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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years

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Prodigal Son Sunday: 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This past Sunday marks one of only two times in the main Lectionary cycle that we hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son proclaimed (the other being the 4th Sunday of Lent Cycle - [C]). The Readings are marked by the theme of repentance and forgiveness.

1. Our First Reading is Ex 32:7-11, 13-14:

The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, ‘This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ “I see how stiff-necked this people is, ” continued the LORD to Moses. Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.”

The context of this First Reading is immediately after the “Golden Calf” incident. To recap, God had sent Moses to the Israelites as they were enslaved in Egypt, and through might miracles brought them out of Egypt and into the Sinai desert, to Mount Sinai itself, where he entered into a solemn covenant with them (Exod 19-24, esp. ch. 24). A covenant is the extension of kinship by oath, so God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai (Exod 24) formed Israel into God’s children, his family. A blood ritual solemnized the covenant, as Moses splashed blood on both God’s altar and the people, symbolizing that God and the people were now one blood. But the blood ceremony also had a more ominous symbolism: “if I break the covenant, may my blood be shed, like this shed blood now being splashed on me.”

Forty days later, while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving instructions for the building of the Tabernacle, the people of Israel defected from the covenant and broke their whole relationship with God. They built themselves an idol of a bull calf, probably representing the Egyptian god Apis whom they had once worshiped along the banks of the Nile. By breaking the covenant, they triggered on themselves the curse-meaning of the blood of the covenant: “may my blood be shed if I break my commitment…” That is why God says, “Let me alone … that my wrath may … consume them.” It is not the loss of God’s temper. It is God enforcing the terms of the covenant, which He is bound in justice to do. God tests Moses in this situation, creating the opportunity for Moses to intercede for the people, the opportunity for Moses to be like Christ. God says, “I will make of you a great nation.” This was the promise given to Abraham (Gen 12:2) so long ago. Thus, God is offering to “rewind” salvation history and start over with Moses as a new Abraham.

But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying, “Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand? Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.’” So the LORD relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.

Moses rises to the opportunity to be a Christ-like intercessor for the people of God. Moses’ main argument is significant: “Remember your servant(s) Abraham … how you swore to them by your own self…” There is only one place earlier in Scripture where God explicitly swears by his own self, and that is Genesis 22:15-18, the great oath which God swears to Abraham after Abraham offers to God his “only begotten son” (RSVCE2). That is the great passage of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, called “the Aqedah” (“the Binding [of Isaac]”) in the Jewish tradition. It is the most important type or foreshadowing of Calvary in the Old Testament. One might just call it “the Calvary of the Old Testament.” It is crucial to recognize that at this pivotal moment in the history of God’s people, where they face deserved destruction for apostasy from God, Moses’ succeeds in his intercession by pleading Calvary, by appealing to the covenant that was re-affirmed after the willing sacrifice of the “only begotten son.” God affirms the validity of Moses’ appeal, and “relents” from punishment. God knew in his foreknowledge that he would do this, but he chose to include Moses in his plan of mercy for Israel, allowing Moses to take an active role in the administration of God’s forgiveness. He does this for us, too.

2. The Responsorial Psalm is Ps 51:3-4, 12-13, 17, 19:

R. (Lk 15:18) I will rise and go to my father.

Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me. R. I will rise and go to my father.

A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Cast me not out from your presence, and your Holy Spirit take not from me. R. I will rise and go to my father.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn. R. I will rise and go to my father.

Psalm 51 is THE great psalm of repentance in the entire psalter, used in the Lectionary and the Liturgy of the Hours at those times in the Church calendar that most call for acts of contrition. Psalm 51 is attributed to David, upon the occasion of his repentance after having been rebuked by Nathan the prophet for killing Uriah and taking Bathsheba as his wife by force.

David’s words have resounded on the lips of repentant believers down through the centuries, unrivaled for bluntness and sincerity. David prays for “a clean heart” which God alone can “create” for him—it is not possible by human power. David had acted like Israel at the Golden Calf. Both David and Israel were recipients of covenants: Israel in Exodus 24, David in 2 Samuel 7. Both had the status of “sons of God” (Exod 4:22; PS 89:20-27). Both succumbed to sexual temptation (David with Bathsheba, 2 Sam 11; Israel when they “rose up to play,” a sexual euphemism Exod 32:6). Unlike Israel, David repents when rebuked. He returns to seek the LORD, whereas Israel would have continued astray had it not been for Moses. In this way, David represents an advance in spiritual understanding over against the behavior of Israel as a whole.

3. The Second Reading is 1 Tm 1:12-17:

Beloved: I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and arrogant, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life. To the king of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

The Lectionary is marching through St. Paul’s letters to individuals right now, and last week we read from Philemon. This week we read from the beginning of his first letter to Timothy, and the selection could scarcely fit better the themes of this Sunday’s Mass. Here we are reminded that St. Paul himself—like David, like Israel—was a great offender against God, who received mercy. Paul calls himself “the foremost” of sinners. Truly the company of the saints is better thought of as the assembly of those who embraced mercy, rather than of those who never needed it.

Gospel Luke 15:1-32:

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them he addressed this parable.

The Pharisees are offended that Jesus associates with “sinners,” not recognizing it to be a God-like trait, since God associated with sinners all through the Old Testament. In fact, Judah and his descendants included some of the worst of sinners.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Jesus prefaces his great parable of the “lost son” with two smaller, down-to-earth examples from everyday life about the joy of finding something that was lost. The phrase “there will be rejoicing among the angels of God” is actually a bit of a mistranslation. It is literally, “there will be rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God.” It is not the angels who are rejoicing, per se. Someone else is rejoicing in front of the angels. Who is that? God Himself. But in keeping with Jewish piety, Jesus using circumlocutions to speak of the divine rejoicing.

Then he said, “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’”

This parable may be read in two ways. On the basic level, it is a story of forgiveness and reconciliation that teaches us about the character of God and his love for sinners. On a secondary level, it is a parable about the history of Israel. Israel divided into two kingdoms: the northern kingdom of “Ephraim” (the adopted youngest son of Jacob) and the southern kingdom of “Judah” (the son of Jacob who inherited the rights of the oldest son). Ephraim went astray and was taken into exile by Assyria (a far country). Judah, however, was only exiled for 70 years and then returned to stay by God’s “side” in the land of Israel. However, in the end it is “Ephraim” who returns to embrace God, while “Judah” resents God’s mercy.

This fits a theme through Luke-Acts, in which Luke shows that Samaritans (direct descendants of the northern kingdom “Ephraim”) and Gentiles (among whom other northern Israelites had assimilated) respond to the offer of God’s forgiveness in the Gospel, whereas the “Judeans”, descendants of southern Judah, resist the Gospel out of pride, and resent the Christian offer of a the “new covenant” to Samaritan and Gentile “sinners.”

Today’s Gospel speaks to us in two practical ways, depending on which “son” we are. Some of us at Mass this Sunday are the younger son, who have been going astray rather self-consciously. We “younger sons” need to be reassured of God’s forgivness. We need to pick up and leave the pig slop we’ve been wallowing in (whether that be substance abuse, porn, financial corruption, promiscuity, manipulation, etc.) and return to God, who is waiting to embrace us.

[Let us notice that the Father does not run after the son to the far country and pull him out of the muck. There is an act of repentance and renunciation that we must undertake before we can return to the Father. We do have to leave the pig sty.]

Others of us at Mass are the older brother. We think we are good, not in need of forgiveness, and God owes us something. We resent riff-raff hanging around, and in particular don’t want them in our churches or other places where we hang out.

We older brothers have no joy in our lives, because we really aren’t motivated by love, and don’t understand the God of love and joy. We need conversion as much as the younger son. We need to recognize “younger sons” as siblings, as family members, and share God’s joy at their repentance and reconciliation. God is not a businessman rewarding service in a tit-for-tat or quid-pro-quo manner. God is a father, who wants all his sons to share his love and joy.

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

#24th sunday in ordinary time

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calamusgerent-blog · 6 years

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JOHN MILTON, REVIEWED.

Paradise Lost, by John Milton.

EVERYONE IS A POLEMICIST, THESE DAYS. IT MEANS “ONE WHO ENGAGES IN CONTROVERSIAL DEBATE,” AND AS A PERSON WITH A TUMBLR, I SEE HOW IT IS AN EASY PIT TO FALL INTO. IT’S EASY TO BE SELF-RIGHTEOUS, AND INFURIATING, AND ENGAGE IN DISCUSSIONS WHICH WILL SERVE, NOT TO CONVINCE, BUT TO INFURIATE OTHERS.

MILTON WAS THAT BITCH, TM.

PARDISE LOST IS AN EPIC POEM ABOUT THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE, LUCIFER’S FALL, AND THEN THE FIRST SIN OF MANKIND. I’M NOT CHRISTIAN, BUT THAT DOESN’T STOP THIS STORY FROM GETTING USED OVER AND OVER FOREVER INTO ETERNITY. I’VE SEEN THE MATRIX, AND LIKE THE MATRIX, PARADISE LOST IS BIBLE FANFICTION.

BUT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE DUDE HIMSELF. BACK WHEN PEOPLE STAYED FILTHY TO KEEP THE DEMONS OUT, MILTON GOT A MASTER’S DEGREE AT CAMBRIDGE. THERE WERE NO PH.D.’S BACK THEN, SO AFTER, HE KEPT STUDYING IN HIS PARENT’S BASEMENT FOR SIX YEARS.

SOUND LONELY? BELIEVE ME, HE EARNED THE SOLITUDE. NO ONE AT CAMBRIDGE LIKED MILTON. WHEN ONE OF HIS FEW FRIENDS DIED, HE WENT TO THEIR FUNERAL AND READ ALOUD A POEM THAT WAS ELEVEN STANZAS LONG. IMAGINE WONDERWALL, BUT AT A FUNERAL, AND WORSE. 15TH CENTURY CRINGE CULTURE. WOULD YOU HAVE INVITED THIS DRIP TO YOUR PARTIES? PROBABLY NOT.

…

HEY.

JOHN MILTON GOT MARRIED THREE TIMES. HIS FIRST WIFE HATED HIM, HIS SECOND WIFE DIED IN CHILDBIRTH, AND HIS THIRD WIFE—HE LOVED HER. BUT THE DAUGHTERS FROM HIS PREVIOUS MARRIAGE HATED HER, SO EVEN THOUGH HE LOVED SOMEONE, HE WAS NEVER HAPPY.

