#actually i think the severity is indicated by the pet name and greeting they use and they know to read into it via presence of other codes

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

My guess it would be sthg like Mina’s coded telegram to Jonathan at the Picadilly house on October 3, like:

Look out for a friend of D. He seems to be going the round and may want to see you: Mina

Just had a thought. How much would you bet that after the whole Dracula deal is said and done, Johnathan and Mina make a series of code phrases. Nothing noteworthy. "It has been a fine day" maybe. "It reminds me of traveling the country". Things like that.

Someone could catch a letter in shorthand, after all, even if they can't read it. Much harder to find fault with some meaningless pleasantries to a beloved spouse.

[ponyam]

terms of endearment ♡

prompt: terms of endearment/pet names i think some genshin characters would use

characters: kaeya, beidou, eula, albedo

fluff!

a/n: i will be working on requests shortly, so hang tight! just wanted to get this one out there <3

kaeya

sweetness, love, angel

frequently uses pet names; probably more often than your actual name, so be prepared

a huge tease; will often use these to get a rise out of you

might get a lil handsy with you in public which, if you've been dating long enough, is a stunt you're fairly used to

but he's not gonna let you ignore him, no, he will get a reaction out of you

this menace will lean in real close--and i mean real close--and seductively whisper in your ear, "you're blushing, love"

save yourself

once he's gets the reaction he wants, he'll go even further by lovingly poking fun at you, much to your embarrassment

might get even more handsy if he's feeling especially flirty, or he'll simply coo at you, saying something along the lines of, "look at my angel, getting all worked up for me"

and yes, you're his angel, and yes, he will remind you

as coy as he can be, kaeya also has his softer moments in which he is more tender and sincere, but he'll usually still carry hints of his flirtatious tone

when he notices you're a bit down, or is just looking for some extra affection, he'll sometimes beckon you into his arms by saying, "come over here, sweetness"

get comfortable; you won't be going anywhere for a while

beidou

gorgeous, baby, hun

she isn't quite as openly flirty as a certain someone, but she will use these as a way to express her affections

as captain, she does have the tendency to be away at sea for a while, so cute little reunions with her are fairly common

expect to be met with a bone-crushing hug and a, "archons, i missed you so much, baby" upon her arrival

she loves you very much, and will want to be around you as much as possible once she gets back

while she does usually have business to attend to with several merchants, nothing will stop her from actively seeking you out throughout the day

when she does find you, or if you decide to visit her, beidou's face will very visibly light up before pulling you close and greeting you with a kiss and a "there you are, gorgeous"

now, while she does have to leave your side often, there is always the occasional sea excursion in which you are fortunate enough to tag along

and because she cares about you very much, she will constantly be looking out for you even if she seems focused on something else

especially in poor weather conditions, she'll check up on you more frequently

she can be very doting when she wants to be, and is the type to say something like "be careful, hun, the deck is slippery" when she sees you emerge from below deck just after a rainstorm

god, she's just so smitten with you

eula

darling, sunshine, beloved

despite her serious demeanor and sometimes morbid sense of humor, eula uses very sweet nicknames for you

even as a lawrence who is only infiltrating the knights of favonius to enact vengeance, she does take her job very seriously, and will fight for you when and if it is necessary

but even if there is no immediate danger, eula will be constantly looking out for you regardless

she's subtle about it though, and may just use excuses like, "take my hand, darling. i can't have you getting lost now, can i?" to get closer to you

her reason being, that standing near her is safer than anywhere else and totally not just because she really likes holding your hand

she also has the tendency to wake up very early to get a head start on the day, but has no problem if you wish to sleep in

on work days, she's usually gone by the time you get up, but occasionally on her days off, she'll be waiting for you in the kitchen, usually fully dressed, before she gets up to greet you with a sweet kiss and a "good morning, sunshine. did you sleep alright?"

she's also willing to give you dance lessons, if you're open, and won't complain if you step on her toes a few times she actually finds it quite cute

and on nights when it's just the two of you, she might spontaneously ask you to dance with her, usually by offering you her hand and saying, "care to dance, beloved?"

she can be quite the romantic when it comes to you

albedo

honey, sweetheart, starlight

honestly is a total sweetheart himself, and he's not shy about it

you're often the subject of many of his artworks, so try not to freak out too much if you catch him staring at you intensely with a pencil in hand

he just wants to get your proportions right! that and he's totally enamored with you

albedo finds everything about you to be beautiful, and will constantly praise you for looking "absolutely ethereal" (his words)

even if all you've done was pose for him for about thirty minutes, a never-ending stream of praise and words of encouragement will continue to fall from his lips

once he's finished he'll sit back to look at his work, smile, get up, walk over to you, and hit you with a, "thank you, starlight. you always know how to inspire me" and a soft kiss to your cheek

enjoys having you with him to keep him company in his lab at the favonius headquarters, and will often ask for your insight or assistance

and don't be surprised if that request for assistance comes in the form of, "honey, have you seen my crucible?"

he also appreciates having you accompany him on research expeditions in dragonspine, but will become insistent that you bring the proper clothes and warming potions with you at all times

as passionate as he is about his studies, he will check in with you frequently to see how you're doing

will typically ask, "are you sure you aren't cold, sweetheart?" while waiting for a set of test results to come through

you will have to reassure him frequently that yes, you are fine, but if you show the slightest indication of being tired or cold, suddenly he's whipping out everything you could possibly need from his satchel and inspecting you like he would a test subject

he means well though, and will offer to hold you close if that is something you'd prefer

overall, albedo would probably be the most doting lover out of everyone on this list; there, i said it

[americanmoths]

inappropriate funeral questions

prompt: haunt me in the night | tw: discussions of dying, MCD | 1.5k lmao | on ao3

--

“Potter,” Draco says at the reception to Goyle’s funeral. “How is it you look exactly the same as the last time I saw you. That was almost 3 years ago.”

Andromeda Tonks’ funeral. Draco wore a black dress.

“Good skincare.” The same answer he gives Hermione. A joke so he doesn’t have to form an opinion on his complete lack of outward signs of aging over the past 5 years.

Draco steps closer and takes his hand. Studies it. Turns it over in his own hand, gentle, focused. Harry swallows.

“You’re unnaturally warm.” Draco points his wand at Harry. “Avada Kedavra.”

Then, nothing. And then, Draco.

“You came back.”

Harry shrugs. It’s not as though this is the first time.

“This is not the time and place to discuss any of this. How about my place, tonight? I’ll give you my address. Bring wine,” Draco says.

“Are you, err, asking me on a date?”

“No, I’m asking you on a secret rendezvous to discuss the bizarre set of circumstances we’ve both found ourselves in.”

“But there will be wine.”

“Yes, Potter! Because we’re adults. Because despite the fact that I look 19, I’m actually 25 and thus will drink as much wine as I want whether on a date or not!”

“You know you look the same as you did 3 years ago too!” Harry calls after Draco as he walks away.

—

“Do you think I’m a bad son for leaving early?” Draco asks at what would be the reception to Narcissa’s funeral. He had left halfway through the ceremony, apparently to raid the communion wine stash and drink alone in the church basement.

“I think you’re grieving. It’s not as though your mom will know you left.”

“Don’t say that,” Draco says. “Don’t say that. She’s not gone. She’s just … somewhere else.”

“Whatever you say, Draco.”

Draco scowls. “No, not whatever I say. Don’t placate me.”

He aims his wand at Harry. A green flash.

Then, nothing. Then, Draco, looking almost sheepish.

“Sorry, I know you asked me to warn you, but I’m drunk, and it’s my mother’s funeral. I’m allowed to forget things.” Draco sighs. “I like that you come back. That we come back. Because if you can come back, then that means that she can come back, wherever she is. It means the matter preserves itself. It means —”

Harry’s heard what it means several times before. Draco’s fond of this particular speech — it staves off Draco's fear of death, Harry suspects. Harry doesn’t understand most of the points Draco makes, but he listens anyways. Draco’s mind moves faster than his does — than anyone’s does, probably. He’s the one that figured out the Fiendfyre hadn’t died as much as it had escaped. It burns still, inside the two people who spent the longest time zig-zagging through its flames. It preserves the two of them. Prevents them from dying.

Keeps them so warm, he thinks as he runs his fingers up and down Draco’s shoulder. He can feel the fire trapped there, still burning inside lovely, grieving, drunk Draco who sighs again and says, “Sometimes when I look at you, I can’t figure out if what I feel for you is real or if it’s because you represent the possibility of seeing everyone I ever love again.”

“What you … feel for me?”

“Yes. The — you know, pseudoscientific ‘heart-opening’ feeling.”

“Errrrr …”

“Don’t worry about it,” Draco says. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”

He sighs with his whole body, his head landing in Harry’s lap. “I think I’d like it if you stroked my hair.”

Harry does. He feels warm. He feels good. He feels as though he’ll wait forever for this dumb-ass intellectual to figure out the pseudoscientific heart-opening feeling is love.

—

“Do you think I look different now that I’m an orphan?” Draco asks after Lucius’ funeral.

“Oh, yes, you look more handsome. All orphans are handsome didn’t you know?” Harry says. “It’s my honor to welcome you to our elite and exclusive club.”

Draco snorts and finishes off a second bottle of wine. “I keep on thinking about all the things he hated about me and how I’ve doubled down on them. Like animals, he hated animals and I have a crup, a dog and a phoenix. And he always told me I overthink things, and now I’m an academic. Kissing boys, also a no, no.”

Harry doesn’t want to think about Draco kissing other boys. Not when he has yet to kiss him.

“Being immortal, that’s a thing I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of,” Harry says.

“Definitely. I’m sure he hates that I outlived him. Well, sort of outlived him,” Draco waves his hand. “I don’t want to think about whatever happens on the other side right now; I’m in too good of a mood. Dancing! He would’ve hated that I dance.”

“I didn’t know you dance.”

“Of course I can dance. Here. Let me show you,” he pulls Harry snug against him, casts a music spell. Harry doesn’t recognize the song, or the dance, but he recognizes the desire in the other boy’s eyes.

“I want to kiss you,” Draco says.

“I know you do,” Harry leans toward Draco, wet heat against wet heat; a fire that burns forever, greeting itself.

Time restarts. When Harry pulls back, Draco’s 29. As old as he’s supposed to be.

—

“Why did you come?” Draco spits at the reception to his ex-lover’s funeral. Tim? Ted? Travis? Harry never learned his name out of spite.

“I wanted to see you.”

“That’s massively inappropriate.”

“I’m supporting a friend. I know how you get at funerals.” Drunk.

“I’m fine. It was cancer; it wasn’t as though it was a surprise. He was in a lot of pain. He wanted to go.” Draco sighs. “We used to argue about that all the time. I was smarter than Toby, but he was much better at arguing, so when we really got going, we could go for days. It’s been so quiet now that he’s — wherever he is. I think I’m scared of being alone. I think I’ve had a little too much wine.”

“You don’t have to be alone, you know. I’m not saying we have to do anything, but you don’t have to be alone.”

“I can’t. Every time I see you, I want to kiss you, but if I kiss you, then it’ll restart our clocks. It’ll kill us, and I’m more scared of dying than I am of being alone.”

“I know you are.”

“How come you’re not?”

“I trust you to do the thinking for the both of us. Sorry, is that unfair? It’s not as though I can keep up with you in the thinking department anyways. I trust you, and you said there’s a flip-side, that we’re proof that there’s a flip-side. Which means all there is is just somewhere else I get to explore with you.”

Draco leans down and kisses his hand. Harry feels the burn pass from Draco to him, feels the fire inside him dim. He gets older by two year, three.

But he feels it more when Draco walks away.

—

“Have you ever seen a phoenix die?” Draco asks at what Harry guesses is supposed to be a funeral for his pet phoenix, Kelvin. He’s sitting in his favorite armchair, dressed in black, still as 29 as when Harry kissed him 29 almost 70 years ago. Kelvin died, please come, that’s all his owl had said.

“No?” Harry says.

“I expected as much. Obviously, die isn’t the right word. Metamorphosis, that’s the word I’ve decided fits best. Because obviously, he’s here still.” Draco indicates the flaming baby bird sitting in a ring of ash on the corner of the armchair. “But his memories were erased, and that’s a kind of death. Kelvin was old for a phoenix — I think he was holding out for me, and he finally realized that I had no intention of going. But it was his time. I watched, out of respect. It was … beautiful. He looked so relieved. As though, finally, he could rest.”

“Errrr you know actually I think maybe I did see that. With Fawkes.”

Draco laughs and runs his hand across his face. “I’m trying to make a segue, you know. To tell you I’m ready. I thought if I was poetic about the whole thing It’d make me less scared, but it didn’t. I’m still scared.”

“I know you are.” Harry says and pulls Draco close to him. Draco rests his head against Harry’s chest. “It’s ok. We’ll be together.”

He slides two fingers under Draco’s chin, angles it up to his face. Waits for Draco to be ready. The longest moment of Harry’s very long life.

Draco looks as though he has something he wants to say, but he never speaks. He leans forward and kisses Harry.

All of the years come at once. 29; 39; 49. His back hurts; his legs ache; he feels comfortable in his body in a way his youth never allowed. 59; 69; 79, on. Two old men, falling into inevitability. Reaching together for what’s next.

There’s Draco, and Draco, and only Draco. And then nothing at all.

[taxicabinmemphis]

Janus gets a snake!! Maybe it's a human au and his partner adopted it with him and they're living together, maybe someone gave him one as a surprise (this could be human or not. Maybe they just conjured it.) The possibilities are endless, but I need Janus with a snake

it is a common fact that I can’t write anything without two people being cute with each other so this is gonna be shippy

tw food, swearing

Janus picked up the box. It had a lot of minuscule holes in it and was sealed tightly with tape. Janus looked up at his best friend with a raised eyebrow, pulling his pocket knife out of his pocket and cutting the tape covering the box. He went to open the flaps, but a scarred hand met his elbow to halt his movements.

"Be careful, Snexy," Remus warned, "this birthday present moves."

Janus slowly turned back to the box, and as cautious and slow as ever, opened the flaps. His eyes widened and he flinched when a blur that looked like a large, bright yellow noodle flung itself his way.

Janus fell to the floor and slid away from his two-eyed, squiggly birthday present and into the wall behind him. His eyes widened as he realized he was cornered and was too distracted by the fear of being devoured by a yellow power cord to register the implications of Remus' wickedly delighted laughter.

He was only able to bring the pool noodle into focus when it crawled onto his left arm. He would have flinched at the boundary violation, but he was frozen in fear. When the longest piece of penne pasta stilled, he was able to see that he was much closer with the power cord analogy than the pool noodle. A somewhat small yellow snake a little more than twice the thickness of a power cord was coiled around his arm and was looking at him with dark brown eyes too innocent-looking to belong to a reptile.

Janus swallowed, his relief that it wasn’t anything he had a phobia of not showing too well on his face. He stared into the snake’s eyes, its innocence not preventing it from looking like it was gazing into the depths of Janus’ soul.

“You got me a snake.”

“Yep!” Remus exclaimed happily, laughter calming down. “One that is just like you! Small, yellow, and brown eyes.”

“Yes, Remus, my scales are definitely yellow. It’s not like they’re green or anything.” Janus rolled his eyes, electing not to comment on the “small” jab of Remus’ remark so as not to provoke him into a session of height-teasing.

“Irrelevant,” Remus dismissed, bounding towards them. “Do you like it?”

Janus bit his lip. “I will have to decide as we get to know each other better. Though, considering it was you who conjured it, my hopes aren’t too high.”

“Virgil and Roman helped me, actually. I mentioned my present idea to them and they didn’t want you to be stuck with an annoying snake or whatever, so they helped me to make sure the snake wouldn’t be too unbearable or disturbing.”

“How kind of them.”

Footsteps were heard descending the staircase, prompting the two dark sides to turn. Patton was standing at the bottom of the steps and looked as though he was trying to figure out what was going on.

“I got Janus a snake for his birthday!” Remus told him cheerily.

Patton visibly paled. “That’s...awesome, kiddo! I hope the opening of the present didn’t rattle Janus too badly.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Brilliant, Patton, truly. And no, I’m fine.”

Remus scoffed. “You’re on the floor like a-”

“Anyway,” Janus interrupted, getting to his feet, “what can we do for you, Patton?”

Patton shook his head. “I just heard the noise and came to check things out.”

Janus nodded and looked at his arm. Despite Janus standing up, the snake was still coiled around his arm and was now looking up at him.

“Does your snake have a name yet?” Patton asked excitedly, walking over to where Janus was but keeping a substantial distance.

Janus shook his head, indicating a negative. “Definitely. It’s not like I just got him or anything.”

Patton gasped, putting his hands over his mouth. “I’ve got it! Let’s name him Jake the Snake.”

“So my snake is just a tool for alliteration for you?”

Patton made a sound of offense. “I just think it’s cute.”

“And I seem like the type to give my snake such a name?”

Patton gave a small laugh and shook his head. “No, but it would be fun! It’s not like you have a better name.”

Janus narrowed his eyes playfully at Patton. “Watch me find one.”

---

Pamela the Snake had adjusted to Janus’ room nicely, for an atypical species of pet. While annoying at times (quite often), Janus had created an attachment to the yellow nuisance. The two serpentine figments of the imagination were now perfecting semi-telepathic communication.

(You see, Remus is this exhausting thing called “extra” about 784% of the time and told Janus that if they worked at it, he and Pamela could communicate through means of telepathy and minimal hissing.)

Janus didn’t like to trap Pamela in one place, and he could tell his snake felt similarly. So, Pamela slept in a terrarium, but either roamed around Janus’ room or coiled around his neck or limb(s) during the day.

‘Janusssssss, get a ssssnack.’

‘I’m working, Pamela. And dinner was two hours ago.’

‘Take a break. sssss.’

‘Fine.’

Janus stepped away from his laptop and sunk out of his room, Pamela coiled around his shoulder. He walked into the kitchen and was pleasantly surprised to see that the large bag of pretzels Virgil had opened earlier was not yet finished. He got a bowl from a cabinet and poured in some pretzels. He spotted Roman approaching from his peripheral vision.

Janus picked up his bowl of pretzels and greeted Roman with a half-smile.

“Greetings, Janus!” Roman said loudly.

“Hello.”

“Is Pamela with you? Should I greet them too?”

Janus nodded. “Pamela is on my shoulder.”

“Hi, Pamela!”

‘Hi, Roman. sss’

“They say hi.”

Roman grinned happily and went into the kitchen as Janus left it.

‘How is Remussssssssssss? I wanna sssssssay hi.’

‘He’s alright. We will see him for game night in fifteen minutes.’

‘Okay. sssss’

Janus diverted his focus from his conversation with Pamela to find Logan descending the staircase.

“Salutations, Janus.”

“Good evening, Logan.”

‘Hi, Logan. How hassssss your day been?’

‘Logan can’t hear you.’

‘But he can hear you. ssss’

“I hear your hissing. Is Pamela trying to say something?”

Janus sighed, annoyed at his snake. “Yes. They want to know how your day has been.”

At this, Pamela uncoiled from Janus’ shoulder and slithered on top of his hat. They then slithered as far off the hat and in Logan’s direction as they could, looking at him with expectant eyes.

Logan tilted his head up to meet Pamela’s gaze. “My day has been satisfactory, Pamela, and I hope yours has been similar.”

‘Ssss thank you, Logan.’

“They say thanks.”

Pamela leaned their head close to Janus’ ear.

‘Kissssssssss him.’

Janus’ mouth dropped. ‘What? What are you talking about?? No!’

‘You know you want to. ssss’

‘No, no I don’t!’

‘Why not? I told you to get a ssssnack. There’s one right here.’

