#HAVE SOME POST-QUINNCIDENT CUTENESS

[riajade01]

18. the one where whenever you get a song stuck in your head, it’s because your soulmate is singing it. :D

“What’s that tune you’re humming, Malavai?“ 

Quinn blinks and looks up at his mother. “I’m sorry?”

She’s smiling at him. “I thought you didn’t like Shasot.”

“I don’t,” he protests, annoyance sharp in his tone. 

Quinn has always had opinions about the Imperial opera canon, and Shasot, well… let’s just say he has no idea why it was deemed worthy of inclusion at all. Why his mother would suggest he like it when he’s studying for the written portion of his OCS finals, which will determine the whole course of his military career, is beyond him. 

“Then why were you humming it just now?”

“I-” He stops, frowning, as his eyes run over the words in his military history text and something about that physical motion brings the tune back to mind. 

It is from Shasot, which is nonsensical. Even moreso, it’s an aria well-known to have been written for Lord Rand’s mistress, a soprano who has been a nigh-impossible act to follow in the centuries since she originated the role of Alyssa. Why something so wholly out of both his interest and his non-existent vocal range would pop into his mind is beyond him. 

Perhaps even more oddly, the voice in his mind’s ear is not the one he remembers from the recordings he’s been forced to listen to endure as part of his primary education. It’s close, but there’s something stilted about it, and breathy, as if the singer is inexperienced enough that she hasn’t mastered where to breathe and how to control her vibratto. 

Odd.

—

“FUCK Viraldun,” Mara announces, slamming her hand into the wall.

Her companion, a towering Red Sith acolyte two years her senior, Zakary Talal, cocks his head in surprise. “Oh… kay. Look, if you don’t like my writing you can just say so.”

Mara rolls her eyes, trying to will the tune - and its vague atonality - from her mind. It’s not working. And she can forgive Zak’s confusion, since Viraldun has nothing to do with their current work, which is completing a composition assignment due for performance in the morning. Well, later this morning, she realizes, glancing at the chrono on the wall.

“Sorry,” she says, grimacing. “I just can’t get this song out of my head and it’s… it’s the worst. All of Triumphal opera is the worst. If you ever write anything in that style I’ll skin you alive.”

“Okay, okay, duchess,” he soothes, “let’s take a break, yes?”

He eases her down onto the practice room’s ratty couch, shoving aside the keyboard and datapad they’ve been working off of. It’s been a good partnership; he’s a ridiculously talented composer and seems to write perfectly for her voice. 

It doesn’t hurt, she thinks, as his fingertips tease over her scalp, that he’s gorgeous, too. But despite the scent of his attraction mixing with hers, that’s a thing for another day. He won’t dally with work partners, he insists, not even at the Academy level. She can respect that - besides, she’ll be sixteen soon, and a few months after that the term will be over, and then, well. She allows herself a smug little smile at the thought.

“You’re very unsubtle,” he says, giving her braid a playful yank. 

“You’re very aloof,” she counters, pouting.

“And for good reason, it sounds like.”

“What? Why?” she demands, a tad more panicked by the declaration than she perhaps should be.

“Some say that songs get stuck in your head for no reason because somewhere in the galaxy, your soulmate is singing them.” He leans in conspiratorially to whisper, “And we both know I wouldn’t be caught dead singing Triumphal opera.”

She laughs, shoving his face away from her. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Not least because I could never love someone with such poor taste.” She shudders dramatically.

“You never know, duchess,” he says with a shrug. “Life is long.”

—

Quinn sits in the living room at Chwukusk reading, Viraldun’s Eternal Cycle playing low from his datapad. The setting feels odd - both like home and utterly foreign after months spent in exile. Not unlike his marriage. 

The weeks since they’ve returned home have been tentative steps toward a new normal, each party checking in frequently to hedge against misunderstanding or sliding into old habits. And he has every hope for their future together. It’s simply… new.

