#I’m currently reading his ‘Sneeze’ short story collection

[mayexiled]

‘He laid his hands on the sin offering.’

[goodyeartheshippycat]

Tag 10 people you want to know more/catch up with.

Thank you for the tag, @prismatic-cannon. Always fun to do one of these! And I like your song choice :D

Favourite colour(s): Green, teal, mint (okay those two are basically green-ish), that blue which they call “petrol” in the UK, and various shades of purple.

Last song: I’ve been back on my folk/power metal bullshit this fall and re-listening to favourite albums from my late high school/early university years. The Dance of Victory by Eluveitie was the song most recently played on my old iPod which is hooked up to my car stereo system. Listened to it last night while coming back from a site visit, as you do.

Last Movie: Oh lord, I watch movies so infrequently that I don’t even remember... It was definitely one of the ones I watched at the cottage this year. Uhhhhh, I think it might have been The Castle of Cagliostro. Which I really enjoyed and am now looking forward to watching the newest Lupin film when the English release comes out. I know, I know, I prefer subs too but my partner doesn’t really like watching subbed films and I almost only ever bother watching a film with him... 

Or it might have been A Mighty Wind which was painful but funny. If you’ve ever seen any Christopher Guest films, you’ll know what I’m talking about. He’s the master of cringe, secondhand awkwardness comedy. I think the one I enjoyed most and would recommend to someone who hasn’t seen his stuff would probably be the one about dog shows, Best in Show, or maybe the one about community theatre, Waiting for Guffman. 

Currently reading: Does re-reading some of my own fics count? XD

Really though, outside of technical stuff for work I haven’t been reading much lately. I did read an excellent sci-fi short story recently, called “Curo the Filthmonger” by J. Marshall Freeman. I can’t find an online copy, unfortunately (I have it in zine form from my local LGBTQ+ bookstore -- which is sadly now closing due to COVID), so no link. I was also thinking of tackling some of the many comic ebooks I’ve collected over the years via kickstarters and whatnot, and then left sitting untouched in a folder on my computer. Might start with Yes, Roya, because I know it recently got a colour edition, but I’d like to read my original black and white copy first. 

Currently watching: Nothing, actually. I just finished watching two things and have yet to start anything else in earnest. Most recently in television, I watched the final episode of the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks which, as far as I’m concerned, is the best Trek series to come out since DS9. Hilarious and clever writing combined with solid animation and excellent voice acting by the ridiculously loveable cast. Each of them is more relatable over the course of only 8 half hour episodes than a single character in Discovery ever has been in two seasons... 

The other thing I watched recently was every currently available episode of a YouTube animated series about @dingodoodles‘s “Fools’ Gold” D&D campaign, which is helpfully collected in a playlist. I have FAR TOO MANY FEELS now, especially about her sorcerer monkey, Sips, and his best friend, Sneeze. It lures you in with the funny jokes and then RIPS YOUR HEART OUT AND STOMPS ON IT. The cliffhangers she does are as addictive as the best fanfiction on the internet, and her animation is an absolute delight. I laugh out loud every single episode. There are only 16 of them for the moment, and the longest one is less than 16 minutes, so the story is very bingeable. While my own D&D group is on a short hiatus between modules I am living vicariously through other people’s campaign stories, and this one is worthy of a Peter Jackson-esque epic movie series. Also now that I’ve discovered she has a tumblr I’m almost certainly going to fall deeper into this hole.

Sweet, spicy or savory?: Sweet tooth almost always wins out for me. Savoury, especially the salty aspect of it, does sometimes become a craving but not as often.

Tea or Coffee: Tea. Always tea. All different kinds. I’m on my fifth cup of the day right now. 

As for tagging folks, where’re my mutuals (who I haven’t seen tagged yet) at? Feel free to do this or ignore it, as you please: @pourpasserlamelancholie @royalphantom @himitsumi @killapunk @aprindea @sparkly-things

[potteresque-ire]

Writing Tag!

Tagged by @bounding-heart ❤️❤️❤️. Sorry for taking forever to reply! I also just realised there’s a “Statistics” page on AO3 to answer the questions. Yes, I’m hopeless 😅.

AO3 name: potteresque_ire

Fandoms: Harry Potter (Drarry), have also dipped my toes in Yuri!On Ice (Victuuri), Good Omens (Ineffable Hubbies).

Tropes: Hmm. I don’t think of fics by tropes -- I don’t search for fics by tropes or start writing with a trope in mind, but I do enjoy many of them and they do pop up in my stories every now and then. Enemies-to-lovers is always good. Yes to pining, hurt/comfort...

Number of fics: Leaving out drabbles and ficlets ... around 25 (I know it’s a small number * bows head in shame *)

Fic I spent the most time on: The fic that felt like I spent the longest on was Twelve Days of Christmas. Its premise, with Draco as someone who might or might not have lost his mind and Harry, who might or might not have got there before Draco, was kinda beyond my skills to execute at the time but I tried anyway 😊.  It’s also the only fic I’ve written that I found truly depressing, because it’s got the worst fate I’ve given Harry by far (and I’ve assigned MCD to him several times)(sorry).

Fic I spent the least time on: For time-spent-per-word, The Kitchen Thieves (and the Kitchen Herself).

Longest Fic: Also The Kitchen Thieves (and the Kitchen Herself) (67k).

Shortest Fic: Among those I’ve given fic-level attention -- written with recipient in mind, edited and beta’ed — probably Owlcards and Letters from Beyond the Storm (~3.6k). Its time-per-word ratio was high though, because it was in a mixed media format and much time was spent on the images and fitting the text to them.

Most hits: Evolution, which has never ceased to surprise me. I assumed, at the time of posting, that this fic would be too event-less (opposite of eventful) to attract readership.

Most kudos: Evolution

Most comment threads:  Owlcards and Letters from Beyond the Storm (published on LiveJournal; the fic is celebrating its 10th birthday this year.)

Most bookmarks: Evolution

Total word count: 362,612 according to AO3. It counts all the shorts and metas as well.

Favourite fic I wrote: Oh, this is difficult! My feelings towards my work tend to stem from the memories I have of the writing period, from who I was at the time, rather than from how the story turned out or how well it’s been received. Owlcards, for example, is highly significant for personal reasons but given the special circumstances of its birth, I doubt I can create something similar again even if I dearly wish I could. 

From a more fannish perspective, I think my answer would be The Kitchen Thieves (and the Kitchen Herself), because I felt it best captured the Harry/Draco dynamics I was aiming for.

Why it was so, I think, is the same reason why this fic hasn’t been attractive to potential readers: its narration came from neither character of the main ship (it’s only after this fic that I learned it’s quite an unpopular thing to do). I’m not good at thinking like a person in love (deep-end aro-ace reporting here 😊) and while I’m getting better at “faking it”, I suspect there’s still a whole plethora of emotions I’m missing. But I’ve trained myself to read the signs of romance for years, taught myself how to approach people, real or fictional, caught in that whirlwind of emotions that leave me confused more often than I’d like to admit. Tumblr fandom is so much about pointing at a pair of characters and saying “they’re in love” (or, ”that’s gay”)... and I don’t really possess that drive, or insight, inherently. (For those who know Good Omens the series, I totally missed Aziraphale’s look after Crowley handed him back the books. That’s how bad I can be at picking up the signs of romance.) I’m therefore used to being a … somewhat removed observer of ships, sympathetic (hopefully) but not necessarily empathetic, and it’s easier for me to write about them that way. TL;DR: Kate the kitchen spirit in The Kitchen Thieves has a bit of me sometimes, staring at Harry’s and Draco’s crazy way of loving and going Whoa???

(Apologies for the TMI! I’ve got a super lovely string reviews on AO3 this week (thank you so much ❤️, V, I treasure all of them) and it got me thinking, it got me to notice that aside from the “you make me cry” comments, I also get a lot of reviews that mention the complexity, the ... heavy-handedness of my writing. I wonder if some of it is compensation. Because I don’t feel the romance of the story as much as many readers probably do, I layer on more emotions because I fear they don’t feel present, that they read inadequate. True? Not true? Something for me to think about. Regardless, I’ll probably keep layering because the emotions are there for myself, as well.)

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: The only fic I’ve ever had a sequel for in my mind is Memoria in Aeterna (yes, @bounding-heart, the bee fic!). The third Wizarding War would’ve broken out, and Draco, who’d long sequestered himself in the Water Quadrant, would’ve found the courage to re-enter society and join Harry for the fight. No happy endings for anyone. I don’t think I’ll write it up though; the climate of fandom has changed so much.

Share a bit of a WIP or a story idea you’re planning on: Here’s a bit from the (very) long Good Omens fic I’m currently struggling with:

===

Dead too, by the end of that snow shower, was any prospect of a future together between an angel and a human. Please forgive me for prying, Robbie would say to Aziraphale one day, while standing in front of the photo in the gentlemen club in Pall Mall. But I can’t be in love with someone I don’t even know the name of. Aziraphale would hold on to the books he’d been gifted, a collection of the Writer’s first edition works, nod and say lightly, I forgive you, before swallowing the words he’d practised saying over and over again in the bookshop.

My name is Aziraphale.

I’m an angel.

He wept that night, and several nights after, but unlike the many times he’d watched Romeo and Juliet, nobody was watching over him in the shadows.

Aziraphale was alone.  

Meanwhile, a few districts down from Mayfair, the demon who’d known this all along, that mortals and immortals could never be mates without deceit and heartbreak, was stirring on a beam. The floor of the living room had disappeared under the letters her colleagues had slipped under the door over the years—commendations addressed to A. J. Crowley, DR letters complaining about the humanity of her new name. They’d piled high, and in twenty-four more years, one of them would reach high enough to tickle the demon’s nose.

She’d wake with a sneeze.

===

Tagging everyone who wants to do it!! :)

[cordytriestowrite]

Tips to the Nurse's Station

The Flu

Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: A series of moments centered around the Nurse's Station tell the story of you and Steve.

There was a line outside the door of the nurse's station the Friday before winter break. Students had passed through all day complaining of runny noses and sore throats. There wasn't much you could do for them, unable to offer anything more than a phone call home. Something you discovered in the short few months you had been employed was that parents seldom dropped everything to pick up their child, no matter how sick they swore to be. 

There was a student in each chair and every cot was occupied. Your ear was glued to the phone for so long calling and pleading with parents that after what must have been the thirty-third phone call you let the sick student dial their own parent and sniffle into your phone in a meek whine.

"Come pick me up I'm sick."

You made sure to wipe down the phone after each call.

There was nowhere for you to hide from the coughing and sneezing and groans of discomfort. Every breath in felt contaminated. You kept meaning to call Principal Fury to let him know his school was in serious need of facial tissues and hand sanitizer but there was never a moment. 

"Go back to class." You instructed the most recent parent-caller after she hung up the phone.

She hadn't looked as bad as some other kids and the runny nose she claimed to be suffering from had not even been rubbed at by the long sleeve of her sweater. The girl's lip fell forward in a dramatic pout that did nothing to garner your sympathy. You waved the half filled out hall pass in front of her face and she slid out of your desk chair slowly. You wiped down the phone thoroughly, even if she didn't seem sick you were not taking any chances. 

The bell rang, signaling the final change of class for the day. You let out a groan of relief. In one more hour no one would be occupying the room besides you. You would wipe down every surface and lock the door and not come back for two weeks.

As much as parents dislike collecting their sick children in the middle of the day they detested even the thought when there was less than an hour left of school. You began to turn away those lingering in the hall and rousing those from their twilight naps in cots and chairs. Fifteen minutes before the final bell the hall outside your door was filling with bodies released by teachers who couldn't tamper down the excitement of the holidays any more. You sent your last patient with them, practically pushing him into the flow in your own eagerness to get the long break started. Pulling a bottle of disinfectant and a cloth from a cabinet you started your scrub down of the entire room. 

"Knock knock."

The sing song voice, albeit congested, was recognizable and it brought a grin to your work beaten face instantly. You turned towards the door.

"Mr. Rogers."

He laughed weakly, leaning heavily against the door frame. 

"Schools out sweetheart, no need to be so formal."

Your pulse doubled in time at the pet name. Steve had a tendency towards ma'am or miss with other female members of staff but if he wasn't in front of students or teachers you were always sweetheart. Granted, this was only the third time he had referred to you in this way but your body had reacted the same way each time: lose your breath, increase your heart rate, heat your face.

You shook off the warm, fluttery feelings making your extremities feel weak and sluggish or was that the oncoming symptoms of the flu? Steve watched silently as you finished cleaning making you wonder why he hadn't rushed out right alongside the student body. You were about to ask him when, over the noise of your spray bottle you heard a sniffle. 

Your head whipped around so fast your neck cracked. Your set your hard eyes on Steve's wide ones and pointed the spray bottle of disinfectant in his direction.

"You sick?"

He shook his head and reflexively sniffed again.

"No." He said unconvincingly, "it's just allergies."

You made a sarcastic noise of disbelief before dropping your bottle and rag to pick up the thermometer. Slipping a protective sleeve over the end you held it before Steve's mouth.

"Open."

"Listen I was sick a lot as a kid and I know I'm not sick now-umph"

You had shoved the thermometer into his mouth between words, something you had mastered in your emergency room days. He accepted it with a small pout but dutifully waited for the device to beep and provide you with his current temperature. 

"Christ Steve how are you even standing right now?"

His temperature was bordering on hospital admission levels. Unthinkingly you placed an open palm on his forehead to feel the heat, then let that hand fall to his cheek. He was hot and clammy and now that you were closer you could see the red tinge around his eyes and nose.

"You need to go home. Maybe the hospital if your fever spikes anymore.'

You couldn't stop touching his face, baffled by the strength and stupidity of the man in question. You reeled your hand back when he started to tilt his head back for a sneeze. Quickly you grabbed him a tissue, pushing it into his hands before he sneezed into the open air. 

"Steve go home."

"I will, I will but I wanted to ask you something first." He says in a stuffy voice before blowing loudly into the tissue.

You shook your head decidedly and shoved the box of tissues on your desk into his chest. He scrambled to keep it pinned there as you herded him out the door. With your palms flush against his pecs you almost forgot the reason they were there in the first place until you heard Steve's congested pleas. 

"I'm fine, I promise. I just want to see if you want to- achoo!"

Your hands stopped pushing and your eyes lifted to his watery ones. A lump you were pretty sure was your heart sat low in your throat. The words sounded like, well what you wanted them to sound like, like he was asking you out. You held your breath as Steve recovered from another sneeze. Dipping his head down into a fresh tissue he let out a trumpeting, snotty blow. His eyes raised sheepishly to yours before he collected himself.

"I really should get home. Get some rest."

"Oh."

The syllable didn't mean to come out so disappointed sounding and you didn't mean to drop your hands from his chest so heavily. You definitely didn't mean to let a frown settle on your face either, but you had thought...and it had sounded like...and you had gotten so hopeful for a moment.

Steve walked back on his own, still clutching the box against his chest. He gave you a small wave and set off for the teacher parking lot.

