#and the rise of the internet of course made things spiral even more out of control

[namira]

I watch a lot of old TV news broadcasts and it really is kind of crazy to see how coverage gradually got more inflammatory over time. (And often more short-form, despite the rise of 24 hour news theoretically giving media companies more time to cover events in a more long-form way.) Some modern journalism companies are worse than others but if you compare literally any of them to how they were a few decades ago the older coverage will consistently have a drier tone.

[to-be-a-dreamer]

hi yes hello im here to listen to ANYTHING you have to spill about jack !! what were his hobbies when he was alive? what were his experiences in the house? how old was he? did he know about race and charlie before he died? what angsty little details can you spill about our boy

- @we-are-inevitable ✨️

OKAY! I'm going to have to leave some big details out for spoiler reasons, but I really love Jack's backstory so I am very willing to tell you as much as I can!

So! first of all, Jack was 17 when he died in November of 2017, so just keep that in mind for the time period and stuff. His early childhood was entirely in the 2000s, he grew up during the rise of internet culture, but died before a lot of current internet trends.

I think Jack in this au was definitely an artist, but he mostly did sketches. Like, he was one of those kids who had a spiral notebook from the dollar store and drew in it with a 50-cent mechanical pencil all day. And his work was genuinely really good but he had some questionable subjects that made his teachers and social worker slightly concerned.

I also think he would skateboard and play video games like every other teenage boy. He was also in the foster system between the ages of ten and sixteen. (He was placed with Medda at sixteen and officially adopted about a month before his seventeenth birthday)

His experience in the system wasn't great; he had always had "behavioral issues", as his teachers liked to say, and it only got worse after he lost his folks. When he lived with his parents it wasn't that bad because they were very patient and loving with him. They always made sure to validate his emotions and teach him how to express them in a healthy and safe way.

None of his foster families ever cared enough to help him properly, so he quickly became a textbook "troubled" kid and lived in about eight different foster homes over the course of six years.

He had a tendency to steal from convenience stores, skipped class, got into fights, smoked and drank (nothing too bad, but he was literally fifteen so anything would have been bad), and just generally mouthed off at any and all authority figures.

No one had shown any evidence that they actually cared about him in such a long time, and he'd basically given up on trying to do anything with his life. Everyone around him thought he would end up in prison by the time he was twenty, even if they didn't say it out loud. He didn't see any reason to try and prove them wrong. Not when they wouldn't care one way or the other

His longest placement, and the last one before he was placed with Medda, was about two years in a group boy's home. Their caregiver (I'll give you one guess who that was lol) didn't really give a crap about them and Jack was the oldest one there, so he ended up parenting about half a dozen children even though he was only fourteen himself.

That forced him to be more "responsible" and he had to ease up a bit on the skipping and stealing. Because as much as he hated the system, he cared about the other kids. They didn't deserve this and if no one else was going to make sure they had some semblance of a childhood, Jack would do it himself.

So Jack has always had to be more "grown-up" than other kids his age and, while he enjoys normal kid things like skateboarding and video games and watching movies and reading comic books, he's just so used to being constantly on edge.

When he came to Medda, he was tense and skittish and responded to everything with anger. He hadn't been able to be a kid since he was ten years old. She helped him a lot, and he was doing so much better and was actually starting to believe he had a chance to do something meaningful with his life.

The way he died was by no means peaceful, and there are times when he reverts back to his old habits, where he snaps or yells at Race and Charlie because for so long that was his only way of defending himself. But it's gotten easier over the past five years. Not better, just easier. And he instinctively wants to protect the two "younger" ghosts, so that's what he does.

While he lived in the house though, he was so so happy. His parents were great and he loved them so much. He still does. They weren't exactly rich, nowhere near that, but they had each other and that was more than enough for him. He had a good early childhood, and he will always be grateful for that.

I think Jack was always aware that there was something weird about the house while he lived there, but Race and Charlie didn't start really tormenting their residents until after Jack and his family moved out

It was mostly just "oh I could have sworn I left the TV remote in the basket, not on the kitchen table" or "huh the doors and cabinets keep closing on their own. That's weird, must be the wind"

Jack in this au is very much a sad art gay, that's genuinely the best way I can describe him. He's angry at a lot of things, but he can't really do anything about it now. He misses Medda but knows she must hate him for what he put her through. He loves Race and Charlie but hates how they're stuck like this with seemingly no way out. And he likes Davey. He likes Davey a lot but they can never be anything real.

Most of all he's tired. He wants to rest, but he has no idea how to do that, so he just keeps brute-forcing his way through the afterlife, trying to hold together the broken little pieces of this odd family he's been given.

[caguaydreams]

A thorough analysis on why Vah Medoh’s dungeon theme makes me want to cry

Yep, that’s an accurate title. Hi there! do you have a moment to hear about Breath of The Wild soundtrack? posting for yet a third time in hopes that tumblr won't hide it. I'm so tired

What started as a quick and harmless post, pretending to simply point out a couple of things, rolled downhill, out of my grasp and turned into a massive snowball of a short essay. How and why did this happen? Well, I assume a lot of people know about this song, and know what I’m talking about when I say that it makes me tear up and sob uncontrollably with every change in key as the seconds tick by and I spiral down into a dwell of misery from where I struggle to find the exit and to later recover.

……No?…..At the VERY LEAST it makes you a little uncomfortable. And I state this with much certainty, because after reading hundreds of comments everywhere online where this song is present, I picked up on a vast majority of people who expressed to feel the same way I did when it came down to our current music subject. See, statistics don’t lie… normally. So, naturally, my intrigue got the best of me. I wanted to find out exactly why this soundtrack was mercilessly stirring up everyone’s emotions, so I caved in and we ended up with this.

Buckle in, fellas.

Out of all Divine Beasts’ dungeon themes, Vah Medoh’s is the one that I can’t sit through. Not without growing antsy and wanting to turn it off as soon as possible. I find it genuinely difficult to listen to, and it’s not only because Revali is my favorite character and the song is just, plainly put, depressing, mind you.

We’ll start from 0 terminals activated.

It opens up similar to the other three dungeon themes; the pace is slow but eerie, gives off the impression that it sounds broken somehow. Something is off here, and it’s easy to figure out what that is from the get go: you’re basically entering a majestic, ancient, mechanical mausoleum, where everything went terribly wrong a century ago. Someone is gone, someone you knew, someone who was probably close to you, but it’s impossible to be sure. You don’t remember a thing, and this entire ordeal is confusing at best, and terrifying at worst. It’s your duty to make things right again.

It’s the same for all four Divine Beasts upon entering, save for the obvious little differences that separates them from each other and make them unique. Ruta’s is played on a major key, adhering to a sense of hopefulness. Naboris’s begins with a startling smashing of the piano keys, much like thunder of a sudden lighting strike. And Rudania’s theme starts threatening, dangerous, like scalding lava.

But now, back to Vah Medoh. The tone here is… alienating. The dissonant chords are all over the place, and feel disconnected, cold. It’s almost as if someone doesn’t want us to be here, or just like the elusive key, our presence is unexpected. Fitting, for a Divine Beast that’s high above the land, impossible for most to reach, yet we somehow made it. Apart from the piano, we have the occasional hint to rito culture, in the shape of a short, synthetic version of the rolled chords at the very beginning of Rito Village. A quiet reminder of where we come from. There is also, of course, the morse code distress signal, but we’ll talk more about that later.

As soon as this formal introduction is over, we finally get to the more, say, intimate stuff. Oh, and wouldn’t you know, it’s just tragic.

One terminal activated.

There’s no better short way I can describe this passage, other than anxiety-inducing. Especially when the strings come into play, and there’s two reasons I can think of why I feel this is an important thing to point out:

1- Characters and Symbolism.

I tend to associate stringed instruments, all of those which compose the violin family, with rito culture. And Revali, most specifically. In Creating a Champion we can see the early concept art and designs for all or most major characters in the game, and Revali’s highlighted rough design might be the one that changed the most throughout proper development of the character, out of all champions. He looks quite different from our usual depiction of him, it’s fascinating. What truly catches my eye, however, is the design of his bow.

You thought bird puns were bad? Oh boy, how do you feel about Revali having a bow that looks like a violin/cello/viola??? And do you need a bow to play it also??? Like, is it even an instrument or it’s nothing more than a mere fashion statement?-

Anyway. I believe this was originally going to be a not-so-subtle wink to rito culture, being heavily musically inclined as we can see and conclude for ourselves. Perhaps Revali was going to be a musician as well, now how cool it that!

Needless to say, the idea was eventually scrapped. But one detail I am CERTAIN carried over to the character we know and love today(okay not all of us love him but seriously if you dislike him why are you still here lol): strings. The association between bows(weapon) and stringed instruments, aside from being a quite clever and creative one, goes beyond the concept art and remains strong as part of Revali’s character, settling for having a presence via score. After all, Revali is a master of archery, so in that way it makes sense to keep strings as symbolism to reinforce the idea and drive it home.

But can you guess what other thing Revali excels at? That’s right: flying. He’s the only rito we know of who successfully managed to take advantage of wind currents and bend them to his will. And do you know what musical instruments are often used to evoke the feeling of flight and gale? If you thought of bowed strings, you’re correct! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much support on this topic online, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I am most certain that this is fact, although not something worth discussing on the Internet, by the looks of it.

Anyhow, violins/cellos/etc are ever-present whenever we’re close to Rito Village or dealing with a rito related mission. Attack on Vah Medoh, for example, features a sequence of strings that is meant to evoke the strong winds we’re fighting against in that particular moment(*). Another great example is The Final Trial, the song that plays at the shrine of resurrection nearing the end of the Champions’ Ballad. Preceding the activation of each terminal, you’ll notice that a new instrumental element joins the crowd: the first one corresponds to the tambourines, related to the zora and Mipha; the second one are strings, referencing the rito and Revali, etc. I tell you, the moment I heard this during the trial I almost started crying like a baby. And, although strings have a lot to do with Rito culture in general, they tie most strongly to Revali, since he was the champion of his people, and his legacy carried over throughout the years. His accomplishments became material of folk tale, a legend, a source of pride and inspiration for the village. And let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, Revali is the crucial and foremost connection Link has to this place. Other than appeasing Vah Medoh, Link’s responsibility here is to free his past fellow champion’s spirit from Ganon’s malice. The soundtrack is referencing Revali first, and by extension his devotion to his home.

With all that in mind, let’s move on to our next point:

2- Nowhere to Go.

You shoot the canons, land on top of the Divine Beast, do what you gotta do, activate the first terminal and the soundtrack goes off unannounced. Like some sort of surprise anxiety bomb. The rhythm turns fast, the melody erratic, incredibly desperate in its execution. There’s this sheer despair, fear, this feeling of suffocation almost, which are so well achieved in this particular piece.

And that is, partially, because a quite familiar resource is used here as well; one that we’ve heard before in songs such as Rito Village or Revali’s theme. You could even think of it as a motif: two notes are played in an semitone interval, repeatedly and in quick succession. For the sake of later convenience, we’ll call this the Flight Motif, now let me explain why. In Breath of The Wild, this semitone loop is often followed up by some form of resolution. In Rito Village, formerly known as Dragon Roost Island(**), that resolution consists of a graceful descent of the melody, from a high that was built up previously during the motif. On the other hand, if you listen to Revali’s theme, you’ll notice that the interval repeats itself for a couple of times as thought charging up, to then rise fast and determined into a triumphal reprise of Revali’s distinctive assigned melody. This juxtaposition supposes the difference that lays between common rito flight and Revali’s trademark ability; both musical sequences are speaking of flight, albeit in two different languages depending on the way to achieve it. While the rito traditionally use their wings to glide and let themselves get swayed by the air currents Buzz Lightyear style, Revali takes full advantage of his flying capabilities to somehow create an updraft of his own, rising meters above the ground whenever he likes or needs to.

So, now that I layed out my base of thought when focusing on the strings, this’ll be much easier to explain. We’ve settled what the instruments themselves are a symbolic representation of Revali, in this scenario specifically. He was the only one inside Vah Medoh, and the score is, in a way, a retelling of what we can vaguely assume went down here during the Great Calamity, as much as it is what sets the tone and ambience for Link’s mission. But what are we hearing exactly? What we talked about, the Flight Motif, is being repeated nonstop. And that’s the thing, remember how I mentioned that this sequence usually finds resolution at the end? Well. Inside Vah Medoh,… it never does. The melody picks up in numerous occasions, but it’s not nearly as graceful, or calculated, as we’ve grown used to by now. It gets tangled and lost, and then inevitably falls to the ground in disarray. The pattern repeats itself, reaching higher after a handful of failed attempts, but no matter how much it tries, the cycle never ends. What used to tell us about flying and freedom in the skies, has morphed into an almost sinister musical incarnation of a tornado, and there is no way out of this trap. What do you think it must feel like to mindlessly flap your wings against wind currents so strong and violent, that it is impossible to get anywhere nearby, let alone take off every time you lose your balance. Or every time you’re shot down. On top of that, trying to aim and fight back in whatever short breaks and opportunities you get, at an enemy that’s much more powerful and relentless, who’s using your own element as a weapon to destroy you… it’s a risk Revali surely had to take in order to put up a fight. Even knowing full well that the odds were not in his favour, that he was most likely going to lose this battle, that he was going to die. Let that sink in. I’ll skip the activation of the second terminal, since there’s barely any change registered in the theme in general. So-

Three terminals activated.

I know this post is supposed to be a breakdown of the song purely, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for a little theorising, and the following scrutiny is also quite relevant for our discussion. Bear with me for a bit. I’ve read almost everywhere about people’s most common interpretations on the Divine Beasts SOS signals, and how everyone thinks that Revali’s coming in last (a few seconds later than the other champions) has to do with him holding on for longer. Or, also, overconfident as he was, it means that the idea of calling out for additional support didn’t cross his mind until it was too late, and that’s why the beeping sounds more frantic and panicked than the others’ when it does appear. After giving it some thought myself, I’m betting on the latter option holding more ground, and that’s not all. I want to touch upon a detail of the piece that I never acknowledged was there until very recently(after seeing myself obliged to listen to this song fully and a handful of times, suffering every minute of it for the sole purpose of this analysis. It’s okay I didn’t need my heart anyway). Soon after activating the third terminal, the SOS signal disappears, or grows distant and faint enough that we can’t make it out from the background anymore. In its place, we’re confronted by this… shrill, piercing and painfully slow tune. It sounds synthetic, artificial, devoid of life. And it’s funny, because you know what it reminds me of? I’ll tell you:

A heartbeat flatline sound.

And I want to highlight that this doesn’t happen in any of the other Divine Beasts themes. All their SOS signals carry on, but Medoh’s is no more. This abrupt stop, followed by this bone-chilling tune…. makes me believe that Revali was the first of the champions to fall. A few days ago I came across SuperZeldaGirl’s video on a similar topic, theorising that this could very much be the case. There is not much evidence to support this claim other than some visual cues that could be suggesting to it, but after I found this in the soundtrack, and if we’re to rely on it for anything, I believe Revali was either the first champion to be ambushed by Ganon, or well…. the first to be killed. It is plausible, because short after Calamity Ganon unleashes his power, Revali parts from the group and flies directly to Vah Medoh, and he very well could’ve been the first pilot to arrive.

On this note…. we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves, when Age of Calamity provides long-awaited answers to many of our questions.

Four terminals activated.

An interesting melody is being played on what, for me, would qualify as a glockenspiel or a celesta, which are keyboard based instruments that produce a sound similar to that of a music box(***). If you want to pay more attention to it, I suggest listening to Vetrom’s Instrumental Mix Cover of the theme, where they practically zoom in on this part of the song (keep in mind that it uses the All Terminals’ time signature so it’s being played faster). For some reason, this particular addition makes me feel profound empathy. The sound of this instrument could be described as cute or childlike, magical, even. It is more often than not used to represent innocence, but I highly doubt that’s specifically the intention here. Much like the leading strings’ melody, the melodic contour of this one is trapped in a loop of going up and down constantly, but the difference is that this time around it sounds more under control. And much more uniform too. It doesn’t lose focus or takes risky, fruitless leaps, but rather chooses to stay on a path of waves that consistently rises and falls without taking detours. Like a determined battle strategy, giving it your all. You fall, but get back up again, and try again, and again. It reminds me of Revali’s approach to training, being persistent to the point of overworking himself. He had discipline nailed down to a tee, which I also think served him well in combat. It’s not just about being hard on yourself, either, but being confident and having complete faith in your abilities; believing that you’ll make it.  For this to appear now, that the SOS signal is almost completely gone, is significant because it means that by this point, being so close to success on Link’s behalf, the music is sparing genuine encouragement for once, in spite of the tragic outcome of the past and the danger of the current situation. But, in all honesty, this is probably just me reading too much into it. Perhaps the composer just thought this addition sounded pretty bitching and there’s not much else to it, which is completely fine. Although, intentional or not, sometimes coincidences do happen, and at the end of the day, interpretations like this are a form of appreciation for an artist’s work and for what they can unknowingly accomplish.

All terminals activated.

This is the moment when the song finally lightens up. Notice how the strings abandon the wave pattern for a more even contour. The beat quickens, the melody stabilizes. At first I thought, coming from our flight analogy, that this meant a cease in movement entirely, and it was partly one of the reasons why the song in general makes me anxious. But thinking about it now, …there is something different going on here. The strings are playing on a steady rhythm. It resembles a march, it’s like a pounding heart. It’s a lively, hopeful statement. And what’s interesting is that, up until this point, there was so much fear and helplessness present in the score, even going as far as to reach a dead end when we activate the third terminal. But that’s it, isn’t it? the music just keeps going further. 

It’s saying: this isn’t over yet. Even after complete and utter defeat, there’s still hope and an underlying wish to overcome this predicament, and we started to hear this as soon as a fourth terminal is activated. The melody we previously talked about? it’s here as well, and its beat is much more daring and confident.

And I just want to say… this is so powerful. Because this sentiment is deeply tied to the game’s story and Revali’s character arc. You see, he is introduced as someone who resents Link for being the manifestation of his failure, in a way, because Revali has trained arduously his whole life to be where he is, to be recognised. And yet… this hylian gets chosen by a magic sword and some tale of divine destiny and, apparently, that’s all it takes for him to be deemed the hero that will save the land. In Revali’s eyes, Link has done nothing to prove his worth before him, so it is easy to see why he despises the silent knight so much; he is yet another individual that was born into their destiny. Meanwhile, Revali has had to build his reputation from the ground up, earning him a place among the greatest warriors of Hyrule, and even then he finds himself surrounded by people who grew up praised for being born gifted.  We can see how Revali is the odd one out, and can map out the reason for him acting so antagonistic towards Link.

But once we’re on Medoh, things start to change. When Link enters the Divine Beast, Revali greets him with disdain, as per usual. Of course, Link has no recollection of whatever happened a hundred years ago, other than a small glimpse of the rito champion talking down to him, a memory that came and went in a flash. So as Link, we more than expect Revali to act cold and mocking, which he does. He provides us with as little help as needed in order to free Medoh, reluctantly, shielding his wounded pride over having to wait for Link, of all people, to come to their rescue. But you can hear him starting to open up bit by bit(I wish I could translate his dialogue directly from Japanese but I’ll make do with a couple of dubs and other numerous sources from translators online). With each little step Link takes towards success, activating the terminals, the perception Revali has of him shifts from one of resentment to one of genuine admiration and respect. By the end of it all, he is willing to not only cheer on Link during the boss battle, but to trust him with his life’s worth achievement. And once left alone, he admits defeat and lets go of his bitterness, realising that he was wrong to underestimate Link, and later wishes he could’ve had a chance to measured up to him. To take all of this into consideration and work with it in the soundtrack I think it’s genuinely splendid. And for once, I am grateful that it ends in somewhat of a positive note that puts my soul to rest. I still have a hard time listening to the first two thirds of the entire thing, but now I can look forward to a hopeful and earnestly heartening conclusion for all the pain that this composition puts me in. I must admit that it’s beautifully and brilliantly crafted, and that I am enamoured of it regardless.

That is why I wrote roughly 4k words about it! I hate myself!

If you’re as crazy as me about the soundtrack of this game, I recommend you read the published cd interview with the composers themselves! if you haven’t already. I just found it yesterday(unbelievable but it’s true) and… after writing all of this and checking it out, I felt validated. It sure is a one of a kind feeling. 

Alright folks, we’ve made it to the end. Congratulations for sticking around and thanks being interested in my nonsensical rambling! 

I also hope that you, like me, will now be unable to listen to bowed strings without being reminded of Revali. Good luck!

————– Annotations/Sidenotes/Whatever

(*)The Flight Motif(in point number 2) is also present in this track. We can hear it in the background right after the Rito leitmotif, as per usual. It starts with a clarinet, I think, before the strings take the lead. (**) Note that the Flight Motif only comes into play in the Breath of The Wild rendition of the song. (***)I strongly associate this instrument with Mipha, given that it is used in her theme, in every “response” to the initial melody. It can be heard in Attack On Vah Ruta, as well, it enters the scene when the notes Mi(E) and Fa(F) are played. The initial tune, Si and Do(B and C) are played on a clarinet or oboe, wind instruments just like the flute that leads Sidon’s respective theme. The celesta can also be heard inside Vah Ruta, activating the first terminal…. when the song really takes a turn just like Medoh’s. Mipha has nothing to do with the song of this analysis, however. We must understand that instruments, although they are attached to characters/various story elements in some cases, can always be used outside of that context, for that is the nature of an orchestral soundtrack. If you have this many tools at your disposal, you will make good use of them.

[gameofdrarry]

Wizards Hearts Recs: Amortentia

Wizards Hearts was a four-month-long Drarry reading fest. Players were given a playing deck of 52 tropes, and were asked to find 52 different fics to read and comment on to fill their decks. To prevent the same few fics from being read, fics were restricted to only being used for the game three times before being considered ineligible for further points. The tropes and submissions list can be found here.

Check out the masterlist of fics for this trope below the cut!

📜 Base Notes by Sectumsempra Rated:  Not Rated Words:  4266 Tags: Potions Class, Potions, Amortentia Summary:  Draco is in the potions classroom, brewing something, as Harry reports for detention. ----- He comes close enough to the cauldron – from which smoke now rises in spirals, the surface gleaming like mother of pearl – that this time when he catches the scent, he recognizes it. ”Wait,” he says. ”You're making perfume?” Malfoy looks at him with a raised brow and a strange, lop-sided simper. ”What perfume?” he asks, which seems like an odd question. ”The one you're always wearing, isn't it?” As their eyes meet now, the expression on Malfoy's face, hard to read as it is, makes Harry wish he hadn't spoken. ”No fucking way.” ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Truly, Madly, Deeply by dracoroxy Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  4926 Tags: Love Potion/Spell, Amortentia, Fluff Summary:  Harry’s life has finally settled down enough to be comfortable, but there’s only one problem: he’s the victim of a truly astonishing amount of love spells. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Stop and smell the roses by regencyaus Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  4079 Tags: Fluff, Amortentia, Like the amortentia smells like you but i tried to take seriously?, Hogwarts Eighth Year, also there's an epilogue, you can't stop me from writing an epilogue on a 4k fic lalala, HP: EWE Summary:  Harry really, really needs to start paying more attention. In his defense, he's been having a very long day. Which is why he runs his mouth before he even thinks about why, exactly, the whole potions classroom would be smelling like Malfoy's stupid cologne. "You're the master of not thinking about things, Potter. Half of your hero moments were due entirely to good timing, a lot of luck, and you doing things you didn't think about." Well, okay, but no need to be rude. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love by aibidil Rated:  Explicit Words:  80466 Tags: Auror Harry Potter, Potions Master Draco Malfoy, Politician Hermione Granger, WWW Owner Ron Weasley, Case Fic, Potions, Potions Theory, Amortentia, Love Potion/Spell, Lust Potion/Spell, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Pensieves, Consent, Consent Issues, Enthusiastic Consent, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Wizarding Literature, Legal Drama, Courtroom Drama, Wizengamot, Wizarding Politics, Wizarding Law, Wizarding Traditions, Potions Attack, Politics, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Feminism, Men's Rights Movement, magical university, Magical Internet, Science, Chemistry, Communication, Soul Bond, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Pining, Mutual Pining, Getting Together, Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Post-Hogwarts, HP: EWE, Dildos, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Oral Sex, Falling In Love, Patronus Summary:  In which a group of wizards' rights activists goes on the offensive after a prohibition against love potions, forcing the magical world to confront the horror of magic's role in sexual assault and the murky legal nature of consent. Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Draco are swept together to solve the case, and in the process they're made to confront their own love and lust—with and without potions. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Oblivious by lealam Rated:  Explicit Words:  17387 Tags: love potions, Amortentia, eighth year, Hogwarts, Party Games, Getting Together, Potions Theory, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Explicit Sexual Content Summary:  Harry doesn't believe his Amortentia's scent is correct, and starts questioning the potion and his feelings. Of course Malfoy, of all people, is the one to answer these questions. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Beautiful Meanings in Beautiful Things by cloudings Rated:  Explicit Words:  76932 Tags: Hogwarts, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Amortentia, Voyeurism, Sharing a Room, and they were roommates.., Roommates, Soulmates, Soul Bond, Face Punching, Bruises, Portraits, Quidditch, Humor, Fluff, Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Enemies to Friends to Lovers Summary:  After a cocky comment from Malfoy and a (totally justified) punch in the face from Harry, Malfoy ends up with a bruise on his face that just doesn't seem to want to go away, no matter what is attempted. Harry is confused by his Amortentia smells, Malfoy keeps asking him to punch him (literally and subtextually), and everybody seems to think that they can just tell Harry that he isn't straight anymore. On top of all that, Harry now has to figure out what to do when you find out you've got a soulmate. A fucking soulmate. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Passion Cake by ICMezzo Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  19397 Tags: Love Potion/Spell, Amortentia, Aphrodisiacs, Baking, Chocolate, Birthday Cake, Owls, Desire, Tea, H/D Food Fair 2018, Baker Draco Malfoy, Treacle Tarts, Oblivious Harry Potter, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Hogwarts, Asexuality Spectrum, Possible grey-ace character, Anxiety, secondary trans character Summary:  It’s all about desire. (Harry orders a magically enhanced cake from a chic London bakery, and from there it all goes to hell in a cake tin. Also, will someone please tell Harry what Passion Cake is?) ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 I Love You by curlee_cue Rated:  Mature Words:  18210 Tags: Rape/Non-con, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Amortentia, Harry starts to lose track of reality, Dark!Harry, kindagoescrazy!harry, blink-and-you'll-miss-it gore Summary:  Harry knows what love is. It’s something that grows. Something that adapts. Something that sometimes needs a little help along the way. (or the one in which Harry loses his mind) ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Nero su bianco by zuzallove Rated:  Explicit Words:  40507 Tags: Epistolary, Slow Burn, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Slash, Angst, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Misunderstandings, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Podfic Available Summary:  September 1997. Hogwarts is under the regime of Voldemort and the Carrows. Finding himself alienated by both his friends and his supposed enemies, Draco puts quill to parchment, and writes letters. He addresses them to the only person he can think of, as Hogwarts rapidly falls into chaos and ruin: Harry Potter. He goes to great lengths to ensure the letters are never discovered, and he’s pretty certain he’s done a great job. Until the day of his trial. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 For All That Ails You by Frayach Rated:  Explicit Words:  16953 Tags: Christmas, Love Potion/Spell, Loss of Virginity, Infidelity Summary:  Voldemort forces Draco to drink a love potion so that he'll fall in love with Harry, and he does - madly. But then Harry does too. When Hermione finds an antidote for the love potion, neither knows who loves who. But then along comes the anonymous poetry contest to save the day. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Banter, Barns and Brunches by jolly_love Rated:  General Words:  1001 Tags: Professor Harry Potter, Professor Draco Malfoy, Potions Master Draco Malfoy, Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Harry Potter, Banter, Humor, Amortentia, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Good Draco Malfoy Summary:  DADA Professor Harry just wants to read in peace at the staff table in Hogwarts. Potion's Professor Draco has other ideas. And banter ensues. Featuring Banter between Professors, a barn and food. All the good stuff. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 I bloom (just for you) by Ladderofyears Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  3910 Tags: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Enchanted Flower Business, Amortentia, Flower Shop Owner Harry Potter, Professor of Viking Magic Draco Malfoy, Misunderstandings, Oblivious Harry, Generous Draco, Falling In Love, Wealthy Draco, No Magical Florists Hurt In The Writing Of This Fic, Promise Summary:  Harry Potter is the proud new owner of Potter’s Blooms and Bouquets, the very first enchanted flower business on Diagon Alley. Harry has been tasked with designing and making the bouquets for the upcoming wedding of Draco Malfoy and his mysterious fiancée. There is one small problem though: Harry finds himself falling deeply in love with Draco himself. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 A Real Gem by tackytiger Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  1059 Tags: Hogwarts Eighth Year, Potions, Amortentia, Falling In Love, Enemies to Friends to Lovers Summary:  “You’re late. I don’t like to be kept waiting, Potter.” “Hmm, I know, but I like you a little angry.” Falling in love, and not talking about it, and all the nice Amortentia smells. ❤️ Read on AO3

[twistedtummies2]

Mia Corazón (Commission)

Another commission I got via my FA page. This is from the same person who commissioned “Tick Tock” and “A Grim Dinner.” It features his OC based on Tick Tock the Crocodile, Tock Crockwork...BUT, more importantly, it also acts as an introduction to his newest OC, Caelyum De Macabre - a character based on Davy Jones (with hints of Tia Dalma) from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”  And it’s NOT A KINK STORY. HERESY, I KNOW. I had a LOT of fun with this one; my only major regret is that I couldn’t make it longer than it already is. XD Also, just for the sake of making sure people know, I did not make up the lyrics to the song featured here. They’re actually fan-made lyrics for Davy Jones’ theme from the movies, originally created by a YouTube artist called Fiajela. I highly recommend looking up the song - it’s been covered by her and Man on the Internet, and they even made a duet version with the two stitched together. Anyway...hopefully you all enjoy. :)

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Valentine’s Day had come to Night Raven College. As you and Grim walked through the halls of the dark castle, you couldn’t help but chuckle at the decorations: pink paper hearts and streamers of white and crimson were everywhere, making it feel almost as if Heartslabyul had somehow managed to take over the entire palatial academy. Grim frowned up at you, trotting at your side, trident tail swishing as he went. “Nya? What’s so funny, Minion?” he demanded to know. “Nothing, nothing,” you responded with a shake of your head. “It’s just…everything looks so different.” Grim sniffed snootily, crinkling his nose at a poster of two young lovers embracing. “I don’t like it,” he remarked. “It’s all…mushy. It just doesn’t feel right for a School of Villains to be so…nya, what’s a good word…?” “Sentimental? Sappy? Saccharine?” “Gross,” was the word Grim chose, sticking out his tongue and shuddering like a small boy afraid of getting the dreaded cooties. You snorted with laughter. “Well, bring it up to the Headmaster,” you smirked, stuffing your hands in your pockets as you went. “I’d rather not,” Grim grumped. “Besides, we all know Crowley would just ramble on about it, or say he’ll get things done and never do…how come he’s Headmaster, anyway? He doesn’t do anything!” “Your guess is as good as mine,” you shrugged. “All I know is the only home I have is thanks to him, as is the only job. I’d like to keep both, thank you.” Grim shrugged back with an accepting sort of rumble as the two of you ascended the spiral staircase that led up to the Headmaster’s Office. Crowley had sent a call that morning; classes were dismissed for the day, so the university was a little quieter than usual: many of the students were off visiting family or loved ones, and those that were hanging around the campus still were largely engaged in…ahem…PRIVATE affairs. You, of course, could not leave; at least for now, Night Raven was your home, and as you were currently not in a relationship, Valentine’s Day wasn’t much different than any other day. Not that you minded much; it was still nice, in your mind, to see others happy and relaxed, and a holiday was a holiday, at any rate…though it seemed even St. Valentine’s holiday would not be saving you from helping clean up whatever mess Crowley needed dealt with this time. As you passed an image of two small, fluffy kittens holding a heart, a random thought came to your head: “Grim?” “Nya?” “Have you ever wanted to be in love?” “Not really,” the cat-like monster said. “Love is all…icky.” You frowned. “Icky?” you repeated. “All the kissing and hugging and…bleh!” Grim shuddered again, then went on: “Besides, it seems awfully difficult; makes you humans and even beast-men all crazy. I’ve got too much to deal with as it is, thank you very much! Nope. The World’s Greatest Mage won’t ever let love make him all soppy.” Grim stuck out his fluffy chest proudly at this, sticking his nose in the air. You smirked, and paused, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. He froze up…then purred and nuzzled into your touch. “Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…o-okay…maybe I love some things,” he admitted.

