#but i think it's my mum's job to put aside her own feelings of discomfort around my dad

[queerstudiesnatural]

mothers. oof.

[jennycalendar]

very really married (12/15)

read it on ao3!

we’re in the home stretch. incredible.

Before the talent show, Giles’s reason for not telling Jenny the truth had seemed absolutely infallible. Above all else, a Watcher had to maintain the secrecy of his calling, and informing others of his duties might make them into targets or put them otherwise in danger. But keeping Jenny in the dark had put her directly in the line of fire, completely shattering the last real argument Giles had against not telling her. She had proven her trustworthiness time and time again, he had known her for more than long enough to know how good a person she was, and she had already known about the supernatural from the get-go. The concept of attempting to protect her now seemed rather idiotic, especially when she had protected him at every opportunity allowed to her.

There was one reason, however, that remained an incredible roadblock when it came to telling Jenny anything: the absolute trust in her eyes when she looked at him. She had placed her secrets and her heart with him, and Giles was so terribly afraid of hurting her when he revealed what he hadn’t told her. He had waited too long to tell her the truth, he knew, but if he’d known he would love her too much to risk losing her over his calling—

“Um, earth to Giles?” Buffy persisted. “Spiders? Crawling all around in the English classroom?”

“Spiders,” said Giles vaguely, only barely registering what Buffy was saying. “Splendid. I shall check my books for spiders, then. Thank you.”

“What is up with you?” Buffy demanded.

“Hmm?” Giles did his best not to think about his marital affairs. This, he thought, was exactly what the Council would deem inadequate prioritizing. “I’m terribly sorry, Buffy,” he said. “Might you repeat what you need me to research?”

“Spiders,” said Buffy with extreme impatience.

“I’ll need something a bit more specific than that,” said Giles pointedly.

“I gave you an explanation, you just weren’t listening!” said Buffy indignantly. Her expression changed into one of abject horror. “Oh my god. Is this what it’s like to be you?”

As Xander and Willow both started giggling, Giles sighed. “Again,” he said, “I do apologize. If you would kindly elaborate regarding the spiders—”

“All in Wendell’s textbook,” said Buffy, as though she had said it more than once before. Granted, Giles probably wouldn’t have noticed if she had. “And from absolutely nowhere. One minute we were all reading about active listening, and the next, boom! Spiders.”

“That does seem, ah, anomalous,” Giles agreed with some discomfort. He had no problems with spiders, as long as they kept their feet off of his books. “I shall do my best to look into it.”

“Look into what?” inquired Jenny, breezing in with an armful of snacks.

Giles caved. Jenny knew about their supernatural adventures, just…not his career as a Watcher. Perhaps he should ease her into it. “Spiders,” he said. “There was a rather unusual incident in Buffy’s class, and she suggested I research its causes.”

“Fun!” said Jenny, grinning. God help him, he had drunkenly married the perfect woman.

“Research is fun?” said Xander disbelievingly.

“I like spiders,” said Jenny, shrugging. “Also learning new things, but that’s mostly a side benefit.” She handed Willow and Buffy each a snack, gave the rest of the pile to Xander, and stepped up to Giles, giving him an apologetic smile. “I only have so many arms,” she said. “I hope you can survive without a bag of chips.”

“I’m sure I’ll live,” said Giles dryly.

“That’s the spirit,” said Jenny, gently bumping his shoulder. “Kids, you should probably get to class, okay? Rupert and I have the spider thing under control.”

“Keep him on task and don’t do anything gross in the library!” Buffy called over her shoulder, following Willow and Xander into the hallway.

As soon as the children had exited, Jenny draped her arms around Giles’s neck, smiling beatifically up at him. “So, like, what I’m hearing is we just can’t get PG-13 with the excessive kissing,” she said.

“Research, Jenny,” said Giles. It was no longer possible to separate his guilt from their moments of intimacy.

“Oooh, he’s using his sexy-librarian voice,” Jenny teased, and tilted her head back, closing her eyes. When Giles didn’t lean in, she opened them again, an expression of genuine worry crossing her face. “You okay?”

“I’m a bit out of sorts today,” said Giles hesitantly. “I’m afraid I may not be up for anything outside researching, at the moment.”

“Of course,” said Jenny, her face softening. Standing on tiptoe, she brushed a gentle kiss against his mouth. “Point me in the direction of whatever upset you and I will absolutely beat it up,” she informed him, giving him a lopsided smile.

Giles tried to smile back. “It’s merely my own poor decision-making that has me somewhat bothered,” he said honestly. “I’m sure it shall resolve itself relatively soon.”

He turned the Watchers’ diaries upside down for any mention of other Watchers who had found themselves in a similar situation to him. But the only mentions of family in any of the diaries came in the form of vague, oblique, often disinterested footnotes. Sarah inquired as to my whereabouts today, one read. I made it clear that she should not be asking such questions; she was abashed, but respected my position. Honestly, all that this cemented was that most married Watchers were utter cads to their romantic partners, which made Giles feel even worse for falling into that pattern. It had been different, before he had fallen truly in love. He had delighted in the thought of devoting himself to the job alone.

When research failed him, he drafted a speech. Or seven. But none of them quite adequately captured absolutely everything he wanted to say to her. Jenny, there is something I have kept from you—but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her quite so bluntly. Jenny, you know I love you—but that was using his love as an attempt to defend his dishonesty, and he couldn’t bring himself to do such a terrible thing. Jenny, not everything I have told you is true—but that called everything he had told her into question, including his stumbling, heartfelt declarations of love. It would shatter him, thinking Jenny doubted his feelings for her.

There was a knock on his door. Relieved by the excuse to put his sorry task aside, Giles hurried to answer it. “Buffy,” he said with relief. “How was patrol?”

“Snoresville,” said Buffy, making a face. She peered over his shoulder, frowning. “That doesn’t look like spiders, Giles.”

“Yes, well…” Giles fumbled for some semblance of an excuse. “The information you gave me was rather vague,” he said. At Buffy’s indignant look, he hastily clarified, “I don’t blame you in the slightest! It’s simply that I think talking to Wendell himself might give us a sense of the matter’s root cause.”

Buffy relaxed. “Fair enough,” she said. “Where’s Jenny?”

“She went home early, I think,” said Giles, stepping in front of the seventh draft of his speech. “I should probably head in that direction myself. Do you need a ride to your mum’s?”

“Seriously?” Buffy grinned. “That would be amazing. Thank you so much!”

“Of course,” said Giles, relieved. Buffy’s company was always a sufficient enough distraction. “Do tell me about—um, your day? How have things been going in your classes?”

Buffy’s smile vanished; she squinted at him, looking genuinely worried. “You okay?” she said. “You never ask about my life.”

This didn’t really make Giles feel any better about the choices he had been making. “Then I need to get better at that,” he said with a half-apologetic smile. “I truly would like to hear more about what you do outside of your sacred calling.”

Buffy blinked, then smiled again, more shy than buoyant. “Okay,” she said. “Well, do you wanna hear about my algebra test? I’m pretty sure I at least passed this one—”

Giles fell into step with Buffy, deciding very firmly to put the mess that was his marriage out of his mind until he reached home. Coming into the situation with a clear head might make his admission easier on both Jenny and himself—though, really, the most important part was that this was easy on Jenny.

Giles reached their small, cozy house, pulled up to the driveway, and saw his wife lying dead on the porch. No—no, it was just a shadow, wasn’t it? That couldn’t possibly be—he had had dreams like this, where he pulled the car up and Jenny was lying dead on the porch and she had died because he had waited too long to tell her the truth, and dreams didn’t come true this exactly, not with Jenny’s head tilted just so and her eyes wide and staring and oh God, it was her—

He slammed on the brakes, unbuckling his seatbelt and diving out of the car without bothering to take the key out of the ignition. He half-stumbled up the porch stairs, collapsing next to her body and then pulling her into his arms—was she still breathing? She might still be breathing, there might still be time—she was so cold—

“Rupert.”

Giles felt a shimmer of something as he turned to look at Jenny. Alive. And looking extremely angry, for a reason he couldn’t possibly fathom. “Oh,” he said, almost sobbing with relief. This was something magical, then. Whatever was going on, he couldn’t trust his senses, which meant that Jenny was nowhere near dead. He looked back down into his arms, and found that he was holding empty air. “Oh—I thought—”

“What the fuck,” said Jenny, and threw two of the Watcher diaries at him. One book hit Giles’s shoulder; the other very nearly hit him squarely in the face. “What the fuck—” She was shaking, tears in her eyes; she threw another Watcher’s diary at him, then held up the fifth draft of his speech. “Jenny, I love you,” she read. “Never doubt that I love you. Please understand that I kept this from you only out of concern for your safety—you bastard!”

