#grammatical errors in assignments make me very mad

[daggerhobbit]

reading over the rough draft of one of the news stories I have to right for journalism is making me realize just how sleep deprived I was when I wrote it

[magpiemissy]

"Your Romeo and My Juliet"

Kaeya Alberich x Reader

A/N: I was just listening to some music and the song came into shuffle. I had this idea, it was actually more painful to write than I thought. I cried a little bit. Hope you all like it.

Warnings: Angst, character deaths, not edited or proofread, english is not my first language so grammatical errors are expected, let me know if there are more

Song: Somewhere Only We Know by Keane

"You already know I'm exhausted, sweetheart." "I too, my love, am very exhausted," they murmur to each other as they gaze out the horizon. Their eyes were overwhelmed with the orange colors of the sky. "So lovely," a pained whsiper.

Wouldn't dying for each other be worth it? Love drives you nuts, mad, insane?

"I'll go to any length for you." "Anything, my snowflake," they respond, painfully smiling.

They giggled gently as the agony crept quickly across their bodies. Pained? Yes. Happy? Perhaps. At the very least, you died for him and only him, and he died for you and only you. It was worthwhile.

A risk. A tale that must now conclude with an uncertain ending? People will never know why they died, yet some may speculate that it was due to love. A forbidden love that is yet ardently pursued. 

"You were not on my assignment, yet here you are. Suffering due to my actions. Why?" He begs, clutching your hand with all his might.

For a few seconds, silence filled the air. "It is easy, my darling. It's only because I adore you. I'd risk everything for you. I may appear insane, but I discovered so much for loving you. You are everything to me. You are my universe, and I can't just let go and ruin it. I love you." 

They say this while tears stream down their face. Even though they are in pain, they smile at him. Their vision is gradually becoming fuzzy. Time has finally arrived, and he was the last thing you saw. Good.

You are so beautiful. Very beautiful. The final thought they had as their eyelids slowly closed but the smile never fading away. 

“Y/N? Y/N, my snowflake.” He says, they hear. He moves closer despite feeling the burn of the pain, cradling them in his arms. 

"Even in death, you are as ethereal as ever... I apologize. I didn't keep my end of the bargain with you. I couldn't remain forever. I failed because I never got to ask you to marry me. I let you down... and I let down my brother again. I'm sorry, Diluc," he says quietly as he feels himself fading away, yet he smiles. One more time.

His eyes are enticing due to the reflection of the orange sky. As brilliant as the stars above. But we all know that stars perish long before they reach our eyes.

“Take care of Mondstadt for me, dear brother… and take care of yourself. For me. My last request to you.” He makes one last wish. The sky eventually darkened, a large star flashing brightly as though his desire had been granted. “Thank you.” 

BONUS: 

"And that was the story of two of the heroes who saved Mondstadt. It was all for love, as heartbreaking as it was. We all experience typical emotions. Both are devoted to one another. They may be forbidden, yet they are fated to be together. They pursue despite the fact that it may have been the incorrect moment. However, who could blame them?”

"Love is a lot of things." 

Their tale lingers on even after hundreds or millennia have gone. Many people claim that when they visit the couple's graves, they can sense their love. Buried next to each other. The pair was last seen happy and clutching each other, according to rumors. It was a tragic love story, but that's what love is.

“Sir Dawn, may we know what happened to his brother?” A teen asks. 

He chuckles softly. 

"No one knows. Many others found it difficult to read him. But, from what I've heard, his heart shattered once more into millions of pieces, just as when he lost his father," the guy continues, sadly smiling.

The man eventually departs the pub as the night passes.

"Oh, I see you've come to visit," a familiar voice says.

"Of course I did. They were both a huge part of my life.” he starts, "And he was still my brother no matter what."

 “Well, how about I sing to you once more like the wind that we glided through back then… Master Diluc.”

“That would be lovely. Thank you, Venti.” 

Both look out towards the sky, which is what the couple witnessed the last time they were together in this world.

"I hope you're happy, brother. Thank you and til we meet once more."

[xkotaro16w]

Alright so I know that you already had a kabedon request, however, mine is a little bit different. I want to know Leona's reaction to Tomboy!MC as she does a kabedon when he is already leaning against the wall. The reason for this? She's either annoyed with something he said and he's ignoring her (she would probably say "hey, I'm talking to you" as well) or she's just wanting to get on his level, her gaze a serious one. Also hers is more with one hand and its on the wall beside his head. Hope I explained that okay ;>w>

—𝚃𝚘𝚖𝚋𝚘𝚢!𝚂/𝙾 𝙺𝚊𝚋𝚎𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝙻𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚊 𝙺𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚊𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝙰𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚢𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝙷𝚒𝚖—

Summary: Headcanon(s) where Leona’s Tomboy!S/O kabedons him with one hand beside his head when he leans against the wall, because Tomboy!S/O is annoyed he ignores her and with something he said to her. How would he react?

Pairing: Leona Kingscholar x Tomboy!F!S/O.

CW: Fluff, grammatical error, OOC.

A/N: OHHH MY OC WILL DO THIS 2 OEIHFRAKJFBWIKBAKDJ ANON, U DO KNOW WHAT OUR OC DO AWLIHALFWKNAOIFN THX 4 THE REQ OMG (ꈍoꈍ🌸)

Why does this happen to you? Leona ignores you because he’s in a bad mood, needs his nap, and tired of everything. Today is just a bad day for him, yet here you are talking to him but he seems doesn’t listen to you AT ALL.

Ruggie interrupts his nap at the Botanical Garden just to make sure he attends the class, Crewel lectures him because of his assignments, Vil comments about his look again, Malleus tries to get on under his skin, what else? Oh, yes, the Savannaclaw’s students make a trouble that involves him in it. Worst day for the big lion.

But now, his S/O is telling him something important in the hallway. Leona leans against the wall. Ignores her words and shuts his eyes. Ah, all he wants is a peaceful day. Can’t he, has it? Just today.

Once he opens his mouth, his words make you annoyed even more. Does he have any other words beside that? He just ignores you afterwards. Not even paying attention to the topic and your words. Shuts his eyes once more and silence. No answer at all, Leona?

Leona, seriously? YOUR S/O tries to talk to you right now, tho. Pay attention to your S/O. Poor unfortunate S/O. You had enough of this attitude. You’re telling something important to him.

You stare at him and try to figure what’s wrong with him. Sometimes trying to understand Leona is hard. He doesn’t talk that much about his feelings; he just shuts up. Communication is very important in a relationship. 

Sigh at his attitude, you put one hand beside his head, or kabedon. Your gaze at him is very serious. 

If you’re taller than him, you look down at him and try to get on his level. If you’re have the same height as his, you just look at him straight to his face. If you’re shorter than him, you look up at him to see his face and meet his gaze.

His eyes immediately open. Oh? His herbivore is kabedoning him. He can feel your intense gaze from his level. You tell him that you’re talking to him and he HAS to pay attention to it.

This big lion boy smirks at you. After all the things he did, HE ONLY SMIRKS AT YOU? Does he really want to get a punch on his face or a hand print on his face? Choose, Leona, before S/O goes mad.

There are 2 options in here, either he switches your position or just leans his face closer to you to whisper a teasing remark. Teasing remaks is something you can’t avoid if you’re with him.

“You’re feisty as always, herbivore. Do you really wanna have MY attention that bad? Hmm~ Fine, I’ll give you all the attention you want, IF you take a nap with me of course.”

I DO NOT OWN TWISTED WONDERLAND & DO NOT REPOST MY WORKS.

[spectrumed]

10. contact

The key to success is networking. Oh, God, how am I ever going to succeed? Networking? Talking to other people? Making friends? That’s not me, that’s not me at all. I don’t want to make superficial connections with other people just so that I can one day use my connections to get ahead in life. I don’t want to force myself on others, trying to convince them that I am some decent guy that’s totally worth getting to know and be friends with. I don’t know if you’re going to like me or not. I imagine some people would like to be my friend, and I imagine some people would hate to be my friend. I’d rather just forget about the latter group, and not torture myself trying to make friends with people who are fundamentally at odds who I am as a person. I’d rather have a small circle of close friends than a thousand acquaintances. But the key to success is networking.

I’ll never be an insider. This is not me just doubting myself, not some decision to undermine myself. I know that making statements about things that are impossible for you to achieve comes across as very self-defeating, but I know that I will never be an insider. I will never fit into a social clique. I am not going to be part of the boys’ club, yucking it up with my mates. I’m not going to be in any gangs, no bands, most certainly no crews. I am a solo-player. I prefer to work on my own. All my life, I’ve kept to myself, one way or another. I don’t ask for help. Growing up, my sister used to get a lot of help from my mother with school assignments, because she wanted it and she asked for it. My sister and my mother would spend a lot of time together making sure that my sister’s schoolwork turned out well. Looking over spelling, fixing grammatical errors, making sure that the text was easy to read and had a flow to it. Normal parental stuff, really. Kids are supposed to get help from their parents, it’s part of the learning process, no-one gets by all on their own. Well, except for me. I never asked for help.

I actually found it really unbearable to have my mother look over my schoolwork to see if I made any errors. Not because I am such a horrid narcissist that I refuse to admit that there were any errors, but rather because… well, it felt invasive. Like as if you spot someone spying on you through your window. It made me feel very self-conscious, in a way that I realise now is similar to how I feel when I make eye contact. Yes, I am bad at making eye contact, especially when I am speaking at the same time. I don’t mind making eye contact when you are speaking, but I don’t want to make eye contact with you when I am speaking. Is that funny? Is that odd? Well, the way I feel about it is that eye contact is intimate, it’s almost like touching. It’s mental touching. If you share eye contact with somebody you are sharing a connection. You are mind-touching each other. Oh, well… I guess that maybe it’s not quite like that, but I still don’t find it easy.

At times, I find much of the discussions about neurodiversity online somewhat off-putting. Especially when it comes to those people who are really keen on being all out positive, all the time. Those people who see any shade of negativity as outright hazardous. Don’t bring up the fact that being neurodivergent can be difficult, don’t mention the difficulties that come with being on the autism spectrum. Engage with self-empowerment! Celebrate what makes you different! Go out there and be proud of yourself, be happy about your autism, it is cool to be autistic! And, sure, I understand the importance of injecting optimism into the neurodivergent community. We need optimism, we need to profess our desire to be happy, to show the world that you don’t need to be neurotypical to be content with your life. No-one wants to be around a sourpuss just wallowing in their discontentment. But, sometimes things just suck, okay? Having a positive attitude may project confidence, may make others think you’ve got it together, but be wary when that positive attitude just becomes a mask you hide behind.

Look, we live in a society. Whether you like it or not, you live in a society. We need to rage against this society, because this society is no good. Things may look good to some people, but those people are wrong, and I am right. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore! Let’s have ourselves a little revolution and see if we can piece a new society together, one that doesn’t commit to the same mistakes as the last one. Oh, wait, how do we do that? And how do we make sure that we win the revolution, we could easily lose, and that might actually just make things worse for us. What if this society we live in got even worse? Yikes, that’s a thought too scary to even really consider. Can things get worse? I don’t want things to get worse. Maybe I just shouldn’t rock the boat. Let’s calm down, and let’s not make any rash decisions here. We can overthrow society at some other point. For now, let’s just have some tea.

