#I miss my sparrow horn. :( | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

grumpygreenwitch · 2 years ago

Text

The Fairy and the Prince #38 + #39 + #40 + #41

Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72

Originally posted 12/21/2022

As autumn sank its grip into the land, Adam abandoned the canvas in favor of paper and charcoal, and began to sketch. He quickly became aware of the disconnect Linden had pointed out, wondering how he could have possibly missed such an obvious thing before. Unable to practice on anyone but his friends, he focused on other studies, much to the despair of his art teachers.

On a blustery, dark night, tapping at one of his windows snapped him awake, heart hammering in alarm he couldn’t yet understand. “Needlemaw!”

The redcap slithered into the room and turned to help Linden in before facing Adam. “I didnae want to go without telling ye,” she began without any warning. “There’s war.”

“War!” Adam felt all warmth drain from him.

“Among the Underfolk, my people, Boul’s people, the smaller sorts beneath the Court,” she hurried to clarify, and her heart both ached and soared to see his stricken look ease not one bit. “‘Tis not uncommon, Adam. We chafe at each other’s edges, and the Queen doesnae help, she’s never bothered. Since she don’t care, none of them do, this is how we solve such things.”

“Will you be alright?!” he demanded. “Will Boul? Can I help? What if you’re hurt?”

“I dinnae ken about Boul, but I think he might be too young to fight. And me, I’ll be hurt, I’m sure of it,” she admitted casually. At his look she added, “there’s pointy bits to every side of me, Adam. Did ye think my enemies were naught like me?”

“No, but…” He chewed on his lower lip. “But it’s you I know,” he said at last, as usual striking to the core of the matter in a way the fairy-maid could, and did, understand.

“Och.” She hugged him tightly.

“What about Linden?” Adam turned to face their friend. “Can you help?”

“I would,” Linden looked wounded and angry. “They won’t let me, not Boul, not Needle.”

“What!”

“Linden cannae be seen to be choosing sides within the Court, Adam.”

“Oh, always with the stupid Court! Why can’t it just be gone, everything I hear makes me think everyone’s life would be better if they were gone. Back to wherever they came from, to pester their like there.”

“Yui’re not saying new things, Adam,” Needlemaw said wryly. “Yui’re just saying them louder than most.”

He growled, and then lunged at her and crushed her in a hug that startled the redcap with its strength. “You come back. Can I ask that? You come back to us.”

“Needle, please.” Linden’s arms wrapped around them like the strong branches of a tree. “Please promise you’ll come back. That’s all I want.”

The redcap had never known safety as she felt in that moment, in that embrace. “I cannae promise I’ll come back,” she admitted. “But I promise I will try. I will try with all that I am.”

Something sounded, far away in the woods, and it was impossible to tell if it was a wolf’s howl, or a stag’s bugling call, or a hunting horn. She slipped away from them like sand running through their fingers, and was gone as abruptly as she’d come.

Linden and Adam closed the window and curled up before the fire, lost and clinging to one another, feeling like children bereft in the dark.

It didn’t get any better. As the last harvest festival was planned and prepared, Linden came into the woods one morning to warn Adam that Boul had been decreed old enough to fight. He wasn’t even given a chance to say goodbye.

There was no one they could ask for news. Adam brought dry cherries and cracked barley for the finches and the sparrows, but there was only so much they could tell him; they weren’t travelers, sticking close to nest and mate and flock. The swallows had left when the cold weather closed in. He brought bacon rinds out and spent a night under the jousting yard’s stands, but the smallfolk there were shy, peaceful creatures. They pointed him out to the kelpie’s old pond, and told him to bring salt and meat.

He snuck out on a bitterly cold night with a small bundle over his shoulder, and met Linden in the woods. They raced to the pond as they had once before, their hearts pounding, unsure of what they’d find. As they drew close they saw them at last, rainbow lights dipping and dancing and twisting over the breath-thin ice on the water’s surface, and Linden recoiled. “Adam.”

“Will they help?”

“Adam, we can’t -”

“Linden, I don’t care what they are. Will they help?”

“Maybe,” Linden admitted. “But pixies are dangerous, Adam. They answer to no court, they answer to no one. They claim everything as their prey, even -”

As they watched, three lights suddenly converged against one. A thin, high shriek reached them from across the water. Blood spattered over the delicate ice, steaming for a brief moment. One of the lights went out.

“ - each other,” Linden finished.

Adam drew a deep, shaky breath. “I’m beginning to think it’s only your people who are nice, Linden.”

“We’re mostly nice,” Linden agreed, their voice gone breathy. “Do you still want to do this?”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I wither a little each day, not knowing.”

Adam nodded and took down the bundle. He opened it, reached in, and threw a heavy piece from a steer’s leg on the ground before them.

For a moment nothing happened. But as the scent of raw meat and blood spread on the cold night air, they saw a change come over the idle, lazy chaos of multicolored lights over the still, dark water. Like moved to like and they began to swirl faster and faster in tiny hurricanes.

Adam unwound his scarf, dropped his gloves in the middle of it, and twisted it around sharply, waiting. “Get ready.”

The pixies came like a swarm of angry hornets. They didn’t come for the meat; they arrowed at those who they feared might keep them from such a feast. Adam was done being polite; two of his friends were embroiled in a conflict that he didn’t understand. From what little he knew, it was fighting that could have been avoided, if the Queen Beyond the Woods had bothered to even try.

He swung his makeshift weapon looking for no prisoners.

Two pixies went flying, one to crash into the water and disappearing at once, another to slam against the trunk of a nearby oak with a cry, stumbling down into the blanket of leaves beneath the tree, its golden light nearly gone. Two more, though clipped, managed to backwing away. One avoided the prince altogether, hissing like an airborne viper at him.

A smaller, green flock chose to ambush the survivors. Above, a small cloud of violet light swirled. Watching, Adam guessed. A stream of blue tried to use the foliage of the wild irises as cover to rush up on the two friends.

Linden cried out something Adam couldn’t understand, and the blade-like leaves closed into an impenetrable wall. No lights came out.

Slowly, so slowly, a single violet light spiraled down. “We greet the Danu child. We greet the mortal prince.” The pixie was not human; of all the fairies he’d met, Adam had yet to see one that was so distant from the mortal seeming. It was as if someone had taken clay and smoothed from it two legs and two arms, adding at least two extra joints to each limb but adding no actual body or further noticeable features. It was the size of Adam’s forearm. Its wings were a dragonfly’s, and its skin was an eel’s, smooth and speckled, a deep violet that colored the light coming from it. Its voice was the low growl of a small, angry animal cornered in its den.

“I greet you in return,” Adam replied. “And for your courtesy, I offer this gift to you and yours.” He gestured to the piece of beef and pointedly backed away a step.

The pixie curled up in the air, twisting a leg around until it could scratch its face with the long, birdlike toes on it. There were no eyes to its face, no nose, no ears. Only a gash of a mouth where jagged teeth like broken glass flashed whenever it spoke. “Freely given?”

“For your courtesy,” Adam repeated.

It twittered something and the violet flock crashed down onto the meat, snarling as they tore it apart. Adam let them eat, aware that the green flock, four lights in all, was still floating warily at a distance, and that a dim golden glow was barely visible under the blanket of the dead oak leaves.

Eventually, the same pixie (or so Adam hoped), left the others and fluttered up to Adam, though just out of arm’s reach of both him and Linden. “You have more gifts, mortal prince. We can smell them.”

“Ah, those are not gifts. Those are payment for favors done.”

The flock rose at once. “What need have we to do favors for what is rightfully ours!” the pixie hissed.

“What need have I to offer payment for favors not done.” Adam shrugged. “Winter comes. Prey goes to ground, to sleep the winter sleep, to hide under cover of snow and ice. Winter is a lean time for all predators, even the best ones.”

“We do not answer to you, mortal prince. We do not answer even to the Danu child!”

“I would never ask that you heed me,” Linden replied. “I know what rights you claim, and what you paid for them. They are yours in my woods, always.”

The pixie, apparently bereft of the fight it had been expecting, hung silent in the air. “What favors?”

“News,” Adam said quickly. “Information. There is a war -”

“It is not our concern.”

“I do not ask that you make it your concern,” Adam agreed. “I ask, yes or no, do you understand it, the reason for it? The ebb and flow of it?” He crouched down and from his bag pulled out a plucked duck.

“Duck,” the pixie breathed. “Greasy, rich, dark, fed fat and lazy duck.”

“Careful, pixie,” Linden warned, and the trees all around them creaked in no wind. “We will not be lied to.”

The violet light pulsed like a small heart. “No and no,” it snarled.

Adam hung his head, and threw them the duck all the same. They scattered away from it. “We cannot give you what you ask,” the pixie demanded.

“I did not ask you to,” Adam told it. “I asked you two questions, and you answered them fairly. The payment’s yours. Take it in good faith, but we have no more to say to one another.”

They fell on the duck with enough zeal that a fight nearly broke among their numbers, tearing it apart and dashing away with the bits.

“What about you?” Linden called out to the flock of green hovering over the water. “Can you answer fair and honest?”

They didn’t draw very close; they were the smallest of all the flocks, barely four in number. “What we want, the mortal prince does not have in his wee bag.” The pixie’s voice was a mournful loon’s call. “What we want, the Danu child alone can give.”

Adam looked at Linden in surprise. “It is autumn, nearly winter,” Linden sounded just as surprised. “I’ve very little I can give at the best of times, less now. But ask, and I will give you an honest answer, if nothing else.”

“We want a home.”

“Traitors!” Voices within the wild irises hissed and snarled. “Cowards!”

“We are hungry! We are tired!” A single green light, parting from the flock, shouted back and moved to hover before Linden. “We know war, Danu-child. We know what brings it about. We fought our own for our freedom. But that freedom tastes stale and false when our children wither in their cocoons from hunger. Freedom has brought us nothing but death. Give us a place in your woods. Give us your law; we have watched you, every season of your life. We know you will be fair as the Queen Beyond the Woods will never be. We ask that you count us yours.”

Linden stared helplessly at Adam, who could only shrug. “Do you trust me, pixie?” They stretched out a hand.

Light as a bird, the pixie alighted on their palm and crouched down. They were much tinier, their body no bigger than Linden’s outstretched hand. “We do.”

“I have no court. I only have my woods, my friends.”

“Your woods and your friends are more potent a force than you can imagine, Danu child. We cannot go on as we are. Our light will be gone from the world and we will be forgotten, and I… do not want that for my flock.”

Linden drew a deep breath. “Then I count you and your flock mine, pixie. And these are your first laws: you hunt to eat, not for sport. You do no war upon your kin unless they do war upon you. And if they do, they do war upon me.”

The woods whispered, and Adam felt as if a hundred eyes were bearing witness to something profoundly momentous. Tiny, twittering, nervous sounds came from the wild irises.

Lightly, Linden kissed the smooth, narrow top of the pixie’s head. “It is autumn, nearly winter. But I will find a safe, warm place for you and your flock. If I am warm, you will be warm; if I have food, you will have food. Now answer the mortal prince’s question.”

The pixie, crouched down on Linden’s hand, turned to stare sightlessly at Adam. “Yes. And no.”

Adam groaned, but he crouched down and brought out a string of sausages, the last wealth inside the sack.

The pixies squealed like rusty hinges. “Oh, long squish smoke guts!”

“Meatsy meat!”

“Crunchy grains and twiggy herby herbs!” They dove upon the string when Adam dropped it.

“Mortal prince,” a thin voice of wind on dry reeds rasped out. “I have the answers you seek.”

Linden stared all around in shock. Adam turned toward the oak, not entirely surprised. “Do you?”

“On my life I do,” the last of the golden pixies declared, its voice full of pain. “Spare it, and I will give it to you. I have the answers to your questions, and if what I know does not satisfy you, then I will find those that will.”

Adam balked. “I don’t want to own anyone. I’m not like the Folk in the Woods.”

“I don’t care,” the pixie snarled. “My life is all the coin I have. I cannot be of the woods, I am of the city. If you want your answers, I must live long enough to give them. And if you give me my life, I only have it to repay you.”

Adam and Linden crossed a look. The night had gone nowhere they’d meant for it to go. “You know it’s right, Adam. If we leave it like this, the moment I let the others loose they’ll fall on it. That’s their way,” Linden said quietly.

“I know, I know, but it’s not a thing, it’s not an inkpot or a book or something to be owned.” Adam pressed his hands to his face and made a high sound of profound impatience. “A task then,” he exclaimed on a whim. “If I give you your life, you must find a way to give me mine. Truly and fairly.”

“Truly and fairly.” The pixie dug itself out from where it had hid, among the autumn-kissed leaves. “And then?”

“And then your life is your own. If you stay, you don’t stay because you owe anyone, you stay because you choose to.”

“And if you die before I can repay you?”

“Then you’re free anyway.”

“You make poor bargains, mortal prince.”

“Maybe,” Adam admitted, shrugging off his coat. “But that’s only because I could make them unfair, and choose not to. Pixies.” He showed the flock of green lights the heavy coat. “To warm you, until Linden can find something better. In exchange for one sausage.”

“Is that satin?” one of the pixies cried out in delight.

“Are those buttons brass?”

“The stitching is gold!”

They all but threw the sausage at his feet. Adam dropped the coat and snatched the treat up, moving closer to the golden pixie and unwinding his scarf. “Can you move?”

It was the size and color of a young trout, golden and rainbow, pink and white and green, flecked with black and brown. Its wings were terribly crumpled and broken. “I have moved all that I could, mortal prince,” it admitted wearily.

“Don’t bite me,” Adam warned. As carefully as he could he scooped the tiny fairy up and bundled it up in the scarf, giving it the sausage at last; it was heavier than Adam had expected, and clung to its sausage as possessively as a miser to a coin. “Oh, gods, now what do we do?”

“Well, you go back to the palace before you freeze blue,” Linden told him tartly before gesturing at his coat, which was moving all on its own, full of admiring and delighted pixies. “But I have to tend to this. Pixie, the mortal prince’s questions?”

The golden pixie shifted tiredly its featureless head, too exhausted and wounded to even eat. “Yes. And yes.”

“Go,” Linden told Adam. “Find out what you can, and tell me tomorrow.”

Adam ran.

***

He named the pixie Trout, because it had no name Adam could pronounce. That night, it sat trembling on the prince’s desk as Adam bathed its broken wings on willow-tea and stretched them out from the crumpled, broken heap they’d ended up in. “You don’t look hurt anywhere else.”

“I am not hurt anywhere else. I do not need to be. My wings are all I am.”

Trout knew of war. Sitting there and instructing Adam on the brutal attention to its wings, it spoke on its whispering, papery voice. It was an old creature, though pixies were only a step above the kelpie: they counted 'yesterday’, 'today’ and 'tomorrow’, but little else. It had seen war, and had fought in one where pixies had won, and demanded to be free of any Court, a wish which had been granted to them, and which had turned out to be more curse than blessing. But it couldn’t tell Adam how long ago, or against who, or on whose side. Only that the palace had not been there when it had been fought, and the lights of its folk had outnumbered the stars in the sky.

“This is no war,” it told Adam. “The Court is bored. There are almost no princes left to kill, not until the new crop is weaned. So they made it seem that the above-folk want something from the below-folk and the below-folk went killing the above-folk, and of course neither will abide the other doing that, and here we are.”

“For fun.” Adam had to stop to steady his hands. “They did this for fun. They started a war for fun.”

Trout turned its empty face toward him. “You seem to be caring more about them than about you. I’m not certain those are sensible priorities, mortal prince.”

“Call me Adam. Everyone here is a prince, but I’m still the only Adam.” He went back to work. It had to be hurting, yanking and tugging on the pixie’s wings, but other than grinding the jagged rows of its teeth, Trout did not react. “Do you know who’s winning?”

“No one. Whenever one side gets an advantage, they go sneaky-sneaking in and fix it so it’s all blood and chaos again.”

Adam said nothing to that, because there was nothing he trusted himself to say. Instead he got up and very carefully poured the rest of the willow tea into his wash-basin, thinning it and cooling it with some water from the pitcher. “If you soak your wings in this, they should hurt you less.”

Trout eyed him warily, and Adam added a kerchief next to the basin. “And wash your face, too, you have bits of sausage all over it.”

“It was good sausage,” Trout admitted wistfully.

“If you get better quickly, and can fly to take messages, I’ll get you more sausages. And bacon.”

“Bacon!”

“Don’t fall asleep in the basin, Trout. I don’t want to get bit fishing you out,” Adam teased, weary to his bones and yet somehow glad to know at least one problem in his life could be solved with something so simple as bacon.

Trout huffed with offended dignity, and proceeded to do exactly that. But at least it remembered not to bite when Adam did fish it out and set it down on the pillow next to his own.

***

Winter came on full of bluster and bitterly cold. With pleasant entertainment, the Court didn’t see a need to try and shorten the season, and all the misery they’d been holding back was left to catch up with the mortal world.

Adam got somewhat used to carrying a pixie in his pocket as Trout healed, and discovered perhaps the only good thing to come from the war: the Court would have no winter celebrations. It would not close its doors. Linden could stay in the woods. They didn’t seem nearly as elated about those news as Adam was, at first, and the prince felt his delight wane into wariness. “Isn’t that a good thing? Don’t you want to stay?”

“Of course it’s a good thing!” Linden was watching pixies come and go, filling old squirrel nests with pilfered wool to make nests no one would oust them from. Perched on Adam’s shoulder, Trout watched as well. “Of course I want to stay. It’s just. I mean…. Oh, butter and burrs!” They threw themselves down on the worn root of the linden tree and mumbled.

“What?”

“I said,” Linden exclaimed with an exasperated sigh, “that my hair falls out in winter!”

Adam blinked, the concept of Linden concerned over something so alien as vanity impossible to understand. Then, quite mistakenly, he thought he’d got it. “Oh, so you’ll need a hat, then! You don’t have any.”

Linden peeked at him. “I suppose,” they replied, sitting up with ill-grace and staring closely at Adam. “You won’t think me a silly sight, bare like a tree in winter?”

“Linden, I never think you silly. Reckless and obstinate, but we’re matched on that.” Adam brightened up. “You’ll be here for my birthday! And for the Longest Night! Now I know what to get you for a present.” Linden suddenly hugged him, nearly sending Trout tumbling. “They’ve called you silly for it, haven’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when has their opinion ever mattered to us?”

Bereft of half their family and forced to wait for Trout to heal before they could do anything about it, they focused instead on younger, simpler times, roaming through all the old familiar places, bringing up rich and merry memories of childhood, unwilling to think of the future and refusing to give the bleak present the pleasure of ruining their time together, taking refuge in the past instead. Linden did lose all their white, gold-tipped hair at about the same time the linden tree lost the last of its leaves, revealing a fine spattering of green freckles on the bark-brown, smooth skin; they promptly hid them beneath a satin-lined woolen cap, and then under any number of caps and hats acquired for them not just by Adam, but by Dane and Beli and Culli.

Without that tempting crown of foliage they discovered the horses were no longer inclined to try to chew on Linden, and suddenly riding was not only possible, but enjoyable.

Sometimes the black dog haunted their wake. Sometimes the black stag shadowed them through the woods.

“Perhaps I should have you teach me archery,” Linden commented tartly one of those times, and they saw their everpresent shadow no more, even if the pressure of his presence didn’t ease.

In the winter-sere woods, Adam learned to draw Linden at last; the true Linden, the long-limbed creature as graceful as a willow, as sweet as a linden, as powerful as an oak. He learned the true shape of those graceful hands that would gently lift a pixie up to catch a breeze, the sharp bark talons that could snatch and rend the life out of a rabbit so they could have dinner over a small fire. He groused endlessly about the smaller things, far more precious, Linden’s laugh, the way the shattered eyes shifted through every color with their moods, the way they curled up among the linden tree roots, stuffed in a whole bunch of coats and cloaks and scarves, having merry conversations with the birds that didn’t leave the woods through winter.

He let his eyes lead his fingers as the charcoal stick raced over paper, instead of the other way around. He drew anything and everything, Trout as the pixie peeked warily out of a pocket to speak to the green pixies, always seemingly surprised to be treated with courtesy by them. He drew the woods and added details from memory. He sketched his absent friends and those who waited for him in the palace, Dane and Beli and the Culli-maid, left to his service once Arditty had wed and departed to her own domain.

He would never, he realized one day in profound chagrin, be an artist. Oddly, it didn’t hurt him as it had before. This time he’d tried, he really had. He’d found the flaw in himself and corrected it. He could expect no more of himself.

It was also the day, two weeks before the Longest Night festivities, that he realized there were only two princes older than him in the palace. Everyone else was now younger. When had that happened?

Linden, who’d been sitting in the sun, head upturned and eyes closed, basking in the silver, pale light for it brightness rather than its warmth, looked at Adam as he froze in realization. “Are you finished, then?”

Adam looked at the drawing, and felt something inside him hurt in the best possible way. How could it not be love? “I suppose. I’m not very good at it, but it’s as done as it’s going to get.” He felt heat spilling over his face but made no effort to hide the workbook as Linden moved to their feet and approached eagerly.

“Well, let me see.” They stared curiously at the drawing. No oil or paint or canvas, only charcoal in fine, measured lines, with precision and care. “Is this what you see,” they asked, their voice gone still. “Is this what you see when you look at me?”

“Yes,” Adam admitted readily, his heart beating like a warring sparrow’s wings. “The most beautiful creature in the world.”

Linden’s breath caught with a sharp little sound, and they turned to stare at Adam, who stared right back, almost defiantly. The many-colored eyes bloomed into spring and went to a riot of summer right there in that empty winter clearing, and so slowly, so gently, Linden leaned down and kissed their young, oblivious mortal of a prince for a long, long moment. When they parted away Adam gasped briefly, tasting linden flowers and honey on his lips.

“Adam, what do these people teach you, that it’s taken you this long?” Linden teased.

“Nothing useful,” he admitted, his voice hoarse.

“I’ve bound my life to a blind idiot,” Trout commented dryly from its pocket, and Linden laughed, and for a moment it was summer, sweet and golden, in the shadow of the linden tree.

***

Adam couldn’t keep it to himself, least of all from those who’d known him nearly as long as Linden. Dane took a look at him when he came back that night, dazed with realization, and shook his head, smiling faintly. Beli gave him a narrow-eyed look, and merely warned him very tartly, “Well, this better no interfere with your studies.”

Culli merely smiled. After dinner, as she examined his mending, which was never too onerous a task, with Beli and Dane arguing quietly about something to do with the temperature in the rooms and the outrageous price of ink, she gestured him close. Adam stood before her like an errant schoolboy. “Well,” she told him. “It’s been a bit long coming, hasn’t it.”

Adam sagged and blew a long breath. “Am I the only one who didn’t know?”

“Well, it’s not that we knew,” she corrected him. “It’s just that there had to be a reason for such as Linden and such as you to come together.”

“We were friends! We’ve always been friends.”

“Aye, Highness, that’s the very point. I’m not saying they loved you from the first. But they did want to be your friend from the first. Their heart was freely given on nothing but what they saw and weighted on a wee lad. How many do you know of their kind that do that sort of thing?”

Adam licked his lips. “Only the ones they’ve brought. Only our friends.”

Culli nodded, and then shook her head in wonderment. “It’s hard to know you and not love you, Highness,” she told him, and laughed a little when he flushed red to his ears. “Well, go on now. Whatever Beli and Master Leminy might have to say about your lessons, you have to make up for lost time now, don’t you? Will you be inviting them to the Longest Night ball?”

Adam chewed on his lip. “I want to, Culli. I want to so much. But it seems so dangerous. The Dowager’s so blind in her hatred. I think I need to speak to them about it.”

“About it and about many other things.” She gave him a pointed look.

Adam scurried into his bedroom as fast as he could.

The thing was, they didn’t want to talk about the future, because to discuss a future without including Boul or Needlemaw in the conversation seemed too much like tempting fate to snatch them away in the present. Trout’s wings were sloughing off like skin from a sunburn, and the pixie was even more impatient than Adam to be airborne, often clinging to the ears of the prince’s charger as the horse raced over the meadows just so it could feel the bite of the wind, as if afraid it would forget what it felt like. Until the pixie could fly they couldn’t send word to either of their friends about the Court’s treachery, couldn’t know if sending word would even do any good.

In the end, Linden decided against the ball. Much as they wanted to see the glitter and beauty that Adam described, much as they hoped that in its own way it would be better than the wondrous galas of the Folk Beyond The Woods, they knew the Dowager Queen for another deadly enemy, and the party for another trap wrapped in satin, gossamer and jewels.

Adam had never really attended the ball beyond showing up, dipping his head politely at the Dowager and making a round of whatever adults had been invited; nothing else was expected of him. It took longer that year because he was repeatedly stopped to hear commentary about how tall he was getting, how broad across the shoulders, how fair on the face. In the end he had to practically sneak into the kitchen, snatching snacks as he went and shoving a crispy meat pastie into the pocket of the elegant, severe blue frock coat he was wearing as a Prince of the Blood. Trout’s appreciative trill nearly broke glass.

