#how many rings does marnie have now

[bloodmoonmuses]

the weatherman's weathered heart | mark lee

genre: weatherman! mark lee x reader, enemies to lovers, slowburn

[series masterlist] [next chapter]

chapter one: coffee hit and run

This is the third time you’ve told yourself you’d stop drinking coffee, yet here you are again- preparing to do the literal opposite. Autumn has wrapped her fingers around summer’s waist, nippy morning air whistling through the crack of your bedroom window. Your cat, Luna, is napping on an armchair, making you jealous of her furnace-like warmth. You shrug on a denim jacket, a sturdy one passed down from your dad, then make your way down the block. Marnie’s, the ever beloved independent coffee shop in your hometown, is a seven minute walk from your house. 

The conveniency of such is where you place blame for your lack of a backbone. It’s also on your way to work, Jagerman Printing Co., making the practice of scooping up your double americano (with a hefty splash of half and half) a staple in your morning routine. 

A bell rings upon your entry and you shuffle into the short line. There’s three people in front of you: At the front of the line stands the town’s school bus driver. He gets a London fog, requesting half the amount of lavender syrup. Next is an artist type, struggling to hold a thick stack of photos in his hands as he orders his iced macchiato. You’ve seen him in your shop before, attempting to flirt with your coworker, Hongjoong, so he could get a discount on his prints. Finally, just in front of you, is a man in a suit. His hair is aggressively and artificially blonde, navy blue ensemble making it practically glimmer. He’s quite spiffy. Maybe he works at the bank, you think to yourself. 

The alleged banker gets an iced americano. Triple. With an extra shot of espresso. The cashier, Marnie’s eldest daughter named Minnie, jokes that he must be really tired. The blonde man scoffs, but in agreement says, “You have no idea.” He tips generously, 4 dollars and some change, then side steps to wait for his drink. 

Now it’s time to receive your poison. When she recognizes your face, Minnie says, “Your usual?” 

To which you say, “Yes, please.” You tip as well, walking over to the side counter to wait. You pull out your phone, opening it to see that Hongjoong has texted you.

HJ (derogatory): This newspaper intern is clueless. Typo on the order for this week’s batch. Need more prints.

You: omw soon. Chat her up, can’t afford any negative reviews. 

HJ (derogatory): No promises.

You rock back and forth on your feet, thinking about how many more newspapers the girl could possibly need. The most compelling news story you had read in the last year was about the town’s duck pond. This wasn’t exactly the New York Times. The error probably meant you’d be going into work a bit earlier tomorrow. Regardless, you liked your mundane job. Going into printing technology wasn’t the most glamourous, but where else does an affinity to paper and a concerning level of attention to detail lead you? 

The menial admin work, e-mails and scheduling brought you comfort. You liked managing your little team. Some projects were more fun than others: birthday invitations, wedding save-the-dates, highschool yearbooks… Disdain only arose in you when people didn’t know how to do their job. Like this intern. 

For some reason, the interns at the newspaper office across town were in and out like goldfish at a pet store. It felt like every other month you were having to explain to some poor kid how to properly put in a printing request for the coming week. Maybe you should do admin work over there. They’d probably think you were a genius. Or a magician. 

You’re snapped out of your internal dialogue by the feeling of being shoulder checked. Hard. A few seconds pass, during which you register the sensation of liquid soaking through your shirt. The scent of espresso enters your nostrils and you scoff at the situation. Did someone just… spill their coffee on you? 

You whip your head around, words caught in your throat, in an attempt to see who just ruined your morning. In a blur, you recognize the offender to be the blonde man who was in front of you in line. He’s running out of the door, half empty cup sloshing around in his frantic hand, while screaming into his phone. 

“What?! I didn’t approve that poor excuse of a fucking article!” he says. “…Already in print? I said no, that journalist, she-” 

“Hey!” You yell after him, looking at your chest in shock. “I think you spilled something!” 

The bell above the door rings, signaling the alleged banker’s exit. The man doesn’t even look back, too engrossed in his argument to care.

When the adrenaline begins to fade out, you make eye contact with Minnie, who you assume saw the entire exchange from her spot behind the counter. She places your double americano on the counter, the side of the cup with your name sprawled on it facing outward. You walk up to the counter and take the warm drink. 

While handing you some napkins, Minnie says, “At least his was an iced drink.” You look down at your cream colored top and the dark splotch that now adorns it. Fuck.

—

When you arrive at the printing shop, Hongjoong is beet red. The guy holds so much anger in that little body of his. He can be surprisingly intimidating, when the situation permits such.

“You do realize there’s a big difference between one hundred and one thousand, right?” Hongjoong says, voice laced with annoyance. 

The mousy intern shakes. “Yeah, but– I just figured, y’know… since this is a weekly order, you might’ve realized it was a typo on your own.”

Honjoong chortles. “Oh, so it’s my fault? Newspapers are an antiquated form of media to begin with, and I��m not really sure why we continue to deal with this bullsh-”

You interject, shooting the intern an apologetic smile. “Take it easy, big man. You’re not scaring anyone in that vest,” you say. The intern stifles a scoff. “We’ll just print the rest tomorrow. No biggie.”

“Um, ‘yes biggie’. I don’t wanna work overtime. Gotta finalize the design for those marathon flyers too,” Hongjoong retorts.

He gives you the up-down, taking note of your frazzled demeanor and adds, “What’s with the stain on your shirt?”

“I’ll do it then,” you sigh. “I’ve got nothing better to do. And the stain? Don’t wanna talk about it.” 

Hongjoong humphs. 

Sliding behind the front counter, you place your satchel and americano down at your desk. Then, you head to the back, grabbing the boxes of newspapers you do have printed. They’re still warm from the press, the scent of the ink calming you down- if only slightly. 

“Here’s a hundred copies. I’ll have the others by nine tomorrow morning. Just… be more careful next time,” you tell the intern.

“Got someone to help you carry these?” asks Hongjoong. The intern shakes her head. “I’ll carry them out. Which one’s your car?” The girl points and he promptly gathers the boxes. 

“Hey, by the way,” you say to the girl, “do you know why they need an extra three hundred? The order is usually seven hundred copies a week.”

“Something about an interview with a weatherman. The moms here really like him-”

The door to the shop opens again and you think it’s Hongjoong, but when you turn, it’s the man from the coffee shop. He’s still on the phone. Great. The offender of your coffee hit-and-run is here to add insult to injury. What are the odds of that?

“Speak of the devil…” the intern says under her breath. 

“I’m not exactly sure how the article got approved for print in the first place,” the man whisper-shouts into his phone. “I was told it was going to focus on my passion for meteorology or my down to earth persona. Not digging into my personal life. Whatever the intent, I want it scrapped. Entirely.”

Hongjoong now re-enters the shop, glancing at the suit-clad man, recognition flickering on his face. “Wow, we’ve got a small-town celebrity here in Jagerman’s? To what do we owe the honor?”

Finally, after hanging up the phone, the previously alleged banker says, “I’m here about the newspaper.”

“Just packed up the first batch of copies,” says Hongjoong. “Since when did you work for the newspaper?”

“I don’t work for the newspaper, I’m Mark… Mark Lee?” He says. Then, he looks at you expectantly.

Hongjoong simply laughs. 

“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?” You ask, agitation rising in your chest.

“Channel 127 News? Beloved weatherman and meteorologist?” Mark continues. 

Hongjoong laughs again. “A real big shot,” he says.

You shake your head. “Not ringing a bell.” 

At this, the bank- weather…man scoffs incredulously. “Well if you crack open one of those newspapers, you’ll see my face all over it.”

“Ah. Popular with the moms. Well, as I told this young lady here,” you gesture to the intern, “we’ll have the rest of the copies tomorrow. There was a misunderstanding with the printing order.”

“That’s what I’m here about. I don’t want them printed.” Mark crosses his arms.

“Well, they already are,” you huff. You had cut the intern some slack, but this guy? He’s a grown man pouting over some paper. And he spilled coffee on you. Honestly, you were more upset about the latter- and the fact that Mark seemingly has no recollection of this. Are you that invisible? Forgettable? 

Nevertheless, the weatherman persists. “Then I don’t want them distributed,” he says.

You cross your arms, mirroring Mark. “You have no authority over that decision.”

Mark exhales dramatically, pinching his nose bridge in frustration. “Are you always this rude to your customers?”

“Do you always spill coffee on unassuming printing technicians?” At this, Mark pauses, finally placing your face. As recognition floods his features you add, “Four shots of watered down espresso on my new shirt. It’s a shame really.” Mark’s face flushes.

“What could possibly be in this article that would make you come all the way here? The news station is on the other side of town,” you inquire.

Mark stammers. “It’s nothing-”

“An affair? Tax fraud? Oh my god, I’m the first to hear about Weatherman-Gate,” says Hongjoong.

You chuckle. “‘Small-Town Weatherman Commits Tax Fraud”. What a headline. I’d actually read that.”

“I didn’t commit tax fraud. I just… didn’t approve of the article. So that’s illegal, right?”

The intern tuts. “You undergoing the interview was the approval. No take backs.”

“‘No take backs’? Are you a toddler?” asks Mark.

“I’m 21,” she responds, chipper as ever.

“So, you are a toddler,” you and Hongjoong say in unison. 

“Jinx!” exclaims Hongjoong. “Buy me a coke after my shift?” You wave off his question, returning to the issue at hand.

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t my problem,” you say.

“Look, I’m sorry I spilled coffee on you, I am, but this is my livelihood. I’d really appreciate it if-”

“You’re gonna have to go to the newspaper office,” you contend. “Like I said, this isn’t my problem.” 

Mark goes quiet. As you turn to walk back to your desk, he whispers out a plea. The quiver in his voice makes you stop in your tracks.

“Please.” You spin back around to see that his eyes are now glassy. For a moment, you think he’s about to cry. 

You look over to Hongjoong. He’s not having any of it. Knowing him, he probably thinks this Mark guy is full of shit. However, you (unfortunately) have empathy. Whatever’s in this article, he doesn’t want it to come out. You sigh. The admin at the newspaper isn't gonna like this one bit.

“We only have a portion of them printed,” you confess. “If you can get the editor to change the article by tonight-”

Mark erupts into a gleeful cheer, effectively cutting you off. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” He engulfs you into an awkward embrace, jumping up and down like a little girl. 

Hongjoong snaps a picture. “A lot of Facebook moms are gonna be jealous of you,” he says.

While in Mark’s hold, you remember the stain on your shirt. “One more thing.”

Mark immediately concedes, finally freeing you from his death grip. “Yes. Anything. I’ll do anything,” he says.

“You owe me a new shirt.”

a/n: feedback is always appreciated! thx for reading! <3

[yanderefairyangel]

Why does Alear simply refuse to die in Engage's main story ?

Alright, so as we know now, Alear got killed a total of 3 times. 4 if you count the DLC. So, why is it that they somehow come back each time ?

While Fire Emblem loves Westernian settings, they are full of references to their own culture, such as the dragon worship and references to Buddhism. So how does it links to Engage ?

Well, Alear despite being a fully established character is still an Avatar and Avatar is a notion taken from Hinduism/Buddhism, as one of the incarnation on earth as a deity/spirit. Alear is treated as such by their Allies because of their status of Divine dragon, echoing themselves with the irl practice of shintoism that includes worshipping dragon as powerful being capable of protecting them.

We also have evidence that reincarnation is implied to be a thing in Engage with this picture

Where Veyle and Mauvier encouters a little girl implied to be Marni's reincarnation. In comparision Alear was ressurected several times.

However, i'd like to point out something about Alear's several "ressurection"... is that they never come back in the same form.

In the begining of the game, the screen will ask you to choose between two forms/apperance/姿 /sugata. An avatar is an incarnation whose form differs in the context of the Samsara/the circle of reincarnations/transmigration.

At the begining of the story, 1000 ago Alear was a Fell child with full red hair and red eyes. When Sombron slew them, Lumera then proceeded to heal them for 1 000 years transfering her magic/life energy to them at the cost of her life.

Why is it important ? Well, when Lumera holds dying Alear, Alear tells her how they wanted to be a "virtuous dragon" not necessarily a Divine one, but Lumera told them that one day "you will be reborn" and that's what reincarnation is : a rebith. The ring of the Connector isn't just a birthday present, but a re-birthday present. And then, they were reborn 1 000 years later... as a Fell dragon/Divine Dragon hybrid, with blue hair, one blue eye, claded in white, capable of wielding the two Divine dragon weapons, Libération and Wille Glanz capable of casting their blessings like Lumera did... you get the idea.

Now brief transition to Veyle. In chapter 18, Sombron says this :

"She denies who she should be, how foolish"

Sombron is refering to how Veyle denies her Evil dragon form since he says "arubeki jishin no sugata". sugata is refering to the outside appearance and jinshin meaning "self". Arubeki meaning "should be". In other words, that Veyle is denying the appearance that shoudl be her legitimate self. Trust me, that little bit about conforming to the appearance/form is going to make more sense later on.

When Alear awakens, they don't remember anything and if you watched stuff like Sailor Moon, then you know that a reincarnated person lose their memories of their previous life. That's what happens with Alear. They can't remember anything but their name. That said, there is some nuance about Alear's amnesia as they do have many times sense of deja vu : the Corrupted triggering their memories, the dragonic crystal, their dragon stone, Veyle has implied by her theme taking the bridge of the opening with the lyrics being "赤の記憶燃え上がり/the red memory burning brightly", Lumera's death as Alear ended up talking in hiragana at some point (yes, I replayed it and Alear ends up switching to hiragana at some point for the first time she died, like how they used to speak in the past) etc.

They do regain their memories at some point...when Sombron kill them for the second time that is. And they do come back, once again but this time, in the form of a Corrupted.

Then they die once again and came back in the form of an Emblem thanks to the miracle.

As an Emblem they have reached the final state of their own journey to become "light" as indicated by their name, Lueur. They achieved the dream that they used to have in their past life as a Fell children. Alear's several death being sort of a purfication journey : going from their sinful life as a Fell child to a more virtuous one as a Divine dragon.

It's however not a sign that Alear's has reach enlightment yet since Alear can still be considered as prisonner of the Samsara due to the bad ending where Alear is reborn, this time as a Dark/Red Emblem. And while we don't know about how Alear would live after their death, seeing how they are an Emblem, they might end up reaching it. Anyway, Alear becoming the "Fire emblem" is showing how they went from a weak glow to a radiant light, thanks to the image of the intense light generated by the Fire, as well as what connects people together : hope.

But that's not all. And that's actually very important after all to point that Alear is the Avatar because the player choose Alear's appearance after this happened, after Alear's first "death" as a Fell child meaning we, the player are the one choosing the form in which Alear's soul will be reborn as (even if it ends up affecting the previous events). We, the player, are the one determining Alear's new form since the begining of the game takes place after their "first death" hence we have a hand in Alear's reincarnation. It is the player that can choose Alear's legitimate form, the one Sombron is talking about for Veyle. She is not our Avatar so we can't change her nature nor determine her form in any way. For Alear however we can.

As for the DLC, if you recall, if we choose one Alear's gender, the other will be the Alear of the other world, the one born as a Divine dragon biologically.

That's just as I was saying, even in the DLC, while Alternate Veyle is slightly different genetically from Veyle*, her form/essence is essentially that she is still a fell Dragon, while in Alear's case, choosing one gender/form determines the nature/essence of the Alear we choose.

Now, one thing about the DLC is that while the two Alear are acknowledged to be different person, they still shares a existence as pointed out by Isekai Alear calling our Alear their "片割れ/kataware". And the translation indicates :

one part or fragment of something broken synonyms 

one part or member of a pair, a group, or a set of something or some people

one of the bodies resulted from the split of another one into many parts synonym

So rather then us being allowed to choose who is "the surviving twins" as I saw some people thinking when meeting Isekai Alear, it's more like this : the two Alear are one soul and when we choose one of the Alear for our adventure, it get splitted into two, with the Alear we choose being the body in which Fell Alear will be reborn as while the other part of the fragment ends up being the other Alear. After all, many of us have pointed out how despite being the opposite of our units, the Alternate units still shared some common points when it comes to personality and in the case of the two Alear, like the two Sombron and the two Mauvier, they have the most similar personality. Besides in their A support when Alear ask Nel if she view them as the same existence as their other self, Nel answer this :

"No. You are yourself. Even if you shared the same name and the same eyes".

And rather then being a commentary about how Alear shares similar physical feature with their other self, I fee like she is actually refering to how they have the same gaze and from there we can deduce that their soul are rather similar. After all, when Alear meets Isekai Alear they tell them how they feel like helping them would put them at ease and as if they were regaining something they abandonned long ago. This might also explain why none of the DLC character with the sole exception of Gregory noticed that they had different body : their sole remain similar. Gregory himself mention that the only thing he sensed to be different was their essence. And if you sticked around my blog, you know that my personal theory is that Fell children in Elyos are splitted as a pair of twins in XenElyos... well, this can actually explain my theory.

Anyway, back to the less speculative field, as I mentionned, since the Alear are two fragments of a same soul ending up in a different body, this means we, the player get to choose the incarnation of Alear : if we choose that F!Alear will be a Fell dragon, then M!Alear will be born a Divine dragon in XenElyos and if we choose that M!Alear was a Fell dragon, then F!Alear will be the Divine dragon of Fell Elyos. We the player, via choosing Alear's gender, actually end up choosing whether or not they will be a Fell dragon or a Divine one. That said, if Alear managed to become a Divine dragon that saved the world unlike their counterpart, it's possible that it's because their counterpart was already born "light" and therfore didn't add to go through the whole circle of redemption/purification our Alear went through to achieve their dream of becoming a hero. The other possiblity is that they aren't prisonner of the Samsara because our Alear have sins to atone which might not be the case of Isekai Alear.

Disclaimer : Alright, those are based on my interpretation of the events of the game, but since I am not buddhist or have some knowledge, please feel free to correct me !

*In the Fell Xenologue, the Mage dragon tribe was victim of genocide by Xenobron, with Zelestia as a sole survivor meaning that Alternate Veyle's mother couldn't be a Mage dragon. In the main game, Zephia was the one responsible for the rampage, but it was only her village that was touched, all the other Mage dragon still were alive, hence how Sombron could mate with them to have his kids.

[derekscorner]

Fiery Opinions: Engaging Dragons

One Ring to Marth them all

This is the second time since I started my Fire Emblem journey that I’ve got to use a brand new game as an entry as opposed to playing older titles. I was genuinely surprised by how refreshing this was both for that very reason and due to how decent the story was.

No joke, the story is actually good. It’s no flawless masterpiece, I’d worry if you went into a video game expecting such, but it does so much right by being so simple.

Hell, I’ll even start this by apologizing to poor ol toothpaste-chan which I’ll get to later. For now let me just ramble about how much I enjoyed the story.

Family is Key

At it’s core Fire Emblem Engage is about family. Not in the same sense as a special lineage a la Marth’s prodigious bloodline but it’s about found family. That made every story beat that would normally be cliche or what I call an “animeism” work because it’s not as simple as being there for blood ties.

Now blood relation is also certainly a factor for many characters but the story goes out of it’s way to make found family just as precious. Many characters lose someone that they thought of as family and others lose people that truly was their blood bound family.

They contrast it effectively against how the villain, Sombron, abuses his family. To him family is a tool and the story will list exactly how cruelly he’ll murder his own children a few times.

HIs actions also cause many others to lose family. Some die due to direct conflicts/schemes to aid Sombron (Morion) or you’ll have people who were good warped by his influence. (Hyacinth)

Sombron doesn’t just harm Elyos but he harms it’s people but breaking bonds. Usually in the cruelest way possible.

It’s also due to these themes of family that many character actions that would normally make no sense would. Such as the villain Zephia.

She is irredeemable. She does truly horrible things but her motivations for doing so make sense. That doesn’t excuse her actions but I at least understand why she would behave the way she does.

Namely, those moments that sharply contrast her usual cruelty. Such as when she randomly decides to help you once she’s defeated. In most modern stories they just treat this as a half-assed redemption. Zephia herself even gives that as a reason to the heroes.

Only for us to learn the real reason once the heroes leave her to die. She did it for spite. She wanted a child and Sombron promised to give her one. She doesn’t love the villain but she deeply seeks a family.

This desire manifests in her behavior toward evil Veyvle and the Hounds. She treats them like a family albeit in a warped perception of what she thinks it is. This caught my eye quickly because the story isn’t excusing her behavior but it is giving me a human motivation for that behavior.

I do not pity her but I, as the audience, understand her. Unlike Sombron, she truly wants a child but like Sombron she treats family cruelly as seen with Marni.

Sombron himself is very similar at the end of the day. He forwent any connections in Elyos because it wasn’t his world. His world had it’s own emblem war and he watched all his family die.

Being a child at the time, the victors cast him out into the Outrealms and he landed in Elyos with nothing but an Emblem Ring he managed to hide. That was his one true companion.

Everything he does is for reaching other worlds to find that emblem but the story doesn’t use this to make him tragic. The entire dialogue is called out by Alear and Veyle, Sombron’s two surviving children.

Sombron himself never tried to act sympathetic either. He merely gave his motivations when asked. The sins he’s done to get there mean nothing to him and when he says he no longer cares about their world the two siblings call him out.

Even if he says he’ll forget their faces and leave they know he’ll “just repeat the same mistake” and appear again in time. So rather than letting his evil reach other worlds they stop him.

This, to me, says that Sombron was either born evil or the war he witnessed made him so. Not once is his actions excused to downplayed. At most, his emblem leaving (which was likely it running out of power) was just the catalyst.

The excuse he needed to act on his evil nature. Something he began by slaughtering the village that had kindly took him in. He wanted to be alone and seek his own power and that’s the life he lead.

He’s not a redeemable being nor will the story act like he is.

The list only goes on from there. Family motivates this entire story in a simple but beautiful way.

The Hounds?

Mauvier swore to be Veyle’s knight. He’s the only one that has a genuine concern for her well being.

Zephia, as mentioned, wants a child.

Marni was abandoned by her mother and saw Zephia as that replacement to a sad end.

Griss also saw Zephia as the “closest thing” he’s had to a mother and chose to die fighting with her.

Princess Ivy? I found her the most intriguing royal by far. Her supports reveal that she did not like the political landscape or her mothers actions within it. However, she’s still a princess and loyal to her home.

Her forms of defiance were small as a result. She chose to worship the divine dragons instead of the fell dragon. She was loving to her sister when her mother and step-mother were in political turmoil.

She would die for her father despite knowing he’s warped. Her faith and loyalty conflict and thus her actions conflict. It’s nothing grand but that’s very believable. Especially due to her faith going form an initial defiance of authority to a legitimate belief and conflict of interest.

Thanks to this I can buy that she’d back down when confronted by the deity of her worship. You even see this in her first scenes at Brodia castle. Her odd behavior is due to that religion she holds.

The Brodian Royal Family Now these guys are endearing to watch. The playable units Diamant & Alcryst are great but the one that shocked me most was their father king Morion. In many stories you’d imagine the king of a kingdom focused on strength to be a hardass that is hard to please but no.

King Morion is a caring father. He relents to some of Diamants overbearing/worried demands and he’s more than supportive and positive to his second Alcryst. While Diamant is a more typical firstborn big brother good guy Alcryst is apologetically cowardly.

His brother and father go in guns blazing with swords but Alcryst wields the bow. A weapon of distance. He’s cautious and far too quick to knock himself down a peg. Despite that Morion is very proud of Alcryst and praises him nearly every second he’s on screen.

Diamant also thinks highly of Alcryst. They do not look down on him for his nature and I think that is because they see Alcryst for the truth hidden within his nature. Although cowardly, Alcryst will ignore his panic to be heroic. It’s not even a crippling fear, if it needs to be done he will do it.

This was most prominent to me when the corrupted Morion had to die. Alcryst hated the idea while Diamant knew it was more respectful to end his warped existence. However, Alcryst will have unique dialogue if he kills Morion. Saying that its better for him to take on such burdens over his older brother.

Morion and Diamant see Alcryst as strong and the player sees that when Alcryst will spare Diamant the pain of patricide.

The other cast aren’t quite as heavy but just as good. For example, the Firenese royalty is also very close as seen in their supports. Their family is as peaceful as the land they rule. Celine gets annoyed by her older brother and worries how Alfred will be as a king but she loves him anyway.

Alfred has some of the silliest but wholesome supports. He never takes an insult bad and will admit he’s more brawn that brain. He takes it all in stride because he’s happy to be alive due to a sickly childhood.

Then you have the retainers of the royals. Many of them have a close friendship, and at times family, closeness. Hell, even ones that do not like one another such as Ivy and Zelkov have a loyalty. They all have a simple but pure bond in my opinion. Some families are made of friends, or strangers even, rather than people with shared dna.

Of them all I rather like how lax Solm’s royal family is. That family is chill as fuck and I envy their freedom and overall disregard for decorum.

The Good & The Tragic

Now this is where I’ll say that I am absolutely sorry for any Alear slander I’ve made before. Sure, some jokes about the hair is okay, but the theme of family and the tragedy of it hit the hardest with this poor dragon child.

As silly as it appears at first, the hair color does have plot relevance. Everything from the blue hair, eye, and the somewhat-goofy white armor Alear wakes up in was actually plot relevant. It was so relevant that it’s almost sad to see upon a new file because I now have the context.

Alear, like Veyle, and so many of Sombron’s children, was an abused kid. Alear even lists, verbatim, the cause of death for many of their siblings;

“One older brother was drowned. One older sister was burned alive.”

“A little bother and a little sister -they were cute- torn apart by the corrupted.”

“Some siblings died in the war. Most were defects. Father disposed of them.”

Alear was old enough to see this, they watched them all die in these horrific ways. During the war Veyle was too young to be a soldier so in the one meeting they had Alear gave her his dragonstone (explaining why you can’t transform) with the intentions to return for her.

