the fake smile on her face and the slightly bored look in her eyes were indications enough. Of course, none of the crowd could tell that, after all none of the crowd knew her as well as he did. Finally their eyes met and his heart started beating a bit faster, he can see in her expression that she was surprised to see him, it was years since he made an appearance in such an event and after seven years of no contact, it was obvious she didn’t expect him to be here when the chances of stumbling into each other were too high. He gave her a tentative smile, hoping to ease some of her tension. He so badly wanted to go and congratulate her and tell her how proud he was of her but he knew it was going to be awkward and he wasn’t ready for it, at least not yet. She returned his smile with a small one of her own, and to Ethan’s relief, it was definitely not fake.

XXXXX

“Dr Valentine.” After having a few drinks at the bar, Ethan finally built the courage to go up to her.

“Dr Ramsey,” Casey said, trying to hide her shock, despite his friendly smile before she wasn’t sure that he would try to talk to her tonight. They hadn’t exactly parted on great terms or any terms for that matter. He had just vanished, leaving her alone without any notice, any contact.

“Congratulations on your research, it’s truly outstanding and for what it’s worth, I am really proud of you.” Ethan said, hoping to convey the sincerity of his words.

“Thank you.” Casey replied, smiling. Those words coming from him meant a lot to her, even after everything that happened between them, he still was her mentor and to make him proud gave her even a higher sense of accomplishment.

“Why are you here tonight, if you don’t mind me asking?” She questioned, it just didn’t make sense to her, him being here after avoiding her for so long.

“Isn’t it evident?” He answered with his eyebrows raised on the inanity of the question.

She waited silently, waiting for him to continue.

He sighed, “I am here for you Rookie…. I mean Dr Valentine, you have achieved something so remarkable, you are finally doing great things, things that I knew you were destined for, obviously I couldn’t miss such an important milestone of your career.”

Before she could reply, they were interrupted by a doctor who wanted to offer her congratulations to her. After she had left, Casey swallowed and looked at him, trying to comprehend the meaning of his words.

“So you came here for me?”

“Yes, and I am so glad I did, because that speech that you gave, it’s been so long that I have enjoyed the keynote address so much. Only a truly dedicated doctor would have the guts to talk about how our flawed medical system has failed to help the masses in an address meant to honour her.” He said.

“Why, thank you, Dr Ramsey, I learned from the best.” She replied.

He cracked a smile at her words. “It is good to see that you still remember all of my teachings.”

“Of course I do, you would think it’s easy to forget your difficult, grumpy and ruthless attending but it’s not.”

He didn’t know whether the words were meant as a joke or an accusation, so he stared at her, trying to decipher the meaning of the statement in her eyes.

“Dr Valentine, Dr Ramsey, the two great minds of medicine together, what a sight.” A doctor chose that very moment to enter the discussion and Ethan was thankful for the distraction. He knew the conversation was bound to take a turn like that but he didn’t think it was going to be so soon.

They talked to the doctor with all the politeness that they could muster, answering all the questions about their recent work patiently but there was an undercurrent of tension in the air now, and they both could feel it.

After they were once again alone, Casey continued, “You know, we’ll keep getting disturbed here. It’s been a long time and I really want us to have a proper conversation.”

“Yeah, I would like that too.”

“Let’s go to my room then, we can sit in the balcony and talk, what say?” There was a purpose in her voice now, she wanted answers, answers that were denied to her for so long, answers that were her right.

“Are you sure? I mean, there are plenty of people here that still want to talk to you.” He was a bit afraid from the determination in her voice, it was as if she was ready to unleash her fury on him, the fury that he fully knew he deserved.

“Yes, those people will be here tomorrow, I’ll meet them then.”

Seeing no out, Ethan gulped, “Well, okay then, lead the way.”

To be continued...

Continue to Part 2.

P.S. This is going to be a part 2 series, I will upload the second part very soon. Let me know if you want to be tagged in it.

Thanks for reading! Please like, comment and re-blog.

#dr. ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey fanfiction #ethan ramsey fic #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #mc x ethan #ethan x mc #open heart fanfiction #open heart #oph #playchoices #playchoices fanfiction

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iwritefanfictionsometimes · 4 years

Text

still growing up now

for @curlymcclain (and myself bc I’m nothing if not selfish)

AO3

Chapters: 1/1

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky

Characters: Theodore Decker, Boris Pavlikovsky, James "Hobie" Hobart

Additional Tags: Someone You Meet at the Wrong Time Then Re-meet at the Right One, Post-Canon, Open Ending, Kinda, Fluff, Theo sorts out his emotions, Healing

Summary: It’s been six months since Amsterdam, six months since I’ve been home for any significant period of time and, six months since I last saw Boris. Maybe after not seeing him for eight years, six months should seem like nothing, but with the new clarity of my sobriety and the strange knowledge in the back of my mind that I would kill for Boris it's harder to ignore the pull in my chest when I think of Boris’ curls and the smile in the corner of his mouth when he’s about to do something definitely stupid and possibly illegal.

----

or, the birthday fic

It’s been six months since Amsterdam, six months since I’ve been home for any significant period of time and, six months since I last saw Boris. Maybe after not seeing him for eight years, six months should seem like nothing, but with the new clarity of my sobriety and the strange knowledge in the back of my mind that I would kill for Boris it’s harder to ignore the pull in my chest when I think of Boris’ curls and the smile in the corner of his mouth when he’s about to do something definitely stupid and possibly illegal.