He dashed away into the woods with a satchel full of gifts, and dropped it in shock when he came to the clearing.

Lights hung everywhere, delicate floating bubbles of color. A few were Linden’s pixies; the rest they’d conjured to dispel the shadows of the longest night upon the world, and the clearing basked in delicate, multicolored light that made the ice flash like precious jewels.

He gave them their gift, a wheel of cheese cut into fourths and a whole cured ham hock cut into thin slices, and watched them dance in delight, grinning. Until the sight of Linden took his breath away.

Before they’d decided against attending the ball, Linden and Adam had discussed the matter of attire with some trepidation. Apparently in the Court they were given no choice as to what to wear; it was provided for them and that was that. Adam had no such concerns, and was quietly and deeply incensed at the casual cruelty of such a simple thing as taking choice away from someone you wanted to impress. He explained in great detail the cut and fit of his own outfit, and with some difficulty the more complex and colorful gowns of the ladies of the court, to which he’d never paid a great deal of attention. It was just as well they’d decided against the ball, and both of them blew secret breaths of relief at it.

But that night Linden had chosen an attire for the only person in the world for whom it mattered. They were a fey thing indeed, as luminous as the pixies. The green freckles on their skin gleamed in the dark. Their shattered eyes glowed like sacred lights. Exactly a replica to Adam’s clothing to every stitch, they wore a fine white shirt and a rich cravat under a frock coat of every shade of green, every tree stitched in brown with painstaking precision. Their pants were the soft, dark brown of rich earth, dotted with stitched shapes of birds, of mice and squirrels and deer, of wolves and hawks and snakes. Their feet were bare.

There was a thin circlet of living vines on their very bald head.

“You’ll be cold,” Adam protested in a daze. “You’re beautiful, Linden. You’re a prince more than I ever will be.”

Linden laughed and it was alright, it was really Linden, his Linden. “Do you like it? It took forever to make and I kept thinking someone in the smallfolk would tell you and it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore.”

“I think it suits you,” was all Adam could say. He dropped the satchel and rummaged through it until he found a present. Unsurprisingly, it was a hat.

“Oh, thank you, yes.” Linden threw the crown of vines aside, where it promptly burrowed and slithered into the ground, and dragged the hat almost to their ears. Only then did Adam notice that one of their hands was still bark, rather that smooth brown skin.

“Linden.”

“Mm? Oh, that.” They smiled in triumph and offered the hand. “Look.”

Adam took the hand in his and looked. His breath caught; there, surrounded by bark, sat the iron ring, untarnished but made harmless not by fey power, but by the very nature of Linden themselves. “You did it. Linden, you did it!”

“I did! I told you I could.” They chewed on their lip. “I gave the knife to Needle, before she left. I hope she’s alright. I hope that was alright.”

“Well, the handle’s from some sea creature, so she should be fine if that’s all she touches.” Adam saw the light of the shattered eyes falter, and drew himself very straight, offering his most refined and elegant bow. “May I have this dance?”

Linden laughed, caught by surprise. “Are you sure it’s alright? Dressed like this? Maybe I should’ve got the other kind of clothing.”

“It’s just clothing. It’s like me being called a prince, it’s just a title because I’m related to the Dowager. Honestly I have no idea how they dance with all those skirts piled on top of one another. This is much nicer.” Linden surrendered their hands, and Adam took them, and they danced to music only they could hear, knowing only that they had one another, and that it was enough. “I wouldn’t care what you wore, Linden. I only care that it’s you.”

They kissed, sweet and shy and glad, and then laughed and danced until the cold chased Adam back to the palace.

Neither of them saw the mismatched eyes, one green and one gold, staring at them with hate from the dark.

#the fairy and the prince #linden and adam #linden the fairy #adam the prince #fantasy #fantasy writing #writing #my writing #original writing #boul the troll #boulders-for-brains #needlemaw #needlemaw the redcap #trout the pixie

2 notes · View notes

the-ultimate-pie-family · 16 days ago

Text

Vanity X blood part 34

"Vanity blasted blood." Really again, vani? Yes, I need to beat your ass. Pfft, yeah, right, I'm unbeatable. "Vani kissed blood deeply, sticking her tongue down his throat he moaned teleported back." You're sick in the head, babe dammit I got tricked, but dammit that was~" mm~ it ended chills down my spine dammit I still got those chills. come here, let me do it again, babe. 'Vani giggled, wanting more' oh fuck "blood did the caption jack sparrow run for his life but got teleported tackled to the bed room" seriously babe already? Yes, you moaned, and it's time. Fuck me.......

~few hours went by vani was rolling a blunt~

So, babe. 'Blood looked at vani with his blind eyes' vani something been bugging you i can sence it. Well, something has, but not bugging me, just annoyed by it. and that is? How come I'm still here? What do you mean? I-i I don't know, maybe I'm just scared of saying it. say what, vani? Is it my past you don't know about my past life my old life before I died? no, your first marriage. Oh?...... 'blood hugged vani kissing her cheek' somethings are meant to be forgotten for reason vani. But explain to me why we can't move forward in our relationship then? I'm not saying marriage, but something greater blood no need for marriage marriage isn't everything. I know, but it is unholy to not have a marriage and a family. Well god can suck on my cock because we have a family now silly is my daughter that I choose to take as my daughter. I know, but you didn't have to. Do not do that shit with me. Blood, I know I didn't have to, but I did, and I don't regret nothing of it silly is mine, and I'll keep my promise to myself. I'll stay for this family beside I'm not letting no girl take my holy draconequus away from me. 'Blood blushed' oh stop vani your making me blush. Come here, babe. I want another kiss~ 'vani stick her long snake tongue out' oh fuck........ uhm actually I have a "vani tackled blood kissing him while sucking on his pierced tongue as blood moaned a few times vani took the advantage"

~few hours laters~

'Vani was fast asleep after a hot and tiring day while blood was rolling a blunt and teleported outside to smoke it' "then his mom/sister luna came to check on him and vani" Hey sis what's up? Came to see what you're doing. Where's your gf is at? Sleeping, we had a wild day. Is she baby hungry? Don't joke about that mom. Do you really think my age and vani age can care for another child? One, you're both immortal two, you pull out, and three me and your mom want grandchildren to spoil. Seriously, mom? Seriously? What you and vani have a wonderful thing together me and your mom couldn't be prouder of you that you started dating again. Don't get me wrong sis love being with vani she sparked up my a fire in my chest again, but I want to show her my true love i have for her. We are still searching for your heart, son it has to be in this realm somewhere. But do I actually need it to show true love? Some would say yes, but some say no. What do you think, bro? I may miss my heart, but I can show true love without it. 'Blood puffed on the blunt coughing' wanna hit this, sis? 'Blood coughed again.' Sure, why not 'luna puffed on the blunt' oooo smooth. yeah. Smooth my assim choking here. That's because you're a pussy son 'luna kept smoking the blunt while blood calmed down' better? Yeah, I probably woke vani up, too. 'As blood said that vani teleported outside' no i was up already and wondered where you went usually your outside if I fall asleep on you yeah new weed wanna puff? Miss vani 'luna took a big puffed holding her breath.' "vani felt challenged by luna, so she grabbed the blunt"

'Luna let her smoke out as her eyes were red as the devil's horns' the challenge is get your eyes as red as the devil ass i got horns. "Red horns appeared on lunas head." i love this game. "Blood took a bigger puff off the blunt." Can he do this game? Since he's blind? Actually yes his have to get pure red to win. Oh? Hmm? Learn something new every day. I guess hahah 'blood let out his smoke where both his eyes turned solid red' dammit....... iron lung baby, that's me, yeah. Yo, I did go, babe. I bet my body that i get the red as the devil's ass. Deal prepare to lose puff away. "vani gathered all her lung power and took her giant puff, holding her smoke, closing her eyes." How screwed would you be if vani does win? Oh, I won't be able to walk or use my magic properly. My body would be even more sensitive, don't you fuckin touch me mom! "Luna was about to touch blood too till he said something." 'vani passed out from holding her smoke, but she won the deal.' Well, your screwed son, good luck. Oh piss off, mom. "Blood picked up Vanity and teleported them to their bedroom. Blood laid vani on the bed." I sleep tight babe 'blood kissed vani cheek teleporting outside again. really started without? What you were forever blood 'luna was still puffing on the still going blunt' it's still going too. like always, luna. 'Blood puffed on the blunt passing it back'

Mod pie: a nice afternoon smoking my FUCKIN medical weed but over all blood is screwed vani has the body of god by the throat lol

Tag: @vanitythevantropist

#Spotify #the ultimate pie family #mod pie #weed medical marijuana #mlp #vanity #vanitythevantropist #vanity x blood

