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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

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Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

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hopelikethemoon · 4 years

Text

Dinner With Friends (Javier x Reader) {MTMF}

Title: Dinner With Friends Rating: PG-13 Length: 3500 Warnings: Family Fluff and extremely mild angst. Notes: You can find the Maybe Today, Maybe Forever Timeline here. And release order here. Set in January 1998. Shout to the one and only Tiernan for supplying the twist in this chapter. Summary: Reader and Javier host the Murphys for dinner.

Taglist: @grapemama @seawhisperer @huliabitch @pedropascalito @rogrsnbarnes @thewallpapergoesorido @twomoonstwosuns @gooddaykate @livasaurasrex @ham4arrow @hiscyarika @plexflexico @readsalot73 @hdlynn @lokiaddicted @randomness501 @fioccodineveautunnale @roxypeanut @just-add-butter @snivellusim @amarvelousmandalorian @lukesrighthand @historynerd04 @mrsparknuts @synystersilenceinblacknwhite @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @exrebelshocktrooper @awesomefandomsunited @ah-callie @swhiskeys @lady-tano @beskar-droids @space-floozy @cable-kenobi @longitud-de-onda @cool-ultra-nerd @himbopoes @findhimfives @pedrosdoll @seeking-a-great--perhaps @frietiemeloen @arrowswithwifi @random066 @uncomicalhumour @heather-lynn @domino-oh-damn @cyarikaaa @ahopelessromanticwritersworld @im-still-a-pieceofgarbage @ksgeekgirl @yabby-girl @xqueenofthecraziesx @punkass-potato @coredrive @pascalesque @theduchessofkirkcaldy @queenquazar (if I forget to tag you, I’m sorry)

“Stevie!” You called out when she started barking loudly — Josie had ensnared her into a game with Olivia and Emily and her patience seemed to be wearing as thin as your own.

“Did you really have to name her Stevie?”

Steve questioned, shaking his head slowly as he leaned against the kitchen counter and watched you press the button on the top of the lettuce spinner.

“I love Stevie Nicks.”

He pointed at you, “And that is bullshit.”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re just jealous that Sofía isn’t Stevie.”

Steve glared, “Well if it starts with ‘S’.”

“I’m sorry, do you have an issue with our daughter being named for Javier’s late mother?” You questioned, folding your arms across your chest briefly, before you emptied out the tossed lettuce into a larger bowl.

“Not when you put it that way.” Steve huffed, shaking his head as he took a swig of beer. “How are… things going?”

You glanced over your shoulder at him, “The drought was quenched almost five months ago. Thank God.”

Steve blanched, “I don’t need to know about that.”

“You asked.”

He narrowed his eyes, “About how things are going.” He rubbed at the back of his neck.

You laughed, shrugging your shoulders. “I’m doing better. There’s still difficult days, but I work through them.” You chewed on your bottom lip. “And Javier is good at helping me.”

“He’s always been more than willing to give you a hand.” Steve said with a slow shake of his head. “The two of you were inseparable.”

You felt a faint blush rise to your cheeks. “I know. And we still are.” You grabbed a handful of freshly washed radishes and started cutting them down into smaller pieces for the salad. “He’s still just as stubborn about everything.”

“Shit. Isn’t he?” Steve snorted, rocking his head to the side.”I don’t know how you put up with that grumpy son-of—“

“Mommy!” Josie called out from the threshold of the kitchen. “Mommmmmy.”

You sat the knife aside and turned back to look at her, hands on your hips. “What’s up?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Dinner is almost ready.” You assured her. “Why don’t you go check on daddy outside?”

“Okay mommy.” Josie beamed at you. “Does daddy have sissy?”

“Aunt Connie does, rugrat.” Steve told her, “She’s out in the backyard with your father.”

“Thank you.” She said politely before leaving through the back door, followed by Emily and Olivia.

“She gets away with everything doesn’t she?”

“With Javier? Oh, yeah. I’m the strict parent. Always.” You shook your head with a laugh. You didn’t actually mind filling the role of the strict parent, mostly because Javier was a marshmallow of a father.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that.” He remarked as he took a drink of his beer, “You’ve always been the fun one. Javier? I didn’t know that fun was in his vocabulary.”

You rolled your eyes, “For the record, he was actually very fun in Colombia.”

“Really?” Steve gave you a skeptical look. “I think that might be the rose colored glasses talking.” He gestured to you with the bottle. “You were the positive influence he needed.”

“Yeah,” You agreed. “He would’ve worked himself to death, if I hadn’t been there.” You scooped up the radishes you’d cut, tossing them into the bowl of lettuce. “Can you get the croutons out of the oven?”

“Look how fancy you are. Making homemade croutons.” Steve teased as he grabbed an oven mitt and pulled the pan out of the oven.

“Josie will only eat a salad if there’s croutons in it.” You explained to him. “Javier hates the store bought croutons.” You grabbed the carton of cherry tomatoes, flipping the plastic lid up so you could rinse them off under the sink.

You glanced back towards the backdoor as it slid open, a parade of tiny humans reemerging, followed by Connie and Javier.

“Hot food, coming through.” Javier warned, clicking his tongue against his teeth to get the girls to move faster. “Come on kiddos.” He shooed them out from under foot as he veered towards the kitchen counter and sat the two plates of grilled burgers down. “Ever try to keep three girls away from a grill?”

You pursed your lips thoughtfully as you turned to face him, tilting your head to the side. “I tried it once, which is why I sent them out to you.” You grinned at him.

“It’s fucking hard.” He chuckled before he leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to your lips. “Thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome.” You used the dish towel and swatted him in the ass with it. He caught you by the belt loop as you stepped past him, pulling you in for another kiss.

“Need any help?” Connie questioned as she cradled Sofía to her chest, looking between the two of you.

You shook your head, “You brought the potato salad and you’ve kept her occupied so I could get everything else ready.”

“Do you have ranch?” She questioned as she looked towards the bowl of salad, “It’s the only way we can get Olivia to even humor eating something green.”

Javier nodded, “Josie likes it on broccoli.” He stepped around you and pulled open the fridge to grab the bottle of ranch, as well as the other salad dressing options.

“How do you get her to eat raw broccoli?” Connie questioned. “It’s an uphill battle to get anything green into the girls.”

“Josie likes food.”

You rolled your eyes, “Josie will eat anything Javier asks her to eat.”

He shrugged, “It’s true.”

“I wish Steve had that effect on the girls.” Connie laughed softly, “He can get them to eat plenty of candy.”

You snorted. “He loves his Werthers.”

She widened her eyes dramatically, “I swear to God, every pocket is full of wrappers!”

Javier clicked his tongue against his teeth, “Should’ve done the patch, rather than going cold turkey.”

