#because it was just painted on wool and looked hideous

[waffliesinyoface]

watching the lotr bonus documentary on youtube (why the fuck wasnt it on the 4k collection warner brothers, you hacks) and feeling a deep sadness and longing that that level of meticulous detail and craftsmanship and love just simply likely won't exist on that scale ever again.

you know, much like how the elves feel in lotr. the light has faded.

it especially kills me because i'm training to be a carpenter who can make quality furniture. and i live someplace with lots and lots of studios. making real-ass wood furniture specifically designed to be fancy setpieces would be incredible. but lol no the industry doesnt care about artisans anymore, get fucked

[thecagedsong]

Forgotten Light: Chatper 8: Boundaries

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11

Chapter 8: Boundaries

Ronodin hadn’t returned, and said that he wouldn’t until tonight. Kendra had another day to whittle away. She read more in her book on the Fair Folk over breakfast, then sat in front of her crafting materials again.

Kendra had no idea if her medallion even worked, but at least it dried nicely. The wooden texture came through the paint, but that made it look functional. Like, hey, this is a wooden medallion meant to weaken my enemies, not be a high school shop class project.

Did she take woodshop class? Did she ever go to high school? From Ronodin’s story, Kendra probably had tutors. Why did she feel like she knew more about the American public school system than she did about monster hunting? Or even tutoring schedules?

Trying to figure out her past by evaluating what bodies of knowledge she possessed and what she didn’t left her with a headache.

Kendra refocused on the fabrics in front of her. She did okay with the medallion, maybe her body had remembered something her brain didn’t. Hopefully that subconscious knowledge would help her do what she wanted to make next: create a jacket.

Ronodin assured her that the clothes in her wardrobe were all hers, taken and given to Ronodin from her own closet for exactly this time. Pieces her family didn’t approve of and wouldn’t know to find missing. But old Kendra’s clothes…left a bit more exposed than she liked. Aside from also being mostly black and red, and she was really growing tired of those colors, the dresses were low cut at the top, and high cut around the thighs.

She looked sexy in them, but with Ronodin continuing to ‘forget’ that she had only met him two days ago, sexy wasn’t the look she wanted to wear. She’d start with a simple cardigan, covering up her shoulders and back, then see what she could do about altering hemlines.

Looking over the fabrics, she wished she had pink. She thought she liked the color. Pink wasn’t among the fabric options. There was more red and black, and white, silver, dark blue, green, orange, and dark purple.

Because it would clash horribly with the red and the black, she selected the pumpkin orange fabric. If she was enough of an eyesore, maybe she could convince Ronodin that they needed to pop into a shopping mall for a real wardrobe. Something she was comfortable with now. The orange fabric was a wool/giant hair blend, dyed with pigment from the Fala plant, that produced its own distractor spell to convince people that it was dead until they forgot what they were looking for.

Sewing was a lot harder than she thought, especially without a sewing machine. Did she do this by hand the first time? The needle felt so awkward, her stitches were uneven, she was approximating the designs in the book, but some of them had her folding fabric before cutting? What did it mean by grain? She tried to incorporate ‘make me look hideous!’ magic intentions as she sewed, imaging Ronodin cringing away from her, refusing to look at her in it, but it was a little hard when most of her focus went to not pricking herself.

Still, she wasn’t a quitter. Kendra had to undo a seam, because apparently clothes were assembled inside out, but by referencing the book every few minutes, and working through hand cramps, she managed to at least make the pieces stick together.

It was early afternoon when Kendra finished her uneven hems. Some of the tools in the basket might have helped her, but her books didn’t reference any of them, so she left them alone.

Holding up the final product, Kendra giggled. She’d done everything on larger estimates, figuring that her goal was to be covered and folds in fabric were easier to have than one side not fitting, and cutting down was easier than adding. The result could generously be described as an orange tent. Kendra had to see herself in the monstrosity. She rushed to the bathroom, passing Mendigo in the hall, and positioned herself in front of the mirror.

She slung on the cardigan over the black lace dress, and cracked up.

“Hi Ronodin!” Kendra waved to the mirror with both hands, one sleeve reaching halfway up her palm the other so wide it fell back against her elbow at the motion. The ruby necklace looked like it was suffering, trying to hide from her attempts at sewing.

“Oh, er Kendra, I see you tried sewing,” Kendra mocked in the mirror with a low voice.

Kendra twirled, then did an impression of herself with a higher pitch than normal, “I did, do you like it? I love it! I put soo much effort into it! I love the pumpkin look, don’t you?”

She imagined Ronodin’s face, the horror, the strain not to insult his girlfriend, and burst out laughing. Kendra couldn’t wait to see his face for real. She would insist on wearing this until he took her to the mall.

Kendra stopped laughing and frowned at her reflection. That really didn’t seem right. Even if she had arranged all of this herself, why would she arrange a hideout she couldn’t ever leave? If old Kendra had wanted to live a free life with Ronodin, why didn’t she pick a hide away that let her go outside? Her family couldn’t be powerful enough to search the whole world. If she had been able to pick anywhere, a remote island seemed like a much better hiding place than where she was.

Maybe she and Ronodin had had a disagreement over how long she should stay underground. He might be capitalizing on her memory loss to keep her extra safe; it’s possible Kendra had never intended for herself to remain sealed away. That seemed like something Ronodin would do. Slip in a little lie amongst the truths to save himself battles.

Well, wherever they were, Kendra wanted out. Now that she wasn’t dressed for a cocktail party, she would find her way to a window at least. She went back to her room, and decided to arm herself with the bow she had brought with her through the barrel, even though she didn’t have any arrows. She hadn’t had anything else on her, so she slipped on her shoes and went to the door that Ronodin usually walked out of.

She turned the heavy knob, but the door wouldn’t budge. Jiggled it some more, but didn’t move. She searched everywhere for a key, but couldn’t find on. What kind of front door could be locked from the outside?

“Mendigo?” Kendra called, and her puppet came forward. “Open this door.”

Kendra stepped to the side as Mendigo started straining his wooden hands at the door. He turned back to her and shrugged, showing his wooden fingers. Duh, no way could he get the grip he needed that way.

Should she order him to break down the door? These rooms were rented to them by their mysterious ‘host’, who apparently had Ronodin working like a slave. He probably wouldn’t appreciate her busting his door down. She decided against it until things looked more dire.

The last hasty, destructive action she had ordered had almost killed her fiancé. She would demand a key from Ronodin when he got back before resorting to property damage.

“Thank you Mendigo,” Kendra said, “Let’s see what else there is in this place.” Putting her hand on the wall to the left of the door, Kendra started walking, never lifting it. She discovered three different storage closets: one for cleaning supplies, one empty, one for linens. Kitchen, Ronodin’s bedroom (extremely frugal, disappointingly empty) (he had a couple of robes Kendra considered using to augment her own wardrobe, but decided that would send the wrong message), Library, bathroom, craft room, Kendra’s room, Kendra’s bathroom, Kendra’s closet, sitting room/front room, and back to the main door.

That was it. The entirety of her existence, done up in blacks, reds, and gray stone and drenched in blue firelight. Some of the carpets had cream accents, but that was it.

Kendra knew what kind of front door locked from the outside.

She wandered back to her craft room and picked up a canvas to draw. This was about passing time. Next time she wouldn’t let Ronodin leave without her. Kendra just needed to stay sane until he got back. Even if practicing her magic with nicer emotions would create a less effective item, she wanted something nice to look at. Something peaceful. An outdoor scene, and she’d try to work peace into it. It was for herself anyway, and she’d do it in blue and green and white, and it would look beautiful.

Unfortunately, Kendra couldn’t visualize what ‘outside’ looked like. She knew the sky was blue, it had a sun, and grass was green and flowers came in all colors, but the pieces wouldn’t put themselves together. Kendra had never seen ‘outside’, she had nothing but rote facts. She put her pencil to canvas anyway, figuring that if she drew the pieces, it would all come together eventually.

Her hand refused to move. It had no direction on what to draw. Were horizons bumpy or straight? What color blue was the sky? What did sun look like on plant leaves?

Glaring, Kendra started sketching her craft table, in front of her, with the wall behind it turning into prison bars. She’d seen those in her mad-dash self-kidnapping.

Sketching came easier than sewing or carving. Maybe because more art principals were known by the public, the curse wasn’t able to remove them as personal memories. It was nice to have something come together, even if it was only a picture of her cell.

When she got to painting, she ignored the descriptions of materials and focused on colors. Easier than before, she took threads of magic, threads of the flame from the candle inside her, into her hand and turned them to her own emotions, mixing with the paint materials. She wanted people to look at the painting and know that she was trapped. She wanted them to know the suffocation, and the feeling of crafting little trinkets while sun and stars roved the heavens unseen. Not being able to draw the sun or the sky. Not knowing what those looked like. Not knowing what anything looked like outside of six people, a puppet, and her prison. It was a nice prison, possibly one of the nicest in the world.

Kendra painted black beyond the bars. Even gilded cages birthed insanity.

[isis-astarte-diana]

The Piano Lesson

Summary: “Personally, I’ve always favoured the carrot and stick approach to education.” When Missy agreed to teach you to play piano, this wasn’t quite what you had in mind.

Warnings: NSFW. Little bit of sadomasochism but nothing heavy. Possibly dub!con or under-negotiated kink if you squint. On the whole, it’s basically fluff with Missy being a soft!domme.

Word Count: 2390

NB: A long time ago @softlilith​​ said something about a piano and a riding crop and this idea was born. It’s set somewhere between Vault Night and Handmaiden and has been sitting, unfinished, in my Google Docs for weeks. I threw in some praise kink for this anon, too! What was supposed to be porn turned into a bizarre ode to trust, vulnerability and things left unsaid. (Why am I like this?)

“No, dearest. Not like that.”

Missy’s hands flutter about your own, lifting your wrists, adjusting your fingers on the keys with tender precision. A strand of her hair tickles your cheek. She’s leaning over you where you sit at the piano bench, pressed close enough to your back to make your pulse quicken.

“There.” She taps the index finger of your right hand. “This note first.”

“Got it.” You drag your bottom lip between your teeth, flexing your hand, rehearsing the movements. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Her fingers ghost over your arms as she withdraws, giving you room to play. “Try it again. From the top.”

You take it slowly, managing the familiar first few bars of Für Elise at half tempo, fighting to ignore the slow click of her heels while she circles the piano. Her keen eyes don’t leave you for an instant.

The sound of a flat note breaking the melody makes you flinch. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologise. These things take time.” This unruffled patience is an odd change of pace for her. While you’re getting more frustrated by the second, infuriated by the way your clumsy fingers miss their mark and your mind stutters over the sheet music, she seems to be thoroughly enjoying her role as tutor. Even the most hideous-sounding mistakes don’t make her twitch. “Do you know where you went wrong?”

“I think so.” She raises an eyebrow and gestures for you to continue. “I, um, misread the music. That should have been a G sharp.”

“Very good.” Her tone makes you shiver. “You’re learning. Once more, from that bar.”

It takes your hands a moment to catch up with your eyes, finding the right keys to correct your mistake. She counts you in with three raps of her knuckles against the piano’s closed lid.

Slower, this time, you repeat the bar, managing to progress a bit further before another slip of your treacherous fingers interrupts you. “Fuck,” you snap, dropping your hands from the keys.

“Language, poppet,” she reminds you, coming to stand at your side. “You’re doing very well. You’ll get there.”

“I can’t do it, Missy.” Your voice is petulant, embarrassing you almost as much as your amateur playing. “I might as well give up for the day.”

“Oh, now, don’t be so defeatist,” she chastises gently, slipping her fingers under your chin to tilt your head towards her. There’s an encouraging quirk to her painted lips. “Faint heart never won fair maid.”

“I’m making a fool out of myself.”

“You are not.” She presses a soft kiss to your forehead, tickling at the sensitive skin under your jaw until you squeak and duck your head. “I’m very proud of you, dear.”

“But I keep getting it wrong.”

“You do,” she agrees, meeting your eyes again. Ashamed, you try to avert your gaze, but she follows. “But that’s how we learn.”

“Can we start with something easier?” You smile weakly. “Frère Jacques, or something? I feel like I’ve been thrown in at the deep end a bit, here.”

“Did you expect anything less from me?”

In fact, you hadn’t expected her to agree to teach you at all. The way her eyes lit up when you asked had taken you entirely by surprise. She tuts sympathetically, giving you a wide smile that shows her teeth.

“We can always try another way.”

Your brow furrows. “Like what?”

“Well,” she tucks a stray hair behind your ear and you shiver. “I can give you some more firm guidance.”

“Firm?” It’s breathless, more pleading than questioning.

“Of course.” Missy leans closer, her nose brushing yours. “Would you like that?”

The question is loaded in a way that you can’t quite grasp. It makes your neck prickle with goosebumps. “I think so.”

Her eyes crinkle at the corners. “My very good girl.”

She kisses you, gentle but fervent, trailing her fingertips along the nape of your neck. A tremor runs the length of your body, twitching through you from fingers to toes. She chuckles as she pulls away.

“Personally,” she moves to stand behind you, placing her hands on your shoulders, “I’ve always favoured the carrot and stick approach to education.” You swallow hard, mouth suddenly dry. “I think you’ll respond quite well to that.”

“What do I do?”

She strokes down both arms, carefully repositioning your hands. You can feel her pressed against your back. “Play it again. All the way through.”

“But I- I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” she reassures. “If you make a mistake, just carry on. Otherwise you get very good at the beginning,” a soft kiss to the side of your head and a conspiratorial whisper, “and not so good at the rest.”

You wait a moment for her to step away but she doesn’t, keeping her palms resting over your shoulders and her abdomen tight against your back. Heart in your throat, you start to play.

The first mistake makes you falter. Missy taps your shoulder with one finger. “Carry on,” she reminds you, not unkindly, and you do.

It’s slow going but you make it to the end of the piece. Each false note has you wincing but, on the whole, you do feel more accomplished having completed it. You tilt your head to see her and she grins down at you.

“Well done, poppet,” she coos, chucking you under the chin, igniting you with pleasure at her praise. “Now, up you get.”

It surprises you. “I can do it again.” She smooths the confused frown from your lips with her thumb.

“You will, in a moment. First,” taking your hand in hers, she pulls you gently to your feet. “Let me give you some help. Take off your clothes.”

“I- um,” it’s a flustered squeak. “How will that help?”

She speaks as if it’s the most natural request in the world. “Well, they’ll get in the way otherwise.”

“Of... playing the piano?”

“Of the stick.”

You eye her suspiciously for a moment and she raises an expectant brow. “Fine,” you concede, beginning to disrobe.

Once you’re down to your underwear, you fold your clothes tidily and pile them underneath the piano. Mess has its place in the vault - a small act of rebellion - but you get the impression that she isn’t looking for that just now.

“Keep going.”

With a theatrical sigh, you reach for the clasp of your bra. “And just to be clear, you’re very sure that this is still about learning the piano?”

She grins wolfishly. “Cross my hearts, I have only the most chaste of intentions.” The way she drags a finger across her chest, marking two looping X shapes, makes your heart flutter. “Chop chop, now, there’s a good girl.”

It’s cool enough to make you shiver, crossing your arms awkwardly over your naked body. Missy’s eyes flitting over you from head to toe don’t help. “What now?” You’re aiming for accusatory but it comes out timid.

“Now,” she eases your arms down to your sides and guides you forwards with a hand in the small of your back until your stomach brushes the edge of the piano. The glossy surface of it feels cold. “Put your hands like this.”

Close at your back, she positions your hands on the lid, shoulder-width apart. Her hips cradle yours. You’re glad to be facing away from her as heat rises in your cheeks.

“Very good.” You can’t supress a sigh when her lips brush your bare shoulder. “Now bend over.”

Your pulse seems to skip. “Missy...”

“Do you want to learn?” She kisses your earlobe.

“Well, yes, but-”

“Then let me teach you.” Gentle hands land on your hips. “Bend over the piano.”

Beneath your breasts and stomach the piano lid is chilly. The shock, combined with the way your arse is pushed out against the warmth of her thighs through the wool skirt, makes you inhale sharply. She swipes her palm tenderly across your back.

“That’s my girl. Feet a bit wider apart, now.”

You wince as you widen your stance, acutely aware of the way it exposes you, the brush of cool air and coarse wool against your labia.

“Perfect.”

She steps away and you hear her boots clicking down the steps from the platform. You twist awkwardly to look over your shoulder.

“Eyes forward,” she says firmly, and you reluctantly obey.

“I feel ridiculous.”

“Do you?” She’s somewhere off to your right, opening a wooden chest with a creak. “Because you look delightful.”

You roll your eyes. “I really don’t understand how this is supposed to-”

“How many mistakes did you make?”

“I’m beginning to think that this was one.”

“In the piece.” She approaches unhurriedly, ignoring your sarcasm. “How many, do you think?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t count. A lot, I suppose.”

“Eleven.” Something brushes against the back of your thigh. It’s cool, smooth leather. Your breath hitches. “Perfectly reasonable, I would say.”

“Okay, then. Eleven.”

“Count them off for me.”

Before you can ask what she means, something snaps against the undercurve at the top of your right thigh.

“Ow!” Rocking up onto the balls of your feet, you reach back to rub at the stinging mark. You turn an accusatory look at her over your shoulder. “Missy, that hurt!”

“Well it wasn’t supposed to tickle, dear.” She taps the riding crop on the left side of your arse. “What number was that?”

“Well, one, but I don’t-”

“What’s the matter, poppet? Don’t you trust me?” There’s a teasing lilt to her voice but somehow the question feels heavy. You bite back a scathing remark that you don’t really mean - not right now I don’t - and turn back to the piano, dropping your hand.

“One,” you repeat.

"Good girl. Ten more, then.”

“Fine, but not so hard this time.”

“Hmm. We’ll see.” 

Another snap of the crop makes you twitch and yelp. “Ow! Two!”

She alternates sides, sometimes going higher towards the fullest swell of your arse, other times landing the crop on the sensitive undercurve where your thighs meet. By the time you count out eleven, your voice is unsteady and your breathing harsh.  A dull haze of stinging pain like insect bites lingers over your skin.

It’s impossible to ignore the slickness creeping down the insides of your thighs.

Mercifully, she doesn’t point it out. “There we are. That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”

You scoff and admit sulkily, “no, I s’pose not.” Wincing at the sting, you straighten up and reach back to soothe yourself.

“No, none of that,” she tuts, slapping the crop against your wrist. It doesn’t hurt but shocks you enough to make you snatch your hand away. “Now play it again.”

It takes you by surprise. “I’m sorry?”

“Sit down, and play it through again.” Missy comes to stand at your side, propping her elbow up on the piano lid. “Just like before. I’ll correct any mistakes after the fact.” She pointedly sets the crop down on top of the piano.

Spotting the way that your eyes flit down to the folded clothes on the floor, she chuckles. “Oh, no, you won’t be needing those.” She slides them further under the piano with her boot. “Well, go on.” A sharp pinch to your arse makes you squeak. “Or do I need to repeat myself?”

“Nope!” You pull away swiftly. “Point made. I’ll try it again.”

The cool leather cushion of the piano bench presses mercilessly against your stinging flesh. The pain is already fading, but it’s turning into a prickling, pins-and-needles heat that you can’t ignore. You shift uncomfortably. The brush of leather against your arousal makes you gasp.

“Comfy?” She leans against the piano, smirking at your plight.

“Yes, thank you.” You clear your throat and find the keys. “Just like before?”

“Just like before. I’ll count you in.”

It’s difficult to focus when you can see the crop lying across the piano out of the corner of your eye.

Still, you do your best. Slow and hesitant, you work through the bars, doubling back over the mistakes to correct them with the right notes. Now, when your fingers slip, you wince not only at the sound it makes but at the thought of what will come when you’ve finished.

If your thighs twitch with each one, that can only be out of nerves.

“I think that was better this time.” Your voice comes out shaky.

“Much better,” she agrees. “A very good effort, my dear. How many mistakes this time, do you think?”

You can’t help squirming in your seat. “Seven. I think.”

“Is that so?” She quirks an eyebrow. “I only counted five.”

“Oh. I wasn’t really-”

“No, no,” she holds out her hand and you take it, rising from the bench. “Far be it from me to contradict you. I’ll leave it to your discretion.” Guiding you closer with a gentle tug, she touches your chin. Her fingers brush light and ticklish there. “What’s it to be? Five, or seven?” She looks at you with such tenderness that your chest tightens.

Suddenly it stops being about the piano.

You squeeze her hand and meet her eyes with some effort. She holds you there with her fingers beneath your chin. “Seven,” you whisper, in a voice that sounds like I trust you.

Something melts behind her eyes. She smiles, fond and benevolent. “Seven it is.” Inclining her head towards the side of the piano, she leads you by the hand as if she were asking you to dance.

You follow.

It feels different, this time. Despite the position, you’re not embarrassed; despite the pain, you’re not afraid. Somehow, naked and splayed out for her, you don’t feel vulnerable at all.

You feel held.