1 note · View note

lonely-lost-soul · 4 years ago

Text

A Pirate's Life for Me

Cover Art Done By: @fridaydev-draws and @friday-dsv (Dreamsmp x reader) Pirate Au! Love Interests: C!Wilbur, C!Techno, C!Dream, C!Sapnap, C!Quackity, and C!Schlatt

~~~

Salt burned your lungs as you tossed open your window with a loud bang, the seagulls perching on your flower boxes screeched in protest and flew from your window. “Fucking sky rats get the fuck out of here you heathens!” You snarled out the window shaking your fist at the bothersome birds, the sounds of the ocean crashing on the shore filled your ears as well as the chatter of the dock workers. You let the breeze blow back your hair and you heard someone calling your name from down below.

“Good morning (Y/n)!” You glanced below you and grinned,

“Morning Eret!” They waved back enthusiastically their dress spilling around their ankles, a basket of fruit was balanced on his hip. “Opening early today? I'm sure your patrons would be happy to start their drunken stupor early,” She held a hand to his mouth snickering and you shot them a look.

“If that gets more money in my pocket then so be it, I won't complain too much.” You shrugged, “Will I still see you later tonight?”

“Always do dove, how can I resist a drink from my favorite bartender.”

“You can’t it’s my charm.”

“Will the both of you shut the fuck up!” Another man’s voice growled from another open window, “It’s too early for your bullshit.” You saw Eret click his tongue but smiled up at you despite the man's protests,

“I’m heading to the market anyway. These fruits won’t sell themselves, I'll see you later.”

“See you soon!” You closed your windows once more, but not before urging your daisies to grow one last time. You tossed open the curtains allowing light to spill into your cozy home, a small carpet was in the middle of your room. It was a deep red and the pattern was made of gold yarn, aside from that everything in your residency was made of dark wood. Your shelves were littered with books and empty cups, and your old worn journal sat open on your desk. It was filled with childhood memories and you continued to write in it to this day, it was easier then, things were simple and everything was innocent and new to you. Now your days were filled with sea fairing idiots who liked to drink themselves stupid, but you could handle yourself, you always kept your father's dagger on your thigh at all times. Those who were frequent customers knew not to mess with you and those who were new learned their lesson within the first ten minutes of meeting you. You inherited the bar from your father, a kindhearted man who died a few years before today, leaving you with the bar and the dagger you had on your hip. You fished through your closet pulling out your clothes for the day, your dress was a gorgeous light coffee color and came down to your ankles. The bottom was flared and had dark brown panels on the sides, it faded inward to a light green then back to the coffee color. The corset around your waist was a dark brown with light green trim, you tied it tight with a small huff making sure your waist was sinched perfectly. The sleeves came down to your elbows allowing you to move your arms freely while making drinks. The top of the dress ended just below your collarbone, you strapped your dagger to your thigh before lacing up your knee-high black boots.

You thought back to your tavern downstairs, you were fortunate enough that you weren’t running this entire operation yourself. You ended up hiring help and they were like family and you knew they saw you as such as well. Most of the girls didn’t have a family of their own so you gave them room and board, also money, of course, you weren’t a terrible boss! You opened the door to your room, you watched Cecil, the tavern’s mascot trot out of Juniper’s room. The border collie liked to switch up which rooms he stayed in protecting every one of your girls when you couldn’t be there for them.

The first of your girls was Adelaide or Addie, she was one of the first to fall under your care. She was around your age, a motherly type, sheep hybrid, who cared for the girls, and always gave the drunk patrons with mommy issues a shoulder to cry on. Her long brown hair always hung down her back, she typically worked tables, served food and drinks, and always got a generous tip from patrons.

The next girl was Judas, a squid-enderman hybrid who was taller than you could ever wish to be, although intimidating you couldn’t meet a kinder woman. A jack of all trades the woman helped out wherever she could, black-ish purple hair curled around her shoulders and some people came specifically to hear her sing. Her voice was like rich velvet and lured men and women in like a siren.

Juniper was after Judas, a demon hybrid who was naive but you’d be a fool to underestimate her. She worked beside you at the bar, she can make some mean fruity drinks, Eret always preferred her drinks over yours. Freckles adorned her face and shoulders, her light brown hair curled down to her middle back, purple horns sprouted from the top of her head. You wanted to adorn it with gold jewelry and you were saving up to gift some to her.

Yeti was a human woman like yourself, she didn’t bother with those who were rude or obnoxious. She kept to herself only really talking when she was spoken to or when there was an opportunity to crack a rare joke. She typically stayed on the sidelines, out of the scenes and Yeti liked to help Judas decorate her sets.

Zig was a kind young adult, they got along with everyone who came inside the tavern. Soft emerald eyes drew people in, and they tried to make sure tensions within the bar didn’t rise and start a fight. There would always be one or two that’s just natural, but one look at Zig and his magic words and they seemed to disperse, not wanting to hurt the kid’s feelings.

Vendetta was the tallest member of the group you had taken in, she was stunningly beautiful and didn't take shit from anybody. She was a guard dog if you will, making sure no one fucked with any of the girls in your tavern. While Zig did their best to keep people under control sometimes they couldn’t win. That’s when Ven would step in and ��kindly’ escort them off the premises with or without force.

The youngest member here was Luvena. She was a moo-bloom hybrid with soft brown hair that sprouted flowers, her cow ears would twitch when she was excited and followed Addie around like she was her daughter. Addie took her under her wing and was training her to be a perfect little waitress, absolutely warming customers’ hearts. Luvena also loved to give out flowers, she was a fan favorite bringing new life into the tavern.

Cecil barked seeing his mama and scampered over to you, you poured food into his bowl as Juniper wandered into the hallway. Her head rested on the doorframe as she gave you a tried wave, “Morning (Y/n).”

“Morning Juni, We’re opening a little early today. Take your time I’m not expecting a big rush of bar patrons this early.” You assured her and she gave a sleepy nod,

“I’ll be down as soon as Ven’s out of the shower.” She yawned, “This beauty doesn’t come naturally.”

“Hardly darling you’re gorgeous just the way you are.” You reassured with a wink, Juniper flushed a little, happily laughing beside you.

“Just go wake the others will you, you flirt!”

Tossing your head back you gave a happy laugh heading down the hallway to make sure everyone was awake and ready to go for later. Addie and Luvena shared a room so she was in charge of waking up the youngest member of the tavern. Judas was already awake making breakfast for everyone when you headed downstairs, Zig was sitting on the counter beside her, they were the designated taste tester.

“Good morning Miss (Y/n)!” Zig chirped, the young adult hummed fondly, “Sleep okay?”

“Absolutely. What about you both? Thank you for making breakfast Judas.” You hummed fondly and Judas had a shy smile on her face.

“I slept well thank you.” Judas hummed softly, “Also it’s my pleasure. Want to make sure everyone’s healthy and alright.” She let out a little squeak as you wrapped your arms around her body, you barely came up to her chest,

“Judas please marry me,” You complained, “Your breakfast is always heavenly and you care for everyone. Please be my wife.”

“(Y/n)! Please.” She sputtered face turning a dark purple, Zig made a noise of protest and held his hand in the air.

“If she won’t marry you I will!”

“Zig! I’d be honored!”

Their entire face lit up with excitement and they hopped off the table to hug you tightly, you hugged them back and pressed a fond kiss to the top of their head. “I got to open up the tavern, you mind setting the table for me Zig?”

“Sure Miss!”

You sent Judas a kiss in the air which her face burned at, quickly going back to her cooking. You smiled eagerly and unlocked the door to the tavern, you shoved a bucket in front of the door to keep it open. The salty ocean air wafted through your nostrils and your eyes sparkled wondrously.

Today is going to be a good day.

Almost immediately a particular bastard caught your eye,

“You’re here early.” You mused raising an eyebrow,

“Heard you were opening early today sweetcheeks,” His voice was a low baritone, rough from years of smoking and drinking. Horns curled around his fluffy ears that stood out against his gruff exterior, he was a ram hybrid at its finest. “Figured I’d take the opportunity to get a special drink from my special girl,” He mused looking you up and down drinking in your figure. You scoffed at the retired man, he dressed like he was cosplaying captain jack sparrow, the gun’s in his belt just added to his costume and so did his large ruffled shirt, he was never one to forget his gold jewelry.

“Where’s Quackity?” You ignored him sitting him at his usual table, he frowned but you knew he was taking it as an opportunity to stare at your ass. He slid into the stool and put his feet up on the table, his boots were muddy but you could only control him so much. He was too much of a regular to get scared off by your threats and scolding.

“He’ll be in at his normal time. He’s not much of a day drinker, although can’t say I’m complaining. Having all your attention on me and all, considering I’m the only one in here. That being said, I’ll have my usual sweetcheeks.”

“Stop calling me that,” You scolded with a certain fondness that was reserved for the man. “You’re lucky you’re my favorite regular Schlatt,” you gave his ears a fond pinch and he bleated. He sent you a scalding look as you walked away, although the look soon fell as he got a good look at your ass once again.

“I’m your only regular sugar tits!”

“Schlatt feet off the table.” Addie criticized whacking his boots with a rolled-up menu, he rolled his eyes but dropped his feet to the floor. “You should know this by now, we go through this every day.”

“Yeah, yeah little lamb I’m on it. Judas here?”

“She’s always here,” She huffed spreading the menu down on the table. “Do you want your usual or something different? Should I get Quackity’s drink ready too?”

“Nah just stick with mine, for now, tell Judas I’d like to see her.”

Addie clicked her tongue and placed her hand on her hip, “fine. But if you’re just going to grossly flirt with her as you do with (y/n), then keep it to yourself.”

“You’re not the boss of me. Just because you look like an old hag-” The way she glared at him sent a chill down his spine, “shit babe take a joke will you.”

Eventually, people began to file into the tavern, as the morning faded into the afternoon and then into the evening. The tavern was bustling with life, Judas’s elegant voice traveled through the crowds and her voices seemed to float above the voices. Quackity joined Schlatt by his side seemingly irritated by a conversation they were having, Schlatt was about five drinks in at this point, which was much less than his usual, and Quackity on his second.

“What are they talking about?” Luvena asked swinging her legs as she sat on the bar beside you. Her moobloom ears twitching every so often as she tried to eavesdrop on their conversation,

“Vena it’s impolite to eavesdrop.” You scolded bopping her on the head lightly, she whined and rubbed the top of her head.

“I wasn’t!” She argued as you rolled your eyes, you looked over at the two men to find Quackity looking over at you. His hand was raised in the air, one finger was up summoning you to get him another drink.

“I’ll be back, why don’t you talk to Ven while I’m gone. She’ll keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter!”

“Good thing she doesn’t want to babysit your ass either, now shoo.” You motioned her to hop off the bar and she did so with a long, dramatic sigh. You looked over at Ven who gave you a silent nod, letting you know she’d watch out for the youngest member of your band of misfits. Meanwhile, you grabbed Quackity another drink and walked over to the two men at the table, “Someone order a drink?”

“Aye! Mamacita! Fancy seeing you here.” Quackity purred a bright smile spreading across his face seeing that you were the one to deliver his drink,

“Hey Big Q,” You greeted placing the drink in front of him, “You doing okay?”

“Better now that an angel walked into my sight,” He flirted and you rolled your eyes. “What? It’s true! You always brighten my day you know? Ow!” Schlatt hit his ex-first mate over the head,

“Take a breath lover boy. Thanks for the drink sugar tits.”

“You’re welcome, what were the both of you talking about if I may ask.” You hummed grabbing some of Schlatt’s empty glasses, an uncharacteristic frown came over both their faces. “Oh? Touchy subject?”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Just dishing out some old problems, most of which are better left unsaid.” He aimed that statement at Quackity, his jaw seemed clenched and Quackity’s brow furrowed in annoyance.

“Well I just want to remind the both of you,” You passed the tray of empty glasses over to Addie as she walked by, she took them swiftly. You grabbed the side of both their heads and pressed them against your chest, not that you knew but both men’s flushed to the tips of their ears. “No physical fights are allowed in this tavern. If one starts I won’t hesitate to kick your fucking asses. Got it?” They looked over your chest and locked eyes with one another, after years on the sea they could read one another’s facial expressions rather easily and at that moment they shared the same thought,

‘They should fight more often.’

“I said, got it?”

“Yes ma’am,” The repeated simultaneously as you pulled away,

“That’s what I like to hear-”

“(Y/n)!” Vendetta’s velvety voice called out from behind you, you turned and saw a group of newcomers file into your bar. Your body tensed momentarily,

Pirates.

Schlatt turned his head to follow your gaze and he tensed from behind you, “fuck me.” He growled and Quackity raised an eyebrow at his captain, he turned to look over his shoulder and his face lit up.

“Sapnap!”

The pirate who had a white bandana tied around his forehead glanced over at him and a smile lit up across his features. “Quackity? Is that you?”

“My man!” He stood up from his chair heading over to wrap the man in a hug, “I haven’t seen you in years, man.” You zoned out of their conversation eyes locking with a few of the other pirates who walked into the tavern. Vendetta and Addie both greeted them, but everyone who was under your care knew to keep their guard up around pirates. From what you could gather there seemed to be two crews, a crew of what only seemed to be two, Sapnap was included. The fire demon was still talking with Quackity, while the other man took in the view of the tavern, he had shaggy blonde hair, and had a few scars across his face. A porcelain mask sat on top of his head, a forest green cloak was around his shoulders, his hood was lowered around his neck. A sword was strapped tight against his hip and there was another dagger that seemed to be tucked against his side. His eyes gazed towards you and he winked teasingly with a coy smile, you scoffed looking over at Addie.

“Seat those two gentlemen yeah? Be careful, I’ll tell Ven and Yeti to keep an eye.” Addie looked at you, concern written on her soft features but she nodded. While Addie departed, you noticed Ven talking with the other group. Luvena was hiding behind Vendetta’s long legs, although a tall blonde boy seemed very keen on talking to her. You smoothed out your dress and moved towards the group of three, you eyed them up casually. The blonde looked to be around Luvena’s age, he had a shit-eating grin on his face and his uniform matched that of the second tallest in the group. The second tallest was clad in a light blue jacket with large golden buttons on the red collar. He had a cream-frilled shirt underneath and a black belt holding up his brown slacks, those were tucked into black boots. On his back seemed to be a guitar and was the only one of them not holding a weapon, but you knew better than to assume with pirates. His curly brown hair seemed to bounce every time he talked, he seemed to be the ringleader but there was no doubt that the real ringleader was the hybrid standing beside him. He was taller, on par with Vendetta in height, he had long pink hair that was tied in a ponytail on top of his head. A few pieces framed his face elegantly, there was no doubt he was the captain of the little crew that was in your tavern. He had a white shirt on with a deep low cut ‘V’ it showed off a good portion of his scared chest, around his shoulders sat a deep red jacket but his arms were outside of it and crossed over his chest. He seemed content on letting his second in command do all the talking, his red eyes were the only ones to meet yours. His head tilted upwards and before Vendetta could stop him he walked over towards you,

“You own the tavern?” His voice was a low monotone and it sent an array of pleasant chills up your spine.

“I do,” You raised an eyebrow crossing your arms over your chest, “Names (Y/n). You are?”

“Captain Technoblade of the ship Odyssey, I was hoping you had a few rooms and a table available. My brothers and I are pretty exhausted, we’ve been sailing all night.”

Brothers, they certainly didn’t all look alike, but then again you certainly had a mix of girls in your care. Your tongue swiped against the top row of your teeth, “Why don’t you and your brothers take a seat at the bar for now. Juniper will be happy to serve you, I’ll see if we have some free rooms available.”

“Thank you, once you return I’ll introduce them to you if you’d like,” Technoblade bowed his head before turning back to get his brother’s attention.

“I’d like that thank you.” You gave a nod motioning for Vendetta to follow you as you slid behind the bar with Juniper, Judas had also taken a spot sitting on the bar. You figured you’d let her know as well, considering she was another adult figure in the group. You knew either Juniper or Judas would fill in Addie considering the three were close. “Ven, can they be trusted?”

“Not too sure about the masked man, the one Quackity seems to be familiar with seems decent enough. He’s a fire demon though, could smell him from miles away, we all just need to be cautious.”

“Agreed,” Juniper added tapping her finger on her chin. “We should just try to curb all fighting if at all possible, what did the captain of the other group ask you?”

“They want a room, I’m about to check to see if we have availability. Thoughts on that?”

Judas let out a low hum her eyes followed both sets of pirate groups around the tavern, “I say if we have availability let them stay. They seem harmless so long as we don’t mess with them, which we’d never do.”

“Plus I can always stay awake to keep an eye on them.” Vendetta tapped her nails against the table,

“You sure.”

“As if I’d let anything happen to any of you, you’re my family.”

You all smiled softly, and you noticed Judas’s eyes widen, “Zig! Get that out of your mouth this instant!” She shot up from her spot and over to the person in question. The three of you laughed fondly at the nonsense, meanwhile, Juniper saw the three brothers sit at her bar. She moved away from you to greet them, you immediately could tell she was taken with the second eldest brother.

He seemed to be an absolute lady killer.

Vendetta ruffled your hair before going back to stand at her place by the door to keep the peace. You headed up the stairs to the rafters to check on the extra rooms you had, “Excuse me?” You tensed visibly turning around to face the man in all green. His eyes were mesmerizing, a fierce jade green to contrast his cloak, “Do you happen to have two rooms available?” The man held up two fingers to clarify his request,

“Do you usually start introductions with a blatant request like that?”

He chuckled a smile spreading across his lips, “I’m Dream and you gorgeous?”

“(Y/n), it’s your lucky day I’m about to check and see if any are available. My tavern is a hot commodity tonight.”

“Well, I can see why,” he spoke and you raised an eyebrow and tilted your head to the side.

“Oh?”

“It has the hottest owner around. Word spreads fast.”

You couldn’t believe this man was making your cheeks burn, he chuckled softly taking a step towards your figure. “Oh really, word spreads that fast on the open sea, Captian?” It was his turn to turn light pink, but he covered it up quickly with a chuckle.

“Touché.”

“I’ll get on that room for you and your friend. Take a seat, for now, this part is for guests and staff only you know?”

“So I have you all to myself?” He cheekily mused, he stepped towards you and before you knew it you were pinned against a wall. His hand suddenly brushed against your cheek, it was cold in comparison to your warm cheek. You felt Dream’s thumb brush against your cheek slowly, “You know...being on the open sea alone does something to a person.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” You mused pushing your forehead back against Dream’s, “All alone with only your crew with you.” Taking his other hand within your own you slid it up to your hip, you saw his entire face turn red as he stared down at your chest. “You’re probably missing a little love in your life, aren’t you Dreamy?” He nodded dumbly, his eyes still not leaving your chest,

Perfect. You weren’t going to let some pirate boy get the better of you.

He let out a grunt of pain as you spun him around and pressed his head into the wall with your elbow, your other hand has his pinned behind his back. “This hallway is for staff and guests only,” You purred in his ear before letting him go and swinging your hips before heading up the stairs fully. From behind you, Dream’s face was a deep, dark red and he had to clear his throat. Dream wasn’t going to let you go after that, I mean look at you, tough and able to hold your own, it awakened something inside him.

After checking up on the rooms you headed back down into the main hall, three-room keys in your hand. Glancing over at the scene in front of you, you saw Juniper dancing in the middle of the tavern the flirtatious brother at her side. Judas was sitting beside Schatt and Quackity at the bar, Addie was tending to Technoblade and the blonde at their little table. Dream and Sapnap were whispering to one another in the corner but still seemed to be enjoying the show. Vendetta was smiling softly by the door, beside her were Luvena and Zig both playing various instruments. You noticed Eret was also amongst the crowd, she had a brilliant grin on his face, it was flushed pink with alcohol and you smiled to yourself.

It was peaceful, and for a moment you forget half the patrons were scoundrels or pirates.

That was until the man dancing with Juniper locked eyes with you, his eyes lit up and he spun Juniper off into Addie’s arms. She giggled snuggling into the mother sheep’s arms, you heard a distressed “Juni! I’m holding glasses!” Before your vision was overtaken by the handsome flirt.

“Hello love,” He hummed, “May I offer you a dance?”

You were about to refuse but you saw Yeti, who finally made her appearance as it was getting closer to Judas’s set, giving you a big thumbs up “I’d be honored.” You responded taking his hand within your own, he pulled you out onto the dance floor and you felt his other hand politely hover on the small of your back. He allowed you to lean into his touch as he began to elegantly spin you around the dance floor, you were almost embarrassed to say felt like a princess. “Maybe I could get your name?” You asked above the music, “Since it seems you’re my dance partner this evening?”

“Wilbur Soot my love.” He hummed proudly, “The first mate of the ship Odysseus at your service. Plus I play music on the side.”

“Well now you need to play for us,” Wilbur twirled you around in a circle,

“Maybe one day. If you give me your name?”

“(Y/n) (L/n).”

“Beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”

“I was right.” You commented biting the bottom of your lip trying not to smile,

“About what?”

“You.”

“Ah? Already talking about me I see? Is my manliness and gentlemanly qualities that renowned?”

“Not exactly.” He picked you up slightly and pulled you into a low dip, “I was right in thinking you a nothing but a flirty playboy.” Wilbur almost dropped you, you squawked grabbing onto his neck. He began to laugh as you clung to his chest,

“Alright love. You caught me red-handed.”

Wilbur set you on your feet hands on your lower back, you were pulled close to his chest. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“I get them for free hon. I own the place.”

“Oh...oh.” He paled a little, “I didn’t fuck up our chances of getting a room did I?”

“Nah lucky for you and your brothers, I have you covered, same with your buddies over there.” You motioned to Dream and Quackity’s friend, Wilbur’s face paled as he felt the chilled room key get placed in his palm. “What’s your little brother’s name?”

“Tommy.”

“Tell them both we serve breakfast free from 7 am to 10 am.” He nodded as you walked past, Wilbur meanwhile turned to look at Technoblade. It seemed he had his red eyes on the couple the entire time they were dancing. He held up a room key, it was labeled 205; Technoblade nodded his head before leaning back and talking to Addie once more. “Dream!” You called throwing a hand up into the air, instead of Dream, Sapnap looked up he nudged Dream with his elbow. The man was now wearing his mask, but at least you could tell he was looking at you,

“Well hello, darlin’ you must be (Y/n). Name's Sapnap. Dream told me about you, so you have good news for us I hope?”

“Pleasure, I'm sure he told you all about me,” He nodded, his eyes taking in your body especially your ass. “Got you both a room key, your neighbors. Across from the other crew of pirates. Just don’t fight and we won’t have any problems.”

“You mean those jackasses are staying?” Sapnap complained loudly, looking over your shoulder at the other crew members.

“You both didn’t think you were the only patrons, did you? This is a business after all.” You, tossed the keys their way, Dream caught it with ease and Sapnap fumbled it only a little bit. After they were in their hands, you waved them off with a flutter of your palm you turned around to go speak with Judas about her set but before you could take a step you saw Schlatt stumbling up from his seat. “Ah shit,” You knew what was about to happen, you weren’t paying attention to the ram hybrid so who knew how many drinks in he was. You felt responsible, for a while you and Judas had been trying to help Schlatt with his addiction. You couldn’t help but wonder what exactly set him off for him to get this drunk, Quackity caught him in his arms with a grumble. The man was a drunken mess, and as you approached you could hear his slurred speech and could practically smell the alcohol on his breath. “Schlatt,” You spoke carefully and as soon as you got close Schlatt detached himself from Quackity and lunged at you. His head was buried in his chest, he almost purred like he was very happy to be there, you rolled your eyes and ran your fingers through his hair. You were mindful of his horns but he seemed pretty eager for you to touch them,

“(Y/n).” He whined although it was muffled against your ample chest, “Why do pirates have to fuck everything up?”

“What are you on about Schlatt? No one likes pirates.”

“They’re gonna take you away from me, sugar. You’re my safe space, this tavern is my safe space.” You sighed listening to his drunken ramblings, you grabbed his horns and pulled him away from your chest.

“This is my life Schlatt, I’m not going anywhere trust me. Plus my family is here, they need me. So try not to worry okay?” You slicked back the hair on his forehead before planting a fond kiss there, everyone in the tavern narrowed their eyes at the scene. Even your girls were green with envy, at the sight of their lovely boss kissing someone who wasn’t them. He leaned against your lips eyes fluttering closed,

“Well, well, well if it isn’t Captian Schlatt? Or ex-captain if I remember correctly.”

“What?”

You turned your head and felt Schlatt’s arms wrap around your waist and held you close to his chest. The touch was protective and you felt your heart skip a beat, why was he protecting you, and why did you actually feel protected?

“Has the drinking finally caught up to you? Or was it the fact that you lost your so-”

Was that Dream's voice?

“Shut the fuck up.” He snarled and you were shoved behind him into Quackity’s arms, you felt less protected. “I’m not that person anymore and you fucking know that,” Vendetta came to stand beside the both of you a hand was placed on your shoulder protectively. You knew she was desperately wanted to step in and you held up a hand to stop her.

“This isn’t good…” Quackity murmured, “They’re going to fight. Schlatt’s going to get himself fucking killed.”

“Calm yourself. We won’t let it get that far.” Ven grumbled eyeing you waiting for your signal. But you were lost in the conversation or argument, the two were having, you couldn’t believe Schlatt was a pirate. He was so...he just didn’t...he was a drunk okay? That didn’t exactly shout feared pirate to you!

“Oh, are you sure? I remember that look, that’s the look you’d get before you stomped someone’s lights out. No wonder your son disappeared under mysterious circumstances-” Dream was shoved against one of the poles holding up the building. He grunted and Schlatt’s arm was pulled back ready to punch, but his arm was stopped by smaller hands,

“Pardon me Mr. Schlatt but you know how we feel about fighting in our tavern.” Addie bubbled, she had a smile on her face but it wasn’t kind, it was full of warning.

“Get the fuck off me, sheepie. This doesn’t fucking concern you.” Schlatt shoved her away and as soon as his skin made contact with her body he made a sound of distress.

“(Y/n)...” Addie murmured quietly, your father’s dagger was embedded in Schlatt’s arm,

“Fucking hell you bitch!” He snarled baring his teeth, you glared at him twisting the dagger he yelled in agony.

“Touch one of my girls again and next time this dagger is going right into your back.” You ripped the dagger out, splattering the floor with blood. He grabbed his arm tightly and looked at you with slight betrayal in his yellow eyes. “I mean it Schlatt, Quackity take him home.” The man nodded looking at you longingly, he muttered a quiet ‘Sorry’ before escorting him out of your tavern. “You,” You glared harshly over at Dream, “Go to your room.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“Then find another play to stay.” You spat, he turned away and you looked over at Addie, “Are you alright?” Your voice turned tender as you cupped her cheeks. She nuzzled against your palms and nodded her head,

“I’m fine. You didn’t need to-”

“Yes, I did. No one messes with you. With any of you on my watch.”

The sheep hybrid made a little sound as her bottom lip trembled, she wrapped you in a tight hug which you accepted without hesitance. Judas walked over next and wrapped you both in her arms, pretty soon you were surrounded by your girls and Zig.

All of them had the same mindset: comforting both you and Addie.

It was good to be loved.

Wilbur watched the scene curiously and glanced over at Technoblade who stood up from his chair.

“I think that’s our cue to leave for the night.” He looked over at his first mate, Wilbur nodded in agreement grabbing his guitar from the chair beside Technoblade.

“They...Techno were they talking about Tubbo.” Tommy whispered to his brother, his brow furrowing in concern as they all climbed the steps up to their room, “You don’t think-”

“It just might be Tommy.” Technoblade tilted his head to the side, “Guess that’ll be something we ask him when we get back to the ship tomorrow.”

