#Golden eyes watch (Dash commentary) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

arrivisting · 4 years ago

Note

I’d love author commentary on basically the whole scene at Ekkaia in all my war is done (or any individual part of that scene, if your prefer). Taken together, it’s one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex and heartrending things you’ve written, from the description of the sea itself, to the difficulties of Fingon and Alqualondë, to Gil and the ocean and his ‘mother’, to Fingon and Gil beginning to tackle the thorny subect of Maedhros.

I should admit something about all my war is done: it's the most fugue-like my writing has ever been. I jotted down a few notes on my commute into work - I was deeply underwater with my PhD at the time, three months away from submitting - and then the idea of writing a sequel to scion seized me so profoundly that I sat down in the Starbucks where my bus stops, took out my laptop, and wrote instead of just collecting my coffee and walking down to my office. I wrote 15k. In one day. In about five or six hours. I've never achieved anything like that before or since - I do have good days where I can knock 2-4k out easily, but not 15k. (You might note that the posted part of all my war is done is only 12k, but I wrote all the way up into the next bit with Fingon in Tirion that you've read, up until Turgon at the dinner table). I didn't sit down or plan events; I didn't actually know much about what would happen: but I knew they were going to Ekkaia and they'd have some kind of resolution there. These are my phone-notes, from that morning:

You can see, I think, something of the way an idea hits me. I note down a few snatches of plot, not necessarily in any order, some lines I think people should say at some point, although I might not use them, sketch out some things (Formenos's ruins were going to feature more heavily, but they're waiting for a later story).

(It makes me laugh, the words my phone doesn't accept - Gil-galad, for one - and the ones it automatically capitalises from where I've yelled enthusiastically about elf things at people. I never stop long enough to correct spelling etc when I'm trying to get something down).

I clearly knew from inception that I wanted Fingon's place to be called the hill of waiting, and had tried out the name in Sindarin; because my verbs are not good, I came up with Amon Dartha. It was when I was redrafting that I realised Amon Darthir had existed actually in Dor-lomin(!!!) and the name was even more perfect symbolically than I'd meant it to be! Did I know that, unconsciously? I don't know.

You can see, too, that the Sea of Ekkaia was almost the very first point to hit me, and that I knew it and the scene there would be important, and that I knew that the story was about Fingon finding a way to tell Gil-galad that he had been loved, and wanted, and that meant talking about Maedhros; and that at the end I wanted Gil-galad to be gently, impersonally, firmly clear that he would not, could not, be staying to wait with Fingon.

Okay, DVD commentary proper - I'm sorry, I remember awfully little about writing this, given the fugue state and my thesis and everything, so I'm not sure how useful this will be!

“Oh,” said Gil-galad when they broke out of the woods and began to ride down over the dune-lands to the rocky shore. “Oh!”

The Sea of Ekkaia was beautiful, in its own way, but that way that was like no other place in Arda, in either Aman or Middle Earth.

It was a dark-blue that was almost black, even in the late afternoon, and the shore was less sand than gravel, a strange inconsistent rubble of rock and broken sea-shells that had been dashed to pieces by the constant fury of the waves. Staring out to sea, one did not see the far-away horizon the way one did on the gentler coast of Belegaer: there was no gentle faraway blue haze through which one might, perhaps, on a clear day, imagine that Middle Earth could be glimpsed, or at least the Straight Path.

No: instead along the horizon there was a seam of silver light, and then a great blackness, where the Sea of Ekkaia met the Uttermost West that was not quite the Doors of Night, but was certainly the end of Aman itself. If you stood on the shore watching, the seam would ripple with a pulse of light, sometimes green and sometimes white.

It was so far from anywhere the Eldar of Valinor lived. While they clustered around the Belegaer like moths to flame, this shore seemed instead to repel them. Was it the sight of the world’s end itself? It might be; yet Fingon thought there was more to why this wilderness was so little visited, this howling black sea lashing itself against a grey shore. It was beautiful, but not in the way Elves liked things to be beautiful: it was too raw, too unfinished, too savage.

It was too close to where Mandos kept his Halls, which were not only a thing of spirit but also matter, at least in the way that things in Aman were both. Too close to where Nienna’s tower looked out into the Void and where she wept, and wept, and wept. It was too close to death and to rebirth, to judgment and to pity.

There's a little Dawn Treader, I think, in this idea of the uttermost West. I don't know why I thought the seam of the world should pulse with strange light, but it's an uncanny kind of geography, so near Mandos and Nienna, and I like the sense that this is the end of the world, but not the end of the universe.

A lot of this came together serendipitously. I knew some kind of memorialisation of the river that bore Gil-galad needed to be part of his story; that meant going to the sea; and it's clear from the notes that I had already decided that couldn't mean Alqualonde because of kinslaying reasons and memories. (And that that too would need to be confronted). Therefore: roadtrip to Ekkaia. Therefore, the question: what would Ekkaia be like? We don't really know anything about it - only the good qualities of Belegaer. This was really written by a process of inversion, a way of pulling what we know about Belegaer inside-out, and imagining a place at the world's edge, a place that was empty, a place that was uncannily close to difficult things, to Mandos and Nienna; a place that seemed to repel the Eldar as surely as Belegaer drew them like iron filings.

I was thinking visually about New Zealand, too. I spent my childhood summers on the beaches up north, mostly around Tūtūkākā, which are bright and lovely, with golden or white or tawny sand, with gnarled pohutukawa and blue-green water. Like this:

That's what beach and sea meant to me, and it was a shock the first time I went to one of the black sand beaches where the wind howled and the colours weren't blue, green, gold, but iron, grey, navy, black. I loved it, but it felt so other, so passionate, so strange. That shock and that wild beauty and desolation were things I wanted to get at, though Ekkaia would be far more wild and desolate still.

They left the horses in the thin sea-grass, and their shoes, too, and walked down to the water. “I missed it,” Gil-galad said, and closed his eyes, breathing in the brine. “I missed it badly, all the long years besieging Mordor before I died.”

I think Gil-galad would be very marked by his upbringing first in the Falas and then on Balar; you don't lose that, if you grew up by the sea.

The wind took up his long dark hair and made a banner of it as they walked along the rough crescent of rocky ground where the waves met the shore, and around their bare ankles small stones tumbled back and forth in the lace-edge of the water.

When I was young I used to stand in the water and let the waves bury me up to my ankles, watching the water move in, out, spreading skirts of lace overlapping as new waves came in. I could do it for hours. There's something very liminal about the water's edge, between the solid land and the sea, which is why I put this conversation in it, I think. They're in a liminal space and at a liminal moment. It's the scene the whole story has been inexorably building toward, the point where all Fingon's painful scraping-away of his barriers finally reaches his skin.

“Sometimes in Middle Earth it became very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said, his eyes still closed, “in the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.” He opened his eyes and looked towards the Uttermost West where the world ended. “And here it is impossible not to. Look at it!"

This is a little more hopeful than the original version, which I don't have anymore, but went pretty much:

"Sometimes in Middle Earth it was very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said. "In the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.”

It was a comment more about Gil-galad's rueful scepticism than wonder - because he fought the Dagorlad before he died, because he spent the last ten years of his life in mud and blood and filth and horror. I work on the First World War - its literary legacy and traces in the decades after, more than its immediate experience or actuality, because there was a ten-year period after 1918 where it was more latent than overt, a traumatic lacuna of silence, a Nachträglichkeit- and I thought in the blood, and the mud, and the filth was a little too on the nose.

I kept it, though, because Tolkien was drawing on his own memories of the trenches with the Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, with those blurred lines of solid land and mud/bog, the living mixed up with the remains of with the dead, all the themes you see again and again in the war poetry and the officer war-books. (Santanu Das is very good on this, as is Eric Leed). Paul Fussell is a bit old-hat now, but his argument that WWI altered the sensibility of its survivors because of their close, consanguinous co-existence with the dead is something I still find valuable. I think there's a lot of WWI survivor in the way I think of Gil-galad, actually, I'm just realising - not that he survived the Last Alliance. He's detached in a different way from Fingon. Fingon's built himself a thick layer of repression/denial, a kind of callous to protect himself from confronting or thinking about what Maedhros did, and what that means for him and to him; Gil-galad is entirely present, but somewhat detached in some ways, the way people who came back from war could be. Not that Fingon and Finrod aren't also separated from the Amanyar by their time in Beleriand and experience of war and death, but Gil-galad lived there for millennia, and he fought a longer, harder, more total kind of war than they did.

But he's at the Sea of Ekkaia, as west as you can get. So much of Tolkien is about that endless longing glance west, that movement: why is this very westernmost edge so under-explored?

I wanted Gil-galad to be softened by this encounter with the sea, so I went back and let his wonder be as much at the spectacle itself as the sea, like the greater hand at work he had sometimes doubted being visible was something wonderful rather than something to be bitter about. I wanted to position him to be potentially open to, perhaps, the Valar; perhaps, to Fingon. I hope he doesn't come off as closed-minded: I think of him as having a fair mind, and good judgment, but - despite placing him here between the sea and the shore - very clear personal lines between what he thinks is just, and what is not. Certainly, it helps a lot, never having known the Feanorians when they had not fallen.

The seam of the universe pulsed with light, and beyond it was – what?

Unutterable nothingness, something worse than death.

Perhaps Maedhros.

This is an important line for Fingon. He hasn't though the name of his own accord for much of the story, flinching away from it; it's only come in when Finrod and then Gil-galad speak the name. This is the first time he's thought it clearly of his own free will, and this is I think the first signal that he's brought Gil-galad here to be as honest and earnest with him as he can be, however much it hurts, or however much it might drive him away. Because if he isn't, and doesn't, Gil-galad will be driven away anyway, and Fingon wants to be connected with him, the first time he's wanted that kind of bond with anyone since he returned.

(I think of Finrod as someone who just kept turning up, regularly, and forcing Fingon to associate with him; and then bringing Amarie; and then his children; and not taking no for an answer. It bothers Turgon rather terribly that they seem to be friends now, when they were never that close Before: that Fingon pushes him away, but allows Finrod to keep pushing; that Finrod does push. He doesn't know about Gil-galad, of course).

He's brought Gil-galad here to show him if possible that he was wanted, to conjure up lost Ringwil where she might be felt if not found; and to do the same for Maedhros. This is a signal that this journey to the sea is as much about Gil-galad's missing father as his missing mother.

The almost-forgotten tang of salt in the air always mingled with the smell of blood in Fingon’s worst memories, and he was not the only one who remembered. The waves were gentle around Gil-galad’s feet, but they boiled furiously around Fingon’s, delivering small spiteful slaps at his calves.

Spiteful was probably the wrong word here. I don't necessarily mean a dramatic boiling or bubbling; but the water is harsh where it touches him, the kind of slapping roughness you get when the tide is coming in rough.

It took Gil-galad longer to mark the difference, engrossed in the joy of the sea and spectacle as he was, and when he did, his face changed. There was something terribly sad in his eyes when he lifted them from the water to look at Fingon.

It wasn’t why he had brought Gil-galad here; but Fingon didn’t want to imagine the look he would receive if he brushed aside the silent question. “No,” he said. “I am not forgiven.”

“So I see.”

They could probably leave it there.

But Fingon won't, because he's trying. He's really trying to connect after all the time flinching away from it, and he's remembering what Gil-galad said about talking, and what Finrod said about mistakes and silences in their first life.

He said, “You said you loathed the thought of being the son of – a murderer. But my own hands have not been clean since Alqualondë, and death didn’t unstain them. All the time you thought I might be your father, you must have known I was a Kinslayer, too.”

I tried to signal this in their earlier tower conversation with Finrod, and Gil-galad's changing of the topic, but I feel like it's a little abrupt here.

“Yes,” Gil-galad said, and his expression didn’t change. “And when the knights that had served you came to me, they told me that you killed that day in ignorance, that you came upon a battle already being fought; that you took up your sword to save those you loved and didn’t question whether it was just. I heard that from others, too, those who had less reason to bend facts to a flattering pattern; survivors of Gondolin and of Nargothrond. I did ask."

“Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. I died ashamed of it, and I live again with the shame.”

"Good!” said Gil-galad, and there was no forgiveness in his voice, even when Fingon jerked his head up in shock. Instead there was the stern ring of a king used to weighing the ideals of justice against the world as it was, the king who had walked arm in arm with Eonwë the Maia, led his people through many full-fledged wars, and held court and meted justice to them for an Age. “That gives me a far better opinion of you than any of the stories did! I’m glad.”

I remember talking to you about this in the comments, about what it meant that Gil-galad wasn't forgiving him. I think I really meant condone, but I also don't think it's Gil-galad's place to absolve Fingon - he wasn't the one wronged! - and that it's important to me that, because Fingon does truly regret it, he doesn't wish to be absolved, to slide away from it. I don't mean he ought to wallow in it or flog himself with it daily, but I think it would be important to him to shoulder and own that guilt rather than ever allowing himself to put it behind him or have someone else tell him it’s quite all right.

I think this is a moment where I show that they're quite similar, too, because even if Fingon wasn't aware that a bracing, clear assessment was just what he wanted, it was what he needed, rather than people being kind (which he's had a lot of, since he returned; and which hasn't touched that central guilt he's hidden from them, that he loved Maedhros, who had done such terrible things. It's prevented him from accepting kindness made him block people reaching out to him. Gil-galad is not being kind, but just, and still reaching out).

It felt like Fingon had been struggling to take a full lungful of air for a long time, and now something constricting in his chest had loosened, as it hadn’t even after the Valar themselves had judged him. It was only now that he realised that he hadn’t wanted Gil-galad to forgive or absolve him. He had wanted – needed – Gil-galad to be better than him, to withhold forgiveness when it was unmerited; and Gil-galad had. He had become the shining legacy they had all hoped he would be, the thing they had all somehow done right.

The water slapped at his ankles again, in impatient reminder.

This is too brief a transition. I should have fleshed the join out more.

“I think Ulmo would come to you here, if you called. You were a king by the sea in Middle Earth, and you may not remember it, but it was a river who gave you life.”

Gil-galad looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “What?”

“I brought you here for a reason,” Fingon said. “Where did they go, the drowned and poisoned rivers of Beleriand? I don’t know; but Ulmo might.”

I've really personified the rivers, but I think it's a clear and easy extrapolation from the Withywindle and the River-daughter in The Fellowship of the Ring that I don't need to justify in order to argue that every river might have had its own attendant Maia-spirit. It does make what happened to the Rivers of Beleriand much worse, though, and I wanted to look at the way a character that was a throwaway mechanism in scion ended up being sickened and dying as horribly as Beleriand did; this story was really about following all those lighter bits in scion home, to the end of the line, and looking at the long-term impacts of something that began more lightly. In this verse, Ringwil was a river, but also a person; and I think of her and Finrod as sharing a strange human-river friendship and overlapping enthusiasms.

He clapped Gil-galad on the shoulder, hoping it said all the things he meant it to say. Affection had been so easy for him once, in the life that had been taken from him by the fiery flails of the Balrogs, but now it came hard, and the sea-smell was in his nose, the terrible memories too close to the surface.

He had surely outstayed Ulmo’s tolerance by now. Fingon left Gil-galad there in the water, and didn’t dare glance back until there was thin sandy soil under his feet again.

Only then did he look once more towards the sea.

Gil-galad was standing in the shallows. His broad shoulders were bunched tight, as if he was readying himself for something very difficult, a confrontation with one of the Valar he had long doubted.

Then he spread his arms out, empty-handed, and tipped his head back, and the light on the horizon grew unbearably bright, whiter than white, more silver than silver; and a face began to move upon the water.

I really like this, honestly. Which I can't/don't say often! The temptation to overwrite this was strong, to show this encounter, to describe the Vala: but I think it's often stronger not to show something numinous, to pull away, to let the mind fill it in.

Again, this is Gil-galad as I imagine him: still somewhat distanced from the Valar by the Dagorlad and the things that happened there (and I think perhaps doubly unhappy in that he lived through the end of an Age once before, and that time, at least, the Valar came: they did not come in the Second, nor send so much as a messenger, and such obscenities as the fall of Ost-in-Edhil and the drowning of Numenor had been allowed to happen, and Men and Elves were left alone to come together and break Sauron's grip). Doubting, but not angry; doubting, but still curious. Open to listening.

a face began to move upon the water is of course a deliberate sideways reference to

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

It took a very long time. Fingon could not watch; his eyes dazzled.

Can you tell I was teaching The Duchess of Malfi at this time? Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. That sense of a light too bright and white to look upon; that sense of guilt; that faint reference to life lost untimely. This wasn't meant to be a direct intertextual reference, but that net of meaning was there, lightly. Again, I wanted to under-write rather than over-write. I know I have a tendency to over-write.

And of course - there's a sense here that Fingon is refusing the kind of close enoucnter with Ulmo he could/might have. There's water in his eyes. From the wind?

“Thank you,” Gil-galad said when he rejoined him at last. His eyes were glowing, and he whistled Ceredir to him from where he was tearing ropey roots of sea-grass from the dunes with great relish. “Thank you for bringing me here;” and he didn’t say it the way he’d thanked Fingon for the horse, or the armour, or the sword, or even the lance.

Because this is a real gift, something that means something to both of them, something more honest/painful. Fingon's been trying to connect through gifts but not serious conversation or sharing, like some estranged parents do, throwing money at the problem rather than giving of their time or their selves, and however well-meant, it hasn't worked.

“I didn’t truly do anything."

“You brought me to the Sea. I know – I could see – how difficult it was for you."

"Well,” Fingon said lamely. He cleared his throat. “What did Lord Ulmo say about – oh, I can’t call her your dam! – the Maia who bore you? Did she – was she there?”

The dam pun is Finrod's. Don't blame me.

A little of the light dimmed, but it didn’t quite fade away. “No, she’s gone. Back to the Timeless Halls, he says; but one with him again, Ulmo, at the same time.” Gil-galad made a noise. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, all the metaphysical nonsense of the Ainur! But he was kind to me, and he told me something of her – that she delighted in the making of me.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I left the flowers we gathered earlier in the waves for her and the sea didn’t dash them back onto the shore. I’m sure Ulmo broke a few laws of Arda there.”

I like this image of the flowers suspended in the water. I had it clearly in mind from before I began to write.

"You were wanted.”

“I’m beginning to believe it,” Gil-galad said.

“You should,” Fingon said. He took a breath. Talking is how you sort things out; and a long time ago, Fingon had been known for his valour. Gil-galad deserved to know how much he had been wanted, who had called himself a political compromise given birth. The truth of that had stung.

And it was less than the truth. Fingon could still remember the first time he had opened his mind to Maedhros over the leagues between them and let him see Gil’s small face through his own eyes, holding nothing back. He had shown Maedhros the dark long lashes and the squashed baby nose, the milk-blister on the bow of Gil’s upper lip, the way his whole head turned an alarming red when he wailed; shared with Maedhros Gil’s fondness for being tossed in the air, his splashing joy in his bath.