“Count for me,” she says again, and now it sounds like a thank you. The first brush of the crop against the inside of your thigh makes you gasp.

For her?

A snap of leather, bringing with it biting pain. Your hips jolt. Your back arches. Inside, deep inside, something comes untied that you never knew was in a knot.

“One!” Breathless, a giddy sort of laugh bubbles up from your chest.

She makes a quiet sound of approval. “Good girl. Back straight, now. Stay still for me.”

You flatten yourself against the cold piano lid. “Yes, Missy.”

For her?

Anything.

[lady-divine-writes]

For drabble list #2 Ineffable Husbands "When I'm with you, I'm home." Crowley to Zira.

Here you are. I hope you like it

Home (Rated PG13)

When Aziraphale notices Crowley eschew going back to his flat at the end of the night in favor of sleeping in his Bentley outside Aziraphale’s shop, Aziraphale braves a rainstorm to find out why. (1732 words)

Aziraphale hums happily as he removes a saucepan of milk from the stove and prepares his mug of cocoa – a plucky, rich, Bolivian blend he had smuggled into Soho a few decades earlier. The moment the milk hits the shredded chocolate, his entire bookshop smells sweeter, homier, cozier (if such a thing is possible).

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons spins on the gramophone - a rare original pressing he purchased from an estate sale longer ago than he cares to remember. Strains of Summer fill the air, the notes dancing off those long silenced violin strings evoking memories of warmth and whimsy; bright afternoons spent strolling through fragrant grass, feeding ducks at the pond, soaking in felicity in all its romantic forms.

Ironic since it’s currently hours before dawn in the middle of autumn, the sky black as fresh tar and raining buckets outside.

Aziraphale sets his mug of cocoa down on his desk and takes a peek out the closest window. Beneath the relentlessly beating spray, a Bentley sits, parked alone by the curb, a dark sentry guarding his storefront. Aziraphale sighs. It must be freezing outside! As the thought passes through his mind, a violent wind blows, pushing the rain sideways and making his glass panes shiver. The Bentley’s engine is off. Aziraphale can see that from here. Which means no heater. Even if Crowley has miracled the heater on, there has to be a chill.

Crowley doesn’t like the chill air. He dresses in layers and wool coats during the winter. But the last time Aziraphale saw him (roughly eight hours ago) he only had a thin button down and a satin jacket on – more style than substance in Aziraphale’s opinion.

Why is he out there? It’s three in the morning! Why isn’t he home, riding out the storm with a bottle of whiskey, lying beneath the thick comforter on his enormous bed? It sounds like the perfect way to spend a blustery evening like this to Aziraphale, who rarely likes to sleep.

A streak of lightning brightens the sky and Aziraphale sees him, his profile painting a stoic silhouette on the driver’s side window. He must be miserable, sitting upright in that cramped leather seat. Aziraphale would say he’s being ridiculous and stubborn, but he has no clue what about! Thunder pounds out a discordant rhythm overhead. A flash of lightning follows on its heels, then another boom of thunder immediately after that, indicating this storm is going nowhere.

If tonight is anything like last night and the night before, neither is Crowley.

And Aziraphale needs to find out why.

***

Knock-knock-knock.

“Mrrr …” Crowley stirs grumpily, squeezing his eyelids shut tight. He’s not asleep, just resting his eyes. The lightning overhead along with the raindrops reflecting the neon shop signs like a thousand liquid points of light are doing his head in. The pounding of the rain on the body of his car pings inside his ears like a twenty-gallon drum of tailor’s pins overturned on a rusted tin roof.

He couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to.

Knock-knock-knock.

A second disturbance but louder. Crowley refuses to open his eyes.

“Go … away …” he mumbles through his teeth, hoping his voice carries. He doesn’t have the energy to move more than that. It’s this blasted cold! He’d decided to let his body shut down naturally instead of wasting a miracle to get the heater running.

Didn’t need anyone downstairs knowing his whereabouts.

The cold would feel less mind-numbing if he turned into a snake, but he doesn’t like to do that too often.

KnockKnockKnock!

“I’m not drunk, officer,” he groans, fully prepared to shift his head into something hideous and tell the nosy cop, bothering him for the ninth time, where to stick it. “I told you, I’m catching a few zzz’s. I’m in no condition to drive,” he lies.

“It’s not a police officer, Crowley!” a voice shouts over the rain. “It’s me!”

Crowley’s eyes pop open. “Aziraphale?”

“Yes! Can I come in? I’m about to drown out here!”

“Oh. Right. Sorry ‘bout that.” Crowley reaches over and opens the door, wondering why Aziraphale didn’t do it himself. It was unlocked. But as Aziraphale climbs in, the rainwater avoiding his body as if he’s wrapped in an invisible slicker, Crowley sees that the angel’s arms are full, a large-ish picnic basket hugged to his chest.

“Am I taking you somewhere?” Crowley asks as he watches Aziraphale settle in with his basket. “It’s a bit early in the morning for a picnic. A smidge damp, too.”

“No, silly. I’ve brought you some provisions. I have a blanket …” Aziraphale pulls a tartan flannel out from inside his coat and spreads it over the demon’s lap without prompting. Then he rifles through his basket, naming off items as he presents them. “A Thermos of cocoa, a tin of biscuits, some finger sandwiches …” He lifts a bottle of amber liquid. “Rum?”

“That’s the ticket,” Crowley chuckles, reaching for the bottle. “Mighty nice of you. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Crowley unscrews the cap and takes a swig. “This is quite the spread you’ve assembled. What’s the occasion?”

“I wanted to ask you a question, if you don’t mind.”

Crowley snorts. “You wanted to ask me a question? At three in the morning?”

“Well, you see, that’s part of it, yes.” Aziraphale opens the tin of biscuits and offers Crowley one. He picks a chocolate shortbread and sticks it in his mouth, devouring it without tasting it, Aziraphale suspects - unwilling to turn him down considering Aziraphale tromped out in the rain to give it to him. “What are you doing here? You’ve been out here the past few nights.”

“I’m keeping an eye on you,” Crowley says, covering up discomfort with another swig of rum.

“Why do you need to keep an eye on me? Is there something you’re not telling me? Something you heard from …?” Aziraphale doesn’t say it, letting his eyes finish his question by shooting a pointed glance downward.

“No,” Crowley assures him. “Not at all.”

“You needn’t worry about me so much, you know,” Aziraphale says, sighing with relief nonetheless. “I’m prepared for any possible attack. I have salt, a crucifix, a bucket of water under my desk, ready to be blessed at a moment’s notice. I even have a sword! Not my flaming sword, of course, but a serviceable piece of steel. I can take care of myself.”

“I know that.”

“So, you can go home, if you’d like.”

Crowley turns his head slightly to peer out the windshield. In the deadlock created between the too bright lights outside and the Stygian shadows inside, Aziraphale sees Crowley bite his lips together. “No. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Crowley puts a hand on the steering wheel, curling his fingers around the pebbly surface and gripping hard, then releasing again. His pose suggests that he might actually turn the car on and drive off despite his protestations. Aziraphale would still be in the vehicle with him, but that’s a moot point. “My flat … it doesn’t feel like home to me. Not so much. Not anymore.”

“And your Bentley does?” Aziraphale teases, though right as he says it, he realizes it very well might.

“No.” Crowley swallows. “You.”

Aziraphale’s brows draw together as he attempts to wring meaning out of that short answer. “Me what?”

“It’s you, Aziraphale. Wherever you are, that feels like home to me. When I’m with you … I’m home.”

“Because I remind you of Heaven?” Aziraphale ventures. He doesn’t want to misunderstand Crowley. There have been too many misunderstandings during the course of their Arrangement, their friendship, and whatever this is trying to become.

“No, for Satan’s sake!” Crowley groans, frustration taking hold. “Because you’re you! You’re the only true friend I’ve ever had! And at some point over the past 6000 years, you became my guiding light. The only thing that matters to me in this pathetic Universe. I’m not here because I enjoy sitting in my car in the rain. I’m here because the farther I am from you, the unhappier I become. And contrary to popular opinion, I don’t enjoy being unhappy.”

“I … I never knew that,” Aziraphale says softly.

“Yeah, well …”

There’s something more to that sentence. Aziraphale knows there is. But regardless of what’s going on behind those yellow eyes of Crowley’s, he’s come to the conclusion that he’s said enough.

Pity because Aziraphale would love to hear more.

“I see,” Aziraphale says for lack of anything better. “Well, in that case, would you like to come inside? Get out of the cold?”

Crowley makes an eggy noise. “I don’t need you pitying me, angel.”

“I’m not pitying you. Believe it or not, I don’t quite relish being alone either.”

“Not,” Crowley replies.

“In fact,” Aziraphale continues, “there are a great many things I don’t enjoy doing alone.”

“You could have fooled me.” But Crowley decides to bite. Aziraphale obviously has something up his sleeve. As long as it’s not a card trick or a dead dove, he’s game to find out. “Like what?”

“Like reading …”

“Yeah, right! You forget all about me when you’re reading!”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t like having you around.”

“What else?”

“Drinking …”

Crowley’s mouth pulls down in a thoughtful frown. “All right. I’ll give you that one.”

“Sleeping …”

Crowley laughs. “You don’t sleep.”

“That’s because I don’t like to sleep alone.”

Crowley looks over at Aziraphale, disbelieving, as the angel’s clear blue eyes stare back.

Stare back hopefully.

Crowley doesn’t know what Aziraphale is getting at, but he’s not the type to give in when he’d rather say no. He’s invited Crowley into his bookshop dozens of times to talk and drink and otherwise socialize.

But invite him inside to sleep? Presumably together?

That intrigues Crowley … too much to say no.

“Maybe I should come inside then. It’s been a long night. You look like you might need your rest.”

Aziraphale smiles beneath the violet glow of the restaurant across the street, casting him a wily aura. “That would be a great help to me,” he says, repacking his picnic basket.

“I’m nothing if not helpful,” Crowley says, opening the door and exiting the car, bottle of rum in tow, while Aziraphale finishes up.

Aziraphale shakes his head. “Let’s not get too carried away, my dear.”

[beyondtheciouds]

.30. Part 1 of 3

Grace groaned, being over dramatic as she followed Christopher down the rotten and creaky stairs to the basement lab. She had volunteered to assist and now she regretted it. Her hair, white ash; untamed like the snowy feathers of a swan fluttered around her shoulders as she took one rotted step at a time.

Her hands; trembling pulled the heavy robe she'd snatched from a closet around her tighter to shield the cold from her body. The robe she'd realized too late was wool and a hideous shade of purple that was approximately several sizes too big. The hem dragged behind her like a veil. For once, Grace was at ease. She gave a doleful look as she opened her mouth. They'd only gone down about a dozen and already she was tired. "How many stairs are there? A thousand?"

Christopher wasn't as oblivious as he seemed. He had been paying attention; listening to her light breathing like a piece of information his brain needed to explain to his heart. He tried not to move as fast as he usually did and walked in front of Grace with a slight skip to his step. In his hand, he held a witchlight in one palm. A smile; hidden in the corners of his mouth formed. His other hand was sweating in the pocket of his trousers clutching the inner fabric nervously. He didn't glance back at Grace when he answered her. He was far too preoccupied counting her breaths. He instinctively took the narrow steps two at a time, multiplying. "Not quite, but a good guess nonetheless. One hundred and twelve to be exact."

Grace groaned again, her gray eyes on the back of his shirt and the crissed crossed brown suspenders he wore. "Seriously?"

For no particular reason, Christopher Lightwood had become a mystery to Grace in the months she'd been working with Lucie. Every now and then he would show up while Grace and Lucie were having tea, discussing the next necessary steps. He'd only speak to Lucie, never acknowledging Grace while he delicately devoured lemon tarts.

Grace Blackthorn was not used to his ignorance and the fact he was oblivious to her had Grace feeling shaken. She was not alright with being ignored.

"Yes," Christopher said, nearly tripping. He caught himself immediately and was shocked he hadn't fallen on his face.

The two moved in a new, comfortable silence until the last step when Christopher announced they'd arrived.

Much sooner than Grace expected they were at the old wooden doors. Christopher opened up the double set of doors and the creak of the hinges echoed in the underground laboratory. The basement opened up to a much larger, cleaner room.

Grace was immensely impressed. "Oh my!"

Tables and chairs scattered about; benches filled with green glass beakers and blue tubes. Images. Images not paintings carefully strung up on copper wires. Boxes and boxes full of color papers and blueprints. Foreign tools and peculiar instruments littered dusty shelves. Scientific equipment arrangements were all over the room like blooming flowers. Strange and unusual inventions and inventory were stacked in every visible corner.

Grace smiled as Christopher turned to face her. Her eyes were wide as she took in all the intense colors of the tubes and beakers.

"You did all this?" Grace asked, astonished by the multitude of items.

Christopher blushed, suddenly shy. "No, well. This is Henry's lab but don't worry. We---- I mean, I am allowed to be in here."

Grace raised her eyebrow, turning to lookat Christopher. She gasped as he pulled off his dusty glasses and wiped them on his shirt. His eyes confirmed her suspicions that he was relieved that she'd wanted to come to his favorite place in the Fairchild Manor. The irises were iridescent; a peculiar lavender shade bright enough to remind her that he was James's blood.

Neither noticed the silver eyes flaring in the shadows as they moved into the room.

Grace leaned over a mental monstrosity on the table, her eyebrows now up into her hairline.

Her features held an increasing amount of worry in the lines that appeared on her forehead. She did not admit that she might be skeptical as she eyed the entire entanglement of large nuts and small bolts; long screws and short nails holding together mismatched pieces of wood and metal. Somewhere in the middle was a control panel with brightly colored knobs, buttons and gears.

Grace continued to eye the machine suspiciously as if it would soon come alive as she moved to the other side of the table where the chairs were. "What is this terrible looking thing and why do you have it here?" She finally asked after several minutes.

For the first time in his life, Christopher felt the lightbulb go on over his head and a tingling feeling in his chest. Someone other than Henry and Thomas were interested in his passion. He now understood what James was referring to when he looked at Grace. She wasn't just beautiful he decided, she was ethereal. "Are you sure you want to know?" His voice teased lightly and surprised both of them.

Grace hesitated, feeling nervous and reached out her hand timidly to touch the gears. "Of course."

Christopher clutched the bright tube in his hand as he sat down in Henry's rocker beside where she stood. The purple liquid in the glass test tube fizzled and bubbled as he moved. "Oh! Don't touch! Sorry! That's... That's Henry's Top Secret investment."

"Top Secret investment?" Grace asked, interested and snickered. She'd wanted to press, but his eyes told her that she'd never be able to loosen his lips the way she could with James. If something was a secret in Christopher's confidence, it stayed a secret. "What does this...calamity of metal and wood precisely do?" Grace asked, her curiosity like a cat winning her over.

"Never you mind," Christopher said playfully, careful not to spill the acidic concoction on his pants. They were already stained from rain and mud. Suddenly he was once again shy and uncertain; perhaps embarrassed by his ruined clothing.

Grace suspected that Christopher was tongue tied and against the voice in her head, she let him be. She gracefully rolled her shoulder and gestured a manicured finger to the tube Christopher held instead of pushing further. The light of the candles painted their silhouettes on the ceiling and Grace wondered if Jesse would be the same when he returned from Purgatory. If. If he returned. If.

Would he still love her? Would all the pieces fit?

She hoped the spell would work as she sat down on a wooden chair. She hoped to be out of Idris soon and away from the other Shadowhunters. Everything that happened next would depend on the accuracy of the spell and of Christopher's potion Grace decided. "Can you tell me what that particular wretched smelling liquid is, Christopher?"

Grace pronounced his name so informally that Christopher blanched, then turned several shades of pink. He tried to sound more calm than he was at her attention. He wasn't even sure how he was feeling. The thing that struck him and took his breath away was that he didn't even consider that Grace Blackthorn knew his name. "Compound X. I would like to name this liquid Compound X." Christopher paused, gathering himself. "Entirely composed of natural and semi-natural ingredients; imposed crystalized crystals then liquidized arnum lily petals, crushed sparrow bones, smashed spider spindles---"

"Right. I get it," Grace interrupted with a sour taste in her mouth. She didnt need to suffer complicated details but she didn't want to be mean. She waved her hand at him as if he were a fly buzzing about her on a summer day.

Christopher laughed uneasily, not understanding the change in Grace's mood. "Sorry. Sometimes I get ahead of myself."

"What does it do?" Grace asked and raised an eyebrow. She smiled sweetly, inching the wooden chair closer to Christopher's.

Christopher grinned, his lavender eyes lightning up like moon flowers. "Hopefully it will bring your brother back."

***

James sighed, leaning against the door. He checked his pocket watch for the third time in ten minutes. "Quarter past three."

"We've got time before the Fairchild clan awakens.. and Lucie said to wait up."

"For bloody sake, the birds aren't even awake Tom. What are we even expecting to happen?"

Thomas cleared his throat, his mind already foggy from the few drinks he'd gulped down during the third and fourth rounds of gin rummy. He sat on the couch with his arm wrapped around a square pillow. "We need to call Alastair."

James felt nauseated. "No," he said, unable to convey agreement. He needed sleep not to be standing here arguing like fools. "Why? Didn't you hear what time it is, Tom? He is probably well fast asleep like we should be by now."

The maid was finally asleep but mostly passed out, drunk in a chair by the window. Her eyes were closed and she whispered unintelligible prayers. Thomas glanced uneasily at her before speaking. "We need the extra help. Lucie said we need to make a complete circle. An even number."

"Without Cordelia with us---even with Alastair there will not be enough." James argued; angry at being deprived of his sleep. This was to be the only night he'd get rest after recieving a letter from Will staying he'd found Tessa. Lucie and her mess had taken it from him originally and now Thomas was corrupting what little time was left.

He was suddenly jealous of Cordelia, sound asleep and refusing to indulge in his sister's madness.

James's nose twitched and he felt the edge of his vision blur; a voice fraying in his ear as the edges became obsolete. Belial wasn't pleased.

"Why are we helping them raise the dead again?" James asked, undeterred by the way his voice slurred, becoming distant.

He was fading.

"Because she's your sister. Obviously this means a hell of alot to her if she has convinced us to risk exile." Thomas said, his own words slurred. James was as crooked as Thomas's smile. "Besides James, you'll have to help keep Lucie safe."

James caught his breath, his lungs burning. "Exile? Lucie never mentioned Exile to me, Tom."

Thomas had the temporary choice to be embarrassed or confused. He chose confused. "I...she never told you?"

James and Thomas had been quietly arguing for the last fifteen minutes and now this new information was the icing on a very thin piece of cake. James was done talking to all of them. He wanted to get to bed before his head imploded with another rotten expose. "No, apparently I was not privy to that piece of information, Thomas but I wish I had been."

"James. James, I am sorry you did not know of the risks involved with her plans but you should have still known."

And of course, he had a faint idea of the consequences.

"Call upon Alastair if you must Tom." James said bluntly and paused, watching Thomas's complection turn white. James's gold eyes were furious and flaring. Thomas sat up straighter, expecting some imitation instruction. Perhaps his friend knew more than Thomas thought. Perhaps that was not news. Perhaps James already knew that Alastair was to be part of their group. Part of the plan. Unknowingly, Thomas's cheeks burned red as James continued on. "But if you do include Alastair in this nightmare, please do know you will be the one dealing with Math when awakes from his drunken slumber. Goodnight, Tom."

James frowned, upset with Thomas. He turned quietly on his heel and sighed. He stormed out of the room like a rotten child who wanted a piece of chocolate that was refused.

James had to get away before he dissolved into darkness.

Thomas sat on the couch quiet and more sober than he was drunk. His hazel eyes were bloodshot wide and unblinking. He was too shocked and stunned to speak.

[needtherapy]

soaring, carried aloft on the wind...continued 3 / 4

A story for Xichen and Mingjue, in another time and another place.

The Beifeng, the mighty empire of the north, invaded more than a year ago, moving inexorably south and east.

In order to buy peace, the chief of the Lan clan has given the Beifeng warlord a gift, his second oldest son in marriage. However, when Xichen finds out he makes a plan.

He, too, can give a gift to the Beifeng warlord, and he will not regret it.

The story continues...

Part 1: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / ...  HOME

It’s on AO3 here if that’s easier to read.

NOTES: This story starts out G but will eventually be E for Explicit.

Chapter 3

The boy accompanies him through the encampment, talking non-stop the entire way, but Xichen isn’t listening. He’s observing this army with a commander’s eye. It helps him to pretend that he’s a spy, not a slave. He notes the neat lines of tents, the clean smell despite hundreds of horses, the smiles on the faces of the soldiers—men and women. This is not the bloodthirsty and chaotic rabble he had expected.

Who hasn’t heard stories of the Beifeng? They have devastated even the strongest clans, whose swords and magic were no match for the Beifeng archers and cavalry, not to mention their own unknown power. Some of the clans retreated into the hills, some sought sanctuary in the Cloud Recesses. And the man Xichen has just met—just kissed—is the demon they fear the most. 