“Well, this trip is going to be way more fun than I thought.” Wilbur snickered lighting a cigarette, taking a long drag, before letting the smoke curl out of his mouth and up into the rafters. ~~~

Tag List: @v01dw4lk3rz, @jam-bombs, @abovenyx, @glitterydigitalart, @phoenixaesthetic19, @luluwinchester, @boiled-onionrings, @pastelmoonwitche, @roxy3457, @alovestruck-fool, @victory-is-here, @mack4676, @fiorenc, @theoneandonlyyeti, @bloodrose0723, @sandyy-woo,

935 notes · View notes

muffindaddystyles · 4 years ago

Text

Hates to, Hate you.

Word Count: 8k

Summary: Harry realizes that hurting Y/N broke him into pieces and tries to win her back with the confession of true feelings, will Y/N let him? If yes, how? How will he walk through fire for her?

Pairing: Famous!Harry x Reader!with anxiety.

AU: fake dating, slow burn, sexual tension, enemies to lover!

Warning: Mentions of violence, sexual assault, language, adult topics.

PART 1, MASTERLIST

"Please, stop." He says dolefully rubbing his eyebrows to get rid of the ache pounding in his head.

He's miserable. It hurts to not have her with him. It's been two tragic months of going through constant sleepless nights, disrestless stomach, intoxicating himself to forget her, staring at things like a hawk and missing her terribly.

He was alone before her and never felt this lonely.

He sees her everywhere. In his dreams and her shadows in his drawing room getting excited over a ceramic vase someone gifted him. Dancing in his kitchen to the beat of pink floyd and hip-checking him for a cheerful nudge, in his back garden rescuing a sparrow who broke it's neck and in his attic stressing over her assignments.

Everything reminds him of her. The fruity drinks that the barista's handing to the people, the fairy lights upon their heads and how she used to fond over them —- buying it for his bedroom too and when he refused to hang them, she just brushed off his snarky comment and did it herself.

The ring in Harris finger floods back all the bitter-sweet memories of the time he refused to have a lil fun with her, (Y/N and Harris made friendship rings and bracelets for eachother with the colorful beads to spend their boring time in his home waiting for him to write some lines before they went to a gumball shop) as they try to knock some senses in their friend's brain, "You tried to dodge a heartbreak and still ended up shattering your heart, yourself." They worry about him. That he's been bearing the pain all alone and not sharing it with anyone.

His voice croak-y and hoarse, "How's she?" The question haunts him. She blocked his phone number and even in the wee hours of night he wrecks his mind whether he should call her or not, he couldn't because she doesn't want to hear his voice.

He misses her voice. He misses her complaints and whines as if they filled the stoic parts of his life with happiness.

"How'd I know?" Harris lowers down to rest their elbows on the table, "I -- I thought . . she isn't in contact with ye'?" When Harris shakes their head with a gesture that he's being truthful it sinks his heart furthermore.

He clears his throat, twisting the jewels on his hand and sucks his bottom lip to muster some courage, "I've been seeing someone." Harris chokes on the boba they were chewing on for so long, "You what?" They are completely perturbed at his statement. Even though they've been working together and been friends before Y/N came in the picture, she's still their bezzy and we don't betray our bezzies like that.

"Yeah, someone to help me sort me feelings out." Harry frowns confusedly and then realization washes upon him so he becomes frantic in his chair, "No . . not what you're thinkin'." He runs his fingers through his hair to subside the twitch in them.

"A therapist, 'm talkin' bout a therapist . ." He sighs watching his tea waft down sympathetically.

"Oh. That's a good start, Harry!" Harris tries to bring the same dimply boyish smile that used to flutter over his lips whenever she used to tease him, unfortunately it never appears.

Y/N didn't handle her first ever heartbreak well. She lost her appetite, her focus on her studies and to her surprise didn't shed a single tear –-- it just kept piling in her chest and she waited for the moment it'd burst until she saw those pictures plastered all over social media. Pictures of him with some model that isn't a shorty pants like her at all, totally how those ladies described his type to be and someone with whom he wouldn't be embarrassed to hang out with.

She's everything, Y/N's jealous of. Those sparkling blue eyes compared to her boring brown ones, handsome figure and the radiance of richness.

Then she got stuck into her life responsibilities and worried about other things such that; she wasn't able to pay any bills and her flat's rent despite doing two part time jobs along with doing her class-fellows assignments in return of money and still got kicked out of it. Her close friend offered her to live in her studio and she has made it her kitchen, study, sleeping room with her stuff and clothes scattered everywhere.

She lives on noodles and toasted breads sometimes treating herself with delights of kit-kat bars in the middle of nights.

Watches her friend do her work and leave when the night comes by —- she has never felt this lonely in her entire life.

"So, was it love at first sight?" Nora her friend asks, handing her cuppa tea and a scone. Y/N let a weak sad smile slip, shaking her head and reminiscing all those moments where she was falling in love with him without even realizing, "Falling in love slowly patiently is the most beautiful . . . at some time I used to loathe his existence but staying with him and after knowing him, it was like --— an escapeless tunnel. I didn't realize it, till one day I woke up and my heart saw him in a different light, where I wanted to give him all me lovin' but he wasn't ready for it." She shrugs sipping the hot beverage and doesn't flinch from the burn that tingles at the tip of her tongue.

When she put her cup aside Nora takes her hand assuring her sweetly, "You'll have that person soon -- he's just on his way, with a big bouquet of roses and a teddy bear to give you the lovin' you deserve." Y/N giggles at that waving her off and not showing how her person is still Harry. What does she do to forget him? To fool her in thinking he isn't her first love.

"Aish, Nora aren't you gettin' late? Gooo." She had some clients to meet before she stopped here at studio to grab some things but it turned into a girlie hangout, "Take care honey and don't forget to put a bucket there." She points to the corner where water's dripping from the rooftop and Y/N exhaled an exasperated sigh of breath when the door clicks leaving her alone yet again.

It was past twelve and when usually she pulls an all nighter to study -- today she decided to sleep early. Her bad habit of overthinking kicks in again, this time it's not over some silly thing but she ponders over where she went wrong? She should've kept her feelings to herself and atleast would have been sleeping in her bed cuddled with her chonky cat Zippy.

She misses Zippy badly.

A noise of door unlocking loudly drags her from her reverie and her heart pounds against her ribcage ready to break it. Who could be at this hour of night? It could be Nora since she's the only one who got keys to the place.

Sitting up quickly she squints against the blinding lights and watches someone's boot stepping over her blanket that flopped onto the floor from the sofa she's sleeping on.

"Kevin? What are you doing here?" He's Nora's boyfriend and her classfellow. He just shrugs tumbling his way towards the sofa and she tries to scoot back from him as much as possible, "I'm here to see you. . ." He slurs. It knocks her breath out, filling terror in her veins as the heels of her feet rub against the leather of the couch in her effort to be away from him.

"What? This's not appropriate I -- I . . suggest you to call Nora s –- so, what're you doin —-" She squeaks in fear sinking into the couch when he towers over her and traps her under him with his hands on either side of her body aggressively, "I like you. Why don't you get it!!" She flinches when he shouts angrily with bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol disgusts her springing tears in her eyes.

"Please, stop . . ." She whispers with silent tears running down her throat using all her strength to push at his shoulders but he grips her hips tightly and yanks at her sleeping shirt revealing the strap of her bralette. She couldn't even cry for help. It's useless so putting some belief in herself for the last time she uses all her power and kicks him in his crotch pushing him roughly on the floor.

His nails tear at her delicate skin but she doesn't care before running out of the studio ignoring the names he's calling her from behind.

She runs away, away and away. Not thinking twice where she's going before crossing the bridges and tunnels. It feels like her ears are bleeding with the echo of loud horns of traffic and the hopelessness of her life makes her fall on her knees. She cries all the tears she was bottling up for months feeling like she's running out of time and reaching dangerously near to her end.

She's been in the same neighbourhood she's been before many times. The chilly wind doesn't prick goosebumps over her skin, the night's darkness doesn't scare her and the stray dog that's barking somewhere in far doesn't affect her at all as she stares at the door from where she has stepped into her comfort space many times.

Harry's with Scottie. His childhood friend who's here in London for some shoot. They were lounged in the living room talking their hearts out and their cringey memories from when they were small when he halted mid-talk, jaw slacking when his eyes took the sight of someone standing at his main door from the multiple security screens appearing on the telly.

He doesn't believe at first. Thinking he's hallucinating and that maybe he just saw a flicker of a ghost but when she looks up revealing her sad face and those big brown eyes he rushes to open the door.

"Fuck." He breathes out working on the heavy cold locks of the oak door with shaky hands anxiously and she was about to walk away with her back turned to him when he spurts out her name in haste, "Y/N." She listens to him. Insides breaking with the nirvana and scent of him surrounding her.

His breath hitches in his throat when she spins to meet his apprehensive gaze and she doesn't give him a chance to have a proper look at her before falling in his arms, her head hitting his chest and body shaking vigorously as she sobs sadly.

"Darlin'?" He asks worriedly, slipping his arms around her shoulders to lull her in his embrace, "Are you oka?" He feels like his stomach ate his heart as he anticipates an explanation from her and she isn't doing anything but crying.

"You're scarin' me, pet. What happened honey?" He pulls away to cradle her face in his calloused palms. His chests pangs with hurt and remorse upon seeing her tear stained cheeks, wobbly blue lips, and disheveled state.

He steps inside with her still in his arms and rubs his hand down her spine to calm her down as little sad sniffles and hiccups keep slipping out of her mouth.

He sits her on the sofa squatting down infront of her and Scottie brings her water. When she refuses to drink it because Harry strokes his thumb against the apple of her cheek, "Shh, 's okay . . you're okay. You're with me now, sweet girl." It's like the world and anything else has blurred around him and his ever priority's focusing on her only. His observant gaze dawdles from her face to her bruised shoulder emitting an afflicted gasp of trepidity from between his lips and it deepens to a growl when it fell over her hip-bone where the fabric of her pyjama's spotted with blood.

He glances up at Scottie who gives him a knowing look of horror. He gets closer to her and she doesn't retract as his thumb streaks away the blood oozing from her shoulder gently, saying nothing as he examines it.

After a brief pause Y/N's heart skips a nervous beat when he tilts her chin to have a better look at her face, taking in the evidence of someone handling his petal so brutally it left scratches at her face.

Harry looks her dead in the eyes. His anger barely restrained tippling from the pot ready to leave burns, his voice is tense and quite, ears heating with wrath.

"Who did this to you?"

"Kevin." The tears are back at her waterline more concerned that he's panicking because of her and Scottie sits beside her massaging her shoulders.

"Kevin, who?" Harry's question is curt controlling himself from finding this mother fucker himself and beat the shit out of him, "H -- he's my friend's boyfriend, I though --– was sleeping in her studio 'n 'n --- when he . . . he —-- " She hides her face in her palms unable to speak but Harry quickly pulls her down in a comforting hug whispering sweet things to stop her crying.

She parts from him with puffy eyes and swollen lips shaking her head at her stupidity, "I … I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here, 'm gonna leave — ' " She's a weeping blubbering mess trying to stand up on her jello legs with the help of the couch's armrest.

He catches her wrist crying out, "No! Don't! please, please stay . . . . fo' me?" Scottie has never seen him like this. Bended out of shape for a person, begging them on his knees to protect them as he rambles loudly.

"Are you sure? I don't want to be a burden on you, I -- I'll go in the morning." Since she has nowhere to go it's better she sleeps here for a night instead of on the streets.

Harry finds it ironic. That once he didn't want her overnights now he wants her all days and weeks, perhaps till the end of his life.

He's gonna win her back.

He hands her his tattered comfy sleeping clothes and the spare toothbrush leaving her to it. When he comes back downstairs Scottie's waiting for him at the main door.

"You should report a file against that bastard the first thing in the morning." Scottie tells him seriously and he nods. His head snaps when she spoke softly, smiling at him, "You're in love."

"What?"

"I haven't seen you like that with anyone, Harry. Make it to her foolish boi -- tell her what you feel." She laughs, jolting him with his shoulders and he smiles timidly bidding her a good-bye.

The door to her room's ajar opened as he peeks inside to make sure she's okay and sighs deeply when finds her staring blankly at the ceiling. The floorboard creaks when he pads inside quietly and her stare diverts to him while he stands on the foot of bed, "I read somewhere that cuddlin' helps ye'sleep better, you w'na try?" She hums in return, fisting the duvet under her chin and slip shuts her eyes remaining stiff in her spot when he slides under the duvet closer to her.

She turns into a puddle when his long arms wrap around her tummy, "Is this okay?" His voice a mere whisper of care earning an honest nod from her -- his thigh strings over her legs to cocoon her in his warmth completely, ". . and this?" She again nod at him so,

He smushes his cheek into the crook of her neck and she could feel something moist on her skin while his lips puckered to speak, "Y/N?" He murmures broken and sad snuggling more into her.

"Hmm?" She hums, the exhaustion from walking and crying this much forcing her to sleep, "I've missed you, terribly." Her heart leaps and she wants to exchange the familiarity of emotions but her tongue remains heavy in her mouth.

Her toes curls and fingers clutches the wrinkly fabric of the pillow case she had her head rested on but now it's slipping down from over it due to her body shaking vigorously as she tries to escape those filthy, gruesome hands like a terrifying shadows of evil choking her throat and sucking the life out of her.

Harry's head snaps down to where she was snuggled to his side moments ago when she murmur-yells no,no,no,no'. He feels like someone placed a heavy brick over his chest at the sight of his lovie writhing like a leaf petrified of whatever she's dreaming of and his shoulders rolls back while he perches on his elbow to shake her gently out of it.

"Y/N . . ." He remains dulcet. Chewing onto his already swollen bottom lip since he didn't even close his eyes the entire night manipulating the plush flesh, he doesn't know what kept him awake —- but it sure was this sense of responsibility to make her feel protected under his wings. She smacks his arm away pushing at his chest with her all might to skid away to the edge of the bed in her sleepy state, so he quickly hunches on wobbly knees to catch her before she falls.

"It's just me, Angel, Harry –- wake up darlin'," His heart beating ominously frantic and head jumbling with horrible thoughts of what she's going through as her warmed up cheeks soak with tears, he has never seen her like this, he never wanted to see her for the first time after months like this --- shattered to pieces and drained of her energy.

He smooths his thumb to caress her cheek slightly and swipe those sad tears away. She wakes up with a gasp making him jerk his chin back, blinking rapidly to confirm her surroundings and her fearful vision zeros to his panicked features. She places her palms against his pectorals to make sure he's real and there and that ugly nightmare just ended, "Harry?" He gulps the thick web of tears down his throat and bobs his head.

"Yes, sweet girl, Harry . . ." The very streaks of golden rays sneak through the curtains and dances between their faces as she fists the hem of his shirt, "It was just a nightmare." He assures her running his hand up and down her arms to calm her down.

"Don't be afraid, dovie' won't let anybody hurt ya from now on, g'na protect you —--" It was the last straw for her before she flipped him over and climbed out of his bed to get out from his room.

"Shit." He drives into a state of frenzy following her down the stairs like a puppy almost missing a step or two as she wears the slippers she came in last night, "Where ye' goin'?" His muscles twitch in a hurry to make his next move and save whatever's between them that's keeping him sane, " Dunno, away from you." She shrugs, lost in her own fog and the sting in his heart's unbearable with the inflammation of hurt.

"Why?" He tumbles through the last step and infront of her, eyes bloodshot and heart how from the squeezing agony of loosing her for second time for the same cause.

"Because, I w'na forget about you!!" The scream she had in her lungs to convey her anger gets stuck in her throat. His shoulders slump from the burden of guilt and regret.

"Why?" He feels like throwing up with the unbearable anguish of him hurting to a point he wants to wash his memories out of her mind.

"Because you make me so confused, Harry…" Her face pinches into an exasperated expression of hopelessness while she nudges him aside to pass by him and to the main door but he catches her wrist before she could step outside and never come back to him, "I wouldn't confuse you from now on …. 've been better fo' you y/n, 'cos I want you to know that I'm yours." His confession springes her off guard by pure stupefaction and when she looks at him -- he's already gazing at her as if she's the moon surrounded by singing stars.

"Please, let me fight for you baby." Tears springs at his waterline ready to welcome a sob out of his lungs. Because he knows he'll be unable to live his life without her, his love will rot in the cage of his heart because he'd never be able to express it for anyone except her.

He continues not holding back anything from her instead unlocking another love language and that's being vulnerable and completely defenceless to her, "While being with you I still thought a part of me was in love with my ex and I didn't want ya to be me second priority, could neve', was so so wrong 'cos even though you're not my firsts you're gonna be my lasts. I'll make sure that you're." He gulps down the tears blocking his wind pipes and making it difficult to speak.

"I want you to give us another chance, to forgive me and give me a proper chance to love you 'cos that's what you deserve . .." The sincerity and genuineness in his stained smaragdine irises turns her pudgy in his hold, ". . . you deserve all the lovin' in this world, honey."

"Work for it then." She tells him and his pretty eyes widen adorably as of some golden fish, a vivacious smile adorns his features and he doesn't take a moment before swiping her off her feet and into his arms to hug her tightly.

His insides feels like nourishing after a time with contentment and satisfaction.

To have his loved one in his arms.

In his life.

"Thank you, Thank you, Thank youuu." He rambles into the crook of her neck, elated and joyful. Swaying their bodies together and making her smile softly after a prolonged time of suffering.

She'll heal.

He'll make sure to put ointment of affection and love on her wounds to help her heal, for herself but nobody else.

"You've got to be kidding me!" She mutters putting the alcohol swab on his torn bleeding knuckles and he squeaks locking his calf around her ankle, "Ouch! Ye' mad woman."

Harry and her went to file a report against Kevin, along with Nora who became her witness because she despises that disgusting of a man to be even around her and her studio let alone her boyfriend.

Harry was her biggest support through the whole process and dropped her off assuring her he'll pick all her stuff from Nora's place. There he was, Kevin. Stumbling at the footpath after Nora kicked him and his luggage out.

Harry's very patient and optimistic but not when his loved ones get hurt. He didn't know what was happening around him before he sprinted towards Kevin and punched him square in his face, breaking his nose and busting his own knuckles with a fierce shout of "y'son of a bastard!"

"If I ever . . . ever see ya near her, I promise that you wouldn't be able to see the living daylight." He grunted, resisting to hit him in the shin with his boots and walked past him to the studio to collect her stuff.

He was grief stricken seeing the way she had to live and not finding her pet cat anywhere. His heart could be heard cracking into tinytinytiny pieces when Nora told him that Y/N gave it to the vet since she was unable to afford it.

When she catches him staring up at her like a love-stricken puppy she huffs wrapping a band-aid around his knuckles, "'M mad at you." He seems unfazed making her gasp when brings her closer with his legs wrapped around her's, "Why . . . you're always mad at me." He whines jutting out his bottom lip and she shakes her head at his silly dotiness.

"You -– you can't go hurtin' yourself fo' me, H." She's very unaware, because certainly he'd do it as many times.

She narrows down her eyes to squint him in offense when he brushes her comment off with nonchalance and raises his bandaged wrist up to her face, "Will you kiss it better' fo' me, pet?" Her insides crumbles like dry rose petals falling from a beloved book of her favourite romances.

"Hmm?" He nudges it in a questioning suppressing a smirk. She wipes her clammy and antiseptic hands down her trousers not meeting his gaze while taking his hand awkwardly but delicately closer to where her soft mouth is located; she halts glowering at him, "Only if you ask nicely."

"That wasn't nice? Thought I was being a good boy there." He mumbles diligently pulling at the hem of her shirt and she bites down a smile, fingers still wrapped round his wrist.

"Pretty please…?" He wheezes his words out begging-ly -- upper lip curving, pupils dilating and she shrugs, "..if you insist so.." His grin was immaculate that of golden sun when she pressed her lips to his knuckles carefully giving it a gentle pat afterward.

"Not doing that again." She breathes out the air she was winding up inside her for so long. Spinning on her heels to turn her back towards him and put the first aid back under the sink, "We'll see 'bout that, let's do some grocery." He stands up patting his thighs loudly, "Wouldn't be surprised if we'll find bugs in me cabinet instead of goodies."

They've been roaming isles for an hour now and they always end up fighting who will push it. Harry doesn't let her because she keeps on filling it with instant noodles, chocolate bars and sakurai oreos.

"How about we try to live till our fifties wouldn't be that beautiful?" He follows behind her closely. His chest brushes against her shoulders everytime she makes a stop to cooes over some brightly coloured food and candies, "'M trying to make it till next year, dunno 'bout you." She mutters grumpy-ly tossing another packet of cherry lollipop inside the trolley.

He puts it back.

With a strict warning glare to her way.

"I want you to stay healthy." He says sternly glaring up at her from his ducked position. She tosses the lollipop back from the shelf, "'M paying for my things." She dismisses him off panning deadly.

"Fo' fucks sake, 's not 'bout money!" He grits annoyed at her stubbornness and she arches her brow leaning against the trolley, "Harry…'m not an actress or some high-paid model. Lemme enjoy real things, okay? Or just say you'd look too outta my league standing next to me." Her brows pints down into a frown and her shoulder slumps with her body further relaxing against the trolley.

She's up for a debate with him right in the middle of the junk food aisle if that's the case.

"See. That's why I don't want to be married!" A couple from far banters off in astonishment catching Y/N completely off guard.

"Uh-ah!" She yelps getting startled from the boom of interruption and a high-pitch squeaks leaves out of her petite lungs when the trolley rolls from under her perched elbow making her stumble for a nice trip but the bang never came as Harry coiled his arm around her waist to pull her on stable feet with a firm hand over her smallest of back.

His gentle pupils flicker between her frenzied one's, noses tickling and teasing each other with each spurt of breath that rushes out of her parted soft mouth and against his cheek.

"Maybe it's not that bad after all." The couple who were planning their future based on another couple, who's not even a couple yet but trying to work on it with their shared amount of affection; sighs in awement leaving Harry and Y/N in their own bubble.

He takes her by the elbow and helps her with his lips thinned, "Careful there." His mumble is deep and coherent husk.

She didn't whine about his green vegetables, boring low fat cheese and planned meals, celery or whatever that shit is, after that. Walking by his side like a kid who just got relief from his time out punishment.

While on the counter she asked him politely rather than biting his head of, "Lemme pay please. I'm already imposing on you by staying at your place." She knows that he wouldn't let her. Harry wants to take care of her -- in every way. He just hopes she warms up to him slowly that there will be a day she thinks of his home as hers too, oh how the table turns!

T'not make her think that his love for her is only restrictive to materialistic things he lets her pay --- but for half of it.

"D'ya got a change, miss?" The cashier asks her and she cranes her neck up to him. He denies waving his credit card with a disappointed expression so she quickly takes a chewing gum from the racks beside in return for the change.

He stops in his tracks. Watching her with glinting eyes more like fawning at her when she sways on her feet happily swinging the bag in her hold side by side.

"C'mon Harry!" She grins twiddling her fingers in a gesture to usher him where she's standing beside his car, "Yup. On your command, darlin'." He shakes his head. To fetch himself from the fond-land he always enters with anything she does.

There's a low hum of telly buzzing in the room as they sit crossed legs on the coffee rug with their knees brushing if any of them moves their bum a tad, while they slurp onto the remaining soup in the noodles cup.

This whole time he wanted to say something, to talk to her, his heart out and make it a domestic routine of sharing stuff while they eat comfy in eachother's presence but seems like his tongue betrays him everytime and his needy eyes always want to admire her and the little things she does.

He licks his lips, nodding profusely when she asks for his cup and chopsticks to take to the kitchen. A huge sigh of relief vanishes out from his chest when she disappears inside giving him time to re-collect himself, he rummages through the bag to take out the chewing gum they bought at the last moment.

He rips the packet with his teeth but it remains pressed there between his morals when he senses the familiarity of the foil --- she bought a fucking condom out of accident!

At the same moment she pads outside halting in her tracks infront of him with a horrendous expression as her peepers wouldn't stop blinking. He doesn't not know what got into him but he throws it her way as if he's utterly disgusted by it.

Sinks into the couch and refuses to meet her gaze. She throws it back at him, "I don't want it, keep it you might need it." There he goes. The smugness fuels back as he outstretches his arm over the back of the couch and man-spreads scrutinizing the way her eyes linger at his meaty thighs before flicking them away with a nervous gulp.

"You've already planned it all out, hun?" He smirks rubbing the belly of his nose with his pinky's knuckle and she folds her elbows under her breasts shaking her head at his teasing, "Yeah planning to . . . murder you t'night." She laughs out evilly when his eyes widen comically.

"Hmm. I see. Didn't know ye' were this kinky 'n naughty." She rolls her eyes at his edgy nip. She wouldn't admit it but him testing her patience turns her hot and flustered.

"Night, H." She yawns and his heart grows ten times bigger at the softness of her appearance. She cranes her head against her shoulder to look at him from the spot she's standing at when his voice calls for her, "Y/N!? Ye'really into knives? In the bed I mean." His grin mischievous knowing fully well what he's doing to her as he waits for her answer propped on his knees.

She slams the door at his face and he plops back into the sofa with a pouty victorious smile.

Harry didn't realise that in the middle of watching Gilmore Girls on the telly he fell asleep straining his neck from keeping it in a weird angle, his arms hugging the pillow and feet dangling adorably nowhere. He groans knuckling away the sleep and tries to wake up when he heard a feeble noise of someone taking his name until he looks up and finds Y/N towering him with her fluffy cream blanket pinched around her head darlingly.

"What happened, pet? Y'okay!?" He gasps trying to sit up and take her precious face to inspect her properly but she shakes her head and lays him back gently.

Her nose runny and cheeks rosied as she asks for a favour from him, "Can I -- um," She wipes her nose with the sleeve of her sweater paw. He doesn't question her further and opens his long arms to welcome her for a warm embrace.

"C'mere, pet." His whisper delicate to her.

She lies down pressed to his front resting her head on his sprawled arm and scooches herself closer to him smiling shyly against his hoodie where a Harry is embroidered in pink thread. It's like a gust of fresh spring and dew of nighty mountains as Harry takes a relaxing breather snuggling her impossibly affectionately close to himself, petting down her sweet smelling hair.

"Y'can talk to me 'bout anythin'." Their heart-beats in sync as he keeps his palm spread at her back to protect her from falling, "Ye' know that right?" He pulls back to cradle her chin between his fingers and look her in eyes sincerely.

"I know that button. Sleep for now, hmm?" He smiles softly, shutting his eyes from giving out how much a mere love name's enough to fuse him into a cloud of giddiness.

In the morning though, Harry's a small spoon and Y/N a big one. Her limbs trying to latch to his body in every way possible with her cheek smashed against his shoulder blade.

His lips quirks up into a lazy loopy smile full of contentment and peacefulness as he weaves his each finger into her's to bring her knuckles to his mouth and smother it in kisses, "Rise n' shine you furball." He rasps. chin doubling adorably as he tries to look at his squirmy girl.

He turns to face her side, temples touching and lips hovering over eachother's skin. He feels her smiling against his chin as she cuddles up into him, "I'd like to make you a brekkie…." She murmurs playing with baby curls on the nape of his neck.

"Dunno 'bout that. What if you poison me, t'death?" He giggles and she smacks his belly pouting grumpy-ly.