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[alannah-corvaine]

alannah; neverending survey

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Alannah Ailíse Caireann Corvaine Outway

NICKNAME: Little Bird (Faron only) 

AGE:  almost 23

BIRTHDAY:   10/16

ETHNIC GROUP: Midlander Hyur

NATIONALITY: Thanalanian

LANGUAGE/S: Common, a hodgepodge of things she's picked up from books

SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Demisexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Biromantic

RELATIONSHIP STATUS:  Married (verse dependent)

HOME TOWN / AREA:  Drybone, Eastern Thanalan

CURRENT HOME:  The Grey Fleet, Lower LaNoscea

PROFESSION: Professional White Mage™, Healer, Purifier

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Rich, dark brown with white streaks extending from her roots (magical scars)

EYES: Sea Green

FACE: Slightly angular, but still has baby fat

LIPS: Full, pouty, usually covered in neutral tone gloss

COMPLEXION: Sickly pale

BLEMISHES:  Birthmark under her left eye, constant red splotchy patches due to allergies

SCARS:  The white in her hair, a mark between her shoulderblades where she was kicked by an aldgoat as a child

TATTOOS: Flowery vines crawling up the left side of her ribcage (permanent), stabilizing arcanima symbols all over her arms (temporary, reapplied daily)

HEIGHT:  5′2″

WEIGHT: 135 ponze

BUILD:  Petite 

FEATURES:  Extremely striking eyes, more girlish than womanly facial structure

ALLERGIES:  Severe pollen and pet allergies, mildly allergic to some foods and perfumes

USUAL HAIR STYLE:  Worn long, down to her hips. Either in a sidebraid, high ponytail with various small braids, or loose

USUAL FACE LOOK :  Lost in thought

USUAL CLOTHING:  Loose, flowing, bohemian style. Lots of white, lots of bangles, delicate necklaces and rings. Sometimes hair ornaments. Barefoot or sandals, doesn't believe in socks. While "working" she prefers trenchcoats open at the waist, shorts, and knee-high boots.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR/S: Failure, guns, the excited laugh her daughter makes when she's found something "interesting"

ASPIRATION/S:  To be a powerful mage, fix her borked aether, and to be a better mother to her daughter than Christaine was to her

POSITIVE TRAITS: Insatiably curious, focused, dedicated, protective, kind, funny, generous

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Emotionally distant, petty, wrathful, impulsive, reckless, gets lost in her own head and forgets to come back out

TEMPERAMENT:   Melancholic

SOUL TYPE/S:  Artisan

ANIMALS:  --

VICE HABIT/S: Swearing, letting her temper get the best of her, alcohol (very rarely, because it ends badly)

FAITH: Hail Hydra Hydaelyn

GHOSTS?: ...verse dependent (lol)

AFTERLIFE?: Not so much an afterlife as much as being recycled by the Lifestream.

REINCARNATION?:  Yes

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: I mean...she might be a bit of an ecoterrorist?

EDUCATION LEVEL:  Self taught through an ungodly amount of reading

FAMILY.

FATHER : Aedan Corvaine

MOTHER :  Christaine Harlow Corvaine (deceased)

SIBLINGS : Faron, Ean, Davon, Brennan

EXTENDED FAMILY: Nine Outway (husband), Aislinn Outway (daughter), Moira Corvaine (aunt), Fayre Harlow (maternal grandmother), Fasshon Fuqushon (step-grandfather), Veronique Corvaine (sister-in-law), Isobel Corvaine (niece), Octavia Outway (sister-in-law)

NAME MEANING/S: You know, I spent hours looking up names with fitting means for Alannah’s family members way back when, but I am absolutely too lazy to go find them again

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: None.

FAVORITES.

BOOK:  Technical studies on the properties and workings of aether, historical volumes, adventure and fantasy stories, and sometimes a romance novel

DEITY: Hail Hydra Hydaelyn

HOLIDAY:  Starlight

MONTH: July

SEASON:  Summer

PLACE: La Noscea

WEATHER: Snow

SOUND / S: The almost electric hum of magic, the sound that Nine makes when she scratches his head

SCENT / S:  White musk, fresh bread baking, old books, lemongrass

TASTE / S:  Wine, dandelion tea, almond cream croissants

FEEL / S:  Being magically powerful, sleeping on fresh sheets, wearing her husband’s shirts, snuggling with her daughter

ANIMAL / S:  Fish, since they’re the only thing that doesn’t maker her sneeze

NUMBER: 9 (lol)

COLORS: White, black, any pastel or sherbet colors

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Retaining large amounts of information. magical aptitude (even if she has to fight her unstable aether for it), large scale destruction, cooking exactly one meal, tripping on flat surfaces, the ability to braid anything

BAD AT:  Wielding any kind of melee weapon, seeing without her glasses, remembering where she put her glasses, keeping up a conversation without getting lost in her thoughts, public speaking, remembering to drink her tea before it gets cold

TURN ONS: Patience, humor, calloused hands, empathy, confidence, kindness

TURN OFFS: Arrogance, cruelty, smarminess, apathy, insensitivity

HOBBIES: Researching, reading, sketching, playing the harp, traveling/seeing new places, teaching her daughter how to human, using her husband as a nap pillow

TROPES: (oh god there are so many, these are just a few) Caged Bird Metaphor, Grass is Greener, Kitsch Collection, Misery Builds Character, Now Let Me Carry You, #1 Dime, Wake-up Call, Grew a Spine, Rage Breaking Point, Big Screwed Up Family, Black Sheep

QUOTES :  “my bitterness was sometimes rest and sometimes ecstacy grace or rage, always the two opposites ready to annihilate each other and to rise from the ruins of the vanquished.”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 : If you could write your character your way in their own movie,  what would it be called, what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about?          

A1 :  Listen, I shamelessly love YA dystopian fiction, so it would be something in that vein, where Alannah is OP as fuck running around and blowing shit up as the young heroine main focus. Also there’s all of the romance tropes (sandwiched between developmental angst, of course), because I like them, and nobody’s allowed to bitch about it.

Q2 :  What would their soundtrack/score sound like?          

A2 :  It would be scored by a collaboration of Two Steps From Hell, Hans Zimmer, Jeremy Soule, and Zack Hemsey, and my ears would orgasm.

Q3 :  Why did you start writing this character?          

A3 : I don’t like doing the whole “my character is just me or an extension of me” thing, it just never feels right. I also can’t just look at the avatar I’m using and see nothing but pixels and just “play the game.” She has to have a personality, a backstory, a reason for what she’s doing. Also it’s a great creative outlet for me because I love coming up with stories in my head as I go. And thus Alannah was born from the soup of inspiration made up of many various characters I’ve loved over the years.

Q4 :   What first attracted you to this character?          

A4 : She was supposed to be something new, a kind of character that I’ve never written before. All of my female characters end up badass, overpowered, and full of personal angst, because that’s just my thing. And yeah, Alannah’s reached that point, but the point is I tried.

Q5 :  Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse.

A5 : I feel like I can never get her voice right, she always just ends up sounding like me.

Q6 :  What do you have in common with your muse?          

A6 :   The longer she’s around, the more of my traits she absorbs by osmosis. At this point she shares like 80% of my personality and traits and is completely unrecognizable from my original concept for her.

Q7 :   How does your muse feel about you?          

A7 :   I am a generous god.

Q8 :  What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ?        

A8 :   My favorite thing to explore, if it isn’t grossly obvious, is her different relationships with each of her siblings, probably because I have none. 

Q9 :  What gives you inspiration to write your muse ?        

A9 : Mostly music and books, sometimes games. I have so many AUs for Alannah. Actually writing things, however, is another matter entirely.

Q10 : How long did this take you to complete ?          

A10 : I had it done by the end of the work day after working on it between things I had to do, but then SOMEBODY tumblr drafts had to blow it up so I had to start over from the halfway point. I am not amused.

tagged by: @resistance-ranger [thankyou♥]

tagging: @keeperprinceling @menphinasbow @keeperofthelilacs @fheythfully @manawalls @khaamara @ahlis-xiv @aethernoise @castthemintotheabyss @alphiinaud @chysgoda @dragons-bones @astrophoros-ffxiv @loslorien @nuclearanomaly @zunshtral @card-and-flame @carmen-ffxiv @arabeka-ffxiv @voidwife @crowsaerie-rp @apassingshadow @violet-warder @hydrangea-fields @areniaagn @autumnslance @keltgeim @holyja @unmend @pulse-oflife

[insomnia-productions]

JC & JL Drabble Collection

Title: life is too short for so much sorrow

yeah i stole that from american horror story, what of it?

Summary: 

A-Jie, he misses you. I don’t know how to take care of him. Please, A-Jie, someone, just tell me what to do.

§

A drabble collection centered around Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling. Features snapshots of their lives in the canon universe as well as a number of other worlds and settings.

PROMPTS WELCOME!

Upcoming additions include:

Yunmengjiang Duo reconciliation (facilitated by JL, LSZ, and LJY) Dogs The Sex Talk The Shovel Talk Tinder The day JL learns how to crawl

...and many more.

Read on AO3 or read the first chapter, Onlookers, under the cut. 

1. Onlookers

[The inhabitants of Lotus Pier notice the little changes in their Sect Leader]

A-Jie, he misses you. I don’t know how to take care of him. Please, A-Jie, someone, just tell me what to do.

§

After the YiLing Patriarch falls, Lotus Pier is all abuzz.

Si Yan has so much work to do. She has been working in the Jiang Sect’s kitchens since the end of the Sunshot Campaign, and yet, even after working for several years, she is still being bossed around by the Head Cook, made to do all the trivial tasks no one else wants.

Even so, she is excited about her work today: finally, after two years of penance, she has been allowed to deliver tea to the sect leader. You’d think that the Head Cook would have forgiven her months and months ago, but Si Yan has learned the hard way that the most senior Jiang Sect attendants didn’t get to their positions by being very nice. Still, this is really too much, even for the Head Cook.

Geez, she only spilled soup on Sandu Shengshou one time.

But that’s in the past.

It’s odd, though. Si Yan hasn’t seen the sect leader at all today. That isn’t unusual for a sect leader, but this one is still young and quite anxious, and sometimes it seems that hardly a minute passes without him popping in to check that his sect is still running. Not that she can blame the poor boy, after everything.

He must be working in his chambers, Si Yan reasons. She has never been to Sect Leader Jiang’s chambers. After rounding the corner, she squares her shoulders, smiles, and walks into the room.

“Sandu Shengshou, I’ve brought—”

“Shhhhh!”

Si Yan leaps back, nearly spilling the tea, and gasps because, oh my god, is the sect leader dying?

He certainly looks like it. He is sitting on the floor,  clothes rumpled, even though Si Yan knows they were washed and straightened and delivered to him fresh this morning. His face is pale and the dark circles under his eyes look like the burial mounds. His eyes, usually sharp and clear, are dull and cloudy, and Si Yan doesn’t think she’s ever seen the sect leader with his hair down.

“S-Sect Leader…?”

“Shhhhh!” This shush is even more insistent than the last one. Si Yan frowns, extending her arms to show him the tea.

She whispers, “Um… I’ve brought…”

Sect Leader Jiang groans softly, covering his face with his hand. Lower than a whisper, he reproaches her: “What part of ‘shh’ is lost on you?” At her confused and slightly hurt look, he sighs the sigh of one who has suffered too long, and shifts to the side.

As he does so, Si Yan catches sight of the yellow bundle behind him. The baby, the Jin heir, is nestled within the cloth, mouth slightly open and brows furrowed with whatever a baby has to be stressed about.

Softly, tiredly, and with a touch of awe, Sect Leader Jiang says, “He’s asleep.”

So are you, Si Yan thinks, noting the slump in his shoulders and the sag of his eyelids. Wisely, she chooses not to say it out loud. Instead, she sets the tea down, bows, and backs out of the room.

She has a feeling tea duty is going to be quite fun.

§

A-Jie, he is so exhausting. He cries and doesn’t sleep and it takes hours to get him through just one meal. I have to keep him with me when I meet with other sect leaders because he screams if he can’t see me, and I can tell that they are all laughing at me. He crawls all over me if I don’t hold him in place, too, and he’s so demanding, always tugging on my clothes and pointing at things and always always making noise. He’s going to grow into a brat like his father, A-Jie, I just know it.

But, he’s also… when he’s sleeping, at least… he’s very cute. That part definitely comes from you.

§

There are precisely three facts that every Jiang disciple can be absolutely certain of:

Lotuses are objectively the best flowers (and peonies can suck it).

Slacking off is punishable by up to triple the usual amount of work for a period of at least a week and at most two months.

Sandu Shengshou is terrifying.

Sun Yu has been a disciple of Lotus Pier for three years and he is thoroughly and empirically aware of all three facts. This can be attested by the fact that he is currently massaging out the strain of weights twice as heavy as the weights his friends had to lift—all because he was “causing a disruption” by “tickling people with feathers when they’re supposed to be training for balance”. Psht.

Sun Yu turns a corner and barely suppresses a scream when he nearly bumps into the infamous Sandu Shengshou himself. Thankfully, the sect leader doesn’t seem to notice him, absorbed as he is in the yellow bundle in his arms. Sun Yu allows himself to breathe out, and begins to sneak away.

“A-Yu.”

Fuuuuuuuuuu—

Sun Yu halts and turns slowly on the spot. “Y-yes, Sandu Shengshou?”

He is beckoned closer and, murmuring a quick prayer for his safety, Sun Yu approaches his sect leader. He doesn’t look especially murderous today; Sun Yu runs through today’s activities in his head and allows himself to hope that perhaps he really isn’t in trouble this time.

He comes to a stop beside the sect leader and is greeted with what could almost be a smile, on anyone else. No, scratch that, it’s definitely a smile. Sun Yu feels his heart stop. Oh god, is the sect leader dying? Is the apocalypse coming? Is this some new form of psychological torment?!

He braces himself for the hammer to fall—or the whip to crack—but the sect leader only says, “Look, A-Yu. He’s smiling.”

Sun Yu follows his eyes and sees that, indeed, the baby is smiling. His brown eyes are warm and content and his tiny mouth is open, lips quirked definitively up. A gentle gurgling sound issues forth, followed by a soft, pleased squeal. Sun Yu’s heart melts.

“Aww, he’s adorable.”

“He is,” Sandu Shengshou says, voice warm and laced with pride.

Sun Yu gapes at him. In his experience, he didn’t think it was possible for the sect leader to feel pride. (Or… maybe that’s just me…)

He lingers a moment longer, taking in the scene, and then, when it seems that the sect leader has forgotten about him, he quietly takes his leave.

It seems… they might have to revise Fact #3.

§

A-Jie, did you know that babies love music? You must have; after all, you always sang him to sleep. ZiXuan must have, as well. We caught him singing to A-Ling so many times, even though he would always deny it…

I don’t sing. I don’t think I ever tried, before. But… I don’t know why, but… I find myself singing to A-Ling from time to time. It’s some old song, something Mother used to sing to us. I couldn’t recall the words if you asked me, I can’t recall them now, but somehow when I’m with A-Ling the words and the melody drift into my memory.

The first time I sang to him, he was crying. I didn’t know what to do so I rocked him, back and forth, and somewhere along the line I began to sing. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until he stopped crying, and then…

A-Jie, he looked at me with so much wonder. I’m not even good at singing, not like you, but the look on his face was like I had taken the stars from the sky and handed them to him. Like I was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen.

No one has ever looked at me like that. No one has ever had reason.

I am sure he will get used to my subpar singing eventually, and he will get older, and that wondrous expression will disappear. But, I think… I’m starting to think that, if I can just raise this child, raise him for you, into someone you would be proud of… I think, maybe, I might be able to deserve that look.