This is is me trying to describe a baby without being too sentimental about it, because Fingon wasn't all, oh look at the toesie-woesies, or my son, my son: his eye was more detached, and you see him in scion thinking of Gil-galad as it.

I've been thinking about why Fingon in no way allowed himself to consciously dote on the baby, why that streak of denial that's so strong in his second life was there in his first light, and really: it would have been dangerous to let himself love him, to see Gil as his son and Maedhros's. He was born at a time of terrible loss, after the Flame, when they all expected they could die themselves. He was moved around Beleriand like a game-piece. Fingon was always going to lose him: he wasn't going to get to raise him, after all, until and unless Morgoth was defeated. Maedhros wasn't going to meet him, until and unless &c. It was easier not to let oneself get attached than it was to confront those hard facts and let oneself be hurt by them. Easier to think of him as a baby Finwean prince, and that only: a political pawn, not a son.

Conversely, Maedhros maintains a physical distance, but not an emotional one. Here's a bit from Maedhros's perspective:

Finrod had told him that. They had written, back and forth, in the long months as Ringwil’s belly swelled, as the child formed, as it began to move and stretch and turn frog-like inside her. They had corresponded constantly during the first months of the child’s life in Nargothrond, and during the first months of his life, Finrod had sent long scrolls detailing every change in Artanaro’s weight, his length, his hair colour, his eye colour, how much milk he’d consumed each day: screeds winging forth to Himring until the child was old enough to survive the secret trip north.

Fingon’s letters had been infuriatingly spare of useful information while the child was fostered at Barad Eithel. Beloved, ineloquent Fingon: Fingon, who had nevertheless shown him the child as no reams of paper could.

Fingon had given him forever the rounded bloom of his full cheeks, and the pursed mouth, sullen in sleep: the feathery, rather cross-looking eyebrows, and the small hands with their deep dimples and smaller fingernails, curled into the edge of Fingon’s furred mantle.

Maedhros had felt the way Fingon hovered between wonder and confusion at what they’d wrought: the way he couldn’t quite manage to think of the child as his own, this thing spun out of air and calculation and freshwater into heavy, solid life. He could have loved him so desperately, Maedhros knew that. He was halfway there, hovering in terror on the edge, afraid of falling. If the baby had stayed in Barad Eithel longer; if Fingon had watched him begin to creep around on fat little knees, to pull himself up on the furniture and to take his first steps – to hear the baby babble turn into words and speech – his heart would have opened to him like a flower, and the child would have become the centre of his universe, the sun in his sky.

Fingon had never known what to do with Idril as an infant, either, but he’d easily become an adored uncle as she grew up. If they’d had more time – if the child had been permitted to stay with Fingon even a month longer before being sent for safety to Cirdan –

Well, they’d never had enough time.

There had been few walls between them then, so he had felt Maedhros’s bright joy, the painful love, in its moment of birth: swelling and swelling like a cloud with rain, as though his heart was growing and his blood was leaking out of him at the same time, transmuting into pure tenderness and iron purpose.

I like this because I think of the Ekkaia scene as a cloudburst, full of emotion that has been swelling and swelling and now released. This is one bit of the breaking-through.

He had never needed to ask whether Maedhros considered Gil-galad a son.

“I don’t want to talk about – him,” Fingon said with difficulty, and the salt breeze stung his face, his eyes. “I know you loathe him, and rightly; and I do, too. I do hate him; or I hate what he did. I do! But you should know – you deserve to – that he wanted you, badly, although he never met you; he never wanted the shadow on him to touch you or to taint you.

And this. You can see here where I spun off into cliffs of fall, which isn't a scion story, but sprung out of this speech. It was already there in those sketchy notes, too, a lot of what Fingon's saying here: this important line about hating Maedhros, or what he did (that movement from clear certainty to trying to separate the deeds from the loved one; to urgent reptition - I do! I mean it, I really do! - which means he doesn't, can't: this is the heart of Fingon's guilt, because he wants to hate Maedhros utterly, but he can't, and he is profoundly in denial about that).

“He always wanted children; I took that from him even before the Oath did, but I gave it back to him with you. I loved you first of all for that, but he loved you for yourself. Because you existed, against all hope and possibility and fate and chance; and because you were ours.”

Gil-galad said nothing. There was still a wildflower tucked behind his ear, but the brilliance had quite left his eyes.

“Well,” Fingon said at last. “I needed to tell you that. You should know that you were never – not only – you were wanted very much."

Beloved ineloquent Fingon, &c.

They were some miles from the beach when Gil-galad said, “‘Ours’?”

“Yes."

I was trying to let the gaps and breaks talk for me in the text. Under-writing.

The beginning was full of these little breaks, too, because they didn't yet know how to talk to each other; now at the end, that connection, and their conversations, are breaking down again. It's echoing that ride together at the beginning very strongly, but now it's not Gil-galad trying to become acquainted and Fingon giving light, unsatisfying answers. These are the real questions/answers at last, and the whole story has really been about getting to the point of Fingon and Gil-galad in Aman where they actually could have the kind of conversation Gil-galad was trying to have at the start.

Some miles further, Fingon said, “Did you ever meet him in Beleriand? After I died. I always wondered.”

“No,” Gil-galad said.

It didn’t seem like he was going to speak again, and Fingon had begun to assimilate that knowledge, that pain – that Maedhros had never seen him, had only ever known him through Fingon’s own eyes – when he added,

“But I saw what he did. Have you ever seen a whole city ruined, and known the ruiners to be Elves? It wasn’t even a city, poor Sirion! It was a refuge, a place for the desperate, as far to the West as they could get, as close to the safety of the Sea. They had so very little. No great stone palaces, no towers, no spires. Little enough fresh food. They were able to grow so little, and they lived on fish, and sea-weed, and what brave hunting parties would bring back; and hope. They lived on hope, and they thought Elwing wore it around her throat, but the Valar didn’t come for them: Maedhros Fëanorion and his brothers did instead, and they burned and killed and ravaged. I’d say they salted the earth, but it was salt already. To fall on any innocent Elven city would be a horror: on poor Sirion it was the greatest cruelty I ever saw, and entirely pointless."

They said nothing more.

I like this, too, actually. You see a little here of why Gil-galad might be healthily sceptical of the Valar - they didn't come for them: Maedhros Feanorion and his brothers did instead - and that very post-war experience of seeing a descrated, destroyed town. Worse when you had seen it when it was whole, when you knew the dead and fled.

Sirion is, I think, the worst thing the Feanorions did. I find it worse than even Doriath or Alqualonde (though they're all awful!). These were desperate survivors, huddled together at the edge of the sea for protection. So many of their leaders had been killed or lost. Idril and Tuor had disappeared; Earendil was away; Maedhros and the others struck while only Elwing was there, and she was so young, and so alone, and so damaged already by what they'd done in Doriath. And now they’d come again. There's something about the revictimisation that gets me. It's awful.

I wanted it to be weight and counter-weight - that soft, painful, remembered moment of Maedhros seeing baby Gil-galad through Fingon's eyes, something Fingon has clearly not deliberately thought about since he was reborn, but dredges up now for Gil-galad, because he should know: and which is echoed in the beginning by Fingon's question to Finrod. But Maedhros is still the person who did the things he did, and I wanted to set that soft moment of truth against his deeds at Sirion, another truth, to point out clearly why Gil-galad would recoil so hard from this offering, this honesty Fingon wants to be able to give him. This is the dichotomy at the heart of the story: reconciling Maedhros and how one felt for him with what he did, and how one feels about that. It is irresolvable, at least for Fingon, at least at the moment I've ended it at for now.

I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, @warrioreowynofrohan, especially because like I said, I wrote this story in a frantic fog, but I hope this in some way suffices!

#not!fic

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jimmymcgools · 3 years ago

Note

Can you do a directors cut for they pay me a golden treasure?

hi! this has been in my ask box for like two weeks! i'm so sorry! my brain broke and i forgot how to think about things!

i'm glad you asked for this one, thank you so much 🙏 i'd had the first ~500 words of this sitting in a google doc for so long -- i was originally thinking of posting after i finished slip and fall season. but then my brain did that thing where i wanted everything to be exactly perfect and i kept working and overworking the first few paragraphs until way too much gluten had formed in the dough and it was chewy and terrible.

but then i took a step back and just tried to write a thing that captured all the little interesting ideas i wanted to include, and that helped me get the ball rolling.

commentary below! 💖

Two points of pressure weigh down his shoulders, as heavy as the bags of cash had been—heavier, even. It feels like he has two hands locked on either side of his neck. He can feel the man who owns the hands standing behind him, and he can hear the echo of the word wife.

this idea was one of the first things that made me want to write this oneshot -- linking this physical sensation of carrying the bags with this metaphorical way he feels lalo's control over him.

He swallows. His mouth is tacky with a sugary layer of Gatorade.

i wanted the whole thing to hopefully be SUPER sensory and way deep in jimmy's head. and this is the kinda shit that takes me longer than it should to remember. sometimes i have to just sit and think through every part of my body as if i'm in that situation and see if anything good leaps out.

He’s just standing there outside the apartment and his arms are so heavy and his shoulders are so heavy and his head is so heavy he feels as if he’s going to fall right through the ground, as if he’s going to plummet into the earth before she can even open the door.

this is one of the sentences that previously died to being overworked. i kept changing it and changing it until eventually i looked back at my very first version, which was more brainstormy note than intended prose, and i thought it was better than anything else i'd managed. so i used that!

There’s a bang and his eyes snap open. The door is widening to a square of light and his hands are in front of his chest, curling into balls.

this part is a reverse of the previous example, though! here i kept an earlier version for a while, something that started like "The door opens with a bang etc etc" and then i realised it DID need more work, it needed to be more in jimmy's head and not tell the reader exactly what was happening in the first three words.

A square of light—sand and sky and space blankets—and then she’s there, silhouetted against the white, and he takes— —one step, then the next, then the next— —through the bright doorway.

fuckin' love an em dash, mate

His legs, having delivered him here, to this final glowing space, give up.

another one of the ideas i was very excited about for this one-shot was comparing kim to the golden glowstick he holds that night in the desert! i always think about it when i watch that scene!

here's my first shot at making the comparison -- this final glowing space. for a while i wanted to include the memory of him holding that glowstick right here, so that people might link it with him holding her in the entryway, but it didn't work with the pace.

Her voice sounds like it’s coming down a long phone line, traveling through thousands and thousands of copper-lined miles. Crackling and cracking.

i'm a self indulgent lil shit so i put some references to my other fic in here. hopefully if youve read acb, this specific description makes you think of baby kim and jimmy talking softly on the phone at night.

Kim’s fingers are razors in his hair, crushing his head close against her shoulder.

another metaphor from early acb used here, which in itself is a reference to a song by the national, of course. all my fics are just a bunch of national songs stacked inside a trenchcoat

As soon as his chest touches hers, he’s clawing with tight fists at her back, holding her faster and faster, like he’s scrabbling for purchase over screaming dirt

i loved the idea of drawing all these parallels between the desert experience and his experience here. it makes me think of the split-screen opening. jimmy's dry tongue sticking to his mouth is like him trying to say the first part of kim's name. the way he hugs her is like the way he scrambles towards the esteem.

it's all entwined forever now.

From down the long crackling line, she says his name again. Jimmy. He almost can’t hear it. Jimmy.

god, i'm such a writing nerd and i love thinking about writing so much and it's like -- what does not having his name in speech marks add here? in my head it adds so much. is it real, is she really saying it? is he just thinking it? yet he says he almost can't hear it. somehow not having the speech marks also makes it feel far away to me. intangible. if she's really saying it, it doesn't feel real anymore.

i love writing!!!!

“Hey,” Kim says, her voice quiet, her eyes locked on his. The dry skin on his lips stretches with his smile. “Hey.”

would die for these two softly exchanging "hey"s.

It’s good to be close because he knows there’s something horrible trapped between their chests. Something he can feel running warmly down his white and unblemished t-shirt.

jimmy brushing his hand over the spot as they sit together on the sofa.

Like he’s something that might burn her, or something that might break. Or both—like he’s fragile and electrified.

i kind of want to do more with this duality at some point. i think they both feel this about the other. that they could burn them or be burned by them.

He wants her to cradle his cheeks the same way she always does, or stroke her thumbs over his mouth, or curl her fingers around his ears, but she doesn’t. She just holds him in her fingertips. Like water in her hands, he thinks.

more of that wild self-indulgency, but god i couldnt resist linking this moment with the first time they makeout in acb:

"Then she pulls back, breathing heavily, looking down at him. She frames his face with her hands. Gasping for breath, staring up at Kim from between her palms, Jimmy feels like she’s the only thing holding him together. Like he’s water in her hands."

the only thing holding him together.

the ", he thinks." i added in the one-shot makes me feel like jimmy's making the link too, not just me as the writer.

The apartment smells of smoke. Another thing he’s dragged with him over the threshold from the desert: one hundred thousand dollars in cash and the word wife and the smell of dust burning beneath a high sun.

of course, it smells of smoke because kim's been smoking inside, but jimmy doesn't know that

Boxers picked up and then put down in almost the same spot on the bathroom floor.

this moment always gets me. these actors are incredible. there's so much goddamn emotion in one little action.

In his hand now, the ache of a yellow glowstick. The edges of his fingers are made red with it, and his skin and bones and all the gaps between the different parts of himself are marked out with the light. He’s awake, and the yellow stick is fragile in his grasp. Glowing through the cold and the dark. Burning a ghost on his retinas. His suit jacket is thin above him, a loose sheet. The desert is loud with lizards and wind and tires wheeling over dirt roads. The glowstick is golden.

and now finally i get to this glowstick moment. i'm really proud of how i executed this paragraph. it's the writing nerd in me again. i love what the present tense does to it. to me, it makes it feel eternal, ongoing. this is how i felt okay about not setting up the glowstick thing earlier. this paragraph makes me feel like jimmy's been thinking about this the entire time.

all the gaps between the different parts of himself are marked out with the light

also the thought of like... jimmy sitting awake in the desert thinking about the jimmy vs saul of it all.

Burning a ghost on his retinas.

"Did I dream it or did I have $1,600,000 on my desk in cash? When I close my eyes, I can still see it. It's burned into my retinas like I was staring into the sun."

Kim’s face is warm against his spine. Her heartbeat seems to pulse through his skin.

more of my stolen acb lines, this from the final chapter:

"He can feel her breathing, her knees pressed up close behind his, her chest against his back. Her heartbeat seems to pulse through his skin. If he didn’t know better, he’d feel like the Sandias, like a line of protection between her and the world."

When he closes his eyes, he’s walking, he’s still walking.

returning to the first sentence here gave it all a terrifying feeling to me. like -- does jimmy feel like this moment of getting home is the dream? this looping dream?

thank you so much to everyone who read this one-shot, by the way! i was super nervous about tackling canon times, and everyone's messages have been so reassuring. i really appreciate it 💖

#asks #anon #directors commentary #that got SO long

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renaerys · 4 years ago

Text

PPG One-Shot: Back At You (Butch/Buttercup)

A T-rated Greens one shot I did for our resident gothic heroine @avesthetea over on AO3! 💚

A heartfelt shoutout to the Instagram clown cult. Y’all know who you are and how much you inspire me to chronicle Brick’s eternal suffering in new and creative ways. It’s what we do.

Summary: When Buttercup's birthday planning falls apart at the last minute, the last person she would ever expect offers his help (or horror, depending on your perspective).

xxx

Buttercup’s phone buzzed on the nightstand by her head, and she jerked awake. Swallowing the bitter sleep taste, she wiped her mouth and fumbled for the phone. Head still buried in the pillow, she answered: “What time is it?”

“Time to get your ass to the precinct,” said Ty, her partner at the Citiesville Police Department. “Chief Foolery’s all hands meeting starts in twenty minutes. Tell me you’re not still asleep.”

Buttercup sprang up on her elbows and checked the time on her phone. Shit, she was going to be late. “Shit, I’m going to be late!”

“Girl, that’s what I’m tellin’ you—”

“Gotta go, bye!” Buttercup hung up the phone and would have launched out of bed if not for the arm that slipped around her waist and pulled her back down.

“Five more minutes,” Butch grumbled.

Buttercup lost her balance and ended up with her bare back flush against his equally bare chest. His breath was hot on the back of her neck where he pushed his nose among her loose black hair. “Butch, I have to go,” she said in a warning tone.

He chuckled, and it sent a thrill of heat down her spine and under the covers, where he pushed a knee between her thighs. “Why go when you could come?” The arm he’d looped around her waist traveled low beneath the sheets.

Buttercup groaned at his crass joke and caught his wrist before he could carry out the threat. “Because if I’m not at CPD headquarters in twenty minutes, Foolery’s going to pop a hemorrhoid—”

Butch flipped them over with his Super speed, and her back hit the mattress beneath him. He loomed over her, those green eyes acid-bright in the early morning sunlight streaming through his bedroom window. Her traitorous gaze raked up his chest, over the shadow of stubble on his jaw, and settled on those fast darkening eyes as he admired her in turn. But the moment he bent down to kiss her, she slipped out from under him in a flash of green and darted across the room. In a matter of seconds, she’d pulled out a spare change of clothes from the lone dresser drawer he’d cleared out for her use.

“Leaving me hangin’? For real?” Butch complained as he flopped back down among the sheets with a yawn.

“You’ll live. But I won’t if I’m late for this fuckery.” She dressed quickly in dark jeans and a button-up blouse before heading to the connecting bathroom Butch shared with his daughter, Brisa.

“Missin’ out!” Butch called from the bedroom.

Yeah, Buttercup thought as she combed through the tangles in her hair with her fingers and ran the water to brush her teeth. A knock on the door interrupted her morning ablutions, and Brisa entered through her bedroom door.

“G’morning,” she said. Her brown hair was a frizzy mess, and she clutched a stuffed purple Pretty Puff Pony under one arm.

Despite her haste to get out of there and jet to work, Buttercup spared the little girl a soft smile. “Morning, kid. You’re up early.”

Brisa grinned wide. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Buttercup’s smile fell immediately. “Did Butch sneak you that second chocolate bar after dinner last night? Goddamnit—Butch!”

“What, change your mind?” he called. “I knew you couldn’t leave before climbing my morning wood.”

Brisa made a face like she was going to ask, and Buttercup slammed Butch’s bedroom door shut. “Never mind. Let me guess, you were too excited to sleep because today’s your birthday, right?”

Brisa blinked up at her and smiled, her questions forgotten. “Yeah! Oh my gosh, we’re gonna have so much fun!”

Buttercup chuckled and ruffled her messy hair. “For sure. But first, I have to go to work.”

“You’ll be back for my party, right?”

“One hundred percent.”

