#Rob Job please calm down about the roof tiles

[shitpostingkats]

Wheel of Time is an insane book series because really early on it’s established that one of the main characters has the memories of dozens to hundreds of past lives that were all great generals and he also learns to speak a dead language and so far this has not been adequately explained or even questioned by the character.

But I'm also seven books in and we have yet to enter a town and not immediately have the color and materials of the roof tiles described in nauseating detail.

[if-weshadows-haveoffended]

Needles and Pins- Charles Xavier x Reader

Needles and Pins (prompt) Words:1,197 Rating: T Warnings: None Ship: Charles Xavier x Female Reader Note: Sorry for the delay, I re-wrote this like twice :(

The darkened halls of the mansion felt hauntingly empty, every movement of curtains a taunting whisper at the failure of the X-men. It always had ever since they- Raven, Erik, Angel, Azazel, Darwin, Moira-

They’d all left you here. Well, not entirely alone. Hank still kept Charles some company, as did you. Alex had returned home after a few years to take care of his baby brother. And Moira was of course currently unaware of anyone’s existence.

And failure? You refused to let the X-men be a failure, no, it just wasn’t ready. Not when you were fighting a cold war rather than other mutants. One ideology had to come before the other. The Hellfire club failed just as you had, and you’d watched Charles sink further and further into himself, remaining silent and remaining as if he’d had the entire world on his shoulders.

And of course mutants were slowly disappearing. Whether or not Charles cared, he never let on. But surely Charles knew Azazel of all people wouldn’t just vanish oh so silently. It wasn’t his style.

Your Quant sandals stepped over chess-like tiles, joining the forlorn professor sitting alone on his now permanent wheelchair as he faced away, towards the dark gardens. You sat beside the wheels of his chair and crossed your legs beneath your mini-skirt, glancing up to see glistening tear tracks down the side of his handsome cheeks.

“Moping isn’t going to do anything, Prof,” You quipped with a smile, but the mutant in question merely scoffed and turned his head away from you, boyish face uncharacteristically grim as he wiped away tears. Whatever happened to the feckless playboy you’d all become unhealthily fond of?

“Why are you still here, y/n? You had a career,” He responded, tiredly.

“I am also a woman, which makes anything beyond a secretary impossible I’m afraid.” You laughed bitterly, inching closer to him. What unnerved you more was that you knew Charles knew you had to be lying. Surely he wasn’t that thick? Or perhaps he was just too caught up in his own thoughts to peruse through yours. “Anyway, I thought we established that annoying you to death was my job?”

“Not if I fired you,”

“Harsh Charlie, really harsh.” You muttered.

“You know I hate that,” He interrupted with a small glare, his mouth however now trying to fight a small quirk upwards at the corners.

“Yes, yes alright,”

‘What about Chuck?’ Your mind supplemented with a small giggle.

‘Don’t be so obscene.’ Charles’ stern voice entered your mind.

“Anyway, you should get to sleep. I’m simply being an idiot.” Charles’ warm fingers gently reached for yours as they rested upon his armrest. You certainly weren’t a mind reader, but years of experience in your admittedly short life told you that lingering touches usually meant a desire for you to stay.

“Charles, my dear, you’re not an idiot until you’ve had one too many cocktails and you cry for a solid forty minutes because you realise snakes are just heads with a tail.” You grinned in triumph, warmth spreading through your chest as you watched Charles try and fail to suppress a sudden exhale of quiet laughter, smothering his grin with a free hand.

“And that time I accidentally nearly became an accessory to crime because my inebriated self thought that I could rob a bank with only myself, a half-empty lipstick tube and one shoe on.” You reminisced with a slight shudder, “Then of course, that occasion in which I somehow found myself in the same bed as this bastard called Robert Redford and a box full of hedgehogs.”

“Hedgehogs?” Charles choked out in between silent laughter that seemed to force all the air out of him.

“They’re not even native here, I know.” You widened your eyes a little in horror of remembering. “I’ve done everything you could possibly do when drunk; from dancing with the attractive teachers’ aid of my archaeology class to climbing on top of the church roof to impress my crush.”

“You’re certainly an adventuress, y/n,” Charles admitted, wiping away a tear. But you smiled, knowing it was at least a happy one.

“Only when drunk, Carlos,” You grinned, unfolding your legs and beginning to stand up. Your job seemed done, Charles seemed much more calm and content.

