#anyways i can feel the bristles of my mustache on my lips. could not feel it before

[fatal-blow]

I've been loosening up my shoulder more and at one point i loosened something in my neck and pulled that back into place and. im starting to realize that whatever i did i can see, think, smell, and hear more clearly now. very bizarre.

[nocturnal-milk-dud]

One Last Time--Right?

Pairing: Obispo ‘Bishop’ Losa x Reader

Summary: A sleepless night and an unexpected visitor. 

Rating: E; NC-17; 18+ only 

Warning/notes: look what was just “sitting” in my drafts! Some of it was sitting, some of it still had to be written. I kind of phoned in the smut ngl; based off of this dialogue prompt; language; gun violence, sort of?; blood; unprotected sex (wrap it up); sex toys; biting; excessive use of pet names, idk. I’ll have more Bishop fics in the future so if you’re not on the taglist and you want to be for those let me know. 

Word count: 1425

“Oops,” you said after flicking on the living room light, grimacing at the sight of Bishop holding his injured arm.

“You just shot me and that’s all you have to say? ‘Oops’?” Bishop demanded. He winced as he slid out of his kutte and you snapped out of your stupor as you watched his bloodied fingers fumble with his shirt buttons. You set your gun down on the side table and rushed over to him, helping him with his shirt, easing the fabric down over his injured shoulder. 

“It’s just a scratch,” you said when you saw the wound, sighing in relief and annoyance. Bishop tossed his shirt on the couch beside his kutte and you hurried into the bathroom for the first aid kit.  

“Clearly I should have taken you to the range more,” Bishop said. He was standing in the bathroom doorway in his black tank top, a line of blood running down his left arm. 

“So, you’re giving me a hard time for not killing you?” you said, looking at him like he was crazy. 

“I’m giving you a hard time for your aim, querida.” 

“Don’t call me that,” you grumbled, cleaning the long stripe of blood from his arm and holding pressure against the wound with a clean towel. The air around you felt tight as you realized how close the two of you were. Your bed had been empty for weeks, and the weeks before that had seen a cold space grow between the two of you. The idea that you could end that physical separation with just a small step forward, with the right touch, the right look, made your heart skip a beat. 

“What are you doing here anyway?” you asked. 

"You left some stuff over at my place. I was bringing it back."

"At one in the morning?" Bishop rubbed his chin with his free hand and looked at the floor. 

"I didn't wanna bother you with it," he admitted. "Figured I’d be in and out and you’d sleep right through it.” The two of you were silent as you lingered on the fact that Bishop had tried to avoid you. That if you had been asleep, the only evidence to show he’d been there would have been a bag on the living room floor full of your things. You lifted the towel to check the bleeding.

"Why are you awake?” Bishop asked as he watched you, a curious expression on his face.

“I couldn’t sleep.” You put the towel down and started cleaning and bandaging the wound, trying to ignore the feeling of Bishop’s eyes on you. His gaze had softened and you knew what would happen if you met it. Sleep had never been a problem for you, even when you were stressed or upset. For whatever reason it managed to find you just the same and Bishop knew all of that. He’d commented often on wishing he had that ability. 

“Alright,” you said, finishing up, a white bandage placed neatly over the damage. “Just call next time, I promise I won’t bite your head off or whatever you thought was going to happen.” 

Bishop stopped you as you went to tuck the first aid kit away.

“Why couldn’t you sleep?” he asked. The question hung in the air between the two of you and you struggled with the answer because there was no good one. Before Bishop showed up you had been tossing and turning, the blanket too hot, the sheets too cold, every part of you wide awake, and a familiar need growing inside you. You had been reaching for your vibrator when you heard the noise and reached for your gun instead. The truth was that without Bishop beside you, sleep was getting harder and harder to find each night. But you weren’t about to admit that.

“I don’t know,” you lied. You went to move around Bishop again but he caught you by the arm and this time you met his eyes. You wished you hadn’t because you were certain he could see everything. 

“Bullshit,” Bishop said, bringing you close, your body tight against his. His tongue passed slowly between his lips as his eyes lingered on yours. “You need me, don’t you, sweetheart?”

“No,” you said, but your voice was so weak and pathetic that you scoffed and rolled your eyes at yourself. You repeated the word, firmly that time, but it didn’t matter. A corner of Bishop’s mouth was turned up in a soft smirk, eyebrows raised, his face clearly asking who you were trying to kid. Bishop caressed your cheek and you melted into his touch, eyes closing at the feel of his calloused hand on your skin. You did need Bishop, maybe just for one night. One last night and then the two of you could move on. You felt the brush of his lips and the heat of his breath, the bristle of his mustache on your skin. 

“You need me to fuck you to sleep, baby?” Bishop whispered. The only response you could manage was a whimper, the sound cut off by his lips closing around yours. The kiss was hungry, desperate, the two of you needing each other more than you were willing to admit, and Bishop pushed you against the wall, his thigh between your legs, thin panties the only barrier between your clit and the friction you so desperately needed. 

“Obispo,” you gasped as you felt his teeth leaving marks on your neck, his hand slipping under your tank top. You caught sight of yourself in the mirror, eyes lust-drunk and heavy, and you pushed away every shred of common sense. You rocked your hips back and forth, moaning in Bishop’s ear at the sensation. 

“Look at you,” he said with a chuckle, “that little toy of yours not getting the job done? Need me to show you how to use it?” Bishop pulled away from you, taking your hand in his and leading you back to the bedroom. Lips locked, Bishop made quick work of your clothes and urged you back onto the rumpled bed.

“You’re fucking soaked, baby,” he said as his fingers found your warmth and you whimpered when he took them away, reaching for the top drawer of your bedside table. Bishop leaned down, lips finding yours in a slow, wet kiss and you moaned into his mouth at the feeling of the vibrator pressing against your clit. You rolled your hips, grinding against the toy.

“I want you,” you said through tight gasps, clinging to Bishop. “I wanna feel you.” 

“You gotta come for me first, sweetheart,” he said. With his free hand he held you by the chin, and you lost yourself in his warm brown eyes as your chest rose and fell with your frantic breathing. “Come for me.” Your nails dug into his skin, your body tensing up before falling apart under the wave of pleasure, and you slumped limp and heavy into the bed. Bishop tossed the vibrator aside and brought you into a tender kiss, his teeth tugging gently at your bottom lip. You reached out, hands fumbling with his belt and he smiled through the kiss. 

“Can’t get away from this dick, can you baby?”

“Shut the fuck up,” you said through a breathy chuckle. Bishop tugged the black tank top over his head, tossing it to a dark corner of the room, and you ran your hands over his chest, craving his closeness, his warmth. You wrapped your legs around him, both of you moaning as he entered you, and you dropped your head back on the pillow.

“God I fucking missed you,” Bishop said, burying his face in your neck and planting wet kisses along your skin. You curled your fingers in his hair, begging him not to stop. Bishop altered his pace, snapping into you faster, his thrusts punctuated by sharp grunts and he slipped his hand between your bodies, finding your sensitive clit. It wasn’t long before another orgasm was sweeping through you, your nails raking his back as his name fell broken from your lips. Bishop’s pace faltered with his last thrust, burying himself deep inside you as he came. He slumped against you, resting his head next to yours on the pillow. The two of you stayed like that, your hand stroking the back of his neck as a calm blanketed you. You turned your head, meeting Bishop’s drowsy gaze. 

“Stay,” you whispered. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

Taglist:  @massivecolorspygiant​ @chibsytelford​ @redpoodlern​ @est1887​ @yosoynicolexo @withmyteeth​

[cutesilyo]

no place in the world (like manila) — an amephil fanfic

A few months after the outbreak of the Philippine-American War, Alfred falls in love with and is betrayed by a bright-eyed teenager with the prettiest smile on this side of the Orient in a single night. 

This is not a love story.

Also available on AO3.

—

"Sir, I don't think it's safe for you to leave the camp," Major-General MacArthur warned. "I don't know how, but the revolutionaries know your face. They could attack you!"

"Pshaw," Alfred snorted. "I'm a nation. What could they do that could take me down, huh?"

MacArthur's mustache bristled in displeasure. "Be that as it may sir, might I remind you that you only arrived in Manila a week ago? Knowing you, you'd just get lost and I'd have to put together a whole squad of troops just to hunt you down. You could get captured, Alfred. I don't know how to tell you just how badly that would bring down morale."

Alfred just wagged his fingers, a bright grin on his face. "Look, if I get captured, I'd bust out of whatever crappy holding place they'd put me in without barely breaking a sweat! And knowing our soldiers, that's just the stuff that would make a great story to tell at dinnertime. How's that for morale?"

The way that MacArthur simply stared at him blankly told Alfred that this was not a convincing argument.

"I hate it when you do that," he groaned, slumping back on his seat. The leather was hot with the heat of the tropical sun and it stuck uncomfortably to his skin. Oh, how badly he wanted to just finally get up and leave. "I'm just saying, I can't stay inside here forever just waiting for you to dictate our next move."

"It's part of our strategy—"

"And it's boring. I'm bored, Major-General. I might as well look around." Alfred's eyes glinted dangerously. "Besides, you'll capture the whole nation for me soon enough, won't you? No harm in wanting to see what we're winning once this war is over."

The silence lasted for a few seconds before the major-general sighed in defeat.

—

Private Patton R. Wilkes was assigned to “accompany” Alfred while he roamed around Manila, but he knew that MacArthur just wanted someone to make sure he would actually return to camp instead of getting lost or, God forbid, taking the next ship back to America. Though the both of them were dressed in civilian clothing, the private carried himself with a strict stiffness that just screamed hardened military man. If Alfred wanted any chance of escape, it looked like the private would be hard to shake off.

Alfred tried to stay optimistic about the trip anyway. He hadn't paid much attention to the city while he was on the way to the American camp, but he certainly expected it to have an air of exoticness. He was a bit disappointed not to see anything like the palaces of Japan or the distinctly oriental architecture of China. Instead, he found street signs written in Spanish, the excited chatter of fast-talking brown-skinned people, and the cacophony of guitars, church bells, and the sound of horse-drawn carriages trotting along the stoned roads. Walking around Manila was like looking at a funhouse mirror version of Mexico: more or less the same, but with just enough differences to make his head spin.

"Uh, you alright there, sir?" Patton asked.

"Was just thinking about a bad memory, is all," Alfred grimaced. He's sure that Alejandro would have his head once he returned to the continent. He's been pissing off a lot of Spanish-speaking nations recently, that's for sure. "Come to think of it, the Philippine Islands must have its own personification too, right?"

The private's face darkened. "He's a force to reckon with, sire. Haven't seen no hide nor hair of him myself, but some guys in the other squadron barely survived after fighting with the kid."

"A kid?" Alfred furrowed his eyebrows. He didn't know there were still nations out there who were that young. Then again, he was only a teenager himself, and he was even younger when he fought against Arthur as well. "I don't know how I feel about fighting a kid. Couldn't I just give him a lollipop or something and this could all just work itself out?"

He meant it as a joke, but Patton seemed to take it seriously and started furiously shaking his head. "Don't think you could even try negotiating with him sir, the kid's a savage. Hacked and slashed his way through the guys with some kind of golden knife, they said. We're lucky our medics are so darned fast, otherwise, we would've been down almost a dozen men from him alone."

Something in Alfred's resolve hardened at the thought of losing his soldiers to someone so brutal. He clapped the other man on the shoulder and said, "Don't you worry, Pat. We'll end this soon, and when we win, we'll make sure that nobody from these islands ever lays a hand on any of our own."

That seemed to comfort Patton somewhat, though he was still shaking with anger. "I'll give them a good walloping right by your side, sire."

"Now that's the kind of patriotic determination I wanna see!" Alfred crowed. He then immediately scrambled for his wallet and hurriedly gave the private a wad of bills. Some onlookers openly gawked at seeing the number of dollar bills in his hand. "Tell you what, why don't you buy some booze, head back to camp, and inspire your fellow soldiers, eh? God knows we need some fun around here."

"Um," Patton blinked, caught off-guard. "I don't know if Major-General MacArthur—"

"Tell Major-General MacArthur that I'm just trying to boost morale," Alfred winked. "Also, tell him I'll back by next morning!"

He didn't get to hear Patton's response as he took off running wildly in the opposite direction. He barely registered running past the stores, wet market, and the cathedral; he just wanted to be alone and independent, exploring this new land to his heart's content. The buildings were shorter and the roads were narrower here than in his own country, but Alfred was just so glad to finally be in a place filled with people just like he was used to.

Alfred collapsed on his knees, winded. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that he had apparently made it to one of Manila's many ports. Past the numerous small fishing boats and trading boats, he could see that the sun was already beginning to set. The sky was painted in a pretty combination of pinks and oranges in contrast to the ocean's blue, the stars already starting to twinkle faintly into appearance one by one. The rhythmic lapping of the waves against the rocks seemed louder than everything else around him — a stark reminder that no matter where he went, there was always something bigger to discover.

He stood there for a moment, mesmerized when a loud grunt startled him out of his stupor.

He turned to find some kind of bull staring at him with its beady eyes, its long horns curving towards the back instead of to the front. It was pulling a wagon full of leafy vegetables that Alfred couldn't recognize, and the old man riding it looked startled to come across a foreigner.

"Hijo, padaan naman po," he said, with a strained smile.

"Oh, sorry, I don't know what you mean," Alfred tried, but the man just continued smiling at him. He was starting to think that maybe abandoning Patton, who wasn't fluent but at the very least conversational in Tagalog, was a bad idea.

Luckily, someone came to his rescue. A teenager with bright eyes approached him, an amused twitch of the lips on his sharp face. He was dressed simply: unlike the suit and tie ensemble of the richer Filipinos he'd come across or the pale blue uniform of the Philippine Army, he wore a thin white top and trousers cut just above his ankles. The scabbard on his hip would have been concerning if Alfred didn't know just how many Filipinos carried knives in their daily lives. All in all, he looked just like any other street vendor, but the red handkerchief tied around his neck was vibrant enough to make him stand out. "You are American, yes?"

"Ah yeah," Alfred flushed, a bit flustered. The way the stranger leaned in was a little too close for comfort, but he looked harmless and at least he spoke English. "Can you help me? I think that man is talking to me, but I can't understand what he's saying."

The teenager grabbed his arm to pull him to the side. The old man tipped his straw hat in thanks, and the teenager smiled, saying: "Pasensya na po, lolo! Hindi kasi taga-rito."

The two of them watched the wagon pass them by. They stood there in silence for a moment, and then Alfred blurted out, "I didn't know I was in the way, I swear."

"You did seem quite distracted." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other boy laugh. The both of them turned to each other at the same time, a small smile on each other's faces. "Not that I blame you. I am sure you have sunsets in America, but it is different here than in other countries. I think the colors are more vibrant, do you agree?"

"Certainly takes my breath away," he admitted. "I do have to ask, how come you speak English so well? I've only been in Manila for a few days but I don't think I've met another Filipino that's as good as you are."

The teenager only laughed again and held on to Alfred's arm tighter. As he looked up at him, his eyes and grin were equally bright with mirth; and despite himself, Alfred was a bit charmed. "Us Filipinos are not as stupid as you think, señorito. Now, you say you are a stranger to Manila, yes? Come with me, and let me show you around my city."

—

They ended up hailing a tranvia, a carriage made to carry a whole group of people instead of just a pair. Alfred found it small and quaint, making an internal note to build tram lines in the city once he was able. Yet the energy that the teenager had with him was larger than life. He had apparently noticed the other passengers giving Alfred a suspicious side-eye, and immediately launched into a round of jokes to dispel the tension. Though he barely understood the jokes due to them being told in a mix of Spanish and Tagalog, the way that the whole tranvia burst into loud laughter was enough to assure him that his companion was quite the comedic performer.

When they got off, the driver even thanked them for the entertainment and told them not to pay the fare anymore. Alfred let out an excited whoo! as the teenager did an exaggerated bow.

As the carriage rode off, Alfred turned to his new friend and exclaimed, "Wow! The way you handled that was amazing! I mean, I've been through worse than an awkward train ride, but you definitely saved my ass back there."

The teenager blushed slightly. "Think nothing of it. I would rather see my companions happy and comfortable in my care than anything else."

"Still, that thing you did was certainly a swell sight." Alfred breathed in the cold evening air and let it out with a contented sigh. He looked straight into the other boy's eyes as he said, "And it's really nice that you're going through all the trouble to be with me tonight too! Like, we don't even know each other's names but you just whisked me away like some kind of fairytale hero! That was really awesome of you, I have to say."

"You are a man of sweet words," the teenager said, with a smile that looked almost bittersweet. Then, as if he had completely forgotten about his melancholy, he grabbed Alfred's arm again and dragged him towards the next street corner. "But let us not waste time talking! Most of these shops close soon, and I would hate for us to miss them!"

Helpless, Alfred let himself be strung along.

Sadly, most of the shops they went past had already closed for the day. Still, the teenager cheerily talked his ear off about what wares they sold and the local gossip about the people who ran those stores — like Pepito, owner of the clay pottery store, who had apparently given away all his lotto winnings to the next city's blacksmith. The one time that they had actually been able to buy something was when they came across a small, brightly-colored cart that apparently sold the Filipino version of ice cream. Both the vendor — Mang Tomas, as he was introduced — and the teenager had chuckled when he brought out a wallet full of dollars, so the teenager had to reach into his own pocket to pay with a few coins. As they walked past yet another cathedral, Alfred caught his friend singing the hymns under his breath. When they reached the plaza, the teenager then asked the lady standing nearby — Aling Nena, he was told — to give him a jasmine garland, the scent of the white flowers so powerful that it immediately made Alfred sneeze on his friend's face when he put them around his neck. Yet instead of getting mad like he expected, the teenager had only laughed and told him he looked handsome.

No matter where they went or who they talked to, his friend always seemed to know everyone's names. Alfred had no idea how he had the time to possibly get so familiar with all the people around him, but he certainly understood the sentiment; he loved talking with all the Americans that he came across with too. Personally getting to know the people who made his nation always made him feel more connected with them in a way that war and politics never could.

And if the Philippine Islands was truly to be his someday, Alfred knew he wanted to treat them similarly. More than anything or anyone else though, nobody in the archipelago had intrigued him most than the young man beside him whose smile was brighter than any star.

Yet all his experience in small talk failed him tonight, and not for lack of trying. Every time he asked questions about his friend, he was always diverted away from the topic.

Which part of the city are you from? was met with a vague Do you ask the flower which vine it came from? You are better off simply enjoying the whole garden.

Where is your family? had been completely ignored as his friend said You must be hungry, yes? I know a place with the best empanadas this side of Binondo.

What is your name? earned him a cheeky wink and a teasing If your mind still ventures to inane questions like that, then I am not doing very well in completely impressing you.

How old are you? made the teenager burst out into loud, hearty laughter that lasted for more than a minute. Alfred didn't even bother to try asking anything else after that, choosing to focus on his empanadas and arroz a la valenciana for the rest of the meal.

Later, when they were served a bottle of gin to share along with a bowl of peanuts, his friend had the grace to apologize for his behavior.

"I truly am sorry," he said, but the playful grin on his face made it difficult to take his apology seriously. "I simply do not think that you knowing more about me is more important than us having a good time together."

"How am I supposed to find you again if I don't know who you are, huh?" Alfred couldn't stop himself from whining. He ignored the glass in front of him, taking a swig straight from the bottle and letting the alcohol burn down his throat. His friend watched him in bemusement. "This has been the best night of my life in a long time. And if this is the last time we see each other, I don't think I'm going to forgive myself if I don't push you into giving me a hint."