“That would make sense,” Connie made a face. “Oh well.” She bounced Sofía in her arms as she started to wake up, “Did you see California is set to ban smoking inside bars?”

“They’ll just ignore it,” You countered, grabbing a tray and putting the salad and the salad bowls on it. “But it’s progress.”

The three of you headed into the dining room, where Steve had managed to corral the girls into their chairs.

“I don’t want a burger, mommy.” Josie complained as Javier sat the plate of burgers down on the table.

“You’re not eating a burger, babydoll. You’re having a soy one with me.” You promised her, pointing to the second plate that contained two burgers that were considerably thinner than the actual hamburgers.

“I want chicken.”

“Princesa, you’re eating what we made for you.” Javier warned her, sitting down beside her, across the table from you.

“Do we have everything?”

“French fries?” Olivia questioned.

“Your mother made potato salad,” Steve told her, pointing to the Tupperware tub.

You sat down beside Connie, taking Sofía from her so you could get her settled into her highchair beside you. You used your fork to grab a potato out of the dish of potato salad, plopping it onto Sofía’s highchair tray. You smashed it up with the fork, “You wanna try a bit of potato?”

Sofía seemed skeptical. She reached down and squished the potato between her fingers.

You tapped your finger against your lips, “You eat it, sunshine.”

Sofía gurgled and threw herself back against her seat, smearing the potato all over her face.

“Close enough.” Javier chuckled, shaking his head as he slathered mayonnaise on a bun for Josie.

“More!” She urged, hanging on his arm.

“Josie.” You gave her a look across the table.

Sofía kicked her feet against the highchair as she leaned over and tried to reach the tub of potato salad that was well outside of her reach. “You like that?” You questioned, grabbing another potato and putting it on her tray, smashing it up for her again.

She dramatically hummed her delight.

“Look at that, she’s not always a grumpy baby.” Steve remarked with a short laugh. “I worried she was a carbon copy of her father.”

Javier glared at him, subtly flipping him off so Josie couldn’t catch him.

You worked on fixing your own burger, glancing around the table to make sure everyone had what they needed. You really hated playing host. An ideal situation was a box of pizza thrown in the center of the table for everyone to fend for themselves. But Steve and Connie were such gracious hosts, you felt like you had to do the same.

Javier had lived on grilled cheese, whiskey, and cigarettes for the majority of his bachelor years. He wasn’t one to complain. He wasn’t actually half bad in the kitchen when he put a little effort into it.

“How’s things at the hospital?” Javier questioned Connie in between bites of burger.

Connie grabbed her napkin and wiped her mouth off before answering, “Good. I’m not working as many double shifts as I was there for a while. I’ve actually had days off that felt like days off. No catching up on sleep.”

“With my transition out of the DEA, it’s been nice to have her around more.” Steve added. “Hun, did you tell her about that lady you’re working with?”

You arched a brow, looking at Connie expectantly.

“Oh! I totally forgot,” She laughed, taking a sip of water before she continued. “We’ve got a new medical social worker working on the floor that looks so much like you. I did a double take the first time I saw her. Do you have a secret younger sister?”

“Nope.” You shook your head, reaching for your bottle of beer and taking a swig. “Is my doppelgänger nice at least?”

“An absolute sweetheart.” Connie said with a grin, taking another bite of her burger before adding, “She’s actually from Medellín.”

Javier dropped his fork, causing it to clamp against his plate. You shot him a curious look, a brow arching upwards.

“Colombia?” He questioned, taking a drink of beer to keep from choking on the bite of burger he’d swallowed nearly whole.

“Is there another one?”

Steve cleared his throat, “You hadn’t mentioned she was from Colombia.” He looked between you and Javier with a knowing look.

“I believe she came here as a political refugee. I didn’t ask for specifics.” Connie shrugged, “Why?”

The look on Javier’s face made the lightbulb come on. Holy shit.

You leaned an elbow against the table, turning towards Connie. “Her name wouldn’t happen to be Elena, would it?”

Connie’s brows shot upwards, “Yeah! Wait — do you know her?”

“Some of us better than others.” Steve muttered under his breath, much to Javier’s horror.

“Yeah.” You nodded your head slowly, “She was great. I’m glad she’s gotten herself out of that situation.” You looked towards Javier then, smiling a little. “I guess that promise of safety had follow through.”

Javier rubbed at the back of his neck awkwardly, “I had no idea she was in Miami.”

“It’s fine, Javi.” You assured him, “It’s a small world.” You watched him as he nodded his head slowly, staring down at his plate of food. Of all the people that the two of you had known in Colombia ⁠— the sheer irony that Elena had made her way to Miami was… something else.

“I feel like I’m missing something.” Connie remarked, looking between the three of you curiously. “What am I missing?”

“Not in front of the kids.” Steve stated with a shake of his head.

“Daddy, you gotta eat your veggies.” Josie said sweetly, pushing the bowl of salad towards Javier. “Don’t you wanna be big and strong like me?”

“Of course I do, princesa.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“Javier, it’s fine.” You said firmly, shifting in your seat so you could brush your foot against his leg beneath the table. “Don’t get yourself bent out of shape over this.”

“I’m not getting ‘bent out of shape’.” He shot back, pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek as he stared at you. “I just can’t believe… of all the cities.”

“What am I missing?” Connie questioned, nudging you in the arm.

You sighed, chewing on the inside of your bottom lip. “Elena was one of Javi’s informants. When was that?” ‘89 to ‘92?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Steve agreed with you, pushing his potato salad around on his plate.

Javier was so tense you could see the corded muscles of his throat as he stared straight ahead at you.

“So she was an informant informant?” Connie questioned, brows furrowed as she looked towards you.

“Yeah.” You nodded, “And it’s not nearly as big of a deal as Javier is acting like it is.”

Javier raked his fingers through his hair, sighing heavily as he sank back in his chair. He scratched at his lightly scruffy jaw, not quite meeting your gaze as he looked across the table at you. “It’s a big deal to me.”

Connie looked between the two of you, “I really didn’t mean to start something.”

“You didn’t.” You assured her, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Hey Javi, did you leave the grill on?”

He gritted his teeth together before he gave a stiff nod, scooting his chair back and getting up from the table.

“Daddy, where are you going?” Josie asked with her mouth full of her burger.

“Daddy left the grill on.” Javier offered, meeting your gaze as you got up from the table.

“Uh-oh!” Josie said with a sing-song voice, entirely oblivious to the situation.

“We’ll hold the fort down,” Steve promised you as you followed Javier through the kitchen and out the backdoor into the yard.

He walked a few paces ahead of you, before he stopped with his back to you. You considered staying rooted to the spot where you stood, but instead you moved towards him and curled your arms around his middle, resting your cheek against his back. “Javi,” You started, trying to keep your voice steady. “This is such a non-issue.”