“Anyway, the only potential drunken mistake I haven’t made was agreeing to whatever it was you said to me when I joined,” You mused with a grin before bending down a little and pressing a small kiss to the smiling corner of Charles’ lips. You couldn’t help but blush just a little at the deepening grin upon his face, and you instinctively brushed a strand of chestnut hair from his eyes.

“Besides, I should be going now,” You added, beginning to retreat at a slightly quickened pace, hoping it wasn’t too awkward.

“Y/n,” Charles called, turning his wheelchair to face you.

“Yes?”

“Do you remember what you said that night? When you agreed?”

“I thought we established I was drunk, Carlos-“

“Just because I excused ‘Carlos’ once, doesn’t mean I condone it,” He warned, “No, but do you remember what you said? Or did?”

You tilted your head in confusion, remembering the haze of a party and a Marvelettes record in the distance. Charles seemed confused at you and you simply shrugged, truthfully unable to remember what happened except for the sudden fluttering of your heart at the charming English accent and the handsome professor that accompanied it.

“I think you might have bought me a drink,” You answered slowly. “I’m sorry Charles, I don’t know.” With that he let you return back to the mansion.

“Was it terrible?” You hesitated in your steps and called back to Charles.

“No, no nothing like that. It was rather wonderful actually,”

You refused to know more and continued back through the darkened threshold.

Somewhere in New York, 1961

“And so, it would be wonderful if you joined,” Charles finished, laughing at the bright young woman as she finished her cocktail in a single go and held out her hand.

“I’m fucking game,” She grinned, eyes twinkling under the golden lights of the bar. Charles took her hand, delighted to have such a witty mutant on their team. It was a fresh change to that Logan bastard who turned them down a night ago. “One more thing, professor,”

“Yes?” Charles answered, excited and expectant, alcohol buzzing pleasantly in his head.

He hadn’t expected her to grab his coat lapel and press soft lips against his, unable to help himself as hands wrapped around her waist, moving to rest at her waist as she deepened her kiss.  The bar roared into cheerful shouts and wolf-whistles and he could feel her grinning. He couldn’t even probe her mind, too busy simply enjoying the sensation building up in his chest and the fingers playing with hair at the nape of his neck. Y/n pulled away after a beat and with a wink gathered up her purse, exiting the bar as quickly as she’d entered his life, but not before collecting what looked like a tuxedo-wearing ferret from a gentleman sitting at a booth.

Charles Xavier knew he was fucked.

Songs used: Needles and Pins, Please Mr Postman

[mortenwrites-blog]

2.2

The drive back seemed, for some reason, to go by a bit faster than last time. The other times he went all this way, the way back had been even slower, sluggish and tiresome. Although Daan was tired, he was now at least a bit hopefull about Monday. If Nataly could send him something to work on, he could at least start doing why he moved here in the first place: design sounds.

Daan is a sound designer, one of those guys working for television or game companies to make sounds out of nothing. Monsters, leaves rustling, complete ambiences that make you believe something (or better someplace) is alive. He loved his job, since he could make a lifeless video seem to be full of action only by adding sound.

The bad part though was that the producers he had worked for did not always have a particular thought-out plan of what they wanted. That left him with a big open space for his creativity to work. But he needed something. If they made a movie about ponies, creating all

these laserbeam sounds was fun but also highly inefficient.

The last few weeks were as inefficient. Not knowing what to do, make or design left him feeling as if he didn’t really know what he was doing here, in England. At least with Nataly trying now, he might get some foothold in the wonderfull world of what he liked to call “the producer’s mind”.

He turned on the radio. The news spoke about a ridiculous situation in a shopping mall where apparently a man had tried to rob a store using a stiffened sock for a pistol. After this whole day of basically doing not much at all, Daan wondered who had spent his time better. Then came the weather forecast, which was the same as the last few days: rain, with a chance of more rain. After this a new song from a semi-popular band came on and he quickly turned of the radio again.

After the first two hours of driving, he left the highway and started making his way over a twisty road towards the little village where he had found the pub. The road became smaller and houses started to appear on either side. He drove towards a little square and parked his car by a somewhat bigger house, built out of white stone and with a black tiled roof. Over the door hung a sign, “Padry’s”. As he walked in, an older man stumbled out.

Drunkenly, he looked up at Daan and went: ‘Pardonme young sir, I did not by the slightest meant to walk into you.’

