#but i never really understood self concept until like three days ago and

[sungwanns]

!!

[a-libra-writes]

How the GoT Characters Propose To You

We’re BACK AT IT AGAIN FOLKS

In this imagine, you’ll be proposed to by: Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Benjen Stark, Jory Cassel, Dolorous Edd, Yara Greyjoy, Daenerys Targaryen, Jorah Mormont, Missandei, Grey Worm, Tywin Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Sandor Clegane, Bronn, Petyr Baelish, Stannis Baratheon, Davos Seaworth, Margaery Tyrell, Brynden Tully, Edmure Tully, Brienne of Tarth, Ramsay Bolton, Roose Bolton, Oberyn Martell, Beric Dondarrion

NED STARK

In spite of the fact your families arranged this marriage years ago, Ned has to be his usual honorable, traditional self and go along with the expected courting process. That includes a formal proposal, but… that’s not for the purpose of tradition. The way he beams and looks at you with such adoration, you can tell he just really wants to hear you say “yes” to the proposal he shyly talks through. The ring is on the more modest side, combining the direwolf and your house’s sigil. There’s a personal touch on the inside; either an inscription or an engraving that has a special meaning to the two of you. He likely has a matching ring, very unassuming, that he wears whenever possible.

ROBB STARK

He didn’t expect to fall so completely for you during this stuffy courting process. Robb can’t believe how lucky he is, and it’s obvious to everyone how enamored he is with you. He’s ready to jump straight to the wedding, tradition be damned, but oh well. What he does do is give you the ring quite early, and his own proposal, even if your marriage has been long decided. His proposal is straightforward, but there’s love and earnestness in his eyes as he takes your hands and presents the ring he secretly acquired. It’s beautifully crafted, with silver direwolves and gemstones that match your house’s sigil for their eyes.

SANSA STARK

Sansa had thought about this for a long time. Letting that romantic spirit come back, even after you’d been together for a while, was difficult. The whole concept of marriage had become repulsive to her, but together the two of you could make it something different. She gave you an unassuming ring you could always wear, with gemstones that reminded her of your eyes. She tried not to cry with happiness as she gave her heartfelt proposal. You’d say your vows in the weirwoods, where she always wanted to be married. The whole day would seem like a dream to her, like the innocent daydreams she had as a girl, before the world took everything.

JON SNOW

He had it planned out: What he would say, where he would say it, but his nerves and doubts bite at him again and again. You can tell he’s been thinking about something for months, it’s been weighing on him, but you hadn’t expected this. It all makes sense when you both are alone in a godswood and Jon takes your hand … and finally blurts it all out. He had a silver ring made; you don’t know how he managed it, but it’s pretty in its simplicity. There’s a direwolf running across the ring, its teeth bared, and another one running beside it. A pack of two.

BENJEN STARK

The asking and ceremony would be more of a ‘symbolic’ thing - being you both were in the Night’s Watch, and you were in disguise. It’s why when he first asked you, you thought it was some silly jap. “Of course, Ben,” You rolled your eyes. “I would love to be your wife.” Then he took your hand, removed the old woolen glove covering it and put on a small, unassuming iron ring that fit you perfectly. Benjen couldn’t stop grinning as he asked you again. It’s a sweet moment you share high up on the wall, in the middle of the darkness, where it seems like you both are totally alone in the world. Days afterward, you notice the engravings of the direwolf inside the ring.

JORY CASSEL

No matter how long you both were together at this point, Jory gets tongue-tied and stumbles over what he carefully rehearsed. He’s still so sure you’ll refuse him, given the small land and influence his family has. He thought for a long time about what sort of ring to get you, and admittedly, he was thinking about it early on in the relationship. It’s something quite pretty and elegant, and it references your house and personal taste. Honorable and traditional as he was, it didn’t feel right going to your family for “formal” permission. He wanted to know your feelings first, and that you truly wanted the arrangement.

EDDISON TOLLETT

You being his “old lady” was a dumb in-joke you and Edd had for some time. You were disguised in the Night’s Watch, of course, but the way you two (playfully) bickered made everyone call you an exhausting old couple. Even when you both were alone, Edd would use “wife”, though you were increasingly aware it wasn’t a joke anymore. Finally he really asks you, even if it’s pointless, even if it’s while you both are freezing in the middle of a frozen wasteland. And even then, he’s still surprised you say yes. One day he ties a piece of old twine around your finger, blushing the whole time, insisting you don’t have to keep it on if you don’t want to.

YARA GREYJOY

If you were from the greenlands, from the get-go, Yara liked to refer to you as her salt wife. It was half teasing, half telling the other Ironborn to stay away. Whenever she’d say it, she’d keep such a protective hold on your waist, you were half-convinced she was going to carry you off to her ship. Eventually she made good on that promise. If you were Ironborn, Yara would be more willing to be forward. She’d tell you about some story she heard from her uncle about brides of the sea, women who stayed together and never married, though you knew she wasn’t one for fancies. Regardless, she’d have matching necklaces made for the both of you, leather and iron, like most of what she owns. She keeps it protected under her clothes.

DAENERYS TARGARYEN

Oh, she’s brought it up with you plenty of times - how you’ll be her Queen before gods and men, no matter what anyone thinks. The thing is, you both never did a grand ceremony. There were other matters to attend to, but Daenerys always made it clear to visitors who you were to her. She has plans for a wonderful ceremony once she takes her throne back, a celebration of your unbreakable union… Well, until then, you both can have your private vows. There’s dozens of beautiful things she’s given you (mostly from suitors who won’t bugger off), but your favorite is a necklace she had specially made. It’s a necklace of obsidian with dragons in flight, all connected together. The three largest dragons have a ruby, a diamond and an emerald for their eyes - a reference to her children, who are also fond of you. You two also wear matching obsidian bands with small rubies, made from the same stone as the necklace.

JORAH MORMONT

First, you knew this was happening. Jorah wears his heart on his sleeve and that’s even more evident when he’s worried about something. You noticed he was being both especially loving and anxious. You considered saying something, but he was clearly waiting for a perfect moment. Seriously, he’d look ready to say something, then back off at the last second at least a dozen times. Finally Jorah asked you, with the most loving smile on his face, and he was so choked up when you accepted - as if he really thought you’d refuse. You’ve told him before that you don’t need anything fancy, but he still gets you a lovely and elegant ring with silver-black engravings of small bears and another animal you’re fond of. He’s thrilled if you got him a matching ring or necklace; again, Jorah didn’t imagine you’d want such a thing. He’d wear it constantly and it’d become something he’d fiddle with when he was nervous.

MISSANDEI

Missandei would wait for you to pop the question because, in truth, she never imagined you’d want to. She understood that was a tradition in your home country, but you were both women, and she was… well, she just didn’t expect it. But Missandei’s eyes light up with surprise and adoration at your earnest question, and she says yes without even thinking. She isn’t one for anything fancy, but she’d love you both to have a matching set of bracelets, necklaces or rings - something elegant but not flashy, perhaps with stones or engravings that mean something personal to the both of you. She’d always wear it, even if she had to hide it under her clothes for some reason or another. She’s terribly flustered when someone asks her who it’s from and what it means.

GREY WORM

Oh, no no no. He’d grown a lot beside you, and as Daenerys’ commander, but there were still areas where Grey Worm felt like he wasn’t enough. It would take a lot of prodding and reassurance from Missandei before he’d finally start planning. You’d wonder what he was up to, and he’d just shyly say it was a surprise and you’d learn eventually. His proposal is sweet and faltering; he tried to stay serious, but he just couldn’t when you looked at him with those kind eyes. Grey Worm decided to make the jewelry himself - it would be an intricate leather bracelet with gemstones inlaid. He hunted the animal and tanned the leather himself, and spent many evenings hurting his fingers to put it together. He has a matching one, though it’s far simpler.

TYWIN LANNISTER

First off, this was a marriage arranged well in advance, so you didn’t expect any extended courting or proposals. This was Tywin, after all. Still he managed to surprise you a fortnight before the wedding with an absurdly jeweled ringbox. The ring itself was Lannister gold, and you anticipated lions and rubies… but it was your house’s sigil, with your birthstone inlaid, and small lions along the band. It’s far more than you anticipated from such a man. And when Tywin presented it to you, you sensed his expectation, and the heat in his eyes... He would never admit to wanting your approval, but that look was saying otherwise. Some years later, you have more jewelry than you could dream of, but you still wear that original ring most often. You’ll catch him glancing at it when you put it on, or twist it around your finger, then he’ll glance aside like he wasn’t watching.

TYRION LANNISTER

Naturally, he’s been thinking of this and planning it for weeks, maybe months, depending on how in love he is. Even if it’s a marriage of love, Tyrion will still have late-night nagging thoughts that you’ll back out, or you’re doing it out of duty. When he takes your hand and gives you the sweetest proposal you’ve ever heard, he still isn’t sure… until you kiss him and tell him what a silly man he’s being. Of course you’d accept. The ring has beautiful craftsmanship, with delicate flowers, lions and gemstones matching your house. It’s rosegold and silver rather than Lannister gold, and the inscription inside is something of an in-joke between you two, likely a quote from a book.

JAIME LANNISTER

You were concerned when he first approached you. It’s rare Jaime is this solemn with you, and he’d been acting strange the past week. Then he started to speak, and you realized he was nervous. His cheeks were starting to get red, and he was having trouble looking right at you. His nervousness came from the fact that Jaime wasn’t entirely sure you’d say yes, no matter how long you’d been together, no matter how confident he was that whole time. All the doubts would begin to creep, and before you could even answer, he considered backing out. But you said yes, and the smile that grew on his face was so wonderful to see. Jaime doesn’t want anything fancy or ceremonial, tradition and his family name be damned. The ring is gold, naturally, but it’s simple and charming. There’s small, pretty gemstones inlaid beside lion engravings.

SANDOR CLEGANE

At this point, you two have been married in all but name for years. He has his own thoughts on marriage, and you have your’s, and there was never a rush. People in the village already thought you already took vows, so honestly, you might have kids before Sandor starts considering something a little official. It would be something simple, but heartfelt. He’d have a fancy leather bracelet woven for you, or a simple silver ring, if you’d prefer that. He wouldn’t want much for himself, and would be flustered if you made something - but he’d absolutely wear it. Instead of taking the three black dogs from the Clegane sigil, you both would think of something new.

BRONN

He’s made all sorts of stupid jokes about marriage, especially now that he’s a proper lord. You’ve never taken any of it seriously, especially when these sentimental rambles come from when he’s drunk and wanting under your dress. Other times are when you’re out and about and pass a sept - “We oughta made it official, then go straight to the wedding night” - really, you never expected him to be serious about it. One evening he tossed something shiny at you, and you caught it. It was a beautiful ring with a huge diamond … and your first thought is if he stole it. He didn’t look at you, only mumbled something about maybe talking to your family. Maybe considering it for real. Bronn’s terrible with emotions, especially speaking them out loud. His gestures speak louder, and the whole time he’s talking he’s trying not to look at you.

PETYR BAELISH

Naturally he planned out the whole proposal - the right location, what he would say, and a beautiful ring that meant something important to you. It wasn’t big and conspicuous, rather it was something absolutely tailored for you, with a mockingbird etched inside. Petyr starts strong as he takes your hand, but begins to falter in his words when you look at him with such adoration. That undivided attention and love just gets him flustered, though he knew you’d accept. This was all part of his plan, but even knowing it would happen didn’t make him any less pleased.

STANNIS BARATHEON

Your houses had been in discussion about the betrothal for a while, but being the man he was, Stannis still wanted to do the usual courting and formal proposal. His words were blunt, the tips of his ears were turning red and he kept darting his eyes away, but he said it. He remembers the ring when you accept, and you assumed he had it ordered without much thought… Though when you look at it, you notice it’s not just pretty woven gold and black diamonds. In the center of the diamonds is your birthstone, and you wonder if he added that touch - your parents certainly wouldn’t have. Even after you’ve been married for years and have plenty of jewelry to pick from, Stannis gets a little flushed that you wear the first ring he gave you so often.

DAVOS SEAWORTH

Your dear Davos made your ring, a pretty and modest thing he created with the help of a blacksmith friend (you were wondering where those little burns on his fingers came from). You both had been together for a while now, talking about marriage here and there but never actually doing it. When he takes your hand, he’s bashful, though he gets through his words. They’re sweet and honest, like you expected. He knew you’d say yes, but he wanted to say it, and to give you the ring. Even if you don’t want a ceremony, he wanted to give you this. It’s a pretty silver and iron ring with pretty engraved flowers, your favorite, and a loving inscription on the inside.

MARGAERY TYRELL

First off, she’d been asking you strange questions for weeks. You could tell she wanted to get you a gift, and she wanted it to be just right. Then you realized she must have some sort of elaborate date planned… Well, you didn’t expect the wonderful evening to end in a proposal. Even if it wasn’t possible for you by the laws of Westeros, Margaery didn’t care. She had a beautiful ring made for you, and she had her “vows” ready. As far as she’s concerned, your hearts belong together, and the gods will understand. She only cries a little, but she’s mostly beaming as you say yes and allow her to put it on your finger.

The gold ring is made wonderfully, with sculpted roses and a large emerald in the center, with her birthstone around it. Margaery wanted a matching one, but that might be suspicious. So, her ring is your favorite flower sculpted with your birthstone in the center.

BRYNDEN TULLY

All his life Brynden resisted the brides his brother threw at him, absolutely sure he was going to die a warrior and not some lazy lord… Well, you certainly changed that perspective, though he likes to say he’s still too old and you ought to spend your life with someone else. Because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, and you deserve it - and with the upcoming war - he gets the ring. Brynden is actually flustered the whole time, giving you a curt and honest proposal. He wants to be with you until the rest of his days - even if they’re numbered - if you’ll have him. No fancy ceremony, ideally, it’s just the two of you. The ring itself is unusual and also not traditional. It’s cool silver with black etchings, and the sigils are your house’s sigil or a favorite flower. It’s not very Tully, except for a small chain of trout engraved on the inside.

EDMURE TULLY

He’s completely confident in this proposal. And why not? You both adore each other, the marriage has been planned for well over a year now, he has just the right place to ask you… Though he’s so excited, he ends up stumbling over some words while he asks you. The official arrangement had already been announced, but he still wanted to do something private and romantic. It was difficult for Edmure to keep the ring a secret. He oversaw every step of it being made, and when he notices you looking at it, it makes him very happy. It’s an elegant silver ring inlaid with diamonds, rubies and sapphires; the latter being in a wavy formation like the Tully banner. You think it’s a bit extravagant, but he says otherwise.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She’s been thinking about it over and over… you can tell she’s been agonizing about something for months. Finally she shyly presents you with a pretty and simple gold bracelet she figured you could always wear; stumbles over her words to explain it, then you understand her meaning. Yall find an abandoned sept and do cute lil vows and shes crying lol. You rlly want her to wear something similar and she’s just blushing the whole time but she agrees; she takes extremely good care of the necklace/bracelet and wears it under her armor.

RAMSAY BOLTON

Your parents and Roose made the arrangement, so you and Ramsay had little say in the matter. Still, he loves to play his roles, so he wanted to play the part of the attentive, doting lord, especially in front of your family. Though you’re surprised by the unusual ring he gives you; it’s two smooth rings interlocking with each other. The proposal is a little intense and unsettling, but you notice something when he puts it on your finger. He has small burns on his fingers, like had smithed it himself… And you wonder how he knew your ring size… Later on, when you both are married and living in the Dreadfort, sometimes he’ll take your hand and run his thumb over the cold ring.

ROOSE BOLTON

You both were officially engaged for some time, so he didn’t have to do any sort of proposal. When you both were at a private, quiet place in the gardens, and he took your hand. You weren’t expecting it at all. It was simple enough. He promised to look after you, to ensure your protection and health. It almost seemed… genuine, though those eyes were cold as ever. The ring was another surprise. You realized it was an heirloom, but it still looked impeccable. It was iron that was twisted into an elegant shape, with rubies and morganite. The largest ruby was in the center, shaped like a tear-drop… or maybe that was a blood-drop? You notice afterward he’ll glance at your hand each time you meet, as if concerned you wouldn’t wear it.

OBERYN MARTELL

You both had been paramours for years now, and you didn’t need the ring to be happy or official… So it surprised you when after a wonderful evening of dancing and drinking, and pressing against each other in the gardens, he asked you the question. It was romantic, like you’d expect, but also so earnest. Oberyn always wears his feelings on his sleeves, but this didn’t seem like a spur-of-the-moment passionate proposal. His words seemed like he’d worked on them for a long time. Oberyn is understanding if you want to stay paramours and not an official Lady Martell, as that title comes with trappings and expectations. He just had to ask you and hear your acceptance. The ring he gives you is gold, with vibrant topaz and rubies. The inside is engraved with the spear of Martell. You later learn from his brother that it’s a beloved family heirloom.

BERIC DONDARRION

The two of you don’t have much, but you’ve been in love for a long time and he very much wants a “proper” ceremony to express that. He shyly proposed to you in the moonlight after you both made love, and the almost desperation in his voice surprised you. He gave you a smooth, iron ring with a faint design of interwoven flames. The “ceremony” is a drunk Thoros and equally drunk septon his men found, for a double ceremony! It’s extra luck! Or something like that. Beric insists that makes it even more official, and he’ll marry you under a Godswood too, if you come across one. He’s full of smiles and wants to bridal carry you every chance he gets.

[hobiiwan]

mirror • cpt. rex

pairing: captain rex x gn!reader

warnings: post-order 66 angst, hurt-comfort but i thrive in the hurt

w/c: 1.6k

notes: i'm back with lots and lots of feelings bc i've been ghosted and it's 5 am so i should probably sleep but i hope you enjoy :D

lovely gif credit to @pieklalat!

Framed by distant moons and even further stars, the night sky never seemed more vast. If you closed your eyes, it didn’t take much to picture a Republic Star Destroyer slicing through the atmosphere of the moon whose gravity became inescapable, with you in it.

Glancing over your shoulder at where Rex had made camp for the evening, you could tell he was thinking it too. Though his eyes were closed, it was clear as watching a holofilm; reliving the searing heat of plasma bolts, shot from the blasters of his brothers, the ones he had served beside for years—the same ones he had buried just hours prior.

It felt as though there was a vice wrapped in a deadlock around your heart, constricting your chest until it threatened to collapse in on itself. You exhale sharply, willing yourself to push past the hollow ache of the now-dulled Force connection, the flashing faces of the clones and Jedi who had perished under the Order—the fear they had felt in their final moments. It was now your fear that you would never escape it.

The price of surviving the command settles atop your shoulders, making a home. A bitter, weighted reminder that you are here, alive, when you shouldn’t be—when you aren’t supposed to be.

You collapse onto the ground next to Rex, which pulls him back to the present. His eyelids flutter as he blinks slowly, once at you, then back up to the stretching expanse of the inky black overhead. He lets out a sigh, leaning up on his shoulders to cast a weary glance at his surroundings. “How long was I out?” He questions.

You reply with a thoughtful hum, “Not long. You need the rest, anyway.” It’s true. The day’s events have undoubtedly taken its toll on the both of you. But how does one go about resting after being hunted to the death?

“I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep, cyare.” He says, now sitting upright and then you know there’s no point in fighting it. You both need rest, but with the way Rex’s frame is pulled tense as a bow, his hand twitching ever-so-slightly towards his blaster, you know there’s no way he’d rest easy.

So, you offer him a victory, albeit a minute one. You pull his unarmed hand into yours and close your eyes, feeling the way he lets out a shaky breath, releasing some tension along with it. A victory—you’re still here with him.

Neither of you can be certain how long you stay that way. The low croon emitting from the transceiver is the only sign that time actually passes. Neither of you complain about the noise, either. It didn’t need to be said that the silence—this silence, was much too loud.

You do try to sleep, Rex gives you credit for that. Though, after turning for the fifth time (he counts) you give up and sit up beside him. He’s got his knees pressed to his chest, one hand curled tight around his blaster. In his other, his thumb rubs circles against the back of your hand. The answer to whether it soothes you or himself doesn’t matter.

Wordlessly, your head lowers to his shoulder, propped gently against the curve of muscle.

“Did I ever tell you I wanted to be a singer?” You murmur, glancing at the transceiver. You don’t recognise the singer on broadcast, though you do take note of the melody, slow and mellow.

Rex watches as you even try to hum along, as offbeat as you are.

“No,” he huffs something short of a chuckle, “you didn’t.”

He knows what you’re trying to do, sees it clear as day. Yet, as he watches your feet tap to the tempo of the ballad, he can’t stop himself from humouring your attempt to comfort him.

You nod eagerly, eyes widening as if to express your candor. “I was about to be one, too! Then the Jedi came and…”

Rex waits as you trail off, then clocks the far-off look in your eyes. He picks up where you left off. “Would you sing for me now?”

You return in a split second, your lips pulling into a bashful smile as you avoid his eyes. “I’m definitely rusty by now, I don’t want you losing your hearing because of me.”

The Captain nudges you teasingly, grinning when you break into soft laughter. “It would be an honour, though,” he quips.

He wonders how much of you has been hidden behind the mantle of a Jedi’s title. Who would you have been had you not been brought into the Order, raised from young to be one thing, and one thing only? Who would he be?

Once again, Rex is dragged out of his thoughts. This time, you’re tugging him to his feet. It takes an effort and a half, which you currently lack in your fatigued state.

As he looks up at you questioningly, you motion to the transceiver, dropping his hand to raise the volume. It’s enough to provide a comfortable backdrop instead of a desperate attempt to quell silence.