Giles was having quite a lot of trouble processing what was going on at this juncture, especially since ten seconds ago, he had been quite solidly convinced that Jenny was dead. His shoulder stung, his speeches were scattered on the pavement, and Jenny looked like she was quite ready to hit him. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I feel I am missing a quite integral piece of the puzzle—”

“Oh, no, that is my line right now,” Jenny retorted. “Because I fell in love with a sweet, gentle, honest guy who took all my secrets in stride, and I thought, god, how the fuck did I get so lucky, meeting someone who was willing to put up with me? And now I find out that you’ve been keeping this from me this whole time—and you know what, okay, I can get why you did it at first, but Rupert—” She pressed her fingers to her mouth, dropping the rest of the diaries on the pavement. Drawing in a shuddering breath, she said, “I trusted you. I wanted to stay married to you.”

Giles couldn’t breathe.

“I don’t trust just anybody,” said Jenny. No longer was there that vindictive fire in her eyes; she looked very small, and very tired. “I guess I don’t trust anybody, now.”

“Jenny,” said Giles weakly. “Jenny, if—if you read my writings, you, you must know that I intended to tell you—”

“Don’t,” said Jenny.

“Jenny, please—”

“I don’t know you,” said Jenny. “I don’t know a single fucking thing about you, if you’re the kind of man like the people in these diaries. How can you expect me to forgive you for this?” She turned, hurrying towards the still-running car, and got in, slamming the door shut and peeling out of the driveway at a terrifying speed.

Giles sat on the porch steps, feeling quite like he had been punched in the stomach. He felt as though he should go after her, plead his case—but her reaction had been exactly as terrible and as definitive as it had been in his imagined worst-case scenarios. It almost felt too terrible to be true.

And then he remembered Jenny, dead on the porch, cold and solid in his arms. Perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t.

Jenny wasn’t at home when Giles woke up the next day. It took him a moment to realize why the bed felt quite so large and empty, and another moment to realize that he had grown accustomed to waking up with her sprawled half on top of him, head pillowed on his chest, arm draped possessively across his stomach. Her absence brought back the memories of the previous night in full relief, and he swallowed, hard.

He would fix this. He had to fix this. Stranger things had happened in Sunnydale, hadn’t they? Stranger by far than his wife dead and leaving him on the same night. If his worst fears were coming true, then that meant that something was making them come true, which meant that none of this was really Jenny at all. And that meant that Giles would be able to look her in the eye and tell her Jenny, I love you, and I am sorry that I kept this from you. She wouldn’t find out from—

Giles stopped, sitting up in bed. He had left the library with Buffy that night, determined to put thoughts of the diaries out of his head. He had left the library, and he had left his office door ajar, diaries and speeches strewn across his office, visible to anyone who might come looking for him.

Jenny’s body had disappeared, Giles reminded himself all the way to school. Jenny’s body had disappeared, so it stood to reason that anything else that might have been a magical trick would have righted itself as well. If his office remained exactly the way he had left it, then that would prove the theory that his worst nightmares really were coming true, and it would put to bed any possibility of last night’s confrontation being real.

The look in his wife’s eyes—

Giles sprinted through the halls, ignoring Principal Snyder’s shout of “Mr. Giles, a little professionalism—” and nearly bowling over Cordelia Chase. He threw open the library doors, barely noticing the children gathered around the table, and rounded the checkout desk to find the door of his office still ajar.

“Giles—” he heard Buffy say from behind him. Her voice was small and shaky.

Giles’s office was a mess. The box of Watcher diaries had been upended and hastily sorted through, half of them open on the floor. One of his speeches—the half-crumpled first draft, which had been the most blunt and tactless in its phrasing—was sitting atop his desk, blotted with tears to the point that his handwriting was nearly illegible. Tossed to the floor was Jenny’s leather jacket.

And the moment felt so foolishly mundane. Nothing magical had slipped Giles up; no nightmare spell had brought his worst fear to life. His own distracted carelessness had revealed the truth to Jenny in the most callous way possible. She had discovered his secret from secondary sources, men who Giles found himself feeling less and less connected to. She saw him as not the man he was, but the man he was desperately afraid of becoming.

The nightmares, Giles thought, had been kinder.

“Giles,” said Buffy again, stepping up to place a tentative hand on his elbow. Giles turned, unable to think of anything he could possibly say.

“Ms. Calendar was here when we came in,” said Xander from the table, looking up at Giles with an unreadable expression. “She said—” He coughed, nervously, then said, “Did you guys get married in Vegas?”

And again, Giles found himself feeling as though he had been knocked sprawling. “I’m sorry?” he managed.

Buffy swallowed, tears in her eyes. Giles was reminded of their conversation in the halls regarding him and Jenny—she makes you super happy, Buffy had said shyly,and that’s really, really awesome—and realized that there had been another reason he had never wanted Buffy to find out what his marriage really was. “She said I guess this is what happens when you drunk-marry a guy in Vegas the day you meet him,” Buffy said unsteadily. “I-I don’t think she knew we had come in.”

“Yes,” said Giles, “well,” and gripped the checkout desk to keep his knees from giving way. His eyes were blurry with tears, and he would not cry in front of his charges. “I-I’m sorry, Buffy,” he said. “I don’t think I will be able to assist you in this particular paranormal venture.”

“Giles—” Buffy’s voice broke.

“Please excuse me,” said Giles, and took two unsteady steps into his office, shutting and locking the door behind him.

Outside, he heard Buffy begin to cry, and Willow and Xander’s murmurs of panicked comfort in response. He wished he was strong enough to go out and face them, but he couldn’t. Not when his Slayer knew he was an inebriated failure, and his wife knew he had lied to her for the entire duration of their marriage, and none of them knew how very much he had wanted to do good in the world. Dazed and miserable, Giles leaned against the door, then slid down to sit on the floor.

He tugged Jenny’s jacket over to him, running a hand down the leather, cradling it against his chest with the same tender hesitancy that he had once held his wife. It smelled like her—just barely, but enough to provide him with some semblance of comfort.

Giles stayed in his office for nearly three hours, surrounded by the wreckage of what he had meant to be a well-made plan. He kept on thinking about small, silly things that he had taken for granted: Jenny’s smile when he made her coffee, Buffy’s bright, clear laugh when she got a good punch in during training, Willow’s gentle, reproving words when she had found out the entire mess quite by accident. Really, if he had listened to Willow from the get-go, none of this would have happened quite so horribly, or hurt Jenny quite so much. He should have listened to Willow from the get-go.

There was a knock on his office door. Giles didn’t answer. Whoever it was, there was no way he could face—

“Rupert?” Jenny’s voice was tremulous. “Rupert, I—”

Without even making the conscious decision to do it, Giles stood, unlocking and opening the door with shaking hands.

Jenny was standing in the doorway, blouse torn, a bloody vampire bite standing out in stark relief on her neck. She swayed, but gripped the doorframe, steadying herself. Giles reached for her; she flinched away. “No,” she said. “We’re not—that’s not us anymore.”

Heart breaking, Giles let his hands drop. “What do you need?” he said in a low, shaking voice.

Leaning against the doorframe, Jenny wrung her hands almost compulsively, looking down at the floor as though she couldn’t quite bear to look at him. “Angelus attacked me,” she said. “He got a good bite in before I managed to dust him.”

“Angelus?” Giles repeated, bemused. “But it’s daylight, and—”

“Angel has his soul,” Jenny finished. “Yeah.” One of her hands fluttered to touch her neck, then jerked away.

“Jenny, are you all right?” Giles asked. The look she gave him in return made him regret ever speaking. “I just meant—”

“You don’t get to ask me if I’m all right,” said Jenny. “Okay? You just don’t.” She wiped her bloody hands on her skirt, then crossed her arms, staring down at the floor. “There’s obviously something supernatural going on here,” she informed her shoes, “and seeing as that is apparently your area of fucking expertise, I think you should be working on researching how to fix it.”

“Before that, I think you should seek medical attention,” Giles persisted. “You look as though you’re about to keel over—”

“Rupert, I don’t like being taken care of even when I do trust people,” said Jenny shortly, “and right now I do not trust you. Okay?”

“You can’t expect me to be able to focus on researching when I know you’re in this state—”

“You did this,” snapped Jenny. “You created this mess. If you’re gonna lie to your wife for months about who you are, then you have to just let her be upset!”

“There’s a stark contrast between letting you be upset and letting you bleed out in the library!” Giles retorted, frustration and worry overtaking his shame. “I don’t at all dispute your right to be mad at me, Jenny, and—” He swallowed, hard. “I won’t try and change your mind,” he said. “I can agree wholeheartedly that I am not the man you knew. But please, please let me patch you up before we continue any research. It’s all I ask.”

Jenny looked up at him, shaking. Then she said, “After this, I’m done, okay? I’m just—we’re done.”

“Of course,” said Giles quietly.