This did not happen. Alear was fatally wounded striking down Sombron and put to sleep to heal.

Found Family

This sad backstory and the encounter with the past Alear with their somber voice and sad face was one thing. A good one, a strong impression enough to make me like the character.

However, what fully sold the family theme was Alear & Lumera. I’m used to Fire Emblem or any RPG having parents die and other such cliches but once Alears past was revealed it hit different.

The “genshin look” let the animation of faces hit harder. I was already sad for Alear but now I was sad for Lumera.

She did not give birth to Alear. She found them. Lumera, like Alear, had lost everyone to that war and when she found them that shared sense of loss connected them.

Lumera was the parent Alear wasn’t given. She gave them love and that pure emotion made their tragic dynamic beautiful. Lumera waited one thousand years, slowly draining her life to convert Alear into a divine dragon, just in hopes of being a family once they woke.

A family is all either wanted and when they found it with each other it just hurtful to look back on her death.

Ya know Alear’s white armor? That’s there because Alear wanted to be a “good dragon” like her. One that wore shining armor and a sword.

Their blue eye and hair? That’s Lumera’s power making them divine.

Alear’s emblem ring? A present she spent centuries making.

Lumera did so many little and big things waiting for her adopted child to wake only for it to become a tragedy instead.

Veyle

This tragedy also affects Veyle because Alear was put to sleep before they could find her again. Veyle was forced to run terrified from all the enemies Sombron had made. The only people that showed her kindness for centuries was her mother and Alear and now both were gone.

She was found by some of Sombron’s worshipers eventually. They treated her nice enough but once Veyle went into her own slumber and awoke things had changed.

The poor girl only wanted to be praised by her father and was manipulated easily enough to help free him only to be treated like less than useful the entire way.

Veyle is such a kind soul that Sombron opted to have Zephia use magic to brainwash her resulting in the split personality. Even then Veyle lacks the power needed to use her dragon form nor any of the power Sombron seems to use.

Even Alear in the past seemed to have more of that power than Veyle. Although, it was this kind streak among Sombron’s children that leads me to believe that Sombron himself is the evil element.

Veyle and Alear are kind yes but seemingly most of Sombron’s children were. The “defects” he labeled useless weren’t just one or two but most of them. I’d imagine even the “useful” ones were kind but scared to act different as Alear was prior to meeting Lumera.

Veyle is easily the most pure and innocent of his children we get knowledge of but I would go as far as to say that Sombron may have been the real “defect”.

We have no context for his family in his original world but he’s the only one we see out of his children that is evil just because that is his nature. It makes me question what a “fell dragon” is within the context of Elyos.

Grima from Awakening was a science experiment gone awry. An artificial dragon made from stolen divine dragon blood.

The game does make a distinction between the power a fell dragon and divine dragon wield. There is a difference but I do wonder if “fell dragon” is the true name of their species.

Zephia claims that Veyles brainwashing brings out her draconic instincts but I find that hard to take at face value. If someone as pure as Veyle can use “fell dragon” power to raise the dead without evil in her heart then I suspect their real nature isn’t something as foul as what Sombron has made it out to be.

Either way Veyle made me question a lot about the fell dragons and her shared parentage made me grow to like her even if I saw the sibling twist a mile away. She had the post-game ending I enjoyed the most simply because she worked to be as kind as Lumera or Alear despite being a “fell dragon”.

The poor little girl deserves the world and I wish she could’ve been family with Lumera as Alear was.

Story Overall

Family themes aside I was pleasantly surprised by how tight the story could be at times. It’s a simpler story about evil dragons and heroes like older FE titles but it also does a lot of things that you’d only notice on a second playthrough.

I’ve already mentioned how the family aspect makes motivations believable, I’d even call it competent and worthy of higher praise, but there’s some things that happen that you only noticed once pointed out to you.

For example, the plot twist of Alear’s parentage. This is done by witnessing how Alear summons an emblem. Divine dragons pray to summon an emblem but fell dragons invoke them.

Alear, being now divine, mixes the two aspects but if you notice in chapter 2 Lumera summons Sigurd without uttering a word. She prays to the ring and he answers her call. That is an early hint to later plot developments and it’s so subtle.

Or the use of the corrupted as a concept to help Alear cheat death in a believable way. Something that’s fixed entirely with the “miracle” that the emblems themselves hint at half way through the story.

In essence, the story foreshadows well and keeps things tied back around in a way that I’m not used to in games today. It’s sad to say that it’s rare but it is still pleasant to see. I’m going through my second file just hoping to catch more stuff like this.

It’s not flawless mind you but it is worth noting.

Emblematic Emblems

Another thing I took notice of in the story was the emblems themselves. Even the DLC bracelets that I currently have access too. They all have an establishment personality as former heroes of the series.

Even Byleth or Corrin who were avatars have enough of a personality forged by spin-off titles to make them feel like people. Even down to mannerism such as Byleth maintaining a blank face and tone that rarely breaks.

They also have a larger story presence than I initially believed them to. All 12 have scenes to do or say something while emblems such as Sigurd, Lyn, Lucina and Marth especially have as much to say as a main cast member would.

Sigurd & Marth in particular are very talkative and present offering advice and commentary on story moments. In contrast their actual bond conversations (think of it as supports for the rings) are extremely brief compared to their lines in story chapters.

You will feel like they are characters even if it’s to varying degrees. I grew attached to Marth very fast despite never playing one of his titles. Then I was attached instantly to Lucina, Riki, and Byleth because I have played those titles.

3 Houses was my first game but Awakening is my favorite. I always had Tiki or Marth on my person at all times. I also often tried to keep their assigned units together because some emblems have unique attacks when paired with a friend.

The most famous one online right now is Byleth and the Emblem of Rivals. If you use the Emblem of Rivals special when Byleth’s emblem is nearby he’ll be added to their attack.

However my favorite was Tiki & Marth. Not only do they actually talk in the paralogue scenes, something I wished for Marth and adult Tiki in Awakening, but if you use Tiki’s special with Marth nearby he’ll boost it.

Tiki, alone, will grant you a rival stone to a unit of your choice but if Marth is next to her this is changed to “Blessings+”.

I also found myself attached to Tiki for how she engages with dragons. For everyone else Tiki turns them into a red dragon with a tail whip, claw move, and fire breath.

But when Tiki is engaged with Alear or Veyle they turn into a proper divine dragon and the fire breath is swapped for fog breath which I used often to give my units a boost to AVO.

I can say without a doubt I loved the emblems far more than I expected due to the small things like what I listed. there’s probably several others I haven’t seen because I’m biased to Marth and Tiki.

I hope they’ll add even more as the DLC releases giving us more emblems or scenes of these legacy characters.

A side note to all my praise; I found it fucking hilarious that Byleth’s special is to act as a dance unit. Byleth can be a dancer class in every game they’re in but their original one. lmao

Gameplaly

Normally I’d give a deeper look into the gameplay like I did with Echoes or others but this post is already novel length. I also have very little to complain about when it comes to the gameplay.

Some of the hardcore fans can do the math to maximize and tackle maddening mode but I suck at math. I do not want to play a game to do math. I do not find join in min-maxing.

I did enjoy the game however. It returned to a two seal system with master & second seals but don’t let that fool you. The gameplay is more complex than you’d expect due to the nature of Emblem & Bond rings.

You can max a units bond with an emblem and inherit their skills. As mentioned, some emblems bounce off each other or even have unique changes on a specific unit.

They basically blow up the game to such a complex level that I can’t properly break it down. I enjoyed what I was doing and didn’t complain once. I liked that it only had two seals and I recognize the depth that I can’t fully see.

It’s like the best part of several fire emblem games were added in. The weapon wheel is back, weapon durability is mostly gone (sorry staves), and you have some new tweaks like how monks affect the returning daggers, bows, and tomes.

I ignored some of these at first but now I keep at least one chain-blocking monk and poisoned dagger thief with me at all times.

I have been trying to use things I didn’t on the first run to properly grasp more of the gameplay such as the new break weapons. Great swords, axes, and spears that are guaranteed to stagger an enemy and prevent counter.

At the cost of you being unable to hit first nor counter of course. They won’t give you that kind of tool for free. lol

I also adore the Somniel because it’s the kind of secretly hidden paradise home in the sky I always wanted. I don’t play the mini-games much despite the stat benefits but I do love to just wander the small island, change the outfits of characters, and take in the peaceful atmosphere of the place.

It’s the type of “my base” I prefer in Fire Emblem. A cross between what Awakening, Fates, and 3 Houses have.

I hope future FE titles use a similar hub world should they choose to continue the trend. It does not have to be a sky sanctuary but I do hope they maintain the laid back nature.

A good base to wander, do a few small things, and just take an overall break from the story grind.

Resolution

I think I’m rambled out. I do sense that I had far more to say but this is long enough already. What’s important is that I enjoyed this game much more than I expected too.

The story is simple and good. I am very glad they dropped the branching routes idea they used for Fates and 3 Houses. Both of those titles had so much potential lost due to the lack of focus.

Gameplay is shockingly deep and while the look is definitely “genshin impact” it works in the games favor. The maps and scenes are beautiful and it allows characters to be animated with great effect at times like the flashback of Alear striking down the villain. The sheer terror and sadness on Lumera’s face works because of it.

Some characters do not translate well into the look (poor Edelgard) but I got used to it. I even liked it when “blue Alear” appeared on screen. God I wish their hair stayed that solid blue...

Anyway, bye now~

================================

Editors Note: This is part seven of my trip through fire emblem. You’ll find the others here: Fiery Opinions <–(link)

[zorua-gaming]

Chapters Sixteen through Twenty and Paralogues Seven through Twelve

All twelve rings have now been met.

But before we go on to the next chapter, first we’re gonna do the Corrin paralogue!

Lowkey kinda shipping Alear and Corrin right now.

For a second, I was wondering who were these two Elusian defects who took an Emblem ring with them, but then I remembered Rosado and Goldmary. It’s GOTTA be them.

YUP, it’s them.

XD that “blink three times” line! THE DELIVERY! This game is SO funny.

And with “Restore calm, Emblem of the Sacred!” we have all the summoning phrases of the main 12 non-DLC emblems.

Oooh, we’re getting some info on the last war.

And now time for the Eirika paralogue.

I hate these evil bitches but love how unapologetically evil they are.

JUST KICKED CHAPTER 17’S ASS

Wait, that means we have Leif back!

YO, PURPLE VEYLE JUST GAVE US SIGURD BACK TOO!! Also that was quite the impressive throw.

OH SHIT ZEPHIA JUST SLAPPED THE HELL OUTTA HER!!

God, that post-battle wandering really hits you. (Especially the NPC who said “so much for gods.”)

Now onto the Leif and Sigurd paralogues.

First, the Sigurd paralogue.

Just looking at the map, wtf Sigurd? Why do so many of these enemies have multiple revival stones?

And now that the bridge is down, he just brought out a million reinforcements. WTF

Alright, he came at us and we took him out.

Now onto the Leif paralogue.

And now that that’s done with, onto chapter 18!

Still no explanation as to why Sombron doesn’t wear a shirt.

Okay, so Zephia said she’s a mage dragon. So why is it that she and Sombron are the only dragons in the game to have pointy ears?

Wow, Father of the Year™ over here. Guess it’s up to me to headcanon what they were like.

Ooooh, meeting of the Emblems!

Sigurd, what do you mean by “other option”?

God, the way Alear and Ivy instantly put together that there were no survivors in the port town. This game is giving me so many feelings.

Marni, I would like to thank you as it tastes like I’m getting some rings back after this fight!

KNEW WE WERE GETTING THE RINGS BACK! YOUR DUMB ASS SHOULDN’T HAVE BROUGHT THEM WITH IF YOU DIDN’T WANT TO LOSE THEM!!

Now onto Micaiah’s paralogue!

That wasn’t so bad.

Now to the Roy paralogue. And he has a Wyrmslayer. I might be fucked.

I ended up fine. Took some time though. Now onto chapter 20!

Damn Marni just got bitch slapped too.

Okay 1) why/how does Alear summoning Celica with “Care for us, Emblem of Echoes?” prove they are Sombron’s child and 2) Alear, why are you believing Griss on this?

At least Griss is now answering my first question.

I really do like that they’re explaining all this lore and calling back on things they’ve shown us to do so.

[ofangelos-archive]

@mvrnic !

they’d always acted on impulse. always, always, always. their timeline was messy and... not entirely romantic, but it was them. from him waving her down at a strip club with $500 to saying i love you for the first time while fucking in a dressing room, they were wild. and now, angel had proposed to marnie via twitter. he couldn’t let that stand though. luckily, he’d already been planning to re-propose, so he already had the ring. all he had to do was wait. he checked his watch just as marnie step out onto the terminal, and instantly dropped down onto one knee as she walked up to him, bright smile on his face as he held the ring box in his hand, “you didn’t think i was gonna let the twitter proposal be the one that actually worked, did you ?” he jokes, popping open the box to show off the ring, “marnie marisol... would you marry me ? please ? you make me a better person, and there’s nobody else i’d rather spend the rest of my life with.”

[husbandohunter]

Stardew Impact [Genshin+Stardew Valley/xReader]

Part 1/3 Kaeya, Diluc

Synopsis: “A mysterious phenomenon brought you and your s/o to an unfamiliar world: Pelican Town! Without the power of Visions, the two of you begin to learn the life of what it takes to be...a farmer?”

(DOMESTIC FARM LIFE YIP YIP)

Coming soon...

Albedo and Childe

Zhongli and Xiao

(A/N): So the brainrot was real in this one. I planned to add Albedo for a Mondstadt edition but kinda went overboard so I gotta split this one into parts too. Wordcount_almost 2k spspspsp

______________________________________________________

Diluc

• Already has the whole year planned in his head. Literally if Diluc were to play this game, he'd have a booming farm within year ONE. Calm and collected through and through, though the new environment raises alot of questions, as long as you were still with him, Diluc ain't complaining

• The town welcomes you two with open arms. It was all thanks to the attire. Diluc wore his usual dark coat adorned with regal gold while you had a dress made of Liyue's finest silk, one that he bought for you. Needless to stay both of you reeked the aura of rich aristocrats (Mayor Lewis is pleased that greedy bastard)

• Once the farm was permitted to your owndership, Diluc began to think of ways to turn it into a vineyard. He was a businessman afterall. Although the staff back at the Dawn Winery were the ones who tended the field, Diluc still knew a few things about planting due to his childhood days Master Crepus would bring him out to their yard and demonstrated the process of gardening. He still remembers those days clearly, doing the very same this moment with you.

• Occasionally works at the Saloon bar. It was the perfect opportunity. As you took care of the farm side, Diluc continues to look for more ways to increase the income while gathering information from the folks around town. Gus LOVES to have him over, like he's just so efficient and reliable! They soon become good friends saying if Diluc were ever to own a wine stock, he would gladly buy from him.

• This is why Diluc would stay a little later due to just chatting with the people from the bar. One time you walked into the Saloon only to the front desk with Emily alone. Turns out the others were in the other room, too busy playing a game of pool. You decided to leave him be since it was rare to have Diluc so relaxed in leisure activities. Thus in the end, you spent your time chatting with Emily until a whole hour has passed before your lover notices and apologizes for losing track of time.

• Everything felt like a dream because it was his dream. To live a life undisturbed from chaos, his duties and the dangers that lurk in Teyvat, Diluc grew fond of the domesticity. There was nothing he loved more than to spend his hours by your side, day after day, returning home to your freshly handmade meals.

• Spring: Already up and early planting the parnersnips (I'm very soft for gardener Diluc you see). What do you expect from a workaholic? Even during his leisure time you would often find him near some plant as he does consider this hobby quite therapeutic. But when it rains, Diluc would be standing beside you with an arm around your shoulder, smiling contently as you lean into his touch. He gazes through the dripping window and silently admires the current progress you both made on the farm.

• Between the two annual spring festivities, I would say the flower dance. Diluc is a private man and would prefer to take things where no eyes were on sight. But with a little bit of nudging from Gus (your wingman), he gives in and leads you to the center stage. Elegant. Graceful. The way you two moved together became the talk of the event. Though, Diluc was already used to people staring by now, all he needed to do was to ignore them and keep his focus on you.

• Summer: No blankets in bed. Nope, its bloody hot in Pelican Town. He tends to stay indoors or anywhere with shade, in other words, his work hours in the Saloon increased.

• Diluc always has a nice cold drink prepared for you if by any chance you were to pay a visit after a whole day of labour. It's a habit he's made subconciously as if it would be a natural occurance for you to enter the door. His colleagues would ask him who did he make that drink for? Honestly so cute i cri

• Moments like these remind him of Mondstadt, where he quietly wipes the glasses while listening to you talk. Your voice is soothing. Sun rays peek from the side casting onto the umber tables, reflecting a rich golden light as the radio plays a soft song in the background. It's so peaceful, the town was small hence not many people visited the bar, Diluc came to appreciate this warm privacy (plus no Venti and Kaeya which is a huge pog realization).

• Autumn: Harvest time baby. The kegs are full and the sheds are full of kegs. This season was huge stonks and the house ended up getting an upgrade. Diluc is the type of man who wants to make sure that his spouse wouldn't have to work another day of her life. I reckon this is why he's so ambitious because he wants you to have the best and you deserve the best. (Husband material. Slap a ring on him ladies).

When there was no more work left to do, time would be spend peacefully exploring the woods. While you skipped a few steps ahead as the leaves crunched beneath your feets, Diluc follows slowly from behind. He sees your back but his eyes stares somewhere far beyond whats in front of him: His future. 

It was such a stark contrast to the one he envisioned before. One filled with uncertaintly, blocked by darkness with no silver lining in sight, endlessly wandering as he drags the claymore against the ground. There was never a day in which the Darknight hero wouldn't think of Mondstadt. Leaving the city in the incompetent hands of Ordo Favonious while Abyss Mages continue to lurk fuels him to find a way to return as soon as possible and yet...

"Higher big sis!" Jas tightens her hold on the ropes as you pushed the swing with all your might. She laughs, like a child, it was full of innocence and joy. Later Vincent came in and nugdes you, asking when his turn will come.

"You wanna go too? Alright alright don't worry," waiting for Jas to come down, you lift the boy up so that he was seated safely on the chair, "3..2..1 go!"

He wonders if he could just be a little selfish for once.

• Winter: Best man to have in this season. Every morning Diluc would find himself restricted in movements due to a pair of arms around his waist and legs entangled with yours. Turns out you've been doing it subconciously because he's just so warm (Diluc keeps it lowkey and pretends to sleep longer cuz of it)

~~xx~~

Kaeya

• Haha looks like the portal is gone, guess we'll be stuck forever :)). No kidding Kaeya would be so down to stay here for the rest of his life and the best part is to spend it with you. He doesn't show a shred of concern regarding Teyvat, not like he's easily shaken by events that are abnormal, but you can see that Kaeya is truly and genuinely happy. (You're stunned).

• Oho we also have this marvelous landscape just for the two of us? And a cozy little cabin to go along with it as well? This should be fun~ 

• Of course Kaeya would also know a few things about planting, just the basics since he did grow up with Diluc. When they were kids, Crepus would give each of them their own pots so they can grow their own plants. It eventually became a competitive thing where whoever's plant grows the fastest gets to eat the other person's dessert for a year (no one wins. They end up sabotaging each other which Diluc started first, thinking it'll be funny as a joke).

• You are, and will be going on dates with him. In fact, the amount of dates you two went on increased since then. The townspeople would call you two "lovebirds" since he's practically by your side 24/7. 

• I mean he doesn't have the responsibilities as a Cavalry Captain anymore so what else is there to do?

• Would attend all annual events no matter what season. 

• Evelyn constantly gushes how much of a wonderful pair you and Kaeya make and often is the one who provides Kaeya a fresh bouqet of flowers for him to use as a gift. George on the otherhand just rolled his eyes mumbling something along the lines of "youngsters these days" and "crazy hormones."

• Befriends Pam. Love for beer plus somewhat cynical attitude? They get along real swell! She starts sending some recipes into the mailbox of course saying if yall ever need a hand, let her know.

• Spring: I can see Kaeya be switching back and forth between caring for the farm or taking quests posted on Pierre's bulletin board. He likes to keep things interesting, learning the ways of the new world while also getting to know the people around town.

• Would NOT return Mayor Lewis' shorts in which he found in Marnie's room. It's such high quality blackmail material. Kaeya is currently plotting what is the best way to use it to his advantage.

• He didn't tell you of course.

• Summer: There are no blankets because he is your blanket. Since your cabin was small so was the bed. That's why he has to hold you so that no one falls off when rolling over. Either he hugs you with your nose close to his neck, or your back against his chest while spooning you or holding hands if sleeping on your sides became too much. Yall need a serious house upgrade.

• For some reason Kaeya becomes more energetic in the summer. He lets you rest in the shade while handling the farm work for the time being. If you guys got a pet it would be a cat. Hes the first one to refill their bowl every morning outside.

Another day passes as summer comes to an end, the town’s Mayor invited you and your lover to see the annual Dance Of the Moonlight Jellies. Kaeya being the opportunist was delighted to come along. Locking the door of your house, you follow him down the path and made your way to the beach.

Everyone from town was already gathered by the docks when the sun had disappeared down the horizon. You stood by his side in a space far from the others, watching  the candle boats set off to ride the waves, lighting up a small ray of light for creatures to find. 

“Wow,” your tone almost above a whisper, “If only our friends back home could see this too.”

“Perhaps,” he says. Kaeya slips his fingers into yours and you shot him a curious glance, “But let us enjoy this moment shall we? Just the two of us.”

And there they were. A sea of luminescence radiating colours of brilliant blue with hints of green like a city of laterns floating in a world below. Their image reflects in the star of Kaeya's eyes as he wonders, where would they go? Where would the light lead them? They were so free with nothing to worry, so serene just like the sea and unknowningly, he squeezes your hand. It was a sense for confirmation. One to remind him that this moment was indeed a reality he wishes to keep.

Autumn: Finally a house upgrade and a kitchen!! Because it was harvest season, you guys end up making a set of delicious meals with all the recipes the townspeople gave you. Kaeya can cook since he lived by himself back in Mondstadt. Most of the stuff he learned to make were food that can be accompanied by alcohol though...

• Ahah remember Mayor Lewis' lucky shorts? He found a use for them. It was displayed on the stands during the Stardew Valley Fair (Oh my how did this get here? Must be the wind). Ends up buying a Rarecrow for the farm when Lewis bribes him not to tell this to anyone.

Winter: This was mostly an indoor season for the both of you. With the existence of television, nights would be spent until morning while watching movies at the couch. A blanket drapes around your shoulders as extends to his.  Oh and don't forget the hot chocolate! 

[imagining-pokemon]

I really liked your "You get severely injured" post. Can you possibly do something like that with Piers? Bonus points if s/o gets hurt protecting Marnie (aka, Best Girl). Thanks, hun!

I’m so glad you liked it! Well here you go, and I hope you’re ready for all the angst~

You Get Injured Very Badly (Piers)

The relationship between the two of you was definitely something special

There just weren’t many things in Piers’ life that he passionately and unselfishly cared for 

But he cared for Marnie and he cared for you

The tenderness towards Marnie was of brotherly love that he learned to accept long ago when she first smiled at him from their mother’s arms

It was kind, and it was pure

But then you came

Now there weren’t many times in Piers’ life where he just felt so undeniably small 

But one of the few times was when he started to have feelings for you

To say it was a crush would take too much meaning from what it really was because Piers just did not know what to do with all these feelings brewing and raging in him 

He just felt so small

Even as your relationship prospered, it started to become a true storm 

Oh how he loved you

But does he deserve this?

He feels as dirty as the town he came from 

How could he deserve you?

Maybe that is what makes you so special

You did not try to completely abolish these emotions but instead chose to understand

You cared for him without expecting nothing in return

You understood and accepted things about him, others would only scoff at

And with each kiss, each hug, the sea in his mind would become serene

It was a sort of calm for Piers

It was his tranquility

And there were many times where Piers felt that this was only a dream

A wonderful, special dream

But then you would brush his hair from his dirty face, or grab hold of his dirty hand

And he would look at you

Piers would see your bright eyes and kind smile, and everything would just come in a tidal wave

This was reality

This was the love you both uniquely shared

It may not be kind, and it certainly wasn’t pure

But it was special, and it was yours

And that is why when he heard you got injured, he felt everything melt into chaos

He held Marnie in his arms, as she sobbed about how you had saved her and all of Galar

Piers had given you time, and he had given you access to what had happened at the Rose Tower

But to know it had it all led to you injured and possibly dying in the pokecenter... 

He did not know what to feel

Piers led Marnie to her hotel room first so she was able to rest 

He tucked her in, and embraced her

And for the first time in a long while, she let him

Even if you were in grave condition at the moment, Piers still wanted to make sure his sister was okay

For the next few hours, all he could hear was the thoughts constantly bashing through his head

Get better

Thank you

I’m sorry

Now there weren’t many who were able to tell with certainty what happened between the time Piers left the hotel and the time he went to the pokecenter to see his lover, but some could say with some truth that they heard tearful crying

When you opened your eyes after all the chaos that has happened, you were first aware of just how sore you were

A groan left you as you quickly stretched out your arm and wiggled your fingers

No one appreciates fingers until you almost lose them

But what really drew your attention was the crazy hair of the Dark type gym leader next your bed

Even after so much time of two being together, that hairstyle still made you giggle

His hard whipped to you and you were able to see a ring of red around his eyes

Piers took your hand and squeezed it, trying to calm everything inside him down

I love you

I love you

“I’m sorry.”

You rose an eyebrow

“Marnie told me what happened after I helped all of you, and how you saved her. I’m sorry I did not go afterward and helped you. I am just glad to see you are awake though.”

