#I really thought from the first moment the shelf of boots was shown | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sam-and-buck · 4 years ago

Text

At Home With Captain America

Fandom: MCU

Pairing: Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes

Rating: G

Words: 7.7k

Also on AO3

“What can you tell me about how you got to know the Winter Soldier?”

Wilson chuckles. “The first time I met Buck—Sergeant Barnes—he ripped the steering wheel out of the car I was driving on the freeway. He got on the roof, punched through the windshield, pulled the steering wheel off. Just like that.” He mimes with his hands as he describes it.

This doesn’t sound like an auspicious beginning to me, but Wilson is laughing.

At Home with Captain America

By: Adrien Davis

Published: February 2, 2026, 3:35 PM

To say I’m intimidated by interviewing Captain America in his own home would be an understatement, and I would never have thought to ask if I could do that if he hadn’t personally invited me. Normally, I’d start one of these articles by describing the location, maybe even throw in an anecdote or two about how I got there, but that’s not going to be possible here.

Sam Wilson lives on [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. It was a windy day.

Here’s what I can tell you: it’s an apartment. A nice one. Two bedroom, two bath.

“Am I allowed to describe the inside of your house?” is one of the first things I say to him, after getting his permission to turn on my recorder.

“Go right ahead,” he laughs, arms crossed over the worn USAF logo on his gray t-shirt. “Just don’t put the street name in there or anything.”

Wilson gives me a moment to poke around. Whoever decorated this place has good taste; it’s no haphazard bachelor pad. There’s an exposed brick wall in the otherwise slate blue living room, several plants (which I assume are fakes—albeit convincing ones—since Wilson is, by his own admission, not home as often as he’d like to be), a sturdy walnut coffee table, and a magnificently squishy-looking red couch.

It’s unmistakably lived in, though. I don’t get the sense that the place has been scrubbed spotless or particularly arranged for my visit. There are two abandoned mugs on coasters sitting on the coffee table, along with several different remote controls, and a stack of half-finished books with dog-eared corners. A pile of mail has been pushed to the side. Next to the door, a wall-mounted coat rack holds several leather jackets in shades of brown and black, and at least as many sweaters, mostly navy blue, charcoal and maroon. The shoe rack underneath houses multiple pairs of black combat boots, worn running shoes, house slippers. And next to that, on the floor, a large, gleaming silver case with red detail that could only contain Wilson’s Falcon wingpack. The legendary shield is propped up against it, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I’m trying to imagine how it would be to leave the house for him. Got my keys, wings, phone, shield, wallet?

There are pictures on the walls and the mantle above the fireplace, under the television. People who I can only assume are Wilson’s relatives by their similarly gap-toothed smiles. Veterans. Wilson in full air force gear next to a blond man I don’t recognize. Then Captain Steve Rogers, in the 1940s with the Howling Commandos, and in the twenty-first century by himself. Wilson with Rogers, and Natasha Romanoff. One conspicuously empty nail where a large frame would clearly fit.

Scattered among these are several very old, dour black and white photographs of a dark-haired family. The first shows a mother, father and two small children, a boy and girl. The second is the mother and children only, taken some time after, judging by their apparent ages. The third is several years later still; the same children with light eyes and dark hair, but they’re teeangers now, and without parents. They look haunting and out-of-place among the glossy prints of Wilson’s big, happy family in matching 80s colorblocked tracksuits, or Wilson and his sisters in front of a Christmas tree, surrounded by wrapping paper and toys.

There’s also a wood-framed painting that stands out: an idyllic watercolor of a little farmhouse with a green roof and shuttered windows in a field. A small pile of lumber and a white mailbox make up the foreground. The most distinctive feature is the signature at the bottom: S.G.R. I know those initials.

“Captain Rogers painted this?”

“Uh huh,” Wilson nods fondly, hands now in his pockets. “Man of many talents. Maybe every talent. Having a hard time thinking of anything he wasn’t good at.”

I hear the unstated in that. A tough act to follow.

I think, for purposes of journalistic integrity, I should probably insert my bias before we go any further. We had never met before this interview, but I am and have always been enormously supportive of Captain Wilson and the work he’s done, and have written myriad articles and think pieces about him over the past several years. He’s shown himself time and again to be a man of unshakable integrity and endless emotional intelligence, and frankly, I’m more worried about the poor sucker who’s going to have to follow Wilson. Rogers did a lot of great things, but among the best of them was choosing a successor.

I tell him as much and he smiles, looking down at his shoes.

“Yeah, I know that’s how you feel,” he says. “I requested you for this piece, actually, because of that. People are going to accuse me of wanting a softball interview here, and maybe they’re right. For this one, I think that’s what I need.”

I’m not sure what he means by that, but he continues before I can ask.

“We should probably do this in the kitchen.” Wilson indicates behind us with his thumb, after I’ve stood silently in his living room for probably way too long. “That couch is too comfortable. I end up falling asleep every time I sit on it.”

The kitchen is, perhaps, a little cramped. There’s a large, dark marble-topped kitchen island that just fits in the center of the room with four bar stools tucked under it. The cabinets are tall, with glass doors showcasing a massive collection of healthy, but non-perishable food. The shelf nearest us holds several well-used bags of pantry supplies: chickpea flour, arrowroot starch, raw sugar. There’s a pasta shelf above it, but no Kraft Mac in sight; everything is lentil-based, chickpea-based, black bean-based.

“Have a seat,” Wilson says, inclining his head towards one of the barstools. “Can I get you something to drink?” He opens the refrigerator.

“We have…” he pauses. “Water. Sorry, just got back from Ecuador this morning. Sparkling or still?”

I accept a glass of still water from Captain America. He sits down on the stool next to mine.

His house, or what I’ve seen of it, is homey in a way I can’t imagine any of the late Tony Stark’s buildings ever were, and I mention this.

“I lived at the Avengers Tower briefly,” Wilson tells me. “Tony liked everything streamlined, really modern. Kinda sparse for my taste. I needed some real furniture when I got out of there, you know? Like, things that were made by human beings. Stuff with ‘character,’ that’s what Steve would call it.”

“So you decorated this place?”

“I think it’s about fifty-fifty,” Wilson says, indicated with vague hand motion.

This is my in.

This interview, as you may have read on the cover description, is actually intended to be an exposé about the working partnership between Wilson and Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, but I didn’t want to be the one who brought him up first.

All I knew going in is that they’re a package deal in the field, a unit. We’ve all seen the footage.

Also, Barnes lives here too, but evidently, he’s not home.

“What can you tell me about how you got to know the Winter Soldier?”

This doesn’t sound like an auspicious beginning to me, but Wilson is laughing.

“I hope he apologized to you for that,” I tell him, because I’m not exactly sure how else to respond.

“Oh yeah, of course he did, even though he knows I don’t blame him for it. He doesn’t remember it at all,” says Wilson. “There are a lot of gaps, to be honest. Most of it is gaps.”

What Wilson is likely referring to here is the decades-long period in which Barnes was under the complete mental and physical influence of the Nazi splinter group known as HYDRA. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of Sergeant Barnes, I’ll list a couple of great articles for you to read at the end of this one. I assure you, it’s worth your time.

Wilson has without a doubt been Barnes’s most ardent supporter. He’s spoken out many times about not judging Barnes based on the actions he couldn’t control, and has masterfully refocused the national conversation towards Barnes’s invaluable contributions in World War II and in the recent war to bring half the universe’s population back into existence. Wilson has been quoted as saying, “The least extraordinary thing about Sergeant Barnes is his vibranium arm.”*

But perhaps Wilson’s most effective act towards building public confidence in Barnes was his decision to designate him as an almost exclusive mission partner. Even if the general populace has been reluctant to trust the Winter Soldier, it is abundantly clear that Captain America does, absolutely. Barnes is a constant in the footage of Wilson’s exploits. The moment he touches down on the ground after a successful arrest or negotiation, Barnes is right there. He’s been sighted treating Wilson’s minor injuries, tightening straps on the Falcon wingsuit before Wilson takes flight, and he stands quietly behind Wilson during almost all of his many public appearances.

Despite his ubiquitous presence in Wilson’s company, Barnes has remained elusive for comment. He has no social media, and the only public statement he’s made to date was in November of 2023, in support of Rogers’s decision to pass on the legacy of Captain America. Barnes expressed his categorical agreement that Wilson is “the best and only choice for this job,” describing him as both “worthy of the honor,” and “equipped for the burden.”**

“Is it fair to say that Sergeant Barnes almost comes with the shield?” I ask.

Wilson makes a face.

“No, it isn’t,” he shakes his head. “The shield is an accessory; my partner is not. I really don’t like it when people lump him in with the shield. It sort of minimizes how Bucky and I have made a series of conscious choices to be the way we are now. Especially because he’s experienced being fully stripped of his personal autonomy—as a veteran, I can say I’ve had a taste of that, but nothing like what he’s been through—and I think it cheapens his choice to do what he does if we imply that he, as a person, is a package deal with my title, you know?”

The therapist in Wilson is showing. In addition to his decorated military history and service as Captain America, he has a background in psychology, and a Masters degree in Social Work with a focus on Veterans’ mental health issues. He’s worked extensively with the VA as a leader in group therapy.

“So Sergeant Barnes is by your side day in and day out because he wants to be?”

This, Wilson has another unequivocal answer for. “Yes. He wants to be there, and I want him there. And here at home.”

“Tell me a little more about that,” I say. “After the...steering-wheel-stealing incident. Once he was more or less himself. Did you two hit it off right away?”

Wilson laughs again. “Not at all,” he says. “I think there was this resentment, kind of, in the beginning. Like I’m Steve’s best friend and no, I’m Steve’s best friend. Real elementary school stuff. He really got on my nerves; just everything about him annoyed me, and the feeling was mutual. Looking back…”

And here Wilson pauses for a moment. He chews on his bottom lip, and I notice all at once how nervous his body language has become. His fingers are drumming on the table, the line of his shoulders is taut, his leg is bouncing. He clears his throat though, and seems determined to continue.

“Looking back, I can see where it was coming from. It wasn’t clear to me at the time, but now I get it. There was this one time, it was during the fight over the Accords. We barely knew each other at this point. Buck and I, we’re fighting Spider-Man—who neither of us had ever even heard of before, like, that afternoon—and he pins us to the floor of this hangar with that goo he shoots out of his wrist. Really gross. I manage to get Redwing [Wilson’s drone] to fling Spider-Man out the window. So we’re just laying there, me and Bucky, stuck. And he goes ‘you couldn’t have done that before?’ And I just turn to him, and I’m like, ‘I hate you.’”

At this, Wilson really starts cracking up. He relaxes visibly, just a little.

“Did you mean it?”

“I sure thought I did,” he says, still chuckling. “Like, I wasn’t about to take it back.”

He continues: “Anyway, so after Steve, you know, passed on the shield to me, that’s when things really changed. Actually, back up a second. After the whole Accords incident, we ended up sending Bucky to Wakanda for like… to hear him describe it, it’s like we sent him for a two-year spa retreat. They unscrambled his brain as best they could—and really, I think it’s a good thing they couldn’t do any more because I wouldn’t wish some of his memories on my worst enemy—and he spent like months meditating in a hut and milking goats and going to therapy every day. When I met up with him again, I barely would’ve recognized him.”

“So that’s kind of when you guys reconciled? The arguing stopped?”

“Oh, it never stopped,” Wilson says with a grin. “We still argue all the time, about all kinds of things. Just ask Rhodey [Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, aka War Machine] or Scott [Lang, Ant-Man] or anybody. But the dynamic shifted a little, I think. Bucky’s got… Like I can’t imagine some of the stuff he’s been through, but he’s just kind of learned to roll with it. He is hands down the most resilient person I have ever met. Easily. It was real hard to keep hating him when he was so dead set on getting me to like him, too.”

“Can you walk me through the process by which you two decided to live together?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the nervousness is back. He smooths his hands on his thighs over his jeans. “So, basically, once I got the shield, we’d just barely come back. Like everyone else who got… I—I still don’t know if this is like an okay question to ask people. Do you mind me asking if you were dusted?”

I don’t mind. “Yeah, I was.”

“So you get it,” Wilson says. “Might be the most vulnerable I’d ever felt. I got nothing. Nowhere to go, just the clothes on my back. Then Steve hands me this shield and this enormous legacy—and I look back and there’s Bucky, standing a couple of yards behind me, nodding like, yeah, it should be you. He was the first person who knew, and he’s been right by my side ever since.”

“So you decided to stick together?”

“The original conversation about it was pretty logistical,” Wilson says, rubbing his beard. “There was so much going on, it’s hard to remember exactly what was said, but I think it was along the lines of him offering to fetch the shield for me while I learned how to throw it, and stuff like that. Just easier to do when we’re together 24/7.”

“So rooming together didn’t actually grow out of field partnerships?”

“It was definitely the other way around,” says Wilson. “Basically, I’d get a call from the powers that be that there was something I had to go check out, and it was easier to just walk across the hall than to pick someone else, try to wake them up, and then have to rendez-vous and strategize.”

“I’ll bet,” I say.

Wilson nods. “Easier and faster. Bucky can go from dead asleep to fully geared up in under three minutes. The first few times were like that, with me just knocking on his bedroom door like ‘hey, I need—’ and he comes barreling out covered in knives thirty seconds later like, ‘where are we going?’ We just… clicked. And I’ll be honest; I was really surprised. He’s got my six, I’ve got his, and I never question it. I started asking for him specifically on all my assignments after that, and Fury [Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.] and everyone caught on quick that that’s how it was gonna be. I don’t have to ask anymore.”

“Do you see this continuing long term?” I ask.

Wilson doesn’t hesitate. “Definitely.”

“How would you describe your relationship with Sergeant Barnes now?” I ask. “Clearly you’re partners in the field, and roommates, but…”

Wilson takes a deep breath. His hands are shaking, but he clasps them together in front of him and looks me straight in the eye.

“As of last month,” he says slowly, “Bucky and I are married.”

In the spirit of my interview with Captain America, who stands for honesty and justice and integrity, I think you deserve to know the truth. I want to say that I didn’t drop my recorder, but I did. It clatters to the floor, luckily undamaged.

That startles Wilson into a laugh. For the second it takes me to retrieve my recorder from under my seat, I wonder if he’s kidding.

“Come on,” he says. “Say something. I’m getting nervous.” He’s smiling, but not joking.

“Congratulations,” I blurt out. “I...really?”

“Yeah.” The tension leaves his body in a rush. “We, uh, it’s official.”

I’m struggling for questions at this point. The talking points I was planning on hitting in this interview are all suddenly moot, and I decide to throw out my mental to-do list entirely. I finally settle on, “How long have you two been together?”

“A little over two years,” Wilson answers. “About three months after I took up the shield.”

“How did it happen?”

Wilson grins. “Uh, well. I had sort of been…having feelings about him, you know, for awhile. Actually, it’s more like I had noticed that I was having more-than-friendly feelings in the few weeks leading up to that. I think the main reason we had so much trouble getting along in the beginning is that it took some time to process those feelings as attraction. So in a way, I was interested on some level right from the get go.”

“Even if that person wasn’t...behind the wheel of their own brain, so to speak—” I start, but Wilson interjects.

“I see what you did there.”

“—I think it would take a lot for me to be attracted to someone who had previously tried to kill me.”

“Less than I would’ve expected, that’s for sure,” Wilson says. “But it’s not like I was checking him out while he was busy tearing my wings off my back; I’m talking about once he was mentally present in his body. That was like...two years after the whole steering wheel incident, and I hadn’t seen him at all in the interim. I didn’t even know where he was during that time.”

“So it had at least been awhile since he had tried to kill you?”

“Oh yeah. And plenty of other people tried to kill me in those two years, and they weren’t even sorry about it. You gotta adjust your standards, you know?” he says with a laugh.

“Anyway, if you ask him, he says he’s been all in since the moment he saw me back in Wakanda after his little vacation. Now we’re talking about four years since the steering wheel thing. Me, Steve, Nat and everybody; we landed in Wakanda and Bucky’s there. He and I look at each other over Steve’s shoulder, and like, bam, that was it for him.

“And then there’s five years where neither of us exist. We get back, we fight the monsters, Steve gives me the shield, and while all this is happening, apparently Bucky has come to the conclusion that he’s in love with me. After that, he was just waiting for me to catch up.”

“And he just knew you’d get there? Did you give him any indication that you were interested, or…?”

“I definitely did, but not intentionally,” says Wilson. “He’s very perceptive—like way more than I was giving him credit for—but I think it’s a combination of that and me not being as subtle as I think I am.

“Because, see there’s this invisible line I’ve drawn here—at least that’s how he was thinking about it—and I keep dancing a little closer to that line every day, the line being the no homo line; the point where you can’t take it back. The flirting, I mean. I, of course, think he has no clue and that I’m being slick about it. Actually, lemme ask—how much detail are you looking for here? Like do you want to know the whole story or just—”

“Lay it on me,” I tell him. “Just however you want to tell it.”

“Alright. Where was I? So I’m just there going back and forth on whether or not it’s a good idea to risk this roommate-partner-buddy thing we’ve got going here by trying to make a move that, frankly, I have no clue if he’s gonna be receptive to. You have to remember we’re talking about a guy from the Great Depression here, like that’s the time period he grew up in. I’m no historian, but I think it’s common knowledge that if you were a man who was attracted to men back then, you mostly kept that to yourself. The chances of him bringing up his sexual orientation unprompted are very low. And like, I’m 90% sure I’ve caught him looking before, but that’s never a guarantee, you know?

“So, instead of sitting down and having a mature conversation about my feelings, I keep doing this thing where, for example, say he’s trying something new with his hair, and I’ll say something nice about it. And then I follow up immediately with, ‘Almost makes up for your ugly mug,’ or whatever, which—I mean, he’s such a good-looking guy, like what ugly mug, obviously I don’t mean that. And he’s not stupid, he knows what he looks like. So he picks up on what I’m doing, doesn’t say anything, and lets this go on for months.

“Eventually, there’s one night… We’re on the couch, watching like, I don’t know, Seinfeld or something. Whatever was on. He’s reading a book on my tablet, looking all relaxed and handsome. I can’t have that, so I start egging him on like I usually do, and I guess I got close enough to the line that he just puts the tablet down, turns to me and says, ‘Sam, you know there’s no line, right?’

“And I’m going, okay, what does that mean? Like, is this a conversation I was previously a part of and forgot or...? Where is this ‘line’ thing coming from? And so I ask him—I think I just said, ‘What?’ At that point he looks me right in the eye, and he goes, ‘You can kiss me if you want to.’” So I did, and he was ready for it, like no hesitation. Like I said: waiting for me to catch up.”

This, as you can imagine, is far beyond the level of detail I could have ever imagined I’d get about Captain America’s love life in my wildest dreams. I decide to ask a new question, because I feel like I’d be pushing my luck to delve further when he’s already been so open about this experience.

“Who proposed and when?”

“Ooh,” says Wilson, “I guess technically I did, but I’m gonna go on record saying that one was a group effort.”

“Well, now you’re gonna have to explain that,” I tell him. “What’s a ‘group effort’ proposal look like?”

“Hmm. I backed myself into that one, didn’t I?” he says. “First, I want the record to show that before I called you guys to set up this interview, I specifically asked Bucky if there were any us-related topics or whatever that were off-limits to discuss and he said ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ and I said, “You better be sure, because whatever I say is gonna be public knowledge after that,” and he said “I know, I get it, Jesus.” Then I dropped it because he sounded like he was getting kinda irritated. If he didn’t want me to tell you any of this stuff, that would’ve been the time to speak up, so here we go:

“We were at… Well, I can’t tell you exactly where we were, but let’s just say we were working. There was nobody else in the room, but we were getting ready to go out in the field; seemed like it was gonna be a pretty...intense situation out there. I had my whole suit on, he was calibrating his arm, and the conversation ended up at living wills. As you can imagine, that’s an important thing to have when you’re in this line of work. So he proceeded to tell me that the last time he’d updated his was never and that his next-of-kin was nobody. And I was like, ‘So what, your grenade launchers are all gonna go to the state? I don’t even get the red one?’ and I’m just giving him a hard time, you know, and he’s like, ‘Sam.’

“And then, my god, he just goes all the way off about how much he loves me and trusts me and I—we don’t usually go there. I mean, we’d been on the same page for a long time as far as, we’ve established that we’re in love, this relationship is going well, but it’s not something that we’d verbalized in any real depth. That’s just a level of like, exposure, vulnerability, I think, that doesn’t come naturally to most people, myself included.

“So he just keeps talking—and I think it’s fair to say he’s not a very talkative guy most of the time—and I’m standing there with my jaw on the floor because he is not holding back, and this is all clearly unrehearsed. Like, this is just how he really feels about me, apparently. By the time he’s finished, I’m crying, he’s crying, it’s a mess. And so I open my mouth, and I have no idea what I’m gonna say to all that, but what comes out is, “Will you marry me?” I wasn’t planning on it, but suddenly I just knew. Best decision I ever made.”

“And you’ve made some very important decisions in your life.”

“That’s right. I know which ones I’m leaving out by saying this was the best, and I stand by it.”

At that moment, as if on cue, the lock clicks, and Sergeant Barnes walks through the front door carrying two very full bags of groceries on his vibranium arm. He tosses a set of car keys into a little dish and locks the door behind him.

“Hey, babe,” Wilson calls out, catching his eye.

“You did it?” Barnes asks.

“Yeah.” Wilson tilts his head up.

Barnes rounds the corner, pecks Wilson on the lips with all the comfort and familiarity of a couple who have done it a thousand times. I hear him murmur, “Proud of you,” under his breath.

Barnes sets the groceries on the counter in front of me as Wilson introduces us.

“Call me Bucky,” says Barnes, reaching out with his right hand to shake mine. There’s a silver band on the fourth finger, and when I look back over at Wilson, he’s slipping his wedding ring out of the pocket of his jeans and putting it back on his left hand.

“Wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go through with all this,” he says, gesturing to me and my notepad. “I took the wedding pictures down in the living room too, before you got here.”

“I knew he could do it,” Barnes tells me. His voice is low, soft, and so quiet, a hint of an old Brooklyn accent underlying his words even now, despite everything he’s been through and everywhere he’s been. He shrugs out of his nondescript hoodie and tosses it on one of the unused stools, grabbing a kettle and putting it on the stove.

“Hibiscus or chamomile?” he asks me, pulling two boxes of tea bags from one of the grocery bags and letting me choose before turning to Wilson. “Bad news, hon. They were out of your whole wheat pita.”

“Again?” says Wilson, with feeling. “Really?”

“They only had the gluten free. I guess I could check the other store tonight, but it’s supposed to rain later, and I kinda don’t feel like going out again,” Barnes says, head buried in the cupboard as he stacks cans. “I was thinking maybe I could just try making ‘em. How does that sound? How hard can it be, right?”

“‘How does homemade pita sound,’ he says,” Wilson repeats, jabbing a thumb towards Barnes. “Can you believe this guy?”

“I honestly can’t.” It’s the truth. My brain refuses to reconcile this man with the supposed playboy I read about in my 11th grade history textbook, nor the internationally feared assassin.

“Is that a yes or no on the experimental homemade pita?” Barnes asks Wilson, still deep in the cupboard. “No promises on quality.”

“That’s a yes, Buck,” says Wilson, then he turns to me. “Don’t listen to him; he’s a great cook.”

The Winter Soldier is a great cook, I write in my notes. And then I realize this is my moment to shine.

“I actually know a good recipe for homemade pita,” I tell them. “It’s whole wheat.” That gets Barnes’s attention.

“You do?” he says, pulling out his phone. “Can you send it to—hmm.” He frowns. “Sam, it’s not showing the thing.”

“What thing?” Wilson asks, taking Barnes’s phone from his hand. “Oh, yeah, that’s cause it’s set to Contacts Only, Buck, you have to switch it to Allow Everyone.”

Wilson looks at me, smiling. “Bucky here hates technology—”

“—I don’t hate technology—”

“Oh yes you do, you won’t even let me get you an iPad—”

“Yeah, for what? What do I need it for? I wouldn’t even use—”

“You wouldn’t use one, huh? How about I stop letting you borrow mine for a couple of weeks, then we’ll see how you feel.” Wilson turns to me, passing Barnes’s phone back to him. “He should be showing up on your AirDrop now.”

Sure enough, I’m able to send the recipe link to Bucky’s iPhone. He thanks me and starts scrolling right through it, argument apparently totally forgotten.

As Barnes continues to read, periodically checking on the kettle; Wilson excuses himself to help put away the rest of the groceries, which are mostly produce.

“I hope you have like, immediate plans for these,” Wilson says, inspecting the avocados as he pulls them out of the paper bag. “They are ripe, man. Tomorrow’s gonna be too late for them.”

“Yeah I do, I was gonna make grilled chicken and avocado sandwiches for dinner,” Barnes replies. “I got tomatoes, swiss cheese—”

“What’s all this about pita then if we’re having sandwiches?” Wilson asks.

“No, the pita is the bread here,” Barnes explains. “You stuff everything in the pocket. I’m gonna have to get started pretty soon; probably gonna double the rising time since it’s cold out.” Wilson hums in apparent approval of this course of action.