His ready acceptance seemed to take Jenny aback. “You’re not going to fight me on this?” she said, her voice wobbling.

Giles raised his eyes to hers. “I broke your trust, and I know you well enough to know that your trust is doled out sparingly,” he said. “Whatever you want at this juncture—whatever I can do to make things even slightly better for you—is what I will give you.”

Jenny nodded, and nodded again, gripping her elbows and returning her gaze to the floor. “Okay,” she said. “You can fix up my neck.”

As Giles stepped forward, the library doors burst open, Willow and Xander tumbling through. “Giles?” Willow called, then stopped, throwing her arm out in front of Xander. Both of them stared, wide-eyed, at Giles and Jenny.

It was a mark of how terribly shaken Jenny was that she couldn’t even muster up a smile for the children. She nodded in their direction, then looked up at Giles. “You can fix up my neck,” she said again. “Go get the first-aid kit from your office.” With that, she crossed the library to sit down at the table, leaning back in the chair to stare up at the ceiling.

“Giles?” said Willow, her voice trembling.

“Jenny has been made aware of my status as a Watcher,” said Giles simply.

That got Jenny’s attention. “They knew?” she said very loudly, standing up fast enough to knock the chair over. “They knew, and I didn’t?”

“They were in the line of fire—” Giles began, terrified that this new development would dissuade Jenny from receiving medical attention.

“Oh, and I’m not?” shouted Jenny, gesturing to the still-bleeding bite on her neck. Willow let out a strangled sob. Xander looked sick. Jenny didn’t seem to register either reaction. “So you’d rather tell yourstudents about your double life than your wife?”

“Don’t throw that word around like it means something to you,” retorted Giles before he could stop himself.

Jenny reeled back, stumbling into the table. The look of utter hurt on her face lasted only a moment, and then she was rounding on him with a new ferocity in her eyes. “Oh, that’s a laugh,” she said. “That’s really funny, Rupert, you talking to me like I’m the one who has reason to be doubted here. I’ve been above-board, I’ve been honest, I’ve told you how much I love you—”

“STOP IT!”

Giles and Jenny turned, for the first time fully realizing the presence of all three children. Xander was now leaning heavily against the checkout desk, Buffy was staring at both of them with furious, blazing eyes, and Willow—

Willow was crying, very hard, into Buffy’s shoulder.

“Oh,” said Jenny. Her voice broke. “Oh no.”

“Yeah,”said Buffy, somewhat hoarsely; she had had to shout quite loudly to be heard over Giles and Jenny’s argument. “Yeah. See what you guys are doing?”

“Don’t blame Jenny for this, Buffy,” said Giles immediately. “She has every right to be angry with me.”

“I don’t care whose fault it is or isn’t,” said Buffy flatly. “You’re supposed to be the adults here.”

To Giles’s surprise, something in Jenny’s face shifted. “Okay,” she said.

“What?” said Giles.

“Rupert, they’re right,” said Jenny matter-of-factly. “We can’t do this right now. There’s actual supernatural stuff we have to focus on.”

Giles felt oddly hurt. Jenny had shifted so easily from furious to businesslike; he didn’t know if he could make that effortless transition himself. “Of course,” he said, because what else could he say? “We have work to do.”

“I’ll take care of Ms. Calendar’s neck,” said Xander, straightening up. “Buffy, you should probably tell Giles about Laura and what you found out in the hospital.”

“Laura?” Giles repeated distantly.

“Laura’s in my English class,” Buffy explained unsteadily, gently removing herself from a still-sniffling Willow’s grip. “She got beat up pretty bad, and she’s not the only one.”

As it turned out, one of Giles’s more inane nightmares appeared to have come true—meaning that he found himself utterly unable to contribute to research of any kind. Willow took it upon herself to tremulously read him headlines, while Jenny turned to the Net for answers. Buffy’s information regarding Billy Palmer did help to some degree, but nothing was definitively discovered until Xander came running in from his fifth period class in mismatched gym clothing.

“Interesting look, Xander,” said Jenny, cracking a small, reluctant smile.

“Oh, ha ha,” said Xander, glaring at her. “Laugh it up all you want—you didn’t have your worst nightmare come true. I’m pretty sure Cordelia will have told the whole school—”

Jenny’s smile vanished, a strange expression crossing her face. “Wait,” she said. “Say that again.”

“What, that Cordelia probably blabbed about my little incident to everyone?”

“No,” said Giles slowly, seeing where Jenny was going. “Nightmares.” He turned to Jenny. “Jenny, you were attacked by Angelus. Xander, you—”

“I was in front of the class wearing only my underwear,” said Xander resentfully.

“Exactly!” said Giles, delighted by the realization. “And I found Jenny’s dead body on my porch last night, but it disappeared when—” He stopped, wincing a bit. “Well. The point is, I’ve had nightmares in that vein—”

“About me dying?” said Jenny a little shakily, sounding somewhat floored.

Giles turned to look at her, opening his mouth. Before he could say anything, however, Willow cut in very firmly, “You guys are on probation, remember? No more feelings talk until the nightmare stuff gets resolved.”

“Right,” said Giles, doing his best to look away from the no-longer-angry expression on Jenny’s face. “Nightmares.” Awkwardly, he cleared his throat, then added, “It seems reasonable to assume that Billy Palmer may have somehow crossed over from the nightmare world he’s trapped in.”

“And he brought the nightmares with him?” said Xander indignantly. “Well, thanks a lot, Billy.”

“Buffy needs to know,” said Willow suddenly. “She’s off with her dad, right?”

The concept of Sunnydale being exposed to a Vampire Slayer’s nightmares did not appeal to Giles in the slightest. “You’re quite right, Willow,” he said. “We need to track her down before something drastic happens.”

Quite a lot of drastic things happened. It was, after all, rather expected when one was wandering around in a compilation of nightmares. By the time Giles finally reunited with Willow, Xander, and Jenny, none of them had found Buffy, and they were being chased by what appeared to be a clown wielding a knife. Giles was beginning to long for the safety of two hours before—yes, his soon-to-be-ex-wife was livid with him, but at least he wasn’t about to die in the most undignified way possible.

To his surprise, at the end of the hall, Xander stopped, then stalked up to the clown, punching it directly in the face. It fell. “You are a lousy clown!” he shouted. “Your balloon animals are pathetic! Anyone can make a giraffe!” With that, he turned away, hurrying to catch up with them as Giles led the group outside.

“Ooh boy,” said Jenny, reeling.

Giles blinked. “Are you all right?”

“Um—no?” said Jenny. Her voice shook. “The sun, it’s, it’s—”

Abruptly, and horribly, Giles understood. “Xander, Willow, go find Buffy,” he said sharply.

“But Giles—” Willow began.

“Go,” said Giles, gripping Jenny’s hands. As the children hurried in the direction of what looked to be a graveyard, he said shakily, “You said you were raised on—on stories of Angelus.”

“I had dreams when I was little,” said Jenny, her nails digging into his hands. “I dreamed that—that he bit me, a-and then I’d be a vampire too—”

“This would have been extremely pertinent information to have half an hour ago,” said Giles. Any sensible Watcher would run, at this moment. “Are you quite sure that this isn’t my nightmare?’

Jenny shook her head. “No,” she said. “No. This feels like mine.” She sniffled. “I always dreamed that I managed to get away before he killed me,” she said. “And then the change would come on out of nowhere—” She seemed just as unable to leave him as he did to run from her. “Rupert, you, you have to go,” she said.

“Jenny—”

“Fix this,” said Jenny. “Okay?”

Giles tugged his hands from hers. He would have done anything to erase that terrible, terrified look in her eyes. “I love you,” he said roughly, and before she could say anything in response, he was sprinting after Willow and Xander, towards the graveyard.

The school was gone as soon as he stepped through the portal. That was the way dreams worked, Giles supposed—and more and more, the real world was functioning with the same impossible logic as dreams. “Willow?” he called. “Xander?”

They turned. “Where’s Ms. Calendar?” Willow asked, voice wobbling.

“I-I don’t know,” said Giles. “I think we may need to conduct the rest of this on our own. As soon as we find Buffy—” And then he stopped, realizing what, exactly, Willow and Xander had been looking at.

Buffy Summers, read the tombstone. 1981 – 1997.

“My nightmare again, then,” said Giles, quiet and heavy. He knelt down in front of the tombstone, dazed by how bloody impossible it felt to fix all this. How quickly it had all fallen to bits—and how strangely little it had taken. “I’ve failed,” he said, thinking of Buffy’s sweet, bright smile. “In my duty to protect you.” He swallowed, hard. “I’d say I should have been more cautious,” he said, “but I fear my caution has been all of our undoing. Had I been half as brave as you—” He dropped his head, swallowing. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

As he began to get up, a hand grabbed at his wrist. Willow screamed. Giles wrenched himself away, staggering back and watching, stunned, as Buffy pulled herself up and out of the dirt. “I thought I was dead!” she wheezed, raising her head to look at them.