I love you

You felt his hand clunch yours harder and harder and you could see in his eyes the tears he had shed and the turmoil that had consumed him for the last few hours

And you understood

Slowly you brought your hands to his face, and pulled him down to place a kiss on both his eyes

The tension left Piers allowing him to breathe for the first time this whole day, and you brought him in for a tight hug

“I love you too, Piers.”

[malecsecretsanta]

Merry Christmas ninwrites!

For @ninwrites. I was so thrilled to get you for Secret Santa this year as your Malec fics are some of the very first that I ever read when I fell into Shadowhunters way back in 2016. You gave me so many great prompts this year that I really struggled deciding what to write, especially because I know we share so many common interests! Part of me wanted to write a sweeping sci-fi, and another part of me wanted to write a clever procedural, and then I know how much you love superheroes and I also love superheroes, so that could've easily happened ...

But in the end, I decided to strip everything down and write a story about second chances. About seemingly unrequited yearning and human connection and liminal spaces and time unravelling backwards and friends-to-almost lovers-to-strangers until serendipity intervenes. Of course, I went drastically over the word limit but this happens every year so I am no longer surprised.

Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy this little microcosm of a story!

Tags: malec | rated: t | extended oneshot | human AU, roadtrip, friends-to-lovers-to-strangers-to-lovers, hurt/comfort, surrealism

Read on AO3

*****

saudade in the key of highways

saudade

/saʊˈdɑːdə/

noun

(especially with reference to songs or poetry) a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, and well-being, which now trigger the senses and make one experience the pain of separation from those joyous sensations. However it acknowledges that to long for the past would detract from the excitement you feel towards the future.

"as we fall / into the common, suspended disbelief of love, you ask / will I still be / here tomorrow, next week, tonight you ask am I really here."

— Olga Broumas, Beginning with O; “Bitterness”

first chord

There is rhythm to this loneliness.1

The endless darkness. Passing headlights; the hum of the engine; the splutter of the heater fighting against the cold that claws and scratches at the windshield. The highway, deserted, is like a strange and eerie dream that travels on and on and never ends.

The rental car: new. Nondescript in its newness. Two hands on the wheel; the faded hum of the radio, a soft accompaniment to the bright beam of the headlights. The car has a cassette player, but no cassettes. It never has any cassettes.

There’s a gas station like a beacon in the distance: a faint glow of sodium yellow that slinks along the horizon but never draws closer, spilling light like fuel out across the open fields.

Alec prefers driving at night. There is never any need to ask for directions because he never passes anyone he could ask for directions; he might be the only car he’s seen in fifty miles.

The radio crackles, then laughs, ‘ we know it’s only November but nothing gets us in the mood for Christmas like -’  

Almost immediately, the signal drops, but the interluding white noise is familiar too. It fills the silence with unimportance, an invisible presence in the passenger seat who doesn’t require conversation or stops to stretch their legs, but is company enough for long drives across the country.

Moments on the road are filled like this: a hundred similar soundtracks for a hundred indistinct highways, their miles wearing down the tread on Alec’s tires and the lines of Alec’s palms, where he grips the steering wheel for hours without a break, in much the same way.

‘So if you’re listening at home, or you’re stuck on a late-night shift, or if you’re driving cross-country and need a pick-me-up, give us a ring and tell us about your favourite ever Christmas song!’ says the radio. ‘But to get us started, we have Marnie from Portland on line one -’

Alec punches the buttons on the radio until he finds a classic rock station. He taps the steering wheel, not to the beat of the song, but to dispel some of the restless energy that tingles in his fingertips.

A sign on the roadside passes him by at high speed; it tells him that he’s a hundred miles from nowhere in particular - but at the last intersection, a similar sign told him he was a hundred-and-one, and now he’s acutely aware of creeping ever closer to his destination.

It’s a destination he’s not sure he wants to reach. A destination he calls home.

There is rhythm to this loneliness . Alec is used to it: the anxious churning of his stomach, the longing for the road to continue beyond its end; the endless, perpetual, and pointless journey of back-and-forths.

One: drive across the width of the country. Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon, again and again. A country of ochre-yellow wheat; plains and flatlands; tractors abandoned on the roadside.

Two: report to the local field office, where he’s given a desk too small for his long legs and a computer he doesn’t have a password to. Talk to the county sheriff who snaps at him, ‘ the FBI has no business out here, we can handle this on our own ,’ and then to the man who refuses to open his door wide enough for Alec to get a good look at his face, but whose eyes skip over Alec’s badge and land on the gun on his hip and he thinks the same thing as the sheriff.  

Three: avert his eyes from the body lying on the steel table in the morgue. Pretend that federal intervention was warranted, even though he knows this case is another crime of opportunity and the sheriff was right. The sheriff is always right. ‘ Waste of the FBI’s time, if you ask me. ’

Four: write up another field report that uses all the same words as the one before. Mail it back to Washington. Hopefully it will reach the Assistant Director before he does.

Then, five, begin the drive home.

Rinse. Repeat. Repeat again. Avoid his mother’s calls when he stops for the night at an interstate motel. Make excuses not to see his father when he’s in town. Pretend like he’s not bothered missing out on another promotion, because that would mean moving to a desk job and he likes being out in the field.

He likes driving. This is the mantra he repeats in his head rather than listening to the song on the radio.

There is rhythm to this loneliness .

The car’s engine rumbles on an empty stomach and Alec glances down at the fuel meter, ticking ever closer to the red with each passing and uncountable mile. The gas station in the distance begins to draw closer, finally allowing Alec to catch up, as its cluster of lights shift and reform into the familiar shape of civilisation.

Alec’s turn signal lights up the immediate stretch of highway with flashing orange and a click-click-click sound in the front seat of the car. There’s no-one behind him and no-one ahead of him, but he slows almost to a stop as he eases the car off the road and onto the crunch of hard-packed sand.

A single streetlamp overlooks the highway, casting a pool of unsettled yellow-white light across a phone booth that stands slanted upon the roadside. The gas station lingers a little further back: a small, stout building with a flat roof and a pile of browning-Christmas trees propped up out front. Its two gas pumps advertise diesel at a discounted price, but one of them appears to be out of order.

Beside the gas station, there is a diner; it’s old and clapped-out and almost empty at this time of night, but the bright light beaming through its windows in all directions is painful to look at. The movement of people inside is like a scene playing out in an old movie, stuck on repeat over and over again, the tape unable to skip forward. A repeated moment, and one which Alec has played his part in too many times to count.

Again, his stomach rumbles loudly and he guides the car to a stop before pulling up the handbrake.

He’s alone at the pumps. As he steps out of the car, the silence greets him; the wind falls and the road is swallowed up behind him by an encroaching night, compressing the universe into a single point. A single flicker in time.

Alec retrieves his service weapon from the glove box and clips it onto his belt, pats his chest for his badge tucked into his breast pocket, before drawing his overcoat tight around him. He won’t linger out here, not when it feels like something just out of sight is holding its breath and shifting in and out of bounds; he’s far too afraid of falling back into the passage of time.

Instead, he turns towards the diner; the bell above the door jingles the same as it always does. The TV in the corner is on mute but hums with static. The sound of plates clattering in the kitchen is enough to drown out his shoes on the chequered floor as the waitress looks up at him but doesn’t say hello.

Corner booths are best placed for people-watching and people-hiding and Alec, in his non-descript suit that matches his non-descript car, sinks onto the squeaky red-leather bench without being seen at all. He sighs heavily, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulder that has been bothering him for the last fifty miles.

There are scuffs on the leather and old coffee stains on the table, but he fishes his keys, wallet, and badge out of his pocket and tosses them on top of the menu; he already knows what he’s going to order and there’s no need to look. He’s been craving something greasy since he left Portland this morning, fuelled only by a cup of filter coffee from the machine in the motel lobby.  

Alec grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes, a soft groan catching in his throat. In the same moment, the lights overhead seem to flicker, although not for long. Must be a short circuit. The waitress rubbing down the bar doesn’t look up, focused too intently on a coffee-ring stain that isn’t really there.

Diners late at night are strange places. Liminal places. Places of beginnings and endings and threshold moments and tangled journeys, forever caught in that feeling of arriving or departing - but the longer one lingers, the more reality begins to distort.

Alec is not alone in the diner, but the diner is alone in the night that laps and recedes against the windows that look out over the parking lot. Beyond, the gas station hums with a familiar argon sound, bright and electric and not-quite-right in the dark and, behind that, the edge of the highway outlines this displaced moment.

There is nothing else. Alec’s eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, and for all he knows of the endless fields of wheat that stretch out to the horizon, he cannot see them. The bell above the door chimes again and a young couple slips into the diner, their arms slung low around each other’s waists, giggling as they take up two stools against the bar. Three seats down from them, an old man in a trucker hat and a Chicago Bulls’ jersey is frowning at the TV above his head, trying to lip-read the late-night news anchor because there are no subtitles. In the far corner of the diner, a group of teenagers are tossing fries at each other and one of them makes a milkshake bullseye.

Alec doesn’t know why these people are here, in the middle of a late-night nowhere. He can’t remember the name of the last town he passed through, but it wasn’t more than a handful of houses and a couple of telephone poles kept upright by plywood and nails.

He glances back out at the parking lot, but his rental is the only car there. Strange.  

Strange, but not unexpected. He has learned not to question it, these fragments of unaligned reality, because soon enough he’ll be on his way again, a burger in his belly and bacon grease smeared across the corner of his mouth, and this diner will cease to exist as soon as he’s out of sight and over the ridge of the highway.

Perhaps it will appear again somewhere else. Perhaps he will come across this place again, another mile or two down the road, inhabited by a different group of late-night travellers who will watch him from the corners of their eyes but not say a word, because a lone man in a cheap suit is no more out of place here than they are at two in the morning.

The waitress brings over his burger and a side of fries, setting a mug down in front of him and filling it up with coffee from her pot. Alec nods at her in thanks and she blows a bubble of gum that pops across her mouth and sticks to her teeth, before she retreats behind the register and starts again on that stain.

Alec doesn’t waste any time tucking a napkin into his shirt collar. His tie is cheap and he doesn’t really care if he ruins it; there’s a spare in the bag in the trunk of his car anyway. He takes a large swig of coffee, and then a bite out of his burger, and ketchup and burger juice leak out through his fingers, splattering on the paper wrapper that covers his plate.

It tastes the same as it always does. His stomach growls loudly as he takes another bite and ketchup drips down his thumb.

Movement through the window catches his eye. He looks up and there, on the very edge of the light emanating from the gas station, is a man in the phonebooth next to the road. His back is to Alec but he’s gesturing wildly as he talks into the receiver, and the wind, now returned, billows through his long woollen coat.

A slice of tomato falls out of Alec’s burger with a distinct plop . He’s not sure why the man draws his attention, but Alec has long since learned to trust his gut - it’s an invaluable skill to have in the Bureau , his father would say. It will get you places. It will make people see you as someone they can trust to watch their back. You can’t buy that sort of loyalty, Alec.

The man is tall. He has dark hair and long legs and he grips the edge of the phonebooth with his free hand. He seems to be having a very intense conversation, unlike the hum of background noise that surrounds Alec now.

The man is an anomaly. He is not someone Alec has seen at a diner before - not a truant teenager or a trucker or a pair of lovers on a late-night tryst - and he doesn’t fit the narrative.

Alec wolfs down the rest of his burger, barely pausing for breath, and washes it down with a swig of coffee that burns slightly too hot. He leaves his fries untouched and throws down a twenty dollar bill, stuffing his badge and wallet into his pockets as he makes for the door.

The bell jingles a third time. Alec wipes the back of his hand across his mouth as he steps out into the cold, no doubt smearing ketchup across his chin. He knows his suit is creased and his shirt is rumpled from the drive, his hair upswept by the sudden gust of wind that threatens to knock him off his feet, and he can almost hear Jace laughing in his ear, alright, G-Man?

Alec passes by his car and heads straight for the phonebooth, but the closer he gets, the more he can hear of the man’s one-sided conversation.

“And there’s no way you can get a guy out here tonight?” the man is saying. “I can pay extra for the trouble. Uh-huh. Yes. Yes, it’s pretty urgent.”

Alec draws to a stop when the length of his shadow steps upon the backs of the man’s shoes. He shoves his hands into his pockets so as to appear as unthreatening as possible when the man inevitably turns around, but -

“I don’t see how a service can advertise itself as 24-hour and then not be available in an emergency,” the man says into the phone. He sounds stressed; there’s something about the cadence of his voice that rumbles through Alec’s chest and draws the hair on the back of his neck up on end. Something decades-old familiar. “The least you can do is give me the number for another rental service. A cab company. Something. Anything .”

The man turns away from the phonebooth, catching sight of Alec from the corner of his eye and holding up a finger as if to say hold on a minute , but he stops, whatever words on his tongue extinguished into roadside dust.

Alec’s eyes widen. He knows this man.

Fuck. He more than knows this man. He remembers the first time they met, the firm confidence of his handshake, the bright colours of his shirt, the way Alec thought, at the time, this man is going to change you .

It’s Magnus. Magnus Bane.

Alec never expected to see Magnus again. Not since -

Well, not since then .

“Magnus,” says Alec, like an exhale. And God , his mouth has not formed that name in years; he’s heard it, sometimes, inside his memories, but never beyond. “What are you -”

Magnus stares at him in disbelief, and Alec can hear the man on the other end of the phone line asking hey, are you still there? Hello? where Magnus holds the receiver away from his ear.

Something doesn’t make sense here, but Alec can’t put his finger on it. Not once has he met someone at a diner who he recognises. They’re all meant to be faceless people; people he could meet again a hundred times and still not recognise.

But Alec would recognise Magnus Bane with his eyes closed. It’s been years, and yet the feeling that floods his chest now, is -

An ache.

“Yes, sorry,” Magnus says suddenly, half-turning back to this phone call. His disbelief becomes a scowl. “No, it’s fine. I’ll call them myself. Thank you. Okay. Goodnight.”

The man on the other end of the line hangs up first and the dial tone echoes in the night for a moment, and then another, and then another.

Alec swallows thickly. He draws his hands out of his pockets and folds them behind his back, clenching his fingers in a tight grip where they can’t be seen.

Carefully, Magnus sets the phone down inside the phonebooth, and turns back to Alec, and then - he smiles.

“Alexander Lightwood,” he says, with a shake of his head. His smile grows broad, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “God, what are the chances? Any other night, and I’d think this was a figment of my imagination, but with the way today’s been going, I-” He stops himself and takes a half-step forward. “I haven’t seen you since -”

“Since before Quantico,” Alec interrupts. He knows he’s staring but he can’t help it. “Ten years. Yeah.”

Ten years, three months, and twenty one days. Alec has been counting. If he looked down at his watch, he would know the amount of time that has passed to the minute, to the second, in fact, but he’s not about to admit to that.

He never expected to see Magnus again, and yet -

He hoped.  

“Ten years, really?” Magnus remarks, folding his arms across his chest. Alec follows the movement with his eyes. “Yes, I suppose it must be. 1985, wasn’t it? Christ, that makes me feel old.”

He looks Alec up and down, focusing on Alec’s dust-scuffed shoes, and then on the gun that sits snug on his hip. The corner of his mouth lifts, and his smile becomes a little more genuine.

“I see it’s Special Agent Lightwood now, though. Congratulations.”

“Alec’s still fine,” Alec says quickly. “I mean - you can still call me Alec. That’s fine.”

“Alec,” says Magnus, sounding it out. He’s always held Alec’s name with a special sort of care, but now, he says it like he’s saying it for the very first time. “Alexander.”

Alec doesn’t know what to say. He stares at Magnus, at the space between them that is too large for strangers who have just met, and which belongs only to two people who once knew each other well.

Serendipity laughs at Alec now; it sounds like the dull hum of neon light in a desert. It sounds like a hundred unanswered phone calls stretching back years.

“Alec -?”

“Sorry, this is - this is weird, I’m being weird,” Alec blurts. “I didn’t, uh - I really didn’t expect to see you, especially - especially here . I mean-” He squeezes his fingers tightly behind his back to stop himself from talking with his hands. “What, uh, what are you doing out here? I thought you still lived in L.A.?”

Magnus rolls his eyes. “Where to start?” he says softly, “I had some car trouble. The tire blew like a mile back and I swerved off the road and hit the fence. It won’t start now, which is something of a mild nuisance - because apparently we’re so deep in the ass-end of nowhere that I can’t get a mechanic to look at it until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest - but not as much of a nuisance as the meeting I will definitely miss if I’m stranded out here for the next God-forsaken twenty-four hours.”

Alec’s eyes flick to the highway, as if he might be able to see a mile into the distance and find the 1970 Dodge Challenger that Magnus had, far too many years ago and long-since sold for scrap, wrecked upon the roadside. It is, of course, too dark to see much of anything.

“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to call a cab out here,” Magnus continues, his mouth drawn down into a frown. “And I’m far too old to be hitch-hiking. The thrill of climbing into a potential serial killer’s car lost its appeal some decades ago.” With a brush of his fingers, he flicks away hair from his temple and huffs. “I suppose if I started walking now, I might reach Salt Lake by, I don’t know, Friday morning at best.”

Alec’s eyes snap back to Magnus. “You’re heading East?” he asks, far too eagerly. “Are you coming home?”

Something minute pinches in Magnus’ expression at that word. Home . Alec doesn’t miss it.

Magnus shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and he looks away, but there’s nothing there to pretend to be looking at. “No, not quite. If I had the time to drop by and see everyone, I would, but - I’m due in Baltimore in four days for a meeting with our investors.” He smiles wryly to himself. “And I thought it would be, oh, I don’t know, meditative or something equally asinine to make the drive across the country myself, rather than fly. See the sights. Enjoy being off-grid. Which, in hindsight, was very, very stupid.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Magnus shrugs. “Wait, I suppose. There’s not much else I can do. My cell phone is out of battery and I used up the last of my change on the payphone, so it looks like I’m stuck here until tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Alec says awkwardly.

“Yeah,” agrees Magnus.

In the glow of the gas station, reality trembles, hollowing out the shadows on Magnus’ face and flickering across the back of Alec’s knuckles. The motion of coming and going calls Alec back to the road and he glances back at his rental car.

It makes sense to offer Magnus a lift. Alec is heading in that direction, and he has an empty passenger seat and a working heater in the car, and a Bureau credit card in his back pocket.

It makes sense, and yet, he still hesitates.

“Well,” Magnus announces, “I don’t want to keep you. I might as well see what sort of coffee this place has on offer if I’m to be stuck here until tomorrow. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a drink before you go -”

“I’m actually on my way back to D.C.,” Alec says, thumbing over his shoulder at the car. He wets his lower lip with his tongue. “Baltimore’s not that far of a detour, so I, uh. I could give you a lift. If you want.”

“If I want?” Magnus repeats.

Alec swallows and nods. “If you want.”

Magnus’ face softens and he smiles at Alec. “Well, I’m not going to say no, am I? Although I don’t think I’m going to get my deposit back on my car.”

He looks over Alec’s shoulder at the rental. His expression changes, and if Alec were a kind stranger offering a ride to a man in trouble in the middle of the night, perhaps he wouldn’t notice.

But they’re not strangers, and in Magnus’ eyes, there is something Alec can’t quite place. It seems a little wistful. A little sad.

He says, “I would like that very much, Agent Lightwood.”

interlude

It’s 1985 and a man stands on the edge of the sidewalk, watching as a car turns right at the end of the street and disappears. He waits, half-expecting it to come back, circling around the block and pulling up beside him, the window already rolled down, but it doesn’t.

Ten years pass, and it doesn’t, and the man has to live with it.

Empty spaces and hands on the steering wheel and loneliness and want . In the end, that’s what everything boils down to.

I want you to come back. I want to see you again. I wanted you to stay.  

This is the rhythm Alec knows well, played out in the key of highways.

I want something I still don’t have a name for.

second chord

The soundtrack to night-driving is a composition of three things: the car heater as it puffs out warm air; the rental wheezing in the cold, coughing and spluttering with seasonal flu; and the deep stretch of silence.

Usually, Alec welcomes the silence.  

In the passenger seat, Magnus shrugs out of his overcoat and tosses it into the backseat, scrubbing his hands together in front of his mouth as he wills circulation back into his fingers. His shirt, open at the throat, looks thin and flimsy and hardly warm enough for a Midwest winter, but the soft shimmer of the satin is devoid of the harsh shadows that cut across Alec’s chest like the black line of a seatbelt.

Alec forces himself to look away. Keep your eyes on the road, he tells himself. And think of something to say before he thinks you’ve forgotten how to talk entirely. He fiddles with the dial on the radio until he finds the company of static, but it morphs all too quickly into Wham!’s Last Christmas .

Alec grumbles below his breath.

“Still a Grinch, I see,” Magnus says with a smirk. “Where’s your festive cheer?”

Alec returns both his hands to the wheel. “It’s too early for Christmas songs,” he replies, “Thanksgiving was literally three days ago and it’s not even December yet.”

“Are you saying the dulcet tones of George Michael don’t do it for you?”

“I prefer Mariah Carey,” Alec mutters. It makes Magnus laugh.

Alec glances at him from the corner of his eye as Magnus begins tapping his finger to the beat of the song against the door handle.

Alec, too, feels restless, but in a different way. He can’t stop looking, stealing glances at Magnus in the rearview mirror. Perhaps he is a trick of the light. Maybe Alec has been driving too long without a break and now he’s seeing people from his past who shouldn’t be here - but are.

Nothing that happens on the road is real, after all.

He digs his fingernail into the skin of his thumb and begins picking.

He’s lived this moment before; he knows he has. Him and Magnus alone in the front seat of a car and Alec’s tongue heavy in his mouth with all the things he doesn’t know how to say, and all the things he couldn’t say ten years ago, because he wasn’t brave enough then.

Hell, he’s hardly brave enough now. He wonders if Magnus remembers any of it.

The space between them is too large for small talk. Conversations that begin with All I Want For Christmas Is You is overrated though, now that you mention it , or so, how is your mother?, or even do you remember the last day we saw each other? are not enough to bridge the gap carved out by a decade of silence.

The thought stretches Alec so painfully thin. He picks at his thumbnail until it begins to sting, then winces, and draws it to his mouth to soothe it with his tongue.

“So,” Magnus begins, in the same instance. He’s still drumming his fingers to the beat of the radio, but now he’s slightly out of time. “What are you doing all the way out here in Idaho?”

Alec could laugh. “I was in Portland,” he says, “Local P.D. request FBI consultation on a case, so. Yeah. Turned out they didn’t need my help.”

“And they made you drive all the way out there?” Magnus asks, and Alec nods. “Sounds grim.” He stops tapping and runs his index finger across the dark polish on his thumb in thought. “Are you still living at home?”

Alec clenches his hands on the steering wheel. “No, I - I moved,” he says. “Uh, not long after I graduated the Academy, actually, but only to D.C.”

“Ah,” Magnus remarks. He pauses for a moment long enough to become awkward. “Still close enough to see your mom on the weekends, though.”

Alec nods again. Close enough , yes , but he doesn’t say it out loud. Close enough for New England ghosts to haunt every intersection between the city and his parents’ big white house in the country whenever he makes the drive upstate.

In ten years, he’s barely moved fifty miles, and Magnus -

Well. The same cannot be said for Magnus.  

Magnus clears his throat, louder than the hum of the radio. “And your parents?” he asks. “Isabelle?” He scans the horizon, fixed on the markings in the road disappearing beneath the wheels of the car. “How are they? Well, I hope?”

“Same as always,” Alec shrugs. “Overbearing. Dad’s retired now, and Iz moved to New York for work last year. Max is in college, so mom’s started questioning him about his life choices instead of mine.”

“Only took thirty-five years,” Magnus chuckles. “How is your mom? Are you seeing them for the holidays?”

Alec makes a noise that amounts to yeah, something like that .

What he doesn’t say is this: his parents’ marriage has been strained a while now - not as many years as Magnus has been gone, but close enough - and Alec is thirty years too old to be used as ammunition, or worse, a bartering tool in a messy ending. The divorce is only a matter of time now.

If only the road continued on forever, he would not have to go back home for the holidays. He wouldn’t have to sit through another Christmas of icy silences and thinly-veiled insults and his mother trying to butter him up while his father does the same to Isabelle. He wouldn’t have to lie awake in his childhood bedroom and listen to his parents screaming at each other downstairs, all the while wishing for the tap-tap-tap of pebbles thrown against his window, begging for it to be open.

A lot has changed since Magnus last saw him, and Alec didn’t have to move across the country for that.

A lot has changed since Alec stood on the sidewalk and watched Magnus’ car turn the corner at the end of the street for the very last time and not come back.

A semi-truck appears in the distance: first, as a pin-prick of light, and then as two beams of headlights striking the highway and the growl of its engine. The whole car rumbles and Alec grips tight to the steering wheel as the headlights blind him and shapes dance across his eyes. The light bleaches through Magnus’ dark hair and streaks across the skin visible beneath the open collar of his shirt; he holds his hand over his brow and winces.

The truck is thunder: a brief jolt and a flash, and then it’s gone, an aftershock of red light disappearing in the rearview mirror.

For a while, there is only silence. A mile, maybe more. Long past the truck vanishing from view, its light fading into the dark; and it’s the sort of silence that is thick and heavy and awkward.

At the five mile mark, Magnus inhales and turns in his seat to look at Alec.

“So, the FBI,” he says, like he has an obligation to fill the quiet, because letting it stew is somehow worse. “What’s that like? Maryse must be proud.”

“Yeah,” Alec mumbles. “She is.”

“It suits you, you know? Alec Lightwood, Special Agent. Not that I didn’t always know that it would.”

Alec’s mouth twitches, a smile in another lifetime. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Magnus gestures with his hand. There are rings on his fingers that fail to catch the thin and distant light, but his fingers, long and slender, draw focus.

