#and its just way too fucking cold you freeze so fast even with a lantern

[foxstens]

bitter aerie is a lot less fun as saint

[holdyourbreathfornow]

Like Father, Like Son

(Oh no, instead of working on the many other things I’m supposed to, I instead wrote this ‘missing scene’ tribute fic to your fic “A Match Lit in the Lantern of My Heart”. Supposed to be set right after Darnold gets Gordon in the car after he burns up the warehouse. I really REALLY want to write the second part but it’s very difficult for me to write more than one chapter of things, regardless of length or desire, so no promises)  (cw for burns,flashbacks of past trauma,slight body horror) 

(feel free to add a readmore. I can’t add one on the submission page)

Bubby was pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor as he and the others waited anxiously for any news from Darnold or Gordon.

  He chewed on his thumb nail anxiously; a bad habit he’d picked up a long time ago and never been able to kick. He often felt the need to gnaw on things with his sharp teeth, especially when he was nervous, and, more often than not, it was his nails and cuticles that took the brunt of the damage. 

  He just hated this damned waiting!  Not knowing what was happening, not knowing what to do. It was maddening!

  None of the others seemed to be handling it any better. 

  Harold was staring, silently and unblinking, into the middle distance, arms folded and hands gripping his upper arms so hard Bubby worried for the integrity of the metal. 

  Tommy was shaking, stroking Sunkist over and over to try to calm himself out of a full panic attack while his father stood next to the two of them, face and mannerisms as unreadable as always, but knowing him as well as Bubby had come to, he could still tell the man was worried. 

  Benrey was sitting in the corner of the room, clutching his head and rocking back and forth slightly. His form twitched and shuddered.

  Benrey had taken the news of Montobar’s return and subsequent threatening of Gordon arguably the worst of any of them. At first he’d seized up, freezing like a deer in headlights, then he’d seemed to completely lose control of his physical form, growing, shifting, and changing in accordance with his rage and despair. Teeth and claws jutted out at all angles, mouths and limbs sprouting and flailing as ear-splitting, shrieking notes of sweet voice filled the air with a slew of blinding lights. 

  It seemed as though his emotions were physically warring with each other over the battlefield of his body, parts trying to draw into themselves in fear and form protective plating, while other parts lashed out, slashing at the air with claws and teeth like razors, while still more moaned and sobbed tears the same ever shifting colors that poured from his many mouths. 

  He’d immediately tried to run off to find Gordon (hell they’d all wanted to) but Tommy managed to console him enough to get him to understand the infuriating truth of the situation at hand, which was that we simply didn’t know exactly Montobar had up his sleeve. 

  Darnold had told them Montobar had been vague in his threats besides an insinuation of something to do with controlling Tommy’s father. While the G-Man had assured them there was no danger of that specifically, they still didn’t know what else Montobar could have at his disposal. 

  No one knew the extent of exactly what had been done to Gordon during his time at Black Mesa, not even Gordon himself. No one but Montobar. If there was something else he knew, something else he had that he could use against Gordon and they showed up and forced him to show his hand…

  Bubby shuddered. 

  No, they had to find out exactly what his demands were. Exactly what he had to back up his threats. Then they could act. Then they could find a way to subvert whatever twisted ace he might have up his sleeve.

  And Bubby could finally deep fry the fucker. 

  For everything Montobar had done to Bubby’s son, to his whole family, he’d make sure the piece of shit’s life ended roasting alive. He’d regret ever living through the fall of Black Mesa, Bubby would make sure of that. 

  Bubby nearly jumped out of his skin when Coomer’s phone ringtone went off. 

  In an instant, the whole room was on their feet and crowded around Coomer, who already had picked up, phone held to his ear.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, not bothering with any kind of greeting. “Is Gordon–” 

  Bubby could hear frantic speaking from the other side of the call, cutting Coomer off, but it was too quiet to hear what was being said.

  “Fire?!” Coomer exclaimed. “But what–” 

  “What- what’s he saying?” Tommy cried, “Is Gordon al-alri- is-is he ok?”

  “Oh my God, man, just put the fucking thing on speaker!” Bubby exclaimed, grabbing the phone from his husband’s hand and pressing the speaker symbol and Darnold’s voice cut in, mid sentence.

  “–and the windows just blew out and when I went in he was just–it was an inferno!” 

  “Gordon? Gordon good, yeah? He’s…he’s not–” Benrey asked, practically crawling over Tommy to get closer to the phone.

  “He’s alive,” Darnold said, and the group let out a collective breath of relief. “But he’s all burned up. He’s…it’s bad. It’s real bad.”

  Benrey’s form started to shift again, but this time with a singular, focused emotion at its core: rage. 

  “Montobar rigged the place to ex-ex- to blow up?” Tommy said with a shudder. “After-after all that? It was just to hurt-to hurt Gordon?”

  “He couldn’t let us live,” Benrey said, mouth stretching and jaw filling with long, sharp fangs. “Can’t have his toys, so he’ll just break ‘em.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand!” Darnold said. “Montobar didn’t start the fire, Gordon did! He was the fire!”

  Bubby nearly dropped the phone, his whole body going numb. 

  It couldn’t be.

  “Darnold, what do you mean he was the fire?” Bubby demanded, voice shaking.

  “I don’t know what it was,” Darnold said. “I just went in and Gordon was at the center of this huge plume of fire and his eyes were glowing! The more he panicked it seemed like the flames just got bigger and bigger! When I got him to calm down, they went out but he’s still really really hot. Like, melting the seat of my car hot.”

  Bubby’s heart pounded in his ears as memories overtook him, unbidden.

  The exhilaration of freedom, but also the fear,the pain. Perfluorocarbon being painfully ejected from his lungs. He knew what it felt like to drown before what it felt like to breathe. 

Everything so loud, so bright. His muscles weak. Scientists everywhere, poking and prodding him. Too much. Too much. Hands grabbing at him, voices yelling, demanding. 

Anger feeding that ever present spark in his chest until it welled up, pushing out through his skin. Too hot. Too hot! Panicking but the panic just fed the heat, the flame. Then just screaming. 

Screaming,screaming, screaming.

  The phone slipped from Bubby’s fingers.

  Luckily Harold grabbed it with an extendo-arm before it could hit the ground.

  “Where are you now?” Harold said, voice low and firm, the way it got when he was pushing all emotion aside to just deal with the situation at hand.

  “We’re at least forty five minutes away, still,” Darnold said. “I’m going,uh,pretty far over the speed limit already but there’s only so fast I can go.”

  G-Man straighted up.

  “I will…warp to you to, retrieve him,” he said, but Coomer caught his arm before he could make any motion to do so.

  “No,” Coomer said. “We need you here. There’s some things we’re going to need…”

  Bubby didn’t hear the end of Coomer’s sentence, nor whatever was said in return, already staggering out of the room and down the basement stairs, hand clamped over his mouth, as if he was going to be sick. He wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t.

  Bracing himself against the cold cement walls of the basement, Bubby struggled to catch his breath. Muscle memory began to draw his flames to his skin, so used to being his outlet for such extreme emotion. He retched, forcing his fire deep down in his chest as his stomach seemed to tie itself in knots. 

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but all he could see behind his eyelids were images of flesh burning, phantom screams echoing in his ears. Sometimes his, sometimes Gordon’s.

  A hand touched Bubby’s shoulder and he pulled away sharply, teeth bared and hands raised to defend himself.

  His hands fell, along with his face, as he saw Coomer before him, arms up in a placating gesture. 

  “Fuck,” Bubby huffed, heart still racing. “Sorry, Harold, I just…“

  He covered his eyes with a hand, pushing his glasses up his face, as if it could hold back the tears threatening to fall.

  When Harold placed a hand on Bubby’s arm this time, he didn’t pull away.

  “He’s got burns over most of his body,” Coomer said. “He won’t be able to heal that on his own, especially not if he can’t cool down. You know what he needs.”

  Bubby moved his hand from his eyes to over his mouth, eyes still firmly shut. He knew what Coomer was going to say. Gordon needed to be put back into the cellular growth fluid he and Bubby had been grown in, the same way Bubby did when he needed to regrow or repair a large amount of tissue. Bubby knew he knew Coomer was right. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear, especially since he knew exactly what that would mean they needed.

  “His old tube is far too small now,” Coomer continued. “He’ll…need one of yours. I already sent G to get the one we kept in storage, but I’ll need your help getting it running again.”

  Bubby squeezed his eyes shut impossibly harder. He wouldn’t cry. He couldn’t break down now. Not when his family needed him. But the idea of facing his tube now, with the memory of being dragged by military men back to the one in Black Mesa and shoved inside, slamming his fists against the unforgiving glass until his knuckles were bruised and throbbing, still so fresh in his mind…it was too much.

  “I…I can’t…” he moaned, voice cracking. 

  Bubby felt Coomer’s hands grab him by the shoulders and he at last opened his eyes.

  “I know. I know how hard it is for you,” Coomer said,his eyes pained, but determined. “And I would never ask you to, if I didn’t have to. But your son needs you.”

  His face softened, as did his voice.

  “I need you, too,” he said. “I can’t do this alone.”

  Bubby swallowed hard and set his jaw. He nodded.

  Coomer let go of Bubby’s shoulders and took Bubby’s hands in his own. 

  Bubby pressed his forehead to Coomer’s and for a quiet moment, they just breathed.  Their moment was quickly ended when a flash of green lit up the basement and, out of thin air, appeared the G-Man, along with the semi-disassembled tube that Coomer and Bubby kept in a storage unit in case of emergencies, along with a few barrels of the cellular growth fluid starter, which would need to be properly prepared before it could be put in the tube itself.

  “I believe, this issss…all you, require.” G said.

  Bubby adjusted his glasses and pulled up the sleeves of his dress shirt.

  “Alright, we don’t have long and we need to get this fully running before Darnold gets back here with Gordon,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”

[agreatperhaps12]

There are a lot of misconceptions about Warren Peace. Five times Layla Williams saw through the bullshit, and one time Warren returned the favor.

happy holidays, @katiewont :) 

Misconception No. 1: Warren Peace loves a good fight.

Warren Peace does not go looking for fights. Fights find him.

See: Stronghold chucking a lunch tray at him the first week of class. Dumb and Dumber challenging them to Save the Citizen. Stronghold’s date going full supervillain at homecoming and nearly dropping a school-size anvil on an unsuspecting suburb.

That’s just the highlight reel for September.

When another villain interrupts Warren’s History of Heroism midterm with another school invasion, Warren’s first thought is: Could everyone around here chill for five fucking seconds.

No. Literally, not ever. See: three weeks later, when Warren is standing in line for lunch with the entourage of freshmen he’s long since given up trying to shake off. It has not even been five minutes since Warren and Stronghold defeated their latest challenger at Save the Citizen, and Zach is already doing a clumsy live-action replay.

To Stronghold, “Did you see his face when you were like?” Zach swings his arm with the spectacular confidence of someone not standing in a very crowded cafeteria. To Warren, “And then you were like—” Zach mimes shooting fireballs from his fists, complete with sound effects. “Totally brutal. You looked scary, bro.”

“He always looks scary,” Ethan says, smiling at Warren like that’s a compliment.

Warren glares down at his tray. He and Stronghold have been defending champions of Save the Citizen for over two months, Hero Team every time. He doesn’t get how people are still managing to make him feel like the bad guy about it.

“How was play-pretend battle?”

Layla has emerged from the crowd to stand beside Warren, with a smirk that makes a stupid something flutter behind his sternum. Layla stopped coming to their Save the Citizen matches after their dozenth victory, because “violence should be the last resort in any hostage situation” and “Save the Citizen completely undermines a valuable opportunity for Sky High students to learn strategic negotiation skills.” Warren doesn’t know what she does with the free period. 

Take me with you, he thinks.

“The match was epic,” Zach says. “Will got to throw a car.”

A bashful smile overtakes Stronghold’s dumb, Labrador face.

“And Warren almost barbequed Evans,” Ethan says.

Jesus, could they shut up about it already.

“Really,” Layla says, eyes on Warren while he pays for his food.

“Yeah,” Warren says, in a deadpan to rival Magenta. “It was epic.”

Layla frowns, but instead of launching into the pacifist manifesto that Warren is expecting, she holds up her bagged lunch says, “Want to eat outside?”

Before Warren can answer, Stronghold says, “Outside?” like he’s never heard of such a place. “It’s freezing out there.”

“It’s almost forty degrees,” Layla says, “and I had to come in early to finish a project, so it’s been over—” She checks the clock. “—five hours since I’ve felt roots under my feet. I’m eating outside.”

“Okay, but like.” Stronghold glances at Warren. “Do… you want me to come?”

“No, you’ll just be a baby about it,” Layla says gently. “Warren doesn’t get cold, do you?”

She looks to Warren for confirmation of a fact that Warren is one hundred percent sure he’s never told her. He shrugs to hide his wrong-footedness.

“Great.” Layla claps a hand on Stronghold’s shoulder and uses it to steer him toward the others, who are already sitting at what used to be Warren’s personal lunch table, once upon a time. She shrugs on her jacket, flips her hair out, and looks to Warren. “Shall we?”

Warren follows her outside warily. Sitting down across from her at the picnic table closest to the edge of school grounds, he says, “So, what is this, exactly?”

Layla pauses in uncurling her lunch bag. “What do you mean?”

Warren shrugs. “We don’t really hang out. Alone.”

They did, a little. Back when Layla was using Warren to make Stronghold jealous. But that pretty much ended with the homecoming debacle—after which Layla and Stronghold spent a few weeks trying to get their romantic relationship off the ground, decided they worked better as friends, and went back to normal.

“What are you talking about?” Layla says. “We hang out at the Paper Lantern all the time.”

It’s true that Layla eats at Warren’s workplace a few nights a week, when her mom is too busy with day-saving to make family dinners at home. But Layla is always doing homework, and Warren is always doing Work work, so, “I don’t think that counts.”

“It does,” Layla says confidently. It’s the kind of confidence that only Layla can pull off, because rather than coming across as arrogant, she gives the air of a mysterious woodland nymph, whose secret knowledge mere mortals wouldn’t understand.

“Okay,” Warren says, because he has precious little personal experience to back up any assertions about how friendship is supposed to work. “But this isn’t the Lantern.”

Layla raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to go back inside?”

“No,” Warren says. He doesn’t want Layla to leave, either. There’s a sureness about her that Warren finds comforting. She’s never been afraid of him—probably because she could kick his ass. Warren likes that about her. But he also likes to know where he stands with people.

By way of explanation, Layla says, “Did you know that when you get stressed out, literal steam comes out of your ears?”

“What?”