I lose Wilson to the refrigerator for several minutes. He stands back up after arranging things in the crisper to his liking.

“Any chance I could get a peek at those wedding pictures?” I ask.

“Oh,” says Wilson. “That okay with you?” He turns to Barnes, who nods, carefully steeping bags of tea in three steaming mugs, and then leads me back to the living room.

Wilson has stashed two silver-framed pictures in a drawer of the coffee table, apparently in anticipation of my visit, and he pulls them out to show to me. Both are taken in front of a familiar-looking farmhouse, which I struggle with for a moment before placing it as the exact one in Captain Rogers’s watercolor painting that’s hanging to my left. Wilson’s suit in the photo is a matte but brilliant shade of cobalt; Barnes wears black.

One is of just the two of them, arms around one another and foreheads together. It’s almost too intimate to look at; I feel as though I’m intruding on something intensely private, even though Wilson is standing right here offering me a glimpse of it.

He puts that one back up onto the mantle.

The next is them in the center of a large group that consists of some people I recognize and others I don’t. Familiar faces include Dr. Bruce Banner [The Hulk], Clint Barton [Hawkeye], and Maria Hill [Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.]. Also present: King T’Challa of Wakanda and his sister, Princess Shuri. There’s a young girl in a white dress, carrying a flower basket and missing a front tooth, standing in front of [C.E.O. of Stark Industries] Pepper Potts. Next to them is a teenager with floppy brown hair doing an indescribably awkward double thumbs up.

“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at him.

Wilson snorts. “Some punk. Family friend.”

That picture gets hung on the empty nail next to Captain Rogers’s painting.

Barnes knocks quietly on the doorway behind us. “Tea’s ready.”

An awkward silence settles in with us once we sit back down in the kitchen, Wilson and Barnes next to one another, and me across from them. I flip through my notes, taking a sip from my mug.. My drink is sweeter than I was expecting, because apparently the Winter Soldier has added agave to the hibiscus tea he made me. It’s delicious.

Barnes eventually breaks. “So whatcha go over so far?”

“How we got together, how we got engaged,” Wilson answers him. “In detail too, so if you don’t want that published, you’re gonna have to grovel at the journalist yourself, because you said—”

“Oh my god,” says Barnes, old-school New York sarcasm dripping from every word. “How dare you tell people about the best thing I ever did, huh? Now they’re gonna think I’m like, a sensitive, good guy, and here I’ve been coasting along on this murder cyborg image. What have you done, you dick?”

Wilson rolls his eyes.

“So...you’re okay with it?” I ask them, absolutely ready to scrub the record if he hesitates.

“You kidding me?” says Barnes. “Every other week comes up some new atrocity I committed against my will in like...the 70s, and you think I’m gonna be upset with people knowing that once in a while I say nice shit to someone I love? Write it. Please. Knock yourself out.”

Okay then. Since Barnes seems willing to talk, I ask them if I can throw them a few questions I have for them as a couple. Barnes looks as though he wasn’t anticipating this.

Wilson turns to him. “You wanna be here for this?”

Barnes nods slowly, hesitantly, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“You’re okay?” Wilson asks. “You decide you’re done at any point and I’ll end it. Or you can go hang out in the other room, your call.”

“I’m good for now,” Barnes decides. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“You can ask whatever you want,” Wilson says to me. “I can’t promise we’ll answer everything, but go ahead and shoot.”

“I guess the first question I have is: what’s the hardest thing about navigating your jobs as a couple? What bothers you the most about that?”

Wilson exhales loudly. “I mean, the obvious answer is the danger,” he says. “The nature of what we do is fundamentally unsafe. I think it goes without saying—I’ll still say it—that we’re always aware that one of us might not make it back from a mission, which is...” Wilson trails off for a moment, shaking his head. “You don’t get used to that feeling. The fear.”

“Mm hmm,” Barnes agrees, from behind his mug.

“And,” continues Wilson, “I’m also aware that by doing this interview, I’m putting Bucky in additional danger. I’m not naive enough to think that the people working against us won’t try to use my relationship with him as leverage against me.”

“That makes sense,” I say, because he’s absolutely right, and pretending that public knowledge of his marriage doesn’t put them both in a new kind of danger seems disingenuous. I face Barnes. “Your turn.”

“Racist assholes,” says Barnes immediately.

Wilson smirks and cocks his head in agreement. “Sometimes I think I’ve talked that subject to death, other times it’s like I could never hope to address it enough. Today feels like the first one.”

A diplomatic, but clear answer. Time to move on.

I’m about to ask the next question when he adds: “Another thing that gets under my skin is how it’s like Bucky’s image in the eyes of the general public is totally dependent on me hyping him up all the time. As far as I’m concerned, he’s proven himself a hundred times over, and yet if I’m not on T.V. reminding people of that every day, it’s suddenly like ‘oh, the Winter Soldier, can we ever really trust him?’

“I just… It bothers me. I want us to come to a collective understanding that everything that happened happened to Bucky, not because of him. It kinda circles back into another of the things I’m passionate about, which is mental health care and awareness. I think if we as a society were better about recognizing and addressing mental illness, and particularly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I wouldn’t have to keep having this conversation about my husband.”

Barnes’s face is getting pinker and he says nothing, but he’s smiling a little at Wilson, who puts an arm around his shoulders.

“Anyway, we can move on,” says Wilson, his expression going easy again. “Just had to get that out there one more time.”

“Hopefully this one’s a little more pleasant,” I say. “What inspired you to come forward about your relationship? I know you guys—” I gesture between them, ”—have been together for a couple years, so why now?”

“I want to go on a date in public,” says Bucky. “I haven’t been on a date since the 40s.”

“That’s right,” says Wilson. “We’re doing all this so I can take him Denny’s and hold his hand over a $6.99 Super Slam.”

When I finish laughing, Wilson continues. “Part of it’s because we realized it’s gonna get out there whether we like it or not. You already knew when you got here that we lived together, and that’s because that information got leaked to the public last week, so it was always just a matter of time before people found out anyway. I’d rather have some control over that narrative; better you hear it from me and Bucky, how we want to tell it, than in some tabloid.”

He’s right about that: they would undoubtedly have been outed one way or another. Their status as “roommates” was reported by TMZ a week and a half ago, and there was a Buzzfeed piece only yesterday, rife with gifs, entitled 15 Times Captain America and The Winter Soldier Made Us Wish We Were Their Third Roommate, that ended on the note of how Wilson and Barnes are “absolute BFF GOALS.” Wilson continues:

“But I think the biggest reason is that we decided, together, that we actually think it’s good for people to know. I’ve seen firsthand the impact that having a Black Captain America has had on the Black community and on the national topic of race, and we think—we hope—that a Captain America who is a member of the LGBT community will have a similar effect.

“The people who already hate me aren’t going to like me any better or worse for being bisexual, but some bisexual teenager out there is hopefully gonna read this article and feel a little bit better about themselves than they did before. That’s really the impact I want to have here. Got anything to add, Buck?”

“Actually, yeah,” says Barnes, staring at the counter in front of him and fiddling with his wedding ring. “I grew up gay in thirties. The idea of being able to just...tell people, that’s still amazing to me. The fact that I’m sitting here talking about it with a stranger and you’re not screamin’ in my face right now…”

“You do know I’m not straight either, right?” I ask him. I’m not exactly shy about that, it’s the kind of thing most people can tell just by looking at me.

“Even so,” says Barnes, finally looking me in the eye. “You fool around with a fella back in the day—or worse, you make a pass and he turns you down—then he knows about you, and then it’s like, what if he tells someone? Some of the worst shit I ever saw came from people who found out that way. So, other gay guys. Basically you never felt safe.”

“What about Captain Rogers?” I ask. “Did he know?”

“Oh yeah, Steve knew,” says Barnes with a dismissive wave of his hand, like that ought to be obvious. “He wasn’t gonna tell anyone; I got too much dirt on him.“

“Pfft. He’s messing with you,” Wilson interjects, directed at me. “There’s no dirt on Steve anywhere; believe me, I’d know by now if there was.”

“I want you to guess how many times I’ve had to clean up Steve’s puke,” says Barnes in a total deadpan, leaning forward. “Whatever number you think it is, the real answer is higher.

“This again,” says Wilson. “I keep telling you Buck, Steve throwing up on you at Coney Island isn’t the big scandalous story you seem to want it to be.”

“Sam wasn’t there, he didn’t see it,” Barnes insists. “We were with these girls and they just left us standing there by the Cyclone, covered in hot dog chunks. Actually, that part was kind of a relief ‘cause one of ‘em was definitely jonesing for me to kiss her before that, and I really didn’t want to.

“But seriously, after everything we went through together, I knew I could trust Steve with anything. And that made me luckier than most—at least I had one person. Lots of guys had no one.

“Anyway, my reasons for coming out with all this are probably more selfish than Sam’s. You know some of those Nazis—we’re callin’ ‘em something else these days, like ‘alt-right’ or whatever, but I know a Nazi when I see one—they have this crazy idea of what I was like back in the day. They’ve got this fantasy, like a golem of toxic masculinity with my face on it, and I just want to publicly shit on their dreams. Every date I ever went on with a girl was a total sham, and I was scared down to my bones that someone would figure that out. I fight because someone needs to and I’m good at it, but I hate hurting people and I’d much rather be sitting here cuddling on the couch with a man. This man.”

Barnes is grinning big and wide by the time he finishes—a real, genuine smile that brings out the sparkle in his eyes—and suddenly I feel like I’m catching a glimpse of what Wilson must be seeing in him. Wilson himself is laughing.

“I like how you snuck your little buzzword in there, baby,” he says. “Toxic masculinity. That’s one of Bucky’s things he learned about from his Wakandan therapist.

“Obviously super important,” Wilson adds, lest I think he’s making light of something serious.

“I think it’s great that we’re talking about it so openly now, especially with respect to the military.”

Barnes tilts his head in agreement, checking the time on his phone. We’re probably approaching the point at which he wants to get started on that pita bread, and I’m definitely in his way.

“So what’s next for you guys?” I ask.

“Isn’t that always the question?” Wilson asks, taking Barnes’s right hand in his left and resting them, intertwined, on the countertop. “Sometimes it’s aliens. Sometimes not. Who even knows anymore?”

“Hopefully, a whole lot more of this,” says Barnes, looking down at their hands.

Wilson smiles. “Well, that’s a given. That’s always.”

This is when Barnes gets up to pull a stand mixer out of one of the cupboards, and I read that as my cue to take my leave. I end my recording, Wilson thanks me for stopping by, I promise to give him an advance copy of my writing to make sure he’s comfortable with what I said, and I find myself standing back on the sidewalk of [REDACTED] moments later.

I’m not typically in the habit of including as many details about the dinner plans of my article subjects as I have here—and I’m certainly testing the limits of my editor’s patience with the word count—but in the spirit of Wilson’s wishes for what his coming out story will mean to the people of America, I wanted to emphasize how human his marriage is.

Barnes and Wilson have extraordinary jobs that they are undoubtedly uniquely suited for and that most of us will never fully understand, but they are also two people who have been through a lot of hardship and found happiness and peace in one another. And that’s something that most of us do understand: love, the human experience that transcends the divisions we give ourselves.

*From a press conference Wilson gave on May 7, 2025.

**From a statement written by Barnes and issued through a S.H.I.E.L.D. representative on November 1, 2023.

For further reading on Barnes, the author recommends:

1. Greatest Generation X: The Impossible Life of James Buchanan Barnes, by Ariel Guzman, published in 2025.

2. R.Y. Uhlencott’s column “The Wolf of Brooklyn” in the October 2024 issue of Time covers the basic timeline and trajectory of Barnes’s life.

#sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #winterfalcon #mcu #marvel #tfatws #sam(antha) tag #my fanfic tag #fanfic

53 notes · View notes

moonknightly · 4 years ago

Text

and you keep me holding on : santiago garcia x reader (seven)

Word Count: 1.8k+ — a short one today, fellas

Excerpt: “Some nights he goes to the bar and finds a warm body to bring home, one that doesn’t care about the wedding band on his finger or the women’s perfume coating his sheets or that goddamn stuffed wolf that now occupies what was once her side. Some nights he sits on his kitchen floor and drinks himself into oblivion.”

Warnings: I said a few bad words. This chapter is pretty light.

[SERIES MASTERLIST]

OCTOBER THIRD — ZERO

Santiago hates October. He hates October so fucking much, he can’t even put it into words when he’s asked to explain himself after he casually mentions it to one of his co-worker’s, someone who wasn’t around a year before when his entire life went to shit. He hates talking about it, hates thinking about it, doesn’t know how he could even begin to explain it.

So he doesn’t answer. He only shrugs, and rolls his eyes when he looks up and catches the horrified expression on his captain’s face.

Santi’s past the breaking down and the sobbing. He’s past the uncontrollable emotions and the erratic behavior. He doesn’t need people to continue to be so careful around him, he just needs things to finally get back to normal-

He stops before he can continue on with that thought, with that wish, because nothing will ever be normal again. Not like it was, at least. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he has a new normal, a new routine.

He wakes up in his new apartment each morning, fixes the covers and pillows on just one side, makes breakfast for himself and only himself. He showers by himself, pays for one coffee from his new favorite coffee shop. He does the grocery shopping, does the laundry, remembers when the bills are due all by himself, no longer looks to the fridge for a sticky-note reminder. Some nights he goes to the bar and finds a warm body to bring home, one that doesn’t care about the wedding band on his finger or the women’s perfume coating his sheets or that goddamn stuffed wolf that now occupies what was once her side. Some nights he sits on his kitchen floor and drinks himself into oblivion.

That’s his normal. That’s his routine.

He fucking hates it and he fucking hates October, but it’s his life now, and he’s just going to have to get used to it.

And so he ignores the look on his captain’s face, ignores his co-worker’s persistence, and shuts his computer down the second it hits 5 o’clock — another unfamiliar part of his new routine. He’s always off work right on time, hasn’t had a second of overtime since-

He sighs, and pushes away from his desk, shrugging his coat on. He feels like it’s one of those nights where a bottle of whiskey is all the comfort and company he needs. His thoughts, those emotions are getting too close again. He can’t let them get too close.

Santi can’t remember how much is left in the bottle of Maker’s Mark he has at home. He can’t even remember if there’s another bottle tucked away behind that one, so he stops by the liquor store on his way back to his place and grabs three bottles off the shelf. The guy behind the counter recognizes him now, and the judgment in his eyes is always clear, but Santi always ignores it. He pays, and at that point he’s only a few blocks from his apartment, so he walks.

He walks and he doesn’t think about a damn thing. He’s gotten good at that, turning his thoughts off on command.

And he’s so lost in his nothingness he almost doesn’t notice when he gets home and his front door’s unlocked, deadbolt and all.

He’s never left the door unlocked. Not even before.

Santi slowly, silently sets his things down on the ground, and his hand easily finds the gun on his hip. He pulls it from its holster, flicks the safety off, but keeps it aimed towards the floor even though his first instinct is to shoot first, ask questions later. There’s only one person he thinks it could be.

But still, he keeps it pointing downwards, and pushes the door open with the toe of his boot.

The light in the hallway is on, and so is the one in the living room. He always makes sure all of the lights are off when he leaves in the morning, and Santi frowns. If Nathan broke into his place, he’s sure as hell not being subtle about it.

But once he makes it down the hall and into the main living space, he sees Jay standing against the island. Not Nathan. Just Jay.

He should’ve suspected the man with the key first.

“Jesus Christ, man,” he sighs, running a hand through his graying curls. Jay eyes the gun in his hand, like he isn’t surprised to see it pulled on him, and Santi sighs a second time before turning the safety back on and setting the weapon on the endtable by the couch. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Santi heads back to the door to grab his things, and he hears Jay’s shoes hit the hardwood floor as he moves into the living room and sits on the couch. Santi’s eyebrows furrow when he doesn’t say anything, and after he has his whiskey stored away for later, he finally looks at him. Really looks at him.

Jay’s face is pale, eyes a little puffy. He’d been crying, that was completely obvious, and as Santi moves closer, he can tell his hands are shaking.

“Hey, what is it?” Santi asks, sitting on the coffee table, hands resting on his knees as he leans forward.

The other man starts to bounce his leg, his eyes looking everywhere but at Santi. It takes him almost a full minute to finally speak, and when he does, his voice wavers.

“They found her,” he mumbles, a small, humorless laugh following his words. “We found her.”

Santi can tell from Jay’s tone that it isn’t good.

“We got a call from State Patrol earlier, about a girl they found in a ditch on the way out to Montauk. They needed someone to ID her so I went and-”

Santi feels that all too familiar bile rise in his throat, and he’s up before Jay can finish his sentence, running towards the kitchen so he can heave into the sink.

His head’s spinning. His arms and legs feel numb and the panic comes back full force. The pain, the grief, all of it hits him so violently in the chest he forgets how to breathe. It feels like the air had been forcefully knocked from his lungs and he feels like he’s getting ready to black out and-

And Jay knows he’s fucked up.

He quickly moves to Santi’s side and puts his hand on his shoulder, shaking his head almost frantically. “No, no. Santi, listen, hey, we need to get going.”

Santi just looks at him while his chest heaves, while sweat starts to drip down his forehead. “What?”

“I came over to take you to the hospital. Come on, you need to see her.”

Santi looks positively horrified, and it’s been months since Jay has seen him look so close to breaking down.

“You want me to identify her body now? Fuck, Jay, I thought you-”

“No.” Jay cuts him off, shaking his head again, mentally kicking himself for not starting the conversation this way, but to be honest, he still can’t wrap his head around it. He’s still in shock. “Santi, she’s alive.”

“Stop fucking with me man-”

“I’m not!” Jay promises, hands reaching out to grip Santi’s shoulders. He shakes once, twice, then laughs again, but this time, it’s in relief. “She’s alive. She’s alive and we need to get you to the hospital now-”

Santiago does black out.

He doesn’t remember much about the next hour. He doesn’t remember Jay peeling him off the floor when he finally came too, doesn’t remember being dragged downstairs to Jay’s truck, doesn’t remember the drive to the hospital out on Long Island, though he does briefly remember wishing they’d been able to get her back to the city. He trusts the doctors and the nurses at her hospital, wants them to be the ones taking care of her. He wants her closer to home, closer to something, somewhere familiar.

But even so, Santi doesn’t fully snap back to reality until he’s standing in front of Graves, and the numbness subduing his body and mind quickly fades into anger.

He’s so fucking angry. All he sees is red.

“You didn’t call me first? You were supposed to call me first, not anyone else.”

Graves holds his hands up, almost as if he’s afraid Santi’s going to rush him, and honestly? He thought about it.

“We wanted to make sure it was really her before we-”

“You had enough time to send Jay to my place. You could’ve called me at work, fuck, you could’ve just shown up-”

“We didn’t think that was a good idea-”

“Will you two shut up.” Cameron’s suddenly standing between the two, a hand on each of their chests, gently pushing them back from each other. “This is the last thing either of you should be doing right now.”

Santi knows she’s right, it’s the last thing he wants to be doing.

He just wants to see her, to touch her, to make sure she’s really there and breathing. His anger evaporates as quickly as it came, and he can’t pick an emotion to describe the feeling that replaces it.

“Can I see her?” he asks Cameron, coughing gently to hide the way his voice cracks, though she catches it. So does Graves, so does Jay.

Jay turns Santi to face him when neither Cameron nor Graves say anything, and he sighs, taking a moment to think about his words carefully before he speaks. “Santi...listen, she’s been through hell-”

“You think I don’t know that?” he scoffs, shaking his head. “You think I haven’t thought about that every damn day for the last fuckin’ year?”

Jay flinches, but he’s quick to relax. He reminds himself that everyone’s emotions are running high, he shouldn’t take it personally. “I just, I mean...fuck, it’s a lot, okay?”

He looks almost scared, and Santi suddenly understands why he’d acted so scattered back at the apartment.

Santi nods, but doesn’t say anything, mostly because he doesn’t know what to say. He just wants to see her. They all know that.

So Jay leads him down the sterile white halls, and Santi shoves his hands into his pockets. His stomach twists the deeper into the building they get, but he pushes down his fear of hospitals and doctors and instead focuses on the fact that she’s still alive.

She’s alive. They found her. She’s alive.

She’s alive.

Though she doesn’t really look it.

Santi stops the second his eyes fall on her, motionless in her hospital bed, hooked up to different wires and tubes. And just like earlier, it feels like the air has completely escaped his lungs. He thinks he might be sick again.

It’s her. It’s definitely her, but she looks so, so frail — so unlike herself, and though Santi expected it, he’s not prepared for it.

He blacks out again, and just like always, Jay catches him before he hits the ground.

#santiago pope garcia #santiago pope garcia x reader #triple frontier #triple frontier x reader #triple frontier fic

199 notes · View notes

dhrdrabbles · 4 years ago

Text

Part V

(Part I, II, III and IV)

His growth spurt between the Battle of Hogwarts and his trial made vulnerable situations with Draco Malfoy extremely awkward.

Hermione noticed this three years later, at a particularly poorly visited DMLE regulars’ table. They had been a small round tonight anyway, with a large number of aurors, including Harry, being dispatched to an emergency in Aberystwyth.

Terry Boot called it a night after the first round of butterbeers, clearly irritated by the only other two participants tonight. As a result, Hermione and Malfoy awkwardly shared an otherwise empty table until Hermione sighed and went to the bar to order another round.

Malfoy thanked her, his eyes glued to the stains and wood grain on the table. Hermione rolled her eyes. Malfoy had joined the department in the past autumn, too much scepticism in the public and Ministry alike, but his behaviour during his probation had been impeccable. From the moment he became an auror trainee, his record was spotless. Robards had mentioned more than once that he would allow him a shortened training period if it weren’t for the Mark on his arm. There were limits even to a Department Head’s power.

She sipped her butterbeer, eyeing him.

Malfoy wasn’t unfriendly towards her, but he had made much better amendments with Harry or Terry, or even Ginny at this point. With her, he seemed to distance himself more than necessary. He was going out of his way to be polite, but barely able to meet her eye when they spoke, which had been a nuisance when they were assigned together during Malfoy’s first field training. When she mentioned it to him, he had become eerily quiet, his gaze – as always – trained on some point behind her shoulder, assuring her that it was nothing personal and just his nerves.

Hermione’s thoughts lingered on this exchange, although it had been five months ago. She had never seen Malfoy so obviously nervous. It was this reaction that made her firmly believe his behaviour hat little to do with his or her blood and everything with her as a person. She just didn’t know what it was.

Malfoy was now sipping his second butterbeer gingerly. Half of his was finished and Hermione had only taken a few sips, so she hurried to follow suit, only to choke on some beer that had sneaked its way into her trachea as she rushed to drink.

Hermione coughed.

Malfoy chuckled.

The small sound from across the table made her look up in disbelief, still coughing lightly.

She must have looked menacingly because Malfoy’s hands quickly shot up in defence. His smile, to her surprise, remained. “Sorry. But the second you started downing that beer, I knew the choking was imminent.”

The next and final cough hid her surprise at his nonchalant small talk and Hermione was thankful for it. She looked up at Malfoy, who loomed over her even when seated. “And you didn’t think of warning me.”

“Granger.” Ah, the drawl. She only ever heard it when he joked with Harry and Terry, or anyone but herself. The tone that once made her shiver uncomfortably in the Hogwarts halls tickled a giddy curiosity in her these days. She itched to find out why he excluded her from it. “Why would I ever warn you when I could just sit here and enjoy watching you chug that beer – and fail?”

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t be angry with him. Not when he finally seemed at home in small talk territory. Not when the corners of his mouth were still pulled upward.

He finished his beer in an impressive performance of ‘elegant chugging’ which Hermione filed under yet another Malfoy-only specialty. Putting down his jug, he looked over at her, caution now dominating his features once more. Hermione looked at him questioningly for another second before he took a small breath and pointed at her beer. “Do you want another of these? Because I actually cannot stand the stuff and will order some good whiskey instead.” He paused for one second and then added, hurriedly, “If you want to stay. Feel free to leave.”

Now it was her turn to grin up at him. “It’s fine. I think I’ll stick to this one for now”, she pointed at her glass which was still half full.

At that, he seemed to relax visibly and got up to order.

Hermione’s gaze lazily followed him as he glided through the crowd. His bright, blond head towered over most of the other guests and was visible up until he stopped at the bar.

Two butterbeers and three whiskeys later, she returned from the bar with yet another butterbeer and a top-shelf whiskey for Malfoy, the snob, who had actually warmed up to her at long last over the past few drinks. She already thought about mentioning his behaviour another day, when they – hopefully – established some sort of routine with each other as she pushed his drink in front of him and dropped down on the seat across from him, head spinning slowly, in an unrushed pace.

She was just about to pick their conversation about the dominance of Veela traits in descendants back up when Malfoy’s gaze made lose track of her trail of thoughts. In her vision, only his grey eyes remained, as he intently stared at her from across the wooden table in the noisy Leaky.

The words were trapped somewhere in the same trachea where their evening had started. Hermione opened her mouth, instantly thought she must look like a goldfish and closed it again, now extremely self-conscious about her messy bun, the layer of sweat on her upper lip and her frantic gaze from Malfoy’s eyes to his frowning mouth.