HE WENT BLIND BEFORE HE EVER WROTE PARADISE LOST. HE ASKED HIS DAUGHTERS TO READ TO HIM IN MANY LANGUAGES—LATIN, ITALIAN, GREEK—WHICH THEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND. THEY RESENTED HIM FOR IT; I GET THAT, I REALLY DO. HE SHOULD HAVE INVESTED IN THEIR EDUCATION, INSTEAD OF MOURNING FOR THE SONS WHO’D DIED.

HE DICTATED HIS BEST POETRY.

…HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN A POEM? IT FUCKING SUCKS. POETRY IS INDUCING SYNESTHESIA IN SOMEONE ELSE. IT’S TELLING A RIVER THE WAY IT FEELS TO FLY, WHEN YOU YOURSELF DON’T HAVE WINGS. I CAN’T TYPE POEMS, BECAUSE THEY’RE TOO HEAVY. THAT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE, BUT IT’S THE TRUTH: I NEED TO FEEL THEM AS I ETCH THEM ON A PIECE OF PAPER, LIKE A CAVEMAN CHIPPING AWAY AT A LOPSIDED WHEEL.

IMAGINE DICTATING A POEM. IMAGINE FREESTYLING RULES-HEAVY VERSE IN A HOUSE WHERE EVERYONE VOCALLY HATES YOU. IMAGINE THAT POEM IS PARADISE FUCKING LOST.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?

A UNIVERSAL QUESTION, AND AN IMPORTANT ONE.

Should God create another Eve, and I Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh, Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

“I KNOW HOW THE CONVENTIONS OF THIS STORY WORK. I KNOW THAT MY FEELINGS FOR YOU CAN BE REWRITTEN, OR EVEN ERASED FROM TIME. I DON’T CARE. I LOVE YOU ANYWAY.”

This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum Of Wisdom; hope no higher, though all the Stars Thou knew’st by name, and all th’ ethereal Powers, All secrets of the deep, all Nature’s works, Or works of God in Heav’n, Air, Earth, or Sea, And all riches of this World enjoy’dst, And all the rule, one Empire: only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith, Add Virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love, By name to come called Charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt though not be loth To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far.

THE SCOPE OF THIS POEM IS EVERYTHING. I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S IMPORTANT FOR ANALYSIS, I’M SAYING IT’S LITERALLY EVERYTHING—LIGHT, CREATION, GOD, MAN, LOVE, SIN, EXISTENCE, EVERYTHING. THE IMAGERY IS RELIGIOUS, OF COURSE, BUT IT WASN’T PURITANICAL. IN THAT PASSAGE, MICHAEL IS TELLING ADAM, “HEAVEN IS PARADISE, BUT IT ISN’T THE ONLY ONE. EDEN WAS GREAT, BUT THERE’S NO REASON NOT-EDEN HAS TO BLOW CHUNKS. THAT’S UP TO YOU. JUST DON’T BE A DOUCHEBAG.”

MOST OF THE ISSUES I TAKE WITH MILTON ARE ISSUES I TAKE WITH THE CHRISTIAN STORY OF GENESIS. AT LEAST PARADISE LOST MAKES SATAN’S OFFER SEDUCTIVE AND CONVINCING. WE SEE SATAN FALL; WE SEE HIM COME TO TERMS WITH THE IDEA THAT HEAVEN IS TRULY LOST TO HIM. WE SEE HIS WRATH. THEN, WE SEE ADAM AND EVE BEING TOLD, BY AN ANGEL NO LESS, THAT HEAVEN DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A PLACE.

THAT’S FAIRLY WILD, RIGHT? THAT THIS SUPER CHRISTIAN MAN THOUGHT, “HEY, REDEMPTION IS STILL POSSIBLE AFTER YOU MAKE A MISTAKE. WRATH AND VENGEANCE KEEP YOU FROM CORRECTING YOUR COURSE TO HAPPINESS. NOT LOCATION. CHRISTIANITY ISN’T ABOUT REAL ESTATE.”

MILTON FOUGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO GET A DIVORCE. HE READ LIKE HE WAS PAID TO DO IT, WHICH HE WICKED WASN’T, BECAUSE HE DIED IMPOVERISHED. HE WENT BLIND, AND YET KEPT UP HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WRITTEN WORD, PRECEDING BRAILLE BY HALF A MILLENNIUM. HE CREATED ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED WORKS IN MODERN ENGLISH TO DATE. YES, HE WAS EGOTISTICAL WHEN HE WAS YOUNGER. BUT BAD SHIT HAPPENED TO HIM, CONTINUOUSLY, UNTIL HE DIED, AND HE WROTE COOL SHIT WITHOUT THE ABILITY TO READ IT WITHOUT HELP.

I WAS GOING TO RIP ON MILTON FOR BEING A NERD. BUT, OTHER THAN HIS DUMB HAIRCUT AND HIS SQUANDERING OF HIS FAMILY’S MONEY, I DON’T HAVE A BEEF WITH HIM. HIS WRITING IS SOLID.

RATING: PEOPLE COMPARE THIS DUDE TO SHAKESPEARE, AND THEY SHOULD. HE’S WORTH IT.

#JOHN MILTON.#ESSAYS.#CW: VOMIT.#CW: MISOGYNIST LANGUAGE.#CW: RELIGION.#POETRY.

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theajaheira · 7 years

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she’s your destiny

ao3

Buffy sighs, looking like she doesn’t want to be jealous but is jealous anyway. “Willow,” she says, “do you think someone can be your soulmate but you aren’t theirs?”

“There are a few rare cases,” says Giles. “My—” He makes a strange face, then says, “Someone I dated, back in college, they had my initials on their arm, but I didn’t have theirs.”

“Let me guess,” says Buffy very seriously. “Your real soulmate is books.”

i missed writing SO MUCH last week that i churned out nearly 10k words of buffy/willow & jenny/giles as soon as my laptop was once again functional. this is honestly one of the best things i’ve written (born of me reading a soulmate au fic, getting annoyed w the concept of soulmate aus, and writing....a soulmate au fic) and i am so so proud of it.

“It’s sparkly!” says Willow happily, rolling up her sleeve to show Ms. Calendar the outside of her upper arm. “And the initials are TM! Which, you know, I don’t know anyone with those initials or anything like that, but I’ve got the whole rest of my life to find him.”

“That’s great,” says Jenny, feeling the familiar weariness that shows up whenever she sees a kid like Willow getting all excited about her soulmate. “Only—Willow, you know that those don’t always mean anything, right?”

Willow frowns, then shakes her head. “No offense, Ms. Calendar,” she says, “but pretty much every couple ever has ended up with their true-blue soulmate. There isn’t a single case of non-soulmate-dating that hasn’t ended in total disaster, a-and I kinda did my history report on soulmates last year so I would definitely know.”

She looks nervous, but still resolute, and Jenny feels a tired sympathy; this is a kid who definitely needs to believe that there’s someone out there in the world for her. It’s that fact that makes her say, “You’re right, Willow,” even though she doesn’t really believe it; what kind of person would she be if she crushed a girl’s spirit this young?

Buffy Summers sticks her head into the classroom. She’s one of the kids who doesn’t have a soulmate mark yet, and she seems almost determinedly unbothered by it, keeping her arms bare as if daring anyone to comment on the lack of ink. “Hi, Ms. Calendar,” she says obligingly, then waves to Willow, adding, “Giles is calling an emergency—uh—library TA meeting. Or something.”

“Oh, um—” Willow gives Jenny an apologetic smile as she moves to follow Buffy. “Sorry I can’t stay and talk more,” she says reluctantly.

“No, it’s cool, sweetie,” says Jenny easily. “No pressure. Stop by after school and I’ll help you with that program you’re writing, okay?”

Willow’s face lights up. “Okay!” she chirps, and all but skips out of the classroom, throwing a furtively delighted look back over her shoulder at Jenny without seeming all that aware of herself.

Left alone, Jenny rolls up the sleeve of her sweater and looks down at her own soulmate mark. A, it reads, for Angelus.

Angel’s soulmate mark is a bright pink BAS, with lots of little flowers and hearts and stakes and things like that. When Xander saw Angel’s mark, his face curled up like spoiled milk and then he started talking really loudly about how it made sense that Angel’s soulmate mark was only one letter short of BS because Angel himself was not too far from BS and someone should just stake Angel already. Personally, Willow thinks Xander’s being an idiot.

“My soulmate mark showed up,” she tells Giles shyly, flipping her arm over and pushing up her sweater sleeve a little to show him the sparkly-happy blue-grey TM on her arm. “See? Sparkly!”

“That’s very nice, Willow,” says Giles, giving her a small, soft smile. “I’m sure they’re an absolutely remarkable person.”

Buffy sighs, looking like she doesn’t want to be jealous but is jealous anyway. “Willow,” she says, “do you think someone can be your soulmate but you aren’t theirs?”

“There are a few rare cases,” says Giles. “My—” He makes a strange face, then says, “Someone I dated, back in college, they had my initials on their arm, but I didn’t have theirs.”

“Let me guess,” says Buffy very seriously. “Your real soulmate is books.”

Giles smirks a little bitterly. “Quite right,” he says.

“What do you think TM is like?” Willow asks Xander.

Xander seems to put some serious thought into the question. Finally, he says, “I’d say really kind. I think you like people who are really kind.”

“I bet he’s a hottie,” Buffy adds helpfully. “Like, ten times hotter than Angel. Maybe even twenty, ‘cause Willow, you’re a total catch.”

Willow feels that warm, blushy feeling she always gets when Buffy compliments her. “Yeah?” she says.

“Definitely,” says Buffy emphatically.

Giles places a stack of books down in the center of the table. “Unfortunately,” he says, “there happen to be some actual supernatural events that demand our attention much more than this conversation. Willow, Xander, you’ll help me with research tonight?”

“Oh, no, I was going to talk to Ms. Calendar!” Willow half-whines. At Giles’s surprised look, she amends, “I mean, I’ll come by a little later, but—Giles, I really wanna talk to her about soulmates, she keeps on saying that the whole concept doesn’t mean anything and I want to know why she thinks that.”