“Mm-hmm.” Layla pulls an apple out of her lunch bag. “A little. It’s easier to see when your hair is pulled back.”

Warren brings a self-conscious hand to the rubber band he used to tie his hair up during Mad Science Lab.

“It happens a lot when Zach is doing his Save the Citizen play-by-plays,” Layla observes. “Thought I might spare you an entire lunch of that.”

“Oh.” Warren’s hand drops into his lap, blind-sided by the unexpected kindness. “Thanks.”

“Any time.” Layla maintains eye contact while taking a bit of apple. Warren shifts in his seat and drops his eyes to his pizza. “You could tell Coach Boomer to assign Will a different partner,” she says after a moment. “Save the Citizen isn’t mandatory.”

Yeah, except it kind of is. No one’s ever voluntarily stepped back from a winning streak like Warren and Stronghold’s. Benching himself would never be worth all the extra side-eye in the halls. Not to mention the explanation he’d have to give Boomer. What kind of superhero-in-training refuses to fight?

Except for the one Warren is currently sitting across from, of course. Who’s looking at Warren with such doe-eyed earnestness that it almost squeezes a “Yeah, maybe” out of him. But Layla is a difficult person to lie to, so he says, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about Save the Citizen.”

Layla sits up a little straighter. “Right,” she says. “Consider it forgotten.”

“Thanks.”

Not that Warren doesn’t trust Layla, but she is the kind of person to press points she thinks are important. Before her mind can cycle back to Save the Citizen from some other angle, Warren says, “Sorry I dragged you outside in the middle of November.”

Layla tilts her head to the side. “You didn’t drag me. I dragged you.”

“Yeah, but for me,” Warren says, and there’s that stupid fluttering feeling again.

“And for me,” Layla says. “I wasn’t lying about needing to get out for a bit. Being inside all day, with the linoleum and cinderblock.” She wrinkles her nose. “It’s creepy quiet, when you’re used to feeling everything alive around you.”

He’s never actually thought about it, before. How Layla has her finger on the pulse of something so vast and intricate, even when she’s not bending it to her will.

“Even in November?” Warren says. “Isn’t everything, like… dead?”

Layla laughs. “No. Just taking a long nap.”

“Huh.” Warren looks around the grey-brown landscape of the schoolyard, with its bare branches and faded grass, with new eyes. It’s a nice idea, that all these lifeless-looking things are just waiting to wake up.

Misconception No. 2: Warren Peace doesn’t give a damn about his bad reputation.

Anyone who dyes a single streak of hair, wears fingerless gloves, and walks around like he’s got nothing to prove has something big to prove.

For Warren Peace, that is: I do not give a fuck about my family legacy.

Before starting high school, Warren figured a couple kids might recognize him, by name or by strong family resemblance. But Warren’s dad had already been locked up for a long time. It wasn’t like he made the news anymore. Worse came to worst, Warren thought he might have to field a few awkward questions about it.

Homeschooling did not prepare Warren for how big a household name Barron Battle was.

The first week of school was all open seats around Warren in class and at lunch, cold and curious looks over shoulders on the bus, “Check it out, that’s Barron Battle’s devil spawn” and “I can’t believe they even let supervillain kids in.”

It was treat or be treated like dirt, and Warren chose the former.

Fast-forward to junior year, and Sky High students know Warren Peace for the asshole he is, rather than the asshole his father was. Warren is comfortably back to pretending like his dad doesn’t exist. It mostly works.

Except during a History of Heroism unit on the most notorious villains of the twentieth century, when Warren’s class is staring at a PowerPoint slide that depicts the leveled Brooklyn neighborhood where Barron Battle and the Commander had their final showdown.

Warren ignores his classmates’ not-so-covert glances as Mr. Magnificent rattles of statistics like ‘seven dead and dozens injured’ and ‘nearly one billion dollars in damages.’ Magnificent has to pause his lecture to silence the white noise of whispers that has swelled up, and Warren wants to sink through the floor.

It’s like the first week of freshman year all over again. Warren is projecting I don’t care vibes so hard, there’s a good chance he’ll spontaneously combust.

What feels like an eon later, the classroom lights come up. Warren shoves everything into his backpack and heads for the door before anyone can try to talk to him. As usual, Layla is out of Hero Support early and waiting in the hall to meet Warren for lunch. Her patent sun-bright smile slips as Warren escapes the classroom.

“Whoa, where’s the fire?” she says.

“What?” Warren stops up short. “Nowhere. There’s no fire.”

“I was kidding,” Layla says, and winces at herself. “Poor choice of words. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Warren rakes his fingers through his hair. “I can’t come to lunch today. I have to—work on something.”

Normally, when Warren is feeling like shit, there’s nothing he’d rather do than sit with Layla in their little oasis of calm at the schoolyard picnic table. But right now, Warren needs at least thirty minutes to pace around the empty auto shop classroom, literally and figuratively cooling off, before he subjects himself to more human company.

“Okay,” Layla says, hugging her notebook to her chest and looking at him critically. “Are you—”

“Yeah. It’s—whatever. I’ll see you later.” Warren shoulders his way through the crowded hall toward the shop room, head down.

Smooth, he thinks at himself. Very smooth.

Shut up.

Warren assumes the first chance he’ll have to apologize to Layla is the next day at lunch. But when Warren shows up for his shift at the Paper Lantern at five, Layla is already sitting at her usual table. Weird, because Layla usually doesn’t come to the Lantern on Thursdays. Weirder, because when she does come, she typically arrives sometime after eight, when the dinner rush has mostly cleared out.

“What can I get you?” Warren says, drawing his pencil out from behind his ear as he approaches Layla’s table. They do try to maintain some appearances of an employee-customer relationship, to appease Mrs. Zhou.

“Hmm.” Layla examines the menu. “I’d like one kung pao tofu, one green tea, and—” She looks up at him. “—for you to explain why you fled your History of Heroism class today.”

“I didn’t flee,” Warren says. “I stormed out.”

“All right,” Layla agrees easily. “Why did you storm out of History of Heroism?”

Warren crosses his arms. “None of your business.”

“Okay.” Layla holds out her menu.

Warren blinks. “What?”

“You’re right, it’s not my business,” she says. “I just thought you might want to talk about whatever it was.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay.”

Warren squints. “Okay…”

“Okay,” Layla says again, and flaps the menu in her hand.

Warren takes it slowly, waiting for the catch. But Layla just pulls a binder and notebook out of her backpack. “Honey with the tea, please,” she says, and clicks open a pen.

“I know,” Warren says, and leaves Layla to her homework. He spends most of the next half-hour trying to untangle why he feels disappointed rather than relieved.

The thing is, Warren sometimes gets a “What was that about?” or “Dude, what the hell happened back there?” from classmates after he goes nuclear. Like after his cafeteria fight with Stronghold in September. Those questions always feel voyeuristic. Prickly and probing.

With Layla, though, the question feels less invasive and more inviting. For the first time, Warren wants to explain himself. He wants Layla to understand. He doesn’t want her to see him as some moody, unapproachable asshole. But he also doesn’t know how to approach her, or the subject, now that he’s already shut it down.

He’s been talking himself in and out of going back over to Layla’s table for ten minutes when Mrs. Zhou sidles up to the pass-through window where Warren is brooding.

“If you’re going to stand around making eyes at your girlfriend, take your fifteen and go over before the dinner crowd arrives,” she says.

Warren’s face heats, and he looks around to see whether anyone is in earshot, even though he’s pretty sure none of Mrs. Zhou’s whitebread suburban customers understand Mandarin. “She’s not my—never mind.”

Deciding he’d rather be having any other conversation besides this one with Mrs. Zhou, Warren forces himself to walk over to Layla’s table and sit down.

“We learned about the Barron in class today,” he says, abandoning any attempt at preamble, “for a lesson on notable supervillain takedowns.”

If Layla is surprised by Warren’s sudden attempt at conversation, she doesn’t show it. She hooks her pen through the spiral of her notebook, closes it, and waits for him to continue.

“Magnificent was showing pictures from the last time Dad and the Commander fought in New York,” Warren says, “and people were looking at me like I was involved somehow, even though all that shit went down when I was still in diapers, and those people have been in my classes for three years, like—I know, we all know Barron Battle is my dad, why can’t everyone fucking get over it already—”

Layla lays a hand on his forearm, cutting Warren off and drawing his attention to the fact that his clenched fist is smouldering like a hot coal. “Shit. Sorry.” Warren shakes out his hand, and Layla pulls back. He wishes she wouldn’t.

Layla waits for the red glow of Warren’s knuckles to dim and then says, “Mr. Magnificent is an idiot. It was totally inappropriate to include your dad in a presentation, especially without asking you first.”

Warren shrugs. “A lot of people’s parents end up in his presentations,” he says. “They’re just usually on the right side.”

“He still should have asked you,” Layla says. “Also, you helped save the entire school in September. If people still think you’re anything like your dad after that, they’re idiots and you shouldn’t care what they think.”

Warren wants to say “I don’t.” What comes out is, “This is high school. Everyone cares what everyone thinks.”

“I don’t,” Layla says.

Warren wants to contradict her, but from what he can tell, Layla genuinely doesn’t. “You have to care a little,” he says.

Layla raises her eyebrows like oh, yeah? and points to her characteristically Whoville-style twist of braids and glittery clips. “You think these hairdos made me a lot of friends in middle school?”

“I didn’t go to middle school.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Layla says.

“Then why do you wear your hair like that?”

“Because I like it.” Layla twirls a stray piece of hair around her forefinger. “And I don’t need to be one of the pretty girls to feel good about myself.”

“You are pretty,” Warren blurts, and immediately has to suppress the urge to set himself on fire.

Layla’s eyes go wide. The last time Warren saw her blush this deep, he’d just called her out for crushing on Stronghold. But instead of straight-up embarrassed, this time Layla’s blush is weirdly, shyly pleased. “You think so?” Her chin is tilted down so that she’s looking up at him through her eyelashes, which is not fair.

“Me?” Warren points at himself, like an idiot. “I don’t—I mean, I do, but it’s not just—you are pretty. People know that. It’s an objective fact.”

“Really.” Layla’s cheeks are still pink, but her smile has a playful slant now.

“Yeah,” Warren says, more defensively than he intends. Christ, he was so much better at this when they were fake-dating, when none of Warren’s smirks or swagger could mean anything. Now, without the protection of pretense, everything feels altogether too personal. Warren is not good at personal.

“Thank you,” Layla says, and bites her lip in hesitation before tacking on, “you’re pretty, too.”

Whatever that comment is—reflex, or politeness, or something else—it is officially too much. “I have to get back to work,” Warren says, overloud in the quiet restaurant, and bangs his knee on the underside of the table in his haste to stand up.

“Okay,” Layla says, trying to hide a smile behind her hand. Before he can turn away, she adds, “Warren,” and points to either side of her head.

Warren stares at her blankly for a second before he catches her drift, yanks his hair down from his ponytail to hide his surely steaming ears, and practically runs back to the kitchen.

Misconception No. 3: Warren Peace thinks he’s got the best power.

“I feel like I should warn you,” Layla says as she turns the key in her front lock, “my house is kind of crowded.”

Warren frowns. “I thought you were an only child.”

“No siblings,” Layla says. “A lot of roommates. You’ll see.”

What Warren sees is a menagerie that would do Ace Ventura proud.

“Watch out for the—everything,” Layla says, leading him through a flock of peacocks, a few dogs and several cats that slink by too quickly to count.

“Why… is this?” is the only semi-coherent question that Warren can formulate as he shoos a parrot from his shoulder and shakes his pant leg free of a fox’s jaws.

“You’re not the only one who has to live with your parent’s superpower,” Layla says.

Layla’s mom, apparently, is a zoolinguist. The only place in the entire house not overrun by furry or feathered residents is Layla’s room.

“Wow,” Warren says as he crosses the threshold.

Layla’s bedroom is situated on the back corner of the house, and the two external walls and ceiling are all paneled glass. Presumably to usher in maximum sunlight for the greenery that crowds almost every inch of space besides Layla’s bed and desk. Warren has to shed his winter coat immediately to avoid overheating in the humidity.

“Yeah,” Layla says. “Sometimes I forget how weird it is. Will’s the only friend I’ve ever had up here.”

Layla is the only friend Warren has ever had in his room—which she immediately declared “entirely predictable,” on account of the punk rock posters plastered across his walls. Layla’s room is way more predictable, if you ask Warren. Or at least, Warren would have predicted this, if he’d known literal greenhouse was a legitimate option.

“It’s nice,” he says. “Peaceful.”

“Isn’t it?” Layla takes Warren’s coat and hangs it on a hook behind the leaves of an elephant ear plant. “Mom had the place renovated before we moved in. I think she figured, if she was going to let every animal in the neighborhood have the run of our house, it wasn’t fair to exile my plants to the backyard.”

“Do they all live here all the time?” Warren says, pointing at the floor to indicate the veritable petting zoo downstairs.

“Some of them,” Layla says. “Mom is good at finding homes for most. I think donations from her fans are single-handedly keeping every shelter in the city afloat.”

It’s rude to ask about superheroes’ secret identities, but context clues give Warren a pretty good idea who Ms. Williams might be. Charismatic Megafauna is basically a one-woman PETA operation, liberating animals from factory farms and delivering them to free-range pastures as often as she commands her elite squadron of apex predators to take down baddies. She’s a more controversial figure than the Commander and Jetstream, but she does have an extremely dedicated cult following.  

“Her power sounds amazing,” Warren says.

“Most of the time,” Layla says. She collects a watering can from beside her bed and begins to fill it with a knee-high spigot beside the door. “But there’s a lot of animal suffering in the world. It can get exhausting for her to be tapped into it all the time, you know?”

Warren pauses to consider. “Yeah, I guess that would be overwhelming.”

Layla turns off the tap and carries her watering can to the closest table laden with potted plants. “Everyone’s superpower looks spectacular on the news,” she says, with a very un-Layla-like smile. “No one’s around to see it when your power makes you so sad you can’t get out of bed.”

“Except you,” Warren guesses.

Layla drops her not-really-smile. “Except me.”

Warren shuffles along the row of plants beside Layla while she waters them. He waits until she finishes refilling the can and starts a new row before asking, “Does that ever happen to you? Your powers getting you down.”

Layla studiously waters a flower with orange starburst petals. “Plants have more…auras and vibes than thoughts and feelings,” she says, and tickles the flower under one leaf. The plant visibly perks up under her ministrations, and Layla smiles. For real, this time. “Their pain doesn’t feel as sharp to me as animals’ pain does to my mom.”

“But,” Warren prompts.

“But sometimes, yeah,” Layla says, and moves on to the next plant.