Xichen can’t believe all the stories. No man can disappear and reappear at will, nor fly to the top of a building, nor drive an arrow through the heart of a soldier a full li away. He does not have wings or fangs. He is certainly tall enough to be fearsome, Xichen thinks with irritation, if less hideous than reported. His broad shoulders must make him as dangerous with a sword as he is known to be with a bow, but surely no more deadly than Xichen himself.

They reach a tent larger than the rest, hung with colorful panels of embroidered linen. Despite his churning fear, Xichen evaluates the workmanship and the cost of the dyes with favor. He sees purple and gold mixed with blue and less expensive yellows and greens, yet somehow the riot of color is pleasing. It is a far cry from the grey and white serenity of Xichen’s home. 

Not his home anymore.

“This will be your home while you are here,” the boy announces, gesturing to an exquisitely embellished panel hiding a doorway, stitched in a beaded pattern of clouds that almost seem to be drifting in the wind.

Xichen’s stomach clenches at this small reminder of the Cloud Recesses, and he’s instantly nauseated. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe away the bile, flinching when he feels a touch on his arm.

“Zewu-Jun, please come inside,” the boy implores, and Xichen lets himself be led through the tent flap.

“If you need to throw up, there’s a basin in the corner.”

Xichen’s eyes fly open, staring at the boy, whose eyes are dancing with repressed laughter. It makes Xichen furious that this child can find his distress so hilarious, and some of his feelings must be evident on his face, because the boy takes a step backward, hands up.

“I meant no harm, Zewu-Jun. The negotiations with your family ensured your safety, but you would be treasured regardless. Whatever comforts you need, please ask.” “Ask who?” Xichen snorts, more acerbic than he intends.

The boy’s grin turns his face into a dancing butterfly, light and carefree, and again, Xichen wonders who he is to the warlord.

“Me, of course. In your language, you can call me Huaisang. I will see you daily, whenever I can, but you can always ask your guards for me. Just say my name. They’ve been informed.”

Xichen looks around him. He has been given every luxury as far as he can see. The tent is warm, thanks to a covered brazier sitting on a ring of stone tiles. There are overstuffed cushions to lounge on, light blankets for summer, heavy wool blankets for the approaching autumn chill, paintings hanging from the tent ribs, a small but sufficient desk stocked with paper, ink, and brushes, and a table he assumes must be for meals, because it holds a pale blue tea service, plates, and bowls. Furthest from the door, next to the thing he will not yet acknowledge, is a wash basin, pitcher, and an unnecessarily large copper bathtub. 

It is all exquisitely made: the wood masterfully carved, the pottery glazed to a mirror shine, the artwork elegant and refined. The finest prison Xichen has ever seen.

He looks in a trunk near the tub, and surprise escapes him in an involuntary gasp. It is filled with books. He hadn’t realized what they were at first because they are wrapped in dark leather with no identifying marks on the bindings. He touches them reverently, opening some of their covers to reveal histories, books of folklore, even musical notations. Some he knows, some he doesn’t, but they are all beautiful. Tears sting his eyes and he inhales, rolling his eyes upward just enough to stop any drops from escaping.

“There’s a guqin too,” the boy—Huaisang—offers, pointing to a wooden case in the corner. “We understand your clan values music and learning. Elder Brother wants you to be comfortable.”

As comfortable as any concubine or sex slave, Xichen’s harsh inner voice reminds him, and he finally looks at the bed that dominates the tent. At home, this bed would be an extravagance. Even in the emperor’s palace, Xichen guesses, although he’s never been there, this bed would be excessive. It looks easily big enough for four people to lay in and never touch, and the thought heats his cheeks. The bed sits low on the ground, but its tall, carved posts are draped with silks thin enough to see through, and the mattress that looks soft enough to sink into is covered with a creamy blanket woven in a blue pattern Xichen would know anywhere: the graceful, curving seal of the Cloud Recesses.

This has all been made for him.

No, he remembers. Wangji. 

It was made for Wangji.

Chapter 4

In his twenty-two years, Xichen had never knowingly broken the rules of his clan. It had been something he was proud of, that obedience and propriety came so effortlessly to him. It made his life uncomplicated, and it allowed him to protect his brother’s small, secret rebellions from notice.

Now, it made it easy for him to deceive without being questioned.

He asked to see the letter his father was sending to the Beifeng warlord, to check it for errors, because there could be no mistakes to disgrace Wangji. His father was grateful for the assistance. He even apologized awkwardly to Xichen for not telling him what they were planning.

“We knew you would resist, Zewu-Jun, and there was too much at stake for your soft heart to interfere.”

Soft heart. As though that was all Xichen was. As though he did not earn his military title at the age of fourteen, two years before his father did. As though he had not defended the Cloud Recesses successfully until he reached his majority and switched his focus to preparing to lead his clan. As though his kindness and integrity were not regularly praised by all his family’s allies. 

What his father meant was, you would have told us we were wrong, and we did not want to hear it.

His father would have been right. He would not have agreed to give away his brother—Wangji, who did not like to be touched even by people he was acquainted with—to be what? A warlord’s concubine? A servant? Xichen was filled with a rage he had never known before, and it blazed like a funeral pyre.

No, Xichen would not be ashamed of his soft heart, no matter how it sounded in his father’s stern voice. 

It was far too simple to imitate his father’s hand and rewrite the letter accepting the warlord’s terms, changing the names and some of the details like his age and accomplishments. Truly, the warlord was getting a better bargain than he intended, Xichen thought. The first jade instead of the second. The heir instead of the spare. In light of the trade, he altered the letter to ask for Yunmeng’s safety as well, rationalizing that it would be suspicious to give a greater tribute than had been asked for.

He gave the letter back to his father, rolled in leather, scented with jasmine, and placed in a bamboo tube, already prepared for travel. His father accepted without suspicion. Xichen hid his smile with practiced ease. Perhaps there was some value to living a life above reproach.

The only thing Xichen regretted was that he could not tell his brother. He knew Wangji’s stubborn pride too well, and his brother would never let Xichen sacrifice himself, even if it was for Wangji’s own happiness.

Under the plum tree, he had wiped the tears from his brother’s cheeks and reassured him that he would tell Wei-gongzi anything Wangji wished. He could deliver a letter to the Yunmeng camp, if that would make it easier, and it strengthened Xichen’s resolve when his brother’s usually impassive face lit up.

The letter Wangji gave him the day before he was scheduled to leave was heavy, several pages thick. Xichen wondered what you told your soulmate when you had been sold in marriage to save your clan and maybe even your region from being overrun and destroyed.

Xichen had no way of knowing. Now, he never would.

He added Wangji’s letter to one he had written and hid them both under a floorboard in their mother’s empty home on the edge of the great forest. She had laughingly explained that as a healer, she needed to be closer to nature, so it had not been a scandal when she had moved away from their father so many years ago. But Xichen remembered the difference in her smiles before and after and the way she seemed to take fuller breaths here in this little house. It was a place he knew Wangji visited regularly, and the only place he could think of where his letter explaining what he had done and why, would be safe.

And then he prepared to get his brother drunk.

Xichen hated to lie to him, but by now, it was just one more promise he couldn’t regret breaking. His brother would leave at dawn in a caravan of horses, mules, and guards that would convey him and his dowry north to the Beifeng camp on the southern border of Lanling. The night before, Xichen invited Wangji to his rooms to share a hot pot of aged white tea, one of the oldest their family possessed.

“If there was ever a time to drink the best tea,” Xichen said, the misery in his voice unfeigned, “Today is the day.”

It was a family joke, Wangji’s intolerance for alcohol. Xichen had put in just enough so the taste would be masked by the sweet, rich honey flavor of the tea, but it would still put his brother to sleep. He was developing a talent for subterfuge, he thought, staring down at the limp form of his brother, sprawled across the table. Wangji’s face had lost the hard planes that masked his emotions, and he looked exactly his age.

It was easier than he expected to disguise his brother as himself, undressing Wangji down to the silk underclothes they both wore, switching their hair ornaments, and turning his face away from the door. Xichen pulled the blankets high around his head, and reinforced his brother’s sleep with a brush of magic. He felt a twinge of sadness to leave his beloved Shuoyue behind, but he couldn’t very well take the sword. Someone would definitely recognize it by his side, and he didn’t want to deprive his brother of Bichen. What would he do with a sword where he was going anyway? 

He put a note on his door with a single angry word—no—and hoped it would be enough to keep anyone from entering for a while.

“I am sorry, and I love you,” Xichen whispered before he left. He told himself it didn’t matter if Wangji didn’t hear him.

The last thing he did, a risk he couldn’t help but take, was to visit the library. His library, as he always thought of it. He breathed in the smell of leather and ink, touched the bindings of books he loved and scrolls of poetry he would never see again. He tried not to think about the music he had not yet committed to memory. Some of these books were ones he had bought himself, when he used to travel to other clans to contract and trade. Some had belonged to his family for generations. Next to his brother, this library was the thing he would miss the most.

Xichen was ready to leave at dawn, waiting on his horse before anyone else was awake to see him off. It felt strange to be riding again. He had not left his city in years, not since he had traveled to Qishan for the grand wedding of the Wen clan chief mere months before the Beifeng invaded. After they invaded, of course, he was too valuable to send into battle, despite his experience.

“You are too valuable to risk being ambushed and lost,” his father had said, but what Xichen heard was, your life only has value inside these gates. 

He wore a heavy riding coat with a tall collar and a plush scarf—too warm for late summer— that covered most of his face. He refused to look at any of his family, disdaining them as he knew Wangji would have done. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful or offended that no one, not even his father, noticed the change.

Notes: This story is about 40k words, so if you want to follow along, it’ll be on my pinned post, and tagged with #soaring au. It’s also on AO3 (same title).

[cagestark]

-Proxy Chapter Three-

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three

Read here on AO3.

-

“FRI—”

“You’re not having a stroke!” Peter shrieks. “What’s—what’s so hard to believe? You’ve been my hero since I was like, eight years old. I’ve been getting off to those old TED talks of yours since I was old enough to masturbate—okay, TMI, I know—but you’re so smart, and you’re so brave, and fuck, Mr. Stark, you’re like, so, so hot, I don’t know what to do—and I got this dumb idea in my head that if I just asked, you’d offer, but I literally almost just had sex with some guy I don’t even know just because I was too scared to ask you myself, and I—I’m so sorry.”

Tony holds up a hand to stop the profuse rambling. His heart is pounding in his chest, but he doesn’t waste the breath asking FRIDAY if he’s having a heart attack. He pieces together the kid’s words with all the background information, the senseless things that he hadn’t been able to compute until he received this context. Brilliant though he may be, social contexts can often fall to the wayside.

“I should have seen this coming,” Tony says. “I guess my rampant self-esteem issues might have pulled the wool over my eyes. I’m sorry. Jesus, kid, this has been one fucked up game of chicken. You almost lost your virginity for a bluff.”

Peter sighs. “It would have been worth it if you had said yes. It would have been worth it even if it was, it was Daniel, you know? Because you were here, and a part of it. Kind of.”

“Yeah, no. Not worth it. And don’t tell anyone about that part of this—”

“Trust me, I won’t,” says Peter glumly, sniffing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. Again.”

“Don’t be,” he says. He means it. Peter can’t possibly imagine how much he means it. Because the last sixty seconds have made him feel filled with helium. This must be how that dumb earnest child and his equally dumb hotheaded grandfather felt when they drank those fizzy-lifting drinks at the Wonka factory. Somehow, this incredible young man next to him sees something in him. Tony believes that Peter is the human equivalent of Mjolnir, some detector of worthiness. In the kid's hands and eyes, Tony is uplifted. He feels…honored. “Peter, look—”

“Don’t,” the kid groans, scrubbing at his eyes. “Please don’t give me the whole, let’s stay friends speech or the you're too young speech. All those speeches suck. Just—can’t we pretend this never happened?”

“Maybe you could,” Tony admits. “But I can’t. Friends—yeah, I want to be your friend. But I want more than that too.” The expression on Peter’s face when he peaks around his hands is one he will never forget, the shred of hope that blossoms and blooms there, prettier than any flower Tony’s ever seen. “You’ve got to know how extraordinary you are, and not just genetically. You’re smart. You’re brave. You’re attractive. If I got to be with you, I’d be an incredibly lucky man.”

Peter frowns. “Why am I sensing a but?”

“Because there is one. But—I’m an old man. I could take care of you financially, yes, but I’d do that anyway, no strings attached. You’re going to want someone younger, with less mileage, less wear and tear. You’re going to want someone different someday. Someone better. And contrary to your youthful belief: they’re out there waiting for you, kid. Someone who is everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and who is going to look at you like you hang the moon.”

“Is that how you look at me?” Peter asks, tears glittering in his lashes. “Like I hang the moon?”

Tony swallows.

Peter crosses the bed on his knees, one, two, awkward steps until he is flush with Tony’s side, and then hooking a leg over Tony’s lap. Tony isn’t as wide as Daniel was, but he is wide enough that Peter sits nearly flush on his lap, skinny jeans stretching. The weight is warm and solid, and Peter’s half naked, all abs and soft, pale skin that makes Tony’s fingers buzz just thinking about touching.

“Pete, don’t,” Tony groans, choosing a spot on the wall across the room (where a conveniently placed painting rests) and staring at it resolutely. God, the painting is hideous, something leftover from Pepper’s abstract art buying phase. It needs burned, needs dropped from the roof of the building, needs donated back to whatever museum it came from.

“Why not?” Peter asks softly. He rests his hands on Tony’s shoulders, kneeling up until his chest is in the way of Tony’s gaze. Not that Tony minds, really, because fuck—the kid is positively built. Peter relaxes his legs and whatever pressure he’d been using to avoid sitting on Tony’s lap settles onto Tony’s groin, where his traitorous, half-hard cock takes notice. Instinct has him reaching out to plant his wide hands across the narrow hips, and the skin burns him. It’s even softer than he imagined. “Even if you don’t think we should be together. Why can’t we? If I want you, and somehow you want me?”

“You think I could look at you the same after fucking you, kid?” Tony asks lowly. “I can barely look at you as is because of all the compromising situations I’ve seen you in lately.”

Peter’s face flushes. “It doesn’t make any sense then either. We want each other in all those ways, so why not try? Please, Mr. Stark. Please, let us try.”

And it always comes back to this, doesn’t it?

The fact that Tony can’t say no to this kid.

He tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling and implore any divine deities to have mercy on him. The kid takes the opportunity to press his mouth to Tony’s jaw, just beneath where his facial hair ends. It’s been so long since Tony’s been with anyone that the contact alone has his eyes shutting. The fact that this is Peter makes it transcendental. He feels the warm wetness as Peter opens his mouth and traces where Tony dabs cologne in the morning, and then the gentle scrape of teeth that has him groaning from deep within his chest.

Peter whines at the sound. His hips begin to move, aborted little jerking thrusts that make him arch his back obscenely to try and connect their cocks, and when he does, it’s like lightning cracking up Tony’s spine, makes him hiss through his teeth and squeeze the kid’s hips to bruising.

“Please, Mr. Stark,” Peter pants in the older man’s ear. “’ve been dreaming about this. Please let me have it.”

“Take it then, kid,” Tony says. He uses his grip on Peter’s hip to help him move, to increase the force of their frantic grinding until Peter is giving gasping little pants with every breath, mouth slack. When he’s sure the kid will keep the pace on his own, he lets his hands move away from the narrow hips and slide over all the gorgeous skin. Peter naturally runs a degree or two higher than an unenhanced human, but now it feels obscene, dangerous, like they’re liable to catch a spark between them and burn the place down.

“T-Tony?” Peter pants, mouth still flush against the man’s neck. It’s the first time in memory that Tony can recall Peter calling him by his given name, and it’s—it’s everything he thought it might be. “I’m—I’m close—”

Tony groans, rolling his neck. “Go ahead. I can’t stop you. I won’t.”

“Tony,” Peter whines, drawing the name out obscenely. His hips stutter, desperately chasing a finish line that’s within sight. Tony takes pity on him and helps guide his hips again, thrusting his own up as best as he can in their upright position.

When Peter cums, he shudders all over, mouth open in a silent scream. A high, long noise slips from his throat, and he buries his face in the juncture between Tony’s neck and shoulder, hips slowing to move in long, leisurely strokes as his cock twitches in his confined pants, a burst of heat blooming between them. Tony commits it all to memory. It makes his head swim, his own neglected cock ache. He can’t help but kiss the crown of Peter’s head when the young man sags against him.

“I love you,” Peter murmurs into Tony’s damp skin.

Tony feels those same words bubbling in his throat, but now doesn’t feel like the right time to say them: not when he’s just given the young man his first orgasm at another human’s hands. Tony clutches the kid to him, breathing in the scent of him, filled with a sudden childish fear that if he lets him go—he might disappear. “Tell me that again in the morning, kid,” he says roughly.

He takes the pointed chin in his hand, tilts it up and (it’s not until the momentum has already caught a hold of him that he realizes this is their first kiss, their very first kiss) devours the kid’s mouth. He’s a starving man, and there’s no one who could blame him for it. He sips at Peter’s mouth like it’s a cup and he’s shaking with thirst, licks into that soft burning wetness of the younger man’s mouth. Peter tangles his fingers in Tony’s hair, tugging and tugging, whining as he shifts from one knee to another.

“Let’s get you out of those pants,” Tony says, parting just long enough for the words to slip out before reaching for the button on Peter’s skinny jeans. A firm hand catches his wrist, strong. Tony pulls away, eyes wide, fear sobering him—is he moving too fast? Did he overstep their boundaries? Did he somehow misinterpret the last five minutes (a little tough to believe considering the kid just came in his pants and whispered a touching declaration of love, but these days Tony puts nothing past himself)?

“No,” says Peter. He let’s go of Tony’s wrist and reaches for the man’s t-shirt. “Let’s even us out first.”

And oh—oh, that’s alright, then. He has a flashing moment of insecurity as the shirt goes over his head; he’s softer than he once was, and there is scarring where the arc reactor used to be, where battles have torn away his armor. The two of them could not be further alike, with Peter’s lean, pale, muscled body and Tony’s wider, tanned, scarred flesh. But Peter’s eyes practically roll when he’s got his burning palms flat on Tony’s pecs, running his hands all over the revealed skin (learning, he’s learning, Tony thinks).

“This isn’t fair,” Peter whines, leaning forward to open his mouth and plant it on the arch of Tony’s trapezius muscle. When he speaks, his tongue laps at Tony’s skin and nearly distorts the words. “You’re so fucking hot, Mr. Stark.”

“Tony,” Tony reminds him. He dips his fingers gently into the waistband of the kid’s skinny jeans. “Should we uneven the score again?”

Peter slips off of Tony’s lap and stands before him. There isn’t any shyness when he bends down and shucks the pants off of his lean legs. The underwear makes him hesitate—eyes flashing up towards where the older man is watching, heart in his throat, cock aching in its confines. Tony sees him steel himself before dropping the boxers too, using them to wipe clean his cock which is slowly returning to hardness. He doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of. Tony’s seen a fair share of cocks in his time, and Peter’s is remarkably pretty, average in length and girth, flushed pink as his bruised lips.

“What art museum did you escape from, again?” Tony asks, waving a finger up and down Peter’s body. “You know, the artwork isn’t supposed to leave the building—”

Peter’s face flushes, all the way down his neck and to his chest. “That’s rich, coming from you Mr. Stark.”

“Well, I’m rich—come here.”

Peter does. He comes to stand flush with the edge of the bed against his thighs. Being so close to Tony must excite him, because his cock lengthens rapidly even though he stands, patient and still while Tony peruses his body from the freckle above his abs to the way the hair on his thighs is lighter and softer than the hair on his calves and shins. The fire in him simmers, turned down from the boiling point. Soft, he remembers. He should be soft and gentle with this precious young man.

So Tony reaches out gently, runs his calloused fingers over the hill of one collar bone. Peter’s head lolls to the side like he’s too weak to hold it up. He shivers when Tony flattens his palm over his heart, dragging it until he rolls it carefully over one stiffened nipple. Peter’s mouth clicks shut on a whine, cock jerking between his legs.

“You’re sensitive here,” Tony remarks, taking one of the pale nipples between his fingers and rolling it.

“Yessir,” Peter says, his voice high and sweet.

Tony’s eyebrows lift, but the kid must not even see anything strange about what he’s said, because his eyes stay closed, face relaxed and in ecstasy. Tony begins to add pressure, soft little pinches that have the cock in front of him jerking and spitting precum onto the bed. From the young mouth pours a litany of silky noises that threaten to stoke the heat inside him back to a rolling boil—but Tony isn’t a young man. He isn’t inexperienced. He knows how to hold himself back, to watch his lover with the keen eyes of a scientist to discover what pleases them most.

The kid is too distracted to notice when Tony leans forward to lick the flat of his tongue across the neglected nipple. The noise he makes is somewhere between a shout and a groan, fingers digging into pale flesh where he has them laying flat on his thighs.

“God, Mr.—Tony. Please, don’t stop, please.”

Tony doesn’t. He strokes and pinches one nipple raw and then soothes it with his tongue, blowing cool air across the abused little buds until the kid shivers and whines.

