#'what do you expect me do read her entire 50+ year history-'

[slightlycomicobsessed]

"we need more complex and irredemable female characters!" yall couldn't even handle Natasha Romanoff

[jetii]

Lessons of the Heart

Pairing: Crosshair x fem!Reader / Crosshair x Teacher!Reader

Words: 15,738

Tags/Warnings: fluff, so much fluff, strangers to lovers, soft!Crosshair, grumpy/sunshine dynamic, awkward flirting, mutual pining, kissing/making out, Crosshair's anxiety, reader has long-ish hair, Tech mentioned briefly

Summary: Over a year after settling on Pabu, Crosshair is still struggling to adapt to life without having something to fight, or fight for. When Omega comes home with a bad grade, he jumps at the chance to help. He doesn't expect to become so invested, and he certainly doesn't expect to fall for his sister's teacher.

A/N: This one got away from me! But since the poll indicated I should keep this all one part, here you go. I really enjoyed writing Crosshair's perspective and all the little sibling moments in here.

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"Again, Omega? We talked about this."

Crosshair stops dead in his tracks, one boot in front of the other, and stares straight ahead. The basket of dirty clothes in his grip hangs limp by his side as he stands in the hallway, listening. Hunter and Omega are in the kitchen, the latter having just gotten back from another day at school, and they’re clearly talking about something serious.

Crosshair doesn't dare to breathe too loud in case he misses a single word. It's hard not to notice how Hunter's voice drops low when he speaks, trying not to be overheard by someone. By someone like Crosshair.

"I know, Hunter," she groans. He can hear the sound of something hit the counter, likely a datapad, and Omega shifts on her stool. "I tried on this one, I promise."

Hunter hums in a tone that makes it clear he's not quite believing her, and Crosshair's eyebrows raise a little in curiosity.

"Let me see, please."

"Hunter—"

"Omega."

She huffs, but a few seconds later, the datapad slides across the counter with a quiet squeak, and Omega's chair scrapes across the floor as she sits back down. "There. Happy?"

"Thank you." There's a pause, and Crosshair can only imagine the face Hunter is making as he reads whatever it is that Omega is showing him. His voice is stern, a tone that Crosshair's come to know as the sergeant, not the brother. "What is this?"

"I told you," she whines.

"She gave you a 50%?" Hunter's voice raises slightly. "Why would she do that?"

Omega scoffs. She's getting better at that. It almost sounds natural now.

Crosshair peeks around the corner, and sure enough, Hunter has the datapad in his hands, reading over whatever report the teacher sent back. Omega sits next to him, her shoulders slumped, arms crossed, and she's not meeting his gaze. Her backpack sits unzipped, its contents strewn out across the countertop and the stool where she usually sits.

He knows he shouldn't eavesdrop, but he's been doing it for so long he's not sure how to stop. And besides, the look on Hunter's face is one he doesn't like.

They'd all known going into this that Omega wasn't going to have an easy time at school. She excelled far beyond her peers in most subjects — math, history, science, languages, you name it — but there were two subjects where her intelligence failed her. Art, for one, because it was hard to grasp the concept of drawing something when she had no frame of reference. And then, of course, there was literature.

It's not her fault, and Hunter's well aware of it. Her education prior to the Batch adopting her was entirely focused on being the best lab assistant a Kaminoan could ever want. Over time, she soaked up anything they would teach her. Strategy, engineering, politics, even some basic medical training — Omega could do it all. But, as it turned out, there was a pretty big part of her education that she was severely lacking in, and it was starting to show.

Out of the three brothers, Crosshair was the only one who actually made a habit out of reading, though he'd never admit it to anyone. So he tried his best to teach Omega the concepts that her teacher was trying to instill in her, but sometimes it was difficult.

Literature was, by nature, subjective. It's always up for debate, and Crosshair found himself constantly questioning himself while helping Omega with her assignments. It usually ended with both of them frustrated, and Hunter or Wrecker stepping in to mediate the situation.

But still, Omega loved her classes, even if they were difficult. And Crosshair would never say it out loud, but he enjoyed spending time with her and helping her learn, even if it wasn't always the easiest.

It seemed, though, that her teacher didn't agree with his methods.

Hunter looks up from the datapad and places it on the counter. He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and reaches across to pat Omega's shoulder. "It's okay. We can work with this."

She shrugs him off and hops down from the stool, gathering her things and stuffing them into her bag. When she tries to reach for the datapad, Hunter snatches it up and holds it out of her reach.

"Give it to me, Hunter."

"No. We're going to talk about this, Omega."

"There's nothing to talk about," she mutters, trying again and failing to grab the datapad.

Crosshair takes that as his cue. He steps into the kitchen and drops the basket of laundry onto the ground by his feet, the force of the landing enough to get their attention.

"Oh, good," Hunter says, looking at Crosshair. "You're home."

"Yep." Crosshair pops the 'p' and folds his arms, leaning back against the wall. He meets Omega's eyes for a moment, and the look on her face is like a punch to the gut. She looks defeated, and it's not a look that suits her.

He hates seeing her upset, especially over something so trivial. It's a report, and not even a very important one. It's not like her grades in the other classes were suffering. She was passing every single one of them with flying colors. It's just this one assignment, this one class, this one teacher who seems hellbent on making her feel bad about herself.

Crosshair can feel the rage bubbling under the surface. How dare her teacher give her a score that low, and why? Because of his help? That was his job, and he was doing it.

"What's going on?" Crosshair asks. He's still staring at Omega, trying to get her to look up at him, to meet his gaze, but she's not taking the bait. She's got her arms folded, her shoulders tense, and her lower lip juts out as she pouts at Hunter.

"I told her we'd talk about it, and she doesn't want to." Hunter sets the datapad back down, sliding it across the counter.

Crosshair picks it up, glancing at the words on the screen before scrolling through the report. It's an analysis, one he's read a million times. He doesn't bother skimming it, because he already knows exactly what she wrote. It's a decent summary of the text, and her thoughts and opinions are written plainly and with an obvious understanding of what the author meant. It's not her fault her teacher wanted her to interpret the text the way a typical thirteen-year-old might, but that wasn't who Omega was.

He glances back up at Hunter. "And what is there to talk about?"

"Well, her teacher doesn't seem to agree with her analysis," Hunter says. He nods at the datapad in Crosshair's hand. "The comments."

Crosshair finds the section in question and reads over the notes. It's a lot of the same, just worded a bit differently, but one comment sticks out among the rest.

Please try to stick to the original meaning of the text, Omega. You did well explaining how your interpretation differed from the traditional meaning, but try to focus on the actual story. 

It's the most condescending, ridiculous thing Crosshair has ever read, and he has to keep himself from throwing the datapad at the wall. He has to remind himself that doing that would only make Omega feel worse, and he doesn't want to upset her.

Instead, he takes a deep breath and hands the datapad back to her.

"This is stupid," he says, and he can see Hunter's eye twitch at his choice of words. "I read the text. I know what it means, and you know what it means. What, are you supposed to go through the entire thing and find the most cliche, obvious way of reading it?"

"No," Omega mumbles.

"Right," he agrees. "So then why is she giving you a low grade for your own thoughts and opinions?"

Omega shrugs. She's frowning, staring down at the datapad like it personally offended her.

And Crosshair knows that feeling, intimately. It's the same way he'd stare at the training room floor whenever a drill sergeant would call him a failure. It grates on his nerves, and he's half-tempted to find the teacher's home address and tell her just how wrong she is.

"But I'm doing it wrong," Omega says, her voice small and defeated.

Hunter is glaring at him now, but Crosshair can't find it in him to care.

"No, you're not," Crosshair insists, and he takes a seat beside her at the counter. "You did your research. You did everything you were supposed to, and you wrote a report about what you think it meant. What's wrong with that?"

Omega shrugs again, and he can see her hands balling up into fists.

The sight alone is enough to set him on edge. His entire body feels like a coiled spring, his muscles tense and ready to go. He hates seeing her like this. She's a bright kid, always smiling and happy, and to see her so down on herself makes him feel ill, and the last thing he wants is for her to think she's failed somehow.

Crosshair doesn't know why the teacher doesn't understand that, doesn't appreciate how amazing it is that a girl her age is even capable of writing a paper like this. Maybe, somewhere deep down, the teacher does get it. Maybe she's just pushing her own agenda. It wouldn't surprise Crosshair in the slightest, and the more he thinks about it, the more annoyed he gets.

"Maybe I should comm her," Hunter says, interrupting his train of thought.

Crosshair snaps his head around, glaring daggers at his brother. "No."

"Excuse me?"

"Don't comm her." He pushes himself away from the counter and stands. "I'll handle this."

Hunter stares at him, one eyebrow raised, clearly confused. "Handle it?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna talk to her."

"Cross," Hunter says, but he doesn't finish his sentence.

Crosshair doesn't stick around long enough to hear the end of it. He's already halfway out the door, pulling his jacket off the hook, and slamming the door shut behind him.

Crosshair is pissed.

He doesn't often get angry. Annoyed, frustrated, irritated, yes. All those are familiar. But angry? Angry is not something he deals with. He can't stand it, the way his chest feels like it's about to explode, the way his heart rate picks up and his stomach feels sick. Anger makes him feel out of control, and the last thing he wants is to lose the little self-control he does have.

But now?

Now, he's angry.

Omega doesn't deserve to be treated like this. She doesn't deserve the way her teacher is talking to her, telling her she's doing something wrong when she isn't. If anything, the teacher should be grateful that Omega is even bothering to read the texts in the first place, that she's putting in the effort to analyze the meanings behind them.

He's so caught up in his own thoughts, he barely realizes how far he's gone. It's only when he spots the school, the tall building looming in the distance, does he realize he's halfway across town, and the sun is starting to dip below the horizon.

He slows his pace, taking a moment to catch his breath, and glances around. He's only been here a few times, just long enough to drop Omega off at the start of the day or pick her up after. He's never actually been inside, never even met a single one of her teachers, and he has no idea where her classroom even is.

A sign points him towards the front entrance, and he follows it. There's a handful of other parents waiting around the main entrance, all of them talking and laughing and joking with one another. A few of them glance his way, watching him curiously as he approaches the doors.

He ignores them, slipping inside and letting the doors close behind him. The hallways are quiet, and the sound of his boots against the tile echoes throughout the empty halls. He's not entirely sure where he's going, but he figures it can't be that hard to find her classroom.

It isn't.

It takes him less than a minute to locate her name, next to a door decorated with bright colors and images of what he assumes are the characters from a few of the stories they've read. He doesn't stop to admire the decorations, though. He doesn't stop at all, really. He pushes the door open and walks right inside, his eyes scanning the room.

The rows of chairs and desks are empty, but the one near the holoboard at the front of the room is occupied. There's a human woman sitting there, head bowed over a desk as she writes, and Crosshair strides up to her without hesitation.

"I want to talk about the report you gave Omega," he says, his voice tight, barely able to contain his anger. The woman looks up, clearly startled, and blinks owlishly at him.

The anger coursing through his veins suddenly tempers as he locks eyes with you, and he finds himself at a loss for words.

You're not what he was expecting, not in the slightest. He'd expected someone older, a woman with graying hair and crow's feet, maybe, one who's lived enough years to become old and jaded. Not this. Not you.

Your eyes are wide and bright, and the expression on your face is nothing short of adorable. He's not sure where that word came from, thrust to the forefront of his consciousness with the force of a speeder, but he can't deny that it's accurate. Your hair is tied up in a messy bun, a few loose strands hanging over your face, and there's a small, pink stylus stuck behind your ear. Your lips are slightly parted, a pretty shade of pink that almost matches the color of the pen, and he watches as they slowly form into a small 'o' as you process what's going on.

And then, just as quickly, your expression changes.

The adorableness falls away, and you straighten your posture, your brows furrowing and your lips pulling into a tight line.

"You must be Crosshair."

He frowns. "How did you—"

"She talks about you." You nod, glancing him up and down, and Crosshair has to fight the urge to shrink under your scrutiny. His mouth feels dry, and the sudden change in tone catches him off-guard. He was expecting defensiveness, maybe a little bit of anger. Instead, you sound...

Well, he can't really place it.

Crosshair nods, and he can feel his cheeks heat up. It's probably because he's angry. It has nothing to do with the way you're looking at him, the way your eyes rake over him, or the way your lips are curled up ever so slightly in a hint of a smile.

You clear your throat and gesture to the seat in front of you. He settles in it, not because you told him to, but because it seems like the polite thing to do. And because he wants to sit down.

Once he's seated, you fold your hands and place them on the desk, giving him your full attention. "I'm glad you're here."

That throws him. "You are?"

"Of course," you say, and the smile on your face is nothing short of dazzling. "I've been hoping to meet you for a while now. Omega speaks so highly of you, and I have to say, I was looking forward to finally meeting the man who's been helping her with her assignments."

And then, you do something Crosshair wasn't expecting. You extend your hand, offering a handshake.

He looks down at your hand, your fingers spread out, palm facing up. Your nails are painted a bright shade of pink, and there's a small smear of what looks like ink near the tip of your index finger. He glances up at your face, and you're smiling at him, the corners of your eyes crinkling a bit as you do.

His stomach does a weird flip, and his chest suddenly feels a lot warmer. He doesn't know what it is about your smile, your eyes, your voice, but it's...nice.

You're nice.

He doesn't take your hand.

You pull it away, but the smile doesn't leave your face. You don't seem offended or hurt, and you're still looking at him with an expression that can only be described as genuine kindness.

Crosshair swallows the lump in his throat. It's getting harder to stay angry, but he does his best to cling to his resolve. 

"You graded her report wrong,” he hisses.

He expects you to get defensive, maybe even offended. After all, no one likes having their work challenged. But instead, you just sigh.

You look down at your desk, grabbing the stylus and twirling it between your fingers. The light reflects off the smooth surface, glinting off the tip of the tool, and the movement is almost hypnotic. He has to force himself to look away, to focus on your face.

For the first time since he barged into your classroom, he notices the tiredness in your eyes. It's subtle, and he doesn't think anyone else would notice, but the way your shoulders sag is a dead giveaway. You look exhausted, and Crosshair suddenly feels an odd pang of guilty for dropping in on you like this.

Your smile is tight when you look up at him again..

"I can explain my rationale, if you'd like," you say, and it's not a question. It's a statement.

He's not sure if he should be annoyed by that or not, but he nods regardless.

"Thank you." 

You reach for a datapad laying haphazardly across your desk and tap away for a moment, before you hold it out for him to take. His fingers brush yours as he accepts it, and the touch sends a tingle up his arm. He tries not to show it, though, and busies himself by looking over the file as you speak.

"I know Omega has been struggling in my class, and I've done everything I can to make sure she has the support she needs. But, unfortunately, there's not a lot I can do when the curriculum is so..."

You pause, and he raises an eyebrow. "So what?"

"Well, it's not exactly tailored for her," you finish, and the small laugh you let out is strained. You shrug, a gesture that's supposed to be nonchalant, but he can see the tension in your shoulders.

He hums, nodding along as you continue to talk.

"I don't usually get students like Omega, you know? Kids who've already seen the world and have lived through so much more than their peers. And that's great, I mean, it's awesome. She's a brilliant kid, and she has such a great sense of herself, but I'm not equipped to handle a student like her."

Crosshair stops scrolling, his thumb hovering over the screen. He looks up at you, and you're staring back, chewing on your bottom lip.

He swallows the lump in his throat and nods. "So, what does that mean?"

"It means..." You trail off, letting out a sigh and shaking your head. You look away, turning to stare out the window behind you. The sun is setting, and the last rays of the day are reflecting off the buildings in the distance, bathing the room in an orange glow.

He watches the way the light illuminates your face, highlighting the curves and lines. It's not the first time he's found himself admiring the way someone looks, but it's the first time it's left him feeling like his heart's about to burst out of his chest.

It's not until you turn back to face him, the light fading, does he realize he's been holding his breath.

"I'm sorry, what was I saying?" you ask, and he's not sure if it's the lighting or his imagination, but he swears there's a faint flush creeping up your neck and cheeks.

"You were talking about the report," he says, his voice a little softer than usual.

You blink. "Oh, right. Of course." You clear your throat, sitting up a little straighter, and Crosshair has to remind himself not to lean in. "I graded the report based on how she did against the curriculum."

"Which is stupid."

"Yeah, I know." You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, and Crosshair tracks the movement. "But it's how it works, unfortunately. We have a certain set of standards we have to abide by, and unfortunately, Omega's interpretation of the story was outside those standards."

"So? Her analysis is solid, and you know it," he says.

"It is," you agree, and the corner of your mouth twitches up into a half-smile. Your eyes are soft and full of understanding, and Crosshair has to look away.

"Her argument was well-researched, and her points were valid," you say, and it's with an apologetic tone. "But she also failed to follow directions."

Crosshair blinks.

That's not right.

"What?"

"She was asked to write a report on her thoughts and opinions on a classic work, and her interpretation of the story was excellent, but..."

"But what?" He knows he's being defensive, and he's not sure why, but the thought of you grading her unfairly, giving her a low score because of something that was his fault, makes his blood boil.

He takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair, folding his arms and forcing himself to relax.

You don't seem bothered by his attitude, though. In fact, you just smile at him.

"Well, she did a wonderful job of explaining her interpretation, but she failed to stick to the author's original meaning," you explain. "And while I understand why she was interpreting the text the way she was, and I'm happy she's able to do that, she was asked to write a paper specifically about the author's intended meaning."

Crosshair doesn't respond. He stares at you, his lips pressed together, trying his hardest to stay calm.

He has to admit, it makes sense. You're just doing your job, and the fact that you're even taking the time to explain it to him is a testament to how hard you're trying. But that doesn't make the situation any easier, and the disappointment in Omega’s voice when she'd shown him her report earlier that day is still fresh in his mind.

"It doesn't change the fact that she's brilliant," you say, interrupting his train of thought.

He snaps his head up, staring at you, and the expression on your face is almost...tender. You're not just saying it to placate him, or to try and get him to leave. No, you mean it. He didn't realize just how much you cared about his sister, and he's taken aback by how sincere you are.

"Omega is an incredibly intelligent young woman, and I am in awe of her every day." You lean forward, your elbows resting on the desk. You're smiling, but there's a hint of sadness in your eyes, and the way you speak, the words that spill out of your mouth, are genuine. "I can't begin to imagine the things she's been through, and I know that's not an excuse for how difficult I've been, but I'm sorry. I really am."

The anger he'd been holding onto melts away, replaced by a strange mixture of pride and confusion. He's proud that you care so much about Omega, and confused by how much it seems to affect him. He'd expected you to be stubborn, maybe even rude. But this? This isn't anything like the image he'd conjured up in his mind.

It's...

Nice.

"So, what now?" he asks.

"Well," you start, and the smile on your face turns mischievous, "you're welcome to challenge my grade. You can go to the school board, or we can go to the principal's office. You could even submit a formal complaint, or—"

"No," he interrupts, and his cheeks flush when he realizes how fast the word came out. He clears his throat, trying to compose himself, and says, "I meant, what do we do? To help her?"

"Oh." You blink, clearly surprised.

He's not sure why. Does he come off as the type of person who would file a formal complaint over a grade?

Probably, actually.

"Right," you say, and you take a moment to collect your thoughts. "Well, there's not a lot we can do. This was her last chance to make up for her last test score, and I'm afraid she'll have to repeat the class next year."

"There has to be something you can do," he insists. The words fall out of his mouth before his brain catches up, and he's already cringing internally at how desperate he sounds.

"Look," you sigh. "You're not the first parent to come in here at the end of the semester and ask me to raise a grade. But, if I raised Omega's grade, then I would have to raise the grades of everyone else who turned in a similar report. And I can't do that."

"You can't be serious," he scoffs, rolling his eyes.

"I am," you say, an edge to your voice. "It wouldn't be fair."

"Life's not fair."

"Yeah, no kidding." You huff a humorless laugh. Your lips purse, and he can tell you're holding back a glare. 

He knows he's pushing his luck, and he's starting to feel like an idiot, but he can't help himself.

"You can't honestly tell me that there's nothing we can do."

Your eyes flicker away from his, and your gaze drifts down to the datapad. He can see your mind working, can see the gears turning as you mull over your options. You chew on your lower lip, and Crosshair tries not to stare, but it's a struggle.

He's never met someone who could have him going from angry to intrigued in the span of a few minutes, and he's not sure why he's so fixated on you. Maybe it's the way you're not afraid to stand your ground against him, or maybe it's the fact that you seem genuinely concerned about his sister's wellbeing. Or maybe it's just the way you look, with your bright eyes and kind smile, and the way you're clearly trying your best to make a difference.

Whatever it is, it's working.

"There is one thing," you say, after what feels like an eternity.

"What?"

You take a deep breath, as if bracing yourself, and meet his eyes.

"I can't raise her grade, but I could offer her some extra credit, if she'd like. It's not a guarantee, and I'd have to see her improvement before I decided to give her the points, but it's an option."