“Dance with me,” you propose softly, “please?”

“I don’t know how to, mesh’la.”

As if pointedly ignoring his feeble protest, your hand remains outstretched, beckoning his participation.

Maker, he’s only ever seen couples dancing on holofilms and is even more certain he has two left feet. But gazing up at your expectant self is like looking at a promise of escaping the sorrow he now knows as reality.

Really, it’s all up to him.

Rex swears he feels three times lighter from the way you beam in delight when he fits his palm into your smaller ones and helps you lift him to full height.

He stands awkwardly, clueless as to where his hands should go, how he should move. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

Below him, you soften at the uncertainty tainting his features. Taking mercy on the poor man, you lift a hand to cup his cheek, garnering his attention.

“Put your hands on my waist,” you murmur, eyes twinkling when Rex’s hands fly up to root himself to you. Your own arms loop behind his neck and he takes it as a sign to pull you into his chest, no stranger to the position.

“and now we sway.”

Such a simple command, yet Rex feels like a fish out of water. His limbs are stiff, like the serenity of the movement is a stranger. To an extent, it is.

When you take over, moving him to the beat instead, he gratefully surrenders, allowing himself a moment of tranquility.

The only sounds that reach him become the silky notes of the singer and your soft, steady breaths. If he tries hard enough, he can pretend to be in a distant galaxy, where he is not a clone and you are not a Jedi, where the war is nothing more than a brash concept and his brothers are alive and well.

Rex doesn’t realise he’s crying until your thumb smooths away a tear rolling down his face. His eyes stay closed as he wills himself to keep pretending, but he can’t.

He is still a clone but you are no longer a Jedi. His brothers are gone.

You hold him when he finally breaks, cradling his head close when his shoulders tremble with the force of his sobs. His tears soak into the collar of your singed robes, but you truly can’t find the will to care—not when the man you love is falling apart, barely held together by the threads of your embrace.

“It wasn’t them,” he chokes, shaking his head, a wretched attempt to convince himself, “—it couldn’t be.”

At that, you’re positive your heart shatters. Stars, he doesn’t deserve this. You wish with all your might to take the pain away, to rewind every clock in the galaxy and then the next, but all you can do is watch.

“It wasn’t,” you nod, lowering your forehead to press against his, “not the real them. You know they loved you.” And by the Maker, you know.

Rex’s hands clutch tightly at your robes, as if letting go of that would mean letting go of you. The last tether to what is now his past, his only constant.

What if you hadn’t made it off the ship? What if Ahsoka hadn’t gotten the chip out of him in time? What if he had hurt you?

He briefly registers your voice calling his name, cutting through the despondent scenarios that could have, by any deciding factor, become his present.

“Rex, my love,” you plead, “please look at me.”

When he raises his eyes, he finds that yours are a mirror of his own. The anguish that parallels his agony. He feels you, your presence. He’s never understood much about the Force, but he thinks this is pretty damn close.

“I’m here,” you whisper. The promise of those two words anchor you both. “‘M not going anywhere.”

You mean it. If you believed it before, there was no chance in any star in the galaxy that anyone would be able to tear you away from him now.

For the current moment, you weren’t sure if there was a place to go, even if you wanted. Less than twenty four hours ago, you had been anticipating the end of the Clone Wars. Now, it feels like you’ve been thrown onto the losing side.

“What do we do now?” Rex asks, but you both know there isn’t an answer. There’s no precedent to go off of.

Two of the finest leaders in the GAR and the Jedi Order are lost, with no one left to follow them.

There’s nothing to do but move on.

“We keep living,” you say with a heavy sigh, burying your face into the crook of Rex’s neck, “we live for them. We’ll find a way.”

You always do.

[a-room-of-my-own]

A while before the latest hoo-ha about Judith Butler, I had just been reading her again. Though she claims her critics have not read her, this simply isn’t the case. I read Gender Trouble when it first came out and it was important at the time . That time was long,long ago. She was just one of the many ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers I was into. I would trip off to see  Luce Irigaray or Derrida whenever they appeared.

I got an interview  with Baudrillard and tried to sell it to The Guardian but they  didn’t know who he was so its fair to say I was fairly immersed in that world of theory.  For a while, I had a part time lecturing job so I had to keep on top of it. Though Butler’s idea of gender as performance was not new , it was interesting.  RuPaul said it so much more clearly in a  quote nicked from  someone else “Honey ,we are born naked, the rest is drag”

What I was looking for again , I guess is not any clarity – her writing is famously and deliberately difficult-  but whether there was ever any sense of the material body. She wrote herself in 2004 “I confess however I am not a very good materialist. Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language” . 

Butler from on high ,cannot really think about the body at all which is why they (Butler’s chosen pronoun) are now the high priestess of a particular kind of trans ideology.  The men who worship Butler are not versed in high theory. The fox botherer had a “brain swoon” at some very ordinary things Butler said. Mr Right Side of history nodded along in an interview. Clearly neither of these men are versed in any of this philosophy and would be better off sticking to tax law and the decline of the Labour Party. Butler is simply a totem for them.

Butler said in the Guardian interview for instance  “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.”

So yeah? That’s a fairly basic view of the social construction of gender though I take issue with the assigned at birth thing ,which I will come back to and why I started reading her again in the first place.

This phrase “Assigned sex at birth” is now common parlance but simply does not make sense  to me. I am living with someone who is pregnant. I have given birth three times and been a birthing  partner. I know where babies come from. There is a deep disconnect here between language and reality which no amount of academic jargon can obliterate. 

Babies  come from bodies. Not any bodies but bodies that have a uterus. They grew inside a woman’s body until they  get pushed out or dragged out into the world. 

The facts of life that we are now to be liberated from in the form of denial. Only one sex can have babies but we must now somehow not say that. The pregnant “people” of Texas will now be forced into giving birth to children they don’t want because they are simply “host bodies”. The language of patriarchal supremacy and that of some of the trans ideologues is remarkably close, as is their biological ignorance.

There is no foetal heatbeat at six weeks for instance. When a baby is born , doctors and midwives do not randomly assign a sex, they observe it and they do it though genitalia. 

There is a question over a tiny percentage of babies ,less that one percent with DSDs but even then they are sexed with doctors having  difficult conversations with parents about what may happen later.

Somehow, though when I read the way in which this is now all discussed it is clear to me that the people talking have never been pregnant, never had a foetal scan, never been near a birth , never miscarried, do not understand that even with a still birth babies are still sexed and often named. 

If you want to know the sex of your baby you can pay privately and know at 7 weeks ((*49-56 days from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual cycle). A 12 week scan will show it. That is why so many female foetuses are aborted . I have reported on this. 

Talking to paediatricians about this is interesting because they do indeed have to think through these things that we are being told are not real eg. that sex is just a by-product of colonialism for instance.  Sometimes pre-conception , geneticists will be looking at chromosomes because certain diseases are more likely in men or women. Males have a higher risk of haemophilia for instance.  

One doctor told me “When babies are premature, the survival advantage of females over males is well known throughout neonatology. This is sometimes something we talk about with parents when there is threatened premature labour around 23 weeks' gestation and options to discuss about resuscitation and medical interventions. In fertility treatment (or counselling around fertility in the context of medical treatments) it is pretty inherent to know whether we need to plan around sperm, or ova + pregnancy.”

She also said that if she involved in a birth that “assigning” isn’t the word she world use. “Observed genitals a highly reliable observation, just like measuring weight or head circumference which is also done at this time. “ Another doctor said that anyone involved with a trans man giving birth  would be doing the best for the patient in front  of them. 

Sex then is biological fact. A female baby will have all the eggs she will ever have when she is first born which is kind of amazing. It is not bio-essentialist to say that our sexed bodies are different nor is it transphobic to recognise it.

Except of course in my old newspaper ,The Guardian who are now so hamstrung by their  own ideology they have got their knickers in such a twist they can barely walk.  They completely misreported the WiSpa incident , basically ignored the Sonia  Appleby  judgement at the Tavistock. Appleby was a whistle blower ,a respected professional concerned with safe guarding. She won her case. The cherry on the cake this week was an interview with Butler, themselves (?) in which they went on about Terfs being fascists and needing to extend the category of women.

Does anyone EVER stop to think that most gender critical women are of the left, supporters of gay rights, often lesbian and that this is not America? We are not in bed with the far right. This is bollocks. Just another way to dismiss us.  

As we watch Afghanistan and Texas ,to say Butler’s words were tone deaf is to say the least. But they didn’t even have the guts to keep the most offensive stuff in the piece and overnight edited it out without really explaining why : the bits where Butler described gender critical people as fascist. Perhaps because the person their “reporters” had  defended against  transphobia at WiSpa turned out to be a known sex offender,  perhaps because someone pointed out that Butler was throwing around the word fascist rather like Rik Mayall used to do in the Young Ones. 

All of this is rather desperate and readers deserve better. When I left that newspaper I said that I thought and expected editors to stand up for their writers in public. Instead they go into some catatonic paralysis. I may have not liked this interview but it should never have been cut. Stand by what you publish or your credibility is shot.

But this is about more than Judith Butler and their refusal to support women . Butler is not really any kind of feminist at all. What this is about is the large edifice of trans ideology  crumbling when any real analysis is applied. Yes, I have read Shon Faye’s book and there are some interesting points in it and I totally agree that the lives of trans people should be easier and health care better . I have never said anything but that.

What Faye does in the book is say that there can be no trans liberation under capitalism so there will be a bit of a wait I suspect. 

Yet surely it is the other way round and what we are seeing is that trans ideology (not trans people – I am making a distinction here ) represent the apex of capitalism .

For it means that the individual decides their own gendered essence and then spends a fortune on surgery and a lifetime on medication to achieve the appearance of it. Of course lots of people spend a lifetime  on medication but not out of choice.  Marx understood very well that the abolition of our system of production would free up women.

Now it is all about freeing up men. Who say they are women. Quelle surprise.  

 Nussbaum’s famous take down of Butler is premised exactly on the sense of individual versus collective struggle “ The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. “

Such thinking now dominates academia. There is simply an unquestioning  rehearsal of something most of know not to be true thus Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right to Sex  “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.”

What does ‘sorted’ mean here? A tiny number of intersex babies are born. A tiny number of people are trans and decide to change their bodies. The feminist demand to challenge gender norms without mutilating any one’s body no longer matters. What matters now is this retrograde return  to some gendered soul. This is not something any decent Marxist would have any truck with . Of course one may change over a lifetime and of course gender is never ‘settled.’ We are complex people who inhabit bodies that often don’t work or appear as we want them to.

But not only is there a denial of basic Marxism going on here , what becomes ever more apparent is  that there is a denial of motherhood. Butler said “Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.”

Self-assignment is key . One may birth oneself. No longer of woman born but self -made. This is a theoretical leap but it also one that has profound implications for women as a sex class. We are really then, just the  host bodies to a new breed of people who self-assign.

Maybe that is the future although look around the word and there isn’t a lot of self-assignment going on. There are simply women shot and beaten in the street, choked to death or having  their rights taken  away. There is no identifying out of this , there is no fluidity here . This is not discourse. It is brutality and do we not have some responsibility to other women to confront male violence ?

Instead the hatred is aided and abetted by so called philosophers describing  other women as Terfs. It is utterly depressing.

The sexed body. The pregnant body. The dying body. The body is in trouble when we can’t talk about it . I thought of Margaret Mary O’Hara’s  beautiful and  strange lyrics and what they might mean. I await my child’s return from the hospital as hers is a difficult pregnancy and thank god they are on the case. The sex of the child she carries does not matter to me at all .

It simply exists. Not in language but within a body. 

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge? 

[oboevallis]

runaway

hey it’s been a hot minute, not really sure what this is ive have it in my drafts for a while, but i feel like everyone’s written this 😂 but i wanted to post something at least also ‘who is he?’ part 4 will be coming out soon hope everyone’s doing well

“It’s always been her, hasn’t it?” Amelia’s voice wavered as she struggled to keep her composure.

“I didn’t sleep with her!” Link exclaimed, slurring his words. “I just stayed with her.”

“Whenever something goes wrong between us you always go running to Jo. Just get it over with and fuck her already! She’ll be all the things I’m not.”

“You have no right to be mad. I poured my heart out to you, I’ve been planning for months on proposing to you. I love you Amelia Shepherd, but your so damn self destructive you’re ruining this for the both of us. I’ve done everything you’ve wanted this is just one thing I wanted. If anything I should be mad, but I’m being the bigger person.”

“You’re being the bigger person?” Amelia chuckled in disbelief. “Talk to me again when you’re sober.”

“Who said I wasn’t sober?”

“Please, part of Jo’s help sessions always result in the two of you downing a bottle of whiskey, which is an incredibly unhealthy coping mechanism.” As she said this she was aggressively packing her clothes in a suitcase.

“Not everyone’s a fucking alcoholic. Not everyone has to sit an a room with fucked up strangers complaining about their lives, when they did that to themselves.”

“You think I wanted to be snorting oxy off of the reception desk of a medical practice while I’ll my friends watched? Or stealing my brothers car and crashing it trying to find drugs? I thought you were different but you’re just like Owen.” That’s the last thing she said before walking into their sons nursery and scooping with up.

“You can’t take Scout.”

“I can because you’re drunk out of your mind, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you.”

“Where are you going?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Amelia yelled before slamming the door behind her. She fought to get the baby in his car seat, she couldn’t seem to catch a break. She needed to get away, she needed to go back to her original refuge.

“Come on Scout, can we cooperate for mommy?” Amelia begged, fighting off tears as her son kicked and screamed. Despite being a movement baby he hated the car, specifically the car seat since no one could hold him. Eventually the baby was secured, and he quickly fell asleep, as he realized how he exhausted himself after his tantrum. Three hours into the drive Amelia immediately started to regret this, it was a 17 hour drive, and she was doing it alone with a baby who just barely turned one. No, she was doing this, she needed to. She’d be sure to take as many breaks as she needed. This was what needed to be done for her and her sons well-being.

After two hotel visits and countless stops along I-5 S she found herself in LA standing outside her sisters door, but couldn’t bring herself to knock. She knew Addison loved her but she couldn’t help already feeling the subtle condescension. ‘How have you already managed to screw this up?’ ‘I love you Amy, I do, but isn’t this a little extreme?’ ‘You’re clean, right? Because I’ll take you back right this minute’

Quickly she turned around to go back to her car to think about her next game plan before a voice stopped her.

“Amy?” Amelia jerked back around to be met with Addison’s confused yet comforting smile.

“Umm I’m vaccinated, but I got tested if that makes you more comfortable. I’m negative I-I just needed to get put of Seattle.”

“I know the feeling.” The older woman chuckled holding the door open wider to allow the two to come in. “Now let me hold my new nephew!” She squealed as she held her arms out for the baby, soaking in his tiny stature. “I miss when Henry was this little.”

“Where is the little guy? It’s awfully quiet.”

“They went camping, Henry’s been stir crazy for over a year and it seemed safe enough for the two to go away.”

“I’m sure Jake was thrilled.” Amelia smirked thinking back to the time the practice went on a camping trip together and Jake had almost refused to go hence his disdain for the wilderness.

“You know it.” Addison joked along, playing with the baby’s tiny fingers. The older woman then lead the way back onto the deck and settled on a lounge chair under an umbrella. Amelia followed behind and took out sunscreen from the diaper bag she was sure to pick up once they got to LA. “He’s absolutely adorable Amelia.”

“Thanks.” Amelia smiled as she lathered the baby’s extremities with sunscreen.

“Gosh i just want to eat him up.” Addison pretended to bite into him, causing the baby to shriek with laughter. Cracking the first genuine smile the neurosurgeon had since after Maggie’s wedding. “You know I was talking to Charlotte a little while ago and she mentioned she was going to go to a meeting if you want to go meet up with her, she still goes to the one near the pier.”

“Thank you, Addison.” It now felt silly to have been scared to talk to Addison, she always knew how to help the neurosurgeon. “Are you sure you’re okay to watch him?”

“More than okay.” Addison beamed, running her hand through the baby’s hair. “And even if you stayed I still wouldn’t let this little guy go.”

“I love you Addie.”

“Love you too Amy.” Addison assured as the woman walked out to her car, it’d be a lie if she said she wasn’t worried for her little sister. But she was reaching out for help, she wasn’t sure what the issue was but she was immensely proud she came to her and not a baggie of pills.

_______________________________________

“Don’t you think you should call her?” Jo asked as she prepared a bottle for Luna.

“No.” Link coldly said, cradling the baby in his arms.

“At least for Scout’s sake?”

“He’s fine, looking back Amelias made it very clear she’s the only parent that matters or gets a say.” Link bitterly replied.

“I’m sure it isn’t like that.” As much as she loved her dear friend, he couldn’t see where he also went wrong in this situation. “She loves you.”

“Not enough to marry me.”

“She isn’t ready.”

“Her and Hunt were off and on, and she accepted his proposal.”

“First off she had a brain tumor, and because of said brain tumor she impulsively asked him to marry her. She thinks clearly now, and I think she just wants it to work out and be right.” Jo turned around and sighed as she saw her friends annoyed look. “You’ve never been a marriage guy, where is this even coming from?”

“I don’t know it just feels right, i don’t want to lose her.”

“Your gonna lose her if you push her into this.”

“I move mountains for her, I’ve adjusted my whole life for her. It’s just one thing, one thing that I want.”

“Link are you stupid? This isn’t fighting over what couch you get this determines the rest of your life. And marriage isn’t all that, it doesn’t keep a person there.” Jo sighed, since adopting Luna she’d been thinking a lot about her ex husband, and how stupid the concept of marriage was.

________________________________________

“Has he called?” Addison cautiously asked as Amelia fed her baby.

“Nope.” Amelia popped the ‘p’. “I get that he hates me now, but I thought he’d at least check in on Scout.”

“He’s just upset.”

“I know, I just thought he understood. He’s nothing like Owen but since we moved into his apartment I just feel suffocated like I did when we were married.”

“Have you tried talking to someone, professionally?” Addison inquired, leaning further back onto the beach chair.

“What so they can silently judge how I have a perfect life but still feel terrible?”

“Amy, you know a therapist isn’t going to think that, their there to help you without judgement.” She stared at the woman for awhile until she came to a realization. “After Scout was born you didn’t have any postpartum appointments did you?”

“No, the world had shut down a week after he was born.” Amelia confirmed.

“Do you think your having a delayed postpartum depression reaction? I mean you were thrown into taking care of a newborn and three other kids who aren’t yours in complete isolation . Then On top of that you didn’t have time to grieve Christopher. It’s difficult on women who have lost a child previously when they bring home a healthy baby.” Amelia held back her tears, as much as she tried to focus on scout she couldn’t help but feel broken over the fact Christopher didn’t have the opportunities scout has.

“Pre-covid a day wouldn’t go by that I didn’t think of Christopher. Then I just got so caught up in everything, and I’d barely think about him. I mean I almost forgot his birthday.”

“You can’t feel guilty about that.”

“I j-just wish Link would get that I don’t want another baby.I mean he’s ten times more understanding than Owen was about my grief but, I just don’t want another baby.”

“You’re allowed to not want another baby, but do you think it has to do with Christopher?”

“I don’t think so, I just can’t love yet another person without losing myself. It feels like I already have, I don’t recognize anything about me. Surgery doesn’t even give me the thrill it use to.” The older women sat up and placed a reassuring hand on the younger ones knee.

“I’m gonna talk to Violet and have her refer someone to you. Then you’re gonna talk to Link and come up with a game plan. And I’m gonna be right here the whole time, you’re my family. Everyone here is your family we’ve got you.”

[vintagedolan]

a concept about y/n just lovin on Ethan when he's insecure about his acne, just giving him kind words and cuddles

basing this on when his acne was closer to its peak fyi

-----

february 2020

“Only if we order it in. Postmate it on my card.” 

He wasn’t doing well that day. Curled up on the bed with a hoodie and a beanie on, expertly pulled down over his forehead like he always so carefully placed it these days. 

“Okay, what do you want?”

“Usual.” His tone was short, and he was lucky that the two of you had been to Monty’s enough times for you to know that meant a double burger, fries, diet rootbeer and a coffee milkshake. It was a usual send day meal for him that was becoming a three-times-a-week-meal. 

You knew the turn that the evening would most likely take. 

You weren’t sure when it would hit him, become too much. You cuddled up to his neck, hoping that maybe tonight it wouldn’t be so bad. His arm curled around your waist, pulled you tighter against him. That was a good sign at least - on his worst days, he didn’t want anyone to touch him, not even you. It made you hesitant to even get up to go get the food at the door - who knew how he would feel when you got back into the room.

Grayson watched you with sad eyes when you answered the door, accepted the paper bags and drink carrier with a smile from the delivery man.

“He alright?” 

“Not sure. Hasn’t eaten much all day, but he said Monty’s sounded good.”

“That’s the third time this week.”

“I know.”

“It’s thursday.”

“Grayson I know.” 

“He’s self sabotaging Y/N, he’s just...”

He sighed, running his hand through his hair, trailing off. His frustration was obvious - his usual tough love approach wouldn’t work, and every time he tried to talk to Ethan when he was in a low place about his acne, it never went well.

You were both surprised when you heard footsteps, bare feet soft on the floor as he made his way into the kitchen. 

“Did you get some too?” Ethan’s eyes followed their usual trail when he looked at Grayson - eyes first, then forehead. Smooth forehead. ‘Perfect’ forehead as E called it when he was pissed off mid acne-discussion. Your heart cracked a bit further when you watched him readjust the beanie, making sure it was covering everything it could, eyes dropping down to his feet. 

