#Anne contemplating her feelings and steadying them

[daydreamdoodles]

The more I get closer to finishing Persuasion, the sadder I feel about the netflix adaption

[thegoddessprose]

Felt like writing outside my main fanfic again... So here's another fic! For now, my Chitarch content will be here on Tumblr... I don't think it's up to snuff for Ao3 and there are a couple of spoilers. Also, the Heavensbadies are more alive here than my other platforms 😁

Anyway, this is about when Chiasa and Plutarch had their first meaningful conversation after she found herself helping out with a minor operation; you could call it the first real spark between them. Enjoy!

Chiasa stared at her comm, contemplating what to do. She had to talk to somebody... But who? She'd had her hard feelings toward the government for decades, but she was normally able to keep them to herself. This time was different... This time, she aided and abetted the rebels directly.

It was Yuletide night... One minute she was enjoying herself at her nephew Marcus's party, the next, she'd heard talk about "undercover," and "safehouses" near a suite's ajar door. She found Marcus, his girlfriend, Ann, and Plutarch Heavensbee with a little family and three festive bags filled with essentials. From what was gathered, the woman, "Agent Hale," was compromised. She was rescued in time and getting ready to get somewhere safe.

There was so much going through Chiasa's head... She'd heard whispers of a "cold war" between the government and a rebel cell, but for the most part, she dismissed it as propaganda. Even so, she was more inclined to side with these rebels. As happy as she was that Marcus turned out to have a conscience, his being an agent filled her with a new kind of worry. Still... That wasn't what compelled her to help. It was the two scared and confused kids. She knew what would happen... Snow would dangle them in front of that poor woman, at least... That couldn't happen, especially when she'd troubled them when she overheard. Helping Plutarch smuggle Agent Hale and her children to her studio and disguising them further was the least she could do. And of course, giving Plutarch her solemn word that she'd keep quiet... Even if Marcus wasn't involved, she still heard that some damaged reputations in the past were the cell's retaliation.

In the end, it was the right thing to do, but being on the sidelines and participating were two different things. As much as she'd always wished to... She had her family, friends, and business to think about. Maybe that ship had sailed... At least with her nephew. He was young, but far from stupid, he had to know what he was getting into. But worrying about him was natural... as was the agony over what had happened, how many rumors were true...

Who would she call, though... Talking to her sister and brother in law were out... Talking to Marcus might end in a lecture born of her anxiety... Tigris maybe? No... She might be estranged from her cousin but who knew where her politics stood? Well... There was one person left... Mr. Heavensbee. She barely knew the guy, only exchanging a polite conversation here and there over the years... But he was there, he knew what he was doing... As much as he didn't seem like the emotional type, there wasn't anyone else. She found his office number and dialed. At the tone, she steadied her breathing... Be polite, but vague...

"Head Gamemaker's office, how may I help you?" a female voice answered.

"Oh! Um... Hello. You must be Mr. Heavensbee's assistant," said Chiasa, "My name is Chiasa Lapin... Is he available? I have to speak with him."

"I'm sorry, he's quite busy... Can I--"

"It's about Marcus Natale's party last night," she added.

The line was silent. She really should have gotten this poor woman's name... Was shein on this, too?

"Oh... What did you say your name was?" the assistant asked.

"Chiasa Lapin."

"Hold please."

Yet another few moments to agonize.... Please don't hang up, please don't hang up....

"Hello?" a male voice answered, "Ms. Lapin?"

"Yes, Mr. Heavensbee? Hello! I know you're busy, but I was wondering if I could speak to you about las--"

"Not now," he interrupted, "Not here."

That would have been rude in another setting, but maybe he had a point... Spies could be anywhere.

"I, sorry, I-I..."

"We can talk tomorrow at 5 PM. My estate in the Gilded Hills," he said, "I'm sure I don't have to warn you about trying anything."

He really didn't, but... She thought it would have taken more convincing than that. Maybe the cerebral man had a soul after all?

"I, yes, thank you, I'll be there."

"I'll see you then."

The line went dead. At least he was straightforward... Those tended to be better men in general. Hopefully the trend would continue...

To be honest, Chiasa didn't know what to expect when she arrived at the grand villa. Nothing was really certain at this point... But that was why she was there, wasn't it? The minute she was let in, two plain-clothed flocked to her. The woman took her coat and purse, then started searching through each.

"Excuse me," Chiasa started to protest.

The man pointed to her skirt pockets, gesturing for them to empty them. She only had her comm, but nevertheless, the man handed it over to his companion. He then took out what looked like a scanner... Something one might find at the presidential palace's entrance. Nothing seemed to be off, so she was escorted through the Roman style home to the parlor, where Plutarch was waiting.

"Hello," she greeted, "Well, that was thorough... Awfully invasive."

"I'm sorry, but one can't be too careful," he said, "You understand... Don't worry, you'll get everything back when you leave."

"I guess..." she replied, "Mr. Heavensbee, if you wanted to frisk me, you could have just asked."

She giggled nervously, and Plutarch blushed lightly. Noticing this, Chiasa immediately went pale and regretted her choice of words. Maybe there was another reason she wasn't an active rebel... Too many slips of the tongue under pressure.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean anything by that, I just--"

Luckily, Plutarch just laughed. "I know you didn't. You're probably just nervous... It's understandable after what's happened."

Chiasa let out a sigh of relief... Even with rebel leanings, at least one of them could still mind their manners.

"Care for a drink?" he offered.

"Yes, please... A decaf with cream would be nice."

"Julius?" he called out to the male avox, "Please bring us two decaf coffees, one with milk, one with cream."

It said a lot about a person's character when they called avoxes by their names... Chiasa remembered a time when the practice wasn't the norm it was in the present... But even she couldn't escape it. Bettina had been with her for about twenty years... Only because she could go to someone crueler if Chiasa let her go. The best she could do was give her nice clothing, tips, and a better place to sleep. Ideally, she'd have her sent home with her tongue intact, but the world wasn't ideal. Chiasa was learning quite a bit about this man, yet the real conversation hadn't yet begun.

"Mr. Heavensbee," she started.

"Please, Plutarch," he interjected, "I get enough honorifics everywhere else, at least let me escape them at home, Ms. Lapin."

"Well then, I'm just Chiasa. I may be old on paper, but I don't need a reminder around every corner either."

"Noted."

Julius had since returned with their coffee... While taking a sip, Chiasa studied her companion. Plutarch was oddly relaxed, having the same idea... It was simply another Tuesday for him! She'd seen such a poise under fire in her elders when she was a girl, but it was rare in people younger than her. She wondered what he’d seen... What he'd done... To master such a skill. It was simply how things worked...

She had to admit, he wasn't bad-looking... In all the years they'd been acquainted, he was. He was freckled, plump, salt and paprika, human. Such a thing was becoming rarer and rarer nowadays... As much as she staved off her age, she was still old fashioned in her belief that beautiful people looked like people, not animals or whatever other fantastic creature was "fashionable." Even her own mentor, Tigris, had fallen into that unfortunate trend.

"Now," Plutarch started, "I guess you're wondering why I agreed to meet with you."

Why indeed... She had a couple of guesses, at least.

"I don't know... Maybe you felt sorry for me? Did Marcus ask you?"

"Maybe a little," he replied, "And he's got nothing to do with this. As far as I know, he doesn't even know you're here. No... I'm curious."

Chiasa found herself shifting in her seat. She knew what was coming. She literally walked right into it, yet she felt a familiar lump in her throat; the one she always got whenever she had to hold her tongue.

"Why? Why did you help?" he asked.

Clearly, he was a rebel. There wasn't much of a need to hide, but she still felt the need to be diplomatic.

"Because it was the right thing," Chiasa replied, "There were kids involved, I couldn't have anything go awry for their sake."

"Is that so... Believe me, if you'd stuck your neck out before, I'd know. The right thing... I'm sure Snow would believe they'd have it come, it's just the way for traitors--"

"Well, Snow can go straight to hell! These are children! No matter what their mother did, they don't deserve death! Actually, since their mother obviously believes the same with what happens every damned summer for so many--"

Surprising herself, Chiasa covered her mouth and averted her eyes. Even though she had some mishaps in the past, nothing on this scale ever happened. For a moment, she forgot where she was, tearing up and starting to tremble.

"I-I'm sorry, I forget myself," she whimpered, "Forget I said that... But they're safe, right? They're in a safe place."

"They are, they're in a much safer place," said Plutarch, "But I can't forget what you said. I think you know by now that I'm not going to condemn any of that... Did you mean it."

She looked back up at him to see him carefully scrutinizing her. Of course... He was still making sense, at least. Either way, she was in too deep to turn back. All she could do was nod. Plutarch seemed pleased... Or perplexed? Both, maybe. He was still hard to get a read on.

"Either I've been misled, or you're a lot better than you're given credit for," he pondered.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't worry yourself with that.... How long have you felt this way? I know you were a stylist."

It was true... Chiasa had been the stylist for District 3 for years. It was typically humiliating to be let go for someone younger and hipper, but she took her retirement as a blessing... It was the least painful way to escape. She couldn't remember what drove her down that path in the first place... Her parents being quietly displeased should have been the first clue... Running away from reality with a "bad habit" in her youth should have been a red enough flag... She really should have gotten out while she could, before Snow had that much power, but she was so damned stubborn back then...

"Quite a while..." she admitted, "My mother did plant a few free thinking seeds in my head... But I didn't have strong opinions until I started work and met the poor children... I didn't take it well the first few years, but that's another story. But yes... I was so determined to have my fashions on top, then I had my kids and had to support them... And if you've heard anything about me, I'm not one to just settle down and marry rich."

"And all those years, you hadn't done anything?" His tone wasn't quite harsh, but still kept the guilt coming.

"I'm sorry to say no... Maybe this sounds pathetic to someone like you... I imagine you're pretty seasoned in this rebel business," she replied, "If you know as much as you say, then you know what's at stake if something goes wrong. You should, after what happened. What about the less lucky ones, like your friend Gus Petra? Even innocent people like my d-- Never mind. I don't want anything happening to me or my family. I'm no fool, Plutarch... But if it helps me survive, then it's best that people think that of me."

Chiasa wiped away her tears, and glanced back at him. The room was silent for what seemed like an eternity... But there was no angry reaction. He continued to scrutinize her, and she felt exposed. It was only fitting, finally getting a dark secret out there. Still, it wasn't ill-intentioned like many men... Moreso he was trying to pierce her soul.

"It's good to put up a front, especially in this world," he finally said, "But it's still simply that, a front. I wouldn't say you're pathetic... Nor callous, shallow, stupid... As for the fear... If it didn't work, we'd be out of the woods by now. You seem like the caring type... Always wanting to protect everyone. In doing so, however, people are still hurt. In the end, not everyone can be saved. I understand."

"I guess... Yet, you're still doing this, being a rebel without the fear, always with that possibility of ultimate failure. How?" she asked.

"I never said there wasn't any fear," Plutarch replied with a slight smile, "But it's not about that. It's about knowing something else is more important. You know Chiasa... You could have just walked away, stood by like always, but you didn't. You can't tell me you weren't afraid."

"But I was... I was terrified. But those children, lost and confused... Simply because their mother did what we both thought was right... I hate that this is the world we live in."

"And that outrage clearly outweighed your fear of any consequences."

He had a point... Chiasa wasn't thinking about herself at all in that moment, but them... Something in her had snapped that night... Too many years of pushing it all down, she guessed.

"Yes... Yes, I suppose you're right," she said, "But it was an anomaly. You still probably go about this stuff every day like it's nothing. Maybe some people think it's stupid... But I admit... I think it's admirable."

The truth was, she took comfort in those rebel cell stories. Even if she couldn't do anything, there were people that could, and did out there. She felt herself flush at her words, although she didn't know why. Maybe she was simply coming down from her emotional state, finally getting to say these things out loud.

Or maybe it was the way Plutarch beamed at her words. Such a natural smile was such a rarity, and adorable. Forty years off the face, not forty light years

"Thank you. That's kind of you to say," he replied, "However... Right now I know you're capable. Who knows what might happen in the future..."

It was nice of him to believe in her, even if that was a little too much faith in her opinion. Maybe that was it... People didn't often assume the best of her anymore. Even in the past, her mother in particular wished she'd think beyond beauty and frivolity "for once... Good people have much better things to think about."

"I suppose that's nice to have that kind of faith in people, but I don't know if I'd hold out for me."

"Not people, you. Maybe not in the present," he said, "But your actions told me otherwise."

"Because I simply did the right thing and helped?"

"And just now, when you told me how much you hate Snow and his bloodlust. Maybe I won't see you taking up arms, buy you care about others, Chiasa. You have the spark. It's a real shame that you've had to keep it to yourself. But right now, right here, you don't have to. You're safe.

You're safe.... You're safe.... You're safe....

Those last two words kept echoing in Chiasa's mind. She'd heard them many times in her life but hadn't been inclined to believe it. So many had tried to tell her how the Capitol was an oasis, yet she'd seen and heard about a lot of messed up nonsense that went on behind closed doors... The dirty deals, the deaths, the pressure.... And she hadn't even gotten into the few times her father spoke of the late war... Simple proof that the outside world couldn't be ignored forever. With the whispers and Katniss's influence... Maybe such a thing was coming a second time... In a few years, maybe.

"Am I?" she asked, "Am I truly?"

Plutarch hesitated, but thankfully was simply pondering again. What was going in that pretty little head of his.... If he was even more aware than she was, how was he not broken by then? What motivated this much rage that called him to action rather than fear. Or was it passion? Both? Even having spent a few minutes with him, Chiasa was woman enough to admit she was wrong about Plutarch Heavensbee. The man was far from boring... Intriguing was the better word now.

"As safe as I can keep you," he replied seriously, "Which is more than I can say for the Capitol... Having to keep your mouth shut to stay alive. I'll say that you don't have to keep your thoughts to yourself while you're in here."

"How refreshing... An honest answer," she remarked, "I guess you picked up that I know when people are trying to sell paradise."

"If you'll pardon the expression, people your age are either completely fooled by illusion or all too aware of how things truly are.

"You're pardoned. Once," she quipped, "You're spot on there... And I suppose you're young enough to still be optimistic.

Plutarch laughed... Somehow the hearty sound relaxed her. Those contagious laughs were just the best; always better than a forced guffaw at some terrible joke.

"Pleased with yourself?" he asked, still smiling.

"That's a loaded question.... In the moment, I guess. I'm pleased with you too... You know, there is something I really want to know."

"What's that, Chiasa?"

"The black... Is it a sort of protest against frivolity? Mourning for humanity? Or simply your color?" she asked.

Chiasa adored bright colors as much as the next Capitolite, but she had to admire people who pulled off simple black. There were too many who looked standoffish or desperate... But those who could pull it off were something special. Plutarch had always been one of them, no matter what she may have thought about him in the past.

"A bit of both, perhaps," he quipped, "I still don't think there's anything wrong with a little bit of indulgence... Life would be terribly dull otherwise."

"Oh, I agree completely..."

She spotted a familiar wicked gleam in his eye... Something she'd recognized in a lit of men. It had to be the lighter mood, but did it matter? Plutarch was cute of course, but now he had that air of mystery, intelligence, and valiance about him. What a combination indeed... It wouldn't hurt to brush his hand a bit... Or maybe his leg. Maybe she could find an excuse to fix his hair or vest...

No, no... That would be too forward. The focus should be on herself at first. If it weren't so damned cold out, she would have forgone the wool tights under her skirt. If only she had her purse... She could reapply her lipstick. No matter, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear would do the trick... His smile widened, even if only for a second. Maybe a subtle lick of the lips would do...

What on earth was she doing? She should have some decorum.... No matter what was going on, this was Marcus's boss. She had to change the subject and be boring and proper.... Maybe she didn't feel too bad.... Plutarch had done nothing to appear uncomfortable or stop her. She'd behave herself for now... Maybe she could test the waters later. After all, her nephew didn't know about all her flings, and he certainly didn't need to.

"It's sad we haven't really talked until now," she said.

"I'm sure the rumor mills are to blame, feeding us both lies about each other," he replied, "But now we know."

Before Chiasa could reply, Julius had wandered back into the room and pointed to his wrist. Plutarch in turn checked his pocket watch and sighed in frustration.

"I'm afraid I have to cut this short, I'm due for another meeting," he said.

"Aww... And we were really getting somewhere," she said, "Business, pleasure, or other business."

"That's classified. You know.... In two days, my schedule is clear after 5," he suggested, "You could come by again if you wish."

"After today? It's no question... I'm so intrigued that I must."

Plutarch had indeed become more interesting and dashing overnight... It was rare Chiasa met a man she wanted to scrutinize on the inside as well as the outside, especially in this day and age... It was definitely rare to find one who wanted to hear what she really thought... Not only did he not judge her, but he encouraged her opinions. He'd told her she was safe. Just this once, she believed it. What an oddly... Joyful? Exciting? Beautiful? Well... Positive feeling for sure.

Plutarch insisted on showing her out himself and all was returned as promised. He'd offered his hand as a polite gesture, but now.... A shake seemed too formal. She lightly squeezed it and he reciprocated with a smile before she turned to leave.

Chiasa wasn't sure to expect at their next meeting, but one thing was for certain... This time, rather than dread, she counted down the minutes in anticipation.

[kaseyskat]

