#and running across parks to find the flowers that she pointed out so I could suck at the stem

[smoreal]

There’s a fkn flower from my childhood that my mom gave me and said smth about the stem being sweet and that you can taste it and I remember it was such a sweet, fleeting, earthy taste… I think it would fix all my current problems tbh

[tinybeetiny]

Proposal: Hyung Line

I know this isn't how traditional Korean proposals are... but I was raised in the US sooooooooooooo yeah :)

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CW: Explicit language, cringey mushy, i tried not to repeat themes and stuff....

Materlist | Ateez Masterlist | Ateez Wedding Masterlist | Maknae Line

Seonghwa:

The prep for the proposal wasn’t as hard as Seonghwa thought it was going to be, keeping it a secret was the hardest part. You had questioned him all week as to why he was acting so weird and secretive, he would just give you wide eyed innocent look “I have no idea what you’re talking about Angel. Nothings wrong” he said with a nervous chuckle.

When the day finally came around he made Wooyoung distract you the whole day even though Woo very adamantly insisted on helping the set up Seonghwa knew that you were the closest to him and he’d be able to keep you busy the longest. After 4 LONG hours the boys had finally gotten everything ready and Seonghwa’s nerves worsened with every tick of the clock “it’s going to be fine Hwa, she’s going to say yes and you guys are going to have a beautiful life together” Hongjoong placed a supportive hand on his best friends shoulder sensing his nervousness “but that’s the thing, what if she doesn’t say yes” Seonghwa turned with a worried look on his face “you guys have been together for like 4 years now and she looks at you with all the stars in her eyes” Hongjoong said with a smile.

The boys scrambled to get into their places when they heard Wooyoung’s loud laugh approaching “Seriously Woo, you don’t need to drag me. I’m capable of walking by myself” you exclaimed trying to free your hand from his tight grip “psh you’re too slow sweetheart” he chuckled. He stopped abruptly making you run into his back. As you were about to yell at him he stepped aside to reveal the most breathtaking view. The flowers in bloom glowing in the candle light didn’t compare to the sight of your gorgeous boyfriend standing in the middle of it all. You had to take everything in for a minute before your feet would let you move.

“Park Seonghwa. Is this what you’ve been hiding for me? What is all this?” You asked skeptical trying not to let your emotions come over you. He said nothing as he took a step closer to you, taking your hands into his “(Y/F/N)(Y/L/N) from the very first day I met you I knew instantly that you were the one I was meant to be with forever, in this lifetime and every one after that. I adore everything about you from the way you snore to the you and Wooyoung clap like seals when you laugh. I will never find someone who completes me the way you do and I can’t see myself with anyone else” by now the tears were streaming down your face, Wooyoung told you not to wear mascara but you didn’t listen to him.

Your hand flew to your mouth as you let out a happy sob once you seen Seonghwa get down onto on knee “(Y/n) my beautiful Angel. Will you bless me with being mine forever” his voice cracking as he struggle to keep his emotions in. All you could do was nod not trusting your voice not to crack. “Yes?” Seonghwa asked not truly believing you “SHE SAID YES DUMBASS” Wooyoung yelled which was immediately followed him screaming in pain most likely from Jongho.

Seonghwa wasted no time standing up and securing you in his arms, giving you a little spin. “SEONGHWA YOU NEED TO ACTUALLY PUT THE RING ON HER- OW” you shook your head as Seonghwa took your hand into his again, sliding the ring on. You could help the wide smile that spread across your face “you have no idea how hard it was to keep this from you” He said as he let out a sigh

Hongjoong:

Hongjoong was usually really good at keeping things a secret seeing as he’s a Scorpio and all but you instantly caught on when he started planning the proposal. Being the amazing girlfriend you are you decided not to out him and continue letting him plan. At one point you thought that he was doing it on purpose to see if you would ask him about it. “Hey love! I have to run to the studio. Seonghwa wants to go over his part a few times!” Hongjoong yelled from the kitchen. You sat up from the bed a little confused considering Seonghwa was with Mingi Gangnam for who knows why “Okay Joongie! Have fun” you yell back trying not to laugh. Hearing the door close you pick your phone up to call Yeosang “Hey. I think today is the day. He just told me that he was meeting Hwa at the studio” you say attempting to brush your hair.

You were planning on keeping everything to yourself but something about Yeosang screamed secret keeper. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest "Isn't Seonghwa supposed to be with Mingi today?" Yeosang questioned "Exactly! Why else would he lie to me!" Little did you know this was all part of his plan “Well (y/n) do you want to go to the Studio to see if he’s there?” “Ooo yes! Surprise him trying to surprise me!” You say getting up, putting some clothes on “Okay, I’ll come and get you in like 10 minutes” Yeosang said before hanging up.

When you arrived at the studio you were met with silence, not a soul in sight “Hey! I found a letter!” Yeosang yelled as he ran out of the room he was in to find you. He handed you the envelope with your name written on it which you rip open with no hesitation ‘Our first date’ was all that was written “I’m assuming that means to go to the place we went on our first date (duh…)” you say thinking back to the very chaotic date, Hongjoong was so nervous he accidentally spilled his coffee all over you WHITE skirt, you tripping up a set of stairs in the park, a bird stealing your pastry right from your hands “The cafe is close by” you pull Yeosang out of the building to your desired destination.

Upon arrival the cashier smiled and handed you another envelope ‘thankfully no coffee was spilled but still lots to be fulfilled. Your next clue is waiting for you at Yongsan Park' "That's the park where Hongjoong and I had our first kiss" you say thinking back to the redo date he insisted on "Oh Yongsan is only a 10 minute walk from here, let's go" Yeosang was the one to pull you this time. When you arrive at the park you head straight to the little bridge. San smiles when he sees the two of you approach "I'm guessing you have my next clue?" You ask the taller male "Indeed I do" he smiles while handing you the envelope 'That little shop you go on and on about ;)' "The shop is all the way across the city, it's going to take forever to get there" you sigh “its fine! We’ve got all day!” Yeosang gave you a wide smile, you gave him a questioning look ‘What did he mean we have all day?’.

Once you arrive to the shop the store clerk hands you a bag with another envelope attached ‘the amount of times you looked at this dress and never actually bought it. I would absolutely love it if you were to wear it and meet me at the place where we first met let’s say around 6:30’. When you open the bag you find the dress that you’ve been eyeing for WEEKS, you weren’t actually going to buy it thinking you couldn’t pull it off (stfu you’re literally so gorgeous 🙄) “Wow! I like that shade of red! Really goes good with your skin tone” You honestly forgot Yeosang was standing next to you “Let’s get you back to the apartment so you can get ready” you nodded following him back to the car.

2 hours later and you were still getting ready, Yeosang bangs on the bedroom door "(y/n) it's almost 6 and we got to get across town plus it's rush hour" You hear him yell "I'll be out in like 4 minutes" you yell back putting the finishing touches to your makeup and putting on your shoes. "Okay let's go" you say as you walk out of the room "Wow. You look amazing" Yeosang lets out a little gasp "You think he'll like it?" "Oh he's going absolutely love it, Now enough stalling" he says as he holds the front door open for you. Your heart was racing as you approached the very balcony where you first laid eyes on Hongjoong 3 winters ago, despite how cold it was his smile managed to spike your temperature.

As soon as Yeosang pulled up a figured approached, opening your door. "M'lady" Wooyoung bowed extending hang out to you, his hair is slicked back and he's wearing some sort of butler suit. You laugh as you take it. stepping out of the car. "You look absolutely ravishing tonight" He says leading you up some stairs. Once you've ascended the stairs he passes you on to Yunho who is wearing the exact same suit. He offers you an arm which you warmly take and you're off to your next destination. "So... was the suits Hongjoong's idea?" you ask, Yunho says nothing only offering you a wide smile.

When you approach the double doors he gives you a small pat on the head. The doors swing open revealing Jongho and San again... in those dang butler suits. "Right this way" San says as they motion you to follow them. You let out a gasp when you see Hongjoong standing surrounded by flowers and candles. “Oh Joongie” you say tearfully as you take in your surroundings “do you love it? Or do you love it?” He said stretching his arms out “it’s beautiful!” You say tearing up. You approach him wrapping your arms around his neck “I’m glad you like it” he smiles before giving you a sweet kiss “so did I keep you on your toes?” He questioned “you knew I knew?” You asked shocked “ppfffttt of course. I thought I made it real obvious” he laughed “you did. I just thought you were being careless” you shrugged “my love, when have you known me to be careless” his hand comes up to caress your face “whatever. Are you gonna ask me or….?” You unwrap you arms from around him. He takes your hand in his as he kneels down “My love, my everything, I have loved you from the moment I laid my eyes on you. You’re my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. At this point you have to pay rent with how long you’ve lived in my head. My love for you is eternal and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So you will fulfill my wishes and marry me” He says as tears run down his face. With the way you were crying you were definitely glad you skipped out on the mascara “yes yes yes yes yes!” You sob pulling him up to you “oh… what’s with the suits?” You ask as you wipe your tears “oh, Jongho wanted them”

Yunho:

Yunho honestly wasn’t planning on proposing that day but with the way the sun was shining and how beautiful you looked, he knew it was the best opportunity. “Wow, YuYu! This place is so beautiful! Where did you find it?” You ask with a small smile “I'm honestly not quite sure. I stumbled upon it one day and thought you would love it" He said taking your hand and moving the two of you along the path (please don't ask where they are because I honestly don't know and I'm not gonna pretend to know). You both walk for a while just enjoying nature and people watching everyone around you.

You notice he’s not with you anymore so you turn and see him down on one knee “Yunho… what are you doing?” You ask as tears fill your eyes “oh I was just tying my shoe” he says cheekily while standing. You smack his chest and he lets a big belly laugh that causes a few people around you to stare. He does this 3 more times throughout the day, pretending to pick up trash, pretending he has a pain in his leg, then pretending to tie your shoe even though you’re not even wearing shoes with laces.

When it’s time for Yunho to actually propose you just stare at him as he’s down on one knee again “oh no sir. You’re not gonna fool me again” you shake your head at him and turn to walk away but you don’t get far as Mingi jumps out of the bushes “Hey (Y/n), where ya going?” He says nonchalantly like he wasn’t just hiding in the bush “what the fuck Mingi?” You give him a bewildered look “come here” he says taking your shoulders and turning you around. You feel all the air leave your body when he spins you, Yunho is holding the most beautiful ring you’ve ever seen. “I know I’ve faked you out quite a bit today but I was trying to find the perfect opportunity. I’ve been carrying this around for awhile and seeing you today looking so gorgeous and the weather being as nice as it is I figured this was perfect. So (y/n), my sunshine, I would absolutely love it if you’d marry me” his eyes twinkled as he looked up at you “Mmm, nah I’m good” you shrug turning to face Mingi. “What?” Yunho asked as he stood up “eh. I don’t really feel like it” you couldn’t help but smile as you turn back around seeing his shocked face “I’m just kidding YuYu, of course I’ll marry you” your voice cracking a bit as you hold back tears “oh my gosh. You scared me” he laughed placing his hand over his heart “well… I mean you kinda deserved it” you say rolling your eyes. He says nothing as he takes you into his arms, twirling you around. You stick your hand out expectingly after he puts you down and he immediately slides the ring on your finger. “Do I have any leaves in my hair” you hear voice behind you, completely forgetting Mingi was still there

Yeosang:

The boys really didn't get time off very often and this was one of those rare times. Jongho had suggested they go camping for the weekend and surprisingly everyone agreed. So here you sat watching Wooyoung and San arguing about how to put the tent together, from first glance you wouldn't have even thought it was tent considering everything was still on the ground. After 5 minutes of the bickering Seonghwa made his way over to separate the two and pitch the tent himself. After everything was set up the 9 of you sat around the bonfire, the boys reminiscing on the fan meets and the concerts in various cities.

“I uh have to get something from the car. Yeosang come help me” Yunho jumped up giving Yeosang a look “oh! Yeth (sorry)” you looked up at your boyfriend confused as to why the TWO of them needed to go “Hey (Y/N) I need your help with something too” Jongho stood grabbing your hand dragging you in the opposite direction. It had been 5 minutes of Jongho dragging you who knows where and he said nothing “Jongie… where are we going” you asked getting tired of walking, he turned and stared you dead in the eyes shrugging his shoulders “what if we get lost?” Freeing your hand from his, he says nothing as he takes his phone out checking the time “hm okay let’s head back” he says nonchalantly turning and walking back to the campsite. You stand looking at his back confused as to what happened.

The walk back seemed to take longer than expected, you soon realized that you were not walking back to the campsite but rather in the direction of the docks “Um, Jongho… are you going to drown me?” You asked suspicious of his antics “You’re so funny” he chuckles… that doesn’t answer your question. As you approached closer you saw small glows of light on the dock. Your eyes widen when you get to your destination, the rose filled vases, the candles, the rose petals, everything was breathtaking. Jongho lead you to the middle of the creaky wood. Without another word he walked away leaving you alone.

“What the fuck was even that?” You mumble to yourself turning to look at the dark water that surrounded you, any other time it would’ve scared the crap out of you but something about the glow of the candles seemed to ease your nerves “do you like it” Yeosang’s sudden voiced startled you making you whip your head around to see his soft face approaching “jeez Sangie, you scared the mess out of me, you can’t sneak up on me like that” you said clutch your chest “sorry, you just looked so pretty in the candle light” he said with smile. The wood creaked underneath his feet as he walked to meet you. “You know I love you right?” He asked as raised a hand to caress your cheek, you instantly melt into his touch “of course” you say staring into his eyes “no like I really love you, so much it hurts. My soul purpose for being on this earth is to love you, to have you by my side, forever. I want to make this officially forever” he gushes out as he gets down on one knee “oh Yeo” you gasp “what do you say?” He asks hopeful “of course” you whisper out. Yeosang rises to his feet placing your face in his hands bring his lips to yours

I honestly wasn't expecting Hongjoong's to be so long, i just started writing and couldn't stop

[libraford]

Day 28/50

Close to the end of my shift, I accidentally scraped the side of the water truck on a decorative pillar at the back entrance to one of the parks. Damage was some crumbling mortar and a big scrape across the bed of the truck.

And I thought...

Dont tell anyone.

Because when I was at the flower shop, if you were in any minor accident it would cost the company in insurance. And while they couldn't dock your pay legally they WOULD make the workplace a hellhole until you rage quit.

But I thought about that for a few minutes.

They might not notice the pillar, but they will notice the foot long scratch on the truck bed. And people would KNOW it was me because I was tge last person running that truck. And they'd match the limestone to the park I was at because it was a very distinctive limestone.

And they'd find out anyway.

One girl crashed a water truck once and she got fired, but ONLY after they drug tested her and she tested positive.

So I figured I'd risk it because there was no way I could keep up the charade for long. Went to my boss's office and told him. Worst that can happen is they fire me and I've already made it past the halfway point.

I showed him the truck.

"Hmmm... it's just a scratch, its fine."

I told him about the pillar.

"That's a tight turn, I'm surprised it took this long. Is it still standing?"

"Yes."

"Was anyone else involved? Like was anyone else hurt?"

"No, no one else was involved."

"Did you get hurt?"

"No."

"Then it's okay. I'd prefer it not happen, but its minor. And I'm glad you said something. I hate detective work."

The difference between a workplace that has profit over people, versus a government labor position where there are no profits to lose.

[layce2015]

The Boys (Soldier Boy x Female!Supe!Reader)

Chapter 4: Glorious Five Year Plan

Chapter 1 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Present Day

*(y/n)’s POV*

"It's Solid Gold, starring Marilyn McCoo. With Solid Gold recording stars Kim Carnes, the Oak Ridge Boys, Waylan Flowers and Madame, the Solid Gold Dancers, and our first very special guest of the night, Soldier Boy!" The announcer from the show said as I sit there in my living room, watching, Bethany sitting next to me.

The camera pans down on the stage to show Ben, wearing his superhero suit including that helmet, standing on the stage as he begins to sing.

Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's fly

DJ spinning, I said, "My, my"

Flash is fast, Flash is cool

François c'est pas, Flash ain't no dude

And you don't stop, sure shot

Go out to the parking lot

And you get in your car and you drive real far

And you drive all night and then you see a light

It comes right down and lands on the ground

And out comes a man from Mars

And you try to run, but he's got a gun

And he shoots you dead, and he eats your head

And then you're in the man from Mars

You go out at night, eating cars

You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns, too...

As he sings, he did dance a bit then walked across the stage as the female back-up dancers surround him, all of them placing their hands on any part of him they could touch. And even watching this old rerun now, I still felt a bit jealous of seeing this just as I was when I was there on that show. I remember being a bit annoyed while I was standing backstage watching this from a TV screen.

"Weren't you on this episode as well?" Bethany asked me. "Yeah, I was." I muttered.

Sure enough, when Ben's song ended the camera switches to show the disco ball hanging from the ceiling as the announcer said. "And now for our second special guest, Mystic Shade!"

And the camera pans down to show me, in my superhero suit, on the stage, leaning against a tall white platform and I hold the microphone up to my lips. "Oh, there you are!" Bethany said, in a teasing manner, and I rolled my eyes.

Girls! Girls!

Watch out! Watch out!

I turn my head to look out at the crowd and I stand up, straighter.

There's a two legged animal running about

If it smokes a great big cigar

And it hangs around at a bar

If it tells the biggest lies, wears the loudest ties

It's a man

If it acts just like a crossed patch

Has a face with whiskers that scratch

If it's stubborn as can be, mean and ornery

It's a man

I watched myself saunter across the stage as I sang this old song, I raised a finger as if pointing out to the crowd before I lowered my arm, continuing to sing. "Wow, look at you go." Bethany teased and I scoff out a laugh.

It if walks, if it talks

If its habits are a little bit peculiar

If it brags and tries to make you think it's wonderful

Be on the lookout, don't let it fool ya

But if it makes the moon up on high,

More than just a light in the sky

If it kisses you and you find you like it too

GRAB IT!

It's a man

At the point I sang GRAB IT I raised my right hand up and clenched it into a fist then unclenched it and placed it on my hips as I do a bit of a dance with a smile, continuing to sing the song.

"Good God, I look so ridiculous." I muttered. "No, you don't. You're now sounding like an old woman." Bethany said, a bit of sarcasm, and I look over at her, she of course had aged a bit, wrinkles had appeared on her face and her hair was turning gray but I could still see that young girl I met back in the 70's underneath all those wrinkles.

"Well, you do realize I'm a little over a hundred years old. I think I deserve to sound like one." I said, smiling. "And yet you still look like you're in your early 30's." Bethany said and I chuckle. "Yes, bathing in virgin's blood does have its perks." I joked and we laugh.

"What? That's the secret? Why didn't you tell me?!" Bethany asked me, in a fake offended voice. "It's a curse I must bare." I said, dramatically, and we laugh and go back to watching the show as I continue to sing the song.

It if walks, if it talks

If its habits are a little bit peculiar

If it brags and tries to make you think it's wonderful

Be on the lookout, don't let it fool ya

And then one of the male backup dancers, dressed in a suit, comes up next to me and gets down on one knee.

But if it's kneelin' down on one knee

Sayin' darling please marry me

Then don't hesitate, better name the date and then

I had walked over to the man and caressed his cheek for a moment then lowered my hand to his tie as I sang the next few lines.

GRAB IT!

HOLD IT!

HANG ONTO IT! 

I grabbed the man's tie, yanked on it to make him stand up and pull him close to me. The guy looked surprised but also seemed to like it as I give him a flirty smile.

For It's a man

I belted out that last line then I pulled the man down towards me and I kissed him. I face-palmed at this while Bethany said. "Ooooohhh."

The music stops and the guy and I break the kiss and we share a smile before the camera switches to a different guest. "I'm gonna guess Ben wasn't happy about that kiss, was he?" Bethany asked me and I shake my head. "No, he wasn't." I said. "He didn't hurt you, did he?" Bethany asked me, concerned, and I shake my head as the memory of what happened after I left the stage came to mind, a smile slowly forming on my face.

"No, he didn't. He, uh...he did something else." I said and Bethany looks at me then noticed my smile. "Oh, I know that smile. Give me details!" She demanded and I shake my head. "A lady never kiss and tells." I said and we share a laugh again. We look back at the TV and my mind began to wander back to that night of the filming of this episode.

Flashback

I walked backstage after the performance and a few people smiled and congratulated me as I walk past them. Then I look over at Ben, who did not look happy. “What the fuck was that?” He asked me, angrily. “What was what?” I asked, feigning ignorance. I start to walk past him but he grabs my arm and I turn to face him.

”You know damn well what I mean.” He growls and I smirk at him. “Ease up, Soldier Boy. Jealousy is not a good look on you. Besides, it was all an act.” I said. “You sure? Because it didn’t look like an act.” He said and my smile grew. Honestly, I was having fun messing with him. “So what if it was?” I asked him then I lean into him. “What are you gonna do about it?” I asked and I see his eyes darken as he glares at me.

Most people would’ve backed down from this glare but I didn’t. Because I could see the lust and desire in his eyes, which told me I was in for it.

I let out a moan that really sounded like it could've come out of a porno as Ben shoved me up against the wall of his dressing room, thrusting roughly into me, my legs wrapped around his waist.

"Fuck, Ben!" I exclaimed. "That's right, you better say my name! Not that asshole you kissed! You are mine!" Ben growls as his thrusts become harder. I let out a strangled moan as I started to feel drunk with how good Ben was making me feel until I felt his thumb rubbing my most sensitive spot.

I cried out again as Ben said, with a low growl. "This is mine! No one else's! Say it. Say that this pussy is mine!" Then his thumb works faster and my walls clench around him even harder. "Y-Y-Yours...always....I'm..yours..." I was able to say in between gasps and moans I was letting out.

"You damn right you are!" Ben growls in my ear as he pounds into me and rubs that sensitive spot even faster and harder.

And at that moment, I shut my eyes and felt them roll back as a very powerful orgasm washes over me. "BEN!" I screamed out in ecstasy and then he growls out my name in my ear as I feel him release himself inside of me.

The both of us stilled and catch our breath until we hear a knock at the door. Both of us look towards the door, lazily, when the voice of the producer of the show calls out. "Soldier Boy, you and Mystic Shade are up in ten minutes."