This time, it was his friend's turn to take a drink: he filled his glass half-full and downed it all in one go. "You are certainly bold, señorito, I will give you that. A good friend of mine warned me about how loud and annoying Americans were, but it seems he neglected to tell me about how forward you all were as well."

Alfred resisted the urge to roll his eyes; of course, he would get deflected yet again. "Alright, I'll bite. Tell me more about your friend."

The teenager looked surprised. "You wish to know more about a man that insulted you?"

"If this is the closest I get to you telling me more about yourself, I'll take it," he shrugged. "Besides, I'd love to know how this friend of yours thinks. Americans are the greatest people in the world! He must be stupid if he doesn't know that."

The other boy laughed. "Of course you would say that, you biased brute. And I will have you know that my friend was quite smart, actually. One of the smartest men I have ever known."

Alfred felt like he wouldn't like the answer, but he asked anyway: "Was?"

All traces of laughter from his friend's face faded away into a hollow smile. "Killed by firing squad a few years ago."

Silently, Alfred poured gin into both of their glasses. They drank in solemn solidarity.

"My sincere condolences," said Alfred, and he meant it: he had lost too many friends himself over the centuries. "And I'm sorry I called him stupid."

His friend waved it off. "No worries. Pepe was incredibly intelligent, but he definitely had his fair share of stupid moments — you wouldn't believe how many times that man fell in love over the course of his short lifetime. Still, I miss him terribly and I wish he was still around. God only knows what he would have thought about everything happening at present."

"Oh, I know the feeling." Despite him dying decades prior, Alfred still longed for George Washington's steadfast guidance sometimes. He reached, a bit messily, for another drink. "It's uncanny, yeah? Some people just have this weird ability to analyze the present and predict the future. I certainly don't know how they do anything like it, really. I kind of just talk big and hope for the best."

"Funny that you talk about the future," the teenager chuckled. "Somehow, my friend even managed to predict that you would come here, Alfred. I did not believe him at the time, of course, but here you are."

"Here I am," Alfred repeated faintly. "Hold on, how did you know my—"

"Why were you all alone in my city, señorito?" His friend interrupted, looking up at him through his eyelashes. He leaned closer, close enough for the skin of their arms to touch, and Alfred suddenly forgot about all his worries. "I was very surprised to see you on your own, looking every bit like a lost little lamb. You are very lucky that I found you."

"Lucky indeed," he murmured, adjusting the collar of his shirt. It felt like the temperature in the room had risen by a dozen degrees. "Just wanted to explore, is all. MacArthur told me we had to stay low for a few more weeks, I got bored, and he let me out."

Those bright eyes were practically glittering as the teenager looked up at him, his fingers slowly tracing up his arm. "And you were alone? I always thought American soldiers traveled in pairs, but perhaps I was mistaken."

"No! No, you're right, you're definitely right," Alfred stammered out. He was sure his face was completely red by now. "I was with Private Wilkes earlier, but we, ah, got separated. He must be on the way back to Bulacan by now."

"How unfortunate," the other practically purred, clearly delighted. "Say, tell me, how did this Wilkes look like? Because I am sure that he does not look as handsome as you do."

That damned smile, now coy instead of kind and sweet, was tantalizingly close. If only he had the courage to lean down—

Alfred, trying desperately to distract himself, grabbed the bottle again and took a long swig.

There were about a million promises that threatened to spill from Alfred's lips, each one more outrageous than the other: Come with me. Stay with me. I'll keep you safe. I'll love you. Yet at the moment, he found himself tongue-tied. He didn't know if it was the alcohol or the atmosphere or the way the young boy across the table had so effortlessly allured him, but he felt like he was about to go insane. He barely registered the both of them standing up to leave, didn't question why they didn't need to pay at the restaurant, paid no heed to what his friend had whispered to the men standing guard by the door. His mind was in a muddy haze, and all he could focus on was the fact that his friend was holding his hand as he was led into the dark streets.

Dimly, Alfred thought that however striking he looked by the setting sun, he looked much more ethereal bathed in moonlight.

He must have said this aloud because the teenager laughed.

"You are a man of sweet words," he said, and there's that oddly bittersweet smile again. "And I wish we could have met in better circumstances."

"What's wrong with the way we met today? I had fun," Alfred argued. He swayed slightly on his feet, and his friend held on to him to keep him from falling. "Didn't you have fun?"

"You forget we are at war, señorito. And you forget that you are seeking to control me and my people, not find a lover." Despite the harsh words, the way his friend said this was soft and sad. Almost like he was somehow hurt. "It does not matter what we feel today if we are bound to fight each other tomorrow. Should you not know this by now?"

They walked together in silence, each supporting the other. Slowly, Alfred's alcohol-induced dizziness began to subside. It was replaced by a growing emptiness in his chest — and a heavy, heavy realization.

"You knew I was America this entire time." When his friend deigned to respond, he continued. "Then, why...?"

At this, the teenager laughed — broken and wistful and desperate, all at once. "I do not know myself. I was ready to attack you, but for some reason, the look in your eyes as you watched the sunset stopped me. I thought, if you could look at my country with such amazement, then you could see that this war is unnecessary. That if you could know my land and my people the way I knew them, full of vibrancy and color and light, then you could realize that they did not deserve to die.

"Yet as the night went on I began to realize my efforts were fruitless. It was not them you were looking at anymore, but me." Here, his friend faced him; Alfred barely catching a glimpse of his wet eyes before the teenager looked away. "Believe me, I would love to spend another night like this with you. But you have your responsibilities and so do I."

"Fruitless," Alfred repeated hollowly. The cold night wind was in stark contrast to the hot rage he felt bubbling inside him. He forcefully wrenched himself away from his friend, yelling: "You made me tell you classified information!"

In seconds, he watched the teenager's face go from shock to hurt to an angry glare.

"Do you not understand how badly I need to win this war? My people did not give their lives to free me from Spain just so you could swoop in and take over! So forgive me, señorito," his friend spat mockingly, "for trying to find whatever advantages my poor nation can get against such an imperialistic nation like you!"

"And do you not understand what we're trying to do here?" Alfred shouted. "We are fighting this war to save you! Don't you see that your country is a mess? That you're underdeveloped, uneducated, and unfit for self-rule? I was the hero who helped save your people from Spain, jackass, and—"

"—and you promised to give us independence, and yet all your countrymen seem to do is kill." The teenager finished, both his eyes and the hilt of his knife glinting golden under the moonlight. "Is that what freedom means to you, America? I beg to differ."

As Alfred stepped away from him in furious, furious betrayal, all he could think about was that the other boy looked so small.

"I thought of you as my friend," he said.

"And I thought of you as my liberator," the teenager said coolly. "I see we were both wrong."

A harsh whinny interrupted them both. Alfred turned to find Patton riding a chestnut brown horse, his face red from exhaustion but seemingly unharmed. The private stopped in front of him, dismounting without grace on the pavement. His face was red from exhaustion and his clothes looked considerably ruffled, but otherwise, he looked unharmed.

"It ain't my position to say this sire, but don't you dare ever try to run away from me like that again," Patton panted, giving a quick side-eye to the other teenager before dismissing him. "We best hurry now, because those two won't be happy about their stolen horse."

Just as he was about to ask who those two were, a pair of Filipinos with muskets turned the corner and ran towards them. He vaguely recognized them as the same two men who were standing guard at the restaurant. They shouted loudly, a mix of Tagalog and Spanish expletives that Alfred could barely recognize, and a phrase distinct enough that he felt like it was something significant: amang bayan.

Patton evidently recognized the words. He looked at him in a wide-eyed panic, saying, "Sire, we need to leave—"

And as quick as lightning, Patton fell to the ground with a sickening crack. Caught completely off-guard and his arms restrained, he was helpless against the teenager who had a knife at his throat: a knife that, as Alfred began to realize with a horrified lurch of his stomach, was engraved with golden flowers and the insignia of an eight-rayed sun.

"You must be Private Wilkes," the Philippines smiled. "I do hope you are enjoying my country."

"Get off him or else!" Alfred screamed, the combined events of the night making him feel like he was about to reach his breaking point. He reached for the pistol he kept hidden on his belt and took aim, hoping to God that the other nation wouldn't force him to shoot. Even after everything, he didn't feel like he had the nerve to hurt Philippines after the hours they spent together; maybe some other day, but not tonight.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the two men had caught up to them. They angled their muskets at him from a distance. The horse, which Alfred had been planning to use for escape, had already taken off running in the commotion.

Patton stared up at him with fear in his eyes, a bleeding gash on his forehead, and Alfred's hands began to shake.

Above all else, Philippines was still smiling: eyes bright, amused twitch of the lips on his sharp face. Slowly, he stood to approach him.

Like a switch had been flicked, his features turned soft and kind again — more like the boy that Alfred had met earlier, the boy who had dragged him around the streets of Manila with lighthearted laughter, the boy whose smile was brighter than any star. All Alfred could do was stand there, mesmerized once again, as his hand was gently pried away from the gun.

"Alfred," Philippines said this quietly, almost like he was invoking a prayer. He motioned the men to stand down. "I do not wish to fight."

"I don't want to either," Alfred admitted. Maybe there was hope... "C'mon, we can talk this through, right? Look, we haven't had a battle in months. It should be really easy to negotiate, yeah? I'll set up a meeting with your generals and mine, we'll have a civil discussion with no weapons allowed, and we'll reach a compromise."

The other nation was leaning in, and this time, Alfred took his chance. He held Philippines' cheek in his hands and they kissed, soft and quick and chaste.

"Of course," Alfred said, as he pulled away. "I would need your complete surrender—"

He was swiftly kneed in the stomach, disarmed, and shot.

"Alfred, I do not wish to fight," Philippines said, as he watched Alfred collapse to the ground. "But I have to. I hope you understand."

He vaguely registered Patton reaching out to him as his eyes closed and the blood pooled around him, but all he could focus on was watching the other nation walk away into the darkness.

—

When Alfred came to, he was already back at camp. Without thinking, he immediately trudged to the general's war office.

"Good morning, Major-General MacArthur," he smiled, bright and cheery. "Gather the troops. I want to destroy Manila immediately."

—

Notes:

This is set in October 1899, during those months when there were no battles or skirmishes between the two armies. On the first day of November, the Americans launched a major attack on the Filipinos. This attack happened in San Fabian, Pangasinan, not in Manila, but let's forget about that.

Major-General MacArthur is, of course, Arthur MacArthur Jr., who was a major military figure during the Philippine-American War. I also claim artistic license in hinting that the American camp was in Bulacan because it probably wasn't.

Alfred's comments about Manila looking like Mexico are based on a comment by former president Manuel L. Quezon when he visited Mexico back in 1937: "Everything was the same." He meant that very, very affectionately.

Here's a nifty map of modern Manila. Alfred and Patton start out in Quiapo, which is basically the heart of downtown Manila. Alfred runs all the way to Muelle del Rey, which, coincidentally, happens to be the same place where the Jones Bridge stands today. Alfred and Phili take the tranvia to Binondo, Manila's business district and home to the world's oldest Chinatown.

The names of the store owners and vendors that Phili talks about are references to assorted media in Philippine pop culture. Pepito is a reference to Pepito Manaloto, a long-time comedy show about a man who won the lotto. Mang Tomas (Mang being an informal way to refer to a male adult older than you) is the name of a popular brand of gravy. Aling Nena (Aling being an informal way to refer to a female adult older than you) is a reference to the song Tindahan ni Aling Nena, about a boy who falls in love with a storeowner's daughter.

The garland of white jasmines that Phili puts around Alfred's neck are supposed to be sampaguitas, our national flower. They're usually sold near churches and are given as a sign of respect.

I have no idea if there are actually empanadas and valenciana sold somewhere in Binondo, but let's jot that down to artistic license. But these are very much Filipino foods that were adapted from Spanish foods, which is why Phili brings it up when Alfred asks about his family.

The old friend that Phili keeps talking about is Jose Rizal, our national hero. He is primarily known for being a great writer, whose novels inspired the Philippine War for Independence, and for being killed for it. He is also known for being having a long list of lovers, many of them not even Filipino. Lesser known is the fact that he visited America, hated it, went on a train ride with an American, and hated it. He wrote a whole diary entry about how much he didn't like America and Americans. He had also predicted that out of all the world powers, it would be America who would probably take an interest in conquering the Philippines when Spain was out of the picture. Go figure. Rizal was also affectionately known by his nickname, Pepe.

I imagine Phili to be particularly proficient in arnis, which is also known as kali or eskrima. It's a kind of Filipino martial art, most easily recognizable as that one martial art where everyone is dual-wielding a pair of sticks. The sticks are actually for training. Traditionally, arnis is fought by dual-wielding knives or swords, and it's meant to be quick and efficient in defending, attacking, disarming, and killing. Phili's fictional ornately designed knife is inspired by this very real ornately designed knife. The detail of the eight-rayed sun is a reference to the eight-rayed sun in the Philippine flag.

Lastly (phew!), some Tagalog to English translations!

Hijo, padaan naman po - Young boy, kindly let me pass Pasensya na po, lolo! Hindi kasi taga-rito - Sorry, grandfather*! He's not from around here. Lolo literally means grandfather but is a general way to refer to any elderly man regardless of any actual blood relation. Amang bayan - Fatherland

[saddle-up-dipper]

Suffocating - Part Two

Part one can be found under #suffocating on my blog! This was based on and inspired by a piece from the talented @mintartem, please check them out!

Tw: aftermath of strangulation, panic attack, references to past child abuse, self-injury

Word count: ~1600

I’m a horrible brother.

Stanley gripped the bathroom counter, staring down at the tile, unwilling to meet the eyes of the pathetic loser he’d become and unwilling to look into the shared face of the man who’d just strangled him.

His breath flowed in and out of his chest with difficulty, clawing to get past his throat with every inhale and exhale, rasping sorely.

The twins were asleep or snuck out adventuring or talking in their room or something. Stanley would be damned if he’d make noise and bring their attention to this.

Grunkle Stan, he could imagine their curious voices. Why are you hiding in the bathroom like a coward? Are those six-fingered bruise marks on your neck? Why did you antagonize Grunkle Ford? Will you tell us the truth or are you lying again?

They’d be so angry. They’d… No.

He exhaled, sagging with the weight, heavy and solid inside his chest. No, the gremlins would be concerned, mad or not, aware of what happened or not. Stanley could fail them time and time again, and he had, but they kept loving him in return. It didn’t matter if they shared that love with Ford, too. They’d still… be concerned. Right?

And that wasn’t their job.

It wasn’t their job to be concerned because he didn’t know when to shut up.

Slowly, he lifted his head to take in the red marks, avoiding the fragile look in his eyes and the stupid tears slipping down his face. His hands trembled as they brushed his throat, vaguely aware how tender it felt, aching and sore.

His own fingertips felt like an invasion against the feeling of hands already wrapped against his throat.

He was alone. This was fine. It was fine. His heart was pounding because he was old and about to have a heart attack or something. He was breathing so hard because he’d ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut and who exercised regularly? Not him.

This was okay. His vision started to swim, and he tried a salesman's smile for the mirror, but his reflection wasn’t the only one watching and a grin couldn’t hide how much of a loser he was, anyway.

Hiding. It hit his head hard, physically driving him backwards into the hall. His knees trembled and shook harder than the rest of him.

He hiccuped, wrapping his own hands around his neck to cover the bruising.

How was he gonna hide this from Ma?

She’d notice. She’d ask. Crampelter. Pa. He’d say it was Crampelter and Pa would do it again for advocating like he couldn’t defend himself, for throwing away what the boxing lessons were supposed to do for him, and he’d take him out back.

No. No, no, no. Stanley grabbed for the floor, for anything to stay here, weakly kicking with the ankle Pa was holding from where his legs had curled on.

Floor. This was the floor.

Pa was so much taller when he was on the floor, dark sunglasses unforgiving and mustache drawn in a snarl.

With a gargled cry, Stanley dug his nails into his neck, trying to claw it uniform so I’d heal all together and normally and maybe nobody would get mad the fighter hadn’t fought off his own father good enough.

If he ran off to the beach, with Ford, maybe… maybe…

Noise filled the quiet room as knuckles met the outside door.

Ice shot through his body as if he’d been drenched in water.

Pa was pounding on the door.

Oh, no, no, not again.

Ford, run. Was he running?

Knock. Knock.

Did I ever tell you which twin I think is the extra, boy? Well, I am now.

“Stanley.”

Pa.

He raked his nails down his neck, biting his lip to stifle his cries, his body no longer his own, his breath rapid and painful and uneven and undeserved. He could have been screaming and crying and crawling away but the ground remained solid underneath him, hands dragging him into the ground, into hell, into the arms of his father.

Pa was screaming again.

“Stan… my God. Was that real?”

You did what, you knucklehead?

It was an accident.

He punched the table, not the machine, Pa, Pa please, it’s cold, Filbrick, it’s so fucking cold on the streets, tell him he’s being crazy. High six?

���Stanley, I’m so s… Stanley?”

Stanford doesn’t give us the trouble you did.

Hands at his throat.

Pa was going to kill him. He was going to kill him he was going to die here and leave Ford alone but Ford fucking hated him which was so fair and so deserved and absolute everything he had the right to feel and--

“Stanley, I know you’re in there.”

Angrier tone he was angry Pa was so fucking angry he wouldn’t smile at the funniest of jokes but he’d scowl at eye contact from the extra twin the big sweater dumber uglier fatter dumber twin

“Is something wrong?”

The doorknob rattled.

Stanley curled in as far as he could go, already feeling the raining of blows to come; cane, fist, some useless knick-knack that hadn’t been sold yet, glass from the case he dropped--

“You haven’t locked the door. I’m coming in.”

“No,” Stanley screamed, but it was quiet and soft.

Your brother doesn’t shame the family name.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped and somebody was gasping along with him and then gasping was all he could do, gasping over and over “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” that I’m crying.

Your brother doesn’t shame the family name. If he cries it’s because he remembers he’s stuck with you as a brother.

“I’m sorry,” that I’m alive. “I’m sorry,” that I did everything wrong with the portal and project and kids and basement and

Something warm that didn’t strike pain was placed on him, tentative and light. He tried not to move but he couldn’t stop trembling underneath his father’s stare, and the warmth squeezed his shoulder as if concerned.

“Stan! I need you to breathe for me.”

“I can’t,” he rasped, wincing at the sound of his one voice and digging nails deeper into his skin to try and claw his vocal cords out.

“Okay, okay.” The voice trembled, but when it returned, it steadied. “In… and out.”

He didn’t want to be struck, so he attempted to follow, but he couldn’t stop gasping and tried to ground himself by dragging his nails down.

“Stanley!” Warm hands wrapped themselves around his wrists, gently but firmly prying them away from his throat and curling them into fists. “You’re hurting yourself!”

Good.

Stanley had shut his eyes at some point, because when he squeezed them, he only squeezed them further closed.

“In and out.” He was being shifted, the icy chill from the floor on one side fought by a warm presence on the other. “In and out.”

He fought valiantly to match the steady breathing of the man beside him, but his hyperventilating seemed endless. A six-fingered hand never left, cradling him close to Ford’s chest and running through his hair.

At some point, Stanley knew the pace to match by heart and Ford stopped vocalizing when to breathe in and out.

When the echoes of Pa’s face faded and the room was occupied by the two twins and the twins alone, Stanley cracked open his eyes, no longer seized in debilitating panic. He inhaled a deep breath, wiping at his face with his palms.

Man. If he thought he was a crybaby before. His throat was so sore it pained him; his face was so soaked he wasn’t entirely sure the lingering headache wasn’t from dehydration.

Oh, God. Look at him, blubbering like a child over nothing.