I've been sad about marcy all day so I thought I'd write something about her being Not Sad to cope, and somehow this came out, come get some marcanne-centric fluff <3

~~~~~

marcy looks the most contemplative at night.

anne doesn't usually make a habit out of staring at her best friend turned partner at night. usually, it's the opposite, she thinks; despite all the practice, all the late nights, she's still always the first to fall asleep and somehow the last to rise. it scares her a little, but she's found that if she makes marcy come lay down with her before bed, there's a better chance that marcy will actually sleep a healthy amount without being woken.

tonight is not one of those nights.

she couldn't sleep. it happened, sometimes, where the worries and fears that plagued her kept her tossing and turning, helplessly staring up at the ceiling - and they had coordinated the placement of glow-in-the-dark stars here, too, even if it made anne feel silly and childish - and tracing constellations she doesn't know by name. she could only bear so much of it before she was sliding out of bed, leaving sasha snoring away and going into the studio slash makeshift office space where she knows she'll find marcy.

marcy looks contemplative. she sits in her fancy rolling chair, pivoting back and forth as she stares out of the window. the curtains are drawn, though, because there's a streetlight right outside their apartment window and the orange light is too familiar, too painful. none of them want to see orange light on anything ever again, anne thinks.

"hey," she says, softly, drawing marcy's attention to herself instead. "whatcha thinking about?" it's a quiet whisper, just loud enough that marcy can hear it- she doesn't want to startle her.

marcy, to her credit, doesn't smile sheepishly like she usually would, but she does pat her own lap invitingly. anne's never one to decline such a welcome invitation, so she surges forwards, plopping herself into marcy's lap, curling arms around her neck to keep herself stable as the chair whirls.

she still doesn't answer the question, though, and anne huffs, poking marcy's cheek with one finger carefully. "hey. marmar. come on, I'm right here."

marcy finally snaps to full attention, and now she looks sheepish, apologetic. "you're so warm," she says, with a light shiver. "I think- I think I'm coming down with something." there's an implied again in her tone- she's been sick a lot recently, the bouncing weather aggravating her fragile immune system.

"and I'm your best blanket," anne nods, very seriously, unable to hide her own smile as marcy snorts. "you don't have to hide because you don't feel good, marce. come lay down with us- you'll feel better."

"that's not the reason," marcy argues. "I'm just... not that tired. I was thinking about my finals."

"your finals are in three weeks, you can think about them later," anne whines. she's not usually so vocally needy, but between her work schedule, sasha's training schedule, and marcy's school schedule, they haven't had much time together to just... relax. "come on, marbles. please?"

she nestles her head into marcy's shoulder, curls against her neck and breathes. marcy's arms come to wrap around her, keeping her steady as she balances precariously in the chair, legs hanging awkwardly off to the side before she curls them fully into marcy's lap.

marcy sighs, and she's letting anne melt into her arms, the chair tilting dangerously. "anne, we're going to-"

the chair tips over before she can finish the sentence, and it sends them both sprawling to the ground.

"shit," anne coughs, and she scrambles to her knees, kneeling over marcy. "are you okay?"

marcy groans, blinks dazedly up at anne, and then laughs. she laughs and laughs, and it's so cheerful and infectious that anne can't help but laugh along. soon, they're both a hysterical giggling mess, laughing and laughing like it's the funniest thing in the world.

"I think we're both sleep deprived," anne says between giggles. "come on, come on, please-?"

"okay, okay," marcy relents, and she allows anne to pull her to her feet, swaying precariously. "but you gotta carry me." she says it teasingly, but anne's never been one to deny a challenge, and she very easily scoops marcy into her arms bridal style, one arm under her knees and the other curled across her back, gentle and firm.

anne carries her all the way back into the bedroom, placing her down in the middle of the bed- her preferred spot, because marcy likes to be pressed on all sides by her girls. almost immediately, sasha turns to curl against her.

"took too long," she grumbles under her breath.

anne and marcy make eye contact, and they both giggle again as anne slides back into bed. the worry and agitation she felt earlier is gone, replaced with a fuzzy warmth and the feeling of contentment. this is what she was missing.

and so she curls into marcy, and sasha's hand finds her own across marcy's chest, and marcy places one of her own hands on top of their joined ones, and it's warm and cozy and everything anne has ever wanted.

and all three of them sleep peacefully for the rest of the night.

[offtopicoverload]

Hope Dumps Noah

I have no logical explanation for what this is, but @bubblybabynailpolish had an anon bring up Noah + Hope = Jade + Beck from Victorious a while ago, and it’s been living rent free in my head for weeks so here’s some bullshit. It’s loosely based on that one episode where Jade gets Tori to win back Beck except gayer and more litg and exists purely to appease the gremlin that is early 2010s me yelling in the back of my mind. And thanks to Anne for answering my weird asks, this is what they were for lmao

T Rating (fluff and angst, some elements of the show kinda? i tried at least)

Hope x MC (Rosie)

~10k (got super carried away but didnt wanna make multiple parts so take it as you will. on the bright side, it'd be longer if i edited properly but im tired so no)

Rosie’s front door shakes on its hinges, a pounding, thundering sound echoing from the other side, berating the wood as it quivers and quivers. Her head flies up in surprise, half expecting an army to spill into her flat, battering ram in hand as they shout orders. But no such event occurs, and she leaps up from the sofa in the corner, pocketing her phone and hurrying across the room before yanking the door open. She immediately freezes in place, meeting bewildered, watery eyes standing on the other side of the threshold.

Tears are streaming down splotchy cheeks, a throat bobbing as it fights to maintain some sort of composure, even as bones tremble beneath skin, shivering regardless of the heat of the building. “Um, uh, hey?” Rosie tries awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot in the doorway and gripping the knob with pale knuckles.

“Can I come in?” the words waver as they leave messy, tear-muddied, brightly stained lips, pouring out like broken shards, creating their own trail alongside tears. Red eyes glance down the hallway, paranoid as they search for something, even in the late night, “I don’t - I don’t want to be out here where -” a sniffle “- where people can see.”

Rosie blinks a few times, her mind still slowly working to process the situation that’s just presented itself to her. But dark eyes are glimmering with shed and unshed tears, pleading beneath lashes and shadows from poor corridor lighting, and she startles into action, “Yeah! Yeah, er, yeah,” she mumbles, moving aside and holding the door open in invitation.

The threshold’s crossed, hurrying inside the flat with arms crossed, making a beeline for the upholstered sofa backed against the wall and dropping down onto it. Rosie closes the door, locking it carefully, neurotically, slowly, just to give herself time to think, to make sense of what to do with one of the last people she ever expected inside her flat: Hope.

Hope’s sitting on her sofa, curled in on herself to take up as little space as possible, cheeks covered in the remnants of despair that Rosie can’t even explain, let alone prepare herself for. Hope’s sniffling in her living room, palms running up and down her biceps to calm herself, her throat struggling to stifle sobs she’s ashamed of. Hope’s crying in her flat, gaze pinned to the floor to avoid the world, makeup streaked and smudged on all of her features, features wracked with inexplicable pain.

Rosie turns from the door, brushing her clammy palms on her sweatpants over and over again, a distractionary stimuli to calm the nerves slowly bubbling beneath her skin. Nerves she hasn’t felt in months, and was determined to never feel again, not after weeks and weeks of the constant feeling of insects crawling beneath her skin, burrowing and biting and squirming. She glances up, finding Hope’s eyes trained on her, hesitant and terrified from across the room, the flat’s lights reflecting in them, her damp cheeks shimmering in the warm colours.

Rosie forces her lips to curl in a tiny smile as she approaches, somewhat slow and cautious, until she can fall into the cushions beside Hope, bloodshot eyes never straying from her movement. Rosie risks a hand on her back, gently skating up and down her spine, an attempt at comfort she doesn’t have a reason to provide. But she provides it anyway, praying it’ll help, it’ll keep the tears from dripping down Hope’s jaw and dampening her top.

Only it doesn’t, only Hope begins to crumble, falling against her and burying her face against Rosie’s shoulder, sobs shaking her shoulders, trembling like the door on its hinges. Rosie wraps her arms around the quaking body clinging to her, murmuring a few quiet assurances, an offer of a lifesaver in the raging sea drowning her. Her hands draw circles on Hope’s vulnerable back, shapes to distract herself with, to ground herself with.

Hope bawls and whimpers and sobs and shakes for what feels like forever to Rosie, a forever that’s odd and uncomfortable, a forever that she doesn’t know what to make of. It’s not that she’s necessarily upset with it - she’s done this for girl friends in the past, she knows how to help a heartbroken woman - it’s just who she’s helping. She hasn’t seen Hope since the finale, since she walked away with her hand clasped in Noah’s, since Rosie split the money with Arjun, just to appease the audience.

He was sweet, sure, but they just didn’t fit. She didn’t feel like he was her other half, her perfect match, a missing piece in the puzzle that constructs her life. She didn’t see herself sacrificing things for him, didn’t see herself working for her relationship with him, didn’t see herself with him, point blank. And Rosie doesn’t do things she can’t see, can’t envision, can’t rationalise.

Which is exactly why she has no idea what to make of the woman dampening and wrinkling her sweater, face pressed to her shoulder and hands fisted in her shirt. “Hey, it’s okay,” she murmurs against Hope’s head, her breath hot where it brushes skin, a shiver running through Hope at the exhale.

This is unfamiliar territory to Rosie, unknown ground as she slowly steps into no man’s land, wary of land mines sitting beneath the dirt. Land mines of glares and scoffs and dismissals, land mines that sat in every corner of the Villa. Maybe in another life this would be normal, be commonplace, but not in this one.

Not in the world where Rosie kissed Noah in the Villa’s lounge that fateful day, that day that she’s regretted ever since. It wasn’t meant to mean anything, it was only supposed to help Priya and Bobby. It wasn’t supposed to cause the end of the world or hurt Hope as much as it did. It wasn’t supposed to confuse Noah as much as it did or leave him dragging things on for ages. It wasn’t supposed to be anything at all, anything but a blatant mistake.

But it was, it was so much, and now here they are, months and months later. Hope hasn’t spoken to Rosie since the finale, and Rosie didn’t even mind. She’s barely kept in touch with anyone, the only people she speaks to being Chelsea and Priya, since they’re always first to reach out. Even in the Villa, Hope would barely speak to her, and it hurt for a while. It hurt that they had been so close and were suddenly so far, but she always forced that hurt away. It was her own fault, it was her actions that led to Hope hating her guts.

Except, maybe she doesn’t hate Rosie’s guts. Maybe she doesn’t want her dead or wish she was never born. Maybe she still thinks about when they were friends like Rosie does. Maybe there’s a reason she’s crying in Rosie’s arms in this moment, that she showed up at Rosie’s door, that she sought out something only Rosie could presumably offer.

Hope swallows thickly, her head turning until her cheek’s resting against Rosie. “We broke up,” Hope croaks, stifling another sob as she forces her voice out again, “I - I dumped Noah.”

“Oh, um…” Rosie fumbles, her hand tracing the length of Hope’s spine beneath her heavy, navy, patterned sweater, “I’m sorry,” she whispers, the words still warm as they settle on Hope’s skin.

“It’s my fault,” she whimpers, turning her face back to Rosie as another tremble courses through her, a barely suppressed noise of anguish dying in her throat.

Rosie resumes her reassurances, her small whispers into Hope’s scalp, her tight hold on Hope’s quivering body. She cycles through every calming technique or phrase she can think of what must be a hundred times over, until Hope quiets, until Rosie stops feeling tears on her neck, until steady, even breathing fills the flat.

She swallows to stabilise herself before asking the all important question, one she’s a little nervous to hear the answer to, “Can I - Can I ask why you’re here? And, uh, so upset? If it was your decision?” she trips over her words, a flower of nerves blossoming in her stomach, and she wants to stamp it out, to stop it from pulling her in once more.

Hope pulls away from, her face set in malleable stone even with tears glistening on her cheekbones, sparkling in the overhead lights Rosie had on, diamonds tumbling down her skin, soft enough not to cut. “I didn’t know who else to go to. I - I didn’t know what to do,” she confesses, her head bowing and eyes staring into her lap.

“Okay,” Rosie nods, a palm still skating up and down the length of Hope’s upper arm, “That’s okay. You don’t have to know. You can just stay here if you want?” she offers uneasily, shifting awkwardly in her spot.

Hope’s eyes flicker up to meet Rosie’s, a cautious hopefulness in them, “I can? It’s not, like, weird?” she mumbles, averting her gaze once more.

“Not if you don’t think it is,” Rosie counters as coolly as she can manage.

Hope shakes her head adamantly, “No, no, I’d… I’d rather not be on my own right now.”

Rosie smiles in what she hopes comes across as encouraging, “That’s cool. You want me to stay out here? We can watch a movie?” she proposes with pinched brows and squinted eyes.

A gentle, hesitant smile quirks Hope’s mouth, “Yeah.” She pauses, contemplative and nodding distractedly, “That’d be great, thanks.”

Rosie rises from the sofa, crossing the living room to flip off the lights and grab the remote and a pile of blankets sitting in the corner. She drops them beside Hope in a heap, crashing onto the opposite side of the sofa a second later. She flicks through streaming services until Hope points out some random romcom, Rosie turning it on as Hope relaxes into the sofa with one of the blankets.

Rosie doesn’t pay much attention to the film, playing with her box braids distractedly and only having a loose grasp on the cheesy plot, but she notices every time Hope laughs, the sound becoming more and more relaxed as time goes on. Rosie sinks into the cushions, her legs folded and arms wrapped around her torso, head lolled against the back of the sofa.

It’s hard to tell when her eyelids fall shut, or when the movie ends, or when Hope moves, but Rosie wakes up to a dark screen flickering through backgrounds and ads for streaming exclusives. She wakes up to Hope’s head resting on her shoulder and a blanket splayed across her lap, as if Hope was worried she’d be cold without it.

She blinks a few times in the dark, taking in the scene around her and slowly processing what her night has become. She only wanted to sit on her phone before going to bed early after her long day at work. She didn’t expect a crying woman to show up at her doorstep or to watch a bad movie until too early in the morning, or to fall asleep in the living room. A sigh shakes her chest, and she reaches for the remote, turning off the telly and settling back into the sofa, Hope shifting beside her with the adjustment.

---

Rosie wakes up to sunlight pouring into her flat and a deserted sofa, blankets the only remnants of Hope’s night spent in the living room. She slumps forward, head in her hands as she adjusts to the too-bright sun and the noise of London already filtering inside, honks of car horns and a hum of people on the streets providing a familiar soundtrack to her wake up.

“I want to get him back,” a voice declares, the words wavering slightly as they fall from lips set in a frown.

“Hmm?” Rosie hums groggily, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she lifts her head, blinking to clear her vision. She finds Hope standing across the room, arms crossed and expression determined as she meets Rosie’s gaze.

“I want to get Noah back, I want to tell him I’m sorry for the breakup,” Hope repeats, her voice sturdier now.

Rosie nods, her mind still foggy but the haze slowly clearing, “Okay. That’s good,” she rationalises slowly, rising from the sofa and stretching her muscles; she’s made a point to avoid sleeping on the sofa normally. She stalks into the kitchen, falling into her usual morning routine easily.

Hope follows behind her, eyes widening, “It is?” she sounds surprised, stopping a ways away from Rosie, feet on the wood.

“Yeah, if you were happy together,” Rosie nods again, turning to her kitchen appliances. She starts with coffee, collecting beans and supplies meticulously as always, setting them out in a particular pattern beside the fridge.

Hope crashes into a barstool at the counter behind Rosie, her voice coming out softer now, “We were,” she confirms.

“Okay,” Rosie shrugs. “So go get him back,” she turns, forearms dropping to the counter beneath her to support her weight. She watches Hope curiously, expecting some explanation or excitement or something of the like, but Hope’s gone silent, her lip slipping between her teeth to worry the skin. Her gaze is trained on the pale countertop, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “Hope?” Rosie asks gently.

Dark eyes fly up to meet her own, snapping up too quickly, “Yeah?”

“You okay?” Concern wells in Rosie’s gaze before she can prevent it, her upper body unconsciously leaning forward to inspect Hope and find what’s suddenly irking her.

“Yeah,” Hope nods.

Rosie isn’t quite convinced, her brows knitting together, “You sure?”

Hope’s eyes flicker around the kitchen for a minute to avoid the deep eyes watching her before her shoulders slump, defeated and exhausted, “No,” she mumbles dejectedly.

“What’s wrong?”

A heavy sigh lifts Hope’s shoulders, twitching them lightly “I don’t think he’ll talk to me, not after yesterday.”

Rosie pauses. She hadn’t really considered that, just assumed Noah would be as torn up about the breakup as Hope had been, that he’d been jumping in place if Hope said it was a mistake. Her fingernails tap at the counter as she considers, weighing her options before diving right in, “Do you want me to try?”

Hope’s eyes dart to Rosie again, still just as surprised as earlier, as if everything Rosie does is entirely unbelievable, “You’d do that?”

“I guess?” Rosie gives an awkward shrug, averting her eyes and turning around to continue making coffee. She grabs milk from the fridge before finishing the process, pouring everything into a mug, “Yeah, sure,” she mumbles when she faces Hope again, swirling the dark liquid in a whirlpool.

It’s a long, almost painful amount of time before either of them utter another word. “Thank you,” Hope whispers the words, a tiny break in the quiet of the flat, of the bubble that’s formed in the kitchen.

---

The next day, long after Hope leaves her flat, long after Rosie made eggs and coffee for the both of them, long after Hope gave Rosie a quick hug in thanks, Rosie grabs an Uber to the other side of the city, to the library Noah works at. She strides into the building with her hands knotted in the pockets of her jacket, nerves clamming her palms as she scans the open area she’s found herself in. It’s relatively empty, only a few people sitting and working or browsing shelves idly in the middle of the day.

She searches a few aisles, glancing down empty passageways and passing shelf after shelf loaded with books. A few patrons give her odd looks, some outright glaring at her for her behaviour, but she eventually finds Noah in a back corner, restocking a few shelves in practiced motions, a cart loaded with books parked beside him.

“Hey,” she greets from down the aisle, waving slightly with an uneasy smile when he glances at her in surprise.

He adds the books in his hands to the shelf before turning to face her properly, his expression slightly stunned, “Hey,” he greets back, his tone puzzled as one hand falls to the book cart to lean against.

Rosie ventures further into the aisle, her eyes darting around as she attempts to figure out how to broach the tender subject of a breakup from only two days ago. She stops before him, folding her arms and rolling up and down on her toes, “So…” she starts, looking up at him from beneath her lashes in hopes that he’ll understand what she’s getting at.

He doesn’t, only blinking as he looks at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation for her presence. She sighs, one hand fiddling with the tips of her braids nervously, rolling them between the pads of her fingers, “You and Hope broke up?” she eventually asks, meeting his gaze with as much confidence as she can muster.

His eyes go wide, his jaw falling open, “Um, yeah, but I - Look, you’re really amazing but I think I need a little time, you know, and if you’ll wait, that’s great, but I don’t want you to feel obligated or anything, but again, you’re amazing, I just…” he trails off as he takes in the confusion on her face, a blush growing on his cheeks.

Then it clicks, “Oh!” she startles. “No, no, I - mate, I didn’t come to hit on you,” she clarifies, somewhat taken aback by the conclusion he so quickly jumped to. “I’m not here to ask you out, no,” she reiterates.

He nods swiftly, muttering a few apologies under his breath before clearing his throat. “So, um, why are you here then?” he asks, careful and wary of saying something else wrong.

Rosie shifts on her feet, hands falling back to fidget in her jacket pocket’s, “Well… I kinda got the impression that Hope regrets the way things went down and wants to try again,” she forces, drawing herself to her full height, still a few inches shorter than the man before her.

Confusion flickers on his face, “How’d you get that impression?”

“I talked to her.”

The confusion grows, a crease splitting his eyebrows, “She talked to you?”

“She showed up at my flat,” Rosie answers casually.

“Why?”

She shrugs, mumbling out an “I dunno” in response.

“And you’re fine with that? And you’re helping her?” his arms cross over his chest as he asks, staring down at her intently, intimidatingly.

“Yeah,” she shrinks under his gaze, drawing her jacket tighter to block out the sudden chill coursing down her spine.

Noah’s lips twist, though in frustration or anger or upset, Rosie can’t tell. “Why?” he repeats.

Rosie sighs, shrugging again at the lack of a better answer, offering her best explanation, “She was really torn up about it.”

“She dumped me,” he states calmly, matter-of-factly, dismissively.

“I know.”

He watches Rosie carefully for a moment, taking in her appearance as she shuffles on her feet, unable to conceive of where this conversation is going next. “Do you know why?” he finally asks, Rosie stilling at the question.

“No,” she admits reluctantly.

“I got lunch with Priya, alone.”

“Well, yeah, that’s not great,” sarcasm soaks her words, coating her throat as the syllables escape.

Noah blinks at her, still stern and calm, “Because Ibrahim and Marisol had to cancel.”

“Oh,” Rosie freezes, her body tensing uncomfortably. That changes things. She swallows thickly, eyebrows raising and curving together, “Does she know that?”

“I tried to tell her.”

“Maybe she’ll listen now.”

“She never does,” Noah shrugs, his demeanor unchanged and unaffected.

She looks to him in disbelief, “That can’t be true.”

He heaves a heavy sigh, his guard finally cracking as his arms fall back to his sides, disappointment radiating from him like warmth from a fire, “For my birthday she got me The Old Man and the Sea,” he looks at Rosie as if he expects her to understand what that means.

“Okay…” she squints. She knows enough about literature to know it’s a classic, that most students have to read it at one point, herself included. “Why’s that bad? You’re a librarian.”

Noah’s lips curve in a slight frown as he straightens impossibly taller, “I hate Hemingway,” he nearly spits the name, a frown splitting Rosie’s own lips at his obvious displeasure.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

---

Hope shows up at Rosie’s flat again that night, her features fraught as she hurries in, hugging herself tight with her coat. She drops onto the sofa after she enters, Rosie following a beat behind and folding her legs on the cushions, Hope nearly vibrating in her skin as she watches Rosie expectantly.

When Rosie only meets her gaze, she sighs exasperatedly, “Well? What’d he say? He didn’t text me or anything,” she leans forward, eager to learn.

Rosie shifts under the excitement presented to her, excitement she knows is about to die, “He, uh, he wasn’t really on board with you guys getting back together,” she mumbles, avoiding shining eyes.

Hope visibly deflates in only a heartbeat, her bottom lip poking out as tears well in her eyes, every part of her depressed and hurt, “He wasn’t?” Her voice is small, painfully so to Rosie’s ears.

She forces herself not to cringe at the tone, at the way Hope’s fighting tears once more, “No, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, you’ve done a lot,” Hope sniffles, wiping at her nose and blinking back tears to calm herself, to prevent another onslaught of sobs on Rosie’s sofa. “You’ve done a lot,” she repeats, eyes trained on the fabric of the cushions beneath them, staring intently just to have something to focus her energy on. “Did he say why?” she finally asks after a minute, breaking the brief silence that had settled over them.

“Er -” Rosie squirms, fidgeting nervously, “He said he didn’t think you really listened to him,” she draws out the words, not wanting to speak them.

Hope is absolutely appalled, her jaw falling open in horror, “That’s - That’s not true!” she eventually manages the words, her mouth fumbling them.

“I know, but -”

“I listen!” she insists, hands flying up to grip Rosie’s forearm desperately, in search of confirmation that she’s a good person, a good partner, “Why would he say that, Rosie?” she’s panicked as her grasp tightens, falling away only a second later, “Why would he say that?” she repeats, softer now, a whisper.

“He said for his birthday you got him a Hemingway book,” Rosie chances.

Hope’s arms fold over her chest protectively, “He didn’t have any Hemingway.”

“‘Cause he hates Hemingway,” Rosie explains as gently as she can, Hope immediately slumping again, any retorts or defences forgotten.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

It’s quiet, Hope staring at nothing and Rosie staring at Hope, waiting for something to change, waiting for her to get sad or angry or maybe just leave all together. But she doesn’t, meeting Rosie’s eyes with a fire inside her own, “I need something else.” She’s determined as she sinks into the cushions, thinking raptly of some solution. “What if I get him a gift?” a lightbulb seems to explode above her head as she sits up again.

Rosie blinks at the quick change in mood, taken aback at the grin sitting on Hope’s lips. “Like what?”

“He likes Greyhounds?” Hope proposes with a tilt of her head and a quirk of an eyebrow, “He always said he’d love to have one.”

“You’re gonna buy him an entire dog?” Rosie asks in shock, her tone stunted and sharp.

Hope scowls at her in irritation, “He likes them!” she defends, “He’s talked about them a lot, and it’ll show I listen, right?”

“I guess?”

“What do you mean you guess?”

Hands fly up in self-defence and attempted placation, “This is your relationship, I don’t know him or what goes,” Rosie gestures in the air separating her from Hope, working to diffuse the tension.

Hope huffs, crossing her arms and collapsing into the cushions behind her, “Fine.”

---

Hope spends the next few days looking up shelters and breeders, trying to decide on a puppy or an adult or even an elderly dog, researching proper care for a Greyhound and what they need. Rosie doesn’t see or hear from Hope until her phone’s ringing incessantly as she gets out of the shower, scrambling to answer it and silence the buzzing, “Hello?” she asks without even reading the Caller ID, fumbling to turn on speakerphone.

“Hey!” Hope’s voice crackles through the speaker, bright and energetic. “I found one!” she announces, clearly pleased with herself and her findings.

“Hmm?” Rosie questions distractedly, tightening her towel wrapped around her body and grabbing skin and hair products to set them on the bathroom sink.

“I found a dog! I went to a shelter!”

Rosie nods, only realising afterwards that Hope can’t see her, sighing as she coats her face in moisturiser. “That’s great,” she hums again.

“Can you come over tonight? And we bring him to Noah’s flat? Please?” her voice is begging as it rings through the phone, Rosie glancing to it as Hope draws out the vowels of her plea.

“Uh, yeah, I think I’m free,” she mumbles, her mouth twisting as she applies products.

She’s reaching for the end call button after a long silence when a quiet murmur surprises her, “Thank you,” Hope whispers into her phone from the other side of the line.

A small smile curves Rosie’s mouth, “No problem.”

---

“You’re the worst,” Hope groans as she tugs on a leash, glaring at Rosie and her amused smile beside her.

“Says the one that dragged me into this,” Rosie grins, popping her eyebrows for effect. She’s refused to assist with the dog the entire time, forcing Hope to try and wrangle the full grown animal.

It darts forward down the street, yanking Hope along, “Hey!” she chastises, Rosie laughing unabashedly from behind her, jogging to catch up. “You could help, you know! He listened to you earlier!”

Rosie smirks, “Oh, I know. This is much more fun, though,” she teases, falling into another fit of laughter as Hope digs her heels into the pavement, working to pull the dog back.

He doesn’t listen, carrying on in the direction of the library. Noah wasn’t at his flat, so they’ve been forced to take a short detour to find him without waiting. “At least he knows where he’s going,” Rosie comments, still grinning.

Hope shoots her a scowl, “How lucky,” she spits through gritted teeth, her jaw tight as she uses all her strength to keep the dog from running off into London’s streets.

Rosie sighs as Hope nearly trips over her own feet, crouching down and whistling sharply. The dog turns, bolting for her, nearly tackling her to the ground until she grips his fur to keep upright, cooing over him the entire time. Hope’s gaze is a mix of disappointed, annoyed, and mildly impressed as Rosie grins up at her, scratching the dog behind his ears.

She pops back to her feet, stealing the leash from Hope in one smooth motion, “You’re welcome,” she hums, setting back off on their path, the dog following obediently on her heels.

She hears Hope groaning about it behind her until she catches up, muttering a ‘thanks’ under her breath, much to Rosie’s enjoyment. The rest of the walk is relatively quiet, only a few good natured ribbings from Rosie or complaints from Hope filling the space as they work their way to the library, street lamps illuminating much of their path in the dark evening.

Noah spots them before they spot him, the pair distracted as Rosie laughs at Hope’s grumbling, Rosie nearly walking into a post as she struggles to stay upright. “Stop it!” Hope chides, slapping her shoulder, which only makes Rosie laugh even harder.

“Um, hi?” Noah calls out to them, earning their gazes simultaneously. Hope stiffens, Rosie sobers, and the dog slobbers onto the pavement beneath their feet.

Rosie passes the leash back to Hope, taking a step back and away from their reunion, much to Noah’s confusion. “Hi,” Hope greets back, his eyes settling back on her.

“What are you guys doing out here?” he asks, his tone slipping into something adjacent to wariness, maybe light caution.

A bright smile curves Hope’s mouth and she sticks her hand out, offering the leash and the dog attached to it, “I got you a dog!” she announces eagerly, “I know how much you’ve always wanted one, so…” she trails off at his expression.

His eyebrows are drawn tight, lips working to form some words, “You got me a dog?!” he balks, his expression soon slipping into anger, almost a snarl, with his eyes blazing. Hope taking a step away from him, blinking rapidly as her mind audibly whirs.

“You always said you wanted one!” she explains, a spark igniting in her own dark eyes, threatening to start a fight.

“That doesn’t - What were you thinking?!”

Hope’s jaw sets tight, but it’s not enough to hide the shimmer in her eyes, “You like them, I know you do! And you don’t think I listen, but I do, so I’m proving that to you!” she counters, her voice raising.

Noah looks baffled, his hands flying and mouth opening and closing as he searches for words, “He won’t fit in my flat, Hope! He’s big and - and has a ton of energy!” he gestures wildly to the dog that’s found his way to Rosie, sitting in front of her as she scratches behind his ear.

“I thought that’s what you liked about them!” Hope’s own arms are waving, in both exasperation and irritation. One hand rises to fidget with her braids, tugging on and fiddling with a few.

“Yeah, for when I’m in a house, not a tiny flat!” Noah shouts back, “I can’t have him! I don’t want him!”

Any fire that had been blazing in Hope’s dark eyes dies out at that, at the way Noah’s glaring at her, at the way he’s dismissed her peace offering, her attempt to fix things between them. “But -”

“You can’t just -” he huffs sharply before trying to school his expression into something calmer, “You can’t just do these things without asking, it’s like you don’t even care what I think.”

Hope looks horrified, like her world is turning to ash right before her, and maybe it is, maybe this is the end of everything for her, “That’s not - I care! This is how I care! I - I pay attention and try and do things for you!”

“I don’t want you to do things for me!” Noah counters, hands balling into angry fists at his sides.

“Why not?” Hope asks indignantly, head tilted back to meet Noah’s gaze directly, her chest puffed out in a show of confidence.

Noah flounders, his jaw snapping shut, visibly rolling with tension as he searches for a reason, exploding when he can’t find one, “I just don’t! I can do things myself, Hope, I don’t need you railroading me like you always do! I’m tired of it, it’s not worth it!” he accuses, his last words effectively severing any chance at reconciliation.

Hope slumps, her shoulders sagging and face drooping, every muscle in her body going lax, as if she’s melting from heartache. Noah exhales sharply, his own shoulders dropping, losing some of the tension keeping them upright as he drags a hand through his hair, playing with it to calm himself further.

Rosie keeps to the side, not sure of her place, not sure if she’s meant to intervene, and only watches Hope stand with her head turned to the ground, braids blocking her face from view as she remains frozen, unmoving, her feet stuck to the ground and her body tense. “I’m sorry.” The words are barely audible, fractures of the typical strength in her voice, before she turns on her heel, dropping the dog’s leash and running away with tears in her eyes.

Noah deflates as she leaves, his hands balled up tight to steady himself, his face scrunched up in thought and frustration and likely a dozen other emotions as he struggles to process them. He slumps forward, his previous fight and irritation dissipating into the air, the dog still sitting at Rosie’s feet, tongue lolling and a whine echoing from him.

All the while, Rosie struggles for words, for a reaction, for something appropriate, but all she can think about is the way Hope collapsed before him, like the sight is imprinted on her mind. “Come on, mate,” she finally breaks the quiet, “You didn’t have to be that harsh,” she comments, deep creases in her own forehead and between her brows.

“I didn’t mean to be,” Noah mumbles, head down in shame as he stares at the ground, blank and empty save for the rise of his chest with each breath.

Rosie steps closer as the silence drags on, scooping up the abandoned leash and glancing over her shoulder and finding Hope long gone as she does. Her hand rises to his shoulder, gripping it loosely, “I know,” she shrugs weakly, squeezing the muscles beneath her palm. “Sorry about the dog,” she offers.

Noah laughs a little, but it’s splintered on the edges and lacking any real joy or amusement, “It’s fine. My mum’ll love him, I’m sure.”

Rosie nods sagely, retracting her hand carefully before gesturing over her shoulder, “I’m gonna, uh, go after her,” she mutters, turning on her heel and hurrying after Hope.

She finds her slumped against a wall half a block away, staring at nothing with tears streaming down her face as her lip quivers with barely restrained sobs. Rosie skids to a stop beside her, earning Hope’s attention momentarily, before she turns back to staring at nothing. She’s hollow, her gaze empty, barely there as she drifts through her mind and the storm that must be filling it like a hurricane. Rosie doesn’t say anything, only leans against the wall beside the destitute woman, eyes trained on the glimmers coating her cheeks, lit by street lamps around them.

“I just,” Hope finally begins after a long, painstakingly silent moment, “I don’t get it.” She sniffles, “I - I know we weren’t perfect, but I just… I thought we meant more than we must have.” Her voice falls apart on the last few words, cracking and splintering into a tiny, fragile whisper.

Rosie nods in understanding, pulling Hope into her arms without uttering a single word, holding her close and letting her fall apart once more, shaking under the weight of Rosie’s arms around her, burying her face in her shoulder. Her hands fist in the fabric of Rosie’s shirt, an anchor to attach herself to as the hurricane blows and wrecks and destroys her insides.

Hope’s tired of letting go, of giving in or giving up, of letting her world dissolve in her hands because fighting’s too much of a risk, a hazard, a danger to her. She’s tired of ignoring the things that rub her the wrong way, that send a cold chill down her spine, that fill her skull with a swirling mass of dark and awful thoughts. She’s tired of all the hurt and the fighting, of the way her skin turns a sickly green every time someone gets too close, of the headaches and nausea that accompany one of his unbothered shrugs.

She’s tired of it, she’s done with it, she’s not going to fight anymore, not when he doesn’t fight for her. Not when Rosie is the one she’s been leaning on, not when Rosie is the one that’s been consoling her, not when Rosie is the one that’s been nice, and caring, and sweet, and gentle, and there.

Hope shifts, freeing her face from Rosie’s top as the tears come to a stop, but keeping her head resting against her shoulder. “Why couldn’t it have been like this?” she whispers into the air, a quiet pondering that’s directed more to herself than the woman wrapped around her.

“Hmm?” Rosie hums, pulling back to look down at Hope, finding her gaze distant as she stares into the space before her, eyes piercing into the street stretching before them. “What do you mean?” Rosie murmurs down to her, finally drawing dark eyes to her own.

They’re averted just as quickly, Hope pressing her cheek even further into Rosie’s shoulder, and Rosie swears she sees some colour rush to Hope’s face. “I dunno,” she mumbles, gaze trained on nothing in particular. “It’s just… easier. Comforting. You let me do this and you’re sweet about it.”

“Noah seems pretty sweet,” Rosie mumbles awkwardly, still unsure where the line is, how Hope feels about him, how she wants to feel about him and their relationship.

Her shoulders raise in a miniscule, half-hearted shrug, “Yeah, but he doesn’t really get it. He doesn’t get it when I’m upset or mad. He’s too calm,” her lips twist at the statement, displeased at the memories.

Rosie snorts, above her, Hope’s eyes darting upwards, “What, and I’m a raving madwoman, is that?” she grins, the tension of the moment falling away with ease.

Hope’s mouth curves at the edges as she slips from Rosie’s grasp just enough to slap her arm, a common reaction to the older woman’s antics, Rosie feigning pain and rubbing at the spot instantly. “No!” Hope chides, “But you get it,” she settles back against Rosie, “Or at least you get what to do. Noah would try and fix it or tell me to ignore it or whatever, but you just let me be.”

Rosie shrugs, some heat rising to her cheeks as she glances towards the empty street beside them, fumbling for a response. She defaults to finding somewhere that will bring Hope some sort of solace, “Okay, let’s get you home,” she sighs, ignoring the heat on the back of her neck to the best of her ability.

Hope removes herself from Rosie’s hold entirely this time, stepping back and folding her arms while shifting from foot to foot. “Can I stay at your place tonight?” she asks with a twist of her lips, looking to Rosie from beneath her lashes.

“Sure,” Rosie grins, slinging her arm over Hope’s shoulders to guide her through the streets to her car, Hope leaning into her with ease as they trade some small conversation.

---

A day later and there’s a knock on Rosie’s door from across the flat, a short, sharp knock. She sighs, grabbing a dish towel and dusting off her hands before exiting the kitchen and the mess of ingredients within it. Another knock sounds on the wood, impatient as it continues on and on, Rosie hurrying to reach the door.

She jerks it open to find Hope on the other side of the threshold, beaming with her fist still poised in the air and a bottle of wine in her other hand. “Hi!” she greets, stepping past Rosie into the flat and scanning the open area curiously.

“Hey?” Rosie tries, shutting the door behind Hope and leaning against it, arms crossed and towel in hand. “Should I have been expecting you?” she asks, cycling through her day in her mind to double-check.

“Nope!” Hope turns, still grinning, “But I brought wine!” she offers the bottle proudly, swinging it for emphasis.

Rosie nods, one brow raised, “I can see that.”

Hope’s smile dims, slowly falling away as Rosie doesn’t say anything more, evidently a sign of annoyance. “Sorry,” she bows her head. “I shouldn’t have come, should I? I’m sorry, I just didn’t know what to do tonight,” she confesses, her words rushing in a hurry to explain herself.

Rosie pushes herself upright from the door, stepping away from the threshold and closer to Hope, “I take it you usually spend evenings with Noah?”

Hope only nods in response, head still down in embarrassment and resignation. Her arms are slack at her side, the wine bottle dangling loosely in her grasp as she awaits Rosie’s harsh words telling her to leave and not come back.

“Well, I’m making dinner right now and I always make too much,” Rosie states, no edge in her voice, no malice in her words, “Take your shoes off and it’ll be done in about a half hour.” Rosie turns, striding back into the kitchen and leaving Hope to collect herself.

She joins Rosie a few minutes later in her socks, her smile repaired as she drops into a barstool across from Rosie, placing the wine bottle on the counter, a glimmer in her eyes as she presents it, pushing it across the counter. Rosie laughs in response, nicking it and pulling out wine glasses. She pours a drink for each of them, Hope draining hers rather quickly as she talks about her day, Rosie stealing a few sips as she cooks.

Rosie presents the finished dinner with a flourish to Hope, earning a laugh as she takes the plate. Rosie rounds the kitchen, dropping into the stool beside Hope and taking a swig of her wine. “So what’d you do today?” Hope prompts curiously, cutting into the chicken Rosie made and taking a bite.

“Usual stuff. Trained today, the new player’s are adjusting pretty well, and then ran a few errands. Usual stuff,” she shrugs, taking a bite of asparagus.

“That’s fun,” Hope hums encouragingly, smiling wide when Rosie glances to her. She nearly chokes on her food at the sight, coughing and laughing at the same time as Hope watches in confusion and concern, “What’s happening? Are you okay?” she turns in her seat to face Rosie directly, hands hovering, unsure of where to land.

Rosie waves her off, still working to catch her breath and stop laughing, something made infinitely more difficult by Hope hitting her on the back to presumably help her dislodge something. “I’m fine!” she croaks, working to suck in deep breaths.

“Are you sure? What happened?” Hope asks again, hand on the back of Rosie’s seat, just in case.

Rosie chuckles briefly before pressing her lips together, forcing neutrality that barely holds together, “You were just very serious in your excitement over groceries.” She bites her tongue to keep from laughing again.

“Is that really it?” Rosie nods to confirm, suppressing more giggles. Hope’s eyes roll, a groan escaping from her throat, “You’re the worst.”