“Pinky promise?” Brisa held out her little finger.

Buttercup hooked her pinky around Brisa’s. “I promise. Now go get dressed and brush your teeth. I’ll check on your dad.”

“Okay!”

Buttercup breezed through the bedroom, chucked Butch his sweat pants with a cautionary “Hide your dick,” and flew out of her paramour’s two-bedroom apartment in downtown Townsville just as Brisa came bursting in excited to start the day.

xxx

The morning was a complete waste of time, and a bitter part of Buttercup lamented not skipping out in favor of staying in bed with Butch.

“Well, at least nobody died today,” Ty said as he and munched on his doner kebab lunch to go. “Yet.”

Buttercup sucked down half of a water bottle after scarfing down her own lunch. They had stopped at the food truck parked a couple blocks from the precinct, opting for a quick fix as they watched oblivious pedestrians lost to their Air Pods. “Welcome back to active duty, Mr. Brightside.”

Ty chuckled, low and deep. After a few months of healing and rigorous physical therapy, his legs were completely healed and he’d finally been cleared for work that didn’t involve pushing papers at his desk. Once more standing tall with the sun shining off his bald head, Buttercup could not have been happier to have her partner back to his old self by her side.

“You bring it outta me.” Ty winked.

“You ready to head out?” she asked, tossing her wrapper in a corner trashcan. Traffic was shit as usual midday on a Saturday, but they had time before Brisa’s party was slated to start.

“Sure. Lemme just text Melanie.”

Buttercup figured she better catch up with Butch while she waited for Ty and make sure he was on the ball.

[Buttercup: Did you pick up the cake?]

After a few seconds, he replied.

[Butch: Omw with B. You still on clown duty?]

Buttercup groaned at the reminder.

[Buttercup: Can I just say he died and couldn’t make it?]

[Butch: Sure, if you want to crush B’s hopes and dreams 💔😈]

“Kill me.”

“What’s wrong now?” Ty asked.

Buttercup pocketed her phone and led the way to the precinct parking lot where Ty’s car was parked. “Just grappling with some casual childhood trauma coming back to bite me in the ass.”

Ty side-eyed her. “Which one?”

“Ha ha.”

They made it to his red hatchback, and Buttercup slipped into the passenger seat.

“This about Brisa’s birthday party?” Ty asked.

Buttercup groaned again and tugged at her loose hair. “Of all the things, a clown? I thought they were universally considered nightmare fodder for kids these days.”

“Speakin’ of which, I think I remember a psychotic clown attacking Townsville back in the day.”

“You remember correctly.” Buttercup glowered out the window as Ty eased them into traffic toward the Golden Bay Bridge. “But it was the one thing she said she just had to have because some other dumb kid in her class got one for her party.”

“Ah. Six years old and already the social food chain’s tuggin’ on her.”

“Whatever. I never cared about that shit when I was a kid.”

Ty smiled to himself. “Uh-huh.”

Buttercup resigned herself to her unfortunate fate and dialed the company she’d previously contracted to rent a clown for the afternoon. After about five minutes on the phone, she hung up.

“What was that all about?” Ty asked. “Problem?”

Buttercup stared straight ahead as the Golden Bay Bridge’s suspender cables passed her by. “The clown died.”

Ty laughed.

“Ty.” Buttercup looked directly at him. “The guy got hit by a bus on his way to work today and he died.”

Ty shut up. “Oh, uh… Shit.”

A pause.

“I mean, is there another clown, or…?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Buttercup snapped. All she could think of was how Brisa was going to be so upset that the one goddamned thing she had asked for wasn’t going to happen because there was no time to book a new party clown on such short notice on a Saturday.

When Ty shifted in his seat, the leather squeaked loudly in the fuming silence he wisely chose not to break, until he did. “So, should I—”

“Just drive. I’ll think of something…” Buttercup said as she pulled out her phone and tried not to completely lose her shit as she dialed the one person who always seemed to know what to do in a crisis.

“Hey, Blossom,” Buttercup said gravely after her sister picked up. “I think I need some help.”

xxx

When Buttercup and Ty parked in front of her childhood home, guests had already begun arriving. Bubbles was outside greeting people and directing them to the backyard for the festivities. When she spotted Buttercup and Ty, she waved. “Hey, there you are!”

“Have you seen Blossom?” Buttercup asked.

Bubbles pushed up the sleeves of her chunky lavender sweater and looked around. “I think she and Princess were setting up the piñata. Is everything okay—”

Buttercup dashed to the backyard in a blaze of green, leaving Ty to make his way inside at a more sedate pace. The backyard was already teeming with people. Brisa was playing tag with her best friend Richie and a few other kids, while Boomer stacked presents on a table by the back door. Mike and Robin led the day drinking charge by pouring out sangria for the adults and juice for the kids. Buttercup nearly crashed through the green tissue streamers criss-crossing the enclosed backyard in her haste to locate her sister, who was in fact stringing up a red monster-shaped piñata with Princess Morbucks. Or rather, Blossom was doing all the work while Princess held two glasses of bloody sangria and provided live commentary.

“Whoever invented piñatas had the right idea is all I’m saying,” Princess said as she sipped her drink. She was annoyingly chic as usual in designer jeans, dark boots, and a purple silk blouse that probably cost more than the pittance Buttercup’s government paycheck brought in every month.

“You think so?” Blossom said, floating near a high branch so she could toss the suspension rope over it.

“Of course. You’re rewarded with candy for smashing the shit out of your mortal enemy. What could be better than that?”

Blossom grinned. “Mortal enemy in effigy.” She patted the red monster’s snout. “But you’re not wrong.”

“Obviously.” Princess handed her back her sangria, and they shared a knowing laugh.

“Blossom,” Buttercup said.

Blossom smoothed the front of her navy skirt as she turned toward Buttercup. “You’re here. Everything all right?”

Buttercup eyed Princess watching them. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Any progress on the clown front?”

“I’m sorry, the what?” Princess asked.

Blossom’s pink eyes softened, and she put a hand on Buttercup’s shoulder. “I took care of it, don’t worry.”

“Wait, really? How? I called five other rental companies, but everything’s booked solid.”

Blossom’s smile turned devious. “Trust me. Brisa’s going to be very pleased.” Buttercup wanted to argue, but her sister squeezed her shoulder in a silent entreaty. “Just enjoy the party. Boomer, Bubbles, and I have everything under control.”

“Speaking of control,” Princess had her phone out when Blossom turned back to her, “where is that prima donna? He’s not answering any of my texts.”

“Brick’s running a little late,” Blossom said as she led Princess away. “Wardrobe malfunction…”

Their voices faded to the background as Buttercup watched them. Two peas in a fucking pod, and she still didn’t really get what Blossom saw in Princess. If Princess hadn’t played such an integral part in things a couple months back, she would never have given the woman a second thought beyond “Hard pass.”

People, however, had a tendency to surprise when it was down to the wire.

“Heads up, Buttercup!”

Buttercup automatically caught the child hurtling through the air like a tossed water balloon before he could crack his head open.

“O-Oh! Hi, Buttercup,” said Richie, meek and curled in on himself like he’d forgotten he was no longer fragile.

Brisa came dashing over. “Nice catch!”

Buttercup peeled Richie off her and dropped him flat on his ass in the grass. “Brisa, don’t yeet your friends. Bubbles will have an aneurism if she catches you.”

Brisa blushed, abashed. “Sorry…”

Buttercup cracked a smile and winked, and Brisa lit up.

“I’m okay!” Richie, Super resilient, hopped onto his feet and shook out his fluffy blond hair. “Um, does this mean I’m ‘it’ now?”

“No, I wanna play with the clown!” Brisa announced.

Buttercup’s face fell. “Uh, about that…”

Brisa blinked up at her. “He’s coming to my party, right?”

The flicker of doubt that passed through Brisa’s big brown eyes cracked Buttercup’s cold stone heart. She struggled for the words to let her down gently, because whatever Blossom had managed to put together so last minute wasn’t going to be the colorful surprise Buttercup had gone out of her way to book and customize a month in advance.

A round of squeals from the other kids across the yard drew her attention, where they had gathered around Mike at the garden door. “Okay, settle down, kiddos! He’s a little shy. Now, where’s the birthday girl at? Hey, Brisa!”

“C’mon, Brisa, let’s go,” Richie said, tugging on her hand.

But she held her ground and didn’t budge. Buttercup wanted to die.

“Brisa, look,” she began.

The door behind Mike slid open, and out stepped what Buttercup could only describe as her personal revenge fantasy gone morbidly wrong. Brick had never looked so sour in his life.

“Oh! Uh, ta-da!” Mike said hastily as he stepped aside for the person formerly known as Brick until his murder by dishonor.

His steps squeaked in his oversized red shoes, and the striped red and yellow overalls he wore over a polkadot shirt ballooned out at his legs. He looked like a tropical bowling pin. He looked fucking absurd.

“It’s Flameo Hotman! Say hello, kids,” Mike said.

Brick shot Mike a scathing glare that may have incinerated him where he stood if the tiny party hat and enormous red clown nose didn’t ruin the effect. “The hell it is.”

Buttercup had no problem averting her eyes from the literal clownery to focus on Brisa, who was still staring and petrified. Oh shit, oh fuck, she was upset and it was Buttercup’s entire fault—

“Uncle Brick?” Brisa blurted out.

Brick’s lurid eyes passed over Buttercup and landed on Brisa. If Buttercup hadn’t been looking right at him, she would never have believed the way they softened just a little. He pursed his lips and lifted his elastic-tied party hat off his short red hair. It snapped back in place when he let go. “Happy birthday, Brisa.”

Brisa immediately dashed out of Richie’s grip in a sprint too fast to be human and body slammed Brick where he stood. With a grunt, he managed to catch her and keep his balance as she hugged him tight around his inflated waist and laughed. “You look so funny!”

Brick coughed. “Yeah, that’s sort of the point…”

The other kids took that as their cue to also mob Brick, and soon he was adrift in a sea of grubby hands and demands for balloon animals and magic tricks. Buttercup could not believe her eyes. She could hardly remember the last time she saw Brick dressed anything other than to the nines, and now…

“Fuck me,” she wheezed, too stunned even to laugh, it was that heinous.

“Pretty good, huh?” Bubbles sidled up to her with a wrapped present for Brisa under her arm.

Buttercup swallowed hard. She didn’t trust her voice as she watched Brick—Brick—snap at Brisa’s friends to line up in an orderly fashion if they wanted their faces painted, and no cutting the line or there would be consequences.

“The costume’s a little janky, but I didn’t have a lot of notice when Blossom told me we needed something colorful for him to wear,” Bubbles went on.

“Why?” Buttercup croaked. She turned to her baby sister, who seemed totally nonchalant existing in a universe where the selfish clown Blossom had chosen to keep for reasons Buttercup could not sympathize with deigned to dress as a literal fucking clown.

Bubbles slipped her hand in Buttercup’s and squeezed affectionately as they watched Brick paint the requested unicorn on Richie’s face as seriously as if it were a goddamned Monet. “I think this is his way of trying,” she said.

Buttercup would never forget that day two months ago when Butch asked her to come over after Brick had broken down and apologized to Boomer and him and all he wanted to do was break something, to feel it shatter in his hands, so why not her, who couldn’t break? That fight had been one of their most brutal, even compared to their rows in high school in the throes of raging hormones exacerbated by Chemical X.

They hadn’t spoken as they rinsed the dirt and sweat from each other after—Buttercup had been worried about setting him off again after he had settled into some sort of quiet serenity with his fingers in her hair, pulling the tangles out under the warm water like an artist honing his craft. Those hands were always working, always looking for something to crush.

“You ever love someone, but you don’t like them?” he’d asked her as she wrung the water from her hair and he stared at his hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror.

Buttercup was pulled from the memory when Blossom came out of the house to snap pictures on her phone of the kids with their painted faces, a bright smile on her face as Brick continued to ignore the entire world and focus on his task with surprisingly minimal complaint. Buttercup supposed that if anyone could dress like an ass-backwards buffoon and maintain some pretense of dignity, it was Brick.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said at length. She squeezed Bubbles’ hand back.

He’s trying something, all right.

xxx

“I want a dog, please!” asked a snot-nosed kid inexplicably dressed in a full dinosaur suit.

Butch watched Brick from the picnic table he’d plopped down on with a cold beer and three entire pizza boxes set aside entirely for Boomer and himself.

Brick frowned so deeply he looked like he was trying to pass a hardened turd. Wordless, he blew up a long red balloon, tied it off at the end, and handed it to the little boy. “Here.”

The kid accepted the unfolded balloon with quizzical look. “Huh? This isn't a dog.”

“Yeah, it is,” Brick said. “It’s a hot dog.”

“But that’s not what I asked—hey!” The kid squealed when Brick squirted him with water from the rubber flower on his overall strap.

“Next,” Brick said in a tone that promised medieval torture.

Cowed, the dinosaur kid slumped away with his shitty balloon, and the next little girl in line made her request.

“It had to be a bet,” Butch said grimly as he watched his brother pawn a “magic wand” on the little girl who asked for a monkey. She trudged off with the unfolded purple balloon and look in her eyes like she’d seen the hidden darkness of this world.

Boomer shrugged and swallowed a bite of pizza. He had his back to Brick, but he spared a glance over his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, he’s gotta know the pictures will live on forever. This is unlimited blackmail.”

That got a little chuckle out of Boomer. Butch ruffled his bangs too roughly to be entirely affectionate, and Boomer swatted him away. “Dude, my hair.”

“Want me to get you a balloon dick?”

Boomer’s gaze flickered to him, and for a moment Butch was transported back twenty years to Mojo’s Observatory. He and Boomer were sometimes left by themselves while Mojo and Brick tinkered in the old man’s lab well into the night with nothing to do and no one to talk to but each other. On nights like that, Butch didn’t really mind it when Boomer crawled into his bunk and fell asleep there. The room always felt a little colder and darker without Brick there.

“I’m fine,” Boomer said.

Butch searched his eyes, blue and expressive and always shining like he might cry or laugh. He had always envied Boomer that ability to project, to offer a connection, even if it was only pain. He’d always been good at that.

“Really,” Boomer added, hardening his gaze like a fucking mind reader. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.” Butch wondered how long it would take for that to be true. “You know, it’s been a couple months—”

“Butch,” Boomer said, cold like he never was.

Butch hopped off the table and put a hand on Boomer’s shoulder. “It’s been a couple months, but it’s not a race. There’s no finish line to cross.”

Boomer chuckled, but it sounded kind of like a wheeze. His hand was cool on Butch’s where he squeezed him. “Thanks, Butch.”

Butch patted his back. As he was leaving, heard Boomer call, “Make mine blue.”

Butch chuckled. “Sure.”

Fucking sap.

At least Butch wasn’t the only one.

He made his way to the terrace, where Brick was set up with balloons and the face painting station. When Brick noticed his brother waiting in line, the balloon he was inflating went up in flames and disintegrated to ashes, leaving him looking as flushed as his stupid clown nose.

“I’m out of balloons, kids. Go dig a hole or something,” he said to the remaining two children.

“Huh? But there’s a whole bag—” one little boy with enormous glasses started to say.

Brick fired his laser eye beams at the bag of balloons and blew it up. “What bag?”

The kids stalked off in a sulk, and Butch sauntered up to the chair Bubbles had brought out from the kitchen table.

“Bitch move,” he said, plopping down. “I promised Boomer I’d bring him a blue cock, made special with love.”

“Uh-huh,” Brick said. He watched Butch with those shifty red eyes like he might lash out and attack him.

Amused and a little nervous, Butch sank into the chair with much bravado and man-spreading. “Paint me like one of your French girls.”

Brick narrowed his eyes, but he picked up the paints and sat down in the opposite chair without a word, until: “What do you want?”

“I dunno, something cool. A rocket ship.”

Silence. Brick leaned in close to apply the paint with a thin brush, meticulous and anal like he was with everything he did. Butch didn’t have to see his face to know he was concentrating way too hard.

“I can feel the vibrations of you clenching your asshole from here,” Butch said. “Relax.”

“I’m relaxed.”

“Fuck off.”

Brick put down the brush. “If you keep talking, this is going to turn out shitty.”

Butch shut up. Brick resumed painting.

After a moment, Butch closed his eyes. There was something soothing about the soft scrape of the brush against his cheek. Behind his eyelids, he saw a much younger version of Brick covered in paint and grinning fiercely, king of the world, until Butch hit him with his paintball gun right in the kisser. Green paint exploded everywhere, and Boomer fell on his ass laughing. Brick angrily wiped the paint from his eyes in a goopy mess and lobbed it back at Butch, who was too far gone to care. Rolling on the grass and covered in paint, he couldn’t remember a happier afternoon spent with his brothers and Mojo. At least, not until Brisa came along.

Butch sucked in a breath as he opened his eyes and dispelled that trance-like memory. Brick didn’t even snap at him when he turned his head to look right at him. His face was pinched: his mouth too thin and his eyes too wide as he waited for another pot shot to the face.

“You look stupid,” Butch said.

“I know,” Brick said.

“Really fucking stupid.”

Brick’s eye twitched. “I know.”

“Thanks.”

Brick swallowed. “It’s her birthday.”

“Yeah, but I’m your brother. So thanks.”

It was not often that Brick was flabbergasted, but the dude looked like someone had just grabbed him by his oversized red nose. Butch burst into a sly smirk and did just that. To his sadistic satisfaction, it squeaked when he squeezed it.

“Honk honk, motherfucker,” Butch said.

It took Brick all of two seconds to ditch his bewilderment and swat Butch’s hand away. “Shit head.”

“Clown.”

To Butch’s immense surprise, Brick let him have the last word. Well, damn. He chuckled and leaned back in the chair so Brick could finish painting his cheek. Two months and he barely saw the guy on purpose, and now this.

“I’m burning every picture Blossom took today,” Brick said at length.

Butch chuckled. “You forgot about the cloud.”

“I’m burning that too.”

“Now you’re just being a whiny bitch.”

“Wipe Bubbles’ phone and I’ll pay you.”

“Eh, maybe just grab a beer sometime.” It came out so naturally that he didn’t even think about it. Brick, too, was taken aback. The more he saw it today, the less Butch liked that surprised look in his older brother’s eyes. It was fucking weird. “Seriously. It’s been a minute.”

Brick didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. “Yeah, cool.”

“Cool.”

Cool.

“Hold on, almost done,” Brick said, and grabbed Butch’s chin to turn his face.

Butch’s eyes found Brisa running around with a large, green balloon crown on her head and her cheeks painted with rainbows, and his gaze softened. It was almost time for cake.

“Done,” Brick announced.

Before Butch could reply to that, there was a small commotion at the backyard gate with Bubbles, who followed a very short, very hairy monkey inside.