Warren casts around for something comforting to say, but comes up with nothing better than, “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Layla says, “but it’s the exception to the rule. Most of the time, I wouldn’t give up feeling this—” She rubs her fingertips over a browning leaf to paint it green. “—for anything.”

Warren shouldn’t be jealous of Layla’s powers. Especially after she’s just admitted what a burden they can be. But Layla has also just confirmed what Warren has long suspected: Superabilities, even the ostensibly powerful ones, are not created equal. Warren’s pyrokinesis is, fundamentally, a weapon. A blunt tool to wield when the situation calls for violence. Layla’s power, on the other hand, seems more like a sixth sense. A trapdoor to another plane of reality.

How much of Layla Williams’s worldview draws on the alien insight of plants that no other human being, least of all Warren Peace, could ever possibly understand?

Layla interrupts Warren’s inferiority spiral with, “I’ve never talked about this with anyone but my mom.”

Warren watches Layla coax a stem into standing up straighter. “Not even Stronghold?”

He should not take as much pleasure as he does in Layla’s dismissive laugh. “Especially not Will.”

“Why not?”

“For a long time, he didn’t have any powers, and he was so jealous of mine, it seemed mean to complain about them to Will.”

“And now?”

“Now, he’s in the honeymoon phase with his new powers,” Layla says, “and it seems mean to bring him down.”

Not even Warren believes Stronghold can be that fragile. “I’m sure he’d get over it.”

“Maybe, but, you know. The things we do for our best friends,” Layla says, with a what can you do shrug, and returns to the faucet for another refill.

“So, why tell me?”

Layla chews the inside of her cheek. “I guess because you already have a complex about your own powers the size of Texas, thanks to your dad.”

“What?” Warren balks. “I do not.”

Layla squints. “Don’t you, though?”

“No. I—shut up.” Warren looks away, feeling hot all over.

Layla bends down to turn off the tap. A moment later, her hand on Warren’s shoulder startles him into looking back at her. Her big, brown eyes are wide with sympathy. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not upset,” Warren snaps.

“Okay.” Typical Layla, letting him feel whatever he’s going to feel and say whatever he’s going to say and refuse to throw hands about it.

Warren’s spark of anger sputters and dies. He huffs out an exhale. “It’s not only about my dad,” he admits, quietly, mostly to the floor.

Layla’s hand remains on his shoulder while she waits for an elaboration. Warren very carefully does not acknowledge it in any way, for fear it might stop.

“Fire is...useful,” he says. “But it can only destroy things. I can’t create. Not like…” He waves a hand around Layla’s room. “All I’m good for is fighting, and sometimes I wish—” Warren shoves a hand through his hair. “I dunno. It’s stupid.”

Layla’s hand squeezes his shoulder. “First of all, you are not your power,” she says. “No matter what Boomer or anyone else says. Second, fire is creative. It creates light and warmth.”

“If I’m ever transported back in time to an era before electricity, I’m sure that’ll be extremely handy,” Warren says, aiming for wry and not quite making it, because the tickly feeling that flitters to life in his chest whenever Layla says nice things about him is going wild.

Layla rolls her eyes. “Third of all, you do not need a superpower to create and nurture things.” Before Warren can stop her, Layla has pushed her watering can into his hand.

“What?” he says. “I don’t know anything about plants. I’d probably kill them all.” He holds the watering can out to Layla, who does not take it.

“Don’t act like you don’t have a book of Keats in your backpack right now,” she says. “If you know ‘To Autumn,’ you already know the most important things about plants. Everything else is technicalities.”

Warren gives her a doubtful look.

Layla sighs. “Trust me. Which you should, because I know literally everything about plants, and I’m a very good teacher, and I would not let you hurt any of my babies. Okay?”

Layla holds out her hand, and Warren has to channel all his concentration into keeping his cool enough that he doesn’t burn her when he takes it in his own. Layla grins, and Warren feels a little light-headed with the thrill of it.

“Come on,” she says, and pulls him toward the row of potted flowers where they left off. Warren follows, as helpless as any of the flora around them to resist the benevolent force of nature that is Layla Williams.

Misconception No. 4: Warren Peace doesn’t get scared.

This illusion is at least partly on purpose. Part of the do not fuck with me ethos Warren has been cultivating for the better part of three years.

In reality, plenty of things scare Warren. Like the idea that everyone is right about him after all, and he’ll end up on the Superheroes Guild’s Most Wanted List someday. Or that deep down, a kernel of grudge in his mother resents Warren for taking so closely after his father. But those are more midnight-existential-crisis concerns than acute fears.

Warren gets scared during battles, too. But the initial kick of adrenaline always seems to knock his consciousness clear of his body, such that he spends most of the fight controlling the firestorm of his fists from somewhere above the action. He usually doesn’t realize how freaked out he is until after the fact, when his brain plugs back into his body and he thinks, huh, my hands won’t stop shaking.

It’s rare that Warren feels, in real time, the bass-drum beat of his heart and a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. But that’s exactly what happens every time he gets close to asking Layla out on a date.

He’s come close so many times. He’s had the tickets in his jacket pocket for weeks. But the prospect of actually asking Layla invites the prospect of Layla saying no, and Warren—can’t.

Sometimes, he can almost convince himself that she would say yes, despite the fact that Layla is kind, beautiful, mystical Layla, and Warren is social-pariah, problem-child Warren. Like last Tuesday, when Layla said “you’re such a disaster” with such heart-stopping fondness, while she pulled a rubber band from Warren’s hair to replace it with one of her own, more comfortable fabric hair ties. Or last Friday, while they were watching a movie at Layla’s place, and she tucked her socked toes under Warren’s thigh on the couch. Or yesterday, when she held her hands out over the picnic table for Warren to warm her pink fingertips between his palms.

And always, in the back of Warren’s mind: “You’re pretty, too.”

But whenever Warren opens his mouth to ask, his tongue goes dry and his palms go damp. It’s such a stupid thing to be afraid of, it makes Warren want to close his head in a locker. Worst case scenario, Layla turns him down. They’d still be friends. She wouldn’t be cruel. She’s Layla. But Warren isn’t used to having so much of himself caught up in another person. The idea that Layla isn’t equally caught up in him provokes a strangled, withering feeling in the pit of Warren’s stomach that he can only imagine would intensify tenfold after the actual rejection.

So, Warren’s been procrastinating.

But time is running out.

It does not help that Stronghold’s flock of freshmen is currently obsessing over Winter Formal like a bunch of… well, freshmen.

“You guys asking anyone?” Zach says at lunch, one day when freezing rain is lashing Sky High too hard for even Layla to sit outside. Zach hooks an arm over Magenta’s shoulder, as if to underline the fact that she’s already spoken for. Magenta rolls her eyes but doesn’t shrug him off.

“I would ask Larry,” Ethan says, pushing steamed vegetables around on his plate with his fork. “If I could stop going full-puddle every time he looks at me.”

Layla and Magenta make sympathetic noises.

“I think I’m gonna ask Abby,” Stronghold says, eyes cast over at a table where Warren assumes this Abby must sit. He hasn’t bothered to keep up with Stronghold’s latest romantic fixation. They’re already two—three?—full crush cycles past Layla. Warren can’t believe he ever felt threatened by a kid with the attention span of a housefly.

“She’d totally say yes,” Magenta says. “I overheard her about how hot you are during the Shapeshifting Students Association meeting.”

“Really?” Will says, at the same time Layla goes, “Magenta!”

“What?”

“Gossip.”

“Okay, Mother Williams,” Magenta says. To Will, “We’ll talk later.”

Layla looks intent on pressing the matter, but Ethan says, “Do you have a date, Layla?”

Everyone turns to Layla, except for Stronghold, whose eyes inexplicably flick over to Warren—who glares him into dropping eye contact.

“No,” Layla says, unconcerned.  

“Not yet,” Zach says. “Just a question of who asks first.”

Warren’s heart stutters, and he swallows back a “What?”

Luckily, Stronghold has less restraint. “What?” he says, like he wasn’t ogling another girl 0.2 seconds ago.

Zach looks at Stronghold like, Are you kidding? “Layla’s hot,” he says slowly. Magenta nods in agreement. “Chen, Robinson, and Feinstein are all thinking about asking.”

“And those are just the ones we’ve heard about,” Magenta says.

“Where are you guys getting this intel?” Ethan says. “We’re your only friends.”

“You can hear a lot from the inside of a locker,” Zach says.

“Or from the vents,” Magenta adds.

“Who’s still shoving you in a locker?” Layla says, frowning at Zach.

“Don’t deflect,” Magenta says. “Who are you going to take?”

“I don’t know,” Layla says, very pink and very determinedly acting like she’s not. “I didn’t know I had options until right now.”

Warren didn’t know he had competition until right now. In his defense, he deliberately pays as little attention as possible to rest of the Sky High student body, except for the five freshmen who invaded his space last fall and refused to leave. But of course other guys want to ask Layla.

Fuck.

“What about you, Bucky Barnes?” Zach says, throwing Warren an upward nod. “Got your eye on any hot junior goths we don’t know about?”

Warren scowls. “No.”

“Warren’s too cool for school dances,” Magenta says.

Stronghold frowns. “He took Layla to homecoming.”

“Only to make you jealous,” Layla is quick to correct.

Warren’s eyes snap over to her, but Layla isn’t looking at him. Just stabbing at her salad with her fork and letting her hair partially obscure her still pink cheeks.

An uncomfortable, sour feeling settles in Warren’s stomach. He makes himself look back at Zach. “I don’t do school dances. I have a thing anyway.”

“What thing?” Magenta says.

“A thing,” Warren says, with enough finality that even Zach knows better than to push it.

That is, until Stronghold corners Warren at his locker after final period to ask, “What thing do you have to do instead of Winter Formal?”

Warren continues loading books into his backpack. “A thing.”

Stronghold, in a bid for Warren’s full attention, shuts his locker door. As soon as Warren turns a glare on him, the kid goes bug-eyed.

“I am so sorry!” he says, reaching out to open the locker, only to remember that, duh, it’s Warren’s and he can’t. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Warren must be spending too much time with Layla, because instead of picking Stronghold up by his shirt collar, he merely swats Stronghold’s hand away and unlocks his locker.

“It was only—I know someone who was hoping you’d ask them to Winter Formal,” Stronghold says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Warren fixes Stronghold with a flat expression. “You’re not my type.”

For an aspiring superhero, Stronghold flusters extremely easily. “Wh—not me!” he says, and then leans in and lowers his voice. “You know.”

Warren, who is not in the business of getting his hopes up—no matter how many summersaults his stomach is doing—raises his eyebrows.

“Layla,” Stronghold murmurs, so low that Warren has to read his lips.

Summersaults, cartwheels, handsprings. Warren’s stomach is performing a full-on gymnastics routine. “Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Stronghold admits, and Warren’s stomach immediately flops. “But I am something of an expert on Layla Williams.”

Warren, who has an entire September’s worth of evidence to the contrary, makes a psh noise.

Stronghold squares his shoulders and ticks off on his fingers: “She hangs out at the Lantern all the time. She eats lunch with you, alone, every other day. The way she talks about you—”

“She talks about me?”

“Dude.” Stronghold lays a hand on Warren’s shoulder, looking so delighted with the irony that it takes everything in Warren not to ignite. “You’re so stupid. She’s totally into you.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Right.” Stronghold’s hand immediately slides off. “Seriously, though. If you don’t ask Layla to the dance, someone else will.”

“Noted,” Warren says, like he isn’t already tying himself into knots over that exact possibility.

“You’re gonna ask her, then?”

Warren heaves a sigh. He can’t believe he’s about to confide in Will Stronghold, of all people, but at this juncture it seems like the path of least resistance. “I have tickets to something that night, and I want to ask Layla to go with me.”

Stronghold has the audacity to look innocently perplexed. “So, why haven’t you?”

“I’m, you know.” Warren pushes back his hair. “Waiting for the right time.”

Stronghold looks dubious. “It’s a date, not a prom-posal.”

“I know that,” Warren snaps.

Stronghold blinks, and something seems to click in his head. His expression goes slightly amused and, even worse, sympathetic. “You’re nervous.”

“I am not,” Warren says, but it sounds like a lie even to his own ears. “I’m just waiting for the right moment.”

“Okay, well.” Stronghold blows out a breath and puts his hands on his hips. “Any chance the right moment might be, like, today? Around now-ish?”

Warren narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because Magenta texted me five minutes ago that Andrew Chen is standing next to our bus, waiting for Layla.”

Warren’s heart lurches. “You should have led with that, Christ.” Guess he’s doing this now. Is he really doing this now? He has to, so he is. Warren slams his locker and swings his bag over his shoulder. “Where is Layla?”

“Magenta said she stayed after class to talk to Mr. Boy about—oh, okay, then. Bye! Good luck!” Stronghold calls after Warren’s retreating figure as he strides off down the hall.

Warren is so preoccupied with figuring out what he’s going to say to Layla when he finds her that he nearly runs into her as she exits Mr. Boy’s classroom.

“Warren,” she says, blinking up at him in surprise. “Hi.”

Warren, who suddenly feels like he’s stepped on stage with no lines prepared, takes a second to remember how to breathe before he gets out a “Hi.”

Layla stares up at him expectantly. Right. He’s supposed to say more words.

“I wanted to talk to you about something.”

A pucker forms between Layla’s eyebrows. “Sure. I actually wanted to talk to you, too.”

Warren clenches the tickets between sweat-damp fingers in his pocket. “Okay. Do you want to…” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the mostly empty hallway.

“Okay.”

Layla follows him out into the hall, and they stand in semi-awkward silence until Warren says, “You first.”

“All right.” Layla tucks her hair behind her ears. She already looks embarrassed. Not good. “So, I might be way off base here, but I get the feeling you’ve been working yourself up to asking me to Winter Formal?” Her voice lilts up like a question, but she must find all the confirmation she needs in Warren’s expression, because she immediately continues, “and I just wanted to make it clear that you don’t have to.”

When Warren opens his mouth, “Oh” is all that comes out.

“Yeah.” Layla hooks her thumbs through the straps of her backpack. “I know school dances aren’t really your thing—and they’re not exactly mine, either. So I didn’t want you to think homecoming set some sort of precedent, that you have to ask—”

“I wanted to ask you,” Warren says, finally unsticking his throat.

It’s Layla’s turn for surprised silence. It takes a full two seconds for her to get out, “You did?”

“Yeah, but—not to the dance. Here.” Warren pulls the tickets out of his pocket. His thumb has smudged the ink of the top ticket, so he hands the bottom one to Layla. “Town hall is holding a fundraiser gala next Saturday to raise money to build a park on an empty lot in my neighborhood.”  

Layla takes the ticket in both hands and stares down at it.