Now Rosie can barely hold it back, dissolving into giggles as Hope scowls, picking at her meal as Rosie struggles to find air. “Says the one eating my food,” she grins when she finally catches her breath.

“What’s that mean?” Hope turns with a glare.

Rosie draws herself taller, even sitting down she’s got some height on Hope, “It means you showed up at my door unannounced and stole all my hard work,” she accuses coolly.

“I brought you wine!” Hope frowns, gesturing to the bottle in her defence.

Rosie raises an eyebrow, a knowing smile on her lips, “Who’s the one drinking it all?”

That shuts Hope up, Rosie earning a scowl as they turn back to their dinners, Hope staying quiet until Rosie brings up her job. Then she’s beaming and telling every detail of her workplace she can think of, every coworker that’s weird or mean or nice or funny, every aspect of career that she loves.

The conversation flows alongside the wine, until the bottle’s empty and the pair’s slouched on the sofa, facing each other on opposite ends. Hope fumbles for her phone, pulling it out and wincing at the time, “I need to go home.” She turns, standing up what must be too quickly because she drops back to the cushions.

Rosie shifts forward too, folding her legs before her, “Did you drive here?”

Braids jangle as Hope nods, her eyes falling shut as she slowly leans back into the cushions again. Rosie sighs, finding it much easier to stand than Hope, and grabs a blanket, draping it across her lap, “Just stay here.

Hope’s eyes squint open, looking up at Rosie with dilated pupils, “You sure?” she mumbles, her words slurring together from the alcohol that had coated her tongue.

“Yeah, you’re not getting in a wreck on my watch,” Rosie hums, collecting their glasses and the empty bottle before striding into the kitchen. She puts the glasses in the sink and the bottle on the counter beside it to deal with tomorrow, then retraces her steps to the living room.

Hope’s curled up on the sofa already, the blanket tucked under her chin, and Rosie smiles at the sight and absurdity of a drunk Hope asleep in her flat. She shakes her head, turning to her bedroom and stalking inside, collapsing on the bed as soon as she can, passing out as soon as her head hits the pillow.

---

Hope continues coming to Rosie’s flat a few times a week, sometimes with an offering of wine or takeaway in hand, sometimes with nothing more than herself. They watch movies and talk and laugh about stupid things from the Villa or stories from their lives until their tired from long days or it’s three in the morning and they still don’t stop talking.

Sometimes Hope sits in an armchair and responds to emails while Rosie paces the length of the flat with her phone pressed to her ear, talking down one of her players or fighting with managers. Sometimes there’s not a single word spoken between them, sometimes all they do is talk, sometimes Rosie makes dinner, sometimes it’s late enough that they’ve both already eaten, sometimes Hope shows up after Rosie has already gone to bed, sometimes Hope even beats her home in the afternoon.

There’s no pattern to any of it, there’s no rhythm, nothing concrete to Hope’s appearances, but Rosie soon finds that she doesn’t even mind. It’s actually kind of nice, to have someone around without any expectations. It’s kind of nice that Hope brings her soup when she gets a cold, or how Hope somehow always has wine on hand for when they need it, or how Hope tidies the flat when she’s especially busy.

It’s a casual night tonight, popcorn and drinks sitting on the coffee table as a movie plays across from them in the dark. Rosie picked tonight, a drama about a hockey team one of her players always recommends, since she couldn’t think of anything else but was not definitely not watching another of Hope’s romcoms twice in a row. They’d been snacking all night, splitting a pizza in the evening as Hope worked on some project and Rosie scrolled her phone, a silence seeping into the flat.

Rosie watches the film in a similar silence now, watches the flickering of light as it reflects and refracts off every available surface in the room. A contented sigh vibrates in her throat as she settles further into the sofa, pulling the blanket she’s enthralled within tighter. She sinks into the cushions, shifting her legs and letting her knees brush against Hope’s thighs.

Speaking of, she can see the other woman watching her in the dark, eyes trained on Rosie’s features, inspecting them carefully as blues and yellows and reds and dozens of other hues play in her dark irises, glinting off and mixing with them. Rosie glances over, finding a crease between Hope’s brows as she stares at something below Rosie’s eyes that she can’t quite place. She smiles softly in the dim lighting, teasingly, “What?” she asks, “Something on my face?”

Only she doesn’t get the chance to ask the second question, because suddenly there is absolutely something on her face, something that she doesn’t think should be there and was not at all anticipating, but honestly doesn’t entirely mind. Hope’s lips are on hers, soft and nice and there.

Hope’s kissing her. Hope’s kissing her, and it’s tentative and cautious and careful, like Hope’s gaze was a moment ago, and it all makes sense in an instant. She blinks, stunned and shocked, until her lashes flutter shut and she’s kissing Hope back. She melts into her, a hand rising to cup Hope’s cheek and draw her closer, a hand fisting in the front of her shirt to close the space between them.

When they finally break for air, a sigh slips past Hope’s lips as their lips separate, still brushing against each other, their breath mingling in the small gap. “Um, what…?” Rosie whispers against the lips on hers, unable to find a conclusion to the question.

“I - I don’t know,” Hope whispers, just as quiet, “Sorry,” she murmurs, pulling back.

Rosie watches her go, hurt welling inside her gut at the regret evident on Hope’s face, “Why?”

Hope shakes her head, like she’s frustrated with something, though Rosie doesn’t know what. “Didn’t ask,” is all she says, leaning away and turning back to the film still playing.

Rosie’s following her retreat without even realising, chasing after Hope unconsciously. “Didn’t mind.”

“Really?” Hope’s eyes snap to her, wide with clear surprise at the admission.

“I mean, maybe a little warning next time, but…” Rosie shrugs, unbothered.

Dark eyes glimmer, lit by the films rainbow of lighting, “Next time?”

“If you want.”

Hope shifts, facing Rosie head on, “Do you want a next time?” she asks carefully, emphasising the importance of the question with wide eyes.

A smirk lifts the corner of Rosie’s mouth, “First time was pretty good, so yeah.”

“Only ‘pretty good’?” Hope teases, leaning closer again, close enough for Rosie to see faint specks sparkling in her irises.

“Yep,” Rosie nods, resolute as her face solidifies into sharp stone. “Not about to stroke your ego.”

Hope groans, “You’re the worst.”

“Says the one that kissed me first,” Rosie teases right back, her smirk only growing at Hope’s annoyance, however played up it may be.

“Shut up,” Hope whines.

“No thanks,” Rosie grins, ready to start a spiel about everything she’s learned annoys Hope in the past few months, everything that earns a groan or a sigh or an eye roll, everything that makes her glare or scowl or slap Rosie’s arm even though it doesn’t hurt. “I think I’m -”

Hope’s kissing her again, only this time it’s deeper, filled with fire as Hope’s hands slip around to cup the back of her head, pulling Rosie ever closer and holding her there. Rosie’s own hands slide along Hope’s body, landing on her thighs and tugging her forward on the cushions, until their bodies are pressed together, with lips locked together. A groan slips from Hope’s throat, Rosie humming at the noise and sending her hands exploring in search of more sounds, palms grazing Hope’s exposed navel, muscles twitching beneath skin.

Hope splits them apart, her forehead pressing against Rosie’s gently, her panting breaths sending a shiver down Rosie’s spine. “What are we now?” her words only amplifying the effect.

“Whatever you want us to be,” Rosie answers easily, the question seeming unnecessary, “You’re kinda taking the reins here.”

Hope pauses, her hands clasped behind Rosie’s neck and thumbs brushing her skin idly. “Are we already dating?” she asks after a long moment.

“What do you mean?”

“We do a lot of coupley stuff,” Hope shrugs a bit, her lips twisting in contemplation, “We hang out all the time and I stay over and you make dinner and we watch movies,” she lists off.

Rosie pulls away, putting enough space between them to take in all of Hope, “Do you wanna carry on like this?”

Hope blinks, like she wasn’t expecting that question, “Yeah,” she answers, a little indignantly.

“Okay,” Rosie nods along, “Do you wanna call it dating?”

Hope stalls, eyes falling away as she considers, her voice coming out smaller than before when it finally does, “...Yeah.”

“Then we’re dating,” Rosie smiles sweetly at her, Hope’s expression softening at the sight.

Until it sharpens quickly, determination building in her eyes, “We have to go on a date,” she states evenly, matter-of-factly.

“Does that make it official?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Rosie shrugs, falling back against the arm of the sofa casually, a wicked grin splitting her lips, “But you’re taking me out,” she warns.

Hope’s brow furrows at the declaration, the surety of it, “What? Why?”

“You started this, now it’s your problem,” Rosie smirks as Hope frowns, her eyes narrowing into a glare in the dark of the flat.

“You’re the absolute worst.”

“Says the one taking me on a date,” Rosie wiggles in her spot, falling back further and slipping her feet into Hope’s lap, Hope harrumphing and shoving them off with a scowl, much to Rosie’s amusement.

---

Hope drags Rosie out to a cafe in the morning, grinning the entire time she avoids telling Rosie where they’re even going, laughing at all of Rosie’s off-base guesses and humming ‘warmer’ when she gets something right.

She holds Rosie’s hand the entire time, occasionally swinging their interlocked digits between them or fiddling with Rosie’s fingers, as if they’re the most fascinating thing Hope can conceive of. And maybe they are. Maybe the way their hands fit together is strange, maybe the way they’re so close in size is odd, maybe the way Rosie squeezes her hand or traces circles along her knuckles idly is puzzling.

She pulls Rosie to a stop at the mouth of an alley, earning a confused expression in turn as Rosie looks around, “What are we doing here?” she spins in a slow circle, taking in the desolate street around them, a backroad with a small boutique, a pawn shop, and an auto body place. “Are you going to mug me?” she asks with twisted lips when she faces Hope again.

A laugh bubbles out of Hope and she swats at Rosie’s arm, a pleased smile curving Rosie’s mouth. “No!” Hope chastises, before pausing, her jaw clamping shut. “Close your eyes,” she demands a beat later.

“Okay, you’re definitely mugging me.”

“Just do it,” Hope whines. “Please?” she smiles, sweet as candy, Rosie immediately giving in with a roll of her eyes. “Perfect,” Hope squeezes Rosie’s hand tight, gently tugging her further into the alley.

“This is a very elaborate ruse to mug me, you know,” Rosie comments, eyes still squeezed shut, a hand on her lower back leading her.

Hope huffs exasperatedly, “Would you stop it?”

“Just saying. You already know where I live and when I have work, you don’t have to mug me.”

“Stop it or I really am gonna mug you.”

Rosie grins victoriously, reveling in the way she doesn’t even have to see Hope’s face to know how irritated she is, that she can tell from voice alone, “Knew it.”

“Shut. Up,” Hope’s teeth are gritted as she glares at Rosie with her dopey smile and closed eyes.

“Fine, fine,” Rosie concedes, “Just leave my money alone.”

“Just your money?”

Rosie faces Hope regardless of sight, “What’s that meant to mean? You want my phone, too?”

“Just checking if you’re available then,” Hope teases playfully, still gently leading.

Rosie pauses to consider, “Depends,” she finally lands on.

“On what?” Hope challenges.

“What you want out of me,” Rosie answers carefully, “I’m not mugging people with you.”

Hope barely suppresses an eye roll, “You’re the worst.”

“Aw, you really care,” Rosie coos, her hands clasping above her heart dramatically.

“I care about your money.”

Another victorious smile, “Knew it. Golddigger.”

“Arsehole.”

“Says the mugger.”

A sigh’s Rosie’s only response as they come to a stop somewhere, Hope’s arms draping around Rosie’s shoulders and her lips pecking Rosie’s. Her hands instinctively land on Hope’s hips, “Okay, open your eyes,” Hope hums.

Rosie obliges, blinking a few times to adjust to the sunlight, smiling down at Hope as her vision clears. “This it? Lotta theatrics. Coulda just stayed in for this view,” she teases.

Hope shakes her head exasperatedly, but it’s not enough to hide the smile on her lips, “Look around.”

She does, lifting her head away from Hope and finding them on a busier street the alley emptied onto. There’s a little café right in front of her, somewhat secluded from the rest of the street, with fogged windows and blurs of colour inside. No one’s moving in or out of the building, and it’s small enough that only a few patrons could possibly be inside.

Rosie’s eyes fall back to Hope and her smile, “What is this place?” she asks softly, bewonderment lessening the edge of her tongue at the quiet little escape she’s been led to.

“My favourite café. It’s really small and has the same regulars and everyone’s super nice and wonderful.” Hope bites her lip, as if she’s hesitating or nervous about something, “I found it after the show, when there was so much attention everywhere I went, and no one even knew me, so I started coming all the time.”

Rosie nods along, staring into Hope’s eyes intently to ground her, to show she understands. And she really does. She understands how hard it was with the editing and the pressure of the show. She understands how bad the backlash online was at times, when people would shit on them for anything. She understands how necessary it was to find a place to withdraw, to have people that didn’t care and just let her continue on with her job.

“Well, let’s go,” Hope’s arms retract from around Rosie’s shoulders, hands sliding down to grip Rosie’s and pull her along to the café. She swings the door open with a grin, a bell ringing above their heads. Not a single patron glances their way, most typing away at laptops or scrolling their phones as they sip drinks and slowly pick at food.

Only an employee takes notice, waving at Hope with a welcoming smile as he wipes down a countertop. She gently leads Rosie to the till, immediately falling into a conversation with the man as Rosie scans the menu and the shop. There’s booths on one wall, most empty, small tables filling the front, and a mural of different climates and natural environments on the wall opposite the booths.

“What do you want?” Hope asks, turning to Rosie as the employee stands waiting, his hands on his hips and a slight smile curling his mouth.

She smiles back before glancing at the menu and the dozens of items written across it. “Um,” her eyes scan over drink after drink, the letters whirring together. “Iced vanilla latte for now?” she tries, meeting the employees eyes.

“Ooh, me too!” Hope chimes, squeezing Rosie’s hand excitedly.

The employee - Chris, on his name tag - smiles even brighter, “Coming right up.”

Hope tugs Rosie away before Chris has even turned all the way around, pulling her along to a booth and collapsing into one side. Rosie follows, settling across from her, their hands still loosely linked together on the table, Hope’s thumb tracing the lines of Rosie’s palm.

Something sparks in the back of Rosie’s mind at the contact, in the pit of her stomach, in the thump of her heart, and she can’t quite place it, but she knows she likes it. She knows she likes this moment, too, the way Hope looks so at ease and relaxed, the way Hope brought her to her hidden spot, the way Hope tried to make breakfast before opting for the café. She likes the way this is going, they way they work together, even from before they realised there was something more to them than platonic movie nights. She likes how casual it was, how easy it came about, how relaxed she is as long as Hope’s there.

And she likes the way they just fit. They fit like one another’s other half, their perfect match, the missing pieces in the puzzles that construct their lives. And she can see herself sacrificing things for the woman sitting across from her, can see herself working for this relationship and all its inevitable flaws, can see herself in this moment forever, without a doubt in her mind. And Rosie doesn’t do things she can’t see, can’t envision, can’t rationalise.

But she can see Hope’s smile, can envision countless Sunday mornings spent at this little café, can rationalise the way her heart flutters at every laugh. This makes perfect sense, every detail and every second is reasonable and real and means so much more than Rosie ever thought they’d mean.

[heli0s-writes]

DEADCRUSH

Summary: Deadcrush, a game played based on the question “what historical figure would I want to take on a date if they were alive today?”

A/N: 4k word count because I can’t be brief about anything. Also mentions age difference, and questionable internet humor. Also now with Part 2! Oh my god and Part 3!

Bag of Tricks One-Shots Masterlist

It’s in the middle of receiving a blow to his jaw when Bucky hears your voice whistle through the air above him.

“No way!” You’re yelling, “That’s sick, Peter!”

He glances up for half a second to see you swinging against the New York backdrop, left hand raised and entombed by a thick knot of webbing from Parker who’s launching you and himself across the skyline. Bucky dodges another fist and by the time he’s knocked out the thug trying to get fresh with him, you’ve already finished your trajectory and bowled over a cluster of bodies. The ground’s cracked where you made your descent in the distance, and Parker lands softly next to you.

“Come on!” He cries, pitch rising, “You picked Rasputin!”

You respond with a maniacal giggle. “He’s Russia’s greatest love machine!” With a flick of your wrist, you condescendingly scoff. “Dude, Anne Frank? She was twelve.”

“Rasputin was like a million! And insane! Anne Frank is close to my age, at least. And this is entirely hypothetical—I'm imagining a future with her where she’s older than me. I think we’d totally get along, I read her diary and everything- I mean, we’re so close! Fine--” Parker crosses his arms.

“Marie Curie.”

Your eyes catch Bucky looking and you give him a wide smile and a small wave before you pivot back to Peter. Bucky’s brow furrows even deeper before he turns and heads towards Steve who’s winding down at the end of his own fight. Kids are fucking weird, he thinks a little bitterly, as you and Parker squabble on in the distance.

-

In the middle of dinner, as he’s twisting a ream of spaghetti onto his fork, you and Parker stand on the balcony eating what looks like a whole baguette smeared with jelly. Through the glass door, Parker crunches into it before handing the baguette off to you. He’s gesturing wildly and brushing crumbs off his suit.

You take a bite too large for your mouth and the crust crumbles down your chin, chased by a dribble of jelly. You level your palm and start measuring Peter’s height much to his indignance, and Bucky has to turn around before he loses his appetite completely. He hears your laughter muffled through the door. Your hand is clasped on Parker’s shoulder in an attempt to hold yourself up.

You’re a funny one. Always joking and cheerful. You’ve been a part of the team for the past six months and you’re closest to Parker both in demeanor and in age, but sometimes Bucky finds you up late at night and the two of you sit at the table over a cup of tea.

You show him inexplicable and strange images from your phone and try your best to explain to him why the frog is on the unicycle and what the hell “yeet” actually means. Once, you showed him a video about twerking but when you jokingly proposed that you might teach him instead, he nearly knocked the table over by jerking up, ready to take off.

It always ends with joyful tears in the corners of your eyes.

It makes him a little bit angry with himself because he really has no right to even be talking to you. Cryrosleep aside, he’s almost old enough to be your father. But when your laughter lights up the room, it burns those harsh thoughts from his brain.

He’d never admit it, but when he’s awake after tossing for hours, he hopes you’re in the kitchen.

The door swings open and in-between mouthfuls, Parker is baffled, “Who is that?”

“Ancient poet.” You answer, popping a finger in your mouth, “My girl! Island of Lesbos. She definitely knew how to...” You waggle your eyebrows, make a V-shape with your fingers, and lewdly run your tongue up and down between them. Bucky thinks he sees you looking at him, but he feels himself flushing at your comment and pretends like he’s enthralled with spaghetti.

“Dude. Stop it.” Peter moans.

-

In the middle of movie night, another showing of Mary Poppins, you and Parker once again tuck away into the corner of the Stark auditorium with a shared blanket and chatter vehemently. Bucky doesn’t know which is more irritating—Van Dyke’s terrible accent, or the fact that the two of you are attached by the hip today.

“Marilyn Monroe!” Parker whispers.

From the corner of his eye, Bucky watches you contemplate your reply before leaning in impossibly close to Peter. The young man’s jaw clenches as his eyes widen like saucers. He shoots Bucky a look, as if catching him eavesdropping.

“What!?” Peter shrieks.

The entire room turns to look at the two of you. You clamp your hand over Peter’s mouth, bury your face into the side of his head.

“That’s the safest one!” You say.

“No! No, it’s definitely not safe!” He responds back, voice cracking slightly and pushing your face away when your hair tickles him. “Gettoffa— God! Are you serious!?”

“Okay, what the hell is this conversation?” Natasha pauses the movie and leans over the back of the recliner.

Peter pulls the cover over his face and you start giggling again.

“We’re talking about our DC’s.” You finally admit, pausing enough to calm yourself.

“DC’s?” Steve questions.

“Dead crushes.” There it is again- that little look you send his way. He thinks three times is at least one too many to be just a dream.

“Dead-what-now?” Sam is incredulous.

“You guys have never played this game before? You know, pick one person from history who you’d take out to dinner if circumstances made it possible.”

Peter pokes his head out, “And look, please tell her that all of my choices are perfectly reasonable! Anne Frank? Marilyn Monroe? Marie Curie? She picked Rasputin! And not because of that weird old song.”

You scoff because Boney M is a fine example of industry-bottled pop music and beat Milli Vanilli as the façade of genuine artistry by miles.

“Rasputin’s a bit dark, isn’t he?” Steve shakes his head.

Sticking your tongue out at him, you land your gaze on Natasha with a sly smirk.

“Who would you pick, sexy international Russian spy? Let’s get a peek into that gorgeous red head of yours.” She licks her lips at your overt flirtation and flips her hair over her shoulder.

Bucky folds his arms over his chest and leans back into the chair he’s on. This was your game—saddling up to people with effortless compliments and humor, reading a personality so well and maneuvering yourself to fit just right into their expectations. Who else could be so forward with Natasha, joking or otherwise? Who else would suggest teaching him how to twerk? Fuck.

Natasha mulls the question over for a second, “Stalin. I’d take him to dinner. And then to his grave.”

There’s an exasperated sound that escapes your lips. “Okay, that’s not really how the game works. This is not supposed to be a political commentary- it's a genuine display of … attraction!”

“To corpses.” Bucky mutters.

“Okay, that’s dark.” You and Peter exhale in unison. The giggles that escape both of you as you start calling “jinx” on each other before wrestling on that tiny fucking sofa chair makes him bite back a growl. From the couch to his left, Steve notices.

-

In the middle of pouring scalding water into a plain white mug, Bucky feels a tap on his shoulder.

“No.” He greets the finger. “Nope. Steve. Goodnight, jerk.”

“You’re actin’ like a kid, Buck.”

Bucky huffs as he sets the kettle back down with a clatter on the stovetop.

“No.” The problem is that I’m not the kid, Bucky scolds himself for even having the thought surface.

Steve half-heartedly sighs because Bucky is so smitten it’s almost painful to watch. It’s obvious to him and the rest of the team that the two of you dance around each other under the pretense of professionalism, but he knows that the laughter coming from down the hallway late at night is more meaningful than a work relationship.

The first time Steve had seen Bucky lean into a friendly touch was when you had placed your hand on his back, steadying yourself as you fixed your shoe. It was such an offhanded gesture, and Bucky tensed briefly before holding out his arm for you. You didn’t realize his intention and took his entire vibranium hand with a firm squeeze before waltzing off, leaving him to gaze after your disappearing trail. That was three weeks into Bucky’s time at the compound, and your fourth month. It opened Steve’s eyes to a possibility he hadn’t yet entertained.

Steve thinks part of how easily you had infiltrated Bucky’s stonewall demeanor is, in fact, your age. You were right on the cusp of balancing maturity and immaturity, often teetering into the immature waters out of habit. You stayed up late for no reason, played video games for hours, ate all sorts of odd meals with no care for your health, and always gladly shared anything that made you smile. It was infectious. You lacked the exact type of self-awareness everyone else had that made them so careful with Buck— and he let you slip through the cracks effortlessly.

It’s your childlike happiness that’s done it for Bucky. Even though it’s now become a point of uneasiness for his friend, Steve is thankful that you’re exactly how old you are. It’s helped him more than harmed him so far.

Bucky takes a sip of his peppermint and lemon tea and leans against the counter. Steve watches with amusement as his shoulders tense when your chortle bounces into the room. You’re telling Peter goodnight as he heads back home to Queens.

“Hey!” You call, “Sunrise tomorrow?”

A faint affirmation is heard before Parker’s whooping whips faintly in the distance, swinging away. The front door closes and you pop into the kitchen wearing nothing but a swimsuit cover-up, full of diamond-shaped holes. A tiny pink bikini peeks out from underneath the pattern. Bucky averts his gaze because the women of his time did not dress like that and he’s not even sure looking in your direction is legal.

“Night swimming?” Steve asks with a smirk at his friend, who turns around to hide the red creeping up his cheeks like vines.

You nod eagerly before opening the pantry and grabbing a box of Oreos from the top shelf. Tucking one into your mouth, you crunch through it and swallow before closing the pantry door and placing the container under your arm. Crumbs fall down your chest and you curse under your breath as you swipe bits of cookie from your top, oblivious to why Steve suddenly finds the ceiling very interesting.

“Hey me and Double-P are gonna watch the sunrise on top of the Chrysler building tomorrow- you two wanna come? He’ll swing you right up! It’s fun! I’m gonna make breakfast!”

They both shake their head and you mutter something about their loss for a free roller coaster and good view. Bucky and Steve follow your path out the door and hear the patter of your feet before you crash into the deep midnight water with a tremendous cannonball. They watch as your head breaks the surface of ripples before you lean back and squirt water from your mouth like a fountain. Music surges from the outdoor speakers— a seductive Latin Pop tune with hints of reggaeton. You float over to the pool’s edge and throw another cookie in your mouth, bopping along to the groove enthusiastically, shoulders winding to the ebb and flow of water.

“C’mon, Buck.” Steve urges, motioning his head to where you float lazily, watching the moon, nodding to synth beats and timbales drumming. “Forget age… she woulda been your kinda girl back in the day.”

Bucky swallows and turns to his steaming mug, “There were no girls like her back in the day.”

-

It’s in the middle of his nightmare when Bucky jerks awake and smells buttered toast and coffee. It’s still dark out, only four-something, but he stumbles to the restroom and brushes his teeth anyway. When he arrives at the kitchen, you’re standing at the stovetop wearing athletic shorts and bunny slippers. There’s a frilly orange apron tied neatly to your waist, covering a shredded crop-top, and you’re flipping a hearty slice of bread with an egg in the center.

“Hey Sarge.” You smile, “Help yourself to an eggy. Yolk’s runny and dippable, just like God intended.”

He shakes his head no because he knows you’re preparing it for Peter, but sits down on a stool anyway, leaning over the counter to watch you with interest. When one piece of toast cooks, you move to crack fresh pepper and sea salt over another. You also slice tomatoes and rinse fresh basil leaves, tunelessly humming the whole time. When you stifle a yawn with your shoulder, Bucky squints at the tell-tale blue bags under your eyes.

“Again?”

You rub your neck with a guilty smile and take a sip of water, “Got stuck on the internet… reading about… I can’t even... I know I started with Kennedy… but the last browser is bee swarming and royal jelly...”

He laughs when you go off on a rant about how bees communicate with each other, even demonstrating for him something you called a “waggle dance”, and he’s not sure if you’re just making shit up or not but it’s cute as hell when you bend your elbows and shuffle in figure eights on the tile.

“So then, me— a bee— would show you— another bee— this dance… and then you would go find the yummy flower! And did you know bees would dance with excitement depending on how convinced they are about the quality of the flower!? They get excited!” You repeat the same figure eight this time accompanied by elbow flapping and happy buzzing. The sound vibrates between your teeth and sizzles over your lips.

Bucky’s laughing so hard he has to put his face in his hand. Finally, you settle down.

“Now your turn.” You tease. He shakes his head defiantly, eyes still brimming with amusement.

You pour him a steaming mug of coffee and slide it next to his hand with a small smile. There’s a strange light in your bleary eyes as you bite your bottom lip.

A flush suddenly sweeps across your cheeks.

“What?” Bucky asks, taking a slow sip, savoring the bitter taste as it rolls down his throat.

“It’s stupid...it’s nothing.” The awkward laugh coming from your throat makes Bucky shuffle in the stool, wary and slightly concerned. Before you can continue, Steve pokes his head in and announces he’s going for a run and asks you to save him some breakfast when he gets back. Bucky checks the time on the microwave. Almost five.

Something dings on the bar counter and you move to grab your phone, frowning and placing your hands on the ruffles against your hip. A disappointed noise sputters from your mouth before you tear off the apron and turn off the stovetop with a quiet fury. “He cancelled!” You cry, disappointment darkening your features. “I made all this crap!”

Bucky looks over the countertop arrangement of perfectly crispy thick multigrain toast, shiny fried eggs, tupperware containers of tomato and shredded basil, and two thermoses of coffee and juice. Your shoulders slump as you place your hands on your hips and lean back to pop your neck and crack your knuckles. You pick up the trash can and kick off its lid, placing the edge of the gaping dark maw against the counter, holding your arm out to sweep the food in. Your generally pleasant features are stained by a scowl.

He forgets how impulsive you can be.

“Wait!” Bucky yells, reaching across the counter. “I’ll go. I’ll watch the sunrise with you.” When you stare at him in surprise, he quickly glances around the countertops, “Let’s not waste all this. You worked really hard on it.”

A squeal escapes as you drop the trash can and clasp your two hands together in a cheer. “Bucky. You are…” you suck in a deep breath and hold your hands over your heart, “just the best. My number one… Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the one-oh-seventh.”

His heart leaps just a tad as his former title rolls off your tongue almost wistfully. Bucky opens his mouth to ask you what you mean but you’re balancing two containers of foil-wrapped toast, another one of tomato slices and the thermoses are hanging precariously on your middle fingers. Bucky leaps from his seat and takes the food from you, leaving the thermoses in your hand.

“To the roof, Sarge!” You smile, leading the way. He follows closely behind and raises his eyebrow curiously when you keep looking back at him every few steps.

It’s in the middle of biting into the most heavenly piece of toast he’s ever had that Bucky hears you giggle shyly. You’re rarely bashful— usually too sharp-tongued and unfiltered is how most people would describe you. It’s why your best friend is Peter Parker: boy genius, mile-a-minute-mouth.

“What is it?” Bucky’s teeth crunch against the crisp brown edge, the bite of egg sliding over his tongue.

You’re leaned back on your palm, brushing a crumb from the corner of your mouth as you chew pensively on a slice of tomato. The sky is a blackened bruise behind you, disappearing into the balm of a soft, glowing orange.

“You were my deadcrush back in the day.” You mutter, hiding your lips with the tomato. Bucky stops mid-chew and freezes completely, unsure if the confession is just another trick his mind is playing on him. Maybe a breeze in the wind just sounds like your voice. “Not to make this weird…” you supply almost fearfully.

“Oh…”

“I mean— you know, it was totally normal. All the girls either liked Captain America or Sergeant Barnes.” You stuff the tomato in your mouth and reach for another just to busy your hands. Bucky’s face heats up like the morning, and he takes a sip of orange juice to calm it down.

“Sure,” you ramble onward, tomato flinging around between your fingers as you gesture back and forth, “I mean, most of them liked Cap— golden lion boy and all—hero’s journey kind of thing… I guess I felt, closer to you.”

You exhale deeply, “When you first came to the tower, I thought I was dreaming. Can you imagine? I felt like I was in the sixth grade.”

His brow furrows as he ponders your question. “Is that why you’re so nice to me?” It slips out before he can catch it, but it doesn’t bother you in the slightest.

“Probably at first,” You admit with a little shrug, “But eventually the schoolgirl crush thing went away, and I started liking you way more. Genuinely, y’know? Not under the thumb of a paltry, fleeting thing.”

He forgets how unexpectedly introspective you can be.

The tomato in your hand is only a shimmer of juice on your fingers now and you reach for something else to occupy yourself lest you become reduced to just weighing your hands together out of nervousness. You pause when Bucky asks, shocked, “You l-like me?”

Then, a smile, against the warming backdrop, he thinks you look like something out of a painter’s imagination—a delicate page from Steve’s notepad. A gentle breeze picks up your lashes, makes you squint a little.

“Yeah. I like you a lot.”

How does someone say such a heavy thing so easily? Bucky turns hot all over, heart beating too fast from your statement and the coffee made too strongly. “Thank you.”

You laugh and throw your head back for a second before shaking your hair wildly and sitting up, as if you’re discarding something. Light bounces off your cheeks as you catch your breath and take the coffee thermos from him. “You’re welcome, Bucky.” Then, softer, “Look.”

A streak of yellow opens up the sky in the east, melting away the ink around it into flames of blood orange and cerise. Still twinkling are the stars entrenched in deep blue further away.

“I’m not dead anymore.” He states plainly. “I can’t be your deadcrush if I’m not dead anymore.”

A chortle escapes- snorts and scoffs and not at all what he expects when you push your hand to your face and laugh in such a way that he might for a split second find it unattractive. But he doesn’t. He finds it so truly endearing that his heart swells like clouds over the morning sky.

A part of him quiets with the settling feeling of disappointment. Your silence gets swirled around in the next bitter mouthful of coffee and Bucky kicks his heel aimlessly against the concrete rooftop. To his left, you scoot a little closer, reach over and take the thermos from his hand. Your fingers linger, and then you put the container down.

“Bucky,” You say. His name so sweetly rolls off your tongue he can taste it—spun sugar and molasses in his mouth. It’s orange and yellow and blue behind you. Your eyes glisten with promise, as sure as the sunrise.

“You can want things, like love.”

It’s so forthright it punches the air right out of him. Before he knows it, you are leaning forward with a smile, planting a tender kiss on his cheek as he stares on open-mouthed and in awe.

And then, you break the moment with a yawn covered by your hand and groan as fatigue slips over like a blanket. “Oh fuck, I am beat, Sarge. Why’d you let me stay up so late?”

He only smiles before he puts his hand over yours for just a moment. “Come on,” He says, “I’ll help you clean up.” But the moment changes again, and he finds himself crawling past the containers of egg and toast, nearly knocking over the juice to hover over your mouth.

Coffee and cream linger between hesitant lips. Then there is a feverish clash-- you, clambering to sit up, to match him in enthusiasm-- him, bold enough to meet your surge with two large hands. He snakes them around your waist, crushing your torso to his.

Your fingers create a separation between your stomachs as you ruck his shirt up, gripping his chest and back and digging into his shoulder. A sharp breath escapes before he comes to snuff it out, licking your mouth, sucking on your tongue.

“Jesus.” You mutter when you break away for air, eyes still closed, “God. Okay. This is happening.”

Bucky laughs and sits back, places his hand on your bare thigh, shaking his head. “I—yeah, well maybe not here.”

“Yeah- yeah, of course… I .. get so caught up.”

He laughs again, because he knows. It’s why you haven’t slept all night, why you made a feast for just two people watching a sunrise, why you ramble on about the most mundane things but somehow still enrapture him, and it’s why he likes you. Your cheeks burn when the first ray of sunshine shoots over the tree scape.

A ding next to your hand catches his attention—a text from Steve.

You peer at it curiously before opening the message. Bucky looks too, and sees the image of the same sunrise he’s witnessed, but over the familiarity of the East Side sprawl.

A second message appears, Steve grinning, Peter winking.

A third one with a single, cheeky question: You and Buck doin’ good?

Bucky slips his shirt back down his golden torso while you tap out a furious response, groaning at the way you’ve been set up by your friends. Before you can send it, he takes the device from you and places it face-down on the roof with a smile. “Are we?” He asks, suddenly shy. “Doin’ good?”

Quietly, you nod.

In the middle of a second kiss, Bucky knows he’s done for. He’s falling hard and fast and can’t stop.

In the middle of a third kiss, you’re there next to him, all smiles and wonder as the two of you plunge together.

Part 2

[aggresivelyfriendly]

If The World Was Ending-WNTC Non-Canon Outtake

Hi! So I had to! Hope you like it, if you do, come talk to me! Or scream at me. All my love to @dirtystyles, long live tripod writing!

Reblogs are love!

This didn't happen - but this song and the current state of affairs made me crazy enough to imagine it, and then Harry and Jo kept talking in my head. So, here we are!

Who Names The Colors Extra: If the World Was Ending.

She's scared. Fucking terrified, mostly because she has zero idea, not a single one about what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone what happens next, next week, next month, if there will be a next year.

Jo wants Harry.

Jo wants Harry in a way she has worked really hard not to. She has given him his life, the possibility of a future.

And now, in this moment when everyone's future is completely uncertain and maybe not going to resemble the world of yesterday, may not happen at all, she just, it doesn't fucking matter. The fact she can't give him a baby, that their ages made all the things she wanted for him possibly impossible, and all the family drama and tension is totally irrelevant. Feels totally unimportant. It doesn't fucking matter. She could get the virus on a market run and she could be sick for a few weeks, or she could stop breathing. She has no way of knowing which it will be, or how long life will be interrupted. She feels helpless, hopeless, future less.

It's probably not that dramatic. By next year, everyone may remember this like a nightmare. But right now, this moment, with cases climbing and death tolls ringing and a government completely fucking it all up, that seems far away and maybe not true.

Jo wants Harry.

If the world is ending, he's all she wants.

Maybe not all she wants, but the list is short. What she would do if this was it. She imagines the last night time especially. The things she'd do. Call her son in Greece, see him happy, scared but happy with Sean, and tuck her ever growing sassy pants daughter into bed, and come downstairs to tea Harry has made her.

His tea was always better, than all the tea she's made on her own. "Made with love's why." He'd smile and wink and dimple and melt her. In the fantasy, he's folding laundry or finishing dishes too. Because, God she misses the partnership she glimpsed too, and she's too tired to do it all alone most days. Though it's easier now that Zoe's school aged.

He'd help her, though, always did, while feeding, watering, fucking, and holding her through all the angst she is feeling. Through the sky falling.

She nearly calls him. But Jo has no idea, not an inkling of where he is in the world. She doubts he's still in Montreal. That was a year ago. It was meant to be a 6 month intensive program. There were others she submitted him for that she knows he was good enough to get into no matter when he rang them interested.

If he is abroad, that terrifies her, too. God, what if he's abroad, and can't get home? Or is sick, fuck, sick alone? Though he is in a low risk group she says out loud and wraps an arm around herself, squeezes her shoulder to distract from the contraction of her heart.

London, he might be in London. She knows he should move there, be part of the art scene. Jo is just not sure if that's where he is in his journey yet. She's not sure why she thinks she knows anything about where he is, or might go, or how he will chart the course to the future she forced on him, gifted him.

They talked about it, or course. They talked about everything. Except when they just understood.

London. If he's in London, it's cruel, because he won't be moving: lockdown orders have just gone out. He'd be so close but so far. Expats are flying in, going home and quarantining. This option had been offered to Ethan. But it didn't make sense for him and Sean, they were safe, and in the home they'd made. If Harry's abroad, unless he's shacked up, ouch, he'd come home to Anne. But, if Harry's in London, he's stuck away from his family. Unless he's settled and happy there instead. Anne might be ok with that state of affairs.

Jo's not.

She doesn't believe that, it's not been that long, since them, not really. She wants him to be happy, with somebody else, but not so soon. She's not over it remotely well enough to contemplate another body in her space, mind, or person. May never be able to fathom somebody not Harry.

She imagines Anne is out of her head worried.

Anne, she could just call Anne. It will be weird, but if it's just to check on Harry, she can do it. Only slightly, ridiculously awkward. But Anne knew, the devastation for both of them. She won't be wholly surprised. It's just a phone call to check on him, Harry never need know. Anne will not tell, Jo's sure. His mother wants them apart, forever.

Jo's heart squeezes again.

As a mother, she understands. As the unsuitable love of someone's life, well, she can't.

But, none of that matters. Because it feels like the world is ending. Jo just needs to know he's alright. First and foremost, that he is ok.  And then she needs to know something for herself. Her selfish self. That he'd come over if he could, to hold her and be with her the way they both wanted but couldn't have. Because none of the consequences matter, not right now.

He will not likely be able to get to her, so it's just the comfort of their love, or his huge heart all for her, still.

She's dialing Anne before she can stop herself. The land line, the one Anne gave her when she'd come to ream her, and had offered loving kindness instead.

"Hullo?" Her heart stops, stutters, blooms.

She hangs up.

Holy fuck, he is here. He is home in their little village. Good, good for Anne. "Oh my god!" She yells to the air, because now the proposition is real. The possible fulfillment and rejection, real. Would he come over, now the world's ending, stay the night? The rest of the horrible uncertain trials they are facing be damned, can go to hell, if he would come hold her tight. Her breathing is rapid and she's concentrating on slowing it down. God, what if he wouldn't come over. Had wised up, decided they weren't what she knew them to be.