He doesn’t realize he’s begun singing along to the music until he hears Mara gasp. He drops the datapad in surprise, spinning guiltily to see her standing in the doorway. He thought he was alone; he never sings in front of others if he can help it. Not since that time early on in his tour with Broysc when he’d mindlessly sung some line or other from Shasot in his sleep and never heard the end of it.

“Darling, I-”

“Zakary was right, that smug asshole.” Her words are half awed, half accusatory. At his confused silence, she continued, “When I was at the Academy, Zak and I were working on a piece for class - it wound up in Valeran - and I couldn’t concentrate because I kept hearing that song in my head.”

“You know Zakary Talal?” he demanded, focusing on the part of her declaration he understood. 

“Yes, who do you think was the inspiration for Valera? That’s not important.“ 

“That- Talal is the best composer to grace the Empire since Viraldun died,” he countered. “This is absolutely important.”

She stops, head cocked as she studies him with those keen amber eyes. “You think he’s that good?”

“You don’t?”

“I adore his work.” She grinned. “I should introduce you sometime.”

Quinn’s stomach lurches into his throat at the thought. What would he even say to the man? 

“So you were at school together?”

She humms an affirmative, snuggling against him. “I had such a crush on him. It never came to anything. But the night before we turned in what would become Valera’s aria, I could NOT concentrate because I kept hearing that damn Viraldun piece in my head.” Her face softened as she met his gaze. “He teased me about that, about how I was destined to fall in love with someone who adored” she wrinkled her nose playfully, “Triumphal opera.”

Quinn frowned, that thought triggering a host of memories, of Shasot - Mara’s favorite opera - jumping unbidden to his mind ever since he was in his early twenties. The implication seemed highly improbable, but then… the universe was an odd place.

“You know, Talal’s more recent work has both Ascendant and Triumphal influences, and is still quite exemplary,” Quinn said. “And we are on leave at the moment." 

"Why, husband, are you inviting me to the opera?" 

"Only if you promise an audience with the composer himself.”

“I think that can be arranged,” she said, leaning down to rub her nose against his. “I need to thank him for his excellent foresight.”

[starrypawz]

writer questions!

i got tagged by @impossible-rat-babies and you tagged me like 3 months ago and I just found this lmao

but anyway

I’m tagging uh... @sleepswithvillains @semper-draca @riajade01 @heartbrreak @chaniters @antigonick

–

name: online i go under starry for the most part outside of that I go by r̷̲̟̫͎͎̂͋̍͗̋̈̋͑̄̕͜ḝ̶͍͙̙̤͕̻̫̇d̴̡̮͈̼̰͓̯̅͋̏̍̏͝a̶̳͆c̴̯̬̲͈̲̞͍͒ͅt̷̗̣̊̿͒e̴̢͔̝͚͎͔͍̓͛͒̂̓d̶͓͓̠͙͉̉́̔͂̊̉

(actually nah it’s not a big deal if people know my irl name I just don’t use it that much on the internet)

fandoms: I mostly write for FHR, Passenger and Wayhaven as of late, will occasionally write for Fo4, AC: Syndicate,  Dragon Age and SWTOR (SWTOR used to make up the bulk of my writing, I’m still very fond of it I just haven’t really played it since 2016 lmao) and will dip in and out of other random fandoms as my mood dictates. 

most popular one-shot: Just going off what i remembered to post to AO3 as trying to find everything I wrote on here would be like the actual heck

On AO3 it’s Pride-Full which is the one Good Omens fic I’ve written which was basically ‘Az and Crowley bump into each other at a Pride’

most popular multi-chapter: Uh I don’t really do multi chapter fics so I can’t answer this

actual worst part of writing: uuuh idk really I think it’s just sometimes getting started or the classic ‘i know the scene i want to write I just can’t seem to get it out’ and like when weird small details get you weirdly stuck on something

also just having the like motivation to follow through with stuff

do you outline: I probably should but I don’t tend to i do sometimes write like a line or two for like idea of what I want to get down, but I admit my not outlining it’s part me being kind of lazy part ‘tbh I mostly only write oneshots’

ideas i probably won’t get around to: Uuuh there’s like many things like for example:

