#but fits perfectly for the deserts child only asking for a penny

[julietwiskey1]

The bridge song in arcane is so haunting. A nursery rhyme taught to Powder about how destitute life is for them. And how across in Piltover they have plenty and all they ask for is a penny.

It’s a song that sticks in my head. And for all the great music in Arcane I think this is my favorite for how well it fits in. It’s perfect and explains the conflict.

While the methods of Silco, Jinx and the chem-barons are to be hated the cause is not. The split between Piltover and Zaun is necessary even if the price is to be paid in blood.

[bluegreenandpurple]

A beard through seasons- Chap 2

Second installment of this four chapter series... let's see what moment is Ron's beard bringing to us!

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters from HP Books nor do I get a single pound/penny/peso (money) out of this. Rated M because of Hermione's thoughts.

You can also find this work in AO3 and FFN.

Chapter 2: The dad’s beard

Hermione Granger-Weasley hadn't slept one single night alone since five years ago when the news of the conception of her daughter had been delivered to her husband. When Ron found out that he would become a father, he made a resolution to never miss a milestone of his child’s life and spend as much time as he could with his family. And so, he resigned his position with the Aurors and took a full-time job with George in the joke shop. Although, at the insistence of the Minister himself, Ron agreed to keep a connection with his former work as a Consultant for special cases and Professor of Strategy and Planning for the Auror Training Program.

Hermione Granger-Weasley hadn't slept one single night alone in five years until two weeks ago when her new position as Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had required for her to present the British Wizarding Community’s advances in the abolition of blood-related laws and regulations for the International Convention of Magical Law.

Actually, Hermione Granger-Weasley hadn't slept one single night alone in five years. Because whatever she had been doing the past two weeks surely couldn't be counted as sleeping. The king-sized bed of the hotel room seemed extremely big and frighteningly deserted without her husband. Despite applying impeccably performed warming charms one after the other, the bed remained cool. And the silence. Hermione could sleep with cold, she had done it countless times during her younger years in the Horcrux hunt. But, as had been proved during said hunt and reaffirmed in the past two weeks, she couldn’t sleep without the soft soothing sound of Ron’s light snores.

Each night for the past fortnight, Hermione had spent hours in bed recalling the warmth of Ron’s body and the comforting feeling of his arms encasing her in a fortress where only his signature smell and his purring breaths could trespass. She would concentrate on every sensation in an attempt to convince herself that he was there and overcome her insomnia. But he wasn’t there and she would subdue herself to night after night of what little hours she could accomplish of restless sleep.

When time passed and Hermione was finally able to return to her loved ones, she was bouncing on her feet in anticipation. The second she stepped out of the fireplace, she heard the muffled voices of Ron and Rose coming from the second floor. Eager to see her family, she sprinted and took off her cloak halfway up the stairs, discarding the garment on the floor. This level of disorder was anomalous coming from her, but the familiar smell of her home combined with her husband and daughter's voice had made her desire for Ron’s warmth and her children's stickiness almost unbearable.

Hermione followed the sound towards Rose’d bedroom and was frozen on her spot at the sight of her family. She was itchy to go and hug them but the scene on display was so adorable that she had to take a minute to commit it to her memory. Ron and Rose were sitting on the petite chairs of her tea time set and she was decorating his beard with a variety of her hair clips. He was curled on himself in an unnatural position, with his knees almost beside his ears and his hands resting palms down on the carpet, probably for balance. He would've been more comfortable on the floor than scrunching to fit on the chair, but Hermione had the suspicion that he was doing it for their daughter.

Hermione’s heart warmed watching as Rose was adorning his father's facial hair with a grin so wide that her eyes were closing from happiness. He was cottoning to her about how beautiful he felt with his new beard style and Hermione chuckled internally as she focused on said beard. She could clearly remember the last time Ron's beard had stolen her attention for so long. It was the day she’d noticed that he was no longer a boy, but a man. And now she was realising that her man had become a full proud and accomplished father. No, not a father. Her colleague's husbands who they continually complain about for not contributing to their children’s care were fathers. Ron was a dad. A fully committed, capital “D”, Dad.

‘Are you done ogling me, or shall I give you a few more minutes?’ Ron was glancing at her from the corner of his eye twitching his lips with the effort to stop a smile.

Hermione shook her head amused by his boldness. Oh, you are so full of yourself, are you? Well, two can play this game . She thought, and narrowing her eyes at him, she asked, ‘What makes you think that I was looking at you?’