"Offer, expired. no more brekkie for you." She tells him wiggling out of his grip and walks towards kitchen but burst into gleeful laugh when he wraps around her calves like a koala bear, "Was jokinnnn', babe." He emphasizes his words with a twinge of whine and she meanders her hand in his ruffled curls.

"Kay! Kay! But, I could only make you omelette and sour bread." He jumps back on his feet enthusiastically looping his arm around her clavicles, "No problem. Glad t'eat anythin' made from your lovely hands."

She made him brekkie and he made fabulous peach tea for them. She blabbered off and he listened with careful ears. He praised her with glinting proud eyes and she treasured these praises in her heart.

While she chewed slowly he messaged his manager that he couldn't come to any working place for a week or so. He wants to make it special and memorable for them, their honeymoon phase.

"D'ya have any class today?" He asks her leaning towards her atop the counter, "Nope 's Saturday dummy." She chuckles flicking her thumb against his forehead and he gives a dimpled grin with bolted shut eyes.

"Yeah … silly me."

"Why?"

"So that I could take ye' ona date." His inners bouncing desperate to know her answer, "Me?" She points at herself surprised with parted lips.

"Yes you, is there somebody else sitting with us? Hello?" He calls for that non-existent person and she suckles her bottom lip to subside her squeals down. She breathes out, "Some ghostie? Evil spirit? Jesus himself —-" She cuts his banter of. With a light slap to the back of his hand.

"Okay." She says with an excited shake of head happiness bare in her words and Harry literally slips from his seat padding towards her in haste, "I'd love to." She confirms with a sweet smile and he hooks his nimble finger around her jeans loop to pull her closer to him for a fervid emotional hug.

She was a frolic mess in her room trying out her outfits and fitting into her skirts, trousers anything that could match perfectly. Deciding to terminate any ideas to wear cotton floral sun-dresses instead ends up tucking a baby pink sweater into her chequered white and black plaid trouser along with a pair of Mary Janes booties.

She took huge puffs of breath to calm her wild heart down when the knock on her door appeared. He decided to be a full on romantic today doing all the date rituals without any shame dressing up in a silk shirt three shades lighter than her's, with a pussy bow around his neck and she thinks she couldn't be more in love with him as he has a bunch of sunflowers and jasmines in the cracks of his jewels adorned fingers.

"Well, well, well, Look who came to their enemy's door holding presents." She smirks and he scowls, "Oh cut it. 'M here to pick y'up fo' our date."

What makes her lose her mind's Zippy on his shoulder.

"Oh my goodness! Harry!" She leaps towards him and takes her fluffy beast in her arms and showers Zippy's crown with many many kisses, "Thank you!" She cries out joyfully wrapping her free arm around his waist and cuddles him for dear life.

"I lo —-- " She thinks it'd be embarrassing to say it on the first date and Harry almost had a mini heart-attack but she changed her words, "I can't be more grateful to you, thank you so much."

"Now, stop thankin' me hunny." He gives her the flowers he plucked himself from his backyard and kisses the apple of her cheek turning her into a gooey mesh.

"Where is it?" She avoids checking him out.

"Why should I tell ya?" He nudges her to lock her elbow around his and she gazes up at him with loving eyes, "'cos 'm your date that's why."

"Bribe me then." He grins bashfully.

"Harry!!" She gasps and huffs tipy-toeing timidly to plant a soft kiss to his chin but it lands against his throat making him thin his lips to give out a noise that could embarrass both of them.

"Not telling you." He squeaks dragging her outside into the porch and she whines, "You leech!"

"You did not!" She snaps her neck in utter exhilaration from the view in front of her and towards Harry who's watching her with puffed cheeks to not to give out his bunny smile as her face turns guppy. The sunshine dawdles around them and she pulls him down to her level with the tug of their intertwined hands, "You're somethin' else, Styles." It warms his blood. Bursting sentiments of pure love and amiability through each orifice that leads to his heart.

"Only fo' you." He whispers stroking the plush of her cheek -- restraining to place his needy lips on her alluring pillow one's inviting him to have a good taste of their sweetness before they could taste the ripeness of strawberries growing at the farm he just took her.

"Uhm. Let's see who could collect more!" She grins pushing herself three steps away from him with support of his pecs, "What's the prize?" He asks pawing at her hips to keep her in intimate distance and she giggles tapping his chin.

"A feeling of saccharine-ss and sweetness when we'll eat those strawberries out." She tries not to step on heavy branches that are still growing and makes her way to the fresh patch, "Perhaps, that could be acquired from eatin' somethin' else out too." His wet lips brushes against her earlobe as he speaks, sending a shiver down her spine.

"You're being very loud and lewd." She pokes him in ribs. Squatting down to pluck a juicy perfectly sized strawberry and hovering it against his mouth to give him a taste, "Hmm what could I say 'm a man of dirty words." His eyes darken to an intoxicating shade of emerald as his heart-shaped magenta lips wrap around the strawberry to split it in two with his teeth.

He still remembers. How her mouth tasted that night, how her lips came molding around his's like a stamp of a lover's letter and her body fitted against his's like a lost piece of puzzle.

Just made for him.

"Harry …" She's out of words. Maybe, breath.

"Yes dovie?" He hooks his finger into her belt's loop to saturate the thread like distance between them and makes tight hold at the nape of her neck to crane her head up to meet his honey eyed gaze, "D'ya know how to make strawberry mochi?" His shoulder slumps at her question and he rests his cheek atop her temple cutely.

"Noo." His voice sort of whine-y.

"No, problem. We'll make it together." She chuckles turning back to collect the strawberries into her basket.

She never had this fun. Messing around with him. Feeding eachother the sweet fruit. Him scaring her that some rat sprinted by her feet and enjoying the way she jumps at him, only wheezing comically when she throws a blow at him.

Her giggles bounces off each and every ivory flower and leafy plant as he pins her to the viridescent grass, with his thighs and tickles her non-stop. What started as raspberries turns into sloppy smothers of kisses all over her face.

"Harry!!" She bursts into another fit of laughter, "Stop." She warns him squeezing her thighs around his waist and he giggles challenging her.

"O'what? Huhh?" She closes her eyes nuzzling into his arm that's trapping her down, "Or I'll kiss you…" Her voice gentle and dulcet making his grip loosen and heartbeat fastens like a thunderbolt.

"'M not afraid of that." He gives a toothy grin sneaking a glance at her hand which's gliding up his throat to cup his cheek, eyelids fluttering like petals from breeze as she smudges her sweet mesh coated lips against his's in a tenderly ardent, and yearningly amiable kiss feeling her pulse ring in her ears with so much force.

His fingers make their home down her smooth hair to cup the nape of her neck, elbows digging into mud when he lifts her up to deepen the kiss sloppily. Just her. Only her. Swirling inside of him as his very thought.

Their noses crooking perfectly, skins kissing and bodies hitched to eachother with the knot of souls.

She whimpers into his mouth squishing the poor strawberry she was holding in her free hand from the intensity of fierce sentiments she's spiraling in; to have him all and swallow him all because he's that damn gorgeous. His tongue pokes and tickles the plush insides of her small mouth tasting the strawberry straight from where he loves the most. His belly burning with the fire of desire feeling the way her body's reacting with puriency to his subtle touches of affection.

He was dying to have a kiss from her the day she gave him her lips that night and he couldn't resist but to think about it regularly.

A wet filthy sound bubbles around them when they part away with the remnants of spit in the form of intricate strings connecting them; that breaks when he relaxes his forehead against her's taking a good breather of mossy air.

"S' messy." He tuts when his eyes fall at her palm covered in strawberry pulp.

She gasps giddy-ly when he pokes his pink tongue out and takes a huge swipe up her palm with an erotic hum that rattled her insides.

"H -- arry." She nibbles at her bottom lip to filter noises she's unable to hold meanwhile he sucks her fingers one by one to clean them, her panties twisting with an ache of want.

"Hmm. All nice 'n clean, now we should go." He says flipping her wrist to act as if he's inspecting it. Brushes the dirt of his trousers leaving her baffled and grumpy. When she doesn't stand up he squats down at her level arching a brow at her and before she could know what's happening she's thrown over his broad shoulder like a rag doll.

Her squeals hearty and giggly as she tries to punch his back but her breath gets caught in her throat when his large hand comes spanking her butt-cheek. He waits for her reaction —- grinning cheekily when she sucks in her weak mewls and grabs the back of his neck blabbering his name off.

He puts her back on the ground once out on the gravel path and hands her the basket piled with strawberries. Ducks down to sponge a kiss to her cheek telling her to stay glued to her spot as he leaves to pay.

She smiles down at her feet then at the sky revinding all the moments and their lovely kiss that makes her feel all warm and stupidly gooey.

While boarding the train he wiggles his finger behind himself to get a hold on her and keep her close to him, craning his neck with a lopsided sly smile, "Hold me hand."

"If you insist." She nods with a grin slipping her fingers over his palm and he wovens them with his own with a firm grip stepping inside the train and helps her to do so with his free hand behind her head.

She sighs. Sitting with her back pressed against the window of the train. One leg folded and other dangling from the seat as she stares at Harry with a pouty smile.

"Don't ya think you're sittin' too far away from me?" He says, grabbing her knee, "Come here." And slides her towards himself now their thighs overlapping. He doesn't like even the mere distance between them —-- might sound sappy but he wants to be like her scent.

"Happy?" She pinches his cheek and he winces dramatically ruffling her already loose tresses of hair making her look as if she was on a roller coaster minutes ago, "aren't you a one clingy bunny!" She huffs trying to blow away the hair falling in her eyes. He bobs his head in agreement and slings his elbow around her shoulders to tuck her under his chin protectively.

"Okie, now add some sugar in it —- aish slow down …" She coughs waving away the sugar dust tickling her nostrils as Harry poured so much sugar all at once. He has his chin rested on her head and her hips crooned against his thighs as they make the strawberry and vanilla mochi together.

His puffer jacket on her shoulders (To the time they went to buy grocery stuff it started being cold and Harry being a mommy he took out his jacket and bundled her up in it) —- She sneezes and he quips pecking her hair, "Bless your heart." Fetches her a tissue too.

"Thank you, bubs." She giggles grabbing his jaw bringing him down to smooch a kiss to his lips. She pulls back but he persists snaking his palm around the nape of her neck to keep her put —- she gives in with her heart fluttering like candle flame in a destructive storm.

Turns in his embrace and hooks her elbows behind his head patching tiny, tiny, tiny pecks on his pillowy lips until he gets desperate to kiss her mouth and tongue pushing her to his front by gliding his hand into the back-pocket of her jeans.

Her head lulls. Feeling as if the kitchen got filled with candy clouds floating around her when he cradles her cheeks in his both palms lapping at her bottom lip and nips at it with every whimper of desire that falls, "Mine." He breathes out rubbing the bridge of his nose up and down her cheek like a puppy nuzzling into his favourite plushie.

"Yours." She says without any hesitation.

He smashes his wet lips back on hers. Swirls of gleeful colours surrounding them as he feels like he could kiss her forever.

She gasps gazing down lustfully at his wine cherried lips when he holds her from waist and sits her on the wooden counter, "I want you to take me." She murmurs nailing at the silk of his top and he paws at her hip-bones cravingly, it makes her feel like one the most desired women alive.

"I'm all yours to pleasure you lovie'," He looks her in the eyes with so much love and affection it melts her whole, "Just ask me and I'll give me girl what she wants …. " He says trailing sloppy kisses down her throat. Her head falls against the tiled wall giving him more access to her skin --- so he could mark her as he wishes.

The heat from his mouth to her bare skin arouses her to an extent she feels wetness sticking to the insides of her thighs with each grind of his crotch against her's.

She tugs at the roots of his curls, mouth parted around a moan when he grazes his touch over her plump breasts, "Is this okay?" He asks breathlessly and she bobs her head vigorously latching onto him.

"Yes, please, more … " He blinks to let reality sink in when she raises her arms in the air for him to get rid of her clothes.

He smiles. Hard. Crinkles forming by his eyes and cheery lines around his mouth as she looks up at him with those doe eyes glinting with his own reflection.

She squirms grumpily and he cackles loudly when she hooks his fingers into the hem of her jeans as a sign that "just undress me right now and fuck me hard over this counter." But, the romantic sap he's just keeps on being a tease.

"Fuck me already." She huffs locking her ankles behind his back.

"Trust me, I want it as bad as y'do but are you sure —-- "

"I'm --- just fuck …. " She cuts him off, cupping his cheeks and kisses his mouth. He groans when she sucks his swollen lip in between his teeth and lifts her pelvis grinned against his swell lining in his trouser to elaborate her neediness through actions,

He undresses her finally folding them and putting them away nicely while she stays a breathless mess just in her undies, her sheer panties soaked in her juices and profanities of moans fuses into air from both of them as Harry places his hands on her knees. Irises darkening with lust when he looks at the delicate lines of her drippy pussy lips forming from underneath the material.

"Spread your legs, I want to feel how turned on I made you feel." His voice an obscene grunt and it tingles her core making her feel she should obey him, "Fuckin' hell." His moan is dirty as he rubs the pad of his long digits against her soaked centre. His piercing gaze flitting between her thighs crumbled her in the best way possible.

She fists the hem of his top, tugging at it with the blabbering of his name.

A series of pornographic whines leaves her through her nose when he demands her to raise her bum so he could get rid of the last thing being a bother to them.

"Oh my — " She arches her spine when his fingers withered in her stickiness, between her glistening pussy lips to her mound pinching her clitoris in the way and listens to the soapy noises he's creating while lathering his hand with her juices he'd love more to coat his tongue with.

"This is what you want, hmm? For me to bend you over this counter right fucking now and pump me thick cock inside your sweet cunt from behind till you're screaming for me to ram harder inside you, so deep that you feel me in your little tummy and I keep it there for hours making you cum on it again and again — many time that you're milky and cramped around my prick like a filthy girl you're." He dips his impossibly sweet pink tongue inside her mouth and makes her sip down his dirty words through her throat not letting her mewls slip out as his lengthy finger slicks inside her causing her melt against his chest with a turmoil of emotions and heat she never felt before.

Her brain whirles with the mantra of fuckfuckfuck but her guppy lips says otherwise, she coils her arms around his shoulders scratching her nails down his neck — eyes rolling back as she shakes with the build of ecstasy.

"You're so snug and warm, sweets. Can't wait to be inside you." He husks curling his digit to give her upper wall a good rub, "Harry!" Her scream comes out gruff vibrating with a sexy octave.

"Yes, baby." He pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger staining soft wet kisses from the corner of her lips, to her rosy cheeks and down her throat sewing love bites along her veins.

"Does it feel good, hmm? 'M g'na stuff you full of my prick bet it'll make you feel like heavens --" Her brows tenses up as he forces her to keep her eyes locked with his's and groans with the throb in his cock bound to implode with each whimper of his name she lets out hiking up her knees on the counter — the heels of her feet sticking firmly against the edge of the counter giving a carnally pleasing view for him to enjoy and ooze with sticky precum.

He huffs out breathily, fingers sliding in and out at a fast pace while he moves down to take her perky nipple between his teeth teasing it with nip of his tongue, "Fuck. Mhmm baby I've so many dirty things to d'to you, would you be an atta girl and be naughty with me?" He nuzzles his curls against her skin grinding his knuckles up and down against her swollen clit.

"Yes, yes, yes." She moans trying to sink impossibly deep on his fingers. He admires her in amusement as her belly twists into ripples and she thrashes in his tight hold —- broken into pieces of vulnerability foxily.

He withers his gaze to where he's driving his fingers roughly inside her and a cold shiver runs down his spine, eyelashes fluttering and he sucks his bottom lip brutally praising her softly, "yes just like that darling taking my fingers so good —- they'll look pretty down your throat too while I'll fill your other holes with me, all me." He wraps a hand around her throat giving it a light squeeze and it was enough to spread warmth and the saccharine feeling of fullness in her every tissue gushing over his fingers.

"You're mine." He growls nipping at her sweet spot –-- wearing her out with his continuous different motions inside her. His wrist glistening with her come and her head lulls on his tanned shoulder, eyes slip shut, chest levitating with shallow breaths.

She cups his cheeks wrapping her trembling legs around his waist and kisses his smile, it's sloppy and barely a kiss with their lazy effort to keep their mouths on each other to soak into intimacy.

Next they're a moaning and crying mess on the kitchen floor with her knee hooked around his hip to keep him close as he stretches her out leaving a pleasurable burn against her squishy inviting walls.

His cock sits warm inside her pussy and his balls snug against her bum. It's torturous waiting for her to give a signal that he might move because he couldn't resist but to be rock hard inside her and fuck her for hours but his knees are laughing at him for being unable to bear the sting of cold tiles.

"You can move, 'm okay." She whispers hugging him for dear life and he nods grinding his hips slowly, the bulbous head of his dick hitting all the right spots —- he's so good at fucking.

He takes her fleshy tits in his palms caressing them with each lewd stroke of his cock inside her and treats her glistening lips from his spit back to his mouth, pecking it generously.

"Pull me hair." He groans pushing hard and guides her hand into his swirl of sweaty curls — hips stuttering, eyes rolling back into his skull erotically when she does so peppering loving kisses under his earlobe, "You're g'na ruin me lovie … fuck me please." He whines grabbing her ass and lifts her pelvis to slide inside her dripping pussy with much more roughness.

She has never seen him like this. Shredded to seams for her, sweat beading down his gorgeous face like glimmer of pearls and eyes mossed with so much lust and desperation it knocks air out of her lungs.

He rolls them over gently and her squeal turns into a shameless yawp when he feels much more bigger than before inside her with her being on top of him —- he was right she could feel him in her tummy.

She's clueless what to do. Not that she's gonna show it –- she doesn't want to give him an impression that she knows barely anything about riding but the way she begins with zealous back and forth movement digging the heels of her palms against his pecks wrecks him havoc.

"You're doin' so good pet, yes, yes, yes. Use me baby. Use me like your little fuck toy 'm c'mon." He grabs the nape of her neck and brings her down to skim his tongue over her lips, manipulating the plushiness of them with his teeth. His balls slapping against her skin as she bounces on his cock diligently and he fists the soft flesh of her bum with both of his hands to help her ride him knows she's labouring herself out, "I'm all yours." He says caressing her sides to make sure she's okay and brushes the wisp of sticky hair behind her ear.

"You're looking so sexy sitting on my dick like that -- how about I don't allow you to cum so you could keep me warm with your pussy like that fo' hours?" His pants out gripping at her thighs as his prick spills with wetness inside her and she cries out shaking, "No!" He smirks crinkled forming by his eyes and takes this chance to drive hard up inside her making her flop onto his chest.

She gasps moistly, pulsating around him feeling every ridge and vein of his cock stroking against her walls creating obscene noises of skin meeting skin and their moistures mixing soapily like gooe.

"Cum fo' me baby -- squeezing me s' tight. I know you're there." His pants laboured and heavy as he sucks his own digits coating them with his spit nicely and glides them down pressing them to her weeping bud, then flickers it in prolong circles. Toes curling. His thrusts consistent and fast. She crooks her nose against his's murmuring to him with a wavering voice.

"I'm gonna cum, fuck."

"You're gonna make me come."

Her eyes widen in surprise but her body reacts otherwise albeit she has never experienced it —- but her moans were uncontrollable when he spanked her butt cheek and she crampied down at him jolting tremendously with the wave of insanity spreading to her bones.

"I'm a naughty boy, give it to me." He kisses his teeth together man spreading and throwing his knees up to ram up inside her perfectly.

His eyes shuts till he could see white spotting behind them -- he spills inside her in form of thick ribbons and milks her cunt with it riding her out of her high. She clings to his body and snuggles into him to tone down the shivers running down her spine with each tiny orgasm she feels rushing out with his lazy thrusts.

"I'm jello." She tells him and he looks down at her with a mishevious grin, "Does that give me a reason to eat you whole?" She rolls her eyes poking at his cheek with a grossed out expression.

"I'm still inside ye', remember?" He stirs his hips to make her realise and she yelps not know if it's making her feel hot or utterly sensitive, "You're insatiable." She mumbles pouting her lips to indicate him she's dying for his lips to smooch kisses to her.

"No kidding I love the noises you make when you come undone." She confesses timidly drawing stars at his chest and he giggles kissing her temple gently, "Stop before you wake me buddy up again –- he quite fond of you." He blushes hiding his face into the crook of her neck with tiny voice.

They're canoodling under the fluffy blanket on the sofa watching telly after they just took a bath together, shampooing eachother with peach scents and drying eachother off with warm towels. She's nuzzled into his side wearing one of his baby yellow robes, his arm stays around her shoulder thumb addicted to caressing her silky cheek, sometimes spreading his fingers down her throat to tip her chin up to smooch sweet kisses on her lips.

"You're cute when you're not a pest." She giggles and he frowns comically pretending to munch her alive, "That's very rude -- you should be thankful that I lov — " Her heart almost stops functioning.

They were sipping onto their green teas and nibbling onto the strawberry mochi they made and refrigerated before when the doorbell rang making them groan in laziness.

She stood up going to see what took Harry so long on the door and got revealed to him talking instinctively to whoever rang the bell.

"Hi, Y/N." Scottie smiles at him. Carrying her luggage and Y/N looks down at her attire for a second then forwards her hand shyly. She was so scared that day –- it's a blur to her but now she watches Scottie properly she realizes …. She's the same girl from all the paparazzi photos.

Something switches off inside her. The rainbows and confettis, the moonlight and stars and the nebula of the whole galaxy she had consumed in her little body from making love to Harry just shuts down into a white noise.

Her bottom lip plumps into a pout. Eyebrows trembling from this confused feeling of some invisible thing squeezing the life out of her.

She's jealous.

"I just came here to say bye." Scottie's voice makes her focus back into reality.

"Oh…" She just nods. She doesn't return the hug even though her brain guilt trips her for that and when Scottie leaves with the air thick and tense, Harry corners her in between a wall and piece of furniture cradling her grumpy face in his careful palms speaking gently to her.

"You don't 'ave to worry 'bout her, she's just a friend …. Infact you don't have to worry 'bout anyone because I love you so so much baby that I don't see myself spending me life with anyone else." She glances up at him twice, jaw falling slack from shock and he chuckles smothering her in kind-hearted kisses when she stares at him like a hawk.

"You what!?"

"I love you, Y/N." Her eyes closing like a moth flapping nearer to fire and finding peace in burning inside it.

"I love you too so much." She whispers and welcomes his lips melting against her ardently. With the passion only lovers hold. Amiability she couldn't find anyone else but in his embrace, in his kisses and his lovemaking.

"Can we go back to cuddlin'? Me feet gettin' cold baby." He whines treading fastly into the living room while carrying her like a kitten from behind and makes squeaky noises once snoozed under the warmth of the blanket.

He touches their foreheads. Kissing the tip of her nose adorably.

"I love you." Then burst into giggles. When she returns the passion coyly.

"I love you too."

#Harry Styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles smut #harry styles one shots #harry styles fanfic #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #Harry Styles fluffy duffy

320 notes · View notes

arcadeking0fpwn · 2 years ago

Text

Once Jubilee severs the last wire with a miniature firework, the gramophone’s timer stops with a little more than two minutes left. Sparrow turns from the gramophone to Jubilee, a smirk growing on her face. Sparrow: “Told you we’d do it!” Arcade: “Bah, humbug!” The Arcade hologram had faded back into view just as Jubilee and Sparrow deactivated the explosive. Arcade angrily finishes his glass of eggnog and throws it over his shoulder, creating an audible crash behind wherever he actually was in Murderworld.

Arcade: “I should have known that trap wouldn’t outwit you!” Arcade raises one eyebrow. Arcade: “But then again…I am glad you both will make it to the grand finale! You thought my traps were full of Christmas cheer so far, just wait ‘till you see-” A faint beeping noise can be heard from one side of Arcade. Arcade: “Oh, hang on a sec! It looks like my dear Miss Locke has found herself another wayward superhero for our little reindeer games! I’ll be right back.” The Arcade hologram steps out of view for a few seconds before coming back with a devilish grin. Arcade: “Oh you two just won’t believe who’s here to rescue you! A fellow member of the X-Men who misses his dear Jubilee has fallen into one of my traps! I’m sure you’ll all be happy to see each other…one last time. You two just stay in this room for a bit while I get everything ready! Ta-ta!” The Arcade hologram fades out of existence.

The gramophone starts playing instrumental soft jazz, breaking up the awkward silence as soon as the Arcade hologram is gone. Sparrow turns to Jubilee. Sparrow: “Umm…yeah, no. I’m not staying here for whatever he’s planning. And whoever he’s talking about needs our help.” Sparrow looks at the door they’d come in through. While Jubilee and Sparrow are distracted, the horn of the gramophone changes direction, now pointing at their faces. Sparrow: “We should be able to take down the door with our fireworks. Too bad I don’t have my cutting tools.” With a sharp hiss, a stream of gas comes out of the gramophone horn, spraying them both and catching them off-guard. Sparrow: “Oh! Knockout gas!” Before she can say anything else, Sparrow sinks to the floor and drifts off to sleep. While the stream of gas eventually stops, the music keeps playing for the now-unconscious heroines. @amazing-jubilee and coordinated with @deathurgeoverdrive

4 notes · View notes

ginwhitlock · 3 years ago

Photo

summary: human!JASPER/ human!BELLA. Bella is called to deliver day supplies to a very tired and mostly lost 1st Regiment Calvary, headed by no other than Major Jasper Whitlock. What will the two do once left alone to go over maps of the Tennessee hills?

fic type: oneshot, SMUT 18+

warnings: is set in the civil war, which means Jasper is a soldier in the confederacy literally only because he’s from Texas I promise, it would’ve been weird to make him union and apart of the Texas Calvary as that wasnt a union regiment, I do not support the confederacy or any of its beliefs, its just part of his backstory and this fic is centered directly in his human life (the confederacy itself is not mentioned in detail, it is just alluded to the fact). This is a smut fic but not hardcore in anyway so be warned. Oh also I made Bella and Emmett siblings. Of course.

She almost broke his nose kissing him.

She almost shattered bone and cartilage clicking their teeth together, enamel scraping enamel.

She almost caved in the center of his face so she could lick the insides of his molars, separate his jaws to find the pit of his throat, dangle her self righteousness by his uvula.

And to think she almost didn’t go out that morning.

Isabella Marie was the kind of pretty you didn’t see right away. The layers of fine muscle and fragile skin hiding the richness of her blood-red cheeks, crisp even in the horrible heat of August. And with that heat came hot headed Calvary men with unlined coat pockets and a hunger for pretty little girls.

She met Major Whitlock three miles outside of town, the local preacher sending her out to their camp with as many baskets as her daddy’s two mules could hold on their hips. She was flushed, the slot of her breastbone slick with afternoon sweat— her riding boots did nothing but slosh around with her pale feet inside, leather no match for Tennessee mountain hidin weather.

Maybe she should’ve dropped ice down her shift. Maybe she should’ve played dead and waited for God to put her on her ass.

The thin brunette was graced with the presence of an even skinner red head the moment Stubborn Ass’s (as she affectionally called her steed in private) hooves entered the temporary camp. The mans hair fell limply in front of his eyes which were slightly sunken, the blue of his irises molting into a starved shade of dust. His lips were worse. Once pink and slightly plump, now skinny and cracked with the less than dusty air.

“Is this the 1st Regiment Calvary? From Texas?” Her voice was strained and feverish, salt dripping off her Cupid’s bow.

The man nodded and offered a hand, “Names Sargent Henry Arquette. Nice to see you Miss, the boys haven’t been able to get any supplies up here for days,” Bella grasped his hand tightly, afraid her unskilled balance would come into play, and forced her weight down to the ground ungracefully, “you’re the sheriffs daughter, right miss?” His smile seemed correct handing off his skinny face, his teeth crooked and off centered, but sweet. She quirked her lip in return.

“Yes Sargent, I seem to be your supply wagon today. There’s more back in town but I was told you wouldn’t be in for a day or so.” Flushed and overdressed, that’s how she felt. Every second.