“Am I bein’ too loud?” Peter asks through gasping breaths. “Just tell me to, to shut up if I’m annoying you—”

“There’s nothing annoying about you,” Tony promises. He takes the kid’s palm from where it’s leaving bruises on his leg and encourages him to palm Tony’s cock and God, Tony can feel the heat even through his jeans and boxers, the pressure is divine after so much neglect. “It drives me up the walls listening to you, kid. I’m trying to hear those noises, so don’t hold them back—but make sure I earn them. Got it?”

“Got it,” Peter whispers, smiling.

“I’m vocal too, is that going to turn you off?” asks Tony.

“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing about you that could turn me off.”

“Let’s not test that hypothesis.”

He places an open-mouthed kiss to the center of the kid’s chest and uses his hands to guide Peter back onto the bed. Standing, he doesn’t bother with any fanfare, stripping himself of his remaining clothes and adding to the heap at the foot of the bed. In his favor, Peter watches with wide eyes. When he reaches Tony’s cock, he licks his lips.

Tony climbs back onto the bed, and they tangle themselves together, laying side by side and kissing like teenagers the first time they’re left alone. Sometimes their cocks bump and Peter whines, hips arching.

“Should you get a condom?” Peter asks.

“I don’t think so.”

Peter blinks. “Oh—without one? That’s cool too. I mean, obviously—”

“No, I mean—I don’t think we should have sex tonight. Hey, no, don’t make that face. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. But all of your firsts shouldn’t happen in one night, kid. That isn't healthy. You should space them out.”

Peter sits up, eyes blazing, as he talks, he presses Tony back into the mattress, coming to sit on the flat of his abs. “Space them out? Okay then. But what’s the right spacing? A few days in between each milestone? A few weeks? That—that might work for somebody else. The schedule, thing. But this is my schedule. I want you. Like, now. Tonight.”

Tony groans, hands naturally falling to the protruding hip bones. He dips his thumbs into the hollows and (curiously) coaxes Peter to rub forward and backward until the curve of his ass nudges against Tony’s aching cock. He wonders then; why wait? Peter wants it, Tony wants it, why shouldn’t they?

But of all his anxieties—and there are many, always, growing like mold beneath the floorboards of his brain—there is one that sobers him:

“What if you regret it in the morning?” Tony asks. He licks his lips, which feel a little like trembling. He tries to look the kid in the eyes, but his own keep falling, rising, desperate to be looking anywhere else so that Peter can’t see, can’t see inside him at what an anxious, scared, desperate old man he is.

Peter plants a palm flat above Tony’s navel. “I won’t. But if I did—that’d be okay too. Regrets aren’t the end of the world. Everybody has some, and life goes on. But look at me. Look at me: I won’t. I promise you.”

Tony’s eyes burn. His hands have gone from pressing bruises into those hips to rubbing his knuckles tenderly across the arch of one. “I can’t take that chance, kid. I can’t. This is more to me.”

Peter frowns. Carefully, he climbs off Tony, but doesn’t give the man chance enough to grow cold. Peter presses himself from collar to ankle along Tony’s side, coaxing the man’s arm around him until Peter is nestled there resting his head on the older man’s shoulder. He must be close enough for the kid to hear his pounding heart, because Peter presses a tender kiss against the skin closest to his mouth.

“How long do you want to wait?” Peter asks. “However long you need, I’m cool. Like, I waited nineteen years, I’m sure I could wait—well, God, not another nineteen years, I hope. Please, Mr. Stark, not nineteen more years.”

“Call me Mr. Stark again and I’m going to make it twenty. How about—in the morning. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

He feels the kid smile. “Alright,” he says. “But I don’t know how you expect me to get any sleep. This is like Christmas, only sexy.”

-

But somehow, they do.

Because Tony blinks his eyes open. He didn’t tell FRIDAY to activate Sunglasses At Night protocol, so the sun streams in through the window. He’s content to be still: before he moves, he doesn’t feel any of the aches and pains that come with getting older, doesn’t worry about the stress of his day, what might come. But beside him, something shifts, rustling the dark sheets—

Peter, lying awake, naked except for the sheet that covers his hips. He’s holding his phone in front of his face, but at the noise Tony makes, glances over the top to see that the older man has awoken. The phone slips forgotten between them.

“Good morning,” Peter murmurs, voice rough from sleep.

“Great morning,” Tony says, mouth twitching.

Peter sits up onto one elbow, curls a wreck. There’s a bruise on his neck, sucked there in ecstasy the night before. His entire body is a long, lean line that Tony wants to trace and kiss and worship. “Do you remember what you told me I could do in the morning?”

Tony rolls his eyes. His morning wood certainly remembers. “You’re going to be insatiable, kid. Alright. If you haven’t changed your mind, we can—”

It’s Peter’s turn to roll his eyes. “Not that, you perv. Don’t you remember? You said, 'tell me that again in the morning.' So:

“I love you,” Peter says. Those are big words, spoken so softly. The kid means them too. Tony sees: he means them. Maybe he meant them last night too, shivering from his orgasm, but this, with the sunlight and the rumpled sheets and the sleep in the corners of Tony’s eyes to witness it? It’s different.

Tony reaches for the kid and coaxes him closer, kissing him soundly.

“I love you too,” Tony says, and all the things he’s ever doubted—this isn’t one of them.

[becca-petersen]

A Better Friend (fanfic)

So... I finally finished chapter one of my Gretchen/Janis fanfiction. I’m going to post it on fanfiction and possibly ao3 (which I’ve never used before so we’ll see how that works out), but I thought I’d post it here first! It’s not my best work and it’s a multi-chapter fic so it’s not completed, but at least it’s a start! I’m going to put it under the cut because it’s long. I hope you read and enjoy! 

A Better Friend

A Mean Girls the musical fanfic 

Gretchen was eager for the final bell to ring. In fact, she’d given up on even pretending to listen to Ms. Norbury’s lecture. Gretchen always struggled to pay attention during math class, and today was no exception. Gretchen had something far more important than trigonometry on the brain. She gripped her hot pink, jewel encrusted pen, tapping it against her desk anxiously. Usually, Gretchen would discreetly pull her phone out of her bag and scroll through Instagram or text Regina under her desk where Ms. Norbury couldn’t see. But today, she wasn’t just afraid of Ms. Norbury catching her in the act. 

Gretchen brought her pen to her mouth and chewed on the button, pushing it down and pulling it back up with her teeth. She could feel her heart fluttering in her chest, and butterflies tickling her stomach. The end of the school day had quickly grown to have new meaning to Gretchen. It meant she could go home and talk to the only person that truly understood and accepted her. 

When the ball rang, a sharp scream against the monotonous drone of Ms. Norbury’s lecture, Gretchen was relieved. She stood up instantly, gathering her books and her bag before she hurried out of the classroom and toward the senior parking lot. Usually Gretchen carpooled with Regina and Karen, but she hadn’t been ready by the time Regina pulled into her driveway. The older girl honked three times, and when Gretchen didn’t appear on the third shriek of the horn, Regina pulled out of the driveway without her. That was okay. Gretchen didn’t blame her for not waiting. She’d been so late that morning, she missed first period. Luckily, Gretchen was impressively gifted at forging notes from her parents. 

The thing that had kept her up so late was the same thing that caused her to half-run towards her Barbie-pink Mercedes-Benz as soon as school let out. She hardly even paid attention to her rearview mirror as she backed out of her parking spot. Her hands gripped the wheel tightly as she turned onto the busy street. Gretchen groaned each time she had to press her stilettoed foot down on the brake to wait for one of her classmates to cross the street on foot in front of her. Each stop light Gretchen hit felt like a personal attack against her. She jerked the wheel abruptly to the right and raced down the last street before she got home. 

She turned her car off and pulled the key out of the ignition, sticking her middle finger through the key chain and hitting the button to lock her vehicle as she opened the front door and walked inside. She didn’t bother checking for her parents, she knew they weren’t home. They always worked late, and Gretchen had learned not to waste time waiting up for them. She slipped her shoes off and left them beside the door, a family rule - no shoes in the house. Frankly, Gretchen’s feet needed the break from her too-high stilettos. She gripped her phone in her hand, leaving her backpack and homework to be neglected until late Sunday night, and raced up the stairs, padding her bare feet against the wool carpet. When Gretchen reached her bedroom, she carefully closed and locked the door behind her, just to be safe. 

Gretchen’s room was understated compared only to Regina’s. She had to beg her parents to let her paint the walls pink, which she only decided to do after Regina said she should. They used to be blue and yellow, but Gretchen really did like the pink better. Even if it didn’t really match the yellow carpet or her blue comforter. 

Gretchen sat down at her desk, which used to be her grandmother’s. Regina said it was hideous the first time she saw it, but Gretchen’s mother wouldn’t let her move it downstairs to the den. Gretchen had liked the desk before Regina said it wasn’t cool. Now she grimaced every time she sat down at it. 

Gretchen grabbed her bright pink laptop and flipped it open, typing in her password, F3tchGr3tch01, to unlock the screen. She already had the website open because she fell asleep without turning her computer off. She clicked the refresh button in the top corner and waited impatiently as the screen went blank, then returned to the display of her inbox. 

‘You have (2) new messages!’ the pop-up said. Gretchen clicked it, and she was redirected to the message screen.

ipaintdeadflowers - believe me, it’s good. i don’t know why you’re always doubting yourself. 

ipaintdeadflowers - it looks like you fell asleep. i guess i better go to bed, too. sweet dreams. i’m going to paint something for you in art class tomorrow.

Gretchen smiled. Nobody had ever painted something for her before. She had only ever dated Jason Weems, who didn’t even like to be seen in public with her. Not that she was dating this online… person. Gretchen didn’t even know what ipaintdeadflowers looked like. In fact, Gretchen didn’t even know her name. She began to type.

you - That’s adorable. Sorry I fell asleep. I wanted to stay up talking to you, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I can’t wait to see what you painted for me.

Gretchen hesitated a second on the enter button. Then she pushed it, her computer making a little ping noise. Almost immediately, three dots came up below her message, appearing and disappearing as her companion typed. Another ping sounded as she received a new message.

ipaintdeadflowers - it’s  fine. i get it. how was your day? here’s the painting, by the way. i didn’t get it completely done because i ran out of time, but i’ll finish it tomorrow. paintingforg.jpg

Gretchen clicked on the file. She smiled. Her friend was so talented. The painting was colorful, like all J’s paintings were. The colors faded together so seamlessly, too. J was fearless. She flicked her brush like she didn’t care if what she made turned out ugly - which it never did. This painting was of the night sky, the stars and moon practically shining on the page. In the corner, she could see J’s thumb, holding the painting down for the picture. Her fingernail was painted black.

you - It looks done to me. It looks great. I love it.

ipaintdeadflowers - i just need to do some shading. then it’ll be tits. that dress you sent me last night really inspired me.

you - I can see that. Your painting is so much better than my drawing, though.

ipaintdeadflowers - don’t say that. you are so talented. one day you’ll be headlining fashion shows all over the world. i hope you don’t forget me when that happens.

you - I would never forget you. You’re one of the only people I can talk to. Like, about real stuff.

ipaintdeadflowers - i still think you should stop hanging out with that girl you always tell me about. you deserve to have friends who are nice to you. she sounds like a friend i used to have… and if she really is like that, things will end badly. trust me.

you - It’s more complicated than that. We’ve been best friends for years. Besides, who would be my friend if I ditched them? Who would I sit with at lunch?

ipaintdeadflowers - i would be your friend. i would sit with you at lunch.

Gretchen bit her lip. It was only a fantasy. She wouldn’t really stand up to Regina or go sit with J at lunch. It was too crazy. Gretchen liked having structure in her life. She hated the unknown, and the real J, the one who wasn’t sitting behind a screen typing, she was completely foreign to Gretchen. Gretchen started to type.

you - You won’t even show me what you look like.

ipaintdeadflowers - neither will you

Gretchen didn’t know why she was so desperate to see J’s face. She spent a lot of time imagining her. Her nose, her eyes, her lips… Her neck, her jaw, the curve of her shoulder… No. Gretchen couldn’t go there. She saw how Regina chewed up and spit out her old friend from middle school. She had to force herself to fake laugh every time Regina opened up to that page in the Burn Book. Gretchen had closed that part of herself off. She couldn’t… But she wanted to. Maybe it would be okay, if she told this friend. J didn’t even know her real name. It’s not like J could spread it around school.

you - have you ever kissed anybody?

There was a long pause as those three little dots began rotating again below her message. Gretchen twirled a piece of hair around her finger as she waited.

ipaintdeadflowers - what does that have to do with anything?

you - I just wondered.

ipaintdeadflowers - have you?

Gretchen tied the chunk of hair she was fiddling with into a knot, then let it go. It immediately unraveled, spilling back down onto her shoulder. She lifted a tube of chapstick beside her keyboard, uncapping it before she brought it to her lips. One, two, three swipes across her mouth, then she rubbed her lips together. She took her time capping the tube and setting it back where she’d found it. Gretchen breathed out slowly, silently counting to three. 

She brought her fingers back to the keyboard and began to type. She looked at what she’d written, then groaned and tapped the backspace key repeatedly until her message had disappeared. She tried again to type something, but her words fell short once more. Gretchen had attempted to deny the feelings she was developing for the other girl for far too long. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t lie to herself. It went beyond friendship and Gretchen knew it. But J had never expressed that kind of interest in Gretchen. And Gretchen hated the idea of putting herself out there only to get rejected. And besides, she hadn’t wanted anything to ruin the special bond the two girls shared. 

ipaintdeadflowers - g? you still there?

you - Yeah, I am. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of the right thing to say.

ipaintdeadflowers - you don’t always have to say the right thing. especially not with me. you know that, right?

you - Yeah… I do. 

Gretchen’s heart was pounding a little faster in her chest. She could see that J was typing, but she knew if she didn’t send her message right now, she would lose the nerve forever. 

you - I like you.

ipaintdeadflowers - yeah, i like you too

you - I mean, I like-like you.

ipaintdeadflowers - oh.

Gretchen’s heart sank in her chest. That was the sort of response she’d been expecting, but that didn’t make it any less disappointing. She was hurt and embarrassed. She started to type another message.

you - forget I said anything. Never mind. I was only kidding.

ipaintdeadflowers - no. don’t take it back. i’m sorry. i was just surprised. the thing is, i like you too. i don’t usually like anyone, but i like you.

you - You do?!?

ipaintdeadflowers - yeah. i mean… it’s not easy for me to talk about this stuff. i’m not great with feelings. i just… i like you a lot. i wasn’t sure if you were even…

ipaintdeadflowers - i just didn’t know how you would feel if i said anything. i didn’t want to make things weird between us.

The disappointment Gretchen felt only moments ago completely melted away. She only felt joy, pure and unadulterated joy. She stood up from her chair and did a little dance around her room, squealing to herself as butterflies fluttered in her chest. Giddy couldn’t even begin to describe how happy she felt as she slid back into her chair and began to type again.

you - So… Have you ever kissed anyone?

ipaintdeadflowers - why do you care so much about that?

you - Because I really want to kiss you.

ipaintdeadflowers - g. you don’t even know what i look like.

you - I don’t care what you look like. I would want to kiss you even if you were ugly. That’s how much I like you.

ipaintdeadflowers - you are absolutely ridiculous and i like you so fucking much.

you - Do you think we could meet in person sometime?

ipaintdeadflowers - hey, i know this is a bad time but i really have to go. i’ll talk to you tonight? bye, g

Then the message “ipaintdeadflowers has left the chat room” popped up below her message. Gretchen sighed, typing a goodbye back to J even though she wouldn’t read it until she returned. Every time Gretchen tried to arrange a meeting with the other girl, she got distant or defensive, then told Gretchen she had to go, but would be back later. Whenever J came back, she always changed the subject, and Gretchen never felt like pushing the issue too far. 

Of course Gretchen had considered that she was being catfished. But for that to make any sense, she figured J would need to be pretending to be someone she wasn’t. And that didn’t seem to be the case. J never sent any pictures of her face and never told Gretchen her real name, first or last. If J was a catfish, she was a pretty bad one. 

Gretchen was disappointed that her friend left so abruptly, but her heart still fluttered when she remembered the content of their conversation. J liked her, too. Gretchen couldn’t help but smile. She scrolled back up and reread those words over and over again. It felt like a dream. She didn’t want to wake up.

x

Gretchen met J on a forum for young artists. Ever since she was a little girl, Gretchen wanted to design clothes. She spent most of her free time creating renderings of her designs, and since she knew her parents wouldn’t support her passion, and her friends would likely think it was stupid, she looked for a different outlet to share her talents. She found the website by chance. There was an advertisement for it on the website she bought her art supplies from. She created her account and within a few minutes she’d read through every recent thread, and she kept noticing ipaintdeadflowers’s username. Out of curiosity, she clicked on the name, which brought her to J’s profile page, where Gretchen found all the artwork J had posted to the website throughout the last few years. Gretchen liked her paintings so much that she decided to reach out to the other girl, though it took her a few minutes of agonizing before she clicked send on her message. She could still remember it. 

you - Hi. I don’t mean to bother you, but I just wanted to let you know that you’re really talented. I’m glad you share all your art on here. If I sent you my drawings, would you tell me how to make them better? I’m just starting out and I could use some advice. Thank you so much for your time. Again, I’m sorry if this message is annoying. I totally get it if you aren’t interested. 

It took Gretchen a week to actually send that message. She typed it out, then copied and pasted it into a Google Docs file and made little edits every day to phrasing, swapped sentences around, and rewrote it entirely until finally, one night, she pasted it into the message box and pressed send. Then she shut her laptop and didn’t open it back up for days. Gretchen hated rejection. She was sure ipaintdeadflowers would just ignore her message. Or even worse, she thought maybe she would tell Gretchen she was being entitled and that ipaintdeadflowers owed her nothing. Gretchen often found herself thinking of the worst possible outcomes and then mulling over the gruesome possibilities for days on end.

But J had messaged back almost immediately. And she was nothing but kind. 

ipaintdeadflowers - hey. it’s actually no problem at all. i would be happy to look at your stuff. 

From then on, Gretchen and J talked every single day. They sent each other pictures of their artwork and offered each other gentle, thoughtful critiques as well as genuine and joyful praise. J taught Gretchen different techniques and told her all about the best materials. Gretchen spent her allowance on a Sennelier French Artist’s Watercolor Set, on Kolinsky Sable watercolor brushes, on Strathmore sketch paper, and on every color of Prismacolor markers and colored pencils she could find. 

J didn’t just help Gretchen improve artistically. Their late night talks about Yayoi Kusama and Anna Wintour soon turned into conversations about schoolwork, friends, and dreams of moving to New York City to pursue art after graduation. J became Gretchen’s closest friend so quickly that Gretchen didn’t even realize it was happening until she started checking her messages as soon as she woke up every morning and falling asleep at her desk as she waited impatiently for J to reply. J was the only person who got to see Gretchen for who she really was. J was the only person Gretchen even trusted to know her, the real her, and not walk away or ask her to change. 

Gretchen hadn’t told J her real name. She didn’t want her parents or anyone at school to find out she’d been messaging a stranger online. And she didn’t want J to figure out who she really was, either. Instead, she’d taken a page out of J’s book and simply gone by ‘G.’ It wasn’t like she ever messaged anyone else on the website, or even publicly posted her art or commented on anyone else’s, but to J, she was G. 

x

Gretchen awoke the next morning to a message from J.After their mutual confessions, she’d avoided her inbox for the rest of the night, just in case J took back her admission in the night. J hadn’t messaged her again the previous night, either, so at least Gretchen hadn’t missed anything. It was the ping of the message arriving in her inbox that woke Gretchen up. She opened her eyes and groaned. It was only 6:00 AM. She’d been planning on sleeping another half hour. 

Gretchen sat up, pushing her electric blue comforter off of her legs as she stood up and walked over to her computer, which she hadn’t shut before she’d gone to bed. She ran her finger along the touchpad until she reached the refresh button, which she clicked instantly. 

ipaintdeadflowers - okay g. i came to school early and finished your painting. i’ve got something else for you, too. i’m going to leave it at the school for you. i have this secret hiding place. there’s a locker at the end of the hall by the art studio. it’s a tall yellow one, and it’s the only one there. i found out it was empty last year, i’ve been keeping stuff in there ever since. i put a combination lock on it. the code is 7274.

you - Okay, I’ll stop by after school. You won’t be there, right?

ipaintdeadflowers - nope. my best friend wrote this ridiculous one-man play that he’s starring in and it’s playing its one and only performance tonight… so i’m going to go help him set it up as soon as the final bell rings. i’ll message you as soon as it’s over, though.

you - Okay. Well… Can I call you right now?

Gretchen’s parents had undoubtedly already left for work, so she had no problem talking to J. No one would hear them. Regina wouldn’t be by to pick her up for another hour and a half.

ipaintdeadflowers - okay, but it has to be quick. my parents are still sleeping.

you - I just want to hear your voice.