‘Well… You didn’t sir.’

‘Ohhhhhh…. But I will. You’ll see.’

And without much of an effort to walk around him, he started moving forward, knocking against Daans shoulder and stumbling on towards a countryroad on the other side of the square, quietly mumbling something that sounded like “Sons…”

Daan scratched his head for a second, decided it was best not to linger on the thought of the old man walking all the way home (he had probably done that enough times to make his way back with his eyes closed) and walked into the pub.

Behind the bar he expected to find the same, big, man that was the barkeeper. Instead he found a young man, quite tall and with a build that would have you think of a builder. The boy could only be the son of the regular barkeep, he thought. He sat down and when the young lad looked at him he said: ‘A pint of Guiness and the menu, please.’

‘Sure thing.’

‘Is your father ill?’

‘Aye, my father is in bed with fever. Haven’t seem him like that in ages.’

‘So he asked you to take over the pub?’

‘Nah, he wanted to keep it closed, but I offered to take his spot for now. I’m Jake.’

Daan reached over the counter and shook the guys hand: ‘Daan.’

‘Oh, your that Dutch fellow my old man was talking about! Said you came here three weeks in a row asking for a menu at exactly the same time.’

Funny, how people remember you if you’re not from here. ‘Yeah, I guess that will be me.’

‘Allright, I’ll get you a menu. Don’t go all fancy on me though. My cooking skills are not the same as my fathers.’

And with that he went to the kitchen to get the menu, probably one of the two only copies they had. When he returned he gave Daan a freshly printed A4 piece of paper with very simply, in large letters, written on there what they had. The dish of the day was potato soup with 3 slices of bread and some cheese.

‘I’ll take the dish of the day.’

‘Allright then, give me two minutes.’ And he went of into the kitchen again.

Daan looked around. Despite the pub being small, it seemed like you could still fit a lot of people in there in a comfortable manner. Wooden chairs and tables where dropped all over the room in a way that would have you think it would be impossible for a drunk man to find a toilet. Yet, it was as clean as clean in a pub would go and the tables weren’t sticky with spilled beer. They were however beaten. Age had probably made them see many a card game, together with maybe the occasional but rare barfight and plenty of drinking. The old man staggering outside was only a small hint to the age of the pub. Daan could only think of the young boy he once would’ve been, drinking his first (or maybe second) ever beer here. On the television in one of the corners close by the ceiling, a rugby match was being aired. Daan did not have the slightest clue about rugby, but liked the way the sport was played. Really different from soccer, which in his eyes had become nothing more than very well paid theaterwork. Other than that, he only saw a team in blue and a team in red, but could not tell which two they would be.

Jake came back from the kitchen with a steaming bowl of soup.

‘I’ll get you the bread in a bit. I was not made to carefully carry a bowl of soup.’

‘Don’t worry. What do you normally do for a living?’

‘I build houses. Not those big projects in the cities though. Small projects, mostly private stuff for people living in the countryside.’

‘I see, plenty of work around here I suppose?’

‘Right now? Yeah, quite a bit. There’s plenty of people who are sick of living in a city and want to come over to the countryside. Let’s hope they don’t all get that plan, I like the calm villages you still have over here.’

‘Then how come you were able to take over your fathers spot for now?’

‘I was done for the day. We were waiting on a delivery of wood, but that one ended up not being delivered at all. As if they couldn’t have told us sooner.’

Daan had to chuckle at that one. ‘Oh, believe me. People just forget about it. Or think they will make it still…’

‘Well, I guess thats true. Hate them for it though. I’ll get your bread and cheese, before that delivery is late as well.’

‘Thanks.’

Daan took the first spoon of soup. It was good. Not as good as what he had eaten here the last three times, but still very decent and a lot better than what he could do. He was a terrible chef. Simple things were o.k., mostly, but if there was an opportunity to eat somewhere else where it was about the same price as making a meal for himself he would do it. That sometimes meant fastfood, but overall he regarded his diet as pretty good. Sitting there in that pub, he suddenly realised this was one of those small things he had looked forward to. Drinking a pint and eating something in a small English countryside pub, on his way back home. It struck him as if the spoonful of soup had suddenly made him five years older.

And after this whole day of waiting and doing nothing, that one bowl of soup and one pint of beer made him feel more at home than all of those other things could.