§

“Liao XiuYing!”

Liao Ming lowers her head into her hands and rubs her temples. She likes the sect leader well enough, and respects him deeply—really, she does—but, sometimes, she wants to shove a cloth in his mouth and put him in time out.

But then, to be fair, she feels that way about most of her patients.

“Liao XiuYing, listen, A-Ling sneezed twice just now, even though it’s summer. Is that bad? Is he sick? Is he dying?!”

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Liao Ming says for what must be the fourteenth time this week, “A-Ling is fine. He is a baby, not a paper doll.”

“Of course. I know that.” Some of his decorum has returned and he is pretending, as usual, that he hasn’t just burst into her home in a panic. “But he has been resisting food, as well, and I am increasingly concerned about his inability to fall asleep—”

“He is a regular baby, then,” Liao Ming interjects before he can go off on one of his rants of anxiety. It’s all a downwards spiral once one of those gets started. She does not want a repeat of last week. “Every child I have cared for was exactly the same, and I would put money on the odds that you were once like that, too.”

“But… just in case…”

Liao Ming knows that she should not encourage this. Listening to him now will only make him worse. Even so, when she glances at him, at that look on his face…

Well, in the end, sect leader or no, he is still just a young man who has lost all his family. Just this much… wouldn’t be so bad.

“Give him here, then,” she says softly. “I’ll take a look at him.”

Relief washes over his face as he eases the baby into her arms. “Thank you. I’ll wait just here.”

“You can leave. I’ll bring him back when I’m done.”

“No, I… I’ll stay.”

“Of course.”

Next time, Liao Ming tells herself as she repeats the same checks she performed on the baby two days ago, and three days before that. Next time, she’ll tell him to let it go and be reasonable.

But when she hands the child back, and he thanks her in a voice barely above a whisper, eyes crinkled and shining and solely focused on his charge, she knows that she will not.

§

A-Jie,

You would love him more every day. I do.

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Since Streaky is canon now (yay! :D), I'm wondering, does Streaky exist in the Cool Aunt Kara AU too?

Short answer: YEP.

Longer answer:

Karais not a pushover. She's not.

Shepromised the Danvers that Alex would be in bed by eight. And she is!

Physically.In bed.

...Notasleep, but...Getting there?

“Okaaaaay,have I told you about the time Thara and I—”

“Yes,”Alex chirps, nodding solemnly.

“Howabout that one time I saved Atlantis?”

“Youtold that one last time.”

Karasighs, scratching her head. “Right, okay.” Alex looks at herexpectantly. The deal was, Alex would go to bed, if andonly if, Kara could deliver asatisfactory bedtime story. Kara had hastily agreed, of course, buthad not bothered to read the fine print:

Ithad to be one Alex had never heard before.

“Um...therewas that thing with the batmobile and the tire pump—”

Alexhuffs.

“Youtold that one too!” she says, crossing her arms and frowning. Karaholds up her hands.

“Right,right, okay!”

“It'sgotta be new.”

“Iknow, I know,” Kara placates, “just let me...” she trails off,thinking. She lets her gaze wander a bit, hoping something in Alex'sroom might offer inspiration.

Shockingly,Lego bricks and Barbies don't really jog any exciting memories.

There'sBrian the Otter, lying at the end of the bed, but Kara's alreadyexhausted her cache of Atlantean stories, apparently. A couple ofbrightly colored Beanie Babies, a cheap, carnival-grade Odie andGarfield, won last summer by Jeremiah—

Karastares at the faded orange cat.

“...HaveI ever told you...” she starts, the memory falling neatly intoplace, “about the time I accidentally gave my cat superpowers?”

Kansas,some years ago...

Thesun had not quite set over the Kent farm. It remained perched low onthe horizon, casting everything in an inviting orange glow, thelengthening shadows tinged with violet.

Karaignored the picturesque scene as she trudged angrily towards thebarn, Jon's toolbox in tow. The tools inside clanked noisily witheach step, announcing her intentions to a few stray chickens who hadwandered over from the coop out back.

“Shoo,”she muttered to the nearest one, who just stared and offered a mildlyoffended squawk. None of the chickens cared much for her; probablyhad something to do with her noisy trips to the barn.

(And...there was that one time...with the...super sneeze...)

Itwasn't her fault, though. (The noisy tool box. The super sneeze...that was definitely all her.) It was the dumb pod that was theproblem, refusing to work properly. She approached the craft inquestion, letting the toolbox drop to the hard packed earth floor ofthe barn with a sharp KER-CLANK.

Shetugged the faded blue tarp aside, gathering the material up into acrinkled, messy bundle before tossing it away.

Dull silver metal caught the early evening sunlight, and the glarereminded Kara to trot back to the barn door, and nudge it closed.

Theywere quite a ways from their nearest neighbor, but. They weren't all thatfar from the main road, and the glare would attract attention.

Doorshut, the interior of the barn was decidedly more gloomy, all dullbrowns and dusty air. Slivers of orange and yellow light peeking out frombetween the wooden slats were enough to work by for now, but. Inabout thirty minutes or so, Kara would have to break out the lantern.

Sighing,she approached the pod again, this time clambering into the crampedcockpit. Her hands automatically moved to the controls, muscle memorytaking over from there as she cycled through the safety checks andflight monitors—all essentially useless now, given the current fuellevels.

Ofcourse, she wasn't interested in a joyride, so it didn't matter. Shewas more concerned with the on-board computer, and the knowledgestored therein.

AccessCode: Accepted. The messagescrolled lazily across the readout in the familiar, blockycharacters of Kryptonese. Kara smiled in spite of herfrustration—reading Kryptonian was so...instantand effortless. English always took half a second more.

Query?

Karasighed, pulling a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of herjeans. In smudged ink was a list of possible search topics that,hopefully, would lead her to something, anything on theon-board computer resembling an encyclopedia, or collection of...of...

Well.A collection of whatever was kept on the Sun Stones.

Thenew search terms she had thought up in the last week were just asnonsensical as the ones she'd come up with the week prior, and theone before that, and the one before that. She ran out of logicalinputs well within the first month of trying to extract everythingshe could from the pods—now she was down to the really weirdstuff that was almost certain to bring up absolutely nothing.

Andshe was right, of course, which meant she had to try and deal withthe darn Sun Stones again.

Ah,the Sun Stones.

Wayeasier to use than the dumb controls on the pod. In theory, anyway.

Shegrit her teeth as she climbed back out of the pod, stalking over tothe workbench where, tucked in a hidden compartment, wrapped in aboutfour layers of grease-covered drop cloths, were the six Sun Stonesthat had accompanied the El children on their journey from Krypton.

Everythingthey'd need to know, everything they'd need to survive.

Andunderneath the bundle of red-tinged prisms was the light array thatallowed the information to be read off the nigh-invisible groovesetched in the crystalline surface.

Thevery broken, entirely useless light array.

Sheset the Sun Stones aside, pulling out the pieces of thearray and setting them on the workbench, running her fingers over themetal casings and tiny, fractured parts.

Afterstaring at them for a while, she took a seat on the nearby stool, andstared some more.

Staredand thought. Ran over various solutions to the problem athand—solutions she hadn't yet tried a dozen times over.

Thetask was difficult for a number of reasons, but almost all of themcould be boiled down to the fact that Earth simply wasn't equipped todeal with this technology—all the tools at her disposal wereso...so primitive. Taking a wrench to this was a sure fire wayto cause even more damage. (Kara knew, because she'd triedthat and all she had to show for it was more broken pieces.)

Shesighed, reaching for the most intact portion—the housing of thesmall deltahedron core. That, thankfully, was stilloperational. The core emitted a bright, cheerful sort of blue light,and hummed almost imperceptibly. She was trying to find a way tojust...bypass all the broken bits and make due with the workingpieces, but. Without the actual light part of the light array,all she really had was an extremely efficient battery and...yeah. Anextremely efficient battery.

“Maybe...maybesomething with magnifying glasses?” Kara muttered to herself,pulling the deltahedron from the housing and blowing off a bit ofdust that had settled on the surface. The barn door behind hercreaked, and Kara turned, ready to tell the intruding chickens to getlost.

Exceptit wasn't the chickens, but rather, the large, orange tabby that hadtaken up residence in the hayloft.

“Oh,hello,” Kara greeted the cat happily. She much preferred hercompany to the chickens. “Want back up in the loft?”

Thecat didn't answer (she so rarely did) and instead trotted to one ofthe posts and rubbed her flank along the corner, purring noisily.Kara stood to shut the barn door, but before she could do so, threetiny kittens scurried inside.

“Oh,hey!” she exclaimed, grinning. “You've got a family!” shepaused, something clicking. “That explains the round stomach...Ikinda thought you were just. Overeating.”

Again,the cat ignored her, but the kittens...they took a keeninterest in Kara's presence, sniffing at her work boots, pawing ather feet for attention.

Shehesitantly granted their request, keeping the interactions to pettingonly—she didn't really trust herself to handle the tiny things—theylooked so small and fragile, and she...she was clumsy. And superstrong.

Theyseemed pleased, though, purring up a storm and mewling happily. Karafound herself delighted by the distraction.

“Youguys are so cute,” she remarked softly, “And way more interestingthan broken Sun Stone tech.”

Thesmallest of the bunch—another orange tabby with a random whitepatch on its side—meowed loudly in what Kara had to assume wasagreement.

Sheliked that one. A lot.

“Areyou guys hungry?” she asked, carefully standing. She was prettysure Martha had some sort of canned meat on hand. “I don't think wehave tuna, or anything. But. We might have that fake ham stuff.”

Therewas no cry of protest (not that Kara really expected one) soshe figured that would work. She briefly wondered if she should putthe Stones and array back in the workbench, but. She wouldn't be gonethat long.

“Beright back,” she promised, hoping they'd stick around a bit longer.They were a great distraction, yes, and infinitely preferableto angrily fiddling with the array all evening, but. Moreimportant than that...

Karawanted to show Clark.

“Whatwere the cats' names?” Alex wants to know.

Karapauses, mid-recollection, momentarily caught off guard.

“What?”

“Thecats' names,” Alex repeats, only slightly exasperated. Apparently,this is vital information that she needs. Right now.

“Well...therewas Streaky...” she frowns, trying to remember. “And Fluffy, Ithink? Or Fuzzy...no. Fozzy. And the other one was Kermit. Yeah.” She looksover at Alex.

She'sfrowning. “Those names are...okay, I guess.”

Karashrugs. “Clark likes the Muppets.”

Alex doesn’t pursue that line of questioning further. Instead, she has others: “Isthe light ray the one my dad fixed?”

“Yes.”

“Didthe mom cat have a name?”

“No,we just called her barn cat.”

“Howmean were the chickens?”

“Verymean.”

“Howdid the cat get powers?”

“I'mnot there yet.”

“Oh,yeah. You gotta finish it.”

“Yes,well. May I?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay,so. The SPAM...”

“What'sit?” Clark asked as Kara tied his shoes. Martha stood by, plate ofprocessed meat product on hand, ready to go.

“It'sa surprise,” Kara told him with a grin. Clark wiggled eagerly,reaching for his sweater, and tried to hurriedly tug it over his headwithout Kara's help.

Hegot a little bit tangled, the sleeves turned at an odd angle, but hemanaged to get his head through.

“Iwanna see!”

“'Kay.But you have to be quiet,” Kara said, straightening thesweater. Martha laughed as Clark covered his mouth with his hands.“And no peeking, either,” Kara made him promise, though shedoubted he'd be able to get his x-ray vision working properly. Hewasn't quite...there yet, in terms of control.

Still,she did want it to be a surprise, so she waited for Clark toagree.

Whichhe did, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster while still beingvery, very quiet.

Karachuckled, and took the plate of meat from Martha.

“I'llbe out in a minute,” Martha said, turning back to the kitchen.“Just have to finish up the green beans.”

“Okay,”Kara said, taking Clark's hand. The two made for the barn, and Karareviewed the rules.

“We'regonna be quiet, right?”

“Yes!��he cried.

“Shhh,”Kara said, and Clark nodded, this time whispering back, “yes!”

Satisfied,Kara opened the barn door and told Clark to take the plate (with bothhands!) over to the middle-ish of the barn and set it on the ground.She could see the mother still basically in the same place she'd lefther, and spotted two of the three kittens playing with some hay a fewfeet off to the side.

Clark'sface lit up when he saw them, and it was clearly a strugglefor him to walk slowly to put the plate down, but he managed.

“Stayquiet and still,” Kara instructed, knowing that he'd want to petthem as soon as they approached. “Let them eat first, okay?”

“Okay,”Clark once again agreed, watching with rapt attention as the catscame over.

Well,as most of the cats came over. Where was the third one?

Karalooked towards the loft and the stacked bales of hay, but saw nottrace of the orange kitten. It wasn't by the pod, either. Where—

Somethingclattered, and then a loud buzzing filled the barn. The catsbristled, and Clark clamped his hands over his ears.

Karafelt the color drain from her face, recognizing the soundimmediately.

Thedeltahedron.

Shespun on her heel and—just as she feared—the orange kitten hadbeen batting around the sphere that Kara had left out on theworkbench.

She'dknocked it to the ground, and Kara could see, even from several feetaway, that the outer shell of the core was cracked. Blue energypulsed and sparked...

Butworse than that?

Thefact that the dumb catwas still playing with it.

“No!”Kara yelped, rushing forward with super speed as the kitten raised atiny paw, and the core burned bright blue with energy. She grabbedthe kitten in one hand, the core in the other.

Bigmistake.

Thecore burned on contact, and for a terrifying moment, Kara could feelthe energy as it raced up her arm and into her chest. The kittenyowled, clawing from her grasp a split second before she dropped thesmoldering deltahedron.

Bothlanded on the barn floor, but only onetook off for the safety of the hayloft, her siblings close on her tail.

Clarkwas crying, surprised by the loud noise and worried something hadhappened to the cats, or his cousin, or both.

Andthat of course,brought Martha running from the house, as Kara hissed and mutteredunder her breath and wondered if she should apply cold water to the burn,or just stand out in the sun for a bit.

“Whathappened?” Martha asked, rushing first to Kara, and then to Clark,once Kara waved her off.

“Catsmessed with...with a thing,” Kara struggled to explain, still a bitrattled by the whole experience. Deltahedrons were some of thesmallest power sources they'd had back on Krypton, but geez...didthey pack a punch.

“Shhhh,shhhh, hey, it's okay, it's okay,” Martha was telling Clark, overand over. Kara nodded, forcing a smile.

“Yeah,I'm fine Kal,” and she would be, so it was kinda true. “I'm sorryI yelled, I was worried about the kitty.”

“IsKitty okay too?” Clark wanted to know, sniffling. Kara x-rayed thebales of hay, and saw the entire cat family, spooked, but otherwisefine.

“Yeah,”Kara told him, pointing to the hayloft with her good hand. “Theywere just scared by the loud noise.”

“Likeme?”

“Yeah,”Kara said again, and winced as Martha tugged at her hand to get abetter look.

“Whatdid you say the cat was messing with?” she asked. Kara sighed.

“Adeltahedron.” She hissed as Martha continued to inspect the burn.