Janus sputtered. ‘Many reasons!’

‘Pssssss Logan. Janusssssss wantssss to kissssss you.’

‘If you think I’m relaying that to him, you’ve got another thing coming, Pamela.’

Logan put a hand over his mouth, and Janus could see his eyes crinkle. Was he smiling?

“Does your snake have something to say to me, Janus?”

Janus huffed. “No. Not at all.”

‘I don’t, but you do. Ssssssso tell him.’

“I think that may be false.”

Janus put a hand to his forehead, looking at Logan through his fingers. He could now see from the way Logan’s eyes were alight and the hand that had moved a couple of inches away from his mouth so he could speak that Logan was indeed smiling. Janus swallowed, knowing his embarrassing conversation with his snake was almost definitely the reason for that.

‘Pretty Logan sssssmile.’

‘If you’re so keen on him then you kiss him.’

‘I’m a sssssssnake, you moron. ssss’

Janus groaned into his hand, trying to give Logan a look that could make him pity Janus and set him free from this conversation.

“Is Pamela troubling you, Janus?”

“Very much so. Would it be alright if I permanently relinquished care of them to you?”

‘Villain! sss’

“I don’t think Pamela would be fond of that idea.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Maybe not. All the better; make them miserable.”

‘If you kissssssssed him you could ssssshare cussssstody.’

‘For the last time, I do not want to kiss Logan. I do not see him that way.’

‘Asssss your love would sssay, falssssssssehood.’

Janus wasn’t able to dignify that with a response because Logan took a few steps closer to the pair. He made eye contact with Pamela.

“You clearly have something to say. Is Janus unwilling to relay it to me?”

Pamela stuck their tongue out at Logan in a hiss and slithered their head up and down.

“Ah. Janus, you seem to be making Pamela,” he pulled out a flashcard, “angy. In order to properly deal with this, I would suggest telling me what they have to say so you can eat your pretzels without any disturbance.”

Putting Logan’s adorable flashcards and uses of modern slang that made Janus want to pepper kisses across his entire face aside, Janus was annoyed that this conversation had yet to be over. He, a master of deception, figured that it would be wise to craft a lie that would satisfy Logan and get him out of here.

“They’re offering you pretzels. I don’t want to give you any, though.”

‘Sss liar. sss’

Logan exhaled. “Well, that is very kind of you, Pamela. Since they are Janus’ pretzels and he wishes to keep them to himself, I think I will pass.”

“Great,” Janus said quickly.

‘Look how hot and ssssse-’

Janus’ face paled. “Bye!”

He raced past Logan and up the staircase.

---

Logan tapped his pen to his chin. Over the past week, he’d had several interactions with Janus and Pamela that occupied his mind, starting with the pretzel incident seven days before. Throughout these interactions, Pamela and Janus seemed to hiss angrily at each other, and Janus refused to translate. This worried Logan, and while at first he was fooled, he worried that something else was going on. After all, most of these interactions ended awkwardly and even the oblivious Logan could tell that Janus was trying to avoid him. While their interactions over the week needed two hands to number, that was over a seven day period and they lived in the same area. Logan had interacted with Roman probably thirty times or more in the past week. Logan could only count six with Janus.

More than that, Janus was clearly trying to cut their interactions short. One time when Janus had looked particularly uncomfortable, he straight-up ran out of the conversation without so much as a goodbye and didn’t even let himself be seen by Logan for the entirety of the following day. There was no other way to interpret his behavior except that he was ignoring him.

Not to mention, Pamela had been hissing in every single one.

Was the snake trying to convince Janus to insult him? Did Pamela know of malice Janus held for him that Logan didn’t?

Logan was startled from his thoughts when Virgil appeared in his room.

“Hey, dude. I can hear anxiety coming from here.” Virgil conjured a chair and dragged it to Logan’s desk, sitting beside him. He put his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his fist. “I rarely feel anxiety from you, so I thought I’d check things out. What’s up?”

“You have confused me, Virgil. I do not feel any anxiety,” Logan said genuinely.

Virgil made a noise communicating doubt. “I know I didn’t hear wrong. Here, how about you tell me what’s on your mind and I’ll see if I can spot any anxiety in your thoughts?”

Logan nodded. “That seems adequate. I do believe I may need another intelligent mind to help me make sense of these findings.”

Virgil bit his lip at the compliment. “I’m happy to help, L.”

Logan nodded and turned to face Virgil properly. “So, it’s about Janus.”

“Snake dude.”

“Yes. About a month ago, Remus gave him a snake, Pamela. Recently, Janus and Pamela have been communicating through telepathy via hissing that no one else can understand. This has been fine until about a week ago when they started hissing at each other anytime Janus and I would interact. The hissing seems to be angry on Janus’ part, he won’t translate for me, and he ends up ending the conversation awkwardly and then running off.”

Virgil frowned. “That’s weird. Maybe Pamela is insulting Janus or something?”

Logan shook his head. “I’ve heard and seen him interact with people like Patton with no trouble at all. Whenever Pamela hisses, he’ll translate, and that’s that. Unless you have had similar-”

“No. Whenever Pamela hisses when Janus and I are talking, he translates. We haven’t had any awkward interactions in a while since Janus is usually good at keeping things from getting awkward.”

Logan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Then what could they be saying?”

“Did you think of anything? If you tell me what you’ve brainstormed so far, I can tell you if any of those can be sources of anxiety.”

“Well, my first thought was that Pamela was trying to get Janus to insult me, or knew of concealed malice Janus held for me. Could that elicit anxiety?”

Virgil snorted. “Of course. Your brain is mistakenly telling you that Janus hates you.”

“It’s certainly a possibility,” Logan defended. “Considering how he has been ignoring me, it is a logical conclusion.”

“Yeah, but I think the more logical conclusion to make is that Pamela is saying something related to you that is making him uncomfortable in your presence.”

Logan frowned. “I don’t like that either.”

Virgil laughed. “Why not? That’s their problem. They’ll sort things out and things’ll be back to normal between you two. It has nothing to do with you.”

“But it does! The only person Pamela is saying those things around is me!”

Virgil’s movements halted. “You really care about this, don’t you?”

“What?” Logan asked. He shook his head. “Certainly not. I simply want to make sure I haven’t upset Janus in any-”

“Bullshit,” Virgil said in a sing-song tone. “You care. I don’t kno-ohhhhhhhh.”

Virgil adopted a shit-eating grin and leaned his head closer to Logan with a shake of his head, wondering how he didn’t come to this conclusion sooner.

“What?”

Virgil snickered. “You like him.”

Logan shrugged. “Sure. He is an intelligent and intriguing side who does his job as Deceit in an acceptably functional manner and we have conversations I would consider intellectually stimulating. He is a fellow side, a fri-”

“No. You like him.”

Logan’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “That’s what I just confirmed, Virgil.”

Virgil sighed. “No. Like as in, you probably want to back him against a wall and kiss the living daylights out of him. Maybe watch romantic documentaries together? Have a debate littered with sexual tension that ends in a make-out session? All of that? None? I don’t know what smart people do when in love.”

Logan’s mouth fell open. He started to stumble out a response. “I- No...that is a blatant lie-”

Virgil shook his head firmly. “Nope. It isn’t. I’m shocked I didn’t see it before. Looking back, I see the way you���ve looked at him, laughed at unfunny things he says, and smiled at him for no reason at all. You’re in love~”

Logan stared at him for a few minutes with a blank expression. He then put his head in his hands. “Oh my god, I am, aren’t I?”

Virgil awkwardly patted his back. “It’s okay...but yes, you are.”

Logan groaned. “And he hates me.”

Virgil drew back. “What? No! Of course he doesn’t!”

“How would you know? His actions seem to be communicating that he does.”

Virgil pursed his lips, thinking. “If I see any sign of hatred, or lack thereof, in any of your conversations in the near future, I will tell you. Okay?”

Logan nodded.

“Okay. I’ll leave you to your pining, Logan.”

---

Pamela would not shut up around Logan, and frankly, Janus wasn’t sure how much more of it he could take. They were constantly hissing about how hot Janus must think he was (essspecially in that outfit, Janusss, that sshirt is making you go crazy, I’m ssssure of it), telling Janus to kiss him, among other things. Janus could not keep his cool around Logan and always had to leave. He knew he wouldn’t act on Pamela’s suggestions, but they still prompted embarrassment and a desire to escape Logan’s presence.

So, for the past week, he had been trying to ignore Logan as best he could. He predicted his typical meal times, breaks, and when he would normally get water based on observations he had made throughout their friendship (for totally not gay at all reasons) and tried his best to stay in his room during those times. Of course, there was margin for error and days where he wasn’t as adamant to escape Logan as others, but he managed to have a full week of having only six interactions with him.

Did Janus miss him? Maybe. Did Pamela miss Logan? Definitely. Did either of those facts matter? Not in the slightest. Janus was fine with only keeping constant contact with four of his five fellow sides. And things would’ve continued to be fine if it weren’t for fucking Pamela.

‘I wanna sssssee Logan, Janussss, go talk to him. ss’

‘Not unless you behave. We’ve already had thisss talk and you alwayss sssay ssomething out of line, even if you promisssed not to beforehand.’

‘But I wanna ssssee him, and sssssso do you.’

‘I do not!’

‘Yesssssss.’

‘How would you know, anyway, if I did?’

‘Caussse you’re not ssssubtle about it.’

‘I take great offenssse to that.’

‘You sssssshould.’

Janus grumbled out some incomprehensible nonsense, electing to get some dry cereal for a snack. Pamela wrapped themself around Janus’ neck and rested their head over Janus’ ear. Janus sunk out of his room and appeared at the bottom of the staircase, where he then made to the kitchen. He poured some dry cereal into a bowl and headed for the sofa, deciding to eat there.

About halfway through his bowl of grainy dryness, he spotted with terrified eyes, Logan walking down the staircase. He realized he didn’t check his list of times Logan was normally in the kitchen or living room, and that now was one of those times. He wondered bitterly if a part of him purposely forgot just so he could see Logan again, for the first time in twenty-eight hours.

‘Go talk to him. sss’

Janus opened his mouth to respond, but closed it and looked to his food when Logan’s head started to turn in his direction. Janus took another bite of his dry cereal, pretending like he didn’t notice Logan’s presence.

Janus heard footsteps making their way over to his spot.

‘I don’t think I’ll have a choice, Pam.’

The footsteps stopped. “Good afternoon, Janus.”

Janus looked up and plastered on a small smile.

‘Oh my gosssssh look at that outfit, Janusssssss, you must think he issss ssssso hot!’

“Hello, Logan.”

Janus turned back to his cereal to take another bite.

‘You’re a rude friend. ssss’

‘Bold of you to assssume I’m a friend.’

‘Logan deservesssss better.’

‘Indeed.’

Pamela angrily hissed at Janus.

“How has your day been, Janus?”

Janus looked back to Logan. “As well as a day can be with a snake hovering nearby all the time.”

Logan gave him an amused smile. “It can’t be too terrible. I’ve heard Patton say he would love having a pet that talked to him.”

“I think even he would get tired of Pamela.”

“That bad, hmm?”

Janus chuckled as another hiss sounded loudly in his left ear. “At times. They’re fine a lot of the time, but they’ve also been rather annoying over certain topics.”

“At least it’s not all the time.”

“It feels like it.”

‘Tell him you love him. ss’

‘I will not.’

Logan’s eyes finally spotted Pamela. “What’re they saying, if I may?”

“Nothing of importance.”

‘Are you kidding? I am the mossst important thing in your life right now, but it would be Logan if you weren’t a coward. ssss’

Logan frowned, noticing that no matter how stupid something was, Janus would always translate what Pamela was saying to him with any other person. “Are you sure? Pamela seems quite incessant.”

‘I am! Your boy isss quite attentive. ssss’

‘He’sss not my boy, nor is he a boy, conssssidering he is an adult. Sstop.’

“They are indeed being incessant. It doesn’t mean it is of any importance.”

‘I think you sssshould take him out on a date tonight. You’ve done all the work you need to already, and you need to make up for the rudenesssss you’re dissssplaying right now. ss’

Janus stood promptly, bowl in hand. “Thank you for your concern, Logan. However, I have a bunch of work left to do today, and I need to return to it.”

He started to sink out, but Logan’s hand clasped around his wrist and pulled him back up. He took the cereal from Janus’ hand and set it on the table. Janus looked at him with wide eyes.

“Apologies, Janus, I did not mean to catch you so off guard,” said Logan, noticing Janus’ shock. “However, you have been avoiding me.”

“Where did you get that from?”

Logan rolled his eyes. “I asked Virgil, and he said that he’s had normal, regular interactions with you over the past week. I can’t say I’ve seen you more than seven times.”

“Do you need to see me more often?” Janus asked.

“Um, well, no-” Logan stumbled. “But I was worried. Have I done something to offend you in any way? I sincerely apologize if I ha-”

“No, Logan, not at all,” Janus said, his voice suddenly softer. “You haven’t done anything of the sort and don’t need to apologize.”

‘Now look what you’ve done! He’ssss feeling guilty for no reassson, and it’ssss your fault. Maybe we sssshouldn’t be pursssuing him if you treat him like thisss.’

“Is Pamela saying something again?” Logan asked solemnly.

“Yeah,” Janus answered. “They’re chastising me.”

Logan snorted. “I can’t imagine what for. Either way, I want to know your reasons for ignoring me.”

Janus put a hand on his neck, brainstorming good lies.

“I don’t want you to lie to me. If you lie, we can’t sort things out.”

Janus sighed, dropping his hand. He instead pondered the pros and cons of telling Logan the truth, that Pamela was trying to matchmake them.

“Does Pamela know something you feel towards me that I don’t?”

‘I told you you’re not fucking sssubtle.’

‘Who taught you sswear words???’

‘Remusssss.’

“Do you hate me?”

Janus was startled out of his conversation with Pamela at those words. He opened his mouth to respond but he was at a loss. He didn’t understand how Logan could ever think he hated him. Where did he go wrong?

“Ah. I see you are unwilling to respond. You don’t need to figuratively sugarcoat anything. I was simply curious. The improvement of our communication with each other depends on our understanding and sharing of the opinions we have regarding each other. Only then can we work together properly. I don’t mind. This will be good, so we no longer have any questions-”

Janus was too busy being worried over the future of his friendship with Logan to appreciate how cute he was when rambling. “I honestly don’t know know if you’re blind, insecure, and/or deaf but everything you’ve said in the past two minutes has been baseless and wrong.”

Logan stopped short, looking at Janus like a deer in headlights.

“...What?”

“You heard me. What, in all of our interactions, makes you think I hate you?”

“I...”

“I’m talking with Virgil more than I’m talking to you. Do you know how much Virgil and I used to hate each other, how much shit we’ve gone through? Yet, he and I are still talking normally. You really think that I hate you?”

“It was the logical conclusion from the facts at hand-”

“You were jumping to a conclusion based on cognitive distortions-”

“I resent that!”

Janus stopped to look at Logan’s face. He looked so indignant, impulsive, and so so very confused. Janus didn’t need Pamela for there to be a voice telling him to kiss Logan in that moment. Janus needed to approach this with more care than he was in the present. Logan had clearly been caught up about this.

“This is bothering you, huh?”

“I want our working relationship to be as functional as possible.”

Janus laughed with no humor, shaking his head. “No.” He exhaled. “You want me to tell you, Logan?”

Logan nodded.

Janus put a gloved hand on Logan’s shoulder and gently pushed him to sit on the sofa. Janus sat next to him.

He closed his eyes. “This will negatively affect our working relationship.”

“I imagine so, considering my conclusion came to be quite negative.”

“Not for that reason,” said Janus. “Pamela can read me like a picture book for infants. I do have feelings for you that you are unaware of. Pamela has been harassing me over it. Every time you and I have a conversation, they always implore me to do something that would ultimately end our friendship.”

“Pamela hates me?”

Janus shook his head, repressing a scoff at Logan’s obliviousness. “They always remind me of my desire to be in a romantic relationship with you and try to get me to act on that wish. The result is me feeling a bit...awkward. So, I leave.”

Logan’s lips parted. He didn’t respond for a couple of minutes.

Janus swallowed and nodded. He rose from the sofa and made to sink out. “It was nice being your friend, Logan, you’re a wond-”

Janus didn’t notice that Logan’s hand was still on his wrist. It was, and it tightened around his wrist for the second time in this interaction, stopping Janus from leaving. Logan turned his head to meet Janus’ eyes.

“I wasn’t aware you were able to feel the same.”

It was Janus’ turn to be taken by surprise. He searched Logan’s gaze for a lie, but he could see nor sense none. His hand covered his mouth and he sat back down.

Logan seemed to adjust to the new information, no longer being the one caught by surprise. He moved his free hand to the human side of Janus’ face, taking his hand from his mouth.

Logan made no move to hide that his gaze was fixated on Janus’ lips. “And the methods of acting on these feelings you have been encouraged to engage in...”

Janus caught his lips in a kiss. Logan kissed back, dropping Janus’ wrist to rest a hand on his scales, the other going around his waist.

They pulled apart after a minute, both of them smiling.

‘My work here isss done.’

‘Don’t you dare think you’re ever leaving my cussstody.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

Logan chuckled. “What is it?” He brushed a lock of Janus’ hair behind his ear.

“They’re happy for us.”

~

Taglist: @somehow-i-got-an-account @justanotherhumanstuff @merlinfreya27

~

Thanks for the prompt! I really loved writing this and there isn’t enough Loceit anywhere. I know this was probably supposed to be snake-fixated but I really liked the idea of the snake making Janus get his act together and kiss the boy. I hope you liked it!

[interstellarrambles]

Hi! Love your writing! Would you ever consider doing a Billy Hargrove x plus size reader? Maybe the reader is shy and nerdy so the party are always hanging around her, she's like an cool older sister to them. Billy finds the kids annoying because they're always around the reader when he tries to ask her out. Thanks!

heya love! very sorry I took my time with this but I wanted to make it perfect as a chubby girl myself. I really hope you enjoy it, this is probably the longest piece I've ever written, it's like four in one. solis x

pairing: Billy Hargrove x female plus size!reader

fandom: stranger things

warnings: bullies unsurprisingly, nothing terrible, abusive families, domestic abuse

fourth time lucky. bh.

the three times billy hargrove tried to ask you out, and the one time it actually worked.

hair pushed back, cig hanging gently on his smiling lips and jeans sprayed onto his muscular thighs; Billy Hargrove looked almost delectable as he stood, leaning against your lockers and waiting for you to show up. this had become a regular thing since you'd first started hanging out, and though the other teenagers of Hawkins couldn't work out why Billy would want to hang around for you, he couldn't care less. whenever he needed someone real to comfort him, and show him he was worthy of love and affection, you were there. you made him feel more alive, and that made him breathless ironically whenever he was around you. touch starved was never a word Billy would ever associate with himself until he met you. no matter how many girls had laid their hands on him, he needed none of them as much as he needed your touch.

already this afternoon, Tommy had tried to pull him away, promising him a girl at his party later on, but Billy simply shook his head and remained where he was. you were due a free period right now, and he wanted to skip and go hang out before the end of school when he'd have to pick up Max.

it was through Max and the gang that the two of you had met properly for the first time, and though she'd hated his insistent flirting, she had to admit that she didn't mind hanging out with you more. suddenly less boisterous and cruel, whenever he was around you, Max noticed how Billy would change. he loved how much you cared about the gang, even if he could never work out why you cared so much.

caring and sweet, yet undeniably outspoken and confident: it was something Billy loved about you - you had the capability to show so much love, perhaps because of experiencing a severe lack of it, but on the other hand, you still stood up for yourself and protected the ones you loved fiercely. your years in high school before billy had been ridden with cruel taunts and bullying because of your appearance, hence why you began hanging out with the gang, but since he had joined, people quickly learned not to mention you in the wrong way. whether it was the love he felt for you in his heart that motivated him to dish out bruises and broken bones in your honour, or the way you always patched him up after and kissed his bruised knuckles as a thank you, he wasn't really sure. in his heart, he knew it was a mixture of both.