For lack of a better word, he appeared sad to Hermione. She tried to pinpoint where they had left off the conversation, looking for a clue where she had said something stupid. Slowly, she opened her mouth again.

Malfoy averted his eyes, dropping on his whiskey.

He sighed. “Thank you.”

Hermione stammered a reply, still wondering what had happened while she was gone. Her insecurity seemed to irritate Malfoy even more, he rubbed his eyes with both of his hands in a slow-motion and groaned almost inaudibly. He leaned back in his chair, his long legs carefully draped next to hers under the table, never quite touching. On various occasions that night, Hermione had heard a soft bump and had always assumed it must’ve been his one of knees that hit the table every time he shifted.

When he removed his hands from his face, Malfoy looked as shattered as he had before. It seemed so wrong on this man, always the epitome of composure and elegance. Even in the field, as a trainee, he appeared in control of every situation. On Thursdays, at the regulars’ table, he dominated the round merely by being such a stark contrast to the rest of them, with his bright hair, light skin, and impeccably straight posture.

Malfoy never sagged, not even after numerous whiskeys. He could raise his voice without automatically shouting as Harry did. He could direct his attention to someone by merely nodding briefly at them. His speech was always impeccable, whether he was stressed or tipsy. He never lost composure.

Yes, Hermione had paid attention to the enigma that was Draco Malfoy’s behaviour towards herself, and she had never seen him lose composure.

Hence, her breath stopped before speeding up excessively when he shifted forward, his elbows now resting on the table, and hid most of his face against his hands again. He was so tall; the table support automatically led him to cower slightly before her. Still, she had to look up to watch his emotions unfold before her.

Hunched Malfoy seemed so at odds with every observation Hermione had made over the past years. She briefly noticed how awkwardly unproportionate he seemed in comparison to the small table and the bench he sat on, but then Malfoy finally raised his voice again. All the effortless command it usually carried via ductus and volume, supported by the sheer size of his torso, had disappeared.

“Granger, how can you stand just sharing a table with me all evening?”

The question startled her so much, she just blinked rapidly at him, her pulse quickening. “I –”

He sighed and rubbed over his face with his hands once more before carefully placing them in front of his torso. His long fingers fiddled with a napkin on the table. His cheeks were flushed, and the corners of his mouth were facing downwards. The image reminded her of their Hogwarts days, but all animosity between them was gone. What remained was a healthy dose of anxiety after what had started as a civil evening.

He sighed again, still hunched in his seat. His eyes never left her face and Hermione struggled to meet his gaze, its intensity almost overwhelming her. The melancholy never left him.

“You testified at my trial – why?”

His voice was levelled, but not its usual nonchalant self – too quiet. Again, Hermione stumbled over his question. She knew the answer, didn’t she? She knew every answer to every question, and this one was so clear to her too. He was just a boy, not even of age. His family – his mother, especially – was in danger. He was – bully or not – just her classmate. He had looked so ridiculously skinny and unhealthy back in their sixth year, crying in the presence of a ghost living in a bathroom. He had stalled when they were captured and brought to the manor. He had not fought during the final battle. He had shown her every day since he had joined the department that the testimony was worth it.

And yet, the question stunned her.

He still sought her eyes with his. “What I want to say, Granger, is this. Whatever your reasoning, your testimony sealed my fate. You made it possible for me to join the auror squad. And I’m thankful.”

She furrowed her brows. “With all due respect, Malfoy, I really appreciate it. But Harry also –”

He interrupted her with a faint smile, but the sadness remained. “Potter has my thanks as well, rest assured. But you – I couldn’t believe it when they said your name. With Potter, I had a ridiculous rivalry. You– you never harmed me, Granger”, his voice cracked. “I depreciated you whenever I could, just to make myself feel better.”

He finally tore his gaze away from her. He was obviously ashamed. Hermione couldn’t reply. Her face was hot, her eyes roaming from Malfoy’s face to his still fiddling hands. She watched as he drew another breath.

All the noise in the pub had numbed around her a long time ago.

“Granger – Hermione – I’m incredibly sorry for how I treated you throughout our years in school. You never gave me any reason to despise you, and yet I did, based on what I now know is a ridiculous notion.”

She watched in awe as he pressed his thin lips together, obviously struggling with the situation, the words, but most of all, with himself. “You are the most impressive person I know. And in retrospect, I knew it a long time ago, but I was so preoccupied with working towards all the wrong goals. Please forgive me. For all the pain I caused you.”

Hermione stared at Malfoy, who had sought her gaze once more at the last sentence but now turned it back to the table, intently staring at the woodwork.

Hermione blinked once, twice, and then the noise of the pub returned to her ears as she slowly rose to her feet.

Malfoy, the tall man across from her, shrunk in his seat. He expected her to leave.

Instead, Hermione made her way to his side of the table and found an even stance in front of him. Despite being seated on a bench in a pub, Malfoy’s face was almost at the same height as hers, small as she was.

Without another word, she unceremoniously dropped next to him on the bench. He jumped slightly, but Hermione caught his long, lithe fingers in her own and pressed them slightly.

“I forgive you, Draco. I forgave you a long time ago.”

His shoulders sagged next to her. A small breath escaped him, and his lips finally curled upward in the most beautiful way once more. His chin trembled.

She sought his eyes – no longer the usual, composed grey now, but a softer, darker hue.

Her thumbs slowly, tentatively began to stroke the back of his hands in reassurance, but he didn’t move, his eyes still trained on her face so close to his own.

Hermione leaned in and kissed him.

---

Author’s notes: This story is now also available to you on AO3 and I have an extra scene planned for you! It it almost finished and should land in the next couple of days. This format was fun! Although I have waded dangerously far away from drabble territory with some of them, length-wise. Thank you for following along and for being a part of it!

#dramione #dhrtag #dramione fanfic #hp fanfic #dhr fanfic #dhrdrabble #Draco Malfoy #Hermione Granger #dmhg #dhr #fanfic

91 notes · View notes

shattered-mirror-fanfic · 3 years ago

Photo

Chapter 2 is finally out! I’ll try not to take as long with chapter 3!

A03 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32206135/chapters/80533708#workskin

Chapter text below th cut for people who don’t use Ao3:

It was cold...too cold. Darkness was everywhere, he looked down seeing blood smeared on his jacket. He didn’t like these colors, they were violent ones...wait what had happened? It was all coming back, all of it in slow motion. His ears were ringing as a gunshot played over and over in his mind. Screaming, crying, blood, pain...it always was his unwanted home.

~~~

Right Hand Man woke up in a cold sweat, had it all been a dream? No, it was real, he wasn’t home. He sat up and looked around at the tent he had woken up in, seeing no one else. Right pulled out his phone (which he noted had a new crack across the top) and checked the time. 11:47. He had never woken up this late, especially when there was something big happening. “Oh fuck me with a metal pipe right up the arse.” He mumbled to himself while sliding off his bed and putting on his boots which had been left beside it. Rustling came from outside and as the australian cocked his head to pear at the source of the noise. Ellie walked in notably with her hair in a low ponytail and without her hat.

"Hey boss, glad you're awake. You completely fainted yesterday after, y'know..." She commented.

“Yeah...um, can I ask wot happened while I was out?” Right asked in response.

“Oh yeah, it was still pretty intense....”

The events of the previous night had started with a strong wind, and ended with a hurricane. Once the government had fled, everything broke down. Henry had immediately darted out, followed by Alphys, Asgore and Frisk. Everyone was panicking. But Right Hand Man...he was silent, cradling Reginald’s newly deceased body in his arms. Have you ever seen a grown man cry? It’s depressing, even more so when it’s a 6’5” australian man with barely anything to lose. Except he just lost the one thing he could lose. Right was trembling for the first time in his life since he was a young lad, tears were rushing down his face as he pulled his best friend closer. He felt the brunette in his arms feel lighter and he cracked his blurred eyes open enough to see Reginald start to fade. Right sobbed more, quietly sputtering out “no”s, all while the teal soul was cracking away, little chips flying off into the wind before dulling and fading. The sun had set, the heart stopped beating. It was all dark, and Right collapsed.

The red-headed woman briefed her boss on everything before addressing which of the tents set up was where Reginald’s broken soul was located.

“Wait, so you’re telling me he's alive?!” Right asked loudly.

“Well, no, the doc just said she had this tank thing that can preserve human souls so she thought it may even work with the chief's soul.” Ellie responded. “Anyways, the doc and Ms. Toriel said they’ll try their best to use healing magic to repair him but it probably won’t work.”

“Hold on, who’s this Toriel lady?”

“Oh yeah, you didn’t get to meet the other monsters yesterday, Ms. Toriel is Asgore’s ex-wife, she’s super nice and patched me up since I got a cut on my arm.”

“Huh, guess I missed a lot…”

“Yeah, here, if you wanna I can introduce you to everyone, how does that sound?”

“Sure but, can we check on Reg first?”

“Yeah, but how come, he’s just a soul right now?”

“I miss him…”

~~~

Frisk and Henry decided that staying around the makeshift camp was too stuffy, so they headed into town. It wasn’t that bad of a walk terrain wise, but it was still pretty long. Henry decided that maybe being dressed like a wanted criminal wasn’t a good idea, so he had kept his hair in a low ponytail today, leaving his hat at camp and wearing his old jacket over top of his normal fancy clothes.

As they entered town Frisk reached up and tugged on Henry’s jacket, making him turn and kneel down to their height.

“Hey kid what’s wrong?” Henry asked calmly. Frisk couldn’t find the words to explain it, so they moved their hands in intricate motions, signing to Henry that they’re scared. Henry smiled and signed back saying that he understood and stood back up, grabbing Frisk’s hand in his own and walking with them into the town. They strolled for a bit until they reached a library. Henry pushed open the door to the dark shop, everything seemed old and sketchy. Henry flicked the light switch, lighting up everything and showing not a single speck of dust. All the books in sight seemed brand new, the floor itself looked recently polished.

“Ah visitors, it’s been too long” A voice chimed from up the stairs. Down walked a man of average height, he had tan skin and dark brown hair pulled into a soft ponytail along his back. He wore grey glasses and a light orange apron, all tied together with a dark blue tie with a small shiny pendant on it. “My name is Mr. Williams, how may I help you?”

“Um hi, I’m Henry, we’re looking for specific books.” Henry said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Of course, what genre?”

“I’m looking for a book on politics and Mr. Henry is looking for books on human souls.” Frisk chimed in.

“Great, Henry, do you see the shelf by the mirror over there? The books over there should be what you're looking for” The man said, gesturing his hand towards a mirror hanging on the wall. “As for you young child, let me show you where the political books are.”

Henry made his way to where Mr. Williams had gestured too, turning his head only once to make sure Frisk was okay. The white-haired man sighed as he scanned over the books looking for the correct one. One stood out among the others, it was an older book with a leather cover, he pulled it out of the shelf and stared at the cover. Guide to souls, and how to work soul bonds. Henry shrugged and opened up the table of contents when something caught his eye. One of the very last chapters was titled “How to undo an unwanted soul bond”. He flipped right to the page it would be on, desperate for answers, unfortunately fate was kicking him in the rear this time when the page was shown to be torn out and missing. Great, just freaking great.

“What’s wrong Heny~ Sick of me already?” Henry turned to the ghost behind him.

“Leave me alone player, I was doing fine before you came along” He stated coldly.

“Don’t you see Hen, you need me, you’re only here because I made you better, and I still need to repay my debt for you helping me all those years ago.”

“I was a child, I of course helped you, just because I did that doesn’t mean I need a demon following me throughout my life!” Henry shout whispered.

"Eh, everyone's a critic, now if you excuse me, I have to take a snack break.”

“Don’t you dare say it-”

“On the fear of weak.”

“Of freaking course you drama royal.”

“Thank you for using the correct pronouns.”

“I’m not an asshole” Henry laughed, following it with a frown. He looked back down at the book in his hand, flipping through the other pages before looking back up. “Hey could you-”

