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peninkwrites · 3 years ago

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the dead don't dream– Ch 1 of 37

There’s something wrong with Tommy. Dream will help him figure out what.

(TW: exile arc, child abuse, graphic depictions of violence, descriptions of injuries, broken bones, gaslighting, manipulation. This is not a happy fic.)

Crossposted to ao3

Ch 2 / Ch 3 / Ch 4 / Ch 5 / Ch 6 / Ch 7 / Ch 8 / Ch 9 / Ch 10 / Ch 11 / Ch 12 / Ch 13 / Ch 14 / Ch 15 / Ch 16 / Ch 17 / Ch 18 / Ch 19 / Ch 20 / Ch 21 / Ch 22 / Ch 23 / Ch 24 / Ch 25 / Ch 26 / Ch 27 / Ch 28 / Ch 29 / Ch 30 / Ch 31 / Ch 32 / Ch 33 / Ch 34 / Ch 35 / Ch 36 / Ch 37

The first time Tommy passes out, his nightmare is familiar. Wilbur, grinning with feverish mania, pacing and rambling cruel words without hesitation or nuance.

Old words ringing in his ears: let’s be the bad guys.

Then it changed. The nightmares had never changed before. Wilbur stopped pacing this dark void, vengeful monologue exchanged for a split second of confusion.

“Tommy..?–”

And then he wakes up, to a white mask and a painted smile leering over him. Far more terrifying than a nightmare.

“Fuck…” Tommy coughs hoarsely. “Ow, my… everything.” His whole body aches, he looks down at his hands to see shining burns marring his skin, healed over enough that it won’t get infected, but nothing more. His neck throbs painfully as he moves his head.

“Tommy? Can you hear me?” Dream sounds different. Almost giddy. “You’re back with me?”

“Never fuckin’ left, what’d’y’mean?” Tommy grumbles, struggling get off the ground, head spinning.

“Right, right,” Dream reaches down and grabs onto his wrist and Tommy thinks for a moment he’s giving him a hand up. He’s far more puzzled when instead Dream holds on tightly to his wrist, hand digging in harsh enough Tommy can feel his own pulse. Before he can question this, Dream lets go, offering him no help up.

“What happened?” Tommy manages to at least stay sitting up, closing his eyes as waves of nausea collide with dizziness.

“You, uh. You stood too close to the blast. Don’t do that next time,” Dream speaks slowly, carefully. “You knocked yourself out.”

“Great…” Tommy sighs, hand going to his throbbing head, wincing as his neck still twinges painfully. “Of course I did… fuckin’ idiot…”

“Yeah,” Dream agrees. Tommy can’t see Dream’s eyes, but from that slight tilt of his head, it seems like Dream is assessing him. “How do you feel?” Dream’s voice is calm, but there’s something strange there, he’s holding back agitation. Tommy really hopes it isn’t anger, he already feels like he’s got a full body bruise, like he hurt his neck in the fall and the burns still itch sharply as magically induced scabbing is irritated by its host moving. He needs to think of the answer that means the least amount of pain.

“I’m okay, Dream. Sorry I stood too close, that was stupid of me.”

“No,” from the way Dream shifts irritatedly Tommy already knows he’s failed some test. “I mean how do you feel? When you were… knocked out?”

Tommy, through a spark of anxiety, scrambles for the answer Dream seems to be looking for. “I had… I think I had a nightmare,” Tommy's eyebrows crinkle together as he grasps at hazy memories.

“A nightmare?” Dream grows worse at hiding his excitement. “Did you see Schlatt? What’d he say to you?”

“No– it was… it was an old nightmare. One I’ve had before,” Tommy is too weary to question any of this. The safe thing is to answer Dream as best he can to avoid any more harm.

“An old one?” Dream’s excitement wanes into something more suspicious. “You mean you’ve experienced something like this before?”

“Wot, you mean nightmares? Yeah I’ve had nightmares before,” Tommy scoffs.

“Don’t patronize me, Tommy,” Dream says coldly. “The only reason you’re alive is because I– because I gave you a health potion after the explosion.”

“Sorry,” Tommy mutters.

“What was your nightmare about?” Dream turns to face the shoreline, arms folded over his chest, full enchanted netherite shining in the sun so Tommy has to squint at him.

“…why do you care?”

Dream turns back to face him, and when he steps closer, Tommy flinches. Dream does not hit him, he crouches down in front of him so they’re eye to eye. Tommy feels dread rise from the pit of his stomach.

“Because we’re friends.”

“You’re…” Tommy’s mouth feels dry. He’s already in pain, so fuck it, this is worth whatever it earns. “You’re not my friend, Dream.”

Dream says nothing for a moment, expression unreadable behind that stupid mask, and Tommy prepares for the worst. Dream laughs, and Tommy is not put at ease.

“Of course we’re friends, Tommy. I’m the only one who visits you, I wouldn’t do that if we weren’t friends.”

“Yeah… you do visit me…” Tommy has to grudgingly agree, bitter melancholy growing louder at the thought of home.

Can you call it home?

“So what was your nightmare, Tommy?” Dream asks and Tommy knows it’s not a request.

“I saw… I saw Wilbur.”

Dream turns back to face him at this and Tommy immediately knows he did something right. He doesn’t understand why at all but if Dream thinks this is good then it’s good enough for him.

“Did he talk to you?”

“Talk to me..?” Tommy grew puzzled again. “Not really, I don’t think? It wasn’t a very long dream, and they sort of grow fuzzy after you wake up, right? It was… I think something from Pogtopia?” Tommy scrunches up his face, trying to remember. His head still aches along with the rest of him. “I’ve had that kind of nightmare a lot. Wilbur…” Tommy doesn’t want to tell him. Let’s be the bad guys. That’s not for Dream. It’s his and it’s Wilbur’s and it’s theirs alone, cruel and bloody words or not. “He was repeating stuff he’d said to me at Pogtopia.”

“Was it like a memory was playing or was it like he was repeating himself, Tommy?” Dream pushes on, stepping closer, his patience waning. A bad sign.

“I– I don’t really know,” Tommy stammered. Dream bearing down on him definitely wasn’t making it easier to remember. “He– He sounded the same, sort of off his rocker, inne? But– It wasn’t– It wasn’t in Pogtopia, it was just in a void, but he looked like he did that day, on the 16th.”

Dream nods slowly, assuaged for now. “Hm. Sorry about the nightmares, Tommy. They’re no fun,” he ruffles Tommy’s hair and Tommy can’t decide if he wants to lean into something gentle for a change or shudder away. The affection is withdrawn before he can decide. Still, it seems like he’s done something right. Tommy wants to ask why Dream is so interested in his dreams, but he doesn’t want to push it.

“It’s alright, Dream. You don’t got to say sorry like you caused them or something, dreams are just dreams… Dream,” Tommy laughs hoarsely, feeling this irritating sense of relief– relief, not pride or eagerness like somehow Dream’s praise is good, it’s just necessary– as Dream exhales a laugh as well.

“Either way, that got the armor out of the way for us, what do you want to do today?” Dream changes on a dime, his cautious analytical demands exchanged for friendship. Tommy knows better than to relax.

Tommy doesn’t pass out again for a while. Hungry, dehydrated, exhausted, but he stays conscious. Wilbur stays confined to his usual nightmares, echoing a past long since dead. He doesn’t long for those days, only wishes he were living a life different to this dark place he finds himself trapped in.

Dream helps. At least he’s not alone.

“I’m so fucking bored I’ve started fishing– fishing, Dream! The boring-est activity there is.” Tommy continues felling the tree in front of him, chattering over his shoulder, Dream follows, standing around while Tommy does his work, struggling with an iron axe. At least Dream offers some protection. Tommy has no armor, so Dream’s job will be to kill any creepers that stumble into them. He collects the fallen logs and keeps walking. “You’ve got to come out here more before I really lose my mind,” Tommy looks back to Dream, but he can’t see him. “Dream–?”

Before Tommy can shout his name any louder, the ground gives out beneath him. Or that’s what it feels like as he steps over open air and falls into a pit. In a split second he sees rocks coming up to meet him, then pain, blinding and sharp as he struggles to catch his breath. He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck.

That becomes harder to take solace in as he looks down at his left leg and sees bone.

“F-Fuck...” Tommy chokes back a sob, trembling hands reaching towards the wound. It doesn’t feel real. His arms are scraped from dragging against the side of the pit on the way down, blood dripping down them. No head wounds. That’s something. But even with two good legs climbing out of here wouldn’t be easy. He squints up at the sunlight above him, too far above. “D-Dream?” He shouts hoarsely.

Tommy is trembling so hard it’s a struggle to keep ahold of his axe. He looks further down the pit, which slants away into a cave, extending deeper into darkness. Tommy feels sick with dread. He looks back up.

“Dream!” He tries shouting louder, hating how unsteady he sounds, he sounds like he’s crying, he is crying, but he doesn’t want Dream to know that. There’s no reply.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Tommy stutters out through desperate gasps for air, sobs turning to panic. He watches as blood begins to drip down the rocks, deeper and deeper. If the mobs don’t get him, bleeding out will. “Dream!” He screams again, desperate and frantic. He swore the man had been right behind him, when he’d looked back, though…

He can’t have lost him. Dream is his only hope right now.

“D-Dream, please! Please, I’m trapped down here! Someone help me! Please!” He screams himself hoarse, tears marring his face just as blood smears his arms, bits of gravel and rock digging in from impact and he cannot look at his leg, he cannot see bone and blood–

“Anyone!” Tommy screams like he’s in agony, which he is. Which he will be more whenever this wave of adrenaline dies. “Okay, Tommy. Okay, you’re g-gonna be okay,” Tommy takes a deep breath and pretends he isn’t still shaking. “Dream isn’t coming, so y-you gotta do this bit on your own.” He looks at his leg and gags. “F-Fuck–”

Tommy takes a few more precious seconds to try and catch his breath. He hears the gentle tick tick tick of his blood dripping deeper into the cave. It echoes.

“Y-You can do this, you’ve bandaged wounds before, you can do this,” Tommy steadies his hands enough to tear a strip of fabric from his shirt. “F-Fuck why’d– Why’d it have to be this fucking bad?” He grimaces. Step one, straighten out the leg. Tommy moves so carefully but the moment he touches the wounded leg, shifts it even a fraction of an inch, a blinding bolt of pain shoots through him. Tommy wishes he weren’t crying, but if there’s ever a time to break down, now would be it. He lays back against the rocks, almost wishing he would black out.

He’s still bleeding.

Tommy stares up at the blue sky, just out of reach, and for a split second he thinks he sees a flash of white over the edge.

“Dream?” He shouts more halfheartedly above. No reply. Not the first time he’d seen shit out here that wasn’t real.

He needs to wrap his leg. If he wants any chance of surviving this he needs to at least stop the bleeding.

Or don’t. What’s the point? We should let go now. No more fighting or struggling or starving or taking hits. Just nothing.

Tommy grits his teeth, some bitter defiance still clawing its way to the surface. Tommy gasps, unable to scream as he forces himself to wrap the wound and try and straighten the bone. This won’t work. What he really needs is a tourniquet.

Tommy feels like he might be sick, but he fishes a stick out of his inventory and ties the cloth just above the wound. Then he begins to tighten it. Even when it hurts he keeps winding tighter, until the bleeding stops and his leg goes numb. Maybe now he’ll survive long enough to regret that decision. It’s not a long term solution, but he won’t bleed out. Just as Tommy manages to cling to some petty modicum of relief, he hears a distant groan from the darkness.

No no no no not this not now–

Tommy doesn’t speak. He doesn’t dare to breathe, instead he fights to stand on his one good leg.

He doesn’t have a sword. Or armor. He has a shield and he has his worn iron axe. It won’t be enough. He can’t even keep upright let alone fight off a mob.

He sees it, rotted flesh limping from the darkness, clawing hands outstretched. Tommy wants to die fighting. He lets out a hoarse shout and brings the axe down on its head, the creature persists, hitting his shield, reaching around it to try and grab at him. Tommy stumbles back, but he doesn’t fall, it takes two more good hits for the corpse to stop moving.

Tommy has never been more exhausted, but the thing is dead. He shoves the rotting flesh away with the end of his axe, the scent already mixing with the smell of his own blood.

He just needs to hold on.

Hold on until what?

Until Dream comes to rescue him?

Tommy just doesn’t want to die out of his own control. He’s stared over that edge plenty of times, but this is different. It is one thing to walk into death, another to lay down and die.

He sits there, in and out of consciousness for how long he doesn’t know. The pain has not lessened. He’s damp with sweat and so thirsty. He’d finished his water already. Nothing to do about it now.

He stopped shouting for Dream hours ago, but sometimes some foolish, desperate part of him thinks he sees a glimpse of a white mask over the edge, but when he shouts, there’s nothing.

Tommy must have fallen asleep, but he wakes to the dull thud of an arrow piercing his shield.

He jolts to his feet, forgetting himself for a moment and crying out as weight was put on his dead leg, he barely keeps on his good leg, clinging to the wall before he collapses. It’s gotten darker. He has to snap out of it quick. He does not have time to wallow in pain. Another arrow landed in the stone a few inches away from his head. He braces his shield just as the next arrow lands.

Tommy can’t hide. He needs to face it. The skeleton won’t be coming any closer. Tommy limps forward, one hand clinging to the wall. The leg didn’t hurt as much, but that’s because he couldn’t feel anything in it at all. Another arrow lands. Tommy takes the moment it’s reloading to swing his axe at it, bones clatter but do not break. He braces behind the shield, the impact of the next arrow almost toppling him. Another hit from the axe. Two more, exhausting and frantic, and the bones collapse. Tommy is ready to fall back against the rocks, to pass out, and then that familiar sound returns– groaning, low and eerie. Tommy cannot stop. He cannot sit back or stumble away, if he moves any way but to swing his axe forward he will not get back up.

Tommy swings first the moment the zombie is in reach. Then he staggers. And it’s on top of him, sending him to the ground with only his shield to keep its clawing hands and rotted teeth at bay. He gags at the scent of rotting meat, struggling to lift his axe around the shield. It keeps going, filthy nails claw into scrapes already on his arm. The weight bearing down on him, already weak and injured, he can barely breathe. One more hit knocks it to the side. Easier to reach, but he no longer has a shield between them. Tommy pins it with the side of his shield, struggling to sit up and hold it down. He cannot reach it with his axe, it’s still brushing against him with rotted hands.

“Stop stop stop stop–” He bashes it into the ground with the edge of his shield until its head rolls back into the dark of the cave. Tommy shudders, fighting not to be sick. Surely he’s too dehydrated for tears, but they well up anyway. He pushes himself back into the light, dimmer now as the sun has set, but moonlight is better than nothing. Better than the dark and clawing hands and arrows and teeth–

Tommy lets out a strangled scream as another body falls beside him. The zombie does not die on impact, but its legs shatter more easily than Tommy’s. It goes down in one hit, the fear worse than the pain. Tommy has collected a small pile of bodies. In such a small space, the smell is overwhelming. If more come he almost hopes the other bodies will slow their approach. His right arm is bleeding more heavily from where the zombie had dug its nails in. His leg is still dead weight.

It’s been too long. You’re going to lose the leg. If you survive at all. How are you going to survive with one leg? Expect Dream to take care of you?

“F-Fuck…” Tommy brushes away tears, rocking slightly against the back wall. He’s just so tired.

Tommy struggles to stay conscious. It hurts, everything hurts, but if he passes out now, he doesn’t think he’ll wake up.

He should’ve payed better attention, he should’ve heard the rough clatter of bones before an arrow landed in his shoulder. Tommy doesn’t even scream as the arrow pins his arm to the wall. He rips it out, fighting to breathe. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stand, he puts his bleeding left arm back through the shield and uses it as a crutch. This time the arrow hits the shield. Then he hears groaning. From more than one echoing, undead mouth.

Tommy dares to look over his shield and sees three shadows clawing out of the dark.

You’re gonna go down fighting. It hurts but you’re not gonna die easy, not to someone else. You were supposed to choose when you died, so at least die fighting.

Tommy braces the shield as the zombies reach him, three of them shove him back against the rocks, but he’s still standing enough to swing his axe. He targets the one to his right, if he gets it down, that’s one less threat. He manages to kill the one, but that’s the last bit of fight he has left in him, as the zombie to his left gets around his shield and before Tommy can even try to fight its teeth are sunk into his bloody arm. The third zombie tugs at his shield, bending the already wounded arm until he fears that bone will break too. Tommy swings his axe one more time. It barely grazes the one currently tearing into him. Tommy abandons his axe, his good arm clawing at the stone above him, looking up at the moonlight through blurry eyes. He doesn’t know if he wants something to save him anymore.

It doesn’t hurt. That should scare him more but he only has the consciousness left for relief. His vision feels spotted and he doesn’t feel himself collapse against the rocks, he just keeps staring up at distant stars. There’s something tugging on his arm but that’s such quiet background noise. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t fight, Tommy doesn’t even see the last arrow hit its mark before he blacks out…

“I’ll make them pay. I will not be fucking abandoned out here. I died a bad guy? I deserved this? We’ll fucking see about that, I will destroy–” Wilbur stops his pacing. He turns around, manic look fading to further bafflement. “Tommy?! How did you– How are you here?!”

Tommy cannot bring himself to speak. Everything hurts. He feels like he’s falling.

“Hold on, Tommy! You– You shouldn’t be here–” Wilbur reaches out to him, a bloody bandage around his arm. Tommy reaches out to him, but no matter how close he gets it’s like Wilbur stays just out of reach.

It hurts. Whatever this nightmare is, it feels like he’s being torn apart. Or maybe that’s some echo from the waking world, where he’s surely dying painfully. Wilbur no longer looks vengeful, he looks worried. Even in that bloody coat, that face almost looks like his brother’s again.

“We’ll figure this out, it is– it is good to see you, man,” Wilbur’s concern is exchanged for relief, frantic and unsettling, but maybe better than rage.

“Wil, I don’t underst–”

“Wake up.”

Tommy jolts awake, gasping for breath, whole and safe in Logstedshire. Dream sits beside his bed, a book loose at his side.

Just as before, Tommy’s whole body aches, he feels echoes of brutal scrapes and bruises. His left leg feels heavy and numb, his left arm itches painfully, Tommy struggles to sit up. He can’t move, he manages to look down, with an eerie confusion. There are no wounds. Only half healed scabs and an unbroken bone remains. He lays back down, head throbbing. Which would make sense, because just before he blacked out he hit his head…

None of this made sense.

“What… What happened?” His voice is hoarse and his mouth dry.

“You passed out for a while, what do you remember?” Dream asks. He’s curious, but unconcerned.

“I was… I fell. A-And I shouted for you and I–”

“No,” Dream sounds sharp. Tommy falls silent immediately. “Not before. When you passed out.”

“D-Did I..?” Tommy is struggling to focus, it blurs. What happened in that pit, it can’t have been real, he shouldn’t have survived that– “W-What the fuck, I shouldn’t– How did I– I should– How am I here?”

Dream says nothing for a moment but Tommy can tell he’s irritated. He waits with bated breath, for Dream to scold him or hurt him or give answers.

“I heard you screaming. Finally found you. You were being overrun with mobs. I got you out,” Dream says flatly.

It was real. It was real and Dream got you out. You’re not dead.

“F-Fuck–”

“Hey,” Dream sounds more startled. “Stop crying.”

“Sorry, sorry– just, thank you. Fuck, man– thank you. It was so dark, it fucking hurt– T-Thought I was a goner–” Before any logic can take over, Tommy is clinging to Dream, burying his face in his shoulder, hugging on tight. He can’t stop shaking.

Dream tenses, but he doesn’t immediately shove him away, instead he pats his back, stilted and awkward and unfamiliar, but it’s something Tommy can hold on to. Eventually, Dream grabs onto his arms and pries him off. “Yeah, you’re welcome, Tommy.” He stands. “So, what do you remember? Any more nightmares?”

Tommy looks up at him, taller and stronger and his savior. Tommy wants to ask why. Fear and reverence force him to stay silent.

“I… L-Let me think, I-I’ll try, I’ll–” Tommy scrambles for anything.

Nothing but dark and hurt and it feels like hours in agony until finally a familiar face–

“I saw Wilbur again. Another nightmare, but– this one was different, it hurt,” Tommy winced.

“The last time– after the explosion,” Dream paces with that book he was carrying open. “Did that hurt?”

“I… I dunno, that time it was not as long? I think. Time doesn’t act right in dreams. Didn’t have enough time to think on if it hurt, this one… felt longer. Felt like hours and hours,” Tommy really wants some water, but he’s scared if he asks Dream for some he’ll say he’s not allowed. Better to answer his questions and get some himself.

“Hm. What kind of hurt?” Dream stops. He’s been writing in that book.

“What’d you… What’d you mean?” Tommy doesn’t follow.

Dream seems irritated for a moment. “There are a lot of kinds of pain, Tommy. Was it like being hit, crushed, drowned, bitten, what?”

“O-Oh,” Tommy doesn’t like Dream’s tone. “I-It’s hard to describe, I– I think, like, like being torn apart?”

“Hm,” Dream takes note of that.

Tommy is relieved to be here and safe and not in that hellhole anymore, but curiosity is persistent. “Why’re you…” He swallows thickly, rethinking his choice of words. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?” Dream’s annoyance feels less sharp now that Tommy has given an adequate answer.

Tommy feels brave enough to ask. “Why’re you writing this down?”

Dream says nothing for a moment and Tommy’s shoulders hunch forward, making himself smaller, waiting for consequence.

Dream laughs lightly and it doesn’t make Tommy feel any more at ease. “Nothing you need to worry about, Tommy. You want my help figuring out what’s happening to you, right?”

Tommy feels anxiety swirl in his gut. “What’d you mean what’s happening to me? Is… something happening?” He’s imploring. Like Dream knows him better than he knows himself. After he’d started seeing shit out in the woods, visions of Tubbo, and just before, Dream’s mask above him when he was trapped. He must be losing it.

“It’s gonna be okay, Tommy,” Dream puts a hand on his shoulder, his hold firm but not painful. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”

Tommy manages a nod, but his dread does not relent.

“Don’t go wandering off so far without me next time. It’s dangerous out there.”

On the list of things wrong with him, waking up underwater is one of the more terrifying. He wakes up already drowning, clawing to the surface in a panic, his lungs burning. He barely makes it to shore before he collapses.

He doesn’t tell Dream.

He doesn’t want Dream to think he’s really off his rocker, he might not trust him to do anything alone if he thinks he’s actually insane.

The drowning was terrifying enough. Then there were days where Tommy woke up, struggling to the surface, but he couldn’t make it. No matter what he did, kicking towards air, he couldn’t get to the surface. It almost felt like there were hands pressing down on his shoulders, keeping him under. Tommy tries to scream, choking on salt, his lungs are burning, begging for air, tearing him apart from the inside, he can taste blood. His vision grows dark around the edges, then…

Tommy vomits up water on the beach, coughing and sputtering and eyes streaming tears through the sea water.

A hand slams into his back and he ejects more water from his lungs.

“Tommy!” Dream’s voice reaches him through the fog in his head. “What the hell were you doing out there?!”

Tommy just shakes his head, fighting for breath.

“Answer me– That’s the third time I’ve dragged you out of the fucking ocean!” Dream grabbed him by the collar of his wet and tattered shirt, shaking him roughly.

Tommy sputters, unable to speak or get any air, one more frantic cough and he manages. “I– I don’t know, I don’t know!” Tommy chokes out, his throat burning from the salt.

Dream holds him there for another moment, Tommy holds onto his hand, like he can somehow stop Dream from taking it a step further and wrapping it around his throat. A moment of silence except for the slow lull of the waves and Tommy whimpering. Dream drops him, shoving him back into the sand.

Tommy continues coughing, his lungs still feel sore and waterlogged, out of the corner of his eye sees Dream pick up a book from the ground and stashed it back in his inventory.

“You’re playing a dangerous game there, Tommy,” Dream sounds cold, less anger but no less terrifying.

“I- I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Dream, I dunno what’s happening to me, I– I don’t understand!” Tommy sputters out hoarsely as Dream paces the beach.

Dream doesn’t reply. He stops, hand reaching to his belt and Tommy covers his face, expecting him to draw a weapon and punish him for his stupidity. Dream retrieves his book.

“What’d you dream about?”

“W-What?”

Dream sounds cold and harsh and isn’t facing him, quill poised in one hand. “You’ve been having nightmares, Tommy. What about this time?”

It’s not a request.

Tommy desperately looks for an answer, he knows if he fucks this up Dream will have a lot worse for him than a book. “I-It was nothing, this time it was just dark, no Wil, no nothing. And before, I w-was in the water, and…” Tommy hesitates. The cost of not giving anything to Dream outweighs his fear of Dream thinking he’s lost it. “I swore someone was holding me under.”

“What?” There’s something dangerous there.

Tommy grabs onto fistfuls of wet sand, anything to ground himself outside his waiting horror. “I-I dunno, I’ve been ‘allucinating shit, so, might’ve been… it felt like someone was holding me under.”

“Don’t be stupid, Tommy. When I dragged you out there was nothing there.” Dream’s voice is cool, but he snaps the journal shut with too much sharpness. Tommy cowers when he turns back to him, but Dream just grabs him by the arm and drags him to his feet.

“I…” Tommy knows the conversation is over, or maybe is supposed to be, but he has to ask. “I dunno w-what’s happening to me, Dream. Every time shit gets bad I-I black out and I have these dreams and I’m seeing shit. I d-don’t understand–”

Dream turns to face him and puts a hand on either shoulder. Tommy bites back a whimper and tries not to flinch. “Hey, you don’t need to understand it. Okay? I’ve saved you. Every time I’ve saved you. You’re fine, Tommy. You have me.” Tommy manages a nod. Dream speaks more softly now. “It’s okay, Tommy. Don’t you worry. I’m gonna figure it out.”

It almost scares Tommy more that he feels relief.

#dsmp fanfic #villian Dream #abuse tw #violence tw #tddd #my writing #whoohoo here we go #this is a horror story i've been wanting to write for a While #if u give feed back i love u #/roleplay #dsmp #c!dream #c!tommy #tommyinnit

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hermits-that-craft · 3 years ago

Text

In My Dreams (Will You Remember Me?)

Flower Husbands Fic - Chapter Eight - Stay a While, Stay a While

Ao3 in the comments

“Aeor give me guidance.” Scott prays, kneeling in the back parlor. “Because if you give me strength, Rivendell will lose her allies to my hand.”

Scott leans back on his heels, fighting not to push his head into his hands. “I know you chose me, as your champion and the king of Rivendell, but we have been allied with idiots.” Scott grumbles. “And they want to attack Jimmy for being your champion, so I’m pleading with you for guidance.”

Scott sits in silence as dawn breaks over the mountains, listening to the serenity that the break of dawn brings.

Or what is supposed to be the serenity of the break of dawn, because one of his guards is fighting with someone. Not a physical fight, from the sounds of it, but a verbal one. Scott stands from his position on the floor, leaving an apple under the golden deer that he parents claimed represented Aoer as an offering. Scott adjusts his cape, putting his crown on his head, ready to aid his guards in getting rid of whatever disgruntled merchant decided to go straight to his house instead of his council to air their grievances.

“You cannot demand council with our ruler, even Rivendell’s closest allies cannot do that.” She snaps, and Scott shivers. Eloise is always harsh, preferring to terrify potential threats away than calm them. Though, its not often that she has to bring up their allies to send merchants down the hill, towards town.

Scott opens the door, ready to call Eloise off, when he sees him.

Jimmy stands in the doorway, nervously holding his hands in the air. He wears the stupid codfather head, but he also glows in the light of the early morning golden hour. The snow glitters around, and the fish hybrid shivers in the wind, but Scott can’t help but to blink. It’s too early to form thoughts about this.

Aoer he’s got it bad for this man.

“Stand down, Eloise.” Scott says, finally find his voice, though its stuck in his throat and he’s not going to be able to speak to Jimmy in private if he’s asked to. “He’s a guest here.”

“Of course, your highness.” Eloise says, lifting her hand from her sword. “Shall I escort him to your office?”

“There’s no need, we’ll be in the front parlor.” Scott smiles, and Eloise glares at him for a split second before she steps aside.

“Enter, Codfather.” She says, her voice saccharine.

“Uh, thank you?” Jimmy says, walking into Scott’s home. Eloise rolls her eyes, shutting the doors behind him.

“I’m sorry about her.” Scott says. “She’s at the end of her shift. I assume your night guards are like her?”

“Um, sure.” Jimmy says. “They’re certainly something.”

“If they’re rude to you, you ought to fire them.” Scott says, but Jimmy doesn’t seem to be listening to him.

“It’s beautiful in here.” Jimmy’s voice is barely audible, a breath on the wind, but Scott’s filled with pride anyway.

Jimmy looks over the intricate carvings on the archways, the gilded railings that lead to the higher levels. The codfather runs his hands reverently over the embroidered tablecloths, as though nothing in his home is worth even the silver stitchwork. It fills Scott with a subtle pride, though his house doesn’t look lived in - what with the maids and cleaners ensuring that nothing is ever out of place, that dust never settles on the rafters, let alone the tables - Jimmy now knows that Scott could afford to take care of him, to give him a life that's more than comfortable.