Before Gretchen could even pick up her phone to dial J’s number, it started ringing. Her name in Gretchen’s contacts was the letter J, followed by a wilted flower emoji. It was inconspicuous enough that if J ever texted her, which she hardly ever did, Regina wouldn’t see it and ask questions, but specific enough that Gretchen would always smile when she saw the name pop up on her phone. 

She cleared her throat and smoothed over her hair, as if J could see her through the phone, before answering with an overly-cheerful “Hello!”

“Sounds like you slept well last night,” J said through the phone. Her voice was lower than Gretchen’s, but had a nice melodic tone to it. She and J hardly ever spoke on the phone, yet Gretchen could never forget the sound of J’s voice. That voice had talked her down from several panic attacks, and lulled her to sleep on her most restless nights. 

“I guess I did. Maybe because I didn’t stay up all night talking to you,” Gretchen said, standing up to go to her closet. She’d already picked today’s outfit the night before, so it was hanging in the front of her closet. She pulled it out, pressing the button to put J on speaker phone, then threw the phone onto the end of her bed as she began to undress, then re-dress. “I did have to sit on a three way call with… Sharon and Georgina for a few hours, though.” Those were the fake names she’d given Karen and Regina. They were two of the most popular girls in school, so she hadn’t dared give their real names, but she admittedly could have been more thoughtful when creating their aliases. 

“Well, it’s good to know I make you as sleep-deprived as you make me,” J paused. Gretchen imagined her twirling the telephone cord around her finger. J usually called Gretchen from her landline, which Gretchen didn’t even realize anyone still used. “Do you want to watch a movie tonight?”

“What about your friend’s play?” Gretchen asked. She was now fully dressed, examining her appearance in the mirror for a moment before she pulled her curling iron out of the drawer and plugged it into the outlet to heat up. 

“Yeah, I meant after. It’s Friday, right? We could stay up late.” J hesitated again. “We could watch something… romantic. You like that stuff, right?”

“Yeah! I mean, yeah. We’ll have to see what’s on Netflix.” Of course Gretchen and J wouldn’t actually watch the movie together. They would just stream the movie at the same time and message each other any interesting thoughts or reactions. “Maybe tomorrow we could actually meet though, in person. We could go to the mall or the park or… or actually see a movie together instead of just watching it at the same time.”

“I… want to, I just… I have to go, okay? Can we talk about it tonight? I promise we’ll talk. Bye, G.” J immediately hung up the phone, before Gretchen even had the chance to say goodbye in response. 

Gretchen sighed, then threw her phone onto her bed in frustration. She wanted to believe that J really liked her back, but it was hard when J continually avoided any opportunity to actually meet Gretchen in person. All Gretchen wanted was to hold J’s hand, cuddle into the crook of her neck, kiss her jaw, her chin, her lips… But maybe she’d never even meet the other girl.

Gretchen lifted a clip and began to section her hair so she could curl it. Because of the length and thickness, it usually took Gretchen an hour or more to style it, and she couldn’t keep Regina waiting for two days in a row. Even though all she really wanted to do was sit down at her computer and read those words over and over again. “You are absolutely ridiculous and I like you so fucking much.” She grinned to herself as she lifted her curling iron in one hand and a chunk of hair in the other, twisting it around the barrel carefully. I like you, I like you, I like you.

Gretchen couldn’t wait for the school day to end. 

x

“Earth to Gretchen,” Regina said, snapping at her friend’s face for the third time in the past minute. “Hello? Are you still in there?”

“What?” Gretchen asked, blinking hard as Regina severed her from her daydream. “Sorry, I spaced out. I have a history test today. I totally think I’m going to fail.” Gretchen began to twirl a piece of hair around her finger, glancing around the cafeteria in search of her mystery chatroom girlfriend. 

“Gretchen, we’re in the same history class. We don’t have a test today,” Regina said, looking at Gretchen with eyes so sharp they could kill. 

“Right, I meant math. Sorry. See? I’m definitely going to fail.” It was hard for Gretchen to lie to Regina. One lip quiver or too many blinks and Regina would back Gretchen into a corner and hound her until she confessed the real truth. So Gretchen tried her best to remain nonchalant. 

“We have a math test today?” Karen asked, wide-eyed. She looked from Gretchen to Regina and back again, then fake coughed into her elbow a few times. “I think I’m coming down with something… I’m going to go to the nurse.” She stood, lifting her red lunch tray, and quickly walked over to discard her uneaten food in a large gray garbage can before placing her tray on top of the pile of dirty ones on top of it. Then without missing a beat, Karen turned and ran out of the cafeteria, shouting for the nurse as she went.

With Karen out of the way, Regina slid over on the pale blue bench to be seated closer to Gretchen, lifting her hand to move her hair off her shoulder. Gretchen ignored her. She was looking at the large Homecoming banner that hung above the exit. It was handmade, with neat gold lettering on stark black paper. HOCO DANCE NEXT FRIDAY - $10 PER TICKET! Gretchen would have loved to take J to the dance. She knew J probably didn’t even like to dance, and Gretchen didn’t like to be gawked at, but going to a homecoming dance was something a normal high school couple would do. And Gretchen so badly wished their relationship could be normal.

“Gretchen!” Regina nearly shouted, and Gretchen immediately turned to look at her. “What’s going on? You keep ignoring me.”

“I’m sorry, Regina,” she said, licking her lips. “I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all.”

“Okay… I was just saying, Karen and I wanted to go to the movies tonight. You’re coming, right?” she asked. 

Before Gretchen could answer, there was a loud eruption of laughter from the art table. That kid Damian was standing on top of it, attempting to do the floss dance while his friends chanted something Gretchen thought she recognized as “Laura Dern.” Regina widened her eyes, then rolled them. She stood, lifting her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. 

“I literally cannot be in this vicinity for another second or all their loser is gonna rub off on me.” She kissed her middle and pointer fingers, then waved them at Gretchen. She picked up her tray before she walked away, calling over her shoulder: “See you tonight, biatch. I’ll pick you up at six.”

“Okay,” Gretchen said absentmindedly as Regina walked away. She hadn’t been listening. Instead, she was studying the faces of all the girls seated at the art table, wondering if one of them could be J.

x

Although it felt like several years had passed within the span of Gretchen’s eight hour day, the final bell finally rang not a second too soon, and Gretchen darted out of her math class without a word to anyone. Her chartreuse Louboutin pumps clicked against the tile floor as she hurried down the hall and around the corner. She’d never been inside the art room before. Regina thought anyone who did art was a freak, so Gretchen would never be caught dead taking any classes. She knew how to get there, though, because she passed it every day on her way to lunch in hopes of somehow bumping into J. Walking by the art room added at least three minutes onto her commute to lunch, but Gretchen didn’t care. 

She’d never noticed the locker before. It was nicely hidden. At the end of the long hallway, there was a T. Going left took you to the cafeteria, but going right took you to a dead end, and the yellow locker was nestled into the corner. Gretchen looked around for a second, then kneeled down and twisted the combination to the correct numbers. 7274. She pulled the lock and it clicked open. Gretchen swung the door open and looked inside, smiling. There was a flower inside, a yellow rose, with a small note tied to it. Gretchen opened it. Turns out the florist doesn’t sell these in black. Love, J. Gretchen grinned, feeling her heart flutter as she carefully re-folded the note. Gretchen opened her backpack and slipped the flower and note into it. She would be cautious not to smush the flower, but she couldn’t just walk out of school with it without people asking who it was from. 

Gretchen lifted one of the papers that had been underneath the rose. It was a sketch of a girl done all in pencil. Her face wasn’t entirely visible, only a side profile, but she had long brown hair and full lips twisted into a smile. At the bottom, J had written “G - I wanted to draw a picture of you, but I don’t know what you look like. So I drew this instead. Hope you like it. - J.” Gretchen carefully rolled to drawing up and stuffed it into her bag, too. Then, she lifted the final present, the painting J had previewed for her the night before. J must have come into school early to finish it. It was breathtakingly beautiful, with blue-blacks and violets and silvers, all intricately melted together to make a night sky Gretchen only wished she could look up to every night. The painting came without a note, but it didn’t need one. 

Gretchen felt her eyes watering slightly. She reached up to wipe them before her mascara could run. Then, she tore a piece of loose-leaf paper out of her binder and began to scribble a silly love note back to J. Once it was finished, she signed her name and set it on the shelf inside the locker. Then she closed it and bent down to spin the lock to random numbers so nobody else could get in and find it but J. 

Gretchen rolled to painting up and stuffed it into her bag as well. She hated to risk ruining J’s hard work, but the last thing she needed was for Regina to spot her with it and start asking too many questions. She zipped her backpack up and slid it over her shoulders, walking away with a bigger smile than the one she’d arrived with. She lifted her phone, about to text J a thank you, but thought better of it and returned the device to her pocket. She would wait until she got home and message J instead. For some reason, that just felt right. Gretchen pulled her keys from her pocket and made her way to the exit, smiling and humming to herself all the way to her car. She couldn’t wait to hear from J again later that night. Plus, Gretchen had some planning to do. She wanted to give J an equally heartwarming surprise in return. 

x

Janis wasn’t one for romance. She could count the girls she’d liked in her whole lifetime on one hand. She didn’t like to be vulnerable or feel too close to anyone. So, maybe everything that happened with designingdreams was fate. Janis had spent years on youngartforyoungartists, or yaya, and only received a handful of messages. And she hadn’t replied to a single one. But something about G’s message, about how hopeful and harmless and endearing it was… made Janis want to reply. And more than that, it made Janis want to know G, to really see her in a way she hadn’t cared to see anyone else. 

Janis had never been in love before… but she knew what it was supposed to feel like. It was a tingling in your chest, and your fingers, and your toes. It was the good kind of butterflies and sweaty palms, it was staying up all night talking and waking up early to talk some more. Love was so many things, and Janis felt all of them for G, for a girl she’d never even really met. 

There were a million reasons why Janis didn’t want to meet G in person, at least not yet. The biggest one was fear. Janis was scared that if G saw her, she wouldn’t like her anymore. Janis was an art freak and a recluse. She didn’t see herself as the kind of girlfriend G would be proud to have. Since she saw no other possible future other than separation, Janis decided to prolong the inevitable. Whenever G suggested they meet, Janis always came up with some excuse, or, in what weren’t exactly her proudest moments, she abruptly left the conversation. 

Janis was dying to see G, though. She wanted to know what she looked like, to hear her laugh in person, to see how their hands fit together. But she didn’t want to ruin anything. She didn’t want to lose G. Not when she was quickly becoming the best thing in Janis’s life. Maybe one day the truth would come out. Janis knew that. But it didn’t have to be today.

So, Janis came up with a plan. She wasn’t exactly proud of it. She didn’t like deceiving G. She just wanted to see her, just once. She needed to know what she looked like, who she was. Janis had a fantasy that she would see G, and wouldn’t be able to resist running to pull her into a tight embrace. Once Janis was sure she could trust G; once she was sure G wouldn’t be put off by the way she looked and who she was, she would have no problem meeting her face to face. In fact, Janis couldn’t wait for that moment. She thought about it all the time.

x

There was a very small, forgotten janitor’s closet kitty-corner from the lone yellow locker where Janis liked to hide some of her most valued possessions at school. Hardly anyone knew it was there, and no one knew the combination to the lock she’d placed on the door - no one but G.

Janis skipped her last period to make sure she was in the closet when G arrived. She hid inside of it with the door cracked only slightly so she could if anyone passed. She didn’t want G to notice her and retreat. Janis quickly grew impatient waiting for her. She kept checking the time on her phone, picking at her nails, messing with old cleaning supplies left behind on the shelves. She heard the final bell ring, but still didn’t move from her hiding spot. Instead, she took a rubber glove from the box and tried and failed to blow it up like a balloon. The opening was too big for her mouth and so Janis couldn’t get it to inflate. 

Then, she pulled a marker from her bag, one of the cheap crayola markers she’d used to make campaign posters for Damian when he’d run for junior co-chair of the student activities committee, and began to write on the wall. She drew an alien emoji, then a wilted rose, then she wrote “I WAS HERE AND IT SUCKED!!!!” in all caps. Just when she was about to give up and go home, she heard heels clicking against the floor. Janis’s heart stopped. 

She straightened up and slowed her breathing the best she could, cracking the door open just a little more. First, she saw G’s feet, which were small and perfect. Then her legs, which, same. G was wearing a blue skirt and a green shirt with half-sleeves and a boat neckline. Finally, Janis’s eyes made their way up to her head. G had a large mess of warm brown hair, with the sheer height and volume Janis knew could only belong to one girl in school. She felt her heart in her throat now, thudding so loud she didn’t know how Gretchen couldn’t hear it. 

No, no, no, thought Janis. It can’t be her. Maybe Gretchen was just lost. There was no way she was G. Until she actually opened the locker, there was no proof she was actually - Janis nearly gasped. Gretchen bent down and began to turn the lock. Within seconds, she had it open, and she was digging through the things Janis had left for G. 

Was this some sort of prank? Had Regina used Gretchen to catfish her? Janis felt sick thinking of Regina reading all the messages she’d sent to G and laughing about them. She looked at Gretchen. The other girl wasn’t laughing. She was stuffing everything into her backpack, sure, but not without reading each note thoughtfully; not without regarding each gift with care and grinning to herself as she examined the items left for her. Janis even thought she saw Gretchen wipe a tear. Then, the girl took some paper from her bag and started to write, leaving the note on the shelf and locking the door before she left. 

Janis’s breath hitched in her throat as she saw Gretchen lift her phone. If she decided to text Janis, the notification bell would give her away instantly. She fumbled inside her pocket, quickly flipping the switch to silent, but luckily Gretchen seemed to have decided against texting anyone. As soon as Gretchen’s humming died away, Janis peeked out the door to make sure she was out of sight. Once she was sure it was all clear, she hurried over to the locker and opened the lock. She lifted the note, closing the door as soon as she got a hold of it, and her eyes scanned it so fast her brain nearly had a hard time catching up. 

J,

I wish I could write poems. If I could write poems, I would write you a really nice one. It would be about roses, and night skies, and dreams so sweet you sleep just to return to them. I would tell you that your smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve never seen, and that your voice is my favorite song. But since I can’t write poetry, I’ll just say this: you are absolutely ridiculous, in the best way. And I like you so fucking much. 

Love, love, love, 

G.

Janis sucked in a breath, reading the note again and again. It wasn’t a note from someone playing an awful trick on her. It couldn’t be. Gretchen actually cared. Janis folded the note up until it was only an inch long. She stuffed it into her pocket and ran her fingers through her overgrown blonde hair, tugging at it as she reached the ends. Janis thought seeing G - Gretchen - would change everything… and she was right. But where Janis thought it would make their relationship easier, it had only gotten a thousand times more complicated. 

Janis pulled the note back out of her pocket, unfolding it so she could reach it one more time. She hadn’t noticed how weak in the knees she felt as her eyes scanned each and every letter. Butterflies fluttered in her chest, and her cheeks burned bright red. Janis clutched the note to her chest and began walking in the direction of the parking lot where she was supposed to meet Damian. Love, love, love. That’s what Gretchen had written. But could she really still love Janis when she realized who she really was? Janis couldn’t meet Gretchen, not now. She would need to think of another excuse tonight, when she talked to Gretchen again. She’d promised the other girl they could finally discuss meeting, and she knew Gretchen wouldn’t be satisfied with Janis brushing it off again this time. All she wanted was to hold onto G for a little bit longer. Janis would do anything if it meant not losing the person she loved.

[poorquentyn]

Men’s Lives Have Meaning, Part 6: Father, Why?

Series so far here 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire.”

–The Lord of the Rings

So. Here we are. Quent didn’t turn back, so neither can I. Part of me wants to, though, because “The Dragontamer” will never be OK; this wound does not close. In Quentyn Martell’s final POV chapter, George R.R. Martin does nothing less than sit us down and ask us to stare directly into the sun. And so we flinch. We have to.

“The Dragontamer” is about the fire. The fire, from the Big Bang to Prometheus: the nexus of both creation and destruction, the tipping point between glory and horror, the spark of the first human thought and the embers from the last funeral pyre. The fire is the true object of Quent’s quest. His story has burned through every trope it touched upon, leaving none of the genre’s promises unbroken. By the end, he knows deep down that he will not succeed. He is not really trying to succeed, not anymore. What he’s looking for, what he descends into that dank dark dragonpit beneath the Great Pyramid to find, is an answer. 

What am I doing here? Father, why?

What was it all for? What did it all mean? Why did I live? Why am I dying? I gave it all I had in me and more! I did everything the songs said, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! I lost everything, and did things for which I can never forgive myself. Father, why? Author, why? God, why? Time stops, space falls away, and our hero is left alone with the fire at the heart of Story itself. Quent meets his maker. And this is what George said to him: your story was about seeing it, knowing it, being it, the fire, just for a moment before it kills you.

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning.

Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.

Were I there, while Drink screamed his name and the big man roared desperately for him to turn around, all I would’ve been able to do is whisper: “Quentyn, what do you see?”

Quentyn’s first three chapters are monumental achievements, but they would be empty signifiers floating in a semiotic void without “The Dragontamer” to give them meaning. They were scaffolding, and now the narrative architecture is complete, a bloodstone obelisk to be marveled at from every angle. Everything was leading to this: the dead friends and the screaming teenagers, the wicked Windblown and the “fires everywhere.” As such, the chapter hits like a mushroom cloud after a book-long doomsday countdown. In its imagery and tone as well as plot and theme, it is a chapter composed of fire, as glorious hideous shades of orange, yellow, and red flare up, ripple out, and consume everything in their path. It’s as if the author leeched away every sickening feeling you ever got in the back of your throat when you realized it was all going wrong, boiled it all down into a dye, and started to paint. “Suspenseful” doesn’t even begin to describe what it’s like to read Quent stepping into the void. The chapter is positively suffused with mortal terror, sweat-soaked with apprehension; “The Dragontamer” is dread given form. 

Quentyn felt light-headed. None of this seemed quite real. One moment it felt like a game, the next like some nightmare, like a bad dream where he found himself opening a dark door, knowing that horror and death waited on the other side, yet somehow powerless to stop himself. His palms were slick with sweat.

At last a pair of heavy iron doors rose before them, rust-eaten and forbidding, closed with a length of chain whose every link was as thick around as a man’s arm. The size and thickness of those doors was enough to make Quentyn Martell question the wisdom of this course. Even worse, both doors were plainly dinted by something inside trying to get out. The thick iron was cracked and splitting in three places, and the upper corner of the left-hand door looked partly melted.

“Fire and blood,” he whispered, “blood and fire.” The blood was pooling at his feet, soaking into the brick floor. The fire was beyond those doors. “The chains … we have no key …”

Arch said, “I have the key.” He swung his warhammer hard and fast. Sparks flew when the hammmerhead struck the lock. And then again, again, again. On his fifth swing the lock shattered, and the chains fell away in a rattling clatter so loud Quentyn was certain half the pyramid must have heard them. “Bring the cart.” The dragons would be more docile once fed. Let them gorge themselves on charred mutton.

Archibald Yronwood grasped the iron doors and pulled them apart. Their rusted hinges let out a pair of screams, for all those who might have slept through the breaking of the lock. A wash of sudden heat assaulted them, heavy with the odors of ash, brimstone, and burnt meat.

It was black beyond the doors, a sullen stygian darkness that seemed alive and threatening, hungry. Quentyn could sense that there was something in that darkness, coiled and waiting. Warrior, grant me courage, he prayed. He did not want to do this, but he saw no other way. Why else would Daenerys have shown me the dragons? She wants me to prove myself to her. Gerris handed him a torch. He stepped through the doors.

The green one is Rhaegal, the white Viserion, he reminded himself. Use their names, command them, speak to them calmly but sternly. Master them, as Daenerys mastered Drogon in the pit. The girl had been alone, clad in wisps of silk, but fearless. I must not be afraid. She did it, so can I. The main thing was to show no fear. Animals can smell fear, and dragons … What did he know of dragons? What does any man know of dragons? They have been gone from the world for more than a century.

The lip of the pit was just ahead. Quentyn edged forward slowly, moving the torch from side to side. Walls and floor and ceiling drank the light. Scorched, he realized. Bricks burned black, crumbling into ash. The air grew warmer with every step he took. He began to sweat.

Image by Dejan Delic

Waiting at the heart of this masterful exercise in horror writing are, of course, Rhaegal and Viserion. And never, not once, not in ASOIAF nor WOIAF nor the Dance novellas, has GRRM brought his dragons to life quite like this. They swim into Quent’s hyperventilating POV like they’ve been summoned from his nightmares, and the writing is so vivid here that I’m going to go ahead and get out of George’s way:

Two eyes rose up before him.

Bronze, they were, brighter than polished shields, glowing with their own heat, burning behind a veil of smoke rising from the dragon’s nostrils. The light of Quentyn’s torch washed over scales of dark green, the green of moss in the deep woods at dusk, just before the last light fades. Then the dragon opened its mouth, and light and heat washed over them. Behind a fence of sharp black teeth he glimpsed the furnace glow, the shimmer of a sleeping fire a hundred times brighter than his torch. The dragon’s head was larger than a horse’s, and the neck stretched on and on, uncoiling like some great green serpent as the head rose, until those two glowing bronze eyes were staring down at him.