Gone. Player had vanished, like always. The man sighed and turned to the shelf to find another book.

~~~

A few hours had gone by before Henry and Frisk met back up at the entrance to the building, Frisk holding three novel length books on politics for beginners and Henry just with the leather book with the missing page.

“Well I hope you two found everything you needed, feel free to keep those books, I really don’t need them.” The librarian said with a smile. Henry felt something off this time, but shrugged it off as something to not worry about. Frisk wasn’t satisfied with what the kind gentleman had said and reached into their pocket. “Oh, you don’t need to pay, please it’s the least I could do for you lovely folks.”

“Mr. Williams sir, is something wrong?” The child asked, tilting their head to the side.

“No, no, I’m perfectly grand, I just thought it would be a nice thing to do since you two stopped by.” Mr. Williams reassured. “But, maybe I have been a bit lonely, you see, I lost my daughters a few years ago and no one takes interest in my library anymore.”

Frisk nodded before asking, “What were your daughters' names?”

“I see you're quite the learner young one, very well then. My younger daughter was Cassie, she was a really sweet girl and my older daughter was Amy, she was like a little mini-me.” Mr. Williams said with a spark of joy, dimming as he finished his sentence. Frisk blinked for a moment before reaching into their pocket and pulling out a light orange cloth wrapped around a box-like object (how Frisk was carrying this, Henry didn’t know).

“I found these, they had your daughters’ names on them, I thought you may want them back.” The child said, unwrapping the fabric to show it was an apron wrapped around a dark purple journal. Frisk passed them to a baffled Mr. Williams as he stared at the objects.

"Th-thank you Frisk, this means so much." He responded, tears welling in his eyes. The man held them close, not wanting to let go at all.

The store fell silent as the three said their goodbyes. Henry and Frisk left, books in hand, ready to go back. Mr. Williams smiled for what felt like the first time in years. He set the journal and apron on the table below the mirror. He turned ready to head back upstairs to enjoy some tea, but he heard the noise of glass shattering, darting back around to see his mirror broken, right from the center. Two of the shards landed each on his daughter's possessions.

He thought to himself, they need me, don’t they?

#yay #undertale #the henry stickmin collection #shattered mirror #crossover #thsc #post-pacifist ending #fanfiction #fanfic #toppat recruits #inspired

7 notes · View notes

pangtasias-atelier · 4 years ago

Text

A Reborn World’s Anomaly

Well, my first fic after a long ass break is for a character that literally no one knows. So blame @mimisgarbage for sharing my love in this dumb whore. Also, I can never just write about fat Yuma, gotta mention the fucked up ending cause I am still emotionally scarred and hurting from that shit

“Those idiots really did it,” Nagamimi glances down at her newfound arms. Her entire body newfound, she barely marvels in her appearance. No longer in the form of a stitched doll somewhat resemblant of a rabbit, her form is now that of a person. Her black attire the same as ever, the sleeves of her rich black outfit engulfs the entire length of her arm, barely stopping at her wrists. Attached to both sleeves is a single white ruffle that nearly engulfes her hands much like her arms. The rest of the outfit is a short skirt that is much less concealing. Ending a tad bit above midway above her knees, the extra ruffling added at the bottom gives a bit more fabric to cover her up alongside her black leggings and black pumps. A rich lilac vest sits atop her outfit with a darker purple cravat right above said vest. Her dragging bunny ears are replaced with blonde hair, two flowing braids of hair parting it down the back with one being far longer so as to reach down to her knees.

“Nagamimi!” A shrill shout sounds as Mio runs towards Nagamimi. Not quite sure as to how she knows Nagamimi or where she even came from, the innate trust she has in her and Unit 13 has in her eases Mio’s already minimal concerns. Mio no longer as sickly frail, she runs with reckless abandon despite her black boots, her long yellow-green hair flows behind her freely. Her short white top rustles from the movement but her black shorts thankfully covers her up. Unwilling to fully stop, she nearly rams into Nagamimi through forcefully grabbing her arm with glee. ‘What are you doing out here?”

“What’d I say about grabbing me like that?” Nagamimi raises her voice yet she makes no effort in putting up the slightest amount of resistance. “I was just saying an extra goodbye is all,” Nagamimi’s eyes never once taken off from the horizon she stares at the increasingly diminishing figure.

“They already said goodbye. The rest of Unit 13 is still celebrating! And Julietta but he celebrates for everything,” Mio tugs at Nagamimi’s arm.

“Yeah,” Nagamimi continues to stare; the tension in her jaws remain. Her mind races. The thoughts jumbled, sudden, instantaneous moments churn throughout her conscious. Flashes of the world destroyed. Flashes of everyone but a select few killed, those near the stage of a dragon spared. Flashes of Unit 13 destroying VFD and with it, a world free of dragons. And yet, Unit 13’s leader’s sudden call had raised questions. Questions only for Nagamimi as the rest of Unit 13 had been purposefully left out of the loop by their leader. With the near teary state their leader had been from such an unexpected call, Nagamimi had no choice to leave it alone. With only her and Unit 13 knowing the truth of their remade world, there simply had been no opportunity to speak about the contradiction of Yuma existing. A man-made human created for the sole purpose of destroying dragons only to instead willingly turn himself into one, his entire existence is contradictory.

And yet, Unit 13’s leader was willingly overlooking such a strange anomaly. Yuma slain by their own hands, Yuma had refused to back down despite the two’s relationship. The deep burning shame and regret haunting them afterwards, the image of Yuma dying in their arms from the wounds they themself inflicted, properly analyzing the situation was simply out of the question for them.

“What’s wrong?” Mio staring at Nagamimi’s face, she glances between her face and the place where Unit 13’s leader once was, their entire silhouette now gone.

Nagamimi deeply sighs. Her entire frame puffing up with air only to expel it still feels too insufficient of a sigh. “I just don’t want to go back to where everyone is. They’re so loud,” Grumbling herself so as to sell the lie, she immediately gives herself away with her smirk.

“You’re a terrible liar!” Mio pouts as she drags Nagamimi back inside.

“I hope everything works out for those two this time,” She earnestly wishes under her breath before she follows Mio’s efforts to get her to rejoin the festivities.

Stepping off the usually packed trains of Tokyo, Unit 13’s leader deftly weaves through the hustle and bustle of packed foot traffic. This new world exactly the same – minus the disappearance of dragons – as their old, destroyed world, the address Yuma had given them is easy to get to. A quick search revealing apartment complexes, Yuma no longer living at ISDF with dragons ceasing to exist, he had eagerly expressed wishing to see them. The shock of Yuma somehow being alive still refuses to wear off, so they hurry through the crowd despite the angry complaints tossed their way from their rushed state.

Eventually reaching the address Yuma sent them, their prepared mental state or rushing up a litany of stairs is still high on adrenaline even when they find Yuma’s apartment to be on the ground floor. Fishing their phone out of their pocket, they double and triple check the address before placing it back. They clear their throat. Their fist shaking, their lungs refuse to cooperate with them as they hold their breath back upon knocking twice. The instant a second passes without a response, their chest seems to well up with water as the sudden inability to breath sinks in.

“It’s open!” A shout responding to their dread and panic, the prickly moist tears that threatened to protrude begin to recede. They almost slam the door open upon their rushed entrance. “I’m in the kitchen,” The soft yet smug tantalizing voice of Yuma’s penetrates their ears and sinks into their very flesh. Their legs continue on moving towards the captivating voice. They stop upon the sight that awaits them.

The kitchen in a somewhat state of disarray, Yuma is at the epicenter of it all. His engorged figure makes it hard for him not to be, Yuma’s hefty body taking up a large swath of the kitchen area. Surrounded by cats, Yuma’s obese body seems even somewhat laughable with the tiny pets clinging to him.

No longer possessing the fit musculature for a body designed with the singular intent of killing, Yuma’s figure is instead comparable with a body designed solely to eat. Where once there was a defined outline of abs shown only in more personal, intimate moments from their dates, Yuma’s heaping gut lurches forward into a massive overhang. Tucked in neatly and safely behind the comfort of his turtleneck, the fabric surprisingly doesn’t fight back its owner’s corpulent body; instead, it conforms to Yuma’s soft curves making up the doughy mass of his gut. His overhang reaching down a bit above his knees, the end up Yuma’s gut ends in a notably defined bell shape, the curve of his stomach curving ever so slightly inwards below his navel. His stomach mercilessly pulled down by gravity due to its sheer weight, the mass of lard rests comfortably on his thighs. The inner rivulets of fat making up his thighs are hidden behind his tank of a gut. However, the sides of his thighs jut out from so much fat crammed into his figure. The edges of his thighs peeking out from behind his gut offer a sense of their own immense girth, the inner mystery of his thighs filled in by the width of his overhang. Each thigh wider than a person, and with extra width to spare for a second, the two tree trunk thighs fill the fabric of Yuma’s pants. His pants perfectly tailored to fit him just like his turtleneck, the legs of them taper to fit his body, the entire canvas of sagging puffed out fat making up his legs visible. Rolls marcating the edges of where his ass and legs meet, Yuma’s ass juts out behind him, a slight fall to them as well from its own weight like Yuma’s stomach. A cat clings onto the fabric of his pants; its nails digging into the thick fabric as it hangs off the side of Yuma’s thigh.

Yuma’s legs slowly shift in clear, deliberate motions. Moving obviously a challenge with so much girth in the way, his pendulous gut sways from the movement. It slaps against his thighs. Turning to face towards Unit 13’s leader, he lets out a sigh – half from spotting his partner and half from exhaustion. “You’re finally here,” His face is puffed out from the extra bits of flab piled onto his cheeks and chin. No longer so angular, it’s instead rounded out to give a more soft and welcoming aura, The apron attached to him offers an even more welcoming aura, the width of it only covering half the width of his expansive gut. Even his breasts splay out the sides of the apron. Both heavy tits rest comfortably on the shelf of his gut, each sploying out somewhat to the sides. The apron lacking a knot, it instead has a collar to fit around his doughy neck. Two cats vye for Yuma’s attention, one on each soft shoulder. Yuma’s doughy looking arms rest comfortably on his plump love handles. Too much effort to hold up the two burdened arms despite each only holding a bowl of cat food, his fat bunches together.

“Yeah,” Unit 13’s leader is at a shock – partly from Yuma’s mere existence yet mostly from his newfound weight. “I made it,” Releasing a radiant smile as the edges of their lips upturn, their feet glide along the floor as they step forward with zero hesitation. Their fingers gingerly wrap around both bowls in Yuma’s hands. The cats meow at them as they walk back. The cats circling their feet, they take great care in placing the bowls down, yet they do so quickly before the cats can prematurely grab them while still in their hands. The cats content with their food, Unit 13’s leader saunters back to Yone. They press a hand on Yuma’s stomach, their fingers sinking ever so slightly into the warm mass of fat. “Sorry about the wait, big guy,” Immediately accustomed to Yuma’s strange reappearance and even stranger figure, they loop an arm around Yuma’s, the warm pile of pudge encases their arm on all sides.

Yuma lets out a small huff of breath before shaking his head at the nickname; his near shoulder length gray-brown hair swishes from the motion, bits of his green eyes momentarily hidden behind his hair. “I guess I’ll never get you to stop calling me that,” A twinkle in Yuma’s eye, he follows their steps as they slowly lead the way.

“It’s hard to not call you what you are,” They give a couple affectionate pats against Yuma’s wobbling stomach. Leading Yuma out of the kitchen, they make their way past their cats that are preoccupied with eating. “Plus, you seem to get a kick out of it too,”

“Oh, I get a kick?” Yuma counters. His personality much the same, he continues his rebuttal. “I’m not the one insistent on using such a nickname, am I?” His fatigue starting to get to him, he huffs afterwards.

“We’re almost there, big guy,” They ignore his rhetorical question and instead lead Yuma further back into the living room. Yuma merely rolls his eyes with a scoff thrown in for good measure.

Upon reaching the couch, they reluctantly remove themselves from Yuma. A wide permanent indent marking his spot, Yuma gratefully lowers himself down on it with only minimal creaking from the loveseat. His bulk finally resting, his fat bunches up together. His thighs take up nearly the entire expanse of the loveseat. His gut rests on the wide pedestal that is his thighs. “Make yourself comfortable,” Yuma challenges.

Without a pause, Unit 13’s leader sits in the tiny crevice left available between Yuma’s fat and the armrest. However, they lift up Yuma’s gut, the mass of fat barely lifting up despite their best efforts. Shifting around, they place their back on the armrest as they sit on Yuma’s lap. Most of their body smothered under Yuma’s gut, they let go of his stomach with a grin. “Got the best seat in the house. Even comes with a personal heater,” They rub Yuma’s gut with their right hand; their hand goes in slow counter-clockwise motions.

“Glad to be of service,” Yuma suddenly blushes as his stomach growls.

“Now it’s my turn to be of service,” Opening up their phone, they start ordering food without waiting for any input on Yuma’s end. Tapping and scrolling away, they smile as Yuma simply starts searching for something to watch.

Deciding to simply take this newfound world without question, they let out a contented sigh as they place their food order, ready to enjoy their first date with Yuma in this world.

#My writing #ssbhm #maleweightgain #male weight gain #fat!Yuma #fat fiction

18 notes · View notes

springtimebat · 4 years ago

Text

Dragon-Smoke

The monster was born on an October morning.

The mother lay on a makeshift bed, her legs in the air, her hands grasping the iron bars of the headboard. Three midwives, three fates cutting a golden thread, three phantoms, three pairs of pincers held her down and interfered with parts of her body she never let anyone touch. Not even the father. Her hair, once golden brown, had greyed. Her eyes were squeezed closed, her nose was snotty and her mouth yelled obscenities at the autumn air. She screamed at the looming circus tent, at the freaks, at the demon, at the father, at the husband and finally, at the cross. It lay there. Just...lay there. Golden, holier than thou, on the old steeple wall in the mother’s mind; it scoffed at her with an imaginary mouth and wicked eyes. She’d been a nurse years ago. She’d wanted to be a nun.

“Bless you,” The cross snarled from another place not so far away.

The father stood outside the tent, his golden curls waving about his head as the wind danced. At every other birth he’d been in the operating room when the time came. The first few times holding this wife’s legs down with the rest of them, leaving sticky, silky marks all the way up her calves when he had a passionate turn. The last few times he’d sat in the back, smoking a pipe and yelling encouraging words over his wife’s curses. It had been in the afternoon then; that was no time for a man to lose himself to the throes of passion. His eyes were just slivers as he looked up at the warm morning skies, their golden reds and their dark golds twisting among the stars and the waxing moon. A waxing moon. All the others had been delivered on a full moon. The father took a puff of his cigarette (he had just moved on from pipes, at a companion’s request when the smoke became too thick to stand) and gave a smile that would make the devil shiver. This would be a special one.

The father, all alone, began to think of past times. He began to remember what it had been like to be Billy Young, over a lifetime ago. He’d never done that before. The name seemed so stifling then. Once it had chained him down, placed a giant padlock on his chest, directly over his heart. He’d not been a man of power. A man of importance. He’d just been Billy; the third son of Harold Young. After that, the fourth child out of a future nine. He was one of nine. That’s how he was seen. By his father. By his mother. By his older brothers and sisters. Nothing special. Nothing extraordinary. But he’d shown them. They were all gone now. He’d outlived them. Once, there had been a family of twelve, ruling the carnival freaks. Now, only Billy Young remained. The freaks answered to him and only him.

Lucy Albarn floated past him, a dove in the guise of a penguin. He’d noticed her one day. One ordinary day with a not-so ordinary outcome. Billy Young had been marching with his freaks; a top hat sat on his head, a smirk spread across his face, a clown and a blind girl held onto his sides, begging for scraps of his glory to devour. Billy Young was a king. The father sighed wistfully as he recalled his top hat; his crown. He’d seen all sorts that day, as usual, but no one stood out. A cold eight in the morning had turned into a boiling four in the afternoon and wearing his jacket hadn’t been such a grand idea. He tried to find a place where he could calm down, compose himself, as the heat threatened to strip him away. That was when he saw Lucy Albarn, her eyes like saucepans, staring. At him. At him! Not Harold Junior, not Allister Young two years his senior: him. She saw him gazing at her, taking notice, and her mouth opened slightly in a little gasp. He shifted a little, his stance grew askew. His hand flew up and gave a wave. Lucy Albarn waved back. He saw her now in the cigarette smoke, waving and grinning slyly. It was funny; he was there for a short time, always moving, always changing, always followed by a circus, always shadowed by the tent. She had been there, in that town (he couldn’t remember the name), probably all her life, and she stood there, looking him in the eye (and oh, how big her eyes were), smirking at him. Grinning. It was a secret smile, the one Lucy Albarn had given him that day, in the horrible heat, just before her other penguin friends whisked her away from him for a short while. It was a friend’s smile, it was a lover’s smile, it was a wife’s smile. It was a smile that he’d tried to get her to show him ever since. It was the smile that made Billy Young realise he liked Lucy Albarn. It was that secret, devious, evil little smirk that made him realise he wanted to marry her.

The next few years were a giant blur, cut into ribbons by his addiction to cigars, rum and producing heirs. An incident in an alleyway may have happened, involving Billy Young, Lucy Albarn and three or four strongmen and a burlap sack. At least, Lucy Albarn had testified that it had happened. But, as everyone knew, she wasn’t quite… right anymore. She hadn’t been since the first baby, the clowns would occasionally mutter. Billy disagreed. He’d say she went wrong on their wedding day. He stood at the altar with the priest who’d kindly agreed to officiate (abruptly, suddenly, there was a flash of a gun cocking, a bat being drawn from the carnival folks mass of hands, claws and hooves), waiting proudly, patiently, as she walked down the aisle. Her hair was still a golden brown, hidden by his mother’s old veil, and she hunched over as she stumbled up to them, ashamed. And, as the priest began to recite his scripture, she looked up at Billy Young for the first time in weeks. She gazed at him, her owl eyes glazed over like glass. Then, she gave him a small smile. It was not the smirk he desired; no she’d never pull it again, not after the first one got her into so much trouble. It wasn’t really a smile, if he was being honest with himself. It was just a slight curve of the lips. It was a small cry of mercy. Billy Young realised, then and there, that this was Lucy Albarn’s final attempt to plead with him. After being taken from her home, being beaten by a group of strangers and being caged in a freak show for three never ending weeks, she was about to break. As she gazed at him with those glass eyes, she searched this man for any sign of Billy Young; the boy with the top hat, the boy with golden curls, the shade of the sun, the boy who noticed her in a crowd of thousands. The boy she had smirked at. He smirked instead, when she looked down and her shoulders slumped. Moments later, a priest declared that Lucy Albarn was now Lucy Young, her husband lifted her off the ground and strode towards his tent (their tent now) and to their bed.

His wife’s silence finally brought Billy back to earth and he turned back towards the same tent, now threadbare and drenched of colour. The three midwives pushed their way outside, their mangled hands holding bloody towels. They began to bicker amongst themselves, about pay, about personal rights, but they saw their master out of the corner of their eyes and put on their brave faces. They were all simpering and sweet smiles. It made him feel sick. Lucy would do the same thing once he made his way to her. That was the worst part.

Billy Young of Young’s Cabinet of Curiosities cleared his throat, “Everything in order?”

“Yes sir!” One midwife with a missing eye said.

“A normal birth sir!” one with a snout for a nose said.

“Here’s hoping it’s a healthy one sir!” the last with a stump instead of a leg said.

“One to live a long and happy life sir!” They all croaked together as a loansome chorus.

“Hmm cheers,” Billy grumbled, “How’s Lucy?”

“Fine. Fine. Could have another ten chillies, if you wish it sir.”

“Good,” Billy changed focus to the tent. Inside was silent. Unnaturally silent.

“I’d like to see my family. I won’t be at the big top for the rest of the day,” with that, Billy let his cigarette fall to the ground and crushed it under his rider’s boots, “Wilson is in charge ‘till I return. You three get back to work.”

The midwives raced away towards the shadowy hills, grumbling about promotions and the unfairness of it all. Billy watched them go, taking his time. He had all the time in the world. Lucy had all the time in the world. The baby had all the time in the world. Slowly, he lifted the flap of the tent up and stepped inside to greet his family.

How many was it now? Surely it had been about ten right? Ten babies. That meant it had been at least twelve years. Twelve years full of babies, travelling, Billy Young. In all of those years, Lucy had never given birth to a child that didn’t scream. Margot, Janie, Billy Junior, Kyle…. All the others that had gone before she could give them names. They’d all had a powerful set of lungs.

“They all took after their father,” Lucy thought grimly as she pulled herself up out of bed. They’d left the tent in disarray; towels had been thrown onto the floor, a shelf had been pushed on the way out, leaving her books in disarray and a stained mattress growing strange, green fur out of its sides had been put next to Lucy’s bed. The monster lay on that mattress, wrapped in the threadbare blanket his brothers and sisters had been nursed in. Still, something else was wrong.

“Something’s missing,” Lucy realised, scanning the room.

Then it hit her. She turned to the tent entrance. The cross that had taunted her was gone, stolen from the patchwork wall.

Lucy sighed,”Strange thing to take,” she thought to herself as she went to meet her new baby. Still, she shouldn't be surprised. She knew she was surrounded by strange folk.

The baby was small and thin, which made Lucy worry.

“I can’t have another one,” She whispered, picking the thing up, “I know I can’t.”

Then, the baby’s hand, bright pink and chubby, grabbed onto her wrist and the mother’s fear faded away. It was a boy, which would please the demon once he decided to make himself known. He had hair; all his siblings had been bald. Not only that but it was a dark, dark brown, wild and curly as his little head swivelled around looking for food. Lucy pulled her dress down and put him to her chest, being rewarded with a clumsy slurp a few moments later. As he ate, his eyes went up to her face, startling her. He wasn’t squinting. No, he was staring at her, as if he were fully aware of everything. His eyes were blue. Forget me not blue. Lucy smiled. All the others had green eyes,their father’s eyes. These were her eyes. They were the one pair of friendly eyes she’d seen in a long, long time. It sounded crazy, but this baby looked almost...sad. It seemed to understand everything within minutes of its birth. Lucy relaxed and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, listening to her son’s noises as if they were a lullaby.

“You’re gonna be ok, aren’t you?” she asked her baby quietly. The baby blinked in response.

The father strolled in from the morning light, his top hat on his head, his eyes tired and weary. Billy smiled proudly once he saw his wife feeding their newborn son on the bed.

“You’re gonna be ok right?” He asked, with a voice like honey. Lucy grunted, trying to focus on her son, who’d stopped eating and was now nuzzling his head against her breast. Quickly, she hauled him over her shoulder and patted him on the back. The baby burped quietly soon afterwards.

Billy chuckled and sat on the edge of the bed. Lucy tucked their son back into his blanket and pretended to look at the wall.

“Can I hold them?” Billy whispered. Lucy sighed. She hated when he begged her. He sounded so pathetic. She slowly handed the boy over to his father, taking extra care to support his head. Billy smiled at her then turned to his son.

“It’s a boy,” Lucy whispered, lying back on the pillows. Her back made a terrible cracking sound, making Billy turn to her.

“You just relax for a while. I’ll get the midwives to nurse him for you,” He stroked the baby, curling a few locks of his hair around his thin fingers. The boy gurgled and his father cooed in delight. Lucy furrowed her brow, suspicious.

“No, I want to do it. He’s mine.”

Billy shook his head, “You need to rest. You can’t even take care of yourself, much less a baby,” He stood up and walked the baby around the tent, bouncing him in his arms. The boy squealed, “You got a name in mind yet, honey?”

“No,” Lucy closed her eyes. She never thought of the names.

“Huh. Ok.” Billy stroked his son’s cheek, thinking. The baby began to gnaw at his nail.

“I like this one,” Billy chuckled. Lucy groaned, “How about Owen eh?”

“Sure that’s nice,” Lucy moaned. She just wanted to sleep. Billy bent down to sit next to his exhausted wife in bed.

“Look at that, you’re both out like lights,” He showed her Owen, who had begun to snore. Lucy rolled her eyes. Billy stroked her forehead with another hand, catching beads of sweat.

“You two get some rest for now okay? I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Sure.”

“Love you honey.”

“Yeah, I love you too.”

Billy handed Owen back to her and lay down on the bed, staring happily at the ceiling. Lucy glared at the sleeping baby in her arms; the son her husband seemed to adore almost immediately.

“I thought we had a deal,” she thought, “This is not how you stay okay.”

The newborn answered with a snore.

Lucy kissed her son’s forehead and fell asleep with him her aching arms.

#a devil's palm story #creative writing #my writing #horror #fantasy #parallel worlds #supernatural #paranormal #carnivals #the outcome of burnout #cryptidcore #cryptids #oddcore #weirdcore #linked to the devil and the seer #sequel post #linked to a poem i wrote a while ago #southern gothic #american gothic

12 notes · View notes

rainydaydarling · 4 years ago

Text

Bo on the Go

I wrote this a long while back while my daughter was sick. We watched lots of Bo on the Go. This grown up version started brewing in my head. I did make her a princess. That’s where the thought process started. She lives in a castle and has her own wizard and dragon. She’s obviously a princess! I guess this can technically count as fanfic. But I don’t think I’m going to expand on it. Just a fun one time thing probably. Enjoy!

“Call me Bo.” The princess smiled as she motioned for the woman before her to stand.

“We need your help, Princess Bo,” the woman said through her tears. “All our reservoirs are being drained. We won’t have any water supplies left if the monster isn’t stopped. We’ll all die of dehydration; some already have. And power struggles are breaking out over water. The filtration plant only has so much left.”

“I see. Has anyone seen the monster?” The princess asked. She stared at the woman with her light blue eyes.

“No. We can’t find it. Which means we can’t catch it, fight it, or stop it.” She shook her head.

Bo nodded. “I think it’s time to summon the royal wizard.”

“Really? I never thought I would have the honor to meet both of you.”

“Really. And the honor is all ours.” Bo waved her left hand in the air in circles, clapped her hands together and waved her right hand in circles. Sparks began to fly, making the invisible circles visible. Red, yellow, and green bands of sparks exploded and smoke filled the room.

When the smoke cleared a man was standing to the right of the princess. He wore a golden suit and a small, navy blue, turban. He was older than the princess but still quite young, thirty at the most.

“Hello, Princess Boyana,” he greeted as he bowed toward her.

“Hello, Wizard.”

“Looking for a thirsty monster, are we?” He asked.

“We are,” Bo confirmed. “What a wise wizard you are.” She smiled at him.

He returned her smile and pulled a large crystal ball out of the air. “Ahh,” he sighed, “The Drinking Flink.” He didn’t wait for anyone else to say anything before he continued. A liquidy and transparent creature appeared in the ball. “He’s an ancient beast. And you’ll never catch him in the water, you won’t be able to see him. You’ll need to find him in his home in the misty caves.”

“It sounds like we have a monster to catch, Desi.” Bo reached over and petted her olive green dragon. He lied asleep on the floor beside her throne. At her touch he made a happy groaning, almost purring noise.

“You don’t have a door for the misty caves. It’s five doors away.” He swept his hand in a line and five small doors appeared in the air. “You better get on the go, Princess Boyana.” Wizard extended his hand to her.

She stood from her worn throne for the first time in the meeting. Her navy leggings were a perfect complement to her plum dress. It's tattered ruffles we're short in the front and long in the back, trailing on the floor. Her black combat boots added an ever more edgy appeal to the whole outfit. But nothing she wore compared to her lusciously beautiful blue hair. There were three glittering bands etched into her right forearm. Nearest her wrist was burgundy, then gold, and furthest up was emerald. She held onto his hand as she rose, locking onto his caramel eyes.

“When will you start calling me Bo, my dear Wizard?”

“The day I tell you my real name.” He kissed her cheek slowly. “When you’re ready.”

“Very well.” She let his hand go and turned back to the woman. ”Are you ready to make the payment?”

"Will it kill me?" The woman asked, staring at the bands.

“Is that what they say about me nowadays?” Bo chuckled.

“They say a lot about you. No one knows what to believe. You don’t leave here much any more. Not since…” she looked down, “… since your parents. Since you let your cousins assume the throne in their palace.”

“Yes,” Bo agreed. “I’ve been hunting the monster who took them. Tell me, are my cousins doing the throne justice? Are they taking care of you?”

“Yes. They do their best. They care for the people and do what they can. But they don’t know how to handle beasts. We need you for that.”

“I know. And I’m here when you need me. Taking down these atrocities is what I live for now. It makes my heart happy to hear that the throne is being well cared for, as for my people.”

“We are. And it makes my heart happy that you still care enough to help us. And… I’m ready to make the payment… even if it means giving up my own life to save the people in my city.” She bowed her head again.