“There’s going to be food and music and dancing,” Warren says, heart rate accelerating. “I think they’re going to auction off dedications for benches and flower beds and stuff. There will probably be a couple boring speeches by some government officials, but.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I dunno. It sounded like it could be fun.”

Layla still hasn’t said anything, and Warren’s heart is throwing a fit in his ribcage, so he adds, “It’s the night of Winter Formal, though. So if you wanted to go to the dance with someone else and hang out with your friends, I totally—”

“No,” Layla says, looking up at him with bright eyes and a wide smile. “I’d love to go.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Warren says, too overcome by the cold flood of relief pooling in his gut to say anything more substantive than, “Cool.”

Layla carefully slots her gala ticket into the front pocket of her backpack. “Took you long enough,” she says, angling a teasing smile at Warren. “I couldn’t take another week of you opening your mouth like you were going to ask me something and then not saying anything.”

“Thank Stronghold,” Warren says, wondering what his life has come to, that those words just came out of his mouth. Must be the generosity of giddy relief.

Layla’s nose scrunches up in tickled confusion. “Why?”

“He warned me that Chen was gonna ask you to the dance this afternoon,” Warren says. “Sort of lit a fire under my ass.”

“But Andrew—” Layla breaks off with a laugh and shakes her head. “Will.”

“What?”

Layla takes Warren’s hand and starts walking them down the hall. “Andrew Chen’s been sick with the flu all week,” she says. “He’s not even here today.”

Warren’s mouth hangs open for a few seconds. “Stronghold.”

Layla laughs again and swipes her thumb across the back of Warren’s hand, and a great, soft warmth blooms in Warren’s chest.

Well. If he has to be indebted to Will Stronghold for something, this is as good a favor as Warren could have asked for.

Misconception No. 5: Warren Peace is not a touchy-feely person.

Warren himself would have sworn by this one, until a month ago. He has never, in all his life, considered himself a cuddly person. By any stretch.

It turns out that in order to identify as a cuddly person, you need someone to cuddle. Or, more specifically, someone you have permission to cuddle.

Dating Layla Williams finally gives Warren that permission.

He expected it to be harder, weirder, more awkward to transition from being someone who looks at Layla and thinks I want to put my arm around you, to being a person who can actually reach behind her back and curl his fingers over her hip bone.

It’s not hard at all. The first time Layla kisses Warren, up on her toes with her hands fisted in the lapels of his suit, in the dark of her front porch after the fundraiser gala, there’s a shift. A gravitational kick that sends them into closer orbit around one another, so that now it’s routine for Warren to wrap Layla in his jacket and tuck her into his side as they walk. Steal her hand to press her knuckles to his lips. Knock his knee gently against hers under their picnic table.

“Who knew Warren Peace was such a cuddle bug,” Magenta says, tipped back in a papasan chair to peer at Warren upside-down.

Warren is sitting on the shag carpet of Stronghold’s basement with his back against the couch to let Layla play with his hair while they talk over a movie. She’s just tied off an elaborate braid, so now his cheek is resting against her knee while she twirls the fine hairs at the nape of his neck around her fingers.  

“Call me ‘cuddle bug’ ever again and I’ll roast you like a marshmallow,” Warren says, too sleepy and comfortable to put any real heat behind the threat.

Magenta, true to form, doesn’t so much as blink. “Hate to break it to you, but an elegant Dutch braid kind of undermines your whole tough-guy act.”

Warren simply shrugs. It’s an occupational hazard of dating Layla, spending a lot more time around her—their?—friends outside school. Warren resisted at first, but at this point, it’s more exhausting to continue holding them all at arm’s length than to let them have the run of his life.

“Layla, in general, kind of undermines his whole tough-guy act,” Zach says. “You know he wrote her a poem for Valentine’s day.”

“Read her a poem,” Warren says. What else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t very well get Layla clipped flowers.

“That’s still sappy as hell, dude,” Ethan says.

“It was very sweet,” Layla says, leaning forward to plant a kiss on Warren’s forehead.

Warren unsuccessfully tries to bite back a smile.

“He’s preening so hard right now, oh my god,” Magenta says.

“Shut up.”

“Don’t tease him, or he won’t come back,” Layla says, but Warren hears the smile in her voice.

“Please. He’d go anywhere you go,” Magenta says, and as Layla’s fingertip traces the shell of Warren’s ear gently, always gently, Warren doesn’t even attempt to contradict her.

+1 Misconception: Layla Williams is a just happy, go-lucky hippy chick.

Outside Layla’s bedroom window, everything green is tucked under snow and the weight of waiting for spring. On the other side of the world, everything is burning.

Record-setting wildfires have raked Australia for weeks. Neither Layla nor her mom can directly feel what’s happening to the outback. But Layla knows her mom must sense it like she does, every time a singed koala or graveyard of splinterlike tree trunks appears on the news: a gnawing sensation that something on the far edges of her mind is vanishing into smoke.

The worst part is knowing there’s nothing Layla can do. Even if she had the means to get to Australia, there’s no way to salvage the aftermath of a forest fire. Layla wields incredible power over living organisms. But it’s like conducting an orchestra. Not much to be done if the entire ensemble is already dead when she takes the stage.

Actually, the real worst part is knowing that the inferno currently eating up Australia isn’t an outlier. The warming world is parching landscapes and revving up hurricanes, and every weather-related threat to her beloved biosphere is only going to get much, much worse. It makes Layla feel horribly, inescapably small.

To avoid sitting around the house and chewing her nails down, Layla takes on more volunteer shifts at the animal shelter. Helps Magenta with outreach for the Shapeshifting Students Association. Spends a couple Saturdays with the local river cleanup volunteer crew. Cooks dinner on the nights her mom is actually home. Overstudies for an exam in Hero Support.

It’s all a good distraction, but at the price of exhaustion. Layla feels emotionally sore. Like she’s been doing the psychological equivalent of running springs.

Case in point: “Layla?”

Layla blinks herself out of her middle-space-stare at the picnic table. “Hmm?”

Warren frowns. “I said, are you coming to the Lantern tonight?”

“Oh, no,” Layla says, and winces her apology. “Will’s coming over to study for Hero Support.”

“Why? You’re gonna ace that thing.”

“I promised Will I’d help him review.”

Warren’s frown deepens.

“What?”

“You should take a break,” he says.

Layla hides a yawn behind one hand and waves the other dismissively. “I’m fine.”

Warren gives her a flat look. Most of his expressions are pretty flat, but Layla has gotten good at reading the subtleties. This one says, quit your bullshit.

“What?” she says.

“You—” Warren spends a couple seconds struggling to find the right words. “Your hair is in a ponytail.”

Layla replays that in her overtired mind, wondering whether she heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“No sparkly clip things. No scrunchies. You didn’t even do the thing where you wrap a little piece of hair around the elastic to hide it,” Warren says, as though that clarifies anything. When Layla’s expression makes clear that it does not, Warren sighs. “Babe. You’re exhausted.”

“Am not,” Layla says, and feels totally betrayed by her own body when the words are stretched out by a yawn. “Coincidence,” she says, in response to Warren’s unimpressed eyebrow-raise.

“Layla.”

“It’s fine,” she insists.

“Take a break,” Warren says, more insistently. “Stronghold can survive cramming for one exam on his own. Let baby bird learn to fly.”

“He’ll drop like a rock,” Layla says mournfully.

“Probably,” Warren says. “But you don’t have to be there for everyone all the time.”

Layla studies her bitten nails. “It makes me feel better.”

Warren’s ever-warm hands take hold of Layla’s, making her look up. But whatever he has in mind to say is interrupted by the bell. Warren gives her fingers a brief squeeze before releasing them, so that they can collect their things.

“Tell Stronghold to find himself another tutor so you can have a night off,” Warren says, hooking an arm over Layla’s shoulders as they head for the front doors. “Please.”

Layla does not. Which is why, when she says “come in” to the soft knock on her bedroom door at eight o’clock, she expects Will. Instead, she gets Warren, hovering on the threshold with his usual carefully concealed uncertainty, like he’s a vampire who has to wait to be invited in.

“What are you doing here?” Layla says, sliding off her bed. “I thought you had work.”

“Got someone to cover my shift,” Warren says. He’s holding what looks like a magazine. “This was more important.”

“What is… this?” Layla says. “You know Will’s going to be here any minute.”

“No, he’s not,” Warren says. “He’s at Magenta’s”

Layla narrows her eyes. “What did you do?”

“Told him to go find another study partner,” Warren says. “Since you’re already prepared.”

Layla crosses her arms and sinks her weight into one hip. “I told you, I want to help.”

Warren adjusts his grip on the magazine. Layla hears the paper stick to the sweat on his fingertips, but his determined expression doesn’t change. “Then help me.”

Layla blinks. “With what?”

Warren holds up what turns out to be a gardening catalog. “I want to get my mom a couple of indoor plants for her birthday,” he says. “Something pretty but doesn’t require a lot of attention, because she’s gone so much. I thought maybe you could help.”

Layla stares at him. “I love shopping for potted plants,” she says slowly.

Warren exhales a short laugh. “Uh, yeah, I know. And you are a good teacher, so.”

He rolls the catalog up between his hands and looks at Layla with guarded hope that shoots a bolt of affection like heat lightning straight through her stomach. She needs to sit down.

“Come in, then,” she says, and ushers him through the door. While Warren is taking off his shoes, “Just so we’re clear, you are not going to make a habit of rearranging my schedule behind my back.”

Warren stands up straight, dead serious. “Got it.”

Layla indulges a smile and leans up to kiss him. “I’ll forgive you this time, though.”

They sit on Layla’s bed, flipping through Warren’s catalog, as well as a stack of magazines that Layla has pulled out from under her desk. Warren loops his arms around her waist and hooks his chin over her shoulder, listening intently while she explains the care and keeping of flowers. It’s comfortable and easy and requires just enough idle attention to avoid falling into a slump. Layla could do this forever, she thinks.

Not an hour later, Layla is lying with her chin propped on her hands, which are folded over Warren’s chest, struggling to keep up conversation through yawns of increasing frequency.

“You can go to bed, you know,” Warren says, dryly amused, and tucks a strand of hair that has fallen out of Layla’s loose ponytail behind her ear.

“I might fall asleep right here on top of you, if you keep talking about it,” Layla says, closing her eyes and pillowing her cheek on her hands.

She feels, rather than hears Warren’s hitched inhale, and suddenly feels more acutely awake than she has all week.

Three seconds pass before Warren murmurs, “You can. If you want.”

Layla very carefully keeps her body relaxed and does not open her eyes to avoid breaking the fragile moment. “Mmm-kay,” she says, and adjusts to find a slightly more comfortable position. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Warren says, one hand splayed between her shoulder blades, his other thumb smoothing the hair back at her temple.

Layla is so keenly aware of every point of contact that she thinks she might stay awake after all. But within minutes, the soft touch pulls her down into sleep.

[16reapergrell66]

500,000 Coin Lowblow

Lucio Morgasson is a bounty hunter. He's sent to retrieve the head of Wyverne Lochland, a woman who had been selling in other bounty hunters. Can he keep his cool around this vixen, or will he be the next one sold?

Special thanks to @vesuviannights for the idea! She had gotten this as a fake fic prompt and I didn't realize how much I needed this till now.

Features: Pining, shower masturbation, blood/gore. Viewer discretion is advised.

It was a quiet night in Vesuvia. The Marketplace was quiet, save for a handful of people left. The lanterns were still lit, softly dancing in a light breeze. Lucio mingled with the crowd, trinkets still clinking and the leftover scent of warm pumpkin bread still clinging to life. He fingered some trinkets, watching them shine as they passed through calloused fingers. Others gleamed, catching his eye, and he picked them up, feeling their weight before placing them back.

 Just a 500,000 coin low-threat, huh? His mind wandered back to that wanted photo of her. Tamed curls, russet brown in color, eyes the color of emeralds, lips painted in a gorgeous shade of red. Freckles dusted her nose, the round apples of her cheeks. She had given the camera a particular smolder, one that gave him weird feelings--a tight, fluttery heart and warm, soft lips licked eagerly to cool them.

     He spotted her, carefully picking along the jewels and trinkets. Her hair was tied back into a loose knot, a beautiful hairpin helping to keep it in place. She laughed, a soft tinkle of bells among the hushed voices. She paid for a few jewels, pocketing them in her pants before leaving the stall.

     Shit, shit, sh-- His mind blanked. His heart skipped a few beats. This awful feeling crept through his limbs, warmth spreading down to other equipment. How in the world she rivalled his own beauty, he didn't know.

     Lucio gently shook his head, trying to clear it of irritating things. He gently grabbed her elbow, pulling her into a nearby alley. He pressed her against the wall, knee between her legs, lips just shy of her ear.

     "Don't you realize what you're doing?" He had growled this, low in her ear. "Why don't you wear a robe? You'll get yourself killed." He still couldn't shake the feeling, how his lips longed to be against hers, how he wanted to mark her, take her, claim her. He couldn't place the feeling, but he absolutely hated it.

     "Um...I-I'm...I….," Wyverne stumbled, stuttering her words. She played this innocent act well, yet there was something stirring in her abdomen. He was so close, a man of his allure doing things to her heart and mind.

     "You need to change, or you'll get caught," he growled, low in her ear. He handed her smooth material, soft and silky in her smooth hands. "Keep this, and please, get out." He pushed himself away, going out of the alley and disappearing back into the flimsy crowd.

     Wyverne clutched the black fabric, her heart racing. That was him! That was the bounty hunter, the one they called simply Morgasson. He was just as handsome as the rumors said, though he was a dangerous edge that loved the taste of blood on his long, silver tongue. She swallowed thickly, a hand over her heart. That was either a lucky shot or he was incredibly stupid! She was wanted for a reason, yet he seemed to buy into her act. If it was gonna be this easy, she'd have to wrangle more dumbasses more often.

♡♡

It was a few days later, the early morning greeting an already busy Marketplace. Wyverne was dressed in something more flattering for her figure, her top partially undone to softly reveal her cleavage. A long flowing skirt hid those legs, those gorgeous curvy legs with delicious thighs. She laughed at Selasi, a hand over her mouth to stifle snorts of pure laughter. Lucio cursed under his breath. Of course this wickedly good vixen wouldn't leave. She just had to stick around. 

     Wyverne grabbed her loaf of bread, paying Selasi. She tore off a chunk with a practised hand, bringing it to her lips. He watched them part, the piece of bread slipping inside, catching on her tongue. Again came that warm feeling, the one that wanted to claim her, mark her, bend her over the nearest stall.