I’m home now, possibly for good. All the Changelings I can remember selling have been bought back, I’ve righted my wrongs. Or at least, most of them. There’s still the wide and horrible divide between me and Kitsey that I don’t think will ever be repaired. It hadn’t broken her heart when I’d called off the engagement, but it had ruined what stability her family had built. I'm not surprised she can’t forgive me for that. I don’t let myself think of what questions I have that continue to go unanswered.

Popper barely moves when I open the door, I think it’s a wonder he’s still alive. I kept thinking I would get a call in the middle of Europe telling me I needed to come home right away. But it never came. I can’t help but remember the way he’d screamed and jumped around when Boris walked in with me only six months ago. But he’s always liked Boris better.

Hobie appears in the doorway to the basement. He looks more tired then I can remember since I showed up at his door unexpectedly after Vegas. It’s not a good look. I want him to smile again like he did while business was doing well. He watches me silently as I drop my bags in the entranceway. I stand there unsurely for a moment —it’s not a familiar feeling— before he sighs and opens his arms. I’m not used to this, even from him, but the hug is good. It means I’m forgiven.

“Go get cleaned up, Theo, I have to run out for a moment,” Hobie says gruffly once we let go.

“Oh,” I say awkwardly, “I was just stopping to see you and get some of my clothes.”

Hobie frowns at me.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome here. And anyway, I thought it was time to start fresh.”

“What are you talking about, Theo?”

“I’ve rented a place, an apartment, it’s not far but I thought I should give you some time.”

Hobie looks sad for a moment and he puts a hand on my shoulder.

“I was never that mad, you know you are welcome to stay,” he tells me gently.

I don’t know how to explain that this was as much for me as it was for him. I am, after all, a selfish creature. Very few things in my life have been done without any regard for my personal gain.

I nod instead of trying to explain everything to him. He studies my face for a moment and then pulls away. “Tell me where your apartment is,” he says while putting his coat on, “I’ll bring over some things I’ve been meaning to give you tomorrow.”

Again, I nod. There isn’t really anything I feel I can say. He’s out the door with one last searching look and a flap of his coat. The lightness with which he moves still surprises me.

I stand there for a moment, both at the bottom and the top of the stairs, before I shake my head and take my first step up to my room. Or I guess my old room.

It takes longer then I thought it would to pack a suitcase. My room is a maze that my sober self doesn’t know how to navigate. Inevitably I end up standing in the doorway with a suitcase beside me and my home for the last nine years looking nearly as bare as it was when I first came. I only look at it for a second before leaving. I don’t put a name to the churning in my stomach.

Boris is at my apartment. I stop halfway down the hallway, and my heart beats a frantic rhythm in my chest. He makes no sense in this hallway. Again, he is a magazine page torn from other chapters of my life. He looks so normal it’s strange, wearing a too-big t-shirt and jeans he looks like any boy waiting outside their friend’s apartment. He looks up when he hears my footsteps stop. There is the startling reality of his face, the paleness of his skin and then how dark his hair is against it, the sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones. There’s a tentative smile in the corner of his mouth, not enough to crinkle his eyes but it’s there.

“Potter,” he says, like this is normal.

I would ask him how he knew where I was, but I didn’t really want to know.

“What are you doing here?” I sound more rude then I had intended, but Boris knows me well enough not to be offended.

He smiles a real smile then. My feet carry me over to him without a thought.

“Do you not know what day it is?” he asks.

I stumble over the dates in my head before oh. Oh. It’s my birthday.

Birthdays in Vegas were never big affairs, neither of us had the money or the commitment to make actual plans. But the two I had with him were both memorable. I haven’t had one like that since I left. I wasn’t even sure if I’d ever told Hobie my birthday, although he must know.

“You missed eight of them.”

I’m not sure what else I could say.

“Yes, but misunderstanding. It is all cleared up now,” he grins, “are you going to let me in?”

I can’t do much else but open the door. I’m hardly about to turn him away, not after thinking I might never see him again. He follows me in and kicks off his boots carelessly in the entryway.

“So, new place!” he observes, “it is very empty, Potter.”

I sigh and wheel my suitcase away from him. He follows me back to the bedroom chatting inanely about the weather and how loud New York is in the summer and ‘Potter! Remember how hot we were in Vegas? Always wearing sweaters!’

He wanders around my room as I drag my clothes out of the suitcase and get to work putting them away. I’m running on autopilot now, my mind too caught on —he’s here in my room his hands are on my things— him to make any good decisions about what I should be doing. He picks up the few trinkets I have with careful hands and studies them intensely while talking. I’m too caught up in the loop of Boris to immediately pick up when his voice stops. Then suddenly, I realize the room is too silent. I look up from my clothes to see him standing extremely still with his head bent towards whatever he’s holding in his hands. The line of his shoulders is tense. I stand up slowly, there’s a pounding in my chest where my heart is beating double time. I don’t know what’s in his hands, but whatever is coming feels inevitable. He turns to face me when I stand beside him.

“You kept it,” he whispers.

I look down to see what he has clenched in his hand. It’s his father’s lighter. The heavy gold one he’d left in my bag a few days after the first birthday I spent with him. I know exactly how it feels in my hands. The swirling designs on the sides are worn down from years of my fingers rubbing them when I was nervous, and the lighter doesn’t even work anymore because of how much I’d used it, and yet, I’d brought it everywhere with me for the last nine years.

His eyes are dark and startled when they meet mine.

“I had not expected you would keep it.”

“It’s the only thing I had of yours,” I say, laughing awkwardly.

It’s still difficult to be honest with him, even if I’ve almost gotten used to being honest with myself.

There’s a silent minute where I have to clench my fists to stop words I’d regret from bursting out of my mouth, and then he lets out a shaky breath. We’re somehow too close.