“Well.I have no idea what that is, but I'm surprised it managed to burn you,what with your thick skin and all,” she mused quietly. “You tellme—do we treat this like a regular burn?”

“Idon't know,” Kara admitted. “I think it'll heal, but...” hereyes were starting to sting, because the burn was starting to hurt.“Um. Could we...?”

“Iceit in the meantime?”

“Yes,please.”

Atwhich point, Martha ushered both Kryptonians back to the house,though Clark protested a little—he wanted visual proofthat the 'kitties were good.' (His words.) And it was only Martha andKara's combined persuasive arguments that he finally acquiesced,allowing the trio to go back to the kitchen, where Martha procuredfrozen peas and some aloe vera for Kara's hand.

“Yousaid the cat gets superpowers.”

“I'malmost there, okay?”

Thecats were scarce after that, and Kara couldn't blame them. Sheherself was less than eager to return to working on the light array,as it would involve patching the deltahedron's shell.

Notexactly something she was looking forward to.

Herhand did heal on itsown, but not before she spent several hours whining about it.(Because it hurt andwhat a dumb thing painwas. She'd been without it for about four years and she didn't missit much.)

Clarkkept asking about the 'kitties,' (again, his words) and desperately,desperately wanted hiscousin to find them.

“They'renot in the hayloft, Clark,” she groaned after he asked for the sixhundredth time as to their whereabouts. “I don't know where theywent.”

“Findthem,” he suggested, and Kara sighed.

“Ican try,” is all she was able to offer.

Clarkwas not pleased.

Butat least he stopped asking after that. And Kara thought the issue hadbeen dropped.

Untilone afternoon, a few days later, when she returned home from schoolto find Martha scolding Clark in the living room.

“Clark,”she said, tone stern. “Did you do this?”

Shegestured to some scorch marks on the rug.

“Kittydid it,” Clark said with sincerity.

Karahad to stop herself from laughing out loud.

“NowClark,” Martha bent down, so that she was eye-to-eye with him. “Youknow kitties don't have special eyes like you do.”

“Theorange kitty does,”he insisted, and looked back at Kara, who had set her bag aside, andtaken a seat on the bottom most set of stairs in order to tug off hershoes. “The one Kara touched. It glowed blue!”

Andof course. Neither Kara nor Martha believedthis outlandish tale about a glowing blue cat with superpowers. Thatwould be ridiculous.

Marthawas getting ready to further interrogate Clark when Jonathan walked in from the kitchen, cleaning his hands on arag.

“Thereyou are!” he exclaimed, beaming at Clark. “I wondered where myassistant had wandered off to.”

Marthablinked.

“Hewas with you? Out in the barn?”

“Allmorning.”

Karaand Martha stared at one another for a moment.

“Clark...”Kara says slowly, “where did Kitty go?”

Kitty,as it turned out, went quite a few places. All they had to do wasfollow the trail of smoldering destruction.

“Thankgoodness she didn't go back to the barn,” Jonathan muttered,stamping out a small fire in a tall patch of weeds.

Thekitten certainly lookednormal, and perfectly content to nibble on some blades of grass. Butstray sparks of blue energy would occasionally arc up her spine, andwhen she sneezed, well.

Karaunderstood why the rug wound up scorched.

“So...so,”Martha folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head, staringat the cat. “Your...deltahedron? Is that what you call it?”

Karanodded. “Yes.”

“Yourdeltahedron...gave a kitten superpowers.”

“Idon't...think so,” Kara frowned and thought about the incident, andthe odd feeling in her arms and chest. “I think...Ihad something to do with it.”

“You?”

“Yeah,I...” Kara wasn't sure exactly how to articulate, nor could sheactually prove it,but. Hedrons didn't give people powers. They just...didn't.

Thefact that her weird alien DNA had been literally standing between thehedron and the cat, though.

Thatwas food for thought.

“Theenergy went through me, first. So...” Kara shrugged. “MaybeI...rubbed off on her.”

Jonathanlaughed, and Martha shook her head.

“Wellthat...certainly is something.”

Clarkgiggled in delight as the cat sneezed again, and sent up a spray ofsparks. Both Jonathan and Martha took a step back, while Kararemained seated in the weeds.

Thekitten shook herself, licked her paw, and promptly trotted overbefore curling up in Kara's lap.

“O-oh,”Kara exclaimed, surprised but also...not-so-secretly pleased. “Um.Hi.”

Thecat sneezed again, and Kara flinched, but the sparks didn't hurt. Notmuch, anyway.

Theydid burn small holes in her shirt sleeves, though.

“Wecan't let her wander off,” Jonathan surmised, taking a look at thepatch of smoking earth. “Last thing Smallville needs is a felinearsonist running around.”

“Sowe let her burn down our house instead, hmmm?” Martha asked with a smirk.Jonathan shrugged.

“Well...”

Asthey went back and forth, trying to figure out how to deal with thesuperpowered kitten, Kara thought about the deltahedron, and thecracked casing of the shell.

“Ithink,” she interrupted the two of them. “I have an idea.”

Karacarried the cat back to the barn; neither Jonathan nor Martha couldrisk being zapped by weird Kryptonian energy, for obvious reasons.(Those reasons being: injury, and/or accidental superpower acquisition.)

Clarkoffered, but Kara didn't trust him to keep a tight enough grip on thecat—or maybe, it would be tootight. Clark's powers were still developing, but even at this nascentstage, they were potent.

Shedid, though, eventually have to pass the kitten off to him in orderto work. She was less concerned, however, because Martha and Jonathanstood guard at the barn door, ready and armed with welding masks andrubber gloves, should the cat make a break for it.

“Holdon tight, but not too tight, okay? Be gentlewith the kitty,” Kara instructed, belatedly realizing that sheherself had managed to transport the animal without squishing it. 

It was a pleasant surprise.

Clarknodded, and the kitten settled comfortably into his small arms. Hereverently stroked her head, using the lightest touch he couldmuster.

Karasmiled, and retreated to the workbench, where she regarded thedeltahedron casing with something of a resigned air.

“Thisis gonna make it harder to fix, isn't it?” she hadn't noticed thatJonathan had joined her. She curled her fingers into a fist, pressingher knuckles into the surface of the workbench. It creaked a little, but didn’t splinter.

“It'lltake a bit longer, yeah,” she told him. Though...it wasn'tentirely...truthful. It implied that there was even hope of fixingit in the first place, and. What with the deltahedron no longer being stable, and the amount of materials she'd need justto put the brokenparts back together, let alone the whole system...

She...shejust knew. That she'd never be able to get it to work.

“ButI mean...” she looked at Jonathan. “It's...my fault the cat'slike this. I have to help her,” she said, and then, frowning,added, “and I reallydon't want her to burn down the farm.”

“Yeah,I think we'd all like to avoid that,” he teased her.

Shetook a deep breath, reached for the casing, as well as Jonathan's boxof tools, and got to work.

Thecollar was not pretty.

Weirdhunks of alien plastic stitched onto mismatched scraps of nylon, itlooked less like a collar, and more like a collection of junk, strungaround the cat's neck.

Butwhen the cat sneezed?

Thesparks were drawn to the Kryptonian material via a process that, evenif Kara could explainit to Jonathan and Martha, their human brains would have no frame ofreference for it. Earth lacked the necessary scientific terms todescribe it.

Neitherof them seemed too concerned with the 'why,' though.

“Justso long as it works,” Jonathan remarked, pleased to see the collardoing its job. “Now she can come in the house.”

“We'rekeeping Kitty?” Clark asked somewhat breathlessly.

Jonathannodded. “She already pretty much lives in the barn.” The catsneezed, and once more, the sparks leaped to the collar. “And Idon't think we want to explain...that. To folks.”

BothMartha and Kara shook their heads. No, they did not.

“Soshe stays!” Jonathan declared, and Clark shrieked with pleased laughter.

“She'llneed a name,” Martha told the two of them. Kara and Clark thoughtfor a moment, staring at the kitten.

“Ilike Kitty,” Clark said.

“Simple,straightforward...” Jonathan nodded. “No frills...”

Karawasn't so sure.

“Well...whatabout...”

“Kermit,”Alex guesses.

Karais once more forced to an abrupt halt, stumbled by the interruption.

“What?No!” Kara says. “Streaky. We named the cat Streaky.”

Alexpushes up from her pillows and leans forward. “How come?”

Karasmirks and points back to the pillows. Alex huffs, and lies back downas Kara re-tucks her in.

“Becauseof that white spot on her side,” Kara says. “Like. A littlestreak. So...Streaky.”

“Whynot Sparky?”

“Becausethat's...” Kara blinks. “...Oh, that's...that's actually...prettygood,” she mutters under herbreath, before coughing and continuing. “Erherm. Clark likedStreaky.”

“Well,tell Clark it's a weird name.”

“I'lllet him know.”

“Andthat Sparky's better.”

“Gotit.”

“Thanks,Kara,” Alex says, pulling up the covers and reaching for Brian theOtter. Kara helps bridge the gap a bit, bringing the stuffed animalcloser so Alex can grab him. “That was a good story.”

“You'rewelcome,” Kara says, and can't help sounding a little bit pleased.She leans over to turn out the light. “Nightlight?”

“Psssh,no, nightlights arefor little kids.”

“Right,sorry.”

Shebids Alex goodnight, giving her a quick hug before turning off theswitch and heading for the door.

“Um,wait...” Alex says. Kara turns.

“DoesBrian need the nightlight?”

“...Yeah.”

“Thoughthe might,” Kara says, stooping to plug it in. “Night, Brian.Night Alex.”

“NightKara.”

Fin

[betweenpaperpages]

Hear Me Still - Chapter Three

A new store-front is set to open on main street in Storybrooke and with it brings new resident Mr. Gold to the center of attention. While he looks forward to this new step in business, it is yet unknown if his deafness will set him back once again.

Beta: @ishtarelisheba

Read on AO3!

[Chapter One] [Chapter Two]

Chapter Three: Shut Down to A Whisper

A vintage apothecary case sat on the glass counter in front of Marcus. The cherry wood had been brought back to a gleaming shine while each hinge and drawer and been carefully revived to working order.

It was certainly a piece that Marcus had pride in. However, parting with the item wasn’t what left him standing opposite the pharmacist looking baffled.

Mr. Clark, the towns ironically, chronically ill pharmacist, sneezed once again where he stood in the shop.

Had that been sneeze number six or seven? His eyes shifted over to Jefferson who was speaking with a young woman with long black hair pulled back in two intricate ponytails, seemingly discussing a sword on the counter between them.

“I - I need to - t-t-o-o-o-” Mr. Clark sneezed into his handkerchief once again.

Marcus’ eyes darted over to Jefferson once again, his breathing picking up in speed, his thumb and forefingers rubbing together as he tired to calm his rising anxiety.

“Bless you!” Jefferson called, walking over to stand at Marcus’ side. He grinned as he leaned his forearm on his shorter friend casually. “Maybe you should talk to Dr. Whale about that, hmm?”

Mr. Clark tucked away his handkerchief as he nodded. “Yes well -- “

“Oh! Are you snagging up this piece?” Jefferson questioned, pulling away from Marcus. “ I had a friend with his eye on it for a while when it was listed online. He’s going to be disappointed to hear someone beat him to it!”

Jefferson reached out to snag the tag off the antique, gesturing towards the other counter. “Let me get you rung up.”

Mr. Clark nodded wordlessly and followed him over to the register without a word of protest, leaving Mr. Gold to his own devices.

xxxxx

The rest of the morning had gone fairly smoothly after that. The customers had adored Grace along with her baked goods. It really had added to the ‘small town’ atmosphere in just the right way.

While he wouldn’t consider it a booming success, he wouldn’t call it a failure either. The traffic of the town folk was steady throughout the day, all curious about the new shop and to see its wears. By the end of the day the shop had done fairly well with sales, as Marcus predicted, the smaller items were in larger demand. However, a first time customer could turn into a long-term customer, and with items being added on a weekly basis they would return.

With Jefferson and Grace at his side he was able to navigate the trickier tricker parts of communication with customers. Although Jeff shot him a look when he refused to sign while one was in the room. He had a feeling they would have a discussion about that later on.

Grace had even offered up helpful hints as to what each person had hobbies and interests in. When asked why she knew such details, she simply chalked it up to being a spy. The idea of little Grace dressed all in black being lowered from the ceiling of the National Museum of Natural History in order to steal the Hope Diamond only added to the humor of the idea.

The pair of them had been a dream team and Marcus couldn’t complain when it came time to get Grace home and fed dinner. He gave them both a tight hug before waving them off, promising that he would be home after the shop closed for the night.  

Marcus had sat down in the back for a short break after making a cup of tea when the high-pitched ringing of the bell above the door caught his attention. The sound was within his hearing rage, even without his hearing aids, so he had opted not to get an alert and notification system.

With a sigh he set his cup aside on the desk knowing it would end up ice cold and untouched, quickly heading out to the sales floor to greet the customer.

“Good —”

Marcus stopped short of his greeting as his eyes landed on the petite brunette that was currently browsing the shop. She didn’t seem to have heard him as she was absorbed in studying the objects and art throughout the shop.

Her chestnut brown curls framed her face as they cascaded over her shoulders, standing out in contrast against the light gray cardigan, layered over a floral blouse. The top was tucked neatly into a pleated black box skirt and while tights hid her shapely legs they lead down to a pair of tall stilettos.  

He opened his mouth again to speak just as her focus shifted, her gaze landing on him, finally picking up on the fact someone else was in the room.

“Hello!” she greeted, her smile large and warm.

Marcus was hopeless in doing anything but returning it in kind, his cheeks burning in embarrassment as he glanced away for a moment. He hadn’t meant to stare, but nodded in reply to her greeting.

“I saw your hours posted outside but I didn’t have a chance to come by earlier. You just opened today, right?”

He moved a tad closer to the woman, standing behind the counter as he lowered his gaze to her lips. She had a warm and rich accent with vowels that were just a bit to wide and open to catch everything she said clearly.

A nod seemed to satisfy her when he caught on to a few words, reaching behind his right ear to turn up the volume on the hearing aid, careful not to expose it from under his shaggy hair.

“I’ve only been here a couple minutes and it's already like I’ve taken a trip around the world! You have so many things here, there must be so many stories behind all if it.” Her lips spread into a smile with a light giggle following them.

“I’m Belle, by the way. Belle French.” She offered out her hand across the counter for him to accept, shaking his in turn. “You must be Mr. Gold. I run the library across the street.”

Marcus looked up to her eyes to make contact, finding the various shades and hues of glittering blue in them impossible to describe. He only had a moment to take them in before his attention dropped back to her lips, doing his best to read them; trying and failing not to notice how soft they looked.

“Do you collect all of this yourself? How far do you travel for your work?” Belle questioned, walking down the length of the counter, her fingers lightly ghosting over a few items on display. “Must have taken you a lifetime to bring all of this together…”

Belle stopped to observe a rather intricately detailed gold-metal clock that sat on the counter, steadily ticking as it tracked the minutes and hours across its face. With the hands reading downwards to display that it was five thirty-seven, it offered the appearance of a mustache.

“This is French, is it not?” she questioned, looking over her shoulder.

Marcus’ brows furrowed together until he caught onto the word ‘French’ and offered a nod of confirmation. Her warm voice was enjoyable to listen to yet her Australian accent threw not only his hearing off, but his lip-reading as well.