Ron chuckled, triggering a reprimand from Rose at the sudden movement of her model. He apologised to her and promised to remain still before he answered, ‘Because if you would’ve been looking at Rosie with that eyes, love... I’ll be calling child support and the Aurors.’

Hermione gawked but recovered quickly, deciding to ignore her husband's ridiculous comment and walked into the room. ‘‘Where is Hugo?’ She queried, noticing the absence of her youngest son, as she squatted next to Rose and wrapped her in a bear hug. The little one immediately left her task at hand to snuggle into her mother.

‘He’s already asleep. Little Rosie here put her brother to sleep - with my help,’ Ron hastily added, as Hermione’s incipient protest died in her throat. ‘And now is my turn to give her night night.’

They ended up putting Rose to bed together, stealing glances at each other, trying to convey through their eyes all the longing from the last two weeks. Once in their bedroom, Ron and Hermione fell into their well practiced bedtime routine. As usual, she was first in bed. Ron didn’t know it, but she had trained through the years to perform the routine in record time so she could watch him peel off his clothes with no interruptions. Contemplating as Ron undressed was one of those little simple pleasures of life.

Whilst Hermione rejoiced with the view of her naked husband, she remembered the story Ginny had told her about the name she’d heard her coworker’s daughter called Harry. Ginny had been so full of herself recalling how she’d caught the girl saying to her friends that Ginny’s husband was a total DILF. When Hermione asked what that meant, Ginny’s grin could have lightened an entire city. “Dad I’d Like to Fuck”.

Hermione surveyed her husband. He was absolutely a DILF. If she’d been a teenager she was sure she'd have a crush on him. She had had a crush on him when they were teenagers and he was still a work in progress. If she’d have to choose, Hermione was completely sure that Ron had never been more appealing than he was at that moment. He didn’t have the body of his early twenties but he was still stunningly fit compared with her colleagues’ husbands. And maturity had brought an air of wisdom that mixed with his sarcastic humour made him more attractive than ever. In addition, seeing him as committed as he was to Rose today, made his sex appeal rise to the sky.

‘Ready to sleep, love?’ Ron had suddenly stopped mid-movement putting on his pyjama bottoms. One leg in the air, contracting his entire body to remain balanced. Hermione bit her lower lip to contain a moan at the sight of is firmed and perfectly sized for a small hand arse.

‘I think there are some other things I’d like to do with you before we sleep.’

Ron’s eyes went wide with want as he dropped his pyjamas and as he kneaded his hands he huskily said, ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Then jumped on the bed and crawled between the sheets.

[brycelahelalover]

GOLDEN AGE

Pairing: Bryce × f!MC( Tesse Sterling )

Author's note: Sooo! Hi... My name is Chahnaz and this my first fanfic... actually it's my first post ever so i don't know how it's going to come out . So for anyone out there who will actually read this thing .. THANK YOU!! I hope you like it .

It's been 30 years. 30 years since Bryce and Tesse gave their vows to love and cherish each other for the rest of their lives .30 years since Tesse called Bryce her husband for the first time. 30 years since Bryce called Tesse his wife for the first time (and by the way he really loved it.. in fact he loved it so much that he called her only that for the first few months. It's like he forgot her name or something). 30 years in which they had two beautiful children. Alexander (Alex) and Alexis. And no they're not twins. Bryce thought that he was funny by giving the girl that name after Tesse got to name the first born and as much as she wanted to argue with him about giving the child that name for the wrong reasons, she didn't since she actually liked it and because she promised him she would let him name their second baby if they ever had one.

30 years in which they encountered both happiness and loss. Like happiness of celebrating weddings. of Danny to Sienna. Of Elijah to Phoebe. And of Jackie to Mike. Yes.. Jackie got married. Make no fault it wasn't easy for the poor lad to convince her.. in fact it took him months of proposing for her to say yes . Happiness of seeing Keiki go through college, getting her dream job and meeting the love of her life. But they also went through big losses. Like the loss of a patient or a loved one. It wasn't easy but they made it through. Together.

In these 30 years, Bryce and Tesse made it through major big stones in their careers. In fact Bryce now is the head of neurosurgery. And Tesse filled Ethan's place as the head of the diagnostics team after his retirement much to June's frustration. They were known as the power couple at the hospital. Granted, it took both of them a lot of hard work to get where they are but it was worth it.

IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE. ALL OF IT.

