#born and raised in london and i am still stuck here

[sciderman]

wait sci whatre your opinions on british people???

i unfortunately am one

[x-heesy]

Our whole system is very very wrong 😑

Europe is lost, America lost, London lost

Still we are clamouring victory

All that is meaningless rules

We have learned nothing from history

The people are dead in their lifetimes

Dazed in the shine of the streets

But look how the traffic's still moving

System's too slick to stop working

Business is good, and there's bands every night in the pubs

And there's two for one drinks in the clubs

And we scrubbed up well

Washed off the work and the stress

And now all we want's some excess

Better yet, a night to remember that we'll soon forget

All of the blood that was bled for these cities to grow

All of the bodies that fell

The roots that were dug from the earth

So these games could be played

I see it tonight in the stains on my hands

The buildings are screaming

I can't ask for help though, nobody knows me

Hostile, worried, lonely

We move in our packs and these are the rights we were born to

Working and working so we can be all that we want

Then dancing the drudgery off

But even the drugs have got boring

Well, sex is still good when you get it

To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach

To each a dream, don't weep, don't scream

Just keep it in, keep sleeping in

What am I gonna do to wake up?

I feel the cost of it pushing my body

Like I push my hands into pockets

And softly I walk and I see it, this is all we deserve

The wrongs of our past have resurfaced

Despite all we did to vanquish the traces

My very language is tainted

With all that we stole to replace it with this

I am quiet

Feeling the onset of riot

Riots are tiny, though

Systems are huge

Traffic keeps moving, proving there's nothing to do

'Cause it's big business, baby, and its smile is hideous

Top down violence, and structural viciousness

Your kids are dosed up on medical sedatives

But don't worry 'bout that, man, worry 'bout terrorists

The water level's rising! The water level's rising!

The animals, the elephants, the polarbears are dying!

Stop crying, start buying, but what about the oil spill?

Shh, no one likes a party pooping spoil sport

Massacres, massacres, massacres, new shoes

Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight

By those employed to protect them

Live porn streamed to your pre-teens' bedrooms

Glass ceiling, no headroom

Half a generation live beneath the breadline

Oh, but it's happy hour on the high street

Friday night at last lads, my treat!

All went fine 'til that kid got glassed in the last bar

Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou

It was madness, road ran red, pure claret

And about them immigrants? I can't stand them

Mostly, I mind my own business

They're only coming over here to get rich, it's a sickness

England! England! Patriotism!

And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?

It goes work all your life for a pittance

Maybe you'll make it to manager, pray for a raise

Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar

The anarchists are desperate for something to smash

Scandalous pictures of fashionable rappers

In glamourous magazines, who's dating who?

Politico cash in an envelope

Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits

Now it's back to the House of Lords with slapped wrists

They abduct kids who fuck the heads of dead pigs

But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs

Jail him, he's the criminal

Jail him, he's the criminal

It's the bored-of-it-all generation

The product of product placement and manipulation

Shoot 'em up, brutal, duty of care

Come on, new shoes, beautiful hair, bullshit

Saccharine ballads and selfies and selfies and selfies

And here's me outside the palace of me

Construct a self and psyhcosis

Meanwhile the people were dead in their droves

And no, nobody noticed, well, some of them noticed

You could tell by the emoji they posted

Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes

The lights are so nice and bright and let's dream

But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream

What am I gonna do to wake up?

We are lost, we are lost, we are lost

And still nothing will stop, nothing pauses

We have ambitions and friendships and our courtships to think of

Divorces to drink off the thought of

The money, the money, the oil

The planet is shaking and spoiled

And life is a plaything

A garment to soil

The toil, the toil

I can't see an ending at all

Only the end

How is this something to cherish?

When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts

To make room for alien structures

Develop, develop

And kill what you find if it threatens you

No trace of love in the hunt for the bigger buck

Here in the land where nobody gives a fuck

Europe Is Lost by Kae Tempest

[evbell]

Evannah Potter: King's Cross Station

My first ever published (mini) chapter (1,843 words)!! This takes place after the true beginning of this story, but is the only chapter I wrote that I am halfway satisfied with. That being said, there are a few things that need to be clarified: Evannah was raised away from Harry for reasons that will be explored in another post. Like many muggle-born students, Evannah received a visit from Professors Burbage and Dumbledore to explain magic to her (in her case with a long-lost brother bonus) and is making her way alone to King's Cross. The characters Phoebe and Nancy are originals and orphanage friends.

...

For the first time since she was seven years old, Evannah Potter wasn't sure where she was going when she left the orphanage that morning.

London was engraved in her brain, obvious in her accent. Orphan City stuck to her like a tattoo- literally- and the London Underground system might as well be her playground, and this was all without counting the buses. So, standing between platforms 9 and 10 at King's Cross, trying to work up the courage to pass a wall, which would (supposedly) take her to a magic school, where her long-lost brother(?) would go to in two years, the girl had never felt more ridiculous or clueless. Evannah was early and exhausted from walking all the way from Soho to King's Cross with a trunk the size of a crib- which she still did not understand, these people had magic, magic, and insisted on carrying luggage around, of all things- not to mention the whining cat she brought with her in a cage on her other hand- oh yes, try opening a door like that. Or stairs. If the tattoo on her finger wasn't already enough of a people repellent, then that vision ought to do it. 

"You're lucky you're cute, Atticus," she whispered down to the grey ball of fur meowing away in a box by her feet. The cat looked at her indignantly, and meowed louder. 

Evannah crouched down in front of the box. "I'm sorry, alright? But what else should I do? Put you on a leash?"

Atticus did not look any less offended.

"What, you think I should've let you free? Atticus, you're scared of balloons, I can't expect you to follow me all the way here."

The following meow sounded like it meant that she very well could and should have, so she reached into the cage slowly, waiting for the cat to press up against her fingers. He did, after a moment, purring softly at her silent apology, until something caught his ear.

The next second, Evannah found herself sprawled over King's Cross' filthy floor, loud, startled cat protests echoing at her side and two red-ish blurs in front of her.

"Oh, by Merlin, are you okay? So sorry about this-" said one of the blurs at the same time the other said, "Ah, fuck, sorry, sorry. We didn't see you."

"FRED! GEORGE!" screamed a woman from far away. Distantly, Evannah thought she sounded like she was carrying multiple bags at once. Like those mothers with three or so small children that go around the supermarket playing with the cart, you know? The mothers that always have those gigantic durable supermarket bags on them.

"Nasty fall, that was, do you think you can stand?" asked someone gently, but casually. Not the blurs. An older voice. Someone that sounded like they wore leather.

"Again, so sorry about that-" said a blur.

"-we really are," added the other guiltily.

Did she fall? That couldn't be, Evannah Potter hadn't fallen since 1986. She had ridiculously good reflexes. Once she even caught a button that flew out of Phoebe's shirt.

One of the blurs made a sound of realisation.The one on the right? "Oh, you need your glasses, don't you? Ginny, can you get the glasses?"

A flash of movement to her left, the soft brush of metal against her hand. "Here."

Christ, she should really say something, shouldn’t she?

"Er, thanks," Evannah finally managed and put the glasses on.

Oh, the red-ish blurs were twins. Gingers. A whole family of fiery-red hair and freckled faces, it seemed. 

The twins still hovered over her, brown eyes checking her for injuries. The older voice, the one that wore leather, was indeed much older and did, in fact, wear a leather jacket. Spot on, she thought distantly. The one who had handed Evannah the glasses, on the other hand, was a girl about Nancy’s age, maybe a bit older, definitely more outgoing. 

“You’re welcome,” replied the girl politely.

“BILL, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WATCH THEM-” came the yelling again. Evannah could see the woman now, a short, less fiery ginger, mother with a kind demeanor but furious glint in her warm brown eyes- who was not carrying gigantic supermarket bags, although she must have at some point, with so many children. 

“Oh, my! Dear, are you all right?” questioned the woman once she saw her.

Honestly, Evannah was still rather confused about how she ended up on a filthy train station floor, and the angry cat next to her wasn’t helping, so her eloquent response was: “I think so, ma’am.”

“What even happened?” asked a new voice. A boy with gelled-back hair behind the woman.

The older one with the leather jacket straightened up. Bill, from what Evannah gathered. “They were running around with their trunks- I know, mum, alright? I’m sorry- and crashed into her.”

“Really sorry about that,” said the twin on the right.

“We were trying to see who’s fastest,” added the other.

Understandable.

Irresponsible, but understandable.

Evannah made to stand, an attempt to help the twins out with their mother. “It’s okay, I think. Really, I’m all right.”

They helped her stand- the twins, that is- and she thought the family’s worry was rather sweet, if a bit exaggerated. Her trunk had probably had more damage done to it than Evannah herself.

“Sorry, kitty. We didn’t mean to scare you,” said a twin to Atticus as he flipped his cage back to the correct position. The cat hissed his opinion on the matter, but sniffed the boy’s hand nonetheless.

“Sorry, trunk,” copied the other twin as he took her luggage from the floor, and Evannah had to laugh. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Fred,” reprimanded the mother.

“But, mum, I’m only being polite,” protested Fred, offended.

The other twin, giving up his luck with Atticus, who had stopped sniffing and was glaring at him, took the cage from the floor and handed it to Evannah. “Here’s your cat. Sorry again.”

“Yeah, sorry,” repeated Fred, more genuinely than when he apologized to the trunk.

“It’s fine, really. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

The twin that was not Fred nodded, “We really didn’t, we were trying to get to the Hogwar- to our train on time.”

“Oh, you’re going there too, aren’t you?” asked the girl. Gina?

“...where?”

“Hogwarts, of couse,” announced a completely new voice, and Evannah was faced with two other red-headed boys- wow, that’s a lot of children- and a tall man that must’ve been their father. “We saw the fall on the way here, hope you’re all right,” continued the voice. The second oldest of the children, a boy with the three top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned.

“Oh… yeah.” 

It must be real then. Okay.

“Us too.”

“First year?” asked the father.

“Er, yeah”

The twins straightened up. “Same as us, then.”

“Oh,” nice? Okay? Good to know? What do you say to people who knocked you over and were really nice about it? “-cool.”

“All right, we should start going to the platform, in any case,” spoke the father, ending the discussion, “Would you like to go first…?”

“Oh, sorry, I’m Evannah. I’ve never… been before.” the girl gestured to the wall.

“Nervous, are you?” said Bill . “You won’t hit the wall, don’t worry. Did it for seven years, only ever hit my head on the train window.”

“Charlie, go on first, then, show her,” commanded the woman to the son with the unbuttoned top buttons. 

Charlie grabbed his trunk and rushed to the door, looking back at her reassuringly, and just as she thought he would collide face first with the wall, the tall boy disappeared behind the red bricks. The boy with gelled-back hair- Percy, apparently- went next, seeming very proud of himself for being a demonstrator. Soon enough the twins were through as well- the other one’s name was George- leaving Evannah to go next. 

The mother smiled encouragingly at Evannah “Now, off you go, dear. We’ll be right behind you. You’ll be all right.”

“Unless you're waiting for your parents…” offered the father, suddenly realising that the girl was alone.

“Oh, no, no. I’m on my own,” responded Evannah immediately, vaguely. “Right, guess I’ll go, then.”

She shot the family one last look before holding on tightly to her cart and running towards the bricks. Halfway through, Evannah was already regretting her decision. Was she about to be knocked over a second time in the same day? She was ready so splash her head against the wall, Atticus hissing his protests behind her, and then…

The twin that was not Fred nodded, “We really didn’t, we were trying to get to the Hogwar- to our train on time.”

“Oh, you’re going there too, aren’t you?” asked the girl. Gina?

“...where?”

“Hogwarts, of couse,” announced a completely new voice, and Evannah was faced with two other red-headed boys- wow, that’s a lot of children- and a tall man that must’ve been their father. “We saw the fall on the way here, hope you’re all right,” continued the voice. The second oldest of the children, a boy with the three top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned.

“Oh… yeah.” 

It must be real then. Okay.

“Us too.”

“First year?” asked the father.

“Er, yeah”

The twins straightened up. “Same as us, then.”

“Oh,” nice? Okay? Good to know? What do you say to people who knocked you over and were really nice about it? “-cool.”

“All right, we should start going to the platform, in any case,” spoke the father, ending the discussion, “Would you like to go first…?”

“Oh, sorry, I’m Evannah. I’ve never… been before.” the girl gestured to the wall.

“Nervous, are you?” said Bill . “You won’t hit the wall, don’t worry. Did it for seven years, only ever hit my head on the train window.”

“Charlie, go on first, then, show her,” commanded the woman to the son with the unbuttoned top buttons. 

Charlie grabbed his trunk and rushed to the door, looking back at her reassuringly, and just as she thought he would collide face first with the wall, the tall boy disappeared behind the red bricks. The boy with gelled-back hair- Percy, apparently- went next, seeming very proud of himself for being a demonstrator. Soon enough the twins were through as well- the other one’s name was George- leaving Evannah to go next. 

The mother smiled encouragingly at Evannah “Now, off you go, dear. We’ll be right behind you. You’ll be all right.”

“Unless you're waiting for your parents…” offered the father, suddenly realising that the girl was alone.

“Oh, no, no. I’m on my own,” responded Evannah immediately, vaguely. “Right, guess I’ll go, then.”

She shot the family one last look before holding on tightly to her cart and running towards the bricks. Halfway through, Evannah was already regretting her decision. Was she about to be knocked over a second time in the same day? She was ready so splash her head against the wall- shielding Atticus, of course- and then…

...

[undecidingfate]

Hi everyone, I am Palestinian born and raised in Gaza city, I moved to London Ontario 4 years ago with my husband. I am raising this fund to help my family flee the war and come safely to Canada and reunite with me and my kids again. I'm writing to you at a really critical and urgent moment. Presently, my family is in Gaza and is dealing with unspeakable conditions. My family and I are fervently requesting your assistance so that we can help them flee to safety and reunite with me in Canada. I live in Canada with my 2 kids , yet I feel like I'm thousands of miles away from my family and are helpless to stop the suffering caused by ongoing aggression in Gaza. The situation is getting worse every day, and I worry about their safety.

I can't do much other than provide what little advice I have and try to help by spreading word as I have no income (likely wont get one for a while), however if you have not created one yet, I recommend you to create a go fund me to raise money to cover expenses and when they make it here I recomend that they sign up for assistance from food drives and whatever government assistance they can that could make immigration easier. On the other hand, I recommend constantly and consistently speaking up about whats happening in 🍉, and your relatives that are currently stuck there as well as where people can donate in order to help them get out quicker.

There is an organization that people can do daily clicks on that help with providing aid to those currently in 🍉 (Arab.org I believe[i think i linked it properly, im still not used to actually posting like this)

[ur-favorite-queer-queen]

Enemies to Lovers

For Maribat March day 23 theme enemies to lovers

Master List

“Kent’s coming over.” Damian stated at breakfast, none of the other Wayne’s seemed phased by this, none but one. 

“Again?” At Damian’s nod she continued, “I’ll be in my room or the Batcave so don’t bring him there.” 

"He will also be bringing a friend over from that exchange program his school did with the one in London." Damian added, Marinette tensed a little bit but didn’t say anything else.

"Is Jon bringing a stranger over a good idea?" Tim asked.

"Tt, Kent said that he would make sure the boy wouldn't wander." Damian answered, after 9 years in the manor he still hadn't gotten rid of his tt habit. 

"I'll be in my room then, I don't want Jon or his friend bothering me." Marinette announced to no one's surprise.

“Marinette,” She turned to look at Dick, “Why don’t you like Jon? This has been going on for almost a year now. Surely you could give him another chance. Or at the very least his friend?” 

“Not interested.” And with that she finished her breakfast and went to go help Alfred with cleaning the dishes, like she did every morning. 

Damian watched his younger half blood sister go, frown evident on his face. Marinette Wayne had been living with them for over a year now. While she was now 16, her opinion of one Jonathan Kent still had not changed. 

After Bruce had a one night stand with her mother she had been born 9 months later, Sabine having no intention of telling Bruce. What she did not expect was that 15 years later she and her husband would be guilty of negligence and emotional abuse of Marinette and custody would be handed to her bio father. Aka Bruce Wayne. 

Marinette changed her last name to Wayne and left her life in Paris behind. There was not much left for her there anyways. But she had never told her new family why she was so insistent on leaving Paris behind. More specifically who she was leaving behind.

The Waynes had gotten used to her bubbly personality in the manor, so they were shocked that when they sent her off to Gotham Academy she was dubbed the ‘Ice Princess’ the next morning.

Turns out after what happened in Paris, she refused to open up to anyone. Most days she was found sketching in her sketchbook, always alone. She still got straight A’s and even participated in a few clubs but never made one friend. It was concerning, how much she resembled Damian in that sense.

One day after patrol, after Marinette headed off to bed they started discussing Marinette's social life. Tim had joked that since she's such a ray of sunshine around them that she should meet Jon. 

This idea was met with positive reactions, all of them agreeing that Jon would be a good influence for her. He was also her age so that was a plus. And he was Damian's first friend, perhaps he could be Marinette's.

That weekend they were proven wrong. Very wrong. Marinette refused to be in the same room as Jon, and when trying to gently push the boundaries she had set, she grew hostile. Something they had never seen from her for as long as they had known her. 

One of their first thoughts was that she was scared of Jon, since he was half Kryptontian. But that idea was quickly shut down after Jason brought up the time she roasted Superman to his face. And had no regrets. 

Then they figured it was because he was still a stranger to her. So they had him over more often. But after 2 months they realized that wasn’t the case either. Yet, none of them had the slightest clue why she was so against Jonathon Kent. 

Not even Jon knew. All Jon knew was that whenever he walked into the same room as Marinette she grew annoyed. He knew she disliked him but that wasn’t what he was confused about. What made him confused was that he could sense her fear. She was scared of him, and he had no idea why. 

He thought about telling the Batfamily, thought about telling Damian, but how would it go over that the latest addition to the Batclan was scared of him. Especially knowing how paranoid and protective they could be. So he just stuck to avoiding her at all costs, it wasn’t that big of a deal anyways. 

Marinette didn’t see Jon as an enemy per se she saw him as an enemy, but he was just someone she strongly disliked, she had her reasons. And while Jon definitely didn’t see Marinette as an enemy, the more she ignored him, and he would need to ignore her, started to grate on his nerves. If she was in a room that he was going to enter he would have to wait for her to leave and vice versa. It was getting tiring and he was starting to dislike her more and more to the point she almost became his enemy. 

Today would be no different except for one detail. That detail being a blonde haired, green eyed, sunshine child that reminded Jon of himself. While Adrien was a little too naive for his taste, they had gotten along great and he wanted to introduce him to Damian. 

Adrien had seemed intrigued by the idea of meeting a Wayne. Apparently his father used to be a businessman and despite the fact he was from France and only moved to London a year ago, he knew of how famous the Waynes are. 

Now here they were, in his dad’s car going to Wayne manor. 

“Okay, you remember what I told you right?” Jon questioned Adrien, he was making sure the boy was prepared and didn’t accidentally stumble upon the Batcave or anything relating the Waynes to the Bats.

“Yes I know, no wandering around the manor, it’s too big and I’ll get lost. No staring in awe at the Waynes, they’re not the celebrities the press makes them out to be. And if I see a girl with dark hair, blue eyes, and looks to be a head shorter than me, I am to walk away immediately in the other direction and pretend I didn’t see her.” Adrien listed off. 

“Perfect!” Jon, exclaimed he was going to add more but his dad interrupted him. 

“Okay boys we’re here, I hope you have a good time Adrien.” 

“Thanks Mr. Kent, I will!” Adrien cheerfully replied as he followed Jon out of the car. Sometimes this boy reminded Jon too much of himself. 

“Master Jon, lovely to see you again. Is this your friend?” Alfred greeted them at the door.

“Yep! This is Adrien Graham de Vanily, Adrien this is Alfred, the Waynes butler but is more like a surrogate grandfather if anything.” Jon introduced. 

“Nice to meet you Mr. Alfred.” Adrien stuck out his hand to shake. 

“It is nice to meet you too Master Graham de Vanily, please just call me Alfred.”

“Then you can just call me Adrien, Alfred, my last name is such a mouthful.” 

“Of course Master Adrien, now will you two be staying for dinner?” 

“I don’t know, is it okay if we do?” Jon answered, secretly asking if she would be okay with it.

“It’ll be okay Master Jon. I will inform the others we will be having two guests stay with us for dinner.” Alfred led them inside, “Master Damian should be in the gaming room.” And with that he left. 

“Come on, Damian is probably setting up some games for us to play.” Jon grabbed Adrien’s hand and started dragging him down a hallway. 

Marinette could hear when Alfred had opened the door for Jon and his friend, she didn’t have super hearing but she had trained her ears for listening for certain things. Like the front door opening. 

After a few minutes Alfred had come to tell her the two would be staying for dinner. It wasn’t ideal but she could live with it, all she had to do was give Jon and his friend the cold shoulder for at most an hour. Nothing new to her.

Now a whole hour had passed and she was getting hungry. She still had another hour till dinner so a small snack would be fine. But leaving her room posed the risk of running into Jon or his friend, and she didn’t want to risk an interaction with either of them.

Both of them are with Damian right now. There are no bathrooms near her room or the kitchen. If she hurries it will only take her 10 minutes to get to the kitchen, grab the cookies she made earlier, and come back to her room. And since Damian was banned from the kitchen this week, and both of his new friends are stuck with him, they shouldn’t be anywhere near the kitchen. 

Of course when was the universe ever on her side. She was about to open the kitchen door when someone she thought she would never have to see again uttered her name, “Marinette?” 

She knew the voice. It was the same voice that told her to stay quiet all those years ago when a vicious liar ran her mouth. The same one that said he was on her side then abandoned her the second things got too tough for him. The same one that didn’t speak up whenever she tried to defend herself, instead saying not to rock the boat. And now the owner of that voice was in her home. 