“Grandpa Mojo?” Brisa stopped playing with her friends to greet the old monkey. He had a box with a green bow on top so perfectly wrapped a department store may have done it. His arms were rigid as they held it out and Bubbles hovered just behind him, watchful.

“Good afternoon, Brisa. I have procured you a gift to celebrate, rejoice, and otherwise partake in various forms of merriment on this day of your birth, which is to say, your birthday, thus, the day you were born.”

Nearby, Blossom paused picking up trash with Robin to eye Mojo askance, nonchalant in that low key frightening I-will-blow-your-dick-off way she had. Buttercup was chatting away with Mitch Mitchelson and Clara Clearly, but she too had eyes only for Mojo.

Brisa blushed cutely, suddenly shy. “Thank you.” She accepted the gift and looked between Mojo and Bubbles. “Um, will you stay for cake?”

Mojo’s green skin turned a ghastly shade of pink. It took a Butch a moment to realize he was blushing. He was sure he had never seen Mojo blush before.

Mojo cleared his throat. “I do not eat cake,” he said with finality.

“Oh…” Brisa clutched her new gift to her chest.

“But, I suppose… I could sample a beverage while I am here. A guest ought not turn away hospitality when it is offered.”

Brisa just smiled brightly and reached for Mojo’s crusty old paw. “I have juice. Oh! And you have to stay for the piñata. Have you met Richie? He’s my best friend in the whole world!”

“I do not think—” Mojo lost his words as he was pulled along by his Super granddaughter whether he liked it or not.

“Hey.”

Brick’s hand on Butch’s shoulder exerting Super pressure made him looked down at his hands, which sparked with green power. He clenched his fists and fizzled it out.

“You good?” Brick asked, low and grave.

Butch sniffled. “Yeah, I’m good. Habit.” He paused, then: “I invited him. Boomer said it was fine.”

Brick nodded. “Okay.”

Butch’s stupid heart clenched. “I meant to text you—”

“Blossom told me. It’s fine, drop it.”

He should have dropped it. Two months ago he would have, happily. What the fuck did it matter now when it never had growing up? But that was two months ago. “Don’t fucking do that.”

Brick frosted over and got up. “Do what.”

“Hey.” Butch grabbed him by his ridiculous overalls. “You and me. No girls. Battle and beers, like the old days.”

Brick was a cold hard bastard, but even he had his cracks, and right now he broke like an egg, slack-jawed and lame.

“Tomorrow,” Butch said.

Brick nodded numbly. “Tomorrow.”

Butch smirked and got up to leave, but Brick’s voice stopped him one last time.

“Thanks, Butch.”

“Sure.”

“Tell Boomer it’s a consolation.”

“Huh?”

But he got nothing more out of Brick once Blossom and Princess showed up.

“Oh. My. God. Wait, let’s take a selfie.” Princess managed to get her arm around Brick’s neck, but he snatched her phone before she could take a picture.

“No fucking way, Princess,” he said.

Blossom grabbed his chin and kissed him right there, shameless. It was enough to distract him so Princess could reclaim her phone. “You know, I kind of like you as a clown.”

“I don’t.” Princess managed to snap a picture of Brick and Blossom. “But you’re pulling off the striped overalls, I have to say.”

“Burn that.” Brick advanced, but Blossom pulled him back with a laugh.

“Why so serious, Brick?” she teased.

Princess stuck her tongue out at him.

Butch left them to their childish shit; it was time for cake, and he had a brand new six-year-old to impress.

xxx

Buttercup was having a surprisingly good time. Between pizza with Butch and Boomer, hanging out with her sisters, and the everlasting memories that were clown Brick saved to her iCloud where he would never find them, today was turning out surprisingly well. Butch caught her eye across the yard and gestured inside, so she excused herself from the conversation with Ty and his sister to followed him.

He was in the kitchen when she found him.

“Hey, doll. Cornering me for dirty kitchen sex?” he teased.

Buttercup laughed at the sight of him, two percent bravado and ninety-eight percent imbecile. “Let me grab you a glass of water for that thirst.”

The cake he’d bought sat in a box in the fridge with Brisa’s name scribbled on the lid. Buttercup brought it out and set it on the counter. Then, she hunted for the colorful party platter Bubbles kept for special occasions.

Butch’s arms slipped around her waist from behind, and he pressed his nose to her loose hair. “Mm, you smell like pepperoni.”

“Eat my dick,” Buttercup said.

“I like it.”

“I bet you do, you horny carnivore.”

“Nooo, not the dirty talk,” he whined, pressing a kiss to her neck and pulling her back against him.

Buttercup fought against her growing smile as she opened the cake box and transferred the treat to the platter. “You need rehab.”

“If that’s your kink.”

Buttercup snorted. “Shut up and help me with this.”

They loaded up the chocolate cake on the platter, and Buttercup found the candles in a drawer.

“Got some shit on your nose,” Butch said.

“What?” He dabbed his chocolate frosted finger on the tip of her nose the moment she turned toward him, and she swatted his hand away. “Oh, come on. What are you, five?” She wiped the frosting from her nose and licked her finger clean.

No sooner had she finished than he grabbed her chin and kissed her deeply. In the quiet of the kitchen with no one around to see them, Buttercup gave into feeling and curled her fingers in his flannel shirt. When he smiled against her like the swooning buffoon he’d always been at heart, she laughed and pulled him closer.

His hands found their way over the curve of her ass, as they always did, and pulled her against him with a squeeze. “Fuck, I want you.”

“You always want me.”

“Have you seen your ass? You’d want you too.” He gave her another squeeze, and she had to bite her lip to stifle a moan.

Buttercup slipped her fingers through his hair, full and soft on top and shorn short behind the ears. For a moment, they simply stared at each other as Buttercup marveled at how much she wanted this, wanted him. She had never wanted anyone as much as she wanted him, so badly she could feel it threatening to tear her in two.

“You have all this power,” he murmured, soft like it was a precious secret he clung to.

Buttercup could have laughed at how much he underestimated his own power of her. “Back at you.”

“No.” He touched his forehead to hers and breathed like they finally had time. “Not like you. Not like this.” His hand moved to her waist as if to lead her in a dance. “You have me, Buttercup.”

Buttercup’s eyes burned with a foreign heat, unwelcome. Butch used to scare her when he spoke to her like this; now, she could only bite her lip and wait for the threat of tears to pass. “Back at you,” she said again, shaky and so fucking grateful.

They stayed that way a moment, in the kitchen of her childhood home with the warm smell of chocolate and the low din of the party outside, and for the first time that day, Buttercup felt the tension ease from her shoulders.

“By the way,” Butch said, his eyes still closed and his forehead still pressed against her, “I’m fucking the shit out of you when we get back to my place.”

Buttercup smirked. “Great example you’re setting for your daughter.”

“I got her new headphones with noise canceling.”

“She’s going to notice if we break the tub again.”

“There’s a hose. She can bathe with that.”

“Just pressure wash her like a truck.”

“Fast, efficient, and it’ll save on the water bill.”

“You don’t even pay for water, the landlord does.”

“Hey, I’m a good Samaritan lookin’ out for my neighbors.”

“Screw the neighbors.” Buttercup ran her fingers over his lips, down his chin to his chest, where his heart thundered under her touch. “I want you to fuck the shit out of me.”

Butch laughed hoarsely. “Maybe I should ask Boomer to take Brisa tonight.”

They parted, and Buttercup was about to tell him to grab the cake while she hunted for a knife when she finally noticed his cheek. “Did Brick do that?”

“The rocket ship? Yeah, good excuse to talk to him.”

“A rocket ship, huh?” Buttercup smiled so brightly her cheeks began to hurt. “That was nice of him.”

Butch gave her a weird look. “Whatever, we’re hanging out tomorrow. After today, I figure he can use it.”

Buttercup’s throat wrenched as she tried her best not to burst out laughing. “Don’t quote me, but he sort of saved my ass today. The other clown died.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious, he literally died.”

“Wow, party almost ruined.”

“I mean, also a man is dead.”

“Oh, shit, yeah you’re right. Sorry. I guess don’t tell Brisa.”

Buttercup rolled her eyes. “Jesus Christ. Grab that cake and don’t drop it.”

xxx

Brisa grinned to the point of bursting as everyone sang Happy Birthday to her and she blew out her candles. Cake went by in a breeze as the kids screamed about presents next. Like some hot, pink angel, Blossom took charge of the activities with Robin’s and Buttercup’s assistance and made sure the kids were thoroughly entertained so that Butch could eat his cake and watch his little girl enjoy her special day.

Now, seated on the picnic table again with Boomer and Bubbles, he dug into the slice Bubbles said she couldn’t finish.

“Hey, Butch,” Boomer said, chill.

“Yeah?” Butch asked.

“Why’s there a huge dick on your face?”

“Huh?”

On Butch’s other side, Bubbles poked his painted cheek. “It’s a very proportionate dick. Good dimensions.”

Boomer wheezed into his beer. Butch choked on his cake. At the next table over, Brick, that soggy ballsack, stood chatting with Princess Morbucks and Mike Believe still in his full clown regalia sipping sangria through a bendy straw. The moment he felt Butch’s eyes on him, he grinned maliciously around his straw.

“Motherfucker—” Butch tried to get up, but Bubbles grabbed his wrist.

“Language, Butch. There are children around,” she sang, cheerful as a fucking bell.

Butch pointed at Brick. “You—you clown!”

“Hey, that’s Flameo Hotman to you,” said Mike, with all the confidence of someone who didn’t know he was about to be drop-kicked in the face.

Princess squinted at Butch. “Is that a cock on your face?”

“It sure is,” Boomer said, mid-heart attack.

“Daddy, come hit the piñata with me!” Brisa came bounding over with a stick and a blindfold.

“Great timing, Brisa!” Bubbles shoved Butch way too hard toward his overeager daughter, and he had no choice but to accept the stick and blindfold.

“Uh, right,” he stammered, trying to reign it in. It was her birthday; Brick and his dick pic clownery could wait.

A hand on Butch’s shoulder squeezed too hard to be entirely friendly, and he turned to get a face full of said clown.

“Honk honk, motherfucker,” Brick said under his breath.

Butch raised his hand to decapitate his brother right there, but Brisa yanked him with her Super strength, and he had no choice but to let it lie.

The sight of Buttercup nearby watching him take his place at the piñata should have mollified him, but she had let him walk out of that kitchen dick pic’d, a betrayal of the highest order…and a quality prank, if he was honest.

He’d let his guard down around her.

It was his own mistake, underestimating her.

The heat of a challenge in her eyes as she watched him lift the blindfold to his eyes set fire to his blood. After all was said and done today and Butch left Brisa with Brick because fuck his fancy Saturday plans, Butch would take Buttercup’s advice and screw the neighbors. Tonight they were putting on a show.

With a self-satisfied grin, Butch lowered the blindfold, readied the stick, and imagined the red piñata was Brick in his ridiculous clown nose.

xxx

Hm, seeding the future Buttercup and Brick friendship I’ve been waiting so long to dive into for this universe? It’s more likely than you think. 👀

Thank you so much for reading! Long live the clown cult (Blossom ghostwrote this). 🤡

#Powerpuff Girls #ppg fic #Butchercup #PPG Butch #PPG Buttercup #PPG Greens #Butch #Buttercup #Greens #PPG BTM #PPG Clown Cult #Brick suffers so we can go on living

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gallivantingheart · 4 years ago

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good luck charm

who?: gryffindor!chan x ravenclaw!reader

word count: 735

genre/s: hp!au, fluff

warnings: none

synopsis: chan, seeker and maknae of the gryffindor team wins the game again thanks to his good luck charm, you.

You jump about in the stands, frantically waving your red and gold flag. You don't look so out of place in the Gryffindor stands, wearing your black cloak and your boyfriends' house scarf that hides your own cool-toned tie. You watch as he zips across the open field, seemingly going nowhere. But, you know better.

"C'mon Chan! You got this babe! Go Go Gryffindor!" You yell, stamping your feet in a known rhythm to start a chant.

The roaring of the Gryffindor house swallows the rest of your cheers, but you still watch on as a chaser goes soaring past and Chan swerves suddenly, swinging round sharply to fly directly at you. He and the Ravenclaw seeker - a fellow housemate a year above you - tuck in close toward their broomsticks, eyes trained somewhere behind you. They drop dangerously low and the crowd screams in fright, ducking for cover. You feel the back draft whip your clothes. The commentary by Seungkwan has faded away as you watch the pair stick close. As they drop to a steep descent, Chan makes a break for it, hand outstretched. Pulling his fist to his chest he veers off, spinning as he whoops and yells. Once high enough, he thrusts it high, the golden glint of the snitch's softly fluttering wings catches your eye.

"And that's game over! Chan has caught the snitch in a win for Gryffindor! The maknae of the team has done it again!" Seungkwan announces.

You shake Sana, cheering in her ear as Chan makes a victory lap of the field. As the team gathers on the ground, you split from the crowd, already running down the stairs to the doors. You stand in the shadows, open enough to be seen but still out the way. You're heaving breaths, feeling your lack of athleticism scream in your lungs. Returning the equipment, the two teams shake hands and head in. Jihoon gives you a side glare at your attire and despite being a bad ravenclaw, you were being a good girlfriend. Chan had asked you specifically this time for you to cheer for him.

He had swung your hands between you. "Baby, I know your house is playing us this week, but it would really mean a lot to me if you would cheer me on this round."

You tilted your head. "But I always do anyway."

He smiled and shook his head, coming in closer. "I know, but...on my side - my colours, y’know? I really need you there. You're like, my good luck charm. Please?"

Of course you melted at that. Between his soft voice and pleading eyes, not to mention that little phrase you were hooked. You sighed and nodded. He beamed and wrapped you in a tight hug, swinging you side to side.

"Thank you." He leaned back to pull his scarf off, wrapping it lazily round your neck. "There, now you look just like a brave Gryffindor."

You smirk, discreetly inhaling the scent of his masculine floral. "If you don't look at my socks."

He'd laughed then, tucking you under his arm as he walked you to your advanced arithmancy class.

But back to the present, Chan catches your eye from under cover. With a blinding grin he breaks free of his teammates, broom in hand to meet you. It hits the grass when he meets you in favour of scooping you up for a tight hug, your toes dragging over the ground as you giggle in his ear.

“Congrats, Channie.” You say on a squeezed breath.

He pulls back to look at you, bright eyes glittering. “Thanks. But like I said, you’re my good luck charm - I couldn’t have done it without you.”

You roll your eyes at his gushing, but take the compliment anyway. When he finally puts you down, both teams have ditched you and you can see the rippling trail of black cloaks weave back up to the castle.

“Hey, lemme just change out of my gear and then we’ll see about sneaking you into the after party, okay?” Chan says, bending to scoop his broom back up.

You nod, ducking to peck his wind-whipped lips. “Sure. See you soon.”

He waves excitedly as he dashes off and you perch yourself against the wood wall of the stand, watching your superstar boyfriend dash off. As lovely as he looks, you hope you don’t see that image too often.

#caratwritersclub #chan #dino #seventeen chan #seventeen dino #seventeen fluff #seventeen au #seventeen fic #seventeen imagine #seventeen scenario #dino fic #dino imagines #dino scenarios #written

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awakened-harmony · 2 years ago

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Watches a lady burst into flames in the hallway.

“Ma’am, we are closed, no you may not speak to the manager, please leave.”

#The beasts of shamouti isles (IC)#Of harmony (Vita)#My heart cries for what could have been (Underfell verse ~ Vita)#Golden eyes watch (Dash commentary)#//we are playing mortuary assistant

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goldenhemmings · 5 years ago

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For The Win | Basketball!Shawn

Me? Posting two pieces in one night?? Shawnblr’s resident sports whore is back with 1.6k words of shitty impulse writing because she loses her fucking mind when Shawn does anything remotely close to sporty. Enjoy.

Raptors have the firepower to reach NBA Finals. Raptors build momentum one defining moment at a time. Raptors become Eastern Conference Champions, will play in first-ever NBA Finals. And, most recently, Warriors defeat Raptors in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. They were all articles she was proud of publishing, but none of them carried the headline Y/N so desperately wished to write: Toronto Raptors become NBA champions.

She was fresh out of college and just finishing her second year as a sports reporter for the Toronto Star, exclusively covering the Raptors. Going to basketball games and interviewing some of the greatest players in the NBA was a part of her official job description; every aspiring sports journalist’s dream. Additionally, she felt luckier than could be explained for the opportunity to cover a championship roster, especially one that was up 3-2 on Golden State, of all teams. It was a feat not many people had expected the Raptors to be able to accomplish, and Y/N was right there alongside it all, reporting on arguably the biggest Cinderella story of the 2018-19 season.

Today was her last chance to get commentary from the players before Game 6, as they traveled to Oakland first thing the next morning. Her editor expected an article to be on his desk by eight p.m. that night to be blasted to the entire city of Toronto the next morning, and time was of the essence.

Y/N rounded the corner towards the front entrance of the OVO Athletic Centre, the Raptors’ primary training facility. She flashed her press badge to the security guard standing outside the doors of the building; team protocol anytime there were members of the squad using the gym. The guard, whom she recognized from her many ventures to this particular practice facility, gave a curt nod before scanning the doors open for her.

She stepped inside, the cool air conditioning of the building overwhelming her and causing goosebumps to rise on her skin. She locked eyes with the receptionist, Jim, who sat in his usual spot at the front desk just on the other side of the doors. Dutifully wearing a red We The North t-shirt, he smiled at her and brushed a hand back over his graying hair as he stood to greet her.

“How’re you doing today, Miss Y/L/N?”

“I’m covering a first-time Eastern Conference champion,” she grinned, not missing a beat, and Jim let out a hearty laugh. “So I’d say I’m doing pretty well.”

“I’d say so, too,” he answered. “Who’re you here for today?”

She smiled. She never knew the players’ individual schedules; all she could do was hope that she could catch them at the right moment. Jim, however, had always been on her side, doing all he could to help her track down the athletes she needed when she needed them. “Ideally Leonard. I’m looking to get a statement for the feature I’m writing.”

“Believe he’s still in the main gym practicing. You might need to wait until he’s done.”

She checked the delicate rose-gold watch that adorned her wrist. “I’ve got time,” she replied, already fishing inside her purse for the tape recorder she’d brought to document the interview. “Just glad he’s actually here. Thanks, Jim.”

She stepped past the desk and followed the path to Gymnasium One; a trail that she knew like the back of her hand. She could hear the echo of a basketball bouncing on the lacquered wooden court before she could see the entrance to the gym, which she took as a good sign; at least someone was in there.

She stepped through the entryway and was met with an empty gymnasium save for the tall, familiar man shooting layups on the far-left hoop, his curly brown hair pushed off of his face with a thin black headband. She took note of the Mendes 98 stitched onto the back of his black practice jersey; he wasn’t who she was looking for, but hopefully he could get her one step closer to finding the player she needed. As soon as he spotted Y/N he began making his way over to her, the basketball now tucked between his arm and the side of his torso.