Yes, society stinks, but what can you do about it? It is absolutely the case that neurotypical people have it easier navigating modern society than neurodivergent people. Others expect you to function just like they function. If you wish to fit in, you are required to act more neurotypical. People expect that from you. Learn to adapt, to hide amongst them. Trick them. Make them think you are one of them. Be the wolf in sheep’s clothing. They’ll never know the truth of who you are. An outsider that managed to get on the inside. You stand by the watercooler, and by gosh, you make yourself laugh at their jokes even though you’d rather not be there at all. You partake in the small talk, talking about the weather, feigning interest in the footballs, and pretending to be an all-around wholesome compatriot. You’re not at all secretly some kind of anti-social misfit, who’d rather stay at home sitting behind a monitor and playing strategy games on your own. Do you want to come and join your workmates for a drink or two later? Oh, yes, of course you’d like that, but you might need to limit your alcohol intake so that you don’t get too drunk and begin to let the mask slip. It���s too easy getting into hyper-specific rants about obscure topics no normal person would care about when you’re inebriated, so let’s not risk that.

“Be yourself.” Pfth, bah, humbug. Neurotypicals love to state empty platitudes. You don’t want me to be myself. You’ve made it very clear that you don’t want me to be myself. Call me a cynic all you want, but you can’t get nowhere in life simply by being yourself. For better or worse, authenticity is nowhere near as desired as some people make it out to be. Name a single really successful person who is truly themselves. Fake-authenticity does better than the real deal. True sincerity, of the kind that’s naked, shameless, ugly, and challenging, it is difficult to love. And that’s not all bad, it’s just a fact of life. We all need to cover some things about ourselves up, and need to keep some secrets, because that is what is expected from us. Just as we wear clothes to cover up our naked bodies. No shame on the nudists, they’re free to embrace whatever alternative lifestyle they want, but I don’t want to see your naked body. Don’t get nude in front of me. I already struggle with eye contact, I sure wouldn’t struggle less if you stood in front of me nude as well.

Actually, to a certain extent, these social rules we all conform to can actually be quite appreciated by those of us who are on the spectrum. It is easier to know what you must do in a formal social situation than in a casual social situation. Casual people, they’re just so… unpredictable. Sticking their casual bits everywhere, acting like guests at your house who don’t seem to understand that your home is not their home. Even as a kid I hated having friends of mine over at my place. They’d play with my toys, place my toys where they don’t belong, or even worse, they may break some of my toys. Don’t touch that, it’s mine. Don’t put your icky hands on my bed, I sleep there. Don’t rip pages out of that book, it’s my favourite book. Don’t breathe in my room, I breathe in my room. I just can’t handle you coming here and disturbing the peace. I had it all ordered, I knew where everything was, and I liked it. Now you brought with you the forces of chaos, and dealing with that is just now what I had in mind for today.

I could never be a freemason. Sure, I have some good ideas for how to secretly rule the world, but if you’re a freemason, you’re expected to be part of the team. There’s no “I” in freemasonry. The secret cabal that controls all of the world’s governments, they don’t want independent folks like me to show up thinking that I can do my work assignments on my own. The Illuminati is run by a committee. You don’t get far in that world by being some freewheeling bohemian incapable of getting along with others. You don’t establish a New World Order by promoting self-reliance. Institutions are great for those who like to get chummy with their pals, the gregarious sorts who know exactly who to talk to in order to advance in the ranks. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. Favours for favours. One of the reasons why I inherently distrust many institutions is because they are rife with nepotism. You know that whoever gets to sit on the high council of the Illuminati didn’t get there via competency alone. No, they knew a guy, who was cousins with this other guy, who used to work for this guy, and y’know, you pull one string and suddenly there you are on top of the social hierarchy. Most often people get promoted, not because they do good work, but because they happen to know the right people. But again, maybe I’m just being cynical.

I’ve had a recurring fantasy, in the past, of being a lighthouse keeper. Living out somewhere all on my own, not having to deal with any human relationships. Maybe I could befriend a seagull, but even that seems a little too much. Seagulls can be very needy. No, I’d just get on with whatever I’d most like to be doing, writing or making art, just enjoying my solitude. I imagine that the toughest thing about being a lighthouse keeper is the loneliness, but the loneliness is only a plus for me. I’ve long ago decided to like being lonely. I don’t want to face the fact that I too yearn for company, I like to pretend as if I am fine with being alone. So the fantasy of being a lighthouse keeper is perfect for me, I could get far away from society and I could earn a living not having to give a fuck about what others think about me. I could allow myself to get as weird as I would want to get, not having to wash my image, acting like I’m all rational and well-adjusted. It would just be me and my seagull. How simple life would be. Too bad I think most lighthouses are automated, these days.

Maybe being the perpetual malcontent cynic incapable of fitting with mainstream society isn’t all so bad. In some regards, I have made that my brand. Generally, I like to think that I don’t take myself too seriously, but like a lot of people, I’ve turned those edgier parts of my personality into armour that I wear to protect myself from the scorn of others. You can’t accuse me of being a miserable piece of shit when I’ve decided to make being a miserable piece of shit my thing. It’s what I am, and I am not going to change. I’m not really all that mean, or nasty. I am fairly cynical, but I don’t act like some asshole. I don’t think anyone is upset with me for how I act. I’ve only occasionally gotten told off for being too gloomy. But the problem here does not lie with how I end up treating others, but rather how I end up treating myself. I don’t want to make cynicism part of my sense of self. I don’t want to be this person, this misanthrope who only sees problems, and never celebrates the good things in life. I should engage with self-empowerment. I should be happy.

It’s okay being neurodivergent! Sure, you may find other people strange or foreign, with their yapping mouths and their over-eager desire to look you directly in the eyes, but just ignore them! Neurotypicals are just so last century, the future is all neurodivergent! You’re on the right side of history, bud! You’re cool, and radical, and you’re absolutely a sexy little cupcake. You either learn to love yourself, or you lose yourself. Make funny memes, find some online community to be a part of. You can absolutely be a freemason if you want to be a freemason. Don’t let your diagnosis get in your way, so long as you’ve got that inner fire driving you, you can be anything you want to be. Go ahead and rule the world, babe. Remember, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and right now, it’s good vibes only.

[unmanageable-day]

Come to me

PART 26.5 - next

masterlist / previous chapter: 26

Summary. After what happened in a relationship in the past, you found it difficult to trust someone with the gentleman image. ‘Gentleman’ seems like merely a concept and it was probably impossible for someone to be a genuine one. Now that you’re stuck with the number one gentleman at campus for a group project, how would you cope with the one and only Joshua Hong?

Genre. College!au, non-idol!au / friends to lover

Pairing. Joshua x y/n x S.Coups

wc / warning. 1k / prolly grammatical error, and nothing more, i guess? (does mentioning shua’s nickname of the holy jisoos count?? if anyone feels disturbed about it, please do let me know!)

TAGLIST.  @samemagicpoint @unravellyn @nonuuu @seventeeneration @skylions-den @wooziverse @infinitemoods @haoraecane @sunflowergyeomie @flower0930 @riashushu​ — [ send ask or dm if you’re interested to be added in the list! 🖤 ]

a/n: i’ve decided to cut this written part into two chapters. hope you still enjoy it, any comments are warmly welcomed! i have this rough draft ready looong time before those smau parts but it took me a while to rewrite it, so it is kinda tricky to connect all the dots hehe

You set the living room as if you were going on a picnic. Instead of a rug or carpet, you used a yoga mat covered with an old scarf—resulting in Joshua quietly laughed at this sudden creativity. The pizza box was wide opened between you and him. Yet what you two had in your hands were two scoops of ice cream. Joshua was the one suggesting to have this salty-sweet-salty-sweet eating pattern.

"Okay. Let's start with... why does everyone call you a gentleman? Oh, I think I've also heard about the holy Jisoos," you trailed off, stirring the ice cream on your cup.

Joshua chuckled. "I honestly have no idea. Some kids made that up. I mean, I do consider myself as a gentle person but I won't even call myself a gentleman."

You nodded slowly, a spoonful of ice cream went into your mouth.

"And, please, stop with the holy Jisoos. If I find out who started that, I think I will commit a murder," he said, rolling his eyes in annoyance. No one really had ever said this particular nickname right into his face, but still, it was the one he most despises of.

Unconsciously you watched his expression quite eagerly. It was probably the first rime you caught him making that face. Even he still kept his smile intact and never showed it if he was exhausted during overtime—unlike you who looked like a mess when it was past 9 PM in the office. And it was fascinating to hear him wanting to murder someone. Basically the word murder and his by-default smiley face simply didn't match.

He made eye contact and you were flustered. "Come on, ask me more questions," said him, looking as eager as you.

"Are you always this nice to people? I mean, not even a bad intention once a while?" That was the best filtered words you can arrange. The truth is, you wanted to ask 'are you sure you're not being fake with all that kindness?' but now that you think about it, it sounds very rude.

"I do plot some things. Well, not to random people, but to my friends." He shrugged, but his voice started to sound more excited. After the last bite of his ice cream, he took a slice of pizza. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

Your eyes got widened at that question. How can you not? You squinted your eyes, looking guilty. "You mean how I made you come late to your first class?"

"What? That was you?"

"... yeah?"

He paused. Tilting his head, he looked at you with puzzled expression. He surely remembered his first day of uni and the accident of coming late and getting scolded by one of the most legendary lecturer in campus because of somebody. Apparently he was too shocked to remember who it was.

“I know, I ran away when you went in to Prof. Lee’s class,” you shyly confessed, covering your face with your hands. “And our second meeting was not great either,” you mumbled.

“Was it coffee accident?”

You nodded.

He smiled wide to himself. Looking at you fondly, he continued, “I thought that was our first meeting. But knowing the truth of our first meeting, it was quite fascinating.”

“I know it’s probably too late, but I’m sorry about getting scolded by Prof. Lee and for ruining your white shirt.” You bowed down.

Still smiling, Joshua shook his head, suggesting to never mind it. “Anyway, about that white shirt..” A mischievous grin grew wider. "That’s not my shirt. It's Jeonghan's. Just a few days before my first day going to school, he dropped some ragu sauce on my shirt he wore. I was already plotting something, that was why I wore his clothes, but you unexpectedly did it for me. So..." He made a face, which strangely reminded you of Johnny’s ‘not my problem’ face.

"Wait, what?" You squinted in disbelief. "But you looked mad though?"

"I did?" The bambi eyes widened at your accusation. "Rather than mad, I think I was more shocked. I mean who wouldn't, right?"

Eventually, you two laughed it off. You were glad you cleared at least one unsettled matter with this guy.

"I'll confess one more thing. You can judge me as you please," he spoke rather excitedly and you just nodded. "You know, I often got anonymous love letters in my locker."

"People are still doing that like in Japanese comic?" you commented, holding your laugh.

"I know right. But that's not the point. Those letters, I never read them. Either I just leave it in my locker, or I just throw them away. Or sometimes Seokmin would read it for me, and still they ended up in the trash."

A dramatic gasp left your lips. "Oh my gosh, those poor girls.. Maybe they're just shy, you know? You should give them a chance." Instantly you realized what you said just changed the mood.

“Why don’t you give me a chance?” he calmly retorted.

You chewed your lips, unable to answer him right away.