“Hmm,” says Giles somewhat dismissively, and makes That Face that he does whenever anyone brings up Ms. Calendar and it turns out she’s actually said something that he agrees with. Sort of a mixture of annoyed and thoughtful.

“Giles,” says Willow, struck by a sudden thought, “do you think soulmates mean anything?”

Giles is quiet for about five seconds (possibly because, even after that whole demon-in-the-Internet thing, Giles still doesn’t seem to really like agreeing with Ms. Calendar) before he finally says, “I’m not entirely sure.”

Xander doesn’t look surprised by this. “Makes sense,” he says. “You don’t seem like the type to go all gaga over someone just because they’ve got your name on their arm or whatever.”

“Xander, shut up,” says Buffy irritably. “Giles—how come you’re not sure? There’s, like, a bunch of data that supports the fact that only soulmates have happy marriages. My parents weren’t soulmates, and look what happened to them.”

Giles hesitates, then says, “It’s simply not a concept that makes a lot of sense to me,” in the sort of way that indicates that he doesn’t really want to say much else about it.

Willow takes the hint. “I’ll definitely stop by later to help, Giles,” she says, changing the subject as smoothly as she can.

“Thank you,” says Giles, handing Buffy a book. “Buffy, you’re planning on patrolling tonight?”

Willow takes this opportunity to go back to looking at her soulmate mark. She tries to imagine TM—Thomas Matthews, maybe, or Timothy MacPherson—and decides that his hair will probably be the same color as Buffy’s, because Buffy’s hair glows under the moonlight and Willow kind of wants to have a soulmate with soft blonde hair like that. Maybe he’ll have eyes like Ms. Calendar, all big and soft and chocolaty brown—and, yeah, Willow’s thinking about girls when she thinks about her soulmate, but girls are generally prettier than boys. It’s purely for planning purposes.

Giles’s soulmate mark is W, for Watcher, and appeared when he was ten years old. It’s a little-known fact that soulmate marks aren’t always romantic, and an even lesser-known fact that oftentimes, when a person is very closely tied to supernatural forces or destiny or something like that, their soulmate mark will change. A very long time ago, Giles’s soulmate mark said something else, but it changed when he was ten and it’s stayed a stubborn W ever since.

He and Ethan had tried to cut it off when he was twenty-one and they were both high off of Eyghon. The whole thing ended with Giles in the hospital, staring down at the black W still visible through the wound. Soulmate marks go down to the bone.

TM, Willow writes into the line of code, and giggles when Ms. Calendar wiggles her eyebrows significantly. Quickly, she deletes it. “It’s not part of the code,” she explains, “I just—I like looking at it.”

“I can see why,” says Ms. Calendar, smiling slightly. “So, who do you think they’re going to be?”

“He,” says Willow decisively, feeling a strange jump in her stomach.

But Ms. Calendar shakes her head. “Not necessarily,” she says. “Not always.”

Willow blinks, feeling startled and strangely happy for a reason she doesn’t entirely understand. “Why not always?” she says, half-hopeful.

Ms. Calendar turns from her own computer and gives Willow this little smile like she knows exactly what Willow’s looking for. “Well,” she says, drawing out the word, “you could fall in love with a girl, someday. That’d be okay.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Willow reflexively.

“And that’s okay too,” says Ms. Calendar, and she’s looking at Willow in the same way Willow’s always wanted her mom to look at her. Like Willow’s—not perfect, not flawless, but enough, just as she is.

There’s a still, soft moment between them that makes Willow wish she hadn’t promised Giles that she would come in and research. She wants to stay in this classroom with Ms. Calendar and with a half-unspoken possibility of something that’s all hers.

“My soulmate,” says Willow, “they’ll love me, right?”

“That’s what soulmates are,” says Ms. Calendar, gentle and emphatic. “They’ll love the hell out of you, Willow.” Her smile twists a little, then, and her hand rubs at a spot on her upper arm that’s always covered by a sweater or a button-down or a leather jacket.

Willow wants to ask what Ms. Calendar’s soulmate mark is, but doesn’t know if she can, and doesn’t know if she wants to know. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem like it makes Ms. Calendar all that happy. “I think I have to go,” she says reluctantly. “I’m supposed to be helping Giles in the library. He’s got a lot of work that he needs done tonight.”

“Skip it,” says Ms. Calendar dismissively, and laughs affectionately at Willow’s affronted expression. “I’m joking,” she says, “I know you’ve got the best work ethic around. Get some sleep tomorrow, all right? You’ve been looking a little run-down lately.”

Willow had gotten home at one in the morning last night and her mom hadn’t even noticed when she came down to breakfast thirty minutes late. Her parents are somewhat of the mind that a capable girl like her should learn how to make her own choices, and that as long as she’s not dating around or partying hard, they’re okay with whatever she does. Which is—it’s okay, it really is, but sometimes Willow wishes that it didn’t mean so much when her computer science teacher wants her to get some sleep.

“Thanks,” says Willow quietly, getting up from her desk and crossing the room. Ms. Calendar stands up, smiling awkwardly, and opens the door for her. “Hey, um, you should get some sleep too,” Willow adds over her shoulder, because she wants to be able to make Ms. Calendar feel just as special.

Ms. Calendar’s smile softens. “Yeah, okay,” she says, and steps back, letting the door swing shut.

Willow enters the library to find Giles and Xander in the middle of yet another argument regarding Xander’s habit of researching with snacks in hand, and the fact that Giles does it all the time, so why can’t Xander, and the fact that Giles is an adult and these are all Giles’s books anyway. She clears her throat, then announces to the room, “Ms. Calendar says I should be getting more sleep.”

Giles stops mid-argument and smiles a little, as if taken by surprise. “I expect she’s right,” he says.

“Whoa,” says Xander. “Can we get that on recording? Honestly, that kind of thing should make the news. Extra, extra, Giles just said that he expects Ms. Calendar was right—”

“Good lord, Xander,” says Giles irritably, “are you attempting to make an Olympic sport of aggravating me?”

Willow sits down at the table and takes out a powdered donut (Giles is partial to the jellies, and now doesn’t seem like the time to upset him further), munching on it quietly and feeling a consistent warm-happy glow. There’s something profoundly wonderful about today, she thinks, something that extends beyond soulmates and Ms. Calendar. There’s something comforting in certainty.

Buffy’s soulmate mark appeared on the inside of her lower arm when she was twelve, and then it disappeared and moved to the palm of her hand with a new, solitary letter when she was fourteen, and then it vanished completely when she was Called and it hasn’t come back since. But the first letters, the one that she thinks matter the most, those were WDR, and she thinks a lot about that, because when she was fourteen she met Tyler and decided that by sheer force of will she would change her soulmate mark.

Turns out, if you wish hard enough and long enough, your soulmate mark will become something else. The letter on her hand wasn’t anything to do with Tyler, though; it was S for Slayer. Sort of like a premonition. Buffy never wanted to be the Slayer, though, so she guesses that the universe gave up on trying to prove that the Slayer was all that the rest of her life would ever be.

Buffy still thinks about that WDR a lot. She thinks about Angel and his hearts-and-stakes soulmate mark, the one he tried to hide from her and wasn’t all that great at doing. She thinks about Willow’s big round eyes and soft, shy smile, and she feels hopelessly lost.

It might have been a different WDR, Buffy thinks. It could have been someone else that would have won over normal non-Slayer Buffy Summers. And Slayer Buffy Summers is very clearly supposed to be falling for vampire-with-a-soul Angel—he’s got his name on her arm, for God’s sake.

But Buffy thinks about that WDR a lot, written in the same shade of purple as Willow’s favorite pen. She thinks that whoever that WDR was, Willow or not, they were who she was supposed to be with before she got Called. She wants it to come back, because then she might be brave enough to tell herself that Willow Danielle Rosenberg can be her destiny.

Not that it matters now, when Willow’s got some TM on her arm like she’s been trademarked by her soulmate. Buffy hopes that Willow will keep on wearing long sleeves.

Ms. Calendar sits down next to Giles at the staff meeting and places a paper cup of tea down in front of him. “It’s bad and American,” she says, “but it might give you a little bit of a caffeine hit. That’s probably good, right?”

“Presumably,” says Giles, giving her a small smile. “Thank you.”

Ms. Calendar looks surprised, then smiles back. “Sure,” she says, and takes a sip of her own coffee.

Giles realizes very abruptly that this is the first time he’s sat next to someone during a staff meeting, which immediately devolves into him trying to find some topic of small talk to bring up to Ms. Calendar, who could, quite possibly, become some kind of an actual adult friend, which isn’t something he’s had in a very long time—

“Your face kinda looks like it’s going through five different stages of panic,” comments Ms. Calendar, looking mildly interested.

“Thank you,” says Giles awkwardly.

Ms. Calendar very clearly bites back a laugh. “Is this how you’re going to act when I’m nice to you?” she says. “Because honestly, I really like fighting with you, so if I’m going to have to spur you into action by telling you how computers are always going to trump books—”

“It’s rather, um, discomfiting to feel—positively—towards you,” Giles finally manages. “Especially after a good few months of outright animosity. It’s quite the tonal shift.”

Ms. Calendar laughs out loud. “Oh my god,” she says, “I think we’re actually in agreement. Do you know how weird it is to see you in the hall and not exchange the usual heatedly angry stares? Remember that one time you walked into a locker door because you were glaring at me too hard and didn’t notice that senior opening her locker in a hurry?”

Giles finds himself smiling, genuinely; it’s an odd feeling. “I think I sprained my dignity quite badly that day,” he says, “though it wasn’t quite as entertaining as you over-pouring your coffee while you were shouting at me across the faculty room a few weeks ago.”

“I burned my hand, you insensitive jerk,” says Ms. Calendar, who’s now outright grinning. “And anyway—” She stops, then stares, eyes wide. Giles follows her gaze to his right wrist, where his sleeve has slipped ever so slightly to reveal the W he only sort of bothers trying to hide.

“Oh,” he says uncomfortably. He doesn’t like this sort of conversation. Not a lot of people have soulmate marks that are only one letter, and most people are incredibly curious as to why Giles’s soulmate is only named W. Giles would come up with a lie, but he doesn’t want to shatter the tentative peace between him and Ms. Calendar, and—

“What was it before it was W?” asks Ms. Calendar softly.