“Potter…”

“Why did you come, Boris,” I interrupt to ask again, a little more desperate.

“I missed you,” he mumbles, almost unintelligible through his accent.

His arm is under my hand, I don’t think about it too much. He’s warm. I can’t read whatever is in his eyes, but it leaves me a little short of breath. He’s fidgeting with the lighter still and I’ve never been more aware of the change in our height difference. I’m almost looking at the top of his head because he won’t meet my eyes. The fear from years ago creeps into my chest but I push it down. I worked for this, I didn’t sleep for this, I called a therapist a couple of times for this. Whether I take the leap or not it’s possible I won’t see him for years. I’m tired of it never being the right time.

“I missed you too.”

It sounds like a secret, and Boris reacts like it’s one, jerking his eyes up to mine so fast it looks like it hurts his neck. There’s a defensive smirk just under his skin, I can tell, but he looks vulnerable like I haven’t seen since the night I left Vegas. I wonder what he would’ve said if I hadn’t refused to hear it. His study of my face must give him the answer he wanted because the fake smirk disappears and his eyes widen.

The lighter clatters to the floor.

His hand is tight on my shoulder, almost painful, and his face is intense: filled with emotions I don’t understand, and fear.

“This is not a funny joke, Theo,” he hisses, and I know he’s serious because he uses my real name. It sounds odd on his tongue.

“I’m not joking.”

“Are you high?” he asks, pulling away suddenly.

“Boris!”

“Is a fair question, Potter.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath. I have to say this right. There’s years of misunderstandings and unspoken lies to try and explain.

“I’ve been thinking,” I start, “I know there are things we never talked about.”

Boris’ jaw clenches and he stands a little straighter. The sun reflects in his eyes through the window. It reminds me of Vegas a little, the sun always too bright and too hot, leaving Boris’ skin red and mine brown. But before he burned and peeled he was stunning in sunlight, gold falling on the many high points of his face and making him look like he was glowing. I could never resist him when he looked like that.

“I also know there are things I don’t remember,” I shift nervously, Boris is completely still.

“I don’t even know if you have any interest in me, but I just. I’ve been thinking-”

Boris’ hand on my cheek causes my mouth to snap shut.

“Potter…” he whispers, and that is a secret as well.

I can’t stop myself from swaying toward him —he’s always had a way of pulling me into his orbit— but I know I need to say this in full. “I didn’t let myself think about anything,” I whisper like the air will shatter if I talk louder.

“Not us, not my mom, and not about my own feelings. I was too empty and too full. And you were dangerous.”

The brush of his fingers in my hair is distracting, and I want nothing more than to let him pull me in, but I’ve done enough thinking that I know I have to tell him this. There has been too much avoidance in our history. Thankfully Boris is quiet. New York is loud outside, but that hardly matters.

“I still am not sure about most things, but I know there was something-” I still can’t say it.

“Something more?” Boris asks.

“Something I never said.”

He looks up at me and touches the edge of my lips gently. I know there’s a scar there from one of the times he punched me. My breath hitches, I remember his lips on my fingers after both our mouths were bloody, I remember the desperate press of his own lips against mine so long ago. We’re both deathly silent.

“What was it?” He asks finally.

I can’t say it. I’ve thought it more times then I can count, and it’s swirling around my head on a loop, but I can’t make the words come out of my mouth. Boris looks like maybe he understands.

“Is okay, Theo. I understand.”

The air leaves me in a rush and then my lungs are burning because his lips are on mine and I can’t break away to inhale.

There’s a sense of relief, like this was the inevitable ending to our story —although I’m not sure it really is an end— like if nothing else had been right in my life at least I had given myself this. One thing that was even more perfect for the disaster it started as. I couldn’t help but hate that it had taken so long, even as his hands fist in my hair and shirt, but I know it wouldn’t have been right nine years ago, or even six months. I couldn’t have done this sober and he couldn’t have done it with me high, not again.

He feels right in a way neither Kitsey or Pippa ever did, no matter how much I made myself believe they were. I place careful hands on his neck and waist and just let myself sink into him. It’s more gentle then I had expected, I had half convinced myself it would be a frantic tumble much like our youth. But of course, when given the chance now he held me like I’d run away.

It’s several long minutes before I break away. “Are you staying?” I ask quietly.

He’s silent, stroking his fingers lightly over the lines of my face and staring at me like he can’t quite believe I’m here. I let him.

“Do you want me to?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want you to.”

He nods like he knew.

“You know I was always waiting for you, Potter,” he smiles slightly mischievously, “you were always the last to know everything.”

I laugh, because what else is there to do when he looks so happy and there’s something growing in my chest that tells me I might be as well. There’s more to talk about, but tonight I just want to sleep and remember what it feels like to have him beside me and not feel guilty about it this time.

“Sleep?” I ask.

He searches my face for a moment.

“Yes, I think that would be alright.”

I look down at him the next morning. The sun is still rising —I’ve gotten used to waking up early for flights— and it just barely shines through his messy hair, lighting it up to gold. The angles of his face are so familiar, even with years of being apart and the haze of drugs I’d been in. I think maybe I’d remember him even if I forgot everything else. I think I’d forget my own mother before him; maybe I already have. Her voice doesn’t sound familiar in my head anymore. In contrast, his had sometimes been the only one I recognized in my delirium. He clenches a fist in the sheets before his eyes open. Everything about him is startling. His dark hair and eyes against my white sheets, the curl of his lips as he catches me staring, the rasp in his voice from sleep.

“Shall we just stand here tenderly and gaze?” He mumbles.

I fight the smile rising.

“We aren’t even standing, Boris.”

He laughs and presses his face into the pillow.

