Thinking a lot about how Calissa is deeply, secretly, absolutely terrified of Tristian.
It sits deep in her psyche. She doesn't know it. But it colors her interactions with him.
But she's not afraid of him in the usual way folk are afraid of him. She isn't afraid of his goodness, his holiness, his purity. He doesn't make her feel small in comparison.
No. She's afraid that he'll make her stray from her faith.
Because she was raised in the church of Iomedae, and her view is short-sighted and skewed. She believes that to honor her goddess, she has to honor the letter of the law. That's how you fight evil, how you ensure everyone is treated fairly, how you uphold justice.
To her, law is a kind of scripture.
She has a blind spot when it comes to laws that are unfair by their nature. Tristian shines a light on that blind spot, and it terrifies her. He preaches Sarenrae's tenets of compassion, forgiveness, patience. He asks her questions like "What about when you have to break the law to do the right thing?" To him, this is easy. To her, it's absolutely incomprehensible.
So she's a little abrasive. Not a lot - she's still attracted to him, after all. But sometimes she teases him about his goddess. If he asks those incomprehensible questions, she goes cold, hiding behind the mantle of the inquisitor. It scares him, when she does that, because he's reaching out with his goddess' holiest teachings and Calissa's rebuking him like he's done something offensive and wrong. She sees how it punches him in the gut when she does that, and she feels victorious. But also guilty.
But even when Calissa does that, Tristian keeps coming back. He keeps asking those same questions. With patience and kindness.
And over time, it starts to break away pieces of that shell inside her. When they defeat Hargulka and he lies beaten and asks for mercy, Calissa knows that he broke the laws of her barony and must be put to the sword. But Tristian speaks up behind her. "He deserves a second chance. Everyone does." And suddenly she's telling the troll to leave and never come back. Tristian says she improves every life she touches. Quietly, she melts.
That night, she prays to Iomedae. She asks if she's straying. She asks for forgiveness. Her goddess sends her no signs of her favor, so Calissa gets despondent.
She fails to notice that Iomedae doesn't send any signs of her wrath, either.
She falls asleep on her watch before she can wake Tristian for his turn.
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you make me
bucktommy ficlet. had a convo about love. had some feelings. gave them to buck. enjoy~
The entire loft is soaked in the hazy blue light of pre-morning. Buck can hear the mechanical thrum of garbage collectors, a handful of singing birds, quiet but steady breathing. His body is sore, from work and then from Tommy, a satisfying reminder of a yesterday well spent. Everything is warm and soft like Saturday morning, even though he's fairly sure it's Tuesday.
The clock on his bedside table tells him it's much too early to get up for a Tuesday, so he turns over to get comfortable and ends up face to face with Tommy's sleep-slacked expression.
Buck watches him in that way that's only creepy if you're not in love. Takes note of his eyelashes resting against the tops of his cheeks, his lips shadowed by the slant of his nose, how the dawning daylight catches on the angles of his face. He wants to touch, but not enough to disturb the serenity of sleep on his boyfriend's face.
Eddie tells him he says that a lot. My boyfriend. "We all know his name," Eddie says, tone harsh but a creeping smirk giving away the joke.
When Buck brought it up with Dr. Copeland, she asked him why he thinks he says it so much, but it was towards the end of their session so they didn't really get into it. Buck thinks it's probably something to do with his self-image problems, or maybe his abandonment issues? Dr. Copeland's better with the answers than he is.
Calling him Tommy is fine, but saying my boyfriend says my meatless lasagna needs more starch just reminds Buck that Tommy's his and, even more novel, Buck is Tommy's.
Buck likes being Tommy's boyfriend.
Tommy's boyfriend knows Tommy's coffee order, and drops it off along with a savory treat for him at the start of a long shift. Tommy's boyfriend always knows exactly where Tommy left his blue-light glasses and grabs them before they head to bed so Tommy can read another chapter of the cheesy historical fiction novel on his tablet. Tommy's boyfriend is the one Tommy goes to after a hard shift, to talk to or hug or just sit in the same room with until the rest of the world is less heavy.
As Tommy's boyfriend, Buck is still all the things he was before--firefighter, brother, friend--but knowing there's someone who trusts him enough to sleep beside him and let him stare at their face like a creeper in the early hours of the morning--there's this unfathomable freedom to it.
It's like--if Tommy loves him, he must be worthy of it. It's a truth and a prophecy, self-fulfilling. It's this ever-turning cycle that bolsters Buck to be the best version of himself, and none of it feels like work because it's all tangled up with joy.