There’s a SWTOR AU I have kicking around that’s like ‘Corso’s sister is still around, shenanigans ensue’

Skyrim fic based around my old PC, a thief named Ferret

Skyrim fic taking one of my old Skyrim PCs, Branda and making some like cute af ‘childhood friends to lovers’ content with Farkas

DAI Idea based around the idea I had where I’ve got a Inquisitor that has a child and it’s like they met Keiran yeah probably some sort of like ‘we bump into each others many years later’ type concept

Like everyone I was trying to do a swtor Quinncident fic and it just... I lost steam on it fast

An idea I keep procrastinating for reasons idk why which is set during Far Harbor where it’s like my non SoSu, Jax is like ‘yeah uh my dad’s from Far Harbor, oh hey dad meet my synth bf lol’

callouts: @impossible-rat-babies because your fic is so good and tbh you’re always so supportive and good for idea bouncing and stuff and we’re often like on the same wavelength on so much stuff and it’s good, @daraasum because i mean we’ve been friends for ages by this point and you have the good headcanons even if your angst ones make me NOPE  sometimes @dwead-piwate-meggers because yet again we go way back @mihqorio because like honestly you’ve always got such nice things to say about people’s content 

best writing trait: I’ve been told I’m generally pretty good at like getting into characters head and apparently quite good at making sort of natural sounding dialogue

spicy tangential opinion:

IDK if I really have anything that spicy but like:

Modern social media has really impacted the whole ‘creator and audience’ relationship on both like ‘fandom creators’ and also ‘published creators’ relationship in a bunch of weird ways and a lot of boundaries have sort of become screwed up as a result

Tumblr really is def not the best platform for like fanfiction and fandom as a whole why did we decide this was like the main fandom platform?

Wait those are more fandom opinions rather than like ‘writing opinions’ on writing opinions front uh

It’s perfectly fine to use said, and tbh things like ‘said quietly’ have a different tone than say ‘whispered’

A lot of writing rules that aren’t things like ‘Spelling is important’, ‘Paragraphs are important’ are to me more like an author’s personal preferences rather than being super set in stone and acting as if there’s some sort of like set in stone ultimate list of  writing rules isn’t really helpful everything is highly subjective 

It doesn’t really matter if you’re writing a super cliche premise, because hey that’s your take on a super cliche premise doesn’t matter if your fandom is full of coffeeshop aus, it’s your coffeeshop au

[semper-draca]

How would Gim react if someone was flirting with Quinn?

I think the answer changes a lot depending on where in their relationship they are.

Pre-the Alderaan Bad Decision; She’d try to be respectful, I think, because she’s very much a ‘other people can make their own choices and I shouldn’t be interfering or being possessive’ sort of person and at that point she’s not even sure why it bothers her. But she’d be… chilly. Towards said flirter. Subconsciously so. 

Post-the Alderaan Bad Decision but Pre-Them Getting Together; Oh man, she’d probably try and push Quinn towards the flirter if she thought they were a good person. Because she does want him to be happy but at this point is convinced that she is the worst person in the galaxy for him to be with. 

Post-Them Getting Together and also Post-Quinncident; She’d probably find it funny cause it would embarrass Quinn. At that point, they’re pretty confident in their relationship and they do (Quinncident not included) tend to trust each other. So she would again think that if Quinn does chose to leave her for some reason, they’d talk it through and it wouldn’t be on the spur of the moment cause of someone cute. 

Final factor - If the flirter is Grand Moff Rycus Kilran, who both Gimrizh and Quinn have a Spicy Mad Crush on. She’d be all for Quinn tapping that. She’d live vicariously through him. She’d ask only that he invite her along ;)