“Good kitty,” you teased, and snickered as Grim growled at you and half-heartedly swiped at your hand with a paw. You retracted it and the two of you kept moving. “Come on. The sooner we deal with Crowley, the faster we can get to our own stuff.” Grim nodded, as the pair of you drew nearer to Crowley’s office. You knocked on the door and waited for the sing-song call of “Come in!” before entering. Inside the office, things looked the same as ever, floating portraits of the Great Seven and all…aside from a vase of roses, plus a couple of heart-shaped ornaments on the desk, as well as the fact the purple-and-green curtains had been exchanged for solid red velvet drapes. Dire Crowley himself was seated behind his desk, sorting through paperwork, dressed in his usual attire. His feathery cloak rustled as he lifted his top-hatted head, and smiled at both yourself and Grim as you shut the door to the office behind you, his yellow eyes sparkling behind his Plague-Doctor-esque Venetian mask. “Ahhh! Prefect of Ramshackle Dorm! And the Little Monster!” he greeted warmly, rising and waving his hands, bidding you closer as he stepped around his desk. “Come, come, you’re right on time!” “On time for what, dare we ask?” Grim meowed. “Aren’t you celebrating Valentine’s Day, too, Headmaster?” you asked, politely. “Later,” Crowley smirked, winking and tapping the side of his mask’s long nose. “I’ll be entertaining a cute little fairy sorceress from the Land of Oz later tonight.” He let out a dreamy sigh, placing a hand to his heart. “Ahhh, Miss Upland…one day, you will be mine…” You and Grim gave each other a look, shrugged, then turned back to Crowley. “What’s the problem, then?” you asked, knowing better than to think this was a social call. By now, Crowley had firmly established yourself and Grim as the chief problem solvers of the Academy, so it stood to reason he had a mission for your both. “Oh! Yes, well,” Crowley muttered, and cleared his throat, adjusting and straightening his stance before going on in a business-like way: “As I’m sure you’ll both know, tonight there’s a special performance, directed by our own Vil Schoenheit, for the holiday.” “Nya? Isn’t it that play about the Sea Witch?” Grim checked, tilting his head. “Correct,” nodded the Headmaster. “And the Little Mermaid she assisted. We have a special guest coming to see the show tonight…” He reached into the folds of his cloak and pulled out a small photograph, handing it over to you. You knelt down to get closer to Grim’s level, and showed him the photo as you both looked it over: the picture was a portrait of a dark-skinned mermaid, with hair black as ebony and scales of red and gold. Her eyes were brown and soft and warm as milk chocolate, and a silver locket in the shape of a heart was clasped about her throat. “Oooh…she’s pretty!” Grim smiled. “Very,” you agreed with a smile of your own. “She,” the Headmaster spoke up, “Is Young Lady Mia Corazón. Her family is one of the richest in the Coral Sea.” “Which is why you invited her,” you guessed, trying not to sound as bored as you were. To your surprise, Crowley answered, “I didn’t invite her! She wanted to see the show on her own…but there is one difficulty: her family insists that she be accompanied by at least two bodyguards at all times. Much like the Al-Asims, they’ve had…ISSUES in the past, and if their daughter is going to be on land for a spell, her parents want to make sure she’s adequately protected.” “That’s fair enough,” you supposed. “Let me guess,” sighed Grim, crossing his arms, “You want us to be the bodyguards then?” “Well, I suppose I COULD hire professionals,” Crowley murmured, scratching his chin in thought. “But they can cost a lot…I’d probably end up having to cut your pay just to-” “Forget it,” you grumbled, while Grim growled and slapped a paw to his forehead. “We’ll do it. But something is worrying me, if you don’t mind my bringing it up.” “What’s that?” “Are you sure WE’RE the right ones for this job?” you pressed, then before Crowley could speak up, you went on quickly: “We’ll do it, like I said, but…are you certain we should?” “How do you mean?” the Headmaster questioned, tilting his head. “Well, we’re not from the Coral Sea,” you explained. “Wouldn’t someone from that area be a better choice? Perhaps Azul could loan out the Leech Twins for a day!” Both Grim and Crowley looked at you as if you had grown a second skull. “…Right,” you sighed, quickly catching on. “Azul. ‘Loan’ us the Leech Twins. And us NOT expect things to go HORRIBLY wrong, one way or another. Yeah, that was a dumb suggestion, sorry.” Crowley chuckled and shook his head. “I have every confidence in you,” he said, with a wide smile. “You’ve solved so many problems in the past! And it’s only for tonight! What could possibly go wrong?” “Well, great, now something will DEFINITELY become a problem,” Grim grumbled. “Look, it’s not that I’m ungrateful,” you pressed on, “Or even that I’ve got a whole lot else to do, just…I’m worried because I don’t have magic. And Grim is…well…Grim.” “Hey!” Grim yapped indignantly. “I could roast any bad guy’s butt if they tried to get to Miss Coronation!” “Corazón,” corrected the Headmaster. “Whatever,” shrugged Grim. Crowley rolled his eyes, then turned his head upward. “You do raise a good point though, Prefect,” he conceded. “I didn’t think of that…at the very least, you two will need some help.” You were just about to agree…when suddenly, you heard Grim shiver. Both you and Crowley looked down as the cat-like demon quivered and hugged himself, the fire in his ears flickering. “Are you okay?” you asked, worriedly. “Y-Yeah,” Grim answered with a slight chattering of his teeth. “But…does anybody else feel like it suddenly got colder in here?” Now that Grim mentioned it, you DID suddenly feel a light chill crawl up and down your back…and it wasn’t too long afterward that the source of the cold made its presence known. With an authoritative BANG, the Headmaster’s office door burst open, causing both yourselves and Crowley to yelp and jump in alarm. You turned around fast, and gulped nervously as you perceived the imposing figure of Chief Jehan – the school’s head of security, garbed as ever in his military style cap and long, black trenchcoat. “Headmaster,” the darkly dressed security chief intoned, bowing his head respectfully to Dire Crowley, “Forgive this intrusion.” “Oh, it’s alright, Claude,” Crowley sighed out, then frowned. “Whatever is the matter?” “I apprehended this rule-breaking scallywag in the school cafeteria,” Jehan stated, indicating a second figure. “Ow! OW! H-Hey, let go of me, you old…! I’ll bite your legs off, you hear me?!” You and Grim were surprised to see the short, thick-hipped, green haired figure struggling in the icy grip of Claude Jehan, trying to pull away as his ear was all but being yanked from the side of his cranium. “Tock?” the two of you chorused. Tock Crockwork just snarled as Jehan glared at him. He tried to return the glower, but it came off more akin to a wounded animal trying to look tough than…well…looking tough. Crowley’s frown deepened, and he stepped past you and Grim – uttering a quiet, “One moment please” – before approaching the chief and the unruly Octavinelle student. “What is the meaning of this?” the Headmaster boomed. The Security Chief pushed Tock forward, releasing his ear. Tock stumbled a bit and caught himself, massaing his sore lobe. “This young ruffian,” Jehan explained, “Started a brawl with Mr. Bucchi over the last Deluxe Menchi Katsu Sandwich. As the latter student was merely defending himself, I felt his punishment should be more lenient; both have been banned from the cafeteria for the rest of the week…but as the one who started the whole affair…” He trailed off as Tock growled rather pathetically, looking down at the floor sullenly. Crowley scowled and hummed thoughtfully, clearly trying to determine a fitting punishment. Your eyes, as well as Grim’s, widened, and you looked to each other. “Grim,” you whispered, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “I think so, Minion, but a show about a math teacher who’s also a criminal mastermind? Who’d want to watch that?” You facepalmed. “What are you two whispering about?” Jehan asked, suspiciously, as Tock and Crowley both looked to you as well. “I think I know a way to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak,” you suggested. “You mean, a way to deal with Mr. Crockwork while also dealing with your dilemna?” Crowley guessed. “Exactly.” “Dilemna? What dilemna?” Tock asked. You grinned.

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“Thanks for sticking up for me, snack meat,” Tock groused, petulantly pouting as he walked by your side. “You’re the one who decided to pick a fight with the hyena,” you shrugged. “Honestly, I think I did you a favor.” “Nya…my Minion has a point,” Grim nodded. “Do you really think things would have been better if Crowley had decided to punish you himself?” “Or worse,” you put in, grimly, “Leave you to Chief Jehan?” All three of you shuddered, and Grim even crossed himself at the mention of the security chief. “Fine, I guess that’s fair,” Tock grumbled. “But I don’t like having to protect a fish filet from harm. I eat fish!” “Well, you won’t be eating Mia Corazón,” you sniffed. “Alright…guess I’ll just have to eat YOU instead,” smirked Tock, and licked his sharp teeth. Grim mewed and hid behind your leg. You blushed. “…We’ll worry about that later,” you grumbled, making Crockwork snicker with a wicked smile. “For now, let’s focus on getting you some actual lunch.” “You ARE an actual lunch,” snorted Tock. “I am not on the menu!” you snapped, flushed with embarrassment as Tock gave you a knowing grin. “Well…not till your work is done,” he teased, winking deviously, then smirking down at Grim. “Maybe I’ll have the little hairball for an appetizer, too…” Grim hissed at being referred to as a “hairball,” but said nothing. “Do you always have to be so antagonistic?” you sighed. “It’s what keeps getting you into trouble, you know.” Tock just shrugged carelessly, hips swaying as he walked side by side with you. “So, where are we heading?” he asked. “Can’t go to the cafeteria, and the Mostro Lounge is way too expensive…” “The Mystery Shop,” you answered. “I’m sure Sam’s got something in stock for us all to snack on before we head to the beach to pick up our special guest.” “Nya! Between my fiery awesomeness, my Minion’s brains, and lizard-breath’s strength, we’ll be the best bodyguards ever!” declared Grim. “Call me ‘lizard breath’ again,” Tock warned, “And we’ll be back down to two people, fuzz-face.” “Fuzz-face?!” Grim snapped. “How’d you like to BURN off a few of those calories you’re so proud of, hah?!” “Girls, girls, you’re both pretty,” you droned. The pair glared at you, then each other…then growled in unison as they stopped. “Thank you,” you sighed with relief. “Now, let’s be on our best behavior: I don’t want Sam’s Friends to give us a hard time…” As you spoke, your little trio reached the entrance to Mr. S’s Mystery Shop, and the three of you walked inside. Aside from a simple banner reading “Happy Valentine’s Day!” over the door, the shop was completely as it usually was…at least on the outside. To be fair, once you all entered the building, the store within seemed its usual self, too; no heart-shaped décor here, only the usual assortment of voodoo accessories. The strange part came when you not only realized Sam was nowhere to be seen…but you all also noticed who was tending to the store. Or rather, what. “Crabs?” all three of you gasped in surprise. Sure enough, crawling all over the Mystery Shop was an assortment of strange white sand crabs. Their shells seemed to have been made from smooth, ivory-colored stone…and as if the presence of the pale decapods wasn’t bizarre enough, their activities certainly would have gotten some unusual reactions. A few of the crabs were straightening out and sorting through items on the shelves, making sure everything was in top-notch condition. One crab was holding a miniature broom, while the other held a dustpan, the pair of them sweeping the floor. Still another crab was changing a lightbulb, while two more – clicking their claws encouragingly – were supervising. A bunch of crabs carrying a spray bottle and a wash cloth scuttled past you all, near your feet. Yourself and Croc stepped back, but Grim – with typical feline curiosity – leaned down and actually sniffed at one of the crustaceans… “ME-YOWCH!” he yelped, and jumped back, mewling and covering his muzzle after one of the crabs pinched his nose with their pincer. The crab seemed to strut away importantly afterward. “Heh…guess the crab cake bit back, huh?” teased Tock. Grim just growled and massaged his stinging snout. “This is new,” you muttered. “Where’d all these little guys come from?” “Cruel and cold, like winds on the sea. Will you ever return to me? Hear my voice sing with the tide: My Love Will Never Die…” The melodious voice soon sang into your ears, and you and your companions looked towards the source. In a corner of the shop, a lone figure was quietly mopping, and singing the lonely, haunting sea shanty you had heard. The figure was a young and slender man, dressed in a tan-colored jacket with ruffle-ended sleeves, and a brown hip-skirt. His legs were covered by dark beige trousers, while plain brown boots were on his feet. A fishnet scarf was loosely slung about his shoulders, almost like a shawl, and an orange muscle shirt festooned his abdomen. His hair was a curious pink hue, and done up in dreadlocks. “Ahem!” you coughed, catching the young man’s attention. He froze and looked up to you, blinking his brown eyes. For a moment, you noticed there was a look of pain and something…hollow in his face, as if something inside of him was missing and he longed to get it back. An overwhelming feeling of loneliness and sorrow seemed to wash over you…but it disappeared in an instant when the youth smiled. “Oh! Ahoy there! Didn’t hear you come in,” he greeted, bowing his head respectfully as he put the mop in its bucket and then walked towards you and your group. “Can I help you?” “Well, you can start by telling us who you are, and what happened to Sam,” Grim frowned. The young man chuckled, flipping his fishnet scarf over one shoulder. “Sam is taking the day off for the holiday,” he explained, then slowly added, “I don’t…make merry on Valentine’s Day, so I volunteered to keep the shop open and do some cleaning.” “Well, that answers one question,” Tock snorted, crossing his arms over his chest and lookin the taller youth up and down. “Mind answering the other?” “Oh! Right, right,” the young fellow chuckled, and cleared his throat before giving a mock-salute and answering: “Name’s Caelyum. Caelyum De Macabre. I’m Sam’s new assistant.” “Pleased to meet you,” you smiled, and shook Caelyum’s hand, and tilted your head. “Say…can I call you Cael for short?” The young man’s smile flickered, and he paused before quietly beseeching, “I’d…rather you didn’t, thank you.” “No problem, I’m sorry,” you apologized quickly. “Not at all, not at all,” the young man chuckled, and straightened his stance, recovering quickly. “So! What can I do for you, me hearties? Supplies, clothes?” “Food,” growled Tock. “I’m STARVING.” Caelyum chuckled and jabbed a thumb to one part of the shop. “You’ll find everything you need in that direction.” Tock nodded, and sashayed in the direction De Macabre had indicated. Caelyum smiled back at you and Grim in the meantime. “You’re the Prefect of Ramshackle Dorm, right?” he guessed. “That’s right,” you nodded. “It’s nice to meet you, then,” Caelyum smiled. “Sam’s told me all about you: he says you’re his favorite customer.” “He says that about everyone,” Grim snorted. Caelyum chuckled and knelt down. He extended a hand carefully. Grim sniffed it carefully…then smiled and allowed the shopkeeper’s assistant to pet him softly. “You have a beautiful singing voice,” you couldn’t help but comment. Caelyum looked up in surprise…then blushed a bit. “Oh, uh…you heard a little of that, did you?” he chuckled with embarrassment. “Nya! It sounded really sad, but…it was also really nice,” Grim mewed. “Thanks,” Caelyum said as he stood back up to his full height. “What song was that?” you asked, curiously. “I’ve never heard it before. Is it from your homeland?” Caelyum’s smile fell, and he looked askance. “Not exactly,” he murmured, then informed you aloud, in a matter-of-fact way: “It’s a song from the Coral Sea. I come from the Jubilee Port, near the Swamplands: same place as Sam. A…friend taught the song to me.” Catching the hitch in his voice, you smiled sympathetically. “It sounds like you two were close.” “We were,” Caelyum said softly. “Very.” “Nya…what happened?” Grim asked. Caelyum paused…then shrugged. “They left,” was all he said. Sensing the sensitive subject, you decided to drop the matter; Grim caught on and did the same. “How long have you been working for Sam? I haven’t seen you around before.” “Not long,” shrugged Caelyum, seemingly grateful the subject had changed. “He and I have some similar interests, and when I joined Night Raven, I applied for work.” “Oh, so you’re a first year?” “Yep.” “What house? Octavinelle?” you guessed, wondering why Tock wouldn’t have recognized the youth if so. “Scarabia, actually and weirdly enough,” laughed Caelyum, as if the placement struck him as some sort of very funny joke…he paused then leaned in and whispered: “Um…is it just me, or is the dorm head of that house a little…you know…how would you say it…?” “Too pure and innocent for this cruel, unholy world?” “…Yeah, that.” “Yes. Yes, he very much is.” The two of you were interrupted by the sound of Tock snarling in the food aisles. You all turned to see him trying to pry a bag of chips out of the pincers of one of the crabs, who looked very insulted to be interrupted in his work. “Hey! Can somebody make this crab cake let go?!” he snapped. “Oh, sorry!” Caelyum called out, and then snapped his fingers. Suddenly, every single crab inside the building froze…and then their claws and extremities retracted into their shells, leaving only a series of what looked like smooth, white stones scattered around the shop. With a second snap of his fingers, the stone crabs disappeared; there was no puff of smoke or flash of light. One second they were there…the next, they were not. Grim whistled, impressed. “Nice trick,” he murmured. “Is that your Unique Magic?” you asked. “Yep,” Caelyum nodded. “They’re called Locker Crabs, and you’d be surprised the kinds of things I can do with them…” “Cool!” Grim commented. “Hey, Tock!” you called out, hearing the rustling of snack food bags. “Leave some stuff for the rest of us, and hurry up! We need to get to the beach quickly!” “I’m hurrying, snack meat, I’m hurrying!” Tock called back dismissively. “The beach?” Caelyum spoke up, looking interested. “Why are you three heading there? What’s so important?” “We’re on a mission!” Grim cheered, puffing out his chest once more. “Oh, really?” smirked Caelyum, looking amused, and scoffed as he moved behind the front desk. “What for? Some sort of Valentine’s Day meeting, or something?” You frowned, sensing a bitterness to two particular words. “You mentioned you don’t make merry on Valentine’s Day,” you said slowly, approaching the desk and leaning on it. “What do you…y’know…have against it?” “Hm?” Caelyum murmured, then shrugged as he leaned back against the shelves behind the front desk. “Oh, well, it’s…not the day itself. More what it represents.” “Nya? What do you mean?” Grim asked, tilting his head. A shadow seemed to fall over Caelyum’s face, and he looked askance. Something icy and stormy flickered across his features. “Love,” he said, as if the word were some repellent toxin. You and Grim shared a look, then looked back to Caelyum. “Love is a lie,” Caelyum went on, seemingly talking more to himself than to either of you. “It’s like a parasite that burrows into your chest…and even once the sickness it spreads is cured, something in there remains, keeping you from ever knowing real peace. It pulls you along a blind alley, and just when you feel safe, it stabs you in every place it hurts most, and then leaves you to either heal on your own or die. It weakens your defenses, and confuses your resolve. And yet every year, every time this day comes around…I just see people acting like it’s the best thing in the universe.” He shuddered violently, looking positively ill. Grim meowed almost sadly. “I think love is mushy and gross, but…I don’t think it’s THAT bad,” he mewed. His words seemed to snap Caelyum out of it. The witch doctor’s assistant glanced up at you both…and, with a light chuckle, his helpful, friendly smile returned, the shadows departing in an instant. “Well…being mushy and gross doesn’t help,” he joked. Grim sniggered. Your own expression didn’t change, even as the employee leaned forward again. “Seriously, though, what IS your mission?” “We’re gonna be bodyguards!” Grim announced joyously. “Bodyguards?” “There’s a special guest coming to the show on campus tonight,” you explained. “The Headmaster assigned the three of us to look after her, since she’s a VIP.” “A really RICH VIP,” Grim added. “That’s our Headmaster,” Caelyum scoffed with a roll of his eyes. “So, who is this special guest?” “Mia Corazón.” Caelyum’s smile vanished, as if it had been smacked off his face. “Mia…Corazón?” he repeated. “Nya? Do you know her?” Grim asked. Caelyum didn’t answer, looking away; that hollow, haunted stare came to his face as he seemed lost in another world. “Mia Corazón,” he repeated again, then let out a soft, slightly hysterical laugh. “Of all the cursed days of the year…she chooses now…” Before you could ask what was wrong, Tock came lumbering over, arms loaded with various snacks and drinks. “There! That should be enough for all of us…or at least, for me,” he grinned, flashing you a wink that would have made you blush in an instant if your mind weren’t on other matters. He looked towards the assistant…then frowned, eyes narrowing. “Hey…who are you upset with?” The words once again snapped the brooding Caelyum out of it. He looked at Tock with surprise…then shook his head fast and brushed some of his pink hair away from his face. “No one. Nothing,” he insisted, and forced his smile back onto his face. “Now! Let’s, uh…let’s ring this up, aye?” In casual, business-like fashion, Caelyum charged Tock; you were grateful for the recent raise Crowley had given you as you paid for it all. The three of you then left the shop. Just before you exited, you turned to bid Caelyum one last farewell. He smiled and waved back… …But the moment you left, the darkness flooded his face once more, and he looked away, eyes smoldering like hot coals as he reached into his shirt… …Revealing the silver locket that was around his neck. The same sort in the photo Crowley had given you. The young man’s face became cold as an iceberg once more as he opened the locket…and sang to the tune the music box inside played. “Wild and strong, you can’t be contained. Never bound, nor ever chained. Wounds you caused will never mend, and you will never end…”

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“Why did you ask him that question?” Tock Crockwork belched and grunted as he finished up his lunch, licking and sucking on his fingers before looking to you, cheeks bulging as he still chewed his food. “Whuh queshun?” he mumbled out through a full mouth. “About why he was upset?” Grim spoke up, tilting his head. “I mean, he certainly looked upset, so…” “That wasn’t the question he asked though,” you clarified to Grim, then looked to Tock. “You specifically asked, ‘WHO are you upset WITH?’” Tock swallowed and let out a hiccupping burp before speaking. “Mph…yeah, and?” he grunted, patting his stomach and licking his lips free of any crumbs from the sandwich he had devoured. “Well…why did you assume he was upset with someone?” “I didn’t assume, I knew,” snorted Tock, and slung his arms behind his head as the three of you neared the beach of Sage Island. “That was the same look I saw in the mirror every day when I thought of Leona, or those boys back home.” Knowing what had happened in his conflict with Leona, you gulped at Tock Crockwork’s words. “Well, I hope he wasn’t mad at us,” murmured Grim. You smiled thinly; you had a very good idea you knew who Caelyum was mad at, given the context of things…and you were very much hoping you were wrong. You had the sinking feeling those hopes would be dashed as the three of you drew closer to the beach…and a familiar-sounding song, accompanied by the tinkling notes of a music box, drifted through the greenery and into your ears… “Over waves and deep in the blue; I will give up my heart for you. Ten long years I’ll wait to go by: My Love Will Never Die.” The source of the singing soon became clear as you pushed past the last few bushes of the wilderness and stepped onto the open, sunny beach. There was a single white bench nearby; standing beside the bench was a man in what looked like an almost Spartan uniform…and seated upon it was a young woman, with dark skin and long, black hair, dressed in a red and gold dress. In one of her hands, she lifted the pendant of a locket; the source of the music box tune. The lady snapped the locket shut, and she and her chaperone turned fast when they heard yourself and your companions approaching. She smiled, chocolate-toned eyes lighting up with interest. “Oh, hello!” she chuckled, seemingly a bit embarrassed at being caught in her reverie, and stood up as her suspicious compatriot narrowed his eyes at you. “Are you…my bodyguards?” “Yes, ma’am!” chirruped Grim, proudly. “Mia Corazón, I presume?” you smiled, respectfully. “That is right,” the young woman greeted, bowing her head in matching respect and lowering her locket. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” “Wait a minute…why do you need us to guard you?” Tock spoke up, and pointed to the Spartan-looking fellow. “Wouldn’t he be enough?” “Oh, that’s Firme. He actually has a date with his wife,” Mia answered, giving the man a teasing smile.

The guard blushed. “Miss Corazón, not in front of civlians!” he pleaded. Mia chuckled. “Sorry, Firme,” she apologized. “Now go on; I know she’s waiting for you.” Firme nodded gratefully, then glared at the three of you more seriously. “Protect her at any cost; we’re depending on you,” he ordered. “Aww, don’t worry, we’ll keep the little fishstick safe!” Tock smirked, cracking his knuckles and neck. “You can start by NOT calling her ‘fishstick,’” you droned, noting the nervous look on Mia’s face and the anger on Firme’s. You gave both an apologetic smile. “Sorry. He’s half-crocodile. Trust me, though, he’s a softy when you get to know him.” “HEY! I AM NOT!” snapped Tock, angrily. Grim just giggled. The interaction and your promise seemed to relax both denizens of the Coral Sea. Firme bowed to Mia, and then walked towards the beach…and kept walking, straight into the sea, until his head disappeared under the waves. “Well!” Mia smiled, and cheerily hurried towards your group. “Can we go see the show now? I don’t wanna be late!” “Of course…um…Your Excellency?” “Oh, don’t bother with titles like that,” the girl giggled. “Just call me Mia! Everybody does!” “Okay, Mia,” you chuckled, quite liking her warmth and energy. “Follow us, and stay close.” “I will,” Mia promised as the three of you set off along the beach. “Thank you, by the way; I hope this doesn’t cause you too much trouble.” “Quite the opposite,” grumbled Grim, remembering what Crowley had said earlier. “Why do you wanna see some silly show anyway?” sneered Tock. “Oh, it’s not silly!” exclaimed Mia. “The story of the Sea Witch and the Little Mermaid is important among my people…and besides, I think theater is exciting! I always enjoy seeing it!” “Hopefully our show won’t disappoint,” you smiled. Tock just rolled his eyes and scoffed. “I still think it’s for wimps,” he mumbled…then abruptly froze. The rest of you stopped, too, looking to the croc boy as he sniffed the air and growled. “What is it?” Mia asked. “Something wrong?” “Very,” Tock nodded. “We are being watched.” “How do you know?” you asked. “Instinct? Intuition?” Tock growled and narrowed his eyes, looking at you determinedly. “No, meat. We. Are. Being. Watched.” “By who?” whispered Mia, nervously. “I have an idea,” you murmured with some dread. Before Mia could comment on your remark, all three of you heard a sharp yelp, and turned to see that Grim had inexplicably toppled over. The feline-like creature sat up and massaged his bumped noggin. “Owwww,” he moaned. “What happened?” Mia asked, sounding concerned. “I dunno!” Grim whined out. “Just…s-something seemed to come up from under me and…” “GAHR!” You jumped as, right on cue, Tock toppled over as well. Then it was your turn, as you felt something shift under the sand where you stood, and you dropped to the ground. The wind was knocked out of you for a moment, but you managed to sit up just in time to see three large, round humps in the sand…which seemed to move of their own accord. The three humps began to trace a path, circling Mia, who froze up and squeaked like a mouse, clearly confused and frightened. It only got worse when, suddenly, more and more humps seemed to appear out nowhere: at least a dozen or more, which shot through the sand, burrowing through it with a barely-audible scraping sound… …Then, dust flew up as the shapes burst from the ground. As the dust cleared, you and your friends watched wide-eyed as a consortium of familiar white crabs toppled Mia Corazón, and – working together to lift her, carried her off across the beachside. “HEY! PUT ME DOWN! STOP!” Mia cried out, but the crabs wouldn’t listen, and soon vanished from sight. “Nya…we’re off to a good start with this job,” sighed Grim dismally. “After them!” you barked, and leapt to your feet as you dashed after Mia and her arthropoid captors, Grim hot on your heels. Tock grumbled sourly as he dusted himself off then jogged after you. “Taking orders from my lunch…I’m gonna eat that stupid, mask-wearing, feather-loving…!”