What if he would come over?

Neither matter, in any case, she's hung up. It's ok, he doesn't need to know it was her.

The phone in her hand buzzes. Anne S. reads the call log. Does she answer?

How can she not? Her whole body feels better, knowing his is close. She sends it out to him, it overrides her nerves about everything, including answering. Even his presence, that she received via strong voice through the receiver, not weakened by sickness, worry, or sorrow, bolstered her. She feels better all ready. She might be able to have more though, than his calm. Jo might be able to have him, a real moment with him. Maybe lots of them, a day that feels like moments because of the way time suspends when they commune.

She catches the call just before it gets shunted to voicemail.

"Hello?" She says, her voice is thin, the only force in it, hope.

"Jo?" He gasps and her tears leak down their cheeks.

His voice. Her name on his lips.

"Hi!" She tries to steady her voice. It doesn't work and his breath tells her she's unsettled him.

"Is everything ok? Zoe ok? Why're you calling my mum?" He inhales loudly. "Sorry, that's rude. I just, god, wasn't expecting your call. Not that it's not lovely to hear your voice, baby."

They both suck in a breath at that. "I was..." How does she say this? "I was worried?"

"About my mum?" He asks, his voice lined with hope as well.

"Well, yes." She says, hopes he hears what she is not saying the way he always did.

He laughs suddenly with something like joy in his voice. "It's alright, I've already asked about you. So no need to be embarrassed." He swallows. "Ever."

"Yeah?" She asks.

"Yeah, you're a brave little thing, calling my mum to check on me." He teases.

"Um, she told me to call if I needed help, she was kind to me." Jo glances down. Shit, it's so late.

It was almost bed time, and their custody agreement didn't end, even in a pandemic. She needs to make sure Zoe hears her voice say she loves her. For the same reason she had called Anne. "I know where you get it from. She has every reason to dislike me—"

"She doesn't dislike you, nobody could dislike you, Jo."

"Oh, well, I think that's an opinion. You're biased." She stops herself.

"Because I love you?" He asks but keeps talking so she can't answer. "It's true though, you're impossible to dislike." He whispers. "Impossible not to love."

"Har- Harry." She looks at the ceiling and hears him groan. "I actually have to go, I didn't plan this at all." She sighs.

"Well, I assume you have nowhere to be?" God, he sounds light as a feather, she could fly.

"Yes and no. It's time for my goodnight call to Zoe. She's with Colin."

"She'll come home though, some point, right?" He asks, urgent. "I hate to think of you alone at a time like this? Where's..." He gulps. "Where's Ethan?" He sounds like he's swallowing glass.

"Greece, stayed there, he and Sean are safe, still able to work, so they stayed."

"Oh Jo!" He sighs. "Baby, are you all alone?"

"No, no, I'm not." Not really, just physically right now.

"Who're you with?" His voice is dark for a moment, thick like his voice box is coated in mud.

"With?" Oh! He thinks a man is with her. He's swallowing his reaction. "No one at the moment, I just, Zoe comes home Monday. But we were talking about initiating the summer schedule sooner." She slows down. That won't make sense to him, he's not privy to the details of her life anymore. Doesn't need to be. "But anyway. She's there and I like to call, have my voice be one of the last things she hears at the end of the day."

"And you need to see her face before you sleep. " It's not a question.

"Yeah, um, but I called you, your mum, without checking the time and her stories are probably over." She explains.

"Ok, that's, thats ok, thanks for calling, Jo." His heart is in his voice. That outsized prize in his chest. She wishes with her whole heart she could keep his.

"Yeah, bye, um bye, Harry." She swallows. Her own emotions coating her throat. "Take care, please." Can he hear the plea in her voice?

"You too." He says in a way she feels. Like all his unspoken hopes for her are in the two words. That she not just to survive the virus, but to be well, and happy, just not with anyone else. Jo's projecting. Those are her unspoken prayers for him. She pulls the phone away and the call ends on his end just before she touches the red button.

She never got to ask him, if he'd come over.

That's all well and good though, because it's real now. He could come over. He could not come over, too. Jo sits for a moment, the oxygen sucked out of the room. That would be worse, definitely devastating. It's good she didn't get to ask. She shakes her head, glances at the time on her phone. She needs to call Zoe.

Her daughter's bright face is a brilliant distraction. Though the pull of the call, Harry's call, the things he said, how he said them, and all the things they didn't say is stronger. Jo gets her motherly reassurance, and smiles for her baby, but her mind is elsewhere.

"Night bug! Can't wait to see you Monday!" Jo's heart squeezes and she signs off the zoom. The leave button feels so final. She keeps herself together when Zoe can see her, no matter what. She hates this, the entire custody thing, that it was necessary, and some days she hates that the entire thing happened. But she can't regret Zoe, or the divorce or everything after. She also can't regret that Colin decided somewhere along the way he wanted to be more involved, needed to be. Though some days, especially these weird isolation days, she hates that she can't just hunker down with her baby and be wrapped up in baking or tik tok dances or crafts, puzzles, whatever Zoe was into. Instead, she has to be separated from her bud.

She sighs and pulls her old bones off the ottoman; she's tired. The nightly routine done by rote while she yawns, flicks lights and clicks locks.

Her heart stops and then defribullates when she gets to the back door.

Through the triple diamond shaped glass is his unmistakable shape.

Harry.

Because if the world is ending he'd come over, right?

"Harry?" The question is only in her voice, not in her heart. Course he'd come.

"Miss Jo." She must make a face, because he steps forward and takes her hand. "Jo, I..." He looks for words to say, "I thought we could paint," he tries to smile for her. "or something?" God, he looks like every dream she's had of him, mostly. He's different, it's been a year. He's shorn his locks, his hair is almost high and tight. His lovely hair gone, she mourns it, the silk of it through her fingers, like water rippling on her skin.

The cut looks good on him, of course it does, everything does. His jaw is exposed, his cheekbones amplified, and the green of his eyes is so golden, she's rich. "Can I come in?"

"Yes." She blurts out, because of course the answer is always yes. Yes Harry, have me, my life, my always. But not at the cost of yours. Have my right now.

What is anyone's always right now?

Which is why they are here.

So, now he is in her kitchen and they stare at each other. There was a time, she recalls, when he would have her on the table, or at least a stool by now. But, it's been a while and a lot of time and broken heartbeats have passed.

"Tea?" She offers for something to do; she sets about making his brew when he nods. Her hands and feet carry her around her kitchen without much thought while she concentrates on what happens next. He's come over, right. Now what? She's waiting for the whistle, when he steps close behind her. His heat warms her for a bit. She forgets she's out of her depth, least his body is familiar, but, "you smell different." She can't stop herself saying.

"I had to change it." He smells her hair. "The other reminded me of you. All the times you mentioned it." He swallows. "You smell the same."

I couldn't change it, it reminds me of you. "Yeah," is all she says. When his arms come around her waist and his chin hooks over her shoulder, Jo feels lighter than she has in, well it's been more than a year.

"How you doing, baby?" He asks against her cheek. And he is not asking about right in this moment, it's everything, how's her art, and her kids, and their relationships, and her job, and most of all her missing him?

The smile takes her face. "I'm alright actually. Really." She summons her courage, says. "I miss you, all the time." She turns and wraps her arms around his neck, her face laying against her bicep, so she can gift herself a view of his face anytime, when she is ready.

Harry kisses her temple. "Me too." And they stay like that, resting in the embrace like it's a balm on a healing wound, for long deep breaths of each other.

When the kettle blows, she pulls her face back and offers him a peck. He smiles before softly bussing her lips and loosening his arms to let her turn around. He eventually has to let his arms drop as she busies herself making the tea - the leaves, and the dunk - serious business. He follows her to the fridge when she gets out the milk. "Same?" She looks at him, he's been looking at her since he arrived, he's always looking at her, in his mind's eye, or on canvas.

"I forgot how beautiful you are." Her gaze drops and she's so glad she got the gall to call his mother. Knows when they have to part again it will be worth it, to have had him in this moment of uncertainty. He is her constant.

She was never more certain than of her feelings for him, his for her.

"Not to steal your words, but me too." The moment's not awkward, just leaden, she rolls her eyes and smiles at him, "now then, same tea?" They do tension like she can't believe, every moment pregnant with possibility.

"'Course, it's not been that long. Only my geography has changed." That makes her almost spill the milk, he means geography like a map. Jo she never thinks of his geography as where he lives, she thinks of the body she mapped under his clothes. Her territory.

"Has it?" She asks and places the milk down, slips her hands under his t shirt to check.

It's bold. She's only ever been so fearless, selfish, with him.

He catches on quickly and the smug smile creases his cheeks in the way that always got her wet. Still. "Would you like to check?"

He doesn't actually give her a chance to answer, his hand is in her hair and he's taken her mouth. She knocks over the milk, the lid isn't tight and drops leak out.

It's both uncharted and the only home she's known. He kisses the same, but tastes just a bit different, like he has a new diet with new habits. Things she might not know, but she does know that when he nips the middle of her lip, it mean he wants her to open her mouth. Jo pulls back to look up at him instead. The thumb on her jaw drops to her neck and the possession makes her weak.

"Lover?" It's a question. His eyes close and he puts his forehead to hers and kisses the tip of her nose. "Har-Harry?" That ones a provocation.

It works. He hoists her up onto the sink sill and jostles the tea cups. Milky tea on the homely countertops.

"We're making a mess!" Harry whispers, breath over her lips.

"Didn't we always?" The color of his eyes is devastating.

"Let's go make a different mess, baby." She nods and he lifts her back up his hips and takes the familiar journey to her bedroom. He walks the counted steps from memory, consumed in the kiss, when his knees don't meet the mattress, his eyes pop open. "Where's the bed?"

Jo points.

Harry stops and looks around. "It's different."

"Yeah." She sighs. She supposes she is negating this change a bit. But this feels like a reprieve and she hopes it's a balm instead of a burn to her missing him muscles. "I miss you. All the time—" She starts to explain.

"Yeah, me too." He interrupts.

"I missed you so much at first I had to, to.."

"I know, baby." He kisses right over her heart. Pulls her arms free and her top over her head. Repeats the kiss. "Of course, I know."

That's the bitch of it all, he does know. He knows everything, all about her, every inch of the body he uncovers. He mapped the curve of her waist, knows that the underside of her breasts makes her writhe when he runs his chin over it, arch when he licks it, and tremble when he sucks. The replay is the same on her nipples, only forceful. It makes her react like a taut bow, she may buck him away. He keeps her still through it, to endure the activation of his prior knowledge . The nips and swirls and eye contact while he favors her breasts, all the things he remembers how to do to her.

Her hips are pistoling. She knows what she needs, has needed for too long to remember how this feels. Too recent, resplendent, to ever forget.

But Jo also knows Harry, and he's in a patient mood. Or worshipful, she supposes. His favorite ritual he is about to perform on her body.

His rite takes him over her belly. Earlier, the lack of curls on his head had only given her a momentary ache, until they didn't make tendrils of fire over her abdomen, slither through the crease of her thigh when he made his way down to start on his knees, at her feet. Her supplicant. The caress to her instep is the beginning of his atonement. The attention to the bends of her knees and then the back of her thighs is a confession.

He adores her ass, and her back. She's onto her knees and pushing back into his body when he gets to her upper shoulders. The supplication is too much to bear and she needs more, every inch of him to merge with her, divine their purpose.

"Har-Harry! Please?" She can feel all of his length in the crack of her ass and it's not where she wants him, but he can do anything he wants with her. It is all a prayer, their worship, even his denial of her pleas. Her glides along him draw a grunt though, gnaws at his patience. She's proud but disconcerted. He's not talking? He always made a joyful noise when he loved her before. "Lover, you ok?"

"I'm," he catches her chin and turns her face into him. "I'm awestruck, Jo."

Their lips mingle just after the breath of his speech ends. She feels him shift behind her, line himself up, anoint his dick with her dew. "Baby?" He asks. She kisses him in an ecstatic state, nods like a sinner taking the wafer , even before he presses the tip in. When he does, she shivers in delight as they commune.

"Oh, lover!" She sings a hymn to their homecoming. Her melody and verse are sighs and moans. He harmonizes with her. Comes to a near crescendo, leads her to a refrain, slower, changes the song. She's on her back now, wide open and ready to receive his message. Instead, he rhapsodizes down her front body again, the chorus quicker. Her cunt is the receiver of his word, and his tongue does something magical while he leads her to the pre chorus. "Oh Harry. Your mouth!" She babbling and praying he doesn't stop, does stop, don't stop, please stop, until she cries an hallelujah.

Thank God she called.

She baptizes him when he takes her through the shakes back to heaven.

Her trance like state is barely broken when he comes to join her, join them. "Jo, you're glorious. I love you!" He swears his oath when he brings them back together. All of him within all of her, and creation too. She grips his face while he rocks into her, needing to see the riches of his eyes. The gold is electric there and she knows he will always come for her, her gold standard. That though he thought their preciousness gone, it was just underneath the weight of the world on top of them.

Now with him on top of her, they've found a new deposit. A shorter vein of richer gold.

They have to relish it, this gift, heaven on earth before it's over.

He does that thing, takes them to that plane, where time doesn't matter, the pandemic makes time sort of irrelevant anyway. What are mere hours between pilgrims?

They go through transfigurations, she's the altar, then the priest. Then him. In all sorts of shapes, their te deum unfolds, refolds, comes undone.

Jo is undone beneath him, unmade, and exhumed as his.

"You're so golden, Jo." He whispers into her ear when his joy and his energy run out.

He falls asleep on top of her, a fugue in the continuing rhapsody this interlude gifted them.

She cries a little, tears of joy. She doesn't want him to go yet. Not until Zoe comes home. That's when their clock runs out, their world ends. It's not fair to put her through it. Zoe missed him so much when he left. Asked about him ceaselessly, them regularly, still rarely.

Jo tells him so. "I'd like you to stay, through Sunday."

He holds her close and nods to nonexistent music in answer. The whole weekend is a symphony to what was, could be.

Some of their overtures are meals cooked for each other, cuddles on the couch, cusses in her bedchamber, a long afternoon with clothes on their backs and paintbrushes in their hands until they found a favored canvas in each other's skin.

He filled in the half heart he found on her with his tears, then with his kisses.

"Let's make a bigger one?" He suggested, and they used her camera, painted their paired halves whole on each other and photographed it. There are a few without looking their faces she will print out and frame, or put into one of the art books she is selling. She loves them so much, that they were complete for a while, she has to have proof.

They call each other by name, a lot. The names vary with the theme, the moment.

But, above all, Jo realizes he is the one she'd call, if she had only moments left. She'd spend them with him.

Their coda is her call and his response.

[thewhumpstuff]

You and I, Me and You [14]

@badthingshappenbingo​ [Original characters and content for ‘Burns’]

[TW: Non/Dub-Con, NSFW, cigarettes and scalpels, psychological manipulation. Vivianne (Vivi-Anne/a) presents with a constellation of personality traits and identity-defining choices/compulsions that are unique to her and this world. (Attributed to her past and involving experiments with sci-fi drugs) She does NOT represent any disorders or conditions] [Teaser and Master List] [Archives of our Own] (On their turf: Chapter 5)

[<– Previous] ~ [Next –>]

Scalpels and Cigarettes. 

The hospital bed was flush against a corner. Akira’s left leg—the one that was shot—was grateful for the extra support and protection the wall provided. About a foot above her shin, the windowsill began. It overlooked the driveway. Vivi had cracked it open, to allow the smoke that curled from her cigarette to escape… and perhaps to hear the processions below. She could not make out the words, but the wind carried sounds sometimes and Vivi was grateful.

Aki had flexed her good leg to let Vivi find her perch. She’d been watching the processions with rapt fascination as she stitched. “It looks bad. I’ve never seen Tariq like this.” She ducked to finish the final knot. “All done! Gotta say, I didn’t think you’d be so still… Well done.” Vivi rested her hand on Akira’s good knee casually and patted.

Akira had dipped in and out of consciousness as Alcyone guided a distracted Vivi to perform stitches. Akira’s bullet gouge was going to scar. The stitches were uneven. Some knots were too tight, others not tight enough. Anne—Anna, part of Vivianne was decidedly better at medical procedures.

This archaic process of stitching wounds itself had been abandoned though. Technology and advancements in the field of biology had made so many alternatives readily available. Akira was nothing more than a fascinating test subject to be toyed with. Alcyone hummed as they walked by and idly squirted some of the shealing (sealing-healing) gel onto the surface in a miserly manner… Like an afterthought. They walked away briskly. “Oh boy. This is not looking good.” Vivi’s emphatic word contradicted the lascivious intrigue painted on her face. She spoke at Akira, speaking to her was not really an option, since she was still rather pain addled.

Akira’s breathing was uneven. She had received serum to aid with the wound healing process, but barely anything to help with her pain. This was a reminder, that on some level, she was considered disposable. She had not earned her right to comfort. She wondered if Alcyone and the others had just wanted her to die in the bus. They must hate me for stubbornly living on then. If fate had given her a chance, maybe they decided to as well? The administration of the gel made things a little better.

“He’s got Jared pinned under his boot.” Vivi twittered. She had folded her legs and was bobbing with excitement. It was no secret that Vivianne enjoyed her share of raw violence. Akira stirred and opened her eyes a crack at the mention of Jared. No one had bothered to dress Akira up again. She was in her solid black underclothes, with a flimsy sheet that Alcyone had thrown clumsily onto her, they were around but interrupted nothing. “Jared?” Akira wanted to know more, she tried to sit up. Vivi put her foot against Akira’s shoulder and pushed her back down. Aki had no strength to resist and fell back against her pillow. Vivi’s gaze hardened when she heard the way Akira inquired about the man. The information Ezekiel shared may be accurate after all. Vivi wanted it not to be.

“You know… You must be in a lot of pain… I’m going to help…” Vivi took her promise seriously and worked on braiding her bubble-gum pink hair, it was blonde at the roots. Something about the scene outside kept drawing her away. So, as she fixed her sleek tresses, she peeked outside again. She winced. “I don’t like having only one leg to work with…” Vivi muttered absently as she made idle circles on Akira’s ankle, then began her slow ascent upwards, sliding her hand under the sheet, tracing patterns against the inner thigh. Akira stirred. She groaned and stilled again. Something was tickling her, it felt nice, but also uncomfortable. She flattened her leg against the bed and kicked Vivi gently in the process. Vivi grabbed Akira’s ankle.

“Now see, that’s not very nice- Fuck.” She let something distract her again, something that was happening beneath them. She watched as Jared stood up to face the baton flourishing men. “Tariq is playing a dangerous game. I don’t think he should be making the call to mess Jared up...” Aki blinked her eyes open this time and licked her lips. Her thoughts came to her slow, they were scattered and bleary, but they were there. She connected the dots of what Vivi’s words. Mess him up?

“Aww.” Vivi cooed as she noticed the flick of Akira’s tongue and assumed it to be a come-hither cue. Akira recognized that look on Vivi’s face, the one that emphasized her desire, and, in the moment, she decided to use it. “Pull me up… I want to feel closer to you.” Akira could be an excellent liar when she wanted and right now, she needed help so she could peek out of the window herself. Vivi looked around sheepishly, then readily obliged. Wedging herself between Akira’s legs, she hoisted her up and set her leaning against the window. She stole a soft kiss for her troubles. Akira did not pout. She did not lean into the kiss and did not return it. Vivi’s eyes narrowed as she pulled away, her fingers tenderly climbed the ladder of scars she had left against Akira’s ribs… The cuts she had willingly accepted. She did not accept the kiss like that today. Vivi was more perceptive than people gave her credit for. She could see that there was some attachment between Akira and Jared. The way her breath hitched ever so slightly with each blow he endured.

Akira hadn’t even realised that Vivi’s fingers were tugging at the waistband of her panties. Her mind was trained on what she had heard, and her heart was in her throat. Akira could now glimpse at the act through the corner of her eyes. It was more than enough, especially if supplemented with Vivi’s commentary. They’re going to kill him. She tried to hold her breath, it felt like the easiest way to steady it. Akira’s eyes were glassy, unfocused and clear, till she closed them again.

Vivi could see the tears that never fell. She shook her head and pulled her fingers off the elastic. She resorted to using her scalpel to make a dangerous slit in the fabric that covered Akira, instead. The cold metal teased the exposed flesh carefully, and fingers quickly replaced it. “You know endorphins and aphrodisiacs are natural analgesics.” Akira looked at her vacantly and her body stiffened. Vivi teased Akira’s folds with expertise. After all, this was not the first time they were doing this. “Controlled pain and fear with sex equals Painkiller. So… I’m just trying to help.” She took another puff of smoke and blew it against Akira. As she re-emerged from the plume and the smoke dissipated, Vivi searched the outline of the slender neck, for the faint scar of that cigarette burn. She pulled her fingers out and pulled the blanket off Akira. Vivi held the scalpel in one hand and the other held the cigarette.

“You know, Nova told Eze some things about a certain man… and cigarettes… and you…” Akira didn’t respond. So, this is theme of my life. Everyone knows everything, but me. Everyone around her, seemed to have it all figured out. And she was the last one to find out that her cover may be blown. “Now, you know I am very jealous when others mark you, right? I’ll forgive it, because it was before my time…” The scalpel rested against the old burn scar. Vivi made a soft cut into it. Marring the mark and the memory. She kissed the cut sloppily. They locked eyes and Akira glared, but she could not fight, not in this state. Vivi ran the handle of the scalpel against the slit in the solid black panties again, using the tool to widen the tear, the fabric split with an agonizingly slow ripping sound.

“You had poor Tariq like a puppy on a leash… You had me too. You led us on, but you always wanted him, right?” She ran the glowing tip of the cigarette across Akira’s inner thigh. Akira’s lips trembled, she inhaled quietly and deeply. She held her breath again. She was not going to give Vivi the satisfaction of seeing any reactions. The scalpel warmed, nestled inside Akira. It certainly was not satisfying. It was not meant to be. Vivi pulled it out and pressed the sharp end into Akira’s cheekbone, forcing her to turn towards the window and watch, or sport a rather deep cut. Akira let the gash cry blood defiantly. Reluctantly she eventually turned.

Jared had fallen to his knees again. Distant grunts were occasionally loud enough to be heard. Akira clenched her eyes shut. Her jaw was set. She shook, frustrated and angry. Vivi placed the scalpel against Akira’s crinkled eyelids. “Open your eyes, or I won’t hesitate to take your sight forever. No Tariq to save you this time, he is busy… you see. Well, you don’t, but you should.” Akira opened her eyes and instantly found them squinting towards the blade in front of them. She shuddered again. Vivi took another puff and ran it higher up Akira’s thigh and let the scalpel’s handle bury itself once more. Akira did respond to fear... Among other things. The steel tool collected the evidence. She held the glistening handle in front of Akira. Jared had fallen to the ground.

“Can you tell me with certainty, what’s arousing you, Kira?” Another puff, another streak of the cigarette across her flesh. Much like Vivi’s climbing fingers, the cigarette certainly had a final destination. Just the idea made Akira want to throw up. They both noticed Ezekiel and his voice rang loud enough for them to know where Jared was headed, especially when he mentioned Alcyone.

Vivi was contemplating something. She set the scalpel aside and continued her puffing and streaking, erratically now. Akira’s inner thigh sported a mesh of ash. “You’re not going to get to remember this as some valiant sufferer, Kira. You do not get to play hero.” She threw her arms around Akira and whispered softly in her ear. “No, I’m going to ruin you. When they haul Jared in here, you best wish he isn’t conscious…” Vivi was cruel when she wanted to be. And she truly was a sniper. She really knew which shot to take, to make this truly hurt. Unfortunately for Akira, Vivi also had a lot of experience with women. Now that Aki’s arousal had betrayed her. All Vivi had to do, was push her over the edge. Almost with clinical precision, Vivi’s fingers pinched and pulled, teased and taunted… fluttered and fucked.

Akira tensed, she remained as still as a statue and hated the fact that not rolling her hips… took effort. As Vivi promised, when the men dragged Jared into the hospital wing, Akira was silently and unwillingly experiencing the throes of several small deaths. She absently recognized the bloody and bruised body that disappeared behind the partition. He was out cold. She did not like the flood of relief that washed over her, amidst other sensations. She collapsed against Vivi. Tears rolled down Aki’s cheek in thick rivulets. Vivi lapped at them and kissed Akira’s cheek. She pulled away and beamed up at Akira, as if nothing had happened and held the cigarette against the torn fabric till it charred.

She let it teeter there for a bit, but Akira did not respond with fear anymore, she did not respond at all. A bored, Vivi pressed the stub into the crease of Akira’s thigh. “I’d say we’re even now.” Aki drew a ragged breath, the burn of hatred, felt so much worse than the final stab of the cigarette. Hatred, towards Vivi, towards Ezekiel… towards the whole world. But mostly, towards herself.

A few BioHackers streamed in to work on the unconscious man. Her eyes darted towards the shadows they made on the screen between her bed and Jared’s. Ezekiel walked in soon after. “Alcy, I need everybody fixed up soon. Use whatever you need to use. Do whatever you need to do. I’ll send Nova to help.” Alcyone didn’t acknowledge Ezekiel words as they busied themselves with Jared. The ruby-eyed man knew his request was heard and that was enough. Actions were following his words. A cursory glance around the room allowed the blonde to spot the girls. “Vivi… Anna. Kira.” He acknowledged politely. Before turning on his heel to leave.

[Category - 1/2]

[ranjxtul]

Fire and Reign: The Unquiet Grave

Here we are with Witches AU Chapter Five! (Finally, am I right?) Sorry it’s been such a long wait loves. TWs: violence (not graphic)

Ao3 Link: The Unquiet Grave

“This is slightly insane. I’m kinda shocked it was you who came up with it,” Anne teased as she got out of the car.

Aragon rolled her eyes, a small amount of fondness behind it. “Well, all the non magical routes were failing us, so why not use magic?” she shrugged, locking the car behind them, and putting her keys into her pocket.

“I mean, that’s fair, but I didn’t think you of all people would think necromancy, maybe Jane or Cathy, but not you,” she shrugged in return.

“Well I guess I’m full of surprises then, aren’t I?” Aragon raised a brow in Anne’s direction, as if she could see it in the pitch black of night. “Anyway, this is where Katherine was killed, correct?” Anne gave a nod in affirmation. “Maybe he’s as patterned as he is methodical, and maybe some other victims will be here after all,” she mumbled under her breath to herself.  

“Right. We’ll need a bit of light,” Aragon recovered aloud. She started to reach into her pocket to get her phone flashlight, but before she could, Anne held up a hand filled with a small flame, illuminating a small smirk on her face. While the gravity of the situation didn’t escape Anne, she couldn’t help but feel a bit excited at what they were doing.

It wasn’t often, Catherine or anyone really condoned necromancy or darker magic, so now she was intrigued. She’d get to see how it worked first hand, and maybe they’d make headway with the Henry problem.

Mingled with Anne’s fear regarding the situation, she also felt the impending sense of urgency as well as anger. This man had tried to hurt the people she called family. He’d succeeded in killing one of her blood relatives. Luckily they’d gotten to Katherine in time, and she wouldn’t imagine what would happen if they hadn’t.

Aragon glanced at the flame in Anne’s palm letting the hand reaching for her phone fall flat, “Well, I suppose that’ll do, let’s go,” she nodded beginning to trek through the open, desolate field.  She let Anne take the lead as they walked. No insects chirped and the air lay flat in the atmosphere. The only audible sound were Anne and Catherine’s gentle footfalls.

The countryside was expected to be quiet, to an extent, but an environment this quiet reeked of something darker. It was as if no living creature dared breathe and break the mist of dread that seemed to cover the field.

Anne hadn’t noticed it on her first trip, and rightfully so. In those moments, her cousin had been the first thing on her mind. Now with each step she took further into the grass the more a feeling of dread burrowed its way into her bones. The flame in her hand lept in size as her heartbeat sped up and the need to see and understand the dread around her. The unpleasant feeling in her bones could have come from an actual inkling of evil, or the simple human fear of the unknown. Whatever it was, Anne couldn’t shake it or ignore it the more she continued.

Catherine followed Anne focusing on the blackness ahead, repeating words she’d read across a page in her head. She had to do this right or she could make this worse than she’d imagined. Looking out into the blackness, she was reminded of everything she didn’t know. She had no clue what was out there, who lay dead in the ground  (if anything) or if she could pull off this type of magic, after all, she’d never practised it. She shook her head, forcing the nerves down with a sigh. There was no turning back, and certainly no room for doubt.

“Stop,” she called to Anne. “We can start here. We don’t have a scope of where he’s possibly started killing and burying people, so here’s as good a place as any.”

Anne rounded on her heel to look back at the Supreme, “What’re you going to do here?” She asked, tilting her head curiously.

“A detection spell, something along the lines of divination still, but borderlining necromancy,” she explained, hoping her voice came across more confident than she felt. Anne nodded expectantly, observing as Catherine allowed her eyes to fall shut. Her lips moved in an inaudible, whispered, incantation and cautiously she stretched a hand out in front of her. Each spell had a different ‘feel’ to it, when the caster cast it. This one was intimate and pulling, searching, but much to Catherine’s dismay she found nothing but dirt and the usual animal bones and material debris under the ground.

“Nothing’s here,” Catherine shook her head as she retracted her palm. “Let’s keep moving.”

Anne nodded, “Yeah, sounds good.” She started off again, letting the air fall silent before she spoke up, “Do you think we’re heading in the right direction?”

“Honestly?” Catherine raised a brow, contemplating her own answer, “I’m not sure. This could be a dead end in of itself. I did tell you that, but if I had to guess, the further we go, the closer we may get. Either way it’s hit or miss.” There was no point in lying or beating around the bush about the situation.

“Could you hold the detection spell as you walk?”

“Possibly. I’d considered that, but I don’t know its ins and outs as well as I’d like… if I did, I’d need you to keep an eye on me and guide me physically. If I were to begin to look too tired, you’d have to stop me,” she warned, mulling the possibility over in her head. The thought had occurred before they’d even arrived, but she’d dismissed it for fear of being unalert or draining herself before they actually needed her magic.

“I could do that,” Anne assured eagerly. Though non vocalised, her will for this ‘mission’ to succeed couldn’t have been any more clear.

Catherine stopped, standing still and regarding Anne for a few moments before she nodded, “Very well. I’ll try it.” She made her way to stand by Anne and took hold of the hand down by her side so as to have a way to be guided through the dark before she closed her eyes and whispered the latin incantation again.

Very slowly, once Anne heard the words, she began to walk pulling Catherine along with her, watching out of the corner of her eye. Wearily, the curly headed woman extended a hand as magic flowed through her body searching her surroundings. The minute portion of her brain not occupied with the spell and its findings however inconsequential thus far, couldn’t help but to fear something as simple as what might be waiting for them in the dark, human or inhuman.

After about ten minutes of silence and walking, Catherine abruptly stopped and opened her eyes as the bitter residue of what used to be humans washed through her body. “Here.”

Anne had fallen into a steady rhythm leading Catherine and listening into the deafening silence for what hells could await them, so when her companion spoke, she nearly jumped. “You’re sure?”

“Definitely. I couldn’t get a read on how many, but I could recognise it as human, and relatively recently dead,” Catherine confirmed with a nod.

“So, what’s the next step?” Boleyn asked, an edge of excitement returning to her voice.

“We summon whoever’s down there,” Catherine said, an unspoken, ‘and we hope for the best,’ lingering in the forefront of her mind.

Anne nodded, “Do you need me to do anything to help?”

“Can you keep watch? If anyone comes along at this time of night it certainly won’t be good and we can’t be caught off guard.”

“Course’ And, you got this, Catherine,” Boleyn offered a wink of encouragement. If she were in Catherine’s shoes she’d be nervous messing around with something like this.

The Supreme only gave a small smile and nod in response before she knelt down to the ground to begin. Anne moved about five feet away so as to give Catherine some space but still enough light to begin.

With a sigh, she set out to work. She’d read about several methods of summoning spirits and the one that was most in line with the current predicament was the most dangerous. Essentially, she had to ritually use her blood in the summoning spell and draw the spirit back to earth through its remains with her blood as an intermediary of sorts. This tied her to the spell and spirit, and as long as she was in control she’d be fine, but if for some reason she were to lose control she could be injured, or worst case scenario possessed.

Before she could think too much, she took out a small pocket knife for the blood component and slashed open the palm of her hand. With a wince, she squeezed the hand into a fist and let blood stream down onto the earth and soak into the ground. As this happened, words she’d put hours into memorising perfectly streamed out of her mouth quickly and thankfully without stumble.

The blood on the ground soaked in as if it hungered for the red, coppery liquid, and in exchange a nearly indiscriminate mist began to rise from the ground and take shape before her.

Now, standing in front of her, or perhaps floating was a more apt term, was a misty figure of a young woman who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. Her hair was cropped around her shoulders and in her spectral state, the most defined colors were the greenish pallor of her skin and the raven black of her hair.

Catherine slowly stood, taking stock of the situation and the spectre before her. As her eyes swept upward, she got the confirmation she needed that this was one of Henry’s victims when she saw the thick raised scar on her neck. So, he’d been careless with her. When she met the girl’s tired, milky white eyes, she only saw a bone deep exhaustion. Before she could speak, the girl spoke up, “What do you want?” Her voice was hollow and brittle from death and disuse.

“I-” Catherine started, then she fell short, realising how selfish she was going to sound disturbing this girl from her rest.

“What?” Asked the ghost again.

“I’m so sorry to have disturbed you, but I need to talk to you.” It was a weak explanation.

The ghost raised an eyebrow, “How’d you know that? You don’t know me and I don’t know you.”

“I know who your killer is,” Catherine said with a sigh. Henry was her only leverage. This made the girl go silent. Then, her face contorted.

“How’d you know I have a killer?”

“I can see your neck love, and you’re buried in the middle of nowhere in a field.”

“So, you know him?” She asked accusingly.

“Not as you might think,” Catherine shook her head, forcing herself to not to take a step back. “He’s been trying to kill my girls, and killing numerous women of our kind. I don’t know how much you knew before he killed you, but you were a witch.”

The ghost shifted uncomfortably, her defensive facial features betraying her fear, “I kinda guessed that in the last year, didn’t know what to do… your girls?” she questioned looking back up at Catherine.

“Yes. I’m the Supreme, the leader of the London coven.”

“Coven?” Her eyes widened.

“Yes, not many know we exist because of people like Henry, your killer, that’s what makes it hard to find, teach and protect young witches. I’m Catherine, by the way,” she added with a small smile in an attempt to ease the ghost’s wariness.

“I’m Florence… and I do know that’s his name,” she shrugged unable to meet Catherine’s eyes.

“Can you tell me what you do know, and what happened to you?” she pried gently. Florence was by no means dangerous, but she was flighty and Catherine knew if she asked the wrong thing, things could go south.

Florence let out a quiet sigh. She pretty much had no choice. Catherine’s spell held her here, and she had no idea what it could do. With a quick nod, she began to speak, “I was at a gig one night. I was a musician, a good one too,” she added a bit bitterly, “and he was there with a buddy of his, someone named Thomas. They chatted with me all night after, said they liked my music. I thought it was harmless enough. I guess I was just desperate enough to meet some genuinely nice people.”

“By the time I said my goodbyes, it was about one in the morning, and they followed me. They followed me and didn’t stop even when I asked. That’s when they attacked and I woke up in this field, my hands tied around a stake and then it was lights out,” her voice faded sadly as she recounted her last moments. “I was eighteen,” she added before she could stop herself.

Catherine’s heart shattered hearing Florence’s story and the true cruelty of Henry and his accomplice who was apparently named Thomas. “Dear-” Before she could complete her statement Anne, who’d been keeping watch as promised turned.

“Catherine, someone’s headed this way, now,” she said, her face paler than usual. Catherine glanced at Anne and then their surroundings in an attempt to make out whatever it was that was coming their way. It was then that the Supreme herself could vaguely hear heavy footfalls close by.

She glanced back at Florence, “Thank you,” she nodded before whispering the incantation that ended the spell and severed her ties with the ghost. She hated having to be so disrespectful and abandon the girl so quickly, but whatever was coming their way couldn’t be good.  

Catherine made the quick journey to stand beside Anne, “Put out the light, and we need to move away from the sound,” she said quietly.

Silently, Anne did as she said, allowing Catherine to guide her through the dark as she saw fit. The downside to this all, was that they were in a field. Grass meant no cover.

Seconds later, the footfalls neared and a flashlight beam pierced the night. At the end of it, the duo could make out a muscular dark haired man who with one hand, dragged something.

Catherine furrowed her brow, attempting to make out what this man could be dragging. He stopped about twenty feet short of where the duo stood and luckily stayed with his back facing them. He set the flashlight down on the ground and took a rather large, camping backpack off of his back only to pull out a spade.

Then, he began to dig. In that moment, it hit Catherine. He was digging a grave, and what he was dragging was a body. She froze. This had to be Thomas doing Henry’s dirty work, and a part of Catherine wanted to take care of him right then and there, but she also had no idea what sort of tricks could be up his sleeve.

She leaned over to Anne, “You know what he’s doing right?” she hissed as low as possible.

“Yeah. Who is he?”

“Think he’s one of Henry’s accomplices, Thomas. I say we follow him when he’s done here.” If they followed him then they could maybe glean a bit more information and if he did see them, he wouldn’t have whatever he had in his pack at his disposal.

Watching Thomas dig the shallow grave and carelessly dump the body of the girl in it pained both witches watching, and incensed them. How could he have so little value for someone’s life or be so mindless that he would aid and abet a monster like Henry Tudor. There was no doubt in Catherine’s mind by the end of this twisted funeral that this was the Thomas Florence had spoken of.

Once he started to head away from the grave site, Catherine pulled gently one Anne’s arm indicating they should go. The brunette clung to the other’s arm so as to stay close as they walked following about fifteen feet behind, barely daring to breathe for fear of discovery.

It almost seemed too easy, as they neared the edge of the field, Thomas stopped and pulled out his cellphone. Seconds after the man held it to his ear, the unmistakable voice of Henry Tudor boomed through the all too silent field, “Culpeper! I suppose it’s done!”

Thomas Culpeper. That was his full name. He let out a laugh spinning on his heel gleefully, “Yeah I-” It was then his flashlight beam caught Catherine and Anne in the radius. “I have to go take care of something.”

The minute they were discovered, every bone in Anne’s body screamed for her to transmutate away, but Catherine didn’t move. Her mind whirled with possibilities until she settled on a course of action.

Culpeper neared all the while, his hand reaching back toward his pack, for God knows what. “Anne, on my count, we light him on fire,” she said as evenly as she could. “He’s not prepared for it, then as soon as he’s burning we transmutate out and back to our car and we head back to the house.”

Anne glanced at Catherine, surprised at the decision, but she didn’t disagree. She simply nodded, waiting for the go.