All accents caused people to have unique vocalizations but also different mouth positions when speaking… and reading an Australian accent was not something he had much practice with.

“France is on my list of places to travel,” Belle explained, “considering its my namesake it seemed an obvious country to visit.” She looked back to the timepiece, reading the hands once again.

“Oh shoot! I am so sorry, Mr. Gold! I wasn’t paying attention to the time at all, I’ve kept you past closing time.” Belle adjusted the strap of her purse where it was hanging on her shoulder before offering him another smile, heading towards the door.

His eyes flicked up across her face to read her expression only to be drawn back to her mouth, finding that it shared the same delighted look as the rest her.

“Looks like I’ll have to add your shop to my travel plans as well,” she noted with a chuckle. “It’s a great deal closer than France. Have a good evening, Mr. Gold.” Belle waved before she stepped out of the shop, the door closing behind her.

Marcus released a long breath that he hadn’t known he was holding, allowing himself to be in the moment to decompress the whirlwind that was Belle French.

Out of everything that Marcus had predicted to happen that day, one or two of them had come true; being left breathless and dumbfounded had not been one of them.

Chapter Notes:

An alert and notification system is typical a visual system (via the use of lights) to notify a deaf individual about an event or action. Most commonly these are set up as doorbells and fire alarms, but have also expanded into baby monitors, telephones, and other safety features.)

[supernatural-stuffs]

Coffee Convos

A/N: I wrote this one-shot for @queen-of-deans-booty ‘s Trope Challenge. My prompt was #30-I see you at the coffee shop all the time, looking beautiful and minding your own business and I see you reading/writing/etc and now I can think of an excuse to talk to you. I may write a part two to this, depending on the feedback I get. Thanks for reading!

Warnings: descriptions of Jensen Ackle’s thighs, swearing

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Word Count: 3,145

Disclaimer:  Jensen is single for the purposes of this fic. No hate intended towards Danneel or his family-this is purely fiction!!!

Also: Y/L/N’s = the name of the coffee shop

I hurried down the sidewalk, knowing I had only minutes left. My feet pounded on the pavement faster and faster until I was practically running, weaving through various pedestrians and passers-by. It was obvious to anyone that I was running late today. There wasn’t exactly a particular reason for said lateness, except maybe my penchant for hitting the snooze button one too many times. Thank God the building was only a 5 minute walk from my apartment in downtown Austin.

Finally I reached my destination. Peeking through the window of the small coffee shop, I sighed in relief. Not a customer in sight. Despite my belatedness, I had managed to beat the morning rush. I pushed through the glass doors, nearly crashing into a tall stack of boxes as I did so.

“Sorry Sarah! Didn’t see you there.”

A flustered face peeked out from behind the tower of cardboard.

“Oh, hey Y/N. I’ll grab you your usual as soon as I toss these.”

“I’ll grab the boxes,” I offered. “The morning rush will be coming in soon, and you should be at the counter.”

She nodded and handed me her load before hurrying to the counter, throwing on her apron. I saw her get to work on my latte as I left. Though there were other employees that could have made my drink, Sarah was my favorite. I’m not sure exactly how she did it, but somehow it always tasted better when she made my coffee.

Throwing the heap into the dumpster in the back, I returned quickly, the extra promise of caffeine hurrying my movements.

Sarah slid it across the counter to me, bartender style. I took a long drag, savoring the sweet caramel flavor.

“Mmm. God, this is good. Remind me to give you raise or something.”

Sarah quirked her eyebrow. “Is that you or the caffeine talking?”

“Probably the caffeine,” I admitted. “But I can’t be held accountable for anything I say under the influence of this beautiful, beautiful drink.”

I took another big gulp of it, and Sarah just rolled her eyes. She knew better than to contest my coffee addiction.

“You were late today,” she pointed out instead. “Almost got caught in the swarm.” She gestured her head towards the line that was already starting to form.

“Yeah well, I was up late last night.”

“Ooh,” she wiggled her eyebrows. “Out partying?”

I scoffed. “Right. Because I have such a corybantic social life.”

“Well you would if you stopped using words like corybantic.”

I scoffed. “Don’t you have work to do?” I looked pointedly at my other employees, frantically trying to fulfill orders as caffeine-starved people jockeyed for their orders.

She sighed and got back to work, mixing drinks while I took my coffee to my regular spot. Getting my laptop out, I started going over the notes my editor had sent me. I had been working my ass off for the past few weeks trying to get my book polished off and edited. Between that and running my little cafe, I had been burning the midnight oil much too late for my liking. I briefly pondered on Sarah’s comments on my social life. Though I knew she was joking, it wasn’t too far from the truth. Sure, I had friends, and it wasn’t as if I was some kind of social pariah, but my double career life did leave something to be desired in regards to the recreational department.

I shook off the thoughts and went back to revising. I could contemplate on the inner workings of my life some other time.

After about three hours, I decided that it was time I took a break. Though I had been there quite some time, it was nearing around nine o’ clock, and people were still bustling about trying to fulfill orders. I thought briefly about jumping in to help out, but then I remembered my last attempt at barista-ing (is that even a word?). Long story short, we were forced to buy three new coffee makers after I attempted a new style of brewing that I had seen on the Food Network. I have since sworn off both coffee making as well as watching Barefoot Contessa.

So I allowed my employees do what I paid them to do, and settled in with Crime and Punishment. It was about my eighth time re-reading it, but what can I say? We all have our guilty pleasures. An old woman being axe-murdered just happens to be one of mine.

I was just getting to Razumikhin’s visit when a voice pulled me out of my reading-induced stupor.

“Crime and Punishment, huh?”

I glared at the book, refusing to look up. I knew it was a customer. Everyone who worked at Y/L/N’s knew not to interrupt me while I was in the midst of reading. As pet peeves go, it was near the top of my list, right up there with loud chewing and people who don’t cover their mouths when they sneeze.

I responded without moving my head in the slightest, turning my page to signify that I was, in fact, reading, and not just staring blankly at a book hoping that a stranger would strike up conversation with me.

“Mmhm.”

“That seems pretty heavy for a coffee shop read, don’t you think?”

Man, this guy really doesn’t take a hint, does he? And who says coffee shop reading has to be light? I certainly had never heard of that social norm. And you know what else I had never heard of? People being overjoyed when a stranger interrupts their reading. So I turned my face up to look at him, ready to tell this guy off for being especially rude and discourteous.

And I stopped dead in my movements. Because it just so happened that Mr. Book Interrupter was incredibly hot. Gorgeous, actually. Some might even call him beautiful. With those green eyes and that light scruff and that sharp jawline. Dear Lord.

Oh, and he was Jensen Ackles. You know, the famous guy? The one who’s on that really popular TV show with the monsters and ghosts and the like? The one that I may or may not have been obsessed with at that current moment in time?

So, naturally, I stared with my mouth hanging open like a fool for…I don’t know, ten seconds? Or maybe it was ten minutes. It felt like ten years, but I knew that was probably unlikely.

He chuckled a little awkwardly, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. This was enough to snap me out of it. I shut my mouth quickly, hoping there was no drool littering my chin, and looked away, embarrassed.

“Sorry, I, um, didn’t mean to stare.”

He nodded, his cheeks a little pink, and I vaguely thought about what it would be like to run my fingers over his blushing cheek, to see if that scruff was as delicious feeling as it looked. Thankfully, my fingers didn’t obey this command. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered reading that he had moved to Austin. But I had never even imagined the possibility that he would be here, in my tiny coffee shop. Why was he here? There were plenty of other, more upscale cafes in Austin. Ones that were surely more worthy of his celebrity status.

My brain suddenly reminded me that he had said something before I so rudely chose to gawk. Ah, right! My book. Even all the glory of Jensen fucking Ackles wasn’t enough to take away from the fact that I was still a little miffed about that. So I decided to treat him as I would any other stranger who had chosen to interrupt my leisure time. I mean, he’s just a person, right? An incredibly handsome, talented, famous person, but a person nonetheless. And it’s not like I was obsessed with him. I was obsessed with the character he played. And that’s totally different.

At least, that’s what I told myself. It was a lie, of course, but it helped me muster up the courage to at least speak in his presence.

“Right, well, Dostoevsky’s writing actually isn’t that complex. Most of his works have overarching themes of nihilism and the natural psychological tendencies of mankind, so once you realize that it’s pretty much just plot analyzation.”

Oh God. I was going for slightly annoyed yet still cool and collected, but instead I did the thing. The rambling thing. Sarah called it my nerd brain purge. Apparently when I get nervous I tend to over inform. God, this interaction was getting more embarrassing by the second.

Jensen looked just as surprised as I did. Maybe he thought I was going to stare at him some more. He sat down in the armchair next to me, wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. His glorious, glorious thighs. I had dreamed of those bowlegs before, but TV and my imagination didn’t do them nearly enough justice. Aaand now I was fangirling again. Don’t stare, don’t stare, don’t stare, I repeated like a mantra in my brain.

It was harder to keep my cool than I had previously expected.

“Well, uh, that certainly sounds complex to me. But I haven’t exactly read much Dostoevsky, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

I smiled slightly and nodded. Maybe that was the approach to take. If I just kept my mouth shut, nothing else stupid could come tumbling out.

He seemed at a loss for what to say next. I saw a light bead of perspiration forming on his upper lip, and he started fidgeting with a tiny thread that was poking out of the sleeve of his jacket. Was he nervous? All the signs seemed to point to that. But what possible reason would Jensen Ackles, TV star and celebrity extraordinaire, have to be nervous around me? In fact, why did he even come over here in the first place?

I decided to abandon my former rule about speaking, my curiosity getting the best of me.

“So, uh, did you need something? I’m sure you didn’t come over here just to discuss the many plot devices of Dostoevsky.”

I let out a little laugh, trying to relieve the tension that hung in the air between us.

Jensen laughed slightly, too, and blushed again. He seemed even more flustered now. I couldn’t understand why.

“Um I wanted to ask you-well actually I was wondering, uh, what your name is?”

I smiled slightly at his stuttering. I didn’t fully understand what was happening at the moment, but I did know that he was extremely adorable when he was ruffled.

“Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N.”

I thrust out my hand for him to shake.

He slid his hand into mine, and I swore I felt a spark of electricity travel up my arm when his rough, calloused hand enveloped mine.

“Jensen Ackles.”

“I know,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. My cheeks instantaneously burned red hot. Why, why did I have to say that?

He grinned. A contemplative look flashed across his face, then, and his brows furrowed as though he was attempting to solve a very difficult math problem.

“Wait, Y/L/N? As in…” he gestured to the area around us, indicating that he was asking about the coffee shop.

“One and the same.” I shook my head in affirmation, my cheeks still uncomfortably hot.

“So you’re the owner of this place?”

I nodded again, starting to feel like a bobblehead.

“That’s cool… that’s really cool.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to figure out where he was headed with all of this. He squirmed a little under my gaze.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked before I stopped myself.

He nodded, leaning a little closer to me as I spoke.

“Why are you talking to me? I mean, you’re a-you’re a celebrity. What made you want to make awkward small talk with me, of all people?”

There. It was out, now. The question that had been hanging in the air since he shad approached me. I may have sounded a little brusque while asking it, but at least I could know now, understand why Jensen had chosen to spend a beautiful Thursday morning in a cramped coffee shop, talking to a girl who had previously had her nose buried in a book.

“Well, um. This is going to sound super creepy.” He took a deep breath, and my eyebrows shot up in question, gesturing for him to continue.

“Well, I’ve kind of been…watching you.”

My eyebrows flew even higher.

“Watching me?” I squeaked.

“Not like that!” He said quickly. “I haven’t been stalking you or anything like that. It’s just… I’ve been coming in here every day for the past two months, and you’re here every day. Sitting in this same spot. And you always look super busy. Like, you’re always either writing furiously on that little notebook,” he motioned to my notepad beside me, which was, indeed, open and full of scribbled words. “or you’re typing on your laptop. And you have this incredible focus. I’ve never even seen you look up from your work. And you do this thing, where you scrunch up your eyebrows and chew on the inside of your cheek when you’re thinking really hard. I guess…today was just the first day I’ve ever seen you look…still. Calm. I don’t know, this probably sounds dumb, but there’s just something about you that made me feel like I had to talk to you. That I had to see what you were working on so furiously every day. And that I had to tell you that-that you’re extremely beautiful.” He said the last part in a big rush of air, like it had been physically painful for him to hold the words inside his chest and they just had to come out all at once.

I stared at him in shock. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Jensen Ackles was here. In front of me. Telling me I was beautiful and that he had noticed me. He had noticed me. He had been coming here for two months? And I had never seen him? How could I have missed him? He was JENSEN ACKLES. Was it really possible that I had been so wrapped up in trying to get my book finished that I had been completely missing looking up and seeing him all these days?

I hadn’t spoken for a good fifteen seconds, just staring at him numbly, trying to process everything he had said.

“Please, say something,” he begged. He looked a little desperate.

I forced myself to snap out of it.

“I-” I laughed a little, still reeling. “I don’t really know what to say. Thank you, I guess.”

He beamed at me, flashing his bright whites. My stomach flip flopped. That had been the first time he had smiled, really smiled, since we had started this conversation, and it took my breath away. We sat there for a moment, him smiling broadly and me grinning like a fool back at him. I got lost in those piercing eyes and the tiny freckles smattered across the bridge of his nose and continuing on to his cheeks.

The moment was interrupted by a loud ringing. We both jumped, and Jensen snatched his phone out of his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and his eyes widened.

“Oh shit. What time is it?” he asked frantically.

I checked my own phone. “Umm…almost 10:15.”

He swore under his breath again and answered the call with a swipe of his finger.

“Jared! Look, dude, I’m so sorry I’m late. I got caught up with something.”

He must have been talking to his costar, Jared Padalecki. I was struck again with how crazy and surreal this whole thing was. Not for the first time that day, I wondered if I was in some kind of a dream. Or maybe a drug-induced hallucination. But inwardly, I knew that my subconscious could never have been this creative. This was completely and totally one hundred percent real.

“Look, I’ll be there in five minutes, okay?…Yeah…Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

He ended the call with a jab of his finger, and turned back to me.

“You have to go,” I stated. I hoped my voice didn’t give away my disappointment.

“Yeah,” he said somberly. “I’m really sorry, but I completely forgot I made plans.”

“It’s okay,” I nodded. “I get it.”

He nodded, and started to get up, then seemed to think better of it and sat back down, facing me.

“Could we…could we do this again sometime? Not exactly this, obviously, I was thinking a different location, and a different day, and we would probably be wearing different clothes, and-”

I cut off his rambling, putting my hand on top of his. He looked down at our hands, and then back up at me.

“Yeah,” I smiled shyly. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

He bit his lip and grinned, gesturing to my phone. “Can I…?”

“Oh!” I typed in the password and handed it to him, allowing him to enter his phone number. He punched in some digits and handed it back. Our fingers brushed for a moment as I took it from him, and I felt that flip flop sensation in my stomach all over again. I smiled when I saw that he had saved his number under the name “Jay”.

“I’ve really gotta get going,” he said apologetically.

I nodded, and Jensen turned and started towards the door, dodging over-caffeinated soccer moms and their grabby children as he did. Once he reached the counter, though, he stopped. He swiveled to face me once more.