“Is the thought of it, Potter.”

I don’t respond. Eventually, he blinks up at me and rolls a little so he doesn’t have to crane his neck. I wonder how long he’s waited for this; how long I’ve waited for this.

“Are you alright?” He asks softly.

I don’t know. There’s an unnamable feeling bubbling in my chest. I remember waking up a thousand times with him, wrapped up together or across the room, and each time felt dangerous. Could I let myself have this? Even a year ago I would’ve said no, I wouldn’t have even thought of it. But a year ago I didn’t have Boris in my bed looking at me with so much hope (even though he tried to hide it). A year ago I hadn’t spent six months trying to fix the wrong I’d done to the world and to myself. Planes and airports leave a lot of time for self-reflection. Sometime in between Las Angeles and Phoenix, I’d come across the startling realization that almost everything I made myself believe about myself was false in one way or another.

It wasn’t hard to accept now that Boris made me better. Better in the worst way, yes, but more myself -messy and angry and the opposite of what I’d built my life around- then anyone else ever has. He knew about the worst parts of me and just let me be broken. He was there, and demanded nothing but my honesty.

I’d called Pippa sometime in London. She’d told me one thing after I’d apologized for every misguided advance I’d made. She said that the only way she’d moved on was by letting it hurt. She told me that only once she’d cried and screamed and cut her hair did the pain start draining away. Her voice had been so quiet —like she was afraid of scaring me— when she’d asked if I ever had that. I hadn’t. I’d drowned it all in drugs and alcohol before I even felt half of the pain. So I’d tried. I lay in nameless hotel rooms and stared at the ceiling, will for the tears to come. They hadn’t. I thought about the things I’d avoided for so long because I was scared of how I would react. But my eyes stayed dry. I wondered if I was broken. If the drugs had numbed something inside me to the point of it being unfixable.

Looking at the boy, man really, in my bed now though I can feel the slightest whispers of emotions squeezing in my chest.

I lay back down and reach a hand out tentatively between us. His eyes meet mine across what seems like miles of pillow. His fingers slide to meet mine. I can’t look at him.

“Theo?” his voice is soft and careful, his accent tripping messily around my name.

I close my eyes. His hand leaves mine but I don’t flinch when his fingers brush my cheek.

“Open your eyes, Potter,” he whispers.

His hand spreads across my jaw. His thumb brushes under my eye. I know my eyes are wet when I open them. He raises his eyebrows at me, it’s almost familiar. But not quite. We’d never been this gentle before. I know there is much more to talk about, but I’m determined to ignore that knowledge for as long as I can. For now it’s just this, I can allow myself this without panicking.

“Are you alright?” he asks again.

‘As long as you stay with me I will be.’ I think, but that feels like too much.

“I think so,” I say instead.

I hope he hears the rest when I reach a shaking hand across to smooth away his frown.

#boreo #the goldfinch #tgf fic #boris pavlikovsky #theo decker #tgf #my writing #fanfiction

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iheardarumorxxx · 4 years

Text

Midnight Sun, Chapter 9 - Port Angeles

Right. I remember this chapter from Twilight. I also have heard quite a bit about this chapter. This is gonna be a ride.

Eddie starts off this chapter saying that he used to be the ‘responsible’ one. I would like to remind everyone that Edward Anthony Masen Cullen spent a few years eating people he percieved to be horrible criminals because he didn’t like animal blood and was being a whiny baby. But go off, Eddie.

SM is still trying to paint Jessica as a rude bitch and I still don’t buy it. It is extremely clear to anyone with eyeballs that Mike has a thing for Bella, and it is pretty obvious that this date he’s going on with Jessica is because Bella said no. So her thoughts come off as insecure. She’s a teenage girl, so I think insecure is a pretty standard thing. Not always, but SM has painted these kids as the stereotypical teens, so.

Basically, I still don’t buy the attempt to make Jessica seem evil.

Bella has wandered off to go get that book she wanted, and Eddie is simply freaking out because he let his daughter out of his sight for one minute and she wandered off. He’s about half a second away from considering getting a leash to put on her. Seriously, though, that’s how this reads. A parent frantic because they lost their child in a crowded store or park. We all know she’s gonna get a serious scolding for this one. Maybe even grounded.

a volly of snarls erupted from my throat

Okay, we’re still not to the big rant about vampire instincts in this universe, yet, but I want you guys to remember this for later. It absolutely aides in the point I plan to make there. Also a ‘volly’ of snarls. That sounds so forced and I genuinely laughed out loud when I read it. Anyway, Eddie has found Bella and she is with the Evil Bad Guys Who Have Ill Intentions.

I would see how he enjoyed the hunt when he was the pray. I would see what he thought of my style of hunting.

Technically a spoiler because it hasn’t happened yet in this book, but not because we’ve seen it in Twilight. Eddie literally does not do anything to this Lanny guy or his friends. He gets out of the car, makes a mean face at them, and then gets back in the car and drives off. Maybe SM has Eddie go back out and hunt them later after he drops Bella off, but that doesn’t fit in with his squeaky clean good boy persona that Daddy Carlisle puts on him, so I doubt it. The scene as we know it comes off as very ‘man, if my girlfriend wasn’t here I’d kick your ass’. Because Eddie is a lot of bloated, puffed up talk.

When SM uses dialogue tags like ‘ordered’ to describe how Eddie says things, it just really hammers home that point I’ve been making about red flags. Even if it’s practical, like him telling Bella to put on a seat belt, especially since Pires bend the will of cars to their inane and idotic physics.