A vampire, Giles realized. Only—she had retained her soul.

“Buffy, your face!” Willow gasped.

Buffy blinked, reaching up to touch her face—and immediately hid behind her hands. “Oh—god,” she whispered. “Oh—don’t look at me!”

“You never told me you dreamt of becoming a vampire,” said Giles slowly.

“This isn’t a dream,” said Buffy unsteadily.

“No,” Giles agreed. “It isn’t.” His thoughts returned to Jenny, looking small and shaken in the shadows. “But there is a chance we can stop it from continuing.” He stepped forward, placing a hand on Buffy’s shoulder; he wasn’t the only one who was having a difficult day. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you, right now,” he said quietly. “If I could, I would take this responsibility on myself. But I need you to hold together long enough to wake Billy up and end this. Can you do that?”

Buffy raised her head. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I-I can try.”

“Trying is more than enough,” said Giles, and squeezed her shoulder.

Buffy woke Billy up. Giles was, overall, unsurprised; after all, Buffy had a flawless track record for stopping these sorts of things thus far. As they left the hospital, he was about to tell her as such when she said, “So we kinda need to talk about that whole married-in-Vegas thing.”

Giles nodded. After his nightmares had quite literally come to life, his previous worries about professionalism didn’t seem quite as daunting—if anything, they felt rather ridiculous. “We met on a layover,” he said, smiling a little at the memory. “In a bar. She was throwing her drink in some fellow’s face, and I happened to be at the next seat over, so that was our beginning topic of conversation.”

“Romantic,” said Willow, grinning a little in a way that made it clear she was only half joking.

“Quite,” Giles agreed. His own smile faded. “I’m afraid my memories of the marriage itself are—hazy. We woke up together the next morning,” he very pointedly ignored Xander’s low whistle, “and decided to stay married in the hopes of not immediately losing our jobs for such an impulsive, ill-conceived action.”

“So you didn’t tell us ‘cause you wanted to set a good example,” Buffy surmised thoughtfully. “And getting drunk-married in Vegas is, like, the opposite of a good example, right?”

“I don’t know, man,” said Xander. “This kinda makes me respect you even more.”

Willow gave Xander a disapproving look.

Buffy stared. “Wait,” she said. “So you guys were fake-married all this time?”

Giles nodded.

“And all the kissing and the gooey eyes and the making out in morgue drawers—”

“What?” said Xander. Giles groaned.

“I’ll explain later,” said Buffy, patting Xander’s shoulder. “My point is…” She trailed off, frowning a little. “Was all the kissing and hand-holding and gooey love talk just for appearances?” she said. “Because believe me, I could have definitely done without the morgue drawer thing.”

Giles smiled a little ruefully. “I think both of us could have done without the, ah, morgue drawer thing,” he agreed.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Buffy carefully. “Which I’m starting to think is kinda an answer itself.”

“None of it was just for appearances,” said Giles quietly, and realized the truth in the statement the moment after he said it. Jenny had never needed to protect him, or kiss him, or tuck her arm in his; no one would be paying rapt attention to the actions of a married couple on-staff. Both of them, he thought, had been looking for some kind of a connection, and within the layers of artifice they had quite accidentally forged something very real.

Buffy winced a little. Slowly, she said, “And Ms. Calendar’s mad ‘cause she found out you’re a Watcher.”

“Yes,” said Giles.

“And now she thinks that means you’ve just been making everything up.”

“Yes,” said Giles again, heavily.

“And you guys haven’t known each other long enough for her to know that you’re crazy about her.”

“Ye—” Giles stopped, blushing furiously. “No! I didn’t—that is—”

Buffy giggled, bumping her shoulder against Giles’s; Willow followed suit. “Giles has a cru-ush,” Xander singsonged.

“On my wife,” said Giles, mortified. Now he was remembering, with full clarity, exactly why he had been so reticent to tell the children the truth about his marriage. “May we please change the subject?”

“No way,” said Buffy, tucking her arm into Giles’s. “This is the best day of my life. This totally makes up for the morgue drawer stuff.”

“Oh, lord,” said Giles, but he found himself smiling just a bit.

Jenny was at home when Giles finally arrived, sitting on the sofa and drinking wine from one of his teacups. Upon seeing him, she set the cup down, looking almost expectantly up at him.

“Are you all right?” Giles asked quietly.

“I mean, I was a vampire for only a minute or two before the world fixed itself again,” said Jenny, trying to smile. “It wasn’t the greatest, but at least I didn’t kill anyone—”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” said Giles.

Jenny exhaled. “Sit down,” she said. When Giles had obliged, she studied him for a long moment, then said, “I-I don’t know how to even begin this conversation, Rupert, I really don’t. I mean, I meant what I said—I understand why you kept this from me for those first few months. We were at each other’s throats all the time back then. But…” She trailed off, looking down at her hands, then miserably back up at Giles. “I told you my big secret,” she said. “Granted, I kinda had to, but after that I started thinking I’ve never told anyone something like that before. And then I started thinking about how safe you made me feel, and how easy it felt to be honest with you, and that’s why I told you I loved you.”

Giles noted the use of the past tense, and did his best not to show how much it stung. “Is there any way I can make this up to you?” he asked.

“I honestly have no idea,” said Jenny. “Right now it’s hard enough to just be around you.” Her hands moved forward, almost of their own volition, as if to grip Giles’s again, but she hastily turned the movement into adjusting the hem of her sweater. She hesitated. “I think I need some space,” she said. “If that’s okay.”

“Of course,” said Giles. “I can, I can collect my things and—” He stopped at the look on Jenny’s face. “What?”

“I was going to say that I think I need to leave,” said Jenny. “Not you. I—I can’t be in our house right now.”

“But it has your computer here,” said Giles weakly.

Jenny made a soft sound that was almost a laugh. “You can finally re-box it up,” she joked, trying to smile. When Giles’s expression didn’t change, she sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just…I can’t be around you or your stuff until I’ve sorted myself out. I need to figure out if I can handle getting to know you all over again.”

Nothing has changed, Giles wanted to tell her. I never lied about the important parts of me. But he didn’t feel as though pleading his case was the honorable thing to do in this situation. “I love you,” he said softly. “So much. Take as much time as you need. I’ll be here no matter what you decide.”

Jenny gave him a soft, wobbly smile. “Okay,” she said. With everything out in the open, however, the way she was looking at him no longer felt as blissfully real as it had when…when he was simply Jenny Calendar’s husband, a clumsy librarian who needed protecting from the supernatural. Giles would have given the world to truly be the man she had fallen in love with. “I’ll see you around, probably. Have the kids let me know if there’s…I don’t know. Nightmares coming to life. Demons I should be looking out for.”

“Of course,” said Giles again.

It felt, in the strangest way, inevitable. He didn’t think he should feel so miserably hurt; he had always knew she would leave when the truth came out. But sometimes, when she had been patching up his face, or when she had kissed him, or when she had laughed at one of his oblique little literary references…he had dared to hope that perhaps they could have had something real.

[thehouseonthehill]

Fear Release

I’ve passed my official due date. Friends have been messaging asking if there is any news and saying things like ‘I bet you can’t wait to meet your baby’ and ‘you must just really want it out now’.

But I confess that most days I’ve quietly thought ‘not yet, please don’t come yet, I’m not ready’. Of course I’m excited to meet this little person who is constantly wriggling around inside me and kicking me, but I’m also terrified. Terrified of giving birth and scared of how life is about to change.

BFG is also oscillating between excitement and fear. Most of the time he is calm and reassuring, constantly telling me that I can do it and that all will be well. But sometimes he wobbles too. The other week he saw me lying down stroking my bump and suddenly said, ‘I can’t cope. Keep it in’.

Just when I think I’m calm and ready, I become seized by panic and anxiety. I worry that I can’t do it, that the baby will get stuck as my body becomes paralysed by fear, that my heart will give up through strain and exhaustion, that I’ll pass out, that I’ll lose too much blood.

Where does all this fear come from? It might go right back to my very beginning, if we are the stories we tell ourselves. My Dad has always described my birth as like a scene from the horror film Alien. My Mum had a caesarean and when she was sliced open, he says that I sat up inside her stomach covered in blood and seized the doctor’s finger with my eyes wide open. He’s told this story at dinner parties and it is even written in my Baby Book. First impressions? Mum wrote ‘Beautiful’. Dad wrote ‘Alien’.

So there is the first seed, an indelible image of my own dramatic birth. In adulthood, I collected birth stories with macabre glee, pushing friends and family to share intimate and horrifying details, relishing the drama. When I fell pregnant, I googled risk factors for every conceivable problem. What are the chances of: dying in childbirth, having a stillborn baby, needing a caesarean, tearing from a vaginal birth, being incontinent after a vaginal birth, permanently losing feeling in your spine after an epidural? And on and on. I have imbibed too many terrifying tales and sordid statistics.