Billy had been too caught up in his thoughts to notice you coming around the corner moments before, but when he heard your laughter bouncing through the corridor, he knew it was you. gazing on in adoration, he watched as you walked towards him, your boots hitting the ground quicker when you noticed him waiting. your smiles and soft skin just visible from your clothes made him nervous, and though he wasn't accustomed to the feeling he'd put up with it if you were part of the deal.

"hey princess, been missing you," he smirked, removing his cigarette to talk properly. up close, he made a note that you were wearing one of his old shirts, one he had left at yours one night after a fight with his father. the bitter memory of his injuries was somewhat sweetened by the memory of you kissing his wounds and holding him. he hoped you'd find comfort in him too.

"hey Billy, thanks for waiting," softly smiling back, you pressed your hands against his chest and pushed him back so you could open your locker. as you touched him, gentle but firm, his muscles tensed noticeably and he felt his heart race a little faster.

"so uhh, I had something I wanted to ask you doll," his demeanour quickly became less relaxed, and you felt yourself fill with nerves. a blush spread across your cheeks when he called you that pet name, your imagination getting the better of you. imagining him whispering, groaning that pet name in another predicament completely made your skin feel hot to the touch.

right as you nodded and he went to continue, one of the gang cleared their throats in an effort to get your attention.

you chuckled as you watched his face quickly drop. behind you stood the gang smiling up at Billy, half scared, half amused. the way you'd yelled at him in the past for even laying a finger on them made him too scared to dare do anything, but the threat remained in their minds.

the kids muttered between themselves as you and Billy took a step aside. you tried to keep your head straight as you watched his muscles tense and the st christopher bounce against his chest, but you still felt slightly dizzy. with you stood against the lockers, him mere centimetres away, your mind was racing and you just hoped he couldn't tell.

"princess..." his tone was a mix of warning and pleading, and made your hair stand on edge. Billy knew the kids wanted to come and hang out at your house, since no one else's parents would allow it. but Billy wanted you to himself for once, and when it came to you, whatever Billy wanted, he usually got. perhaps not today though.

shaking his head, Billy knew he'd lost the battle when you smiled and tilted your head at him.

"okay, but they're gonna have to make it up to me at some point," he stated, loud enough for the whole corridor to hear, turning to you with a smile, he whispered, "and so will you doll."

a few weeks later, you found yourself sat on the bleachers in the school gym, watching Billy practice. confident, proud and talented: Billy knew he was good at basketball, better than anyone else on the team, so he enjoyed the moments on the pitch. it was one of those moments where Billy felt good at something; it was something he could be proud of.

lighting up with joy, his face was always a wonder when he noticed you were watching, and it made your stomach fill with butterflies. though you were sure the guys on his team would've said something about you hanging around, you were also sure he'd shut them up. it made you nervous being in a room full of boys that had made your high school experience suck, but the occasional smiles from Billy were worth it.

the mainly quiet gym, hour long practice and shirtless Billy were all more than enough to convince you to attend every practice he had, using the space to revise or study (or spend your time gazing at the boy of your dreams). as well as this, Billy always rushed through showering and getting ready afterwards to take you to a local diner, where the two of you would hang out and waste away the evening with jukebox dancing and milkshakes.

having the privilege to be in the presence of post workout Billy was something you'd never stop being grateful for, because his bad boy act usually dropped during these times. buzzing with energy, he'd grab your hand while he drove down the endless country roads and tell you stories of running away, making a new life. his eyes would electrify, and you'd both lose track of time, playing his music way too loud and dancing badly.

hopefully, today would be no different. you both had a big test the next day and you had revised so much your brain had turned grey and blurry. Billy needed a pick me up too, since his home life had been worsening, so you vowed to make tonight memorable for him. planning ahead, you'd packed a bag with a blanket and some snacks, hoping to find somewhere to stop and have a fire.

as you finished going through your notes one last time, the coach blew the final whistle indicating practice was over. after receiving a wink from Billy and waving back to him gleefully, you began packing away your notebooks and headed for the car park, where you'd wait for him.

by the time Billy joined you, his hair still wet from the showers, you were freezing, your jumper not quite shielding from the bitter mid spring air. immediately, Billy picked up on this and before even greeting you his jacket was wrapped around your frame. it made you nervous sometimes, since his clothes weren't as baggy on you as they would be on other girls, and this threatened to wipe the smile off of your face.

"sorry I took so long doll, Steve was giving me shit," although his face showed obvious distaste for Steve, his eyes still softened at the sight of you in his clothes: "you look gorgeous today y/n, even better with my jacket."

blushing, you hugged him silently, chuckling to yourself when he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket to reach for a his lighter and cigarettes.

"there's no surprise," swinging open the door for you, he simply ignored your remark, so you continued, "what's the plan for today then?"

Billy had also wanted today to be special. he'd thought it over and over in his mind, trying to think of something good enough, a way to ask you out properly that suited you, showed you how much your deserved. he thought he'd come up with a pretty good idea, but it would have to be a surprise for now to make the reveal even more worthwhile.

"well babe, that is a surprise, you'll have to wait and see," he teased, a smirk rolling around his lips, sharing the space with his lit cigarette. hopping into the seat next to you, Billy began driving away from Hawkins high school, his palm resting gently on your thigh. a small affection you had grown to love, the feel of his palm against your skin set your body alight almost and you had to fight the smile threatening your lips.

Billy eventually let you know he needed to pick some things up from his house before you could set off together to do whatever he had planned, claiming he'd left something at home that morning. therefore, when his Camaro rolled up the street to his house, you settled into the seat, not expecting to have to wait long before he'd be back.

with the weight of his denim jacket on your torso, you fiddled with the seams of it, adoring the way it swamped your body even if you knew you probably looked ridiculous. tuning out to the situation, you knew Billy wouldn't invite you in at all, so you busied yourself organising the front seat of his car, something he'd probably kill anyone else for.

living with his father, there were certain things Billy was sensitive to, things he could piece together pretty quickly to decipher the situation. so when he saw the lights of the living room illuminating the house and heard the stern voice of his father hollering through the house, it set his body on full alert. he knew pretty quickly it had something to do with Max, since she had told him not to bother taking her home, saying she didn't want to wait until practice was over.

Billy figured he could buy perhaps another half hour to drive you home and pretend like everything was normal; the outcome would be the same regardless, he'd be blamed and punished for whatever stupid thing his step sister had decided to do.

hands shaking, Billy returned to the car, his lips pressed tightly together as he gripped the steering wheel white knuckled.

realising the tension coursing through his body, you slowly placed your hand in his empty one, holding it on one of your thighs. only moments before he'd been touching your skin with a completkely different emotion racing through his veins. he'd been overtaken by excitement and anticipation, wondering whether he'd finally be able to kiss you tonight and hear you call him yours properly. fear and adrenaline had replaced this now, and anticipation for a completely different evening set his heart beating off time.

his eyes trailed over to you for a second, a silent acknowledgement, a thank you for showing him the love he needed. whether you were good with words or not, it didn't matter since he probably wouldn't hear you over his heart pounding.

keeping him grounded, the warmth of your hands around his and the soft of your thighs held him in place; reminded him there was good in the world.

"I... Billy I wanted to say something, and I don't know if now is the right time," you started, regretting the words as soon as they left your mouth, but not being able to stop once you'd started, " you mean the world to me, and I..."

the words got choked in your throat, and though his eyes remained on the road, you felt the car pull over so he could focus on you. it was so fucking embarrassing to Billy. tonight of all nights, when Billy was planning to ask you to be his girl, his little sister had decided to sneak out instead of riding home, and got caught. his dad was furious and now Billy was livid with Max again. but most of all, he was embarrassed that his home life was so fucked up, he couldn't even take the time outside of school to ask you on a date.

processing the words you were speaking to him wasn't really working in his overactive mind, and you could tell. reaching with your hands, you held his face and as you spoke, he watched your lips shamelessly

"I'm sorry it's like this Billy. I wish I could do something. I just want you to be safe."

Billy didn't have anything in mind to respond to your sympathy with, so he simply leaned into your touch one final time.

"you should get going. I'll pick you up tomorrow morning. my dad..." he trailed off but you understood clearly.

miserably reaching for your bag, you leaned over to him and kissed his cheek before clambering out and making your way up to your house. butterflies still fluttered around your stomach at the small moment of bliss, having him so close yet so far, even if the moment was horrifically tainted.

Billy traces his fingers across the shape your lips has branded into his cheek and smiles softly for a second, forgetting himself in your love.

today, Billy had noticed something different about you. adorned in one of his borrowed band shirts, a confidence seemed to radiate from your skin, and though he didn't know what had provoked it, he was determined to keep it there.

glittering with amusement, your eyes widened as he stole your book from your hands and took the seat next to you. in the cafeteria especially, many wondered why Billy Hargrove, the legend, would sit with someone quite a bit lower down the social ladder. even so, his presence, along with the faint smell of cigarettes and aftershave, followed you in your lunch periods and you were eternally grateful. you loved spending your lunch times listening to him complain about Steve and Tommy, and you loved how he'd listen intently to your ramblings about school, home and whatever work you were doing.

whenever Billy wasn't with you, cutting remarks would haunt you like a second shadow, and though you were big enough to deal with it yourself, it was nice not having to.

as he winked at you and dropped your book back into your lap, your heart swelled a little and you didn't quite notice one of his teammates walking by, so when his voice cut through your moment harshly.

"hey Billy, I didn't realise you were trying on the fat girl? c'mon there's much better-" the boy didn't quite get to finish his sentence before Billy had him against a nearby support, clearly furious.

gripping the lapels of his jacket, Billy practically growled, "I suggest you shut the hell up before I beat your ass," before dropping him, realising the staff members had caught on to his out burst. as well as the rest of the students, whose eyes quickly landed on you, shaking and visibly embarrassed.

pathetically whimpering as he crawled away, the boy avoided your path when he noticed you snatch your bag and make a run for it. breathing hard, Billy quickly grabbed his jacket before chasing after you as you hurried outside, gasping for air. your cheeks felt like they were on fire and you couldn't help but wish it didn't have to be like this.

you cursed his athletic nature when he caught up to you almost immediately, whispering "hey, hey don't cry babe, don't cry about him, he's an asshole," over and over while pulling you into a hug.

until he mentioned it, you didn't notice you were crying, fat tears making his sweater soggy. glittering again, this time your eyes struggled to meet his when he pulled away to speak to you.

"I'm so, I'm sorry you had to do that for me Billy, I," you started in between wiping the tears away on your sleeve. wrapping his jacket around you, he smiled and replied "it's no problem, I just wanna see you smiling girl, that's all. I just lose my temper when they say shit like that because I just..." before he managed to finish his sentence, you took his hand, already half expecting but not quite believing what he was about to say. trembling but warm, strong; his eyes dropped to your hands intertwined and you were somewhat shocked to see a blush forming across his cheeks.

"I wanna look after you forever y/n. hate seeing you upset, you're too important to me," Billy couldn't believe he'd copped out with such a wishy washy answer, but it satisfied you. you knew what he really meant behind his words and you felt the same, which was why you pushed yourself into his arms again and kept your face pushed against his neck for longer than before.

the cold bite of his metal jewellery against your skin mixed with the faint smell of his cologne made you almost light headed, overtaken with love and light swarming your insides, but with his arms around your waist, there was nothing but safety to be felt.

smiling against his skin, you whispered loud enough for only him to hear,

"you're important to me too Billy, always will be."

perhaps a month or so later, Billy stood against his Camaro, a cigarette painting his lips with grey smoke, watching as you ran over to him. smiles exchanged from a distance as usual, he couldn't help but notice yours was bigger than usual and he wondered why.

knuckles clenching when he saw Steve and the children close by, following your heels, he felt worry wash over him and he became gripped by the though that Steve had perhaps made a move. Billy had always gotten the idea that Steve was interested, since you hung out more than average friends due your shared love for the kids. it could've also been a sense of masculinity that Billy had always felt he needed to uphold - Steve had been the king once and what would stop you from seeing that he was better for you than Billy would ever be?

Billy had never had to deal with feelings of insufficiency before, and he wasn't quite sure what to do. washed away as quickly as they had arrived though, he felt himself calm when you came closer and fixed his collar for him. his breath fanning against your neck as you reached to unfurl the collar, his warmth enveloped you and it took everything in you to hold back.

blissed out from just that moment, Billy took a few seconds to realise there was something in your hand before asking, eyeing the kids behind you.

"there's a fair coming nearby!" El butted in, earning a ruffle of her hair from you and a slight smile from Billy - he had to admit she was cute sometimes.

"and obviously, we're going," you proposed, half asking, half demanding.

Steve smirked at the way you placed a hand on Billy's chest, unconcerned at the glare he received from Billy as a result.

"I'm off, come on kids, you can come to mine," Steve announced, giving you a smile that just reeked of 'tell him you pussy'.

a few goodbyes were said and hugs were given, and then you were alone with Billy, Max clambering into the car to give you a minute. perhaps even she could sense what was going to happen.

Billy simply raised an eyebrow having clearly worked out there was something on your mind.

"Billy, I've been wanting to say it for a while and I wasn't really sure how you'd react, but," hot, red and fast, Billy could feel his blood pulsating as the words tumbled from your lips, but he couldn't stop looking at them.

"I wanted to know if you'd go to the fair with me, as more than just friends? I get it if not, but I like you a lot and it's kinda..."

before you could finish your sentence, Billy was asking if he could kiss you, ignoring everyone around you.

soft, warm and comforting, his lips against yours convinced you you had no reason to be nervous. the kiss quickly deepened, your hands laced through his hair and his settled on your waist.

"God I've waited too long for this," he whispered into your neck.

[inthelonelycoolbeforedawn]

tw: mentions of past animal abuse (nothing graphic and not portrayed in the fic itself)

Harringrove April Day 10: Peaches

Steve couldn't contain a smile as he stepped out onto the deck. Billy was sprawled in their double lounge chair, sunglasses on, Lemmy and Cookie flopped next to him.

"Hey," Steve said. "You gonna sleep all day?"

"Got bored waiting for you." Flashing a grin, Billy hooked his arm around Steve's waist and tugged. "C'mere. Celebrate with me."

"Nuh-uh," Steve said, planting one hand on the chair to regain his balance. "Dogs in the house, then I'll celebrate with you."

Billy heaved a dramatic sigh. "Fine. Hurry up."

Laughing, Steve called Lemmy and Cookie inside and slid the door shut. He felt a bit guilty about disturbing their nap, but he and Billy hadn't had much time to themselves in the last couple of weeks.

Besides, they had a lot to celebrate.

After eight years in L.A. they were both ready for a change. They weren't sure exactly what they wanted, but when they found a house away from the city on three acres of land, with a big yard for the dogs and an easy drive to the beach, they decided to buy it. They cashed in their savings and the last bit of settlement money from Starcourt, signed the papers making the house theirs, and officially moved in two days ago.

"Sorry, guys," he said, scratching the silky black-and-white fur between Cookie's ears. "We'll make it up to you. You want some treats?"

Both Lemmy's and Cookie's ears perked up at the word treat. But where Lemmy's bright eyes and barely wagging tail were his only indications of excitement, Cookie was practically bouncing up and down on her three legs, her entire body wriggling. Steve laughed and gave them both another pat before reaching for the box of dog biscuits.

A flash of movement by the window caught his eye, and his grip on the box instinctively tightened as he looked out to see what it was.

There was a small brown-and-white pony in their driveway, its thick mane flopping into its eyes as it snuffled at the ground.

Steve watched it for a minute, then went back to get Billy. "Um, Billy? Come see this."

Billy pulled his sunglasses off. "What?"

He hurried after Steve, and Steve pointed out the window.

"The hell?" Billy said.

"We should try to catch him," Steve said. "He could get hit by a car or something if he's running around loose like that."

"Yeah," Billy said. "I guess we can get him tied up somewhere and call animal control."

They went out the side door so they were ahead of the pony. It ignored them, taking a few steps and dropping its head again to mouth at some weeds.

"Here, uh - " Steve frowned. "Boy? Girl? Horse? Here, horsey, nice horsey."

"It's not a dog," Billy said. "Let's just try grabbing him. He doesn't look very fast."

They took a few cautious steps towards it. The pony lifted its head, nostrils flaring, but didn't move.

Steve and Billy inched closer.

The pony snorted and broke into a trot. Steve and Billy lunged for it, but that made it run faster. They stopped so they wouldn't chase it onto the road and watched it.

"Maybe he's hungry," Billy said. "Do we have anything he would eat?"

"Oh, yeah!" Steve spoke louder than he'd meant to. The pony looked up and moved farther away. "Oops." Lowering his voice again, he continued. "Carrots. I think horses like carrots. Go get them, babe." 

Once Billy returned with their longest dog leash and a bag of carrots, they each took one.

"Here, pony," Steve said.

"You hungry, little guy?" Billy said.

The pony looked at them, tail swishing.

They crept towards it, getting closer than they had before. The pony was watching them intently.

"Nice pony," Steve said, almost whispering. "Who's a good pony?"

"Steve," Billy said, his own voice quiet. "Go right."

They split off, approaching the pony from both sides. The pony stomped its foot but didn't move. They were almost close enough to grab it.

Holding his breath, Steve stretched his arm out a little farther. The pony snorted again, then reached out to take the carrot from his hand. Billy grabbed its halter while it was chewing.

"Got you," he said.

The pony flinched and quickly backed up a couple of steps, but when Steve grasped the other side of its halter, it stopped and stood, trembling.

"Hey, it's okay," Billy said. "You're okay."

"Good pony," Steve said.

Slowly and carefully, they looped the leash through one of the halter rings and secured it with the clip.

Now that it was caught, the pony seemed willing to follow them. They led it to the deck and tied the leash around a post.

Steve gave the pony a tentative pat on the neck. "One of us should probably stay here. Keep an eye on him."

"I will," Billy said. "Just, maybe grab some water for him? And the carrots?"

"Oh, yeah," Steve said. "All that fur, he's probably thirsty."

Billy grinned. "You know, he reminds me of Henderson, with all that hair in his eyes."

"He does not look like Dustin," Steve said, although he secretly agreed.

He retrieved the bag of carrots, then filled a big cooking pot at the kitchen sink and managed to carry it outside without spilling any. The pony stood quietly as Billy worked at a tangle in its shaggy mane.

"Wow," Steve said. "He's really calmed down."

"Yeah," Billy said.

"Well." Steve paused, not sure why he suddenly felt like he was doing something wrong. "I'm gonna go call. I'll be back soon."

Lemmy and Cookie crowded around him, and he petted them absently as he flipped through the phone book.

"It must have an owner," he said. "I bet it belongs to some little kid who'll be really happy to see their pony again, right, guys?"

Cookie licked his hand and Lemmy's tail beat against the floor.

Steve sighed. "Right."

He lifted the receiver and dialed the number for animal control.

A few phone calls later he headed back outside. He found Billy sitting in front of the pony, stroking its nose, a soft smile on his lips. The pony's head was lowered almost to his lap, its eyes half-closed.

It reminded him of the times he'd come home to find Billy and Lemmy, napping or reading or watching TV, Billy's hand resting on Lemmy's scarred side and Lemmy's massive, brindled head resting on Billy's scarred chest.