“You’re smart. Logical. Far too severe for your own good, which I imagine serves you well in law enforcement. You’ve always had a keen sense of justice,” he explains. His voice softens. “You know I’ve always thought that about you.”

Alec swallows thickly. “Magnus, you don’t have to -”

“And besides,” Magnus interrupts. “I always knew you’d look good in a suit.”

Alec looks down at himself. “What, even a suit off the rack?”

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything.”

Shakily, Alec laughs under his breath, but he relaxes his hands on the wheel and his knuckles fade from white back to pink. He lets the tense line in his shoulders fall flat.

“I don’t really have anyone to give me advice on what I should be wearing anymore,” he admits. “Or what colour ties match my -”

“Complexion?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Green. It’s dark green,” Magnus says. He smiles to himself, amused by something far back in time. “Do you remember that time when-”

“Yes,” Alec says. Yes, of course I remember. I haven’t forgotten a single thing . “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I still have that tie, the one you picked out for me that Christmas.”

“And the pocket square? They were a matching set -”

“Still the only pocket square I own,” says Alec.  

Magnus chuckles to himself, swiping his thumb across his lower lip in thought. The nostalgia becomes him; his expression softens with the memory of something fond.

The same cannot be said for Alec.

If only pocket squares could be metaphors for other things. For years gone by and silences that were once not this awkward and filled with jilted conversation. Or for a place once frequented but now abandoned; or a past that Alec still calls his now .

Alec is too clumsy at this; he doesn’t know how to step back into a space once occupied with ease, making smalltalk and laughing about Christmases in 1979 as if they were yesterday and they haven’t gone ten years without talking.

He’s not like Magnus; he couldn’t drop everything and leave it all behind. He didn’t get to move on. He had nowhere to go, trapped in this endless back-and-forth of travelling, always returning to the very same place once departed.  

interlude

On a postcard never sent:

What is worse: the separation, or the place where we will meet again, afterwards, that looks and feels like nowhere and is no longer familiar?

I miss you. I am afraid that I will no longer know you when I see you again.

third chord

Two motel room doors. Two identical rooms with identical twin beds and box-set TVs with only five channels and VCRs that don’t really work. Two sets of keys, although the weight of the fob in Alec’s hand feels more like brass than cheap white plastic.

He’s been here before: a shared dorm room, long, long ago. And then, after that, two houses on the same suburban street, sharing the same zip code. And then, finally, two cities, half a world apart.

He and Magnus, half a lifetime spent apart.

Alec did not notice the growing distance until it was too late; in hindsight, he’s not sure if that hurts more or less, to be blindsided by a farawayness he never saw coming. But here, now, there’s five-and-a-half feet of space between his shoulder and Magnus’, standing in front of their respective motel room doors, and happenstance has crossed their lines again.

Alec looks down at the key in his hand and then back up.

Beside him, Magnus casts a long and lonely shadow, thin and black as it stretches back into the dark. The wind ruffles his hair and plunders the pockets of his coat in an act of midnight robbery. The cold has chapped his lips already and he grumbles below his breath as he jams his key into the lock with frost-bitten fingers.

Alec doesn’t mean to be looking, but he is. He’s not sure he’s looked away since Magnus stepped out of that phone booth, as if slipping through a gap in time connecting two unrelated places that somehow ended up overlapped.

Magnus’ door clicks and he pushes it open with a soft, “aha!”, flipping on the light inside. The light tumbles out of the room - cheap, yellow, glaring - and Magnus bends down to grab his bag from his feet.

He pauses, then, in his open doorway.

“Well, then,” he says, looking at Alec with a half smile. “Until tomorrow, I suppose?”

“Yeah,” says Alec. He clenches the key in his palm until the metal digs into his fingers. If Magnus notices, he doesn’t let on. “Listen, Magnus. About what happened, when you left-”

“I’m glad, you know,” Magnus interrupts. “For whatever serendipitous force brought you to that gas station tonight. It’s good to see you. I mean it.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Alec replies. “I didn’t think - I didn’t think that day was going to be goodbye. I didn’t realise. If I’d known, Magnus ...”

“I didn’t either,” replies Magnus. His voice becomes softer. His eyes, too. Apologetic in a way that might take Alec years to unravel - or seconds. “But these things happen. You can’t stay stuck in one place forever, Agent Lightwood.”

Alec nods stiffly but says nothing.

Magnus offers him another smile, leaning heavily on his door frame.

“Alexander?” he asks, as if oblivious.

Alec squeezes the key tighter in his hand. “Yeah?”

A pause, then. Deliberate and weighted, and for a moment, Alec wonders if Magnus is going to answer the question that hasn’t been asked.

(Do you remember the day you left?)

(Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not talk. It’s in the past and we’re both different people now.)

But, instead:

“I’ll see you in the morning, Alec,” he says. “Goodnight. And thank you, again.”

The door closes and the light vanishes, and Alec is left suddenly in the darkness, gazing at the space once occupied. The night around him is cold. A whisper sets heavily upon his tongue but goes unspoken.

Everything always goes unspoken.

interlude

Somewhere between here and 1985, there is a man who doesn’t regret letting his feelings go unsaid. There is a man who moved on with his life; a man who doesn’t live in a moment years ago, with someone else’s hand playing idly in his hair.

There is a man who meets an old friend at a gas station in rural Idaho and it doesn’t hurt in a way he can’t ever explain.

Alec wishes that he knew him.

fourth chord

It’s always night, on the road.

As with endless highways and endless diners, other things begin to repeat themselves too. Alec prefers driving at night. It’s quiet; he can hear himself think; he can run red lights without being pulled over, without anybody in the world seeing him at all. He affords himself this one little thrill, the knowledge that the power to swerve off the road is clenched in his fists.

A fuel tanker passes the car on the opposite side of the highway, the sound of its exhaust like a fog horn parting thick cloud; for a moment, the low hum of the radio is wiped from existence. Alec eases the car over into the middle of the lane with the barest adjustment of the wheel, avoiding the spray of wet grit kicked up by the truck’s wheel arches. As the rumble fades, the melody of late-night jazz begins anew.

He glances sideways at Magnus in the passenger seat. His temple rests against the window and his eyes are closed but he’s not asleep; Alec can tell by the way he’s drawing his thumb in tiny concentric circles against his index finger again, as if deep in thought.

It was always a tell of his.

There is so much of him that hasn’t changed. So much of him that has crossed the threshold from Alec’s memory and fanned out into reality, and Alec is not quite sure where it all meets and blends together. Magnus is half a stranger and half a man ten years younger than he is now, with expensive clothes and the same aftershave and a twinkle in his eye and a strange, unspoken grief on his face whenever he thinks Alec isn’t looking.

But Alec is always looking.

There are memories in the footwell and on the dashboard and in the usually-unoccupied passenger seat of his rental car. Memories that Alec often revisits on other long and inconsequential journeys as a way to pass the time as the odometer climbs.

Magnus is always the main feature of those memories.

It’s 1978 and Alec is a junior in college and Magnus is stumbling into a lecture hall half-an-hour late with a thermos in his hand. He’s wearing the shortest shorts Alec has ever seen, and he’s slumping into the seat next to Alec, whispering in Alec’s ear that he’s so hungover he’s about to revisit Thanksgiving dinner.

Then, it’s 1981 and Magnus is trading secrets with Isabelle at a drive-in movie theater while Alec buys the popcorn; and he’s flattering Maryse’s cooking while leant across the kitchen island, chin in his hand; and he’s slamming the door to his and Alec’s shared dorm, before sneaking back in an hour later, only to find Alec waiting up for him with an apology at the ready.

It’s 1982 and he’s laughing. He’s giving Alec the grand tour of his mother’s home, three streets down from the house where Alec’s parents live. I can’t believe it took moving away to college for us to meet , he says to Alec. We’ve lived this close for so long and we didn’t even know.

It’s 1984 and he’s curling his hand over the back of Alec’s neck, feeling out the knobs in Alec’s spine. His breath is warm against Alec’s jaw as he whispers gentle words into Alec’s ear.

It’s 1985 and he’s packing up his car for the very last time.

Yesterday is tangled in Magnus’ hair. Memories twist time out of alignment and rearrange it into something, and someone, that Alec does not recognise. Ahead of them, in the distance, on the horizon, is a year from a decade ago.  

But here in the car, moonlight makes crosses on Magnus’ body. He is beautiful, still. Older, more refined, more improbable , but the composition of him is something that makes Alec’s heart ache as if he’s eighteen again and they’ve only just met.

The mole above his eyebrow is too familiar.

The lines around his eyes that appeared only after his mother passed. Alec remembers that summer well. He remembers listening to Magnus cry as he stood in Magnus’ kitchen doing the dishes that had been neglected for a week.

The map of his hands. A journey that Alec never took but longed for. Longed for and left to gather dust, like an atlas tucked away on the highest shelf of a bookcase.

In the dark, Magnus cracks open one eye, as if aware of being scrutinised. Alec turns his attention back to the road, but it is too late. He’s been caught.

“What is it?” Magnus asks, and his voice is smooth and rich and fills the car like music, even so shortly after waking. “Are we out of gas already?”

“No,” says Alec. “We’ll be fine for a while.”

“Hungry, then? We could stop for a late dinner. Or early breakfast. I’m not entirely sure what time it is, but I can always eat.”

Alec doesn’t reply, but he presses his mouth into a thin line.

Magnus’ eyes narrow. “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

Magnus scoffs. “You’ve always been many things, Alec, but able to lie to me is not one of them.” He laughs a little. “You think I’ve forgotten the look on your face when you’re trying not to spill your heart?”

No , Alec thinks. No, of course you haven’t. You should’ve, but you haven’t. You should’ve, because then at least one of us could say they moved on.

Alec exhales through his nose and flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances in the rearview mirror, but there’s nothing behind them for miles. Much like pocket squares, perhaps that is a metaphor too.

“You never called,” he says, trying to sound casual.

Immediately, Magnus tenses. He shifts in his seat and sits up a little straighter, angling himself to look at Alec.

“I did,” he says, “At the start. You never answered.”

“You were in L.A. The time zones -”

“Oh, come on,” Magnus laughs. “You could’ve called me, you had my number. I know you did, because I wrote it down for you and left it on your bedside table, the day I moved.”

Alec squeezes his eyes closed; for a brief moment of respite, the road ahead of him vanishes. He thinks about letting go of the wheel at 90 miles per hour - not because he wants to, but because the thought of picking up the phone and hearing Magnus’ voice on the other end was always something that felt like driving his car into a ditch.

It’s the fear of impact. It’s the old hurt of being abandoned. It’s the longing to have run after Magnus’ car and asked to go with him that day in 1985. It’s all such a blur. Alec cannot sift between it all.

Magnus sighs heavily, knocking his head back against the seat. He looks at Alec from the corner of his eye and studies him at length.

“Maybe we should stop,” he says slowly. “The next town, find a diner. Get some food.”

“It’s fine. I’d prefer to keep driving,” Alec says, “If we keep stopping, you won’t make your meeting in time.”

Magnus frowns.

You clearly want to talk about it , Alec imagines him saying. Evidently, there are things that went unsaid.  

Magnus says none of those things. His phone begins to ring and it shatters the strange tension in the front seat, splitting it like a sudden burst of lightning. Magnus twists around and reaches into the backseat, rummaging through his bag. He returns with a cellphone in his hand, pulling out the antenna and flipping it open.

He meets Alec’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he presses it to his ear.

“Magnus, speaking.”

Magnus listens to the voice on the other end of the line and taps his fingers on his knee. He makes a low noise of disapproval to whomever he’s speaking.

“Yes, yes, Raphael, I know,” he says. “My battery died and I didn’t have a chance to charge it - do you know how much payphones cost? Do I look like the sort of person who carries change in his pocket?” A brief pause. “Don’t answer that.”

Alec reaches for the dial on the radio, intending to turn the volume down, but Magnus’ free hand darts out and swats his fingers away.

He mouths the word no and returns to his phone call, but Alec’s hand remains outstretched.

There’s a tingle in his fingertips, a short spark of static that leapt from Magnus to him, and he stares down at his hand as if he’s been burned.

And it makes Alec realise, oh.

So you’re lonely -lonely.

“I’ll be in Baltimore in four days. I ran into an old friend who offered me a lift,” Magnus continues into his phone. He listens to the other speaker for a moment, glancing briefly at Alec’s hand and frowning. “You’re lucky I phoned you at all after all that car trouble. It was a courtesy only.”

The radio briefly breaks into static before the song resumes again. Magnus begins drumming his fingers on his leg, listening intently to his phone call. He uhms and ahs and says something about investors and capital and shareholders and begins talking numbers that are too big for Alec to really understand.

He opens up the glove box and pulls out an old diner napkin that Alec shoved in there three states ago, and scribbles down a note, but he has to tap his pen against his thigh for the ink to flow.

Alec curls his hand into a fist and rests it on his thigh, but the tingle doesn’t go away. He listens to Magnus talk - this whole other person that Alec doesn’t know, but who he was clearly always meant to be - but all he can think about is how long he has gone without being touched.

Do you know? he thinks. Do you know that the last person who touched me was you? Do you realise at all?

interlude

Driving is like running. The rhythm of the road; the splattering of rain against the windshield; the thrum of a heartbeat as the speedometer tips over ninety. Clear head. Relentless motion.

Forward, forward, forward, always and forever. Try to keep up. Don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t look back.

fifth chord

The diner is the first sign of civilisation that Alec has seen in over a hundred miles - and it is the same diner as it always is, an eminent glow on the 3AM horizon that creeps closer and closer like a spaceship hovering over the fields and drawing circles in the wheat and the barley.

It draws circles around Alec too, this singular moment in time. This microcosm that exists in the form of red leather seats and bright, fluorescent light, and the same empty parking lot and abandoned phonebooth on the highway verge. The waitress changes; sometimes, the group of teenagers in the booth at the back is an old couple embarking on a long trip south before they get too old to make the drive; and instead of a man at the bar watching the baseball, every few miles there will be an off-duty sheriff nursing a cup of diner coffee.

In the end, it’s all the same. A small pocket universe that Alec has crossed a thousand times in a thousand different rental cars.

Perhaps the people in the diner do not exist outside of it. Perhaps they are like pictures on a TV screen that cease to be once the lights have gone off and the static has fizzled and died.

Perhaps they exist only because Alec and Magnus are passing through, creating the world around them as they go. The Midwest has that quality about it.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate diner food,” Magnus says as Alec holds the door open for him and the bell jingles above their heads. “L.A. is on a health kick right now. Everything is kale. Try ordering a steak at any restaurant within a half-mile of downtown and they’ll have the bouncer throw you out on the sidewalk with your drink still in your hand.”

“Not sure they know what kale is out here,” Alec murmurs, leading the way to a booth by the window. He slides onto the bench as Magnus slumps down across from him, dramatically throwing his head back and closing his eyes. “You’re probably safe here.”

Magnus cracks open one eye to look at Alec. Beneath the table, his toes nudge against Alec’s, and then he shifts so that their knees knock together too. He throws a grin at Alec and expects a volley.

Alec tucks a smile into the corner of his mouth and rolls his eyes. He feels fragile, but he’s always been good at acting like he’s not. He picks up the menu and pretends like he doesn’t already know it like the back of his hand.

The waitress approaches their table with a megawatt smile that only brightens when Magnus turns his focus on her, casting her in spotlight. She laughs, tucks her hair behind her ear, and asks where they’re from. Magnus says Los Angeles. The waitress tells him she has a dream of becoming a singer and moving out West, seeing Hollywood and all that .

Alec has never been, but there was a summer back when Alec was in college, where Isabelle decided to follow a boy to California, swept up in the promise of love and adventure and new opportunities. Jace and Alec had protested, their mother had expressly forbid it, but Izzy had gone anyway, and it had ended in heartbreak six months later, as these things always do.

“Everybody in L.A. is from somewhere else,” Izzy had told him, when she came home for Christmas and Alec picked her up at the airport, her life packed up into suitcases in tow. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’re drawn there because of all the - you know, all the sparkle. The glamour, Alec. But really, people there are just running away from somewhere else. Somewhere they don’t really want to be.”

“You don’t want to be here?” Alec had asked.

Izzy shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s more … you don’t realise what was good in the place you left until you’re somewhere else. But then you’re too far to phone, or it costs too much to get a plane ticket, or you just don’t want to give people back home the satisfaction of knowing that they were right.”

Back in the diner, the waitress scribbles down their order on her notepad, pours Alec a coffee, and then tells Magnus she’ll be right back with his seltzer water.

Alec can’t help himself. “Seltzer water,” he murmurs. “And you say you don’t fit in in Los Angeles.”

Magnus laughs. “I didn’t say that .”

The diner coffee is cheap and watery; the burger Alec gets has no bacon, but too many gherkins soaked in brine. The fries are soggy, left bathing in grease all evening, but the waitress brings them an extra portion at no extra charge, because she mistakes Magnus’ friendly conversation for flirtation. Her number is tucked on a napkin beneath the plate.

Magnus rolls his eyes as he shows Alec, but he’s too good a person to crumple it up and toss it to the side. Instead, he slides the napkin into the pocket of his jacket, a keepsake. A souvenir of someone else’s dreams for the future. In that sense, it almost seems precious.  

“What?” Magnus asks when he notices Alec staring. “What’s the matter?”

Alec turns his attention back to his food, pulling out a soggy gherkin from his burger and draping it across the edge of his plate. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?”

Alec’s eyes dart to the pocket of Magnus’ jacket and then away again.

“Alec,” Magnus gently scolds. His smile becomes sympathetic. “Just ask me what you want to ask.”

“Are you gonna call her?”

Magnus shrugs. “Probably not. But who knows. Sometimes the people you meet by accident re-enter your life further down the line and become important. I don’t know where her story might take her.”

“What about your story?”

“My story?”

Alec nods, but says nothing.

Magnus leans forward across the table. “You know my story, Alec.”

A man lights a cigarette at the table two rows behind them; he draws smoke into his lungs and it escapes through his nose, a thin grey stream falling upwards, towards the tiled ceiling. Alec watches him tap the filter on the ashtray in the middle of his table and a clump of ash disintegrates from the lit end; it lands silently, like snow. Like dust on the highway.

Magnus follows Alec’s line of sight and turns in his seat, glancing over his shoulder at the man. When he looks back, he has one eyebrow raised expectantly.

The smell of cigarette smoke fills the diner - acrid, bitter, and faintly earthy. It takes Alec back to college, to sitting out on the back porch of Magnus’ mother’s house before Magnus sold it because he couldn’t bear to look at it any more. He can picture the pack of Morley's tucked beneath Magnus’ thigh. He can still remember the way the unlit cigarette bobbed between Magnus’ teeth as he told his secrets to both Alec and the dark.

“I quit, you know,” says Magnus, in the present. “They say it’s bad for you.”

“I always told you it was.”

Magnus smirks at him and leans forward again, his elbows resting on the table. He steals a limp fry from Alec’s plate and pops it into his mouth. “I listened, didn’t I?” He nods over his shoulder towards the cigarette-smoking man. “What do you think his story is?”

“Huh?”

“What do you think his story is? Why is he here, alone at a diner in the back-end of Wyoming, past midnight in the depths of November? Smoking a cigarette? He must have a story.”

Alec’s never really thought about it. He’s always imagined the inhabitants of the diner as a backdrop, not as characters in their own story.

He looks harder at the man now: he’s older than both Alec and Magnus, salt-and-pepper hair thinning at the back. Once handsome, perhaps, but the years have stretched out his face and made his jaw sag. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit, his shirt rumpled and his tie missing, the top button of his collar undone. He takes a deep puff of his cigarette, looks at it, and then extinguishes the lit end, grinding it into the ashtray.

“I don’t know,” Alec says slowly, looking back at Magnus. “Some sort of business trip?”

Magnus’ mouth lifts at the corners, drawing Alec in. “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. You see how he’s fingertips aren’t yellow? He’s clearly not a smoker, but he’s stressed enough to do it now.” Magnus reaches across the table and taps his finger against Alec’s fourth knuckle on his left hand. “And he’s not wearing a wedding ring, although looks like he was until recently. You see the mark?”

Alec steals a glance at the man, and then shuffles forward on the bench, so that he might drop his voice low and conspiratorial.

“Divorced, then?” he proposes.

“Maybe,” Magnus grins, “Or cheating, and he’s about to go back home and face his wife and pretend like his fishing trip with the guys from the office didn’t turn up much success, so they’re going to try again next weekend. He’s probably never fished in his life.”

Alec laughs then, loud enough to draw some attention. The sound is foreign in his mouth and a flush surges up the back of his neck as he sinks lower in his seat, hunching his shoulders and biting down on his smile.

Magnus looks delighted; in his eyes, Alec sees the reflection of the fluorescent lights above their heads, laid out like stars.

“You just made all that up from looking at him?” Alec asks.

Magnus beams at him. He reaches out and touches Alec’s fourth knuckle again. “Why, of course,” he says, and then he nods his chin towards the sheriff sat alone at the bar, making smalltalk with the waitress. “Now, how about him?”

sixth chord

The sun rises over the endless Nebraskan fields in shards of light.

Alec adjusts the rearview mirror. He will remember this moment later in figments of pale winter blue, snow-hazed pink, and November sky through the passenger window as Magnus gazes out across the passing countryside: a blank canvas for a painter to fill with bodies.

The color changes depending on where Alec chooses to angle the reflection of the mirror. Slightly to the left, and Magnus’ hands are stained in a pale wavering indigo, a purple so rare that it is only ever seen in the fleeting hour between twilight and sunrise. Move the mirror to the right, and that colour becomes orange, then gold.

Magnus swipes his hand across the condensation forming on the inside of the window, smearing colour across the landscape, but the story he might paint is hidden from view. Alec knows the start and he knows the middle - the brushstrokes the ones Alec remembers, but it’s the details that differ now -  and it’s the end of the story that is vague and undefined in sepia.

Alec thinks about cigarettes again. He wants to ask Magnus who it was that finally got him to quit. Or when exactly he started drinking seltzer water instead of shitty beer from Walmart, or decided that listening to the dial tone while waiting for Alec to pick up the phone was too much.

‘Let’s start the morning right with some ‘old but gold’ ,’ announces the radio. ‘ We’re going back twelve years to 1983 with this first track …’

Magnus makes a nose of protest in the passenger seat. The indigo has already faded from his hands, moving on to become something else, something more.

Faithfully by Journey begins to play. Alec recognises the song; in much the same way that a breath of fresh air on a cold winter morning can take him back to another place and another time, the first note paints a picture in his memories.

“This song played at Isabelle’s quincea ñ era,” he remarks. “D’you remember?”

“I remember,” Magnus says, tipping his head back against the seat and staring up at the roof of the car. He closes his eyes and basks in the light of the early morning sun. His smile grows gold. “That was the summer she dragged us all to see them in concert, wasn’t it? Jace had me make a tape for her, for the party. She played it on repeat all night.” Magnus pauses for a moment, letting his words sink in. “I also remember asking you to dance to this.”

Alec remembers that too. “Dad didn’t like that. He was pissed.”

”I’m not surprised. He tolerated me, at best. He was clearly jealous.”

Alec huffs on a laugh. “Jealous? How’s that, exactly?”

“Mhm, jealous,” Magnus reminisces. “Specifically of when I spun you around and dropped you on your ass in the grass and you laughed like I’d never heard you laugh before.”

Alec’s neck grows warm, a flush curling around his throat. He pinches at the skin between his thumb and forefinger where his hands both rest on the wheel.

“I was drunk,” he says, like an excuse. “I don’t remember much after that.”

That’s a lie. He was drunk, but he remembers being sprawled out across the grass and staring at the sky and laughing, until Magnus dropped down beside him, his hands planted either side of Alec’s head as he bent over him, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. And he had laughed it off like it was nothing, pulling Alec back to his feet, but Alec spent the rest of the summer picking that feeling out of his teeth.

Magnus turns his head to gaze out the window again. The curve of his smile speaks of fondness, of a quieted sense of longing and looking back. He seems at peace.

“I was drunk too,” he says, after a beat, to the countryside.

And oh, Alec wants that. He covets that like he covets touch. To be able to look back and not feel all this … regret.

Isabelle’s fifteenth birthday was the first and only time they kissed. Magnus probably doesn’t even remember that night, not beyond the dancing, the beer, the spinning around and around in dizzying circles. There’s no way he would remember a kiss that wasn’t really a kiss.

Alec never once told him how he wanted to do it again.

That was the problem, in the end.

interlude

“You haven’t moved on?” says a man, once, in a bar. He’s tall and handsome, with curly blonde hair and large hands that Alec has imagined once or twice upon his chest, although it never makes his heart leap like it should.

His name is Andrew. He works in the building next door to the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. They met at a coffee cart on the corner of the block, and this, now, is their third date.

Alec had thought it was going well.

“What?” says Alec, turning to look at Andrew, leant beside him at the bar. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t moved on from whoever it is that you loved first,” says Andrew. He pulls his American Express from his wallet and passes it to the bartender to settle their tab, but they’ve only had one drink so far. “And you know, that’s okay. I get it. The first is always different, especially when it gets left unfinished. But I can’t see this working between us if you’re still in that place. You’re a good guy, Alec, but I deserve more than that.”

seventh chord

“Take the next left.”

Alec scowls at the road before turning to look at Magnus. He is bent over an atlas he found beneath the passenger seat - it’s not Alec’s and must’ve been left behind by whoever rented the car before him. The pages are dog-eared and coffee ring-stained, and Magnus’ finger is pressed against the thin line of the highway that divides Nebraska in two.

“What? Why? This is the quickest way.”

Magnus glances up, a look of mischief on his face. He grins at Alec.

“There’s something I want to see and we’ll be passing right by. Seems like a shame to miss it while we’re here.”