We went on a tangent about one of Eddie’s kills from his Vampire Batman days, and like honestly? I watch a lot of Criminal Minds. I see a lot of this kind of stuff, and it is absolutely awful that people like that exist in the world. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be stopped. HOWEVER, this idea Eddie has that he was playing a good guy by taking justice into his own hands, I don’t jive with that. Now, I am aware of how faulty the criminal justice system is, especially with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. I’ve lived that, myself. But if Eddie is so comfortable taking another life, no matter how he tries to justify it, he is no better than the people who he’s deciding to kill for their crimes.

a highly justifiable murder

See, this. This is why I don’t buy that SM’s Cullens are the paragons of good that she is constantly trying to say they are. There is no such thing as a justifiable murder, no matter what. Solving heinous acts with heinous acts simply perpetuates a cycle of heinous acts.

I wasn’t giving her a chance to say no.

This is a trend that will continue throughout the entire series. I will point you to all of the times that Edward never gave Bella a choice in a matter, including leaving her in New Moon, and DISMANTLING HER CAR ENGINE IN ECLIPSE SO THAT SHE COULDN’T GO SEE HER FRIEND. That one in particular rubs me the wrong way for reasons, but we won’t do that here. Just know that Edward never actually lets Bella make a choice in this series, and even when he pretends to, he does everything in his power to make the outcome go his way.

And now we’re at the restaruant. I’ve heard some stuff about this scene and god, can I not WAIT, but for now, let’s just talk about the one off waitress character. She is clearly only here to be a rival to Bella for this scene. Brief, unimportant, underdeveloped. And honestly? One off characters don’t actually need that development, not really, but what I can’t stand about this one is that she is literally only here, both in this book and in Twilight, so that SM can puff up how clearly Bella is so much better than she is. Because, you see, Eddie doesn’t find the pretty hostess attractive, he only has eyes for Bella. Her entire point is so that Edward can look at Bella, and therefore, the audience as Bella is their SI for this world, and go on about how much better and prettier and more perfect she is than this woman. It’s just gross.

“Do I dazzle you?”

This is still, in my personal opinion, the best and most iconic line in a series full of iconic lines. Eddie the Dazzle Machine. Charming the pants off people when he’s trying to scare the shit out of them. It’s hilarious, and so fuckin’ romance novel cliche, and I love it.

This restaurant is apparently a real place in the real Port Angeles. And from what I understand, at least when the Twilight craze was in full swing back in 2008, they got a lot of extra business and a lot more people ordering the mushroom ravioli. Even put something about Twilight on their menu. Good for them, taking advantage of that free marketing. I have never been to Port Angeles, and am allergic to mushrooms, so I can’t say I’ve experienced the dish, but if any of you have, please let me know if it’s worth the hype.

Its so funny that right now, Eddie is worried about Bella being cold and going into shock, while Bella is over there huffing the fumes off his jacket like it’s a paint can, and he can’t even tell that that’s what she’s doing. The girl is doing everything short of just shoving her whole face in it and inhaling, but he’s too thick to get it.

And here we are folks. The meat and potatoes of this chapter. The big comparison. The reason the cover has a pomegranete on it. Edward Anthony Masen Cullen has the absolute GALL to compare Bella, the boring, walking video game avatar to Persephone. Lets break down Persephone for a second here. There’s a lot to break down, but let’s stick to the basics, for fear that this rant gets wickedly out of hand before I can stop it. Persephone radiates optimism and hope. Persephone is soft, sweet, but has a temper that could kill a man. Persephone is sympathetic. When in the ever loving FUCK has Isabella Swan ever shown any of those characteristics? She is NEVER optimistic about anything. She fucking exists in a constant cloud of negative thought and assuming the worst. She isn’t hopeful about ANYTHING, not even her future with her PRECIOUS Eddie because she’s always questioning his intentions and feelings for her. She is not sympathetic in the slightest, no matter what SM tries to shove down my throat. She treats her friends like shit, she manipulates and lies her way through conversations so she doesn’t have to deal with them, she compares Mike to a FUCKING DOG. Bella is not comparable to Persephone, and it’s fucking beyond ham-fisted, it’s fucking EGREGIOUS to try to make that comparison.

I could see more of an argument for comparing Eddie to Hades, since, ya know, Hades fucking stole Persephone to be his wife and most stories about Hades paint him as kind of a moody, brooding dickbag, but I’m still calling fucking foul on this attempt at comparison, SM. No dice.

Moving on.

Eddie describing Bella’s skin as ‘velvety’ gives me war flashbacks to those grocery store checkout novels with Fabio on the cover that my mom used to read. Eghhh.

So, Bella touches Eddie’s hand and it’s described in a way that gives me very G-rated sex vibes. Which just makes me wanna tell them to get a room because they’re in public right now, and also don’t do that in front of Bella’s salad ravioli.

Eddie is still being super controling and weird about Bella eating, and honestly, I super wish that Bella had had the good sense to get the hell out of there with Jess and Angela. Or that she would have the good sense now to excuse herself, find someone on staff, ask to borrow a phone, and call her dad. Because this guy is literally throwing out every red flag that exists. I know I say this a lot, but if Bella were a normal girl, she would not be charmed by this guy, she would be freaking creeped out and trying to get away from him. He isn’t even subtle about his creep factor or charming enough to play it off.

Edward thinking he has any edge at all is like white bread thinking it’s the right kind of bread for a hamburger.

Anyway, chapter ends with Eddie paying the bill and the pair getting in the car to head home. And the drama chord of the last sentence that’s supposed to play in your head when you read it falls flat. They’re on the way back to Forks and Eddie is chomping at the bit to hear Bella’s latest theory that we know from Twilight isn’t actually a theory so much as she heard a story from Jacob and then did some searching on some shitty Angelfire website. Or Geocities. Either way. And then she just went ahead and had a big old prophetic dream about it.