“What’s this?” Jimmy asks, and Scott walks towards his potential partner. “It’s beautiful.”

The golden statue of Aeor rests on the mantle, glittering in the light. Jimmy holds onto his clothes, as though he doesn’t want to touch it. Scott fights back a soft smile at the gesture, its kind of the man to do, even if unnecessary. Aoer would not care if one of his statues was touched, even if it were touched by someone who knows not of the god.

“It’s a statue my parents gave me” Scott says. “It’s supposed to keep me and my loved ones safe while I’m at home.”

“This is your house?” Jimmy gawks. “These two rooms are as large as my entire house.”

Scott winces, turning to avoid offending Jimmy. Why would the founder of an empire live in a hut? Sausage and Fwip built their castles outside of the town that they were given to rule over, why didn’t Jimmy build himself a castle, something fit for someone his stature.

Jimmy deserves better.

“It is my house.” Scott admits. “I built it myself, when my parents told me that I was their heir.”

“Did they?” Jimmy asks, something sad infecting his tone. “That must be nice, your design skills are impeccable.”

Scott flushes a deep crimson, blinking a few times as Jimmy giggles. That damned giggle, that mad Scott stumble over his feet as they danced during the ball, the one that makes the words solidify in his throat, that he can’t get a single syllable out. He can’t even think, just focusing on that giggle.

“Do people not compliment your builds often?” Jimmy asks, cocking his head to the side, and Scott catches a glimpse of Jimmy’s eyes.

Ocean blue, and full of mischief.

“Not to my face.” Scott lies, not wanting to vocalise the words that fight to escape his throat. “Can I ask why you’ve come over? I’m fine with this being a social visit, of course, but we’ve never exactly had those.”

“I wanted to apologise for the ball.” Jimmy says, so quietly that Scott’s heart shatters.

“You have nothing to apologise for.” Scott says, softly, ever so softly. He needs to reassure Jimmy. No one should sound that upset with themselves over a party that they didn’t even ruin. “You made my night, it was nice to dance with you.”

“I promise that I would see you soon, after that dance.” Jimmy says. “And I didn’t. I’m sorry, King of Rivendell, please accept this gift as an apology, even if you do not accept the apology.”

And Jimmy offers him a flowering blue orchid, growing in a small, hand painted pot. It’s a strong plant, the soil is wet and the flowers bright. The pot has green paint around the borders, and a silver ribbon is wrapped around the pot, tied in a neat bow.

“It’s beautiful.” Scott says, carefully taking it from Jimmy. “How do I care for it?”

“Strong light, high humidity, periods of dry soil altered with periods of heavy watering and airflow around the roots.” Jimmy says, and Scott can hear the smile in his voice. “I’m sure you’ll be able to care for it well.”

“What if I kill it?”

“Then I’ll bring you a new one.” Jimmy offers, watching as Scott carefully puts it on one of his tables. Scott watches the cod hybrid rub his arms, as though he was cold, but its rather warm in Scott’s home - kept a perfect temperature for everyone, so why would Jimmy be cold?

“You alright?” Scott asks, looking at Jimmy. “You’re rubbing your arms.”

“It’s a bit cold in here.” Jimmy sounds embarrassed, and Scott watches as he nervously shifts his balance. “It’s alright though, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re from the swamp.” Scott realises aloud. “Take my cloak, as recognition of my forgiveness.”

Scott takes his cloak off, handing it to Jimmy. Jimmy holds it as though its made of the most precious material, running his fingers over the stitching in a way that screams reverence. As though this cloak means something else, something more to Jimmy.

Scott didn’t just intrude on some Cod Empire custom, did he?

“I can’t accept this.” Jimmy says, pushing the cloak back into Scott’s hands. “It’s too good for you to hand away. I’ll be alright, keep your cloak.”

Scott frowns for a moment, the cloak in his hands. Jimmy is a guest, not even an elf who could adapt to the cold quickly, and he’s a cod hybrid. He needs the warmth, he’ll get sick rather quickly if he doesn’t accept the cloak. Then Lizzie would kill Scott, and take back her blessing. Not only that, but it could take months for Jimmy to heal. So Scott needs to improvise.

Without thinking, Scott wraps his cloak around Jimmy’s shoulders, pulling the other man close to him as he does the top button up, taking care to ensure that he doesn’t damage the silk thread that keeps the button on. He can hear Jimmy’s breathing hitch as he does, and Scott looks down into the man's eyes, watching as something unreadable passes through them.

“Now you’ll remain warm.” Scott says, slightly breathless as he steps back.

Jimmy looks up at Scott, and pulls the cloak closer around his shoulders. The cod hybrid steals Scott’s breath away, even though Scott can’t see his face. The cloak pools at the floor around Jimmy’s feet, the arm holes slightly too low to be practical, but he looks stunning anyways.

“Could I offer you tea, or breakfast?” Scott asks, standing in front of a plush armchair. It’s his favourite chair, though due to the fact that it’s situated in the front parlor he doesn’t use it often.

“I had breakfast before I came, but tea would be nice.” Jimmy says.

“I’ll have that arranged, if you want to take a seat?” Scott says, smiling. He waits for a moment, as Jimmy chooses a seat, before he walks into the back parlor.

Scott quickly crosses into the kitchen, watching as one of the chefs jump in surprise. He’s already had breakfast, and it’s far earlier than he would normally arrive for a snack or a break from meetings with stuffy officials. Scott offers them an apologetic smile, and they roll their eyes, smiling at him.

“How can I help you, your highness?” They ask, turning away from kneading the bread.

“Could I bother you for some tea?”

“Meeting’s going that poorly?” They ask, washing their hands in the sink as they turn on the redstone kettle.

“I have a guest over, and he asked for some?” Jimmy deserves nice tea, and Scott hopes he’ll like it.

“The codfather’s over for a social visit?” They ask, incredulous. “You never have social visits, let alone with one of our allies' enemies.”

“He’s nice.” Scott says, watching as they pour the tea into two tea cups. “I’d like him as an ally.”

“Considering how Arel saw you put your cloak on him, I think you’d like him as more than just an ally, your highness.” They smirk, putting four biscuits on a tray. “Are you able to carry this out yourself or do you need someone to supervise the pair of you?”

“You aren’t my father, Cyran, nor my mother.” Scott says. “I can carry this, and we don’t need a supervisor.”

“Don’t make a mess of the front parlor, my lord.” They tease, passing Scott the tray. “I may not be your parents, may Aeor guide them, but I am your eldest member of staff. You were so young when I was bought onto the staff, you’re still the boy who hide behind my skirt from your tutors.”

“Please stop telling people about that.” Scott mumbles, embarrassed.

“Stop leaving your guest unattended. It’s rude.” They say, ushering Scott to the door. “I don’t want you back here until your guest has left, Scott.”

And they shut the door on Scott, making him laugh silently. Of course they kick him out to attend to the guests, they’re so stubborn. He should give them a raise.

Scott carefully carries the tray of drinks and biscuits through the back parlor, silently opening the door to navigate to where Jimmy sits. Jimmy’s looking out of the front window, watching as Rivendell bustles about as families take their children to school and adults attend to their jobs. The sun beams down, reflecting off of the snow and casting a glow into the front parlor, just as Scott intended when he designed the build. Scott places the tray down, startling Jimmy.

“Thank you.” Jimmy says, as Scott passes him a cup. “I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”

“Not at all.” Scott lies through his teeth. His guards will inform the advisors that he’s busy, after all. Potential allies are more important than sitting through another meeting that leads to nowhere. “Am I keeping you from anything?”

“Nothing that I can’t get done later.” Jimmy takes a sip of his tea. ��This is amazing.”

“Thank you.” Scott smiles. “Are you doing anything important tomorrow? I have a meeting after lunch that I must attend, but I would love to give you a tour of Rivendell.”

“I have a meeting with Fwip tomorrow.” Jimmy says, and Scott’s heart stops. “I’m going to his base to arrange a trade agreement, but maybe next Wednesday?”

“Did Fwip arrange the meeting?”

“He did.” Jimmy nods. “I don’t want to spark a war between us by entering the Grimlands uninvited.”

“Do you know what you’re going to ask him for?” Scott says, ignoring the pit beginning to form in his stomach. Fwip is something, an enemy of the Cod Empire and someone who believes that Jimmy is Aeor’s champion, which means he could harm Jimmy.

But it’s just a trade meeting, and Fwip has honour. He wouldn’t harm Jimmy during a peaceful meeting.

“Probably some gunpowder.” Jimmy shrugs, before a ring sounds from his pocket. “Oh, I’m sorry!” Jimmy pulls out his communicator, looking at the caller id before wincing.

“Something the matter?”

“I was supposed to meet with Joel now.” Jimmy winces. “I should go.”

Jimmy moves to take the cloak off, but Scott stops him, gently moving the other rulers hands from the button. Jimmy looks up at Scott, and though Scott can’t see Jimmy’s face, he can tell the codfather’s surprised.

“Keep it.” Scott murmurs. “You can return it when you come back for the tour.”

“Thank you.” Jimmy says, taking his hands from Scott’s. “I’ll see you next week.”

“I’ll see you then.” Scott smiles, walking Jimmy to the door. “Fly safely.”

“I will.” Jimmy says, walking away from Scott’s home.

Scott shuts the door, leaning on it with a sigh. Something isn’t right about this, something is so intrinsically wrong with Fwip inviting Jimmy to his empire for a meeting that Scott’s stomach turns with fear for the other man. Jimmy’s naive, the ruler of the youngest empire in this world. Even Shubble’s empire is older - just from a different dimension. Scott needs to ask Aeor to protect Jimmy. Surely they will.

Scott wonders if Jimmy liked the bouquet of roses that he left for him.

#in my dreams (will you remember me?)#imd(wyrm)#flower husbands #empires smp fic #longer chapter pog #calm before the storm

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arhvste · 4 years ago

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Hi! I saw your Dad hcs and istg I wanted more 🥺 can you please make a part two with Sakusa (God i love this man) Hinata, Bokuto and Ushijima (do add more if you want) your works are amazing but the Dad hcs got me 💘

i re-read all my work last night and i consciously kept spelling sakusa’s name wrong 🤠 like i know his name i know what it sounds like but i kept getting mixed up between sasuka, sakura and sasuke because they all look the same to me 😳 I'm sorry sakusa pls forgive me 😼

also i will be doing ushijima in a seperate post for dad hcs with two other haikyuu boys a bit later so dw i haven't accidentally missed or ignored it! :)

SAKUSA, HINATA AND BOKUTO AS DADS

SAKUSA

the two fo you only have one kid so far

a 3 year old girl

you plan to extend your family soon though 👀

you already KNOW this man gets your kid every vaccination available for their age

he is very protective over his daughter

boys near her daughter at the playground

NOT on his watch

he will simply scoop her up and suggest she play somewhere else

this man doesn't care how mean it may seem

he’s not having his precious daughter surrounded by disgusting b-boys 🤮

“have they had their flu jabs? when was the last time they washed their hands? they're breathing their gross little germs too close to her”

“sakusa, they’re 3.”

sorry but no dating for your daughter

sakusa teaches his little girl the concept of “boys have cooties” from a very young age

this man is nothing but proud when that concept sticks with her 😈

“d/n, are you excited for pre-school?”

“daddy said there's going to be boys and boys have cooties so no 😠”

as she gets older though he does become more lenient with her and who she makes friends with

he’ll secretly love it if you brought her to his games

he’s not huge on pda at all

but he won’t mind being caught on camera embracing the two of you when the team win

atsumu is not allowed near your daughter when she’s a baby

“omi omiiiii why can’t i ‘ave a look t’cha daughter?”

“because she has been vaccinated and i fear your disgusting germs may be strong enough to over power it”

when she gets older though she straight up approaches atsumu on her own

“so you’re the rat my daddy talks about a lot? you don’t look like much of a rat?”

atsumu doesn’t know whether he’s flattered that sakusa talks about him or offended that he refers to him as a ‘rat’

he won’t encourage your daughter to play volleyball

he wants her to pick her own hobbies and not feel pressured by his influence on picking an activity she’ll enjoy

secretly hopes your daughter takes up an individual activity like painting or something to keep away from other germ infected kids

but if your daughter does happen to pick a team sport he doesn't complain

she just has to wash her hands before she comes home and have a shower when she comes in

he is a very very proud father

he may not be very expressive about it

but he absolutely brags about his kid to other people

“my son won maths star of the week!”

“yeah? well my daughter won student of the year, highest achieving in her class and had 4 boys confess to her this week so”

he does make sure his daughter knows he is very proud of her despite his petty bragging

anything she does he takes pride in her

it’s her who makes him want to have another kid

so get ready for round two y/n because when sakusa wants something he’ll make sure he gets it 😼

HINATA

now, you may think hinata would be nothing but pure chaos with his kids

but

he is actually very responsible

it’s hardly a surprise though because he grew up with a younger sister whom he took care of a lot

from the second your triplet boys are born hinata is on it

at first when you found out you were having triplets your mind went blank

“so like, 3 little shoyou’s running around my legs? 😀”

“ma’am are you okay?”

“i’m finE :)))”

surprisingly two of your sons took more after you

but the youngest one

phew

he doesn't have an off switch

he’s just like his father

but that’s what makes him so loveable too

hinata is a doting dad

he also encourages his kids to go out and make as many friends

he explains all the opportunities he had growing up and how far these opportunities took him to reach is goal

and this is all because he was open to meeting new people and being friendly with them

he makes sure his kids grow up with lots of aunts and uncles surrounding them

he wants his sons to grow up in a close environment

your kids have so many aunts and uncles because hinata makes a new friend everywhere he goes ufshfi

your oldest son takes a liking to kenma the most

your second oldest takes a shine to uncle oikawa

and the youngest?

uncle kaegyama ofc 😈

lmao when kageyama holds one of your sons for the first time he holds it by the leg with a straight face

nobody thought they’d ever see hinata having to show kageyama how to hold a baby properly

kageyama is lowkey excited he’s the fav but he’s so awkward fjishsgjh

bring your sons to his games

he will absolutely smile and wave at his kids whenever he scores

and will pull them out excitedly into the arena when they win

he has you all plastered on his social media

he thinks everyone should know that you guys are the light of his life

he already had a fulfilled life before his sons but you gave him a whole new concept of love and excitement when they were born

you guys will totally take a vacation to brazil at some point

hinata wants your family to meet all his friends over in brazil too

hinata is mr worldwide 😎

with hinata as a dad, your kids will grow up in a very nurturing home

he wants the best for your kids and will teach them from an early age that any goal is possible

and he’ll support them in every single way he can

BOKUTO

hinata as a dad isn’t chaos

bokuto as a dad certainly is

he’s basically a child himself

you guys have 2 kids

a 5 year old son and a 6 year old daughter

bokuto will try and BEFRIEND your kids

“kou baby, they're your kids not your friends”

“uh says who?”

“biology??? their dna?? the birth certificate??”

he literally lets his kids do whatever they want forcing you to be the bad cop (im so sorry)

your kids want ice cream for dinner?

consider it done

they want to adopt a snake?

bokuto has excitedly taken them to the pet store to pick out one each

you’re always the one who has to say no because if you didn’t these kids would be off the r a i l s

the first time your kids cries he cries

the first time your kids talk he cries

the first time they walk he cries

he’s full of emotion and the love he holds for your kids is often expressed through tears of happiness

when you leave bokuto and the kids alone

things will go smoothly

until one of them starts crying and bokuto can’t stop them

then the other one starts crying and he is clueless on what to do

he doesn’t want to call you because he doesn’t want to look pathetic

so he calls the next best option

uncle akaashi 😼

akaashi is like a walking parent website hfdjbgu

he literally instructs bokuto on what to do through the phone

and if they still won't calm down akaashi will just sigh and agree to come over

you come home to the sight of akaashi reading a story book to your two kids who are staring up at him in awe from the floor

along with your husband

“am i interrupting?”

bokuto will break out into smiles and practically pounce on you when you come home

“everything was under control wasn’t it? right akaashi?” :D”

akaashi will just sigh and give a small smile

“yes bokuto-san, everything was under control”

you give akaashi a small smile of apology and he’ll often join you for dinner

yeah your kids spend a lot of time with uncle akaashi but you know who’s adamant on being the favourite uncle?

uncle kuroo ofc 😎

he will spoil tf out of your kids

we love rich, capitalist uncle kuroo

and he’ll tell them things about bokuto to irritate him

“kids, your dads a criminal he doesn't pay his taxes”

“taxes?”

“money everyone has to pay the government - basically it’s illegal and i think you should call the police on your dad 😈”

you actually have to stop your kids from calling the police on their dad fbhjdsfgu

again, another dad who wants nothing more than for his kids to come to his games

“HEY HEY HEY THAT”S MY FAMILY!!!”

no boundaries with pda

will pick you all up and shower you all with affection when they win

would love if your kids took up volleyball

would tell them it’s the best sport to play

and they actually listen to him hduigefuiew

your son becomes a middle blocker

and your daughter becomes an ace

bokuto could die from happiness

he will absolutely teach your kids and play and bring them to msby practices so they can watch up close and play along too

if bokuto is the father of your kids

good luck but have fun with it

because while yes, he is still your big baby that needs taking care of from time to time

he is also an extremely loving father who would gladly give his kids the world and all the stars

#sakusa kiyoomi #sakusa hcs #sakusa x reader #sakusa x you #sakusa headcanons #hinata shouyou #hinata x reader #hinata x you #hinata hcs #hinata headcanons #bokuto koutaro #bokuto x reader #bokuto x you #bokuto hcs #bokuto headcanons #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu hcs #haikyuu headcanons

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

Text

February 18, 2021: The Danish Girl (Review)

Before I go into ANYTHING else...let’s talk about the actual Danish Girl, Lili Elbe, or Lili Ilse Elvenes.

Oh, uh, full warning, this is gonna be LONG, so skip to the bottom if you’re just here for the Review! OK, history time!

Now, what the film The Danish Girl notes about the beginning of the transition is pretty spot-on, from what I can tell. After marrying portrait painter Gerda Gottlieb in 1904, the two lived in Italy and France before moving to Paris in 1912. Yeah, that’s over 14 years before they’re shown doing so in the movie. Inaccuracy #1. In 1908 (here comes number 2), Elbe (Einar at the time) painted this portrait of trees along a fjord in Denmark.

Yeah, NOT in 1926, as the film says. But, yeah, that’s a nitpick, I recognize that. Anyway, the revelation came when model Anna Larssen (not “Ulla”, which is Inaccuracy #3) was late, and Gerda asked Elbe to fill in. When Larssen eventually showed up, she suggested the name “Lili”. Basically, this scene from the movie was pretty goddamn accurate.

Except for the dates, anyway. Because while the movie mostly takes place around 1926 and afterwards, this probably happened closer to 1920, in Paris. So, yeah, Lili spent a LOT more time as Lili in real life. Additionally, Lili was pretty goddamn public about the whole thing, inviting guests and hosting parties as herself, rather than as Einar. At the same time, Gerda was getting pretty goddamn famous for her paintings of Lili, like this one.

Which, yeah, are really good! Also, they were considered lesbian erotica by many! YEAH! And here’s a fun fact: Gerda may not have been straight-up straight. Yeah, the film and the book (we’ll get there) kind of ignored the fact that their marriage was annulled by the Danish government, not by the two of them. Inaccuracy #4. Now, obviously, their relationship ended, and Lili ended up getting together with a man (we’ll get there, too), but there are a LOT of unanswered questions about Gerda’s sexuality, and views of sexuality (which is barely hinted at in the “male gaze” speech in the beginning).

After the annulment, the two just...drifted apart. Their relationship dissolved, and the details on that are fuzzy. By 1930, Lili was headed on a completely different path. She wasn’t a painter like Einar (and it turns out that she thought of them as two entirely separate people, like two souls living in the same body, which the movie got mostly right), and she was mostly unsatisfied with her career, life, and other things. And that is where Drs. Erwin Gohrbandt and Magnus Hirschfeld come in, NOT Kurt Warnerkros...yet. He’d come in for the other five (YES FIVE) surgeries, but wouldn’t be involved with the first. Inaccuracy #5, and also #6, while we’re at it! See, the film would make you think that Lili was the first complete gender reassignment surgery, but she was actually the second. The first would be Dora Richter, in a procedure that was performed by Dr. Hirschfeld from 1922 - 1931. YEAH. BIG-ASS INACCURACY THERE. Here’s Dora, by the way:

Anyway, Lili had her first procedure, to remove the testicles, performed in 1930. In the same year, the divorce between Lili and Gerda was finalized, and Lili legally changed her name. Two more procedures were performed, the first to implant an ovary, and the second to remove the penis and scrotum. Inaccuracy #7, by the way. And, hey, let’s go for number 8! Let’s talk about Henrik, a dude who didn’t exist. He and Hans were both very loosely based on an art dealer named Claude Lejeune.

Claude was an art dealer (there’s the Hans part), and was indeed in love with Lili. They got together around early 1931, and he’d actually been in love with her for a good, long time. He proposed to marry Lili, and she accepted, also hoping that the two would be able to have children together. But to do that, it was believed that Lili would need a uterus. And, obviously, having children would be MILES more complicated than that in basically EVERY way, but this was early in medical science’s understanding of some of that biology.

In any case, however, Lili would need both a uterus and a vagina to feel whole. And so, the fourth surgery was scheduled. And she had that surgery in 1931, a couple of weeks after Dora Richter successfully had the same surgery performed. But, sadly, Lili wouldn’t be so lucky.

Lili’s body rejected the uterus, and while transplant rejections of any kind wouldn’t necessarily be fatal now, they definitely were back then. They attempted to remove it, but that subsequent 5th surgery caused infection, which caused a fatal heart attack three months later. Lili Elbe died on September 13, 1931, at the age of FORTY-EIGHT. Yeah, Inaccuracy #9.

By the way, you may be wondering: what about Dora Richter, the first successful person to get these surgeries? Well, she disappeared...in Germany...as the Nazis were coming into power...yeah. Fuckin’ YIKES.

And so, that’s the true story of Lili Elbe. And there are far more differences than that, I’m sure, but those 9 inaccuracies aren’t insignificant, that’s for sure. Although, it probably doesn’t help that the movie was based on a fictionalized book.

Oh, uh...did I not mention that? Yeah, this movie is based on The Danish Girl, by David Ebershoff, which means that this film is essentially a cinematic game of telephone. Which, uh...not great. Granted, Ebershoof made some other...interesting changes, which the film didn’t inherit. In the book, for example, Gerda is named Greta, and is American? Um...why? I dunno, it’s kind of weird. Oh, and that’s not including one more issue with the movie. But, you’ve waited long enough, huh? Recap of the film is here and here if you wanna check that out! Let’s get to the Review already!

Review

Cast and Acting: 8/10

I am...conflicted. So let me start here by saying that the acting in the film in and of itself is fantastic, all-around. Not a weak actor in here, that’s for sure. Let’s start with the side-roles, for once. Ben Whishaw, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Amber Heard are all good. Heard’s accent is a little shaky, but they’re still all solid performances. OK, how about Alicia Vikander? She’s great! And she won the Oscar for...Best Supporting Actress. Um...wait...Supporting? But not Best Actress? Uh...OK. That’s a little weird, let’s be honest here. But, Alicia Vikander did deserve that win over...oooooooh, Rooney Mara in Carol? Maybe not...damn.

And OK...let’s get into the elephant in the room, huh?

Eddie Redmayne is fantastic as Einar Wegener/Lili Eber, and I genuinely think he had a great shot to win Best Actor...but, yeah, Leonardo DiCaprio definitely deserved it, I think that goes without saying. Hell, that year had a SOLID line-up for best actor. And Redmayne had even won it the year before for The THeory of Everything, another biography where he played Stephen Hawking. But ALL of that said...HNNNNNNNNNG, there should have been a transgender actor cast in this role, ideally. Now, I’m fully aware how difficult that would be, as Hollywood isn’t extraordinarily diverse in terms of including trans actors in massive mainstream projects. It’s better now, but it’s nowhere near ideal. But if anybody knows an actor who would’ve fit this role and performed it well, I’m DEFINITELY interested. So, despite that controversy, Redmayne was pretty goddamn great in this role. But, uh...that doesn’t mean everything is perfect...

Plot and Writing: 5/10

OK, that seems low, I know. But it’s pretty goddamn damning that this movie was based off of a heavily fictionalized book instead of the actual life story of Lili Eber and Gerda Gottlieb. And because of that, there are not only some missed opportunities, but some straight-up damning inaccuracies. That’s a set of pretty poor decisions, I tell you what. Not sure why Lucinda Coxon came to that decision when adapting this screenplay, but it wasn’t exactly nominated for Best Screenplay. And the writing certainly isn’t bad, but it is...overly saccharine sometimes, especially for a film based (loosely) on a true story. I dunno...just not the best set of choices here, sorry to say.

Directing and Cinematography: 8/10

Tom Hooper shouldn’t direct musicals. However, since this wasn’t a musical, directing and cinematography here is pretty damn good! Real talk, this is a gorgeous looking movie, and the way shots are framed are fantastic. Perfect? Weeeeeeeell...given the fact that painting is a main focus of the film, for both Gerda and Einar, there should’ve been more painter-quality shots in here, I think. And while the cinematography by Danny Cohen is pretty fantastic, I can’t say that it’s perfect. Still, in terms of lighting and general skill, it’s still quite a good looking movie.

Production and Art Design: 10/10

But the deficiencies in the direction are EASILY compensated for by the production design! Like, hot DAMN, this is a good looking movie, like I said! That goes from the construction of the sets, to the gorgeous outfits all over the place, especially Lili’s outfits. Some iconic pieces of wardrobe there, that’s for sure! But if I have ONE complaint...this movie never once felt like the 1920s. Yup, good old anachronistic complaints from me again! Yeah, I’ll change the record one of these days, I promise. But even with that, it’s hard to ignore just how good this movie looks, to be honest. It’s just...gorgeous.

Music and Editing: 8/10

As I type this, I’m listening to a track of the film on YouTube, and it is a beautifully delicate tune. I’m not sure that I’d be able to associate it with the film if presented to me on its own, but it’s definitely a nice track to listen to by itself. Playlist worthy? For somebody, almost certainly, but not for me. One of these days, a film like that’s gonna pop up, I swear. But for now, Alexandre Desplat and his score are gonna stay off my iPhone. This really is a nice score, though, I promise. Editing by Melanie Ann Oliver is pretty good as well, and I’ve no complaints about it, to be honest. Overall, this side of things was quite nice, if not the most notable thing I’ve ever seen or heard.

I might have been a little harsh, but it’s still got an 78%.

This is a good movie, but...I dunno, the inaccuracies do bug me. Hell, there are WAY more than what I’d mentioned, and I mentioned a lot. Not to mention the other glaring issue: no trans people at any stage of the production? Really? No script consultants, no writers, no NTOHING? That’s...egregiously bad. Like, holy shit, guys. And, yes, this includes Redmayne, because even though he performed admirably in the role...I dunno. I’m no expert on ANY of this, as a cissexual dude with cissexual experience, but it feels a little...reductive, is all. Like I said, if any other actors have been suggested for this role, I’d love to know. The whole thing feels...I don’t know, just not great.

And by the way, that’s without even TOUCHING the question as to whether or not this film is authentic to the trans experience. Again, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA, but I’ve also heard that this film isn’t universally acclaimed in the trans community, so to speak. And I’m definitely interested in the reasons for that. All I know is this: from the perspective of a complete outsider, I was intrigued by this films view of the transgender experience, specifically as seen in the earliest days of those realizations happening and being publicly known and reported on. And that’s all I can really comment on, in truth.

WHOOF. That was a goddamn topic, huh? And now, I’m going to continue on the the month of romance with...wait, the 19th is my 5-year anniversary with my GF, pictured here:

Ravishing. Anyway, I think I’ll let her pick from my choices for this next one. Hold on a sec...OK, then. Sing it with me now! AND DO I DREEEEEAM AGAAAAIN, FOR NOW I FIIIIIIIIIIIIIND...

February 19, 2021: The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

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atlantis-easte · 3 years ago

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Entrance Interview || Self-Para

“I’m just pulling up your file, can you remind me where you were before joining us at Colony 22?”

You don’t really have to ask that do you? [She sits up in her seat, hands carefully placed on the table in front of her. The metal was cold beneath her palms, the space around her fingers frost over with her heat. She throws a pointed look towards the interviewer, her glossy blonde hair looked electric against the lime-green cast of color that warped the space around her. Looking at it made her skin crawl. It reminded her of those buckets of slime her sister used to play with when she was stressed out from school.] I uh, I fatally injured a reformist guard during one of the rebel riots at MIT. [The woman across from her goes stiff in her seat, Atlantis can’t help the shame that colors her cheeks.] I know what you’re thinking, but it was ruled an accident. The NWRF cleared me or they wouldn’t have transferred me halfway across the world, right?. [She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince, herself, or the Blonde in front of her.]