He wanted to say sorry again, to Ford, silent beside him, but it felt so familiar on his tongue he wasn’t sure how long ago he’d stopped repeating it.

One of Ford’s hands slipped away from his hair, drifting down to rub his back.

Stanley flinched at the touch, shuffling away from Ford, whose hand lingered as if wanting to pull him back but eventually returning to his side.

Stanley placed a hand on the wall, mentally preparing to pull himself to his feet, but he slowly became aware that the pain in his throat wasn’t entirely from the sore insides.

“Stan, are you okay?”

The silence wasn’t broken so much as it was rippled, like a stone skipped upon the water. Like a trunk thrown in a lake. Would Stanley let the surface still?

Nah.

“Take a wild guess,” he muttered, looking anywhere but Ford.

Knucklehead didn’t seem to have the same idea.

“Stan, I need you to look at me. You've been injured.”

He bristled, finally shooting his brother a weak glare. “Have not!”

He had just been coddled. If he didn’t shut it down now, it would never end and everybody would see just what a baby he was.

And then he really looked at Ford and was left in shocked silence. His face was marked by tears, eyes sad and exhausted. “Stanley, do you understand the effects of asphyxiation and brain damage?”

He looked away, mustering sarcasm into his voice. “It’s not fun.”

It’s not fun for your brother to fucking strangle you.

What he was thinking must have shown on his face; Ford pulled off his glasses to rub at an eye, breath hitching. “I need you to know… I never would have done that if I knew it was you.”

It was an olive branch; the start of an explanation. A little bit of a bullshit explanation. If Ford was really not himself, then maybe an apology.

But Stanley refused to reach for it.

“So, you’re just in the habit of strangling strangers, then?”

Ford rubbed the bridge of his nose.

This was going to be a long conversation.

[shih-coulda-had-it]

Nanas thought on sorahikos beard lol so much teasing

a/n: i cannot rightly explain the details of beard growth genetics, but let’s say chinstrap beards are an unfortunate gene much like green hair and red eyes

//

For the record, Nana already deduced what was happening by the first weekend of November.

Gran Torino’s clean jawline was a point of pride for a pro-hero that tended to get socked in the face, and whatever defiant stubble emerged was swiftly shaved the following morning. So far as Nana knew, if Sorahiko ever grew out a beard, it would curl along the squared jaw and chin, as unruly as his fluffy wind-tossed hair.

So far as Nana knew, Sorahiko would have a terribly hard time growing a full beard. He was destined to never have a bristling moustache.

Toshinori had recently been educated on how to shave himself, with both a cheap plastic razor from the convenience store and Sorahiko’s treasured old-fashioned kit. Her successor, leery of the blade, preferred the former. When mocked by Sorahiko, Toshinori shot back a challenge: Gran Torino never had to shave right above his upper lip, therefore couldn’t understand the difficulty of maneuvering the razor thereabouts.

Yagi Toshinori’s American genes indicated that without any shaving, the boy would be blessed with a full robust beard.

“Hmm,” said Nana, openly eyeing Gran Torino from across the room. Presumably, the two of them were scouring witness statements, having split the workload an hour ago. He gave no response, except to scratch at his jaw with thickly-gloved fingers.

The stubble was growing, lengthier by scarce centimeters in patches.

“Hmm,” she intoned again.

“What,” he said. Then he hastily added, “Is there anything of interest in those statements, because these are all trash.”

“A few locations. Some we can even take Toshinori-kun too!”

“Like?”

“A fun fair,” Nana tested, and snickered at Sorahiko’s aghast expression. “I think it’d be fun! And also a preventative measure against petty theft. Maybe we can get hired as security guards.”

“And the brat?”

Generously, Nana ignored the terminology. Instead, she said, “He can get hired as a ticket vendor!”

“He wouldn’t pass the interview. He looks like an overgrown baby.”

“Not if he grew out his beard,” said Nana innocently. She watched as Sorahiko’s mouth twitch, and his fingers still, lingering on the curve of his jawline up to his ear. “Speaking of! New look, Gran Torino?”

“I’m certainly not trying to pass off as older,” he snarked.

“Well, it’s not as though you’ve just forgotten to shave,” she responded, and gave into the urge to leave her desk, bounding across their shared office and flipping halfway with Float, timing her landing with her feet (and returned weight) flat on top of Sorahiko’s desk. Unfortunate for the witness statements, but they were garbage anyway.

Sorahiko, too used to these antics, didn’t even flinch.

“My papers,” he said, aggrieved.

“Scratch paper,” said Nana, and inspected Sorahiko’s face with new eyes. With the opaque white lenses, she couldn’t accurately tell if Sorahiko was looking at her back; it was 50-50, what this shivery feeling in the pit of her stomach was. “Hmm.”

Now, Sorahiko tensed. He bit out, “Not good?”

“You’re scratching at it,” Nana responded diplomatically. No signs of a mustache, but plenty of dull reddened marks. She did her best not to pay too much attention to the upper lip itself, pink turning white with how he briefly pressed his mouth into a thin line.

“It’s itchy.”

“You should buy beard oil.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, you know, I think,” her voice faltered, then regained a newer, false enthusiasm, “I think I’ve got half a bottle left from Sakumo’s kit.”

Sorahiko was silent. Nana distracted herself by tugging off a glove, driven by some impulse to soothe the marks away. She was halfway there, hand raised, when she remembered that this was not a typical best friend thing to do.

“Ah,” she said, but Sorahiko cut in to say, “Go ahead.”

He tipped his head up and a little to the side, regulating his breathing into something softer, into a noise that barely registered at all. Nana fell to her self-appointed task with a new eagerness. First she skimmed the tips of her fingers over the more successful hints of his growing beard, then pressed firmly at the stubborn bristly bits. Where the stubble wasn’t, his skin was soft and incredibly warm, not weathered at all.

“Hmm,” said Sorahiko, and Nana swore she could feel the hum reverberate through her bones.

“Not good?”

“You need gloves with better insulation,” he said. “Your hand is cold.”

[carol-effing-danvers]

knock me the fuck out (i dare ya, babe) part two

More Teacher Steve and Soft Billy!

Part One 

Prefer Ao3 Format? Click here!

Angie is left to wail with around the living room with increasingly frustrated hunger, because Steve needs to spend the first thirty minutes after he comes home screaming into a pillow.

Had Billy seen him staring?

He was so sweet with Lauren, so gentle to her that Steve couldn’t help his smiling, but he’d seen the annoyed expression on Billy’s face from the corner of his eye when he’d turned away. Could he tell that Steve had been checking him out earlier? Maybe he just didn’t want to call him out in front of Lauren and the other children? Maybe he loathed Steve just as much as ever did?

Steve hugs a pillow to his stomach and rests his cheek atop it, feeling glum. Figures. Figures that the first boy he’d ever been attracted to would roll back into town ten years later (looking finer than any person has a right to!), while Steve spends his days with children and his nights alone.

He can’t even get a girlfriend anymore – after the big bisexual breakdown, no girl in Hawkins will date him, but he wished he had a boyfriend or at least a hookup he could call.

Robin gets dates, but he concedes that it’s probably easier when the entire town doesn’t know you’re a queer.

He can’t date any woman within ten miles of the town – even if she somehow doesn’t already know the whole stupid story yet, someone will happily and gleefully open their mouth to enlighten her. And no man will date him either, because agreeing to that is basically agreeing to let the whole town know who you are. There’d be no hiding it.

Flopping his face back down into the pillow, Steve screams some more, before jumping off the couch with a sudden burst of motion. No, no. He promised himself, he promised Robin, he promised Dustin, that he wasn’t going to make himself feel bad about this anymore. The past was the past, and he couldn’t change it.

So what if his dad never spoke to him and his mom only called twice a year? That was about the amount of contact they used to have! So what if the parents tried to stop him from being hired? They hadn’t been able to succeed and Steve got the job of his dreams anyway! So what if he still had a crush on Billy Hargrove? He’d survived it the first time and he’d survive it again.

God knows he’s survived worse.

“Uh, Steve-o?” Robin asks, looking around the kitchen. “Wanna tell me what happened to you today?”

“What do you mean?” Steve responds absently, without looking up from the pan of mushrooms on the stove.

“Steve, you’re making beef wellington, honey,” she says carefully, as though making Steve aware of this might make him explode or something. “I mean, please don’t stop, because your beef wellington is fucking amazing – but you also only make it when you feel like shit. So. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

He stares down at the pan. “Did you know that Billy Hargrove was back in town?”

“Billy – Max’s brother, Billy?” Robin asks. Steve could almost feel her bristling. “He didn’t start threatening you again, did he?”

“No, Max was right,” he says, in the soft stilted tone that tells her he’s actually very upset. “He’s much calmer now.”

“Okay,” she says slowly. “Then you need to tell me why you look like someone killed Angie in front of you.”

Woodenly, he replies “Remember how I said I had a crush on a straight boy, back in ’86, when all the shit was going down?”

“Oh my god, Steve-”

“But he wouldn’t give me the time of day, unless it involved his fist and my face? Billy was that boy. Is that boy. Man. Whatever.”

“Steve,” Robin says seriously, grabbing onto his forearms and holding her eyes open wide as she tries not to laugh. “Billy isn’t any straighter than I am.”

---

After leaving Lulu with Steve fucking Harrington, holy shit, Billy feels the urgent need for a cigarette as soon as he leaves the school parking lot. He fishes for a lighter before whispering “Fuck” because of course he can’t smoke in the fucking car anymore, Lulu rides in this car with him now.

Cursing, Billy pounds on the steering wheel and pulls over to furiously smoke a cigarette outside, standing on the side of the road because Steve was there, and how the fuck has he gotten even prettier in the last ten years?, and Billy wanted to fuck him on that desk so bad something was wrong with him, and Steve’s smile for the person Billy loved most in the world was absolutely devastating.

Easy as that blinding smile, Billy could feel the old ghosts of his yearning – if not laid to rest, then at least peaceful in their haunting – live and howl again.

Getting back into the driver’s seat involves a whole new chorus of swearing, but he needs to get into work, mental breakdown or not. The bell over the shop jingles as he steps inside, accompanied by the intoxicating smell of sugar, flour, and vanilla.

The woman standing behind the counter of the bakery display finally manages to break his bad mood and he cracks a smile for her. “Hey, Trouble.”

Eleven leans over the counter, palms flat on the glass, her curls pinned to the back of her head. There’s flour smudged across her face and raspberry jam on her apron. “Who, me?”

He hugs her over the counter and kisses her flour-dusted cheek. “Yeah, you topple any major government conspiracies lately?”

Loftily, El says “I like to take the winters off.”

“Is that right?” he drawls, turning the hand-washing station onto hot after hanging up his jacket. “Then I’m just in time.”

She stares at him from her spot leaning against the pastries display, chin resting on her small fist. “Yes, you are,” she says in that eerie tone that means she isn’t talking about herself anymore. “Welcome home, Billy.”

Drying off his hands, Billy says “How come you ain’t tell me how bad things had gotten with her, huh?”

El stands straight, arms protectively folded over herself. “She was already mad at me for…the whole…”

She waves her hand around ambiguously, but Billy correctly interprets that as ‘spilling the beans on that asshole she married’. “She ain’t mad at you,” he soothes. “She’s mad at herself.”

When Eleven still looks unconvinced, he adds, “Don’t tell her I said so, but I know she misses you. Misses all of the nerd herd.”

“We may not be together anymore, but we miss her too,” she says sadly.

Billy’s gaze sharpened upon her. “You tellin’ me Wheeler just left you out here in this backwoods town all by yourself?”

She shrugs. “We grew up. He wanted to go to MIT and I didn’t want to follow him.”

He wants to tell her that Mike Wheeler was insane to leave her, but honestly, staying in Indiana for a teenage girl and giving up MIT was way more insane.

El nods. “Yeah, that’s what I told him.”

He glares at her. “No peaking, Ellie.”

She lifts her hands in surrender. “Stop thinking at me so loud, then.”

Steve, Steve, Steve – has she seen about Steve? El’s eyes widen. Shit. SHIT. SHIT.

“Uh..” She chews at her bottom lip.

“We are not talking about this,” he informs her flatly, pushing the door to the back room open. “You’re gonna pretend you didn’t…hear…see…whatever.”

“Billy…” she says hesitantly.

“What I literally just say?” he demands.

“Yes, okay, but…” Her eyes search his expression intently. “Um…Max didn’t tell you what happened during Spring Break in ’86, did she?”

He swore he was ‘bout to get whiplash from this girl. “Noooo,” he says, drawn out. “Why? What happened back in ’86?”

“Um…” El’s face turns red and she scratches nervously at the nape of her neck. “Steve, um…oh, never mind! Ask Max if you want to know.”

---

“What do you mean, Billy’s not straight?!” Steve demands, practically standing on the kitchen counter as he yells the question at her.

Robin is still trying very hard not to laugh. “Uh, okay…how do I put this…I want you to look back on your memory of Billy Hargrove when we were in high school, Steve. Think really, really hard. Did you ever actually see him kissing a girl? Dating any girls, back in school? Can you name a single girl he dated?”

“Everybody knew he was a total horndog,” Steve scoffs, feeling that old belated jealousy rear its ugly head.

“No, I don’t care about what everyone knew. What did you see, Steve? Remember the way Billy dressed?”

He rolls his eyes. “He was from California, Rob.”

“I visited Disneyland when I was sixteen. I did not see anyone in California dressed like that. He wore eyeliner and curled his hair, Steve. And if I’m remembering this correctly, that boy flashed his tits like he was starring in his own fucking porn video.” She smirks at his steadily reddening cheeks. “Your boy? Is gay, Steve-o.”

Robin pauses and squints a moment, as though staring at something in the distance. “Wait, Billy was a lifeguard that summer, right? Red shorts, came into Scoops and ordered…”

“Double strawberry,” Steve mutters, feeling bitchy and depressed.

“Oh my god.” This time, Robin couldn’t hold the laughter in.

“What?” he asks, annoyed. “I mean, I know the mustache wasn’t really working for him back then, but you should see-”

“No-no-no,” she cackles, holding her sides. “Oh my god, boys are so dumb. Steve-Steve, back then? Billy wanted to choke on your dick real bad.”

He stares at her blankly.

“Real bad, Steve.”

“What are you even talking ab-no! No!” Steve snaps. “Billy hated me! He beat my face in and tormented me from the moment he stepped into town, Rob!”

It’s Robin’s turn to scoff. “You’ve never heard about that trite old adage about boys who pull on little girls’ pigtails, Steve? Except that his little girl was another boy – a boy who already had a girlfriend when he got into town.”

“No way,” Steve snaps.

“And he wants this boy’s attention really, really bad, Steve. But this boy had just got his heart broken and didn’t know he also liked boys, yet. Billy’s boy won’t give him the attention he wants and he’s got a lot of anger management and self-control issues. We see that in the classroom every day, Steve. What do you think Billy would do?”

“That’s a pretty picture you’re painting,” Steve says flatly, rolling their wellington into its blanket of puff pastry. “I have a much simpler explanation – Billy was an egomaniac who thought I was at the head of the Hawkins food chain and decided that he was going to be the new apex predator and humiliated me to accomplish that. Him being gay or not doesn’t factor into it.”

Robin pours them both a glass of red – she’ll have to drink a lot of water if she doesn’t want a headache, but she needs it tonight. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” she says airily. “I bet you a full year of grading tests that Billy Hargrove would totally suck face with you.”

“Okay, hold on a fucking minute!” he sputters. “Even assuming this bullshit your on about him having the hots for me ten years ago is true, that has nothing to do with right now!”

“Steve, you look like a nerd,” she says gently. “And nerd really works for you, dingus. If he doesn’t want to at least make out with you a little, the man has no taste and you need to move on.”

“How about I skip the whole question and move on regardless,” Steve says dryly.

“Then you forfeit the bet and you’re marking all of my quizzes for the entire school year next year.”

“Goddamn it, Robin.”

---

“Uncle Billy, what are those silver thingies on your tummy?” Lulu asks, poking at the scars covering his torso where her uncle is in the middle of washing the dishes.

Very seriously, Billy says “That’s where I got bitten by the werewolf.”

He hears Max mutter “Oh my god, Billy”, but she doesn’t attempt to dissuade him from telling the story the way he pleased – after all, what would she tell her? That Uncle Billy was possessed by an interdimensional alien being that had come to Hawkins through a hole in the world beneath their feet and fought a monster made of pulverized corpses with his bare hands? Werewolf it is, then!

“Nooo, Uncle Billy, you’re not a werewolf!” she protests with a little giggle.

“Yes I am. Uh-oh, Lulu,” he says somberly. “Oh, no – it’s-it’s the full moon!”

She vibrates with anticipation, giving a loud shriek when Billy lets out a wolf-like howl and lunges for her. “RAAAAAAAAAH!”

“NOOOOOO!!!”

He wears her out good, chasing her around the house for nearly an hour before he convinces her it’s time to go to bed now. He lets Max relax and talks Lulu through bedtime himself. Feeling like a dickhead as he plops down onto the sofa, where Max is watching a rerun of Friends, Billy just sucks it up and says “So, what’s up with Harrington and Spring Break of ’86?”

To his complete surprise, Max’s jaw gets tight and her eyes flash. “Jesus fucking Christ, the people in this town really can’t keep their mouths shut, can they?” she says angrily. “So who told you, huh?”

“Uh…what?” he says blankly, feeling really far away all of a sudden. “Ellie-Eleven told me I need to ask you about Harrington and what happened in ’86, she never said why I need to ask.”

Yeah, he was still very unclear about why this was a story he had to hear.

Max gives him an owlish stare. “She…she wanted you to know?”

“…’s what she said, man.” He shrugs.

“Wow. Okay. Uh…so during Spring Break, one of your old classmates came home from college and threw this really big party,” Max begins, puffing her cheeks out with a sigh. “Steve and his friend Robin – you remember Robin? Blonde, used to work with him at Scoops? They were at this party, and the longer the night went on, the more that shit got out of hand. Like people were passed out on the front lawn. Someone broke into the neighbor’s house because they were too drunk to realize they knocked on the wrong door. Todd Grace took the riding lawn mower from the garage and crashed it somewhere on the golf course down the road. So, naturally the cops showed up.”

“Naturally,” Billy says neutrally, still wondering exactly where in the hell this story was going.

“Everybody freaked when they came in and Robin couldn’t find Steve, so she assumed that he’d hooked up with someone and forgot to tell her that he was leaving. She didn’t realize that he was still there, and he had no idea that the cops had come and were already in the house.”

She stops and stares at the ceiling. “If anybody in this town could keep their mouths closed, that would be the end of the story, but some of the officers blabbed, and now the whole fucking town knows that they found Steve Harrington in a closet on his knees, sucking off two high school seniors.”

Billy’s brain starts floating on ‘Steve Harrington on his knees’ and launches itself into outer space at ‘sucking off’. Immediately it becomes critical that he try not to picture that – young Steve, still doe-eyed and pretty, but brattier, the stuck up ice princess, with his soft sweet mouth wrapped around-

Max’s jaw tightens up with rage again. “I find it really interesting that whenever someone tells that story, they never mention Mike Tentiss or Zach Cooper, but they were the ones standing there with their pants around their ankles.”

Billy stares at the television without really seeing another on the screen. “Why you never tell me that story, Maxine?”

She’s known he was gay since just before she got married. She kept making jokes about getting him a nice girlfriend or hooking up with one of her bridesmaids, until Billy had just snarled over the phone “Maxine, I am a FUCKING queer!”