“For you.” He retorted, resting his hands over yours. “I feel like every time we take one step forward, something happens that sets us back. Every fucking time, baby.”

“But it’s a non-issue,” You assured him, squeezing him a little tighter. “I liked Elena the handful of times we worked together. I’m thrilled that she’s thriving. Hell, I’m glad she’s here. Miami isn’t so bad.”

Javier turned in your embrace, his hands settling at your hips. “I didn’t know she was here.”

“I didn’t think you did.” You reached up and cupped his cheek, brushing your thumb over the rise of his cheekbone as you met his gaze. “Look, I know that’s a period of history you’re not particularly fond of, but… It doesn’t bother me. At all.” You tilted your head to the side, “I thought we were working past this.” You gestured between the two of you. “There’s no other shoe waiting to fall.”

His Adam’s bobbed as he looked down at you, “I just can’t fucking believe she’s in Miami.” He shook his head slowly. “Of all the goddamn places.”

“I think she had a cousin here.” You recalled, “Shit, that was a long time ago.”

Javier nodded his head in agreement, “Yeah.” He ran his hands over your hips slowly, “Last time I saw her was right after you told me…”

“Did you tell her?” Your brows furrowed.

“I did, yeah.” He recalled, “I mean she knew about you…”

“I know she did.” You reached you and played with the hair that sat against his forehead. “I thought you didn’t tell anyone.”

He shrugged a shoulder, “It slipped out. I figured it didn’t really matter that she knew. She was happy for us.”

You smiled fondly, “I think we should meet up with her.”

“What?”

“Catch up, see how she is…”

“Baby—“

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.” You raised your eyebrows. “Hell, she might not even want to see either of us.” You shrugged your shoulders. “I just think it’s too ironic that she’s working at the same hospital as Connie.”

“I’m not going.”

“That’s fine, I’ll go then.” You rose up on your toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. “You need to stop worrying so much, Javi.” You brushed your nose against his as you raked your fingers through his hair at his temples. “I trust you.”

Javier curled his arm around your waist, keeping you close to him. “What’d I do to deserve you, baby?”

“Still trying to figure that one out.” You teased, kissing the tip of his nose. “Come on. Connie’s going to be stressing that she’s single-handedly destroyed our relationship if we don’t get back inside.”

“She was mortified.” He chuckled.

“Not nearly as much as you were.”

“I was praying for the earth to open up and swallow me whole.”

You rolled your eyes. “You felt that way in the sex sho—”

Javier cut you off, covering your mouth with his hand. “Don’t.” He warned you.

You poked him in the stomach and when he didn’t remove his hand, you swept your tongue over the palm of his hand. That worked. He quickly pulled his hand away, wiping his hand off on the front of his jeans.

“If you want to shut me up, you’re going to have to wait until we’re alone.” You told him, putting your hands on your hips, before walking backwards towards the back door. “But until then, we have guests to entertain.”

“It’s just Steve and Connie.” Javier followed after you, his arms crossed across his chest.

“Who are guests we’re entertaining.” You narrowed your eyes at him. “And you’re going to finish your food, otherwise Josie is going to believe she can skip dinner too.”

“Fine.” He huffed quietly, shaking his head as he slid the sliding door shut behind him. “But we’re dropping this conversation. I don’t wanna talk about an informant in front of the girls.”

You gave a mock salute, “Sure thing.”

Javier caught you by the belt loop, pulling you towards him. “I mean it.”

“I’m not going to bring it up again.” You promised, curling your fingers around the back of his neck. “As much as I love torturing you I’m not cruel, Javier.”

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, “Thank you.”

You smiled up at him, “No ‘thank yous’ needed, babe.” You took his hand into yours, interlacing your fingers as he headed back for the dining room. Steve and Connie had managed to keep the kids entertained in your absence.

“She’s had about a full little potato.” Connie told you as she gestured to Sofía, “I think most of it got into her mouth.”

“She gets really into her food.” You chuckled, releasing Javier’s hand as you both returned to your own seats.

“Where’d you go daddy?” Josie asked, tilting her head to the side as she licked the dressing off a piece of radish, only to dip it into her salad bowl again.

“Like I told you,” He reached over and smoothed his hand over the top of her head. “I left the grill on.”

Connie gave you a wary look as you picked up your burger and took a bite. “So…”

“Everything’s fine.” You assured her, looking towards Steve then, “So have you heard any rumors in the DEA about the article?”

“Oh, I have.” He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek and shook his head. “I hope you don’t plan on looking for a job in the federal government.”

You feigned offense, “If I ever did, you’d know I had been abducted by aliens.” It was still bizarre to consider that you had spent so much of your early adulthood working towards a role in the very institution you wanted to pull down.

“Baby, you know I have a class of students that would love to see you teaching.” Javier pointed out, beaming with pride. “End of last semester, I had her come in and give a lecture for the department.”

You rolled your eyes, “It was a fifteen-minute talk.”

“With a forty-minute question and answer section.” Javier insisted, his eyes meeting yours with an adoration that warmed your heart.

“I would only disappoint them,” You licked a drop of mayonnaise off your thumb as you sat your soy burger back down. “They already think you’re a tyrant when it comes to papers and grading.”

Steve laughed, “Isn’t that because you do most of the marking for him.”

“And I go easy on them.” You grinned. “My teachers didn’t take any corners with me and I worked my ass off to get here.”

“I don’t know if I can picture you as a teacher,” Connie said, giving you a once over. “No, I can’t.”

“Thankfully,” Javier started with a teasing tone. “They’re college students and not children.”

“And what does that mean?” You questioned, looking in between the two of them. “I am a delight.”

“You certainly lectured us a lot. Back in the day.” Steve joined in.

“Was I wrong?”

“Rarely.” He agreed.

“Well, we can't all be Professor Peña, now can we?” You quipped, nudging Javier’s foot under the table.

He scratched at his jaw, shaking his head. “No, we can’t.”

“But I’m always interested in dropping in to torment you and Monica.”

“Do the other students know that you’ve all but adopted her?” Steve questioned.

You started to answer, but Olivia was quick to announce, “I’m adopted!”

Josie turned towards Javier, “Am I adopted?”

“No princesa, you weren’t adopted.” Javier assured her as she grabbed at his arm.

“Was sissy adopted?”

“No. Remember your mommy grew her in her belly?” Javier reminded her, giving Connie a sympathetic smile, before his eyes flickered towards your face. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

“Seriously.” You laughed as you shook your head, reaching for your beer. “To answer your question, no. They don’t know.”

“Trying to keep things unbiased.” Javier explained as he scooped Josie into his lap, much to her delight. “She actually earned herself a B- on a test this week she should’ve aced.”