“Here to interview me?” he asked, flashing his trademark, brilliant smile. His deep voice had a slight echo in the nearly-vacant gymnasium. Shawn Mendes was a first-year player for the Toronto Raptors after the team acquired him from the Phoenix Suns, where he’d been drafted and previously spent two seasons. He wasn’t quite ready to be a main-rotation player, but he did see a few minutes of playing time most games. He was young and he was talented, and the Raptors were doing a great job at developing his skills. In a few years, he’d undeniably be of starting-five calibre.

“I’m looking for Leonard, actually,” Y/N answered matter-of-factly. She ran into Shawn quite frequently due to the fact that he wasn’t a hard-to-reach, top player in the same category as Kawhi Leonard or Kyle Lowry, and she’d had plenty of time to get to know Shawn with all the time she’d spent diligently waiting around the Raptors’ clubhouse to catch one of the team’s stars for a quick statement she could write into an article. In fact, she was the one who’d written the story that broke the news of his trade from Phoenix to Toronto; she had the article, her first-ever breaking news story, in a frame sitting on her desk at work. Shawn, on the other hand, had quickly taken a liking to the young reporter and began to look forward to seeing her before and after games, but it had never surpassed his innocent--but very obvious--attempts at flirting.

“Well when do I get an interview?” he pressed, his eyes sparkling under the bright, fluorescent lights of the gym.

“Singlehandedly put up 36 points in a championship game and then we’ll talk.”

He laughed, looking down at his basketball shoes. “So never, then.”

“I wouldn’t say never,” she teased. “You’d just better get practicing.”

“Fair,” he replied with a smirk. He was slightly sweaty from what Y/N assumed to be an intense practice session, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit to herself how endearing she found the fact that his cheeks always flushed when he played. “36 points for an interview, but how many do I have to score to get you to go to dinner with me?”

Y/N raised a brow at him, suddenly amused; he’d never been this forward before. “Equally as many,” she fired back, challenging him, and relishing in the way his lips pulled into a smile. “Plus the championship.”

His eyes widened. “You do know who we’re playing, right?”

“Are you saying you don’t believe in your team? That’d make a great headline.”

“Am I on or off the record here?” he laughed, and just as Y/N was ready to bite back with a witty remark she noticed a door on the opposite side of the gym open, and in walked Kawhi Leonard in his typical practice uniform. Y/N gasped and turned to dash towards him, already turning her tape recorder on, hoping to grab him before he left for the day.

She could feel Shawn watching her as she spoke to the Raptors’ star forward, occasionally turning away to take a few shots from behind the arc. Show off. Once satisfied with the questions she’d had Leonard answer, she said a polite thank you and good luck before turning to tuck her tape recorder back into her purse. Shawn was approaching her in an instant, the basketball bouncing off in the opposite direction, disregarded after the last shot he’d taken.

“You never answered my question, you know,” he began, still smiling, though his tone was less joking than it was before she’d gone to do her interview. “About what it’ll take for you to go to dinner with me.”

“Yes, I did,” she retorted, a sly smile crossing her mouth. “You put up 36 points in a game and the Raptors win the championship. That’s your answer.”

“That’s a lot to ask, Y/N,” he replied, laughing lightly. “I don’t exactly have a large influence over whether or not we win the championship.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, enjoying their banter more than she’d ever admit. “You’d better make the most of your three minutes of playing time, then.”

He sucked a breath of air in through his teeth, feigning offense. “Ouch.”

She giggled, but was interrupted by her phone sounding its familiar ringtone that signified a text message. She pulled it out of her bag to reveal a text from her boss: How’s the article coming?

She sighed, which Shawn picked up on right away. “Everything alright?”

“Duty calls,” she shrugged, tucking the phone away and readjusting how the strap of her purse rested on her shoulder. “I’ve gotta get back to the office and put this story together.”

Shawn nodded in understanding, his soft eyes fixated on hers. “I guess I’ll see you, then. Hopefully we can get the win in Oakland, but if we do come back to Toronto for a Game 7 I look forward to seeing you there.”

Her cheeks got hot. Why was he looking at her like that all of a sudden? “Tell your teammates I’m rooting for them,” she replied, beginning to move back towards the door.

He laughed, reaching to grab another basketball and not fully understanding what she was getting at. “Half of North America is rooting for them.”

“Then half of North America wants you to take me to dinner,” she called back with a smug grin, turning around to leave the gym before she could see his expression, but she didn’t miss the perfect swoosh sound that accompanied a basketball falling perfectly through the net.

#i literally don't even know what this is other than me acting on impulse because im crazy #shawn mendes one shot #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes writing #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes one shots #shawn mendes imagines #shawn mendes blurbs #shawn mendes #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes au #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes aus #basketball!shawn

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godlivesonthemoon-archived · 5 years ago

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⌜ tag dump general

⚡️ god is listening | ic

⚡️peasants who wants my time | ask ic

⚡️tales you want to hear about | headcanon

⚡️unholiness is the greatest gift | NSFW

⚡️pleasure of the flesh | SINDAY

⚡️hidden from god’s eyes | anonymous

⚡️beauty shall always be celebrated | aesthetic

⚡️I have eyes everywhere | dash commentary

⚡️the world in an apple | art

⚡️thunders and melody in the nocturnal sky | music

⚡️in the name of God | self

⚡️the only place I’ll call paradise | Skypeia

⚡️no boundaries and no limits | hedonist philosophy

⚡️somewhere on the moon | queue

⚡️god’s speak shall always be the most entertaining | musing

⚡️deeper in the verse of spirituality | character study

⚡️god always wins the game | meme

⚡️it’s probably a human decease | crack

⚡️you shall be entertained | starter

⚡️keep it safe | tag list

⚡️somewhere on the moon | queue

⚡️the woman behind god | ooc

⚡️I have things to say and you shall listen | PSA

⚡️eyes wide open | promo

⚡️is it a plane? is it an UFO? oh wait! it’s another one! | nami’s blog promo

⌜ tag list : RP PARTNERS (I’ll add your tag if we start to have thread together or whenever I’ll figure out what to put)

⚡️innocence in the eyes | eyesofcuriosity

⚡️the only angel I keep in my heart | puiiet

⚡️a lack of manners and style | chillin-at-partys-bar

⚡️the wonderful bitter venom in a cup of ambrosia | kingofdesert

⚡️a monster and a man all at once | xdiez

⚡️the golden wings of shame and duty | seraphiixa

⚡️tabacco smell on a sharp tongue | museabyss

⚡️a count of ice and steal | coffiinatsea

⚡️adventure gleaming in her veins | themercsadventures

⚡️I have a feeling I must protect her | moondeluge

⚡️vice and danger under a mask of beauty | redlips-blooddrops-deux

⚡️hissing his lies in the land of God | zahraalgernon

⚡️she could have been so much more under my command | castaris

⚡️the second half of my mother’s heart | hibiscusxqueen

⚡️fox ears and the sly smile of a merchant | yakusozai

⚡️just another fool with a big mouth | shutupvital

⚡️heaven and hell colliding in the dust | tenyxshx

⚡️false god is hiding behind sunglasses | vice-admiral-vergo

⚡️cerberus always watching the gates | abaddonrighthandofgod

#⚡️the woman behind god | ooc #⚡️keep it safe | tag list #; when you finally decide to have a proper tag list!#; you want to add/change your tag please let me know :)

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war-of-the-words · 5 years ago

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Winter Wonderland

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to the wonderful, kind, and talented @airu27! I’m sorry your gift is coming to you so late, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. I loved working on your gift and the picture you drew for me (despite me being the secret santa for you) warmed my heart! I hope this short little date fic can warm yours! Sincerely and with the most love, Two.

A03 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996061

The holiday season was usually pretty uneventful for Kudou Shinichi. He would spend time with Ran, or his parents if they were in town, but he never had a lover to spend the season with. This year, after all of the crazy nonsense he had gone through, he was glad to say he did.

“Shinichi~” a chipper tone said from behind him. Arms circled around Shinichi from behind him. Shinichi had been seated on the couch, savoring his evening coffee in what he thought to be an empty house. “Did you have a good day?” the voice asked, followed by the appearance of Kaito’s face as he leaned over the couch. “Yeah, I did.” Shinichi smiled and gave Kaito a peck on the cheek. The light blush Shinichi was treated to was a gift in its own right. “How about yourself?” “It was boring,” Kaito said, finally maneuvering around to take a seat next to Shinichi. Kaito leaned into him, resting his head on his shoulder. For just a second, Shinichi could see Kaito’s tails swish with agitation. Kaito’s ability to hide his ears and tails had improved over the past year, so even with Shinichi’s sensitivity to the supernatural it was difficult to see them when Kaito didn’t want him too. Regardless, Shinichi threaded a hand through Kaito’s hair and scratched his scalp, making Kaito let out a let out a sigh. As he relaxed, his yokai parts came into view, it was a little like having a camera come into focus. “That worked up, huh?” Shinichi let out a small laugh. “You know how I get when I do nothing all day.” Shinichi could hear the pout in Kaito’s voice. How cute. “Well then, you wanna go somewhere?” “Absolutely!” Kaito shot up, a wide grin on his face, his tails excitedly swishing around behind him. Really, he was too cute.

It. Was. Cold. Shinichi had to constantly remind himself that this was a good idea because the cold was making him think otherwise. He was wearing about everything he could to try to stave it off. Coat, hat, scarf, mittens, the works. At least Kaito was happy, he seemed impervious to the cold, he was just wearing a coat, which might have something to do with the large, fluffy tails he had to keep him warm. Shinichi was not jealous, not in the slightest. At least the hand Kaito was holding was warm, that was enough for Shinichi. He had passed by a shop-filled side street a couple days ago and noticed their absolutely absurd amount of decorations. Upon further investigation, he found out that the entire street had come together to transform into a winter wonderland in the hopes of racking in the holiday cash, especially from couples, so there were all kinds of promotions going on. Shinichi respected the drive, and decided that it would be the perfect place for a Christmas Eve date. As Shinichi directed Kaito back to the street and the lights came into view, Shinichi knew he made the right decision. Above their heads, golden lights crisscrossed all down the street, with bright white lights made to look like snowflakes hung down at varying levels, as if they were falling from the sky. The storefronts were all trimmed with multicolored lights and were decorated with candy canes and snowmen and such. Despite the cold, the doors to all of the stores were open, and heat lamps were set up at intervals down the road. Couples populated the street, but it wasn’t too crowded, there was plenty of room to get around. Shinichi watched Kaito’s face as he took it all in. It was Shinichi’s favorite part of taking Kaito out on dates, he loved the way his eyes seemed to sparkle with excitement. And with the added glow of the Christmas lights, he seemed absolutely ethereal. Maybe that had something to do with being a yokai, but all of the other yokai Shinichi had met over the past year had nothing on Kaito, he was in a league of his own. Kaito turned toward him, and pulled him in for a small kiss before dragging Shinichi into the street. Shinichi didn’t feel as cold. They wove in and out of stores, looking through clothes and different kind of knick knacks. They were partly shopping for Christmas gifts for their friends, but mostly just making commentary amongst themselves about the weirdest finds. They found some cute winter wear for Ran and Aoko, and Shinichi had to convince Kaito that a gag gift for Hakuba was not the best option. Instead, Shinichi found a Holmes themed notebook, but since Shinichi had found a gift for Hakuba, Kaito insisted he find their gift for Hattori. A little more walking around and Kaito swiped something off of the shelf and held it up in front of Shinichi. It was a paperback, cheap-looking book titled 101 Ways to Ask a Girl Out. Shinichi was half-tempted to say no, but it was funny, and Kaito was using his puppy-dog eyes. Shinichi couldn’t say no.After leaving the store, Kaito immediately whipped his head toward somewhere further down the street. “I smell chocolate.” That was what he left Shinichi with before he dashed off. The street was just crowded enough that Shinichi lost him in the crowd. He tried to make his way toward where Kaito had vanished, pushing through people and giving out apologies all the while. Shinichi started to become frantic, he was sure Kaito wouldn’t have wandered too far from Shinichi, and he had no idea where Kaito might have went, Kaito’s heightened senses often left Shinichi in the dark. “Geez Shinichi,” came a voice from behind him, “Why’d you go so far ahead of me.” Shinichi turned around to face Kaito and his cheeky grin. Shinichi scowled at his boyfriend, completely unamused and slightly relieved. “Like it’s my fault,” Shinichi let out a sigh. Now that he had relaxed, Shinichi noticed what Kaito was holding, two cups of what Shinichi assumed to be hot chocolate and a small bag. Shinichi took an offered cup and gave Kaito a questioning look. “Gingerbread,” Kaito said, “At first, I could only smell the hot chocolate, but when I got closer I smelled the gingerbread and, well, how could I say no?” “This is why you leave me behind,” Shinichi rolled his eyes, “Because I know how to say no.” “Yeah, partially.” Shinichi gently punched him and Kaito let out a laugh. “Sometimes you just shouldn’t say no, this is one of those times.” “Does that mean I don’t get to have gingerbread?” Shinichi teased. “Nope, gingerbread is for sharing.” Kaito said, pulling a cookie out from the bag. Kaito held it out, waiting for Shinichi to take the cookie, instead, Shinichi leaned forward and bit the head off of the tiny man. The gingerbread was delicious, but sweeter was the expression of pure horror on Kaito’s face. “You monster! You just murdered this poor man, has your detective work left you so desensitised to life?” “Yep.” Shinichi replied, finally taking the cookie and biting off an arm. “Oh the humanity! This is the man I love, what does this say about me!” “Kaito, you’re not human.” Shinichi pointed out, emphasizing the statement by pointing his cookie accusingly toward the kitsune. “Oh, yeah.” Was how Kaito responded before pulling a cookie out of the bag and biting the head off another poor gingerbread soul. Shinichi could only hold back a little while longer before he burst out laughing, Kaito cracking soon after. If they had cared, they would have noticed all of the attention their fit of laughter was drawing, but they were truly in their own winter wonderland.

#kaishin #dcmk #dcmksecretsanta #merry christmas airu!#player 2 #one shot

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megabadbunny · 5 years ago

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No Place Like Hohm (7/8)

***

(Aka the obligatory post-GitF fic, for anyone else who ever wondered what might have taken place between a trip to France and an adventure in a parallel universe. Ten/Rose, all ages, full of angst, fluff, a pinch of romantic bickering, a dash of mutual pining, and a dollop of swashbuckling adventure!)

***

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Chapter 7 | Ch 8

Perhaps later, Mickey thought, he’d have an easier time picking out the discrete parcels of what happened next, establishing some sort of sensible timeline.

(He was, of course, magnificently wrong.)

At the moment, what he knew was this: he was pinned to the ground with the business side of a sharp blade pressed to his throat, until suddenly he wasn’t, and then the crowd went absolutely mad around him, screaming and shouting and stomping their feet until Mickey thought he’d drown in the noise, and what had riled them up like that anyway?, but maybe it didn’t matter because a bunch of those Golden Guards rushed in, and there was lots of shouting amongst the Champions and their captives, and the Guards might have been splitting everyone up or they might have been making everything worse, and there might have been a bit of a scuffle, and Mickey might have punched one of those pratty Guards in the face, which they Very Much Did Not Appreciate, and then he might’ve got a punch-to-the-face of his very own, which might’ve hurt quite badly actually, and now here he was, in some sort of alien infirmary, wondering exactly how he’d come to be in this position, thousands of miles and years away from home, nervously awaiting the decision of a council of humans and horse-people who would determine whether he and his friends deserved a reward or an execution for their impertinence, watching the events of the day play out before him on one of a dozen hi-res screens as he iced a bloody nose.

It was more than a little disconcerting, watching yourself get tackled to the ground. More than that, though, it was a little annoying to watch it while someone poked fun at you in ceaseless mocking commentary.

“All right, but this is my favorite part,” Vareem said gleefully, pointing at the screen as Rose yanked Mickey to the ground to avoid a barrage of dragon-fire. “Look at your face! Your face, Mickey!”

“What was I supposed to do, pout like a supermodel?” Mickey grumped. “That thing was gonna kill me!”

“I didn’t even know faces could make shapes like that!”

Huffing in frustration, Mickey pushed up from the plush bench, pacing round the room for what felt like the hundredth time. Certainly it had to be the hundredth time they’d watched these bloody clips from the stupid Championship, the giant screens in front of them blaring Mickey and Rose and the Doctor’s faces over and over and over again for all in the room to see.

But that, though, that was a thing all its own—it was like ancient Greece out there, how comes it looked like an Apple store exploded in here? It wasn’t just the jaw-droppingly huge television screen, either; it was the gentle music that played from some unseen source, the lights overhead whose color slowly changed with the mood in the room, the curved clear windows that displayed facts and figures and useful tidbits at a mere touch of the glass, the doors that went whoosh in and out of the walls like something out of Star Trek, all of it posh and polished and spotless pristine white. It was almost like the further they got away from the town and the townspeople, the fancier this weird little planet got. It just didn’t make sense. Nor, Mickey thought with a frown, did it make sense that their lot had been tossed in here amongst all the other winners while the City Council decided their fate, instead of being chucked into some sort of alien jail.

If they had access to the TARDIS, Mickey imagined they would have grabbed Dyana and Vareem and hopped out of here lickety-split, but since those Golden Guard blokes had confiscated the TARDIS to whereabouts unknown, that complicated things a bit. At any rate, Mickey supposed he should be grateful, however grudgingly, that the whole instant-death-round thing no longer seemed to be on the table. But there was still time enough for that, he thought glumly.

“How much longer d’you think it’s gonna be?” he asked Dyana. “Feels like it’s been hours.”

“It has been hours,” replied Dyana, arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against a pillar. “Not that I’m too keen on them rushing into things. Don’t really want to become someone’s property any sooner than I have to, thanks.”

“Nah, it won’t come to that. The Doctor will talk some sense into the Council, if nothing else.”

Dyana offered a wistful smile. “That would be nice. Wouldn’t get your hopes up, though.”

“Trust me, he’s got a talent for it. Only took him six words to uproot our entire government back home.”

“Sure it did,” teased Vareem.

“It sure did!” Mickey replied. “I wasn’t exaggerating. Just six words, and he toppled the whole thing. Poof! Done and done.”

Vareem frowned. “That’s sort of terrifying.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Well, I reckon it’s not so great for Harriet. And probably not for the people who work for her. And probably it’s causing some problems in the long run,” said Mickey thoughtfully. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Point is, he takes care of things. That’s what he does. And sometimes Rose ‘n me, we help. Isn’t that right, Rose?”