What to do with all this fear? Early on, I turned to hypnobirthing, reading three books on the subject and taking a course. The premise of hypnobirthing is simple, based on the premise:

Fear = Tension = Pain

The more you panic about contractions and try to resist them, the more you will be working against your muscles and the more painful and prolonged the whole process is likely to be. Hypnobirthing is about trusting your body to work naturally and instinctively to birth your baby. It aims to keep your conscious mind out of the way in order to let the body do its job as efficiently as possible. Breathing exercises help you to stay calm and supply your muscles with plenty of oxygen. Our tutor told us that women in comas can give birth - it can all happen without you consciously doing anything.

As I’m not in a coma, the challenge is to keep my mind out of the way. I have a very active mind. Hypnobirthing involves self-hypnosis to reprogramme your brain to eliminate fear and think positively about birth. Whilst I believe the theory and plan to embrace the breathing exercises, I have struggled with re-programming and switching off my conscious mind.

In our classes we’ve watched videos showing hypnobirthing mothers giving birth. These women ‘breathed’ their babies out, without screaming, without being told to push. They maintained a state of controlled calm, even though you could see the discomfort on their faces. It is a world apart from the dramatic births typically depicted on television. We sat silently watching these incredible women whilst the camera zoomed in on the baby coming out. However calm the women were, there was the inescapable reality that these babies were being squeezed out from a small space. After the video our tutor asked us what we thought of what we’d seen. We all sat in awkward silence for a while. The expectation was for comments along the lines of ‘she was so calm, she didn’t scream, it’s amazing’. But instead my friend broke the silence confessing, ‘I don’t want to do it’. My thought exactly.

In class, we’ve done relaxation exercises. One exercise involved trying to lose feeling in your hand, and then transferring that numbness from your hand to your face. BFG achieved this. I didn’t and immediately thought, ‘I’m going to feel everything, there is no escape’.

I turn to my hypnobirthing affirmations, which I listen to lying in bed:

I put all fear aside as I prepare for the birth of my baby

I’m relaxed and happy that my baby is finally coming to me

I’m focussed on a smooth, easy birth

I trust my body to know what to do and I follow its lead

Each surge of my body brings my baby closer to me

I look forward to birthing with joy and ecstasy

Intrusive thought: No, I can’t go this far. I can’t look forward to birthing. I still fear it. I find the other affirmations helpful. I repeat them to myself. I shut my eyes, breathe deeply in and out, feel my lungs and diaphragm inflate, try to think positively. But I haven’t let go of all the fear.

Some friends took a class where everyone wrote down their birth fears and then a shaman ritually burnt them all. I don’t have a shaman. But perhaps writing these fears here will prove an exorcism of sorts. I hope so, I can’t carry them anymore. And I do want this baby to come soon, before the medical professionals intervene and induce my labour. So, once more, with feeling:

I put all fear aside as I prepare for the birth of my baby

[theclaravoyant]

Hey Clara, I really miss your Trans!Fitz stories, and I just wanted to know: is there any on the making? If not, could we got one with Fitzskimmons? Thank you so much!

AN ~ Thank you so much! I’m really glad you like them :D and this prompt gave me an excuse to write something that’s been floating around in my head for quite some time now… it’s easily able to be interpreted as romantic or platonic due to being set during S1, hope you don’t mind. If you have any other and/or more specific ideas, let me know - in the meantime, enjoy!

Read on AO3 (~1900wd). Rated T. Bus Kids or FitzSkimmons. trans!Fitz.

After the Fall, Fitz comes out to Skye - partly for security reasons and partly because he’s wanted to tell her for a while now and never quite did.

also known as

Jemma rapped her nails on the teacup, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. The tears had stopped, for now at least; her grief momentarily suspended in the wake of the increasingly wide-reaching ramifications that seemed to be coming from this. Communications were down. Someone, somewhere was storming the Academy. Their friends and classmates were Hydra, on the run, or dead. It was enough to turn the stomach – only, she hadn’t eaten anything in over a day.

Fitz, lying on his bunk nearby, turned his Rubik’s cube over and over in his hands. His chest felt tight, his thoughts scattered. He stared blankly. Lost.

“D’you think Brian…” he wondered, trailing off before he could form the words. Voice straining, he recalled: “He was stationed at the Hub.”

The Hub. The Triskellion, as it was officially known. One of the first places to fall – and in a big way, too. Which meant there was almost no way Brian’s story ended well. He probably wasn’t Hydra, Fitz thought – and hoped: they’d been fast friends back in the day. But even if he were loyal, Fitz couldn’t help but recall his own experience in the field, barely scraping out alive from his first firefight after almost having his throat slashed and almost blowing up a plane. The plane he’d been on. He’d been a bumbling giraffe of an agent and last time he’d checked, Brian wasn’t much better, physicality-wise. Being surrounded by enemies, and secret ones at that, he wouldn’t last long.

And to think, earlier this morning, Fitz had teared up over wiping the personal data from everyone’s phones.

Fortunately a knock on the door interrupted him before the tears could well again. Unfortunately though, it was Skye, with a tablet in her hands and a solemn, almost timid expression on her face.

“Hey,” she greeted, similar discomfort mixed with sympathy in her tone. “How’re you guys holding up?”

“Great,” Fitz responded, needling and sarcastic. “Nothing like watching everything you’ve ever achieved in your life get taken away. Fictional people taking all the credit – or worse, our names getting wiped while that lot gets to keep the glory. ‘n glory’s not even the worst of it.”

“Fitz.” With as much strength as she could muster, Simmons scolded him. “Don’t take it out on Skye, this isn’t her fault.”

“Take it out?” Fitz retorted. “I’m not taking anything out. This is calm. I’m… zen.”

He clenched his jaw, and pressed the heels of his hands against the cube as hard as he could. The spiked shell of fury that had materialised to shield his grief and panic from prying eyes quickly crumbled and he sighed. Sitting up, he wiped a hand over his face to clear the clutter and haze.

“Sorry,” he whispered earnestly. “This is just… a lot.”

“I understand.” Skye nodded, then shrugged, and then realised that a shrug was probably not appropriate. In truth, while she saw their pain it was difficult to connect. She didn’t have a history of marked achievement that anyone could take away though, she supposed. Nor did she have the kind of network of acquaintances, colleagues and friends that they did. 99% of all the people in the world who cared whether she lived or died were in this building, going through this same pain, this same fear, as Fitz and Simmons were. As guilty as the thought made her feel, she hadn’t felt so grateful to be alone in a long time.

“We’re the lucky ones, though,” Jemma pointed out. Her tea was going cold. “Our loss is just paper, really, just scraps of code. Accolades. Plenty of people save the world and never get half as much.”

“True,” Fitz acknowledged, though it didn’t make him feel any better.

“I’m – sorry to do this,” Skye pressed, “but I’m actually here on business. I need to know, is there anything else you can think of where your personal details might be found. Old social media profiles, comments on New Yorker articles, a digitized catalogue of your baby photos…”

Jemma shook her head, but Fitz hummed in consternation. Skye raised an eyebrow and he let out a second sigh.

“Actually,” he said, “there is.”

Jemma glanced at him like she knew what he was talking about. Fitz glanced back at her, as if he had been expecting the look.

“It’s okay, Jemma. I was going to tell her sooner or later.”

“Tell me what?” Skye frowned, watching as Jemma brought Fitz what appeared to be an old shoebox, from his shelf. Fitz waved Skye over as he dug through it.

“I want to show you something,” he said. She sat on the bed beside him and took the photograph he held out. On a field of thick, patchy grass – somebody’s yard, most likely – stood a young child, probably around eight years old. A little girl, sandy blonde hair, her fists clenched in the skirt of her dress, which was somewhere between white and yellow – the photo was a little discoloured with age, so it was hard to tell. The girl scowled at the camera, and her eyes were on somebody standing next to the photographer, out of frame.

“School picture day?” Skye quipped, looking back at Fitz.

“It was, actually,” Fitz recalled, with a grimace. “But that’s not why I’m showing you.

Skye scanned the picture again. Not much more came to mind by way of observation, except that the girl looked like Fitz – which was unsurprising, since he had her photograph in his box of momentos from home.

“Who is she?” Skye speculated. “Your sister? D’you have a sister?”

“No.” Fitz took a deep breath. Time to move this along. “That’s me.”