Tesse was sitting at the desk in the diagnostics office going through all the details that were presented to her for their lastest patient when her thoughts wondered to her spouse. She knows that she should focus. Christopher, the patient, still hasn't made it from Seattle. He was a wealthy 78 years old who seeked them as his last resort after his last 11 doctors came up empty handed for a reason to his symptoms. Yes, they started treating rich patients too since the whole ordeal 30 years ago because both rich and poor people have the right to the best treatment, adding to the fact that the hospital gains a good penny from the wealthy ones. But still as much as she tries to focus on the words in front of her, she can't. And she doesn't blame that on her aging brain, that as unfocused as it gets it's still as sharp as it was back in her twenties. But she blames it on her husband's behavior. Bryce has been acting quite weirdly as of late. She speculates that it's because of their marriage's 30th anniversary. But he has prepared surprises for her like that before but never acted like this. He spent a lot of time out which is surprising considering he never goes out without her.. or he prefers not to. Adding to the fact that he has been avoiding her and being really quit most of the time, which obviously isn't like Bryce since he's a talking machine that doesn't stop unless he's sleeping. So what could possibly caused this change in behavior. Well only one way to find out, she's going to talk to him later at home. She'll prepare a nice meal to celebrate their b-day while he's in the hospital since apparently he has a surgery that's bound to end a little bit late. And over dinner She'll attack, well not quite laterally cause she's not crazy but she will rain down on him with questions. Now that she forged a plan she feels a little less unfocused and goes back to work.

After a long day of work, Tesse is on her way out of the hospital when she decides to check out the surgery board to see exactly when Bryce's surgery end... or so she tells herself. And lo and behold, there's no surgery preformed at this hour by him. Well that ads to the list of suspicions. Why did he lie to her??. Tesse goes to check his office to see if he's still in. He's not. After that she goes to see if Danny by any chance saw him. He informs her that Bryce has left a couple of hours ago. So he's probably at home. On her way to her car, she gets her phone out to call him but he didn't answer " of course " said Tesse and not because he's used to not answering his phone in fact he's used to nag at her every time she didn't answer his calls . But because the man went to great lengths to hid whatever he's doing. Now remember how I said she wasn't going to attack him because she's not crazy... FORGOT THAT. She totally will.

After the whole drive thinking what he could possibly be doing she makes it home. And at her first step inside the door, she calls his name "BRYCE" you could totally hear the anger in her voice but she was met with silence, that is intel she hears one of the doors opening. Turning around she sees her son who was visiting after his law school finals to spend some time with his parents." Mom?" said Alex " .. you okay?" she could see the confusion writing on his face because of her near scream.

"Yeah, sweetheart. I'm fine." replied Tesse.

"Then why are screaming dad's name?"

"Well, I don't know where he is. He's not answering his phone and he lied to me about having a late surgery. And Now he's not even home. So.."

"Do you want me to try calling him?"

"Sure. Though, I doubt he's going to answer."

And sure enough, Bryce still didn't answer his phone.

"Okay... So, isn't today supposed to be your marriage anniversary?"

"Yeah" Tesse answered dejectedely. She really didn't expect to spend it this way.

"So why don't we go to a restaurant? Have a nice dinner? Just you and me? "

"I don't know..."

"Please, mom? I miss spending time with you."

Not wanting to lower her son's spirits, she agreed and went to change her clothes. She wore a beautiful little black dress that fit her form perfectly. Sure, she was sad and angry at Bryce for ditching her but she didn't have to look that way. Not when her son went out of his way to lift her spirits. She really did raise a gentleman.

By the time she was done, she found Alex waiting for her at the living room dressed in a dress shirt and pants. He took her hand than kissed her knuckles" Happy anniversary, Mom" than placed her palm at the crook of his own. And they made their way down to his car.

The direction Alex was driving in, was familiar to Tesse but not to any restaurant she knew. Only when he parked in the drive way to the huge mansion had she realized where he took her. It was her parents mansion. She haven't been in this place since her mother's funeral over 5 years ago. She has been thinking lately of renovating it but it was a project that would take a huge amount of time. Time she didn't have. But still that doesn't answer the question as to why would her son bring her here. The place is supposed to be deserted.

"Alex? Why are we here?" She asked.

But Alex didn't answer her question, instead he lead her to the front door, taking out a key when they made it there and opened the door. Where he got that key she will never know, but she didn't have time to wonder about that a lot cause as they made their way inside, the light suddenly turned on and in front of her she saw all of her friends, Alexis, her brother Connor and in the middle, sporting a huge grin in his face, stood the one and only Bryce Lahela.