"Okay, thanks. We'll be out there." Ben said and we hear the guy leave. Ben turns to look at me then gives me a soft kiss on the lips. "Looks like round two is gonna have to wait." He said as he pulls out of me. I hiss at this and set my wobbling legs on the floor before he walks over to his table that was next to us.l

"There's more?" I asked, breathlessly, as he goes to grab a towel and wipes himself clean, puts his pants back on then zips it up. "Yeah...gotta make my girl know who she belongs to." He said as he comes up to me and cleans me up as well.

"Well, in that case...I should be punishing you in round two." I said, smirking, and zipping up my pants once he finished. "How so? I didn't go kissing anybody." Ben said, tossing the towel aside. "Oh, but you did let all those girls touch you, let them run their hands all over you." I said as I sauntered over to him, my legs still feeling a bit like jelly.

I get up close to him and I grab his crotch, he tensed up at this and he let's out a small sigh through his nose. "If my pussy is yours then this dick is mine. And no one else can have it, no other woman should be touching you, understand?" I asked him and I could hear a low growl coming from him as I tightened my grip on it.

"Yes, ma'am." He said, lowly, and I give a seductive smile. "Good boy." I cooed and I kiss his cheek then let him go and go towards the door. "Where you going?" He asked me and I turn to face him. "Gotta go clean up my face and hair. Probably look like a used whore." I said and Ben looks me up and down. "More like properly fucked, in my opinion." He said, with that cheeky grin, and I rolled my eyes.

"I'll see you out there, Soldier Boy." I said, in a sultry voice. "See you later, Mystic Shade." Ben said and I walk out of the dressing room.

Present Day

I sighed a bit as Bethany pats my arm and points to the TV. "I forgot you two did a duet!" She exclaims and I look at the screen as it showed me and Ben back on stage, I must've being off on la la land in my head for awhile cause I remember our duet was at the ending of the episode.

The music intro to Endless Love began to play as Ben starts to sing first, both of us facing each other.

My love

There's only you in my life

The only thing that's right

I smiled at him as I bring my microphone up to my lips.

My first love

You're every breath that I take

You're every step I make

Then we sang together.

And I want to share

All my love with you

No one else will do

And your eyes (Your eyes, your eyes)

They tell me how much you care

Oh, yes, you will always be

My endless love

"You know, even though you told me about the crap you two went through, I still think you two made a good-looking couple. Better than him and that, what was her name? Crimson Countess?" Bethany said, thinking. "Yeah..." I muttered as I look down for a moment then back to the TV.

Two hearts

Two hearts that beat as one

Our lives have just begun

Forever

I'll hold you close in my arms

I can't resist your charms

And love

I'll be a fool for you, I'm sure

You know I don't mind

'Cause you, you mean the world to me, oh

I know

I've found in you my endless love

I felt this great wave of sadness overcome me and I get up and head to the kitchen. "(Y/n)?" Bethany called out to me as I head to the fridge. "You okay?" She asked as she follows me while I grab a beer bottle.

"Yeah, I just..." I stopped then opened the bottle and started to chug down the beer. "Hey..." Bethany said as she comes up to me and places a hand on my shoulder. "I know I should be over it but....fuck, Bethany, it's hard." I said and Bethany nods. 

"I know, I mean, I wouldn't know how I'd feel or do if Steven died. Let alone forty years after the time." Bethany said. "I know he was an asshole and a bastard but he was the only one that knew what I was going through, what I had been through. He was mostly good to me; couple of things he did, did annoy me. But I still love him." I said then she hugs me.

*3rd Person POV*

Maeve was swinging her sword around, like she was getting ready for battle. She jumps, rolls and swings the sword around until she hears a knock at the door. She opens it and sees it was Starlight. “Hi. Can we talk?” she asked. “No.” Maeve said, flatly, and she goes to shut the door but Starlight stops her. “Maeve, please.” Starlight pleads and Maeve sighs then lets her in and Starlight closes the door.

”I heard that you stopped training.” Starlight said as she noticed that Maeve had moved her furniture around where there was a large space in the middle of the room. “Yeah? You also hear that I wake up six days a week hungover, tits-deep in some random fսck pile? People think what I want them to.” Maeve said as she walks over to the kitchen island. “Okay, listen. Have you ever heard of something called B.C.L. RED?” Starlight asked her as Maeve gets a drink.

”You mean a weapon that can kill Homelander, if Butcher can find it?” Maeve asked her, knowingly. “You know?” Starlight asked, surprised, and Maeve smiles. “Who do you think sent them down the rabbit hole? Actually, I should say I had help with that but still…I brought it up to them. It's why I'm training. Or haven't had a drink in four awful, shit-eating months. Maybe I can buy Butcher a second or two to get a good shot. At the very least, I'll get a couple of licks in.” Maeve said. “Wait, so who gave you the information about this weapon?” Starlight asked and Maeve glares at her.

”Why should I tell you that?” Maeve asked her. “Well, whoever this person is, could join us. I mean, this person obviously wants to help.” Starlight said. “She only wanted to give out the information about the weapon and that’s it.” Maeve said and Starlight furrows her brow. “She?” She said but Maeve doesn’t reply.

“Okay. Okay, okay. So there's you, me and your mystery friend. Maybe we can find some others.” Starlight said. “Right. Yeah. I'm sure you and Duluth's Most Mighty would really get the job done. And I told you, my mystery friend doesn’t want any part of this. This is my problem. I'm the one who was with the asshоlе.” Maeve said.

“Maeve...you cannot do this alone. He'll kill you.” Starlight pleads and Maeve rolls her eyes. “You really care that little about yourself?” Starlight asked her. “I got it coming.” Maeve said before she walks over to her sword and starts to swish it around again.

*(y/n)’s POV*

“Okay, here is one scotch for the pretty lady.” Steven said to me as he hands me a glass of the drink. “Thanks, Steven. I said as I accepted it. I had gone over to Bethany’s and Steven’s house for the night to just have something to keep my mind occupied. Steven is Bethany’s husband for almost forty years and he always had this cheery carefree attitude, even at the age he is now.

“And, of course, for the lovely lady…bourbon!” Steven said to Bethany as she takes it. “A man after my heart.” Bethany said. “I should be the only man!” Steven chuckles and Bethany pretends to think. “Hmm, I don’t know..there is that cute young man at the coffee shop…” she said. “Well, then I better go pay him a visit, show him what happens when you try to get my girl.” He said and the two laugh and I smile and shake my head as I take a drink.

”Oh, and how are you gonna do that? Hit him with your cane?” Bethany asked him, teasingly, as she gestures to the black cane leaning against their couch. “Nah…I’ll just send (y/n) after him.” He said. “And what makes you think I’ll agree to that?” I asked him. “I’ll let you keep beating me at poker!” He said and my jaw drops.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked him. “Well, not to brag but…my superpower is that I am really good at poker. I just didn’t want to show off and let you win so you wouldn’t feel bad.” Steven said and I scoff out a laugh. “Oh, really? Well, c’mon, sonny, put your money where your mouth is!” I said and Steven claps. “Alright, grandma!” Steven teased as he goes to grab his deck of cards but then Bethany looks over at the TV.

”Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Look!” She said and Steven and I look at the screen to see that there was a news broadcast. It said Neuman Holds FBSA Press Conference on the news banner and Neuman gets up to the podium. “Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. I'm Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, the director of the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. For the last year, the Bureau has been working with Vought International under one guiding principle. The most powerful among us are not above the law, including the most powerful man at the company.” Neuman said then she pauses, looks to the side and takes a breath.

”Homelander...has bravely come forward as a whistleblower and provided evidence of crimes committed within Vought by CEO Stan Edgar.” Neuman said and the crowd gasps while mine, Steven’s and Bethany’s jaw drops at this. “And in the coming days, the FBSA will be investigating charges of blackmail, perjury and obstruction of justice against Mr. Edgar. Vought International must be held to the highest ethical and legal standards. The people are entitled to the truth about their heroes...” She said while Bethany and Steven share a look.

”What the hell?” Steven mutters and I furrowed my brow. “I don’t like this. Especially if Homelander is the one that gave that information to her….” I said. “Why do you hate Homelander so much?” Steven asked me. “I don’t know…there’s something…off about him. And I know how things went there at Vought…” I replied. “Plus, Homelander dated a Nazi, isn’t that bad enough?” Bethany asked.

“But he didn’t know…I mean, didn’t you know her as Liberty, (y/n)?” Steven asked me. “Not really well, course I thought something was off about her too back then.” I said and he sighs. “Look, I’m not defending him, I mean, I’m not a huge fan of the guy either but…some men make mistakes when they love a woman. I mean, it came out earlier he and Starlight are a thing now.” He said. 

Bethany hums at this while I stay quiet about this. I don’t know but I think that whole Starlight and Homelander paring is a load of crap and trying to deflect his whole thing with Stormfront.

*3rd Person POV*

Meanwhile, in Russia, Butcher, Frenchie, Kimiko, Hughie and M.M. went to infiltrate a military compound to find the weapon, thanks to Nina. Nina was Frenchie’s old associate and he got tangled back up with her was because his old girlfriend, Cherie, begged him for help to get her out.

So, for that, the boys had to a job for her then she would have her people help them get to the compound. They were able to cut the power out at the compound to make the Russian soldiers leave and they make their way inside.

“Any idea what this Supe gun is supposed to look like?” M.M. asked Butcher. “Ain't the joy in the discovery, eh?” Butcher said and they look around until they see a large metal tube. What is it?” Hughie asked as they look at it then Butcher looks over some papers nearby while Frenchie looks at this large glass case.

“Hey, there's something here. Look.” Frenchie said as he shines his light into the case where he sees a small hamster inside. “Look, look. Oh.” Frenchie said and M.M. comes up next to him to see the hamster. “Hey. What does it say?” Frenchie asked as he shines his light at the label that was written in Russian. “Says his name is Jamie.” M.M. said before he chuckles. “Jamie. Hi. Are you okay, Jamie?” Frenchie asked the hamster as he taps the glass. “No, no, no, don't fսck with it. Just leave him alone.” M.M. tells him and Frenchie chuckles.

”Aw. Jamie. Who's a handsome, petite, little gerbil?” Frenchie said as the hamster scurried around in the cage and Kimiko comes up and smiles. “It's a hamster. My daughter went through three of them.” M.M. clarifies then suddenly Jamie rapidly pounds around in the case, scaring the others. “Oh, shit! Motherfucking V'd-up hamster.” M.M. said, surprised.

At that moment, alarms start blaring. “told you not to fսck with him. Damn it.” M.M. growls at Frenchie and Butcher turns to them. “Look lively!” He shouts and every pulls out their guns and get ready for a fight.

Immediately, the Russian soldiers come in and start firing at the team and the boys all take cover and fire back at them. One soldier was able to corner Frenchie but Jamie, who had gotten out, flies up and burrows into the soldier’s eye, making him scream out in pain before falling over dead.

“Merci, Jamie.” Frenchie said as he nods to the hamster.

“I'm out!” M.M. shouts and Butcher fires his gun but he stops and looks at the others as they try to take cover. Butcher looks over at Hughie, who was hiding, then smiles at him then walks out. “Oi! Evening, cսոts.” He shouts at the soldiers and he walks out. The soldier firing at him but no damage was done to him, thanks to the Temp V.

The others watch this in shock and disbelief as Butcher uses laser eyes to take out the Russians, then he grabbed the nearest one and breaks his neck. Hughie then noticed a soldier coming up behind M.M. “M.M.!” Hughie shouts and he starts to run then teleports to the soldier and punches through the soldier.

”Oh! Oh! Oh, shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Uh...” Hughie grunts and pants then pulls his arm out of the soldiers body, revealing him to be completely naked. Butcher glares at Hughie, realizing that he had taken some Temp V without him knowing, and everyone stared in shock. Kimiko covers her eyes as Hughie chuckles softly. “Your dіck's out.” M.M. said, plainly, and Hughie looks down at himself then goes to grab his clothes and puts them on.

”Butcher?” M.M. asked, angrily. “All right, all right, look, hang about.” Butcher tries to defuse. “You and Hughie both took Compound V? What are you two, fսcking Supes now?” M.M. asked. “Temporary V.” Butcher said then Kimiko signs at him while Hughie picks up the busted cast he was wearing, smiling.

”Oh, she say, Why do you do this to yourself on purpose?" Frenchie translates. “Only lasts 24 hours, all right? Break glass in case of emergencies, you know, like this one.” Butcher said. “And you give this to-to Hughie?” Frenchie asked. “I didn't give it to him. The thieving git must have broken into the case and nicked it.” Butcher said as he glares over at Hughie, who looks at him then stammers.

”Let's just find this thing and get the fսck out of here, all right?” Butcher said and M.M. turns to Hughie. “You're better than this, kid.” He said and Hughie scoffs. “Butcher, I'm...Look...I'm s...I'm sorry, okay? It's just, I...” Hughie said then he laughs softly and everyone walks away from him.

Butcher walks up to the large container and he grabs at the edges of the panel and pulls it open. Smoke billows out of it and everyone steps closer to it to see there was a person inside of it. The smoke starts to clear up and they see it is a man with long hair and a beard, a breathing mask was over his mouth and nose and he was restrained inside. The man lets out a breath which is filtered through the mask and he opens his eyes to look at them, Butcher recognized the man.

“Soldier Boy.” Butcher whispered, shocked. Soldier Boy moved his arms to break the restraints off of his arms then takes off the wires then the mask and starts to walk out of the tube, naked as the day he was born. He looks around at everyone then turns as Frenchie stands in front of him. “Ah... It's okay.” He tries to assure. 

Suddenly, a bright orange glow appears in his chest then bursts out of him, Soldier Boy yells as Kimiko runs to Frenchie and pushes him out of the way as she gets hit with the blast and crashes through the wall. The glow dissipates and Soldier Boy grunts then he stumbles through the hole in the wall and walks away.

“Kimiko. It's okay. Huh? It's okay.” Frenchie said as he goes to Kimiko, but she had a barbed wire through her abdomen and she wasn’t healing like she normally does. “She's not healing. Why she's not healing? Kimiko. Why does she not heal? Kimiko. She's not healing!” Frenchie panicked and the boys gather her up and carry her to their van.

@winchestergirl1720 @deans-spinster-witch @mimaria420 @wirdbeimaufhebengebunden @kitsun369 @jesllianaquilesrolonsworld @deangirl96 @demodemo909 @cassiecasluciluce

[abellmunsonmovie]

Sweetheart Wordcount: 1,052 Warning: Age gap (Eddie's supposed to be 25-early 30's & reader is 19-early 20's so not that big of a gap), readers gender/race is not specified ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮

 A couple weeks ago you had moved to the Forest Hills trailer park, across from your totally banging neighbor, Eddie Munson. He has a little daughter, Clementine, probably around 4 years old. She has wild, curly hair just like her dad, and big doe eyes. She’s quiet literally a mini Eddie. You had started working at a restaurant in uptown Hawkins called Enzo’s, it was enough to keep the lights on, but you still needed to find another way to make an income. 

 One day while doing the dishes you see Clementine playing in your yard with on adult in sight, you dry off your hands and walk outside. Clementine doesn’t even notice you’re there and continues picking flowers making you giggle, her head turns around and you hear a sweet, “Hi!”. You smile and wave, “Hi…what’re you doing?”, “Pickin’ flowers for my daddy.” You nod and walk closer to here and say “What’s your name?”, “Clementine”, you pick a flower and hand it to her, “Well that’s a very pretty name, i’m Y/N”, she smiles and says “Oh yeah my dads has seen you”, you smile, “really?”, she nods “uh huh”, and then you say, “...you like popsicles?”, you see her eyes and smile widen as she nods, “What’s your favorite flavor?” you ask, “Red!”, you run inside and grab a red popsicle, you walk back outside opening the popsicle wrapper and hand it to her. She bounces a little as she taste the popsicle, you smile wide and you ask, “Where is your dad?”, she smiles and points at the Munsons trailer, you see Eddie struggling to put his shirt on, almost falling off the steps, jogging to your trailer. “Clem!” he says, “i’m so sorry i was getting ready for work and didn’t even realize she got out-” he says running a hand through his hair, you shake your head, “No, no don’t worry she’s a doll” you laugh softly, he smiles looking at you a little longer than he should, Clementine taps Eddies arm and puts her little fist up, holding a bouquet of the flowers she picked, “I’m sorry…I just was pickin’ you some flowers” she says with a little pout, Eddie smiles softly and picks her up, kissing her head, “it’s okay, baby…you just scared me for a second there”, you smile and he looks at his watch, “shit” he says under his breath, “um…listen, my uncles supposed to be here to watch her and i'm running late…you think you could watch her for me, he should be home soon, i’ll pay you just-”, you saw a chance and you took it, watching some cute guys kid why not? “Sure! I’d love to”, he smiles, “Thank you so much, sweetheart, okay um- Clem, be good, say “please and thank you”, Wayne’ll be home soon”, the little girl nods ans he gives her a kiss on the cheek, handing her to you, “Bye baby, i love you, see you tonight bean… and again thank you”, you nod “Of course, anytime” you say with a smile, Eddie walks away with a smirk that makes your heart beat faster and he gets in his car, “Bye daddy!” Clementine says, Eddie waves as he drives off.

After a few hours Wayne had picked Clementine up and you guys had a nice conversation, talking about how both him and Eddie are so busy always one of them has to be late/leave early, or just completely call off work that day, making it harder to pay the bills, you the offer helping out by becoming Clementines babysitter after your shifts at Enzos.

✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮

After a few months of watching Clementine, you and the whole Munson family have became close, especially you and Eddie. One night after a longer shift Eddie had taken, Clementine had fell asleep on your couch while watching cartoons, as you were picking up you hear a knock on the door and see Eddie on your door step. You open your door and you walk outside so you wouldn’t wake Clem up, “Hey” he says smiling, “Hi” you say quietly as you shut the door. “She’s out like a light” you giggle, he laughs and says “I can’t believe it she can never get to sleep, I read to her, sing to her, nothin’ works”, you smile, “Welll turn on some cartoons and she’s out”, he smiles and gives you a soft look, “I think she just likes you”, you blush lightly and say “Well I think she just misses you…” he smiles. After talking about eachothers day, he says “Y’know I um-...really appreciate you for treating Clem so good and…not seeing my family as outsiders like the rest of this shitty town” he laughs sadly. You smile and nod “Of course…you guys are amazing, i love yo- your family”, he smiles and nods “Well…we love you”, your brain goes blank for a second and you smile wide, “It’s just been me, Wayne, and Clem her whole life…her mom…her mom abandoned her…fucking piece of shit”, your smile fades quick and you feel angered yourself, “What…shes an angel how could-”, “Exactly!” Eddie interrupts. You shake your head, “Well…i’m always gonna be here for her…” he smiles “You’re a real sweetheart, yknow?”, you blush and say, “It’s easy when it you…”, he laughs and he gets closer to you, “Can I kiss you?...Please?”, your eyes flicker to his lips and back to his eyes. Without saying anything you clash your lips with his, one of his hands find your waist as the other goes to the back of your head, while yours rest on his chest. After a while of kissing, you both pull apart to catch your breath and you look in eachothers eyes with bruised lips, Eddie laughs softly, “So um…Wayne’s off next Saturday…was wondering if you wanted to go on a date?” you giggle and bite your lip, “I’d love that…..you know, since Clems already out… you could stay over if you wanted” you offer, he blushes and nod “Y-yeah, that sounds nice”.

You both get into bed, as you guys are spooning Eddie whispers, “I love you, Y/N”, making your stomach get butterflies and you turn around and whisper back “I love you too, Munson”, he gives you a sleepy grin before kissing you gently, “Night, sweetheart”.

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HIIIIII OMG I MISSED YOU<33333 I promise im gonna try to write more but i love ya<3333 xoxo- Bella:)

Taglist(please dm if you wanna join!): @nxrdamp

[skelavender]

“Still, my mom is going to imply…” “I know. It’s not serious. I mean, it’s not like we’re married or anything.” Scully chuckles and pushes up onto her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “Now that’s not going to help dissuade the rumors, Agent Scully.” He teases. “At this point, I don’t think there’s any hope.” OR After a year of platonic marriage, things start to change.

read chapter one of you are in love on ao3, or below the cut!

One look, dark room

Meant just for you

Time moved too fast

You play it back

Buttons on a coat

Light-hearted joke

No proof, not much

But you saw enough

***

November 1996

There are flowers on Mulder’s desk. 

A bouquet of… well, Mulder’s not great with flowers, but they’re all purple. There’s lavender, he knows that, and what he’s guessing are violets and irises. The last he can’t recognize, but it looks like a purple daisy. Maybe it is just a purple daisy? He didn’t know they made those. 

As he steps further into the office, he notices Scully behind the desk. She had been gone when he woke up, which was unusual for them, but had left a note on the coffee maker saying she had some errands to run before work and she would meet him there. It was folded and in his pocket. 

“Good morning,” she greets.

“Hey. Who sent you flowers?”

Scully raises one eyebrow and a small smirk graces her face, a challenge. “Check the card.”

He looks at her with curiosity and approaches the desk. He plucks the card out of the little fork, and when he unfolds it, he blinks dumbly a couple times.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart. 

Oh.

It wasn’t as though he’d forgotten. Of course not, not in a million years. Her gift is waiting at home, on top of the bookshelf in their home office where she could neither see nor reach. That was part of why he’d been disappointed when he woke up to a cold bed. He had wanted to give it to her before work, but she left before he got the chance. He had ordered personalized stationery for her, paper being the traditional gift for a first wedding anniversary, from a store down in Rosslyn. They have Special Agent Dana Scully, M.D. letterpressed across the top in green, with a notepad to match. 

“I don’t think anybody has ever gotten me flowers before.” He notes with a dreamy tone to his voice. Scully has impressed him.

Her satisfied expression softens. “I’m glad I could be the first.”

“Thank you, Scully. I love them.”

“You’re welcome.”

“God,” he laughs and ducks his head. “I can’t believe it’s been a year. It’s flown by.”

“It has, hasn’t it.”

“It seems like just last month we were averaging a hospital visit every two weeks.”

Scully snorts, “Not that we’re that far off.” 

Mulder chuckles, and rounds the desk to peck her cheek. “I didn’t forget, by the way. Your gift is at home. I’ll give it to you this evening.”