“What is it?”

Magnus’ tongue pokes out between his teeth as his smile broadens. He mimes locking his mouth with an invisible key, tucking it into his shirt pocket.

Alec huffs. “Magnus, we’re in Nebraska. All they have here is grass. And nothing. And more grass, and more nothing.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Magnus folds the atlas up and sets it on his lap. He pats it with his hands. “What’s so wrong with a little spontaneity?”

“Uh, the fact that you have to be in Baltimore in three days? For an important meeting?” Alec says, gesturing with his flat palm at the road ahead. “You know I’m still on the clock, right? This is Bureau time you want to waste.”

“It’ll be an hour’s detour. We can afford it.”

“ Magnus .”

Magnus just grins at him. It’s the same grin that used to get Alec into so much trouble back in college; it leans against his doorframe with arms folded and a come-hither look in its eyes, and Alec has never been able to say no. Not to Magnus.

Magnus laughs. “Wow, they really did shove that stick right on up your ass at Quantico, didn’t they?”

Alec glares at him, but Magnus reaches out and pats Alec on the forearm, gently curling his fingers around Alec’s wrist. His touch, unfairly, is warm.

“Come on. The turning’s coming up,” he says. “Time to make a decision, Agent Lightwood. You don’t always have to play by the rules. Live a little.”

Alec rolls his eyes, but flicks the turn signal and merges into the outside lane, slowing as the turning approaches. Magnus beams at him and his laughter is buoyant, delighted as he claps Alec on the shoulder. His hand lingers, fingers pressing into Alec’s shirt, thumb against Alec’s pulse point.

Alec takes the turning.

He takes the turning and he wishes, only once, that Magnus might tell him exactly what those rules are. For a situation like this, he wonders, when you’re in the front seat of a car on an endless highway with a man you haven’t seen in years and who, once upon a time, you would’ve followed anywhere.

Although, in the end, not everywhere.  

A sign on the roadside welcomes them to Alliance, Nebraska, but instead of houses and street lamps, it’s grass that stretches for miles in every flat direction, endless swathes of frostbitten green. The road, now, is dirt and dust, and in the distance, a single white building and a cluster of standing stones appear as a landmark on the horizon.

Alec slows the car, but as the stones come into focus, he realises they’re not stones at all.

“Are those … cars ?” Alec asks, squinting into the distance. He looks sharply at Magnus. “Magnus, what -?”

Magnus holds up the atlas, his finger pressed against a roadside attraction labelled Carhenge .

“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Alec says.

“Stonehenge replicated entirely out of cars, you mean?”

“Yes. That .”

“Well, it’s not as exciting as the World’s Biggest Ball of Paint , sure,” Magnus grins. “But when in Rome, Alexander. When in Rome.”

Alec pulls off the road, passing by the visitor’s sign that reads: Carhenge and Car Art Reserve. Welcome! The parking lot, little more than a field worn thin by tire treads, is scarred by muddy trenches that have frozen solid in the night and not yet thawed, and the rental’s suspension works hard to navigate them.

Alec huffs as he pulls up the handbrake and cuts the engine, but Magnus is already twisting in his seat to reach for his coat. He shoots Alec a cavalier grin as he opens the car door and tumbles out into the cold, and the blast of icy-cold air hits Alec square in the face.

Alec grimaces, but in front of the car, Magnus knocks his knuckles against the hood and gestures for Alec to follow him. Alec grumbles and pats himself down for his keys-wallet-ID-gun , before grabbing his own coat and shoving open the driver’s door.

The only other vehicle in the parking lot is a campervan, shiny and white and sparkling in the winter sunlight, either a midlife crisis or an early retirement investment. An older couple - a man and a woman - are standing in front of it, peering over a large DSLR camera. He’s in socks and sandals and she has binoculars looped around her neck, and if the weather was any warmer, Alec is sure they would both be in cargo shorts too.

“What attracts people to places like this?” Alec mutters, stuffing his hands into his pockets and turning up the collar of his overcoat as he hurries after Magnus. He hunches his shoulders, but the wind feels like it’s gusting through him, with nothing to stop or hinder it across the plains. “Why would you drive all the way out here to see … this ?”

“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey, Alexander,” Magnus teases, walking backwards so that he can face Alec. “Why do we do anything without purpose? Because it’s there, and because we can.”

Behind him, the large circle of cars stands out of the landscape, spray-painted grey to look even less like standing stones. Alec grits his teeth.

“It’s about those little moments that break up a long drive,” Magnus continues, nudging Alec’s arm. “Or making small and inconsequential memories that can be revisited whenever one needs something slightly absurd to fall back on. It’s something to do with another person, even if that person is insistent on being a grouch the entire time we’re here-”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Alec grumbles. “Let’s just hurry up and look because it’s fucking freezing out here and I wanna get back in the car.”

Alec’s dress shoes sink straight into the mud as they traipse across the grass towards the circle of cars; the squelch-squelch-squelch of his feet is loud enough to be heard over the wind. Along the horizon, the sun is weeping yellow, low in the sky and sinking moment by moment towards sunset, and the shadows that stretch out lengthways from the stones-that-are-not-stones are long and warped.

Alec stops when his toes meet one such shadow and he looks up at the stack of cars towering over him. He tilts his head to the side, but it looks no better from an angle. Magnus steps away from him, meandering over towards an information sign.

“ ‘Carhenge is formed from vintage American automobiles, all covered with gray spray paint,’ ” he reads out. “‘ Built by Jim Reinders, it was dedicated at the June 1987 summer solstice in memory of his father. ’ Huh. How about that.”

“My dad would kill me,” Alec mutters.

“Oh, yes, mine too,” says Magnus. He bends down and squints at the smaller text on the sign. “‘ Carhenge consists of 39 automobiles arranged in a circle measuring about 96 feet in diameter.’ ”

“That seems excessive.”

“I think it’s strangely compelling, actually,” Magnus says. “There’s something about roadside Americana that has its own distinct charm. It’s a product of human eccentricities and I like that.”

“Oh yeah, and what are you seeing?” Alec says, gesturing with his hand. “Because all I see is a 15ft tall metal monstrosity.”

Magnus wanders back over to him, pressing up against Alec’s arm for the sake of warmth. He folds his arms across his chest, shoving his hands under his arms, and huffs out warm air that forms white clouds. He gazes up at the monolith above them.

“Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Alexander,” he says. He frowns then, studying the twisted shapes of metal and fibreglass as if they’re some extraordinary work of art kept behind velvet ropes and a glass case and only allowed to be looked upon for a fleeting moment, and not an old car barely spared from rusting. “Michelangelo despised the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and yet it’s one of the most impressive feats of Renaissance art that still exists.”

“ Magnus ,” Alec presses.

“Mhm?”

Alec pauses. He studies Magnus’ face in profile: the line of his nose, the sharp cut of his jaw, the purse of his lips as he contemplates some deeper meaning that passes Alec by. High in his cheeks, the cold paints his skin red.

Alec thinks he understands a little, then. Nobody really comes to Alliance, Nebraska to see thirty-nine vintage cars spray painted grey and stacked together like some prehistoric monument from halfway across the world. There are other things worth looking at.

Alec shrinks down into the collar of his coat. “Michelangelo is overrated anyway,” he grumbles.

interlude

Here is the creation of a new memory: the orange-gold of a sunset, the cold metal of a rental car against the back of Alec’s thighs, and the warmth of a cheap coffee in his hands, steam rising and obscuring the face. The sky, shifting into navy, into darkness, into the pitting of stars as the temperature plummets and each breath becomes a plume of smoke rising heavenward.

Here, sat together on the hood of the car, Magnus touches him. Not an accidental brush of the fingers or a friendly hand on the arm while driving, but instead, Magnus tips his head to the side, letting his temple rest on Alec’s shoulder.

Here, Magnus’ whispered name crosses Alec’s lips. A question posed to the night, painful and tender and purple like a bruise (‘ what are you doing? ’), but Magnus doesn’t reply. He hums and turns his head and presses his nose to Alec’s coat.

Alec’s doesn’t dare move. Magnus’ hair tickles his jaw, and Alec wants to turn his head and press his nose there and breathe him in, but he doesn’t. Ten years ago, maybe. But not now.

So, he looks up, and he exhales as the last fragments of the sun shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The night sky, in its infiniteness, mirrors the high plains of the Midwest: how endless, how deep, how black it all is, away from the city.

How less lonely it is with another body tucked against his shoulder. How much it hurts.

eighth chord

They find a cheap motel, afterwards, on the outskirts of the Alliance city limits. This time, there’s only one room left. One room with two twin beds made up in ugly floral sheets, and a TV without cable, and a minifridge, because that’s how it always is; how it’s meant to be; how it was, once, years ago.

Standing in the doorway of the room, Alec thinks back to their college dorm. He thinks about being eighteen and away from his parents’ home for the very first time - only one city over, but far enough, far enough to breathe - and Magnus crashing into that room, laden with boxes and a bright smile.

He thinks, aged eighteen, God, he’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen .

He thinks, aged thirty-something, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.  

Magnus, in the present, slumps down on the bed furthest from the door with a heavy sigh and immediately toes off his shoes and flings off his coat. His suitcase is beside him on the bed, but Alec’s bag - Alec’s bag is still clenched tightly in his fingers.

He doesn’t move from the doorway. He can still feel Magnus’ head against his shoulder, Magnus’ weight against his side, and he’s not sure he’s taken a proper breath since; but then Magnus looks up and catches his eye and tilts his head as if to say, what next, Alexander?

He offers Alec a smile which Alec can’t return.

Alec swallows thickly and nudges the door closed with his hip. He pads over to the other bed, his feet sinking into the plush carpet and leaving tracks, and he sets his bag down on the very end of the mattress, and -

What next, Alexander?

There was never a what next . That’s the problem; it’s always been the problem. Alec, afraid to put a name to the feelings in his chest and step outside his comfort zone, and Magnus, unwilling to push him. This is the point they always reached: the touches, the glances, the wondering. The waiting for someone to do something. Around and around again, until Magnus couldn’t do it anymore.

This is always the point. The moment, repeated, just like the highway. Just like the diner.

Magnus exhales and cards a hand through his hair, combing it back against his head. He looks away from Alec, eyes drifting across the room until they settle on the cheap plywood door that leads to the ensuite.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he announces, and then he’s up, grabbing a towel off the bed and disappearing into the bathroom.

The shutting of the bathroom door is too soft and too careful, and Alec sinks down onto the end of his bed and rests his head in his hands. He closes his eyes and focuses on the outline of his badge in his jacket pocket, digging into his chest. The weight of his service weapon on his hip. The scratchy linen of the bed, the stains on the ceiling, the fuzzy TV as it cycles back and forth through the few sparse channels, even though the remote is on the bedside table and out of Alec’s reach.

He tries not to listen to the sound of rushing water through the walls.  

He goes to shower, after. When Magnus emerges from the bathroom with wet hair and a freshly-scrubbed face, there are no words exchanged as Alec passes him by.

The bathroom is small and full of steam, windowless and ventless and hot like a sauna and that’s definitely a fire hazard. Alec peels out of his suit and tugs the tie from his collar. His undershirt goes next, and then his belt, which hits the floor with a heavy clank. He stares at himself in the mirror but the reflection that stares back at him is blurred by condensation, and Alec’s finger is drawn to it, if only to leave a mark.

He wonders what Magnus would say if Alec told him of how he would write Magnus’ name in the steam on his mirror in the days after he left, standing in front of it to watch until it faded.

And it faded every time, until Alec stopped doing it.

He steps out of his pants and underwear, a puddle of creased suiting on the floor, and climbs into the shower, turning the dial up as hot as it goes. He stands beneath the spray until it scalds his skin pink, and then, once done, sits on the edge of the tub with a towel wrapped around his waist and finds himself craving a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke, not really. He just needs something to do with his hands.

When he leaves the bathroom, the TV is quiet and the light is off. A faint, electric glow escapes the bottom of the curtains, the same blue colour as the NO VACANCIES sign that overlooks the parking lot outside.

Magnus has his back to the bathroom door, his hands tucked beneath the pillow where he rests his head. He’s not asleep yet; Alec can tell from his breathing, not yet slowed. He will be able to count every long second that Alec spends staring at him, watching the rise and fall of his body beneath the covers, and he will be able to hear the moment Alec sighs and turns and leaves, padding across the room to his own empty bed.

Alec has lost count of the number of times he’s rolled over in the dark of a shuttered room that smells of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke, and reached for something that’s never been there. That hasn’t been there for years.

His mattress dips in the middle with the weight of one body. The pillow scratches at his cheek. He sets his service weapon on the bedside table, within easy reach, but hides his badge within the pocket of his jacket, out of sight but not quite out of mind. This is how it always is.

He listens to the rustle of blankets from the other bed and wonders, briefly, if Magnus has turned to look at him in the dark. He wonders what Magnus’ expression might be, and if Magnus stares at him now with the same sort of regret that Alec fails to hide.  

He is still in love with Magnus. He never stopped being in love with Magnus. This, too, is still the same.

interlude

In a wealth of human experience, the worst, by far, is what if .

ninth chord

Magnus taps his fingers against the car door, beating out an inconsistent rhythm. Alec knows it’s not a love song, but it could be something similar - a song about lost chances or maybe second chances. Sometimes, it’s difficult to distinguish between the two.

‘ THE PEOPLE OF IOWA WELCOME YOU ,’ reads a passing road sign, and it catches Magnus’ attention for a moment long enough to falter his rhythm. ‘ FIELDS OF OPPORTUNITIES. ’

There is little else to distinguish the crossing of the state line: the fields still stretch in endless directions, swathed in a fog the colour of glass. They set off late from the motel this morning because Magnus overslept and then insisted on breakfast, and refused to ask for the cheque until he had seen Alec consume something other than filter coffee.

He had offered to drive too, but Alec remembers what his driving is like: one arm propped on the wheel and the other fiddling with the radio, eyes barely on the road because, to Magnus, highways are straight lines from point A to point B and he has no time for speed traps or taking corners slowly or braking .

Alec, meanwhile, always has his hands at ten and two.

“Alexander, can I ask you something?”

Alec reaches for the dial of the radio and turns it down; this time, Magnus doesn’t try to stop him.

“I’m not stopping at another Carhenge,” Alec says. “Once is enough.”

Magnus rolls his eyes and continues tapping his finger against the car door.

“No,” he says, “No, I’ve seen my fill, I think.”

“But?”

Magnus smiles a little. “What makes you think there’s a but?”

“Because you haven’t said a word since I told you there’s no way in Hell you’re driving,” Alec chuckles. “And you’ve been thinking about something. I can tell. You do this thing with your hand -” He mimics the rubbing of his thumb and forefinger together, and then the touching of his ear. “And then you touch your ear. You used to have that piercing, remember? You’d always fiddle with it when something was on your mind.”

Magnus tugs gently at his earlobe. “I didn’t think I was so easy to read.”

“You’re not,” Alec smiles, “I’ve just known you too long. Or, uh. Knew you too long.”

Magnus hums at that. He begins spinning one of his fingers around his forefinger.

“Do you think I’ve changed? Since then?”

Alec shrugs. He’s never been that good of a liar, not in front of Magnus. And Magnus knows that; he told Alec as much, two days ago  “A bit. It would be weird if you hadn’t.”

“Hm,” Magnus considers. “You’ve changed, you know. And it’s like the strangest sense of deja-vu, because I know I know you, and yet there are these little details, these little things that seem slightly off. That I don’t recognise and I don’t know where they came from.” Abruptly, he stops fiddling with his ring and curls his fingers into the palm of his hand. He smiles wryly to himself. “And why should I? You don’t stay the same person your whole life.”

“I don’t think I’ve changed,” Alec murmurs, chewing on his lip. “I’m pretty much the same person I was back then.”

Magnus shakes his head, his smile fading. “That’s not true. I can see it in your face. You laugh more. You roll your eyes at me. Tell me no. You didn’t used to do that and I would drag you into so much shit , Alec. God, I was such a bad influence on you back then.” He pauses then, and his expression sobers. “But then, sometimes, when I catch you looking at me now, you seem ...”

He trails off, searching for the words with a flick of his hand. Alec doesn’t know what he means.

“I seem like what?” he asks.

“You seem so sad .”

Alec laughs in disbelief. “Sad? What - Magnus - I’m not sad, what do I have to be sad about?”

Magnus runs his thumb over his lower lip in thought. “That’s what I wanted to ask. Last night, in that motel room, I wondered - well. I wanted to ask if you resented me, after I left.”

Alec’s hands clench on the wheel. “If I resented you?” he repeats carefully. “Magnus, I didn’t resent you. Where’s this come from? What - what sort of question is that?”

“A genuine one,” says Magnus. “Just humour me a little. I want to know.”

Alec’s heart thumps in his chest. He forces himself to stay focused on the road. “Why are you asking about this now?”

“Why not two days ago when I found you at that gas station, you mean?”

No , Alec thinks. Not then. Before. Ten years ago, maybe.

Why didn’t you ask me then?

“Yeah,” Alec lies. “Something like that.”

Magnus frowns. “Do you not want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Do you?”

Magnus hesitates. He presses his mouth into a flat line and with his clenched fists, he taps his knuckles against the glass of the passenger window. The beat is one-two three-four , like a pair of heartbeats.

“I want to make sure you know why I had to go,” he says, eventually. “You understand that, right?”

“Right,” says Alec, unconvincingly.

Magnus huffs and leans his head into his hand, rubbing at his temple. When he continues, his words are addressed to the horizon and the straight line that leads them there and disappears into a singular point in time and space.

“I know I hurt you, Alec,” he says. “And I think you’re still hurt, in a way, because you’re both the most obtuse person I’ve ever met and yet the only person who I was always able to - who I can always see . And ... can I be honest here?”

Alec nods, but says nothing.

“Right, well,” Magnus continues. “How do I explain this? It’s … it’s frustrating . Sometimes. The way you keep looking at me out the corner of your eye like it causes you suffering to do so but you can’t help yourself. The way you didn’t pick up any of my phone calls, back then. The way we just … the way we just ended. Snuffed out like a candle.”

“But you’re the one who left , Magnus,” Alec interjects. “You’re the one who - it wasn’t me. I didn’t decide that.”

“I didn’t want to be stuck there. I wanted a career, Alec, I wanted to see what else there is ,” Magnus says, gesturing with his free hand to the open road and empty Iowan landscape. He sounds weary. “And there is so much else, so much more than a nice house in a nice neighbourhood with a white-picket fence and a dog and two-point-five kids. I couldn’t wait around for you to - I didn’t want to live the life my mom lived. She never left that place, not once. The same four walls, the same dead-end Middle American town until the end of her days. And that ... that was too small for me.”

He talks about getting out the same way painters talk about muses, the same way a traveler searches for God in the landscape: something they had to see before they died. A holy calling.

He always has.

Perhaps Alec is the ghost lingering at those New England intersections that keeps Magnus far and away from home. Alec, too afraid to cross over the threshold of a highway, destined to haunt the same small town for the rest of his life.

Too afraid to wander so far from home that he might not be allowed back. Too afraid to say something that he can’t recant, even if it’s the truth.  

Alec chews on the inside of his cheek. “Didn’t you ever ... didn’t you ever think about that sort of life? With the house, and the yard, and the dog?” he begins. “Just a little? Just a bit?”

Magnus shakes his head. “I didn’t want that,” he murmurs. “It’s not me. You know that. And after my mother passed and I sold the house, I - God, sometimes I would sit on the front porch and watch all the cars go by, passing through that town like it was nothing, like it wasn’t even a blip on their map, and I would think the world moves on without you . It doesn’t care if you don’t catch up. It doesn’t care if you’re - if you’re waiting for someone to say something they never want to say.”

He glances at Alec as he says it, and Alec realises then that he knows.

Magnus knows. Perhaps he’s known a while; perhaps he’s known since they were young that Alec loves him but refuses to say it. It is Alec’s worst kept secret, after all.

“I had to get out, Alec,” Magnus continues. “Sometimes I thought, if I stayed, I’d suffocate.”

I was suffocating too , Alec thinks. A gay man in the early 80s didn’t get to breathe . That’s just how it was.

Magnus, of course, already knows that. Alec would only be preaching to the choir if he said it aloud.

Instead, he mumbles, “I wanted to say it.”

“What was that?”

“I wanted to say it,” Alec repeats. He sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek and wishes he could squeeze his eyes closed for just a moment - but there’s the road. There’s always the road. “I just - I couldn’t. Not then. But I wanted to say it. The thing you were waiting for. From me.”

Magnus’ mouth falls open a fraction, as if, somehow, he is surprised by such a revelation. Alec feels Magnus’ stare boring into the side of his face and he fights every muscle in his body not to turn and look back, because he knows exactly what he’ll find in Magnus’ eyes and he’s not sure he can stomach it.

He has looked at Alec this way before. Hell, a thousand times before. He’s trying to understand Alec - why here and why now, why are you finally saying something after all these years of pulling me along at the other end of a string, leaving me hoping and desperate and in love with someone who couldn’t ever say it back - but Alec is not that complicated.

He’s just scared. Scared of change. Scared of veering off the side of the highway that he has driven all his life, even though a part of him wants to know what it feels like. A part of him longs for the impact because, at least then, it will all be over.

And Magnus -

Magnus has always been so difficult to pin down, so close to chewing through his own foot to get away (and Alec had always hoped he’d never quite manage it, so that he might stay with Alec, forever, in some selfish vision of the future). It’s inside of him, that need to wander and see the world and meet new people and learn from them and be better and be something . The need to throw the roadmap out the window at high speed.

“Was that -” Alec begins, but clears his throat again. “Was that not enough? For you to stay, I mean?”

Magnus’ expression softens. His shoulders slump and his hand falls away from his temple and his mouth curves upwards at the corner and he says nothing. In his eyes, however, Alec finds an answer.

Sometimes, you cannot wait to be loved at someone else’s pace. Sometimes, you deserve more than that. I deserved more than that.

And maybe -

And maybe I’m still waiting.

interlude

Another postcard, this time purchased from a roadside gas station and then left crumpled in the glove box of a rental car:

I loved you then. I love you now. I still don’t know how to say it.

tenth chord

The day Magnus left was a Sunday. The beginning of August, 1985. The sun was bright that morning, harsh on the roof of Magnus’ new car as he piled boxes and suitcases into the trunk.  

Alec had not understood what ending meant until he was standing on the sidewalk and watching Magnus pack up his life into ten square feet. He had not understood that some endings aren’t peaceful or satisfying or tie up all the loose threads of a story tangled by the writer; some endings are excoriations. They leave you raw and wounded.

The realisation, now, is that letting Magnus go a second time will be a worse experience than the first. This time, Alec already knows what it’s going to feel like.

In the rental car, the heater works hard to circulate warm air into the front seat. The windshield wipers battle against the thick blanket of fog that has rolled in across Lake Michigan and which obscures the signposts for Chicago from view. Frost covers rural Illinois in a comb of silver, not quite yet snow, but soon. Soon enough, the country will be white and glistening in the low sunlight as far as the eye can see.  

Magnus has his coat draped over him like a blanket, his arms backwards through the sleeves and his head resting against the window. He hasn’t slept, but he’s been quiet for a while now, watching the world pass by with little commentary, save for when a song to which he knows the words plays on the radio.

On the side of the road, timber-frame houses disappear in and out of existence, reappearing in various states of disrepair. A barn, an old farmhouse, a disused gas station, a tiny church built on stilts that extends out over a frozen lake on a wooden walkway.

Magnus makes a noise of interest as they pass it by, turning in his seat to look back at it as it vanishes into the fog.

“Did you see that?” he asks. These are the first words he’s said to Alec in nearly a hundred miles. “That church.”

Alec glances in the rearview mirror but, as always, they are the only car on the road and the fog swallows up the passing seconds behind them. He’s not sure how long they’ve been on this road without a turning, nothing but an undeviated line for miles, and sooner or later, the end of the road is going to take them by surprise.

Alec takes his foot off the gas and presses down on the brake instead, and the car lurches to a near-stop. Magnus jolts forward in his seat, his seat belt cutting into his chest and stopping his momentum. He turns to stare at Alec, but Alec throws his arm over the back of his seat, knocks the gearstick into reverse, and spins the car into a three-point U-turn.

Magnus sits up in his seat, his coat slipping down from his shoulders and onto the floor.

“Baltimore not on the cards anymore?” Magnus asks, as Alec turns the car around and begins driving back the way they came. “Alec, what’s going on?”

Alec leans forward over the steering wheel, squinting out into the fog. The shape of the gas station reforms out of white cloud, and then, beside it, the shimmer of the frozen lake and the small church that sits atop it. A place for prayer amidst the smell of petrol fumes and gasoline and road dust.

A traveller’s chapel , Alec notes. It seems apt.

The church is small and squat and built of dark, gnarled wood, falling apart at the seams. From a distance, it seems almost black, but the need to pull off the road possesses Alec and he pulls into the parking lot of the gas station, before locking the handbrake.

Once parked, he turns to look at Magnus, both hands still clenched on the wheel. The radio crackles with white noise, interspersed with the tune of a Christmas song that Alec doesn’t recognise. Magnus reaches out and turns the volume down.

There’s never really been a need for words.

Alec unclips his seatbelt first. He doesn’t pat himself down for keys-wallet-ID-gun . He grabs his coat from the backseat and leaps out into the cold, and doesn’t look back when he hears the passenger door slam and Magnus follow after him, albeit at a distance.  

What Alec finds is this: the wind is brittle and the walkway that leads out over the lake creaks and groans beneath Alec’s weight, but doesn’t make a noise for Magnus. On the highway behind them, a truck rumbles past, but the fog is so deep that Alec cannot see it, save for the glow of its headlights. There is a small placard nailed to the outside of the church that reads: Visit Your Roadside Chapel and a big red arrow points down at the doorway.