"Y/N, I'm shy too, but since we were assigned for group project, I encourage myself to talk to you instead of sending anonymous letter." He tried to break the ice.

"Like you, Y/N, they only see me as someone with that too good to be true image. If they really mean it, why not approach me personally? You see, I had bad relationships too. There are many people who only like the way I look, the way I behave. How I don't really voice out, how I never show them if I'm angry, how I always say "it's okay" when things start going bad and "I'm sorry" even when the fault is not mine. They thought I'm 24/7 an angel who is never upset."

A small part of your heart just melted to finally see another side of Joshua Hong. You simply could feel the honesty. It was nice to see the ‘humane’ side of him, to see his emotion as he shared a bit about himself. Now you felt bad for having bad prejudice about him.

"There is one thing I’ve been wondering. Why me?" you asked carefully after observing him catching his breath.

"I don't know." He shrugged. "It's just interesting to see you. It looks like there are so many sides of you."

You looked at him, confused.

“When you're with me, do you notice you're very quiet? But when you're with Johnny, you turn into someone else and you express yourself easily. When you're with Mingyu, Seokmin, and Soonyoung, you change again. You play along with them, you get their jokes, overall it's like you're a child again playing with your friends. Then Wonwoo, you used to have that sheepish smile when you talk to him. And when you're with Seungcheol...” Joshua paused, clearing his throat and looked away. “It's clear how you're comfortable with him, you talk freely with him, as if he's an old friend. And the way you smile at him.. how could I not envy him?”

You attentively listened to him while trying to digest everything. You were quite flustered that he paid that much attention to you.

"So I thought, there must be something wrong with me. I was insecure of myself. 'What is it that Seungcheol does better than me?', 'Why the quiet Wonwoo can be close with you while I can't?', 'Am I good enough to be with you?', 'Am I a trust worthy person to you?'. I was always doubting myself whenever I tried to make a move. Especially since Seungcheol butts in."

The pizza was long forgotten as you were drowning in his thoughts.

"If there is one thing I'm lacking, it's confidence. I don't want people to know about that. Also, I'm not really into telling others how I feel, not even to Jeonghan. I tend to bottle up everything instead of expressing my feelings. Then I would overthink, I would be overly sensitive about things. In the end, I wouldn't actually do anything about it. I'm a coward, Y/N." His hands were fiddling with the spoon on his empty cup.

"Y/N, do you like Seungcheol?" he asked suddenly, making you flinched in your seat.

"Honestly it's hard to not to.." you said guiltily. It was such a mystery to you too why you felt guilty. It wasn’t like you and Joshua were something in the first place.

[chick-from-nz]

Paper, Scissors, Rank (Ch: 9)

CHARACTER/PAIRING: Modern!Carrillo x Army!OC (eventually) 

WARNINGS: maybe some swearing, military slang, more military talk,  spelling and grammatical errors. Flippy floppy points of view and tenses. Could be very OOC/AU for some. Carrillo may not be narcos accurate as this is an AU. Some OC x OC. awkwardly written moments. Sexual tension. some NSFW content. Mentions of death,  child endangerment, TW: car crash. 

AUTHORS NOTE: ok so this chapter went a little darkish at the start and then very different at the end. not gonna lie a little bit giddy and proud of this chapter, hope you all enjoy, sorry for the wait between the chapters. would also love to hear any predictions about where the fic may go.

WORD COUNT: 5.5K  

CHAPTER:  9 OF ?

TAG LIST (OPEN): @girlpornparadise @1zashreena1 @xxidontwikeitxx @nicke0115 @allalngthewtchtower @lettherebrelight

** **

                                                  ~15 years ago~

“Ashlyn honey, come on, we don’t want to be late ”  her mother, Teressa, yelled out from the bottom of the stairs, laughing softly to herself when she heard the mad rush of footsteps on the wooden floors before seeing her eight year old daughter running towards her with all her might, only to halt army style and stare up at her with wide eyes.  There was not a single soul that could deny the resemblance between the two of them, they shared the striking green eyes and red-brown hair of the Sayer family, both had a boisterous take no shit attitude and the same little quirks and tells when they were upset. Which Teressa could tell was the case with her daughter right this minute.  She reached down and pulled her young daughter into her embrace, balancing her on her hip as she made haste towards their car, “what's wrong baby? What’s got you thinking, hmm?” 

Ash looked up at her mum, teary eyed and mumbled, “I don’t want daddy to get mad at me, I didn’t mean to hit that boy, he just said some mean things about daddy and I got really angry”. Little sniffles were becoming more and more prevalent as she continued talking, try as she might the little girl couldn’t fathom why people would speak bad about her family, they were all so nice!. She clumsily climbed down from her mum's arms and hopped up into her car seat, clipping her belt before pulling on it dramatically to prove that she was actually clipped in. Ash then let out a small gleeful laugh when her mum bopped her on the nose before walking around the car to get into the driver's seat to start on their journey to the principal's office to find out the punishment for the young girls justified behaviour. 

The journey to the school would take longer than necessary, unexpected road closures with no concrete explanations from the officers monitoring the road blocks had forced Teressa to take the back roads and add an extra forty minutes to their already long commute for a Saturday morning. Travelling along generally unused and quiet roads was somewhat of an unusual experience for Ash, having been used to seeing cars passing by every other minute and looking at houses rather than vast open fields. As they passed round a corner, entering a tree lined road with dense forest on either side of them, an unsettling feeling overcame the young mother, there was a strange darkness that clung to the air, setting off alarm bells within. She remained calm as possible as to not alert Ashlynn that something was wrong, as the young girl was far too perceptive for her age, a trait that she had inherited from her fathers side of the family. She glanced back at her daughter, noticing that she was rather quiet, but let out a small sigh of relief when she noted that she had dozed off, head slumped against the panel of the door and her hair covering her face, snoring away softly to herself. It was in this brief moment of distraction that Teressa failed to notice the truck approaching rapidly from behind, when she did she increased her speed well beyond the speed limit, keeping an eye on a sleeping Ash to make sure she didn’t wake up and begin to start asking questions like the curious little thing always did.

As her speed increased the blacked out vehicle behind them only got faster until it was a mere meter behind their car, seeing no other option she pushed the car to its limits, approaching the upcoming intersection at speeds that should terrify her beyond means, but in this moment she was focusing on only one thing, protecting her innocent daughter in the back seat. As she passed through the intersection a scream forced its way from her throat, just through the intersection sat a parked truck blocking the road. Teressa knew she wouldn’t be able to stop in time so she swerved sharply to the right, hearing the screaming of the tires as they went from smooth asphalt to the gravely uneven surface that bordered the edge of the road. The steering of the car locked up, Teressa tried with all her might to get it moving again but was forced to endure the inevitable pain from the collision that was about to happen, with what may be her final words to her daughter she turned to look at Ash, tears filling her eyes when she took in the terrified expression on the young girls’ face, and whispered “I love you baby girl”

When Ash woke up she was sprawled on the grass a few feet from the car, rain was pouring down putting a darker spin on the event occurring. There were people standing around her, albeit a few feet away and semi-huddled together, and something warm was running into her left eye. Reaching up and feeling a thick, sticky substance she pulled her hand down to get a better look, a terrified scream leaving her small body when she noticed her hand washed red with blood. Her scream drew the attention of the people huddled together but they dismissed her without some much as a disgruntled look, they weren’t there for her. Ash glanced around, frightened and searching for her mum, who she found in a heap a meter or so to the left of her. With great difficulty she managed to crawl over to her mum, gathering her head and shaking her when she wouldn’t wake up.

“Mummy please! I’m sorry, no mummy please! Please wake up mummy, I need you” Tears poured from the eyes of the young bruised girl, mixing in with the blood as she desperately tried to wake her mum up. Her little body was exhausted from the effort, shivering from the cold seeping into her bones from the rain, and the toll of the crash began to take effect, she was becoming drowsy, a sure sign of a concussion. Ash felt a small wave of relief was over her when the eyes of her mothers’ met her own, the tears never halted, dripping off her face and landing on the face of her mother, mixing in with the blood that was covering the once beautiful face of her mum, now marred by sliced and bruised flesh.  Her mum pulled her head towards herself, pressing a short but meaningful kiss to her forehead before her body began to go limp.  “Ashy, darling, hold Mumma close for a little while”  the broken voice of her mother rang clear in her ears.

Ash pulled her mums’ head as close to her little chest as possible, crying out and trying with all her might to keep her mum with her till help could arrive. With one last shuddering breath her mother passed, she was gone, no matter how tightly Ash held her. Looking down and seeing the closed eyes of her mother, she panicked, screaming out for the group of people to try and get their attention or at least their help.  “Please help me, my mummy won’t wake up! I need my mummy, please help me!” 

One of the men started towards her, dressed in clothes very similar to that of her father, before coming to a stop before her. He looked over the child thoughtfully, knowing the orders he was given deemed only that the woman be killed and the girl to be delivered to the hospital in a recoverable state, sighing to himself he reached down and hoisted the girl up and made haste towards one of the trucks. 

“Put me down! I want my mummy. Don't take me away from her! MUMMY!!!!”  the girl cried and screamed and beat at the man that was carrying her. She didn't understand. Why was the man taking her away from the one good thing in her life.  Ash watched as the other men made their way towards her mum, before picking her up and beginning to chain her to the tree. One of the men pulled out a large knife which had the young girl screaming at the top of her lungs, “Leave my mummy alone! Just leave her alone you bully! Dont touch her!”  the men just laughed at her, mocking her pitiful cries. She was unceremoniously thrown into the backseat of one of the vehicles, effectively cutting off her view of the men outside.

The young man climbed into the driver's seat, this was his first assignment within the force and he was disgusted by the behaviour of the team. His gaze travelled out the side window just in time to watch the team commander behead the young woman they had just killed, his stomach turned even further when the men began taking turns carving something into the body as they chained her up to the tree and left her there for someone to find. With the signal from his commander he started the car and made haste towards the nearest hospital to get the young, tortured girl seen too as fast as possible, her eyes were drooping and she was beyond pale which scared him. He felt for the young girl, having to go through so much at a young age because of the wrongdoings of her father. 

                                                      ~present~

Ash would never forget the sounds of the crash, the shattering of the glass or the painful scream that left her mothers’ lips the moment before both their worlds went dark that day. The final words of her mother were painfully etched into her memory, a grim reminder of that fateful day, and in tribute to her fallen parent the words “A little weakness goes a long way” were tattooed above her heart, words she stuck to as much as possible. 

**

**

She sucked in a deep breath of air in an attempt to re-center herself with her surroundings and shake off the ghostly shivers of her broken past. She rubbed her hand across her face, wiping away the tears before scoffing out a vacant laugh. “Every damn year, without fail, I get these... these dreams about it ya know?. It’s like I can’t escape my past. I’m constantly thinking ‘what could I have done better, why couldn’t I have been a more grounded child’. If I had just controlled my anger my mum might still be here today” 

The broken sob that left the young soldier had the Colonels’ heart clenching in his chest and his hands tightening on the steering wheel, almost uncomfortably so. He knew all too well the effects blaming oneself had on the mind. There were many things he took the blame for or blamed himself for as an inexperienced officer in his younger days, he would not allow the girl beside him to fall into that trap any longer given there was likely a deeply buried explanation to the event, one he would commit to finding. While keeping a close eye on the road ahead he reached over to wrap Ash’s hand tightly beneath one of his own effectively hoping to silence her racing thoughts and give her something more tangible to focus on. She was one of his own now, a team member that needed to be looked after as thoroughly as possible, but also someone that, dare he say it, was slowly becoming more than that. 