“I didn’t think you had.” She mirrors the small kiss and Mudler retreats to the chair Scully usually sits in. If she wants the desk today, she can sure as hell have it. 

***

Scully pulls up outside her mother’s house and parks the car. She’s unbuckling her seatbelt when his hand shoots out and stops her. Her eyes shoot up to meet his, one brow raised.

He’s been thinking about it since Maggie called him to extend the invitation to the dinner. When they were first discussing getting married, Scully was concerned about her mother finding out. She had mentioned to him that she didn’t think her mother would keep the secret, but he suspected that she was afraid she wouldn’t approve of what was essentially a sham union. 

But Mulder wears his ring, and people tend to be curious.

Most of the time he can get away with vague answers that aren’t really lies, but he knows Mrs. Scully would grill him about it. He can only answer so many questions by talking about Scully without really talking about Scully before her mother notices. 

“Your mom still doesn’t know, right?”

Scully knows what he’s talking about immediately. “No. Only that we’re living together.”

He slips his ring off his finger and holds it out to her, “Will you hold onto this for me?” Her mouth forms a little O. “She’ll have questions. There are only so many ways I can skirt them.”

“Of course,” she says. Her hands trace the neckline of her cardigan. He’s about to ask what she’s doing as he’s still holding the ring out to her in a flat palm, until the gold chain pops out and she undoes the clasp.

It would be so easy to forget about it. That she also wears the ring. That their union isn’t one-sided. That she’s as intertwined with him as he is with her. She wears it openly at home, sometimes, but the necklace remains hidden when they’re out and about. Despite that, Mulder, with a possessive streak that he tries to damp down, remembers. The image of her ring laid against her chest, or the fleeting vision of it on her finger for a couple days in the hospital, is settled into its own corner of his mind. He thinks of it more often than he’d like to admit. 

Scully plucks the ring from Mulder’s hand and slides it onto the chain. It clinks into place next to hers. Two hearts, strung together. 

“Thank you for mentioning that, I hadn’t considered it,�� The thought of hiding you hadn’t crossed my mind, she doesn’t say. She tucks the necklace back into her shirt and goes to unbuckle her seatbelt again. “You ready?” 

Mulder nods, and they approach the Scully residence. 

“She does think that we’re dating, you know.” Scully says as they walk up the pathway side by side.

“Really?”

“I tried to explain we’re living together because of the convenience, but she was not convinced.”

Mulder’s hand goes to the small of Scully’s back as she does up the couple steps onto the porch. “I’m not surprised. She always seemed to think we were…”

“I know. But now she’s pretty damn sure of it.”

“You did your best.”

Scully wonders how different things would be if they were… romantically entangled. Would he have fought her mother’s Thanksgiving invitation so hard? Would his hand be in hers, or around her shoulders, instead of on her back? Would he drop a kiss onto her lips on her mother’s front porch before facing the crowd inside?

She steps back and her eyes crawl up and down Mulder’s form. One of the buttons on his shirt doesn’t match, she notices. The cleaner would have attached a closer match, so he must have done it himself. 

Who had taught him to sew a button? It’s not a skill she would expect him to have. She can’t exactly picture his mother sitting him down to teach him. Every time Scully thinks she finally knows Mulder, finally understands him, something new surfaces that makes her rethink him. 

Scully sucks in a breath and refocuses. “Still, she’s going to imply…”

“I know. It’s not serious. I mean, it’s not like we’re married or anything.”

Scully chuckles and pushes up onto her toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

“Now that’s not going to help dissuade the rumors, Agent Scully.” He teases.

“At this point, I don’t think there’s any hope.” She rings the bell.

“Dana! Fox! Oh, it’s so good to see you both.” Maggie swings the door open and greets them with her usual warm, excited smile. She takes each of them in for a hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mrs Scully.”

Maggie slaps his arm playfully. “You call me Maggie, Fox, how many times do I have to tell you.”

“Alright Maggie.” Mulder smiles at his shoes. Mulder fucking loves Maggie Scully. She offers affection so freely, in a way Mulder isn’t used to experiencing, especially not in a familial manner. He wasn’t raised with this, with hugs hello and being allowed to call friends’ parents by their first names. It’s foreign to him. She’s been trying to get him to call her Maggie since she started feeding him while Scully was gone, but it had never stuck. 

“Bill and Charlie are in the living room, why don’t you two go sit with them while I check on the bird?“ Maggie offers.

“Tara and Marcel couldn’t make it?”

“No, Tara decided to go to her parents last minute, and Marcel is, well, Polish, so he didn’t want to come back over with Charlie for an American holiday.” Maggie winks at her daughter. “You’re the only one who brought a partner this year, Dana.”

“Mom, that’s not—“ Scully sighs and runs a hand over her forehead in exasperation before deciding to just drop it. “I’m surprised Charlie was able to get the time off, he usually isn’t.”

“I’m not teaching this semester,” a new voice explains, Mulder turns around to face a burly looking redhead. “I’m focusing on research and writing. Makes it a bit easier to get away for American holidays.” He turns to Mulder and offers a hand, which the agent takes. “You must be the Agent Mulder I keep hearing about in Dana’s emails. Charlie Scully.”

“That would be me. It’s good to meet you.”

“Dana says you just go by Mulder?”

“With a first name like mine, you’d go by anything else.”

Charlie laughs, “So tell me, Mulder, has Dana ever told you about what happened at her senior prom?”

“No, she has not.” Mulder replies, tone keen and interested. He turns to his partner, “Scully, am I about to unlock embarrassing childhood stories?”

“Charlie, you promised you would never tell anyone!”

Charlie taps his fingers together conspiratorially, and begins regaling Mulder with the story as they enter the living room. 

Upon introduction to Bill, Mulder understands why Scully had laughed so hard at a joke he once made about the two of them having an affair. Bill hides his contempt for Mulder poorly, with a pinched smile as they shake hands and the occasional glare. When Maggie calls them into the dining room to gather for the meal, Mulder sticks to his Scully’s side and Bill settles himself on the other end of the table, at the head. 

“Mom, that was delicious,” Scully says as she pushes her chair back. She then turns to Mulder, “Should we get on the dishes?”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Dana.” Maggie protests, rising from her seat.

“You cooked us an amazing meal, Mrs. Scully, please let us clean up.” Mulder places a hand on her shoulder to encourage her to stay in her seat and converse with her sons, and he and Scully retreat to the kitchen with piles of dishes in hand.

“You wash, I dry and put away?” Scully offers, and Mulder nods. 

“Thank you for inviting me,” he says after a few moments of quiet washing. “I was afraid it would be awkward. I mean, Bill doesn’t seem to like me very much, but Charlie seems nice.”

“I can’t believe he told you about Marcus.” Scully laughs, “That story is so embarrassing.”

“I’m just glad to have finally earned your embarrassing childhood stories. It’s like I’ve reached the next level of friendship.”

Scully snorts. “Right, Mulder. Step one is they bail you out of jail, step two is they shoot you, three is get married, four is buy a home together, and five is learn about their senior prom. That’s the natural order of things.”

Maggie watches from the other room as Mulder tilts his head back to let out a full belly laugh. Dana elbows him, and he deposits a smear of suds onto her nose in response. As she observes the ensuing playful water fight, Maggie can’t help but hope they soon see what she does, what she’s sure Charlie has picked up on as well, what Bill might still be unaccepting of. There’s so much affection between the two of them. Dana looks up at Fox with a look that she’s never seen on her daughter’s face before, one filled with raw affection. Maggie can tell that whatever they have, it’s coming to a head. Something is there. Everything is there, glowing between them.

Plus, Fox has a thin strip of paler skin on his fourth finger of his left hand, right where a wedding ring would lie. 

next chapter ->

[skyler10fic]

Picnic Poetry

Summary: Carol has a special literary date night planned for Daisy.

Notes: Based on the November 1k image prompt from @ficwip

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

In the familiarity of their favorite coffee shop, Daisy and Carol exchanged clueless looks as Jemma and Fitz laughed at their inside joke. Sometimes double dates were a perfectly cohesive found family, and other times, one couple simply blinked at the other couple in bafflement.

“I’m happy you’ve found each other,” Carol quipped.

“Oh come on,” Jemma admonished, seeing their stares. “It’s Shakespeare! Everyone knows…”

Fitz jumped in, “It was also a quote in last week’s episode of Howling Commandos.” 

“Not helping!” Daisy whined. “We’re smart at things too.”

Carol pointed up. Her satellite, as they all called it despite her part in it being a small component, was successfully returning data back to Earth now. The friends were all very proud, but the time she had spent at work for the last year meant she was behind on pop culture references in addition to literary ones.    

“Yes, we know,” Jemma sighed, “you have an excellent excuse for not being caught up with television, but really? Shakespeare?” 

“I get it, poetry and all that is important,” Carol offered unconvincingly, which only made the withering look from Jemma worse. “Okay, fine, we will read more. And real literature, too.” 

“We will?” Daisy tilted her head. 

Carol turned to Daisy with a sparkling smile only made more charming in the dim, warm light of the coffee shop’s cozy aesthetics. 

“I have an idea.” 

Daisy couldn’t wait to find out what Carol’s wink was about, but she knew flirting when she saw it. 

“Alright, Miss Reading Rainbow,” Daisy teased. “I’m in.” 

—---------------------- 

Carol watched the weather all week, anxious as the last heat of summer cooled into autumn. She found a comet on one of the satellite cameras at work and wished on it, just in case it counted as a wishing star. Technically cheating, but a gesture to the universe that she was not above begging. 

When Friday night came, she got her wish: date night temperatures would be crisp and dry for her plan. 

She arrived at the hillside park early to set up. She had blankets, pillows, a candle, a few love-poetry collection books, and a plate of homemade cookies. She would wait until Daisy arrived to open the tumbler of hot tea and pull out the old autumn-patterned tea cups her grandma had given her. She wanted this night to be meaningful. 

She paced around the setup, realizing what she’d forgotten in her Subaru as the blanket threatened to blow away in a gust of wind. Five minutes later, she was back with seasonal gourds to function as blanket weights. It was still missing something… She spotted some small white flowers growing nearby and a sprig that had broken off. 

“There,” she said aloud to the blanket. Now all it was lacking was a flannel-clad girlfriend. 

—---- 

Daisy saw Carol futzing with the picnic blanket. As she walked closer across the grassy hill and saw more clearly, her heart lept in joy and it was all she could do to keep from running to Carol. 

“It’s perfect,” Daisy called. Carol turned to her and gestured in pride. 

“Ta-da! Not too cheesy?”

Daisy shook her head. “Romantic. Look at all of this!”

“This is for you.” Carol arranged a pillow pile and sat crisscross on her own. Daisy mirrored her and Carol poured their tea, pausing when she noticed the laugh Daisy was holding back.

“What? And don’t say what back, I see you,” Carol teased and her eyes dipped to Daisy’s lips. 

“It’s silly.” Daisy giggled, but shrugged and looked away at the park and then back at Carol. “It’s just, when I was little, the first time I wondered if I liked girls, I said I thought a tea party would be my ideal date. I always laughed about it as such a five-year-old thing to say, but now we’re here.” 

“That’s so sweet.” Carol laughed. “Would it feel more grown-up if I read you some poetry?”

“Let’s try it.” Daisy arranged the extra blanket over their laps and took a cookie.

As Carol read, Daisy fell deeper in love. After the third famous poem, Daisy stopped her with a hand to Carol’s knee and leaned in. Carol met her sweet lips eagerly, and that was the end of their high-brow literary expedition for the evening. They kissed and watched the pink-orange sunset, but Daisy had one last poem for them. 

“This is so embarrassing,” Daisy cringed. “I wrote it myself and it’s terrible, but I wanted to give you something too, as a thank-you for all of this. Or whatever your plan was going to be.” 

Carol rearranged the pillows and put away the food and drinks in her picnic basket. She lay down on the pillows, and Daisy lay back against her, then began reading from a note on her phone. Carol held her tight and kissed her temple several times as Daisy read. It was no Shakespeare, but it was so much more special because it was just between them, for them, about them.  

When Daisy finished, she turned around to gauge Carol’s reaction, feeling the most vulnerable she’d ever been with her. Carol’s lips were slightly open in awe but she didn’t speak.

“Please say something.” Daisy laughed nervously. 

“Sorry,” Carol exhaled. “I love it. You…” 

“Yeah,” Daisy shrugged in faux nonchalance as if she hadn't just bared her whole heart. “It’s getting dark. Time to take this back to my place?” 

“Yes, please.” Carol smiled devilishly, and they gathered their romantic setup in favor of dinner and a night in Daisy’s warm, cozy bed. 

—--------------

Snuggled under the quilt, Daisy yawned and said, “What if we have a lazy Saturday watching Jane Austen movies.” 

“Mhmm,” Carols mumbled, half-asleep. “There’s an Agatha Christie play on Sunday.” 

“There we go,” Daisy concluded. “We are cultured, smart women, who have time for bookish stuff now.”

“So smart,” Carol sighed and cuddled in close as she fell asleep. No matter what anyone said, to Daisy’s mind, this was poetry.  

[reasoningdaily]

Oliver Hernandez’s front yard hums with plenty of bugs for the 12-year-old and his friends to find.

“It’s kind of fun just knowing that there are lots of caterpillars in the yard,” he said.

About a third of the yard looks like a teeny swath of prairie, with wild indigo, bee balm and, until recently, a key plant for monarch butterflies: common milkweed.

Last fall, the city of Overland Park told Oliver’s mother to rip the milkweed out of her pollinator garden.

That bummed Oliver because it’s a plant where brightly striped yellow, black and white caterpillars would appear each summer, grow fat on leaves and transform into the feather-light marvels of nature most famous for what they do next.

“They are pretty,” he said. “Also, whenever they become butterflies, they fly to Mexico. I think that’s pretty cool.”

Across the U.S., milkweed bans are disappearing. But this Kansas suburb and plenty of other towns and cities across the Midwest continue to define it in their city codes as flora non-grata.

Sometimes city, county and state rules conflict, leaving homeowners to navigate mixed messages from local governments that can’t see eye-to-eye on whether to promote milkweed or kill it off.

City workers may not have much heart for enforcing these rules. The plight of the continent’s dwindling monarch population is, after all, well-known.

Ginger Werp, Oliver’s mother, got the impression that the city worker who showed up at her door in late September didn’t really like telling her to remove environmentally beneficial plants.

“Our world is becoming degraded and needs us to change,” Werp said. “Not all of the cities in Johnson County have this rule.”

In fact, Werp points out, this county encourages homeowners to plant common milkweed and reimburses part of the cost for people who replace grass turf with native plants — including this one. The goal is to feed wildlife and fill the soil with deep roots that absorb stormwater and slow the pace of pollution washing into streams.

Werp knows about the program because she works at a nonprofit organization that, among other things, helps the county run it.

And she knows about native plants because wading into prairies to identify species and collect seeds for habitat restoration projects is her full-time job.

A clash of aesthetics

Oliver’s front-yard insectary likely came to the city’s attention because his mother and her neighbors have very different tastes in landscaping.

On a street lined with neatly trimmed bushes and traditional lawns, Werp’s little meadow is perhaps 12 feet by 7 feet. The tallest plants, native Maximilian sunflowers, tower above her head.

Instead of mulching the bed in the typical Suburban style (with cedar chips or other store-bought options), Werp lets fallen sycamore leaves mulch her plot.

Rather than chopping down plant stalks in the fall, she lets them stand, so her family can watch finches raid the garden for seeds all winter.

Werp knows this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

“I’ve had some uncomfortable conversations with neighbors about it,” she said of her flower bed. “But it doesn’t bother me. … I think it’s pretty, I think it’s fun. My son and I have a good time out here.”

She supposes a neighbor became concerned that her naturalistic landscaping would hurt home resale values.

A monarch caterpillar and a milkweed beetle munch on common milkweed in Ginger Werp's garden in Overland Park last summer. Ginger Werp

But when a city worker showed up to inspect her handiwork, he said most of the plants could stay. She only had to remove the contraband common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca.

Werp agreed and the matter ended there.

Had she refused, the city could have sent someone to remove the milkweed and charge her for the work.

Overland Park’s code allows it to prosecute violators, though it’s not clear that the city would actually pursue something so stringent against a butterfly enthusiast. The penalties include a fine of $50 to $500 and/or up to 10 days in jail.

City codes vs. conservation

Other cities in Kansas and nearby states frown on milkweed, too — usually common milkweed but sometimes its relatives, as well.

Winfield, Kansas, puts common milkweed on its list of “rank” plants that harbor rats and insects, pose fire risks or blight neighborhoods.

Sometimes, city codes hinge on context.

Prairie Village lists common milkweed as a no-no, followed immediately by this caveat: “Native plants contained in a native garden, such as common milkweed and other pollinators (sic), would be considered a cultivated garden and not classified as a rank weed.”

City bans on milkweed are on the way out, the National Wildlife Federation says, a fact that it welcomes.

“They have been historically very, very common,” said Mary Phillips, head of the group’s Garden for Wildlife program that aims to integrate habitat into cities and suburbs. “Particularly in the central United States.”

She traces that history to the region’s agriculture. Milkweed can sicken livestock when they eat enough of it. Animals tend to steer clear of the toxic plants, but accidental poisonings do happen, particularly if milkweed infiltrates a hayfield and gets cut, dried and served up to livestock mixed into their hay.

Cities that no longer worry about keeping cattle safe have nevertheless retained the historical opposition to milkweed.

“The real trend is that those bans are being reversed,” Phillips said. “There’s a lot of pushback to get those overturned.”

In 2017, Illinois passed two state laws. One forced cities and counties to drop milkweed bans on common milkweed. The other declared milkweed the state wildflower.

Illinois cities such as Ottawa still have bans on their books, but the state law trumps it.

Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed, is the species that cities most commonly target.

This species spreads not just through its seeds, but also through underground runners.

It takes work to control it in a flower garden, which might explain city bans where they still exist.

Bug chow

The reality is, many cities may not have anyone on staff who knows when or why milkweed was banned.

An Overland Park spokesperson said the city considers common milkweed a noxious weed because the Kansas Department of Agriculture does.

But the state agency refuted that. It says all Kansas milkweeds are “native and beneficial.”

“As far as we know it has never been listed as a noxious weed and there is no indication that there is any interest in listing it as noxious,” a Department of Agriculture spokeswoman said by email. “While it’s not healthy for cattle to eat, they generally avoid it.”

The center of the country is a significant flyway for migrating monarchs. And on their way north from Mexico each spring, they lay eggs.

Common milkweed was a key feature of Ginger Werp's front yard in past years. In September, Overland Park asked her to remove it. Ginger Werp

These famous travelers — by some counts, they were five times as numerous in the 1990s — can’t survive without milkweed.

A monarch butterfly can happily nectar on the blossoms of a wide variety of plant species, but its offspring eat just one thing: milkweed leaves. Without that, the females can’t produce descendants any more than humans can rear babies without breast milk or formula.

But milkweed has gotten harder to find.

“That entire (central) flyway was so heavy with milkweed many, many years ago,” Phillips said.

But today, as Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas notes, genetically modified corn and soybeans allow aggressive glyphosate herbicide (sold most commonly under the brand name Roundup) application that kills, among other things, milkweed. The plants have disappeared from tens of millions of acres of cropland.

Monarch Watch founder Chip Taylor and other researchers wrote in 2020 that restoring milkweed “is the conservation measure that will have the greatest impact” for helping the insects.

Monarch Watch distributes milkweed plants for habitat restoration, encourages the creation of pollinator gardens in cities and suburbs, and mails free plants to eager schools.

Common milkweed holds particular significance.

A 2018 study by researchers at Iowa State University and the USDA compared nine types of milkweed at 10 sites across Iowa from 2015 to 2017. They found Asclepias syriaca was one of two types where monarchs laid the most eggs.

Its decline makes some homeowners passionate about offering their yards as refuge by planting the long-maligned species, with its large leaves and spheres of pink blooms.

Mixed messages

As some governments see the plant in a new light, it can lead to conflicting messages, such as the discrepancy between Johnson County and Overland Park.

In 2014, Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, ended its battle against common milkweed. But as recently as last summer, a butterfly enthusiast there lost her milkweed-heavy pollinator garden to Toronto workers with weed wackers enforcing the city’s landscaping rules.

Lawrence lists common milkweed as a weed in its city code, but its parks and recreation department grows the plant in pollinator gardens.

“Our stance is that common milkweed in a properly maintained garden is perfectly acceptable,” a city spokeswoman said by email.

The city, which is part of a National Wildlife Federation pledge to support monarchs, says it can enforce its weed rule when properties aren’t properly tended.

But a citizen advisory board has asked the city commission to strike milkweed and other plants from Lawrence’s list of 56 weed species. It recommends using the state’s far shorter list.

“The list has kind of grown (over the decades) and nobody knows where a lot of this stuff came from,” said advisory board vice chairman Ben Sikes, a biologist. “Many of the species that are on there, we know are native species. Many of them are important for habitat or for food for native animals and insects.”

The Lawrence City Commission hasn’t acted on the recommendation.

[lovejosephquinn]

Just anything cute and fluffy dad!joe pls I’m having major baby fever right now

Tagging @josephfakingquinn because she's crying out for dad!joe.

Thank you for your request, think we'll all admit we're a sucker for him and I thought this little blurb was so cute. Baby fever delivered.

You're out on a lovely summery day, the sun is shining and all around the park you can hear the sounds of birds chirping in the trees surrounding it, children running around and squealing with excitement at their other friends and the echo's of other parents calling out with a be careful! or come on, time to go!

You and Joe on the other hand are with your 18 month old, wandering over to the younger part of the playground, putting your son onto the swings and you're pushing him lightly whilst he swings back and fourth, Joe in front of him making him giggle and screech when he's making grabby hands at his feet, eventually going to making silly faces every time he swings forward to meet him. Either way it's the most adorable thing you've ever witnessed and since your boy was born, there'd been a lot of those happenings. The giggle's sounding from Joe himself are just a deeper version of what's coming from your son's mouth and it's the best unified sound your ears were to be blessed with at that moment in time; like two peas in a pod, the other noises drowned out from your fixation on your boy's.