"Yes." The word slips out before he can stop himself, and he mentally curses at his own eagerness.

You arch an eyebrow.

"She'd like that." He clears his throat and forces himself to sound casual, unbothered. "If you're willing."

"Of course." You smile at him, and the warmth that spreads through his chest is...weird. But not unpleasant.

He's not sure what he did to deserve that look, that smile, but he decides he doesn't hate it.

"I'll tell her," he says, and he gets to his feet.

You stand as well, and the height difference between the two of you is not lost on him. He has to look down to meet your eyes, and the way you have to tilt your head up makes him feel strangely amused.

He's used to looking down at people, and most of the time, it makes him feel superior. But right now, he just feels...

Well, he doesn't really know how to describe it.

"Thanks," he says, and the word sounds foreign on his tongue. It's not something he's used to saying, especially to a stranger. He's not even sure what he's thanking you for, exactly, but it feels appropriate.

"You're welcome," you say, a grin on your face that's almost too wide, too bright, too much. "Oh, one more thing."

He hums, and you take a step closer around the desk. You're a foot or so away from him, close enough that he can smell the perfume you use, the floral scent filling his senses. He swallows hard and tries to ignore the way his pulse is racing.

You're not making this easy for him.

"We had a chaperone drop out last minute for the end of the year field trip," you explain. "If you have the time, would you be interested in helping me out? We're going to the spaceport museum."

Crosshair has no interest in a bunch of kids running around a museum, and he's about to decline, but the look on your face stops him.

The pleading look in your eyes, the way your eyebrows are knitted together, the slight pout of your lips. He knows what you're doing, and he doesn't like it. He's not the kind of man who caves to pretty girls asking him for favors, and he's definitely not going to cave now.

He's stronger than this. He can resist the urge. He's a trained soldier, a skilled marksman, and he's not about to give in to the will of a cute teacher.

He's stronger than this.

"I'll do it," he hears himself say.

Fuck.

"Perfect." Your eyes light up, and your smile widens. You're practically beaming, and it's like looking directly at the sun. "I'll send you the details. Thank you, Crosshair. I'll see you soon."

"Yeah," he says, struggling to think of a clever response, but coming up empty. He doesn't have a chance to say anything else before you're practically shoving him out the door.

When he turns back to face you, he sees you wave, and then the door is shut, and you're gone.

The silence of the hallways is suddenly too much, and he has to force himself to take a deep breath.

He's in trouble.

The trip is a nightmare.

It's not your fault. If anything, you've gone above and beyond to keep the kids in line. Crosshair's watched you run after them, chasing them through the exhibit and reminding them that they're not allowed to touch things. And, for the most part, the kids are well-behaved. There are a handful of them that seem to have a problem listening, but you've got the rest under control.

He has to hand it to you. It's impressive, and a little endearing, how hard you're trying. He knows you're exhausted, can see it in the way your shoulders sag when the kids start talking over you, can see it in the way you sigh when one of them pushes their way past you.

But the kids are bored, and he can't blame them. It's a pretty lame field trip, and he doesn't really understand the point of bringing them here. What is a museum, anyway, if not a place to look at cool, old ships?

So far, all they've done is look at boring, historical texts, and listen to you drone on about the importance of space travel and the role its played in storytelling throughout the galaxy.

The whole thing is dull, and he doesn't have the patience for this. He wants to go home and do literally anything else, and if he has to listen to one more kid whine about being bored, he's going to scream.

At least, that's what he tells himself.

Really, he's not bored.

In fact, he's quite the opposite.

He's fascinated.

It's the way you speak, the passion and excitement in your voice. He finds himself watching the way your lips move, the way your eyes sparkle with amusement. It's the same sparkle they had the other night, when he'd confronted you in the classroom. It's the same one that's been haunting him for the past week, and it's the reason why he's stuck here, in a crowded museum, surrounded by dozens of prepubescent teenagers, all while his brothers are back at home, probably having fun without him.

And, as if things weren't already bad enough, you're wearing the cutest outfit he's ever seen. It's a dress, the kind that flows down to your ankles, and it's got tiny flowers all over it. Your hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, tied back with a pink ribbon, and it swishes back and forth as you walk.

Crosshair's not usually one for dresses, and he's definitely not a fan of the color pink. But on you? It works.

It's almost unfair, really.

No, it's extremely unfair.

He's spent the entire day stealing glances at you, trying his best not to be obvious, and Omega is catching onto him. She keeps smirking at him, her eyes narrowed, and he's pretty sure she's been teasing him. He'll get caught staring at you, and she'll elbow him in the ribs and wink at him.

It's annoying, and he hates it.

Not as much as he hates himself, though.

Because he knows better. He knows it's wrong, knows it's stupid, and yet, he can't seem to stop himself.

And the worst part is, you don't even seem to notice. You're so busy trying to keep the kids in check, to keep them from causing a scene, that you're not paying any attention to him. He's grateful for that, because he's not sure how he'd handle the embarrassment.

But, at the same time, he wishes you would look at him. Just once. Just a quick glance, a tiny smile, a small nod. Something.

He sighs.

It's been a long day, and he's tired.

He's standing near the entrance, keeping an eye on the group of students, Omega included. They're currently huddled around a holoexhibit, and he watches as you answer their questions and explain the significance of each ship. You have the patience of a saint, and he has no idea how you do it. The questions they're asking are ridiculous, and a few of them are just flat out wrong.

Crosshair's tempted to go over and tell them how stupid they are, to get them to give you a break, but he refrains. He's not supposed to be getting involved, after all. This is your job, and he's just here to make sure the kids stay safe.

But he's not about to let them cause a scene.

A flash of metal catches his attention, and he frowns. One of the kids, a Rodian, is standing on a platform, and his hand is hovering over a lever. Crosshair doesn't need to read the label to know what the kid is thinking. He's been watching this one eye this exact display all morning, and he's been waiting for him to finally get brave enough to try his luck.

The kid reaches out, and before he can touch the lever, Crosshair strides across the room. He grabs his wrist, his grip firm, and pulls his hand away. The Rodian squawks in surprise, and Crosshair glares down at him. He's not tall, not for a Rodian, and it's easy for Crosshair to loom over him.

"Don't touch that," he growls.

"I-I wasn't gonna," the kid stammers, and his eyes dart towards the exit. He looks ready to bolt, and Crosshair would find it funny if it weren't for the way the rest of the kids are staring at him.

"Bullshit."

"Language," you scold, and Crosshair turns his head to see you approaching him, an exasperated look on your face. You have your hands on your hips, and you look like you're ready to lecture him instead of the kid who was about to activate the simulator without permission.

He raises an eyebrow at you, challenging you.

"You shouldn't swear in front of children," you say, your tone matter-of-fact.

"Well, maybe they shouldn't touch shit that's not theirs," he retorts, and he shoots the kid a pointed look.

"Crosshair!"

You're glaring at him now, and he knows he should feel bad, but he doesn't. He can't. Your cheeks are flushed, and your brows are furrowed, and you're trying so hard to look stern and serious, but it's not working. He's not sure why, but seeing you angry is a lot more appealing than it should be.

It makes him want to push your buttons.

"If I catch you touching this again, I'll throw you out," he warns the kid, and he lets go of his wrist. "Got it?"

The kid nods, and then he's dashing back to the rest of the group, a look of fear on his face.

"What is wrong with you?" you demand, and Crosshair looks down at you, fighting the urge to smirk. You're still glaring at him, but the flush on your cheeks is a shade darker now, and he can't help but feel a little proud of himself.

"I'm just doing my job," he says, and the smirk he'd been fighting is making its way onto his face now.

Your eyes widen. "Your job is to make sure the kids are safe, not threaten them."

"I wasn't threatening him," he scoffs.

"Yes, you were."

"No, I wasn't."

"Yes, you—"

"Okay, fine, maybe I was. A little," he admits, and you shake your head, a huff escaping you. The glare falls away, and the look on your face is softer now, a little less annoyed, and a lot more amused.

"I had it handled," you tell him, and there's a hint of teasing in your tone now, too.

"Yeah, it looked like it."

"Crosshair," you warn, but the corners of your lips are twitching upwards, betraying the seriousness of your voice.

"What? I'm just trying to help," he says, and the shrug he gives is a little more smug than it should be.

Crosshair isn't trying to antagonize you, not really. He's just...testing the waters, he supposes. Seeing how far he can push you, seeing how much you can take before you crack, and he has to admit that you're holding up pretty well so far. Most people would've told him off, or stormed off by now, but not you.

No, you're still here.

You're standing in front of him, your arms folded across your chest, trying your very best not to smile at him.

You're enjoying this.

The realization hits him like a punch to the gut, and he has to force himself to breathe normally. He's not sure why that's such a revelation, but it is. You're enjoying his company, enjoying the back-and-forth, and it makes him feel lighter than air.

"Are you always this much of an ass?" you ask, and his eyes widen at the sudden vulgarity, but he recovers quickly. He likes it, actually. The bluntness, the honesty. It's refreshing, and a lot more than he expected from you.

Crosshair smirks. "Now who's swearing in front of children?"

"They're not paying attention."

"Oh, right, because the exhibit on the history of intergalactic trade is so exciting," he says, and you snort, shaking your head.

"Yeah, you're not wrong," you admit, and he chuckles.

"I know."

"Of course you do," you mutter sarcastically. But, the annoyance has faded, and there's a smile on your face as you turn to look at the kids, so Crosshair considers it a win.

You stand there, next to him, your arms folded, and you watch as the kids slowly make their way through the exhibit. They're talking among themselves, completely oblivious to the exchange between the two of you. It's a bit of a relief, because he's not sure what they would make of the fact that he's flirting with their teacher.

Is he flirting?

No, that's not right.

He's not flirting.

He's just being...friendly. He's just making conversation, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not his fault that you're easy to talk to.

Omega is the only one looking in his direction, and he doesn't miss the grin on her face. He shoots her a look, a warning, and she winks at him. He glares, and she sticks her tongue out.

Great.

He's definitely going to hear about this later.

"You're not exactly what I was expecting," you say quietly. 

Crosshair looks back at you, his heart skipping a beat when he realizes just how close you are. You're standing next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and you're looking up at him, the same sparkle in your eyes as before. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, and you seem...pleased.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" he asks, and he's almost afraid to know the answer.

"A good thing, of course." You nudge him playfully with your elbow, and the touch sends a jolt of electricity up his arm. "I'm glad I was wrong."

"Yeah, me too."

You laugh at that, and he smiles, more than a little pleased with himself. It's an unexpected, but pleasant, reaction, and he finds himself wanting to make you laugh again.

"Anyway," you say, taking a step back. "Thanks for keeping the kids in line. I really appreciate it."

He shrugs. "It's nothing."

"No, really." You look up at him, your eyes bright, and you give him a sympathetic smile. "I know this isn't exactly what you signed up for."

"It's not so bad."

You raise an eyebrow, clearly skeptical.

"I mean, it's boring as hell," he admits, and the way your nose scrunches up as you laugh is adorable. He clears his throat and tries to focus. "But it's not awful. The company's...bearable."

You tilt your head to the side, and your eyes narrow. "Thanks, I think."

"Don't mention it."

"So," you start, a slight hesitation in your voice, "does this mean you're not going to file a complaint against me?"

"I wouldn't go that far," Crosshair teases. The way your eyes widen is enough to make him chuckle. "But I guess I can let it slide. For now."

"For now," you repeat, and you let out a breath. You shake your head and look up at him, the ghost of a smile on your lips. "Well, I'll take it. Now, let's get back to the kids, shall we?"

"After you," he says, gesturing for you to lead the way.

He follows after you, and he tries his best not to stare at the sway of your hips as you walk. He fails, but only a little bit.

And, if he catches you glancing back at him every so often, well, he's not complaining.

Omega is practically bouncing on her heels as they make their way down the street, heading home from the school. She's talking a mile a minute, her eyes bright, and she's still somehow full of energy despite the long day they've had. Crosshair can't quite keep up with her, and he's having trouble focusing on her words. He has no idea how you manage to do this every day, and he feels a little bad for thinking that teaching is an easy job.

She's going on about the trip, how much fun she had, and she's not slowing down. Crosshair doesn't mind, though. He's content to listen to her, and he's not going to stop her from gushing about her day. He does the same thing for her he’s always done for Tech, humming and nodding in the right places, and he knows that it makes her feel good to talk.

Besides, he's too distracted by his own thoughts to focus on what she's saying.

He's spent the last hour replaying the events of the day in his mind, trying to make sense of everything. The way you'd looked at him, the way you'd laughed, the way you'd teased him. It's all a little overwhelming, and he's not sure how to process it.

Crosshair isn't the kind of person who gets all worked up over a pretty girl. He’s not even the kind of person who gets all worked up, period.

But something about you, the way you carry yourself, the way you smile, the way you look at him. It's different.

You're different.

He doesn't know what to do with that information, and he's not sure he likes it. For all he knows, you're just being nice, just trying to be polite so he doesn’t give you a hard time. It wouldn't be the first time someone's done that.

Crosshair has been told his whole life that he's difficult to deal with, and he's learned to live with that. He's used to people being afraid of him, and he's used to people not wanting to be around him. He used to take pride in the fact that people were scared of him, but lately, it's started to wear on him.

Maybe it's because of his brothers, the way they've started to change, the way they've become softer. Or maybe it's because of Omega, the way she looks up to him, the way she trusts him, the way she thinks he's capable of great things.

Either way, he can't deny that he's a little lonely.

And maybe a little curious.

"Crosshair," Omega says, and the sharpness in her voice catches his attention. She's stopped walking, and she's giving him a look, her eyes narrowed. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Huh?" He blinks, and then he frowns. "Yeah, of course."

"Then, what did I just say?" she challenges, her hands on her hips, her head tilted up.

He pauses, and then sighs. "No, not really."

"I knew it!" she exclaims, throwing her hands up. "You were totally spacing out."

"I was not."

"Yes, you were," she argues, and she crosses her arms over her chest. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"Really? Because you look like you're thinking about something."

"Nope," he lies. Crosshair turns his head away from her, pretending to look at something else. There's a few vendors pulling in their stands in front of them, closing up for the evening, and he watches them, trying to avoid Omega's gaze. The florist is packing up his display, and the bright, colorful flowers draw his attention. He tries to ignore the fact that they remind him of your dress.

"Are you sure? You seem...weird."

"I'm fine."

"Are you thinking about the field trip?" she asks, and he can hear the smugness in her voice. "About Miss—"

"Omega." He snaps his head back towards her, his eyes wide, and he gives her a warning look.

"What?" she says, feigning innocence, and he groans.

"Just drop it," he mutters, and he turns to keep walking.

"I can't," she says, following after him. She has to jog slightly to keep up with his hurried pace, but it does nothing to deter her. "You like her."

"Of course I like her. She’s nice,” he replies. His tone comes out more defensive than casual, and he grimaces internally.

"No, you really like her."

Crosshair opens his mouth, ready to defend himself. There's no way that's true. It's impossible. He barely knows you, and you're just his sister's teacher. 

Just a pretty, sweet, kind teacher who cares about her students and isn't afraid to push the boundaries to help them learn. Who didn't back down when he challenged her, and didn't hesitate to stand her ground when he was being an ass. 

Who smiles at him and looks at him like he's worth something, like he's important, like he matters. Who laughs at his pathetic attempts at humor and makes him feel like he's not a complete waste of space, like maybe there's something worthwhile inside of him after all. Like maybe, just maybe, there's a chance for him.

Shit.

He shakes his head. "You're crazy."

"Am not," she insists, and she skips in front of him, forcing him to stop. "I won't tell anyone."

"Omega—"

"You know, she's single," she continues with a knowing, smug grin, and it reminds him so much of Hunter that he has to take a deep breath and count to ten before he can speak again. And even then, he's still annoyed.

"How the hell do you know that?" he demands, his eyebrows raised.

"I overheard her talking to the other teachers during lunch," she explains, and the smugness fades, replaced by a sheepish smile.

"You shouldn't eavesdrop," he chastises, though he's a little too preoccupied with the new information to put much force behind the words.

"I didn't mean to," she says with a shrug. "I was looking for her, and I found her, and they were talking about her, so..."

"So, what else did you hear?" he asks, trying his best to sound disinterested.

"Nothing."

"Omega," he warns.

"I didn't hear anything!" she insists, her eyes wide. After a beat, a smirk forms on her face, and her eyes narrow. "Why? Did you want to know something else?"

"No," he snaps, a little too quickly. "Just forget it."

"But—"

"It's not important," he says, cutting her off as he steps around her and continues walking. He hears her groan in frustration, and he smirks to himself. Serves her right.

"Wait!" She hurries after him, her hands gripping the strap of her bag tightly as she catches up. She's practically running now, trying her best to match his long strides, and her breathing is a little heavier than normal. "Crosshair, slow down."

"No."

She huffs. "I'm just saying—"

"Omega, enough."

"I think she likes you, too."

Crosshair stops walking abruptly, and Omega almost collides with him. He turns his head towards her, his eyebrows raised, and she takes a step back.

"What makes you say that?" he asks. He knows he's being foolish, letting her bait him like this, but he can't help himself. The hopeful note in her voice is hard to ignore, and he's suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic than he should.

"Because she kept looking at you," she explains.

"No, she didn't."

"Yes, she did," she argues. "She was looking at you, like, the entire time. The whole trip. I'm surprised you didn't notice."

"You're exaggerating," he mutters, trying to hide the flush in his cheeks.

"I'm not," she says, shaking her head. "I was keeping track."

"You know, if you paid half as much attention to your schoolwork as you do to gossiping, neither of us would be in this mess," he retorts.

"Hey! That's not true," Omega pouts. "I learned everything I need to know about intergalactic trade from Tech. I'm good."

Crosshair can't help but smile at that, and Omega grins back at him. They start walking again, this time a little slower, and she reaches for his hand, grabbing hold of his fingers.

"But you like her, right?" she asks, tilting her head up at him.

"She's...nice," he admits, and the look on her face tells him that's not enough. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck with his prosthetic hand. "I don't know. Maybe."

"You should ask her out."

"Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea," he mutters, shaking his head.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I barely know her."

"So? Just get to know her," Omega says, and he sighs.

"It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

"Because..." Crosshair hesitates, trying to think of a reason. The truth is, he's never really had to deal with this kind of situation. He's not exactly the best when it comes to social interactions, and his history with romantic relationships is...limited. It's not something he's ever bothered to think about, but now that it's staring him in the face, he feels woefully unprepared.

"What if she says no?"

"Well, what if she says yes?"

Crosshair doesn't respond. If he's being honest, he hadn't even considered the possibility of you saying yes. He'd been so focused on the negative outcome, the embarrassment, the awkwardness, that he'd completely forgotten about the other side of the equation. What if you did say yes? What would he do then? Would he be happy? Relieved? Or would he be even more nervous than before?

"I don't know," he finally admits.

"You should ask her," Omega urges. "At least, think about it."

"Maybe," he says, and she frowns, clearly not satisfied with the answer. He sighs, and then gives her hand a squeeze. "I'll think about it."

"Okay," she grumbles, and the two of them continue walking, falling into a comfortable silence. It's quiet between them all the way to the front door, and he's almost home free, his hand hovering over the sensor pad, when Omega speaks up.

"I'm just saying," she starts, and he groans, "you should go for it."

"I'm done having this conversation," he grumbles as he tugs her inside, slamming the door behind him. He can hear voices coming from the kitchen, and he freezes, holding fast to her wrist.

"You have to promise not to tell them."

"Okay, okay, I promise," she says, rolling her eyes, and she tugs her arm away.

"No, not okay," he says. "If you tell them, I'll kill you."

"Okay, fine," she huffs, and he narrows his eyes at her.

"I'm serious," he says, his tone low, threatening. It doesn't work on Omega, not anymore, and she just looks up at him, unbothered.

"So am I."

"Fine." Crosshair sighs, deflating, and then, before he can stop himself, the words are spilling out. "So, what do I do?"

Omega's face lights up, a grin so wide it nearly splits her face in two, and he regrets the question almost instantly. "I'll help you."

"What?"

"I'll help you," she repeats.

"You're kidding," he deadpans.

"No," she says, shaking her head. "I have a great idea. Trust me."

"Omega—"

"I promise, you won't regret it," she says, and then, she's gone, dashing off towards the kitchen where Hunter and Wrecker are arguing about dinner.

Crosshair watches her go, and then, with a groan, he drags his hand over his face.

What has he gotten himself into?

The next few weeks are a blur. Omega's been keeping him busy, asking him to help her with homework, walking her to and from school, and the whole time, he's wondering when she's going to bring up her big plan.

She managed to get a score high enough on her extra credit in your class to pull her grade up, and Hunter nearly fell over when he found out. You'd sent a letter home with her, letting them know how impressed you were, and both Hunter and Wrecker wouldn't shut up about it for days. Omega's been bragging about it, too, and Crosshair's heard her go on about how smart and amazing and brilliant and perfect you are, over and over again.