She steeled her face into something cold and emotionless, despite the fear she felt in her stomach and turned to face him, “Agreste.”

“It’s Graham de Vanily now.” He corrected, both forgetting/not noticing the two other people there. 

“Pretty sure it’s Agreste, you know, just like your father.” She bit back, venom laced into every word. 

“He’s not my father, not anymore.” He replied, fists clenched at his sides, staring her straight in the eyes, confusing the other two boys.

“You sure, because you’re exactly like him, you know.” She raised an eyebrow and matched his gaze. 

“I am nothing like him.” Adrien took a threatening step forward and that’s when Damian immediately stepped in front of Marinette, wanting to protect his little sister from this person who just threatened her. Damian was about to ask something but was cut off when Marinette moved around him to face Adrien. 

“Really? Both of you put your own wants and desires above the well being of other people. Your father the people of Paris, and for you it was me.” Jon saw she was visibly shaking, from fear or anger he wasn’t sure. Both emotions were pretty strong for her, and when he focused on Adrien all the boy felt was guilt. 

“Look Mari I’m-” He was cut off by Marinette’s angry shout. 

“You would think that after all you put me through you would at least have the dignity to not call me by a nickname that friends are only allowed to call me. You know, people who actually care about me!” 

“Marinette, I’m sorry okay, that was really dumb of me!” Adrien shouted back. 

“Save it! You can pretend to regret your actions all you want, but people like you don’t change! That’s something you taught me!” Snack forgotten, Marinette ran back to her room and slammed the door. Locking it, she slid down the back of it and just cried. 

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do Graham de Vanily. How do you know my little sister? Why did she react to you like that? What did she mean by ‘all you put her though?’...” As Damian kept spitting out question after question Jon followed Marinette. Her cries were the only thing he could hear right then and there. 

As he made his way closer to her, the cries stopped, only tiny sniffles coming out. “What do you want Kent?” He could hear the shaking in her voice no matter how much she tried to cover it up. 

He sat down, his back resting on the closed door thinking about what he should say. “I wanted to see if you were okay.” 

“I find that hard to believe. You wanted answers didn’t you?” She hiccuped in between words.

“A little bit.” 

“Well once upon a time there was a teenage girl who wore rose colored glasses all the time. She saw the world in rainbows and sunshine, never knowing of the darkness. Then one day a lying fox came into her life, spreading her tall tales. The girl tried to warn her friends and family but they didn’t listen. The fox ripped off the girl’s glasses and forced her to see the world for what it really was. The girl’s love at the time came to her and told her to keep silent, after all the fox’s lies weren’t hurting anyone. It was then she noticed that the boy wore the same glasses she did, only his were much stronger than hers had ever been. But she loved him, so she believed him, that everything would turn out okay, that if it didn’t he would be by her side. 

Slowly those around the girl turned on her, despite her doing nothing wrong. The boy who she once loved left her the second things got tough, never letting her stand up for herself. Soon the lying fox had gotten to her parents, things escalated from there. Now the girl moved to live with her bio family and everything was fine for a time. But then a boy who saw the world in sunshine and rainbows came around, and she was reminded of her past all over again.” Marinette finished her tale, her hiccups had faded away. 

“You don’t like me because I remind you of Adrien?” He hesitantly asked. 

“You don’t just remind me of him. Every time I see you I see him. But you’re also different from him. I don’t know. When you’re all happy and optimistic you're like him, but you also know how to be serious, which is something he could never do. I don’t know how to explain it but I thought if I kept you away from it would be alright. I really messed up didn’t I?” Marinette tried to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. 

“Kind of. But if you want we can start over.” Jon suggested, he wouldn’t mind getting to know the Marinette Damian talked so fondly about, not that Damian would ever admit it. 

He heard the lock unlock and he stood up as the door opened. He turned around and there was Marinette, her eyes were a little red and she had tears stains on her cheeks but she looked much better than before. 

She stuck her hand out, “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Marinette Wayne.” She looked up to look in his eyes and wondered if they were always so blue. And oh god please say she didn’t start blushing!

“Nice to meet you Marinette. I’m Jonathan Kent, but you can call me Jon.” Jon took her hand and shook it, his eyes looked into hers and he couldn’t help but think they looked so beautiful when they weren’t glaring at him. Unfortunately, Damian’s scream broke them out of their daze.

“ANSWER ME!!!” 

“We better go help him.” Marinette pulled her hand back. 

“Yeah we probably should.” Jon replied but Marinette was already racing to where they left the boys. Jon ran to catch up with her, mentally berating himself for thinking his friend’s sister was cute. 

Marinette on the other hand was mentally berating herself for thinking that someone she used to dislike so much was now cute. Not to mention he’s her brother’s best friend. Well, Damian doesn’t have to know she thinks that.

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I’m back from the dead! As I said before in What If... (which you can find on my master list day 22) school sucks and has been burying my grave so I had to focus on that for a while. But I have this and What If... done and am planning on doing the other days I have not crossed off on my Master List. 

This took so long to write and I’m already planning a part 2. Anyways hope u enjoyed!

@maribatmarch-2k21 

[joshjacksons]

Joshua Jackson interview with "Mr Porter" (2021)

Minutes before Mr Joshua Jackson joins me in a booth for a Friday afternoon drink at a vibey hotel bar in Santa Monica, he’s confronted by his past. Or rather, a woman in her early twenties who is binge-watching Dawson’s Creek, the teen show about a close-knit group of high-school friends coming of age in a sleepy American town, which made Jackson incredibly famous between 1998 and 2003. The series, which also made household names of Ms Michelle Williams and Ms Katie Holmes, went off air 18 years ago, but is now streaming on Netflix, to the bemusement of Jackson, who played lovable rogue Pacey Witter. “This girl was like, ‘Are you...?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am. He got old. I’m sorry to break it to you,’” he says, before ordering an iced tea and a charcuterie board to tide him over until dinner time. “It always surprises me when young people say they’ve just got into Dawson’s Creek. I’m like, ‘Is it a costume drama to you? Do you feel like you’re watching a historical documentary?’”

The idea of a Friends-style reunion episode or a Sex And The City revival feels equally far-fetched to Canadian-born Jackson, now 43 and wearing it well in a pale green linen shirt and tailored linen trousers by Oliver Spencer that complement his fading brown hair and Cali-tanned skin.

“I don’t know why you’d want to [bring it back],” he says. “Nobody needs to know what those characters are doing in middle age. We left them in a nice place. Nobody needs to see that Pacey’s back hurts. I don’t think we need that update.”

And Jackson doesn’t need Dawson’s Creek. From Mr JJ Abrams’ sci-fi series Fringe (2008-2013) to the Golden Globe award-winning The Affair (2014-2019), from Ms Ava DuVernay’s ground-breaking true-crime drama When They See Us (2019) to the recent Ms Reese Witherspoon and Ms Kerry Washington-produced Little Fires Everywhere (2020), he has commanded the small screen – with a collection of dynamic and diverse work – ever since.

His latest role as Mr Christopher Duntsch, the Texas surgeon convicted of gross malpractice when 33 of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them and two of them died, in chilling Peacock crime drama Dr Death, is only stepping his career up another gear.

“I’ve never played anyone irredeemable before,” says Jackson, who is joined in the eight-part series (based on the 2018 Wondery podcast of the same name) by Messrs Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin. “He is charming, gregarious and has a high-level intellect, but he’s also a misogynist, probably a sociopath, certainly a narcissist and a complete incompetent who is incapable of seeing himself.”

If Duntsch is terrifying, then Jackson’s portrayal is even more so. The artist formerly known as Pacey is virtually unrecognisable (thanks to prosthetics) in the opening scene, but the real challenge for Jackson was allowing himself to view someone who is so “spectacularly evil” as a human being in order to walk in his shoes. “It’s a more damning portrayal of the man to make him into a human being, rather than just make him the bad guy,” he says. “He really believes he’s the hero, he’s the genius and that he’s the victim, so once I got past my own judgment, all the other things fell into place.”

Jackson might have his pick of stellar roles – and challenges – now, but it has not happened by accident. Take it from someone who has been in the business since landing his first job aged 14 in Disney’s live-action movie series The Mighty Ducks, opposite Brat Pack alumnus Mr Emilio Estevez.

“You try to make it look like it happens accidentally,” he says, “but there is no way to do this and not be ambitious. I’d say I’m extremely ambitious because I’ve been doing this cutthroat job for nearly 30 years. I’m in the pay-off phase of my career now. One of the benefits of surviving for as long as I have is you get to learn from your own mistakes.”

Such as? “I wouldn’t say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ because it all becomes bricks in a path, but [after Dawson’s Creek] I was not choosy enough about the things I was doing. You get stuck. You start trying to perform the performance you think people are hoping to see you do. I was so used to working all the time that I just worked all the time. There was definitely a conscious moment in my mid-twenties when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying the work that I was doing. My manager at the time just said, ‘Take a breath. You’re burnt out.’”

The turning point came in 2005, when Jackson was offered a role in the two-hander Mr David Mamet play A Life In The Theatre, opposite Sir Patrick Stewart. “God bless him, Patrick could have made my life miserable because I had no idea what I was doing, ” he says. “I hadn’t been on stage since I was a kid and now I was in the West End in over my head. But it reminded me that I actually enjoyed being an actor, that it’s not about the red carpet or travelling around the world. What I really enjoy is working on good material with good people.”

It’s no surprise Jackson’s time on Dawson’s Creek led to a career crisis. From the ages of 19 to 24, he lived with his fellow cast mates in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming day in, day out, in an arrangement he likens to college. “You get to the end and they’re like, ‘Here’s your degree. Go live now. You’re an adult. Go out into the world,’” he says.

But most graduates don’t have to deal with global fame. “It’s transitory. You’re only ever cool for a moment and then you become much less cool. I was always pretty dubious about flatterers,” he says, recalling a time he was stung in London in the mid-2000s. “I went on a date in Hyde Park with a woman whose name I will not use – she was socialite-famous – and she was acting completely bizarre, looking over her shoulder the whole time. I came to find out that she had hired a photographer to follow us through the park and gave a whole story to the tabloids about how I was going to meet her family.”

It was his growing fortune, rather than fame, that caused Jackson the most anxiety. “Suddenly, at 19 years old, I was making more in a week than most of my friends’ parents would make in a year,” he says. “It was lovely to have the money, but it was that feeling of nobody is worth that kind of money. You feel like a fraud and it took me a long time to forgive myself for not being the thing that I was perceived as.”

Born in Vancouver, but raised in Topanga, California, until he was eight (before moving back to Vancouver following his parents’ divorce), Jackson bought his childhood home in 2001 and lives in it today with his wife, British Queen & Slim actor Ms Jodie Turner-Smith, and their 15-month-old daughter.

“My father unfortunately was not a good father or a husband and exited the scene, but that house in Topanga was where everything felt simple, so it was a very healing thing for me to do,” he says. Fast-forward to 2021 and his baby daughter now sleeps in her father’s childhood bedroom. “There was a mural of a dragon on the wall in that room that I couldn’t believe was still there, years later. The owner [who sold him the house] said, ‘I knew it meant a lot to somebody and that they were going to come back for it some day.’”

Becoming a first-time parent during a pandemic sounds stressful, but it afforded Jackson months at home with his wife and child that his normal work schedule wouldn’t have allowed.

“I now recognise how perverse the way that we have set up our society is,” he says. “There is not a father I know who works a regular job who didn’t go back to the office a week later. It’s robbing that man of the opportunity to bond with his child and spend time with his partner.”

Despite his obvious career ambitions, fatherhood has changed Jackson’s priorities in “every possible way”, he says. “It’s 100 per cent changed how I approach my work and my life. That has been made so clear to me in this past year. For me to feel good about what I’m doing day to day, my family has to be the central focus.

“There are plenty of things left for me to do, but now the thing that gets me excited is experiencing the world through my daughter’s eyes. I can’t wait to take her scuba diving. I can’t wait to take her skiing. I can’t wait to read a great book with her. I’m not worried at all she’ll be a wallflower. She’s been a character from the word go.”

Jackson met Turner-Smith, 34, two days after his 40th birthday. He had been single since his 10-year relationship with German actress Ms Diane Kruger ended in 2016. “I was not looking to fall in love again or meet the mother of my child, but life has other plans for you,” he says.

The couple met at a party. Turner-Smith was wearing the same The Future Is Female Ejaculation T-shirt Ms Tessa Thompson’s character, Detroit, wears in the 2018 film Sorry To Bother You. “That’s what I used to break the ice. I shouted, ‘Detroit!’ across the room. Not the smoothest thing I’ve ever done, but it worked. We were pretty much inseparable from the word go. It was a whirlwind romance and I can tell my daughter I literally saw her mother across a room and thought, ‘I have to be next to this woman.’”

A self-confessed “useless” shopper, Jackson gives his wife full credit for his current wardrobe. He is jewellery-free, apart from a wedding band and a gold signet “JJ” ring on his little finger (a present from his wife), and discovered tailored sweatsuits (by Stampd and Reigning Champ) in the pandemic.

“Jodie has influence in the way that a wonderful wife encourages you, through love, to dress well. She was like, ‘We’re going to throw away all the sweatpants from your past and I’m going to get you some that actually make you look like an adult male and you will still feel comfortable around the house,’ and I’m like, ‘What an amazing idea!’ Who knew you could get sweatsuits that actually look good on your body?”

Jackson’s style has evolved, he says, “from slovenly teen to it’s-nice-when-your-clothes-actually-fit-you”. The penny dropped after he auditioned for his former co-star Estevez, who was directing the 2006 Mr Robert Kennedy biopic Bobby. He said to me, ‘You only got this job because I know you. You came in here to play a very well-put together 1960s political operative and you’re wearing jeans and a hoodie.’

“I had to grow up a little bit. We are very much raised in Canada to never, ever show off, so it took me a while to recognise it’s OK to look good when you go out.”

Still, when you’ve grown up in front of the camera, “every pimple literally documented”, and lived (very successfully) to tell the tale, you can probably be forgiven for the odd fashion faux pas.

“I wore a silk Ascot to an event once in Paris and I still have nightmares about it,” he says. “I looked like Fred from Scooby Doo, but you live and learn.”

[loki-writes-things]

Requiem of a Dream (OCxDream of the Endless)

(A/N: This is horribly self-indulgent, and may or may not go up on AO3. We'll see. I hope at least someone enjoys it, and if not, I do. Things will get spicy in later chapters, so be prepared. Also: in case it's not clear, since it wasn't specified (That i noticed, correct me if I'm wrong) Eliot is the name I gave Hob in 2021.)

Chapter 1

Lenore Abernathy had dreamed of the man in the fishbowl since she was a child. She didn't know why she kept dreaming the same dream, but it was always the same. She would find herself in a big mansion, but it was empty, dark. The first time she found herself there it felt like she had wandered the halls for hours, until she found the basement.

And that's where she had saw him. He was a strange man, almost unnaturally thin, with wild black hair and dark, piercing eyes. When she was a child she thought him pretty, as she grew, and as she returned to the mansion time and time again she found him handsome, and…well…quite attractive. She was pretty sure he was where she got her taste for tall, skinny, emo twinks. Fishbowl man, the blueprint.

She had had the dreams for so long that she was quick to notice their absence. It'd been months, and she hadn't had the dream about the fishbowl man. It felt…odd. She'd come to enjoy the dreams, even though the man never said anything, and rarely seemed to move. He felt almost like…a friend. Which, thinking about it now sounded pathetic. Friends with a figment of her imagination. What was she? Five?

But…she still felt a pang of loss, there. Twenty years she'd had the dream, and just as quick as it started…it was gone.

She figured that was that. She'd never see him again. Poof, gone forever, just like that. She didn't realize just how wrong she would end up being.

o.0.o

Lenore had been looking forward to the London trip for a year. It was an abroad study trip for collage. It was a month long trip, with a focus on art and culture. She'd hardly been out of state, and never even been on a plane before, so an international trip was an absolute thrill to her.

And now here she was, in London, piratically bouncing off the walls to see what the city had to offer. She wanted to see Buckingham palace, and Big Ben and just…everything. She was born and raised in a town of a couple thousand. Her graduating class was twenty people strong. She'd been to DC once, but London seemed so, so much bigger.

She wandered around, wanting to see as much of the city as she could with her free evening, before the tours and whatnot started. She wandered wide-eyed and amazed as she walked down a side street.

She came to a inn and pub, and the grumbling of her stomach told her that she probably should get something to eat. She headed in, and found a seat, sitting back to watch the people milling around her.

"Drinking alone, hm?" Someone asked, and Lenore looked up. There was a man, with a kindly face and brown hair, and a warm smile.

"Ah, I'm not drinking at all, actually." She said sheepishly. "Can't stand alcohol. But I wouldn't mind some company. What's your name?" She asked as the man sat down with his pint.

"Eliot. Eliot Fisher." He said. "And yours? You don't sound like you're from this side of the pond."

"Lenore." She said. "And, no. I'm here for a study abroad. It's….certianlly something." she said.

They spoke for hours. Eliot seemed to have a never-ending list of stories to tell, and she was happy to listen.

It was in the middle of one of the stories that she saw him. It was the man in the Fishbowl. It had to be him. She could never forget that face- or the moping look that seemed to be permanently stuck there.

And Lord help her he was even hotter in person.

"And then- Lenore? Is everything alright?" Elliot asked, and looked behind him. His face lit up when he saw the man, and she had to snap herself out of her haze as he approached.

"I hope I am not interrupting something." The Man said. His voice was black silk, smooth and dark. Jesus H. Christ that just made him even hotter.

"No, no it's alright." Eliot said, and turned to her. "I hope to talk to you later." He said to Lenore. "But I have some catching up to do." He said.

"Yes, I do hear it's rude to keep your friends waiting." The Man said to Eliot, and Eliot positively beamed. They moved away to another table, and Lenore was left gobsmacked.

What. The. Fuck. She threw back the rest of her soda, knowing full well that it wasn't going to do anything.

Soon the fishbowl man stood, and headed to the door. She had to do something, she had no idea if she would ever see either of them again.

"Excuse me?" She called out, and the man stopped.

"Yes?" He asked, and turned to her.

"I…what's your name?" She asked. "I…okay this is going to sound crazy and I understand if you don't believe me but I….I've dreamed about you for the last twenty years." She said, the words spilling out before she could really think about it. "You were…you were in a fishbowl. Or, well, more like just a big glass ball but I mean…." She said.

He was next to her in two long strides. He had an incredibly intense look on his face. "What did you say?" he asked.

"I-I….." Lenore stuttered. "I dreamed about you in a glass ball." She said. "I know it's crazy but I…."

"Who are you?" He asked, and Lenore blinked.

"I asked you first." She said, a little taken aback at the sudden intensity.

"You know things that you could not possibly know." He said. "There must be a reason why you know what you do. So tell me. Who. Are. You?" He asked and she blinked up at him.

She should not find this as hot as she did. Fuck.

"I, um, my name's Lenore. Lenore Abernathy." She said sheepishly.

"Is everything alright?" Eliot said, and it broke the tension for just a moment.

"Perhaps." The man said, his dark eyes still piercing through her. "You are not from England, are you?" He asked, and tilted his head.

"N-No." She said. "This is my first time in the country."

He studied her, and then narrowed his eyes. "You are not lying." He said.

"No?" she asked. Why would I?"

"Come with me." He said, and beckoned her to follow.

She heard Eliot sigh behind her. "As mysterious as ever, my friend." He said as she stood, and followed him out into the night.

o.0.o

"Do you know who I am?" He asked as they walked down the cobblestone street.

"No." She said and shook her head. "I…you never really said anything in my dreams." She said. "Or really ever did much but sit there. Really the only thing I actually know about you is what you look like naked."

That earned her an almost glare from the man.

"What? It's the truth." She said. "Who even are you, anyway?" She asked.

The man sighed at that, and put his hands in the pockets of his dark blazer jacket.

"I am known by many names, the most recent of which is Morpheus." He said and looked over to her, and Lenore just raised an eyebrow.

"You're who now?"

"Morpheus, Dream of the Endless." He said. "I am the ruler of The Dreaming, and the Lord of Sleep."

"No fucking way." Lenore said and shook her head. "You're shitting me."

"I assure you that I am not. For the past century I have been trapped in the basement of a man named Rodrick Burgess." He said.

"Wait. Rodrick Burgess? That magical hack?" She asked.

"You know of him?

"Ehhh." She said, with a non-committal motion of her hand. "I know that he was a rival to Crowley. I dabble in sigil magic every now and then, but modern sigil magic is a lot different than the bullshit that Crowley an his ilk were into."

"I can assure you that his magic worked."

"Just because it worked doesn't mean it wasn't bullshit. He was a cult leader." She said. "which automatically makes him a shit person. There's a lot of stuff that can work but that doesn't make it good, ethical, or right. Hell, one of the books I read said that he kept the devil in……his…basement….oh fuck. That…that wasn't a tall tale, was it?" she asked.

"It was not." He said and shook his head.

"…..You got out a few months ago, didn't you?" She asked.

"I did, yes. Why?"

"Because that's when the dreams stopped. Were you…were you giving me those dreams? I mean if you're…." She said, and motioned to him. "Morpheus, Lord of Sleep, King of The Dreaming, all that fun stuff." She said.

"I did not." He said. "I was cut off from my realm during my imprisonment. Which is what makes you so interesting." He said. "Just why were you dreaming of me while I was imprisoned?"

"My dude that's exactly what I'd like to know as well." she said as she looked up at him.

He was deathly pale in the moonlight, his skin like porcelain and his eyes like two chocolate diamonds.

His clothes did little to hide the lines of his body, especially since she knew them so well. She knew exactly what was under that coat, that shirt, those slacks.

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair at all.

"'My dude'?" He asked, arching his eyebrow. "An odd way to address an Endless."