“Three, two, now,” Catherine hissed flicking her wrist down by her side as the resultant plume of flame began to travel up Culpeper’s side. In a fraction of a second, a similar flame encompassed him starting from the back of his neck. Simultaneously, the duo glanced at each other and with a simple thought, were whisked up for a moment, only to be brought back down by their car.

It was then Catherine allowed the anxiety of the situation to run its course, she slouched back against the door. They’d almost been caught by one of his accomplices, who’d lucklily been unprepared, but nonetheless, if they’d been unprepared, they could be dead. And to think, she thought necromancy had been the original source of worry.

Anne too slouched back against the car beside Aragon. She’d been close it felt like, to losing big time. It was all so real. It wasn’t just a hypothetical game anymore. They’d probably just killed a man in a life or death situation, but the killing wasn’t what Anne was hung up on. In her eyes, Culpeper had it coming. She was stuck on the true gravity of it all. They could have transmutated to begin with, but that would only belabor the situation. Running could only get them so far, and they’d finally made a move, a bold move. It was Henry’s move now.  

[jessahmewren]

Trade Winds Chapter 1 of 4

Written for @thexmasfileschallenge and tagging @today-in-fic

Day 22: Mistletoe

-0-0-0-

"Now you."

Scully eyed the amber liquid impassively. Without looking at Mulder, she palmed the shot glass and tossed back the drink without a thought. The rush of warmth that followed it was both weakening and empowering. She hadn't let go like this in a while, and it actually felt good.

"If I didn't know better I would think you were trying to get me drunk Mulder."

He smiled what Scully secretly referred to as his Oxford smile but said nothing. He tossed back his own shot, finishing with ease and flourish. He methodically poured another and pushed it to the center of the table. Her turn.

The little hangout on Cuba’s south beach was bustling in the late hour. It was Christmas time, mistletoe and paper lanterns hung from the ceiling and the air was smoky and thick. It was her first time out of the country with her new partner, and while she was not sure if drinking on the job was SOP, she wouldn’t be mentioning it in her report.  

She reached for the latest shot, favoring Mulder with a challenging stare.

But for once, he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were trained on the front entrance, on the bulky, dark-clad figure walking in. Suddenly, he stood and was at her side in a second. He grabbed her by the arm, pulling her up. When she protested, he leaned into her hair. "Manny's here," he said into her ear. "Oh, and I forgot to mention this, but you're my dance instructor."

She looked at him with open disdain. "I can't dance," she said through clenched teeth. If looks could kill, Mulder thought he might be dead on the floor.

Mulder gave her a tight smile. "Just follow my lead," he said smoothly.

They were in Cuba to expose a man claiming to have technology for sale…alien technology.  Mulder knew he was a fraud (for once, she mentally amended), but suspected his ties to the U.S. government and maybe even the Syndicate went deeper than what appeared on the surface.  

Mulder pulled her onto the dance floor, crushing his body against hers. Her legs were rubbery from an hour of drinking, and Mulder's proximity only worsened matters. The room was hot, and he was too close. Much too close.

The music started and he opened up their frame. It was the cha-cha, she surmised, and absolutely terrifying. "Mulder, please." Scully looked at him with such desperate pleading that he almost took pity on her. Almost. Instead, he led her through the steps with such mastery that it looked like he was the novice. "Up here, Scully." She was looking at the floor. "Into my eyes.”

She met Mulder's gaze and found herself steadied, relaxed. As instructed, she focused on him. She noticed with fascination how his eyes vacillated from hazel to brown to grey and back again. After a few moments, she could not feel the floor or hear the music; there was only Mulder, and she was tethered to him. The ease of it unnerved her, the comfort of the space between them, his hand warm and fingers splayed across her back. Overwhelmed, she pulled away from him, nearly stumbling, and instantly regretted that last shot. "Dammit, Mulder, why can't you just slow dance like everyone else?"

He laughed then and drew her close. "Whatever your pleasure Scully."

His eyes portrayed a sort of dark charm as he encircled her. His hand smoothed down her back, stopping to rest firmly just below its usual place. She prayed silently that he couldn't feel her tremble. The other hand slipped beneath her hair, the lightest of touches, yet his cool fingers on her delicate skin produced a tight coil of warmth low in her belly. Her heart beat faster. Seemingly of their own will her hands moved up across his broad shoulders, returning the embrace. Mulder was both supple and strong, and his shoulders beneath her hands felt like coming home.

With her head on his chest, she didn't have to look at him; it was her only salvation. The security she felt when she was this close to him was disturbing. Wordlessly, they swayed to the music, the alcohol's effects only augmenting Scully's sense of peace.  Her eyes slipped closed.

His chin brushed the top of her head, settling there as they began to sway. The smallest sound from him reverberated through their bodies, something akin to a low purr, and the shockwaves of that little moan began to threaten her fortitude. He nuzzled her ear.

"You're not a bad dancer Scully."

It was the first time he'd ever lied to her. His voice, deep and rich, was the same timbre of that little sound, and she caught the heat and scent of him full force. Scully could feel his breath stirring the tendrils of hair at her neck, little puffs of warmth as they swayed rhythmically to the music. His lips brushed her hairline, the gently slope of her forehead, and she openly shivered. The soft chuckle that elicited from him was delightful, and he tightened his arms around her to quell the quiet tremble there. The feel of that sound from him was something she could get very used to, she realized. She imagined her resolve unraveling in ribbons at her feet.

Mulder withdrew, wanting to see her face, and Scully inwardly frowned at the loss of contact. He cupped the back of her neck with one hand, the other still around her waist. He looked into her eyes.

It dawned on her then, with her body nested perfectly into his and with the warmth and strength of his arms around her and his soft eyes searching her face, that she wanted him. She wanted Fox Mulder, the FBI’s foremost criminal profilers and now the black sheep of his graduating class, her partner, more than she had ever wanted anyone. It was an admission that both freed and disturbed her.

"Get your hands off me," she protested weakly. She pushed against him, but it was no use. Her face was flushed and she was breathing rapidly.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," he murmured into her hair, "unless you want to get us both killed. Manny has at least two men watching us."

She looked then and she could see them clearly. Two imposing men in dark clothes stood near the other exits. They tried to blend in with the relaxed, celebratory atmosphere, but failed miserably.

She wrapped her arms around him then and felt him instantly relax. Secretly, she smiled at her power and wondered briefly how else it might be manifested with him. Just as she had begun to contemplate specifics, a boisterous voice broke her revelry.

“Marty, you old gigolo, you always had a weakness for the ladies." Manny clapped Mulder on the shoulder good-naturedly, a gesture Mulder simply ignored. "As good as any weakness to have," Mulder countered coolly. Scully wondered briefly if he was annoyed by the interruption.

"Manny, this is my dance instructor, Ann. Ann, Manny, the most nefarious womanizer you will ever have the displeasure of meeting."

Manny chuckled as he took Scully’s hand to his lips. "You've just described yourself Marty," he said in a thick Cuban accent. "Let's get a table, shall we?"

They dined on spicy fish with rice and black beans and fresh fruit. Manny talked freely about the purchase of his contact and the purchase of alien technology, a coded circuit board that supposedly should allow aircraft to fly much faster than previouly thought possible.

"I'm interested in meeting Sergei," Mulder said casually. "When will he be arriving in Havana?"

Manny looked guarded, uncomfortable at the mention of the man's name, Scully surmised. Probably some bad blood between them despite their history. Scully could detect fear in the man's face. She was beginning to understand the duplicitous nature of the criminal relationship.

"Tomorrow." He took a swig of water around his mouthful of food. "I'd like you to deal with him through me, Marty."

Mulder remained impassive. "Out of the question," he said firmly. "You know I meet all of my contacts in person." Scully mulled that over. Mulder had something once about the first meeting with someone being the most important.  He wanted to size Sergei up, catch him off his guard.  She wondered briefly if he had done the same with her.

"Marty, this man is a small fish in a big, unfamiliar pond. You would gain more access to him by being less approachable." Manny fingered his large gold watch. "Make a statement."

Mulder cocked his head, seemingly in thought. "You want to be the intermediary," he said smoothly. "Make a profit from my business transaction. Don't you think you've made enough money just by having skin in the game?" His eyes narrowed.

Manny's eye twitched. Scully could feel the presence of his henchmen where they stood blocking the exits at strategic points throughout the establishment. She suddenly realized with some surprise who Manny was afraid of. Mulder.

The man laughed heartily, poorly masking his apprehension. "Marty, you do me a disservice," he said with a nervous laugh. "I only mean to make things better for you. If you want to maintain your position in Havana, you have to be more strategic." His eyes flitted to Scully, down to her breasts, and then back at Mulder. "Don't get distracted."

She could feel Mulder tense, his jaw tightened. Scully couldn't decide what had angered him more, Manny telling his cover how to run things, or his lascivious little glance in her direction. Whatever it was, he was livid in that very Mulder way of his. His eyes were smooth, but there was a darkness there. His full mouth was pursed.

"You mean only to make things better for you," Mulder said darkly. Scully had no idea who Manny thought Mulder was, but Mulder was playing it to the hilt.  Suddenly Mulder stood, reaching for Scully’s hand. "I will meet with Sergei in the morning. We may not meet again."

Manny swallowed then, fully examining the implication of Mulder's words. Manny said nothing as he watched the two walk arm in arm into the night.

-0-0-0-

[mang0fruitblast]

I’ll Never Leave You

Summary: “Frank,” she begins as she wipes her eyes and steadies her voice, “You don’t know how much you mean to me. I’ve been feeling so alone lately without Matt and Foggy’s so occupied with Marci and work he doesn’t realize all that I’ve been going through. It’s made me feel better—and safe, just knowing you’re out there. I’m glad you sent the flowers. I was afraid—” she breaks off again. “I was afraid that the elevator was going to be the last time I saw you alive.”

Hesitantly, she looks into his eyes. In them, she can see a multitude of emotions, some she can read, some that make her shiver.

Frank sets down the wine glass and says tenderly, with purpose, his voice low and deep, “Karen, I’ll never leave you.”

Set right after The Punisher ends // Thanksgiving fluff

Note: So after years of mooching off everyone else with countless fandoms, I'm finally getting my shit together and writing something for once. This is my first fanfiction ever so I'd appreciate any comments about anything!! I intended this to be a one-shot, but if I get an idea for continuing it, I will!

Shoutout to @throwndownsilvergirl on tumblr for giving me the idea of a Thanksgiving fic

Also on ao3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12850413

It’s after 6 p.m. The meeting with Curtis and the other veterans is over now, and for the first time in a long time, Frank doesn’t have anywhere to go. He doesn’t have anything to do or anyone to see. He contemplates asking Curtis if he can join him and his family for their Thanksgiving meal, but he doesn’t want to barge in. Plus, he’s sure that Curtis is tired of his shit and all the violence that follows Frank wherever he goes.

For a brief moment, he considers Micro and his family, but then shakes his head. The Liebermans just got their father back; they want to spend time with him, not the murdering liar who had left their lives as abruptly as he entered them. Besides, Curtis and Micro, though he admires and is fond of them, are not who he wants to spend his Thanksgiving with.

He thinks about calling her. Karen Page. The woman who entered his life as he began his crusade as the Punisher and persisted in hearing his story in the hospital room. The woman who wasn’t afraid to point a gun at his face. The woman who was compassionate and would readily give her money to the homeless on the streets. The woman he was beginning to feel something real for. A feeling similar to what he felt for Maria but had since evaded him since her death.

But even though his fight is over, Frank is loath to reintroduce Karen in his life. He doesn’t want anyone, not one person, to know what she means to him and to use her to get to him. He would rather have both his eyes gouged out like Rawlins, have his face broken in a thousand places from glass on a carousel like Billy, be stabbed in the neck like Stein than let one hair on Karen’s head be touched by someone trying to reach him.

He thinks back to that night last year when Karen had that hand cannon pointed at his face. The way she held it, like she meant business, almost seemed that she’d used a weapon like that before. However, he didn’t think she’d actually use it, not on him, but he was proud of her for owning it and not being afraid of holding it. It was the first time he began to think of Karen a little differently. And that partly led to what he did next. He heard the faint click of safeties going off, and in that instant, he knew that unless he did something, what happened to his family would happen to Karen in a few seconds. He dove for her, shielded her, protected her. He didn’t know much about this woman, but he knew he had to make sure she didn’t get hurt.

Now, he knows a little better. She’s been trained more. She can take care of herself more. If he’s not involved in her life and if she stops trying to dig up the dirtiest of the dirty of Hell’s Kitchen, what she can do to protect herself will be enough. But he knows better. He knows that there’s no way she’ll stop doing what she’s doing, and he knows there’s no way he can stay away from her. Not anymore.

He wishes he could call her, but he can’t. He feels like he’s taken so much from her life and also she’s such an accommodating person that if he called her she would say “of course, Frank, come on over” even if she didn’t really want him there. He wants to be there with her, but he cares too much about her to be selfish and get what he wants without considering if it’s what she wants.

Quickly, he decides what to do. He goes to the nearest open grocery store and buys a dozen white roses. White roses, meaning pure. Karen, meaning pure. He’s not sure if she would agree with that meaning due to some hints she’s given about her past, but compared to him, Karen is as spotless and blameless as a baby lamb.

He asks the cashier for a spare piece of paper and a pen and hastily scrawls a note on it. “Karen. I’d like to see you, but I don’t know if you have plans or are in the mood to see anyone right now. If it’s okay for me to stop by, you know what to do with these.” He doesn’t sign it. She’ll know who they’re from.

He walks the now-familiar route to her apartment, places the flowers outside her door, and walks away as quickly as he can. Not expecting much, he crosses the street to another building and climbs to the roof, settling into his old sniper spot, the place where he’s kept an eye on her all this time. When he peers through the scope of his rifle to Karen’s apartment, to his shock, the flowers are already there, on her windowsill.

He grins, the first time he’s smiled since he can remember as he quickly packs up his rifle and heads back over to her apartment. Climbing the stairs for the second time this hour, anticipation lightens his heart. Roughly, he knocks on the door. He waits a moment, then says, “Karen, it’s me. You don’t need your weapon.”

Karen opens the door with a sheepish look on her face. She tucks the gun into the waistband of her sweatpants. “You can never be sure in this city. They were just saying on the news that a CIA agent named William Rawlins was brutally murdered and his killer is still at large.”

Frank misses the twinkle in her eye. “I had to, Karen. He killed my family. I had to.” His voice raises several levels in volume and Karen can hear the fervor with which he says it. It’s the same fervor she heard when he told her, by the river, that he couldn’t let the same thing happen to her.

“I know, Frank, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Here, come on in.” She takes a step back and opens the door wider to allow him and his huge artillery bag to fit through. He walks in and dumps his bag on the floor feeling awkward in Karen’s apartment. There’s so much her everywhere. He looks around. Worn copies of the Anne of Green Gables series lie on her bookshelf. On the stove, he can see a couple pots. The delicious smell of spaghetti sauce fills the air. Through the French doors leading to her bedroom, he can see that her bed is unmade, her work clothes on the floor, neglected since yesterday, when she threw them off as soon as she got home. When he looks back at Karen, she’s pouring red wine into two glasses. After she offers one to him and he accepts, she studies him.

He has a gash on the side of his head that’s healing, but still looks nasty. His breathing is a bit labored. Both his eyes are bruised. She wonders if this look, this perpetual state of injury, will ever end.

“Frank, is there something I don’t know about Rawlins? You look like you’ve taken a hit, which means since it’s you, you were probably hurt pretty badly. When are you going to take care of yourself?”

Frank just shrugs.

Karen knows that this means that he was, in fact, hurt pretty badly. She grows frustrated with him for continuously putting himself in these situations.

“Dammit, Frank, you could’ve died! You could’ve died and left me too!”

“Red died and you seem to be doing okay,” Frank mutters under his breath. He’s jealous of the blind crusader because he has Karen’s affection. Unfortunately, she hears him.

“Of course I’m not doing okay! One of the only friends I have in the world is dead! I’m trying to put on a brave face, to move through the stages of grief, but inside, I feel like I have no one to turn to besides you! And if you left me too, I don’t know what I’d do!” By this point, her voice has risen an octave and she’s practically crying.

“I don’t know what I’d do,” she repeats softly, as tears flood her eyes.

“Frank,” she begins as she wipes her eyes and steadies her voice, “You don’t know how much you mean to me. I’ve been feeling so alone lately without Matt and Foggy’s so occupied with Marci and work he doesn’t realize all that I’ve been going through. It’s made me feel better—and safe, just knowing you’re out there. I’m glad you sent the flowers. I was afraid—” she breaks off again. “I was afraid that the elevator was going to be the last time I saw you alive.”

Hesitantly, she looks into his eyes. In them, she can see a multitude of emotions, some she can read, some that make her shiver.

Frank sets down the wine glass and says tenderly, with purpose, his voice low and deep, “Karen, I’ll never leave you.”

He hesitantly opens his arms and she falls into them, fitting as perfectly in them in this moment as she did in the moment after Lewis blew himself up and Frank had to pretend to hold her hostage, her back flush against him, to get away from the SWAT team. While her heart thrilled in that instant, there was too much anxiousness surrounding them that she couldn’t focus on the feeling. Now, they have all the time in the world, and she lingers, fully appreciating the fluttering in her stomach, the quickening of her heartbeat. She’s still nervous, though, about this thing, this feeling, between them, and after a minute, she awkwardly pulls away.

Frank senses the newfound tension between them and breaks it by asking, “So, what’s for dinner?”

“Oh, shit! My water is boiling!” Karen darts over to the stove, opens a box of spaghetti and dumps it unceremoniously into the pot. She takes the lid off the smaller saucepan, stirs the contents, blows on the spoon, and tastes the sauce. Nodding at herself, she again covers the pot, and turns around.

“So,” Frank begins with a half-smile on his face, “Spaghetti on Thanksgiving?”

Karen flushes slightly before she answers. “My grandma was Italian growing up, and she’d always make us spaghetti for special occasions. Usually Christmas and when someone requested it for their birthday. She was born in Italy, so it’s the real deal. It’s a day long process to make it, so when I’m up for it, I make a huge pot and freeze the sauce to defrost later when I want a little taste of home.”

Frank’s eyes soften as he hears this story. He realizes he doesn’t know much about Karen since she’s so private about her personal life, so he relishes this moment of revelation. He listens as she continues.

“I know it’s weird to have spaghetti on Thanksgiving, but I didn’t feel like doing a lot of cooking, and I could use the comfort it brings me.”

“No, it’s great!” Frank is quick to add. He can’t help but think of Maria and how making spaghetti was a big part of her family’s traditions too. He’s always considered himself a spaghetti snob since first tasting her sauce, but after smelling Karen’s apartment, he thinks that she could give Maria a run for her money in this regard, among others.

He resumes his thought in a teasing voice.

“I’m learning so much about you. You don’t like conforming to the traditional food eaten on holidays. You actually own sweatpants and t-shirts. What’s next, a hidden child I’ve never heard of?”

Karen giggles and with that, it’s like they’re old friends. They chat amicably as the pasta cooks and Karen pours them a second, then a third glass of wine. During dinner, Frank laughs more than he had since Maria, Lisa, and Frankie died.

After their meal, he helps her clean up the kitchen and dishes. They sit in Karen’s living room and pour the dregs of the wine bottle into their glasses. For a while, they just sit, enjoying each other’s company.

It’s nearing the end of the night. They can both sense what’s about to happen. Frank, trying to be the polite gentleman, thanks Karen for the wine and the food and begins to make his way to the door.

“Frank…” He turns, hopeful.

“Please, stay.” He does.

Frank falls asleep on the couch. He doesn’t want to push any boundaries. He wakes up in Karen’s bed. She’s tucked into him, their bodies gently curved together. He smiles and closes his eyes, then falls back asleep.

When Karen wakes up, she smiles too.

[qqueenofhades]

The Dark Horizon: Chapter XXXIX

summary:  AU. The Caribbean, 1715: Royal Navy Lieutenant Killian Jones and his brother, Captain Liam Jones, have just arrived to help pacify the notorious “pirates’ republic” of New Providence. But they have dangerous allies, deadly enemies, and no idea what they’re getting into when they agree to hunt the pirate ship Blackbird and the mysterious Captain Swan. OUAT/Black Sails. rating: M status: WIP available: FF.net and AO3 previous: chapter XXXVIII

The door of the Walrus’ cabin stood just ajar, laying a thin track of lantern light a few feet inside, where it caught short against the total darkness. No lamps or candles had been lit, and nothing stirred within, like the empty lair of a wolf gone out to hunt. Or perhaps the wolf had been mortally wounded, retreated to lie down in the dark and wait to die, too bitten and battered by the combat to think of returning, even as it burned to destroy any and every challenger, everything in its way. But just now, it did not know how. Did not know anything except the utter, unbearable desire for oblivion, and even that remained elusive.

Emma hesitated for a long moment, not sure if she wanted to go in or not. But it was not much of a true dilemma, as she could not be anywhere else just now. Miranda had told her once, in Boston, that she always put everyone else before herself, always thought of their needs first, always sacrificed whatever it took to save them. And while Emma was so rarely confident of her own ability to actually do so, she also knew it was the one thing – perhaps the only thing, in her mind – that was good about her, that was right, that was true. She was heartbroken and struggling with her own grief over Miranda, but there was still someone who was more so, who had even fewer places to turn for solace than she did, who was perhaps the only other person who understood the true depths of what was gone. As well, Miranda would have wanted it. She always wanted us to get along. She always wanted more for us. For everyone.

Emma steadied herself, then pushed the door further open, slipping inside and setting it quietly closed behind her. The cabin looked like chaos, things thrown and the table overturned, the precious books scattered on the floor and papers and charts and quills sliding over the boards. Still no movement. The bed was empty, as was the chair. Was she mistaken, and he –

She took another step, and almost tripped over Flint. He was hunched in the corner, arms resting loosely on his knees, unmoving, unseeing, staring at nothing, as if he had wept and raged himself out and turned to ash and dust. Emma had never seen him like this before, not when Flint’s energy and ambition and initiative burned as brightly as his redhead temper, when he always had another plan, another idea, another cunning plot to overthrow his enemies and rise triumphant. He looked like a statue, barely seeming to notice her entrance, until he finally, very slowly, turned his head and raised bloodshot green eyes to hers. More wearily than anything, as if he couldn’t even find the strength for anger, he mumbled, “The fuck are you doing here?”

“I just. . .” There was no easy answer. She figured he had likely had enough already, but a bit more couldn’t hurt, and handed him Killian’s rum flask, which he had supplied her with when she told him she was going to try to talk to Flint. “I thought you could use some company.”

Flint snorted bitterly, but accepted the flask, unscrewing the top and gulping down half of it at a go. He wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand, scattering droplets from his untrimmed beard. “I’ll keep company with this.”

“I meant real company.” Emma paused, then slid down next to him, feeling her own knees give a little as she did. They sat with their backs against the wall, the Walrus rocking gently beneath them on the nighttime sea, as a heavy silence reigned over them. At last she said, very quietly, “You know I feel the same way as you do. About Miranda.”

“I doubt that.” A muscle worked in Flint’s cheek.

“About losing her.” Emma felt her own voice waver as she said it, and almost wished she hadn’t, as Flint looked as if he’d been hit again by something heavy. Ordinarily she would have reached out to offer a comforting hand, but she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t bite hers off. “The first time we met. When you and the men attacked the ship I was on. Why did – why did you think I might fetch a ransom? I couldn’t have been much. I was just a maidservant.”

Flint looked surprised that she would even ask. He took another slug of rum. “It was a shit prize anyway,” he said, after a moment. “A hold of uncured skins, a few bronze pennies, and barrels of turpentine and tar. Hardly the riches of Croesus. We needed to make something from our effort.”

“There were other passengers. The captain.”

“I shot the captain.” Flint finished off the rum.

Emma wryly supposed that he had. Remembered fighting Billy, thinking he was going to kill her, that she would die and leave Charlie and Henry alone, and how frightened she had been, even more, when he didn’t. Marched her up to the deck still awash in gunsmoke, grapnels tumbling from the railings where the Walrus’ motley crew had swarmed aboard, and her first sight of Flint, striding through the chaos and barking orders. While Billy was the one to cop to the fact that she might be worth something in ransom, she would never have lived to make Nassau if Flint had not agreed. He might not relish killing a defenseless young woman, but he would have, if he judged it more profitable or pragmatic. She realized, now, that she had never known why he decided to keep her alive even before she met Miranda, before their unexpected bond played a part in Flint agreeing to take her on as apprentice, and she wanted the answer. “Why?” she said again, just as quietly but with undeniable force. “Why did you spare me?”

His mouth twitched again. It was far too forbidding to be a smile, and too pained to be a grimace. “You looked like you were worth something.”

It was Emma’s turn to flinch. Knowing Flint, he probably meant in money, but that was still more than she had heard from almost anyone else. Her parents might have thought so, but they had died. Charlie was still too young to be anything except another responsibility for her. Leopold and Eva White had been kind in their way, but she was always and ever their servant, and their charity did not extend to keeping her on when they discovered the scandal of her pregnancy with Henry. Neal Cassidy – she did not want to think about Neal. For Walsh, she was a glorified housekeeper and bedwarmer. If this was so, James Flint, of all the bloody people, might have been the first individual in her then-twenty-one years of life to think that she was valuable in any way, and that both tore at her and touched her beyond words. Because of that, she had met Miranda, met Killian and Liam, met Sam, provided for Charlie and Henry, had Geneva, built this small but desperately loved little family of hers, even if it was awash in danger and uncertainty and death. Will, Jack, Anne, Billy, even Regina, all the people who had come to matter to her, and for whom she was still fighting. Finally she said only, “Thank you.”

Whatever response Flint had expected, it did not seem to be that one. One gingery eyebrow jumped, but he didn’t answer, muscle working still harder in his jaw. Then he got up, searched among the ruins of the cabin for another bottle of rum, and pried the seal off, sitting back down and draining a sizeable quantity of it. “Fat lot of good it did us,” he said at length. “Both of us.”

“It did.” Emma’s heart hurt, hurt beyond belief or breath or any notion of where the ease might ever come from, but she did not regret it. Did not regret any of it, or them. “It did.”

Flint looked at her bleakly, as if to say that this morbid optimism was all well and good, but he could not comprehend this view of the situation, himself. He still seemed to be thinking about ordering her out so he could be alone with his misery, but instead he said, “So why were you sailing back to England? Leaving the boys in the Americas, returning to a place you couldn’t have many good memories of, when certainly there was other employment where you were. Even if not – especially not – high seas piracy. Get a position in some other rich fuck’s household. It wouldn’t have been hard. Why England? That never made sense to me.”

“I. . .” Emma looked down at her hands. She had likewise never spoken this aloud, never given it form. Even Miranda had never asked, and she felt an almost unbearable, searing pain of missing her. “I. . . I was running. Leopold and Eva had put me out. Walsh was dead. I had nothing left, nowhere to go. I had an idea that I would go back to England and find that I had missed it, that there was something I had left behind when I emigrated with Charlie. That it was home, just because I was born there, and I had to get back to it somehow. That I would find what I needed, and bring the boys back to join me when they were a little older. That I could care for them from afar, but that I . . . I’d be alone, I’d only have to look out for myself. It. . . seemed easier.”

“Aye.” Flint blew out a slow, pained breath. “So it does.”

“But of course, I didn’t,” Emma said quietly. “Get there. England. And I didn’t miss it, either. The feeling that I wanted to have then – it’s what I have now, when I think about Miranda, and Sam being away, and not knowing where Liam and Regina and the children are, and everything else. I can’t bring any of them back. I would do it in an instant if I could, I would go down to hell and get them out if I had to. But I can’t. And the war’s not. . . not over.”

“Fucking tell me about it.” Flint contemplated the rum bottle, then set it aside. “Silver and I spent days talking the Maroons out of killing us and the men, and now we have some of them here with us. You saw them. We know there’s another battle for Nassau ahead. Woodes Rogers has a death grip on the place, Robert Gold can’t be far behind, Benjamin fucking Hornigold is doubtless lurking traitorously nearby as well, all the godforsaken lot of them. Just set the whole island afire. Might smoke out the rats.”

“Sam went to Massachusetts. Meant to bring back recruits, mercenaries, gentlemen of fortune. Swords and ships. He has plenty of treasure from his own successes, he’ll find takers.”

“How fast?” Flint stretched his legs out slowly, grimacing. “And what was in that letter?”

Emma was startled. “Silver didn’t think you knew about it.”

“Silver’s an idiot.” Flint paused. “He’s had his uses recently, I’ll admit. But still an idiot.”

“He’s not, you know,” Emma said. “He’s just like you. And if you two worked together to bring the Maroons around, if he – ”

“He’s – tried, I suppose.” Flint’s voice caught and roughened. “To do what he. . . what he can. But I never know if that’s because he actually bloody cares a whit, or because he’s saving it up to use lucratively for advantage later.”

Emma was tempted to remark that the exact same quandary often obtained with Flint, but this was not the time to rub salt in old wounds, not when she was trying to comfort him. Instead, she acquainted Flint briefly with the contents of the letter, of Mariah Hallett’s tragic situation in Cape Cod, and how Sam had felt obliged to depart at once, to do whatever he could to remedy it. Flint made no comment, except when she had finished. “Seems fate is after the lot of us with a vengeance, doesn’t it? The monsters on their maps, the villains in their fairytales. Getting what we fucking deserve, is that it? The scourge of the pirates, struck down at last. Civilization and harmony restored. Is this what qualifies as a happy ending?”

“I’d hope not.” Emma felt in need of some of the rum herself, so she plucked it from Flint’s unresisting hand and took a sip. She felt it burn all the way down, settle in her stomach like a small blazing ember, and set the bottle on the floor. “We think we managed to stop Rogers from getting word to Gold in Antigua – there was a ship, the Halifax, we. . . we dealt with her. And sent David Nolan with a letter about Gold’s treason, so there might still be time to catch them off guard. We have the Jolie and the Walrus, and whatever reinforcements Sam returns with, as well as then the Whydah. Do you know where Vane went, after. . . after?”

“I never know what the fuck Vane’s doing. I’m still barely sure why he didn’t just let me die, except that he hates the bastards just as much as I do – I’ll give him that, and only that.” Flint’s lips tightened. “Is it true that all his Spanish treasure is aboard the Jolie with bloody Jack Rackham? I wonder if there’s some way to maneuver with that. Spain must be holding Rogers’ feet to the fire agitating for its return. If we let him know that we had it – ”

“What?” Emma was surprised, though not terribly, that Flint would conjure a plan that involved depriving Vane of all his hard-stolen gold – even if Vane himself had just rescued him in Charlestown. “You’d negotiate with Rogers?”

“No,” Flint said. “I would not negotiate with Rogers. I’d set up the appearance of doing that, let him think there was a chance of retrieving the stash, and then shoot him, Hornigold, and everyone else I could in the fucking head.”

Brutal as it was, Emma could not argue in the broad strokes with the efficacy of this plan, and she knew Flint better than to think he would want any kind of peaceable or bloodless solution after he had just lost Miranda, not with the rage and grief that burned unquenchably, unbearably within him. She could not deny that she wanted Rogers to pay for what he had done to Killian, that she might not mind seeing him shot properly after Anne had almost, but not quite, pulled it off the first time, but she also knew that he was just as dangerous when backed into a corner as was Flint himself. That much had already become clear from their short and regrettable acquaintance. They were also still wagering quite a bit on Sam being able to recruit help in Massachusetts, and David Nolan delivering the charges against Gold. Vane and Blackbeard might turn up in time to join an assault, or they might not.

“Rogers still holds the harbor and all of Nassau,” she said instead. “He’s weakened, but he’s not dislodged, and he has the tactical advantage in every way that matters. He has no incentive to discuss terms at all with just two pirate vessels. We’d have to let him know we have the Spanish gold right away, and we can’t afford to wait until Vane comes back. And since it is his loot – ”

“What, did you think we had to politely ask his permission?” Flint’s mouth twisted viciously. “It’s not our fault Vane’s gone again. I’m not intending to hand the gold over anyway. And do we even have a way in at all? Rogers is a – ”

“Yes,” Emma said heavily. “Eleanor.”

That caught Flint by surprise. “Eleanor?”

“Yes. She’s. . . she’s Rogers’ lover, she’s working with him to provide intelligence on Nassau and help establish English control over the island. She wanted me and Killian to make a bargain with him before. We. . . didn’t. But if we could set up a meeting – ”

Flint did not answer, still chewing over the news of Eleanor’s desertion and betrayal. They had been close, had worked together for a long time, and he must have recognized something of himself in her, in her cutthroat determination to survive and overcome no matter the cost, no matter who had to be trampled underfoot. “Eleanor Guthrie turned from the fierce fence of the pirate empire to Woodes Rogers’ devoted little helpmeet and proper English lady,” he said at last, voice quiet but scathing. “Wonders truly do never cease.”

“I don’t know why either.” Emma rubbed her eyes. “I think she loves the idea of ruling Nassau more than anything or anyone, and she’ll ally herself with whoever seems to be the best chance of achieving that goal. It doesn’t matter if it’s under the black flag or the Union Jack. Either way. We could pull it off, possibly, but once we pull this gambit, we need to have the firepower ready to back it up, if Rogers goes for the bait. And I don’t know if the Jolie and the Walrus alone can supply that. There are still at least six Navy frigates left. Those are. . . long odds.”

“Well.” Flint’s mouth went even grimmer, but the world’s most terrifying not-smile tugged at the edges. “Who says they have to know the truth?”

Emma looked at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

Flint paused, then slowly, painfully hauled himself to his feet, a phoenix rising once more, somehow, from the ashes. “Where the fuck,” he said, “are Hook and Silver?”

The answer was: not far away, as Killian had doubtless been waiting anxiously for Emma to return, and Silver – well, who knew what he was up to, but both of them were rounded up fairly expeditiously. Flint heaved the table upright, looking as if this was far more effort than he felt like going to, but somehow compelled. The four of them sat down, though the conversation was far from bounteous. Then, since Flint did not appear inclined to be the first to broach the silence, Emma did instead. Explained their plan to bluff Rogers into a fatal miscalculation by dangling the lure of the Spanish treasure, and give them a shot at launching a surprise attack on Nassau. The difficulties of this plan were numerous and obvious, and the hard details were, to say the least, in the drawing-board stage. But it was better than nothing. Not by much, but still.

“So the main problem would be getting Rogers to believe that we had a strong enough position that he had something to lose if he didn’t take up our offer,” Killian said, having as usual grasped the essentials without the need for much explanation. “Which, with just two ships, we don’t currently have. I am sensing, then, that this would be where Mr. Silver enters the picture?”

Silver smiled faintly. “See. We’re finally becoming friends after all.”

Killian looked as if he very much doubted this, but wanted to stay focused. “You could,” he said. “Convince them otherwise. About our numbers. Our strength. Our threat. Couldn’t you?”

“I’m not a Cheapside street magician,” Silver pointed out. “I can’t spin something entirely out of nothing. As well, you said the tale is that Flint’s dead. Nobody’s going to be in haste to put their necks on the line for a dead man, especially if Rogers has been so liberal with applying nooses to them already. That, though. . . that does give us something. As if the world tried as hard as it could to kill him in Charlestown, and failed. As if you are their own and especial monster. There’s power in that. Possibility. That, now. We could make something from that.”

Flint regarded him balefully, but once again, there was no real heat or conviction or hatred in it. “So what? I sail up and ask who wants to join the cause?”

“You?” Silver sounded surprised. “No. The dead man never announces his own return. As Hook said, that would be my job. Indeed, since my leg was hacked off, I daresay talking is all the use I am now. Certainly not in any actual fighting. I can create the legend of the dread Captain Flint, returned from the grave, with an army of slaves and pirates and free men at his back, but I can’t guarantee it would take root. However many redcoats Rogers has garrisoned on Nassau, there are still more of us – but they’re scared. They have not seen him lose yet. Surprised, yes, by Vane’s trick with the fireships, but not yet disadvantaged enough to make it worthwhile to turn on him. There might be something to cause them to change their minds, yes, but I don’t know what.”

“Figure it out.” Flint drummed his fingers on the table, eyes bleak and distant. He clearly did not want to be sitting here calmly talking strategy and subterfuge and possible angles of approach, did not want to keep holding himself together for outward appearances. Just wanted to burn, and burn, and burn. “And the Maroons – talk to Madi about it. Get her to make them agree to follow me, if that’s what we’re going with.”

“I can’t get Madi to make them do anything.” Silver’s voice remained mild, but there was a warning in it. “She’s a remarkable woman in her own right as well. You know none of them left the island thinking they’d have to follow anyone but her.”

Flint’s fist clenched, then smoothed jerkily flat on the tabletop, fingers working as if in search of something tangible to strangle. “So,” he said after a moment. “You lie your arse off – it should come naturally, I imagine – to frighten the island, and the English, with tales of my return with an unstoppable force. We bluff to get a meeting with Rogers. Draw him out somewhere. Promise the Spanish gold back. Then strike, and settle this for good and all.”

“It won’t be that easy, you know,” Killian warned. “Rogers is too careful for that, and he’ll be on high alert for a trap. And if we can take him alive, he gives us more leverage that way. Dead, he’s just a martyr for their side, an enduring image of the pirates’ brutality and barbarism. No surer way to draw the infighting English factions together. Even you know that, mate.”

“Whatever you say.” Flint’s voice was close to a snarl. “Mate.”

Killian grimaced, as he himself could not at all be looking forward to a reunion with his tormentor. “And are we going to tell Rackham about this? I imagine he’ll balk at offering up Vane’s precious gold, even in pretense, when he’s the trusted custodian of it.”

“Fuck Rackham, then. We’ll do it without him.”

“We can’t, all right?” Killian was clearly sympathetic to Flint’s current emotional wasteland, but an edge of exasperation roughened his tone nonetheless. “We can’t. He helped save my life, he was – is – the lawfully elected captain of the Jolie since I decided not to challenge him again for command, and there’s nothing to be gained by spurning him now, when our allies are thin enough on the ground as it is. I’ll go over and tell him.”

“Fine. You do that. Really, I don’t give a shit.” Flint picked up the rum bottle again, finished it off, and banged it down. “And how about all of you get the fuck out, anyway?”

Killian and Silver glanced at each other, then rose to their feet with rather deliberate courtesy, Silver’s crutch thumping as he braced himself. Killian turned to Emma. “Coming, love?”

“Aye, just – just a minute.”