She hasn't brought up her big plan again, though, and Crosshair's grateful. She has, however, started dropping hints here and there, meddling in ways that she shouldn't, and it's getting old, fast. 

He's already had to stop her from inviting you over for dinner, twice, and he's not sure how much longer he can keep her from blowing his cover. More than once, Omega's forgotten her datapad at home, and he's had to drop everything to run it to the school. It's a pain in the ass, but at least it gives him an excuse to see you.

And he sees you, a lot more than he should.

He tries not to get too excited about it, tries not to think too hard about what it means, but it's impossible. Omega's made it her mission to get the two of you alone together, and he can't help but feel a bit like a pawn in her scheme, one that she refuses to share with him. Not that it matters, because it's working.

You're talking to him.

In fact, the two of you have spent so much time together over the last few weeks, that it's almost weird when he doesn't see you. Every morning, when he drops Omega off at school, he makes sure to walk her inside. You're always there, and he doesn't miss the way you look up when the door opens or the way you smile when you see him. You're usually sitting at your desk, grading papers, or helping a student, and he's quick to leave before anyone notices how long he's standing there. 

But every once in a while, when he's lucky, you're standing at the front of the room, and the two of you are able to exchange a few words. It's nothing too special, and it's not as if you're exchanging life stories or anything, but it's enough. It's more than he could've hoped for, and it's better than the alternative, which is absolutely nothing. He even brought you coffee one day, after you'd stayed late to work on a project with Omega, and you'd blushed.

Blushed.

For him.

Crosshair would be lying if he said he hadn't enjoyed that. It's nice, having someone to talk to, and it's nice, being able to see you smile. Even if it's only for a minute or two, and even if his brothers are constantly giving him shit for it.

He's not an idiot. He knows they're all watching him, waiting to see how this plays out, and he's doing his best not to give them any ammunition. Omega's already told him, several times, that they're rooting for him, and he's not sure how to feel about that. The last thing he needs is everyone butting into his business, and he's hoping that Omega will keep her word and keep her mouth shut.

He's not going to say anything, not until he's absolutely sure. And, even then, he'll probably wait. The only problem is, he's almost certain he's run out of time.

Crosshair has been keeping a mental countdown, counting down the days until Omega's finished with school, and it's come up a lot sooner than he'd expected. The semester is over, and it's officially summer vacation, which means you're no longer Omega's teacher. And with that, comes an end to whatever small shred of hope he'd had that something might happen, that whatever plan Omega had in mind would work, and the two of you would end up together.

Which is fine.

Really, it's fine.

He's not hurt. He's not disappointed. He's not anything. He doesn't care, not one bit, and he definitely isn't sulking, not at all, because that would be ridiculous.

It's just a crush. A silly, stupid, fleeting thing, and it's not worth getting upset about. It's not like anything would've happened between the two of you. You're way out of his league, and he knows that.

But still.

He can't deny that he misses the daily interaction, the brief exchanges, the occasional smiles. He can't deny that he'd enjoyed it, and now that it's over, he feels a little lost. 

He jumped at the chance to go to the summer festival with everyone, partly because he didn't want to be home alone, and partly because he was hoping to run into you there. Which is stupid, and foolish, and pathetic, but he can't help himself. He'd overheard you telling Omega that you'd be there, and it's the closest thing he has to a sign, and so, he's taking it.

Besides, Hunter practically ordered him to go, so it's not like he had a choice.

So, here he is, standing off to the side, watching the rest of the family enjoying themselves. It's still early, and the real festivities won't begin until the sun starts to set, but everyone is already in a good mood. He tries his best not to ruin it with his attitude, but he knows he's doing a shitty job of it, and it doesn't help that they're teasing him relentlessly.

"You're moping."

Crosshair sighs and rolls his eyes as Hunter bumps him with his elbow. He's been standing next to him, staring out into the crowd, and he doesn't turn his head when his brother speaks.

"No, I'm not," he replies.

"Yes, you are," Hunter says. He takes a sip of his drink, and then, nudges him again. "Is this about your girlfriend?"

"Shut up," Crosshair grumbles, and he elbows him back, a little harder than necessary. Some of Hunter’s drink spills, and he feels a small flash of satisfaction.

"Ow."

"Leave me alone," he says, and Hunter snorts.

"No, I'm not gonna do that," Hunter says, a hint of amusement in his voice. "It's too easy."

Crosshair groans, and turns his head away, trying his best to ignore him. It doesn't work.

"Come on, just ask her out," Hunter urges, and Crosshair glares at him.

He can hear Wrecker snickering behind him, and when he turns around, the look on his face tells him everything he needs to know. He must've been listening in the whole time.

"What's the worst that could happen?" Hunter continues.

"I could make an idiot out of myself," Crosshair replies.

"So? You already do that every day," Wrecker jokes, and he winces when Hunter smacks him.

"Not helping," Hunter mutters, and Wrecker just shrugs.

"Look," Hunter says, turning back towards him, "if she says no, at least you'll know, and you can stop worrying about it."

Crosshair doesn't respond, too caught up in the sight of you weaving your way through the crowd. You're wearing a sundress, a cute little thing that ends just above your knees, and a flower crown sitting atop of your head, and he can't take his eyes off of you. 

You're walking with Omega's art teacher, a Rutian Twi’Lek laden with jewelry, talking and gesturing animatedly. She has her hands full with decorations for the festival, and you're trying to help, but she keeps shooing you away. He can see the pout on your face, and he can't help but smile, just a little, and then you turn your head and catch Crosshair staring.

He doesn't have time to look away.

He doesn't even have time to try.

Instead, he watches, frozen, as your eyes lock with his. Your face lights up, a bright smile on your lips, and you wave at him. He feels his hand lift in acknowledgement despite himself, and he can't stop the way his lips quirk up into a half-smile. 

He can see Omega trailing after the two of you, a stack of posters in her hands, and she's saying something, but he can't hear her. The only thing he can hear is his heart pounding in his ears, and the only thing he can see is you, your face flushed, and a look in your eyes that's far too soft for him to know what to do with.

"Wow," Hunter says, breaking the spell, and he blinks, the image of you in front of him fading, replaced by his brother's annoying smirk.

"What?"

"I knew you liked her, but I didn't know it was this bad," Hunter says.

"Oh, come on," Wrecker teases, a big grin spreading across his face. "He's in love."

Crosshair can't stop the growl of frustration that leaves him, and the sound makes his brothers laugh. He wants to shove them, or punch them, or something, but he doesn't have the chance.

You’re walking over.

You're heading in their direction, and Crosshair panics, unsure of what to do. He doesn't know how to be anything other than aloof and rude, and he's afraid he'll say something stupid and embarrass himself. He doesn't want to mess this up, and he's terrified he'll ruin everything if he says the wrong thing.

He looks at Hunter, a desperate plea in his eyes, but his brother is no help. Instead, he just smirks and shrugs, nudging Wrecker.

"We should go check on Omega," he says, his tone is casual. "C'mon, Wrecker."

Wrecker doesn't argue, and he doesn't hesitate, following Hunter without a word. Before he can blink, they're gone, and it's just the two of you. Crosshair's not sure if it's better or worse.

"Hi," you say, your voice soft as you come to a stop in front of him.

Your cheeks are flushed, and you're fidgeting. He finds it endearing, and the fact that you're just as flustered as he is makes him feel a little bit better.

"Hey," he says, his voice coming out a bit raspier than he'd intended. He clears his throat, and then nods towards your companion. "Are you having fun?"

You tilt your head and look back over your shoulder, and Crosshair doesn't miss the slight roll of your eyes.

"Yeah, I'm having a blast," you deadpan, and he can't help but laugh. He's grown used to your particular brand of sarcasm over the past few weeks, the kind that only seems to come out when he's around, and he's come to enjoy the way it sounds when it's aimed at someone else.

"Don't worry," he says, "we can be miserable together."

"Well, that's not very festive," you reply, and there's a teasing edge to your voice. "What did the festival ever do to you?"

"Nothing, I just don't like people."

"Fair enough," you say with a laugh. "So, what brings you here?"

"Omega."

"Ah." You nod, and a soft smile forms on your face. "Of course. She told me you'll be helping us out later. Thanks, by the way."

Crosshair raises an eyebrow.

This is news to him.

"Uh, yeah," he says slowly, his eyes narrowing. "What did she say, exactly?"

"She said you'd be helping with the games." You tilt your head and look up at him, confusion in your eyes. "Is that...not true?"

He stares back at you, unsure of what to say. He's never agreed to anything like that, and the idea of working with children is...unappealing, to say the least. He can't imagine why Omega would've said that.

The realization hits him, and his eyes widen.

That little brat.

She set him up.

She's been planning this, and he was too distracted with moping to realize it. He'd let her walk all over him, and now, he's going to have to play along. Because there's no way in hell he's going to tell you the truth, not now, not when you're looking up at him, expectant and hopeful.

"Yeah, no," he lies, shaking his head. "She's right. I'll be there."

"Great," you say, and he's pretty sure you actually mean it. "I'm running the scavenger hunt. And, if you wanted, I could use a partner."

Crosshair blinks, brain stuttering over the word partner, and he must look like an idiot, because you start to backtrack.

"But, you probably have better things to do. I'm sure there's someone else who would love to help. I just thought—"

"No, no, I'll help," he interrupts, and you stop, giving him a grateful look.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Your smile is so bright, so radiant, that it makes his heart ache. He can't remember the last time someone was this happy to spend time with him. He's not used to feeling wanted, and the knowledge that you enjoy his company fills him with a sense of pride he's not quite prepared for.

"But," he starts, his eyebrows raised, "you owe me."

"I know, I know," you say with a laugh. "Anything you want."

"I'm serious," he insists, though the smirk on his face betrays his words. "I'm doing this under duress. I'm being held against my will."

"I'll make it worth your while," you tease, and the way your eyes flash, the playful look in them, is almost enough to make him forget how to breathe. He tries not to focus on it, tries not to dwell on the way his mind immediately goes to some very interesting places, but it's a losing battle. He's sure his cheeks are red, and the knowing look in your eyes doesn't help.

"Uh," he says, his voice strangled, and he has to clear his throat again before he can continue. "Good.”

"Good," you repeat, and the smile on your face turns shy. You take a step back, and then another, and the look in your eyes is...different, softer, and a little more vulnerable. It makes his stomach twist. "Well, I should probably go. But, I'll see you later, right?"

He nods, and you grin. You wave goodbye and walk away, and Crosshair watches you go, a small smile on his face. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes at himself, but he can't stop smiling. It's a dumb thing to be happy about, but it's nice, knowing that you're looking forward to seeing him. And the way you'd looked at him, the hopeful look in your eyes, the shyness, the blush on your cheeks. He can't stop thinking about it.

It's just a crush, and it'll go away eventually. It's just a silly little thing, and it'll fade away. You'll be gone, and he'll be left behind, and everything will go back to normal. He'll get over it.

But, as he stands there, watching you laugh and smile and talk to the others, the sight of you making him feel things that he's not quite ready to admit, he can't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, he doesn't want it to.

By the time the sun sets, the courtyard is packed. The vendors have all set up their stalls, the games have begun, and the music is blaring. Crosshair stays close to Wrecker, using his bulk to help him avoid the crowds, and does his best to ignore the children running around. Wrecker's not much help. He keeps wandering off, getting distracted by the food or the games, and Crosshair is left to wander around alone.

It's not all bad, though.

He's able to keep an eye on Omega, and that's enough to keep him occupied. He knows she can take care of herself, but it's hard for him to relax when she's not within eyesight. And, every once in a while, you catch his eye. You're busy, running from place to place, and he knows that you don't have time to stop and chat, but the small, shy smiles that you give him are enough to put him at ease.

It's a nice distraction, and it helps him stay focused, which is a good thing. Because, before he knows it, it's time for the scavenger hunt. Omega drags him over to the table where you’re waiting, and he can't help but smile at the enthusiasm in your voice.

"I'm so glad you could make it," you say, and the look in your eyes tells him that you really mean it.

At his side, Omega looks far too proud of herself. Crosshair narrows his eyes at her, and she gives him a toothy grin in return.

"Me too," he mutters, and you laugh.

"Come on," you say, grabbing a basket from the table. "Let's get started."

Crosshair nods, and he stands back as you hand out datapads and explain rules to the crowd that’s formed around them. He's not paying attention. He's watching you, listening to your voice, enjoying the way you look in the light of Pabu’s setting sun, and it's a nice moment. That is, until Omega elbows him, and he startles.

"What?"

“She likes you," she whispers conspiratorially, her hand cupped over her mouth.

"Shut up," he hisses.

Omega giggles, and he glares at her, but it does nothing to wipe the smirk from her face.

"I'm not talking to you," he growls.

"Yeah, you are," she says, her voice laced with amusement. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Before he can say anything, you announce that the scavenger hunt has started, and the kids are off. Omega joins the crowd, and soon, she's lost among the swarm of children running past them. Crosshair watches her go, his eyebrows furrowed, and then, he turns his attention to you.

You're smiling, waving at the kids, and he can't take his eyes off of you. This was a bad idea. He should've said no. He should've done something, anything, but instead, he'd let himself get roped into helping, and now, he's standing here, watching you, wishing he had the courage to just say something, and it's driving him crazy.

"Thanks again for helping," you say, turning towards him, and he startles, caught off guard.

"Uh, yeah, no problem," he replies. "I was going to be here anyway."

"Yeah, Omega mentioned that."

Crosshair nods, and the two of you settle into an awkward silence. He shifts on his feet, his hands shoved in his pockets, and he stares out into the crowd. You're quiet beside him, and the longer the silence lasts, the more uncomfortable he becomes.

It's not like you to be so quiet. Usually, you're chatting his ear off, asking him questions, trying to get him to open up, and the fact that you haven't said a word is concerning. You’re shuffling datapads and small trinkets around as if looking for something to keep yourself busy, and he's starting to wonder if he's done something wrong.

He's trying not to worry about it, but the longer the silence stretches, the more his mind races. He knows he's overthinking, and the more he thinks about it, the more anxious he becomes.

It's just a crush, he reminds himself.

He doesn't want anything from you. He doesn't need anything from you. He doesn't expect anything from you. But, as he stands there, trying not to dwell on the way his heart is racing, the way his stomach is twisting, the way his breath catches in his throat, he can't help but feel like a bit of an idiot.

He can't help but wonder if you've figured him out. 

Maybe you know, and that's why you're acting so strange. Maybe you can tell, and you're waiting for him to make the first move. Maybe you're nervous, or maybe, you just don't want him to say anything, because you don't feel the same way, and that's why you're keeping your distance. He knows that's a long shot, but it doesn't stop his brain from fixating on the thought. He can't help but think about how much worse it'll be if you do know.

So, he stands there, and the silence stretches on, tension thick in the air as you cast glances at each other. 

It's not until a couple of kids come up and ask for help with the next clue that the tension breaks.

The two of them are young, maybe eight or nine, and they're struggling. They're a cute pair, brother and sister, and they remind him a lot of his siblings. Their parents are nowhere in sight, and they're arguing, bickering, and it’s not until you crouch down to speak to them, taking the datapad from the boy's hands, that they calm down. You explain the next clue to them, and Crosshair watches as the siblings nod, their faces lighting up with understanding.

He wants to keep watching you, but a second pair of kids approach, and then a third. He can see you’re starting to get overwhelmed, and so he picks up a datapad and gets to work.

Soon, the two of you have a rhythm. You help the younger kids while he helps the older ones, and the system seems to work. He finds himself enjoying the task, and he doesn't even realize that an hour has passed until the scavenger hunt is over and the sun has nearly set. The two of you gather up the datapads, and the kids line up in front of the table, ready to receive their prize.

They're all so excited, and they're smiling and laughing and cheering, and it's a nice sight. Crosshair has never been the biggest fan of children, but these ones aren’t so bad.

He doesn't even realize that he's smiling until Omega runs back over to him, her arms outstretched, and she flings herself at him. She grabs hold of his waist, and she squeezes him tight.

"Thanks for helping," she says, her voice muffled, and he has to swallow past the lump in his throat.

"No problem," he replies as she lets go. She's still grinning at him, her eyes bright, and he can't help but reach out and ruffle her hair. "How'd you do?"

"I won," she boasts and slaps his hand away, and he rolls his eyes, unable to keep from smirking.

"Of course you did."

"It wasn't easy," Omega continues, her eyebrows raising as she speaks slowly. "But I had a great partner."

Crosshair sighs, and he gives her a knowing look, which she ignores.

“Don’t screw this up,” she whispers, and then, before he can say anything, she turns on her heel and heads back towards the others.

You're still sitting at the table, and he takes a moment to compose himself before heading over. You're organizing the datapads, sorting them into a bag, and he takes a seat next to you.

"Thanks for the help," you say, and he nods, a hint of a smile on his lips.

"Not a problem."

"You did a good job," you tell him. He ducks his head, a faint blush coloring his cheeks as you continue, “You’re good with them.”

"Well, you're welcome," he says, his voice low. "I have a lot of practice dealing with little brats."

You laugh, and the sound makes his heart swell. You continue sorting the datapads, and he watches you work, his eyes trailing over your features. It's not until you clear your throat that he realizes how long he's been staring.

"So, um," he begins, trying not to think too hard about the fact that he's been caught. "I was thinking..."

You look up. "Yeah?"

"You owe me."

"Huh?"

"You said anything I want," he explains, and the confusion on your face clears.

"Right," you reply, a smirk tugging at the corner of your lips. You stop what you’re doing and turn to face him fully. "And what would that be?"

"Dinner.”

"Dinner?" you repeat, your eyebrows raised, and he nods.

"With me."

"Are you asking me on a date, Crosshair?"

"Yeah," he says, and his heart leaps into his throat when your eyes light up. "I'm asking you on a date."

"Oh," you say, a soft smile on your lips, and he can't help but mirror it. "Well, how could I say no?"

"Great," he replies, and then, after a pause, he asks, "is that a yes?"

"Yes, of course it's a yes,” you chuckle. You shake your head, and then, a teasing smile forms on your face. "Did you think I was gonna say no?"

"Uh," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was prepared for it."

You snort, and the laughter that follows is almost enough to distract him from the way his cheeks are burning. Almost. He looks away, embarrassed, but he can't help but smile.

"Sorry," you say, stifling your laughter, and he shrugs.

"It's fine."

"No, no, I'm not laughing at you," you say. You're biting your lip, trying to stop yourself from smiling, and his eyes narrow. "It's just..."

"What?"

"This whole time," you begin, and you have to bite back another laugh. "I've been trying to figure out how to ask you out."

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah," you admit, and the shy smile on your face is almost too much for him to handle. He can't believe what he's hearing. "I've been waiting for an excuse to spend some time alone with you, but I couldn't think of anything. So, when Omega mentioned you'd be helping out, I figured it would be my chance."

Crosshair shakes his head, trying to process the words. It's a lot to take in. You've been trying to ask him out? All this time, he's been wondering, worrying, and it was all for nothing? You've wanted this, too?

"Oh," is all he can manage, and it's enough to make you laugh again.

"Yeah."

He doesn't know what to say, so he stays silent. You shift next to him, and you place your hand on his arm, the contact sending sparks through his skin. Your touch is light, but it makes his breath catch, and he doesn't miss the way you smile at his reaction.

“So, do you want to watch the fireworks with me?” you ask, your voice soft.

"Yeah, sure," he says. He's trying not to let his excitement show, but judging by the grin on your face, he's not doing a very good job of it.

"Good."

He's expecting you to let go of his arm, but instead, you slide your hand down, and your fingers brush against his, a subtle gesture that makes his heart race. He turns his hand palm up, and you slide yours into it, your touch warm and gentle. His fingers curl around yours, and the smile on your face makes him feel bold.

Crosshair stands, pulling you up with him, and the two of you walk to the edge of the courtyard, hand in hand. It’s quiet now, save for the music playing over the speakers and the soft murmur of conversation, and the sky is dark. There are only a few people left nearby, mostly parents picking up their children, and no one pays the two of you any mind. You squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back, a smile forming on his face.

You lead him down a set of steps, and the two of you make your way towards a spot overlooking the bay. The breeze is cool, and the smell of salt fills the air. Without the lanterns and torches and strings of lights, it's dark, and he can just barely see your face, illuminated by the soft glow of the moon.

There’s a tree behind you, and it offers a bit of privacy, and the two of you settle against it, sitting on the grass. He can see the bay spread out in front of them, and the waves crashing on the beach, a steady rhythm that helps slow his racing heartbeat. 

He's still holding your hand, and he gives it another squeeze. You lean against him, resting your head on his shoulder, and the two of you watch as the fireworks begin. The explosions are loud, and bright, and colorful, and you point out the best ones, and the ones that remind you of him, and the ones that make you laugh. And, as the fireworks continue, as the colors fill the sky, you lean closer, and he pulls you into his arms.