“Nah, I made veggie soup earlier. There’s plenty of leftovers if you wanna help me knock it out tomorrow. Can’t eat it all by myself.” It was his subtle way of offering a healthy meal without shoving it down his brother’s throat. 

“Yeah.” His eyes moved to yours. “Wanna watch another episode?”

“Sure,” you smiled, taking his hand as he headed back to the room. You unpacked the bags once you got settled on the bed, frowning as Ethan shifted around on top of the covers. 

“You good?”

“S’ hot in here,” he mumbled, wrestling with his hoodie and pulling it over his head.

His beanie fell with it, and you got a glimpse of the skin he’d been trying so desperately to hide all day. It was red and angry, agitated by the medicine he’d started on. They’d told him it would probably get worse before it got better, and it seemed like it had, even in just the first few weeks. You’d never seen him so unconfident before, so determined to hide from everyone, even you... even Grayson. 

He scrambled to get the black knit fabric, pulling to down over his head again, too far down. 

“You might be hot cause of the hat,” you said before you thought about it. His eyes flickered to yours - accusatory. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Right.” You tried not to take it personally, knew that he wasn’t trying to be short with you. But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting just a little bit. 

Dinner was consumed mostly in silence, the show neither of you were really watching playing mindlessly in the background, making it less uncomfortable. But it seemed like every bite made him more angry, more annoyed. 

By the time he got to the milkshake, he was scowling, almost spilling it when he sat it on the nightstand.

“What’s wrong?” 

“I keep doing this to myself. Grayson was right, I’m self sabotaging.”

You gulped around the fry you were trying to get down.

“You heard that.”

“You all weren’t exactly quiet,” he grumbled. “I don’t know why I keep doing this. I feel like shit, so I eat shitty. But then I feel even more shitty cause I ate like shit. It’s a fucking cycle and I don’t know how to break it.”

“I can help you with that. If you’ll talk to me.” You tried it, hoping maybe now would be the time he’d decide to let you in. The only time he was willing to talk about it all was when he was already at the breakdown stage, and that generally just consisted of you reassuring him and trying to comfort him. You’d yet to have a productive conversation about it. 

But he just looked at you, eyes unreadable. 

“I feel gross. I’m gonna shower,” were the words he finally chose. “I’ll clean up once I’m out.”

You watched him walk to the bathroom, closing the door behind him as the tears prickled in your eyes. Fighting them back, you gathered the bags and wrappers in one hand and his milkshake in the other before you headed to the kitchen. 

You were able to hide your face from Gray until you stowed the shake in the freezer. He saw the redness in them and frowned. He’d treated you like a sister ever since Ethan had brought you into his life, and he was as protective of you as he was anyone else. 

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Y/N, you know he’s not himself right now. Whatever it was, he didn’t mean it.”

“He didn’t say anything Gray. That’s the problem, he won’t talk to me. I don’t know how to help him, and it’s killing me.”  

“Hey. C’mere.” Grayson was waving you over when you finally looked at him, and just that was enough to almost make you cry all over again. He stood up from his chair, wrapping you in a hug that was sturdy but soft at the same time somehow. He just held you for a minute, both of your worries unspoken but understood as you squeezed yourself against him. 

“All we can do is love him. That’s all we can do,” he said, and you weren’t sure if he was talking to you or to himself. 

You took those words with you when he let go, mulled them over as you went back to the room, heard the shower running behind the door. 

You brazened yourself for the rejection you knew was going to come as you went into the bathroom, stripping down and taking a deep breath before you pulled the shower door open. 

Ethan was standing under the water, letting it run over him as he stood perfectly still, a statue in the rain. He flinched when you wrapped your arms around his torso, pressing up against his back. He was vulnerable here, no clothes to hide behind. So you weren’t all too surprised that once you made your way around his form, hands coming up to his shoulders, then his neck and then his jaw, he caught your fingers, stopping them.

“Don’t.” He turned his head away from you, staring at the rough rock wall to your left, looking anywhere but at you.

“Ethan... please.”  

It took a minute, but he finally looked back at you, eyes sad and void of the Ethan that you knew, the confident, bubbly man that you’d fallen for so long ago.

“Don’t act like you don’t see them. Don’t act like they aren’t disgusting.” He couldn’t look you in the eyes when he said it. 

“No part of you could ever be disgusting to me. And of course I see them. But it doesn’t change how I look at you. I love you, no matter what.” You hoped with every fiber of your being that your words got through to him.

“You have to say that.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You’re my girlfriend, it’s what you’re supposed to say.”

“Oh, right. Cause I’m being held hostage here. I’m choosing to be here because I love you. No amount of bumps on your face is gonna change that for me. Because you’re you. And I know you don’t feel like yourself right now, but I know you’re still you. And you’re gonna come out of this stronger. I know you are.” The words spilled out before you could stop them, and the tears did too. 

When he finally looked at you, you could tell he was crying too. He hadn’t found his voice yet, but you didn’t care. The way he looked at you told you everything you needed to know. 

As gently as you could you traced your hands up over his head, over the short soft hairs, and then around to his face. You knew they were sore, didn’t want to get more oil on them that could make it worse. 

You ran your fingers over them anyways, felt the raised skin, his skin, his face that he hadn’t let you touch in so long. So you cried. You both cried, let it mix in with the water as you traced over him, over and over, no hesitation to be found. His hands held onto your hips, fingers squeezing there as he let you touch him, let himself be felt for the first time since December. 

You stayed until the water ran cold, but you stayed close as you dried off, eventually collapsing back into bed in each other’s arms once you were dressed.

“Thank you,” he murmured once he tucked his face up against your neck. “I love you.” 

“I love you too.” You let those words hang in the air for a few moments before you remembered something. “Question.”

“Answer,” he said, perking up a bit.

“Can we eat your milkshake now?”

He laughed, a delicious sound, before he nodded, rolling off of you so you could both get up and head to the kitchen. You talked while it thawed, your voices traveling down the hall and making Grayson raise his eyebrows. 

When he snuck down the hallway he couldn’t help but smile - the man in his kitchen was the man he hadn’t seen in a few months, and he’d never been happier to see him coming back to him, little by little with your help.

[coochiequeens]

Like most Americans, I learned to ride a bike as a kid. I still remember the glee after learning how to ride a bike on a subdivision road where I grew up in Florida. I had cracked the mysteries of balance, and now I had the giddy pleasure of my newfound freedom.

But girls around the world don't always get to experience the joy of a first bike ride. In some countries, conservative societies frown upon women and girls who ride bikes – it's not considered dignified or appropriate — and gives a girl too much independence.

Joumana Seif, a Syrian lawyer and activist, recalls riding a bike as an 11-year-old in the capital city of Damascus. It was the first time she understood there were different rules for girls and boys.

"For the people [watching on the street], and even for the children, it was shocking to them that I was riding a bike. They started to say, 'Oh, shame on you, you are a girl riding a bike,' " Seif says. "It just wasn't in our culture."

But it's never too late to learn. In Germany, a nonprofit group called Bikeygees is teaching refugee women from countries such as Iran, Iraq and Syria how to ride.

Bikeygees began in 2015, a time when Germans were embracing a concept called Wilkommenskultur -- or "welcoming culture" — to greet newly arrived refugees, many of them fleeing the war in Syria. The movement spawned an explosion of nonprofits eager to assist the newcomers, including Bikeygees, says founder Annette Krüger. Bikes are an important part of German culture. In fact, nine out of every 10 residents own a bicycle.

The group's name, she explains, is "a word creation" of "bike and refugees."

In the early days of the program, Kruger donated bikes to refugee centers and taught refugees how to ride on an ad hoc basis. Since then, the program has grown, and today, volunteers offer riding lessons to refugee women five days a week in 15 locations in Berlin and Brandenburg. The women can take as many classes they need to master the skill. Since the group first started, it has taught 1,100 women how to ride a bike, says Krüger.

"It is possible to change the life of a woman in two hours. It is really magical," says Krüger, an avid cyclist.

The group also teaches women how to fix bikes. It instills a sense of self-sufficiency, says Krüger. If they can do bike repairs, ride and learn the German rules of the road, they are awarded with a bike kit. That includes a a bike, helmet, bike lock and bike tools. So far, Bikeygees has distributed 400 kits, paid for with donations.

In a sprawling park on the edge of Berlin in July, Krüger watched four volunteers teach cycling to a new crop of refugee women.

The three students came from Ahvaz, Iran; Kirkuk, Iraq; and Afrin, Syria. They say they didn't know how to ride a bike before they arrived to Germany and were forbidden to try in their home countries.

Shaha Khalef, 21, signed up for her first lesson with Bikeygees three years ago and now she's a volunteer trainer. She gently holds a trainee on a bike around the waist while running alongside until the rider finds her balance to take off on her own.

"It's a beautiful feeling when a person is riding a bike," she says with a broad grin.

Khalef, a member of the Yazidi religious minority from Sinjar, Iraq, says she wasn't allowed to ride a bike when she was growing up.

"It was both forbidden and highly risky," she says. Not only was it culturally prohibited for girls and women, it was dangerous. Her neighborhood had dirt roads and no sidewalks, and people's bikes were often old and unsuitable for riding.

But these concerns have slowly disappeared since she and her family moved to Germany, says Khalef, who is studying to become a social worker. Her three sisters also learned bike-riding through the program, and her mother insists Khalef teach her fourth sister, the youngest, how to ride, too.

The program's success is measured in the smiles of the riders when they conquer another bike skill, says Krüger. Shapol Bakir-Rasoul says she grew up in Kirkuk and came to Germany four years ago. She's been honing her skills for weeks in these classes — and on this day, she's learning how to better use the handbrakes. They screech as she makes a perfect stop on a dirt road in the park.

Her hands shoot up off the handlebars. She whoops and cheers in a duet with her trainer.

Krüger says when some women master bike riding for the first time, they cry. "Sometimes we [do], too," she says of the volunteer trainers.

She recalls one student in her 60s who continued to practice through a bitter German winter. "She said, 'This is a dream for me. I have been waiting my whole life to do this.' "

[disneydreamlights]

To the Future

AO3 | FFN

Summary: Namine's invited for a girls day out in Twilight Town.

A/N: Written for @naminezine who I cannot thank enough for this experience. If they do a leftover sale you guys should definitely pick up a copy.

The irony is not lost on me that it's Star Wars day and the fic I'm publishing is not Star Wars but this has been in my backlog for months and I'm so glad I can finally share it!

Naminé was still more than a little nervous about following Kairi to Twilight Town today. Today had been the day she was finally allowed to leave Radiant Garden to go explore the other worlds, and Kairi had insisted that to mark the occasion, she’d get to visit Twilight Town and meet the friends who had helped them on her journey.

As Kairi stopped in front of the Usual Spot (Naminé knew it, she’d helped design it in the Virtual Twilight Town for Roxas after all), she put a hand on Naminé’s shoulder. The fact that they were both born from the same heart had left them connected, and it was likely she knew that Naminé was much more nervous than she’d let on. “Don’t worry, Naminé. It’ll be fine, we’re starting small, and they’re both friends with Roxas too.”

“I know.” The small reassurance from Kairi did wonders, and Naminé followed after her into the small hidden room in the alley of Twilight Town.

“Kairi! You’re here!” Despite the fact that they’d never met, Naminé recognized Olette easily from the memories she’d had to create such a long time ago. “Oh, is this the friend you said you’d be bringing?”

Kairi nodded. “This is Naminé, we just recently finished the replica to help her get a body of her own.” It made sense Kairi wasn’t bothering to protect the World Order, then again, Twilight Town was a strange world to begin with. “Naminé, this is Olette. And that’s—”

Naminé watched as the other girl in the room stood up from the armrest she was sitting on with a smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Naminé.”

“You two already know each other?” Kairi tilted her head slightly, not to Naminé’s surprise. Kairi knew with the exception of Riku and DiZ, she had spent most of her year alive alone.

Naminé, however, simply nodded in response. “Once, a long time ago.” She didn’t elaborate, now wasn’t the time to talk about what had gone down during the year Sora had been asleep. “I’m glad to see you again too.” Xion’s fate had been something that had never sat well with her. Knowing she got a happier end, that was what mattered.

“Well, if I’m the only one here who isn’t your friend yet, that just won’t do,” Olette smiled at Naminé, who was surprised by her kindness. “I guess we’ll just have to become friends today.”

And just like that, Naminé smiled, feeling at ease among the two girls who welcomed her so easily to their day together.

-x-

It turned out, when Kairi had invited her to a girl’s day, it had been planned specifically with Naminé in mind. “So I think the first thing we really need to do is get you a new outfit,” Kairi smiled, leading the girls into a small clothing shop in the main street of Twilight Town.

“What’s wrong with what I have now?” It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the concept; the white dress and others like it was all she’d ever worn—it was comfortable, a part of her.

“You were wearing it while I was still in the Organization,” Xion pointed out. Naminé couldn’t argue about that, though she still wasn’t sure she understood.

Olette looked at her in a bit of surprise. “You’ve been wearing the same outfit that long, with no other options?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” despite having been fine with it earlier, Naminé found herself self-conscious at the fact that the girls were so surprised by that fact.

“It’s not a bad thing, but Xion said you guys had met before, right?” Olette pointed out, waiting for Naminé to nod before continuing. “Well, if you two had met during that time, it probably wasn’t in the best of circumstances, and sometimes, changing what you’re wearing can help you feel like you have control over what happened, changing anything can.”

Unsure if what Olette was saying was true, Naminé turned to Kairi for confirmation. “It’s the main reason I wanted you to join us today. The reason Riku cut his hair after coming home was to feel like he had control after everything that had happened, and to show that he had changed.” Naminé nodded, she did remember that his hair had been longer when they’d worked together to save Sora than it was currently. “Right now, cutting your hair seems like it’d be a bit of an extreme to do, but changing your outfit would still be a good start.”

Naminé sighed, willing to accept it for now, at least while they were shopping and supposed to be having a good time. “I understand.”

“Great, then in that case, let’s get started!” Olette immediately dove into the racks, looking for something in Naminé’s size, Kairi following behind her eagerly, although with a reassuring smile, probably sensing how nervous Naminé felt at the idea.

It was Xion who stayed behind while the other girls looked. “I know you’re nervous about it, I was too,” she indicated her new clothes. The black top and white skirt looking like they belonged on her. “You don’t have to even wear anything they buy you today.” And they would, both of the girls were sure of that. “Just keep an open mind. If you’re not ready, none of us will force you to change it right away.”

Naminé gave Xion a small smile in appreciation. “Thank you.”

Before the dark-haired girl could continue to offer reassurance, Olette came back over with an outfit. “How about this one!” It was a dress, not far off from her current one, which Naminé couldn’t help but find relieving in its own way. The dress remained plain white until it got to the skirt, in which a small blue pattern embroidered the bottom, looking like the ocean’s waves.

Naminé looked it over once. “It looks nice.”

“Then come on, go try it on!” And with that Naminé had been shoved into a fitting room by Olette to try it on. She emerged moments later in the dress to approving smiles from the three other girls she was with. While Xion had remained in her normal outfit, Kairi and Olette were both trying on different outfits, although given that Kairi’s was a neon yellow she wasn’t sure if either of them were as serious about it for themselves as they were for her.

“I knew it’d fit!” Olette was grinning, clearly proud of herself for finding a good outfit.

Kairi was just as happy. “You look great.”

And Naminé smiled. “Thank you.”

Maybe this whole new clothes thing wouldn’t be so bad after all.

-x-

Two hours later, three stores, and ten new outfits purchased, the girls had finally decided they’d had enough of shopping and had returned to the main plaza in the shadow of the clocktower for an ice cream break. Olette came over with the four light blue bars with a smile, spreading them out like a hand of cards. “Here.”

Kairi and Xion both grabbed a treat immediately, unwrapping the bars. Naminé grabbed hers, although was a bit more hesitant in her unwrapping. “Thank you.”

“You’ve never had sea salt ice cream before?” Xion asked, her confusion evident in her voice. Xion was the only one who knew she’d been in Twilight Town before.

Naminé shook her head. “DiZ never brought it for us.”

“It’s good,” Xion took a bite out of the bar, which Naminé shuddered as she watched, just imagining how unpleasant the cold on her teeth would be.

“Don’t feel bad about being disturbed by how Xion eats her ice cream. There are other ways.” Kairi seemed to demonstrate, rather than biting into the bar she licked it.

“Yeah, the rest of us don’t eat our ice cream as though we have no sense,” Olette grinned, clearly teasing Xion, who pouted as a result.

“There’s nothing wrong with how I eat it, Axel and Roxas eat it that way too.”

“Lea and Roxas are not the standards you should be going by,” Kairi pointed out. “They eat their ice cream badly too.”

“Roxas really bites into his ice cream?” Olette looked shocked. “That’s terrible, didn’t the virtual version of Hayner, Pence, and I teach him anything?”

As the other girls continued their bickering, Naminé took a small bit of the ice cream, deciding to try it the same way Xion did and savoring the salty, yet sweet taste of the bar.

Kairi stared. “Oh no, Naminé not you too! Don’t tell me you’re embracing Xion’s cursed ways of eating ice cream.”

“So what if she is?” Xion defended herself. “It’s a good way, right Naminé?”

Naminé nodded in agreement, taking another bite. It was cold, but not unbearable, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “It is, the cold isn’t so bad.”

Letting go of the ice cream eating bit with that comment, each one of them resumed eating their frozen treat—laughing the rest of the day.

[olliedollie1204]

everything fits (2/8)- the follow up

Single father Patton is utterly devoted to his son Virgil. Recently divorced Logan is utterly devoted to his twin sons Remus and Roman. The pieces come together.

Pairings: Romantic Logicality

Word Count: 4,795 words

Tags: Single dad Patton and kid Virgil, Divorced Dads Logan and Janus and kids Roman and Remus (their split was mutual and their relationship is good)

chapter 2 babey! this chapter features that past romantic Loceit-- just a reminder that there’s no drama or conflict regarding their divorce at all!

warnings for general discussion of divorce, siblings bickering, brief descriptions of injury, and arguments between ex-spouses!

(Read it on AO3!)

Logan mostly pushed the morning’s incident out of his mind, switching gears into what Janus lovingly referred to as his “Robo-Teacher” mode. After he relieved the substitute from her position watching his class, he wasted no time in getting the second graders back on schedule.

They were good kids, if a bit rambunctious, but Logan enjoyed the work. Children are so much brighter than society gives them credit for. All they want is what anybody would want: to be heard, and respected, and taken seriously. Logan could understand that; he remembered feeling exactly the same way when he was a child.

So even though he had a reputation as a stickler for rules, order, and schedules, he actually didn’t mind too much when a student would interrupt math time with an unrelated question like, “Mr. Croft, why can’t we drink hand sanitizer?”, or when one would come up to his desk during silent reading with a request of, “Mr. Croft, can you tell us about stars, please?”

He would simply nod and change the subject, giving an impromptu lecture about alcohol poisoning or Alpha Centauri, and within minutes his pupils were satisfied and engaged again.

This attitude was a little unorthodox among his peers, but made him a hit among the children. Every holiday would result in his desk being covered in candies and coffee mugs and handmade cards (which he saved in his bottom right desk drawer— every single one).

So the day was not wholly unenjoyable, even though it had gotten off to a rocky start. Truthfully, he really had never once been late to work, not even when the twins were little.

Logan sighed to himself as his work was once again interrupted by thoughts of his children. At least he didn’t have any reason to worry about them at the moment. They were happy, healthy, and safe— three things that were becoming harder and harder to maintain in his prepubescent sons.

In hindsight, babies are remarkably uncomplicated compared to the minefield that is nearly-teenage children. Babies simply have certain physical, mental, and emotional needs that must be met in order for them to grow up happy, healthy, and well developed. And Logan, not to brag, was very good with babies.

Especially cute little twin baby boys, with their gurgling coos and their sweet smiles and their tiny, pudgy hands, one for each of their daddies to hold—

Logan shook his head, attempting to read the words in front of him for the third time, but he still found his mind drifting to his sons.

That was the main problem, really: Logan was constantly thinking about the twins.

The thing is, there was really no reason for Logan to worry as much as he did. Roman could be a little self-absorbed, and Remus had no concept of a filter whatsoever, but they were generally kind, courageous, and so unbelievably creative, it made Logan wonder where on Earth they got it from. Certainly not him; the arts were admittedly not his forte, although he did know a great deal of trivia about art history. And although Janus was crafty and charming, even he had to admit that he had no idea where the boys got their innate sense of innovation and originality.

Logan hummed, tapping his pen against his desk as his mind drifted from his children to his ex.

His relationship with Janus was about as healthy as ex-husbands could be— you’d think that getting divorced from a lawyer would be hell on Earth, but Janus Sanders had gotten to be one of the top attorneys in the city for a reason. He was so furiously thorough at ensuring everything was fair and just in their divorce papers, Logan hadn’t doubted for a second that everything would end on equal terms.

He’s a good man, Logan thought, not for the first time. They still liked each other, but they weren’t in love, not really— not anymore. It had taken them so long to get to the point where they could make that distinction, and even though they knew it would’ve been easier to carry on in their marriage, neither could deny the somewhat sombering realization that their separation was for the best.

That was a year and a half ago. And things were good between them, sometimes better than they were when they were married, but if he was being honest, Logan just missed his kids.

He had stayed up all night last night thinking about them; their goodnight phone call had been cut short when Roman burst in on Remus’ time, begging his brother to help him add something to their current art project before they had to go to bed. And Logan understood how important their projects were to them, he really did, but he couldn’t deny the twinge of hurt when the line went dead, his sons on the other side of the city. They might as well have been a world apart.