“Really?” Skye frowned down at the picture again, and bit her lip. Part of her wondered if this was not another one of their pranks, though to what end she wasn’t sure, and the timing seemed extremely insensitive, even for Jemma’s usual tactlessless. Plus, as best Skye could tell, the photo was genuine and there was no other reason she could think of for Fitz to expose this kind of secret only to lie about it. Surely it would be easier to fake having a sister. And even if Fitz could pull it off, Jemma wasn’t sitting beside him, holding his hand, with an eerily May-like expression of neutrality for nothing.

“Okay,” Skye said. “I believe you.”

Fitz frowned a little, surprised at the anti-climactic response. “Do you have questions?”

“What kind of security threat do you think this poses?”

“What?”

“That’s why you showed me, right?”

“Right. Yeah.” He blinked, pulling himself together. “I’m not sure. There’s probably not even that much of her online, but you said everything, so, um…”

Feeling his hands begin to fret again, Jemma passed a pillow over. Fitz hugged it close to his chest. Skye was busy scanning the picture into her device and adding it to the search parameters, so Fitz had time to check his voice before he spoke.

“Her – My, uh, name was Bridget. If that means anything.”

“Sure, I’ll add it,” Skye murmured, typing into the search field. She paused, finger hovering above the screen. Fitz seemed hurt, and though her job was important – possibly moreso than anything she’d done with Shield so far – she was finding it hard to ignore the shimmering vulnerability that seemed to emanate off him. Maybe she didn’t understand the depth of what they, as Shield veterans, were going through right now, but Fitz clearly put a lot of weight on coming out to her and she was rejecting him. She knew that feeling far too well.

Taking a deep breath, Skye set the tablet aside.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to be an ass, I just didn’t want to pry, which is ironic, since I’ve been sifting through everyone’s dirty laundry the last few days…”

“S’okay,” Fitz replied. “Kinda surprised you didn’t know already, actually. Everyone else does.”

“Everyone?” Skye raised an eyebrow.

“It’s in my file, so May and Coulson definitely know, and I told Jemma already. Ward, I’m not sure. Sometimes he says things… but maybe he’s just teasing me, or I’m reading too much in. He does have higher clearance though so who knows.” Fitz shook his head. “That’s not the point. The point is, I didn’t really tell you because of security. I mean, that helped, but either way it just didn’t seem right that everyone else got to know and you didn’t.”

“Then, thank you,” Skye said. “I wish it could have been a less morbid occasion but here we are. Can I sit?”

Fitz and Simmons scooched along the bed to give Skye some space. Then all three of them leant backward, and huffed out a breath of air as they took sanctuary lying under the roof of Fitz’s bunk.

“Can I ask, Skye,” Jemma wondered, “you didn’t seem that surprised, or confused. Have you encountered this sort of thing much before?”

“I mean, yeah.” Skye shrugged. “I was an underground anarchist hacktivist. You meet all sorts of people in that world, plenty of trans people. Might be a bit out of date but for the most part it’s… pretty normal to me, if that makes sense.”

“Sure you don’t have any questions?” Fitz asked. Skye took a moment to consider, and then ventured forward.

“Okay, I’ve gotta ask. Leopold?”

“I know,” Fitz groaned. “My mum thought of it. Thought it sounded brave and strong. ‘Lion-heart’. You know.” He snorted, and gestured down the length of his body with distaste. “Then she got this string bean.”

Jemma batted at him. “Shush, you. I think you’re very brave. You can’t be brave without being scared first.”

“Yeah… that’s not better.”

Fitz screwed up his nose and Jemma laughed. Skye laughed with her, and her hands joined the tangle of Fitz’s and Simmons’ in the middle of them all. As the humour of the moment fizzled - the weight of the day’s more sobering revelations making itself felt once more - she gave a squeeze.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she said. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. And for the record, I think you’re plenty brave. Not just for this, I mean - I knew you for like, one day, and you’d already been shot at, held at gunpoint, and nearly blown up twice and you still didn’t tell Shield to shove it, so don’t underestimate yourself. But also… there is something to this. Knowing who you are. To be honest, I’m kinda jealous, actually.”

A heavy moment passed between the three of them as they reflected further back than the fall of Shield. It was not only Fitz and Simmons who’d had their worlds shaken lately: Skye’s search for her mother had come to the most heartbreaking dead-end possible, and despite all her hopes, she was an orphan after all.

But after that moment, Fitz squeezed her hand.

“Hey,” he quipped. “Who says I know who I am? I have an existential crisis every other day. Got one scheduled for tomorrow at 10 if you want to join.”

“Sounds good,” Skye said. “I’m in.”

[agentverbivore]

Channukah prompts: I would love to see homesick FitzSimmons bonding over Channukah at the Academy (preferably platonic at this stage in their relationship), or a really competitive dreidel game!

thank you for sending this! inspired by @buckysbears’ Chanukah headcanons/prompts.this is the second of my Chanukah ficlet trio. (the 3rd won’t come out for another few days, since I haven’t started writing it yet.) Happy Festival of Lights!Rated G. Canon-compliant Academy era FitzSimmons, followed by a scene in the future. CW for mentions of Fitz’s father. AO3.

Although Jemma knew that Fitz didn’t like heavily populated social gatherings at the best of times, it continued to flummox her as to exactly why. Furthermore, he was even grumpier about them around Jewish holidays so far as she could tell, even though he professed to enjoy their traditions. How he could like the traditions but not the celebration confused her even further.

It was the end of their third semester at the Academy, and she was mulling this contradiction in her best friend over during their second Chanukah celebration at the Jewish Student Union. Watching him scowl as one of the party’s organizers handed him a yarmulke had renewed her curiosity about the matter. For her part, Jemma was in high spirits – they had another two weeks before the Academy closed for winter break (dictated as it was by the Christian holidays), which meant that she could enjoy tonight’s festivities without feeling guilty about wasting time that should otherwise be spent studying.

Once Fitz had the yarmulke settled on his head, she nudged him about his grumpiness and he gave her a weak smile. As the evening went on, they were both distracted by food and games and the other customary activities associated with Chanukah parties worldwide. But when they went to put on their coats before leaving, Jemma noticed Fitz drop his yarmulke into the provided basket as if the small piece of cloth had burned him. Letting out a low huff as she followed him out through the door, she decided that she was going to settle once and for all why Fitz became a Yehudi Grinch at every JSU event.

“Fitz,” she said determinedly, hopping up alongside him on the path through the quad. With the winter chill in the air, most students were inside at this time of night, providing them a more-or-less private walk in the direction of the freshman dorms. “Why don’t you like going to JSU?”

He gave her a funny look, digging his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “What? I like JSU.”

“No, you don’t,” she retorted.  

“I wouldn’t go if I didn’t like it,” he argued, elbowing her in lieu of waving his hands in indignation. “I mean, their Chanukah party last year’s one of the first things we hung out at, other than chem lab. Went on my own.”

“Then why do you act like that every time we go to one?”

“Act like what?” Jemma scrunched her face into an exaggerated but apt impression of Fitz’s frown, and he made a noise of disgust. “I don’t look like that!”

“You do, every time we walk through the door!” A flash of understanding passed over his face, and he turned so that he was facing forward on the path as they walked. “What?”

“No, nothing,” he said too quickly, and she let out a frustrated groan.

“Fitz, come on,” she tried again, tugging hesitantly at the edge of his coat sleeve. “What is it?”

He let out a low huff, a cloud of air billowing out of his mouth in the night’s chill, and for a few seconds, Jemma thought he was just going to flat-out ignore her. But, at long last, he muttered an answer, dropping his gaze to the concrete beneath their respective trainers: “I don’t like yarmulkes.”

Jemma wrinkled her nose in skepticism. “Yarmulkes? Seriously?”

“Don’t like the way they look on me.”

Making a sharp noise of disagreement, she had to speed up to hold her friend’s stride. “You look fine in it, honestly. You’re being silly.”

Silence, again, stretched on between them, and she tried to think of what other questions with which she could pepper him to get at the truth of the matter. Instinct told her that there was something more to it. Before she could approach the subject from a different angle, however, Fitz spoke unprompted.

“My dad used to – said I looked like a clown in it. Half-pint clown, to be specific.” His voice was low and he was staring determinedly at his feet as they strode side by side, and suddenly Jemma felt wretched for having pressed him. Although her friend rarely spoke of the father who had left him when he was but ten years old, with every brief mention she hated the man a little more.

“That’s awful,” she whispered, tugging at the pocket of her purple peacoat. “Was… I mean, is he…?”

“Jewish?” He let out a low laugh. “Yeah. He’d be wearing a yarmulke, too. Didn’t stop him from insulting everyone he saw with one.”

Inhaling, she gave her head a slow shake. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Fitz shrugged, squinting up at the streetlamp beneath which they were passing. “So I don’t like yarmulkes. Mum stopped making me wear one when we celebrated at home, wish I didn’t have to here.”