He's not sure how long it lasts, but the longer the fireworks go on, the closer you get, and the more content he becomes. You're sitting between his legs, leaning back against his chest, and his arms are wrapped around you, holding you close.

You turn your head, the movement catching his eye. Your eyes meet his, and the two of you stare at each other, and the fireworks fade away, forgotten.

"Hey," he whispers, and the corner of your mouth twitches.

"Hey."

"This is nice," he says, his voice low.

"Yeah, it is."

You shift, turning towards him, and your face is so close that he can feel your breath on his lips. He knows he should wait, should give you a chance to change your mind, should give himself a chance to talk himself out of it, but he can't. 

"I—"

"Yes," you interrupt, a mischievous glint in your eyes, and he has to laugh.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say," he teases, and you shrug.

"I'm sure it's something good," you say. You reach up, cupping his cheek with your free hand. "Whatever it is, the answer is yes."

He can't stop the smile that forms on his face. He doesn't even try. He just leans in, closing the gap between the two of you, and he kisses you, a soft press of his lips against yours. He feels you sigh against his mouth, and his eyes flutter closed as he loses himself in the kiss.

The fireworks are still going off, but he can barely hear them, and the cheers and laughter and music are distant, a soft hum that fades away. All he can focus on is the feel of your lips against his, the warmth of your body pressed against his, and the soft sound of your breathing.

He feels you smile, and his heart races, and he has to pull back to catch his breath. He opens his eyes, and he's met with the sight of you, your face flushed, and the most beautiful smile he's ever seen.

"That was nice," you say softly, and he scoffs.

“Just nice?" he asks, half-joking and half-serious. He’s just had the best kiss of his life, and if you think it was just nice, then he's got some work to do.

"Well, maybe it was a little more than nice," you tease. The look in your eyes has him leaning in again, his gaze drifting from your eyes to your lips and back.

"Only a little?"

"Yeah, a little."

"Hmm, well, let's try that again," he murmurs, and you laugh, a soft breath against his lips.

"Alright."

Crosshair kisses you again, and this time, the kiss is deeper, slower, and more deliberate. His hands find their way to your hips, pulling you onto his lap, and you don't hesitate to follow his lead. He runs his tongue along your lower lip, and when you moan into his mouth, he feels a thrill rush through him.

Your hands are on his shoulders, and you're straddling his lap as you kiss him back, matching his pace. The feel of your tongue sliding against, and the soft whimper you make when he bites down on your bottom lip, nearly drives him crazy. He grips your hips, and he tugs you closer, the pressure of your weight against him drawing a groan from his mouth into yours. It’s a sound so low and raw that it surprises him, but you don’t seem taken aback by it. If anything, you seem pleased, and it suddenly occurs to him that there’s a lot he doesn’t know about you.

And, for once, he's excited to learn.

He doesn't want this to end, and when you break the kiss, his lips chase yours, unwilling to part just yet. You're gasping, your breath coming in shallow pants, and he rests his forehead against yours, his eyes closed, his fingers digging into your hips.

"You're right," you say, breathless. "Definitely better than nice."

Crosshair laughs, and he opens his eyes. The sight of you, your eyes dark and your cheeks flushed, lips swollen and red, is almost enough to make him let go of the fragile grasp he has on his control. He wants to kiss you again, and again, and again, but the sound of cheering startles him and reminds him of where he is.

He blinks, and he looks around, and then, he lets out a breath. The fireworks are over.

He hadn't realized.

You're still staring at him, a dazed look in your eyes, and when your lips twitch into a smirk, his grip on your hips tightens.

"Don't look at me like that," he warns, his voice raspy.

"Why not?" you ask. Your hand moves from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, fingers brushing against the hairs there, and it sends a shiver down his spine.

"Because I'm trying to be good," Crosshair explains. "And you're making it very difficult."

"I'm sorry," you say, but there's a hint of laughter in your voice that tells him you're not sorry at all.

"Don't be," he replies, and then, with a groan, he continues, "you're worth it."

Your cheeks flush, and he has to fight the urge to lean in and kiss you again. He knows if he does, he'll never be able to stop, and he'd prefer not to scandalize the locals. Or worse, have his brothers catch him in the act. So, instead, he takes a deep breath, and he moves his hands from your hips to your waist.

"Come on," he says, giving you a gentle nudge, and you pout.

"Fine," you sigh, and you give him a quick peck on the cheek before sliding off his lap. You stand and dust yourself off, and then, you offer him a hand. He takes it and lets you help him to his feet. You're still holding his hand as the two of you start walking, heading back up the stairs.

"So," you begin, breaking the silence, "when should we have that date?"

"Are you free tomorrow?"

"You don't waste any time, do you?" you tease, and he rolls his eyes.

“I’ve wasted enough time," Crosshair says, his tone serious, and you give him a look of understanding

"Yeah, me too."

"So, tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow.”

The two of you share a smile, and he leads you back through through the courtyard. You walk slowly, and you let go of his hand, but the loss of contact is quickly forgotten when you lean into him, your shoulder brushing against his. He's tempted to wrap his arm around you, to pull you close, but the idea of having an audience for that makes his stomach turn, so he doesn't. Instead, he just enjoys the feeling of you at his side, and the easy way you fit into his space. 

It doesn’t take long to make it to the point where you part ways, and the two of you linger, neither one of you ready to leave the other.

"I guess this is goodnight," you say, your voice soft.

"I guess so."

You reach out and grab his hand, and you squeeze it, giving him a shy smile. He squeezes back, and then, without thinking, he raises your hand to his lips and presses a soft kiss to the back of it.

The flash of embarrassment that follows is enough to make his face heat, but it's worth it for the way your eyes light up, and the faint blush that colors your skin. You duck your head, and the small, pleased smile on your face has his heart racing.

"Goodnight, Crosshair," you say.

"Goodnight."

You turn away, and he watches you go, his eyes lingering on the sway of your hips, and the way your hair dances in the wind. You don’t make it very far before you turn around, a mischievous grin on your face.

"By the way," you begin, your voice raised, and the smirk on his face fades. "Tell Omega I said thank you.”

Crosshair's eyes narrow, and his mouth opens and closes, his mind stuttering as he tries to process the words.

Omega set him up, and you knew, and this entire night was her idea. He'd known, in the back of his mind, that she'd been plotting something, and yet, it hadn't occurred to him until now just how much that entailed.

That little brat.

He can't decide if he's proud or embarrassed. He settles for a combination of the two, and the amused look on your face tells him that he's doing a poor job of hiding his feelings.

"Goodnight, Crosshair," you call out, a teasing lilt to your voice.

"Goodnight," he calls back, his tone flat.

You wave goodbye, and then, with a final, knowing look, you turn around and walk away.

He waits until you're out of sight before letting out a groan. Crosshair runs his hand down his face, and he shakes his head, trying not to think about how many times he'd made a fool of himself tonight. His siblings were never going to let him live this down. He sighs, and then, with a roll of his eyes, he starts walking.

When he makes it home, he finds them already gathered in the living room, talking amongst themselves. Omega’s chosen a chair that faces the front door, and her head snaps over toward him as soon as he walks in. Wrecker and Hunter catch on quick, and the room falls silent, the three of them watching him.

"So, how'd it go?" Omega asks innocently.

Crosshair glares at her, his eyes narrowed. She meets his gaze, a challenging look on her face, and he closes the front door with more force than necessary.

"It went fine."

"Fine?" Wrecker repeats. "That's it?"

They’re all staring at him now, and he can feel his temper rising, the heat of embarrassment rushing to his cheeks, and his fingers twitch, aching to shoot something. He forces himself to calm down, to remind himself they’re only asking because they care. Crosshair relaxes his shoulders, his jaw unclenching, and then, he lets out a sigh.

"Yes, fine," he says, his voice low. "We're going out tomorrow."

The room erupts into cheers and laughter, and Wrecker stands, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. Crosshair squirms, trying to escape, but it's useless.

"Wrecker, let him go," Hunter orders, and Crosshair breathes a sigh of relief when his brother finally releases him.

"Thanks, Wrecker," Crosshair grumbles, only to let out a grunt when Omega barrels into him, her arms wrapped around his waist.

"I told you it would work," she says, and Crosshair reaches down and ruffles her hair.

"Yes, you did," he concedes, and the look of triumph on her face has him rolling his eyes. He sighs and extracts himself from her embrace, and he clears his throat. “She says thanks.”

Omega beams, and Wrecker and Hunter laugh, clapping him on the back. They congratulate him, teasing him, and he bears it as best he can, trying not to show how happy he is even as his heart races, and a warm feeling spreads through him.

He hadn't thought he'd have this again, a family, people who cared about him, and he hadn't dared to hope that he'd find something else, something more. He hadn't even known what he was missing until he met you.

And, for the first time in a long time, he's excited for the future.

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[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for almost killing my 8th grade english teacher? (warning: racism, sa mention)

I (M16, 14 at the time, white (this is important later)) was part of the newspaper in middle school. The teacher running the newspaper (F… 50? 60? i have no idea) was always really nice to me, and we got along really well. I was ecstatic to see that she would be my english teacher in 8th grade.

That is, until the class actually began.

This english class we mostly read books about oppression and historical atrocities and genocide because our history class wouldn’t cover that for some reason (the reason is racism). It seemed like this teacher would have done a good job of teaching this material, but well. you can see where this is going.

a week into the school year the whole class saw that she was pretty racist - not like overtly racist; she sort of said she cared about fighting oppression and then… was a part of that oppression. like she’d say “i could never be racist” and then she would be racist. it’s hard to explain. she would always be incredibly weird about disciplining the Black kids in the class, blaming one guy in particular for like. every time a guy in the class acted like and eighth grade boy would act. she was also really condescending to him; she’d constantly make comments about how he couldn’t follow rules (which obviously isn’t true). she did this to an extent to all the other Black kids in the class as well; later when some of them went to the principal to talk about what happened they said they didn’t feel safe in her class.

additionally, pretty much nobody even stood for the pledge of allegiance (we were usually busy reading cause the library in that school was really nice and had a really good collection of books), and when they did they’d never actually say it. this teacher had a problem with this, and every time she saw absolutely nobody in the class standing for the pledge of allegiance, she’d make the entire homeroom (oh yeah i was in her homeroom too, forgot to mention that) tell her why they didn’t for literally the entire class period. Every time someone mentioned systemic racism or racist history she’d butt in either saying “my parents were immigrants and they stood for the pledge” or she’d start talking about her gay son. some kids told stories of being called slurs when they were younger. some kids cried. she would always bring up her gay son as a rebuttal. and i get that being gay is hard, i’m gay myself, but that is not in any way applicable to the situation at hand here. This happened on three separate occasions - sometimes a single person would stand for the pledge just so there was at least one person doing it and so we wouldn’t have to have that conversation.

And then there was the actual teaching. oh boy. so, as i said before, almost all of our books in this class were about some sort of historical atrocity because the history class didn’t have time for it apparently. and uh. uhhhhhhh yeah. with this teacher it was not a good experience.

We had read books about racism for summer reading and we were reading the novel Chains at the beginning of the school year, and the teacher would always talk about how “resilient” the characters in the books were and how they made the best of their situations and fought back, but never about how these characters should have never had to be in these situations in the first place and WHO PUT THEM IN THESE SITUATIONS, WHAT SYSTEMS PUT THEM IN THESE SITUATIONS YOU KNOW THE KIND OF STUFF ONE WOULD NEED TO KNOW FROM A COURSE LIKE THIS TO MAKE SURE HISTORY DOESNT REPEAT ITSELF. Later in the year we read Warriors Don’t Cry and it went exactly how you’d expect. “Resiliency”. Also worse than you’d expect. The teacher victim blamed the author, a real ass person writing about real fucking events, for almost being assaulted at a young age. And though we focused more on the systems of oppression, thankfully, we also watched and interview with the little rock nine and some of the people who harassed them in school, and one of them, a white woman, said the n word and refused to apologize. and this teacher defended her???? On another occasion we had a lesson about feminism and we read some of Sojourner Truth’s writing, and she interpreted it as solely being about womanhood and not race - and when I tried to talk about how race is an important factor in the message of one of the speeches, the teacher called my parents. We also read books about the holocaust and this teacher was surprisingly respectful throughout the whole thing. No victim blaming, no talk of resilience, nothing.

I had talked to her about all of this before. We knew each other from the newspaper, and it even seemed like I was her favorite student. She would not budge. Sometimes she even made the argument that I was smarter than the other kids, that I cared more than the other kids, that I would notice these things and care about them but other kids wouldn’t and I should just shut up because nobody understands me because i’m just so smart. which made me fucking pissed. i don’t care any more than the other kids who told you stories of being harassed and ridiculed at 8:30 am on a weekday so that the whole class could excercise their freedom of speech. i’m not any smarter than the other kids who cited countless examples of the atrocities this country committed against people of color to you who you didn’t listen to. in fact, i’m not even that smart. i’d say i’m kind of an idiot. and i want to be an idiot, because then i’m not put on a pedestal to push other people down.

This happened two years ago so i don’t exactly remember the order in which these next three events happened.

Since during these talks sometimes i’d start to cry, in may my french teacher asked me if i wanted to transfer to her homeroom and i did. It was a lot better there.

Around this time about eight of the kids from my old homeroom went to the principal to talk about this teacher and how her class made them feel unsafe.

Anyway, my backpack is very heavy. I usually have a lot of books in there, until this year I used five subject notebooks, I never clean out my folders and I brought a laptop as well. Even with all this though, my backpack always ends up being heavier than I expected.

So, one day my anger toward this teacher boiled over. On my way out of english class, when she went to say goodbye to me, I shoved her to the side with my backpack. It turns out that broke her hip, and she was out of school for two weeks. When she came back she said she had almost died in the hospital. She also announced her retirement, and that she was going to go and “end racism”, ironically. She knew I was the one who hit her, but she didn’t say anything about that. I was still her favorite, apparently. It left a bad taste in my mouth that she still thought of me like this. Eventually I graduated from that school and I haven’t seen her since.

tldr: A teacher of mine was racist and making a lot of the kids in the class feel unsafe, and she tried to keep me from arguing with her about it, so I hit her with my backpack and broke her hip, almost killing her.

AITA???

What are these acronyms?

[vanhelsing-if]

Tbf the life expectancy being so low in the past has a lot more to do with high rates of infant and child mortality and people dying in childbirth rather than people dying young once they reached adulthood (though I will say post industrial revolution a lot of people did die young from being worked to death, factory accidents, etc before basic labor laws were implemented). On the other hand, my sister had her first gray hair at 9, so premature graying definitely has always been a thing.

Also sorry if this comes off as condescending or anything, this is a really common misconception and it's not a big deal! You just unlocked the history nerd part of me, so I wanted to talk about it a bit!!

yes, i did know about this and don’t worry, you didn’t come off as condescending! as a fellow history nerd i can understand the compulsion (although, my focus is on ancient civilisations rather than the 19th century).

however, i read a study a while ago which showed that (more notably) starting in the late 1800s (more specifically in those born after 1880), women had a higher life expectancy than men. men aged between 50-70 were twice as likely to die than women. this is believed to be because men were more susceptible to cardiovascular diseases than women (although life expectancy did generally increase in both due to germs becoming more understood). so, this is kind of what i was thinking about, but until i just found the paper and re-read it, i couldn’t remember the exact numbers and just took the ones i saw on google as the correct-ish ones without taking infant/child deaths bringing the curve down to about 40yo into account.

obviously, this doesn’t entirely work with helsing because they were born prior to 1880, but i just thought those stats were funny in relation to the older helsing ask, considering helsing can be only a year off of 40 if that’s what the reader decides.

obviously, as you said, premature greying is a thing, so helsing can absolutely achieve their older look lol!

link to the study for anyone who is interested:

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421942112

(some of the studies they reference are quite interesting as well, but many of them you need to either pay or have university or work access).

[is-the-fire-real]

judío por elección (part 2)

(part 1.)

My wife and I started searching for a community after a lot of talking. But, technically, we were already looking.

After E died, S gave us charge over a specific set of books. He had told her that it was vital these books go to a synagogue. He preferred it to be a London synagogue. We had no clue which one.

Shoved in with all the different books he had, and we inherited, was ephemera from different synagogues--pamphlets from the 1980s and 1990s, booklets from the '40s and '50s. We started calling and emailing them about these books, because they were pretty important.

They're chumash with a publication date of 1898.

Problem was, we couldn't get any synagogues to respond. The one who finally did said that they had too many books and could not accept any more. They suggested that E might still be honored if the chumash went to a Spanish synagogue.

The community here, as you can imagine, is struggling. Spain has done a real good job at keeping Jews out since the expulsion of 1492. Most groups operate in half-secret: no website, or a website that hasn't been updated in years; no phone numbers. Half of the people we tried to contact never responded. Most of the rest couldn't support our conversion.

One rabbi from Madrid answered us. She made it clear that we'd have to move if we wanted to attend her group. This was expected and crushing. We're poor, disabled, and pretty well stuck where we are. But then she said that there was a brand-new community in a city closer to us, one we visit with some frequency. She introduced us to their leader.

I have the impression that A would be considered a cantor. He is not a rabbi, but he can lead services. He had a few questions about my wife and I's histories and experiences with Judaism. (Those experiences I'll talk about somewhat, but it's difficult to talk about meaningfully while also maintaining privacy, so it'll have to wait.) He wanted to know if and what we were reading. Then he invited us to Shabbat, which they conduct through videocalls.

This group does not have a rabbi, much less a synagogue. Several of the folks who call in for our Shabbat meeting live in a different city entirely. That person talks about experiences with Mossad. I want to get better at Spanish so that I can learn from her.

There's singing (as someone who's seen Ashkenazi services, the Sephardi tradition sounds amazing), of course, and because there's so few of us, A has my wife and I read sometimes for services. The very first thing I got to read was Psalm 23, which has always been one of my favorite works of art... which A couldn't know when he asked me to read it.

I said I'd stumble at lot. He told me to read it slowly in Spanish, that it's better to read slow and correctly than quickly and clumsily. He seemed pleased with my effort.

I was raised Mormon, and the entire approach to worship was very different, in a way I found appealing. My wife said it wasn't that different for them--they were raised mainstream Protestant, so singing and standing/sitting a lot were normal for them.

When we were asked to raise a glass of alcohol, we asked if it had to be wine. (We're bad Spaniards. Neither of us likes the stuff.) A said that as long as it was fermented, it was fine. One attendant had a gin and tonic.

The last time we celebrated Shabbat, we used gay-pride themed glasses and filled them with beer. "¿Qué tenéis?" we were asked.

"¡Cerveza!", which cracked them all up, and the ex-Mossad member talked about how the Orthodox she used to worship with would drink whiskey.

Setting aside the Shabbat has been, overall, easier than I thought it would be. I check HebCal to make sure when the candles should be lit. I do all my household chores throughout Thursday and Friday-daytime. My wife tries to cook as much as possible before the candles are lit, and we eat, talk, and do our video-call service with the community.

Saturday I set aside. I have to keep reminding myself not to work, to consider things done even if they look like they're not.

But onward.

Our little community is fantastic, particularly A. He found out I'm having problems with some of my IDs. He told us not to worry. He knows a lot of people who work immigration and he can help us go to the right office and navigate the Spanish bureaucracy. ("Byzantine" should be replaced with "Spanish".) He's answered all our questions and invited us to events about the Shoah and personally introduced us to people.

They were so welcoming, so open, so not-rejecting-us-three-times (but if you count all the rabbis who told us no, technically, that's more than three) that it shocked my wife and I. We talked beforehand about how the community might want to withdraw, and not trust new converts, given October 7. We found the opposite. Our local Jews seem to feel that our willingness to look at how the world is behaving right now and still say "Your people will be my people" demonstrates our sincerity in and of itself.

On the other hand, when we first met A in person, my wife made a comment regarding his personal safety. He admitted that there was a man in the room with us who's his armed bodyguard. He and his wife do not leave home on business related to the community without their bodyguard.

My wife felt a cold hand creep up their back when they heard that. I was not nearby--I was checking all the exits of the auditorium and calculating where we'd need to sit if we had to flee. There were "pro-Palestinian" protests going on that day and the odds were there wouldn't be any danger near us, but... but...

Several of A's family members are also converting. We will have to travel halfway across the country to a mikveh. There are many medieval mikvehs in Spain, but to my knowledge, there are only two which are actually in use. My wife says we'll have to do a road trip. I immediately think about how "one Sephardi and four converts go road tripping across a country where one of its favorite dishes was designed as a Fuck You to Jews and Muslims" would be a fucking great novel.

Would be? Will be. And completing this branch of the journey with a journey feels right.

Oh, and my favorite A story: he invited us to spend some time with him and his wife after a community meal. We agreed to attend the meal, but had to leave after. "We have a lot of dogs and cats," my wife said, "we have to return and care for them."