The whole week had been some form of win for you as parents, as he was walking little steps with the help of your hands guiding him. Over you trotted to the slide, a giant object to him but miniscule to you as grown ups. Joe's hands gripped to his as his feet touched down to the ground one by one, lifting into the air and stumbling slightly a few times, Joe pulled him up each time, to which instead of making a huge deal about it, you'd both simply chuckle and say oh no, not again. in an excitable voice, purely to let him know there was nothing to worry about.

You took it in turns climbing up the small stairs and sitting your toddler on your lap, edging yourselves to slide down and make a weeee sound each time you descended the tiny slope. Your son was a naturally happy child, boisterous as well as careful, always laughing and smiling at whatever was happening, a sweet triumph indeed.

Sitting on the field after a good hour of repetitive playing, you shared a bag of food you'd prepared for the warm afternoon, a blanket rested against the grass for you all to sit on. Talking amongst yourselves, you'd bare witness that today was another new day of firsts for him as you watched him shuffling over to the daisies in the ground, picking at them and holding them up to show you both at his new finding, a look of shock when you situated them in Joe's curls for him to eventually giggle at his silly daddy for looking so funny with the little flowers tucked a top on his head.

Leaning back to bask in the sun's warmth, you'd only took your eyes off him for a second, Joe getting up to fetch the ball you'd brought for him to play with, rolling it across the blanket and mastering the technique of him rolling it back to you with Joe's help. Putting it by his side then going back over to the park's bin to throw the contents of leftovers before returning over and gasping. Your eyes that were shut for a moment, enjoying the second of quiet had you shooting your gaze open in sudden alert, first at Joe who made the apparent sound of surprise then straight back to your baby who had now given you and Joe your own first that day. "Babe, babe, look!" Joe pointed.

Rising to his feet all by himself, your boy stumbled down to the floor pretty much straight away, trying again each time to see if he could hold his own more and more and eventually steadying himself and taking a step forward; only to land on his little bum once more. Your throat hitched when you witnessed what Joe just had, your hands came to cover your mouth as you both applauded him and cheered on. "Oh my goodness." you shrieked. "He's walking!" Joe's eyes filled with the brink of tears, a proud daddy watching on.

For a little time after that, you and Joe spent facing one another with minimal distance apart, helping him to stand and the other holding their hands out for him to totter on over, a challenge for you all to undertake and successful in his wake. His will and courage to muster the scary task of taking his first steps was proven quite quickly and it without a doubt surprised the both of you that he'd become so independent with it so soon.

You were mentally punching your fist in the air, a shake of your head in disbelief towards your man that you and Joe as first time parents had managed to get your baby to this point. In the same breath, a little sadness that it was all coming too fast and you had a little gutted notion that he wasn't a baby anymore, but becoming a little boy.

After he'd tired himself out from the day's activities, you put him back into his stroller and let him fall to sleep almost immediately, a little wind had hit so you'd covered him with his favourite blanket, cooing and stroking his head before beginning to push him. With Joe by your side, his arm hooked around your shoulder, he stopped in the middle of the path making you abruptly come to a stand still.

"What's the matter?" You smiled.

Joe put his fingers onto your chin, leaning down to give you a simple yet sweet and endearing kiss on the lips.

"I'm just so proud of our son, he's doing so well." Joe moved away not before planting a kiss to the bridge of your nose.

"I know, I just want him to stay little forever." You pouted your bottom lip.

"He'll always be our baby no matter what, my darling." A pause of silence came over the both of you, you nodded slightly to Joe's response, a smirk overcoming Joe's face when you furrowed your brow towards him.

"What?" You chuckled.

"Maybe it's time we made another." Joe winked your way and you had to look away, excitement? Lust maybe? Or just the thought of making another baby together was such a perfect idea.

[aetherdoesthings]

HANAHAKI!READER x ROBIN EPILOGUE

forethoughts: well, it's been a fun ride taking this series home. just wanted to tie a sweet little bow to this present for my lovely EL anon who's been here since the beginning. merry christmas, EL anon. thanks for sticking around.

notes: it's like 12am and i have to wake up at 4 (don't ask). i've never written an epilogue before, so yeah. nevertheless, an ending is an ending, whether happy or sad. gn!reader, hanahaki au, high school au, modern times.

Peace. That was where you were. You strolled around an empty park, your shoes rolling across dry autumn leaves, the wind plastering onto your face like a cool hug. No recollection of your past, any memories that made you who you were could be found. All that surrounded you was nature. A giant cherry blossom tree was erect in the center, its flowers and petals whisked away by the gentlest breeze.

Pain was nonexistent, as was suffering. All that surrounded you was peace and serenity, coating your body like a warm blanket or the softest hug. 

You admired the scenery in front of you, watching the leaves dance in the wind and flowers join along. But as you watched the tree in this never ending realm you were in, enjoying the feeling of the wind brushing your skin, something wasn’t right. The tree was losing more petals and leaves, the wind whisking them away in one current. Eventually, the bark started to fly off the tree, joining the flow of leaves and branches. Like a tornado, the tree broke apart itself, joining its earthly brethren in the spiral flow that pointed upwards. You took a step back, unsure whether to run or stay put. As the tree disappeared, your breathing began to ease. Expanding your diaphragm felt easier and your throat didn’t itch or burn at all. It was a miracle. Air flowed through your body without any problem or obstacle, with no urge to cough or regurgitate. Everything was-

“And that is our presentation about Queen Elizabeth I. Thank you for listening!” Robin exclaimed. Everyone clapped as you stopped screen sharing your presentation, before heading back to your seat with Robin. She smiled warmly at you, mouthing ‘good job’ to you. You tried to smile back and sit down before your legs gave out, but you were only successful in one of the two tasks. 

“Alright, that’s all of our presentations done. Good job, class. Glad to see you’re better in health to do the presentation in person too, Y/N.” Thankfully, before any further embarrassment could be dealt, the bell rang, as the sound of chairs sliding across the ground, computer lids closing and chatter filling the room. You calmly packed all of your stuff, a small smile on your face as you exited the room. A hand wrapped around your wrist, dragging you against the current of the crowd. 

“Hey! Watch it!” You protested, watching Robin drag you into an empty toilet stall, swiftly locking the door behind the two of you. She gently pressed your body against the wall, her hands quick to each side of your cheek. Her lips enveloped yours, giving you a taste of heaven and ecstasy. You leaned into the kiss, mentally mapping out the dimensions of her lips just so you could think about it whenever you weren’t with Robin.

Robin lifted her lips away from yours to your disappointment, but the small giggle she let out in the end was all worth it. Robin gazed into your hazel brown eyes with her ocean blue ones, a perfect sunset created in your eyes. 

“Good job, partner.” Robin giggled, pecking a kiss on your cheek. “That was amazing.”

You blushed profusely, trying to find a spot in your vision that wasn’t covered by Robin. “I-It was nothing…”

“Our grade will say different.” Robin hummed. “Come on. School’s ended. Would you like to go get Starbucks together?”

The corners of your mouth shot up to your eyes. “I’d love that! I mean… if you’re okay with it…”

“Y/N, I’m asking. Of course I’m okay with it.”

“Oh. Right. I didn't know. Sorry… I'm not used to people talking to me. Especially you, now that we're... you know.”

“It’s fine, Y/N. Don't worry about it, alright? Be yourself, that's all I care about. Be as awkward and weird as you want. I'd still love you nonetheless. My treat, okay? To completing our project. And to our first date~”

“You shouldn’t be saying that out loud...”

“Because people'll hear me? So what if people hear me? Why’d I try to hide my wonderful girlfriend from the world?”

You buried your head in the crook of Robin’s neck, letting the heat simmer and wash away from your cheeks. Robin simply laughed at your action, taking the opportunity to plant one more kiss on the top of your head. 

Her fingers ran through the locks of your hair, before ruffling it a bit. You couldn’t help but protest at her action as you looked up at her, worried she would ruin the hair that you had styled specifically for Robin. She stopped at your protest, letting out a chuckle at the sound that came out of your mouth. You gazed into her eyes, drowning in the sea of comfort and serenity.

“Can we go shopping too? Together?” You blurted out.

Robin gleamed at your offer. “Of course! I’d love to!”

Fire shot up from your guts to your cheeks, lava pooling on both sides. “G-Great!”

“Did you have something in mind you wanted to buy?”

“Well… not really… I just like to look around. Maybe I’ll buy something.” You murmured sheepishly. Truth be told, you did have something you wanted to buy. It had been sitting on the top of your buylist for a while. You had the money to buy it too. 

“Come on. We’re not getting anywhere by staying in this stall all day, dear.” Robin unlocked the door, whisking you away before anyone could ask any questions about two girls exiting the same stall together. It still baffled you about how you ended up here. Robin by your side. Your grades finally higher than a B-. 

But hey, since the world didn’t end three days ago, you might as well treat yourself, right?

cheers, EL anon. thanks for taking me on a ride with you.

-aether<3

[fullofgutsndopamine]

or: ludwig takes up jogging and keeps running into you

ludwig thinks if he keeps walking everything will work out.

one foot in front of the other, one, two, step-falls into a pace as his worn shoes kick gravel across the park.

a blanket had fallen over LA, leaving it dark as if someone was covering his eyes-even though it was dark sweat dropped down his back, made his shirt stick to him. he wondered how much longer he has to do this stupid fucking walk that's suppose to help his mental health or whatever bullshit Aimen has told him (he wasn't really listening)

ludwig kicks at a pebble with the tip of his boot and wishes the darkness would engulf him, swallow him whole and make him disappear.

look, nightly runs werent her favorite thing in the world but if it got her out of the house, that was enough for her.

the apartment was too small, too loud, became everything she hated with what seemed like overnight-

"Hey!"

her hands break your fall barely, can feel the tiny pebbles dig into your palms that she’ll have to pick out later.

her head whips up at the figure in front of her who looks more confused than she is.

"Who wears all black to go on a fucking jog in the middle of the night?!" she huff, shaking dirt off from her shirt, "idiot."

ludwig shakes his head as if he's waking himself up before he finally offers his hand wordlessly to help her up. instead, she smacks it out of the way, grumbling as you struggle to stand.

"So," she pushes, still irritated, "the all black?" ludwig's lips buzz with anxiety, trying to find the right words to make this count.

instead, it comes out like this:

"victim blaming," he huffs but the smirk gives him away, "in 2023? real nice."

"it's not victim blaming if you aren't the victim, idiot."

"you could at least ask my name before you try and bully someone off the trail."

she wants to wipe the stupid fucking smirk off his face.

"So i have a name to match with the idiot who decides to wear dark clothes at night?" she crosses her arms over her chest, "sure. give me a name."

now he smiles, crossing his own arms over his chest:

"no, now i don't think you actually want it."

"you're an actual liability," she huff back, "next time wear a safety vest."

and she takes back off on her run before he can see how pink her face is.

days pass. she almost forgets about the encounter if it wasn't for the gravel stained marks on her palms.

the next time she sees him, she hears him before she see him.

he falls into step as she jog.

"so look," he says, immediately matching your stride,

"i wore a fucking pink shirt so i wouldn't be a liability today."

she rub at your temples:

"didn't i say a safety vest, not brightly colored shirt?" his eyebrows scrunch together and he looks genuinely confused:

"is it not the same thing?"

she roll your eyes, squinted at the horizon ahead.

"it's ludwig, by the way." his voice is so quiet next to her, she would almost miss it, "that's my name. Ludwig."

finally she looks over at him and he looks nervous for a second, like he's afraid he passed an imaginary line or said the wrong thing (he always says the wrong fucking thing)

"ludwig," she tries his name in her mouth, getting use to the way it feels, the way it falls off her tongue.

"hm."

"that a good hm?" he teases, finally smiling as you slow down to a slower walk with him, "i hope?"

she wipe at your face to hide the smile.

"indifferent, for now."

it becomes a routine. there's no set time-when darkness falls over LA and the only sound is the hum of cars passing by and crickets in the background is when she begins her walk. eventually, she starts seeing ludwig in the parking lot-both stretching together as she take off on the same route. ludwig listens as she point out the same flowers, acting like she don't always tell him what they are, and she laugh as he trips over his feet as he always does. it's a comfortable routine.

days pass without her. for a while he's afraid he said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, that she’ll be gone forever.

he finally sees her as she sits on the regular bench kicking her feet, neck craned as if she’s looking for someone. he approaches her slowly, a if he's unsure.

With ludwig's fists buried deep in his pockets he stares at the ground to stop the words from falling out of his mouth and falling at the gravel under him. they're shaped like her: missed her yesterday it spills out quietly on the ground not the same without her here. he watches as the words fall at the ground under him and he uses his boots to kick gravel over them before he can do anything stupid, like say the words that so desperately dance on the tip of his tongue.

instead he says:

"Hey"

she all but hops out of her seat, hoping she don't come off as too eager.

"Hey!" she finally say back, a large smile on her face, "finally. was thinking you weren't making it tonight. thought you quit on me."

"like you quit on me?"

he's teasing, hope it comes off that way and he's lucky, as the smile spreads across your lips:

"bastards at work tried to kill me this week-"

"ah," he shakes his head, the anxiety falling out with it, "i see they didn't succeed."

"guess they'll have to try harder."

he laughs, falling into place with her, trying to ignore how her hand hits his gently as they both walk and catch up with one another

[janewaykove]

Dreams ft. Kate Mulgrew & chaos

Okay, I rarely dream of her but last night I chased her around from dream to dream, lol! This'll take a while, so be warned, haha! I'm putting it behind a cut cos there's a lot!

I was at a desk in high school, like the back or outskirts of the classroom. Some idiot who used to make fun of me irl was teaching math. Kate (maybe 10 years ago version) taught at the school and came and sat at my right. I noticed she had on a couple rings, including a wedding ring, and wondered when she'd gotten married again. She looked tired and sad.

I asked how she was and she said her husband comes home from work and expects her to have dinner ready for him, even though she works too. He doesn't appreciate her, doesn't treat her well enough, etc. She said she was about done with him and ready to leave him. Two thoughts came to me: Ask her about her dog (not sure she had one so I didn't but I imagined she did) and ask if she ever considered a relationship with a woman (didn't want her thinking I was hitting on her so I didn't ask).

I noticed her fingers were all callused halfway down each finger. She said she'd been chewing the skin on them! She was stressed and couldn't stop. I suggested putting something bad tasting on her hands to deter her from doing it. I think there was a continuation where I was in class the next day and she was there again. I'm not clear on that, but we got along really well and I was honored she trusted me with her situation and knew I wouldn't tell anyone.

Then I'm in another, very boring, class our in a clearing in the woods. The idiot bully was on my right now (being decent) and I said this class was awful. I said I felt like we'd been there for hours and I'd much rather be in math. Across the "room" I saw Kate standing at a long black table talking to some kids. I caught her eye but we didn't have the same connection. I went up to speak to her and she invited 2 little kids to have chocolate in a bit. I think I was invited as well, or I just stayed to get some candy.

She didn't seem as talkative and I assumed her problems were solved. She was single, but not into me, lol! We walked a bit and then she had decided to give out snowballs (the shaved ice with flavoring kind). Suddenly I was holding one and the ice was shaped like a flower. I said how beautiful she made them and thought she could sell them. She gave them out to everyone around us.

I wanted to dump mine out (only because things taste weird in my dreams) but didn't wanna risk her seeing or finding out I did. Then we're walking across the K-Mart parking lot (if you know me, I always dream about that place, lol). There were 2 FBI agents walking behind us. They were listening to her and I didn't trust them. I let them pass and I quietly followed, listening to them as Kate stayed behind with some kids. The agents didn't know I knew her and I heard them saying she didn't deserve something or other (some achievement but I forget what it was).

At some point I was typing what I heard on a computer and they came up behind me and looked. I tried to cover the screen but they saw their names and conversation. I said I was writing a book and would change their names. They believed me, but made me delete everything and I did. Then it popped back up and I had to do it again and they destroyed the computer but let me go. They went to report to someone.

Now I was walking up the side of a prison building where a bunch of inmates were. I saw Red there. Some tall, skinny blonde comes up walks on my right, says she runs things in there and says her name is Lisa. I said that was my name as well. I tried hard to be nice so she'd leave me be. She asked me what Red's name was and I said it was Galina. We went over to a bus of inmates being dropped off at another building (we were supposed to be on it). Red was on there, shackled and in the back (so people didnt know they were on there). We all had to go into the building and nobody wanted to.

One girl said this is where they torture you for information. There was a woman in a cell that we walked by and she had her foot broken and bent the wrong way. It was black and looked awful but she was glad it was over. Another woman had been severely beaten. By now, I was freaking out. Some of us were in a large room. Red was there and this guy cut off her right pinky finger. I think she had a head wound, too. They said she'd have to have this stomach procedure that would keep her from eating so much. She started screaming when the guy came in to do it.

I grabbed the guy and swung him around and smashed his head into the wall. He was fine. I had to do this like a dozen times. (Why are my dreams so disturbing and violent?!) Finally he was dead (I think). I knew that I could say what he had planned and the higher up people would understand. Red was safe but she didn't really know me. The other girls were gonna take a stand and protect each other. I went out into the parking lot and found a woman in charge. She was speaking to someone but let me interrupt to say what I had done. She said "Puppy" was a mean fat guy who is better off dead (not even the one I killed tho).

Finally, I was at a dance recital by the mall. Kate was there with her daughter (some random girl about 10 or so). I remember talking to Kate and she knew me again, but something happened and I was yelling at something. Some white coats took me down the road to a bus stop and said I should be with the "others" who were crazy. I had to try hard to find my way back to the building (night and a highway). I found it and went inside.

Kate was sitting in a booth (it was a restaurant) with her back to me. I walked up and this woman reached across the aisle to give her a note or receipt and when Kate took it, they kinda held hands. Kate looked up and saw me and didn't know what to say. I said I couldn't believe she would do this (I guess we had that connection again but whatever). Then I saw the woman was in a wheelchair so I felt bad (knowing she deserved to be happy) and just left.

I went outside and cried. I either imagined, or hoped, that Kate would come up to me and comfort me. Then she was there and said some stuff I can't remember. I walked away to take photos of this crazy big cross and Egyptian statues around the corner. My phone had a new update that made it zoom in weird and I dunno. When I was done with that, everyone was leaving so I ran to find Kate and her daughter before I lost them.

I stood up on a car and a woman said it was hers, but she didn't make me get down. I couldn't find them and thought they'd already left. Then I saw them walking to their car and I ran for them. I think I reached them, but then I woke up.

[tummymoth]

Of (Tattoo) Guns N’ Roses [5]

Chapter 5: My Michelle (read on Ao3 here)

Chapter Summary: After an eventful day of helping a girl who ran into his shop hide from someone and gaining a new employee out of it, Xie Lian decides to take Ruoye for a walk at the nearby park and runs into a certain rambunctious pit bull again. Or rather, the pit bull runs into him.

Additional Info: strong language, slice of life, mentions of blood from a cat scratch

Word Count: 11,396

<<Beginning <Previous

Xie Lian cocked his head at the girl who waltzed into his shop. 

Well, to say that she waltzed inside was to suggest some air of grace. It was more accurate to describe the way she sprinted in and all but slammed the door shut behind her—hair tousled and her breaths coming in short, laborious huffs—as a panicked scramble.

The commotion was enough to startle Ruoye from his spot on Xie Lian’s shoulder. The harsh clang! of the door chime made the poor thing sink his claws past the knitted material of his sweater and into flesh (ow), and the subsequent bam! resulted in it being used as a launching pad (ow) as he scrabbled to flee from the ruckus. 

If Ruoye drew any blood, he hoped that it wouldn't seep through his turtleneck and stain his sweater. He had just gotten it from a thrift store the other day, and the creamy white knitted material was of astoundingly high quality—who knows when he’d come across a find like it again?

He waved away any thoughts of bloodstained knitwear and took a moment to look at Banyue. As much as he could see of her, anyway. She wore a black hoodie so large that it nearly engulfed her and a pair of wide-legged cargo pants. They would probably drag on the floor, were it not for her boots giving her a good few inches of height. She couldn’t have been any older than 15 or so.   

Her demeanor itself was… odd, to say the least. She was clearly tense with apprehension, but not in the socially anxious way that was typical of those her age. He took it in stride. All kinds of eclectic patrons walked through the door on a given day. Who was he to judge?

“Welcome to Chestnut Florals! What’s the name for the order?”

“Banyue.”

“That’s a very pretty name,” he earnestly replied. “How can I help you?” 

The girl’s eyes—impossibly dark against the backdrop of skin pale enough to resemble a corpse—flicked to the window for a beat before they settled back on him. “I saw the listing you posted on the window. You’re hiring, right?”

Xie Lian smiled and made no effort to follow her line of sight even as she compulsively eyed the front door. 

“Mn, I am.” In all honesty, he was about to take it down. He had followed Feng Xin’s advice and taped a poster to the window saying ‘Help wanted!’ but after a few weeks of non-stop orders and a distinct lack of people interested in the job, he was ready to throw in the towel. 

He grabbed an application from a small pile of papers and handed it to her. “I have this for you if you’d like to fill it out—”

“I can start today! I have loads of experience with flowers! You have a workshop in the back, right? I can show you right now.” Banyue all but leaped down his throat as she reshouldered her bookbag. 

To her credit, her frantic behavior could almost have been mistaken for enthusiasm.

He took a moment to give it some serious thought. On the one hand, this girl was a complete stranger. If some random person bursting into one’s store just as one was about to close for the day wasn’t a red flag, then it was at least a reason to give pause. On the other, she was clearly trying to avoid whatever was pursuing her outside. 

And if he could be so bold as to bring up another point, he was in dire need of an additional pair of hands around the shop.

“Well, I don’t see the harm in having you help out for the day.” He could ask her questions later, preferably when she didn’t look like she was ready to bolt at any given moment. “Why don’t we do that and see how it goes? I’ll pay you, of course. I have a bunch of roses in the back that need to be dethorned—”

“On it!”

Before he could get a word in edgewise, Banyue’s boots thudded on the ground and her bookbag jostled as she scurried to the back room, application in hand. Xie Lian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he did know that she wouldn’t be able to find the thorn strippers. He was just about to step into the back room himself to show her where he kept them when the front door nearly swung off its hinges. 

CLAK CLANG CLUNK! 

The florist allowed himself a weary sigh as he was about to face his door chime’s newest abuser. 

“You! Hua Ren [1]!” A guttural voice yelled for his attention before he could fully turn around. 