Ash’s head shot up in surprise when she felt the large warm hand grasp her own, it brought a wave of unexpected comfort to her being, warming her to her core. Turning her attention from the hand over her own to the face of the man beside her she gulped. His shoulders were drawn up tight, hand gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white, his jaw was clenched to the point she could have sworn she heard his teeth grinding. His brow has drawn now and his mouth was drawn into a tight line, he was clearly displeased, no, angered by her past she just confessed, the anger that had settled in his deep brown eyes had a chill racing down her spine, it was a look of cold calculation, one she was sure many of has enemies had seen moments before their death. Gathering a small amount of courage she covered his hand with her other and began rubbing small unconscious circles into the side of his thumb, letting a small relieved breath when she saw some of the tension leave his body.

**

**

A short time had passed and they had reached the hospital; the tension had now left Ash’s body, with the weight of telling Carrillo about some of her destructive past now off her shoulders she felt like the awkwardness of the previous week had been all but forgotten. Her now unwavering trust in the man beside her somewhat frightened her, coupled in with the ever growing feelings she knew she was in far too deep. There was a silent agreement between the two of them that Ash would go to the medics while Carrillo would head to the archives to try and find files that would be useful to the team, they would reconvene at the car within the next two hours. 

Upon entering the hospital and being directed to the outpatient clinic Ash was greeted by a very familiar face, “Captain Lisa Ortiz, my god it has been too long”. The smile that graced her face was pure and genuine, seeing a long lost family friend after so long was a relief and a huge shock to the system, but a good one at that. Ash wasn’t even aware that the Captain had returned from deployment, the last time she’d seen the woman was at her graduation parade when Ash had not long turned eighteen. She had grown up down the road from the amazing woman and as it turned out the Captain was now dating her favourite Lieutenant, Lt. Henry O’Connor. 

“My god, little Ashy is that you, come over here girl” Captain Ortiz beckoned her over before wrapping her in a bear hug, she used to babysit the kid when she was a young tot, and furthermore after her mother had passed. Ash’s father, more often than not, would drop her on the Ortiz family doorstep and disappear for weeks on end, she had all but raised this girl and was proud that she had followed her dreams and joined the force. “Right, you, we have some catching up to do, head down to the third room on the right and I’ll be there after I’ve found your files”  she had pointed down the corridor signaling the direction she wanted the 2nd Lieutenant to go, a pleased smile gracing her face when she watched the young thing wander off with a new found bounce in her step. 

Ash was startled from her thoughts when the Captain entered the room before plonking herself down rather ungracefully into the chair beside her. “I read the report Greys, what the fuck! Have they found who did that to you? That's some messed up shit girl, glad you’re ok though kiddo” She reached over and ruffled Ash’s hair not giving her a moment to answer the questions thrown at her before standing up to grab some gloves and some tools to begin removing the younger officers’ stitches.  “Right up on the bed, shirt off, I’m sure by now you’ll be wanting those stitches out”

Ash only nodded, shaking her head with a brief laugh before pulling her shirt over her head and climbing onto the bed like she was asked, she was far to content to do as she was told given how much she trusted the woman before her, she’d admired her since she was a small child and inspired to be like her even now. Lisa began carefully removing the stitches from her side, poking and prodding here and there to make sure she was most definitely healed like she should be, when one particularly hard poke had Ash wincing, she knew the Captain had found the slightly marred skin from where she had pulled those stitches. 

“So...” the Captain began, “I heard a dit Greys. About you, a certain LT. Colonel and then a certain international guest. Care to share?”. 

The shiteating grin that was currently taking up Lisa’s face told Ash all she needed to know. The Captain already knew everything about the whole ‘Sinclair situation’ so there really wasn’t much to tell there, but from what she remembered about the slightly older woman, she always got the answers she wanted, Ash really couldn’t hide anything from her if she tried. “Damn it Lisa, just spit it out, what do you wanna know” she said with a jeering tone, she knew forgoing rank with the Captain wouldn’t drop her in the shit, the benefits of knowing someone since you were five years old. It was funny watching Lisa try and find the right words to say, the furrowing of her brow and the opening and closing of her mouth like a fish out of water nearly had Ash in tears, it was quite the sight.

**

**

“From what I’ve heard the LT. Colonel was a bit of an asshole to you, kid. But I also remember a certain eighteen year old having it bad for him when she attended my graduation parade. I wonder who that could be...” Lisa trailed off with a chuckle. She was sure that by now Ash had all but forgotten about her nagging antics involving the man she no doubt despised nowadays, but it was still a moment of great amusement for the Captain. “Little eighteen year old you just wouldn’t shut up about him. Sinclair this, Sinclair that, honestly kid I'm surprised you never tried to jump that dick near the end of training”  Ortiz paused for a moment, considering something before having a light bulb moment, “Unless it's because of a certain Columbian hunk I’ve heard so much about from some of the medics in your intake...”  She knew she’d hit the jackpot when Ash blushed beet-red from her hairline to her neck. “Awww, does little Ashy have a crush on the big bad Colonel?”

Ash didn’t know what to say, she had honestly forgotten about how she had crushed on the LT. Colonel before she really even knew him, embarrassingly enough her reactions towards him kind of made sense now. She was going to attempt to deny her ever mounting crush on the Colonel she now lived and worked with but given the reaction Lisa had given, she knew she’d been caught out.  “Even after all these years you’re still a gossiping teen” Ash choked out with a laugh, shaking her head with a big smile on her face, “And pffft no, I do not have a crush on anyone. Thank you very much”. Even to her own ears the lie was so evident in her voice, there was definitely no denying she did have a crush on the aforementioned man, but that was despite the point. 

“OH yeah, for sure. Definitely. You sound so sure about that Greys. Come on now, between friends, what's it like living with that god of a man? I’ve only seen some pictures but holy damn girl, if you don’t ride that dick that I’m going to get you sent to the block, because denying that man that would be a crime!” The pure childlike glee that passed through the Captains body at witnessing the utter shock of her words became clear to Ash and had her curling over in laughter. Never in her life has she seen someone look so offended yet also curious at the idea.

“Hey put it this way, if that man is cuffing me. I’ll happily go right to horny jail” Ash huffed out between laughs, god it was good to be around someone who thought like her and wasn’t afraid of talking shit at work, it was gold. It felt good to genuinely laugh with someone she knew and cherished, it had been far too long. 

“Anyway Greys, better get you all wrapped up and sent on your way back to your mans before he gets grumpy and you get told off. Although secretly I’m sure you’d just love that” She walked over to the desk and gathered up some papers that she needed Ash to give to her new Commanding Officer before writing out some prescriptions for more painkillers and nausea meds that she knew would come in handy in the future.  “I need you to give these papers to the Colonel for me” she pointed to the stack tucked into an envelope, “And these ones are for you little lady. Please do keep me posted about that handsome hunk you live with. And don’t let Henry annoy you too much when he gets to the house, I’m sure you’ll have your hands full though. Good luck Greys!”  and with one final tight hug she let the young officer go. Watching her plod down the hallway with a dopey smile on her face. Before she could forget she flicked her partner a text:

To: Future Hubbster

~ baby it seems you’ll have the perfect opportunity to have some fun in your new posting. Our little Ashy-bear has a crush on the Colonel, you HAVE to get them together somehow, we need our girl to be happy.

It was barely a minute later that her phone chimed, reading the message she had to shake her head with a laugh.

From: Future Hubbster

~ God I love you. Permission to make a certain Colonel jealous by any means necessary?

She quickly typed out a reply before hitting send and making her way back to the nurses desk to grab the papers for her next patient. She was sure that whatever her partner would do that it would for sure stir up some shit in the team, one of the many reasons she loved that troublemaker.

To: Future Hubbster

~permission granted, boy scout. Just don’t weird out our little Ashy or get kicked off the team. See you tonight baby xx

                                                  ----------

From that day onwards the energy in the house was no longer awkward. Carrillo and Ash had fallen back into a rhythm of eating meals together and just genuinely enjoying each other's company in the moments when they could relax.  Every Night at around twenty hundred hours they’d both find their way into the living room, generally Ash with a book and Carrillo with some kind of file that could potentially be helpful for their missions, reading quietly in comfortable silence had brought a sense of peace to the both of them. With the events from earlier in the week pushed to the side, but definitely not forgotten by either of them, they were back to being a well gelled team, a small team nonetheless but it worked well for them. 

Ash had not so subtly started doting on the man. She’d bring him coffee’s to the office during the day because he barely left the room when he got stuck in a rut reading paper after paper, her heart always warmed that extra little bit when he’d happily accept the cup and give her a small grateful smile, she always left the room with a blush on her cheeks and an added skip in her step. Sunday rolled round and Carrillo had seemingly disappeared from the house, and with him nowhere to be found Ash took it upon herself to finally go for a run. 

The property definitely seemed larger now she was running around the outside of it, she was becoming exhausted much faster than she would have liked and her side was rather sore from the effort. It was on her third lap of the property, the lap she had named ‘struggle street’ that she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Gapping it towards the house in an attempt to act like she hadn’t just been breaking the rules she made it just in time, rushing round her room and heading to the shower as fast as possible. The both of them had obviously learnt one thing from their moment in the living room nearly a week ago, always take your clothes into the bathroom and come out fully dressed, definitely a less awkward situation. Upon leaving the bathroom, fully clothed, she noticed a fresh set of groceries on the bench, it now made sense as to where the Colonel had disappeared to. 

Ash started out putting everything away neatly and into the designated spots, putting her favourite foods into easy to reach spots because while she was average height, some of the cupboards were just that little bit too tall for her to reach up into.  Once everything was put away she beelined for the couch and flicked on a random movie on tv, not intending to do much more than nap due to being beyond tired from her run, the dull ache of her muscles was a welcome feeling. Ash skipped dinner that night, still feeling far too tired from her exercise and instead chose to retire to bed early, but not before delivering a fresh cup of coffee to a very busy Carrillo.

Ash was starving when she woke up the next morning, stomach was growling and her body ached more than it had in a very long while, the good kind of overworked ache. Climbing rather ungracefully from her bed and into the kitchen, forgetting to put shorts on under the t-shirt she wore while in a tired state. Growing bored while waiting for the pot of coffee to finish she dug into the cupboard to grab a bowl and spoon in preparation for breakfast, wandering over to the fridge to get the milk before returning to her previous place, just in time for the coffee to be ready. Pouring the cup and taking a quick sip she felt herself begin to wake up, she definitely functioned better after the first cup of coffee in the morning, placing the cup down she reached up to the cupboard she usually kept her cereal in to make herself a bowl, only to find it wasn’t where she had put it yesterday upon unpacking the groceries. Huffing to herself in frustration she began checking the other cupboards, each one she opened came up empty, the frustration growing more and more when all the ones in her line of sight and reach didn’t contain her beloved Creamy Oats. It was then that it occurred to her there was one cupboard left to check, the highest up one that Carrillo usually kept any of his favourite stuff in, reaching up on tippy toes and flicking one of the doors open and she struck gold. From her placement she could see the logo of her cereal staring back at her, now she just had to reach it. Somehow. 