"How long have you been staring at me?"
Buck startles out of his internal monologue to find Tommy's left eye open. The right is buried in his pillow along with the lifted corner of his mouth.
"Probably a little too long," Buck admits, staring fixedly at that corner of Tommy's mouth.
Tommy's lips part to release a sigh before settling into a smile. "Evan. Go back to sleep."
"In a minute."
Tommy shifts closer on the pillow, his nose nudging Buck's, his morning breath awful and his eyes so close Buck thinks their eyelashes might tangle. "You worked a 24-hour shift yesterday. You need to sleep. You can stare at me tomorrow."
"Promise?"
Tommy brushes their lips together. "Promise."
Buck finds Tommy's hand between them and laces their fingers together. "Alright," he says, settling back into the mattress and letting his eyes shut as he brings their hands to his sternum. "Tomorrow."
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Thinking tonight about Caelus, and the nature of his loss and his grief after the Everything that went down in Penacony during 2.0.
Because Acheron, Black Swan, and Misha kind of knew of Firefly, they at least met her, but they didn't like really know her, and Caelus never even got the chance to introduce her to the rest of the Astral Express Crew. The only person who would have talked to her much was Sparkle, who is. Probably not really someone Caelus is interested in grieving with skznmsks
Anyway, all this to say, I like thinking about how alone poor Caelus is in his grief, because he was the only one who knew Firefly. He's the only one really mourning her. There's no one to talk about her with. There's no stories to trade or memories to reminisce with anyone over. It's not as though he knew her for long, but still. No one else knew her at all.
And I love the thought of all of this coming bubbling up, hot and acidic and bitter, during a conversation with Sampo, who Caelus just so happens to run into in the Golden Hour. Poor Sampo is kinda blindsided, he knew shit was going down in Penacony, but yeesh. And he just. Isn't quite sure what to say about it all, because he's never really encountered this before. His feelings about the Masked Fools are...a mixed bag, but he's been a part of them for a very long time, and when you're with a close organization like that, it's hard to feel alone, in grief or otherwise.
So Sampo sits there on their little bench that the two of them have occupied, and he thinks of his old friend April, how she'd died in his arms cackling and spitting her own blood after a heist gone wrong, and how after he'd dragged himself back to the World's End Tavern they'd all held a Fool's Funeral- which is basically just a big party where everyone gets really really drunk and reminisces and toasts the dead and celebrates their life.
He still thinks about her a lot, and he remembers how the time he'd most keenly felt her absence was on Jarilo-VI, the one place where he couldn't talk about her because he couldn't say anything to give himself away as an alien. The Fools still tell stories about her every time he goes back to the Tavern. His first toast of the night is always in her name. Even now, all these years after she'd died, Sampo is still learning new things about her. He's never had to grieve her alone.
Caelus doesn't have any of that.
He might never have that. As they speak, Caelus has no proof that Firefly was even her real name, or if she dreamt with her true appearance. He might not ever find out who she even was.
And just imagining that kind of loneliness hollows out a strange little pit, right behind his sternum, deep between his ribs.
So Sampo claps Caelus' shoulder and offers him a deal. Come find him outside of the dream. He knows a guy who can get them a lot of beer for really cheap-
("Is that guy you and your five finger discounts?" "Whatever do you mean, dear friend, I don't even know the meaning of the phrase, hehee.")
-and they can hole up in a bar or a hotel room or something, and get completely shitcanned. Tell him all about Firefly, tell him everything, and he'll tell Caelus about April and everyone else he's ever lost. Sampo will carry Caelus' memories of Firefly with him, and at least this way, Caelus will be a little less alone in remembering her. And the next time they cross paths, Sampo will be the one to bring her up, and to tell her stories, and Caelus can get to be the one listening. He won't have to be the only person to talk about her anymore.
Caelus rolls his eyes when Sampo avoids another remark about sticky fingers, but...ok, yeah. That sounds good. Nice, even. Thank you. Caelus bumps his shoulder against Sampo's. Sampo bumps back.
(They find each other again the next day, and true to their word, get themselves completely and utterly shitcanned. Caelus talks more than Sampo has ever heard him; every minute detail, every word choice, Firefly's every odd little mannerism and habit. Because Caelus wants to make sure this will outlive him, that even if the Stellaron dwelling within him finally burns him to a crisp and he really does up and kick the bucket, or even, godforbid, if he forgets, he wants to make sure someone remembers her. She deserved that.)