I never meant to hurt anyone, I just–[She just needed to get that guard off of her. Atlantis hadn’t done anything wrong, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time when all hell broke loose. The next thing she knew there were reformist guards filing in from every corner, rounding up all the civilians on campus. Unfortunately the guard who spotted Atlantis, who had been hiding in the bushes during the riot, had been entirely too rough with her. His color was all wrong, once yellow now stained black like raw oil. She hadn’t realized she had reached for the army knife in her pocket until his blood was in her mouth. Sometimes she could still taste it if she thought about it hard enough.] I’m sure whatever you need to know about the incident is in my file.

“Do you or did you have much involvement with Infected persons?”

Of course, I have. It’s not exactly a loaded question is it? After D.D. [She pauses at the Blonde’s furrowed brow.] D-Day [She self corrects.] a group of us [A small collection of NYU students, E.R. nurses, and a handful of NYC civilians.] were forced to leave New York. I’m not sure how much you know about what’s left in America but the majority of it is flooded now. [She shrugs a shoulder as if she could be less bothered by this fact. Atlantis was devastated to see New York City go under. She never felt at home in Virginia and often she felt like a ghost in the halls of NYU but New York City? That was the one place she didn’t feel like a complete waste of space. The roar of the streets outside her window always helped drown out the voice in her head that wanted her six feet under.] Anyways, a few people in our group started showing signs of pow–infections. I wasn’t particularly close to any of them. [That’s not entirely accurate. She was incredibly close to one of the NYU students in her clan. Miles Braker, once her best friend and drug dealer. She decided to not mention it because one, Miles was dead, and two, the last thing she needed was this Blonde flagging her for having been close with an infected person.] Nothing against them or anything, I just tend to keep to myself.

“As I’m sure you can appreciate, we strive to offer a welcoming environment to all of our residents. It’s our hope that we can rebuild a co-operative society, which means we discourage our residents from getting involved in any… upsetting political discourse. Do we understand each other? Do you have any concerns?”

[Atlantis is well aware she wasn’t transferred for the betterment of her mental health. They purposely separated every rebel they were able to locate the day of the riot. The reformist blood on her hands didn't exactly paint the image of a well adjusted citizen. Did she agree with the New Wave Reformist? No, absolutely not. They thought Atlantis was out of her damn mind. Did she agree with the Rebel extremists? Fuck, no. As far as she was concerned, despite the minimized population, life was still a shit show. She didn’t care about the future, much less believe she had one to salvage. If she could eat the whole world raw just to end everyone’s suffering, she would have done it by now.] Look, I appreciate you trying to be thorough, I really do, but there’s nothing to worry about. I’m not some sleeper agent or whatever the fuck you think I am. I made a mistake. That mistake won’t be made twice. [Her fingers curl into her palms, nails digging into the softest part of her hand.] I have zero intention of rocking the boat while here.

“How do you feel you’ve been adjusting to life these last few years? Is there anything we can provide for you in the way of additional support?”

You mean besides being labeled as a lunatic? [She meant it to be funny but the Blonde wasn’t giving her a fucking inch. She supposed if someone just confessed to murdering an agent of her organization she wouldn’t be up for a laugh either, but still. She was just a kid, was she really going to be blamed for a split-second decision she made in the middle of a war zone? She knows for a fact many people have done a lot worse in the wastes. Atlas leans back into her seat, her right leg jiggles under the table in pace with her heart.] It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park.

[She shrugs a slim shoulder, evasive as always. The truth was, Atlantis was in hell. After being placed in correctional she was forced into withdrawal. They wouldn’t ship her off to another colony until they were certain all drugs were flushed from her system. She didn’t exactly have much access to Pixie Dust after D.D. but she made do with other substances. She would take anything and everything she’d been offered, if only to stave off the hallucinations. She missed the quiet, the numbness that coated her tongue like MSG. She’s been strung out for so long she didn’t recognize the sober eyes that blinked back at her in the mirror. The inky blue aura that painted the space around her didn’t help, small dots of shimmering opal stained the blue like stars, if she hadn’t been so worried about being sane she would have admitted she liked walking around with a galaxy on her shoulders.]

I’m sure my file says all kinds of things about me, things that I might not entirely agree with but here’s something I know my file doesn’t say. I want this to work, not just for everyone here but for me too. [She wishes she meant it.]

“The people here seem to really value the health and stability of the community. The NWRF wants to protect that. In what way do you see yourself fitting in and contributing?”

[She lets out a laugh, albeit shaky but it’s a laugh all the same.] That question sounds remarkably similar to the one you just asked me. This is beginning to feel like an SAT test. [Again the woman doesn’t react, this was beginning to get tedious. Atlas pushes her curls back with thin fingers.] I don't know what you want me to say. [Her voice was small as she spoke, if the room hadn’t been so bare of furniture and warmth the Blonde might not have heard her.] I was transferred here because they didn’t know what to do with me in America. They don’t have the resources to take care of someone like me. I don’t know what I have to offer you, not yet anyway. [Nothing besides the blood in her veins or whatever the fuck they need from her during testing.] But maybe with some therapy and a mandated chore chart we can figure something out.

“Do you have any existing connections of significance here at Colony 22? Would you mind telling me a little about these relationships?”

Everyone I know is either dead or at a different colony. [But they already knew that. They made sure of it before her transfer. She found it a bit funny they even bothered to ask her when they were all fully aware of her past. No one believed the words of a junkie, why start now? She watches as the blonde jots down a few notes in her file, if she cared more she would have tried to sneak a peek but Atlas knew better. She didn’t want to know what anyone thought of her, not when she was constantly at war with herself.]

“Okay Miss Easte, you’re free to go. Remember to check in with your house advisor before settling into your new dorm.”

[Atlas nods her head, she collects her limbs and makes to leave before she’s stopped by the Blonde.]

“I don’t have to remind you that we will be watching you closely, do we Miss Easte?”

[Atlantis smiles at the woman, warm and innocent, just like her father taught her.] I wouldn’t dream of it. [Her smile dissolves before she’s out the door.]

#entrance interview #self-para #context for the starter!

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soysaucevictim · 3 years ago

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“I started thinking about human nature...”

Summary: Janus thinks Remus started off on entirely the wrong right foot with him. This is how they became best friends since. (Sanders Sides, Gym Rat AU. One-shot. Ao3 link.)

Genres: Slice of Life, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Tragicomedy, Comedy-Drama, I Don’t Know Man

Characters: Janus and Remus centric. Roman supporting.

Relationships: Dukeceit (platonic), Creativitwins (familial), Pre-Roceit (ambiguous)

Warnings: Injuries/blood, Creativitwin angst, implicit queerphobia, implicit ableism, physical abuse, disownment, chronic illness (psoriasis), Enemies to Best Friends, Remus Being Remus, Remus Is a Little Shit, Trans Masc / Nonbinary Remus, Janus Is A Good Friend, Remus Is A Good Friend, 2e Remus (Twice Exceptional), Protective Roman, Roman Is A Good Brother, Roman Isn’t Having a Good Time, Tonal Whiplash (Seriously)

Janus knew Remus since they were in high school. On age difference, they easily might’ve just missed each other – 4 years. But Remus did jump a grade in elementary school, demonstrating a precocious knack for SOME arenas of academics.

He was clearly gifted, especially when it came to things of mechanical nature. But he was also just as clearly troubled. It was a crying shame that most people paid more attention to the latter part. Truly.

So they met, when Janus was a junior and Remus a freshman.

Janus was also partway into the school’s 3+3 DPT program, to speed the process up for him to get to be a physical therapist in a few years out of high school. He had his reasons for that, reasons he’d much rather disclose to very few people.

Other than the market demand, to be sure. It wasn’t because he cared about people, and he’d be obstinate about making that point clear.

Remus wasted no time to leave an impression on the student body, in the first month of the school year. Though, at the time, no one knew it was him.

Janus was minding his own business in chemistry class when the school’s sprinkler systems went off. But something was… wrong.

It – it smelled like AXE body spray. Janus thought it was mostly water that went through the pipes, but it was unmistakable and overwhelming. He was caught by surprise like everyone else was, but still attempted to play it cool as he shoved his belongings into the desk to try to salvage them from the deluge.

Mr. Sanders yelped, just as confused as everyone else in the room, “What in the name of-!? I-I guess it’s fire drill time. Let’s go, class. Quickly and calmly.”

It turned out the entire first floor of the building was set off and only that floor (this campus had two of them).

The entire floor, positively reeked of the stuff for days. No one was was able to figure out what miscreant was responsible for this. Janus would absolutely leisure in the chaos of the student body and staff smelling like they vaped canisters of body spray. But, you see, Janus’s skin took objection to the whole experience, rather quickly.

At the tail end of middle school, Janus developed a few rashes, probably from stress or perhaps as a result of a strep infection. Which he quickly learned from his family doctor to be psoriasis, which was just fantastic. So, the chemical assault aggravated the already flaring up patches on his face and hands. He could give less of a shit about what other students would say about his appearance, but holy hell did it ITCH.

He was determined to figure out who the hell was responsible, to give him a piece of his mind.

Things appeared to go without incident for sometime, nearly a month. Not without Janus warily scanning the classrooms and occasionally the rest of the campus for anyone that just set off any alarm bells.

He finally met eyes with him in the cafeteria. Well, he still didn’t know that at the time.

Just this kid who dressed like a hot mess and rather ambiguously gendered lounging in the corner picking their nose and looking like they were about to doze off. It was as if someone threw a punk, an emo, and a dragster in a blender. Hit frappe, topping it all off with toxic green and black coat of paint. They really stood out, yet no one dared to approached them.

Janus did read some big “FUCK OFF” energy from him. Still, he was curious, “Hey.”

This kid’s attention snapped up pretty quick, with an excessive amount of drama to it, “And who might yooou be?”

Janus decided to withhold his name, just in case, “Dee. You?”

The kid shrugged, boldly going the flirtatious route, “Whatever you want me to be.”

“… I’m not interested in that… right now. You new around here?”

“Maaaybe.”

Janus was sure it was a shot in the dark, but he was getting increasingly agitated with his face, “Were you here during the AXE incident recently?”

The kid perked up suspiciously, “Maybe I was. Maaaybe I wasn’t.”

Janus lightly rubbed the patch on his cheek before pinching his nose in exasperation, “Can you not with this evasive bullshit?”

“Oooh... feisty.”

Perhaps his patience was on the thin side, but Janus felt a building urge to slap this fool. He sighed, “Well. Let’s just say – urg-”

The itching was unbearable at this point and he started to furiously rub his offending hand through his gloves. The kid looked almost concerned, “Uh. You okay?”

Janus lied through his teeth, “I’m fine. But whoever was responsible for that body spray shit certainly won’t be…”

The kid started to crack. Torn between seeming to find pleasure in making Janus squirm and a glint of actual concern. This only made Janus more mad, if he was perfectly honest. Janus just snipped out, “I don’t know what your angle is here, but I will figure it out.”

The kid seemed insulted, placing a hand on their chest, “I have no idea what the fuck your problem is, man. You came to me with the 20 Questions!… heh.”

Janus groaned, unsure of where he should take this, his gut telling him he was looking at the perpetrator of his current bout of absolute suffering. He could only muster turning on his heels and give the kid the “I’m watching you” signal.

The kid just cackled uproariously as they parted ways.

Yeah, Janus was certain that kid was responsible. He just knew it.

The two of them shared a pre-calculus class and the kid was just… snoring at their desk, by the time it was almost up. Ms. Crofters didn’t appreciate the insubordination, “SANCHEZ.”

Everyone was already starting to file out of the room, since the bell rang. Morning classes were rough for everyone, but this kid looked exhausted, actually. No, Janus was determined not to pity them. Janus simply watched the exchange play out.

“Sanchez” smacked their lips blearily responding with, a simple “… what?”

The teacher sighed and softened, “You really need to take this more seriously, I know you have so much potential, to be a freshman placed in this class. You just need to-”

They grumbled and rolled their eyes, “Whatever.”

The teacher remained seated, decided she was going nowhere and started to grade some papers in the break in between classes. Sanchez took the cue to stand up with their things and leave. Not before Janus was noticed for staring at the whole situation. Sanchez was surprisingly icy, “You got a problem with me, too?”

“Plead the fifth.”

Janus was now intrigued, sensing they might be a lot sharper than they seemed. Hints at them being more capable of pulling off tampering with the sprinkler system in such a noxious fashion.

Janus confronted them in the hallway, fiddling through their locker, “Don’t lie to me, Sanchez.”

Sanchez rolled their eyes, still playing coy, “Whatever do you mean, Dee?”

“I KNOW you fucking did it.”

“Did what?”

“I don’t know, not the surprise assault on the senses, weeks into the year!?”

“… your rash is looking pretty angry.”

“NAH. YOU THINK SO?!”

Sanchez finally began to placate a little, “Okay, I’m… I’m sorry.”

Janus was taken aback, not expecting the apology so easily, “What was that?”

“Hahaha… a few other kids wound up in the hospital thanks to that stunt I pulled. Asthma and shit like that. Almost got in a little bit of hot water.”

Staff still refused to state who perpetrated the mess, maybe this kid was far more brilliant than Janus could imagine.

“I didn’t take you for the kind of person who would give a damn about that sort of stuff.”

Sanchez simply shrugged in response.

Janus found himself staring into Sanchez’s locker, at random parts of electronics and diagrams haphazardly piled into it. “… what’s in there?”

“I dunno. Projects?”

“How helpfully vague.”

“Look, I just like keeping my hands busy, you know, fuck around and find out.”, Sanchez snorted at their own choice of words.

“Why… why did you put AXE in the system, in the first place?”

Sanchez threw up their arms and just said, “I dunno. One moment, it just started off as a ‘you know what would be fucking hilarious’ thought and the next I was going at the preaction sprinkler valve with a wrench, a bunch of cans of Provoke, and a soldering iron.”

“Aaand no part of you went, ‘why don’t we sleep on it’?”

“SLEEP!? Sleep is for the weak, amigo.”

Janus gave them a withering glare, personally greatly appreciating a good snooze himself, “I guess impulse control really isn’t your forte?”

They were overly chipper, “NOPE.”

For some reason, Janus couldn’t stay mad at this point. There was just something strangely endearing about them.

The two of them wound up hanging out together more.

Up until that point, Janus just migrated from friend group to friend group, making himself kind of a chameleon to any ne’er-do-wells who might’ve wanted to get a rise out of him. He was good at not taking shit from people and he was usually left alone for it.

Sanchez eventually told Janus that he wanted to be called Remus. That he was actually a guy… mostly. Sort of. Good enough, as far as Janus was concerned.

Janus returned the favor of trust, telling him his actual name. Still choosing not to explain anything, but glad that Remus didn’t make any potshots about how it sounded. Remus was fast warming up to him.

Mutually, they surprised each other about their own predilections for anarchy, and they really hit things off in that department. Janus just had two stipulations: not being the collateral damage again… and maybe Remus should show a little more concern for his own well-being and safety.

(To this day, Janus wasn’t particular successful about the latter part.)

One of the next most notable/notorious stunts perpetrated by Remus, neared the end of his freshman year.

A voice blared into the intercom system, ran through some distortion filters to make it less obvious to most people. Several octaves lower and static-y, “Goood morning, bitches, bastards, and everyone else! Thank you for listening to KRAX radio! I’m your host for today, The Duke of Butts himself. Ready for some garbage?! No?! Well, too bad!”

Janus, was split between cracking up and pretending to be just as alarmed as everyone else.

An obnoxious record scratch was heard through the building before an unholy remix of the likes of “Never Gonna Give You Up”, “All-Star”, and “Gangnam Style” started playing. It was the most beautiful and awful thing Janus had ever heard, it brought a tear to his eyes.

His fellow students eventually broke down laughing – in fact several neighboring classrooms worth were cheering and booing.

The teacher was far less amused, angrily dialing for the school administrators probably to report his disdain. It was in vain, since he was drowned out by the classroom and the broadcast.

Silence on the intercom.

The students went “awww” about it.

The teacher tried again, getting though, “You heard that right!? Yeah. Okay. Make sure to catch whosoever responsible for whatever the hell tomfoolery that was!”

Things seemed to quieted down.

That is until the first lunch period, “Goood afternoon, it’s me again! Bet y’all missed me! Huh!? Anyways, time for another plate full of Shitcago.”

Janus snorted as the scratch sample lead into yet another audible travesty. “Sandstorm”, “Shooting Stars”… and “Peanut Butter Jelly Time”.

There was a lot of gasping in awe at the shear audacity, Janus felt a sense of pride. Remus outdid himself, this time.

By then everyone was wondering when this entertainer would show up again.

A few minutes before school was to be dismissed, there was one final broadcast, “Goood evening, fuckers! Have a parting gift from me, before y’all head off to the shitty places you call home!”

Janus winced at the concerning subtext.

Next, Remus outright said, “Record Scratch!?”, for the segue. And what played next… was just “Chemical Bomb” by the Aquabats. Not quite the same level of aural hell as the previous sets… but that did get the school staff REALLY squirrely.

Remus didn’t actually talk much about his home life.

Janus came to learn that he had a brother and that his parents just weren’t in the picture anymore. Beyond that?

Whenever Janus gently prodded that hornet’s nest, Remus deflected constantly. Janus desisted after awhile, growing to respect this quirky kid’s boundaries. But that didn’t stop Janus from speculating that something volatile was brewing, Remus getting more and more agitated.

That didn’t stop the two of them from occasionally orchestrating some more dramatic pranks on the school over the next year. Janus helping him with being more discretionary. Remus also did well to shore up Janus’s own vaguely threatening reputation to the school.

(The fact he was going into the care industry, notwithstanding and completely irrelevant.)

It was a small miracle Remus managed to never get caught for his bigger stunts. But he did get more and more disciplinary action against him as Remus cared less and less about this school.

Janus was on track and since graduated with surprisingly little incident. Swearing Remus would see him out with a bang, at this point. Janus went straight to a local college, him coming by a family inheritance was a real boon for him to focus on himself.

But, they still kept in touch. Halfway into Remus’s senior year, Remus started a worrisome text conversation with him.

“Hey, can I stay at your place tonight?”

“Sure? Something happen?”

“Uh. I may’ve fucked up. Badly.”

“Listening.”

“I’d rather talk about it in person.”

“Ok? Need ride?”

“I maaay already be halfway to your place. Also, I’m taking my brother over...”

“Pls don’t tell me you’re txting while you drive. Wait – brother?”

A pause, Janus almost imagined Remus sighing, “… I’ll explain later.”

Remus arrived at Janus’s doorstep looking like even more of a mess than usual.

There was a bright red hand print on Remus’s face, and clear evidence that he had been crying heavily. The makeup he usually wore washed down his cheeks. Which felt like a twist of a knife in Janus’s chest, this was the opposite of the unflappable goblin of a friend he grew accustomed to.

Remus only mentioned his brother in passing a few times. Part of the whole “I refuse to talk about my family” thing. But Janus was observant enough to note that there was a ghost of a smile whenever he talked about Roman, more than anyone else.

Janus had missed the chance to really get to see him thanks to their age difference and the fact Roman barely kept up with his age grade (compared to Remus). He wasn’t informed why.

Roman was certainly in worse shape, physically. Remus had him to his side, arm over the shoulder for support. Roman’s nose and mouth dribbled with blood, he had a black eye showing, and the arm that wasn’t around Remus hung limply. Roman was woozy, but noticed he was getting stared at, “You just… going to... let me bleed all over your porch or-?”

Asking why the hell these two weren’t in the hospital was a foregone conclusion, so Janus ushered them in.

When they all filed into Janus’s living room. One thing was becoming clear. Roman’s arm was wrenched out of socket and Janus bit his lips, “I’m pretty sure that needs a closed reduction. But, I’ve only really done one of those yet, in my training. That is, if nothing is actually broken.”

Remus’s eyes were blown wide, “Well?”

Janus inhaled sharply through his teeth, “It’s not like this is totally a proper a clinic… I can’t exactly give him much to make putting his arm back in socket… Bearable.”

Roman looked like he couldn’t focus on anything other than all the pain, and stayed quiet.

Janus knew he was being unusually pensive, but now’s not the time to unpack that, “Can I see that arm? Just. Just so I have a better idea of what to do about it?”

Roman simply grunted and nodded.

Janus sidled next to him and looked at the injury and gently prodded the area to get a better physical sense of what was wrong here. He didn’t exactly have imaging to go off of, nor a licensed care team, or really anything. This was… so messed up.

Roman winced a little as Janus touched some bruises and aggravated nerves, but let him continue to attend it. Janus, while looking at it still, gulped and asked them, “Um… care to tell me what the hell happened?”

Roman just looked down, unable to talk. Remus started stammering, “T-tío Esteban. Found out about everything and lost his patience with-”

Janus unfortunately couldn’t fully unpack what Remus meant there, he had a few ideas, but still grimaced. That said, Janus’s memory from training was getting jogged, looking at his brother. “Roman, was it? Let’s check to see how much your arm is working now? Get a better sense of the damage here…”

Janus ran through the actions to test how good his nerves and blood supply were, thankfully Roman was remaining conscious and showing some hopeful signs. Janus then left and did as he said, “I’m going to grab a sling, before we do anything else…”

When he came back, “Care to lie on your belly with your left arm hanging off the couch? I’m – I’m only going to try this once. Because I don’t have shit like lidocaine to give you. If it’s not going to work, I don’t want to-”

The brothers sighed, as if they both knew and dreaded what Janus meant. Roman flopped into position on the couch, without another word. Except for some short gasps of pain, probably brushing bruises Janus couldn’t see and aggravating the offending shoulder.

Remus was uncharacteristically timid, glancing at Roman and then at Janus, “He-he stood up for me. The dumb ass. He-he didn’t need to out himself too and-”

Roman hushed Remus.

Janus nodded as he started manipulating Roman’s shoulder blade in a subtle and gentle fashion. This seemed to surprise Roman, “This… isn’t anything like the movies, huh?”

“Well, there are more… forceful techniques. But I’d rather not resort to that.”

Roman mumbled, “… sorry to burden you.”

Janus just sighed, not wanting to address what was buried in that statement either.

Soon enough, Roman sighed in relief once Janus put his shoulder back in place and put that sling on him. Janus did stress he should still get that looked at, totally uncharacteristically prepared to open his wallet for the costs, if need be.

For the longest time, it was a shame that Roman didn’t remember very much of what happened, that night. Maybe it was too much trauma for him to access, maybe Roman just wanted to distance himself from it, but Janus wasn’t going to be that kind of “doctor”. When they later rediscovered each other in the gym, years later, it was like they were simply acquaintances. Which hurt… a little.

But Remus certainly remembered. And reminded him how grateful he was, fairly often.

It equally hurt seeing Remus being so hesitant, “Can you… can you help us… you know? He doesn’t want us back home, after-”

“Not even a question, dear.”

#spilled musing #sanders sides #janus sanders #remus sanders #roman sanders #gymrat au #(okay... time to refocus on the iZ!AU~)#(despite remus winding up in adv placement courses... he's still an understimulated underacheiver by conventional measures)#(/unconventionally/ extra af tho)

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pikapeppa · 4 years ago

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Felassan/f!Lavellan: Paint

Chapter 26 of The Love That Grows From Violence (post-Trespasser Felassan x Tamaris Lavellan) is up!

In which Felassan reveals yet another hobby. 😂 Featuring gorgeous art this week by @elbenherzart!!

~8100 words; read on AO3 instead.

The following days were a buzz of activity for Tamaris and Felassan. Gone was the lazy flow of leisurely-executed activities that had previously characterized their time; now, it almost felt to Tamaris like there weren’t enough hours in the day to do everything they wanted to do.

Their morning sparring sessions were becoming longer and more strenuous as Felassan’s grasp of his magic grew. He switching between types of magic now in his attacks, transitioning from fire to lighting to ice to raw Fade strikes while using barriers to repel Tamaris’s blows, and by the time they finished their sparring these days, they were often too fatigued to fuck right afterwards like they’d been doing when his magical control was more modest.

Outside of their sparring sessions, Felassan kept working on his magic by himself. He tinkered with Dorian’s crystals and pored through the few tomes on magic that he’d found in the mansion’s library, as well as a few tomes that Varric had given him from the stock that was salvaged from the Gallows during the Kirkwall Uprising. Dorian was sending a selection of more complex books from Tevinter, and until they arrived, Felassan cheerfully made fun of the Chantry-based books he did have access to, even as he read them.

While Felassan was working on his magic, Tamaris worked on getting herself back up to speed about current events happening in Thedas and what the other branches of the wolf hunt were doing. They sat together in the study, Felassan working at the desk while Tamaris spread her papers and reports across the couch and floor, and they frequently made snarky comments to each other about what they were reading. Although it wasn’t pleasant to be so busy again, Tamaris had to admit that it was nice to have a constant companion who was working just as hard as she.

One day, Tamaris looked up from one of Leliana’s coded letters to find Felassan leaning back against the desk with his arms folded and a pensive frown on his face.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He met her eye. “That piece of ironwood I gave you. Can I have it?”

Her eyes widened. He’d given her his piece of ironwood so long ago now that she’d been half-wondering if he’d forgotten about it. “Of course,” she said, and she stood from the couch. “What are you — are you going to make a staff with it?”

“I’m going to try,” he said.

“That’s great!” she exclaimed. “That’s – I’ll go get it right now.” She ran upstairs to her bedroom and pulled the short length of ironwood out of her dresser.

It was wrapped in a fine silk scarf Josephine had given her. She carefully unwrapped it, then ran back downstairs and held it out to Felassan.

He smiled faintly as he took it. “Why do I get the impression that you’re more excited about this than I am?”

“It is exciting,” she insisted. “You’re going to… I mean, I don’t really know what you’re going to do, but you’re going to try and make this into a staff! That means you feel pretty confident that you can do it, right?”

“I’m reasonably confident that I won’t blow up the house while trying,” he said wryly.

She frowned. “Come on, Felassan, don’t be so down on yourself. You’ve got so much more control than you did a month ago.” Just this morning, they’d been discussing the possibility that he shouldn’t spar with her anymore out of concern that he might harm her, since his attacks were surpassing the bounds of her barriers to repel him.

“True,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I am close to what I used to be.” He twirled the ironwood in his fingers and gave her a knowing look. “Using magic in this time truly is a matter of control and skill, you know. The feeling of magic being like a second seamless heartbeat really was an artifact of my time. Waking up in this time was like… like having to learn to speak again. Conscious manipulation of a skill I once took for granted.” He gestured at himself. “This relearning is like doing that all over again, but even more difficult since I can’t do what I intend to do.”

“You couldn’t before,” she said emphatically. “Now you can.”

He shrugged. “I can sometimes.”

She frowned more deeply. “Most of the time. You do what you mean to do three-quarters of the time now.”

He smirked. “Have you been keeping a ledger of my progress that I don’t know about?”

“I’m proud of you, okay?” she blurted.

He raised his eyebrows, and she hunched her shoulders defensively. “I’m just… You thought you might not recover anything when you first got here. You’ve come a long way.”

His expression softened with fondness. “I haven’t tried to do anything particularly complex. Certainly nothing as complex as making a staff.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “Just try, and if you can’t do it right away, keep trying. You’ll get it.”

His smile widened. “Look at you, being all optimistic. If not for your scowl, I’d think you were trying to seduce me.”

She scoffed and gently shoved his chest. “Go make your staff, you brat. I’ve got reports to read.” She started back toward the couch, but Felassan grabbed her hand before she could get very far.

He pulled her close and stroked the metal joint of her left wrist. “Ise inor vhenan. Do you know what this means?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “‘Heart of fire’?” she said hesitantly.

“‘Fire in the heart,’ yes,” he said. “It’s an Elvhen term for someone who refuses to give up, even when the odds are stacked against them.” He smiled faintly. “Determination to the point of stubbornness.”

“Uh-huh,” she said flatly. “You’re calling me the stubborn one here, I guess?”

His smile widened. “I’m saying you are the fire in my heart, Tamaris. And I appreciate your stubborn reminders that I am, in fact, getting better.”

Her belly burst into giddy butterflies. The fire in my heart...

She bit the inside of her cheek to stop a stupid grin from spreading across her face. She gave him a chiding look instead. “Now who’s trying to seduce whom?”

His smile curled with mischief, and he tipped her chin up with a gentle finger. “Not when you have so many fascinating reports to read,” he murmured. He placed a sweet kiss on her lips, and for a blissful moment, she melted helplessly into his kiss.

He leaned away from her with a smile, and Tamaris grinned goofily at him before tottering back to her spot on the couch. Felassan chuckled and returned to his desk, and it was with a light and happy heart that Tamaris returned to her pile of reports.