“You didn’t tell me that.” You frowned. “Why?”

“Her attentions a little stretched right now.”

“Of course it is.” You rolled your eyes, “Oh to be young and in love.”

“Old and in love isn’t too bad, is it?” He countered with a wink.

You grinned, “It’s pretty good too.”

#javier pena #javier pena x reader #pedro pascal x reader

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amazon-me-bitches · 3 years

Text

If anyone is interested at all... I wrote a story about the “sweet angelic” character. from the TS shorts video

Title: I did not think of a name for this and I have to get ready for work so call it whatever you want. Pairings: LAMP No Warnings needed I don’t believe. This one is pretty chill.

Roman was sound asleep, when the door to the imagination popped open and out stepped a bright eyed, freckled, little wisp of a thing. The boy looked around Romans luxurious bedroom taking in the art and majesty of it all before remembering why he was there.

He walked over to the bed and leaned over the sleeping prince. He gave him a light nudge and smiled giddly as the prince murmured a bit but never fully woke up. He wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue a bit ah! he had it! He climbed onto the bed with him and straddled the princes hips and leaned over him.

“Excuse me! im looking for King Creativity!” he all but shouted in the sleeping mans face. That got Romans attention real quick and he shot up so fast he slammed his head on the bookshelf above him. Damn Logan for insisting he install one that close to his bed. He groaned and flopped back down not opening his eyes. “Patton?” he guessed then peaked an eye open. The boy on him giggled and shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He sat up a bit more eyes widening and taking in the boy in front of him, “ w-who are you!?” He demanded, Roman pulling the covers up his body as best he could. The boy shrugged. “wait I know you, aren't you a character from a shorts episode?” Roman asked groggily relaxing a bit. This was too much to deal with before breakfast. “yeah! I’m a little…lost…Someone told me I needed to talk to the king?” Roman sighed “I’m not the king, you must have talked to someone very old in there but…. I’m Prince Roman and the ruler of the light side of the imagination so…I mean you are in the right place.” he assured them rubbing his eyes.

“oh goody!” he bounced a little but paused when a hand came down on his shoulder and he turned to see a very pissed off purple clad man holding a bowl of cereal behind him. “Hi! Who the hell are you?!” he snapped angerly. “Hi! oh! forgive me I was just helping the Prince wake up.” the boy said cheerfully. “whow! Virge nope, nope see my hands? no touchy touchy!” Roman said holding his hands out to show nothing was happening. “Well let me make a few things clear to you about who is and is not allowed to be straddling that prince in that bed.” Virgil growled bending the spoon in his hand so much it broke and fell to the floor. “Easy Vee, but yeah get off me.” Roman gently picked up the boy and set him over to the side of the bed and sat up. “he is just a creation Virge, remember the shorts video a few days ago, that’s why he is here. You’re lost?” The boy nodded his head “my…frenemie was with me but we got separated…and… I’ve been wandering around but I can’t find him and I can’t find….anything… I don’t know where I’m supposed to go…” he said sadly looking down as his lip started to tremble a bit. “oh hey, It’s okay listen, The shorts have a village where they all live It’s on the north side of the main village and up Disney drive, go past the waterfall and there is a fork in the road the right leads to Lego land and the left goes to the village where all the characters who have been in Thomas’ short videos live.” he calmly explained.

Patton and Logan came in a minute later with coffee and stopped short at the door. “ whats going on?” Logan asked observing the situation and taking in their new guest. “ooo whos this now?” Patton asked approaching the boy. The boy gave him a smile and a wave. “Hi! im new!” “Hi new im dad!” Patton laughed. “whats your real name kiddo?” the boys smile faltered and he looked nervous again. Virgil could feel it in the air slightly and sighed. Gently he waved his hand and letting a calming aroma of lavender to fill the room. The boy took a deep breath and smiled softly again. “I don’t have a name…” he confessed. “Can you give me a name?” he asked Roman hopefully. “well um…I think…perhaps we should just bring you to see Thomas and let him name you.” he suggested patting the boys head. The boys eyes widened . “no! im not going to bother Thomas! he only created me for a short silly video he doesn’t want to see me again!” he blushed. “well actually if you want to get technical Roman created you but Thomas and Roman both worked together to help make you a reality or…a figment of his imagination…It is WAY too early for this…” Logan grumbled. “Still this…doesn’t have to involve him we can just….not do that…I mean what if he decides to just get rid of me all together because I’m making trouble.” he said nervously. “h-have you ever…met Thomas? He is not like that, I was the biggest thorn in his side for the longest time and he still gave me a chance and now we are best friends. He is very forgiving and very sweet, trust me as someone who thought those same thoughts for a lot of years I can tell you with 100% confidence he will not banish you or hurt you or yell at you or anything you are thinking of.” Virgil explained softly as he gently touched the friendship bracelet on his arm Thomas had made for him. He sat on the bed next to him so he wasn't looming over the newcomer. The boy launched himself into Virgil's arms immediately to hug him. “oh! okay we are doing this now, wow, okay, your okay.” he said wide eyed mouthing ‘what the heck’ to the others behind the boy. “there there come on now lets go see Thomas.” he said patting the guys shoulder. “your SURE he isn’t busy?” he asked one more time. “busy doing what? Watching Parks n Rec in his underwear eating pizza? no your fine come on” Virgil took the guys arm gently leading him to the real world.

“Thomas we have a bit of a dilemma” Logan said as he rose up. The others rose up as well and Thomas we indeed right where Logan said he would be. “see does that look intimidating to you?” Logan asked gesturing to Thomas. “hey guys! want to watch Casper with me? it just started.” he grinned and sat up pausing the show. “ohhh nostalgia!” Patton about squealed. “whos he?” Thomas asked pointing over to the boy. The boy shook his head and stepped behind Logan a bit. “aw hey no come on its alright, I just wanted to know your name.” Thomas coaxed gently. “I-I don’t have one….Sir…” Virgil snickered at that and Patton lightly smacked him in the back of the head. giving him a scolding look. “whow easy, Thomas is just fine.” he laughed. “so you don’t have a name right I don’t think I ever gave you one. you’re from that short video about characters that I made the other day, where's your friend or lover or whatever?” he asked looking around. “I don’t know they are lost somewhere in the imagination too I think.” “fear not, for we are going to find them later when I escort him to the village for the short video characters.” Roman explained. “See there ya go, Roman will take care of you, he is a smart and savvy prince and my hero.” Thomas said smiling softly. “Roman you’re blushing.” the bespeckled man whispered. “shut up” he murmured back not breaking eye contact with Thomas. “So does that offer still stand to watch the movie?” Patton asked hopping a bit excitedly. “ sure absolutely come on over and find a spot.” They all clamored over and got comfy as Thomas hit play on the TV. The boy had never watched anything before and was completely enamored. bouncing giddly at some parts and looking slightly frightened at others.