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Mia cried out as the crabs carried her along the sand, her “volunteer” bodyguards soon out of sight. She tried to fight free, but the crabs pinched and held her fast, keeping her in place. She wasn’t sure how far or for how long they carried her…but suddenly they stopped, and she let out an “eep!” as they moved into a pillar, and pushed her up, allowing her to stand. The mermaid-in-disguise turned around, panting for breath as she watched the crabs swarm about each other…then, they seemed to coalesce and mesh together; their pale shells took on more colors; hints of pink, brown, and orange… …Until, finally, standing before her was a familiar young man with dreadlocks and a fishnet scarf. In his hand, he held a heart-shaped silver locket. “Come my love, be one with the sea. Rule with me for eternity. Drown all dreams so mercilessly, and leave their souls to me.” He snapped the locket shut at the end of the verse, and paused before uttering, in a mechanical, robotic tone, two words: “Ahoy, Mia.” Mia blinked slowly, absolutely stunned. “…C-Cael?” Caelyum blinked back and said nothing, his face emotionless and blank. Mia slowly smiled, her eyes lighting up…then squealed with joy and rushed forward, throwing her arms around the young man…who stood stiff and rigid, not even looking at her, as she hugged him close. “CAEL! I…oh, Gods, what do I even say?! It’s…it’s been so long…I’ve missed you so much! Where have you been?! Cael…Cael, I-I’m so happy…!” “Let. Go. Of. Me. You. BITCH.” Mia gasped as Caelyum harshly pushed her back, nearly knocking her over. Her heart sank as she stared at the young man, who glared at her, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists. She looked deeply hurt…and not because of the push. “Cael?” she whispered. “Cael…wh-what’s wrong? Why…why are you upset with me?” Cael’s eyes flashed with anger. “What’s wrong?! Why am I upset?!” he repeated. “What in Hades do you THINK is wrong?!” Mia flinched as the boy from the swamplands’ voice rose to a perfect scream. Cautiously, steadily, she approached. “Cael…please…I-I don’t understand. I…I’ve wanted to see you again for such a long time, and now-” “How DARE you?!” shouted Caelyum, silencing the aristocratic mermaid. “How dare you say something like that to me?! After what you did to me, do you expect to believe you’ve ever cared?!” “I…what…I do care!” Mia pleaded, and tears began to twinkle in her eyes. “Cael, what are you talking about?” Cael laughed; a dangerously unhinged, malicious sound. “Oh-ho-ho, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about! You should!” he spat…then, the bitterness was replaced by pain as he went on. “Two years, Mia. Two years I waited, and you never returned. You…y-you broke your promise to me…and did you ever think of me in those two years? Did you think of me even once in all the time since, until now?” Cael’s eyes began to brim with tears of his own; he was shaking. Mia felt her heart sinking further in her chest. “Of course I did,” she said, softly. “You’re…you’re my best friend.” One could almost hear Caelyum’s last heartstring break. “Best friend,” he repeated, in a dead, soulless voice…then hung his head. “You still don’t get it, do you, Mia? You broke my heart, Corazón…” Head still hung low, dreadlocks casting shadow over his eyes, Caelyum De Macabre lifted one arm, and snapped his fingers…and Mia nervously stepped back as a swarm of crabs appeared to trail across his arm and mesh together…forming a silver cutlass. “…And now, I’m going to break yours. Literally.” Ominously, Caelyum began to approach. Mia felt panic rise in her, and started to back away…then yiped, almost comically, as she tripped on her own dress and tumbled back. “C-Cael…Cael, PLEASE!” she cried out, as the boy loomed over her, his face twisted in anger as he began to lift the sword above his head… “HEY! BACK OFF!” FWOOSH! A jet of blue flame shot between Mia Corazón and Cael De Macabre; the lad from the swamplands jumped back, then growled angrily, turning to face the source. You had finally arrive, with Grim at your side, both of you glaring at the bokor’s assistant. “That’s enough, Caelyum,” you warned. Cael sneered. “It’s not enough,” he hissed, “Until she endures the same amount of PAIN and AGONY I HAVE!” With a roar, he rounded about to try and strike Mia down…then froze in place when he found she had seemingly disappeared. Startled and caught greatly off guard, he was unable to avoid the green scaled fist that grabbed hold of the back of his jacket, and cried out as, with a roar, the owner of the fist hurled about seven feet away, sending him rolling through the send. His sword spun through the air before stabbing into the ground right at the edge of the shore. Caelyum coughed and snarled and spat as he got onto his hands and knees…then glared as he found Tock Crockwork – now in his full “true form” – glaring at him, fangs and claws bared. “Keep away from the fishstick, swamp meat,” he spat. “Thank you,” Mia whispered. Tock just smirked at her – somewhat cockily but not cruelly – then glarde back at Caelyum as yourself and Grim moved to stand beside him, all of you making sure to create a barrier before poor Mia. Cael rose to his feet shakily. “Leave her alone, Caelyum,” you said. “This is not your fight!” he snapped back. “Uh…yeah, it kinda is,” Grim snorted. “We told you, this is our job today!” “You don’t know who you’re protecting,” Cael viciously sneered, his shoulders trembling with fury, his fingers clenched so tight that his knuckles turned white as the bones under his skin. “She cursed me!” “Cursed you?!” Mia exclaimed. “Caelyum, I never did ANYTHING to you!” “Yes, you did!” Cael answered…and gulped back a sob before explaining: “You made me love you.” All eyes widened; you and your friends looked to Mia, then back at Caelyum. “Ohhhh…now the pieces are coming together,” Grim murmured. “I know the look in your eyes, meat, and it’s not love,” Tock said, darkly. “Not love as it should be, anyway.” “Cael…I-I’m so sorry,” Mia quavered. “Of course you’re sorry,” Cael scoffed. “Everyone’s sorry when it’s too late.” So saying, he lifted his hand…and the sword that had stabbed into the ground “dissolved” into a group of crabs. They scurried across the beach, crawled up his side…and reformed into a cutlass in his grasp once more. “Put the weapon away, Caelyum!” you beseeched. “It doesn’t have to be like this!” “Yes it does!” Cael yelled. “Don’t you get it?! I can’t be free! I’ll always remember! I’ll always feel that pain! Love is a curse; a curse that hurts me, every day of my existence…but after today, I’m going to change that.” He closed his eyes. You had a bad feeling you knew what you’d see when he opened them again…and you were correct. One of his eyes was suddenly surrounded by a fiery aura. “Today, I break the curse.” KA-ZAM! The familiar black cloud of Overblot surrounded the shopkeeper’s boy. Blue and orange light flashed in the gaps between the vapor as it swirled around the fellow from the swamplands…until finally, the mist parted. When it did, you all found that Caelyum De Macabre had gone through an alarming transformation. His brown-tinted clothes had vanished, replaced with a blue-gray uniform like a navy seaman. One of his arms was stuck into the sleeve of a long, tattered cerulean coat with gold lining, which hung about his shoulders almost like a cape. A blood red sash was lashed about his middle. While his left eye was surrounded by orange aura, a tattoo had appeared over his right, in the image of a pirate medallion. His dreadlocks had transformed into a head of writhing, wriggling, pinkish-purple tentacles, like those of a squid; each tendril’s tip was smeared with ink. His left arm had become a white crab claw, ink oozing from its joins; his right leg had become a crab’s leg, too, and was also oozing with Blot. A single black boot covered his one human foot…and he still held his cutlass in his one human hand. Cael grinned viciously, pupils pinpricks as he pointed his sword at you. “Yo-Ho, me hearties!” he bellowed. “Shiver ‘em from stem to stern!” At these words, the ground before his feet seemed to ripple…and then, a swarm of Locker Crabs came scrambling from the ground, racing towards your group. “I’ll take care of this!” Grim pronounced, and summoned a wall of flame. As the fire struck the crabs, they vanished in a cloud of silver smoke…but more just kept coming! Caelyum laughed and began to move towards your group, swaggering as the point of his crab-leg stabbed into the ground repeatedly. Seeing the approaching dark mage, Grim paused to hurl a fireball in his direction…only for Cael to split in half, crab legs showing in the “seam” of his being, as the fireball hurtled past without causing any harm. He stitched himself back together and kept moving forward, as if nothing had happened. Tock Crockwork roared and charged at Cael, swinging a punch at him…but De Macabre simply swept up his crab claw and, in a fluid, wrenching motion, whirled Tock about and flung him to the beach floor. He grinned with deranged excitement as he moved closer to yourself and Mia, leaving Tock to choke in the dust. “Hold them off, Grim!” you called out as he continued to scorch the crabs. “I’ll try!” Grim called back. “Run for it, Minion! RUN NOW!” And you did, holding onto Mia’s arm as you dragged her after yourself. With a wild laugh, Caelyum lifted his sword up…and then “melted” into a swarm of crabs, which scurried after the two of you as you raced along the beach. Behind you, Tock snarled, clutching his banged skull as he watched the horde of crabs vanish. He angrily kicked away a few that Grim didn’t manage to stop, and then charged forward. Grim panted; he was already growing weary. “I…I can’t hold them off!” he meowed. “There’s…there’s too many-EEP!” “Stop whining and shut up,” snarled Tock, whisking Grim up in one arm and sprinting on, the pair pursued by the remaining Locker Crabs. “We’ve got more important things to worry about, come on!” Unaware that your friends were on the chase, you hurried along with Mia Corazón. The crabs that made up Cael’s being clicked and scraped behind you with a deeply unsettling sound, urging you to go faster and faster. “Wait!” Mia gasped. “If…I…can…talk…to him…!” “I don’t think he’s in a mood to talk!” you replied. “Right now, all we can do is…!” You trailed off and stopped short as the crabs suddenly caught up with you…and then moved around you, reforming in front of you into a column. Thinking fast you looked around… …And were just in time to grab hold of sturdy tree branch, as a sword reshaped and then stabbed at you. You barely had a moment to parry the strike, the blade cutting a notch into the wooden limb you held. “Stay behind me!” you hissed to Mia, as Cael reformed fully. “So, it’s a duel then?” Cael cackled. “Alright! EN GARDE!” You yelped, instinctively blocking as the sword slashed at you once more. The slash was followed by a lunge; you jumped back quickly and parried that strike, too. CLING-CLANG-CLING-CLANG! The cutlass and the branch clattered against each other, the sound of the steel against wood that was tougher than it looked ringing out. Each time Cael tried to get around you to lunge at Mia, you blocked his path. You laughed softly, amazed you were holding out; guess one didn’t know how good they’d be at something like a swordfight till they tried! You ducked another slash, and responded by swinging your stick around. WHACK! Caelyum reeled as you managed to smack him across the face…then slowly turned back. He looked…annoyed. “Ow,” was all he said, almost sarcastically, before swinging his blade around again. You quickly lifted your branch… SWACK! And gulped nervously as the cutlass sliced it clean in half. “Oh, boy.” “HA HA!” laughed Cael, and lifted his crab leg, kicking you hard in the stomach. You coughed, dazed and winded as you crumpled to the ground. Now, nothing was standing between the enraged Caelyum and his prey: Mia. The mermaid with legs began to back away in fright…then cried out sharply as Cael thrust out his crab claw and grabbed her by the throat with it. A grin of evil triumph spread across his face as he lifted his weapon above his head. “And here we are at last,” he crooned with twisted delight, and squeezed, making Mia gasp for air. “Any last words, my dear?” Mia gulped…and looked pleadingly into the Swamplander’s eyes as she uttered five simple words. “Cael…please…I love you!” Just before the last three words were uttered, Cael had prepared to attack…but then he froze. The grip of his pincer loosened as she said those three golden words, and the demented smile vanished from his face. He hesitated, as if those words had caused something in his brain to just shut down… Which was all the opportunity you needed. CRACK! “GAH!” exclaimed Caelyum, and dropped Mia, who coughed as she hit the ground. His tentacle hairdo wriggled like a horde of angry snakes as he glared at you in rage: the stone you had thrown at his shoulder had hurt! With a furious roar, he swung his sword around his head three times, trying to cut you into pieces. You ducked and dodged each strike as fast as you could…only to fall back as Cael summoned a horde of sand crabs. You squirmed and grimaced as the crabs pinned you to the ground, acting like organic shackles. You winced as each time you moved, they pinched you hard, making you stay still. Caelyum smirked victoriously, and pointed the tip of his cutlass at your heart. “Tell me, Prefect,” he taunted. “Do you fear death?” “Do you?” CHOMP! Caelyum began to turn around towards the voice, his face etched with surprise…and stayed perfectly still, as if he’d become a statue, paralyzed in shock. The red marking of Tock Crockwork’s unique power – One Minute to Die – was evident on his left arm. “NOW!” the crocodile shouted, as Grim hurried over. The feline-like creature wasted no time: he focused his power, a bright blue aura surrounding him…before, with a spiteful hiss, sending a huge jet of flame towards Caelyum. Caelyum was sent flying through the air, clothing scorched, and rolled across the dirt, still in the position he had been stuck in. Only a few seconds later, he convulsed, and groaned, trying to stand up… …Only to find Tock looming over him. “This,” the crocodile hissed, “Is why I’M top of the food chain, snack meat!” WHAM! He spun around, slapping his tail across Cael’s face…and the Overblotting mage fell still and silent, rendered swiftly unconscious. The sword disappeared without warning from his hand, as if it had never been there. The crabs he had summoned all vanished in the blink of an eye: just like at the shop, one moment they were there, and the next they were not. All four of you – yourself, Mia, and your friends – sighed with relief. “Thanks,” you nodded to Tock as he helped you to your feet. “Hey, I’ve gotta protect my territory; that includes you,” Crockwork shrugged. You decided not to comment on that. “Are you okay, Miss Corazón?” meowed Grim, nuzzling up against the mermaid’s side. She smiled weakly and patted his head before standing. “Physically, yes,” she said. The teenaged girl’s eyes then lit up with concern as she hurried over to Cael’s side. “Cael…Cael, are you okay? S-Speak to me!” she pleaded. “He just tried to kill you!” Grim snapped out. “He wasn’t thinking straight,” Mia defended him. “Just…h-he didn’t understand…” She sniffled and bowed her head. “…C-Caelyum…I’m so sorry…” You and Grim shared a sad sort of look. Tock just looked confused, above all else. “What happened between you two?” the croc grimaced, crossing his scaly arms. “I think we’re about to find out,” you said, and pointed as silver mist began to wisp off of Caelyum De Macabre’s form. A moment later, a blinding white light surrounded the young man…and the mist formed a cloud, inside of which – as always seemed to happen – pictures from the past began to appear… “Tag! You’re it!” “I’ll get you! Ha Ha Ha!” In the swamplands of the Jubilee Port, a small boy with pink dreadlocks giggled and hid behind a tree by the riverbank. For several seconds, he sat anxiously…then yelped when, out of the river burst a familiar, dark face with flowing raven hair. “GOTCHA!” sang out the girl with the gold and ruby tail, and reached out a hand to playfully tap his shoulder. “No fair!” huffed the boy. “I always have to stay near the water; you never let me have an advantage!” The girl giggled and smirked teasingly. “Not my fault you’re a lousy swimmer,” she cooed. The boy grumbled and pouted. She smiled gently. “I’m sorry, Cael; I didn’t mean it,” she said, placing a hand on his leg… “AHA!” the boy laughed, and tapped her hand before jumping away. “You’re it again!” “HEY! THAT’S CHEATING!” The two laughed as the girl swam through the river, chasing the bayou boy up and down the banks…before finally leaping out of the river with a victorious cry. “RAAAAH!” “EEK!” Young Caelyum yelped as he was thrown to the ground. The girl with the fish tail grinned, flippers wagging happily as she kept him pinned. “Gotcha again!” she sang out. Young Cael giggled and wiggled under her. “Hey, lemme go!” he demanded with a slight laugh. “Hmmmm…if I do, will you just tag me again?” “…Maybe?” The mermaid glared…and tickled her friend with her tail. Cael squealed with laughter before flashing an evil smile. “Ohhhhh, you wanna play that way, huh?” He tickled her back and the two rolled across the bank…before yelping and splashing into the river. A moment later, both rose from the depths Caelyum coughing and floundering. “Help! Mia, help! I’m drowning!” “I’ve got you, hold on!” Mia said, and helped Cael back to shore. The boy sighed with relief and began to wring out his clothes. “Thank you,” he gasped out. “No problem,” Mia smiled. “I’m sorry you got all wet…” “It’s okay; I’ve got other clothes,” Cael smiled. Mia nodded, then smiled a bit more sadly. “I still should have been more careful: there may be more clothes, but there’s only one Caelyum.” Cael blushed. “Hush, you’re just teasing me now…” “No. I’m not,” Mia said seriously. “You’re my best friend, Cael.” Cael blinked, pausing in his activities. “…But…don’t you have other mermaid friends?” “I may have OTHER friends, but you’re my BEST friend,” smiled Mia. “And there’s only one of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Cael blinked again…then smiled sentimentally. “Heh…well, um…you’re my best friend, too, Mia. And, uh…a-and I feel the same.” “I’m glad,” Mia smiled. A pause. “You should really suck less at swimming though.” “Oh, hush. Say! Maybe you can teach me?” “Sure!” That word seemed to be a cue, for the scene changed to a few years later; the same river on the bayou, the same boy and girl, just a little older. “MARCO!” “POLO!” The Mermaid floated with her upper half above the water, eyes closed, flapping her tail as she blindly searched for her friend. Cael would pop up now and again with a gleaming, gloating grin as he watched her try to find him: he’d learned to swim VERY well in the years since that time playing tag. “MARCO!” Mia called out again. “POLO!” laughed Cael. “Oh, this is impossible, you’re too fast!” “Suck less at swimming,” teased Caelyum. “I’m a MERMAID, all we DO is swim!” “You can walk!” “I need a potion or a spell for that,” huffed Mia, and turned around, trying to feel about for her friend. Cael smirked and dove under again, swimming cautiously around her in the wide river… …But as he popped up again, he was due for a terrible sight. He gasped as he saw Mia blindly reaching closer to the shore…where a venomous serpent glared at her oncoming form almost hungrily… “MARCO!” “MIA, WATCH OUT!” Confused, Mia opened her eyes…then gasped as she saw the snake rearing back to bite her! She pulled away just in time, and at the same moment, Cael glared and snapped his fingers. The snake heard a clicking noise, and turned its head to find a white crab snapping its pincers. The pincers swung towards its throat… SNICKER-SNACK! And that was the end of the snake. Mia swam back to Caelyum’s side as she snapped his fingers again and the crab disappeared. He hugged her close. “Are you okay?” he whispered, worriedly. “Yeah…i-it didn’t get me,” she panted with relief, and squeezed him tightly. “Thank…th-thank you…” Caelyum smiled warmly and returned the hug…then froze up as Mia leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said again, and nuzzled against his bare chest. Cael blinked…then blushed red as a tomato and grumbled. “…Hey, what are friends for…? More time passed, and the swamp disappeared. The scene now became a lonely pier. On it sat Caelyum and Mia, who was now in full human form. “Do you really have to go?” he whispered. Mia nodded sadly, hanging her head. Cael bit his lip, and looked away, tragedy in his eyes. “…When…w-when will you be back?” he asked, timidly. “I don’t know,” Mia admitted sadly, then smiled gently up at her friend. “My mother said I need to start learning more about the family business; spending less time on land and…well…with you.” Cael frowned and clenched his fists. “I see.” Mia’s smile fell…and she gave Caelyum a hug. He relaxed. “She’s set in her ways,” she said softly. “But I will never forget you. And I WILL come back.” “Do you promise?” “Of course. You’re my best friend,” smiled Mia…then reached into a bag she had with her, stationed between the two. “Here…I have proof…” Cael tilted his head as out of the bag she pulled two silver necklaces with heart shaped lockets. She gave him one, and clasped the other around her neck. “What is this?” Cael asked, crinkling his nose in confusion. “A sign that we both share the same heart,” Mia said, and giggled. “That’s the really sappy way of saying it, anyway. Put it on and open it!” Cael did, and at the same time he opened the locket, Mia did too…and soft, beautiful melody chimed from the music box contained. Caelyum’s eyes widened. “That’s the song you taught me,” he recognized, and looke dup to Mia. “The one about the pirate and the goddess of the sea?” Mia nodded. “It’s your favorite…my favorite…OUR favorite,” she said gently, and took Cael’s hands in hers, looking into his eyes with deep-rooted affection. “And as long as we share these lockets, share these songs…we’ll never truly be away from each other.” Caelyum smiled weakly. “I don’t know about that,” he chuckled, wryly. “But…thank you, Mia.” He paused. “You…you know I love you…right?” Mia blushed. “Yes. And I love you too.” Cael gaped. “You do?” “Of course, silly! You’re my best friend!” Cael blinked…then smiled and shook his head wearily. “Yeah…I know,” he said softly. “I…I know.” A pause…and the pair began to sing together to the mingled tune on their music boxes as they watched the sun sink on the horizon beyond the sea. “Warm and welcoming as the sea, someday I will return to thee. Hear my voice, sing with the tide: Our Love Will Never Die.” Time passed once more, but the music box still played. The next scene played in silence, as Cael lay on his bed silently one night. He hummed to the tune on the locket, and glanced sorrowfully towards a calendar on his wall. Every date was crossed out with a red X. He sighed…then snapped the locket shut…before a lightbulb seemed to go off over his head, and he reached towards his book case, grabbing a specific spell book… This short tableaux was followed by another as Caelyum was now found…underwater. His lower half had become a white-scaled fish’s tail as he swam through the water, using a spell that would turn him into a merman for a few short hours. He’d taken a boat out to the coordinates where he knew Mia lived. Now, he swam quickly and quietly through the city, looking for Mia. His eyes darted this way and that, seeking some sign of his long lost friend; two years without any sort of contact – never a call, never anything written – and he was now so close to seeing her again! He smiled wider as he moved into one of the higher rent neighborhoods of the underwater area, carefully brushing past other, natural merfolk going about their business. His heart was beating fast in his chest; when he found her, he’d tell her everything. How he felt, how much it hurt to be without her, how much he never wanted to be separated again! Then he found her, as he turned an alley…and that fast beating heart seemed to skip a beat… …As his face filled with sorrow. Only yards away – never noticing he was there, he saw a strong, burly-looking merman with blonde hair…hugging his Mia and kissing her full on the lips. He clamped his eyes shut…and swam away, out of the city and back towards the surface. His tears were lost with the tides. Thus ended the vision, as the blinding light faded, leaving an unconscious Caelyum De Macabre lying on the ground, back to his usual self. “…Prefect?” “Yeah, Grim?” “Is it, like…a requirement that we stand here for several seconds in total silence after we see those?” “No, I think it just happens.” “Ah. Okay then.” Tock Crockwork said nothing. A few moments later, Cael groaned and began to stir. He blinked his eyes and clutched his pink-haired head as he started to sit up. “Ugh…what…wh-what happened?” he slurred out. “You tried to turn my food into shish-kabob,” droned Tock, thumbing towards you. “Shut up,” you grumbled. Confused, Cael turned towards your voices, and looked about to say something…until he heard sniffling and whimpering. He turned…and found the teary-eyed face of Mia staring back at him. “C-Cael,” she whimpered…then let out a squealing cry that caught him off guard as she threw herself upon him and began to cry. “CAEL, I’M SO SORRY! I’m so, so sorry…please…please, I’m sorry, PLEASE…!” Caelyum, as you might imagine, looked beyond uncomfortable…and with a growl, he managed to push Mia off of him. She whimpered like a kicked puppy as, without a word, he got to his feet and turned away from her, one hand on his chest, clutching his silver locket. “Sorry isn’t enough,” he answered, coldly. Mia gulped…and stood up. “Cael…please don’t walk away,” she begged. “Why not?” Caelyum snarled back over his shoulder, and began to stumble away. “Because I love you!” Cael stopped. He didn’t turn around…but he stopped. Mia paused…and took a deep breath. “I love you,” she said, firmly now, not desperately. “I…I always loved you, but…but I was…I don’t know, I…I was worried…” She hung her head and paused before going on. Cael turned his head slightly to show he was listening. “When I returned to the sea, my mother didn’t want me to ever go back to the land. She forbid it. She told me I had to stay under the water, and…and find a proper husband. She told me to forget about you, and…that merman you saw? He was…my betrothed.” Cael growled. “WAS,” Mia pointed out, and then went on quickly: “Cael, I could NEVER forget you, and I could NEVER stop loving you. Those two years…they were agony for me. That time in the alley…I asked him to kiss me because I wanted to show him we WEREN’T right for each other. He agreed; there just…wasn’t a spark. We liked each other, but…we both knew it would be wrong.” She swallowed, and lifted her head. “So…we both spoke to my mother. And…she realized what she’d been doing was wrong. The very next day, I went back to the swamplands; I looked everywhere for you…you weren’t there.” Silence. “I’m so sorry, Caelyum,” she sniffled. “I’m…I’m so-” Cael stopped her with a raised hand…and slowly turned towards her. All of you were surprised to see tears in his eyes. “…I just tried to kill you.” “Yes.” “I ran off over this whole misunderstanding.” “Yes.” “All this pain, all this time…and you really loved me?” “Yes.” “And…you…still love me? After all that?” Mia smiled. “Yes.” Cael blinked…then let out a wet laugh. “Wow,” he chuckled. “I…I guess swimming isn’t the only thing we both suck at. I mean…we’re n-not very good at this whole ‘relationship’ thing, either, are we?” Mia shared a sniffling laugh…and the pair promptly ran into each other’s arms. “I’m so happy I found you,” Mia sobbed with joy. “I’ve missed you so much…” “Not half as much as I’ve missed you,” Cael choked. The pair squeezed each other…then backed up, holding each other’s hands and staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. “Play the song you sang long ago,” Cael began. “And wherever the storm may blow,” Mia continued. “You will find the key to my heart,” both finished. “We’ll never be apart.” “Aaaaand…kiss,” you murmured to yourself with a smile, as the pair did exactly that. Tock snorted, rolling his eyes as Grim stuck out his tongue and grumbled something about “soppy mush.” The two lovebirds parted after a few seconds…then seemed to remember you were all standing nearby, and blushed before backing away from each other like scalded cats. “Um…s-sorry,” Caelyum mumbled. “About trying to destroy us, or for that sappy display?” droned Tock. “Because I can forgive one of those…” “It’s the destroying us part, isn’t it?” you guessed. “Yyyyep.” Cael hung his head and shuffled his feet guiltily. “…I’ve…had a lot of pain bottled up for years,” he said silently. “And…when I heard she was coming here…I…well…” “It’s alright,” you soothed, moving closer. “I can understand. And for the record, we won’t tell the Headmaster.” “Nya…or Chief Jehan,” Grim added. “Claude Jehan?” Mia spoke up, and tilted her head. “Is he really as scary as they say back home? The Ashengrottos and Leeches have a LOT of stories to tell.” “I’d imagine,” you snickered. “And no. He’s not that scary.” “Right. He’s WORSE,” Tock responded. “Amen,” you and Grim chorused. Mia gulped nervously; Cael chuckled softly, smiling at her with puppy-eyed affection. “I…hope he’s not going to be at the play tonight,” she said slowly. “Trust me, you’ll be fine,” you soothed. “Well, we won’t be if we don’t get there on time!” Grim reminded you. “We’re already behind schedule, thanks to all this!” “The hairball has a point,” nodded Tock, stiffly, then grumbled under his breath: “I still say it’s all for pansies, though…” All of you chuckled…except Mia, who took Cael by the hand. “Can…can he come, too?” she asked, shyly. Cael looked shocked, as did Grim and Tock. You just smiled wider. “If he wants to,” you answered. Cael blinked…then grinned so wide his face nearly seemed to split in two. “Please!” he nodded eagerly. “Then come on!” you called, and gestured for the reunited lovers to follow. “Let’s get moving before my pay gets docked! I have a pet to feed, you know!” “I AM NOT YOUR PET!” snapped Grim, while Tock cackled with amusement, snapping his fingers and resuming his humanoid form. Caelyum De Macabre and Mia Corazón just smiled and squeezed each other’s hands, following at a steady pace. It took longer than it should have to reach the theater, in the end, but you still made it in the nick of time. When asked why it took so long, you had an honest answer: Cael and Mia were so busy staring into one another’s eyes with everlasting love, it made getting there quickly difficult. In your mind, and theirs, it was more than worth it.

 The End

[syntiment]

thank you for speaking on callout culture! i hope you're doing okay :)

I’ve been around on the internet for a long time, I’ve seen the internet cancel people who didn’t deserve it when the ability to hold content creators accountable should be used appropriately. I’ve seen it done properly too, where people who don’t deserve a platform because they’ve hurt people or abused that power, have had that power taken from them rightfully. And I’ve seen people who made mistakes learn that they were wrong and course correct. 

Holding people accountable is good, but the modern era of the internet and the easy accessibility we have to content creators through social media is a double edged sword that’s being absolutely misused. And unfortunately there’s been a large push in the younger generation taking over the internet, towards an almost puritanical view of people’s actions. Satire is taken completely seriously at face, people’s words are taken out of context, and there’s an expectation that everyone needs to act completely unproblematically or your entire internet career is at stake. And the slightest mistake or an action viewed as “wrong” by this large majority makes these people think they have the right to witch hunt others off the face of the internet.

Callout culture and cancel culture no longer serve the purpose they were created for. When thousands of people online can doxx, harass, and tell content creators to end their lives because they have either unknowingly or unintentionally done something that breaks these expectations people have for them, there is a huge problem.

In a lot of cases, there’s nothing that content creators who’ve been deemed as “problematic” or “cancelled” can do or say that will satisfy people. There’s no right answer to give, because even an apology and a vow to change their actions will be taken as insincere. We’ve seen this happen before. 

Regardless of someone’s other actions online, or what they’ve said. There can be surmounting evidence of someone being a good well rounded person. As soon as people find one flaw regardless of the age of that flaw, or taken one thing said out of the satirical context it’s being used in, no one bothers to take the time to weigh those pros and cons of their actions. Given critical thought and genuine analysis to situations like these and a lot of them can be solved long before they get this out of hand. 

A lot of that issue stems from younger people online putting SO much weight and importance on these content creators and their value to these kids mental health, that as soon as one of them deviates from the image or expectation they have in their head, it feels world shattering and emotions rise and spiral. 

But there are a lot of other factors that play into the way that callout culture and cancel culture have become completely abhorrent in modern times too. Too much for me to fit into this already very long response. 

It’s just really disheartening and sad to watch this kind of mob mentality bare down on more people.

I’m doing great, still trucking along in my homework. I’m far more worried for how this kind of behavior is effecting the people involved in the techno/sleepytwt/mcyt situation. Namely techno himself. This is a man with severe social anxiety, current having thousands of people openly demanding his death and putting his family at risk through doxxing. He must be going through a lot right now. And I just hope that he knows that there are people out there who don’t hate his guts and still want to see him do well for himself.

[riotwritesthings]

Coffee and Bad Words

WinterIron, T, 1.5K, convenient amnesia

For the @winterironmonth​

Fun fact, this is probably my favorite prompt I’ve written for the month so far it’s so goofy I regret nothing.

SFW Wednesday, Amnesia AND “All I do is drink coffee and say bad words.”

-

Bucky walks into the lab with a half formed plan for how he’s going to try and coax Tony out. The man’s been locked up down there playing with some weird bit of tech they picked up on their last mission for almost 36 hours now, and everyone is starting to get concerned. Bucky is pretending not to know why he was chosen for this job.

The doors open for him, and the second he steps into the the lab Tony spins to point at him and demands “you. We’re friends, right?”

“Um,” Bucky says, because that’s the big question isn’t it? Bucky would certainly like to think so, at least, he’d even like to think maybe he’ll work up the balls to try for more than that sometimes soon. Especially if the rest of the team keeps mocking him about his ‘totally obvious’ feelings. Still, he’s not sure what answer Tony is actually looking for here, so he finally settles on a hesitant “yes?”

“Right,” Tony says, nodding and turning back to the million screens opened up before him, spanning nearly the entire workspace and displaying what looks like various clips of security feeds from the lab. “Right, of course we’re friends, you spend so much time down here. We’re totally friends. That makes sense. I’ve hardly seen anyone else on these feeds, and look, look I’m even laughing in this one.”

Tony pauses to point to one of the screens and Bucky remembers that day. He doesn’t remember exactly what stupid pun he’d made, but he remembers the way Tony had laughed, eyes squeezed shut and head thrown back.

“Tony,” Bucky says slowly, and he’s starting to get a bad feeling about this, but before he can say anything else Tony spins back towards him with a victorious grin.

“Tony! That was going to be my question, thank you!”

Bucky’s heart drops into his stomach. His bad feeling gets exponentially worse.

-

Turns out, the fancy new gizmo Tony had been playing with activated somehow, and apparently wiped his memory. All of it. And instead of telling anyone, Tony has spent the past twelve or so hours alone, watching security footage.

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Bucky can’t help demanding, heart racing, and he has to get Tony to medical, get him checked over, what if there’s something else-

“Because I had to figure out who I am, first!” Tony insists, breaking into Bucky’s panic spiral, throwing his arms in the air, like somehow Bucky is the one being ridiculous here.

“So you’ve been watchin’ security footage of yourself?”

“A man is most himself when alone,” Tony says obnoxiously and Bucky resists the urge to roll his eyes. Then Tony considers the screens again and adds “and when you’re here, I guess, you’re down here like all the time. You didn’t even leave when I snorted a questionably green shake out of my nose, which, gross. Although you did laugh at me, that’s real friendship I guess.”

Bucky ignores the heat trying to rise in his face because right, sure, friendship. “You couldn’ have tried the internet?” Bucky asks instead of addressing the fact that it really is obvious how much time he spends hanging around Tony now that it’s all laid out like this, “or, I dunno, asked JARVIS?”

Tony’s nose wrinkles adorably as he demands “the ceiling voice?! Like hell am I trusting that, next thing I know it’s going to be refusing to open the pod bay doors!”

“Oh my god, you’re so paranoid,” Bucky groans, slumping onto one of the stools and resisting the urge to drop his forehead to the table.

“See, you do know me!” Tony says brightly, smile lighting up his face, and despite everything Bucky’s heart gives a little flutter. “So far, I’ve been able to determine that all I do is drink coffee and say bad words.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there,” Bucky mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Tony laughs again.

“Also, am I building a robot army? What up with that?” Tony asks, turning back to his many screens with a thoughtful look.

“You are a robot army,” Bucky says, and he’s about to actually explain the suits of armor lining the walls when something on the screens catches his eye instead.

He remembers that day, too. Tony in a tank top, working on one of the armors, grease smeared across his bare arms. Bucky feels his face heating up, because he remembers what happens next, too. On screen, Bucky wants into the lab, catches sight of Tony, and promptly trips over DUM-E and goes sprawling to the ground. Not his proudest moment, but not the worst he’s ever embarrassed himself in front of Tony with the man, somehow, miraculously not noticing.

Bucky glances over at Tony, to see if maybe he’d managed to miss Bucky’s face plant this time too, only to find Tony already watching him with a considering look. Bucky opens his mouth with absolutely no idea what he plans to say, but Tony beats him to it anyways.