Softly, Max says “Cause it started this whole town-wide drama and it almost ruined Steve’s life, Billy. Darlene Cooper tried to have him arrested for molesting her son, but obviously Zach was only a year younger than him. She went around to our house and the Wheeler’s and the Sinclair’s and Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Byers and tried to get one of us to say Steve had…done something to us.”

“Jesus Christ.” That sounds like something out of Billy’s worst nightmares.

She dips her head into a nod. “Uh-huh. It didn’t work, obviously, and Mrs. Byers – I never saw her that mad, Billy. She screamed at Darlene something awful. Some of the parents threw a fit when the school hired him, said he didn’t have any business being around kids, but I think his mom pulled some strings. She and his dad have basically disowned him. He thought none of us would want to speak to him ever again – I mean, the boys got a little weird for a bit, but Erica was…Erica, and they came around. It’s really sad, though. He’s one of the nicest men I know, but no girl in town will go out with him.”

Confused, Billy says “Uh, ain’t he…?”

She shrugs. “Robin says he likes both, I guess. Anyway, no woman in this town will go on a date with him, and no man will so much as be alone in a room with him. Like if Steve sneezes on them, they’ll suddenly want to suck a dick or something.”

Oh, I’d do a helluva lot more than be alone in a room with Steve Harrington. And there wouldn’t be any ‘suddenly’ about it.

Billy realizes that Max is looking very suspicious right now and narrows his eyes. “Max. Maxie. Maxine. Maxine Roberta, please tell me that you and Eleven aren’t trying to set me up on a date with Steve Harrington.”

His baby sister looks even guiltier. She picks at her fingernails, staring down at her lap. “You don’t-you’ve never talk about any guys that you’re going out with, you’ve never even told me that you were interested in a guy,” she mumbles. “I just…don’t want you to be lonely. Dustin thinks Steve is – lonely, I mean. You’re the same age and you can both…y’know. Handle all the weird shit around here.”

“Mad Max,” he sighs, and tucked the wisps of red hair behind her ears the way he had for Lulu this morning. “I was not nice to Harrington. I was never nice to Harrington – and I don’t just mean the night I nearly killed him. There was a whole bunch of shit you guys weren’t around to see. The fact that we’re both willing to suck a dick doesn’t change anything, Max.”

“But you apologized for that ten years ago!” She pleads with her big blue eyes. “Please? I’m not asking you to go on a date with him, just be nice to him when you see him, okay?”

Gruffly, he says “That why ya didn’t wanna tell me who Lulu’s teacher was?”

---

Saturday morning means going to the 11th Hour, because Robin has a hangover and going to the 11th means that they don’t really have to get dressed because El has seen them both covered in mud, blood (their own), blood (others), blood (alien), and puke – all at the same time.

Also, Steve is a grown ass man who can’t be bothered to put on real adult clothes unless he has to teach and today he’s just fucking given up on his hair because the only people who are gonna see him are Robin, who still calls him dingus after ten years of knowing him, and El, who still seems to think he’s Prince Charming after ten years of knowing him (god help her).

Steve and Robin both think it’s very cute that Eleven the Eggo Queen decided she wanted to open a bakery when she grew up. And she’s really good at it, too. She makes this spiced tart thingy with pears and cherries that he would hold someone at gunpoint for. He loves it so much that she makes a big one on his birthday every single year.

Her eyes light up when they walk through the door, looking so pleased that Steve has a guilty thought that they may’ve been neglecting her a little. “Good morning!” she greets, wriggling with excitement as she leans over the counter. “Christmas galette for Steve and for Robbie…?”

“Tart au citron,” Robin says decisively after a moment’s thought. “And coffee.”

“Lots of coffee,” Steve adds with a grimace. The half a bottle of wine was a mistake and he’d known it was gonna be a mistake even as he was pouring their glasses. “El, can you pretty please with chocolate chip Eggos on top make your hangover sandwiches for me? I’ll watch the counter for you! Please?”

Even more pleased, El says “Oh that’s okay, I can make them. Hang on.”

The swinging robin’s egg blue of the backroom door opens, a voice behind it murmuring, “Lulu, skip to my lou. Lulu, skip to my lou.” A distracted Billy walks in carrying Lauren one-handed, half sleeping across her uncle’s shoulder, and a Styrofoam cup in the other. “Lulu, skip to my lou, my darlin’…”

His cheek rests on her head and the forearm supporting Lauren’s weight bulges with muscle beneath the skin and Steve’s fucking knees feel like water.

“Can you watch the front for a few minutes?” El asks pleasantly, ignoring the shell-shocked look on Steve’s face and the intense scrutiny Robin is giving her employee.

“Sure…boss…” Billy says slowly, eyeing his former classmates suspiciously. He wants this boy’s attention really, really bad, Steve.

He suppresses a snort. In Nancy’s very succinct words – it’s all just bullshit.

---

Who let this man walk out of the house that way? Was it Buckley? Was she trying to cause a goddamn riot? Wasn’t there a law against being such a fucking tease? Malicious seduction or something?

Still mostly dressed in pajamas with his glasses hastily shoved on and his hair looking like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket, Steve looked tired and fresh from bed, even softer and sleepier than the cardigan and khaki look at school yesterday. Billy wanted to push him down on a bed, straddle his waist and kiss him for ages. Kiss him until those heavy eyelids went from surprised to dark and glazed with lust.

“Hello, Mister H,” Lulu, his sweet saving angel, mumbles into his shoulder.

That sunny-warm smile brightens up his face again, and Billy’s heart gives a painful squeeze. “Good morning, Lauren. Are you helping Billy at work.”

“Uh-huh,” she grunts, eyes closing again. “Woke me up.”

“Aw, I’m sorry,” he says, all sympathy and sad eyes.

God, this is fucking torture. And Maxine had to go and like…give him fucking hope and shit. Jesus.

“You wanna go back and lay down in Miss Hopper’s officer, Lulu?”

“Uh-huh,” she repeats, still clinging to his shirt.

He makes his very hasty retreat, not looking at El as he passes her in the kitchen. Unfortunately, when he returns to the front counter, Steve is still there, but Buckley seems to have disappeared and he’s blushing now, maybe because the whole universe fucking hates him and then Steve is right up in his face and says “I’m just gonna get this over with, please don’t hit me-”

And then-

-his mouth, still tinged with the minty clean taste of toothpaste, so fucking soft against Billy’s lips, his long fingers lightly touching Billy’s jawline. Steve’s cheeks are cool where Billy touches them, but his mouth is burning hot. The erection he was just managing to get under control before surges to painful, insistent life in his jeans when Steve sighs and moans, large curling around the back of his neck.

Billy answers with a low groan, fingers twisting through the silky strands of his hair to hold him there – not that Steve seems keen to escape.

Breathing is a tragic necessity, though.

“Oh,” Steve exhales as Billy pulls away reluctantly, and his eyes are just as dark, just as sloe and heavy as Billy always dreamed they’d be. He’s still clinging to the front of his shirt and his mouth looks wine-red from kissing, which only makes Billy wanna kiss him more. “I’m gonna grade quizzes for a year.”

[thaisibir]

La Vie en Rose (Bede and young!Opal time travel fic)

La Vie en Rose (Life in Pink) Rating: T (for character deaths and language) Chapter 2/10 - Meeting Celebi (length: ~3k words) Summary: Bede doesn’t get why that loony old bat Opal wants him to be the next Fairy-type Gym Leader. To help him understand, Opal has Celebi take Bede back to the time of her youth.

(For other chapters, look up the tag “pokemon la vie en rose” or go to my profile)

As Bede carried the photos downstairs, a single burning question pervaded his thoughts: how did Opal’s nose get so long? Did she tell too many lies? Did she look at her feet too much and gravity pulled her nose down? But he thought it better to keep his mouth shut about that.

Once at the kitchen, Opal brewed tea while Obstagoon made salad sandwiches for lunch. Exactly what kind of salad sandwiches changed with each day. Today was egg salad. Opal’s hands were too frail and shaky to handle a knife, so she left that task to Obstagoon.

She had her back to Bede while she prepared the tea, but as she turned to give him his teacup, she said, “I’m sorry for getting upset with you. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” he quickly insisted. “It’s my fault, anyway. I shouldn’t have poked around where I shouldn’t be.” He ventured a question. “Why did you want to forget those photos?”

She settled into her chair with a shuddering sigh. “When you get to be as old as I am, Bede, you’ll learn that revisiting distant and dusty memories of people you’ve outlived can really hurt. If I was going to pick someone to inherit my Gym Leader mantle, I had to look to the future, not the past. I didn’t want to lose my focus, and I didn’t want to feel the pain. So I locked those memories away, and enough years passed so I couldn’t get up that attic and remember where I last left them.”

Bede didn’t know what to say to that. What could he possibly say to offer comfort or a solution? He set the photos over the dining table, muttering thanks to Obstagoon as the Pokemon offered him a slice of sandwich on a plate. He took that as a forgiving gesture from Obstagoon for upsetting Opal earlier. Typical of women her age, Opal avoided foods that would be hard on her teeth and gums, so it had been a while since Bede chewed on something like crackers and candy. Not that he complained. Obstagoon knew how to make good sandwiches.

“But now you don’t want to put away those photos anymore because of me,” Bede said.

Opal smiled at him. “You’re the chosen one. I’ve completed the hardest part of my task. Now that I can see the future, a future with you in it, I can afford to look back at the past without it hurting so much.” The old woman gazed down at the photos and took a long, thoughtful sip of her tea. “My, it’s been a long time since I’ve looked back at my better days.” She ran a hand through her snow-white hair. “This used to be so dark.” Then she tapped the tip of her long nose. “And this...” She glanced up at Bede with a twinkle in her eyes. “You’re probably wondering how this turned into a broomstick on my face.”

He merely hid his smirk behind the teacup in reply.

Opal tapped at her nose again. “Runs in the family, unfortunately. Got it from my dear old mum. Hers came in even earlier than mine. Ah, speaking of Mum, there she is. My last photo with her.” She pointed with a long painted nail at the two women standing in front of the Ballonlea Gym. Next to a young Opal—who Bede guessed to be in her late teens—was a woman with wild, dark hair down to the middle of her back, with wide eyes that seemed perplexed and distant before the camera. While Opal smiled for the picture and was well-dressed in a stylish blouse and skirt, her mother had a tight-lipped frown and wore a shawl frayed at the edges. “She was quite the character, my mum. Even more kooky than me, if you could believe it.”

“Hard to believe,” Bede admitted.

Opal chuckled at that, then she pointed at another photo. “Mightyena, Obstagoon, take a look. Those Pokemon next to my Roger, they are your great-great-great...great grandfathers.” She had to think and count on her fingers to say that.

Obstagoon peered over Opal’s shoulder, while Mightyena, closer to the ground, had to prop both front paws on the table to look over the table edge. All three smiled for the photo, with Mightyena sitting on one side and Obstagoon standing at the other. Roger had one hand over Mightyena’s head and the other on Obstagoon’s shoulder. The present-day pair of Dark type Pokemon stared down at the photo, pleased and intrigued to see their ancestors for the first time.

“You take after them in every way, if I do say so myself,” Opal remarked. She pulled out another photo and addressed Bede this time. “There’s me on my first day as Gym Leader.”

Bede knew from the League Card that Opal must have eighteen by that time. Framed by the photo, inside the Gym stadium, an eighteen year-old Opal posed with straight-backed pride. From her hands on her hips to the smirk on her face, she radiated confidence. Alongside her were Weezing, Togekiss, Mawile, and Alcremie: the same team of Pokemon she used right up to her retirement. Same kinds of Pokemon, to be exact, but not the very same that had been with her seventy years ago. Those original Pokemon were long gone. Bede wondered how Gym battles were fought back then. Not for the first time since staying with Opal, he was reminded of how long she had been around, roughly five times longer than he’d been alive, and the fact never ceased to amaze him.

Opal picked up the photo that was on the verge of tipping over the tabletop. “Oh, here’s my old man, Sir Lionel Roy. And that’s me with my brothers.”

The family posed before a mansion this time, clearly not in Ballonlea. Opal was a little girl—Bede guessed before ten years old—and she cradled a Togepi egg in her arms. Standing rigidly beside her in suits were two boys, one nearly identical to Opal in height and hairstyle while the other was shorter and younger. The severe-looking man standing over them, their father, had a bristling mustache obscuring the top lip and a tophat tucked in one arm. The male Pyroar sitting beside him looked just as stern. The only one smiling in that solemn, formal family portrait was a Yamper at the feet of the older boy.

“That boy is my twin, Randall. The other one is Kestrel.”

“Your family looks loaded,” Bede remarked.

“Hardly anyone knows that these days,” she replied modestly. “I may have been born in Wynwall, but I spent most of my life here in Ballonlea.”

“Wynwall?”

“Don’t you know your Galar history, my boy? Where do you think that Chairman Rose got the name for the city he built? The land he settled on for his city was called Wynwall for ages.”

At her hint of exasperation, Bede scowled and stuck out his bottom lip. “I skipped lessons at the orphanage. I had crummy teachers who hit the back of your hand with a ruler and put you in timeout with a dunce hat on your head.”

“In that case, my dear, I don’t blame you for skipping them.” Opal patted his hand with sympathy, then resumed her grip on the teacup to drink the last of her tea. “Anyways, that’s my family. The Roy family.”

Bede scanned through the many photos Opal hadn’t mentioned and discussed. Pictures of her with Jasper: exhausted yet beaming as she held her newborn son for the first time, reading a book to him on his bed, caught in mid-laughter when he put a theatrical mask over his face the wrong way. Pictures of her with Roger: posing backstage in period costumes, swept up in the passionate wind of singing a duet on stage, dressed in their best and in each other’s embrace on their wedding day. Even through the sepia tone of old photos, a distant past, Bede could really feel the vibrant color of Opal’s spirit jumping out at him. He took in the portrayals of important people who once populated Opal’s life, then looked up to find a pitiful and lonely sight as she sat alone across from him. “What happened to them?”

She turned wistful eyes to the window. “All sorts of things. I could talk your ear off all day long and my rambling will put you to sleep better than a Pokemon could use Hypnosis, or I could invite someone who will do a much better job of showing you than I ever could.” Opal lowered her teacup to level a serious gaze at him. “Bede, my boy, there’s someone special I want you to meet. But first, we have to wait for the morning of spring equinox, and I have to prepare a special treat for that special someone.”

Bede scrunched up his brow in confusion. “That’s oddly specific.”

“Indeed. Did I already mention that our visitor’s quite special?”

“So who’s coming?”

But she wouldn’t tell him. Spring equinox was a week away, so Bede spent that week passing the time with reading Ruby’s book, training in Glimwood Tangle, keeping Opal’s house clean, and occasionally bugging her with the same question. Each time she would not answer, much to his dismay.

“You should be focusing on your studies,” she would tell him with a wagging finger. “If you don’t study, you’ll fail my quizzes.”

That lady just loved asking questions. She could come up with new ones every day without effort, and Bede had to be ready for any tricky ones she would give. She wanted him to know Fairy type Pokemon inside and out, just like she had.

Late at night before spring equinox, well past his bedtime, Bede watched Opal make a cheri berry pie that made his mouth water. But it looked too small of a serving even for him. Was Opal talking about a tiny child? At the crack of dawn, he followed her out of the cottage and deeper into Ballonlea, away from the human populace and where the mushrooms clustered closer overhead.

Bede glanced back at the house. “You’re not taking Mightyena or Obstagoon with you?”

“Our visitor is very shy and doesn’t take well to Dark type Pokemon. Best if it’s just the two of us coming up.”

Impatience gnawed at him like the jaws of a Mawile. “You’ve got to tell me, Ms. Opal. Just who are we about to see?”

She winked at him. “Someone who can’t resist the aroma of my cheri berry pie.”

That didn’t tell him anything. Bede found the old woman’s habit of withholding information maddening. A frustrated sigh slipped through his lips as he followed Opal through the tangle of moss, mushrooms, and the drooping branches of ancient trees.

“It was easier to crawl through here when I was a little girl,” Opal remarked. She opened up her umbrella to protect herself from the snagging, finger-like twigs above them. She had Bede hold the pie while she led the way through the dense undergrowth. Finally they stopped inside a ring of tiny yellow mushrooms. The tree before them was so large and old that moss hung down from the branches like a thick green curtain.

Opal folded up her umbrella and took the pie from Bede. “I have your favorite pie warm and ready for you,“ she called. “Come on out.”

All was silent and still for several moments. Bede could hear the blood pound through his ears. Then the curtain of moss rustled. A light-green shape darted from behind them. Bede’s eyes could barely track the winged, flitting blur before it stopped just in front of the pie Opal held out.

His jaw dropped. “Is that Celebi? That time-traveling Pokemon from the Johto region?”

Opal lowered the pie to the forest floor and grinned at him. “You know your Legendary Pokemon. Looks like you didn’t skip all your lessons at the orphanage.”

Bede’s cheeks warmed. “The only ones worth sitting through are the ones about Pokemon.” He shook his head in wonder. “Celebi...it really is real.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. He dared not raise it. If he did, he might just send the Pokemon flying back into hiding, he thought.

“Long time no see, Celebi,” Opal said fondly. “You still remember me, don’t you?” She pulled off the pink and black glove on her right hand. Bede noticed a large, jagged scar on her palm, and when she turned her hand over, the same scar appeared on the back of it. It was as if someone had stuck a knife straight through her hand. Celebi gently laid its small, light green hands over Opal’s right palm, then smiled at her with a soft affirmative “Bi.”

“I’m sorry that it’s been a while since I last paid you a visit,” she said. “I’m not getting any younger.”

Celebi touched its forehead against Opal’s and twirled in the air, perhaps to say that it didn’t mind and that it understood.

They watched Celebi eat the pie, then Opal glanced at Bede. “I need to teach you how to cook sometime. The quickest way to a Pokemon’s heart is through the stomach.” She looked back at the little green Pokemon. “You know, I’m lobbying for the scientific community to retype Celebi as a Fairy type.”

Bede raised his eyebrows at her. “How’s that going for you?”

She shrugged and turned up her palms. “Not making much traction, unfortunately. I’ve been trying for the past forty years. Those scientists can be a stubborn bunch, I tell you.” The corners of a smirk made small indents in her cheeks. “I did, however, manage to play a part in convincing other regions to retype many of their Normal types. Professor Magnolia and I collaborated on a thesis to present to the research community. Did you know that Galar was the first region to officially recognize Fairy types? It took a while for the rest of the world to catch on.”

Bede shook his head. “You sure are crazy about Fairy types, Ms. Opal.”

She merely grinned at his comment. “Not crazy. Passionate. You find that passion, something to live for, and that makes life worth living.”

Celebi finished the pie and wiped red stains from its mouth. Opal took the chance to address it again. “Celebi, this is Bede, who I’ve taken under my wing. He needs to understand why I chose him to be next Gym Leader of this town. It’s not an answer I can give shortly and easily. Celebi, darling, I have a big favor to ask you. Please help him understand by taking him back to the time of my youth.”

Celebi considered this for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

Bede took a step back. “W-wait. I’m going back in time? With Celebi? How long am I going to be traveling back?” Suddenly he wished he had spent that past week preparing for the journey ahead. If only that woman had let him know in advance! “Won’t I need to eat, drink, sleep, and...” His ears grew hot. “You know, use the loo?”

Opal waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, don’t worry about all that. Celebi’s time-travel ability puts a peculiar effect on the human body, so that you leave and come back to find that barely a second had passed in the present day. You won’t be thinking about your usual bodily needs and functions. When Celebi takes you to another time, you’re not really there, in a sense. You’re there to observe only. You’ll have no physical presence and no power to alter the events you’ll see. Things would get quite hairy if that weren’t the case. Disrupts the continuum of time, creates paradoxes, and all that.”