“You won’t be giving up your life. I promise. It will put you to sleep for a few hours and you’ll be fine again when you wake. I kill monsters, not people.” Bo smiled and tilted the woman’s face back up to meet her eyes.

“Thank you, Princess Bo.”

“You’re welcome. Come this way.” Bo walked slowly and the woman followed.

They went a short way down a long corridor into a bedroom. Everything was old but still well cared for. There was a large bed in the middle of the room.

“You may rest here after you’ve given your energy. My guards will watch over you until you wake.” Bo motioned to a wardrobe. “There are pajamas in there if you’d like.”

“No thank you. I’ll be fine in my clothes. A bunch of men will be watching over me as I sleep?” The woman said with worry.

“Who says only men can be guards?” Bo gave her a sideways smile. “I’m an equal opportunity employer. If you would prefer female guards to watch over you, that’s perfectly fine. Or you may be left in this room alone and I’ll lock the door behind me so only you can let anyone in. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“Female guards, please.”

“As you wish.” She nodded and guided the woman to the bed.

Once the woman was lying down, Bo took her hand and closed her eyes. Her bands began to glow. She opened her eyes as the woman before her began to glow as well. She went slow, making sure not to take too much and break her promise to not take the woman’s life. The woman’s eyes slid closed and Bo held on a little longer before letting go. Bo watched her breathe for a minute until she was sure she was alright.

Bo left the woman and went back to her throne room. Wizard was sitting on the floor with Desi, petting his head. He looked over at Bo as she walked in.

“Good to go?” He asked.

“Yes. I didn’t think you’d wait.”

“One last thing. Be careful, Princess.”

“I will.” She sat beside him and stroked her dragon’s back. “Come on, Desidore Dragon. It’s time to go.” Desi opened his sleepy eyes. He gave his wings a little shake then stretched them out with a yawn. She started down another corridor with Desi in tow.

“I’ll see you soon,” Wizard called.

Bo didn’t answer or turn around. She gave a wave and kept walking. She would see him when she got back. Her hand came to rest on a golden doorknob set on a faded white door. It creaked open and her and Desi walked into the room with the door closing behind them.

This room was round. It held many doors going upward in a spiral. Each one was a different color and held its own picture on it. Wizard had shown her the five doors she needed. She’d been through the first door before. It would be easy to picture in her mind.

Bo closed her eyes and thought of the door. She called it to her. Desi waited as the doors spiraled downward, unnecessary ones disappearing into the floor. Finally, the right door came to a stop in front of them.

Bo opened her eyes. Before her stood a bright green door with a picture of a yellow daisy on it. The first time she went through this door she’d nearly died. It was filled with fifteen feet tall daisies. They were yellow or white, some even pink. They stretched on for miles. It was a gorgeous sight to see. But as she had been walking through, looking for the next door she needed, the flowers had reached out to grab her and Desi. Their leaves encircled them and tried to strangle them to death. Luckily, Desi was able to set his ablaze with his breath. Then he saved Bo too.

“I think it would be best to take flight for this one, Desi.” Bo climbed on his back and held on tight as the door flung itself open before them.

Normally she didn't have to travel through more than three doors. She had worried the woman’s energy wouldn’t be enough. But she’d made it through and, with her dragon’s help, defeated the Drinking Flink. She’d even managed to come back with a new treasure.

When they returned Bo went to her treasure room while Desi went to eat. She found an empty space on a shelf and set the shimmering golden goblet down. She sighed. These treasures were the only things she earned from these journeys. They weren’t what she truly wanted. They weren’t her parents. But she hoped maybe they could help her in the future.

Next she returned to the throne room. She found the woman waiting and pacing back and forth. Her head whipped to Bo.

“Is it done?” The woman asked.

“It’s done.” Bo nodded. “You may return with good news. Your water is safe again. You may want to petition the royals for replenishments until your stores are built up again though.”

“We will.” She walked over to Bo with tears in her eyes. “I can’t thank you enough, Princess Bo.” She threw her arms around her neck.

Bo allowed herself to be embraced for a moment and then pulled away. “You’re welcome. Do you need help getting back home? I can send my driver to take you if you like.”

“That would be great.” She turned to leave as a guard led her away. “Thank you again.”

Bo nodded and waited until the room was clear before she dropped herself down on the stairs in front of her throne. She put her face in her hands on top of her knees and rubbed up and down.

“Rough day?” Wizard whispered from behind her. He sat down next to her.

“Not too bad. Just not what I always hope for,” she responded without looking at him.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

#writeblr #writeblr community #writing #fanfic #author #bo on the go #original rainy

10 notes · View notes

doof-doofblog · 4 years ago

Text

"I Think That's It!"

Thursday 14th January 2021

Hello again everyone! Hope your week is going well so far, I'm really looking forward to reviewing today's episode! I feel there's a lot of emotion and drama going on in the soap right now, still so many secrets and lies to be exposed! I do believe that a new EastEnders trailer has gone out, I have say it looks absolutely brilliant, very exciting with confrontations between Frankie and Mick and then Ash and Suki!! Ooooo it's all going to kick off!! I'm really looking forward to seeing what's due to happen within the next couple of episodes! But back to this episode, I won't waste anymore of your time and jump straight into it!

Okay, so there's a few things I want to talk about. The first thing I'll mention first is Iqra! I do get the feeling that her relationship with Ash is kind of on the rocks, they seem to be disagreeing on things a lot. Plus Ash seems to have a big interest in Peter all of a sudden! During the scene where Iqra and Ash are sat alone in the Cafe, Peter enters and no surprise, Suki follows after a while. However as Iqra and Ash make themselves scares after Suki makes a comment on them staying up too late the night before, did anyone notice that she implied that she and Peter had slept together?! Peter orders himself a drink, to which to interrupts and offers to pay for it, telling him to enjoy his drink - to which she made a disgusting comment that she "Enjoyed" her time with him the previous night! Firstly - Ewwwww! - I don't know what your opinion is on Peter and Suki, but personally, I really don't like it! But I do have a feeling that Iqra is going to have another love interest soon! - The new girl at the Prince Albert - Mila! If she is going to become a regular character and we're going to see more of her, I think it would be nice to give her a storyline. We've already seen her beat Kim to win a job at the Albert, also seen her chatting up Frankie, and now she's been introduced to Iqra. What's not to say that Iqra and Mila begin get grow a close bond and eventually fall for one another? It would be nice to see Iqra in a happy relationship, as I feel right now, she's not happy with Ash. What do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this possible theory?!

The second thing I want to talk about is the Carter's. Shirley is determined to find her little sister, much to Gray's frustration and panic. Before Mick arrives to accompany her to the police station regarding her attack on Katy, Shirley makes a call, which is later to be revealed as one of Tina's friends, as she desperately tries to search for her sister. As she does so, Gray is looking even more worried, for his own sake. He tries to convince her not to make any calls to Tina as it will makes things look bad on Tina as well as Shirley herself! Later when Shirley and Mick arrive back from the police station, they both inform Linda that Katy isn't going to press charges on Shirley for her attack. (Deep down I'm thinking it's because she doesn't want her own crimes being revealed!) But it's during this moment, when Mick and Linda begin to fret that Tina still hasn't been in touch with any of them, Shirley reveals to them that she actually received a text from Tina, informing them that she actually had attacked Ian. Instantly, things don't make sense to the Carter family, they believe that what the message is saying isn't true. But Mick makes the valid point that even if they don't believe it, they have no proof to show that she actually is innocent. It's then that Linda takes a huge gamble and requests to speak to Max. Since Linda ended their fling, Max has been down in the dumps and moping ever since. So when he gets a message from Linda asking that they talk, he goes round to her apartment when no one else is around. She informs Max that she's sorry for the way she treated him, but regardless of sticking by her husband, she does still care for him and treasures his friendship. But she then turns the subject onto more important matters and informs him that she's worried about Tina, even though that Tina has sent them a message almost admitting to attacking Ian, the only way to prove that it wasn't her was to give the police the weapon. Now we all know that the weapon used to attack Ian was the blue Lucy Beale Award, which Max ended up stealing and burying in an attempt to save Linda. The big thing here is, is that Linda is basically asking him to give up the weapon to put Tina out of the frame, but I don't think she realises that it could make Max look guilty of attacking Ian instead, and Max makes a very valid point here, even though he cares deeply for Linda, he refuses to go back to prison for anyone! Why should he also help her family after what's happened between him and Linda? I get Linda is just trying to help her family, but honestly - I think she needs to find another way, approaching Max is the wrong way to go about it.

Thirdly, let's talk about Martin and Ruby, shall we?! When we first see them, Martin appears to have gotten off the phone to, I'm assuming, Sonia or Bex, and he happily informs his wife that he's going to be going away to see his daughter. Ruby has a face like thunder, she is clearly unhappy and as soon as Martin tells her his plans, she has the audacity lie once again to him to reminding him that she's pregnant. I hate to say it but I loved the way Martin responded with "I didn't think I'd have to ask your permission to see my daughter!". Ruby states that since she's told her husband about her pregnancy, he hasn't shown her the slightest bit of interest, however Martin puts on a front saying that he's happy that she's carrying his child, but as he leaves the room, we can see that he still doesn't feel right about it. However, later on Martin bumps into Sharon with little Albie in the park. As they begin talking, Martin reveals to her that Ruby is pregnant, even though it wasn't planned. As she congratulates him, he questions how show manages to cope, knowing that her son Albie was born on the same day she lost her other son, and also happens to mention that he never thought he'd see the day when she and Ian would be married. It's at this point when Sharon has to put on a front and basically lies to Martin, informing that even though it wasn't the future or family that she had planned, somehow it works for her. Her words must play on Martin's mind though, as later, returning to Ruby, she's alone in the house and reaches for a bottle of wine from the shelf, only to be interrupted by the front door opening, she quickly puts it back. Martin enters and comes with a peace offering, he reveals he has bought some baby items such as a baby grow, little boots and a teddy and informs his wife that she'll make an incredible Mum. Ruby seems completely overwhelmed by his surprise baby gifts, but the realisation sinks in when she realises she has to pregnant fast, before Martin becomes suspicious! What on Earth will she do? Could she convince Martin to sleep with her? Or would she have to take extreme measures and get pregnant by somebody else?!

The next thing I want to talk about is Sheree and Patrick. Trying to avoid the situation which is happening with her husband, Sheree is keeping herself busy at the salon. Cleaning things making everything look absolutely spotless, regardless of the fact that her first client isn't due for a long while. Suddenly Stacey and Jean enter, announcing that it's Jean's birthday and she's eager to get rid of the dark eyebrows that Mo has applied for her. Sheree takes it upon herself to help Jean out and stating that she has all the time in the world to help her. During Jean's time in the salon, Kim steps in and confronts Sheree about not visiting Patrick in the hospital after his stroke, she states that if she doesn't step up she'll be disowned by family. Jean witnesses this confrontation and sees the devastating look in Sheree's eyes, she takes it upon herself to console the poor woman and informs her that families can be hard to talk to if they don't understand the upset and hurt you're feeling. It's then that Jean begins to tell Sheree all about Daniel and his aspect of life, regardless of knowing he was dying from cancer, he lived every day to the full and didn't let it get him down, he was strong and was right up until the very end. I believe it's these words which really hit home for Sheree, after Jean's wise words, she rushes to the hospital to be at her husbands bedside. Meanwhile poor Patrick has been asking Isaac for his wife, even questioning why he's there when she should be at school - however what Isaac says really moves me, "I have to be here for my Dad!" - Is this the first time he ever called Patrick "Dad"? Even so, it was so moving, the look in both of their eyes was so warm. Eventually Sheree arrives at the hospital, Patrick is happy to see her but also informs her that he doesn't want her to be his carer, as that was not what she signed up for when they got married - however, Sheree informs her husband that she won't be going anywhere, she's going to remain at his side during this knock back in his health, but informs him that he will be taking all the medication he needs and following the doctors instructions.

Now, I've mentioned her already but I need to talk about Jean, we need to talk about Jean. I've said it before and I've said it again, what an absolutely inspirational woman! Regardless of coming to terms with her own personal situation, she's still wanting to help out everyone around her, previously it was Dotty and Iqra, today it was Sheree. I have to be honest, I absolutely LOVED the fact that she talked about Daniel again, even though he was such a small part of the soap, his role was very very important and he plays such a huge part in Jean's life, we need to make sure he's not forgotten, and Jean continuing to talk about him is just perfect, even if it is quite sad. After getting her eyebrows fixed and getting dressed up in another gorgeous dress (She's been wearing some stunning dresses recently!) she begins to record a video of herself. At first, I know it sounds silly, but I genuinely thought she was doing a video for Daniel, even though he wouldn't be able to see it, I just thought it would've been a way for her to still kind of talk to him, if you get what I mean? But as she continued the video and talking to the camera, I think it became clear that the video she was recording is actually intended for Stacey and the rest of the family. In the video, she announces that devastatingly that she feels in herself that the cancer has returned, even though she hasn't had it confirmed, she can feel it. Not only does she announce this but she also states that she's taken the drastic decision not to have treatment this time around, she wants to live the rest of her life to the full and be just like Daniel. She doesn't want the family to worry and to accept her decision. I did find this very emotional to watch, I mentioned this in my previous post but I can't applaud Gillian Wright enough for her performance as Jean, she is absolutely incredible actress. The only thing that plays on my mind though however is that, I would be incredibly devastated if they were to kill her off. Jean has been such a breath of fresh air in EastEnders, even during her absolute lowest moments, everyone loves her and wants her to fight through the toughest times. I truly believe that the Slater family will be lost without her, the whole Square would be lost without Jean - Oh I love her so much!

I know there are plenty of storylines happening at the moment, and with the recent trailer which has been released, I can't wait to see it all unfold. But Jean's storyline is the one that really going to keep me guessing the most I think, I hope to God that her cancer hasn't returned, or maybe it's something completely different and not cancer - (I don't know?) - But either way, I just hope Jean will be okay and EastEnders don't kill her off! What do you guys think? How do you feel about Jean's current story? Are there any storylines that are keeping you gripped at this moment in time, how do you feel about them all and what are your thoughts and theories?! I'd love to hear what you have to say, please feel free to leave me a message or a comment, I'll always respond! Thanks again folks! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I'll be back very soon! Love you all xXx

3 notes · View notes

witchcraft-in-wonderland · 4 years ago

Text

Cori's Tale (Pt.1)

-------------------------

I was never much for listening to the old stories they told us about monsters and humans fighting. It wasn't that I didn't care- I just had better things to do, like drawing. I had a black backpack with gold spikes for all my sketchbooks and drawing materials, I never leave home without it. The other kids at school think it's weird, I've never taken the thing off since I got it, but I like it! That's all that matters.

Oh, how rude of me, I haven't even introduced myself have I? Cori Sable, resident nonbinary disaster child. Not that it's of any consequence what my gender or lack thereof is, after all I'm only twelve years old aren't I.

But back to the important stuff! I live in a community of lots of people, it's fun, we get along pretty well when people aren't calling me names or telling me the backpack I wear is pointless and stupid and I should just get rid of it.

If I had to complain about anything, it would be the fact that no one seems to notice how many kids go missing at Mt. Ebbot every year. Every year some kid gets dared to climb it, and every year they don't come back. With the way the other kids look at each other sometimes, I worry they know exactly what they're doing when they send someone up there.

"And that's the story of how the humans were victorious in the Battle of Mt. Ebbot," the teacher closed her book, placing it on a shelf next to her. I hadnt heard a word of what she said, not that it mattered since I already had the whole thing memorized to begin with. I glared enviously at the back of the room, where teenagers sat on their phones, willingly able to ignore the story and not get in trouble. We werent allowed to get phones until we were fourteen, and even then we had to get jobs first, and recite the story of monsters vs humans. I don't think I'll ever get a phone, I'm terrible at doing work for one. For two the way everyone here tells the story of our fight seems very biased, it's almost like they didn't try to cooperate with the monsters at all, just maim and kill and lock away where no one else can find them. It's rather rude in my opinion, monsters just seem like weaker magical humans, they just look different and have a different culture, I don't see what's wrong with that.

Of course, bringing this up would be a detriment to my already tediously hanging reputation here. A kid who isn't well liked would be ill-advised to go spouting off about how monsters and humans aren't so different, about how maybe if we'd shown a little mercy we wouldn't be in this situation.

See, we used to be able to live in separate houses, used to be able to get stuff whenever we wanted. But it turns out a lot of that was because if decent trading with monsters, and of course, no monsters, no nice things. Not to mention, going through an entire war is hardly good for anyone involved, it's actually probably the worst possible event to go through. That's what led us to here, with so many orphans the human race decided "why not just make all children orphans" and took us away from our parents nearly as soon as we were born to be raised in these communities, only able to escape once we prove sufficient enough to survive on our own.

I'll probably never get out, they'll kick me out at twenty-one of course, but the problem with that is, I don't think I'll get the hang of life by then, or ever really. There's just to many things to learn! How to drive a car, how to use a phone, how to get a job, how to talk to people, it's all way to much. And with no one helping me out, I'm basically trying to operate a plane where all the buttons are the same color and the switches don't have labels.

Recess was my least favorite part of the day. I used to like it, but now I get pushed off of everything I try to use. On top of that, recess is when The Choosing happens. If you haven't figured it out yet, that's when someone gets dared to climb a giant mountain or risk being labelled a coward and ostracised, one time a kid refused and they got them kicked out entirely!

"Cori!" I heard a rough grumbling voice call my name. I turned to face the girl, her name was Ulana, and she was the one who decided what happened to all of us. Red hair braided behind her back, Jean's ripped in so many places it couldnt possibly be intentional, the only thing scarier than her was the twin brothers that always followed close behind. Sora and Pevril were oddities of their own, with Sora having black and blue eyes and Pevril being abnormally tall for a child. They were of course, only scary when around Ulana, other than that, I didn't see them as much of a threat, sometimes it even seemed like we could be friends.

"What is it, Lan," I said, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't call me Lan," growled the girl, she was nearly a foot taller than me, and almost old enough to age out of the community to. But she was looking for a reaction, and I learned long ago that I should never give one to a bully, not if I had any self-respect.

"Right, well what do you want then?" I tilted my head to the side, focusing more on the sound of children playing in the distance than Ulana.

"I bet you can't climb Mt. Ebbot and survive," I froze for a second. I was aware I wasn't well liked, but perhaps i should've paid attention to just how deep that disdain went.

"And if I don't accept?" I said, digging my feet into the ground.

"Then I'll take that nice backpack of yours and chuck it in with the next kid, and you'll get kicked out," I wrapped my hands around the backpack straps subconsciously.

"Fine, I'll play your game, but if I do make it back, you can't send anyone else down ever again," I said, looking her directly in the eyes. There was a glint there, one I that sent shivers down my spine.

Mountains were, of course, cold, but my legs had a weird relationship with temperature. I had a blue and indigo striped hoodie on, one with little grey horns at the top, and black shorts with black boots. The ever important backpack was still tossed over my shoulders, sketchbook and art materials jostling around inside.

I reached the top of the mountain soon after, there was a crater at the center. I thought to myself for a second, whether Ulana had mentioned anything about going into the mountain, or if I could go home saying I had climbed it myself. I was in fact, so caught up in this decision, that I was caught off guard by a light shove from behind, and sent hurtling down the crater, my backpack clutched to my chest.

I landed, miraculously, in a pile of soft flowers, that seemed to cushion my fall.

I couldn't tell where I was, just that I was really far down, and the sky was really far up. I made the decision to keep walking.

After a few mere seconds of this I came across a patch of grass, where an orange tree stood at the center. I paused for a second before realizing- the tree had a face.

"Howdy! I'm Orangey, Orangey the orange tree!" It spoke, in a voice that sounded cold and calculated.

"Uh- hi- I'm Cori- the not orange not tree-" I said, doing a sort of two-finger salute in return.

"You're new to the underground arentcha?" Said Orangey, I nodded in response.

"Let me help you," suddenly something jumped out in front of me. It was glowing, different shades of pink blue and yellow faded in and out of what looked like a heart.

"This is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!" Said Orangey, he seemed unphased by the tri-color phenomenon of it.

"Your SOUL can get stronger when you gain LV, that stands for LOVE," he said. I wasnt sure that sounded right, Love didnt seem like the kind of word one would need to abbreviate.

"Down here, LOVE is shared through friendliness pellets," spinning orange shapes appeared on all sides, I eyed them suspiciously "Go on! Catch as many as you can!" Said the tree. I chose to go the opposite route, backing away as the shapes closed in on me.

The tree's expression changed, it was one of anger and hatred "Smart kid, aren't you," its voice was deeper, less calculated, more angry and bordering on psychopathic.

The pellets surrounded me on all sides, preparing to close in. The tree began to laugh, a cold and unfeeling cackle that sent a chill down my spine. The pellets were inches away from my skin, when suddenly they'd disappeared, the tree was gone. Something- no- someone- walked out if the shadows. He was tall, with white fur and horns, and a tossle of light brown hair at the top of his head, adorned with glasses, a blue shirt, khakis, and a grey cardigan.

"What a cruel creature, torturing such a poor innocent youth," he spoke in a softer voice, one that reminded me of how the guardians back at the community spoke to the younger children.

"I am Patton, caretaker of the ruins, come with me, I will keep you safe," Patton held a hand out, I accepted it after a few moments hesitation. Patton walked with me through an archway, into an elaborate structure, covered with vines and flowers. I felt something spark in me, I thought back to the sketchbooks in my backpack.

"Can I sit down for a second? That was a little scary," I said. Patton smiled and nodded, setting himself down in a pile of flowers between two sets of stairs. I sat down as well and pulled out a sketchbook, beginning to draw the things surrounding me.

"Oh! An artist!" Patton said excitedly.

I smiled and brushed it off slightly "Not so much artist as bored little kid with to much creativity," was my only reply as we sat there, trying to ignore the things my head was telling me.

----------------------------------------------

Tag list:

@nerosdayinhell

@that-artsy-gay

@official-lucifers-child

@spooky-scary-virgil

@youtuberswithalex

@misunderstoodshadowling

#cori writes #ts patton #ts orange side #cori sable #undertale cw #undertale #cw undertale #tw bullying #bullying tw #war mention tw #tw war mention #war mention #bullying #cori's tale

12 notes · View notes

elphenfan · 5 years ago

Text

Walking in the Air

This is going up literally as I’ve finished writing it. It’s not beta’ed or anything.

For @tlou15 who replied to my request for prompts with: “I would like to see Aziraphale and Crowley going to the country side to have night flying dates”. Took me an embarrassing second to realise it wasn’t anything to do with fruits.

And yes, it’s titled after the song. Do listen to it while reading this, if you like.

--------------------------------------------------

The car that had pulled up on the other side of the road from the bookshop was quite the familiar sight in the area and so was its owner. So was the owner’s reaction if you touched or even made mention of anything the car did and consequently, no one made a peep of comment about the fact that the car was idling and had been for at least half an hour.

Of course, it should’ve been fine, seeing as the engine had never seen a drop of petrol since it had been bought – the petrol bought in the sixties by its owner had been given to some youth who was protesting something or other, it was hard to keep track of them all at the time.

Somehow, though, despite the fact that it drove purely because its owner expected it to rather than having any combustion happening in its engine, it also put out quite the cloud of exhaust, whether it was idling or not, because its owner expected it to.

Right now, it put out even more than it usually did, and one might wonder if it was in response to said owner and his mood.

The owner who sat inside, in the driver’s seat, a bundle of energy that could only be called nervous.

Why would he be nervous, it might be asked and rightly so, perhaps. After all, he’d walked the earth for actual millennia, seen just about every permutation of evil, and good, that humanity could muster, and been instrumental in causing a few of them, on both sides. He’d been friends with his hereditary enemy for roughly as long and he’d gone up against Heaven and Hell themselves with said enemy in a bid to avert Armageddon.

Which they’d accomplished, too, somehow, though he had a pretty clear idea that without the presence of such a clever, sensible and entirely human Antichrist, all due to a previous cock-up, they would’ve been, well, buggered, screwed, fucked. Take your pick, or they might’ve gone for them all.

The point was that considering all of that, it was very strange that he was nervous about this. Not that he’d been precisely calm through the averted apocalypse, especially not when this very same car had burst into flame and he’d had to struggle to keep it together, both metaphorically and quite literally. But the point remained even so.

When you looked at him, there could be no other words for it, at least if you knew what to look for, knowing better than to confuse the small, suppressed gestures for impatience or annoyance, and especially if you knew the reason he was letting his car idle outside a particular Soho bookshop.

He was going on a date. They were going on a date, Aziraphale and him. Together. The two of them.

Just the two of them. On a date.

They’d been to dinner before, of course. Lunches, too, even a few breakfasts. Gone to the theatre, been to more than a few concerts as well as a few operas.

So what if Crowley happened to like operas?

The point was that they’d done quite a lot of things that could be considered dates already and he’d got through them easily enough.

Relatively easily, at least, but, well…

So, why was he so nervous about this one? It wasn’t even the first time after they’d averted the end of the world and things had changed. All in all, things should just be as they always were.

There was no denying he was nervous, though. Of course, that didn’t mean he was going to admit it out loud or even acknowledge it to himself.

If he did, the culprit might be that he had called it a date, when he’d asked Aziraphale a week or two ago. Not left it open to interpretation as such or alluded more or less obliquely to it that way.

No, he’d come right out and asked, one day after much consideration, at least that was what he called it, and had caused Aziraphale to pause in his work.

“Date?” he’d asked as he’d started up working again, and though he was hardly the one to keep current, to say the least, he had understood it had nothing to do with the fruit mostly eaten around Christmas, for whatever reason, and everything to do with two people going out.

“Yeah. Date. You and me,” Crowley had clarified, just be sure, casual as anything. He’d even leant against a bookshelf as he’d said it. “I was thinking a drive out into the countryside, just take in the scenic route. Maybe have a picnic.”

He’d dropped the reference in there, wondering whether Aziraphale would pick up on it or not. Expecting that he wouldn’t, hoping that he would.

Judging from the way that the angel had almost dropped a book he’d been putting back on the shelf, it seemed likely that he had.

A, a picnic,” he’d echoed. He’d stared into the shelf for a moment that was very long, or felt it, and Crowley had wondered whether he’d outright decline or just ignore that something had been said at all.

Then he’d turned around, a smile on his face that was bright and delighted, with just a hint, the demon had thought, of nervousness in there.

“A picnic sounds utterly delightful, my dear, I would love to,” he’d said and that had been that.

Well, no, not quite that. There’d been the practicalities of when and where and such, of course, as well as convincing Aziraphale that he wouldn’t be in charge of catering.

The angel seemed to have taken that to mean they were buying a hamper from a place somewhere, possibly local, to take out into a field or something similar.

They…weren’t.