"One: I'm not exactly sure what an 'endless' is, and two: I deal with stress with humor. So humor me for a bit, yeah?" she said.

"As you wish." He said, sounding almost…amused. "You are odd, for a mortal." he said offhandedly.

"Yeah, well, you ain't the first to say something like that. Minus the 'mortal' part, at least." She said, trying to hide a grin.

"Look, it's um…getting late, and as much as I genuinely would love to keep talking and figure this out, I need to crash, I got a tour early in the morning." She said. "I'll be seeing you?" She asked.

He tilted his head, and she saw what could only be described as a ghost of a small cross his face. "I think you shall."

[beclynn-herondale]

In Another Universe: Chapter 9 - The Greenhouse part 2

(characters, tsc, and tmi belong to Cassandra Clare, it's also similar to the original)

After Hodge had fixed Jayce and Simone up, Jayce went off to shower and mysteriously disappeared. Isidore was sitting in his bedroom throwing knives at a target he had in there, when someone knocked on his door. He got up with a sigh, walked over and opened, there was his big sister, looking angry and upset, she tried her best to hide her emotions but so often they were written plain on her face.

"Can I come in?" she asked. He gestured her inside, it was often she did this, usually when Jayce made her upset, unfortunately Jayce made her upset quite often these days. "What's up?" he asked. "Jayce is nowhere to be found, I think she's avoiding us." "Of course she's avoiding us, we both have been picking arguments with her and you know when she gets into these moods, she doesn't like to argue with anyone, well not really."

"I did something stupid, and if she finds out she'll hate me." "Oh?" "I— I slammed Clar against a wall and may have threatened him." Isidore let out a whistle. "Why?" "He knows about me." "I know." "Wait, you knew that he knew?"

"Yeah, he figured it out but I made him promise not to tell anyone." "Well he did, he told me. I want him to leave, to go away and never come back." "Me too, but we're stuck with him for now," he said. "So do what I do my dear sister and throw knives at your walls while pretending it has the face of your arch enemy." "Why are you like this?" He shrugged

They sat in silence for some time. "Hey, Alec?" "Yeah?" "What do you think will happen with Clar when mom and dad get back?". "I don't know," said Alec. "I suppose if he asks for a place to stay, they would have to let him, since he's a Shadowhunter and it would be technically against the law to turn him away."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. So I guess we're stuck with him." "Yeah," she said bitterly. "Maybe he'll grow on us." "Maybe not." "Well, for now we gotta put up with him," he said. "I am tired, so unless you plan to sleep on my floor, cause I do not intend to share my bed, you should go to your own bed and try to sleep a little." "Yeah," she said half heartedly. "Give Jayce time, let her cool off from everything that happened." "You're probably right." "Of course I am," he said, and winked at her.

——————

Jayce opened the door, she took in the familiar smell of the plants, the smell of earth and the sweet smell of the flowers. She looked behind her and saw a look of awe on Clar's face. "Wow," he said, very slowly. "It's so... So beautiful at night." She grinned at him. "And we have it to ourselves. Alec and Iz don't dare coming here, they have allergies."

"What kind of flowers are these?" asked Clar, pointing at one of the shrubs. She shrugged and sat down. "I don't know. Do you think I pay attention in botany class? I am not going to be an archivist. I do not need to learn these things." she may have been slightly lying about not paying attention in botany class. "You just need to have all the knowledge of killing things?" She smiled at him again. "Exactly right," she said as she pulled a napkin wrapped sandwich out if the paper bag. "I also happen to make a badass cheese sandwich. Here ya go." She handed it to him. He smiled at her and sat down across from her.

Jayce pulled some apples, a chocolate bar that had nuts and fruit in it, and a bottle of water out of the bag as well. "Not bad," said Clar admiringly. She pulled her bone-handled knife out of her pocket, Alec had given it to her forever ago. She picked up one of the apples and started carving them into eighths. "It may not be birthday cake," she said, handing him slice. "But hopefully it is at least better than nothing at all.". "I was expecting nothing, so thank you." he said and took bite of the apple piece.

"Everyone should get something on their birthday," she said as she started peeling another apple. "Birthdays are special. My birthday was the one day of the year my father said I could do or have anything I wanted to." "Anything?" he asked with a laugh, his laugh was different from other's laughs. "What kind of anything are we talking here?"

"Well, when I was five, I asked if I could take a spaghetti bath.". "He said no, right?" "No, that's the thing. He let me, he said it wasn't expensive, if that was what I wanted? He had servants fill a bath with boiling water and spaghetti noodles, and after it cooled down enough. . ." she gave a shrug. "I took a bath in it."

"And how was that?'. "Very slippery.". "I am sure." He looked to be in thought for a moment. "Did you ask for anything else?". "Weapons, pretty much," she answered. "Which probably isn't a surprise. Books. I read many books on my own.'. "You didn't go to school?" They were heading to a topic she did not want to venture down. "No," she said slowly.

"But what about friends—" "I didn't have any," she said. "It didn't matter, it had always just been me and my father. He was all I ever needed.". "None at all?" She met his eyes with a steady look. "When I first met Alec," she said. "I was ten years old, that was the first time I'd ever met another person my age. She was the first friend I ever had."

He looked down now. He looked sad and sorry for her. "Don't feel sorry for me," she said. "He gave me the best training, the best education. He took me to see all kinds of places. London. Saints Petersburg. Egypt. We traveled a lot. I've barely left New York at all since he died.". "You're so lucky," Clar said. "I've never left New York. My mom wouldn't even let me go on field trips. I suppose I know why now, though.". "She was probably afraid you'd freak? And start seeing demons in museums?.". "Are there demons in museums?". "I was just kidding," she said and gave him a shurg. "If there were, I am sure someone would have mentioned it."

"I think she just didn't want me to be too far away from her. She changed after my dad died." Jayce raised her eyebrow at him. "Do you remember your father, at all?". "No. He died before I was born.". "You're lucky," she said, she could hear the loneliness in her own voice. "You don't have to miss him, I mean.". "Does it ever go away?" he asked. "Missing your father, I mean?" She didn't answer him, but no it didn't. "You thinking about your mother?". "No. I was thinking about Luke.". "That's not actually his name though," she said and took a bite of apple. "I have actually thought about him. His behavior just doesn't add—". "He's acting like a coward," said Clar bitterly. "You were there, you heard what he said. He won't go against Valentine. Not even if it's for my mother."

"I don't think that's exactly—" The bells started ringing. "Midnight," said Jayce, she set her knife down and got to her feet, she held her hand out to help him up. "Watch." She could feel Clar beside her, but she didn't look at him. She stared at the medianox flowers. She didn't know why she didn't look at him. She recalled the first she had ever saw the flowers bloom. Hodge had woken her, Alec and Iz up at midnight to watch them bloom. She was in the middle between Alec and Iz. The flowers usually only grew in Idris.

She remembered catching her breath at the surprise and beauty of the flower. Alec and Isidore had not had the same reaction, Alec had never been a night person and had fallen asleep against Isidore's shoulder. and Isidore lost interest after he found out it had no lethal uses. She worried perhaps, Clar would be the same: find them interesting, perhaps pleased. But not be enchanted by them.

She wanted him to feel the way she had about the flowers. But she couldn't say why exactly. Then she heard him say a soft "Oh!" As the flower bloomed, opening up, and shimmering with it's golden pollen. "Do the flowers bloom every night?" "Yes, but only at midnight."

She felt relief wash over her. And looked at him, his eyes shining, his fingers flexing unconsciously, they did this she had started to notice when he wished he had his sketchpad, when he wanted to capture an image. She wished she could see the world as he did: see the world as a canvas to be painted. And at the moments when he looks at her that way, as of he were taking her apart, piece by piece to be separated and painted. Almost an emotionless analysis of her — she caught herself on the verge of blushing. Such a strange feeling, so strange she almost didn't know it. Because, Jayce Wayland did not blush.

"Happy birthday, Clarus Fray," she said. He smiled at her. "I got something for you," she said and fumbled slightly reaching for her pocket, he didn't seem to notice though. She pressed the witchlight into his hand, and she was conscious of his hands, Artist hands, delicate but strong, he had calluses from holding paint brushes for hours, he had slight paint stains on his hands. And she wondered did his pulse speed up as well when they touched.

She supposed not, because he drew away quickly, looking at the runestone curiously. "You know when someone says they want a big rock they don't mean literally a big rock." That surprised a smile out of her. Which was odd in of itself, usually only Alec or Iz could surprise amusement out of her. She knew Clar had been brave since she first met him, going after Isidore into a closet unharmed like that took guts. But that he made her laugh was still a surprise.

"Very funny, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, exactly. Every Shadowhunter has a witchlight stone.". "Oh." He looked at it with a new curiousity in his eyes. He closed his hands around. "It will bring you light always, even among the darkest of worlds." That was what her father had told her when he had given her first witchlight runestone to her. What other worlds? She had asked, Her father only laughed though. There are more worlds a breath away this one than there were grains of sand on a beach, he had told her. She sometimes wondered about those other Jayces in those worlds, were they happy? Were they sad? Were they dead or alive? Was she by chance so different in one that she could be a boy? Would his name be Jace? And did they wonder about her? Were their parents alive?

Clar smiled again and made a joke about birthday presents. "thank you, it was nice for you to give me anything," he said. "Much better than a spaghetti bath.". "If you share that personal information with anyone, i may have to kill you." she said darkly. "Ok, well, when I was five, I wanted to go inside the clothes dryer and spin round and round," he said. "The only difference is, she said no.'. No"Probably because getting inside a dryer to spin around is very fatal," she pointed out. "But pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isidore were to make it."

She saw the petals were shedding now. "Then when I was twelve, I wanted to get a tattoo" he said. A strand of hair fell into his eye and like the afternoon he had fallen asleep she wanted to push it away but fought the urge. "Well, usually most Shadowhunters get their first marks at twelve. Maybe it was just in your nature.". "Maybe. But I don't think many Shadowhunters want to get a tattoo of Dontello from teenage mutant ninja turtles on their left shoulder." He had that fond look on his face that he had when talking about something she couldn't quite understand but interested her. It sent a spark through her veins. A kind of fear, but what fear? That he would one day go back to the mundane world and leave her behind in her world of hunters and demons, battles and scars, and do it gratefully?

"You wanted to get a turtle on your shoulder?" He gave her a nod. "I wanted to cover this scar on my shoulder that I got from chicken pox." He pulled his shirt up to show her, there was a scar, it reminded her of something but she wasn't sure what. But she saw more than the scar, she saw the freckles that he had on his back, his shoulder blades. She took the moment to see his eyelashes that were a coppery color, his red curls like fire, the curve of his lips. Some kind of desire swept over her, one she had never felt before, she had desired people in a certain way before, but never in this way. Not in a way that cut through her like fire, and left an almost nervous tremble in her hands.

She looked away and shook her head slightly. "We should probably go back down stairs." He gave her a curious look, his green eyes on her like he could see through her. "Have you and Isidore ever dated?" Her heart still beating too fast. "Isidore?" she echoed. She thought, what does Isidore have to do with this? Why mention him? "Simone was curious," he said, and she disliked the way her name sounded as he spoke it. She had never felt this way before: never anything that could unnerve her like Clar did. She remembered that day back at the coffee shop when she wanted to lead him away into her world, away from the dark haired friend of his, lead him away into her world of shadows. She had a feeling even then he belonged where she did, not with mundanes who did not know the full truth of the world.

This boy right her and his green eyes that pinned her to the wall like a butterfly, was real, so very real. He pierced the distance she had put up so carefully to keep others away. "No, the answer is no. Maybe a time the thought crossed our minds but we're like siblings so it would be weird." "So you and him have never—" "Never," she said. "He hates me, you know." "No, he doesn't," she said, wanting to laugh like a sibling would, knowing their other sibling so well that you knew when they were frustrated. "You just make him nervous, he's always been the only boy in the crowd of our group, getting the attention and now he isn't." It was true, Isidore being the only son the Lightwoods had, was always adored and he got used to it.

"But why? He's so beautiful, and talented, what would I make him nervous about?" "You are too," she said automatically, it surprised herself. His face changed, but she couldn't read it. She had told people they were beautiful before but it was always calculated. This was not, this time she wanted to go to the training room and throw knife after knife at targets, wanted to kick and punch until she was exhausted and bloody. This boy making her this way.

He looked at her not saying anything. Ah, the training room it is. "We should go down stairs," she said again. "Okay." She couldn't read his voice either, she was usually good at reading people but her ability to do so has apparently deserted her and she doesn't know why.

They started to make their way out when she saw something flash a light and Clar backed up bumping into her slightly, he turned around to her and the next thing she knew she was throwing her arms around him to pull him down and kiss him, she was kissing him. She was shocked by herself, she didn't work this way, she always had control over her body. It was an instrument, like the piano. It didn't move without her permission, never. Here she was though, running her hands through his hair and kissing him hard, she ran her hands along his arms. He wrapped his arms around around her and leaned down a little, he ran a hand through her hair, then ran his hand down her back, he smelled like citrus, she tasted the apple on his lips, somewhere for a moment she lost herself. Understanding now why kisses were described the way they were in the books. She was slightly unsteady and she clung to him, he held her weight. She remembered the first time she saw the midnight flower, and thought it was something beautiful that belonged in the world.

She heard a rush of wind, and drew back from Clar, to see Hugo watching them. She still had her arms around him and they were still leaning on each other. His eyes were half closed still. "Don't freak, but I think someone is watching us," she whispered to him. "If Hugo is here that means Hodge is not far behind him. We need to go" He opened his eyes all the way, and looked amused. Shouldn't he be more flustered after that kiss? But he was just grinning. He wanted to know if Hodge had been spying on them and she assured him no, but she felt his laughter through their joined hands and didn't remember how that had happened.

They made their way downstairs. And as they did, hands still interlocked, she understood why people held hands, she had always thought it was something like saying this is mine. But it wasn't like that at all. It was speaking without using words and saying I want here with me and don't go. Suddenly she wanted him in her bedroom, not in that way — nobody she had ever been with had been in her bedroom. It was her safe space, it was special to her, her sanctuary. But she wanted Clar there. She wanted him to see her for who she really was, not the image she put on for the world. She wanted to lay in bed with him and just be snuggled up together. Wanted to watch him sleep and breathe softly. She wanted to see him and have him see her. So even when they got to his bedroom door, and he thanked her for the night again, she hadn't let go of his hand.

"Are you going to bed?" she asked. He looked down at her. "Aren't you tired?" She felt different now. "I have never been more awake." She stepped up on her tiptoes, pulling him down a bit to give a light brush of lips.

Then at that moment Simone flung the door open and came out into the hallway. Clar pulled away from Jayce hastily, and turned his head to the side looking at Simone. She felt a sharp pain, like ripping a bandage off. Simone was saying a bunch of angry words. And Jayce thought back to all the times that she'd been kissing someone in a club against the wall or in a alley behind a bar. And their significant other or the person who thought there was a chance staring at them like someone had ripped their heart out. Jayce had always felt sorry for them, but in a distant way, like in the plays when they were acting out a heartbreak scene.

But now as she looked at Simone she realized she would never have to wonder what it felt like again. Because the look of regret on Clar's face as he looked to Simone, made her realize Simone wasn't the one going to get her heart broken and shattered to pieces. It was Jayce.

Oh, Jayce what have you done now, she thought.

——————

Clar stared at Simone with regret, he knew what was going to happen, something else was going to blow up, and so much had blown up today. He was going to hurt and piss off more people and he had already done that in these last 24 hours as well, he wished he could disappear.

"What the fuck!" said Simone. "Simone! I— I mean I thought that you were—" "Sleeping?" she flushed with anger. "I was asleep, but then I woke up and you weren't there."

He didn't know what to say, he should have known something along the lines of this would happen. He wondered why he hadn't asked to go to Jayce's room, and the thought of that made him blush and want to kick himself more. But the worst part is that he hadn't thought of it because he had forgotten about Simone.

"I am sorry," he said, though not sure who he was apologizing to or for what.

He looked at Jayce from the corner of his eye and thought she looked angry for a moment but he looked again and she looked as she always did: composed, confident, easy, a little bored.

"In the future, Clarus," she said. "It may be a wise decision, to mention you already have someone in your bed, we could avoid situations such as this one.". "You asked her to bed?" asked Simone looking shocked. "Simply ridiculous, right?" said Jayce. "There's no way we could all have fit.". "I didn't ask her to bed," he snapped. "It was just kissing." "Just kissing?" said Jayce mockingly. "How quickly you dismiss our love.". "Jayce. . ."

He saw the malice in her eyes as she trailed off. "I'm sorry we woke you." "Me too," she said and went back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Jayce had a bland smile on her face. "Go after her and tell her how she's your special girl. Isn't that what you always do?". "Would you stop that," he said. "Stop being like this." She widened her smile. "Like what exactly?". "If you're upset, just say it. Don't act like nothing touches you. You seem like you never feel anything at all.". "Maybe," she said. "You should have thought of that before you kissed me." He couldn't believe she just said that. "I kissed you?" She looked at him with malice. "It wasn't that great for me either, don't worry," she said.

She walked off and Clar wanted to run after her, mostly to shake her and ask why she is like this. But he knew that would fill her with satisfaction, so he didn't, instead he went back into his room.

Simone was in the middle of his room, she looked to be lost. He heard Jayce's words replay nastily in his head. He stepped forward but stopped when. He saw what she was holding. His sketchpad, she had it opened to the drawing he had done of Jayce early.

"Nice drawing," she said. "All those art classes are paying off, I see." Usually Clar would be going off on someone who was looking at his sketchpad without his permission but it wasn't the time right now. "Look, Simone—" "I know how pathetic I look going off to sulk in your room," she interrupted as she threw the sketchpad on his bed. "But i needed to get my stuff."

"Are you going?" he asked "Yes. I've overstayed here. and besides, mundanes really don't belong here, anyway." He let out a frustrated sigh. "I wasn't planning on kissing her, ok? It just happened. I know how much you don't like her.". "That's where you're wrong," she said. "I don't like flat soda. I don't like traffic. I don't like terrible boy band pop. I don't like math. I hate Jayce. There's a difference, see?". "She saved your life, you know," he said but felt terrible for it, because she did it so she wouldn't get in trouble with the clave if either of them got killed.

"Slight details," she said dismissing it. "She's an ass, like those girls in highschool we always avoided, because they thought they were so much better than everyone else. I just thought you were better than actually hooking up with one of them."

Something about that made his temper rise. "Oh, yeah. You're sure on a high horse," he snapped at her. "Talking about going to ask the guy with the best abs to the fall fling." He mocked Erica's tone. Simone's mouth thinned. "So what if she's a jerk at times? It's not like you're my mother or sister, you don't need to like her. I've never liked anyone you dated, but at least I was nice enough to keep it to myself."

"This is different," she said. "How, Simone? How is this in any way different?". "Because I see how you look at her!" she yelled. "I never looked at anyone I dated like that! It was something to do while I waited—'. "For what? Waited for what exactly?" They had never fought like this, all their fights were always about who hate the last cookie or which anime character was better. But he didn't stop, and wanted to again kick himself. "For when Isidore came along? You're lecturing me on Jayce when you have been mooning over him like a foo!' he realized he yelled it.

"I was trying to make you jealous!" she yelled back. "Sometimes you are so stupid, Clar. you can't even see what's in front of you." He just stared, what did she mean by that? "Make me jealous? But why?" He saw the look on her face and realized that was the last thing he should have asked. Bitterly she said. "Because, I've been in love you for the last ten years. I thought maybe I should see if you felt the same. But I have my answer now."

She might as well have punched him. He searched for a response but couldn't find one. "Don't even try. There are no words for you to say," she said sharply. He watched her walk away not being able to move, as if he were paralyzed. What was he supposed to say "I love you, as well"? But he didn't. right? She paused at the door for a moment to say. "You want to know what else my mom said about you?" He shook his head, but either she didn't see it or ignored it. "She said you were going to break my heart."

She left, the door shut behind her, and Clar was alone with everything that had happened in such a short amount of time.

Everyone hates him, he thought. He wanted Joan to be here so bad, at least she wouldn't hate him.

Tag list: @khaleesiofalicante @chibi-tsukiko @spotsandclawsthings @megs-readstoomuch @replayfootsteps @magnus-the-maqnificent @jazzkaurtheglorious @simply-ellas-stuff @bookfast-at-tiffanys @my-archerboy

[unprofessional-bard]

Out of Touch

Pairing: Jacob Frye x Reader

Warnings: Jacob being Jacob (aka a lot of teasing/flirting), just some grabbing around (nothing to explicit), angsty at first but ends with a slightly heated fluff.

Summary: Jacob has been your bodyguard for the past month under strict orders from poor Evie who had been dealing with your father's unnecessary worrying. Jacob is a rough, reckless man who killed and you were the daughter of a man who had taught you manners and raised you as if you were royalty. Two complete opposites... right?

Author's Note: Okay nsjdjdjdsjns this is basically a Han/Leia AU... I've watched the originals again and wanted to write a fic with their chemistry: a scoundrel and a princess - Jacob and my lovely readers 😚 And of course a big thank you to @marshmallow--3 for helping me when I got stuck while writing 😊💘

This fic is for readers of all genders! If I've written anything that says otherwise please please please let me know!

Enjoy!

"Ugh!" You huffed for the umpteenth time that day because of the boredom eating away at you. All you had been doing for the past month was to sit on your armchair in the library with a hawk watching over you. Or should you say, a rook?

A rather handsome rook at that.

"What is it now, your highness?" Your supposed bodyguard groaned at you.

"Would you stop calling me that?" You snarled at him as you pushed the wood in the fireplace around with the steel poker. The poker was dirtier than you imagined, which annoyed you even more as your hands got covered in ash and dust. "This whole being stuck at home thing is really getting on my nerves..."