Their evenings were spent with Varric and Dorian discussing the ways they could use Felassan’s information to benefit the wolf hunt. Tamaris felt that getting in touch with the Grey Wardens’s commanders should be a top priority. “We should be telling them not to kill the last two archdemons, right?” she said one night as they gathered at the dining table with Dorian’s crystal. “They should know the archdemons might be guarding against the Blight, so if anything, the Wardens should be protecting the archdemons from being found by the darkspawn.” Based on the information that Felassan had outlined, they had come to the conclusion that events like the Fifth Blight happened when the darkspawn infected the archdemons, and not that the archdemons were galvanizing the darkspawn into action like everyone seemed to think.

Felassan shrugged. “It probably would be ideal for them to stop attacking the archdemons, yes.”

“But you don’t think they’ll stop,” Varric said.

Felassan smiled faintly. “I think they have several centuries’ worth of evidence that killing archdemons coincides with the end of a Blight event, and no reason to accept the hypothesis of a random elf.”

“Well, we still have to try,” Tamaris retorted.

“I am not saying not to try,” Felassan said. “But I also think it might be worth launching our own independent ventures to find the archdemons.”

Varric grimaced. “That’s a pretty ambitious undertaking, Jester.”

“True,” Felassan said casually. “You could also speak to individual lower-ranking Wardens rather than approaching their commanders.”

Dorian’s voice floated up from the crystal. “Why shouldn’t we try and approach the Warden-Commanders?”

“People in charge are usually disinclined to listen to strange ideas,” Felassan said. “They’re considerably more skeptical than the average person. The more experience they have, the more convinced in their rightness — and the more closed-off — they tend to be.”

Varric chuckled. “Not a fan of authority figures, are you?”

Felassan widened his eyes. “I respect authority figures deeply. That doesn’t mean I listen to them or follow what they say.”

Tamaris snorted with amusement. Felassan smiled at her, then casually waved his hand. “Anyway, we should start looking for stray lower-ranking Wardens. Not only might they be more open-minded, but they could lead us to Weisshaupt, if that’s still where you think the Wardens are gathering.”

Varric scribbled a memo in his notebook. “All right. More efforts to find the Wardens. Any other thoughts?”

Dorian spoke up. “I was thinking about the fact that Solas has so much knowledge at his disposal now, with those two other souls piggybacking on his body. It certainly puts us at a disadvantage, but he’s not the only person we know whose head is stuffed with ancient knowledge.”

Tamaris nodded ruefully; she’d been thinking the same thing. “You mean Morrigan.”

“Yes,” Dorian said. “We should try and get her assistance. There must be information from the Well of Sorrows that can benefit us.”

She ran her hand slowly through her hair. When Dorian spoke again, his voice was gentle, as though he could see her reluctance. “I know you wanted to let her raise Kieran in peace, but if Solas drops the Veil, there will be nowhere safe left for them to live. Or any of us, for that matter.”

“No, I know. You’re right.” Tamaris sighed and lowered her hand. “How should we even go about trying to find her? She doesn’t care about keeping in touch with anyone.”

Varric tapped his quill idly on his notebook. “The Hero of Ferelden would be a good bet. Nightingale said she and Morrigan were close back in the day.”

Tamaris frowned. “That was over ten years ago. And isn’t Mahariel already going off to spy on the qunari?”

“She’d have time to send a letter,” Varric said reasonably.

“I guess,” Tamaris said, somewhat reluctantly. She still felt guilty about the Hero of Ferelden doing so many tasks for the wolf hunt after everything she’d already done for Ferelden, but no one seemed to have any choice about getting pulled into all of this.

“Okay,” Varric said as he took another note. “Get the hero to write to the swamp witch.” He looked up at Felassan and Tamaris. “Any other ideas?”

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about, actually,” Tamaris said. She gave Felassan a critical look. “The Well of Sorrows. The fact that it even existed and that Mythal had warriors who were bound to her will. Don’t you think that’s fucked up?”

He pulled a little face. “It’s not a fate I would ever choose, that’s for certain.”

“So why did she make anyone choose it?” Tamaris demanded. “Why make anyone be bound to her will?”

“Remember that the Sentinel order arose around the time that the Evanuris were all starting to war with each other,” Felassan said. “In retrospect, I wonder if the rising of the Sentinels might have been the first sign that Mythal was worried she would be betrayed. An order of warriors who are bound to your will means they can’t betray you, not even if you die. Allegedly die, that is,” he added.

Tamaris folded her arms. In her opinion, that was no excuse. “What did Solas think of the Sentinels when Mythal started recruiting them?” she asked.

Felassan grimaced again. “He was… conflicted,” he said slowly. “On the one hand, Abelas and the others were willingly giving themselves into Mythal’s will, so technically they were submitting to her by choice. But by submitting to her, they were effectively making themselves her slaves.” Felassan twisted his lips ruefully. “It certainly kept him up at night, even if he didn’t speak against her outright.”

Tamaris relaxed slightly at this. “It didn’t seem to sit right with him when we were there, either.”

Felassan nodded and gave her an appraising look. “You never considered drinking from the Well, did you?”

“I mean, sure, I considered it for a second,” she said. “Until Solas refused point-blank to drink from it. If he was saying no, then I sure as fuck wasn’t going to do it.”

Felassan snorted a laugh. “Wise of you to follow his example. It would be a very different Tamaris sitting before us now if you had drunk from the Vir’Abelasan.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or perhaps you wouldn’t be sitting here at all, if Solas really is hosting Mythal.”

Tamaris frowned, but Dorian filled in his unspoken thoughts. “Fasta vass. You think he would have taken control of Tamaris via Mythal?”

Tamaris’s guts went cold at the thought, and Felassan’s answer only discomfited her more. “It’s possible,” he said.

“So that means Morrigan could be in trouble now, then,” Tamaris said tensely. “And Kieran too.”

“Also possible,” Felassan said.

“Shit. Fuck.” She ran her hands through her hair, then gestured at Varric’s notebook. “Write that down. Trying to find her should be a priority.”

“Fen’Harel won’t kill them, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” Felassan said.

Varric gave him a skeptical look. “If he’s willing to bring the Veil down on us, he’s probably not too concerned about killing one woman and her kid.”

“It’s not like that,” Tamaris said. “Solas doesn’t want to kill more people than he has to.”

Varric looked at her in surprise, and Dorian sounded surprised as well when he replied. “That almost sounded like you’re defending him.”

“She’s not defending him,” Felassan said. “She’s just explaining him.”

She looked up to find Felassan smiling at her. But instead of smiling back, she frowned. “Can you explain something to me? Why did he trust her?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Who, Morrigan?”

She gave him a chiding look. “No. Mythal. She was so fucking shady. The dwarf stuff, the Well of Sorrows stuff, hiding her dragon without telling him so he thought she was dead, not to mention how smug and bitchy she was when I met her, and all the shitty things Morrigan said about being raised by her. How could Solas have trusted her?”

His smile began to melt into that look of anachronistic melancholy that made Tamaris’s heart twist. “I don’t know if it is possible to explain the strength of the ties that exist between them,” he said quietly. “Can any of us even imagine the depth of love that could develop between two beings who have known each other for several thousand years? Solas knew Mythal since he was barely more than a wisp. She was one of the main sources of pride that fed and fostered him before he became an elf. She shaped him in ways that none of us can fully understand. Even if he later realized that some of her proudest achievements were terrible mistakes, the depth of his devotion to her would have made him incapable of seeing her as truly flawed.”

Dorian hummed an acknowledgement. “Love is blind, hm?”

Varric grunted. “It’s a literary cliché for a reason.”

“It really is,” Felassan said. His tone was jocular, but his smile was wry and sad.

Tamaris reached over and squeezed his thigh. Then Varric snapped his fingers. “Hey, that reminds me. I was thinking about the whole Mythal-hiding-her-dragon thing the other day, and I thought, uh… well, what if Mythal’s dragon really is dead?”

Felassan straightened in his chair. “Interesting. Then how do you propose that she survived?”

Varric put his quill down. “Well, Hawke had this amulet that Flemeth told her to take to the Dalish. She took it to our friend Merrill’s clan, and Merrill did some kind of ritual, and Flemeth popped out of the amulet like… like, uh…”

“Like magic?” Dorian suggested wryly.

Varric laughed. “Yeah, I guess. Obviously.”

Dorian chuckled, but to Tamaris’s surprise, Felassan just stared at Varric without laughing.

“Felassan, what’s wrong?” she asked.

He continued to stare at Varric. “Why didn’t you mention this the other day when I was talking about the dragons?”

Varric shrugged. “I didn’t think of it then.”

“I wish you had,” Felassan said. “That changes everything. If Mythal’s dragon truly was killed, but she had another piece of her life essence stored in an amulet…” He trailed off, then snorted a sudden little laugh. “Amulets are far easier to hide than dragons, you know.”

Varric shrugged and picked up his quill. “I mean, I could be wrong. You can read The Tale of the Champion yourself and see what you think.”

“You should read it, actually,” Tamaris piped in. “There’s more detail in there about Merrill and her eluvian, too.” She turned to Varric. “It’s the same eluvian that gave the Hero of Ferelden the blight, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what Daisy said,” Varric replied.

Felassan looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, an eluvian gave the Hero of Ferelden the blight?” he said sharply.

Varric tilted his head in an equivocal gesture. “Well, maybe it didn’t directly give Mahariel the blight, especially if only living stuff can have the blight. But it was definitely involved, from what Daisy told us.” He narrowed his eyes. “Hey, eluvians aren’t alive, are they?”

“No, they’re… they’re not alive,” Felassan said numbly. He kept staring at Varric in a stunned sort of way that made Tamaris nervous.

She tapped his thigh. “Felassan, are you–?”

He suddenly burst out laughing — a distinctly hysterical-sounding laugh. Tamaris shifted closer to him and held out her hand, and he grabbed it as he dragged in a breath.

She squeezed his fingers. “Just breathe,” she said soothingly.

He nodded, then burst out another uncontrolled laugh. “Just when I think I have a grasp on this time, I realize something enormously significant that I missed,” he wheezed.

“What do you think you missed?” Dorian asked.

Felassan giggled before dragging in another calming breath. “An eluvian that’s steeped somehow in the blight makes me think there is a specific place that it was keyed to access. A place that was so catastrophically affected by the blight that the eluvians connected to it might be growing red lyrium.”

Tamaris’s eyes widened. “Arlathan?” she breathed.

Felassan nodded and chuckled, and Tamaris sighed. “Fuck. So we should try and get Merrill somewhere safe too, then.”

Varric sighed. “I hate to tell you this, but I haven’t heard from Daisy in a while.”

Tamaris’s stomach went cold once more. “You think she’s working with Solas?”

Varric twisted his lips sadly. “She’d have good reason to, if he sweet-talked her with stories about the ancient elves.”

Felassan sighed. “That’s good.”

Tamaris frowned at him, affronted. “It’s good? What do you mean, it’s good? One more ally for Solas means one less for us!”

Felassan gave her a chiding look. “It would also mean that an eluvian leading straight to the Black City is under Solas’s control and not, for example, Tevinter’s. Neither is… ideal, but having that eluvian in Tevinter hands is probably worse.” He cocked his head. “Probably.”

“That hurts my feelings slightly,” Dorian said.

Felassan chuckled, then sighed and rubbed his forehead, and Tamaris studied him with a pang of sympathy. He looked so tired.

She squeezed his hand once more. He gave her a little smile, then squeezed her hand in turn before kicking his feet up on the table. “In any case, I know what’s next on my reading list.” He shot Varric a smirk. “Maybe you should just give me an annotated bibliography of your work so I can catch up on everything I need to know about the last twenty years.”

Varric huffed in amusement. “I guess I could get you a copy of all my works. I am just a humble servant to my loyal readers, after all.”

Felassan smiled at him. “A sweet sentiment. That reminds me, how is your most loyal reader?”

Varric rolled his eyes. “Cassandra’s fine. Yes, I wrote her a smut scene. And no, you can’t read it.”

Dorian burst out laughing while Felassan complained playfully about not being allowed to read Varric’s smut, and Tamaris listened to the three of them faux-bickering with a bittersweet feeling in her chest.

Later that evening, long after Dorian ended the call and Varric had gone home, Tamaris trudged gloomily back to the study to read some more reports. A minute later, Felassan sidled into the study as well.

He pushed some of her papers aside to sit down beside her, and Tamaris poked him in the arm. “Hey, don’t touch my mess. I have a system.”

He draped his arm over the back of the couch. “You’re not really going to continue working now, are you?”

She scratched her ear. “Well, I — there was one last report I was in the middle of reading, so I just want to finish it.”

“Finish it tomorrow,” he said.

She gave him a chiding look. “You’re being a brat.”

“And you’re working far too hard for someone who doesn’t actually have anything to do.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Do you have to rub it in? I feel guilty enough already.”

He tilted his head. “You feel guilty staying in this house with me while my magic is too uncontrolled to travel?”

Her eyes widened in dismay. “Wha– no, that’s not what I mean at all!”

“Then why bother feeling guilty?” he asked.

She gazed at him in exasperation. “It’s — I can’t just turn it off, okay? Everyone else is working hard, including you. I need to do something.”

He shrugged. “You can help me with making my staff.”

Her irritation melted into surprise. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “You have full control of your magic. It will form a stabilizing influence to help me channel mine into the ironwood.”

She smiled at the thought of helping Felassan with something magical, then wilted slightly. “Are you sure you don’t want Dorian’s help instead? His mana reserves are way stronger than mine.”

Felassan smirked. “Jealous, are you?”

“No, for once,” she said snarkily. “Just being practical.”

His smile widened. “So you admit that you are jealous of my friendship with Dorian.”

She rolled her eyes and picked up her half-read report. “Fuck off and let me read my report, will you?”

He chuckled and plucked the papers from her hand. “To answer your question, no. I don’t want his help. Even if he could help via the sending crystal, which he can’t, I would still be asking for your help instead.”

“And why’s that?” she grumbled.

“Because I’ll enjoy feeling the hum of your magic in my fingers when I use the staff,” he replied.

She looked at him with fresh curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll leave a magical signature in the wood if you help me make my staff,” he explained. “It will be an enjoyable feeling when I’m blowing apart our enemies.”

“Oh,” she said dumbly. His tone was casual, but she couldn’t help but feel oddly flattered that he would want to feel her magical signature during a fight.

She shyly tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Well, um. Sure, I’d be happy to help.”

“Excellent,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll let you know when I need your hands.”

She blinked in confusion. “Oh, you – you don’t want to do this now?”

“Oh, no,” he said casually. “My experimentation today proved that I need more time to practice the spells for imbuing our signatures into the wood, not to mention tailoring it to the size-modulating spell I’ll be putting on the staff.” He lifted one eyebrow. “Besides, we’re not working anymore tonight.”

“We’re not, huh?” she said wryly.

“No,” Felassan said. “We’re going to do something fun.”

His tone and the curl of his lips were mischievous, and Tamaris smirked. “Like what?” she said drolly.

His answer surprised her, though. “Like painting the walls.”

She wilted. “You want to start painting the walls? Now?” She eyed the plain washed walls of the study with some resignation.

“Not those walls, and not that kind of paint,” he said. “Come.” He stood up and held out his hand.

Tamaris sighed and allowed him to pull her up from the couch. He led her to the foyer and jerked his thumb at the east-facing wall of the foyer, which they’d painted a deep peacock blue. “This bores me,” he said. “I think we should paint a mural.”

She balked slightly. “A mural?” Her mind instantly went to the murals Solas had painted on the walls of the rotunda: those huge, floor-to-ceiling works that he’d painted during the year he’d spent by her side — beautiful masterpieces that she’d once considered as tributes to his love for her, but which had later been too painful for her to look at, leading her to avoid the rotunda altogether.

Felassan, as usual, picked up on her thoughts. He gave her a knowing look. “Not a mural like Fen’Harel’s. Something much simpler and much less planned.”

Tamaris gave him a cautious look. “What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing in particular, really,” he said. He looked at the wall and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “I usually just start painting and see where my hands take me.”

She gazed at him with growing confusion. “W-wait. You… do you know how to paint?”

He shrugged. “I have been known to paint sometimes.”

She gaped at him. “Seriously? Why didn’t you tell me?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Maybe I didn’t want to be made fun of for having yet another hobby.”

She gently punched his arm. “Don’t be stupid! I would never make fun of you for being an artist! Would I have seen anything you painted? In the Vir Dirthara or any ancient temples or anything?” Her eyes widened. “Or — or even at Skyhold?”

He gave her a mischievous grin. “You flatter me by suggesting anything I paint would be worthy of such illustrious locations.”

She eyed him shrewdly. “That's not an answer.”

He chuckled. “You’re right. And you might have seen some of my work, though it would be hard to tell it apart from the work of others.”

“What do you mean?”

He let out a little huff of laughter and rubbed his mouth, as though he was thinking of a private joke. “Did you ever see quick, messy paintings of elven warriors going to battle on halla?”

“Yes, in many places,” she said. She paused, then double-taked at him. “Wait, those were by you?”

“Not just me,” Felassan said. “Fen’Harel’s rebels had a tendency to leave our mark in the places where we foiled our foes.”

Tamaris stared at him, then smiled. “You vandalized the Evanuris’s property while you were freeing their slaves?”

Felassan grinned. “I like to think we improved their decor, much like you and I are doing in this house. Now let’s see how we can improve this wall, why don’t we?” He started opening the pails of paint, then glanced up at Tamaris. “Can you bring some bowls so we can mix the colours?”

“Sure,” she said. She hurried to the kitchen and came back a minute later to find that Felassan had already laid some dropcloths on the floor along the base of the wall.

He gestured to the floor. “Set them here. You don’t mind ruining those bowls with paint, do you?”

“I don’t give a single fuck about these bowls,” she said.

He snickered. “I figured as much.” He poured together some red and yellow paint to make a deep orange shade, then looked up at her as he stirred the paint. “What colours are you in the mood for?”

She blinked in surprise. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” he said drolly. “What colours do you want to start with?”

She recoiled. “What? No. I’m not — I’ll just watch.”

He paused in his stirring. “That won’t do. You have to paint.”

She laughed at his bossy tone. “No I don’t. I’ll just watch.” She sat on the carpet and wrapped her arms around her knees, perfectly willing to watch Felassan the way she used to watch Solas during the long nights when he painted his murals.

Felassan gave her a chiding look, then gestured for her to come closer. “Come, avise. Paint with me. You’ll like it.”

She stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t know how to paint.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think I knew how to paint before I started vandalizing the Evanuris’s walls?”

“I thought you were ‘improving their decor’, not vandalizing,” Tamaris retorted.

He grinned. “Silly me. Of course that’s what we were doing. Now come, I need your help to improve this wall. What colours do you want to add?”

She gave him a knowing look. “If I touch that wall, I’m going to fuck it up.”

“Anything you do will be an improvement over the wallpaper that was here before,” he said.

She snorted a laugh. “You know what, that’s true.”

He raised his eyebrows hopefully, and Tamaris finally gave in with a sigh. “Fine. How about…” She paused and gazed idly into his expectant violet eyes.

“Purple,” she said. “Mix me up some purple paint.”

“Purple it is,” he said. He mixed together some red and blue paint and added some white to lighten the shade, then held out the bowl.

She stood up and took the bowl. “I need a brush.”

“Use your fingers,” he said.

She recoiled slightly. This would make an enormous mess if she painted with her hands. “Are you serious?”

“I never joke about vandalism,” he said. “I take it very seriously.”

He was grinning. His eyes were dancing with mischief and he looked so carefree and young, and Tamaris couldn’t help but smile in response to his joy.

She blew out a breath. “All right, but if it looks really bad, we’re painting over it.” She dipped her fingers in the thick paint, then smeared some of it on the wall.

She immediately regretted what she’d done. The paint began to run in slow drips, and Tamaris was forced to catch it with her fingers and smear it even more. Exasperated, she started rubbing the paint haphazardly onto the wall until it was a blobby patch of purple.

She threw Felassan an I-told-you-so look. “See? It looks like shit.”

He shook his head. “Keep going,” he said. He was still smiling, and Tamaris gazed at him with rising annoyance.

“Keep going with what?” she demanded. “It’s an ugly smudge.”

“You had something in mind when you started painting,” he said. “Keep going with it.” He picked up the bowl of orange paint, then padded over to the other end of the wall and began dashing the paint onto the wall in quick practiced strokes that clearly told her he’d done this a thousand times.

She sighed, then dipped her fingers in the paint again and kept slapping it haphazardly onto the wall in a series of vaguely rounded irregularly-sized blobs. A few minutes later, she set the bowl down and wiped her hand on the dropcloth before looking over at what Felassan was doing.

Her eyebrows jumped up. Felassan was painting a series of what looked like stylized orange teardrops that varied in size and shape, but the shifting shades of orange and red and yellow were clearly meant to signify fire.

She narrowed her eyes. The shifting colours in his painted flamedrops represented such a subtle blend. How was he managing to make the colours meld so seamlessly? He was holding the bowl of orange paint, but the buckets of yellow and red were sitting on the floor a good two metres away from him.

She stepped away from the wall, and Felassan looked over at her. His gaze darted to the wall, and he smiled. “Clouds,” he said.

She grunted and rolled her eyes. “Really original, I know.”

He gave her a chiding look. “A wise woman once said you shouldn’t be so down on yourself.” He approached her end of the wall and examined her purple smudgy clouds for a second, then dipped his fingers into his bowl of orange paint and added a dash of orange to the underside of each cloud.

Tamaris raised her eyebrows. The orange underline gave the impression that each blobby cloud was lit from below by the setting sun. It was exactly what she’d been thinking of when she started to paint: sitting on the roof with Felassan while the fading light of day lit the clouds aglow from beneath.

She looked at him, and he raised his eyebrows. “Better? Worse?” He smiled faintly. “Did I ruin your artistic vision?”

She swallowed hard, feeling oddly emotional by his addition. She shook her head. “You un-ruined it,” she said gruffly.

His smile widened. “Oh good. I’d always dearly hoped to un-ruin something during the course of my life.”

She scoffed, then nodded her chin at his drops of flame. “What are you doing over there?”

“Sketching,” he said. “Working out an idea.” He nodded at her clouds. “Keep going. Or paint something else.”

She nodded, but as Felassan returned to his side of the wall with his bowl of orange paint, she couldn’t help but watch him instead. He continued painting drops of flame on the wall, then eventually put the orange paint aside and picked up the bucket of green paint instead. He set the bucket on the floor by his feet and started scrawling green shapes on the wall that looked like stylized leaves, and Tamaris was once again awed — and bemused — by how seamlessly he seemed to be blending the orange of the flames into the green of the leaves.

She watched him with unabashed interest, her own painting endeavours forgotten in favour of watching Felassan instead. He eventually paused and smiled at her. “If you’re going to stare, this really is your chance to paint a picture. The paints are open and everything.”

She smiled at his cheeky remark. “I’d honestly rather watch,” she said. “I want to see what you come up with.”

He gave her a reproving look, and she waved dismissively. “I mean it. I’ll have more fun watching you than I will with actually painting.”

He frowned at her for a moment longer, then finally shrugged. “All right, but you’re going to start off the next mural. I insist on it.”

She wilted slightly. “The next one?”

He nodded. “We need to cover every wall of this house with filthy knife-ear art.”

Tamaris burst out a laugh. “That would be pretty good revenge for how aggressively Orlesian this house was before we got here.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” he said complacently. “I have always enjoyed exacting petty revenge through the use of paint.”

She beamed at him. “You really are a vandal, you know that?”

He bowed politely to her. “Thank you, Tamaris. That warms my heart.”

She chuckled and settled on the carpet once more. She hadn’t been self-deprecating when she’d told Felassan she wanted to watch him instead of doing the painting. She’d always enjoyed watching artists working on their craft — and one of the artists she’d most enjoyed watching, unfortunately, was Solas.

She’d never seen an artist who worked the way Solas did. Watching him transform the rotunda walls from raw rock to smooth plaster to charcoal sketches and finally to fully-rendered murals had been, in her eyes, its own form of magic. Solas’s careful stepwise method had also been something to marvel at; he always started with a lovingly-crafted small-scale sketch of each design before translating the sketch to the walls in perfect proportion, and the actual painting of the mural was an all-night process that exemplified his focus and methodical devotion to the art. During those all-night painting sessions, Solas was intent and focused and almost completely silent, and Tamaris couldn’t remember a single time when he’d faltered or made a mistake in the execution of his spectacular works.

Watching Felassan paint, on the other hand... truly, it was nothing like watching Solas. Felassan hadn’t planned a thing, opting instead to experiment directly on the walls with his fingers instead of the sorts of fine brushes that Solas used to use. His movements were loose and relaxed and lacking in precision, and he kept jumping between the different elements of the scene he was creating: adding a bunch of those green leaf shapes, then adding some more flames, then swiping a streak of gold in a bold vertical arch through the cluster of flames before starting to add some violet clouds to his end of the mural. He hummed to himself as he worked and made little playful comments to her over his shoulder, and when the occasional drop of paint rolled slowly down the wall from his quick and messy application, he simply blended it back into the wall or painted over it with a new leaf or flame.

She stared shamelessly at Felassan’s emerging work. His application method appeared slapdash and careless, but the effect was anything but; his work was striking and bold, and to Tamaris’s eye, very appealing. The lines varied from dark saturated lines to graceful faded streaks, giving his mural a dynamic and energetic feel that was more emotion than story, and Tamaris felt energized in turn as she watched him moving from one end of the wall to the other and back.

The longer he worked, the less he spoke and the more focused he seemed to become, even as his movements remained loose and flowing. He looked incredibly graceful as he moved across the wall, and he was using both hands now to paint, and–

Wait. Both hands? she thought. And with a jolt, she realized that Felassan was no longer holding a bowl of paint in his hand. Even so, the colours continued to flow from his fingers as though he had dipped his fingers into the paint. But how…?

She narrowed her eyes and watched him more carefully. And eventually, with a rising of wonder, she realized what he was doing. He kept gesturing in the direction of the paints and twisting his wrists as though he was dipping his hands into the paints, and the amount of paint in the buckets and the bowls was actually decreasing in accordance with the movements of his hands.

It’s magic, she thought in amazement. He’s using magic to pull the paint to his hands and to blend the colours. Her heart was pounding now with excitement at his exquisitely controlled magical feat, but she continued to watch him in silence, unwilling to disturb his flow by commenting on what he was doing.

He flicked his wrist at the bucket of gold paint, then dragged his fingers in a long horizontal line from the center of the vertical arch and back toward Tamaris’s end of the wall, and Tamaris finally recognized the shape that dominated most of the mural: a stylized bow and arrow, with a background of flames toward the front of the bow that blended into leaves toward the end. Enthralled by his design and by the magical way he was executing it, she wrapped her arms loosely around her knees and continued to watch as he added a silvery-white bowstring, then a purple-silvery arrowhead and purple-and-red fletching to the arrow.

He stood back briefly to study the design before going over the golden bow and arrow again with a smattering of brown, making the bow and arrow look like a combination of wood and gold.

He paused again and idly scratched the back of his neck, and Tamaris watched with a swelling of affection as he smeared some paint on his neck.

He turned to face her then. “Look at me?” he said.

She lifted her eyes to his face, and her breath stalled in her chest; his beautiful amethyst eyes were bright with focus. He studied her face intently for a long second, then nodded and turned back to the wall. He flicked his wrist at the paints, then started painting over the leaves again with a slightly lighter shade of green that blended into a darker green at the edges.

When he finished re-painting the leaves, he stood back once more and folded his arms as he surveyed his work, and Tamaris stared shamelessly at his handsome profile as he studied the wall. He carelessly flicked his wrist at the paint buckets, then flicked his fingers at the wall, and Tamaris watched as a fine blend of white and bright blue droplets appeared in misty-looking streaks near the upper edge of the bow — a fine blend that would have required painstaking care to paint by hand, but which Felassan’s magic had rendered quick and doable. His magic, which he was clearly gaining better control over with every passing day…

Her heart throbbed again with an undeniable surge of pride. Felassan continued to flick streaks and curls of fine blue-and-white droplets across the mural, and Tamaris eventually realized that the streaks and curls looked like smoke, which made sense given the omnipresent stylized fire that dominated much of the right-hand side of the mural.

He stepped away from the wall one more time to examine his work, then finally nodded in satisfaction. He turned to face her with a smile. “So? What do you think?”

“I love it. It’s beautiful,” she said. Then she immediately regretted her inane compliment. It sounded so paltry compared to the way her heart was pounding in her chest, as though it wanted to escape the confines of her ribcage and leap into his open hands.

He sat beside her with a satisfied sigh. “I’m glad you like it. It’s us, after all.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What?”

He gestured at the wall. “It’s us. A slow arrow dancing with flames. And a little bit of deep mushroom smoke, of course.” He smirked, then gently lifted her chin and studied her face. “I’m not convinced that I captured the shade of your eyes right, though.”

“My eyes?” she said stupidly.

“Yes, your eyes,” he said vaguely. He was still carefully examining her face. “Those green shapes on the left half of the wall.”

Those are my eyes? she thought. The green shapes he’d painted, then painstakingly repainted a second time to adjust their shade: those were meant to represent her eyes?