Jemma pursed her lips, nibbling at the bottom one in thought. Although it was Fitz’s choice whether or not to wear a yarmulke, by and large, she did rather think it appropriate that he wore one when observing the more important Jewish holidays. Her own mildly agnostic feelings about religious beliefs aside, it just seemed proper to do so. Truly, Chanukah was not an important enough of a holiday for it to matter, she supposed, but on Rosh Hashanah it would feel rather disrespectful for him not to wear a yarmulke. These musings, however, she kept to herself, as her own relationship to her religion as a scientist was something she was still developing and cultivating.

“I think you look nice in a yarmulke,” she said quietly, sliding her eyes over to glance at him. “It fits nicely on your well-formed cranium.” Fitz burst out laughing, and she tried not to look affronted. “What? I mean it!”

“Thanks, Simmons,” he chortled, dodging when she tried to elbow him in the side in retaliation. “And a happy Chanukah to you, too.”

——

Jemma bounded through the front door, a padded manila envelope in one hand and a wide smile on her face. The whole apartment practically shone as she re-entered it from having checked their mail, having just finished hiding the last of the moving boxes in their bedroom. Tonight would be one part house-warming party and two parts Chanukah celebration, and between the two of them, she and Fitz had done an ample job of getting it ready in time. She had finished getting dressed for the party earlier than he, and had decided to make one last, fortuitously fruitful, run to the mailbox. With a new green and white patterned sweater and sea star necklace in place, Jemma felt both pretty and festive, and was very excited to welcome their friends into their new home. All she had left to do was finish the cookie and rugelach display – and deliver the mail she had just collected.

“Fitz!” she called out, locking the door behind her and heading towards the front hall closet. “The package from your mum finally arrived!” Instead of the enthusiasm she had expected, all she heard in response was muffled swearing coming from the general direction of their bedroom. Pausing with one hand a few inches away from the closet’s door handle, she wrinkled her nose. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he barked, which was followed by an indistinct noise of triumph.

Giving her head an amused shake, Jemma continued her current task of fetching a screwdriver from the toolbox they had a few hours prior agreed to store beneath their hanging winter coats. About a minute or so later, her husband finally emerged from their bedroom, dropping his hand from where he had been affixing a yarmulke to his hair.

“Is that it?” Fitz asked needlessly, eyes lighting excitedly upon the manila envelope that she still held. Not quite waiting for her nod, he took it, quickly ripping the paper open and reaching for the wrapped package and note inside. “Came on the perfect night,” he said, giving her a grin as she closed up the closet and followed him to the dining room table.

“And not a day too soon,” she agreed, watching his eyes skim over his mother’s handwriting. “The thirty days are up next week.”

She noticed that his smile had softened, and reached for the card when he handed it to her. “It’s for you.”

Before she could actually read anything, Fitz slipped up along her side to wrap his arms sideways around her waist. Jemma tilted her head up to meet his gaze, and happily accepted the gentle kiss he pressed to her lips. A pleased hum slipped out of her as she pulled away, and she let him nuzzle against her cheek as she dropped her gaze to read, even with his now familiar scruff tickling slightly at her skin.  

There was a note to Fitz at the top of the card – decorated on the front with a miniature, watercolor menorah – and then a second note beneath:

Jemma – May the light and love of the house you build with my son be as bright and warm as what shines from within you. This mezuzah brings the blessings you both deserve, and may it long serve as a remembrance of the love I hold for you. Chag Urim Sameach!

“We need to call her tomorrow,” she murmured, dabbing at her eyes with her free hand.

“Yeah, before work.” Fitz held out the small package that he had finished unwrapping as she read: An intricately carved, metal cylinder, flat on one side and about four inches in length. “Should have time to put it up before everyone arrives, too.”

“I thought so,” she said, craning her head back to smile up at him. Without thinking, she reached up to trace alongside the edge of the yarmulke, her fingers feathering through the short curls that puffed up around it.

“What?” Discomfort flashed across his expression, and she turned so that they were hugging each other from a more direct angle, allowing her fingers to trail down over his scruffy cheek.

“I’m glad you’re wearing it,” she said quietly, trying to imbue her expression and voice with the happiness and affection she felt for him. “The yarmulke.”

“Oh.” He shrugged self-consciously, tightening his grip around her waist. “Yeah, y’know, thought it’d right. First Chanukah party in the apartment and all.”

“You look perfect.” Jemma stretched up for another kiss, giggling slightly when he tried to deepen it.

“That’s just rude,” he grumbled, and she gave his cheek a quick peck before disentangling herself from his embrace. “We’ve talked about laughing when I kiss you before –”

“They’ll be here at any second.” She pointed to the screwdriver she had taken out for him, and he reached for it. “And I have to finish putting out the desserts.”

When Fitz opened the door, they were both greeted by the distinct sound of someone’s singing echoing down the long hallway towards their corner apartment. Jemma could just barely make out the words “dreidel, dreidel, dreidel” to the tune of a Justin Bieber song before her husband burst out laughing.

“I think that’s the sound of Daisy and Trip arriving,” Fitz chuckled, reaching over to put the mezuzah and screwdriver on the entryway table. “We can do this later.”

“Agreed,” she answered, reaching for the dessert plates.

As Jemma watched Fitz greet their friends, yarmulke worn proudly on his head, she was struck by a sudden sense of pride, both in him and in the life that they were about to embark upon together.

[Other ficlets.] [AO3.]

[etoilesdephan]

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? (Chapter 9: Ne plus ultra)

Chapter masterpost

Chapter words: 2.7k

Overall words: 23.3k

Read it on ao3!

Trigger warning: Mentions of violence, suicidal thoughts

The stitches on his forehead and cheek felt more offending than the black and blue bruises covering too many parts of his body in a familiar knuckle pattern. The black eye and the swollen feeling was nothing compared to the concussion that he had gotten and due to which he had been instructed to bed stay. He constantly felt nauseous and though he got some painkillers, they did a poor job actually blocking out the pain.

Everything felt too intrusive to his senses.

The cotton was just as scratchy in the prison's medical ward as back in his cell bed. Every little movement created too much sound, too much rough rubbing of threads against the patches of exposed skin.

And the irritation that the feeling sent through his senses didn't help him relax.

On top of the pain inflicted by the fight, he was plagued with the flashes of fear and anger. More often than not he would wake up due to the discomfort that the tension in his muscles would create, and in his less aware moments of awakeness he would zone back in only to feel his nails digging into his palms, leaving painful crescents in his skin.

Through the spotty sleep, he found himself struggling; the general restlessness was eating at his sanity, the pain - distorted his vision, and his emotions were running incomprehensible scenarios through his mind.

Perhaps it was also the bareness of his scalp that made him so restless.

After the fight, the three prisoners had been taken off to different parts of the prison. Dan had only heard about what happened to Rudy and Stanley a few hours later when he had come to it again, head full of scratchy cotton of where the initial stronger painkillers had still been numbing out the pain.

Rudy had been sent out for psychological reevaluation after a brief medical attention. His attack and reaction had been deemed dangerous for the inmates, though admitted as self-defense.

There was a guilt-laced part of Dan that wasn't sure that the other man would ever return. He'd seen the stares before, how people would deliberately avoid the other man and how they snickered at him when Rudy wasn't looking, as if the man was a loony.

The closest thing to a friend that Dan had made in this forsaken place was taken away.

Stanley meanwhile had been taken to the high security cell. His case had been reopened and, from rumours that his weary mind had pieced together from the guards passing through, the most likely outcome was that Stanley's previously dubious sentence would be cemented now with the record of the attack.

Dan knew that he was supposed to feel relieved hearing that. He understood how much of his lifeline depended on being separated far away from this man.

Yet he couldn't help feeling a bit regretful still.

Though Dan didn't miss the idea of being used as a punching bag, there was a certain familiarity in the fear and loathing. He knew who to avoid and what was to come if he failed to accomplish it. He knew the punishment, accepted it as part of his payment for what had caused.

Now he was left with a questionable future.

It was his rational mind fighting with that deeply rooted darkness that had resurfaced over the months spent behind the bars.

Dan himself had ended with a lot of open gashes, most of which he had no memory of getting. His body had pumped too much adrenaline into his veins, numbing the nerve endings. Upon awakening, however, he'd very soon become very much aware of the soreness and discomfort.

And there had been something else off about how he felt.

He soon realised what had been wrong when he'd brought a hand up in a trained motion, partially to rub his head in hopes to soothe the pain, and partially to brush his fringe aside. Instead he'd been met with a line of short, pointy hair.

They had taken the liberty of cutting his hair in buzzcut to reach a particularly nasty open gash that needed stitching and later justified it that it had been only a matter of time when he would have had the little machine running across his scalp.

He'd not lost his dignity, but he had lost a characteristic nonetheless.

And he had lost that strange continuity in his prison life.