Giles looks up, startled. “I’m sorry?”

Ms. Calendar blushes, looking somewhat uncomfortable in her compassion. “Your soulmate,” she says. “Their name isn’t just one letter. That kind of thing is a responsibility.” Quietly, she rolls up her sleeve, flipping her left wrist out to face him. Written in old-fashioned cursive is a blood-red A.

“Oh,” says Giles again, this time in a very different tone of voice. “So—”

“It’s a secret,” says Ms. Calendar, with the same kind of bitterness that Giles feels whenever he looks at his inky W. “And I’m guessing yours is too?”

“Yes,” says Giles, and his hand moves, almost of its own volition, to trace the A on Ms. Calendar’s wrist. Her eyelashes flutter at his touch, and she doesn’t break his gaze, just looks at him with soft, steady, dark eyes.

In her notebook, Buffy doodles the WDR that had once been on her arm, because it was only there for a year but she still remembers its soft purple curlicues. It’s in Willow’s handwriting, she realizes, right down to the purple pen and the way the W’s points are perfect forty-five degree angles. She can’t replicate it perfectly, though, and she wishes she’d thought to take a picture of it or something instead of thinking that it’d always stay there.

Maybe the reason that Willow doesn’t have Buffy’s initials on her arm is because Buffy had fucked everything up by becoming a Vampire Slayer. Maybe love and destiny don’t mix.

“Being a Vampire Slayer sucks,” Buffy says to Willow as they walk to class. “Pun absolutely intended.”

Willow giggles. She’s wearing a blue-grey button-down the same color as her soulmate mark with sleeves that end at her elbow, and she keeps on running her fingers along the soft sparkly curve of the T. Five girls have congratulated her in the last hour alone, including a very sarcastic Cordelia, but Willow had just grinned sunshine-bright and kept walking. “You’ve got Angel, though,” she says. “That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?”

“I mean—” Buffy exhales. “It feels like he’s made up his mind about the whole soulmate thing before I ever got the chance to,” she says. “He told me he had that mark way back when he was human, and that was before I was even born.”

“Oh, that’s so romantic!” Willow gasps. “Gosh, I wish I had a soulmate like that.” She giggles again. “I guess I’ll get to find out someday now, huh?”

Buffy hates looking at Willow, now, because Willow’s this soft-blooming sunflower all of a sudden and Buffy wants to be the cause instead of the witness. “Yeah,” she says. Then, “You ever think about how cool it would be without all this soulmate junk cluttering up everyone’s lives? You could just date anyone, do anything—”

Willow’s smile fades into something sympathetic and a little sad. She slips her hand into Buffy’s, interlacing their fingers in that shy-comforting way that makes Buffy feel all warm and tingly. “I mean,” she says, “I feel a little better, knowing that there’s someone for me out there, but it’s also kinda scary to know that you’ve only ever got one shot at love.”

“Destiny’s a bitch,” says Buffy decisively.

Willow nods. “It really, really is,” she says knowingly, but Buffy sees her other hand resting lovingly on her soulmate mark. “Hey, you feel like going Bronzing tonight?”

“Angel might be there,” says Buffy somewhat reluctantly. She likes Angel, she does, but the fact of the matter is that she likes Willow one hell of a lot more than some cryptic vampire-with-a-soul who never really gives her a straight answer. “And we still can’t be together—”

“Nothing stops true love,” says Willow earnestly, squeezing Buffy’s hand before she lets go. “Oh—I have math and you have English, I just remembered,” she says sadly. “You know, next semester, we’re going to have to coordinate our schedules for real.”

“Yeah, totally,” says Buffy, managing a smile. “English is so boring without you to copy off of.”

“Without me to help you,” Willow corrects reprovingly, but she’s grinning too as she enters the math classroom. Buffy hesitates, thinking, then heads not towards the English classroom, but back towards the library.

Giles is reading a book on programming. Buffy, startled, debates whether or not to make a teasing comment about Ms. Calendar (the hot gossip of the day is that some freshman kid saw them holding hands), but decides instead to say, “Giles, what’s your soulmate mark?”

Giles looks up, surprised. “Is that the hot topic of the day?” he says. “Jenny and I were just—” He turns a very interesting shade of pink and then says in a strangled voice, “That is. Ms. Calendar.”

“Oh my god, is Ms. Calendar your soulmate?” Buffy demands, not sure whether to be amused or horrified. “You two would create such horribly conflicted babies.”

Giles sort of looks like he wants to hide his face back in the programming book. “No,” he says. “We, ah, have a bit more in common than I realized, that’s all. Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

Buffy exhales, because she’s not sure if she wants to tell Giles this, but he’s maybe the only person who really gets what it’s like to be roped into destiny. “When I was twelve,” she says, “I-I got a soulmate mark on my arm. Like, a bona fide mark on my arm in a really nice color. But then I got a mark with just one letter, and then when I got called as a Vampire Slayer, that mark disappeared, and now I don’t have any mark at all, and I was wondering—”

Giles is quiet for a second. Then he says, “For some people, soulmate marks are a prediction of the future. For others, they’re a confirmation of destiny. I expect that both of your marks fell into that first category.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Buffy tries to come off as quippy-snarky, but she thinks she just sounds inquisitive and a little sad.

“Well,” says Giles, and rolls up his sleeve a bit, showing her the black W that looks more like a stamp than a mark, “I know that I must give myself first and foremost to my responsibilities as a Watcher. Whenever you have seen your mark, do you know and accept with certainty that that is who you will choose to give yourself to?”

Buffy thinks about the angry-twisty feeling she’d gotten when the S mark had appeared and she’d figured out what it had meant. She thinks about how determinedly she’d tried to get rid of the WDR for the sake of some boy she barely remembers, and how there still isn’t a mark on her arm for Angel. “Oh,” she says in a small voice.

Giles smiles, almost proud. “I don’t think there’s ever been a Slayer without a mark,” he says. “It isn’t something to be upset about, Buffy.”

Buffy feels, suddenly, near tears. “Not for you,” she says, “you’ve got a mark,” and storms out of the library with her arms crossed against her chest so she won’t start really crying. It’s her fault that she doesn’t have Willow’s name on her arm, her fault that she doesn’t even have a Slayer mark to define her, her fault, her fault, her fault.

Buffy bumps into Cordelia.

“Oh,” says Cordelia somewhat dismissively, then, “Oh,” a little softer, when she sees that Buffy’s crying. They haven’t actually talked since the Invisible-Girl thing, but Buffy guesses that that still holds some weight, because suddenly Cordelia’s grabbed her arm and is steering them both into a broom closet, shutting the door behind them.

Cordelia pushes on Buffy’s shoulders till Buffy’s sitting down on an overturned bucket. “If anyone asks,” she says, “we were totally making out in here,” and fishes in her purse for a handkerchief, handing it to Buffy.

Buffy sniffles, scrubbing at her face. “I want to be alone,” she says.

“You really don’t,” says Cordelia. “And you can talk to me about it, because you know I’m probably going to forget about it as soon as we’re out of this broom closet.” Her voice is almost purposefully flat, but when Buffy looks up, she sees half-hidden concern in Cordelia’s expression.

“I don’t know who my soulmate is,” says Buffy. “I mean—I did, but the mark went away. Twice.”

Cordelia looks at Buffy, and then she smiles a little. “See this?” she says, pointing at the dramatically swirly soulmate mark on her shoulder. “There’s absolutely no way to read something like this. It showed up when I was five weeks old, and my parents paraded me around telling everyone about how amazing and artistic my soulmate probably was. Fact is, I’m probably never going to meet the right person, and they’re probably never going to meet me.”

“Yeah?” says Buffy.

“Yeah,” says Cordelia.

They smile at each other a little sadly. Then Cordelia says, “Do you wanna actually make out?”

“Yeah,” says Buffy.

Jenny stops by the library on her way out of school and finds Rupert sitting on the library table, reading her programming book and muttering to himself as he tries to eat an apple at the same time. She finds herself smiling, all of a sudden, and when the door shuts behind her, Rupert looks up and smiles too. “This is complete gibberish,” he tells her ruefully. “Haven’t learned a thing.”

“I’ll teach you,” says Jenny, crossing the room. Their hands brush as she takes the book from him and their shoulders touch when she jumps up to sit next to him on the table. “Oh, wow, have you only made it five pages in?”

“It’s not really—clicking,” says Rupert. Then, earnestly, “I am trying.”

He really is. “You know what?” Jenny flips through the book before decisively shutting it. “This kind of thing should be done on an actual computer. You want to come over to my place, see how it’s done?” Rupert blinks, blushes, and Jenny adds, “Not for sex, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m very much about propriety.”

Rupert gives her this big smile when she uses the word propriety. Then he says, “I think, someday, I’d rather like to tell you what the W stands for.”

“If it ever comes to that,” says Jenny, “I think I’ll tell you about my A.” She means it, too; maybe she’s never going to have a real soulmate, but when is she ever going to meet another person who doesn’t have one either? “You still down to go to my place?”

“I think so,” says Rupert. Warily, he adds, “Am I going to have to listen to techno-music?”

“Oooh, I actually really like that idea,” says Jenny enthusiastically, grabbing Rupert’s hand and pulling him off the table with her. He stumbles, laughing—

“Giles we have an emergency—oh my god are you holding hands with Ms. Calendar,” Buffy demands breathlessly, more of an outburst than a question.

Rupert winces, looking sheepishly over at Jenny. He’s holding himself differently now that Buffy’s in the room, Jenny realizes; more reserved, quieter, less accessible to her. “Duty calls,” he says.

“Duty,” Jenny echoes significantly.

“Of a sort.” Rupert hesitates, then reaches forward, tracing the A on Jenny’s wrist again in what, if done by someone else, could be considered an intimate sort of thing.

Jenny opens her mouth, not sure what she wants to say, but Rupert’s already hurrying to follow Buffy out of the library. She watches him go, listening to Buffy’s half-laughing voice as the door swings shut. “So am I right about you and Ms. Calendar, Giles?” Buffy’s saying. “Are you two reeeally soulmates?”

Jenny lets her thumb rest against the blood-red A on her wrist, imagines Rupert’s mouth there instead.