“Did you know,” Tony starts slowly, and apparently he doesn’t need his memory to get the same look on his face when he’s putting the pieces together, “that when you moved the couch to get the ball one of the weird robots lost, I straight up fell off my chair and nearly stabbed myself with a screwdriver on the way down?”

“Uh,” Bucky says, because he had not known that, and the knowing look that’s slowly growing on Tony’s face is making him nervous. For multiple reasons. And a part of him can’t stop wondering how many other stupid things Tony has seen him doing in these feeds, how many stupid things Bucky has missed Tony doing over him.

“So, new question,” Tony says, sidling towards him with an amazing amount of confidence for someone with no memories. “Are we, by any chance, right on the delicate edge of more than friends?”

“Uh- you,” Bucky stutters out and he can’t back away fast enough, his hip bouncing painfully off the corner of a table because he can’t drag his eyes away from the way Tony’s tongue swipes out to wet his lips. Finally Bucky gets his brain back online enough to insist “we’re not having this conversation when you don’t remember anythin’!”

Tony pouts but at least stops advancing on him, and it’s incredibly difficult for Bucky to drag his attention away from the swell of Tony’s lower lip. “Fine. And I suppose you’re going to make me go talk to doctors now,” Tony says with a roll of his eyes, and Bucky’s not sure if it’s a good or bad sign that Tony’s dislike of going to medical isn’t reliant on his memories either.

“For starters,” Bucky grumbles. That’s right, he just has to deal with this one thing at a time, first they make sure Tony is okay, then they figure out what’s going on with his memory, and then-

“And then we can make out?” Tony asks hopefully and Bucky almost trips over exactly nothing.

“Would you please just- grab the thing and we can go talk to someone?” Bucky demands and Tony’s little smirk is really not helping anything.

“Fine, fine,” Tony says, smirking wider as he turns to grab the small device still sitting on one of the tables.

There’s a bright flash of light.

Bucky wakes up on his back, blinking at the ceiling in confusion.

“Are you kidding?! It was that easy?!” Tony’s voice demands from somewhere on the other side of the lab, “I hate magic. So much.”

“I know,” Bucky says with a groan as he pushes himself upright again, and then pauses, “wait, you remember that?”

“I also remember taking my midterms in a hula outfit, which I haven’t remembered since the 90’s, so that’s fun,” Tony says and his head pop up over one of the tables, looking a little dazed, a little confused, but no worse for wear. “Apparently, when I get my memories back I get all of them back. Including the things I’d rather not.”

Tony continues complaining as they pick themselves back up, dust themselves off, and Bucky is just trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to say now. Does he act like they didn’t just have an accidental revelation? Chalk it all up to the effects of the magic mind wiper and never speak of it again?

As usual, Tony beats him to the punch. His eyes flick up to the screens again, and a hopeful smile spreads across his face. “So, did we have to go upstairs right now, or..?” He trails off, wiggles his eyebrows, and almost manages to hide the nerves in his voice.

“Or,” Bucky says, surprising himself with how firm his voice comes out considering he had no idea he was going to say it. He’s not taking it back through, not missing this chance because knowing himself, Bucky could spend the rest of his life finding excuses to wait.

“Yay, we’re gonna make out,” Tony says, giddy and goofy and oh, Bucky’s heart is swelling almost painfully in his chest as Tony picks right back up on advancing on him.

“Just a little,” Bucky says, already reaching out to pull him in, “then it’s straight to medical for you.”

“Boo,” Tony tries to complain, but Bucky just kisses him quiet.

[homebody-nobody]

touch me someone

HIIIII it’s your favorite fic writer back from the dead with TWO whole fics real close together maybe I’ll finally become a consistent publisher?!? we can dream. Anyway. JJ and Kiara are my new Bellamy and Clarke I guess so enjoy this VERY angsty smutty hurt/comforty poetic nonsense the idea for which would not leave my brain til I wrote it. Please for the love of god read this bc I actually kind of love it and need validation or concrit or literally any feedback at all bc my none of my irl friends like this show so pls interact/comment 

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ao3

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He pulls away from her, and his eyes are wide but dry as his chest heaves. He looks wild, uncaged and raw, the moonlight turning his blond hair white and his blue eyes into pools of silver. Tragedy and shock have destroyed him, the chains he’d wrapped around his brash, heedless, unending want twisted into shards by an explosion of hurt and grief. He has always been the victim, the boy left behind in empty rooms with nothing but loss and bloody fragments, told to piece himself back together. Finally, they’ve taken the last thing. When he told John B they had nothing to lose, they still had each other. And now, he doesn’t even have that.

But she’s still here.

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

Touch me someone 

I’m too young to feel so

numb, numb, numb, numb 

You could be the one to 

Make me feel somethin, somethin. 

The Phantom went down around 8:30 PM. Or maybe 10:30. Kiara doesn’t remember. She only knows that the hours between then and now have felt like a lifetime and also no time at all. Like she’ll turn and John B will be there, behind her shoulder, laughing at something JJ said, Sarah hanging off his arm; but also like the world is dark and will be dark and has been dark forever. Like the sun will never rise after this. Like the storm took the light and heat from the world just like it took her best friend. 

Later, she’ll learn that John B’s official time of death is listed as 8:34 PM, when they stopped trying to establish radio contact with him and Sarah. Later, she’ll watch news stories about the manhunt for Rafe Cameron and the scandal of Ward Cameron’s property being left to his second wife, rather than his remaining daughter. Later, she’ll get an email from an internet cafe in Bermuda and her whole world will flip upside down one more time. 

But now, she is laying in her four-poster bed, watching the ceiling fan lazily trawl the same, tired circle, listening to the pull-chain tap not-quite-silently against the glass fixture. Now, her hair still damp from the shower that her mother made her take, eyes stinging from sharp wind and tears not yet shed, the inside of her mouth shredded and sore from the hours she spent chewing on her lips, the world is too quiet, too peaceful. The crickets outside sing soft and gentle, just like they have every night her whole life, and the texture of her comforter, the quiet harmony of the night, the soft click and whoosh of the fan -- it all feels so chokingly familiar, like spiralling back down to earth after spending weeks dipping in and out of orbit. 

She wants to scream until her throat is raw, sob and fight and unleash herself on every single adult that hurt John B, that brushed him off or refused to help or wouldn’t listen to him. She wants to gut Ward Cameron for ripping everything away from John B, first his father, and then the gold that was his by right. The gold that was theirs. She wants to rip off Rafe’s skin piece by piece until he’s in shreds at her feet. She wants to eviscerate his father with the same gaff hook he used to rip apart those two mainlanders and ruin John B’s life. She’s so full of hurt and grief and anger that her fists keep clenching white-knuckled in her blankets and she wants to bring down the sky itself. But at the same time, she’s haunted by that same emptiness that followed her after Sarah’s childish betrayal, like she’s watching it all from the outside. 

She can’t sleep. She won’t. Sleep is just an escape, a place to forget, and she’ll have to wake up and remember what happened all over again, remember the rush of hope and the hours of adrenaline and apprehension that ended in a tragedy none of them could have ever predicted. What child foretells death? 

Rolling over, she presses her face into her pillow, smothering herself until her lungs force her to turn her head for air. She opens her eyes, no less heavier than they were hours ago. Her throat tightens like tears are about to well up, to spill over and stain her sheets, but they don’t come. Itchy and claustrophobic, she throws back the sheets and paces over the smooth boards of her room, bare feet making soft noises over the lacquered wood. She has to get out, to make sure that she didn’t dream up the whole goddamn thing. 

She dresses quickly, throwing on denim cutoffs and an old drug rug that cycled its way through at least two of the boys’ wardrobes before landing in hers. She doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know what she needs, but she throws her wallet, her charger, a flashlight, and her water bottle in her beat up backpack, and, on second thought, a toothbrush and some deodorant. She picks up her keds and tiptoes down the stairs, avoiding the creaky eighth stair. 

The key rack is empty, and, chastising herself for believing her parents would leave the car keys out after everything she’d pulled in the last few days, she rocks on her heels, assessing her options. The most prudent one is probably just to go back to bed, given the usual risks of going out at night as a teenage girl, the massive punishment that looms in her future, and, now, the lack of a vehicle. But the thought of returning to her stale room, skin crawling and mind racing at a standstill, makes the decision for her. She slips out the back door, making sure to catch the screen door before it slams, and digs out her bike from next to the garage. The tires could use air and the gears are misaligned, but it still rides, and it’ll get her… somewhere else. 

Her original intention is to go to Pope’s house, mostly because it’s closest, but then she thinks about how she kissed him earlier that afternoon -- and God, was that just this afternoon? There’d be implications, now. Showing up in the middle of the night, throwing pebbles at his window -- it would mean something. So she stands up on the pedals and pushes past his street, floating like jetsam through the night. 

She ends up heading for the chateau, which is where she was going all along. After her family moved to the outskirts of figure eight just before high school, it was the only place that felt like home anymore. She cruises deep into the cut, where even the smell of the air changes, from freshly mowed grass and chlorinated in-ground pools to gasoline and oil, rotting seaweed and the salt marsh. 

The little house sits in the reeds, ramshackle and welcoming as ever, tired and reaching under the moon. It’s empty and forlorn, alone on the edge of the edge, out past the main cluster of the cut, pushed past the tideline, separated from the rest of the flotsam by a freak wave. The Routledge boys never fit in, even with the outcasts, and they made their home like they knew it. Skidding to a stop in the gravel driveway, the sting of tiny rocks against her bare ankles is the only thing she’s really felt in hours. Her heart picks up, skipping over itself as her memory stumbles over all the years seeping out of the wind-weathered boards and the sinking foundation. 

Again, it feels like this would be a moment for tears, like the sight of John B’s house, the memory of Big John’s booming laugh and all the bonfire-scented nights on that sagging porch should mean enough to make something in her crack, to finally shatter the glass walls of shock and let the grief come pouring in. But it doesn’t. She just stares up at the chateau, one part of her aching for the ease of a found family she’ll never get back, the other dreading the fate of the little house. 

The breeze changes directions as she stares up at the rickety shutters and holey screens, bringing with it the tinny sound of music played out of a cell phone in a solo cup, a noise she knows well. Her stomach drops to the hard-packed dirt, crashing there with her bicycle and sending up a cloud of dust. Maybe John B survived. Maybe he made it back to shore, and he’s laying low, doing that stupid, chivalrous thing he does, trying to protect them by not letting them know. Maybe he’s out by the shed in that old metal lawn chair, Sarah in his lap, exhausted and defeated and alive. But as she gets closer, the moonlight glints off tawny waves crusted with sweat and salt, and the momentary, wild hope crashes and ebbs away from the shore. 

JJ hears her, of course, sitting up in the hammock and turning toward the sound of her flat-soled sneakers slapping the dirt. “Hey,” he says, his expressive face, for once, inscrutable. 

“Hey,” she says, slightly out of breath from the sprint. “I thought you were…” she trails off, because he knows. Because he’s the only one in the whole world who can look at her and understand the cathedral dreams and vaulted memories crashing down in her chest. 

“I’m not,” he says, an answer that belies more than either of them knows. JJ gets this look, when he’s seconds away from doing something particularly concerning (and usually criminal). Manic energy lights up in his blue eyes, burning anywhere from mischief to stubborn determination to full-tilt rage. The well-developed muscles in his shoulders and arms refuse to relax, and his hands get so fidgety they lose the coordination it takes to flip the zippo lighter between long, practiced fingers. His face fights with itself, half already spitting with well-steeped anger, the other tired, and broken, and grieving. 

“I noticed,” she responds.  She drops her bag on one of the metal folding chairs, dooming it to a coating of flaky, faded paint. Crossing the grass, hoping her broad strides will disguise the rattling breath in her chest, the shake in her hands, she moves to sit next to him in the hammock, and he shifts his weight to allow her. 

There’s no verbal communication, no squabble about personal space or indignant demands she find her own seat. There never is, not with her boys. The Pogues. It seems so silly now, hiding behind that name for themselves, a name she’d never really belonged to, anyway. He’s holding a lit joint in one hand, a bottle dangling from the other, and he offers her one while swigging from the other. The old favorites of a Maybank in crisis. She takes it. 

He falls back next to her, sending the hammock swinging as he gazes up at the stars. Sarah had known the most about constellations, of the five of them, but JJ knows a fair amount, too, some of the only memories of his mother the nights when she would hold him under the stars, tracing the designs across the sky, her hand wrapped around his tiny one. His eyes keep drifting off the sky and landing on Kiara, eyes distant, bathed in moonlight. 

“He’s not dead,” JJ says, surprising himself as much as her. He sits up, and she follows. He stares at his feet for a while, and she thinks about putting her arms around him.  “I --” he picks his head up to look at her and stops, voice stolen by the hope in her eyes. “I’d feel it,” he finishes lamely, and watches the spark die. 

“The first stage of grief is denial,” she says, and it’s supposed to be at least slightly lighthearted, but it falls cruelly to the crabgrass. 

“You sound like Pope,” he counters, and there’s too much weight to that name to throw it around for long. They’re both thinking of Kiara kissing him, and the memory is pleasant to neither. 

She doesn’t really know why she did that. Maybe it’s because he’s everything she’s supposed to want, intelligence and ambition and ingenuity, everything she tells herself is important in a guy. Maybe because he’s in love with her. Maybe because she’s definitely in love with one of her best friends, and he’s the one who makes sense. She takes another hit and hands the blunt back to JJ. 

“I’d know,” he repeats, and she knows it’s not her he’s trying to convince. He lays back in the hammock, putting the blunt between his lips and dragging deep before tilting his head back and blowing the smoke into the tumultuous night. She looks back over her shoulder, watching his jaw and the movement of his throat as he exhales. Laying back next to him, she tries not to think about the warmth of his skin against hers, the strength of the body pressed to her side. It’s only JJ, the same reckless, stupid asshole who carried that damn pistol everywhere all summer and has a talent for getting into trouble. He’s not giving her butterflies with his proximity, and she’s not thinking about reaching down and lacing her fingers through his. 

Eventually, JJ flicks the roach into the darkness and stands as quickly as he can without tipping Kiara out of the hammock. She starts, not realizing she was dozing on his shoulder until it’s gone. “It’s late,” he says. 

She stands as well, tucking her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt as he kicks at the dirt. “I don’t --” she starts, and the hesitation makes him stop his nervous movement, meeting her eyes. “I don’t want to go home.” He opens his mouth to say something, but she interrupts him. “I can’t go home.” 

“Okay,” he says, after a second. He doesn’t want to be alone, either. She nods, and walks past him, picking up her bag. He follows her up to the house, and they stop at the foot of the stairs to the porch, staring at the buzzing light. JJ takes a stuttering inhale Kiara pretends not to hear, and he goes up the stairs first, wrapping a shaking hand the handle to the screen door. He pauses before going in, frozen, and it isn’t until she lays her hand on his shoulder that he summons the courage to push the door open. 

They knew the place was going to be tossed, but it still hurts Kiara and kills JJ, to see the overturned table and scattered papers, the couch cushions scattered on the floor and the coffee table flipped. He tries to shuffle backwards, to run from the sharp, fresh grief and the deep, familiar ache of loss and violation, but Kie is in the way, and when he turns to escape she catches him, her arms around his shoulders, his clutched around her waist. “I can’t --” he chokes, his face pressed to her neck, “It’s not --” his breath speeds up, his shoulders shaking. “They --” 

“I know,” she says, swallowing down tears, herself, in that same small voice from the night in the hot tub. She knew JJ was broken, on that deep, fundamental level that, intellectually, she could conceptualize, but she could never feel. But that night, seeing the bruises on his ribs, damning as fingerprints, the ghost of his pain, the whisper of breath knocked out and the brush of betrayal, turned her chest inside out. This feels the same way, watching him lose the last shred of some semblance of home to the same kind of mindless anger and selfish authority that claimed the first one. “I know.” 

He pulls away from her, and his eyes are wide but dry as his chest heaves. He looks wild, uncaged and raw, the moonlight turning his blond hair white and his blue eyes into pools of silver. Tragedy and shock have destroyed him, the chains he’d wrapped around his brash, heedless, unending want twisted into shards by an explosion of hurt and grief. He has always been the victim, the boy left behind in empty rooms with nothing but loss and bloody fragments, told to piece himself back together. Finally, they’ve taken the last thing. When he told John B they had nothing to lose, they still had each other. And now, he doesn’t even have that. 

But she’s still here. “Kie…” he breathes. She opens her mouth to reassure him again, but then his hands are on her face and he’s kissing her, deep and rough and desperate. She bursts into flame underneath him, paralysis broken, stupefaction overcome, as the glass walls she’s been watching through crack and shatter at her feet. JJ’s hands wrap around the back of her neck and spread across the small of her back, pushing her up against the door, and she twists her hands into his shaggy, sun-streaked hair. Every desperate question is met with his touch, and she chases it, even as he pulls away in horrified shock. 

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck, Kie, I’m so sorry --” He tries to shove himself away from her at the instant she curls her fists in his shirt, and it almost rips as she pulls and he slams back into her. Teeth clash and noses bump and it’s not perfect or soft or loving, but passion born from desperation and terror of what it would mean to stop. Putting his hands on the door on either side of her face, he pushes himself off of her, even as she tries to yank him back. “What are we doing?” he asks, in a voice that won’t like the answer. 

“JJ,” she gasps, pushing her fingers back up to tangle in blond, salt-sticky waves. “Shut up.” Pulling his mouth back down on top of hers, she gasps into him as his hands come down and frame her ribs, one of his arms sliding around her waist and the other pushing back up into her hair. 

“Don’t you think --” he tries, even as he leans over her, their breathing ragged, his knuckles white in her impossibly soft curls. His forehead is pushed to hers and he can’t pull away any farther, sucked into her gravitational field, helpless to it. 

“I don’t want to think,” she insists. “I want this, I need this,” This momentary pause is already too long, and if he stops kissing her, stops touching her, the tears she’s been holding back will crash over her and they won’t stop. The dark room is loud with heavy breathing as she catches the scent of him, salt and sweat and smoke. “I need you.” 

His grip falters and the momentary relaxation has her pressing herself against him. “Are you sure?” he asks, and this is a choice, now. This isn’t something that either of them can pawn off as a mistake made in the heat of a desperate moment. He wants this, has wanted it, ever since he met her, but he won’t be a decision half-made, won’t take advantage of vulnerability only to become a regret. He’s giving her a way out, knows her pragmatic nature and her anxious need for well-thought plans. He wants her to think, even if she’s desperate not to. 

He’s right, when he almost never is, but she knows that if she waits too long or lets in the doubt that expects her, she will break. “JJ,” she gasps, “Please.” His name, she knows, he can’t resist, not when paired with urgent pleading, and in this way, she makes her choice. He surrenders to her. 

They fall onto the creaky pullout, still set up from JJ’s most recent stay, not minding the sheets and blankets wrought asunder by the angry police search. He can’t let go of her, his hands pushing up her sweatshirt, dragging over her sides and up her thighs, tangling in her hair like he’s drinking her in with his touch, intoxicated with the smell of peach in her hair and the taste of sweat on her skin. Kiara lets herself get lost in him, ride the wave of desire pushing through her, moans and gasps when he hits the right spots and closes her eyes as he lifts her shirt over her head and attaches his lips to her neck, his hands finally coming up to cover her tits, and the long careful fingers she’d spent so many afternoons watching prove adept at twisting and pinching her nipples and leaving her begging for him. 

She almost rips his t-shirt off, pulling his bare chest against her own and letting the feeling of skin on skin light her up, setting fireworks off behind her eyelids. Wrapping one hand around the arm holding him up, she can feel his teeth on her neck, and she knows he’s leaving marks, and, for once, it doesn’t feel like she’s being claimed. She knows what it is -- proof this is happening, that they’re alive and feeling and crashing together again and again. She sinks her nails into his bicep as his fingers skim below the waistband of her shorts, and feels him smirk against her lips. 

“Yeah?” he asks, and the teasing in his voice is tortuous and reminiscent of his old, humorous self, just enough to make her sad for a moment, and when she nods quickly in return, it’s a bid to forget that sadness. His fingers flick open the button of her shorts and as his fingers dip lower, the only thing she can think about, the only thing she can feel, is his touch, his all-consuming presence, radiating heat. The bastard takes his time, her only gratification the press of him against her hip, hot and hard. He teases her through her underwear, and she can’t say she doesn’t enjoy it, arcing into his touch, shocks of pleasure building in incredible anticipation, but he’s going too slow, and he’s wearing too many clothes, still, and the intense want gnawing at her has too much potential to turn into grief. 

“Would you just --” she grunts against his mouth, cut off on a moan as he presses his fingers against her clit. “Fucking -- ah,” he works slow, hard, circles, enjoying himself as she tries to form sentences with his hands on her. “Fuck me already!” Because even this can’t be easy, not between the two of them. Because she’ll always be fighting with him, even with her bare chest pressed against his and his hand down her pants. 

JJ grins, scraping his teeth over her ear. “What,” he says, still teasing, still bittersweet, as he finally pushes his hand into her underwear, “aren’t you enjoying this?” Slowly, much too slowly, his fingers part the lips of her cunt, pressing down over her clit before finding the wetness further down. JJ practically growls as his middle finger dips between her folds and he finds her soaked, dropping his forehead against the forearm braced above her head. “Fuck, Kie,” he moans, and he can’t disguise the wasted crack in his voice. “God, you’re so fucking wet.” He’s already drunk on her, every new sensation dragging him deeper.  

“Your fault,” she stutters as he puts his hands, lean and strong and practiced, to good use, dragging slick fingertips back up to her clit and teasing small circles, rough, calloused skin creating delicious friction. And this -- this is what she was so desperate for, to feel only his touch and the way he pushes her higher, closer to an edge far away from the bleak grief of their every day world. He moans, too, as he dips his middle finger into her and she keens into his mouth, and she’s not thinking anymore, only chasing heat and skin and pleasure, the rest of the night foggy and distant, moonlit and blurred. 

She doesn’t even know how much time passes before he’s kissing his way down her body, only that he’s fucked her so well with his hands he has three fingers inside her and she’s asking for more. He pulls his hand away and she lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched noise at the loss of contact, only to end on a gasp when she opens her eyes to see that he has his fingers curled around the waistband of her shorts and his face is hovering near her hips, pupils blown wide as he looks up at her. He asks her something, but blood rushes in her ears as her heart pounds and her chest heaves and it isn’t until his tongue darts out to wet his lips that she realizes what he’s saying. 

“Fuck, yes, please,” she whines, and it feels like less than instant before her shorts are on the floor and his head is between her legs, his tongue on her clit, and she screams, pushing her hands into his hair as his mouth launches her higher and keeps her there, wave upon wave crashing over her until her legs are shaking, and when she feels the pull deep in her stomach and he takes half a second to breathe, she has enough presence of mind to yank him back up, slamming his lips down onto hers, tasting herself there. 

“Inside me,” she gasps, ragged and raw and scraping. “Now.” 

“But you haven’t --” he breathes, and she reaches down, shoving past the waistband of the shorts he’s still wearing, her hand on his cock stopping him dead. 

“Now,” she repeats. And then, leans up to kiss him, slightly softer than before, as if in apology for being so rough, but more as a distraction as her hands unbutton his shorts and shove them down his thighs, her hands finding him again and stroking his cock until he’s gasping into her mouth. “Unless,” she says between short kisses, trying to keep her tone light, even as her cunt aches for him. “You changed your mind?” 

He scrambles out of his shorts and boxers so fast it’s almost funny, but the laugh falls out of her chest as he braces his forearms on either side of her face, pushing her hair back from her forehead and looking at her so carefully it almost hurts. “I don’t have a condom,” he says, uncharacteristic worry trembling in his voice. 

“I’m clean,” she says, her hands reaching up to tangle in his hair once more, to ground her, and disguise their shaking. “You?” 

He nods. “What about --” 

“I have an IUD,” she says, more grateful than ever for her liberal mother and her own presence of mind. 

He licks his lips again, eyes dropping to her mouth before flicking back up to her eyes. “Last chance,” he says, like she’s going to change her mind and push him off of her, run off into the night and leave him here, disgraced and embarrassed. “Still sure?” he asks, like he’s expecting her to say no. She nods without hesitation, caught in his blue eyes, turned cobalt in the half-light. He kisses her one more time, and it’s laden with years of things he hasn’t said, and she surges up with urgency, not ready for the tenderness in his touch. JJ tries to slow her down again, to revel in the moment of bare skin and vulnerability, no matter how guarded it may be, but she reaches down, wrapping her hand around his dick, guiding him closer to her, and he’s falling into her touch, into her orbit, helpless. 

She draws him inside her, his forehead dropping to her shoulder with a forsaken, heavy breath. It’s too soft, this moment before he moves, too easy to break, every sense on fire. The air is too close to her skin, too tight around her arms, like she could rip the fabric of it with the barest movement. She wants to be lost in him again, to feel separate, far away and floating above herself, not so torturously in her body, JJ trembling and present above her. “JJ,” she says, opening her eyes to find his, a split-second mistake, the next word hitching on its way out of her chest. “Move.” 

He does, mercifully lowering his face to press against her neck, the eye contact too substantial, too burdensome to hold. The bubble surrounding them expands as he works her up to that blissful edge with ease, his mouth letting out a stream of filthy words about how good she feels surrounding him. Closing her eyes, she tilts her head back, letting her hands have free reign over his back, his shoulders, his arms and up into his hair, every place she wants to touch him when she watches his ridiculous muscles ripple under his young, tan skin. He shifts his weight, hooking her knee over his hip so his cock hits exactly the right spot with every thrust, and she cries out, racing higher. 

She should have expected that JJ likes to run his mouth -- she only catches parts of what he’s saying, things like ‘so fucking hot’ and ‘sound so fucking good’ and ‘so fucking wet for me’ and as her moans increase in pitch and volume, he growls “c’mon, Kie, cum for me,” and she falls apart. He fucks her through the aftermath and she barely knows what noises are coming out of her mouth, her nails digging angry welts in his back. Just when she thinks she can’t take anymore, he tenses and spills inside her on a half-broken sigh. 

Her vision sharpens as he rolls off of her, collapsing on the squeaky bedsprings, and the house is too quiet all of a sudden, the air once again too close. Her breath slows, the sweat cooling on her skin in the soft breeze pushing through the wooden walls, the still-open front door. Neither of them says anything, and Kiara can feel him looking at her, his blown out smile too loud in the fallout. She sits up, almost flinching at the light touch of his fingers on his spine when he picks up a strand of her hair. “I’m gonna pee,” she says, finding her underwear and pulling them on, and then, after half a moment, pulling his discarded t-shirt over her head. 

Her head echoes as she steps over the scattered mess to get to the bathroom, like she’s walking through a tunnel. Her legs ache and tremble, and she wraps her arms around herself, numb and falling. She fights tears as she washes her hands. The bathroom is, as always, a deplorable mess, products everywhere and hair all over the sink. Her green bikini top is still on the floor from when she’d forgotten it just the other day, and that girl feels impossibly far from the one staring at herself in the mirror, wearing her best friend’s shirt while he’s naked in the next room. There’d be shame, and guilt, too, if the smell of John B’s deodorant didn’t choke her with overwhelming loss. Bracing her hands on either side of the sink, she can’t hold it back anymore, and sobs spill out of her, harsh and echoing in the small space. 

JJ is behind her an instant, half-dressed in basketball shorts and drawing her into his arms, tucking her close to him, her tears hot on his skin. “He’s gone,” she whimpers. “He’s really gone.” He doesn’t say anything, just guides her back to the pullout and straightens the blankets enough for her to fall in. She curls up on her side, crying so hard she can’t breathe, and he climbs in across from her, pushing one arm under her neck and using the other to pull her against him, his lips pressed to her forehead. 

Tears leak out of his own eyes, silent and soft to her earth-shattering grief. “It’s gonna be okay,” he reassures her, fighting the quiver in his own voice, his chin shaking with the effort of it. He stares into the empty darkness above her head, every jerk of her prone body another crack in his breaking heart. “He’s coming back,” he says, more to himself than her. “He’s coming back to us.” 

When she finally quiets down, the betrayal of dawn is beginning to lighten the sky, the moon fading, and the idea of this night being over feels impossible. For a short while, they breathe each other in, her forehead pressed to his collarbones, his hand trailing up and down her spine. Her head aches and her eyelids fall heavy over gritty, exhausted eyes, but she still fights sleep, stubbornly resisting another day, the beginning of a life without John B and Sarah. “I can’t stay here,” she says, finally, pushing back from him. “I should go home.” 

He reaches up to catch her chin as she watches her hands curled close to his chest, reluctant to go. “Kie,” he murmurs, lifting her gaze to meet his. He moves forward to kiss her, and she flattens her palms against his skin, stopping him even as her eyes fall to his lips. 

“JJ,” she says, an exhale more than his name. “We -- I mean, I --” 

“Shit,” he sighs, and it almost sounds like a laugh, formed from expectations he wished hadn’t come true. “Okay.” His eyes flutter close, and she watches him draw back into himself, close all the doors, like he wants to turn off the lights and pretend he’s not even here. But then, he looks at her again, gently smoothing a curl behind her ear. “It’s just --” he starts, and inhales again, wetting his lips as he struggles to keep his eyes on her deep brown ones. “Can we go back to normal tomorrow?” Her eyebrows push together a fraction of an inch, and he focuses on the wrinkle there, a thousand times easier than holding her gaze. “Please,” he says when she inhales to say something. “I don’t want to be alone.” 

It’s the first time either of them have been completely honest all night, and the most he’s said in hours. “Yeah,” she says, agreeing without thinking. Making it about him instead of admitting to herself that she wants to stay, that she doesn’t want to be alone either. “Yeah, okay.” She allows herself to be kissed, to be held and kept softly. JJ twists his fingers in her curls, skims his lips over her hairline before pressing his forehead against hers. 

He tucks his hand against the side of her neck, his fingers spanning from her ear to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright,” he promises, and they both pretend he’s saying it to her. She’s seen JJ cheerful and stubborn, breaking and angry, seen him a thousand different ways. But never like this, kind and soft, quiet in the grey, grieving dawn. Eventually, she falls asleep under his touch and reassuring whispers. 

The morning is just as sticky and unforgiving as every other that summer, and she wakes up damp and sticky with sweat. JJ is stretched out on his stomach, arms tucked under his head, mouth slack and hair falling over his eyes. Her head still hurts, and now so do her back and thighs, and she stretches her hand out across the rumpled sheets, tracing the red lines she’d left down his back. He blinks awake, closing his mouth and freezing when he feels her touch on his skin. 

“Hey,” she murmurs. 

“Hey,” he replies.

She waits for him to say something, but he just watches her, his clear blue eyes unflinching. She bites her lip. “I should get home,” she says, keeping her eyes on the knuckle tracing over his back, his gaze too heavy to hold. 

“Yeah,” he says, “okay.” Neither of them move. The world waits on a hair trigger, and JJ’s more familiar with this kind of silence than she is. She wants him to break it first, to be the impulsive hothead he always is, to make the choice for both of them. But he doesn’t, and the moment crumbles, and she sits up and goes in search of her clothes. 

He doesn’t say anything until she stoops to pick up her bag, sweatshirt in hand, ready to shove it into the biggest pocket. “Kie,” he says, and she stops dead, looking up at him. She doesn’t know what she wants him to say, but she deflates anyway when he just asks “my shirt?” 

She’d forgotten she was wearing it. Pulling it off, she feels his hungry eyes trace up her bare chest as she untangles the drug rug before pulling it down and arranging it around her hips. She tosses him the shirt, and he holds her gaze as he flips it right side out and tugs it on. They stand on either side of the disheveled living room, daring the other person to say something, move, do anything first. He knows what he wants, what he can’t have, what he’s convinced himself he never will. She remembers the line she drew, the boundary she’d very clearly set. He chooses to respect it while she waits for him to break the rules.