Bede didn’t fully understand, but he nodded. “All right, then. And what about you, Ms. Opal? Are you coming with me?”

She shook her head. “There can’t be more than one self in the same era, which means that there can’t be young me and current me in the same time and place. I have to stay here in the present. So will your Pokemon. You won’t need them where you’ll be going. I’ll take care of them while you’re gone.”

Throughout his life, Bede had been alone and fending for himself. It had always been him against the world. Normally Bede wouldn’t trust his Pokemon with anyone, but he knew from his time with her that he could trust a seasoned and caring Trainer like Opal. He unhooked his belt of Poke balls and handed them over to her.

She hugged the belt to her chest, as if she understood the significance of his willingness and appreciated it. “You’ll be on your own, my boy, while you go see me seventy years ago. But don’t fret—Celebi is an excellent guide. You won’t get lost.”

Celebi danced a figure eight in the air and looked at Bede expectedly.

“It is ready to take you through time,” Opal said. “When it does this, take its hands and don’t let go.”

Bede stepped up to do as she told him. His fingers enveloped and closed over Celebi’s small hands. The time-traveling Pokemon from Johto tilted back its chin, closed its large eyes, and warm light emanated from its form. The light outshone the glowing mushrooms and sent ripples up the trees. Bede squeezed his fingers tighter around Celebi and shut his eyes, but that only made the insides of his eyelids go red.

Before the light engulfed everything, he caught Opal’s faint parting remarks. “Bede, my boy, you’ll find that you and I aren’t so different. You’ll understand what pink means. See you on the other side.”

Notes: Musical inspiration for this chapter was “Departing London” from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

When and how did Opal get the scar? Only time-traveling will tell!

I thought it’d be cute to have a naming pattern in Opal’s family, so everyone has a name ending in -al or -el, like Lionel, Randall and Kestrel.

[stillness-in-green]

Stress Management

Guess who woke up with post-Deika Shigaraki/Re-Destro on the brain?  (Spoilers: it me.)  

A few months after Deika, when everyone is beginning to settle into the new status quo, Rikiya finally gets to meet Shigaraki’s other most mysterious ally.  (Content Warning: Ujiko, Shigaraki being kind of handsy.)

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

When Rikiya entered the lab, mouth still tasting unpleasantly of bitter black ichor, his first thought upon seeing the twelve tubes and their contents was, Ah.  So, we never could have won, after all.  

“Why didn’t you bring these with you to Deika?” he asked, gaze taking in the obsidian-black Noumu floating in their rows.  “It would have saved everyone some injury and expense.”

Shigaraki Tomura, slouching as ever undisturbed behind him, huffed out, an edge of exasperation to the sound.  He didn’t have time to answer, though, as the figure in the chair at the end of the room turned to face them.  

“He hadn’t earned them yet,” the little man replied, eyes masked behind thick green lenses.  

Curious, how much function shaped form.  Rikiya had never met a true mad scientist before, but of course he had imagined how this one might look when Shigaraki had, the day prior, called him out of the blue and told him to make time for a doctor’s appointment.  And here Ujiko-obvious-pseudonym-Daruma sat, a perfect embodiment of Rikiya’s idle imaginings.  

“I have to thank you!” the man went on.  “The winter training retreat was getting fairly dull, but I couldn’t ask for a better result.”  

“Training retreat?” Rikiya echoed, raising an eyebrow.  He looked back at Shigaraki, who never had bothered to explain what he and his team were doing up in Niigata when the Liberation Army made contact.  “How—youthful.”  

Shigaraki rolled his eyes—a perfectly youthful response—and the doctor chortled.  

“Come, come.  Sit down, Yotsubashi Rikiya!  I want to talk about your quirk.”  

A skinny robotic arm extended from behind Ujiko’s chair (truly, the Platonic ideal of what one imagined when asked ‘what sort of man creates things like the Noumu?’) and indicated the rather more mundane folding chair across from him.  

Rikiya hesitated for only a moment—he still wasn’t accustomed to his new prosthetics, and that cluttered floor looked to be a nightmare—before a hand alighted between his shoulder blades.  He stiffened at the four little points of contact, his skin prickling, suddenly hyper-sensitive to where the fifth might fall.  

“You heard him,” Shigaraki Tomura, middle finger hovering, said in the casual voice of a man who knew he didn’t need to threaten.  He pushed Rikiya forward—well, pressed him forward.  Despite everything, Shigaraki lacked the physical strength to do more than suggest. Suggestion might as well be doctrine, though, when it came from a hand like his—certainly if one appreciated the uncertainty of living another day.  Rikiya went, picking his regrettably wobbly way over the sprawling oversized cables.  Shigaraki ambled along behind, hands back in his pockets.

Manilla folders sitting upright in a wire organizer, a somewhat dated laptop computer, a mug full of writing utensils—up close, Ujiko’s desk was a spot of normalcy amidst the lab’s draping shadows and looming, flickering observation monitors.  As Rikiya sat down, the doctor examined his new legs with a professional eye.  

“Better quality than that stump your magician was working with,” Ujiko aimed over Rikiya’s shoulder, to the sound of a snort from Shigaraki.  

“You haven’t seen what they put together for him since then.”  

“Detnerat is very proud of our upcoming prosthetic line,” Rikiya put in, aware of the commercial-quality falsity of his good cheer.  “Those who give their all in the line of duty deserve only the best.”  

Shigaraki actually laughed at that, a throaty snicker mostly drowned out by Ujiko’s slapping at the arm of his chair amidst belly-shaking guffaws.  The sounds echoed up through the canyon-curve contours of the room, perfectly at home and perfectly unsettling.  Rikiya didn’t move, didn’t react, didn’t let the smile fall off his face, but felt his stress spots swell a fraction of an increment larger.  

“Government subsidies!” Ujiko barked in his humor.  “They do buy the best, eh?”  

Rikiya settled for inclining his head.  Modesty was generally a good tactic, he’d found.  

Still chuckling, the doctor pulled a folder over and slid a sheet of paper out of it.  Rikiya accepted it when offered and skimmed over the contents as the other man brought himself back under control.  

“Does it look accurate?” he asked, his mustache still bristling around a smile.  

Rikiya’s name, his alias, a brief on his meta-ability (titled his quirk, of course), one on his personal history, followed by a section on one half of his parentage and that man’s ability.  The paper was a non-standard size and, sure enough, the bottom looked slightly uneven, as if a portion had been cut away.  

“In general, yes,” he replied, trying to pass it back over, then letting it settle in his lap when Ujiko made no move to take it.  “What did the rest say?”  

“Considerations for my work here,” Ujiko answered, prompt if unspecific.  “Now, tell me!  You transform your ‘stress’ into power.  Was there ever a time when you did so inadvertently?  Can it happen by reflex, or must it always be a conscious choice?”  

“It does have an accumulation condition, if that’s what you mean.  Imagine the board meetings if it worked solely on reflex!”  

Ujiko did not laugh at that joke, only leaned closer in interest, eyes narrowing behind his goggles.  That proximity was less alarming, though, than the sudden twin weights on his back.  

Shigaraki had leaned on him—not dropped those deadly hands over his shoulders, but, from the feel of it, propped his thin elbows on them instead.  He was close enough that Rikiya felt the brush of his hair—still overlong despite Rikiya’s tentative suggestion of a trim and Trumpet’s frequent backroom complaining.  

Rikiya’s stress markings gave another twinge.

“Ho!  Hohoho!  So there is a degree of reflex involved!”  Rikiya looked back up to find Ujiko staring intently at his forehead.  “What admirable self-control you must have, then!”

“Getting brought up to be a cult leader will do that for you,” Shigaraki said, the sneer audible in his voice.  

Rikiya almost opened his mouth to protest the designation, but the sensation of Shigaraki’s fingers (his good hand; he seldom wore the prosthetic Detnerat had produced for him) tapping restlessly over his shoulder killed the objection before it could reach the internal committee governing the kinds of smart remarks Rikiya allowed himself to make out loud.  

No rhythm, no real pattern, but somehow never all five fingers at once.  Rarely even four, in fact.  And Shigaraki Tomura was the successor of All For One, as that beast who had so recently joined his group unceasingly reiterated in its refusal to call the youth by name.

Really, it’s no wonder he laughed so freely back then.  Rikiya relaxed, incrementally, ignoring the doctor’s interested hum.  I must ensure he’s able to do so again soon.

Ujiko, it became rapidly clear, had brought him in to sound out his quirk for the purposes of placing it in one of his Noumu.  Quite an alarming prospect—I’m afraid I can’t be parted from it! he’d said with jovial force—until Ujiko waved off the protest with a dismissive comment about rudimentary genetic splicing he’d mastered in college.  

“Even so, it’s quite distinct, as meta-abilities go,” Rikiya argued.  “Part of why I can do what I do is my position.  I can’t have that position brought into question by a High-End Noumu rampaging through, oh, Sapporo or somewhere, with stress blots mottling its skin every time a hero lands a good hit.”  

Before Ujiko had done more than inhale to volley back, one of Shigaraki’s spidery fingers touched Rikiya’s forehead, causing them both to look up.

“No one would see it.” Shigaraki’s red eyes flicked to Rikiya’s and away.  The young man’s touch skated lazily over his skin, following the pulsing movements of his stress markings—across his temple, around the hollow of his eye, over the bridge of his nose.  “I’ve seen you covered head-to-toe in this gunk.  It’s not that different-looking from those things.”  

Ujiko sputtered briefly, probably torn—at a guess—between protesting the unique wonders of his “children” or backing up Shigaraki in hopes of swaying Rikiya’s opinion.  Shigaraki went on.

“If I know the doc, they’ll all perform different anyway.  One with your quirk”—he paused, then grinned wide enough that it probably hurt his cracked lips, and continued in a mocking tone—“sorry, your meta-ability.  People won’t even raise an eyebrow, as long as it’s just doing the armor-buff thing.”

“Naturally they all perform differently; that’s called scientific progress, you brat,” Ujiko said with his strange, amicable malice, then reoriented.  “In any case, Mr. CEO, as you’ve pointed out, you don’t make a habit of getting into brawls in front of news cameras.  Just good sense, really.  Until you all decide what you’re going to do with that footage out of Deika, no one even knows what the combat applications of your quirk look like.”  

“Think Skeptic’ll leak a video or two?”  Shigaraki leaned over him, leering.

“Of course not,” Rikiya demurred.  “Not Skeptic or anyone else.  They are all loyal to Destro’s will.”  

“And remind me who’s the one carrying that these days?”  

Rikiya sighed, settling back into the chair.  Shigaraki’s weight shifted with the movement; he was left curled over Rikiya’s right shoulder, radiating self-satisfaction.  Rikiya truly had not expected the leader of the League of Villains to be so—touchy-feely?  One day, he hoped to gain enough of Shigaraki’s favor to find out whether it was a mark of affection or a display of dominance, or perhaps some strange blend of both.  

“You, Shigaraki Tomura,” he said, voice level.  “As I said in the ruins of Deika.”  

“Right.  So be a good minion and roll up a sleeve for the nice doctor.”  

Rikiya obeyed.  

“How droll.  Well, he’s no Gigantomachia, young man, but he’s not a bad start,” Ujiko said with shades of approval, rummaging in his desk and pulling out a syringe with unsettling rapidity.  He drew two vials of blood, movements brisk and efficient—part of Rikiya, the part not preoccupied with the way Shigaraki’s chin tilted into a prouder angle at the compliment, considered this evidence that, terrifyingly, Ujiko Daruma might actually run some kind of day-world clinic where he worked as a perfectly normal doctor, all-unbeknownst to an unsuspecting populace.

The bright blue and yellow child’s band-aid he applied to Rikiya’s arm after removing the needle did little to allay the suspicion.  What a disturbing souvenir, he thought, rolling his sleeve down as they stood up.

“Where will it be?” Ujiko asked, pulling a truly appalling assemblage of brain and legs, red tennis shoes and bulging eyeballs into his lap like a favored pet.  “Back to the office?”  

Pulling his jacket back on, Rikiya looked down at Shigaraki.  “I keep a water pitcher in the mini-fridge.  It should help with the—flavor residue.”

“The office, yeah. I wanna hear more about that hero line of yours.  See you ‘round, Doc.”  

A grunt from Ujiko, whose attention was obviously straying further by the second, and then the sudden engorgement of sticky fluid, bursting in his mouth like a rotten grape. This method of transportation really was just awful.

Back at the office, Shigaraki spat the goo out onto the tile with no sign of embarrassment whatsoever and stalked over to the mini-bar.  Rikiya sighed.  The young man had no manners at all.  

But then, etiquette was one of the first restraints one learned as a child.  Of course, there were limits to how charming such coarseness could be, but…  

He allowed himself a small smile.  

Well, it wasn’t as if it was the worst thing Custodial had ever had to clean up off his floor.  

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

(And now I’m going to post this on AO3, where, incidentally, everyone who likes this pairing should go read the other post-Deika fic about it, A Different Kind of Weight.)

[starship-squidlet]

Kurta’s Moving Castle: Chapter One

Summary: Leorio is a young medical student in the middle of a war. While he studies for his final exams, he works in an infirmary away from the front lines. One day, he is rescued from a brawl by a mysterious stranger. A curse, a giant chicken, and a storm later, he finds himself swept off into a whole new adventure... (Hunter X Hunter and Howl’s Moving Castle fusion)

Word Count: 1,486

Disclaimer: Kurta’s Moving Castle Preface

A/N: Hey, y’all! I’m going through and cleaning up/reformatting all of my older fics, starting with this one (since it’s shorter then the collective mess of i like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it) so get ready for a slight hxh spam... Do I still have Newsies fics to fix post-URL change? Yes. I’m procrastinating on them for whatever reason. Anyways, I’m also planning to work on finishing some of my older abandoned fics in the near future (starting with this one), so this is also in preparation for that!

Original A/N: Okay, so I wasn't going to post this just yet, until I had a few more chapters finished, but... It's just so fun I couldn't help myself! I make no promises that the next chapter will come particularly soon, but we'll see what happens (aka how work goes for me this week...). Anyways, I hope you all enjoy! I'm really having a lot of fun writing this story, so I hope you all have fun reading it too! Please let me know what you think!!!

Next chapter: Chapter Two

Leorio leaned back in his chair and sighed, slinging his arm over his eyes.

Knock knock.

"Come in!" Leorio called, sitting himself back up.

"Hello, Leorio," Melody's soft voice chimed from the doorway. "The infirmary is closed for the day. You don't have night watch tonight; do you want to come out with the rest of us?"

"No, that's okay," Leorio half-turned to look at her. "I want to get some more studying done tonight."

"Are you sure?" there was a gentle admonishment in Melody's tone. "You can't stay cooped up in here forever."

"It won't be forever," Leorio grinned. "Just until I graduate with my M.D."

Melody laughed. "I suppose that's fair. Well, if you change your mind, the rest of us will be over at Forger’s."

"Okay," Leorio had already turned back to the textbooks spread across his desk. He heard the click of the door settling back into its latch and sighed again. Soon, he promised himself. Soon. Final exams are in a few weeks, and then you'll be able to go out with the others.

.*.*.*.*.*.

Despite his best intentions, Leorio found himself unable to focus. Finally, after being distracted by the whistle of the train outside for the fourth time in an hour, he slammed his book shut and stood up with such force that his chair fell backwards to the floor. "One night won't hurt," he declared to the closed window in front of him. "I'll come back and study tomorrow. Maybe even later tonight!"

With that decided, he grabbed his jacket and was off. He waved at a few of the nurses and field doctors who were still around despite the late hour on his way out the door, but didn't pay much attention to them. He hadn't really taken the time to get to know anyone at the field hospital. Melody he'd known before, and she was the one who introduced him to Zepile, owner and bartender of Forger’s, the best bar in town. They were his only two friends in this lonely place…

Outside, the air was crisp and clear, and smelled of locomotive smoke and fall. The town had really cleaned up for the parade of soldiers passing through. Leorio hadn’t gone to the display that afternoon; he was too busy in the infirmary taking care of the wounded from the war--the true heroes, as far as he was concerned--to laud those who had spent the battles watching from the background. He pushed the war out of his mind. There were no signs of it on a night like tonight, after all. No sense in spoiling a perfectly good evening with something so foul as senseless fighting.

Leorio took the long way to Forger’s. It was nice enough to do so, and he could avoid the parties of visiting soldiers spilling out of just about every bar or restaurant by taking the back streets. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually know the back streets particularly well, and soon found himself lost as the sun dipped below the distant hills.

Leorio was trying to get his bearings when he ran into… someone. He staggered backwards, a rebuke on his lips (despite fully knowing that he was the one at fault) until he saw the bright blue and red uniform on the man in front of him. He immediately swallowed his pride and muttered an apology, attempting to continue on his way.

“Hey!” the blond soldier--he probably would have been attractive in any other situation, uniform or not, Leorio mused--barked, grabbing Leorio’s arm as he tried to brush past. “Watch where you’re going, buddy!”

“I said I was sorry,” Leorio kept his voice meek and his eyes directed at the ground. Maybe if the guy thought he was a coward, he’d let him go. In truth, it was everything Leorio could do not to punch the soldier in his smug, pretty face.

“Mousy little thing, aren’t you?” the blond laughed, shoving Leorio back into the stone wall behind him.

Little? Leorio, who stood head and shoulders over the brawnier soldier, arched an eyebrow.

“What’s going on over here?” an even gruffer voice called from the nearest doorway. Leorio didn’t find it hopeful; the only person who would consider getting involved in a dispute with a soldier was another soldier.

“This little mouse bumped into me and thought he could get away without apologizing,” the first soldier called back.

The man who stepped into view sent Leorio’s heart into his mouth. He was huge; easily as tall as Leorio, and twice as broad. His biceps were thicker than Leorio’s thighs--and Leorio didn’t consider himself a small man. “I, uh… I did apologize, actually. It was just a little… quiet?” Leorio stammered.

He didn’t even see the fist coming.

The blond soldier’s punch hit him square over his left eye and cheekbone, and sent his head slamming back into the stone wall, effectively dazing him.

“Ow,” Leorio mumbled.

“You calling me a liar, pretty boy?” the blond sneered, grabbing Leorio by the jaw.

Oh. That’s what he wants.

The other soldier was already pinning Leorio in from the other side, reaching up to grab his tie. He leaned in close enough for Leorio to feel his bristling mustache and smell his breath--heavy with alcohol--and spoke: “It’s not smart to tell lies to people like us.”

“Hello there.”

Three heads snapped around to find the source of the new voice. Leorio’s heart pounded with terror on behalf of the new arrival. A small, slight blond with shaggy hair and perfectly tailored clothing stood in the dark alleyway a few feet from them, hand on his hip and head cocked to the side.

“What’s going on here, darling?”

Is he talking to me..?

“You with this guy?” the big soldier laughed. “You’re way out of his league.”

“Yeah, you should stick around with us for a little while,” the blond soldier simpered. “We can really show you a good time.”

“Too bad,” the new arrival sighed.

“‘Too bad’?” the blond soldier repeated.

“Too bad you two were just leaving,” the gentleman--because, with clothes like those, despite his haircut, he had to be something more than just a normal townsperson--twirled a finger in the air.

The two soldiers snapped to attention, saluted Leorio, and marched down the alley, past the cute blond, protesting the entire way.

“Wha--uh, what just happened?” Leorio mumbled as the blond appeared at his side--Leorio didn’t even see him move--and slotted himself against Leorio, draping Leorio’s arm over his shoulders.

“Just a little fun,” the blond smiled up at him through his messy golden hair. “They’re harmless, really, they just need to be reminded of that every now and then.” He started walking, pulling Leorio with him.