Alec reaches for the doorknob and gives it a twist. Behind him, he can feel Magnus watching him, arms folded across his chest to ward off the cold, in silence. He says nothing to Alec, no witty remark about the FBI’s predilection for breaking and entering, no tired smile, no weary remark about how he’s tired of waiting, which they both know means far more than it seems.

The door to the church is not locked and it opens with a fair shove, and out spills the smell of damp wood and dust and old smoke. Magnus coughs lightly, wafting his hand in front of his mouth, but Alec steps inside.

The church itself is small and cramped, barely wider than the span of Alec’s arms from wall to wall, and the cold sweeps through the gaps in the walls, carrying with it the earthy smell of burning. There are no church pews, but a padded piece of wood for kneeling in prayer sits beneath a floor-to-ceiling cross, and bible verses are scratched into the plywood walls in a messy hand. Empty beer cans and extinguished cigarettes litter the floor, and cobwebs are strung like garlands above Alec’s head, which he reaches up to swipe away.

A row of candles stand where the altar should be. Soot still clings to the wicks, as if freshly extinguished.

Alec steps forward and his feet crunch on dried leaves that have blown in through the door. He lifts his foot and looks down and finds a crumpled receipt stuck to the sole of his shoe, grey with running ink and dozens of footprints that have come before Alec’s. The date on the receipt is fifteen years ago. It was issued in Dallas, Texas.

This is a space of comings and goings. Of passing throughs. The afterimages of a thousand travellers linger here like memories and, carved into the cross above Alec’s head, he notices the words: what is more important to the traveller, the journey or the destination?

The silence sings, or maybe it hisses, like the wind rustling through the endless miles of wheatfields between here and where they’ve come from.

What is more important to the traveller, the fact that we got lost along the way, or that we made it back here, in the end, and met again?

Alec looks back over his shoulder, and Magnus is there, standing in the open doorway, waiting. His nose is red with the cold. The light behind him casts him in the pale yellow of a winter twilight. He is watching Alec with an expression that Alec doesn’t understand.

“Magnus?” Alec asks, low and gentle.

“Yes?” he replies.

“Do you have a lighter?”

Magnus’ mouth tips upwards at the corner. “I said I quit, remember?” he says, but he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a shiny, silver Zippo lighter, engraved with his initials. He places it in Alec’s outstretched hand, but his touch lingers against Alec’s wrist and the staccato of his pulse. “Here.”

Alec turns to the candles and flicks his thumb along the lighter. The flame is summoned into existence, its light dancing across Alec’s thumbnail as he lights the wick of the tallest candle.

He lights it for his mother, and then, once it catches, he lights another for Izzy, and then one for Jace and Max and his father. He recites the Catholic rotes his grandmother taught him beneath his breath, in Spanish, a whisper. Then, a prayer for Magnus, and for his mother too, wherever she might be.

And lastly, a prayer for himself, aged eighteen and away from home for the very first time. Aged twenty-three and in his graduation gown, Magus’ mortarboard on his head and Magnus’ arm around his shoulders, laughing in his ear. Aged ten years younger than he is now and standing on the sidewalk of his parents’ house, watching Magnus’ car pull away.

Magnus joins him at his side, his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him. An inch of space exists between their shoulders, but, even now, Alec can feel the warmth of him through his coat.

Alec has missed this. He will miss it again, he’s all too sure, but maybe it’s okay to have it only for a moment.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it has to be.

“Alexander?”

“Yeah?”

“I meant what I said yesterday,” Magnus says quietly. He tugs on the sleeve of Alec’s coat and turns Alec to face him. His eyes are bright - not wet, but earnest - and drop to Alec’s lips before returning upwards. “That it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. You know that, right?”

He squeezes Alec’s arm. He wants Alec to understand something that still remains out-of-focus.

“What do you mean?” Alec asks.

“I am sorry for the way we left things,” Magnus says, “And I’m sorry that it hurt more than I realised it would. I really am. But it doesn’t have to end the same way this time. You can change the way you remember it. Make it mean something, something fond that you can look back on. You can make it good, if you want.”  

Alec frowns. They’re a day away from Baltimore. In forty-eight hours, Alec will be back home in D.C., and in a week, Magnus will return to L.A. and the life he has built there, where he drinks seltzer water and no longer smokes and talks a mile-a-minute on an expensive cell phone about investments and equity and big-ticket numbers, and is loved by Alec at a distance.

It’s not like the highway extends into the sea. All roads eventually end, and this one must too, amounting to nothing more than four days in a nondescript rental car with Christmas music playing on the radio, but -

This doesn’t have to end the same way this time.

“Doesn’t it?” Alec asks, unable to help himself.

Magnus shakes his head and lets go of Alec’s arm. He takes a step forward and lifts the last unlit candle, holding its wick to the flame of another until it catches.

“No,” he says. “No, it doesn’t.”

interlude

Nothing that happens on the road is real. This is what Alec tells himself between diners and gas stations and faded markings down the centre of the highway.

I can love you now, while the engine’s still running. And you might love me too, while the engine’s still running. Sometimes I think that you do, when I look at you from the corner of my eye.

In the distance, Chicago rises from the fog, lit up in one thousand pin-pricks of light. It makes the world glow in the colour of cities and concrete and it feels a bit like a dream after so long passing through nowheres.

If we drive far enough, we might make it back to the place we once called ‘now’. If we drive fast enough, maybe that day will end differently and you’ll stay.

The speedometer tips over ninety and the countryside blurs into rooftops and stop lights and traffic backed up across the bridge that spans the highway. Streetlights line the side of the road and pass across the rental car in flashes of strobe and yellow.

“I don’t want you to stay there,” says Magnus, in one such patch of light. Sometimes, it’s like he can read Alec’s mind. “I want you to write a different ending, Alec. I want you to want it.”

eleventh chord

Chicago is behind them as they cross into Indiana with the stroke of midnight, a dull orange glow that seems too bright for the eyes after so many repeated nights driving in near blackness.

Their destination is getting closer, and Alec eyes each passing road sign that counts down the miles to Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, then Baltimore, then home with a heaviness in his heart that beats a slow rhythm.

It’s the rhythm that he knows - that lonely beat that matches the roll of the odometer on the dashboard - and yet it seems too fast now, accelerating towards an end point at which he has a choice to make.  

He tries to match it, that rhythm. He tries to strike a chord with the bouncing of his leg in the footwell, with the tapping of his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances across at the passenger seat to see if Magnus is looking back at him, but he’s not - he’s staring ahead through the windshield and holding himself unnaturally still.

Alec wants to slow down below the speed limit; put his foot on the brake; stall the car. Drive it off the side of the road and into a ditch and then shrug and say, guess we’re stranded for another night ‘til the tow-truck can get here . And maybe that’s dishonest - or too honest, because the thought of spending the night in the car together, crowded around the heater as if it’s a bonfire keeping them warm, does something strange to Alec’s insides - but the relentless momentum if the car is no longer a balm on his nerves.

He can’t help but think about what lies in wait at the end of the road. Another goodbye. A polite smile and a parting hug and some kind and empty and wistful words; longing and loneliness and more of the same heartbreak, made worse by the fact he knows, now, what they could’ve had, if things had ended differently the first time.

Alec doesn’t want to leave this car; he wants to keep Magnus here forever, the two of them trapped in this rocking motion of roads and highways, where Magnus tells him over and over again that it doesn’t have to end and Alec believes him.

Alec wants to keep driving off the very edge of the continent and into the Atlantic Ocean. He wants to arrive in Baltimore and say, take me with you . He thinks about grabbing Magnus’ hand when he steps out of the car, and saying, don’t leave me behind this time. Take me with you. Take me somewhere that isn’t here. I’ve had enough of coming and going back to the same place as before. You’re right about that. You’ve always been right about me.

Magnus shifts in the passenger seat, clearing his throat.

“We should probably find a motel. It’s getting late,” he says. He doesn’t need to say it, because Alec is already thinking it: tonight is the last night. Tomorrow, Alec will be in his own bed, and Magnus, in some fancy hotel room paid for on a corporate credit card. “We both need a good night’s sleep. For tomorrow.”

“Right,” Alec echoes. He clenches his jaw. “Tomorrow.”

The air in the car is thick and heavy, so Alec reaches for the radio to try and suffocate his own thoughts. He skips through the stations until he finds one that sticks, and then turns up the volume. The voice of a man quoting late-night scripture fills the front seat:

‘So, flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord for a pure heart.’

Magnus exhales through his nose and runs his palms up and down his legs, digging his fingers into his thighs. His eyes catch Alec’s in the rearview mirror.

A decision, then. Alec has seen this look before.

“I really think we need to find a motel,” Magnus says again, more forcibly this time. “Let’s check the map. Can you pull over?”

“Huh?” says Alec, “Just switch the light on, it’s okay. I don’t mind. Pick somewhere that sounds good and tell me which exit I need to take.”

“Alec,” Magnus insists. “Pull over.”

Alec looks at him, confused. “What? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Really. I just need you to stop driving, please.”

“Okay, uh. Okay. Hang on, I’ll just -” The turn signal flashes and Alec steers the car off the side of the highway and onto the grassy verge. The tires sink into the mud and the car jostles them from side to side until, finally, coming to a stand still.

Magnus unclips his seatbelt and reaches for the glove box, retrieving the atlas from inside. He spreads it out on the dashboard between them, running his fingers down the page until he finds where they are, and then flicks on the cabin light above their heads.

The car becomes an island, then. The sky is clear and the road behind them is almost empty, and the world outside is completely black and they are floating in an endless void. And all that exists is Magnus leaning across the gearstick and grabbing Alec’s hand and pressing his fingertip to a point on the map and saying, “there.”

“There?” asks Alec, looking up at Magnus’ face. His voice is a whisper now. “What’s there? A motel?”

“A motel,” Magnus agrees, shifting forward on his seat, closer to Alec. His grip on Alec’s wrist is vice-tight, his rings cold against Alec’s skin. “What do you think?”

Alec pauses. There is an unasked question here, hidden in the silence between words. It’s a proposition and Alec wants to get the answer right.

But Alec also wants to kiss him. He can smell Magnus’ cologne, the aftershave patted onto the slope of his jaw in the bathroom of a cheap motel that morning. He can feel the heat of him. He can feel the flutter of Magnus’ pulse where Magnus’ thumb is pressed insistently against his skin.

He wants to kiss him and muster the courage he could never find before, and he wants to say fuck it . Give him that moment of undoing, or redoing, or whatever the fuck it is that he wants the last few years to have meant.

He’s pretty sure that’s what Magnus wants too.

“Alexander?”

Kiss me now while the engine’s still running.

“I don’t want this to end.”

“I know you don’t,” says Magnus. “I don’t either.”

“No. No, Magnus, you don’t know. You don’t - you can’t ,” Alec insists. “You can’t know because I never said anything. That’s the whole point. I never said anything, even though we both knew how I felt. We both knew. And despite all that, we still didn’t do anything about it because in the end, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. I loved you and I think you loved me and it didn’t matter.”

He and Magnus exist in a not-time. This place isn’t real; Alec can speak to these feelings and not be beholden to them in the morning, or at the end of the road, or wherever it is that they’re heading. Not if he doesn’t want to.

But he does want. He wants more than one man with a body can bear.

I loved you then but it didn’t matter. But it matters now because I can say it. Because we have circled around and found each other again after all this time and that -

That has to mean something.

Magnus’ hand relaxes on Alec’s wrist; his fingertips brush across the back of Alec’s knuckles, across the roadmap between them on the console. It is tentative and questioning and even now, still says, you can drive away if you need to.

Alec inhales deeply. He shakes his head.

He meets Magnus’ eyes on purpose.

“I was afraid that the next time you walked into my life, I wouldn’t know how we fit together,” he whispers. “I was worried that something inside of me, inside of you, would’ve changed, because things always change after this long, but - it hasn’t.”

Beneath Alec’s palm, Washington lies hidden. In the dark, the paper rustles.

“You haven’t, Magnus. Not when it comes to me.”

interlude

The radio sings, ‘It will never be the same, baby.

We will always be the same, baby.’

twelfth chord

Alec’s hand shakes as he fumbles with the key in the motel room door.

Magnus stands a half step behind him, his breath forming white clouds that float and dissipate over Alec’s shoulder. The smell of his aftershave carries. There’s a deliberate space left between their bodies, greater than the distance that has existed between them in the car for the last four days.

It’s the furthest they’ve been apart since Alec approached that phone booth back in Idaho.

“Fuck,” Alec mutters, as the key sticks in the lock and refuses to turn. His palm is sweaty and anticipation licks up the side of his throat where the collar of his shirt is too tight. “Sorry, just give me a sec-”

Magnus leans over his shoulder and takes the key from him, sliding it into the lock with ease. The door clicks, and then swings open.

This motel room is just like all the rest: two beds, one TV, the oddly stained carpet. Thin plywood walls. A single light that plunges the whole room into that low-res yellow of cheap nighttime lodgings.

Alec places both their bags on one of the beds, exhales, and then, when he turns back, Magnus is standing against the closed door. His head is tilted back, his chin aloft, and his arms are folded across his chest, the sleeves of his coat tight around his arms.

His eyes are dark and molten. Where Alec is an unlit cigarette, he is the match.

And that’s enough. All things end and all endings are terrible in their own way, and Alec doesn’t know why he shouldn’t lean into the inevitable if it’s something he can’t avoid.

He abandons the bags and steps towards Magnus, grabs him by the lapels of his overcoat, and kisses him.

Immediately, Magnus opens his mouth to Alec; the sound he makes into the kiss has the hairs on the back of Alec’s neck standing on end. They stagger back against the door with a thud , and Magnus grabs at Alec’s coat, shoving it from his shoulders, then pulling Alec’s shirt out of his belt, his hands slipping beneath Alec’s undershirt so that he can feel skin.

Something rattles around inside of Alec and maybe it’s his heart come loose at last. He kisses Magnus ever deeper for it; his chest aches; his heart aches. He should’ve kissed Magnus sooner, and yet it feels like this is the only moment in time and space where it’s meant to happen: some dingy motel in rural America where it’s just the two of them and Alec has made a choice where he refuses to let this separation be the same as the last.

They’ve never needed to speak. The span of time hasn’t changed the connection between them; Alec could be his twenty-three year old self; he could be his eighteen year old self; his self from five days ago, picking up the keys to a rental car in the backwoods of Oregon state - he would still be in love with Magnus, whether or not he has said it out loud.

Alec cups the sides of Magnus’ jaw and tilts his head back, deepening the kiss. Magnus’ tongue presses into his mouth, his hand flat against the small of Alec’s back, his fingers pressed against Alec’s spine. He pulls Alec closer until their bodies are flush.

And oh, it’s so easy for Alec to lose himself to the push and pull of it: the lick of Magnus’ tongue, the pliance of his mouth. His hands are so warm as they settle on the slope of Alec’s waist.

Alec feels like he’s standing in the middle of a highway, staring down the headlights of an oncoming truck, willing it to move first or be moved . His heart is pounding loudly in his chest. The light is so bright that he is blind to everything else.

Is this driving off the edge of the road or is this the impact?

The kiss leads to the bed. The bed leads to shucked clothes and kicked-off shoes and Alec tossing his badge and service weapon blindly onto the bedside table as Magnus kisses down his throat and the blood rushes to Alec’s head.

Magnus pins him back against the starchy motel pillows, one hand splayed on Alec’s chest - stay still, don’t move - while his other hand cups Alec’s hip and his thumb slips into the band of Alec’s underwear.

No. It is the destination.

Magnus runs his hands down the inside of Alec’s legs, his palms smoothing across Alec’s thighs. His eyes meet Alec’s as he presses his mouth against Alec’s knee.

Alec’s eyes fall closed.

He wants to say something about endings, to gasp, to whisper it. He wants to ask what happens next: if he is to leave Magnus on the side of the road in Baltimore tomorrow and never hear from him again; or if Magnus will fly back to Los Angeles in a week’s time and only look back on this moment as one of those pocket memories of his, something fond to warm him on colder nights.

Alec doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be an uncalled telephone number in Magnus’ diary again; he doesn’t want to stop here , with Magnus’ mouth slowly kissing up his inner thigh. He cannot let Magnus slip through his fingers a second time, so he reaches out and pulls Magnus towards him, up the length of his body, crushing his mouth against Magnus’ and swallowing Magnus’ untethered gasp. He kisses Magnus’ jaw, and then the side of Magnus’ neck, and then he presses his nose to Magnus’ shoulder and breathes him in.

He says nothing, but he has to screw tight his eyes to stop himself from doing something stupid, like letting a stray tear roll down his cheek and wet the pillow. Magnus wraps his arms around him and holds him tight, words whispered in Alec’s ear that he’s been waiting ten years to hear and which Magnus thinks must all be said in one night.

Alec is too old for messes of the heart like this, but maybe that’s the problem: how long they’ve delayed this particular end, to the point that neither of them know how to exist in a world after .

interlude

The final postcard never sent:

“The boy in the yellow shirt walks like there is all the room in the world. I am standing on the edge of what is an ending world.” 2

I read this in a book that Catarina leant me. I think it’s about us, or at least it’s about me, the first time I laid eyes on you.

Come to L.A.

thirteenth chord

Alec wakes up alone in the bed, his arm outstretched across the mattress, his hand palm-up to the ceiling. There is an ache in his legs, bruises scattered across his thighs like the shattered glass of a windshield spread across the road. The smell of sex hangs heavy both in the air and on his skin where sweat has dried and not been scrubbed away, and when he tries to speak, his voice is hoarse and raspy.

Beside him on the bed, the pillow is cooling - but not yet cold.

Disappointment curls in Alec’s gut, but in his head - well, that’s empty, devoid of the constant noise that has existed there for the past few days, if not years. He hasn’t noticed until now that it mimics the sound of a car engine, a forever rumble.

There is simplicity to the silence now. The carpet is cold when Alec’s feet hit the floor, a draught slicing beneath the bed. Magnus’ suitcase is gone from the other bed; his clothes gathered from the floor. The smell of his cologne has faded, replaced by the musty smell of floral bedsheets and mothballs and wallpaper that has absorbed the smoke of a hundred cigarettes.

The only evidence of Magnus being here is his absence.

His absence - and the way Alec’s mouth tingles when he brings his fingers up to touch his lower lip.

Alec brushes his teeth to the sound of the faucet running, water gushing down the drain. He splashes his face and dresses in the crumpled clothes from yesterday that still smell like the front seat of the rental car and shakes carpet fibres out of his overcoat where it still lies by the door.

Keys. Wallet. ID. Gun. He moves through the motions on autopilot, patting his pockets and then his chest as he mentally tallies up the parts of himself worth collecting - but then stops. Standing in the middle of the motel room with his bag in his hand, he turns to look at the unmade bed, the sheets kicked into a pile, a backdrop to a journey he has taken so many times before.

The difference, now, is in the details. It feels significant. It’s worth remembering.  

Crossing to the window, he throws open the curtains and sunlight streams into the room, flooding every dark corner. Alec squints against the light, raising his hand to his face to shield his eyes. A faint sheen of frost forms fractals on the outside of the glass and, beyond that, the roof of the rental car, the prelude to the first snow of winter.

Leant against the side of the car is Magnus.

Alec inhales deeply, his breath clouding upon the window. The cold draws down into his lungs - a sharp ache inside of him that he holds for a count - and then he exhales. Deflates. Sinks back into a rhythm that is both familiar and somehow different to the one he has known for so long, as if the world now beats in imperfect time.

Magnus is propped against the hood of the car with his eyes closed and his head tipped back to catch the sun, and he doesn’t stir when Alec shuts the motel room door behind him and the gravel of the parking lot crunches beneath his shoes. On the side of Magnus’ neck, there is a hickey bitten darkly into his skin. It’s the colour of rare indigo.

Alec doesn’t feel the need to avert his gaze now.

“Have you ever been on a roadtrip?” Magnus asks, opening his eyes when he feels Alec’s shadow cross his body.

Alec frowns at him as he bends down to grab Magnus’ suitcase, before tossing both their bags into the backseat. “Isn’t this a roadtrip?”

Magnus waves his hand aimlessly. “No, this is serendipity, Alexander. I’m talking about a comprehensive tour of all the worst diner coffee in the continental United States. Hiking in the Grand Canyon. Exploring the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest.” He looks at Alec and smiles a coy smile, pushing away from the car. “You know, in Indiana, they have the World’s Largest Ball of Paint? I’d like to see that sometime. All the best roadside Americana that the country has to offer.”

Alec rounds the car to the driver’s door, opens it, but doesn’t get in. He leans his arms on the roof of the car and Magnus, on the other side, turns to face him.

“But Baltimore,” says Alec.

Magnus’ smile softens. “But Baltimore,” he agrees, across the span of the roof. He glances at his watch. “Providing we don’t hit gridlock outside the city, I should be right on time for my meeting and Raphael won’t have the pleasure of removing my head from my shoulders. You always were excellent at keeping me punctual.”

Alec smiles quietly, ducking his head. “Yeah, well, one of us had to live in the real world.”

He climbs into the car and Magnus follows, folding himself into the passenger seat and draping his coat across his lap. He buckles himself in and then leans back to look at Alec as Alec slots the key into the ignition.

“What?” Alec asks. He reaches up to touch his neck, in the same place where the bruise forms on Magnus’ throat, but can’t find any tenderness. “Is there something on my face?”

“No,” Magnus says gently. “No, not at all. I was just thinking that sometimes the real world is rather overrated. In my experience, the longer one can put off returning to it, the better.”

Alec turns the key and the car splutters into life. The heater blows warm air into the front seat, condensing upon the windshield, and when Alec reaches out to direct the flow of air downwards, Magnus covers Alec’s hand with his.

It’s a reflection of the night before, but without the urgency.

Magnus curls his fingers around Alec’s hand and brushes his thumb over Alec’s knuckles. Then, he brings Alec’s hand up to his mouth and presses his lips to Alec’s fingers, his eyes falling closed and his eyelashes casting feathered shadows on his face.

Alec holds his breath. He waits for Magnus to say something, to say so let’s not go back to the real world yet because I’m happy here , but he doesn’t.

Happy is too vague a concept. Not that Alec isn’t happy here, in this particular not-real moment, but it’s a feeling that belongs to strange, liminal motels and repeated diners. It is hard to grasp, and harder still to fathom how it might slip into the spaces occupied by a life back in the city at the end of the road.

Magnus sets Alec’s hand down on the gearstick between them, and settles back into his seat, kicking his feet up on the dashboard. He tips his seat back and rests his head against the window as Alec puts the car into reverse.

The road is quiet but not deserted. Alec knows that they will meet traffic before too long, but, for a moment, he imagines the highway stretching beyond the horizon and continuing into the sky, winter-blue and endlessly deep, leading above and beyond the curve of the Earth.

There’s a very thin dusting of snow on the hard shoulder, and the sun, shockingly bright, refracts off it with a white glare. It’s the sort of daylight that possesses Alec, that fills him up and makes him feel separate from his body.

If Alec rolled down the window, that daylight would spill in and flood the car, crisp and cold and foreign. But here in the warmth, he unspools a story in his half-awake mind: him and Magnus and the unending road. If they stop moving, they’ll die. If they stop driving, they’ll die. There was a Keanu Reeves movie about that recently , Alec thinks. It probably didn’t end well.  

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

Alec glances sideways at Magnus. “What happened to quitting?”

“Oh, I did,” says Magnus. He produces an unopened pack of Morley’s from the folds of his coat and inspects it curiously. “But I got this from the motel reception this morning on a whim and it feels like a waste otherwise.”

Alec rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says, but he cracks open the driver’s window and the cold rushes in. The wind ruffles through his hair, funneled by the cuffs of his jacket up the length of his sleeves and into his coat. A shiver ripples down his spine and he grimaces.

Beside him, Magnus pulls a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth and cups his hand around his lighter as he lights it, before holding it out to Alec.

“I haven’t smoked in years,” Alec says, but he takes the cigarette anyway and taps the lit end against the ashtray on the console. “You can’t laugh.”

Magnus lights a second cigarette, the clink of his lighter sharp, like metal. He draws in a deep breath, pulling smoke down into his lungs, and then exhales. The grey plume rises towards the roof, only to be sucked suddenly out of the open window.

Magnus coughs, clearing his throat, and takes the cigarette from his mouth, only to pull a face at it.

“Tastes like what I imagine licking the floor of that motel would be like,” he says, before stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray. He frowns at the packet in his hand, before throwing it into the glove box. “Let’s stop at the next gas station. I need something to wash that out of my mouth.”

“Okay,” says Alec, unable to stop himself from smiling. His cigarette warms his fingers. His stomach growls at the thought of cheap diner coffee and a greasy bacon burger for breakfast. He presses his foot down on the gas and shifts the engine up a gear.

A passing road sign reads: Baltimore, 405 km . About a five hour drive.

Alec will miss this rental car.

interlude

In the dark of a motel on the night before, Magnus’ eyes are almost black. Alec studies him from across the pillow, their noses nearly touching. Magnus’ hand, splayed on Alec’s ribs, draws gentle circles into Alec’s skin, while Alec’s ankle lies tangled with both of Magnus’ legs.

Magnus’ body is warm. It’s rhythm is familiar in the way that it matches Alec: how he moves, how he breathes, how the sound of his heartbeat disturbs the silence of the motel room.

If Magnus were to speak, he would say, ‘something is only beautiful because it does not last forever .’ But he does not speak, so Alec cannot say back, ‘ that’s not true. You’ve always been beautiful .’

Instead, he leans forward and he kisses Magnus and he earns a soft groan for his troubles as Magnus curves into him like the other side of a parenthesis, ‘til now unpaired.

Magnus’ hand slides upwards, cupping the back of Alec’s head. His thumb caresses the shell of Alec’s ear and the soft hair above it.