He chuckled and lowered his hand. “Tell me the truth. You thought they were leaves, didn’t you?”

She stared wordlessly at him, overwhelmed by the perfection of this moment — the perfection of him. Her body was still buzzing with energy from watching him paint, and her heart was humming besottedly from the careful way he’d inspected the verdancy of her eyes. The memory of his loose and joyful movements danced across her mind as surely as his paint-slathered hands had danced across the wall, and gods, the laughter in his voice and in his smile…

Her heart was pounding so loudly that she was shocked he couldn’t hear it. She swallowed hard and gazed at the mural once more — this mural that was them, that was her and Felassan together: a slow arrow dancing in flames, splashed boldly across the wall of this house for everyone to see. As Tamaris studied the bold jewel tones of the freshly-painted wall, it dawned on her that she had never seen any mural more beautiful than the one Felassan had just rendered with his magic and his own two hands.

Tamaris tore her gaze away from the mural and met his bright violet eyes. “I love you,” she said.

A slow and brilliant smile lit his entire face, like a bursting of joy that rendered him even more painfully handsome than he already was. Tamaris stared gormlessly at him, her throat thickening with emotion as she took in the tenderness in his face.

He cradled her neck in his palm. “I know, Tamaris,” he murmured.

Her heart squeezed with nerves. She swallowed hard, then smacked his chest. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”

His smile grew wider and softer at once. “I know you love me. I don’t need to hear you say it.”

Feeling slightly stung, she scoffed and tried to push him away. “You’re so fucking smug.”

He pulled her easily into his lap. “I don’t need to hear you say it, but I have been waiting for you to say it first.”

“Why?” she complained. “Why did I have to say it first?”

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated to say it back if I said it first,” he replied.

She darted him a cautious look. If he said it first? So that meant — did that mean…?

She cleared her throat and rubbed at the dent on her metal arm. “So… say it back, meaning…?”

He chuckled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It means that I love you too, felasil’ain. But I think you already knew that.”

Her heart leapt into her throat, and she gazed silently into his glittering amethyst eyes. As usual, Felassan was right. He’d been right when he said that empty words couldn’t wipe her bitterness away. And now, in this moment, he was right when he said that mere words of love weren’t necessary. Just because he’d never said he loved her didn’t mean she didn’t know — and if she dug beneath the surface of her own stubborn insecurity, she could openly admit that she’d known all along.

She knew Felassan loved her; of course she knew, because it was infused into his every act. He made foods that he knew she would like and concocted herbal remedies for her withdrawal and her pain. He offered her massages and pulled her out of her terrible moods with his terrible jokes. He kissed her like there was nothing else he would rather do, and he fucked her like he was trying to wring every last shiver of pleasure from her body, and he was patient — almost unfathomably patient. He listened while she talked about Solas, and he’d tolerated the torture of their heated trysts until she was ready to have sex again, and he’d waited quietly while she held back the words of love that seemed to consume her more with every passing day.

No longer would she be consumed by those words. No longer would she be held hostage by them — especially not when his feelings for her were so patently obvious.

She straddled him and cradled his paint-stained neck in her palms. “I love you,” she said huskily. “I — you’re right, okay? I wanted to say it for weeks but I felt — I don’t know, shy or something. I was being stupid.”

He squeezed her waist soothingly. “You were not being stupid. And there’s no need to explain. I told you, I don’t need you to say it.”

“Well, I need to say it,” she retorted. “And you deserve to hear it, okay? I fucking love you.”

He grinned at her, then broke into laughter. “How is it possible for someone to be affectionate and rude at once?”

She tsked and smacked his chest. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, and she kissed him.

He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her tongue with his, and Tamaris happily capitulated to the heat of his kiss. When he broke away from her lips to laugh, she was helpless to do anything but laugh in turn.

They sat twined together on the floor, kissing and laughing and making fun of each other in husky murmured voices, and Tamaris basked shamelessly in the ample evidence of Felassan’s love. His lips pulled gently at hers and his hands moved carefully over her body, and there on the wall, looming benevolently over them in bright and brilliant strokes of colour, was the most visible sign of his love: a mural rendered by Felassan’s bare hands — a mural showing his slow arrow dancing fearlessly and boldly through the fire of her heart.

#felassan #save felassan #felassan romance #felassan/lavellan #felassan x lavellan #the love that grows from violence #pikapeppa writes #elbenherzart

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cowboisadness · 4 years ago

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Hang ‘Em High {Arthur Morgan x OC} Chapter 13

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x FemOC

Summery: Belle Hawthorne is high society looking to escape her mean husband. A robbery by the Van Der Linde gang could be her chance. Can she escape his cluches and possibly discover what love should feel like?

Warnings: Micah being Micah

.....

Chapter 13

I couldn’t stop thinking about Arthur's reaction after telling him I wanted to kill that no-good bastard. Currently stood in the cover of Arthurs tent as Miss Grimshaw checked my wound for any infection and helped me apply fresh dressings. She had seen so much of me at this point it didn't bother me anymore. She really was the mother hen of this gang. His reaction was one of confusion at first. His brows furrowed and his mouth hanging open like he had a million questions but didn’t know which one to start with. The moment I began to laugh his expression relaxed, snorting out a laugh along and shaking his head. Like it was a lighthearted joke shared amongst friends. To be honest, I am undecided on if it was a joke or not, I couldn’t see myself going through with something like that but I imagined it none-the-less The rage was true, I felt it from the depths of that pit in my stomach and as it spread throughout me. I wanted him to die, to be rid of him for once and for all, it would be the only thing to quell this feeling.

My wound travelled from my breastbone and down just shy a couple of inches from my navel. A clean-cut that wasn’t deep enough to require stitches but enough to scar. Another to add to the collection.

Once done I made my way to the scout fire just on the edge of camp. It was hardly used by other members of the camp so the fire was out, everyone preferring to sit amongst each other at the main fire. Kicking the burnt logs on top I collected what I was after, the charcoals that sat at the bottom. Old wood that was burnt for so long and almost starved of oxygen. It was perfect for what I needed. I took my blackened treasure to the lakeside, collecting a pestle and mortar as well as a spare metal cup on the way. Sitting on the small jetty I began to make my concoction, breaking down the charcoal till it was nothing but dust and adding small amounts of water. Mixing it all together till a black paste was formed. I kept at it crushing as much of the charcoal until it was thoroughly mixed. The sun was high in the sky at this point, its rays reflecting off the ripples as it licked the stony shore. I continued what I was doing even as I heard footsteps on the jetty coming towards me. The person stopping just a couple of feet away from me, my back still turned away from whoever it may be. “What you up to girly?”

It was Micah. I had only interacted with him a few times since being here. His comments always seem condescending and slimy. The girls had warned me about him, none of them liked him and actively tried to keep away from him after comments he had made towards each of them. I wouldn’t have guessed he had been here only a handful of months given how he hangs around Dutch like a bad smell. “Charcoal mixed with water. Going to use it as eye makeup to hopefully make me less recognisable while out of camp.” “I thought only whores painted their faces. Whores and clowns.” He sneered

“They possibly do.”

“Bit of a shame to ruin that young pretty face with makeup don’t you think? If you ever want to leave camp for a drink just come along with me. I’ll make sure to take care of you.” His voice turned lower with seductive tones. Worthy to make the bile from your stomach make its way up and stick to the back of your throat.

“Um, thank you for the offer, Micah, but I think I’ll feel much safer disguising myself somehow no matter who is with me.” I still didn't turn to him, hoping that he would take the hint that I didn't want his company.

“Suit yourself. But the offer still stands, I’m willing to take you out on the town. Show you how us folks really party. None of that pricey wine and fancy petticoats you’re probably used to.”

I finally turned to him, looking at him deadpan in the hopes he would get the hint. He seemed too as he raised his hands in defeat and began walking backwards back into camp. That man desperately needs to go into town himself and pay for a woman. Hopefully, then he might just be a bit more bearable to converse with. But no woman would be paid enough to lay with that man.

Once done I poured the contents into the metal cup then cleaned out the pestle and mortar before returning it. The camp was much quieter than this morning when Sadie threatened to slice up Pearson. Arthur decided to take her out of camp and help with collecting any provisions Pearson needed. Knowing what Sadie had been through, losing her home and husband brutally and thus having her life flipped completely on its head, I wasn’t surprised by her overall behaviour. A once hardworking and happy woman with nothing to lose. I understood that in a way. They both arrived back, Sadie now sporting pants instead of a dress. They both unloaded the wagon and then Arthur was off again to meet Dutch back in Rhodes. I made my way over to the wagon to help organise the provisions and to offer my help in preparing the stew. Give Sadie and Pearson a break from each other. “Nice look you got going on, Sadie.” I smiled at the woman as I approached. She turned towards me, a box of vegetables in her hands.

“Why, thank you. Thought I would take a leaf outta your book. They are sure more practical than a damn dress.”

“More comfortable too.” She hummed her agreement, placing the box down and then leaning against the wagon and lighting a cigarette. She offered me one to take from the box and I gladly accepted. She lit another match and presented it to me for me to light it with. Smoke quickly fills the air between us.

“So how are you doing?” She asked, waving the match in the air and then flinging it into the dirt.

“I’ve had worse. What about you?”

“This place is driving me nuts. Glad I could get out for a while. Shooting those no good Raiders that ambushed us helped me relieve some of the rage.”

“You got ambushed?” I looked at her with wide eyes, smoke being exhaled as I spoke.

“Relax, I ain’t afraid to hold my own...Ain’t afraid of dyin’ neither.”

“Hmm, I knew that feeling once,” I replied, thinking back to that night looking over the balcony railings in Saint Denis. Dying by his hand was a petrifying thought but dying by my own was something I thought about often back then.

“Oh, I got what you asked for. Sumac flowers and beet juice?”

“Thank you so much, Sadie. This is perfect.” I boasted, taking the items from her.

“What you need it for anyway?”

“Sumac and beets are natural dyes. Hoping together they will change my hair colour to a dark red.”

“Well, that sounds mighty smart.” She smiled, blowing out smoke into the air above and then flinging the cigarette into the dirt along with the matches. We parted ways after that and I began to help Pearson prepare the stew. He seemed considerably more at ease with me as his assistant chef this time around. We exchanged mindless chatter about the weather and what variations of stew he could create. That was until he mentioned his time in the Navy. Once he started he couldn’t stop. But I listened along with a smile on my face and the occasional ‘uh huh’. After the threats he received this morning and gave out no less, I wasn’t in the position to stop him from having this moment of happiness. Once everything was in the pot and beginning its slow boil, I made my way over to Karen for a towel I could borrow. Collected a fresh pair of clothing and a bar of soap and made my way to the lake. Beet juice and Sumac in hand. I'd crushed the Sumac into a powder after preparing dinner then mixed it in the jar that held the beet juice. It was very dark red, like old blood or wet artists paint. With my dark blonde hair, it should have no problem changing the overall colour while still looking somewhat natural. I’ll look like a new woman no doubt. I followed along the waters edge until I was out of sight from the camp but still close enough I would be heard if anything was to happen. Placing the towel and soap on an old fallen log I made work on stripping my clothes and dressings, dropping them on the dirt around me. They were sweat-soaked anyway with how hot it can get here during the day. Opening the jar I was met with the powerful smell of beets, that earthy smell along with the scent the sumac was giving off was overwhelming but thankfully not too unpleasant. Making my way into the lake I began pouring the mixture onto the top of my head, making sure to get every strand completely saturated and not paying any mind to how it will stain my skin on the back of my neck and down my back where it lays. Leaving a trail in my path I flung the jar back onto the shore once I was waist-deep. Thankfully the lake remained shallow quite far out, given that I couldn’t get my wound wet. I began to wash, humming to myself at the delightful coolness the water granted. I’m starting to get used to this. Bathing in lakes instead of warm and deep porcelain tubs. Fish surrounding me instead of bubbles and the smell of the earth instead of Lavender hair oils. Although I'd probably be saying the exact opposite if I was in colder climates. I spent more time than I usually would bathing. Cupping the water and letting it pour over my shoulders and arms to wash away the soap and dirt, being careful to avoid the cut as I went. The scabs formed a ridge along my flesh, the skin tight and red around the edges. A constant reminder.

Leaning back I dipped my head into the water to remove the dye and just hoping it had done its job. The water surrounding me turned the same deep red as I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling out any knots as each digit travelled from the top to the ends. An overwhelming sense of tranquillity washed over me as I looked out beyond the lake to the land ahead and around me. A small flock of ducks milling about further up, diving under the water to catch any small fish swimming below them. I slowly started making my way along, hoping I didn't disturb them. The cool water lapped around my waist and rippled behind me. Perching myself next to a large boulder standing out of the water to watch them as they quacked and ruffled their feathers. I was lost in my thoughts once again for a short while, the sounds of my name being called from the shore behind me bringing me back to where I was. I made my way around the boulder to see Arthur standing at the shore beside my scattered clothing. We saw each other at the same time, my arms coming up to cover myself, him turning around to face away from me. No doubt he saw. I could feel the heat flushing to my face, my cheeks probably as red as my hair should be. “Jesus...are you okay? Your cut opened up?” He asked, fidgeting on his feet as he looked in the direction of camp

“What? Erm, no, I’m fine.” I shook my head. He turned back slowly then, his eyes going everywhere else until they landed on me, then looked down to where my clothes lay.

“W-well what's with the blood all over here?”

“Oh...that’s beet juice. I’m fine, Arthur. I’m coming out in a moment.”

“Okay...Well, Hosea is looking for you.”

“Okay...Thank you, Arthur.” I said more quietly, my cheeks still burning and my arms wrapped tightly around my chest. His eyes met mine for a moment and I expected him to turn away again like the gentleman he usually is, but he didn't. And neither did i. He inhaled deeply, nodding his head then turned to make his way back to camp with some haste.

I leaned against the boulder, exhaling a breath I didn't know I was holding in. The chill of the water returning as my body began to cool down.

Despite the embarrassment of what just happened I thought to myself, out of all the men in the camp he was the only one I was glad came looking for me. Anyone else I would be mortified.

I didn't mind Arthur seeing me like this. I trusted him...I liked him.

My whole body shivered, goosebumps forming all across my arms and chest. It wasn’t caused by the water or the air was beginning to lower in temperature.

With my lips curving up into a smidgen of a smile and a quiet sigh I admitted to myself that I liked that he saw me. I wanted him to.

@kashasenpai

#hang em high #hang em high fic #arthur morgan #arthur morgan fanfiction #arthur morgan x oc #arthur morgan x fem oc #rdr2 fic #fanfiction

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anomander-dragnipurake · 4 years ago

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Possessed Chapter Four: Victory

‘I forgot the living could turn off their consciousnesses for hours at a time.’

Luigi didn’t want to wake up and would’ve gladly sunk back into unconsciousness if he could. King Boo wasn’t letting him though; he wanted to wake the rest of the way up and he was the one in control.

‘It’s probably the one good thing about being alive, you get to take breaks from your mind.’

Fully awake now, Luigi’s head hurt in probably one of the worst headaches he’d had in his entire life. The light was too bright when King Boo opened his eyes and sitting up made him feel dizzy.

They were in a cell, one of a grand total of two in the basement of Peach’s castle. As far as cells went it was probably a nice one even if it was barren, it had even had proper bed, though it wasn’t comfortably by any means. King Boo frowned at all of it though, his experiences with E. Gadd’s boo vault and being trapped in a painting had instilled a very strong dislike of being locked up or confined in anyway.

‘It’s bigger though so I suppose it’s not as bad. We can actually move around some, that’s new. I’d like to know how we got here though.’

We were knocked unconscious. By something that had clearly hit them in the back of the head, judging based off the apex of the headache, and thus there was no way to know who or what had done it.

King Boo made a wordless sound of displeasure both internally and externally. ‘Stupid fragile meat suit.’ He might’ve complained more but before he could…

“Luigi?” Mario was at the cell bars, holding one as he peered in.

Luigi’s mouth twisted into another evil grin as King Boo slid off the bed. “Nope, a little whack on the head ain’t gonna get rid of me.” As he spoke, he strode confidently over to stand in front of Mario.

Mario grimaced but didn’t pull away from the bars. As long as they were there though, he should be safe. “Let my bro go.”

King Boo took great pleasure in saying, “No!”

“Do it or else.”

“Or else what? You’ll beat me up? Torture me? You’d really do that to your brother?”

Mario faltered. “What do you want? What will convince you to let him go?”

“Well, right now I want you to let me out of this cell.” King Boo could probably break out with a little bit of magic and possibly some force but he wanted Mario to be the one to let him out. “And the only thing that’ll convince me to let my puppet go is when I get tired of dealing with it.” ‘I’m still having fun though so don’t expect that any time soon.’ Great, perfect, just wonderful, Luigi’s suffering probably wasn’t anywhere close to being done yet.

“I’m not letting you out until you let him go.” … Did Mario have a plan? He had to, right? He was going to force King Boo out… somehow. Hopefully soon.

‘He can try but he won’t succeed.’ “I don’t think you understand the position he’s in. I’m in control of his body, he feels everything that’s done to it. So, if I were to say… let his meat suit starve to death, he’d feel it. Or what about this?” He pointed at Luigi’s arm, the one Polterpup had bitten. It hurt less now and was bandaged. He poked it, hard enough to awaken some of that pain. “If I rubbed dirt in this, how long do you think it would take for him to die of infection? I’ve heard it’s a pretty painful and slow way to go.”

“You…” Mario tried to interrupted but King Boo kept talking.

“I should be able to keep his body alive beyond what’s natural too, prolonging his suffering. How long do you think I’ll be able to keep that up? And how many of his bones do you think I can get away with breaking without hindering my own…”

STOP! No more, please! Hadn’t Luigi suffered enough already? He couldn’t bare the thought of going through any of that. Don’t do that to me please! I can’t…. I just… can’t.

King Boo laughed out loud. “If only you could hear his thoughts. He’s begging me not to do that to him because he just can’t. And he’s oh so frightened of me, it’s wonderful.”

Mario glared with far more hate in his eyes than Luigi had ever seen before. “Don’t.”

King Boo stepped closer to the bars, grabbing one as he looked smugly down at Mario. “You going to try to stop me?”

Mario, always the brave one, didn’t back down or even flinch. “Yes. So, don’t worry bro, we’re going to save you. Just hold on, okay?”

Luigi wasn’t sure he could but if anyone could get him out of this, it was Mario. So… he’d try to, not that he could really do anything else anyway.

“You’re going to have to chain me up tight enough that I can’t hurt your brother’s body. And even then, if I struggle enough, I should be able to anyway. And what about my magic, huh? How are you going to stop me from using that to free myself or hurt him? Also, if I absolutely must, I can stop his heart beating whenever I please and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”

Now Mario did falter, his look of determination wavering, further pulling down Luigi’s own brief hopes of being saved. There… really wasn’t much or anything Mario could do stop King Boo, was there? Unless he had a way to exorcise King Boo this instant, there was no way he wasn’t going to suffer, potentially a lot, and maybe even die. Though, King Boo had already made it clear that that would be his last resort so by the time he did it, it’d probably be end up being a mercy.

“So,” King Boo, continued, reveling in his victory and forcing that feeling onto Luigi to increase his misery, ��you’re going to unlock this cell door and let me leave unhindered.” Sealing King Boo’s victory once and for all. “Or I’m going to unbandage this,” he gestured to Luigi’s injured arm again, “and see how much worse I can make it with just my fingers. My suit’s already ruined, more blood on it won’t hurt.” ‘You think if I mess with it enough, I can get you to bleed to death from just this one wound?’

Please don’t. Luigi was already bracing himself for the worst though. In hindsight it made sense that King Boo could and would do such a thing if it could get him what he wanted.

‘I won’t, it’d be far too fast an end. And I like the infection idea more. I was just wondering because I actually don’t know that much about the living anymore, like how much blood you need to survive and stuff. Depending on what your brother does, I might get to learn some things though.’

Luigi never would’ve thought it possible but he was hoping Mario would do as King Boo said. As desperately as he wanted Mario to save him, he didn’t want to be tortured more than he wanted Mario to insist trying right now. He’d always been a coward like that. He wasn’t proud of it he couldn’t change it.

Mario glared at King Boo in silence, both hands gripping the bars now in a tight grasp. What he might be thinking, Luigi couldn’t guess but he could feel King Boo’s pleasure at the look of fury on his face. When he finally did speak it was through gritted teeth. “I hate you.”

“I know but you’re going to let me free anyway unless you’re okay with your brother suffering for a chance at defeating me. I’ll respect you if you are okay with that though, it’s certainly what I would do if I were somehow in your position.”

Those words seemed to break Mario. His shoulders sagged, the anger on his face melted to be more despair. “Fine,” he muttered under his breath after several seconds of defeated silence. He looked down and away for a second or two before looking back up to meet King Boo’s eyes again, with renewed determination. “Don’t think this means you win forever though. Luigi, I’m still going save you, okay? It’s just going to be a bit harder than I initially thought but I promise, I’ll do it as soon as possible.”

Luigi would’ve hugged him if he could and thanked him for acquiescing for now as well as for the promise. Mario had always been good at keeping his promises so honestly, he a had a bit more hope.

‘It’s foolish to believe he’ll save you,’ King Boo said with a scoff. Luigi didn’t care what he had to say about it though.

Mario turned and left, presumably to get the keys. When he returned to unlock the cell, his determination remained as he glared at King Boo, unafraid.

King Boo grinned at him as he strode out of the cell. His evil glee in the moment was almost overwhelming as it washed over Luigi – ‘sharing’ a body with an evil person was horrendous in more ways than he ever would’ve predicted. His victory here was so utterly complete, he was he let free of his confinement by his captor, he barely even had to do anything. He couldn’t have asked for a better way to rub it in Luigi’s face or Mario’s.

To rub it in even further he stuck Luigi’s tongue out at Mario and lifted his hands to either side of his head, making L’s with them; the universal sign of calling someone a loser. It was so childish, it was almost funny in the context of how messed up this situation was and how evil King Boo was. … King Boo didn’t care about being childish though; he was the victor here so he could do whatever he pleased. He even half-skipped his way out of the dungeon area.

They didn’t encounter anyone else, not even a passing toad, on their way up and out the rear of the castle. That was probably for the best, Luigi didn’t want King Boo to be tempted to hurt anyone should they try to stop him.

Luigi’s car was still where King Boo had parked it, making it easy to circle round to it and find. Where to now? Luigi asked with a mental sigh as King Boo hopped in.

‘Uh…’ King Boo paused, holding Luigi’s hand on the ignition. ‘I don’t actually know. I didn’t think this idea would work so I didn’t plan for anything beyond this point. … You don’t have any more friends, do you?’

Not really. Unlike Mario, he’d always been bad at making friends.

‘Heh, pathetic. I guess we’ll just have to find something fun to do then.’ With a laugh, he started the car and drove away.

That was fine though. Luigi wasn’t being physically tortured and Mario had promised to save him as soon as possible so. He just had to sit tight and be patient for now, everything would turn out okay in the end… hopefully.

There’s more to this story, I’m actively working it. But it’s more a part 2 due to it being so different, y’all will see why if/when you read the next part when it comes out. It’s either gonna be a sequel or just a part two, which here on tumblr is only gonna effect how I title the chapters.

#My writing #super mario bros #luigi's mansion #luigi's mansion 3 #Booigi #Luigi #King Boo #Mario #Angst #Bad guys win for now

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jabbajambler · 4 years ago

Text

Human

The Mandalorian/Din Djarin x f!OC

Word Count: 2,076

*GIF by @chewbacca*

Orange walls of rock surrounded us, closing in and weighing on my chest like an anvil. The setting sun was bright, but barely lit our path through the small ravine. Small lizards filled the area, alerted by the sound of our boots squishing in the mud.

The child's pod floated a few feet behind us, following us closely during the journey. Mando had connected the carrier to his vambrace. I had forgotten how high-tech Mandalorian armor could be.

"So, what do you think it is?" I looked up at the Mandalorian who stared straight ahead, acting as though he couldn't hear me.

"No clue." He finally answered.

I nodded, feeling the brooding silence build around once again. In all honesty, I did feel bad about knocking him out and holding him hostage on his own ship, but I didn't have a choice. I wanted to prove myself and as usual, I took it too far.

The ravine grew silent. All of the lizards and insects began to scatter, hiding within the walls or flying far away. I could feel a disturbance, a pair of eyes watching us from somewhere in the cliffs of the rock.

We stopped walking as everything began to still around us. The breeze, the chirping of the bugs, everything. Instead, an eerie quietness took its place.

Mando carefully scanned the area, his hand hovering over his blaster. I, too, tried to figure out what could be hiding, silently removing my blaster from its holster. I could sense it, a subtle movement within the crevices of the tarnished rock. I moved my blaster in its direction, but I was too late.

An orange alien jumped down from the walls, surprising the both of us. It swung an axe towards my head, the swift movement causing me to drop my weapon. Thankfully Mando had managed to jump back and shove the pod away from the action and swiftly grab ahold of his blaster.

The alien swung at me again when I stood back up, but I was able to dodge its attack. I quickly extended my staff, blocking the sharp axe's harsh swings. Oh, the things I would be able to do if I could just press the other button.

I was pushed back into the rocky wall, using my weapon to push it away as the alien forced the blade towards my neck. I glanced over at the Mandalorian with pleading eyes. He had no reason to save me. He could have left me for dead and continued with his mission like nothing happened.

But he didn't.

He snuck behind the alien and kicked in the backs of his legs, forcing the alien to drop to his knees in front of me. I shrunk the extensions of the staff back into its hilt, using the small piece to slam against the creature's face.

I could feel my chest heave as I tried to catch my breath. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me just yet." He spoke while raising his blaster.

Two more aliens dropped down, both holding similar axes to the first one. Mando nodded towards one, both of us silently agreeing to split up the battle.

I ducked as the alien swung for my head, a scowl forming on my face. Greef always told me that I needed to stop looking so angry because my face would get stuck that way. I think it may be a bit too late for that.

I sent a firm punch to its face, causing it to stumble back. Mando was dodging the alien's swings and grabbed his rifle from his back, using it to block the axe. He spun and jabbed the butt of the gun against the alien, sending an electric shock through its body as it hit the ground.

I looked over to find an alien running towards the child, a feeling of protectiveness flooding my senses. "MANDO!" I shouted, pointing towards the alien that was heading for the child.

Raising the rifle, Mando pulled the trigger and the alien disintegrated into nothing. That was certainly one impressive weapon.

Our heavy breathing became the only sound in the ravine as we tried to recoup from the action. Everything returned to normal so quickly, it was almost as though nothing had even happened.

Except for the remaining alien bodies.

Mando reattached his rifle to his back, watching as I searched the mud for my gun. I managed to find the gross blaster, my nose wrinkling at its repulsive appearance as I set it back in my holster.

"Well, wasn't that exciting?" I tucked the stray strands of brown hair behind my ears, a tired smile slowly forming on my face.

"Thrilling." He spoke in a monotonous tone, glancing around one last time before we continued on the journey.

The sky was painted in pastels once more as we settled down to camp. It was a little bit of beauty in a day of so much horror. Like a rainbow after a storm. The entire planet was painfully beautiful art that changed with every glance.

Mando's little cauterizer was the only sound on the desert planet. He worked to seal a cut he received during the battle with the orange aliens. I hadn't even seen that he was injured.

"I could help-" I started, interrupted by Mando scoffing.

"You'd probably try to kill me with it." He shook his head, focusing again on the task at hand.

I sighed and sat back, admiring the sky as the moon ascended into the sky. "You're not necessarily wrong, I guess."

I glanced over at him, the corners of my lips morphing into a small frown. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry, that I didn't actually want to kill him. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to actually say it out loud.

The child had somehow managed to crawl from its pod, now standing next to the Mandalorian with an outstretched arm.

I smiled. Its efforts floated through the growing bond we were forming.

Mando quickly picked the kid up and placed it back in its little home. He sat back down with a huff and began to work on fixing his broken chest plate, wincing when he moved his cut arm.

I rolled my eyes. The man was unbelievably stubborn, I doubt he would let me help even if his life were on the line.

I sat up as the child once again escaped it's orb, reaching for Mando's arm with his big eyes narrowed. Mando groaned and grabbed the little creature, setting it in the pod and closing it shut.

He sat back down and went to grab his tool, but ended up grabbing a handful of sand instead. He looked around, patting the sand as he searched for it, gradually becoming more irritated and confused.

"Looking for something?" I grinned and held up the tool he was desperately searching for.

His head snapped to meet my gaze, quickly trying to grab it from my hand. I pulled my hand back, holding it out of his reach.

"Let me help." I spoke softly. "I promise not to kill you. It's no fun if it isn't a fair fight.."

He sighed and looked down at his wounded arm. It still looked fresh and was prone to infection if it wasn't closed soon. Reluctantly, he nodded.

I moved closer to him, cautiously taking hold of his arm. Using a small pocket knife, I cut the fabric of his sleeve a bit wider so it wouldn't get caught in the wound.

The tool sparked as I turned it on, the sparks reflecting in the dark glass of his helmet resembled stars. I could have easily gotten lost in the flicker of its light.