“‘Harmless’?” Leorio didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Where were you heading?”

“Oh, uh… Forger’s. It’s a bar.”

“I know the place,” the blond said. “Just stay close, and act natural. I’m being followed, and by something more dangerous than those two.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Leorio looked around. He thought he saw a shadow in the alley behind them, but couldn’t be sure.

“I said ‘act natural’,” the blond hissed. “I may not know you, but I don’t think that’s natural.”

“Sorry, but I got a little concerned when you said you were being followed by something dangerous,” Leorio grumbled, doing his best to keep his attention on the alley ahead.

“Too late.”

“Wait, what?” Leorio panicked.

“Run.”

And then the blond was pulling him along, racing down the alleyway faster than Leorio thought was humanly possible.

“Hey, you do know this is a dead end, right!?” Leorio yelped. There were definitely moving shadows all around them now.

“Not a problem!” the blond sang out. “Jump!”

They jumped.

They jumped up, and up, and up, and then… they were sailing through the air, over the rooftops of the buildings that had surrounded them moments before.

“Don’t look down!” the wind nearly stole the blond’s voice away, but the warning came just in time, as Leorio had been about to look behind them for the shadows. “They can’t fly like I can. We’ll lose them this way, at least long enough for me to drop you off.”

The flight didn’t last nearly long enough. Before Leorio knew it, they were beginning to descend, and then the blond was slipping out from under his arm and depositing him on the balcony of Forger’s.

“I’ll lead them away, don’t worry,” he smiled, not unkindly, down at Leorio before turning and taking a leap off of the balcony railing.

“Wait!” Leorio shouted, racing to the edge and peering down, half-expecting to see his newfound friend splattered over the cobblestones below. Instead, he saw a huge black bird soaring up from the courtyard and away into the night sky, shadows flitting along the ground behind it. “I didn’t even get your name…” Leorio sighed.

[aestas-wishes]

Prince!Wonwoo

this boy

so cool, like in the calm and serene way

it could be the hottest part of a desert but just being around him makes you feel cooled off

but like that’s only on the outside

his inner self is a super goofball

not on seungcheol’s level, but he’s up there

for example, he’ll be on his way for a meeting with some great important person. and he’ll just be mindlessly doodling or looking out the window

and when he looks out the window his driver sometimes thinks that he’s thinking about the future or some deep stuff

nope

he thinking about how good it would be to have some fried chicken right about now

because let’s be honest, we all need a constant supply of fried chicken

anyway, he’s a goofball, but only when he’s comfortable around people

otherwise he’ll just be silent and cool, reading his books and stuff

secretly thinking about chicken

okay, moving on from chicken

one day, wonwoo’s parents decide that it’s a good idea to paint a portrait of the crown prince, like all other crown princes before him

sooooooo they hire the best artist they could find in their kingdom

enter you, dear reader, best artist in the kingdom

you normally stay in your apartment on the outskirts of a nearby city, painting to your heart’s content.

when you get the message that you will be painting the crown prince, your heart skips many beat

you’re extremely happy, do not get me wrong, like for the first ten minutes you’re bouncing around and screaming like a madwoman

but then the anxiety sets in

like holy crap you’re painting the prince

what if you mess it up

what if you accidentally make his nose too big?

what IFFFFF

you spend the next five hours worrying about how much you might fail

then you realize that it’s pretty pointless to worry.

you still do anyway.

but you go to the palace anyway

because you can’t deny the prince or his family

you stumble in with your paints and palette and brushes

you brush a stray lock of hair out of your face

apologize for making them wait even though you’re perfectly on time

you take a look at the prince

wonwoo looks at you

and he just smiles

and you immediately feel a little calmer than you once did

he’s just sitting there on a stool waiting for you

“sit down, please, and set everything up,” he says as he stands up

you nod nervously and smile

you get everything set up and wonwoo walks over to your station, just watching everything being set up by your graceful and precise hands

his father told him just to wait to be painted, but he can’t help himself

he looks at all the different brushes

“whats all this?” he asks, honestly curious

you look up at him, surprised

he takes half a step back and smiles

“sorry, i’ve never seen tools like this before,” he says with a grin

you chuckle in surprise

“what? not even a paintbrush?” you ask

he laughs and you feel butterflies breackdancing minghaoing in your stomach

“no i’ve seen paintbrushes, just not this many different kinds,” he admitted, picking up a fan brush and stroking the bristles

you take the brush back and start mega info dumping about the brushes and different paints you brought with you

he just listens and kinda gently messes around with the mustache

“It looks like mustache,” he murmured, grinning

you roll your eyes,

when you’re finished, you look at Wonwoo

“so what are you going to do to paint me?” he asks gently

you take a look at the portraits of Wonwoo’s predecessors, all perfect oils and look refined and regal

you slowly wince, because you don’t think you can see Wonwoo as this way all the time

“i don’t know, maybe i’ll just paint you like your father was painted,” you sighed, and Wonwoo looked at his fathers painting as well

“paint me how you think i should be,” he said steadfastly, turning to smile at you

you feel your cheeks get warm but you nod, getting everything set up

for the next couple weeks you come in and paint Wonwoo while talking to him, making jokes and general smiling at each other

it’s all amazing

you take breaks and then wonwoo brings you to see his garden

and he’s just a goofy bean

and you can’t help but chuckle and do quick sketches of him

you find out more about each other, and about how clumsy both of you can be

but it all goes to heck one day

you’re in the middle of painting him when his father

the KING

comes in to see what you’re doing today

he sees so many colors and his son smiling in the painting

he just stops for a moment

the room is dead silent

you just stare in horror as disgust burns in his eyes at the painting

wonwoo is the first to speak

“father-”

“don’t try,” the king sneers, turning to wonwoo

fear is plastered on wonwoo’s face

“you’re my only heir, wonwoo. you carry our legacy.” he starts to speak, slowly and coldly

his voice is a frozen wasteland

“I expect you to act as such,” he continues, lecturing wonwoo

he turns to you

“please redo the painting in a more dignified manner.” he tells you before leaving

both you and wonwoo release a slow breath you didn’t realize you were holding

you looked at wonwoo

he looks at you

you can’t bear to hold his gaze

“i think i should go home for today,” you murmur

wonwoo opens his mouth to stop you but you’re already starting to pack up and leave

he does nothing to stop you

you leave the castle grounds and head back to your home

you fall on you bed and just stare at your wall for a very long time before you realize you were crying

you wipe your tears and stare at the portrait that the king hated so much

all you could see was the prince smiling at you, like he had just finished laughing at one of your jokes

it was almost taunting you

it confounded you

it really made you kinda PISSED

how could something this beautiful make the king so angry

needless to say you did not return to the castle for a very long time

weeks passed

wonwoo missed you more and more with each day

it was driving him crazy how much he missed you

even some minister’s mustache reminded him of you

the king noticed wonwoo growing more and more grumpy

he had sent letters to you, and wonwoo did too

but they all ended up on your desk, for you were too busy

busy fixing the painting, so that it was good for the king

it was he who was paying you after all, not the prince

you were barely sleeping or eating

you devoted all your time to that painting

which might i say is unhealthy!

quite! qUITE uNhEaLtHY!!!!

anyway

your hair is in your face

you’re sweating because you are so stressed, and you feel like this painting is worse than ever

you glance over to your desk

you pick up a letter, wiping your forehead

so, so, so tired

you read something about offering more money, triple what you were going to be offered in the first place

your head really hurts

pounding, throbbing, drums

wonwoo decides enough is enough

you pick up another letter

vision blurring

“please come up”

“i loved the painting”

“i loved having you around”

“i love you”

you hear a knock on the door, and you feel yourself hit the floor

then darkness

you wake up in your bed, and with a monster headache

the headache to end all headaches

your eyesight focuses and above you you see wonwoo, making sure your forehead is cool and you’re comfortable

“if i’m dreaming, dont wake me up,” you mumble, giving a breath of relief

you hear a soft chuckle in return

“i’m afraid that you are no longer dreaming” wonwoo smiles at you

finally you’re aware enough to know what is going on and you start pushing his hand away

“oh wonwoo, get out of here! i have to get back to work, your painting,” you started to protest and sit up

but wonwoo gently but FIRMLY pushed you back into bed

“no you’re obviously ill, even a prince like me can see that,” he responded, getting some food out of a basket he brought

“uuUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHH”

“what?” wonwoo asks, looking at you concerned

“i just need to work on your painting!” you shout

“your stupid painting that I can’t ever get right and its horrible horrible HORRIBLE,” you start weeping

wonwoo just quietly holds your hand while you shake and weep

you calm down eventually after minutes of crying

“y/n, i know you’re porbably stressed-”

“prOBABLY?!?!?!?!!!!!” you screech

wonwoo blinked and shook his head

“you are VEry stressed, and i’m sorry about that.  but please hear me when I say i love the painting you did, the first one”

“oh shut it.” you cover your hand

“no, listen, it was magnificent. almost as magnificent as you,” he murmured softly, stroking your hand.

you go still

“what was that?” you whispered

wonwoo took in a slow breath. he forgot that he had said that

it kinda fell out. whoops

but there was no going back

“y/n, please don’t think this forward of me, but i think i am… well… terribly in love with you,” he said quietly

silence fell on you both

“wonwoo,” you spoke

“don’t say anything, you’re sick, you silly,” he said quickly, going back to taking care of you

everytime you treid to speak, he shot you down

eventually he left

you got better

you began work on your painting once more

and a month later you sent a letter to the king telling him that you were coming back with a finished painting

he told wonwoo and he was ecstatic

the day finally came around when you arrived with a covered painting

the king gathered an audience for the great reveal

you went in front of them with the painting

you took a breath

wonwoo met your eyes and smiled

“this picture is the mage of the prince that will one day be our king. i hope you all like it.” you announced before taking the cloth off the painting

it was the original painting, finished proper

the king was flabergasted, but wonwoo couldn’t help but grining

“i love it!” wonwoo shouted, running to pick you up on his arms

he hugs you and sweetly kisses you on the lips

you are shocked but kiss him back

when you pull away you are smiling

“i think i love you too, your highness,” you grin

wonwoo chuckles and just kisses you

and its SOOOOOO CUUUUUUTE LET THE PRINCE HAVE HIS TRUE LOVE

[sasha-rochester]

Violence Bred by Violence

Co-written with the wonderful @safestsephiroth​, he did most of the good stuff. Warnings: Strong, violent themes ahead.   Gerrith Gaffgarion sat alone in one of his myriad safehouses, the room lit by a single candle and the cigar he was puffing away at. When the door opened, he knew who it was even before his eyes had adjusted to the light. “Ragnald.” The go-between had followed Gerrith from Ala Mhigo. Cruel as he was, callous as he was, violent as he was, Gerrith had always valued loyalty, and that left Ragnald almost the only person in Eorzea Gerrith could have viewed as the closest thing he understood a friend to be. Ragnald’s hair had greyed with age, but his eyes were every bit as sharp as they’d been decades ago. That was one reason Gerrith liked keeping him around - it was a smug reminder that they’d lived to be old where all the fools and the ‘heroes’ and the ‘valiant’ and the ‘just’ had died. It was the strong, the shrewd, the clever and the bold that lived. It was an important credo for Gerrith, and keeping living proof on hand was that much more reassurance. “Gerrith. The money’s cleared. The targets are there.” Gerrith took another deep breath and nodded. “Anything else you’ve got for me?” “I did more digging, like you asked. The Rochester manor proper is in the same district as your targets. And the layout of the house she gave you is almost completely perfect.” “What’d she get wrong?” “The hedges have grown taller since she was last there, it would seem, and the guards’ schedule is slightly different. They’ve also redecorated. One of the staff told us Edward keeps a gun in every room of the house, and that he checks them every day when he wakes up.” Gerrith took this information in, committed it to memory, his eyes moving rapidly as he added this to his mental map of the place. “And the maid?” “She took the carrot over the stick.” “That’s another thing to fix, then.” “Well worth the trouble, though.” “It is.” Gerrith tapped his cigar on the ashtray. “You impressed upon the client’s agent how important it is that no one affiliated with her be anywhere near the property?” “I did. Didn’t need to threaten him, either.” “That’s good. Depending on how she handles this, we may end up getting more work from her in the future. You told him I don’t do prison breaks?” “Yes. He understood my meaning.” “Perfect.” Gerrith picked up the dossiers on the Castille couple one last time. “Midlanders. I love fighting midlanders. They don’t look at you like any other race does. A miqo’te accepts you’re taller than them, they’re used to it. A lalafell, well, we all look the same from up here. Roegadyn and Elezen, to them the size difference isn’t that big, but our appearance means they recognize us as different. But the midlanders. Oh, the midlanders. They don’t see us as highlanders, they see us as tall midlanders, and they get so scared. Beautiful thing to see, Ragnald.” “Aye.”“ While I’m in there, run the usual interference.” “The Brass Blades are going to be more concerned with many other things across town until they get an anonymous call.” “Good. And the wait staff?” “We know where they live. Any who aren’t there at the time will be easy to track down.” “Good. We can’t have any of them surviving to breathe a word about who did this.” With that, Gerrith stood up, and looked through his sword collection. The Castilles would outfit their guards with the absolute best weaponry possible, but they also wouldn’t want them to be too terribly heavily armored. The blood sword would be sufficient, and the lighter blade would be more useful in the manor’s corridors.

“Let’s go, Ragnar.”

The tick-tock of the grandfather clock echoed throughout the library. Edith flipped through a book upon her lap, breaking the silence: “It feels lonely, you know.”  Edward didn’t even lift his gaze from his work, carefully examining the numbers in what looked like an accounting book. “Hm?” “Without Alex around… Or even Nathaniel.” “I’m surprised you’re not mentioning Sebastian for once.” The small hyuran woman frowned, “... I miss him too, but there’s nothing we can do about that.” “We can get justice. I’ve made arrangements to submit our investigation to the blades next week, it has been delayed for far too long.” Edith paused, falling silent for a minute as she tightly clutched her book, “... Do you really think she did it? I’m not even sure our evidence-” “That’s for the blades to determine, and frankly, we need that closure, Edith. If she isn’t behind it, who is?” “Some thief, I don’t know, a criminal… He was slaughtered in the pearl lane like a pig. It’s not uncommon. That she’d be behind something like that-- It just seems…” “Unlikely? Doubtful.” “She was a child when he died.“ The man shook his head, picking up a quill to write something down upon the pages before him, “She was nineteen. That’s no child, Edith.” “... And Alexander’s obsession with her is concerning- It’s all he writes or talks about. I’m just worried that we have the wrong person. I’m just worried that we hurt someone who sincerely doesn’t deserve it. After all she’s been through- “ Edward interrupted her train of thought, “You don’t find it suspicious?” “Pardon?” “What she went through. Father dying from sickness, mother being murdered in a coup she miraculously survived, second husband mysteriously vanishing after that was done, you don’t find it suspicious?”