Jacob gave you an offended look: "You've been stuck in a big, empty house with the most handsome man in all of London for the longest time, yet you still complain - unbelievable..."

You didn't bother looking at him as you walked to the door. If it were your first week with Jacob, you'd be gasping, throwing a book his way, yelling at him to shut up with his infuriating flirting; but you were used to it by now and chose to ignore him for the sake of your nerves.

You were born in London, but your family moved to Paris when you were younger and now, ten years later, you were back in London -not as settlers but as guests- with your father. Your mother had passed before you could begin your assassin training and it wounded your father deeply, leading him to cancel your training and keep you out of the "assassin" business. It didn't anger you before because you didn't care, grieving and moving on from your mother's passing took a toll on you and it took too long. When you turned 16 however, you started realising what a great opportunity your father had taken away from you and so you've been upset with him ever since. Five years had passed and here you were, stuck with a reckless assassin named Jacob, who's father was friends with your own for a long time until his recent passing.

The reason you were stuck in the house with the said assassin was nothing but for your own safety, at least that's what you've been told by a variety of people. How hard was it to put you in a carriage and let you sail back to France?

Too hard apparently. You didn't even really know why your father was in London in the first place. He kept saying "assassin business" and hid things from you, why did he even bother bringing you along in the first place?

"Remind me, for how long more will I be stuck with you?" You walked to the living room, Jacob right behind you.

"Two more weeks," he shrugged. "Why, bored of me already, your worshipfulness?"

You sighed loudly in irritation, to which he replied: "I bet I can get you to make those sounds with my-"

"Will you shut your gob?!" You turned around, eyes and arms wide open, shouting at him. "The audacity you have, if you were half the person your sister was-"

"Oh don't bother," Jacob spoke suddenly with a tone you haven't heard before. "I'm too 'wild' and 'vulgar' and 'rebellious' for the likes of you people, I know. Spare me the lecture."

Your anger cooled down and you almost felt sorry for him, thinking about how upsetting it must be to always being compared to someone, not better than him, but different. He didn't look you in the eye as he turned around to leave.

"I just wish that you'd cut it out when you're told to cut it out," you said quietly, not wanting to start up a fight with him. "Anyways... I am going out."

That made him halt in his tracks and turn around: "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me." You said, determined. "I am going out and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"Oh, trust me, you don't want to know the amount of ways I can stop you from taking another step," he said, still shocked.

"Well, I don't care. You either come with me or stay out of my way because I am going ou-" Just as you were reaching for the door handle, you felt your body being pulled backwards and pressed harshly against the wall.

"Good lord-" you gasped involuntarily. He was pressing against your body from behind, your face trapped between the wall and his face which was only inches apart from yours. "You make it so difficult sometimes."

"I do, I really do..." Jacob nodded as he held you in place but he wasn't hurting you . "You could be a little nicer though. Eh, admit it, sometimes you think I'm bearable."

A moment of silence settled between you as you pushed him off yourself and turned around, still leaning against the wall, rubbing your wrist: "Occasionally- maybe, when you're not acting like a rotter."

"Rotter?" He raised a brow at you. "Rotter..." he repeated as he very slowly closed the space between you two and gently grabbed your wrist. He smirked like the rascal he was as he carefully massaged your wrist - you both knew it wasn't hurt at all. "I like the sound of that."

It took you a short moment to realise what he was doing: "Stop that."

"Stop what?" He asked, confused.

"Stop that," you repeated, trying to pull your wrist away from his big hands; "my hands are dirty."

"My hands happen to be dirty too, your majesty. What are you afraid of?" His voice was low and it couldn't have been deeper.

"Afraid?" You tried to act confused as you felt the distance between you close even more.

"You're trembling..." he pointed out.

"I'm not trembling," you tried to chuckle but instead your voice trailed off.

At this point, he was towering over you: "You like me because I am a rotter... There aren't enough 'rotter's in your life."

"I happen to like polite men-"

"I am a polite person," his nose brushed against yours and it was then, you realised, he almost had you.

Just before he could close the little distance between you entirely, you pushed him off with little force and immediately went out the door.

Jacob was absolutely stunned at your sudden act and followed you out: "Oi!"

You smirked to yourself as you skipped around the streets amongst the throng of people, thinking that Jacob will have a hard time finding you and dragging you back home. Ten minutes were all you needed and before he knew it, you'd be back as if you hadn't stepped outside at all.

Well, you were wrong.

Just after three minutes of walking around the streets you finally took a turn and stopped to rest on an empty alley, but only after 20 seconds of freedom and starting to feel joyful because of finally being by yourself, you were harshly grabbed by your waist and shoulders once more and were pulled into a small cabinet behind you.

You yelped but a big, familiar hand muffled the sound as it closed over your mouth.

After you stopped moving and stood still, Jacob dropped his hand onto your shoulder and the other remained around your waist. Your back was, once more, pressed tightly against him; his breathing on your neck sending involuntary shivers down your spine.

"Let go," you demanded quietly.

"Sshh-" Jacob ignored you. You weren't exactly sure what he was up to, but it was starting to become suffocating in there.

"Let go, please..." you asked, softer this time. Although he wasn't pressing you down entirely and you could easily move out of his hold like you did minutes ago, Jacob noticed how you weren't really fighting to get out of there but decided to reply anyway.

"Don't get excited now," He whispered half arrogantly and half disturbed.

"Well, Mr. Frye, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited."

But your reply seemed to excite him: "I'm sorry love, but we haven't really got the time to do anything else at the moment."

Jacob let go of you just in time as some nasty looking Blighters finished passing by and stepped out of the cabin with you.

You straightened your clothing as Jacob growled: "Do you have a death wish? What were you thinking?!"

"Perhaps I do," you replied angrily but you didn't raise your voice at him. "What do you care? Other than getting an earful from Evie and your little gang of assassins?"

"Your father-"

"Of course," you sighed. "But you needn't worry, Jacob. If he cared about me even in the slightest, he would've respected my choices and left me back in Paris instead of getting me into this mess."

"But he does care about you, a lot in fact."

"Really?" You asked, smiling bitterly. "If he had cared from the beginning, I would've been an assassin now and we both wouldn't have been stuck in that cursed house for weeks! Maybe if he didn't wail as he does with everything and lost himself in his assassin business and actually cared for me, then he would've made sure I could take care of myself instead of 'protecting me from the dangers of the world!'"

You didn't realise the tears rolling down your face as you finished yelling at the once more stunned Jacob. After a moment of quiet, you began sobbing and broke down, falling onto your knees.

Jacob calmly approached you and kneeled down beside you, wrapping his arm around your shoulders and putting his hands on them.

"Please take me home," you sobbed quietly as you leaned in to rest your head on his chest. He didn't move while you cried a little more and thought about how hard it must've been for you. He couldn't imagine what he'd do if he wasn't an assassin and he understood your frustrations with your father.

He gently moved and picked you up bridal style. You had neither the energy nor the state of mind to fight him about it and let him carry you, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and burying his head in the crook of his neck.

"Hmph," Jacob hummed thoughtfully as he aimed his rope launcher to the edge of a roof. "Hold on tight love."

"What do you me-" you began but got interrupted when you heard a thwip, then a far away clang from above you; and just as you felt Jacob's arm tightening its grip, with a whoosh, you suddenly gasped.

In a matter of seconds, you were launched in the air and landed on a rooftop in Jacob's strong hold. How did we not fall?! you thought.

"Jacob!"

He switched your position from his arms to his back: "If this doesn't excite you, I don't know what will." he said smugly and just as you hugged his back tighter, he repeated the motion with the rope launcher and down you went.

You were surprised at how strong both Jacob and the rope was as it carried you across the sky, downwards to your house. It took maybe a little over a minute but it felt like more - and it certainly did pump some adrenaline through your veins. You shouted and laughed all the way through which put a different kind of smile on Jacob's lips.

You both almost fell over when you landed, but Jacob grabbed your legs and found his balance. You were right in front of your door, which made you sad as you had the most splendid time in a long while. When he let go of your legs, you only grabbed onto him tighter.

"What's this then?" Jacob smirked as he tried to turn his head around when you didn't let go. He could feel your heart beating on his back and it was still beating like crazy.

"Your grace demands that you carry them into their chambers," you demanded in an exaggerated way and smirked backed. "You asked for this, I told you to stop calling me those names."

"Very well," he sighed in defeat and adjusted your form on his back, then went to open the door. If this was all it took to make you smile, then so be it.

Jacob carried you all the way upstairs to your room but instead of dropping you on your bed right away, he somehow effortlessly switched back to the bridal hold.

Your smirk dropped from your lips as you noticed that you were trapped in his hold. He gazed at you for a while -your disheveled hair, your beautiful eyes, crimson cheeks that matched your perfect lips- and then slowly lowered you onto your bed, but as he did, he carefully climbed on top of you; he gave you enough time and space to tell him to stop or push him off, but you didn't.

Jacob moved closer until your noses touched and quietly asked: "May I have my kiss now?"

Without hesitation, but slowly, you lifted your head up and connected your lips with his in a soft, passionate kiss; he, however, immediately grabbed your face and pressed you back onto the bed.

Incredible was one way to put it, arousing was another, but you truly couldn't find the words to explain how utterly delicious that kiss was. Your hands were quick to find their place, cupping his face, his beard an absolute delight to feel on your fingertips.

Just as everything was getting more heated, however, there was a calling of your name along with Jacob's from downstairs.

"Damn..." you cursed, breathless.

"We'll continue this darling... later." Jacob smirked devilishly, he was as out of breath as you were. He quickly jumped off you while you called your father.

You both quickly fixed your attire and went out of your room to greet your father. A sour expression settled on your face, which Jacob noticed. He quickly but gently pushed you against a wall and gave you another toe curling kiss.

"Thank you, Jacob..." you managed to say when he detached his lips from yours. "For today- for everything, really. Much as you infuriated me, you also made this past month more bearable."

"My my, is this a confession?" Jacob said with a brow up.

"Don't get cocky," you pushed him off and went downstairs.

Maybe it was a confession, maybe it wasn't, nevertheless it would be better if you kept it to yourself, for you'll be on your way back to Paris in two weeks.

... But then again, you could make your last two weeks more interesting. He said it himself, you two weren't done yet - it wouldn't hurt to have a little fun and make this a memorable trip, right?

[x-heesy]

Europe is lost, America lost, London lost

Still we are clamouring victory

All that is meaningless rules

We have learned nothing from history

The people are dead in their lifetimes

Dazed in the shine of the streets

But look how the traffic's still moving

System's too slick to stop working

Business is good, and there's bands every night in the pubs

And there's two for one drinks in the clubs

And we scrubbed up well

Washed off the work and the stress

And now all we want's some excess

Better yet, a night to remember that we'll soon forget

All of the blood that was bled for these cities to grow

All of the bodies that fell

The roots that were dug from the earth

So these games could be played

I see it tonight in the stains on my hands

The buildings are screaming

I can't ask for help though, nobody knows me

Hostile, worried, lonely

We move in our packs and these are the rights we were born to

Working and working so we can be all that we want

Then dancing the drudgery off

But even the drugs have got boring

Well, sex is still good when you get it

To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach

To each a dream, don't weep, don't scream

Just keep it in, keep sleeping in

What am I gonna do to wake up?

I feel the cost of it pushing my body

Like I push my hands into pockets

And softly I walk and I see it, this is all we deserve

The wrongs of our past have resurfaced

Despite all we did to vanquish the traces

My very language is tainted

With all that we stole to replace it with this

I am quiet

Feeling the onset of riot

Riots are tiny, though

Systems are huge

Traffic keeps moving, proving there's nothing to do

'Cause it's big business, baby, and its smile is hideous

Top down violence, and structural viciousness

Your kids are dosed up on medical sedatives

But don't worry 'bout that, man, worry 'bout terrorists

The water level's rising! The water level's rising!

The animals, the elephants, the polarbears are dying!

Stop crying, start buying, but what about the oil spill?

Shh, no one likes a party pooping spoil sport

Massacres, massacres, massacres, new shoes

Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight

By those employed to protect them

Live porn streamed to your pre-teens' bedrooms

Glass ceiling, no headroom

Half a generation live beneath the breadline

Oh, but it's happy hour on the high street

Friday night at last lads, my treat!

All went fine 'til that kid got glassed in the last bar

Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou

It was madness, road ran red, pure claret

And about them immigrants? I can't stand them

Mostly, I mind my own business

They're only coming over here to get rich, it's a sickness

England! England! Patriotism!

And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?

It goes work all your life for a pittance

Maybe you'll make it to manager, pray for a raise

Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar

The anarchists are desperate for something to smash

Scandalous pictures of fashionable rappers

In glamourous magazines, who's dating who?

Politico cash in an envelope

Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits

Now it's back to the House of Lords with slapped wrists

They abduct kids who fuck the heads of dead pigs

But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs

Jail him, he's the criminal

Jail him, he's the criminal

It's the bored-of-it-all generation

The product of product placement and manipulation

Shoot 'em up, brutal, duty of care

Come on, new shoes, beautiful hair, bullshit

Saccharine ballads and selfies and selfies and selfies

And here's me outside the palace of me

Construct a self and psyhcosis

Meanwhile the people were dead in their droves

And no, nobody noticed, well, some of them noticed

You could tell by the emoji they posted

Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes

The lights are so nice and bright and let's dream

But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream

What am I gonna do to wake up?

We are lost, we are lost, we are lost

And still nothing will stop, nothing pauses

We have ambitions and friendships and our courtships to think of

Divorces to drink off the thought of

The money, the money, the oil

The planet is shaking and spoiled

And life is a plaything

A garment to soil

The toil, the toil

I can't see an ending at all

Only the end

How is this something to cherish?

When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts

To make room for alien structures

Develop, develop

And kill what you find if it threatens you

No trace of love in the hunt for the bigger buck

Here in the land where nobody gives a fuck

Europe Is Lost by Kae Tempest

[lov3nerdstuff]

Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 5.1}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend… and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student, blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 5.4k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

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There was a major difference in the way Robin approached this summer break in contrast to the last years. The dread that usually overcame her even before she stepped onto the train back to London was still very much present and accompanied by a deep sadness at the prospect of not being able to have coffee with Snape every night, but she didn’t feel quite as desperate about the length of the break. This year, she actually had something to look forward to.

It had come as a surprise on her last evening at school, when she had been talking to Snape about summer plans, that he had handed her a letter that had originally been addressed to him. At first Robin had been understandably confused why he’d given it to her, but after a moment of explanation, things had started to make sense. It was an invitation to a one-day conference in London, taking place two weeks into the holidays. According to him, it was an ‘insignificant’ event with a series of lectures and discussions about anything related to the overall subject of potion making. While the invitation was meant for Snape himself, he had made it rather clear that he had no interest in attending and thus wanted to give Robin the opportunity to listen to some of the lectures if she cared to go in his place. Obviously she’d been absolutely delighted by the possibility, and assured him that she would do her very best to lay low and make a good impression for once. He’d told her where to be on which day, then spoken a brief warning about some people he couldn’t stand but who likely would be attending, and at last they had changed the topic, talking about the book Robin had just finished that day.

On the train ride home the next day however, she had wondered if he really didn’t want to attend or if he merely wanted to give her the chance to go in his place, but seeing as she couldn’t answer that question, she had let it go after a while of pondering. But she did take pride in the fact that he obviously believed she would understand whatever would be talked about at this conference, and even more that he trusted her to not embarrass him in his absence. She would definitely try to learn as much as possible from this event, and be noticed as little as possible in return.

The two weeks until the anticipated day passed by slowly, but with something to look forward to, it wasn’t quite as dreadful as wishing and waiting for the end of the holidays already. Robin did actually end up telling her parents about the conference a few days before it would take place, and they seemed rather delighted about the fact that Robin was indulging in the same kind of academic endeavours they themselves thrived in so much. To be honest, Robin had merely told them because spending the entire day in London meant that she would be home very late if she took the train after the last lecture would be over, and she didn’t want them to worry. They however seemed fairly unbothered by the fact that their daughter would be out and about in the middle of the night, and Robin gave up on trying to get them to take interest in her person as much as they did in her 'career’. Thus they merely talked about proper behavior at an event like this, how to ask questions without being rude or make suggestions without sounding braggy, and Robin did in fact appreciate the advice for once. Who knew… maybe it applied to the wizarding world just as much as to the muggle world.

When the day finally arrived, Robin was nervous and delighted at once. Seeing as she would indeed have to stick to public transportation like the muggle she was pretending to be during the holidays, she opted for a more mundane choice of outfit too. Still, she wanted to make a good impression, and thus she chose to wear dressier clothes for once, which turned out more of a challenge than anticipated, due to an underwhelming amount of options. Eventually she ended up with a black, high waisted tube skirt that ended a little higher than a hand’s width above her knees, and an olive green blouse with long bishop sleeves which she tugged into the skirt. Paired with some dressy flats and her usual leather backpack, Robin deemed it fancy enough. Her mom also gave her approval, calling it 'appropriate enough’ for someone Robin’s age, and thus she was off to London even before it had properly started to dawn.

Finding the place where the conference would take place was actually easier than she had expected, especially if one considered that she had to rely on an ordinary, non-magical street map of London to find the correct building. This rule forbidding underage magic outside of Hogwarts was bullshit, in her eyes, but she also figured that not everyone was being as responsible with their magic as she was… so it maybe did make sense for some people. After finding the right building however, the next obstacle was being allowed in.

“Can I help you?” The first person she tried to simply walk past, once inside the entrance hall, already stepped into her path.

“I have an invitation for the conference.” Robin replied as self-assuredly as she could, portraying nothing but calmness on the outside while yet on the inside she felt rather overwhelmed by the whole thing. Too many people, too many strangers especially, and in addition to that a place she wasn’t familiar with and a situation nobody believed she belonged into. Great…

“May I see it, please?” At least the man was polite, even if a bit too condescending for Robin’s liking. Without protesting though, she grabbed the invitation card out of her backpack and held it under his nose with an indifferent expression.

“I apologise for the inconvenience, Miss. The conference room is on the third floor. Just follow the signs and you should find it with ease.” He said after but a brief glimpse at the paper, and stepped out of Robin’s way while pointing her to the staircase.

It really was beyond easy to find the correct room by following the signs, but before she even could set foot into it, she was held up yet again by a man sitting at a table in front of the room.

“Good morning.” Robin actually addressed him first, with a polite smile, as she came to stand in front of the table. Somehow she had rather hoped that she could just sneak into this like she had done in some lectures at university in the past years… but obviously that wasn’t the case.

“How can I help you, Missy?” The older man raised his eyebrows at her with a small smile, and Robin found herself conflicted by his disrespectful way of addressing her in contrast to his kind face.

“I am here for the conference.” She stated calmly though, and handed the invite to the man in front of her.

His eyebrows rose even higher as he read over the card, before he finally turned back to Robin with a surprised face. “What does a lass like you have to do with Severus Snape? You surely know that this is his invite, don’t you?”

“Of course I am aware of that.” She bit down the snarl and kept her tone polite and neutral like the adult she was trying to be here. “I’m his… friend. He couldn’t attend and therefore sent me in his place.” There was no need to tell him that Snape had called them an old bunch of idiots and hadn’t wanted to come here because it would bore him out of his mind, was there? No, certainly not.

“From what’s said about him, he doesn’t have a lot of friends I believe.” The man mused, but handed the paper back to Robin with a smile nonetheless. “Well, he still seems to have a decent taste in people if he sent you here today, huh? What’s your name? For the list of attendees, and the name tag.”

Robin almost would’ve snorted at the statement… Snape and good with people? Best joke she’d heard in weeks. But at least she wasn’t questioned any more than that. She would’ve hated to elaborate on her 'friendship’ with her professor. One sided as it was, especially…

“Robin Mitchell.” She answered with a small smile, and a moment later accepted the sticky tag he was holding out to her. Without questioning why it only read her last name, she stuck it onto her blouse a little below her collar bone, and then was granted entrance to the room at last.

If she’d had any hope to just not be noticed before, it definitely was gone by now. The room was crowded with wizards of all shapes and sizes, mostly of the older generations, and Robin spotted exactly two females other than herself. Age and gender… first things that drew quite a few eyes to her. But then there also was the small but very obvious fact that she was the only one not wearing robes. Hell, even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t have sat in the train for two hours looking like a kid dressed up for Halloween and not panic. Well… she could’ve changed once she got here. Too late for that idea now.

Many eyes followed her indeed as she walked across the room to sit down as far to the back as possible. At least there were many people scattered around the room, chatting and laughing currently; surely they would just forget that Robin was here at some point. Hopefully, if they didn’t ignore her, these people would actually treat her with some professionalism at least, even if she looked like she could be their grandchild. Well, at least she got why Snape had called them a bunch of old idiots now.

After her initial discomfort, the situation improved (fairly little at first) once the actual event began. Robin tried to somewhat keep up with the smalltalk the man next to her was trying to make, but he ended up spending more time staring at her mostly bare legs than listening to what she said in return, so she eventually just gave up on trying to converse in the first place. The lectures however were well worth the trouble, as Robin discovered, and she took plenty of notes about anything that seemed interested or useful to remember. In fact, she did understand most of what was said and even recognized a lot of it from her extensive readings. Events like this generally seemed to function more by knowledge than by experience, and Robin had theoretical knowledge in the plenty. Thus she actually had a pretty good time for the majority of the lectures, as it allowed her to completely ignore the fact that other people were present in the same room.

Only when they took a break at noon, she was approached by some people who probably only wanted to be kind and involve her in the conversation, which however served to make Robin feel rather nervous in the beginning. They asked her about her young age, of course, and she tried to politely convince them that intelligence wasn’t a matter of age, and neither was passion for a subject. At least the lunch break was spent with conversation this way, rather than awkward silence, and Robin actually found herself enjoying the polite and professional conversations they engaged in soon. Throughout the talking she got involved in however, she tried to share as little information about herself and her knowledge about potions as possible, for she feared that she would only embarrass herself anyway if she said something wrong. She was here to listen, not to talk.