" Happy anniversary, Tesse " said everyone.

Through her overwhelm and joy, she could see the place has been cleaned and tidied. It was like no time has passed. She looked into Bryce's eyes knowing that was probably all his doing. He smiled, making his way toward her. Taking her hands, he said:

" Happy anniversary, Love. I hope you're not too mad at me "

And in that moment she knew why she could never be mad at Bryce Lahela.

The end

Hi again! It's me.. And you probably knew that. Again, I want to say thank you to the people who took time out of their day to read this. I know there wasn't much to it but I didn't want to make it longer than it was. Plus, it took me more than 3 hours. So there... I hope you enjoyed it and thank you. Again.

[hellolittleogre]

48!! Kiss!!

48 - A kiss out of habit

Billy finished off the last dregs of his beer and threw his cigarette into the glass, looking down into the sludgy mess. To the left of him Goody was clearly trying to distract his opponents from his lousy cards with a loud and extravagant tale about a Louisiana alligator who loved band music. Billy had heard it before, it ended with the gator at a fancy dress party where it didn’t even win best costume. 

Playing cards was boring. It involved sitting still and if you did it properly nobody died. Billy liked dominoes better, but Goody, Sam, Vasquez and Faraday looked intent enough on their game to keep it up all evening. Billy toyed with the idea of discretely dropping his hand into Goody’s lap and see where that would get him but as intent as Goody was right now on his game and his story he wasn’t likely to even notice. Or he wouldn’t notice until Billy had got started and the he’d really notice.

But no, as enjoyable as it had been he was still a little sore from the last time he had got Goody all riled up, and they had a long day of riding tomorrow. He shifted a little in his chair just to feel that pleasurable soreness and smirked down into the mess in his beer glass. It had been very pleasurable indeed. He resisted it with a shake of his head, he actually had things to do, he needed to shave and pick up their shirts from the laundry and write a letter to his ma*. Better to go up and get a quiet hour in their room before Goody came to be poured into bed, drunk and sleepy, either giddy with success or pouting from failure and ready to celebrate or be comforted accordingly. He sat for a moment composing a mental list of everything he needed to do before putting the glass down and pushing out his chair.

 “You going up?” Goody asked absently, frowning and rearranging his cards and Billy hummed.

 “Doing some errands first. I’ll be getting our shirts at the laundry.”

Faraday put down a card and Goody swore under his breath, and scowled fiercely at his cards, teeth buried in his bottom lip as he without looking away dug around in his shirt pocket for some crumpled bills and handed them to Billy. “For the shirts,” he said and Billy snorted. 

“Not your servant, Goody” he said but took the money anyway. If he had them at least Goodnight couldn’t gamble it away and Goody looked up from his cards to crane his head back to look at Billy.

“I guess you could buy sweets with it?” he suggested with a smile and Billy rolled his eyes.

 “Try not to lose to badly,” he said and Goody reached out his hand tugging at his sleeve. 

Billy had spent hours, days, weeks on his muscle memory. He had trained himself to throw knives with his eyes closed, to hold the sharp blades between his fingers without getting cut, to reload and pull the bolt of a rifle without thinking, so used to absorb recoil of any sort it no longer registered. But he never realized that Goody was as deeply ingrained into his body as his knives, because when Goody tugged at his sleeve, just as he does when he wants to kiss him goodbye when they are alone, it was entirely out of habit he lightly placed one hand on his shoulder and lent down to kiss him.

Goody smelled familiar, his mouth always the same mix of humid breath, cigarettes and whiskey and his lips fitted perfectly to Billy’s, even misaligned like they were now. “See you in a moment,” he murmured against Goody’s mouth and felt Goody’s answering squeeze of his arm. 

He straightened up and met  three various  expressions of shock, Faraday’s jaw was hanging down to the table, Vasquez had an expression of unholy glee and Sam looked like his horse had just waltzed off without him. He could feel Goodnight freeze under his hand, and hear him let out his breath like its been punched out of him. For a second they were frozen to the spot, like foxes in a trap, before something in the back of Billy’s brain kicked into motion.

“Its, um, how we say goodbye.” he said, his voice sounding extremely odd to his own ears. “In, uh, Joseon.”

(Whatever lived at the back of Billy’s brain its a fucking idiot, that’s what)

Faraday’s eyebrows shoot all the way to his hairline, to match his hanging jaw and Sam looked like he’s on the verge of crying laughter.