Henry took in the view of the well fed half breeds and gestured off handedly, something she would come to learn was an action he didn’t even notice he performed. “Day. Days. Who knows until we ration it. These trails are less trails and more raccoon paths. I’m just waiting to see why the hell we’ve been sent so far east to begin with.” He had no recognition what was proper to say in front of the young lady at his side, the year had been sucked dry of any feminine… life, to say lightly. A piece of his brain nudged him for speaking so plainly, but Bella never once looked offended and twitched her head in both sympathy and understanding. She had been raised in these hills. She knew their damnation like the back of her hand. Maybe even the back of her skull.

“I’ve heard about raids up in McMinnville. Bases and such lining up and down the mountain. My brother’s part of the 16th Regiment Calvary up there actually, you know. Things are heating up in our little slice of the world.” The little thing spoke like a sparrow, her nose pointed and soft, the bottom of her front teeth pillowing into her bottom lip. At the age of seventeen she seemed somehow both grounded and unsure.

The south was ripping itself apart. And she— and the Sargent, knew it.

Bella could see the redhead start to comment on her brothers hand me down gossip when a giant of a man— boy? Man? Definitely man, by the looks of his muscled shoulders and high jaw, the darkened cast shifting just under the skin of his cheeks, the low dip of a scar just below his brow— a brow which furrowed, twisted, and arched back up into his tanned forehead when he noticed the mules waiting restlessly, tails swinging behind a girl in a kinder man's idea of a dress and interrupted the lower soldiers train of thought.

“You must be Miss Isabella McCarty. I spoke to your father when we arrived last night.” Clipped and forward were his words, his hand outstretched in front of him, decorated in mis-matched freckles and calluses she could feel pressing into the column of her throat as she placed her small palm in his. “Major Jasper Whitlock, at your assistance.”

No smile graced his face but by God she would witness his lips stretch over his teeth if it was the last thing she ever did.

Still with her hand in his she whispered “You can call me Bella. Or Bella Marie. Or Isabella Marie oh or my mother calls me Belle or sometimes when my father is upset with me he calls me Marie McCarty like my grandmother used to and um..” her tongue had to have swelled to the size of a watermelon in the three seconds it took to look him in the eyes— the swamp green eyes in fact. Eyes the color of duckweed and marigold stems and whatever leaves would stick to the blackberries in the spring.

He laughed. And it sounded like a white flag waving in her insides. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Maybe the preacher was a righteous man after all.

“I like Isabella Marie. Miss Isabella Marie.” Like rain drops on a tin ceiling.

The Arquette boy looked between the two before edging towards the black mules “Any orders where to put these, Major?” Skinny lips. Skinny spine.

Jasper had finally looked up from the strawberry cheeked girl in front of him, released their hands, and knocked his head backwards, towards the other soldiers checking tents and cleaning their own horses.

“Just take em back to the storage tent. Not like it’ll be competing for space.” The Major looked back at his men “Calhoun, Jennings, help Arquette move these rations will you? Make yourself useful for once.” His voice didn’t have to boom and condense like a rung out air horn, the cool of his vocal cords carried and personally plucked the not yet men from their activities and dragged them towards the group of three. Like some sort of magic act.

Bella was far from resigned. “So Major Whitlock, what would you like me to do?” Hopeful eyes, always searching to please. Or to piss off— as Emmett always scorned.

An upturn of lips flashed through Jaspers face and he looked to the sky for a mere moment “Mind helping me sort out some of my maps back in camp? My backwoods knowledge ain’t as sharp as my Houston kind and you seem like an expert in this area, getting yourself up to us all alone.” Bella’s feet started to move on instinct towards the felted wool tent covering a hundred or so feet behind the large man, but his hand stopped her at the shoulder, “And, if you don’t mind, would you be my guide back to town this evening? I’ve got to scout the path for the boys to pull through by the end of this week.”

She should’ve thought longer about it, linger over his words, the way his tongue flicked over his canines and brushed noticeably at the edge of his front teeth. But she didn’t. Not now. Not when the time it would’ve taken could pick at the carefully constructed wall built specifically for boys with serpent tongues. And lion hands. And bear teeth and… he still waiting for her response.

A shake to her head “Of course Major. If you’ll help me bring the mules back home, you’d be more help to me than I think I’d ever be to you.”

He could taste her self doubt. And he didn’t like it.

A jut of his brow led them through the ragged campsite, broken down cinders coating the bottom of her unusually worn boots, the lace of her dress clashing horribly with the scent of charred flesh and resting wounds. If only she knew a doctor. If only the town still had one.

His tent was one of the stronger ones, every inch placated with the spine of a book or a map binder or a drape of letters. He needed a desk and a real bed and maybe someone to make sure he stayed warm during the mountain nights.

Jaspers hands found a tiny stack of drawn maps and laid them over his now folded lap on the ground. Bella swiftly found her place at his bended knee and ran a finger over the torn edge. “These look older than my father. It doesn’t even mark the trail you follow to town.” The squishy flesh of her thumb traced an invisible oil line through the mountain and deposited itself in a town with seemingly no name, according to the parchment. “That’s home. If you’re following these maps I don’t quite understand how you ever got here.” Her eyes were full, engorged on road markers and faded city names.

Jasper softly nodded, their heads just inches from each other as she leaned in to scour the map. He had barely gotten to the camp they were in, his right hand Henry doing nearly all of the sight work. He’d be a hell of a tracker if he was a bloodhound. The blond almost chucked at the thought of Henry with big floppy mutt ears, yelping at the pretty girl almost in Jasper’s lap.

Her hair was like a chocolate waterfall. The good chocolate that mama got sent to her from her sister up north, the kind that was broken off continuously, piece after piece fed to him and his sisters until nothing was left.

Part of him wanted to see if she tasted as sweet.

He’d blame it on how damn long it’s been since he’s smelled anything other than soured sores and gunpowder. Even if Miss Isabella Marie smelled good enough to eat. Good enough to take like a man starved. And God— Jasper hungered like no other.

“There’s a river through the valley here, if you can find yourself through the woods.” Bella had found a piece of graphite and drawn in the harsh line of a hidden waterway just a mile or so from camp. She looked up at him as she spoke, her eyes warmly whiskey colored through her lashes.

His mouth clenched. “How old are you Miss McCarty?”

She blinked rapidly, like coming out of a daze. “Seventeen.”

Her hand dropped the instrument to the paper and draw up to his knee, the covered bone sharp under her knuckles.

“Do you have a boy at home waiting for you, Miss McCarty?” Hot air blew from his mouth to hers like a heatwave. Like a curse.

Bella’s lips formed a small “No” as she slid her small hand up the Major’s thigh, her singular ring gliding like margarine inch my inch as the seconds ticked by, each breath marking the two closer.

“Do you have a wife, Major?” Only whisper escaped her rosebud mouth, his face turning downwards, noses only separated by spirit.

“I was too busy waiting for you, it seems, Miss Bella.”

Her heart thumped her chest hard enough to make her ears ring.

Bella’s fist jumped from Jasper’s thigh to his army issued button up and crushed his chest to her own, her lips finding purchase slotted against his, the force clinking their front teeth together without care. His hands were gripping the roots of her soft waves, their skulls as close as their skin would let them. She wanted more, more, the heat suffocating the tent from more than the August sun. Her thin fingers slipped easily through the button gaps as his tongue invaded the privacy of her mouth. A horrible demented part of her brain screamed ‘Take, Take, Take. Mark me down and climb into the spaces that were meant to fit just us.’ Her brother had always called her too much of a dreamer. Too much of a poet and a believer and an artist. But God. This man was in her hands and she felt like a masterpiece.

A man she hardly knew.

But somehow, the scrape of his knuckles against her soon to be bare thighs felt like they had known each other at birth. Like Texas and Tennessee were just minutes from each other. As if they were the only bodies in the whole entire war.

Jasper’s hands were of no gentleman’s when he unfastened the ribbons holding her skirt to her waist, the under coat used for riding coming off like silk in his calloused palms. She was moaning into his mouth, the world outside the tent becoming buttery soft and not to be worried about. All there was was Jasper and his fucking mouth moving to her neck and his teeth toying around her jaw.

“Jesus, Major” He chuckled at her swear and rid her completely of every layer but her shift and the wool of her stockings, the small corset she wore becoming just cannon fodder for the mouth and hands of the Cavalryman.

“I love when you call me that, darlin. Wanna hear you scream it.” She had barely gotten open a single button on his shirt before he brushed the maps out of the way and flipped her on her back underneath him, the sway of his curled mane teasing her, the golden wheat just barely out of the reach of her teeth or fingers.

She wanted to use it like reins.

She’d especially like calling him by his rank then.

“You know I—“ her breathing caught the better of her as he lifted her by her thighs and dragged her ass to his kneeled position, his fingers running up her stockings with particular care, each inch another layer to her growing wetness. She didn’t let go of her breath until he had reached the skirting of her underdress, the white cotton nearly see through with the sweat sticking to every inch of her skin. His watery eyes devoured the sight with an indescribable hunger. Like a wolf hanging over a bleeding lamb.

What a happy sacrifice she’d be.

“Are you a good little southern girl, Isabella?” His fingertips brushed just under the fabric, his intent not easily hidden behind his hardened brow.

She came out trembling, she couldn’t tell over excitement or fear. “Yes Sir. No ones ever…” even her mother would blush saying those words.

Jasper finally smiled, sharp and soul quenching, like a mist of rain before a hurricane.

“I’m going to ruin you.” He couldn’t tell her about the wedding playing out behind his eyes or the static electric resonance he felt thinking about how another man would never get to lay a hand on his pretty Isabella.

His fingers slipped over her cunt, the soft curling hair tickling his fingertips. The moist warmth wet his fingers before skirting over her lips. He almost groaned. She was soaked. He had to see what his little Belle looked like in the light.

Jasper’s eyes met Bella’s giant blown out doe ones, her elbows holding up her upper body, trying to anticipate his very next move.

If they were playing chess, he was going to win. And she had always been a sore loser.

The skirt of the shift creased with the heat of his palms against her stomach, the slightly cooler air blowing across her pussy, making Bella suck in a breath through her teeth, her bottom lip becoming stuck under them with practiced strength.

Her knees knocked against Jasper’s hips as he watched the pink of her pussy clench around nothing, her wet little hole puckering and buzzing with the want of something under his trousers. He licked his lips as he had a gathered two fingers at her slit and traced upwards, her breath coming out in pants as he reached her clit, the engorged nub nearly ringing in her ears. A small circle over it make her moan from her throat. Bella had never felt someone else’s touch, she had never realized how much she wanted for it. She never knew how much she wanted Jasper to touch her.

The solider took his time as he brought the pads of his fingers back down to her achingly small hole and gathered some of her slick, the smell of sweat and Bella nearly driving him half insane as he brought a finger to his mouth, his tongue licking her clean off.

If Bella could speak to God directly and have him reply, she’d thank him for the creation of Major Jasper Whitlock.

But all she could do was cry out for more. And more he silently promised to give.

Maybe too much.

He had to stretch her out, the head of his cock wouldn’t fit into her without an orgasm in her, not now at least. Jasper slowly brought his hand back a third time and entered a single finger, her hips nearly bucking against his wrist as he slowly sat himself. A bead of sweat ran off his brow. A second finger partnered with the first after a few pumps, in and out, in and out. The near wetness coated on those fingers alone could bring him to release in his cot. He couldn’t wait any longer.

“Isabella I have to—“ “Please Major I need—“

The two looked at each other, their mouths in sync as they sat, their souls intertwining and bundling up into a bramble of wonderful thorns, coy smiles gracing both their faces.

Bella sat up slowly and draped a hand over Jasper’s belt buckle. “May I, Major?” The shorty craftsmanship of the iron buckle became putty under her unskilled hands as he nodded, now without words for the angel in front of him. The belt was off before the two noticed and Jasper brought his issued pants down to his ankles and off with his shoes to rest with the scraps of her dress he had taken off so quickly.

“Do you… always go bare?” The squeak of Bella’s voice made Jasper snicker like the teenage boy he technically still was, the nineteen year old clicking his teeth together and grinning. “Miss McCarty, sometimes underpinnings only get in the way of an army man.” A deep blush settled into her cheeks as she slapped at his chest, his shirt hanging open just slightly as he pushed her back to the floor.

“Shush, Whitlock.”

His smile turned feral as the head of his cock graced the hood of her clit, bouncing just slightly with the breath of their bodies. Jasper marked in his head that this should be a sight to see on their wedding night, not their first night together, but by God was it a beautiful one.

He looked at her as he grasped one of her hips with his right hand and the base of his cock with his left. “Breathe, Belle. Breathe with me, alright?” She nodded her head slowly and brought her own hand to the tent floor, grasping tightly.

Jasper’s hand guided the head carefully over her lips and to her quivering entrance. One buck and he’d tear her to badly to bear. No matter how long it had been… he’d never rush with his Isabella. Not now.

He slowly pushed in, the stretch a burn like no other, Bella’s voice turning from a quick steal of breath to a long sigh, the air being pushed out as he took her in. Inch by inch she devoured him, the heat marking his cock in emotional third degree burns. The sky burned brighter, the colors in his eyes turned clearer. Her hips and her fragile skin and the slip of her cunt was the end of the world and the birth of something entirely new. She grasped his shoulders as he mumbled a slew of impressive praise as he allowed her to adjust and seated himself at the very base of her cervix. Her throat screamed out to him as her nails dug in his back.

A wonderful, wonderful burn.

Bella slipped a hand to Jasper’s hip to push him back, to set any and all pace so that the fire would keep burning. He quickly slotted his face in the clench of her neck and began to move his pale hips, beginning to push and pull within her very tight walls.

The tent was full of grunts and moans and breathy screams he was sure the entirely camp heard. But Jesus Christ he didn’t give a single damn at that very moment. His boys knew to stay out of his shit and they be proven that every second until his angel’s orgasm.

God he wanted to fill her up. Wanted to take all of his cum and bury it deep where the lord intended, leave her leaking and exhausted and full of everything he had. He’d empty his balls in her again and again if it meant the Tennessee flower in his arms would keep him forever.

He wanted her forever.

“Major, deeper, please God please yes YES.” Jasper’s hips were snapping at a rapid pace, his balls slapping against her ass as he drove her into the hard ground. He could feel her tighten up the way he felt the air change around him before a fight broke out, the way a horse steps on a snake without jumping. There was an electricity in the air and the moment Bella tore his head out from her and pulled him into a jaw crushing kiss, he was crumbling at her feet, her pussy clenching and spasming around his cock with enough force to take out a grizzly bear.

She locked her legs around his hips as he all but collapsed into her, his hair sweaty between her fingers as she combed through it as his dick twitched it’s last time inside her belly. Jasper’s own hands found repentance under her ass and stayed there, too tired to remove himself from her heat.

“That ride home is gonna be sweaty, isn’t it?” Her whisper made her snort and bite into the side of her neck as she giggled.

#btw the link on the summary is always the ao3 link #i cross post things there #jasper/bella #my writing #mine #writing #fic #twilight #thetwilightsaga #twilight fanfiction #jasper hale #jasper Whitlock #jasper Cullen #bella swan #confederacy tw #smut tw #smut

39 notes · View notes

greenstudies · 4 years ago

Text

Movie recommendations

This is a list of movies I’ve seen with scores!. Used to be a part of my To Watch list, but it got too long. If you’re looking for films to watch, welcome!:

Before we start... Movies with rating 9/10 and higher are highlighted. Movies I didn’t finish have 0/10

🎦 Action

Kingsman: Golden circle 2/10

Spy who dumped me 6/10

John Wick 9/10

John Wick 2 8/10

John Wick 3 5/10

Blade Runer 0/10

Central intelligence 6/10

The Hitman’s Bodyguard 7/10

Constantine 9/10

Point Break 9/10

Charlie’s Angels 5/10

Speed 5/10

Mad Max: Fury Road 8/10

Murder on the Orient Express 6/10

The Old Guard 6/10

🎦 Animated

The Fox and the Hound 7/10

Kubo and the two strings 8/10

Sing 8/10

Sinbad 7/10

Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse 10/10

Toy Story 4 8/10

How to Train Your Dragon 3 6/10

Whisper of the Heart 7/10

Castle in the sky 6/10

Ponyo 6/10

Arriety 9/10

From Up on a poppy Hill 5/10

Tales From Earthsea 5/10

Raya and the Last Dragon 7/10

Mitchels and the Machines 7/10

Soul 8/10

Only Yesterday 5/10

Klaus 8/10

🎦 Comedy

Devil wears Prada 5/10

Bad moms 6/10

Clueless 0/10

Ibiza 4/10

Isn’t it romantic 8/10

Crazy Rich Asians 8/10

Dirty 30 couldn’t find it :(

The Perfect Date 5/10

Someone Great 7/10

Unicorn Store 5/10

Tootsie 7/10

Mortdecai 7/10

I Love You Phillip Morris 7/10

Always Be My Maybe 7/10

Knives Out 8/10

9 to 5 7/10

Fried Green Tomatoes 4/10

Love and Monsters 7/10

Bo Burnham: INSIDE 9/10

Little Miss Sunshine 7/10

The Intern 6/10

🎦 Drama

Passengers 6/10

Joy 9/10

Inferno 8/10

Catch me if you can 7/10

Rush 5/10

Leon 7/10

Bohemian Rhapsody 7/10

The Game 8/10

Alpha 3/10

The Breakfast Club 3/10

Burlesque 7/10

The Judge 7/10

The Godfather 5/10

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest 7/10

To the Bone 8/10

My Own Private Idaho 4/10

Little Women 0/10

1984 6/10

Devil’s Advocate 10/10

Her 5/10

Walk the line 5/10

Lady Bird 4/10

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 0/10

Mindscape 9/10

Seven 10/10

Unbreakable 7/10

Split 7/10

Glass 4/10

Much Ado About Nothing 5/10

47 Ronin 5/10

Bend It Like Beckham 3/10

Brokeback Mountain 8/10

JoJo Rabbit 10/10

The Colour Purple 4/10

Now and Then 5/10

Marriage Story 7/10

The Master 0/10

The Truman Show 9/10

The Yards 0/10

Stay 8/10

The Snowman 4/10

Parasite 7/10

I Care a Lot 4/10

Primal Fear 9/10

🎦 Documentary

Minimalism 6/10

What the Health 0/10

The Social Dilemma 8/10

🎦 Horror

Train to Busan 4/10

The Woman in Black 5/10

Bird Box 7/10

Silent hill 0/10

Doctor Sleep 7/10

Jennifer’s Body 3/10

The Quiet Place 6/10

The Witch 2/10

American Psycho 1/10

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 2/10

🎦 Thriller

Red Sparrow 0/10 (didn’t even finish it, I’m too pure)

Ocean’s 8 7/10

Bad Times at the El Royale 4/10

A Simple Favour 8/10

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch 9/10

Joker 10/10

Chain Reaction 6/10

Widows 0/10

Prisoners 10/10

Zodiac 8/10

Our Kind of Traitor 6/10

The Girl on the Train 6/10

🎦 Fantasy

The Huntsman: Winter’s War 6/10

Beauty and the Beast (life action) 6/10

Red Riding Hood 5/10

Tomb Rider 2/10

Pete’s Dragon 6/10

Upside Down 2/10

Sleepy Hollow 6/10

The House with a Clock in its Walls 7/10

Fantastic Beasts: Grindenwald’s Crimes 8/10

Mary Popins returns 6/10

Big Fish 6/10

Jack the Giant Slayer 5/10

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 8/10

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe 7/10

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 8/10

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring 7/10

Christopher Robin 6/10

Into the Woods 3/10

Beetlejuice 6/10

Robin Hood 3/10

Horns 4/10

🎦 Sci-fi

Ghostbusters: Answer the Call 7/10

Fahrenheit 451 0/10

Ex Machina 6/10

Looper 8/10

The X Files: I Want To Believe 4/10

The Island 7/10

The Matrix 6/10

The Butterfly Effect 8/10

Star Wars I: Phantom Menace 7/10

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones 7/10

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith 7/10

What Happened to Monday 5/10

🎦 Superhero

Ant-Man and Wasp 5/10

Deadpool 2 9/10

Aquaman 8/10

Captain Marvel 8/10

Spiderman: Far from Home 8/10

Iron man 3 7/10

X-Men: Dark Phoenix 7/10

Birds of Prey (And the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) 8/10

Venom 8/10

Venom: Let There Be Carnage 6/10

🎦 Romance

How to lose a guy in 10 days 6/10

Love Actually 6/10

The Kissing Booth 4/10

The first time 4/10

Pretty Woman 7/10

Dirty Dancing 9/10

The Notebook 5/10

Just Friends 3/10

Moulin Rouge! 8/10

Call Me By Your Name 6/10

The Lake House 5/10

Carol 7/10

Playing by Heart 2/10

Hope you like some of these!

#the-diary-of-a-failure #studyblr #lifestyle blog #studies #film #movie #movie recommendation #movie list #movie rating #film recommendation #scifi #fantasy #action #drama #romance

99 notes · View notes

melanielocke · 3 years ago

Text

Lost in the Shadows - Chapter 24

AO3

Taglist: @nott-the-best @foxglove-airmid @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @justanormaldemon @styxdrawings @ipromiseiwillwrite @a-dream-dirty-and-bruised@alastair-appreciation-month

Previous Chapter: Chapter 23

Next Chapter: Chapter 25

Lucie was exhausted. She’d used more magic today than she had in her entire life and when they were finished eating Thomas’ admittedly very good shepherd’s pie, she was so tired she wanted to go to bed. She usually had a bit of an irregular sleeping schedule, you never knew when inspiration might hit, but right now she needed sleep more than anything. She suspected no one else would want to go to sleep yet. Thomas and Alastair had curled up on the couch, cuddling while watching a movie. They both seemed to really like touch, Lucie noticed, which was something she’d expected from Thomas, but not Alastair. Cordelia had always described him as having difficulty showing physical affection, but perhaps it was different with Thomas. Cordelia was on the other couch, reading a book she’d borrowed from her.

‘Can I talk to you?’ she asked her mother.

‘Of course, Lu,’ her mother said. ‘Where did you want to go?’

She and her mother went upstairs to Lucie’s bedroom. She didn’t think Alastair had the energy required for messing with someone’s memory right now, so she left him. Perhaps he could help tomorrow, or whenever he felt like it. Restoring years of memories had to be hard.

‘Alright, so we freed Grace,’ Lucie said. ‘And she had some information. Including a story about a witch with powers similar to mine, who sealed the thief away in his realm and then fell asleep in the land in between for a 130 years.’

Tessa tilted her head. ‘Like sleeping beauty?’

‘I think she woke up by herself,’ Lucie said. ‘With the strange way time moves there, she could have just passed out for a little while, but woken up 130 years later. Anyway, according to Grace this woman’s name was Theresa Gray and she was the thief’s daughter. And she woke up about twenty years ago. The thief took her memories and replaced them with false ones.’

Tessa frowned. ‘And you think I was that witch in a past life? You know I have no powers, right? Nothing like what you can do.’

‘According to Grace, the thief took your powers.’

Jessamine walked into the room, through the wall as she so often did. Jessamine, who’d met a miss Gray who was a witch around the same time period…

‘Show yourself, Jess,’ Lucie said. ‘Come here.’

Jessamine sat down on her bed next to her.

‘Do you recognize my mother?’ Lucie asked.

Jessamine frowned. ‘She’s come here regularly for the past twenty years or so,’ she said.

‘No, I mean before that. What did Mr. Gray’s sister look like, the other one who could see you?’

‘Your mother looks a lot like her, Lucie. But she lived 150 years ago.’

‘But could they be the same person?’ Lucie asked.

Jessamine tilted her head. ‘It’s been a long time… But yes. It could have been her, if it weren’t for the time passed.’

‘See!’ Lucie said triumphantly. ‘It was you. You’ve been here after Jessamine died to offer condolences, because she was to be married to your brother.’

‘My brother died in a car accident,’ Tessa said. ‘In the 1990s.’

Lucie didn’t know much about this uncle, her mother barely talked about him and she didn’t even know his name. Now she began to suspect these false memories of everyone around her dying were the only way such a fake past could make sense. Because she’d woken up in this century alone, everyone she knew had died.

‘Alastair could help you,’ Lucie said. ‘To remember. It could be important. Besides, it must suck not knowing who you are.’

Tessa put her hand on Lucie’s shoulder. ‘I know who I am, Lu. I have a PhD and do medical research. I am your mother. But if in the past I was someone else, I am willing to find out.’

Lucie wanted to finish some writing but her eyes were falling shut, there was no point.

She slept restlessly that night. She dreamt of an old fashioned stone castle, a man on a throne decorated with bones. She only got glimpses of him. Of the horns on his head. No, they weren’t horns, they were antlers. A pair of red eyes. Not just the iris was red, the entire eye was, shining in the dark.

‘I know what you did, Lucie Herondale. I know what you are. And I will make you pay.’

Lucie shot up, drenched in sweat. Was it a nightmare, or a warning? Lucie couldn’t be sure. All she could see where those horrible eyes, burning red. She changed into a clean pajama, but at least the bed seemed clean enough. Lucie just wasn’t sure if she would fall back asleep. Her heart was still racing, and it was worse knowing that the monster might be real. Could that be him, the thief of souls? Grace had said he’d been human once, and beyond the antlers and the eyes he had been human in appearance, even if Lucie had only seen flashes. Had he found out she’d stolen Barbara from him? It seemed like an obvious explanation. Did he know about her mother? Barbara was still around here, Lucie wasn’t sure how or when she’d move on and neither was Barbara herself. She’d be safer when she wasn’t here as a ghost anymore, but perhaps she’d want a chance to talk to uncle Gabriel as well. Lucie imagined it would be harder for him though. Uncle Gabriel did not remember his mother at all, she wasn’t sure what it’d be like, to be confronted with a mother who’d died so long ago you didn’t remember her. But perhaps it was still nice to at least be given a chance to meet her, even if only once.

Lucie decided she could not go back to sleep and checked the time. It was around ten, she’d gone to bed very early. She suspected Cordelia might be going to bed right now. She usually went to bed around ten and considering it had been an exhausting day for her as well she didn’t think Cordelia would be up much later.

Lucie left her room, plushie sparrow in her arms, sprinting to where she knew the light switch was until she could turn it on. It was stupid and irrational, she knew, but part of her expected to see a pair of red glowing eyes any moment. Not that turning the light on would protect her but at least she felt safer. She walked over to Cordelia’s bedroom and knocked on the door.

Cordelia opened, wearing her pajama top but the jean shorts she’d changed into after showering.

‘Are you alright, Lu?’ she asked.

‘Nightmare,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

Cordelia gestured for her to come in and Lucie did, sitting down on Cordelia’s bed with her plushie sparrow. Cordelia had her redhead Persian cat plushie on the bed. Lucie knew Cordelia wanted to get a Persian cat for a pet when she lived on her own. Uncle Jem had one, although that little beast hated everyone except uncle Jem, her father in particular. Cordelia quickly changed into her pajama bottoms and sat down on the bed next to Lucie. Fortunately, there was enough space for the two of them.

‘What did you dream of?’ Cordelia asked, putting her arms around Lucie.

It was comforting, to be touched on her own terms, to be touched by Cordelia. It wasn’t always easy, but Cordelia would always be an exception. Her fingers were soft and send sparks down Lucie’s spine. Her arms were firm and applied just enough pressure for it to be comforting but not painful. Cordelia was both chubby and muscular, and it felt nice.

‘I think it might have been the thief of souls,’ Lucie admitted. ‘He said that he knew what I’d done and I’d pay the price. I don’t know, it could have been an ordinary nightmare. There’s no way to tell, is there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cordelia said. ‘But I have cortana right here. If he so much as dares come close to you, I’ll stab him with my sword. I don’t care if he’s some all powerful immortal being. Cortana can kill anything.’

Lucie curled up against Cordelia. ‘That’s comforting. But I don’t know what to do. We’ve set Grace free, but now what? Even stopping Tatiana’s plans won’t be enough, not if the creature she works for is after me regardless of what she does.’

‘We’ll destroy it,’ Cordelia promised. ‘We’ll find a way. I won’t let anything hurt you.’

Cordelia kissed her forehead, gently running her fingers through her hair and Lucie felt herself burn up. Cordelia had no idea how she felt about her, did she? Lucie felt a little guilty about not telling her, but what if Cordelia didn’t feel the same way? She surely wouldn’t want to hold Lucie like this if she knew?

So instead she remained silent, both of them falling asleep like this. It worked, Lucie didn’t have any other nightmares. She slept until late the next morning, and only woke when Cordelia wanted to get out of bed and started moving. She felt rested again, as if she’d slept for a week.

After breakfast, Cordelia decided to help her and Thomas with wielding the dagger Alastair had given them. Lucie guessed when necessary she might stab something, but it was just as likely someone could disarm her and use the weapon against her. She didn’t want to rely on magic alone, she still hadn’t realized its full potential and it tired her too much. At least Thomas had some natural talent with the dagger.

Alastair was in conversation with Lucie’s mother, helping her with her memory Lucie guessed. It was difficult for Alastair because he had no starting point, but they’d taken Jessamine as a start and worked through association. Alastair had explained that he usually worked through timeline, but in this case association would be an easier way in. Lucie knew it had to be confusing for her mother. She couldn’t imagine finding out she was really a Victorian lady who’d travelled through time and forgotten all about it.