That however changed drastically in the afternoon. After one particularly long lecture about medical potions and strategies of use, the following discussion was a furnace of opinions and arguments. Robin merely listened to the many arguments and counterarguments in silence, just as she’d been doing for the past few hours, and kept her own thoughts to herself. That worked rather well for her, right until the man who had held the lecture in the first place, Kenneth Crowe, said something undeniably wrong and everybody in the room seemed to agree with him. Instantly the desire to at least ask about it jumped to the very front of Robin’s mind, but she bit the insides of her cheeks to stay quiet. It wasn’t her place to say anything at all, and definitely not to correct a well renowned professional in the field. But it was such an obvious mistake… such a stupid but important little detail. And leaving it in the wrong might actually result in very much real consequences for people, especially in the medical field. 

Crowe had introduced a new kind of healing potion in his lecture, a revolutionary invention of his that might cure yet untreatable curses… and Robin believed to know that it wouldn’t work. At least not in the way he was suggesting. Bloody hell, she just wanted to tell them, but she was also desperately scared to say something stupid. It wasn’t her place to speak up, it wasn’t her goddamn place to doubt these people!!! But the knowledge that she might be right sufficed to torture her mind more with every second she didn’t at least voice the doubt. At last Robin’s mind won over her churning stomach and racing heart. She raised her hand, was called on almost immediately, and after one deep and shaky breath, she started explaining to a room full of professionals why they were wrong about the subject.

“I… would like to ask a question.” She started, hoping that her criticism wouldn’t come off as such if she phrased it this way. “You, uh… You stated that the petals of the Varilion flower are a key ingredient, and so is the essence of Canticor, yes?”

“Yes. And?” Crowe looked down at Robin from his pedestal with a humored, but undeniably deriding smile. He probably thought that she didn’t even understand a word of what they were currently dealing with… oh, how wrong he was. A bit of the reluctance to possibly insult this man fell off Robin’s mind at the stupid look on his face alone, and she decided to continue more directly.

“I just wanted to be sure I didn’t misunderstand you.” She replied with a polite little smile that was born out of her newly arising wish to wipe his own smile off his stupid face. “Because as far as I’m aware, Varilion –as a plant in the family of nocturnal vinca breeds– would very likely cancel out the effects of the Canticor which are needed here. Without the Canticor however, the entire product would likely be unstable and thus lacking the functionality you have described.”

“That’s ridiculous, I tested the potion myself and it was perfectly stable. You shouldn’t make assumptions like that without prior knowledge of the subject, child. This potion will be perfectly stable.” He almost snapped back, and a few people frowned at his admittedly harsh reply. Robin didn’t let it impress her at all; she was just getting started. Somehow, now that the dam was broken, she really didn’t mind speaking up all that much anymore.

“Well, it is stable if the potion is made in a common testing quantity as opposed to an average production size. If one would try to make a sufficient amount of it in order to be able to give it to a human being with the desired healing result, one would run into severe problems, seeing as the Varilion and the Canticor start canceling each other out at an amount that is way smaller than what would be needed indeed. Thus it is not possible to use this formula to even make enough of the potion for one single person. Which, in return, renders the potion quite useless.” People stared at Robin with all kinds of mixed and shocked expressions as she spoke, some whispering and turning pages, but she used the opportunity of having the word already to lean just a bit further out of what she had thought to be her place. “However, seeing as the core problem is merely the radically dominating nature of the vinca breed in the Varilion, I would suggest replacing it with Plangentine. As another nocturnal flower with almost the same properties, as far as I’m aware, it might make a functional replacement even in larger quantities. But that, of course, is only my humble opinion. Thank you.”

With that she shut her mouth, leaned back in her chair, and observed how about thirty jaws dropped. Geez, it was hard not to smirk. This really shouldn’t be so much fun… What she had done wasn’t exactly considered polite, even if she had phrased it politely. Her parents would be disappointed. Snape however would likely be proud. Robin decided to focus on the latter.

For the long moment that followed, nobody said anything at all, and people merely seemed to think about what Robin had suggested. When the discussion was finally continued however, every single person who contributed something spoke in favor of Robin’s opinion or at least seemed to accept it as correct. Thank goodness… she would’ve hated to feel so smug and then be proven wrong. Thus, seeing as she had done her part in voicing her doubt and wiping the stupid smile off the man’s face, Robin went back to simply listening to what was said, and meanwhile noted down the discussed healing potion in her journal, with her own suggested change. She’d have to ask Snape about it when she went back to school. Maybe they could even test it, for fun.

The rest of the afternoon flew by just as the morning had, but with significantly more glances at Robin. One time she was even directly asked for her opinion on something, which freaked her out quite a bit on the inside at least, but she still was able to give a reply everyone seemed to be accepting as a contribution as valuable as any other person’s. Maybe she had finally gotten herself out of the grandchild box in their minds after all.

After the last lecture was over, fairly late in the evening, the entire group of attendees was asked to come to the podium to pose for a photograph. At first, Robin had respectfully stepped aside to let the real attendees take the stage, but upon multiple people insisting that she had played an important role in this meeting, she had found herself among the group as well. Right in the front. Definitely not as subtle as she’d planned to be today, but seeing as she was a good head shorter than almost everyone else, it did actually make sense to put her up front. Once all pictures were taken, Robin planned to head home, but she was quickly (and more or less against her will) pulled into a discussion about the very same healing potion once more. Now, in a smaller group of far less hostile people, she felt more comfortable with repeating her suggestion and explaining how she had gotten to the realization in the first place. Many people asked for her name, her age, her profession… and some went even further and asked for her opinion on all kinds of topics related to potions and even herbology. Robin did her best to answer with knowledge and educated guesses, but seeing as she was actually taken seriously by the people who bothered to talk to her in the first place, she also didn’t hesitate to say when she didn’t know about something. In those latter cases, she asked the person she was speaking to for suggestions on books or articles on the topic, so that she could one day maybe answer their question on a more profound basis. Finally, some time after eleven at night, she made for the train back to Oxford with a long list of things to read up on, and an even longer one of people she had left an impression with.

… … …

The days after the conference were as dreadful as the summer usually was, and any opportunity to make something out of the free time stayed ridiculously absent. Thus Robin was bored out of her mind even more quickly than usual, therefore spent more time reading than likely was good for her, and generally found herself desperately wishing to be able to return to school already. Every bit the usual summer.

After two weeks of this mind numbing madness however, Robin’s days became a little more bearable with an unexpected turn of events. She was sitting at breakfast, her parents about to leave for the day, when her mom came back into the kitchen to hand Robin a letter, saying it looked like her friends from school had finally thought of her after all. Robin didn’t have the heart nor the time to tell her that she didn’t even have friends, so she just took the letter out of her mom’s hand with a quiet thank you, shrugged at the question who it was from and merely tossed it onto a stack of books in feigned indifference. Then she wished her mom and dad a nice day at work, and continued to sip on her black coffee.

However, the very second the front door fell shut and the house silent in return, Robin had the letter in her hands again and flipped it over to see her name written on the envelope in the familiar spidery cursive she’d missed seeing in the past few weeks. Her heart skipped a beat, and she didn’t know if she should be scared or excited about this letter. Both, probably. Without wasting another second, she opened the envelope with a kitchen knife and fiddled a folded piece of parchment out of it. Yup, definitely scared and excited at once. But if she was in trouble, it surely would’ve been an official school letter, right? Not just an average envelope with nothing but her name on it… bloody hell, her heartbeat was louder than the silence around her. With a deep breath, she unfolded the letter at last.

Miss Mitchell.

You might find yourself wondering what led me to write to you in between terms, and you will find the main answer to that in the envelope with this letter.

Robin stopped reading at that point and took another look into the envelope she had carelessly dropped onto the counter. There was another piece of paper in it, folded in half as well, but Robin could already tell by the look of it that it was a newspaper cutout. Once she unfolded it, she found herself both smiling and feeling too warm in the face at once. It was the photograph that had been taken at the conference, with a short article beneath it. It was nothing special, just a little text about how many people had attended and which topics had been discussed, and thus Robin found herself looking at the moving photograph for a longer moment instead. Really, she’d known that she had somewhat stood out from the crowd, but the picture made it undeniably evident. About fifty much older people in thick and flowing robes and with the most serious faces, and Robin right in the middle with her short skirt, victorian style blouse and a small smile. Oh dear… she almost dreaded going back to Snape’s letter. He surely would be complaining about her choice of clothes, but she honestly hadn’t known better. Her attire would’ve been perfectly ordinary in the muggle world. Oh well… at least the photograph was a lovely reminder of the admittedly amazing day she’d had at the conference. Careful not to crease the picture any more than the folds it already had, she put it into her most recent journal and then finally went back to the letter.

Miss Mitchell.

You might find yourself wondering what led me to write to you in between terms, and you will find the answer to that in the envelope together with this letter. The picture was published in the Daily Prophet the day after the conference. This cutout was sent to me a few days later, by an acquaintance who you should have met at the event, Patrick Isaac. I assume you are not keeping up with the news, not with the Prophet at least, which is why I decided to forward the picture to you directly. Perhaps you would like to keep the cutout, you certainly have more use for it than I do.

Furthermore it might interest you to know that Mister Isaac, together with the picture, sent me a fairly long letter to gush over a certain young witch by the name of Robin Mitchell who attended the conference with him and who obviously was rumored to be a friend of mine. I will spare you the details of his disconcertingly detailed elaborations, but overall it appears that you have earned yourself quite a few admirers among the attendees, if the other six letters that I have received in your praise are any indicator of that. It seems that you have surprised me yet again, which indeed does not surprise me at all.

However I still would like to know more about the 'remarkable incident’ involving a certain new potion that was discussed. Multiple people reference it in the context of your astonishing intellect, yet without ever elaborating on the issue. What did you do this time that rendered competent professionals quite so speechless? I expect your timely reply, seeing as you do not have further plans for the summer anyway.

Snape

Robin frowned at the last few lines, then sighed to herself and dropped the letter on the counter to make another cup of coffee first. Well, at least writing a letter would give her something to do. And writing a letter to Snape would give her something enjoyable to do indeed. A smile spread on her lips as she set the kettle on the stove. He could’ve waited until after the holidays to give her the clipping, and even to ask her about the conference, but he had sent a letter instead and that made Robin smile even more. Maybe, in some reality, he actually enjoyed talking to her too. Seriously enjoyed it, that is, not just because she kept on talking to him first. Once the kettle whistled, she added the boiling water to her instant coffee and then balanced the letter, the envelope, her book, her journal AND the coffee mug up the stairs and towards the desk in her room. She had a letter to write after all.

… … …

Robin received the next letter three weeks after she had written to Snape about her experiences at the conference. She’d been careful in her explanations to always leave some things unsaid so she would have something to tell him in person, but she had elaborated on the conversations she’d had with people he might possibly know.

This time his letter was dropped off by an owl on a Sunday evening, which almost gave Robin’s dad a seizure when the poor animal landed on the windowsill next to his armchair. Somehow muggles just couldn’t get used to the post being delivered by owls… People have used pigeons to deliver messages for decades; what was so weird about owls now?!

“Oh look, it has the same illegible handwriting on it as the last one.” Her mom smiled as she picked up the envelope that again just had Robin’s name written on it. “How come your friend didn’t write to you in the last years?”

“We, uh… we’ve only been friends since rather recently.” Robin replied evasively and snatched the envelope out of her mother’s hand. “And his handwriting isn’t illegible! It’s just… kinda squiggly.”

“If you say so, sweetie.” Her mom shrugged, and turned back towards the living room. “You must have a lot of practice deciphering his handwriting if you find it legible.”

“We work together. A lot.” Robin mused and thumbed over the rough corners of the envelope. “On… essays.”

“Well, if I had to grade his essays, he surely wouldn’t come very far.” Her dad replied with a snarky expression while he didn’t even look up from his book. “I’m surprised that you write essays in that school in the first place. Not just bunnies in top hats then, huh?”

“You are who wouldn’t come very far.” Robin whispered to herself with a roll of her eyes as she made for her room with her letter still clasped tightly in hand, not even honoring her father’s remark with a reply. Honestly, her dad wouldn’t understand a single word about anything magical at all, seeing as he made every attempt not to, nor would he ever understand that she wasn’t attending a clown’s college but a serious magical academy. And… oh bloody hell, he would probably hate Snape with a passion. Well, good thing they never had to meet. Hopefully. Unfortunately. Ugh… that crush of hers wasn’t getting any better, rather on the opposite. But she usually could ignore it pretty well these days.

With a sigh she sat down on the carpeted floor, leaning against the post of her bed as she opened the envelope at last. This letter was a lot shorter than the first, but she didn’t mind. The sole fact that he had replied even though he didn’t have to was enough to make her skin crawl in excitement.

Miss Mitchell.

I cannot believe that you told off one of the best renowned potioneers in the country, and obviously were in the right to do so. What I would give to have been a witness of the incident indeed; I have always had a rather strong distaste for that man. You will need to tell me more on the specifics of the circumstances once term starts.

Furthermore I have come to the decision that I would like you to assist me in my practical work and studies from now, seeing as I deem any other mode of teaching you insufficient and thus pointless. Your knowledge is already on an acceptable level, as you have once more proven at the conference, and I believe it is time that your practical capabilities keep up with both my standards for your work and your own. You will assist me in my work, and in return I will do my best to teach you everything I possibly can. Seeing as you have run out of books of mine to read, I believe this addition to our already prevalent nightly meetings to be in your best interest as well. I am looking forward to the new term.

Snape

Seconds ticked by and Robin stared at the letter in her hands with a positive numbness, until at last her lips curled into a smile, then a grin, and at last she felt an overwhelming excitement at the opportunity that had just opened up in front of her. Well, and the fact that he had in all seriousness written 'already prevalent nightly meetings’ without any care in the world. It was amazing how absolutely serious and yet casual he was about it. A pleasant shudder ran up Robin’s spine, all the way into her neck. He couldn’t mind her presence all that much if he suggested her to spend even more time perched into the minimal space of the laboratory with him, could he?

She had been helping out in the lab on a few occasions since their endeavour with the restored page in her third year, but it by far hadn’t been a regular thing nor one that could be described as real practical experience. While she’d been desperately wanting and wishing to do this kind of practical work with Snape again, for a multitude of reasons, she had never actually believed that she might. And now she would. God, she couldn’t wait for the holidays to be over already.

______________________________

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[rebelwrites]

Chapter Nine: Pancakes and Regrets

Summary // Chapter list / Masterlist

A/N as always I love to know your thoughts

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The sunlight beaming through the gap in the curtains, brought Xavier peacefully out of his slumber, he let his eyes adjust to the light that flooded the room before looking down to a sleeping Brooke, her limbs had tangled themselves with his and he couldn’t help but smile. This wasn’t the first time they had woken up like this, but something felt different this time. Something in the air had changed. Maybe Xavier needed to go on the path of self destruction to realise what was truly important. He knew Brooke needed to heal in her own way and on her own time, and that it was going to take baby steps to get there. But in this moment all that mattered was that she had started to trust Xavier and felt safe around him and that was good enough for him at the moment.

“Morning” Brooke whispered, not wanting to break the little bubble of comfort that they had created.

“Hey sleepy,” Xavier smiled, kissing the top of her head.

“Thank you for last night Xav,” Brooke whispered.

“Anytime my bumble bee,” Xavier said, squeezing her tight.

“Question” Brooke laughed “why bumble bee?”

“I did wonder when you were going to ask about that” Xavier smiled as he played with the ends of her hair. “Well everyone has always called you Bee, ever since the day you were born. But I wanted to be different, I didn’t want to call you what everyone else was, so when you were brought home from the hospital you were dressed in his black and yellow baby grow thingy that my mom and dad got you. And I dunno it just reminded me of a bee and the name just stuck. I may have always told people off if they called you bumble bee”

“That is cute,” Brooke smiled looking up at Xavier. “I don’t want to but I best get up and get a shower”

“Meet me downstairs when you are done, it’s pancake day” Xavier smirked

“I know” Brooke giggled before leaving his room leaving Xavier laying in the middle of the bed, with a grin on his face.

He was happy and didn’t care who knew it. As he rolled out of bed he heard a knock on his door before it slowly opened revealing his dad. Who took in the butterfly stitches on his son’s forehead and the dark shadow of the bruise that was forming around his right eye and sighed.

“We need to speak about last night, son” He said leaning against the door frame.

“I will be down in five, meet you in the kitchen yeah” Xavier nodded, gone was his cheery mood.

He knew this was coming, he knew his actions would cause repercussions with the family. He was hoping they gave him a bit more time than first thing in the morning to discuss it. Running his hands through his messy blonde hair, he used his fingers to pull out some of the knots before grabbing a hair band and pulled the golden locks into a messy bun. Grabbing whatever clothes he could find before he headed downstairs to face whatever his consequences from the night before were.

As he walked into the kitchen he saw everyone sitting around the table, with just one look on their faces he knew he was going to get a grilling about the previous night.

“Look before you start going off at me, at least let me have a coffee and a smoke first” He mumbled as he poured himself a black coffee before heading out onto the deck.

As soon as he finished his cigarette, he made his way to the table.

“Son you acted like a child last night” His father sighed looking at his only son with disappointment “going to the club to get beat up on purpose, leaving us all extremely worried as the last time this happened. Well you know”

“I realise that now” Xavier sighed, not looking his father in the eyes.

“Xav we understand okay” Craig said putting his hand on Xavier’s forearm “This isn’t an easy situation to be in for any of us”

“I am truly sorry” Xavier said looking up with tears in his eyes, this was his family so he didn’t feel ashamed of looking weak to them. “I know my actions last night were definitely not of a future president of the club, sorry to have let you down”

“Son, you know we are here for you” Alex said softly “And next time you need to release some anger come find your old man yeah”

“Thanks pops” Xavier smiled as he stood up, he knew everyone in this room had his back, and if he needed to fall back on them for support he could. As he knew full well a person can only take so much before they crumble into pieces. “Now who is hungry”

“Thought you would never start breakfast” His mum winked “I’m starved”

“Bro I just want to ask, how do you do it?” James asked Xavier as the two of them started breakfast.

“Do what?” Xavier questioned looking puzzled.

“Brooke has only been home for a week now, yet she trusts you the most” James said, with some sadness in his voice. He was once close with his sister and wanted nothing more to have that back but she spent more time with Xavier than anyone else.

“Honestly I don’t know” Xavier nodded, he didn’t need to say it, everyone knew he was developing feelings for Brooke.

“I think it is the same as when they were kids” Lily smiled “Always inseparable and always pulling bloody pranks” Xavier laughed at the memories of some of the pranks they pulled.

Brooke felt lighter this morning and she couldn’t work out why, but she hadn’t felt this good in a while so she didn’t question it as she walked into the kitchen.

“Morning” She smiled as she headed straight for the coffee machine, pouring herself a large mug of the caffeinated goodness.

“So sweetheart, we have a surprise for you” Craig smiled pulling his daughter into a hug. “I know you mentioned about seeing your friends and the family that raised you and it got me thinking. I really want to meet the people that have looked after my baby the last couple of years”

“Okay” Brooke nodded.

“So I may have got in contact with them yesterday and booked flights for them to come and see you” He smiled. “I believe your adopted parents, brother, Lexi and Nate are coming”

“Really?!” Brooke grinned, “Thank you dad, I can’t wait for you to meet them”

Brooke hid it well, yes she was excited to see everyone again, but there was one person who she was worried about. Nathaniel Baker. Seen as they had a bit of thing going on when she was back in London. But now that she was here there was definitely something going on between her and Xavier and she didn’t know how either of them would act considering they were both alpha males. It could only end in disaster.

“They will be here tomorrow,” Craig smirked.

“I can’t believe it” Brooke gasped hugging her father tight “Thank you so much”

As it was Sunday, there was no club business to deal with so everyone was still gathered around the kitchen table, the plates from breakfast piled in the middle and the coffee was flowing. Brooke sat next to Xavier with her head on his shoulder just taking everything in. This was what she had longed for most of her life. Yes she had a family back in London but they never did things like this, so the fact that Sundays were a family day made Brooke excited.

“So Bee” Alex grinned resting his head on his fists knowing their sunday ride would be complete now “What do you say we go for a ride today, we normally go for a family ride to the lake every sunday”

None of them had seen a grin so wide.

“That sounds amazing,” Brooke beamed as her green eyes shone brighter with excitement. Since she got here she hadn’t got to ride her bike as much as she had liked so this was perfect.

“There is one condition, my little Bumble Bee” Xavier smirked.

“What”

“I get to ride your bike,” He winked.

“Deal” Brooke giggled “But you put so much as a scratch on her I will come for you in your sleep”

“Don’t worry I will be gentle with her” Xavier laughed placing his arm around Brooke’s shoulder, kissing the top of her head as everyone started their own conversations or clearing the breakfast pots.

What he didn’t expect was her next move.

Brooked looked at Xavier, gently placing her fingertips on the dark hue that was forming around his eye, causing him to wince slightly.

“Promise you won’t let yourself get beat up because of the past anymore” She whispered looking into his blue eyes.

“Promise” He whispered letting his eyes close, taking in her gentle touch.

[cruecifymesixx]

Love and Leather /part eighty one/

Word Count: 8.1k

A/N: To the anon that said Vanity is a sloppy, one dimensional character in my inbox the other day, you can eat a bag of dicks and choke :) Enjoy!