     Lucio saw her disappear down a side alley, the same one as the other night, and followed her. He held an arm in front of her, making her lightly bump into him. She turned to face him, a momentary look of shock on her face. He pressed her against the wall, not as close as last time. His heart was pounding in his ears, a little too fast for his liking.

     "What the hell d'you think you're doing!?" Lucio was in exasperation at this point. Over the past few days, he had given her things he thought she needed--cloaks, blankets, medicine, books. She wouldn't tell him much, but this time he hoped she would.

     "Look, Morgasson. I appreciate the offers, the trinkets, the advice. But I can't leave. Not yet," Wyverne told him, voice soft yet firm. Her lips were painted with that ruby shade again, catching his eye. He bit his lip, smacking his fist against the wall.

     "What else do you need so that you will take my advice and leave this gods damned place??" He almost whined the last bit of his question, trying to look anywhere but at her. His pants felt awfully tight this morning, did they shrink?

     "I can't tell you, Morgasson. It'll put them in danger," she said, giving a slight shake of her head. She glanced down, then met his eye one more time. "I hope that's just a knife in your pocket, big boy," she remarked, ducking under his arm and carrying on with her day, still eating the warm bread.

     Lucio had groaned, low in his throat. That's why his pants felt tight this morning. Did she even know what she was doing to him!? He doesn't have time to pine after a target, he's got others for a lot shallower prices on their heads than hers. If only she'd stop her game--but then again he's loved games in his spare time. 

♡♡

It had been a few days since then, each time his conversations with her grew more and more, till it could almost be called casual flirting. He was sitting at his desk, early morning light shining through the sheers as he finished up a call with his bosses up top.

     "Yes. It took a while, but I found her." A pause, listening. "Mmhmm. Yes. She'll be gone tonight. Right. Take care." He hung up, sighing. He ran his golden hand through his hair, looking at the notes he had made sprawled on the desk.

     He had to do something, this was taking too long. Surely there were other pretty faces like hers, ones that he could easily take and pretend its her. He groaned, leaning back in his chair, rubbing his face with his hands. Why was he going through all this trouble for a gods damned crush? He has refused to make his move for almost two weeks now, he needs a plan in mind. Sighing, getting up and lazily stretching, he moved towards the bathroom, drawing a warm shower for himself. 

     He took off the red silk bathrobe, the steam billowing from the shower as he stepped inside. Water drummed over his skin, making it pink from warmth, running in rivulets down sculpted muscle and countless scars from past skirmishes with other prey. He closed his eyes, tilting his head back and wetting his blond. He could see her, in his mind's eye, the way she had looked at the breadmaker's stall. He growled, low in his throat, wishing that she would leave his mind already as he took a small amount of soap and scrubbed his head. He rinsed the soap through, picturing how her top had shown just enough to tempt, how easily she had laughed, how she had thrown her head back, exposing her lovely neck. Lucio could feel himself hardening, almost tempted to freeze himself out with a cold shower. He grabbed the soap that smelled of pomegranates, and poured some in his hand, washing himself as his mind wandered again.

     Lucio could picture her, under him, a gorgeous look on her freckled face as she moaned his name. He could almost feel how she clawed at him, could almost feel how her walls pulled at him as she came undone. He flinched, a small twitch of the eye, furiously shaking his head. Now was not the time for such thoughts, even though he had washed himself to a full hardness in a matter of seconds. He rinsed off, and another mental image came to mind.

     Wyverne, on her knees, her lips pulled thin from him, her hands on his thighs, his pants around his ankles. He could almost hear her, how she choked on him, the soft pop as he allowed her to pull away, her soft lips dancing mere inches from his cock. He hadn't realized he was stroking himself, thumb running around the sensitive head of his cock and slipping through his slit. He tried to mimic her soft mouth and warm tongue, picturing the way she would look as she begged for his come. He rocked into his hand, fucking it as he pictured himself taking her, pressing her against a mirror, fogging it up as she cried out for him. A low groan, and he spilled onto the tile wall, his come painting the rich blues a creamy white. He stroked till he was spent, grabbing more soap to wash off again.

     "Gods damn she needs to leave," Lucio muttered, to no one in particular but himself. He turned off the shower, pulling the glass door aside and grabbing a fluffy white towel.

     He drew the towel over himself, softly sighing. If only she hadn't lured him.in with that delicious body and gorgeous eyes...and pouty lips. He mussed up his hair, smoothing it back when he left the towel fall around his shoulders. He looked in the mirror, then lathered his face and shaved the shadow of stubble he had. Lucio hummed to himself, applying his signature aftershave that smelled of warm, mulled wine and campfire smoke.

     He left the bathroom, tossing his towel aside, and pulled on a thin undershirt, loose and flowy and looking more like a tunic than an actual undershirt at this point. He pulled on his pants next, a tough canvas that he relied on more and more these days, fitted well so it hugged all the right places. His boots were next, a deep brown with a slight heel to add to his 5'10" frame, boosting him to a height of 6'2". He grabbed a vest, slipping it on and he grabbed his neck belt, fastening it over the popped collar. He grabbed his knife belt, slipping it over this thigh and fastening it, since that's all he needed nowadays. He glanced at the pointed armor, the stuff made for his golden hand, the one he lost to another high-priced bounty. He shook his head, deciding he didn't need it, and headed out, smoothing his hair back with a bit of pomade from his dresser.

♡♡

Wyverne was wandering the Marketplace, her eyes savoring each trinket and fabric roll. She absently popped another torn piece of bread into her mouth, the warm spices of pumpkin filling her. She ran fingers through silk, wool, and brushed cotton, eagerly spinning thoughts about her next tailoring project. She had glanced up and caught him in the very edges of her vision, clean shaven with glistening golden hair still wet from his shower.

     It was amazing, how a man like him could make her feel like a giddy teen again. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her fluttering heart as she continued like she hadn't seen him, a warmth spreading through her and gathering at the base of her spine. She popped another piece of bread in her mouth when she gently bumped into the bounty hunter.

"Hello, butterfly," Lucio said, greeting her. He noticed her hair was up in a bun, messily done with a hairpin to keep it all in place.

     "Morgasson," she replied, a smirk on her lips. He softly bit his lip, trying to not let a soft whine escape from his throat. "What brings you here?"

     "Just you, butterfly." He brushed her cheek with his cool metal gauntlet, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and leading her away from the Marketplace.

     He led her down towards the docks, which weren't such a hustle and bustle this morning. Lucio snuck a piece of bread for himself, chuckling when Wyverne playfully smacked his chest. He went to lick his fingers, but Wyverne grabbed his wrist, a smirk on her lips that he was getting all too familiar with. She brought his fingers to velvet lips, breath catching as she slipped them inside her warm mouth, suckling the few crumbs from his slender digits. Her tongue swirled around them, soft little mewls escaping her throat. She pulled away, looking like the cat that got the cream as she ran to the docks.

     Lucio groaned, a smirk on his lips. His pants were awfully tight again, maybe he needed new ones. He ran after her, long legs quickly catching up to her, strong hands gripping her waist and pulling her back, spinning her around. Wyverne laughed breathlessly, hands on his arms, head thrown back against his shoulder, slight wisps of hair in her face.

     Lucio gently set Wyverne down, resisting the urge to kiss her like a man starved. He wasn't expecting her to kiss him, the softest lips in Vesuvia placing a kiss along the scar on his right cheekbone, red lipstick leaving behind a perfect print of her full lips. She smirked, fingers brushing his hand as she disappeared into a group of people, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

♡♡

Midnight. The streets are quiet. Too quiet. The only ones out are the girls, the ones looking for a fun time in colorful dresses and corsets. Lucio walked into the Town Square, the three tiered fountain lit up. He knew his target would be here, lost in an attempt to go back home.

     There she was, a scared look on her face. The perfect match for Wyverne. Lucio stalked his prey, keeping a distance away from her. She was frantic, muttering to herself as she tried to go back home. She kept looking over her shoulder, wanting to know if she was being followed or watched. She stopped, just beside the fountain, trying to remember how to get back.

     Lucio was behind her, his breathing stilled and heels silent on slick cobblestone. He reached for his knives, still on his thigh, a steel to the silver glinting in the light. When he was close, he wrapped his hand around her mouth, preventing the shriek that followed from escaping her lips. She tried to pry him off, to get away, to scream and shout through his warm flesh hand. He drew the blade across her throat, letting her feel the cool metal against heated flesh.

     "Your luck just ran out, little dove," he whispered in her ear, the point of the blade just drawing blood from her skin.

     She struggled harder, screaming and crying against his palm, trying to break free, kicking him in his shins. The knife plunged into her side, dragging down, ripping the silk dress she wore. Blood poured from the wound, her screams muffled against his hand. She struggled against his body, crying rivers of tears as the knife was drawn across her throat--once, twice, three times. Blood poured down the front of her, ruining the pure white with deep crimson. He finally let go, and she slumped to the ground, laying in her own blood.

     Lucio made short work of the decapitation, bringing it back to his boss for the reward money. 500,000 coin, and Lucio was gonna give it to that very-much-alive, drop dead gorgeous vixen that haunted his dreams.

♡♡

It had been weeks since that night, and Lucio hadn't seen Wyverne around at all. She had seemingly disappeared that day, like she had left Vesuvia. Lucio sighed, toying with the coin purse on his desk. Well, if he wasn't gonna see her again, might as well drink to her honor.

     The Rowdy Raven was as rowdy as ever. Barth greeted Lucio with a nod, bussing the bar area. Patrons laughed, sang merry shanties, played cards, and were just generally in good spirits. Lucio ordered himself a drink, and was about to sit down when he saw her, dancing in all her lovely glory.

    Wyverne's tamed mess of curls shone like a beacon, her laughter hitting his ears like a godsend. She raised a glass, rimmed with salt, and shouted cheers, downing the rest in one single shot. She pressed her lips to the inside of her wrist, and he swore she had glanced his way, making his heart positively ache for her touch.

     Lucio grabbed his drink and followed her, walking to a corner booth and sitting down across from her. He dropped the coin purse in front of her, a loud clink of coin. She looked up at him, green eyes full of wonder.

     "That was your bounty, butterfly," Lucio said softly, bringing his cup to his lips and taking a draft. She watched him, his Adam's apple gently bouncing as he drank.

    "How much...how much was it?" Wyverne spoke softly, her hand over her heart, voice gently shaking. She touched the rough cotton, feeling the weight in her slender, small hands.

     "500,000. It's all yours, butterfly," he told her, as easily as telling someone about the weather.

    "500,000!? Morgasson I couldn't possibly--" Wyverne was in shock when she was cut off, his metal hand on her soft ones. She looked at him, her lower lip trembling, her eyes wide and soft and oh how he wanted to just kiss her.

     "Just take it, butterfly. You need it, and maybe you'll leave this place." His tongue darted out, licking his lower lip. His fingers entwined with hers, all soft sweetness.

     Wyverne bit her lip, taking a sip of her full Salty Bitters, the salt still clinging to her lips. She swallowed the drink, and leaned over the table, kissing him with all the softness in the world. Lucio kissed her, easily parting her lips and slipping inside. Sure, it was a little bitter, a little salty, but something stirred in his gut, something predatory and primal. He pulled away, before the feeling got too strong, his fingers brushing her cheek.

     She kissed his fingertips, scooting around the table to sit next to him. Chat and conversation came naturally, and when the food came around she readily shared, occasionally feeding him. He didn't want the night to end, didn't want to leave her side, not without making her feel so good.

     "I'll see you around….Lucio Morgasson," she whispered to him, his name full of wanton desire. She kissed him again, his hands roaming her sides before she pulled away. Wyverne left the table, and when he looked down, there was her address, signed 'B' for his pretty nickname.

The next day, he went there, to her home on MagickAlley Lane. Her home was modest, colored in a dull brown, her flowers bright and vibrant. Lucio went up the worn oak door, his fingers feeling the smooth metal handle, about to pull it. His fingers fell when he found the note, plastered to the door with his own knife. Strange, since he didn't remember missing any.

Morgasson,

I can easily spend that 500,000 on my own. That sick friend story was just to get you to pity me. Read up on me, big boy, maybe you'll find something interesting for your….equipment.

Cheers lovely! B

Lucio chuckled, deep and low, almost a purr. So, that was her game, her fun and sexy little game. Alright, he could play that game. It was sexy while it lasted, he supposed, as he ripped the knife from the door.

     Guards swarmed him from all angles as he put the knife away, slamming him into the door. They spread his legs, patting him down, ripping the knife belt from him, tearing his shirt almost in half as they searched his chest.

     "Look, guys, if you wanted me naked all you had to do was ask," He commented, smirking like an evil maniac. The Guards simply shoved him further into the door, reading him his rights.

     "We were tipped off that you were here! By one Wyverne Lochland! She's skipped town. So sorry, 'big boy!'" The Guard sneered, pulling him back by the blond locks. "Maybe you'll find a new lover in those dungeons! Move him into the carriage!"

     Lucio busted out into laughter, an evil little laugh that shook him through and through. So she was the one who ratted him out!! That little minx!!! He was shoved into the carriage, still laughing. How dare she think she could put him away and act like nothing happened? Well, he'd remedy that, one way or another. Sure, it'd be a few years with all his charges, but he'd get his last fuck, right at the honeymoon

[shreddedparchment]

Parallel Pt.02

Heartbroken

11/18/2018

Pairing: Steve x Reader          Word Count: 2,674

Masterpost          Warnings: Angst, language

A/N: I’m in that head space when these new stories are kinda writing themselves. Anyway, I hope you like this little chapter. I mean, I cried? So...yeah...As always, if you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work! xoxo

Nervous is how you feel the entire flight from Australia to Norway.

When you land, it's dusk and the horizon burns red orange as the sky above slowly shifts from deep purple to an inky black.

The color of the coming night reminds you of your face. Your black eye is pretty terrible to look at and you keep getting stares as you exit the small airport.

The next stop is a boat.

You miss being able to fly places yourself. This time of year, when fall is turning to winter, Norway’s biting cold shocks your system. You miss the warm Australian atmosphere, but you keep Thor in mind. Getting back to him is all that matters.

So, you steel yourself against the inconveniences of having to take a cab to your boat and then ride a boat for an hour in cold waters to get to the Lofoten Islands.

A sharp knock on the glass of the front viewport startles you. The kind and excited Norwegian boat Captain points to the left.

“Se! Sølvbyen!” He smiles a toothy grin.

You follow the indicated direction and your jaw drops. Slowly you rise and move to stand in the doorway that leads out to the deck.

New Asgard, this New Asgard, even in the fading twilight shines like a beautiful polished silver jewel nestled on tall green and white cliffs.