Rose did not reply, lost in thought as she sat still on a fluffy white hospital bench, staring at nothingness like it wronged her. A flash of silver peeked from her wrist and upper arm, two of several high-tech mesh bandages peppering Rose’s body, slapped here and there over bruises and cuts. The bandages were good stuff, futuristic high-tech mesh infused with something that would greatly expedite the healing process, or at least that was what Mickey had garnered from the physician’s explanation—the physician, not the Doctor, because he’d waltzed off the moment they’d arrived. Strange, that; Mickey would have expected the Doctor to insist on tending Rose’s wounds himself, or at least he’d hover over the physician while they did it and drive them batty explaining everything they were doing wrong. But no, he’d vanished almost immediately. Mickey wondered why.

A flurry of raised voices erupted from the monitors, pulling Rose’s attention and Mickey’s, too. They both watched as an onscreen Doctor and Rose bickered heatedly. Mickey had every intention of teasing Rose about it, but stopped upon glancing back at her; her gaze sharpened into a glare, her mouth tightening at the sight of the Doctor onscreen, tiny and digital and utterly confused, and oh dear, but this would be a very bad time for teasing, wouldn’t it?

Mickey’s brow furrowed in concern. “Rose?”

Wordlessly, she pushed up from the bench and stalked out of the room.

“All right,” Rose said impatiently, pushing aside the privacy screen—didn’t matter how he might try to hide, she’d recognize the telltale whir and buzz of the sonic screwdriver anywhere. “We can’t keep dancing around this, Doctor. We’ve got to—”

The Doctor’s gaze snapped up to hers, eyes wide in alarm, but that wasn’t what killed Rose’s words, left her breathless, nor was it the sight of him shirtless and exposed, though that was certainly unusual in its own right. No, it was the bandages, dozens and dozens of them. Some of them were wrapped round his arms, others pasted on his shoulders, others still slapped on his flanks, curled around his ribs and peeking round from the back; stepping to the side, Rose could see even more bandages slathered along his spine. What few patches of skin left uncovered by the bandages were dotted with little pink cuts and bluish-yellow bruises and angry purple welts, a perverse sort of rainbow playing out across his skin.

Bruises and cuts and wounds, a whole tapestry of hurt, and—and how long had he been wearing those special healing bandages, now? They’d been waiting here for hours, hours, and the bandages had already helped Rose and the others so much—so why did it look like the Doctor had fought and lost a round with a heavyweight champion? Or were the original wounds just that bad? When had he even gotten those wounds?

Had he been hurting this entire time, and Rose just hadn’t noticed, somehow?

“God,” she breathed, aghast. She reached out to touch him, but drew back at the very last second. She didn’t want to put pressure anywhere he hurt. “What is all this? What happened?”

“Erm, like you said earlier, average line-of-duty stuff,” said the Doctor just a little too quickly, avoiding Rose’s gaze. He continued his work with the sonic, scanning something in his hand--that pet-chip-thing, by the looks of it--and he frowned. “Just a couple of action hero wounds. Normal stuff. Standard. Run-of-the-mill, even. Nothing a couple of Beznisian battle-bandages can’t cure—and isn’t that funny, that they’ve got battle-bandages here? Definitely unexpected, considering the technology outside these walls doesn’t appear to have advanced much past the Middle Ages, but then, I suppose we’ve encountered stranger and more out-of-place things, haven’t we?”

Rose swallowed against the suspicion bubbling up sickly in her stomach. “Doctor, how’d you get hurt?”

“I just told you,” said the Doctor, pocketing the sonic and the pet-chip. “Standard stuff. Nothing worth discussing. Certainly nothing worth worrying about.” He stood up, grabbing his shirts from where he’d discarded them and pulling the tee-shirt over his head, only wincing a little as he did so. “Now, they did offer me some acetylsalicylic acid to help with the discomfort, and that actually is worth worrying about, because you know what they say about Time Lords and acetylsalicylic acid: they don’t mix. Or rather, they shouldn’t. They occasionally do. But that’s why you always have a handy spare bar of chocolate on hand!” He pulled on his oxford and hastily buttoned every other button. “There’s a bit of advice for you: Always keep spare chocolate around, Rose Tyler; you never know when you might need a good source of simple trigclycerides.

“Anyhoo, now that we’ve all had a chance to rest and recover a bit, I rather think it’s time to get going, don’t you? Shall we collect Mr. Mickey and the TARDIS and call it a day?”

“Doctor…”

“Speaking of chocolate, it’s probably time we restocked, or added to the current stock, as it were. You can never have too much chocolate, you know. It’s demonstrably proven to be the one thing in the universe you can never have too-much-of—”

“Doctor, please,” Rose interrupted, firmer this time. “Would you just—”

“Finish saving the day, first? Yes, of course,” said the Doctor. He grabbed his suit jacket and pulled it on. “Give a good speech, give a good glare, give the baddies a good what-for, don’t you reckon?” He whipped his coat about his shoulders with only the tiniest of grimaces. “Oh, and good job on recognizing what the pet-chip-thing was, by the way. It gave me a couple ideas, so I scanned and poked around a bit and I think it might end up being rather important after all. But isn’t that always nice, when something so small actually ends up being rather big in the grand scheme of things? Always a fun revelation, never a dull moment there.

“All right, shall we?” he asked, setting off before Rose had a chance to answer.

She hung back for a moment, hesitating. Even if she didn’t recall every moment of the adventure today—which she did, in startling detail—the footage playing on the screens overhead, over and over and over again, would have reminded Rose that there was no rational explanation of how the Doctor had sustained those wounds. There was no moment when he would have received them, no time he could have received them, and there was certainly no reason. Except as she watched the scene playing out onscreen, following the progress of her tiny digital self as she struggled to steer a sickly-glowing dragon, and it disappeared behind the mountainside in a hail of fire and a thunderous boom that shook the speakers around her, Rose realized that there was, in fact, a moment when the Doctor could have been hurt, and moreover, there was certainly a reason.

(And the screen flooded black with smoke, and Rose remembered awakening, groggy and sore but relatively unhurt despite everything, and what had happened to the dragon, and where was the Doctor, and was he hurt, and later, Mickey couldn’t believe she’d survived, and how…?)

Worrying her lip between her teeth, Rose followed after him.

The Doctor, Dyana thought with a sick-clenching throat, was going to get them all killed.

(It was not surprising that the guard had no inclination to bring the Doctor and co. before City Council; what was surprising was how easily the Doctor managed to convince them otherwise, and how suddenly, in a matter of seconds it seemed, the group was bursting through the Council doors.)

“About time,” Mickey muttered under his breath, but everyone else stayed quiet as their Golden Guardsman guide typed a series of characters into the keypad next to the chamber door. Dyana couldn’t guess what held Rose or the Doctor’s tongue, but a look over at Vareem let her know that Vareem, too, was likely clenching her teeth against the urge to vomit, fighting all of the instincts screaming at her to run, run, run while she had the chance, that they were both silent for the same reason:

This was it, for them.

Their entire lives had been building up to this single event, this single conversation, this one moment, a slice of time dangling their futures precariously over the knife-sharp edge of a narrow precipice. After this handful of moments, one way or the other--whether they were punished for their insolence, executed for their crimes, or maybe, just maybe, pardoned and offered freedom--their lives would forever change.

The robotic chime of the keypad sliced through the silence, paving the way for the heavy groan of the doors as they swung inward, revealing, bit-by-bit, the darkened chambers within. The second the doors parted enough, the Doctor surged on ahead, Rose and Mickey following immediately after; Dyana and Vareem hung back, frozen in uncertainty and fear. It was all good and well for Rose and her blokes to forge ahead without a second thought, but they didn’t know the Council like everyone on Hohm did. They didn’t know enough to be afraid.

(For all her plans of rebellion, Dyana had never imagined she’d meet the Council in the flesh--she had hoped to escape the Championship with her freedom intact, or die trying. Never had it crossed her mind that fate would bring her here, face-to-face with her planet’s own personal devils, confronting the pieces of filth responsible for so much death and destruction. The very same monsters who had sanctioned the her sister’s murder.)

Dyana closed her eyes against the memory that fought its way to the surface, her fists clenching in anger. She forced herself to drink in a deep, calming breath. It didn’t matter how terrified she was. She would do what she could with this chance--a chance her sister never got.

Swallowing hard, she grabbed Vareem’s hand, squeezing it; Vareem squeezed back, as if in thanks. Dyana led them both in.

Blinking against the dark, Dyana waited for her eyes to adjust as the Councilors murmured in response, and she grimaced at what she saw. It was about what she’d expected, a mixture of old money and new tech, marble pillars and velvet curtains blossoming out of the semi-darkness amidst softly glowing lights and screens. A grand table spread out before them, a great polished wooden thing that cost more than Dyana’s family could earn in an entire generation; behind it, gilded in the finest golds and silks and gems and slim electronic accoutrements the surrounding systems had to offer, sat a half-dozen humans and horse-people, gazing down imperiously.

The Council. Dyana felt Vareem shudder next to her.

Rose glanced back at the two of them and offered an encouraging smile; Dyana knew she was telling them, without words, the same things Mickey had said earlier. The Doctor will help fix everything. It’ll all work out in the end.

Gods, Dyana hoped they were right.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded one of the Councilors.

“Six hours and fourteen minutes,” the Doctor announced as he strode confidently forward. “And eleven seconds, in case you were wondering.”

The Council stared down at the group, each of them distinctly unimpressed. “Guard, we did not send for these offenders. Why have you brought them before us?”

“And counting,” continued the Doctor, consulting his wrist as if he wore a timepiece there--which, he didn’t. “That’s more enough time to collect the facts and render a decision, wouldn’t you say?”

“We would not,” said another Councilor. “We have not yet decided your fate.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about your decision,” the Doctor replied cheerfully. “I’m talking about mine.”

The Council stared down at them, unimpressed. “Guard, remove the offenders,” ordered the Prime Councilor, “and report to your superior for suitable punishment.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said the Doctor, waving his hand dismissively before the guard could reply. “In fact, here in a few moments, none of this--” he continued, gesturing to the room around him, “--will be necessary, because here in a few moments, none of this will be in operation. See--”

Flashing the Council a cheeky grin, the Doctor rummaged around in his pockets, presenting a slim black wallet that he flipped open, displaying its contents for all to see. Normally Dyana might have delighted in seeing all of these stuffy upper-crusts breaking out of their dusty indifference, some of them stiffening in alarm at the sight of the wallet while others grew pale, but she didn’t understand--when the wallet flashed her way, all she saw inside was a small white paper that simply read: Trust me :D.

She and Vareem glanced at each other in confusion, then turned to Rose, a question half-formed on their lips. Rose shot them a little wink.

“See, things are about to change around here,” said the Doctor, absolutely beaming with mischief.

Even the Prime Councilor seemed surprised at what she saw in the wallet--which, Dyana could only imagine, must have differed wildly from what she and Vareem each saw, somehow. “I see,” the Prime Councilor murmured. Her gaze switched back to the Doctor, her mouth pressed into a thin smile. “My apologies, High Commander. We were unaware the Shadow Proclamation had chosen to honor us with their presence today. Were we not?” she asked, glancing at her fellow Councilors, as if perhaps one of them had invited a guest to the party without her permission. Dyana wondered if any of the lower Councilors would end the day without a head attached to their neck.

“Had we known a member of the Proclamation would deign to enter our humble competition, we would have proceeded quite differently,” said the Prime Councilor. “Forgive us, High Commander. You and your party are, of course, free to leave, winnings and usual fees fully intact, and we will deliver your ship promptly.”

“Excellent, most excellent. And after that, you’ll dismantle the Championship, lift your technology ban, and all of you will resign from office, effective immediately.”

The Council broke out in a murmur, but the Prime Councilor simply glared at the Doctor, her smile tightening unpleasantly. “We beg your pardon?”

“Which you most certainly will not receive,” replied the Doctor. “I’m not interested in winnings or usual fees, whatever they might be--”

“Sounds an awful lot like bribes,” muttered Rose darkly.

“--which, I suppose, sort of makes me your worst nightmare, doesn’t it?” the Doctor laughed. “After all, you must have had great success bribing anyone who came before me, mustn’t you? It’s the only thing that makes sense with all of the statutes-violations and felonies bloodying up your ledger. No way you’d have been permitted to run things so poorly for so long, otherwise.”

The Prime Councilor drew back, eyes flashing. “High Commander, those are very serious allegations, none of which, I assure you, you have any evidence to support.”

“So you’re not forcing people into your stupid little knockoff Olympics, then?” Mickey demanded.

“Or promoting the use of kidnapping and date-rape drugs?” added Rose.

“Or denying us access to vital and sometimes life-saving technology?” blurted out Vareem.

“Our people have been denied nothing,” the Prime Councilor said sharply. “The Honorable Council ensures that the people of Hohm do not descend into anarchy and chaos. We are not your mothers and fathers; it is not our place to award trinkets and treats. We cannot be blamed for those of you who have not earned your way.”

“And what about giving us away as bloody prizes, huh?” Dyana spat out before she could stop herself. “What about pawning us off on a bunch of rich off-worlders, just moving us like we’re so much rubbish? You gonna tell us you don’t do that, either?”

The Prime Councilor turned Dyana’s way. Dyana forced herself to hold the woman’s gaze even as she shuddered at the cold.

“Certainly the Honorable Council would never do such a thing,” replied the Prime Councilor. “But should any member of our population choose to volunteer themselves as bride-prizes in the Championship, we will not stop them; your lives are your own, to do with as you choose.”

“Horse shit,” Dyana tried to say, but her words were trampled by the Prime Councilor’s continued insistence that “Freedom, on Hohm, is valued above all things, even the freedom to devote oneself as a winning token. We cannot strip our people of their liberty to make such decisions, however inadvisable they may seem to others. We will not deprive our people of the right to choose.”

“Except we don’t choose at all,” Dyana argued. “Your Champions choose for us.”

“And is it not a great honor to be chosen by one of our Champions? For our Champions to pay a generous price in your name, to fight and compete and strive for your hand?”

“No!” shouted Dyana. “We don’t want that--you know we don’t want that!”

“Save your breath, Dyana,” said Vareem, pulling her back with a gentle hand on her arm. “It’s not like they can hear you over their jangling purses, anyway.”

Dyana managed not to pull out of Vareem’s grasp, but only just barely, and only because she was surprised at Vareem’s candor in front of the Councilor. She didn’t think Vareem felt so strongly about all of this. She’d never been happier to be wrong.

“It is unfortunately true that few things speak louder than money,” the Doctor agreed. “Which, I suspect, is why most of your Champions, especially the wealthy offworlders, pay such a hefty fee to enter the Championship. Does that sound about right?” he asked Dyana and Vareem. “Forgive me if I’m wrong; it’s just a hunch, as Mr. Smith and I didn’t exactly enter the competition via the usual circumstances, sort of bypassed the whole exchanging-of-money bit.”

“You’re not wrong,” Dyana replied. “They call it an entry fee or a fee to participate, but everyone knows what it really is. They put out a call to everyone in the surrounding systems, and anyone with money can pay a fortune to come here and either compete for a wife or watch the blood spilling from the stands. We’re out there risking our lives, stripped of our freedom, and rich offworlders just sit there and watch it like it’s bloody theatre.”

“All while the Council sits up here with their silks and their gold and they watch everything from behind their pristine screens,” Vareem spat.

“And they don’t even allow us to own so much as a telecommunications device.”

“Of course they don’t,” scoffed Vareem. “Otherwise they know we’d band together and stop them getting rich off violence and selling us as slaves!”

“We’re Hohm’s greatest export,” Dyana said bitterly.

“As I said,” the Prime Councilor replied, her voice as smooth and cool as the marble surrounding them, “you have no evidence to support your claims. Nor, I assure you, will you find any.”

“You know, on some level that may be true,” the Doctor admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “On the other hand, I’m certain there are scores upon scores of native Hohmish citizens who would loudly object to their mistreatment at your hands, if given the opportunity to do so--is that an accurate presumption, Dyana? Vareem?”

“Yes,” Vareem nodded, as Dyana muttered a sharp, “Very.”

“Although, if pressed by the Proclamation, I’m certain you would do your utmost to convince your citizens into stating otherwise,” the Doctor continued, to the Prime Councilor, “via your usual methods of coercion, pressure, threats, violence, et cetera et cetera. There’s the video footage of the Championship, of course, but certainly that could be easily erased, if it hasn’t been already. And unfortunately an official investigation into your many (many) sentient-beings’-rights violations could take weeks, months, possibly years, even if we did have physical, tangible evidence at our disposal. Sadly, folks like Dyana and Vareem don’t have that sort of time.

“You know what they do have, though?” the Doctor asked, and here his smile grew downright manic. “They have us,” he said, gesturing to Rose, Mickey, and himself. “And one of us has some of your oft-requested evidence conveniently hiding right in his pockets.”

He withdrew something from his coat-pocket, a small, rectangular silver thing with a series of numbers stamped across its face, and tossed it onto the table before the Prime Councilor. It clattered over the wood and slid to a stop beneath the Prime Councilor’s nose; unmoving, she peered down at it, lip curled in a disgusted sneer. “What is this?” she asked.

“That, my dear Prime Councilor, is an identifying integrated circuit, also known as a passive integrated transponder tag, outfitted with the very latest in local radio frequency identification and remote control technology; in short, as my brilliant friend here just happened to notice, it’s a pet chip,” the Doctor explained. “But Doctor, whatever are you doing with a loose pet chip floating about your considerable pockets? you might ask. Why, I’ve got a loose pet chip floating around my considerable pockets because I found it in the arena after the oh-so-mysterious explosion of a dragon, and it has yielded a surprising amount of helpful information, I would answer. In fact, I would go on to say, a scan of this particular pet chip just so happens to inform me that its original host was a squamata basilisk draconus, a species that is massively illegal to be imported, purchased, or otherwise owned in this quadrant of the universe due to its status as an endangered species.”

“You want to shut us down because of illegal animal ownership?” asked one of the Councilors, amused.

“No, I want to shut you down because you’re denying your people access to things they want and need purely in the name of control, you’re turning a profit off violence, you’re running a thriving slave trade, and you’re dabbling in illegal pet ownership,” the Doctor replied. “Oh, and the fact that you murdered a endangered animal in cold blood. Can’t overlook that.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the Council, but the Prime Councilor did not flinch. “Once again, I must assert that you have no evidence to support your claim--”

“Ah, but I do! It’s right there on the chip. It’s oh-so-helpful and absolutely packed with information. For example, it tells me who engineered the dragon, and when, and where, and why, and most importantly, for whom. And that whom is you!”