"We'd love to have you," he said, "but it's a mitzvah, taking care of animals. Do that instead."

Afterward, my wife stared at me in wonderment and said: "I don't think I ever heard that once in church."

[tortoisesshells]

2022 Fanfic Year in Review: tortoiseshells on AO3

Thanks for the tag @hmsannlett!

Total Completed Works: 6.

Word Count: 6,925 - strictly from completed works; 105,996 including chapters from Customs and Duties.

Fandoms I’ve Written In: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Blackwell Series, Fallout 4, Band of Brothers (specifically for @mercurygray‘s The Darkening Sky-verse), 1899

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected?: Less, honestly. Real Life Issues have really eroded my down time and mental space, and while I’m grateful to have the opportunity to take care of my family, I do miss the space I had before.

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year?: I love all my children equally. Customs and - uh, hang on. the ink on my hand is smudged.

In all seriousness, though, Customs Ch. 22 “Unused to Home” or [Nellie “Sustained Mental Breakdown” Treat Has A Bad Time] was my favorite single chapter to write, since I finally got to jam the last bits of her backstory in there; my favorite completed fic was probably et mūtam nēquīquam alloquerer cinerem, because I love untranslated Latin and trivia about Boston and the history of the Bonus Army, and unfortunately all twelve of you who read it just had to go along with it.

Do You Have Any Fanfic Goals For The New Year?: Either I finish Customs or Customs finishes me. Curse of the Black Pearl turns 20 this year, and it would be thematically appropriate for me to finish in time for the Big Anniversary. That, and I really only have to [checks notes] figure out the entire back half of that Fallout 4 fic about the putative shore whaling economy of post-apocalyptic Massachusetts that exists only in my imagination and as a flimsy excuse for Piper Wright/OFC.

Most Popular Story Of The Year?: lol. Probably Customs, but pretty much everything else I was lucky to break 50 hits and 4 kudos.

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion: I was never expecting great things for a short character study of the most unpopular character in Fallout 4 but, in the words of the man himself, goddamn. I suppose getting hit with some weird bot or glitch that gave me more kudos than hits on bear your neighbor’s burden is some consolation but ... it’s really not.

Most Fun Story To Write: had you not better make One of us, which features teenage Elizabeth Swann’s growing pains, Captain Johnson’s history of piracy, musing about sharks via shark-tooth fossils, and the as-yet only canon-to-the-original-AU appearance of the late, lamented Captain Samuel Treat. I had fun with the character voices and it was nice to have Samuel doing something other than being dead in a Boston graveyard.

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: I could stand here joking about being even more emotionally shut-down than either of my protagonists in Customs, but I suspect I’ve done that before. Lauren Blackwell’s inner monologue in save me, damn you, for all that I’m not an unwilling psychic in 1970s Manhattan.

Biggest Disappointment: well, it happened two days into 2023, but Netflix canning 1899 was a little bit of a let down to my fic-writing ambitions she says, with dozens of tabs on late 19th century liners and hydrography and radio technology open.

Biggest Surprise: I wasn’t expecting to get into a new fandom with about a week to go in the year, and it feels almost like cheating to say that 1899 was a surprise, since it hits a lot of my narrative buttons. But, yeah, for the sake of argument (and undercutting my own surprise because me? using Emily Dickinson for a fic title? vintage Mercy Street.) covers the Abyss with Trance — So Memory can step.   

Tagging: @mercurygray, @theonlyredcar, @shoshiwrites, @jomiddlemarch, @r-osehips, and anyone else who wants to talk!

[survey--s]

546.

Any recent purchases? Yeah, I had to replace my laptop on the weekend. I got a new Chromebook which seems pretty decent for what I paid.

Have you ever thought about giving up on life completely? Yeah, my mental health was in the toilet for a fair amount of time when I was a teenager and a student.

Have you seen the entire Harry Potter series? Yeah, several times over lol.

Do you still have both of your parents? I do.

Do you live very far away from Kansas? I’m a long way from Kansas.

Do you enjoy cuddling? Sometimes. At this time of year I find it really claustrophobic though as I just get really warm and sticky and horrible.

Do you play video games? Not really. 

How many colors are in your hair right now? My hair is just my natural colour, so dark brown.

Do you have your full license yet? Yeah, I’ve had my license for...five ish years now.

Do you have the same color eyes as your mother? No, mine are darker than hers.

Does your significant other boss you around a lot? Hahah no. I wouldn’t tolerate that shit in a relationship.

Do you prefer winter or summer? Hmm, probably summer overall but I love winter too - they both have their benefits.

Do you know anyone who has overdosed? Yes.

Are you a fan of PDA (public displays of affection)? Nah, not really. The odd kiss and holding hands is one thing, but couples that are draped all over each other all the time make me really uncomfortable.

Have you ever been put to sleep for surgery? No, thankfully not.

Where are your siblings as of now? I don’t have any siblings.

What color shirt are you wearing as of now? A black jumpsuit.

What is your favorite class? I used to love History.

Are you in love with someone right now? I am.

Can you speak any other languages than the one you’re fluent in? Yeah, French and basic German. I can also speak a few words of Spanish and Italian - I can understand more than I can speak though.

Do you take a lot of photos? I take loads at work but otherwise no, not really. I guess I take a few photos of where we live as it’s so pretty.

When you were little, did you think band-aids healed everything? Hahah yes, or wet paper towels.

Have you ever had a pregnancy scare? I was pregnant as a student - I miscarried at about 12-13 weeks.

Where do you download music from? Spotify.

Have you ever cheated on someone before? Never.

Have you ever attempted suicide? Once, yeah.

Do you know what ‘irony’ means? Sure.

How many pillows do you normally sleep with? I sleep with two, but if I’m just in bed reading or online, I use two plus two throw pillows as well.

Do you lose your remote often? No, not really.

Have you ever skipped class before? Sure, loads of times at university.

Are you a regular school skipper? Not in actual school as I’d never have gotten away with it, but at university, yes.

Do you have any Pay-per-View channels? Nope.

Who, in your life, makes you feel discouraged? Nobody.

When was the last time you went bowling? About six years ago in Blackpool. I won, lol.

Do you ever suspect your significant other of lying to you? No. He’s an awful liar.

Are you expected to help fix Thanksgiving dinner? We don’t have Thanksgiving here.

Is there anything bothering you right now? My elbow hurts.

Would you like to talk to someone about it? lol, no, it’s hardly a major issue.

Do you live by any major bodies of water? Yeah, the Irish Sea is about five minutes away.

Do you tend to make the first move in a relationship? It depends, it’s probably been 50-50 over the years.

Do you spend a lot of time with family? No, not really. I’ve never been especially close with my family.

How many times have you been to Disney World, if any? None. I have been to EuroDisney once though.

Have you ever lost anyone close to cancer? Not close, but I do know plenty of people who have had cancer.

Have you ever been accused of being on drugs when you weren’t? Yes.

Do you have a more quiet or loud voice? I tend to go from one extreme to another.

Do you personally know anyone who is transgender? Yes.

When was the last time you got a shot? Uh, my last COVID shot which was about two? years ago now, maybe.

Can you play any instruments? If so, what are those instruments? I can play piano and I know a few chords on guitar.

Do you have any diseases? No.

Have you ever been into a car accident? Yeah, but luckily I’ve never been badly hurt - just bruising and whiplash.

[tstimacstumblinfuntime]

January Book Roundup

The Commodore (”Aubrey & Maturin”, book 17) by Patrick O’Brian, 1995  ★★★☆☆ 

I had more fun with The Commorodre than The Wine-Dark Sea, but not enough to make it all the way to four stars. Jack and Stephen are back in England with all the domestic strife that entails. While I got into the series for the navel adventure, the personal relationships that anchor the novels are what keep me coming back and boy howdy does this one have plenty of that. The book also has plenty of navel action, a good bit of espionage, and a significant digression to acknowledge the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. Another perfectly acceptable book and I’m excited to read the next one. 

Leviathan Falls (”The Expanse”, book 9) by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck), 2021  ★★★★★

For unclear reasons, it took my local library an entire year to get a copy of this one and another two months for me to get my hands on it. Thankfully, it was entirely worth the wait. The final volume of “The Expanse” has all the exciting space action and well observed human drama that made the series so beloved. Not only that, it manages to wrap up the story of the Rocinante and her crew in an extremely satisfying, narratively symmetrical way. As for the plot... gang, this book has EVERYTHING: Malevolent interdimensional dark gods, an ex-Martian space emperor trying to do an “End of Evangelion”, ancient alien history lessons, and a Good Dog who doesn’t die (technically). I obviously can’t recommend the last book to anyone who might be curious, but the series in aggregate gets a hardy endorsement. 

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon), 2022  ★★★★☆

I picked this one up knowing exactly two things: My wife enjoyed it and what the cover looked like. Based on this information I was expecting some seriously spooky eco-horror. I was less than a page in when I discovered it was a retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and adjusted my expectation to a story trading in gothic dread. And there is a good deal of both those things, but it was all filtered through a narrator who felt like a comic relief character who wandered in from a different story. What Moves the Dead is a strange piece that I never managed to get completely into, but it has a spectacular voice to it. This one gets a recommendation, but I’d give it a coin flip if the average reader bounces off or becomes completely absorbed.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, 2022 ★★★★☆

Don’t let the time travel, the people from the moon, or the majority of the book taking place in the future trick you: This is literary fiction, not science fiction. Not even what Margaret Atwood insists on calling “speculative fiction”, this is all literary all the way. I’m not much of a literary guy most of the time. If you aren’t going to keep me interested with cool sword fights or dope spaceships, I’m going to need the writing, themes, and structure to be perfect. And the book almost was perfect, bar one slight stumble at the end when a character says the theme of the book directly to the audience. I’m probably being churlish knocking a whole star off for that, but reviews are always subjective. To give you an idea of how perfect the book is otherwise: One of the characters is an author expy on book tour to promote her pandemic novel that was recently adapted to a popular film only for the tour to be interrupted by an actual pandemic and I didn’t immediately close the book with a sigh. This one gets the strongest possible recommendation to anyone with a passing interest in literary fiction (who have probably already read it). If you’re not usually a literary fiction person, I’d recommend this to you, too. Just know that if you find it a bit dull, that’s entirely your fault.

By the Numbers:

Total Books: 4

Genre: Historical Fiction (1), Science Fiction (1), Horror (1), Literary Fiction (1)

Decades: 1990s (1), 2020s (3) 

Author Stats: Women (2, 50%), POC: 0 (0%), Queer Authors: 1 (25%), Living Authors (3, 75%)

I keep saying “kinda light month” after reading four books, but after three months I’m forced to confront the possibility that I’m a “four books a month” guy. Would have been five if the library app hadn’t torn a book from my hands when I had less than 10% to go, but that’s life sometimes. I’m sure I committed some great sin to cause that reversal of fortune.

Also a much bigger percentage of books from this decade than in previous months, which is always nice. And if I can finish The World We Make before the loan expires in 7 days, next month I’ll finally have something other than a 0 for POC authors. 

Have you read any of these? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. But please don’t tell me what to read next. I have so may books to read, gang. Please don’t stack that tower any higher, I’m begging you.

[c-is-for-circinate]

Okay! I did it! I renewed my library card after a pandemic-and-then-some's worth of years, and I read now.

Which I think means keeping a record or something, probably. If only to keep track of things I do and don't like, for future reference!

Books I've tried to read in the past two weeks, in roughly chronological order:

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir -- never have so many people whose taste I respect disagreed so forcefully on a work of fiction. Plus I had a free epub of it on my harddrive from a Tor thing ages ago, so it seemed like a good place to start. I found it genuinely enjoyable! Gideon was a fun headspace to follow along, and while I absolutely did not go in expecting 'Agatha Christie locked mansion murder mystery, with lots of bones', I was down for it when it happened. A solid choice.

Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton -- DID NOT FINISH. Another random free Tor download. Got about a chapter in and then decided that there was too much cannibalism going on in the weird Regency-esque dragon religion for me, thank you no.

The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson -- DID NOT FINISH. I was sad to not like this one! Tumblr keeps raving about Brandon Sanderson! But man, once you've hit the fifth chapter in a row (sorry, third chapter, there were two prologues first) with a brand new narrator, and one of the previous narrators is dead and you're pretty sure you'll never see two of the other POVs ever again, and you've had three timeskips and you're a hundred pages in and maybe the story is finally actually starting, and there have been a whole two female characters so far (well, one female character and one 'sprites aren't supposed to have gender but this one has boobs so I'll give her female pronouns') and we're supposed to like this one because she's Inappropriately Witty in a way her brothers like but her nursemaids scoff at, which mostly seems to consist of arch remarks about how men don't want to date her...big nope!

A Dead Djinn in Cairo, P. Djeli Clark -- A fun (queer) detective novella, prequel to one of this year's Nebula novels. The worldbuilding was very cool -- 1912 Cairo in an alternate history where magic has recently entered the world, very very grounded in its place and period while doing interesting things with magic and djinn. The mystery felt pretty bare-bones and formulaic in itself, but it was a short novella, without a lot of space for twists. An easy read, and you've got to love a dapper lady detective in a suit.

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir -- I am now officially Up To Date with my various tumblr friends who raved about these books. I enjoyed it! I enjoyed it slightly less than Gideon, I think -- I liked a lower percentage of the characters, and the ones I liked were present a much lower percentage of the time, plus Harrow is just so miserable for so much of the book that it's less fun -- but 'enjoy' is slightly different than 'appreciate', and I did very much appreciate it. Not going to go rabid over the series any time soon, but I'll probably check Nona and Alecto out when they happen.

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, K.S. Villoso -- DID NOT FINISH. Oof, another one I wanted to like, a random browsing pick when I went to grab a hold from the library. The protagonist of this book feels incredibly realistic and relatable as a woman who got married young to a man her family chose, who fucked off and left her with the kid and the family business after an argument, and then showed back up after five years with divorce papers because he wants his 50% of the communal property she's been taking care of the whole time. Which is cool! Unfortunately, said 'communal property' is an entire kingdom, and the protagonist makes zero sense as a queen. She's BAD at her job, in a way that could be interesting to explore as part of her youth/shitty support network, but it really feels like the author does not get just HOW BAD she is at her job. Or what basic logistic decisions could have been made to imply that the progatonist or literally a single member of her staff were even marginally competent. This could be a great setup for a novel about a merchant or a homesteading farmer or a clan leader, but it flopped hard for me.

A Master of Djinn, P. Djeli Clark -- Sequel to the aforementioned novella, and Nebula award winner! This one was, like its prequel, fun, and the imagery and really excellent worldbuilding is 100% its best part. It's very much a detective novel, with certain conceits. None of its characters are particularly layered, everybody is improbably good at sword-fighting, and there was definitely a point at which I was tallying up just how many different incredibly dapper, well-tailored suits in dazzlingly fashionable colors our heroine had worn so far, apparently bought on her civil servant's salary. But at a certain point, you just open yourself up to the joy of an extremely dapper lady detective with a sword cane and a bowler hat and an Extremely Hot Girlfriend who is sometimes a thief. There's an underground jazz club which functions as a speakeasy for no apparent reason but features a brass band direct from New Orleans. At one point Kaiser Wilhelm II shows up. There may or may not be a mecha. Again, the mystery itself is nothing to write home about (a lot more intricate and interesting in the middle than the prequel but still somewhat predictable in bits, and the bad guy at the end was pretty obvious), but the book is fun. Shouldn't dapper lesbian lady detectives get to have that?

In Other Lands, Sara Rees Brennan -- I enjoyed this way more than I expected! I read The Demon's Lexicon years ago, and was DEEPLY unimpressed (I mostly remember it as a mediocre British Supernatural AU made more boring by the process of filing the serial numbers off), but it looks like Brennan and I have both grown as people, because I liked this a lot. It sidesteps the low-hanging fruit of 'why do fantasy lands always need kids to save them? isn't that kind of fucked up?' and goes right for the throat of 'what the fuck kind of sociopolitical system is implied by this child soldier bullshit in the first place, and why is it so easy to be okay with it?'. I found the whole elven reversal of gender tropes grating sexism somewhat wearing, but I liked Elliot as a protagonist a lot. Here's a kid who knows down to his bones that he's bad at people, that he's abrasive and mean and judgemental and impatient, who still values people on just the most fundamental level. Kid's got a -2 to charisma and is still the party face because he's the only person in the entire system who wants to talk first and stab never. I appreciate that, and I appreciate him.

The Unspoken Name, A.K. Larkwood -- An interesting book! I read the whole thing and liked most of the beginning third and most of the end third a great deal, and the middle third well enough with a smidgen of 'I'm a little too ace for this, the Love Interest showed up and it's boring now'. It's a story about...isolation? Abuse, but not the kind that recognizes itself as abuse. In some ways the story feels very scattered, thematically -- a lot of theme going on but I'm not sure how much some of it actually resolves -- but I did really like it. Most of the relatively few relationships in this book, be it friendship or co-worker-ship or acquaintanceship or even just the relationship of a person to a place, are brief and thin, negative or unhealthily one-sided, or just absent, which isn't exactly my taste but does make Csorwe and Shuthmili's mutual understanding the sweeter for it. Fans of Gideon the Ninth would probably like this, although it felt a little less original than I think it might've had I not read that first, and the interplay of traditional fantasy language and extremely casual modern talk felt a lot more uneven. All in all, I think it's a rec if you're into vague unsettled feelings about gods and stories that are more about learning to stand up and leave your abuser than about said abuser ever getting any sort of comeuppance in return. Plus, stubborn lesbian orc girl with a big sword, always a plus.

I have a pile of recs from my last post! I will continue to collect recs! Toss 'em my way, I'm beginning to remember that, oh right, last time I regularly read books I read them voraciously. This is FUN.

[achillieus]

we’re fools. (bucky barnes x reader)

summary: for all bucky barnes knows, he hates clichés. and this thing between you two, happens to be the biggest one.

(enemies to lovers trope or i watched the society on netflix recently and based this entirely on harry bingham and cassandra pressman)

pairing: college au!bucky x reader

warnings: alcohol, angst, too much tension, bucky and reader are stupid and in  denial, sexual tension all around the place

tagging: @tonystankschild​

(other parts)  (masterlist)

part 2/3:

And then it’s the last week of February and you have an assignment together, you and Bucky, the boy with black hair and a mind that you’re certain is not as clever as he insists it is. You know this cannot possibly end well. You feel it when he sits beside you and his knee brushes past your leg. You feel it when you take a breath and smell his aftershave. Sandalwood and vanilla. It makes you want to lick your lips. Please, get a grip. You try to get away, even propose to write the whole thing alone so you wouldn’t have to spend any time around him. In your mind, you call it self defense. But Bucky’s boastful and you can see him pumping the muscles in his neck, trying to intimidate you.

“My dorm, tomorrow at 7,” he says “Don’t be late.”

-

(your late night instagram search history)

(00:38 AM) #literaturememes

(01:15 AM) @buckybrns

(01:30 AM) #newgirl

(01:50 AM) @buckybrns

(02:10 AM) @buckybrns

You find it annoying; how he’s present even when he’s not around.

-

The thing about Bucky Barnes is that everyone, boys and girls, adore him alike. He’s charming, he’s crafty, he’s brilliant. He’s everything they want him to be and even more. It nearly condones his megalomania.

The thing about Bucky Barnes is that he’s aware he has an audience. Always plans his moves, knows how to play his character perfectly. He wears dark designer jeans and plain Henley shirts, buttons open, fabric tight around his biceps. Sometimes even a black leather jacket and a tag necklace. Girls are intrigued by the bad-boy, straight A student contrast, while the boys are envious enough keep him close and invite him to all of their parties. Bucky gives them whatever they need.

The thing about Bucky Barnes is that he’s utterly lonely. He has never said so, but it’s the truest thing about him. He has Sam. But for how long? Bucky’s used to people going away. It has been imprinted on him. His best friend, Steve, left with his girlfriend in an exchange program last month and Natasha, the one girl he ever came close to loving, just started dating Clint Barton. Clint fucking Barton. What a downgrade.

And then there’s you, sitting at the end of his bed, playing with the ring in your finger, reading some neatly written lecture notes. Usually, Bucky would think about 129 cheeky comments he could make to a girl in his room. But not to you. Are you sure, Bucky? He has grown accustomed to disliking you. It’s the one constant he has left and he’s not planning on losing it.

He leans down and takes the place next to you, a bottle of beer dangling loosely in his hand.

He offers and you decline.

“We need to concentrate on the project.”  

“You’re the biggest killjoy.” Bucky says with a hint of a smirk.

“I’m studying, Bucky.” He can see your left hand holding that dark green pen in a tight grip and your eyes trying to focus everywhere but on his face. He can see your hair glistening in the warm afternoon light that comes from his window. He can see the soft red blush on your cheeks and the beauty mark on your neck. What a tricky thing it is to see. And to feel. And to want.