The thing in the closet, it was something very quietly real, and Buffy thinks that that scared Cordelia. It scared her a little too, to be honest, the way it felt to kiss Cordelia, not hard and angry and biting like Buffy had imagined (hey, she’s sixteen, she can’t help her hormones) but soft and quiet, a mutual escape to somewhere safer than wherever they both were right now. Buffy would kiss Cordelia again if Cordelia wanted, she thinks, but she doesn’t want to get herself hurt, so she keeps her head down when they cross paths in the hallway.

It takes her a very long time to consider that maybe Cordelia was doing the exact same thing.

Willow’s off studying with Xander, today, and Giles is probably off pretending that he doesn’t have some totally obvious Watcher-crush on Ms. Calendar, so Buffy goes out on a sunset patrol, walking meditatively between the tombstones with Slayer grace. Brooding suits her, she thinks, she makes it look all dramatic-teenage-Slayer and she definitely pulls it off better than Angel, which makes her laugh a little as she walks.

“You look sad,” says Angel from next to her.

Buffy jumps, then huffs indignantly. “You can’t sneak up on people in a graveyard!” she objects. “That’s total bad form. I could’ve turned around and—and staked you, and that would have been awful to explain to Willow and Giles.”

“Yeah, I think Xander would have enjoyed hearing that news,” says Angel, and gives her a small half-smile.

Buffy smiles back. It’s not his fault that he was apparently always destined for her, even if she wasn’t all that destined for him. “Hey,” she says. “What do you think soulmate marks really mean?”

Angel looks surprised. “They’re just—they’re who you’re destined for,” he says, as if that’s where it begins and ends.

Buffy thinks about Willow’s TM and Cordelia’s indecipherable artistic mark and Giles’s painfully black W and something twists in her chest. “I don’t like that,” she says. “It makes things needlessly confusing.”

“Isn’t it supposed to make things easier?” Angel sounds genuinely confused.

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” says Buffy somewhat derisively, then sighs. “I’m sorry,” she says, reaching out to quietly trace her initials on the back of his hand. “I really am.”

“Yeah,” says Angel quietly. “Me too.” He smiles a little. “We’d have been something pretty incredible, huh?”

“I think so,” says Buffy, smiling a little. “I bet I’d have made the first move.”

Angel grins, looking almost boyish. “Really?”

Truth is, Buffy doesn’t know what the future would have or wouldn’t have held for her and Angel. It’s sort of like trying to guess what would have happened if Willow’s soulmate mark had been her, or if her first soulmate mark had been the one that really stuck, and that realization makes her feel honestly better. But she doesn’t think Angel’s quite there yet, so she says, “Yeah,” because she thinks that that’s the kind of thing that he needs to hear.

Angel’s actually smiling now. It’s kind of weird, but still sweet. “Friends,” he says, and sticks out his hand. Buffy shakes it, giggling at the way his smile gets bigger like some kind of happy puppy.

They end up patrolling together, because Angel says he wants to do something more constructive than roaming around Sunnydale brooding, and Buffy says that she’s been feeling a little broody herself lately so maybe they’ll be good influences on each other, and it’s honestly the most fun Buffy’s had in a while. She doesn’t get herself caught up in his eyes or what soulmates mean or what it would mean for her to be his soulmate (okay, maybe she does a little, but she can’t help her hormones), and she stands on tiptoe to give him a hug at the end of the night.

“You’re looking chipper,” says her mom when Buffy finally gets home, sounding pleased by this fact.

“Thanks,” says Buffy, and goes upstairs. Neatly, in purple pen, she writes Willow on her arm. Screw ambiguity.

Giles has inadvertently learned how to use a computer, and Jenny (no longer Ms. Calendar, but decisively Jenny) is trying to set up one in his office while he reads from the Codex that Angel had brought him. “You know,” he says, “this computer thing is very much on a temporary basis.”

“Sure,” says Jenny, and smirks. “I still win.” She shrugs off her jacket, as though she’s not even thinking about it, and Giles’s eyes are drawn to her bare shoulders as she runs a hand through her hair. “Whew! Let no one tell you that setting up a computer isn’t a damn workout,” she laughs.

“You know,” says Giles, soft and thoughtful, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing anything that isn’t long-sleeved.”

Jenny’s bright smile seems to dim a bit. Self-consciously, her hand rests on her mark, and she says, “I don’t like people asking questions about things I’m not ready to tell them.”

Something falls into place in Giles’s heart, and he smiles shyly, reaching out to remove Jenny’s hand from her mark. “Well,” he begins.

The computer on his desk begins to shake. It takes Giles a moment to realize that the computer isn’t the problem, but the floor, which is rumbling ominously, and his cup of tea slides off his desk. On impulse, he grabs Jenny in his arms, pulling her protectively into him and then taking a stumbling step out of his office.

Jenny yelps as the bookcases on the opposite side of the library topple against each other, hiding her face in Giles’s chest. Giles stays still, holding her tight until the rumbling dies down and then some. “You’re all right,” he says, less a question than a reassurance to them both.

Jenny raises her head, hair disheveled. “Yeah,” she says. “And you?”

“Yes, of course,” says Giles reflexively.

“Rupert,” says Jenny reprovingly.

“What?”

“You do this—this thing,” Jenny makes a face, “you always say you’re all right even when you look like someone dropped an anvil on your head. It’s super annoying.”

Everything Jenny says feels a reminder of the fact that Giles is beginning to care very deeply for her. “I’m a bit shaken,” he says honestly. “But truly, Jenny, I’m fine. Now, about that prophecy I was translating—”

“Your library looks like it was hit by a tornado,” says Jenny indignantly, “there is no way you’re getting more work done tonight.”

“Actually, dear, it was an earthquake,” Giles corrects. Jenny gives him an annoyed look, and he sighs. “Look,” he says, “this prophecy truly is relevant and important. I’ll finish it up, and—we can—go out.” His voice softens at the end; he likes the thought of going out with Jenny. In any context, really.

Jenny gives him a reluctant smile. “Fine,” she says. “I’m gonna see if my computer got trashed.”

“My computer,” says Giles immediately.

“You said it was temporary,” says Jenny, looking amused.

“Yes, well,” Giles rests his hand over Jenny’s, which is still pressed against his chest, “sometimes I’m wrong.”

Jenny turns a soft pink and smiles in a way that makes Giles feel like the word holds endless possibility, prophecies and soulmate marks and destiny be damned. Reluctantly, she steps away from him. “I’ll get to work on that computer,” she says.

Giles gives her a grateful smile, inclining his head. “Thank you,” he says, and follows Jenny back into his office, finding the Codex facedown on the floor and paging through it to find his place again. He’s only half-translating, really, because he’s thinking about where he and Jenny might go for dinner, or if he should take her back to his place, because she practically lives off frozen dinners and he’d rather like to cook her something actually nutritious, and—

and—

“Rupert?” Jenny’s voice seems like it’s coming from very far away.

Blindly, Giles reaches out in her direction, grabbing at her hand and holding it tight. “Buffy’s going to die,” he says.

Buffy’s wearing a tank top that’s Willow’s favorite shade of purple, and it matches the badly-smeared, indecipherable mess of ink that mars her arm this morning. “It’s my soulmate mark,” she tells Xander with a grin that holds a fire Willow hasn’t seen on her in a very long time.

“Yeah?” says Xander doubtfully.

“Yes,” says Buffy, and steps past Xander, eyes blazing-bright. She’s the most beautiful thing that Willow has ever seen.

Jenny hasn’t been able to get a single solitary word out of Rupert since the earthquake. He hasn’t explained why Buffy’s going to die, or why he of all people would be so affected by some sophomore’s death, or why the hell he would have gotten that from some ancient prophecy book. He’s just been searching semi-desperately through books that might prove his prophecy wrong, and Jenny’s been helping, because—because Rupert’s her guy. That’s all it comes down to, really, something that goes beyond marks and duties.

They’ve both been up all night, and Jenny feels like she’s about to pass out, so she calls in sick from the library phone and sits down in Rupert’s office chair. His office is a mess from the quake, but the computer is surprisingly still usable. She considers trying to set it up, then decides against it when she gets a head rush.

There’s a knock on the door.

“It’s your office,” Jenny reminds him, almost amused, “you can just come in.”

Rupert steps gingerly around a pile of books on the floor and places a mug of coffee down in front of a surprised Jenny. “From the staff room,” he says. “Black, like you prefer it.”

Jenny looks at him and feels unusually sentimental, and maybe it’s the sleep deprivation that makes her ask, “Do you ever wonder about what it would have been like if we were soulmates?”

Rupert blinks, looking genuinely surprised. “We are,” he says. Jenny freezes with the mug at her lips, staring up at him, and he elaborates, “I-I don’t, I mean, I’m sure there are others with a duty or a responsibility or something of the sort, but,” he smiles tiredly, “the—the fact that you’re still here, that you stayed all night, that—means something to me.”

Jenny nods, feeling a dizzy understanding. “You mean something to me,” she says. “I don’t know what yet, but—” She stops, considers, looks at the A on her arm. Doesn’t she owe her sort-of soulmate something of an explanation, even if it frightens him or drives him away?

“You don’t owe me anything, Jenny,” says Rupert softly, even though she hadn’t said a word. “Not a thing.”

Jenny’s eyes snap up to meet his and she all but slams the mug down on the table as she stands up, pressing her fingers to her mouth; that is the first—the only time she has heard someone say that to her in her life and genuinely believed it, and the way he’s looking at her right now, the quiet understanding—she crosses the room in two steps and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him, remembering to breathe only when he’s holding her just as tightly. For the first time since that damn A appeared on her arm, she doesn’t feel alone.

They stay like that for a few minutes, Jenny’s chin resting on Rupert’s shoulder, and then Rupert says, “W stands for Watcher.”

“A stands for Angelus,” says Jenny.

Rupert pulls back very fast to look at her. “Angelus?” he echoes, and Jenny realizes that there’s a very good chance that Rupert, with his books and his prophecies, might know at least a thing or two about Angelus.

“Oh, it’s not—” Jenny winces. “God, if Angelus were my soulmate, that’d be truly horrible. Um, it’s sort of a,” she looks down at the blood-red A, “blood thing. I mean, a family thing.”