Warnings: language, dash of angst

Taglist:   @aryssav , @miserablecunt , @dangerous-like-a-loaded-pistol, @fandomshit6000, @anntheboneless,  @justjodeye, @supernaturalvikingwhore, @hi-my-name-is-riley, @extremesadnerding, @thatbandchick39, @awkwrdcait, @countrygirlswonderland, @awesomealmostdopestudent,  , @tashy-bear, @krazykatkay456, @terror-triplet, @shouttatthedevill @beachystars, @rodriguez025, @kickstart-myheart-sixx, @s-outhie, @anxious-diabetic, @awkwardblackgirls, @rockersbox, @brooklyn-antiques-deactivated20, @shamelessobsessions, @jerseytaint, @lilytalebi, @criminalyetminimal, @motley-queen, @trapt-in-a-dream, @lunamadhatter99, @broke-n-bitchy @thanks2pete,  @lovesick-heart0, @keepcalm-and-beyou, @miriampraez, @teenwolflover28, @lilyhw1, @motherloovebone, @random-internet-user-4471, @falcon-arrows, @talranocchia2001,  @waywardprincess666, @malibubarbievince, @iluvmesomemarvelndc, @zoenicoles, @vamprlestat, @supersoldierballerina​, @primal-screamer @electradestiny, @marshbev, @n0-sh0rtage-0f-faults​, @cruebaby​, @ggorehorror​, @valentines-in-london​, @miss2001babe​, @nassauartist​  @cmft-jr-winchester​, @bokkie92​, @notworthyofyou1120​ @xrosegoldwolfx​, @lauravic​, @mgkobsessed​, @chaoticvybe​,  @kellysimagines​ @thoughtsoftheantagonist​ @marvelismylifffe​, @sleepyjunhong​  @meetthesixxter​ @sparxx27​ @gingerspicetalks​ @kaitieskidmore1​ @unknownoblivion​ @nevergoodenuffbutokaaayyy​ @sublimeprincesswasteland​ @kylieinwonderland​ @haileynicoleseavey17​ @lavendersoundbarrier​ @youretheonlyonewhomakesme​, @xxisxxisxxis​, @dogmom2014​, @cruesixxlover1991​, @xpoisonousrosesx​, @cranberrirolls​, @m0rnlngstar​, @love-struck-aries​, @findingmyths​, @i-want-to-shoot-myself​, @arianareirg​, @fentitrbl​, @dogmom2014​ @motleycrueprincess​, @redlipscrystalskies14​, @samanthadegaro​, @oskea93​, @idkmanhereisshitilike​, @idumpyourgrass​, @makaelahdelvalle​, @brideofdraculana​, @patheticgay69​

~January 26th, 1996~

Our heads turned when the door opened up and in cane our new therapist, "Someone move over to the chair please." She stated as I got up, Nikki's hand falling off my lap. I sat in the deep blue chair adjacent to the couch Nikki was on.

"I am Dr. Crystal Peterson." She smiled, pearly white teeth showing through a plum red shade of lipstick as she stuck out her hand for me to shake.

"Vanity."

"Nikki."

She nodded as she put a notepad and a folder down on the table. She put on a pair of glasses that were connected to a beaded necklace, "So, tell me a little about yourself Nikki."

He glanced at me for a second before turning back to Crystal, "Uh...okay-" he cleared his throat with a cough, "Um, I'm in a band. I'm from San Jose but I moved around a lot before I ended up here in San Jose. I play bass in my band and write songs. I like photography um....yeah. That's it." Nikki scratched the top of his head awkwardly.

"Vanity?"

I rolled my eyes, "I was born and raised in Texas to a wealthy family. Moved to LA when I was in my twenties. I work at a diner as hostess. I like shopping and traveling. I have a daughter-"

"We, we have a daughter." Nikki butted in.

"Sorry, we have a daughter. She'll be six in May and her name is Arianna."

Crystal nodded, "Vanity, can you tell me something about Nikki? Anything."

"Um...I don't know-"

"You don't know anything about him?" She cut me off as I stared at her.

"No, I didn't mean it like that. Um, Nikki he uh...he collects knifes and guns?"

"Interesting hobby."

Nikki shrugged, "They're cool."

"Nikki? Can you tell me something about Vanity? Anything you want as well."

Nikki chuckled to himself, "She has my bands name tattooed on her ass cheek."

I glared and rolled my eyes, "Nikki, that's private."

"We're in therapy Van. Relax. Have some fun." Nikki retorted as he reached for his water to take a sip.

"Your paperwork says that you two are not married, but we're engaged and the span of you relationship has lasted ten years give or take? That correct?"

"Off and on." I shrugged, "But really, our relationship didn't start until he got sober. And we were only together for a year and engaged for like eight months."

"But have known each other for around ten? Yes?" We nodded.

"Okay, well let's get to work. "So I see on the checklist uh.....there's quite a few checked off: improving communication, resolving conflicts and disagreements, overcoming adultery, to understand one another better, reducing tension, learning "good" ways to fight, and to stop hurting each other. That's half the list and more than what I've seen in a while."

Awesome.

"Vanity, can you describe your fights with Nikki? Give me all the gory details, it's okay."

I nodded, "Um, it just depends what we're fighting about. Sometimes we just bicker all day over nothing. Other times we are in each other's faces screaming and yelling. Just depends."

"Can you give me an example of bickering and then the latter?"

"Okay, like for example we'll go back and forth about who has to pick up Arianna after school. We'll use snarky comments, uh poke fun at one another. I don't really count our bickering as fighting. I think it's fun."

I knew that was the wrong thing to say by the way Crystal tilted her head, "I mean-I mean it's entertaining. I know it shouldn't be but it is. It's just us."

Crystal looked over at Nikki who sat up a bit taller, "Do you count the bickering as fighting?"

Nikki shook his head, "No, no I don't. I think uh it's normal for us? Like Van said, it's entertaining. Yeah, she's annoying when she does it but it's whatever. It's kinda like our way of communicating.."

"You're annoying too." I blurted out as she put her hand up to silence us.

"Back to you Vanity, describe the actual fighting then."

I chuckled, "Yeah, it's bad. Really bad. Screaming, yelling, name calling. We're both red in the face. It usually takes one of us leaving for a little bit to simmer down."

"Does it get violent?"

I looked at Nikki, "Um...we don't hit each other. Well, I- describe violent please."

"If I have to describe it that lets me believe yes, your fights do get violent." Crystal pointed out as I sighed.

"Sometimes we shove one another. Or I um slap him across the face but he never hits me. Nikki wouldn't ever do that to me. Um...I suffer from severe anger issues and sometimes I throw things. Sometimes at him, sometimes at the wall behind him. He has punched walls and doors before. We sometimes also have to be pulled apart physically." I explained, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.

"Nikki, do you agree with what Vanity's saying?"

Nikki nodded, rolling his neck "Yeah. I agree. We do get bad at times. Sometimes our fights just get so out of hand neither of us know how to bring it back down to a good level. Like uh, sometimes she'll try to get the last word in but when I'm worked up like that I just can't let her have it. So when she tries to walk away from me, I grab her and pull her back in."

It was quiet for a second, the only sound being the pen Crystal was writing with on the notepad. Nikki and I looked at everything but each other.

"Would you say Vanity listens to you Nikki?"

He laughs, "Fuck no she doesn't." I furrowed my eyebrows and shook my head, "I ask her to do something and she doesn't do it. I ask her not to do something and she keeps doing it."

"That is not true at all!" I laughed at him, "I do too listen to you!"

"Well Vanity, you have to understand this how Nikki feels. You have to consider his feelings as well. Nikki, can you please explain to Vanity how you think she doesn't listen?"

"Gladly-" Nikki glared proudly, "For example, shopping. I ask you not to spend a lot of money-"

"Oh for fucks sake. It's my money. My families money. It's my bank account and your name is nowhere on it so fuck off. And If I want to rack up a three thousand dollar shopping bill then I gladly will." I quickly interrupted, jumping down his throat as he glared at me.

"Anyways, shopping. She spends an outrageous amount of money all the time and never thinks responsibly with her money. That's what it really boils down too. She doesn't think about the future or plan for a rainy day. Granted, she thinks she doesn't need to plan because she has money and that it's always going to be there because it won't. You never know Vanity, the company can go belly up one day and bye bye trust funds."

"And that's my problem to worry about not yours-"

"...and who do you think will be taking care of you?"

I scoffed, "I do not need you to take care of me! I'm not some fucking child, Nikki! You always treat me like I'm clueless and so naive and I'm not! I have a brain and I can think for myself! And figure things out! I have never needed you to take care of me!"

Dr. Crystal cleared her throat to speak up, "I think Nikki might feel pressure due to society to take care of you. Let's strip away everything and get down to the core of it. He is a man and a man provides for everything-"

"Oh cut the sexist crap. It's not about that. It's about him wanting to control what I do! He never lets me do anything!"

"Never let you do anything? Jesus fucking Christ V. You act like I'm some fucking dictator and I'm not. When I got sober, you still drank. I never threw a fit. Hell, I encouraged it because I didn't want to be that guy. You go to work and have a job. If I wanted to be an asshole I would tell you 'No, You're gonna stay home and raise Arianna.' You go out with Clementine and go to the bar and get drinks wearing a skirt that when you bend over, your ass shows. If I wanted to be a controlling piece of shit I wouldn't let you step foot out of the house like that. The clothes you wear, the things you like to do, the way you do your make up, dyeing your hair. If I had a problem with it I would tell you, but I don't V. I want you to be your own person. I don't give a fuck what you do as long as you stay safe and come back to Arianna."

I stared at Nikki, sighing. I was starting to feel like I was the fucking psycho. Not because he was making it seem that way, but because he made everything make sense to me. Nikki, truly does let me do whatever the fuck I want and never throws a fit unless it is harmful to me.

"Any words on what he just said, Vanity?" Crystal questioned as I shook my head and looked down at the carpet.

"So, I see money is a stressful discussion for you two?"

I felt Nikki look at me, waiting for me to speak up but I didn't, "I-I don't know. We do argue about it sometimes. Not because we don't have it, but because we do. We have an abundance of money we don't know what to do with. From the band, from her families oil company. We're privileged to have it."

"Do you two have a joint checking account?" Crystal questioned and we both shook our heads telling her no, "So why are you worried about money you don't even get to touch, Nikki?"

"Cause Vanity doesn't recognize the value of a dollar."

"Sorry I wasn't fucking poor as a kid." I rolled my eyes, "It's not my fault I was born into the family I have. I know how lucky I am to have it and I do recognize the value of a dollar, ten dollars, hundred dollars, thousand, million, billion. You should be happy we can give Arianna this life Nikki! Instead of struggling like the rest of the world."

Nikki laughed, "Oh yeah, cause having a self centered, snobby, silver spooned brat is so much better."

"Can we take a break please?" I looked at Crystal and she nodded. I quickly got up and left the therapy room. I headed down the hallway to the bathroom to take a breather. I closed the door, locking it as I stepped up to the mirror.

"Pull it together, Vanity." I mumbled to myself, clutching my chest as I felt a heavy feeling in it. It was crushing. I splashed some water on my face and took a few deep breaths. I was starting to get worked up, and if I could and I wouldn't get in trouble id probably jump on Nikki and strangle him. I sighed when someone knocked on the door, "Just a minute!"

"It's me, V..."

I sighed and went over to the door, unlocking it and opening it up just a tad, "What?" I looked at him, the same tired expression mirroring on his face.

"Are you okay?"

"No Nikki! I am not okay." I shouted quietly, opening the door more so I could get out, "Let's just hurry up and get this over for today."

We were back in the office, sitting in our seats. I had a handful of M&Ms and cup of water to calm me down.

"So, can we talk about your twos sex life?"

I guess calm wasn't in the cards today. I felt my face heat up as I took a sip of water, "I don't mind."

"I'm fine with it." Nikki shrugged and got up to get a cup of water, chugging it down before filling it up again.

"I know it might sound like a strange question, but it helps figure out the tension and how your relationship works. That is all. How is the sex life?"

"Good..."

"Just good?" Nikki looked at me with a smirk as I rolled my eyes at him.

Crystal chuckled, "Is it a monogamous relationship? Or do you allow outsiders in?"

"It's just us."

We both watched as she flipped through our papers we filled out before the session, "It says adultery was committed?

"You make it sound like a crime." Nikki chuckled.

"I don't find it fucking funny, Nikki." I glared, a hurt expression on my face as he quickly stopped laughing and looked away from me.

"I cheated years ago and I married my mistress while Van was in New York, giving birth to our daughter who I didn't know existed until last year. We went to a therapist there and we worked it out. It's fine. It's history and doesn't matter anymore." Nikki expresses, lounging back onto the couch like a lazy teenager.

"Vanity?" I looked at Dr. Crystal when she said my name softly, "Does it not matter anymore?"

Of course it fucking mattered.

"It hurts still..." I muttered, looking down at my shoes, "Like a lot.."

It was quiet for a moment between the three of us, feeling both sets of eyes on me. I shook my head and pushed hair out of my face and looked at Crystal, "I-I don't want it to hurt. I don't want to feel any hatred towards Nikki because I know how sorry he is for it, but it's just so damn hard still. I can't set foot in his bedroom, our old bedroom, without my skin crawling. I can't look in his bathroom because all I see is him and Brandi. I can't even sit on his bed because I feel so disgusting knowing she use to sleep in it too. It makes my stomach wrench and twist knowing they attempted to have a life together in a house that was suppose to be for me and him."

"Vanity-" Nikki mumbled my name attention to move closer to me.

"I want to forgive you Nikki, I really fucking do-" I spoke to him through tears in my eyes, "But I can't and that isn't your fault, it's mine. I wish I could let it go and move on so we can be good for the sake of our relationship and for Arianna, but Sixx, I can't trust you."

Nikki was taken back as he slumped down into the couch. He looked away from me and pulled strings off his jeans as he remained quiet.

"I know everyone hates this question, but how does that make you feel Nikki? Granted by your body language and expression, this is the first time you heard it?"

Nikki shrugged, "It makes me feel like shit." He mumbled, "I wish I could take it all back, I really do. It was mistake and I don't know why I did it..."

"Sure you do." Crystal spoke, "Was it because Vanity doesn't listen to you so maybe you'd find someone that would? Was it to prove a point? I think you do know why you did it Nikki." I watched as they remained eye contact, his chest rising with a deep intake of air as he exhaled.

"It's okay, Nik.." I whispered, "I want to know."

"We-" He exhaled a quiet fuck, "We were getting married soon. I-I wasn't getting cold feet! I wasn't. I wanted to marry you. I still do. But I, I Uh, I just had to prove to myself that I was still that guy."

"Getting sober is the best thing I have ever done for myself, but I just needed to know if I was still that Nikki. If I was still that rockstar that could get with any woman I wanted."

My lips parted as my heart sunk to my stomach. I realized right then and there what Brandi was all about: Ego.

"I needed to know, Vanity. And it had nothing to do with you or our relationship. It was me. I just-I just wanted to know if I was still that fucking asshole sober like I was jacked up on heroin and the snap of my fingers I could get someone on their knees for me and I did."

I wiped my eyes, reaching for a tissue from the box on the table, "So what would you have done if Vanity never found out? Would you have continued your affair?"

Nikki shook his head, "No, no I wouldn't have continued-"

"But you married her Nikki." I croaked through a pathetic sob, "You had such an extravagant wedding with her and you even told me you and her were trying to have a baby before you came to New York."

"If you didn't come home that day, I would have never continued my affair. That would have been it. Would I have told you? I don't know, probably not because I know regardless of how it would have turned out you still would have left me." Nikki spoke softly as he wiped his face with the back of his hand, "I cheated on you Vanity and I should have never done that. I shouldn't have jeopardized our life together like that. After everything you and I have been through. I shouldn't have done that, to hurt you like that."

Crystal put her items on the table, "May I ask a question?" We both nodded, "Do you two love each other?"

I nodded, "Yes, I love him with everything I have."

"Yeah, of course. I love her to fucking death."

Crystal nodded, glancing between the both of us, "Now do you really love each other or are you just pretending for the sake of your daughter? I ask that because from an outsider looking in, it seems like that spark, light, connection, whatever it is you want to call it has went out."

"Of course. I still love her. We're still in love like we were back then. We just have to work through it, right Van?" Nikki looked at me, his small grin slowly leaving his face as he studied mine, "Right?"

My mouth opened to say something but nothing came out. It was as if someone had a grip around my voice box. Nikki's soft expression quickly turned into confusion and anger.

"I-I love you. But I just don't know if I'm in love with you. I want to be with you because I can't picture myself with anyone else but you and I know it doesn't make sense but I can't see us together right now in my head. I look at you and I just feel hurt and guilt and pain. But I also feel all the love I've had before with you and happiness. And I want that back Nikki." More tears started coming as he stared, his head shaking as he listened to me, "..and I want to be like that with you again but just not right now."

"Okay..." Crystal cleared her throat, "To help with that, I suggest maybe finding some hobbies to do together outside of the house and without Arianna so you two can focus on each other. Do you think that could be something the each of you can do? Maybe you pick something for you and her to do Nikki, and Vanity you do the same."

Nikki nodded, "Yeah, I don't mind doing that." He looked at me and I nodded, "We can do that."

"Great. How about you come back in two weeks and we can talk some more. I look forward to working with you two."

After we made our next appointment, Nikki walked ahead of me, taking long strides to the car. I frowned and held my purse as he got in the car and waited for me. I slid in and buckled up as I watched him dig a cigarette out of the glove compartment, "Can I have one?" I asked quietly. He took the one he had lit between his teeth and handed it to me before grabbing another.

"Are you mad at me?" I asked, inhaling as I looked out the window.

"No, I'm not mad. I'm just...I don't know. But I'm not mad or angry or upset with you." Nikki stated as he reached over to give my thigh a light squeeze before he turned up the volume of the radio.

*A few days later*

I was finishing up my shift at the diner, splitting tips I had received today so I can give them to the girls so they can have. I grabbed my notepad when the door chimed, a smile on my face but it went away when I saw Clementine, "Booth?" She nodded and I lead the way. I put a menu down on the table as she sat down.

"Can I have some hot water and tea bags, please?" She asked, smiling as I nodded. I went to retrieve some for her as I brought a carafe of water back. I poured some into her cup before placing it on the table.

"Can I get you anything else?" I held the notepad and pen in my hand as she shook her head, "Okay, then I'll have Annabelle ring you up when you're done. There is no rush at all-"

"Actually, can I get some time with my favorite waitress here." She leaned towards me, "And the prettiest too."

I chuckled at Clementine and slid into the booth with her, "You really think I'm the prettiest waitress here?"

"Of course princess vain." She teases and glanced at me, "I want you to listen to me because I am only saying it once and I really don't want to repeat myself."

I shifted in the seat, crossing my knee over the other, "O-okay.." I cleared my throat and stared at her.

"I am sorry for being a cunt. You were right, Van. I should have moved out sooner. I was barely home and Arianna didn't need me anymore, with her being at school and you and Nikki doing a wonderful job with her. So I am sorry for how I was acting."

I shook my head, "No, no. You weren't being a cunt. I was being one, I should have tried harder to defend you and actually listen to what you had to say. But I just didn't know what to say, Clemmy. I-I was just in shock or denial about the check and everything else."

"No, I should have just left without showing you the check." She sighed, "I should have at least told you sooner and not hide it. But Van, you were so happy with Nikki being in New York. I've never seen you that happy before so I just decided to keep my mouth shut." Clementine expressed as she held the cup of tea in her hands.

I shook my head in frustration, "I'm sorry he even did that to you Clementine. I know you want an apology from Nikki but I don't know if you'll ever get it." I frowned, tapping my nails on the table as I rested my chin in my other palm, "I'm just put in a really weird spot when you two fight. I want to defend you and I want to defend him and I don't ever know what to do so I get upset because I have no control over the situation and that's when I lash out."

Clementine raised an eyebrow, "Are you going to therapy again? Because that's a very therapeutic thing to say." She chuckled as I smiled at her.

"Well, Nikki and I are trying our relationship counseling to see if it helps us. It was his idea, he thinks I don't love him anymore." I rolled my eyes and chuckled, "But I've missed you so much and the day at the studio when you were so standoffish hurt so bad. But I know how you are when you get upset so I should have expected it."

Clementine laughed, "Yeah, I don't know why you thought talking to me would have worked."

"I don't know, maybe you would have ate enough of Tommy's edibles and forgot about it." I chuckled a bit and glanced over when the door chime went off, seeing Nikki take off his sunglasses as he scoured the place for me.

"Well maybe next time I'll consider it-" Clementine grinned, "How about a girls trip this weekend? Maybe rent a hotel room and have a spa day. Arianna can come too. I know she likes to eat the cucumber slices."

I got out of the booth as Nikki sauntered over to us, "Maybe. I'll let you know. Nikki wants to do the bonding activities our therapist suggested we do. I love you." I bent over and gave her a tight hug.

"I love you too, just let me know." She pulled away from me when she saw Nikki.

*Nikki's POV*

I walked through the doors of the diner, glancing around for Vanity. I groaned when I saw she was sitting with Clementine and laughing. I forced a smile as I walked up to them, "Sorry to interrupt....can I talk to you for a minute?"

Vanity nodded and gave Clem as smile as I walked over to the cash register with her, "Is everything okay?"

I nodded, "Yeah I just wanted to see you." I smiled as she did the same.

"Sorry I left in such a rush this morning. I slept through my alarm. Was Arianna easy to get up?" Van asked as she leaned against the counter in front of me.

"Oh yeah she was good. She hated how I did her ponytail but it went okay. Are you almost off?" I looked at her and scooted over when someone needed to get past.

"Um in about thirty minutes I will be. Why? What are you up too?" She chuckled and sat down on the leather barstool.

"I thought maybe we could go to the beach.." I had thought about what our therapist had said about hanging out together and having fun.

"Oh. Okay! Yeah, Arianna would love that. It's kinda gloomy today but that's okay." She smiled, "Just let me finish up and if you wanna pick her up from school and wait for me at home?"

"No, I Uh...I wanted it to just be us..."