Is that what dislike tastes like, Bucky?

-

He talks a lot, that’s the first thing you notice. He says all sorts of things, most of them having nothing to do with your project. You’re certain it’s because he’s feeling as uncomfortable and agitated as you. But still, it’s annoying as hell.

“Listen,” you say and turn to his side “I’m not going to fail this class just because you have the attention span of a two year old.”

A laugh escapes his lips and you watch, completely in awe, the way little wrinkles form around his eyes and his nose scrunches. Right now, he looks tender and warm. No, he doesn’t.

“I think we’re both pretty smart,” Bucky says nonchalant and wets his lower lip with his tongue, before he adds, “We’ve got this, so relax doll.”

There are rules, things that are solid, de facto.

Example 1: Bucky never praises you. At least not out loud.

Example 1: Not valid anymore.

Example 2: Bucky uses the word “doll” approximately ten times a day. To other girls. The girls he likes. Not to you.

That’s actually wrong, he called you doll the first time you met. That doesn’t count. He didn’t know you then.

Example 2: Not valid anymore.

It feels foreign. Pleasant and beguiling, but foreign.

“You always call girls “doll”. What is this?” You ask and he looks up. “Is it like your thing, your flirt move?”

Bucky meets your gaze, his forehead creased, and holds it for some seconds before he laughs again. Is this amusing him?

“No, I’m serious.” You bite your lip. “You even did it to me when we first met.”

“I did?”

Of course he doesn’t remember, what did you expect?

“Yeah, when you helped me find the admission office.”

“And you remember that, an entire year later?” He raises his eyebrows, looking entertained and partly interested.

Your mind empties and for some time you feel out of place, embarrassed. But you’re quick to recollect yourself. You can’t let him get you.

“It was my first day as a college student, I remember all of it.”

Liar. You don’t even remember who you sat next to.

Bucky smirks a little too long for your liking and then he leans in, his body bending in a way that makes you forget to breath. He’s so close and you only see blue, a rare kind of blue between the depths of the ocean and the brightest shade of the sky at noon. This would be so much easier if he wasn’t that handsome. Handsome and indomitable. What an awful combination.

“Interesting.” He whispers and lies back, touching the wall.

You tuck a piece of hair behind your ear and clear your throat.

“I should go, it’s obvious we’re not making any progress.” You pick your books and stand up. “Sometimes I wonder how you get all those perfect grades, you clearly-” You merely finish your sentence before he grabs your arm and swiftly, he has you pressed against his wooden bookcase. You don’t have time to blink.

What’s happening? He was sitting down a second ago.

“That day,” he says while his thumb draws circles on your wrist. “You were wearing a denim dress and some Saturn shaped earrings. And you were holding a cherry juice box.”

It’s utterly terrifying how your emotions toss and turn the moment you realize what he’s talking about and the fragile muscles of your heart ache because Bucky cares. Bucky remembers.

“It wasn’t my first day of college, but I remember.”

You want to throw up. Or kiss him. You’re not sure. You know you hate Bucky. Do you? You’ve taught yourself to. And it was never supposed to change. It shouldn’t have to.  

You part your lips to say something, anything, but he shakes his head and steps back.

“You should go.”

And you do. And you’ll never tell him, but you’ll always regret not kissing him then. You’re sure now.

-

your inbox, the next morning

(10:25 AM) from buckybrns@gmail.com

              I’m sending you our assignment. You only need to add a few things and it’s done. If anything else comes up, it’s better we work on our own.

-

For Bucky, it all came crashing down the moment he first saw you. It was all over the moment his eyes met yours. A gourmand perfume lingered in the air around you that day and it stained his pores. And it’s been with him since then. Clinging onto his flesh.

It’s partly obsessive and partly romantic and Bucky tries to keep it locked inside. He thinks he can make it go away easily, the way he flicks a crumb off his expensive cashmere scarf. He thinks if he doesn’t talk about it, it’ll be less true. That’s not how things work, Bucky.

Yeah, he’s starting to notice.

And he’s trying so hard to hate you. The problem is, he doesn’t think he can.

(his late night instagram search history)

(00:45 AM) #tomfordperfumes

(01:30 AM) @y/n

(01:50 AM) #funnycats

(02:15 AM) @y/n

(03:45 AM) @y/n

-

You make it your mission to avoid him and it’s going well until the fifth of March. You spot him at Sam Wilson’s party. You should have known he’d be here, they’re friends. There’s a thick cloud of cigarette smoke all around, but still, you can perfectly see him. He’s standing alone, his skin changing colors under the neon lights, a plastic cup in his hand, eyes crystal blue and swollen and fixated on you.

The room is small and everything feels known but unfamiliar at the same time; the atmosphere, his gaze, the lump on your throat.

They’re suffocating you, the looks you give each other.

-

“Buck, what do you want?” Sam asks, holding both vodka and gin and he observes the way Bucky merely turns his head to look at him.

What do you want Bucky?

Not to play a role anymore. For Steve to be back. Maybe, Natasha. No, he hasn’t thought about her in a month. Perhaps a Pulitzer Prize. Definitely a new pair of sunglasses. But there is one more answer he has behind his teeth.

Y/N, he almost says. Always.

“Vodka.”

-

He leaves before midnight and you can’t remember where the urge came from, yet you’re following him. You know he has noticed. But he just keeps walking until he reaches the door of his dorm and presses his back against it. He sees you and you see him and his eyes cut your heart open.

“Your place is on the other side of the building.”

“I know,” you mumble, “I just never got to say good job on the assignment and I wanted to.” You are unable to meet his eyes. You sound pitiful and you want to hit a wall; with your head.

Why the hell did you follow him here?

Because sometimes you do stupid things.

Bucky mockingly opens his mouth, as if shocked. It almost makes you groan.

“Did Miss high and mighty just comment something nice about me?”

“Why do you have to contradict everything I say?”

He shakes his head and you can feel your heart beat loud and irregular and it’s not because you’re mad. It’s because he’s coming closer, almost chest to chest now. And it’s because you can swear, he just glanced at your lips.

“Someone has to, you can’t act like you know everything all the time.”  

“I don’t do that, you don’t know a thing about me Bucky.”

“Oh, but I do. You’re Y/N, you like plaid skirts and Homer and dark green pens. You expect everyone to be perfect. You expect yourself to be perfect. And you always want to do the right thing.”

His pupils are dilated. Yours must be too. Bucky Barnes is dangerous and fatal. He makes your blood coil and your mouth dry. And there’s a tension, almost pain, almost agony, deep in your lungs and it burns. And you don’t know who leaned in first, probably you because Bucky isn’t that brave yet, but suddenly your hands are everywhere. Your fingers blending in his hair, his digging in the skin on the back of your neck. He’s bringing you closer and it’s a mess and all you can hear is the beating of your heart; a rapid vibration between your ears. It’s pure and raw and it doesn’t hurt anymore.

He tastes like ambrosia and a year-old despair and you think you can go on forever. You eventually break apart because you both need to breath and for a second you worry because he looks like he’s ready to cry, but instead he smiles, softly touching your cheek.

“Did I do the right thing?” You whisper.

...

feedback is so appreciated and motivates me tons, thank you :)

[fridayfirefly]

Sunrise on Gotham

Read Sunrise on Gotham on AO3

Masterlist

Written for Maribat March Day 29 - Wait!

Gotham wasn’t Marinette’s first choice for the location of their class trip. In fact, the grim American city hadn’t even made her top ten list. Marinette wanted to go to Amsterdam, a city rich with history and culture. But when Mm. Bustier announced that a vote for the class trip location would be held, the class voted almost unanimously. After all, Lila’s long-distance boyfriend, Damian Wayne, lived in Gotham. Wouldn’t it be great for Lila to be reunited with him? And Lila traveled so frequently that she had already visited all of the other cities Mm. Bustier suggested. Would it be fair to make her go visit a city she had already been to? Marinette scoffed as she overheard the class discussion. She knew that this was just another one of Lila’s lies, perfectly designed to manipulate the people around her into doing what she wanted.

Marinette kept her mouth shut while her classmates all decided to vote for Gotham. But that didn’t stop her from putting her checkmark next to Amsterdam on the ballots Mm. Bustier passed out. Maybe that would have been the end of Marinette’s bitterness if Lila hadn’t “accidentally” glanced at the ballots on Mm. Bustier’s desk she was leaving the classroom. Marinette could still remember Lila’s sickeningly sweet voice, feigning concern for Marinette, asking why Marinette wanted to go to Amsterdam so badly.

As Marinette scrambled for an answer, Alya turned to her with cruelty in her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re trying to sabotage Lila and Damian’s reunion. You’re so selfish, Marinette.”

Marinette didn’t bother replying - it never helped. As she left the classroom that day, she could see the disappointment in Adrien’s eyes. Her crush on the blonde model had long since faded, and alongside it went the rose-colored glasses she used to see him through, back when they were both thirteen. Now, four years later, all she saw was a selfish boy who cared more about avoiding conflict than actually solving problems.

Four months later, the plane landed in Gotham just as the sun began to rise. As her class walked from the airport to the hotel, Marinette felt herself zone out. Even though it wasn’t her first choice, Marinette could still appreciate the sight that was the Gotham skyline. Looming silver skyscrapers were framed by the gray, cloudy sky. As Marinette took in her surroundings, she began to wish that she could stop and get her sketchbook out. Ideas for a Gotham-themed fashion line popped up in her mind like weeds, and she needed to stop and pick them before she could properly zone back in. Gray was a color she had never properly worked with, which would make incorporating the color a nice way to challenge herself. In her mind, shades of gray instinctively started organizing themselves into the different ways she could pair them together.

“Wait!” A hand grabbed Marinette’s arm, pulling her back. Marinette gasped as she realized that she was about to walk onto the street, straight into traffic. She whipped around to face her savior.

The first thing Marinette noticed was his height. She was used to feeling short, at 5′2″, most people were taller than her. But he seemed to dwarf her. She figured he was 6′0″ at least. The second thing she noticed was the look of concern in his eyes. “Are you okay?” He asked.

Marinette nodded jerkily, trying to control her breathing. Having a panic attack alone in the middle of downtown Gotham would be just about the worst thing for her to do. She was supposed to be Ladybug, the savior of Paris, yet she was so unaware of her surroundings in a completely foreign city that she almost got killed in traffic. “I’m okay, I was just daydreaming,” she babbled, “Usually I’d be more aware of my surroundings, but I just got off of the plane and I’m not used to jetlag.”

The stranger had a bemused smile on his face as he walked her talk. Marinette blushed as she realized how dumb she must look to the handsome stranger. “Your accent, is it French?”

Marinette nodded. “I just got here from Paris. I’m on a class trip.”

“Where’s the rest of your class?”

Marinette looked around, trying to figure out which way her class went, but they were already gone, out of sight. “I’m not sure...” She trailed off. “But I have the address for the hotel on my phone, so I’ll be able to catch up with them there.”

“Gotham is known for being difficult to navigate. I can take you there if you’d like.”

“Sure,” said Marinette, pulling her phone out to check the address. “It’s called the Gotham Grand Hotel. It's on the corner of 7th Avenue and 22nd Street.”

“That’s about twelve blocks away. It’s pretty far. Are you sure you’re up for the walk?”

Marinette nodded. “I’m sure I can make it."

His smile returned as he introduced himself. “I’m Damian, by the way.”

“I’m Marinette,” Marinette introduced herself as Damian led the way.

A moment later, Damian's phone started to ring. He answered it while still walking. "Hello.”

A brief pause, then. “I’m on 4th Avenue, by the Starbucks.” Another pause as he listened to the person on the other end of the phone conversation. “I’m not free right this moment, but I will be in a few minutes." Another pause. "I'm helping someone get around the city. She got a little lost on her school trip, and you and I both know that the city isn't exactly safe when you don't know your way around it."

Marinette was beginning to wonder who exactly Damian was talking to, but she didn't want to be rude and interrupt. Instead, she got her phone out of her pocket and sent a quick text to Alya, telling her that she would be a little late because she got disoriented on the hectic Gotham streets.

"I'll be free until five tonight. Father's insisting that I come and have dinner with the family, and I have my internship afterward, from seven to nine." Another pause, this one longer. "I suppose that would work. I was planning on going out to eat at some point, anyway. I'll just have to ask Marinette if she's okay with it."

Damian put the phone down and turned to face Marinette. "My boyfriend, Jon, offered to pick us both up and drop you off at your hotel on our way to get brunch. If you don't feel comfortable with that, I understand."

"Oh, it's perfectly fine," Marinette assured him.

Damian frowned slightly before replying to his boyfriend. Marinette knew that Damian probably thought she wasn't being cautious enough, but she didn't care. After four years as Ladybug, Marinette was confident that she was capable of taking care of herself.

A minute later, a car pulled up beside them. “This is Jon’s car,” said Damian as he grabbed the door for her.

“Thank you,” Marinette smiled in return as she pulled her suitcase in after her. "Hello, Jon. I'm Marinette."

"Welcome to Gotham, Marinette." Jon leaned past the driver's seat to shake her hand. Marinette noticed that he had a very friendly face: a nice smile and kind eyes. "How are you enjoying the city?"

"It's nicer than I expected, I suppose, but I didn't exactly have high expectations. Gotham has a reputation in Europe for being the worst tourist destination in America."

Damian nodded. "That sounds like Gotham. It'll grow on you, though."

"Like a fungus," added Jon.

"If you say so." Marinette cast a distasteful look out the window of the car at the gray streets.

"Do you have any plans for lunch?" asked Jon.

Marinette shook her head. "Not really. The hotel has a restaurant on the ground floor, but their lunch menu is pretty limited. I'm vegetarian, so my only option is a salad."

"Would you like to come to brunch with us?" offered Jon.

"Are you sure you want me there?" Marinette didn't want to be a third wheel if brunch was supposed to be a date between Jon and Damian.

"Of course," said Damian.

"Alright. I don't think I'll be missing anything if I go with you. Our itinerary keeps us pretty busy at the beginning of the trip, but we were given today to rest up, to help get rid of the jetlag. I switched my sleep schedule a week ago, though, so my body is already running on Gotham time.”

Damian nodded thoughtfully. “Do you want to check the itinerary, just to be sure?”

Marinette shrugged. “It can’t hurt to check it one more time.” She pulled the paper out of her suitcase. “Our class doesn’t have anything planned until tonight. We have dinner at a restaurant called..." Marinette consulted her itinerary, "The Coast, and then we’re seeing Wicked at one of the theaters downtown.”

“I've been to The Coast before with my family. They have very good vegetarian options. It is very expensive for a high school class trip,” Damian noted.

“I go to an accelerated school. The school has a very large budget, due to the amount of tuition, and the number of alumni who give back to the school.” Marinette shrugged, a nervous tick. She didn’t like talking about how much her tuition cost. Even with her 50% scholarship to Francois Dupont, tuition was still a struggle sometimes. Her parents didn’t make that much money from the bakery, and compared to the elite professions of some of her classmates' parents, Marinette was often considered to be poor. It left her feeling out of place, guilty every time she felt embarrassed by her working-class parents.

“That sounds-“

Marinette continued to babble. “I’m grateful for the opportunities that François Dupont gives me. Much more grateful than a lot of my classmates, anyway. Some of them only read the itinerary for the first time on the plane ride to Gotham. One of my classmates, Chloé, threw a fit because she believed that the entire trip would be a shopping spree through Gotham. Other students got mad for other reasons. One of my classmates made some promises that she had no business making - telling everyone that we would be getting way more free time than we were actually given. It’s a shame. I used to love being a part of Mme. Bustier’s class, but everything fell apart after...”

Marinette stopped half-way through her sentence and stared down at her hands as she realized that tears had sprung to her eyes. She felt the red flush of embarrassment begin to overtake her face. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize. It sounds like you have a lot going on with your class at the moment."

"That's putting it mildly," said Marinette. "It's been... difficult, to say the least."

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Jon.

Marinette shook her head. "Not really. Even if Gotham wasn’t my first choice for our class trip, I still want to at least try to have a good time.”

“What was your first choice?” asked Damian, a hint of curiosity to his voice.

“Amsterdam,” said Marinette longingly. “But Lila wanted to visit her boyfriend in Gotham, Damian Wayne, so the whole class ignored the fact that Gotham is the most crime-ridden city in America, all so that Lila could visit her boyfriend.”

Damian looked shocked. “Did she say her boyfriend is Damian Wayne?“

Marinette nodded. “Uh, yeah.”

Jon snorted. “I know that you like girls too, Damian, but I figured you would tell me before adding a third to our relationship.”

Damian rolled his eyes, quipping back something just as clever. Marinette was too stunned to listen, as she realized that the rich and powerful Damian Wayne whom Lila claimed to be dating was the same Damian who helped Marinette on the streets of Gotham. Marinette stuttered out, “I didn’t- I didn’t realize that you- you’re Damian Wayne.”

Damian chuckled. “I can tell. I have to admit, I’m not used to not being recognized. I'm pretty famous around Gotham."

“The Billionaire Bisexual Ice Prince of Gotham,” quoted Jon with a grin on his face. “The tabloids love Damian.”

“It’s unfortunate, but it can’t be helped. The tabloids obsess over everything even slightly unconventional, and to them, the bisexual bastard son of billionaire Bruce Wayne is the perfect target. Even more so when he started dating another man.” Damian's voice was smooth, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness to it. Marinette got the sense that he didn't often open up about his relationship, for fear that the media would not be kind about it. Marinette sympathized. Françoise Dupont had been a progressive school: they had a GSA and a no-tolerance policy (not that the policy was ever upheld). She hadn’t been bullied, per se, for being bisexual, but she had experienced the all too familiar feeling of being othered for who she happened to love.

“Nice use of alliteration,” said Jon. His words would have lightened the mood if it wasn’t for the slight strain to his voice.

It was obvious to Marinette that this was a sore subject between the boys. “So how long have you two been dating?” asked Marinette, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Two years, but we’ve been friends since middle school,” answered Jon. “Damian was the world's most uptight twelve-year-old, so I took it upon myself to get him to loosen up. We became friends and everything since then just sort of fell into place.”

“An apt recounting, even if it omitted some pertinent details.” Damian conceded.

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that I was the one to ask you on a date, and you were so shocked that I had figured out that you were bisexual that you dropped the glass in your hand, shattering it,” teased Damian.

“I thought I was being subtle about it,” Jon defended.

Marinette giggled. If she could just spend all of her time with Jon and Damian, rather than her class, she might just have fun on her class trip.

Damian turned to Marinette. “He had a pride pin on his jacket and listened to Carly Rae Jepsen. Subtlety is not, and has never been one of Jon’s string suits.”

Marinette noted that she had a pride pin of her own attached to the front strap of her backpack. Most people never took any note of it - Marinette had quite a few pins on her backpack - but Marinette got the feeling that Damian was aware of it.

"We're here," said Jon, parking the car in front of a little café.

"Café Carlisle has good vegetarian options," Damian assured her as he opened up her car door and helped her out. "They make a superb gourmet grilled cheese sandwich and tomato basil soup. I would recommend it to anyone."

"That's pretty high praise. I get the sense you don't give false compliments."

"I don't." It was a simple answer. Marinette was beginning to get a clearer picture of Damian, who didn't waste unnecessary words but was never afraid to speak his mind.

"Then it had better live up for expectations," teased Marinette.

Damian smiled at her as he held open the door to the restaurant. "It will."

As Damian led Marinette to a booth in the back of the restaurant Marinette caught sight of the reflection of her little group in one of the windows. There was a look on Jon's face that Marinette wasn't sure how to interpret. He had a smile on his face, but it wasn't the joking smile Marinette saw a lot of in the car. It was more of an indulgent smile, giving Marinette the sensation that Jon knew something that she didn't. Marinette wanted to turn around and ask him what it meant, but part of her brain begged her not to ruin this budding friendship before it had even begun.

Marinette had only known Damian and Jon for twenty minutes but already had the strangest feeling that there was a connection between them, some sort of relationship that needed nothing more than a little bit of shown vulnerability to create a deep bond. The only thing Marinette could think to liken it to was love at first sight, but it was beyond that. This wasn't infatuation or obsession (both of which Marinette knew well from her days of crushing over Adrien). This was deeper. This was the knowledge that Damian and Jon had seen her vulnerability and had embraced it, showing vulnerability in their own way. Neither boy had said it out loud, but given that they had both closed themselves off from physical affection as soon as they were in public, Marinette made the assumption that any sort of public display of affection was off-limits to them anywhere that the tabloids could see. It put the fact that they had been incredibly open about their relationship in a new light. It reassured Marinette that she wasn't just imagining their connection. Damian and Jon must have felt similarly about her to be able to talk to her about their relationship.

"Marinette?" Damian spoke her name, snapping Marinette out of her thoughts.

Marinette blushed. "Sorry, I tend to daydream a lot."