I was careful while cauterizing the wound, barely touching the hot metal against the cut. My fingers brushed against the bare skin around it, but it was enough for him to tense and go stiff. I had almost forgotten how strange the contact must be to him.

"Relax... I said I won't kill you... yet." I looked up at him through my eyelashes, feeling a little smirk quirk at the corners of my mouth.

He shook his head and looked away, taking a deep breath as he allowed himself to relax next to me.

I closed my eyes while my mind went blank, focusing on the pain in his arm. My mind began wandering and I could feel a struggle, pain that was not from a measly cut but from loss. This wasn't my mind... it was his.

I tore my hands from his arm, my body shaking as I recovered. He turned and looked down at the barely visible cut. At this point, it was practically just a scar.

"What did you do?" He lifted his head and I could instantly feel his eyes lock with mine. I imagined they were brown, like mine, but maybe lighter.

"What do you mean?" I tilted my head and tried to act clueless. "I helped you with the cut, just like I said I would."

I tossed the tool on the ground, tearing my gaze from his. His eyes were nowhere to be seen, but they seared my skin with its burning stare. That made it even more difficult to lie.

"Sealing a wound doesn't make it disappear."

"I think the blood loss is going straight to your head. Are you feeling alright?" I raised an eyebrow and tapped my finger against his helmet.

He stared at me. I could only assume he was trying to figure out what I've done. His confused thoughts were overwhelming. I could suddenly hear his questions, each one putting him more on edge.

"Stop staring at me... It's weird." I crossed my arms, trying to get out of his head if only for a few moments. "Do you know what Greef would say if he caught you looking at me that long?"

He quickly regained his senses, listening to my words instead of his own thoughts. He let out a single airy chuckle. "He would have my head on a stake."

"Damn right he would." I could no longer hold back the smile that snuck on my face. I quickly wiped it away, or at least concealing it with my arms. "So, uh... Why'd you join the Guild, Mando?"

"I'm a Mandalorian... We are born to be bounty hunters and mercenaries. I didn't really have a choice."

"I know... Don't Mandalorians usually work independently? I've never met a Mandalorian who has an employer." I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His posture had relaxed, leaning towards the little lantern he had set up.

He paused. "And just how many Mandalorians have you met?"

"Quite a few, actually. There is a covert on Nevarro. Don't you know?"

I laughed off my slip up. Mandalorians had become sparse since the fall of Mandalore, everyone knew that. Still, I didn't want to lie. He just didn't have to know the whole truth yet.

"Yes... " I could feel his confusion grow once again. "Why did you join the Guild?"

I sighed and laid back in the soft sand. It was warm, but the cool breeze of the night would soon arrive and destroy the comfort I currently embraced. I rolled on my side and gazed into the helm.

"Sometimes it's nice to know someone has your back... I haven't had that for a while. I didn't think I needed it. Still, I like having a place to call home. I almost have a family... People to protect me, people I can trust."

"You seem perfectly capable of taking care of yourself." He chuckled.

"I am." I answered quickly and confidently. "But I ran around with a bad crowd. They outnumbered me and I needed backup... I'm sure you understand." I sent him a wink before yawning, folding my hands beneath my head. "Wake me when you're tired. If you try anything while I'm sleeping, I-"

"I know. You'll kill me." Mando mimicked me, poking at his chest plate with the soldering iron.

I could feel myself drift to sleep, no longer willing to force the smile off my face. Maybe we didn't completely trust each other, after all, I did kidnap him, but we had each other's backs. We both wanted the same thing and that was to get the hell off of this planet and pretend this never happened.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x oc #mandalorian #mandalorian x oc #din djarin #din djarin x oc #dyn jarren #jedi #oc #star wars #babyyoda #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters

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breakingsomething · 4 years ago

Text

the fall part nine - the truth about magic

basic summary: henrik meets some old friends, a LOT of worldbuilding happens, and the world falls apart

trigger warnings: vomit, kidnapping, violence

tagslist: @synonymsforzombie @spicydanhowell @skyewardlight @dreaming-of-stories-and-stars @cest-mellow

henrik was hurting. his phone was dead. and he had not realized how far away the golf club was.

fuck, maybe he was going to need help.

he wasn't far from one of his coworker's houses, and they were on... decent terms, so henrik figured he'd be able to rest a bit there and maybe ask him for a lift. just the thought spurred him on, giving him the energy to walk just the little bit further to the expensive houses two streets away.

this was one of the much nicer areas of brighton. of course, henrik and his coworker worked as surgeons. that was a high paying job. but henrik lived in a small flat with his brothers (because it was in a safe area to practice magic in, and because staying together had always helped keep anti at bay), and he couldn't help but feel slightly insecure as he limped up to the white doorway surrounded by green shrubs in a well kept garden and rung the bell. christ, even the doorbell sounded posh. henrik winced in pain as he shifted from foot to foot, trying to find a comfortable position to stand in while he waited.

after maybe ten seconds, he heard sounds from the other side. shuffling, footsteps, a loud barking. when the door opened, henrik was immediately greeted by two tiny dogs leaping up his legs, and he cried out, grabbing at the door so his legs wouldn't give out.

"down, bacon, down, hash!" a sharp voice yelled, and henrik's head snapped up from the yipping puppies to the man in the doorway. brown hair shaved at the sides, skin orange from fake tan, wearing plaid pajamas like a cartoon character. nevertheless, he grinned when he saw henrik, bright white teeth practically glowing in his mouth. "schneeplestein!" he boomed, throwing out his arms for a hug that henrik wasn't sure he wanted but felt obliged to accept. "haven't seen you at work in yonks! where've you been, friend? come inside!" he clapped henrik's back, to which he began coughing wildly. the other man didn't appear to notice. "i have another friend inside you may want to see - she also visited unexpectedly, haha! is this a surprise party or something?"

henrik couldn't answer. his head was suddenly spinning, and without warning, he grabbed at the man's shoulder as he collapsed to the floor.

"oh - oh, jeez! schneep, are you alright?" the man asked, yanking him back to his feet. "son of a monkey - what did you do to your leg and your back?"

"parker - don't - i -" henrik ran out of words and simply let parker drag him inside, hardly able to stand up himself. the man rambled on and on as henrik stared, awe struck, at all the intricate decorations and paintings on the walls. "nice place," he managed to say. "it's… changed a bit, since since i was last here."

"it sure has!" parker laughed loudly, guiding him towards what henrik remembered to be the kitchen, if it hadn't been renovated into a ballroom. "me and molly got pay rises, her especially - don't know what i'd do without that woman, by the way - and we redecorated! i like it much better. what do you think, schneep?"

"yeah," henrik agreed weakly. "lovely. also, i've mentioned that i'm not fond of the nickname -"

"and these are our dogs, bacon and hashbrown!" parker interrupted, gesturing towards the fluffy white dogs that were padding behind their owner, tongues hanging out. "very clever names, molly chose them. do you have a cat?"

"my brother has one -"

"ah, so that explains why they're so enthusiastic. they love cat smells. ellie, schneep's here!"

henrik paled as they entered the kitchen and he saw who it was that was sitting at the table.

a woman. long brown hair, a pale, heart shaped face, dark painted lips forming the shape of an "o". henrik didn't blame her; he was doing the same thing. "el - why are you here?"

"i could ask you the same thing," she snapped, scraping her chair back and standing. "nathan, what is henrik doing here?"

parker held up both hands beside his head - not that henrik was looking at him. his eyes were pinned on the furious looking woman at the table, her yellow-brown eyes stormy. she hadn't changed a bit in the six months it had been since he'd last seen her. he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting.

"i didn't invite anyone!" parker cried. "i'm still in my damn nightclothes!"

ellie and henrik simply stared at each other for a long moment, until henrik cried out in sudden pain and grasped one of the kitchen chairs. parker helped him sit, propping his leg up on another chair in front of him.

"what happened?" ellie asked, concern darkening her face despite everything. she shuffled over as parker rolled up his trouser leg, hissing through his teeth in sympathy.

"jeez louise, schneep, these are some bad burns," parker commented. "what the heck did you do? did someone hurt you? should we call a hospital?"

henrik shook his head rapidly. "no, no, no," he babbled desperately. this had so been a bad idea. "i - i need a lift, if that's ok. to the golf club a little ways away. i would have walked, but -"

"oh no, you can't walk like this!" parker exclaimed. "especially not - you could get an infection - what burned you, tell me th-"

he suddenly cut off, eyes glazing over unnaturally. he stood up straight almost robotically before turning and leaving the room. henrik watched him go, confused, before turning to ellie.

"what was that?" he laughed awkwardly, before his face fell. her expression, too, was completely blank for a moment before returning to its previous rage.

"why did you never call?" she asked angrily, as though having forgotten everything they'd just been saying. henrik blinked, wondering how to reply.

"i - well, i…" he trailed off, looking away. "i don't know."

he could feel ellie's eyes on him. the guilt burned underneath his skin.

"six months, henrik," she said softly. "are you that much of a coward? do you always date women then leave them on read for months?"

henrik wanted to argue that he couldn't have left her on read because he'd only ever read her messages from the notification bar, never clicking them, but decided that was maybe a bad thing to bring up at this moment in time. "i didn't mean to," he mumbled. "i got overwhelmed. i'm so sorry, ellie. you deserve better than that."

she paused, staring down. "you're a douchebag," she told her clasped hands.

"i know," henrik agreed miserably. he tapped his fingers on his thighs. "i, uh, hope you have been doing ok. i should have checked up on you. i… haven't exact been very social with anyone recently. things have been happening, which i know is not an excuse for what i did, but… yeah."

she nodded. "i've been doing ok, i guess. nathan's been good to me. he was the only one who kept in touch after i left work."

henrik bobbed his head, guilt eating him up. they sat in awkward silence for a couple minutes until parker came back into the room. "found my keys!" he announced cheerfully, waving them in the air. he had also changed clothes to a pale blue button up and black dress trousers. he looked like he was going to a job interview. "now let's take you…" his blue eyes clouded over again. "where was i taking you?"

"um… hecate golf club." henrik glanced back and forth between parker and ellie, confused. "are you two ok?"

ellie got to her feet suddenly, not looking directly at henrik. "i'll leave too," she said loudly. "i should probably be getting home too. i'll drive myself. thank you, nathan, for your hospitality."

"anytime," he said with a smile. "see you, els. come on, schneeplestein, i gotta get you there before molly gets home. i'm not supposed to leave the dogs home alone for too long."

had they completely forgot about the injuries on his leg and back? henrik stood on shaky legs and limped to the door and outside, where two cars were in the driveway. parker walked over to his car (a mercades benz) and threw open the door casually. "hurry up! i'll get her started, let's just…"

"henrik?" ellie asked quickly, lowering her voice so parker couldn't hear. she turned to face him fully, eyes large. "your whole not talking to me thing… was that because of… the reason i left work? i know people were gossiping, and -"

"mein gott, no!" henrik exclaimed. he shook his head rapidly, rushing to explain. "ellie, i understand - if the whole gossip bullshit is true, then i completely understand. mental health is - it's much more important than work, ok? i get that."

ellie hummed softly, seemingly unconvinced. henrik softened. "perle," he murmured. "did you - did you ever wonder why i took so many breaks from work myself?"

she blinked, but before she could say a word, parker called him over again. "come on, we don't have all day!" he cried, and henrik finally ducked into the car, watching ellie step back.

"i'll call you this time," henrik promised. "i swear."

she said nothing, but the corner of her mouth twitched. henrik sat back in his seat, breathing deeply.

"hecate golf club, here we come," parker told him. henrik craned round to see ellie out the window. she was standing in the driveway still, but she was smiling softly.

the drive to hecate was rather awkward, especially given that lucas was their driver.

"are you like, the official chauffeur of hecate?" marvin asked sarcastically from the back seat. chase had called shotgun, and was awkwardly tapping his seat with his nails as lucas drove.

"kinda, actually!" lucas said cheerfully. "my main magic specialty is shields and protection, after all. i make a good chauffer."

"really?" chase said, looking up at lucas with wide eyes. "marvin can do protection spells and stuff, is that what you do?"

"kinda," lucas said again. "marvin here is a very skilled magician - one of the best i've seen. he can probably do the spells better than me, not gonna lie." he laughed, and marvin sunk lower in his seat, glaring out the window and listening to the other two chatter on and on.

he wasn't sure how chase was so calm, given what they'd just heard. everything was falling apart and jackie was partially responsible - marvin refused to believe it. a few people acting odd and a strange magic smell wasn't exactly the end of the world. not only that, but the possibility that henrik could be in danger made marvin feel sick, and anti had fucking drained his phone before he could finish the call. god, he hoped he was ok. "are we nearly there?" marvin interrupted. "i can barely see out the bloody windows, and i'm tired of having anti on my shoulder."

marvin shoved anti off to accentuate his point. anti, half conscious, groaned and weakly batted at marvin's legs before slumping against the car door.

"nearly there, yeah," lucas told him. "miss kamata asked me personally to take you there. it must be big stuff. is it about your brother?"

marvin hesitated. "yeah," he mumbled. "i guess."

when they drove up to the parking lot, chase peered through the window curiously. "so many cars," he noticed. "and people. i thought this wasn't a real golf club?"

"it's not," lucas said, parking the car in an empty space. "a bunch of this is all illusions, to keep up the pretense of this being an active organization. well, it is an active organization, but not… a normal, active golf club. that's it. yeah."

"while do you act as a golf club?" chase asked. "like, out of everything you could choose…"

"because it's easier to hide," lucas said. the car stopped fully, the locks on the doors clicking open. "no one important notices an expensive golfing place. that's why they chose this area to base it in too, i think. not only is this one of the more magical areas of the city, but it's subtle. blends in with all the other rich people shit."

"so some parts of the city are more magical than others?" chase asked. he and lucas stepped out of the car, leaving marvin and anti in the backseat. marvin frowned - chase knew all this stuff, why was he asking?

"yep!" lucas said, flashing chase a grin. "especially in brighton. brighton is one of the more magical places of the world. mostly cause there was a resurgence of magic here in the last few years. no one knows why, but it's good for us. our branch of hecate is pretty powerful, considering."

marvin rolled his eyes. "hey, can someone help with anti, please?" he called. the two men startled, like they'd forgotten he was there.

"oh - oh, shit, sorry!" chase spluttered, turning bright red. he and lucas helped marvin to get anti out the car, and together they dragged him inside.

two magicians were waiting for them at the door. "mcloughlin?" one woman asked, and marvin nodded. anti moaned softly, stirring and attempting to straighten himself.

"miss kamata asked us to take the sick one to our medbay," said a man with purple hair. "she'll speak with him later. you're to come upstairs to her office so she can fill you in on the current situation."

"my brother's coming here," marvin said. "his name is henrik von schneeplestein. looks just like us but - shorter hair than all of us, uh, with a streak of grey. glasses. he's hurt, i think. will you keep a lookout for him?"

the magicians exchanged glances. "we'll see what we can do," the woman told him. she gestured for him to follow. "come on, we'll take you to her."

some other magicians took anti from marvin's arms to help him along to the medbay while they walked through the halls. marvin had seen it all before, but chase was in awe, craning his head back to look. "woah!" he cried, spinning on the spot. "this place is epic!"

"it's under an illusion," the male magician told him. "to all those without magic blood, it's just a normal place. it's a risk to mask it that way, as those with evil intent could theoretically discover us through that, but we have other ways of hiding such things. besides, we help those with magic. do you have magic, young man?"

chase shook his head sadly. "i wish," he said longingly. "i've always wanted to do magic."

"but you can see through our illusions," the woman said, perplexed. "you have magic blood."

"just from my brothers," chase said casually. "marvin does a lot of miscellaneous spells, stuff he discovers, and jackie has photokinesis. henrik can heal minor injuries as well, i'm pretty sure."

"a healer?" the magicians look at each other again. "we don't have many of those. i think your brother could be a useful asset to hecate."

"wait, wait, wait," marvin interrupted. he moved between the magicians and his younger brother, holding his hands up. "you're not here to fucking recruit my brothers, especially not the ones who aren't here." he shot chase a look, and chase shrank under his gaze. "we probably shouldn't talk about that stuff right now anyway."

they continued up the stairs in silence.

"sorry, marvin," chase mumbled to him. "didn't mean to say too much. i'm not used to all this."

marvin just sighed. "don't mention jamie," was all he said in response.

they were taken to kazuki's door and the man went to knock, but the door swung open almost as soon as his knuckles graced the wood. "thank you alana, zack," came kazuki's voice from inside, and the doors quickly shut behind them.

"kazuki," marvin said cooly, standing straight. "explain what's going on, please. what's happening to the people?"

"hello to you too, marvin," kazuki said. she was standing in front of her desk, wearing a red suit with her hair loose around her shoulders. she nodded at the other two men with him. "chase brody. lucas. good to see you two. lucas, thank you for driving them here."

"my pleasure, miss kamata," lucas said with a smile and an awkward hand twirl. "shall i go?"

kazuki considered. "do you wish for him to stay?" she asked. the question was directed at marvin, but chase answered.

"yes, please," he said, giving lucas a smile. lucas smiled back, surprised, and chase turned back to kazuki confidently. "i like this guy."

kazuki's lips upturned, and suddenly the four of them were sitting in an odd circle next to her desk. there were no seats under them, just what felt like solid air. "cool," chase breathed, and he giggled. kazuki tittered softly at his amazed reaction before turning serious again.

"so let's talk about your brother," she started. "we know he stole your magic - the black magic spells you discovered."

"i never performed them," marvin said quickly. "i just found them and never would have -"

"yes, we've been through this," kazuki sighed. she shifted in her invisible air chair, possibly using magic to make it more comfortable. "but here's the thing. we... know of the organization he sold it to."

marvin turned to look at chase and lucas, who both looked surprised. "we do?" lucas said uncertainly.

"let me rephrase that. the higher ups of hecate know," kazuki said. she leaned back onto the desk behind her, blue eyes scrutinizing their reactions. "the leaders of each branch around the world."

"this is a worldwide problem?" marvin said. rage suddenly rose in his chest like boiling water. "why did i never know? i was practically top of hecate when i was with you!"

kazuki raised an eyebrow. "were you?" she said flatly. "even your ex boyfriend was higher ranking than you."

chase piped up while marvin spluttered indignantly. "there are rankings in hecate?"

"in a way," hecate told him. "but that's a conversation for another day. this other organization…" she sighed. "they were once part of hecate."

no one said anything. marvin blinked rapidly, mouth hanging open, but couldn't summon any words. kazuki continued. "hecate was originally a rebel organization founded by british magicians in 1735, when the witchcraft act was passed by parliament. you don't need all the history, though. magic was highly disliked by many back then, is all you need. we named ourselves "restitutio", latin for "restoration." our cause spread. we took in magicians and everyone who did magic and trained them. we hid. but some of us did not want to hide. some of us… turned to darker ways of life."

there was a dramatic pause. chase cleared his throat and opened his mouth, but didn't say anything. lucas sniffed loudly. marvin tapped his foot against the floor.

kazuki twirled her hand absentmindedly. a few trinkets floated off her desk and round her hand. "some of them wanted to fight. didn't want to keep our magic hidden. they… did many horrible things. people died. many of them. this was near the end of the 1700s, and many of the original values of restitutio had been lost." she took a breath, glancing up at her hands. "eventually, we, the hecate side of restitutio, took as much dark magic as we could and the others left. it was more recently that things began to change."

"what was the change?" lucas asked.

"there were a few," kazuki said. "all happening within a few years. first off, we discovered that the darker half of us had been hiding for years, cultivating dark magic by infiltrating our ranks. then, around the same time, magic itself changed. it seemed it learned to hide itself, through a barrier we called the veil."

"i didn't know all this," marvin muttered. then he raised his voice. "is this another thing only higher ups know?"

"you should know about the veil," kazuki said. "it hides our magic from nonmag eyes. it was discovered a few years before the dark organization."

"and.. when were these discovered?" chase said, voice low. he had a strange look on his face, and didn't turn to look at marvin.

"well, the veil was discovered on, i believe, october 10th of 2014," kazuki said, seemingly not noticing how marvin and chase jolted. "and we found the first traces of the black magic on october 31st of 2016. we thought it was a halloween prank of sorts, at first - are you two ok?"

chase shook his head rapidly, bouncing on his air seat and waving his hands, slapping his thighs lightly. "we're fine," he said firmly. "fuck, we're fine - what does jackie have to do with this? where does he tie in?"

kazuki frowned, though didn't comment. "his magic… is unnatural. you say he's a user of photokinesis?" the brothers nodded, and kazuki took a breath. "that's not good. photokinesis is a branch of light magic. whatever magic the organization gave him - i'm sorry for always calling it that, it doesn't have a name that we know of - we don't know what that magic is. it's dark, and it's corrupting him."

"it comes from a necklace," chase said. "does that mean anything?"

kazuki swore under her breath. "it could be… we'll talk about that later. here's the important point."

she leaned forward, eyes cold. "the magic in him is fighting for power. and he clearly has never been trained in controlling either branch of magic. and ever since the explosion in that motel in new romney, the veil has been… breaking."

the silence was deafening. marvin felt like it was crushing him, his breaths coming quicker with the effort of staying upright. "could be a coincidence," he said, but his voice was very small. "it can't be… breaking, what do you mean -"

"the two worlds are trying to collide and for some reason they're physically unable to now," kazuki said. "he's tearing a hole in the veil, in the barrier between magic and… normality, i suppose."

marvin was about to finally say something - he wasn't sure what, just something - when a man burst into the room. zack, the purple haired magician from earlier, was gasping and panting for breath, trying to force out words.

"zack," kazuki said, narrowing her eyes and standing. the air chairs under marvin and the others lifted them up onto their feet and promptly dissolved underneath them. "this better be important."

"it - it is, miss kamata," he wheezed. "we've been breached. one of our own has been taken."

it all happened so fast.

parker dropped henrik off at the gates of hecate, not even heading into the car park. "see you soon, schneeplestein! come visit, i'm sure molly would love to see you," he said with a dazed grin, eyes unfocused. henrik stepped out of the car and closed the door, smiling nervously at the doctor's strange expression.

"are you alright, parker?" he asked with a small laugh. "you are acting very strange."

"what? just - just fine!" parker exclaimed. he didn't look at henrik. "go do your… golf. i'll be seeing you."

henrik swallowed, straightening as much as he could with his injured leg. "yes," he mumbled. "i'm sure you will."

parker's grin was far too wide. he turned the car, preparing to drive off down the road, when the car glitched and disappeared.

henrik stood in absolute shook for a moment.

the car glitched. and disappeared. it had glitched in a burst of static and vanished completely, leaving nothing behind. not parker. not anything.

ok, so henrik was hallucinating. the magic aaron had hit him with was making him hallucinate. he blinked and turned away, suddenly aware of his head pounding, feeling slightly sick. there was a strange smell in the air. something wrong. he sniffed, realizing it was a very specific scent. like… smoke. like smoke through an open window.

"henrik?"

he jumped, eyes focusing on the man in front of him. as soon as they did, he soured. "raymond," he said with slight disdain. "fancy seeing you here."

raymond snorted. "i work here, friend," he said, sarcasm in the last word. "what are -" his brown eyes widened as he took in henrik's wounds. "oh, bloody hell!"

henrik grabbed the man's arms for support. "don't feel well," he managed. "ich glaube, ich könnte krank sein…"

he stumbled back and promptly threw up on the concrete. raymond's noises of disgust reached his ears through his retching, and as he wiped his mouth he just managed to decipher "fuck, dude, you got vom on my fuckin' suit!"

"sorry," henrik said weakly. his vision was beginning to blur, blackness creeping into the corners of his eyes. "g'hit… car, it glitch…"

"i am not looking after my ex's sick brother," raymond said disgustedly. he reached up and tapped a device behind his ear. "hey, some guy down here is sick. probably a bad hex or something. i dunno, man, it doesn't look good. physical too. leg, back. should i send him to the medbay?"

the more the man spoke, the dizzier henrik felt. someone else was talking to him. he thought he couldn't hear what they were saying.

" - here, come inside," raymond was saying. "we'll check you over. alana, open the spell for a sec so i can get him in."

henrik passed out then. but later, people filled him in on what had happened.

the spells on the gates to the car park has briefly been lowered to let henrik inside. but the second they were down was all that was needed. two men had burst in, ripping through the air with magic that reeked of smoke and something else, something unplaceable. the attack hadn't even really been an attack; it had lasted maybe a minute. when henrik woke in the medbay, he was informed that raymond had been taken, kidnapped, captured, and that was that.

it all happened so fast. so fast.

not only that, but the magicians didn't know what the magic in henrik's body was. dark stuff, they said. incurable, at least by them, they said. it must have come from the same two men who had broken into hecate, they said. they thought black magic didn't exist anymore, they said.

henrik was numb to it all.

"i'm sorry i wasn't there!" marvin had said when he came to see him, chase and another blonde man in tow. "i tried to contact you, anti drained my phone - henny, i'm so sorry, i shouldn't have left you alone!"

henrik hurt. jackie was truly gone. hecate had been breached. a man had beem captured. henrik didn't say a word.

fuck, it had all happened so fast.

"you did it, babe!"

"we did it! fuck, it was far easier than i expected. i can say this now, but i was pretty certain we weren't going to manage it."

jackie laughed at aaron's words, kissing him before drawing back with a grin on his face. "honestly? me neither," he giggled. "but look at what we got! far, far better than i could have hoped - oh, he doesn't like that, does he?"

the man chained to the chair in front of them narrowed his eyes, rage burning in them. jackie bent down in front of him, grinning wide. "been a while since i last saw you, raymond! when was it? god, i can't remember. was it the time that you came round demanding marvin paid back your money? was it the time marvin caught you in bed with some fucking nomag twink and you and him had that screaming match? was it the time we saw you in the street with your new boyfriend and marvin started crying so i nearly hit you?" jackie flicked raymond's nose, still giggling like a child. "god, every day since then i've wished i'd beaten the fucking shit out of you. i used to be disgusted with myself for thinking that kind of stuff too, you know? but now… i think i've embraced it."

he tapped a sleek black dagger on raymond's face, just on top of the gag shoved in his mouth. "you like my knife? my boyfriend got it for me. this is him, by the way. say hi, aaron!"

aaron waved from the corner where he was leaning, resting on a blue baseball bat. raymond's eyes were wild with fear and anger, and he shook his head to try and get the blade away.

"what's that?" jackie said, pretending to listen like a kid playing with a doll. "you want to talk? certainly!" he slashed the knife down the man's face, cutting through the gag but the skin underneath as well. raymond screamed in pain, but cut himself off as quickly as he could, biting down on his lip and panting.

"bitch," raymond spat. "what are you? a demon? what type of magic is this?" blood dribbled down his chin. "and - ha, why did you break in? idiot, i would have left anyway - do you not understand how high security hecate is? you got in, and all you did was, what, knock out your sick brother and kidnap me?"

jackie leaned back, sticking out his lip and looking upset. then his smirk returned like it had never left, and he threw back his head to roar with laughter. aaron giggled from the corner before coming to stand next to his boyfriend.

"oh - oh, raymond, no," jackie giggled, wiping at his eyes. "oh, you think we - you think we just grabbed you and left? nooo, no no no. time is an illusion, my bastard friend!"

"we got so much done!" aaron said joyfully. "all thanks to jackie's wonderful brother -"

"oh, stop it, mo chroí, we couldn't have done anything without your lovely magic!" jackie elbowed aaron and the two dissolved into peals of laughter while raymond watched with a forced neutral expression.

"what do you want with me?" he said, trying to keep his voice flat. "i don't know what information you think i know, but it's nothing good. i'm not as high ranked as you might think, i swear, i -"

"shut up now, ok?" aaron suddenly interrupted. "we were having a moment there and you ruined it. fuck, they're never polite, are they, jackson?"

"i don't know, this is only my second prisoner!" jackie joked. then he rolled his eyes. "and we don't fucking care what rank you are, we just snatched the first guy we saw. it just so happened to be my brother's filthy, cheating whore ex." he leaned forward, right into raymond's face. "you're my ticket to a better life, bitch. look at that. you have a fucking use after all."

jackie turned to aaron, gripping his arm and turning him to face him. "they're really gonna love him, aren't they?" he cooed. "will he be good enough?"

"course he will, babe," aaron said. "he's hecate, he - what does he do, teleport? he teleports. that's interesting, they might like that."

"'they?'" raymond shouted angrily. he struggled against his chains, grunting. "who is 'they?' why can't i teleport? is this - is this about what i did to marvin? i never meant to hurt him!"

without warning, jackie slapped raymond right across the face. "i already fucking told you that it's nothing to do with you," he snapped, dropping the soft tone from before. "i saw you and took you. we kind of had other priorities at that moment. you fucking got it? jesus shit, dude, not everything's about you - although, i know you think it is, huh?" he hit raymond again, sending him reeling. "do you know how many nights i spent holding marvin while he cried, feeling worthless, depressed - you meant so much to him but you are nothing but a repulsive -"

"jackson, calm," aaron soothed, taking his face in hand. "you can't hurt him too bad. they'll get upset, it'll show a lack of control. that's something they look for. do you want to be accepted or not?"