Caught up in trying to reach her cereal she failed to notice the Colonel leaning against his bedroom door watching silently from afar. He’d woken to the sound of the kitchen being ransacked only to laugh at what he was seeing. His plan it seemed, had worked, from his vantage point he was granted with quite the sight, long muscled legs, and a well toned ass were revealed as Ash tried to stretch as much as she could onto her tiptoes to reach the box of cereal he had deliberately placed at the back of ‘his’ cupboard. Smirking away to himself he slowly padded over to the kitchen, taking special care to dare not make a sound to alert her of his presence. 

Ash jumped when she felt a hand land softly on her side, her body tensed before relaxing all too quickly when she felt the penetrating heat of the man behind her. He reached up over her head, muscles bunching and pressed tightly against her effectively caging her in, grasped the box of cereal she was desperately trying to reach and reached down and placed it in front of her. She expected him to move away instantly but instead he stood there trapping her between the hard wood of the bench and the increasingly harder wood poking her in the lower back. One arm was still gripping her side, the other wrapped around her front with his hand played out on the bench, desperately close to where she needed it most. 

Testing the resolve of the officer behind her might not have been her brightest idea but she craved any kind of interaction or touch she could gain from this man. Ash pushed back on him, letting out a small pliant sound of need when she felt him twitch against the curve of her ass, the resulting groan she received from him had her buckling at the knees. His head moved down, mouth hovering against the shell of her ear, she could feel the harsh uneven breaths and when she ground down on him again, harder this time, she was rewarded with yet another deep  moan, one that sent a delighted shiver down her spine. She made a move to repeat the action but the hand on her side clamped down impossibly tight, efficiently halting her movements, the last thing she expected was for him to speak.

“Do that again, and you’ll find out how little control I really have” His voice was a mere whisper but it had the desired effect. 

Ash froze, processing the words. The sleepy lust filled drawl sent a punch of arousal straight to her core and a moan escaping her throat. She was almost tempted to see how far she could push him, but settled for subtly maneuvering herself to grab for her coffee and bring it closer, her throat was impossibly dry now and he was not helping the situation. 

The subtle movement brushed so lightly against him that in any other state it may have been  imperceptible but in this highly aroused state it made him want to return the favour. He leaned down slowly, gauging her reaction, before gently and fleetingly brushing his lips behind her ear, smirking softly against her skin when she tilted her head slightly to accommodate him, mouth agape. Never one to turn down an advantage he slowly moved his right hand towards her coffee cup, distracting her further by trailing his lips along the edge of her jaw towards her own lips. He continued his journey towards her lips, stopping only when his hand found purchase on the hot cup of coffee before her, before he retraced his previous path, this time stopping every few centimeters to mouth at underside of her jaw, when he reached his intended target he sealed the deal. He nibbled at the soft skin beneath her ear, sucking lightly to leave the barest of marks but one the both of them would know was there, he blew softly on the skin, lips once again pulling into a smirk when she threw her head back against his bare shoulder. He leant his head against the side of her own, gently nuzzling against her before he growled out lowly, “Thanks for the Coffee Ash” and then as if he wasn’t affected by the current situation, he stepped back, groaning at the loss of pressure against his painfully hard cock. 

To say Ash was an undignified mess wouldn’t be far from the truth, but even in her current state of dizzying arousal she wouldn’t let him have the last word. She spun on her heel, briefly stunned while watching the muscles on his back bunch and twist as he made his way back to his room, before she remembered her mission. “Sir..” she tempted in a voice dripping with sin, smirking proudly when she saw his shoulders tense and his head shoot up in a hurry, obviously not expecting her to speak back, “When you start something next time, I expect you to finish it” and with those as her final words she turned around, leaning heavily against the bench for support, barely resisting the urge to get herself off where she stood, Colonel be damned. 

Carrillo only just had his door closed and the coffee cup discard before he was desperately pulling himself from his shorts. In less than a dozen strokes and with a barely concealed yell he had spilled into his own hand, moving across the floor he reached down to pick up a discarded t-shirt to clean up his mess. Sitting down on his bed to catch his breath he had to laugh at the situation, he had underestimated the young woman, severely so, and now he’d crossed a line he never had before. He was in deep, far too deep to continue to deny his true feelings for the junior officer. He flopped back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling before growling out a string of curse words in his native tongue. That girl really knew how to get under his skin.

[camille-marshall-blog]

Challenge #5

Alternately Titled: The Im-pasta-ble

a/n: Mabuhay, Ni hao, Hello! Another fic written during another hell week in school- please excuse the grammatical and formatting errors. Thanks to @nathaniel-schreave, @clove-teasdale, @eloiseduval, @victoria-seaberg, @ladyallegrahannon for the RP! Hope you guys enjoy!! (3180 words)

Life is like lasagna: it’s full of layers, cheesy, and a combination of magic and pasta.

A few days after the ball, my heart was pounding in my ears when Nate had gathered us to announce who’d be getting eliminated. I was nervous because of the fact that Nate and I had ended well that night- that whatever was there wasn’t supposed to be over yet, but even more terrified of this growing attachment and the feeling of wanting to stay.

Nate had announced the Elite, which even worsened everything. There was a sense of madness that could drive me up the wall because of how unlikely I was supposed to be here in the first place. Top 10. I wasn’t meant to make it this far, I have never planned to be this close.

Among the ten girls that were here, one of them was going to be my future sovereign. A part of me always knew that everyone here was practically queen material, and what continued to bug me was how everyone here would probably do a better job at it than I would. Whatever I’ve learned before, and everything I am now… well.. I don’t think anyone would appreciate what I could do.

After the initial shock of making it into the Elite had worn off, we later found out that we all were going on a series of group dates with Nate and we somehow had gotten divided into two groups. Theoretically, a group date sounded a bit out of the ordinary, but somehow… I’ve come to accept that behind these palace walls anything was possible. It didn’t sound too bad for Nate either, this probably helped him save time and still try to hang out with all of us. Good lord, the lengths that boy went to entertain all of us…

I was assigned to join the cooking group date, which didn’t seem like a bad idea- but what really sucked was that I wasn’t going to be with Vee.

Venus Minerva Vale always loved talking and entertaining. She’s the closest friend I have here, I’m pretty sure she had adopted me or something. She was always a beacon for everyone’s attention, which worked to my advantage whenever I was around her. She did most of the talking between us while I was the one who often listened and observed things. Now I’m being put in a position where I’d have to interact with a lot of people without Vee being my first line of defense.

I’ve always liked interacting with people one on one, the conversations were easier and I preferred giving my full and undivided attention to that person alone. Being put in a group always made me feel overwhelmed with everything I had to keep up with, all that information and goings-on flooded my senses to some points it got overwhelming. That’s always been my struggle with people I’m not comfortable with: the unfamiliarity of their territory, the fear of overstepping their limits.

I’m not very close with the four other girls in group my date, though I am familiar with most of them, you tend to learn a lot when you’re on the sidelines watching everything happen around you. Victoria was a fierce force on her own, and despite the rocky first impressions she had with Vee, they seemed to have patched it up. Eloise was the first Selected girl I had ever met at the beginning of the Selection, and we’ve shared a few conversations here and there like during my birthday- she was. Clove was clearly Eloise’s best friend and always appeared collected and possessed some kind of air of maturity that most 17 year olds didn’t have. Then there was Allegra, who I’ve never really seen around- but I haven’t heard anything bad about her… so surely she at least must be nice. 

The low levels of familiarity was reassuring in a way, but it still didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t rely on Vee this time. I promised myself a while ago that I had to stop being so conscious about being closed off from the people in this palace, and I knew that if I really wanted to enjoy my time here, I had to start putting myself a little more out there. I have Vee to thank for that… and well Nate too. Spending time with Nate had somehow made me feel more comfortable, most especially while I was around him. He had earned my trust during the ball, and his presence did seem to make me feel a little more relaxed.

Being nervous sucks, but when Nate had come along the hallway to meet up with us, things seemed to mellow things out for me.

“Hey, Sorry I was running a bit late. The meeting went a little over…” Nate declares, walking up to the group of us.

I nod in greeting, “Don’t sweat it.”

“Yeah, don’t want to ruin the suit.” Clove remarked in her usual humor, which made me turn to her and notice Eloise half hiding behind her.

“Thanks guys, let’s go in.” Nate chuckles us as we all walk into the kitchen.

Knowing that we were going to cook, I immediately start pulling my hair up and tie it into a quick bun.

“Marshall is ready for anything. What dish are we tackling today?” Clove comments before turning to Nate.

I click my tongue in response, “Just a force of habit.” It was, really. The way things were run in our mess hall kinda asked girls to tie their hair up while cooking back in my old military school.

Nate then quickly responds to Clove’s question, “Lasagna.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I acknowledge, internally trying to remember what were the steps for making lasagna.

“Marshall could you get the pasta cooked and stuff? Allegra you could help Marshall with that. And Victoria you could…” Nate pauses to think for a moment, “measure the cheese? And Clove and Eloise can you come with me to help cut some vegetables…?” Nate began to delegate the tasks, and everyone separates a bit to work on their tasks (of course washing their hands before they did anything).

Allegra and I move over to the stove, getting things ready while Victoria measured the cheese.

“So, what’s everyone’s favourite food?” Victoria asks.

“Mac and cheese.” Allegra hungrily groaned.

“Lasagna isn’t in too bad a spot on my list.” Clove replies from a separate island in the kitchen, while cutting vegetables with Nate and Eloise.

“It’s a tie between.. burritos… and…” I lower my voice a little as I turn the stove on and begin waiting for the water to boil, “s'mores.” S’mores were always amazing, the combination of graham, chocolate, and marshmallows was a masterpiece for the tastebuds.

“Oh! That’s a really good answer! s’mores are amazing!” Allegra comments, and I nod.

Victoria nods as well, “S'mores are the best. Lasangna and mac and cheese are also great picks.”

“I’m a fan of baby carrots.” Eloise then pipes up, for the first time since the beginning of this group date. Well, things have been kinda this way since Fleur’s birthday… an air of tension and awkwardness between Eloise and Nate… things were off, and it made me worry for the two of them.

“What are baby carrots? Are they like small carrots?” Victoria turns to Eloise, and I hear a chuckle at the comment or mention of baby carrots coming from Nate, so maybe things might have mellowed out between them, I’m not entirely sure.

Allegra laughs before giving us the 411 on baby carrots, “They’re just adult carrots that they’ve whittled down. Don’t ask me why I know that.”

“Ow.” I hear from behind me, and I turn to see Eloise pushing paper towels onto her hand. Goodness, she must have cut herself while chopping.

“Eloise… are you okay?” Nate asks before seeing the blood, and I notice a bit of confusion flash through his features, “Uhhh….”

“I’m fine, it’s fine. I’m just- I’m going to go get this taken care of.” Eloise says looking down on her hand.

“Is there a first aid kit?” Allegra inquires.

Eloise turns to Allegra, “No really, you guys just finish here and I’ll go to the hospital wing.”

“Are you sure? I know how to bandage wounds.” Allegra offers.

“Um Clove could you take Eloise to the hospital wing please.” Nate instructs, and Clove sets her knife down with a nod.

“Don’t need any more blood anywhere than necessary.” Eloise shakes her head before offering everyone a small smile and leaving with Clove.