So he had gotten very little sleep the night before, and this morning, he had overslept.

Logan knew, rationally, that it was not a big deal: he had immediately called the school, requesting a temporary sub to watch his class, and set about preparing for his day. He lived relatively close to the school, so despite the increase of morning traffic due to him leaving at a later time, Logan knew he would be there before a substantial amount of time had passed.

But still, it was the principle of the thing, to be on time for work. And then he had remembered that he needed to make those photocopies for his students, and he had been in such a rush to get to his class, until—

He paused, letting his mind drift to the interaction he had had with the man— with Patton— this morning. He found himself flushing a little, even hours after the conversation, as he thought back on the awkward way he had first invaded Patton’s personal space, then spoke to his child without his permission, and then proceeded to continue to converse with him when he and his son were very clearly in a hurry.

And Patton had been so polite, trying to let Logan know he didn’t need to walk them to the office, and he had replied, what? ‘It has nothing to do with you’? ‘I would be going this way regardless’?

He groaned internally. It was not a pleasant interaction to look back on. Normally, he would push it out of his mind altogether, but…

But Patton had been kind, not judging him for his somewhat stilted way of speaking. He had asked him about his kids, a topic of conversation which Logan could never possibly tire of. And he was clearly a doting father to Virgil, who was, in Logan’s professional dad opinion, objectively adorable.

He hadn’t meant to duck out right before the two of them had to leave; he had seen Virgil coming to rejoin his father, and Logan could tell that the boy was at least moderately uncomfortable around him. He had quickly stepped away to give them space, entering the break room and beginning the photocopying process, but when he heard Patton make a comment about getting Virgil to his classroom, he suddenly realized that he couldn’t let them go without saying something.

So when he saw that they were mere seconds away from stepping out the door, he acted without thinking, calling out Virgil’s name on a whim.

He remembered how the two had turned to him, identical looks of confusion on their faces, and how he had scrambled for something to say to the shy boy, something that would perhaps make up for all of the mistakes he had made earlier in the conversation.

So he took a swing, and complimented his hoodie.

In no way could he have predicted the reaction he got. Virgil, who up until this point had barely even looked at Logan, broke into a delighted smile, chirped “Thank you!” in a clear, sweet voice, and waved his free hand at Logan so hard that the hoodie sleeve flopped around in the air.

And Patton— Patton’s reaction was almost as good: the half-second as he registered that Virgil had spoken to Logan directly, and the uninhibited joy in his face as he looked at his smiling son made Logan feel… well. He didn’t know what exactly that smile made him feel. Maybe satisfaction, that he was able to help Virgil in a way that made Patton so happy? He pondered it for a moment more before shaking his head. Feelings were really not his area.

And right before they left, as Virgil practically skipped into the hallway with Patton in tow, the two men met eyes yet again, only this time there was something different in Patton’s gaze— not just friendliness, but like he was… exceedingly grateful. Yes, that was it. His gaze was full of gratitude for Logan, for the small act of kindness that apparently would leave a big impression on his son. Then he, too, raised his hand and waved at Logan, and Logan waved back, and then the door shut, and they were gone.

Logan stared into space for several seconds, picturing Patton’s smile in his mind’s eye, before straightening up in his chair. He would think about this interaction in greater detail after his work day ended. In the meantime, he picked up a pen, continuing to decipher the scrawled handwriting of his students.

He was glad his class had electives for the last section of the day; he had the classroom to himself for 45 minutes up until the final bell, which usually gave him plenty of time to finish his work before the school day officially ended. But today, his attention kept drifting to the clock on his desk, until he looked up as it read 2:03.

His fingers twitched slightly as he did the math in his head: school let out at 2:00 on the dot, his classroom was on the second floor of the main building, and it was approximately a five minute walk to here from the gymnasium; so if two little boys were to, hypothetically, sprint at full speed from the gym as soon as the bell rang, in order to come join Logan in his classroom, then they should be arriving right about—

“Dad!”

Logan dropped his pen, spinning haphazardly in his desk chair just in time to catch the child that was diving in to wrap his arms around his waist.

Immediately he felt himself break into a large smile. “Hello, Roman.”

The boy in his arms pulled back, grinning wildly. Both of his sons were on the scrawny side, but Roman was already building up a bit of muscle mass, while his brother seemed content with somehow becoming even more gangly and bony with each passing day.

“Where were you this morning?” Roman demanded, shifting to sit on Logan’s knee.

“We thought you got hit by a bus!” Remus interjected with glee, running in to give Logan a quick hug before hopping up to sit on a desk.

Roman frowned. “No, we didn’t,” he insisted. “I said you were probably running late, and— oh!”

He suddenly tugged on Logan’s shirtsleeve. “And Remus called me stupid! This morning! He called me stupid, Dad!”

Logan shifted his eyes to his other son.

“Remus?”

Remus shrugged, not looking sorry. “He said something stupid. You’re never late.”

“First of all, although it’s true one might say something which may be qualified as ‘stupid’,” Logan began, rubbing circles on Roman’s back as he lectured Remus, “it’s inappropriate to assume that a single statement is indicative of one’s intelligence. Second, don’t call your brother stupid, you both have big, beautiful brains,” he continued, planting a kiss on Roman’s temple, which the young boy attempted to duck away from.

“And third,” he finished, “Roman was correct. I was running late this morning, and I did not arrive until school had already started.”

“Ha!” Roman exclaimed in a gloating fashion. Remus seemed unbothered by being proven wrong, instead leaning forward to taunt, “I’m gonna tell Papa you were late for school!”

“Please do,” Logan replied dryly. “He’ll probably find it highly amusing.”

As he spoke, he reached into his desk drawer, pulling out two packs of fruit gummies. Both boys gasped as Logan passed one to each of them.

“Thanks, Dad!” they said simultaneously, ripping open the snacks. Logan grinned.

“Now, if my memory is correct, I believe it is Remus’ turn to tell me about his day first.”

Roman’s jaw dropped. “No, it’s not!”

“That was rhetorical,” Logan replied. “I am positive it is Remus’ turn. You went first yesterday, because you wanted to show me your paper mache project. Remember?”

Roman paused, then groaned. “But that’s not fair!”

“Yes, it is!” Remus jumped in, his mouth full of gummies.

“Not!”

“Is!

“Not!”

“Is!”

“Not!”

“Is!”

Logan sighed. The twins would literally keep this up for hours if he let them.

“Time out,” he interjected. The boys shut down immediately, turning to him with matching sheepish expressions, and Logan would have to remember to thank Emile again for suggesting he and Janus implement that technique back when the boys were first learning how to talk.

“Roman, will you please staple these papers for me while Remus talks about his day?”

Roman huffed and slid off of Logan’s lap, sticking his tongue out at his twin as he did so.

“What would happen if I stapled myself?” Remus asked Logan with idle curiosity. “Would it hurt?”

“Depends on where, exactly, you stapled yourself,” he replied as he passed Roman the stapler and stack of papers.

“My finger?”

Logan hummed. “It would hurt like a pinch, but as long as you pulled the staple out smoothly and made sure to disinfect and bandage the wound afterwards, you would be fine.”

“Can I try it?”

“If you feel like you need to experience the pain in order to learn why you shouldn’t staple yourself, go ahead, but I will not feel sympathy for you when you get a booboo.”

Remus wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Don’t call it that, I’m not a baby!”

Logan bit back a smirk. “Of course not.”

Roman cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he interjected. “Will you start talking about your day, so that I can talk about my day?”

Remus made a face at his brother, but he did turn to Logan and begin rambling about his day, from the bus ride to school to the food they had for lunch to the game he, Corbin, and Sloane played at recess. He was halfway through explaining the increasingly incomprehensible rules for the game (something about who could perform the most dangerous stunts on the playground equipment while simultaneously answering trivia questions about their favorite cartoons) when Logan caught sight of the clock, realizing almost fifteen minutes had gone by.

“Switch,” he interjected the next time Remus took a breath.

“Aw, what?” Remus protested as the two boys swapped places, Roman hopping onto the desk while Remus grabbed the stapler.

“Your bus arrives at 2:30, and I still need to hear about Roman’s day.”

“But I didn’t even get to tell you about the bee that got in the classroom,” Remus grumbled.

“Save it for tonight,” Logan commented absentmindedly. Silence followed for almost two full seconds, which was a clear sign of trouble with the twins.

Logan looked up from his gradebook to see the two having a silent conversation. Whether it was from growing up attached at the hip or a genuine case of twin telepathy, Logan couldn’t be sure, but very often the twins could convey rather convoluted ideas to each other using only their faces.

“What are you hiding?” he asked bluntly. Both children jumped.

“Nothing!” Roman insisted, turning and giving him what he probably thought was a winning smile (it was, but Logan would not be distracted).

He turned to his other son, who was suddenly very interested in sorting the papers into neat piles.

“Remus?”

“Hm?” he replied, looking up innocently. “Did you say something, Father?”

“Boys—”

“We’re going to a sleepover tonight!” Roman blurted out. Remus groaned.

“Why did you say it?” he asked accusingly. “You suck at lying.”

“Stop.” Logan held up a hand. “Explain, now.”

Roman took a deep breath. “It’s Sloane’s birthday today, and he invited all of us—”

“He invited me, and told me you could tag along—”

“Falsehood! The invitation had both of our names on it!” Roman shot back with a dirty look at his brother. He turned back to Logan, continuing, “He invited us and Elliott and Corbin to a sleepover at his house, and, um, he said we could come over at six, and we know we usually do our goodnight call at nine, but—”

“You will ideally be busy gorging on pizza and playing video games at that time,” Logan finished, giving them a measured look. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell me?”

The boys looked down in guilt, nodding.

Logan toyed with the pen in his hand.

“Come here,” he said suddenly, patting his lap.

Roman and Remus hesitated, glancing at each other for a moment, before Remus bound over and sat down on Logan’s left leg. He leaned his head on Logan’s shoulder, and Logan’s hand instinctively came up to stroke his hair. Roman soon followed, taking his spot on Logan’s right leg.

Logan gave an exaggerated groan. “You’re almost getting too big for this,” he said, bouncing his legs as much as he could under the boys’ weight. They both giggled at the movement, each clutching onto his shirtsleeves to avoid falling off.

Logan took a deep breath. “I love you.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “We know, Dad.”

Logan leaned forward to kiss Remus’ forehead, causing the young boy to squawk.

“I love you,” he said again. He turned his head, catching Roman with a kiss on the cheek.

“Ew, Dad!” Both boys were blushing at the display of parental affection, but they were smiling, too.

“I love you,” he repeated once more. “Nothing you can do will ever change that. Even missing our goodnight call.”

Both boys seemed to relax, and Logan felt his heart swell a little bit.

“Don’t lie to me again,” he finished sternly.

“We won’t!” the twins chimed in unison. Logan fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Falsehood,” he muttered, before asking out of pure curiosity, “What was going to be your excuse for when nine o’clock rolled around and I didn’t get a call from you?”

“Rats chewed the phone wires,” Roman and Remus replied instantly. Logan registered this for half a second before he let out a bark of laughter.

“That makes perfect sense.”

~

“So, the boys are at a sleepover tonight.”

“Yes, I walked them over to Sloane’s house about an hour ago,” Janus replied, his smooth voice losing its hypnotic effect over the phone.

“And when, exactly, was I going to be informed of the whereabouts of our children for approximately the next 18 hours?”

Silence came from the other end of the call before Janus gave a huff of annoyance. “They told me they told you about this days ago.”

Logan smirked, holding the phone between his shoulder and ear as he carried his dinner to the dining room table. “I’m beginning to see why we should not trust our children to act as go-betweens.”

Janus heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, Croft. I don’t have any idea why they would lie about something so minute.”

“Falsehood, we both know they were doing it to protect my feelings,” Logan replied in a clipped tone.

“You know, I did think it was weird when they insisted they would be okay making their goodnight call from Sloane’s house,” Janus remarked idly. Logan could picture him sitting in his home office, his feet propped up on his desk as he spoke. “I had assumed they had reached some level of maturity where it’s not embarrassing to love their parents.”

“An obvious mistake on your part.”

Logan could also picture the smirk Janus was currently trying (and failing) to suppress. “Clearly.”

Logan resituated himself as he sat at the table, turning on speakerphone and placing the phone next to his plate.

“Speaking of our children being liars,” Janus continued, “Remus had this crazy story about you being late for work.”

Logan reached over to pour himself a glass of water from the pitcher. “Crazy indeed. I didn’t arrive until almost eight.”

“And the school descended into anarchy and chaos,” Janus deadpanned.

“My students were merely happy for a break,” Logan replied. “I should’ve slept in a little longer to give them the entire morning off.”

The conversation fell silent for long enough that Logan leaned over to check that the call hadn’t dropped.

“You overslept?”

Logan blinked in surprise at Janus’ incredulous tone. “Correct.”

“You. Logan Croft. Overslept.”

“Is our connection failing? Are you having trouble hearing me?”

“Logan,” Janus said with the air of someone who was explaining something very simple. “I have known you since you would bike to school on four hours of sleep and three energy drinks, stay awake in all eight classes, go to at least one extracurricular after school, work retail for a few more hours, do homework until you passed out, and then do it all over again the next day. You have never overslept in your life.”

“Falsehood,” Logan replied. “In fourth grade—”

“Why did you oversleep today, Croft?”

Logan paused. “I was… thinking,” he admitted.

Janus waited a few seconds before prompting, “About…”

“About the boys,” Logan confessed, suppressing a sigh.

Immediately Janus dropped his overcasual schtick. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Nothing at all,” Logan rushed to reassure him. “I was merely reminiscing about some of their childhood antics, and it prevented me from going to sleep on time.”

“… Antics like when they accidentally ripped a book of stickers they’d been fighting over for an hour, and proceeded to scream like banshees in the middle of a crowded Walmart?”

Logan smirked. “Antics like when they ran around the house with pull-ups on their heads, calling themselves aliens and demanding we take them to our ‘leader-ers’.”

Janus snorted with laughter. “Oh, God. I’ll have to find those pictures for their next birthday party.”

“I’m sure they’ll thank you for bringing up such delightful memories in front of their friends.”

“Snarky today, aren’t you?”

“Only for you, Sanders.”

A companionable silence fell as Logan finished his dinner.

“Are you okay?” Janus asked, gentle in the way he only got when he spoke to Logan or the twins.

Logan hesitated for just a moment before answering, “Of course.”

“Because if you want to take the boys out somewhere tomorrow night, I’m sure they’d—”

“It’s important we stick to the schedule,” Logan interrupted, a touch more defensively than necessary. “It’s your weekend with them, and I don’t wish to complicate things.”

Janus paused, and then scoffed. “It’s not… complicating things if you want to spend time with our children, Logan.”

“You’re already sacrificing one of your nights together for the boys to attend this sleepover,” Logan insisted, feeling himself becoming increasingly irritated that Janus wouldn’t drop the subject. “I don’t want to take another night away from you.”

His ex-husband’s voice dripped in derision as he cooly remarked, “I love how it doesn’t even cross your mind to consider that the two of us could possibly spend an evening with our children together. So glad to know you would rather spend your night alone than have to be near me for even a sec—”

Logan hung up, his hands shaking as he attempted to hit the button to end the call. He hadn’t realized he was clenching his jaw until he forced himself to release the tension in his body. He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth.

Logan had known Janus for over half his life. They had been married for almost as long— 18 and fresh out of high school, Janus insisting he was only doing it for the tax benefits right up until Logan had kissed him in the middle of city hall. They had spent the last decade raising their sons together.

Logan did love Janus. Which is why moments like this, moments that reminded him why they shouldn’t be together, were so particularly painful.

He continued to fume for a few moments, replaying his ex’s callous tone and harmful accusations, but his mind also drifted to how he had shut down Janus’ genuine attempt to be considerate of his feelings, how abruptly Logan himself had left the argument when he didn’t know what to say.

The anger seeped out of him, replaced with something akin to shame. Logan curled inwards, leaning his head on his hands.

It made sense that all of their worst fights in recent history had been over their children. Janus was an excellent father, Logan recognized, his thoughts turning somewhat bitter as he continued, a better father than me—

Suddenly he saw Patton’s face in his mind. Patton smiling at him kindly when Logan had slipped up and made his divorce obvious. His quiet voice, telling Logan, ‘I reckon you’re probably a really great dad’. Logan focused on the words, allowing himself to remember the sincerity in Patton’s voice.

It didn’t make sense how much comfort Logan found in the memory. Patton didn’t even know him, had never seen him interact with any children besides Virgil, and even that had started off poorly.

But for some reason, when Patton had reassured him, Logan wanted to believe him.

Logan realized he had been staring into space for a few minutes, finally shaking his head to bring himself back to reality.

He reached over to grab his phone, muscle memory taking over as he dialed the familiar number, but when it rang in his hand Logan remembered that his ex was just a little bit faster than him when it came to self-reflection.

“I’m sorry, Logan,” came Janus’ voice as soon as Logan answered. “I didn’t— I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

Logan sighed. “I apologize, as well. Ending the call in that manner wasn’t productive or healthy.”

Again Logan could visualize the way Janus was waving his hand in the air dismissively.

“Pobody’s nerfect.”

Logan’s lips quirked into an involuntary smile. “What a ridiculous statement. I had assumed an attorney would have a more advanced vocabulary than that.”

“Lawyer, shmawyer.”

Logan laughed lightly, and he swore he could hear Janus’ grin through the phone.

“While I do appreciate your offer,” Logan eventually continued, breezing past the topic of the previous argument, “I have plans tomorrow evening regardless.”

“Oh?” Janus questioned casually. “Hot date?”

Logan scoffed. “An all-day teaching seminar,” he replied with distaste, “in which a group of corporate-funded administrators are going to spend twelve hours lecturing the faculty of the top school in the state about how we need to be making them more money.”

Janus clicked his tongue in sympathy. “Plus on Monday, you’ve got that parent-teacher meet and greet thing at the school.”

Logan paused for one, two, three seconds, before letting out an unceremonious, “Fuck.”

He heard Janus laughing on the other end of the call. “Sorry I said anything.”

“No, it’s fine.” Logan heaved a sigh. “I had forgotten that was this week as well, and I still have to prepare packets for all of my students’ guardians—”

He froze midway through his sentence.

“Logan?” he faintly heard Janus ask. Patton’s smile flashed through his mind again.

“Yes,” he responded, a little too quickly. “I apologize. I just remembered I have more work to do than I thought, and I will need to hang up now to complete it.”

“Uh huh,” Janus replied slowly, sounding unconvinced. “Cough twice if you’re being held hostage.”

Logan coughed once, pointedly falling silent.

“... Oh, you’re funny, you know that? Just absolutely hilarious.” The sarcasm in Janus’ voice was palpable, making Logan grin.

“Goodnight, Janus,” he said with affection.

Logan could hear the fondness in his ex-husband’s voice as he responded with a quiet, “G’night, Croft”, before the line went dead.

Logan turned his phone over in his hands, his mind far away. The likelihood that Logan would see Patton again at this event was causing him to feel a strange sort of tension. He didn’t understand it. Why was he still thinking about this man, this stranger, really, who he had spoken to for less than five minutes?

Logan couldn’t answer that question. All he knew was that he would most likely have trouble falling asleep again tonight.

[honeyctzen]

scarred leash (prologue) - m.l

IMPORTANT: This is the prologue for my newest fanfiction and is an introductory to the main character and the themes of this story. It involves sex, bdsm, self harm and themes relating to that matter. It will also not just be sex, but have an actual story and characters falling in love. If any of this is not for you, my other works are much lighter and less “plotty”. I really hope this excites you for the rest of the story, I am very much proud of it. Thank you! - Maisie ♡

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I was sixteen when I chose to leave home without even whispering a word to anyone. Sixteen when I decided I had to go out alone into the world, to make my own way with the little experience I had gathered so far. It took a long time to map out my plan, endless days that turned into sleepless nights. I spent most of my last teenage years memorising a singular night, a night that would lead me into the next stage of my life.

My dusty countryside town was a few hours from the monumental London. I thought about the city all hours of the day, the faraway land that was London. The idea of even stepping foot in it was weird and foreign and still, it was the only place I ever wanted to go. I’d lived in one place for my entire life and rarely ever left the town, in fact I��d only left it a few times. All because of hospital trips. The idea of living away from that place was terrifying and yet, completely exhilarating. Given that back then, I’d been pretty naive to how the world works as I’d never been told of it. I wanted a nice house, nice job, maybe I would meet a nice person and we would have a nice relationship. I had come to learn as my research into London and life in general continued that it wouldn’t be that simple. Everything was complicated. If you wanted a place to live, there was several thousand procedures you had to endure. If you wanted a job, you had to have a thousand different qualifications. I thought after realising all this that my hopes of leaving were over, that was when I had begun thoroughly planning.

Through school and college I was able to obtain the qualifications I needed to move away and work in business. I knew I would have to work for a few years before I gained any sort of fulfilling job, but I had endured years of education, I understood patience. Through research I had found a small flat that I would be able to pay for with money I’d saved over the years and earnings from a job I would later procure. Life would still be difficult, I knew this. I was a young, inexperienced girl moving out to a tumultuous city, it would be dangerous. Though I had concluded long ago that dying in this new fantastical place was far better than peddling on back home, where I would die unknown, just another body in the wet dirt underneath the town church.