Edith fell silent again, chewing on her lower lip, “I just want my children to be safe-” “Your children?” “... Yes. My children. I still hate you for it Edward. I will never forgive you for your betrayal, but I still raised those boys as my own. At least Alexander, anyway. The other always seemd so indifferent to me…” “Well, at least that’s an improvement from our last conversation.” _________________________ It was midnight when Gerrith reached the manor. He enjoyed doing his work in the daylight when possible, because it made seeing would-be escapees easier, but the nature of this job meant darkness would be necessary. The rich made for witnesses that were difficult to silence. Some assassins would have taken this caution a step further. They’d have attempted to sneak through the manor, slip in unnoticed, avoid the guards, and either poison the Castilles or slit their throats before slipping back out again. If that was what Sasha Rochester had wanted, she hadn’t done her research. Which wasn’t Gerrith’s problem. He decided to test the manor’s defences by grabbing the gate’s bars and ripping it open. The fact it was somewhat challenging to do so was a good sign - plenty of people are content to hide behind a sturdy gate and walls and think this protects them. He stepped through the breach, drew his sword and started humming a tune as he approached, a red aura starting to emanate from his body. Oh come, ye wayward brothers, “Halt!” One of the guards yelled. A giant roegadyn. Upon seeing Gerrith, and recognizing who he was, the guard immediately raised a rifle. “Stop right there!” “What’s the point of hiring a Roegadyn,” Gerrith asked, “If you’re just going to give him a gun?” He continued stepping forwards, calmly. “You know who I am, don’t you?” “I said stop!” “Gerrith Gaffgarion. I’m here for your boss. You can’t kill me. Give it up.” A finger to a trigger, a quick pull...and nothing. “What…?” Gerrith reached the door to the manor, reached the guard who was now pulling the trigger repeatedly, unable to understand how a gun he personally inspected every night could be broken. “As I said. You can’t kill me.” The Roegadyn started to move, which meant he’d started to think, which meant he’d become a threat again. Gerrith grabbed the man by the shoulder and plunged the sword upwards, beneath the breastplate, under the ribs, out through the neck. He felt the man’s aether - his soul - get sucked into the blade, and through it into Gerrith. One down. _____________________________ Bereft of hearth and home, the sound of a loud crash on the lower floor caused Edith to jump. “Did you hear that?” Edward hardly looked up from the accounting book ”Hm? Probably one of the servants knocking over vases again--They seem to have a talent for that. ”“That’s not it. That did not sound like a vase.” “Maybe it wasn’t a vase, maybe it was several vases,” Edward stated this with a stupid smile upon his lips, clearly amused at himself. Edith scoffed, “Gods, Edward.” She stood up from her seat as her husband began to chuckle lowly. “I’m going to check what it is.” __________________________ “Wyssbenn?” A voice from inside, another man. This one hyuran, Gerrith recognized. And then Wyssbenn’s body was hurled through the door, which was now little more than scattered shards of wood carpeting the floor. The foyer was massive, here, the walls lined with paintings and tapestries and inlaid with gold and silver, the floors carpeted in the finest fabrics. The marble stairs to the second story were completely covered in ornate etchings. It was beautiful, to some. To Gerrith, it was pointless. “Oh, was that its name? Wyssben?” He asked, a thin smile beneath his bristling mustache. “I can never tell what the barnacle bastards’ names are. How do you keep them straight?” There were two guards, this time, at the base of the stairs, and two more on the upper balcony. All had rifles, and this time they had swords at their waists, too. This amused Gerrith. They looked at the body, looked at Gerrith, raised the rifles and… Click. “I love this newfound reliance on guns. It makes you people so easy to deal with.” He extended his arm, grit his teeth - beneath yon burning star there lies - and a blast of malevolent energy exploded from his palm, smearing one of the two balcony guards across the wall. The other started to flee, to try to raise some sort of alarm, when a second blast took both his legs off. Gerrith took a half second to appreciate the screaming as the other two guards approached him. They swung their swords, he grit his teeth, clenched his grip on the blood sword more tightly and cleaved their blades in half with the now brightly glowing weapon. The first guard caught the sword through the neck - A haven for the bold - which, with a quick twist, decapitated him. The rush of devouring another life lent Gerrith the speed and power to move with the speed of a blur, striking the next man twice before he’d hit the ground in three pieces. Raise up your hands and voices, He yanked the switch to the side of what was once a door, dropping the security gate over the entrance and a similar gate over every window and exit in the house. Except the panic room and the escape tunnel, of course. As a test, Gerrith punched into the adjacent keypad - such expensive defenses these rich Ul’dahn bastards had! - the code that the Castilles knew to be correct. Nothing happened, of course. “Ragnar,” Gerrith said to no one in particular. “You’re worth every coin I pay you.” ________________________________________ Edith was about to open the door towards the hallway before the first scream caused her to freeze on her step with a shudder crawling down her spine. It was now that Edward finally looked up, “Shit.” Edith’s eyes widened with every scream that followed the first, “W-we need to leave.” The midlander set down the quill and immediately made his way towards a specific bookcase the back of the library, “Good thing this house was designed for situations like this.” He pushed the spine of one of the many tomes, causing a “click” to be heard, hearing that “click” as a sign of entrance, he pulled back the faux-bookcase and slid it to the side, revealing an intricately decorated, thick, metal door. “Edith, the key…” The woman quickly made her way across the room, plucking the keys from her husband’s desk before quietly handing them over. With a relieved smile, Edward inserted the key inside the lock of the door, but when he tried to turn it, it didn’t. “W-wait..” He removed the key, flipped it, and inserted it again, attaining the same results. “It’s not---” Edward pushed, “It’s not working!” Edith’s eyes widened in panic, “W-what do you mean it’s not working!?” “The lock… The key isn’t the right one.” “Edward, that’s the godsdamned key, I know it’s the key! I checked it a week ago and left it on your desk! Are you sure you’re doing it right!?” _________________________ Gerrith moved methodically, sweeping through each room of the manor. He wanted Edith and Edward scared, and the longer it took them to see him the more terrified they’d be. After the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth guards, he saw no more as he went through the ground floor. But of course he wouldn’t have. They were defending their charges in their rooms. Strength in numbers, of course. But what he did find were the butler and both maids, sitting calmly in the kitchen. “So this is what he was talking about,” one of the maids said. She was an auri woman who was eating an apple. “Good to meet you, I suppose. Are they dead yet?” “No,” Gerrith said. “Well, get on it.” “It was twenty million gil, wasn’t it?” Gerrith asked.“Each, yes.” “And you fouled every single round in every single gun in the manse?” “Obviously. You haven’t been shot yet, have you?” “And you’re positive their escape routes are locked down.” “Yup. I changed the codes and the locks myself. Honestly it’s surprising these rich Eorzeans can even chew their own food.” “I see.” Gerrith looked between the three. “How much would you say your lives are worth?” The butler looked up at Gerrith. Realization dawned on his face before the maids understood. He reached under the table, but before he could get the gun he’d kept safe, Gerrith was already there, clearing the room in a single leap and cleaving the butler in half lengthwise. He had cut down the other maid, the one who hadn’t spoken, before she could so much as scream. But the last maid, the collaborator, had plenty of time to scream. Gerrith grabbed her by the throat, lifted her off the ground. “Wait! Wait! I know the codes, you can’t, you can’t kill me!” Gerrith grinned at her. Let fill your hearts with pride His grip slowly tightened, more and more, as the auri’s eyes started to bug out of her face. “The gates aren’t going to stop me. They’re just to make sure there are no survivors.” The maid tried to choke something out, but whatever it was didn’t matter to Gerrith. With a quick flick of the wrist, a motion he’d done countless times before, he snapped the woman’s neck and threw her down. His soul soared. He had learned half a lifetime ago how to control the darkness that gave him these powers in the first place, but that didn’t mean he never felt it rise within him. Even now, it longed to take over. The first floor now cleared, he returned to the foyer. “Castille, I’m here for you, not your wife!” he called up. “You can save her or she can die with you. I don’t care which.” Edward tossed the key aside before turning to his wife, “Listen, we don’t have time to look for the correct key, find a place to hide and I’ll take care of it.” “What about the guards? It’s their job to shoot intruders down.” Edward stopped as soon as she spoke the word ‘shoot’, he slowly turned to look at her, “Shoot? I didn’t hear any shots.” “But they were fighting, you heard their screams!” Edward paused again as the realizaiton dawned on him, carefully pulling out a small revolver from his pocket, The woman’s words turned into panicked whispers- “What are you doing, are you insane!? They’ll hear us!” He didn’t listen. He pulled the trigger, causing Edith to instinctively flinch. Click Nothing. He opened the bullet chamber of the revolver, causing him to frown. Edith furrowed her brows, “No bullets?” “Worse.” He turned the revolver to show the full chamber, “Someone tampered with the ammunition.” His eyes locked on Edith’s, “Hide.” The woman nodded, whispering “Be careful” as she made her way towards what looked like a storage room closet near his desk. Gerrith stomped up the stairs, making all the racket he could. Taking his time. Savoring the moment. Savoring the fear. With each step, he marched closer to the study. The panic room would be there, but they wouldn’t have been able to get in. It was, however, Edward’s easiest to defend room, and therefore where he would choose to hide. His wife would be hiding elsewhere, naturally. Hiding together just lowered their chances of survival. Edward was a smart man, and the beautiful part of smart men is there are only so many smart solutions to these sorts of situations. “Edward,” Gerrith called. “Nine more guards, Edward. Got ‘em all with you?” “Open the door and find out,” Edward replied. “You can still leave, whoever you are. The second you come in here you’ll be so full of holes they’ll be able to-” The door opened slightly, and immediately all nine guards opened fire in a panic, Edward having broken open a secret, hidden stash of ammunition. Above the churning waters we The gunfire was so loud in the relatively small space that all were immediately deafened, but Edward, paying rapt attention, felt a vibration in the floor. A body had just hit the ground. Perfect. Whoever had hired this mercenary, he was going to see them on trial and Twelve willing they’d die as well for this. It was probably the Rochester daughter, now that he thought of it. She’d always struck him as- The wall next to the door blew open as Gerrith Gaffgarion smashed through it and the thin layer of steel reinforcement like it were tissue paper, sword sheathed at his waist, grabbing the first guard he saw with his bare hands. Stand strong and unified He lifted the midlander off the ground by the throat and swung the man one-handed into the Roegadyn next to him. The roegadyn stumbled with the loud CRACK of the midlander’s neck, and as gunfire filled the room again Gerrith used the roegadyn as a shield, drew his sword and began cutting rapidly, swiftly, precisely through the rest of the guards. It wasn’t ten seconds before they were all little more than fleshy ribbons around him, and he drew their aether together into a barrier around him as Edward Castille fired for his face, bullets evaporating before they could hit Gerrith. We blessed few, born from blood,With tired hands do toil “Oh, Edward,” Gerrith said to the man who couldn’t hear him anyway over the tinnitis. He calmly walked towards the stocky midlander. Too many men let themselves go with age, and Gerrith noted Edward had lived long enough for the process to barely begin. “You were right to think I was lying. Your wife will die regardless. But you just made it so, so much worse for her.” Reading Gerrith’s lips, Edward’s face fell. He tried to yell something for his wife, but both Gerrith’s hands were on his skull, thumbs over Edward’s nose, slowly increasing in pressure. Instead of a yell, there was a scream as Edward’s nose crunched into his head, and the screaming rose until suddenly stopping. Seconds later there was a fleshy pop, and the body of Edward Castille fell back to the ground. Gerrith ripped a tapestry off the wall and wiped his gantleted hands with it, then counted the bodies to be absolutely sure. Sure enough, that was twenty-one total. Which only left Edith. He took his gauntlet off, planted the envelope in the drawer of Edward’s desk, and began the search. Edith was shaking, keeping her palms over her mouth as tears streamed down her cheeks. The sound alone was enough for her to know what had happened, and she wasn’t about to accept the same fate as her husband. She curled herself into a position to make herself smaller, keeping still as a statue on the top shelf of the storage room, a dark cloak covering almost the entirety of her body and face. The torturous echoes of her thoughts bounced around her head: “I can’t… Not like this. Slaughtered like a pig, like my husband, like my son!” “... Like my husband…” The door of the closet creaked as it eased open, her mind now becoming blank as she held her breath in fear. “... Like my son.” “Peek-a-boo.”  Gerrith reached up into the closet, grabbed the struggling Edith Castille by her wrists and ripped her down to the floor. She tried to scramble away, but he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back to her feet.

“LET ME GO, PLEASE!” “Edith, you should thank your husband.” “GET AWAY FROM ME! DON’T TALK ABOUT EDWARD!” To shape this rugged land of ours, and build a home for all. “Edward left one last gift for you. Because of him, you get to leave the manor.” “I don’t believe you!” “No, no, it’s true. I’ll even let you go if you shut up.” Her breaths were rattling, her entire body shaking, but when he let her hair go she didn’t fall, merely stumbling backwards, away from him. Gerrith looked directly into her eyes, saw the basest human fear, and his heart soared. “How can I leave? The windows are locked. How did you even get in? The codes don’t work, the-” “Shut up, Edith.” Gerrith casually raised a hand towards the closest window, fired another blast of dark, hateful energy and blew the security bars right off it. Edith looked up at him, not quite understanding, until he grabbed her by the wrist and shoved her her out the window, dangling her out the side. She screamed again. “So sad, Edith,” Gerrith said. “All you had to do was shut up.” He leaped out the window, his feet landing firmly on Edith Castille’s knees. His weight combined with the impact shattered them, what was left of the bones piercing outward through the skin, bits of her shins falling out onto the back garden. She was sobbing, she was struggling, and Gerrith dragged her over to the decorative fountain. He took his time, singing aloud this time, his hatred of his “homeland” powering him with every word: “‘Beyond the silent watchmen, upon the great loch's shore,’”He forced the screaming woman’s head under the water, her arms flailing wildly, trying desperately to stop him. “‘Now stands a mighty citadel, our rock forevermore.’” As he felt her start to fade, he pulled her back up, relished the terror, relished the anguish. This was what he did this work for. This was what he lived for. Not the money, not the infamy, not the whores or the cigars or the weapons, this moment.“ ‘To ye who help our brothers, shrink not from Rhalgr’s flame,’” She was sputtering, coughing, choking, gasping for air. “‘But those who scorn their fellow man, shall surely share his pain.’ Hear that, Edith? You sit here in your little manse, look down on the people outside your fancy gates.” He saw plenty of the water on her face, now, was tears. So much more satisfying than any brothel. “‘Though storms of blood approach ye, Hells open, Heavens weep,’” It was several more times that Gerrith shoved her under, each time yanking her out before she could drown. It was slow. It was agonizing. It was magnificent. When he sensed she could barely take it any longer, felt the life starting to fade, he changed it up: rather than hold her under the water, he gripped the back of her skull tighter and slowly, rhythmically lifted her head out and then smashed it into the bowl of the fountain, repeating the motion every few seconds until the fountain’s waters were stained red and the twitching had stopped. Gerrith picked the body up by the leg, hurled it across the yard and walked out through the same gate he’d torn open. He made his way to the agreed upon meeting place with Ragnar, where he changed into a fresh set of armor. As he walked back to his safehouse, content with a job done, he muttered the final line: “‘No goodly soul need ever fear, the measure of His Reach.’” What a crock of shite.

[roadtripwarrior]

The Last Wizard

Gregorboc Stonehandle hobbled his old bones up to the side out of the mountain as fast as they would allow him. The cold air nipped his red nose and frost hung from his bristled gray mustache. Snow was beginning to fall. He approached a large door carved directly into the mountain. Tattered in ancient markings. He tapped it three times with his walking stick and it opened. Pulling his cloak tightly around his ears, he hurried inside.

The wind hollowed behind him and the doors swung shut. Dark and damp, the old man could hardly see his own nose. Striking a match and he found a torch mounted on the wall and made his way deeper into the cave. Muttering to himself quietly as he walked, checking each corner to make sure nothing unruly had made this place it’s home. Finally, after what felt like hours, he came to a small room, different from all the others. It had paved stone walls and was filled with water up to the ankles. In the center was a pedestal and on that pedestal sat a book. Removing his shoes he dipped his aching feet into the water, lifting his robes and walking towards the book. It was a brown, ordinary looking book. With a leather cover that had been worn. Touching it filled his body with warmth.

Drums began to sound, further down the cavern. He spun and peered into the dark to see what was coming, but it had stopped. He stared into the black for a long time, quickly he took the book and fled the mountain. Outside it was blizzarding now and the sun had all but faded. He hurried through the snow and back to his home. The wind and the snow was so thick that he could not hear the sound of drums that followed behind him.

Months later, when the snow had thawed and the flowers began to blooms once more, I got a letter that my brother, Gregorboc Stonehandle, had died. Since I was the only remaining member of our family I received his inheritance. I decided to take a small wagon and a young girl from the village with me to his cottage. “I didn’t know you had a brother, Abe.” She said to me as our wagon trotted along the dirt road, towards the mountain. “What, did you think that Wizards just fell out of the sky? Of course I had a brother. I had several brothers at one point. Twenty-eight to be exact! All wizards. All gone now... ” I trailed off and become lost in thought as I remembered them. There was a silence for a moment, Elda looked at her feet as they swayed off the back of wagon. “There’s is a myth that Wizards are born out of stone. Lighting stricks and it splits open for them to walk onto the earth. Or the one that says when they are born they pop out of their mum’s, immediately sprawling white whiskers and pointy hats!” She teased, trying to change the mood.

Her name was Elda Rashmoor. Red hair, freckles. A young thing, but strong. With hips and shoulders as large as the ox’s carrying the wagon. “Hogwash!” I exclaimed. “What woman could bear a fully grown man? We’d have to be born from giants if that was the case. And what’s wrong with pointy hats? Loads of people wear pointy hats!”  Running my fingers across the brim of my own. Elda laughed.

“Why did you bring me out here with you anyway?” She asked. “Couldn’t you have gotten one of the Copper boys to come with you instead?” “The Copper boys! Those holigans don’t know the rear side of an ass!” I grumbled. Thinking about their scrawny faces and rat noses. “I couldn’t stand a few hours with those boys let alone a day’s whole trip. Anyway, didn’t you beat them both at weight tossing and arm wrestling a few weeks ago? I heard you even gave Ol’ Davie a good wallop when he got handies one night.” Elda glowed, “Yes, I did infact. I’ve beaten every boy in town at wrestling at this point. Arm or full body.” “Excellent! Because I’ll need someone to lift my brothers things into the wagon, and I’ll trust no weasly Copper boy to do so!” Elda sighed. “Couldn’t you just use magic or something to do it though?” “Magic bends the very fabric of our world!” I exclaimed. “I can’t and shan’t be using it for such trivial things. That’s a wizard's way.” Removing my pipe from my robe and placing it to my lips, I snapped my fingers and in an instant a flame was created around the brim of the bowl. I began puffing the smoke into my mouth. Elda smiled. “No such trivial things, huh?”

“My dear, there is nothing trivial about allowing an old man his pleasures. Now then, looks like we’re here.”  The wagon came to a halt in front of an old cottage. Its wood had all but rotted. The window frames and front door hung wide open. Part of the roof had almost caved in. “Hmm, seems my brother was taking good care of the place.” I stepped down from the carriage. Leaning on my staff and puffing on my pipe as I approached. Elda hopped of the back of the wagon and walked behind me. The place was mostly empty. Bed in the corner, few barrels of Brandy, and several bookshelfs all filled with tomes and knick-knacks.

“Well then,” Elda said rubbing her pinky finger into her ear. “Seems I won’t be having to do much work afterall.” “There should be some old family heirlooms in the cellar. Go and have a look will you and bring up what you can.” Elda nodded and headed downstairs. I spent sometime searching the place, looking at all the old books that sat lined with dust. Some of them mine, at one point. Running my fingers along the brim of my favorite, titled “Ashmire Goes to Heaven and Hates it.” I chuckled remembering the first time I read it, skipping lessons from our mother to go hide out in the woods. Reading it day after day. I turned back to the desk and began looking over Gregorbocs notes, thumbing through pages that lay out on his desk.Trying to find some clue as is to what he was up to before he died. When the doctors found the body they found no evidence of malpractice. They pinned up to old age.

Stroking my beard as I read. Finding nothing of value aside from the standard journal entries, a mathematical equations to evaluate the measurement of a ‘good time’, and a few poems about birds. Which were actually pretty decent. I slid open the largest drawer of the desk. Inside sat a brown, leather book. It’s cover was worn and it bared no title. I found myself unable take my eyes off it. The whole room seemed to have become deathly quiet. I reached slowly for the book and picked it up. It filled me up with warmth, warmer than the spring. Warmer than I had felt in many years. I Stared at it for a long time, slowly making my fingers way to its edge. I was just about to open it when Elda shouted. “Hey, Abe! You want these old boxes of robes? They look quite comfortable, if not a bit dirty.” “Hmm? Oh yes, please…” I looked back at the book. Wanting to place it back down in the drawer, close it, and leaving it here to rot. But I couldn’t shake an unbearable weight that felt the book was left here for me to find. I placed it into my robe and went back to helping Elda manage my brothers things.

We loaded up all the things into the wagon that were of some value, sentimental or otherwise, and then made camp just outside the cottage. Using the old fire pit out front for warmth. I sat smoking my pipe as Elda roasted a few lizards with mushrooms for supper. She looked at me oddly while she cooked. “You doing alright there, Abe? You been a bit quiet since we started loading the wagon.” I raised my eyebrows to her. “Oh, I suppose I’m just… reminiscing about my brother.” I lied, forcing a feeble smile. She nodded and went back to the cooking. I puffed awhile longer, staring into the fire. It’s flame crackled in the night. It wasn’t the only noise I could hear. Somewhere, far off, I could hear the faint beating of drums.

Supper was concluded and the fire reduced to embers. Stars swepped the sky. The absence of the moon made it so dark one thought they might be locked in a cavern somewhere. Elda had put up a tarp around the roof of the wagon and quickly fell asleep inside. I stayed watch. It didn’t feel right to sleep. The drumming had stopped but I knew something was still there. I waited for it. Puffing on my pipe. An owl hooted nearby once in awhile.  Looking up I could see its glowing eyes looking down at me. It’s presence brought me some comfort and my own eyes grew heavy. The gentle grasp of sleep just began to wrap its fingers around my mind when I heard it again. The drums. They were closer now. Very close, and growing louder. I gripped my staff tightly and waited. It was all around me now. But I could see nothing beyond the trees. It was right in front of me now. No, it was closer than that. It was playing in my mind, unrelentingly banging away at my brain. I could hardly stand it, pressing my fingers to my brow and wincing hard, feeling I was about to go mad when finally it stopped. All that beated now was my heart beat. Then it appeared, or maybe it was always there. A dark figure among the trees not far off from me. It was no larger than the child, with eyes like white orbs. Glistening. Lifeless. I swallowed hard. There was a sudden blood curdling scream, coming from the wagon. I turned around and saw that Elda had been raised and was hanging in the air like a doll. Shrieking. Eyes rolled back.

Clenching my staff I rose. “Release her, demon!” Casting my voice as deep as it would go and raising my rod to threaten the thing. It didn’t react. I stamped my staff hard against the wagon and a blast of light shot forth. The thing began to fade in its wake and Elda was released. Dropping back into the wagon with a thud. She didn’t move. I cast forth another ray of light. Beaming so bright I had to squint my own eyes. When the light dispersed the figure was gone. Rushing quickly to the back of the wagon, I placed my hand on her chest and felt she was still breathing. Peering back into the night, I could feel no presence. Burning heat was now searing into my skin. I ripped the book from my cloak and tossed it to the floor of the wagon. It scorched the wood and began to cool. I took one of Gregorboc’s old robes and covered Elda with it. Whispering a spell under my breathe to keep her well. Short of breathe and very tired, I slouched against the side of the wagon and waited for the sun to rise.

Pink and purple hueys of light found there way into the forest. Day had come. Elda still lay sleeping, as though nothing had happened. I reached for the book with my staff and pulled it towards me. Tapping it with my fingers quickly to make sure it was cool now, before lifting it up and beginning to read.