He gave her another, longer look, clearly not fond of leaving her alone with Flint again, but nodded and withdrew. The silence this time was close to stifling, Flint all but about to go off with a bang, but Emma held her ground. When he started to look around again as if in search of yet more rum, she raised a hand. “I think that is enough.”

“Nursemaiding me now, are you?” Flint got heavily to his feet, staggered, and had to steady himself, belying his attempt to look as coldly sober as ever. “There’s a waste of time.”

“James.”

His head snapped up, unwillingly.

“James,” Emma repeated. “I know you just want to sleep. I know you want to go away from it. But we. . . we can’t do this without you.”

Flint’s lip curled, as if to say that if so, they were spectacularly fucked. He seemed briefly about to blaze back a sharp reply, but didn’t. “I keep dreaming about her,” he said instead, very low, almost as if he had not meant to, but could not hold it back. His voice was anguished and small. “Miranda. She’s – screaming. Always screaming, but she never makes a sound. There’s some monster there, some beast, that stalks us both. I can’t reach her, I can’t touch her. She wants to speak to me. Sometimes she does. Asks me to forgive her, as if she was the one in the wrong. I almost want to stay asleep for good. Stay wherever she is. I am. . .” He turned away, into the shadows, as if he could not stand for Emma to see his face, but she still heard his whisper. “I am ruined without her. Ruined. And I cannot imagine ever being whole again.”

Emma hesitated, aching for the evident and absolute devastation in his voice, his face, every raw and shattered sinew of him. She had lost her foster mother, whom she trusted and respected and admired and relied upon, whom she had loved very much and could hardly stand to think of her life without, and that was no small pain. Yet Flint had lost his wife, the woman he had been with for ten years, his partner and his solace, the woman who had given up everything to flee with him to Nassau, his last remaining link to Thomas Hamilton, to his old life in London, to any hint of James McGraw. He and Miranda had loved each other through hell, through exile and darkness and everything else that had been thrown at them, and they had not deserved this, this crushing of their dreams and despoliation of their future. Emma had no way to take that pain away, to ease that burden, and she wished that Sam was here. He would know how to make this better, even momentarily. He would know what to say, what comfort to offer. She hoped he would be back from Massachusetts soon. She and Killian – and Flint – needed him.

And yet, he wasn’t. It was only her, only them. Notwithstanding the ever-present danger of death by decapitation, she crossed the creaking floorboards, reached out, and took his hand.

Flint tensed as sharply as if she had tried to shoot him, clearly on the brink of pulling back. He also clearly wished that she would stop trying so hard to reach him, that she would walk away and let him drown, as if the loss was so raw that even comfort made it worse. Or perhaps because he was so used to doing everything alone that the idea of sharing a grief, a loss, with anyone except Miranda – when Miranda herself was the subject of the grief – that he simply did not know how. Lost even that human notion, that allowance of fragility, in the fire.

“Hey,” Emma said, her own voice barely a whisper. “There’s something left to fight for, all right? For whatever it was worth, when you said that I was Miranda’s daughter. I don’t know if you feel the same way. I doubt it. But I’m still here. In any way it really matters, I’m the mother of your grandchild, of Miranda’s grandchild. Killian is your friend. Sam is your. . . Sam. You still have something, someone, to come back to. Don’t give up. She wouldn’t want you to. You know she wouldn’t.”

“Do I?” Flint drew a shuddering, painful breath. “She wanted Charlestown burned. You heard her say it. After what happened with Ashe – ” He stopped. “She had no intention of begging his forgiveness, any more than I did. If she wanted the war to go on – ”

“She didn’t,” Emma said softly. “Not forever. Not at the cost of your soul. She always wanted the demon to let go of you, for the fight to be enough. We. . . we talked about it. Often.”

Flint didn’t answer, though the agony etched in every line of his face remained acute. The cabin was still dark, though the lamp they had lit for their meeting was burning low, wick guttering in the oil, throwing strange and shifting shadows on the walls. Emma had a sense that there were any number of things he could have said, rebuttals to be made, arguments about how very far they still had to go to have any hope of coming out the other side, and what state they would possibly be in when they did. That, after all, was exactly what Flint did: fight, no matter the battleground, no matter the subject. And he was, as anyone with even a passing acquaintance with him had cause to know, often to their detriment, extremely good at it.

Any of that, therefore, would have been far more expected than what he did. He let go of her hand, turned to her without a word, and leaned down to kiss her forehead, quietly and briefly and lightly. Then he straightened up, went to the door, and opened it, letting in a rush of warm night air. Stood there, still silently, and waited for her to go.

Emma, aware that she had done all she could for now, wanting to be with Killian, knowing that Flint did not want her to see him weep, went.

-----------------

The next fortnight was occupied with this dangerous, delicate game of cat-and-mouse. For the best effect, the story had to have time to germinate, to spread naturally, to smolder just under the surface and then catch fire, to put Woodes Rogers on uneasy notice and start to wonder if his request for reinforcements had made it to Antigua after all, or if he was cut off and about to face the Caribbean’s longest-tenured and most infamous (and now angriest) pirate captain by himself. They also had to find a place to anchor where the Navy would not stumble across them by accident, as the success of this bluff rested on Rogers believing that they had somehow assembled enough of a force to make his life very difficult if he wanted to do this the hard way. Silver had gone ashore with some of the men to get started on his task, but he likewise had not explicitly showed his face, or made himself known outright. He had instead written a letter, setting out the cost of continuing to oppose them, the danger of what was, if Rogers insisted on it, about to be unleashed. A letter signed, since the only legend who could announce the return of Captain Flint was another that must be created, Long John Silver.

In the meantime, Emma and Killian were working to find a way to pass a message to Eleanor, wondering how much to tell her, and how exactly the hell they might pull this off. Wild tales of slave risings and pirate armies might be enough to frighten Rogers into one rash decision, although even that was not guaranteed, but if he learned too quickly that it was all just Silver’s expert lies, he could strike back hard and trap them at a vulnerable juncture indeed. Their best hope was to catch Rogers off guard and take him prisoner at any potential meeting, as if they had the governor in hand, they would be able to dictate terms to the English forces. Even if so, even if he was forced to come alone, Rogers would be sure to have arranged some nasty snare in his wake. Such as, if he did not return within a set amount of time, his men had orders to torch the island and kill anyone who resisted. It would not at all be safe to underestimate him.

In this work, apart from each other, Emma and Killian were most often joined by the Maroon chieftainess’ daughter and leader of their men aboard the Walrus, Madi. Emma could quickly see the reason for Silver’s intrigue; Madi was indeed a remarkable woman, barely in her twenties but strong and steely-minded, brave and decisive, but with that slight bit of vulnerability nonetheless. It transpired that her father was Mr. Scott, Eleanor’s longtime assistant and co-manager of the Guthrie enterprise, someone well familiar to Emma from her days in Nassau. Madi also knew Poseidon and Ursula, which had rendered her reception of Killian distinctly cool, but she did at least seem willing to judge him on the merits of how he presented himself now, and to not hold past sins unduly against him. With what was at stake, they could not afford it. Not that that was likely to stop anyone else, but she, at least, could grasp it.

They did not see Flint much. He kept largely to his cabin, rarely emerging even for mealtimes, though sometimes he would appear when the scouts came back with their reports. Rackham had also kicked up a fuss about letting Vane’s treasure potentially slip through his fingers; he knew he would be the one to take the fall if his ex-captain came back and discovered it gone. But as he was unable to offer much of an alternative, he was grudgingly forced to consent. They would have to make their move soon. A few more days at most. Otherwise Rogers would realize that his message had not made it to Gold, that nobody was coming to help him, and he would accordingly do something drastic. We are running out of time.

“Is he meant to be back soon?” Madi asked, that evening. “Black Sam?”

“Aye, though who knows how long it took for him to make it to Massachusetts.” Killian checked the chart on the table, where they were engaged in the slow process of plotting out the reported positions of the redcoats, how far they had fanned out across the island. If the scouts were to be believed, they were also avoiding the plantations, which was noteworthy. Rogers might have caught wind of the fact that Sam and Lancelot had been trying to stir up a revolt, and issued strict instructions to his men not to provoke them at any cost. That means he’s afraid of the possibility. Doesn’t think it amounts to much, but he’s still afraid of it. “Or how long it took him to smooth things over with his Mariah. He’ll be back, though. He’s Sam.”

Madi regarded him inscrutably. “Are you sure of that?”

“Aye,” Killian said again. Doubting Sam was as foreign to him as doubting Emma, and needed no further articulation. “I likewise hope it will be soon. We could manage it – barely – but storming the harbor again with just the Walrus and the Jolie will be very dangerous.”

Madi raised an eyebrow, as if to say that he had not needed to tell her that, and swept her long black dreadlocks over her shoulder, tying them out of her face with a thong. Then she said, “What if he does not? What if something went wrong? It is a long voyage to Massachusetts and back. If he was captured by the Navy, or. . . worse?”

Killian looked at her queerly. “Nothing went wrong.”

“It would be comforting to be certain, yes. But if he does not return, it is my men who will have to make up the lack. Before I ask that of them, to fight alongside pirates in a battle where they could well all die, it would be only right that we knew for sure.”

“If they didn’t want to fight alongside pirates, why would they have left your island in the first place?” Killian dipped his quill in the inkwell and scribbled a terse update of their coordinates. “Besides, it won’t come to that. Sam will be back soon.”

“But if he – ”

“I said, Sam will be back soon!”

Madi gave him a long, stonily cool stare, and Killian grimaced – if he wanted to convince her that he had changed from the days when he had dealt Ursula so dishonorably, this was a piss-poor way to go about it. While the air was crackling, the door opened and Emma appeared, returned from her nightly errand to leave food outside Flint’s cabin – they were fairly sure he might not bother to eat otherwise. At sensing the standoff, her brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s my fault, love.” Killian sighed heavily. To Madi, he said, “You have a point, lass, of course. I’m just – it’s not been the best few weeks of my life, that’s for bloody certain, and I’m run raw with worrying about it all. Still, that’s no excuse to bark at you. I’m sorry.”

Madi eyed him suspiciously for a moment longer, then nodded fractionally, accepting the apology, and some of the tension eased. She turned to Emma. “Did you have news?”

“I did.” Emma looked between them. “We have a meeting with Rogers. Tomorrow night.”

Madi uttered a small exclamation of surprise, while Killian did not manage to be quite as circumspect. “Bloody hell! We do? How? What the blazes did he want, a – ”

“I’m not entirely sure. It went through Anne, to Max, who got a message to Eleanor, and apparently she influenced Rogers to agree to it. It’s a hidden spot outside Nassau, tomorrow after dark. We made it clear he was supposed to come with only a few trusted men, and we’d do the same. Obviously, it’s a gamble, but. . . at this point, I think we’re committed to making it.”

“Bloody hell,” Killian said again, looking down at their carefully curated map with its painstaking diagrams of movements and positions. As one of the few – indeed, the only, apart from Flint, and he wasn’t much use at the present – men with actual military experience, even if his proficiency was at sea rather than on land, he had been requisitioned to craft and direct the pirates’ entire plan of battle. It was also clear that while Rackham remained captain of the Jolie, nobody had forgotten the duel where Killian had come out atop Flint, Vane, and Blackbeard, and the command he had taken as a result. They had set this up as Rogers having to face down Flint once and for all, but – with Flint as shattered and eclipsed and out to sea as he was – it seemed ever more that it was full as much a lie as Silver was making it. That the true power, the true adversary who awaited his reckoning with the governor and everything he stood for, in payment for what he had done, was Hook.

“Fine,” Killian said, trying to recollect his troubled thoughts. “Tomorrow night after sundown. Do we know what sort of trick Rogers is liable to pull on us once we’re there?”

“We’ll have to be on the lookout for anything.” Emma absently tidied a strand of loose blonde hair out of her eyes, as Killian’s fingers ached with the desire to do it for her. “You should find Lancelot. We don’t have much time to get ready and be sure of what we’re going to do, so. . .”

Madi sensed the unspoken dismissal, looked between them for another moment, then nodded again and showed herself out. When they were alone, Emma leaned against Killian, burying her face in his shoulder, as he slid his arms around her and could not help but notice the shiver of need that ran through him. Emma was still healing from Geneva’s birth, Killian still felt like one giant bruise, and with the worry and uncertainty and emotional turmoil of the past few weeks, intimate relations had been the last thing on their minds. Yet they had been sleeping closely together every night, curled in each other’s arms, and he could not help but find it increasingly difficult to continue to do so in uneventful celibacy. They could touch each other, satisfy each other in different ways than full consummation, but that was still only a temporary measure. He wanted her, and he’d wait as long as he had to, but that did not mean that it was not starting to drive him slightly mad.

Emma’s eyelashes fluttered, her lips parting, as Killian slid hand and hook down to her hips, bracing her firmly against him. Her fingers combed through the curl of hair at the nape of his neck, pulling his lips to hers for a very thorough kiss, and he took a step, about to lift her onto the table and to the devil with all their charts. Her other hand fiddled at the buttons of his shirt, sliding across the plane of his chest and around his shoulder, their foreheads close, noses brushing and mouths musing. He hitched her up onto the table, stepping between her legs, turning her head to deepen the kiss, hungry and haunting. Could at least give her release, some way or another, try to ease her over for whatever was about to happen tomorrow, or –

There was a scrape at the door, a thump, and Killian broke off, Emma still in his arms and both of them flushed and flustered, to see John Silver clearly regretting his decision to stop by for a strategical update.  “Please,” he said, holding up his free hand. “By all means, don’t let me intrude. I’m glad someone is enjoying themselves around here. But as we’re going to have to come face-to-face with Rogers tomorrow, I thought – ”

“It’s fine.” Emma slid off the table, pulling her unlaced shirt over her shoulders. Killian let go of her as well, the moment broken. “You can – you can look, we were – we were just finished.”

Silver raised an eyebrow, as if to say that he was well aware that he had arrived while they were in flagrante delicto, but did not demur. Stumped inside on his crutch to take over the maps, the vigil, and after a pause, quietly, they went.

The next day crept by on turtle feet. Everyone was, to say the least, on bristling edge about the multitudinous and spectacular ways in which the upcoming rendezvous could go horribly wrong, and Killian had to be clear on who all he meant to take along. Him and Emma, for a start. Rackham was in charge of the chest of Spanish treasure, which they would have to take to prove they had it. Lancelot and Madi would both be there as well, to serve as proof that the Maroons were fighting alongside the pirates. Silver would have to come, since it was his lies they were counting on, and Flint, so Rogers would know that he was in fact alive. That made seven in all, six if you considered that Silver couldn’t fight, and there was no telling what show of force Rogers would make in return. After all, the bluff could cut both ways.

Killian paced and worried for most of the afternoon, until it was time to leave. Everyone had dressed in dark clothes, strapped on considerable quantities of weapons, and Killian was half-wondering if he would have to break into the cabin and drag Flint out by the heels. But he appeared in due course, nodded curtly to Emma, and climbed into the boat with them. Didn’t say a word, but pulled the oars as if they had personally insulted him, sending them at a good clip across the glassy sunset water of the lagoon. They made a stop at the Jolie, to pick up Rackham and the chest, and then rowed ashore, tied the boat, and headed off into the trees.

It was a good walk to the designated meeting spot, an outcrop of broken shore rocks and low-lying marshland a few miles outside of Nassau, and they made an odd traveling party to say the least. Silver was missing a leg and Killian was missing a hand, so Lancelot had to help Rackham haul the chest. Madi took the lead, though sometimes, unobtrusively, she would offer assistance if Silver was struggling too much on his crutch. Flint strode silently in the rear, and Emma was clearly keeping an eye on him. They had decided to arrive several hours early, so Rogers could not get there ahead of them and entrench an ambush, and everyone was sweating and out of breath by the time they made it. The wind whistled desolately over the empty ground, whistling among the hollows of the rocks as the breakers crashed below, and Killian felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. If this went bad, it was going to be hard to get out of here easily.

There was not much conversation as they waited. The sun was well down, the moon was up, and Rackham had just opened his mouth – doubtless to ask if they had gotten the date correct or something else annoying – when they finally heard the sound of hoofbeats and saw torchlight flickering on the path toward them. They stood up in a hurry, trying to look intimidating, as Woodes Rogers galloped into view, trailed by half a dozen other men on horseback. One of them, Killian was intensely disgusted to see, was Benjamin Hornigold, and he heard Flint make a similar hissing noise of loathing. Rogers appeared to have chosen the rest of his assistants for brawn rather than brain. If this was devolving into a slugfest, he preferred to be prepared.

There was no sound but the wind as Rogers dismounted and regarded them with those cool, opaque eyes. “Good evening,” he said at last. “I have been told that there is a specific purpose to our meeting. Something about the Spanish gold pillaged from the wreck of the treasure fleet off Florida. Was I misinformed?”

“You were not.” Killian gazed back at him just as coolly, though it sent an unpleasant grue down his spine to see him again. Rogers appeared to be mended from the wound Anne had dealt him, unfortunately, though there was still a slight scar on his forehead. “Though seeing as your bloody friend Jennings stole half of it, you could have asked him about its whereabouts well before.”

“I did. Captain Jennings was unaware.” Rogers shrugged. “He said he had been parted from it quite a while ago, when Charles Vane turned on him to drive him out of Nassau, and therefore could offer no useful intelligence on it. So – ” those wintry eyes flicked to Rackham – “I understand that you are the man responsible for it now?”

“I, ah, I am.” Rackham cleared his throat. “We’ve brought this one chest to prove we have it. The full stash is safely elsewhere. We can imagine that Spain sees its return as a matter of priority.”

“They do.” Rogers’ expression did not change. “They have issued an ultimatum that if their unlawfully stolen treasure fails to be repatriated to them in full, they will no longer consider themselves bound by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht and will feel free to resume their previous state of war against Great Britain and all her allies. The governor of Havana has sent me several strongly worded letters about it, in fact. Even men of your. . . irregular sensibilities can doubtless understand that another war is the last thing we can afford.”

“I don’t know.”  Flint spoke at last, voice rough as granite. “I’d be all for another fucking war.”

“I don’t doubt you would.” Rogers smiled faintly as he said it, taking in the sight of Flint from head to heel. “So the stories are true. You are alive.”

Flint continued to stare at him with utter, charblack malevolence, until Killian shifted slightly, in case he should need to stop the older man from doing something stupid. Rogers himself was surely aware of his danger, but glanced at Lancelot and Madi, seemed to decide that they did not rate an actual comment, and then said, “Well? Am I to understand that you are proposing terms, or am I not?”

“Aye.” Killian lifted his chin. “We hand over the Spanish treasure, you avert another war that neither Madrid nor London can afford, and in exchange, you and all your men leave New Providence Island for good. We remain as a free and independent state in the West Indies, to make our laws and customs according to our own authority and volition. At no point in the future may England again claim us as part of her land, expect taxes or services from us, or impinge upon our sovereignty. If she does, we will defend ourselves as necessary.”

Rogers looked completely incredulous. “You must be mad,” he said. “Mad, to think that I would ever agree to withdraw and leave a nest of thieves at large on His Majesty’s rightful territory, to plague shipping and commerce in His Majesty’s waters. Or perhaps you – ”

“How much do you want the Spanish treasure back?” Killian said coolly. “Not that much?”

“No term of exchange or armistice will involve the continued existence of the pirates’ republic.” Rogers said it calmly and matter-of-factly, without much ire or umbrage, merely a cold, ironclad certainty. “Neither myself nor Robert Gold would ever agree to it, far less the rest of Westminster.”

“Ah. See, there’s this funny thing about your mate, Gold. Do the words camera stellata ring any bells? Star Chamber?”

At that, Rogers did blink, but only once. “The Star Chamber was disbanded years ago.”

“Really? Are you certain? Because you might want to pop back in and ask Gold one more time, just to be sure. Because he’s been writing letters signed with their cipher as recently as a month ago, and, as I am sure I don’t need to remind you, the Star Chamber was a symbol of monarchical tyranny and a secret society and law unto itself. A Jacobite law.”

“Lord Robert,” Rogers said stiffly, “is not a Jacobite.”

“Really?” Killian repeated. “You’re sure? Though in this case, I think you’re right. He’s not a Jacobite. He’s a bloody lunatic who serves no king or country except his own power and profit, and he’s certainly no friend of yours. You know who I am. We used to attend the same supper parties in Bristol. You knew that Liam and I were devoted servants of the crown, and Gold deliberately destroyed us. He meant to push me into piracy all along, to make the Caribbean’s new monster, and I am sad to say that I obliged him in everything. All the while so that all eyes would be fixed on me, and not whatever he was doing. Check his books. Check anything. He’s a traitor. You already said you don’t take orders from him. Is he the man you want covering your back in Antigua, mate? You really think he’d protect you from us?”

“Protect me.” Rogers laid a light hand on his sword. “Yes, from this mighty force you claim to have assembled. Pirates and Maroons and all the bilge rats of the Indies, rising up to throw off the shackles of English tyranny. So you would have me believe. I only see seven of you.”

“There are more,” Killian said. “Many more.”

“And I have the word of a traitor himself to wager on it?”

“If that’s what you’re questioning him on, why the bloody hell is that fat shit standing next to you?” Flint had evidently had quite enough of this badinage. “Fucking Hornigold?”

“Captain Hornigold is assisting me with the defense and intelligence of the island.” Rogers’ gaze did not waver, though his grip tightened on the sword hilt. “And surely it is no treason to repent from an outlaw to an upright citizen?”

“James, my old friend.” Hornigold spread his hands in a rueful shrug. “When are you ever going to admit that in the end, you have chosen the losing side?”

Flint did not answer, merely stared back at him in such utter loathing that Killian was surprised that a crack did not split the earth open beneath Hornigold’s feet and deposit him directly into hell. Evidently, however, Hornigold took his silence to mean that he could not refute the point. “Where is dear Samuel, by the way?” he went on. “I would have thought to see him here with you. Or did he try to overthrow another one of you, and had to be hastily dealt with? My condolences.”

Killian gritted his teeth, reminding himself that there was absolutely no good result of being drawn into a bear-baiting with Hornigold, much as he yearned to stuff the bastard’s smirking mug directly up his backside. Instead, he looked back at Rogers. “Are you interested in my offer or not? Besides, you must have sent to Antigua for reinforcements. Still nothing from Gold. You sure they want you to succeed here? You know what a crocodile that man is.”

Rogers looked back at him inscrutably. “I want this chest now, as a signal of your good intentions. And a hostage. You can select among yourselves whichever one.”

“Are you mad? You think we’ll give you one of us as a – ”

“The exchange of hostages becomes necessary, where trust does not exist between two hostile factions,” Rogers pointed out, once again as coolly as if he was reading from a treatise on military strategy. “And it has not escaped my attention that pirates, among their other disreputable qualities, are not known for their honesty. So both of us will have to strain ourselves, if we intend to walk away from here with any progress made.”

“I don’t see you in a haste to offer us a hostage.”

“We’ll take Hornigold,” Flint put in. “That should do nicely.”

Killian was about to ask whether Flint remembered that the point of hostages was not to kill them on the spot, sympathetic as he was to this aim, but Rogers shook his head, almost amused. “You still think you can demand that we treat as equals, that you are owed any consideration or conciliation under the law which you have repeatedly and flagrantly flouted and showed your disdain for at every available opportunity? If you wish to enjoy the benefits afforded by it, I suggest you begin by respecting it. If you are not willing to hand over the chest and a hostage – again, as I made plain at our last meeting, none of what I ask is overweening or unreasonable – then there are other ways to settle this. As noted, there are seven of you present. Captain Flint, ‘Long’ John Silver, Captain Hook, Captain Swan, Jack Rackham, and two leaders of the Maroons. I daresay without you, your compatriots would find it difficult to carry on.”

Killian tensed, reaching for Emma. “You don’t want to – ”

“I don’t want to what?” Rogers nodded to his redcoat escorts, who slung their muskets off their backs and checked the priming. “Provoke the wrath of this mystical pirate force that I have been assured is on my doorstep, waiting to fall upon Nassau with fire and slaughter? Perhaps you take me for a fool, or are in a haste to frighten me into a miscalculation? Was I intended, then, to unquestioningly believe the word of that paragon of trustworthiness, John Silver?”

Flint looked as if he was on the verge of agreeing wholeheartedly with this statement, before remembering that it came from Woodes Rogers and therefore he could not, on principle, do so. He shifted his weight. “Do you want to take that risk?”

“I don’t know.” Rogers’ voice dropped, soft and menacing. “Do I?”

Killian remained engaged in trying to get Emma behind him, as to his eyes, those redcoats looked half a second away from opening fire and sending this exactly as pear-shaped as he had feared. They appeared to not quite dare without Rogers’ say-so, Lancelot, Flint, and Rackham all had their hands on an exotic variety of swords and pistols, and Killian gave Emma a warning look, trying to tell her to grab Madi and make a break for it. But he wasn’t sure that Rogers wouldn’t fire on two women, even in the darkness, and since Silver was no use in a fight, that put them at severe disadvantage of numbers. Or –

“I will make myself clear,” Rogers said. “Hand over the chest and two hostages – since if nothing else, this exchange has proven that your intransigence is not likely to be curtailed with one. Otherwise, I will have to give the order for the lot of you to be shot.”

At that, Flint had heard more than enough. He ripped out his sword, lunged over the boulder dividing them, and went directly for Hornigold, as Killian – judging in the same amount of time that they had rather abruptly reached the end of negotiations – pushed Emma toward Madi, drew his own, and charged Rogers. A fusillade of musket fire boomed and flashed across the clearing as the redcoats drew the same conclusion, but Killian could not look around. Rogers managed to get his own sword free of the buckler just in the nick of time, and their blades crashed with an impact strong to send sparks skidding from the edges and the reverberations up Killian’s arm. He took a better grip, changed angles, and slammed down a second blow, then a third.

Rogers was ready for him, expertly parrying his attacks and well aware of his footing on the treacherous ground, as they drew apart, circled briefly, then closed in again, swords crashing and screeching. Killian was aware of Flint punishing Hornigold somewhere nearby, another exchange of shots – Lancelot and Jack were firing, he thought at least one redcoat was down, Silver had spread his arms trying to shield Emma and Madi (that was, however slightly, a point in the git’s favor) but Emma herself did not appear inclined to hang back and let the men handle things. She was, after all, a pirate captain in her own right, the only woman in the Caribbean to claim the honor. She drew her sword and leapt for the nearest redcoat.

Madi herself dove for a rock, which she threw hard at the soldier coming for her, and he went down with a curse, clutching at his bloodied nose. At that, Killian lost track of everyone else again, the thought locked in his head that if he could just handle Rogers right now, he could save them, he could save everyone. He remembered his own admonition against murdering the man, that a public demise would be exactly what the English needed to rally together and finish the fight, but if Rogers got himself killed in some midnight backwater duel, if they could just pull the threads and make it unravel – it would be over, they would be safe – Gold might send another deputy to Nassau, yes, but their back would be broken –

“You’re making a foolish choice, Jones.” Rogers was out of breath, but only slightly, a long lock of sandy-brown hair falling in his face, as they sized each other up for the next attack. “After everything – ”

“Aye.” Killian almost laughed, despite himself. “After what you bloody did to me, you still somehow think there’s a chance I’ll decide to come over to your side again? And here I thought you were supposed to be a smart man.”

Rogers looked as if he was about to reply, but at that moment, they were distracted by a crash, a thump, and a sickening squelching sound from behind them, and they both whirled around, just in time to see Flint throwing his full body weight into driving his sword as deep into Benjamin Hornigold as he possibly could. He pulled the blade out with a shriek and grit against bone, and as Hornigold was going down, swung it like an axe into his neck, blood spraying in his face as he bared his teeth. Hornigold seemed to be trying to say something, choking and gurgling, but couldn’t make it out. He convulsed once more, and went still.

Rogers stared at the fallen body of his loyal stooge for a brief, spellbound moment, then lunged like a striking cobra, grabbing Madi by the hair and dragging her in front of him, as another of the redcoats kicked the pistol out of Rackham’s hand, punched him in the belly, and doubled him over. A third went for the chest, then hauled it up toward the horses, which had been rearing and shying at the sight and sound of the free-for-all. Rogers forced Madi backward, sword at her throat, as Jack kept struggling, received a thumping blow over the head for his trouble, and slumped like a sack of oats. Flint whirled around, but was stopped dead as Rogers trained a pistol on him with his free hand. “Please,” he said. “Give me a reason, I beg you.”

The redcoat hoisted Jack’s limp body over the back of his horse, hog-tying him, as the other two took custody of the chest. Rogers pushed Madi in front of him, keeping the gun pointed unwaveringly at Flint. “Two hostages,” he repeated, breathless and snarling. “Two hostages, and the chest. That was what I asked for. Well, I appear to have them now. You could have handed them over far more peaceably, but you didn’t. All the Spanish treasure, returned to me by sundown tomorrow, or both of them die, as well as all the remaining men accused of piracy that I hold back in Nassau. Then I will search the entire island, deploy my ships to find however many you claim to have, and order them all sunk without quarter or cessation. Any man who survives will then be hanged. This is your final warning. Do not test me.”

With that, he spun around, grabbed Madi by the arm, and shoved her onto his horse, then mounted up as well, raising a hand to beckon to the other two. Gathered up the reins, gave them a final, blazing, hell-black look, and galloped away into the darkness.

----------------

It was a long, grim, dangerous retreat back to the beach. Even the momentary and much-deserved vindication of finally killing Hornigold could not disguise the desperation of their situation. If Madi died, the Maroons would, at best, desert the pirate cause immediately – at worst, they might actively turn on them. Jack was, in a coldly pragmatic sense, not an irreplaceable loss, but he was the captain of the Jolie, Anne would not stand to let him die, and might take reckless risks trying to rescue him. As well, Rogers had of course additionally acquired the chest of Spanish treasure, which left them without anything else to use as negotiating leverage. Either they meekly handed over the rest of it, or they dug in and prepared for an all-out battle on both land and sea waged to the bitter end, and with casualties guaranteed to be ruinous. Everything hung from the slenderest of threads.

Killian’s mind was racing, and his stomach was leaden. He could not help but blame himself for his own failure to take down Rogers in time, as if that had been the final real chance they had to stop him, and he was viciously second-guessing the decision to risk a parlay with the dangerous bastard in the first place – which had been mostly his as well. The ragged remnants of the pirate cause had put their faith in him to serve as their general and commander, and all he seemed to be doing was leading them from bad to worse. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.

It was very late by the time they made it back to the Walrus and the Jolie, yet there was no chance of anyone sleeping. They had to face the Maroons and admit what had happened to Madi, and while at least Lancelot could vouch for their version of events, it was a violently fraught atmosphere. Anne was also as pleased as could be expected to hear that Jack and the chest had been captured, and there was so much shouting on all sides that an outsider stumbling on the scene would have concluded that they were the adversaries, not the allies. Flint would hear of no reproach for making Rogers even angrier by killing Hornigold – did it matter, when he was clearly determined to do them all the harm he could, provocation or otherwise? – and Killian’s own culpability in the matter did not escape censure. What the hell was his plan now? Why should they trust him? Why not just hand over the Spanish gold, and try to get away why they still could? Nassau was a lost cause. Find another island to call home. The English might well come along to boot them off that one too, but at least it would buy them some time.

It was in the middle of this rancorous scene that the lookout ran in to make it even worse, by telling them that he had spotted a ship approaching, and everyone crowded above decks. It was close to sunrise by now, so the faint dawn glow illuminated an eerie redness on the horizon behind the newcomer – the portent of war, Killian thought, could stand to be not quite so on the nose. He found himself praying it was the Whydah and Sam, but it was only one ship, and not nearly large enough. But it was, for better or worse, just as familiar. The bloody Ranger.

Within another quarter-hour, Vane had drawn abreast, close enough to shout over the railings, as even Flint, for once, could not muster a sardonic comment on his timing – said timing had, after all, saved his arse in Charlestown. That did not mean he was pleased to see him by any stretch of the imagination, but he had to bite his tongue, as they were so sorely in need of any help at all that Vane’s particular brand of insanity had the possibility of being useful. “You what?” he rasped, when he had been brought up to date on recent events. “You took my fucking treasure, then let Rogers capture it and Jack?”

“You weren’t here.” Killian looked at him coolly. “And unless you’re planning on making yourself bloody useful, and fast, we’ll likely have to hand over the rest of it.”

Vane looked as if he could not believe that they kept getting themselves into situations from which he was obliged to exert himself to retrieve them, especially it involved this risk to his capital, but he was also aware that with Rogers on the warpath, now was not the time to split hairs. “In case you didn’t notice,” he said instead, “I haven’t had any fucking trouble fighting him. Rogers, that is. I burned his blockade once, I’ll do it again if that’s what this has come to. I want Jack and my money back, and I intend to get them. The rest of you – ”

“We’ll fight,” Flint said. “That’s not even a question at this point. And once Bellamy returns – ”

Something flickered across Vane’s face, which all of them noticed, bringing an abrupt and uncomfortable halt to the conversation. Killian took a step forward, feeling as if something had come to ferocious life in his gut and was about to claw its way out. “What?” he demanded. “Did you – on the way back here, did you hear something? What?”

“I ran across a small trader under pirate colors,” Vane said after a moment. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Called the Mary Anne. When I drew in alongside her, I found eight men from Bellamy’s crew aboard. They said there had. . . there had been a storm.”

Killian’s heart felt as if it was about to burst from his chest. “Storm?”

“Aye.” Vane looked at him straight. “They said they had taken the Mary Anne as a prize, that all of them had then been caught in a terrible gale off the coast of Cape Cod, and they barely survived. Waited and waited for the Whydah to appear, but it didn’t. Never did. I wouldn’t wait for your friend to return. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“You’re lying.” It burned out of Killian like a fresh-fired cannonball. “You’re lying.”

Vane barked a mirthless laugh. “The fuck reason would I have to lie about it? They weren’t. Looked like a bunch of milk-white cowards, rattled to the bone, just wanted to be out of there. So I stopped another ship, the Swallow, and they had the same tale, said it was spreading across the Cape like wildfire. The Whydah was wrecked and sank in the storm, only two men survived, and both of them were caught and taken to jail to be tried for piracy. John Julian, one of the Indians, and Thomas Davis, a carpenter. Bellamy’s dead, Jones. You’d better fucking face it.”

Killian felt as if the world was giving way beneath his feet. He couldn’t even look at Flint and Emma, even knowing that they must be reacting in the same way, that this was flaying and burning any hope they had of a miraculous deliverance, an eleventh-hour arrival of extra forces prepared to fight – and more than that, Sam. It could not be. Sam could not be dead, he simply couldn’t be. It made no sense, it was not right, it was not just, it was not. It was not. It was not. And if Flint was already utterly delirious and destroyed and reeling from losing Miranda, this second blow on top must be the complete and final confirmation of the burning hatred that the world seemed to hold for him, his unbridled temerity in ever loving anything or anyone anywhere. Just then, Killian was not sure he was handling it any better. He wanted to seize a pistol and shoot Vane on the spot, even though there was that old saw about what you were not supposed to do to the messenger. He couldn’t breathe. He wanted this to be a dream. Vane might be mistaken. Had to be. Had to be.

Killian tightened his grip on the railing with his one wretched hand, as if he might be shaken off into space if he didn’t. He was aware that the last thing Sam would have wanted was for him to plunge straight back into the darkness, to give rein to Hook again, and careen out of control down that old, terrible road. There was no person or entity to swear vengeance on for Sam’s death, if it had been quite literally an act of God that took him out – Killian could hardly murder the wind and weather, could not swear to make nature itself pay for this outrage. He did not know if that was better or worse. At least it freed him from the temptation to start a new obsessive crusade to bring the man responsible down, but it also meant there was no easy answer, no obvious way, to pay back the immensity of this outrage. Meant that he would just have to accept it, of all the impossible, unbearable things, and try to pick up the pieces.

He struggled to say something. He could not get his tongue to form around the words. Everyone was looking at him, he felt as if his spine had been snapped, and yet he could not even let himself think about this, could not grieve, could not break. Not when this terrible, final task remained.

Killian lifted his head, and said, “We fight.”

[bluewatsons]

Arlie Hochschild, Emotional Life on the Market Frontier, 37 Ann Rev Sociology 21 (2011)

Abstract

As American society has become ever more dominated by the market, sociological interest in commodification has paradoxically declined. Marx, among others, noted how a worker can become estranged from his work—the doing of it, the tools of it, and the product resulting from it. Consumers can become estranged from all these, too. As workers and consumers today, we often detach ourselves from what we make and buy, and extreme forms of detachment we can call estrangement or alienation. Marx's iconic worker was (a) the nineteenth-century male factory worker for whom (b) estrangement was a static state (c) about which the victim had no narrative. In today's economy, we can look to the female service worker who does emotional labor to alter her state of estrangement and whose narrative may be that of “free choice.” Is the commercial surrogate I met in a for-profit clinic in India an autonomous agent in a free market, I wondered, or is she the latest version of Marx's “alienated man”? This essay grapples with that question.

Estrangements: Extraordinary and Everyday

At dusk one evening in January 2009, a Muslim call to prayer in the air, I walked around mud puddles along the ill-lit path through a village on the edge of Anand in the northwest state of Gujarat, India. Sari-clad women carrying pots on their heads, gaggles of skinny teenage boys, scurrying children, and elderly men shuffled along the jagged path past brick and tin-roofed shacks and mildew-stained concrete homes. Aditya Ghosh, a Mumbai-based journalist, was with me. We were here to visit the home of a commercial surrogate, 27-year-old Anjali,1 seven months along with a baby grown from the egg of a Canadian woman, fertilized by the sperm of her Canadian husband, and implanted in Anjali's womb at the Akanksha Infertility Clinic. In several dormitories, the clinic houses the world's largest known gathering of commercial surrogates—women who carry to term the genetic babies of infertile couples living in India and elsewhere around the globe (Hochschild 2009, 2012; Garey & Hansen 2011). I was to learn from Anjali, and others, how it feels to finally afford a house secure against the monsoon rains; to rent her womb to a couple who remained strangers throughout the process; to manage a detachment she felt from her womb, her baby, and her clients; and to feel she was acting out of “free choice.”