Birds sing in the unflinching morning, and a breeze stirs the hair around her face. She slings her backpack over her shoulder. The sun blazes as gulls call and waves lap against the dock. He tilts his chin back, like he always does just before a fight. She turns to go.

[sdv-lostatsea]

Tracks- SDV Sebastian

Uh well this is the first thing I’ve written in a while so I’m pretty rusty, but I liked how this turned out so I’m gonna throw it to the internet anyway. Of course it’s angsty as hell because what’s new with me.

Sebastian & Farmer/Reader: You meet him at the train tracks during an unforgiving night.

It was almost ridiculous how visible the stars were, but then again light pollution wasn't really a problem in Pelican Town. However, it was cold enough for your breath to be visible, small clouds obstructing the nearly flawless view above. 

You don't know why you agreed to come out here. The night made the cool air sink into your bones and it was going to be a long hike back to the farm. And yet here you were lying on your back with your head cradled by steel rods made to carry trains and not human heads full of overwhelming thoughts. 

To your right he takes a deep breath, face illuminated by the glow of the cigarette, then exhales. Smoke mixes with the cool air in a slow moving dance, extending it's fingers outward until the night swallows it inch by inch. Nothing remains but the smell. 

All of this you see from your periphery as you still have not looked over at him. Not fully. You know that at some point you will probably have to, drawn in by his voice as he asks what's up with you tonight. But he hasn't yet and he probably won't until he has discarded the cigarette. 

For now it is quiet. 

Through the hood of your winter jacket you can feel the hard metal and resist the urge to shift into a new position. String in the pocket of your jacket keeps your fingers occupied and you long for this moment to be over, to be able to go home and crawl into bed and rethink every little encounter you've had with him until your mind shuts down. But you're stuck here with him in a silence that you wish wasn't so damn awkward because they never used to be. Silence had always been welcome, it showed trust. Now though, now it was twitchy movements and spiralling thoughts and-

"Stop thinking so loud."

It's the first thing he's said since you laid down beside him. You shut your eyes tightly and try to overcome the embarrassment that has heated your face. After a moment of internal debate, you turn your head slightly so that his face is mostly in view. He's not done with his cigarette.

He's not looking at you, eyes focused on the moon as he lazily takes a drag. If you hadn't known him for almost a year now you would think he looked almost serene, but there were emotions roiling under the surface of his resting face. He flicks the ashes off to his right, away from you, and then takes one last drag before discarding it. 

Now comes the moment you've dreaded.

He turns to face you, fully shifting to lay on his side. He uses an arm to cushion his head from the steel and he huffs slightly in attempt to move the fringe from his face. And then silence settles again. 

You want to look away but his dark eyes bore into yours, a steady gaze that holds you captive. If it wasn't so cold out you're sure you'd be sweating but instead you're trying to transfer some of the numbness of your fingers to your emotions. If you couldn't feel the sting maybe it would all just go away and you could walk home with blissful apathy and a mostly intact friendship.

"What's wrong?" 

You're not even sure he spoke but the question lingers in the frozen air between you. 

You're about to sputter out an undeniably horrible excuse when the truth rushes forward in the worst form of bile you've ever tasted. 

"I saw you and Sam earlier." 

His eyes only widen a fraction before returning to normal and he looks at you with a gaze more scalding than you've ever seen on him. He's defensive, you realize.

"I-it's not… it's that…"

A lump forms in your throat and you struggle to breathe in the cold air for a while. He won't stop staring at you.

The few minutes it takes for you to compose yourself are deafening and it's like he's solidified into all the fears you had going into tonight.

"I just thought… I hoped it could be me." Your voice is meek and shaky but his face softens a touch. The hard facade melts into a soft frown and worrying eyes. 

"(Y/n)..."

"It's fine Sebastian." You turn away as pity starts to form in his eyes, yours burning with the threat of tears.

He sits up, movements sluggish, and he reaches into his pockets for another cigarette. He puts the stick between his lips and fumbles with the lighter, clicking it once, twice, and a third time with no success before muttering sharply under his breath and putting it away. The cigarette dangles from his lips while his hands remain in his pockets. He won't look at you. 

You knew this was a bad idea but some part of you was hoping you had misinterpreted the scene, that maybe Sam had laid his hand sweetly on Sebastian's cheek after the kiss as some platonic gesture of gratitude. But you weren't that naive. It didn't take more than a glance to see the emotion in Sam's eyes or the burning of Sebastian's ears. 

And you will him to look at you, to say something, anything. He doesn’t. Instead he pulls a hand out of his pocket, fingers trembling, as he takes the cigarette from his mouth. He doesn’t put it away, choosing to hold it tightly between his thumb and forefinger. His face is turned away from you and you wrap your arms around your chest to try and retain any semblance of warmth. 

“I don’t know what to say.” His voice is quiet, strained. 

“I don’t know what I want to hear.”

He shakes his head gently, as if the notion is absurd. 

“I know what I would want to hear if I were you… but I can’t say it. It wouldn’t be the truth.”

You knew, had known since you walked away from where Sam and Sebastian had been in the back of the saloon, that he wasn’t going to love you back, but hearing him voice it feels like cracks in already thin ice. The cold air hurts your lungs but you try to focus on pulling air in, visualize the tissue there freezing outward in the pattern of snowflakes until your whole body becomes like one of Robin’s ice sculptures. At least then Sebastian might look at you. 

Through the hood of your jacket you can feel the hum of the rails. For a moment you close your eyes and will everything to disappear, but then the vibrations grow stronger and you force yourself up. You stand, forcing your gaze to him as he rises as well. He doesn’t look at you and you take this as your cue to leave. 

You make it a few steps before he calls out to you. When you stop you don’t look at him, but you can hear his footsteps crunch in the light frost. 

Finally you’re looking at each other again. His eyes are solemn, jaw clenched, looking like he wishes he had all the answers to every question he’s ever asked because maybe then he could resolve this. But that’s the funny thing about the situation: there is nothing to resolve. There’s no conflict, no issue, no pent up anger to dissipate. Just the splintering of a dream you had clung to at night. And while it hurts, there is nothing to apologize for. 

You want to tell him this but he opens his mouth first. 

Whatever he was going to say is drowned out by the sound of the train’s horn as it comes howling down the track. A strong gust of wind accompanies the noise and you have to focus on not losing your balance. His hair whips around wildly but his gaze is steady, never leaving yours. It’s so cold and windy and the night has been an exceptional disaster, but for a moment there is no one here but you and Sebastian, eyes locked as if letting go means losing every last trace of your fragile friendship. And, as the train carries past on squealing wheels and rattling cars, you can feel your heart beating in your throat, a rhythm so steady for the most disquieting night you’ve had since moving to the valley. 

It’s over too soon. The train continues onward and your moment ends.

He’s still looking at you but the atmosphere isn’t the same. What could have been mended is lost, sinking below a sheet of ice into a frozen lake. You could try to resurface it but it would be changed, maybe even unrecognizable. And you know that whatever emotions he’s feeling are too destructive to heal you right now. 

So you say goodbye. Not with words since the time for talk has long passed. Instead you take a step forward and place a kiss on his cheek, but rather than waiting to see his expression as you would have just yesterday, you turn on your heel without so much as a glance his way.

Maybe with time the waters will thaw and you will be able to go back to late night track talks, but for now you just want to curl up in bed and sleep the rest of the abysmal night away.

[recentanimenews]

ESSAY: Berserk's Journey of Acceptance Over 30 Years of Fandom

  My descent into anime fandom began in the '90s, and just as watching Neon Genesis Evangelion caused my first revelation that cartoons could be art, reading Berserk gave me the same realization about comics. The news of Kentaro Miura’s death, who passed on May 6, has been emotionally complicated for me, as it's the first time a celebrity's death has hit truly close to home. In addition to being the lynchpin for several important personal revelations, Berserk is one of the longest-lasting works I’ve followed and that I must suddenly bid farewell to after existing alongside it for two-thirds of my life.

  Berserk is a monolith not only for anime and manga, but also fantasy literature, video games, you name it. It might be one of the single most influential works of the ‘80s — on a level similar to Blade Runner — to a degree where it’s difficult to imagine what the world might look like without it, and the generations of creators the series inspired.

  Although not the first, Guts is the prototypical large sword anime boy: Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife, Siegfried/Nightmare from Soulcalibur, and Black Clover's Asta are all links in the same chain, with other series like Dark Souls and Claymore taking clear inspiration from Berserk. But even deeper than that, the three-character dynamic between Guts, Griffith, and Casca, the monster designs, the grotesque violence, Miura’s image of hell — all of them can be spotted in countless pieces of media across the globe.

  Despite this, it just doesn’t seem like people talk about it very much. For over 20 years, Berserk has stood among the critical pantheon for both anime and manga, but it doesn’t spur conversations in the same way as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, or Dragon Ball Z still do today. Its graphic depictions certainly represent a barrier to entry much higher than even the aforementioned company. 

    Seeing the internet exude sympathy and fond reminiscing about Berserk was immensely validating and has been my single most therapeutic experience online. Moreso, it reminded me that the fans have always been there. And even looking into it, Berserk is the single best-selling property in the 35-year history of Dark Horse. My feeling is that Berserk just has something about it that reaches deep into you and gets stuck there.

  I recall introducing one of my housemates to Berserk a few years ago — a person with all the intelligence and personal drive to both work on cancer research at Stanford while pursuing his own MD and maintaining a level of physical fitness that was frankly unreasonable for the hours that he kept. He was NOT in any way analytical about the media he consumed, but watching him sitting on the floor turning all his considerable willpower and intellect toward delivering an off-the-cuff treatise on how Berserk had so deeply touched him was a sight in itself to behold. His thoughts on the series' portrayal of sex as fundamentally violent leading up to Guts and Casca’s first moment of intimacy in the Golden Age movies was one of the most beautiful sentiments I’d ever heard in reaction to a piece of fiction.

  I don’t think I’d ever heard him provide anything but a surface-level take on a piece of media before or since. He was a pretty forthright guy, but the way he just cut into himself and let his feelings pour out onto the floor left me awestruck. The process of reading Berserk can strike emotional chords within you that are tough to untangle. I’ve been writing analysis and experiential pieces related to anime and manga for almost ten years — and interacting with Berserk’s world for almost 30 years — and writing may just be yet another attempt for me to pull my own twisted-up feelings about it apart. 

  Berserk is one of the most deeply personal works I’ve ever read, both for myself and in my perception of Miura's works. The series' transformation in the past 30 years artistically and thematically is so singular it's difficult to find another work that comes close. The author of Hajime no Ippo, who was among the first to see Berserk as Miura presented him with some early drafts working as his assistant, claimed that the design for Guts and Puck had come from a mess of ideas Miura had been working on since his early school days.

  写真は三浦建太郎君が寄稿してくれた鷹村です。 今かなり感傷的になっています。 思い出話をさせて下さい。 僕が初めての週刊連載でスタッフが一人もいなくて困っていたら手伝いにきてくれました。 彼が18で僕が19です。 某大学の芸術学部の学生で講義明けにスケッチブックを片手に来てくれました。 pic.twitter.com/hT1JCWBTKu

— 森川ジョージ (@WANPOWANWAN) May 20, 2021

  Miura claimed two of his big influences were Go Nagai’s Violence Jack and Tetsuo Hara and Buronson’s Fist of the North Star. Miura wears these influences on his sleeve, discovering the early concepts that had percolated in his mind just felt right. The beginning of Berserk, despite its amazing visual power, feels like it sprang from a very juvenile concept: Guts is a hypermasculine lone traveler breaking his body against nightmarish creatures in his single-minded pursuit of revenge, rigidly independent and distrustful of others due to his dark past.

  Uncompromising, rugged, independent, a really big sword ... Guts is a romantic ideal of masculinity on a quest to personally serve justice against the one who wronged him. Almost nefarious in the manner in which his character checked these boxes, especially when it came to his grim stoicism, unblinkingly facing his struggle against literal cosmic forces. Never doubting himself, never trusting others, never weeping for what he had lost.

    Miura said he sketched out most of the backstory when the manga began publication, so I have to assume the larger strokes of the Golden Arc were pretty well figured out from the outset, but I’m less sure if he had fully realized where he wanted to take the story to where we are now. After the introductory mini-arcs of demon-slaying, Berserk encounters Griffith and the story draws us back to a massive flashback arc. We see the same Guts living as a lone mercenary who Griffith persuades to join the Band of the Hawk to help realize his ambitions of rising above the circumstances of his birth to join the nobility.

  We discover the horrific abuses of Guts’ adoptive father and eventually learn that Guts, Griffith, and Casca are all victims of sexual violence. The story develops into a sprawling semi-historical epic featuring politics and war, but the real narrative is in the growing companionship between Guts and the members of the band. Directionless and traumatized by his childhood, Guts slowly finds a purpose helping Griffith realize his dream and the courage to allow others to grow close to him. 

  Miura mentioned that many Band of the Hawk members were based on his early friend groups. Although he was always sparse with details about his personal life, he has spoken about how many of them referred to themselves as aspiring manga authors and how he felt an intense sense of competition, admitting that among them he may have been the only one seriously working toward that goal, desperately keeping ahead in his perceived race against them. It’s intriguing thinking about how much of this angst may have made it to the pages, as it's almost impossible not to imagine Miura put quite a bit of himself in Guts. 

  Perhaps this is why it feels so real and makes The Eclipse — the quintessential anime betrayal at the hands of Griffith — all the more heartbreaking. The raw violence and macabre imagery certainly helped. While Miura owed Hellraiser’s Cenobites much in the designs of the God Hand, his macabre portrayal of the Band of the Hawk’s eradication within the literal bowels of hell, the massive hand, the black sun, the Skull Knight, and even Miura’s page compositions have been endlessly referenced, copied, and outright plagiarized since.

    The events were tragic in any context and I have heard many deeply personal experiences others drew from The Eclipse sympathizing with Guts, Casca, or even Griffith’s spiral driven by his perceived rejection by Guts. Mine were most closely aligned with the tragedy of Guts having overcome such painful circumstances to not only reject his own self enforced solitude, but to fearlessly express his affection for his loved ones. 

  The Golden Age was a methodical destruction of Guts’ self-destructive methods of preservation ruined in a single selfish act by his most trusted friend, leaving him once again alone and afraid of growing close to those around him. It ripped the romance of Guts’ mission and eventually took the story down a course I never expected. Berserk wasn’t a story of revenge but one of recovery.

  Guess that’s enough beating around the bush, as I should talk about how this shift affected me personally. When I was young, when I began reading Berserk I found Guts’ unflagging stoicism to be really cool, not just aesthetically but in how I understood guys were supposed to be. I was slow to make friends during school and my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood had my friends' parents moving away faster than I could find new ones. At some point I think I became too afraid of putting myself out there anymore, risking rejection when even acceptance was so fleeting. It began to feel easier just to resign myself to solitude and pretend my circumstances were beyond my own power to correct.

  Unfortunately, I became the stereotypical kid who ate alone during lunch break. Under the invisible expectations demanding I not display weakness, my loneliness was compounded by shame for feeling loneliness. My only recourse was to reveal none of those feelings and pretend the whole thing didn't bother me at all. Needless to say my attempts to cope probably fooled no one and only made things even worse, but I really didn’t know of any better way to handle my situation. I felt bad, I felt even worse about feeling bad and had been provided with zero tools to cope, much less even admit that I had a problem at all.

  The arcs following the Golden Age completely changed my perspective. Guts had tragically, yet understandably, cut himself off from others to save himself from experiencing that trauma again and, in effect, denied himself any opportunity to allow himself to be happy again. As he began to meet other characters that attached themselves to him, between Rickert and Erica spending months waiting worried for his return, and even the slimmest hope to rescuing Casca began to seed itself into the story, I could only see Guts as a fool pursuing a grim and hopeless task rather than appreciating everything that he had managed to hold onto. 

  The same attributes that made Guts so compelling in the opening chapters were revealed as his true enemy. Griffith had committed an unforgivable act but Guts’ journey for revenge was one of self-inflicted pain and fear. The romanticism was gone.

  Farnese’s inclusion in the Conviction arc was a revelation. Among the many brilliant aspects of her character, I identified with her simply for how she acted as a stand-in for myself as the reader: Plagued by self-doubt and fear, desperate to maintain her own stoic and uncompromising image, and resentful of her place in the world. She sees Guts’ fearlessness in the face of cosmic horror and believes she might be able to learn his confidence.

    But in following Guts, Farnese instead finds a teacher in Casca. In taking care of her, Farnese develops a connection and is able to experience genuine sympathy that develops into a sense of responsibility. Caring for Casca allows Farnese to develop the courage she was lacking not out of reckless self-abandon but compassion.

  I can’t exactly credit Berserk with turning my life around, but I feel that it genuinely helped crystallize within me a sense of growing doubts about my maladjusted high school days. My growing awareness of Guts' undeniable role in his own suffering forced me to admit my own role in mine and created a determination to take action to fix it rather than pretending enough stoicism might actually result in some sort of solution.

  I visited the Berserk subreddit from time to time and always enjoyed the group's penchant for referring to all the members of the board as “fellow strugglers,” owing both to Skull Knight’s label for Guts and their own tongue-in-cheek humor at waiting through extended hiatuses. Only in retrospect did it feel truly fitting to me. Trying to avoid the pitfalls of Guts’ path is a constant struggle. Today I’m blessed with many good friends but still feel primal pangs of fear holding me back nearly every time I meet someone, the idea of telling others how much they mean to me or even sharing my thoughts and feelings about something I care about deeply as if each action will expose me to attack.

  It’s taken time to pull myself away from the behaviors that were so deeply ingrained and it’s a journey where I’m not sure the work will ever be truly done, but witnessing Guts’ own slow progress has been a constant source of reassurance. My sense of admiration for Miura’s epic tale of a man allowing himself to let go after suffering such devastating circumstances brought my own humble problems and their way out into focus.

    Over the years I, and many others, have been forced to come to terms with the fact that Berserk would likely never finish. The pattern of long, unexplained hiatuses and the solemn recognition that any of them could be the last is a familiar one. The double-edged sword of manga largely being works created by a single individual is that there is rarely anyone in a position to pick up the torch when the creator calls it quits. Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond, Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and likely Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter X Hunter all frozen in indefinite hiatus, the publishers respectfully holding the door open should the creators ever decide to return, leaving it in a liminal space with no sense of conclusion for the fans except what we can make for ourselves.

  The reason for Miura’s hiatuses was unclear. Fans liked to joke that he would take long breaks to play The Idolmaster, but Miura was also infamous for taking “breaks” spent minutely illustrating panels to his exacting artistic standard, creating a tumultuous release schedule during the wars featuring thousands of tiny soldiers all dressed in period-appropriate armor. If his health was becoming an issue, it’s uncommon that news would be shared with fans for most authors, much less one as private as Miura.

  Even without delays, the story Miura was building just seemed to be getting too big. The scale continued to grow, his narrative ambition swelling even faster after 20 years of publication, the depth and breadth of his universe constantly expanding. The fan-dubbed “Millennium Falcon Arc” was massive, changing the landscape of Berserk from a low fantasy plagued by roaming demons to a high fantasy where godlike beings of sanity-defying size battled for control of the world. How could Guts even meet Griffith again? What might Casca want to do when her sanity returned? What are the origins of the Skull Knight? And would he do battle with the God Hand? There was too much left to happen and Miura’s art only grew more and more elaborate. It would take decades to resolve all this.

  But it didn’t need to. I imagine we’ll never get a precise picture of the final years of Miura’s life leading up to his tragic passing. In the final chapters he released, it felt as if he had directed the story to some conclusion. The unfinished Fantasia arc finds Guts and his newfound band finding a way to finally restore Casca’s sanity and — although there is still unmistakably a boundary separating them — both seem resolute in finding a way to mend their shared wounds together.

  One of the final chapters features Guts drinking around the campfire with the two other men of his group, Serpico and Roderick, as he entrusts the recovery of Casca to Schierke and Farnese. It's a scene that, in the original Band of the Hawk, would have found Guts brooding as his fellows engage in bluster. The tone of this conversation, however, is completely different. The three commiserate over how much has changed and the strength each has found in the companionship of the others. After everything that has happened, Guts declares that he is grateful. 

  The suicidal dedication to his quest for vengeance and dispassionate pragmatism that defined Guts in the earliest chapters is gone. Although they first appeared to be a source of strength as the Black Swordsman, he has learned that they rose from the fear of losing his friends again, from letting others close enough to harm him, and from having no other purpose without others. Whether or not Guts and Griffith were to ever meet again, Guts has rediscovered the strength to no longer carry his burdens alone. 

  All that has happened is all there will ever be. We too must be grateful.

      Peter Fobian is an Associate Manager of Social Video at Crunchyroll, writer for Anime Academy and Anime in America, and an editor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: Peter Fobian

[datleggy]

Prompt: Eddie and Buck are together and Buck has never felt as serious or as committed as he does once he and Eddie get together. But the rest of the group doubt his seriousness/ability to be with Eddie only because of Buck’s previous wild ways and they continue to make side comments about it, until Buck starts doubting himself and wondering if Eddie deserves better which infuriated Eddie when he sees how horrible it has made Buck feel

this is short and very cheesyyyyyyyyyy i hope u like it anyway!

COMMITMENT

Buck knows he’s being sensitive about this whole thing. 

He tries to brush it off and pretend not to be phased by the remarks his team makes regarding his relationship with Eddie. They announced about a week ago that they’re moving in together--a decision they came to after dating for the past seven months. 

Buck is beyond his wildest dreams excited about the move, excited about spending more time with his boys, and most of all excited to be starting this new chapter in his life. 

He had really been hoping the 118--his family--would also be thrilled about the new development. 

Instead he’s gotten comments like: “Eh, I give it two weeks tops.” And, “Moving kinda fast, huh?” Or, “I never thought I’d see the day.” and so on. 

And it’s fine. Really. They’re just joking.

Buck is making a way bigger deal out of it than he should be. He knows this. So he tries his best to ignore the ribbing; it’ll pass soon enough, he just needs to wait it out and stop being a baby. 

Except that on his way to Eddies--or rather, what is soon to be his home--Captain Nash stops him as he's leaving the firehouse. “You got a minute?” he asks. 

“Yeah Cap, what’s up?” 

“Listen, I just wanted to say, you’re still young, and sometimes we rush into things without thinking them through entirely and--” 

Buck tilts his head. “Um, what are you talking about?” 

Bobby sighs. “It’s about you moving in with Eddie. I know you two have been dating for a few months, and you’re having fun, but I need you to understand that Eddie has a child, and when you move in you’re making a big impact on that kids’ life, it’s not just about you and it’s not just about Eddie anymore. You need to be one hundred percent sure, one hundred percent committed, before taking such a big step. You get what I mean, right? No one here would judge you for reconsidering, maybe taking some more time to think it through?” 

Buck can feel the heat rising up from his neck to his ears. Is this what it feels like to get the shovel talk from your prom dates dad? Only instead of ‘if you hurt him you’re toast’ it’s more like ‘don’t even bother trying’. 

“Uh, yeah, no, I know what you’re saying. I will, don’t worry.” he rushes out of the station after that, unable to look at Bobby in the eye. 

Is that what the team thinks this is for him? That he’s just having fun and passing the time with Eddie? 

But it’s not like Buck hasn’t given them enough ammunition over time. It makes sense that they wouldn’t think he’d be serious about this relationship--when he’s rarely been in the past. It reminds him of the time that guy online had been using his photo and name to date women on the internet. Abby and his team had all been pretty skeptical over his claims of innocence back then. 

What if everyone is right? What if he reverts back to his old immature self and what if he’s not enough for Eddie? What if he and Christopher hate living with Buck? What if Eddie decides he doesn’t need him in their lives, after all? 

By the time he makes it home--to Eddie’s--Buck is spiraling with crippling self doubt. 

“Hey, what’s wrong? You look pale---well, more pale than usual.” Eddie jokes lightly, putting down the book he’s been reading. 

“Do you think we’re moving too fast?” Buck blurts out, before he can chicken out. 

Eddie sits up, concern and confusion knitting his brows together. “What? Buck, what are you talking about?” 

“You know, us. Us and moving in together. Is it too soon? Because I get it if you need more time, to like, think about it and stuff. It’s kind of a big decision and I don’t want to rush you into anything--” 

Eddie stands up, walks over to Buck, and rests his hands over his shoulders. “Hey, look at me, breathe; you gotta’ calm down and then we can talk about this super sudden change of heart you’re having? Here, sit.” he gently leads his boyfriend into the living room so they can have this conversation more comfortably. 

Buck sighs. “I’m sorry, I know I’m freaking out, it’s just…” 

“What happened?” 

“I’m happy with you, with you and Christopher, and I just really don’t want you to regret this next step we’re taking, if this is too fast for you or for Christopher." 

Eddie shakes his head. “Buck we talked about this. And honestly, this whole moving in thing is more a formality than anything--in case you haven’t noticed you’ve been basically living here for the past two months. 

“Your toothbrush is in the bathroom, your hair gel, your shampoo and conditioner, your body wash, all of it’s in there; all your favorite foods are in the fridge and in the pantry, also all your clothes are in my closet, your underwear are in my drawers--and it’s not just stuff. 

“Buck, my abuela calls the landline looking for you more often than she does to talk to me, you drop and pick Christopher up from school so much his teacher invited you to the next parent teacher conference next week. And last month when you had to go back to your apartment for a whole week because your moronic upstairs neighbor flooded your bathroom Christopher and I were miserable here without you. 

“I have never been more sure of anything, Buck. I want you to move in. Officially.” Eddie takes his boyfriends’ hands into his and squeezes. “Now, tell me what’s really wrong.” 

Buck chews on his lip anxiously. “It’s nothing, really. I let all these little comments get to me, and then Bobby’s weird shovel talk made me feel some type of way, I guess. It’s dumb.” 

“What comments? And I’m sorry, did you say Cap gave you the shovel talk?” 

Buck shrugs, looking away. “Just, you know,” he clears his throat awkwardly. “Before you joined the team I was this wild, immature kid who never really thought with the right head, if you get what I’m saying? And so, I get why they think that maybe I’m still that same guy, who hops around  from person to person, and can’t commit. That’s the word Bobby used, he said if I wasn’t a hundred percent committed to this, to you and to Christopher, that I should reconsider. But I don't want to." 

"You are committed. I don't even have to ask you to know it." Eddie says fiercely. 

Buck breathes out. Relieved. "I am. I've never wanted anything more. I love you. The both of you." 

Eddie leans in, slowly closing the distance between them. "And I love you." 

Bucks eyelashes flutter and his heart stutters for a beat. He lets himself be pulled in the rest of the way. Eddie wraps his arms around his waist, kissing him softly on the mouth, and Buck can feel Eddies warm breathe on his face as he pulls away. 

"I'll be back." He gets up from the couch and grabs his jacket off the hook by the door. 

“Um, where are you going?” 

“I’m just gonna’ go have a chat with Bobby, that’s all.” He says, putting his keys in his back pocket. 

Buck blinks. “Wait, what--” 

Eddie opens the door and leans in to kiss Buck one more time before stepping out. “Christopher’s asleep. Leftovers from dinner are still warm in the oven, I’ll be back in a bit. Love you.” 

Buck is left standing at the doorway, a crooked smile on his face. Even though it feels as if he just sent the equivalent of a raging storm over to the 118, it also feels nice to know that Eddie cares that much.

Bobby looks up, surprised to see Eddie--who was off today--at the station so late at night. Hen and Chim, who are fighting over a video game, pause it when the younger man stomps inside. 

“Everything alright?” the Captain asks. 

“Oh yeah, everything’s great--except for the fact that apparently my boyfriend needs to reconsider moving in with me?” 

Bobby raises his hands in a placating motion. “Eddie, that is not what I meant. Buck can be impulsive sometimes, I don’t want him to end up hurting you or Christopher because of it, that’s all. It's nothing to do with you.” 

“After all this time, is that really what you think of him? You know damn well how much he values your opinion--all of your opinions--” he says, pointing at Hen and Chim, too. “But most especially yours, Cap. He’s been so ecstatic about this move, and today he came home miserable, doubting himself because of what you said." 

Bobby looks suitably chastised. "Miserable? That wasn’t my intention at all--I just, sometimes I’ll admit I still see him as my ki--a kid--" he corrects himself last second, “I should know better. I didn’t realize my opinion meant so much to him.” 

"Of course," Eddie shakes his head. "Buck cares a hell of a lot what you all think of him." 

Bobby grimaces. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said those things to him."

Chim sighs, scratching the back of his neck. "Yeah, Cap isn't the only one. Maddie and I teased him about the big move last week at dinner." 

Hen nods. "We've all been less than supportive. I feel awful, guys." She looks at her watch. "Shift ends in five. I think we should all go and apologize."  

Bobby looks to Eddie. "Only if it's not too late. I'm sure Christopher's asleep by now; I wouldn't want to intrude so late at night." 

Eddie shrugs. "Never too late to say sorry." 

Only the light in the hall is on by the time Eddie gets home with three other firefighters in tow. 

Christopher must have woken up some time after he left. 

In the living room, on the couch, Buck is sat half slouched with Christopher laying on top of him, head against his chest. Charlotte's Web is loosely held in one of Buck's hands, almost falling off the couch. They're both soundly asleep. 

"On second thought, maybe midnight was a little ambitious for an apology." Eddie mutters. Buck had just finished a twenty four hour shift, after all. 

Seeing Buck like this, with Christopher, it makes Bobby feel that much more ashamed for his unnecessary little talk earlier in the day. Buck is ready. How had he not seen that before? 

He claps Eddie's shoulder lightly. "We'll be back tomorrow. He's had a long week. We should let him get some rest." 

Eddie nods, leading everyone back out quietly. "I'm holding you to that." 

[honeyctzen]

scarred leash (prologue) - m.l

IMPORTANT: This is the prologue for my newest fanfiction and is an introductory to the main character and the themes of this story. It involves sex, bdsm, self harm and themes relating to that matter. It will also not just be sex, but have an actual story and characters falling in love. If any of this is not for you, my other works are much lighter and less “plotty”. I really hope this excites you for the rest of the story, I am very much proud of it. Thank you! - Maisie ♡

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I was sixteen when I chose to leave home without even whispering a word to anyone. Sixteen when I decided I had to go out alone into the world, to make my own way with the little experience I had gathered so far. It took a long time to map out my plan, endless days that turned into sleepless nights. I spent most of my last teenage years memorising a singular night, a night that would lead me into the next stage of my life.

My dusty countryside town was a few hours from the monumental London. I thought about the city all hours of the day, the faraway land that was London. The idea of even stepping foot in it was weird and foreign and still, it was the only place I ever wanted to go. I’d lived in one place for my entire life and rarely ever left the town, in fact I’d only left it a few times. All because of hospital trips. The idea of living away from that place was terrifying and yet, completely exhilarating. Given that back then, I’d been pretty naive to how the world works as I’d never been told of it. I wanted a nice house, nice job, maybe I would meet a nice person and we would have a nice relationship. I had come to learn as my research into London and life in general continued that it wouldn’t be that simple. Everything was complicated. If you wanted a place to live, there was several thousand procedures you had to endure. If you wanted a job, you had to have a thousand different qualifications. I thought after realising all this that my hopes of leaving were over, that was when I had begun thoroughly planning.

Through school and college I was able to obtain the qualifications I needed to move away and work in business. I knew I would have to work for a few years before I gained any sort of fulfilling job, but I had endured years of education, I understood patience. Through research I had found a small flat that I would be able to pay for with money I’d saved over the years and earnings from a job I would later procure. Life would still be difficult, I knew this. I was a young, inexperienced girl moving out to a tumultuous city, it would be dangerous. Though I had concluded long ago that dying in this new fantastical place was far better than peddling on back home, where I would die unknown, just another body in the wet dirt underneath the town church.