The first several pages were sprawled with signatures. All of them belonging to the Stonehandle family name. Each one of my brothers, starting from oldest to the youngest. Gregorboc’s was the last one signed. The following pages were all letters from one brother to the next, starting at the top of the list. The final letter was addressed to me from Gregorboc. It read;

;“Dearest Abe,

How are you? Been some time. Bit of a silly question to ask how you’re is doing when one is dead and won’t be receiving a reply for some time, ha! Unless you find a way to communicate with the deceased, like Brother Nobbie did, and we all know how that turned out… Anyway. Hope you’re well! On to business. This book is a part of our family. A part of the wizarding culture we have established in these lands. When our great great great grandfather, Richenstein the Rickety, first learned the ways of magic, it was at a cost you see. Just as when life was brought into this world so was death. Dark magic was unleashed, and our family has spent our whole lives trying to cover it up. It wasn’t until our own father that we learned that only way to close pandora's proverbial box, was to put everything back inside. That includes our own magic. Funny that we’ve been fighting our enemies with the very tool they use to destroy! Ironic, isn’t it? Now, as you know. You’re the youngest brother. The one always getting lost in thought and staring off at butterflies. We certainly liked to tease you about that one in the day. Called you “Abe the Ablivous!” hoo ho! What fun. Moving on. You’ve come to the age, and appropriate measure of magical wisdom that it is your turn to sign your name. When you sign your name in this book, you’ll be signing off you namesake. All the spells and enchantments you learned in your life will funnel its wisdom and the pages will be rewritten, as they once were, before our great great great Grandfather took them out. You’ll be an ordinary old man. And the darkness that plagues this land will be locked away for good. I’m sorry if this is hard to read. It took me very long to come to terms with it myself and I have paid the price. Usually we do this differently, there is a rite, and some songs we’d sing for you, but I got greedy. Researching several ways to find a way around this. Hoping for some way for you and I to stay this way. But it was in vain. And now the darkness grows at my doorstep, to which, I cannot escape. You have a chance however. At the back of the book lies a map that will take you to a tomb. Sign your name, and leave the book there for ever. Along with all the magic left in the world. But do it quickly, I’m sure as you’ve learned by now, I was not the only thing that wished not to give up our power. Don’t try to follow my research. I’ve destroyed it and you’d only be wasting your time and more importantly, your life.

With much love,

Your brother,

-Gregorboc Stonehandle”

The letter was concluded with a P.S. ordering me to please return several overdue library books. I closed the book and stroked my mustache. “Lose all my powers.” Somber thoughts washed over me as I imagined the life without them. No more magic. No more villagers seeking aid for things such as ravenous boils and angry garden vegetables.

“No more adventures.” I found myself saying aloud, realizing that Elda had woken from her slumber. She must have heard me because she immediately began questioning me what I meant, asking what the book was and why I lied last night, and why she had bruises on her back. How annoyingly curious youth can be. Begrudgingly, I explained everything to her. She had a way of getting me to share things I found myself rather not wanting to share.

She insisted on coming with. To take me to the mountain where the tomb was. “You’ll need someone to watch your back incase that thing comes back, and you’ll also need someone to carry your rickety old ass back to town.” She teased once more.

“I’m losing my powers, not my legs or my will to live! I can walk just fine thank you.” Of course, there was no turning her down. We had a quick breakfast of stewed eggs and potatoes. Then feed the ox and walked off a path that lead into the woods behind Gregorbocs empty house. Leaving the wagon and the ox at the house as the road was to narrow. Elda, who apparently had snuck a sword into the wagon when I wasn’t looking, lead the way. If the mood and coming end of our journey had been different, I might have been happy to be on an adventure again. It had been sometime.

After a few hours of hiking, we came to the mountain noted on the map. Before us sat a door with ancient carvings driven into its side. The book noted how to open it, so I approached and tapped it three times in three separate places with my staff before it slowly opened. Elda took the torch that was laying on the floor by the door and we entered.

It was dark. So dark I could hardly see my own nose. We paced our way slowly through the darkness. Keeping a sharp ear out for the sound of drums, or anything else that might try to stop us. Finally coming to a stone paved room, filled with water to my ankles. Elda stopped near the water and stared at it.

“I feel that it wouldn’t be right if I touched this water… Only magical folk should…” Her voice was a bit weaker than usual. I looked to her curiously. She smiled, her freckles and fiery hair made even redder by the light of the flame. “Call it a hunch.”

Slowly squatting down and removing my shoes, one by one, and setting them aside. I dipped my feet in. It chilled my very bone and moved around my feet in peculiar ways, almost as if it was watching me. Slowly I made my way to the pedestal that sat in the middle of the chamber. The closer I got, the closer the beating of the drums found its way back into my mind, approaching my very soul. Louder and angrier with each step, piercing my skull. I began to find it hard to breathe and almost fell over, leaning heavily on my staff to catch my breath. Elda called to me, but I could not hear what she said because something else was speaking to me now. It told me not to do it. It told me of the terrible things that would happen if I did. It told me it would eat her and me and the Copper boys and everyone else in the village if I did not stop. It’s pounding grew so painful I thought I might die.

Reaching the pedestal I slowly removed the book from my robe and placed it down, leaning heavily against it. It told me how horrible my life would be if I signed my name. How mundane and clammering each rotting day would be. It asked if I wanted that, wanted to rot while the world forgot who I was. Slowly I removed my pen from my pocket, opened the book and scrawled my name in sloppy ink and with it the voices stopped. Closing the book with a sigh, I felt my vision begin to blur. Water splashed as Elda sprinted towards me, and then I fell.

I awoke days later in Eldas house. The familiar pelts of animals lined the walls. A few covered my body keeping all the heat under them. I rubbed the wrinkles on my head and looked about. Elda was sitting by the fire, cooking something. I called to her, and she smiled. I remembered what had happened before, we spoke about it. She told me she heard the voice to, it had her gripping her sword blade, demanding to cut me down. She almost did, but somehow she found the strength to fight back.

“What are you going to do now?” She asked, retrieving my pipe for me from my robes that had been laid to dry by the fire. Handing me them along with a matchbox. I stared at the matchbox for a long time. Then stared out the window.

Silence hung for a long time. Broken only by the birds chirping just out the window, and the gentle breeze of spring days pressing against it. I took a deep sigh “I’d like to see the Red Desert again… Maybe visit Rogue Port as well.” I said fumbling with the match on the matchbox.. She took the match from me and lit it with one quick stroke, holding the flame up the brim of the bowl as I puffed.  “I’d like to come with you.” She said, smiling. “Wouldn’t be right letting a feeble old man wander the lands by himself.” I smiled back, finding no need to argue.

[readbookywooks]

The Invitation

By the time Harry arrived in the kitchen, the three Dursleys were already seated around the table. None of them looked up as he entered or sat down. Uncle Vernon's large red face was hidden behind the morning's Daily Mail, and Aunt Petunia was cutting a grapefruit into quarters, her lips pursed over her horse-like teeth. Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual. This was saying something, as he always took up an entire side of the square table by himself. When Aunt Petunia put a quarter of unsweetened grapefruit onto Dudley's plate with a tremulous "There you are, Diddy darling," Dudley glowered at her. His life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home for the summer with his end-of-year report. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual: Aunt Petunia always insisted that Dudley was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn't understand him, while Uncle Vernon maintained that "he didn't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway." They also skated over the accusations of bullying in the report - "He's a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!" Aunt Petunia had said tearfully. However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well-chosen comments from the school nurse that not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could explain away. No matter how much Aunt Petunia wailed that Dudley was big-boned, and that his poundage was really puppy fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn't stock knickerbockers big enough for him anymore. The school nurse had seen what Aunt Petunia's eyes - so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on her gleaming walls, and in observing the comings and goings of the neighbors - simply refused to see: that far from needing extra nourishment, Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale. So - after many tantrums, after arguments that shook Harry's bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Petunia - the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by the Smeltings school nurse had been taped to the fridge, which had been emptied of all Dudley's favorite things - fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called "rabbit food." To make Dudley feel better about it all, Aunt Petunia had insisted that the whole family follow the diet too. She now passed a grapefruit quarter to Harry. He noticed that it was a lot smaller than Dudley's. Aunt Petunia seemed to feet that the best way to keep up Dudley's morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more to eat than Harry. But Aunt Petunia didn't know what was hidden under the loose floorboard upstairs. She had no idea that Harry was not following the diet at all. The moment he had got wind of the fact that he was expected to survive the summer on carrot sticks, Harry had sent Hedwig to his friends with pleas for help, and they had risen to the occasion magnificently. Hedwig had returned from Hermione's house with a large box stuffed full of sugar-free snacks. (Hermione's parents were dentists.) Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, had obliged with a sack full of his own homemade rock cakes. (Harry hadn't touched these; he had had too much experience of Hagrid's cooking.) Mrs. Weasley, however, had sent the family owl, Errol, with an enormous fruitcake and assorted meat pies. Poor Errol, who was elderly and feeble, had needed a full five days to recover from the journey. And then on Harry's birthday (which the Dursleys had completely ignored) he had received four superb birthday cakes, one each from Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Sirius. Harry still had two of them left, and so, looking forward to a real breakfast when he got back upstairs, he ate his grapefruit without complaint. Uncle Vernon laid aside his paper with a deep sniff of disapproval and looked down at his own grapefruit quarter. "Is this it?" he said grumpily to Aunt Petunia. Aunt Petunia gave him a severe look, and then nodded pointedly at Dudley, who had already finished his own grapefruit quarter and was eyeing Harry's with a very sour look in his piggy little eyes. Uncle Vernon gave a great sigh, which ruffled his large, bushy mustache, and picked up his spoon. The doorbell rang. Uncle Vernon heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon's grapefruit. Harry heard talking at the door, and someone laughing, and Uncle Vernon answering curtly. Then the front door closed, and the sound of ripping paper came from the hall. Aunt Petunia set the teapot down on the table and looked curiously around to see where Uncle Vernon had got to. She didn't have to wait long to find out; after about a minute, he was back. He looked livid. "You," he barked at Harry. "In the living room. Now." Bewildered, wondering what on earth he was supposed to have done this time, Harry got up and followed Uncle Vernon out of the kitchen and into the next room. Uncle Vernon closed the door sharply behind both of them. "So," he said, marching over to the fireplace and turning to face Harry as though he were about to pronounce him under arrest. "So." Harry would have dearly loved to have said, "So what?" but he didn't feel that Uncle Vernon's temper should be tested this early in the morning, especially when it was already under severe strain from lack of food. He therefore settled for looking politely puzzled. "This just arrived," said Uncle Vernon. He brandished a piece of purple writing paper at Harry. "A letter. About you." Harry's confusion increased. Who would be writing to Uncle Vernon about him? Who did he know who sent letters by the postman? Uncle Vernon glared at Harry, then looked down at the letter and began to read aloud: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, We have never been introduced, but I am sure you have heard a great deal from Harry about my son Ron. As Harry might have told you, the final of the Quidditch World Cup takes place this Monday night, and my husband, Arthur, has just managed to get prime tickets through his connections at the Department of Magical Games and Sports. I do hope you will allow us to take Harry to the match, as this really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Britain hasn't hosted the cup for thirty years, and tickets are extremely hard to come by. We would of course be glad to have Harry stay for the remainder of the summer holidays, and to see him safely onto the train back to school. It would be best for Harry to send us your answer as quickly as possible in the normal way, because the Muggle postman has never delivered to our house, and I am not sure he even knows where it is. Hoping to see Harry soon, Yours sincerely, Molly Weasley P.S. I do hope we've put enough stamps on. Uncle Vernon finished reading, put his hand back into his breast pocket, and drew out something else. "Look at this," he growled. He held up the envelope in which Mrs. Weasley's letter had come, and Harry had to fight down a laugh. Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs. Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys' address in minute writing. "She did put enough stamps on, then," said Harry, trying to sound as though Mrs. Weasley's was a mistake anyone could make. His uncle's eyes flashed. "The postman noticed," he said through gritted teeth. "Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That's why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny." Harry didn't say anything. Other people might not understand why Uncle Vernon was making a fuss about too many stamps, but Harry had lived with the Dursleys too long not to know how touchy they were about anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Their worst fear was that someone would find out that they were connected (however distantly) with people like Mrs. Weasley. Uncle Vernon was still glaring at Harry, who tried to keep his expression neutral. If he didn't do or say anything stupid, he might just be in for the treat of a lifetime. He waited for Uncle Vernon to say something, but he merely continued to glare. Harry decided to break the silence. "So - can I go then?" he asked. A slight spasm crossed Uncle Vernon's large purple face. The mustache bristled. Harry thought he knew what was going on behind the mustache: a furious battle as two of Uncle Vernon's most fundamental instincts came into conflict. Allowing Harry to go would make Harry happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years. On the other hand, allowing Harry to disappear to the Weasleys' for the rest of the summer would get rid of him two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having Harry in the house. To give himself thinking time, it seemed, he looked down at Mrs. Weasley's letter again. "Who is this woman?" he said, staring at the signature with distaste. "You've seen her," said Harry. "She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hog - off the school train at the end of last term." He had almost said "Hogwarts Express," and that was a sure way to get his uncle's temper up. Nobody ever mentioned the name of Harry's school aloud in the Dursley household. Uncle Vernon screwed up his enormous face as though trying to remember something very unpleasant. "Dumpy sort of woman?" he growled finally. "Load of children with red hair?" Harry frowned. He thought it was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone "dumpy," when his own son, Dudley, had finally achieved what he'd been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall. Uncle Vernon was perusing the letter again. "Quidditch," he muttered under his breath. "Quidditch - what is this rubbish?" Harry felt a second stab of annoyance. "It's a sport," he said shortly. "Played on broom-" "All right, all right!" said Uncle Vernon loudly. Harry saw, with some satisfaction, that his uncle looked vaguely panicky. Apparently his nerves couldn't stand the sound of the word "broomsticks" in his living room. He took refuge in perusing the letter again. Harry saw his lips form the words "send us your answer...in the normal way." He scowled. "What does she mean, 'the normal way'?" he spat. "Normal for us," said Harry, and before his uncle could stop him, he added, "you know, owl post. That's what's normal for wizards." Uncle Vernon looked as outraged as if Harry had just uttered a disgusting swearword. Shaking with anger, he shot a nervous look through the window, as though expecting to see some of the neighbors with their ears pressed against the glass. "How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?" he hissed, his face now a rich plum color. "You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I have put on your ungrateful back -" "Only after Dudley finished with them," said Harry coldly, and indeed, he was dressed in a sweatshirt so large for him that he had had to roll back the sleeves five times so as to be able to use his hands, and which fell past the knees of his extremely baggy jeans. "I will not be spoken to like that!" said Uncle Vernon, trembling with rage. But Harry wasn't going to stand for this. Gone were the days when he had been forced to take every single one of the Dursleys' stupid rules. He wasn't following Dudley's diet, and he wasn't going to let Uncle Vernon stop him from going to the Quidditch World Cup, not if he could help it. Harry took a deep, steadying breath and then said, "Okay, I can't see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I've got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know - my godfather." He had done it, he had said the magic words. Now he watched the purple recede blotchily from Uncle Vernon's face, making it look like badly mixed black currant ice cream. "You're - you're writing to him, are you?" said Uncle Vernon, in a would-be calm voice - but Harry had seen the pupils of his tiny eyes contract with sudden fear. "Well - yeah," said Harry, casually. "It's been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn't he might start thinking something's wrong." He stopped there to enjoy the effect of these words. He could almost see the cogs working under Uncle Vernon's thick, dark, neatly parted hair. If he tried to stop Harry writing to Sirius, Sirius would think Harry was being mistreated. If he told Harry he couldn't go to the Quidditch World Cup, Harry would write and tell Sirius, who would know Harry was being mistreated. There was only one thing for Uncle Vernon to do. Harry could see the conclusion forming in his uncle's mind as though the great mustached face were transparent. Harry tried not to smile, to keep his own face as blank as possible. And then - "Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy...this stupid...this World Cup thing. You write and tell these - these Weasleys they're to pick you up, mind. I haven't got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your - your godfather...tell him...tell him you're going." "Okay then," said Harry brightly. He turned and walked toward the living room door, fighting the urge to jump into the air and whoop. He was going...he was going to the Weasleys', he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup! Outside in the hall he nearly ran into Dudley, who had been lurking behind the door, clearly hoping to overhear Harry being told off. He looked shocked to see the broad grin on Harry's face. "That was an excellent breakfast, wasn't it?" said Harry. "I feel really full, don't you?" Laughing at the astonished look on Dudley's face, Harry took the stairs three at a time, and hurled himself back into his bedroom. The first thing he saw was that Hedwig was back. She was sitting in her cage, staring at Harry with her enormous amber eyes, and clicking her beak in the way that meant she was annoyed about something. Exactly what was annoying her became apparent almost at once. "OUCH!" said Harry as what appeared to be a small, gray, feathery tennis ball collided with the side of his head. Harry massaged the spot furiously, looking up to see what had hit him, and saw a minute owl, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, whizzing excitedly around the room like a loose firework. Harry then realized that the owl had dropped a letter at his feet. Harry bent down, recognized Ron's handwriting, then tore open the envelope. Inside was a hastily scribbled note. Harry - DAD GOT THE TICKETS - Ireland versus Bulgaria, Monday night. Mum's writing to the Muggles to ask you to stay. They might already have the letter, I don't know how fast Muggle post is. Thought I'd send this with Pig anyway. Harry stared at the word "Pig," then looked up at the tiny owl now zooming around the light fixture on the ceiling. He had never seen anything that looked less like a pig. Maybe he couldn't read Ron's writing. He went back to the letter: We're coming for you whether the Muggles like it or not, you can't miss the World Cup, only Mum and Dad reckon it's better if we pretend to ask their permission first. If they say yes, send Pig back with your answer pronto, and we'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday. If they say no, send Pig back pronto and we'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday anyway. Hermione's arriving this afternoon. Percy's started work - the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Don't mention anything about Abroad while you're here unless you want the pants bored off you. See you soon - Ron "Calm down!" Harry said as the small owl flew low over his head, twittering madly with what Harry could only assume was pride at having delivered the letter to the right person. "Come here, I need you to take my answer back!" The owl fluttered down on top of Hedwig's cage. Hedwig looked coldly up at it, as though daring it to try and come any closer. Harry seized his eagle-feather quill once more, grabbed a fresh piece of parchment, and wrote: Ron, it's all okay, the Muggles say I can come. See you five o'clock tomorrow. Can't wait. Harry He folded this note up very small, and with immense difficulty, tied it to the tiny owl's leg as it hopped on the spot with excitement. The moment the note was secure, the owl was off again; it zoomed out of the window and out of sight. Harry turned to Hedwig. "Feeling up to a long journey?" he asked her. Hedwig hooted in a dignified sort of a way. "Can you take this to Sirius for me?" he said, picking up his letter. "Hang on...I just want to finish it." He unfolded the parchment and hastily added a postscript. If you want to contact me, I'll be at my friend Ron Weasley's for the rest of the summer. His dad's got us tickets for the Quidditch World Cup! The letter finished, he tied it to Hedwig's leg; she kept unusually still, as though determined to show him how a real post owl should behave. "I'll be at Ron's when you get back, all right?" Harry told her. She nipped his finger affectionately, then, with a soft swooshing noise, spread her enormous wings and soared out of the open window. Harry watched her out of sight, then crawled under his bed, wrenched up the loose floorboard, and pulled out a large chunk of birthday cake. He sat there on the floor eating it, savoring the happiness that was flooding through him. He had cake, and Dudley had nothing but grapefruit; it was a bright summer's day, he would be leaving Privet Drive tomorrow, his scar felt perfectly normal again, and he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup. It was hard, just now, to feel worried about anything - even Lord Voldemort.