“Okay.” Allegra nods, “I hope you feel better.”

“I’ll be fine, thank you.” Eloise smiles at Allegra before the remaining four of us watch them leave out of our sight.

“Hope she’s gonna be okay…” I remark, getting hurt from a cooking accident was no stranger to me (you could blame me trying to julienne carrots for that once). I take the pasta out of the box and start setting it into the pot, “So are we making the sauce from scratch?”

Nate nods, “Yeah. Do you want to do that?”

“Yeah, I can make the sauce.” I affirm while sprinkling a pinch of salt into the boiling pasta. Weird as it may seem, but adding the salt would add a little flavor to the pasta, infusing it with some flavor while it boiled and then adding a little bit of oil to seal that flavor into the pasta- thank god for the old lunch ladies who supervised us while we worked in mess. These little hacks worked wonders for us.  

“Allegra, could you take the pasta out of the water after 6 to 7 minutes?” I ask for Allegra to take over before moving over to the counter to start working on the sauce.

The four of us continue to converse while working on our assigned component. We talk about how our days have been, what we missed about Christmas, and few more other topics I didn’t really feel invested in. I focus a little more on working on the sauce. I crush a few cloves of garlic under the blade of a knife and cut it up before throwing it in a pot to sautee, then adding the tomato sauce to let it heat. While that had to simmer, I work on the ground beef- first making sure to sweat some chopped onions on a separate pan then adding the ground beef to let it cook. Hearing the little sizzle of the beef on the pan was always a nice little pleasure of cooking.

Before we knew it, Clove and Eloise were walking back into the kitchen.

“Uh hey, how’s the lasagna coming?” Eloise asks while I was transferring the tomato sauce into the sauce pan with the ground beef- the best way to keep the juices of the beef in the sauce was to mix it well with the tomato sauce.

“I’m just about done with the sauce. It… uh needs a little seasoning.” I reply, setting the used tomato pot in a sink and brisk walking back to my simmering mix of tomato sauce and ground beef.

“Do you need something specific?” Clove asks, peering over my shoulder.

“A bay leaf and some basil would do just the trick… I’ve got everything else I need here.” I nod, adding pinches of salt and pepper into the sauce.

Eloise steps up to my side, “Anything else I can help with?”

I take a moment to remember what else I was missing and realize that I had almost forgotten something.

“Hmm… maybe get a teaspoon of white sugar?” I glance down at Eloise’s hand, hoping to see it in better shape. “How’s your hand?”

“Oh, it’s not too bad. I’ll live,” Eloise holds her hand up, with a small smile. “But sure I can get that.” She walks over to the counter and gets a teaspoon of sugar before offering it to me.

“That’s good to hear,” I nod while I mixed the sauce a little more, “You can add the sugar to the sauce.”

“I’ll let you mix it in. Me and cooking don’t exactly go together.” Eloise laughs as she adds the sugar to the tomato sauce.

Clove watches us a little before getting the seasonings I asked for, “Yeah, you stay away from fire and sharp things.”

“I’d argue, but I’ve set off the smoke alarm at home too often.” Eloise replies.

“Yeah… I guess it’s safer for you to stay away for a while.” I snort, entertained by the two girl’s banter.

“We can let her be the one to taste things.” Clove suggests as she hands me the spices.

“I’m okay with that,” Eloise agrees as she leans against the counter and my eyes shift to check if nothing sharp was near her.

“Sure, let me just add the bay leaf and the basil in,” I sprinkle some of the basil and drop a bay leaf in to season the sauce, “and let it simmer for a minute or two… then we’re good with the sauce.”

“Did you cook stuff like this at your base?” Clove asks as I stirred the sauce. The sound of a baking pan hitting the counter makes me turn to see Nate starting to arrange the pasta on the pan.

“Well… uh… sometimes me and my squad did when we got tired of the food in the mess hall… but I kinda learned this while in military school. It was kinda a boarding school where everyone had to do chores and stuff- I typically got assigned to help in the mess hall.” I explain to Clove, I really did owe most of what I know thanks to all that time claiming to help in the mess hall and trying to avoid doing laundry duty- I did not want to handle a bunch of smelly socks and pit stained shirts.

“Nate, did you check if that pasta’s al dente?” I ask, hoping that Allegra got the pasta out on time. The noodles would still need to be baked, so if it was already fully cooked, it wouldn’t be firm enough to hold up a nice shape.

He holds up a piece up and wiggles it, “Looks good.”

The sight makes me want to laugh with just how silly it looked to wiggle the pasta, usually I’d just tear a piece off and check the texture.

“Alright, I’m trusting you about that…” I snort while getting a spoon for Eloise. “Here… Eloise ,” I scoop some of the sauce into the spoon.

“Try it now.”

Eloise takes the spoon and samples the sauce, and I get a little nervous- feeling like one of those contestants on Masterchef or something. I watch her eyes widen and I’m praying that I didn’t add too much salt, or if she didn’t like the way the sugar balanced out the acidity of the sauce. “That’s delicious. Working in the mess hall paid off.”

I look down with a laugh, happy that I didn’t mess this sauce up and feeling a little embarrassed by the compliment, “Thanks… It sure beat doing the laundry… “

“Well it’s safe to say this lasagna will turn out pretty great.” Eloise laughs along.

“I hope it does…” I comment, turning off the stove and bringing the pot near Nate, ready for layering.

“The cheese is done as well,” Victoria comes up to us bringing a bowl of cheese to us- I guess we weren’t making a cheese-based bechamel sauce.. regular cheese would do just fine I suppose.

“Thanks,” Nate says as the five of us watch Nate layer the lasagna.

“Wait… did we pre-heat the oven?” I ask, not exactly remembering pre-heating an oven.

Nate turns to the ovenm “I think we did,”

I hold my hand out to the front of the oven, feeling heat radiate off it, and sigh in relief. “Okay, I thought we almost forgot about that.”

“How do you think they came up with lasagna?” Clove asks, leaning against the counter.

“How did they come up with half the things that exist today?” Nate asks back.

“wow, deep question.” Victoria remarks on Nate’s question.

I hold back a laugh while trying to answer Clove’s question “Hmmm… maybe they got bored with plain spaghetti bolognese and wanted something a little different…”

“You guys are making my brain hurt,” Allegra laughs.

“I mean, maybe it was an accident as were a lot of stuff.” Clove reasons out.

Eloise shrugs, “Someone probably just wanted the ultimate pasta dish.”

“Or spaghetti flavored cake” I mumble, noting the similarities of the way lasagna was made compared to a regular cake.

“That too.” A laugh comes from Eloise

“I like that possibility.” Clove smirks as Nate places the finishing touches on the lasagna before setting it into the oven.

The six of us spend the rest of the day conversing, sometimes asking each other the weirdest of questions that rivaled Clove’s origin of pasta question, and I’m finding myself feeling a little more comfortable with the rest of the girls on this date.

[patrickube-blog]

(h x r)

[i honestly feel really strongly for this piece of writing i did about two years ago, it never fails to make me emotional. a lot of the stuff i wrote in the past has identifiable influences – like a movie i’d just watched, a book i loved, a game i just played, or some real life personal thing that happened to me. this story bemuses me because i don’t remember how i even came up with the entire idea, or the weird structure of it. but i think it’s quite lovely and skeletal, so, i hope this gets you feeling something as well,  my nonexistent followers!]

–

The Beginning

We had English after lunch. All of us were caught in a mad, exuberant flurry of motion, scuttling around like schools of fish to finish our essays on Romeo and Juliet.

The sun was smoldering, the clouds whisked briskly into hiding, the breeze faint and whispery. We sat in our customary, rickety red bench, the table-top scrawled with adolescent blather. There were lyrics to hit songs; prancing stick figures; crude swear words; male genitalia of different sizes; names etched inside swollen, crooked hearts, then scratched out and blotted with angry ink.

There was five of us then. We grew together, then grew apart. I remember Travis, always joking, always coy. I remember Lila, sharp as a tack, harsh, slim from weekly track meets. I remember Henry, foppish and vibrant, good-hearted. As for Rose, was the smartest in our group. Naturally we sought her assistance that day. She glowed under the attention. She set about patiently correcting grammatical errors, pointing out muddled sentences, indicating softly which areas needed elaboration.

I noticed Henry was sitting alone during this time, scratching his head, furrowing his brow, staring at his essay in concentration. Travis was teasing him.

And then, like a guardian angel come from the golden gates of heaven, Rose left her gaggle of students and sat beside him. Henry smiled. Nervous, tentative sweat slicked his forehead.

We laughed about it then, me and Travis and Lila, but deep down we were jealous that the inevitable shifting of our group’s dynamic had taken place, and none of us were a part of the equation.

The Middle of the Beginning

“I think I like her,” Henry said frequently afterwards when it was just me and Travis with him. “I think I do. A lot.”

We sniggered collectively, played along. It became a game. “What do you like most about her? Are you gonna marry her?” we would ask with false sincerity.

“Everything about her, I like,” he’d reply importantly, “And, yeah. Maybe I will marry her.” We all laughed. There was no doubt in our minds then that poor, hapless Henry was dreaming up this big romance, borne from Rose’s simple kindness.

“I’m going to ask her to dance,” Henry said one day, out of the blue. “Tomorrow, I’ll ask her.” We grinned. Travis nudged his shoulder boyishly. Someone else who happened to be sitting with us that day made up a bet on whether or not Henry would pull through. I just smiled. Poor, hapless Henry mistook our amused, youthful mockery for pride.

The following week, the dance took place. We gathered in our little group excitedly, flashing smiles, pretending that we couldn’t care less. The gym was bedecked in fluorescent neon lights, strips of flashy, glittery gold paper wrung from the ceiling, music pumping from the domed roof. Lila bragged about how much of it was all thanks to her creative ambition, since she was a part of the dance committee. The girls were resplendent in their skimpy dresses. We wore our flashiest, priciest clothes.

Henry showed up late with Rose in tow, causing quite the fuss. His brown eyes were bright. Rose’s smile was small and shy, her honeydew hair glimmering amidst the neon lights. We stared, pointed, bobbed grins and cheeky laughter across the hall. Travis spat out his drink. Lila arced an eyebrow. We were collectively in awe. Hapless Henry had turned a new leaf.

The girls fawned all over them; we resorted to a thumbs-up.

The Ending of the Beginning

Henry went to a different high school than the rest of us. He moved house early in the year we all started a new chapter in our lives. I wasn’t to see him for years. I was too caught up in the difference of high school to contact him.

In my second year, I dated Lila. She was vivacious, a fresh breath of air from the old days. We laughed about our middle school-selves. I asked her constantly if she knew anything about Henry and Rose, whose quiet popularity in middle school devolved into anonymity. She frequented the library and acquired a new circle of friends, long-legged girls with swathes of hair. I only had to glance to know they took her for granted, accepted her only for the gleam of her blond hair rather than the understated perception of her mind. Lila told me that the last she’d heard, she and Henry had split. I felt duly crushed. Those two were akin to glowing, golden idols from a better, simpler age. Like the rest of us, they’d succumbed to change and rust.