She stared at me for a moment before the lightbulb turned on, "I see, from what the therapist said. Um...."

"I was going to pick her up and I asked Jessie if she could come over for a few hours to watch her. Only if you want too though. I'm sure you're tired from working all day. But there's this nice little path that drops down onto a beach I know of. It's not a hard hike at all." I suggested, becoming nervous as she looked around at customers leaving.

"Okay. That sounds good to me, Nik. I just want to change when I get home and we can go." Vanity smiled at me, reaching for my hand and squeezing it a bit. It made me feel better, but also this is the first time she's physically touched me since we went to therapy.

After I left the diner with a free milkshake, I was standing outside my car waiting for Arianna. I heard the school bell ring and out came a whole bunch of kids running to their parents. I smiled when I saw Arianna dragging her backpack on the concrete behind her, Must have been a rough day. I chuckled to myself and reached into the car and grabbed a milkshake for her, "Hi daddy."

"Hey angel! How was school?" I picked her up and gave her a kiss on the cheek "I stopped and saw Mommy at work and she made this for you."

"Somebody took my dolly." She frowned and laid her head on my shoulder and sipped on the milkshake.

"Your dolly? Baby, you know you can't bring your toys to school." I sighed as I put her down on the ground "Let's go get it-oh Miss. Martinez, hi. Arianna was just telling me someone took her doll?"

Her teacher chuckled and held out her toy to me, "I told Arianna she could get it back at the end of the day. She had a really rough day. Her toy was preventing her from paying attention in class.

Arianna glared, "You're being mean poopy head."

I crouched down, "Look at me, Arianna." I spoke sternly as she kicked rocks on the ground and tried going to open the car door until I blocked her, "Arianna Lynn Blackwood, look at me."

She finally made eye contact, "You do not talk to your teacher like that and you do not bring toys to school. Do you understand me? I will wash your mouth out with soap. Got it?"

She nodded, bottom lip quivering as she gave me her signature puppy dog eyes whenever she was in trouble. I stood up and opened the door for her, "Sorry about that. We'll make sure she won't bring anymore toys to school."

"It's okay Nikki. She did have a minor outburst when we took the toy away so she did have to sit out in the hall, but after that she was a peach as usual. Everyone has their good days and bad days. Have a good weekend and tell Vanity I say hello." Her teacher reassured as I nodded.

"Of course. See ya Monday." I waved to her before getting into the car, "You buckled up?" I spoke, looking at Arianna through the mirror as she nodded, pouting and giving me the silent treatment.

Like mother like daughter.

We got home, seeing Van had already made it before us. I opened up the door for Ari and watched as she got out of the car, letting her backpack swing and hit me in the knees, "Loose the 'tude, dude." I ruffled her hair as she pushed her hand off of me.

Vanity was inside sitting in the living room chatting with Jessie, "Hi baby!" She yelled opening up her arms for Arianna.

"Arianna had a bad day at school." I told her as Van quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah? Can I see your folder?" Van asked holding her hand out but Arianna shook her head , "One...two...thank you." Vanity grabbed the backpack when Arianna handed it out to her.

"She has a folder that gets sent home with paperwork and news from the school...and her behavior for the week." She explained, showing me as I looked at it. I didn't know about this:

‘Monday, great day today. Very helpful with cleanup and sharing markers with the other kids. 

Tuesday, Got frustrated over some counting cards and threw them on floor, but picked them up when I asked the first time. Other than that it was a good day.

Wednesday, wonderful today! Got two gold stars on the chart, three more and she can get a prize from the treasure chest! Her handwriting is improving!

Thursday, she read 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' during reading time to the class. No problems at all. Very impressed with how much she likes to read!

 Friday, came in this morning with a very poor attitude. Didn't want to hang up her backpack and jacket after dad left, wouldn't share paint during activities. I had to ask her three times to put her doll away before I held onto it the rest of class time. Had to take away one of her gold stars. Please leave toys at home. Was very uncooperative today and only ate half of her lunch. -Miss M.’

"Arianna..."

"Mommy, I'm sorry." Arianna frowned as she climbed up on the couch and sat next to Jessie.

Van sighed as she looked at me, "I don't think we should go today, maybe tomorrow..."

I shook my head, "What? No, no. Just cause she had a bad day doesn't mean anything. Arianna, no TV tonight."

"Daddy! No!!" Arianna yelled at me, her face getting red as she got off the couch and marched over to me, "I want to watch TV!" She shoved my legs as I stared down at her, shocked over her outburst.

"Okay...Jessie, thank you but you don't need to watch her tonight." Van says apologetically as she went over to her purse and handed Jessie a twenty, "Maybe we can try again tomorrow. It's your deposit." Van cracked a smile as Jessie laughed and took it.

"Thank you. I'll see you later Ari."

Ari pouted even more as Jessie left, "You're being mean!" She shoved my legs again as I quickly picked her up and brought her over to her little pink chair in the corner.

"You're going in time out, Arianna." I retorted and placed her down on her butt, "You're going to sit here and think about how you're acting-Arianna!" I shouted when she quickly got off the chair and started running up the stairs.

"Arianna! What is the matter!" Van quickly grabbed her and brought her back over to the seat, "You do not talk to daddy like that! And you don't push him either!"

"But you do it!" She yelled in Vans face, tears streaming down her cheeks, "You push daddy all the time!"

Fuck!

Van stared at her, "Five minutes Arianna. Then you're going to your room. I mean it. Do not move from this chair or you'll get your butt spanked, got it?"

That sent Arianna over the edge as she started crying uncontrollably. Vanity backed away from her and stepped out into the backyard, "No! Go away Anna!" Ari kicked her legs out when Anarchy got close to her.

"Come on girl." I muttered as we both went into the backyard, "Van?" I noticed that she was sitting on the outdoor couch crying, "Shit, doll. It's okay." I sat down next to her and wrapped my arms around her, her head leaning against my chest.

"We-we can't fight in front of her Nikki." She sobbed to me as I kissed the top of her head, "Shes at an age where she just absorbs everything now! Damnit." I rubbed her back as she shook in my arms, her tears bleeding through my shirt.

"We'll get better Van. I promise." I took my arms away when she sat up and wiped her face, "No more fighting in front of Arianna. She doesn't need to hear or see our death matches."

Van nodded, "I really wanted to go to the beach with you." She sniffled, looking in through the glass doors to see Arianna was still sitting.

I smiled a bit and rubbed the back of her neck, "It's okay. Just like you said, we can go tomorrow." I kissed the top of her head as she relaxed back into the cushion, "Just let her get her tantrum out for now and we can explain to her later how mommy and daddy sometimes don't get along."

"Because daddy's mean." Van chuckled a bit and looked up at me and gave my cheek a quick peck.

"Hmm, call me daddy again." I laughed as Van swatted my chest and shook her head.

We went back inside seeing that Arianna had calmed down, "Go get a juice box and go to your room for a little bit." I told Arianna as she went to the kitchen before going up the stairs sulking as Anarchy followed after her.

I groaned and laid down on the couch, kicking off my boots, "She's literally the mini version of you."

Vanity chuckled and hanged Arianna's backpack up on the hook, "I can only imagine how she's gonna be when she's older."

"A fuckin demon. We'll probably need to call a priest." I grinned as I sat up and patted the spot next to me, "So the beach tomorrow?"

"Maybe if she has a better attitude. I don't want to leave her alone with Jessie if she's still acting like that. But maybe I can call Clementine, I also know Arianna has been asking to see her and Tommy." Van explained to me as she grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

"So are you two good now?" I asked, rubbing the back of my neck, "Best friends again?"

Van nodded as she glanced at me for a split second before putting on MTV, "Yeah, we're okay now. We talked about it. She said she was sorry for being so distant and I apologized as well. Just no more being mean to Clementine, okay?"

My jaw clenched as I nodded, "Yeah. Of course."

*Next Morning*

~Vanity's POV~

"Nikki, you dyed all your undershirts pink!" I groaned as I pulled them out of the washer, seeing the red and black checkered boxers lying at the bottom.

Nikki came into the laundry room and looked at all of his wet clothes, "Eh, not a big deal. Plus, I was tired last night and just threw it all in."

"Don't ever do my laundry." I chuckled as I started the dryer just to put more clothes into the washer. I left the laundry room, smelling the sweetness of French toast cooking.

"Arianna! Breakfast is ready!" Nikki yelled for her as she came from the living room, blanket wrapped around her body as she climbed up into her spot at the table.

"Tank you." She spoke quietly as Nikki put a plate down in front of her and a small bowl of orange slices on the side, "Mommy, can we go to the park today. The one with the really big slide?"

I smiled at her and then Nikki when he put a plate and a cup of coffee before me, "Actually baby, you're gonna go hang out with Auntie and uncle Tommy while me and daddy go do some things."

"I get to see auntie!?!" She exclaimed as her smile was wide and her giggle was contagious.

"Yes Ari. She's gonna come get you in a hour and you'll hang out with her and T for the day. So eat your breakfast so you can get ready." I watched as she started to scarf down her breakfast.

"Where's she taking her?" Nikki asked as he sat across from me.

"I think her and Tommy want to take Ari to this interactive exploratorium downtown? She gets to learn things plus it's hands on and then probably get something for lunch." I looked at him, pointing to the syrup dripping onto his goatee.

He wiped it away and then rubbed the remnants on his pajama pants, "Is it that new one? I wanted to take her there. It looks like a lot of fun. You can even walk through space and you can dig up dinosaur bones."

I chuckled, "Yes the new one. We can always take her there some other time. It's not a big deal."

"Mom I'm done."

"Eat your fruit."

"You're right. It gives us enough time to spend together anyways. We can bring Anarchy too." I looked at him for a moment before I continued eating my breakfast.

Nikki's been saying I'm right to a lot of things lately. I don't know if he actually means that or if he's just saying it instead of starting an argument.

After Arianna was done eating I helped her get ready for the day. She sat on the floor between my legs as I french braided her hair, "You need to behave today, you hear me? If auntie calls and me and daddy have to come get you, there will be no TV for the rest of the weekend."

Arianna nodded as I tied the braids with yellow rubber bands. I kissed the back of her head as she leaned into my chest and stared up at me.

"Brat." I chuckled and tickled her stomach as she started giggling.

"Nuh uh!" She pressed my arms to my side as she stood up to grab her shoes. I watched as she put them on and tried to tie them herself. I grabbed a backpack and put an extra set of clothes in it just in case.

I looked behind me when there was a loud bang. I chuckled seeing Arianna rip off her shoes and throw them back in the closet before crawling around for her slip on light up tennis shoes.

"We'll practice tying them later." I handed over her backpack as she took it. I reached for a jacket behind her door and followed her down the stairs.

"Tommy's here!" Nikki shouted as I heard boisterous laughter coming from the front door.

"What's up munchkin?! You ready?" Tommy crouches down as Arianna ran to him and he picked her up, "Me and auntie have such a fun day planned for you. You get to hang with the cool kids today."

Arianna smirked at me and stuck her tongue out at Nikki. I chuckled and gave Ari a kiss on the cheek, "Where's Clem?"

"Ah...she was finishing up some commission and she'll be ready when we get back. I don't know how she got this job, but she's making a piece for Bon Jovi." Tommy grinned smirking at Nikki, "Your best friend."

Hm.

"The dudes a fucking flake man." Nikki rolled his eyes, "Sorry, freaking flake. But yeah, good for her for making her own money."

Tommy rolled his eyes, "Shut up. Uh...anytime you want her back by?"

I shrugged, "Whenever you guys are done. Him and I are gonna go to the beach and whatever else he has planned."

Tommy nodded and put Arianna down on the floor, "Alright little sixxter lets go. Bye guys!" Arianna bolted out the door as she waved to us before Tommy helped her into the backseat.

"You ready?" I looked at Nikki when he asked and nodded, "I made some sandwiches for us and grabbed some drinks too."

"Okay." I chuckled as I grabbed Anarchy's leash off the hook. Her tail started wagging instantly as well as her barking excitedly, "I know I know you're ready to go too."

*An hour later*

I glanced out the window as we were on the outskirts of Malibu and past all the fancy houses were surrounded by already in Hidden Hills. Nikki pulled off onto a winding dirt road with green hills on each side, "Are you actually going to kill me out here?"

His lips pulled into a smirk but he remained quiet and came to a stop where a yellow dead end sign was posted on a old chain link fence. He then locked the doors, "Nikki! Stop!"

He started laughing and took the keys out of the ignition before unlocking the doors and getting out, "It was too good to pass up. I knew you'd freak out."

I rolled my eyes and looked around, smelling the salt in the air and hearing the waves crashing on the shoreline, "That wasn't funny." I mumbled as he handed me a backpack before putting the camera strap around his neck.

"Till death do us part, Princess." He grinned before grabbing a hold of Anarchy's leash, "Come on. We gotta go through the fence."

I followed him as there was an opening with the chain link rolled back but long wispy branches from the tree blocking it, "Are you sure this isn't like trespassing?" I asked Nikki as I went through and watched him help Anarchy through it next.

"You know, I'm actually not that sure. I found this one night a few years ago when I was just riding on the Harley." He explained to me as we started walking down the trail. He unhooked Anarchy's leash and she started running ahead of us.

I looked around at the grassy hills with a light mist resting on top of them. There was fields of California peonies that ran along the man made path down to the beach. I heard the shutter of a camera and turned around when Nikki was taking a picture of the coastline.

"So why'd you wanna take me here?" I asked him, bending down when Anarchy dropped a stick in front of me and I chucked it for her.

"I've read that nature is relaxing and soothing. Plus I thought maybe we could use the peace and quiet since it's been kinda hectic lately..." he trailed off as he snapped another picture of Anarchy running up to me.

"Yeah, it has been.." I grabbed the stick and threw it for her again, "So how's the album? Do you know when you guys will be done?"

Nikki caught you and walked beside me, "Uh...actually I have a demo cassette in the car if you wanted to listen to it. It's real fucking good, Van. It's hard, it's rough. It's perfect."

I smiled at him, "I'd love to listen to it. I'm sure I'd like it Nikki. I know all of you have been working hard on it."

"You know, John is so talented. Like he's helped write the lyrics and come up with the sound. Hell, he can even play guitar and cover things that Mick normally wouldn't be able to. It's great."

The trail lead us over a small hill as we dropped down onto old wooden stairs that led down to the beach, "So if you have the demo that means you'll be ready to release the album soon, right?"

"Yeah, yeah. I wanna say maybe by March the album will be ready. We're just self titling so we don't gotta get clever with it."

I chuckled, "Mötley Crüe by Mötley Crüe?" He grinned and nodded, "I like it."

"Okay next question, album comes so does the tour....what are we doing? Because I know you want us to come but I'm not sure how i feel about bringing Arianna."

Nikki exhaled deeply, "I would like both of you to be with me. I don't want to leave you two at home by yourselves for that long. I could make sure we have our own space so she isn't around anything bad, not that they're would be anything bad! Except for the booze and culture of touring with a rock band."

I grinned at Nikki and nudged his side with my elbow, "That is pretty bad. I'm just concerned of her falling behind in school and she would be so overwhelmed with everything going on she wouldn't focus on any school work I'd help her with. Her sleep schedule would be completely off, and plus Anarchy, I don't want to board her for months. Plus with us and how we've been fighting whose to say we wouldn't on tour? I don't want to go on tour Nikki."

I knew he was getting frustrated with my by the way he shook his head and rolled his neck from side to side, "Okay well what if we work it out with the people that book the shows and venues and we could stop in Dallas and maybe your mom can keep her for a bit?"

I laughed, "Oh my god. You're actually serious? Leaving Arianna with my mother would be such a horrible idea. No we aren't doing that either."

"Van come on. Why not? Why can't we just agree on something for once? Arianna would probably love to go on tour and see me on stage and go to a bunch of cool places too. We could go somewhere neat in every city and whose to say we can't bring Anarchy with us? It's my band." He laughs and wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me to him when we get on the beach.

I rest my cheek on his chest, "If, and I'm saying if. If my mom does hypothetically say yes how long would we leave her for her. I'm not to thrilled about leaving her anywhere. Not after New York."

I never wanted Arianna to think I abandoned her ever again.

"A month? Gives us a break and time to be adults. Plus we both know she'd have the time of her life being spoiled down there on the family farm with Theo and Betty." Nikki laughed as Anarchy came up and dropped seaweed on his shoes, "Nice, thanks girl." Nikki rolled his eyes and picked it off before throwing her stick far across the shore, "So is that a yes?"

I glanced at Nikki, "It's a maybe and let me think about it."

Nikki nodded and gave my ass a light smack before pulling away from me, "Can I take some pictures of you? You are my favorite model after all."

[allthebest20]

Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

8/10.  A joy to read and a great debut novel. I think the author has even better work ahead of her.  The characters are complex and unique, and the book explores modernity, pain, and generational spirituality in a very readable style.  I couldn’t help but make assumptions about the author as I read the book: definitely Nigerian, definitely a cook, definitely spent time in London and Canada, definitely queer, definitely raised in the Church, but also definitely spiritual.  The authenticity with which she writes, especially in regards to being queer in the modern world and the cultures of different places, is what makes this book great.  The story dances between the gruesome details of reality in the twenty-first century and romanticized views of youth and love. It raises a lot of questions in me about the international class system, wealth, and privilege.  

The only real complaint that I have is around one of the main plot points: the rape of Kehinde when she is 12.  While this is a turning point in all their lives, I feel as though it is also simultaneously underappreciated, as if the author choose this event simply because it was one of the worst things she could think of.  I think this is a common pit fall for authors.  A lot of traumatic things happen to this family: Kambi, the mother, is very mental ill, Banji, the twin’s beloved father, is murdered, Taiye, the queer twin, struggles with her own mental health.  Yet, the rape is regarded as the primary Bad Thing and all the other traumatic events are hardly discussed.  I appreciate how the author takes some time, maybe 1 chapter, to discuss Kehinde’s relationship to sex and her body.  Yet, Kehinde’s life seems to be mostly unaffected by this event, except in the way she punishes her family with her silence.  She is in a healthy relationship.  She does not abuse alcohol or drugs.  She has a successful career.  Ultimately, it’s not a book about overcoming childhood sexual abuse.  It’s a book about mending a family after years of pain, resentment, distance, and silence.  I almost feel as though the book could have been stronger if it focused more on the effects of Banji’s death and Kambi’s violence and depression on the twins.  Ultimately, though, sexual abuse is just a thing that happens to a lot of kids, and perhaps it serves a purpose to write a book where it happens, it’s horrible, but it doesn’t need to be put under a magnifying glass.  It just reverberates.

This book could have been about a lot of things.  When I picked it off the shelf at the library, I barely read the entire description, immediately caught by the spiritual nature of Kambi’s being and the brief mention of “reckless hedonism.”  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Taiye was a lesbian, and I saw a lot of myself in her: the serial string of intense relationships, always slated to go nowhere, the indulgence in food and weed and dancing and occasionally other drugs, the loneliness and missing family but not being able to connect with them, the exploration of religion and spirituality and non-monogamy, seeing and feeling things you don’t know are real.  I feel like a lot of modern young adults live like Taiye does, unsure what to look for except comfort.  I love how the author mentioned the chaotic draw of dating apps.  I love how Taiye is a stoner.  I love how Taiye loves organic butter and fair trade chocolate and cooking extravagant meals for anyone who will eat it.  I LOVE how the author includes recipes for what Taiye is cooking.  Although I probably won’t use those recipes, I did want to cook what Taiye was cooking, and it reads just like my brain reads when I am absorbed in a culinary project.  This book could have been more about what it means to be a lesbian, but it only barely describes her formative romantic and sexual experiences.  The author details the first time Taiye calls her self gay out loud and has queer sex, but this is long after she has had gay feelings and gay experiences.  The author does not explore Taiye’s inner turmoil, and it is unclear if Taiye struggles at all with her sexuality in the long term.

I also like how the book explores mental illness.  It doesn’t shy away from both the good and the bad parts.  It doesn’t shame medication use.  It explores the spiritual powers of those who’s brains work differently.  Kambi’s voice explores suicide in an interesting way: both from the frequent pull of the voices, asking Kambi to escape the pain of living, and Kambi’s own knowledge that she wants to remain here with her family.  Although I have perhaps 0 hard examples of mental illness being spiritual, I still want to believe that those who hear voices, who see things, who feel things, are connected to the spiritual in a way that those who live entirely in reality are not.  This book explores one such case.  I also found it interesting how Taiye inherits some of Kambi’s crazy (struggles to speak as a young child, depressed, sleep walks) and some of Kambi’s magic (draws people to her, sees and hears beyond).  This make Taiye feel closer to her mom as she ages, while Kehinde remains unsure.  This book could have been more about generational mental illness and the pain and distance it causes, but instead the author focuses on the magic of it all.  It asks, quietly, if the girls should be mad at their mother, can they be mad at her?  From the outside, Kehinde knows that Kambi is respoinsible for the scar on Taiye’s face, but yet we, the audience, know that Kambi had to do this to prevent Taiye from killing the rapist, Uncle Earnest.  Does Kehinde know this?  How can she understand?  In a family, we have no choice but to forgive and let live if we cannot understand, or else remain alienated.  This is the underlying message of the book.

The book has a complicated timeline: the main story line follows the events of a six month period in which the three main characters are united again in Lagos, after over a decade apart.  Slowly, in tangents, the three characters’ backstory is explained.

The book features a few key locations:

Nigeria (specifically Abeokuta, where Kambirinachi is born, Ife, where she spends her youth, and Lagos, where she raises her family),

London (where the twins were born and where Taiye lived for 9 years during and after university),

and Canada (Kehinde lives in Montreal since attending university there and Taiye lives in Halifax after London). 