Crowley glanced at the hamper stashed underneath the backseat, tucked away so that hopefully, Aziraphale wouldn’t spot it when he entered the car. He’d spent the last week sourcing everything good he could think of to take.

Then he’d spent some time sifting through those to actually make it fit into a hamper. Of course, there were miracles to sort such things out – bigger on the inside, hah, what would you need with bigger when you could have infinite? – and it wasn’t as though he didn’t want to spoil the angel…

But that was just it, wasn’t it? To spoil him properly, and to show that this was a date rather than merely one of their usual meetings, he needed something else. Something more. Something picked among the best of the best.

Something to show the angel just how much he meant to Crowley.

Not that he hadn’t shown him before, of course, in his own way. But now that he wasn’t merely not prevented from doing it but actively allowed to, as much as he liked, almost, he wasn’t going to pass up any opportunity he was given.

Of course, there was something else about this meeting in particular, apart from it being their officially labelled ‘date’, but, well…that was –

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the passenger door opening. For a moment, he stiffened, worried about the hamper being discovered. Then his brain kicked in to inform him that what he’d heard was the front passenger door, not the back.

“Hello, dear,” an oh, so familiar and achingly beloved chimed as the car dipped with the weight when he got in.

“Aziraphale,” he acknowledged, his expression not changing an iota.

Then he glanced down, thinking he saw something, and sure enough, there was a small…not exactly hamper but certainly a basket in the other’s lap.

“Thought I said you weren’t in charge of the food,” he said, turning his attention back to face ahead. The car began to move, without him ever doing something as silly as pushing the pedals. He’d never thought he’d need them and therefore, he didn’t.

Oh, this isn’t – this is just a little something extra that I found,” Aziraphale said, somewhat…well, not exactly shiftily but slightly evasively, at least. “Thought it would be perfect for a picnic. I will say, though, that I’ve never had a dinner picnic rather than a lunch one before.”

Something new, then,” Crowley said as he turned out into traffic, metaphorically almost flooring the accelerator.

Aziraphale let out a gasp at that, sharp and high, and shot out a hand to try and grab onto something, anything for a steadying grip. He found it and his knuckles turned just a little whiter.

“Crowley!” he protested, loudly.

“What?” the demon asked, feigning innocence as he took a corner fast enough that he would’ve done a handbrake turn without a handbrake if he hadn’t been in control of the car.

“You don’t have to go this fast!”

“Aw, come on, angel, it’s no fun if you’re only going at the speed limit.” He accelerated just a tad more, to underline the point.

Speeding is one thing, endangering the pedestrians is – Crowley!”

“What?”

“You hit that cyclist!”

“I didn’t. I missed him by three quarters of an inch. That he went tumbling anyway, that’s not my fault, is it?”

It – “Aziraphale looked over to him, then stopped speaking and sighed, heavily. “Oh, it doesn’t matter what I say, does it? Or you might make it worse, just to spite me.”

“Never to spite you. Just…wind you up a little, maybe.”

“Really,” Aziraphale said, and the word really felt orphaned without the disapproving cluck afterwards that should’ve been there. Probably was in the expression, though, if Crowley turned to look.

He didn’t.

They made it out of inner London without any issue and really, in rather record time, to boot. So what if Crowley scared the life out of four cops, a criminal in the process of being arrested, a banker and two telephone salespersons on their way to work.

“You haven’t told me where we’re going,” Aziraphale commented after they’d made it out of the city altogether. He was looking out the window as he spoke, as though trying to guess just by what they passed.

Crowley hadn’t and there was a good reason for that. Well, perhaps not a good one, but a reason, anyway.

“You’ll see,” was all he said out loud about it.

He’d thought that as they left London, his nerves would calm at least a bit and he’d relax back into their normal chat and to be fair, it had. But the moment that the blond had asked, it had spiked right up again.

Was it too much? Too little? It would be too little, wouldn’t it? Or just plain stupid. Definitely plain stupid and Aziraphale would think so. He might even outright refuse to do it.

Not the picnic. The day Aziraphale outright refused food like that…that day Crowley would be sure the world had indeed ended – or someone else was trying to impersonate Aziraphale, and doing a really bad job it, too.

A hand landed gently on his knee. Just on his knee, well within the area that could be considered perfectly acceptable, even respectable.

They still didn’t touch a great deal, at least not by Crowley’s standards – or perhaps those were just fervent wishes – and when they did, it was not uncommon for it to stay at that perfectly respectable stage.

But the important point was that they did touch now, freely if not frequently, and there was a sense that said touching was allowed.

They could if they wanted to and do it as much as they wanted to, as well. The question might then be – why didn’t they?

To be fair to them, it hadn’t been that long since That Saturday, relatively speaking. Half a year, a bit more. Just about the time where the south of England was getting to be fairly warm again, by the standards of old Blighty, anyway, and might reasonably be expected to have a relatively lovely, if not exactly warm, night out like this.

To have gone from not touching at all, even actively avoiding it so as to be sure not to go anywhere they shouldn’t, over six millennia to this rather comfortable touching, infrequent or not, within a span of a little over six months was…quite an achievement, Crowley would say.

Not that he wouldn’t be thrilled with me, and practically melted whenever they ended up in a cuddle session, often because Crowley was an octopus rather than a snake when he was in a bed, sleeping or not, and Aziraphale was sitting, or sometimes even lying, beside him.

That wasn’t to say the angel was an unwilling or passive participant in the sessions, far from it. He just did it in his own way.

Such as touching his hand to a knee.

It helped that he left it there, too. Obviously.

“My dear, it is getting rather late for…well, if we’re to call in somewhere and buy something to eat, they’d be…well, it would be rather rude to expect them to keep their kitchens open for us.”

“As if you haven’t done that several times over the years, angel, and that’s putting it kindly,” Crowley countered, looking over at the other.

Glancing at him out of the corner of his eye didn’t work with the blinkers, for lack of a better term, that he had on his current set of sunglasses, as the most he saw there were disjointed colours through a metal mesh. If he turned his head a little, it seemed to give him the same effect, though, as well as being able to see the other.

“Well, I...” Aziraphale said, not quite spluttering but achieving something to that effect. “I may have, once or twice over the years, but I…that is…well, you’re allowed to mend a bad habit, aren’t you?”

“‘Course. Just find it interesting that the time you decide to mend it is the time when it’s not you who’s in charge of the food, for once.”

Again, he wasn’t looking fully at the other’s face as he spoke, but he still managed to clock the way Aziraphale’s face fell. Not completely but quite a bit, showing that he understood what Crowley was saying and what he was implying as well.

“I didn’t – oh, good grief, I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I?”

“Just a bit.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, dear, and I apologise.”

He didn’t say anything more but then, what really was there to add? Further words wouldn’t change anything or make it more sincere. The sincerity was more than evident in the angel’s almost always very expressive voice.

Nor was Crowley about to say that it was okay because it wasn’t. It was only a minor thing, that was true, but it still mattered. That said, he wasn’t going to ignore it, either.

“Accepted,” he said instead, quietly, and felt the hand on his knee squeeze slightly in understanding and thankfulness.

He laid his own hand over it, covering it completely. He still thrilled in his heart at being able to do this, and he also had to admit that his nerves had quietened some more.

They sped along into the afternoon that was turning into early evening, and quite a bright one with a clear sky that could be appreciated better without obstructions, if that was your cup of tea, along narrower roads and increasingly more picturesque landscapes, heading for the destination that Crowley had in mind.

It wasn’t Lower Tadfield.

Even though there might certainly be reasons to go to Lower Tadfield, such as the general feel of love that Aziraphale still claimed or the people they’d met that still lived there, it wasn’t his intention to go there.

For what he wanted to do, he needed somewhere a little more…out of the way. Or at least, seeing as the south of England wasn’t exactly sparsely populated, as a rule, he needed somewhere where there was no Antichrist about that might show up to ask what they were doing.

He wanted a bit of privacy. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

........................................................................................

It was that special time of evening just before the sun decided it was done for the day. They had only just pulled in somewhere, where the nearest town was a mile or two away all around, there were no nearby farms or obstructing woods. Just pleasant landscape all around the vantage point that Crowley had picked.

Aziraphale, sitting in the passenger seat, looked around him, clearly not finding what he was expecting to see.

“Crowley – “he began, sounding just a little bit…concerned, perhaps, but the demon interrupted him before he could get further.

“I said I’d take care of the food, Aziraphale,” he said as the car shut off, “and I have, so don’t worry about it.”

With that, seeing as it was obviously on his mind and he’d need to bring it, instead of getting out of the car, he reached behind him and down. With a flexibility that ought to have been difficult, at the very least, grabbed hold of the hamper and pulled it around, holding it up at the same time.

If he was a little bit pointed about it, so what?

“Oh.” Aziraphale looked more than a little embarrassed. He looked down at his lap, his fingers twiddling on the handle of the basket he’d brought. “It seems that I might not be able to eat the food, seeing as I keep putting my foot in my mouth.”

It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, it’s – Crowley!”

Aziraphale called out his name because the demon had got out of the car with his usual speed and dexterity, despite being hampered by a lidded wicker basket.

Come on,” he called just before the door shut behind him, sauntering his way towards a lovely looking spot that would give them quite the perfect view, around and, not unimportantly, up.

He heard the passenger shut and presumed the other was about to join him. While he would’ve liked to walk up there with Aziraphale’s hand in his, he also wanted to find the perfect spot himself, without being interrupted.

That and get his suddenly galloping nerves reined back in a little, of course, if he could.

As he spread the blanket – more of a duvet style of thing, with a few extra things added on, because just because you’d decided to dine outside on the ground didn’t mean you had to be uncomfortable, did it? – out on the ground, he picked up that Aziraphale had stopped moving.

He straightened back up and turned to look, a part of him just a little bit worried about why.

What he found was Aziraphale stopped, basket in hand, looking out over the area which, Crowley had to admit, they had a very good view of from up here. Both of the landscape and the sun setting over it, not a cloud in the sky to obstruct it.

“Strikes you, doesn’t it?” he said as Crowley sauntered up close to him, hands in his pockets. “Even though you’ve seen it unimaginably many times before, it can still be as beautiful as that very first time it happened.”

“Every time since, really,” Crowley commented. “Either none are beautiful, or they all are.”

“True,” Aziraphale agreed, voice and smile soft.

They stood for a few moments, just watching it, taking it in. Enjoying it and each other.

Then the ginger walked back towards the blanket, which now quite mysteriously was packed with just about everything he’d brought. Equally strangely, there was still room for the two of them to sit on it, though not with their legs, despite the spread that could only be described as ‘abundant’.

He sat down, his heart in his throat, hoping he’d got it at least somewhat right.

Which really was stupid. This, at least, he knew he’d got right. Not only had he possibly got every type of picnic-appropriate thing put out on the blanket, and then some, but he knew his angel well at this point and knew that something of quality, food or not, that was made for him was bound to be approved of.

Had he thought about it, he would’ve likely realised that it was almost certainly the nerves from what he had planned for after their ‘light’ dinner that were bleeding over into this.

Aziraphale joined him, sitting himself down opposite, where Crowley had made room for him. Just like they always did. Well, almost always. At least, there was space between them wherever they sat. It had got to be less in the last half a year but well, with everything else, he didn’t want to overdo it.

It was probably, no, unquestionably being overly cautious but at the time, he didn’t see it as such.

Only this time, while the blond did sit where he’d been given a space, it seemed that it was somehow much closer to the ginger than what he’d intended, what he’d made room for, while the spread remained unaltered.

Crowley wasn’t about to complain, he just...he’d thought that with this being so different from what they’d done before, with no concert or play to distract them and not a drop of alcohol drunk between them yet, on an actual date, Aziraphale might find it one thing too many, one step too close to also be sitting as close as they’d done on many occasions now.

Apparently not, though, if not just the fact that he’d sat himself down where he had but the ease with which he’d done it, no hesitation, as well as the smile still on his face.

One might think that the smile was because of the food but as blue eyes were meeting yellow through tinted glasses, it seemed unlikely.

For a long moment, he sat there, immobile. Then he reached across and again placed his hand on top of Crowley’s.

“Thank you,” he said, and there was more packed into that small sentence than the ginger had expected. It felt like he was being thanked for more than just the spread or even the picnic.

“You’re welcome,” he managed to reply, smiling in turn. He was purely smiling, though, not colouring. Not in the slightest. “Go on, then. Eat some. It’s not show food.”

It does look absolutely scrumptious I have to say,” Aziraphale enthused as he looked it over. He put one or two things carefully on the plate beside him, then picked up a jar of something to examine it. “I didn’t know there was anywhere that sold a hamper like this.”

“There isn’t.”

The angel looked up from the jar, realisation dawning.

“My dear…” he said softly, and it really shouldn’t be allowed to pack that much into just two words. Especially not when it wasn’t clear just what exactly was meant.

Oh, the understanding and the gratefulness were both clear enough but as for the rest of it…

The poor demon had to swallow and had to remind himself not to wet his lips.

“Eat,” Crowley said, glad of his glasses that hid his eyes looking just about anywhere else because he couldn’t right now.

He reached out and grabbed something without looking and brought it to his lips. Due to sheer luck, it was something that could be eaten as was and he bit into the scotch egg without relish. Or any other type of condiment, really.

Aziraphale looked at him for an achingly long moment, then smiled and began to fill his plate.

So did Crowley after he’d finished off the scotch egg. Though they as supernatural beings didn’t get hungry and eating was more of Aziraphale’s indulgence than his, he found himself piling more on the plate than he normally would – that he didn’t eat as much as the angel didn’t mean he didn’t eat at all – and what was more, digging into at least most of it.

That seemed to delight Aziraphale for some reason and he placed the occasional morsel from his own plate over on Crowley’s, who in turn made sure to pick up the offered treat as the next thing he ate.

By and by, the food Crowley had brought was eaten, between comments, big and small and completely irrelevant, and discussions, laughter and the occasional touch that was no less meaningful or appreciated for not being constant.

As they ate and talked, they also watched the sun disappear completely beneath the horizon, gradually calling back its tendrils of colour, who darkened as they ran, and the bolder ones even changed colours altogether.

Behind them came night, this time rolling in slowly and majestically rather than jumping and skipping along or racing as if it had got out of bed too late and was in a hurry to reach its destination.

They were even lucky enough to have a few stars come out as night-time came.

As they became visible, Crowley shifted where he sat, feeling a sense of unease creep up on him, but not for the reason that Aziraphale evidently thought, judging by the way he clutched the hand wrapped around his and tried to gently run his thumb back and forth over the patch of skin it touched.

It would be a guess but given what they were looking at, it didn’t seem that big an assumption to make; that Aziraphale was worried he was uneasy being ‘confronted’, as it were, by evidence of his life Before.

Crowley wasn’t going to deny that he did think about it at times or that he wasn’t affected by them, both positively and negatively, much as he didn’t want it to.

At the same time, not only hadn’t he been the sole builder of stars – the paperwork alone on managing all that would’ve caused anyone to Fall, he felt – and consequently weren’t necessarily responsible for what he could see on any given night, he’d watched the night sky so many times over the millennia that…

Well, it hadn’t stopped hurting, but it had dulled, in a way, and become at the very least something he could look at and even contemplate without feeling small and lost, let alone outright pained.

That said, he appreciated both the consideration and the gesture on the angel’s part.

No, the unease, the nerves, were to do with the realisation that they were nearing the end of the meal and therefore also nearing the next step in the plan. The plan which he still wasn’t sure how the other would react to.

Could he just put it off a little bit longer?

Well, yes, of course. He could put it off for eternity, if that’s what he wanted. If he was honest with himself, however, and stripped away the fear and nerves that were doing at least part of the thinking for him, then he knew that he didn’t want to. It hadn’t been a sudden impulse or idea, after all, but something he had wanted for a long, long time.

Putting it off for just a little bit longer wasn’t going to change anything, either. Not the issue and not how he felt about it. If anything, it was in all likelihood only going to exacerbate the matter.

Procrastination was the thief of time, yes, but it didn’t even have the decency to leave a solution or a better feeling about it all behind.

It might be shot down and not happen but if he chickened out like this, it wasn’t going to happen anyway.

With all of that in mind, he took a deep, unnecessary breath and, not entirely intentionally, squeezed the hand in his.

He could do this. More importantly, he was going to do it.

Aziraphale looked at him, puzzled but evidently willing to wait for an explanation, even as he then stood up, keeping hold of the hand in his.

The ginger, after taking another breath, then tugged at the hand in question. Aziraphale followed his request and stood up as well, a little less fluidly than the noodle that was the demon but with a surprising amount of grace, nevertheless.

Once they were both upright, Crowley tugged again and led the other a little way away from the blanket.

The question in blue eyes grew larger still.

Crowley?” he asked, evidently hoping for an explanation.

I…ehm…”

No. No hesitation, no more second guessing. The worst that could happen was that Aziraphale said no and even if he did, he would do it kindly and with understanding rather than judgment.

It was Aziraphale, after all.

For all that he could be a bit of a bastard, Crowley not only loved him the more for it, he was never a bastard around such things.

“I wasn’t only planning to go all the way out here for a picnic,” he said, speaking calmly and at a normal pace, both of which was a bit of a surprise.

He might’ve expected the blond to make a comment but all he got was a patient, yet expectant expression and a small smile.

“I was actually planning, well, hoping that we could…could maybe, if you’re…”

Bless it, when did his tongue become a knot? Or rather, a positive jumble knot. Spit it out already.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go flying. Together.”

The angel didn’t seem to react to that and for a split second, Crowley was unsure of whether he’d heard him. But he must’ve done, as he then noticed the blue eyes slowly but surely widening, possibly as realisation dawned.

It was on the tip of the forked tongue to take it back, to somehow annul it. He stopped himself, however. If he was going to do it, then he was going to go the whole way. Even if he ended up being the only one up in the sky.

The possibility that Aziraphale didn’t know what he meant was remote. There really weren’t many, if any, other ways you could interpret those words, were there?

Another deep breath and he made a further decision; he was going to go up there, whether the angel was going to join him or not.

You might not be able to claim that half a year was a long time since they’d last been ‘let out’, not in the context of their lives, but even so, he’d felt an itch in his shoulders ever since that day on the airbase tarmac.

And it would be good, not just to stretch them on the ground but flex the muscles of them, too, let them do they were intended to do for once.

He closed his eyes and let out a long, drawn-out breath of relief as he let go of something inside of him and felt the wings unfurl behind and around him with a silent roar.

It occurred to him, then, somewhat and perhaps unwisely belatedly, that maybe Aziraphale’s reaction had something to do with a fear, residual or not, that they would be spotted. Not by humans, that could be fixed. By upstairs or downstairs.

That conclusion seemed born out by the fact that the blue eyes had somehow only grown wider as they looked at him.

If they were going to strike them down, though, they would’ve done so already, surely? Quite apart from what they had already put them through, what with the trials and everything, they’d had plenty of opportunities in the last half a year.

Going for a flight wasn’t going to piss them off more than the rest of what they’d done so far, or so he’d thought when he’d contemplated it himself.

“Crowley…”

There was quite the evident amount of concern and apprehension in that one syllable, or so the demon would’ve said.

He sighed, heavily. There was convincing and then there was coercion or simply pushing someone into doing something they really didn’t want to do. He had no intention of doing either, not when it came to Aziraphale and their time together, much as it was sending small cracks through his heart.

They would mend, though. It was fine.

It was fine.

He let go of the hand in his, reluctantly but nevertheless, he did it. If he was going to do this on his own, he wasn’t going to drag the other with him, not even a little.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, angel, or if you don’t feel safe going up. I can go up myself, it’d probably be safer – “

Before he could get any further, he was interrupted by the angel unfolding his own wings with an equally inaudible clamour.

There were certain benefits to being a demon. One of them was excellent night vision and so he could easily see the angel standing before him, wings spread out on either side before they came to rest, much like his own.

Without the threat of impending doom and obliteration, for the entire planet as well as them, looming over him, over them both, he had the opportunity to take in the shape of his friend and partner, with his wings, and the sight took his breath away.

Oh, to see those wings beat as they brought the angel up into the air properly and then stretch out as he glided across the night sky, occasionally pushing down with force yet still with grace to stay up.

If ever he’d been in doubt that he’d had a fantasy about seeing that, it evaporated at that moment. Not that that meant anything, really, at least in this particular context.

“I don’t believe I ever said I didn’t want to,” Aziraphale said. “Nor imply it, either.”

“Your silence was pretty telling,” Crowley countered, with just the merest hint of sharpness to his voice.

“Perhaps so, but that doesn’t mean it was indicative of the thing you assumed,” Aziraphale returned, with an equal hint of sharpness.

Then he paused, swallowed, and his voice softened when he spoke again.

“With that said, I do see how it wouldn’t necessarily come across as it formed in my brain, and that a silence can leave some very unfortunate implications in its wake that mere words very often, and for that, I honestly do apologise.”

He grabbed hold of the hand that had only just left his, gripping it even firmer than before.

Crowley expected him to say something more. Perhaps explain his reasoning for not feeling like he could go up there. Which wouldn’t gel with him having let his wings out but perhaps his had been itching same as the ginger’s and this had, if nothing else seemed a good opportunity.

What he did not expect was what he got; Aziraphale not saying a word as he took a step backwards, then another while still trying to keep hold of Crowley’s hand.

As the demon didn’t move, however, since he didn’t feel like he ought to, given what the other was trying to do, that proved impossible, even when they both stretched.

Crowley frowned, puzzled but hopeful. Was that – did that mean that –?

When Aziraphale closed his eyes and drew a deep, but quick breath, it seemed more likely and when air slammed into him and flowed around him as the large wings pushed it down with force and the distance wasn’t quite great enough, Crowley could no longer be in any doubt.

He watched, something constricting his throat, as Aziraphale rose into the air, born aloft by his wings that a certain subset of humans would unquestionably point out were entirely impossible; that with their size and construction they shouldn’t be able to carry something the rough shape and weight of a fully grown human.

Impossible included other such small titbits as being immortal and performing actual, honest-to-opposition miracles, whether benign or malignant, too, and they managed both of those well enough, didn’t they?

To be perfectly fair, it was probably at least a little more graceful to Crowley’s biased gaze than reality would record, but that hardly mattered.

What mattered was that it was happening and for that, he could have swayed like a kite that refused to pick up wind as it was run along to make it fly and Crowley would still have found it beautiful.

That wasn’t to say it was inelegant, regardless of the body shape of the angel. Just a, a little rusty, perhaps. Like something that you once excelled at but haven’t touched in long enough that not just your brain, but your body needs a moment or two to tap into what the dickens this was all about again.

Once that seemed to come back to him, he visibly relaxed. How exactly that was visible, given, well, everything, was something best left to someone with demonic night vision and very intimate, though not sexual, knowledge of the body in question.

Then, another thing happened that Crowley hadn’t expected and certainly wasn’t prepared for. Rather than hold his hand out for the ginger to take as he rose himself, Aziraphale instead grabbed the hand he’d been trying to hold onto earlier.

He didn’t pull or anything like it that would make the demon destabilise or otherwise risk staggering and stumbling, though, just held on as he waited, his wings beating a slow but steady rhythm, keeping him afloat in the air.

Crowley should’ve been up there to join him immediately, he knew. He wanted to, too, without a question, and he would’ve done, as well, if not…

If not for the tiny little issue that his body seemed to have shut down for its holidays and the front desk wasn’t taking any calls at the time.

This was not…

He had been so bloody nervous about all of this ever since he had first formulated it in his mind and suggested going on a date; he’d gone from being hopeful and sometimes even confident back to being a nervous wreck to then thinking in entirely defeatist terms about it and then swung back around to hopeful and start it all over again. Sometimes it’d switch up the order, of course, but otherwise, it had stayed.

All of that, over and over in his mind since Aziraphale had said yes to the date, and this was the result?

It wasn’t that he was…no, that wasn’t right. He was complaining, he just didn’t have any right to complain. Not when things had turned out more or less just like he’d hoped for, and he was more than fine with avoiding drama.

Drama when it was someone else could be interesting, might even fuel a tarnishing of a soul somewhere – he was a demon, he’d had a job to do – but drama when he himself was involved? No, thank you. He’d had more than enough of that in his life, he was going to avoid any further instances.

He guessed there was just the slightest sense of…anti-climax to things panning out like this.

Or perhaps anti-climax was the wrong word. Maybe it was more accurate to say that it felt like it was going too well and that it would come crashing down on him, if not right now then in not very long.

Or…oh, he didn’t know. It was too much, all too much to contemplate at once. It wouldn’t change anything, either, but that wasn’t the same as easily being able to push it out of his mind.

The hand that wasn’t already gripping his was extended towards him.

He looked at it, followed the line of the arm all the way until his eyes met those of Aziraphale. The ones that were smiling so softly, so warmly.

So lovingly.

There was no other word for it.

That broke through not just the thoughts thronging in his mind and making the start of an absolute racket, but his momentary stupor.

Right.

Pushing aside the small thought that it ought to have been him who’d asked Aziraphale like this, not the other way around, as petty and irrelevant in the circumstances, he grabbed the proffered hand without further hesitation.

Thankfully, pushing his wings down wasn’t something that required a whole lot of thought. Not none at all, mind, and he ran the risk of wobbling as much or even more than the angel in front of him. But he would gladly take that if it meant that he got to experience this.

He was in the air before he knew it, the hands in his gripping firmly. It certainly wasn’t him that was holding on tightly to the hands of the angel. Most definitely not.

Aziraphale didn’t say anything, not even when Crowley accidentally pulled a little higher than he’d intended in one go.

Only when the demon felt like he had it all under control – and he wasn’t as foolish as to let go before he was sure he had it under his control – did he let go…of one hand.

The whole reason he’d wanted this wasn’t for him to faff about on his own, now was it? One might argue ‘tricks’ but if that was what Crowley was after, he had plenty of things he could show off to his angel – and they were things that only he could do, too.

Hardly a competition, was it?

He changed the grip on the hand in his, just enough that it was much more secure. That and, well, interlacing your fingers always felt very comforting and, well, romantic.

It was a good thing that angels didn’t have excellent night vision as well, because it spared him from having his slightly reddened cheeks exposed. What light might be left from the disappeared sun was not enough to illuminate the demon’s face, thankfully.

His hand was squeezed gently and Aziraphale’s smile only broadened.

Shall we, then?” the angel asked, and Crowley nodded, ignoring the moisture in his eyes.

Despite it being Aziraphale who had got off the ground first, as it were, he let it be Crowley who took the lead on moving forward, beating his wings once, twice as he looked across the expanse of fields, trees and a small smattering of houses that constituted the nearest village, which included both a post office and a pub, and beyond.