He stood there a minute, watching, before sitting down next to them.

Billy glanced over. "I gave him more carrots. Guess he's happy."

"Yeah, looks like," Steve said. "Oh, and uh, it's actually a girl horse. Her name's Peaches."

"Peaches?" Billy repeated. "Figures it'd be something stupid."

"I don't know, it's kind of cute," Steve said.

Billy stopped petting Peaches and turned to face him. "So. I guess that means you found her owner?"

"Yeah." Steve picked at the hem of his shorts as he spoke. "Animal control said there was a missing horse reported, and put me in touch with her, and - anyway, she's coming to pick her up."

"Oh." Billy looked away. "That was fast."

They sat in silence until the dogs barking and tires crunching on the driveway alerted them to Peaches' owner's arrival.

Steve squeezed Billy's hand, then got up to greet her. He came around the corner of the house just as a young woman climbed out of a pickup truck with a trailer attached, holding a halter and a thick, neatly coiled rope.

"Hi," the woman called. "I'm Nina. I'm here for Peaches."

"I'm Steve." He shook hands with her, then gestured towards the yard. "She's out back."

"So, you're new here?" Nina said as they walked.

"Yeah," Steve said. "We just moved, actually. How'd you know?"

"It's been empty for a while." She smiled. "I drive this way a lot. Our place is only a couple miles from here."

Billy was still sitting with Peaches when they rounded the corner, but he stood up when he saw them. Steve hurried to his side as Nina introduced herself to Billy, then turned to the pony.

"Peaches!" she said. "Hi, sweet girl. Oh, you scared us."

She gave the pony a quick once-over. Satisfied, she clipped the rope to Peaches' halter and handed the dog leash to Steve.

"Thank you for taking such good care of her," she said with a warm smile. "We were worried sick when she got loose. She's had such a tough time, poor girl."

"What happened?" Steve asked.

Nina's smile faded, her lips tightening into a thin line. "Her last owners weren't very nice to their animals. She developed back problems and couldn't be ridden anymore so they just threw her out in a pasture and left her to fend for herself. Luckily someone called us before it was too late."

"She's a rescue?" Billy said softly.

"Yes," Nina said. "Honestly, I'm surprised she let you catch her. She's still skittish around strangers." She patted the pony's shoulder. "She must like you two."

"Well." Steve ran a hand through his hair. "At least she's safe now, right?"

"Oh, she'll for sure have a home with us if she needs it," Nina said. "But we're a horse rescue. New horses are always coming in and space can be a problem. So ideally our goal is to get all our animals adopted out." She gave Peaches' shoulder another pat. "It might be difficult to find a good home for Peaches, though. She's a sweetheart, but most people want a horse they can ride."

Steve glanced at Billy, who was fidgeting with his ring and staring somewhere past Nina, jaw clenched.

"Hmm." Steve tried to sound casual, fighting to hold back an eager smile. "You know, I think I might know a place."

*

Steve and Billy stood at the fence, arms crossed over the top board, watching Peaches graze while Lemmy and Cookie frolicked in the far corner of the pasture.

Nina had agreed to let them adopt Peaches on the condition they volunteer at the rescue to learn how to take care of her properly. Nina, her family, and the other volunteers were glad to help with everything from answering questions to building the fence and a small barn on their property. They'd made several new friends by the time they were ready to bring Peaches home.

She'd settled in quickly, making friends with the dogs and spending her days grazing and playing. She loved being groomed, and Steve had teased Billy a few times about him spending more time on Peaches' hair than his own now.

Steve and Billy had settled in too. They'd used some of the extra land to plant a garden. Steve converted the garage into a woodworking shop and with a bigger space to work in, he started experimenting with larger pieces. Billy still surfed whenever he could. They took the dogs to the beach and discovered a few new favorite restaurants. It was everything they'd hoped for when they bought the house.

"I was talking to Mrs. Cooper today," Billy said, breaking the silence. "Her goats are having their babies, and I guess there's a lot of them this year. She said we could have a couple if we want."

"Goats?" Steve was so surprised he wasn't sure what else to say.

"Yeah," Billy said. "We've got room. They'd be buddies for Peaches, and we could sell goat milk and stuff eventually."

"Huh," Steve said. "Goats." He shrugged. "Why not?"

Billy grinned. "Great. I'll tell her we'll take 'em."

Steve grinned back, and surrounded by their dogs and their pony and their own happily-ever-after, he and Billy kissed in the soft spring twilight.

[kessielrg]

[DA+KH] Bashful

Summary: Inspired by @chibi-mushroom‘s Dragon Age AU for the Kingdom Hearts series, in which Anora (OC/KHUX Player stand-in) meets a mysterious Orlesian merchant named Brain and the duo immediately hit it off. [established Ephemer/OC][hinted Brain/OC][pre Act 1 of Dragon Age 2]

Rating: K+

Word Count: 2,015 words

If you like this story, please reblog!

-

Walking alone in Lowtown gave Anora goosebumps. No small wonder, really, what with her being a woman, and a mage, and being about the right size to simply snatch up without a second glance. She had learned by now to keep her coin in a small burlap sack, wrapped tightly around her wrist and close to her body at all times. If worse came to worse, she could use it as a makeshift weapon.

Every hawker shouting to draw attention to their pop up shops made her flinch. It was almost too loud. It was never this noisy in the Circle, and it had been even quieter at the rehabilitation retreat Ephemer had been admitted to for awhile. At least she could still be fairly invisible in Lowtown- assuming no one tried to kidnap her first. Anora did her best to avoid most of the noise. She eventually found herself at a modest stall that held some basic supplies on offer.

The young woman bit her lower lip as she looked over the potions and wares for sale. She didn't notice that the seller of these items was arranging a few more expensive items in the back. She didn't hear the sound of an odd mewling from something inside the stall, drawing the attention of the stall's proprietor. Anora still barely registered when he came to the front of the stall, looking her over without a hint of bias.

“Is there anything I can interest you with, madam?”

Despite being a gentle, warm voice, Anora nearly jumped three feet in the air. She looked up at the merchant with wide, terrified eyes. She was greeted with gentle ones staring right back at her. No shame, no judgment, just a genuine curiosity.

“Oh, no, no.” the young woman stammered, backing a little away from the stall. Her face was starting to grow hot. Why was she blushing? She wasn't that embarrassed. Was she? “I was just looking to sell some excess healing potions I had. Nothing special.”

“Is that all?” the merchant mused with a teasing grin. He fingered the tip of his fedora and tipped it to her. “Well, I could take a look at them for you. I pay pretty fair coin for a good commodity.”

Anora shrunk a little. She did say she was looking to get rid of her excess health potions. This merchant also seemed to be rather nice. When was the last time anyone was that nice to her? Even Ephemer had to hide how much he cared when he was with the other Templars. Despite herself, Anora carefully placed her burlap sack on the counter, ready for him to inspect her potions and poultices.

“Before we do business,” the merchant spoke up, offering his hand to her, “Let's introduce ourselves proper. My name is Brain.”

“Brain?” Anora repeated in surprise.

To this, the merchant gave a light chuckle. “I have many other names, but I wanted to know how that one would sound on your tongue. Ferelden, right? Kirkwall's seeing more of them by the day.”

Still unsure on why she was so bashful, Anora quickly nodded her head in agreement. Her own arm extended to accept Brain's hand shake.

“I am Anora.” she carefully said.

“The pleasure is mine, Anora.” Brain smiled; his hand gently clasped in hers, and it gave it three shakes before breaking them apart. “Now, let's see what you have in that little rucksack of yours.”

There was a polite little nod from the young woman before opening her sack of healing items. Brain let out a low whistle at the sheer quantity of them. The vials that held the potions gave off a warm, comforting glow as the vial itself revealed the bright red liquid inside. The poultices were made with just as much care; each placed inside a steel tin and wrapped with colored cloth- a date written in black ink indicating when she had made that particular poultice.

As Brain looked over everything, a cold chill ran up Anora's spine that made her look over her shoulder. It almost felt like someone was watching her. Sure, many of the Templars at Kirkwall knew she was a mage, and some were sent to watch her while Ephemer trained or was attending to his duties. But she never actually felt them watching her. Some would go out of their way just to escort her from place to place. Perhaps not kindly, but they definitely didn't hide what they were doing. None of them would try to hide from her if they were sent to watch either, come to think of it. Would they?

“These are neatly made.” Brain noted- succeeding in scaring the young woman for the second time that day. “Not perfect, of course. But pure elfroot? That stuff's in hot commodity around here. It'll be potent, if nothing else.” He then set the potion down to look her over. “Almost too potent for a tiny little waif like you. Are you trying to cure a dragon or something?”

A nervous laugh escaped Anora's lips. In a small voice she admitted, “I am the caretaker to one of the new Templar recruits.”

“Ah.” Brain nodded. “May I ask how?”

The young woman shrank a little as she shook her head. “Long story.” she told him- her voice even smaller than before. Brain observed her, slightly tipping his hat upward.

“Very well then,” he decided with a shrug, “I'll be the last person to judge a person's past.”

Anora offered a faint smile in thanks. For a moment, the merchant simply admired her before turning his attention back to her wares. There was quite a bit of silence between the two as Brain looked over everything. Possibly several moments in, Anora started to hear an odd mewling sound from inside the stand, but Brain had ignored it. The mewls grew louder until something suddenly leaped onto the shop counter.

A shriek almost escaped the young woman's lips when all she saw was something gray with black spots. Brain was immediately at attention, but in finding what had jumped up, he laughed at her. Anora took a moment to regain her breath before realizing that the creature was a snow leopard. But… much smaller; possibly not much smaller than a standard cat. It didn't seem like a kitten, though, and it certainly looked like the pictures of adult leopards in the zoology books back in the Circle. Her demeanor easily went from surprised horror to complete bewilderment.

“Are you afraid of animals?” Brain teasingly asked her, petting the snow leopard.

“I... had a sheltered childhood.” Anora informed him with a wary voice. “But I don't remember leopards being so… tiny, though.”

Brain gave her a little smirk, giving the little leopard a rather absent stroke along its back.

“Ragnar's a special case.” he told her with a bemused voice. “All the fun protective natures of a snow leopard, scaled down to nothing more than the size of a house cat. If you'll believe it, he was the largest of his litter.”

Anora cocked an eyebrow at him, turning her attention back to the small creature. At the time, the snow leopard, Ragnar, turned its attention to her as well. The pygmy leopard left its master to better scope out the newcomer. It sniffed at Anora with interest- something that she tried rather hard not to recoil at. When Ragnar started to rub his head against Anora, the young woman very carefully started to pet him. Ragnar seemed to enjoy this; a small purring noise could be heard from the creature.

“Huh.” the merchant wondered. He placed a hand at the back brim of his hat, tilting it upwards a bit. “He doesn't usually take to strangers that easily. Must really like you...”

“Is that bad?”

Brain looked up at her- a small twinkle shown in his eye as he said, “No. Not at all. It just means that you're destined for great things.”

Anora's eyes grew wide as she looked up at Brain. “Y-you're joking!” she stammered. It was a bit hard to tell, but there was a small blush placed on her cheeks from embarrassment. “You're just saying that!”

Brain let out a light chuckle, throwing up a hand in promise. “Swear on my life it's the truth.” he told her. “And on the official adoption certificate from the Black Emporium. Would you like to see it?”

“No thanks...”

“Suit yourself.” Brain teased with a shrug. “Now, where were we before getting so rudely interrupted...”

Brain continued to go through what Anora had brought with her. As he pulled out a piece of vellum, an inkwell, and a feathered pen to write out a receipt of sale, Ragnar gave a disinterested stretch before deciding to take a nap on the counter. Anora kept her attention more focused on the little snow leopard than to Brain- who was trying to tell her how much coin he was about to give her. He laughed when he caught her near grimace, and he didn't break her thoughts as he gently placed what he owed her into her sack.

“Well,” he finally announced as he tied off the sack for her, “I suppose we're done here. It was nice doing business with you, Anora.”

That finally got Anora out of her trance. Was it really time for them to depart so soon?

“How much longer are you going to be at Kirkwall?” she asked, almost a bit too quickly.

“I might be around for another week or two.” he said to her. “I've finally found good help with my main shop in Val Royeaux, so I'm not expected back immediately. If I give them a fair enough warning, I could linger behind for a bit longer.” Brain then tilted his head at her and gave her a sly smile. “Why?”

Anora immediately looked away. “I-I...” she started to stammer, “I was just curious. It gets rather boring waiting for E- my Templar to finish with his training or duties.”

“You can't wait by Templar Hall for him?”

“Another long story.” Anora bitterly informed him. Brain gave an understanding nod in agreement.

“Business in Lowtown is usually pretty slow.” he then informed her. “Perhaps I could put in a request to change locations to the Gallows for the rest of my stay. Those Templars are always buying potions and such- I might actually turn a profit for once.”

Anora's eyes widened in surprise. “You don't have to do that!” she said. But the merchant only laughed.

“Anora-bird, if the street walkers around here were half as pretty as you, I'd reconsider. But as it stands, I could use a change of location. Perhaps we'll meet up again soon. Who knows in a backwards town like this?”

Again feeling her face heat up in a humble bashfulness, Anora offered Brain a polite little nod. She once more wrapped her burlap sack tightly around her wrist -now a bit heavier from the coin he had given her- before starting to head back. The young woman barely looked up as she scurried to Lowtown's main entrance- and it was by accident that she bumped into someone on the way out. She looked up at who she had run into, and nearly staggered back in a horrified shock.

“Knight-Commander!” Anora gasped. “I-I didn't see you...”

The Knight-Commander did not answer her. Instead, he chose to glare at her with an unreadable expression. Anora let out a nervous laughter as she moved away from him, hurrying back to Templar Hall. With an arched eyebrow, Sephiroth watched her leave before turning his attention to Brain. The merchant, who had been observing Anora for a moment as she parted, had turned his attention to the poultices and potions she had given him. As he admired the slightly glowing mixtures in their bottles, he absently gave his pygmy snow leopard strokes along its back. At this, Sephiroth's eyebrows furrowed.

“Interesting.” he decided, in monotone, before also making his way back to Templar Hall. “Very interesting indeed.”

[melodious-madrigals]

of communication and cats

Written as part of @wondertrevnet‘s Lock Out Bingo.

Fandom: Wonder Woman Pairing: Diana/Steve Prompt: texting Word Count: 2552 Rating: T Summary: Steve and Diana adopt a cat. Steve is exceptionally bad at texting. The two converge more often than you'd think. (Aka miscommunication, but like. Low stakes.) Mostly fluff. In-universe for lost love (sweeter when it’s finally found) which you can read here.

Find it below the cut or on AO3.

***

Notes: not really a texting fic, just a very loose definition of "fulfilling" the prompt because it includes some texts, lol. 

***

Don't be mad, but says the preview on her push notification from Steve's latest message. Not exactly an auspicious start, given his propensity for doing reckless things.

Diana massages the spot between her eyebrows where tension headaches start, and decides she needs to just bite the bullet and look at the text. (It can't be too bad if he's still able to text about it, right?)

Swiping down, she taps on the message.

Don't be mad, it says, but I found this little one abandoned, and I was *going* to ask if we could keep it but then I fell in love. Sorry, no takebacksies, but I will let you help me name it.

Attached is a picture of a fluffy black kitten curled up against Steve's chest. The angle is funny—clearly an attempt at a one-handed selfie while also holding the kitten—but it's one of the most precious things Diana has ever seen. The kitten's tail is wrapped tight enough to be gently touching its own nose. It's so adorable that Diana thinks she might cry.

The message is a little over an hour old, and Diana goes to text back when more messages come through.

Vet says: It's a girl! 🎈

Then, She has a great big personality, with a photo attachment of the kitten—vet office clear in the background—looking extremely indignant at her current circumstances.

I look forward to meeting her, Diana types back.

When Diana gets home, she finds a veritable explosion of cat toys and products across their living room and kitchen. At the epicenter, on the couch, is Steve, asleep, with a tiny little ball of black fur tucked up under his chin. If Diana had previously had any reservations about their new kitten (she hadn't, really), they would have been erased upon seeing them like this.

She snaps a quick picture, and then goes into the kitchen, pulling out vegetables to start dicing for the evening meal.

Twenty minutes later, Steve wanders in, the kitten now cradled against his chest.

"She's about six weeks," says Steve. "Which is a little early, but the vet says that other than needing to be fed, she looks healthy. She didn't appreciate her first round of shots, but she did appreciate the salmon pâté slurry I gave her afterwards."

"Poor thing. She was abandoned?"

"I think so," says Steve. "I actually saw her yesterday, hiding in the same spot, but they say not to move kittens, you know? because sometimes the mother is just off hunting. But she was alone yesterday and crying, and she was doing the same when I passed by today, and I couldn't just leave her there."

"You did the right thing, Steve. So, about her name."

Steve looks away guiltily, and Diana just knows that he's already named the cat.

"The vet needed a name to start her file," Steve mumbles. "I thought Bast would be cute."

Diana purses her lips, trying not to smile. "She already has you worshipping her like a goddess; it fits." Then she breaks, and starts laughing. "I'm not mad, Steve! About the cat or the name."

Steve looks relieved, like he didn't really think this would be a fight, but wasn't sure. They've talked about getting a pet before, but have always decided against it because of how much they travel.

"I already talked to Aisha and Marguerite," he says, referring to the couple who lives across the hall. "They said that they would watch her when we go out of town, as long as they also get to play with her while she's still a kitten."

"That reminds me, we should have them over for dinner this weekend. Or next, if they aren't free."

Steve shakes his head. "Next weekend's bad. I've got a work thing Friday night, and we're going to the concert at the Madeleine on Saturday with the Giraudets."

Diana makes a little humming noise as she pulls several spice jars from the cabinet. "Am I coming to your work function?"

"Only if you want, but I'd love to have you. You can't hit Floyd, though."

Diana wrinkles her nose at the mention of his co-worker. "We can go out for late night kebab afterward," she decides. "As a reward for putting up with him."  

"Génial," says Steve, at the same time that Bast wakes up and meows loudly. "Apparently we haven't been paying her enough attention."

"Hello, Bast," Diana says, and the kitten meows again.

"Here, take her; I'll finish supper," offers Steve.

The kitten squeaks as Steve transfers her, then settles into Diana's arms, looks up at her, and slowly closes her eyes and falls asleep again.

They're cat people now, apparently.

*

Bast, as it turns out, is a very affectionate cat. She wants to be held, constantly, and when she isn't being held, will toddle up to one of her people and scream until they finally do pick her up. She also likes sleeping tucked up under Steve's chin, which Diana finds absolutely hilarious because Steve is not—and has never been—a back sleeper, but now, more often than not, she finds him falling asleep on his back so as not to disturb Bast.

Bast is most definitely Steve's cat, but she likes Diana well enough. Often, she perches on Diana's left shoulder when she's working on her laptop, and peers at the screen like she's reading the artifact dossiers too.

Sometimes, if Diana is very lucky, Bast will curl up in her lap instead, nose still tucked into the curl of her tail, and purr. Most of the time, Bast perks up as soon as Steve gets home, and prances over to greet him with an affectionate headbutt.

"I see how it is," Diana says, one day, when Bast lifts her head at a sound outside the door that turns out not to be Steve, and Diana swears she looks disappointed. "You like him best."

Bast simply looks at Diana with her big round eyes and blinks once, which Diana suspects is cat for 'duh'.

"Oh, all right, I cannot blame you," Diana sighs, "I like him best too."

Bast presents her chin, and Diana obliges her with a scritch.

("That was a cat-kiss," Steve says later, of the blink, laughing. "Bast was basically telling you she loves and trusts you, and you thought it was sass.")