He pulls himself against Alec’s chest, his other hand trapped between them, pressed over Alec’s heart.

He kisses Alec back.

outro

The woman in the apartment above Alec’s has Christmas lights in her window: red and green flash in alternating patterns and Mariah Carey’s faint warble can be heard from the sidewalk as Alec gazes up at his building and allows himself to watch, if only for a moment.

His bag is heavy on his shoulder and his suit is stiff across his back; the thought of a shower is calling him home, but he wants to linger outside a little longer. The cold is sharp against his face and draws a red flush to his cheeks. His breath escapes him in white clouds, tumbling upwards. Baltimore lingers on his skin with the memory of a parting kiss.  

He is, now, alone.

On his doorstep, his neighbour has left him an early Christmas card; she has done the same for the last few years, concerned for the young man who lives alone and never has his family visit once December comes around. As Alec unlocks his front door, he slips his finger beneath the seal of the envelope and tears it open, and the message inside is the same as it always is, wishing him and his loved ones well for the holidays.

He places the card on the sideboard by the door as he toes off his shoes, and wanders into his living room, dumping his bag on the floor as he goes.

The stillness in his apartment is strange: the air is musty, the windows unopened for nearly two weeks now, and while there’s no dust on his coffee table yet, the scattered paperwork and unwashed coffee mug are somehow disturbed by his presence.

There are dishes in his kitchen sink and his bed is still unmade; the space is exactly as he left it, and returning to it feels a little like disembarking an airplane after a long journey spent cramped in one mindset, and now having to reacclimatise to solid ground.

Alec is not sure why he expected his apartment to be changed. Even in some small way, like the rotating characters at a diner, or the different coloured carpet at each roadside motel, or the occupancy of his passenger seat by a man he thought he’d never see again, he hoped for something new. Something welcomed but unrecognised, symbolic of a new start or, perhaps, a second chance.

Oh. Maybe he’s the one a little changed, then.

It’s not about the destination , after all , he tells himself, reaching for the remote to turn the TV on for background noise. It’s about the journey.

Briefly, he wonders if this happens every time: if each successive back-and-forth across America wears him down just a little, like the treads on car tires, and it’s only now that he has changed enough to notice that he no longer fits into the routine once occupied with ease. In his footsteps, he brings the liminality of the road into his own apartment, the threshold moment between one state of being and the next.

And Alec is okay with that.

He locks his service weapon in the safe on his desk. Loosens his tie. Pulls a bent postcard from Carhenge, Nebraska, a receipt from a gas station just outside of Baltimore, and a nearly-full pack of Morley’s from his jacket pocket and sets them all on the coffee table, before throwing his coat over the back of the couch to take to the dry cleaners tomorrow.

His suit jacket goes next - two days old and creased around the elbows - and then his belt, a heavy thunk on the floor, before he pads into the bathroom and turns on the shower so that the water might have time to heat up before he gets in.

He strips down to his underwear and wanders back out into his living room, and it’s then that he notices the red flashing light on his answering machine: a voicemail.

He hits the play button - ‘ you have three unread messages ,’ says the disembodied voice - and he pours himself a glass of water as he listens first to Jace ramble on about not coming home for the holidays, and then to his mother discuss her plans to visit her solicitor next week.

Alec empties his glass and sets it in the sink to be washed later. He heads back to the bathroom, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders, and the answering machine beeps to signify the final message.

‘ Alexander, it’s me. ’

Alec stops and turns to stare at his answering machine as if it might come alive in front of him.

‘ You’re probably not even back in D.C. yet, but - well ,’ says Magnus. ‘ I made it on time to the meeting, in case you’re interested. I’m never going to hear the end of it from Rafael, of course, and he’s never going to let me drive anywhere alone again, but it’s looking like we’ll be able to close a deal before Christmas. It sounds like I’m going to be back and forth between L.A. and Baltimore a lot next quarter.’  

In the background, Alec can hear the sound of people, of a bustling street, of taxi cabs blasting their horns as Magnus tries to hail one down.

‘ But I all that aside, this couldn’t wait and, I suppose, serendipity can only get you so far.’

Alec reaches for the handset, poised above the redial button, but then something in Magnus’ tone changes. In his words, Alec can hear the sound of his smile.

‘ How far is the drive from Los Angeles to Indiana?’ Magnus asks. ‘No, wait, how far is the drive from Baltimore to Indiana? I’ve been thinking a little more about the World’s Biggest Ball of Paint. Perhaps you’d like to see it with me.’

The beat of Alec’s heart shifts in its rhythm once again. He holds his breath. He imagines himself taking a step over that imaginary threshold.  

‘There are too many things I haven’t told you yet. ’

*****

“They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

[another-bloody-multimuse]

CRUELLA DE VIL - What is your muse’s fashion style? for everyone because I love clothes headcanons

Disney villain asks!

Penelope: A combination of fancy/expensive jewellery and casual clothing. Usually with some level of cleavage on display. Think gold, precious stones (fake diamonds, though), ridiculously tall high heels, painted nails. Usually in different shades of pink. Darker pinks accompanied with black, lighter pinks accompanied with complimentary colours or white. Clothes are often figure hugging, albeit not ridiculously skin tight.

The extravagance/expense is toned down a lot for main verse/Team Skull Pen, though is still in full force for her Team Magma and Flare incarnations. Flare Pen specifically is also often seen in oranges and blacks, as fitting of someone often seen hanging off Lysandre Delannoy's arm. A hint of alternative fashion in Skull Pen's look, or "goth lite" basically, thanks to Guzma's influence.

Examples: [x] [x] [x]

Alder: Comfort is king, so his clothes are easy to move in. And sometimes a little on the shabby side, as well. Doesn't really bother if things are a touch of the threadbare side, and likes the aesthetic a poncho gives him. Often chooses quite neutral colours, shades of whites, blacks, beige. Maybe with a bit of pale orange thrown in to compliment his hair colour, too.

Knit sweatshirts, maybe a long-ish cardigan over a t-shirt.

Examples: [x] [x] [x]

Guzma: Baggy, black and white, with maybe a bit of gold or purple thrown in for good measure. Tries to go for a typical "hard man"/"gangster" type look. Sometimes with big, chunky gold chains, drop crotch joggers, trainers, akin to his canon look. Sometimes a more punk aesthetic, in a Sex Pistols vibe. Albeit accidentally, since they were before his time.

Piercings, partially shaved hairstyles, tattoos, spikes all appeal, too. Doesn't have any real tattoos yet, but will probably get some in the future. Doesn't have any immediately visible piercings. I'll, uh, let you come to your own conclusions there.

Oh, and rude shirts. Can be rude because it's just the word "FUCK" in giant letters, can be rude because it's offensive and/or sexually crude. If it's a t-shirt you wouldn't want someone to wear around your kids, it'll suit Guzma perfectly.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x]

Océane: A toned down version of Pen. She'll occasionally rock some expensive jewellery, but her tastes are generally less ridiculously priced and more down to earth. Lavenders and lilacs are popular with her, as are form fitting t-shirts and jeans. Often seen with short nails and a natural makeup look.

Jewellery tastes are usually kept to something black and gold. Not opposed to wearing heels, though as no stranger to working hard gardening, the nail polish and heels are much less of a guarantee with her than, say, Pen or Oleana.

Formalwear depends on the type of event. She has been seen dressed up to the nines as expected of someone from a royal bloodline, in a red and black theme, but sometimes if appropriate will wear a white trouser suit, with some gold jewellery on the more understated side of things.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Sinclair: Sinclair basically has two modes when it comes to his dress sense. Suave, sophisticated, formal. Or a Pokeverse Joe Lycett.

Sinclair is quite typical of a Rich Person, with no qualms about spending obscene amounts of money on ridiculously expensive clothing. Out of his siblings (Océane and Lysandre @nats-rp-world), he's the least down to earth by far. Signet rings, ridiculous amounts of gold and precious gems (though was probably talked out of real diamond jewellery). Waistcoats, cufflinks, shiny shoes, ties, you get the idea. In cool greys and blues.

And then Pokeverse Joe Lycett Mode is. Well. Anything goes. Fluffy, hot pink, leopard or zebra print, leather, sunglasses

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Ghetsis: Oh. Oh God. Where do I even begin?

Pre-Plasma, he probably favoured expensive suits and jewellery similar to Sinclair when dressed as a human being and not a Muppet. With the addition of sunglasses regardless of the weather/location to hide his scarred eye. During and post-Plasma, however, when he stopped giving a fuck, he leant hard into his occult aesthetic and basically started dressing like the evil cult leader that he became.

While he has an interest in occult/supernatural/paranormal symbolism in general, his personal aesthetic has always been toward eyes, including Turkish nazars and the Egyptian Eye of Horus.

Plasma-era Ghetsis favoured long, elaborately made flowing robes, especially ones that allowed his scarred arm to be concealed completely, and/or ones with a very high collar to hide his lopsided mouth. And yet still had the audacity to pretend not to be completely evil. My man is not subtle.

Post-Plasma Dennis is just as up his own butthole with fancy, elaborate clothing. Just more with a royal theme, because hey, now everyone knows that he was the team's true king, why not lean into that particular aesthetic? Other than all the reasons of being a decent human being that we can immediately think of. Some kind of half cape or a way to hide his injured arm, gloves included, are still very much welcomed.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Lance: Capes, capes, capes, capes, capes, capes. My boy loves a good cape.

Often seen in his dragon master outfit, or a variation of it, which there are several. Normally in dark blues, a bit of orange, and a black and red cape. Though he does have an outfit that's more red than blue, as well, ala LGPE. Though in the summers, he's more likely to be seen wearing traditional garb instead, to try and keep cool.

He favours a red, white and gold version of the outfit, due to his own Gyarados being shiny. But he does also have a black and blue version.

For shits and giggles, he also got a version of his dragon master outfit in the colours of Dragonite, though it hasn't seen much use yet. Not after Cynthia found out about it and mercilessly took the piss.

Has probably leant into his black and red (ish) cape's aesthetic to dress up as a vampire on Hallowe'en. A more casual outfit tends to be simple, jeans, jacket, t-shirt and boots. Something that can be easily thrown on.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Giovanni: Suits all the way. Giovanni likes to look good, and he's damn well aware of when he does. Suits range from form to business casual, maybe sometimes with a turtleneck in lieu of a shirt. His outfits scream class and sophistication.

The mob boss look of a fedora and long coat has been retired, but he still appreciates the aesthetic.

And then sometimes he just dads out in Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals. No socks, though, he's not a complete heathen.

Silver must be so proud.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Marnie: Black teamed with pastel pink, leather, spikes. Basically punk aesthetic. Marnie joins Guzma in an appreciation for tattoos, shaved hairstyles and piercings, and like Ghetsis (no, I didn't expect this comparison, either), has an interest in occult symbolism. Though Marnie's interests more lie in witchcraft than general occultism.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Mustard: Sports jackets and jaunty hats. Like Alder, Mustard prefers clothes that are easy to move in. Which is understandable, given the fact that this is a ripped old man who is still in sufficient shape to perform fuckin' flips and shit.

He's often seen exercising in a karate gi. Barefoot if he's in the dojo, and in trainers if he's outside. Which granted, don't really go together, but it's Mustard. Eccentric old man gives zero fucks.

As well as the hat he's seen in game, he also takes a shine to pork pie and bowler hats. Usually in darker colours, but brightened up with a nice teal, or yellow. Sometimes he'll sport a t-shirt with something silly/funny on it. Though unlike Guzma, his can actually be appropriately worn in public.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Rose: Professional Farhad favours fancy suits, usually in a sleek grey, accented with red. A suit in general will do the job for him when he has to look formal, but that's definitely his preferred signature look. No matter what, however, his tie will be sporting a rose knot. The rose knot is non-negotiable. Partly for the obvious reason of relating to his name, but also because it just looks damn impressive.

He often keeps an earring in one ear and a lot of the time it's an impressive looking stud, but unlike the more pretentious (or wanky) muses like Ghetsis or Sinclair, Farhad doesn't care about getting the real deal, the most expensive thing. A simple stud or hoop is plenty sufficient.

Professional mode or not, he's also not even slightly afraid to rock some eyeliner. It makes him look amazing and he doesn't give a shit about how "socially acceptable" it is for a man, and doesn't try and make it sound more masculine by referring to it as "guyliner".

When partaking in religious holidays, he opts for a simple black yarmulke.

Casual Rose isn't quite as eye-bleedingly horrible as in the past. He might still try and disguise himself with a pair of sunglasses and a change of wardrobe, but no more eye-watering polka dot shorts. His non-professional wear leans more toward business casual nowadays, seeing how "incognito mode" never really worked. So on a day to day basis, he's seen in polo shirts and jeans, often in varying shades of purple or red.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Leon: Who wears short shorts? Leon wears short shorts! Leon is often seen in clothes that can be easily exercised in. Partly because he does a lot of it, and partly because he likes that they tend to draw attention to his figure. Little shirts, tight tops and one of the many, many hats from his collection.

He is also a fan of neon 80s patterns. Particularly the neon ones that look like the carpet in an arcade. He also genuinely enjoys a nice regal, fur lined cape. It's just a shame that he decided to plaster sponsorships all over the back of it...

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Peony: In contrast to the bright orange expedition outfit that he debuted in, Peony's fashion sense is quite toned down and dark. Greys and black mainly. During his teens, however, he was another one for punk fashion.

Like Rose, he also unashamedly wears makeup, and is occasionally seen with a yarmulke during holidays (Hashem verse only).

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x]

Oleana: Minus the odd choker that Oleana enjoys wearing, her fashion sense is more often than not kept looking professional, in shades of red and black. Rose themed jewellery is a lot of the time considered too "on the nose", but every now and then she'll indulge.

She keeps her nails professionally manicured, painted red, and short. And similarly to Pen, has a penchant for high heels.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Maxie: A lot of the times, Maxie keeps it simple in the Hoenn heat, in just shirts and shorts. Accompanied by socks and sandals, unfortunately. But still. He finds the whole disgust of socks/sandals to be overdone, and therefore won't let it stop him from wearing them if he wants to.

And then sometimes he'll find something really truly, spectacularly hideous and be unable to resist buying it just for shits and giggles.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Bede:

This probably goes without saying.

Any and all shades of pink are fair game for Bede, usually with blue jeans and white trainers, for everyday wear. He likes to accessorise with the gold watch from Rose, and a choker, either plain black, or in subtle bi pride colours depending on how confident he's feeling about his sexuality. He also has his ears pierced, and an industrial bar through one.

Also, being a teenage edgelord, it's not unexpected to see him in tops that have slogans like "I don't care", "I hate everyone", or something else equally delightful printed on the front.

A few things with a rose on them are in his wardrobe as well, because... well, Father.

And the toe shoes have long since been binned.

Examples: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] 

[maribatshipper]

Trollhunting Lantern Chapter 1

A/N: This was written down long before Wizards, about two/three years ago, so this is an alternate universe.

“It’s Marnie & Campo, on River 94.9!  We play the best music mix from the 80s till now!”

The song “Hungry Like The Wolf” starts playing as two strange figures fight in the early morning light. Technically, morning shadows. They don’t touch the light.

“Yield, Trollhunter Jim!” One of the figures exclaims.

This figure is terrifyingly tall, has glowing yellow eyes, and a crimson coloured armour all around him, only revealing the glowing eyes. He has a long sword in his right hand the same colour as his armour.

The other figure, who has now been identified as Jim, replies, “A Trollhunter never yields, Venjo! I’d rather die!”

Jim is a tall creature that looks like he was once human. He has teeth pointing out of his bottom jaw, blue skin, horns on the top of his head, messy black hair, blue eyes, and red/black armour on with a sword made of the same material as his armour.

A human female with brown hair, a white streak and hairclips in her hair, reddish-brown eyes and purple armour jumps into the fray.

“& I’ll kill you if you kill him!” She exclaims.

Venjo smirks, “Terms accepted Trollhunter. Flesh-bag! This is not your battle!”

Jim smirks, “I can take him, Claire. Get out of here. Stay with Blinky.”

Claire smirks, “And let you have all the fun?’

Venjo jumps at Claire, who dodges and slams into him with her armour.

She smirks, “I gotta thank Merlin for the armour.”

Jim scoffs, “You’ve already thanked him a dozen times!”

Venjo slams into Jim, causing Jim to come dangerously close to the sunlight.

“Master Jim! Careful!” Another male voice calls.

Jim jumps away from the sunlight and slams into Venjo. Venjo gets thrown across the ground. Jim holds his sword towards Venjo.

“Your reign of terror will soon be over, Venjo!” Jim frowns.

The sunlight touches Jim’s armour, causing it to burn. Jim panics, & Venjo takes this opportunity to kick him in the face. Jim flies away, close to another beam of sunlight, with his sword in the sun. Venjo gets up, ready to run into Jim. Jim reaches into the sunlight to grab his sword, burning his hand. Claire keeps Venjo occupied while Jim shakes the sparks off his hand. Venjo hits Claire away, into the sun, which doesn’t affect her has much as it does the other two creatures.

“There is nowhere left for you to run, Trollhunter! Give me the Amulet!” Venjo yells.

Jim looks towards the circle on his chest. He jumps up a tree, trying to get away from Venjo for a short while. But every now and then, the branches snap underneath his weight. Jim stops and looks around for Venjo, when Venjo hits him from behind.

“OW! That was worse than your breath!” Jim groans.

Claire jumps on the branches too; her weight being supported more than Jim’s and Venjo’s. Venjo pushes Jim close to the end of the trees, where the sun is shining.

“It ends here, Trollhunter. It’s either me or the sun. Either way, you’re doomed.” Venjo laughs.

Claire hits Venjo away from Jim, who is burning.

“Doesn’t matter. The Amulet will find a champion. That Trollhunter will stop you and your schemes.” Jim groans.

Claire gasps as she realises what he’s saying.

“JIM! NO!” She screams as he jumps into the sun.

As he burns, he turns to stone. He smashes as soon as he hits the ground. Claire runs towards Jim’s remains.

“No! No, Jim, no.” Claire cries.

 ***

An alarm goes off at 7:00 playing “Eye of The Tiger”. A girl climbs out of bed. She has brown, curly hair, blue shining eyes, and looks like she’s only 13. She sings along to the song as she gets changed. She slides to the kitchen and cooks herself some scrambled eggs. She sets the table for the rest of her family, with six plates on the table, at six chairs, then she removes a plate. She puts milk, Milo Cereal, oats, and Rice Bubbles on the table. She continues to sing. Her family comes out with a smile on their faces.

“Face to face, out in the heat

Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry

They stack the odds 'till we take to the street

For the kill with the skill to survive!”

A boy slightly taller comes out and yells, “Shut up, Scarlett!”

The girl now identified as Scarlett ignores him.

“It's the eye of the tiger, it's the dream of the fight

Risin' up to the challenge of our rival

And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night

And he's watchin' us all with the eye of the tiger!”

The boy yells, “If you don’t shut up, Scarlett, you’re gonna regret it.”

Scarlett stops, then looks at him.

“You know, if you had taste, and were a proper brother, Nick, you would be encouraging me, not patronising me for being happy. I have every right to be happy. You, Nicholas, should be happy too. But you have no idea what it’s like to be happy anymore. You don’t even know what it’s like to work at Maccas! I had to slave over a grill, a HOT grill, & clean it while it was still on!” Scarlett frowns.

The boy now identified as Nicholas smirks, “How many jobs have you had?” thinking he has the upper hand.

Scarlett retorts, “How many jobs have you kept for more than a month?”

Nicholas stumbles, and two young girls laugh.

“Thank you, little sisters. Now I must be off, to my ACTUAL and real job. Unlike your big brother here, who, A, I didn’t put a plate out for, because he needs to learn to do things himself, and B, is a freeloader.” Scarlett smirks.

Scarlett walks out the door with a satisfied smirk. She grabs her bike and sees someone.

“Hey Greeny!” Scarlett exclaims.

A girl with short red hair, a yellow shirt, blue eyes, and a few bruises rides up and sighs, “What did I say about calling me that? I’m trying to keep my secret, and if you blurt that all over town, they’ll figure it out.”

Scarlett giggles, “No one’s gonna find out, Bracha. When someone calls someone else a Greeny, they think the person is either a vegetarian or a person who cares too much for the environment. Not…”

Scarlett points to a little green ring on Bracha’s right hand.

“I get it. I just don’t like it. What if there are other people who know about them?” Bracha asks.

Scarlett sighs, “It’s fine, Bracha. Talking about Extra-terrestrial’s is all the rage now. People are even going to storm Area 51 according to the internet. They won’t find anything. It’s all been moved to Area 49b.”

Bracha asks, “What makes you say that?”

Scarlett giggles, “It’s what my Arcadian friend Eli told me before he told me that he had to study abroad in Cantaloupia.”

Bracha asks, “Cantaloupia?”

Scarlett giggles, “I believe he actually meant he was visiting an alien planet to be the human ambassador or something. Speaking of, have you visited any new planets?”

Bracha smirks, “Akaridian-5. The species there are made pretty much entirely of energy, and their hearts they call “Cores”, and if someone dies, as long as their core is intact, they can come back to life through regeneration chambers. Or that’s what I gathered from the peace treaty. Queen Aja seems to be a wonderful queen. She recognised me as being human though.”

Scarlett asks, “Are they blue?”

Bracha falls off the bike in surprise.

“How did you know?” She asks.

Scarlett hops off her bike to help Bracha up.

“I’ll show you later. Let’s just say, Eli knows two. He was surprised I was actually sixteen. He swore I was alien.” Scarlett replies.

“Scarlett...”

Scarlett stiffens.

“Did you hear that?” Scarlett asks.

Bracha shakes her head.

“Scarlett...”

Scarlett notices a few rocks. She points to the rocks and sneaks over, as if a snake were going to jump out.

“Scarlett!”

Scarlett gasps, “Rocks are saying my name. If I get a ring from digging in that, and it’s green, I’m requesting to be on your team.”

Bracha makes sure no one is around and whispers, “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight, let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power, Green Lantern’s light.”

A green costume forms around Bracha, and a mask appears over her face. She thrusts her ring towards the pile of rocks and what appears to be a laser goes over them.

“I’m getting an energy reading, but it’s not a Lantern energy. It’s something else. It registered the stones as k-spar.” Bracha frowns.

Scarlett turns and sighs, “Take that off. Someone could see you.”

Scarlett picks up a rock to show a glowing blue object.

“An amulet?” Bracha asks.

Scarlett sighs, “I thought it would be a ring. I was hoping. So I could hang out with you more often.”

Bracha’s green outfit disappears. Scarlett looks up and sees something white in the trees, then it disappears.

“Ever get that feeling you’re being watched, but you find no proof of it?” Scarlett asks.

Bracha nods.

“Let’s go. I’m gonna be late for work. Besides, if something does happen, I’m sure we can fight them off. Or you can.” Scarlett jokes.

The girls hop back on their bikes and ride off.

Meanwhile, above in the trees, a creature with blue skin and six eyes gasps.

“It chose a female human?” He asks.

Claire sighs, “I’ll keep an eye on the green girl. You keep an eye on the new Trollhunter. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be like Jim’s time as Trollhunter.”

 ***

 Scarlett smiles, “Will that be all for today, Ma’am?”

A woman replies, “That’ll be all honey. Too much damage to my account.”

Scarlett giggles and receives the payment. As the woman leaves, someone pats Scarlett on the back.

“Well done, kid.” A guy smiles.

Scarlett replies, “Well, like you said, Jack, at Macca’s, we strive to put a smile on every seat. Correct?”

Jack smirks, “Good job. You going soon?”

Scarlett sighs, “I gotta do some mopping, but I’ll go after that. Red bucket for customer space. Right?”

Jack smiles, “Right again, Scarlett. I’m going on break. Seeya tomorrow?”

Scarlett replies, “Sure Jack.”

Scarlett washes her hands and gets the mop. She mops the customer’s area, and a familiar figure comes up behind her.

“Anything interesting happening in there?” Bracha smirks.

Scarlett rolls her eyes, “Nothing really. I barely even know anyone outside of work. They are all old enough to be my cousins!”

Bracha smirks, “That’s rich. You have, like, fifty cousins. Half of them are much older than you. And they are on your mother’s side. I haven’t even met your father’s side.”

Scarlett smirks, “You & I both, kiddo.”

Bracha frowns, “I hate that nickname.”

Scarlett giggles, “I call everyone that looks young kiddo. Especially if they are younger than me. Like you.”

Bracha sighs, “Alright, Alright. But I still don’t like the name.”

Scarlett rolls her eyes and sighs.

“I’m done my mopping. I have other work to do. Seeya later, Greeny.” Scarlett smirks.

Bracha sighs, “Don’t call me that.”

Scarlett walks away and notices a young girl sitting down with a white stripe in her hair. It reminds her of Disney’s Princess Anna. Scarlett continues walking into the staff only area. She goes into the staff break room, where her workmates are having fun on their breaks.

“Is she still following you around, Scarlett?” A girl with blonde hair asks.

“She’s my friend. I’ve told her she can stay around as long as she doesn’t come into the staff area and doesn’t pick any fights. Besides, it’s safer when I ride home.” Scarlett replies.

A tall guy sighs, “Well, it’s none of my business, but a girl seems to have taken an interest in the two of you.”

Scarlett sighs, “Who, Caillou?”

Caillou replies, “A customer. Her name is Claire. She’s got a white stripe in her hair.”

Scarlett frowns, thinking.

“Could she know? No, she couldn’t know. Or maybe she does know Bracha’s Identity. Maybe that’s why she was looking at us.”

Scarlett sighs & realises her shift is almost up.

“Got to go, guys!” She smiles.

“Seeya later, Strange Scarlett.” Everyone smiles.