The Prime Councilor glared at him. “The Honorable Council would never--”

“Now, admittedly the chip doesn’t tell me how or why you inserted a remote detonation device into your pet dragon, but it doesn’t have to; anyone with a working brain can tell you that,” the Doctor breezed on as if the Prime Councilor had never spoken. “You, being fully aware of this creature’s status as an endangered (and therefore protected) species, asked the engineers of this specimen to implant a remote detonation device in case something happened and you needed to take dramatic action very, very quickly--say, for example, a devastatingly handsome agent from the Shadow Proclamation just happened to drop by unannounced, or a pair of disgruntled Championship participants stole your dragon for a joy ride and flew a little too close to the sun, figuratively speaking, and you lot got nervous. All you needed to do was press a little button, and boom goes the dragon.”

He leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “Unfortunately for you, the dragon might have gone boom, but that pet chip? It’s made out of none other than some of your very own Hohmish ore, and that stuff is nigh indestructible. The chip survived totally intact, with all your damning evidence written right across its face. Really, you should have made your money exporting your ore instead of your citizens, but you know what they say: hindsight’s 20/20, though there’s no time like the present to start sporting a pair of spectacles.

“Anyhoo, I may not have physical proof that you’re violating your people’s rights, but I have plenty of physical proof to charge you with multiple counts of violations of Proclamation Article 72.3 subsection 17-B, being the illicit breeding and destruction of an endangered, protected species,” said the Doctor, his hands clasped behind his back like an office manager delivering an only-mildly-unpleasant presentation to his wayward employees. “My report is on its way to my superiors right now, with the full details. Once they receive it, and find you guilty of your charges--which, make no mistake, they certainly will; dragon-breeders are notorious for turning on their clientele, no confidentiality amongst thieves I’m afraid--you’ll be stripped of your titles, fined of all your wealth, and thrown into a Proclamation prison for a minimum of ten years.”

A self-indulgent little laugh escaped his lips. “And once you’re locked away in prison, it’s only a matter of time before your other crimes are uncovered. After all, with you lot in the brig, who’s going to intimidate your citizens into silence for you?”

Finally, the Prime Councilor had the decency to look nervous, and inwardly, Dyana rejoiced.

“We could kill you where you stand,” the Prime Councilor said, her words slicing the air like shards of ice.

“Could do, but it wouldn’t stop the report from going through,” the Doctor replied. “It’s already on its way. No one can stop it going through, except me.”

Councilors whispered nervously amongst themselves in a low susurrus of mounting desperation. “What do you want?” the Prime Councilor asked the Doctor.

“Ooh, is that another veiled reference to a bribe? How exciting. It just so happens that what I desire is for you--all of you--to resign from your posts, effective immediately.”

“You can’t be serious,” one of the Councilors balked.

The Doctor laughed. “Of course I can! In fact, for every time you argue with me, or say any other silly or inane thing, I’ll add another punishment to the list. This time, you get to donate seventy-five percent of your total net worth to your citizenry.” He grinned beatifically. “Would you like to argue some more?”

“Please, be reasonable,” protested another Councilor, and the Doctor just chuckled in response. “And now I’m banning you from the planet Hohm altogether,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, you’re off the planet. All of you. It’s that, or prison for a decade.”

His grin grew sharp. “A decade, if you’re lucky.”

This time no one dared argue with him; the only response the Doctor received was a bunch of open-mouthed, disbelieving stares.

“Uh-oh, hear that?” asked the Doctor, pointing to the imaginary timepiece on his wrist. “Sounds like it’s make-a-decision-already o’clock.”

“You would really break our world like this?” asked the Prime Councilor. “Break our foundations, shatter our economy, leave our people leaderless and wandering?”

“I’m sure your new Councilors-in-interim will smooth things along nicely.”

“There are no other Councilors. We have not chosen successors.”

“Nor would any reasonable person permit you to. I am referring, of course, to Dyana and Vareem,” the Doctor replied, brow quirked in amusement, as if the Prime Councilor was terribly stupid. “Both excellent candidates for Councilor-ship. That is, if they’d like the job?”

All eyes turned to Vareem and Dyana, and Dyana’s throat ran dry. She had strode into the arena fully expecting to escape, or die trying. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined any of this would happen. Never had she dared hope that she would help make it happen! And now, this bright, shining gift sat just before her, the chance to help guide her world into the future, to make things better for everyone, to give every person on Hohm the choices they needed, the choices they deserved…

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She wished her sister had lived to see this. She would have been so, so proud.

“Yes,” Dyana whispered, warmth blossoming from her cheeks to her fingertips to her toes, bringing joy and hope and relief flooding with it. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Me too,” added Vareem, nodding emphatically.

The Doctor beamed at them. “Wonderful. You’ll both do brilliantly. I’m certain of it.”

He turned back to the Council, clapping his hands together in anticipation. “All right! You’ve got a choice before you, which quite frankly in rather generous considering the choices you’ve robbed your people of over the years; you can voluntarily resign, leaving behind most of your fortunate and all of your privilege and prestige, but living otherwise modest lives somewhere far, far away from the people you’ve hurt, or, my report goes through, my superior officers at the Shadow Proclamation get a nice little arrest warrant handy, and the swift hammer of justice strikes fast, hard, and without mercy.”

His smirk was one of the smuggest things Dyana had ever seen, as if he knew the answer even before asking, but wanted to savor the satisfaction of it, anyway. “So,” said the Doctor. “Which’ll it be?”

***

Rose was willing to bet the Councilors had never made a decision so quickly in all their pampered lives.

“How are you doing?” she asked in a low voice, sidling up to Dyana as they watched the Council exiting their chambers, some of them leaving with heads held high and proud while others slunk away like perhaps, if they tried hard enough, they might disappear into the shadows before anyone caught them. “You gonna be all right?”

Dyana shrugged, eyes wide. “I think so? I don’t know. I never expected anything like this to happen. I think I’m sort of in shock, actually.”

Chuckling, she shook her head. “Kind of funny, though--they’ve been so horrible, for so long, made such a huge mess and made things so bad for so many people--only to be brought down by something so small.”

“Ah, I sort of love it when that happens. Poetic justice.”

Dyana shifted, shooting Rose a glance full of suspicion. “And you deliver that sort of thing often, then? The poetic justice?”

“We’ve been known to,” said Rose with a smile.

“As agents of the Shadow Proclamation.”

“But of course,” replied Rose, tapping the side of her nose knowingly, and the two of them laughed.

They both fell quiet as a pair of Golden Guards wheeled in the TARDIS from its hiding spot somewhere in confiscation-land, watching as Vareem poked about the ship in confusion and Mickey excitedly explained it to her. The Doctor was oddly quiet as he looked on, patting the TARDIS doors in greeting, like the arm of an old friend.

“Wouldn’t have mistaken any of you for the authoritarian type,” Dyana said thoughtfully. “Doesn’t really seem like any of you care too much for any sort of rules.”

As if he could sense her watching, the Doctor glanced Rose’s way. Their gazes locked. His expression was neutral, perfectly inscrutable. But something about it twisted in Rose’s gut anyway.

“But then again I didn’t think the Doctor’s paper-thing said anything important, so, I dunno,” Dyana continued. “I guess looks can be pretty deceiving, huh?”

The Doctor ducked into the TARDIS, breaking their gaze. Rose frowned.

“Yeah,” she murmured, worrying her lip between her teeth. “I guess so.”

“Okay, look. I know you don’t want to talk about this,” Rose called out, closing the TARDIS doors quietly behind her. “Not really, not in any way that actually means anything. And that’s fine. You don’t have to talk. Just listen.”

Surprised, the Doctor looked up from the console, watching wordlessly as Rose fidgeted in place. God, why was this so difficult?

She swallowed, loudly. “You hurt me,” she said. “Back on that spaceship. Back in France. You said things and you did things that hurt me.”

Before the Doctor had a chance to reply, Rose shook her head, rushing along with, “Maybe you didn’t mean to, maybe you didn’t think about it that way. Maybe you didn’t think about it at all. And I mean, I guess that matters, at least a little. But when you share your life with someone--because that’s what we’re doing, Doctor, we’re sharing our lives right now, that’s what’s happening whether you want to call it that or not--when you share your life with someone, you have to think about how your actions affect others. You have to.”

The Doctor didn’t reply, just kept watching her, his brow knit in concentration, or maybe concern.

“I know you’re hurt because of me,” Rose said, her voice quiet. “Because you protected me. That’s what happened, yeah? I don’t remember, and it was too dark and smoky to make it out on the screens back there--but you kept me safe when we were falling. Right? Cos I don’t have barely a scratch on me, but you look beat to hell under all those layers. So you must’ve protected me, put your arms around me and broken the fall, somehow. You must have done.”

Now the Doctor couldn’t meet her gaze, scratching his neck uncomfortably as he looked away.

“I wanted to say thank you for that,” Rose said, forcing her words to stay clear and strong, not to shake the way they wanted to. “I’d probably be dead if it weren’t for you. Honestly, I’d probably be dead several times over if it wasn’t for you. Of course, the same is probably true in reverse. But that’s what we’re both there for, yeah? To watch out for each other, keep each other company, keep each other safe. To trust each other.”

Drawing a deep breath, Rose closed her eyes. “What you did a few days back--leaving us behind on the spaceship, kissing Reinette and bragging about it after--that was a violation of trust,” she said, her cheeks flushing red-hot with embarrassment. “Whether or not you meant it that way. It was--it felt like a betrayal.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him; big mistake. He was staring into the distance, mouth tight, jaw taut, fingers clenched round the edge of the control desk. To an outsider, it might have appeared that he was fighting not to be angry at Rose; Rose knew him well enough to suspect he was trying not to show his anger with himself. The thought broke Rose’s heart.

She kept going.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way,” she said, carefully. “But you need to know how it felt to me.”

Silently, the Doctor issued a curt nod.

Rose suppressed a sigh. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she felt disappointed, somehow. Although really, she’d given him the option not to speak, so maybe she shouldn’t be surprised he was taking her up on the offer. Still, she’d hoped…

But that didn’t matter. She’d said her piece and he’d heard it, and acknowledged it, at least a little bit. That was worth something, right?

Rose turned to leave, to give the Doctor some space, but stopped in her tracks at the sound of him clearing his throat.

“Rose?”

She turned back to look at him, her heart convulsing painfully in her chest, so hard she thought her ribs might crack from it. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, slowly. “What I did--it was a betrayal.”

Now Rose’s pulse was hammering in her ears. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

The Doctor’s gaze met hers. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Relief flooded Rose like waters through a broken dam. Before her brain had a chance to make any choice in the matter, her feet had carried her across the console room, up the stairs, and launched her straight into the Doctor, her arms wrapping snugly round him, purely of their own volition, she was sure. She squeezed him tight in a reassuring hug and he responded in kind, embracing her in a way that felt only a little bit desperate. Rose buried her face against his shirt and let out a long, pent-up sigh of release.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, her voice muffled by his shirt.

The Doctor did not reply, but hugged her harder instead.

***

Previous | Next

***

note: once again, as much as i wish i had come up with it all on my own, the conversation about semantics re: betrayal is heavily (heavily!) inspired by some writings from my good friend, the insanely talented @ksgsworld , who is super amazeballs <3

#picandchips #ficandchips #tenrose #tenxrose #ten x rose #gitf fixit #rose x ten #otp of legend #mbb writes #mbb fic #OMFG Y'ALL I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS OFF AND ON FOR A WHOLE. FUCKING. YEAR #and it's FINALLY READY #a;sldjflskdjf;lskdfj #ALDSFJSLKDFJSLDIFJWLOERJISLDKFJWAOIRJAOEFIJAWELRIJ

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thedistantstorm · 5 years ago

Text

Day 18: “Secrets? I love secrets!”

Fandom: Destiny

Pairing: Zavala/Female Guardian

Warnings: mild sexual content, alcohol use, one unhappy, over-bribed Lilith

Miyu belches by way of greeting, Shaxx whacks her on the back with a thick hand, and they both laugh heartily. "Sid'down, Lillie," She gestures to the empty seat beside her with a slosh of her mug. "Nightss only getting started."

Lilith-2 almost wonders for a moment if she's going to blow a bulb in her optics. This is not the strict, gentle teacher she trains with nearly every morning. This warlock is flushed with a pretty blush, doe-eyed and flailing wildly for Lilith to join her.

Miyu is plastered.

This is going to be so much fun, Lilith thinks.

(And it is, until it really, really isn't.)

"When I was her age-"

"No," Miyu looks like she's slapped Shaxx, but it's very unlikely he's even felt it. Or, if he did, he likely enjoyed it. Lilith can't tell. "Don' finish that. You're a bad influence."

"Bad influence?!" Shaxx bellows in Miyu's face. "I'm a bad influence? You've drank half the bloody bar dry and I'm the bad influence?"

"You're not recounting the Dark Ages to my protege," Miyu snips back, lips plump and pouting in full force.

"Just because you were lost for half of it-"

"Ignore him," Miyu says, slinging an arm around Lilith's shoulders. "Do you need another drink?"

"Still good," She chirps, having never fully recovered from her first social outing. She'd meant to meet Bertie here for dinner and a drink, but he'd gotten caught up on patrol with a new Titan. Was just as well. This was fantastic entertainment, and she wasn't very hungry, anyway.

"You don't need to hold back on my account," Lilith watches Miyu swing her feet - the stool is too high for them to touch the ground - and hum idly. She waves down the bartender for another drink and elbows Shaxx when he focuses too hard on a Crucible replay, mouthing his own commentary.

"Please. At this stage," Shaxx covers both of Miyu's ears with his monstrous hands, but she's too concerned with the frothing ale placed before her to stop with the giddy smile, "She doesn't have a filter." He removes his hands. Miyu is still happily glugging her drink, "Zavala has another thing coming if he thinks I'm taking her home."

"Z'vala?!" she turns and looks over her shoulder, lip curling outward. "Aww, I thou' he wuss here," She slurs. "Damn." She very earnestly informs them both, "I love him. He's incredible," And then sighs like a teenager with a crush.

"You're a terror. He puts up with so much."

"He does not!" Miyu glowers at Shaxx and he cackles. She rounds on Lilith, who covers her mouth with both hands. "Don't you dare," She pokes Lilith in the chest, "Yer s'posed t'be on my side!"

That does make Lilith laugh, and she accepts a high five from Shaxx for it that night have shattered her hand. Nizana, her Ghost, runs an internal scan. Seems he's shorted out her neural sensors on impact, but everything is fine.

"He doesn't mind. I'm a cute drunk," She insists, hiccoughing once, with a petite shudder. "Makes me seem younger."

"You are too much," Shaxx agrees, clinking his mug to hers. "I'll drink to that."

"How good're you at keeping secrets?" She nudges Lilith, some time later.

"Secrets? I love secrets." Lilith makes an x over her chest plates, where a heart would be.

"Zavala. I'm like, phoo," She leans back, swaying as if her mind is blown by the idea. "I'm centuries older than him and he has no idea."

Lilith tilts her head. "Really?"

"Uh huh. He's so sweet, calling himself 'Old Man' like he's not a baby himself. This oaf, too." Miyu elbows him as punctuation for her words. "He's alright once y'get pass' the yell-y parts."

"Quit elbowing me, woman!"

The next day, Lilith wakes up to find out her morning training session is cancelled. No surprise there. She dresses, gets ready, and heads into the Tower, ready to throw herself into something that will make up for the lack of structured activity this morning.

Shaxx is irritated - she understands it as hungover - and louder than usual. Arcite is humming the song they'd been singing when Zavala arrived after his shift to take Miyu home. Talk about irony, Lilith thinks.

She doesn't want to poke the metaphorical bear, so she trudges quietly over to Zavala's post.

He does not turn from his viewpoint over the City but acknowledges her approach. "Guardian."

Lilith's reply is equally as neutral. "Commander." She waits for a beat and when he does not reply she asks, "Do you have any ops or patrols I could do? My morning appointment was… uh, cancelled."

"Ah," He muses, a hint of amusement hinted in his voice. "My breakfast plans were… dashed, as well," He shares with something like amused exasperation. "I could find something for you, if you'd like. Any preference on location?"

She shrugs. "Didn't know you have people a choice," She concedes.

"I do not, usually. However," Zavala regards her with that serious blue stare, "I require information and am willing to barter for it."

"Commander?"

"Miyu said she told you a secret, last night. She would not divulge the nature of it, but challenged me to figure it out on my own."

Lilith gulps. She should have risked going into the Crucible. Hungover Shaxx seems a hell of a lot safer than an inquisitive Zavala.

The man in question lifts his chin, his eyebrows doing this strange lift and drop whilst he tucks his hands behind his back. Without a hint of foreboding - somehow, that makes Lilith even more frightened - he apprises her.

"And you are going to tell me."

Four patrols in the EDZ later, he comes across the comms for her specifically.

“Nizana, don’t answer that.”

“I know. I pinged back our coordinates and said we were in the middle of a firefight.”

Lilith creates a grenade in the palm of her hands, solar energy blazing across her gloves. She throws it into a nearby cave, and picks off the Cabal that come rocketing out of it.

“Sir, I can’t tell you. Miyu swore me to secrecy.”

He paces before her, but it’s not anxious to anyone but the Exo left to watch him contemplate in motion.

“Is it related to her Light?”

“No.”

“The Dreaming City?”

“No.”

“Drinking?”

“No.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

“Maybe she’s embarrassed?”

“Of what?” Zavala inquires so innocently that Lilith almost answers.

“Oh-noooo. Commander, come onnn,” She whines. “This is mean. Miyu is my teacher.”

“And I am your Commander.”

Lilith, having nothing left to lose, flips a switch. “How does that work, anyway? If she’s seeing you and you live together, isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

“Alright,” He hedges, unsettled. “Dismissed.”

The Exo doesn’t waste her time, escaping while she has the chance. “Oh, thank the Traveler.”

Miyu guides her through the first four stances of a new set - Lilith had been begging to expand her repertoire - and watches as she flounders the fifth. Her teacher’s diamond eyes follow her line of sight up to a watching Zavala, who is studying Lilith intently.

“Leave her alone,” Miyu calls up to him. “This is my time and you’re making her uncomfortable.”

“You could tell me yourself.”

“Not in this life or the next, Anata. Now shoo,” She waves him off with a suggestive smile, threatening, “Or I’ll tell her another secret about something you really won’t want me sharing.”

Zavala leaves immediately.

“I don’t actually know what I told you,” Miyu admits softly, apologetic. “I was really drunk. Hopefully it was something juicy.”

“You don’t remember?!” Lilith screeches. “You are the worst drunk in the history of drinking!”

“Says the Exo who crashed on her Commander’s couch the first time she touched a pint of ale.”

“Ooooh, you’re mean. I should tell him for that.”

“You really, really shouldn’t,” Miyu says, and produces a new sword. “Give it a spin. If you like it, you can keep it.”

Lilith doesn’t look convinced. “You’re bribing me?”

Miyu shrugs, saying softly, “He’s withholding sex. I need leverage.”

“I did not need to know that.” She blinks back at Miyu. "If you don't remember, why-"

"Pride. And also he's so cute when he's focused. And his jaw does the thing."