He did a double-take. Now, he has heard many names thrown his way—some endearing, some crass. Most were derogatory—but it was hard to tell whether this stranger was insulting him based on his appearance or his ethnicity. 

His hand unwittingly went to his hair. Sure, he spent some extra time each day to make sure he wouldn’t be balding by forty, but was that so excessive? His current routine was a far cry from all the perfumed oils and expensive skincare products he took for granted as a kid.

The man looked down at him, his chest heaving and nostrils flared as if he had just embarked on quite the run. There were a few moments of him sizing said ‘huaren’ up before he opened his mouth to speak. He was burly and rather tall—easily dwarfing Xie Lian in size—so he had to bend his neck quite a bit to make eye contact with the florist.

So this is what—or who, rather—Banyue had been running from.

“Have you seen a girl about this tall?” the man asked as he put his hand at around the same height as Xie Lian’s chest. 

“Black hair? Big hoodie?” He continued for him. The rustling he had been hearing from the back all this time paused abruptly, and he felt the air behind him become tense. He pretended to ponder the question for a second. 

“Yeah, that’s her,” the man replied with no small amount of animosity. “She acts all innocent, but I promise you. That bitch has been giving me and my boys problems left and—”

“I think she ran down that way not too long ago,” Xie Lian interrupted, nodding his head toward the front window. He was unsure what issue he had with Banyue, but a man of this size chasing after a little girl spelled out nothing but trouble. “You’d better leave quickly if you want to catch up.” 

The man let out a sound of frustration strangely akin to a growl before leaving the way he came, his poor door chime suffering all the more for it. Maybe he’d replace the ‘Help wanted!’ sign with something that would beseech customers to handle the facilities with care. 

He poked his head into the workshop to see Banyue sitting at the table with her back to him. Ruoye was perched on the far windowsill as he carefully watched the stranger that bumbled into his domain messing with his owner’s flowers. 

Not wanting to scare her, he cleared his throat before stepping into the room. “How are you doing with the roses?” 

As he came closer and closer to approaching her, he saw her frame tense up imperceptibly. So much for that.

“They’re going… well…?” Even from only a few feet away, her voice was nearly inaudible. “You said you wanted them dethorned, right?”

His mouth had hardly opened to respond with the affirmative when he saw the state of her hands. The thorns had scratched them up in a number of places. From the look of the red-spotted paper towel next to her, it seemed that she did little more than hastily wipe the blood before continuing. 

“Do they hurt?” he asked after a moment of pause.

“No,” she lied.

He gently took the scissors from her right hand and set them on the table. 

“I did want you to dethorn them, you’re right,” he agreed and grabbed a first-aid kit from the cabinet. “I was going to tell you that I keep the thorn strippers in that cabinet over there,” he nodded at the cabinet in question behind her, “but I wasn’t able to get to the back in time. They’re a convenient tool and help to prevent situations like this.

“Convenient isn’t always best, I’ll admit. Thorn strippers can damage the stem if it’s not perfectly straight, so it’s better to cut the thorns with a knife or a pair of scissors. A lot of people buy roses here though, so I prefer to use the strippers. Cutting thorns sounds like an easy task—if a little tedious—but you can hurt yourself if you don’t have the right experience.”

Banyue’s hands shook as he held one up to examine the extent of the damage.

“This will sting for a little bit, but I need to make sure these don’t get infected. Can you handle that?” Xie Lian waited for her to nod before he continued rambling, hoping that the white noise of his voice would calm her down while his hands worked.

“The roses I sell are all grown by me or other gardeners in the city. It’s a little bit pricier than just buying them in bulk from some company, but it comes with its advantages.” He gingerly wiped her cuts with rubbing alcohol and kept his tone light.

“Because they’re grown locally, I don’t need to worry about them surviving the weather here, or about all the chemicals they spray on them to keep the bugs off. Also,” he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper as he dabbed ointment on her skin to prevent scarring, “I just don’t like the hassle of working with those big companies. They like money too much.”  

He mentally cheered at the sight of her lip quirking up at the corner.

“But because we don’t use pesticides, there’s a higher chance of getting infected by bacteria or fungi if you prick yourself on one of the thorns.” 

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, her eyes not leaving the table. 

Xie Lian waved off her apology as he put bandages on the worst of the cuts. “No harm done. I’m sure you had your reasons for needing to avoid the… gentleman who was looking for you.”

“His name is Kemo. We used to be friends.”

“Used to?”

Aside from a nod, Banyue declined to volunteer any more information. So, he stood up and clapped his hands together. It was best not to press for any details that weren’t his business, anyway. 

“Well, I’m sure your day was eventful before you stumbled in here. Your friend Kemo is probably a few blocks away at this point, so you should go home before he decides to retrace his steps or your parents will be worried,” he admonished.

“I live by myself.” 

Despite himself, Xie Lian found his eyes widening. Had he jumped to conclusions? “How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Nineteen.”

So he did. 19 was still a child in his eyes, but if he had actually known her age he wouldn’t have been cajoling her the way he would a young child. He was about to start profusely apologizing when Banyue shrugged and examined her bandaged fingers.

“It’s okay, I get it a lot.” 

He coughed, suddenly self-conscious. “Either way, I can call a taxi for you. That way, you wouldn’t just be walking on the street alone.” 

Blessedly, Banyue gave him some face and agreed to this arrangement. As she exited the shop, Xie Lian spotted her folding the slip of paper he handed to her earlier and tucking it into her pocket.

“You don’t have to actually apply.”

“Actually, could I work here?” She looked up at him. “I know I caused you trouble, but I started an apprenticeship recently, and it got in the way of the hours of my last job.”

His brows raised, mouth forming a small ‘o’ in surprise. “Sure! I could use some help around the store. How about you come back tomorrow with the paperwork, and we can get started?” 

“Thank you, Mr. Hua!” For the first time since they met, Banyue gave him an earnest smile. 

A sound of confusion escaped him. “Hua?”

“That was what Kemo called you, right?”

“Oh. I guess so.”  

“Then thank you, Mr. Hua!”

He opened his mouth to correct her when the cabbie twisted around to face the two with a sour expression. “I don’t care what your name is. Are you two gonna take up any more of my time, or can I start driving?”

Thoroughly berated, the florist let Banyue go and went back inside. 

Without intruders bumbling around the store and causing such a hubbub, Ruoye was free to lounge about next to the register while the florist busied himself with closing, his tail occasionally flicking back and forth. He didn’t move from his spot in the short while that it took to ensure everything was sufficiently tidied up. 

Xie Lian was just reaching for Ruoye’s harness on the coat rack when his left shoulder twinged in protest. He frowned and rolled it in circles a couple of times. The pain felt superficial. As a matter of fact, it was hardly painful to begin with, only just enough to err on the side of annoying. Maybe his shirt was rubbing against where Ruoye scratched him? He headed to the back and stood in front of the mirror above the sink. It was impossible to pull the neck of his shirt aside to assess the damage, so he carefully peeled off both the turtleneck and sweater in one go. 

Soon enough, he was greeted by a series of short, angry lines crisscrossing the skin of his shoulder. They didn’t feel horribly deep, but the skin around the cuts was reddened and puffing up with irritation. 

He tsked and frowned at the mirror as if that would intimidate the scratches into healing faster. Through the course of his life, he never scarred easily, but his skin was sensitive nonetheless and prone to bruising and redness. Minor trips and bumps always looked worse than they actually were. Gods forbid Mu Qing saw the state of him now. 

“He’ll kick you out of the apartment at this rate, Ruoye…” With a helpless smile on his face, he grabbed the first-aid kit for the second time that day and made quick work of disinfecting the scratches and slapping a bandage (or three) over them.

Once he was sure the bandages weren’t going anywhere, he clothed himself again and headed to the front to call for Ruoye, harness in hand.

“Good boy,” he cooed at the cat once the straps were secure. “It’s a nice evening. What do you say we go for a walk before we head home?” 

Blue eyes blinked slowly at him before the mass of white fur before he butted his head against his hand. Xie Lian laughed and gave him a couple of scratches. 

“I’ll take that as a yes!”

The duo walked a few blocks down to the nearby park. With the days getting increasingly shorter, the streetlamps had already flickered on and the usual crowds had mostly filtered out, much to his delight. Ruoye now had free rein to explore the area and nose at the plants to his delight without having to worry about being accosted by overexcited dogs or children who hadn't yet learned how to handle cats properly. 

Leading the way, Ruoye made a beeline to the trail they frequented. Whether this had anything to do with the small bunches of catnip that grew along it or not, one couldn’t say. 

Regardless, he had promised his cat a walk, and a walk he was going to get. Ruoye happily swatted at the dead leaves covering the ground, crunching some under his paws and pouncing on others as they walked.

The scene was too endearing not to immortalize, so Xie Lian hurriedly pulled his phone out and started recording. He got a good several seconds of Ruoye thrashing about in a pile of leaves—there was probably a piece of catnip that managed to survive the drop in temperature—and sent it off to Mu Qing in his daily quest to get the man to the newest member of their shared living space. 

‘See? He can be cute! (*^^*)♡’ was the caption he sent right after to accompany the video. Almost immediately, a text bubble indicating that his roommate was typing popped up.

‘you better get those leaves off him before he tracks them into the apartment.’

No threats of making Ruoye sleep in the hallway! Success! 

Smile on his face, he was about to reply with an emoticon saluting. His fingers were starting to numb up from the cold—it was surprisingly windy out—when he dimly registered the sound of leaves crunching. His fingers paused over the screen as the sound of leaves being rapidly trampled underfoot came closer. Without thinking, he scooped Ruoye up into his arms. The last thing he needed was one of the cat’s few safe spaces to be tainted by a traumatic experience.

He was turning to face whatever was barreling toward him when something impossibly solid collided with his shins. Not wanting to drop Ruoye, Xie Lian stumbled a few steps forward and whipped his head around, ready to kick away whoever or whatever his assailant was, only to be faced with—

“E’ming?” His foot froze in the air. Sure enough, the pit bull in question was practically vibrating with excitement. She whined in reply and made a move to nose at his ankles. In the dim lighting of the park, it was hard to make out anything other than her eye and the blurred motion of her tail whipping to and fro. 

The florist let out an undignified “agh—!” and shuffled back to avoid being slobbered on. Amidst the excitement, Ruoye squirmed until he was free from the arms carefully cradling him and leapt to the ground at his feet. Before E’ming could get at Xie Lian’s ankles again, Ruoye swatted her muzzle, quick as a viper. 

“Ruoye!” Xie Lian scolded. It looked like his claws were retracted, but he didn’t want his cat making a habit of slapping other animals around. 

E’ming didn’t even notice Ruoye until this point, preoccupied as she was with Xie Lian, and dipped into a playful bow. After a few moments of pause, it was clear the cat was decidedly uninterested. He remained seated between her and his owner, tail flicking with irritation. 

When that didn’t work, E’ming switched tactics and flopped onto her back. Paws in the air, her tongue lolled out as she panted happily. 

Ruoye blinked, unmoved by the display. 

His owner, however, was not. He sidestepped Ruoye and bent down to scratch her belly. “You gave me a scare, little one,” he said. “Is your owner nearby?” 

She didn’t offer him much by way of a reply aside from twisting her torso this way and that as she tried to lick his hand. After a few moments of playing, he patted E’ming’s chest and produced his phone from his pocket.

“I’ll need to call him. You shouldn’t be wandering around on your own, especially at this hour,” he playfully admonished. “This is the second time! What if he thinks I’m sneaking you away? I doubt he’ll think I’m such a ‘nice man’ anymore.” 

Not one to be left out, Ruoye sidled up and flopped over on his side, meowing plaintively as if the burdens of this world were simply too much for him to bear. What a thankless job he was tasked with, being a fearless guardian tirelessly protecting Xie Lian from the evils of this city.

He didn’t so much as move a muscle when E’ming tried to sniff at him and opted to meow again. With the wind picking up and swirling dead leaves around him, he really did make for a tragic sight. Look! He was once again sacrificing himself for his owner’s well-being! Surely such a demonstration of bravery warranted a treat. 

He laughed at Ruoye’s dramatics as the phone rang. It was a few short moments before someone picked up.

“Hello?” A warm voice quietly answered.

Xie Lian straightened his back in spite of the fact that E’ming’s owner couldn’t see him. “Hello! I’m sorry for interrupting your evening, but E’ming found me again. You wouldn’t happen to be at the park tonight, would you?” 

“It seems I have to keep apologizing for her antics.” He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he swore he could almost hear the other man smiling as he spoke. “I let her run around when it’s not crowded to tire her out, but she normally stays by my side. She hasn't caused you any grief, has she?” 

“No grief at all!” Just like last time, the florist was quick to shoot down the notion of her being anything less than a joy to have around, no matter how excitable she was. “Where are you? I can bring her to you to make sure she doesn’t run off again.” 

“Oh, you don’t have to. I’d hate to inconvenience you.” 

“Really, it’s no trouble—”

Before he could say much else, E’ming’s ears pricked up and she abandoned her pursuit of trying to play with Ruoye, sprinting toward an unknown destination.

“E’ming, wait—!” 

Ruoye in tow, he followed the pit bull past several trees before he found her obediently sitting next to a bench a few paces away. 

Her owner, dressed in the same brilliant red coat from when they first met—unbuttoned, this time—was sitting with an ankle crossed over his knee and his arm lazily propped up on the backrest, nursing a can of what looked like an energy drink. Argent rings glinted on his fingers in the dim light of the park. The same necklaces from last time hung from his neck in elegant lines. In one hand, he held a silver dog whistle between two forefingers and E’ming’s leash. A picture of idle temerity, one would think that he was simply lounging about on a quiet afternoon despite the late hour. 

The man uncrossed his legs and bent down to clip leash to collar before standing up and approaching him, his dog following closely behind. 

“I thought that this lout,” his eye sharply flitted to E’ming and his tone turned sour as she gnawed on a stick, “could handle being off-leash without mauling any unsuspecting passerby, but I was mistaken. I’ll have to trouble you to forgive me for that misjudgment.” 

There was plenty of displeasure in the other man’s voice as he insulted her, but it was hard to pay it much mind when he was also bending down to indulge her with scratches behind the ears.

“There’s nothing to forgive. E’ming is a good girl. I’m sure she just has a love for people.”

“She has a love for you if anything,” the man grumbled as he brushed a stray leaf from her coat. “Plenty of troublesome rabble she could be bothering, but she has to go and make it a habit to harass the nice man minding his business.”

The thought, He still thinks I’m nice, came to his mind unbidden. He quickly shook it away and smiled. “I don’t think I ever caught your name?” 

“I go by a lot of names, but you can just call me San Lang.” 

“Ah…” Xie Lian hesitated. Was it not too soon to be on a nickname basis? He was unsure if it was truly okay to refer to someone so casually after only meeting him twice, and the last thing he wanted to do was be overfamiliar. “Would you like to walk together? Well—if I’m not keeping you from anything, that is! If you’d rather have time to yourself or if you have somewhere to be, that’s fine too.”

If San Lang noticed any awkwardness in the air, he didn’t make a show of it as he stood up and dusted invisible debris from his pants. As he came closer, Xie Lian couldn’t help but notice the smell of rain and a glint of silver on his left brow. That was new. Surely he would have noticed any piercings when he first stopped by the store? 

“I can’t imagine anything happening tonight that would be important enough to whisk me away at a moment’s notice.” 

He decided to take that as a yes and the two continued along the trail, both of their pets walking ahead of them on slack leashes. E’ming tried to reacquaint herself with Ruoye multiple times and was rebuffed by him with each and every attempt. 

San Lang clicked his tongue with a glower. “E’ming, heel.” 

Her gait instantly changed and she circled back to his right side to keep pace with him. Head tilted up and tongue lolling out, she trained her eye on him intently as they walked. 

He offered Xie Lian an apologetic smile, and for a moment the florist distantly wondered how the sun could possibly be out at this hour. “I’m afraid she’s taken a liking to you both. Thank you for your patience with her, Mr. Xie.” 

Choking on his spit, the florist coughed. “Do I really look that old? I’m only twenty-eight…” Realizing that he could be coming off as vain, he waved his hand and laughed it off. “‘Mr. Xie’ makes me feel like my father.” 

“Alright then,” the other man breezily replied. Xie Lian thought he saw the beginnings of a roguish smile on his face, but attributed it to a trick of the light. San Lang nodded his head at him in acknowledgement, keeping it lowered for a second longer than what was probably necessary. “Thank you for taking care of this one, gege.”

‘This one’ was obviously in reference to E’ming; Xie Lian knew that. Some delirious—delusional, even—part of his brain took it as San Lang thanking him for his attention. That, combined with him looking like he was bowing to Xie Lian? He prayed to whatever gods out there that the lampposts weren’t bright enough to reveal the heat spreading on his cheeks and mentally kicked himself for such a reaction.

“It’s nothing,” he managed to squeak out. “Just call me Xie Lian. We’re close enough in age, right?”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind that I’m a bit of a stickler for honorifics,” San Lang explained. His eye swept over to Xie Lian for a moment. “Gege, are you okay? You look flushed.” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he lied. At this rate, his hand was going to fly off from all of the waving it was doing. “I’m just sensitive to the cold.” This was not a lie. In only two layers, it was clear that Xie Lian hadn’t accounted for the wind chill. 

“Would you like to borrow my coat? ” San Lang had already set down his drink—Monster Energy, the florist noted—and paused to shuck off his coat as he spoke, leaving him in a simple white buttoned shirt and black slacks. With his hair in a cursory braid, he gave off a more boyish air as opposed to the normally refined way in which he carried himself.  

Xie Lian balked. “You don’t have to! It’s my fault really, I should have dressed for the weather this morning.” 

“I insist.” 

“Won’t you get cold too?” 

“Gege, you’re shivering.”

Sure enough, he vaguely registered his teeth clacking together. Well. He hadn’t even noticed that. The florist forced his jaw to still and didn’t fight San Lang when he draped his coat around him. The shoulders were a little too wide, but the heavy warmth was more than welcome as it enveloped him. Xie Lian tried not to focus on how pleasant the scent of his cologne was as he inhaled. It smelled of petrichor and lilies with a subtle note of something metallic. 

“Thank you, San Lang.” 

The other man gazed at him with an unnamable expression before he cleared his throat. “It’s nothing. I’m just glad I can help.

“Besides, I think the color suits you.”

Xie Lian turned away to cough (it had nothing to do with the fact that his face was on fire, he swears). Insisting that they refer to each other by nickname and sharing his coat despite being near strangers, and now this? Maybe San Lan was a naturally playful person. Or maybe the concept of shame was just completely foreign to him.

“E’ming seems very well-trained,” Xie Lian said in what he hoped was a graceful attempt to change the subject.

San Lang hummed. “She was in school to be a guide dog on account of,” he paused and made a vague gesture at his eyepatch with no small amount of disdain as if he loathed to acknowledge it, “this.” 

So it wasn’t just a bold fashion statement. Xie Lian took a moment to get a closer look. 

Just like his other accessories, San Lang’s eyepatch was of exquisite craftsmanship. The leather looked freshly polished. It had beveled edges and was molded perfectly to fit the contours of his sharp features. There were two straps securing it to his head; one was of the same black leather, while the other was thinner and looked like silver thread—most likely decorative. 

Xie Lian wanted to ask what happened to his eye but restrained himself for the sake of maintaining propriety. “Was?”

“The trainer she was working with insisted that she couldn’t carry out a command to save her life and that a dog with one eye was a lost cause.” San Lang rolled his eye with a level of contempt that left the florist wondering if he was only talking about the dog. 

Xie Lian frowned in sympathy. “So the trainer kicked her out?” 

“No. I pulled her out of the program and trained her myself.” He paused to look down at E’ming, who was still gazing up at him, before he met eyes with Xie Lian sporting an impish—if not mildly vindictive—smile. “Not so bad for a ‘lost cause,’ I would say.” 

At that, they fell into a relatively comfortable silence. After a few minutes of walking, the pair came across a small clearing bordered by trees. San Lang bent down and unclipped E’ming’s leash, much to her delight. 

“E’ming, break.” The pit bull took off at the sound of her release word, her tail whipping up a storm as she was given free rein to run to her heart’s content and sniff at whatever she wanted to. 

Laughing at the sight, Xie Lian looked down at Ruoye. “Would you like to join her?” 

Two blue eyes slowly blinked up at him. 

“Hm, a no then.” He scratched the cat’s head. 

“Gege,” San Lang called from behind them. “There’s a couple of benches here if you’d like to rest your feet.” 

“Alright!” He made his way with Ruoye leading the charge.

“This is her favorite spot in the park,” San Lang explained as they both watched E’ming roll around in the grass. “I usually take her here to get all the energy out before bed. She’s impossible otherwise.” 

“I’m sure she’s not ‘impossible,’” Xie Lian differed. “Just very enthusiastic.” 

“You have no idea, gege.” San Lang groaned and leaned back into the bench. It was hard not to laugh at the sight of him acting like an affronted teenager. “I’m sure I’m growing grey hairs because of her by now. Parenthood is taking the best years of my life away from me,” he mourned. 

The florist made a show out of scrutinizing San Lang’s hair and leaned close. The light from a nearby lamppost reflected off of inky black strands, his bangs free to hang over his eyepatch. 

“Your hair is in perfect health, San Lang,” he observed, his voice adopting a medical quality as he played along. “Not a single split end or white hair in sight.” 

San Lang turned his head to face him, their noses only inches away from touching. Xie Lian blinked owlishly and tried not to think about that too much. “Are you sure? My hair might be thinning out from the stress.” Before the florist could say anything, he turned his head away again for scrutiny. “I think you should check again.” 

Xie Lian’s mouth opened in shock. Truly, this man really was shameless. “...You’re fishing for compliments.” 

“Is that so? What makes you think that, gege?” 

“Don’t play dumb!” Despite crossing his arms in indignation, he found that a smile had made its way onto his face.

San Lang turned his head to face Xie Lian, his eye playfully bright. “Would gege be mad if I was?” 

Xie Lian huffed. “Well, I don’t think you would need to go around fishing for them.”

“What makes you say that?” San Lang’s face brightened as he propped up a hand on the back of the bench and rested his head on it, legs crossed as he fully faced the florist. 