This New Asgard is at least ten times larger than the New Asgard you spent time in with Thor. His palace rises high into the sky, reflecting the stars and moonlight making the whole city look like an enchanted fairyland.

So different. It's all so different. How can it all be so much better for everyone else and not you?

The city falls from view as the boat approaches the base of the cliff and docks at a large station. There are tons of people disembarking off of small boats like your own, but a larger ship brings streams of excited Norwegians and tourists, all of them following the dock up towards a beautiful wood and steel staircase that leads up to a smaller station with what looks like elevators.

You look at the captain with a quizzical brow, “Why are there so many people?”

“De er her for feiringen.” He says with a small laugh, thinking you stupid for not knowing.

You quickly sift through the Norwegian you know, trying to translate in your head as fast as possible. “Feiring? Celebration? What celebration?”

The captain laughs at you, thinking you’re joking and waves you off.

You slowly limp off of the boat, drawing your jacket up higher around your white tee. Jeans and a tee were a terrible choice for Norway.

“Lykke til.” The captain calls out to you and you watch him pull out and sail back into the night.

With no other choice than to move with the crowd, you slowly follow the flow of the bodies that laugh and joke. It’s such a babble of languages that you can’t pick out one from another.

The queue at the elevators is long but moves quickly. You wait only ten minutes before you shove your way onto one of the large glass boxes, reinforced with steel and wood. This New Asgard is definitely much more well off than the small humble one you'd enjoyed with Thor.

You move straight to the back of the box and turn, carefully using your arms to block people from jostling you. Your ribs, as you had suspected are indeed broken, fractured actually which is not as bad but they still fucking hurt.

Funnily enough, it feels reminiscent of your first injuries at Avengers compound when the Shadow had attacked looking for the serum and you’d spent the following week limping around with a cane for an injured leg, broken ribs, and small cuts.

It feels strange that you seem to have almost the exact same injuries even though this is a much different reality.

“I hope they have lots of food. I’m starving.”

“Are you kidding? A celebration of this size? I doubt they’ll run out of anything. These Asgardians are really generous.”

You peek over the shoulder of an older lady on your left and spot two girls, no older than sixteen or so, giggling excitedly.

“Do you think we'll get to see him?” The blonde girl asks.

“Thor?” Asks the brunette. “Duh, it's his celebration.”

Your heart begins to pound at the mention of your husband and you quickly push your way closer to the two girls. The offended older woman in front of you gasps and pushes back slightly making your ribs burn.

“Personally, I hope I get a look at Loki…he’s so hot.” The brunette confesses.

The blonde glares at her friend. “Ew, Lisa, after what he did to New York how can you even stand to look at that creep?”

“Hey, people change.”

“Excuse me.” You swallow hard, eager to get some info on Thor.

The two girls turn to look at you, slightly surprised, the blonde still frowning about her friend's love for Loki.

“You said this celebration is for Thor? What exactly are they celebrating?” You ask, a small uncertain smile plastered on your beaten face.

The two girls exchange a long look as if they cannot believe that anyone who is here would not know what the Asgardians are celebrating.

As the elevator doors open and people begin to file out the blonde turns her gaze back to you looking slightly crestfallen.

“Its for Thor's engagement. He’s going to marry the Lady Sif.” The blonde sighs sadly.

Her words freeze you, you’re not here, where are you? Numbness fills your chest and once again you have no beating heart. This can’t be happening.

As the girls leave you to your numbness you watch as the brunette rubs the blonde's shoulder comforting her friend at the tragic loss of her crush.

Almost as if you’re floating, you drift out of the elevator and trudge painfully through the crowd.

Asgardians are lined up along the road from the elevators to welcome the tourists, but you don’t give them a glance. You're too busy trying to keep your shit together. You force yourself to move faster along the beautiful cobble road. Trying to ignore the pain as you pass street vendors in old wooden and stone type stalls to fit the Asgardian aesthetic. Lanterns light up the streets and music plays from almost every building giving the city a laid back, party vibe.

Laughter floats around you in harsh contrast to the agony you slowly feel is beginning to consume you.

You continue to follow the flow of the crowd. Asgard is massive and there are so many people everywhere. Is this the glory that Thor had spoken of? Was this the might of Asgard?

Slowly you begin to recognize the twists of the streets as the ones you walked so long ago with Thor and the people of Asgard. You turn right and pass the smithy you'd first seen on your visit with Thor. Then the school and then the Tavern. The door swings open and raucous laughter floats out intermixed with music and the clinking of steins.

You turn your eyes to Thor's palace as it grows closer and the crowd begins to get thicker until finally, about a hundred yards from the front stairs that Thor had once presented you to his people on, you find yourself unable to get closer.

You strain against the mixture of Asgardians and tourists trying to get a little higher to see but you're saved the trouble as Thor moves up a few steps before he stops and offers his hand to someone below and out of sight.

The sight of him hits you like the sharp bite of a snake. Its piercing and sudden and painful. But he’s still so beautiful. His hair is still short, and his beard is thick. His blue eyes sparkle as he waits for the person he beckons.

That should be you. He should be reaching for you.

A milky white hand moves up from the base of the stairs, reaching for Thor. The hand is followed by the regal form of an Asgardian woman with dark brown hair that falls in cascading waves along her back. Her dress is silver, floor-length, and matches the silver embellishments of Thor's new armor. Hair her is pinned back with beautiful shining opal berets to keep it from falling in her face.

She definitely looks the part of Thor's betrothed, much more than you ever did. It hurts, and you reach up to clutch at the base of your chest.

For a moment you can’t breathe. “No.”

Your whisper draws the attention of an Asgardian woman who turns to glare at you.

Stupid Midgardian woman objecting to Thor's marriage to a true Asgardian? How dare you?

But that’s where you belong. She's in your spot!

Thor takes her hand and wraps it around his left elbow and leads her up to stand at the top of the stairs so that everyone can look on his future bride.

He raises a hand, and everyone goes silent. Although music and laughter continues to flow in from the city behind you, here by the palace, the silence is heavy.

“Thank you all for coming to help me celebrate the choosing of my bride.” He looks at Sif, staring at her with an affection that makes your heart clench. “I am not exaggerating when I say that I have been quite blind for hundreds of years to the clarity that my own mother often expressed. Perfection was before me and I did not see it.”

“Better late than never.” Sif jokes, squeezing his arm.

Thor beams at her and it kills you. This can’t be happening.

“I have often wondered if I would ever find a woman strong enough to rule Asgard at my side and I am glad to say that I have finally found her. Sif, my friend and counsel…my Blossom, I am very happy to present you tonight as the future Queen of Asgard.”

Blossom? Blossom? Did he just call her…you let your gaze fall away from them as your heart shatters to pieces. Grief begins to consume you as you succumb to the agony that you not only lost Thor, but this seals any hope of ever getting your baby girl back.

You shut your eyes and don’t even feel the tears as they fall. As the crowd cheers around you, you turn your gaze back onto Thor’s smiling face and watch him lean down towards Sif's cheek to press a soft kiss. She shuts her eyes, the utter happiness she exudes chokes you. That should be you.

As you watch him happily love his new betrothed, your mind is suddenly filled with his words, spoken on a rooftop in Wakanda what feels ages ago.

“My love, I’m sure that even if we use the watch there must be a way to hold on to what we have. This love between us does not just disappear. And we can make this baby again.”

You'd known then that it would be impossible. It was a fool’s hope. You’d wanted to believe that you and Thor could weather any storm. That even if the universe separated you that somehow, you and he would find your way back to each other. You'd feared this outcome. You’d dreaded it. You'd had nightmares about it and here it is in shocking reality. Thor doesn’t care for you anymore. He’s moved on. Your baby girl is nothing but a blip in your own memory and as you think about her, tiny and perfect, kicking you from within, your face crumbles.

Thor suddenly turns to look over the crowd and for a terrifying moment, you feel like his eyes find you. For two seconds he stares in your direction. Embarrassment and pain drive your gaze down.

You wait a moment then chance a glance back up at him and Sif but they’re no longer standing by the stairs. They’re moving into the palace as the crowd begins to disperse around you to join the many small celebrations going on throughout the city.

You’re left standing in the middle of the road, alone and without hope, crying because what else can you do? You pass your hands over your stomach and your pain is renewed stronger.

With a quivering lip you look back up towards the palace doors and consider going up there and knocking on the damn door.

But doing that would require you have some hope and you don't.

If Thor really did spot you in the crowd and if he did recognize you, then he either doesn’t remember your life together or he doesn’t care.

Six months. Six blissful months before he left, that was all this version of you had. Without the Snap he has no reason to seek you out, just as you feared.

Suddenly a stout Asian man wearing dark red robes steps into your view.

You look up at the body's face and find Wong's furrowed brow staring down at you from the top of the stairs.

There's something off about his gaze however and you see the spark of recognition in his eyes.

Already embarrassed, you have no desire to be seen at the moment and you have the terrible idea that Wong might take you up to meet with Thor and at this particular moment when you’re just beginning the mourning of the husband and daughter you’ve lost, it's tantamount to torture to see him.

You turn quickly and move to head back towards the elevators so that you can get the hell off of this island.

You only get a few feet, thanks to your stupid leg and ribs, when orange sparks startle you into stopping. The orange sparks grow out and wide until they’re a clearly defined circle.

Through this circle you can see a large room with a large staircase and a large glass wall with rooms beyond. The room is mostly made of dark woods and the occasional brass embellishments, but you can also see comfortable red chairs, tables, and decorations like vases and statues.

None of the Asgardians seem to be paying the portal any mind. A few of the tourists look over with curiosity but go back to their celebrating after staring for a bit.

“Vex? You should not be here.” The accented voice comes from behind you.

You turn to look at Wong as he moves towards you, his eyes kinder bit still narrowed in confusion.

You quickly reach up to wipe at your tears as he closes the distance between you and stops with his hands on his hips.

“What did you just call me? How do you know that name?” You demand, hating the way hearing your old pseudonym fills you with what you’d just abandoned, hope.

“I am a Master of the Mystic Arts. I would not forget you easily. I’m sorry to say that others were not so lucky.” He’s talking about Thor.

Your eyes water again as you struggle with your aching heart.

“Why did you come here?” He opens his arms as he shrugs, struggling to understand your motives.

“I-I didn’t know that he was engaged.” You admit and feel your sorrow double as you finally say it aloud.

Wong sighs. “Come on, this is not a place for you anymore.”

His words cut you and you sob as you look over his shoulder at the palace doors. Betrayal courses through your body even though you know that Thor isn’t deliberately abandoning you. He just doesn’t remember ever loving you as much as he did.

“Come.” Wong places his hand on your shoulder and helps turn you back towards the portal.

As you limp through it and the portal begins to close, you watch as the palace doors open and with curiosity twisting his expression, Thor moves back out, watching as you and Wong disappear.

@until-theend-oftheline @jessieray98 @dsakita @coldfacedwarf @just-trying-to-survive-marvel @myfandomlife-blog @wishingforahome @theonelittleone @aireka-frnc @oursameoldlove @wintersoldierswhore @keithseabrook27 @jewelofwinter @markusstraya @sincerelytlh @rumoured-whispers @thehatredofshipprick @the-surviving-revolutionist @fairislesheets @mannls @moonlessnight14 @pandazlazykid @donner5822

[scribblescrabblebabble]

RoyEd Week Day 6 (LATE!)

Title: All in One

Rating: T+

Relationships: Roy Mustang/ Edward Elric

Chapter: 5 (Together/Apart) [Masquerade Ball ‘03 reunitation because I’m in denial]

Cross- Posted on AO3 and Fanfic.net links- AO3; Fanfic.net

Best quality reading will be through the links, not on Tumblr itself because I’m too lazy to do italics and shit right now

Roy's face itched. More specifically, the mask that obscured half of his face chafed against his jaw as he talked, and thus his face itched.

Not that he could really complain, though, for as it were, his mask was comparably lighter than many of the men and women populating the sparkling ballroom. For once in his miserable life, Roy found that he couldn't afford a mask so extravagant for the annual military masquerade.

It was astounding that he was actually here, if he were perfectly honest with himself. He wouldn't have even known it was the right time of year had Riza not shown up at his snowy cabin weeks before and demanded he come; the days all seem to blur into one when the only thing for miles is barren snowy wasteland. Roy had agreed to go, but only because he was fairly positive nobody would try to invade at the current height of winter.

He felt a tap on his elbow, and turned to find the aforementioned blonde, eyes and forehead masked in shimmering blue and an uncharacteristic smile gracing the corners of her mouth, "Glad you could make it," She greeted simply.

"Glad I could leave that hellhole for a weekend," Roy murmured back, "Five years its been since I traveled any further than the nearby town for food."

"Your eye hasn't been a trouble?" Riza asked, nodding towards the masked area of his face. Roy had forgone his eye patch in favor of the mask, but visually it didn't make a huge difference- this just itched a bit more.

"I've gotten used to it. Care to dance? I'll have to warn you in advance; I haven't danced since before I lost my depth perception." Roy offered Riza his hand, which she took, and led her to the center of the large ballroom, where couples twirled glitteringly.

Luckily, Roy's muscle memory seemed to be unaffected by time, as he found himself easily maneuvering the steps of each dance smoothly, only occasionally hit by a woman's dress tassel as she swung about or brushing another dancer's back when the temp increased suddenly. As the mass of people began to become vibrant blurs of beads and feathers, Roy caught a glimpse of gold. There was a lot of gold in the room, but only one set of golden eyes that pierced through a mask of tanned, ornately carved leather.

Roy only realized he'd stopped moving when Riza prodded him sharply with her elbow, and several annoyed dancers cursed him. Although he couldn't see her facial featured amazingly, Roy could read the concern that poured Riza's blue eyes like a current. Roy hastily moved them to the edge of the dancing crowd, smiling apologetically at his former subordinate, "I have to go check on something."

"What? Is something wrong?" Riza asked, reaching down to place her fingers at her thigh, where Roy could assume her trusty pistol was strapped.

He shook his head, "No, I just… I need to find someone."

"Okay…" The blonde woman nodded, "Well, I'll go make sure Jean hasn't gotten himself wasted on champagne."

Roy nodded absently, already intent on his curiosity. As Riza melted into the crowd, he began to ponder. Had he really seen golden eyes? Or was he just projecting his wants into the extravagance of his current setting? Was he really that sad and desperate?

He decided to slip through the crowd, keeping a very sharp eye out for the leather mask and golden set of hair and eyes, towards a gigantic stone balcony, whose doors were kept open for the partygoers to admire the expansive gardens of whoever's wealthy family home this was.

He assumed the air was cold for central at this point of winter, but he simply couldn't find the air anything but pleasantly fresh and not violently windy. It wasn't even snowing! Just to feel the chill he once mistook for real cold, Roy shed his jacket, holding it folded under one arm.