((And it takes quite a while, after that. Caelus doesn't see Sampo again until after everything has settled down. On his last day in Penacony, he finds the guy slinking out of a seedy back alley and all but runs right into him. Sampo happily leads him to some dive bar in an even seedier back alley that Caelus has never even heard of, and Sampo raises his glass. "To Firefly! Who sounds like she probably would have hated me at first, but I would have liked to have met her anyway."
And Caelus stares at him, almost looking startled, long enough that Sampo worries that he's read him wrong and brought this up too soon. He's halfway into planning how to talk himself out of this situation when Caelus finally throws back his head back and laughs, tells him that yeah, Firefly would have politely called him out on every lie he told, and all their conversations would take twice as long with the way Sampo is so full of shit.
And he can see it, the same way he watches and sees through everyone, that Caelus' eyes have a tightness to them, his knuckles are nearly white around the handle of his mug. But he smiles. He hits his glass against Sampo's far too hard and throws it back and gets foam everywhere like he does every time they drink because the guy's about as elegant as a raging bull, but those things don't lessen the genuineness of his smile.
The grief is there, but so is the elation, and those emotions aren't a sliding scale between one or the other. It is all of both and both at once, and that's what contents Sampo enough to throw his own mug back when Caelus makes a toast of his own, "to April!!".))
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cutie patooties | max verstappen social media au
pairing: max verstappen x fem leclerc!reader
just them terrorising the world with their cuteness (and collecting the younger drivers)
MASTERLIST | TIP JAR | SMALL BUSINESS
yourusername
liked by arthurleclerc, maxverstappen1 and 1,209,455 others
tagged: maxverstappen1
yourusername: he loves redline more than me 🙄
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user1: obsessed with how she's like "oh you wanna ship max with my brother" and then takes lestappen out back and shoots them
user2: as she should, she's the cutest leclerc by far
yourusername: true 😙
maxverstappen1: double true 😘
charles_leclerc: die.
yourusername: erm consider your ass REPORTED THIS IS HARASSMENT
maxverstappen1: did you just threaten my girlfriend ????
charles_leclerc: and what?
maxverstappen1: pull up, i'm outside
charles_leclerc: ???? leave ????
maxverstappen1: no i'm deadass don't disrespect my gf 😤😤😤
charles_leclerc: it's my SISTER
yourusername: when he's protective 😛😛😛
user3: screaming, crying, throwing up over the keychain
user4: i need someone *cough, cough* them to recreate it 🥸
landonorris: YOU WENT TO THE LEGO STORE WITHOUT ME? YOUR FAVOURITE CHILD?
yourusername: watch your tone
maxverstappen1: god forbid i want to spend time with my GIRLFRIEND on a DATE
landonorris: that's not a valid excuse
yourusername: also bold of you to assume you're our favourite child when oscar, yuki and logan are right there
oscarpiastri: snooze you lose lando
yukitsunoda0511: suck on that lando
logansargent: i'm just happy to be included
landonorris: damn...
maxverstappen1
liked by yourusername, danielricciardo and 1,203,513 others
tagged: charles_leclerc & yourusername
maxverstappen1: spent the weekend bothering my girlfriend's brother, what about you?
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user9: the way charles put his ferrari cap on y/n only for max to throw it into the crowd and put his own on her head instead
user10: those who know max's attachment to his caps, this is big.
yourusername: winning looks so sexy oh my
maxverstappen1: blushing like a motherfucker
yourusername: skip the debrief? they won't notice?
maxverstappen1: i think they might notice the driver of the race they're analysing not being there
yourusername: show them the pic i just sent you, they can't say no to my puppy dog eyes
maxverstappen1: helmut said fuck off 💔
yourusername: tell him i have a present for him (it's a pack of salt and vinegar crisps and a pamphlet for caskets)
user11: @yourusername winning IS sexy, tell your bf to tell charles win
yourusername: if charles wins it's suddenly decidedly unsexy, this isn't game of thrones babe
charles_leclerc: you ARE annoying that's right
maxverstappen1: annoyingly sexy
charles_leclerc: no comment, we're going to be family at some point soon
maxverstappen1: DAMN RIGHT WE ARE
yourusername: if you think we're annoying now, oh boy.
user12: i need max and y/n to be engaged right this fucking moment
user13: i think it would actually make my year
user14: after the championship win queen @maxverstappen1 ?