Well, where should Xie Lian start? The man was impeccably dressed and remarkably well-spoken. Between his flawless skin and kempt appearance, it was clear that he went to great lengths to care for himself. His features were severe and carefree in equal measure—if it was possible for someone to be objectively handsome, it would have been him. 

He was just about to reply and say all this before he snapped his mouth shut and pointed an accusing finger at the younger man, not unkindly. “You’re doing it again!”

“Guilty as charged,” San Lang grinned, looking quite the opposite.

Xie Lian was at a loss for words. “You…” 

“Me?” He raised his brows in question. 

“...Are shameless.” 

San Lang laughed for the first time that night, his low voice melodic as it rang throughout the clearing. Xie Lian looked at him as he leaned his head back, eye crescented with how hard he was laughing. Surely what he said wasn’t that funny?  

“Maybe,” he said once he was able to catch his breath, “but I’m the most honest man you’ll ever meet.” 

“For some reason, I find that hard to believe,” the florist drily replied as he turned his attention to Ruoye. The cat had leapt onto the bench and decided to use his lap as a resting spot.  

“I guess I’ll have to run into you more often, then,” San Lang mused. Xie Lian turned to see him leaning against the backrest of the bench, head still on his hand as he studied the older man’s expression. 

“For the sole purpose of proving myself, of course. Gege will give me a chance, right?” 

Xie Lian didn’t know what to make of that. He also didn’t know what to make of the way his heart jumped weirdly as San Lang’s words sank in. Rather than let the conversation drift off into awkward silence, he opted to point at the younger man again. 

“See? Shameless!”

Sang Lang raised both hands in acquiescence, a smile playing on his lips. “Okay, okay. You caught me.”

If asked how much longer their conversation continued to carry on, Xie Lian wouldn’t have been able to answer. What he did know is that, in addition to being well-spoken, San Lang was remarkably well-read in most areas of literature (“I find myself rereading I Live in the Slums by Can Xue a lot. She’s a remarkable writer.”), prolific in most areas of art (“I wouldn’t say that, gege, I just have a lot of time on my hands. I dabble.”), and had a penchant for collecting most kinds of antiques (“Paintings, weapons, furniture, whatever. They last longer than whatever trash is being mass-produced nowadays.”).

They probably would have sat there all night, if it weren’t for E’ming approaching the two—trotting this time, not sprinting or bounding wildly as she did before—and bumping her nose against Xie Lian’s knee. 

San Lang made a sound of disapproval. “You’ve been enough of a fuss. Down.” 

Disregarding her owner for the first time that night, E’ming huffed and tried to jump up, clambering onto Xie Lian and trying to plant her paws onto his lap. Ruoye narrowly avoided her paws and swatted at her in annoyance.

“Ruoye,” Xie Lian chided as he scooped the cat back and held E’ming back with an outstretched arm, “be nice!” 

He wrestled both animals for a short moment before a terse whistle beside the florist cut through the chaos, and the pit bull whipped her head toward the noise. San Lang narrowed his eye at E’ming, his expression one of irritation. 

“Sit.” 

She hesitated for a second before letting out an affronted whine and obeying. For good measure, she huffed and lowered herself until her nose was level with the toe of San Lang’s shoe. Without her there to badger him, Ruoye calmed down and reoccupied his spot on Xie Lian’s lap as a curled-up ball of fur. The florist absentmindedly ran his fingers through his fur. 

E’ming whined and flopped onto her back at her owner’s feet, looking almost as if she was throwing a tantrum. 

“Is someone cranky?” He laughed as he bent down from where he sat and patted her belly. “What a good girl you are. You listened so well today.” 

“Gege, you’ll spoil her,” her owner bemoaned. 

“Oh, but she deserves to be spoiled every now and again.” Xie Lian’s tone morphed into something playful. “And I’m sure you agree, don’t you? Don’t you~” 

His phone interrupted him with a ding! Upon checking it, he was greeted with a text from Mu Qing. 

‘where are you?? feng xin is here.’

‘I lost track of time ! ╥﹏╥ Be home in twenty ?’ 

Xie Lian dropped his phone back into his pocket and gently peeled Ruoye off of him before setting him on the bench. The cat gave a quiet meow in protest. 

“Is it time for gege to leave?” San Lang inquired as he observed the man standing up. 

“Mhm. I’m afraid I lost track of time,” he replied. He made to remove the coat from his shoulders with only a small amount of reluctance. “Ruoye looks ready to go home, anyway. Thank you for letting me borrow your coat.” 

“You can just hold onto it until next time.” 

Xie Lian blinked at him dumbly, temporarily frozen in surprise. Next time? 

“It’s cold out, anyway,” the younger man continued, his tone nonchalant and face hidden as he bent down and readjusted E’ming’s collar. 

Suddenly feeling too hot, the florist precipitously unshouldered the coat and took care in handing it back. “I couldn’t possibly take this home. I’ll be fine!” 

San Lang stood up and regarded Xie Lian for a moment, his movements slow as he took his time in accepting it. “Then would gege indulge me by letting me call a ride?” 

“Ah…” Xie Lian couldn’t help but feel as if he was taking advantage of his time to begin with. 

“It wouldn’t be any trouble at all. I’d feel better, actually.” 

Well, he couldn’t argue with that. It was as if he read his mind. Abashed, he agreed and San Lang made a call as the pair walked back. The walk took only a few minutes, but upon getting to the entrance of the park, there was a sleek black Lexus waiting for them. As they came closer, a smartly dressed man exited the driver’s side and opened the door. 

“Evening,” was all he said as he gave the two men a curt nod. A flicker of familiarity registered in Xie Lian’s brain, but he couldn’t place where he had seen the man before.

He had no mind to play “guess who,” anyway, busy as he was with gawking at the sight before him. The car looked understated enough—it wasn’t as if Xie Lian knew enough about cars to tell—but a chauffeur on top of everything else? In his simple work clothes, he had the irremediable feeling that his newly met friend’s trappings critically outclassed him. 

“Gege,” San Lang’s voice interrupted his thoughts. He was already seated in the middle, with E’ming in the farthest seat. “Are you coming in?” 

Xie Lian coughed and cleared his mind of the urge to backtrack and insist that his apartment really wasn’t that far of a walk before nodding and stepping in. He told the driver his address and, after a few seconds of readjusting in his seat, he managed to get Ruoye to sit in his lap again as they set off. As he relaxed in the admittedly roomy and plush leather seat, the work from today seemed to hit him all at once. 

“I hope you won’t be too offended that I’m not a great conversationalist right now, San Lang. I’m just—” he interrupted himself with a yawn and leaned his head against the door. “Feeling tired right now.” 

The other man looked up from meticulously picking leaves and bits of grass out of E’ming’s fur. His eye was soft with an emotion Xie Lian was too tired to interpret. “No worries, gege. You probably had a long day. Do whatever is comfortable for you.” 

The drive turned what would have been a twenty-minute walk into a pleasant ten minutes of quiet. Once they pulled up in front of his building, the driver stepped out and opened the door for Xie Lian. 

“Thank you for your help,” he earnestly acknowledged as he stepped out, the bell on Ruoye’s collar giving a delicate jingle as he trailed closely behind him. 

The driver nodded at him. 

Xie Lian bent down a bit. “And thank you, San Lang! It was good seeing you and E’ming.” 

“I got to spend what would’ve otherwise been a boring evening talking to gege,” came San Lang’s easy reply. “If anything, I should be the one doing the thanking.” He smiled back at the florist with a hand on E’ming’s collar to ensure she wouldn’t bolt after him. 

Goodbyes exchanged, Xie Lian headed up to his apartment (the elevator was working this time, bless) and came home to his expectant dinner companions. 

“I’m sorry I’m home so late,” he apologized again to Mu Qing while Feng Xin was setting up the table. 

“It’s fine.” His roommate waved him off, tone noncommittal. “Feng Xin wanted to wait for you, so I figured I’d ask to make sure you didn’t end up chasing after strays again and getting lost.” 

“Did I keep you both waiting long?” 

“No.” 

“His book club ran overtime, so if anything I was waiting on them to leave.” Feng Xin poked his head out from the kitchen with dishware in hand. He was dressed in joggers and a long-sleeve compression tee, the same kind he had gifted to Xie Lian and Mu Qing (“It’s thermal! You’ll thank me this winter”). “Where were you anyway?” 

“It’s not a book club,” Mu Qing insisted for the nth time before Xie Lian could respond, his eyes rolling to high heaven. 

“You meet up with people every week to talk about books and how reading them made you feel. What else would you call that? Church?” 

“I resent that comparison.”

As the other two bickered, the smell of rain and lilies came to mind unbidden. Xie Lian smiled and shucked off his shoes to begin helping out with dinner. 

Xie Lian opened up the shop the next day in high spirits. 

“Ah, let me see here,” he murmured absentmindedly as he rummaged through the desk drawers. No matter how many times he straightened them out, they always managed to be in some form of disarray or another when he needed them most. Ruoye very helpfully swatted at the various baubles rolling around amongst the mess. 

After a moment of searching, he found a small stack of yesterday’s invoices and plucked them from the yawning abyss.  The door chime sounded.

“Right on time, Banyue.” He looked up and smiled at the girl in front of him. True to her word, she had shown up this morning with all of the necessary paperwork in hand. She nodded and offered him a small smile. 

Xie Lian clasped his hands excitedly and went to the back room. “Great! Welcome to your first day on the job! I’ll walk you through your responsibilities.”

She offered him a small smile and made her way behind the register with little sound before setting her backpack on the counter behind them. Now that the drawer was shut, Ruoye blinked and meowed at the newcomer with mild interest.

“Oh, hello,” Banyue’s smile grew as Ruoye tentatively sniffed at the air in front of him. She raised her hand halfway before pausing and looking at Xie Lian with a question in her eyes. 

He waved his hand reassuringly. “You can pet Ruoye all you’d like. Just let him get familiar with you for a bit; He’s a rescue and he’s still rather shy.”

Given permission, she nodded and slowly offered her hand to let him nose at her fingertips. “What a handsome cat you are,” she praised when he started trying to give her licks.

As if he was responding to the praise, Ruoye took it upon himself to headbutt her palm with a purr, his tail languidly swishing back and forth behind him. Xie Lian stifled a chuckle and gave him a few pats. 

“He’s also incredibly vain. Flattery will get you everywhere with him.” 

“I think he’s the right amount of vain, Mr. Hua,” Banyue replied, clearly feeling more at ease now that she had a furry friend to lave with affection.

He coughed awkwardly and set the stack of invoices on the counter. “So anyways. We can take our time going through orders without so much pressure on you.

“Pricing is based on the size of the arrangement and if the flowers are harder to come by,” he said as he dove into the little spiel that he definitely did not rehearse to Mu Qing and Feng Xin the night before over dinner. From the bottom of the stack of invoices, he gave her a larger sheet of paper.

“I wrote up a list for you, so it’s easier to remember. It’ll come to you more quickly after a couple of weeks.” He paused and looked at her to make sure she wasn’t overwhelmed by the deluge of information.

“Mhm.” Banyue took the paper from him and gave it a quick once-over before looking at him again.

“I’ll have you mostly working the front until you’re more comfortable helping me take care of the flowers. Once we get into a rhythm or we have a system in place that works for both of us, it’ll be a lot more flexible and you’ll be able to do as you wish as long as it keeps the shop running smoothly. 

“I’ve never had someone working for me, so this will be a learning experience for the both of us,” he said with a sheepish smile. 

“Now, ringing people up is easy. This is an older register…” Older in this case meant that he fished it out of those run-down antique stores that usually sold junk. To find such a charming machine in a place like that was a real stroke of luck. “...so you just input the customer’s total, if they’re paying by cash or card, and then you hit ‘enter.’” 

Xie Lian’s hands moved to demonstrate as he explained the process. This invoice was for a simple, medium-sized rose bouquet, and he pressed the corresponding numbers out of muscle memory. When he pressed the ‘enter’ button, the register gave a small ding and the cash drawer popped out. 

“And because this order hasn’t actually been paid for yet, I’m going to cancel this transaction by pressing here,” he hit a button in the top corner, “and it won’t count for the total when I close the register tonight.” Xie Lian tucked the invoice into the bottom of the pile and handed Banyue a slip.

“Why don’t you try for yourself?”

He had her practice a couple times to make sure she was familiar with the system—work experience or not, he knew his register was a great deal older than the newer systems other stores used—and was pleasantly surprised at how well she handled the machine deciding to be temperamental and jam up the receipt printer.

With that out of the way, he showed her around the workshop. 

The floral refrigerators on the far wall stored arrangements ready for pickup. The large work table was used for preparing the flowers and doubled as a dining table during lunch breaks. The standing cabinet in the corner of the room housed coils of twine and other trinkets used to decorate the arrangements. Underneath the sinks were cleaning products and other supplemental plant care products. Propped against the stainless steel basin was a broom and a mop. 

Xie Lian took extra care to emphasize the importance of keeping the floor dry.

He peered down at Banyue, who was diligently taking mental note of all the various pieces of information he offered her, and smiled. He led her past the large work table to the other side of the room. 

“And this is the ‘Green Corner.” The name had been offhandedly coined by Mu Qing on a day when he was helping out, and it had stuck since. 

Sunlight streamed through one of the windows, landing on gunmetal shelves laden with indoor plants and flowers of all kinds. Ivy crawled out from its pot and wound around the metal supports, making for quite a lush sight. Larger pots sat on the ground around the shelves, home to monstera, snake, and bird of paradise plants. On one of the walls, a little calendar with a watering schedule was posted.

“Sometimes people come in looking for plants to buy for decoration, so I grow and sell them—or I’ll sell cuttings at a reduced price so they can propagate them themselves.” He gave the rest of the room a once-over. Surely he was forgetting something…? 

He opened his mouth to continue when his phone started ringing. 

“I’m sorry, Banyue. Just give me a moment,” Xie Lian said as he fished his phone out. “In the meantime, you can look around and familiarize yourself with the space. I have a couple of cabinets I didn’t get to, but those hold all the cellophane, pots, and buckets. You won’t need to worry about those for a bit.”

The girl nodded and stayed to look at the plants of the Green Corner while Xie Lian went to the front to fetch a pen.

“Chestnut Florals, how can I help you?” he greeted.

“Xie Lian, surely you have my number saved?” Jun Wu’s voice carried a hint of mirth over the line.

The pen he had in hand clattered to the floor as icy shock washed over him. 

Why is Jun Wu calling? 

He frantically searched for where the pen had rolled off to. He still needed it. Surely it didn’t roll away too far? It had a—oh, what did you call it—that bit of plastic you’d use to leave your pen hanging off a stack of papers or your breast pocket… A clip? 

And in the middle of the day, too? 

A clip. So there was no way it would’ve been able to get far. Maybe it bounced…? He should’ve kept an ear out as it fell. That way, he could at least hear the general direction it went in. Honestly, how clumsy was he? 

What does he want?!

“Xie Lian?” He snapped out of his stupor. 

“Ah…” His mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but he found that he was unable to coerce his lips into forming any words of substance. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“It’s nothing that’s any cause for worry. I just haven’t heard from you in a while and was wondering if you had given what we talked about any thought. I don’t mean to rush you, of course. I just know you to be a punctual person. As the end of the year is right around the corner, I’ve been drafting up changes to tenants’ leases, and thought of you.”

The florist’s throat clicked as he swallowed. The sound of it was foreign to his ears.

“If you’re too busy to be bothered with such things right now, I can always call back another day or stop by your unit to discuss in person.” 

“No!” Xie Lian winced at how forcefully his voice came out. He cleared his throat. “It’s no bother, I’m just training a new employee right now.” 

An oppressive pause left Xie Lian to stew with his thoughts once again. Jun Wu chuckled good-naturedly. It did little to soothe him. 

“I see. Well, far be it from me to get in the way of your matters of business,” he said magnanimously. “I won’t keep you.”

Xie Lian felt his shoulders sag as air released itself from his lungs. He quickly straightened his back again and hoped it wasn’t audible over the phone. “Thank you for understanding. I’ll get back to you when I can.” 

“I hope to hear from you soon.” 

The line went dead.

At that, he set the phone down and shook his head to clear any thoughts about the newest encounter with his landlord. He had no time to linger on the minute details; Banyue was waiting for him. What kind of a boss would he be if he spent her first day preoccupied with his personal life? It was better to talk about it with Mu Qing this evening, anyway. 

For good measure, he clapped his hands over his cheeks a couple of times. 

He poked his head through the door to see Banyue sitting cross-legged in front of one of the Green Corner’s larger pots, probably reading the little labels with the name of the plant, some information on its origins, and basic care instructions. 

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Banyue.” He smiled contritely when she turned toward him. 

“I wasn’t waiting long,” she replied, standing up. 

Xie Lian gingerly removed a large bundle of roses from the fridge and set them on the work table. “How about I show you how to properly dethorn these?”

An hour later, Banyue managed to nick her fingers even with assistance from the thorn strippers. Xie Lian had wanted to move on to something else after the first few times, but she had insisted that she wanted to keep going. He was only able to force her to stop when they both agreed that the bandages on her fingers were no longer effective in keeping her from bleeding on the flowers. 

The florist called for a 15-minute break so he could readdress the scratches on her hands. 

“What hours can you work?” Xie Lian asked, trying to make conversation. He tried to keep the subject away from anything associated with roses as he cleaned her cuts. The poor girl was most likely mentally kicking herself for a rough start to her first day at the shop, and he didn’t feel that it was necessary to rub salt into the wound. Disinfectant was enough. 

Banyue’s feet gently swung from the stool, her expression thoughtful. “I can be here from opening to afternoon every day except for Saturdays. My classes are in the afternoons, and I have my apprenticeship every evening and all day on Saturday.” 

“Sounds like you have awfully long days,” he commiserated, frowning in sympathy and thinking back to his college days. He had it easy, all things considered, but it was four years of late nights and long lectures powered by energy drinks that were probably the reason why he had high blood pressure today. Six years, if he counted his time in his graduate program.

“What’s your apprenticeship for?” 

“You know Crimson Elysium?” 

Xie Lian perked up and nodded in recognition. “I have a customer who works for the owner—He Xuan’s a regular, you’ll see him at some point. Downtown, right? In Ghost Tower? ” 

“Mhm.” She nodded. If he paid close enough attention, he could see an elusive flash of excitement pass her features. “I started my tattoo apprenticeship there not too long ago.” 

Tattoo? Xie Lian blinked and thought back to the time when he delivered flowers to He Xuan a few weeks ago. He had never been inside a tattoo parlor before (did tattoo parlors have reception rooms?), but whatever mental image that came to his mind’s eye didn’t match the reception room he had seen, what with its expansive ceiling and meticulously curated decor. To be fair, Ghost Tower didn’t correlate with his idea of an art studio either.

Maybe he really did need to reexamine his personal biases. 

“I didn’t know they were taking apprentices! How are you liking it so far?” He also didn’t know that Crimson Elysium was a tattoo parlor, to begin with, but Banyue didn’t need to know that.

She bit the inside of her cheek in thought. “I thought it was kind of hoity-toity at first. The artists are nice enough, but I think that’s only because my mentor is their boss. I can’t tell if they’re scared of him, or if they all want to make a good impression on him. They all call him ‘Hua Chengzhu,’ even though that’s not his name.” She wrinkled her nose. Clearly, the idea of such flagrant adulation was distasteful to her. 

Xie Lian laughed at her frank assessment. “And what’s this ‘Hua Chengzhu’ like? I’ve only ever heard of him in passing from He Xuan.” 

“Well, his name is actually Hua Cheng, but I call him Mr. Hua.” Banyue looked like she was going to continue, but stopped short and looked up at him, aphotic eyes questioning. “Are you two related by any chance?” 

Surprise launched him into a coughing fit. “Beg your pardon?”

“I was just asking since ‘Hua’ isn’t a common last name around here.”

The florist didn’t have the heart to correct her. She had been calling him “Mr. Hua” all day, and he didn’t want her to face embarrassment on top of the literal wounds she amassed while working. 

“Maybe it’s a lucky coincidence?” Was all he could offer.

“Ohh. The other Mr. Hua doesn’t really talk much. He has me shadow the other artists whenever he’s on business or in his office. It’s not too different from studying under him; they all say he taught them how to tattoo so the technique is all the same, even if they specialize in different styles.

“I heard some clients talking before their appointments and saying all sorts of crazy things about him, but I think Mr. Hua is a lot nicer than he wants people to think,” Banyue contemplated.

“And what makes you say that?” 

“His wording can be…” She trailed off. “Unpleasant when he talks to people, but he always makes time to stop by the studio and check up on everyone.” A circumspect smile spread across her face as she reminisced. “A few days ago, someone was giving Jian Lian—she’s one of the artists—trouble and he called the guy a ‘sad, thimble-headed excuse of a human whose sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others’ before kicking him out.” 

Xie Lian stifled a laugh at the biting insult and tried his best to school his expression. “He sounds very creative.” 

The phone rang before Banyue could continue detailing the exploits of her mentor. Xie Lian had her pick up and coached her through the process of taking an order.

Fortunately, the rest of the day went smoothly. By the end of it, Banyue was taking calls with no problem (Xie Lian would need to look into getting a proper phone for the shop). By the end of the week, she was sedulous in maintaining the plants of the Green Corner and keeping to the watering schedule. By the time the autumn chill became biting winter winds, she was able to brave the roses again and come away with minimal damage.

Xie Lian underestimated just how helpful having Banyue manage the storefront while he worked in the back was. Without being interrupted by a customer walking in every now and again, he was free to focus on keeping the backroom tidy and be more meticulous with his arrangements. The volume of orders grew, and with it, Chestnut Florals became increasingly hectic, but he never felt the strain of it now that she was here to take calls and greet customers. 

On one such busy day, the florist was putting the finishing touches on an arrangement when he heard his name being called. 

“Mr. Hua? There’s someone here to see you.” 

He turned to see Banyue standing at the door, Ruoye on her shoulder. The cat had taken a liking to her, always running up and rubbing against her legs whenever she clocked in. Xie Lian gave his tickseed flowers one last adjustment before heading to the front. 

“XIE LIANNNNN~” Two wiry, strong arms pulled him close and smothered him in a hug before he could so much as open his mouth to say hello. 

“It’s good to see you too, Qingxuan,” the florist laughed and hugged them back. The light scent of ginger and something citrusy filled his nose. “How was the wedding? What kind of day is it today?”