I knew by leaving that I was inflicting an unimaginable amount of pain upon my mother, who was as neurotic as she was suffocating. Though I understood she didn’t mean to be, I couldn’t bring myself to feel sympathy for her. My father ran, as did my older brother, leaving me and my ailing grandmother the only people she had left. I wasn’t old enough to understand why my father had just abandoned us but once I grew enough to comprehend love, pain, divorce, I got it. This town was the entire world for my mother but as I got older, she realised it wouldn’t be for me. Instead it would be a restraint.

The first time I recall my mother knowing I would be difficult is when I was eleven. I developed much quicker than most children my own age, breasts already sprouting on my chest, hair spreading over my body. There was a huge wave of name calling, little jabs at my appearance, and while I tried to ignore it, eventually it burrowed beneath my skin. That was the same year I cut myself for the first time. My fingers coiled around a pair of scissors, pressing the metal over the flesh of my arm until a litter of red scratches appeared over the pale skin. Back then, it was just a punishment, a way of controlling myself from completely losing my mind. I stopped it for a while. In natures due course, the other girls grew into their bodies and I was planted back into an unremarkable place among my peers. There was no bullying and so, I forgot about cutting myself for a couple years.

While I had physically matured much quicker than others my age, mentally, it seemed I had been halted somewhere. There appeared no reason for it but the things that my schoolmates were interested in disgusted me. When a friend first showed me porn, I remember feeling vomit rise up in my throat. A woman, bundled up with rope, a muscled, balding man arched over her. The blood curling shrieks that filled the room felt torturous. I couldn’t understand how people liked this, how they liked it enough to pleasure themselves to it. I suppose that was when my fascination with sex begun. Initially, it was hatred, a complete abhorrence for the thing, a vexation that appeared randomly and intensely. If a classmate would mention it, or describe any sort of sexual act, I felt ill. My stomach twisting uncomfortably as the boys all called out derogatory names for the women they had seen in the films and then once again, I grew to hate my body.

I was fifteen the next time I cut myself. It was much more deliberate, much more intense. I had swapped out the dull scissors, for a pocket knife a friend had gifted me. It was able to bury itself much deeper than before and immediately, with the first slice, a tsunami of relief rolled over me. Though, it was a different kind of relief than it had been those years before. I found myself thinking back to the woman I had seen in the porn, the intricate ropes that clasped themselves over her limbs, the pained screams that passed her lips. The man leaning over her figure, how his fingers gripped the flesh of her waist, how he bevelled his teeth down onto her neck until it bled. I found myself recalling each detail of the images I had seen so long ago, and I found myself cutting down into the flesh as the memories scurried across my brain.

I felt guilty afterward, an awful guilt that followed me around for weeks. But then, a boy would mention shapes they had seen in porn and suddenly, I would feel the urge to damage myself again. It spiralled quickly. So quickly that I, myself, was shocked. Instead of recalling images I had seen, I created my own imaginations. Blurred, colourless visions of violence, and sex dulling into one, all as I pulled a knife against my own skin. It continued for months, months of fantasies and cutting and by the time my sixteenth birthday hurdled toward me, I had a plethora of thick scars covering my arms and legs. Though that didn’t faze me when finally, three years after all my friends, my mother bought me a cell phone.  

She would scour over the phone from time to time, checking my messages, calls, emails, and all other forms of communication. Yet, of all the applications on the phone, my mother was the most ignorant to the internet. She didn’t understand the concept of it, let alone know it was built into the mobile and so, I was able to roam free for the first time. And I roamed. My inexperience meant I didn’t know what sites to go to, nor did I know which keywords to search. The titles of the videos that came up almost seemed to be in a foreign language but after a couple of trips to the websites, I gathered the premise of each category. After locking myself in the bathroom, I would go to the sites and type in words such as bondage, submissive, sadism, pain and the things I liked would appear. Though I now understood how people looked at porn, I still didn’t understand why they touched themselves to it. Merely pushing a blade into my leg as I watched seemed to be enough. I wasn’t sure if it was sexual for me, or if it was a punishment thing as it had been when I was younger.

My understanding of my own sexuality went little further than this and my adventures on the websites dwindled until they stopped. It had grown to stop making me feel any better, and so I began inflicting more serious physical harm upon myself. The hospital visits followed soon after, as did my mother’s rantings about how unhealthy that stuff all was for me. For once, she paid attention to me. It almost felt nice, deserved. But I couldn’t hold it for long, as quite abruptly, my grandmothers health began to decline. She died a while after growing sick, and the absence of her in the house made my mother somehow more insufferable. And though we lived in the same house, it was almost as if we were separated by an unseen barrier.

I didn’t completely mind, it gave me enough solitude to go about my planning. Endless research into where I could live in London, what jobs I could obtain with the qualifications I would acquire after leaving sixth form. It took a while to find what would suit me right but after I finally latched onto it, my future suddenly felt full, meaningful almost. I now had something to look forward to, something to work toward. So, I studied harder, concentrated on the daydreams of my new life away from the idle cottage town. My grandmother had left some money to both me and my mother, more to me. I insisted I was able to tend to my own finances and after long bouts of pleading, my mother agreed. I had money, two months left at sixth form and then I could leave.

Time blurs together, memories jumbling, I can barely remember the last few months back home. But what I do recall vividly, is the night I left. I had booked train tickets the week prior and planned to stay in a hotel while I found somewhere to live. I needed to be close to the central city, I knew that much, though, not much else. I’d found a job interview for admin staff at a stockbroking company. My business a level came in handy, and my odd passion for calculations and numbers did too. If I could just get this job, if I could get that flat, I could make it.

I chose to leave during the night, climbing from my bedroom window, scuttling across the streets like a fragile hedgehog. I’d never even snuck from my house once before and the first time I was, I was doing so knowing that I would never come back. With every step I took I thought I would be caught and hauled back home by my hair. Each step further from the slanted bungalow made my heart beat a little faster until, gradually my pulse slowed, and the gentle pitter of my feet grew to calm myself. Though I didn’t feel completely secure until I passed the welcome sign to the town. But once I did, I felt a weight pulled from my stomach. A sudden notion that I had done it, I had gotten away like my father and brother did years ago, like my grandmother had in death. I was now free to do everything I had lost the chance to do through my mother’s coddling. I could drink, do drugs, have sex with an endless stream of people, work. I found myself grinning as I wandered further from town, the dishevelled map directing me toward the train station. The smile pulling at my lips until I worried they would rip. And it only widened when I spotted the station, when I saw my train, when I boarded, when the train began to drift from the docile place I had called home.

I knew that now, I was reborn, I was my own person. It had taken three years to map everything, to prepare myself for life away from the secure blanket I had been smothered with all my life. But now, it had all come to fruit. I dreamt of London on the train, my head pressed against the window, my scarred legs trembling with the thought of all the things that I could do. My chest thick, and heavy with excitement.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

London was everything I had imagined and so much more. It was larger than anything I had ever seen back home, with each building bigger than the next and thousands of vehicles filling the roads. As the train eventually rolled into the city, my eyes clasped over each detail that began to emerge. The differences of the people that wandered the streets, the warmth in the chatter that clambered through the train windows. Everything was so different, so good. I found myself smiling away as I watched from my place in the tube container, my toothy grin shining back at me in the reflection. I was finally there, finally apart of everything I had read about.

Walking the streets was even better, even more real. My feet paced the same tempo as everyone else, my body dipping between the mounds of crowd as I ambled through the roads, glancing down at the map I had printed back in my murky home. The directions were confusing, each street twisting awkwardly to the next and what should have been a five-minute walk turned into two hours of working out where I was. Though eventually, after consulting several locals, I found my way to the flat I had seen in the ad weeks ago. It was in what my mother would have called a ‘ghetto area’ but it was still much larger and greater than the street I had lived on all my life. It looked a normal house though split into three different flats, with a garden leading up to the two doors and ivy climbing up the sides of the home. I’d felt nervous to knock, I wasn’t particularly sure why. Perhaps because the person to answer could have been my future roommate but now, thinking back, I shouldn’t have been.

The person that had answered was taller than me, her gangling arms hanging low, one raised to her mouth as she nursed a cigarette. She was beautiful in an odd way, striking, her nose large and hooked, hair shorted and burnt from styling. She smiled widely when she spotted my obviously anxious face, her voice pouring out in its deepness.

‘The tenant?’ She mumbled through puffs of the intensely clouded cigarette.

‘Um, yeah.’

‘Cool, cool, yeah, sorry, come in.’ Her accent was prominent, thick and harsh but calming all at once. I smiled as I stepped into the flat, the stairs immediate at the entry. I stood beside my single suitcase, my backpack still on my shoulders, her gaze dancing across them before she turned away. She climbed them ahead of me, her feet clattering against the wooden steps and I trailed behind, eyes clinging to each detail of the walls. I wanted to take in as much as I possibly could, I wanted this to be my home, my sanctuary.

Once we stood in the depth of the flat, the girl began to speak again, pulling the cigarette from her mouth for a moment. Throwing her body onto the dusty sofa and awaiting me to sit beside her. I allowed the bag to drop to the floor, my feet pushing it further from me. My lanky limbs folded in on themselves as I perched on the seat, features impossibly too bright for the dullness of the flat.

‘You’re eighteen?’

‘Nineteen.’ I corrected abruptly.

‘Okay, you just have to be eighteen to rent, but that’s fine then,’ she said, inhaling from the stick before releasing the dense cloud into the room, ‘so, um, this is it.’

‘Um, what’s your name?’ I ask quietly.

‘Oh, shit, sorry, I’m Rose, and you?’

‘Ellie.’ I mumbled.

‘Are you the owner?’

She snickered, ‘Uh, no, my uncle is so I get a discount, barely, but, it helps. Um, he doesn’t really care who moves in but I, I do, I live here, so.’

‘Yeah,’

‘You’re not from here?’ She asked, finally pushing the cigarette into the ash tray that sat near her. The smell still strong but dissipating enough for me to open my mouth to speak.

‘No, I um, actually moved here today.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, um, so, I’m new to this.’

‘Where you from?’

‘A little town just outside Sheffield, I, um, hated it, figured it was time to get away.’ I explained as briefly as I could, my fingers instinctively pulling on my sleeves whilst I spoke of home.

‘For a bit or are you staying here long term?’ She questioned, eyes flitting once more over the lack of things I had brought with me. It hadn’t been that I had forgot much, I hadn’t owned many things back home, not things that warranted bringing anyway.

‘Long term.’ I answered immediately.

‘And you’re gonna work here?’

‘Hopefully,’ I chuckled, ‘I have a job interview tomorrow, so, I um, I’d find work anyway, so I could pay, but,’

‘Cool, so, you want to move in then?’ She proposed, her voice soft, speaking the question as though it held no merit. My stomach churned, lips parting in another goofy smile, head nodding vigorously.

[franklyshipping]

The Definition of Evil ~ A Markiplier Ego Fanfic

HERE WE HAVE ANOTHER WONDERFUL ANON PROMPT THAT IS VERY CUTE AND HOPEFULLY WILL LEAD TO LOTS OF CUTENESS AND WHOLESOMENESS! LET'S DO IT!

TAGGING: @darkipliler and @wilford-lee-warfstache

Wilford Warfstache was a very happy man. He was snuggled up in bed, nestled into the chest of the man he loved more than anything in the world, and said man was playing with his hair in the loveliest manner possible. Life was good. Wilford let out a gentle hum as he absently scrolled through Tumblr on his phone….and he ended up developing a frown. Now, he knew of course that all their fans on the internet were joking and being playful, but every time he saw a post about Dark being an “evil boi” or “the embodiment of Bad Shit™”, it got to Wilford a little bit. How could no one else see how perfect and sweet and wonderful Dark was?

‘What’s with the frown love?’

Wilford heard Dark ask, and when he looked up at him he couldn’t help but softly smile again. Dark was so considerate, and always noticed the subtlest things, whether it be specs of dust or changes in micro-expressions, Dark noticed all. Wilford let out a gentle sigh, softly kissing Dark’s chest as he set his phone aside and mumbled.

‘Sometimes I just hate how you’re cast as the evil baddie, y’know? I mean, I know us and the fans joke about it but….I wish they’d actually talk about how much of a sweetheart you actually are.’

Dark’s gaze softened down at Wilford, and he kissed Wilford’s temple tenderly with a smile. He was always caught off guard by Wilford’s dedicated love to him, and Dark just adored the hell out of Wilford Warfstache; he purred softly in response.

‘I know dear, but I assure you that I do not mind, frankly I find it quite fun projecting out my evil side and having that as my outward image…’

Dark softly nuzzled Wilford’s cheek, making the moustached man crack and smile and let out a hum at the affection, but then his frown returned as he looked up at his boyfriend.

‘But you don’t have an evil side, you’re sweet and tender to the core!’

Dark raised a surprised eyebrow; he accepted that yes, perhaps he was secretly nice, but he liked to think he did have quite a large degree of malevolence within him. Dark wondered of Wilford perhaps needed reminding of that fact. Dark playfully smiled, cocking his head at Wilford.

‘Oh? You don’t think I have any capacity for evil….at all?’

Wilford grinned, and playfully kissed Dark on the nose because he loved playing and being all soppy like this with him.

‘Nope! You are my tender red velvet cupcake through and through!’

Dark couldn’t help but blush at the nickname, trust Wilford to come up with nicknames that were unbearably flustering whilst somehow always being oddly fitting. Dark wasn’t going to let himself spiral into the realm of flusteredness though, that would only confirm Wilford’s words. Dark knew he had to prove his….darker side.

‘I bet I can prove you wrong.’

Dark smirked as Wilford cocked his head up at him curiously, before the moustached man squeaked as he was suddenly straddled by Dark, face heating up instantaneously. Wilford had no idea what was about to happen, but right now he didn’t care because he was blushing and giggling and getting giddier at how playful Dark was being. Wilford nibbled his lip as he spoke in a very excited voice.

‘Ohoho? Prahay tell how you plan toho do that?’

Dark smirked wider, cracked his knuckles, and crooned.

‘Raise your arms and you’ll see.’

As always with Wilford, his curiosity overcame any semblance of common sense inside him, and he immediately raised his arms. He grinned and cheekily wiggled for Dark as he replied.

‘Raised and ready honeypie.’

Dark chuckled fondly at how utterly adorable and giddy Wilford was, before he slipped his fingers under Wilford’s t-shirt onto his bare tummy so he could ever so gently tap the skin there. The light touches made Wilford gasp and tense….he knew what was coming now.

‘Oh I hope you are, because this is going to be truly malevolent….’

Wilford giggled at Dark’s purr, getting goose-bumps from nervous excitement. It was no secret that Wilford adored being tickled, especially by Dark….but ah…..Dark wasn’t going to give him what he wanted so easily.

‘Ohoho jeheez….’

Dark smirked, and let out a relaxed sigh, leisurely swirling and tracing his fingertips all over his soft sides and tummy.

‘Ahhhh yes, you’re very, very ticklish, aren’t you darling?’

Wilford bit his bottom lip as he let out the cutest whine known to man, Dark knew just how to tease him into flustered little pieces; that in combination with the gentle tickling was already making the whole thing rather….evil.

‘Yohohohou knohow I aham!’

Wilford giggled out, making Dark chuckle as his crimson eyes twinkled with loving amusement. Wilford flinched and whined even more when Dark’s fingers tapped just above his tender hipbones, and his cool, deep voice rang out unrelentingly.

‘I barely have to do anything and you’re a sweet little mess….perhaps in the future I should only tickle you like this, your reactions are ever so sweet….’

Wilford went utterly beet red at Dark’s words, stuttering with wide doe eyes as he squeaked before he could stop himself.

‘N-Nohohoho y-yohou cahan’t dohoho thahat!’

Dark raised an amused eyebrow at that, oh he’d so hoped his words would get a rise out of Wilford. He snickered smugly as he swirled a single fingertip in the bowel of one of Wilford’s hips, making the poor man whimper and buck as Dark crooned in a mock-curious tone.

‘Oh? Why ever not? I thought you’d prefer these gentler, less evil methods….’

Wilford gritted his teeth as he squeezed his eyes shut….because for him, this tickly scenario was the most evil thing in the whole world. Something to know about Wilford is that the teasiest, gentlest tickles were the ones that got to him the most. They made him tingle endlessly and made his lee mood get bigger and bigger with every passing second, and as time went on….all Wilford started to want was for Dark to go faster. Wilford spluttered out of embarrassed, lee mood induced frustration.

‘Y-Yohohohou bahahastahard!’

Dark smirked and crooned with feigned innocence.

‘Oho I’m a bastard am I? Why is that?’

Wilford squeaked and twitched as Dark now slowly walked his fingers up Wilford’s sensitive body, before resting them in his armpits whilst Dark also rested his face on Wilford’s tummy. Dark felt even more satisfied now that he could feel Wilford’s shaky breaths and jumpy yips as he stammered.

‘Yohohohou knohow dahamn wehehell why!’

Wilford was crumbling from it all, and Dark was relishing in his lover’s demise.

‘You know, I’m not sure that I do….if there’s something else that you want, then you’ll have to ask me so I know what it is you’d like….’

Wilford’s eyes flew open….oh now that was just cruel. His whole body was shaking now as he lost the last of his composure, giggles overcoming him from the soft, blunt scrapes of nails in his armpits and stubble at his stomach.

‘Yohohohou ehehevil meheheanihie gohohoddammit Dahahark!’

Dark laughed gently into Wilford’s tummy as his fingertips carried on playing softly in his hollows, and he mused smugly to Wilford.

‘I’m still not hearing any requests for something different….’

Wilford was beyond flustered, which meant he had no filter left to stop him from crying out in flustered frustration.

‘Fuhuhuck gahahad p-p-plehehease bahahabe juhust gohoho fahahaster!’

Dark smiled, an utterly feral, gleeful smile, and gazed at Wilford adoringly.

‘Anything for you my love.’

Wilford then squealed and descended into laughter as Dark scratched relentlessly in his armpits, all the while he also nibbled the absolute hell out of the pudge of his lower belly. It was tickle torture at its finest and Wilford was relishing every damn second of it.

‘AAAHHHEHEHEE FUUHUHUCK AHAHAHA!!’

Dark hummed, warmth filling his chest at how Wilford thrashed and thrashed, but never once fought back; he lived for when he could make Wilford so happy like this.

‘Does it tickle good darling?’

Dark purred, and even amidst his shrieks of mirth Wilford managed to nod in response, crying out as he arched his back and clenched his fists.

‘YEHEHEHAHAHA!! TIHIHIHICKLES!!’

Dark genuinely thought his heart was going to melt, well, that’s what true love does to you. Dark gave his loving, kissy, nibbly attention to Wilford’s waistline now, but kept up the treatment at his armpits because he knew Wilford adored his underarms being tickled immensely. He murmured lovingly into Wilford’s skin.

‘It’s gorgeous how much you adore this….you’re so fucking cute, it drives me crazy…’

Wilford was a squealing, laughing, blushing mess of delight as tears built at the corners of his eyes; with Dark complimenting him too, that just drove him right over the edge of happy bliss.

‘IHIHIHI LOHOHOHOVE YOHOHOU!!!’

Wilford threw his head back amidst his proclamation, and Dark beamed as he replied.

‘I love you too, my darling Wilford.’

Dark grinned….then decided to really show his love. He unleashed a torrent of raspberries along Wilford’s tender waistline, whilst also vibrating his thumbs into his poor, sensitive hollows. Wilford absolutely howled with mirth as tears trickled down his cheeks, and he finally slammed his arms down.

‘AAHHHHH FAHAHAHAHACK NAHAHAHAHAAA!!!’

Dark smiled fondly, and then had mercy on his Wilford. He chuckled gently to himself as he got off of Wilford and lay back next to him in bed, and let out a happy hum when Wilford immediately came close so he could curl up at his chest. He was giggling, panting, grinning….and beautiful beyond sanity in Dark’s eyes.

‘Hoholy fuhuck….’

Dark smirked, and kissed Wilford’s jaw as he purred.

‘Had fun?’

Wilford gazed up at Dark, and grinned brightly as he let out a soft purr of his own.

'You’re so evil….I love you so much.’

Dark’s eyes gleamed with his own delight, before they shut along with Wilford’s as they kissed, utterly encased by mutual bliss and happiness beneath their blankets and encased by limbs. Maybe sometimes, just sometimes….to be truly evil, first you must be utterly good of heart.

WOOOOOO HOPE YOU GUYS LIKED THIS FIC LEMME KNOW IF YA DID WOOOO LUV YOUS XX

[let-it-raines]

Prompt: two boarding school teachers finally, FINALLY get together. Everyone around them is way too invested and knows way too much. I'd send you the link but tumblr won't like that.

Okay @shireness-says​ this completely and totally spiraled, and I 100% blame you for that. I’m sure you won’t mind though, and I hope that you enjoy! 

Rating is on the more mature side for the ending, as per request 😘

-/-

Wind whips through the courtyard as Killian walks along the sidewalk wishing he had a scarf to go along with his jacket and his knit hat, but he can’t seem to find his school-approved scarf. He’s thirty-two years old, and he still has to wear a school-approved scarf when it’s school hours and he’s technically on the clock. Though, working at a boarding school means he’s nearly always on the clock when he’s in charge of the eleventh-grade boys’ dorm three nights a week. At least they don’t check his scarf-wearing there.

He simply has to check to make sure thirty hormonal seventeen-year-olds aren’t sneaking out or sneaking girls in. Most nights it’s easy, others he swears he gains several wrinkles on his face, and sometimes he has to call in Rob on his night off to help to get them to all settle down.

Killian never thought that being a Calculus teacher would be this damn hard, and he voluntarily became a Calculus teacher.

The dorm beds really kill his back, and he longs for the days where he can stay in his apartment in the faculty building that’s located between the boys’ and girls’ dorms.

Tomorrow.

He’ll be back in his apartment tomorrow, and he cannot wait to spend the entire time in bed.

Pulling his coat a little tighter around him, Killian keeps trudging through the slight dusting of snow with his backpack bouncing against his lower back. A group of students are throwing a football back and forth to each other while another bunch sit at a cluster of picnic tables, their voices echoing between the small group of buildings, and Killian can’t help but smile at them voluntarily sitting out in the cold simply so they can get in a little fun on their lunch hour.

The thing about Storybrooke Academy is that it’s remote. Wealthy parents up and down the east coast ship their teenagers off to live and be educated in the ivy-covered halls of this prestigious academy for two reasons:

(1)  The teachers are top notch.

(2)  Their children have very little access to distractions.

The actual town of Storybrooke is a fifteen-minute walk downhill – which inevitably means the walk back is a torturous fifteen minutes uphill – and since students cannot have cars here, the only way to leave the campus is by walking. They’re also only allowed to leave on the weekends, and even then, anyone under sixteen has to be accompanied by a faculty member. As much as Killian loves his students, he doesn’t love spending the little free time he has on the weekends with them as they spend their entire day at the diner that backs up to the beach.

He doesn’t blame them for going there, though. Not at all. As wonderful as their meal hall food is, it can get repetitive. And as much as they all try to provide the kids with enough study material to spend their afternoons and enough entertainment to spend their evenings, it can get a little boring up here. The headmaster is a bit old school in that he doesn’t believe in school-wide Wi-Fi – “the internet is a distraction full of horrors, and we will not have it here outside of the library and the classrooms” – so it’s not as if they can spend their days scrolling through Instagram or streaming YouTube videos.

Is he old or does he simply sound old thinking that?

No matter, the students and faculty at Storybrooke Academy spend their free time in search of entertainment through reading, board and card games, the occasional movie night, and, of course, gossip.

Gossip, as they say, makes the world go around, and that is surely true here.

It’s what makes the clock in the tower tick and the ink in the pens run. It’s what causes teenagers to have flush rise in their cheeks and for adults’ whispers gets caught in the wind and carried to the three hundred people who live on this campus.

Killian doesn’t truly want to take part in it, but it’s nearly inevitable with how things work. For instance, he knows that their head cook Ms. Lucas was once married to their handyman Mr. Geppetto but that they can’t stand to be in the same room together now. It’s to the point that if something in the kitchen is broken, she will fix it herself and get electrocuted before calling for help. The gossip is always what allows him to know that last week a group of the tenth-grade girls snuck away from their dorm in the middle of the night to break into the science building so that they could use the internet to stream this week’s episode of the Bachelor. It is always what enables him to be aware of the fact that there was a copy of one of his tests floating around so now he’s been able to make a new test with new questions.

Mostly, however, being aware of the academy’s penchant for gossip is what has Killian knowing that he must keep his private life at a degree higher than private so no one knows the details of what is going on when he is off campus.

As Killian continues to move along the courtyard, he passes by Emma Swan and Mary Margaret Blanchard huddled together with a group of their history students. He tries not to look at her for too long, so he only sees a flash of blonde hair wrapped up under a warm white knit hat with a puffball on the top and the slightest hint of a smile. Blush warms his cheeks more than a scarf ever could, but Killian pushes it down. He is not a school boy, and he certainly will not blush like one over a pretty lass smiling at him.

Even if that pretty lass is the woman he’s been pining over for the past three years.

She may very well be the most gorgeous woman he’s ever seen. The first day he ever saw her she walked into the faculty lounge wearing a skin-tight black dress that showed every curve of her toned body hidden under a vibrant red blazer. Her blonde hair cascaded off her shoulders in thick waves that he simply knew would be soft, and the sunlight gleaming through the windows made the green of her eyes almost look blue. She was breathtaking, and he nearly did have his breath taken away from him when he went to speak to her and words did not come out.

Not his best first impression, but certainly not his worst.

However, Emma isn’t simply someone who he’s physically attracted to. She’s smart and kind and so goddamn witty that his heart aches when she’s smiling while talking to him and that it aches even more when she’s smiling while talking to someone else.

Killian has never once had an issue telling a woman that he wants to be with her, and yet he can’t even think about telling Emma how much she means to him. They’ve grown too close.

Besides, Emma doesn’t feel anything besides friendship for him. How could she feel anything else? She deserves far better than him.

The thing about the rumors that bounce along the walls of this school is that they are not simply current rumors. They are rumors of the past like Killian’s forced retirement from the Navy at the age of twenty-two and the married woman who he was having an affair with. He didn’t know at the time, but that’s never seemed to matter.

Rumors make the world go around and yet bring a singular person to a screeching halt all at once.

“Killian,” Emma calls out, and he stops in his tracks to turn back around to look at her as she walks toward him. She’s even more beautiful close up, white specks of snow sprinkled in her hair and on the tip of her eyelashes, and the only thing keeping him from reaching up to touch the snow is Emma’s hand landing on his forehand as little sparks of electricity move over him. “Why weren’t you at breakfast this morning?”

Killian quirks his brow and sways a little further into Emma’s space, all of his usual bravado returning as his lips curl into a salacious smirk. “Did you miss me then, love? I know I’m irresistible, but I figured you could at least make it through breakfast without me.”

She good-naturedly rolls her eyes as her hand stays wrapped around his forearm. He can see the gold specks in her eyes from here. “I’m not stroking your ego, Jones.”

“You’re not stroking anything of mine if we’re being particular.”

“Please,” she huffs, a white puff of air coming out with her breath. “You couldn’t handle it.”

Killian dips his head down to lower himself to her eye-level and get as close to her as possible so that he knows she can feel the heat of his breath on her skin. Emma’s hand over his coat sleeve is burning him alive.

“Perhaps you’re the one who couldn’t handle it.”

She blinks, and he swears that she gets the smallest bit closer, her mouth nearing his, and his stomach painfully swoops at the prospect of Emma’s lips against his. He’s imagined it far too many times. They’ll be soft, he’s sure, and he knows that if Emma kisses anything like she argues, she’ll give as good as she gets.

If not better.

And if they weren’t standing in a courtyard filled with all of their students and if Killian wasn’t sure that Emma had no interest in him, he’d surge forward and pull her lips and her body into his so that he can feel the heat of her body all over him, the cold air around them completely disappearing as he is absolutely consumed by Emma.

Emma’s breath hitches, the sound the loudest thing he’s ever heard, and Killian’s thoughts come back to him so that he’s stepping back and righting his features while he wishes that his trousers weren’t quite so tight. Reaching up to scratch behind his ear, Killian smiles down at her, this time in a perfectly friendly way.

“I missed breakfast because I was grading papers. I’ll be at supper tonight if you’d truly like to dine with the best company on campus. I know that I can be charming.”

Her smile changes then, from soft to a bit smug, and she steps back into his space so that his breath hitches this time. Her hand has never left his arm. “I simply wanted to know where you were because I wanted my headphones that you borrowed back. I don’t find you that charming that I simply needed to see you.”

Killian bites his tongue to keep from laughing at the squeak in her voice, and he leans into her as a strong gust of wind ruffles their coats and causes Emma’s hair to fly into his own face, tickling his upper lip.

“All that sounds like, darling, is that you need me in order to listen to your music, and I suggest that you start to find me charming so that I’m able to give them back to you.”

There’s a pinch at his skin. “You’re an ass.”

He winks. “You love it.” Emma opens her mouth to say something else, but then a bell is ringing over the courtyard, and they both spring away from each other and look around to see that most everyone had already started to head inside in preparation for the fifth period bell to ring, and yet the two of them have simply been standing outside. “Well, Swan, I guess I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“Yeah, and bring my headphones.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Killian turns on his heels and starts walking toward the building where his classroom is. Emma follows right behind him except that she takes a turn one door earlier than him, and as soon as she disappears behind the stone walls, he lets out a sigh of relief and can feel his heart start to beat normally again. Not every interaction with her is that charged, but damn does he love it when they do get to talk like that.

There is nothing quite like him being able to tease her.

By the time Killian gets to his classroom, all of his students are already sitting in their desks, each of them on their phones to use the internet while they can, and they barely even notice his presence as he sits down in his rolling chair and places the stack of tests he was grading this morning on his desk before he turns on his computer to pull up today’s lesson plans.

“So,” he starts as he types his username in, “do you guys have anything interesting to tell me today? What have I missed while I was holed away grading your papers, which were excellent by the way. I’ll give them back after I have a chance to go over some of the answers to the trickier questions with you all.”

His usual very chatty peanut gallery is silent, and he stops looking at his computer screen to look up and over at all of them. No one talks more than his advanced class of seniors, but every single one of them is staring down at their notebooks, all of their phones put away like the annoyingly good students that they are.

Killian rolls his chair to the center of his desk and leans forward to rest his cheek in his right palm while the fingers of his left hand drum against the wooden frame. “It’s Monday. That means we just had a weekend, and since we’ve had a weekend, I know that means you all have gossip. And because I don’t want you annoying your other teachers with it, I need you guys to tell me what’s going on around the school.” Still, no one says anything, and Killian sighs. “I’m not going over the exam until someone spits it out. You lot can’t focus until after we’ve had our Monday afternoon chats.”

His eyes scan over the room and finally land on Caroline Abbot. She never can keep a secret.

Sure enough, she starts speaking once he’s spent two seconds staring at her. “Ms. Swan went on a date this weekend, and we didn’t want to tell you since we know that you like her.”

An anvil drops in his stomach, the pain overwhelming him, and Killian bites down on his tongue so harshly that iron immediately fills his mouth while flames flicker across his cheeks.

Bloody hell.

No.

No.

Emma can’t have gone on a date. She simply can’t. Well, no, of course she could. She’s a gorgeous, intelligent woman, and she can do whatever she damn well pleases.

It’s just that…no, that’s hopeful thinking. They are not going to end up together, no matter how much his students are convinced that they are.

“First of all, Caroline,” he breathes out on a heavy sigh, “I do not have feelings for Ms. Swan.”

For fuck’s sake, why is he justifying himself to teenagers? Then again, he is the one to ask them about this weekend’s gossip, so he’s brought it on himself.