Her father helped out here and there as well. It was easy to forget he’d learnt all of this too, training with uncle Jem, but even after all these years he knew what he was doing.

‘I used to wield throwing knives,’ her father said. ‘I don’t think this dagger is balanced enough for throwing though. Excellent for stabbing. I must admit it looks very familiar, I think I used to have a dagger that looks just like this.’

Her father turned Lucie’s dagger around in his hand. ‘Even the jewels and the inscription matches. Where did you get this?’

‘Alastair gave it to me,’ Lucie said. ‘Not sure where he got it.’

‘It was a gift,’ Alastair clarified, who’d just came to join them. ‘Tessa is starting to remember, but I think it’s best to take it slowly. It’ll be easier now that the first memories came back.’

Will gazed up thoughtfully. ‘A gift, huh? Oh, of course, I gave the dagger away. A long time ago, to Charlotte Fairchild. Some monsters were after her, we later learned those were Benedict Lightwood’s as he held a grudge against her family or something, and Jem and I killed the beasts. I gave her a dagger that looked just like this one.’

***

Alastair didn’t know Charlotte Fairchild personally. He’d never met any of Charles’ family, aside from Matthew whom he knew from school. Charles had never wanted him to and Alastair had thought it was best at the time. He knew Charlotte was a member of the parliament for labour, and she was probably a much better politician than her son would ever be, but apart from that he didn’t know much about her. He certainly didn’t know she had once been involved in the supernatural as well.

‘Perhaps it’s a different dagger,’ Will mused. ‘Or Charlotte sold it or gave it away, I don’t think I ever asked what she did with it.’

‘Didn’t you say this one was a gift from your ex?’ Lucie asked.

Alastair stiffened. He hadn’t realized at all, but if Will knew Charlotte, did he also know Charles? It made sense, of course. His son James was best friends with Matthew Fairchild. But Charles had always seemed a bit like an isolated person to Alastair. Not in the sense that he had no friends or family, but Alastair didn’t know anyone Charles spent time with, and therefore it had never occurred to him that other people might know Charles.

‘Yes, I did. Charles never told me where he’d gotten it, I’d assumed he’d bought it.’

Perhaps Charles had found it among his mother’s old things and asked if he could have it, so he could give it to Alastair? Charles had never said it had belonged to his mother, he’d never said anything about where he’d gotten it and Alastair had assumed he must have bought it, although he’d never asked. He’d assumed the dagger must have been expensive considering the jewels. Charles was rich and had not shied away from giving him expensive gifts Alastair never could have bought on his own. Those gifts had made him feel so special, had made him forget about all the times Charles had dismissed him or pressured him into doing something. Had convinced him the pain didn’t matter because Charles loved him.

Of course, Alastair didn’t care much about how much money someone was spending on him, and he would have liked it if someone found him such a gift among his mother’s things, but not telling about it and letting Alastair believe he’d bought it was weird, right?

‘You mean you got it from Charles Fairchild? Charles was your ex?’

Alastair could easily read the shock on Thomas’ face. ‘I didn’t realize you knew him.’

‘I always saw him as Matthew’s annoying older brother, but I did know him. He used to be friends with my sisters. My parents have been very close with Charlotte and Henry for as long as I can remember, I’ve come there since I was a child. I never realized he might be someone I knew.’

Stupid, Alastair thought. Of course they knew Charles. Charles might have kept him away from his family and friends, but Matthew was Charles’ younger brother and Matthew and Thomas had been friends since they were little, before Charles had moved out. Did everyone here know him?

‘Charles Fairchild is your ex?’ Lucie’s eyes were wide with shock, but she also seemed intrigued.

Alastair stepped back. He knew what would happen, of course, he wasn’t stupid. Some unnamed man they had never heard of they could vilify. Someone they didn’t know could have been an abuser. But if they knew Charles, they would believe him over Alastair, wouldn’t they? They’d know him as he presented himself to the world, charming and hardworking and considerate, and would question Alastair’s story. Was he really that bad? Hadn’t he just asked for it?

He hadn’t told Will and Tessa the details about his relationship, of course, only Cordelia, Thomas and Gideon knew more than that he had broken up with someone some months ago. Now he couldn’t tell anyone else, couldn’t count on them to believe him. Not that he’d intended to necessarily, but he wished he could have.

‘Yes,’ Alastair said stiffly. ‘He gave me that dagger when I turned seventeen. I didn’t know it belonged to his mother before I got it. I didn’t want to return it after the break up, so that’s why I gave it to Lucie.’

Will didn’t seem to have any additional questions, but Alastair wasn’t so sure what he thought of the story. Even without any information, he had to be able to figure out Alastair had been a minor at the time of their relationship and Charles was not. Of course, not everyone thought that was wrong.

Alastair retreated inside, just as Tessa came outside. Looking for him? She’d just remembered visiting Jessamine in this house, the easiest entry to her old memory and had to be very overwhelmed. Not sure what to do now, the only distraction offered by the ringing of a doorbell. He guessed that would be Thomas’ parents, so Alastair went to open the door. Gideon would find out Charles had been his ex, right? Someone he’d known since he was a child. Alastair was a little overwhelmed from the discovery, scared what everyone would think. He opened the door expecting Thomas’ parents. Instead, it was his cousin Jem.

‘What are you doing here?’ Alastair realized that sounded rather rude. He’d been working at being nicer lately. Only for people who deserved it, of course, but Jem was one of those people. ‘Sorry. I mean, I wasn’t expecting you here.’

‘That’s alright. I came because I was worried.’

Alastair frowned. ‘Why?’

Had Will told Jem of what was happening here? Considering how close they were, he probably would have.

‘I haven’t heard a thing from Will and Tessa in some time,’ Jem said. ‘Nor has your mother heard anything from you or your sister.’

‘I’ve texted her every single day. She hasn’t read anything though.’

He and Thomas had speculated something like this might be going on, something blocking their lines of communication. He guessed that must be true. He led Jem to the living room.

‘I suspected something like this could happen. Will did mention something of the supernatural being active here, and sometimes that interferes with communication. I have not been able to reach any of you, nor did Gabriel and Cecily.’

‘Gideon said he couldn’t reach Gabriel, but apparently it was not unusual for Gabriel to disappear like that,’ Alastair said.

In this age of phones and technology, Alastair couldn’t imagine not responding to anything for several days.

‘That’s because back when he and Cecily still investigated the supernatural, phones tended to go haywire when they were deep in the middle of something. It’s something they got used to.’

The idea of his mother not sending a reply at all because she didn’t receive anything was certainly better than her purposely ignoring him, especially after Alastair had sent her a picture of him and Thomas.

‘And now it’s happening here.’

‘Yes,’ Jem said. ‘Your enemy wants to isolate you. That’s why I came here, I knew something was going on and you might need help.’

‘Well, you’re not wrong,’ Alastair said. ‘How is my mother?’

‘She is a bit worried, but I assured her there was no need for her to come here, that I would check in. I told her there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to reach her either. There’s something else she’s been wanting to tell you and your sister, but since she’s been unable to contact either of you, she’s asked me to tell you.’

Alastair was instantly sick with worry. ‘She’s not going back to Father, is she?’

‘No, that’s not it. Do you still not wish to know how your father has been doing? Otherwise I could give you some more information.’

Alastair considered his options. ‘I just want to know that my mother is safe from him,’ he said.

‘He’s at a clinic,’ Jem said. ‘Your mother has not visited. She is trying to find a way to get the house back after the divorce, but is currently still staying with Risa.’

Alastair was not sure what to think of that. Alastair had lived the first few years of his life in the old Carstairs manor, but his father had been forced to sell it because of financial problems. Jem had bought it back some years later, as a doctor he had the income to afford it. Not to mention he probably had saved his inheritance instead of spending it on alcohol. They’d moved into a smaller but honestly still bigger than average house, which had been paid for at least partially with his mother’s money. Who would get the house after the divorce was a bit tricky. While it would be convenient for them to have the house, Alastair feared there were too many bad memories attached to it. He didn’t want to go back to living there, even without his father.

‘You know, my offer still stands. You can come live with me,’ Jem added. ‘I have plenty of space.’

Alastair knew moving in with Jem was probably more practical than living with Risa. She didn’t really have the space to accommodate an entire family since she’d always lived on her own and didn’t have a high income like Jem did. The main reason he’d turned down the offer was because he didn’t know Jem all that well. Father had always done the best he could to keep him away from their family, and he was this distant relative he vaguely knew of. But after sharing a room with Cordelia for some time, he guessed perhaps moving in with Jem was a better idea. He’d even considered moving out altogether like many students did, but he didn’t think that was feasible with the money he had, not without getting roommates who were likely going to be messy and consumers of alcohol like students often were. Not to mention people often chose their new roommates and Alastair knew realistically, no one would choose him. Even if he didn’t know Jem all that well, living with him would probably be preferable.

‘I’ll think on it,’ Alastair said. ‘At this point it might be the only feasible idea. I don’t think it would be right to impose on Risa for much longer.’

‘You and your mother and sister will always be welcome with me,’ Jem said. ‘Now, how are you? With everything that’s been happening, I imagine this summer was not the escape you’d hoped it would be.’

‘Not really,’ Alastair said. ‘But it’s not all bad. I’ve grown closer to Thomas. We’re in a relationship now. It’s all very new though, and I find it difficult to open myself again, or to accept that he cares. He keeps saying he does, but this voice in my head tells me he couldn’t possibly care about me.’

‘It’s hard, to accept that you are loved after everything you’ve been through,’ Jem said. ‘To believe it, really.’

Alastair felt a bit embarrassed by it all, as he often did. Both Jem and his therapist had often assured him having a mental disorder was nothing to be ashamed of, but that didn’t stop Alastair from feeling weak and broken.

‘I will think about moving in with you at the end of the summer,’ Alastair decided, if only because it was the least bad option he had. He didn’t want to make a permanent decision yet, but it was a good option. He knew few people had the luxury of having a cousin he could just move in with. ‘But on one condition. I do get to keep my dagger collection.’

‘You still have those, then?’

‘They’re important to me,’ Alastair insisted. ‘Right now, we use them in case we need to defend ourselves, but beyond that they’re decorative.’

‘I don’t mind them,’ Jem said. ‘I’m just concerned that you’ll hurt yourself.’

‘I could also hurt myself with razor blades and kitchen knives. But I don’t. I’ve never cut myself, and I don’t intend to start,’ Alastair said.

To be honest, he did understand why some people did. Some had said that cutting made the pain go away for a moment and Alastair could understand doing anything to make the pain go away. Alastair had been more prone to hurting others than himself though, lashing out as a way of coping. Both were quite maladaptive coping methods, but fortunately Alastair had at least learnt to stop lashing out.

‘I trust you,’ Jem said. ‘Are you getting along with the others here? You always struggled socially.’

Some time ago Jem had considered that like Lucie, he might be autistic, but Alastair wasn’t sure. His issues with social interaction could also be due to trauma. It was always frustrating, how people around him worried about his lack of friends. He was still considering getting tested for it, but waiting lists for autism assessment, especially in adulthood, were endless and the longer he postponed making a decision, the longer it would take.

‘I am,’ Alastair said. ‘Mostly with Thomas.’

‘Yes, you mentioned you were in a relationship with him. Is he treating you well? Better than the last one, I hope,’ Jem said.

‘Yes he is. He is sweet. Speaking of the last one, do you know Charles Fairchild? I just discovered that everyone else here knows him.’

Alastair figured it anyone would be on his side, it would be Jem, so perhaps it was best to hear how well everyone knew Charles from Jem. He very much did not want to talk about Charles, but he also knew he should be prepared.

‘I knew him well when he was a child. Lately, not so much. I still see Henry and Charlotte, but Charles doesn’t live with them anymore, so I haven’t seen him in a while. You don’t mean to say he is your ex boyfriend?’

‘Everyone knows him apparently. I didn’t realize. And I told Thomas and Gideon the whole story without mentioning his name. But now Thomas knows it was him because of the goddamn dagger and why would they believe me over someone they knew since he was a child?’

‘Alastair, I believe you,’ Jem said. ‘That I did not expect such a thing from Charles only tells me I did not know him at all. Some people are simply good at hiding what they’re really like.’

Alastair guessed he was such a person too. He spent so much time hiding how broken and awful he really was.

‘I do not think knowing the person who hurt you will make them stop believing you,’ Jem added. ‘They might be shocked to know Charles was capable of such a thing, and I understand you might prefer not to discuss it, but they will still believe you.’

‘How can you know?’

‘Because Will and Tessa and Gideon and Sophie are my friends, and I trust them. Now, where are Will and Tessa? I would like to greet them.’

‘They’re just outside,’ Alastair said, leading Jem into the garden where Cordelia and Will were still helping Thomas and Lucie wield their daggers properly.

Truly becoming skilled with them would take years, but they would have to make do with the time they had.

‘Jem, I didn’t know you were coming!’ Tessa said.

‘I had become worried,’ Jem said. ‘And I missed you.’

Jem hugged Tessa, and then Will. Alastair envied their close friendship sometimes, one that had endured over the years even after Will and Jem had stopped training to fight together. Perhaps he really did lack the social skills to build such a friendship.

‘I think we all missed you,’ Will said. ‘I didn’t realize you’d be coming.’

‘You’ve been cut off from communicating with people outside,’ Jem said. ‘I realized when none of you responded to me, or Gabriel, or Sona. I thought it would be best to come here and see for myself. Gabriel and Cecily would have come, but they couldn’t find a babysitter.’

‘Of course. You’re always welcome here,’ Tessa said.

‘Now I do have to deliver a message to Cordelia and Alastair,’ Jem said.

Alastair and Cordelia followed Jem back inside. He was still worried, scared something was not right. All he knew was his mother was not going back to his father.

‘What is it?’ Cordelia asked. ‘Nothing bad, I hope?’

‘No, nothing bad. She really wanted to tell you this herself, but considering the circumstances she gave me permission to tell you. She is expecting a child.’

‘Wait, what? And how?’ Cordelia asked.

‘She likely got pregnant shortly before leaving Elias,’ Jem said. ‘And didn’t realize until after you two left. Despite the circumstances she is very happy about it and excited to meet her new baby. She hopes you are as well.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Cordelia said. ‘But wow, I really did not expect a baby sibling,’ Cordelia said.

‘Me neither,’ Alastair said. ‘But the baby will have everything they need. They won’t be burdened by Father.’

Alastair could never have guessed he’d have another baby sibling, but even now, not knowing them at all, he knew he’d do anything for the baby. He knew he could not quite be a father, but he could be a good older brother, a better one than he’d been to Cordelia at least. He could make sure the baby wouldn’t have to grow up like he had, and would always have someone to tell them they were loved and perfect and enough as they were. Although Alastair could never have anticipated this news, he was happy.

#Lucie Herondale #Cordelia Carstairs #Alastair Carstairs #Thomas Lightwood #Lucelia #Thomastair #the last hours #tlh #fanfiction

18 notes · View notes

mooncustafer · 3 years ago

Text

Recover, Regroup, Roadtrip

Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in March 1989. The case is still open. Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in October 2016. The case is still open.

for @laughingpinecone /

/ @countdowntotwinpeaks‘ WONDERFULXSTRANGE 2021

“Diane, I am uncertain of the date and time, or indeed if such concepts have any meaning in this place. Nor do I have my recorder, but I find verbalizing my thoughts helps me to resist the confusion and lethargy. As for addressing my words to you, even though you’ll never hear them— well, old habits die hard.”

It pleased Wally Brando on a profound level to discover that a few pay-phones remained in Philadelphia, that reaching out was not yet the prerogative only of those who could afford a landline or a mobile. He could also have checked his email on a terminal at one of the city’s Public Libraries, and indeed, made a note to do so within the day so that he might catch up on the news of parents and former school friends. The pay phone was also blessed with both the yellow and the white pages, and the number he sought appeared under “F.” Getting transferred to Dr. Albert Rosenfield was a more complex quest, but he was persistent as well as polite, and after a few minutes he was able to speak to Dr. Rosenfield’s voice mail, if not the man himself.

He introduced himself with salutations, and was about the explain the nature of his request when a beep signalled that the allotted time had run out.

“To listen to your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two,” said the voice of the machine.

Silently cursing his volubility, Wally pressed two. This time he simplified the introduction, and asked if Dr. Rosenfield would be good enough to meet him that evening at the Morimoto Japanese restaurant not far from the FBI offices, to discuss a matter of deep concern connected, he believed, with the little town of Twin Peaks. When the beep came this time, he listened to his message and then, satisfied, hung up. The restaurant he’d named was slightly above his means, but he was meeting a friend of his godfather, and wanted to do justice to the occasion, even if the reason for it was one of peculiar anxiety to himself.

“Diane, I have tried so many times to escape— on the last attempt I really did get out into the world, but my plans, I fear, had dire repercussions for you, and to no end— my course still led me back to the Black Lodge. Some flaw in my own nature keeps trapping me in this loop; perhaps it’s what they sometimes call Saṃsāra.”

It was Agent Tammy Preston’s custom, when scraping the internet for information relevant to one or more recent cases, to check her email inbox every seven minutes— to do so every five minutes would disrupt the flow of her work, but ten-minute gaps might let something important go unanswered for too long. Just now the inbox was due another glance, and switching tabs she saw that two minutes earlier Director Bryson had replied to Tammy’s email of that morning with an invitation to come by her desk at her earliest possible convenience.

Tammy locked her screen, paused ‘Soft Fuzzy Man’ on her playlist and removed her headphones. Picking up the folder marked Missing Persons, 1989– Palmer, she slipped back into her pumps and made for Bryson’s office. The door was open but Tammy stopped at the threshold and rapped on the wall.

“Come in,” said Director Bryson, looking up from a folder. Bossa nova music played softly in the background as Tammy entered and pulled up a chair. It sometimes puzzled Tammy that apart from herself and Director Gordon Cole, no one in this particular division of the FBI seemed to have any interest in music recorded after 1979. (The first few times she’d heard ‘Du Hast’ pounding through the walls of Cole’s office, she’d wondered if this taste for metal was the result, or perhaps the cause, of his hearing loss; but after he’d joked to an unamused Agent Rosenfield about how these were difficult times and difficult times called for Dave Brubeck, she’d looked up the reference in case it was a coded message, and then the next day had overheard Gordon whistling ‘Mister Sandman,’ a song she knew primarily from an internet meme, at which point she concluded that the ear wants what it wants, regardless of demographic.)

“You told me you’d found some serious inconsistencies in the records surrounding Twin Peaks and the Palmer case?”

Tammy nodded, hesitated:

“I believe there may be inconsistencies as well in my own perceptions of the case.”

“Well now, that I find a little harder to believe.” Bryson smiled, but then her voice grew serious: “I’ve looked over the notes you made, and it confirms my own doubts about events.”

“Worse yet— the fact that I truly left the Lodge and then returned to it, will enable the beings that inhabit this place to take another twenty-five year turn in my likeness, unleashing even more evil on the world. The only thing stalling them is the doppelgänger I had MIKE make for the Jones family, but I don’t know if he’s still under the White Lodge’s protection.”

After all these months it still surprised Harry Truman there was so little physical pain, and so much boredom, to dying. Oh there’d been pain at the beginning, when he’d started treatment and had had to stop drinking; the memory of detoxing still made him shudder. But now he only felt a tiredness too huge for sleep to make any dent in it; and since he couldn’t sleep all the time, there were a great many hours during which all he could do was lie in the hospice bed or sit in one of the hospice chairs, and think.

At this point dying didn’t even sound so bad— it wasn’t like the past three decades had been all that great. He imagined going to sleep, just filling up a big bowl of silence and darkness and sinking into it, and then he felt bad for thinking that because Frank had already lost enough people without Harry lighting out too. Anyways, with the things he’d seen over the years he’d be a damn fool to think there was anything peaceful about death and whatever came after. So he’d lie awake trying to find some other topic to ponder, and that’s generally when the boredom set in.

Right now, courtesy of the nap he’d had in the afternoon after today’s treatment had left him especially exhausted, he was lying awake in the wee small hours. 3:52 am, said the clock on his bedside table beside the stack of paperbacks Frank had brought him on his visits— Harry wasn’t afraid of e-readers the way Lucy was of cellular phones, but he found the smell of paper comforting. It reminded him of the Bookhouse. The hospice tended to smell of disinfectants and sweat and soup. The food actually wasn’t as bad as the food at the hospital in Twin Peaks used to be, not that any food could be as bad as the hospital food in Twin Peaks used to be, but it made no difference to Harry, whose appetite had been gone for months. Frank always brought a slice of Norma’s pie too, carefully sealed in an old cookie tin to keep it fresh, but Harry could never manage more than a couple of bites, and they didn’t always stay down.

Being awake in the middle of the night in a hospice wasn’t as bad as being awake in the middle of the night when you were alone at home— the occasional voices or footsteps from the corridors beyond were reminders that whatever might be happening to Harry, life went on for the staff; and the lights from the city outside showed that life went on for others outside the hospice walls. When he’d first arrived, those city lights had made it hard to sleep, but now they substituted for the starry sky above Twin Peaks. There were fewer birds to watch in the city, though sparrows, pigeons or a starling sometimes lit on the ledge outside his window and peered in at him, or maybe at their own reflections. The frequent rain pattering against the glass— well, that sounded the same here as it did in a cabin.

Frank had called to tell him about Margaret Lanterman. Harry sometimes wondered if he should have stayed in Twin Peaks and died in his own home like her, instead of lingering in this hospice like the doomed heroine of some nineteenth-century novel. Or like Annie Blackburn. Or Audrey Horne.

The rain was spattering now against Harry’s window, bending the light from the Japanese stone lantern in the pocket-sized garden below. Harry couldn’t remember what the hospice building looked like from the outside, but he guessed it was similar in style to the mid-century one next door where the day-patients came for their treatments. A flash silhouetted the roofline; five seconds later came the thunder-crack. Harry settled back and closed his eyes.

Sleep pulled him into dreams of an espresso machine, like the one in the coffee place down in the lobby next to the gift shop for visitors. This machine filled a whole room, metal pipes feeding back on themselves like some kind of espressouroboros, neither steam nor coffee escaping from the grotesque contraption. Agent Cooper stood wearily before it with two empty coffee-cups. Harry was just wondering who the second cup was for, when Coop looked up and met his eyes:

“What year is this?!”

Harry sat up in bed, listened intently for two full minutes, but he didn’t hear Coop’s voice again. He sighed. Sometimes the mind pulls imaginary sounds out of the background noise. False pattern recognition or something— Coop would have known a word for it. Harry had little hope left they’d ever find Cooper, or if they did, that he’d still be the man he’d known. Yet he’d carried on, more (he told himself) out of habit than any real hope. He’d kept in touch with Agent Rosenfield, even when it meant letting him know about the cancer— not that Albert would blab the secret to anyone in Twin Peaks.

“Hello?”

“Good, you’re still alive.” Albert’s personality hadn’t mellowed with the years, exactly, but familiarity had worn the edges off his jibes.

“Shut up, Albert. So what have you found?” Albert’s calls generally came every three months, but never at nine in the morning, and he’d last spoken to Harry only two weeks back. Something important must have happened.

“Actually, Sheriff Truman, I’m the one coming to you for information.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to do investigations from a hospital bed. What can I tell you that you can’t get from other sources?”

“I need you to summarize the Laura Palmer case back in 1989, and the actions of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks at that time.”

“Albert, is this one of your damn cognitive tests? You already know—”

“We’re both too tired to argue, just humor me.”

“How detailed do you want?”

“An outline will suffice.”

Harry took a deep breath and briefly listed the finding of Laura’s body, and the living but dazed and injured Ronnette, and the arrival of Agent Dale Cooper to lead the investigation. He skimmed over the crimes of Jacques Reneault and some of the other peripheral drama that had occurred in the town around that time, noted that Leland Palmer had murdered his own daughter, albeit while not fully himself, and was beginning to recount Cooper’s temporary suspension and Windom Earle’s campaign of terror, when Albert interrupted:

“You’ve still got the unofficial version, then.”

“Unofficial?”

“According to FBI records and your colleagues at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office, Laura Palmer is an unsolved missing-person case.”

Harry began to feel sick.

“Goddammit, Albert, you did the autopsy. I punched you and you fell across her body. You found a broken poker chip in her stomach—” Albert broke in:

“I hadn’t disclosed that detail to anybody I’ve questioned about this.” His voice was a little shaky. “Listen, Harry,” he continued. “Last Friday I was contacted by a young man wearing motorcycle leathers and talking like Jack Kerouac on quaaludes.”

“Wally.”

“Naturally I supposed him to be from your iodine-deficient neck of the woods even before he introduced himself as your godson and the offspring of those lieutenants of yours. He told me he’d come because he wasn’t sure where else to turn. Apparently he keeps in touch with his parents as he rides across the continent, but in their most recent conversation he’d noticed their memories of certain events had become confused. I was about to tell him I wasn’t the least bit surprised, when he added that he’d checked with other townsfolk, including your brother, and they all seemed to have had the same— how’d he put it? ‘The walls of their memory painted over like a childhood bedroom converted to a study.’”

”That sounds like Wally, all right.”

”Eventually he got round to explaining why he’d come to me. The message that had prompted him to call home was from Lucy; she said she’d shot a suspect who was attacking your brother Frank. She’d also mentioned some FBI agents arriving a few minutes later.”

Harry swallowed. He tried to imagine Lucy shooting anyone:

“Frank never said anything about this.”

“And when Wally called home, Andy and Lucy not only denied it had happened, they had no idea what he was talking about, not that I’d guess that to be an unusual state of affairs. Anyway, after I sent your godson away, I began to have contradictory memories myself of what Cooper had told me about the case. I remembered the poker chip after waking in the middle of the night from the worst dreams I’d had since medical school. I’ve been telling myself it was a false memory, maybe a composite of all the young female murder victims I’ve had to examine in my career, but I told myself I’d make one more phone call, just to check. And now you confirm it. Also, in my recall you knocked me across Leo Johnson’s body. Thanks for the correction. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, glad he was already sitting on his bed.

“Now that that’s established,” said Albert’s voice on the other end of the phone: “here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: when do you remember Agent Cooper disappearing?”

“March 1989.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady, as though he was giving evidence in court. He briefly explained about the Black Lodge and Coop’s reappearance and unsettling behaviour and how he’d checked himself out of the hospital and was never heard from again. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you still there, Albert?”

“According to FBI records and, up until two days ago, my own memories: Coop disappeared this past October while driving to Odessa, Texas for a case. The last record of him was a credit-card charge at a motel just outside the city.”

“What was he investigating in Odessa?”

“Missing person. I’ve tried looking into that case, but it seems to be a dead end, especially since Coop never seems to have arrived at the diner where the man he was looking for had allegedly been running drugs.”

“Sounds like the kind of establishment where nobody’d admit anything. Maybe Coop did get to the diner.”