“It’s a girl day,” Shi Qingxuan casually acknowledged before continuing. “The wedding was beautiful, Xie Lian.” She pulled back, still holding him by the shoulders with a wide smile on her face. Perpetually wearing flowy, white clothing with teal or baby blue accents, she always looked ethereal—as if she could float along with a gust of wind and bathe in the sunlight, should she so choose to. 

“Everyone cried. I cried, the guests cried, He-Xiong cried.” She counted people off on her fingers. “I even saw my brother getting misty-eyed! The bouquets you made for the bridal party were exquisite, by the way. People were complimenting them left and right. They were also complimenting us left and right. I don’t blame them though, have you seen my husband?! Wait, I don’t think you have…” 

While Shi Qingxuan rummaged around in her tote bag to look for her phone, the phone rang. Xie Lian made a move to answer it, but Banyue swooped in and gently set Ruoye on the counter before waving the florist away. 

“I got it!”

The florist thanked her and turned to his bubbly guest. 

“I didn’t know you hired an assistant!” 

“Banyue’s been working here for about a month now. She’s been a huge help around the shop.” Xie Lian paused before nodding his head toward the workshop. 

“I feel bad just standing around and talking while Banyue is manning the phone,” he began, “Do you wanna head to the back with me? That way we can talk while I work.” 

Shi Qingxun enthusiastically followed Xie Lian and showed him countless photos of wedding decor (featuring Chestnut Floral arrangements, of course) and unfamiliar smiling faces before she swiped to a picture of the couple at the altar. Shi Qingxuan was all smiles in a stunning gown that looked like something straight out of a fairy tale, delicate golden adornments draped across her shoulders as she gazed lovingly at the groom. 

The florist did a double-take. The set of the groom’s jaw and the sharp line of his nose was familiar. Was that…?!

All black with golden accents and trimming, the tastefully tailored suit didn’t deviate too far from his usual attire, but without his signature slicked-back ponytail, He Xuan wasn’t immediately recognizable. His hair flowed freely down his back, with gold adornments similar to Shi Qingxuan’s laid around the crown of his head and woven into his hair. Furthermore, he was smiling. A man of few words and even fewer expressions, such a blatant display of emotion (and a positive one, no less) from him felt illegal for Xie Lian to witness.

Huh. Small world.

“And I’m just so proud of him,” Shi Qingxuan gushed. “He always complains about how business law is soul-sucking work, but he’s out here brokering deals for small businesses and making sure they don’t get screwed over by those nasty mega-corporations.” 

“A lawyer?” With every new piece of information Xie Lian received today, he found that his preconceived notions were more and more incorrect. “I thought he worked for Hua Cheng…”

“He does!” Shi Qingxuan chirped. “He’s his lawyer.” 

“Oh…” 

Her lips quirked up in a smile at his befuddled expression. “He came in here talking about being a servant or something or other, didn’t he?” 

“Personal assistant, actually.” But Xie Lian figured the two weren’t all that far off from each other. 

Shi Qingxuan laughed; the sound was musical in quality and carefree. “They were buddies back in college, and He-Xiong lost a bet to Hua Cheng. He won’t tell me what the bet was or how much he owes him, no matter how much I ask him,” she pouted, “but he’s been in debt to Hua Cheng ever since then. I think it’s just a running bit to him though; that guy only ever cashes in favors.” 

Echoing chimes reminiscent of the bells one would hear at a Daoist temple sounded from her phone before she could entail what those favors exactly were (with how often Xie Lian saw He Xuan around, he could probably field a guess). 

Shi Qingxuan leaned her head back in a disappointed sigh and muted the alert. “That’s my alarm. I need to go on some other errands. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer!”  

“That’s fine.” The florist smiled as she pulled him into a hug. “Congratulations on a successful wedding. I’m happy I could be a part of the process.” 

“Of course, are you kidding? I was looking at a bunch of different florists in the area and none of them even close! Oh, and before I forget!” She reached into her tote bag again and produced a small box with a brush-style illustration of an open fan depicted on the lid. 

“I’m opening a bakery soon and wanted to bring these to you as a show of thanks for the wonderful flowers. You said you like mantou, right?” 

Sure enough, when Xie Lian wiped his hands on his apron and opened the box, it was full to bursting with pillowy, snow-white buns. He took a deep breath as steam wafted up from them, carrying the nostalgic smell of herbs and spices. 

Shi Qingxuan was right; he had mentioned his affinity for the pastry the last time she was here, but only in passing. Her coming all the way here just to drop off food to show her gratitude left him feeling touched.

“Thank you for these, Qingxuan,” he thanked her earnestly. “These look amazing.” 

“Sure thing. It was good seeing you, Xie Lian!” 

The florist smiled warmly. “Come again soon!”

The door chime jingled cheerily as the whirlwind of energy named Shi Qingxuan left. Xie Lian let out a sound of contentment and let himself think back to their conversation, chuckling to himself at how she managed to jump from one topic to the next, her attention flitting between subjects like an errant breeze. 

“Thank you again for getting the phone,” he said, turning to Banyue to see her jotting something down on an invoice sheet in neat print. “I really do appreciate your help.” 

“Of course.” She finished up whatever she was doing and looked up. “Was that your friend?” 

Xie Lian gave his answer some thought. “I actually only met her one other time, and that was when she came here to order flowers for her wedding.” 

Banyue’s lips formed an ‘o’ shape as she nodded in understanding. “She’s really friendly,” was what she settled on after a short moment of contemplation. The florist laughed. 

“Yeah, you could say that.” He set the box of mantou on the counter. “Qingxuan brought these, but there’s no way I’ll be able to finish them alone. Do you like steamed buns? Why don’t you take an early lunch? I can watch the shop.” 

<<Beginning <Previous

[1] 華人/huá rén refers to those who are ethnically Chinese. Kemo mispronounces this and says 花人/huā rén, which would mean “flower man.” It’s a play on the Korean concept of flower boys—originally referring to an elite group of male warriors in in ancient Korea, but nowadays it just means a pretty boy with softer characteristics (화랑/hwarang in Korean, or 花郎/huā láng in Chinese)

A/N: Back from my four-month unannounced hiatus, everyone point and boo at all the people that told me I could take my time writing this chapter (don't actually do that. thank you for being so patient with me huhu) This was a big phat chapter to make up for my absence. Also big news !! I started recording a podfic for OTGAR as well if you're the type of person who prefers audiobooks ! The first two chapters are already up and you can find it here ! I hope you enjoy~

[thmgau]

CHAPTER 20 - A DAY AT THE MALL [wattpad link]

---

During the drive to the mall, Spring & Storm had explained to the group why exactly they were on Earth in the first place. Apparently, their father had told the girls about their mom running away to Mercury last night, when nov SHOULD have told them about it 2000 years ago. That was pretty much the gist of it, anywho. Now, Spring & Storm want to have a little fun on Earth before they deal with the divorce.

Cherry pulled her car into the parking lot. As everyone unbuckled their seatbelts, they hopped out of the car.

“Welcome.. to the mall.” Cherry said, gesturing at the mall. “Ta-dah.” “Oooh! It’s so big!” Spring gasped, in awe of the mall. “Man, I haven’t been to the mall in years!” “We literally went last month.” “Your point?” “What are we waiting for?! Let’s get in there already!”

The 7 of them walked into the mall. It was massive inside, as most malls are. Shops & stores were lined across the walls, with an escalator leading up to a second floor, with presumably more stores. In front of the group was a map of the mall, labeling where all the stores & exits were.

“Alright, mall time!” Kalani cheered. “Wait! Before we go anywhere,” Nora started. “It’s going to be impossible for all 7 of us to shop if we all have to stick together. I think we should form 2 separate groups.” “There’s 7 of us, yea? These groups are gonna be uneven.” “I for one approve of this group idea. Even if it’s uneven, it’ll be fun.” “Ok, fine. We can do groups.”

& so, the group strategically split themselves into 2 groups. The first group was Leslie, Spring, & Juniper, while the second group was Cherry, Storm, Nora, & Kalani.

“Alright. Let’s agree to meet back at the food court in.. an hour? Is an hour good?” “We can work with that.” “Alrighty! See you in an hour!”

With that, the two groups went on their merry way.

“So!” Nora clapped her hands together. “What store are we hittin’ first?” “I don’t actually know. We only went here because Leslie wanted to get a present for Natalie.” “We could.. go to Dillard’s? Have you ever been to Dillard’s, Storm?” “This is literally the first time I’ve ever left the Castle. I don’t know anything about your human locations.” “Yea, that’s.. fair, actually.” “I think you’d like it. C’mon!”

-

Leslie & Juniper found themselves inside of Old Navy. Juniper had asked where Spring wanted to go, & she spun around & pointed at the Old Navy. Leslie doubted it’d find anything Natalie would want in an Old Navy (it seemed like Spencer’s or Hot Topic would be more her style, anyway), but it could use a new pair of jeans anyway.

“Ooh! What’s that?” Spring asked, pointing toward a mannequin styling a blouse & a pair of leggings. “Oh, that’s a mannequin!” Juniper said. “People use them to model clothes & all that sorta jazz.” “That’s neat!” she hummed. “I didn’t know humans had different types of clothes.” “You- You didn’t?” Leslie questioned. “No. The only other human I’ve met is Betty, & she doesn’t talk about what Earth was like often.”

Betty.. that name sounded familiar. It was in the list of Celestials that Leslie & the group were reading just a week ago.

To avoid talking about Celestials in the middle of an Old Navy, the group decided to put the topic at rest & ask more about Betty later.

“Oh! These look cool!” Spring ran up to a pair of jeans with a flower embroidered on it. “Oh, that is cool.” Juniper nodded. “If it’s in your size, you could probably get it. What size are you?”

Spring turned to look at Juniper.

“Oh. Yeah. I don’t think Celestials know what pant sizes are.” “I mean, hey! If they’re too big or too small, we could probably get Natalie to fix ‘em up. She did make that villain costume herself, after all.” “Well, I’ve never worn pants before, so this’ll be an exciting experience!” Spring grinned. “I’ll take ‘em!”

-

“So what, this place just sells.. foot gloves?” “They’re called shoes.” “Whatever.”

Cherry, Nora, Kalani, & Storm were in Dillard’s, a very widespread department store. The group typically didn’t go in here often, but it seemed like a general enough store for them to go to for now.

“I mean, Dillard’s sells more than just shoes. There’s bags, dresses, jewelry.. I think this is where I got my first skirt, actually!” “Oh yea, this is where you got your first skirt! It was you & me & Sorrel, who had just gotten their driver’s license, & they took you here to shop around!” “Why did you tag along again? I always forget.” “I think I wanted to skip out on some event my mom wanted to take me to. I dunno.” “Can we just shop?” Cherry crossed her arms. “We are shopping! Look at all this shopping I’m doing!” Kalani grabbed a sweater off from the hanger it was on. “Look! Doesn’t this look cool?” “That does look.. kind of cool, actually.” Storm said.

The sweater was dark blue, with a yellow thunderbolt design crocheted into it.

“Oh, yea. Thunderstorms are kind of your thing, huh?” “Duh. Why do you think my name is Storm?” “I mean, if you want the sweater, we can get it for you.” “Really?” “Of course!” “Well, then.. I’ll take it.”

-

A feeling of dread & agony quickly washed over Leslie & Juniper when they saw what store they were headed to next. It was purple, bright, sparkly, & not a very good place to get your ears pierced (Leslie would know, from experience).

Claire’s.

Leslie was certain it wasn’t going to find anything here for Natalie’s birthday, & Juniper’s punky aesthetic clashed with the store’s vibrant colors. Nevertheless, this is where Spring wanted to go, & the two of them weren’t about to say no to a Celestial.

Spring was in awe of everything in the store. It kind of reminded Leslie of when they walked into Claire’s for the first time. They just desperately hoped Spring wouldn’t ask to get her ears pierced here.

“Ooh! Look at this!” Spring gasped, holding up a pendant with a little white daisy on it. “Oh, that’s cute!” Juniper smiled. “I think that’d be perfect for you!” “Really?!” “Of course! C’mon, let’s go pay for it!”

As Juniper & Spring went up to the front counter, Leslie looked at all the necklaces that Claire’s had to offer. It wasn’t sure if Natalie would like these necklaces, let alone want a necklace at all. If they had known it was Natalie’s birthday beforehand, Leslie could have made cupcakes for her. They sighed, holding a pair of BFF Yin & Yang necklaces in their hand.

Yin & Yang are, to put it in simple terms, opposites that are interconnected. Did Leslie & Natalie really feel interconnected? Without delving too deep into it, the two of them could be considered opposites. Light & dark, passive & active... All sorts of things that are together in some way. Leslie’s only known Natalie for a month, but she’s always been intertwined in their heroic adventures. Helping out with the bananapocalypse (as Leslie liked to call it), fending off Pim & The Auctioneer, & even fighting the puppets on stage. Despite only having a squeaky hammer as a weapon, Natalie might as well be just a part of the group as anyone else.

Leslie grabbed the necklaces off from where they were hanging.

-

“So.. how do I look?”

Storm stepped out of the dressing room. Instead of the dress & hood the group had met her in, she now donned the sweater from earlier, along with some ripped jeans & fuzzy boots.

“Oh! You look so cute!” “Fuckin’ awesome, girl.” “Thank you!” Storm spun around a little bit. “This.. ‘sweeter’ thing is a lot softer than I had anticipated, but I do like it. A lot.” “I’m glad you enjoy it! Clothes shopping can be so much fun sometimes. We really need to do this more often!” “Oh yea, totally. It has almost been an hour though, so we should-”

Cherry paused, spotting 2 girls entering the store they were currently in.

“Oh no.” “Huh? What’s up?” Nora asked. “My sisters are here.” Cherry shuddered. “Oh, Poppy & Carmine? We haven’t seen them in years!” “Yea, for good reason. Those bitches always got on my case for breakin’ the rules.” “Ohh, yea, now that I think about it, they were kind of dicks to all of us, huh?”

Poppy & Carmine turned around & spotted Cherry.

“Cherry!!” Carmine waved as the two of them walked toward the group.

Poppy & Carmine were dressed a lot more fancy than Cherry was. Carmine, the middle sister, wore a white tube top & red, baggy pants. Poppy, the youngest, wore a red dress with a white belt & an opal necklace around her neck. Along with that, Poppy also had a red headband keeping her hair behind her, & some fancy dangly earrings. If you put Cherry, Poppy, & Carmine in a line together, you wouldn’t be able to tell Cherry was even related to them.

Cherry groaned, stuffing their hands into their hoodie’s pockets. “Hey, Poppy. Hey, Carmine.”

“What a pleasant surprise running into you here!” Carmine grinned. “Hey, what’s up with the necklace?” Poppy asked, pointing at the red tie necklace around Cherry’s neck. “You didn’t have that last time we saw you!” “Jesus, you’re not even going to say hi?” “Greetings are reserved for people who don’t wear lame old hoodies & necklaces shaped like ties.” “Oh, whatever. You & Mom have always been on my case over what I wear.” “Well, we are Russells.” Carmine said. “We’re expected to be the example.” “Yea, & as the oldest out of all of us, you should know that the best, Cherry.” Poppy crossed her arms.

Cherry groaned. Nora & Kalani stepped back a little, Storm following along.

“Who cares about being the example or whatever?” “You know Mom only pays for you & your friends’ rent because she thinks you’re out wearing dresses & being fancy instead of wearing trash like this, right?” Carmine raised an eyebrow. “Of course I do.” Cherry lied. “You have a standard to uphold, Cherry. We all do. So you better start upholding it.”

“WELL THIS HAS BEEN A GREAT MEETING BUT WE HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE!” Kalani grinned, pushing Cherry out of the store as Nora & Storm followed. “YOU TWO HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY! SPARKLE ON!”

As soon as the group was out of range from Poppy & Carmine, Cherry sighed, sitting down at a table in the food court (which just so happened to be nearby).

“God, I fuckin’ hate my sisters.” “Yea, they suck bad.” “They’re probably gonna tell my Mom about this encounter & she’s gonna stop paying for our rent. I honestly considered going into Hero Mode just to fuckin’.. stab ‘em with my sword or something. I don’t know.” “I don’t even think you’d need the sword, honestly. Haven’t you been working out? You could just beat ‘em up!” “Yea! You’re right!” “You are not going to beat up your sisters, Cherry.” “Well, duh. But I wish I could.” “Hey! Over here!”

The group looked up & saw Leslie, Juniper, & Spring from across the food court.

“Les! Juni!” Kalani waved.

The two groups ran over to each other.

“Did you all have fun?” “Yea, it was awesome!” “Storm, check out my new outfit!”

Instead of the yellow & orange dress Spring was wearing earlier, she now wore a yellow t-shirt with a pocket (a picture of a flower was on the pocket), some jeans with a flower embroidered into them, & flip-flops. A necklace with a white daisy on it was also around her neck.

“Woah, that’s cool.” “Thanks!” “Alright! Who wants lunch?” “Ooh! Lunch time!”

-

The rest of the day went as well as it could. After the group had lunch at the food court, they went to the park, which Spring & Storm had enjoyed quite a bit. Then, they visited the museum for a bit & got some stuff at the gift shop.

By the time the group made it back to the dorm building, they were absolutely worn out.

Cherry parked their car as everyone unbuckled their seatbelts & hopped out.

“Jeez, it’s getting late.” Cherry yawned, looking up at the sunset. “We should be heading to bed soon.” “What about us?” Storm asked. “Yea, where are we gonna stay?” “Oh, you two can stay in my apartment if you want!” Nora suggested. “Really?” “Of course, I’ve got plenty of room! Hope Sorrel doesn’t mind!” “Wow.. you 5 truly are heroes.” “I suppose we are!” Leslie chuckled. “& tomorrow, you 5 are gonna get our parents back together!” “Oh. I forgot about that. There goes my Saturday.” “I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Kalani said, a twinge of doubt in his voice. “Let’s just head to bed for now. G’night, everyone.” “Goodnight!!”

[clubsmarties]

"I do happen to rock blue," he said as a small smile spread across. Being compared to Cinderella was not at all something he had ever gotten but now would be getting a kick out of it. He was pretty sure Emma was going to get a giggle. "I did. You made them?" There was a twinge of surprise in his tone. "That surprises me." Eli nodded. "In a way but it isn't bad. I tend to cocoon myself from the world. It's for my benefit why they push. They don't want me to become a loner." Funny since that was what he had been before being adopted into the Phillips family.

He could understand where she was coming from. Part of him related but the other part also rejected the notion since he couldn't dwell on the past. He didn't want to. "I get it." Came the simple reply. "But a fresh start isn't always so bad." It was still to be determined whether or not this one was a good or bad idea. Texas needed to prove itself. "Apparently it's Texas wild flower. Kind of tracks with all the," he gestured around at the people. "One of the reasons the diner is called what it is. I like to read. It busies my mind from wandering. I tend to absorb facts quicker than most people." People called it his high intelligence but he hardly did. "Knock yourself out with questions. If you stump me you get a free tutoring session." Eli offered with a smile of his own. He had found a loophole.

He shook his head making a small face. "No on Jeopardy. I don't do well in crowds." It had been a thing since he could remember. The last time that happened was when they went down to a carnival with the whole family and he was holding a baby Emma when crowds had overwhelmed him to the point of having to run off into a park bench for hours before the Phillips siblings came to find him after searching for a while. "I do better in the shadows. I don't need attention."

Eli shook his head telling her it was quite alright. "Yeah, I want to make sure people get their closure. A lot don't have that so that open wound would never be closed. They shouldn't live like that . No one should." He shrugged his shoulders. "Thanks, you're kind too."

"No, I think I've exhausted my stay there. I would, however consider living in other places. Maybe see sights I haven't before." At this point he could go back to visit the Phillips which wouldn't be too much of a hassle. "You?" Leaning forward he smiled as he took a fry and dipped it in the milkshake. "Dont worry," his eyelashes hit the bottom of his eyelids and smirked. "I don't need a straw." Before he ate the chocolate dipped fry. "You don't drink this with a straw."

“No, sorry," waving her hand in the air to dismiss his apology. "I didn’t mean to call you out or anything. It wasn't rude, I just thought it was funny. I felt like Prince Charming watching Cinderella dash out of the ball,” she explained with a shrug. Her comparison was amusing her to no end. "That's alright, really. I get it, other commitments and all. I'm glad you stopped by though, hopefully it wasn't too crazy. Really, you liked them?" She was ecstatic to hear that, that was absolutely a win for her. "Look at us finding something in common, sense of humor." In slightly different words, saying that she had been the one to work on those. "Are you being peer pressured to go? Yikes, now I feel the pressure to make epic parties so they're worth your time."

Her nod in response was swift, taking a couple more fries from the basket. Honesty had never really been an issue with her, but rarely this quickly with a stranger. "I do miss it, it was the only home I knew, but it's also the place that holds some rough memories. This is supposed to be our fresh start, guess there's worse places for that. Bluebonnet? That has a nice ring to it, I like it." A mischievous smile spread as she pinched her fingers together, "I'm this close to just quizzing you on all the state flowers. I am curious how you know all these fun facts. Have you ever been on Jeopardy? If you haven't, we should sign you up."

Oh. Now she felt horrible for even asking. She should know better, family could be a sensitive topic. "I'm so sorry." Laurel considered her earlier words, how much damage had she caused? Enough for a day probably, but the sentiment remained the same. A kind guy with noble reasons behind his career plans. His family must be very proud of him. "I'm sure there's a lot of pride. You'll help a lot of people with that degree."

Learned behavior, that was an interesting way to put it. Laurel wondered what he meant by that, but she hesitated to ask. She had already messed up enough for one day. "Well, I really really appreciate it. Again, you saved me from dropping out." Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but she had begun wondering if she was being too ambitious pursuing a science major. "Now you're being too nice. Honestly, I might take you up on that offer, but you'll have to charge me. No way I'm getting tutored for free. You sound really busy, I can't just take that time up for free."

Laurel heard the sadness in his tone when he spoke of Chicago. She could understand that, leaving home was not easy. "I understand that feeling." His choice of words felt odd. Was that related to his mom? Laurel didn't know anywhere near enough to keep asking personal questions like that though. "Would you consider moving back there at some point? Or just moving forward to new places?" Was Texas that for him - just the next place on the list?