Next time, we get the awkward car ride home and more. Thanks for hanging around guys. As always, feel free to message me (though, please note to anyone who has sent me anon messages that are rude or angry because I’m making fun of this book, I’m gonna ignore you.), recommend what books I should put on my list for my next recap series, and feel free to buy me a snack using the CashApp tag in my bio.

See you next time, babes.

#sierra recaps stuff #midnight sun #midnight sun spoilers #midnight sun recap #twilight #ms chapter 9

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dearlazerbunny · 5 years

Text

Lie to Me (Ch. 25 of 27)

(Sorry I couldn’t count my chapterssss)

Pairings: Loki x Reader

Genre/Ratings: M eventually (aiming for a slow burn here); warnings for kidnapping and subsequent anxiety/PTSD (will be marked before every chapter)

Words: 2100

Summary: If you had to guess what the captured, traitor, trickster god Loki Laufeyson wanted or needed at this moment, a babysitter would be far, far down on the list. (Set after the events of Avengers 1.)

SHOUTOUT TO @molmcb and @jessiejunebug, who will get 20% royalties each on my first novel that I will never write

Requested Tags: @deraniel, @iamverity, @yasnooshka24, @wegingerangelica, @themusingsofmany , @dark-night-sky-99, @tarynkauai, @stuffandstuff-stuff, @angelicshinigami, @my-current-fandom-is, @geekysimmerthings, @lokis-butter-knife, @help-i-need-a-social-life, @vodka-and-some-sass

While being mortal is a fascinating experiment in the short term, Loki would not generally recommend it as a whole.

He feels much more vulnerable, in a way that has nothing to do with him sitting powerless in a cell. Now, his blood is much more easily spilled; his bones more easily broken. It is harder to dull the sudden aches that flare up for no apparent reason at all, and while magic soothes the troubleshooting somewhat, he can’t deny that there’s something.. missing. Nothing tangible or concisely identifiable, but incredibly distracting nonetheless.

His magic is another matter. Frigga has been visiting him for months, on and off, and each time he expects her to begin the process that will ultimately be much more damning to him than mortality. His magic is all he has sometimes, that and his sharp tongue. It is singularly his, and while they may bind his wrists and throw away the key, it will still thrum through his veins with a purr, content to be him and it and it and him.

He expected her to be hesitant, but never to defy Odin altogether. So when she comes to fetch him one day and undoes his manacles with a snap, and green sparks race to heal the raw skin on his wrists, he raises a wary eyebrow at her. “Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe this is supposed to be gone?”

Frigga graces him with a rare smile that speaks of trouble- if he didn’t know better, he would say his habitual smirk was learned from hers. “You are not mistaken. But what mother would I be to rob my son of his pride and joy?” Her fingers brush an unruly lock of hair from Loki’s forehead. “But, your father will not be denied. At least, not so obviously. Do you trust me?”

“Infinitely.”

“Then stay still.” Her hand to the side of his face, she murmurs an enchantment that washes over his whole body like honey- viscous and stifling. Only her voice keeps him from panicking, and when she’s done, he takes a breath. Frigga hasn’t taken his magic, only… repressed it. It’s a bit like being in hiding. He can still feel his power, only now it remains curled up sluggishly in the deepest parts of his bones. “We both know that the magical arts are not Odin’s strength. This spell should hold for long enough.”

Loki flexes his fingers, his body awash in so many new sensations. “Long enough for what, precisely?”

As it turns out, long enough for the most casual jailbreak Loki has ever been apart of.

Frigga leads him where he never again thought he’d go- out. Up into the castle proper, where the air isn’t stale and the sunlight is filtering through the window. To his amazement, nobody turns their head as they walk side by side through the halls, then the gardens, and out the gates, eventually leaving not only the palace but the whole of Asgard behind, fading into the background.

Crossing the bridge is a strange sort of anxiety. The cracks underneath his feet have long since been mended, but spiderweb fractures remain embedded in his very bones. Old memories fade in and out of existence right in front of him, teasing his brain down paths he doesn’t want to follow- the past holds little more than anger and regret.

Caught up in his thoughts, Loki doesn’t notice when his mother stills. Thor has met them at the edge, and just beyond him Heimdall watches with a stony gaze. Confused, he glances around. “Mother?”

“It has come to Odin’s attention,” she says, “that your remaining on Asgard is a liability to its people.”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “Indeed.”

“And so, he has remedied his previous decree. You are to be banished to Midgard for the remainder of your time as a mortal, and without your magic.”

Time seems to slow. Too many fragile hopes are leaping over themselves for his attention, threatening to topple what little composure he has. “And Odin… agreed to this?”

“It took some doing,” she admits, lips pressed in a thin line. “Your brother and I have not been idle in the previous months.” Thor nods, arms crossed and eyes on the horizon for any unwelcome approachers.

“I-” for once, words fail. What can be said to those who have essentially given you a second chance at life?

Frigga smiles. She can hear what he’s not saying. Carefully, reverently, she presses her palm to his cheek, in a gesture only used by a mother who would do anything for her child. “As I said, my son,” she says softly. “You deserve all the happiness this life may afford you.”

Happiness. Such a foreign concept. Happiness is held in his Witling’s smile, her laugh, the way she looks at him as though she’s never seen a monster in his face-

I want you to come back. Please. If you can.

It turns out he’d lied to you after all.

“Thor will escort you.” A fond thumb is graced against his cheekbone, and then he’s released. “And I trust you will find Y/N and tell her all that you have yet to say.”