======

“Shit, Dan, is that--” The words were an unquestionable shock as Dan slumped down into the seat across from Martyn, a slight limp showing in his walk until he sat down, exhaling a sigh of relief. As if to add an insult to his injuries, he'd soon realised that somewhere along the way he had also sprained his ankle and that had put an extra damper on his mood.

“I didn't want my parents to see this,” He croaked out, offering the older man a small, almost apologetic smile. He had made sure to tell his mum off over the phone, saying that he had some things that he needed to discuss with Martyn this week. “Think this will go onto my record?” He half-joked.

“Bloody hell, what happened to you? This is inhumane, you need to--” Martyn's voice was loud, too loud for Dan's still mushy brain to be able to handle and he squirmed at the sound a little.

“Martyn, calm down. I got in a fight with another inmate. He's now being transported away,” There was tension that had settled in his back and he shifted a little, trying to stretch, only to scowl when pain shot through his body. “I'll be fine, I'm healing right,” He added when he noted the worry in Martyn's face.

“You can't do this, Dan...” The tone was low, careful, but ever so worried still as Martyn spoke, surveying the bruises and stitches, and Dan soon noted that the other man's eyes lingered on Dan's forehead, probably used to the fringe cover.

“Do you think I did this to myself? Honestly, Martyn, and here I thought that you knew me better,” Some hostility was beginning to boil again and Dan curled his fingers into fists when he felt the headache begin to return. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose, allowing the spark of strong emotions settle down again.

“Sorry, I just…. Shit, you look like a mess,” Any other time, Dan would've laughed at the amount of profanities, but now he just offered a small, crooked smile to the other man.

“Don't I always?” Dan tried to humour only to receive just as a half-hearted smile from the other man.

“And the hair?” Martyn then motioned towards Dan's head. It made him wish for one of the hoodies again, where he could just pull the hood over his head and hide away similarly to how he had behind the hair before.

“For stitches and apparently they have a single haircut option behind the bars,” There was a certain cheekiness in Dan's words, but the reality was clear; Dan was uncomfortable. The makeshift amusement in his face was soon exchanged by a frown and his fingers bunched some of his uniform clothing tightly in his grip.

There was a silence, and though he appreciated that, his whole being was restless and he shifted in his seat.

“So.” He began again and the dark eyes trained onto the other man whose summer attire was almost an offending reminder of how long Dan had been locked away.

“So?” Martyn mirrored, but after being stared at for moments longer, the man heaved a sigh, entwining his fingers as he leaned forward with arms resting on the wooden table and the hesitation alone made Dan's chest throb “There were….. Some complications.” It seemed like Martyn was trying hard to find the correct way to word it, and there was tension in his shoulders.

Dan felt the colour drain from his already pale features and his heart sunk to the bottom of his stomach, only to jump with the next bit of shooting headache, spilling the breath so hastily that his voice could barely keep up “W-what...”

“They noticed something off during the routine checkups. Apparently there was some liquid in his lungs, but don't worry, they attended to it and he should be fine again. He's being monitored carefully to avoid a relapse.”

Dan released a shaky breath and slumped more into the chair behind him “Don't scare me like that,” he muttered and, out of habit, brought a hand to rub through his hair only to flinch away when his fingertips met with the short cut. He dropped his hand in his lap.

It felt like a first in a long time that his head felt so clear, even if for a second, when the news had been announced. For a moment he'd come to a conclusion that it was all over and they had lost.

“He's still out, and with how this is going, I'm just worried, Dan,” Eyes, achingly similar to Phil's in colour, were looking straight at him and he felt judged under the gaze though there was nothing but a genuine familial worry in them. “Look at what already happened to you; I don't think mum will be able to handle losing both of you.”

Dan blinked, at first surprised, then it dawned upon him. She'd said before that she'd accepted himself as her own son too, and though he'd found it heartwarming, he'd always set himself outside the Lester family. A stranger that is just always there.

He hadn't thought that they truly had accepted him as their own.

He leaned forward, holding the other man's gaze for a moment and there was a renowned life his dark eyes “Tell her that she won't.”

If he could do one thing correctly still, it would be this.

“She won't lose us.”

======

It was always an unpleasant reminder, whenever he stood by the sink, drawing the dull blade over his cheeks to rid his face of the light scruff that had taken over a week to properly grow. The metallic sheet mirror made his reflection a little distorted, but even if he kept that in mind, it didn't change the reality.

They said prison changed people.

For him, it just seemed like the prison tore the weak down and encouraged the most vicious.

He stared, and the familiar brown eyes looked back, but that felt like the only familiar feature at the immediate glance.

His skin was pale, discoloured with the varying degrees of healing bruising and his eyes and cheeks seemed to have sunk in, the black eye not helping. He looked at the man in the reflection, beaten and ill-looking, and he could barely piece together the person he had taken for granted during all those years of self-loathing.

Dan wanted to laugh when that thought crossed his mind.

Teenage years were angsty, and there had been a lot of of self-image issues that he had gone through. His grave humour always expressed openly the many things he had hated about himself, but slowly he had been finding his way to a stability.

The same stability that had been completely floored.

He had hated parts of himself before, but now the loathing had gone far and beyond and, as he looked in the mirror, he realised that he hated the person in the reflection. The one which he knew that he'll never get rid of if he wanted to fulfill the promises he'd made.

The blade made his skin feel itchy and he reluctantly set it aside, fighting the temptation to push the sharper edges into his skin more, eyes instead lingering on the edges and his teeth sank into his lower lip, chewing at it. It would be so easy to just cut himself away from all of this. To just run away from it all and save the trouble for everyone around him.

“Shit,” He muttered, and looked away from the razor and down at the sink, now filled with the water and he watched it for a moment before submerging his face into it.

He felt the bubbles tickling his face as they escaped his nose, and after a while his heart was beginning to jerk uncomfortably in his chest. When he finally pulled his head out of the water filled sink, a gasp escaped him loudly and he leaned against the edge of the sink, trying to catch his breath again.

When he looked up and at his reflection again, there was a solemn man staring back.

“Don't mess this up,” He muttered lowly and watched as the chapped lips of the reflection moved with the words “Don't you make this worse than it already is.”

And somehow, though he hated the man, he soon found himself nodding in agreement.

======

“Phil, I'm sorry...” He muttered, head hung low as he stood in front of Phil, too ashamed to look the other man in the eyes. He felt shorter, he was shorter than the other man and when he looked up, prompted by Phil's pale fingers on his chin, dark strands of hair fell into his view, but he brushed them aside with a trained hand movement.

The Phil in front of him looked so young, and his hair was just as long as Dan's, his skin was not quite as creased with the laughter lines yet and his frame was thinner. His lips were stretched into that familiar smile that always made Dan's chest tingle with emotion.

“Come on Dan, you know I can't stay mad at you,” And there was a dusty pink on Phil's cheeks, mirrored by the warmth Dan felt in his own.

“But you should, I'm being an irrational trash and I honestly don't understand why are you still putting up with me, living with me,” He felt the tears begin to well up in his eyes, but Phil just kept smiling that goofy, slightly crooked smile, his blue eyes soft as they regarded the younger boy.

There was a bit of hesitation, and Phil's cheeks grew pinker, eyes shifting for a moment before he took a small step forward, enough that Dan had to look up a little to properly look the other man in the eye.

“Don't you understand it still?” Phil asked and Dan swallowed, trying to shake his head but he was too mesmerised by those deep blues of the other man's irises.

“It's because I love you, Dan,” And with that, Phil closed the distance, their lips touching softly before Dan's eyes snapped wide open.

It had been a dream, again, but it was the calm nature of the memory, how it wasn't touched by the gore and guilt, that surprised Dan awake.

He lied in the stiff bed, eyes staring at the dark ceiling.

It had been 2012, just after all the troubles began and Dan had overreacted so badly. It was through all their fighting and Dan's meltdowns that they had ended up like that. Standing in their apartment, with Dan's shoulders slouching too much and he had been so sure that it would end there and then. Yet it had turned around completely, and it had been when Phil had finally confessed.

They had been dancing around feelings, sharing drunk and messy kisses before and messed around, but it had never hit the point where they actually committed to it, never truly agreed to the idea of being officially together. Too scared by how that would change everything, by how the world would react.

It had been the final push, Phil had later told him, those months of on and off fighting, that he finally understood that it had been time. He hadn't been able to imagine losing Dan and, Dan had admitted later, it had truly been a mutual fear back then.

So Phil had decided that it was time to confess.

Dan had been so used to nightmares, to the darkness and crimson flooding the peace of different moments of their life that he liked to recall. He had forgotten just where it had truly began, how it had felt and how, at his worst, Phil had taken him and raised him above the tallest mountains.

The strange amount of elation in his chest was unexpected and Dan found himself lying there, unmoving, for hours until the late summer sunlight finally began to pour in through the small window.