When it was over Virgil and Patton were asleep snuggled up on the couch and Logan was leaning on Roman barely awake. “are you awake love?” Roman murmured. “mmhmm” Logan replied but never opened his eyes. Roman smiled and kissed his cheek softly before gently picking him up and laying him on the couch and covering everyone up. “how you feeling dude?” Roman asked the guy. “that was so much fun!” he replied giddy as ever. “thank you so much for inviting me!” he smiled to both Roman and Thomas. “you are very welcome uh…huh we still never gave you a name…” Thomas pondered. The man picked up the movie case and looked at it… can…can it be Casper?“ He asked smiling softly. ”you- yeah! absolutely! I think that is a wonderful name!“ Thomas smiled. Casper beamed and gave Thomas a hug too. woo this kid was going to give Patton a run for his money as the number one huggy person in the whole Thomasphere. ”Okay Casper lets get you back to the village I bet your…friend? lover?…something is waiting for you and getting worried.“ Roman smiled taking him back into his room and back into the imagination.

”THERE YOU ARE. don’t you ever run off again, I was scared out of my mind!“ the ‘badass hellspawn of a character’ called running over and hugging Casper. ”I’m okay but boy do I have a lot to tell you about. come on. thanks Roman! thank you for everything!“ He took his friend/lovers and gave Roman a wave before walking into the newly formed house in the village.

Roman smiled and made his way back into his room to see everyone had migrated to his bed. good thing it was a king sized. He sighed and snapped into some PJs and wiggled his way into the middle of his boyfriends. He wrapped an arm around Patton and leaned back on Virgil trying not to put his feet directly on Logan. He sighed as he unsuccessfully fought for some cover. They were so lucky they were all cute. Patton murmured something about cookies and Roman smiled and closed his eyes drifting off to sleep. The End.

#ts fanfiction #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #ts shorts characters

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stressedspidergirlsfandomblog · 5 years

Text

Pt12

"You barely ate anything," Keith protests. He can see the bones in Shiro's face are more sharply defined, now.

Watching Curtis slide in behind Shiro and wrap his arms around the other man's middle, Keith wonders if Shiro would even sit up without the support. He seems frail. He's never seemed frail before. Never.

"I put the soup bowl back mostly full," he continues. "We brought sushi, if you'd rather..."

Krolia takes the cue to bring food over from the counter. Along with drinks and Lance gets up to help her load the coffee table with silverware and food.

"Or pizza," Matt suggests.

"Or if youre queasy... Soup or juice."

Shiro breathes out through his nose.

"Patience yields focus," Keith, Matt, Pidge, and Lance all day in perfect unison.

Shiro just wrinkles his nose in mock irritation by way of response. Leaning over he picks up one of the juice packets and makes a big show of being unable to open it one handed. He could if he wanted to.

Curtis snorts, and wrestles the packet away to crack it open and pass it back. But not before faking a hand over and then taking a long drink of it, first.

"Gross," Shiro mutters.

"You've had my tongue in your mouth, but sharing a drink is where you draw the line? Well guess where else I guess my mouth doesn't belong."

"Oh, no gross. No, not cool." Lance pretends to cover his ears. "Even referencing old people sex is nasty!"

"Old!" Shiro says indignantly as he can. Play along. Fake it till you make it.

Tempted to make an experience joke, Curtis feels it might hit a sore spot. For all he knows Lance has done a little dating recently.

"Yeah I mean you look like a grandpa, why don't you dye it?" Matt asks. Mostly still teasing.

"So i can look as tired as I feel?' Shiro tries. It falls flat. "The senior citizen discount is better than the one for veterans...." He tries, working a smile onto his face.

Lance looks at him, and lightly touches the Altean marks on his cheeks. "Its for her, isnt it?" He asks, eyes overbright. He's really moving on fine. But he'd never thought all those times Shiro checked on him, that Shiro was still grieving, too.

Looking down and away he presses his lips into a thin line so they won't tremble. Taking a drink of juice, he lets the flavor roll over his tongue. At least no one's pushing him to eat.

When Shiro finishes off his drink, Lance makes eye contact with Curtis. Shifting back, he understands. And isn't shocked when Shiro is slammed into him and Lance's arms dig into his middle.

"I miss her, too," Pidge says abruptly, and Lance holds out an arm. She squishes into the pile. "Keith just get your ass in here," she snaps irritably and he 'reluctantly' joins. Curtis shifts away, letting Keith take his spot. Keith settles behind Shiro, supporting him.

"I'm really sorry about Adam, too," Keith says softly. "I let you blow me off once and I never... We both loved him."

"I never even thought to check..." Matt says. "After you left, he and I got closer. He was a good guy."

Shiro's shoulders start to shake in silent sobs.

Colleen and Sam have finished up enough to know the topic has turned to Adam. "He knew how you felt about him," Sam promises. "And he knew you were alive and coming home." If that helps he doesn't know, but hopefully it's better than knowing nothing. "I think he was excited to see you. Even if you two never were going to be the way you were before."

Curtis quietly does his best to explain to Krolia who Adam was. She knows Allura.

"It doesn't upset you? Them praising him?"

"That's Takashi's past. I'm his present, and I hope...his future."

Krolia shrugs. Humans are weird.

At some point the grieving winds down and concludes. Keith is gently rubbing Shiro's back and trying to reassure him. For all he knows his brother is mortified at having broken down in front of witnesses.

Curtis drags over a box of tissues that gets passed around.

"Okay my turn, move aside boys," Colleen says, forcing the paladins to clear out until she has a path to Shiro. Pulling him into a tight hug, she's gratified when he leans into her and hugs back. Patting his back gently, she kisses the side of his head. "I don't know when we forgot you were just a young pilot... Not much older than Matt. You've always been like family to us."

Shiro tries to brush her comments aside but she's not having it.

"Sam knew you were the best. And somewhere along the way we forgot you were anything other than a leader. We forgot to be family. You and Adam and Keith were one. And at the Garrison it was you, Sam, and Matt."

"I was your boss," he points out, voice muffled by her shoulder.

"Moms trump all military rankings. I'm always able to veto you," she tells him reassuringly.

"Pff," he protests, only to scrunch his face when she peppers him with kisses.

"Earth mothers have no shame," Curtis comments to Krolia quietly.

"Make a comment like that and you're next," Collen warns. "We're all family here."

"Why does that sound like a threat?" Keith asks, grunting when Shiro pushes against him in a lackluster attempt to escape more affection.

"Because it is," Pidge and Matt say in unison.

"Holt family hug!" Sam insists, bunching up his kids closer to his wife.