Green, the prince thought, his scales are green. “Rhaegal,” he said. His voice caught in his throat, and what came out was a broken croak. Frog, he thought, I am turning into Frog again. “The food,” he croaked, remembering. “Bring the food.”

The big man heard him. Arch wrestled one of the sheep off the wagon by two legs, then spun and flung it into the pit.

Rhaegal took it in the air. His head snapped round, and from between his jaws a lance of flame erupted, a swirling storm of orange-and-yellow fire shot through with veins of green. The sheep was burning before it began to fall. Before the smoking carcass could strike the bricks, the dragon’s teeth closed round it. A nimbus of flames still flickered about the body. The air stank of burning wool and brimstone. Dragonstink.

“I thought there were two,” the big man said.

Viserion. Yes. Where is Viserion? The prince lowered his torch to throw some light into the gloom below. He could see the green dragon ripping at the smoking carcass of the sheep, his long tail lashing from side to side as he ate. A thick iron collar was visible about his neck, with three feet of broken chain dangling from it. Shattered links were strewn across the floor of the pit amongst the blackened bones—twists of metal, partly melted. Rhaegal was chained to the wall and floor the last time I was here, the prince recalled, but Viserion hung from the ceiling. Quentyn stepped back, lifted the torch, craned his head back.

For a moment he saw only the blackened arches of the bricks above, scorched by dragonflame. A trickle of ash caught his eye, betraying movement. Something pale, half-hidden, stirring. He’s made himself a cave, the prince realized. A burrow in the brick. The foundations of the Great Pyramid of Meereen were massive and thick to support the weight of the huge structure overhead; even the interior walls were three times thicker than any castle’s curtain walls. But Viserion had dug himself hole in them with flame and claw, a hole big enough to sleep in.

And we’ve just woken him. He could see what looked like some huge white serpent uncoiling inside the wall, up where it curved to become the ceiling. More ash went drifting downward, and a bit of crumbling brick fell away. The serpent resolved itself into a neck and tail, and then the dragon’s long horned head appeared, his eyes glowing in the dark like golden coals. His wings rattled, stretching.

All of Quentyn’s plans had fled his head. He could hear Caggo Corpsekiller shouting to his sellswords. The chains, he is sending for the chains, the Dornish prince thought. The plan had been to feed the beasts and chain them in their torpor, just as the queen had done. One dragon, or preferably both.

“More meat,” Quentyn said. Once the beasts were fed they will become sluggish. He had seen it work with snakes in Dorne, but here, with these monsters … “Bring … bring …”

Viserion launched himself from the ceiling, pale leather wings unfolding, spreading wide. The broken chain dangling from his neck swung wildly. His flame lit the pit, pale gold shot through with red and orange, and the stale air exploded in a cloud of hot ash and sulfur as the white wings beat and beat again.

A hand seized Quentyn by the shoulder. The torch spun from his grip to bounce across the floor, then tumbled into the pit, still burning. He found himself face-to-face with a brass ape. Gerris. “Quent, this will not work. They are too wild, they …”

The dragon came down between the Dornishmen and the door with a roar that would have sent a hundred lions running. His head moved side to side as he inspected the intruders—Dornishmen, Windblown, Caggo. Last and longest the beast stared at Pretty Meris, sniffing. The woman, Quentyn realized. He knows that she is female. He is looking for Daenerys. He wants his mother and does not understand why she’s not here.

Quentyn wrenched free of Gerris’s grip. “Viserion,” he called. The white one is Viserion. For half a heartbeat he was afraid he’d gotten it wrong. “Viserion,” he called again, fumbling for the whip hanging from his belt. She cowed the black one with a whip. I need to do the same.

The dragon knew his name. His head turned, and his gaze lingered on the Dornish prince for three long heartbeats. Pale fires burned behind the shining black daggers of his teeth. His eyes were lakes of molten gold, and smoke rose from his nostrils.

“Down,” Quentyn said. Then he coughed, and coughed again. The air was thick with smoke and the sulfur stench was choking.

Viserion lost interest. The dragon turned back toward the Windblown and lurched toward the door. Perhaps he could smell the blood of the dead guards or the meat in the butcher’s wagon. Or perhaps he had only now seen that the way was open.

Quentyn heard the sellswords shouting. Caggo was calling for the chains, and Pretty Meris was screaming at someone to step aside. The dragon moved awkwardly on the ground, like a man scrabbling on his knees and elbows, but quicker than the Dornish prince would have believed. When the Windblown were too late to get out of his way, Viserion let loose with another roar. Quentyn heard the rattle of chains, the deep thrum of a crossbow.

“No,” he screamed, “no, don’t, don’t,” but it was too late. The fool was all that he had time to think as the quarrel caromed off Viserion’s neck to vanish in the gloom. A line of fire gleamed in its wake—dragon’s blood, glowing gold and red.

The crossbowman was fumbling for another quarrel as the dragon’s teeth closed around his neck. The man wore the mask of a Brazen Beast, the fearsome likeness of a tiger. As he dropped his weapon to try and pry apart Viserion’s jaws, flame gouted from the tiger’s mouth. The man’s eyes burst with soft popping sounds, and the brass around them began to run. The dragon tore off a hunk of flesh, most of the sellsword’s neck, then gulped it down as the burning corpse collapsed to the floor.

The other Windblown were pulling back. This was more than even Pretty Meris had the stomach for. Viserion’s horned head moved back and forth between them and his prey, but after a moment he forgot the sellswords and bent his neck to tear another mouthful from the dead man. A lower leg this time.

The dragons are cinematic avatars of shadow and light, and simultaneously flesh-and-blood predators who smell prey. They are Become Death, but also children in search of their mother. This duality is in part what makes it so perfect that Quent’s quest ends with them. He, too, is on the precipice between self-conceptions, the sad scared shy kid (“I am turning into Frog again”) trying to psyche himself into believing that he can be a badass like his nuncle the Red Viper, even as he knows that “this will not work” and that he just wants to see his mother again before the end (see below). 

Indeed, “The Dragontamer” opens with our hero sensing the Stranger’s approach, a rattle of bones and a chuckle spread from ear to ear, as (in my mind) SHEL’s cover of “Enter Sandman” plays in the background:

The night crept past on slow black feet. The hour of the bat gave way to the hour of the eel, the hour of the eel to the hour of ghosts. The prince lay abed, staring at his ceiling, dreaming without sleeping, remembering, imagining, twisting beneath his linen coverlet, his mind feverish with thoughts of fire and blood.

Quent’s quest hath killed sleep, and his waking dreams bring him no comfort. What he’s “remembering” is no doubt Cletus’ death on the Meadowlark and the faces of the teenagers at Astapor as he cut them down. What he’s “imagining” is “fire and blood,” the very thing Doran sent him to find...and he found it, in a way Dad never dreamt. Thus, the quest’s beginning is linked to its end; it’s all one, the deaths of his friends and the Sack of Astapor and the dragontaming. All are facets of the same cursed diamond, different representations of the same idea, and that idea is that ASOIAF is eating our hero alive. 

Of course, the hero’s fear keeping him up the night he takes a big foolish romantic risk is a very common trope. What makes this different is that Quent is descending, not ascending--he’s headed to his death, and he knows it:

He stared at the candle for a long time, then put down his cup and held his palm above the flame. It took every bit of will he had to lower it until the fire touched his flesh, and when it did he snatched his hand back with a cry of pain.

“Quentyn, are you mad?”

No, just scared. I do not want to burn.

Image by Tiziano Baracchi

There’s a reason I have the image above, that of Quent reaching out to the fire, as my icon. It’s a moment in which the author interrogates his genre in terms of the mindset it instills in those who believe (or want to, anyway) in the stories and the songs. I’ve been saying that the story itself killed him, but perhaps a more accurate way to put it is that in the name of story, Quentyn killed himself. He committed suicide-by-dragon. Look again at this line: “...knowing that horror and death waited on the other side, yet somehow powerless to stop himself.” His inner monologue keeps urging him on, but in his heart of hearts, he knows better. Yet he walks into the fire anyway, because he cannot bear the thought of going home a failure, knowing his friends died for nothing and that Story is a lie. 

Drink, affable sleaze that he is, tells him that the solution is to get laid:

“I could not sleep.”

“Are burns a cure for that? Some warm milk and a lullaby might serve you well. Or better still, I could take you to the Temple of the Graces and find a girl for you.”

“A whore, you mean.”

“They call them Graces. They come in different colors. The red ones are the only ones who fuck.” Gerris seated himself across the table. “The septas back home should take up the custom, if you ask me. Have you noticed that old septas always look like prunes? That’s what a life of chastity will do to you.”

Quentyn glanced out at the terrace, where night’s shadows lay thick amongst the trees. He could hear the soft sound of falling water. “Is that rain? Your whores will be gone.”

“Not all of them. There are little snuggeries in the pleasure gardens, and they wait there every night until a man chooses them. Those who are not chosen must remain until the sun comes up, feeling lonely and neglected. We could console them.”

“They could console me, is what you mean.”

“That too.”

“That is not the sort of consolation I require.”

“I disagree. Daenerys Targaryen is not the only woman in the world. Do you want to die a manmaid?”

This puts me in mind of Jon’s line from ACOK: “Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods.” But Quent wants neither. This is what Quent wants:

Quentyn did not want to die at all. I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again.

He never wanted to go on this quest, marry the beautiful princess, rule by her side. What he wanted, more than anything the wide world has to offer, is a quiet life at home with his wife. Back when I was a teenager m’self, I might’ve sneered at this, thinking it corny and dumb. The older I get, though, the more it resonates. Why pour yourself body and soul into a narrative that isn’t what the singers said it would be? Why throw your life away dreaming of adventure when adventure stinks? I shake my head to think how much time I wasted before I realized: the meaning of life isn’t to be a badass, it’s to be happy. Which, hey, might involve being a badass for some people...but not for Quent. 

I think this revelation of Quentyn’s motives is absolutely vital to making his story work on an emotional level. He’s not what Arianne thought he was, a whiny selfish pretender who wants something he hasn’t earned. He’s a conscript in a war that isn’t his, playing a role he doesn’t actually believe in, while all he wants is to go home, and for his friends to not have died because of him. We might like to think we’d be the Prince that was Promised, but only one in a million can be. Who are the rest of us, then? The rest of us are Quentyn Martell. If you seek his monument, look around you. 

Again, though, even as Quent knows at some level that he’s the Everyman, not the messiah, he keeps trying to tell himself differently: 

“Not all risks lead to ruin,” he insisted. “This is my duty. My destiny.” You are supposed to be my friend, Gerris. Why must you mock my hopes? I have doubts enough without your throwing oil on the fire of my fear.

“This will be my grand adventure.”

“Men die on grand adventures.”

He was not wrong. That was in the stories too. The hero sets out with his friends and companions, faces dangers, comes home triumphant. Only some of his companions don’t return at all. The hero never dies, though. I must be the hero. “All I need is courage. Would you have Dorne remember me as a failure?”

“Dorne is not like to remember any of us for long.”

Quentyn sucked at the burned spot on his palm. “Dorne remembers Aegon and his sisters. Dragons are not so easily forgotten. They will remember Daenerys as well.”

“Not if she’s died.”

“She lives.” She must. “She is lost, but I can find her.” And when I do, she will look at me the way she looks at her sellsword. Once I have proven myself worthy of her.

“From dragonback?”

“I have been riding horses since I was six years old.”

“And you’ve been thrown a time or three.”

“That never stopped me from getting back into the saddle.”

“You’ve never been thrown off a thousand feet above the ground,” Gerris pointed out. “And horses seldom turn their riders into charred bones and ashes.”

I know the dangers. “I’ll hear no more of this. You have my leave to go. Find a ship and run home, Gerris.” The prince rose, blew the candle out, and crept back to his bed and its sweat-soaked linen sheets. I should have kissed one of the Drinkwater twins, or maybe both of them. I should have kissed them whilst I could. I should have gone to Norvos to see my mother and the place that gave her birth, so she would know that I had not forgotten her.

GRRM doesn’t shy away from explicitly meta ruminations in Quentyn’s storyline. Here, the author is pointing out that quest narratives are built in part around losing people along the way; what Quent’s POV demonstrates is that we should not think of this as normal, because by thinking of it as normal, the meaning has slowly seeped away. If the rules of the genre are that you’re supposed to watch your companions die because this is all just part of your grand success story, then why should we care about that loss? Quent’s story, then, can be seen as GRRM’s ultimate genre deconstruction and reconstruction. Unexamined tropes lead to the mindset that got Quent killed: “I must be the hero.” 

What GRRM is saying with Quent’s arc in ADWD is the same thing he said with Sansa’s arc in AGOT: uncritically swallowing the values that stories feed you is dangerous. It leads you to believe that complicated problems are easily solved, that any costs are inherently worth the price, and that doing what you’re supposed to do will automatically lead to rewards. “The Dragontamer” stands as a natural, perfect climax to ADWD because the book’s other main characters are either struggling with leadership given these revelations (Jon and Dany) or reeling from their lives being destroyed by said revelations (Tyrion and Theon). Of course, those characters’ struggles extend backwards to the rest of the series, and forward to TWOW. Quent is more like Ned, introduced and killed off in the same book, forced to face at every step how Dad’s master plan to bring back “fire and blood” has gone horribly wrong:

Four Brazen Beasts stood guarding the door. Three held long spears; the fourth, the serjeant, was armed with short sword and dagger. His mask was wrought in the shape of a basilisk’s head. The other three were masked as insects.

Locusts, Quentyn realized. “Dog,” he said.

The serjeant stiffened.

That was all it took for Quentyn Martell to realize that something had gone awry. “Take them,” he croaked, even as the basilisk’s hand darted for his shortsword.

He was quick, that serjeant. The big man was quicker. He flung the torch at the nearest locust, reached back, and unslung his warhammer. The basilisk’s blade had scarce slipped from its leather sheath when the hammer’s spike slammed into his temple, crunching through the thin brass of his mask and the flesh and bone beneath. The serjeant staggered sideways half a step before his knees folded under him and he sank down to the floor, his whole body shaking grotesquely.

Quentyn stared transfixed, his belly roiling. His own blade was still in its sheath. He had not so much as reached for it. His eyes were locked on the serjeant dying before him, jerking. The fallen torch was on the floor, guttering, making every shadow leap and twist in a monstrous mockery of the dead man’s shaking. The prince never saw the locust’s spear coming toward him until Gerris slammed into him, knocking him aside. The spearpoint grazed the cheek of the lion’s head he wore. Even then the blow was so violent it almost tore the mask off. It would have gone right through my throat, the prince thought, dazed.

Gerris cursed as the locusts closed around him. Quentyn heard the sound of running feet. Then the sellswords came rushing from the shadows. One of the guards glanced at them just long enough for Gerris to get inside his spear. He drove the point of his sword under the brass mask and up through the wearer’s throat, even as the second locust sprouted a crossbow bolt from his chest.

The last locust dropped his spear. “Yield. I yield.”

“No. You die.” Caggo took the man’s head off with one swipe of his arakh, the Valyrian steel shearing through flesh and bone and gristle as if they were so much suet. “Too much noise,” he complained. “Any man with ears will have heard.”

“Dog,” Quentyn said. “The day’s word was supposed to be dog. Why wouldn’t they let us pass? We were told …”

“You were told your scheme was madness, have you forgotten?” said Pretty Meris. “Do what you came to do.”

The dragons, Prince Quentyn thought. Yes. We came for the dragons. He felt as though he might be sick. What am I doing here? Father, why? Four men dead in as many heartbeats, and for what? “Fire and blood,” he whispered, “blood and fire.” The blood was pooling at his feet, soaking into the brick floor. The fire was beyond those doors.

Now, why does the mission go horribly wrong at this particular moment? Because elsewhere in the Great Pyramid, Barristan Selmy is leading a coup against Hizdahr zo Loraq, and the Shavepate gave a different password (“Groleo”) to those locust-masked Brazen Beasts helping him do it. Indeed, no discussion of "The Dragontamer" is complete without talking about "The Kingbreaker." The two chapters happen at the same time and place, bringing the simmering tensions that have defined the Meereenese Knot to a head. At the center of the pyramid, the white knight topples a king; below the pyramid, the captive dragons burn a prince. Taken together, these chapters constitute ADWD's heart-in-your-throat climax (something the book's critics claim doesn't exist), every bit as much as the Battle of Blackwater in ACOK or the escalating conflict at the Wall in ASOS. The kingbreaking and dragontaming are on a smaller scale than those previous climaxes, but are no less compelling in execution and weighty in theme. This is especially so when you contrast the two, as GRRM encourages us to do by placing them side by side. "The Kingbreaker" plays host to one of the series' most cleanly and classically executed setpieces:

Ser Barristan moved closer to the king. “Are you the Harpy?” This time he put his hand on the hilt of his longsword. “Tell me true, and I promise you shall have a swift, clean death.”

“You presume too much, ser,” said Hizdahr. “I am done with these questions, and with you. You are dismissed from my service. Leave Meereen at once and I will let you live.”

“If you are not the Harpy, give me his name.” Ser Barristan pulled his sword from the scabbard. Its sharp edge caught the light from the brazier, became a line of orange fire.

Hizdahr broke. “Khrazz!” he shrieked, stumbling backwards toward his bedchamber. “Khrazz! Khrazz!”

Ser Barristan heard a door open, somewhere to his left. He turned in time to see Khrazz emerge from behind a tapestry. He moved slowly, still groggy from sleep, but his weapon of choice was in his hand: a Dothraki arakh, long and curved. A slasher’s sword, made to deliver deep, slicing cuts from horseback. A murderous blade against half-naked foes, in the pit or on the battlefield. But here at close quarters, the arakh’s length would tell against it, and Barristan Selmy was clad in plate and mail.

“I am here for Hizdahr,” the knight said. “Throw down your steel and stand aside, and no harm need come to you.”

Khrazz laughed. “Old man. I will eat your heart.” The two men were of a height, but Khrazz was two stone heavier and forty years younger, with pale skin, dead eyes, and a crest of bristly red-black hair that ran from his brow to the base of his neck.

“Then come,” said Barristan the Bold.

Khrazz came.

For the first time all day, Selmy felt certain. This is what I was made for, he thought. The dance, the sweet steel song, a sword in my hand and a foe before me.

The pit fighter was fast, blazing fast, as quick as any man Ser Barristan had ever fought. In those big hands, the arakh became a whistling blur, a steel storm that seemed to come at the old knight from three directions at once. Most of the cuts were aimed at his head. Khrazz was no fool. Without a helm, Selmy was most vulnerable above the neck. 

He blocked the blows calmly, his longsword meeting each slash and turning it aside. The blades rang and rang again. Ser Barristan retreated. On the edge of his vision, he saw the cupbearers watching with eyes as big and white as chicken eggs. Khrazz cursed and turned a high cut into a low one, slipping past the old knight’s blade for once, only to have his blow scrape uselessly off a white steel greave. Selmy’s answering slash found the pit fighter’s left shoulder, parting the fine linen to bite the flesh beneath. His yellow tunic began to turn pink, then red.

“Only cowards dress in iron,” Khrazz declared, circling. No one wore armor in the fighting pits. It was blood the crowds came for: death, dismemberment, and shrieks of agony, the music of the scarlet sands.

Ser Barristan turned with him. “This coward is about to kill you, ser.” The man was no knight, but his courage had earned him that much courtesy. Khrazz did not know how to fight a man in armor. Ser Barristan could see it in his eyes: doubt, confusion, the beginnings of fear. The pit fighter came on again, screaming this time, as if sound could slay his foe where steel could not. The arakh slashed low, high, low again.

Selmy blocked the cuts at his head and let his armor stop the rest, whilst his own blade opened the pit fighter’s cheek from ear to mouth, then traced a raw red gash across his chest. Blood welled from Khrazz’s wounds. That only seemed to make him wilder. He seized the brazier with his off hand and flipped it, scattering embers and hot coals at Selmy’s feet. Ser Barristan leapt over them. Khrazz slashed at his arm and caught him, but the arakh could only chip the hard enamel before it met the steel below.

“In the pit that would have taken your arm off, old man.”

“We are not in the pit.”

“Take off that armor!”

“It is not too late to throw down your steel. Yield.”

“Die,” spat Khrazz … but as he lifted his arakh, its tip grazed one of the wall hangings and hung.

That was all the chance Ser Barristan required. He slashed open the pit fighter’s belly, parried the arakh as it wrenched free, then finished Khrazz with a quick thrust to the heart as the pit fighter’s entrails came sliding out like a nest of greasy eels.

Blood and viscera stained the king’s silk carpets. Selmy took a step back. The longsword in his hand was red for half its length. Here and there the carpets had begun to smolder where some of the scattered coals had fallen. He could hear poor Qezza sobbing. “Don’t be afraid,” the old knight said. “I mean you no harm, child. I want only the king.”