Damian smirked. "I'm aware. You almost wandered right into traffic the last time I caught you daydreaming."

Jon stifled a laugh. "What could you possibly be thinking of that would make you so focused that you managed to ignore the traffic right in front of you?"

Marinette launched herself into a spiel about her newest design inspiration, explaining as she went that she was incredibly passionate about fashion and designs and that her designs often had her zoning out for hours at a time. Jon and Damian looked so interested in her explanation that Marinette blushed, not used to having anyone's undivided attention.

Marinette wasn't yet certain where she stood with Damian and Jon in terms of the relationship between the three of them, but she couldn't wait to find out.

@maribatmarch-2k21

[maggiec70]

Another Review, This One about Marie-Antoinette and the Revolution I promise that this is the last one for some time. Thanks for being kind and not slamming me for my indulgence.

Trianon: A Novel of Royal France

Elena Maria Vidal [aka Mary Russell, and self-published by her Mayapple Press]

Prelude: I originally posted this review two years ago, in May 2013, where it received a 50/50 split between helpful and not helpful votes. Normally I wouldn’t care what sort of votes or comments any of my reviews attracted, since my reviews are simply my opinion of the books I buy—or borrow—and read. However, two of the many vehement and outspoken fans of this writer were so livid that I disliked this book that they expressed their outrage by posting one-star reviews on a book I wrote, which neither of them read, and boasted about their little exploit on comments to someone else who shared them with me. So to prevent further damage, I removed this review. But I’m not happy with the path of least resistance. If I wanted that I’d never give any review less than five stars, right? So I am reposting this review, and I expect some of the folks who adore Trianon because of its overarching theme of Christian/Catholic piety and forgiveness will return here with their most un-Christian brickbats. Let’s see how long it takes…

My Review originally posted on Amazon and Goodreads in 2013, and removed in 2019:

No author can deliver either “The True Story” or “The Real Personality” of anyone. No author whose work is liberally larded with endnotes and a dense, lengthy bibliography can do it. No author who admits she or he is writing historical fiction can do it, either, despite “years of research.” A writer is only as credible as his or her research, and if the writer approaches the arduous task of research with preconceived ideas, or conducts research as if it were some sort of divine mission, the resulting work will have problems.

This story of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette has problems--a great many of them. In her preface, the author states that all characters were real people, which is perfectly true. She states that the “incidents, situations and conversations are based on reality.” That claim is not so true. Whose version of reality, for example, are we to believe?

From the preface we know immediately that the author’s work is an “attempt to correct many of the popular misconceptions” about Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. She claims that these misconceptions have been promoted by “secular and modernist historians,” and asserts Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette can “only be truly understood in view of the Catholic teachings to which they adhered and within the context of the sacrament of matrimony.” Surely no one takes this allegation seriously? If you do, then it is like saying these two people were defined then--and are being defined now--by nothing other than their religion and their marriage. Even someone with minimal knowledge of this period of history knows better that that. But there is more in this vein: “The apocalyptic events through which [Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette] lived dealt a serious blow to Christendom from which we have not yet recovered.” Certainly no reasonable person with any knowledge of history can believe the entire French Revolution was either apocalyptic or a lingering canker on the body of civilization. To be perfectly fair, the author warned me of her mindset, but I really couldn’t wait to see how Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette would be rehabilitated, cleansed of all the failings and wickedness unjustly assigned to them by all the secular historians who believe the vile, revolutionary propaganda, and then magically transformed into two of the most saintly people ever to rule anywhere at any time.

This story is hagiography, not history, and not even good historical fiction. The author uses hyperbole, hysteria, cloying 19th century-style purple prose, clichés, and some sophomoric punctuation and dialogue. I can understand wanting to show one’s readers another side of a person, or in this case, an entire family, and show this aspect based on solid research if one is a historian, or less strenuous research if one is not. However, I can’t understand inundating a reader on every page with glowing, breathless, adjective-laden descriptions of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, a few of their family members, and even fewer lesser folk. In order to further emphasize the too-good-to-be-true nature of the king and queen, their children, the king’s sisters, and the queen’s intimate friends, everyone else in Paris or Versailles or Le Petit Trianon is simply bad, or immoral. These morally bankrupt folks include intellectuals or freethinkers, atheists, Freemasons, philosophes, Protestants, Jews, and every single revolutionary of every single political stamp.

I find it hard to accept, for example, that Marie-Antoinette had the most radiant skin in all of Europe, perhaps the world, or that Louis XVI was so much like Saint Louis, the crusader king. Especially amusing was the second chapter supposedly seen from the nine-year-old Madame Royale’s point of view, which provided a wealth of details of the largesse, magnanimity, and saintly nature of her parents. This chapter also provided a wealth of details about the sweet, kind, delicate, and utterly beautiful intimate friends of the queen, de Polignac and de Lamballe. Of course, most of these details are well outside the purview of a child, and expressed in a style foreign to a nine-year-old.

There are some entertaining inaccuracies throughout the book, which makes me wonder about all those alleged years of research, and some hilarious bits that I do hope never appeared in any historical document. Ever. For example, Marie-Antoinette’s lengthy conversation with Madame Elisabeth about her opposition to French aid to the American “rebels”--those dreadful people rising up against their lawful king, inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s Masonic cabal--had me on the floor. For all I know, Antoinette may have said this, as well as the absolute drivel that followed about how admired Louis XVI was, even to the extent that her brother, Joseph, allegedly came to France to see “for himself why [her] husband was so loved by his people.” Despite the author’s magnificent--and completely specious--spin on the nature of Louis XVI’s and Marie-Antoinette’s utter lack of intimacy in the first six to seven years of their marriage, Joseph came to talk to his brother-in-law about the facts of life. There is not, I think, any evidence for the claim that Louis XVI was universally beloved by his people, even the “simple people” or the peasants, as the author loves to go on and on about, though she does so in a noticeably patronizing manner. There is definitely no evidence for the claim that the much-maligned philosophes and freethinkers feared Louis XVI “despite their derisive and nasty comments [about the king].” I was also intrigued by Louis XVI’s comment about how the birth of his son and heir “nearly coincided with his [??] victory over the British at Yorktown.” Such hubris from a would-be saint, and completely inaccurate, of course.

When the Estates-General met on May 5, 1789, Louis XVI’s speech to the assembled delegates was “magnificent...echoing with all the ardor and majesty of the Bourbons.” Not according to quite a number of delegates among all three estates, including some underwhelmed clerics in the First Estate; they said Louis mumbled, was nervous, and mostly inarticulate. The good, kind, benevolent governor of the Bastille, the marquis de Launay, was indeed attacked by the sans-culottes, but “the dreadful Marquis de Sade” was most definitely not in residence in the Bastille, having been released from the Bastille ten days earlier. It is also difficult to claim there was nothing but “flimsy evidence” against Louis XVI at his trial, and the only charge brought was that he gave money to the poor “to enslave the nation.” There were thirty-three specific charges, most of which were substantiated by copies of the king’s correspondence found in the infamous iron box in the Tuileries Palace. I was amazed at the statement that on September 2, 1792, “there began five days of carnage unlike anything Paris had experienced since the days of the barbarian invasions.” Apparently the author hadn’t heard about Catherine de Medici, regent for her son, Charles IX, who ordered the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre on the occasion of her daughter’s marriage to Henry of Navarre. In that case, a Catholic queen ordered the deaths of more than 3,000 French Huguenots in Paris alone, twice that of the casualties of the September massacres. Sometimes history can be inconvenient for the story one is trying so desperately to tell. Madame Royal’s husband did not go to Italy to fight Napoleon, thus proving himself to be a brave and able soldier. He commanded a cavalry regiment in the Bavarian army and fought not Napoleon but General Jean Moreau at Hohenlinden. It was a decisive French victory, and the duke was certainly on the wrong side of it. Napoleon was not a friend to Maximilien Robespierre; he knew his brother Augustin, and was actually imprisoned briefly after Robespierre was executed on 9 Thermidor because of his alleged Jacobin sympathies. Napoleon did not “fire grapeshot upon a crowd of poor peasants rebelling against the revolution.” He fired on a faction of the Royalist army led by émigrés and outnumbering Bonaparte’s forces roughly six to one. But grapeshot is indeed a great crowd leveler.

In her effort to sanctify Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the author has criminalized virtually everyone else. This trend begins with the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and continues unabated until the last page. The king, the queen, the various mesdames of France, the friends, the children--all are saintly, heroic, courageous, full of fortitude, true to their faith, and so forth and so on. The revolutionaries are all several rungs below beasts, and made up of unrelentingly bloodthirsty, vicious, crude, nasty, and godless mobs who tear innocent folk apart. This is black and white, and it does not work. It is dishonest, it is inaccurate, and it is, at the end of the day, just plain ridiculous. Even Georges Lefebvre, the respected French Marxist historian of the Revolution, was far more subtle in his description of the entirety of this great event in terms of economic determinism that this author is here with her maudlin, hagiographic portrayal of two people who were, after all, not much in the way of royalty. Their deaths define them far more than their lives ever did, I think.

The most dishonest aspect of this book is, of course, the shrill insistence that Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were somehow Super Catholics, that their faith was deeper and more worthy than anyone else’s, except for a select few family members, and that they were defined by their Catholic faith. I think that is the author’s view, not how the king and queen would see it. Either way, to view anyone through the single prism of religion--or gender, or political affiliation, or economic status--or any other lone defining characteristic is to fail to understand anything at all about the person, or persons, or the age in which they lived.

There are legions of folks who gush endlessly and fatuously about Marie-Antoinette, if one considers the amount of historical fiction churned out about her. There are probably enough folks who think Louis XVI was worthy of sainthood, as was Marie-Antoinette. The Church did not—and has not—come to that conclusion. There was nothing remotely special about these two royals, other than the fact that they were wrong for the times in which they lived, rather like Nicholas II and Alexandra. Oh, well, some Russians are also trying to turn them into saints.

Postscript: The enraged, saintly author of this saintly garbage attacked me personally for my review, as well as a review of a friend of mine. Then she tried to contact our employers to complain about what dreadful people we were. She indulged in several inflammatory screeds on her blog, Tea at Trianon, that were clearly beyond the pale, and it was here that she doxed both me and my friend.

I got her banned from Goodreads and all her reviewing privileges removed from both Amazon and Goodreads.

I also find it eminently fitting that she launched another blog in 2016, this one in support of all things Trump.

[ren-c-leyn]

Happy WBW Ren! So there is a village with scars from the Mad War?👀 Am I getting a bit of nostalgic melancholy something was lost but we continue on theme vibe...?

What were the consequences of the Mad War anyway? It must have been a large scale conflict that influenced the world and adventures in how they are today.

Other than that I would like to ask how your projects are going in general, I like me some Ren work updates^^

@writingonesdreams

Happy WBW to you too, Dreams~! :D

Very good and very relevant questions. I've been developing the Mad War and it's impact more closely recently since it's been coming up more and more, such as the village in question.

There are many towns, villages, fortresses, and even cities that still bear the scars of the Mad War. The one in question comes up in the first chapter of the Stormy Road Ahead arc. So, while it is unfortunately unavailable to be read in full at the moment, I have decided to paste it's description below your customary read more, since you are one of my favorite enablers and have been a huge help in motivating me to work hard on multiple projects. So, hopefully that'll help paint the scene for you as you go through my long, rambling explanation of the history of the Mad War, it's effects, and so on.

So, I hope you're in your comfy chair, and allow me to just hand you your gold star now because I think this is my longest ramble to date. If you have follow up questions, you know where to set your bait to lure more rambling out of me.

Happy reading ~!

(Warning, there are mild spoilers in here. 1 paragraph of text from The Stormy Road Ahead arc and some mild story elements of The Guild Masters' arc. Nothing too major, but if you don't like spoilers, you may want to throw this in your drafts until after you've gotten past chapter 1 of The Stormy Road Ahead arc. Also, trigger warnings for both people and animal deaths. Tread lightly if this sort of thing bothers you.)

This place had a different feel than that town. Older, quieter. Like the guild hall separated two completely different eras in time instead of neighboring settlements. This place seemed far more familiar with Trouble's well of sorrows as well. Some of the buildings bore scars where newer materials had been used to fill gaping wounds. Hollowed trunks of broken trees stood like tombstones in some of the yards, while others housed the ruins of long destroyed homes. Not such an odd sight in the world outside of the towers, but it still saddened him each and every time. The Mad War had taken much from many. ~ The Shackles of Time chapter 17 - The Stormy Road Ahead, Part 1.

So, yeah, this sense of lose and melancholic nostalgia is a running theme with The Shackles of Time. I knew it was going to be present since I had the Mad War, Wyndulin and The Time Keeper's backstories, and a bit of the history behind The Dawn Isle guild figured out before hand, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite as in the spotlight as it is. Not that I mind, it's an interesting aspect to the story. It is, however, something I do need to be careful about how I balance. It'd be easy for the entire story to get swallowed by it if it's mishandled.

So, I'm going to start this with a bit of a heads' up, some of this stuff will come up in character in The Guild Masters' Meeting arc. So, if you want Wyndulin's take on this, chapter 3 of it has him talking through it with a younger guild master. It also has his friend, and fellow legend, Monster Slayer Myria talking about her experiences with pre-Mad War life. So, yeah, there's some extra context for you later regarding the culture shift as the people themselves see it.

Now, The Mad war isn't actually wasn't that long ago. It actually was less than 50 years ago, a very short time in the grand scheme of things. However, it is widely regards as the death of an era and the birth of a new one, that is how destructive and devastating it was and how far reaching it's consequences were. The Mad War, as it was dubbed by particularly dramatic bards, was the result of the Mad God, a literal divine God, opening ancient portals to other realms fully.

These portals are known as The Shadow Gates. Not much is known about them, but they are forged out of an extremely strong material that no current means can harm, and seem to be one way portals only. I imagine a few mad mages have tried various experiments to get to the other sides, but if anyone of them succeeded, no one has heard tale of it. No one knows who or what created them, or exactly how ancient they are, but they have been referenced throughout the entirety of history. Documents recovered from the lost cities and other ruins even occasionally speak of them with aw and horror.

The Shadowed Gates are, most famously, where most the monsters that plague the world came from. It is theorized that they are also where the massive monsters who giant bones dot the landscape also came from back in a forgotten age where they were flung fully open, though there is no hard evidence of this. What is known for certain is that they seem to fluctuate in activity, leading to eras that have more monsters and chaos than others. They are basically indestructible, though hundreds of people have tried. And they are where The Mad God got his army from.

He opened all of the gates and invited the monsters and fiends to cross through the threshold and then gained control over them, organizing and coordinating their attacks against mortals. It is uncertain how many died. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe more. The places hit hardest were the regions closest to the gates. Entire cities were destroyed over night, armies slaughtered, fields burnt, and even the wildlife devoured. After the initial shock of the event, the armies, adventurers' guilds, mages' guilds, and mercenary guilds started coordinating and working together. They set up battle lines to halt the advance of the monsters and fiends, but could not gain ground against them. They were fighting a God after all. Then, The Time Keeper put forth her theory of sealing the gates and the Mad God. The leaders agreed, and the mages set to work.

While The Time Keeper was an active participant in the battles, her most important contribution to the war was helping develop the seals that were used on the gate and then tear a hole into the divine realm and battle the Mad God before sealing him away as well. The Time Keeper paid a very, very steep cost for this victory however, one she's still struggling to come to terms with.

There are some guilds of all kinds that were wiped out during The Mad War, some cities that were completely lost and never rebuilt, and a major shift in religion. Angry mobs attacked temples, priests and priestesses turned their backs on the Gods, people threw their faith away or turned to other entities to put their beliefs in, such as spirits. The few temples that remain are mostly attended and up-kept by those who are very entrenched in the old ways and those whom believe the Mad God was not a true god or had been driven mad by some corrupting force, though no shrines are left for the Mad God. Even his name was stripped from the records. It is actually illegal in every country with a Shadow Gate in or near it to speak his name, little alone worship him. He is to be forgotten. Though I am sure there are a few secret doom cults that still worship him in secret and seek to return him.

During the Mad War, there were several books and guides written by seasoned adventurers on monsters. Their behaviors, typical tactics, strengths, and weaknesses all written out and illustrated. They were produced in mass and passed out to mercenaries, mages, soldiers, volunteer fighters, and rookies to help them better fight in the Mad War. This was a major boon during the war and also assisted in the eradication efforts against the monsters of the guilds after the Mad War was over, which helped contribute to the current era of relative peace.

However, with as much and as complete as the destruction was, many people had to find new ways to live. Sources of every day essentials were destroyed, people who had been hulled up in protected places often returned to find their homes and businesses and means to make a living destroyed, families were broken apart in the chaos and unable to find each other, among hundreds of other tragedies that completely reshaped peoples' lives. I imagine food was a huge issue during and after the Mad War due to the slaughter of livestock and the ruin of farms, but there probably was very limited access to any sort of goods with trade routes in such disarray. It lead to the increase of traveling merchants and the rise of several merchants' guilds, many of whom still hold a great deal of power over the moving of goods and maintenance of trade routes after establishing themselves in the aftermath of the Mad War.

On an interesting note that probably had more of an effect on the war than the aftermath of it is is that the era before the Mad War was one in which the gates were seeing elevated activity. So there were more monsters, more attacks, creatures getting bold enough to try their luck in cities, and also random dragon raids until The Time Keeper put a stop to that. It was a very hard time to be alive, but as a result there were more people who were raised learning to wield at least simple tools as efficient weapons, learning magic, and other means to protect themselves. It was also a generation prone to making tough choices and had to be willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of survival. I think that that may have been a big factor in Mortals' success against the Mad God and his hoards. They had experience in dealing with monsters, in fighting for their lives, and still they lost so much.

Now, you and I have talked at length about some of the other cultural shifts related to this event, like the adventurer's guilds and their relationships with the people and their reputations and affects on the culture. So I believe that's all I have for the first part of my answer right now.

As for your update - I don't have much to report. I've been working more on the Anniversary specials and I've recently picked up Stardew Valley on a steam sale and yeeeaaah, that game is super addicting and has been a fun break to let my brain rest between bouts of sudden creative sprints, so a lot of my writing has taken a bit of a backseat for the moment. I do still have a bit of an update for you, though. :D

I'm almost finished with the second piece of the Anniversary event special posts. Yes, I am still only on the second. It turned out to be way more complicated than I was originally expecting but it is coming out well. I'm glad I started these pieces way early, because I may not have been able to get all of this prepped in time, otherwise. Though I imagine the next piece is also going to be a bit complex, particularly since the format is new for me. But I think that even with me working with a new thing, the third celebration piece will probably be your favorite of all that I have planned, and the only spoiler I will give for it is the link to the incorrect quote that inspired it:

I confirmed how the elf prince was assassinated in Dark Princess wip. I went for the theatrics over the practicality and then reverse-engineered the reason for why they went with a flashy method because I loved the mental image that much that I decided to latch stubbornly on it. The joys of self-indulgent writing, lol. But the very flashy and public assassination method will also make some of the more mystery-like aspects a bit easier on me. So, that's a big step forward. I may have enough to start it soon, but I want to clear some stuff off my plate first since Dark Princess is a big, delicate project with a ton of moving pieces. It's probably not going to get the green light until I at least get Forgotten Gods' draft 2 out of the way, and may not begin until I get a lot of Shackles of Time chapters banked. It's definitely one that I'm going to have a notes document to keep track of everything on because the small details are going to be critical.

I'm playing with some ideas for the trio's third quest and the final part of Glenn and Zephyr having to tag along with them. I haven't quite decided on one yet, but I'm also thinking about another arc before their third quest due to some things that cropped up during the final chapter of The Guild Masters' arc that may make more sense overall, though it will keep the trio at the guildhall longer. Which might not be a bad thing since I have some plot threads and foreshadowing for future events I can pull on there. Plus, I'm missing some of those side characters. On the other hand I have a big, shiny chaotic world I want to drag the characters through.

So, I guess we'll all see what I decide to do after I wrap up the Stormy Road Ahead arc when I get there. Not sure if I'm happy with how the current chapter I'm on is going, so I am probably going to back up and try writing out an alternative one to see which version I like more. It just kind of feels out of place and too much, but maybe I just need to step back for a little bit then reread the arc as a whole. We'll see.

So, yeah. I'm still cooking up things, but progress will be slow for a little while.

Thanks for stopping by, Dreams~! have a lovely day/evening.

[jaxsteamblog]

Flirt

Click here to read the entire fic on AO3

Katara straightened her crown in the mirror, turning her head side to side to make sure it was straight. Her wavy hair had resisted the pin, and the thickness certainly fought the top knot, but she had eventually managed to get the thing on.

“Are you sure it doesn’t look silly?” She asked.

Zuko came into view behind her, sliding his hands around her sides to hold her lightly. 

“As silly as mine does in modern clothes.” He replied and kissed her soundly on the cheek.