"accepted?" raymond cried, voice high in pitch. "are you selling me to a cult or something?"

"nope," aaron said cheerfully. "much worse."

jackie growled in raymond's direction. "fucking bastard. the organization better see self control from me if it means i can't beat the living daylights outta this guy."

"they will," aaron reassured. "they will. then we can properly be together, and you can't -"

jackie suddenly screamed, a howl of complete agony that made raymond throw his head back like it would save him. jackie clawed at his chest, doubling over as his whole form… his form, his body… raymond cringed. the man's form was flickering, like a glitching computer screen. and as he watched, raymond started to smell something. a stinking, magical smell so thick it almost made him choke. it smelled like smoke. like smoke creeping through an open window.

"jackson, jackson - fuck, let's get out of here," aaron said, pushing jackie out the door of the small room raymond was being kept in. aaron whipped back round to look at him as he left, glaring. "get comfortable," he said. "you might be in here a while."

the door shut behind them, leaving raymond cold with the taste of copper and smoke on his tongue.

#jacksepticeye #boop writes #marvin the magnificent #henrik von schneeplestein #chase brody #jackieboy man #antisepticeye #tho he was barely here this chapter i'm sorrh we'll see him soon #lucas ross #kazuki kamata #aaron mckenzie #the fall

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chasseurdeloup-retired · 4 years ago

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That’s How the Black and White Cookie Crumbles || Queenie and Kaden

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Kaden’s apartment PARTIES: @drqueenieking and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Queenie comes to check on Kaden’s stitches when the 13th cookie arrives.

Kaden winced as he grabbed the leash, getting ready to take Abel for a walk. The bite from that fucking wolf that tore off a good portion of his arm throbbed every time he gripped anything with his right hand. Which was all the time, apparently. If only that hunter healing would kick in a little faster. But this was hardly the worst injury he’d endured. Not even the worst in White Crest. And he’d take a wolf bite over a mime stabbing any day. “Hold on, I have to tie my shoes,” he told Abel as there was a knock on the door. He groaned. Kaden knew what this was. It was the cookies. It was the fucking. Cookies. From the mimes. He knew it. And he was going to catch them in the fucking act this time. He ran to the door and swung it open. “AH-HA! I got--” Kaden paused, slack jawed. That was not a mime in his doorway. That was Queenie. Regan’s sometimes maybe not friend but definitely her friend Queenie. “Oh, uh, sorry. I thought-- What are you doing here?” Great, just great, Queenie already thought he was fucking insane, he was sure of it. This was likely not helping. Only, was he seeing what he thought he was? “Is… was it like this when you got here?” The whole hallway was striped. Everything was black and white. The floors, the walls, the stairwell. This was a fucking nightmare. In so many ways.

Queenie and Kaden always seemed to meet under questionable circumstances. Not only that, but Kaden being injured seemed to be a common occurrence as well. Regan had reached out to Queenie, much like last time, and asked her to check in on Kaden. She hadn’t gone into specifics on the injuries but had apparently been confident that Kaden didn’t need a hospital. By this point, Queenie needed to start charging people for house calls. She seemed to do them enough. It wasn’t until she arrived that she realized things were... off. The entire hallway leading to his apartment was striped. The black and white coloring wrapped around the floor, walls and ceiling. It was an odd choice for a decoration for sure, but hadn’t mimes been one of the strange sexual preferences that Kaden seemed so fixated on? Could he have convinced the other residents to decorate this way? Or maybe he lived around other like-minded Mimephilliacs. She knocked against the door, careful to use a tissue as to not risk getting any black or white on her. Kaden answered with an accusation, pausing only when he realized who it was. “Your girlfriend sent me.” Queenie answered simply, looking past Kaden and into the apartment. At least the interior wasn’t quite as black and white. “Yes. Does this mean it wasn’t like this the last time you opened your door?” This didn’t seem likely. Though the paint job looked fresh, it had already dried. Kaden must have left his house in the last day or so.

Kaden let out a sigh. “Of course she did. Come in,” he said, moving to the side and nudging Abel a bit away from the door. It was hardly surprising that Regan sent her. All because he refused to go to the hospital for a standard monster maiming. And it’s not like he could properly explain hunter healing even though he was sure she’d witnessed it by now, caught on at least a little bit. “You’re good with dogs, right?” he asked as he held Abel’s leash while the dog tried desperately to say hello to the new human in the apartment. “And no, this place wasn’t like that when I moved in. Or yesterday for that matter. I think it was brown or something. I don’t know, I never paid much attention. I just know it wasn’t that.” Abel pulled on his leash again and Kaden grit his teeth at the pain that shot through his arm. Time to switch leash hands. “I’m going to guess you’re here to examine my arm, right? It’s fine. But you’re welcome to look at it and tell Regan it’s still attached to me and everything.” Kaden gestured towards his kitchen table and took a seat, ready to get this over with as quickly as possible. No amount of doctors looking at his arm was going to make it hurt less.

Queenie made her way into the apartment, apprehensively eyeing the dog that Kaden took hold off. It seemed far too excited to have someone else coming into their living quarters. “They do not bother me.” Queenie said, not quite stating that she was good with them or that she liked that. She reached her arm out, keeping her body angled away from the beast and awkwardly patting the top of its head stiffly. Three pats and Queenie pulled away again, hoping to ignore the creature until it lost interest in her. “That must be some fast drying paint then.” Queenie noted, more to herself than as an entry into their conversation. That was the only thing that made sense. “Regan wouldn’t give me much information, however I am here to make sure you are taking care of your wounds.” She set her bag on the kitchen table that Kaden pointed out and was happy to see that he had already taken a seat, “You are much more compliant outside of a hospital. How ironic.” Queenie mused, grabbing for the arm in question and unwrapping the quick wrap job that had been done to it. “I’m impressed you took the time to wrap it. Did you do this yourself?” Queenie questioned, eyeing the wound once it was completely undone. Someone had stitched the wound close. The stitching was not entirely even or as tight as Queenie would have done, but clearly whoever had done it had done it before. Otherwise, although the wound did not look minor by any means, it at least wasn’t infected. “Whoever stitched this could use some practice. However, I’m surprised that you had it stitched at all. I’m going to clean around the wound and then wrap it in fresh gauze. Not too shabby, admittedly.” Unless Regan had done the stitches, in which case it was done horribly and Queenie couldn’t wait to message her following this and offer her private lessons to get her skills back on track. “This appears to be a common theme. You needing medical attention.”

Kaden relaxed his grip on the leash a tiny bit but called Abel back to sit by his side when it was more than clear Queenie was about as good with dogs as Regan was. Was it a doctor thing? Or just a them thing? Not worth asking while he sat with his arm out for her to examine. “I was out on patrol, got bit by a coyote.” He rolled his eyes at her comments. “Yeah well, I don’t like hospitals. And of course I wrapped it, do you think I’d leave that open?” He realized that was a mistake as soon as he said it. “Don’t answer that.” Still, he was shocked that she offered any sort of remote compliment on the stitches. “My uncle was around so he stitched it up. It seemed good enough for me so I skipped the hospital visit and all the fun bills. And look, I still got to see you anyway,” he said with a cheeky smile as she finished cleaning and rewrapping the wound. “I work in animal control. Bites and scratches are just part of the job. The mime stabbing was a weird exception.” He hoped. Actually, it sure seemed like a possibility given all the cookies and that mime at the restaurant. Putain, he hoped mime stabbing wasn’t a regular occurrence in his life. At that, he heard a knock on the door. His brow furrowed. “Hold on a second,” he said as he stood and opened the door. There was… nothing there? He peered out and looked from side to side. There, to the left, was a bag. A fucking paper bag. He was so sure what it was. The cookies. His eyes narrowed and he groaned at the sight. “We good here?” he called back to Queenie as he begrudgingly walked towards the bag. Time to see what horrors awaited him this time.

Before Queenie even got a chance to speak up, Kaden told her not to answer his apparently rhetorical question. She smirked. She was apprehensive to admit she had anything in common with Regan, but it was humorous to know that Kaden knew Queenie intended on answering him. For the danger he seemed to constantly be in, at least he knew how to take care of a wound. The animal control department in New York were idiots. They were frequent visitors to the ER with a myriad of bites and infections. Another knock distracted from their conversation shortly after Queenie had finished rewrapping Kaden’s wound. She glanced curiously at the door as Kaden opened it but didn’t notice anyone there. Instead, Kaden’s head glanced towards the ground. Maybe someone had left a package. Queenie began packing things back into her traveling medical kit. She had been here to check on Kaden’s arm. Not a social visit. “All good on my side.” Queenie answered, slinging the bag over her arm and making her way towards the door when the explosion happened. She didn’t know what had happened at first. All she knew was a loud sound and a burst of smoke. Moments later, Kaden turned around and was covered head to toe in black and white stripes. “What the…” Queenie trailed off, taking the entire scene in. How had it done that? A color explosion like that couldn’t have caused the stripes that now appeared on Kaden. “How did you do that?” She squinted her eyes and questioned him.

Kaden took a deep breath and opened the bag. Without any fucking warning, crumbs and glitter exploded in his face, leaving him coughing and waving his arms to get it away from his face. “Putain de fucking merde!” he yelled as it seemed like it just kept pouring out of the bag in a cloud of black and white. He backed away and tried to wipe the crumbs away, make sure no glitter got in his eye. “How did I do that? What the fuck, I didn’t do shit! I opened the bag!” He looked down at his arm. It was also black and white now. Not just the bandage. His arm. “No. No, no, no.” Kaden tried to wipe his uninjured arm clean, but it was still there. Stripes. Black and white stripes on his arm. That weren’t coming off. He felt his pulse racing. This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t be a mime. This was his worst nightmare.

Kaden’s eyes were only pulled away from the fucking stripes on his fucking arm to look over at the bag. Something was coming out of it. Something other than crumbs and glitter. The cookies were in pieces, but they were moving, pulling themselves together to form something. His eyes grew wide as he watched the pieces take shape. They smashed into place and there before him was a small version of the mime monster he’d fought with Jeff, the one he’d seen in the alley when they blew up the restaurant. It was only about five inches tall. A chill went down his spine, the familiar feeling of when a werewolf was nearby. Only this time he knew better. Kaden screamed and ran towards the thing to try and crush it, but it scuttled off out of sight, way too fast for him. It scaled the striped wall and crawled out the window on all fours. He lept at it and missed, falling face first on the floor. “Mother fucking mimes!”

Queenie crept closer to the doorway. Aside from Kaden’s appearance, it was hardly the most unexplainable thing happening at the moment. Outside of the door, Queenie stared at the ground in horror as crumbs began gravitating towards each other. Like there had been a vacuum or something just out of view. But the pieces continued together until they began taking form. This couldn’t be right. Queenie had inhaled too many fumes from the recently painted hallway outside. That had to be it. Otherwise, she would have to acknowledge that a small creature had formed from the crumbs and crawled away from Kaden’s leap. “What. The. Fuck.” Queenie repeated again, this time under her breath. None of this could be real. She stood away from Kaden, watching him with a horrified curiosity. “This must be some trick. How did you change clothes that quickly? How did you get that mime makeup on?”

“Putain de merde,” Kaden grumbled as he pushed himself to stand up, trying to brush the crumbs covering his hands and knees. “Fuck these fucking mimes,” he grumbled under his breath. He should really go after that thing, make sure it didn’t become bigger and start eating cats. Oh. Queenie was still here. “No fucking clue but this is seriously f-- Wait, what?” He felt his face and checked his hands. Nothing came off, no white paint, but his hands were striped. What, no. Nope. No. “Make up? I didn’t put on any makeup. And I didn’t change my clothes. Or my skin. Or my bandage! This isn’t my fault! I don’t want to--” Then it hit him. He was standing in front of Queenie. And he looked like a mime. This was horrifying. Humiliating. Not possible. He couldn’t stay here in the hallway. “Thanks-for-looking-at-my-arm-I-have-to-go-now goodbye!” Kaden shouted as quickly as he could, bolting for his apartment and slamming the door behind him. This had to come off with a shower or five, right? He couldn't be stuck like this. He couldn't be a mime. Putain de bordel de merde.

#wickedswriting #chatzy #that's how the black and white cookie crumbles #drqueenieking #queenie #writing

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viinas-writes · 4 years ago

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“Desert Rose”

Written for the Kiribaku Anthology “Ascent”. Words: 5,211

The weight of Eijirou’s last bullet is both a grim and comforting reminder. It’s locked in the pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants like a soldier at the ready, waiting for its first and last command.

Blood-red clouds race past his vision, blurring into the overcast sky. He feels the ravaged terrain of a city he once called home tilting under the worn soles of boots that have been too small for over a year. His lungs burn. Smoke and debris sting his eyes. His body aches down to his bones but he doesn’t stumble, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t stop.

A fleeting thought rolls across his mind: I don’t want to die here.

He casts a glance over his shoulder. The hooded man—a dorobou, probably—is still in pursuit. Eijirou can hear the clack of a rifle bouncing against his assailant’s back.

Eijirou is virtually unarmed; his pistol has been empty for months. He keeps only what he calls an “insurance bullet”—to put into his own head if things turn for the worst. If the choice is between dying as himself or having his soul obliterated by a dorobou, there’s no question about how he’d rather go.

He skids to a stop just before the ground plunges straight down. Loose earth scuttles past his feet and falls over the edge. His blood throbs in his ears. Down below, he makes out human remains, grotesquely discolored, emaciated, and half-floating in dark, shallow water. Discarded hosts. When a dorobou’s human body decays from infection, the only way for them to survive is to move onto a new one.

His hand finds his pistol, his trigger finger twitching.

“You stopped.”

Eijirou’s heart skips. Furtively, he looks back. His pursuer stands a safe distance away, rifle in hand but pointed at the ground. He pulls his hood back to reveal a shock of blond hair.

His appearance gives Eijirou pause. The venom in his gaze is discordant to the roundness in his jaw, as if everything he’s seen has yet to catch up with him, physically.

He’s a kid...like me.

“A dorobou wouldn’t have stopped.” His head falls. He pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a heartfelt, “Fuck.”

Eijirou’s head fills with questions but the only one that forms is: “What are you looking for?”

The boy’s hand drops to his side and he screws his eyes shut, furiously shaking his head. He won’t look up, lest he lower his guard. Eijirou understands that well. Trust can’t be given blindly; altruism was a luxury their world lost.

“You looked like…” He drags a weary hand through his hair. “Same shitty dye job.”

Eijirou raises an eyebrow. “Uh—”

“Whatever,” the boy says. He turns on his heel, slinging his rifle across his back. “I made a mistake.”

“H-hey, wait up!” Eijirou yelps, because to a certain degree all trust is blind and maybe he’s just as angry and tired as anyone unlucky enough to have been born into this hell. “You know, we’ll survive longer with two of us, right? I...I mean,” he pauses, turning his words over in his head. “Unless you’re not alone…”

The boy sneers and the venom in his eyes now drips from his voice. “Like hell. I made it this far on my own.”

Eijirou laughs, which makes the boy turn and glower. He’s got big, rotten pride and an attitude to cut through glass, but if he’s survived this long all by himself, there’s got to be a thing or two they can learn from each other.

“S-shut up!” he stammers, visibly thrown off-kilter. “Give me one good reason why I should let your dumb ass tag along!”

Eijirou’s lips curl into a grin. “Well, I’m not much for offense, but.” He brings his fists together with a satisfying thud. “I’m resilient. I’ll be your unbreakable wall, man. A guard who won’t waver.”

“You are so goddamn weird.” He turns back around. Something like disappointment feels heavy in Eijirou’s chest but before he gets the chance to make a move of his own, the boy calls out, “Fine. But get in my way and I’ll kill you.”

***

Time elapses and once they’ve gotten to know each other—in whatever capacity Katsuki will allow it—it may have been days, weeks, or even months. He learns the idiot is named Kirishima Eijirou and he’s sixteen just like him. Katsuki is able to connect his ink black roots and faded red dye job to his loud, vivacious personality. Who else but someone with a desire to stand out would even bother keeping up such an appearance in this wasteland?

Katsuki also learns that there’s an organized chaos to the way they work together. Everything about Kirishima should make Katsuki hate him; he’s chatty, impulsive, optimistic to a fault, way too touchy…

But he’s also quick on his feet.

Clever in the emotional ways Katsuki is not.

He’s rock solid and dependable where Katsuki is turbulent.

Somehow, it just works.

One night, a storm chases them into the dilapidated remains of a drugstore. They rush in, sopping wet, the soles of their boots squeaking against the tile. Broken glass and empty food wrappers litter the floor. Along the walls, there are dark, empty refrigerators and equally vacant shelves.

It isn’t uncommon for looters to gut places like this. If anything, Katsuki is annoyed he hadn’t thought to do it first.

They find a corner clear of debris to rest their aching feet and Kirishima wastes no time in talking Katsuki’s ear off.

Katsuki supposes he doesn’t mind the sound of Kirishima’s voice. It’s a way to fill the silence he’s has grown uncomfortably used to—protection from his own thoughts. What’s more, as long as the idiot stays yapping, it means Katsuki doesn’t have to talk back.

His secrets don’t define him, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to let any asshole into his head. Some things are sacred. For now, his memories are fragmented moments in the back of his mind. They belong to him in the form of nightmares and fantasies that will become all too real the moment he shares them with anybody else.

So he lets Kirishima talk.

Kirishima’s head tilts back against the wall. He shuts his eyes as if lost in a moment long gone.

“I can’t remember anything before the orphanage,” he admits. His voice has taken on a softer tone, uncharacteristic of the boisterous pain in the ass Katsuki’s come to know. “It wasn’t much, you know. Overcrowded, underfunded...the food was awful.” He brings his hands together and starts to wring them out. “There were never enough beds either. We’d play games to decide who’d have to sleep on the floor for the night.” His lips quirk into a crooked grin. “I’d always let the younger kids win. It sounds pretty shit, but it was home. It was all we knew. Some kids, like me, were orphans of war but a lot of them were abandoned. We didn’t have anybody but each other.”

Kirishima rests his forehead on his joined hands. “When dorobous Thieved our caretakers, I was thirteen. Nobody knew what to do. So many of my siblings died. I was scared and desperate.” He takes in a shuddering breath. “I ran away. Like a coward. I didn’t do anything. Didn’t jump into the fray like a real man should.”

Katsuki tries to picture it, a younger, doe-eyed Kirishima, running without purpose. All his life he had nothing—he was running toward nothing—and yet, he stayed on his feet with love in his heart and a will to live.

How could someone so kind survive in such an unforgiving place? Katsuki tries to wrap his head around it. These days, survival is earned only by the most ruthless.

Katsuki isn’t sure whether it’s Kirishima or the world he’d underestimated. Both of their truths cannot coexist.

“Do you ever regret it?” Katsuki asks, mulling the pieces over, studying the nuances of Kirishima and the broken pieces of his sorry life. He wants it to make sense.

“What, surviving?” Kirishima chuckles. “What kind of question is that?”

Katsuki wonders if he’d have the same optimism if his strength amounted to something other than more time in hell.

A grin that’s at once hopeful and sad touches Kirishima’s lips. He punches Katsuki’s shoulder playfully. “Besides, I met you, didn’t I?”

***

The first time Eijirou sees a dorobou die, the shock leaves him reeling. He’s no stranger to death, but something about the way this body—once so omnipotent—hits the floor is horrifyingly human.

Smoke rises from the barrel of Bakugou’s rifle.

Eijirou’s stomach turns at the sight of the bullet nestled between the host’s eyes. A clean shot. From a distance, he might even look peaceful.

As he steps closer, Eijirou studies the details of his face—close-cropped brown hair, patchy stubble on his chin, thick eyebrows and a hooked nose. The veiny black tinge under his eyelids is the only indication that he was ever anything but human.

Who was he before he was Thieved? Whose life did we just take?

Eijirou’s siblings and caretakers, all Thieved or murdered, flash with gruesome clarity in his head. One by one by one.

“Do you think they felt it?” Eijirou whispers. Lead has settled in his bones. His hands curl into fists to keep them from trembling.

Bakugou snorts, slinging his rifle around his back. “Who gives a shit?”

“Not the dorobou,” Eijirou corrects, his voice steadier than he would have given himself credit for. “I mean the man...do people stay conscious when they’re….Thieved? Are they still there? Do they know they’re being kil—”

“You talk too fucking much.” Bakugou’s voice is like ice. “Let’s go. We don’t know if there were more where he came from.”

The way Bakugou withdraws from hard questions isn’t lost on him. It leaves Eijirou wondering what he’s so afraid of and what he’s seen to make him so cold.

More so...why was it so easy for him to pull the trigger?

***

When Kirishima manages to hotwire a pickup truck, Katsuki supposes he could have done worse in finding a partner. It’s in bad shape, with a cracked windshield and rusty paint job—not to mention the fact that it’s ancient—but it isn’t like they can afford to be choosy.

Methodically, he fiddles with a tangle of blue and red wires, tongue poking out between his sharp teeth, and Katsuki can’t help but study the stern wrinkle in between his brows. He is held captive by the movement of Kirishima’s calloused, dirt-caked fingers looping, tying, pulling, working in such a comfortable motion that Katsuki knows he’s done this many times before.

The truck roars to life; Kirishima sits up and grins. A drop of sweat rolls down his neck, pooling in the hollow of his throat. Katsuki drags his eyes away once he realizes he’d been staring.

“You’re not as dumb as you look,” he remarks.

Kirishima laughs, unapologetically loud. It does something strange to Katsuki’s pulse. He shoves him out of the way and settles into the driver’s side, then looks at the dashboard. The gas meter is a hair away from empty. He sighs.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to siphon gas too, would you?”

As night rolls in, the two decide it’s best to get some much needed rest. They lay a couple of blankets they stole from a looted shop some weeks ago over the truck bed’s hard ridges and then collapse beneath a threadbare quilt they found in the backseat.

Katsuki’s heavy eyes fall closed as cool air fans across his face. The humble chaos of nighttime has always been so strange to him. Daytime can be so quiet—lonely, when your only company is the terrain. But nighttime rings.

Crickets on the outside.

Memories on the inside.

Kirishima’s breathing so steady and calm...protective in its own inexplicable way and shushing Katsuki’s hurricane of thoughts.

He shifts and Katsuki opens his eyes, transfixed by the way the moonlight drips over Kirishima’s face, delicately tracing his features. He follows the soft silver lines from the ends of his hair, down the slope of his nose, over the curve of his lips, enamored by how they shift and change as he moves.

Kirishima turns on his side and Katsuki can’t breathe for a second. They’re close enough that he could count his eyelashes if he wanted to—long, black, and brushing the top of his cheeks when he blinks.

“Can I ask you something?” Kirishima asks, almost whispering.

Katsuki swallows, something heavy settling in his chest. “What is it?”

“You asked me some time ago...if I ever regretted surviving.” Kirishima wets his lips and the crease between his brows returns, like the question is something he’d considered as carefully as he did the wires in their truck. “Do you?”

He exhales, watching the scar on Kirishima’s eyelid appear and disappear as he blinks. He doesn’t know how to answer that. Survival nowadays is limited only to how desperate you are—more so, how lucky. Katsuki has never been fond of games of chance.

At last, he settles with, “I don’t regret not giving up.” Be it due to luck, skill, selfishness, or a combination of it all, Katsuki doesn’t know how to surrender. He’ll stay alive out of spite if he must. What better way is there to get back at a life that took everything away from him?

Kirishima stares and it makes Katsuki feel naked, like his gaze alone can crack through his armor and sink beneath his skin. He wants to turn away but he’s trapped. Kirishima’s eyes are a deep crimson with sunny flecks of gold—embers that don’t stop burning.

Gooseflesh covers Katsuki’s arms.

He tells himself it’s just the chill.

“My mentor.” The words fall from Katsuki’s tongue. Kirishima’s eyes hold him steady like his own private gravity and it makes Katsuki feel safe.

Maybe secrets whispered in the dark aren’t quite as real.

Kirishima moves closer and their knees bump under the blanket. Electricity sparks in the places they touch.

“I…” Katsuki’s mouth feels dry. He clears his throat and tells him, “My parents and I joined the rebellion when I was a kid. We went out on rescue missions, slaying dorobous and bringing civilians back to the safe house we built. My mentor...he was well-known in our town. A hero, really.” What Katsuki doesn’t say is that Toshinori Yagi was practically his father after his own parents were Thieved and then mercy-killed by their own comrades in action.

He feels Kirishima’s fingertips graze his arm, maybe by accident. Katsuki draws in a swift breath.

“What happened to him?” he asks, gentle and undemanding. Maybe the skeletons in Kirishima’s own closet have given him this specific type of empathy. Or maybe he’s just that kind.

“I went out on my own one night,” he says, curling his trembling hands into fists. Anxiety mangles his words and Katsuki needs a moment to recalibrate. This memory—this confession—isn’t supposed to belong to anybody else.

He keeps talking.

“That fucking safe house felt more like a graveyard than a sanctuary,” he grinds out. “It was full of grief-stricken survivors. I had to get away, just for a bit. Every day felt like a goddamn funeral.”

Kirishima says nothing. His eyes are so damn big, like a puppy’s. It at once throws Katsuki and comforts him.

“I got ambushed by dorobous. Like a dumbass I wasn’t armed so the fight seemed pretty hopeless. I kept thinking to myself that I’d rather die than be Thieved, as if I had the luxury of a choice.” Katsuki grasps the blanket with white knuckles, swallowing the knot in his throat. This fucker will not see him cry.

“Toshinori, my mentor, noticed I was gone so he came looking for me. The idiot was recognized immediately. I mean, people called him All Might. He was their worst nightmare…”

Or at least that had been true before his accident. After a close call with a dorobou some years prior, Toshinori was left walking with a cane and almost blind in his left eye. His aim wasn’t what it once was. He could barely hold his own in a fight. He existed as a symbol, a tactical leader, but he hadn’t been on the frontlines in years.

“I wasn’t as interesting to the dorobous anymore and he saved my life at the cost of his own.” His voice was strangled and he cursed himself for being so weak, even now. “They killed him. And I ran away when I should have died by his side.” Beneath his own anger and grief, he knew why he did. Because if Katsuki had died that night, Toshinori’s sacrifice would have been for nothing.

It still felt like a flimsy excuse.

“It was my fault.” It comes out in a broken whisper that didn’t even sound like himself. “If I hadn’t gone out...if I hadn’t been there…” He shakes his head furiously and curses under his breath.

Kirishima touches his arm, running his thumb across his skin. “Hey...what happened after that?” A soft voice. A steady voice.

Katsuki swallows. “I couldn’t face anyone. I took one of his guns from the weapon closet and ran like hell.” As an afterthought, he adds, “The leader of the attack looked like you from the back. It’s the reason I chased you down that first day. Sorry, I guess.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kirishima says.

Katsuki finally averts his eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says again. His fingers stay on Katsuki’s skin. “Look, this world doesn’t really lend itself much to blame. Shit happens and we just have to get through it as best as we can.”

Katsuki turns away from him because suddenly he can’t stand to be touched. He’s surrounded by the ghosts he just set free. It’s all too much.

He hears Kirishima sigh but then the silence feels all too heavy. It empties his mind of the present and leaves too much room for the memories. He comes to a compromise.

“Hey, idiot,” Katsuki says. “Tell me a story.”

Kirishima tenses beside him. He stammers, “Uh, s-sure. Of what?”

“Anything.” He just needs to hear his voice until sleep pulls him under.

And so he does and his gravity returns. When they wake up the next morning, they’re a tangle of limbs.

***

Sunlight beckons them awake and they extricate themselves from each other without words. For the past few weeks, ever since their first night together on the truck bed, every morning has been this way.

Eijirou tucks his pistol into a proper holster now while Bakugou is bent over his knees, lacing up his boots. Once they’re both ready, they share a glance and then hop into the front seats, off again. Sleepy, laconic conversations have become routine for them and each response brings them closer to some semblance of the energy required to survive.

“You reek,” Bakugou says.

“So do you,” Eijirou says.

“Let’s find a shower.”

“But food first.”

“Food first.”

“And coffee.”

A snort. “Good luck finding that.”

“You really do reek, man.”

“You didn’t think so when you clung to me last night.”

Eijirou laughs, tilting his head back against the seat, listening to the rickety hum of their motor. He catches Bakugou’s smirk out of the corner of his eye.

It’s rare to find an abandoned supermarket stocked up, but when they stumble upon one with its front doors intact, Eijirou suggests they give it a look.

Bakugou grunts an affirmative.

Humid air rolls over them as they step inside. The first thing Eijirou notices is the assaulting stench of rancid meat.

“Eugh,” he half-gags. “That’s ripe.”

“Good sign,” says Bakugou. He stalks past Eijirou. “Means there’s still food here. There’s gotta be something salvageable.”

“Should we split up, then? Cover more ground?”