*

It's a perfectly ordinary day, and perfectly ordinary days are very easily ruined.

For the day in question, it's the We need to talk that shows up from Steve, causing Diana's nerves to go haywire. She really doesn't think they're fighting about anything, but 'we need to talk' is universally a bad thing, right? They're usually pretty good about handling their problems in constructive ways, and they're excellent at talking through things, but there's a certain permanent ominous quality to 'we need to talk' that fills her with dread.

But when Diana unlocks her phone, she finds: We need to talk about how adorable Bast is right now, along with a picture of the cat in question with her paws crossed over her eyes, and the tiniest tip of her tongue visible between her teeth, like she didn't quite pull it all the way in when she closed her mouth.

Diana laughs, shows the picture to her interns, and sends back She looks so angelic. Like she didn't start caterwauling at four a.m. this morning and wake me out of a dead sleep.  

She's a cat, replies Steve. They're always perfect little angels, even when they're not.

"That cat has you wrapped around its paw," Diana says that afternoon, when she comes home to find Steve making a special meal for Bast. "That had better not be the hake I bought at the market this morning."

"Of course it isn't. I filleted that and have the rest cooking down in the stock." He tilts his head toward the lidded pot on the stove. "This is just a little treat for being three months old." He says the last bit to Bast in a slightly sing-song voice.

She loves this man, she really does.

*

Diana is having a very long day and thinking about Bruce Wayne in a rather uncharitable way. (He is, after all, the reason she had to extend her business trip to the States and is not currently home with her husband and their cat.) She's dirty and tired, and trying desperately not to be bitter about it, because she doesn't approve of feeling bitter about things, when her phone buzzes.

The setting it's on means that the text can only be from Steve, while everyone else is filtered out by 'do not disturb'. Checking her surroundings surreptitiously, she pulls out her phone.

Diana help I'm dying reads the preview and Diana's heart drops into her stomach, body immediately prepping for a supersonic flight and going into panic mode because she's too far away, an hour or two at least from whatever Steve has gotten himself into now—

Diana help I'm dying at how fricking cute Bast is and I need you to be too, Steve has written. I can't even. Underneath is a minute long video of Bast, and Diana nearly hurls her phone across the room before the relief takes over. She almost throws up as she comes down from the adrenaline spike, too.

After a couple of deep breaths, Diana hits the dial button, and Steve picks up on the first ring, right as rain.

"Did you watch it? Isn't she just the best?" he exclaims.

"You need to work on how you start your texts, Steve," she says instead of answering. "Do you know how it popped up on my phone? 'Diana help I'm dying.'"

Steve sucks in a breath sharply enough that it's audible even across the tinny connection. "Oh, Gods. I'm so sorry, Diana."

Between his contrition and the fact that he's clearly okay, Diana feels her anger evaporate. She can't count the number of times that Barry—just for example—has used 'I'm dying' or 'DEAD' or 'deceased' to indicate various emotions that are not death-based. It's only normal that Steve would pick it up.

"No, I also overreacted," she admits. "I have not slept properly in two days and was not really thinking."

"I'll still work on it," Steve promises. "Seriously, watch the video; she's such a weirdo. It'll make your day better."

"Okay, I will."

"Hey, are you okay? Do you want to talk?"

"I am just ready to be home," Diana says. "I really shouldn't talk now, but hopefully I will be home before morning."

"Okay, Angel. Love you."

"Love you too."

The call disconnects, and then Diana hits play on the video. It's shot in their kitchen, and it's dark enough out that Steve has the overhead light on. Bast is in the middle of the floor, spinning in circles chasing her tail, or maybe the shadow of her tail, Diana can't quite tell. She suppresses a laugh as Bast starts spinning the other way. Dammit, Steve's right. She really is cute.

Day brightened, Diana taps out. Give her a kiss for me, we both know how much she loves those.

Two minutes later, a photo pops through of a very disgruntled looking Bast with the caption 'post-kiss', and Diana squashes down another laugh.

She's home by one in the morning, their time, and only has to move Bast a little bit to climb into bed next to Steve.

*

One of the reasons Diana was originally hesitant to get a cat was how much they both travel for work, and this month has been absolutely non-stop for her. In the past three weeks, it feels like she's only been home about three days. Fortunately, this is her last trip for another month (or at least, her last scheduled trip; JL business has a nasty way of popping up at inconvenient times), and Steve's job has been largely quiet on the travel front, lately.

She's got one more day to get through, and then it's just her normal job. She might even take a personal day or two.

She's just about to go into another meeting when her phone buzzes. Urgent! Read me NOW says the preview of Steve's message, and Diana immediately thumbs open her lockscreen, pausing before she enters the room, just in case she needs to dart back out.

We love you! ♥️💕 reads the rest of the message, and underneath is an attached photo of Steve and Bast. He's holding her up so that their faces are pressed together, and Bast has decided to be a perfect angel for Steve, looking directly into the camera. Diana swears she's even smizing next to Steve's own grin.

I know we talked about this, says another message that pops up while she's looking at the picture, but we wanted to make sure you saw that right away.

And then, We miss you.

A smile inches its way across her lips, and she sends back a quick selfie with a cat ears filter and a miss you too scrawled along the bottom before ducking back into the meeting.

*

It's Bast who hears her first, because when she opens the apartment door, Bast is sitting squarely in front of it. She lets out an indignant yowl, and then puts her front paws up on Diana's legs, asking to be picked up.

Diana shoves her suitcase inside the door, closes it, and obliges, and Bast settles in against her chest.

"She's clearly forsaken me," says Steve, who's just come out of the bedroom. "Hey you," he adds, leaning in over Bast to give her a kiss.

"Give it five minutes," Diana replies, because even though the cat looks comfortable now, her moods are mercurial.

"Mmm," Steve hums, clearly in agreement. "Hey, before I forget: can I see your phone?"

She shifts Bast (who looks up at her reproachfully) so that she can free a hand and pull her phone out of her pocket to give to Steve.  

"I've been fiddling with mine, and I figured out how to turn the preview off of the push notification," he says.

Diana lets out a startled laugh. "That's probably a more secure setting anyways," she says. "Go ahead. I look forward to the moment when every third text from you will no longer induce panic."

"The future is now," Steve deadpans, and Diana has to set an affronted Bast down so that she can give Steve a proper hug, because she's glad to be home.

*

The next morning, Diana sneaks out early to their favorite boulangerie for a couple of pain aux raisins. She's in line when her phone pings.

Swiping it open, she taps on the notification and sees (in full, this time, thankfully): Mayday, mayday, mayday, the cat has taken your spot. There's Bast—stretched out so long across the bed that it almost looks like someone put her on a medieval torture rack—looking very pleased with herself because she's taken up the entire half of the bed that is Diana's.

A small smile creeps over her face as she steps forward to order. She's got a spot to reclaim, a cat to snuggle, and a husband to kiss good morning; she hasn't got any time to waste.

***

[maidenof-thesea]

Snakes and Butterflies | Preface

Pairing: Jimin x reader

Genre: Soulmate Au!, Fluff, Angst, Smut (Maybe, still debating)

Words: 2.1k 

Warnings: MC briefly mentions self harm but she recovers. 

Note: So this is my first series, I sort of dabbled in writing when I was younger. so I’m no expert but feedback is appreciated. I always enjoyed reading fan-fictions and always wanted to try it myself. Hope you like it! 

"So your room will be on the 3rd floor, facing the parking lot behind this building" I say to the couple in front of me as I hand them the keys to their hotel room. When they both reach for the keys I see their soulmate marks both matching arrows. I look up and feel my fake customer smile come on my face as I met their gaze. "Elevator is on the first hallway to your right as soon as you leave out the door. Dial zero if you have any questions." As soon as the couple is out of hearing range, I let out a sigh that Fernando, the security guard, hears.

"It's almost time till you get off," He says. "I have 7 more hours to go.."

"Oh you’re right" I say, as I look at the time on my phone. "Time to go home to the love of my life: my Yuki."

"Y/n, you need to go out and have fun like other girls your age," He says laughing and rubbing his beer pot belly. "You never know, you might just meet the love of your life...which would be nice in times like these.."

"Times like what?" I say counting out my last cash drop of my shift. "Did you see something on Facebook again? I told you so many times--"

"I saw this on the local news!" He says with red blotching his cheeks. "Young girls! Young girls around your age getting abducted! They turn up later on having no memory only that their Soulmate marks are gone!"

"Let me guess," I say printing out my paperwork and logging out of the system so that I could wait for my relief to come running through the door late again. "All these girls had a bunch to drink while having this so called 'fun' you say and this happened to them."

He stammers for words and in comes running my coworker who happens to work the graveyard shift. I saluted her and  I gestured for her to hurry up and clock in since guests are pulling in the parking lot. She smiles and hurries to start the beginning of her shift, while Fernando walks me to my car.

"Okay," He starts when we reach my car. "Perhaps not now but later when this whole ordeal dies down." I hum in response ready to get in my car as I unlock it, but he stops my door from opening. 

"I just worry about you, that's all y/n. Most girls either rebel or try very hard to find the one that matches their Mark but you.. you hide behind those sweaters and let no one near you, I've never even seen your Mark-"

“Fernando," I say grasping his shoulder. "There's no need to worry, I'm just letting fate decide for me. We've been blessed with this, surely fate means for me to come across them at some point in my life." I feel my other hand clench at the word 'blessed'. Surely to me it was a curse. I force myself to smile and I see that it works, he's convinced. "I just want time for myself. I want to grow into a person that feels like she's lived her life and is willing to open up and welcome someone." That wasn't a lie, that was genuine and I felt my voice wavering with emotion. Emotion I didn't know I still had. Fernando pats my hand and opens my door. I roll down the window after starting the ignition. I smile as I hear his radio go off, my coworker stating she needs him upfront. 

"Alright then miss," he says smiling. "I will let you go now and get some sleep!" I wave at him, as I reverse out and start the short drive home. My smile fading off my face as I clenched the steering wheel, willing myself to force unwanted emotions and memories away and drove the short distance to my home.  

The reason I decided to move out here to one of the beach cities was to escape. I found solitude in the sounds of the waves. My friend Jennie had recommended me to stay in this house alongside her family’s private beach, once I had told her my plans of moving out. She told me the rent would be really cheap which was impossible to believe but she told me that her family was planning on making it an airbnb during the summer and that they needed someone to manage it. She offered a wage but of course I declined, I just told her to hire someone to clean and I’ll manage the rest. 

It had been a year since then and now summer was just peaking over the horizon again and I knew I was gonna have to take time off to get everything situated. As I got through my door, my beloved Yuki, my tonkinese cat greets me with her purring and rubbing around my ankles.

“Hello my precious, how was your night?”

She purrs and licks my petting hand. I go to take off my coat and shower before bed. As I strip my work clothes, my arms catch my glance and from the conversation from earlier, I am reminded just how much of a freak I am. Where there should have been a Mark, lied just my skin. Scarred skin, to be exact, scars that matched my finger nails.

Rather than face the questions and pity in people’s faces, I rather hide. Hide just how pitiful my life has been. As the warmth of the water envelops me, I don’t feel the need to hide, at least not here in my own home, well that is till the summer. I force the pity I have for myself away and hum a tune. After that I fed Yuki a late night snack and turned on the TV to watch some Netflix. Just then my phone dinged and I saw a message from my mother. 

Mom[10:47 pm]: Have you seen this? Link: ww.foxnews.com/missingMarks

I clicked on the link and apparently the news I thought was just local made national news. 

“Today in a small town in southern California, tragedy has struck for several young adolescents who were out enjoying their youth when their very futures may very well change forever.” I rolled my eyes at that. They’ll live. “These women were abducted and their Soulmate marks stripped from their arms. All of them have no recollection of their whereabouts in the last 14 hours. Here’s Nancy with one of the victims.”

The clip changes to a girl with her eyes blurred out but it was evident that she was crying as she kept wiping her face. 

“I swear I just needed some air, I stepped out for a bit and I woke up at some park and this excruciating pain in my arm… my Mark was gone, almost as if it was burned off! How am I ever-gonna find them?!” 

Once again I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes, although a part of me was reminded of my teenage years but now older me, thrives in independence. My phone dings again, indicating another message from my mother.

Mom[10:52 pm]: They think there’s some Neanderthals out there taking Marks away… is that even possible? I thought they were extinct…

Me[10:52 pm]: I thought that was just a bedtime story??

Mom[10:55 pm]: Seriously? It’s in the history books! Why would you think that?

Me[10: 57 pm]: You know why… I don’t really care for things involving those stupid Marks. Besides I learned that along with basic math, how am I supposed to remember that?

Mom[10:57 pm]: I know sorry. But you should at least know our history!

Me[10:58 pm]: Ok I’ll watch a documentary on it on Netflix right now

Mom[10:59 pm]: You just got off work! Go to sleep!

Me[10:59 pm]: yea yea goodnight <3

“Maybe we should just sleep Yuki?” I say as she jumps on my lap and continues to purr and make herself comfortable before I could even get up. “Oh well guess I’m not moving.”

I grab the remote and start Netflix and about to click on Stranger, a Korean drama that I binged in the night prior but a new planet earth documentary catches my eye. This time instead of endangered species it’s about Neanderthals, an extinct race of human beings.

“Would you look at that?” I say tilting my head in curiosity. “Guess I am gonna learn our history.”

As the documentary starts to play, I get a text from my boss that she needs me off for tomorrow so I could work a full shift the day after and I internally groan but realize I can sleep in tomorrow. The theme song of Planet Earth starts playing and I am reminded of my childhood when I see the photograph of the Neanderthals, they look more ape like than human. I begin to wonder if they really actually looked like that or if they were exaggerated or not. Would they still look like that or would evolution help them adapt among humans now? Assuming that they were still alive…

“Humans and Neanderthals have always had their differences and constantly were at war with each other. Evolution had blessed humans with the abilities to procreate faster by aiding humans to find suitable partners. Each generation of humans was more beautiful than the previous. The Neanderthals, unfortunately were unable to evolve like us human beings and they would rape and pillage humans in order to procreate. Thanks to our advancement in evolution, humans were able to develop better weapons and eradicate the Neanderthals…”

“Okay,” I said rolling my eyes, raising the remote control. “Enough of that genocide bullshit.”

“But what if that’s all a lie?” a man obscured in the video said. On the bottom where typically the name of professors or researchers would be credited, the name ‘John Doe’ was instead. This caused me to raise my eyebrows. This man did not want to be known. Of course what he just said is considered blasphemous. “What if I were to tell you that humans are not the apex predators-that we never were the apex predator? That our ancestors may have won the war but fabricated history for their benefit?”

“That’s quite possible,” I mumbled. “But how could you possibly obtain the evidence to prove that?” 

“Of course there is no evidence left to prove that but I have dedicated my entire research into finding the remaining Neanderthals. Our ancestors could never locate the actual origin of the Neanderthals-”

“Seriously? I thought that place was just a myth!” I exclaimed, rousing Yuki from her sleep. With the flick of her tail she hopped off the couch and headed to my bedroom to sleep on my bed. “Sorry baby.” 

The documentary went on and on about the possibility that Neanderthals may live among us. That everything we know is a lie, that Neanderthals were the ones who evolved, they were the ones that had Soulmate marks… but there was no evidence to support it.

I turned off the TV when the credits started to roll. “Well another documentary to piss off the republicans.” My eyes started to feel heavy and instead of going to my bed I just pulled the throw blanket over myself and fell asleep. 

“Y/n look! Fireflies!” a boy with crescent moon eyes and Cheshire smile came running up to me with cupped hands. On his arm, was a Soulmate mark that wrapped around his entire arm, like a snake. It was the most beautiful I had ever seen. Most marks were abstract symbols but this was the first animal one I had ever seen.

“Can I see, Jimin?” another boy said excitedly running with buck teeth, almost like a bunny’s. 

“No I want to show Y/n first!” and the boy called Jimin reached me and opened his hands.

The fireflies floated up the sky and both me and the other boy stared in awe. The other boy proceeded to try and catch the fireflies once more and when I looked back at Jimin, he was already staring at me with a gleam in his eyes. He reached for my hand and when our skin made contact, a shiver went through the both of us. When I looked at our joined hands, I noticed that instead of a snake tail on his wrist, the snake’s body seemed to morph into particles and the particles continued onto my arm and morphed into butterflies..like a puzzle piece.

“Y/N-”

Next

Masterlist 

[kynmoonlight]

Spelling Matters [a Witcher fic]

Spelling Matters

A cautionary tale about spelling when spelling. Geralt and Jaskier go off to hunt an Ekhidna, but that’s not what they find. Well, not exactly.

--

Me: Writing an entirely different fanfic, like, hmm, I’ll throw in a Witcher-verse monster I’ve heard of... Let me look up details... wait, how can a little porcupine-thing be such a threat to Geralt? I had to Fic it.

Image credits; Google search and Witcher fandom wiki. https://g.co/kgs/DTmGmV https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Ekhidna

--

“What’ve you got?” Jaskier asked, crowding against Geralt’s shoulder to look at the paper the Witcher had pulled off the notice board.

“Ekhidna.”

“Ooh, that’s like a siren?”

“Hmm. Bigger. Stronger.”

“Um, isn’t the coast still like half a league away?”

“Mm,” Geralt agreed absently, head tilted as he took a deep breath of the westerly breeze. “Saltwater inlet not far outside town. I’m guessing that’s what ‘near Blue Marsh’ means.” He showed Jaskier the location on the notice and started walking.

“That’s not how Ekhidna is supposed to be spelled.” Jaskier pointed as he caught up.

Geralt shrugged “Not everyone is an Oxenfurt graduate.”

The “Blue Marsh” was kind of a grayish brown marsh when they scouted the area. Geralt cautioned Jaskier to stay well back from the water, so he waited on a sandy stretch that wasn’t too boggy this time of day while the Witcher checked out the surrounding area.

“Hm. Nothing,” Geralt reported on his return. “Some torn up areas where the marsh meets the water, but it looks like if there was something here, it’s moved off.”

“That’s nice,” Jaskier said, distracted. He paused and turned his focus back to Geralt. “I mean, lucky for the townspeople that there’s no more danger. Unlucky for us that means there’s no coin either. But, hey, look at this cute little thing.”

Geralt followed his indication to the spikey little hedgehog-like creature, placidly licking up ants, it’s little pink tongue poking out of a long narrow snout. Beak? He wasn’t sure about ‘cute’ but it was small and harmless looking.

“Oh, Geralt, the poor thing got stranded out here when the tide washed into the reeds and blocked the thoroughfare.”

“An arm’s width of sandbar is hardly a thoroughfare.”

“Well it is if you’re the size of a soup bowl! We have to rescue him! This spot will be completely underwater by sunset.”

Geralt sighed as if very put upon, but waited while Jaskier scooped the little animal up in his folded doublet and then helped him pick his way back through the shallowest part of marsh.

“You’re not keeping that stupid whatever-it-is as a pet,” Geralt warned when they set up camp for the night.

“Geralt! Don’t call Pinchy stupid! She’s very sensitive.” Jaskier offered the creature another bit of plant, trying to find out what it liked to eat. He sighed. “And we’ll find her a nice home in the morning far enough away from the marsh and the busy unsafe road, with plenty of other whatever she is to play with and whatever they like to eat to keep her content.”

They’d actually tried to go back to town, but the first person they met started ranting fearfully about ‘freaks of nature’ and ‘abominations’ - which wasn’t that unusual of an occurrence to witchers - but when the comments turned to ‘four dicks’ and ‘tummy pockets with naked babies’ they took themselves and the unwelcome pinchy critter back out of the settlement quickly.