“Hey Y/N?” he called out through the din of people chatting and orders being yelled.

“Yeah?” I responded hopefully.

“Call me, okay?”

There was a kind of vulnerability in his eyes. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was almost as if he needed to hear me say it, that he needed the reassurance that I would actually use the number he’d given me.

So I stared into those emerald eyes and hoped that I looked sincere. “Yeah, Jensen. I’ll call you.” I smiled reassuringly.

He nodded. He looked a little more confident, a little more sure of himself, then, as he winked at me and turned on his heel to stride out the door.

I sighed happily, collapsing against my chair. Now I knew what all those romance novels (which I totally, definitely don’t have a stash of underneath my bed) were talking about when the girl got all swoony. My mind was moving at warp speed, trying to catalog every detail, every flash of those dimples to think back on later. I could not wait to tell Sarah about this.

[marauderingbad-blog]

Yer a Werewolf, Remus

PART 2/3

Read the Full Story on ArchiveOfOurOwn http://archiveofourown.org/works/11614782

The plan was simple: Distract McGonagall and recover the goods she had on Animagi. Well, the plan was simple in theory, that is. In reality, it’s nearly impossible to get one over Minerva McGonagall’s head--as evidenced by the towering pile of detention slips containing the names ‘James Potter and Sirius Black.’ Despite their grim odds, the boys considered themselves to be persevering overachievers in the field of mischief. If at first you do not succeed, try again--right?

In second-year Transfiguration class, Sirius sat at his desk with his foot tapping wildly from anticipation while his eyes were fixed on the clock above Professor McGonagall. For some reason, gaping at the clock was not helping it to move any faster. He was almost offended.

Sirius’ eyes began to sting when his cornea became arid from lack of blinking. He decided to abandon his intimidate-the-clock approach to passing the time. Instead, he scribbled a note on a black piece of parchment and casually tipped his chair back to subtly attract the glance of his best mate way across the room (clearly Mcgonagall had strategically selected their seating arrangements).

He hadn’t just yet mastered the art of nonverbal spells, and so subtly coughed into his fist and muttered a spell that intricately folded the note he had written into a tiny animated paper spider. It covertly crawled across the room and clambered onto James’ lap.

The note was written in a script using a powerful encryption charm so that the letters shuffled their places at random. But Sirius’ penmanship was so poor that the charm was practically unnecessary. The decrypted note read:

One of us here has failed the exam. A Hint: his name directly translates to ‘The Reliably feckless stubby Heffer’

He’ll be getting a lecture from Minnie post-class, no doubt.

Methinks ineptitude could be used in our favour.

P.S: I can smell Snivelly from here.

-With love from 7,000 kilometers away

The letter also included a crude animated drawing of an ongoing popular conversation topic between the boys: Professor Binns’ alleged death. In this scenario, alive professor Binns was being kicked in the face by a sneezing centaur.

James had been paying about as much attention to McGonagall’s lecture as his twelve-year-old mind could devote--he actually liked Transfiguration best, not that that equated to better behavior. James didn’t even have any parchment before him to take notes, but was instead just listening to McGonagall and committing what she said to memory, picturing what she was explaining in his head. Despite his relative attentiveness, James could sense Sirius as if an electric current had just run through him--his eyes immediately darted over in Sirius’ direction, and then with as much discipline as he could muster, looked back at McGonagall, watching the paper spider crawl it’s way over to him out of the corner of his eye. Once he felt it crawling up his leg, James discreetly opened it in his lap.

There could be no doubt which of them was failing. James looked over half-sympathetically at Peter. It wasn’t as though James didn’t try to help him, he just had very little patience and not the faintest clue how to explain something that seemed obvious to him. James dug his quill out of his bag and turned the parchment over:

Might as well make the best of a bleak situation. You go for her office, I’ll stand in as back up with some question or Quidditch thing. Probably will seem more natural coming from me. What do we do about Remus?

James paused to look up at the back of their friend’s sandy-blonde head. He was bent over, diligently taking notes, ever the model student. Peter occasionally looked frantically over his shoulder, no doubt trying to make sense of what he was writing. Remus was not likely to miss James and Sirius ruffling through McGonagall’s things, and he would most definitely ask questions. James felt a familiar pang of guilt at excluding Remus, but he knew if there was anyone who could talk them out of this, it was Remus himself. He couldn’t know.

Maybe I’ll distract Remus and be ready to step in with McG.

P.S. Smells like a bad fish and chips place on a summer night.

Fondly, Your Friend on Isolation Island

James had to smother a snort at the drawing Sirius had made of Binns. He sucked on the end of his quill, trying to think of a good retort, then eventually doodled Binns boring himself to death, falling asleep and suffocating in his own book. Slipping his wand out of his pocket, James pointed it at the parchment now in his lap and covered his mouth as he muttered a spell to transform it into a tiny paper fly that looped through the air and over to Sirius.

Sirius eagerly watched the paper-fly land before him on his notes (which were covered in doodles) and swiftly unfolded the note. After using the decryption charm, He scanned James’ response and failed to suppress a soft snicker at James’ cartoon.

And then it happened:

“Mr. Black,”

Of course McGonagall caught the laugh.

“I’m thrilled to find that you share my enthusiasm for the engorgement charm. Could you now tell us about the casting, duration and success outcome of its counter-spell?” Mcgonagall asked, her hawk-stare burning unblinkingly through Sirius’ soul.

Upon hearing his name, Sirius’s eyes grew as wide and round as two galleons.. In that horrific split second, he believed he’d been had. He quickly came to his senses, collected himself and assumed his natural haughty disposition.

“Erm...Counter-spell: shrinking charm. Casting time: one round. Duration: one scene. Excellent success entails shrinking the target one hundredth its original size, obviously…” He began to recite with bored monotony. Sirius so very badly wanted to add a snide remark such as ‘you know, its the spell Merlin permanently cast on Snape’s knob before he was born’--but for the sake of the mission, he restrained himself.

Professor McGonagall was satisfied enough with this answer but continued to eye Sirius and James for the remaining duration of class. Sirius waited until the perfect moment to send back the note with a pithy statement:

Put your cloak in my backpack once the bell rings and then we commence.

Don’t let Pete escape.

Once the bell rang, Sirius unzipped his backpack and began to collect his things at a markedly slower pace than usual.

Peter, on the other hand, was moving faster than he probably ever had in his entire life. The combination of vaguely knowing that a scheme was unfolding and the fact that it was now lunch time were both major adrenaline boosters. He stuffed stray bits of parchment hurriedly into his backpack, losing any hope for organization, and already he was perspiring. Professor McGonagall had requested to have a word with him but she was temporarily distracted as she was using a spell to erase the blackboard. This was Peter’s moment.

James was swift to block Peter’s escape route. He strode across the room, discreetly dropped his invisibility cloak from his own bag into Sirius’, then stood directly in Peter’s face.

“Pete. Don’t you have to talk to Professor McGonagall?” he asked, his tone communicating a great deal more than a casual reminder.

Peter’s face dropped and he opened his mouth, considering what would happen if he just told James that he was out, they’d have to do this without him, but then--

“Yes, Mr. Pettigrew, I would like to speak with you for a moment,” Professor McGonagall said sternly. Peter trembled at the mere sound of her voice.

“Y-yes, Professor.”

As Peter sulked over to McGonagall, James sauntered over to Remus. “Reckon we could do a lot of interesting stuff with those engorgement and shrinking spells, don’t you think?” he asked, leaning in towards him so McGonagall wouldn’t hear--and so Remus wouldn’t see Sirius disappearing under an invisibility cloak and sneaking off into McGonagall’s office.

Remus’ face twisted into a wry smile. He may have been the least offensive of them, but Remus was just as mischievous. “I’m sure we could think of about a hundred questionable uses,” he murmured as he packed his things up.

Once Sirius confirmed that he had found his opportune moment, he threw the cloak over his head and nimbly headed towards the large door leading to McGonagall’s office. The joy on Sirius’ face was unmistakable as he stepped into the private office of his most revered (and feared) professor. The secrets this room must hold..He let the cloak drop to the floor as he dazedly looked around. The awe faded a bit, and then, a lot, when he realized the sheer volume of books Professor McGonagall kept in here. This was not going to be as simple as he’d thought. He groaned and began to search, his excitement thoroughly dimmed.

“Sit, please.” Mcgonagall started, offering Peter the chair directly in front of her desk. “Mr. Pettigrew, I’m sure you understand why we must speak.” She began with a soft sigh. She felt rather sorry for the small plump boy, she knew he had been trying..for the most part. “Your marks for this term, Mr. Pettigrew, are deeply concerning..” She frowned. “Unfortunately I’ll have to write your mother again..”

Sirius grew weary from inspecting the bookshelves after a rather short period of time and began to rummage through the papers on McGonagall’s desk instead. His heart leapt when he suddenly realized that he had just scanned a letter with a familiar name on it. He looked back at it again and, yes.. The letter clearly read:

Mrs.Walburga Black Number 12 Grimmauld Place London

”Oh bugger…” Sirius grumbled with horror.

“How is the tutoring going on with Mr. Lupin?” McGonagall asked with a frown. “Shall I speak with one of the other boys? Perhaps they too can assist you. Potter certainly can help, can’t you Mr. Potter..?” She asked, noticing that he and Remus were still nearby. “...What are you still doing here, Potter..” Her eyes narrowed slightly. The boys never stuck around class, especially not when it was lunchtime.

James felt his heart lurch, and Remus frowned, wondering himself why James was talking to him here and not taking the conversation on the move to the Great Hall, but then--Remus’ brow furrowed at the realization--where was Sirius?

Clearing his throat to shake the nerves, James explained, “Actually, I was hoping to talk to you about something I was interested in from class, but only once you’re done talking with Peter.” McGonagall and Remus both looked weary, but not fully suspicious--Transfiguration was James’ favorite subject and the only one he really devoted some extra attention and effort towards. McGonagall assessed his claim trustworthy, then nodded her head.

“Alright, then, we can speak after. But Mr. Pettigrew needs more intensive tutoring.” She went on, addressing James, though still eyeing him suspiciously--it was more or less her default expression when it came to Potter or Black. “We’ll put together a schedule for him. When you have practice perhaps we can have Mr. Black assist as well..” She sounded far less sure about that last bit. “Don’t worry, Mr. Pettigrew, we’ll help sort this out for you.” She said sympathetically.

Sirius listened for their voices; hearing that they were all still conversing, he ripped opened the letter:

 Dear Mrs. Black,

I am writing in response to your requests regarding your son Sirius’s upcoming term progress assessment for the subject of Transfiguration. Despite Sirius’ s high marks on exams, I cannot honour your requests to adjust his overall term assessment. As we have discussed at several points both by owl and in-person, students at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry do not receive marks based on their intellectual potential and ancestry. Especially when given that that the student in question spends at least four nights per week in detention for Transfiguration alone.

Additionally, as you already know, I cannot and will not grant your secondary request of switching Sirius’s house. Speaking on behalf of the Gryffindor house, our loyalty never wavers.

You will have to take that one up with the sorting hat.

Always a pleasure, Minerva McGonagall

“Oh, sweet christmas hippogriffs--I love her.” He whispered with glee, then returned the letter to its envelope and placed it back on the desk. Surely, he’d receive a howler (or several dozen) in response, but the sending of this letter was dire. As he put the letter down his noticed a basket containing a cat scratching post directly beneath the desk. He knew he was very close now.

“What is it that you need, then, Mr. Potter?” Sirius heard Professor McGonagall ask from the otherside of the door.

James shifted his weight from one leg to another, anxiously wondering what was taking Sirius so long. Remus watched James intently as well, becoming all the more alarmed at Sirius’ absence.

“I was curious about the body weight aspect of the formula you taught us,” James explained. “What impact does it have on wand power and concentration if there’s a great disparity between the body weights in the objects you’re trying to transfigure?” he questioned. “Say, for example, if you try to transfigure something of a much lighter weight into something three or four times the original weight? Or if it’s the other way around, too, something of much greater weight into something much smaller?” James had to refrain from grinning at himself--not only did he effectively stall for Sirius, but he managed to ask McGonagall a question about the animagus transformation without being at all obvious.

McGonagall’s eyes glinted subtly, the way they often did when she recognized a student who was genuinely engaged in her subject. “It would require a proportional increase in the amount of wand power and concentration, meaning if you are trying to transfigure an object into something three or four times greater or smaller the original weight, the wand power and concentration need to be three or four times greater than normal. It takes a great deal of practice.”

James nodded, running his teeth across his bottom lip in eager anticipation. “That makes sense,” he said, a plan already forming in his mind of the training they’d need to do in preparation of their transformations--he could make it like Quidditch. Peter and Sirius alike might protest, but magic was not unlike Quidditch--if you wanted to get better, you had to practice, and practice often. “So, if you really want to get better at Transfiguration, you need to regularly work on your overall wand work and concentration,” he said.

Professor McGonagall nodded. “Yes, of course, Potter. You can’t run off natural talent alone, you’ll plateau quickly that way.”

“Of course, Professor,” James said with a slight smirk--she unintentionally admitted that he did have natural talent.

Silently, Sirius hurriedly searched the area surrounding the pet item and was disappointed to come up empty handed. He trusted James’ ability to prattle on, but certainly if he took any longer McGonagall would become suspicious. He was so sure something would be right around here...He began to stand up form under the desk with defeat when suddenly he felt his head collide with something he hadn’t accounted for. He examined the belly of McGonagall’s desk and realized he had discovered a secret compartment.

Excitement struck as he assessed the keyhole attached to the compartment. It clearly was charmed to repel any unlocking spell, however, Sirius had other tricks. He dug deep into his robes and recovered his enchanted pocket knife, and slipped it into the keyhole. Much to his delight, the keyhole turned and the drawer opened.

Inside, Sirius found McGonagall’s animagus certificate, some other official documentation on her registry...and a book, which upon further investigation, Sirius discovered was an animagi training manual issued directly from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. This was it.

Sirius swapped the book cover with one of his own textbooks of equal weight and size and put it back into the drawer. He would have to eventually return to switch the book back, but that wasn’t the priority just then.

All he wanted to do now was celebrate his victory, but they weren’t in the clear just yet. Sirius threw the cloak back over his head, slipped silently back out of the office and then finally crept out of the classroom into the corridor. There, he removed the cloak and stuffed it into his backpack. Once he was visible, he appeared in the classroom doorway.

“I’m STARVING.” He burst out, feigning his propensity for irritation. “Can we get on with this sometime before I turn grey?!” He crossed his arms in protest and tried to appear haughty, but purposefully avoided Remus’ eye. Like James, keeping all of this from Remus had brought Sirius immense guilt.

Remus, James, and McGonagall turned at Sirius’ outburst; Remus’ brow furrowed, as he couldn’t remember Sirius ever leaving the classroom; James smirked, cool as a cucumber; McGonagall’s lips pursed instinctively at an outburst from Black.

Peter had never been more happy to listen to Sirius. He instantly bounded across the classroom without so much as a good bye to his professor.

James cleared his throat, “Well, Professor, I would love to talk to you more about Transfiguration and my natural talent, but it seems I need to feed the beast. He has a tendency to destroy property when he’s hungry,” he informed her, as if talking about a rare breed of magical creatures.