Who did Emma go out on a date with? Why didn’t she mention it? Why did no one mention it? Rob or Mary Margaret or, hell, Ms. Lucas should have mentioned it to him.

Emma should have mentioned it to him. They’re friends. They tell each other things. At least, he thought that they did. Yet, now that he truly thinks about it, he cannot remember the last time Emma told him one of her stories from her adventures in dating. They used to make a fire burn deep in his belly, still do apparently, and as nice as it was to listen to her share about her days, he’s a bit relieved that he hasn’t had to listen to any stories lately because he’s a miserable sod.

“But you do have feelings for her,” Abigail speaks up from the back of the classroom. “You two are perfect for each other, and everyone knows it but you.”

This gets the class in an uproar, as it always does, and Killian can do nothing to stop it. He’s tried before, but his students are absolutely convinced that he and Emma are some kind of fairytale True Love with capital letters and an overly cheesy happily ever after that doesn’t happen in real life because trials and tribulations still happen after the guy and the girl get together and drive off into the sunset.

And maybe he’d like to drive off into the sunset with Emma so that he can always hear the sound of her laughter and look at the crinkle of her nose as she smiles, but that’s simply not happening. The car is very much in park, if not shifting into reverse.

“Enough,” he shouts over the noise, banging his hand down on his desk just so that everyone can hear him. “Seriously, guys, I appreciate how much you care about your teachers, but Emma and I are simply friends and coworkers. You all go a little stir crazy holed up in here, so you’ve dreamed up this romance that simply isn’t there.”

“But it is,” George speaks up, and Killian is soothed by the familiar British accent of his student even if his words aren’t particularly pleasant. “You simply don’t know it yet. We all agree that the spark is there.”

Killian chuckles under his breath as his head shakes from side to side. He’s really got to get on with today’s lesson. “You know, as much as I love our Monday morning gossip sessions, I hate to tell you that no matter how hard you try, my personal life is never going to be something that runs along the rumor mill of this school. At least, my legitimate and current personal life. This hypothetical relationship between Emma and me doesn’t count.” Every single one of them opens their mouth to stay something, but he holds his finger up to stop them. “Nope. We’re moving onto Calculus, and that’s final.”

To say that the knowledge of Emma going on a date eats at Killian for the rest of the day is an understatement. The knowledge consumes him. Every second that he is not busy giving a lesson or grading papers his mind is focusing on it, and he knows that it’s unhealthy. It’s simply that he doesn’t think he’s able to turn his mind off and let himself focus on other, normal things that he should be focusing on.

Emma is a grown woman free to do what she wants, and she deserves all of the happiness in the world.

Killian was simply idiotic and selfish enough to think that some of that happiness could involve him.

It certainly doesn’t help that over the next few days Emma seems to be everywhere that he is. She slides in next to him in the booth at breakfast, excitedly telling him about this new book she just got in the mail or about how her foster brother is coming to visit next weekend, and he can barely keep his omelet down for the way that his stomach churns at the thought of her eating breakfast with whoever the mystery man is. If she doesn’t invade his space at breakfast, she’s finding him in the hallways between classes and utilizing the internet to show him something funny she found online. She’s always doing things like that. He’ll have not checked his phone overnight, and when he walks across campus to the classrooms where there’s internet, he usually has at least ten messages from Emma. The texts load in the dorm, at least for him, but the pictures and videos never do.

They’re living in a semi-dark age, obviously.

And Killian isn’t exactly going out of his way to avoid running into Emma. He’s obviously a glutton for punishment, and he will seek her out at dinner so that they can sit together and talk about their days and so he can see and hear that beautiful laugh of hers. It’s all normal, he tells himself, until one day he’s walking down the halls to the office to use the printer when he passes by her classroom and sees her showing some sort of video on the Waltz. Emma likes to add in little elements of fun into her history lessons, often incorporating pop culture moments, but she certainly doesn’t look to be having fun demonstrating the dance with Andrew Barron who seems to have two left feet.

Killian smiles as he stands in the doorway, his heart fluttering at the way that Emma even with her spitfire personality, stays so calm so as not to embarrass the lad.

Emma catches his eye over Andrew’s shoulder, and the little half-grin she shows him gives him the courage to step in and ask Andrew if he may have the dance with Ms. Swan.

“What are you doing?” Emma asks, the incredulousness obvious in her voice, but he ignores it in favor of folding his fingers over her hand and placing his left hand just below her shoulder while she places hers on top of his.

“I’m helping you demonstrate a Waltz, love.”

“I think we were doing just fine.”

Killian leans in a little closer so that their bodies are nearer to each other than they have any right to be. “Well, perhaps I just wanted to dance with a beautiful woman.”

Emma blushes, and her lips part to say something, but he doesn’t give her the chance, quickly moving his feet so that their bodies begin moving along to the music still playing on the projector. Her chest is visibly heaving and a little flushed, and it takes the sound of the metal leg of a desk scraping against the tile floor to remember that he’s in Emma’s classroom and that this is technically a lesson.

He should not be staring at her breasts.

“It’s really a rather simple dance,” he explains to the class, flashing them his broadest grin as his skin still sparks from the heat of Emma’s touch. “At least this version is. And if all else fails, you simply have to pick a partner who knows what he’s doing.”

They all nod in agreement, smiles on their faces, and Killian doesn’t fail to notice one of the students pulling out his phone to record them. He’s sure that it’ll make the rounds of the school and quite possibly the internet sometime soon, but he doesn’t really care, not when this is the most fun he’s had in days.

“Where’d you learn to do this?” Emma questions, her eyes lighting up as she looks up at him.

“You’d be surprised what they teach you in the Royal Navy.”

Her lips stretch out from one side to the next in a slow smirk, and Killian swears that his entire body is on fire. “I’m impressed, Mr. Jones.”

“As you should be, darling. And if you ever need someone to save you from a horrific dance lesson, you know where I am.”

“The only person who saves me is me.”

Killian winks as the music winds down to the end. “Aye, well, it never hurts to have a little help, especially when one of us is much better with our movement than the other.”

She scoffs and reaches out to slap his arm, but Killian stops her, grabbing onto her hand and bending down to press his lips to her knuckles, his eyes never straying from hers so that he can see her sharp intake of breath and the way that her eyes widen so that all he can see is green.

“It was a pleasure, milady. I’ll see you in our faculty meeting this afternoon, aye?”

And then he’s walking out of the classroom with a thundering heart, barely able to remember that he needs to pick up the papers he had with him when he walked into the room.

It’s wrong to want to be with her when she is likely with someone else, and yet here he is still doing things like that.

Killian vows to himself to back off and to stay away from her outside of actual work duties and friendly conversation, and that seems to last less than eighteen hours as Emma simply keeps finding him or he keeps finding reasons to talk to her. It doesn’t help that the video that was indeed taken of the two of them dancing has begun circulating throughout the school, and all of Killian’s students bring it up to him, each of them wondering why he and Emma aren’t together.

Life isn’t boxed into pretty pictures and graceful dances, and just because two people move well together does not mean that they are meant to always move in the same direction.

They don’t get it, but he doesn’t expect them to. They’re all teenagers who have experienced little when it comes to love and relationships, and even if they all feel that deep pang of the heart one feels when they are attracted to someone, they don’t understand that this is some kind of pipe dream.

He may sound a little juvenile even thinking that, but it’s the truth.

And their hope and faith in he and Emma being together does nothing to tamper down the feelings still festering in his chest.

The hopelessness he feels makes him wonder if he should take the step forward and tell Emma how he feels. At least then he’ll have the words off of his chest and no longer have the little inkling in his brain that makes him think that there’s hope there. Then again, that’s rather selfish, isn’t it? All that does is let Emma have to walk around with the weight of his feelings on her shoulders, and he can’t do that to her.

For all he knows, she is still dating that guy, and he’s been too much of a coward to ask his students if they know of her going on another date. It’s an invasion of privacy, one he can’t take, so he doesn’t.

January fades into February in the blink of an eye, the chill of a Maine winter somehow getting colder and filled with much more snow, and most outdoor activities get cancelled in favor of spending time indoors, and that’s exactly how he ends up supervising a movie night with none other than Emma Swan.

Life is funny that way.

The common room is full of all of the residents of his dorm, each of them huddled around the projector that Killian’s brought in to watch the new Spiderman movie. The cafeteria provided popcorn and snacks as well as a few cans of soda for everyone to drink, and the excitement of the students is palpable. They don’t get to do things like this too often, especially with the eleventh-grade girls from Emma’s dorm being mixed in with his guys, and he’s happy to let them simply be teenagers.

Just…under a hell of a lot of supervision from their teachers, so not a hell of a lot of freedom.

It’s probably been about fifteen minutes since he seriously had a look around the room, though. He trusts these students, and it’s not as if he can’t see absolutely everything that’s happening. Plus, he’s far too distracted by the way that Emma’s thigh is brushing against his under the blanket that she brought in to combat the chill from the cold stone building they’re in.

She’s relaxed this evening, her hair pulled back into a high ponytail and black-framed glasses perched on her nose, and she has on an oversized white sweater and a pair of leggings, thick socks pulled halfway up her calves. They’re both out of the dress code tonight, as they’re allowed to be, and it’s nice simply to feel normal.

The students aren’t the only ones who are restricted here.

“This movie is so cute,” Emma sighs. “I mean, I remember feeling exactly like that when I was a teenager and had a crush on someone. The overthinking and always trying to find a way to spend time with them or to brush your hand over their forearm.”

“I don’t think that stops when you get older.”

“No, I don’t think it does.” She twists to the side and smiles at him, and the insane creatures that live in his stomach start fluttering. “I think we simply get a little smoother in our actions, but I do think we overthink things a little more.”

“Why’s that, love?”

She shrugs. “We know more. Love is…scarier, I guess. Our hearts have been broken and bruised, and even if we feel the thrill of attraction, it’s dampened by the fear of what happens if the person we want to be with doesn’t want to be with us.”

It’s like she doesn’t even know.

The again, she doesn’t.

“Yeah, true,” he breathes out as his eyes move away from Emma and back up to the screen where the kids are on the plane traveling to Europe. “Then again, you don’t have to worry about that anymore, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

Killian grits his teeth, his fists clenching beneath the blanket, and he’s almost reckless enough to say something else.

Almost.

Thankfully, though, one of his students asks him if he can turn the volume up on the movie, so he has to rise from his seat and move to the projector to adjust the settings. When he returns to his seat, the conversation is long since forgotten, and he can move on.

He has to move on and put some distance between the two of them.

Emma doesn’t seem to have any inclination to let him because even though he makes a conscious effort to not spend time with her over the next few days, she is still always around. If she’s in the dining hall, he skips a meal. If she’s in the library, he finds somewhere else to make his lesson plans. If she’s in the lobby of the faculty apartments, he turns right back around into the cold even if all he wanted was to go up to his apartment and go to bed.

The only time that he’s safe is when it’s his nights to sleep in the dorms and supervise. She may have been in there for movie nights, but that was simply a one-time thing.

Nothing else will come of it.

At least, that’s what he tells himself until he’s sitting in his classroom entering grades during his planning period, and his door opens before slamming shut behind Emma.

“Swan,” he says in greeting, furrowing his brow together as he takes her in. “What are you doing in here? Do you need something because I – ”

“Why the hell have you been avoiding me?”

“I have not been avoiding you.”

Emma rolls her eyes and steps in closer to him with her arms crossed over her chest, and he’s reminded that he quite fancies her when she’s yelling at him. And when she’s not. It’s an all the time kind of thing. “You have been avoiding me. Every time I see you around campus, you bolt in the other direction. That’s called avoiding, Jones.”

“That’s called coincidence.”

“Well, that’s a lie.”

He minimizes his screen as if that will somehow help the pounding of his heart sounding between his ears. “I can assure you, darling, that it’s not.”

Her jaw ticks, and he can hear the click of the heel on her boot tap against the floor while she looks up at the ceiling. “You know what, fine,” she huffs, uncrossing her arms and slapping her hands against her thighs. “If you’re going to be a dick and avoid me and lie to me instead of telling me what I have done to make you mad, fine. That’s just how it is.”

“I am not angry with you. What could possibly give you that idea?”

“The avoiding me thing.”

“Again, I’m not avoiding you,” he lies as more guilt festers in his stomach.

“You are,” she shouts, only to look behind her and bring her bottom lip between her teeth and quiet her voice to a low hiss. “You are avoiding me, Killian, and I thought we were close enough to be adults about this and actually say what’s going on in our lives.”

“Yeah, like you told me that you were dating someone.”

Oh fuck.

He did not mean to say that.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Just, leave it alone.”

“I am not going to leave it alone, Killian. I have worked here for three years, and in those three years, I have never gone more than two days without talking to you. It’s been a week and a half, and I want to know what’s going on.”

“Well for fucks sake,” he groans as he stands from his chair and walks toward her, anger and confusion coursing through his body so that his brain doesn’t bloody work anymore. “I was backing off from spending time with you because I couldn’t deal with the fact that I was flirting with you while you had a boyfriend.”

She nearly recoils, but she stands firm. Stubborn lass. “You were flirting with me?”

“That’s what you got out of that?”

“What else am I supposed to get out of it?”

“The bloody boyfriend part, Swan. You have one of those, and it’s not right for me to be blatantly flirting with you and spending time with you when you belong to someone else.”

“First of all,” she starts, holding up a finger, “I do not belong to anyone else. I belong to myself. Second of all, I do not have a boyfriend. I don’t know where you got that idea. And lastly, I wanted you to flirt with me, you dumbass. For someone who is literally the king of innuendos, you surely don’t know how to notice when a woman is interested in you. My God, I was ready to slap the shit of you so many times. I still am right now.”

His brain is broken. Just…it is broken. Because the words Killian is hearing cannot possibly be coming out of Emma’s mouth. They wouldn’t even come out of her mouth in his wildest dreams.

And because he’s an idiot, he doesn’t focus on what he’s supposed to focus on. “I think you have a boyfriend because the students told me you went out on a date.”

“A date? When the hell did I go out on a date?”

“I don’t know. A bloody month ago. I’m sure the two of you are happily in love by now.”

“You are positively daft, aren’t you?” She scoffs and shakes her head from side to side before hiding her face behind her hands. “Like, I cannot believe we’re even having this conversation.”

“You should be able to. You came into my classroom. I didn’t seek you out.”

“And we’re running back in a circle again.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It means nothing.”

The two of them stand in silence as they stare at each other with the air around them thickening with words unsaid. Killian isn’t sure what’s happening, can’t remember the words that have been said and the words that haven’t, and for what may very well be the first time in his life, he doesn’t know what to say.

Somehow, he has been rendered speechless.

All he knows is that in this entire mess he missed out on one very important sentence.

Emma is going to kill him, probably, and he doesn’t even care. Killian narrows his eyes and sways closer to Emma, very much invading her space as a smile curls on his lips while his heart absolutely hammers within his chest.

“Swan, did you say that you were interested in me?” he teases, and God, her perfume smells fantastic.

“No,” she blatantly lies, “no, I didn’t.”

“You did, though. In all of that mess of a conversation, you said you were interested in me. You wanted me to flirt with you. Love, you have a crush on me.”

“What are you? Sixteen?”

“Thirty-two,” he answers as his hands cup her cheeks and feel the smooth skin under his touch. Her cheeks are warm, nerves and embarrassment and anger obviously causing the flames to ignite beneath her pale skin. “But you already knew that.”

Her eyes flicker up to his, and Killian will never quite be over just how gorgeous they are. Her eyes fill his dreams at night and light up his days.

“Emma?” he whispers.

“Yeah?”

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

There’s a short intake of breath from Emma, and his stomach flips. Despite the circumstances, he expects some kind of rejection from her. He doesn’t expect her to surge up on her toes and press her mouth over his while her hands thread into his hair, but she does.

Emma kisses much like everything else she does. She’s rough, passion being the first thing to burst through, but then once a little work is done, she’s a little more gentle and delicate as the blooming heat between them wells up and bursts so that little sparks of electricity trickle down his entire body and encourage him to pull Emma closer to him while his lips decide to take charge and devour her the way that he has always wanted to.

It’s a funny thing, kissing Emma Swan. A part of Killian is sure that this isn’t real and is all part of some kind of fever dream caused by the below freezing temperatures outside, and yet he knows from the warmth of her body – every inch of it – and the little gasps that she’s letting out that this is very much real.

This is real.

He bites down on her lip to tease her, to make her sigh more, and he’s very much satisfied with the result as a little whimper escapes past her lips and his hips press into hers so that they can get a little friction while his hands fall from her hair to travel down her arms and land on her waist, fingers dipping back into the pockets of her pants so that he can feel the firmness of her ass.

Thinking about taking her back to his apartment and fucking her into the mattress, though, is the exact thing that has him remember that they are standing in his classroom where students could walk in at any second.

It’s why he pulls back, if only just a little. His forehead stays pressed against hers, nose brushing against the skin of her cheek while his eyes finally flutter open to see the smile on Emma’s face.

“So, you were avoiding me because you thought I had a boyfriend?”

“I was an idiot who let the school gossip get to my head.”

Her fingers thump against the back of his head. “It was two dates. He’s a nice guy, but I couldn’t get into it when I have far too much fun flirting with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely. Do you want to, um…do you want to come by my apartment tonight?”

“I do,” he answers gleefully, “but I can’t. It’s my night to supervise my dorm.”

“Shit,” she hisses, and he absolutely has to kiss her again for that.

“I’ll call Rob and beg him to take my place, aye?”

“Okay, but don’t let him know why. I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly want any more of my life to be gossip amongst teenagers.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

The bell rings then, a blaring alarm in his ears, and the two of them spring back from each other like they’ve been burned. Emma nearly runs out of his classroom, only leaving him with a sly smile on her kiss swollen lips, and instead of greeting his students at the door, Killian hurries to sit down at his desk and calm himself down so that he can teach this class like he isn’t currently consumed by the fact that the woman he has been pining for actually has feelings for him as well.

And that she wants him to come over tonight.

Robin better pull through for him and pay him back for all of the times that he’s changed shifts with him.

Killian can barely think for the rest of the afternoon. It’s nice that math comes automatically to him and that he can teach without too much thought, but he’d kind of like to think that he’s mature enough to not be completely and totally consumed with thoughts of a woman.

This is obviously not any woman, though. This is a woman who is bloody magnificent in every way imaginable, and all he wants to do is feel the softness of her lips once more.

And as slowly as the day passes, it does pass. He’s got after hours tutoring today as well as a basketball game to attend for at least a little while, but before he knows it, he’s in the boys’ dorms showering the day away and brushing his teeth once more before getting dressed in a pair of jeans and a button down that will not at all keep the cold away from him, especially with the way that he leaves the top few buttons undone.

He doesn’t plan on staying outside for too long anyhow.

Grabbing Emma’s headphones that he has yet to give back to her in the past month, Killian walks out the door of the dorm room faculty stays in when not in their apartments, and begins walking down the hallway to the exit.

“Where are you going, Mr. Jones?”

“I have some errands to run in town, Tyler,” he explains before flashing him a smile. “Mr. Locksley is taking my shift for the night. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask him, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

And then Killian is walking out of there faster than he’s ever walked and stepping out into the cool winter air before quickly dipping back inside the faculty building. He walks through the lobby, saying hello to everyone sitting there, before taking the stairs up to Emma’s apartment. She lives on the floor above him, and when he pokes his head through the hallway door and there’s no one there and no one wandering outside who can see up to the apartments, Killian quickly and quietly makes his way down the hallway before knocking on Emma’s door.

When she opens it, she quickly ushers him inside before he can see that she’s wearing naught but a black robe with her hair cascading down her shoulder in loose waves. She smells like heaven wrapped up in a stick of cinnamon, and had he not been in Emma’s apartment several times before, he’d probably want to take a moment to look around. Instead he holds out her headphones while his eyes flicker down to her chest and the swell of her breast that he can see under the material of her robe.

“You know, Swan,” he teases, purposefully lowering the timber of his voice, “it seems that I have come over to your apartment simply to return your headphones to you, and you are dressed for something else.”

With a roll of her eyes, Emma leans forward and takes the headphones and places them on the table in her entryway before she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him back into the apartment. “You see,” she sighs, “I was getting dressed, and I thought to myself how much I really didn’t want to have to put on pants with buttons again. And since we have, like, three years of unresolved feelings that we need to get out tonight, I figured that I’d just save us a step or two by not getting dressed.”

His hands find purchase on her hips, fingers tumbling toward the tie of the robe to undo it, and the little lingering fear in the back of his mind that he’s ruining something really good in his life goes away know that he knows Emma is still able to tease him.

“A man likes to be courted first, you know?” He slips her robe open so that his palm spreads out over the warm skin of her stomach, and it takes everything in him not to let his eyes flicker down to peruse her body. This is very much about what’s physical between them, but it’s also about so much more. “I don’t want you to think that I’m simply going to fall into bed with you.”

“I also have a couch.”

Killian’s laugh rumbles up from his stomach before he’s capturing her lips in a fierce kiss so that the laugh fades away into a growl that rumbles in his groin instead. Yet again, her warmth is bringing him back to life as her kiss lights him aflame. This is everything like their kiss in the classroom, but there’s an undeniable heat to it now that wasn’t there earlier.

The first kiss will always be special, but this means so much more to him because Emma didn’t run away. She’s seeking more of him.

His hand moves up her stomach to run across the lace of her bra, and he smirks into her kiss because he knows that she put this on specifically for him. Emma gasps when his fingers flick the material down so that his hands come into contact with a quickly hardening nipple while his tongue sweeps into her mouth in a warm slide that has every hair on his body standing at attention.

Emma’s tongue is sinful, her body even more so, and Killian is so damn distracted by the way that she feels against him and in his hand that he doesn’t even notice that she’s started to unbutton his shirt until sharp nails are scratching against his skin.

“Eager, are we?” he growls as his lips make a swift detour down her neck to kiss skin he hasn’t gotten a chance to taste yet.

“Are you complaining?”

“You’ll not find me complaining about one moment of tonight.”

Emma chuckles as she cranes her neck to the side so that he can continue to devour her skin. “I don’t believe that for a second. You’re always complaining about something.”

He flicks her peaked bud and scratches his beard along her flesh. “That’s because I didn’t have you in my arms.”

“Cheesy.”

“I’ve heard you like cheese.”

Killian is sure that she rolls her eyes, but he doesn’t see that because he’s kissing her again and trying to back her up to the bedroom. The apartment is the exact same layout as his, so he knows the way down the hallway. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t nearly trip over Emma’s shoes or hit his hip against a hallway table, and they definitely stop against several different walls to continue devouring each other as well as undress the clothes from their bodies.

Though, he does rather wish he could see Emma in black lace for a little longer, but seeing her bare of everything but gooseflesh is much, much better.

She’s stunning with her toned muscles and creamy skin that seems to stretch on for miles, and he tells her so as his lips map her skin, leaving his mark against her while arousal continues to stir within him, his cock hardening at every little gasp and breathy moan that Emma elicits.

This woman has been one of his dearest friends for years now. How did he ever got so lucky to be able to drag the whiskers of his beard across the sensitive skin of her thighs while her fingers grab onto his hair in an attempt to move him to the slick flesh where he knows that she wants him.

She wants him.

Emma Swan is currently writhing on her bed unable to string more than a few words together because she wants him and is incredibly turned on by the things that he’s doing to her body.

Smirking, Killian bites down on Emma’s inner thigh before dragging his nose along her skin and breathing out over her folds before slowly flicking his tongue against her clit. Her grip tightens in his hair while her other hand bunches into the sheets, and Killian is pleasantly surprised by the way that she cants her hips up into him. The attraction between them is undeniable, the passion hard to tamper down, but they are also new to each other. He doesn’t know what makes Emma tick, but he’s extremely eager to learn. Slowly, tenderly, carefully Killian kisses her and shows her just how much that he cares about bringing her the pleasure that she’s finding at his touch.

At her instruction, Killian flattens his tongue and drags it against her once, twice, three times before dipping it into her entrance so that she moans in response. Killian looks up at her then through his eyelashes and sees the crane of Emma’s neck against the expanse of her body, and he smirks into her folds before continuing his efforts to continue to make her writhe. When he slides a finger into her, then another, the moan that Emma lets out is downright dirty, and he can barely breathe when she hooks her ankles around his shoulders and tugs him closer to her while she starts to pant and his own breath gets a little short.

“Like that,” she gasps out, and the sound of her voice goes straight to his straining length that’s pressing into the mattress. “Oh, fuck, just like that.”

It’s the most she’s said in minutes, and he takes the instruction in stride, sucking on her clit and curling his fingers inside of her just like he was until she’s crying out every curse he’s ever known and thrusting her hips into the air while her heels dig into his shoulders. It’s one of the most glorious sights he’s ever seen, and Killian fully intends to spend his entire weekend seeing her make faces similar to that over and over again.

“Glorious,” he promises her as he begins to move up her body, peppering kisses across every inch of skin that he can reach, focusing on her breasts for a few moments before bracing his hands on either side of her head and slowly gliding his mouth over hers, lazily kissing her as she still basks in the glory of her orgasm. “You’re simply glorious.”

Emma sighs as her hand wrap around his neck, and he can still feel her smile in the kiss. “You are not so bad yourself. I think I’m going to have to have you do that again.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“And mine, obviously.”

A chuckle passes through her lips as he kisses her again, swirling his tongue around hers in a dance that resembles their waltz. He’s leading, but Emma is perfectly capable of doing that on her own. He almost wants her to.

And she does when her hand reaches down between him and grabs onto his cock, her touch absolutely electrifying, and he loses any and all sense that he has as he hisses into her shoulder.

“Bloody fuck.”

“You are so British.”

“I never, ah – I never…shit, Swan.”

“You never what?” she teases as her hand continues to move up and down his shaft.

“I never claimed to be otherwise. Do you have condoms?”

“Did you not bring any?”

“I did, but they’re wherever my pants are and I don’t really feel like going to find them.”

Emma laughs, and the sound is as pleasant as it always is, before she’s releasing him and leaning over to her bedside drawer to bring out the foil package. Every bit of him is on edge right now, the ache of not having a release building in the base of his spine, and he nearly loses himself when she rolls the protection down him. It’s all he can do from there to position himself on his knees and take hold of her legs, pushing them back against her chest while he slowly guides himself into her in a thick slide. She’s warm and mesmerizing and every other wonderful adjective that his brain is able to conjure up.

Funny thing, he can’t seem to think of many adjectives right now.

She’s rendered him absolutely speechless once more. The way she feels around him is magnificent, and he could stay slowly rocking with her like this for hours. It’s why, no matter how desperate he is, his pace is deliberately unhurried as the pressure slowly mounts between them. He wants Emma to feel good in this, to find her own bliss once more, and her weak, pleasured cries make him think that she is.

Killian’s hand finds where they’re joined as his eyes do the same, watching himself move in and out of Emma in what has to be one of the most erotic sights he’s ever seen, and her whimpers get louder which each flick of his finger while her moans become more frequent when he shifts over her so that his thrusts can be deeper and the hair on his chest brushes over her nipples while sweat glistens off of Emma’s forehead.

It’s overwhelming, being with her, and this is only the first time. Killian cannot even begin to imagine the road that they have in front of them, but a grin spreads across his lips at simply the thought of it.

This isn’t going to be a one-time thing, and he fully intends on falling in love with Emma.

If he’s not already there.

Emma trembles beneath him as her nails scratch down his back, and the contracting of her walls around him has Killian following soon after Emma and spilling himself inside of her with mangled grunts and groans and a declaration that is so close to love that it causes him to bite down on his own tongue and bury his face in the crook of Emma’s neck while he falls down on top of her, trying not to let his entire weight press onto her body even if the exertion has taken all of the energy out of him.

“So,” Emma mumbles as her nails softly drag across his back instead of scratching into his skin, “as well as you avoiding me seems to have worked out for us to get here, please don’t ever do it again.”

“No, Swan,” Killian laughs, kissing her collarbone before propping himself up and looking at her and the completely disheveled look of her hair, “I don’t think I will. I rather like you too much for that.”

“Good.”

Emma’s stomach rumbles then, this loud, unattractive noise, and Killian rolls off of her with a laugh as he reaches down and removes his condom to tie it up, quickly getting up from the bed to throw it away in the bin. “You hungry, love?”

She sprawls out on the mattress, something he guesses that she’s used to doing, and the goofy, sated smile on her face is one of the most glorious things he’s ever seen.

Killian seems to be thinking that a lot tonight.

“I’m absolutely starving. We worked up quite the appetite. That’s why you have sex before dinner. And then afterward you can talk about ways to improve while stuffing your face with lasagna.”

Killian barks out a laugh as he reaches down to pull up his boxers and toss Emma’s robe at her. “I like the way you think. C’mon, love, let’s go eat. You promised to court me.”

“That I did.”

Nothing really changes between the two of them. Sure, there are kisses exchanged and Killian can take her against the kitchen counter if he wants to (he does want to, and they do fulfill that want), but mostly it’s the same. They still talk and laugh and tease each other until the other gets angry. It’s exactly what he wants, what Emma wants too, and every fear that he has had about them doing this seems to be unfounded.

At least if the first night is any indication.

And the next two nights.

They spend the entire weekend holed away in Emma’s apartment, only leaving so Killian can go down one floor to get his clothes from his own place, and making love to Emma while the snow falls outside and laughter passes between them is a memory that will forever be etched into his mind.

He owes Rob quite possibly the biggest gift basket in the world for taking over his dorm duties.

Eventually Monday does roll around, their weekend between the sheets ending, but there are promises for it to happen again and again and quite possibly as much as possible. Being stuck at a boarding school and living so close together gives them a great chance for dating and figuring this whole thing out.

Secretly, of course. It’s still new and fresh, and Killian doesn’t want anything to come between them until they are settled in this thing.

“Happy Monday,” Killian sighs as he walks into his fifth period Calculus class after lunch Monday morning. All of his classes have been weirdly distracted today, and he’s hoping that this period actually pays attention. “Did everyone have a good weekend?”

There’s a quiet murmur with several answers of yes and a few of no, but then things get oddly quiet when he settles down at his desk and logs into the computer to take attendance. Curious, Killian looks up and sees that every single student is staring at him with absolutely giddy looks on their faces.

“What?” he questions as his brows furrow. They’re still silent with their creepy grins, so he asks again. “What? Someone tell me what’s going on.”

They all seem to look at each other as if they’re debating whether or not to actually tell him what’s on their minds, and a shiver runs down his spine.

Then Caroline Abbott speaks up. “We know that you spent the weekend in Ms. Swan’s apartment. Congratulations! You guys are finally together!”

Killian doesn’t even get a chance to protest, to lie and tell his students that they’re wrong. He doesn’t know how they know, but they do. The rumor mills around here never seem to stop, and this time they certainly didn’t get their facts wrong.

Warmth rushes to his cheeks, blush painting them, and Killian never does get control of his class that day. They’re simply too excited that he and Emma are finally together.

They’ve got to get cable and internet in the dorms. His students should not be this invested in his personal life.

Then again, it’s nice when the entire school hosts a party for he and Emma when they get engaged the next year.

Of course, neither of them has to announce the engagement because somehow everyone already knows.

They’ve really got to get their own place.

[thehollowprince]

Two cents from a female cis-het passing queer person who grew up in a deeply compulsory heterosexual environment. Media and mainstream het culture socialises girls and women to identify so much deeply problematic and violent male behaviour as perfectly normal, romantic behaviour. Prime example, Spike and Buffy. imo this is heavily reflected in the mlm slash ships that straight people love to fetishize, prime example St*r*k. When I discovered they were a ship it made me really sad.

Oh, you're preaching to the choir.

That was a pattern I picked up on years ago, one that I actually had to look for, because as a guy, I was told that it was okay to behave like the men we saw on television. Well... half told. My grandmother always told me to be nice first, because if you start off by being an asshole, no one's ever going to think your anything but an asshole. I also realized all on my own that maybe I should just care about other people, but that's just me.