“Oh,” says Rupert, looking a little embarrassed. “Good,” and kind of looks like he wants to be hugging her again but doesn’t know how. The slightly teasing part of Jenny wants to stay standing alone, make him squirm a little, but after what she’s told him she feels like she needs the physicality of holding him, so she steps back into his arms.

“He, uh, killed—someone, a favorite daughter, a very long time ago,” says Jenny carefully. “My family gave him a soul as punishment, and—and I was sent here to watch him and make sure that he’s still suffering. They were going to send a cousin, but—” She flips over her wrist and holds it out to Rupert. “I got this, and that apparently meant it was my responsibility to come here.”

Rupert still looks somewhat surprised. “Do you—believe that he still deserves to suffer?” he asks carefully.

“I believe…” Jenny trails off. “I believe that I’m tired,” she says, “and I want to go home, and I don’t really have a home at this point, and I don’t want my life to revolve around some ensouled vampire to the point where I forget that I can be a person too.”

Rupert takes Jenny’s hand in his, tracing the mark again. Then he says, “Buffy Summers is the Vampire Slayer.”

This is absolutely the last thing that Jenny was expecting him to say, right up there with I’m Batman and I’m actually not British, and she has to hold back a surprised laugh. “Seriously?”

Rupert looks back up at her. “Seriously,” he says. “She’s the one girl in all the world—”

“—the Chosen One, yeah, I know, I’ve read up on Vampire Slayers,” says Jenny, waving a hand. “They pop up in history books from time to time—what?” Rupert’s looking at her with big, soft eyes.

“Nothing, I just,” Rupert’s blushing a little, “I like you,” he says.

Jenny smiles a little bit. “Yeah, I like you too,” she says, and adjusts her arms around his neck. “So. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, huh?”

“Yes,” says Rupert, his smile fading a little. “And—every Slayer needs someone to train and prepare her for her battles against evil. A, a Watcher.”

“Oh,” says Jenny, “okay, so—so your soulmate mark is—” She looks up at him, “That is really, profoundly sad,” she says. “I mean, look, I know that you have an incredibly important job, and that you probably got that soulmate mark at a weirdly young age, judging by how calm you seem about all that, but I think I’d go crazy if I had a mark that meant I’d have to watch a girl like Buffy die.”

Rupert nods, a jerky, almost painful-looking motion. “I’m halfway there, to be honest,” he says.

Jenny looks at him, then takes a step backward and shuts the office door, locking it behind her. She draws the blinds, carefully stepping around books and debris and Rupert’s still-shattered cup of tea on the floor, lifts the computer up to place it on the floor as well, jumps up to the now-empty space on the desk, and says, “Kiss me.”

Rupert does.

Willow keeps on thinking about Buffy in class that day, in a half-afraid, half-ashamed way that has her looking down at her soulmate mark every so often. She fingers the sparkly point of the M, wishing it could give her the same amount of comfort that it had seemed to so long ago.

There’s a boy out there who loves me, she thinks, but how many boys write in sparkles? The only time Willow’s ever felt sparkly and happy is around Buffy, but Buffy’s seemed distant and sad ever since Willow’s soulmate mark showed up.

Wait.

Ever since Willow’s soulmate mark showed up?

Willow’s already telling herself that she’s being ridiculous before she even really knows what she’s thinking, and has to fumble through five to seven layers of panic before remembering the curve of a W on Buffy’s ink-smudged arm. And, and that would explain Buffy being so dismal about Angel, and Willow thought she knew why Buffy wanted to know about soulmates but maybe she was wrong, maybe Buffy thinks that it should be Willow’s initials on her arm and not Angel’s—

Willow hurtles out of class five minutes before she’s supposed to, sprinting through halls and down stairs and nearly bowling over an indignant Harmony Kendall. It takes her what feels like an eternity to finally reach Buffy, who’s cheerfully putting things away in her locker. “Will!” she says, bright and happy. “What—”

“I’m in love with you,” says Willow, only it comes out as more of a wheeze and oh my god what did she just say.

Buffy’s face changes. But it’s not surprise or disgust or anything like that, just a wide-eyed hope. “What?”

“What?” Willow has somehow simultaneously figured absolutely everything out and gotten completely lost. “Well—” She fumbles for words. She hadn’t actually thought past get to Buffy, and was kind of hoping that the universe would help her out a little bit here. “I’m in love with you,” she says again, awkwardly, earnestly; it’s the only thing that feels like a concrete fact, and Willow’s all about the facts. “And—I think you’re in love with me—right?”

It’s sort of the feeling she gets right before she gets her test back in English or science or math, where she knows she’s done the reading and she knows the test was a breeze but there’s still that twisty fear that there’s a variable she didn’t account for. It’s that feeling, but magnified, because suddenly there’s something at risk that’s more than grades or college or anything like that; it’s been a long time since Willow’s put anything at risk, let alone her heart.

Buffy’s lips are parted like she’s afraid that if she moves she’ll get hurt somehow. Willow realizes with a not-quite-shock that she knows Buffy, she knows all the little faces Buffy makes and all the reasons why, and suddenly she’s letting herself feel things that she didn’t even know she could feel, she’s breathless, she’s flying—

“Right,” says Buffy. “Exactly right.” She still isn’t moving.

Every time Willow flips a test over, it’s never below an A minus. There’s something intoxicating about being right so often about—not everything, not always, but about the most important things. The ones that genuinely matter. “So we’re in love,” she reaffirms.

“You’ve got a soulmate mark, though,” says Buffy.

“Not a factor,” says Willow, because yeah, maybe she and TM might end up being happy someday, and maybe they won’t. “All that matters is that we’re in love.”

“My parents—”

“Are your parents,” Willow finishes. “We’re us. It’s like—okay, you know how usually puzzle pieces from different puzzles don’t fit together, but sometimes you get ones that do? We’re like that.” Her words are running together, now, and she wishes her soulmate wasn’t stamped on her arm like a reminder that Buffy isn’t the one the universe thinks she should have, but maybe, maybe, if she’s lucky— “I am never,” she says, “going to find another Buffy Anne Summers. Not even if I look in the back of the soulmate store—”

“The soulmate store,” Buffy echoes, half-laughing, sounding absolutely giddy, and grabs Willow’s hands in hers, kissing her without either of them even really thinking about it.

Willow knows, okay, she knows she should be worried about kissing another girl in public, she knows she should be thinking about whether or not this might get back to her parents or what Xander’s going to say when he finds out that she stole Buffy from him (only Xander never had Buffy, Xander had this idealized version of Buffy that he kept clinging to and talking about like she was already his, and really Willow’s the one who actually fell in love), but this is the first time that she’s kissed someone—at all, really. Maybe there were times in middle school a long time ago, or a game of Spin the Bottle freshman year, but all of that falls away now that she and Buffy are this close.

This is how soulmates kiss, Willow thinks. This is what love feels like. Nothing feels new about kissing Buffy, nothing’s changed; she’s been in love with Buffy all along.

Neither of them pull back—neither of them can—but the bell rings, and they both reluctantly break the kiss.

“Um—”

“So—”

They both laugh, shy and delighted. Then Willow says, “So what about Angel?”

“Oh, Angel,” says Buffy, and they laugh again, falling into step in the hallway with Willow’s hand tucked into Buffy’s arm. Willow feels a shy kind of happy, protected by Buffy’s smile. “Totally old news. We’re going to be awesome friends, though.”

“Yeah?” says Willow. “You should invite him over this summer. And Xander. We could all have one big sleepover party.”

“Ooh, a Scooby sleepover!” Buffy’s giggling. “I bet Giles could make popcorn.”

“No, Giles is probably busy planning his own sleepover,” says Willow significantly. “Probably with Ms. Calendar.”

“Ugh,” says Buffy. “I’m in my happy place right now, Will, do not try and talk to me about anyone else’s love life but mine.”

“Hey, nothing stops true love,” says Willow, and she and Buffy have to stop walking just to smile at each other.

Jenny says Giles’s name, very softly, and kisses his shoulder. Honestly, his office isn’t the most uncomfortable place for a romantic tryst, and Jenny makes everything feel so much better anyway, but Giles still has to pull back and figure out how to defy prophecy, so he mumbles, “We have some work to do.”

“We always have work to do,” says Jenny gently. “Just—give yourself a minute, Rupert,” and raises her head, looking up at him with bright, soft eyes.

Giles cannot for the life of him remember what it was like not to be this close to Jenny. “We’re going down to face the Master,” he says.

Jenny nods.

“We’re not telling the children.”

“You could have translated that prophecy wrong, you know,” Jenny suggests.

“I could have—” Giles huffs, irritated, and Jenny laughs as he kisses her. “I’ll have you know,” he manages between kisses, “that I am quite good at my job.”

“Mmm, I’m sure you are,” Jenny agrees, kissing him back.

Giles thinks of Jenny’s family and his responsibility, Jenny’s left wrist and his right, and feels like he’s found the half to his whole. And lord, he is stupidly romantic, ridiculously sentimental, nothing like the brave, beautiful woman in his arms, but something about the concept of Jenny by his side makes him feel brave enough to do anything. Pulling back, Giles says, “We’re going to face down the Master,” and means it this time.

Jenny breathes out. “Wow,” she says. “Okay. Sounds like a plan. What—I mean, how—”

“He’s underground,” says Giles, “somewhere, and, and I’m not letting Buffy die just because some book somewhere says she’s destined to.” He grins a little at her. “Books are wrong, sometimes.”

Jenny smiles back. “Never thought I’d say this,” she says, “but you are exactly right.”

“Ha ha.” Giles helps Jenny off the desk, then pulls her in for a last quick kiss. She hums, winding her arms around his neck with the clear intention of keeping them both there, but Giles pulls back; there’ll be all the time in the world once they’ve taken down the Master. “There are weapons in the book cage,” he adds.

Jenny makes a face. “Um, actually?” she says. “I think we should go home, get some sleep, and do this tonight, because I am personally ready to pass out and I definitely don’t feel up to taking down an incredibly old, incredibly powerful vampire guy.”

This seems like a good idea in theory, but Giles wants everything done and every chance of Buffy’s death eradicated from the face of the earth. On the other hand, though, Jenny does have a point, and despite his determination he is feeling a bit out of it. “All right,” he says. “Shall I finally see your apartment, then?”