I had come to Anand because it seemed to me the ultimate expression—in the words of Robert Kuttner (1997)—of “everything for sale.” Over the past three decades, in the United States, India, and many other parts of the globe, influential thinkers have pressed forward the ideal of a free market, deregulation, privatization, and fewer government services. The ideas of Nobel Prize–winning University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman (1962), for example, have widely influenced practice and thinking regarding the role of the market in daily life. He links the idea of progress with the forward movement of a market frontier into all spheres of life. On one side of the market frontier lie the unpaid activities of family, friends, and neighbors. On the other side lie the goods and services for rent or sale. Services range from what, for many of us, are modern-day essentials (child care and elder care), to more optional services (birthday planners, life coaches, wedding planners), to highly specialized services used by fewer people (surrogacy).

What is the human story behind a world of everything for sale? Marx & Engels (1967 [1887]) get us started with the idea of commodification.2 In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx (1959 [1932]) noted that a person could become estranged from—as a stranger to—the object he made (say, a shoe), from the making of it (the cutting, hammering), and from himself. The more capitalism, the more commodification, and the more estrangement (or alienation; he used the terms interchangeably). But what if we turned his statement into a question, and focused on one small part of it: When is a worker so detached from what she makes as to be estranged from it? How do workers handle their detachments? For Marx, either we were estranged or we were not and there was little we could do about it short of overthrowing capitalism. So Marx gives us a salient topic but few tools for exploring it further. For those, we can turn to the innovative work of Zelizer (2005) and the anthropologist Appadurai (1988), and to their tool kit we can add a steady focus on emotion and all the ways we manage it.

Today we encounter commodification at every turn. Is every form of detachment a form of estrangement? How, we can ask, do we distinguish estrangement from the many useful forms of emotional detachment necessary to the commercial relations of everyday life? Do we ever imagine and choose good forms of detachment? (A surgeon must, after all, learn to see parts of the body as “its”.) How is detachment related to the psychoanalytic concept of dissociation? What feeling rules guide our sense of how emotionally involved—or uninvolved—we should be in any given circumstance (Hochschild 1983, 2003)? That is, in addition to sensing what we feel (joyful, sad) there is the question of how much we should care at all.

The realm in which we normally think we should feel the most deeply involved—should care the most—is that of family, community, church. This realm is governed by an overarching ethic—what Hyde (1983), drawing from Mauss (2000 [1954]), describes as “the spirit of the gift.”3 If the world of the market centers on the efficient monetary exchange for goods and services and a capacity for emotional detachment, the world of the gift moves through a continual affirmation of bonds, based on responsibility, trust, and gratitude and premised on a capacity for emotional attachment.

What did Anjali think she “should feel” about the baby she carried for a client for money? Did she feel an “I-thou” relationship to the baby or “I-it”? In either case, what emotional labor did that require?4 In Anjali we see, perhaps, an extreme example of a kind of emotional labor many people do, for many service providers are surrogates of one sort or another.5

This line of questioning led me to conduct over a hundred emotion-focused in-depth interviews over the past few years with providers of personal services and their clients. I have talked to clients and service providers at each stage of the life cycle: falling in love (a paid love coach and his eager, lonely, divorced client), marrying (a wedding planner who crafted a “personal legend” for her delighted nuptial clients), conceiving a child (an Indian surrogate and her American clients), raising a child (a loving Filipina nanny and her grateful long-hours clients), managing a household (a household manager and her wealthy client), caring for an elderly parent (an elder care worker “paid to love”—and actually loving—a crippled relative of a client), and death (a boat captain who scatters the ashes of the deceased on behalf of the bereaved).

Free Choice Estrangement?

Anjali told me how—half voluntarily, half not—she tried to detach herself from her baby, her womb, and her clients. So I wondered how she reordered the parts of herself that she claimed and disclaimed, and what emotional labor that required.6 Could Anjali's story shed light on lives far closer to our own? I thought it could.

As I sat on a cot in her new concrete house, Anjali, now in her second surrogacy and contemplating a third, explained how she had become one of more than 232 surrogates to give birth at Akanksha since it opened in 2004. Her husband, a house painter, had gotten lime in his eye from a bucket of paint. A doctor would not attend him unless he was paid an amount of money that they did not have. After fruitless appeals to family and friends, Anjali fell into the hands of a money lender who hounded them for repayment. Shortly thereafter, the family paid twice daily visits, heads hung low, to the Hindu temple for daily meals. It was under these circumstances that Anjali offered her services as a surrogate. At the same time, she was mindful that neighbors and relatives often disparaged surrogacy, confusing it with adultery or prostitution. So to avoid malicious gossip and shame, like many other surrogates at the clinic, Anjali and her family moved to another village.

If her relations with extended kin and neighbors atrophied, those with fellow surrogates grew closer. For her first pregnancy, Anjali stayed nine months in Akanksha's hostel with other surrogates, nine cots to a room. (Women were only selected for surrogacy if they were married mothers, so all of them had husbands and children.) Their young children were permitted to sleep with them; older children and husbands could pay daytime visits. During their confinement, they rarely left these premises, and then only with permission.

Meanwhile, Anjali was directed by the clinic's director to maintain a business-like detachment from her clients. She met the genetic parents on only three occasions, and then briefly. The first time she spoke to them through an interpreter for a half hour and signed a contract. (Fees range from around $2,000 to $8,000.) A second time she met them when eggs were harvested from the wife, fertilized in a petri dish by the husband's sperm, and implanted in Anjali's womb. The last time she met them was when she gave birth and handed them the baby. Anjali knew little about her clients, except to say “they come from Canada.” Other surrogates seemed even more vague about their clients; several said simply, “They come from far away.” The main reason doctors encourage such detachment, one doctor explained, is to protect clients from the possibility that poverty-stricken surrogates will “come after them for more money later on.”

The clinic director instructed surrogates to think of their wombs as “carriers” and themselves as prenatal babysitters, to detach themselves emotionally from their baby and their clients. And because they were to see their wombs as carriers, they were asked, as a matter of professional attitude, to detach themselves—the “core me”—from this part of their body, a task that might have been especially hard in a strongly pronatalist culture such as that of India. They tried to detach themselves from their babies, not because they did not want their babies, but because they wanted them as a source of money and would have to give them up.

When I asked Anjali how she managed not to become too attached to the baby, she repeated what the director said: “I think of my womb as a carrier.” Then she added, “When I think of the baby too much, I remind myself of my own children.” She substituted. Instead of attaching her idea of herself as a loving mother to the child she carried, she substituted the idea of the child she already had, and whose school fees her surrogacy would pay for. Another surrogate, a mother of a three-year-old daughter who could not afford to bear the second child she greatly wished for, told me, “If you put a jewel in my hand, I don't covet it. I give it to its owner.” And others said simply, “I try not to think about it.”

Surrogates living together in the clinic helped each other do this as well as did the practices and philosophy of the clinic itself. For their nine months under the clinic's direction, Anjali and other surrogates became part of a small industry run according to three goals: (a) to increase inventory (recruit surrogates and produce more babies; it now produces a baby a week); (b) to safeguard quality (monitoring surrogates' diet and sexual contact); and (c) to achieve efficiency (assuring a smooth, emotion-free exchange of baby for money). By applying this business model, the clinic hoped to beat the competition in the skyrocketing field of reproductive tourism, which has since 2002 been declared legal and remains to this day unregulated.

Anjali's story raises a host of issues: desperate poverty, the appalling absence of a government safety net, the lack of legal rights for surrogates or clients, cultures that assign greatest honor to biological parenthood, the absence of nonprofit or community answers to infertility. But the issue that so strongly drew me into Anjali's home was the very issue of applying to surrogacy a business-like model of relationships, calling for a high degree of emotional detachment all around.

Other Americans I interviewed responded to Anjali's story by drawing many sorts of moral lines. Some were heavy, others light. Some were clear, others vague. And they fell differently on various aspects of the surrogate's experience. One man reflected, “Surrogacy is fine but not as a way to earn money.” Another added, “It's fine for the surrogate to earn money, but the agency itself should be nonprofit.” Yet another said, “Commercial surrogacy is fine up to two pregnancies per woman, but not three.” The sociologist Amrita Pande (2009a,b; 2010), who spent nine months at the Akanksha clinic talking in Gujarati to the surrogates, described conversations the surrogates had amongst themselves about Anjali, whom they felt had become too driven, too strategic, too materialistic, with her fancy new house and stereo surround-sound system. (A photographer for the Hindustan Times told me that he had earlier photographed Anjali weeping just after she had a miscarriage; he asked her what she was thinking, and she answered, “We were going to redo the first floor of the house. Now we can't.”)

In their hostel life together, some surrogates blamed Anjali for carrying a baby “only for money.” She had crossed their moral line. She was therefore “like a whore,” a dishonor they themselves perhaps feared. All the Akanksha surrogates were renting their wombs because they needed money. There was little talk in the hostel of altruism, Pande found, and many enjoyed their nine months for all “the coconut water and ice cream we want.” But most also took pride in not giving in “too much” to materialism and not imagining their wombs as only money-making machines. They were motherly. They were givers. They did not want to be or seem too detached from their bodies or babies. They ate “for the baby.” They felt the baby kick. They felt their ankles swell and their breasts grow larger and more tender, so it was no small matter to say about the baby “this is not mine.” As one surrogate told an outsider, “We will remember these babies for as long as we live.” But they had to prepare to let their babies go and to do the emotional labor of dealing with the potential sadness that evoked.

Like Anjali, many surrogates seemed to take certain actions to walk this line along the market frontier (Swidler 1986). First, they avoided shame. They moved out of their villages, they kept their pregnancy secret from in-laws, and they lied about where they were. If photographers came to the clinic, they wore surgical masks. Second, as their doctor instructed, they developed a sense of “me” distinct from “not me.” In the “me” they embraced was, to a limited degree, the pride-saving idea of giving a gift to the clients and money to their own families. In the “not me”—much of the time—were the womb and the baby. And third, they did the emotional labor needed to avoid a sense of loss and grief. They worked on their feelings to protect a sense of self as a caring mother in a world of everything for sale. Each woman drew for herself a line beyond which she was “too” estranged from the baby she carried and up to which she might not be estranged enough. She guarded that line through her actions and work on feeling.

Echoes on the American Market Frontier

Anjali's circumstances were far more desperate, her options more limited, her clientele more specialized, than those of other service providers I was to interview. But her calibrations regarding “how much to care” echo a theme I heard among First World consumers, starting with one American couple who were clients at the Akanksha Clinic.

Sitting in the living room of their home in Jackson, Louisiana, the genetic father-to-be, a mild-mannered musician named Tim Mason, recalled meeting the Akanksha surrogate who would carry their baby:

The surrogate was very, very short and very, very, very skinny and she didn't speak any English at all. She sat down and she smiled, then kept her head down, looking towards the floor. She was bashful. The husband was the same way. You could tell they were very nervous. We would ask a question and the translator would answer, just to try and make conversation. They would give a one or two word response. We asked what the husband did for a living and how many kids they had. I don't remember their answers. I don't remember her name.

Tim's 40-year-old wife, Lili Mason, an Indian-American who described a difficult childhood, a fear of motherhood, and an abiding sense that she was not “ready,” reported this:

I was nervous to meet the surrogate just because of this Indian-to-Indian dynamic. Other client couples—American, Canadian—all react more emotionally. They would hold hands with her. I was thinking, “That's weird'; we don't do that touchy-feely goo goo gaa gaa thing—especially for a service. “I am so glad you are doing this for me, let me hold your hand.” She is doing a service because of the money, and the poor girl is from a poor family. I am a little bit rough around the edges anyway and this meeting isn't going to put me in a touchy-feely mood.

As it turned out, this particular pregnancy failed. But even had it succeeded, there were many factors working against the development of a warm relationship between the Masons and their nameless surrogate. Lili did not feel she “should” try to attach herself to the surrogate, nor did she say she really wanted to. For her, motherhood was a potentially core identity, but she disconnected the idea of a close relationship with her surrogate from it. And the clinic's ethic certainly allowed—even encouraged—her detachment. Although they did not say so, perhaps, too, the couple wished to avoid the shame of admitting to friends and acquaintances that they needed a surrogate to have their genetic baby. If they remained detached during the pregnancy, they might feel freer to leave the issue of surrogacy behind them, a past and shameful secret. Finally, there was the gaping chasm between First World and Third, moneyed and non-moneyed, those with more power and those with less, all factors that discouraged the forming of a bond.

It is hard to know how typical Anjali is of other Indian surrogates or how typical the Masons are of her American clients. Still, their experiences lay bare the deeper questions of how we symbolically subtract from and add to a notion of core self, how we claim or disclaim feeling, and what emotional labor it takes to do so.

“The Experts Know What Makes Five-Year-Olds Laugh”

The relationship between an American parent and a birthday party planner traverses far fewer worlds, bears less serious consequences, and calls on far less deep parts of oneself than that between Anjali and her client. Still, for one harried, long-hours father of three young daughters, part of his core self felt at stake. Having suffered through a miserable childhood himself, working very long hours now as a father, and seeing far too little of children whom he said “mean the world to me,” Michael Haber did not want to risk feeling estranged from one important symbolic act of fatherhood: planning his daughter's birthday party.

In their upscale neighborhood, all his daughter's neighborhood friends hired birthday party planners. But as Michael told his wife one day, “It's stupid to hire a birthday planner. Let's do this ourselves.” “We?” she replied. “Okay. Me,” he answered. “I'll do everything. As his wife recalled:

All of Raquelle's friends' parents hired a party planner named Sophie. All the kids loved Sophie's parties. Kids would write her thank you notes, “Dear Sophie, Thank you very much for the fun birthday. Love from your friend, Harrison.” Or even, “Dear Sophie, I was wondering how you are today. Love, Maya.” Kids around here come into birthday parties these days and immediately ask, “Where's the coordinator? Where's the itinerary?” It's what they expect.

Sophie might be wonderful, Michael granted, but Sophie had moved in where dads and mothers had moved out, as he saw it, and he, for one, was going to buck the trend. He had already taken small stands against other forms of what he considered the over-outsourcing of domestic tasks. “I walk our dogs when I'm home weekends. Why do people have dogs if they don't walk them on Saturday and Sunday?” he told his wife indignantly. He had drawn a moral line there beyond which a person was, as he felt, estranged from their own intimate life. This and other stories that he told his wife, who told me, or that he told me directly revealed how deeply important it was for him to feel attached to the labor, the tools, and the product of planning his daughter's birthday party.

So Michael sent out invitations to Raquelle's friends. He ordered a cake. He blew up the balloons. He taped up pink and blue streamers. He planned games. Even though Michael was rebelling against paying a party planner, he unwittingly borrowed the idea that the kids needed adult-crafted activities, that there should be many guests, and that the party should have a clown. His wife described the event:

Michael dressed up as a cowboy from the Australian outback—like Crocodile Dundee [an alligator wrangler portrayed in a film of that name]. He put on a broad-brimmed hat, khaki shirt and shorts and tall leather boots. He stalked about on a pretend stage in front of the girls, describing this and that wild animal in a flat Aussie accent. And he went on for three or four minutes. Then he ran out of things to say. Michael hadn't thought out more to say. Worse yet, the children didn't think his jokes were funny. They began to examine his knobby knees. Then they began to fidget. Then the whole thing fell apart.

When Michael recalled the same event, he put it differently:

Do you know how long two hours is? I didn't know it would be so hard! You have these people organize the kids into games and do tricks for them. And I thought, why not try it? So the day came, and I had all these little five-year-olds. But they needed constant organizing, moving, entertaining. You have to know how to do this. It's a skill running groups of twenty or thirty five-year-olds. You can't really tell them what to do. You have to quickly engage them. It's like being a continual stand-up comic. You have about two seconds to catch their attention. If there's a gap at any point, they break up into little groups…. It nearly killed me.

The children were, in fact, accustomed to being conducted through a series of planned activities, so when the entertainment segment of the party failed, the children did not spontaneously regroup; they acted as if leaving a theater. “When I couldn't hold the kids' attention,” Michael added, “the parents had to intervene. They were tired, so they weren't so very grateful to me either.” Nor was his daughter, who told him, “You're not as good as ‘Spotty Joe’” (a clown she saw on television).

Meanwhile, a neighbor standing at the kitchen door watching the entire event said: “Michael, leave it to the experts. They know what five-year-olds think is funny. They know games five-year-olds like. We don't. Don't embarrass yourself. Leave it to them.”

Chastened, Michael concluded she was right. Sophie knew better than he did what makes five-year-olds laugh. He had felt that, as a father, five-year-old humor was his to know. He did not want to feel estranged from his identity as a hands-on Dad who knew how to make his kid laugh. But in the end, Michael adapted to his neighbor's advice. He renounced his attachment to the role of entertainer and accepted the idea of paying someone to do what he had wanted to do himself because she did it better. It hurt to do so. “You could say I felt hurt afterwards, stung actually.” Michael explained, “I had to pull myself out of it.” His wife added, “It took him a long time to get over it.” But the story he told himself about this small move from producer to consumer is that “Sophie could do it better.” If Anjali spoke of surrogacy as a “free choice,” Michael, who was infinitely more free to choose to do as he liked, told a narrative of expert standards: “What can you do; the experts do it better.”

Like others I interviewed, Michael did what I have come to think of as a “take-back.” A Los Angeles–based executive said he had asked his assistant to order flowers for his mother's birthday but said “I felt embarrassed when my mother asked me what kind of flowers they were. I thought to myself, daisies? Roses? I didn't know. I figured I'd do it myself next time.” A professor at a large Eastern university recounted a similar experience:

The wife of a colleague of mine had just given birth to a new baby. They had set up a gift registry at Babies ‘R’ Us. So I got to my computer and clicked on the Babies ‘R’ Us gift registry. There were about a dozen choices from the most to the least expensive. I didn't want to choose the most expensive, since I don't know them that well. But I didn't want to be cheap, so I didn't pick the least expensive either. I aimed for something in the middle, gave my Visa details, and that was that. But then, I began to feel strange. I hadn't asked them what the baby needed. I hadn't gotten in the car. I hadn't looked over toys or baby clothing. I didn't wrap the gift. I didn't write the card for the gift. I didn't deliver the gift. I didn't visit the baby! I didn't feel like I gave the gift. A month later I couldn't remember what the gift was, only how much it cost. So I picked up some simple plastic measuring spoons, got in the car and paid them a visit.

And, she said, “I felt relieved.” The act of shopping, the registry, the recipient's experience as well as her own (the work, the tools, the product)—from all these she felt estranged.

Michael tried at a take-back and failed. The executive and professor tried and succeeded. But each struggled with outsourcing acts that at one point symbolized “me.” Unlike Anjali, Michael was not forced by desperate need into estrangement from a core part of himself, nor was he faced with total social rejection as a result of it. His was a small matter woven into normal upper-middle-class American life. The conventions of his social class—already deeply embedded in the imagination of neighborhood children—forced him to surrender his claim to a treasured image of himself as a celebratory hands-on dad. He had to talk himself into caring less. He should turn things over to a better trained surrogate.

“Not If He Thinks of Me as a Box of Cereal”

In a very different way, the issue of estrangement from a symbol of self arose for a woman who hired a love coach to help her find a partner through an online dating service; she found herself on the receiving end of an overly marketized—i.e., depersonalized—way of seeing. Grace Weaver, a sprightly American 50-year-old engineer and divorced mother of a 12-year-old daughter, described how she came to hire her love coach:

I remember waking up the morning after going out to a New Year's Eve party. I felt disappointed. I hadn't met any interesting men. I flipped on the television and watched a Wall Street Journal show on Internet dating. I'd always thought Internet dating would be tacky, and leave me feeling icky, overexposed, and naked. But then Evan Katz [a love coach] came on saying, “Come on, guys. There's nothing embarrassing about Internet dating.” I jotted down his name, checked his web site, ordered his book, and wondered if this shouldn't be my New Year's resolution: take control of my life.

When Grace told her friends she was hiring a love coach, they said, “You're doing what?!” They felt, she said, that you should find a loved one by going to friends' parties, church socials, hiking clubs. It was something a family and community should do, not a paid service. They felt that they, and the realm they were a part of, were being edged out of a role, demoted, as Michael Haber had felt by the more skillful party planner. Grace loved her friends, but at 49, she “didn't want to waste time.”

The love coach guided Grace as she wrote her profile and helped her select a photo of herself. He advised Grace on how to get good ROI, as he put it, return on investment of her time, effort, and money. He offered to scan the replies she received. But here Grace drew the line; she could not hire someone to scan for her; that part of “production” of her personal life had, she felt, to rest with her, if she was not to feel like a creature of the dating service, detached from herself.

Evan introduced Grace to a market way of seeing herself and to how she would be seen—in a market way—by others. “The Internet is the world's biggest mall,” he explained, “[so] you have to know how to shop and be shopped for. We're going to get you a better brand. It can't be too generic. On Match.com, you have to stand out,” he told her.

He also introduced Grace to a 1–10 rating system that, like a price tag, represented each candidate's worth in the Internet dating marketplace, her own included. Each rating symbolized the likelihood of a “return wink,” given a person's weight, height, beauty, intelligence, occupation, and other attributes. “I see a lot of ‘5’ men looking for ‘10’ women, and that leaves the 4 and 5 women in the dust,” Evan explained to Grace. Grace expected men to rank her just as she ranked them, informally, but she was saddened to discover a decline in her market worth when she rewrote her profile after turning what she called “the magic 5-0.” “It cut my email responses in half, but I'm the same person I was a day ago.”

Grace came to accept Evan's talk of dating as work, the idea of branding herself, of watching her ROI, and of 1–10 ratings. But she also drew a line beyond which one dropped a market way of thinking and picked up a spirit-of-the-gift way of thinking. While she gets to know a person online, she thought, she would be wise to think in market terms. But once she and a date agree to meet offline, she felt that a new, more intimate—and less market-feeling—phase in their relationship should begin. Once you go offline, that means you have stopped looking for someone, Grace said, “And when the man gets offline, that's what it means to him, too.”

But even with the boundaries that she had felt were proper to place between herself and the market, a certain market logic crept in the back door and deeply unsettled her:

Before I met my current partner, I got interested in two other men. I dated each for about half a year. In both cases they didn't get along with my daughter or she didn't like them, or our kids sparred. But as we ended the relationship, both men at different times told me the same thing. My first date said, “I'm getting back on Match.com. It was so easy to find you; there must be others out there.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” He came back months later, “Oh, my God! What did I do? There isn't another you out there.” I said, “It's too late.” I'm not dealing with someone who thinks people come in facsimiles. It was very weird, but the second guy said exactly the same thing. “It was so easy to find you. I'm going back out to find another you.” Ten months later, he tells me, “There's nobody out here like you.” In his mind, too, I was a box of cereal, just like the next box of cereal on a grocery shelf.

Each suitor, Grace felt, had taken the market language and logic “too far.” They had erased signs of the slow-paced, abiding, openhearted spirit of the gift. In their eyes, Grace was no longer a unique person but a model of a person that might be easily duplicated, replicated, manufactured, purchased. This was a person chillingly different from her core self. She mused:

If he went right out to get a copy of me, was it me he ever really saw? I felt sad and depressed—and then disgusted. It made me re-see our whole relationship as more shallow than I'd realized. And after he came back, and that box of cereal wasn't on the shelf after all, I didn't want anything to do with him.

Michael had to detach “me” from the beloved role of planner and clown. Grace had to detach her “me” from an over-marketized view of herself. She was not, like Anjali and the other surrogates at the Akanksha clinic, forced by poverty into the strange embrace of estrangement—nothing close. But, on her First World market frontier, Grace pursued a line of action that separated her sense of “me” as openhearted and oriented toward trust, faith, gratitude—the spirit of the gift—from the men who saw her as like a box of cereal. She avoided that way of seeing things by avoiding them.

The Mommy Mall

A working mother named April looked over an array of parenting services available to middle-class Americans in her city, with an eye to how she felt about each one. At 35, a marketing specialist and mother of two small boys, April was led to detach herself from another “me”—the commercial citizen, the faithful believer in mainstream American culture. We were sitting together, looking over an assortment of ads for services that I had collected. These included offers for coaching parents on what to buy for one's baby (baby planner), installing safety gates and cord-free windows (safety proofers), choosing a baby's name (nameologist), potty training a child (potty trainer), teaching a child to sleep through the night (sleep specialist), teaching a child to ride a bike (sports coach), picking a summer camp (camp consultant), and creating a fun ambiance at a teen party (party animator).

For April, the important encounter was not between her sense of “me” and my body (Anjali), nor “me” and a cherished activity (Michael), nor “me” and a market mentality (Grace). April was struggling with the relationship between her sense of “me” and an idea of parent and child that she felt was implied by the entire, tempting “mommy mall.” April had gladly employed a wonderful babysitter, paid a neighbor to drive her children various places (the sitter did not drive), and hired a hair de-louser (when the kids got fleas) and a psychiatrist. But she also suspected that the mall was inviting her to worry about meeting the standards it invented and preying on her anxiety about her child's capacity to compete.

In the realm of work, April believed a person should get very good at one special thing—for her it was corporate public relations. In that arena, she was a great believer in the principle of specialization: outsource what you can to experts. Become a specialist in something yourself, and in this way make a better world. But how far did this principle extend? In the realm of parenthood, she grew wary. She could understand parents trying to give their children a good head start in a tough world; she was trying to do that, too. “I'm not the earth-mother type,” she added. But, on the other hand, she said, “If you outsource all these tasks to a different specialist, your kid is going to feel like the car you take in for the tune-up, oil change, wheel rotation, lube job. How would he remember his childhood? Appointment…appointment…appointment….”

She felt the need to distinguish between the “me” who was a good mother and the “me” who might be tempted to anxiously over-rely on expert help. She gave a recent example:

All the second- and third-graders in our school district are supposed to do a special report on the California missions [built by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish missionaries]. They are supposed to build little replicas. A few years back, parents hunted up the materials themselves. Then Jimmy's Art Supply began to provide the tile material for the roof, the yarn for your trees, the green paint for your garden. Now the store has a special section that has even the precut foam-board, trees, railroad, grass. There's one kit for Mission Dolores, another for San Juan Bautista. You pull it off the hook at Jimmy's, take it home, glue four walls together, put on the roof, glue the trees and take it to school. What are the kids learning? That the store-bought mission is better than the mission they could build on their own.

This meant that a child who did not go to the store would come to school with a substandard mission. “You may be a parent who says to their kid, ‘build the mission out of things you scrounge around the house,’” April explained, “but then your kid is embarrassed to walk to school with his home-made mission. I know.”

In general, April felt that experts—specialists—typically knew more than parents. The baseball-coached child threw a better ball. The bicycle-trained child rode a steadier bike. But parents eager to help their kids get good at a wide range of things could feel surrounded on all sides by raised standards against which to measure their perfectible child. Neighboring parents lived frantic lives, she felt, because they pinned their “core me” as parents to the aim of meeting ever-ascending standards for which they hired the best and newest services. She felt this was deskilling both parents and children. Reflecting on party animators paid to get the party going at bar and bat mitzvahs, she commented, “I want my kids to learn what to do when the party turns dull.”

In essence, April felt a desire to define herself at one remove from Jimmy's Art Supply store. She did not want to be “like those parents who cave in” to the heightened standards its inventory implied, from the teacher who judged results but not the process by which they were achieved, and even more, from the part of herself that was tempted to buy magical shortcuts. Like Michael and Grace, April did not feel the desperately “chosen” estrangement of an impoverished Third World woman such as Anjali. Anjali felt estranged from womb and child in a culture she unquestioningly embraced. April felt attached to her children but a stranger in the culture of her own land. If a service could really help her child, she did not hesitate to pay for it. But she felt estranged from the culture of child and parent that she saw it creating. “We know best. Trust us,” so many service providers seemed to imply in the advertisements she reviewed. So to balance things out, April turned to her family, creating occasions in which they all got “back to basics.” On weekends, they delighted in helping a friend with every messy detail of feeding, grooming, and cleaning their friends' horses and barn. April outsourced more than she believed in outsourcing. But she made up for it; she counter-balanced. To a narrative of “the expert does not know best” she added one of work-life balance.

Estrangement and Mechanisms of Defense

In Third World and First, as provider and consumer, to different degrees, and in various ways, we daily encounter the market. With each encounter, we face a potentially important question of identity: How much “production” of intimate life should I care about? And how much should I turn over to others to care about?

Marx has given us an important issue—commodification. But he mistakenly argues that commodification under capitalism leaves the worker automatically estranged from the things he makes and the consumer estranged from her purchase. Drawing on the finer tools of the interactionists (e.g., Zelizer 2005), we can see how many ways there are to encounter the possibility of estrangement from symbols of oneself. What we need is a new scholarship that draws together the commodification, our attachment to and detachment from the things we make and buy, the strategies we use to address it, and the role of emotion in those strategies.

Such a line of inquiry can be guided by the following observations. Apart from modern-day slaves and trafficked people whose estrangement is forced upon them, there is the world of the free-but-unfree Anjalis. Anjali felt she was acting out of “free choice.” But if her choice was free, her options were few and fixed and plunged her into the paradox of a self-estrangement she “freely” chose.

And this has its costs. Environmentalists speak of uncounted costs in making or selling things as “externalities.” Commodification, too, produces such externalities, except that they occur inside, through the costs in emotional labor of trying to avoid or live through estrangement.

We can also envision a continuum between the Anjalis of the world and the Tim and Lilis, the Michaels, the Graces, the Aprils—i.e., the middle-class First World consumers of personal services. Though worlds apart from the deprivation and indignity of the Akanksha surrogates, American clients of personal services struggle with milder, more mundane versions of the same task: figuring out how and how much to care about that which is bought and sold, and to manage their feelings accordingly. Those of us at this nexus of market and gift are not hapless victims of market-induced estrangement. Nor are our adaptations “natural”; we work at them.

We develop lines of action, apply feeling rules, and do emotional work so as to stay attached to our precious symbols of self. Doing what we do, personal life in market times feels personal anyway. Indeed, we have become brilliant at avoiding estrangement. Anjali used substitution. Grace used avoidance. April counter-balanced. These are mechanisms of defense—not those of which Freud talked, against dangers from within. These are mechanisms of defense such as Erik Erikson and Neil Smelser described, against perceived dangers from “without” (Smelser 2002). We need these defenses. They are our way of regulating capitalism from the inside.

At the same time, our defenses can block from view the market itself as it takes on ever more tasks of intimate life. In these modern times, surely we need many services. At the same time, we need the keenest minds in sociology to explore that which a world of everything for sale can silently crowd out, and to find ways to make room for the spirit of the gift.

literature cited

Appadurai A. 1988. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. PressArticle LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Bales K. 2004. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. PressArticle LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Friedman M. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: Univ. Chicago PressArticle LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Garey AI, Hansen KV, eds. 2011. At the Heart of Work and Family: Engaging the Ideas of Arlie Hochschild. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. PressArticle Location

Granovetter M. 1985. Economic action and social structure: the problems of embeddedness. Am. J. Sociol. 91:481–510More AR articles citing this reference

Hochschild AR. 1983. The Managed Heart. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. PressArticle LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Hochschild AR. 2003. The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. PressArticle LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Hochschild AR. 2004. The commodity frontier. In Self, Social Structure, and Beliefs: Essays in Sociology, ed. J Alexander, G Marx, C Williams, pp. 38–56. Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. Calif. PressArticle Location

Hochschild AR. 2009. Childbirth at the global crossroads. Am. Prospect Oct., pp. 25–28Article Location

Hochschild AR. 2012. The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times. New York: Metropolitan. In pressArticle LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Hyde L. 1983. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. New York: Vintage BooksArticle Locations:

Illouz E. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Malden, MA: PolityArticle Location

Kuttner R. 1997. Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets. New York: Albert KnopfArticle Location

Marx K. 1959 [1932]. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Moscow: ProgressArticle Location

Marx K, Engels F. 1967 [1887]. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. New York: Int. PublishersArticle Location

Mauss M. 2000 [1954]. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. NortonArticle Locations:More AR articles citing this reference

Pande A. 2009a. “It may be her eggs but it's my blood”: surrogates and everyday forms of kinship in India. Qual. Sociol. 32:379–97Article LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Pande A. 2009b. Not an “angel,” not a “whore”: commercial surrogacy as “dirty” workers in India. Indian J. Gend. Stud. 16:141–73Article Location

Pande A. 2010. “At least I am not sleeping with anyone”: resisting the stigma of commercial surrogacy in India. Feminist Stud. 36:292–312Article Location

Smelser NJ. 2002. The Social Edges of Psychoanalysis. New York: Oxford Univ. PressArticle Location

Swidler A. 1986. Culture in action: symbols and strategies. Am. Sociol. Rev. 51:273–86Article LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Uzzi B. 1997. Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: the paradox of embeddedness. Admin. Sci. Q. 42:35–67Article LocationMore AR articles citing this reference

Zelizer V. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. PressArticle Locations:More AR articles citing this reference

Zelizer V. 2010. How I became a relational economic sociologist and what does that mean? Presented at Relational Work Conf., Univ. Calif., Davis, May 1Article Locations:

Zukin S, DiMaggio P. 1990. Structures of Capital: The Social Organization of the Economy. New York: Cambridge Univ. PressArticle Location

[aggresivelyfriendly]

Hi! So I had to! Hope you like it, if you do, come talk to me! Or scream at me. All my love to @dirtystyles, long live tripod writing!

This didn't happen - but this song and the current state of affairs made me crazy enough to imagine it, and then Harry and Jo kept talking in my head. So, here we are!

Who Names The Colors Extra: If the World Was Ending.

She's scared. Fucking terrified, mostly because she has zero idea, not a single one about what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone what happens next, next week, next month, if there will be a next year.

Jo wants Harry.

Jo wants Harry in a way she has worked really hard not to. She has given him his life, the possibility of a future.

And now, in this moment when everyone's future is completely uncertain and maybe not going to resemble the world of yesterday, may not happen at all, she just, it doesn't fucking matter. The fact she can't give him a baby, that their ages made all the things she wanted for him possibly impossible, and all the family drama and tension is totally irrelevant. Feels totally unimportant. It doesn't fucking matter. She could get the virus on a market run and she could be sick for a few weeks, or she could stop breathing. She has no way of knowing which it will be, or how long life will be interrupted. She feels helpless, hopeless, future less.

It's probably not that dramatic. By next year, everyone may remember this like a nightmare. But right now, this moment, with cases climbing and death tolls ringing and a government completely fucking it all up, that seems far away and maybe not true.

Jo wants Harry.

If the world is ending, he's all she wants.

Maybe not all she wants, but the list is short. What she would do if this was it. She imagines the last night time especially. The things she'd do. Call her son in Greece, see him happy, scared but happy with Sean, and tuck her ever growing sassy pants daughter into bed, and come downstairs to tea Harry has made her.

His tea was always better, than all the tea she's made on her own. "Made with love's why." He'd smile and wink and dimple and melt her. In the fantasy, he's folding laundry or finishing dishes too. Because, God she misses the partnership she glimpsed too, and she's too tired to do it all alone most days. Though it's easier now that Zoe's school aged.

He'd help her, though, always did, while feeding, watering, fucking, and holding her through all the angst she is feeling. Through the sky falling.