Jaskier left “Pinchy’ (whose tummy pocket -- thankfully without any naked baby Pinchies -- apparently meant she was a she) rooting for insects and sat down to scribble some lyrics on the back of Geralt’s now-irrelevant monster notice, flipping it over again while he contemplated any possible rhymes for pinchy, and tried to recall enough of his boring natural sciences class to figure out what animal was like a hedgehog but not, with maybe a bit of anteater thrown in. And regretting that info from classes that were boring to an aspiring bard could have been useful to an actual bard.

He hummed a bit, and corrected the ‘k’ in Ekhidna on the paper, unable to stand looking at the misspelling anymore.

“Geralt!” he screamed as the ground shook, and tiny spikes and claws stretched up and up and up into scales, wings, a siren tail and… he tore his gaze away for a terrified peek at the notice and back at the growing monster. “Geralt!” he called again, a little more frantically to the Witcher who was running back from his dinner-hunting excursion in the nearby woods.

Panting, Jaskier hastily rubbed his corrective pencil line off the notice while backing away from the sudden Ekhidna.

Several things happened at once. Geralt stepped past him, sword in one hand, shoving him to a marginally safer place behind him with the other. Most of the pencil lead finally rubbed off the paper. And the Ekhidna shuddered and faded out around the edges, and shrunk back down to…

“An Echidna!” Jaskier said.

“It was! Where did… What the fuck?”

Jaskier sat hard, right on the ground in shock, waving the slightly crumpled notice at Geralt in insufficient explanation while he caught his breath.

The silver sword hung down in Geralt’s hand as he touched his medallion. “It was vibrating, then it just stopped when the Ekhidna turned into a …” He pointed in lieu of calling Pinchy a ‘whatever-it-is’ again.

“An Echidna.” Jaskier repeated. “With a ‘c’. I remembered that’s what they’re called. Not a ‘k’.”

“Not OK?”

“K.” Jaskier climbed back to his feet and traced a line over the ‘c’ in the misspelled monster name on the notice as he showed it to Geralt, careful that the lead didn’t mark back over the faint erased line changing it into a ‘k’. 

“Some kind of magic? Curse? Like a ... what? A spelling spell?”

Geralt snorted. “That’s absurd!”

“Do you really want me to change it again to see?”

“No! Once was more than enough.”

The Witcher, Bard and Echidna sat around the fire later that evening debating the issue. At least, the first two did. The third just blinked at them with shiny dark eyes.

“But why would a sorcerer curse a siren to turn into a hedgehog if townspeople spelled it’s name wrong? And how could he even know that would happen?” Geralt growled, angry enough at dealing with magic without having to deal with nonsensical bizarre random magic.

“I think,” Jaskier mused, “I think she must not really be an Ekhidna or an Echidna.” He hummed looking at the notice page with caution. “Do you think that a mage used a written spell to change something - or someone - into an Ekhidna for whatever unfathomable mage reason, and there was enough magic bound up in the spell that when whoever wrote up the notice spelled it with a ‘c’ like little Pinchy here, that’s what it changed her into?”

Geralt grumbled in very begrudging agreement. “Completely ridiculous! But evidence seems to hold that up.”

“The fuck is wrong with mages?”

“Who knows.”

Jaskier laughed grimly. “Well, do you think we should try to break the spell?”

That led to another discussion between the three of them. Although Jaskier was the only one soliciting Pinchy’s opinions, and she was, predictably, unable to share them if she had any.

Eventually. it ended up with Geralt leaning over Jaskier’s shoulder, reminding him of their carefully agreed-upon wording while the bard wrote it out over ‘Echidna’ on the postbill.

Jaskier, always the optimist, had draped a cloak over the back of the tiny creature, “Because after all she’s been through she shouldn’t have the added trauma of turning back naked with two strangers.”

Geralt, with classic witcher skepticism, held his sword in his hand behind Jaskier’s back just in case, ready to jump in front of the bard to defend him if things went poorly. 

“... true form,” they finished verbally and in print, together. 

Pinchy shuddered and grew once more under the fabric. To both their relief, stopping at approximately person scale proportions rather than overgrowing that to super-Siren-size. 

Moments later, she stood gathering the fabric around what appeared to be a normal human form, looking down at herself, at the Witcher, the bard, the paper and quill in the bard’s hand. 

As Jaskier babbled out a greeting, introductions and explanation all in one jumbled sentence, their transformed guest blinked, sighed, and finally nodded.

“The fuck is wrong with mages?” she demanded.

“Who knows.” Geralt and Jaskier agreed.

—

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Battle of the Butlers: Who Buttled Best?

One of the big debates I’ve seen since the movie came out is the burning question of who should have actually been in charge of the staff. Everyone has their opinion of who should have been calling the shots, making certain that the Royal visit was a worthy experience. As with many things in the fandom, people act the answer is the most obvious thing in the world, but really, is it? I mean, if it is, why are we even having the discussion? So let’s take a second and unpack this burning question a bit, shall we?

To start with, what does the person running this three ring circus have to accomplish? They need to make the visit go like clockwork, doubly so because the King was known for following a strict schedule. They had to make certain everything was up to the standard of the visiting Royalty. In short, they needed to cater, flawlessly, to all of Their Majesty’s whims. Given this, the answer is indeed obvious:

Mr. Wilson should have been in charge.

Now I know what you’re saying. Mr. Wilson didn’t deserve to be in charge. He was an utter prat. The Downton staff was every bit as good as their Royal counterparts and better, because they had manners. Thing is, if you look at it, being nice and polite – at least to your equals or, as he would insist, inferiors – isn’t really a necessary part of being a butler or similar role. You don’t have to be nice to choose the proper wine, see that the silver is polished, and get the tea served on time. Mr. Wilson may have been an utter prat, but he was an utter prat whose entire job was to see the King and Queen comfortable and served in a manner they were accustom to. He knew their likes and dislikes, all of their little quirks. He’d been doing these tours for awhile. He had a system, that system had been tried, tested, and it worked. So, on sheer technical merit, he held all of the aces and should 100% have been in charge.

Does that mean I wanted him to be in charge? Hell no, guy was an utter, inexcusable prat. You don’t just come into someone’s house, tell their staff to go sit in the corner, and while you’re at it write your hosts off as people of no importance (outside of their ear shot, of course). He could easily have come in and said “Their Majesties are, as you can imagine, quite particular. We have a system, please, let us use it” and then found ways for the staff to be useful in that system. Say, having the housekeeper give Mrs. Webb a tour so she could find the proper bedrooms or something like that. He could, at the very least, have acknowledged the huge amounts of prep work the staff had done before he even showed up. No, Carson was absolutely right – the man had it coming. In spades. And I, as with everyone else, am glad he got it.

So, completely ignoring the fact that on technical merit, Mr. Wilson should have gotten the lead, let’s look at our other two candidates, Mr. Barrow and Mr. Carson.

The one thing these two have absolutely in common is that the Royal Staff walked all over them. Both of their efforts to direct people to the servants’ entrance ended in failure, the main difference being that while Lady Mary was on hand to see Barrow herding Mr. Wilson and co. downstairs, only Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Bates were there to witness Carson being walked over. (Also, Mr. Barrow greeted his crew alone – Mr. Carson had backup.) If Mr. Carson had not been called in, Mr. Wilson would have been in charge the entire time. As it is, with Mr. Carson at the helm, Mr. Wilson would have been in charge if it weren’t for the Bateses getting their hackles up and leading a rebellion. As far as managing the Royal Staff is concerned, the only difference between them was that Mr. Barrow was willing to compromise, deferring to Mr. Wilson on the choice of silver while for Mr. Carson, compromise was out of the question and it was his way or the highway (or in this case Mr. Wilson’s way while he sat in the servant’s hall reading a book). Neither of them was going to actually challenge what was going on.

Once you get past that, their merits and failings pretty neatly balance each other. Barrow is new and nervous, but fully capable of doing all aspects of the job while Carson has experience, but also palsy that keeps him from pouring anything, which was why he was forced into retirement. Barrow is efficient, choosing simply base polish the silver, but not wasting the time to bring it all up to full shine since they weren’t going to use it all while Carson brings t it all up to full polish which means it’s all available at a moment’s notice, but it was less efficient.

In the end, the key deciding point has nothing to do with the abilities of either man, but rather the needs of the house at large and Lady Mary in particular. Like Barrow, Lady Mary is relatively new to her position, eager to impress, and therefore quite nervous. She both projects her mental state on him and recognizes that, projection aside, he’s genuinely nervous as well. This does not help her feel any more stable or in control, particularly when it takes the form of leaving the choice of which silver to use up to a stranger – and a strange servant at that! She has worked with Barrow, but she grew up with Carson. He’s her second father and she trusts him unfailingly when it comes to running the household. She has to trust the butler because in the end, she knows very little about it. If she did, she’d know there’s a lot more to it than polishing the ruddy silver!

Of the Downton butlers, Carson needs to be the one in charge, note because he’s more capable, but because he and his system are more familiar and therefore offer more stability. This is a perfectly fair judgement call on the part of Lady Mary.

However. As with Mr. Wilson’s authoritarian dismissal of the Downton staff, there is a polite way and an impolite way to handle this decision and as both Mrs. Hughes and Lord Grantham pointed out, the one that was utilized was the wrong option. If Mary had discussed things with Robert more than two minutes before Carson walked into the room and announced that Barrow would be along in a jiff, they could have worked out in advance what Barrow would be doing with his time. They could have fond a graceful way to tell him that Mr. Carson was coming back, one that didn’t completely dismiss all of the non-silver-related work that he’d gotten done.

In short, they could have handled the situation better than Mr. Wilson did, and it’s pretty clear that at least two people in the house are fully aware of that.

Incidentally, I’ve seen several things that indicate people think Mary’s “Are you going to sack him?” is a statement of desire. He’s thrown a tantrum, she can’t abide it, and she wants him out. But watch that scene again. Listen to her tone of voice and watch her face. Consider: this is a woman who later tells Anna that one of her big struggles is “will the servants stay?” That wasn’t a vindictive wish to have Barrow gone, that was the “oh shit” of realizing, on some level, that she’d screwed things up and that when the Royal Visit was all over, she might have to find a new butler along with figuring out what the devil she was going to do about the roof!

And of course, this is all in story reasoning. There’s another reason Carson had to be the butler that’s much easier to unpack – the plotline. If Barrow had been ‘on duty’, he couldn’t have gone off to York, gone dancing, gotten arrested, and wound up with a boyfriend. If Mr. Wilson had been ‘on duty’, there would have been no room for Mr. Carson. As anyone watching the cries of “If (insert character name) isn’t in the film, we should riot!” that went around Tumblr before the trailer release can tell you, no one wanted that. The fans clearly didn’t want it. The actors didn’t want it, because they enjoyed their roles. Julian Fellowes didn’t want it, because he enjoys his characters and after six seasons wanted Thomas to have some actual fun. (Yes, he’s stated that.)

Now, can we please stop bickering over who’s pet butler is the most perfecest and deserving and move on to something more important? Like Lady Mary’s blue dress vs. the black and white one? My vote is for the blue.

[princesskayjay]

@shinyorangemushroom, I’m your secret sant! Sorry I was late, I was out of town.  I decided that christmas shopping is something you do during the winter, right?  .... I’ll just let you get to reading ^.^;; Merry Belated Christmas!

AO3 Word Count: 1448

The dusting of snow along the school campus was light, falling to the ground and coating it for rarely more than a day. But the arrival of snow meant the arrival of cold, and for most students, that meant it was time to dig out warm clothing for the winter. Warm scarves and jackets and maybe hats, though there was no doubt part of that was to just look cute. Aelita was excited to go out and spend a day on the town. She had been making plans with all of her friends, to get some time spent in before winter break really got under way and everyone went home for the next couple of weeks. That way, even if she did decide to go home with someone, she had gotten time with everyone.

Now if only her ‘date’ for today would be on time. Here she was, waiting by the gate for Odd to make his way to the gate. Though she wasn’t surprised. Knowing him, he was just now getting out of bed because it was very much winter and he was even harder than usual to get up around this time. Or maybe she was wrong, if the blob of purple against the pure white background was any indication. “Hey Princess!” He came to a stop in front of her, absolutely not almost slipping in the snow trying to get to the gate. “You’re late, you know.” She reminded him. A yip drew her attention to Odd’s bag. Oh come on… Odd caught where Aelita’s eyes were looking. “Oh! Yeah, I brought Kiwi with me. He’s been real neglected lately with finals and stuff, ya know? I just couldn’t leave my poor dog in dorm all by himself!” He opened the bag to show Aelita the dog inside, and to let him out. And out popped kiwi, in all his doggie glory, with purple doggie jacket and pink booties.

“You remember we were planning to go christmas shopping right?” Aelita asked, kneeling down to greet the dog with a cheerful headscritch. Just because his owner was a dork didn’t mean that Kiwi didn’t deserve pets. “Yeah? What of it?” “...Dogs aren’t allowed in stores.” She had a feeling Odd knew that. And by the grin, she wasn’t sure she was going to like the answer that she was going to get. 

“Oh, I have a plan, don’t you worry Princess.” ...This was going to end with them banned from shopping, wasn’t it? 

The shopping center was moderately packed, with many people out to complete (or start, if you had chosen to procrastinate like Odd had) their christmas shopping. Bright lights covered the building with a gorgeous wreath in the windows. No matter how many years Aelita lived here, she didn’t think she was ever quite going to tire of the decorations.

All around them were equally decorated stores, windows lit up, displays drawing her attention all the way to the ceiling. Kiwi was trying to get away with from Odd to investigate the strange noises and smells. Odd was searching through his bag searching for his shopping list, face scrunched up slightly when he couldn’t find it. 

“Oh come on, I have to have brought it…” He grumbled under his breathe. Kiwi stuck his nose into Odd’s bag possibly to help him search. “No, Kiwi, I don’t have any treats for you right now- Aha!”

He held up a piece of folded paper, folded several times over with purple secret! Scrawled on the front. “Alright, let’s see…” He unfolded the present, skimming over it. Aelita craned her neck to see who he was shopping for out of curiousity. Kiwi was at the top of the list, with a drawing of kiwi doodled in the spaces next to it. Below that were their friends and his sisters. And in little writing at the bottom was a name beginning with a W before Odd folded it up. “Alright, got it!” He said triumphantly. Oh well, she was spying, she couldn’t complain if she didn’t see the whole thing. She’d probably figure it out. “Who do you want to start with?” There was a lot of places to go and she could barely choose between them!

Odd covered his eyes and spun around dramatically, making far more of a show than it needed to be. Plus if he riled up his dog, it could lead to unwanted attention. His finger landed on a fashion shop at the opposite end of the central lobby. “Let’s start there.” Well, it was as good a place as any to start, yeah? The two of them made their way towards the shop, and Aelita decided that it was a worthy first stop. Based on appearances alone, she wasn’t sure she’d find much that’d impress Yumi, but there was no way to knowfor sure until she looked inside. But there was certainly stuff int here that would interest her! It’d be a good look into stuff she’d want to buy later, and that made it a good stop by itself. “Now, Princess, I’m going to show you something really neat, alright?” Odd stepped out of line of sight from the window, and knelt down. “Come here Kiwi, c’mere, there we go!” He picked up his dog and held him to his chest. “See, he’s already dressed up, so if I carry him, it’s like I have a baby and they won’t know the difference!” She rolled her eyes. That was Odd’s bright plan? Somehow, she wasn’t really surprised, but if he thought it’d work… She reached over and grabbed the end of his scarf and draped it over Kiwi’s body. “I’m pretty sure human babies don’t have four legs.” “Psh, details, details. No one will notice, honest.”

Maybe she should let him go in by himself, so she could theoretically return later and get anything she wanted. . . Nah, she couldn’t abandon him to that. “Well, if you’re sure.” The clerk at the counter only spared them a short glance when they first walked in. Kiwi was behaving himself fairly well, or at least, wasn’t making much noise, seemingly contented by the gentle scritches on the head Odd was giving him. The selection of the store really was wonderful, and the accessories were cute. As guessed, there was no one really on Aelita’s shopping list that’d really like anything here, though there were cute gloves and hats that Aelita may just have to come back for herself.

Actually, with there was a cute barrette that was red and a dark enough purple to almost look black. Maybe she’d grab that, she could thing of someone that’d it look nice on… Mind made, she bought it.

“Alright, I think I got everything!” Odd said, the arm not holding Kiwi filled with miscellaneous goodies. Now, they’d have to go up and actually face the woman at the counter, and see if they could get away with actually breaking the rules.

Aelita checked out first, just in  case. She had less things, and she would like to be able to actually buy the barrette before they possibly got kicked out. She put the gift in her purse and stepped aside to allow Odd to drop his pile of presents onto the counter in front of the lady. And then things went wrong.

Odd nudged Kiwi enough while putting things down that he actually barked, causing the clerk to look up at him. “Is that a dog…” “Of course not!” Odd said, before she had a chance to convince herself that it was. “That’s just my son, Kiwi! He’s just learning to talk, you see.” Oh, don’t burst into laughter and ruin it early, Aelita. “That’s right!” She hoped her grin wasn’t too cheeky. “And he just loves animals.” Odd nodded. “Isn’t that right, my d- son.” He nuzzled the dog, causing him to bark again. Aelita held her arms out for Kiwi. “I’ll take our- son.” And she could get out of here before she burst into highly unfortunate laughter. “Thank you dear!” He handed the dog over to her, and she hurried out, catching the clerk’s “pay for your stuff and leave immediately, before I call security.” Odd ran out, yelling “Thank you!” over his shoulder as he joined Aelita. “I think we should probably head upward. I don’t think Queen Dog Spotter in there would appreciate us hanging around.” Aelita shook her head, passing his dog back to him. “I don’t think so either.” “Race you to the next floor?” “I guess I don’t really have a choice.”

The two took off running for the elevator, looking forward to finishing their shopping and getting lunch...

[distractedhistotech]

Before MSA +1:  The Surprise Pepper

Lewis’ first memory was following a dead man down a street.  He didn’t know how he knew the man was dead.  He just knew, but he also knew that the dead man wasn’t dangerous. It was incredibly confusing to his young mind.

The dead man took him over to a house porch.  “This is a good family.  They’ll help you.”

“Okay…?”

The dead man left. Lewis watched him leave, suddenly feeling scared.  He had no idea who that was, but he had been the only person Lewis had known in his very brief life.  What was Lewis supposed to do now?

Lewis decided he was tired and curled up on the welcome mat to go to sleep.

Several hours later, Mr. Friggitello ‘Frig’ Pepper opened the door to get the morning paper and nearly tripped over Lewis.  He stared, mouth open in shock for several moments.  “Savina?”

“Hm?”

“There is a child sleeping on our welcome mat.”

“What?”  Mrs. Savina Pepper walked over to the front door and got a good look at Lewis.  “…Is that blood?”

“Urm…”  Frig took a closer look.  “I, uh, I think it is.”  He swallowed.  “Why does he have blood on his clothes?”

“Let’s ask him.” Savina knelt down and shook the boy. “Hey, wake up, you can’t be comfortable.”

Lewis made a sound that indicated that he didn’t want to wake up, but he did open his eyes after Mrs. Pepper shook him for a couple of moments.  He blinked up at the Peppers with sleepy eyes.  “Good morning?”

“Good morning,” greeted Savina.  “Who are you and why are you sleeping on our doormat?”

“I’m Lewis.  It’s softer than the wood,” said Lewis as that made perfect sense to him.

“It’s nice to meet you Lewis,” said Frigg.  “I’m Frigg, and this is Savina.”