The smell of freshly mown lawn hit him as he approached the edge of the balcony, resting his arms against the ornate railing. The stars twinkled above him as populous and vibrant as the dancers behind him. Several glass lanterns hung from hooks along the balcony, shedding light into the otherwise dark nooks not brightened by the flood of ballroom light. He appeared to be the only person on the balcony, he guessed because of the apparent cold.

The golden eyes claimed his mind. How long had it been since he had last seen the gleam of confidence- of total faith in success- that had rested so permanently in those eyes?

Ed would be, what, twenty now? Was it futile to believe he was still alive, as Al so ferociously persisted? After all, they hadn't found a body, and the Rose girl had said that she saw Ed sacrifice himself for Al.

Was it possible, after all this time, Ed had found his way from the gate?

He vaguely heard the sound of footsteps behind him. The steps stopped a few paces away from Roy, and then resumed until they stopped again on his blind side. He was too focused on his thoughts to really care about whoever currently stood beside him.

The dumbfounded, "You gotta be fucking kidding me!" broke Roy from his stupor. He turned around to find Edward Elric's golden eyes burning into him behind the leather mask, "There's no way you're not cold right now."

"Fullmetal." Roy said stupidly, unable to really process the situation.

Ed rolled his eyes, pushing the mask to the top of his head, "No shit- took you long enough to see me, I've been standing here for like five minutes." He looked older, unsurprisingly, but seemed to have maintained his small frame.

"Y-you're standing in my blind spot," Roy momentarily flipped up his own mask in explanation, exposing the rough scarring that now replaced his left eye, "Where the hell've you been? It's pretty rude to up and leave everyone worrying about you for nearly five and a half years, you know."

The blonde looked off to the side, resting his arms against the railing as Roy had previously, done, "I was in another world- on the other side of the gate. Alchemy wasn't a thing there, so it took a bit of creativity to find a way back."

"Another world?" Roy repeated, "What kind of world was it?"

Ed paused to think, "It was like… the same, but… I don't know, not?" Roy must have looked incredibly confused, for Ed slid a hand down his face and elaborated, "It's a lot. The people there were the same people as there are here, like everybody has a doppelganger from this world in that one, but they were all… off, like something wasn't clicking to make them just like the people here- FUCK, it's cold."

"Inside, then." Roy suggested.

"Yeah," Ed agreed.

They left the balcony to seep in the nighttime darkness. The air back inside was much nicer, but the noise was obscene. Ed led Roy to a cluster of tables, one of which was empty in the very back corner of the room. He had pushed his mask back down over his face, as was the dress code of the night.

They sat in silence for a minute, Ed with a conflicted look on what Roy could see of his face, "…There was- I mean- I met you there. Like, your other version."

Roy raised an eyebrow, "Oh?" He hadn't expected Ed to tell him something so specific.

"Yeah, we were, uh… friends," Ed explained, a blush poking out from under his brown mask that made Roy question Ed's use of 'friend', "Every bit as stupid as you, but he was more… naïve, I guess."

"How do you mean?" Roy asked, choosing to ignore the 'stupid' comment.

Ed sighed, "I don't know, I guess it was just because he's like my age there? I guess I've always been closer to adults than people my own age, so a lot of my peers in Germany just seemed so naïve, especially with that Roy. I couldn't help comparing him. Same thing with Al's double; I saw him and could only see how much he wasn't Al," Ed frowned, but quickly snapped out of his stupor with a change of topic, "How'd your eye go?"

It was Roy's turn to sigh, "Archer's bullet got me after I was done at Bradley's mansion the night you left. As you can imagine, I was demoted to Enlisted Man as soon as I came to, and I've been cooped up in a cabin up north freezing my ass off ever since. This is actually my first night away from that shit shack in five years."

"And you were about to spend it alone on a freezing balcony." Ed snarked, crossing his arms.

Roy laughed, "Trust me, the outside here is like a fresh spring morning compared to my post right now."

"...That's my fault, isn't it? I made you go kill Bradley." Ed asked tentatively.

"Ed, I wouldn't have gone if I didn't think it was the right thing to do. I chose the outpost over one in Central, you know, because if I stayed here it could only remind me that I was bleeding out when I could have been down there helping you. Maybe you wouldn't have had to sacrifice yourself then." Roy explained, doing his best to keep eye contact with the young blonde, even if he wanted to look away out of embarrassment. He hadn't had to face people and emotions for five years, and the fast refresher was like lemon juice in a wound.

Roy stood, raising a confused and slightly disappointed look form Ed, "You know, I didn't travel hours from my post for the first time in half a decade to attend a masquerade ball and not dance."

Ed realized what Roy was hinting at and shook his head violently, "Not a damn chance, Mustang. I can't dance for shit."

"And I don't have depth perception. We'll be the perfect annoyance to the higher-ups out there."

"You danced pretty well with Lieutenant Hawkeye," Ed retorted.

"She's one of the best dancers I know; it'd be extremely hard to look bad dancing with her," Roy replied, "Were you watching me dance?"

Ed blushed, "N-Not like- I just saw- don't make this fucking weird! You know what? Yeah, lets go dance," Ed stood hastily and grabbed Roy's arm whilst the older man laughed at him.

They moved into the throng of dancers in between songs so they were able to somewhat gain their bearings when the next tune began. Ed wasn't a bad dancer. In fact, he was surprisingly good, if not a bit uncomfortable, but that all really came down to experience.

The dances grew longer, and they all began to blur into one, with he and Ed following the steps of the crowd the whole while and laughing at each other when they messed up.

Roy didn't really know how it happened, but he and Ed were dancing in the ballroom at one point, and then somehow found their way back onto the deserted balcony, and then he was kissing Ed against a wall. The music's orderly and elegant tempo hardly matched the pace of their kiss- on Ed's part it was almost desperate, whilst on Roy's it was astounding relief.

Later, they would have to talk, and Roy would probably have to ask Ed exactly how close he and this 'other Roy' were to each other. They may just hook up for a night, or allow their feeling to flourish into something more.

But that could come later.

{END}

[dunmerofskyrim]

17

“You’re not going in?” Flat-voiced, but Simra’s face was so incredulous it bordered onto pity. Brows both knit and raised at once. A pursed mouth, derisive at the corner his scars would still let curl.

“I see no need,” said Noor.

“Yeah. Right. If you don’t count ‘getting clean’ and ‘not freezing your toes off when you get the fucking chance’ as decent reasons…”

“We cross the Desh come morning. That’s all we need from Oudabridge. All I need.” Noor’s voice turned goading. “The rest is baelathri nonsense. Excess.”

“Baelathri,” Simra echoed the word with the shadow of a sneer. It was one he’d seldom heard but knew all the same. “Tomb-dwellers. Tsscht. Dunno how convincing that whole act is, coming from you. All that ‘lest the decadent works of settled folk sully me; like corpses they roof themselves in stone and trap themselves in living death’ crowshit. Not when it’s coming from a woman who lived in a fucking bonestrewn cave under a fucking settled folk city for however-fucking-long.” Simra’s laugh was a mean and meagre thing. One cold and barking note.

Noor charged to fill the silence that came after. “That’s different—!”

“Nchow! Be different, then! You need me, I’ll be over there, being warm and clean and exactly as drunk as I blighted well want to be, in a bed that doesn’t make my back feel like it wants me dead. Ghosts and fucking bones…”

Simra rolled his eyes. Kicked at the hard-packed dirt that made up the skirts of Ouadabridge’s west bank. A herding ground, he reckoned by the short turf  and rings of pale starved grass he’d seen as they rode in. Pitching grounds for Velothi more likely to trade than raid. Noor would fit right in between the piles of dried dung and the cold-moaning wind.

He turned to Tammunei. “You coming?”

“The yurt. The guar and horse…” Tammunei said, slow. “Someone else should stay.”

Simra nodded. Tried not to show the warm relief that flooded his chest. He’d be alone, at least for a night. Alone somewhere coin could be spent, food and drink got by asking.

“Right, well… Take care of them then,” he said. “The fucking pony can go to the knackers and butchers for all I care, ‘cept that then I’d have to walk. So yeah. Take care.” The last two words were softer than he’d meant them to be. He hurried to bury them. “Meet you at the second bridge come morning?”

“Dawn?” said Noor.

“Later’s best. I’m paying for a bed, fucked if I’m not making the most of it.”

A scowl deepened the lines and shadows that crossed Noor’s face.

“Tsscht. We’ve got a whole other half of the fucking plains to cross. You can make a proper Velothi of me then. For now, you wanna begrudge me all the decadence and ills of the baelathri, please be fucking quiet about it.”

“Did I say anything?”

“Tsscht…”

Simra turned away, colour and curses and muttering tongue all held behind his teeth. He unshouldered his spear and planted its spike, working it a moment til it had broken the dirt enough to stand.

“Keep that too. Don’t wanna have any accidents with any fucking doorways.”

Crouching, he looped an arm through the strap of his gathersack and lifted it over his right shoulder, up from where it had slouched on the ground. The pot-belly of his kettle dug through the sackcloth. A grimace.

“Before noon then?” he asked.

“Before noon,” said Tammunei.

Simra’s mood raced ahead of him across the plain, happy maybe, or perhaps just fast. Coarse-cropped grass; sky turning pink with the early fall of evening. The wind was restless, antic, now at his back and rushing him on, now in his face and scourging his cheeks, numbing his mouth til it felt lipless.

Walking the last distance to Ouadabridge, Simra reached down and hitched the netch-leather tails of his leggings around his hips, tying them in front. They made a kind of lopsided kilt there – an extra layer of almost-armour – but for now it was enough that it stopped their blighted flapping.

“Dramatic, yeah, but a fucking bother into the bargain…”

He couldn’t say the same of his mantle. Every step he took and every change in the wind, the breeze grew hooks and tried to fish the old goatskin cape off his shoulders. Simra’s right hand clutched at the pin-and-ring brooch that held it round his neck, knuckles white with gripping and fingers pale with cold.

His left was at rest on the hilt of his sword: the raider’s sabre with its heavy curved blade and smooth wood grip, ridged to fit another mer’s fingers. Another new sword, taken from someone for whom he reckoned it had been an old one. How many had come through his hands down the years, like this one, and the one before? He’d remember each one if he tried maybe, but the order had turned to a blur. The first few had each been as precious as the last. When had that stopped?

“You stopped being a stripling, happy just to have something steel in your hands,” he told himself, muttering under his breath. “That’s all. You learnt what suits you.”

This one sure as sunrise didn’t. Not so much as a disk or bar to get in the way between blade and handle. Nothing to protect the fingers. His grip shifted uneasy on the wood of it. Perhaps his right hand stiffened.

“Learnt what suits you,” he repeated. “Little later though, you learnt that nothing suits a swordsman’s hand worse than nothing at all. Shitty skinflint fucking sword or empty fucking air, I’ll take the sword any day.”

Most of the words he spoke were patois, dragged with him from the Grey Quarter, but fewer than they once had been. He carried them with him but, more and more, new words fit under his tongue and found voice when he set it moving. Bits borrowed and sucked up and stolen from all the languages that had crammed into the gorge where he was born — tongues that had knit and bred together til they birthed out a language of their own. Nordic cadence, curses and oaths, and words to talk of weapons. Trade-words and scriv-words, scholar’s words, lifted haphazard from Imperial Tamrielic, Hlaalu Dunmeris. And Velothis now, creeping in at the corners, last of all where by rights it ought to’ve been first. The mothertongue his mother had hoarded and hogged from him…

Nowadays his mind spoke a dialect of its own almost, and it came out loud in private. Talking to himself, he sowed it on the air as he walked, leaving parts of where he came from and parts of where he’d been. Like Noor sang who she was and who her ancestors were, all across the plain. Like perfume lingered in a room long after the one that wore it.

Simra stopped that thought where it started. Cut it out like rot before it could spread.

Ouadabridge drew up from the evening ahead. Shapes first – the blocks and planes of Hlaalu adobes – then a slow lighting of lamps and brighting of windows. Slits and squares and spheres alike, in brass and green and blue, began to break the beginnings of shadows, and stem the gathering gloom.

The glow of a lantern-staff showed the start of a bridge. A long cane of bound and bundled rattans; a teardrop of plain-glass hung from a link at its tip, wicks and oil inside shedding light. A watchman slouched against its shaft. She wore a loose fold-breasted coat of yellow-brown cloth armour, sleeves lending down into mittens at the hands. Another shaft of bundled rattan rested against the start of the stone bridge behind her, this one tipped with an iron billhook.

“Your business?” Her voice and stance and resting weapon were all eloquent about her boredom. A pair of eyes checked Simra, loose from under her wide-brimmed conical hat. More farmer than soldier, he reckoned.

“Bed for the night. Hot meal.”

The guard gave a grunt in her throat. “And your business?”

“Money spent and gone by morning?” He smiled.

“‘Traveller’ then. Sorry friend but there’s a tithe for that.”

“Little place like this?” Simra was taken aback by his lack of surprise. “Shut up…”

She shuffled. Raised a mittened hand to worry at one round pock-marked cheek. “People round here,” she began, defensive, in a dialect not-quite-Hlaalu. “They pay into the pot, see? Yearly. Or they do their turns on watch. But those as are passing through, see, they still get guarded. Come under protection of the town-law, don’t they? Sorry, friend, but someone’s got to pay for that, seeing as they don’t pay no taxes…”

“Thought this one through, haven’t you?” Simra’s hand went from the hilt of his sword to search into his satchel. “Now, I dunno if you’re stupid and honest, or a little bit clever and trying to pull one. If I’m honest, I don’t care. Thing is though, don’t think you care much either. Right?” He brought out a purse, chiming blunt with coin. “What’s the tithe, friend?”

“Call it three.”

“Shils? Call it five. That’s a dram of decent sujamma for you, or as much absolute swill as you’d ever wanna drink in one night.”

“What you want for it?”

“Know some things.” Simra shrugged. “Whatever you know. What’s the news between here and Senie. Davon’s watch if you wanna go one better, but Senie’d be a start.”

“Senie? Pshaw… Think I know what happens far as Senie?”

“Guarding the one open bridge on the Desh in close to a hundred leagues? And with road from here to there, if I’m not wrong? Reckon you do. Reckon you get plenty of fascinating types through here, coming both ways…”

“Six.”

Simra gave a calculated sigh. “Alright, alright. There’s six in it for you. If, that is, I like the sound of what you tell me.”

“You’re talking swordwork, aren’t you?”

“Swordwork, scalpwork, whatever… What’s the word along the road?”