She nearly calls him. But Jo has no idea, not an inkling of where he is in the world. She doubts he's still in Montreal. That was a year ago. It was meant to be a 6 month intensive program. There were others she submitted him for that she knows he was good enough to get into no matter when he rang them interested.

If he is abroad, that terrifies her, too. God, what if he's abroad, and can't get home? Or is sick, fuck, sick alone? Though he is in a low risk group she says out loud and wraps an arm around herself, squeezes her shoulder to distract from the contraction of her heart.

London, he might be in London. She knows he should move there, be part of the art scene. Jo is just not sure if that's where he is in his journey yet. She's not sure why she thinks she knows anything about where he is, or might go, or how he will chart the course to the future she forced on him, gifted him.

They talked about it, or course. They talked about everything. Except when they just understood.

London. If he's in London, it's cruel, because he won't be moving: lockdown orders have just gone out. He'd be so close but so far. Expats are flying in, going home and quarantining. This option had been offered to Ethan. But it didn't make sense for him and Sean, they were safe, and in the home they'd made. If Harry's abroad, unless he's shacked up, ouch, he'd come home to Anne. But, if Harry's in London, he's stuck away from his family. Unless he's settled and happy there instead. Anne might be ok with that state of affairs.

Jo's not.

She doesn't believe that, it's not been that long, since them, not really. She wants him to be happy, with somebody else, but not so soon. She's not over it remotely well enough to contemplate another body in her space, mind, or person. May never be able to fathom somebody not Harry.

She imagines Anne is out of her head worried.

Anne, she could just call Anne. It will be weird, but if it's just to check on Harry, she can do it. Only slightly, ridiculously awkward. But Anne knew, the devastation for both of them. She won't be wholly surprised. It's just a phone call to check on him, Harry never need know. Anne will not tell, Jo's sure. His mother wants them apart, forever.

Jo's heart squeezes again.

As a mother, she understands. As the unsuitable love of someone's life, well, she can't.

But, none of that matters. Because it feels like the world is ending. Jo just needs to know he's alright. First and foremost, that he is ok.  And then she needs to know something for herself. Her selfish self. That he'd come over if he could, to hold her and be with her the way they both wanted but couldn't have. Because none of the consequences matter, not right now.

He will not likely be able to get to her, so it's just the comfort of their love, or his huge heart all for her, still.

She's dialing Anne before she can stop herself. The land line, the one Anne gave her when she'd come to ream her, and had offered loving kindness instead.

"Hullo?" Her heart stops, stutters, blooms.

She hangs up.

Holy fuck, he is here. He is home in their little village. Good, good for Anne. "Oh my god!" She yells to the air, because now the proposition is real. The possible fulfillment and rejection, real. Would he come over, now the world's ending, stay the night? The rest of the horrible uncertain trials they are facing be damned, can go to hell, if he would come hold her tight. Her breathing is rapid and she's concentrating on slowing it down. God, what if he wouldn't come over. Had wised up, decided they weren't what she knew them to be.

What if he would come over?

Neither matter, in any case, she's hung up. It's ok, he doesn't need to know it was her.

The phone in her hand buzzes. Anne S. reads the call log. Does she answer?

How can she not? Her whole body feels better, knowing his is close. She sends it out to him, it overrides her nerves about everything, including answering. Even his presence, that she received via strong voice through the receiver, not weakened by sickness, worry, or sorrow, bolstered her. She feels better all ready. She might be able to have more though, than his calm. Jo might be able to have him, a real moment with him. Maybe lots of them, a day that feels like moments because of the way time suspends when they commune.

She catches the call just before it gets shunted to voicemail.

"Hello?" She says, her voice is thin, the only force in it, hope.

"Jo?" He gasps and her tears leak down their cheeks.

His voice. Her name on his lips.

"Hi!" She tries to steady her voice. It doesn't work and his breath tells her she's unsettled him.

"Is everything ok? Zoe ok? Why're you calling my mum?" He inhales loudly. "Sorry, that's rude. I just, god, wasn't expecting your call. Not that it's not lovely to hear your voice, baby."

They both suck in a breath at that. "I was..." How does she say this? "I was worried?"

"About my mum?" He asks, his voice lined with hope as well.

"Well, yes." She says, hopes he hears what she is not saying the way he always did.

He laughs suddenly with something like joy in his voice. "It's alright, I've already asked about you. So no need to be embarrassed." He swallows. "Ever."

"Yeah?" She asks.

"Yeah, you're a brave little thing, calling my mum to check on me." He teases.

"Um, she told me to call if I needed help, she was kind to me." Jo glances down. Shit, it's so late.

It was almost bed time, and their custody agreement didn't end, even in a pandemic. She needs to make sure Zoe hears her voice say she loves her. For the same reason she had called Anne. "I know where you get it from. She has every reason to dislike me—"

"She doesn't dislike you, nobody could dislike you, Jo."

"Oh, well, I think that's an opinion. You're biased." She stops herself.

"Because I love you?" He asks but keeps talking so she can't answer. "It's true though, you're impossible to dislike." He whispers. "Impossible not to love."

"Har- Harry." She looks at the ceiling and hears him groan. "I actually have to go, I didn't plan this at all." She sighs.

"Well, I assume you have nowhere to be?" God, he sounds light as a feather, she could fly.

"Yes and no. It's time for my goodnight call to Zoe. She's with Colin."

"She'll come home though, some point, right?" He asks, urgent. "I hate to think of you alone at a time like this? Where's..." He gulps. "Where's Ethan?" He sounds like he's swallowing glass.

"Greece, stayed there, he and Sean are safe, still able to work, so they stayed."

"Oh Jo!" He sighs. "Baby, are you all alone?"

"No, no, I'm not." Not really, just physically right now.

"Who're you with?" His voice is dark for a moment, thick like his voice box is coated in mud.

"With?" Oh! He thinks a man is with her. He's swallowing his reaction. "No one at the moment, I just, Zoe comes home Monday. But we were talking about initiating the summer schedule sooner." She slows down. That won't make sense to him, he's not privy to the details of her life anymore. Doesn't need to be. "But anyway. She's there and I like to call, have my voice be one of the last things she hears at the end of the day."

"And you need to see her face before you sleep. " It's not a question.

"Yeah, um, but I called you, your mum, without checking the time and her stories are probably over." She explains.

"Ok, that's, thats ok, thanks for calling, Jo." His heart is in his voice. That outsized prize in his chest. She wishes with her whole heart she could keep his.

"Yeah, bye, um bye, Harry." She swallows. Her own emotions coating her throat. "Take care, please." Can he hear the plea in her voice?

"You too." He says in a way she feels. Like all his unspoken hopes for her are in the two words. That she not just to survive the virus, but to be well, and happy, just not with anyone else. Jo's projecting. Those are her unspoken prayers for him. She pulls the phone away and the call ends on his end just before she touches the red button.

She never got to ask him, if he'd come over.

That's all well and good though, because it's real now. He could come over. He could not come over, too. Jo sits for a moment, the oxygen sucked out of the room. That would be worse, definitely devastating. It's good she didn't get to ask. She shakes her head, glances at the time on her phone. She needs to call Zoe.

Her daughter's bright face is a brilliant distraction. Though the pull of the call, Harry's call, the things he said, how he said them, and all the things they didn't say is stronger. Jo gets her motherly reassurance, and smiles for her baby, but her mind is elsewhere.

"Night bug! Can't wait to see you Monday!" Jo's heart squeezes and she signs off the zoom. The leave button feels so final. She keeps herself together when Zoe can see her, no matter what. She hates this, the entire custody thing, that it was necessary, and some days she hates that the entire thing happened. But she can't regret Zoe, or the divorce or everything after. She also can't regret that Colin decided somewhere along the way he wanted to be more involved, needed to be. Though some days, especially these weird isolation days, she hates that she can't just hunker down with her baby and be wrapped up in baking or tik tok dances or crafts, puzzles, whatever Zoe was into. Instead, she has to be separated from her bud.

She sighs and pulls her old bones off the ottoman; she's tired. The nightly routine done by rote while she yawns, flicks lights and clicks locks.

Her heart stops and then defribullates when she gets to the back door.

Through the triple diamond shaped glass is his unmistakable shape.

Harry.

Because if the world is ending he'd come over, right?

"Harry?" The question is only in her voice, not in her heart. Course he'd come.

"Miss Jo." She must make a face, because he steps forward and takes her hand. "Jo, I..." He looks for words to say, "I thought we could paint," he tries to smile for her. "or something?" God, he looks like every dream she's had of him, mostly. He's different, it's been a year. He's shorn his locks, his hair is almost high and tight. His lovely hair gone, she mourns it, the silk of it through her fingers, like water rippling on her skin.

The cut looks good on him, of course it does, everything does. His jaw is exposed, his cheekbones amplified, and the green of his eyes is so golden, she's rich. "Can I come in?"

"Yes." She blurts out, because of course the answer is always yes. Yes Harry, have me, my life, my always. But not at the cost of yours. Have my right now.

What is anyone's always right now?

Which is why they are here.

So, now he is in her kitchen and they stare at each other. There was a time, she recalls, when he would have her on the table, or at least a stool by now. But, it's been a while and a lot of time and broken heartbeats have passed.

"Tea?" She offers for something to do; she sets about making his brew when he nods. Her hands and feet carry her around her kitchen without much thought while she concentrates on what happens next. He's come over, right. Now what? She's waiting for the whistle, when he steps close behind her. His heat warms her for a bit. She forgets she's out of her depth, least his body is familiar, but, "you smell different." She can't stop herself saying.

"I had to change it." He smells her hair. "The other reminded me of you. All the times you mentioned it." He swallows. "You smell the same."

I couldn't change it, it reminds me of you. "Yeah," is all she says. When his arms come around her waist and his chin hooks over her shoulder, Jo feels lighter than she has in, well it's been more than a year.

"How you doing, baby?" He asks against her cheek. And he is not asking about right in this moment, it's everything, how's her art, and her kids, and their relationships, and her job, and most of all her missing him?

The smile takes her face. "I'm alright actually. Really." She summons her courage, says. "I miss you, all the time." She turns and wraps her arms around his neck, her face laying against her bicep, so she can gift herself a view of his face anytime, when she is ready.

Harry kisses her temple. "Me too." And they stay like that, resting in the embrace like it's a balm on a healing wound, for long deep breaths of each other.

When the kettle blows, she pulls her face back and offers him a peck. He smiles before softly bussing her lips and loosening his arms to let her turn around. He eventually has to let his arms drop as she busies herself making the tea - the leaves, and the dunk - serious business. He follows her to the fridge when she gets out the milk. "Same?" She looks at him, he's been looking at her since he arrived, he's always looking at her, in his mind's eye, or on canvas.

"I forgot how beautiful you are." Her gaze drops and she's so glad she got the gall to call his mother. Knows when they have to part again it will be worth it, to have had him in this moment of uncertainty. He is her constant.

She was never more certain than of her feelings for him, his for her.

"Not to steal your words, but me too." The moment's not awkward, just leaden, she rolls her eyes and smiles at him, "now then, same tea?" They do tension like she can't believe, every moment pregnant with possibility.

"'Course, it's not been that long. Only my geography has changed." That makes her almost spill the milk, he means geography like a map. Jo she never thinks of his geography as where he lives, she thinks of the body she mapped under his clothes. Her territory.

"Has it?" She asks and places the milk down, slips her hands under his t shirt to check.

It's bold. She's only ever been so fearless, selfish, with him.

He catches on quickly and the smug smile creases his cheeks in the way that always got her wet. Still. "Would you like to check?"

He doesn't actually give her a chance to answer, his hand is in her hair and he's taken her mouth. She knocks over the milk, the lid isn't tight and drops leak out.

It's both uncharted and the only home she's known. He kisses the same, but tastes just a bit different, like he has a new diet with new habits. Things she might not know, but she does know that when he nips the middle of her lip, it mean he wants her to open her mouth. Jo pulls back to look up at him instead. The thumb on her jaw drops to her neck and the possession makes her weak.

"Lover?" It's a question. His eyes close and he puts his forehead to hers and kisses the tip of her nose. "Har-Harry?" That ones a provocation.

It works. He hoists her up onto the sink sill and jostles the tea cups. Milky tea on the homely countertops.

"We're making a mess!" Harry whispers, breath over her lips.

"Didn't we always?" The color of his eyes is devastating.

"Let's go make a different mess, baby." She nods and he lifts her back up his hips and takes the familiar journey to her bedroom. He walks the counted steps from memory, consumed in the kiss, when his knees don't meet the mattress, his eyes pop open. "Where's the bed?"

Jo points.

Harry stops and looks around. "It's different."

"Yeah." She sighs. She supposes she is negating this change a bit. But this feels like a reprieve and she hopes it's a balm instead of a burn to her missing him muscles. "I miss you. All the time—" She starts to explain.

"Yeah, me too." He interrupts.

"I missed you so much at first I had to, to.."

"I know, baby." He kisses right over her heart. Pulls her arms free and her top over her head. Repeats the kiss. "Of course, I know."

That's the bitch of it all, he does know. He knows everything, all about her, every inch of the body he uncovers. He mapped the curve of her waist, knows that the underside of her breasts makes her writhe when he runs his chin over it, arch when he licks it, and tremble when he sucks. The replay is the same on her nipples, only forceful. It makes her react like a taut bow, she may buck him away. He keeps her still through it, to endure the activation of his prior knowledge . The nips and swirls and eye contact while he favors her breasts, all the things he remembers how to do to her.

Her hips are pistoling. She knows what she needs, has needed for too long to remember how this feels. Too recent, resplendent, to ever forget.

But Jo also knows Harry, and he's in a patient mood. Or worshipful, she supposes. His favorite ritual he is about to perform on her body.

His rite takes him over her belly. Earlier, the lack of curls on his head had only given her a momentary ache, until they didn't make tendrils of fire over her abdomen, slither through the crease of her thigh when he made his way down to start on his knees, at her feet. Her supplicant. The caress to her instep is the beginning of his atonement. The attention to the bends of her knees and then the back of her thighs is a confession.

He adores her ass, and her back. She's onto her knees and pushing back into his body when he gets to her upper shoulders. The supplication is too much to bear and she needs more, every inch of him to merge with her, divine their purpose.

"Har-Harry! Please?" She can feel all of his length in the crack of her ass and it's not where she wants him, but he can do anything he wants with her. It is all a prayer, their worship, even his denial of her pleas. Her glides along him draw a grunt though, gnaws at his patience. She's proud but disconcerted. He's not talking? He always made a joyful noise when he loved her before. "Lover, you ok?"

"I'm," he catches her chin and turns her face into him. "I'm awestruck, Jo."

Their lips mingle just after the breath of his speech ends. She feels him shift behind her, line himself up, anoint his dick with her dew. "Baby?" He asks. She kisses him in an ecstatic state, nods like a sinner taking the wafer , even before he presses the tip in. When he does, she shivers in delight as they commune.

"Oh, lover!" She sings a hymn to their homecoming. Her melody and verse are sighs and moans. He harmonizes with her. Comes to a near crescendo, leads her to a refrain, slower, changes the song. She's on her back now, wide open and ready to receive his message. Instead, he rhapsodizes down her front body again, the chorus quicker. Her cunt is the receiver of his word, and his tongue does something magical while he leads her to the pre chorus. "Oh Harry. Your mouth!" She babbling and praying he doesn't stop, does stop, don't stop, please stop, until she cries an hallelujah.

Thank God she called.

She baptizes him when he takes her through the shakes back to heaven.

Her trance like state is barely broken when he comes to join her, join them. "Jo, you're glorious. I love you!" He swears his oath when he brings them back together. All of him within all of her, and creation too. She grips his face while he rocks into her, needing to see the riches of his eyes. The gold is electric there and she knows he will always come for her, her gold standard. That though he thought their preciousness gone, it was just underneath the weight of the world on top of them.

Now with him on top of her, they've found a new deposit. A shorter vein of richer gold.

They have to relish it, this gift, heaven on earth before it's over.

He does that thing, takes them to that plane, where time doesn't matter, the pandemic makes time sort of irrelevant anyway. What are mere hours between pilgrims?

They go through transfigurations, she's the altar, then the priest. Then him. In all sorts of shapes, their te deum unfolds, refolds, comes undone.

Jo is undone beneath him, unmade, and exhumed as his.

"You're so golden, Jo." He whispers into her ear when his joy and his energy run out.

He falls asleep on top of her, a fugue in the continuing rhapsody this interlude gifted them.

She cries a little, tears of joy. She doesn't want him to go yet. Not until Zoe comes home. That's when their clock runs out, their world ends. It's not fair to put her through it. Zoe missed him so much when he left. Asked about him ceaselessly, them regularly, still rarely.

Jo tells him so. "I'd like you to stay, through Sunday."

He holds her close and nods to nonexistent music in answer. The whole weekend is a symphony to what was, could be.

Some of their overtures are meals cooked for each other, cuddles on the couch, cusses in her bedchamber, a long afternoon with clothes on their backs and paintbrushes in their hands until they found a favored canvas in each other's skin.

He filled in the half heart he found on her with his tears, then with his kisses.

"Let's make a bigger one?" He suggested, and they used her camera, painted their paired halves whole on each other and photographed it. There are a few without looking their faces she will print out and frame, or put into one of the art books she is selling. She loves them so much, that they were complete for a while, she has to have proof.

They call each other by name, a lot. The names vary with the theme, the moment.

But, above all, Jo realizes he is the one she'd call, if she had only moments left. She'd spend them with him.

Their coda is her call and his response.

He'd come over, right.

[caredogstips]

Ann Patchett:’ If writers are to survive we must take responsibility for ourselves and our manufacture’

The author explores buying her own bookstore, the bequest of divorce and referring to herself in the third person

In the windowpane above Ann Patchetts desk is a small steel and enamel sign that reads: What good shall I do this day? This simple dictum is the engine of Patchetts world, both on the sheet and off. In the Orange prizewinning Bel Canto , comradeship, ardour and productivity bloom among terrorists and captives; in 2011 s artful State of Wonder , a sensible research scientist faces not just the serpents and other frights of the Amazonian jungle, but the dragon of her former medical lecturer.

I have been shown so much kindness in “peoples lives”, so for me to write volumes about good, species parties seems totally natural, Patchett tells. When “theyre saying”, Oh its too nice, its naive, I just think: who killed your mother?

It infringes a literary inhibition to write fiction that hints parties might be fundamentally good. For the 52 -year-old Patchett, however, the real taboo was writing about their own families. Commonwealth , her seventh romance, publicized this week, encompasses 50 years and two pedigrees, the Cousinses and the Keatings, whose common fate is set in motion at a gin-soaked christening defendant where Albert Cousins caresses Beverley Keating.

Today, the very best that Patchett will do involves picking up a columnist from Nashvilles airport and devoting her whole daytime to zipping around township in her little silver Prius, testifying mentioned journalist her world-wide. Even if she hadnt published an paper, The Mercies, about her schooling with the Sisters of Mercy, you might guess that Patchett had been raised by nuns. She excretes that sleeves-rolled, get-on-with it ability, paired with the clarity and occasional brutality of true-blue righteousness. To watch her in action is to hear the Mother Abbess from The Sound of Music sing, Climb Evry Mountain. Patchett climbs every mountain, but she will also croak an occasional, and deliciously un-nun-like, fuck!

What do you do when the bookstores in your hometown all shut down? If youre Patchett, you open one yourself. In 2011, she founded Parnassus Books, an idyll in a shopping plaza, with her business marriage, Karen Hayes. She has since become a rallying spokesperson for independent bookstores.

I feel that writers are treated like orchids: they keep us in the hothouse, they cloud the americans and attend to our every motivation, but if this system is going to work, if we are going to survive, we need to come out of the hothouse and take responsibility for ourselves and for the health of the industry.

She takes a firm line. When customers visit the bookstore and keep telling her Amazon is cheaper: Im like, You cannot come in, soak up what we have, talk to the staff, get recommendations, then go home and buy the book on Amazon. If you do, I will hunt you down and smack-dab you guys later. Somehow, she lends with a smiling, Ann Patchett can say that in a way that your regular bookstore owned cant.

She leads the way to the offices at the back, where young women work with puppies at their hoofs and on their laps. One of the salesclerks pokes her president around the door and tells Patchett that theres an Australian fan here who would really like to meet her.

All right, here “theres going”, and Patchett psyches out to the storey to signal four replicas for her love. Later, she tells me that when people tell her how much they cherish her notebooks, Im smiling, and Im grateful, but I almost dont know what theyre speak about. Its so far away, and what I am thinking at that moment, is: I hope I am cooking my face in a way that I seem hired and grateful.

She and her husband, the surgeon Karl Vandevender, talking here Ann Patchett in the third largest being, as do her friends and peers at the bookstore. Theyll reply: Oh, we need Ann Patchett for something, and Ill run: Ill see if I can conjure her up. Ann Patchett, she reads definitively, is the label. Ive got to employed that away at the end of the day.

All of her tales, she explains, are the same floor: a group of parties are thrown together and must forge connections to survive. Ive been writing the same journal my whole life that youre in one family, and all of a sudden, youre in another family and its not your option and you cant get off. Eventually, she expected herself: I wonder if I wrote the storey that Im so carefully not writing, if I might be free of it?

As soon as she began working on Commonwealth , the story of her own parents divorce and her precede life with stepsiblings, she announced her intentions to her family. Thats brave, I say.

Yeah, it is. It was also really smart. She told them: I dont want to cut off a part of my life any more. I dont wishes to not have access to my own experience because I dont want to set anybody out. I want to be able to grow. And, I find, until I get this done, Im not going to grow. And everybody supposed: You lead, girl!

Patchett concedes that, until this stage, shed been very self-congratulatory over not having written a volume about their own families, which seemed like the strong, easy thing to do. Then she read an paper by Jonathan Franzen in which he insisted that the novelist has to do what intimidates him “the worlds largest” and, for him, that had been writing about his family. When I speak that, I thoughts: oh , good-for-nothing would scare me more. I would happily razz down the Amazon in a canoe and is being dealt with serpents[ as she did to study State of Wonder ] rather than face my family.

In the entitle paper of her 2013 non-fiction collect, This Is the Story of a Joyous Wedding , she details the lineage of divorce in her own family, including her own at the age of 25, and her eventual matrimony to Vandevender. There is a sense in that paper, which moves in steady, clear-eyed increments, of a columnist willing herself into facing and articulating hard truths, of which this is paramount: Divorce is the history lesson, that circumstance that must be remembered in order not to be repeated. Divorce is the rock upon which this faith is built.

She remembers sweat swarming down her appearance as she wrote it, while she experienced the distinct sensation that she was sitting in the middle of the road in the dark, with a legal pad, contemplation: Im going to get squashed by a truck.

She writes candidly, for example, that she, her sister and their stepsiblings werent the products of our mothers joyous wedlocks: “were in” the flotsam of their divorces. In Commonwealth , that flotsam is the intense little tribe of the six Cousins and Keating babes, each of whom corresponds to her own stepsiblings.

Its like chess fragments, she tells, as she explains that each persona stood in for a real family member. In this mode, it was very easy for me to keep track of everyone over 50 years. And genuinely, I committed everybody a high quality of life, by a very large margin. The parties in the book somehow represented my dearest desires for all the people.

Its dedicated to Mike Glasscock, her half-brother, reimagined here as Albie, a very young, whom the others find so annoying that they narcotic him with Benadryl to induce him sleep for hours. Years afterwards, as a bicycle messenger and recovering heroin user, Albie chances upon a romance called Commonwealth by a writer announced Leo Posen. He realises it is about two pedigrees, his own, about the inestimable burden of their lives: the occupation, the houses, the friendships, the marriages, the children, as if all the things theyd craved and worked for had cemented the impossibility of any kind of merriment. He wonders: Isnt that what everyone wants, just for a moment to be unencumbered?

Its surely my greedy lust, Patchett laughs. Franny, whom the nun had led to believe that God granted preference to people who did things the hard way, is a cocktail waitress when she first fulfils the famous novelist Posen.( Who wants to have a novel about a novelist? Patchett groan. But thats the way it turned out .) He becomes so drunk that she must help him up to his hotel chamber, where he has only enough time left to ask for one more advantage, which Franny thought was the deepest difference between women and men. Eventually, that dynamic is enlarged in incidents established in the Hamptons, Long Island, where Franny spots herself expected to single-handedly acquire dinner and liquors for changing hordes of Posens clients. Theyre some of the funniest of the book.

You wanna talk about which part of this volume is autobiographical? Patchett reads. That fraction. How exhausting it is, as the status of women, to always be the one who has to do the meat and change the bunks. No topic how enlightened, how much of a feminist I am, I am still doing all of it.[ With] every journal I conceive: well, if this ones actually successful, maybe I wont “re going to have to” acquire dinner any more, she laughs. Perhaps Ill finally is how to not do this any more, because its my fault. Its is not simply gender, but the 12 years of Catholic school and being trained to be a good servant. I believe in this, I truly believe that the greatest event you can do is to serve.

Oh, if I could free-spoken myself from the autocracy of good deeds, she mocklaments. Oh, there used to be no stopping me. I could be Tolstoy without good deeds. I has actually be something.

Over lunch she tells me that she read a Charles Bukowski poem that morning that aims those who/ replace/ know/ this secret :/ there isnt/ one. Its abide with her, perhaps because writing, more than any other art formation, is susceptible to regulations, premier among other issues being to write every day.

Dont you think guys are the ones that always say that? she adds. Im not sure Ive heard a woman say you have to write every day. Theyre too busy obligating dinner. I go through extended periods of time when I dont write, and Im fine. Writing is an amazing situate to hide, to go into the rabbit defect and pull the trap door down over your premier. I want to have time in my life when I dont have that cover.

She also insists that there are things that are a lot more important than me writing a novel. For illustration: If person told, OK, you can either write five more great novels, or you are able to made to ensure that the people who work in bookstores have health insurance and have some home to depart if they need assistance because theyre transgressed. At this stage I might certainly go for the very best. Nothing fuels the good of “the worlds” like gaiety, and the thing that sees me feel really alive is figuring out how I can startle other beings into doing good.

To ordering Commonwealth for 15.57( Bloomsbury, RRP 18.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or announce 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over 10, online orders merely. Phone orders min p& p of 1.99.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Ann Patchett:’ If writers are to survive we must take responsibility for ourselves and our manufacture’ appeared first on caredogstips.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2ubyT9W via IFTTT

[poetrybooksya]

COVER REVEALS: OPEN WOUNDS and WEATHERED SOULS by Inger Iversen | Xpresso Book Tours

Open Wounds: Abel & Hope Inger Iversen (A Love Against the Odds Novel) Publication date: June 28th 2017 Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

If you could see your life from inception to your death, would you change things or would you let your death play out as fate intended? Abel is in search of only two things. A stable job and a safe place to lay his head at night after a mistake that cost him eighteen months of his life. As if fate had plans made only for him, Abel is offered a complicated job, and a chance to redeem himself to his old boss. And then he meets her… And Abel adds another item to his list—Hope. At twenty-six, Hope has only ever slept with one man, and at her boss’s unsolicited advice, Hope plans to forget the abuse and degradation she suffered at her ex’s hand by seducing and bedding the next man she meets. Only, after Hope finds a promise of death at her doorstep, her plans are derailed and only chance at staying alive rests on the dedication of her new bodyguard and her own sheer will to live the life she deserves.

Add to Goodreads / Pre-order

AND – look out for the last book in the series, Weathered Souls: Ivory & Eric, coming this fall!

—

EXCERPT:

Once Thea and Lex dropped off the groceries, Abel started cooking away. Hope’s mouth watered as scents wafted through the kitchen and met her nose. If the aroma from whatever was brewing on the stove was any indication, that man could cook.

Hope had always watched her figure while married to Mark. All it took was one extra pound, and he’d make sure her life was even more of a living hell than it already was. Every night, he’d force her onto the scale, and every night, he would find something about her body that needed to change. Your thighs shouldn’t meet in the middle. It’s disgusting. Hope’s stomach twisted in fear at the thought of placing food in her mouth. If you cared about the way you looked, this wouldn’t be necessary. Mark’s voice was engrained in her head, and the memories of his degradation were the only reason she hadn’t gorged herself the second she was free. Because in the back of her mind, she would never truly be free of Mark. Perhaps, one day, her physical wounds would heal, but her soul would be forever scarred. “No excuses,” Abel muttered as he opened a steaming pot and stirred. His comment pulled her from her memories. She glanced up. “Excuse me?” Lifting a container of spices, Abel shook a liberal amount into the pot. “You’re going to eat, and then you’re going to sleep a full eight hours tonight.” Stirring the sauce, he added, “No excuses.” Hope prickled at the demand in his tone. “I’m not a five-year-old.” “No excuses.” He hadn’t even looked up, just stood there stirring, while she silently fumed. She’d had enough of men telling her what to do. Taking in a deep breath with the intention of telling him just that, she paused. Abel had leaned down and opened the oven door. The scent of marinara sauce, baked cheeses, seasoned meat, and Italian seasoning assaulted her senses, and she could do nothing but stare in wonderment at the man in her kitchen. “You’re underweight and have bags under your eyes.” Though his words stung, Hope didn’t even flinch at his observation. The aroma coming from the oven had moved her to her feet, and she was now standing inches from him. It wasn’t as if she’d never smelled decent food before; it had just been a long time since she’d contemplated eating a delicious meal without the fear of gaining an ounce. “It’s hard to eat healthy when you are on the run.” The excuse flew out of her mouth, as a force of habit. Abel slightly lifted a brow, letting her know he didn’t believe her. “That changes tonight.” He turned his body to the side, making room for her to sidle up next to him. “For tonight, we’ll be dining on lasagna, Caesar salad, and garlic bread.” Gently, he took hold of her hand, his warmth invading her cold palm the second he touched her. Guiding her hand to the wooden spoon, he said, “Stir.” Then moved away from the oven and began to prepare the bread. Hope stirred the sauce, light-headed from Abel’s magnetic touch. Of course, she was already riding on cloud nine at the thought of a full belly and a full night’s rest. But while she was hesitant to believe she’d be able to sleep through the night, Hope prayed Abel’s presence would trick her mind into believing she was safe—at least for now. “Why are you making this sauce, if the lasagna is already in the oven?” Abel didn’t glance up from smearing butter on the rolls as he spoke. “That is spaghetti sauce. We’ll make a lot of it, divide it up into containers, then freeze it.” He sprinkled some garlic powder onto the buttered rolls. “Can you turn the heat down under the sauce? We’ll need to let it simmer for another twenty minutes. Then pull the lasagna out of the oven, please.” Hope did as she was told. Leaning her face over the cheesy meal, she inhaled. “Jesus, this smells like five pounds.” She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but she couldn’t take them back. She turned to Abel to apologize for her crudeness, but instead of meeting angry eyes, she found his soft gaze. “Listen to me.” He moved to her, his gait sure and steady. “You’re beautiful as is.” His words knocked her a bit off kilter. She opened her mouth to disagree, but Abel softly placed a finger over her lips to hush her. “When I make comments about your weight, it’s not because you aren’t attractive. It’s because I understand the stress your body is under. I want you strong and alert—always. After all this is said and done, you can go ahead and drop the pounds again, if that’s what you want. “But never confuse me with Mark. I am not him. Whatever comments he made, or whatever way he made you feel about your body, starts and stops with him. I am not that man, and I never will be. We just need to get you healthy again.” Hope was unsure of what to say. No one had called her beautiful in years. Mark had only ever complimented her when they were dating, and if another man so much as glanced at her, Mark would remind her that her thighs touched and men didn’t like that. Hope knew she wasn’t ugly, but she didn’t feel beautiful; she hadn’t for some time now. To hear Abel say it with such sincerity, while looking nowhere but in her eyes, made her feel good.

Author Bio: Inger Iversen was born in 1982 to Anne and Kaii Iversen. She lives in Virginia Beach with her overweight lap cat, Max and her tree hugging boyfriend Joshua. She spends 90 percent of her time in Barnes and Noble and the other ten pretending not to want to be in Barnes and Noble.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

GIVEAWAY! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Click to subscribe for more!

Follow me on:

Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Bloglovin' | Instagram

Tumblr | Pinterest

Click to share on Twitter!

via Blogger http://poemsbyayoungartist.blogspot.com/2017/06/cover-reveals-open-wounds-and-weathered.html

[selcouthrp]

Ginger

Veronica Ann Kennedy

Veronica began twirling a strand of her hair around her index finger. It was very clear to her that Damien’s siblings really knew nothing about him, which wasn’t that surprising; Damien has always been withdrawn and brooding. She noted Damien’s reaction whenever Favi asked what they were, and it took her a moment to not grimace. She kept her blank face perfectly, a trick she had picked up over the years from Damien. Veronica’s body got more and more tense as Favi spoke. There would have been a time that she would have sunk down into the couch, and had taken the verbal abuse. However, over the years, Veronica had been broken down too many times to count, and she was used to it.

Whenever Favi brought up the Little Bump, however, Veronica’s calm exterior cracked with a twitch of her eye. She rolled her neck quickly, and took a deep relaxing breath that didn’t do much to her system. Her legs uncrossed themselves, and she moved toward the edge of the couch. She entwined her fingers, and placed her hands into her lap. She stayed quiet for what seemed like minutes as she mulled over Favi’s questioning. Her long eyelashes fluttered, and a mischievous smirk placed itself at the corner of her mouth. She cleared her throat, and pretended to remove a piece of lint from her jeans.

“Ever think that I am here, because, maybe just maybe, Damien wants me here. Hm? Does your tiny mind comprehend that, or have you slept with enough men that don’t think for yourself anymore?” Veronica’s voice was steady as she spoke, “And as for benefiting the family, well I do have to say that I think not murdering you all while I could was a really good perk.” She arose from her seat on the couch, and her smirk turned into a grin. A small giggle escaped her lips, “Although, I am still contemplating it.” She straightened out her shirt, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and looked down at the two Javachi siblings. “I could have done a lot more damage than what I did, and it wasn’t even my fault it happened. You can ask your brother for the explanation on that one.”

Without looking at Damien once, she walked out of the room, and headed down the stairs to the main foyer. She thought about where she was going for only a split second before going into the one room that hadn’t been used in months, the art studio. Art used to be Damien’s escape from all his stresses, but it was placed on the back burner whenever he became the Father, at least that’s how it seemed. She inhaled a deep breath, and instantly regretted all that she had said upstairs. “It’s too late now,” she whispered to herself before walking into the room further. Amongst the scattered canvas, the room was as nicely decorated as the rest of the house. One wall was covered in finished paintings, and right in the middle of them all was one that Damien had done while still in school. Absentmindedly, Veronica ran her fingertips over the familiar canvas. It was the perfect recreation of her poised silhouette. 

James Malcolm Perry

James shot a final warning glance toward the man before exiting the business with Damien and Tony. Whenever Damien questioned the text, James shrugged, “Could mean anything at this point.” He hopped back into the SUV as they sped off toward the compound. He glanced over at Damien, and adjusted his cuffs on his jacket, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like him. He seems way too cocky for his own good, and that’s me saying that, so it should mean something.” He snorted at his own words, and shook his head with a breath, “I think we should look into him more. I feel like he would double cross you the second someone offered him more money.”

Once they got back into the garage, James got out of the car quickly, but let Damien go in first. The guards being in their places was alarming, but James tried not to let it get into his head too much. He went up the stairs to see Damien’s siblings with their guns pointed at Ronnie and Collins. His eyebrows pulled down and his jaw clenched itself together. He motioned for Collins to come to him, and keep his eyes on the situation. James found it strange that Veronica didn’t know who they were, considering that she was practically a Javachi herself at this point. He had met Frankie once before, and heard things about Favi that, at one point, made him excited to meet her.

James followed after Collins when she moved passed him. He frowned as he began to worry about her. When she explained her behavior, his face softened. He wrapped his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head, breathing in her scent. “Then come on, the lovebirds can have their family drama, and we will go sleep for a couple days,” he pulled back from her to take her hand, and lead her toward the guest quarters. After they had stepped into the room, he locked the door behind them so that they wouldn’t be interrupted. He took off his jacket, and pulled his shirt over his head. He slipped off his shoes, and then flopped backwards onto the bed. He let out a long breath, as he allowed his muscles to relax themselves.

Noahi June Louis

Noah listened to Olly removing his clothes, and she grinned as he sat down behind her. The feeling of his fingertips across her back caused goosebumps to appear all over her skin, although the water was quite warm. She moved to relax back against him as she sat in between his legs. She moved her head so that she could kiss his neck with a laugh as she was splashed, “Good thing neither of us are that tasteful then, huh?” She splashed him back as she moved to take his hands, and wrap them around herself. She laced her fingers with his, and began to hum softly to herself.

She closed her eyes as she allowed the water to ease the tension out of her body. It was a bit of an overstatement to say that she needed this moment of peace and normalcy. “I never thought I would ever have these type of moments,” she commented out loud before realizing it. She opened her eyes, and moved so that she could turn her face toward his. She let go of one of his hands, and reached up to cup his cheek gently. She ran her thumb over his skin, “Thank you for putting up with me. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Memories flooded back of after she returned to the states. She was angry and overwhelmed with emotions. She didn’t want to be alive, and there she was. She was always supposed to die in combat, fighting for something she stood for, but now it was ruined. One of the nights that Olly wasn’t there at the hospital with her, Noah tried to end everything and take the coward’s way out. She had never told him, and she wondered if the doctors had. If they did, Olly had never brought it up. Being here in his arms, however, made her glad that the nurse had found her in time. It gave her hope for a future with him.