The faster they’re out of here, the better. If this place has yet to be looted, that means it’s only a matter of time.

“Yeah.” Bakugou cocks his rifle, ever-vigilant. “We’ll meet back at the entrance in ten.”

They part ways and Eijirou combs through the aisles, stocking up on whatever non-perishables he can find. A jar of peanut butter. Saltine crackers. Canned goods. His backpack puts on satisfying weight. But the rotting smell only grows more oppressive the closer he moves toward the back.

He tiptoes forward and the stench sends his stomach lurching. When he turns the corner, fear winds through his stomach.

A girl—no, a corpse—lies at his feet. One yellow-tinted, glassy eye stares straight through Eijirou; the other has been eaten by a festival of maggots that have since found a home in her now-hollow skull.

Infected black veins bulge from her ashen, emaciated hands.

Not just a corpse. A discarded host.

Eijirou draws his gun and calls Bakugou’s name.

Katsuki backs into a wall, aiming his rifle at the horde of enemies closing in on him. He’s limited on bullets and would prefer not to waste any on these lowlife dorobous but if he must, then he will. His eyes dart from left to right, searching for an opening.

Kirishima’s voice falls on deaf ears. It wrenches Katsuki’s heart. Is he alright? Did a dorobou find him? He knows Kirishima is more than capable of taking care of himself.

But still...

The one directly in front of Katsuki cocks his head with amusement. Katsuki’s head spins; something about him sets his nerves on end.

“You know…” His voice is deep and gravelly, grating against Katsuki’s ears like nails on a chalkboard. “You remind me of an old friend. It’s that look in your eyes.”

Katsuki’s blood runs cold but he shows no indication. He narrows his eyes and clicks a bullet into its chute.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” he says, though he’s still careful. Right now, his odds aren’t good.

“Aw, kid, don’t you remember me?” He smiles, displaying a row of decaying teeth. “I wonder if All Might would be proud to know you’re still alive.”

Silence.

Eijirou’s heart sinks.

Without thinking, he breaks into a run.

He keeps his gun drawn as his eyes scan the area, desperately searching for a sign of his partner.

He runs.

Leaping over debris and groceries strewn over the floor.

He runs.

As nightmarish what-ifs fill his head to a point of bursting.

He runs, and runs, and runs.

Because if he doesn’t...

His thoughts and better judgment are so wholly monopolized by adrenaline that he isn’t prepared when he’s tackled. He crashes to the floor, gripping his gun to his chest. Cans of food spill out from his backpack and roll straight into the foot of an adjacent shelf.

Eijirou turns over with a gasp, aiming the gun forward. A dorobou with a nest of blonde hair crushes his legs beneath her weight. Her honey-colored eyes are feral with hunger. A web of black veins blooms from her temple.

Her body has already started to give from the infection; once a host can no longer sustain them, they find their next target.

That insurance bullet flashes in his mind.

She’ll kill him. She’ll take him. The gun throbs in Eijirou’s hand like the heartbeats its bullets are meant to collect.

He should kill her.

He should…

A scream tears through his chest and he jams the butt of his gun into her nose. She shrieks as blood runs over her lips. He wrestles her off and leaps to his feet and he doesn’t hesitate to take off again.

Red floods Katsuki’s vision. Toshinori’s alias falls off the dorobou’s tongue like something poisonous. Visceral familiarity carves into Katsuki’s gut and suddenly the pieces jerk into place. Those smug eyes. The bloodlust that would rather kill than Thieve.

A different host, but it’s him.

“You.” Katsuki abandons logic and self-preservation. He lunges at him. “You son of a bitch!”

He’s shoved to the floor by four or five others and his rifle is wrenched from his grip. It clatters to the floor, out of reach.

“I want the body!”

“Shut up! My host has given way. I need it the most.”

“If you damage it beyond repair, none of us will be able to take it!”

A knee jams into his back and Katsuki’s jaw cracks against the tile. Agony explodes through his body. All of his senses but the ones that register pain begin shutting off. White noise spills into his ears and he feels like his skull is about to burst open.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t see.

He can’t speak.

Why the hell did he let his anger get the better of him? Katsuki tries to curse but pain shoots through his spine.

Maybe this is some kind of penance. To die the same way as Toshinori, the way he should have all those years ago.

Even now, thinking of his mentor’s sacrifice, he’s so selfish.

He’d give anything for more time.

More things to learn. More sunrises to see. More...more nights under the stars and long drives in comfortable silence and more warmth. Warmth under a tender gaze, a familiar voice, a soft touch...

...just...more…

The floor grows warm as pins and needles spread across his back. His heartbeat slows, but so does the pain.

Is it over?

It’s so quiet.

And then, a gunshot.

A scream.

A sob.

Bang.

A watery voice calls his name, not Bakugou, but Katsuki. It sounds so sweet. Like a lullaby. He wants to hear it again. Warm hands carefully roll him over and take him into their arms.

“Hey.”

It’s so warm.

“Katsuki.”

It’s so safe.

“Godammit, STAY WITH ME!”

A gentle flame flecked with fierce gold embers. It’s so beautiful.

“I took care of them but we need to leave before we’re ambushed by more.”

It’s...

“Katsuki.”

It’s home.

***

And then everything burns white.

Katsuki’s eyes open to what feels like the goddamn sun. Slowly, the stiff gears in his mind begin to turn as shards of reality draw together: the ridges of the truck bed under his body, the throbbing in his head, the smell of grass and gasoline, and the faraway sound of music trickling through static—a radio?

He groans and tries sitting up but the pain knocks him back down. Kirishima is instantly by his side, hands hovering just above Katsuki’s shoulders.

Kirishima.

He takes him in: big doe eyes, razor sharp teeth barely biting down on his bottom lip whenever he’s concentrated or confused, the scar cutting through his eyelid. He’s so soft. Kind. For a dumb moment, Katsuki asks himself how someone like this could possibly fit into a world so cruel.

“The….fuck,” Katsuki says.

Kirishima helps settle him into a sitting position, then gestures sheepishly at Katsuki. “I hope it’s okay. I have, like, the bare minimum of first aid knowledge. They taught us at the orphanage. But, uh, I’ve never properly dressed a stab wound.”

Stab wound?

He glances down at his body and connects the pain with a concentrated area just shy of the small of his back. Threadbare bandages are wound tightly around his torso.

“It’s...fine,” Katsuki manages, still dazed.

Kirishima sits back on his heels and exhales; it looks as if it’s the first time he’s allowed himself to breathe in days. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

His head is still full of fog, but through the haze of pain, confusion, and whatever memory he has from that night in the supermarket, he’s able to realize one thing.

Kirishima saved him.

Kirishima, with his gentle heart and careful hands pulled the trigger again and again, crying Katsuki’s name—desperate. Kirishima who once asked him if human hosts could still feel the fear and agony of being Thieved, and then being killed. He discarded his own empathy to save Katsuki.

Dorobou or not, his hands are forever stained with blood now.

“You,” Katsuki begins, then stops himself. He doesn’t need to rehash that. Not right now. There will be time to talk about it just like there will be time for Katsuki to return the favor. Instead, he sighs. “It had to be you, didn’t it? No other asshole could have gotten us out of that mess alive.”

Kirishima laughs and the remaining tension bleeds out of him. There’s still something different in his eyes—not broken, but less naive. They’re the eyes of someone who just learned that the only way to survive is to be more ruthless than the world you’re in.

But those fire eyes with their sunny gold flecks are still unequivocally Kirishima Eijirou.

“Is there anything you need?” he asks. “I mean, now that you’re awake.” He jabs a thumb in the direction of the front seat. “I can change the radio station, though, it’s either this or polka.”

Katsuki has half a mind to snap at Kirishima for coddling him. He doesn’t, though. Because it’s Kirishima. Because when everything was slowing to a stop, all he could see was scarlet eyes and a starlit smile.

So he doesn’t curse at him, or move away, or listen to the parts of himself telling him he’s a fool for letting anybody this deep into his heart.

He says, “You called me Katsuki.”

Pink blossoms on Kirishima’s cheeks. He lets out a nervous laugh and scratches the back of his head. “Sorry about that. I, uh, things were...I mean, you know. I don’t kn—”

“God, you talk too fucking much,” says Katsuki. His fingers wind through the fabric of Kirishima’s shirtfront and he pulls him in for a kiss. Butterflies explode in his stomach and his heart feels like it’s about to burst out through his ribs and at first, he thinks Kirishima is going to push him away.

But he melts.

His hands cradle Katsuki’s face, calloused thumbs circling his cheeks. His flushed skin, soft lips, and the rhythm of his pulse intoxicates him like a drug. When they pull apart, Kirishima licks his lips, and then laughs.

Katsuki is taken aback. Defensively, he sputters, “What the hell?”

“You’re so cute when you’re smitten,” he replies, then presses a sweet kiss to the side of his mouth. Katsuki’s face burns. “Man, I’m so glad you didn’t kill me that first day.”

He snorts, then narrows his eyes. “Once again, you talk way too damn much.”

Kirishima cocks an eyebrow. “What are you going to do about it?”

They fall back into each other and Katsuki smiles against Eijirou’s mouth, thankful at the very least for one thing: that all of the anguish leading up until now gave him something so good. Maybe they were unfairly born into a world where the odds are stacked against them. But maybe there’s also something to be said about the way they’ve kicked adversity in the ass. Destiny, fate, or whatever brought hellfire to their home, challenged humanity to a fight to the death.

Every moment up until now has been about trying to conquer the insurmountable. But now, together, there isn’t an odd they won’t beat.

#kiribaku #bakushima #kirishima eijirou #bakugou katsuki #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #fanfic #zine

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artificialqueens · 5 years ago

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Little Lights [Chapter 1] (Trixya) - mrgtmcs

A/N: Hi pals, this is a first time post from a longtime lurker. This will be a canon-compliant multichapter because now I have invested myself. I fully wrote this on my flight to Israel and was half asleep so apologies in advance. Also also, I promise

The music in the venue started to fade, and Katya had already walked offstage, holding heels in one hand. He tiptoes back to the dressing room, sliding past the propped open door.

“Hello,” Trixie practically sang as he spun around in one of the chairs.

“That was awful,” Katya responded, grabbing at his curly blonde wig and sliding it off his head. “No. Worse than awful. Deplorable.”

Trixie tried to stifle a laugh. “Alright, drama queen, calm down.”

Katya was rapidly de-dragging, back turned to Trixie. “I didn’t know any of the lyrics. None of them!” he shot back in rapid fire, tugging at layers of tights. He turned around to face Trixie again. “And it’s a song I’ve done FOR YEARS! But today of all days my brain went, ‘No Brenda, we are not going to give the people what they PAID to see.” Katya took a breath and stuck a baseball cap on his head.

Trixie gasped and said, in mock horror, “Oh no, not a sequel to Glamazonian Airways!”

Katya laughed wildly. “Shut up, you cunt,” he shouted, reaching past Trixie to pick up a pack of cigarettes from the table. Gesturing towards the door, he asked, “You coming?”

“I will watch you from the door,” Trixie said. Katya extended his hand to Trixie, and as he stood up, Katya pulled him into a hug.

“I love you, bitch.”

“You too, incompetent whore,” Trixie laughed. He kissed Katya’s forehead quickly.

Katya pulled out a cigarette from the pack and held it between his fingers. “Mother, I’m going to increase my chances of lung cancer again.” He squeezed Trixie’s shoulder and Trixie followed him outside.

It was pitch black outside the club, Katya’s face, still fully painted, illuminated only by the momentary flicker of his lighter. “Do you ever think,” he started, pausing to take a drag from his cigarette. “About, like, changing your name and getting a full face transplant and, like, starting over as an ER nurse or something?”

Trixie was watching him from the doorway, a smile appearing across his face. “I don’t think you can just go get a face transplant,” he said. “Isn’t that just for, like, burn victims?”

“Dollar bills, mama,” Katya responded.

“Also do you personally believe you have an aptitude for a medical profession?” Trixie started. “Because I’ve seen you try to do math and I don’t think you’d be much of an asset.”

Katya laughed loudly. “You know what I mean, Tracy Martel, now answer the question!”

Trixie looked directly at him and smiled. “Sometimes,” he said.

Katya paused, taking another drag. “We should, you know,” he said. “One of these days. Just be Brian and Brian, ER nurses. Or Stanley and Charles, or whatever.”

“Who are you? Charles?” Trixie asked incredulously.

“Obviously,” Katya responded as he walked closer to Trixie.

“Excuse me, please keep your fumes over there,” Trixie said, placing a hand on Katya’s shoulder. “I enjoy my clean air.”

“I just wanna stand next to you, bitch! Is that such a crime?” Katya shouted.

“When you’re infecting me with your toxins, yes,” Trixie retorted

Katya dropped the half-finished cigarette and smashed it beneath his shoe, making sudden eye contact with Trixie when he looked up. “Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Trixie responded.

Katya sidled up to him and rested his head on Trixie’s shoulder. He felt fingers gently grip the side of his waist, and he could hear his heart beating loudly in his ears. They stood in silence for a moment, staring out at the empty lot. “Guess we have to do this all over again tomorrow,” Katya said, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, Maria, not like it’s our job or anything,” Trixie said, gently bumping Katya with his hip.

“I know,” Katya said, letting out an exasperated sigh. “Just let me complain a little longer. If I don’t get to bitch about my amazing life sometimes, I think I’ll go crazy.”

“Oh, it gets worse?” Trixie laughed.

“You are a rotted bitch, Trixie Mattel,” Katya said, shoving him lightly. He took Trixie’s hand and asked, “If I’m bored later, will you come over?”

Trixie feigned exasperation. “How far will I have to walk?”

“Several doors perhaps, and I’m offended you would even dare ask,” Katya said, pulling Trixie’s hand close to his chest, fingers intertwined with his.

“In that case I will consider it,” Trixie said.

Katya stepped in closer to Trixie. “Can I have a small kiss, mama? For old time’s sake?” Katya asked.

“What old times are you referencing?” Trixie laughed. His hands had already migrated to Katya’s waist, and Trixie pulled him in slightly until their lips met for a brief moment. It was nothing they hadn’t done before, but Katya felt suddenly like the wind had been knocked out of him.

They suddenly heard the voice of the tour manager, Andrew, a few feet away, and Katya felt the moment get yanked away faster than it could begin. “Everyone’s already on the bus, guys. We’re trying to head out.”

“We’re coming in a second,” Trixie shouted back, shooting Katya a knowing grimace. “Oops,” he whispered.

Katya quickly kissed Trixie’s cheek while he still had the chance. “To the bus we go.”

Once they got on the bus, Katya fell half asleep, head in Trixie’s lap. He could feel Trixie’s hand lay haphazardly on his shoulder. He was afraid that moving even an inch would disturb the delicate placement of Trixie’s hand, his fingertips a comforting presence against Katya’s bare skin. Katya didn’t want anything to upset the fragility of the moment. He didn’t want anything to jolt Trixie back into overthinking, didn’t want him to wonder if this was okay. He just wanted to stay there in that moment, no words needed, time suspended. Eventually, though, the bus came to a sudden halt in front of the hotel, and the spell was disrupted. Katya opened his eyes and rolled over to look up at Trixie.

“Hey sleepy,” Trixie said softly.

Katya was in love with the way Trixie’s hand lingered on his chest. He took a breath and paused for a moment. “Brian?” he whispered. Trixie looked at him and grabbed his arm to let him know he was listening. “Promise me you’ll come over tonight?”

Trixie laughed a little. “Alright,” he said.

Katya stood up and started to walk towards the door. “Okay, well I’m holding you to it.” As they both went inside and got in the elevator, Katya scanned Trixie’s face for some clarity. Blank. Nothing. The elevator came to a sudden halt on the fourth floor, and Katya poked Trixie’s ribs. “409 bitch,” he said.

“See you in thirty?” Trixie asked.

“I will be anxiously awaiting your arrival.” Katya turned down the hallway and heard Trixie’s footsteps trailing away in the other direction. When Katya finally got to his room, he was on autopilot, standing in the bathroom immediately waiting for the shower to warm up. His makeup had smeared, leaving trails of black on his cheeks. As he undressed quickly, he stared in the mirror for a little too long, regretting his decision to forego a tan this weekend. Prodding at the contours of his pale abdomen, he felt suddenly out of sorts.

He and Trixie had hung out in each other’s’ rooms countless times. They always had a more or less open-door policy, and Katya had shown up to Trixie’s apartment more than a few times unannounced. Trixie was always up, sitting on his couch, and he’d always motion to Katya to sit down next to him, and he’d slide over and put his head on Trixie’s shoulder. What are we watching? Katya would ask, like he was home. Trixie would hand him the remote and say, Your choice. Eventually he’d fall asleep on the couch, and Trixie would cover him with a blanket and go to bed. He’d let himself out as soon as he’d become sentient again, awaking suddenly to a dark room on a too-familiar couch alone, calling an Uber home at 3AM like a pseudo walk of shame.

Katya’s stream of consciousness was interrupted by a sharp double knock on the door. He quickly turns to shut off the shower, frantically looking for a towel. “Uh, just a second,” he shouted, struggling to dry off as quickly as possible. How long had be been in there? Katya shuffles towards the door, t-shirt only halfway on, and emerges to see Trixie completely de-dragged in an ex-white merch t-shirt.

He took a look at a dilapidated Katya and, already walking into the room, said, “You’re shirt’s on backwards, bitch.”

“Well, I’m sorry that you require perfection, but some of us have been a little too busy with our shower thoughts to pay attention to these details,” Katya said, sliding his arms out of his t-shirt and flipping it around to the front.

“Shower thoughts? Anything particularly sordid you’d care to share with the class?” Trixie asked, tossing himself onto the bed.

“Oh, I wish,” Katya responded, rubbing his soap-irritated eyes. He looked over to see Trixie eyeing him expectantly. “No, no. Nothing interesting.”

Trixie was already messing with the TV settings as Katya sat down next to him, his tense, upright posture a juxtaposition with Trixie’s relaxed sprawl. He suddenly didn’t know how to act normally. “Do we have Netflix capability? Or is it gonna be a cable TV infomercial night?”

“Uh, probably the latter unless you can figure it out—”

Trixie’s phone buzzed and she interjected. “Oh, Alaska’s staying in 412. I told her she could come over. That’s cool, right?”

Katya’s shoulders sunk a little. “Y-yeah, yeah that’s fine.” His entertainment of the idea that maybe there was a hint of something else in the air tonight was promptly smashed to pieces. He was suddenly feeling very antisocial.

Trixie was still flipping through channels on the TV, and Katya, now devoid of the pressure of expectation, flopped onto his back. He felt Trixie’s fingers grab his shoulder suddenly. “Bitch, look at what’s on in two minutes!” he shouted with much more energy than Katya could muster at that point. Katya sat up a little. “Heathers, Brenda. We have won the late-night hotel cable TV lottery.”

Katya smiled. “Alright, well you know what to do,” he said, gesturing at the TV. He popped up for a moment. “I’m going to retrieve a Red Bull from my stash. You want one?” he asked, already across the room digging through a drawer. “I have multiples,” he said with affectation, a dumb grin on his face.

“It’s almost midnight,” Trixie protested.

“And when have you let that stop you?” Katya asked, tilting his head and flashing a smile at Trixie.

“Alright.” Trixie responded, and Katya danced back over to the bed, placing a can gingerly in Trixie’s hand.

“You’re welcome,” Katya said sarcastically. Trixie bumped him with his shoulder. For just a moment, Katya let himself think about those nights at Trixie’s.

Then Alaska knocked at the door, and Trixie paused the movie. Moment over. Trixie got up to answer the door. “I really hope I wasn’t interrupting any hand fun between the two of you,” Alaska said in a long, overdramatic drawl. Katya watched from the bed awkwardly.

Trixie laughed. “You awful cunt.”

He walked in and eyed Katya. “Alaska Thunderfun, what ever are you doing here?” Katya asked in a theatrical voice.

“To relieve my dreadful boredom, of course,” he responded. “How was your show, mama?”

“She said it was awful, and I don’t believe it,” Trixie interjected.

For a fraction of a second, Katya shot him a glance of rare sincerity. He hoped that Trixie got it. “It was awful. Point-blank, period. No exaggeration.”

“Well why? I’m on the edge of my seat,” Alaska asked, sitting down on one of the armchairs.

“Okay, well one, I didn’t remember a single word to the song. Which was horrifying and bad because I don’t think I even managed to sell it. And two—”

Trixie cut her off. “It’s a song she’s performed for years, and then tonight for some reason—”

Alaska jumped in. “Oh my god, my favorite married couple. Are kids on the way?” he said mockingly.

“SHUT UP!” Katya squealed in, thrashing his hands around in the sheets.

“I can’t help it that you two are disgustingly adorable, just casually finishing each other’s sentences. Gross.”

“Girl, don’t be jealous of me and my work wife.” Trixie said. Katya poked his leg and for a brief split second, he could have sworn he saw something in Trixie’s eyes that was different. It was something; it had to be.

“Oh speaking of which, girl, what ever happened to that gorgeous man from last night?” Alaska asked. Was it nothing?

“Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much—” Trixie started.

“Oh my god, you did?” Katya asked, attempting to find the right tone to mask his jealousy.

“No, we didn’t. Well, I mean, not that.”

“Oh, so you—” Alaska holds up her fist and mock-fellatiates the air.

“Maybe.” Trixie said quietly, pulling his chin in closer to his chest. “But you know that I’m not about to go all the way with a man from the club in the same night. I am not that kind of girl.”

“Okay, Miss Mattel, thank you for the shade,” Alaska said. He looks at the TV, the semi-blurred opening scene of Heathers still paused. “So what are we watching tonight?”

“The magic of Heathers has graced the hotel TV this evening. We just started it before you got here,” Trixie said.

“Well onwards, ladies, let’s get it going,” Alaska said. He stayed in his armchair while Trixie climbed back into bed with Katya. “No funny business, you too. Mother is watching,” Alaska joked.

As Trixie unpaused the TV, Katya became distracted by monitoring Trixie’s presence out of his periphery. Trixie and Alaska would ever so often interject commentary during the movie, but Katya was uncharacteristically silent. He waited to see if Trixie moved closer, if he turned his hips away, if he was looking back. Slowly, Katya attempted to inch closer. He figured if it was done at glacial speed, maybe Trixie wouldn’t even notice. Maybe it would seem like an accident. So she counted every few minutes and slid another inch or two closer. The neurosis of it was pure agony, and with every passing moment of Trixie’s signals failing to provide relief, Katya was beginning to feel like a petulant child.

The credits rolled, and Alaska got up. “Alright, I should be heading out. I have got a major early morning tomorrow,” Alaska said, rising from the chair. He walked towards the door and grasped the handle. “See you guys at breakfast tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes, girl, for sure I have to get those pancakes from downstairs,” Trixie said. Katya just nodded. Alaska shut the door behind him.

Katya had the sudden realization that he had fully migrated probably an entire foot. So much for subtlety. Their arms were close enough that they would be touching if either of them moved a millimeter. Katya turned on his side, and Trixie started to sit up.

“You don’t have to go,” Katya said softly. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”

“You sure you don’t wanna go to bed?” Trixie asked.

“You should know by now that your presence does absolutely nothing to affect that,” Katya reassured, gently grasping Trixie’s wrist.

“Well lucky for you, I am completely wired from your Red Bull from earlier,” Trixie said, sliding back underneath the covers.

Katya laughed and said, “Then my plan was successful.”

Trixie passed the remote to Katya. “Your turn,” he said.

Katya started scrolling. “So who was the guy from the other night?” he asked, realizing it came out sounding a little more controlling housewife than he was intending.

“Oh him? I have no idea.” Trixie’s tone luckily didn’t seem to imply he had read this as accusatory. “His name was Dan or Dave or something like that. Very much what I’d classify as a drunk decision.”

“Gotcha. Well that’s fun, I guess,” Katya responded, a little too seriously.

Trixie paused for what felt like an eternity and looked at him. “What?” he asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Katya asked.

“What is this reaction you’re having? ‘Well that’s fun, I guess’? That’s not how you talk and you and I both know it,” Trixie pressed.

Katya felt exposed, all of a sudden. With no rehearsed heart-bearing statement, he said, rather anticlimactically, “No, no, sorry, I just was reading something on the TV and wasn’t paying attention.” He took a breath and tried to sell it further. “No reason to panic, Mother,” he said in a jokey cockney accent. Trixie seemed to accept this response, but Katya secretly wished she’d pushed more. He just needed another moment to think of how to frame what it really was. He wasn’t even sure he could put it to words right then. It was all too much feeling and too little logic to relay. Katya tried to change the subject. “Cops?” he asked. “I think it’s as good as we’re gonna get this time.”

Trixie seemed distracted. “Uh, yeah, it’s your call. Whatever you want.”

Katya put it on and relaxed back into the bed, sliding a little further away in a weak attempt to conceal his motives. Almost without missing a beat, Trixie moved in closer, so much so that their arms were suddenly touching. Katya felt his breathing get faster, it was all too much and he almost couldn’t function. He resounded to not react, taking every bone in his body and willing himself to not move one way or the other. He wanted to see what Trixie would do without any of his own influence.

Katya was nearly stressed by the inaction. They remained like that for minutes on end, nobody making a single move. He tried to watch Trixie from the corner of his eye, but he was watching the TV. He felt his palms sweating, wondering how he could be so overwhelmed and Trixie could be watching TV with the inner calm of a monk. But before long, Katya felt fingers running along his wrist. The touch was tentative devoid of any reason or context. This was a sign, right? Katya took it as encouragement enough to lean her head into the space between Trixie’s shoulder and his jaw. “Wait, sit up for a second,” Trixie said. Katya felt a sinking feeling. Did he cross the line? Was this too much? He thought he was just following Trixie’s lead. Trixie moved his arm so it hooked around Katya’s waist. “Okay, all good,” he said reassuringly. He pulled Katya in closer, and Katya felt his cheek brush against Trixie’s.

There was always a line they never seemed to cross, even though it seemed to get blurrier and blurrier with time. They never went beyond the point of no return, beyond the point where they’d actually have to talk about it, where it couldn’t just be chalked up to a platonic intimacy. Katya was never really sure where this line was, but Trixie always seemed so sure of it. His boundaries were always so defined to him, even if they seemed unclear to Katya most of the time. But from experience, Katya learned. They could snuggle in the same bed all night as long as they didn’t sleep together, and they could share quick kisses if it was mandated, but they never, ever lingered. Anything beyond that could upset the delicate balance of not having to talk about it. Even Alaska’s comments could make Katya jump, like he’d just peered at the X-ray of his innermost thoughts that he didn’t dare voice. Katya always assumed Trixie didn’t have any questionable thoughts that Alaska’s jokes would threaten to illuminate, since he always managed to seem so collected.

Katya wasn’t even pretending to watch the TV anymore, his eyes enamored with studying the contours of Trixie’s face. Trixie remained seemingly oblivious. “You know, if I were running from the cops, I don’t think I’d bring my crack pipe with me,” he said, laughing a little. He looked over at Katya, his lithe body practically melted into Trixie, and his face was so close that Katya could feel the warmth of his breath against his skin, making his stomach flip over. Trixie raised his eyebrows at him.

“Yes, yes, totally agree,” Katya said absently. He traced the perimeter of Trixie’s jawline with his index finger, then ran it along the bridge of his nose. “You have a cute nose, you rotted whore. Just thought I’d tell you.” He whispered it so gently that it was almost too intimate.

“You are a strange one,” Trixie said.

Katya traced the curve of his bottom lip. “Brian, uh—” Trixie was looking at him again. “Would you, uh, get mad if I kissed you right now?”

Trixie laughed again, but Katya was dead serious, his face almost concerned. So Trixie didn’t answer immediately. He turned onto his side and place his hand on the side of Katya’s face. “I’d get mad if you didn’t.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Trixie brought his lips to meet Katya’s. But this time was different. He didn’t pull away instantly, didn’t make a joke to diffuse the tension, didn’t stop it before it began. They lingered, Trixie’s breath hot and heavy against Katya’s face. Trixie’s tongue brushed Katya’s lips, and it instantly intensified until the weight of Katya’s body was pressed on top of his. Hands wandered underneath t-shirts, feeling warm skin against skin. Trixie’s fingertips raked across Katya’s back until he reached towards the waistband of Trixie’s jeans. “Wait,” Trixie said, near-breathless. “Don’t.” Katya looked up at him with wide eyes, half-surprised, half-disappointed. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have let it happen.” Katya rolled off Trixie and flopped onto his back, facing a separation that felt like it could’ve spanned oceans. Still fully clothed, he felt more naked than ever before. He wanted to crawl into the shower and wash the feeling off.

Trixie was already up and heading for the door. He didn’t even try to diffuse the situation, his words just sat there with their jagged edges, cutting into Katya with every moment he still stood there. Katya didn’t even try to come up with a response. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Trixie said as he closed the door behind him, his inflection at the end making it seem more like a question than a declaration that things would go on as normal.

#rpdr fanfiction #trixya #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #fluff #angst #canon compliant #mrgtmcs #little lights #submission

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