The answers came. Simra listened. Later, alone in a cornerclub called the Journey’s Pause, over mazte, balls of rice and dried shrimp and reed-greens, and a yolk-gold bird’s egg soup, Simra took notes.

[sserpente]

Condolescence (Chapter I)

Pairing: Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive) x OFC Language: English Rating: M

A/N: I’ve announced it, so here it is! I love writing about Adam (and I’m going to re-watch the movie tonight), so I hope you enjoy reading as much!

“Chris… Chris, slow down, I can’t walk this fast in high heels!“

It was a fresh night in Detroit, with cold wind rustling through the eerie alleys and the broken windows of abandoned houses in the suburbs, lonely street lanterns flickering as they threw weak and yellow light onto the dirty asphalt, the beam hardly big enough to orient oneself in the dark and the barely audible sound of stray cats echoing through the oppressive silence, drowning the clattering of heels on the street.

“Come on, Tal, hurry up.”

They seemed like a happy and young couple from afar, enjoying youth and tasting freedom before adulthood would outrun them, forcing them into lives full of worries, lies and pain.

Adam scoffed, the quiet noise immediately drowned by his heavy and dark curtains, hiding him from the outside world. If only they knew his suffering when time would not pass. When hours, days, months and years of loneliness and grief went by, mercilessly driving him to his knees.

“Chris… where are we heading? I’m cold, we should go home. It’s past midnight already.” The girl, he hadn’t quite caught her name, was wearing a purple dress, her feminine shoes of a matching colour. Unlike her casually dressed boyfriend’s, a concerned expression was blemishing her innocent face. Her cheeks were reddened from the harsh cold biting at her skin and when Adam looked closely, he could see the warm and sweet blood pumping through the tenuous vein on her neck, partly concealed by waves of brunette hair. She was pretty. For a zombie.

“Chris! Chris, where are you taking me?”

The boy stopped dead in his tracks, his brown hair covering one of his eyes in an intimidating manner. A devilish smile seemed to form on his lips as he reached into an abandoned old car at the side of the road. It was rusty and covered in dirt. But it also served as the perfect hiding place.

Watching how the girl stopped too and slung her arms around her body to prevent herself from freezing any further, he reached inside the broken window and tore apart the dusty fabric of the driver’s seat.

Mere moments later, he held a slim leather belt and a syringe in his hands, a grey liquid shimmering inside of it.

“Chris? Chris, what is this? I don’t want to do that.”

“Oh, shut up, you coward. One shot won’t kill you.”

Shot? Was he trying to drug her? Against her will? Adam clenched his fists, lifting his chin as he weighed his options. Would he bother for a zombie and save her from this endless and deadly spiral of drug use or would he observe silently, minding his own business and working on new music?

“Chris, please, stop! I said stop!”

Ignoring her weak attempts to push him away, the boy did anything but that. Brutally grabbing the right arm of the girl, he bound the slim leather belt around her upper arm, jerking her towards him as he ungently rammed the syringe into the crook of her right arm.

Adam could almost feel the bruise forming on her pale skin as he emptied the medical utensil. The girl’s screams were ear-piercing. Loud and devastated, she abused her vocal folds. No. This was Detroit, the very end of it. There was nobody near who could help her. Nobody but him.

And then she slapped him. A loud smack echoed through the cold air as her left palm connected to the boy’s cheek, the rude impact forcing his head aside. The syringe mutely dropped to the floor but there was no one paying attention. The boy grunted, gnashing his teeth as he shot his girlfriend a threatening glare, ready to make her pay.

“You just fucking punched me.” He stated quietly, his hand briefly rubbing over the red spot forming on his cheek.

“Chris, please, listen to reason.”

But again, the male zombie didn’t listen. A simple step forward and a vigorous push was all it took for the girl to fall to the ground, her palms and elbows breaking her pale skin as it made contact with the hard and rough asphalt. Pain flooded her body like electricity when another scream escaped her lips, the boy hovering above her with a furious sparkling in his eyes. The moment he kicked her ribs for the first time, something inside the vampire snapped. Had he just… flinched?

Taking a deep breath, Adam stepped away from the window and let the heavy curtain fall back in place before he hurried downstairs, not even bothering to grab his black leather jacket in the process. He stormed out of the door too fast for himself to change his mind and then started at the young couple, now only a few feet away from him.

The picture revealing itself to him was horrifying. There she was, lying on the floor with her hands and arms trying to cover her tearstained face, to protect it from the boy’s aggressive hacks and expecting the next inevitable blow, knocking all air out of her body.

It never came. What followed was a dull thump, a muffled cry and lastly, the sound of a fist forcefully connecting to bones.

Chris dropped to the ground, unconscious and looking like a picture of pure misery with his limbs twisted in a gross and painful way, his eyes shut and his mouth slightly open.

The girl swallowed thickly when she finally dared to lift her gaze, spotting a stranger dressed in tight leather pants and a dark and old-fashioned shirt. His shoulder-length black hair framed his flawless face, a five o’clock shadow adding mysterious shadows to his features.

His lips were pressed together tightly as he reached out his hand, offering her to help her back on her feet. Hesitant at first, she obliged, her eyes still widened in shock as she took it with trembling fingers, flinching when his cool skin touched hers.

There was no explanation needed. She had been straitened and he had been the honourable hero saving her. Wondering where he had come from was not important.

Tal rubbed the bluish coloured crook of her arm when her lips parted, words not coming easily after overworking her voice this much.

“Thank you.”

The stranger nodded.

“Where do you live?” His voice was as mysterious as his appearance. Heavy with a formal British accent, it was a little throaty but soft. Instantly, she knew that she could spend hours listening to him.

“Michigan Avenue fifty-two.” The girl replied after a moment, still trying to steady her shaky breath.

Adam frowned. He had intended to bring her home and then forget about the unpleasant incidence. No reason would thrive him to ever meet her again, after all. A female zombie, young and inexperienced. He did not have to throw her a second look to realise there was not much she knew about life. But then again, none of them did, for none of them lived for as long as he had already.

“That’s at the other end of the city.”

“Yes.” Still shaking. Uncontrollably. She really was not well.

Fate, however, had its ways of making things complicated. The vampire rushed forward when the girl’s eyes suddenly rolled to the back of her head, her body losing balance completely. He caught her before she fell on the hard asphalt once more, brushing a streak of her brunette hair out of her face before he took another deep breath and effortlessly lifted her up, carrying her across the street and into his house.

What else was there to do? He could not possibly call the police, for they would ask way too many questions and bringing her home now, in this very condition, was irrational.

Adam gently placed her on his bed and threw a blanket over her petite figure, keeping her from freezing any longer.

And then he waited, wondering whether this was possibly the stupidest thing he had ever done. She was one of them. There were billions like her. She was worthless and drugged and therefore not even suitable to be fed on, after all.

➡️ Find all chapters on my masterlist!

[thewritingjasmine]

Escape (Not the Pina Colada Song)

I sat in my car alone. The silence was only broken by the occasional tire squealing across the asphalt. The parking lot was full of cars, and I felt almost comfortable, snuggled in between the two SUVs. As I stared through my windshield, past the chrome Honda Accord, my view of the tree on the other side of the lot was slowly being obscured by the light snowfall. Having just shut off my car, I could feel the heat being replaced by the freezing cold. I couldn’t go inside. Not yet. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and leaned my head back. Just a few more minutes. This isn’t a healthy way to deal with your problems. I was losing track of the amount of times I’d sat in this parking lot, trying to avoid interacting with my roommate, having nowhere else to go. Out of my peripheral, in the seat of my car, I saw my phone’s screen light up. As I picked it up, I sighed. I’d been ignoring my phone for too long. Text messages from my mom? Ignore… Snapchat from my roommate? Not now… Emails… Not important… OKCupid? My thumb hovered over the push notification. “Jake messaged you! This could be big!” I tapped on the notification almost instinctively. I always hoped that the notification specifically designed to make me want to use this app was right and that maybe it “could be big.” Pressing the notification lead me to Jake’s profile. Only one picture, strike one. He says the phrase “I’m a good guy, and I’m funny,” strike two. The only person that gets to decide if someone is funny is me. “The three most important things in my life are my car, my family, and God. In that order.” I swiped left on Jake. He’d probably rather have sex with his car than with me. I forget about the message he sent me. Vijay, 22, smoking a cigarette in one of his pictures. Swipe left. Sal, 20, his self-summary is “Young college guy” and nothing else. Wow, I feel like I really got to know him. I swiped left. Ariana, 19, super cute, 93% match. Beautiful ebony skin and bleached blonde hair. We go on our first date. I can tell she feels kind of awkward, but the way she laughs at my jokes tells me she wants to be there. She’s wearing a blue, spaghetti-strap sundress and combat boots. Her hair is cut short, and I can make out each individual curl. We decide to go to a coffee shop on our date, but neither of us order coffee. “You don’t like coffee either?” I laugh, and she smiles in her awkward way, telling me she’s more of an herbal tea kind of girl. I sighed. Why didn’t she just tell me she doesn’t like coffee? I swiped left. James, 23. His only picture is of a jack-o-lantern. Swipe left. Brandon, 20. “Wanna Netflix and Chill? You can probably beat me at Fortnite.” Left. Doug, 21. 94% match. They/Them pronouns. Speaks Spanish. Gorgeous, curly black hair that you only dream about having. One of their pictures showed them with black nail polish, but it’s not in an “I’m still in my emo phase” way, so it’s cute. “When I graduate, I want to move to New York and become an actor.” After a few dates, we start pursuing a relationship. I was convinced it would be nothing serious, but we spend most of our spare time together now. They’ve made a habit of falling asleep in my arms when I try to show them some of my favorite movies and tv shows. It used to be annoying, but now it gets cuter every time it happens. They laugh at all my jokes, even the bad ones, and, if I tell them enough jokes, they’ll kiss me to shut me up. I’ve slowly started falling in love with, not just their personality, but everything about them. The way their curly, black hair falls over their eyes, the freckles that brush their cheeks and bring out their smile, and the sweatshirt they stole from me… They’re perfect. “Too bad I want to move to Boston after I graduate,” I swiped left and placed my phone face-down in my passenger seat. That’s enough. I should just delete that stupid app. I felt the cold that had seeped its way into my car. I looked down at my hands and flexed my fingers. I knew I could only stand to be in there for a little longer. I glanced up at my building to answer a question I already knew. The lights in my dorm room were on; my roommate was home, and she wasn’t asleep yet. Dammit. I picked up my phone again with every intention to respond to my mother. Facebook message? I tapped on the blue circle to read the message, “Hey! I lost my syllabus for HIS262, can you send me the rubric for the paper due tomorrow?” Oh, yeah. I closed the app. We have a paper due tomorrow. I should get on that. I found myself scrolling through my newsfeed. Something political I didn’t want to read tonight. Continue scrolling. A cute dog playing with a balloon. Like. My aunt shared a post: “Real women have meat on their bones and don’t eat salad.” I comment: “All women are ‘real women,’ including, but not limited to: skinny women, trans women, and women who don’t have children.” Throughout the next day, I’m plagued with “You need to lighten up. My post was meant to be light-hearted” and “All you lib-tards take things too seriously” replies. I get a message from my mom, asking me to apologize to my aunt after being so rude. Too much red tape. I continued scrolling, careful to avoid accidentally reacting to the post. My mother shared a video that teaches people how to make “ice cream lasagna.” I’m glad her diet is working. Like. My little sister shared a picture of a Jeep Wrangler with the caption “They say money can’t buy you happiness, but I’d rather be crying in a Jeep Wrangler.” She was trying to be subtle with my parents about her intense need for a Jeep Wrangler on her 16th birthday. Like. A funny video of a cat stepping in water. I instinctively started to tag my roommate. She loves cats. Before I hit send, I saw that her boyfriend had already tagged her in it. Continue scrolling. My sister-in-law posted a picture of my niece. She’s wearing a Princess Belle costume. It’s captioned “She told me she wants to sleep like a princess and yells when I try to take it off. This girl officially has the most expensive pajamas.” Heart react. I started scrolling through the posts absent-mindedly, so fast that I wasn’t even reading them anymore. I glanced at the clock in my dashboard. 10:47pm. When am I going to go inside? I flex my fingers again; I could feel them getting stiff. I could turn on the car again, or I could go upstairs. I put my phone to sleep and stared at my keys. I could drive anywhere. I almost have a full tank. I don’t have to go inside right now. I close my eyes, take one last deep breath, and grab my bag. Walking up the two flights of stairs is agony. Maybe I should exercise more. I grab the doorknob, count to three, and open the door. My roommate and her boyfriend are cuddling on the couch. At least they’re not having sex. When I walk in the room, it’s freezing. They always kept the thermostat 10 degrees colder than necessary because they could keep each other warm. “How was your night?” the way my roommate asks feels like it was pre-recorded, I’d heard it so much lately. “Um, longer than I wanted it to be,” I grab a couple books off my desk, “I have a 7-page paper to write, so I’ll be in the lounge if you need me.” “When’s it due?” the boyfriend chimes in, like he cares. “Noon.” “Why didn’t you do it sooner?” “I haven’t had time.” “Well, I feel like you could’ve budgeted your time better. Then, you wouldn’t be pulling an all-nighter.” I look away from him and grab a notebook from my bed. He had a nasty habit of making me feel inferior or stupid. “Well, that’s not what happened,” I leave the room quickly, trying to avoid conflict. You need those books. “Fuck it,” I exited the car, grabbing my phone and my bag, locking my doors as a walked across the parking lot. After the uncharacteristically short two flights of stairs, I stopped at my doormat. I stared at my door, at the rainboots next to the doormat, at the numbers by our door. I put my hand on the doorknob, and, while I turned it, I put on the best smile I could. Then, I opened the door, still smiling. “I’m home.” My roommate and her boyfriend were cuddling on the couch—our couch—watching the same show they’d been watching for the past three weeks on my TV with my Netflix account. I can’t remember the last time I even thought about watching TV.. “Hey,” my roommate’s voice was tired and disinterested. The greeting was a formality at this point. “Hi,” I tried so hard to make it sound genuine, but it came out a little more aggressive and short than I intended. I walked past them and grabbed the books from my desk. They didn’t quite fit in my bag, but I forced them into their place. I made sure my laptop and its charger were still there. Her boyfriend glanced over at me, “How was your day? “Long,” I really didn’t feel like explaining the intricacies of my day, and I knew he didn’t really care; he just wanted to use me as a pawn to make himself feel better. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, “I’m gonna go start a paper that’s due in 12 hours. Pray for me.” I pushed my way through the door. I set my things down in the lounge and intentionally didn’t turn the lights on. The lounge had become another place I went to avoid interacting with my roommate. I closed my eyes again and cried.