All stretched out below them and around them, ready to be seen.

Not because he never had, though it had been a while since he’d last been on any flight, on his own or assisted by machines. That wasn’t the point.

The point was that he was going to see them with Aziraphale.

That made the difference. All the difference in the world, really.

He thought he saw something glow in the far distance and figured that that would be a good thing to start heading for. Not the final destination, of course, just the pointer to head for right now.

Taking a deep breath, he then set off, his grip on Aziraphale’s hand very firm, warm, a little sweaty and just about perfect.

There was the slightest of tugs in their clasped hands at that, but the angel kept pace with him almost immediately and despite the fact that they should’ve crashed right into each other, flying so close and on a line, nothing happened.

For a little while, they just sailed across the sky, floating in the air, in silence that was only theirs.

Crowley closed his eyes without meaning to, unable to help exhilarating in the sheer excitement and utter joy of being up here, letting his wings out to stretch and flex their muscles. The wind in his face, the sting in his lungs, the rushing through his feathers, the power underneath his wings as they rose a little.

Apart from those small noises right beside him, the almost deafening silence of everything around him, the everyday humdrum noises of an evening that hadn’t realised it had become night far too small to be heard up where they were.

All of it coming together to form something that was altogether so much more than the sum of its parts.

Something that was magical.

But it was only so because it was focused through the spectacular, unique prism that was his angel. Without Aziraphale, none of this would’ve meant even a fraction as much, if anything at all.

Speaking of that, he thought that maybe, if he concentrated on the right muscles and such, he could change the angle and maybe just –

Aziraphale, caught up in his own enjoyment, it seemed, must’ve felt the hand in his loosen. But even so, he let out an inaudible but visible gasp as he watched the demon suddenly fly beneath him, keeping perfect pace with him as they sailed on through the gathering night, his wings beating steadily.

Blue eyes slid across the entirety of the body beneath him and Crowley couldn’t help but spread out his arms as well, grinning just a little cockily.

Alright, so perhaps showing off wasn’t purely for when there were serpentine tricks to perform. Sue him.

Actually, that…nah. He’d got better things to do. Especially now.

Such as flying up above the other and circling all the around him, ending up right back where he’d started, but with a bigger grin than he’d had before.

Aziraphale’s mouth clearly said ‘show-off’, judging by the careful, somewhat exaggerated movements of lips, but despite the distance and despite the darkness around them, Crowley had no trouble seeing the warmth shining in the eyes that he knew so well.

He rose again but only so much that he was in front of Aziraphale, hovering high above the ground.

Luckily, the angel must’ve expected something like that to happen, as he slowed immediately before stopping completely, and thereby avoided crashing straight into the other.

Crowley flew in close and grabbed hold of both plump hands. He brought him up a little and then tugged, moving as he did so. The grin that now threatened to take over his face had nothing to do with cockiness and everything to with unadulterated joy and delight.

Aziraphale followed him, a smiling frown on his features as he didn’t quite understand what the ginger was getting at.

That soon became a laugh of delight as he caught on and moved with the demon, faster and faster as they spun round and round, like a celestial round-about, with the added benefit that they weren’t going to fall off and if they became dizzy from it all, it was easily fixable.

They were both laughing like idiots the entire time.

When they finally stopped, Crowley felt just the slightest bit dizzy, but he also felt outright giddy and joyous and the fact that his feelings were reflected on his most beloved face in the whole world. The entire universe, really.

Part of him wondered whether they ought to call it a night. Whether Aziraphale would want to call it a night, after everything.

Did Crowley want to call it a night? No, not at all. Not ever.

…And still have begged for more…

He had no idea where that had come from. No, actually, he did, with music accompanying it and everything. He just didn’t want to acknowledge it, that wasn’t the same thing.

Despite that, he couldn’t deny that he shared the sentiment, even as he tried to bury the wretched song deep where it might never resurface.

He did want it to go on all night, at the very least, if not longer. It wasn’t as though they were exactly hindered by the limits of other creatures with the ability to fly, was it?

On the other hand, though, he did recognise that a large part of the magic lay in it being such a limited time.

To extend it beyond the night would not only mean that they’d have to perform quite hefty miracles not to be spotted by anyone – as it was now, even with the clear sky they were flying in, they would, if they were spotted at all, be seen as weird birds or possible odd hang-gliders…oh, weren’t humans simply wonderful? – it would take away from the night.

From their date.

Which wasn’t what he wanted at all.

So, instead he could make the most of what he had, make it as memorable an experience as possible.

That did not mean that all it could be was showing off for Aziraphale.

He flew a little closer, with the intention of asking whether the angel wanted to make a swooping dive with him.

Before he got the chance to more than open his mouth, however, he was in for a shock that almost sent him crashing out of the sky; Aziraphale closed what distance remained between them and kissed him.

It wasn’t a short kiss nor a chaste one, either of which he would’ve expected from Aziraphale, if he’d expected anything at all. Which he hadn’t, mainly because he hadn’t dared to entertain even the glimmerings of such a thought. To do more was to only set himself up for unneeded disappointment, or so he’d thought.

This now…

This told an entirely different story, though, didn’t it? As well as saying that maybe he’d got it wrong. Possibly not entirely but quite significantly wrong, even so.

Quickly, he pressed back, as enthusiastically as he could without risking the other toppling over. His hands let go of the other’s as their tongues met, but though he’d intended to wrap the hands around the back of Aziraphale’s neck, only one managed that.

The other settled itself under and over the angel’s jaw, cupping it and allowing his thumb to brush across the entirety of the cheek, paying special attention to the cheekbone and the corner of an eye where it seemed as though some moisture had gathered.

It was him that pulled back after a small eternity, his eyes opening slowly…which was entirely lost on the other, seeing as he’d retained his sunglasses for the trip into the air.

“Well, that…”

“Shush,” Aziraphale said, without opening his own eyes. He placed a finger on Crowley’s lips for emphasis, even though they were definitely close enough to hear each other now. “Don’t go ruining it. Not yet.”

The demon let out a sharply indignant noise at that and pulled back a little further.

Ruining it! The bloody nerve of it – as though he would!

Then the angel did open his eyes and there was nothing but warmth and love in them, no anger or annoyance at all.

Well, to say that it was all that was in them was perhaps not quite true…

“You bastard,” Crowley murmured when he cottoned on, the downward pull of his lips transforming into a broad grin in an instant. “You – “

“At your service, my dear, always and ever,” Aziraphale smiled back. After a moment, he asked, “Shall we head back, then?”

Crowley was about to say ‘yes’ – because just because they were headed back didn’t mean they had to take the straight route – when he spotted something flashing through the night.

“Not yet,” he said, his grin a positive beam now. “Come on, I want to try something!”

And what’s that?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley didn’t answer, just grabbed the other’s hand and headed down.

That was to say, he dove down, in a swoop that was a bit too vertical for any kind of comfort. Nevertheless, Aziraphale followed him, keeping hold of his hand throughout and staying right beside him.

Down they flew, down and down and forward as well, until they were right above what Crowley had spotted; a train, though sadly not a steam train, moving through the night with a speed that was quite seductive and almost lent it a sort of grace as it sped across the rails.

They kept pace with it for a while, just because they could.

Once or twice, Crowley dropped down to look in on the passengers, which rather startled at least a few. There was one who merely waved to him, but as that was a child, with a sibling beside it who just frowned and stared, he had no compunction with waving right back to them before shooting back upwards, with perhaps more speed than he rightly needed.

When he emerged back up above the train, he looked around.

His heart seized when he at first saw absolutely nothing, not even a hint of angel as he looked.

Just as he was about to call out for him, however, strangled and, admittedly, desperate, his eyes caught on a mass of white. A familiar and incredibly welcome mass of white.

He dropped a foot or two out of sheer relief before he flew over to where Aziraphale was. Where he had sat himself down.

On top of the moving train. He was cross-legged but somehow managed to look as prim and proper as he always did when he had something more…chair-like with a seat to perch on instead.

Crowley alighted on the roof himself.

“What the heaven’s possessed you to sit yourself down on top of a moving train?” he asked once he had.

Aziraphale looked entirely innocent. “You were the one who wanted to follow it along like a couple of gulls trailing a ship.”

Gull? Gull? He wasn’t a bleeding gull!

What he said out loud was something else, though. “And you went along with me, which you didn’t have to if you didn’t want to.”

“Of course, I had to, don’t be silly,” the angel said, but his sniffy attitude was rather undermined by the way he reached across to grab Crowley’s hand again. The ginger definitely felt like he could get used to that happening far more often.

“What’s more and much more important, I wanted to,” Aziraphale added, a smile creeping back into his expression. “I just felt that while you flitted about scaring the life out of innocent passengers, I might as well get a bit of rest out of it.”

“As though you get tired – and isn’t it your job to stop me from doing things like that, anyway?”

The flight had lessened some tension between them, which had been more needed than Crowley had been aware of beforehand, and it was nice to just bicker back and forth a little.

That and the kiss had helped significantly in that regard, obviously.

“Scaring passengers is not very nice at all and even a bit juvenile but it hardly counts as evil, my dear, and certainly not something that needs thwarting.” The smile turned just the slightest bit mischievous. “Besides, I thought that we had retired. I believe you were rather adamant on that score.”

“Me? It was your idea.” Crowley wasn’t going to be goaded by something like ‘juvenile’.

“No, I am entirely certain it was yours, dearest, and you won’t persuade me otherwise.”

Crowley opened his mouth to argue, got as far as the first half of a syllable before he gave it up in mild disgust, turning it into a mocking grimace.

It only made the angel smile broader.

They stayed on the train for a few more miles, just taking in the scenery. As the first, faint but distinguishable glow of predawn began to suffuse the darkness around them, they looked to the landscape around them.

Then they looked at each other.

With a deep breath, their wings pushed down in unison as they set off, with surprisingly little issue for either of them, their timing meaning that they only just missed the tunnel the train was about to hurtle through at top speed.

They flew quietly but happily through the countryside, going past a town that might’ve qualified as a city, a few towns, quite a few villages and a whole lot of landscape, none of which looked remotely familiar to Crowley, who excused himself with the fact that it had been dark when they’d set out, completely ignoring the night vision, and besides, didn’t it all look the same?

He wasn’t worried, though. Not in the slightest. After all, he’d left his car in loads of places over the years and he’d always been able to find it.

It had always been in fine condition, too – and if he returned now and found that it wasn’t, for whatever reason, then he would make the little punks who’d so much as thought to damage it or even take it regret the day they had ever been conceived.

And if Aziraphale made any comment, he would ask, innocently, about if someone hurt his books.

He squeezed the hand in his, unable to fight the beaming smile of utter joy on his face as they flew back towards the car, the angel taking the lead this time.

For a first date, it had been almost, definitely entirely perfect. Every other date from now on certainly had a lot to live up.

…Well, then. He liked a challenge.

.............................................................

The car turned out to be fine.

When they finally located it about a mile or two away from where their picnic blanket still lay, undisturbed. Mostly fine, at least.

Aziraphale never asked where Crowley went one afternoon about a week later, which he had spent polishing and pampering his car despite the fact that he could and had fixed it completely with one single glare at the dents and scratches, and the demon never volunteered the information.

It was better and easier for both parties that way, and there was no need to spoil the mood.

Not when they had had such a beautiful trip out of it.

Aziraphale was already planning for another ‘date’, one which he hoped could do the first one proper justice.

-------------

Hope you like and it even remotely lives up to what you hoped it’d be.

#tlou15 #Ineffable Husbands #post-canon #prompt fill #aziraphale/crowley #date night #nervous crowley #uncertain Crowley #loving aziraphale #loving crowley #good omens fic #elphen fic #ineffable husbands go flying #first kiss #picnic #ineffable husbands picnic

16 notes · View notes

prairiesongserial · 4 years ago

Text

11.14

John passed silently under the hanging lights, hands in his pockets, appearing to be just another body wandering the carnival. Circus, he told himself. A firecracker burst somewhere behind him, bathing everything in red as it let out a piercing whistle and pop. John set his teeth and kept walking.

He had heard thirdhand that Cody wasn’t here anymore - was off doing errands, something like that. He hadn’t seen Friday or Val in hours. John paused, back pressed against the railing, as a flood of circus-goers tramped onto the boat. He was almost to the ramp that led down to the pier, but the tide of people was unrelenting.

Very small children ducked between the legs of adults, apparently unclaimed. The older children washed through like riptides, jostling the adults out of the way, occasionally cackling and apologizing over their shoulders. John watched as a very little girl struggled with single minded focus to pick a dropped coin from the deck of the steamboat. The crowd passed slowly around her, their boots landing within a hair’s width of her tiny fingers. John had the urge to scoop her out of their way. Running footsteps somewhere in the crowd - getting nearer - and John lurched forward, not sure what he was doing.

The head of his cane thudded softly against the chest of a gap-toothed boy less than twelve years old. John staggered, the weight of the collision with the boy, however slight, going straight to his knee. He glanced down for the little girl, but she was gone. She was crying and kicking in the arms of a man with another, slightly older kid clinging to the leg of his pants. She pointed to the lost coin and hollered as her father carried her away.

The gap-toothed boy had circumvented John, and was gone in the crowd. John stepped back to his place on the railing, feeling a hard pit in his stomach. The crowd ebbed, leaving John an opening to hurry down the ramp. He walked as quickly as he could, cane sliding uselessly on the decline. His head stopped buzzing, finally, as the noise of the steamboat became a distant object separate from himself.

John walked. The sun was almost finished setting by the time he found what he was looking for. A long, circuitous walk had led him through a tangle of boardwalk, but eventually, John had reached land. On the high ground right at the edge of the city, the last of the sunlight glinted teasingly off the headlights of the circle of circus trucks. John plodded on, boots sinking in the wet earth.

He was out of breath by the time he reached the caravans. He sat on the front step of one of them for a while, re-tying his boots to give himself something to do while he caught his breath. He had a decent guess as to which caravan was Johannes Madsen’s. John had been paying attention to where the ringmaster went in a day, who he talked to, who else was in charge. That was the prerogative - the only prerogative - of an indenture.

John stood again and calmly crossed to the purple caravan with the bright blue trim. He paused outside the door. Something was whining at him. The shepherd he had met the first night. The animal was chained to a stake in the center of the circle of trucks and caravans, bouncing against his tether excitedly.

John wandered over. The shepherd - H.D. - was not alone. The other shepherds shared his tether, though they either napped through H.D.’s excitement or spared John only mild interest. John found suddenly that he was being jumped on, and then, that he was sitting on the ground.

“Ow,” he whispered. H.D. licked his ear. John fumbled for the collar around H.D.’s neck as the shepherd climbed on top of him.

“Stop that and you can come too,” John struggled to say as H.D.’s tongue lapped over his nose. The shepherd listened, laying down on John’s chest and knocking the wind out of him. John grimaced, looking into the animal’s milky brown eyes for the first time as it stared quizzically down at him. At once, a piercing headache and an accompanying wave of nausea struck John. John looked away, closing his eyes as he finished unfastening H.D.’s collar. The headache subsided.

As John struggled to his feet with the now free shepherd doing excited laps around him, he experimentally met H.D.’s eyes again. The splitting pain in his head returned for as long as he held the shepherd’s gaze.

“Huh,” he said. H.D. bullied her way between John’s legs, making him almost fall again. It was a good reminder that he hadn’t wandered from the circus to rescue children and dogs. John climbed the steps to Johannes’s caravan and opened the door.

In the low light, John could see the outline of a gas lamp by the door, though he hadn’t thought to bring any matches. There was an electric light, too, hanging from a cord overhead, though there must have been a trick to it; the switch by the door didn’t turn it on. John would just have to be fast.

Johannes’s caravan was overwhelming. It looked as if the windows had been left open for the wind to wreck whatever havoc it pleased upon the mountains of papers strewn across the small table in the center of the room. What space wasn’t occupied by paper was crammed with crates of gaudy-colored fabric. The walls were hung with a mix of bright drapes and costumes. On top of every crate and shelf tottered a precarious pile of objects, from little gold-painted boxes to cloth drawstring bags. John blinked down at the table. Amid the sloping stacks of paper and envelopes were coins, a ledger book, and dirty mugs. And John’s own pistol.

He picked up the gun, turning it over in his hands until he was sure it was his. His gun belt had to be around here somewhere. After a few minutes of squinting into corners of the caravan trailer, John found it hung on a hook on the back of the door he had come through.

H.D. started to whine on the other side of the door. The shepherd had only been content to wait for John on the steps as long as the door had been open, apparently. John opened the door again. Now H.D. trotted inside, and the electric light flickered on. H.D. lay down under the table.

Brows furrowed, John buckled his gun belt on and slipped the pistol where it belonged. He returned to the table of papers.

John had seen his indenture to Mister Thomas only once, when he had been about seven years old. It had been the end of the harvest; John had tried to follow a seasonal farmhand a few years older than him. The older boy would come down to Chokecherry every summer and hitchhike back to Washington at the end of fall, and John had wanted to go with him. Mister Thomas had unlocked the big safe and shown John his paper - something that had only been an idea, hard for a child to understand - until that moment.

John remembered the thick paper stamped around the edge in a red design. It was a beautiful document, pretty like the gilded edges of the travelling preacher’s Bible. No matter where you go in the world, this paper means I’ll find you again, and bring you home. Mister Thomas had said that with a smile that had made his eyes crinkle.

John slammed his hand against the table, upsetting an old coffee mug and making his palm sting. H.D. boofed a complaint at him from under the table. John was looking for four of them. Four beautiful papers. He couldn’t read, but he wouldn’t need to.

He shifted through each page on the table, realized that his eyes weren’t focused, that he wasn’t seeing the pages, and shifted through them again.

The caravan door opened behind him. John straightened. He was still holding a short stack of papers, none of them promising. Johannes stood in the doorway, wide-eyed. He was in a black and magenta costume, formal and over the top. His jacket was unbuttoned, revealing the many pockets on the inside, each stuffed full with other people’s coin purses. There was a necklace threaded through his fingers.

“Well, hello,” Johannes said slowly. “What do you have there?”

“The papers, or my gun?” John returned, blinking owlishly at Johannes.

Johannes slowly took off his magician’s hat and hung it on the back of the door. His shiny black shoes were loud on the wood floor of the caravan.

“Which would you rather talk about?” Johannes asked with a lazy smile. He made every move very slowly, but with a performative grace that was meant to communicate to John that he wasn’t the least bit worried. John watched as Johannes deposited all the stolen coin purses, rings, and other jewelry into a simple box of raw wood, the only thing in the whole caravan not designed for flash.

“I want my indenture paper,” John said.

Johannes stopped on the other side of the table, glancing down at the papers John held. John looked, too. The top page bore several signatures. It was meaningless to him.

“They don’t understand yet,” John said. “But I know. And I want my paper.”

“Well, John, that’s a really moving speech,” Johannes said. “You’ve utterly convinced me, and I assure you, it has nothing to do with the fact that one of us has a gun. But Ezra has the papers, and I don’t know where they are.”

John looked down at the paper with the signatures he held. He placed the pages under it on the desk, and held the paper up, starting to tear it from top to bottom.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Johannes said, snatching it from John’s hands. John picked up the next page from the pile and started tearing it, too, until Johannes grabbed it away. “Just wait a second. I need to get back, okay, the main stage can’t start without me. We can talk about this later.”

John stared back at Johannes, unflinching.

“Look, do you want it in writing?” Johannes added. “That I swear I’ll return your indenture to you?”

“No. I can’t read,” John said. At that, Johannes’s posture relaxed, becoming almost easy. John felt that was inappropriate. He unholstered his gun. “I decided to take my paper back instead of killing you,” he said. “That’s your encouragement to keep your word. It’s stronger than writing.”

Johannes stood perfectly still for a long moment before breaking into nervous laughter.

“A man plans, and God laughs,” he sighed, smiling grimly and rubbing a white-gloved hand over his chin. “Your encouragement is enough for me. Now I’m going to get back, unless you’re going to shoot me.”

John holstered the gun again.

“I’ll wait here,” John said, taking a seat at the table. His boot nudged H.D., who he’d forgotten was there.

“What a great idea,” Johannes said, nabbing his hat from its hook and jamming it onto his head, still laughing somewhat hysterically. The papers he had snatched from John had disappeared at some point - not that John was surprised, since Johannes was apparently talented enough at sleight of hand to make a successful pickpocket. Johannes was still muttering to himself as he tramped down the steps. “Fucking paskudnyak, Ezra is going to…”

John took a deep breath, then another. It wasn’t as if he could have left tonight, with Cody who knew where. Although some part of him had thought it was possible.

Under the table, H.D. was snoring. The electric light overhead flickered in time.

11.13 || 11.15

#story

3 notes · View notes

complicatedandstained · 5 years ago

Text

358 Nights: The Poker Night That Never Was, Part 3: Pretty Things

They can smell it before they can see it—the delightfully rank aroma of rotting fish and the spike of salt air. The streetlamp above Axel and Roxas has long since been shattered to bits, but the island’s night air, split open with a silver knife of moon, is far brighter than the dark corridor the pair have passed through to get there, so they stand still for a moment, just blinking.

They turn to each other, crinkling their noses against the stench. Axel tugs at the material of his coat nearest his thighs, showering the cobblestones underfoot with Agrabah sand, and Roxas chuckles, patting the sleeves of his own coat to free it from grime that had once coated the basement of the Beast’s Enchanted Castle.

Roxas stops patting puffs of dust from his uniform when Axel abruptly reaches for his cheek. At first Roxas thinks Axel’s going to caress it, and then, as the man’s fingers twitch, he thinks Axel is going to pinch him, which is usually more Larxene or Xigbar’s department, but fine.

Instead, Axel gently plucks something from his skin. It catches the light for a moment and Roxas sees the faint glisten of an intricate spider’s web passing through the air before settling on the back of Axel’s hand.

“Ahg. Gross,” Axel says, voice quiet in the darkness, shaking the offensive strands free.

“I don’t know,” Roxas responds thoughtfully, just as quiet. “I think they’re kind of beautiful.” The web tangles and drops to the cobblestone, and Roxas stares for a second, almost disappointed.

Axel chuckles and briefly rubs his knuckles below Roxas’ chin. Axel can feel his chest warming, breathing in the same air as this impossible piece of nothing who can find the bright spot in everything, even Axel himself. “Of course you do.”

After spending his day baking in the oven that was Agrabah, Axel welcomes the nip of the wind yanking at his coat like it wants him naked, but he can tell Roxas, who spent the better part of his day fending off the soul-sucking Heartless that swarm the dank smelling, drafty, damp castle basement of the Beast, does not appreciate it quite so much. Roxas’ shoulders slump against the insistent tug and with every sharp breeze, he grits his teeth to ward off the shivers he thinks Axel wouldn’t be able to resist teasing him about.

With each step Roxas veers slightly closer to Axel, until Roxas’ shoulder collides with Axel’s chest. Axel chuckles a bit, and then drapes both arms over Roxas’ shoulders, like a heavy scarf. As Axel’s unnaturally strong heat seeps into Roxas’ bones, Axel feels him relax against him despite his initial surprise at being held in such a public, albeit empty, location.

Abruptly, Axel shifts his hands until he’s hugging Roxas’ neck, one elbow locked over the other in a loose chokehold. Roxas yelps, halting, and Axel stops along with him, leaning forward to rest his chin in Roxas’ hair, soft as ever despite the lingering layer of dust.

Axel chuckles, low, slow. “What’s wrong?” he whispers into Roxas’ ear. “Chilly?”

Roxas mumbles something unintelligible into the material of Axel’s sleeve, and Axel laughs again, just a quick exhale, pressing the fabric closer to make Roxas huff, and then pulling it away.

“I’m sorry,” Axel taunts quietly, “were you saying something?”

Golden eyebrows furrow. “I will fug you up,” Roxas says, words somewhat less muffled, no doubt a direct quote from one of the other Org members, though not quite as tough as he had hoped. This is made all the more ridiculous because Axel knows Roxas very well could take him down, if the other keyblade wielder’s powers were any indication.

Axel tries to push thoughts of Sora from his mind. Just a kid... It makes him remember what guilt felt like, and even though the full weight of it can no longer freeze up his chest, it’s not exactly pleasant.

Roxas shifts his head to glare up into the green eyes darting playfully as they take in Roxas’ piss poor impression of anger. Axel’s not sure he’s even fully convinced Roxas has reached actual irritation.

“I’m shaking in my boots, Roxas.”

Roxas’ arms cross. He wriggles around to face Axel and better hit him with his glare, and Axel gives him the extra room to do so, his arms stretching out a bit, his thin lips drastically pulling up on one side.

Roxas’ chin juts up. “Good.”

Axel leans forward until their noses brush. He exhales, a white puff of air that bridges the distance between their lips. His eyes seem a darker green in the evening shadows. He stops smiling. “Good,�� Axel echoes.

Roxas can’t contain his grin, and then, fast as he would dive at a Heartless with his blade, he’s tilting his head, rising up on his toes. His hands cup Axel’s jaw, rough with auburn stubble, and he presses their lips together. It’s not the bittersweet tingle of sea salt that they’re used to, or the familiar staleness of morning breath. Axel tastes like hot sand and Roxas like damp earth. But somehow that makes the moment feel all the realer. Not something dazed or dreamy that could slip away any second, but something concrete and imperfect: something real, something theirs.

Axel’s arms wrap tighter around Roxas’ upper and lower back, pressing their torsos together like he thinks if he tries hard enough, they can melt into each other completely.

They only pull apart when they recognize the distant explosion of music and drunken chatter as the sound of a pub door being open and shut. The cacophony reminds them of their destination and the time crunch they were already on before they stopped.

Roxas sighs and turns back around, Axel’s arms still barring his chest and waist, and begins to take heavy steps to maneuver them forward, though Axel’s heels drag the first few feet.

But, it being Tortuga, and Roxas being Roxas, Axel knows it will not be long before his steps slow, and Axel’s pace has to quicken to make up for it. Axel doesn’t mind. He kind of adores Roxas’ constant state of distraction, his abrupt fascination with window displays and passing strangers and snippets of sound.

Maybe because of his amnesia, Roxas seems to have retained more curiosity, interest, passion for life than the other Nobodies, and Axel can’t help but find it amusing, hell—mildly intoxicating—to get sucked into. He’s grown used to Roxas asking a million questions, stupid or brilliant and seemingly nothing in between.

He likes that Roxas thinks Axel has all the answers. He even likes when Roxas shows a flicker of the growing realization that Axel doesn’t have all the answers. Then again, there’s not much about Roxas he doesn’t like.

However, Roxas has seen Tortuga before on multiple occasions and walks with surprising intent. It’s not until they pass a hatter’s shop that his pace begins to flag, eyes shifting off to the side more and more often, head starting to tilt. Axel is forced to suppress a fond sigh.

“You want one?”

The window’s nothing special as far as Axel’s concerned. A bare bones wooden shelf displays rows of captains’ and sailors’ hats in chestnut brown, night black, and ash gray leathers, festooned with all manners of ribbons, feathers, brooches, and embroidery. But for Roxas, who has no memory of owning something of his own, aside from his standard issue Organization coat, slacks, and boots, and a few stray popsicle sticks, Axel can see that it means more.

“It’s stupid,” Roxas says, though his eyes linger, because he’s used to being told anything that he takes an interest in is, by the other members, certainly, if not by an unthinking Axel himself.

“If liking pretty things is stupid,” Axel squeezes Roxas’ shoulder, and a lick of flame springs to life in his free hand to illuminate fair skin, fire blue eyes, the faintest sweep of freckles, “how ‘bout, we can both be stupid together?”