Jenny stares at him, then laughs. “Yeah!” she says. “That sounds—yes!” She hesitates, then stands on tiptoe, hugging him a little awkwardly. “Let’s go,” she says. “We’ll get some sleep, defy prophecy, pull all that stuff off—it’ll be a great first date.”

Giles is genuinely smiling as they leave the library. Jenny is impossible, Jenny defies prophecies, and if Jenny believes it’s so, then he thinks he’ll take his chances.

Cordelia’s soulmate mark looks more like some weird work of art than anything, and it frustrates her beyond the telling of it. She wants someone’s initials, not something that makes her feel lost and small and forgotten in the swirly artistry on her upper arm. She wants something simple, even though she likes to pretend she wants something dramatic.

She’s mulling over this at the Bronze, sipping an orange soda through a straw and watching Willow and Buffy dance, when the guy next to her says, “That’s my tattoo.”

Cordelia looks up, startled. “What?”

The guy smiles at her, a strange expression on his face. “My, uh, on my back,” he says awkwardly, but he’s still got a sweet smile. “See?” He points to a letter hidden right at the bottom of the tattoo. “A. For Angel.”

“These things don’t always mean anything, you know,” says Cordelia.

“Yeah, well,” the guy gives her this dorky-shy grin that looks out of place on someone that attractive, “I think that that’s okay.”

Cordelia smiles too, scooting over a little so that the guy can sit next to her, and asks him, “Do you like orange soda?”

So Giles and Ms. Calendar show up the next morning with the Master’s bones. Not only that, but they definitely look like they had sex, and when Xander asks significantly if they had a fun after-party, Giles tells Xander to be quiet and Ms. Calendar gets unusually giggly. Buffy’s honestly kind of surprised. She wasn’t expecting Giles and Ms. Calendar to ever be able to get along, let alone bring down the Master without her. Some part of her feels weirdly ashamed of herself for not being able to do that kind of thing herself.

“You don’t exactly look as happy as we were hoping,” says Ms. Calendar, sitting down next to her on the library counter. Giles has gone back to telling Xander to not put his feet on the table, and Buffy’s girlfriend (!!!!!!!) is filing books and looking happier than she has all year. “Everything okay?”

Buffy exhales. “I wish I could have been there to kill him myself, is all,” she said.

Ms. Calendar hesitates, eyes flitting over to Giles. Then she says, “Buffy, uh, the reason we did it ourselves was because Rupert—” She stops, then smiles a little. “He worries,” she says finally.

Buffy gets the sense that that’s not the whole reason that Giles and Ms. Calendar killed the Master without telling any of them, but she also gets the sense that it didn’t come out of a place of doubt, which she thinks is enough for her. “And he can’t come back?” she says.

“We’re planning on making the bones into bone powder and burying everything in consecrated ground,” calls Giles from the other side of the library, pushing Xander’s feet off the table. “It’s not definite, but it should hopefully be enough.”

“Hmm,” says Ms. Calendar softly, and Buffy notices, for the first time, that Ms. Calendar’s sleeves aren’t covering her soulmate mark. There’s a scrawly red A on her wrist that she’s stroking absently with her thumb, smiling a little. “That’s actually pretty comforting to me.”

“Me too,” says Buffy. Then, “Am I allowed to ask about the mark? You and Giles are the only two people with marks like that.”

“Well,” begins Ms. Calendar.

“We’re soulmates,” says Giles, and gives Ms. Calendar this dorky grin that she actually returns.

Buffy blinks, debates further questioning, and realizes that maybe soulmate marks don’t have to mean anything at all. The way Giles and Ms. Calendar look at each other, the way Buffy felt about Willow long before she knew Willow’s middle name—that kind of thing doesn’t change just because Willow and TM are destined for each other or Giles is supposed to be a Watcher first and foremost.

Sure, maybe they’re all doomed, but maybe they’re not. Buffy doesn’t want to give up on happiness just because some mark on the wrist of the girl she loves says she should. Hopping down from the library counter, she crosses the library to kiss Willow. “Hey,” she says. “I love you, soulmate.”

“I love you too, soulmate,” says Willow, and gives Buffy that beautiful Willow smile.

#fic #calendiles #buffy x willow #jenny calendar #rupert giles #buffy summers #willow rosenberg #cordelia & angel also make cameos #i struggled w/ titling it for like 2 hrs i'm just going to leave it alone now #anyway!!! i love this fic So Much

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flamingophan · 7 years

Text

PINOF 9

i have so many feels right now and i should definitely be studying and not writing this text but i haven’t seen anyone do a longass post yet so.. here we go!

drawing the whiskers

look, this made me think. the last time they drew whiskers on each others faces must have been tatinof-related, right? so about a year ago? after making them almost daily for months? imagine all the memories it must bring back for them.. i’m emotional.

phil is concentrating so hard when drawing on dan that he puts so much pressure on (knowing dan, he probably enjoys it somehow). dan’s lines on the other hand are much thinner, he is so delicate and gentle with phil and just stab me, it would hurt less.

“watch me dad”

.. excuse me? did dan just unironially call phil dad? wow. so heterosexual. such good friends. i too call my best friends kinky names.

arm wrestling

i love that phil is trying so hard while dan is just sat there, with the look of loveTM on his face. and then he just finishes phil off and phil’s lying there and i wonder if they’ve ever done that when they can’t decide which way to.. you know..

stranger things

that scene is hilarious, i want more reenactment! the way phil holds his nose and does the telepathic hand thing and dan is just out of control.. top acting, good sirs!

“how would you celebrate your birthday?”

asks dan, while opening his legs suggestively. was that for us? so we’d get it? i mean what are you doing there daniel?

crab walk up the stairs

dan is so very concerned for phil’s safety and phil is acting as if he was to cross an icefall. it’s the freakin crab walk guys, not the olympics! they are old. very old and inflexible. i’m kinda worried they might hurt their backs whenever they get it on.

hi. my name is ..

i love that phil takes great pleasure in teasing dan with that. also danis snot on fire. i want to know how many times he does that in their everyday life.

the tie tie

sometimes i realize that they are both men. no, i mean they are both full grown up men. not only two people goofing around, soulmates whatever, but men who know how a tie works and who shave in the morning. makes me feel things.

embarassing photos

that was some married shit. if phil’s picture is considered bad by dan, i wanna see a good one. seriously, he just looks a bit tired. while dan’s photo is.. straight up cringe. but we all know that dan likes to take fuckboy selfies so what’s new.

(6:40 why is dan’s hand on his crotch?? do you think they’ve ever done it in the cheese costume..?)

chaynal? anal?

the best thing here is phil’s face. his cheeky smily and the eyebrow raise. that’s a very rare phil face and i need a compilation of all the times he’s done it.

(i’m not gonna mention the outfits because they both have terrible fashion sense)

leg dab

phil’s genuine laugh and dan’s snort laugh. i bet they make each other laugh like that all the time. i am so jealous, they really like to keep the best things to themselves.

tattoos

*dan voice* carrying on the rat joke, aren’t we? and dan’s face as a tattoo? i mean, i guess it’s better than his name on phil’s ass or whatever the cringey lovebird cliché is.

ribena flip

i mean.. what should i say.. is that phil lester? everyone’s angel bean? wow. i mean we’ve seen phil spreading his ass and dan filming it but phil kneeling on a bed.. with his legs spread.. and dan behind him.. i am shaken.

honorable mention to all the times dan laughed softly, eyes smiling and i’m not crying, you’re crying! oh yes, and of course phil’s chest hair. what a cameo, truly.

tl;dr this video was definitely my new favourite pinof, just because they were so free and open with themselves. now looking forward to the bloopers.

#phan #pinof9

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marauders70s · 7 years

Note

Number 1,753 I guess. Can you do a drabble involving the marauders, centered around Remus the Mom Friend(tm)?

HELL YES I love Moomy! @suffering-trashcan (sorry everyone whose drabbles I forgot to tag 0.o)

Sixth Year, November 1977

“Not strong this,” James hiccuped loudly, “…stuff.”

“Not at all,” agreed Sirius, draining the last of the Firewhiskey.

Peter was snoring on the tabletop in the Three Broomsticks. He was drawing a lot of stares.

“You-you’re lucky,” slurred Sirius, “That I t-turned seven. Seventeen. Seventeen I mean. You know? I turned seventeen first and now I’m old enough to…to…”

“Yeah,” agreed James, sloppily shoving his glasses up his nose with the flat of his hand. They were very smudgy and he was peering through them as if he wasn’t sure why things were so blurred. He kept touching the lenses to make sure they were still there, and leaving more fingerprints.

“For Merlin’s sake, please keep your voices down,” moaned Remus. “Students aren’t supposed to be drinking.”

“Y-y-you were drinking,” giggled James. As usual, his voice was not anyone’s idea of an indoor voice, a quirk that was not unique to his current inebriation. James was, in the simplest of terms, loud.

“Twas not,” Sirius argued. He was bright red, but seemed to at least be stable. James was weaving in his chair like a top-heavy flower in a strong wind. “R-Remus he didn’t drink…didn’t drink…didn’t you know? Didn’t…he just went -” he gave a strangled choke.

“I did not,” Remus snapped, a little miffed. “I’ve been choking down much fouler stuff than this my whole life.”

“Really?” It was Lily, and the immediate reactions of the four created a loud cacophony of sound that drew every eye in the Three Broomsticks.

Sirius yelped a war cry of triumph, something between “AAAIOOOO and HEYYYYYYOOO.” James shrieked and fell from his chair trying to sit on his hands. Peter woke up when James hit the legs of his chair with a gigantic snort and an indignant “HEY!” And Remus, who had truthfully only had enough to make him feel dizzy and quickly stopped, flushed a brilliant ivory that Lily of all people had approached the table. He might have even handled anyone better…except perhaps Professor McGonagall.

“Really?” Lily sighed while she surveyed the table, Sirius not at all subtly tucking the square bottle into his jacket under one armpit. It slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. He swooped it back up under his other armpit and pulled his leather jacket closed over his school sweater, his grin a glitter of white in a sea of red.

“Did you really expect different?” Remus said, trying to laugh a little. His ears were so painful from the blush he thought they would fall off.

“From them?” Lily gestured at James and Sirius. James had crawled up to his chair only to discover someone was sitting in it. He and Sirius were now having a heated argument whose chair it was, while James tried to pull him out of it. “No. From you and Peter? Yes.”