Three shitty parties, one pregnancy test, and two ‘break ups’ later, Lila and I split. “All you ever talk about now is ‘those old days’ as if they were years ago, as if they were amazing all the time. They weren’t. God, get a grip on yourself, you’re pathetic,” she’d said at the argument that ended it. After that, brilliantly angry and youthfully, foolishly bitter, she spread the rumor that I carried STDs. I remember Travis laughing in my face the day after. He made a quip about girls being bitches, about how he was taking Maria Henderson to a party that weekend, about how I should come and use the STD-thing as a sob story to get laid.

I skipped school for a week, pleaded sick to my blank-faced parents. Days were spent staring up at the billowing, far-away clouds from my bedroom window, lost in thought. Escapism. All I wanted was to envelop myself again in the golden warmth of the before, not the now, with stressful deadlines and assessments and new social pressures and angry ex-girlfriends.

The Beginning of the End

-During my final year of university, an unregistered number called my phone while I was walking to a class.

It was Henry, though I still didn’t make the connection when the voice said, “it’s Henry, hey, it’s me.” He had to awkwardly introduce himself twice more. He sounded tired. He asked how I was doing, what I was up to, what university I attended, inquired about assignments, deadlines, and my parents. He confessed, with sheepish laughter, that he’d gotten my number off of Lila, who Rose still saw every now and then. He added in serious undertone, that he never for a second believed those old, filthy rumors.

I had a multitude of questions clamoring in my head. For one thing, I did not appreciate him bringing up the STD-drama. Also, what was he calling me for? After years of silence, hearing him speak while I weaved through other students staring into their phones was a surreal experience.

There was a new, tense quality to Henry’s voice that I’d never heard before. He suddenly apologized, for falling off the radar, for being too busy to keep in touch. Things with Rose were rocky, he admitted quietly, in a resigned sort of way. Before I could ask when they’d gotten back together, he quickly slipped in that he loved her. A lot. They’d gone on-and-off a number of times.

“Look, I know this is…weird, since we haven’t spoken in years,” Henry said shakily. “But you were always the most considerate of the guys. I know that you’ll help me.” There was a long pause. I waited. “Rose is pregnant. We didn’t plan it. She’s totally against, ah, abortion. And, I mean, so am I! She says we have get married…quickly. Fast. She doesn’t want the kid to be labeled a bastard, and I guess she just…” Henry trailed off. “I think she just doesn’t want to be alone.”

He sighed, sounding older than he really was. I didn’t know what to say, or what exactly he was calling me for. “Please,” he went on. “I need your help. Her parents hate her for all this business, and my dad…you know how he is, ever since we were kids, always just…sorry. Ah, when are you free next?”

The Middle of the End

I helped arrange mostly everything. I found a reception hall in town. It was a small, humble, exquisite building that didn’t make a big deal of itself. Henry, Rose and I went down there a few days after he called. I skipped my afternoon lecture.

I did most of the talking. Henry was taller, a bit leaner, though jittery, his smile nervous. There was a new tentative energy in him, the sadness in his eyes never quite going away. Rose, though, was very lovely. Refined, cool and calm. The gaggle of loud, unappreciative girls that used to surround her in a stifling circle were nowhere to be seen. I wondered where they’d gone. Her belly swelled under the blue blouse she wore.

They chose a day, a time, talked over some meaningless technicalities. We had coffee afterwards. It seemed like the decent thing to do, though I could tell both of them just wanted to go home, retreat back into whatever form of shelter they had built for themselves upstate. I felt out of place meeting these two old friends I didn’t actually know anymore. My brain was momentarily confused, attempting to re-arrange itself; I remembered Henry as a flushed, messy-haired youth with gangly arms and a hapless grin. On the last day of school, he’d hugged me tightly and rather desperately, only letting go when Travis shoved a pencil up his ass. The day before he moved, we hung out in the arcade and then the beach. After everyone had gone and the sun began to vanish in the horizon, my mother had dropped off Rose first, then Henry. The three of us sat in the backseat, making small talk, and as we neared Rose’s house, Henry had grabbed both our hands without preamble. Even after Rose left his hand kept clutching mine.

Now he was suddenly taller than me, dressed in a modest suit-and-tie. He had never been solid and leery like Travis, always floppy, but sitting in that café, there was a solidity about him.

The youthful vivacity that was in Rose once was gone; it was replaced by a wide void, reduced as she was to a politely-smiling, well-mannered, chagrin adult. She used to get all the boys’ attention, even in high school. Mature and level-headed, Rose hardly ever went to parties, but when she did, she always vanished upstairs, swallowed up by the inky darkness of the stairwell. I always assumed she and Henry’s split was official. Their hastened marriage date said otherwise.

The café was small, but busy, bustling. Its homey interior and cream walls watched as we slowly took a sigh of collective relief, our stress and tension melting away gradually, mingling with the steam of mochas and lattes.

Henry sincerely apologized for all the sudden fuss, asked again what I was majoring in and when I’d graduate. He asked after my parents and what they were getting up to. He shared some funny stories, but Rose never laughed, she only maintained her frozen little smile. She herself congratulated me for my academic successes, sympathizing with me on how Lila acted all those years ago, affirming she was different now and still asked about me, sometimes. I told them how well they looked, how happy I was for them, what name they were considering for the baby, and did they know yet if it was a boy, or a girl? I didn’t get to pose the questions I really wanted to ask, since I could tell they were both terribly tired of things. Whether it was from work, or each other, or the baby bombshell, or all of the above, or some hidden factor they kept to themselves, I still do not know.

What I knew: they were only alive by the love they shared, weakly binding them together. It was quietly, tragically beautiful.

The End

-Their wedding day fell on a midsummer, lukewarm Friday afternoon.

Henry and Rose invited only a few people, less than a handful: Geraldine was the bride’s sister. Carlton was her boyfriend. As for Lila and I, one could say we were close in school, but Travis wasn’t invited. Was Lila merely a sop for me? Was it a feeble, girlish, chick-flick attempt to get us back together? Was Henry and Rose’s social circle just that closed-off? Were they afraid and ashamed of others knowing about their marriage and Rose’s pregnancy? Had they alienated themselves that much? Like many things about them, I don’t know.

Geraldine picked up the girls, while Carlton and I were put in charge of Henry. It was quite a beautiful day. Sunlight dappled the trees lining the sidewalk, while buildings reached up into the unfathomable sky. There was not a cloud in sight.

We got to the reception hall first. Henry, in a sharp blue suit, paced back and forth erratically in one of the rooms the kindly receptionist directed us to. I had helped him get ready in my flat. Carlton could tell we had history and he was destined to be a mere footnote, so he politely complimented Henry, made some light jokes which we responded to politely, and then he left before we did, saying he’d meet us at the hall. His car was parked in the lot, four spaces from mine. He was browsing through his phone when we pulled up. I thought it prudent to wait for Geraldine to arrive before calling out to him.

While Henry paced, I mused aloud how the girls were faring. Perhaps Rose had cried a little, then switched to happy laughter while her hair was done up artfully.

He was implacable, in that small window of time when it was just us two. I attempted small talk: why his father or her parents weren’t invited (the look he shot in my direction was, I guess, the only answer I needed.) Did they not want anyone else to come, any other friends? That didn’t provoke a response, but I filled the silence with noise anyway. I spoke wistfully of the increasing difficulty of my university assignments, about Travis, about the beauty of the afternoon. Henry was unresponsive, curt. It took me awhile to accept that I simply did not understand the entire situation, and I left him alone with his own thoughts for a bit. Happy nervousness leaked from his every pore as he walked back and forth, back and forth.

He wouldn’t stop pacing. Without a word, I placed a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. The effect was electric. Henry spun around, looked at me with wide, trembling, damp eyes and kissed me. I only began to respond when he drew back again, as fast as he’d leant forward. He was flushed. “I doubt the baby’s mine,” he said abruptly, absurdly. Then, “I love you. Thank you for being here. I mean it. I love you.”

There was a knock on the door, and Geraldine asked how things were coming along. I could have addressed what Henry had just blurted out and the way he’d kissed me, but I didn’t. His eyes met mine, and without flinching, I told Geraldine we’d be right out and that Carlton was in his car. Her heels faded away into the warm afternoon. Before we left the room, Henry kissed me again. I let him, not reciprocating this time.

Rose was a vision of loveliness, a divine apparition. Her back was facing us as we walked up. Daisies were wrung prettily in her hair. When she turned, her face wore an expression that I couldn’t read. The corners of her mouth were upturned, but I wouldn’t say she was smiling. I saw her rounded belly, remembered Henry’s suspicions, his desperate kisses. But I could not harden my heart against her. How could I, with her standing there, her white dress whispering as it danced across the floor in time with the wind?

Geraldine walked in with Carlton and Lila in tow.  “Shall we?” Lila announced with theatrical grandeur. She shot me a glance. The lot of us had dinner a few nights beforehand, a perverted version of the five our original group had, plus Carlton, very handsome, very respectful, shaking my hand firmly over glasses of wine. Geraldine, I knew slightly growing up, a stately, assertive girl who had none of Rose’s subtlety. As for Lila…she was much the same. Harsh green eyes, a smirk instead of a smile. The only thing of note was a tattoo of a pale lily on her thigh. I told her that it was really clever and witty, when we had sex in my flat that same night. She said that I’d gotten myself a nice pad, and allowed that she missed our middle school days sometimes, especially the science lessons where we were partners, fucking up all of our tests. I took that as her apology for the STD rumors. We didn’t mention it.

The sunlight spilled in from the doorway and doused Henry in soft brightness as he stepped forward and took Rose in his arms. She was crying. Her small shoulders trembled demurely. He whispered words to her that the rest of us didn’t hear. Geraldine patted her back. Carlton shifted in place. Lila linked her arm with mine.

There was a small wait inside a depressingly-clean room where no-one really said anything. Shortly, a middle-aged man donned in priestly garb approached us, calling for “Mr. Henry and Ms. Rose.”

It happened so fast. The designated room was jarringly empty. Geraldine, Carlton, Lila and I crowded the front seats, the chairs behind us devoid of any life. The girls had, in an attempt to spruce the state of things, blown up a few listless balloons and scattered a handful of daffodils on the aisle. It was beautiful in its own doomed, sad way. I imagined the lily on Lila’s thigh blooming open for me. Sunlight alighted on each flimsy white petal of the flowers in Rose’s hair.

When Henry and Rose kissed as man and wife, melting into one, trembling, Geraldine let out a sob. Carlton clapped earnestly, then hugged his girlfriend with one arm. Lila touched my shoulder. Her eyes leaked mascara-stained tears. My throat became constricted with emotion.

“I never saw this coming. Never. I mean…not like this. Did you?” she asked me, her green eyes softening, causing me to almost fall in love with her all over again.

The makeshift priest watched as the six of us left, Henry and Rose leading the way with damp cheeks. His sad eyes were full of hopeless love, and he’d given me a look pregnant with apology and confusion as he walked past; he reached out as if to touch my cheek, but instead clasped my arm. The bride’s honeydew hair was aglow, blinding us all.

In the parking lot, Henry and Rose leaned into each other and so did Geraldine and Carlton, shadowing them. Lila kissed my cheek, and I remembered Henry pressing his lips into mine, not once but twice, his suit clinging to his slim frame, his shoulders set. It seemed to have happened a million years ago. I like to think that we were all, in that moment, happy. The waning afternoon sun embraced us and congratulated our exit.

But I suppose that deep down I knew it was temporary.