The thing that really gets me about this phenomenon is that it's on here. Naturally, I don't expect Tumblr to be completely absent of this, but come on! This is Tumblr! You could throw a stick and hit a post about how men shouldn't treat women like that, or how women shouldn't put up with it, but then those very same people turn around and make apology posts for Kylo Ben, or Snape, or Damon Salvatore or Klaus Mikaelson or Spike. Oh, god, Spike! That whole "romance" (see: obsession) between the two just blew my mind, even back when the show was airing (yes, I'm old enough to remember when it aired on the WB and then UPN).

The fact that anyone can look at the intersections between Buffy and Spike and call that a romance disgusts me. And that's without even including the attempted rape. Just his obsession with her since the fourth season and how that spiraled into everything. That show really should have just ended at season five.

Spike is actually the earliest example that I've seen of a fandom loving a villain so much that the production decides to keep bringing them back. Except, you can't keep them around as the villain (y'know, the version of the character that everyone fell in love with), because it eventually gets to the point of "why can't the heroes beat the villain?" Simple, we'll give them a Tragic Backstory™, have them make the sad puppy eyes, and bam! We got us an antihero.

And people just eat that shit up.

It happened with both Damon and Klaus on The Vampire Diaries and The Originals. We have two characters who are introduced as these outright villains, killing people for their own amusement or to prove a point, but fans loved them so much that they got turned into antiheroes and all their bad deeds forgiven. I mean, its outright nauseating to see the way Damon treated Elena throughout the run of the show, invading her personal space, trying to compel her into kissing him, manhandling her, taking her choices away, and fans calling that love. Same with Klaus, who repeatedly threatened Caroline, actually tried to kill her (twice!), and Kl*r*line shippers thing that's the peak of romantic behavior because Klaus makes the sad puppy eyes. (See also: Theo from Teen Wolf)

And don't even get me started on the fandom fixation on Bonkai!

It all stems down to this weird phenomenon where one of the two characters is a self-insert for the reader/viewer, because they want to bang the male character/actor. That's why Rey is usually written so one-dimensional in R*ylo fics, because the reader is thirsty for Adam Driver. And that, of course, just leads us back to Teen Wolf and St*r*k. Although, that one's a little tricky, because you'd think that so many of these St*r*k shippers would insert themselves into Stiles (which there are a fair share that do), but more often than not, Derek acts as the self-insert, because most of the fans want to bang Dylan O'Brien. Seriously, I will never understand fandom's fascination with white twinks, but it's an all-encompassing thing.

Part of me understands because I'm old enough to remember the early years of internet fandom. Okay, I was there for FF.net before the purges. I remember Anne Rice's militant legal campaign against her own fans. I remember when the BNFs started gatekeeping, harassing the self-insert OCs in fanfic. Hell, I remember Ms. Scribe and the Inner Circle! I have seen things! And that crackdown against OCs was what led to the rise of fangirls in the slash fandom. Equal parts hiding from the BNFs and fetishizing mlm sexuality for their own amusement/pleasure.

The thing that really baffles me about it all is why St*r*I. Ignoring the obvious reasons (*cough*racism*cough*), why them. As I already pointed out, Tumblr loves their posts about self worth and not standing for abuse, but then turn around and advocate for one of the most abusive crack ships I've ever seen. Why not, say, Scott and Danny, who had actual moments that, if taken out of context, could be portrayed as moments of a building romance ("its Armani"), or Scott and Isaac ("Be careful"/"I don't want you to get hurt" and "Dude, I love Mexican"). Like, the subtext between Scott and Isaac was so strong that one could just call it text.

We had four canonically gay characters (Danny, Ethan, Mason and Corey) and yet the focus is still on two straight characters. Hell, Mason was literally the version of Stiles that fandom cooked up (incredibly smart, did the research, openly gay, had a crush on a hot werewolf that he was very open about) and yet he doesn't get even a fraction of the attention that Stiles does, despite fulfilling the criteria they claim they want in the form of more queer representation. It can't be because he's black, right? I mean, they've told me they're not racist, despite numerous examples of racism, so it's hard to know what to believe (insert sarcasm here).

But still, fandom put these two characters that couldn't stand each other, and who both had much stronger connections to Scott, together in their heads and then cried queerbaiting when they didn't get what they wanted. There comes a point where you have to question whether these people are that influenced by media and propaganda or they're being willfully ignorant.

Anyway, thanks for listening. Apparently I had more of that bottle up inside than I thought so thanks for giving me an outlet to express my frustration. And now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

[wistfulcynic]

To Keep It All The Year (3 /4)

Anyone up for a spot of pure fantasy in which people are essentially good and their positive actions are rewarded with deserved happiness? Yeah, me too. It’s been a WEEK, for me and @katie-dub​ and anyone else in the UK with a conscience and a shred of human decency, so let’s all have a bit of an escape.

SUMMARY: Killian Jones is a broken man, betrayed by everyone and everything he thought he could believe in. He’s all but given up on life until a fateful meeting with bartender Emma Swan and her son Henry gives him a reason to live again, and a chance to redeem his past.

All it takes is a little Christmas magic.

On AO3 | Tumblr: Part One | Part Two 

Thanks as ever to @thisonesatellite​ who keeps me fuelled with whisky and lebkuchen, a paring ordained by the gods, and also because MAGICAL WREATHS OMG WUTTT ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Tagging all the folks from the last tag list, PLEASE do let me know if you want to be added or removed. @kmomof4​​​​​​​​​​​ @shireness-says​​​​​​​​​ @snidgetsafan​​​​​​​​​​ @darkcolinodonorgasm​​​​​​​ @snowbellewells​​​​​​​​ @stahlop​​​​​​​​ @mariakov81​​​​​​​​ @courtorderedcake​​​​​​ @jonirobinson64​​​​​ @tiganasummertree​​​​​​ @ohmightydevviepuu​​​​​​​​ @shardminds​​​​​ @jennjenn615​​​​​ @superchocovian​​​​​ @teamhook​

-

PART THREE: THE FUTURE

Killian moves out of his apartment that very afternoon. He can’t bear to spend another moment there. He needs a fresh start in a new place, one that will encourage him to be better rather than indulging the worst of him. 

Everything he owns, every single thing, fits into a large satchel and a medium-sized suitcase. Packing it all takes less than an hour. Killian drops his key into the landlord’s mailbox and heads across town to a guesthouse he found with a quick internet search, not a great place but his finances are limited and it’s still better than that apartment. There’s an actual bed, for a start, and part of him is tempted to crawl into it and drink until his chest stops aching and he no longer sees the crushed look in Emma’s eyes each time he closes his own, but he has made promises to himself and he intends to keep them. 

So instead he falls back on the least damaging of his old crutches and heads out for a walk. The guesthouse is a bit rough around the edges but the neighbourhood whose western boundary it marks is a vast improvement over his old one. There’s an elegance and dignity in the slightly run-down buildings here, like they’ve aged gracefully and in comfort without any of the desperation and squalor that characterised his old place. They’ve kept their head up, even through hard times, and they haven’t given in. A lesson lurks in there somewhere, he thinks. 

He’s been wandering for about half an hour when his attention is caught by a door. Not a particularly remarkable door, but has a jolly little Christmas wreath hung upon it which brings a smile to Killian’s face. Something about those little wreaths always draws him in, he thinks. Something he can’t quite put his finger on...

The door is made of wide wooden planks painted a deep forest green and boasts an old-fashioned brass knocker in the shape of a roaring lion. It belongs to what appears to be a small bookshop, and as Killian pushes it open he feels a stirring of eagerness that he hasn’t felt in years. He can’t remember the last time he read a good book. Something layered and complex, he thinks, with a well-crafted world that he can dig into and lose himself for a while. 

The shop is surprisingly spacious, with row upon row of tall wooden bookshelves lined up straight as soldiers along its walls and a broad central aisle leading to the till and a small cafe at the back. Twin spiral staircases rise up on each side to a mezzanine where he can see more shelves and a cosy reading area with overstuffed sofas and armchairs and a few scattered beanbags of the perfect size for children. Killian walks slowly down the centre aisle, aware his mouth is hanging open and barely resisting the urge to spin around, gaping in awe. Were he asked to give a description of his ideal bookshop it would be precisely this, he thinks, from the aged patina on the shelves to the fluffy grey cat curled on a cushion in the window, to the truly dizzying array of books. It is magnificent. 

“Can I help you find anything?” Killian shakes himself from his reverie and turns to see a petite brunette in towering heels smiling a friendly smile. 

“Ah, no thank you, lass,” he replies, “I’m just br—you know what, actually, yes. You can.”

He explains what sort of book he’s after and the woman—Belle, according to her name tag—leads him around the shop in search of it. She makes excellent recommendations, a fair number of which he’s already read, but after an enjoyable hour or so Killian has a small armload of books he can’t wait to crack open and perhaps, he hopes, a friend. 

After he pays for them he and Belle stand at the till for another ten minutes or so, chatting amiably. Killian formally introduces himself and informs Belle that he’s just moved to the neighbourhood and is out exploring. He’s just about to ask if she knows a good place to eat when he spots the small sign taped to the cash register. 

“Are you hiring?” he says in surprise.

“I am. I could use an assistant three or four days a week,” says Belle. “You interested?” 

“I might be,” Killian replies. He’ll need a job to afford the new life he intends to build for himself, he thinks, and working in this lovely little shop with Belle would be a dream come true. 

“Any retail experience?” she asks.

“None. But I’m a fast learner and fairly widely read.” 

“I’ll say,” says Belle wryly. “Okay, let’s give it a try. I can start you on—” she names an hourly wage that has Killian’s eyes widening. 

“Is that the standard market rate for a bookshop assistant?” 

“Nope.” Belle’s voice is cheerful and also makes it clear she doesn’t intend to answer any questions on the subject.

“Er—okay. Well, that would be more than satisfactory.” Enough to give him the new beginning he needs, he thinks. More than. 

Belle nods. “When can you start?” 

“Tomorrow?” 

“Perfect.” 

—

Belle lives above the bookshop, in a two-bedroom flat that she claims can get a little lonely. She claims this a week into the new year when she learns that Killian is looking for a place to live, and insists on showing him the spare room that very minute. 

Her flat is tidy but comfortable and the room she shows him plainly furnished, with polished hardwood floors and plaster walls painted a warm ivory. A large chest of drawers takes up one corner and in another is a metal framed bed spread with a quilt that he’s sure is handmade. There’s a single wide window framed by soft yellow curtains that turn the afternoon light golden and a single framed poster on the wall, of Waterhouse’s Miranda. Killian stares at the painting for some time, thinking it should probably upset him. Instead he feels soothed, by the room’s gentle simplicity and by the shipwreck safely tucked away in the brushstrokes of an oil painting. He moves in the next day. 

He and Belle get on splendidly. Their habits mesh in a comfortable way, both being meticulously tidy early risers, equally content to spend their evenings in heated argument about books as in the silent companionship of reading or watching television. Killian almost wishes their easy friendship could develop into something more, though it does occur to him that he’s never had a woman as just a friend before and perhaps this is a thing that might do him some good. 

That and he still dreams of soft golden hair, and green eyes that see into his soul. 

He begins to eat regular healthy meals, sharing the cooking duties with Belle, and after a month or so of that he joins a gym. He still goes on his long, rambling walks but far less frequently than before, using them as an opportunity to explore new neighbourhoods rather than a desperate attempt to escape his demons and he never, never stops at the docks. 

He also starts seeing a therapist, on Belle’s gentle suggestion after one too many nights of being woken up by his nightmares. She can recommend one personally, she confesses, for the very same reason that she is able to pay him so well. The bookshop is financed by hush money—she spits the words—her lavish divorce settlement from a man who controlled and abused her for years and when she finally managed to leave him tracked her down and nearly killed her. She grips Killian’s hand tightly as she tells him this, tears rolling unheeded down her cheeks, yet there is a ring of triumph in her voice as she explains how he signed over more than half his assets to her in exchange for her promise not to prosecute, or sell tales of his abuse to the press. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it,” she says. “Maybe I should have exposed him instead, or pressed charges. But he could weather bad press or bribe his way out of jail time while it will take him years to build his business back up again. Decades, even. And meanwhile I have my shop. And my freedom.” 

Belle knows as well as Killian does how heavily tainted money can weigh on person’s conscience, and that the only way to bear its weight is by turning it to something good. She’s a survivor, just like him. Just like Emma. 

Slowly, so slowly, Killian feels the parts of himself he thought were broken beyond repair begin to mend, and every day he focuses on that healing. He nourishes his body with exercise and good food and he nourishes his mind with books and conversation. He nourishes his soul as well, with his therapy sessions and with the bookshop’s weekly children’s story time, which Belle insists he take charge of after catching him watching wistfully from behind a shelf as she sat surrounded by a semicircle of rapt faces, reading an adventure book. 

He was thinking of Henry. 

He thinks of Henry often, and of course of Emma. Every time he rambles through a new part of the city he wonders if they are living there, perhaps in one of the sprawling houses with soft green lawns in the residential areas, or maybe in an airy loft in one of the edgier, artier neighbourhoods. He hopes that wherever they are they’ve found a true home of their own, with security and comfort and reliable childcare for Henry. Emma no longer needs to work so she could study full time if she wished, or do something else entirely. She wouldn’t strictly speaking need to do anything, but if Killian knows her—and despite the short duration of their acquaintance he’s quite certain he does—she will want to keep studying, for her own satisfaction and to find a career that suits her. Emma Swan could never be content sitting around all day doing nothing. She would want to do some good in the world, regardless of her personal circumstances. The kindness she showed to a strange man in a bar when she had next to nothing of her own was proof enough of that. 

It hurts to think of them but it’s a good sort of pain, a gentle, bittersweet ache that warms his heart, nothing like the tearing agony he felt for so many years whenever he thought of Liam. Thoughts of Emma and Henry inspire him, keep him moving steadily along this new path he’s chosen to tread. Though he’s certain he’ll never see either of them again he wants to live his life in a way that honours his feelings for them. 

He doesn’t go back to the bar where he and Emma met, not often. It’s just a place to drink without the magic her presence lent it, and drinking is a thing he’s trying to do less of these days. But the following Christmas Eve he finds himself back in his old neighbourhood standing before the plain brown door. There’s a jolly little Christmas wreath hung upon it, and Killian knows by now that he’s powerless in the face of those wreaths. He lets it draw him in through the door and over to a stool at the bar where he orders the expensive rum Emma gave him last year and sips it slowly as the memories that infuse the very air of this place both warm and pain him. He’ll allow himself this, he thinks, just this one small lapse. He’s worked hard all year, he can have one evening of self pity. His Christmas gift to himself. 

“Hey, sailor.” 

The voice is impossible and yet he hears it, turns towards it in astonishment then scrambles to his feet. 

“Emma!” he gasps. He stares at her, drinks in the sight of her, of the face that’s haunted his dreams for a year lit up by a bright smile. “What—what are—I had no idea you’d be here.” 

“I almost wasn’t,” she replies. “I was at a Christmas party across town, actually. but then I just had the strangest urge to come here and so here I am.” 

“It’s wonderful to see you, love.” His astonishment ebbs and gives way to a fierce and fearsome joy. He can’t believe she’s here, right in front of him and real, and so lovely he aches to look at her. “How are you? How’s Henry?” 

“Henry’s great. I’m great. We’re great.” She laughs. 

“That’s... well, it’s great.” His smile is beginning to hurt his cheeks, but he could no more stop smiling it than he could make the Earth spin backwards. 

“It is,” she agrees. “Listen, um, can we sit down somewhere?” 

“Of course. Can I get you a drink?”

“Yeah.” Something shifts in her smile, sharpens it in a way that steals his breath. “I’ll have a rum.” 

He orders one for her and another for himself and they sit together in a small, round booth in the corner of the bar. It’s cosy and intimate and it envelops them, making Killian’s heart pound and his mouth go dry. 

Emma seems unfazed, giving him a cool once-over as he slides in beside her on the leather seat. There’s a new confidence in her demeanour now, the kind of quiet assurance that forms in people who answer to no one but themselves. It sits well on her, he thinks. Comfortably, like it was always waiting for her to slip it on.

“You look good,” she tells him. 

“Um.” He feels himself flush and gulps some rum to wet his throat. “Thank you. You look lovely, but then you always did.” 

She observes him in silence for a moment, sipping her own drink. “I looked for you, you know,” she says. 

“You did?” 

“I did. Do you know how many Killian Joneses there are in the phone book?” 

“Er—no.”

“Zero,” she declares. “Including you.” 

“Ah. Well I don’t really—” 

“But,” she interrupts, “as it turns out, I’m pretty good at finding people, even when they don’t want to be found. I found you, eventually. In that bookstore where you work.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I was going to come in but you, ah, weren’t alone. I saw you through the window, standing with a woman. Laughing.” She stares into her glass. “I’d never seen you laugh like that before. Or at all.” 

“A woman?” Killian frowns in confusion. “What woman?” 

“A really pretty one with long brown hair,” says Emma quietly. “Cute dress, very petite. You looked... close.” 

“Belle,” he says. “My boss and flatmate.” 

“Flatmate?” Emma repeats with an odd note in her voice. Her eyes flicker up to him then back to her glass. 

“Er—my roommate,” he amends. 

“I know what a flatmate is, Killian.” 

“Ah. Yes of course, I just, er—” 

“What are you doing tomorrow?” 

He’s taken aback by the non-sequitur, and the shy smile that accompanies it. The shy smile and the eyes shining with something that makes his already galloping heart pound harder still. “Well, it’s Christmas Day,” he replies weakly. 

“That’s also a thing I know.” 

“I was just planning to have a meal with Belle, maybe watch some Christmas movies,” he says. “Nothing special.”  

“Why don’t you and Belle come to my house instead? For dinner?” 

“Oh, well, I—” 

“Come on, you have to,” she cajoles. “Henry would never forgive me if he found out I’d seen you and not invited you. He talks about you all the time.” 

“He does?” 

“He does.” 

Killian takes another gulp of rum, emptying the glass. He feels dizzy at this turn of events, almost afraid that they will turn out to be nothing more than another fevered dream. Surreptitiously he pinches his thigh and when he feels the sharp prick of pain he risks a look at Emma. She’s still smiling, that same hopeful, expectant smile he’d been so powerless against one year ago. “Well, I’ll have to check with Belle but I’m sure she’ll agree,” he says. “I’ve—mentioned you and Henry once or twice myself, she’ll be over the moon to meet you both.” 

Emma’s smile turns radiant. “Give me your number and I’ll text you the address,” she says. He does, and a moment later his phone dings with a new message. Her address he recognises from his rambles as belonging to a part of town that’s nice but not ostentatious, with comfortable family homes and plenty of parks and very good schools. He thinks about Emma and Henry living there and feels a warm glow of sheer delight. It’s exactly what he hoped for, for them. 

“I have to get home,” says Emma. “I told Henry’s babysitter I’d be back by midnight. But—you will come over tomorrow, won’t you? About noon? You promise?” 

Killian smiles. “You have my word. I’ll see you then.” 

—

Belle agrees to have dinner at Emma’s with as much enthusiasm as he predicted, practically dancing with excitement at the prospect.

“The mythical Emma and Henry!” she sings. “I feel like I’m about to meet a unicorn, or Santa himself.” 

Killian’s stomach is dancing too, with anxiety and eagerness and hope. Foolish hope, he tells himself firmly, but it ricochets around his insides nonetheless and refuses to be quashed. He walked away from Emma a year ago so she could have the freedom to make her own choices and she chose to find him, to invite him back into her life. He’s not certain quite what that means but he thinks—he hopes— that at the very least he won't have to go another whole year without seeing her and Henry. That thought alone is enough to make his Christmas bright.

As he stands in the shower with the hot water flowing over him he thinks about how very different his life is than it was just a year ago. The fact that his shower is hot and the water plentiful is the very least of the changes. He no longer has nightmares, no longer feels haunted by his past or fears he might be swallowed up by bleak despair. The dark moods still come from time to time but he is prepared for them now, equipped to weather them without turning to self-destruction. He feels healthier than he has since his navy days, physically as well as mentally. His paunch is gone, replaced with firm muscle, and though he’ll never be as ripped as some of the younger men he works out alongside, he’s toned and strong and that’s enough for him. His complexion now has a ruddy glow, especially when he returns from one of his walks, and he’s begun to take more care with his appearance again, keeping his hair trimmed in a flattering style and investing in a nicer wardrobe. 

He gets out of the shower and towels himself dry, then dresses in some of his new garments: charcoal trousers and a black sweater over a shirt with a soft tonal pattern, pale purple and blue against dove grey. He wonders what Emma will think of his new clothes, what she will think of all the changes this past year has wrought in him. He wonders if she’s thought of him the way he’s thought of her. 

He wonders what he can bring to dinner this afternoon. There’s a bottle of good wine in the cupboard that he and Belle planned to have with their own Christmas meal and of course many things in the bookshop he’s sure Emma and Henry would love. That should be fine for gifts but still something troubles him, an itchy sort of tingle at the back of his mind, like he’s forgetting something vital. What was it that he brought for them last year? He frowns as he tries to remember. The ship for Henry, that was it, and flowers for Emma from that odd little shop, the one with the florist who reminded him of... of... 

Bloody hell. 

Killian reels, gripping his bedpost for balance as memories from the year before come flooding back, clear and perfect as though they happened only yesterday. It couldn’t be, he thinks, it’s impossible, and how could he not have noticed at the time? How could he not have seen?

Magic, little brother.  

“Killian!” Belle raps sharply on the half-open door of his bedroom, her tone of voice suggesting she’s been calling him for some time. “Are you ready to go? It’s nearly half past eleven.”

“Aye, love.” He breathes in deeply and stands upright. “Be right there.”

They go down to the shop where Killian selects several books for Henry, some of which are slightly above his age group—because a child should have a library that builds towards the future—and, remembering the shelves in her old apartment, a picture frame for Emma made of delicately carved rosewood. He wraps them carefully and rings them up on his employee account as Belle calls them a cab. It’s not far at all to Emma’s house but when Killian suggests they walk Belle informs him crisply that while he might enjoy a snowy stroll across twelve city blocks her shoes would not, and takes out her phone. 

The quiet Christmas streets make the ride a short one, but Killian is glad of even a few minutes of peace to sit and to think and spends most of the journey staring out the window at the snowy trees and lawns and attempting to sort through the chaos in his mind. 

“Why didn’t you put the wreath on the door this year?” he asks Belle. 

“What wreath?” She turns to him with a small frown. 

“Last year there was a Christmas wreath on the door of the bookshop,” he replies. “A small one, made of evergreen and holly with pinecones and cinnamon sticks and a big red bow. It’s what caught my attention as I was walking by, why I went inside.”

Belle shakes her head. “There wasn’t any wreath, Killian, though that’s a lovely idea. Maybe we can get one for next year.” 

“Aye. I know just the shop to get it from,” he mutters, and then the cab pulls up to Emma’s house. 

It’s a charming little house, two storeys of dark red brick with slate blue trim on the windows and on the wide porch where comfortable looking wicker furniture and outdoor toys are all jumbled together. There’s a snowman on the lawn, jaunty and quite pleased with himself in his red and green striped scarf and an actual top hat, surrounded by piled-up and solidly-packed mounds of snow and the gruesome remains of what was evidently a long and hard-fought snowball battle. 

The mat lying at the foot of the front door reads Welcome! Everything is fine in soothing green lettering and Killian and Belle exchange a grin as they ring the bell. From within they can hear the sound of voices and then the door swings open and Emma appears, looking festive in skinny jeans and a green sweater with the cartoon face of Rudolph on the front, his nose large and round and glittery red. There’s a plastic holly sprig behind her ear and a bright smile on her face. 

“Hey!” she says. “Come in! You must be Belle, I’m Emma. You can hang your coats just here.” 

They do so, shrugging the coats off and handing Emma the wine and gifts which she accepts with a laugh that holds a touch of surprise. She leads them down a short hallway and into a cosy living room with a plush sofa along the wall and a tall and brightly decorated tree in the window. A fire blazes beneath a wooden mantelpiece where Christmas stockings labeled Henry and Emma still hang, empty now, and bits of wrapping paper and ribbon still cling to the rug in front of it. Killian has just enough time to observe these things before a miniature whirlwind bursts through the door and barrels into his solar plexus. 

“Killian!” Henry cries, squeezing him in a tight hug. “Mom said you were coming but I couldn’t believe it. I missed you. Why didn’t you ever come back?”

Killian’s chest feels as tight as Henry’s arms as he struggles for breath and for the words to explain his conduct. “I’m sorry, Henry, I just—I—I had some things I needed to sort out with myself, before I could be good company to others.”

“But you’re here now, right?” Henry pulls back and looks up at him with brown eyes as wide and trusting as ever. “And you won’t go away again?” 

Killian hesitates. He doesn’t want to presume, but then again Emma did come to find him. Surely it wasn’t overstepping to say he would visit Henry from time to time? He senses her watching him and looks up, catching her eye with an imploring look. She nods to him and he swallows hard before returning it. 

“Aye, lad,” he says, stroking Henry’s hair with a hand that’s not quite steady. “I won’t go away again.”

“Good,” says Henry solemnly, and then his face lights up. “Guess what? I have my own room now!” he cries. “Do you want to see it?” 

“I do indeed.” Killian glances at Belle who waves him away. “Go,” she says. “I’ll stay here and chat with Emma.” 

Henry’s room has bunk beds with Thomas the Tank Engine sheets and an overflowing toy chest in one corner. There’s a small bookshelf as well, with the beginnings of a fine library already on it, and taking pride of place in the centre of the very top shelf is the ship Killian gave him last Christmas. 

“I play with it in the tub. We have a tub now,” says Henry when he notices Killian looking at the ship. “Mom made sure we did but she says I can’t play in it every day because I splash too much and take too long, but on Saturdays I can play as long as I want.” 

Killian takes a moment before replying. “What else do you like to play with?” he asks hoarsely. 

Henry shows off his toys and books and though Killian is anything but an expert in parenting he can see that they’ve been carefully chosen for both fun and enrichment, and that while they are plentiful there aren’t too many for one child to use. Emma hasn’t spoiled him, or herself, despite how easily she could have. 

When they head back downstairs they find Emma and Belle laughing together on the sofa, each with a cup of hot chocolate in hand and a plate of Christmas cookies on the coffee table in front of them. 

“Hey!” says Henry indignantly. “I want hot chocolate!” 

Emma gives him a stern look and he flushes. “Please,” he adds. 

“There’s some for you in the kitchen,” she says, setting her mug down on the table and getting up. “Would you like some too, Killian?” 

“Yes, thank you,” he replies. 

They drink their chocolate and munch their cookies and conversation flows easily and merrily among them. Killian is amazed at how well Emma and Belle have hit it off and Henry is ‘on his Christmas behaviour,’ Emma says with a laugh, sitting on the floor playing with his trains and listening, occasionally piping up with a question or comment. Belle and Killian tell them all about the bookshop and Emma promises to bring Henry there as soon as possible. 

“For the story time!” cries Henry, eyes wide at the prospect, and then Belle suggests he might like to open the presents they brought him. He squeals with delight at the new books, and Killian gets so caught up in telling him about them that he doesn’t notice Emma quietly unwrap the picture frame until he hears her soft “Oh!” 

He turns to see her staring at it with misty eyes and an expression that makes his heart clench. “I know how you love your pictures,” he says softly. “I remember.” 

“Henry, what do you say we find a place for those books on your shelves,” says Belle. “Then maybe you can show me your room and the ship Killian gave you last year?”

She ushers Henry from the room, leaving Killian and Emma alone, staring at each other. 

“Emma—” he begins, just as she says “Killian—” and they share a nervous laugh. 

“Me first, please,” she says, and he nods. 

“Of course, love.” 

She licks her lips and takes a steadying breath before she speaks. “When you walked away last year,” she begins, “outside the bank, I was so hurt. I know why you did it—I think I know—but it still hurt and for a while I was angry. I thought—I thought we had a connection, and then for you to just leave like that, I—” She shakes her head. “Well, I tried to forget about you and move on, build this new life for myself and Henry, and I did build it but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. All year I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, and I missed you. That may sound dumb since we only spent a day together, but that’s how I feel.” 

“It doesn’t sound dumb at all,” he says. “I missed you too.” 

She gives a small, choking laugh. “I thought you didn’t,” she says. “When I saw you and Belle in the bookstore, I thought, well, he’s forgotten all about you.” 

“I definitely did not,” he replies. “I couldn’t. I thought about you too, all year.” 

“Really?” 

“Oh, aye.” He attempts a smile. “Every day.”

Her eyes are liquid soft and their expression makes his blood hum. “I don’t want to go through that again next year,” she says. “I want to… to see you, and not—not just as a friend.” 

“Emma—” 

“And don’t say you’re too old! I know that’s what you’re going to say.” 

“It is true.” 

“It’s not. You can’t be more than what, thirty-four, thirty-five?” 

“Thirty-five.” 

“I’m twenty-three.” 

“That’s—” 

“But I don’t care about that, Killian. I like your silver hair and that you’ve had experience of the world. Sometimes I feel like I missed out on so much, getting pregnant so young and since then my whole life has been Henry and trying to get through college. And now I have all this money and I know there’s so much I can do with it, and places I can go, but I don’t really know where to start.”

“Love—” 

“Not that I want you to be a tour guide or like an adviser or something, I want—fuck, I’m making a mess of this.” 

Killian realises he’s holding his breath, forces himself to exhale and draw in fresh air. “Emma,” he says firmly, “there’s nothing I’d like more than to have a place in your life, and Henry’s, in whatever capacity you wish.” 

“Whatever capacity?” 

“Aye.” 

“So if I said I wanted you to be my—” she takes a deep breath—“my date for a New Year’s Eve party I’m invited to, you’d agree?” 

“It would be my honour.” 

“And then if I asked you out to dinner?” she continues. “My treat.” 

He laughs. “I know a restaurant I think you’d love.” 

“And afterwards? If I invited you back here for some coffee?” 

“You do make excellent coffee, I don’t think I could refuse.” 

“Then if I wanted to go out again, someplace else?” 

“You could choose the restaurant, and I would pay.” 

“Then maybe a movie sometime?” 

“At the old cinema near the bookshop.” 

“And what— what if, after a little while, I wanted to have coffee again in the morning? You’d—you’d stay and have that second cup with me?” 

“I would love nothing more.” 

She nods. “That’s the capacity I wish.” 

She’s so close now that he can count the flecks of gold in her eyes and he realises that her hand is on his thigh and his is on her hip, and then she closes the remaining distance between them and kisses him. He moans and pulls her closer, his other hand tangling in her hair as hers curls around his neck and he loses himself in the taste of chocolate and cinnamon on her tongue and the promise of her lips on his. The promise of a future, their future, together. 

There’s a clattering noise of footsteps and loud voices on the stairs and they break apart. Killian leans his forehead against Emma’s, revelling in the sight of her dazed and happy smile, and silently thanks Belle for her discretion. Emma stands and pulls him to his feet, and when Henry and Belle appear she beams at them both. 

“I think dinner’s nearly ready,” she says. “Henry, let’s go set the table.” 

Belle gives Killian a smirk that’s thoroughly ruined by the delight dancing in her eyes. “You look happy,” she says. “And a bit shell-shocked.” 

“Aye, to both those things.” 

“And you appear to be wearing lipstick,” she teases, handing him a tissue and grinning at his blush. He wipes his mouth and when he offers it back to her she takes his hand as well. 

“I’m so glad for you,” she says. “Merry Christmas, Killian. The first of many, I think.” 

Killian looks into the dining room where Emma and Henry are laughing as he sets the table and she lays the food out on it. “Aye,” he says gruffly. “I think it will be. I hope.” 

-