Loki wants to argue a million points- how they possibly could have managed to convince Odin to simply let him walk away; how she expects to keep his still-present magic a secret- but his curiosity is tempered by the sheer thought of you. You, in his arms; you, no longer separated from him by glass or pain or stubbornness-

The colors of the Bifrost have never looked brighter as they swirl around his fingertips.

XXX

He was not particularly expecting a warm welcome from SHIELD- perhaps some cushioned lining around newly-soldered handcuffs- but to his surprise, only the droll man with the eyepatch and Stark are there to greet him when Thor informs them of their arrival on Earth. Infuriating as Stark may be, after so long with nothing but his own company, his glare is almost a welcome change. “So. The prodigal sinner returns.”

“The pleasure is all mine Stark, I assure you.” Loki treats him to one of his smirks, though inwardly he’s already dreading the derision almost certainly headed his way.

“Gentleman, if we could all stand to be civil for more than seven seconds, this will all go a lot smoother.” Fury seems unruffled standing in front of his former most wanted. “Let me get one thing clear- I am not particularly happy about this. Organizations I’ve never even heard of are crawling out of the woodwork to tell me I’m crazy. But,” he sighs heavily, deep lines etched on his face, “as it turns out, we need you.”

Never one to mince words, the director. Loki raises a delicate eyebrow. “Need me for what, exactly?”

“We’ve acquired another magic user in your absence.” Stark snorts, apparently disagreeing with that description, and Fury silences him with a glare. “Well. Some sort of energy. She’s incredibly volatile, moody, and hates Stark with a passion.” There’s a minute shrug under his leather jacket. “Figured the two of you would get along well.”

“Joy,” Stark deadpans. “As if I don’t have enough people who want to blow my brains out. Now you’re going to teach her how to do it more effectively.”

“At least this way, if she murders you, she’ll be doing it on purpose and not by accident,” he replies smoothly, his attention never leaving Loki. “What do you say?”

Loki glances at his brother, and then suppresses an eye roll when Thor gives a classic I dunno, I’m just here to hit stuff gesture. “Well. I suppose I do not have much of a choice.”

“No, you don’t. Glad we could come to an agreement. Thor, if you’ll follow me. We need to make sure thee wont be any… repercussions, from Asgard.” Fury nods once, briefly, before taking his leave. “Welcome to the team.”

Loki’s eyes widen, just a bit. Stranger and stranger this day becomes.

Once they’re alone, the engineer turns back to his project, fiddling with wires exuding faint blue light. “So, where’s your guardian angel? I would have thought she’d be nipping at your heels.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your mini-me. Your not-so-secret-admirer. Your groupie. Your devotee-”

“I would stop there, Stark,” Loki growls.

“Can’t say I’m wrong.” Two wires come together with a spark. “So?”

“I am not sure.”

“Really? So you mean you weren’t the one who told her to rip us all a new one?”

Loki sighs. Mortals and their inane languages. “I assure you, as with most things that fall from your mouth, I haven’t the faintest idea what you speak of.”

“J, play back the recording.” Something warm floods his system at hearing your voice, clearer than its been in a year, even over a recording. Though you sound angry, even more livid than that day in his cell-

“Have none of you, not a single one, ever fucked up because you were hurting? Because it all just became too much?”

“She even made Captain Tightpants sit down, and let me tell you, that’s hard to do.”

This ‘Avengers Initiative’ is one big shot at forgiveness for all of you. Why doesn’t Loki deserve that same chance?”

“What prompted this?” Loki asks, bewildered.

“Oh, the day you left, we took her in because we thought you whammied her brain on that little rescue mission.”

“Loki’s never had a friend, not really. But I’m his friend. And I forgive him. And I gave him the second chance he deserves.”

Oh, love. “I hope you do not expect me to apologize for her.”

“Right.” Stark points a bit of machinery at him without looking in his direction. “Also, if you even think for a second you’re living in my tower-”

“I would not live in that monstrosity if it were shelter from a sandstorm, Stark, fear not.”

I’m here, love. I’m coming. I swear.

A/N: The new Addams family movie is awesome so here’s a celebration chapter. Also only TWO MORE CHAPTERS TO GO PEOPLE well one chapter and an epilogue but whatever technicalities

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shipping-receiving · 5 years

Text

Fictober 2019 Day 12: “What if I don’t see it?”

Rating: T | Word Count: 1343 Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones Relationship: Jaime Lannister / Brienne of Tarth Tags: Alternate Universe – Office

(read on AO3)

//////

Honestly, Brienne didn’t think it would get this out of hand.

She had only said it because she wanted to shut them up. She didn’t think it was going to spread around the entire office. She didn’t think Jaime Lannister would ever hear about it.

It was just driving her insane, the way Renly, Loras, and Margaery kept going on and on and on about how hot their boss is. Jaime Lannister is beautiful. She knows this. She was born with eyes. Unfortunately, she was also born with ears. And it felt like she was hearing about it all the time.

One day, it just—happened. She said those fateful words. And she would find herself wishing, eventually, that she hadn’t been born with a mouth.

She had been working late the night before, which had caused her to oversleep, which had caused her to miss her bus to the train station, which had caused her to miss her train, which had caused her to miss the office shuttle, which had caused her to have to walk an extra fifteen minutes in the heat. And of course, when she finally arrived, covered in sweat, she had passed Jaime Lannister in the hallway, and he had given her a look. Whatever the look meant, she didn’t like it.

So the one thing she didn’t want to have to listen to while having her morning coffee in the office pantry was yet another inane conversation about Jaime Lannister’s hotness. A conversation in which she was expected to be an enthusiastic participant.