Roxas’ cute little nose crinkles, his lip quirks up, eyes narrowing. “You don’t like pretty things.”

Axel’s face tilts closer to Roxas’, his smile mild, his words more whisper than sound and more to himself than to Roxas, “Says the boy I take to the top of a clocktower every damn day so I can watch the light of the sunset play in his hair.”

Roxas’ chest does that hot mushy thing, that thing like his arm’s been clawed open, but on the inside. He smiles so hard it hurts.

Axel closes his glove around the flame and the light goes out, Roxas’ dark lashes fluttering as his eyes attempt to readjust. Axel straightens and shifts behind Roxas, resting his chin atop Roxas’ head again.

Roxas tilts his head up searching for eyes, hunter green in the sinking evening, Axel’s sharp features, all highlighted with affection and concern like no one else has ever shown him. And Roxas has been told over and over that the emotions shown by a Nobody aren’t real, that they’re just a reflection, an echo of what used to be, but when it’s Axel showing them, he can’t bring himself to care.

Axel’s smiles, laughs, and kisses may be edged with briars of hollowness, reluctance, distance, but at the end of the day, they’re the only smiles, laughs, and kisses anybody’s ever given him. Maybe they’re not supposed to be enough, but they are. And maybe he’s not supposed to believe them, but he does.

Maybe it’s like Xigbar says and Axel’s possessiveness isn’t really love. (Whatever the fuck love is.) But if it isn’t, Roxas doesn’t want to know.

If it isn’t, he figures it’s close enough.

Roxas’ words aren’t much more than a whisper, either, “I think you’re pretty, too.”

Axel’s smile slips, taken aback, but he recovers in half a second, smirks. “Well, whaddaya know?” He lifts his chin, ruffling Roxas’ perpetually messy hair, before linking their arms together and drawing him a few steps closer to the hat shop. “C’mon, let’s step inside for just a minute.”

Pulled out of the moment with a sharp laugh, Roxas’ heels drag, catching against the dirty cobblestones of the street. “But it’s locked!”

“Roxas,” Axel claps Roxas’ arm, words wheedling as ever, “you wield the key-blade, not the but-it’s-locked-blade.”

Roxas grimaces, glancing down the dimly lit street though the pub they’re headed toward isn’t yet in sight. He notes no Heartless, no obstructions. It won’t take them long to get where they’re going. But… “Luxord won’t be happy if we’re late.”

“Eh.” Axel shrugs. “We’re already late.”

Roxas stares at him for a second and then his gaze returns to the window, the hats, all that flair and personality and glossy leather. He grins brightly, his keyblade materializing in his hand in a brief flash of golden light. “Okay. But we’re just going to look.”

“Of course, we are.”

* *

The hat shop is dark and smells like shoe polish and sunned leather. Axel lights another flame in his gloved hand to illuminate a space crowded with sun-bleached shelves and tables, dapper manikins, and tilting racks sporting its wares. A lone cutlass hangs just above the door and sand smatters across tired wooden floorboards.

Their resolution to just look lasts approximately zero seconds, as Axel grabs the first hat within grabbing distance and, with flourish, caps Roxas’ head. As Roxas turns to search for a mirror, the leather immediately slips in front of his eyes, setting them both into a quiet fit of giggles.

It takes a fair bit of searching—both grateful for their practiced, quiet steps on the warped, creaky floorboards—before they locate hats in a small enough size that the petite young man can wear them without his vision being obscured.

After parading Roxas before the mirror in increasingly absurd styles, each more feathery and frilly than the last, Axel finds a sturdy, glossy brown tricorn, a reliable, trusty hat, its only ornament stitched X’s on either side. This one suits Roxas just so, his nervous smile twitching into something real.

Humming, he runs his thumb across the bottom rim, tilting it ever so slightly. He meets his own eye in the mirror, and then Axel’s. “This one.”

“That one,” Axel agrees.

“Your turn.”

Axel takes a step back, raising his palms in half-hearted argument. “I don’t need—”

But Roxas has set off, away from the mirror, at a determined pace, and Axel just shakes his head, watching the strong cut of Roxas’ back as he shifts, lifts, and replaces hats on this shelf and that one. Eventually, Roxas finds his way to the front window, and Axel paces just after him, once again filling his hand with a small flame to illuminate their way.

After staring for a long while, Roxas selects a single elegant ebony captain’s hat from the center of the display. Its edges are rimmed with a delicate dark gold embroidery and just above the left ear sits an elegant emerald feather with gold accents, just the shade of Axel’s eyes.

“This one,” Axel realizes, accepting the hat Roxas sets into his hands, and placing it above his unkempt red curls.

Roxas nods. “That one.” He catches Axel’s hand in his and tugs him over to the scratched, speckled, but probably once beautiful, looking glass he’d modeled in front of a few minutes earlier.

Axel looks fierce and fine at once, the plume and his violet tattoos offering just a hint of the exotic. Roxas can’t seem to tear his eyes away, Axel notices with an unexpectedly warm feeling.

“We could almost be,” Roxas tilts his head, trying to decide how to phrase it, “...like everybody else…”

“Roxas…” Axel’s voice takes on a careful warning, turning away from their reflections to face the real thing, “we can’t ever really—” A flash of gold flickers in the corner of his vision, sending a cool prickle up his spine. The thoughts evaporate as he whirls, a chakram appearing in his hand as he crouches.

Roxas is quick to follow suit, scanning the area Axel’s edging in on, until he spots an itty-bitty Shadow climbing out of the floor, off in a shadowy corner near the cash register. Ordinarily, Axel would evaporate it and be done with the matter, but he can’t risk sending the building up in flames.

He gives his chakram a spin and steps closer, directing his next words to the tiny monster, “Didn’t anybody tell you it’s our night off?”

“Careful,” Roxas cautions, but Axel’s already tossed his weapon, his aim true, and the little Heartless fizzles out in a fine black mist, the chakram clanging loudly as it plunges into the wall beyond.

Immediately, they hear the scrape of claws and a stern bark, which resonates throughout the entire room.

“Shit,” Axel curses.

A large, fluffy white dog surges forward from the shadows where it had been deep in slumber, reminding Roxas warily of the massive purple and green dog-like Heartless that had near squashed him with their girth just hours prior. Jangling rings high in their ears as the dog is stopped abruptly, a chain attached to the collar around its neck going taut. The dog goes silent, surprised.

“Thank the gods,” Axel hisses, backing away, his chakram reappearing in his hands. Roxas follows after, backpedaling swiftly, his keyblade materializing in a dazzling shower of light.

This turns out to be too much for the dog, which begins yapping once more with vigor.

“Shit.”

A staircase occupies the far side of the wall, and atop it, lights flicker on. No longer concerned with stepping lightly, Axel and Roxas turn and barrel out of the shop.

“Stop!”

As they hit the dark street, the smell of leather and polish replaced with briny salt and scales, Axel and Roxas glance up to see the window of the room above the shop, its shutters thrown open and a man in a nightcap leaning out it, his graying bearded face fixed in a violent scowl.

“Stop this instant, ya bloody thieving pirates!”

Axel and Roxas do not stop. Holding tight to their accidentally stolen hats, they sprint, and the man gives chase, surprisingly swift in step despite his generous gut. But Axel and Roxas glide over the uneven stone streets, used to sudden exertion and unafraid of the threat of the man’s waving cutlass.

The crowds of sailors, pirates, and merchants grow denser the closer they get to Gibbs’ pub and they manage to give the hatter the slip in a back alley. Roxas pushes his way inside first, the door near slamming the side wall, and then stops, half bent over, choking over rapid breaths and sharp laughter. Axel enters a minute later, sparing a final wary glance outside, before his arm catches Roxas around the shoulders and steers him out of the threshold, elbow jabbing him in the side to help him get a handle on himself.

“We’re just going to look,” Roxas repeats. “You said we were just going to look!”

Axel hasn’t stopped grinning their entire escape and he doesn’t stop now. “Worth it.”

Roxas shakes his head, bemused, “How was it worth it?”

“I look really sexy in this hat.” Axel leans in until his lips near brush Roxas’ ear, and whispers, “and you look really sexy in that one.”

“Luxord is going to kill us!” Roxas squirms away, but he doesn’t completely manage to fend off his smile, even as he declares, “I’m never speaking to you again.”

Axel sets a hand on Roxas’ bicep, tugging him closer to the bar, and tilts his head, pretending to contemplate this. “That’s going to make it a little difficult to kiss you.”

“I’m never kissing you again, either.”

“We’ll see about that.”

#kingdom hearts #pirates of the caribbean #akuroku #axel #roxas #pirates #potc #358 nights #my writing #tortuga #luxord

9 notes · View notes

vibranch · 5 years ago

Text

Hockety Pockety - Kingdom Hearts Fan Fic

Pairing: LeonxRinoa Heartilly / Squall LeonhartxRinoa Heartilly Rating: T (for some dark thoughts later into the story) Word Count: 4,197 AO3 link here (Author’s notes can be read here)

Summary: Rinoa Heartilly always seemed like such an outgoing young woman. So Merlin was a little surprised that she was having so much trouble with a spell that required its user to sing and dance.

Leon always seemed like such a quiet and uncaring guy. So Rinoa was a little surprised when he spoke and said something nice.

How should either understand what the other is going through? Does it even matter if they do? AKA: The, no doubt, long awaited origin story to Leon's leather jacket

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Merlin sipped his tea as he considered how to best explain where his student was going wrong. “My dear, you have to sing the words, not just mumble them like an out of tune frog.”

Rinoa huffed an exasperated breath at the wizard. “I will not! I’m going to look like a loon.” Rinoa could feel her face growing hot as she considered what Merlin wanted her to do.

Long ago before she knew of other worlds, Rinoa used to sit on her mother’s lap and watched the stars as her mother sang to her. Despite her mother’s crippling shyness, she had written and publicly preformed a song about how she felt when Rinoa had looked at her as a baby.

Rinoa loved that song even before she’d even learned to speak. As a baby, Rinoa would mimic the sounds of the song her mother would always sing to her.

And when she’d gotten a old enough to speak, Rinoa would shamelessly sing along with her mother. “Loud and proud,” was how her father would describe her singing.

“Loud and Proud,” Rinoa would shout right back, taking pride in her father’s words of encouragement, not feeling any of the shyness of being heard that her mother felt.

Those days felt long ago now.

Very long ago.

Now that she was older, Rinoa sometimes worried that she hadn’t inherited her mother’s singing voice. Occasionally, while watching the stars alone, Rinoa would sing to herself the same song her mother once sang.

“Darling, so there you are. With that look on your face. As if you’re never hurt, as if you’re never down.”

It hurt to say the words and know that her mother would never sing them to her again, or that her father would never be around to describe her singing as loud and proud either.

But she was glad that it still hurt.

It hurt, but only because she was reminded that she was loved, that there had once been happier, better days before the Heartless entered her life and destroyed her world.

“My mom was a singer, you know.” Rinoa looked to Merlin. “I always thought she was better at it than me, but… Do I really sound like a frog? I don’t think I’m that bad.”

Merlin placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, my dear. Don’t worry you don’t sound like a frog, haven’t you listened to them croak? They have wonderfully deep baritone voices.”

“Oh, so I’m not even as good as a frog.” Rinoa said sadly as she looked at the floor.

Merlin coughed into his hand as he considered his next words more carefully. “Ah, now Rinoa, don’t feel too disheartened. I know you can perform the spell. You just don’t understand the proper form to it. Here, copy after me.” Merlin hopped onto the stool Rinoa once stood on in the middle of the room.

“You’ve already shown it to me, I’m just not going to get it.”

“Ah ah ah!” Merlin tutted. “Watch me now.” He slumped his shoulders and began to chant slow and nervously, “Hockety… Pockety… Wockety…”

Rinoa raised an eyebrow as nothing changed. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m preforming it as you were.” Merlin answered. “Maybe a bit exaggerated, but my point stands. You’ve got to be less self-conscious. When it comes to spells, they can almost feel your indecisiveness and can go very wrong if you don’t cast them with gusto.”

“With gusto?” Rinoa repeated, arching an eyebrow as she did so.

“Precisely!”

None of this made sense to Rinoa. This was supposed to be a magic and spells lesson, not a singing and dance class. Confidence had always been key when it came to learning new spells, but she never had to dance and sing like an idiot for a spell before.

“Now watch me.” Merlin cleared throat and scanned the room carefully.

A moment later he jumped into the air and danced on the stool. Not caring about how he looked. Which was good. Graceless didn’t even describe as Rinoa watched in horror.

He wants me to do that?

“Hockety Pockety, Wockety Wack!”

Objects throughout the room began to float through the air. As he continued his song and dance, dishes and furniture began to shrink in size and float gently into an open bag of holding he’d laid out.

“There now,” Merlin announced as he finished the spell. “Just do it exactly like that.”

“I am not doing that!” Rinoa said.

“If you don’t, you’ll never master it.” Merlin chimed.

“But if I do, someone is going to walk through that door and see me dancing and singing like a crazy person! I just know it!”

Merlin waved a hand at Rinoa. “Oh poppycock, you worry too much. Just relax and have fun with it. Magic should be fun, so long as you use it responsibly.”

Stepping gingerly onto Merlin’s Stool, Rinoa believed she understood why her mother had always struggled to publicly perform her songs in front of an audience now.

“Go on!” Merlin cheered. He knew she had it in her to perform the spell. There was a great source of magical potential within her, and he couldn’t wait to see her soar!

“Hockety… Pockety…” Rinoa slowly began. She felt the sense of unease and shame build within her. “Loud and proud, loud and proud.” Rinoa repeated under her breath.

“Is everything alright?” Merlin asked. Perhaps he should have thought of a different spell to teach her instead. He didn’t think she’d have so much trouble with it. She normally seemed so outgoing and extroverted everywhere else.

“Hockety Pockety!” Rinoa yelled at the top of her lungs. She took a peek at the curtain that served as Merlin’s door, looking for any sign of outside movement. “Wockety Wack! Abra Abra, Dabra Nack!” Rinoa kicked her legs out and began to dance on the stool just as Merlin had.

Merlin watched with pride as the spell worked its magic. Objects lifted gently off the shelf and bobbed in orbit around her. Each time they drooped down, they rose back up a size smaller than before.

Rinoa couldn’t believe it, it was working! She continued to sing the song, with only slight interruptions coming from a laugh that would bubble out of her throat. She spun a couple of times, letting herself become lost in the moment.

“Keep going, keep going!” Merlin encouraged. A request Rinoa happy to oblige.

So caught up in the moment, Rinoa didn’t notice the sound of someone moving aside Merlin’s curtain and stepping inside.

“Merlin, can I use your…”

Rinoa’s eyes shot open. She was frozen in place, looking directly at Leon.

Not again… Rinoa thought to herself.

“I, uh, I can come back later.” Leon said embarrassedly, as if he’d been the one they walked in on.”

Rinoa covered her face with her hands as it began to heat up, unintentionally casting an aero spell that lifted Leon off his feet and threw him somewhere outside. Rinoa hadn’t even noticed that she’d cast the spell until she heard something splash into the lake outside Merlin’s house. Cracking open an eye, she saw Leon wasn’t in the room anymore.

Leon stepped on to the grassy shore of the lake, trying not to think about the condition his leather jacket was going to be in once it had time to dry. The soggy, muddy grass he stepped on gave way as he put his full weight onto it, causing Leon to tumble back into the water.

“Umm, do you need a hand?”

Leon sat up from the water to see two brown eyes staring at him with a mix of concern and amusement.

“I’m fine.” Leon replied curtly, trying to grab hold of something solid to help pull himself back up. A piece of muddy embankment came lose, pulling grass out by its roots as he fell back in the water.

Rinoa stretched out with her hand towards Leon. “It’s alright I won’t blow you away again.”

Sighing with resignation, Leon reached back for the girl’s hand.

“Sorry, about that…” Rinoa rubbed the tip of her boot on the ground as she tried to find a better way to apologize.

“…Whatever” Leon replied.

There was an uncomfortable silence as Rinoa waited for Leon to continue. He looked uncomfortable to her. She wondered if she made him uncomfortable, or if it was just because he was soaked.

Probably because he’s soaked, she decided.

If he wasn’t going to break the silence, Rinoa decided she would. “Did you need to speak with Merlin?”

“No, it can wait. You go ahead and finish your lesson and I’ll come back later.” Leon said.

“Oh, well I’m finished now.” Rinoa dug circles in the ground with her boot. “Merlin said I pretty much had the spell figured out, so I’m done now.”

“If you say so.” Leon said as he squelched towards the entrance.

Rinoa winced as she saw the condition of his leather jacket. It was completely soaked, and it would only get further damaged as it dried.

“Oh, by the way,” Leon said just before entering Merlin’s House. “You sounded good. Sorry if I bothered you again.”

Rinoa walked home, considering Leon’s words. That was the second time he’d walked in on her singing.

The first time he’d heard her, she was singing quietly to herself as she watched the stars. Just as she’d done with her mother years ago. She hadn’t even noticed he was there until he’d said anything.

“He’s too quiet!” Rinoa yelled. With no one walking the streets at this time of night she could give into the little temptation to be a bit loud.

But even back then he wasn’t rude or anything.

“That’s a nice song.” Leon’s voice cut through the cold night air like a knife.

Rinoa jumped back in surprise. “Sorry, I thought I was alone… How long have you been there?”

“Not long,” Squall admitted. “I was just on my way to see Merlin. He has an entrance to the water way.”

“What do you do down there?” Rinoa asked. She didn’t often talk with Leon. In fact, he didn’t often talk to anyone. She’d really only seen him say short sentences to Aerith, Yuffie, and Cid. Nothing that could really be considered a conversation. Just enough words answer a question they had or the bare minimum to politely respond to something they said.

Rinoa was almost certain she had a closer relationship with Aerith and Yuffie than Leon did, maybe even Cid. But the little that he did talk with them was more than he ever said to anyone else.

“I go there to be alone.” Leon answered.

Rinoa scrunched her eyebrows together as she tried to understand his answer. “You go there to be alone? But you’re always alone.” Rinoa suddenly realized that what she said was rude before she could stop herself.

“…Whatever,” Leon responded. He didn’t know why she cared what he did there. At least when he was there no one bothered him. Sometimes just being secluded was all he wanted. Still, he felt compelled to tell Rinoa more. “Gunblades can be dangerous around others so it’s safest to make sure I practice somewhere others won’t accidentally sneak up on me and get hurt.”

“Wow, I didn’t realize you were so considerate of others.” Rinoa said only a little sarcastically. “Is it really that dangerous of a weapon?”

Leon considered explaining how the recoil from pulling the triggering mechanism adds a lot of recoil. How one time when he was younger, he pulled the trigger and shot out of his hands and landed somewhere behind him.

And even though he was used to its recoil now, his old instructor back home had drilled into his head that ‘the worst always arrives with an audience’, and an audience could get hurt if it ever flew out of his hands again.

But instead of explaining any of that, Leon just replied with a curt and succinct “Yeah.”

“How kind of you.” Rinoa said, again only slightly sarcastically. She realized she was probably sounding kind of rude again. “Sorry, I guess I was expecting you to say more. I know we don’t talk much, but you never seem to have anything to say.”

Leon sighed. Cid and Aerith were always asking if he was okay, and despite constantly telling them he was, they never seemed to believe him. Even Yuffie, who was more oblivious about how much he wanted to be left alone, was constantly questioning every little noise and sound he made. Rinoa seemed to be the same as them, and yet for some reason, he found he didn’t mind as much.

“Leon, are you alright?” Rinoa asked. He’d been silent for a while now, so she said with innocent intent. Despite that, the question annoyed Leon.

“I should go.” Leon announced before Rinoa could ask another question. But her words, ‘you never seem to have anything to say,’ rattled in his head. For some reason he wanted to prove her wrong. “I liked the song, by the way. Sorry if I bothered you and made you stop. It sounded nice.” Leon walked off before Rinoa could say another word.

For some reason, when Merlin told her that he had a new spell to teach her, and that it required the user to sing a song to do it, Rinoa thought of that night with Leon again. She felt a little more confident in her singing voice since that night and decided to attempt the song.

Rinoa felt so stupid as she laid down on her bed. Leon had nothing bad to say to her, and what had she done? She sent him flying into a lake. No doubt ruining his jacket permanently.

Maybe she could think of a way to apologize for blasting him into a lake. Just saying sorry didn’t seem right. But what else could she do?

She had once considered adding a leather jacket to her everyday outfit, but this was back before Leon and the others came to Traverse Town. But she found it to be a little too Hell’s Angel looking for her taste. Almost literally with the red angel wings embroidered into the back of it. She liked the angel wing motif, but not even that could save it for her. Now it just hung in her closet, never to be worn again.

Maybe that could make a good replacement for the one she ruined…

Of course, once she’d pulled it out of the closet, she saw it definitely wasn’t going to fit. It would be way too tight on him. It’s not like she’d memorized his body size, but still. Something told her Leon probably wouldn’t fit in a women’s size. The short sleeves alone would cut off the circulation in his arms, if his arms even fit through it.

Then she got an idea.

It was probably stupid idea. But she couldn’t get it out of her head.

Loud and proud.

She recanted the words to the song Merlin had taught her, changing the lyrics slightly.

The sound of a pulled trigger immediately followed by the sound of a firing mechanism echoed through the cavern. The smell of gunpowder wafted in the air mixing with the smells of wet stone and still water.

Leon smiled, or the closest thing he would allow to a smile. He felt at peace. No one was around to remind him of his old home or the people he couldn’t save. How he ran away, how chose to save himself, how he should have stayed and fought till the bitter end.

Oh,

There goes that smile.

Good.

What right did he have to be happy? Every time Cid, or Aerith, or even little Yuffie, asked him if he was alright, they wouldn’t quite believe him when he said he was.

They didn’t understand that he was alright and that was the problem. He was alright and so many others weren’t. Why should he be alright? It wasn’t fair to everyone he failed if he just moved on and forgot them.

Sometimes Leon thought his favorite part of the water way was just how alien it was to home. It was completely different to anything he would find in Radiant Garden.

But in moments like these, not even that fact could help. Maybe it was because there was one last reminder of home hidden even in here. A warp gummi that Cid had placed behind a mural that laid on the wall beyond a section of deep water.

Cid trusted Leon enough not to take the warp gummi hidden in this place. That or he knew.

Knew that Leon was scared to go back. Scared to watch his own Heart flutter out of his chest, lose his mind, and become a Heartless. Just like everyone he couldn’t save.

Maybe

Maybe it was time to change that. He could be fearless, like a lion. Unafraid to take on the endless horde of Heartless that were no doubt still ravaging his home.

All he’d have to do was wade into the deep water that separated him from the mural that housed the warp gummi he needed.

His leather jacket was already ruined from water damage, so it’s not like that weak excuse was still there to stop him.

Leon stood at the edge of the water as the thought lingered in his mind.

Was he really going to do it? Return to that Hollow Bastion and fight until he hoped he could feel redeemed?

“Uhh,” A voice interrupted his thoughts. It came from by the stairs that lead back to Merlin’s house. “Sorry, am I interrupting?”

Rinoa tiptoed into the water way, taking in the soft green glow of the room.

Leon looked at her skeptically. “No, I was…” He looked back at the mural the warp gummi was in. “Just taking a break.”

“From your Gunblade practice?” She swung both arms exaggeratedly together, mimicking what she thought a Gunblade swing looked like.

“Yeah,” Leon kept his voice even. What was she doing here? He told her he liked to come here to be alone, right?

Rinoa walked further in but stopped as she saw the cracked remains of Leon’s leather jacket. “I’m sorry about your jacket. I didn’t mean to get it wet.”

“…Whatever.” Leon said, but he felt like he should be thanking her. Now that it was gone, it was just one less obstacle to stop him from marching into the water, taking the warp gummi, and taking off for home again. Then whatever happens, happens.

“You say that a lot. Is it a nervous tick or something? Do you get nervous around girls?”

“N-No.” Why was she asking him something like that? A question like that is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leon could feel himself getting hotter, but he didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about!

Rinoa took a slight pleasure at seeing him look flustered. It was a nice change from his usual, or more like constant, stoic demeanor. “Well, it’s not ‘whatever’ to me. I feel bad about it.” Rinoa paused for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice rose with excitement. “Which is why I got you something.”

Leon watched as she ran back towards the stairs. If Rinoa had looked back she would have remarked that he looked like a cat, tilting his head in confusion.

Rinoa came running back holding a black leather jacket of her own. “Here! It’s a replacement for the one I ruined.

Leon examined the gift. Red angle wings on the back? Not really his style. But it was high quality and looked comfortable.

C’mon, try it on, try it on!” she cheered.

Leon sighed as he put it on. He tried to make the process look tiring, but if he was being honest, he was a little excited too.

Rinoa was nervous as he slipped both arms into the sleeves. She made a small inaudible gasp as she realized her mistake. She hadn’t made it long enough!

Unlike his old one, this new jacket only reached as far as, maybe, the middle of his stomach. She hung her head in defeat. She cursed herself for not noticing the issue sooner.

“Thank you. I like it.”

Rinoa’s head shot up. He was twisting and turning, trying to check himself out in it as best he could without a mirror. And was there some actual emotion in his voice as he said it too?

Leon liked how the sleeves ended at his biceps. The nights in Traverse Town never got as cold as back home, so he could see himself being much more comfortable wearing this new one. And while he liked the fake fur collar from his old one, it had been an uncomfortable reminder of his old life as of late.

Rinoa watched in fascination as he moved around in the women’s jacket she’d enlarged. “You know?” Rinoa said, interrupting Leon from further investigating how he looked. She gazed into the water Leon had earlier been standing near. “I just realized I walked in on you practicing. I guess that means it’s your turn to push me into the water now, huh?”

“I’m not going to do that.”

Rinoa couldn’t help but smile. Did he think she was serious? Rinoa couldn’t tell. Even he couldn’t be that literal, but he said it so seriously. “I was just joking, Leon.”

Leon was quiet for a moment. “… So was I.”

“You were not!” Rinoa laughed. When she finally looked up at him he had that flustered look again. Like a cat that had been caught looking foolish. She recollected herself and figured she should stop teasing him. “Sorry, I can go now if I’m bothering you.”

“You’re not.” Leon spoke faster than he meant to. Unlike most people, he didn’t mind her being around. There was something about Rinoa’s presence that he didn’t want to lose.

“I thought you said it could be dangerous being near someone practicing a Gunblade.”

“Well… Maybe not that dangerous. Besides, I think I’m done now anyway.”

“Then, if you’re done practicing, what did you want to do?”

“We could talk, I guess. I haven’t really gotten to know many people here yet.” Leon admitted.

“Yeah, I guess we could.” Rinoa had some doubts about Leon as a conversationalist. He was so quiet and untalkative that she half wanted to joke that she was surprised he even knew how to talk. But she figured that would just make him angry.

“I kind of want to know more about that one song you were singing.” Leon spoke, taking charge of a conversation for once.

“O-Oh, you mean Hockety Pockety?”

“No, the other one you were singing. When I was on my way to Merlin’s the first time.”

“Oh, you mean ‘Eyes on Me’. My mother actually wrote it.”

Leon tilted his head. “Really? That’s impressive.”

“Yeah, she was really talented. I can’t sing it as well as her, but I still do sometimes when I’m alone.”

“You sounded fine to me.”

“Oh, thank you.” Rinoa didn’t know why she felt so embarrassed to receive such a simple compliment.

Rinoa thought about the song ‘Eyes on Me’ some more. When she looked back, she found Leon’s gaze firmly planted on her.

His eyes are on me.

It was just word association, but as soon as she made the thought, she felt something twist in her gut.

Rinoa suddenly felt the need to think about something else. She muttered the words to Hockety Pockety, hoping the lyrics would get her mind off of whatever she definitely was not thinking of.

“Rinoa, are you-” Leon stopped when he felt something move on his arm. He looked at it but didn’t see anything different.

Wait a minute… Was his sleeve larger now?

No, that would be impossible. Probably just his imagination.

Leon had long since forgotten about taking the warp gummi and flying back to Hollow Bastion. The desire to make one last stand on his home had evaporated over the course of the night. Slowly the idea had faded when Rinoa presented the gifted jacket.

They talked for a long time. About lost homes and adjusting to Traverse Town. Leon talked about his Gunblade training and why it could be dangerous. Rinoa talked about Dogs and caring for them. Leon didn’t know she cared so much about dogs. Rinoa admitted that on multiple occasions she’d asked Merlin to conjure up a fountain or a statue in the third district for the two dogs she’d been caring for.

Leon hadn’t even realized he’d forgotten about taking the warp gummi when he finally went to bed. In fact, it would be a long time before Leon would remember his idea to return to his home for one last fight. But by that time, he couldn’t see a point to fighting an obviously hopeless battle.

After all, he had a right to be happy and to make something new for himself. He could see a little bit clearer that his life hadn’t been a waste.

#kingdom hearts #final fantasy VIII #Fan Fiction #Rinoa Heartilly #squall x rinoa #Kingdom Hearts extended universe when?#Squinoa #Squall Leonhart #Leon #kingdom hearts fanfiction #Final Fantasy VIII fanfiction #My Writing

14 notes · View notes