Curtis isn't sure how it happens but somehow they all end up squeezed together in a group hug. It's not comfortable, and thankfully it doesn't last long, but it feels kind of perfect.

Once freed Shiro takes an interest in the food, leaning forward to use his fingers to pick out random pieces of sushi and dumping them on a plate before settling back against Keith.

"Are you gonna use me as furniture all night?" Keith complains. Not like Shiro and Adam hadn't told him the same thing hundreds of times before. He wriggles a little in mock discomfort and Shiro makes an annoyed noise when it makes him drop his sushi.

"I've got this Shiro," Lance reassures him, leaning over to grab chopsticks.

"Oh no, take cover," Pidge warns.

"Hey! I'm really good at using chopsticks!" he drops the piece of sushi twice before he has it.

"Why're you taking my food?" Shiro complains.

"Im not, I'm helping. Open wide."

"What?"

Keith starts to laugh. Curtis can't imagine Shiro letting someone feed him. He won't even eat off Curtis' fork at restaurants unless Curtis passes the whole fork over. Laughing, too, soon everyone but Lance is giggling.

"Nope. Not gonna happen." Shiro selects a different piece and stuffs it into his mouth.

"Fine!" Lance jokes, setting the piece back along with the chopsticks.

Shiro takes them up instantly with a little smirk.

Keith leans over Shiro's shoulder. "That looks good," he says, reaching for a piece.

"Hey!" Shiro protests, trying to rebuff him with just his shoulders. Stuffing the piece in question into his mouth, he tries to inform Keith that it's gone now. His mouth is too full.

"I mean there's more on your plate," Keith points out. He'll do this all day if it means Shiro will eat.

"Cut it out," Colleen warns. "You'll choke."

Shiro gives Keith a look that most definitely says : no I won't.

"Gross. Shiro, gross."

"Seems interesting to me," Curtis grins, having caught the exchange.

Keith gives Lance a look. "I gotta stretch," he tells Shiro, gently patting his back. He wheezes when Shiro leans back on him more. "I will pee on you," he threatens and Shiro instantly sits up straight.

Lance shifts some, not to take Keith's spot but to offer more support. Pidge and Matt shift in response.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" Keith asks Curtis, checking to see Shiro is occuppied by Pidge, Matt, and Lance.

"Sure."

"Ask Shiro, I'm really bad with words, okay? But I feel like I should say something. I know very little about you guys and I'm sorry. But I can tell you really love him. And he loves you. And I don't know how it works, or what the future holds...

But it was so different with Adam. He was so different. Patience yields focus. Everything had to be controlled. And he had to be perfect. He was a little bit of a show off... And he drove himself to the edge." Keith takes a breath. "And they suffered for it. Trying to support someone who never chooses you first. I was so angry at Adam but I get it now. And... I see him choosing you. This time he's choosing you.

"I see the way he looks for you. Or just the way you guys look at each other. You're so in tune." Keith looks down. "And I'm so sorry you had to call us to task... You're right. We are his family. And so we're yours, too.

"And i don't know what I'm really trying to say other than... He's not struggling or fighting for anything. He has you. And I'm so grateful he has you. I haven't seen him relax... Or drop his guard... He was so annoyed all of us came," Keith laughs. Curtis grins. "And he didn't even try that hard to play Mr. Perfect and cover it up. We got to grieve with him. And tease again." He rubs at his eyes.

"I don't know what he'd be like without you in his life right now, but I'm glad I don't have to find out."

(I'll edit more in later?)

#shurtis #curo #takashi shirogane #curtis #voltron #my fic #keith kogane #lance mcclain #pidge holt

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trans-girl-nausicaa · 6 years

Note

🔥 food

pineapple on pizza, especially “hawaiian style” is extremely good.

anchovies are delicious.

nutella is overrated.

grilled cheese is overrated. the best grilled cheeses have something else in them, especially some other type of flavor. like if you put some sliced tomato, the acid helps counterbalance the cheese. one really good grilled cheese sammich i had once had granny smith apples in it. basically cheese by itself is not the best way to make a food item.

tomato soup is overrated as hell. its usually too sweet and too creamy and is just monotonous as fuck. grilled cheese to dip helps but again i have my own problems with grilled cheese.

french cuisine is extremely overrated.

i have a distaste towards any sushi or roll that has cream cheese or avocado in it. the texture and flavor don’t really match. i like avocado in other settings like guacamole or whatever, and obviously i like cream cheese on bagels. but they don’t taste good in sushi rolls for me.

wedge salad is annoying as fuck. what, am i just supposed to carve this giant wedge of iceberg lettuce and mix it with the dressing myself? with my own knife and fork? it’s going to make a mess, guaranteed. any salad where the greens component isn’t already in bite-size pieces is generally a huge inconvenience and totally unnecessary.

the best way to balance flavors is by contrast. acidic plus savory. fruit and meat. that kind of thing.

you know those “health food bowls” that have like a million ingredients in them? like “oh we have quinoa and acai and avocado and faxseed and tofu and etc etc etc” those are the biggest bull shit i have ever seen. theres no concern for the balance of flavor and texture whatsoever. you just made a bowl of ingredients. i’,m glad that you are having an easy time but unless you let me pick the specific ingredients that are going in it one at a time theres no way im gonna enjoy it.

smoothie places, or, basically, any restaurant or food service place that doesn’t list ALL of the ingredients in EACH dish is a bastard of earth and will receive all my wrath. theres a lot of reasons to do so, not least of which is allergies, and lactose intolerance, but also for fucks sake if i want to eat something and theres soime ingredeniuence i dont like in it thgen im not gonna like it. not rocket science.

#ask meme #food #raiona

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everyonesomething · 6 years

Text

Session 23b

Edith Runekill smiles fondly. "Heck, first time I talked to Mal I was trying to get him to remember the provenance of a bunch of pottery shards showed up at the museum and prove the importance of proper documentation."

Edith Runekill: "And now look at us." Malkas: "She yelled at me for four non consecutive days." Edith Runekill: "Including on our first date, sorry to say. Glad to say he wasn't sick of the sight of me by the end of it. And we eventually got those provenances figured out."

In this session, we pick up where we left off, minus one elf.

The set-up: It's Edith's turn to tell a story!

The Game: With Pepper dead asleep, Hiram turns his attention to Edith and Mal asking where they're from and how they got acquainted with Grim.

Hiram: "Y'all are from all over, hm?"