I’ve never been to Nigeria or London, but I love the way the author writes the dialogue and the characters from each place.  I cannot say if they are accurate, but they have a clear and unique voice, not homogeneous but also representative of those place-based qualities that unite an area.  The characters give me a glimpse into what it feels like to be Nigerian abroad vs. Nigerian at home.  She rarely writes about interpersonal incidents of racism: the characters are mostly well liked, treated nicely by the people in their life, given opportunities.  I think that contributes to the feeling of romanticism in the story.  Racism is discussed on a more systematic level: they have problems at the airport, Taiye learns about the history of racism in Canada. As someone who has been to Canada, knows about the history of Canada, and lives very close to Canada, I enjoyed hearing about Taiye learning about Canada’s dark side, something that is so rarely discussed by the general public.  However, for those of us who are interested, the evidence is everywhere.  The history is just waiting to be explored by anyone who is interested in looking just slightly beyond the state-issued textbooks.  I thought the way the author wrote about Canada was really authentic, which convinces me that the way she writes about London and Nigeria must also be accurate.  What it must be like to be Ekwuyasi, so intimately familiar with places so far apart.

There was one line in the book that really stuck with me: as Taiye is traveling home, she passes through the busy streets of Lagos, crowded with street children, and she is reminded of her privilege in a very visual way, something she doesn’t get in Canada or London.  This is the view the West wants us to have of Africa: a whole continent made of dirty huts and begging children on busy urban roads.  Yes, poverty looks different in Nigeria than it does in Canada, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in Nigeria is somehow poorer.  In fact, this family has a beautiful compound and a trust fund.  Despite having a trust fund, Taiye still makes decisions on a strict budget and denies herself luxuries to save money, the way I do.  I don’t really know a lot of people with trust funds, so I can’t tell if this is an international thing or if there are American kids who act like this.  It kind of annoyed me when Taiye wrote to the culinary program saying she didn’t have enough to pay for the program, when in reality she just didn’t want to dip into her trust fund.  I don’t know if there were limited spots/funds available for people who couldn’t afford to pay full price, but I hate when rich people forget what it means to actually not have money.  Being cheap and being poor are two different things, often way more opposing than people think.  Rich people are often the ones who know how to exploit the system to get what they want for less, while the poor are left with less connections and less time to work it.

Still, I refrain from delivering too harsh judgement on Taiye. I do not know the size of the trust fund.  I know their family home was a gift, so perhaps the fund is to be saved for medical emergencies and property taxes.  I’m not sure how insurance or taxes work in Nigeria, although I know the government is very unstable.  How did they pay for international university?  Did that come from the trust fund?  The whole plot line has me thinking a lot about wealth and class on  an international level.  While I grew up comfortably, I often felt like my family was poor because of how rich everyone in our town was.  I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a compound and see homeless children often, but also ingest international media that cast your entire country as poor and to know your government is unstable.

All in all, the book touches on many of the central issues of modern life  While it only brushes the surfaces of these topics, it had me thinking for days and wanting to know more.  Perhaps I will search out an some Nigerian autobiographies / memoirs in the future.

[maerenee930]

7, 10, 34, 47, 55 from the 65 questions :)

7. what shirt are you wearing?

- a black cropped tank top i got from Torrid and a Black sweatshirt i got from Hot Topic that has Sam from Supernatural on it and on the back it says Moose 😅 (it’s one of my favorite sweatshirts 🥰🖤)

10. what were you doing at midnight last night?

- i was laying in my bed. my depression was (and still kinda is, tbh) pretty bad and i didn’t feel like watching anything, so i just laid in bed, was letting myself feel how i need to and just let myself be. idk how else to describe it lol. i just was there 😅 and then my younger cousin came in my room (she stayed the night for the past few nights lol) and she was gonna get ready to go to bed and then she was being all goofy and singing some weird song she made up and that made me think of something, which lead us to bringing up random little (i guess) inside jokes we’ve made over the past 2 days and from last week and we got in one of those laughing fits for like almost 10 minutes 😅 like where we just ended up laughing at each other laughs and it somehow made it even funnier even though all of it was really stupid lol.

47. if you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?

- are you living the way you’ve always wanted to and dreamed of?

(going on adventures, traveling with friends and a significant other. doing what my heart desires. living life to the fullest and doing what makes me truly happy)

55. can you do any accents other than your own?

- umm… i can kind of do a british accent. like not a super cheesy or the typical one people do to make themselves sound fancy lol. i love doctor who and have watched so many other english shows so when i’m alone i will talk to myself or my cat in those accents lol. oh or one time one of my best friends and i talked in british accents the whole day and later that night (like maybe 1am lol) we went out to eat with my brother and we were still talking like that (it was hard to stop and we were having too much fun lol) and when we got to the restaurant, my brother told us that if he didn’t stop with the accent, he was gonna get in his car and leave us there 😂 it was so funny. we didn’t mean to annoy him lol but it was an added bonus lmao. and then when we got in the restaurant we slipped in and out of it and it kept making my brother so mad 😂 we weren’t doing it on purpose 😅 we just couldn’t help it.

and i can kind of do an italian accent. both my grandparents on my mom’s side are from (born and raised) italy. so they have kinda strong accents and when we make fun of my papa (my grandpa. it’s okay, he’s an ass and deserves to be made fun of) we all talk like him and do his accent 😅

and i can barely do an irish, australian or russian accent. i just try them after watching certain things and i’m not really good at them lol. if anyone wants to hear me do any of the accents i mentioned, let me know and i will absolutely make a fool of myself to entertain anyone who wants it lol.

34 is answered under here ⬇️ my answer for the next one is super long (i am so so so sorry, i didn’t mean for it to and just thought i would do this so that no one had to try and scroll past it if they didn’t want to read it. i hope that makes sense lol)

34. what was your last dream about?

- so i don’t remember my dreams from last night, but i do remember the ones from the night before 😅 so i was at some hockey game (no idea why, not really a fan of hockey at all lmao) and so in the dream not only was Robert Sheehan there, but there were some characters from a movie i used to love as a kid (a live action movie. not a cartoon lol) and the characters from that movie were flirting with me and at some point randomly one of them told me they made a bet with someone that i wouldn’t give them a kiss (i have no idea why… lmao) so i ended up giving them both a kiss each and then nothing ended up coming from that lol.

and then there was this really cute girl in my dream who was flirting with me on and off through out the whole dream and at one point she was leaving this restaurant i went to after the hockey game (she was at the game as well and then happened to be at the same restaurant afterward lol) and gave me her number, told me to call her sometime and then she kissed me and it was really cute lol.

and then not long after that, Rob came to that restaurant and i guess in my dream, he was one of my best friends and so we sat down at a table and after we ordered food and while we were eating, we were talking and catching up. and okay one point he was asking me how my day was and what i’d been up to and so i filled him in on all of it and i could see he was getting a bit bothered by it. so i asked him if he was alright and he ended up saying to me, he wanted to tell me something that’s been on his mind for a while now but didn’t know how to say it and didn’t want to make me uncomfortable.

i remember getting really nervous cause i didn’t know where he was going with this and was pretty sure i made him upset and i didn’t know why or what i might’ve done. (my anxiety likes to make me feel like i’ve done something wrong at any chance it gets 🙃) so i asked him if i did something wrong and he reassured me that i didn’t but he didn’t wanna talk about it in here. so we end up going to his place (apparently in my dream he was renting a house to stay in while he was in the US cause we were definitely no at his place in London lol. it didn’t look like it at all 😅)

and so we get settled in his place and sat down and he took me hands and apologized for not wanting to talk about this in the restaurant, for making me wait to talk about it and he understands i must be feeling pretty anxious because he didn’t give me any indication as to what he wanted to talk about. and then he also apologized for not saying this sooner. so i reassured him it was alright and that i understand him wanting to talk about whatever it is at his place and asked him again if everything is alright. so as we’re sitting on his couch, i’m sitting on it facing him but like with my legs crossed up on the couch (idk how else to describe it lol)

he scooted in closer to me and told me that he had a hard time hearing me talk about flirting with other people and saying that i kissed them. he told me it hurt him even though he tried so hard to not let it get to him or bother him but he couldn’t help it. (i honestly didn’t expect things to go in this direction lol)

so i nodded and apologized that it hurt him. i told him i truly didn’t mean to and didn’t know that was something that would’ve bothered him. i told him that i don’t ever want to hurt him and i’m so sorry that i did. he smiled sweetly at me and put his left hand on my right cheek and kinda on my neck and jawline, and told me that it was okay and i didn’t need to apologize. he said that’s not why he told me that. he didn’t mean to make me feel bad. he just wanted to be honest with me. and as he said it, he gently rubbed his thumb on my cheekbone, and said speaking of being honest, he told me that for so long he had a crush on me. he really likes me and wish he had said something sooner.

he told me he hadn’t because he couldn’t tell if i was just being nice to him or if i was flirting with him and he said honestly that he didn’t expect to have feelings for me or fall for me.

he said when he met me for the first time, he could tell we were gonna become really good friends but he honestly didn’t expect to fall for me. he said he realized how shallow this was going to sound but i’m not normally the type of person physically that he’s attracted to. (i mean, i highly doubt he would be attracted to me seeing as how i’m 5’1 and plus size lol) so he apologized for how rude that came off and i reassured him that i completely understood and wasn’t offended.

i could see he was starting to kinda beat himself up because this wasn’t going how he wanted it to and it broke my heart 🥺 i ended up putting my hands on his cheeks, pulled his face in close to mine and told him that it’s okay. i understand what he’s trying to say and i appreciate him being so honest. he gave me a little smile but still looked somewhat upset with himself. he kinda sighed and thanked me for understanding. he gave me these sweet little puppy dog eyes and said “i just- i just love you and am so in love with you and i don’t want to lose you”.

so extremely touched by what he said i blushed and gave him a smile, looked into his gorgeous green eyes and told him that i feel the exact same way about him. i said that i’ve felt that way since before we met but didn’t want to say anything because i honestly didn’t think he did or would ever feel that way about me. (and i didn’t wanna come off weird and only have him see me as a fan and then not wanna be my friend lol) but i told him that i’m so unbelievably happy that he does and i’m so in love with him, too. he gave me the cutest smile. then i pulled he face closer to mine and we kissed 🥰 after we did, he smiled and said “you have no idea how long i’ve wanted to do that” and i told him, me too. so then he kissed me again and things progressed pretty quickly to where we ended up making out for a bit 😅 and then after that, he asked me if he could be my boyfriend 🥺 and i said i would absolutely love that 💙 and he gave me a little kiss on the nose and then i snuggled up into his side and we watched something and then i woke up 😅 - sorry i didn’t mean to ramble so much and go into so much detail lol. it just really stuck in my mind and wanted to share as much as i remembered 😅 i know it’s pretty cheesy lol.

[xmalereader]

Kylo Ren X Modern! Male Reader

1/2

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|| Masterlist ||

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Summary: Reader lives on earth, far away from Kylo Ren and somehow he is able to see him one day during kylos training, he feels the readers force and tries to search for him but can’t. So, in order to find him he has to talk to him through the force.

Warnings: Force Sensitive, bullying, soft Kylo, slight angst.

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“Your shorter than I expected, but then again. I’m a little surprised on how someone like you can see me.”

He suddenly opens his eyes, waking up from the strange dream. He could hear the sound of chirping birds and the sun was shinning through his closed curtains. He turns his head to the left to see his alarm clock proped up on his nightstand. It read, 7:45AM. He doesn’t want to get up and he really doesn’t want to deal with anything or anyone today. He’s already struggling enough, what more could he go through?

“Y/n, it’s time to wake up!!” He hears his mother shout from downstairs. The older male groans in frustration and drapes the covers over his head, waiting for his mother to come and get him out of bed because their is no way in hell that he is leaving this amazing bed of his.

—

He groans once he’s forced down to sit on the dinning table with breakfast ready. “You were suppose to be up already, doctor said that you can’t over sleep when your on medication.” Said his mother as she walks around the kitchen, cleaning the dirty dishes and pots that she’s used the day before.

Y/n could only sigh and poke at his food. He wasn’t really hungry, he was never hungry in the mornings but yet again, he was always forced to eat something. “Is dad still in town?” He suddenly asks and shoved a forkful of food into his mouth, listening to the water run and his mother scrubbing off the disgusting food that stuck on the plates. “Yes, he’s still in town and I have to go too. So you stay out here in the country house and try to relax, remember the doctor said-“

“-said that I should spend some time out in nature to keep myself and my thoughts relaxed.” Y/n cuts in to finish off his mother’s sentence before leaning his head to the side and sighing again. “Can’t I just stay here alone without you or dad checking up on me daily? I’m a grown Man.”

“Twenty is an adult age but you don’t act like a grown man.” She cleans her hands and drys them off. She approached her son and reached out to gently stroke his hair, he could feel her trembling hands as he reached out to grab her by the wrist and gently push her hand away. “Just go to town with dad, I know that he needs you more than I do.” He whispered out.

He caught a glance of his mother’s smile but he avoids it.

“Please be careful and take your meds.” She says on last time before leaving the cottage, he hears the door lock and the sound of the car engine starting and driving down the road. Once the sound goes faint he stands up Harshly and grabs his plate full of food and dumps it into the trash can. He never eats his mother’s cooking or any of his parents cooking, he knows that they pour his medication into his food since he refused to take them awhile back. But now that he’s alone, they can’t stop him.

He makes sure to grab each bottle he finds around the house and empties them out into the sink with a frown on his face.

He was stuck here.

Ever since that voice came to his head it wouldn’t seem to go away and it was slowly making him go insane. Not physically but it was driving him crazy on just hearing that bickering voice speak to him, he’s tried many ways to cut it out but it always finds a way back in. He remembers when he told his parents and expected them to understand but that only worried them, causing him to meet up with a doctor and therapist.

They thought their son was losing his mind, which is why he’s stuck out here in the country side. His parents thought that it was best for him to stay away from the city and towns since he got into a fight with one of his college classmates for calling him crazy, he just lost it and suddenly attacked the poor kid but he didn’t regret it one bit.

His parents were keeping him locked away, they were afraid of him and yet they still try to help when he knows that theirs no way for him to get better.

Once he finishes dumping out all of his meds he tossed the rest of the empty bottles away. He makes his way around the cottage and heads upstairs to his own room to change properly and possibly go outside and take a walk around the woods.

“I Can sense you.”

Y/n was tying his shoes when he hears the voice again, causing him to freeze in place.

“But your too far away.”

He quickly shakes off the voice and brings up a wall that’ll block it out. He’s been teaching himself ways to keep the voice away and it’s worked a couple of times but his walls were never strong enough to hold.

He ignores the voice and finishes up with his laces before grabbing a jacket and rushing down the stairs, he makes sure to grab his phone and headphones before stepping outside.

The cottage was located on the out skirts of London. His father was born and raised here while his mother was born and raised in America, which leaves him. He was born in America but raised in London. He didn’t gain a heavy accent like his parents did and instead kept his mouth shut. He was the odd one of the family of three and he didn’t care, he was always alone and he’ll always be.

Once he plugs in his earbuds he starts to play some music, picking up a stick as he makes his way through the woods. He swings the stick around like a child would and continued to move up a small hill that lead him to a perfect view of the forest. He stood on top of the hill with a small smile on his face, the only thing he enjoyed in his life right now was this view. Everyday he would come up here only to relax and try and clear his thoughts if posible but today he somehow felt different. He felt a shift deep down inside of him, but what was it?

Y/n tosses his stick to the side and sighs. Listening to the music fade away into the background as he yanks off his earbuds and ticks them into his shirt. He enjoys the silence for a while.

“I can see you now.”

Y/n gasps and turns around to see a tall man all dress in black, he has his arms behind his back and he held a strong stern look. “Who are you?” He suddenly asks and slowly backs away from the stranger.

“You Can see me now, that’s good it took you awhile to clear that head of yours.”

The other chuckled nervously and shakes his head. “I’ve finally cracked, this is all in my head just my imagination.” He tells himself as he turns around to face away the man.

“This isn’t your imagination, this is real.” Said the dark tall Man. He was examining y/n, his eyes moved up and down his body and frowns. “I can only see you, but I can’t see your surroundings.”

“Are you supposed to see what’s around me?” Y/n asks and looks around, hoping that he was alone and that no one could see him talking to a stranger that could or could not be real. “Your strong enough to block out your surroundings.” He added which only left the other adult even more confused.

“Listen, I don’t know who you are and you don’t know who I am. Your just the voice in my head who’s finally taken a form to mess with me, I’ve already lost enough and I can’t let this continue on!” He shouts at him and reached out for his earbuds but notices that they are missing from his shirt. “What?”

—

“I need a location for this.” The supreme leader hands the earbuds to one of his generals and waits for them to analyze it. “What are your trying to find?” Asked general Hux as he stands next to Kylo with a frown on his face as the other waits for the results. “I may have found another force-senstive but he’s powerful. I tried to communicate with the scavenger girl but instead I was taken to someone else. He doesn’t know that he has the force.” He explains to Hux before tilting his head to the side, feeling the others concern about this strange young man that he’s suddenly stumbled upon. “Wherever he is from, we can bring him here and I can train him.” He finally says.

Before Hux could reply the other general comes back and hands the earbuds back to the supreme leader. “Sir, these come from a planet that doesn’t exist on our maps. It was erased many many years ago.” She says and bites her lip. “What is the planet?” He asks. “Earth, sir.”

“Earth? I’ve heard of that planet before is located far away from our solar system and it’s forbidden for us to cross their atmosphere. I heard that the people that live on that planet are considered weak and selfish. They dont know how to control anything.” Said Hux with a grin on his face. He watched as kylo stares at the strange earbuds and puts them inside his own pockets. “Set corse to earth and get my ship ready.” He orders to the general.

“Are you mad? These people dont know anything about the solar system and how there are more things out here. They’ll easily detect you.” Hux follows his leader around the finalizer. “Then let them know, ill only pick up the boy and come back.” He reached his quarters and watched as the door slides open. Hux stops and stands just outside the doorway. “I hope you know what you are doing.” He said before the doors close in front of him.

—

“I need new headphones.” Y/n tells his mother once she enters the cottage. “You what?” She tilts her head to the side in confusion and makes her way to the kitchen where she sets down the bags full of food. “My last ones broke and I need new ones, I dont care if they are the cheap ones I just need a pair to block out the voice...” he whispered the last part softly while avoiding her eyes. It’s been two years since he’s last made eye contact with his parents, he can feel their fear that he sometimes fears of even looking at them.

His mother sighs and placed a hand on her face in frustration. “Okay, I’ll go into town tomorrow and get you a new pair.” She says and turns back to put away the groceries. Y/n can only stand their and watch her work before he finally decides to speak up. “Why dont you go rest? I’ll put everything away.” He approached her and takes the bag from her hands and gave a small smile. She sighs sadly with a smile and nods, “Thank you darling.” She pats his shoulder and leaves the kitchen to allow him to work in silence.

Once she was gone, y/n began to take out everything from the bags and set them on the table so that he could easier and faster. “You seem to have a complicated relationship with your mother.”

Y/n gasps and jumps at the sudden voice. He turns around to see the same stranger standing in front of him this time. “Get out of my head.” He hisses out quietly not wanting his mother to hear him. The other chuckles and shakes his head. “I’m not in your head, you’re like an open book. You’re allowing me to see all of this.”

“What are you talking about?” Y/n walks pass him and began to put away the canned food into the cabinets. Trying to ignore the other, “You think that I’m a voice in your head but I’m not. This is real, its all real.” He held up y/n’s earbuds in his hand to show him that he wasnt hallucinating. “Where did you get those?” Y/n asks and reaches out to take them. Once his hand takes the earbuds back he feels the other brush his gloved fingers against his palm, causing him to flinch away. His eyes widen in fright. “How-?”

“I’m just like you.” He says.

Y/n licks his lips nervously and steps back. “If you aren’t an illusion than what are you?” He suddenly asks.

“I’m a human being like you; they call me Kylo Ren.”

Suddenly he’s froze in place with his eyes widen open as he thinks back to all of his previous dreams. He remembers seeing a man dressed in black, wearing a helmet and holding a sword that was a bright red color and it glowed. He could hear the crackling sound of the sword. He also remembers seeing multiple people dressed the same way. “The knights of ren.” He whispers out.

Kylo hears him speak those words and steps forward. “How do you know that?” He asks. How did y/n know about the knights of ren, he’s been trying to search for months and he hasn’t gotten anything from them yet. “I don’t, It was all a dream.” He replies back to kylo and grips his headphones in his hand and shakes his head. “I’ve been having dreams like that for days now but I tend to ignore it. It means nothing to me.” With that he turns back to putting away the groceries, once everything is away he makes sure that the kitchen is clean before he began to heat up some water for his tea.

“You can’t ignore these visions.”

“Visions?” Y/n laughs out and grabs a mug from the sink. “These aren’t Visions, they are dreams.” He states.

“In those visions, did you see yourself?” Kylo suddenly asks as Y/n stares out the window and sighs. “No, I only saw a group of people dressed in black while wealing weapons but there was one that held a very peculiar sword. It was red and it glowed, I remember hearing it turn on or something it was strange.” He shakes his head and hears the kettle go from. He walks over to the stove and removes the kettle from the hot surface and began to pour himself some tea. “But like I said they aren’t visions but dreams.” He turns around to see Kylo staring at him with a strange look on his face which only left the other staring back in confusion.

“What?”

Kylo slowly speaks. “You’re mother, she’s watching you.”

His eyes widen at the mention of his mother. He turns around in one quick motion to see her standing by the entrance of the kitchen. Her eyes were red and full of tears as she stared at her own son. “Mom...” he could feel her emotions.

She was fearing and she was upset, the man in front of her wasnt her son anymore but a stranger to her. “Mom?”

“She cant see me.” Said kylo which only worsened the situation for y/n. His mother jus taught him talking to no one which only makes things worse fo him. “You’ve lost it now.” She says all of a sudden causing y/n to flinch at her words.