I knew by leaving that I was inflicting an unimaginable amount of pain upon my mother, who was as neurotic as she was suffocating. Though I understood she didn’t mean to be, I couldn’t bring myself to feel sympathy for her. My father ran, as did my older brother, leaving me and my ailing grandmother the only people she had left. I wasn’t old enough to understand why my father had just abandoned us but once I grew enough to comprehend love, pain, divorce, I got it. This town was the entire world for my mother but as I got older, she realised it wouldn’t be for me. Instead it would be a restraint.

The first time I recall my mother knowing I would be difficult is when I was eleven. I developed much quicker than most children my own age, breasts already sprouting on my chest, hair spreading over my body. There was a huge wave of name calling, little jabs at my appearance, and while I tried to ignore it, eventually it burrowed beneath my skin. That was the same year I cut myself for the first time. My fingers coiled around a pair of scissors, pressing the metal over the flesh of my arm until a litter of red scratches appeared over the pale skin. Back then, it was just a punishment, a way of controlling myself from completely losing my mind. I stopped it for a while. In natures due course, the other girls grew into their bodies and I was planted back into an unremarkable place among my peers. There was no bullying and so, I forgot about cutting myself for a couple years.

While I had physically matured much quicker than others my age, mentally, it seemed I had been halted somewhere. There appeared no reason for it but the things that my schoolmates were interested in disgusted me. When a friend first showed me porn, I remember feeling vomit rise up in my throat. A woman, bundled up with rope, a muscled, balding man arched over her. The blood curling shrieks that filled the room felt torturous. I couldn’t understand how people liked this, how they liked it enough to pleasure themselves to it. I suppose that was when my fascination with sex begun. Initially, it was hatred, a complete abhorrence for the thing, a vexation that appeared randomly and intensely. If a classmate would mention it, or describe any sort of sexual act, I felt ill. My stomach twisting uncomfortably as the boys all called out derogatory names for the women they had seen in the films and then once again, I grew to hate my body.

I was fifteen the next time I cut myself. It was much more deliberate, much more intense. I had swapped out the dull scissors, for a pocket knife a friend had gifted me. It was able to bury itself much deeper than before and immediately, with the first slice, a tsunami of relief rolled over me. Though, it was a different kind of relief than it had been those years before. I found myself thinking back to the woman I had seen in the porn, the intricate ropes that clasped themselves over her limbs, the pained screams that passed her lips. The man leaning over her figure, how his fingers gripped the flesh of her waist, how he bevelled his teeth down onto her neck until it bled. I found myself recalling each detail of the images I had seen so long ago, and I found myself cutting down into the flesh as the memories scurried across my brain.

I felt guilty afterward, an awful guilt that followed me around for weeks. But then, a boy would mention shapes they had seen in porn and suddenly, I would feel the urge to damage myself again. It spiralled quickly. So quickly that I, myself, was shocked. Instead of recalling images I had seen, I created my own imaginations. Blurred, colourless visions of violence, and sex dulling into one, all as I pulled a knife against my own skin. It continued for months, months of fantasies and cutting and by the time my sixteenth birthday hurdled toward me, I had a plethora of thick scars covering my arms and legs. Though that didn’t faze me when finally, three years after all my friends, my mother bought me a cell phone.  

She would scour over the phone from time to time, checking my messages, calls, emails, and all other forms of communication. Yet, of all the applications on the phone, my mother was the most ignorant to the internet. She didn’t understand the concept of it, let alone know it was built into the mobile and so, I was able to roam free for the first time. And I roamed. My inexperience meant I didn’t know what sites to go to, nor did I know which keywords to search. The titles of the videos that came up almost seemed to be in a foreign language but after a couple of trips to the websites, I gathered the premise of each category. After locking myself in the bathroom, I would go to the sites and type in words such as bondage, submissive, sadism, pain and the things I liked would appear. Though I now understood how people looked at porn, I still didn’t understand why they touched themselves to it. Merely pushing a blade into my leg as I watched seemed to be enough. I wasn’t sure if it was sexual for me, or if it was a punishment thing as it had been when I was younger.

My understanding of my own sexuality went little further than this and my adventures on the websites dwindled until they stopped. It had grown to stop making me feel any better, and so I began inflicting more serious physical harm upon myself. The hospital visits followed soon after, as did my mother’s rantings about how unhealthy that stuff all was for me. For once, she paid attention to me. It almost felt nice, deserved. But I couldn’t hold it for long, as quite abruptly, my grandmothers health began to decline. She died a while after growing sick, and the absence of her in the house made my mother somehow more insufferable. And though we lived in the same house, it was almost as if we were separated by an unseen barrier.

I didn’t completely mind, it gave me enough solitude to go about my planning. Endless research into where I could live in London, what jobs I could obtain with the qualifications I would acquire after leaving sixth form. It took a while to find what would suit me right but after I finally latched onto it, my future suddenly felt full, meaningful almost. I now had something to look forward to, something to work toward. So, I studied harder, concentrated on the daydreams of my new life away from the idle cottage town. My grandmother had left some money to both me and my mother, more to me. I insisted I was able to tend to my own finances and after long bouts of pleading, my mother agreed. I had money, two months left at sixth form and then I could leave.

Time blurs together, memories jumbling, I can barely remember the last few months back home. But what I do recall vividly, is the night I left. I had booked train tickets the week prior and planned to stay in a hotel while I found somewhere to live. I needed to be close to the central city, I knew that much, though, not much else. I’d found a job interview for admin staff at a stockbroking company. My business a level came in handy, and my odd passion for calculations and numbers did too. If I could just get this job, if I could get that flat, I could make it.

I chose to leave during the night, climbing from my bedroom window, scuttling across the streets like a fragile hedgehog. I’d never even snuck from my house once before and the first time I was, I was doing so knowing that I would never come back. With every step I took I thought I would be caught and hauled back home by my hair. Each step further from the slanted bungalow made my heart beat a little faster until, gradually my pulse slowed, and the gentle pitter of my feet grew to calm myself. Though I didn’t feel completely secure until I passed the welcome sign to the town. But once I did, I felt a weight pulled from my stomach. A sudden notion that I had done it, I had gotten away like my father and brother did years ago, like my grandmother had in death. I was now free to do everything I had lost the chance to do through my mother’s coddling. I could drink, do drugs, have sex with an endless stream of people, work. I found myself grinning as I wandered further from town, the dishevelled map directing me toward the train station. The smile pulling at my lips until I worried they would rip. And it only widened when I spotted the station, when I saw my train, when I boarded, when the train began to drift from the docile place I had called home.

I knew that now, I was reborn, I was my own person. It had taken three years to map everything, to prepare myself for life away from the secure blanket I had been smothered with all my life. But now, it had all come to fruit. I dreamt of London on the train, my head pressed against the window, my scarred legs trembling with the thought of all the things that I could do. My chest thick, and heavy with excitement.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

London was everything I had imagined and so much more. It was larger than anything I had ever seen back home, with each building bigger than the next and thousands of vehicles filling the roads. As the train eventually rolled into the city, my eyes clasped over each detail that began to emerge. The differences of the people that wandered the streets, the warmth in the chatter that clambered through the train windows. Everything was so different, so good. I found myself smiling away as I watched from my place in the tube container, my toothy grin shining back at me in the reflection. I was finally there, finally apart of everything I had read about.

Walking the streets was even better, even more real. My feet paced the same tempo as everyone else, my body dipping between the mounds of crowd as I ambled through the roads, glancing down at the map I had printed back in my murky home. The directions were confusing, each street twisting awkwardly to the next and what should have been a five-minute walk turned into two hours of working out where I was. Though eventually, after consulting several locals, I found my way to the flat I had seen in the ad weeks ago. It was in what my mother would have called a ‘ghetto area’ but it was still much larger and greater than the street I had lived on all my life. It looked a normal house though split into three different flats, with a garden leading up to the two doors and ivy climbing up the sides of the home. I’d felt nervous to knock, I wasn’t particularly sure why. Perhaps because the person to answer could have been my future roommate but now, thinking back, I shouldn’t have been.

The person that had answered was taller than me, her gangling arms hanging low, one raised to her mouth as she nursed a cigarette. She was beautiful in an odd way, striking, her nose large and hooked, hair shorted and burnt from styling. She smiled widely when she spotted my obviously anxious face, her voice pouring out in its deepness.

‘The tenant?’ She mumbled through puffs of the intensely clouded cigarette.

‘Um, yeah.’

‘Cool, cool, yeah, sorry, come in.’ Her accent was prominent, thick and harsh but calming all at once. I smiled as I stepped into the flat, the stairs immediate at the entry. I stood beside my single suitcase, my backpack still on my shoulders, her gaze dancing across them before she turned away. She climbed them ahead of me, her feet clattering against the wooden steps and I trailed behind, eyes clinging to each detail of the walls. I wanted to take in as much as I possibly could, I wanted this to be my home, my sanctuary.

Once we stood in the depth of the flat, the girl began to speak again, pulling the cigarette from her mouth for a moment. Throwing her body onto the dusty sofa and awaiting me to sit beside her. I allowed the bag to drop to the floor, my feet pushing it further from me. My lanky limbs folded in on themselves as I perched on the seat, features impossibly too bright for the dullness of the flat.

‘You’re eighteen?’

‘Nineteen.’ I corrected abruptly.

‘Okay, you just have to be eighteen to rent, but that’s fine then,’ she said, inhaling from the stick before releasing the dense cloud into the room, ‘so, um, this is it.’

‘Um, what’s your name?’ I ask quietly.

‘Oh, shit, sorry, I’m Rose, and you?’

‘Ellie.’ I mumbled.

‘Are you the owner?’

She snickered, ‘Uh, no, my uncle is so I get a discount, barely, but, it helps. Um, he doesn’t really care who moves in but I, I do, I live here, so.’

‘Yeah,’

‘You’re not from here?’ She asked, finally pushing the cigarette into the ash tray that sat near her. The smell still strong but dissipating enough for me to open my mouth to speak.

‘No, I um, actually moved here today.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, um, so, I’m new to this.’

‘Where you from?’

‘A little town just outside Sheffield, I, um, hated it, figured it was time to get away.’ I explained as briefly as I could, my fingers instinctively pulling on my sleeves whilst I spoke of home.

‘For a bit or are you staying here long term?’ She questioned, eyes flitting once more over the lack of things I had brought with me. It hadn’t been that I had forgot much, I hadn’t owned many things back home, not things that warranted bringing anyway.

‘Long term.’ I answered immediately.

‘And you’re gonna work here?’

‘Hopefully,’ I chuckled, ‘I have a job interview tomorrow, so, I um, I’d find work anyway, so I could pay, but,’

‘Cool, so, you want to move in then?’ She proposed, her voice soft, speaking the question as though it held no merit. My stomach churned, lips parting in another goofy smile, head nodding vigorously.

[rockandrollfool]

Grief And The Healing Power Of Music

I find myself in the rather weird position of having listened to three Genesis albums in the last week. I am not complaining, however they are not normally a band I would listen to. As a grown man and consenting adult it would appear I gave myself permission to exercise this choice. Autonomy can be a bind and extremely confusing at times like these.

I am well aware of why this has happened. My Mother died less than two weeks ago and I now find myself revisiting songs, albums and artists from my teenage years. Tully (2017) suggests that music can have a role in helping a bereaved person accept death ‘as part of our everyday lives’ and more importantly, we then find meaning through the experience of grief. I dispute the concept of meaning as for the last fortnight I have felt lost, overwhelmed and more than a little confused. I am aware however that grief is linear, in that, it has stages and we navigate these in whatever order is relevant to each of us. Genesis though?

I haven’t listened to Genesis in a mighty long time. Well why would you? The ‘progressive rock’ movement left a nasty after taste for me, and therefore I ‘progressed’ on to pastures new and genres that gave voice to a political awakening. You might like Pink Floyd, Yes, Camel and Van Der Graf Generator but they left me cold and I never understood the reverence and undying love many of my friends had for this music. I still don’t. The progarchives.com offer that by definition ‘prog’ was “a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility” (on-line) and bands at the time tried to push ‘rocks technical and compositional boundaries’. No honestly they did. Honestly.

In 1978 I was already besotted with punk and the clarion call to ‘never trust a hippy’ aimed directly at Richard Branson, or so it felt, owner of Virgin Records, who would and should shoulder full responsibility for the awful Mike Oldfield album, Tubular Bells. I digress though.

Heather Fellows (2020) makes the case, that music can offer ‘a safe space to feel the emotion of loss’. Those three to four minutes represent a beginning, middle and an end where we can bawl, yelp, shout and cry knowing we are contained in that time and space, safe and in turn we have sanctuary. Fellows talks about music being the outlet for the big emotions, arguing “when we listen to music that moves us, it’s hard to avoid our feelings. This can be a good thing” Fellows (2020). Through grief we can lose the sense of who we are and therefore identity can be transient. We are a child, sister, brother, friend, parent and the competing demands of these roles during a time of loss and bereavement can create a whole set of other feelings and a personal agenda which we struggle to reconcile. With this in mind music can reaffirm who we are and more importantly re-establish our spiritual roots, a reminder of self, of purpose and where we came from. Genesis though?

DiMaio (2017) argues that research conducted by O Callaghan (2013) evidences a highly nuanced relationship between people that are bereaved and music. The findings evidence that 70% of people involved felt that music helped them find “meaning and beauty in life” after the death of someone close. Equally people found that music helped confront pain and find meaning at a time when logic felt in very short supply. The participants were able to share stories, memories, thoughts, feelings and insights related to music and grief. In most cases people were able to confront their pain, adapt to loss and continue to develop a bond with the person that has died.

I cannot attribute any of the above to my current on-going audio relationship with Genesis. The 1978 album “then there were three” (Virgin Records) has proved quite a ‘rock’ in terms of support a and mechanism to revisit some of my memories of my Mum and particularly how those are located within the context of our family home. I find myself back in my old bedroom and music seems like the passage and avenue to how I now understand the world.

I would love to claim all those cool cultural reference points that others so frequently throw into conversations when considering their teenage influences. However it’s feels like I was adrift on an ocean all of my own making. Boston, The Electric Light Orchestra, Kansas, Cheap Trick, Sweet, Wizzard, Slade, T.Rex and Bowie, are not really the stuff of the cool kids at the time. Not too sure they are now.

I recently penned a piece regarding the lead singer of Boston, Brad Delp. I now know exactly why. I was readying myself for all that was about to happen. Don’t get me wrong I will stand by that first self-titled Boston album until the day I draw my last breath. However in the context of my Mum’s death I can’t help but feel that Brad, and the rest of the Boston chaps were steadying me, and reminding me that my life is so much ‘more than a feeling’ (Epic Records 1976). I could listen to that album track by track over and over. It’s a soundtrack isn’t it and a gentle reminder of the teenage Brian Mitchell and his Mum. The never ending threats regarding what would happen “if I didn’t turn that racket down’.

Tousley (2017) argues that people have known for hundreds of years that music can touch the soul, and it can heal us in the most profound of ways. It helps us remember the person that has died and it can bring ”balance, peace and harmony back into our lives, even if only for a moment” (griefhealingblog.com 2017) That seems to make sense, right here and now to be fair. I am still not too sure about the Genesis thing though.

As an aside, whilst listening to the album ‘then there were three’ in the car, I pulled up at some traffic lights and became acutely aware I had the widow down and anyone in the immediate vicinity would have heard ‘snowbound’ or ‘scene’s from a night’s dream’ emanating from within the vehicle. Needless to say I quickly turned down the volume and raised the window. I am not that ‘out and proud’ I’m afraid.

For now though I feel connected to my Mum. I always will. In the blog songsoflossandhealing.com the author argues that music ‘speaks simultaneously to both body and mind’ (2021) and that through listening to songs and tunes it allows us to really connect with “the indelible part in you that a loved one leaves in you and allows that part to live on through music” (2021) I adore this. It resonates on so many levels. It also explains the Genesis thing. So messrs Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, I’ll follow you, no need to follow me though chaps. I had very little credibility to start with. Don't take what shred of self respect I have now, if that is ok?

Blog dedicated to Joan Mitchell – My Mum

Much love

The Rock And Roll Fool

[rocksandrobots]

Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 13 - A Work of Art

Varian was just putting away the last piece of the portal when Honey Lemon burst through the lab door. He and the rest of their friends were packing up his stuff to move into his new private laboratory. Having disassembled the device yesterday, he planned on moving everything today and to start rebuilding upon the morrow. If all went well, he could have his invention up and running again by Friday. 

Honey Lemon however took no notice of the task her friends were currently busy with. She was far too excited about the news she had to share while she waved two small slips of paper in the air. 

"Guess what I have?!" She exclaimed in a singsong voice and, before anybody could answer, blurted out, "Tickets to the newest exhibit at the San Fansokyo Art Museum! Who wants to come with?!" 

"Ah...gee, that sounds great, Honey Lemon buuuut…." Hiro searched the lab looking for an excuse, his eyes landing on Wasabi who stood next to him, "Wasabi and I have a group project to do this week."

"We do?" 

Hiro gave Wasabi a nudge in the ribs.

"Oh! Oh, we do!" Wasabi caught on and collaborated with his friend's lie. "Big project. We'll be busy with it all this week and possibly the weekend." 

Honey Lemon narrowed her eyes and gave them a pout, clearly not believing them. They however could only nervously laugh and held onto their plastered grins. 

Honey Lemon shrugged. "Oh well, I'm sure someone else will go with me, liiike my best friend, perhaps?" She leaned in close to Gogo as she said this and gave her a big smile. 

But Gogo wasn't having any of it. 

"No." She said and turned back to packing. 

Honey Lemon's face fell. She looked about the room to see who was left. "Freddie?" 

"Sorry, Honey Lemon," Fred answered. "I'd love to, but after the museum found out I was the one behind the water fountain incident I've been banned from the building." 

"Won't anyone go with me to see the Da Vinci exhibit?" She wailed in exasperation. 

Varian's ears perked up. "Da Vinci? As in Leonardo da Vinci? The famous painter and inventor!?" 

Honey Lemon inhaled in renewed excitement as she began to regain hope. "Yes! They have a bunch of his paintings on loan from Paris." 

"Oh, oh, do they have his blueprints for a flying machine on display?" Varian asked, his own excitement now beginning to match hers. 

"Uh huh! They even have the Mona Lisa!" She squealed. "Do you wanna come?" 

"Would I?!" He breathlessly laughed. 

"Yaaaay!" Honey Lemon hopped up and down repeatedly, barely unable to restrain her excitement. She then grabbed Varian into a big hug catching him off guard. He was still in a daze when she pulled away. 

"We'll meet up at the bus stop after school tomorrow, okay?" 

"Okay." Varian agreed hazily. He still hadn't gotten used to the girl's exuberant nature. 

"I can't wait!" She gave another squee and hurried off to her next class.

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

 Varian and Honey Lemon stood in line at the exhibit, waiting to get in. 

"Wow! There sure are a lot of people." Varian commented. 

"I know right?" Honey Lemon agreed. "The exhibit is only here for this week and then it's going down to L.A. I had to rush to get the tickets before they sold out. Everyone wants to see the Mona Lisa." 

"The what?" 

Honey Lemon looked at him in surprise. "Only the most popular painting in the world! It's a portrait of a noblewoman named Lisa Gherardini and its sooo expensive. They hardly ever let it out of the Louvre. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I can't believe I'm going to see it in person!" Once again Honey Lemon squealed with joy, clapping her hands and jumping up and down repeatedly. 

Varian still wasn't sure what the big deal was, but he found her enthusiasm infectious anyways. An enthusiasm which only grew as they made their way into the exhibition hall. The line wrapped around the room, stopping at each picture, and ending at the famed painting that everyone came to see. 

Varian stared in breathless wonder at the various sketches and notes that lined the wall. He had only heard about most of them through reputation and through a small misprinted copy of the artist's notebook that he managed to snag off a traveling spice trader when he was thirteenth. Some of the pages had been smudged in the printing process and there were surprisingly few illustrations by the original creator within. 

But here he could see them in person and up close. He marveled at the blueprints for an underwater breathing device, swooned over the detailed anatomy studies, and practically cried with joy when he came upon the sketches for the infamous flying machine. The inventor could never get it to work, but the concept itself was fascinating to Varian. 

He continued to drool over the diagram, trying to commit it to memory, until Honey Lemon pulled on his arm excitedly. 

"Oooh, we're next! Come on!" She exclaimed. 

They were only behind about three or four people and Varian could peer over their shoulders to see a portrait of a well to do woman, with dark hair, sitting in front of a landscape. 

"I don't get it," Varian questioned out loud, "all of these magnificent inventions and scientific studies and all anyone cares about is a painting of some woman? Did she do something important or something?" 

"Hmmm...honestly not much is known about the real Mona Lisa. She's mostly famous for the painting itself." Honey Lemon answered. "But I think that's the point. She's so… mysterious. Everyone wants to know why she has that small smile on her face. Is she happy? Is she sad? Is she in love and putting on a brave face because she can't be with the handsome painter she's fallen for ‘cause of class division?" 

"Or is she just constipated?" Varian snarkily interjected, snapping Honey Lemon out of her romantic musings. Honey Lemon gave him a frown, clearly not appreciating his attempts at humor. He cleared his throat in embarrassment and was about to say sorry, when the people in front of them moved and they now had a clear view of the picture. 

All of Honey Lemon's annoyance melted away as she became enamored with the painting once more. 

"I can't believe I'm standing in front of the Mona Lisa!" She squeaked. She quickly pulled out her phone and took a quick snap of it with both him and her in the photo before turning back to gawk at the portrait. 

"Look at the craftsmanship, the colors, the detail! How could you not love this?" She fawned over the image.