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tagged: maxverstappen1
yourusername: @ the person who asked how much max weighs... god will deal with you
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user15: i'm obsessed with how obsessed they are with each other
user16: is max's wardrobe all red bull merch and t-shirts dedicated to y/n?
maxverstappen1: yes 😌
danielricciardo: i saw the clip... the time stamp was 3am - we RACE TODAY?
yourusername: i am happy to support my man's hobby
danielricciardo: yes but you also don't have to race with that man on three hours of sleep
yourusername: be real daniel, the only time you'll be close to max is when he laps you xxx
danielricciardo: EXCUSE ME??? MAX YOU GONNA LET YOUR GIRLFRIEND TALK TO YOUR FIRST LOVE LIKE THAT?
maxverstappen1: bold of you to assume you were my first love
danielricciardo: did on the couch mean nothing to you?
maxverstappen1: soz buddy this is a childhood friends to lovers narrative right now (and we were already together by the time i was at red bull)
charles_leclerc: WHAT?
yourusername: spare me the dramatics, you guys were deep in the ANGST and then austria happened so really it's your own fault that it took as long as it did
user17: one comment section where the girls aren't fighting? impossible.
oscarpiastri: omg the shirts look so good y/n !!
yourusername: we're ✨graphic designers✨
maxverstappen1: does having a dashingly handsome model help
yourusername: of course !!!!!
oscarpiastri: i'm not going to answer that question
maxverstappen1: :(
oscarpiastri: on another thought - yes!
yourusername: @landonorris this is why he's one of the favourites
landonorris: i'm not talking to yall
maxverstappen1
liked by fernandoalo_oficial, yourusername and 1,309,556 others
tagged: yourusername
maxverstappen1: weekend off racing means shenanigans and late night streaming
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user20: i know whatever poor soul went for dinner with them hated every second
yukitsunoda0511: working on being the favourite of the favourite children 🫡 and they paid for my meal at a really cool italian restaurant
oscarpiastri: game on
yourusername: so who is the lady and who is the tramp?
danielricciardo: THAT'S A TRICK QUESTION MAX DON'T ANSWER IT
maxverstappen1: you're not a lady... you're a queen 😘
yourusername: did you just fail the test, successfully?
danielricciardo: you smooth motherfucker
yourusername: stole your red bull drive and your nickname @carlossainz55
carlossainz55: why am i catching strays?
yourusername: bored ❤️
user21: y/n really be like "oh the season's boring cause my bf wins everything? let me make it interesting by shading every driver on the grid"
maxverstappen1: do NOT give her a challenge
charles_leclerc: can you PLEASE stop taking such lovey dovey gross ass photos maman keeps getting them printed and I AM GETTING MOVED OFF OF THE MANTEL PIECE I AM ON THE BOOKSHELF, THIS FACE IS A MANTEL PIECE FACE NOT A BOOKSHELF FACE
yourusername: not reading all of that, i'm happy for you or sad that happened x
charles_leclerc: MAX DO SOMETHNG
maxverstappen1: step your pussy up bro
yourusername: when he catches your lingo >>
charles_leclerc: i am a VICTIM
yourusername
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tagged: maxverstappen1 & charles_leclerc
yourusername: invented babygirlism actually
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user22: y/n is so real for choosing a cute recent photo for herself and then just violating the guys
user23: she's funny as fuck for that
charles_leclerc: finally some fucking credit
yourusername: not everything can be about you all of the time 🤨
charles_leclerc: don't make me an ankle-biter again you're PUSHING ME
sebastianvettel: knew you were an ankle biter
yourusername: LOL
charles_leclerc: no seb no! i didn't bite ankles, just y/n's and that doesn't count
user24: what the fuck is going on here
maxverstappen1: you are the most babygirl to ever babygirl
danielricciardo: i think i had a stroke reading that
yourusername: awwwww you're so cute maxy
maxverstappen1: knew you were the one for me when we first met karting, you taught me the babygirl ways
yourusername: and you're delivering
oscarpiastri: you guys can't see but he's blushing so bad right now
landonorris: are you just attached to them
yourusername: yes he is, a babygirl in training
user25: how do i get adopted by y/n and max?
maxverstappen1: no but for real i love you, even if we are lumbered with your brother
yourusername: i love you too xxx
charles_leclerc: *brothers
maxverstappen1: nope arthur and lorenzo are sound
charles_leclerc: fUCK OFF :(((((((
FIN.
note: heyyyyyy you guysssss! we all know i have a soft spot for these two (plus oscar and alex) so i wanted to put out a little thing to celebrate 5k! thank you so much for following and reading my work, hope you enjoyed xx
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