“I don’t think it’s made for hair like mine.” She muttered.

“Sounds like a design flaw, not a you flaw.” 

“Mmm.”

“Mmm?”

“MMM.”

Zuko kissed her cheek again and backed away. The loops usually at the side of her face had been pulled back to start a simple sort of braid. The beads were still present, and she was wearing her necklace, but the crown stood out as an accessory.

“I know it’s a flame, but doesn’t it look a bit like a crescent moon?” He asked.

“That’s a stretch.” Katara said.

Skittering claws came into the room and Katara turned as Druk bounded toward her. He was less than a year old but already the size of an adult owl cat. His wings were still clumsy and he could only fly short distances, yet his legs were powerful enough to send him racing down hallways.

He terrified the palace staff and greatly annoyed the also still alarmingly growing Mister Whiskers. 

“Don’t.” Zuko warned both Katara and Druk. Both of them ignored him and Druk launched himself at Katara, making her stagger as she caught him.

“He can’t jump up on people like that.” Zuko grumbled. “It’s poor manners.”

“Aww, my sweet baby just wants attention.” Katara cooed, rubbed her nose against Druk’s snout. He smelled like soot and heat, and Katara cuddled his chest close to her face. He nipped at her crown and Zuko sighed in annoyance.

“A dragon shouldn’t be carried like a toddler. It’s undignified.” He said finally and Katara turned to him. 

“How dare you say such a thing about our boy.” She said. 

“This is why he’s a brat when you’re gone.” 

“Of course, he misses his momma.” 

“You both are deranged.” 

Katara kissed Druk’s scaly head and set him down. The dragon hopped indignantly, blowing out bursts of flame.

“You know he’s going to be a terror when we have actual children.” Zuko said, holding out his arm. Katara linked to him and held on with her other hand.

“Why do we even need anymore? Let’s just crown Druk and the Fire Nation can have an actual dragon as it’s Fire Lord instead of making up all these fancy honorifics for you.” Katara said.

“If history is any indication, they might not tell the difference.” He agreed.

Walking out of their bedroom, Druk followed them closely. Having returned with a dragon, the court and the city of Caldera had changed its attitude toward Zuko. The rest of the world still thought dragons were extinct, so Druk was a miracle bestowed to their Fire Lord as a sign from the spirits. As they had all sworn an oath never to speak of Ran and Shaw, no one disabused people of that notion. 

Now, even the prime minister had quelled his adversarial politics. 

Ozai and Azula both had been recorded as having thrown massive fits about it. 

Katara and Zuko headed toward the ballroom, watching with wry amusement as the staff jumped out of Druk’s way. When they reached the massive double doors, Katara called Druk and held him again, knowing that he didn’t do very well in large groups of people. 

“Fire Lord, Fire Lady.” A member of the house staff jumped when he opened the door, seeing the royal couple on the other side. 

“We wanted to see how everything was progressing.” Zuko said.

The man glanced at Druk, curled in Katara’s arms and she smiled back at him. 

Being favored by a dragon was also helping her image at the palace as well.

“Of course.” The man said, stepping to the side. 

Katara followed Zuko inside and looked around. While Zuko himself wasn’t overly interested in celebrating his birthday, there were expectations for the Fire Lord. These expectations somehow included the Water Tribe Ambassador rearranging all of the flowers. 

A sour faced man approached them, bowing obviously to Zuko and leaving Katara in her place at his side.

“Is everything to your liking, Fire Lord?” He asked.

Zuko turned to Katara and idly scratched Druk’s crest. 

“Lady wife?” He asked.

“Yes?”

“Everything pales in comparison to the luminary beauty of yourself. I am unable to adequately judge these offerings with you standing so close to me.” 

Katara smiled and had to keep herself from laughing.

“How can I do any better? The light of your loveliness blinds me to anything else.” She remarked. 

“My most prudent and beloved queen, I beg that you give me some words to describe this room that does not degrade your glittering visage.”

“Oh honorable husband, for that you would have to leave my sight and I could not bear to stand in such darkness.”

“I think,” The sour faced man said bitterly. “I will have to trust the Fire Lady’s most esteemed brother then?”

“Sokka is a marvel, I think that might be best.” Katara said, wrinkling her nose and giving the man a patronizing look. 

The man bowed to them both and walked back to the activity. Zuko did laugh softly then and Katara turned back to him.

“Light of my loveliness?” He asked.

“Glittering visage?” She countered.

“Hey, the words may have been stuffy, but they were still true.” He replied.

“So what words would you really use?” Katara asked. 

“Hmm,” Zuko thought and took some of her hair in his hands. He stared at it as he rolled the strands under his fingers.

“I would start by saying how devious fate must be to make my love part ocean spirit as I most certainly am in danger of drowning when you’re around.” He started and twirled her hair around his fingers. “You take my breath away, but also, there are times when I don’t feel like coming up for air.”

“Zuko!” Katara whispered sharply, her face heating up in a flash. 

Zuko only smiled and released her hair.

“I would say that thank the spirits you’re brilliant because I lose all sense when I look at your face, because your beauty is enough to make a fool of any man.” He continued. “And I’d quite like an opportunity to play the fool soon.”

“Spirits, you are brazen.” Katara said with a laugh. Her grip on Druk tightened and he squeaked in annoyance. 

“Sorry Druk, I’m displacing you as your mother’s favorite.” Zuko said and scratched Druk’s neck. 

“You are always my favorite.” Katara said. “No matter what season it is in the Poles, I only feel like the sun has returned when I’m with you.” 

“I don’t see how I can compare when you are always the one lighting up the room.” 

“I wish I could paint with ink the same shade as your hair so I could write every character with the same kind of elegance.” 

“I wish I could train birds to sing in the same notes as your laughter so I could hear your joy every morning.”

“My laughter? I wish I could keep your voice with me because it soothes me better than the sound of a far off thunderstorm.” 

“I am going to vomit all over the floor if you two don’t stop.” Sokka interjected.

Katara lowered her face, blushing, but Zuko chuckled.

“Aw come on! They were being really cute!” Thuy added as she approached from behind them.

The twins that hung around Thuy, who Zuko swore were harmless, watched them with different levels of interest. Suzu looked gleeful while Zula looked bored. Or mildly irritated. She was harder to read.

“I see my wife every other season. You’re lucky we’re out of our rooms at all.” Zuko said.

“Zuko!” Katara blurted while the three teenage girls burst out laughing. Sokka only sighed and tapped the heel of his hand against his forehead. 

“Can we play with Druk, Auntie?” Thuy asked, changing the subject.

“Please.” Katara said, holding Druk out even as he clung to her in protest. “He needs to potty.”

“Thank you Auntie!” Thuy said and forcefully took the dragon, running off with him before he could break free of her grip. Suzu jogged after her and Zula walked stoically after. 

“Okay you two, try to focus for long enough to look at these terrible centerpieces.” Sokka said. “I think I’ve managed to salvage them.”

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[alistonjdrake]

June’s World Building Cheat Sheet Part Nine: Multicultural

I kind of touched on these subjects before but as I’ve been doing lately I’ve had more thoughts and I want to do a deeper dive. 

Honestly while I’ve been thinking about this for a while and briefly mentioned it in a previous post, it really hit me when I was playing Crusader King’s 3 and my character became the Norwegian-Irish Emperor of Britannia and France, and a lot of my subjects had some qualms with my cultural identity and as I watched areas of England get Norwegian-nized and names changed I started thinking about cultural markers. 

To put it simply, a “cultural marker” is basically just something to quickly pinpoint where someone is from or what their heritage is. Of course these are not always super specific and there is overlap. Like, me saying I speak English does not immediately make it obvious that I’m American. But if I talked about what I grew up eating, regional slang, some things people wore commonly, you would probably be able to narrow it down. There’s also what I tend to refer to as the stereotypical cultural markers so if someone was to say “I’m from X” what’s the first thing that comes to people’s mind that they relate to that place and that culture?

I also started thinking deeply about language and language as an extension of someone’s identity. This also stood out to me in the case of empires or in places were dozens of cultures have blended. At some point, language either is or isn’t an extension of someone’s background but the language someone does speak can say a lot about them or the area they grew up as I mentioned in my last post with regional dialects or when a certain language might be considered the “default” among some characters.

Now, as always, I have to say I do not think it’s extremely pressing to give fantasy cultures so many layers. I don’t think it’s always necessary to have a throwaway line about people speaking multiple languages in your metropolitan city or the fact that the culture is either not a monolith on its own or new people have moved in. Do I think it spices things up a little bit? Of course. That’s why I’m talking about it.

The lack of especially falls short to me in settings, as mentioned, that are empires or densely populated or considered “centers” of the world. How many times have I read a fantasy university or guild settings or these expansive cities and all the characters were more or less from the exact same place, all spoke the same language, pretty much ate the same things, and had the same opinions on anything not a huge plot point. 

So Let’s Talk About Language (Again)

I’m not gonna lie. My nerd brain loved it when my Norwegian-Irish emperor took over England and instead of the names of familiar places changing completely they were just changed to sound slightly more Norwegian while still looking enough like what it used to be. I am upset with myself for never considering this before in my own work or thinking about it when I craft fantasy worlds, especially in settings where one group or place takes over another. The language would change or there would be shifts due to either

The sounds for the original thing they’re trying to say do not exist in their language

That’s simply how they pronounce it

Maybe they were feeling frisky that day and decided to change it just because. 

I think we see this most often especially with borrowed words. When a word more or less exists in several languages maybe because they’re taking on a title or a position, it’s not so much that the word changes but each one has to put their spin on it. Not always intentionally it might just be how they say it given either the limitations of their own tongue or how they heard it. 

In my last post I began to touch on this with the introduction of people speaking the same language differently in my Grazan Escan vs “regular” Escan dialect (the basis of this discussion just that people who live in Graza in my setting speak the language slightly different than non-Grazans which sometimes makes the language hard to understand for even native speakers). Last night I had another breakdown about how much I hate the common tongue and the concept of the common tongue and I’d like to also mention that if there is going to be a “common” language in a setting, I myself tend to use Escan as the common language because Escan is an imperial nation and have intentionally spread their language all over the place so a lot of my characters speak it, I think it is important to have some context as to why a language would be so widespread/ common. Someone would have had to go to these far places and teach people how to speak this language (and somehow walk away with it having no regional differences). Why would people in this setting think it a good idea to even learn this language if they have their own and rarely communicate with people outside of their community? What is the impact of a character having to take up another language in order to? In my recently finished draft of The Night Court, due to my own temporarily fleeting memory I forgot one of the main characters was going to a place where he could not speak the language and spent that entire half of the book asking for translations and not being able to speak to certain characters directly. Which, now that I’m done with the draft I appreciate more because I’ve definitely been in situations where I’m in a new place and my poor planning and education made me the only one who couldn’t speak the language and I had to have friends help me.  

This is where language as an extension of identity comes in. Could this character have assumed that his first language was dominant enough where he could travel to new places and not have to learn anything else? Or was it just bad luck and now he feels isolated in a setting where he cannot speak to anyone? What are the implications behind someone’s first language based on where they live? I just wrote two posts now talking about Prince Toli of the Escana Empire’s first language not being Escan and how that impacted his early life and how he appears by the time we meet him in the books. What does it say about the world characters live in where what language they speak and what language they learned to speak first has such an impact?

And in the reverse, what is the perception of someone being multilingual? It is expected in a setting? It is a bonus? A requirement of certain jobs or positions? A necessity to live in certain areas? Given how much court intrigue and political scheming I write I tend to have characters switch languages to avoid spies or eavesdroppers but on the other hand it’s also easier to make new allies if you extend the branch by speaking their language. 

Are there official languages? Court languages? Trade tongues? Coded languages you’d only learn for very specific purposes? 

Clothes And Culture: Sumptuary Laws & The Fashion Police.

This is a point I missed completely in my fashion post and I’m sorry about that. As with all my “advice” I feel it important to note I don’t ever expect anyone to go the extra mile nor do I usually think people need to. These are just things I like to sprinkle into a setting to give in breathing room or background information so it doesn’t feel like it was created just to serve a story purpose, but that it’s a world people live in. 

On that note. I’m very passionate about clothing. I’m encountered a lot of fantasy fashion in my day and I understand why people don’t ever find it relevant to mention certain things but as my setting is a late 18th century world in which the common people are starting to realize that royalty kinda sucks, it’s something I can talk about.

Like, the extensive labor that goes into making sure my royal characters have 100s of different outfits. Fashion is cheaper than its ever been but that was not always the case. There’s a reason why often see people in ye old days with only like 2 outfits for any given occasion. Characters and people who had constant changes weren’t just fashion forward, they were showing off wealth whether or not that was front of mind. To give some context as a lover of historical fashion and beautifully detailed garments, I did some quick math to see how long it would take me to recreate one of my favorite gowns by and. Given the intricate details, all the delicate beading and lace and all the fabric I’d have to buy (I didn’t even get into costs) it would have taken me at minimum 50 years. 

Now does anyone need characters going around talking about how Princess Zurina is wearing a gown that would have taken one man 50 years if not for the staff of seamstresses who likely work on her wardrobe? No. If a character in a setting is a seamstress or if the story has anything to do with wealth distribution and the extravagance and waste of the super rich, sure maybe throw it in there. One half of the book I’m working on is about political cartoons criticizing the royalty and wouldn’t you know if I go back to the time period I’m basing my work off of, you can find a lot of jokes and slights towards outrageous dress because people back then understand the labor that went into these garments. 

This is where I’m going to mention sumptuary laws. Basically, whenever I do my dives into fashion history I’ll find a lot of policing towards the way people dress. I mean we still have them now but maybe they’re not as apparent to us? And a lot of them used to be more class-oriented. One should not dress above their “means” or status which is where we get certain fabrics or colors meant only for certain types of people. But it also happened in the reverse where certain groups are designated things to wear so other members of the community know who and what they are. People not being allowed to wear certain things either because they would be related to deviance or offensive. Like characters in my setting cannot wear any shade of green around the king because dark green is the Escana mourning color and it would be considered as cursing the king to die.

Are there punishments for wearing the “wrong” thing? Is exaggerated wealth or having too many outfit changes something calls criticism if the character is at the top of the food chain (or maybe criticism them no mater social standing)? Are there any unwritten dress codes in a setting that people unknowingly follow? In settings where multiple cultures might exist or people from different backgrounds exist in the same place, do their choices in dress reflect cultural markers? And is there a stark difference between traditional (to a culture) clothing and modern dress? 

I think really I’m spewing this out because I want to see more culturally rich settings that reflect some of the stuff that I think is the most interesting things about a person which is what they wear and how they speak. But again, this is a personal preference and it’s just stuff I think about. 

[lit-in-thy-heart]

you know what, what's the point of being on this platform if you don't get to bellow into the void about your interests in the hope of finding someone with the same interest?

in light of this, let me inflict a lowdown of the victorian literature (mostly novels because poetry is difficult to collate) that i've read for my module this year upon my mutuals

i'll do a separate one for vampire novels and reblog with the link

because what are the victorians without vampires? straight

bleak house (dickens): what a ride that was! yes, it was nearly a thousand pages and, yes, some chapters i was like can we move on please, but that's dickens for you. honestly, i loved it. if you're looking for thinly-veiled lesbianism, this is the book for you (esda all the way, if they even have a ship name). unfortunately i already knew one of the plot twists due to watching dickensian five years before, but there are plenty more to go around! if you can get through the first chapter describing nothing but fog and the law courts, you're in for one hell of a treat -- just don't google anything about it until you've finished because you will get spoiled (or don't share a house with me, where i'll tell you the entire plot as i'm reading it). definitely recommend, but marking it down for the heteronormativity with allan. (9.5/10)

villette (c. brontë): where to fucking start. i, quite frankly, do not care for charlotte brontë, and when reading the earlier novel agnes grey by anne, i could see some more things that charlotte has filched for this travesty. no victorian novel is going to be without problems, but this one was xenophobic, ableist and, of course, racist. the protagonist doesn't really give anything away, which is meant to make her more mysterious, but it just renders her an empty vessel. oh, and she tells you stuff that she's figured out waaaaaay after she says she's figured it out, a bit like she's allowing you to feel smart for making a connection before going 'oh yeah i knew that like twelve chapters ago, keep up'. some of the passages are really striking and there's maybe one character who's likeable but that's about it. i'd say it's more a story of omission than repression tbh. (4/10)

janet's repentance (eliot): wait, have i even finished this? no, no, i have not. it's fine, i wasn't going to tell you the ending anyway. i did get hooked eventually, there were just a LOT of names thrown around in the first few chapters, and a word that i didn't know was used frequently (turns out it was a name for the followers of this guy). i did get strong hester prynne/arthur dimmesdale vibes from some of the main characters, but janet is a very sympathetic character which, after reading villette, was nice. slightly depressing in some places, but a good enough read if you're not cramming it in the day before your tutorial, because it is mildly dense. (7/10)

the wonderful adventures of mrs seacole in many lands (seacole): not what i'd been expecting to read on my module, what with it being a biography, but enjoyable nonetheless. horrible histories lied to me, though, she was in her 40s/50s when she treated people in the crimean war, not in her 20s, but that's minor. it was actually quite funny??? like she was very reluctant to give away to give away her age and almost slipped up a couple of times, and also made some very biting remarks about people who were passing comment on her skin colour. for a biography, it wasn't hugely biographical, in that she was married for what seemed all of five minutes before her husband died, when in fact they were married for several years, but if you want an in-depth depiction of war, this is for you. not what i'd usually read, but some of the descriptions are so vivid that it does read like a novel in places, though sometimes the descriptions were so detailed that i did tune out at odd intervals. (9/10)

the happy prince and other stories (wilde): if you're feeling low, don't read these. don't. especially not 'the nightingale and the rose', because that was honestly heartbreaking. really well-written, some passages were just beautiful, i just wasn't in the right headspace to fully appreciate it. it also has a lot of death, i should probably explicitly say that. (8/10)

agnes grey (a. brontë): chef's kiss, honestly. if i'd read this last year then i think it definitely would have hit a lot harder, what with agnes moving away from home for the first time and struggling with loneliness around people who she is different from. beautifully written, i'm irritated at myself for not reading it sooner, even though i've owned a copy for about four years or so. agnes does come across as a bit wet sometimes, but those moments are rare and far between, she's overall a resilient character who is trying to make her own way in the world. seeing as i managed to get through the whole thing and didn't lose focus on what i was reading, i rate it higher than jane eyre (which is a rip-off of this anyway). we stan anne. though i am marking it down for the underdeveloped romantic relationship that just pops up (9.5/10)

now for some old classics that weren't taught on my module, but i can't not mention them

a tale of two cities (dickens): this was my first dickens book and oh my word what a book. yeah, okay, lucie is a bit of a wet dishcloth and has basically no personality, but there is definitely something there between her and her maid. sydney is my baby and oh so gorgeously dramatic ("you have kindled me, heap of ashes that i am, into fire"), which was perfect for the pangs of unrequited love. the plot is slightly confusing, and you don't really understand everything until right near the end, but i loved finding parallels in the chapters set in france with the chapters set in britain. oh and the showdown between miss pross and madame defarge is wonderful. i had a tradition of reading it on the run-up to christmas, just because that was the period when i read it for the first time, but i haven't done that for the past two years just because of exams and stuff. now, bleak house just pips it at the post, but i still love it dearly. (9/10)

wuthering heights (e. brontë): i couldn't review victorian literature and not include this. there are very strong similarities between this and villette (seems charlotte really drew on her sisters' work), particularly in terms of me not liking a single one of the characters except hareton. everyone is called cathy. literally. and heathcliff/cathy one is a toxic ship that should not be boarded. it is obsession, not love. the second volume is basically a repeat of the first one, thus showing that humanity will never move past its vices and will be caught in a vicious cycle of self-destruction for the rest of time. again, though, beautifully and vividly written. the characters are the type that you love to hate. (8/10)

the tenant of wildfell hall (a. brontë): what. a. book. this was a book that was simultaneously loved and condemned as scandalous when it came out. there's mystery, there's a woman escaping a horrible situation and making her own living, and there's a well-developed relationship! and the characters are likeable (i love rose, she's great, completely goes off at her brother when she has to do things for him all the time), which always puts it onto a winner. there's one chapter with gilbert that i have to skip just because i hate what he does in it. there are quite a lot of religious references, with redemption playing a huge part in the novel, but even the religious views brontë expresses went against a lot of the teachings of the anglican church at the time. do i even need to say that it's beautifully written if it's anne? marking it down for gilbert's behaviour and arguable control of helen's narrative. (9.5/10)

far from the madding crowd (hardy): i love this book. a little more uplifting than tess but still with the drama and murder you'd expect from hardy. maybe my review is influenced by my tiny crush on bathsheba: she's not the best role model but damn what a woman. gabriel isn't quite bae but i love him all the same, i'm so glad he's happy in the end. (9/10)