"The thing?"

"The thing," Miyu confirms. Lilith doesn't get it. "Ugh, nevermind."

At the end of her wits, Lilith throws open the door to Zavala’s office, letting it bounce off the wall. She throws him a scathing glance at having been summoned for the twenty-seventh time this week. “Shaxx also knows. Miyu gave me a sword and I’d like to keep it. Go ask him.”

Zavala considers. “He won’t tell me, I’ve already asked.”

“What does she have on him?” Lilith flaps her arms, exasperated.

“Apparently they go way back,” Zavala says, with a roll of his eyes.

Lilith freezes.

“That’s a clue,” Zavala reasons, immediately. His eyes widen, then narrow intently.

Lilith smirks. “You got it from Shaxx, not me.”

The Commander nods. “Indeed.”

“The next time someone tells me a secret,” Lilith tells Bertie, laying in a field of redgrass near a Vexmilk stream on Nessus, “I’m going to tell the first person I see. I’m done with this. She throws her new sword into the stream and doesn’t look back.

Nizana scoffs. “Good riddance.”

“Ikora, how does one escape a difficult situation?”

“By making a choice.” She narrows her golden irises on Lilith. “Is this about the secret?”

“You know about it, too?”

Ikora harrumphs. “I know everything that happens in this Tower.”

“So you know that Miyu gave me a sword-”

Nod.

“Because Zavala is-”

“Unfortunately so.”

“Would you please just tell him? He won’t leave me alone.”

The Warlock Vanguard sighs. “I did tell him.” She crosses her arms. “Several times, in fact. He does not believe me.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not.” Ikora smiles.

Everyone wants to see Lilith suffer, it seems.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Guardian?” Kadi looks at Lilith with a blink, the postmaster terribly confused. “But-”

“I’m sorry,” Lilith shakes her head. “Throw it all away.”

The post frame takes a moment to process, then tries again. “For Guardian Lilith, from Commander Zavala. Very nice man.”

“You’ve never been on the receiving end of him when you’ve got classified information. Return to sender, Kadi. Please.”

“But Guardian, it’s busy.”

“I’m sorry, but this is just out of control. You can give that gun to the next warlock you see, okay?"

Half a week later Lilith slams the door shut behind her, causing a rather comical reaction. Miyu is paused, drink - it better not be alcohol, Lilith thinks - just shy of her lips, and Zavala's eyes narrow in thinly veiled irritation.

"You interrupted my dinner, so I'm interrupting yours."

"I have to be in Command in half an hour for a strike operation. I do not have time for-"

Lilith smacks her fist on the table, leaning forward, bellowing at him, "You interrupted my dinner, called for me sixty two times-"

"Seventy one," Lilith's Ghost interjects.

"And you've been making me out to be the biggest jerk to the postmaster. No more gifts. No more favors, no more secrets." She looks to Miyu. "Ikora said she'll teach me to be a Voidwalker, and Shaxx said he'll teach me swordplay. I'm this close-" Lilith holds up two pinched fingers to use as a meter, looking between them, "To taking them up on it!"

"Easy, Lillie."

Lilith snarls, waving her hands. "Oh no. You don't even remember it! I can't believe you!"

Zavala stares at Miyu in shock. Miyu flushes. "What?" He snaps.

Miyu flushes and shrugs. “I had a lot to drink?” She reminds them, sheepishly.

Lilith makes a flapping, exasperated gesture, and finally caves. "Look. She's older than you. By a lot. Apparently she feels younger when she drinks away her brain cells, and thinks you're cute thinking you're all old because she's like twice your age."

Miyu tilts her head. She and Zavala share a glance before he speaks. "This is a blatant fallacy, Lilith. She's pulling your le-"

One eyebrow goes up in a bold impersonation of the Commander's signature eyebrow raise.

"No," He says, scandalized.

"Yes," Miyu confirms.

“That’s impossible.”

"Not at all,” Miyu shrugs. “Lilith?"

The younger Warlock takes a heaving, exhausted, aggravated breath. "Yeah?"

"I'll take it from here. Training in the morning. Don't be late."

"Don't go out drinking," She throws back, petulant. Miyu doesn't spare her a glance. They both know the other will be there.

"Go collect all that stuff from your postmaster. It you don't want those robes, I'll take them back. He tried bribing me with them first and they’re really nice." She winks.

Zavala glowers at Miyu, but he doesn’t deny it.

"For Light's sake," The Exo grumbles, rolling her optics so hard she fears they might pop out from the strain. "I'm keeping them now, for sure."

#Destiny Fanfiction #Fictober 2019 #Commander Zavala #Zavala x OC #oc: Miyu #oc: Lilith #miyu the sweet bean warlock

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longclawislightbringer · 5 years ago

Text

Arya Stark and the Green-Eyed Monster Chapter Five: Arya Stark Knows Nothing

Rating: T

Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Elinor Tyrell/Gendry Waters, Arya Stark/Trystane Martell, background Jon Snow/Sansa Stark

Characters: Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Daenerys Targaryen, Robb Stark, Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Elinor Tyrell, Hot Pie, Trystane Martell

Summary: Arya ends up sitting next to Gendry at the highly anticipated Hufflepuff v. Ravenclaw match and certain things come to light.

Lol, finally uploading the final chapter here. Really should keep to a better schedule. Anyway, have the original author’s note:

This is it! The final chapter. I'm glad I got it finished before the final episode. Thanks to my wonderful beta reader sansapotter for that.

Thank you so much to every person who has read, left kudos, commented, and bookmarked this story. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter Four. Chapter Five.

Also on AO3.

Chapter Five: Arya Stark Knows Nothing

Candles flickered, casting dark shadows over the crowded patrons of the Three Broomsticks. Smoke hung thick in the air. Trystane stopped at the end of the bar to order them a couple of butterbeers. He nervously signaled to the bartender as Arya tapped her foot against the floor. The bartender placed two tankards of butterbeer, each overflowing with golden foam, on the bar. Trystane tossed down a few coins before taking the mugs. Weaving through the tables of students drinking their own butterbeer, he lead her to a small table in the back corner. Arya flopped into her chair, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well?” she said. “This better be good.”

“Right,” Trystane stammered, passing her a tankard. “I should start by saying that I do think you’re cool and that I did want this date to go well.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” She took a big gulp of her butterbeer. The butterscotch bubbles bounced around her mouth before careening down her throat. “Why did you ignore me for half of the date and then tell me that I looked like 'a girl for once,'?”

Trystane gulped. “Okay, that does sound quite bad thinking about it now . . . I don’t know why I said that; you look pretty all the time. Can I make a confession?”

Arya raised a brow and gestured for him to continue.

“I wanted this date to work because I’m trying to get over Myrcella.”

Arya nearly choked on her butterbeer, the golden liquid dribbling out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, what?" She mopped the spilled butterbeer off the table. “Myrcella is your best friend, even I know that.”

Trystane glanced around the pub before lowering his voice. “I’ve been in love with her for years, but she’s too caught up in her crush on your older brother—" Arya spat out her butterbeer again, ”—To ever think of me as a possible romantic partner. I guess I thought I could get over my unrequited crush by trying to find someone else. I do admire you; you’re probably the coolest girl in the whole school.” Trystane hung his head. “I’m just too in love with Myrcella for this to have ever worked.” Arya stared at Trystane, the words to respond dying on the tip of her tongue. He fiddled with a napkin while he waited for Arya’s reply.

"I understand perfectly," Arya responded after she finished processing his confession. The part about Robb was particularly hard to wrap her head around. “I also have a confession to make. I said yes to this date because I’m trying to get over someone too.”

Trystane jerked up. “Gendry?”

“How did you know?” Arya gasped, flushing a deep crimson.

“Please; the whole school has shipped you two together since he stood up for you down by the lake in our first year. You know, I wouldn’t have asked you out if he was still single.”

“The whole school knows?” Arya panicked, the pitch of her voice rising with each word. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. Had Gendry known this whole time?

“Relax,” Trystane assured her. “I don’t think he’s caught on yet.”

Arya breathed a sigh of relief. She gulped down the rest of her butterbeer.

“Where does that leave us?” she asked.

“I don’t think a relationship would work out.”

“Seconded. But I do think you’re cool. Friends?” Arya stuck out her hand.

Trystane grinned and took her hand. “Friends.”

***

A week later, Arya glared at her ever-problematic Arithmancy homework. The equations seemed to swim together in impossible combinations, the numbers and letters blurring. She pounded her head against the desk. If only Elinor were here. The great clock chimed three times, piercing the silence of the library and startling her from her reverie. Arya bolted upright, one of her papers sticking to her face.

"Shoot!" she yelled, jumping from her chair as she shoved her papers haphazardly into her knapsack. Trystane, across the table, looked up from his History of Magic paper. "I'm late; Jon would kill me if I missed his last game."

Trystane nodded, cleaning off his quill. ��I guess I should get going too. See you Tuesday, then?"

"Yep," Arya smiled. "Bye!" She darted out the library doors in a flurry, her furious footsteps pounding on the pavement floor as she dashed through the corridors. Outside, she sprinted down the hill, skidding to a stop at the spectator entrance. She paused for a moment, leaning against the door to catch her breath before she entered the stadium. Students milled about in the hallway, waiting for a chance to enter. Arya pumped her fist in victory; she made it just in time after all. She tapped her foot against the ground, waiting for the line to move. At last, she entered the stadium.

Perusing the stands for her sister, Arya wove through the large crowd assembled for the highly-anticipated Hufflepuff v. Ravenclaw match. She spotted Sansa in her usual seat, though she had swapped out her red and gold Gryffindor scarf for one of Jon’s. Arya waved to her as she climbed the steps to the top of the stands.

“Hey,” Arya greeted her sister when she reached Sansa’s mostly empty row. Sansa took removed her handmade sign with Jon’s name in perfect glittery letters from the seat so Arya could sit.

“I brought snacks.” Arya held out an assortment of sweets.

"Excellent," Sansa replied, taking a proffered chocolate frog.

Arya plopped onto the wooden bench beside her sister. “Are you nervous?”

“Nope,” Sansa answered, popping the frog into her mouth before it could escape. “Jon’s the best chaser at this school, and he’s been preparing for this match for weeks.” The pitch crackled to life as both teams entered the field. “Look! There he is,” Sansa sighed, her cheeks flushed.

Arya gagged.

"You know, sometimes, I wish you guys weren't so insufferable together, but then I remember how you were when you were both still pining, and this is infinitely better."

“Haha, very funny.”

Margaery's voice rang out through the stadium. "Welcome to today's match between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw." Arya cheered, clapping her hands. Margaery began to announce the player's names, but the noise of the crowd faded when she noticed Gendry climbing the stairs two at a time in a beeline for their row.

“What is he doing here?” Arya hissed, her heart pounding as he stepped closer. She curled in on herself, attempting to hide behind her much taller sister.

“I invited him to sit with us,” Sansa responded. “I thought you would want to sit with your best friend.”

Arya cursed under her breath. She still hadn't figured out what to do about her Gendry problem, which was precisely why she been avoiding him for the last week aside from Quidditch practice.

“Hello, Gendry.” Sansa smiled.

“Hey there,” Gendry grinned as he turned onto their row.

“Hi,” Arya squeaked, her voice suddenly an octave higher. Gendry plopped onto the seat beside her. Arya tensed, holding herself very still to avoid looking into his ocean blue eyes. She tried to concentrate on the game, but every now and then Gendry’s leg brushed against her, sending jolts of electricity through her body.

The whistle blew, and the players took off. Jon got the first possession of the quaffle. Leaning forward in her seat, Arya followed him down the field toward the Ravenclaw goalposts. He had nodded to his two other chasers, Gilly and Shireen, and they flew in formation to protect him from flying bludgers. Jon may have been the kindest and most loyal Hufflepuff in her acquaintance, but he was ruthless on the Quidditch pitch. He lobbed the quaffle straight down the center goal post. Arya, Sansa, and Gendry cheered; Sansa waved her sign like a maniac.

“That’s ten points for Hufflepuff!” Margaery’s disembodied voice rang out.

“He’s good,” Gendry remarked. “Wonder if he’ll share his strategies with us now that he’s graduating.”

“Yeah,” Arya replied, trying to keep her voice steady and not so high-pitched. “Then maybe we wouldn’t keep getting absolutely destroyed like the last time we played Hufflepuff. They don’t call him the Lord Commander for nothing.”

Gendry laughed.

One of the Hufflepuff beaters knocked a bludger into the Ravenclaw chaser, sending the quaffle spiraling into the air. Gilly soared in to catch it just before it hit the ground.

“Quiet, you two,” Sansa shushed them, leaning forward in her seat. “I’m trying to watch the game.”

“I didn’t even think you liked Quidditch that much.”

"I don't," Sansa answered. "But you, Robb and Jon like it, so I'm supporting you all. I even helped Jon come up with some new strategies for this game." She game Arya a smug smile.

Arya rolled her eyes but kept her commentary related to the game at hand.

Sometime after the snitch entered the pitch, Arya spotted Robb and Dany sitting together several rows down. Dany stuffed a handful of popcorn in her mouth. When they noticed that they had been discovered, they whipped back towards the game, whispering conspiratorially in each other's ears. What weirdos. Arya shook her head and thought nothing of it for the rest of the game.

The game passed in a couple of hours, much faster than Gryffindor's game against Slytherin last fall. Jon and the rest of the Hufflepuff crushed the Ravenclaw keeper in points so in the end the Ravenclaw seeker dove for the snitch to end their humiliation.

"Hufflepuff wins!" Margaery announced through the speaker.

Arya, Gendry, and Sansa leaped to their feet, yelling and clapping. Sansa pulled her sister into a crushing hug. Arya hugged her back before releasing her. The Hufflepuff team dove to the ground, tumbling off their brooms to dogpile on Jon in the center of the pitch. When they pulled back, dinkon Tarly and Dolorous Edd pulled Jon onto their shoulders. As his teammates carried him off the field, he searched the crowd. When he located Sansa and Arya, he waved. Sansa blew him a kiss.

“I’ll see you guys later.” Sansa scooted past them, bounding down the stairs through the crowd of students exiting the stadium to meet Jon outside the player’s tents. She only paused to give Robb a high-five.

The euphoria of the Hufflepuff victory faded, leaving only awkwardness behind. Gendry was looking at her again, the way he had while they were under the mistletoe at the Yule Ball.

“Guess we should head back in,” Arya broke the silence before she got lost in his blue eyes.

"Yeah," Gendry agreed. They joined the line that funneled out the door, walking together in uncomfortable silence until they made it back into the castle. Arya stopped in an empty corridor.

“I should go,” Arya said. “See you around.”

“When?” Gendry asked.

“I don’t know,” Arya answered, turning to leave. “Sometime.”

“Nope,” Gendry shook his head. “That’s not good enough.” He grasped her wrist, dragging her into a nearby closet. The door shut with a bang behind them, cloaking them in darkness.

“Lumos,” Gendry said, lighting the lantern hanging from the ceiling. Arya’s breath came fast and shallow as she noticed how close they were.

“You’ve been avoiding me again.” Gendry crossed his arms, stretching the muscles underneath his shirt.

Arya flushed.

“No, I haven’t,” She stammered, turning to leave the closet. Gendry put an arm up to stop her. Arya huffed, avoiding his searching gaze.

"Don't lie to me," Gendry implored. “Does it have something to do with Elinor? Because Elinor and I—”

"Elinor's fine." Arya snapped, crossing her arms.

"What is it, then?" He dropped his arm. ”Arya, please. I can’t lose you. You’re my best friend.” His voice broke on the last sentence.

“You want to know what’s wrong?” She whirled to face him, full of fury as her heart sped up like it was on fire. “What’s bothering me is that I’m so jealous that I can’t think straight.”

“What? I don’t understand—”

“Gendry, you dolt. I don’t want you to kiss her stupid face, I want you to kiss me!” Arya gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. Her pulse quickened; had she just said that out loud?

Gendry stood dumbstruck.

“I’m so sorry,” Arya apologized, paling. “Forget that ever happened.”

The gears turned in Gendry’s head.

“Do you like me?” He asked after a moment’s contemplation.

“I thought that was kind of obvious from my desire to make out with you.”

A wide smile spread over Gendry’s face. “Elinor and I—”

“I don’t want to hear about how happy you are with your girlfriend.” Tears welled in Arya’s eyes as she turned away.

“You don’t understand.” Gendry grabbed her shoulders. “Elinor and I were never actually together—she was using me to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. And we' fake broke-up' a week ago."

“What?” It was Arya’s turn to be dumbfounded.

Gendry pulled her close, cupping her cheek with one hand. “Arya, I’ve been in love with you for years.”

"Really?" Arya murmured as he closed his eyes and leaned down.

“Since the moment I met you,” he breathed.

She punched him in the arm.

“That’s for lying to me,” she said.

“Arya, I . . .”

Arya surged forward, devouring him in a bruising kiss. She molded herself against him, reaching her arms around his neck to pull him closer. His hand gripped her hip, setting her aflame.

They separated when the need for air became too high.

“Wow,” Gendry panted.

"You can say that again," Arya smirked, shoving him against the wall of the broom closet to dive back in.

A broom clattered to the floor.

Arya winced.

“Do you want to go somewhere without brooms?” Gendry asked.

“Yes.” Arya laced her fingers through Gendry’s and pushed the door open. After checking that the coast was clear, she pulled him out into the corridor. They walked hand in hand through the hallway. “I’m curious; how did Elinor rope you into her being her fake boyfriend in the first place?”

Gendry rubbed the back of his neck as he walked. “Robb and Dany apparently suggested me to her as a viable candidate when she was looking for a date to the Yule Ball.”

Arya halted. “Robb and Dany?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why, though.”

“I do,” Arya groaned gritted her teeth as she thought on every interaction she’d had with those two meddlers. The strange comments at the victory party; the yellow dress that Dany picked out and the mysterious mistletoe at the Yule Ball; Dany's surefire plan for getting over Gendry; she even thought she recognized them sitting at a table in the back corner while she was on her date with Trystane. She smacked her forehead. “We’re so oblivious. They've been trying to set us up for months." She stormed down the hallway, their earlier plans wholly forgotten.

“Where are you going?” Gendry struggled to keep up with her fast pace.

“Come on; we’ve got to concoct a revenge plot.”

“Revenge? What for?”

“I’m tired of their meddling.” She paused just before they entered the main hallway, her fists clenched.

"How are we going to do it?" Gendry asked.

A sly grin spread across Arya’s face.

“Gendry, I know what we’re going to do today.”

#gendrya #arya stark #gendry waters #my fic #hogwarts au #jonsa #BUT IT'S IN THE BACKGROUND #daenerys the matchmaker #robb the matchmaker #asatgem #arya stark and the green-eyed monster #quidditch #love confessions #broom closets

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