“What if I don’t see it?” she finally huffed, before taking the last sip of coffee from her mug.

Renly, Loras, and Margaery went quiet, so it did shut them up, at least. “What do you mean, Brienne?” Margaery asked, incredulously.

“I just don’t see it. He looks average to me.” And then she got up, rinsed her mug, and left the pantry.

Okay, so it hadn’t been very wise to say this when the conversation wasn’t exactly private. They hadn’t been the only four people in the pantry, and soon, everyone in the office was talking about how Brienne Tarth thinks Jaime Lannister looks average. And Brienne knew people only talked about it so much because she isn’t much to look at, and he is. He really is. She was born with eyes.

But she thought it would be fine. Jaime Lannister isn’t even their real boss, not directly. He’s the son of the owner of the corporation that employs them, and he was just supposed to spend three months in the Stormlands office. He was coming to the end of those three months, and she knew he was meant to be transferred back to the head office in King’s Landing. He’d be gone soon, and that would be the end of that.

Then, for whatever reason—some conflict within the family, apparently—that didn’t happen.

Then, Jaime Lannister heard.

Not only did he hear, he overheard it at an office party. When everyone, including him, was already quite drunk. Except Jaime Lannister was the only one who wasn’t in a celebratory mood—probably because of that conflict within the family, whatever it was.

And so he had walked up to Brienne, and Renly, and Loras, and Margaery. He had tapped Brienne on the shoulder, and said, quite bitterly:

“So, you’re the one who thinks I look average.”

All four of them just stared at him. What was Brienne supposed to say? She couldn’t tell him to his face that she thought he wasn’t good-looking. Even if he wasn’t, she wouldn’t do that to his face. She’d had enough of that herself, growing up.

But then, he sneered: “You? You think you’re a good judge of beauty?”

Oh, she knew the insults were coming. She knew Jaime Lannister was quite drunk. But Brienne was also quite drunk. So when he asked her if she had looked in the mirror lately—as if she hadn’t heard that one a thousand times before—she could feel the anger rise within her.

“Or maybe you have. What’s your name again? Bridget? Bridget the Beauty, is that what you think when you look in the mirror?”

Brienne the Beauty. He couldn’t have known, but he had stumbled upon it anyway. Maybe she wouldn’t have lost control if he hadn’t said that.

“No wonder you wouldn’t know beauty if it punched you in the face,” Jaime Lannister concluded, in all his alcohol-soaked smugness.

Next thing she knew, she had punched him. In the face.

And now she is sitting in HR, next to Jaime Lannister. Who has a black eye, which she inflicted, in front of the entire office.

She is absolutely going to lose her job in the next five minutes.

Except, if she had heard right, Jaime Lannister had just said: “I fell. She wasn’t responsible for this.”

Brienne just looks at him. She thought this only happened in cartoons, but her jaw might just have dropped in shock.

“You… fell? Mr Lannister, Ms Tarth punched you. We have witnesses.”

“Well,” he says, quite calmly. “I am the son of the man who pays all those witnesses their monthly salary. And I say that Ms Tarth wasn’t responsible for this. Drop it.”

Brienne knows she should say something. It isn’t right. She punched her boss in the face. But she just sits in stunned silence, stands up in stunned silence, leaves HR in stunned silence. It’s only when they’re both out in the hallway that she’s able to say anything.

“You—you shouldn’t have done that. I did punch you, Mr Lannister.”

“Jaime. You can call me Jaime.” As if that was the only thing to be concerned about.

“Mr Lannister.” It wouldn’t be appropriate at all to call him Jaime, would it? “I was responsible, and I should face the consequences. Why did you… lie? For me?”

Jaime Lannister sighs. “What I said, it was unworthy.”

Unworthy? Is this guy for real?

“I’m—I’m not in a good place right now,” he continues, “and I’m sorry I said those things to you. I deserved that punch.”

“No, you didn’t,” Brienne asserts. “No one does. I overreacted because—”

She can’t complete the sentence. She can’t tell him about Brienne the Beauty. He seems to understand, though, because he has a kind of conciliatory expression on his face. She supposes he can’t tell her about I’m not in a good place, too.

“I feel like I did deserve it, anyway,” Jaime Lannister says. “And I’d have felt worse if you’d lost your job, Bridget.”

“Brienne.”

“I’m sorry. Brienne.”

“Okay then.” She takes a breath for what feels like the first time in the past hour, though she doesn’t quite feel relieved. “Thank you for doing that. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. If there’s ever anything you need, Mr Lannister—”

“Jaime is fine, really,” he replies, mildly exasperated. “Mr Lannister makes me sound like my father.”

“That’s not a good thing?” Brienne asks. She’s never met Tywin Lannister, but he did build this company into the corporate empire it is today. She thought his son might enjoy the comparison.

Jaime just shrugs, cryptically. “Since you’ve given me a black eye, we’re past those formalities, aren’t we?”

“I—I suppose. But thank you, again. I’ll… I’ll see you around, I guess.”

She’s walked a few steps in the direction of her cubicle when Jaime calls her back.

“Hey, Brienne?”

She turns to see him tilting his head at her, and she’s struck by the absurd thought that he reminds her of an earnest puppy. “Yes, J-Jaime?”

“Do you really think I’m only average?”

Oh. He actually seems to care about that. She wants to explain, about the way everyone was going on about his looks, and how it was driving her mad. About oversleeping, and missing buses and trains and shuttles, and just wanting to enjoy her coffee in silence.

But all she can manage is, “N-no. I don’t.”

Jaime gives her a half-smile. “Good to know,” he says, and walks away.

#fictober19 #jaime x brienne #braime #my fic #i never knew home until i found your hands

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