He wiped his sword clean on a curtain and stalked into the bedchamber, where he found Hizdahr zo Loraq, Fourteenth of His Noble Name, hiding behind a tapestry and whimpering. “Spare me,” he begged. “I do not want to die.”

“Few do. Yet all men die, regardless.” Ser Barristan sheathed his sword and pulled Hizdahr to his feet. “Come. I will escort you to a cell.” By now, the Brazen Beasts should have disarmed Steelskin. “You will be kept a prisoner until the queen returns. If nothing can be proved against you, you will not come to harm. You have my word as a knight.”

The aged paladin, on One Last Job, cuts down a brash young opponent in order to defy and topple the cringing cowardly unworthy ruler. Aside from perhaps the description of Khrazz’s insides, it could have appeared in any number of not-remotely-deconstructive fantasy novels. And this fits the POV; Barristan Selmy is as old-school archetypal as they come. Quent, by contrast, is Not The Hero. Whereas Barristan the Bold has been a subject of triumphant songs and stories since he was a child, The Prince Who Came Too Late is swallowed up by his own adventure. It fits so well that the mechanisms of Barristan’s straight-laced fantasy story end up interfering with Quentyn’s deconstructive one. Even as Barristan reifies the genre’s values within his own story, he has in doing so inadvertently helped burn those values down in the context of Quentyn’s story. 

Image by Urukki Saki

What Barry and Quent have in common, however, is a set of companions with their own agenda. The white knight is accompanied by the Brazen Beasts, whose leader Skahaz mo Kandaq is IMO manipulating Barristan in order to rid himself of his nemesis Hizdahr (hence the locust masks, GRRM’s little hint as to who really poisoned the locusts at Daznak’s Pit). The frog prince is, as ever, reliant on the Windblown to advance his quest, and as ever, they are there to undercut the quest narrative’s values:

“They may ask for a word,” the Tattered Prince had warned them when he handed over the bundle. “It’s dog.”

“You are certain of that?” Gerris had asked him.

“Certain enough to wager a life upon it.”

The prince did not mistake his meaning. “My life.”

“That would be the one.”

“How did you learn their word?”

“We chanced upon some Brazen Beasts and Meris asked them prettily. But a prince should know better than to pose such questions, Dornish. In Pentos, we have a saying. Never ask the baker what went into the pie. Just eat.”

That Pentoshi saying is a perfect summary of the Tattered Prince’s role in Quent’s storyline. That our hero had to team up with the Windblown, take part in their atrocities, and then rely on them to get inside Meereen and now to (try and) tame a dragon, has given him the terrible knowledge of how the story-sausage is made. He’s seen the slaughterhouse floor, and now he can never metaphorically dine on tales of dashing derring-do again. The cost is simply too much, especially when Quent isn’t going to get the pie anyway. 

But he tries. One last time, he tries, and every time I read it, I can’t stop myself from hoping that this time, this time...

Quentyn let his whip uncoil. “Viserion,” he called, louder this time. He could do this, he would do this, his father had sent him to the far ends of the earth for this, he would not fail him. “VISERION!” He snapped the whip in the air with a crack that echoed off the blackened walls.

The pale head rose. The great gold eyes narrowed. Wisps of smoke spiraled upward from the dragon’s nostrils.

“Down,” the prince commanded. You must not let him smell your fear. “Down, down, down.” He brought the whip around and laid a lash across the dragon’s face. Viserion hissed.

And then a hot wind buffeted him and he heard the sound of leathern wings and the air was full of ash and cinders and a monstrous roar went echoing off the scorched and blackened bricks and he could hear his friends shouting wildly. Gerris was calling out his name, over and over, and the big man was bellowing, “Behind you, behind you, behind you!”

Quentyn turned and threw his left arm across his face to shield his eyes from the furnace wind. Rhaegal, he reminded himself, the green one is Rhaegal.

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning.

Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.

Image by Marc Fishman

Like I’ve said before, what we have in Quentyn’s sad little adventure is a horror story disguised as a fantasy story, GRRM using the former genre to interrogate the tropes of the latter. Quent can’t trade riddles with these dragons, nor flatter their egos, nor steal that one particular piece of treasure and then hightail it outta there. They are “monsters, not maesters,” and he is not their master, but meat. The fantasy story was in his head all along, a function of his inner monologue, not the world around him. The world around him is a horror story, and it has devoured him whole.

Around our own little fires, we tell stories to keep the children happy; the fires urge us on, converting our flailing gestures to dramatic shadow puppets. Quent spent his entire life in Plato’s Cave, watching the shadows dance, telling himself they were real even as his doubts grew. At the end, he finally steps outside, to find the fire waiting for him. This fire will save the world when the Others come for us; it marked Daenerys Targaryen as a savior figure worthy of wielding it against the Long Night, and will do the same for Jon Snow and (if I’m right) Tyrion Lannister. But when Quentyn Martell reached out to the eternal flame, it spoke to him as it did to Varys, and it said no. 

How does poor Quentyn respond? “Oh.” What else could he say? What else do you say to the abyss when it stares back? It echoes out like an “om” into the cosmos: Oh. My friends died for nothing. I flew too close to the sun. I’m never going home. 

I’m not the hero. 

This revelation is what’s been waiting for him all along. Not the princess, not the dragons themselves, not the songs to be sung, but a terrible diamond-hard clarity, a perfect knowledge of himself just as that self is utterly destroyed. No, no, it cannot be, my family, my friends, my story, I tried so hard...oh. 

Oh, the light.

the light

oh gods the LIGHT

[stupid-lemon-eater]

i’m still thinking about this and i really feel like i need to emphasise that just because i feel like it’s essential that you have a hobby involving creation, doesn’t mean you have to be perfect at it - it just has to be something you like.

i’ve been knitting a blanket for the last couple of years that’s almost certainly going to be hideous when it’s done, all knitted in the most basic stitch in long, mismatched lengths. i have to ask my mum how to cast on and off by the time i get to the end of each length. i change wool colour every time i run out of a ball. my minis are clumsily painted, i still haven’t figured out how to do skin colour without it looking vaguely muddy, and the only reason there’s any sort of shading is due to the type of paint i chose.

and you know what? i still look at my lengths of knitted wool and my clumsy little minis and think to myself “i did that. i made that. that couldn’t have existed without me”, and really that’s the only thing that matters.

I’ll admit, one thing I didn’t anticipate to get out of the last couple of years was an increasing conviction in the importance of hobbies that cannot be conducted passively and involve some sort of creation

[tilltheendwilliwrite]

Soft Names, Soft Touches

Chapter Eleven

 Previous Chapter

Pairing: Bucky x OC | Word Count: 4.2K+

Warnings: Angst. Violence. Russian that may or may not be correct.

Franki sank onto the seat of the swing in Central Park and sobbed softly against the chain. Everything she knew was a lie. Everything she felt was only a fabrication by Hydra. Her serum, her body, all of it had been one big genetic experiment to create matches for the Winter Soldier program.

She was a broodmare.

The only reason they had trained her this well was so if her partner ever got too aggressive, she could defend herself long enough for help to arrive. She wasn’t a field operative and the missions they had wanted to send her on, the ones she’d always refused, had been breeding missions. She was supposed to entice her soldier into fucking her until she was pregnant, and then she would be put in stasis, a chemically induced coma so she couldn’t abort the child until the offspring was born and they could begin the cycle anew.

It made her sick.

They’d played with her pheromones, done something to her to make her sexually attractive to the winter soldiers. That was why they put her in the room that day. Not to kill her, but so he could beat her down long enough to fuck her. Only she’d fought to the bitter end, and they’d been afraid he would actually kill her so they’d pulled her out.

Then she’d healed and made herself very interesting. What if they could unlock her genetic code? Create a bevy of females that healed like she did? Imagine the soldiers they could create. They could put their altered females back in with the men in days rather than weeks.

“Oh god… we were nothing more than animals…” she whimpered, leaning her head against the chain.

But it hadn’t worked the way they wanted it to. The men were all too feral, too dangerous, and eventually killed their partner. Whether on purpose or by accident the reports didn’t say. She’d been the last, and they had screwed with her the most. They’d played with her chemical makeup. Changed it, messed it up, and had turned her into a walking weapon. A weapon aimed… at Bucky.

She didn’t know how they’d done it, but, somehow, they’d made her into the perfect woman for the first Winter Soldier. Her scent was altered to be something he couldn’t resist, and when his skin came in contact with hers, it released a chemical reaction that bound them together. The closer they got, the tighter the bond. If she had slept with him before his leaving… it could have been so much worse.

It had been Hydra’s plan all along to dump her on Bucky’s doorstep. From there it was only a matter of time before nature took its course, and then Hydra would have done everything to get her back.

And Bucky would have come for her, do anything they said to save her because he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. She was a danger to him, and the farther away she was, the better. They hadn’t completed the bond yet, and if they stayed apart, it would, she hoped, fade. But for now, it fucking hurt.

“Hey? You okay? You need help?”

The voice was familiar, as was the flash of light over her face, and Franki looked up to find Officer Jack looking back.

“Franki Romanoff?” he murmured quietly, staring in horror at the woman. She looked absolutely devastated, and he took a step towards her. “Ma’am, are you alright? Do you need me to call the tower?”

“No!” she hollered, jerking upright. “Don’t call the tower. I am fine. I will go.” She got to her feet and nearly fell.

“Miss, if you’ll pardon my say so, you ain’t alright,” Jack murmured, moving to take her arm.

Jerking it away, Franki shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes. “Please… don’t… nothing good comes of people touching me.”

“Ma’am… Franki,” he said softly, watching her fold in on herself, “You got a place to stay tonight?” 

“I’ll be fine.” She smiled for him, but it was a weak one.

“Course you will. You’re coming home with me. My wife will be pleased as punch to have you.” He motioned for her to join him. “Come on, now.” He didn’t know what had happened between her and her team, or her and Sergeant Barnes, but he wasn’t about to leave a clearly upset woman alone in Central Park; didn’t matter who she was.

She looked at him standing there, all of thirty-five if he was a day, but he had that look that she’d come to think of as the dad look. Steve wore it sometimes, or Tony, when they were trying to be patient, but they expected obedience. “I do not wish to be trouble.”

Her accent grew thick and made him smile. “No trouble. Promise.” Slowly, she walked out of the park, and carefully stepped over the fence with him. She moved like she was broken, but he couldn’t tell if it was physical or emotional damage. “We have to go through the park and a bit down the other side. You going to be alright?”

“I’ll be fine. Super… soldier….” She made to remind him but faltered when she remembered that wasn’t what she’d been made for.

“Hey, you want to talk about it? I’m a pretty fair listener,” he urged softly, heading home with what felt like a shadow in a red coat dogging him.

“No, thank you,” she murmured, head down, keeping pace.

“You change your mind…” he offered, but when she only looked away, he began to talk about anything and everything. Little antidotes of things he’d heard or seen in the park. Stories about people he’d met or arrested. Comments on things that had changed or stayed the same for years, until he came to the brick building that housed the apartment he shared with his wife and son. “It ain’t much, but its home.”

“It is quaint,” Franki murmured.

“Well, it’s no Stark Tower, that’s for sure,” Jack chuckled.

“I lived in an eight by ten cell for roughly thirteen years,” Franki mumbled, looking at the glowing windows, and wondering about the lives and the stories behind them. “This is nice.”

It wasn’t the information that caused his heart to plummet, no, it seemed all those who called themselves Avengers were destined for tragic backstories, but the way she said it. It was so off-the-cuff like it was normal in her world to have been kept like an animal for what must have been a good chunk of her life. “Come on,” he encouraged, holding open the door.

She stepped past him, taking in all points of entry, before following Jack up the stairs to his third-floor apartment.  She wasn’t really sure why she’d agreed to follow him home like a lost puppy, but, maybe it was for just that very reason. A lost puppy was precisely what she felt like.

Opening the locks on his door, Jack stepped inside to a softly glowing stove light. “Looks like Tam’s already gone to bed, but I can make us some tea if you want?” He offered quietly, shrugging out of his jacket and placing it on the hook behind the door. He looked at her expectantly, but she only huddled deeper into the red wool. “Franki, you don’t mind if I call you Franki, right?” She shook her head, and he smiled. “You’re safe here. Why not take your coat off and stay awhile?”

He held out his hand, and she clutched the collars of her coat tightly before slowly shrugging it free and handing it over. It went on top of his, and when he motioned her to take a seat on the pea green sofa, she did so without fuss.

While he was busy in the kitchen, Franki had a quick look around, again noting the entrances and exits, but her eyes were drawn to all the brick-a-brack that sat on every flat surface. There were china dogs and painted ladies, and cats, and birds. There were crystal candy dishes and glass animals. On the back of the sofa was a colourful lap quilt that looked old and well loved. Pictures hung on the walls, family gatherings and outings.

A wedding photo had her looking swiftly away. That hollow feeling that had bloomed in her chest when Bucky was gone, returned with a vengeance and made it hard to breathe.

In the kitchen, Jack kept his hands busy making tea but took the time to send a quick text to his partner to get in touch with Stark Tower and let them know Franki Romanoff was safe and in his home. If she looked like this, he could only imagine what the others looked like.

When the kettle boiled, he filled the cups and returned to find her staring at one of his wife’s weird statues with a funny look on her face. “Tam calls it collecting. I call it hoarding.” He chuckled softly, setting the cup down in front of Franki and sitting across from her.

“Are they always this…”

“Go ahead, you can say it. They’re hideous.” He chuckled again and sipped at his tea.

Picking up her cup, Franki quelled the quick twitch of her lips. “Do you always invite strangers home with you in the dead of night, Jack?”

“Only strangers I know,” he quipped back, head turning when he heard the squeak of floorboards. “Why don’t you come out and say hello, Jimmy.”

Franki’s eyes darted to the partially opened door where the fuzzy blond head poked through. The boy was no more than five and was absolutely precious in his soft grey jammies with the red stars all over them. It slammed through her that these were his Bucky Barnes pajamas, and she had to quickly swipe a tear away. “Hello, Jimmy,” she murmured, her voice raspy.

Shooting her a glance, Jack wondered if she had issues with kids, but the look on her face was the same one she’d worn for Barnes. Evidently, his son had captured another feminine heart, this one an Avenger. “Jimmy, this nice lady is Franki Romanoff. She works with Sergeant Barnes.”

His sweet, cherub face lit up when he looked at her and matched the charming voice. “You know Bucky Barnes!?”

His eyes were huge, and she nodded slowly. When Jack had turned his son to face her, she felt her heart clench in her chest for the little boy’s left sleeve hung empty. But his eyes were big and bright, so full of excitement that she couldn’t help but smile. How could someone so small be so adorable already? “I do, yes.”

“My daddy brought me a picture! I like Bucky! He’s my favourite Avenger.”

His enthusiasm made her smile, even though her heart shattered. “Me too,” she whispered. Was it any wonder Bucky was his favourite?

“Are you an Avenger, too?” he asked, eyes big and round.

“I am…” or, at least, she had been. “I’m the one they call Reaper,” she murmured and pulled her hood up over her head. The display came to life, and she found multiple messages from all the team, begging her to come back. They could figure this out, work it out together, and when the little red flashing notice read tracking she murmured, “Friday… I can’t yet. Please. I need time.” The notice turned off, and she sighed, “Thank you.” Pushing back her hood, she looked tiredly at Jack. “Can I use your phone?”

“Sure!” he leapt up, his son in his arms, and found her the cordless one. “Here you go!” He took Jimmy and headed into the kitchen to give her a semblance of privacy.

Franki dialled a number she knew by heart and was unsurprised when it rang only once. “Sestra.”

“Sestranka! Where are you? Are you alright? I’m coming to get you.” Natasha was on her feet and turned for the door when the phone was wrenched from her hand.

“Franki? Tell me where you are!” Bucky demanded.

“Bucky…” a sob broke free.

It made his heart ache. “Moya zvezdochka, come home. We can work this out together.”

“Did you read it?” she whispered.

“Da.”

“Then you know why I can’t. I’m a danger to you. You can’t be with me.” A second sob broke from her, and she pressed her hand to her mouth.

“That’s not true! Come home, Francessca!”

“Nothing you feel for me is real. It’s all lies! I won’t be your weakness, Bucky. I won’t!” She hung up the phone and collapsed over her knees, sobbing into her arms. It felt like she'd just torn out her own soul.

It took her a few moments to notice the slight weight on her shoulder that was stroking down her arm, almost as if it was petting her. When she turned to look, little Jimmy patted her arm.

“It’s okay to be sad,” he said, tears dripping from his eyes. “I’m sad cause my Pop-Pop went to heaven. Sometimes Nonna cries when she thinks I’m napping. She calls tears liquid memories.” Pushing at her arms, he crawled up on her knee. “Are you and Bucky fighting? My momma and daddy do, sometimes, but then they say sorry and kiss each other, and everything is all better.”

His big hazel eyes looked up at her with such trust, such sincerity, she started to cry all over again and hugged the little boy tightly. Something about him soothed a part of the hollowness inside her; his innocence like nothing she’d ever known. “It’s not that simple,” she murmured into his crown of golden fuzz. “I’m bad for him. He won’t be safe with me around.”

“Sergeant Barnes can handle anything! He’s the Winter Soldier!” Jimmy stated, thinking it strange that she would worry for someone so strong.

Tucking her face down in his hair, she breathed in a scent that she would never forget. How was it possible for a trust to have a smell? Or hope? Or love? Yet, this boy in her arms smelled like all of the above. “You’re a good boy, Jimmy. Thank you.” He snuggled closer, and she lightly stroked his back.

They stayed that way for a while, his breathing slow and steady, and his presence in her arms a soothing one. Jack drank his tea in companionable silence, not asking though she knew he wanted to until a knock came at the door.

Looking sharply to Jack, Franki murmured, “You expecting anyone?” This was not the time of night one got random callers at the door.

“No.” He shook his head.

Getting up slowly, careful of the little boy who’d fallen back to sleep, she handed him to his father. “Go into the room with your wife. Lock the door and don’t come out until I tell you it is safe.”  She tucked the phone down with him. The knock came a second time, and she mouthed the words "who is it?"

“Who is it?” Jack called out.

“Jack? It’s Ronny. Let me in.”

“Ronny?” That was weird. “Just give me a sec to put Jimmy down. I’ll be right there.” He looked into the suddenly cold silver eyes of Franki and shivered as he confessed, “I told him to call the tower, tell them you were here and safe. That was it.”

“How long has he been your partner?”

“Couple of years.” But… when Shield had fallen after Hydra had been outed, they’d all learned the evil organization was good at blending in. “There’s a handgun on top of the fridge in a lockbox. Key is hanging there.” He nodded his head toward the wall. “Franki…”

“No, Jack. Keep your family safe. You redial that last number. That’s Natasha. Tell her code red, and she will find me with the snow cats.” She pushed him towards the door on the other side of the kitchen and reached for the lock box. A quick tug snapped the lock, and he stared at her, amazed before she gave a sharp jerk of her head. “Go!” she hissed, turning to pull knives out of the block beside the stove. The door shut behind him, and she heard the lock snick before something heavy landed in front of the door.

Flicking her hood up, she looked towards the hallway. There were five men out there. Five Hydra agents, she just knew it, and she stepped closer to Jack’s bedroom door. “Jack, make that call. Do it now.” She could just hear him talking as she turned out the stove light and skated into shadows, making her way to the door. Removing the chain as silently as she could, Franki grabbed the lock and whispered to Friday, “I need to sound like Jack.”

“Go ahead.” The AI said.

“Come on in, Ronny. Just keep it down. Franki fell asleep on the couch.” She turned the deadbolt and leapt up to sit nimbly on top of the curio cabinet behind the door. It banged inwards, the men swarming with weapons drawn, but she waited until the last one was through before slamming it shut and leaping into the darkness.

Two went down with knives through their necks, the third took one in the thigh that she wrenched out and swiped across his throat. He fell through Jack’s coffee table, taking out a host of Tam’s collectables.

The fourth managed to fire his weapon. The bullet slammed into her side causing heat to erupted along her skin. It fractured a rib, tore through her liver, and exited out the back according to Friday and Franki knew it was bad. The amount of blood that poured down her side was a terrible thing.

She shot him point blank in the chest. The last one was Ronny, and she sank back into the shadows to buy some time, pressing her hand against the front of her wound. “Hydra send you?”

“Like you don’t already know,” he scoffed, turning a circle to find her.

“They going to try and use me against Bucky?”

“Well, look at you go, sweetheart. Got it in one,” he sneered, swinging his gun towards a shadow he thought had moved.

“I refused to be Hydra’s pawn for thirteen years. I’m sure as hell not going to be their pawn now, and I will never let them use me against Bucky!” Stepping up behind him out of the dark, she grabbed his head and gave it a quick, concise twist to the right. The snap was most gratifying.

As his body fell, she dashed to the windows that overlooked the street. More men had arrived, most in tactical gear, all packing weapons. “Jack!” she called out. “You’re going to need to move your family. I’m sorry about the mess. I’ll make sure it’s handled. Your partner was a Hydra agent.”