“Were you separated from your parents?” asked Savina as she looked around for anyone who might look like Lewis.

Lewis thought. He had parents.  He wasn’t sure where they were…or who they were.  He decided to settle for a shrug.

“Should we call the police?” asked Frigg.

A jolt of fear shot through Lewis.  “Did I do something wrong?”

Frigg shook his head. “No, no, no!  I just…You’re in trouble, and police help people who are in trouble.”  He looked to Savina.  “But I guess maybe we don’t have to?”

Savina made a considering sound.  “Maybe if we can find Lewis’ parents ourselves.  What’s your last name?”

“I don’t know,” Lewis said slowly.  That struck him as being rather odd.

Mr. and Mrs. Pepper frowned.  “Where did this blood come from?” asked Frigg.  “You don’t seem to be injured.”

Lewis looked own at his clothes in surprise.  He’d honestly forgotten about the blood.  “I don’t hurt…”

“I’d still like to take you to the hospital.  Or at least a clinic,” said Frigg.

Savina suddenly thought of something.  “Lewis, why did you decide to rest at our hourse?”

Lewis tilted his head. “Huh?”

“There’s a cemetery behind our house.  The nearby church seems more preferable,” explained Savina.

Lewis lit up. “Oh, is that where the nice dead man came from?”

Mr. and Mrs. Pepper stared.  “Nice dead man?”

Lewis nodded. “Yeah.  He brought me here.  He said you were nice.”

While Mr. and Mrs. Pepper were rational adults and initially thought that Lewis might have imagined ‘the nice dead man’, they’d seen enough weird stuff in their house to consider that there really had been a dead man, especially since Lewis didn’t seem bothered by the idea.

Then again he was still pretty young.  Maybe he didn’t completely understand what death meant.

“I’ll call the restaurant and let them know we’re taking the day off,” decided Savina. “I’ll grab something for Lewis to eat too.”

Lewis’ stomach growled at the promise of food.  Frigg chuckled a bit as Savina walked back inside their home.  “I hope you like spicy food.  There’s not a lot in our house that isn’t.”

“I’m too hungry to care,” Lewis said.

“I can believe that,” said Frigg.  He studied Lewis for a moment.  “Hey, how old would you say you are?”

Lewis thought for a moment before shrugging.

Frigg sighed.  “Don’t know that either, huh?  What do you remember?”

“Um…The nice dead man brought me here.”

“And?”

“And, uh, the nice dead man brought me here,” repeated Lewis, looking very confused.

Oh, this was starting to look bad.  “Do you know where you’re from?”  Lewis shook his head.  “Do you have any pets?”  A shrug. “Brothers or sisters?”  A shrug.  “Where you got these clothes?”

Lewis glanced down as his simple green t-shirt and pants.  Nothing special besides the blood on them.  He shrugged again.

Frigg bit his lip. Did Lewis have amnesia?  Before he could try and figure out a way to tell, Savina returned with a plate of toast that she’d put some jam on.  “Here you go.”

Lewis lit up.  “Thank you!”  he immediately dug in.

Savina turned to Frigg.  “I called the restaurant to let them know we probably won’t be coming in today.  Let’s get Lewis to the hospital.”

“All right.”  Frigg wasn’t sure he should tell Savina about Lewis’ possible amnesia in front of Lewis.  Lewis was calm now, and Frigg wanted him to stay that way as long as possible.

It took around 15 minutes to get to the hospital.  Lewis had finished his toast by then, so they wiped off some of the jam with a towel so he wouldn’t be too sticky when they went in.  The emergency department had a few other people present, but the counter was free when they got up to it.  “Ah, hello?”

The nurse on duty looked up with a tired smile.  “Yes? I can help you?”

“My wife and I found this boy,” explained Frigg as Savina picked up Lewis and put him on her hip.  “He says his name is Lewis.  He doesn’t know who his parents are.”

That got a startled look from Savina and a concerned look from the nurse.  “I see.  Uh, Lewis, are you hurt?”  She’d noticed the blood by then.

Lewis shook his head. “Nope.”

“Do you know any adults I can contact?” asked the nurse.  Lewis shook his head.  “If that’s the case, I’ll have to contact child services and the police.”

“We understand,” said Savina.  “Do we wait or is there an open bay?”

“Well, we’re a bit short-staffed, and Lewis doesn’t seem to be in any danger, so I’ll have to ask you to wait.”

So the three sat in a group of chairs not too far from the counter.  Lewis occasionally saw people in hospital gowns walking out of the doors. No one else seemed to notice them, much to his confusion.

After a little while, a man in a police uniform came in.  His eyes swept across the room before landing on the Peppers.  He made his way over to them.  “Hello, I got a call about a missing child being found.”

“Is he missing?” asked Frigg.

“Well, I haven’t heard of any missing children matching Lewis’ description, but if you found him he must have been missing at some point,” reasoned the officer, who clearly had some odd logic going on.

Frigg sweatdropped. “Uh, I see…”

The officer took out a notebook.  “So, would you mind telling me the events leading up to your trip to the hospital?”

The story was told mostly by Mr. and Mrs. Pepper with occasional input from Lewis. Unfortunately, this meant he mentioned the nice dead man.  Fortunately, the officer seemed to think this was a living person and asked Lewis to describe him up until Lewis mentioned that part of his neck was missing.  Then he figured this was someone Lewis saw die or something along those lines.

“Excuse me, but what is going to happen to Lewis?” asked Frigg.

The officer closed his notebook.  “Lewis will be taken into the care of child services until his legal guardians are found. If they cannot be found, I suppose he’ll be placed in a foster family, maybe adopted.”

“Can’t I stay with Mr. Frigg and Mrs. Savina?” asked Lewis.  “They’re nice, and I like them!”

“You’ll have to ask the child services representative.  They’ll know more about that than I do.”  The officer frowned.  “Actually, I’m surprised they haven’t shown up yet.  I wonder if they’re having a busy day.  And these two will have to be okay with it of course.”

Lewis turned and looked at the Peppers with big, hopeful eyes.  It reminded Frigg of the time he found a box of abandoned kittens that he took in even though he was allergic.  Savina simply had bad experiences with the foster system.  “We have room.  He could stay,” she said.

“Ye-yeah!  I know this isn’t exactly how we were planning on having kids, but this feels…important?  Special? I just feel like this was meant to be and we should do this,” agreed Frigg.

“Well, that would depend on us not finding Lewis’ family,” said the officer.  “You seem like a nice couple though.  Oh, hey, I think that’s the child services officer.”

The person he was talking about was a tired looking, middle-aged woman.  She caught sight of them and hurried over, putting on a smile. “Hello there.  I’m sorry I took so long.  There was an…incident that I had to take care of.”  She knelt down so she was at the same level as Lewis.  “Hello Lewis.  I’m Catherine.  How are you today?”

“Hungry,” Lewis answered promptly.  “I ate all the toast.”

“I see.  Maybe we can go get you something to eat once the doctors have looked you over,” suggested Catherine.  “But can you tell me where your parents are first?”

“I don’t know,” said Lewis, starting to get annoyed at how the grown ups were asking him questions he just didn’t know the answer to.  “I don’t know who they are.”

“I see.  I’m sorry.  Can you tell me who you were staying with?”

“I don’t know.”

The police officer cleared his throat.  “Lewis may have some sort of amnesia,” he whispered.

Catherine winced. “Oh dear.  Well, what can you tell me about yourself?”

“My name is Lewis. I like Mr. Frigg and Mrs. Savina! And toast with jam!”  Lewis tried to think of something else to say.

“Can you tell me how old you are?” prodded Catherine.

“No.”  Lewis wasn’t trying to be difficult, but he was certainly making it difficult.

“Peppers?” called a nurse.

They moved to a hospital bay where a doctor started taking some vitals.  “A bit dehydrated, but I don’t think we need to put him on an IV,” said the doctor.  “Maybe get him some juice.”  The doctor started feeling around Lewis’ head.

“Ow!”

“Looks like you’ve got a pretty bad bump on your head.”

“Is that why he’s having trouble remembering things?” asked Frigg.

“Probably not.  Amnesia caused by head injuries is pretty rare, at least to this extent.  It’s much more likely to be psychological,” explained the doctor.  “He might remember.  He might not. You might have results if he sees a child psychologist.  However, all in all, I’d say he’s a healthy boy.  I can’t say for sure how old Lewis is, but I’d his development would be in the range of 5-6 years old.”  He paused. “I’d say 6 given your size.”

“Oh…”  Lewis made a note.  It felt a bit better to know how old he was.

“There are no signs of abuse?” asked Catherine.

The doctor shook his head.  “No, his parents took care of him, whoever they are.”

Lewis suddenly wondered who his Mom and Dad were.

“Now, I understand you two were interested in looking after Lewis?”  Mr. and Mrs. Pepper nodded.  “That’s excellent!  But as we may be able to locate his parents, you won’t be able to adopt him at first. Also, I will have to do a house check, and I’ll need to know who will be taking care of Lewis while you’re at work.”

“I think we can hire a babysitter until Lewis can go to school.  Then we can take turns taking weekends off to stay with him,” suggested Frigg.

Savina nodded.  “It might require hiring another chef or sous chef, but I think it could work.  Perhaps if he makes some friends at school, he can spend time with them.”

“I wanna make friends!” agreed Lewis.

Catherine nodded. “Good, good.  I’ll check on you three weekly for the first month, and after that we can stick to monthly visits until it an adoption is possible.”

As the small group started to walk out of the hospital, Lewis happily grabbed Mr. and Mrs. Pepper’s hands.  Despite only knowing them for a few hours, Lewis felt safe and happy around them.

Lewis hoped he’d be able to stay with them.

[xukunstellation]

Fantasy Fest Series: By Your Side || Mu Ziyang [Werewolf!AU]

Title: By Your Side Pairing: Reader x Ziyang Genre: Werewolf!AU + fluff Word Count: 2,774 words Summary: Walking in the dark is always scary, but at least you had your new canine friend to be with you every step of the way.

A/N: Fourth installment of Fantasy Fest, which ranked third in the poll. I struggled a bit on deciding who to choose for this particular fic, but I finally settle on Werewolf!Ziyang thanks to some lovely followers! Ziyang is my bias wrecker in Oner (can you guess my actual bias) despite him being so underrated. So, this one goes out to you Ziyang! 

okay can we talk about how HANDSOME ziyang looks in that gif?

a straight up GOD

still shocks me to this day that he didn’t rank in top 10 for ip visuals

world’s greatest mystery

let’s start, shall we?

you lived in a relatively small village where everyone seemed to know each other

businesses thrived, everyone was healthy and children ran around freely 

the crime rate was also relatively low, especially since everyone seemed to always be looking out for each other and helping one another

for example you were well acquainted with the butcher’s daughter, the seamstress’ son, the woman who ran the local inn, etc

you felt lucky to call this safe haven of yours your home

so where did you fit in this picturesque image?

you were the village herbalist

at your cozy cottage located near the outskirts of the village, you planted and harvested medicinal plants, roots and herbs 

your services often worked hand in hand with the village’s apothecary ran by a close friend of yours

hint hint nudge nudge wink wink

speaking of apothecary, you were headed there now after your friend had requested you via letter

entering the dainty shop, you saw your friend whispering angrily to an unknown presence behind them that you couldn’t see. when they noticed your presence, they coughed in surprise before awkwardly hurrying to the front counter to greet you

“hi (y/n)! glad to see you again”

“it’s good to see you, too. it’s been a while. is everything alright? you seem a bit flustered” you asked in concern

“ah no, i’m fine. don’t worry about it. some... things can be very annoying”

as if some presence was offended by their words, a jar unceremoniously was knocked off of the counter on its own. if it weren’t for your fast reflexes, it would have shattered on the floor

as you placed the jar back on the counter, you missed the way your friend’s eye twitched in annoyance 

“sorry i’m really clumsy today” 

you saw with your own eyes that they hadn’t even touched the jar, but you chose not to question it since you understood that they were secretive about certain things and you didn’t want to pry

“it’s okay. did you need something? you didn’t specify in the letter”

“oh, that’s right! i was wondering if you had any moonflower petals?”

thinking back to your garden at home, you couldn’t recall growing the said plant mainly because they were so delicate and hard to maintain, even for an experienced herbalist like yourself

“sorry, i don’t believe i have any” you apologized sadly

your friend looked disheartened, “i was afraid you’d say that. i desperately need some to make a cure for goblin cough”

like a switch going off in your head, you remembered that moonflowers were in season and if you were lucky, you’d be able to find some in the surrounding woods of the village

“i can go try and find some in the woods for you. i know exactly where they tend to grow and i’m probably the only one who knows how to harvest them correctly” you offered

“will you be okay? the woods can be very dangerous if you’re out there on your own” they questioned in concern

“i’ll be fine. you know how strong i can be. i’ll try not to wander too far in and i’ll bring my dagger with me for protection just in case”

although they seemed reluctant, they agreed to your offer. you knew they seemed to be in a hurry, so you made quick note of heading out to the woods tonight since that’s when it was easiest to find the flowers

when night fell, you set out to the woods with your trusty woven basket linked on your left arm and a lit lantern in your right hand

hearing the crunch of leaves and sticks under your boots, you used the light of your lantern to scour the area

moonflowers were a special species of flowers; they grew only during the night. like the moon it was named for, the petals were uniquely shaped into crescent moons. the flower also emitted a soft white glow that resembled moonlight

as you walked deeper into the woods, you heard the howl of an unknown creature in the distance that sent shivers down your spine

you were well aware of the numerous creatures that lurked in the forest at night so you were determined to make quick work and gtfo of there

in the corner of your eyes, you spotted that soft white glow you were anticipating for

walking past a few more trees, a huge smile grew on your face when you saw an entire patch of moonflowers growing under a cedar tree

as you carefully plucked the previous flowers and placed them into your basket, you heard a loud crunch behind you

you froze 

you then heard the low grumble of a growl permeate through the air

fuck 

slowly turning around, you dropped your basket and a squeak left your lips as you saw a massive wolf standing right in front of you

it was easily almost twice your size. its mouth was opened slightly, revealing sharp rows of teeth within. despite how dark it was out, you could still make out the wolf’s golden irises staring straight at you

falling on your butt, your body was wracked with tremors as you cowered in fear. your mind went blank and you completely forgot about the dagger that was hidden in your boot

the wolf took a few steps closer to you and you knew you were done for

clenching your eyes, you began to cry as you braced yourself for your impending death

imagine your surprise when instead of an agonizingly painful chomp, you felt a large smooth tongue lap away at your tears on your cheeks

even in your fear-induced state, giggles bubbled out of your mouth at the ticklish sensation 

at the pleasant sound of your voice, the large canine happily increased in its ministrations and licked at your face more enthusiastically  

“well you aren’t very scary after all, huh?” you mused as you scratched its neck. “you’re just one big cuddly puppy, aren’t you?”

the wolf playfully loomed over your form and nipped at your fingers as if indicating to you that it was far from being a puppy

you chuckled, wiping away the slobber off of your face “sorry, i know you’re a big boy... or girl?”

the animal growled lowly in protest as you mentioned ‘girl’ to it

“okay, boy for sure. you scared me half to death!” you scolded in which the canine licked your cheek once again in apology

as you ran your hands through its thick fur, you admired how silky smooth his fur was as well as its pretty shade of ash blonde 

“are you out here on your own?” you asked it

he shook his head

“that’s a relief to hear. you have someone to keep you company,” you said wistfully more so to yourself then to him

for as long as you remembered you lived alone, so you imagined what it was like to live with several others

you felt him nudge his muzzle into your neck in a comforting manner, making you smile softly

“well i have to head back home now. it’s not safe for me to be out this late and i’ve already gotten what i needed”

standing up, you picked up your fallen basket filled with your bundle of moonflowers

relighting your lantern with a spare match, you smiled at the wolf in goodbye and walked away to head back home

a few minutes in of walking, you heard rustling and you looked to see your new wolf friend trailing behind you

you tilted your head in confusion, “did you need something?”

he only walked towards you and nudged you forward, urging you to continue on your path. confused, you went back to walking but this time with him walking right beside you. then you understood what we was doing.

“ah, keeping me company and making sure i get out safe? thank you.”

you scratched behind his ears in gratitude, holding back a laugh as he struggled to keep his eyes open as you did so

when you saw the edge of the forest approaching, he halted to a stop, making sure he was well hidden in the shadows

“i’ll make sure to visit you again” you promised him, crouching down to his level. “in the meantime, what shall i call you?”

you were caught off guard by a masculine voice echoing in the back of your head

“ziyang” you repeated the voice in a whisper

the wolf barked in response, seemingly pleased that you referred to him by his real name

but how the hell did you know that? 

you didn’t have any time to question it further because ziyang had ran back into the forest and out of sight

when you went back to the apothecary the next day to deliver the moonflowers, your friend was thrilled and paid you accordingly for your efforts

“thank you, (y/n)! you’re a lifesaver”

“it’s no problem. let me know if you need me to gather anything else for you”

you were all too eager when your friend indeed had a list of ingredients that they were running low on stock on, all of which were grown in the forest 

something strong pulled at your chest at the thought of seeing a certain wolf

returning to the forest a few days later, you tried to follow the same path that you did the first time hoping it’ll lead you to ziyang again

while gathering a bunch of pygmy mushrooms, you heard a familiar low grumble and smiled brightly when you saw ziyang enter through the bushes

“i was hoping to see you again” you grinned, dropping everything to cradle his face and pet him affectionately

ziyang returned the affection with a lick to your cheek, rubbing his entire body into you and almost knocking you completely over causing you to laugh

“i see someone missed me too” you chuckled. “i brought something for you to thank you for escorting me out the other day”

looking into your basket, you took out a separate container and opened it to reveal a large raw steak you got from the butcher. holding it out to him with your hand, ziyang carefully pulled it away from your fingers and scarfed it down 

you were pleasantly surprised by how gentle he was considering he looked like he could devour you in one bite

just like before, ziyang stayed by your side the entire duration 

and so this became a regular thing for you and ziyang

every time you had to head back into the forest for ingredient scavenging, ziyang would always guard you throughout the process and walk you back to the entrance of the forest but never stepping out of it

you enjoyed talking to the large wolf, even though he never said anything back to you

however you suspected he understood every word you were saying judging by his body language

“the mason’s son is definitely fooling around with the merchant’s son, don’t you think?” *ziyang nods*

“i might have to skip dinner tonight if i want to make sure i plant the sapplings in time” *ziyang nips at your hand and shakes his head in disapproval*

“if you wore trousers, would you wear it only on your hind legs like a human or would you need custom pants to wear on all four legs?”

*ziyang has left the chat*

although no real words were exchanged, it was like you were talking to another human being no matter how silly it may have looked from the outside

you were once again walking through the forest to gather some more roots and plants for the apothecary 

however, after fifteen minutes of being on your own (ziyang usually found you within five minutes of you entering the woods), your furry companion was no where in sight

you were beginning to grow worried when more time passed and he still hadn’t shown up

you heard rustling come from beside you. using your lantern, you held it out in front of you and just briefly caught ash blonde locks duck behind a set of trees

“ziyang? is that you?”

the male whimpered in response, making your eyebrows furrow in worry

why did it look like he was hiding from you? 

“are you hurt?” you asked, taking a step forward towards him

you were astonished when the male growled at you in warning. however, it wasn’t in a threatening manner. it sounded like he was afraid

why would he suddenly be afraid of you?