The chocolate milkshake was set down in front of them, and she tilted her head, almost admiring it. Yeah, he was right. It did look pretty good. "You want to share? It does look really good, but I am also not sure I can finish all of it. I might've gotten carried away eating fries." In case of any hesitation, Laurel quickly followed up. "I'll ask for another straw, don't worry! This is not some long-winded way to make a move, promise."

[fearsome-series]

BOOK ONE | BOOK TWO | [BOOK THREE]

Chapter One | Two | Three | Four | [Five] | Six | Seven | Eight

FIVE PEACE ON EARTH

“Surprise!” Katie announced.

“Go to hell,” Melissa replied, looking down at the cake sitting on the table in the rec room. “Happy Retirement? You stole me a welcoming cake?”

“No, we didn’t steal it,” Katie said.

“It was made for someone else though,” Javy answered.

“How thoughtful.” Melissa put her hands on either edge of the table. “Want me to knock your stupid cake on the floor?”

“No. If you don’t want it we’ll have it.”

Melissa took her hands off. “Then have it. I already ate.” As she returned to her room, one of the metal flaps shook; she shot a glance at it. Besa’s face peaked back from the crack. “If you do anything to celebrate my arrival, I’ll turn you to stone.”

“You turn people to stone…?” She said, clearly afraid. Heh.

“Want to find out?” Melissa smiled a big, stupid, fake grin, and went back to her room undisturbed. She lifted the flap, sat down on the rough mattress they placed on the concrete. She had a lamp on the floor next to her and nothing else. She started to unlatch her goggles, and -

Knock knock. June. Only a couple days and Melissa already knew her pattern: knock knock KNOCK, knock knock, KNOCK KNOCK. Melissa reluctantly re-latched her goggles and threw open the flap. “What do you want?”

“I only wanted to check in on what went down the other day in group.”

“Nothing went down.”

“That’s my point! I wanna check in that you’re making friends and influencing people. That’s an old book, y’know. Not saying you need to -”

“Is there a book called ‘shutting up and leaving people alone’? You could really use that one.”

“Aw, gee, I don’t think so, but if that’s what you really want, I’m all about respecting your boundaries. But sometimes, when your boundaries are being broken, that’s the best time to process what’s troublin’ ya.”

“Here’s a thought: go process your brain worms.”

“You’re gonna be here a while, ya know. Might as well get to know everyone. Get to know the vibe of the place.”

“Okay, teacher, can I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“How many suicides has this place seen? How many people got too bored of steam pipes and bricks and - “ She mimicked hanging herself.

“That’s not a very funny thing to say.”

“An answer like that implies the answer’s not zero. Now, did you wash up the blood yourself? Did you paint a little yellow flower over it? Did you give a eulogy about the power of positive thinking and just keeping up your goshforsaken spirits? Well, Gosh is dead, sweetheart. Live with -”

BRRNG BRRNG BRRNG of an alarm, flashing lights down the corridors, the raising of metal…

***

They walked across a small beach, to a wooden pier that creaked in the waves, a pier that looked out over the city.

“Biggest pier on Earth. So long there’s a train out to the end.”

“Wow.”

“There’s this little theme park by it. Adventure Island. I went in a couple times.”

“1 AM. It’s so quiet. Just us and the waves.”

“Aye. Sometimes, the night’s beautiful.”

“What’s the most beautiful part?”

Clive paused. “I’ll be honest. I really can’t see a bloody thing. ‘Sides you.”

“I forget you have eyes meant for...daytime...awakeness.”

“I’ve only been nocturnal for a year. I’m not ready to count my eyes out yet.”

Frantic flapping, and Malphas flew in low.

“Someone’s coming! Two men!”

“Are they Agency?” Clive asked.

“I don’t know!”

Eliza pulled herself to her feet. “We should go.”

“No.” Clive sat where he was. “We have as much of a right to be here as they do.”

“I know we do, but-”

Clive crossed his arms. “We always run and hide. Hear a person outside the docks, we cower and hide away for twenty minutes. Creeping around downtown so that a hipster doesn’t see us. We can’t keep doing that.”

Eliza debated what to do. And she decided to stand her ground. Clive rose up, and joined her at her side. Two men ambled down the path. They were white, middle-aged, and one seemed familiar to Eliza, though she couldn’t place how. Both were overdressed for walking the lake at 1 AM, and Eliza suspected their motive wasn’t simple jogging or fishing.

She prayed that they would go by, willing them to leave. But they made a beeline for the pier. She took Clive’s hand. He held it tightly.

“What do we have here?” He was graying and stocky, and when he spoke his voice was gravelly, like a smoker’s.

“Jeeeeesus,” the other man - the familiar one - was brown-haired and serious, his face like a disappointed teacher’s. “What tree did you fall out of?”

“If I looked like you, I’d -” The gravelly-voiced man mocked holding a gun to his head. “BLAM!”

“I hope you’re aware this is our spot.” The other man said.

“You don’t own it.” Clive replied.

Clive held firm, but Eliza was glancing around. Trying to find an exit if things went south.

“I don’t know where you got the idea we were asking you.” The gravelly voiced man said.

“You never asked me to leave.”

“That part was implied.”

Eliza watched helplessly as the familiar looking man punched Clive in the gut. Her boyfriend doubled over in pain. Adrenaline surged through her body. She let out an involuntary hiss. Her fangs glistened. Her claws trembled, anticipating a strike. But could she do it?

“Get out!” The man spat in Clive’s face.

No. She couldn’t. She took Clive’s hand, yanking him to his feet. They ran. Clive shook with rage. Eliza kept looking back, afraid they would follow. They ran past the Union and up the hill, using the surface entrance they were never supposed to use, Eliza seeing danger within every shadow. 

They scurried through the tunnels and collapsed onto the well-worn couch.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t…” Eliza said.

“There was nothing you could do. I shouldn’t have made you stay.”

“No. We had to try it.”

“We’ll go back in our rooms. See the world through a little window in the zoo. And he’ll go back to his job, his family, his house…”

“We could still go out.”

Clive hung his head low. “Not anymore. It...it’s not safe anymore.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I know.”

***

Malphas flew over State, and Laura, Manuel, Eliza followed on foot. It was evening, but the traffic was heavy. They were passing a theater, where a show was about to start; through the windows, Laura could see many people buzzing about beforehand.

“Are you, uh, okay?” Laura asked.

“Yeah, I am now,” Eliza answered. “You?”

“Yeah…no. But. Yeah. No.”

“How about you?” Eliza looked at Manuel.

NO :).

“I saw things. When it was singing to me. I saw my family and where I grew up, and…did you hear it?”

I DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING.

“Yeah.”

“What did you see, Wolfgirl?”

“Uh…my family, I guess…hey!”

Laura watched as Eliza and Manuel were caught among a crowd of people - and before she could follow, Laura found herself pushed back and forth by groups rushing to get in. People were all around her, a crowd, packing her in, breathless.

When the crowd dissipated, she found herself half a block down. She looked back. No Malphas. No Eliza or Manuel or…

She reached in her pocket. No Gef.

But something else caught her eye. Caught something even deeper. Captured all of her attention, all of her thoughts and worries and hopes.

***

A glittering marquee for another theater, across the street. She found herself drawn to it, as if sleepwalking. 

No one was in the ticket booth. No shows tonight, a sign said.

A ticket popped up anyway.

***

“Did the ghost do something to your voice?” Eliza asked, feeling very stupid as the words left her mouth, but unable to stop them from emerging.

Manuel shook his head. SOMETIMES WHEN I GET OVERWHELMED IT HURTS TO TALK.

“Overwhelmed by…the ghost?”

NO :( THE COP

“I’m…sorry for running out on you…” Eliza scratched the back of her head; the pinprick of pain surprised her, and she drew back her flat, human fingers with dots of blood.

YOU DIDN’T RUN OUT ON US, YOU WERE FOLLOWING MALPHAS AND WEREN’T STOPPED.

“It wasn’t my fault?”

NO :) 

“Why does it hurt to talk? Did the smoke hurt your throat?” The words felt very stupid again, but they wouldn’t stop emerging.

I DON’T KNOW, IT HURTS. IT’S BECAUSE… Manuel trailed off his writing. I’M AUTISTIC.

“Oh. Um, that’s okay, I’m the chupacabra.” Why, throat? Why?

Manuel looked up from the ground, and stared right in her eyes, and raised his eyebrows; then he looked back at Laura for a reaction, and…

“Did she run off too?” Eliza said, with a weird hint of very, very stupid pride.

***

Inside the theater, Laura found herself in a lobby: expansive, but empty. The darkness was only broken by a faint, flickering light from a half-open theater door.

She walked over. Her mind was beginning to wake up. Beginning to scream, beginning to thrash against its current daze. She couldn’t feel something controlling her; in fact, she could barely feel anything at all.

Laura pushed open the doors and entered a theater, its stage lit by a droning projector. It chugged along, projecting images Laura couldn’t understand. A montage: a gray sky, a pair of eyes unattached to a body, a mountain. A few images kept repeating: a man with long hair, wearing rags. A strange, black shape that hurt to look at.

But then the images changed.

It wasn’t images from another being’s life. It was her own.

Laura, in the house. Laura, in the woods. Laura, 9th grade, before the bite.

But then the projector groaned, and the images changed again.

The cop, the one in the hospital and the one on the Square. The hospital, the slice of claws, the spray of red. Laura’s face transforming.

A werewolf crouched over a body in a police uniform, its maw stained red with blood, chunks of spleen stuck between its - her fangs. Laura’s eyes, wide.

“Don’t you want it?” “Don’t you want revenge?” “Don’t you want to be strong?” Voices, she couldn’t see from where. “You could have it.” “You can have it!” “Don’t you want it?”

“I…” She did want it. She did, in a great deep secret place, wish she could stand up to the people who hurt her, who dismissed her, and therapeutically rend their flash with her fangs and claws. Only if they make the first move, of course.

But…

Distantly, the projector chugged, a hiss pierced by pops. But Laura was walking down the aisle, down between the chairs, down towards the screen, set up at the end.

She reached out to it, and a hand reached out from the screen and reached out for her…

She was pulled back, spun around to face Eliza, who let her go, and Manuel, standing by the projector. “Let’s get…” Eliza grabbed Laura’s hand, missed, found it, grabbed more forcefully. “Let’s get out of here.”

She tugged her up the aisle, leading her, carrying her; she heard a grinding of metal and an explosion of dust. The same strange dust Malphas kicked up; it flew around her, a storm that gave her painful, hacking coughs. She doubled over, but couldn’t stop, let Eliza carry her. As they reached the top of the theater, they saw a man, a thin man, dark, who rose a bow…

Something within the dusk shrieked; something unseen, as Laura didn’t turn back…dust flew around her, and…

Something cold brushed her leg, and she yelped; Manuel took her other hand, and the three of them charged out the door, charged down the street, not heeding the stares of the people around them. Pounding, breathless, taste of iron in her throat; they didn’t stop until they reached a small park, with a white post. On it was etched the letters

M

A

Y

P

E

A

C

E

P

R

E

V

A

I

L

O

N

E

A

R

T

H

in English, Japanese, Spanish, and Hmong.

They collapsed onto a bench; Manuel stroked her hand, before stopping to pull out his notebook and write WHAT DID IT SHOW YOU?

“You don’t want to know.”

“You should really tell us,” Eliza said.

“It showed me…a lot of blood.”

A street musician strummed an off-key guitar on the corner, warbling out something about his mother.

“Your blood?”

“No,” Laura said simply, and Eliza seemed to understand.

I WONDER WHAT IT WOULD SHOW ME… Manuel wrote. WHY IS IT TAKING PEOPLE?

“Did you hear voices?” Laura asked.

“Yeah,” Eliza answered.

“Maybe that’s why it wants us. It has some messed up chorus stuck in there and it needs a few members.”

DO YOU THINK IT WOULDN’T TAKE ME BECAUSE I’M NOT TALKING?

Laura shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Manuel’s eyes glanced around a bit, then he pointed his pen at where he wrote WHAT DID IT SHOW YOU?

Laura leaned in. “It showed me…it showed me being able to defend you two. It showed me me all transformed, and…” Manuel nodded, and Laura stopped talking.

“We should call the Doc,” Eliza suggested, pulling out her phone.

“She has a number? Aren’t you not allowed to use phones?”

“It’s some encrypted app.” Eliza stepped out to wrestle with her phone.

Malphas swept down and perched by Manuel. “Ah, not-a-wolf, you found your dear compatriot?”

WE DID.

Gef suddenly appeared on the post, and lunged off it, tackling Laura right in the face.

“Gef!”

“Hardly trying to maintain the facade, eh?” Gef hissed at Malphas and reared up. “Abandoning us again, you -!”

HE WAS LOOKING FOR LAURA. WHERE WERE YOU?

“I? Why, knocked out of Laura’s pocket I was, by the ravenous hordes of -” He groaned in horror. “Theater people. Nearly crushed me on my way back! They’ll never know what evil they abetted tonight, but the Devil will, I’ll tell you that much.”

YOU DON’T LIKE THEATER PEOPLE?

“Why should I?”

YOU’RE SO… Manuel paused his writing. DRAMATIC

“HOW DARE YOU! Betrayer! To think I rode on your shoulders!”

Laura knocked Gef off her face. “I’m feeling kinda shaky still, Geffrey, so…”

Gef scrambled up Manuel’s side and jumped into his bag. “Onward?”

Manuel sighed. ONWARD…:(

***

Eliza’s phone finally connected. “Doctor Sjöberg, we -”

“We’re on high alert,” Sjöberg said. “Nothing to be afraid of for you on the surface, but an alarm in the tunnel triggered and we have yet to clear it, and cannot come or go until that time.”

“Doc, the ghost hunt isn’t going well. The ghost is dangerous. It’s already taken people.”

“That’s…quite concerning. Miss Keita is on the surface, you should ask for her assistance while we clear this lockdown.”

“Jainaba? Doc…it already has her.”

“What?”

“It has her and one other person, we don’t know who that is. But…”

“Hang on. Do you have her number?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Let me contact her, then. See if we can still reach her…”

***

Singing and wind and emptiness, total, desolate emptiness, a quiet of the kind Jainaba had never experienced before, that you could never experience in the world outside the…outside the ghost.

All broken by the ringing of her phone.

She drew it from her pocket. Dr. Sjöberg. She picked up. “Doc?”

Static, and…

Beep beep.

***

“The Tunnels can’t help us,” Eliza said, putting down her phone. “They’re on lockdown. Sjöberg tried calling Jainaba, but…she says all she heard was this grinding noise, and over it some chanting. Not her, though.”

“She’s still in there,” Laura said. “I saw her.” Laura remembered Jainaba’s hoodie: the only touch of color in that horrible, gray realm.

“It’s on us, Wolfgirl. Unless you know anyone else who could help us.”

JESSIE? Manuel scribbled down quickly.

“I don’t…I don’t want to call Jessie,” Laura said.

WHY NOT?

“She’s. She’s still mad at us going off on our own with the whole black dog thing, and I don’t, like, want to bother her again…”

LAURA.

“I’ll call Jessie.” Laura pulled out her phone; Jessie picked up quickly. “Jess, uh, it’s Laura. We’ve got ourselves into some trouble and we were wondering if you could help us out.”

“What kinda trouble?”

GHOST TROUBLE! Manuel pointed at what he wrote.

“It’s, uh, there’s a uh, supernatural thing that’s…that’s really supernatural. Really supernatural and, uh, paranormal also. But not…we didn’t run off into it this time, you know? Sjöberg wanted us to go.”

“The ghost?”

“She…she told you about it? Uh, great, well, we’re downtown and the ghost is…the ghost is, uh…”

“Can ya put Manuel on the line?”

“No…why, though?”

“No reason.”

“Yeah. Well, we may be eaten by a ghost, and we were wondering if you could do anything to help us, uh, not be eaten by a ghost. Which, yeah, ghosts do that. Or…they don’t eat eat people, but, uh…”

“Where are you?”

“Downtown. Uh, State at Gilman.”

“I’ll be right there. Hold tight.”

“We may have to move to follow the ghost.”

“I’ll find you all. My nose is strong enough. Stay safe ‘til I get there, though?”

“‘kay.” Jessie hung up. “Jessie should be on their way.”

Manuel patted the bench beside himself, and Laura took that seat; Eliza continued to pace, Malphas perched on the nearby building. “Sorry if this gives you a bad impression of the Tunnels. I’d understand if you don’t want to come down here anymore…”

“Uh, unless you’re fighting ghosts every single night, I’m not gonna hold up tonight as representative of the whole.”

“I’d understand it, Wolfgirl. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.”

“I’m not getting rid -”

“It’s a joke.”

Eliza paused, and laughed nervously. “If you have too much going on up here to join us down there, I’d…”

Manuel quickly scrawled something down. I’M VISITING YOU AS OFTEN AS I CAN :) 

“Good…” Eliza blinked.

The street musician on the corner strummed his instrument. “This is my ghost song, this is my ghost song, the song of the ghost that lives under a bank and the ghost is America…”

Laura, Eliza, Manuel, and Malphas all exchanged confused looks.

“The ghost is white, and the ghost is cold, and the ghost is -”

“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” Laura asked.

“Extremely bad poetry?” Malphas cawed, and they went over to check on him.

***

7:45.

“My name’s Bezoar I.L.M. Zop-Zo.”

He had the same beard as two-thirds the men Laura saw downtown, and a striped shirt and plaid jacket. He slung the guitar over his shoulder as he walked.

“Wow,” Laura said dryly.

“It’s not even a stage name. My mom had a way with names. The kind of way that involves a wrong turn. You know what a Bezoar is?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“It’s a lump that forms in somebody’s stomach from all kinds of gunk. They used to think it cured poisons. I’ve got a song about my mom naming me that…”

“Oh...nice…so you saw the ghost, right?”

Laura thought Bezoar was telling the truth, but she still doesn’t trust him - and wouldn’t have gone after him alone, only feeling safe due to Manuel and Eliza’s presence - and while she thought Bezoar had seen the ghost, she wasn’t sure he hadn’t been too strung out to see anything useful about the ghost.

They passed back up towards the capitol.

“Last night, I was out presenting a heart-poem…”

“A what?” Laura asked.

“Oh, yes, I must illuminate. During the day, I do songs everyone knows, for money. At night, I perform for only myself. I let my heart’s verses sing free!”

“...oh.” 

“And then I saw it there!”

He pointed to the top floor of the State Historical Museum.

“Through the glass, shimmering bright! It assumed the form of cosmic dust, and I knew I had to follow it!”

“Why?” Eliza asked.

“We’re all stardust, are we not? I couldn’t deny a herald of the cosmic unconscious.”

“It went up there!” Bezoar raced around the Square, retracing his steps. “There! There!”

Laura wished he’d just tell them where it went instead of roleplaying every step. She followed him to the all-glass building, which was half a bank, and half fancy restaurants.

“The bank?” Laura asked.

“Yes. That’s when I knew this was no cosmic herald. For a herald of the divine to step into such a temple to avar-”

“But what did it do?”

“It went through the glass. It passed right through, and then it sank into the realms of Mother Gaia.”

“It sunk in? What does that mean?”

“It means it went right through the floor and into the Earth. I could almost see this light. Not the ghost’s, but these little wisps. More manifestations of false consciousness.”

“...yeah...so the bank is haunted?” Eliza asked.

“Aren’t they all?”

“Like, man, I agree with you, but-” Laura said.

“Unkkk!” Tendrils of light hung down from nowhere, and looped around his armpits. They lurched him upwards. Up, towards a storm cloud of dust in the sky above; up, with force and speed.

“No!” Eliza jumped up and grabbed onto one of his feet.

Laura tried the same. She couldn’t reach. She fell back onto the sidewalk, where Manuel caught her…unintentionally.

“Help me! Help!”

The dust swirled and came together and became the full ghost. Eliza held on tight, but it only drew Bezoar higher. She found herself lifting off the ground with him.

“Eliza!”

Laura ran over and jumped for her. Still. Too. Short.

Eliza let go. She tumbled to the ground, landing by Laura. Helpless, they watched as Bezoar was swiftly pulled to the ghost, kicking and screaming.

“What are you doing?” It was the cop from the park.

“Help! Help!” The sickening crack of ribs, and Laura and Eliza looked away as the void consumed him.

“Answer me.” The cop said. “Do you know these two?” She pointed towards Eliza.

“I...I…” How could Eliza explain?

The cop crossed her arms. “Can I see some ID from you?”

As Bezoar was pulled in above them, as he screamed and kicked against glass, Eliza dug around in her hoodie pockets for her ID. An ID she never, ever had. She realized that the ghost had moved in: it was all around them. Its hands high. It tilted its head. Studied the two of them as the strange farce continued.

“If you could do this quickly-” Laura said.

The cop glared. “If you won’t present your ID, I’ll have to take you in. Turn around and put your hands behind your back…”

They looked up. The ghost was moving in. They knew they couldn’t run. Not with the cop on one side and the ghost up above. They waited. Let the cop step closer, let her start her work…

She screamed. They didn’t look up. They knew she was kicking in the air up above, kicking as she was dragged into the void…

Laura remembered what she saw in there. Imagined Bezoar in that lifeless plain. Imagined Jainaba.

Imagined…the cop too, she guessed.

Imagined Eliza. Imagined Manuel. Imagined Gef. Imagined herself, fading to nothing over an eternity. No. No…

“Four.” A male voice growled. “Four!” A girl cried. “Four!” A boy joined in.

The ghost dived them: floating down from the sky, tendrils whirling. Laura recoiled; knew she couldn’t be suspicious. Tried to hold still. Tried, tried, really tried. Others passed by.

To them, there was nothing.

Down the street walked the archer, at a deliberate pace, walking around a girl who giggled to whatever she was listening to on her airpods; she had no idea there was a man next to her, a man raising a bow.

“Not yet!” the girl yelled. “Not yet!” “Give me time!”

The archer notched an arrow, but a pair of men passed in front of him; he lowered his arrow, but held his head high, aiming at the ghost.

The ghost crumbled into dust. The archer walked off, past Laura, Manuel, and Eliza. The archer was gone. Bezoar was nowhere. Neither was the cop. Laura, Eliza, and Manuel were alone, and nobody around them knew why.