A female voice called back, “I knew there was something wrong with him!”

“Tam, not now.” Jack sighed. Shoving the dresser from the door, he walked into the kitchen. “Well… damn…” he whistled. There were five dead people in his living room.

“You may not want your wife to see…” but the woman in the pink nightgown was already striding into the room, Jimmy’s face tucked firmly against her chest with her hand over his eyes. The little boy didn't even whimper, and she was impressed with how tough he was.

“Honey, I’m retired Army Ranger. You go, girl!”  Tam grinned.

A smile worked its way onto Franki’s face. “You three better get out of here. You got a neighbour you can go to?”

“Right in here, sweetie! I heard all that commotion. You three come with me.”

Came a voice from the hall and Franki turned to see a woman, who had to be seventy if she was a day, open the door and wave them over. “Good, go. I’ll get them to follow me. They’re not after you. Did you speak with Nat?” she asked, stepping into the hallway and grabbing for the wall when her vision dimmed.

“Jesus, Franki! You’re bleeding!” Jack reached for her, and she stepped away. “You need help!”

“Friday?” The suit sealed over. “I’ll be fine. Get going.”

He shook his head, but she shoved him in the door of his neighbour's apartment. “I will not be responsible for you ending up dead! Stay here and stay quiet!” She’d barely gotten the door shut when the ones at either end of the hall slammed open.

Diving back through the doorway, she jumped over the dead men and went straight through the glass window onto the fire escape, making as much racket as possible. More agents were climbing up, and she shot the front-runner through the eye causing him to fall back and domino the rest. Darting up the stairs, she muttered, “Friday, I need options!” Calculating flashed a few times before a route was mapped out that led to the zoo and the snow leopard pen. “Da!”

Climbing quickly, she made for the roof.

Bucky placed Natasha’s phone down with extreme care. It was that or throw the thing as hard as he could. “She won’t come back. Says it was all lies. Nothing we feel is real.”

“Horseshit!” Helen snapped from her place before the computer.

“Doctor?” Tony asked, intrigued.

“She clearly didn’t read these through or didn’t understand what she was reading. Her skin and your skin react to each other, release pretty potent pheromones, and are creating a chemical bond.”

“What?” Bucky gasped.

“She’s your chemically perfect match. It was what they were trying to create with the other pairs, but here’s the kicker. This program of Hydra's? It didn’t work. Not with any of the other subjects and they were abandoning it. She was slated to be terminated the same day you rescued her. Originally they had planned to mess with her systems and drop her on you, but when the reconditioning continued to fail, and then none of the other pairs worked, they gave up.”

Helen turned to look at them all staring at her with different levels of stunned confusion. “Don’t you get it? Hydra has no idea that Franki is Bucky’s match! They haven’t got any clue that she literally holds the keys to his sanity! Look at this!” She drew up medical scans of Bucky that Friday had been compiling. “Testosterone, elevated. Cortisol, elevated. His whole damn endocrine system is going into overdrive! If you don’t get her back here, he’s liable to go into a rage, become highly aggressive, and will continue to be so without thought or desire for anything else.”

“What are you saying, doc?” Steve finally asked, needing the clarification, but he was pretty sure he knew what she meant. She’d basically describe the last three weeks.

“I’m saying…” Helen sighed, passing a hand over her face. “It’s too late. Whatever Franki thought she was saving you both from by running… it’s too late. She’ll do more damage than good at this point. But she’s wrong when she says what you feel are lies. Tony told me you two got together around the same time I did my last batch of tests?” Bucky nodded, and she smiled. “Then what you feel is most certainly real. Did you have feelings for her before touching her?”

“Well, yeah…” Bucky murmured.

“And did you ever come in contact with her skin before then?”

“No.” Bucky knew it for certain. Francessca didn’t like to be touched, and he’d respected that until things between them had changed.

“How you feel about someone has little to do with pheromones. Sure they can make that person more attractive to you, but they can’t make you fall in love. Shit, if you were going to fall victim to some Hydra shenanigans, some chemical pairing they planned to make you compliant by taking away your woman, you would have succumbed to your hormonal urges within a week of meeting her. Hell, we are all susceptible to pheromones. You’re with her because you want to be, right?” Again the man who was the Winter Soldier nodded. “Then for god's sake go get her!” She jerked up another screen, showing the same readings for Franki. “Just like with you and all your aggression, she needs you to balance her too, but she goes the other way. For her…” Helen pulled up the video from the pool, the one Tony had sent her and showed it to Bucky. “It becomes extreme grief.”

Bucky's heart plummeted to his feet as he watched her cry her eyes out. “Steve…”

“We’ll find her, Buck,” Cap said. “Trace on that call?”

“Narrowed to a five-block area. She’s on the other side of the park,” Sam muttered.

“Her suit just came online again!” Tony called out, working fast to make certain he could pinpointing her location before she shut the tracking down again. “Got it!” He smacked his hand down on the console and had his latest Iron Man suit crawl up his arm.

Nat’s phone rang in her hand, and she quickly answered it. “Franki?”

“Natasha Romanoff? This is Officer Jack O’Shea, I met Franki and Sergeant Barnes in Central Park about four weeks ago. She’s been at my place tonight. I was told to call and tell you code red, you’ll find her with the snow cats.”

“Dammitl! How the hell did they find her before we did? Thank you, Officer. We're on our way.” She ended the call. “Everyone gear up! Hydra’s after Franki!”

“I thought you said they didn’t know!?” Bucky snarled at Dr. Cho.

“They don’t, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still try and use her against you. Your relationship isn’t exactly a secret!” Helen shouted back.

“Neither of you are helping matters!” Tony stepped between them. “Barnes! She needs us! Hurry up! I’m going on ahead.” Before anyone could say otherwise, he flew out the window that opened in the ceiling.

Next chapter

[keyismykitty]

//PEER PRESSURING Mmmmkay let's see how abouuuttt do gray and mac celebrate the holidays? If so do they have any traditions if not do they do anything as an anti holiday party? (Just wait till morning I'll have plenty of prompts 4 u)

AAAAAAH (this got long WHERE IS THE READ MORE WHEN I NEED IT)

gray hated christmas. he hadn’t minded it as a kid, even as an adult it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but ever since he’d been transferred to boston, the holiday just got steadily worse. first, it was the snow. in all the films it was depicted as soft and fluffy and not at all inconvenient, not this hideous slushy shit that turned brown after a day and then turned to ice on the sidewalks. then he married teresa and suddenly he was expected to go to christmas parties, terribly boring events where he was dressed in a hideous wool sweater, sometimes a tie, then some years he was expected to wear a suit and teresa and her friends would fawn over just how dapper he looked when they thought he couldn’t hear. and then there was her friggin’ kid. every year it seemed he wanted a new bike because he’d broken the last one. overall, a stressful occasion.

when he told maccready about the holiday, he hadn’t thought for a minute that maccready /wouldn’t/ share his sentiments. it seemed so natural to hate christmas, but for some reason, the kid had become worse than shaun the closer it got.

“i hope you remembered to get me a preseeeeeent,” maccready sang, sprawled on gray’s bunk, hanging upside down over the side.

gray mumbled to himself and ignored maccready, who was now bouncing excitedly. “i was gonna wait until it was actually christmas, but i want to give you it now. do you want it now? do you want to open it?”

“alright, fine, i’ll open it, but i’m cutting you off, no more cookies,” gray said. “where is it?”

“here, come here,” maccready said, taking a small package wrapped in a towel from inside his coat and holding it out to gray, who took it without a word and pulled the towel off unceremoniously. it was a small plastic horse, taken from a children’s toy set, and seated on it’s back, crudely tied on with fishing twine and sloppily painted in the uniform gray always wore, was the toy soldier maccready had given gray months ago. “it’s you,” he said, blushing. “because you always wanted to be a cowboy.”

gray closed his fingers around the horse, unsure of what to say. “wow. um. thanks, kid,” he said, and ducked out of the projector building without another word.

(also later when maccready went to bed he found a huge stack of comic books on his pillow but when he asked gray about he he pretended like he had no idea also also i got carried away and forgot the ‘do they have any traditions’ part but no gray lied and told maccready that crab claws were traditional christmas decor and if he wanted to go hunt down mirelurks then go for it but maccready said nah so they just stick to presents)

[les-bi-katamari]

B-SIDE: SESSION 1

The ‘B-Side’ campaign is actually in the same setting, focused on different characters in the Athanar Marches. In addition to the npc Silenne from the A-Side, our party is:

Fara Undertree, the height of fashion, dwarven seamstress to house Vassar. She previously served Ivandra's mother Castia, who she loved with all her heart, though she never knew her feelings were requited. She continues to serve Ivandra, who she treats as her own adoptive daughter. Since Casyia's death she has slept her way through most of the castle staff and Vassarein guard. Brute Fighter. Played by Megan.

Liriel Selevarun, tattooed wood elf carnie. She is a wanderer exiled from her family, seeking out new inspirations to hone her Art - a mix of dance, martial arts, tattoos, and mystic elemental powers. Incorrigibly vain. Has no idea she's got a Charisma of 6. Four Elements Monk. Played by me.

Nisha Loy, human musician. Also a carnie. Performs music alongside Liriel's act, among others. Useless lesbian flirt. Lore Bard. Played by Gwen.

-

The campaign begins as Ivandra orders the evacuation of the castle. Castle Vassarein is abuzz with activity as people prepare to flee. Fara Undertree, personal seamstress and tailor to Ivandra, is instead busy preparing several outfits for Ivandra while she’s away. [“I should probably let her dress herself, but I don’t trust like that.”]

Ivandra comes to offer her money before she goes, but Fara continues finishing up the outfit she’s working on. When she notices Ivandra’s red-rimmed eyes, she takes a handkerchief and walks over to place it directly in her breast pocket, because that’s the kind of person she is.

Fara is very upset with her basically-adoptive-daughter sending her into exile – “It’s not exile…” “It feels like exile!” and has Mom Words for her about not letting the castle burn down, not wearing some kind of hideous wool smock while she’s gone. She gives her a hug goodbye before she leaves.

Afterwards, she goes to find Silenne, who is in the garden, brooding near the sepulcher. She’s despondent over being bested by the other spy; “I feel like I’ve been so monumentally useless.” Fara resolves to go with her, and that they’ll enjoy this ‘vacation’ together. She leaves a flower for Castia before they go.

-

As their carriage approaches the under-construction walls of Rothanvar, they pass by a collection of colorful tents and people, and large crowds drawn to them.

Rothanvar is full of a very diverse assortment of people, foods, sights, and sounds – and everywhere the scent of sea-spray. It is a tiered city, built on a seaside bluff (and on elven ruins). The more affluent part is up in the Clifftop district. In addition to steep streets and stairs, there are massive lifts used for transit from the clifftop down to the waterfront district. There is a FAR bigger wealth disparity here.

Fara and Silenne look for lodging at the tavern called the Cliffside Keep, rather than the… EXTREMELY sketchy waterfront inn, the Silent Siren. The nice tavern is PACKED.

After a night of empty flirting, Fara awakes to Silenne, who is gazing out the window, apologizing to Castia for not being there for Ivandra. As she comes back to bed, she touches Fara on the shoulder – she catches her hand, and says, “It’s going to be alright, goose.”

-

That same night, Liriel also wakes up to the sound of footsteps outside and fingers scraping along a tent. (“ftr even though liriel doesn’t NEED to sleep, she definitely DOES” “elves on sleep: ‘I just think it’s neat!’”)

She pokes around outside, seeing and hearing fantastically bejeweled knives FWIP into the ground nearby. As she sneaks around trying to find the source, she hears a voice behind her – “Are you lost, love?” There’s pale a figure in ragged clown’s motley, white and black and grey and blue. She looks vaguely elven, and her eyes are closed. Liriel starts slowly backing away

“Nooo, I work here? But um, if you lost some knives, they’re right over there –“

The figure smiles, holding out a hand, in which a knife appears.

“Oh, they ARE yours, yes, just like-“

The figure’s grin grows wider, and three more knives appear.

“O-oh, you have lots of them, oka-“

The figure starts juggling knives, as more and more appear.

“That’s very impressive actu-“

Now there are nine knives, no longer juggling, but floating in midair. They all turn to point at Liriel. “DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH US?”

“Nooo, I really don’t, I was sleeping and-“

The eyes open, they are completely empty. The grin is even wider, face cracking. She’s very very, close, and Liriel earthbends a bunch of dirt up between them and runs back towards the tents screaming. There is angry-sounding snarling and scuttling from the other side.

Others start to burst out of the tents, asking what’s going on. I catch one last glimpse of a tattered motley darting behind one of the tents, and try to tell everyone what happened.

Osvaldo Salazar: Kazalian halfling, ringmaster. Dark olive skin, MANY sailor tattoos. Short and compact. Short black hair, shaved sides, many piercings. Medea’s husband.

Medea Salazar: Tiefling illusionist. Tall, pale, freckled with crimson, long violet hair (normally braided), hooves. Mute but hearing; signs. Osvaldo’s wife. Circus mom.

Damian Timori: Human; older man; currently in classy pyjamas. Runs a "house of curiosities"

Suraan: Massive dragonborn; 6’3; rust-red, covered in scars. One of her eyes is a clear blue-green; the other is milky-white, with a ragged scar. Doesn’t talk much; sometimes signs. Strongwoman.

Nisha: Gwen’s character! Our bard.

There’s no trace of what I saw anywhere. No knives, no knife marks in the ground, no footprints but my own – only the mound of earth and grass I pulled up.

-

The next morning, after Fara picks out Silenne’s clothes and is shocked to learn she swims – “Alright. You have a secret life, as some kind of pond-floating trollop.” – they decide to check out the circus.

Osvaldo is in top form bringing in the crowds, [“No sick or elderly patrons!”] with the help of a claque pretending his hair was turned white by seeing the performance the previous night. [“Claque: Gentlemen, you are about to see something what was frightened to deaaaath - on the top of my headth"]

The two are amused, and decide to check out the carnival a bit. “It’s nicer than the last one we saw, ay lost they all HAVE clothes" "Yes, I'm not mentally redressing all of these ones. Much."

Fara feels a chill on the back of her neck, and whips around to see – someone looking familiar. A woman in pale lavender, a shock of dirty blonde hair, a thin-boned hand reaches out towards her… and suddenly the reverie breaks, as a crowd of laughing children passes between them.

They go to the fortune-reader, which Nisha has recently taken over. She gives the excited Silenne a love reading, gathering that she’s in a rut, and may have to look in new places.

Then she gives Fara a reading, on her family, and ‘fate’ takes over the spread. There are a lot of cards about home, industriousness, work, but then things take a bigger turn. Queen of pentacles – three of swords – page of wands – the devil. Nisha feels compelled to keep placing cards. Eight of swords – the star – two of wands – eight of cups – Death. She almost reaches for another card, but stops.

[For those of us who don’t tarot, ‘Fate’ summarizes for us: the queen of pentacles represents Castia; the page of wands is Ivandra. There’s a big choice coming for her – the Devil, Glasya and the Star, Apphia. Restriction, loss, and Death – while not always literal – is combined with a strong sense of finality, inevitability.]

The two leave, a bit glum, despite Nisha’s attempts to focus on the hope in it. After getting some mead, they visit another tent, with the sign ‘The Illustrated Woman.’

The tent is dark as they are ushered in, and through their colorblind darkvision, they can see Liriel seated on the floor. She slowly begins to rise, twisting and dancing, as sparks of fire flit from her fingers, offering brief glimpses of her and her tattoos, glimmering in the bursts of light. As she reaches her full height, she makes a grand gesture and the lanterns in the tent alight.

She continues to dance, weaving and sinuous, as she begins to focus on a large urn on the floor. As she dances over it, a serpentine form begins to emerge, made of water – it twists and turns, following her dance as it rises out of the urn entirely, growing more draconic in appearance, until the dance reaches its climax – the water dragon rushes towards the small audience, before bursting into a light mist.

Liriel bows and keeps posing and preening as Silenne and Fara approach to admire her tattoos and unsubtly check her out. She's fully tattooed from the neck down, covered in overlapping, shimmering designs that seem to move as she does. Most are beasts and magical creatures, particularly dragons.

They ask more about her tattoos, which Liriel is proud to tell them she did herself as she shows them off.

"Even the ones on your back?" "Oh, yes! I'm *very* flexible." Silenne swallows audibly.

They ask if she tattoos anyone else - she does, but it's painful and permanent. She also offers temporary painting, which Silenne eagerly accepts. Liriel takes her aside to show them her sketchbooks, and paints a little dragon on her wrist and forearm, in cerulean and violet.

Fara, who has been watching intently, asks if she can get one too. She is delighted to be offered Liriel's sketchbooks to look through, immediately giving Silenne the rest of her mead, and chats about a potential collaboration, using some of Liriel's designs in outfits. She ends up getting flowers painted along her collarbone (and carefully sealed so they won't rub off on her dress).

Nisha, who has been relieved of fortune-telling duty, has joined them in the tent as Liriel paints on Fara. She reintroduces herself to Fara and Silenne as the musician who accompanies Liriel's performance in the big top. "It's not as close and personal as this performance, of course, but oh, you should see what I can do with fire in that space!"

Fara rolls insight to see if Nisha and Liriel have fucked, and we decide they have. Nisha's flaw is that she's 'always a sucker for a pretty face,' after all, and flattery can get her everywhere with Liriel.

["We've been playing the A-side for months and there have barely been any kisses, and in the B-side our characters are already making movies on each other!"]

After some more flirting, Fara asks for other sights they should see - Liriel has trained long and hard for this, and she manages to promote some of the other circus performers' acts rather than simply declaring herself the greatest sight there is to see. Even if it's true. Nisha gives her an approving nod as she recommends they go see Suraan and Damian's daytime acts.

End of session.

[jackblankhsh]

Pleasant Dreams -- Proof

"Pleasant Dreams" A dream I had Once drove me mad, But I'm not starting to pray. It made me glad -- The loss is aching bad -- I just wanted to stay. Never sure of the start Stekel's headline may say Anchored by a full heart -- Trapped in an empty world I arose (a rose) in the wasteland Any tongue I could understand. Molding molten glass by hand, Shapes inspired by Chateaubriand: Fractal forests and a Taurus Playing djent metal jazz To nymphs with eyes Emerald, and topaz. Plucking a gem I cut myself, but never bled. I ate poison, and felt well fed. Then as my skin shed, I awoke to the joke -- I was still in bed. Vague pieces in my head Told where the dream led Breathing underwater Shark born to slaughter Tearing thru a parade Of siren mermaids I paved a highway With blood and bone, Never looked back, Never once felt alone. I worked a nightmare factory For a blessed whole century Pleased to build The horrors who killed Every child's evening. Sure some monsters thrilled, But that's just fear they gild To enjoy how it chilled. Then a satyr dancing in the abyssal womb Of the queen of carnival creation I evolved to a higher station The night of her cremation Composing threnodies To pull rain from heavenly bodies; I recited for gods All the truths I shouldn't Regina Saturnalia agunt de animabus pereunt... ...though what exactly is gone. Forced to carry on No clue how to return The only way to earn A hint if it's possible Burn my soul like coal, Exhale a brown cloud, And howl thru a keyhole. Hope to summon Some numen Who could take me back To a world that doesn't exist, A land of ghosts and mist. I'd rather be the panegyrist Eulogizing that purest Impossibility The glorious infinity Of fantasy; I visit nightly, And lose daily. Because I think it's the loss I love. "Proof" It would be judicial malfeasance To ascribe importance To these circumstantial offerings Priceless as pencil shavings. Objects little altering Perception of the raving Claiming these are paving A collective abstract impression A mosaic human conception Fully fleshed and present. While the court may assent This apartment reliquary With various types of library -- Musical, cinema, literary -- And collections of clothes, Art, and furniture compose A sense of someone When all is said and done Aren't these borrowed forms? Piling up what conforms To the desired expression of self, Many set on a dusty shelf. See what I've read, watched, heard; This painting:  Cubist Bird -- Fallen asleep admiring. Always acquiring Others' expressions To inspire impressions Of being this and that, Aligned to a format. Ready to flow With the rebel psycho Status quo, Quote with Infinite Jest Instead of daring to manifest Fresh seeds to sow. A turn of phrase like fingerprints Offering some subtle hints It isn't a tape recorder, Or MP3 on repeat, Thesaurus masked trending tweet, IKEA floor show, Cardboard Millennial Joe Blow. All the free trade coffee can't prove There's a decent human being here, Just a tasty cup of hot Columbian tears. And that grass clipping beer Settles no existential fears, Though it keeps the fridge full Of the right wool To pull over eyes About to glance in a mirror Because you can't risk seeing clear: The cracking veneer... Except as sarcastic hashtag Then able to brag What lies beneath is hideous, But fashionably monstrous, On march spectral wisps of humanity Cloaked in thrift store finery And artisanal Chipped porcelain masks Under which they bask, In communal seclusion Instagram cracker occlusion Keeping out any semblance of hostility Cattle prodding towards More fulfilling possibility.