"I mean, yeah, it's well made. But at the end of the day, it's just something a rich person paid him to paint." He gently pulled her out of the way of the next group of people who wanted a turn to look at the portrait, and walked her back over to the blueprints of the flying machine he had been admiring earlier, careful not to get in the way of the crowded line. 

"Now this… this is a masterpiece." He breathlessly said and now it was his turn to geek out. "This is something that the artist wanted to draw; to create! No commissions, no annoying noblemen telling him what to do, just pure science and discovery." 

He looked back and saw Honey Lemon tilt her head and give him a curious look. He suddenly felt self conscious, even though she herself had been practically bouncing off the walls just a few moments ago. 

"I think I understand." She said thoughtfully, "you admire it cause it's a reflection of the artist's innermost thoughts and you can relate to him, right?" 

"Uh...yeah I guess." Varian rubbed the back of his head. He hadn't ever thought of it that way before, he was just interested in the potential applications of the device, or so he thought. But upon considering her words it made some sense to him. He always did admire famous scientists and inventors because he felt a certain kinship to them. No one else in his village had understood his love of science and he had often wished to meet such masters of the craft if only to have someone to talk to about his interests. 

Honey Lemon flashed him a knowing smile, and Varian suddenly felt like an ass. Here before him was such a person. Someone who was genuinely trying to understand his point of view and how had he repaid her? By dismissing her passion for something she loved.  

"Look, I'm sorry if I insulted your favorite painting. It's cool if you like it, even if I don't understand it." He rubbed the side of his arm, not looking directly at her, unsure of how she'd respond. 

"Oh it's okay." She cheerfully chirped. Varian looked back at her in surprise but she only gave him a warm smile and continued on. "I'm just excited to be so close to such an important piece of history, but it's not my favorite." 

"It's not?"

"Nuh - uh" 

"Then what is your favorite?" 

Honey Lemon bit her lip as if unsure she should answer. 

"Do... Do you really want to know?" She asked hesitantly. 

Varian nodded his head encouragingly. She stood there undecided for a moment more before quickly grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the exhibition hall. Varian was surprised at the sudden action but he allowed himself to be led along down the various winding hallways of the maze-like building. 

She pulled him into another gallery room, this one far away from the crowds. She let go of his hand and ran up to a large long painting up on the opposite wall. 

"Ta-da!" She sang and gestured wildly at the picture indicating this was the one she had wanted him to see. "City Rising by Lenore Shimamoto." 

Varian walked over to join her and to gain a better view. The picture was a landscape painting of San Fansokyo. Only the city looked to be under construction and was silhouetted against the sunset. 

"Lenore Shimamoto is kind of my hero." Honey Lemon explained. "She was also an inventor and painter just like Da Vinci. She helped to rebuild the city after the great earthquake of 1906." She then paused and sheepishly added. "An earthquake she may have, kind of, caused." 

"Wait, she destroyed a whole city!?" Varian incredulously asked.

"Weeelll, she didn't do it on purpose." Honey Lemon excused. "She was experimenting with new kinds of energy and it went...wrong. She spent her whole life trying to make up for her mistake, but in the end she did wind up making things better for a lot of people." 

Varian looked back at the painting with a newly found appreciation. 

"I now instantly relate to this woman." He exclaimed. 

"You mean because of what happened Monday?" Honey Lemon asked, referring to the flooding he had caused with his portal. 

"That and... other … things." He swallowed, unable to explain further than that. 

"I get it." She sympathized. "One time I stained the whole bathroom pink." 

Varian snorted with laughter. "What!?" 

Honey Lemon let out a sigh before explaining. "I was trying to quickly break down metals using chemical compounds. You know, a bit of cobalt, hydrogen peroxide, some perchloric acid all super heated together and it can turn a hard substance like tungsten carbide into ash!" 

Varian's mouth hung open in awe. Disintegrating a hard metal into dust in an instant was a break-taking feat of chemical engineering and he was reminded just how smart the tall girl truly was. He now had a billion questions to ask her but the only thing that would come out of his mouth was a statement of admiration. 

"Amazing." He breathed. 

Honey Lemon blushed at that before continuing with her story. "Only the bit of metal I was working with kind of exploded when I touched it and it splattered all over my mother's bathroom. Everything is now stained pink; the walls, the sink, the ceiling, the bathtub. You name it, and it won't come out. I must have scrubbed the whole room for days." She bemoaned. "Mama was furious." 

Varian could only laugh. It wasn't as though he found her misfortune funny, so much as he found it relatable. It sounded so much like something that could have happened to him at some point. 

Honey Lemon didn't seem to mind though and joined him in his merriment. "You should have heard her." She said through her laughter. "Amanda, what did I tell you about experimenting in the house? !Sinceramente, ¿qué voy a hacer contigo hija? No more beakers in the bathroom!" Her accent became stronger as she wagged her finger in the air and tried to mimic the woman who raised her. This sent them both into another fit of giggles.

Once Varian had caught his breath he gave a mock groan. "Ooooh, I know how that is. Sometimes I think my dad would be much happier if I never touched a chemistry set again." 

"But it's not like you can ever just... stop." Honey Lemon said quietly. She was no longer looking at him but at the painting, as if musing over some great fundamental truth. 

"It's like there's, just this, this itch that you have to scratch. You get an idea and it just goes around and around in your brain in circles and if you don't make whatever is in your head right then you'll just... explode!"

It was a bit of a hyperbolic description, but it struck a chord with Varian nonetheless. He followed her gaze back to the painting before hesitantly adding his own commentary. 

"And … sometimes when you're in the middle of creating your idea you just... get lost, and don't fully realize what else is going on around you." 

"Yeah! And you just can't wait to make it real so you can show it off to everyone." The words were tumbling out of her now. "Cause it's not like anybody can see what's in your head, right? But you want everyone to know, to see, because… well because…" 

She was beginning to fumble as she searched for the right words to conclude her ramble, however Varian finished for her. 

"Because maybe then they'll see you too." He said quietly, still looking at the painting. 

She stopped in surprise and turned to look at him, as if just now noticing he was even there. He finally turned back to her and their eyes met. 

"Uh...yeah." She breathed, now at a loss for words completely. He had hit upon something very raw and real that she didn't like to normally think about too much. They stood transfixed for a moment more before Varian broke the silence. 

"Wow!" He whispered and gave a little breathless laugh. "I.. I never met anybody who could put it into words before, what it's like, to just...just be an inventor and to love science so much...and explain why." 

Now it was his turn to fumble over his words. She blushed at the sudden declaration and began to self consciously play with a strand of her hair.

He trailed off, still unable to look away from her. It was as if he was truly seeing her for the first time and all he could do to express his new found admiration was to give her a dopey smile. 

"I'm not making any sense am I?" He laughed awkwardly. 

"Oh, no, you're making perfect sense," She reassured, "well as about as much sense as I am. Which, according to some people, isn't a whole lot admittedly." She joined in with her own awkward laugh. "Abuelo is always calling me his little soñadora." 

"Abuelo?" Varian asked, confused. 

"Oh! My grandfather." She explained. "It’s Spanish." 

"Ahh." Varian slowly nodded his head as realization dawned on him and Honey Lemon continued on about her family. 

"Yup, it's just me, my mama, abuelo, and my three younger brothers." 

"Sounds like you have a big family. That must be nice." 

"Yeah, it is, though it could sometimes get crowded in just our three bedroom house. Hence, why I always snuck in the bathroom to do experiments. Otherwise my brothers would never let me get anything done." She rolled her eyes at that, mentally recalling all the times her siblings crashed through her work space or got in the way of what she was trying to do. 

"Yeah, now, there I can't relate. I never had siblings growing up. It was always just me and my dad, and the big old empty castle we lived in." 

Honey Lemon gasped and brought her hands up to her face in excitement, "You grew up in a castle !?" She squealed. "Oh, what was it like!? Were there any tapestries? Did you hold dances and banquets? Wait, are you a prince! ?" 

"What?!" Varian exclaimed, completely knocked for loop by her questions. “Uuuh… drafty, a few, usually never, and no, just, no.” He listed off the brief answers before explaining further. “Old Corona used to be the capital hundreds of years ago, before they moved it to the island port. My dad is the leader of the village, so we live in the old castle, but it’s nothing special or fancy or anything. There’s no servants, just us, and the whole place is kind of worn down. There’s always something that needs to be cleaned or repaired. You’re more thinking of the palace in Corona itself. That’s the ‘new’ capital. It’s got all of those things, except replace ‘prince’ with ‘princess’ and there ya go.” 

“You met, a real, live princess?!” Honey Lemon blurted out. Like many young women, Honey Lemon had grown up on stories about fairy-tale princesses, castles, knights in shining armor, and charming princes. She couldn’t help her romantic nature from taking over and filling her head full of picturesque images of balls and courtly chivalry. She could just imagine Varian kneeling before a beautiful girl in a long flowing gown and declaring his undying love and loyalty, just like in all of the old movies she’d seen growing up.

“What was she like?” Honey Lemon asked eagerly.

Varian pouted and mulled over the question before answering. 

“Not very nice.” He finally said. ”Not as nice as she pretended to be, anyways.”  

He left things there and declined to explain any further. Honey Lemon’s face fell and she could have kicked herself for being so stupid. Of course Varian wasn’t some fairy-tale prince. He was a real person and so was the aforementioned princess, and sometimes real people didn’t get along. There was no telling what had transpired between the two of them; a bad breakup perhaps, or maybe she was just a rude individual since the start? But whatever the reason, it was clear Varian had been deeply hurt by what had occurred as he looked off to the middle distance forlornly.  

Honey Lemon racked her brain for a way to cheer him up. 

“Hey, you know what?” She said, “We should go get some ice cream after this.”  

“Ice cream?” Varian asked confused, ”What’s ice cream?”

“You’ve never had ice cream before!?” She asked incredulously and he shook his head.

 “Oh my gosh, it’s only the best thing ever!” And with that she once again grabbed him by the hand and excitedly pulled him along, eager to share with him the frozen treat that was always sure to make things better.

“...Annnd that’s how I got kicked out of student housing.”Honey Lemon finished her story about another chemistry accident she had had. They had come to the bus stop and were now waiting for the public transit to arrive as they finished their ice cream. She took the last bite of her own dessert and threw the cup away in the trash. She turned around and then asked Varian if he had any stories to share.    

Varian was caught off guard once again. He didn’t want to delve too deeply into his past, so he offered up one of the lesser damaging scenarios.

‘Ummm...I once set the barn on fire. I was trying to make an automatic plowing machine for my dad, but turns out grease fires and hay shouldn’t mix.’ He joked sarcastically.

Honey Lemon gave him an empathetic smile, crinkling up her nose and closing her eyes in that adorable way that she sometimes did. Varian felt his pulse quicken at the sight and he quickly shoveled the rest of his ice cream cone into his mouth to stop himself from saying or doing anything foolish.

Fortunately the bus then arrived, interrupting their conversion.

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

Varian stepped off the bus and turned around to wave goodbye to Honey Lemon. The public transport had arrived back at the college where they had begun their day together, but she was going to continue on and head back to the apartment she shared with Gogo.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” She yelled through the window as the vehicle pulled away.

She continued to wave at him until the vehicle was out of sight and Varian found himself holding his breath and mimicking the action. Once he could no longer see the pretty redhead and was sure she was out of ear shot, Varian let out a whoop of laughter and joyously spun around.

He’d never had an experience like the one today. He’d had crushes before, sure, but not like this. He’d never met someone he could relate to so much and the time spent with her was exhilarating. It was certainly the most successful conversion he’d ever had with someone near his age.

He made his way back to the dormitories, humming a cheery tune as he went and grinning like a maniac. Maybe she'd like to hang out again sometime, just the two of them, like today. Varian began to think of things he might invite her along too, but he soon stopped in his tracks as a nagging thought encroached upon his mind.

What was the point of trying to get closer to her, to anybody, if all he was going to do was leave soon.

You don’t have to leave you know. Another more tempting voice told him.

But Dad.. he argued.

Varian just stood there in the middle sidewalk at war with himself, unsure what to do now. Until a third thought entered his mind. Why not both? Why couldn’t he go back, rescue his dad, and then return with him here? It wasn’t like either of them had anything left in Corona now, and if he could find a way to reconnect the two worlds a second time, why not a third?

The nagging voice of doubt tried to tell him he was being overly optimistic, that people didn’t always get what they wanted, that reconnecting the worlds was proving to be more challenging then he initially had thought, but he stubbornly shoved it down. He wasn’t willing to let go of this near perfect day, not just yet.

Sure he’d done some bad things in his past but didn’t deserve just a little happiness? Didn’t he deserve a chance at a normal life after over a year and a half of horror and misery? Why couldn’t he have an education, friends, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of romance? He was sixteen after all, and even if it wasn’t with Honey Lemon specifically, as he didn’t know for sure how she felt about him, he was still old enough now to start dating.

With his decision made he continued to head back to the dorm, now marching along with new resolve and running over plans in his mind.

He opened the door to the dorm-room and was met by the sight of Wasabi and Ruddiger fighting again. His pet was wrestling to get out of Wasabi's grip while the taller teen was covered in claw marks and feathers from one of his pillows. Now ripped to shreds and lying discarded on the floor.

Upon seeing him, Wasabi stormed over holding Ruddiger by the scruff of his neck indicating that Varian should take the raccoon away from him.

“Look, I love you, man, but I hate this raccoon.” He glowered and then deposited Ruddiger into Varian’s arms. Wasabi then stormed out of the room without further explanation.

Varian gave his pet a stern look. So much for a perfect day.

[softderekhale]

from the archives: snippets of a sterek pacrim au

hey y’all! i definitely haven’t been super active on this blog or tumblr at all lately, for a lot of reasons but mainly just... life. doesn’t that suck sometimes? but i really, truly hope everyone is doing well and you + your loved ones are staying safe. (long reflection + tumblr fic after the cut, lol)

i’ve been in kind of a funk with writing since the last time i “had” to do it, which was 12 days/sterek secret santa like, 6 months ago. it’s frustrating to me that i went from writing my longest fic ever exactly 2 years ago to having almost zero output now, but i’m trying not to be too hard on myself and i know writing is a really fickle pastime. anyway, this is a really long leadup, but i decided to just release some stuff i wrote into the wild. it’s either here or my google drive, so i might as well see if anyone wants to read it! 

pacific rim is undoubtedly one of my favorite movies of all time (it was only bumped down by into the spider-verse, but they’re almost tied ;D). it came out right after my sterek obsession began, and i always imagined writing a sterek au based around derek and stiles being drift compatible. that whole concept has always been so lovely to me and fits in nicely with some of my favorite soulmate-y tropes. this idea always felt too ambitious, though, and i didn’t write a single word of it until i rewatched the movie in november/december 2019. i wrote the following stuff in an extremely giddy haze over the next few weeks. i’m not good about pushing myself to write, so i never added any more, but i still really like what i had/have! i hope maybe someday i’ll feel the urge to come back to it. but anyway, here’s my completely self-indulgent homage to one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite fandoms. in my au chronology for this, following the events of the first movie, global governments and the ppdc decided to deploy jaegers for continued deep sea exploration to further benefit scientific discovery and avoid wasting such expensive tech/training. this lead to a lot of corporate interference re: treasure hunting, etc. (national treasure, but make it underwater). oh, and werewolves exist (because wouldn’t they make great jaeger pilots?!). also, A SECOND PACIFIC RIM MOVIE WAS NEVER EVER MADE. THE END. laura and derek were copilots before a kaiju-fighting incident forced them into early retirement. laura is still alive, though! (because it’s me.)

***

“Mayday! Mayday! LOCCENT, do you copy? This is Luna Geminae paging for backup. LOCCENT! Danny, we can’t hold them much longer…”

Laura’s growl of frustration rang in Derek’s ear as he strained against the beast.

“Keep holding it, Derek. You can do this. I know you can. They’re so close, Derek, they’ve gotta be. Just a few more—”

Derek never knew how Laura intended to finish that sentence. All he would ever remember was the scream that tore out of her throat. Later, he would describe it as the first time he ever understood the meaning of “bloodcurdling.”

“Laura!” Derek gritted his teeth as pain roared down his left arm, causing his vision to blur and spark white around the edges.

“My arm, Jesus, my fucking… They got my arm, Derek—” 

As water poured into the cabin above and around him, the last thing he remembered hearing was Laura’s anguished howl. Then the sky became fire, and everything went dark.

***

The day of the accident convinced Derek that his world would never stop burning.

For months after, when he lay staring at the ceiling until the early hours of the morning, the staticky shapes his eyes created to fill the darkness always melted and formed a wall of flames no matter how many times he scrunched his eyes shut and buried his face in his pillow. The noises, too — the ambient whoosh of the Dome’s ventilation system and the soft heart-like thud of the power grid soon coalesced into a unified, rhythmic chant that sounded more and more like Laura’s scream the longer Derek listened: Derek! Help!

In the days and weeks following their accident, Derek had tried every trick he could think of to reassure his subconscious that Laura was alive and safe, and would remain so even after she left his line of sight. For almost a week after she was released from the medical bay, he slept in the spare bunk above her. As reticent as he normally was to invade Laura’s privacy any more than he had to, experiencing her near-loss allowed panic and instinct to envelop Derek’s frayed nerves. He never fully explained it to Laura, but he didn’t have to — she never questioned his presence, nor did she point out that Derek always waited to fall asleep until he was certain she had already drifted off. 

Eventually, though, Derek realized the routine was leaving them both sleep-deprived and irritable. He resolved to move back to his own quarters, not wanting to smother Laura with his relentless, anxious presence. But he knew she still sensed his distress — every evening at 2300 hours, like clockwork, she knocked on his door to tell him goodnight and gently pressed her right palm against her brother’s neck before waving and returning to her own room. It was a routine they continued even now, half a decade beyond the fight that had left their Jaeger decimated. 

They had made progress, which Laura was always quick to remind her younger brother. Nothing could have prepared him for the aftermath of the accident, though, and the dark places where Derek’s mind would drift when there was no one around to distract him. Alone with his thoughts, no reassurance was strong enough to quiet Derek’s memories.

He shifted again in bed, his half-awake mind scrambling to remember the breathing exercises Deaton had taught him over the years.

Inhale through your nose. One. Two. Three. Hold. Exhale through your mouth. One. Two. Three—

Derek!

Start again. Inhale through your nose. One. Two. Three. Hold. Exhale through your mouth. Slower this time.

Good. Again.

***

This comes way after the scene above lol sorry

“Right hemisphere locked. Left hemisphere locked. Vitals are steady. Initiating neural handshake.”

Danny’s voice echoed through Derek’s head as he let his eyes flutter shut and tipped his head back. He’d been anxious about this moment for days now, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t secretly a little — or a lot — excited, too. Drifting was a heady, emotional experience, and if he and Stiles were truly compatible, Derek might finally get to settle the unease he had felt since his connection with Laura was severed.

“Alright,” Danny said. “You should be feeling it in three… two… one.”

Derek’s eyes flew open, but his gaze defocused as he felt his center of gravity list forward before returning.

As his sense of internal balance returned, the tingle of the neural link fizzed over his scalp. There it is. Slowly, then all at once, he felt the rush of Stiles’ mind meeting his own. Their emotions flowed over one another like water, memories flashing and sensations pulsing before slipping away into their shared flow of awareness. Derek had trained himself long ago to let himself float until the waters steadied, and he could feel Stiles, ever perceptive, do the same.

“Neural handshake established and holding at 100 percent.”

Without having to think twice about the gesture, Derek felt his knuckles meet his palm as he dipped into a customary bow. As he and Stiles led Luna in her first exploratory steps, Derek felt the weight of any lingering fears melt away.

With Laura, Derek had always felt like they were extensions of one another, movements and decisions cascading seamlessly from a fully unified thought process. Drifting with Stiles, though, felt unlike anything Derek had ever experienced. They were two sides of the same coin — each aggressive and reserved in equal, opposite measure. If Derek and Laura were reading from the same script, he and Stiles were finishing each others’ sentences as they improvised the same scene. 

When they first met, Derek had found Stiles anything but graceful — but now, as they nearly seemed to glide across the ocean floor, he felt foolish for not realizing the instinctive adjustments and calculations stiles was constantly making based on his surroundings. As they steered Luna across the testing ground, Derek felt his temples begin to thrum with an energy he hadn’t felt in years. Best of all, he knew Stiles felt it too — he could literally trace the path of his elation as it wrapped around Derek’s senses and amplified his own excitement.

“How are you doing?” Derek shouted across the rig. It wasn’t a question he needed to ask verbally, but he chose to anyway, knowing it would help ground them both in the present moment and prevent any stray thought spirals from taking over their link.

“So good, dude. This is — this is unreal,” Stiles replied, slicing through the air with his left arm to test the angle of the jaeger’s knuckle daggers.

Derek smiled. “Not exactly like the simulators, huh?”

“Nothing like the simulators, man. Holy shit.”

As they continued to acclimate to the drift, Derek took Stiles through a few more of Luna’s signature maneuvers. Stiles’ extensive research showed, and combined with the knowledge he and Derek now shared, the moves seemed to come naturally.

“Do you want some music?” He and Laura always played music when training, but he didn’t want Stiles to feel—

“That’s all I want right now, Derek.” Derek’s grin broadened as Stiles flicked through the controls hovering in front of him. A heavy bass line thrummed through the cabin, and Derek finally did what he never thought he would be able to again in his lifetime: he let his mind relax and free-fell into the drift.

***

Two hours after he and Stiles had eaten dinner and finally parted ways, Derek still couldn’t stop thinking about their drift.

That wasn’t unusual, all things considered — emotional transfer was common, especially for werewolves and especially during the first few drifts with a new partner.