McGonagall’s lips twitched infinitesimally in amusement at James’ remark. “Yes, well, I certainly won’t stand for any of my property being destroyed, so I suppose you better go.” Her expression turned sharp as she looked over at Peter’s retreating figure from across the classroom. “Mr. Pettigrew! I wasn’t quite finished with you yet,” she called. “I do hope to see some progress with the tutoring efforts redoubled.”

Peter paled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

McGonagall nodded her head. “Good. Now, go, all of you.”

At this point, none of them needed to be told twice. James caught Sirius’ eye once they were decidedly out of McGonagall’s view. He raised his eyebrow inquisitively behind Remus’ back.

The smug expression Sirius wore and the electricity in his eye told James everything that he needed to know. Their mission was a success. Sirius gave Peter a triumphant slap on the rump to silently indicate that he served his role well--or, in the very least, stating that he didn’t blow the whole thing.

Peter kept his gaze down at his shoes.

“Where did you run off to?” Remus asked pointedly.

Sirius abruptly ceased his unspoken dialogue with James when Remus spoke to him.

“Oh...erm...the loo,” he muttered culpably. “Was about to burst.” he added a bit more playfully, but he still had a shifty, uncomfortable look about him.

Remus frowned at this, not quite buying it--he could sense Sirius’ discomfort and knew it could mean nothing good. He opened his mouth to challenge Sirius some more, but got cut off.

“--So, Pete. About our tutoring lessons,” Siris promptly changed the subject as he put his arm around Peter. “I was considering which method would elicit the best results, and then I realized, what better way is there to retain knowledge than through fear? Say, for instance, whenever you answer one of my questions wrong, I stuff your head down the toliet and flush. Should do the trick.” he suggested with a wide grin before turning to James.

“James, quite like myself, you’re a learned lad. Inform dearest Mr. Pettigrew about the beneficial usages of terror in education.”

Peter turned to Sirius, stricken, “You wouldn’t,” he said, but didn’t look at all sure of it.

Sirius cocked his eyebrow at Peter, which without words told him, ‘oh. yes I would.’

Remus shook his head, deciding to let it go for now--when it came to Sirius, all tended to reveal itself sooner or later, anyway. “What teaching book did you learn that from?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“No, I know exactly what Sirius is talking about,” James smirked. “McGonagall makes good use of this method herself, but I’m not sure it’s really working on Peter,” he pointed out.

“True enough,” Sirius responded to James and mocked contemplation by putting his index finger to his lips. “Perhaps public humiliation, then?” He suggested. “I hope you’re wearing knickers today, mate.” he said evasively to Peter with a devious smirk as he released him from his grip.

They arrived at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall and began to assume their places. One of the third year boys had taken Sirius’ reserved spot on the bench. By no account was this acceptable. He scorched him with the infamous Black flaming glare that Sirius had inherited from his mother. Eventually, the boy awkwardly abandoned his place at the table. He may have been older and larger than Sirius, but even from a twelve-year-old that stare could turn the bravest men to ash.

As the boys began to pile food onto their plates, Sirius slyly recovered the book he had discovered in Mcgonagall’s office from his backpack and brought it up just enough so that only James could see the title.

“Let’s get started tonight!” he began excitedly, but then exchanged glances with Remus. “...On those tutoring lessons…” he added in a mumble. He had turned to Peter as he spoke, but clearly this was meant for James.

James’ eyes widened at the sight of the manual. He grinned broadly, but then cringed at the obvious outburst. Remus looked perplexed.

“You never seemed much interested in joining our tutoring sessions in the past,” he pointed out.

Sirius intentionally stuffed a loaded spoon of potatoes into his mouth to delay his need to respond to Remus.

“I mean, I reckon I’ve always been an appreciator of humiliation,” he reasoned as they all continued to sloppily eat. “We all have our strengths, after all...James has quidditch, Peter has eating, you’re pretty good at not getting detention, and my talents are in humiliating people.”

Peter couldn’t even hear his friends, being so engrossed (and completely covered) in his meal. Thus, confirming Sirius’ assessment of him. Remus chuckled a bit, “Oh? Is that my only talent? Not getting detention?” he grinned. “I should probably find new friends if I want to stay good at that.”

“Probably,” James agreed, relieved that Sirius seemed to have managed to successfully throw Remus off their trail.

Remus frowned a bit then, “But I’m not sure if I want you hanging around tutoring if you’re just going to make fun.”

“Fine. I can tell when I’m not wanted,” Sirius simpered with a grin curling at the corner of his lip. “James will appreciate my company, then.” Although he joked, this presented an opportunity to evade Remus that night and break open the Ministry book with James. And they wouldn’t have to worry about lying to Remus now. He shot James a knowing look. James smiled in return.

“Yeah, I’m not sure if I’ll be more of a hindrance or a help, honestly.”

“Probably more of a hindrance,” Remus remarked.

James laughed, “Well, all right then, if you have any pressing Transfiguration questions later, you know where to find me, but otherwise I’ll leave you to it.”

Peter, meanwhile, sighed with relief. They couldn’t be sure if the sigh originated from his reassurance that Sirius would not be able to bother him later, or if it was just related to the completion of his lunch.

The students began to disperse from the Great Hall, signaling the end of lunchtime. The boys began to climb from the bench with far less enthusiasm than they had when they arrived. The end of lunchtime meant the return to class.

Even Remus sighed. “History of Magic,” he said. “So much potential. So wasted.”

James groaned, hauling himself slowly from his seat. “Let’s take the long way. Maybe we’ll get caught on a moving staircase, that wouldn’t be our fault, now would it?”

Remus shrugged, “Binns won’t notice,” he pointed out, as Peter tore himself reluctantly from lunch.

“Very true,” James agreed, falling into pace behind Sirius. Part of him very much wanted to mosey on over to History in order to miss as much of the class as possible without cutting. Another part of him wanted to speed through the rest of the day in order to get to tonight, when he and Sirius could start taking some action.

But no matter how fast he moved, he wouldn’t be able to move time any faster.

To Be Continued

[indecisivepsyche]

for the cafe asks: flat white, cappuccino, iced coffee, iced lemon tea, sparkling water?

!!!

Flat White: Coffee or Tea?

Definitely tea. At the moment I'm sitting beside my tea collection which has about 24 different teas in it? Black tea's my favorite and I'd say my favorite at the moment is a tea with Assam and Ginger. I'm good with coffee if it has creamer, but I prefer tea.

Cappuccino: What's your middle name?

I'm actually going to skip this one since I prefer to avoid giving name details out, but I'll say it's pretty common. Whenever it comes up there's almost always another girl with it as their first or middle name, funnily enough.

Iced Coffee: Do you like reading? If so, what's your favorite book?

I love reading! Embarrassingly enough, I've been reading a lot more fanfiction than published works since mid high school. But I have a collection of Agatha Christie mysteries I've been working through. As for a favorite, I think I'm going to draw from old favorites I remember fondly. I'm very tempted to say Triss or Mossflower by Brian Jacques. But I think I'll go with Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories by Garth Nix. A bit of a cop out since it's a collection of short stories, and I haven't read it in forever (might have been middle school, I really need to reread it and his Keys to the Kingdom and Abhorsen series), but I remember rereading it a lot and one of the stories is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Lots of fun.

Iced Lemon Tea: Favorite song/band?

At the current moment, it's probably Monody by TheFatRat. I listened to that song on loop for a couple of hours one day when I was cooking. (Fun fact: I just got startled by my suitemate sneezing in her room)

Sparkling water: Describe what qualities you look for in a person.

Honesty, I suppose, or at least trustworthiness. I find dedication (not just to a significant other, to the things they love, to what they have to do) a pretty admirable trait, as well. A willingness to help others and work towards the improvement of the community they work in through one way or another. Being considerate. Having the sense to shut the toilet lid before they flush.

Thanks for asking! You probably weren't expecting paragraphs, sorry. I'm a wordy person.

[stephenmccull]

Appendicitis Is Painful — Add A $41,212 Surgery Bill To The Misery

Joshua Bates knew something was seriously wrong. He had a high fever, could barely move and felt a sharp pain in his stomach every time he coughed.

The 28-year-old called his roommate, who rushed home that day in July 2018. The pair drove to the nearest emergency room, the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. After several tests, including a CT scan of his abdomen, the emergency team determined Bates had acute appendicitis.

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Do you have an exorbitant or baffling medical bill? Join the KHN and NPR ‘Bill of the Month’ Club and tell us about your experience. We’ll feature a new one each month.

Submit Your Bill

“They said my appendix was minutes away from rupturing,” Bates said.

Not mentioned, he said, was that the hospital was out-of-network with the insurance plan provided through his job. Even so, he couldn’t have jumped up and gone elsewhere. His appendix was about to burst.

He had surgery that night, which went smoothly, and went home the next day.

“Everything seemed according to plan,” said Bates.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Joshua Bates, a technical recruiter for a staffing firm, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Continental Benefits insurance plan comes with a deductible of $2,000 and an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350.

Total Bill: $41,212 covering the surgery, one night at the hospital and the emergency room charges. After payments by both Bates and his insurer, the hospital sent Bates a bill for the balance, just over $28,000.

Service Provider: Carolinas Medical Center, owned by Atrium Health, a for-profit health system based in Charlotte.

What Gives: Bates was “balance billed” because he went to an out-of-network hospital — and, even though it was an emergency, he fell through the limited protections in existing law.

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“Terrifying,” is how Bates describes the feeling when he first saw the bill for $28,000. Don’t worry, his insurer told him, it would negotiate with the hospital.

“If you pay your complete deductible, this will all go away,” Bates recalled the insurer saying. “I pay. It doesn’t get resolved.” 

More than a year later, with negotiations between the hospital and his insurer at a standstill and his credit score falling because the $28,000 debt has gone to collections, a frustrated Bates contacted “Bill of the Month.”

“From what my insurance is telling me, the hospital is just non-responsive to them trying to negotiate this price,” he said.

His situation is not unusual. A recent study found that about 18% of emergency room visits have at least one such charge for out-of-network care.

A balance bill is the difference between what insurers pay toward a bill and a provider’s “list charges,” which facilities set themselves and often bear little or no relationship to actual costs.

In Bates’ case, the insurer paid $8,944 toward the $41,212 charges, according to his explanation of benefits from his insurer. On top of that, Bates paid the hospital about $4,000, a combination of his annual deductible and his coinsurance for emergency care. That left $28,295 of the hospital’s charges unpaid. 

The online site Healthcare Bluebook, which calculates costs based on health insurers’ claims data, estimates a laparoscopic appendectomy ranges from $9,678 to more than $30,000 in Bates’ ZIP code. The “fair price” it suggests for the surgery is $12,090 — completely in the ballpark of the $12,944 that Bates and his insurer already paid the hospital. Fair Health, another site that collects claims data, estimates total costs for an out-of-network appendectomy at $19,292 — about $11,000 less than the hospital says Bates still owes.

“It’s ridiculous. He’s a young kid who goes to the emergency room and he has insurance,” said Duane Sunby, the insurance broker for Bates’ employer.

Bates says it was “terrifying” to see a bill for $28,000 following his emergency appendectomy.(Logan Cyrus for KHN)

Sunby added that Continental’s payment to the hospital was nearly 2½ times more than Medicare would have paid for similar services, but the facility is going after Bates for more than seven times what the federal government would pay. A growing outcry about such balance bills has attracted attention from statehouses and Congress, but current protections for patients often fall short.

Congress last year debated several bills that would have provided federal protection nationwide, especially for emergency room patients. But bipartisan efforts stalled late in the year following intense lobbying by providers, including private equity-backed physician groups, over how to calculate what insurers should pay providers.

Bates is the kind of person who would be helped by a federal law, because his employer “self-funds” his insurance plan — all such plans are regulated by the federal government.

In the absence of federal rules, about 21 states have taken action, although a study from policy experts at Georgetown University Health Policy Institute cites only nine as having comprehensive protections.

North Carolina, where Bates lives, has partial protections for people in state-regulated plans, according to the study. It limits, for example, the amount patients owe in out-of-network emergency cases. But the state law doesn’t cover Bates’ type of job-based insurance.

“We really need a federal solution,” said Maanasa Kona, an assistant research professor at Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown.

Joshua Bates, a technical recruiter for a staffing firm, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, was “balance billed” by an out-of-network hospital even though he received emergency care. North Carolina law has partial protections for out-of-network emergency cases, but the law doesn’t cover Bates’ type of job-based insurance.(Logan Cyrus for KHN)

Bates’ insurer brought in third-party Advanced Medical Pricing Solutions, which examined his bill and called the nearly $28,000 “excessive charges.” It sought in September an adjustment or an explanation of the charges.

That came not long after Bates received a “final” payment notice from a collections group connected with the hospital. A credit reporting agency “told me it would continue to impact my credit score,” said Bates.

Resolution: After KHN and NPR placed inquiries about his bill with the hospital, insurer and AMPS, Bates received a call from a top executive at the Carolinas Medical Center.

More From Our Bill Of The Month Series

Nothing To Sneeze At: The $2,659 Bill To Pluck Doll’s Shoe From Child’s Nostril Nov 26

Grief Grew Into A Mental Health Crisis And A $21,634 Hospital Bill Oct 31

Her Biopsy Report Was Benign. But The Bill Is A Spot Of Contention. Sep 30

They Got Estimates Before Surgery — And A Bill After That Was 50% More Aug 30

First Kidney Failure, Then A $540,842 Bill For Dialysis Jul 25

“He seemed really eager to help me out,” said Bates, “which is crazy after two years of reaching out and trying to communicate with them. They call shortly after they catch wind of the story.”

However, in an email to KHN, an Atrium Health spokesperson essentially pointed to the insurer for a solution.

“We believe it is imperative that insurance companies cover the costs for patients who are unable to choose where they are treated due to a medical emergency,” wrote Dan Fogleman. “We continue to be willing to work with this patient to pursue any additional payments that may be due to them from the insurer.” Continental Benefits CEO Betsy Knorr declined to comment: “It is a legal issue at this point and we do not want to prejudice the process.”

Bates is deflated.

“The hospital is trying to put all the burden on the insurance, and the insurance is trying to put the burden on them. I’m back to square one, essentially.”

The Takeaway: Insurance plans’ yearly out-of-pocket maximums apply only if you stay in-network. So, if possible, check ahead of time to see if your hospital is in-network — and the network status of anyone who might be involved with your care.

Sometimes that isn’t possible, as in Bates’ case. What then?

If you get a balance bill after your insurer has paid the provider, check state laws and with your state’s insurance regulators to see what protections you may have, said Kona, particularly if your bill resulted from an emergency room visit.

Bill Of The Month Resources

Read More

Ask your insurer or employer to pay the bill or to negotiate a discount with the provider, said Mark Hall, a law professor at Wake Forest University who studies contract law and medical billing issues.

Check online claims data websites, such as Healthcare Bluebook and Fair Health, to research what insurers pay for similar care in your area. Use that price range in negotiations about what you may owe.

Even if your employer plan is exempt from state laws limiting patient responsibility for out-of-network emergency care, ask the provider to honor that benefit. They don’t have to agree, but it can be worth a shot.

Hall also said patients may be able to hire a lawyer and go to court challenging whether the amount being charged is reasonable, although that could be costly and success is not guaranteed.