"How'd you wind up keepin' company on a job like this?" Edith Runekill: "Well, Mal and I were both living in Neverwinter when we met." Hiram nods Hiram: "Right enough, said that's where y'come down from." "Long way west for you, girl." He looks at Grim. Grim shrugs and keeps eating Grim: "Had a contract on Malkas." Malkas: "Mistaken identity." Edith Runekill shrugs too. "There's a lot going on out west... uh." Edith Runekill: "Yeah." Grim: "Tiefling. Looked like 'im." Hiram raises his eyebrows and studies Grim Hiram: "That right?" Grim grunts irritably at him Edith Runekill exchanges a glance with Mal. Malkas shrugs, "Bad photo." Edith Runekill: "Yeah. Coulda been anyone in that picture." "And I guess we were in the same neck of the woods when it was taken..." Edith Runekill shrugs. "Water under the bridge at this point. Mostly it just meant we were all in the room together when Szass Tam busted up the world's fair, which is how we got on his tail." Hiram: "Together?" Grim: "Weren't givin' up the contract on Malkas 'til I was sure." Grim mutters into her bowl, scraping it clean Hiram: "That so." Edith Runekill: "Sometimes you make friends the strangest ways." Grim putS HER BOWL DOWN Hiram smiles Hiram: "Sometimes the only way."

Hiram admits he didn't take Edith and Mal for a couple at first, but if they're happy together it's no one's business but their own.

Note: Lines written (“Like this”) are comments from a character in present time.