“Ce vrai,” Goodnight said in a wobbling voice and Billy felt hot and cold in turns. His hand on Goody’s shoulder tightened, just one wrong move and he was ready to pull Goodnight down behind the next table and shoot the lot of them. It felt like the floor underneath him has swung around to be the ceiling, and his heart was beating so hard in his chest it was painful. His mouth tasted metallic.

“First I’ve ever heard of it,” Sam said mildly, with something that might definitely be laughter bubbling in his voice.

“We weren’t that well acquainted,” he said, mechanically straightening further and walking the half step over to Sam’s side, and before he’s even aware that he was going to do it he’s bent down and bussed Sam’s cheek, somewhere in his horrible, bushy side burn. He could see Goody’s eyes grow round like pennies, but now he had committed to this stupid course of action and there was no choice but to carry on. He dutifully smacked the air beside Faraday’s head, not able to bring himself to actually kiss him. Its only Vasquez left and if Billy can get through this and leave, then Goodnight can spin whatever he needs to make this go away. Doubtlessly it will involve Billy being very, very foreign.

He bent down to quickly peck Alejandro on the cheek but the man turned in his seat quick as a snake and grabbed Billy by the waistcoat, hauling him in and kissed him straight on the mouth, warm and lingering with a liberal hint of tongue stroking against the seam of his closed lips. His stubble scratched nicely against Billy’s chin and he tasted of that cigar he’s always chewing on, smokey and strong. Vas let him go with a loud pop and set him back on his feet.

“And that’s how we say goodbye in Mexico!” he said, his wide affable smile in Billy’s stunned face, and slapped his shoulder, bursting out in wild coyote laughter. Behind Billy he could hear how Faraday start to laugh helplessly and Sam making a braying noise like a dying donkey, which was probably laughter too. They were all pounding on the table and Billy honestly thought Faraday might pull something if he doesn’t calm down soon.

Billy had imagined that he had schooled himself entirely out of blushing at the age of fourteen but now he can feel his face heating up, flaming all the way from his neck to his ears until he’s sure he must be red as blood all over. 

“Ain’t that cordial,” Goodnight said grimly over the laughter and put his cards down on the table with a soft splat, something of a gleam in his eyes, cold and hot at the same time. “On second thought, I think I’d better come with you for those shirts, there’s obviously no knowing what you can get into on your own.”

 He got up and steered Billy out of the room gripping his elbow, a slight hectic flush fanning over his cheeks and even in his deeply stunned state Billy could still feel a smirk running up his face. Looks like he’d managed to get Goodnight riled up after all. Still smirking he leaned slightly into the hand on his arm. He guessed Goody could be the one uncomfortable tomorrow, if it came to that.

* In this AU I imagine that Billy Rock’s ma is a lovely little Korean lady in her sixties, alive and well in California and Billy writes her and sends money every month like a good boy. According to those letters he’s living a very settled life as a mine foreman to a surveying crew, with a lovely girl called “Gertrude” married since five years back, no fire fights here, no ma'am. He sure couldn’t tell the difference from a gun to a hole in the ground. And he only drinks on Fridays. He and Goodnight are frantically trying to invent excuses as to why they haven’t had kids yet. Every letter is a balance on a knife’s edge between reassuring her that everything is fine and never, ever enticing her to visit. The child conundrum has occupied them for years now, Goody says they should just invent a couple, while Billy claims that if his mother thought she had grandkids anywhere she would cross the desert by foot to see them, and if they say that “Gertrude” is infertile, she will also come to make sure they drink tea of fennel and stallion urine and never have a genital temperature above 34.7 F (besides Billy would never slander “Gertrude” like that). His suggestion is that they invent a permanent mine-related accident for his testicles to which Goody counters that if Billy has his testicles crushed by a fictional boulder his mother will absolutely come up from California to make sure he is all right, to which Billy said that that wasn’t entirely correct, sure she’d be up with them fast as a shot and bring all their female relatives but only so they could have a good laugh about it.

Meanwhile Billy’s ma is no fool and she can see that the postage stamp is different for every letter and knows there is no mining company that would let an Asian man be foreman over a surveying crew and that Gertrude doesn’t sound like she knows the first thing about keeping a house, but she figures that at least he’s alive and well and as long as she can tell him she loves him and is proud over him in every letter there’s no harm done. She can tell him on her deathbed. She figures it’ll be funny.