“I’m not drunk,” Remus said quickly. “Somebody’s got to wrangle this lot.”

“You’re trying to get them outside?” Lily asked.

Remus nodded. He gestured her forward. “Are you going to-”

Lily drew back, affronted. “First of all you have been drinking! Remus Lupin, a prefect!”

Remus ducked his head guiltily, but Lily only laughed.

“And come on Remus, we’re friends. I wouldn’t tell. I’m a prefect, not an asshole.”

Remus, who had grown up hearing Sirius swear since he was twelve years old, still blushed when Lily said it, and laughed awkwardly. “Thanks.”

“I can’t help you get them back to school,” Lily said. “Just outside. I have to go meet Mary and Alice at Scrivenshaft’s to pick out our planners for January.”

“Of course,” Remus agreed at once. “Just outside. Away from people,” he stressed.

“Come on, Peter,” Lily said kindly, tugging Peter’s arm. He had fallen into a stupor, eyes glazed over. He tried to stand, staggered back into the chair, knocked the chair over, and was only saved a rough tumble by Lily’s hand on his arm. She quickly took him out first.

“Where’s Wormy going?” James demanded loudly.

Remus sighed, but tried to fix a smile to his face. “We’re having a snowball fight outside,” he said cheerfully. “Want to come?”

“RACE YOU!” bellowed James, and bolted from his chair. He weaved a very circuitous and uneven route to the door but managed it all on his own.

“Padfoot?” Remus asked in a low voice.

Sirius only grinned. “Don’t be stupid,” he said briskly, and stood quite steadily. “You think this is going to stop me? You should have seen what Mum put in Reggie’s and my milk bottles to get us to sleep.”

He left Remus gaping after him, his arm awkwardly bulky over the square bottle. Remus quickly recovered himself and followed. Outside, he could see James sprinting after Lily calling, “WAIT! EVANS! WAIT FOR ME!” It was normal enough behavior for James, though Remus knew he’d be mortified when he sobered up.

Remus and Sirius walked forward. Sirius only staggered the slightest bit over the icy and uneven terrain, but was mostly steady. He had a strange, fixed grin to his face that made Remus uneasy, but he didn’t comment on it. Lily was waiting with Peter, who was shivering and looking distinctly miserable, his round face pale and sweating. James had dived headfirst into a snowdrift and was making snowballs as fast as his bare hands could make them. Remus reflected it was lucky his mum had spelled his gloves to be unloseable as James was so absentminded.

“Are you going to be okay?” Lily asked, watching James with a mixture of disgust and helpless amusement.

Remus smiled, more to himself than for her. Sometimes Lily couldn’t quite hide how she was starting to feel about James, even if James was oblivious to it.

“Evans, hey, Evans,” he kept saying. “Come play. You want to play? We can be on the same team? Or not, whatever you want. But I’m really good. Like really good. Good. Good at snowballs. You know? Quidditch. Quidditch snow. Like, I’m amazing.”

“Yeah,” Remus coughed into a fist to hide his amusement. “We’ll be okay.”

“Right then,” said Lily, backing away and laughing in spite of herself at James’ weak armed throw in her direction. It missed by a good five feet. “Good luck with this…and see you for rounds later?”

“Course.”

“You will give me the drunk Potter blow by blow?”

Remus smiled to himself again. “Every embarrassing detail,” he promised.

As Lily walked back toward the main avenue in the village, James still demanding she come back and play, Remus turned first to Peter.

“Can you transform?”

“Huh?” Peter was in a daze, his blue eyes streaming in the cold. His nose was red, lips swollen from the alcohol.

“Transform into Wormtail?”

“Yeah. Yeah I can do it.” He stood there, staring bewilderedly at Remus.

Remus sighed, but put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Peter. Pete.”

Peter looked at him again. “Huh?”

“Transform into the rat.”

“Right now?”

“Yes,” repeated Remus patiently. “Right now.”

There was a long moment when nothing happened, then Peter was shrinking as Remus had seen him do dozens of times before. Remus stepped in front of him, shielding him from view though they were around the bend on the edge of town. In a moment, the rat was in front of him, shivering uncontrollably. Remus picked him up and put him in his inner robe pocked by his right hip. By the way the rat went limp next to his body heat, it was evident Peter had fallen asleep.

“You good?” he asked Sirius. Sirius had climbed over James’ snowbank and was leaning against the fence.

“Yeah. Course I am,” he said, but his face looked green. Without warning he turned over the fence and vomited a shockingly bright orange sludge into the snow, where it hissed on impact.

“Great,” said Remus. “Perfect. Well, better in the snow than anywhere else.”

“I’m fine,” Sirius repeated weakly. He was clutching his stomach.

“I need you to stick with me,” Remus said, bending to the snow where James was soaking wet and shivering, finally realizing there would be no snowball fight. He crushed his waiting pile of snowballs childishly with an angry swipe of his fist.

“Can you get up?” he asked James.

James bounded up so fast he cracked into Remus, who straightened up, wincing as James bellowed, writhing on his back in the snow in a weird mimicry of a snow angel. Watching them, Sirius vomited again.

“Come here!” demanded Remus, pulling James’ arm over his own, taller shoulder. “We’re going home.”

“Don’t want to,” said James bitterly. His glasses were hanging off one ear. Remus plucked them from his face and put them in his own pocket.

“I can’t see!” James yelled. “I’ve gone blind!”

Remus closed his eyes, praying to any old god they’d been talking about in History of Magic that he wouldn’t be cracking James’ skull again in the next hour.

“Sirius, come on. We’re going now.”

Miserable now, Sirius followed a little ways behind as Remus and James started trudging their way up to the castle. It was a good thing that Remus was carrying the bag, which had James’ invisibility cloak inside, because after a miserable twenty minutes of Sirius groaning that he would die, and James insisting he was fine and he wanted to walk on his own (only to promptly slip and fall), they stopped a little ways away.

“Silencio,” Remus tapped James’ mouth and James opened it to bellow belligerently once again, but nothing came out. Remus quickly took out James’ invisibility cloak, wrapped him in it, and fastened the ends in place with a mild sticking charm. He left the very smallest wisp of James’ flyaway black hair out of the cloak; impossible to see if you weren’t looking for it. With another spell, locomotor mortis, he levitated the invisible, thrashing, silent James.

“Come on,” he said to Sirius, who was no longer red but ashen grey. “We’ve got to get upstairs. Taking the arm James had been hanging on the whole way, he slung it under Sirius’ shoulder as they reentered the castle, the young caretaker Argus Filch parked in a chair by the entrance, eyeing students suspiciously.

“What’s wrong with him, then?” Filch asked Remus.

“Bad meat pasty,” he replied hastily, hauling Sirius up the grand staircase. He had a funny feeling Filch would try to follow them, and he was sure to smell Sirius within ten feet of him. The odor of whiskey was unmistakable.

It was a good thing they had spent so much time on their marvelous map, because it helped Remus navigate to the most isolated, little used corridors, even though the moving staircases made Sirius retch. On the first occasion, Remus pulled Sirius’ wand out of his jacket pocket and vanished the pool of sick, using two wands in two hands. He didn’t bother giving it back, as he had to repeat the vanishing charm several more times until they made it to the Seventh Floor. The common room, thankfully, was mostly empty, though James accidentally collided with the chandelier because Remus wasn’t paying attention, looking casually at the faces of the younger students staring openly at them.

Sirius bolted up the stairs to the first bathroom on the boys side of the dormitory. Remus passed him on the first turn of the staircase, still levitating James. Up, up, and up they went to the highest level to their attic dormitory. Up another narrow, ladderlike staircase, and Remus finally settled James on the floor, or so he guessed by the piece of his hair. He undid the sticking charm and pulled the invisibility cloak off of him. James was brick red in the face and still swearing silently.

“Are you going to yell? If you are, I’ll just leave it on.”

James closed his mouth, but finally shook his head.

“All right then.” Remus took the silencing charm off of him. James sat up on the floor, looking around.

“The floor’s gone all…all weird,” he said, right before his eyes rolled up in his head, and he passed out from his thrashing exertions.

Sighing, Remus went over and pulled off James’ coat and robes, sending them to hang up with a silent spell. He was quite good at the household ones, but was still learning the others. Taking off James’ shoes and belt by hand, he used magic to get James into his bed and under the covers. He carefully took his glasses out of an inner pocket and placed them on James’ nightstand Remus pulled the hangings shut and put the rat Wormtail his own bed. Wormtail was fast asleep, so Remus shook him until Wormtail squeaked indignantly.

“Change back,” Remus commanded.

Wormtail ignored him, trying to turn back in a circle, finding warmth to go back to sleep.

Remus picked the rat up. “Change back.”

A few more indignant squeaks and thrashes until it occurred to Peter that it might just be easier to do as Remus suggested. Remus quickly let go when the half-morphed Peter became too heavy to hold. He fell to the bed and landed heavily, human again. Peter managed to struggle out of his own shoes and clothes fairly well, and Remus only pulled the covers up to his chin and shut the hangings.

He went in search of Sirius, and found him a few stairs short of their room, green and holding his stomach, his face pinched. He had managed to hold onto the firewhiskey bottle up until now, and Remus helped him up with an arm under his, taking the bottle from him gently. He got Sirius into bed and managed to find a few spare potions in his own nightstand for the days leading up to the full moon. He gave Sirius a stomach settler made primarily of dandelions, and spiked it with a dash of a sleeping draft. It did the trick. Sirius blinked hazily, laid his head back on his pillow, and was asleep before Remus finished drawing the curtains.

Peter began to snore again, and sighing, Remus left the dormitory to go back down to the commons. To his surprise, the chairs by the fire were empty. He moved to one gratefully; he was more chilled than he had thought, and smiled when Lily peered around the edge of the armchair.

“You did all right,” she said with a grin.

“Thanks,” Remus said, flopping into the chair with a groan and closing his eyes in the warmth of the flames. He was more tired than he had realized. There were several long moments while they sat quietly, listening to the bustle of the Commons behind them. Remus realized he was drifting farther and farther from wakefulness, but it didn’t worry him. He just listened idly as the world around him slowly faded, but didn’t miss the last thing Lily said.

“You’ll make a great dad.”

#drabbles

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