Edith Runekill smiles ruefully. "Wish my parents could see it like that." Helia (GM): FLASHBACK~~~ 8 Months Ago ~~~ Ma and Pa Runekill arrive in the city of Neverwinter via train. Edith Runekill waits on the platform, standing beside Mal. Edith Runekill: "You nervous, Mal?" Malkas: "Nah, I'll be fine." ("I was gonna shit.") Nora R. | The train pulls into the station. Passengers slowly start disembarking. Most of them look like they're from well west of Plaguewrought. No sign of Ma and Pa yet. Pa Runekill finally disembarks, Ma Runekill behind him. He's carrying two large suitcases. Malkas takes a steadying breath. Edith Runekill waves, and then rushes forward to take the bags. "Here, let me—" Malkas: "Oh, I'll uh - " Edith Runekill casts Tenser's Floating Disc beneath the bags, artfully levitating them. Malkas is kinda left reaching for ... nothing. And looking like an idiot. Edith Runekill: "There, that'll make it easier to... uh..." Pa Runekill is stone silent. Ma Runekill: "You're being a bit of a show-off, Edith." Edith Runekill is chagrinned. Edith Runekill: "Uh." Edith Runekill attempts to smile brightly, as if that was just good-natured ribbing. "Anyway! This is Mal. Mal, this is my Ma and Pa." Pa Runekill and Ma Runekill exchange A Look. Malkas: "Hello, uh, Mister and Missus Runekill." Malkas reaches out a hand to shake Pa's hand. Pa Runekill takes it and gives it a quick, perfunctory shake. "Nice to meet you, son." Edith Runekill withers at this clear sign of Plaguewrought Hostility. Edith Runekill: "Uh... should we... uh...?" Malkas: "Did you, uh, enjoy your trip?" Pa Runekill: "We had to spend a week on that train just to see our own little girl. Do you think we enjoyed it?" Ma Runekill: "It was fine." "We just wish you were a little closer to home, Edith, that's all." Malkas: ("Her dad is terrifying.") Edith Runekill: ("He's... well. Guess meeting some dads who weren't him put things in perspective...?") Edith Runekill: "Er... I guess I should hail us a cab?" Grim: (Grim digs her own flask out of her pack, ego bruised enough by the Jhuil at this point) Malkas: "Hey, uh, why don't I go do that?" Malkas gives a fleeting smile to the Runekills and flees. Ma Runekill: "He's... a little different than I pictured him, Edith," she says, just before Mal is out of earshot. Edith Runekill: "Er... how so...?" Ma Runekill: "Well, he's..." "Hm." Pa Runekill: "What your mother is trying to say is that when you told us his father was from Ormpetarr, we were picturing somebody a little more... human, y'know?" Edith Runekill winces. Edith Runekill: "Does... does that really matter...?" Ma Runekill: "Of course not," she says, in a tone of voice that means Yes, it matters a lot. "The important thing is that you're happy." Edith Runekill walks outside with her parents in sullen silence to see if Mal had any luck finding a cab for them. She looks pale and withdrawn. Malkas has successfully located a Taxi. Edith Runekill levitates the bags into the trunk and opens the door for her parents. She murmurs the address of the hotel her parents are staying at to the cabbie. Grim: (Grim stretches out against a rock a little way back from the fire, working on her flask and a cigarette while she listens to Edith) Edith Runekill: (Edith lights a cigarette of her own with prestidigitation. "People from out where I come from can say a lot with silence. Saying nothing can mean real different things depending on how you do it.") ("Sometimes if you know someone real well silence can be comfortable, calming, companionable. But in this case, what was being signaled was intense unhappiness and disapproval.") ("Speaking the same language Mal's dad does, I reckon, but saying something real different." ) Hiram: ("Reckon I know how that is.") Malkas: ("They were real weird about me helping them with their bags") Edith Runekill: ("I think they thought you'd run off with 'em. Even though that doesn't make even a little sense?") ("They... in retrospect they were kinda weird about me using magic to help with them, too. Like I wasn't doing it the honest way. Like I could carry all that stuff with my skinny noodle arms.") ("Well. Maybe if I'd had some jhuild first.") Hiram: ("Oh, I bet that would've gone down real well with these folks.") Edith Runekill: (Edith manages a slight laugh at that. "Anyway... things didn't really go downhill until dinner after they got settled in at their hotel. We went to this really nice kobold place that was well outside of my normal price range, but I figured it had to be my treat 'cause I was already being rude by not letting them stay at my place, because there was no room, because it's the size of a shoebox and I share it with another girl.") —at the restaurant— Ma Runekill peers at her surroundings— the temple stylings, the kobold waiters, the crowd of hungry Neverwinterers happily eating pasta and pizzas. She prods at her spaghetti uncertainly. Ma Runekill: "It's... nice." Pa Runekill: "Maybe a bit ethnic." Ma Runekill: "That's how it is out here, I reckon." Edith Runekill is dying Malkas holds her hand under the table. Edith Runekill picks up a breadstick and accidentally snaps it in two. "Haha.. whoops." Ma Runekill: "Don't play with your food, dear." Malkas is eating his breadstick with a fork and knife he doesn't know what to do. Ma Runekill turns to Mal. All smiles. "So. Tell me. When did you and Edith meet?" Malkas makes sure his face doesn't have any crumbs on it or anything in his teeth, "We, uh, met at her work. I came in with some reclaimed artifacts I had found and was donating them to the museum." Malkas: "And Edith was working at the artifact desk that day." Edith Runekill nods. "Yeah. And... and we, uh, worked together a lot after that. And got to know eachother." Malkas: "You have a wonderful daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Runekill." Ma Runekill and Pa exchange another Look. Pa Runekill: "What kinda work?" Edith Runekill: "Uh. Museum stuff. Some digs and the like. Maybe a bit of travel...?" Edith Runekill exchanges a Look with Mal, because she's from Plaguewrought Land too and grew up speaking the same language. Malkas: "Organizing dig sites, taking photos of the, uh... artifacts if we're moving them." "There's a whole team of archaeologists at the museum we work with and go to dig sites with." Hiram: (Hiram is listening quietly. He notices Grim dozing off, however, and gives her a prod in the ribs.) Grim: (Grim does not appreciate it but sits up with a frown) Ma Runekill: "That's nice." She gives Pa another look, but a slightly different one than before. Pa Runekill suddenly pins Mal with a death glare. Malkas sweats. Pa Runekill: "'Archeological digs'." "Huh." Edith Runekill looks extremely nervous. More so than before. Malkas: ("I still am not sure why that set him off.") "Uh... I'm sure Edith will be happy to, uh... show you some of the sites the team has worked on, if you guys were planning on going to the museum." Pa Runekill: "I know all about the kinda things that go on at archeological dig sites. The sorta things people go through to retrieve old artifacts best left beneath the earth. I ain't naive." "Malkas." "Are you leading our little girl into danger?" Malkas: "Uh... N-no, sir. We - we're not doing any kind of dungeoneering, really." "M-most of it's, uh, say a farmer or landowner ... finds some kind of old fragment of pottery or armor scraps on their land and... sometimes calls us to investigate further." "Any danger is ... fairly minor." Malkas: "And... You know, if there was, I promise I'd ... put myself between it and Edith every time." Malkas gives Edith kind of a fleeting smile. Pa Runekill is caught off-guard by how detailed that explanation was. He glances at Ma, who nods at him slightly. "Well. Suppose I'll take your word for it." Malkas: ("Basically I'm full'a shit.") ("Except that last bit.") ("We had fought, oh, seven mummies by this point.") Edith Runekill: ("Well, it's true you aren't leading me into danger. We get into trouble together.") Malkas: ("Yeah, if anything we're leading each other into danger.") Hiram: ("Still, takes some balls to lie to a gal's father, face to face.") (It's not clear whether Hiram sees this as a good thing or not.) Edith Runekill: ("They... don't really approve of 'adventuring'. They think it's too dangerous. They think just plain old living in Neverwinter and working in a museum is too dangerous. Too many people, too much crime, so easy to get hurt. Think I shoulda never left home." ) Grim: (Grim gets up to start clearing away the dinner things, leaving Hiram to enjoy the tale of archaeology and parent child relationships) Hiram: ("They know how far you disagree?") Edith Runekill: ("They're... hard to argue with. Gonna... gonna be some tough conversations when we pass through Plaguewrought Land on our way east." Hiram: ("Sounds to me like they ain't so easy not to argue with neither.") Edith Runekill: ("Rock and a hard place.") Hiram: ("Nothin' wrong with standin' on solid ground when it's the choice you got.") Ma Runekill: "Well. Anyway. I'm glad we had the wrong idea about that. Suppose someone still needs to pick up all the pieces when old things best forgotten surface." Pa Runekill slightly inclines his head; the faint whisper of a nod. Edith Runekill: "Uh... it's real important stuff! A few pieces of pottery or a coin hoard or an ancient midden can tell the story of all the world's people. Even Plaguewrought Land's in history's long shadow— the old Golden Plains, the Spellplague, the Luskan migrations and centuries of reclamation efforts— it's the stuff that made us." Ma Runekill: "Still just like you were as a little girl." She smiles. "More interested than what's in old books than what's in front of nose." She smiles again. It's jokes. Clearly. Malkas has literally never been more uncomfortable in his life. Ma Runekill: "You know. For a while we thought she was gonna grow up and be a priest; she always loved old things and old stories and magic." Pa Runekill: "Woulda kept her closer to home, anyway." He doesn't smile. Just tightens his lips strangely. Edith Runekill: ("I literally never wanted that and I still don't really know where they got that idea.") ("Maybe it was just wishful thinking...?") Grim: (Grim straightens up with the dinner things and heads down the hill to find water and wash up.) Edith Runekill: ("And... it went on like that. Just.... lots of little things. Small slights. Backhanded comments.") Hiram: (Hiram watches Grim go, then looks back at Edith. "That the last time you've saw 'em?") Edith Runekill: ("Thank Auril they believed Mal's story about our work or it would've been an absolute crisis. But it was still... upsetting.") ("Yeah. But like I mentioned we're headed back that way again. And... and this time, I don't think we're gonna manage to hide what we're really up to.") ("Can't imagine they'll like how much danger I'm putting myself in. Or that they'll believe I'm really the one putting myself in it. But...") Malkas: "I think your father might actually murder me." Edith Runekill: —it's the present again— Hiram considers this for a few moments, sucking on his pipe Edith Runekill: "Well... You know, if he did, I promise I'd ... put myself between it and you every time." She gives Mal a crooked grin. "I... I feel like I gotta go back though, precisely because of how much danger we're going into. It'd... I wouldn't want to lose what might be my last chance to see home. Since... it's still home. They're still my people. Y'know?" She stares at the fire. Hiram nods slowly at this Malkas snorts at Edith, "Hey come on, I was bein' sincere." Hiram: "My son took up bounty huntin' when he was just seventeen." "Never did want that for him, tried to stand in his way." "But he kept on, an' I realised after a time, I'd wind up walkin' one of two roads. One where he keeps on speakin' with me 'til the day he's cut down, or one where I'd lose him while he was still livin'." "Ain't easy for a parent, seein' a child walk into the way of danger, but...it's harder, seein' a life without 'em in it." "That's my learnin' on it, anyhow." Edith Runekill nods. "I... I can't pretend that it's not awful to see your kid go out into danger. I get that. I really do. But... but is it wrong for me to have wanted something outta life different from what they did?" Edith Runekill throws her cigarette butt into the fire. "I dunno." Hiram: "Hells no it ain't. We all have had our young days, an' we all got our own fights to stand in." "Ain't no sense to a parent, is all." Edith Runekill: "Guess... guess I just gotta try to do better when I'm a mom. If... if I live long enough for that, anyway." Hiram: "Seein' you put away the Jhuil, I got faith." Hiram smirks Hiram: "Somethin' to you, that's for sure." Edith Runekill smiles. "I can be tougher than I look." Hiram: "Most can, but damn few try." Hiram glances down the hill after Grim, then looks back at Edith Hiram: "Don't go tryin' too hard, is all." Edith Runekill: "Well. I try to know my limits, too."

Seems like a nice family, those Runekills.

#summary #previously on #neverwinter 1933

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