NPR produced and edited the audio report by NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by Kaiser Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

Appendicitis Is Painful — Add A $41,212 Surgery Bill To The Misery published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Appendicitis Is Painful — Add A $41,212 Surgery Bill To The Misery

Joshua Bates knew something was seriously wrong. He had a high fever, could barely move and felt a sharp pain in his stomach every time he coughed.

The 28-year-old called his roommate, who rushed home that day in July 2018. The pair drove to the nearest emergency room, the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. After several tests, including a CT scan of his abdomen, the emergency team determined Bates had acute appendicitis.

Send Us Your Medical Bill

Do you have an exorbitant or baffling medical bill? Join the KHN and NPR ‘Bill of the Month’ Club and tell us about your experience. We’ll feature a new one each month.

Submit Your Bill

“They said my appendix was minutes away from rupturing,” Bates said.

Not mentioned, he said, was that the hospital was out-of-network with the insurance plan provided through his job. Even so, he couldn’t have jumped up and gone elsewhere. His appendix was about to burst.

He had surgery that night, which went smoothly, and went home the next day.

“Everything seemed according to plan,” said Bates.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Joshua Bates, a technical recruiter for a staffing firm, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Continental Benefits insurance plan comes with a deductible of $2,000 and an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350.

Total Bill: $41,212 covering the surgery, one night at the hospital and the emergency room charges. After payments by both Bates and his insurer, the hospital sent Bates a bill for the balance, just over $28,000.

Service Provider: Carolinas Medical Center, owned by Atrium Health, a for-profit health system based in Charlotte.

What Gives: Bates was “balance billed” because he went to an out-of-network hospital — and, even though it was an emergency, he fell through the limited protections in existing law.

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“Terrifying,” is how Bates describes the feeling when he first saw the bill for $28,000. Don’t worry, his insurer told him, it would negotiate with the hospital.

“If you pay your complete deductible, this will all go away,” Bates recalled the insurer saying. “I pay. It doesn’t get resolved.” 

More than a year later, with negotiations between the hospital and his insurer at a standstill and his credit score falling because the $28,000 debt has gone to collections, a frustrated Bates contacted “Bill of the Month.”

“From what my insurance is telling me, the hospital is just non-responsive to them trying to negotiate this price,” he said.

His situation is not unusual. A recent study found that about 18% of emergency room visits have at least one such charge for out-of-network care.

A balance bill is the difference between what insurers pay toward a bill and a provider’s “list charges,” which facilities set themselves and often bear little or no relationship to actual costs.

In Bates’ case, the insurer paid $8,944 toward the $41,212 charges, according to his explanation of benefits from his insurer. On top of that, Bates paid the hospital about $4,000, a combination of his annual deductible and his coinsurance for emergency care. That left $28,295 of the hospital’s charges unpaid. 

The online site Healthcare Bluebook, which calculates costs based on health insurers’ claims data, estimates a laparoscopic appendectomy ranges from $9,678 to more than $30,000 in Bates’ ZIP code. The “fair price” it suggests for the surgery is $12,090 — completely in the ballpark of the $12,944 that Bates and his insurer already paid the hospital. Fair Health, another site that collects claims data, estimates total costs for an out-of-network appendectomy at $19,292 — about $11,000 less than the hospital says Bates still owes.

“It’s ridiculous. He’s a young kid who goes to the emergency room and he has insurance,” said Duane Sunby, the insurance broker for Bates’ employer.

Bates says it was “terrifying” to see a bill for $28,000 following his emergency appendectomy.(Logan Cyrus for KHN)

Sunby added that Continental’s payment to the hospital was nearly 2½ times more than Medicare would have paid for similar services, but the facility is going after Bates for more than seven times what the federal government would pay. A growing outcry about such balance bills has attracted attention from statehouses and Congress, but current protections for patients often fall short.

Congress last year debated several bills that would have provided federal protection nationwide, especially for emergency room patients. But bipartisan efforts stalled late in the year following intense lobbying by providers, including private equity-backed physician groups, over how to calculate what insurers should pay providers.

Bates is the kind of person who would be helped by a federal law, because his employer “self-funds” his insurance plan — all such plans are regulated by the federal government.

In the absence of federal rules, about 21 states have taken action, although a study from policy experts at Georgetown University Health Policy Institute cites only nine as having comprehensive protections.

North Carolina, where Bates lives, has partial protections for people in state-regulated plans, according to the study. It limits, for example, the amount patients owe in out-of-network emergency cases. But the state law doesn’t cover Bates’ type of job-based insurance.

“We really need a federal solution,” said Maanasa Kona, an assistant research professor at Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown.

Joshua Bates, a technical recruiter for a staffing firm, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, was “balance billed” by an out-of-network hospital even though he received emergency care. North Carolina law has partial protections for out-of-network emergency cases, but the law doesn’t cover Bates’ type of job-based insurance.(Logan Cyrus for KHN)

Bates’ insurer brought in third-party Advanced Medical Pricing Solutions, which examined his bill and called the nearly $28,000 “excessive charges.” It sought in September an adjustment or an explanation of the charges.

That came not long after Bates received a “final” payment notice from a collections group connected with the hospital. A credit reporting agency “told me it would continue to impact my credit score,” said Bates.

Resolution: After KHN and NPR placed inquiries about his bill with the hospital, insurer and AMPS, Bates received a call from a top executive at the Carolinas Medical Center.

More From Our Bill Of The Month Series

Nothing To Sneeze At: The $2,659 Bill To Pluck Doll’s Shoe From Child’s Nostril Nov 26

Grief Grew Into A Mental Health Crisis And A $21,634 Hospital Bill Oct 31

Her Biopsy Report Was Benign. But The Bill Is A Spot Of Contention. Sep 30

They Got Estimates Before Surgery — And A Bill After That Was 50% More Aug 30

First Kidney Failure, Then A $540,842 Bill For Dialysis Jul 25

“He seemed really eager to help me out,” said Bates, “which is crazy after two years of reaching out and trying to communicate with them. They call shortly after they catch wind of the story.”

However, in an email to KHN, an Atrium Health spokesperson essentially pointed to the insurer for a solution.

“We believe it is imperative that insurance companies cover the costs for patients who are unable to choose where they are treated due to a medical emergency,” wrote Dan Fogleman. “We continue to be willing to work with this patient to pursue any additional payments that may be due to them from the insurer.” Continental Benefits CEO Betsy Knorr declined to comment: “It is a legal issue at this point and we do not want to prejudice the process.”

Bates is deflated.

“The hospital is trying to put all the burden on the insurance, and the insurance is trying to put the burden on them. I’m back to square one, essentially.”

The Takeaway: Insurance plans’ yearly out-of-pocket maximums apply only if you stay in-network. So, if possible, check ahead of time to see if your hospital is in-network — and the network status of anyone who might be involved with your care.

Sometimes that isn’t possible, as in Bates’ case. What then?

If you get a balance bill after your insurer has paid the provider, check state laws and with your state’s insurance regulators to see what protections you may have, said Kona, particularly if your bill resulted from an emergency room visit.

Bill Of The Month Resources

Read More

Ask your insurer or employer to pay the bill or to negotiate a discount with the provider, said Mark Hall, a law professor at Wake Forest University who studies contract law and medical billing issues.

Check online claims data websites, such as Healthcare Bluebook and Fair Health, to research what insurers pay for similar care in your area. Use that price range in negotiations about what you may owe.

Even if your employer plan is exempt from state laws limiting patient responsibility for out-of-network emergency care, ask the provider to honor that benefit. They don’t have to agree, but it can be worth a shot.

Hall also said patients may be able to hire a lawyer and go to court challenging whether the amount being charged is reasonable, although that could be costly and success is not guaranteed.

NPR produced and edited the audio report by NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by Kaiser Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

Appendicitis Is Painful — Add A $41,212 Surgery Bill To The Misery published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Appendicitis Is Painful — Add A $41,212 Surgery Bill To The Misery

Joshua Bates knew something was seriously wrong. He had a high fever, could barely move and felt a sharp pain in his stomach every time he coughed.

The 28-year-old called his roommate, who rushed home that day in July 2018. The pair drove to the nearest emergency room, the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. After several tests, including a CT scan of his abdomen, the emergency team determined Bates had acute appendicitis.

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Do you have an exorbitant or baffling medical bill? Join the KHN and NPR ‘Bill of the Month’ Club and tell us about your experience. We’ll feature a new one each month.

Submit Your Bill

“They said my appendix was minutes away from rupturing,” Bates said.

Not mentioned, he said, was that the hospital was out-of-network with the insurance plan provided through his job. Even so, he couldn’t have jumped up and gone elsewhere. His appendix was about to burst.

He had surgery that night, which went smoothly, and went home the next day.

“Everything seemed according to plan,” said Bates.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Joshua Bates, a technical recruiter for a staffing firm, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Continental Benefits insurance plan comes with a deductible of $2,000 and an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350.

Total Bill: $41,212 covering the surgery, one night at the hospital and the emergency room charges. After payments by both Bates and his insurer, the hospital sent Bates a bill for the balance, just over $28,000.

Service Provider: Carolinas Medical Center, owned by Atrium Health, a for-profit health system based in Charlotte.

What Gives: Bates was “balance billed” because he went to an out-of-network hospital — and, even though it was an emergency, he fell through the limited protections in existing law.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

“Terrifying,” is how Bates describes the feeling when he first saw the bill for $28,000. Don’t worry, his insurer told him, it would negotiate with the hospital.

“If you pay your complete deductible, this will all go away,” Bates recalled the insurer saying. “I pay. It doesn’t get resolved.” 

More than a year later, with negotiations between the hospital and his insurer at a standstill and his credit score falling because the $28,000 debt has gone to collections, a frustrated Bates contacted “Bill of the Month.”

“From what my insurance is telling me, the hospital is just non-responsive to them trying to negotiate this price,” he said.

His situation is not unusual. A recent study found that about 18% of emergency room visits have at least one such charge for out-of-network care.

A balance bill is the difference between what insurers pay toward a bill and a provider’s “list charges,” which facilities set themselves and often bear little or no relationship to actual costs.

In Bates’ case, the insurer paid $8,944 toward the $41,212 charges, according to his explanation of benefits from his insurer. On top of that, Bates paid the hospital about $4,000, a combination of his annual deductible and his coinsurance for emergency care. That left $28,295 of the hospital’s charges unpaid. 

The online site Healthcare Bluebook, which calculates costs based on health insurers’ claims data, estimates a laparoscopic appendectomy ranges from $9,678 to more than $30,000 in Bates’ ZIP code. The “fair price” it suggests for the surgery is $12,090 — completely in the ballpark of the $12,944 that Bates and his insurer already paid the hospital. Fair Health, another site that collects claims data, estimates total costs for an out-of-network appendectomy at $19,292 — about $11,000 less than the hospital says Bates still owes.

“It’s ridiculous. He’s a young kid who goes to the emergency room and he has insurance,” said Duane Sunby, the insurance broker for Bates’ employer.

Bates says it was “terrifying” to see a bill for $28,000 following his emergency appendectomy.(Logan Cyrus for KHN)

Sunby added that Continental’s payment to the hospital was nearly 2½ times more than Medicare would have paid for similar services, but the facility is going after Bates for more than seven times what the federal government would pay. A growing outcry about such balance bills has attracted attention from statehouses and Congress, but current protections for patients often fall short.

Congress last year debated several bills that would have provided federal protection nationwide, especially for emergency room patients. But bipartisan efforts stalled late in the year following intense lobbying by providers, including private equity-backed physician groups, over how to calculate what insurers should pay providers.

Bates is the kind of person who would be helped by a federal law, because his employer “self-funds” his insurance plan — all such plans are regulated by the federal government.

In the absence of federal rules, about 21 states have taken action, although a study from policy experts at Georgetown University Health Policy Institute cites only nine as having comprehensive protections.

North Carolina, where Bates lives, has partial protections for people in state-regulated plans, according to the study. It limits, for example, the amount patients owe in out-of-network emergency cases. But the state law doesn’t cover Bates’ type of job-based insurance.

“We really need a federal solution,” said Maanasa Kona, an assistant research professor at Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown.

Joshua Bates, a technical recruiter for a staffing firm, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, was “balance billed” by an out-of-network hospital even though he received emergency care. North Carolina law has partial protections for out-of-network emergency cases, but the law doesn’t cover Bates’ type of job-based insurance.(Logan Cyrus for KHN)

Bates’ insurer brought in third-party Advanced Medical Pricing Solutions, which examined his bill and called the nearly $28,000 “excessive charges.” It sought in September an adjustment or an explanation of the charges.

That came not long after Bates received a “final” payment notice from a collections group connected with the hospital. A credit reporting agency “told me it would continue to impact my credit score,” said Bates.

Resolution: After KHN and NPR placed inquiries about his bill with the hospital, insurer and AMPS, Bates received a call from a top executive at the Carolinas Medical Center.

More From Our Bill Of The Month Series

Nothing To Sneeze At: The $2,659 Bill To Pluck Doll’s Shoe From Child’s Nostril Nov 26

Grief Grew Into A Mental Health Crisis And A $21,634 Hospital Bill Oct 31

Her Biopsy Report Was Benign. But The Bill Is A Spot Of Contention. Sep 30

They Got Estimates Before Surgery — And A Bill After That Was 50% More Aug 30

First Kidney Failure, Then A $540,842 Bill For Dialysis Jul 25

“He seemed really eager to help me out,” said Bates, “which is crazy after two years of reaching out and trying to communicate with them. They call shortly after they catch wind of the story.”

However, in an email to KHN, an Atrium Health spokesperson essentially pointed to the insurer for a solution.

“We believe it is imperative that insurance companies cover the costs for patients who are unable to choose where they are treated due to a medical emergency,” wrote Dan Fogleman. “We continue to be willing to work with this patient to pursue any additional payments that may be due to them from the insurer.” Continental Benefits CEO Betsy Knorr declined to comment: “It is a legal issue at this point and we do not want to prejudice the process.”

Bates is deflated.

“The hospital is trying to put all the burden on the insurance, and the insurance is trying to put the burden on them. I’m back to square one, essentially.”

The Takeaway: Insurance plans’ yearly out-of-pocket maximums apply only if you stay in-network. So, if possible, check ahead of time to see if your hospital is in-network — and the network status of anyone who might be involved with your care.

Sometimes that isn’t possible, as in Bates’ case. What then?

If you get a balance bill after your insurer has paid the provider, check state laws and with your state’s insurance regulators to see what protections you may have, said Kona, particularly if your bill resulted from an emergency room visit.

Bill Of The Month Resources

Read More

Ask your insurer or employer to pay the bill or to negotiate a discount with the provider, said Mark Hall, a law professor at Wake Forest University who studies contract law and medical billing issues.

Check online claims data websites, such as Healthcare Bluebook and Fair Health, to research what insurers pay for similar care in your area. Use that price range in negotiations about what you may owe.

Even if your employer plan is exempt from state laws limiting patient responsibility for out-of-network emergency care, ask the provider to honor that benefit. They don’t have to agree, but it can be worth a shot.

Hall also said patients may be able to hire a lawyer and go to court challenging whether the amount being charged is reasonable, although that could be costly and success is not guaranteed.

NPR produced and edited the audio report by NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by Kaiser Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/appendicitis-is-painful-add-a-41212-surgery-bill-to-the-misery/