Every time Derek thought about his connection with Stiles, though, and the experience of their emotions weaving together, his mind kept snagging in one place. It was a place that had struck Derek even during the high of the neural handshake, not because it felt odd or foreign, but because it felt hauntingly familiar — but looked ugly and sinister looming over someone else. 

It was anguish. It was a grief that had been doused in shame and set alight. It was a feeling of loss and self-loathing that made Derek feel like he was suffocating. It was exactly the way Derek had felt every day for years after the fire, and again after the accident. 

He had tried to explain it to Laura as dispassionately as possible all the times she chided him for blaming himself or expressing guilt over what happened to their family, but he never knew how to describe it until he experienced it through Stiles’ memories. It was sore, like a bruised rib, a persistent ache that radiated out from the point of impact and lingered at the edge of his consciousness. Distractions might be able to push away some of the pain, but as long as he kept breathing, it would always be there.

Derek hadn’t seen exactly where Stiles’ pain radiated from, but it seemed to shroud the memories of his mother especially strongly. Stiles told him she had been sick, though — why would he feel guilty about her death?

He sat up, his leg bouncing as he fidgeted absently with a hangnail. Since deciphering what that unexpected shared emotion reminded him of, Derek couldn’t stop thinking about it. This, he knew, was normal too — without an outlet, emotional transfer tended to create a feedback loop as a co-pilot bounced back and forth between their own memories and their partner’s. 

Before he could talk himself out of it, Derek shot up and strode to the door. It was late, almost midnight, and the full body experience of drifting had left Derek racked with fatigue. But — he just wanted to talk to Stiles. To be near him, again, as if it were a substitute for the feeling of absolute synchronicity they had just shared. It would only take a few minutes.

He was so distracted by his own jumbled thoughts that it took him a moment to register who stood just outside his door as he flung it open — it was Stiles, hand paused in mid-air.

“Stiles.” Very eloquent, Derek, he chided himself with an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Laura.

“Oh— Well. Um. Hi.” Stiles gave a small wave before shoving his hand in his pocket. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were about to—“

“I was about to find you.”

Stiles paused. “Really?”

Derek stepped back, nodding toward the doorway. “Really. Do you want to come in?”

As he and Stiles stood facing each other silently, Derek scrambled for exactly what he wanted to say. Everything was so effortless when they were in the drift. Why was it so hard to find the words now?

To his relief, Stiles was the one who broke the silence. “Sorry, I’m sure you’re tired… I’m just kind of keyed up, I guess, and I couldn’t—“ Stiles ducked his head down. “I don’t know. I thought it might help to see you.”

“Don’t apologize. You have good instincts,” Derek assured him. “And I— I wanted to see you too,” he added, feeling the tips of his ears heat. 

He could almost feel Stiles’ sigh of relief in his own chest. “Can I sit?”

“Of course.” Derek scooped a discarded pile of clothes off his bed and gingerly sat down after Stiles, mindful of the careful space between them. “Are you feeling okay?”

Stiles’ eyebrows jumped. “Yeah, I feel fine, I really do, but I just feel… jumpy, I guess. Which is normal for me, but I can tell this is different. I don’t know how I know, but…” he trailed off, gesturing abstractly in front of him.

Derek nodded. “I know what you mean. You can’t really prepare for the drift until you’ve done it,” he said, remembering how disjointed he felt after his first few test runs. “But it gets easier,” he added.

Stiles shook his head. “I’m not worried about it. I trust you.” His eyes shot up to meet Derek’s, as if challenging him to dispute the steady, honest heartbeat behind his words. 

Derek was surprised to feel something behind his eyes sting at the pronouncement. He looked away from Stiles’ scrutinizing gaze, but he felt the other man’s eyes continue to study him. “I’m glad. I— that means a lot to me.”

Stiles nodded, remaining thoughtfully silent. Derek sensed he wanted to ask something, but wasn’t ready to admit it on his own.

“Is there anything I can do?” Derek asked gently, eyes seeking Stiles’ again.

Stiles looked pointedly away and bit at his thumbnail. “Um. It sounds stupid now. But I read… I read that physical contact can help,” he mumbled, so quickly Derek might not have caught it without his magnified hearing.

He realized Stiles’ admission may have felt embarrassing for a human, but for Derek, it was almost a relief. He reached forward slowly and cupped his hand over Stiles’ shoulder with a light squeeze. 

“It’s not stupid. You felt how intense the drift is. When you separate from a complete mental overlap, it can be disorienting. And you know how tactile wolves are — that makes it even harder for us, so you’re probably getting some of this from my own emotional bleed.” He didn’t miss the way Stiles melted into his touch, his whole body swaying into their point of contact.

Stiles nodded. “Yeah. That makes sense. Thanks,” his gaze flicked up to meet Derek’s.

“Do you—“ Derek didn’t really know how to ask for more contact. It came so naturally with other werewolves, so he’d never really had to think about it before. “I don’t want to touch you in a way you’re not comfortable with. But if you want to lay down, or you want me to lay down or…” He took a sharp, steadying breath. “I’m trying to say that I understand, and I think it will make us both feel better, and I’m fine with whatever level of contact you’re okay with.”

Stiles laughed, a bright and unexpected break in the tension. “Jesus. Listen to us. I feel ridiculous, but— Thank you. You’re very considerate.” He paused, expression drawing almost imperceptibly tighter. “I want that too, though. I want you to feel comfortable. If you’re not, if there’s anything I do— I promise I’ll ask, first, and if you can tell me, I want you to.” 

Derek felt a lump rise in his throat. Stiles’ words were sincere, but carefully chosen. He wasn’t sure how much of his own memories Stiles had observed, but it seemed to have been enough to understand that physical touch had once been a powerful weapon wielded against him.

“Thank you,” he answered quietly, before gently tugging at Stiles’ arm. “Here, lay down.”

The bed was barely wide enough for both of them to lay side by side, but it was just enough space for both men to settle on their backs with their elbows carefully layered between them. Derek hesitated for a moment before angling his head against Stiles’ neck. “Is this okay?”

Stiles hummed in agreement, the back of his hand flitting against Derek’s so softly he almost thought he imagined it. “This is perfect.” He inhaled deeply through his nose and tilted his head closer to Derek’s. They lay silently for a handful of minutes, and the rhythmic in-out of Stiles’ breathing nearly lulled Derek to sleep.

Suddenly, Derek felt Stiles still. “Why were you about to come look for me?”

Derek huffed. “I wanted to see you.”

“What, you had to check in on the rookie who can’t handle a drift?” Stiles’ tone was light, devoid of any real offense, and he jostled his shoulder gently against Derek’s.

“You did great. If anything, I— I hadn’t done it in so long, and Laura was my only co-pilot before you.” Derek frowned, remembering the heavy emotions of Stiles’ that had ensnared him earlier. He didn’t want to overwhelm Stiles, but he also wanted him to know that he both empathized with and thought highly of him. 

“I never thought I would get in a rig again,” Derek continued. “I don’t think I trusted myself enough. I carry… I carry a lot of guilt, Stiles. But when I thought about piloting with you, the guilt didn’t win. You’re the first person who’s been capable enough, smart enough, strong enough, that I didn’t have to worry.” 

Stiles didn’t respond at first, and a flash of panic seized Derek before he felt strong, warm fingers curl around his own.

“I won’t let you down,” Stiles said, his voice nearly a whisper and rough with emotion.

“I don’t think you could,” Derek whispered back, before he let his eyes slip shut and exhaustion overtake him.

***

When Derek awoke the next morning, he was startled — but it wasn’t in reaction to the way Stiles had draped himself over Derek in his sleep. Feeling Stiles’ arms around his waist felt oddly natural. The surprising part was how well he had slept — it was the first night of uninterrupted slumber he could remember having in months, if not longer.

***

yeah so... that’s all for now! if you read this, thanks and i hope you’re doing well!!! ❤️ 

[dancingkirby]

Azula Week Day 5: Smiles

Summary: Zuko decides to invite all of his and Azula’s illegitimate half-siblings to the brunch on his and Mai’s wedding day.  It goes less badly than Azula had feared.

Warnings/Notes: Multiple non-graphic references to past sexual abuse of multiple underage girls, leading to one death and one near-death in childbirth.  (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending!).  Classism, internalized misogyny, etc. on Azula’s part.  OC-heavy.  One GoT reference that sort of wormed its way in there under its own volition.  

Word count: 2667 (longer than I had been anticipating!)

After many, many delays, the day of Zuko and Mai’s wedding was finally imminent.  There, would, of course, be intense media coverage and a general holiday for the populace, as well as thousands of guests. However, Zuko had also come up with the idea to have a pre-wedding brunch for family and close friends only. This wouldn’t be so outlandish, except that to him, “family” included Ozai’s bastards…every single one that he could find.

“Even the commoners, Zuzu?” she had sighed when he broke the news.  “It’s not a good image.  People at court are already talking.  We ought not to remind everyone of our baggage.”

“They’re not baggage, Azula,” he retorted.  “They’re our siblings.”

“Half-siblings,” she corrected as she brushed a cherry blossom from her shoulder; they were sitting in the courtyard watching the decorations being put up.  

Azula,” her brother admonished.  He spent what seemed like an absurd length of time trying to figure out what to say next, looked to make sure the decorators weren’t eavesdropping, then added, “I’ve been to their houses, you know that.  I’ve spoken with them personally, and I know all of their names and their stories.  You don’t want to know what I found out.”

“Don’t I, brother?” Azula inquired in faux innocent tones.  Zuko rubbed a knuckle against his forehead.

“Fine.” He conceded. “Here’s just one of the stories. There was a girl.  Lian.  Her father died suddenly, and her mother was sick a lot.  So she and her older siblings had to find jobs in the palace so the family wouldn’t starve.  She wasn’t even old enough to legally be hired, but they found work for her in the laundry under the table.  Her job was to go from room to room, gathering the dirty clothes.  I think you can see where this is going.  And…she died giving birth.  She was just a child.”  Sparks flew out of his nose as he exhaled forcefully.

“You’re rambling, Zuzu.  And watch the volume,” Azula stated almost without thinking.  Internally, however, her mind was spinning.  As much as she hated to admit it, Azula had not been prepared for that last part.  Died? Five years ago, she would have dismissed Lian as not fit to live anyway.  But now…she knew that she herself had been near death in that same situation, no matter how much the doctors had tried to sugarcoat it.

She was able to remain expressionless, however, and asked, “And the baby?”

“His name is Chun. The youngest of the bunch; just turned four.  Cute kid.”

That would place his conception sometime in the weeks after the Day of Black Sun, during which Ozai had lost his last vestiges of self-control and everyone else in the palace suffered.  For all she knew, Lian could have been one of the ones Azula herself had witnessed; she’d never bothered to find out any of their names.

“Any other dead?” she queried.

“No, thankfully.  Many of the mothers have permanent medical problems, though.  Some have turned to alcohol.  A few of the kids were adopted out.  Acknowledging and welcoming them and their children...well, it’s the least we can do.  It’s the…”

Wait for it.

“honorable thing to do.”

And that was that.  Once the h-word was added to the equation, there was no changing her brother’s mind.

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It was the morning of the big day.  Zuko had decided to get the inevitable family photos done at the brunch, since Fire Nation weddings were lengthy and the smaller children would probably be tired after a long day of ceremonies.  Currently, he and Mai were standing at the entrance to the courtyard, greeting the guests as they walked in.  

There were twenty-one acknowledged bastards; everyone at court knew that.  Zuko had managed to track down an additional twenty-three, and he wasn’t even certain that he’d found them all.  This meant that their lord father had sired at least forty-six children…well, technically forty-seven, Azula thought as she fingered the footprint pendant on her necklace.  Twenty-eight of those had been born during his not quite six-year reign as Fire Lord.  Had she not known for herself how insatiable Ozai had been, she may have found the number mind-boggling.

What was more, their heretofore unacknowledged half-siblings tended to skew younger than the acknowledged ones.  The noblemen of the court who were actually decent people (or at least concerned about marriage prospects) had started keeping their young daughters home a couple of years into Ozai’s reign.  That meant a veritable flood of children ten and under, most of them having never come anywhere near the palace prior to this.

She nibbled on a green onion tartlet as she stood on a slight rise, surveying the goings-on in the courtyard.  Some children were wandering around, looking at their surroundings with big eyes.  A sizable group had been attracted by Ty Lee’s impromptu acrobatics performance.  Ursa was sitting by the pond, commiserating with some of the young mothers.  Kiyi had taken it upon herself to give people tours of the grounds whether they asked for it or not.

But…where was…?

Azula was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even fully register the timid tug on her sleeve until it was repeated a few seconds later.  She looked down for the source, and saw a small boy, wearing what must have passed for finery in whatever tiny village he came from.

“Bathrooms are that way,” she said for about the tenth time today as she pointed with her finger. But apparently that wasn’t the reason this child had sought her out.

“Are you the Princess?” he asked.  Except the “r” sounded more like a “w.”

“I am,” she confirmed. Then she watched, bemused, as the kid sank into a kowtow with surprisingly good form for a child of that age…not to mention a peasant.

Azula would not smile. She would not smile.

“You may rise,” she told him automatically, with all the solemnity she would give to an adult.  He sprang back up.

“Aunty said we have to do that if we see the Fire Lord or Fire Lady or Princess,” he explained in a rush.  “I saw the Fire Lord and he said don’t do it, but I wanted to do it because I practiced!”

Pwacticed.

She…was smiling, wasn’t she?  Damn.

“What is your name?” she asked him.

“Chun,” he answered. Azula had already had her suspicions when he had mentioned an aunt instead of a mother, and this confirmed them. This was the one Zuko had mentioned, whose mother had died.

“Well, Chun,” she said, “Your aunt was correct, generally speaking.  However, Zuzu does have his hangups about etiquette.  If you really want to pay obeisance, I would suggest a bow instead.  Would you like to learn the correct form for that?”

“Yeah!” he cheered.  Azula was quite sure that in the entire history of the world, no four-year-old had ever been as enthused about learning courtly manners.  

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

Chun had the three different depths of bowing down in about five minutes.  Azula had always considered herself good at sniffing out potential, and this child had heaps of it.  Perhaps one day he could find work as a palace bureaucrat, and even ultimately be appointed to a seat on the Fire Lord’s council.  She supposed that Zuko’s incorrigible stubbornness had had some merit for once; otherwise, Chun’s talents would have been wasted among the riffraff.  He was also tremendously eager to please, and refused to leave her side.  Azula got the feeling that nobody paid much attention to him at home.  

It almost made her wish that she hadn’t been so harsh toward Mai’s younger brother a few weeks ago. For someone who continued to know nothing about children except that they liked gross stories, she sure seemed to attract a lot of children.  

As the two of them wandered back to where the main crowd was, Azula provided a running commentary about their various half-siblings.

“That woman in the glasses is Anshi, the oldest,” she informed Chun.  “Great with numbers, and even beat Iroh at Pai Sho once.  Very boring conversationalist, though.  The lady in that hideous gown next to her is Zhilan.  She can lightning bend, yet refuses to actually learn how to use it effectively because she prefers to spend her days arranging flowers and playing the erhu like a proper lady.”  She shook her head.  

“She’s fat!” Chun exclaimed brightly.  Azula chuckled.

“Sssh.  Well, to be fair, she doesn’t have my flawless physique, but actually she’s expecting her third child.  Perhaps she thought that people would be so blinded by that monstrosity of an outfit that they wouldn’t notice?” She pulled Chun along before her vision was permanently ruined by what even Ty Lee would likely reject as too over-the-top.  Although it was unclear how much of her gossip the child actually understood, he didn’t appear bored.

“There’s Ichiro; he’s skilled at archery and so aloof that he makes Mai seem warm and inviting. And…ugh, that’s Eri, stuck-up as ever. Do not go near her,” Azula cautioned. The girl apparently ruled over the Royal Fire Academy for Girls just as Azula herself had done a decade earlier, but unfortunately lacked the intellect to be anything more than a common bully. Best to give her a wide berth like Kiyi did.

“Who’s that?” Chun piped up while pointing at a pair of children dressed in bright red from head to toe.

“Those are Akane and Akemi.  Twins. They’re the youngest of the Acknowledged, and they’re…”

Azula never got to say exactly what it was that Akane and Akemi were, since just then, there was a commotion at the courtyard entrance.

“Sorry I’m late!” yelled the new arrival.  As she turned to greet the soon-to-be newlyweds, her face was somewhat obscured. However, Azula had no difficulty recognizing her.  She’d know that short haircut anywhere.

Ruanyu.  Azula’s breath caught in her throat.  They hadn’t seen each other in nearly five years.  After so long without any contact, she’d been starting to think that her half-sister was dead.

“How about you run over to the Fire Lord and show him your bow?” she asked Chun.  He scampered off happily enough.

Azula was not anticipating that this would be a happy reunion.  Once, they had been close, and Azula had even allowed Ruanyu to call her by her given name.  However, she really had treated the girl more like a pampered yet disposable pet than anything else, and had all but forgotten her in the events leading up to Sozin’s Comet.  In fact, she hadn’t remembered that she had left the girl to her own devices until months later, when she was in the hospital.  

Then Ruanyu looked her way, paused for a split second, and began running toward Azula at top speed. Azula steeled herself, her heart racing. She remembered that the feisty little girl had held her own in sparring matches, and she was prepared to repel any firebending that might come her way.

What she was not prepared for was being nearly knocked off her feet by the sheer enthusiasm of her half-sister’s embrace.  When they pulled apart, Azula attempted to remain stoic, but the sheer magnetism of Ruanyu’s famous ear-to-ear grin was too much for her to resist.

“I see you managed to escape,” she commented dryly.

“Yeah.  My mom smuggled us out after the whole Phoenix King thing,” Ruanyu answered while shrugging, as if it were of no great importance.

Azula became painfully aware that everyone in the courtyard was watching them.  In fact, Zuko was leading the spectators in some applause, Ty Lee ran over to get her hug, and Mai made a cough that sounded a lot like the word “Finally.”

“You knew about this, didn’t you?” Azula accused Zuko.

“We wanted it to be a surprise,” was all he said in response.

“It seems that you succeeded in something for once,” Azula remarked in as deadpan a tone as she could manage.  Then, to Ruanyu, “Let’s go talk somewhere more private.”  Ruanyu agreed, and they retreated to Azula’s favorite shady little enclave.  Once they were out of earshot, Azula decided to cut right to the chase, as she looked at the face that was almost like looking in a mirror.

“If you’re angry at me, then say so.  Don’t hold back on my regard.”

Ruanyu bit her lip as she considered.

“I was angry at you.  Really angry for a while,” she commented.  “But I decided to forgive you.  Zuko told me about what Ozai did to you.”  Her eyes hardened.  

“Did he do anything to you?”   Azula had to know.

“Nah.  Well, he kept saying all this creepy stuff, but I was always faster than him,” Ruanyu replied.  She was obviously trying to be casual, but not quite succeeding.  She was sixteen; old enough to know that she had only just dodged a lightning bolt, and that others had not been as fortunate.

“And just what have you been doing these past years?” she inquired.

“Mom took us back to the village where she grew up.  She wanted me to settle down with some boring man and raise a family.  But that’s…not me.  So I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, seeing the world,” Ruanyu explained. Yes, Azula remembered her half-sister’s thirst for adventure well.  In fact, she had briefly considered taking the girl to the Earth Kingdom, but had decided against it since she knew that Ruanyu would never have gone along with taking Zuko and Iroh prisoner.  

She asked, “Any plans for after the wedding?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Ruanyu answered.  “I think I might stay at the palace again for a bit, then set off again.  I’m interested in seeing that new city that Zuko and his friends are building; he told me that they’re looking for settlers.”

Someone cleared their throat behind them.  “Did someone say my name?”  Azula turned to see that Zuko was indeed present, with one twin hanging off each arm.

“Yeah, I was just telling Azula that I wanted to see Republic City.”

“Well, we’d be glad to have you there.  But, uh, anyway, I came up here to tell you two that the photographer’s setting up.  He has a prototype model of a new kind of camera; one that can take the picture instantly.  I thought the younger kids might find it harder to stand still.”

“Don’t get him started on that special camera,” Mai chimed in as she walked up with Chun trailing behind her.  “He’ll probably spend our entire wedding night talking about it.”

“Not the entire night,” Zuko protested.

“Oh, really?  I suppose I will just have to make sure that you keep your word.”

Azula said, “There are children here, you two!” in almost perfect synchrony with Ruanyu’s “I don’t think I wanna hear this…”  They must have pulled identical faces, since Akane exclaimed, “More twins!”

“Oops.  Forgot about the kids,” mumbled Zuko. “So…yeah.  Picture time.”

And so the soon-to-be-wed couple kissed as they temporarily parted; Mai had to leave to undergo the ordeal of getting dressed in her many-layered wedding outfit.  (“If I’m really lucky, maybe it’ll actually get done sometime this decade,” she said.)  Zuko eventually got the whole group of Ozai’s progeny rounded up.  As her brother enlisted Sokka’s help to explain how the camera worked to those children who had never been photographed before, and Azula snuck appraising glances at the latter, she felt oddly at peace. They made for an odd collection of individuals indeed, but Zuko had been right just this once.  That awful trial was behind them, and they were all stuck in this same recovery boat together.  

After some time, they were all arranged in a more or less organized manner, and Azula made sure that her necklace would be clearly visible in the picture.

“Smile!” the photographer ordered.

And, as they saw weeks later when the developed pictures were sent to them, nearly everyone had.  Even Azula.