X

-Lila called me well over a year later.

We’d kept in touch after the wedding, making half-hearted attempts to reconnect, to start over. We had sex two more times afterward, but the second time, I made the mistake of asking her why she did it, all those years ago in our second year of high school. When she feigned sleep, I touched her lily tattoo and waited until she was actually slumbering. We were in her flat, so I left. Taken away from the pale, sentimental magic of that reception hall, I noticed that her green eyes had hardened again. I realized: I did not love her anymore, if I ever really did. I didn’t bother maintaining contact, and neither did she.

We were there, however, for the sake of appearances, when Henry and Rose left on their honeymoon to Florida. I remember Rose waving a lavender handkerchief at us as Henry drove them away. Carlton took me home, doing the same for a friend of Rose’s who’d been invited, some girl co-worker. He asked how things were going with Lila. I said that things were definitely going. He shook my hand when we reached my flat, and I wondered what he would do if I kissed him in the semi-darkness of his car. Later that night I hit up the girl co-worker whose number I’d procured at some point, and drove to her place and had sex on a pull-out bed. She was ensconced at a friend’s for the moment because of personal issues I did not care to divulge in because I had enough of my own, enough of Henry’s, enough of Rose’s, so I fucked her again before she could open up.

I wasn’t present when Rose gave birth five months after, but I was at their infant girl Victoria’s one-month celebration. She was an exhilarating, lovely thing, but she had brilliant blue eyes. Neither Henry nor Rose had blue eyes.

Lila was there, too, but she didn’t look at me once. The girl co-worker arrived late with a guy who I thought at first was Travis, and I was so shocked I dropped the small sandwich I was eating into Victoria’s crib. Carlton told the guests about the promotion he’d received, and Geraldine gushed over her niece, imploring to her in sickly-sweet coos that the girl would have a cousin in due time. Henry never left Rose’s side once, and when I said goodbye, his hand was sweaty. He lingered a second too long, just like at our last day of school, his scrawny arms nearly suffocating me.

When Lila called almost two years after, she did so with a dead voice. Henry had shot himself in the mouth, in the upstairs bathroom of the Victorian-style house he and Rose had bought a year prior.

Lila told me Rose had come home to hear Victoria’s wail of irritation and hunger from bedroom on the second floor. She’d rushed up the stairs, and saw the bathroom door closed. Blood leaked from the space underneath, staining the fresh carpets. And, somehow, Rose had known. I asked what Lila meant by that, but she stuck by what she said. Somehow, Rose had known.

So, she went back down and sat in the living room, called her sister to come over as soon as she could, and remained in the couch for almost an hour, listening to her child’s pitiful, escalating wail, letting her dead husband drown in his blood in the upstairs bathroom.

When Geraldine arrived, everything came undone.

I hung up after telling Lila I’d make it to the wake.

I remembered his warm and perpetually melancholic brown eyes, the lovely honeydew of her hair, the way he kissed me twice in that warm, fuzzy, almost pastoral waiting room with dust dancing in the space between us. I remembered how their initials were etched onto the red bench outside our old classroom. “HxR.” There, forever. ♦

[aurora077]

Harry Potter and the OMG Hermione is not Ugly Chapter 2

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12755845/2/Harry-Potter-and-the-OMG-Hermione-is-not-ugly

Chapter 2

Harry could hear his heart pounding in his ears. For a moment there was utter silence in the great hall before Ron's burst of laughter prompted everyone else's. Harry, in an attempt to seem casual and like I-was-just-minding-my-own-business-and-totally-not-staring-at-you, had hastily raised his arm to rub the back of his head (like that was sooo casual at dinner). Except, Harry had completely forgotten he was holding his treacle tart, which slipped out of his hand at his panicked movement. The next moment seemed to move in slow-mo for him as his tart flew across the room.

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Hermione was at an utter loss to explain what just happened. One minute she had a question on the tip of her tongue about transfiguration, the next, her best friend's treacle tart was soaring across the room and making it's acquaintance with a certain Slytherin's face (with an audible whap too). Said Slytherin was rapidly turning Gryffindor red as the tart slid down his face and to the floor.

All he had been trying to do was leave the great hall, but Potter had to make him the laughingstock of the evening. He was so angry he couldn't speak. But Potter's attention had finally left his bushy-haired friend and had turned to look at Malfoy with wide, shocked eyes. Draco noticed he wasn't laughing with the rest and so instead of taking points like he should have, he just stomped out of the great hall and made his way back to his dorm. Normally for a feat like that he'd give the prat detention and remove points. But for some reason he didn't, and he really didn't want to think about why. "You know why," a small voice in the back of his head taunted him, "It's because of The Incident." He shook his head to get rid of that thought and flopped down on his bed. The voice was right though. Thanks to those wretched Weasley twins Potter now had something to hold against him. He didn't like the idea of Potter having blackmail material on him so he just stayed out of his way as much as possible. "Right. That's why. Blackmail. You tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night," the voice said slyly. "Oh shut up!" Draco grunted audibly. Just great. Now he was talking to himself. Darn that Potter! And he couldn't even tell his father about this.

Meanwhile back at the Gryffindor table Hermione was looking at Harry with a thoughtful expression. Earlier on she had thought that Harry was only acting weird towards her but now that she really thought about it, he was acting weird with regard to Malfoy as well. Usually Harry took every opportunity he got to complain about the Slytherin. But lately whenever she or Ron brought up Malfoy he was strangely silent, only grunting in agreement and generally trying to change the topic.

And Malfoy himself was acting weird. Instead of following them around and taking points at every opportunity he appeared to be avoiding them, even going so far as to lead the Inquisitorial Squad away from them. Even when they accidentally caught eyes he would just sneer and walk away as opposed to pelting insults. Something was going on. She didn't know what but she would definitely make it her business to find out. After all what if Harry were in some sort of trouble? Maybe that's why he kept avoiding her gaze and acted so twitchy around her. He probably thought if she found out she'd be mad at him. Well, that was going to have to stop. What kind of best friend would she be if she didn't help her friend out of whatever trouble he was in? He didn't even seem to be thinking about winning over Cho anymore so something really must have been wrong.

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Ron couldn't hide his amusement at the situation. "Good one mate!" he chuckled, thumping Harry on the back, "Did you see the look on his face?" He ignored the angry murmurs coming from the Slytherin table and the glares some of them shot in their direction. By some really random stroke of luck, none of the teachers had witnessed what happened which was fortunate for them. The incident had completely wiped out all thoughts of finding out what was up with Harry's weird behaviour. All Ron could think about was Malfoy's face with that tart on it. The git had it coming, in his opinion. But somehow, while everyone was enjoying seeing Malfoy get his comeuppance, Harry was just looking melancholy.

"You okay mate?" Ron asked, noticing Harry's lack of enthusiasm.

"Yeah I'm fine," he said, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Hermione and then turning back to Ron, "I think I'm just gonna head in now. I'm full and Malfoy's wearing my dessert after all."

And with that Harry took off like he was being chased, leaving behind two confused best friends.

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Just great, thought Harry, as he trudged up to the common room. He'd made a fool out of himself in front of Hermione. And he was lucky Malfoy didn't retaliate, although he didn't count it out just yet. Harry didn't stop to consider why exactly he was bothered that Hermione saw that dinner disaster, especially since it really wasn't the first time she bore witness to him doing something stupid. If she had laughed he would have counted it as a victory but as it was, Hermione had just turned to him with a look of utter bafflement. He assumed that meant she disapproved. Somehow, the thought of Hermione's disapproval left a bad taste in his mouth. Never mind that he did many things she disapproved of before and that it had never bothered him that much.

He plopped down in the very same armchair he sat in when Neville had helped him clear his head of some worries, but introduced some new ones as well. It was starting to become a habit to go to that one. Everyone would start coming back to the common room soon and he didn't feel like being around too many people at the moment. But it was too early to go up to bed and he knew he would only toss and turn anyway. Maybe if he got a head start on his transfiguration essay then Hermione would forget about dinner and start thinking about homework. School could always be counted on to distract her. Besides, something in the back of his head was telling him she'd approve of this, and really, though he didn't quite consciously know it, the thought of her approval left a tingly feeling in his stomach. He merely attributed the feeling to stress though. The poor oblivious dear.

Ron and Hermione came up to the common room together a little while after. As it turned out, Harry was right about homework distracting her. "Hey Hermione could you look over my transfiguration essay for me?" he asked, before she could get a word out.

She looked pleasantly surprised, "You're finished already?"

"I am," he replied, feeling slightly proud of himself. Harry had come to realise that throwing himself into work was a good way to clear his head of other thoughts.

"That's great Harry! Of course I'll check it over for you," she cried, "I'm glad to see you're taking your schoolwork seriously. Unlike some people we know." She shot a glare at Ron, who was busy stuffing his mouth with a Cornish pasty he brought up from dinner.

"What," he mumbled, spewing some crumbs onto his shirt, "Thish ish my pwe-homewoke schnack."

"Ugh, Ronald! How many times have I told you to chew and swallow your food before you speak?" she scolded, sounding remarkably like Mrs. Weasley.

"Showwy," he said, grinning sheepishly with his mouth still full, which allowed a few more crumbs to decorate his clothing.

Hermione just face-palmed and stifled an annoyed groan, muttering about manners and hygiene. Of course, Harry was just glad he wasn't on the receiving end of her displeasure. Better Ron than him.

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Hermione was surprised but happy at Harry's initiative. In fact she was actually so surprised that she forgot to question him about his recent behaviour. She herself hadn't finished her essay as yet, but that was because she'd ended up writing twice the required amount and was forcing herself to redo it in a more concise manner so Professor McGonagall wouldn't start worrying about her overworking herself again. The irony of this didn't quite strike her.

She sat down in the armchair across from Harry's, head bent, scanning through his essay for any faults. She was absorbed in it, pleased that Harry's quality of work seemed to have improved, for that particular assignment at least. She finished reading it through and moved over to the armrest of his chair to point out a few grammatical errors.

Harry took the parchment from her and corrected them a bit shakily, thanked her for her help, and bid them both a good night. He claimed all that thinking made him exhausted and all but ran up the stairs to his dorm. This odd behaviour reminded Hermione that she was supposed to talk to Harry about whatever was bothering him. But she supposed she would have to wait until tomorrow to do it, and so she set about finishing her own essay with a disgusted look at Ron who had gotten crumbs all over his.

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Harry lay in his bed, glad to be away from the common room. His essay had distracted him from his woes for a while. But then Hermione had smiled at him in that proud manner and his chest felt funny. He didn't know what it was but seeing her so concentrated on his essay was suddenly making him feel strange. And when a lock of hair fell in her face he had the urge to brush it away and tuck it behind her ear.

It was too much then for poor Harry when she sat next to him to point out the few errors he had made. He had barely managed to focus on what she was saying as he found himself thinking what a nice voice she had. Their hands brushing as she returned his parchment made his stomach flip and having had enough sensory overload for one day, he unsteadily corrected his essay and decided, for his sanity, that he should go to bed. His mind didn't know what to make of these new observations about one of his best friends.

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A/N: Poor Harry. Denial: Not just a river in Egypt.

Reviews help Harry learn to swim.

Thanks to all of you who favorited my story, I'm really glad you like it and I hope you enjoy the rest of it as well :)