“Gee, you’ve cracked it Sheriff, we would never have thought of that. The diner was old-school, but not so old-school they didn’t have a security camera trained on the front counter. We went over three days worth of footage. I admit we can’t be sure he didn’t slip in through the back for some reason; but you knew Coop— can you honestly picture him entering a diner and not ordering a coffee?”

“Not the Coop I knew, but— I already told you he was acting pretty erratically just before he took off.”

Harry heard Albert sigh.

“I’ve been checking with a few of my colleagues who were involved in the original Palmer investigation. I think Gordon knows something, but being Gordon he’s saying nothing, and as loudly as possible. Denise— Director Bryson, now— remembers the unofficial version, and according to her so does Agent Preston— oh right, you never met Agent Tammy Preston, the poker-faced glamazon computer hacker— I’m not sure she was even born yet in 1989, but she was on a case in Twin Peaks in October 2016, and during the course of the subsequent paperwork, she started noticing a lot of records and statements didn’t match up, and then she realized her own memories didn’t match up. Which brings up another problem with trying to reason this out by conventional methods: something in that Salem’s Pacific-Northwest Lot of yours is rewriting memories, documents, maybe the facts themselves. But so far it’s predominantly affected the people who were on the spot this past October.” Albert’s voice rasped a little from the long phone call, and he paused to clear his throat. “Unfortunately, that also means the people most likely to remember the original version of events are people who weren’t in the Sheriff’s Office during the incident that seems to have triggered the change. At the risk of sounding like one of those bullshit shows on the History Channel, we may never know exactly what happened that night.”

“Wait, what even was the case that brought you all back in 2016?”

“That’s the problem— I’m one of the people who was there, and I only have vague and disconnected memories of a British man with a gardening glove, the chorus of Guys and Dolls, Agent Cooper leaving the room with Diane, his secretary who quit the FBI decades ago, and Gordon, and only Gordon coming back.” Albert paused again. “It goes against my personal feelings and medical opinions, but would you be willing to let me visit you in person? I’ve some vacation time and enough frequent-flyer miles that the trip will probably cost less than the long-distance charges if we continue this conversation.”

Harry opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out the key to Coop’s old hotel room:

“Yeah, come by.”

“Diane, I am currently alone. I realize that statement implies that I’m not always alone here, and indeed I sometimes have a companion, who I still think of as Laura Palmer, though I don’t know if that’s her identity anymore; I’d hoped, after my last attempt, that Laura would no longer be in this place at all. She comes and goes, or perhaps we both come and go and our orbits occasionally intersect. I’ve tried to find some pattern to it, but with no reliable way to measure time, I’ve had little success.

The last time we met she told me about a room she hadn’t seen before, all white walls, in which a dark-haired woman was contemplating a mirror with a puzzled look. I can’t help but feel this parallels my own situation.”

“Frank sent me this last month. But when I thanked him the next time he called, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.” Albert hesitated before taking the room key:

“Great Northern Hotel,” he read, turning it over. “Twin Peaks. Isn’t the front desk going to want this back?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s from 1989 when Coop was staying there.”

Albert’s ears stuck out more noticeably, or perhaps it was his face that was thinner. He’d spent the first part of his visit scrutinizing Harry and questioning him about his case and what the doctors were doing for it, until Harry told him to quit it or he’d run out of time to discuss Coop’s disappearance before visiting hours ended, and anyway weren’t Albert’s patients usually dead to begin with?

The trouble with the subsequent discussion was that it went in a circle— the people who’d been present for the 2016 Unknown Event had uncertain memories of what had actually happened; and the people who clearly recalled the 1989 Palmer case as a murder hadn’t been present for the Unknown Event. The one thing that seemed likely was that there was some connection between the 1989 case and the 2016 case, particularly since both had been followed by the unsolved disappearance of one Agent Dale Cooper.

“I hate to say it, Albert, but I’ve given up hope on ever finding Coop.”

“What’s hope got to do with it?” Albert asked. His tone was not sarcastic.

“Diane, I’ve decided that, if only to keep my mind occupied, I will go looking for the white room and the woman with the mirror. I’d feel happier if I had a ball of twine or some breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back to the waiting room, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that’s there’s no advantage to remaining or returning here— it’s not as if I need food or drink in this place, and I cannot be any more lost than I already am.

So far, I believe I’ve walked down five identical red-curtained hallways, and turned left five times. It therefore seems likely that I’m following a counterclockwise, roughly spiral path, although I’m uncertain if I’m proceeding inwards or outwards.”

“If this search is going to require juggling two sets of memories, then I’d better come along so you don’t get brainwashed again.”

“Sheriff Truman, if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re in a cancer hospice.”

“I just finished a round of treatments, I’ve got a couple of weeks free.” Albert snorted and Harry added: “You can monitor my health while we’re on the road.”

“I’m already thinking of your health. You’re immunocompromised, travel is too risky.”

“We’re crossing a few state lines, not going to the other side of the world.”

Albert pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. I’m driving. Which also means I get to choose the music.”

In fact, they went most of the way by plane, after Albert weighed the odds and decided five hours in a tube of recycled air would still be easier on Harry than a two-day road trip. Some of the passengers threw suspicious looks at Harry’s N95 mask, but they’d cleared it in advance with the airline, and Harry had briefly removed it when he went through TSA, and Albert was prepared to flash his FBI badge, but the flight crew were understanding.

They picked up a car at Midland International. Someone, presumably an employee of the car-rental company, had left a bundle of tourist-attraction pamphlets on the front passenger seat.

“According to these, Odessa has replicas of the Globe Theatre and Stonehenge,” Harry observed once he’d got himself settled.

“Why?” Albert asked.

“Got me there. The pamphlets don’t explain the motivation.”

Albert reached up and pulled down the car’s sunshade on Harry’s side, though the Sheriff insisted his cowboy hat was protection enough for his pale scalp:

“We’re not in the northwest where it rains every fifteen minutes,” he muttered, “and I’ve been looking up the side effects of your meds— you sunburn easily now.” Albert’s driving skirted the city, and they did not pass the Globe or Stonehenge.

The Pearblossom Motel, last recorded location of Agent Cooper, proved to be closed down. They’d noticed the papered-over windows as they pulled up, the sign unlit, not even to say NO VACANCY, but Albert got out to knock anyway. Harry watched him from the car; eventually he clambered out and slowly walked over to join him.

Albert was peering through a spot where the paper had torn away behind the window-glass. He stepped aside for Harry, and the sheriff took a look into the motel’s dim interior. He saw an ordinary, rather old-fashioned registration office, wood-grain panelling on the walls along with a few faded posters for local attractions. Rows of keys still hung on a board behind the desk, and a daily calendar read October 15, presumably the date the motel had closed, or the approximate date— Harry could imagine a concierge might not bother to keep tearing off the pages if they knew it was their last week on the job.

“I now realize that despite everything, I’ve still been harbouring hopes of finding my way back to the waiting room, hence my continual choosing of left-hand turns, as if attempting to mathematically navigate a maze. I must make a true leap of faith if intuition is to guide me, so I’ve closed my eyes and spun around several times in this corridor, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Now that I no longer can tell which direction I’ve come from… Diane, can you hear that? Of course you can’t, I don’t really have my tape recorder. I’m going to fall silent and listen for a bit.”

There seemed little else of interest at the motel (Harry, feeling a bit silly, had even tried the Great Northern’s room key on all the doors), so they turned back towards Odessa to look for the diner Cooper had been investigating. The motel was only a mile behind when they saw, ahead of them, a tall woman walking along the highway, her fire-engine-red hair, black t-shirt and pencil skirt out of place in a locale that was rural to the point of emptiness. Albert swore under his breath.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he told Harry. “Roll down your window, I’m pulling over.” But the woman only threw a glance at the car as it slowed, flipped them the bird, and kept walking, though she stepped gingerly and Harry noticed she was barefoot on the asphalt. Albert leant across him and stuck his head out the window:

“Diane!”

“Fuck off, guys. I’m not Diane, and whoever she is I bet she’d tell you the same.” Harry gently pushed Albert back and leant out the window himself:

“Sorry, ma’am, mistaken identity. Are you all right though? I see you’ve mislaid your shoes.”

“Looks like somebody ran off with them,” the woman answered, her tone mocking despite the tired set of her shoulders. “I haven’t been up to anything illegal, officer. Just a bit of fooling around.”

“We can give you a ride into town,” Harry offered. “If it helps, you’ll be alone in the back seat— means you can get the drop on us if you start to feel nervous.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the offer, then abruptly barked out a laugh and opened the back door of the car, took a seat and folded her long legs in after her. “Only because I need a lift,” she insisted, rubbing her bare feet. “I knew office romances were a bad idea, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. Nothing to do now but go home and drown my sorrows in Hallowe’en candy.”

“You’ve still got candy left over from Hallowe’en?” In the mirror above the dashboard, Harry saw Albert raise an eyebrow and the woman in the back seat frowned, insulted:

“No! I may not have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m not going to give the trick-or-treaters candy that’s a year old.”

“Ma’am,” Harry asked, thinking about the calendar back in the Pearblossom Motel office, “what date d’you think it is?”

“Mid-October,” she began. Harry saw her reach into her purse with her black-and-white nails and pull out a mobile phone. Her eyes widened at the date: “No, it’s March. The fuck?—” She ran a hand through her scarlet hair. Harry wondered if it was dyed or a wig. Perhaps she was bald too. “Must be losing it. I was so sure it was October. And it’s not like I’ve could’ve been wandering around this desert for five months.” She tapped her phone screen. “5,230 messages?!” She looked frightened now, raising her head to meet their gaze in the mirror. “Where the hell have I been? And you guys— you’re feds, aren’t you?”

“No,” Harry began.

“I am,” said Albert. “He’s not.”

“Well, can you tell me what’s going on? Or is it classified? God, it’s not aliens, is it? I always assumed alien conspiracies were bullshit to cover up real conspiracies.”

“It’s probably not aliens,” Harry answered, unable to keep doubt from his voice as he remembered Major Briggs, “but I afraid it’s not going to sound any less weird.”

“To start with, we’re in the area investigating a colleague who disappeared in October,” began Albert, “and then you turn up, apparently amnesiac since that date.”

“And with my messages unchecked since then.”

“Yes, but there’s another detail— you look exactly like a former colleague of mine who was close to our missing man. That’s why I called you Diane when I slowed down.”

“I need a smoke.”

“No.”

“Albert,” Harry interrupted, “I’ve already got cancer, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you want me to answer that in detail?”

“No I don’t.” Harry turned to look over his shoulder at the woman in the back: “Just roll down your window first.”

“We’ll pull over and she can step away from the car,” said Albert.

He stopped on a shoulder, and their passenger got out and lit a cigarette. Examining the packet, she called to them:

“Three left. That’s fewer than I remember having on me in October, but not by much.” Albert, meanwhile, had pulled a shopping bag from the back seat:

“You should eat something,” he said to Harry, producing a sealed cup of applesauce and a box of plastic spoons. Between rounds of treatment, Harry’s nausea receded, but his appetite was still pretty weak. “There’s saltine crackers, too.” Harry chuckled in spite of himself as he tore the foil off the applesauce:

“This all makes me feel like I’m home from school with the ‘flu.”

“You’ll have to watch Roadrunner cartoons on your own phone, I’m not paying for the data,” Albert snapped.

“I’m surprised we even get reception out here.” The red-haired woman had strolled back to the car with her cigarette, though she took care to stay downwind from Harry’s rolled-down window. “Guys, is it just me or is this highway really deserted— like, Rod-Serling-voiceover deserted?”

“We were just thinking Roadrunner cartoons.”

“Can’t be, there’s no weird rocks.” She flicked ash onto the pavement, “Though it does feel like if someone painted a tunnel entrance on a wall around here, you might be able to drive into it. If you weren’t a coyote.” She took another drag and glanced at the power lines humming above their heads. “Maybe it’s the hum from those wires that’s giving us brain cancer— oh sorry, dude.” She broke off and looked at Harry in apology.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said when he’d finished swallowing his mouthful of applesauce. “I’ve got leukaemia, not brain cancer. And the sound from those lines is unpleasant. Like the whine of mosquitoes in the woods.” As he spoke the hum intensified, becoming a loud crackle. Albert glanced up as a shadow fell over the three travellers and their car.

In the sky a dark, nebulous shape twisted, circled, formed a comma or an apostrophe, and dove towards them.

The first few grackles, out of thousands, came down on the roof and hood of the car. Harry could see one pecking at the windscreen and glaring at him with hard yellow eyes. He suddenly remembered Coop had been afraid of birds; until now, he’d never been able to imagine why. He turned and pushed open the back door as the woman dove inside the vehicle. Around them, the flock blotted out the landscape.

“Hope they don’t scratch up the finish,” Albert shouted over the sound of wing-beats, “or I’m not getting my deposit back.”

“Is this nesting season? I mean, are the grackles round here normally this—”

“Oh fuck, one got in!” came a yell from the back seat. Eardrums ringing, Harry turned to see a small black shape ricocheting around the car’s interior as the woman flailed her long, bare arms. The grackle made for the gap between Albert’s seat and headrest.

And got stuck, its beak not quite touching the back of Albert’s neck.

Harry reached for the little feathered body, thinking of how to pin the wings against the bird’s sides to avoid injury to it or the surrounding humans, but the moment his fingers touched it, it crumbled. At the same time the din outside the car ceased.

“That— that’s not natural.” Their passenger was covering her mouth with her hand. Even Albert looked shocked. Harry stared at the palmful of ash that was all that was left of the grackle.

“Let me get a sample bag,” Albert muttered. He pulled out a small clear plastic bag, and held it out while Harry poured the remains in. Then he handed him a packet of wet wipes. “You all right, Diane?” The woman in the back seat did not correct him on the name this time.

“Couple of scratches,” she said, examining her right arm. Albert passed her a mini first-aid kit. Got to give him his dues, he prepares for everything, thought Harry, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Y’know,” he said, “This could be a good sign. In that it’s any kind of sign. There’s nothing worse than working in the dark, waiting for some hint you’re getting warmer or colder— that’s the kind of thing makes you wonder if the thing you’re looking for is even out there at all. But this—”

“Someone tipped their hand, you mean, when they tried throwing a Hitchcock movie in our faces,” Albert cut in. “But what exactly did we do to worry them?” His glance, and Harry’s, moved to the dashboard mirror’s reflection of their passenger.

“You think the birds were after me, or wanted to break up our merry band?” She raised an eyebrow. “Trouble is I know a token effort when I see one.”

“Or a warning.”

“We found the Pearblossom Motel;” Harry thought he saw the woman flinch at the name. “And then left it, to head for Odessa.”

“Are you suggesting we drive around in circles and see if they attack again?” Albert muttered.

“I think that’d be a little unfair to our passenger.” Harry turned to her: “Ma’am, I believe Albert when he says he knows you; but I also believe you when you say you don’t remember him. We can drop you anywhere you like— your call.”

“Give me a few minutes, fellas. Given all the weird shit I’ve just been through, I’ve got to think about whether I’m safer away from you two, or sticking close by. Plus I’ve got messages to check.” She took her phone out again. Without taking his eyes off the road, Albert pulled his own phone from his suit jacket, passing it to Harry:

“You’d better check mine. Maybe Tammy’s got some news—she’s been looking up everyone connected with events in Twin Peaks, but not living in the area. She even emailed some couple in Japan, though I’m still not sure what they’ve got to do with this.”

Harry peered at Albert’s phone screen, occasionally commenting if something looked to be of interest:

“Gordon’s sent a grudging OK, tells you to be careful. Also tells you to look after me. I’d always imagined he’d type in uppercase— didn’t realize it was him at first. Hm. Do you know a coroner?”

“I know lots of coroners, we get together for an annual poker tournament and lucky draw. And when I say draw…”

“Do you know a Dr. Talbot in Buckhorn?” Harry interrupted. “Autopsied a headless body last September that turned out to be Major— wait, he— is this one of those revised timeline things?”

“Not exactly.” Albert brought Harry up to date as best he could on Major Briggs’ disappearance and decades-later reappearance. “I certainly remember meeting Constance,” he added, after a pause, and cleared his throat again. “According to Tammy, I made a favourable impression on her, which is… unusual among my acquaintances, even those who share my profession. So what does she have to say?”

“Something about a wedding ring and Schrödinger’s Cat?” Harry looked at the message again. “She says Tammy spoke to her, and was going to contact you too… a gold ring they found on Briggs… sorry, in Briggs… keeps disappearing from her office’s records and the FBI’s evidence files, then coming back again?”

Albert frowned in thought as he drove: “Does it have anything engraved on it?” Harry tapped a message on the phone screen, CC-ing Constance and Tammy.

Outside the car, suburbs, or at least car dealerships and big-box stores, were beginning to sprout up along the highway.

Albert’s phone pinged and Harry read the message from Constance:

“Yes, scribbled it down last time I could find the record. This ring any (wedding) bells? TO DOUGIE, WITH LOVE, JANEY-E”

“Janey-E,” said Diane from the back seat, and Harry heard her drop her phone. Turning around he saw her wringing her hands, the nails now robin’s-egg blue. “Albert,” she gasped, “Oh, Albert, I was almost lost again.”

“I believe the change in method may have led to a breakthrough: I haven’t found any rooms leading off of the corridor I’m following, but the decor has gradually changed from black-and-white flooring and red curtains, to dark brown linoleum flooring and institutional green walls hung with large relief maps of different parts of the world. The maps appear to have been manufactured some time between 1954 and 1965, as they show North and South Vietnam as separate nations. I’m just passing the continent of Antarctica, now, and… oh. I think there might be…

Diane, I found the white room, and when I call it that, I’m not simply echoing Laura’s name for it. It was like a cross between a sanatorium and a snow cave, if a snow cave had furniture. There was a bed with white blankets and a white metal frame like a hospital bed. Audrey was sitting on one end of it, wrapped in a white bathrobe and looking at a round mirror that stood on a little white table. She turned as I entered, and her face was older, drawn and, for a moment, frightened. Then she looked at me again and relaxed, saying ‘Oh, it’s really you.’ I fear she must have met one of my nastier doppelgängers at some point.”

At Diane’s request, they stopped to eat at a fast-food chain before approaching the diner Coop had been investigating in at least one timeline.

“I’m hungry, but I’d be too nervous to eat at the place where Dale might have… well, if they’re a front for something, then the food’s either spectacular or terrible, and I’m not feeling lucky right now. I want to be someplace as bland and mundane as possible for a while, so I can regroup.”

“Well this place has a twenty-minute limit.” Albert jerked his thumb at the sign.

“That’ll do.” Diane curled up beside Harry in the booth as Albert went up to the counter to place their orders. She still wore her pencil skirt, but on on of their stops she’d purchased tennis shoes and a couple of fresh t-shirts— the one she was wearing at the moment read NOT TODAY in flowery letters. “Now he’s got two of us to worry about,” she said under her breath. Harry decided to reply:

“Someone needs to worry about him.” Diane nodded, and Harry offered his hand: “Sorry, we never did the proper introductions did we? Harry S. Truman.”

“I know.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “I see why he likes you.”

“Not sure Albert likes anybody, exactly—”

“That’s not who I was talking about.”

Albert returned with a eye-searingly-orange plastic tray:

“Mushroom burger, cheeseburger, buttered biscuit for you, Harry, because they can’t just serve toast like a real restaurant and those things they claim are bagels are made out of lies.”

“Don’t worry Albert, I’ll survive a biscuit.” Harry picked up one half of the baked item and took a bite. It wasn’t too bad, actually.

“Diane, the ring that jogged your memory—”

“My half-sister and her husband. Don’t ask me how they’d be mixed up in this though, Janey-E’s aggressively normal.”

“And her husband?”

“Never actually met him. Janey-E and I don’t talk much,” she explained. “But from her comments he’s… passively normal. Works for an insurance company, drinks too much sometimes, the whole man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.”

“I’ve been talking with Audrey, or the version of her that existed in the white room. You’ll notice I use the past tense. Still sitting on the bed, she raised a finger and pointed to the mirror in front of her, saying:

‘The other me— she ran away from home, like she thought Laura had done. I’m amazed she survived her first year in the big city, but look:’

Diane, I saw Audrey searching records online, tailing suspects, testifying in civil and sometimes criminal courts. It’s a life that can make a cynic of the kindest soul, but there are situations the police don’t or can’t investigate, and those were— are, I suppose— Audrey’s bread and butter, in that mirror world. And they seem to pay well enough she can afford to do some pro bono cases.

‘I wish I were out there,’ she said, and the mirror clouded and shifted. She patted the bedspread, and I sat down beside her. ‘You know how,’ she began, ‘when you’re a kid, and you’re reading your favourite book, and a little after the halfway point, you start to think ‘I’m getting near the end of the book?’ And really, you’re not— there are pages and pages left of scenes and pictures. You’re always surprised just how much more there is. But it’s not enough to shake the feeling it’s putting off the inevitable. Dawdling before bedtime.’ She stood up suddenly, bent and kissed me on the brow. ‘Say hello to the other me, if you ever run into her.’ And then she was gone, Diane. Not in flame or fadeout, just gone.”

I look up, and Laura is beside me.

The diner, when they found it, was not what Harry’d pictured. Instead of a lonely Edward Hopper tableau, or a grimy spoon where toughs whispered to each other along the lunch counter and cast knowing glances in the direction of the men’s room, “Wispy Dreams Cafe” was a blandly cheerful donut shop, the logo rather obviously altered from that of a national chain.

“Looks like they’re under new management.” Diane observed as they got out of the car. “Or else they got tired of paying for the franchise?” The three of them made their way across the parking lot the cafe shared with the landscaping company next door. Inside, the sound of chattering customers and a hum from the coffee machine both soothed and overwhelmed. Harry steadied himself against a gleaming, cream-colored formica counter. The woman on the other side— not a fresh-faced high-school senior or a kindly-faced matron, just a woman with her hair in a ponytail and circles under her eyes, doing her best to smile— threw him a glance and Harry nodded.

“I’m ok. Albert, Diane, what do you two want?”

A couple of minutes later, they sat by the window, feigning interest in their donuts and coffee.

“Well, we’re living the cop cliché,” whispered Albert. “So, what do you think? Soulless suburban hangout, or den of villainy?”

Harry gingerly sipped the brew in his cardboard cup and eyed the other customers. You couldn’t say the place wasn’t busy; the woman at the counter had already served a family of four in the time it had taken Harry, Albert and Diane to seat themselves with their coffees, and another customer had just come in the door.

“That counter’s been installed recently. Deep-fat fryer’s been replaced too.”

“And they don’t know how to use it yet. You could wax skis with these donuts. That’s hardly a crime, though.” Diane looked around at the blue and yellow walls painted with large trompe l’oeil sprinkles. “Doesn’t seem to be anything else funny about the place— I hate to say it but this place might be legit.”

Harry watched the new customer lean in to the counter. Harry couldn’t quite make out what he was saying— presumably the man was placing his order, but it seemed to be taking a while and there was something tense in the woman’s expression. Beside him he heard Diane swear under her breath, and faster than he could turn his head, his peripheral vision took in that she was getting up. She strode towards the counter and Harry had a glimpse of the angry red scratch on her arm as he struggled to his feet.

Diane was leaning on the counter now, trying to insert herself between the customer and the worker.

“What did you just say to her?” she was asking.

“Look, I come in here all the time, we joke around. What makes you think it’s your fucking business?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Harry loomed up behind the customer— he might have only half his usual strength but he was still a good six inches taller than the other man. Behind him, he guessed, Albert was approaching. Harry knew the agent was unwilling to use physical force and not exactly skilled at defusing situations through diplomacy, so he turned his gaze on the customer with all the quiet confidence he’d used as Sheriff. In his ear Diane hissed:

“It’s nothing to do with the case, this asshole’s just creeping on the staff.” She must’ve locked eyes with the man too, for he was staring at her now, his bland pink features shifting expression from anger to terrified fascination.

Rather an unimpressive face, thought Harry, and then, what’s Diane doing? He turned to look at her sharp, smiling profile, and saw a tear slide from her eye.

“No,” she said loudly and abruptly, and blinked hard. “Do you want us to escort him out?” she asked the woman behind the counter; but the man was already out the door and running for his car.

“Diane,” Harry whispered.

“Diane,” whispered Albert. Diane was passing one hand across her eyes.

“I could have fried him. Just now. Something wanted me to; but I just wanted him to back off.” She beamed at them as Albert held out an arm for her to steady herself. “I think I’m back to normal. Well, normal for me.”

“Are we the only two left here now?”

“I’m not even here anymore.”

“I don’t know how to get back to the waiting room.”

“It doesn’t matter, the coffee’s cold.”

Somehow, the white room has become even more featureless, despite that being both a logical and a grammatical impossibility. Only the bed, the table and Audrey’s mirror remain. A moment in the glass catches my eye, and I look to see— oh Diane, I’m so glad you escaped! I see you travelling with Albert, and… oh, Harry…

…the cafe’s fluorescent lights flickered as the background hum, noticeable since their arrival, now rose to an ear-splitting volume then died away just as suddenly. As the three of them looked on, an old-fashioned hospital bed, its steel frame painted white, materialized between the counter and the booths, replacing two unoccupied tables. At one end of it sat Agent Dale Cooper, fully dressed in his suit and tie, a look on his face of mild surprise that turned to the familiar joy as his gaze met theirs. Coop had grown older like the rest of them, sharper angles in his face, but he looked hale and well, and his eyes did not have the cruel gleam that chilled Harry’s memories of their last meeting.

“Harry,” he said, as though a quarter-century hadn’t passed. In response Harry silently doffed his cowboy hat, revealing his pallor, his naked scalp. Coop’s smiled wavered a little. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he whispered, and rose from the white bed. In the background, the cafe staff and patrons continued to chat and serve and drink and eat coffee and donuts as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on right in front of them. Albert made a hesitant noise in his throat and Coop raised his hand in that just a moment gesture he always used to make, and in that moment Harry knew his friend really was back from wherever he’d been all those years.

“Apologies for being brusque,” Coop said, “but there’s a family in Las Vegas who I’ve reason to believe are in danger right now—”

“Janey-E?” Diane asked.

“Right on the button. For personal reasons which I’ll explain later, I can’t get in touch with them myself. The Mitchell brothers might be able to help, but I don’t know how much they’ll be able to recall of our last meeting.”

“Tammy and Constance are already on it.”

“Good,” Coop looked relieved, and Harry stepped forward, shaking a little in spite of himself, and as if the motion had at last given him permission, Coop sailed forward and embraced him— very gently, as if he feared Harry might break. He’s gauging by touch how much weight I’ve lost, thought Harry, but it’s all right. He’d forgotten how warm Coop was. He became aware of Albert and Diane joining in, arms circling his shoulders and Coop’s. If I died right here and now, it’d be all right.

But this embrace was not an epitaph, or an epilogue. Outside, somewhere else in the city, was an imitation of an ancient stone monument; and a copy of an old theatre where real audiences watched real actors. Somewhere the forces that had sent the dark cloud of grackles prepared another attack, and somewhere Tammy Preston was moving to protect Janey-E and Dougie Jones. Elsewhere Audrey Horne walked the mean streets and was not herself mean. This was an interlude, but let them have it for a while.

A couple of patrons turned their heads to smile at the reunion going in their midst.

#wonderfulxstrange #@laughingpineapple #twin peaks #@laughingpinecone

11 notes · View notes