“sweetie, it’s okay. it’s just me. you know i would never hurt you. come out, please?”

there was a moment of silence as ziyang contemplated your words before coming to a decision

however, you were astonished once more when instead of the four legged companion you expected, an unfamiliar male stepped out from behind the trees

the stranger was very tall and you had to lean your head up to look him in the face, which was framed with long light blonde hair. aside from a pair of trousers, he was devoid of any other clothes

but what caught your attention more was the fact that his entire upper body, hands, and feet were entirely covered in fur. your eyes trailed to the claws at the ends of his hands

moving your gaze to meet his eyes, you saw golden eyes looking at you with a mix of guilt, fear and a bit of hope

you could recognize those golden eyes and fur color anywhere

“...ziyang?”

ziyang looked physically relieved that you recognized him, but he made no move to step towards you

“it’s me...” he said, and you realized it matched that same voice you heard in your head a few weeks ago

“so this in entire time, you were a...”

“werewolf. i’m a werewolf and belong to a pack who rule these woods”

that explained why he understood everything you said and knew exactly how to find you each time you came

he wasn’t just a wolf

he was a wolf wolf

a diggity dang werewolf

while trying to process that thought in your mind, ziyang sighed sadly and took a tentative step towards you

“please don’t be afraid. i promise it’s still me. just in a different form than you’re used to” he explained and stopped a respectable few feet away from you 

you should have been afraid of him, but you weren’t. just like he said, he was still the ziyang you knew and adored

slowly walking towards him, you gently placed a hand over his heart, feeling it beat rapidly against your palm

“it really is you. i was scared something happened to you tonight,” you lightly slapped his bare chest and he winced in mock pain

“sorry, sweet. to be fair, you scare me as well”

you cheeks tinted pink at the sudden pet name. “s-sweet? and how can someone like me scare someone like you?”

“how can you not? whenever you’re around, i feel this innate need to protect you. i get excited at just the mere thought of seeing you again. you look at me with those pretty little eyes of yours and i lose all focus. one smile from you and i’m completely at your mercy. what have you done to me? you’re absolutely terrifying”

you felt that same strong pull tug at your heartstrings again, overwhelming your entire being but you welcomed the warm sensation

his words only made your heart beat even more

“i still find the idea that a big wolf like yourself has fallen for an ordinary human like me”

“you better get used to it because i intend on courting this ordinary human as my mate”

“m-mate?”

“mhm”

now that he knew you weren’t afraid of him, ziyang seemed to have made a full 180. instead of the timid being a few minutes ago, he stood charismatically in an almost alluring manner. his eyes though still held that same playful and soft gaze you realized he always looked at you with

“you sure you won’t regret it? courting me isn’t an easy feat”

“for you, i’ll do anything”

at this rate, you had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before you fell for him too

fin

okay but werewolf!ziyang is hella sexy

and anyone who disagrees is lying to themselves

i love ziyang

stan oner

stan mu ziyang 

[writingmask]

Diner Dog

Hey, y’all! This was my entry for the Fullmoon Fanzine! Finally posting it here!

Rated G

It all started with the dog.

Hanzo should have known better, of course, than to try to pet and feed stray dogs, especially ones that looked more like wolves than your average Canis lupus familiaris and were capable of knocking over the dumpster behind the diner despite having only three legs. But Hanzo couldn’t help himself; the poor thing was starving and alone and how could he resist those soulful amber eyes and mismatched ears?

Which was how he now found himself cursing his existence as he slumped over the cash register at The Triple Dragon Diner-- his brother’s choice of names, not his-- at 3:00am. The dog had a schedule, and Hanzo had for some God-forsaken reason decided to take the night shift to ensure the poor thing got his fill of leftover bacon and eggs, as well as the ever important tummy rubs.

Genji had laughed for an hour when he figured out why he, Hanzo Shimada, a man who practically worshipped the luxury of sleeping late now that they were out of their parents’ influence, was willing to take the night shift for two weeks straight.

The bell chimed as the door opened, distracting him from his litany of self-derived insults. As hard as it was to believe, there were actual customers during the night shift. Not many and usually some form of stoner, but they did come in for an early (or extremely late) breakfast. Hanzo looked up, his service smile already plastered on his face and…

Oh. The smile faltered, becoming something more genuine despite his best efforts. The scruffy man filling the doorway was a regular, a new one, but Hanzo could already count on him making an appearance at least once a night. Ordinarily, Hanzo would brush him off as another addict of some variety with a severe nightly case of the munchies, but as unkempt and tired as the man-- Jesse, he called himself-- seemed, he was too alert to be under any form of intoxicant.

“Howdy, darlin’,” he called wearily with a smile that brightened the entire room.

“Greetings,” Hanzo replied, fighting off the blush that appeared like clockwork around Jesse. “Your usual?”

“Please and thank you,” the man replied, plopping himself down on the bar stool in front of Hanzo and setting a tattered Stetson next to him.

Hanzo nodded before setting to work. Jesse’s usual was pretty much everything on the menu-- high in quantity and protein. Hanzo had no idea how he managed to pack it all away and not get sick, but the act itself was impressive. Whatever Jesse did for a living worked up an appetite.

Hanzo had once asked what Jesse did to keep him up at this unholy hour. He assumed it was some form of illegal activity or else top secret law enforcement because Jesse’s answer had been, “Simply put angel? I’m a werewolf.”

Which was altogether ridiculous.

Still, he could take a hint, and since he honestly had no room to judge when it came to quasi-legal and secretive activities, Hanzo let the silly answer suffice and concentrated on cooking and flirting.

Cooking, he told himself firmly as he piled more bacon on a plate than was likely safe for anyone. Flirting while working was a terrible idea.

Even if he did want to see what this particular customer looked like in the daylight. And who made conversation as easy and simple as breathing.

Hanzo slapped a fried egg on top of the bacon and shook himself. He was working and Jesse hadn’t indicated anything remotely resembling interest. After all--

“Hey, Han?”

Hanzo looked up to see Jesse looking at him in favor over his unusually still full platter. “Hanzo, I uh… Look, this might be inappropriate since I’m a customer and all, and you can absolutely tell me to fuck off and go to hell, but… I kinda have this lil’ crush, and I was wondering if you’d like to go out sometime?”

Hanzo blinked at the rushed words, for a moment wondering if he’d suddenly lost the ability to understand English. Jesse… Was… Asking him out? As in out-out? On a date? With a crush? Hanzo’s brow furrowed as he looked up into those ernest, anxious golden eyes, looking for a hint of a joke or something that would make sense.

Wait, he realized with epiphany. Not golden. Amber.

“Jesse, I….” His voice faltered, and whatever question had been forming faded as the bells above the door tinkled with obnoxious cheerfulness. He and Jesse broke apart-- and when had they leaned in that close?-- as Hanzo reluctantly turned his attention to the intruder.

Or intruders. Four men walked through the diner door, and the hairs on the back of Hanzo’s neck rose with wary alarm. Everything about them, from their suspiciously nondescript clothing to the way they walked in a formation as though they expected a fight screamed predator to his long dormant instincts. Electricity thrummed under his skin, and he carefully wrapped his hand around the hidden blackjack under the counter even as he put on his customer service smile.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” he said, voice steady and carefully pleasant. “What can I get for you?”

The man in the front, apparently the ringleader, stepped forward with just as much forced casualness. A professional, Hanzo thought. But a professional what? “Our apologies, but we’re here on business.”

“Business?” Hanzo asked, glancing at Jesse, who seemed to have shrunk to the other end of the counter with his hat lowered and shoulders hunched.

“Afraid so,” the man said, oozing sincerity and charm in a way that made Hanzo itch to slam the blackjack in his face. Not law enforcement, they’d have badges. These were hunters of some sort. “There’s been a wild dog sighting in there area. Dangerous and injured. We’re tasked with bringing it in before someone gets hurt. Have you seen anything of the sort?”

Hanzo’s mind flashed to the three-legged dog he’d been feeding. That was the only dog he’d seen running wild, and it was hardly dangerous. And yet, he had a sneaking suspicion that was their target. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jesse tense.

“I’m sorry,” he said slowly, “but I’m afraid, I haven’t seen anything larger than a cat around here.”

“Are you sure?” the ringleader prompted. “There’s a pretty big reward. And you wouldn’t want to misinform us, now would you?”

Hanzo’s lip twitched in an aborted attempt to snarl. Bounty hunters, then. Why they were after dogs, he had no idea, but they’d get nothing from him.

As they spoke, one of the man’s companions slowly walked to Jesse’s seat at the counter, suspicion in his eyes. While Hanzo and the ringleader had a silent battle of wills, his hand moved to grasp Jesse’s shoulder. Jesse stood and turned with incredible speed, slamming a gloved hand into the man’s jaw.

“Shit!” yelled one of the others, running to assist his associate as Hanzo and the ringleader both jumped. “It’s him!”

The hunters charged Jesse, drawing clubs and knives from hidden sheathes, and Hanzo leapt over the counter with blackjack in hand. He made it to Jesse’s side, ready to aid as all hell broke loose in one of the most riotous brawls Hanzo had ever been a part of.

Later, when he had time to think, he’d remember details such as crashing his weapon across the nose of the ringleader with a satisfying crack of cartilage, and a rush of heat and flurry of fists from Jesse next to him.

Blue lightning crackled along Hanzo’s arm and into his weapon. Not a bow, but it apparently was enough. Years and years of training rushed back, and his body moved of its own accord with confident strikes. A dark thrill ran through him as he roared at his opponents, limbs flying in dangerous patterns and forms as he attacked. As much as he’d hated the reasons he had his skills, it felt good to fight again.

He glanced at Jesse to his side, and found a mirroring joy along the man’s face as he tore into his own targets. His lips were stretched in a fierce grin, showing long, sharp teeth. His eyes were wild, his hair flying loose around pointed ears that peeked through without his hat to hide them. Hanzo’s eyes widened in realization, and he found himself laughing. Apparently Jesse’d been telling the truth after all!

The battle could have lasted forever or only an instant. Hanzo never bothered to figure it out. At the end, there were four bodies laying in crumpled heaps along the floor of the diner, and Hanzo felt a slight surge of irritation and guilt. He’d have to clean that up, and Genji was probably going to yell at him for getting blood on a restaurant floor.

But clean-up would have to wait. Hanzo leaned against the counter, panting with weary satisfaction. His body would hurt in the morning, but for now, adrenaline flooded him with giddy delight. He grinned up at Jesse. “So you’re actually a werewolf.”

Jesse rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. “Yeah… It’s… A long story.” He coughed and went silent for a moment. “So… Uh… You’re a magic ninja then?”

Hanzo snorted. “It’s a long story,” he said with a smirk. “One I’d be happy to tell you… Over coffee sometime?”

Jesse blinked and a slow grin stretched across his face. “You know, I think I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

[ofknowhere-blog]

more pointless headcanons? of course.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on several disparate elements of Tivan’s life, some of which have immediate bearing on this blog and some of which don’t. There’s no really organic way to include them all in a single post, so this is going to be very messy and will likely result in more future posts on certain subjects--we’ll see which way the muse takes me!

As ever, feel free to reblog, add, agree, disagree, start a conversation around what I have to say! I’m all for building a community through conversation. <3

So then. On to the pointless headcanons, yeah?

Space-Brain Vagabond: More on Tivan

--Pardon the Alice Cooper lyric shout-out, he’s my happy place. <3

I don’t have much to add on this subject as of yet that I haven’t already stated on this blog. Rather, I wanted to draw out something I mentioned but failed to elaborate on in my about section. I mention in passing that I’ve given Tivan the power of telemetry; this was in one part to excuse the fact that he is woefully under-powered as an Elder and one part to provide him with a more interesting context for his peculiarities. Telemetry, of course, is in this sense the psychic ability to read recordings in objects by touching them--often having to do with strong emotions or special events the object witnessed by proxy. It is not always limited to reading by object and can extend to people, but nearly always includes the elements of both eye-contact and hand- or physical-contact with the person or object being read.

In a post on my En Dwi blog, I bring up the fact that the shared painting of the nails originates from Tivan’s culture, because hands play a large role in defining status there. Even on reflection, that remains true for me here--but with a slight twist. In his first cinematic scene, Tivan takes Gamora’s hand and kisses it, a clear sign of respect for her: again, not unusual for a culture with an emphasis on hands. This was likely a common greeting among higher-caste members of Cygnus society. For me, what’s notable in the greeting is the rather peculiar way he takes her hand; rather than taking it in the palm, he scoops it up by the back.

Call it subtle. Call it strange. It’s definitely both! But I also call it significant.

This is a motion that doesn’t strike me as being mass ritualized; it’s practiced enough to appear so, I will give you that, but the steady eye-contact and the purposefulness of the motion communicate to me that it’s something more personal, more meaningful, to Tivan. I believe the peculiar mechanisms of this greeting are actually a modified form of social practice from Cygnus, here changed directly to limit the scope of Tivan’s telemetry.

I believe his hands are the most sensitive part of his whole body, in terms both telemetic and physical. His palms, in particular, are acute instruments, good for use both in finding flaws during curation and in forming telemetric contact. While he can still get vibrations by using the back of his hand, his sense is less acute when the object in question does not come in direct contact with his palm--hence the peculiar greeting. It is a different, still respectful way to greet a guest - one that does not include the danger of accidental discovery of something unpleasant. It is a mark of deep respect for Tivan to greet anyone while intentionally ignoring his palm; it is the same as a telepath reigning in a naturally roaming phenomenon, a means of offering privacy to a guest.

And yes, Tivan very DEEPLY respects Gamora.

Taneleer: Family Life & Cygnus

As with my thinking on Homeworld culture on the other blog, I fully expect my thinking on Cygnus to evolve into its own beast and pick up it’s own peculiarities. This is hardly going to be an extensive review of it. I just want to put the basics out there.

Unlike the unification of Homeworld into a full-planetary regimented hierarchy, Cygnus (much like earth) is fractured across the planet into different countries. Unlike Earth, however, each country is its own continent, and thus has its own specific hierarchies and interests. The Taneleer family hails from one of the largest--and thereby most lucrative and important--continents.

Tivan was the first- or secondborn son of his family, meaning he was bred into rulership and duty from a young age. These contributed to his rather serious, restrained demeanor, almost as much as his telemetry contributed to his muted emotions. Tivan was always a dutiful son. ...or, I should say, nearly always. He was on the cusp of marrying to form a stronger political alliance for the Taneleer family when he met Matani, an off-worlder of no significant planet or family, and fell in love.

Tivan and Matani eloped together and lived for a time on the shore of another planet. The Taneleer family never disowned Tivan--such would have been a disgrace upon them--but their relationship was beyond terse and never mended before Cygnus fell.

The Free Years

For a very short period of time--short relative to the rest of his life, both before and after--Tivan managed to experience a freedom like he had never known before. On the shores of Silmar, next to the sea, Tivan lived with his wife Matani. They had Carina. They lived as a family, happy and wholesome, for a period of time. This time is sometimes referred to as “the Free Years.”

Free from the constraints of his family, from the social expectations of his class, from the confines of the world he had known before, Tivan flourished. He found and kept true love. He had his family. He nurtured his artistic ability--as a painter, a sculptor, a true artist, maker of beauty--and allowed himself to feel. He was at his happiest during the Free Years, able to revel in his emotions without guilt or resentment; he revealed a romantic heart and Romantic sensibilities, and lived softly and lovingly with his family. It was during this period of time on Silmar that Cygnus met its end; that Tivan and Matani met En Dwi; that they rose to the station of Elders; and, at the end, that they lost Carina and eventually each other.

Grief is a powerful thing.

The man who existed during the Free Years is, in many ways, naught now but a dead relic. He can still be felt in the art he wrought through various forms of telemetry and other psychic ability, but the reality is that that happy man withered and died when his family did. It is more likely than not that he will never be resurrected, or will come back as only a ghost of his former self, only in private, only for the right person.

Slave Culture & Knowhere

The majority of attendants in the Museum are slaves. Unsurprising, I know. Slaves are guaranteed lifelong labor at lower costs, and are thus viewed by Tivan as being more efficient for the job than hiring on additional hands. While sometimes apprentices are sent to study as attendants at the Museum, they are few and far between, and never last long. The work is far too taxing for that.

Attendants are taken either from the existing Collection--being eager to leave their cages and willing to accept any role offering them even a modicum of freedom--or are bought wholesale from slaving auctions on Knowhere. Although they are allowed to choose their own manner of dress, they are disbarred from selecting overly-flowy materials, and all of their clothing (regardless of style) is white. These are functional more than aesthetic concerns; former-fitting clothing offers less opportunity for a third party to commit mischief, and white stands out better against the dark setting of the Museum. All attendants--indeed, all or most collectibles--have an obedience disc implanted in them upon arrival (see below). 

The attendants are afforded the freedom to walk around the Museum, to sleep in the attendant’s quarters, and to socialize with one another--so long as the day’s work is done. Sexual relations are forbidden and will result in immediate demotion, sometimes meaning death, other times relegation back to collectible status. Attendants work on a strict schedule maintained by an artificial light source; the attendant’s quarters are kept in a strict twilight lighting, with loud chimes indicating when it is time to rise and return to their shift.

The handful of other considerations already in place have to do with politeness culture. Tivan is referred to as master by all attendants, even the voluntary among them. It is polite to bow or curtsy slightly to him, although too deep or prostrating a bow will insult him (it reminds him too much of his time on Cygnus), and no bow at all with be marked with irritation and warned. He is assisted personally usually only by the Head Attendant, whom he selects personally. He always selects only that individual he feels is most efficient in their duties. Other attendants may elect to serve him when their other duties are completed, but seldom do, as they tend more to fear and revile him. Only the Head Attendant may leave the Museum on errands for Tivan.

Sharing Is Caring?

As well as the sharing of cultural markings as a means of claiming one another as closer parts of the same tribe, many of the Elders share among themselves a variety of things. En Dwi shared his telepathic mastery as a means of creating the Elder Web, the psychic bond they all share and may communicate through; in a similar vein, Tivan often collects things for his siblings. Not trinkets so much as information, lost pets, wanted materials, etc.

He also shares, perfects, and re-shares technology between them.

One of my favorite moments in Thor: Ragnarok is actually the deleted/extended version of the Grandmaster’s first meeting with Thor. Over the course of the scene, one moment in particular sparked interest for me:

Uhm. Yeah, I see you’ve been familiarizing yourself with our - our obedience disc. It’s a little invention of mine, by the way. Y’know, some people find it kind of e-erotic. Walk--walk with me, I’m gonna tell you somethin’. Uh, obedience disc! I’ve never been crazy about that name; it was supposed to be a placeholder until I could think of something better, but then everybody started to call them ‘”obedience disc-discs.”

The question here for me over the past few nights had become “who is ‘everybody’?” Does he mean the scrappers? The servants with jobs? Maybe. It’s not unlikely. But, as is a habit of mine, I chose a different answer.

He means the other Elders.

NB: I make this assertion based on my own opinions of En Dwi. He seldom gives proper credence to shorter-lived creatures, leaving to me to believe that “everybody” must be in reference to people he would consider to be real and to matter enough to not speak fully over...ie, the Elders.

Obedience disc technology has long been in the works for En Dwi, in large part due to his early reluctance to engage in unnecessary violence, but the necessity for them grew as his own opinions twisted over time. The trouble is, the necessity grew beyond him as well. Many of the other Elders, Tivan among them, found they needed an additional means of control as their individual interests slowly narrowed their focus. So obedience discs were passed around among them--and the more technologically adept among the Elders, such as Tivan (with his keen artist’s hands and attention to detail), helped to perfect the technology. Obedience discs are used on Sakaar for servants with jobs, and on Knowhere for Museum attendants. Updating and improving the technology is a frequent pastime for Elders with access to the technology, sometimes only tweaking it to serve their own needs and sometimes changing it to be more accessible to all Elders, at which point it is passed around among them again.