[athenagc94]

Gust and Piper - Beginnings Pt. 1

I’m starving for more MTAP content, but now I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I have to create some of it too... I guess.  Here is a little of snippet of something I’m working on for my builder, Piper, and Gust.  It’s a lot of scenes right now and I’m working on bridging them together.  Here’s one of them.  Kind of the start of everything.  I don’t know

You can read the first the other parts here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

I’m also posting the story here on AO3!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As a younger man, Gust dreamed of making his mark on history.  He planned on traveling across the Free Cities, designing important structures for important people.  Several years ago, he’d fled to Atara to chase those dreams.  He lived the fast paced life of a bustling city.  He’d studied under his mentor Vera for years.  When he graduated, he was ready to take on the world as the next Master Architect.  If Gust could smack his younger self upside the head, he would.  Because that kid was a naive fool.

When he and Albert discussed the possibility of forming their own business, he didn’t plan on setting up shop in his hometown of Portia.  However, his sister’s health started to decline and, as it does, life happened.  Now, here he was, four years later with nothing to show for it.  He spent his days hunched over a drafting table, designing bland buildings for the bland people living in this bland town.  It wasn’t the life he had hoped for, but it was his reality.

His grip tightened on his pencil as he dragged it across the page.  The latest rendition of the South Bridge was beginning to take shape.  It wasn’t his first crack at the design and he doubted it would be his last.  His design process followed a similar pattern these days.  He’d create an inspired concept, the client would see it, they would hate it, and he’d be back at square one.  Wash, rinse, repeat. 

His father always said Portia was a frontier town and that they would develop it into something great.  Gust clucked his tongue irritably.  The longer he worked in Portia, the less he believed it.  How did one develop a town full of people that feared the very concept of change?

“Good morning!”

The front door jingled.  Gust set his pencil aside and turned around.  Portia’s newest builder, Piper, stood just inside the door, hands stuffed in the front pockets of her grease stained coveralls.  She didn’t seem to notice him right away, in fact, she didn’t spare the loft above a single glance as she searched the lower level.  “Albert?”  She disappeared out of sight, “you here?”

Gust pursed his lips and stood up.  Albert was usually on top of helping customers.  He rarely did any filing in the back rooms during office hours.  Albert would never miss out on helping one of Portia’s eligible bachelorettes.  He peered over the railing curiously.  His desk looked like it hadn’t been touched.  The usual mess of work orders and commission forms were stacked neatly on either side of his desk and his chair tucked in place.

Now that he thought about it, he never heard Albert come in this morning.  He racked his brain.  They’d left the office together yesterday.  They were discussing the latest commissions they needed for the bridge when they bumped into his father.  Gust groaned.  That’s right.  Albert was meeting with his father and Mint this morning to go over the budget for the project.  He would be gone until after lunch.

“Albert?”

“Albert is meeting with my father this morning.”

He heard a gasp and the builder reappeared under him.  He watched as several emotions played on her face.  It was like flipping through a book.  Surprise quickly turned to realization, which immediately became disappointment.  He sighed.  Yeah, he tended to have that effect on people.  “He won’t be back until this afternoon.”

Piper glanced down at her watch and made a face.  “Can you help me then?”

Gust blinked, taken aback.  Most people never asked him to help.  If a customer came in while Albert was out, they’d quickly apologize and came back later.  To them, Albert was the brains of the operation.  Gust was just there to be pretty and make things pretty, which was a fair assumption now that he thought about it.  Regardless, it wasn’t true.  Gust was knowledgeable enough about the inner workings of A&G.  But the people of Portia didn’t need to know that, if they did, he’d be expected to help them.  So he never corrected their assumptions.  Apparently, no one had bothered to inform Piper.

He rolled his eyes and turned away from the banister.  He may as well help her.  The sooner he did, the sooner he could get back to work.  He smoothed the lapel of his coat as he meandered down the stairs and towards Albert’s desk.  If he remembered correctly, Albert kept the blank work orders in the bottom left hand drawer.  He rummaged through the drawer, pulled out a blank order and took a seat.

Piper hadn’t moved.  She stared at him, dumbfounded, though he couldn’t imagine why.  Was she surprised to see him willing to help?  Should he be insulted right now?  He pursed his lips.  A moment passed, then another, and she still didn’t move.  He tapped the nib of his pen impatiently on the desktop.  After another moment of tense silence, he cleared his throat.  “Well?”  

Piper shook herself from her stupor.  “Iー” she cleared her throat, “I’m looking to add an extension to my workshop.”  She bounced on the balls of her feet.  “I’m tired of sleeping where I work, ya know?”

Gust didn’t know the feeling, so he chose not to respond.  He tried to ignore the awkward silence that had settled between them and made quick work of filling out the form.  It was easy information.  The initial consultation was always easy.  His real work began when he started conceptualizing.  It was his favorite part of the process, but recently, it had also become the most draining.  He could see it now.  He’d design the new addition.  The builder would want something less aesthetic and more functional.  He’d be disappointed and create the same thing he’s made for the last four years.

“Alright, I’m going to needー” The rest of the sentence died on his lips.  Piper was gone.  He peered around the room and found her examining the model he’d left on one of the displays.  His stomach lurched.  He’d spent weeks designing that model for a competition for the Vincent Design Institute.  The results had come back earlier this week.  They had been less than satisfactory.  He swallowed thickly.  He would have thrown it out already, but Ginger had insisted he keep it.  She didn’t want his hard work going to waste.

Piper peered a little closer.  Scrutinizing it.  Picking apart every flaw, just like the judges had.  His grip tightened on his pen.  Just like he had since the results had come out.  He pushed himself out of his seat and approached her.  

“Are you done snooping around?”

Piper jumped away from the model.  He met her sheepish gaze evenly as he crossed his arms.  “Sorry,” she gestured to the model, “I was just admiring this. It’s really well made.”

Gust felt the heat flood into his cheeks.  Pride swelled in his chest as he let his arms fall to his sides.  At least someone seemed to notice its quality.  “Well, thank you,” he said curtly, “I guess.”

Piper gaped.  “Is this your design?”

He scoffed, “well, obviously.”  He brushed past her and approached his model.  He’d drawn inspiration from the logic cube Ginger sometimes played with.  It was a boxy structure made up of three stories.  Every level was skewed on a central axis to give it a unique shape.  He’d used lots of windows and skylights to draw on natural light.  “It was for a competition I entered last month,”  He ran his finger along the edge of the top most story.  Dust was already beginning to collect on its surface.  “I didn’t win,” he continued bitterly, “they said it was too strange.  They didn’t understand my vision.  The crotchety old fools.”

Piper tilted her head to the side.  “Well, those guys have no taste.”  She knelt in front of the design and peered through one of its windows.  “It’s so interesting.  I’d love to see it full scale.  It would be breathtaking.”

Gust narrowed his eyes and searched her face.  She had to be messing with him.  The people in Portia didn’t like his designs.  She was tracing the angles of his design with his eyes.  She wore a sincere, almost dreamy, smile as she examined his work.  He stared a little longer before giving up.  She genuinely liked it.  The mere notion made his heart flutter in his chest.

“Have you studied architecture?”

Piper snorted.  “Well, no,” she admitted as she stood back up, “but I’m a builder, so I make things for a living.  Sometimes I like to admire the handiwork of others.  Especially when they’re this talented.”  She stuffed her hands back in her pockets and took a step back.  “You think differently and I like that.”

“Unfortunately,” Gust regarded his model with a look of disdain, “you seem to be the only one who shares in that sentiment.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile.  “It’s a shame they didn’t appreciate your design,” she was bouncing on the balls of her feet again, “If it makes you feel any better, I would have scored it well.”

Gust would be lying if he said it didn’t.  It felt good to know that someone appreciated his work.  His real work, not just the stuff he made to satisfy the town.  He didn’t really have a lot of support in his creative endeavors.  There was Albert of course, but he was more practical about these things.  He did what had to be done to make money.  Whatever made the client happy, he would do without question.  His sister tried to show her support, but she lived a sheltered life and she didn’t quite understand his late night tirades about parapets and gables.  

Piper was a builder.  She understood construction and aesthetics to some degree. The materials he’d used to create this model had been given to him by his father.  A halfhearted attempt to show his support, but the materials came from somewhere.  Had she been the one to provide them?

Gust’s breath hitched.  “Those materials my father got me,” he began slowly, “they came from you didn’t they?”

Piper shrugged.  “Your father asked me to lend a hand.  I was more than happy to help.”

“You sure like to be nosy, don’t you?”  He tried to sound irritated as he brushed past her, but he couldn’t stop the smile that curved on his lips.  The room had gotten significantly warmer.  His heart was hammering so loud, he was afraid Piper would be able to hear it.  He pressed a hand firmly to his chest and cleared his throat.  “Now,” he slid back into his seat, “come over here and sign this.  You’re wasting my time.”

“You’re not the only one with things to do.”

“Then do us both a favor and get over here.”

Piper didn’t argue and took the seat across from him.  “Sign here, here, and here” He punctuated each word with the tip of his pen.  “This is just the initial work order, so Albert will touch base with you later to go over the details.”  He handed her the pen and shifted back in his chair.

As she read through the fine print, Gust gaze wandered back to the model across the room.  He’d spent the last few days despairing over its imperfections.  If only he’d made the angles a little cleaner, or if he’d spent a little more time conceptualizing, maybe then the judges would have liked it.  He was nursing a big blow to his ego.  He had even begun to doubt his abilities as an architect.  Maybe he wasn’t as good as he thought he was.

It would be breathtaking.  Her words resonated with him.  He had thought the exact same thing when he drafted the first renditions.  It would be nice to see it come to life.  

“Is that all you need from me?”

Gust tore his gaze away from the model.  Piper fidgeted in her seat.  She really didn’t like sitting still, did she?  “That’ll be all for now.” He picked up the order form and placed it in Albert’s pile off to the side.  “I’ll begin drafting some concepts for you addition.  When I’m done, Albert will bring them your way for review.”

“Ooo, a Gust original for my addition,” she beamed at him, “I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

Gust gave her a thin smile and he hid his twitching fingers in his lap.  He could feel the thrill of inspiration course through his veins.  He was itching to get started.  “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“I’ll try not to,” she winked and slipped out of her seat, “but I should really get going, so I’ll leave you to it.  Thanks for your help.”  She offered him a small wave.  Gust watched her go, offering no farewell in return.  She didn’t wait for one.  Without another word, she slipped through the door and out into the plaza.  The door jingled after her.

Gust was out of his seat in a flash and making a beeline for the model.  He scooped it up in his arms and hurried up the stairs to his drafting table.  Several ideas were already floating around in his head.  He hadn’t been this excited about a project in awhile.  He sat down at his table with renewed vigor and got straight to work.

[we-are-inevitable]

love and it’s decisive pain

Prompt: "Could you make a modern spin where javid is established but they are hiding it at first. And David’s parents find them and tease them cause they knew already?" (i had to repost this and can’t remember who sent this ask, but thank you!)

Rating: M (for good measure)

Warnings: Mentions of violence and homophobia (to third party, unnamed characters), vague NSFW concepts, coming out anxiety. feel free to message me if i need to put any other trigger warnings, and i will gladly do so!

Word Count: 2,364

Read on AO3! Fic under the cut.

The decision to never come out was something that David had made peace with long ago.

He had been fourteen when he made the vow. Fourteen and vulnerable. Naive. At first, he had wanted to come out. He had known something was different about him, since the first time he heard Sarah talk about a boy she liked, and realized that what she was describing- what she felt for a guy in her class- was the same way that he felt about guys, too. At the time, he had been twelve, just now starting to realize that liking guys was even an option- and apparently, it was the only option that he saw fit for himself.

At age twelve, David realized he liked men. 

At age thirteen, David realized he liked only men. 

At fourteen, David realized he was in love with his best friend who had just moved to the school.

David had thought about the possibility of bringing it up to his parents, but he had never found the right time, never found the right way to say it. He had even considered trying to tell Sarah first, or maybe even Les, but he figured that Les was too young and Sarah just wouldn’t understand that her baby brother was anything other than straight. Nonetheless, David had made… a plan, per se, of just how he was going to do it. He had written it out and everything- he was going to wait until he left for school one day, maybe kiss his Ma on the forehead and give his Dad a goodbye hug. Then, he was going to walk to the door, yell, “Hey, I’m gay!”, and take off like a shot down the flight of stairs in their apartment building.

It was a plan. He never claimed it was good.

But that was before he saw just what could happen if he did. He saw a news report, of a couple being attacked on the subway for daring to be brave enough to hold hands in public. He remembered seeing the pictures on the TV, seeing the bruises and the bloody noses, and that struck enough fear into his heart that he had resigned himself to being alone. He would lurk in the shadows. Give his unconditional love and support to others. He would be the best damn ally he could be, but after seeing the pain, the heartbreak, the fear in the faces of the men on the TV that night, he knew his choice was the right one. He wouldn’t be able to survive if something like that happened to him.

He had successfully made it three years without anyone knowing the biggest secret of his life. Not even his closest friends knew, even though most of them were in the community themselves. It wasn’t as though he didn’t trust them- no, no, he trusted each of them with his life. Crutchie, Race, Albert, and Elmer, along with many others, had already told him that they would take care of him if anything ever happened. It had been joking, but David didn’t doubt their loyalty for a minute.

But then there was Jack. 

Jack, the guy that David had been crushing on for three years.

Jack, the guy who had the most intense stare, most beautiful smile, most effective puppy dog eyes, most lovely laugh and talent and, God, David could listen to him talk, listen to his accent, for hours on end.

It was Jack that had caused his crisis, who had been the guy behind the story, the guy he wanted to come out for. He remembered the night that Jack told him he was bi, a conversation that had happened at four in the morning one summer night when they were both sixteen. Oh, how Davey longed to tell Jack then. How he longed to lean over, gently cup his cheek and kiss the worries and insecurities out of him. 

Instead, he had just reassured Jack that he didn’t care, that he would always be safe with him, and that he was always there if Jack needed to talk.

They had been in a similar situation about a year later. Another late night, safe on Jack’s fire escape, where they had been for hours watching the sunset and idly talking about the people that passed on the streets below. Jack had kitted it out with everything- some christmas lights wrapped around the railings, two thick blankets laid out on the floor and an old-fashioned radio playing some music behind them. In a way, that fire escape felt more like home than any other place on earth.

It was everything that David had ever dreamed of.

They had gotten pretty silent, but it was a comfortable drop in conversation as they both watched the bustling streets of New York. It was Jack who broke it eventually, taking in a deep breath as he looked down. “‘Ey, Dave?” “Yeah, Jackie?” David asked softly, pushing himself up from his back. He stopped about halfway, kicking his long legs out in front of him, braced on his palms. 

“You… You  know how I told ya, that I’m into dudes?” Jack approached the subject carefully. Davey gulped. His mind immediately went somewhere bad- that Jack had a boyfriend, that Jack had found out that he really only liked women, that Jack had been... hurt. “Well, I-... There’s a guy,” Jack started, and Davey could see him tapping a familiar rhythm onto his knee. Jack did that when he was anxious. “And, well- I like ‘im. A lot. But… But I dunno if he’s into guys, and even if he is, I don’t think I’m the kind’a fella he would like--”

“Are you kidding?”

“Huh?”

“Jack,” David said with a sad grin, furrowing a brow. “Any guy would have to be crazy not to like you back. I mean, have you seen yourself? You’re hot,” David said with a soft laugh, gently nudging Jack’s shoulder with a fist. “Plus, you’re talented. You’re crazy good at art, you can sing and play guitar, you’re wicked smart. Unless a guy just wasn’t into smartasses, I don’t get why anyone wouldn’t be into you,” David joked softly, but every word was the truth. He didn’t understand why Jack was so insecure, why he was so self deprecating, but he knew it had been something he had struggled with for a long time.

“...For sure?” Jack asked, his voice smaller than David had ever heard it. “Jackie, I wouldn’t lie to ya,” He said with a grin. “Everything I said is true, y’know. You’re an amazing man, any guy would be lucky to--”

David was cut off with hands fisting his shirt and dragging him into a kiss.

Time stopped for a moment.

David could feel his eye’s widening, could feel his heart pounding, mind racing a mile a minute. He must have froze, because suddenly, all too suddenly, Jack was pulling away with a flushed face and a look of terror in his eyes. “Fuck, Dave, I’m so sorry, I didn’t--” He cut himself off with a deep breath, immediately turning away from David to face the New York skyline yet again.

David took in a shuddering breath a few moments later. “...Jack, you idiot,” He muttered, and Jack winced, turning to apologize yet again, until Davey pulled him in for another kiss. This time, he was in control. The kiss was soft, hesitant at first, until the both of them got confident enough to take it to the next level.

David had his arms wrapped around Jack’s waist, the angle a bit awkward, until Jack had fixed it by moving to sit in David’s lap. That was when it hit David that this was real. He was kissing Jack Kelly, and Jack Kelly was kissing back.

After that night, they kept things lowkey. David still wasn’t ready to come out to the guys, which Jack understood wholeheartedly. Their relationship may have been a secret, but it didn’t mean tht they didn’t like it. No, sneaking around was fun. Making out in the school bathroom, going on dates disguised as hangouts, even being there for each other on their eighteenth birthdays was something so much more magical than anyone knew. 

They lived in that bubble of safety until they finally told the guys the night after their high school graduation. They had been together for close to a year that night, and it just felt right. All of them were together, hanging out in the park and discussing the crazy graduation parties that had happened the night before. Something must have lit a fire in David, because Jack made eye contact with him as Race was telling a story, and David kissed him in front of everyone else. They had to fess up- after Race finished his agonizingly long story, of course- but David had never felt happier.

That next week, David was riding the high of finally making it. He had a boyfriend, he was officially moving on to college in the fall, and he was finally, finally safe and accepted.

Until that next Friday came along.

David had thought that they had the apartment to themselves. Jack had even climbed through the window for good measure, but David knew that his parents were going on a weekend getaway in Boston, and Les would be at a friend’s house until Sunday, so he didn’t think to lock the door.

It started out as cuddling and watching some old western movie that Jack had fallen in love with, before cuddling turned to kissing, and kissing turned to David pressing Jack down against the bed as he nipped and sucked dark marks onto the tan skin of Jack’s neck. Jack was a blushing mess, murmuring soft pleas as his hands carded through Davey’s dark hair. “Davey, baby, come on, stop teasin’,” Jack muttered pitifully, eyes shutting, before they suddenly flew wide open at the sound of David’s bedroom door opening. “David, we just came back because your father forgot his wallet, and-- Oh, my good Lord!”

The door was shut just as fast as it had opened, and David was so thankful that they were still clothed, until he realized what had just happened. 

He could feel himself visibly paling as he launched away from Jack, hurrying to stand up. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck--”

“Babe, babe, calm down, it’s--”

Jack didn’t have time to say another word before David was already out the door and down the hall.

“Ma!” David said quickly, chest heaving as he came to a standstill in the living room. He was red faced in shame, and could already feel the tears welling in his eyes. “Ma, it- it’s not what it looks like!” He rushed out, gulping when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Jack, looking just as scared as he did, as he desperately buttoned his flannel to try to cover the marks. “We-- I didn’t-- I thought- Ma, I’m not--” “David.”

David went silent, staring at the floor with wide eyes, refusing to meet his mother's gaze. He vaguely registered his father coming into the room, who stopped mid sentence when he saw Jack and his son.

David could feel his world crumbling, but then he felt Jack’s hand gently grab his, ever so slightly intertwining their fingers. He glanced over at Jack with wide eyes, who looked at him and gave a gentle nod, taking a deep breath. 

Slowly, David looked back up, gulping. “...Mama, Dad, Jack and I--” “We know, dear.” 

“You-- You know?”

David finally took a good look at them. His father was standing behind his mother, a strong hand on her shoulder, but they didn’t look… angry. Or upset. Instead, they were smiling at him. “David, hunny, we’ve known for years. We… found a note that you had written- something or another, of how you wanted to tell us. At- At first, we were… shocked. We didn’t really know what to do, so we decided to wait it out until you told us yourself, we just didn’t expect it to take four years,” Esther added with a gentle laugh.

“It didn’t shock us to find out you were with Jack, either,” Mayer noted, glancing between the two boys. “Jack, you spend an awful lot of time at our house, more than any of the other boys. As long as you don’t intend on hurting our son, you’re part of this family, too.”

That was David’s breaking point.

He couldn’t hold in the sob that rose up from his chest, and though the Jacobs family had never been the most physically affectionate, David found himself running across the room. He pulled his mother into a tight hug, crying softly into her shoulder, and he took in a deep, shuddering breath as she rubbed his back. He pulled away and wiped his eyes, only to be pulled into another hug by Mayer, which was a shocking moment in itself.

One of them must have gestured to Jack to come closer, too, because when David looked over, Esther had him wrapped into a tight hug. David stepped away, and watched with a fond smile as Jack shook his father's hand.

Things seemed to calm down after that, though David still had watery eyes, but he couldn’t help the immense joy that flooded his chest. He gulped and wrapped an arm around Jack’s waist, who in turn began rubbing his back.

“Like I said,” Mayer spoke firmly, “take good care of our boy. Now, we have a reservation at the hotel to meet by midnight, so we should get going,” He said, looking down at Esther, who nodded. 

They said their last goodbyes, but just as the door closed, it opened again. Esther poked her head in and grinned. “One more thing- use protection!” She said quickly, before the door shut with a final click.

David would have been mortified, if not for the bright laughter that bubbled out from the boy beside him. 

Yeah, this was a happiness he could get used to, he thought as he pulled Jack in for another kiss.