Scarlett laughs as she goes & grabs her bag. She shoves a jumper on so people know not to go to her for food now. She signs out & walks into the customer area.

“Scarlett! You ready to go?” Bracha calls.

Scarlett sighs, “Sure.”

 ***

 Scarlett frowns, deep in thought while riding.

“You okay, Scarlett?” Bracha asks.

Scarlett answers, “Yeah... I’m fine. It’s actually about a customer. I’ve been told she took an interest in us. She had a white stripe in her hair. Funny thing, I could’ve sworn I saw her in the forest, but no one was there.”

Bracha stares at her ring.

“Well, maybe the ring went haywire and didn’t see her.” Bracha suggests.

Scarlett smiles, “Well, we gotta split now. Seeya, Bracha. Good luck with the GLs.”

Bracha smiles, “Call me if that thing does anything.”

The girls split up and go to their separate houses. Scarlett opens the door and walks in.

“Hey, Scarlett!” Her father smiles.

“Hi Dad! How were the busses in Brisbane today? Anything special?” Scarlett asks.

Her father says, “Just your normal day. There were a few grumpy customers. I met a weird old man. I think he was at a costume party. He had armour on.”

Nicholas comes in and says, “Hi, Michael.”

Scarlett gasps, “That’s Dad to you!”

Michael sighs, “I’ll deal with it, Scarlett. How about you tell your mother about your day?”

Scarlett smirks. She knows not to get her Dad angry. She walks into the loungeroom.

“Hi Mum. How was Joshua today? Did he give you a hard time?” Scarlett asks.

Her Mum says, “Not really. He was actually quiet today. And you know that’s hard for your brother.”

Scarlett nods.

“Hey, Heather, where are the Wasabi nuts?” Michael asks.

“In the pantry!” Heather answers.

“I’m gonna put my stuff away.” Scarlett smiles.

“Alright honey. Your dad and I have to visit someone. Can you take care of your sisters tonight?” Heather asks.

Scarlett answers, “Sure Mum. As long as Face-ache is gone before you go.”

She walks to the room she shares with her sisters.

“Scarlett’s home!” The youngest exclaims.

“Hi, girls. Oriel, did anything happen today?” Scarlett asks.

The girl with sandy blonde wavy hair replies, “Sophie wanted to hang out. But since Nicko’s here...”

The girl with straight brown hair growls, “I really want to-”

Scarlett sighs, “Crystal, I know what you want to do, but it’s not that simple. If he hurts you again, do all you can to fight back. Just use a broom to whack him. By the way, I’m in charge tonight.”

Crystal frowns.

“Ring-ring-ring, Ring-ring-aling. Ring-ring-ring, ring-ring-aling. Get your phone! When someone calls. Get your phone!”

Scarlett answers the phone.

“Hello.”

“Has it done anything yet?” Bracha’s voice asks.

Scarlett sighs, “Nope. Nothing yet.”

Bracha asks, “You’ll tell me when it does something, right?”

Scarlett giggles, “Yes. Should I Pinkie Promise to ease your worries?”

Bracha sighs, “Alright.”

Scarlett rolls her eyes, “Cross my heart, hope to fly, Stick a cupcake in my eye I will tell you when it does something.”

Bracha giggles, “Thanks. I’ll ask tomorrow. Got to report in for the corps.”

Scarlett smiles, “Got it, Bracha. TTYL!”

Bracha hangs up.

“She still a Lantern?” Oriel whispers.

Scarlett’s sisters are the only other people that know about Bracha’s secret.

“Of course. It’s rare to be fired from her job. She’s still one of them.” Scarlett smiles.

“Girls!” Heather calls.

All the girls run towards their Mum.

“It’s time for us to go. Scarlett, you’re in charge while we’re gone.” Heather smiles.

Crystal hugs Mum & Dad first and gives them both a goodbye kiss. Oriel gives them a goodbye hug.

“What? No kiss?” Michael asks.

Oriel exclaims, “Yukky!”

Everyone giggles. Scarlett gives them a hug & a kiss.

“Seeya later guys.” Scarlett smiles.

Michael and Heather walk out the door. Scarlett’s sisters almost immediately run to the TV. Scarlett pulls the Amulet out of her pocket.

“What exactly are you?” Scarlett whispers.

Suddenly, all the girls hear a crash in the basement. They see Joshua is sitting on the couch. Crystal and Scarlett grab brooms and Oriel stays with Joshua. Scarlett opens the door and walks down with a torch in her mouth. Crystal stays behind in case something comes up behind Scarlett. Scarlett holds her broom like one would a katana.

“I hope it’s not snakes.” She mumbles.

She goes over to a pile of boxes and looks behind it. She notices strange footprints on the floor. Meanwhile, something comes up behind her.

“Lady Scarlett!” It exclaims.

Scarlett turns as fast as she can and whacks the creature with the broom. She now sees it has six eyes.

“Ow… Master Jim wasn’t so violent on his first encounter.” It comments.

Crystal comes down and goes to hit it when Scarlett grabs Crystal’s broom.

“Before we start attacking, and sorry, it was instinct, what are you?” Scarlett frowns.

The creature smiles, “I am Blinky. A troll. And you, Lady Scarlett, are the Trollhunter.”

Scarlett and Crystal exchange glances, look back at “Blinky”, then laugh. Blinky frowns in confusion.

“Sorry, Blinky. We just had to get that out of our system.” Scarlett smiles.

Crystal grips the broom again and goes to hit Blinky. Blinky winces when Scarlett grabs the broom, again.

“As you can see, Crystal’s prone to hit things that she doesn’t understand. I have adapted after living with her for thirteen years. Now, better explanation please before she hits me.” Scarlett asks in a deadpan voice.

“You have to fight evil trolls.” Blinky replies.

Crystal seems happy with this answer, then runs upstairs.

Scarlett sighs, “I’ll grab a mattress.”

She pulls a mattress out from behind some other boxes and puts it near the stairs as Crystal pulls Oriel and Joshua downstairs. Joshua acts like nothing’s different, and Oriel screams, promptly fainting on the mattress.

“You need to go before my parents get home. Either that, or get another beating, only from my mother. GET!” Scarlett orders.

Blinky leaves.

 ***

 Scarlett throws water on Oriel, and Oriel gasps.

“What was that for?” Oriel coughs.

Scarlett replies, “Simple. You fainted after seeing a troll. Crystal’s fault. She showed him to you. If I end up hanging out with him, getting rid of evil trolls, you two have to cover for me. Especially you, Crystal.”

A knock is heard upstairs.

“Mum and Dad!” Crystal gasps.

Scarlett orders, “Not a word. Oriel, shower.”

They run upstairs. Scarlett prays it’s not Nicholas. Oriel runs to the bathroom and the others finish running to the door. They open the curtain to see-

“Nicholas. I jinxed it!” Scarlett mumbles.

They open the door and scowl.

“What are you doing here, you monster? Didn’t Dad tell you that if you’re not back before Eight, don’t come back at all?” Scarlett asks.

Crystal growls in a growl that sounds like a lion’s growl.

Nicholas scoffs, “You’re not Dad.”

Scarlett feels her face go red in anger when suddenly, Crystal jumps on Nicholas and pulls his hair out, little bit at a time. Scarlett stares in shock when Oriel comes down, shower finished, and stares, slack-jawed.

“Is Crystal…?” She asks.

Scarlett nods, “Uh huh.”

Oriel pulls Scarlett’s phone out and records the ordeal.

“This is going to be awesome.” Oriel smiles.

“What is going on here?” everyone hears a voice asks.

Oriel stops the recording and hides the phone while Heather and Michael stare at Crystal and a boy that looks like a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing.

“What did you just do?” Heather freaks out.

Michael just stares in shock.

“Uh… Mum, Dad, He had it coming for eight years. She’s done enough for both of us.” Scarlett sighs.

She pulls Crystal away from Nicholas and takes both of the girls to their bedroom, and collapses on the floor.

“This day went from normal to the craziest day I’ve ever had in my sixteen years of living. And I bet this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

 ***

 Nicholas comes back from the hospital, with his face and left arm in a cast. Heather walks upstairs and sits on the bed.

“I’m very disappointed in you girls.” Heather sighs.

Crystal frowns, “I’m sorry Mum. But he deserved it after all that he did to us!”

Scarlett keeps quiet, feeling ashamed.

“I know, but it wasn’t right. I know you have… issues, honey, but you should not do it. Scarlett, I know you were in shock, but please, take her off next time.” Heather frowns.

Scarlett nods. She walks over to the window and stares out.

“I understand Mum.” Scarlett frowns.

“I hope you all will be more responsible in the future.” Heather sighs as she walks out.

Oriel facepalms, “I can’t believe we let this happen.”

Crystal frowns, “Not my fault. He had it coming for years!”

Scarlett just continues staring out the window, a blue glow emanating from the amulet she now has in her hand.

“We have bigger fish to fry now. Like what showed up in our basement.” Scarlett whispers.

The girls stare at Scarlett.

“So, what do we do, Trollhunter?” Crystal smirks.

Scarlett giggles. It’s funny how her family can be upset and angry one second, then can be happy as Larry the next.

“Well, first, I need to find out more about this thing. It seems to be connected to Blinky. I have a plan.” Scarlett smiles.

Oriel frowns, “What are you doing?”

Scarlett whips out the phone.

“Hi, you’ve reached Bracha. Unfortunately, I am unavailable at the moment, but I will call you back as soon as I can. *Beep*”

“Hey, Bracha. Big news. I have to tell you something in person. One question I have to ask though. Ever heard of a Trollhunter?” Scarlett says into the answering machine.

 ***

 Scarlett looks at her glow-in-the-dark watch and sneaks out the window. She looks at her sisters as they put pillows under her blanket. Scarlett gives them a thumbs up and walks as far as she can down her yard. Living in the middle of nowhere gives you a fairly big property to live in. She stops near the dam. She never goes this far from fear of snakes. Especially at night. She looks at the Amulet, which is glowing blue. A language comes up, which Scarlett finds familiar. Maybe Japanese or Chinese. It changes to another language, and another, then English.

“For the Glory of Merlin, Daylight is Mine to command.” Scarlett reads.

A few blue lights start going into the left side of her chest, and she floats into the air. Armour appears around her, which is slightly bigger than herself. The Amulet is right where the blue lights went. The armour glows blue, then changes its size so it fits perfectly.

“Awesome. Now my sisters will want one.” Scarlett laughs.

She holds out her hand and as another blue light goes into her hand, putting a sword in her hand, only slightly bigger than she can hold. It drops to the ground, making her groan in pain.

“I hope it works for this sword too.” Scarlett sighs.

The sword slightly shrinks to fit Scarlett’s muscles.

“Much better. So this is what that guy meant.” Scarlett giggles.

She waves the sword around and gets it stuck in a tree. She relaxes, then the armour and sword disappear, and the amulet falls onto the ground.

[happyweddingblogs]

150 Best Engagement Quotes By Famous Personalities and Celebrities

Source: Happy Wedding App

You might need engagement quotes to beautify your Facebook and Insta posts; here, I am sharing with you 150+ timeless Engagement quotes given by famous personalities and celebrities. Take a look……

“Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.” ― Daniel H. Pink.

“I have an engagement ring, which is my favorite accessory.” — Jules Asner.

“I love you for all that you are, all that you have been, and all you’re yet to be.” — Unknown.

“When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.” ― P.G. Wodehouse.

“I couldn’t have dreamed you into existence because I didn’t even know I needed you. You must have been sent to me.” ― Kamand Kojouri.

“…learning always occurs in a context of taking action, and they value engagement and experience as the most effective strategies for deep learning.” ― Richard DuFour.

To speak frankly, I am not in favor of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.” ― Oscar Wilde.

“I married a man who was as much a part of me as my own soul.” ― C.J. English.

“Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love.” — William Penn

“Marriage is not kick-boxing, it’s salsa dancing.” ― Amit Kalantri.

“There are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship, which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.” ― George Eliot.

“It is wrong to think of marriage as hyped bondage. You can marry and still be happy. Everything rests on who you are married to. Marriage is a beautiful thing.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson.

“Student engagement is a product of motivation and active learning. It is a product rather than a sum because it will not occur if either element is missing.” ― Elizabeth F. Barkley.

“And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivie. It can lead to marriage if you’re not careful.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert.

“Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart.” — Unknown.

“The success of love is in the loving; it is not in the result of loving.” – Mother Teresa.

“Give a man the finger; he’ll put a wedding ring on it!” ― Ljupka Cvetanova.

“My acronym for full-on engagement: ROAR, Return on Attendee Relevance” ― Andrea Driessen

“The highest happiness on earth is marriage.” — William Lyon Phelps.

“They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact, solemnized, so far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement to belong only, and to belong tremendously, to each other.” ― Henry James.

“Love is not in the ring. Love is in the heart.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson.

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” — Nora Ephron.

“You Need To Gauge, To Engage.” ― Syed Sharukh

“Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.” — William Shakespeare.

Related:  List of ideas for your Engagement party

“When you found someone you really loved, everything fitted.” ― Melissa Hill.

“It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel—they get to know each other better.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“I’ve found someone who refuses to let me be anything but myself.” ― Hayley Paige.

“We start a relationship with someone not only because of how great they are but how great they make us feel. And because they have granted us this extraordinary gift—a chance to experience Love, joy, compassion, and security —it is our exclusive privilege to make them feel wonderful about themselves, especially during days when they, themselves, don’t feel so wonderful.” ― Kamand Kojouri.

“Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.” — Dante Alighieri.

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness and call it Love—true Love.” — Robert Fulghum.

“Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.” — Zig Ziglar.

“I won’t give my heart to another girl until God shows me it’s my wife.” ― Eric Ludy

“The reason why women think men should spend a lot of money on an engagement ring is because women are the ones who get to clean up all the poop (stains and toilet bowl swirls included) that is provided by every family member living in the house until they die.” ― Heather Chapple.

“Engagement can be a commitment to love or a declaration of war. One must enter every battle without hesitation, willing to fully engage the enemy until death does you apart.” ― Emily Thorne.

“My forever.” ― Unknown

“To keep the fire burning brightly, there’s one easy rule: Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart—about a finger’s breadth—for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule.” — Marnie Reed Crowel

“Once you’ve found the right person, you just know.” ― Sophie Turner.

“A perfect couple shares their failures, mistakes and their successes equally and deals with them all as a team.” ― Ricardo Derose.

“How could I say no?” ― Unknown.

“Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.” — Barnett R. Brickner.

“Calm down, it isn’t a ring,” I laughed, and he pushed the box across the table to me, and I blushed and opened it.” ― Mercy Cortez.

“We’re engaged to be engaged, aren’t we?” ― E.D. Baker

“You don’t marry someone you can live with-you marry the person you cannot live without.” — Unknown.

“Marriage is not the beginning of the journey, nor the end – it is the journey.” ― Carew Papritz.

“He’s just the best person I’ve ever met in my whole life.” ― Jennifer Lawrence.

“His proposal was dedicated to his love for me and the future he wanted to build together.” ― Rachel Lindsay.

“My Constant.” ― Unknown

“He got down on one knee, and he’s like, ‘I forgot everything I’m supposed to say, but you’re my best friend.'” ― Hilary Duff.

“It was so sweet.” ― Hilary Duff.

Also See: 110 Most Romantic Wedding Couple Quotes

“Well, he is the best man I’ve ever met. He’s just everything to me.” ― Unknown.

“Here’s to a lifetime of friendship, purpose & unconditional love.” ― Bindi Irwin.

“I asked my best friend a question… and he said yes.” ― Unknown.

“We have the greatest pre-nuptial agreement in the world. It’s called Love.” — Gene Perret.

“Wherever you are, is my home, my only home.” — Jane Eyre.

“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.” — Simone Signoret

“She said yes. Locking it down.” ― Alex Rodriguez.

“When he asked, I could not say NO.” ― Unknown.

“Engagement marks the end of a whirlwind romance and beginning of an eternal love story.” — Unknown.

“True love stories never have endings.” — Richard Bach.

“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” — Robert Browning.

“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” — Franklin P. Jones.

“The countdown begins.” ― Unknown.

“We are not perfect; we learn from our mistakes. And as long as it takes, I will prove my Love to you.”— Sara Bareilles.

“It’s time to make things official.” ― Unknown.

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” — Helen Keller.

“Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite.” ― Unknown.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; But it is the journey that matters, in the end.” — Ernest Hemingway.

“Every day is an engagement day for us.” ― Unknown.

“The secret of a happy marriage remains… a secret.” — Henny Youngman.

“25 days to go.” ― Unknown.

“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.” —Charles Dickens.

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” — Maya Angelou.

“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.” – Arthur Conan Doyle.

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you, and I’d choose you.” —Kiersten White.

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” — Aristotle.

“Love one another, and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.” — Micheal Leunig.

“It’s not your perfectness that I fell in Love with. It was your flaws that brought me in.” — Unknown.

“All commands from your lips are sweet, I say, and now have you not said the sweetest of all? Marry you!” — Byron Caldwell Smith.

“My whole heart for my whole life.” — French Proverb

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” — Emily Bronte.

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.” — Albert Einstein.

“A marriage is like a long trip in a tiny rowboat; if one passenger starts to rock the boat, the other has to steady it; otherwise they will go to the bottom together.” — David Reuben.

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you, and I’d choose you.” — Kiersten White.

“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” – Ruth Bell Graham.

Related: 65+ Beautiful Wedding Album Quotes

“Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each includes the other, each is enriched by the other.” — Felix Adler.

“It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel—they get to know each other better.” — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.

“Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet to see who they really are.” — Will Ferrell.

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.” — Milan Kundera.

“The disgusting way an engagement is regarded public property; all these older women smirking…but my point is their whole attitude is wrong— an engagement, horrid word in the first place, is a private affair and should be regarded as such.” — Daniel Day-Lewis.

“If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.” — Katharine Hepburn.

“It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” — Rita Rudner

“We may have started as individuals, but now we are as one.” — Bryon Pulsifer.

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.” – A.A. Milne.

“Today, engagement parties still allow both families to meet each other if they haven’t done so before. Even if both sets of parents have met, it’s nice for siblings and other extended relatives to meet and mingle, so they are all acquainted with one another before the wedding.” — Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer.

“They say that marriages are made in heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.” — Clint Eastwood.

“Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.” — Barnett R. Brickner.

“Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them, and you have found a lover for life.” — Leo Buscaglia.

“Courtship to marriage is a very witty prologue to a very dull play.” — William Congreve.

“It is the duty of the bride’s father to give a party to announce the Engagement. Apparently, this is done only after everyone knows about it.” — Spencer Tracy.

“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” — Phyllis Diller.

“The best thing that the diamond ring could do; was to amicably occupy a place on the engagement finger.” — Nikhil Parekh.

“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning. Your Love paints a beautiful picture of what Love really means.” — Unknown.

“You rose into my life like a promised sunrise, brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I’ve never been so strong. Now I’m where I belong.” — Maya Angelou.

“Engagement can be a commitment to love or a declaration of war. One must enter every battle without hesitation, willing to fully engage the enemy until death do you apart.” — Emily Thorne.

“It’s never out of style to have good manners. If possible, make the engagement announcement to the bride’s parents in person.” — Joyce Scardina-Becker.

“Love would never be a promise of a rose garden unless it is showered with light of faith, the water of sincerity and air of passion.” — Unknown.

“A perfect couple shares their failures, mistakes and their successes equally and deals with them all as a team.” — Ricardo Derose.

“Marriages don’t work when one partner is happy, and the other is miserable. Marriage is about both people being equally miserable.” – Forget Paris.

“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.” — Mignon McLaughlin.

“I won’t give my heart to another girl until God shows me it’s my wife.” — Eric Ludy.

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” — Antoine.

“You rose into my life like a promised sunrise, brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I’ve never been so strong. Now I’m where I belong.” — Maya Angelou.

“Although somewhat outdated, the use of formal announcement cards is a beautiful and elegant way to spread the word of your engagement.” — Joyce Scardina-Becker.

“Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.” — Zig Ziglar.

“If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.” — Michelle Hodkin.

Also See: 111 Best Wedding Anniversary Wishes for Friends

“I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon…and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is.” — George Eliot.

“If you tell me you love me, I might not believe you, but if you show me you do, then I will.” — Unknown

“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.” — Jane Austen.

“An engagement should come upon a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be. It is hardly a matter she could be allowed to arrange for herself.” — Edith Evans.

“For a marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end.” — Catherine Zeta-Jones.

“Let us be together for the rest of our lives; I will assure you that, starting from this engagement.” — Unknown.

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is a conversation.” — Oscar Wilde.

“I choose you, and I’ll choose you. Over and over and over without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat, I’ll keep choosing you.” — Unknown.

“For it was not into my ear, you whispered but into my heart.” — Judy Garland.

“The only gift is a portion of thyself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“We may have started as individuals, but now we are as one.” — Bryon Pulsifer.

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” — Carl Jung.

“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.” — Leo Tolstoy.

“To love and to be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” — David Viscott.

“I promise to take care of you when you are old, but the first time you hit me with your cane, I’ll wash your dentures in toilet water.” – Unknown.

“No engagement is worth anything unless it has been broken at least once.” — Dorothy Tutin.

“There are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship, which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.” — George Eliot.

“Each time you happen to me all over again.” – Edith Wharton

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” — Ernest Hemingway.

“Love is not blind—it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” — Rabbi Julius Gordon.

“Without you, I’m nothing, with you I’m something, but together we are everything.” — Unknown.

“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” — Audrey Hepburn.

“I try to remember, as I hear about friends getting engaged, that it’s not about the ring and it’s not about the wedding. It’s a grave thing, getting married. And it’s easy to get swept up in the wrong things.” — Gwyneth Paltrow.

“I feel like this is the beginning, though I’ve loved you for a million years.” — Stevie Wonder.

“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories!” – George Eliot

“A relationship is like a house when a light bulb burns out you do not go and buy a new house, but you fix the light bulb.” — Unknown.

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” — Antoine.

“My instinct is to keep my engagement ring. After all, I wouldn’t like to see it on the finger of a cheeky girl.” — Sian Lloyd.

“Engagement is the time when you have a clear view of how wonderful your coming life will be. So try to get the best vision of a great and wonderful future waiting for you.” — Unknown.

“Love doesn’t make the world go round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” — Franklin P. Jones.

“If I had a single flower for every time, I think of you, I could walk forever in my garden.” — Claudia Adrienne Grandi.

“All commands from your lips are sweet, I say, and now have you not said the sweetest of all? Marry you!” — Byron Caldwell Smith.

“For you see, each day I love you more, today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.” — Rosemonde Gerard.

“I love you and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“You are my answered prayer because you are more than a giver in many aspects—a giver of Love, hope, and happiness. You are a great giver in your own peerless ways.” — Unknown.

“I love you’ means that I accept you for the person that you are and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you’re in a bad mood or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you’re down, not just when you’re fun to be with. ‘I love you’ means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. It means thinking of you, dreaming of you, wanting and needing you constantly, and hoping you feel the same way for me.” — Deanne Laura Gilbert.

Everyone has an addiction; mine just happens to be you.” — Unknown.

Use these beautiful Engagement quotes to write wonderful F.B. and Insta posts to announce the great news to the world.

[alonely-dreamer]

The Valuable Sun | Chapter 19

Summary: Bill informs Eric and Brooke of the new coven in town.

Pairing: Eric x OC

Warnings: 18+

A/N: Please, note that I am French so there might be some mistakes here and there.

Words: 3594

Masterlist

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Walking through the doors of Bill’s house, or as Eric called it: ‘royal castle’, Brooklynne wondered how weird it must have been for Sookie to step foot inside. It had changed more than their own house and was barely recognizable. Of course, Brooke had been there so many times she almost knew it like the back of her hand. She didn’t need for the human guards to lead her to the King’s office. At some point that summer she had spent days and nights helping Bill with a vampire crisis. Walking through the house made her miss the sun. Not just because of the fake windows, but Bill, perhaps in an attempt of modernizing his tastes, had decorated everything in black and white, and Brooke always thought Sookie would add a little color to it.

“Ah,” Bill said as they came in, as if he were impatiently waiting for them. He was sitting at his desk, pen and paper in his hands, and a worried look on his face. “Thank you for coming.”

“What’s so important, your Majesty?” Eric said, the way he always said those words, sarcastically.

“There’s a new coven in town.”

“Again?”

“Oh no, witches,” Eric sighed as he stopped himself from rolling his eyes.

“Based out of a Wicca shop, not far from here. We…” he paused, then stood up. “I sent a vampire to stop them, two nights ago. We only found him earlier tonight… he seems he’s forgotten… everything.”

“What do you mean ‘everything’?” Eric asked.

“His name, his past… He knows he’s a vampire but only seems to remember fragments of his human life.”

“So the witches cast a spell on him?” Brooke deduced.

“They’re necromancers,” Bill informed them. “They brought a bird back from the dead.”

“A bird?”

“Are you certain of this?” Eric asked, suddenly as concerned as his King.

“I had someone on the inside. You know what this means, don’t you?”

“If they can control the dead, they can control us,” he nodded.

“That’s why I need Brooklynne. I need her to ask Marnie if she knows how to undo the spell she cast two nights ago.”

“Can’t you glamour her?”

“Like I said. She’s a necromancer.”

“I’m not letting Brooklynne go in that coven alone.”

“She won’t have to. Marnie’s downstairs.”

“You kidnapped the witch?” Eric scoffed. “Just kill her.”

“I thought that would be the reasonable thing to do as well,” he said. “But Nan disagreed. We’re forbidden from killing her or any human.”

“Fuck her. Make it look like an accident.”

“Any vampire who kills a mortal will be sentenced to the True Death. Is that what you want?”

“It’s fine,” Brooke interrupted them. “I’ll go.”

“Wait,” Eric stopped her. “We don’t know what she’s capable of, she could cast a spell on you too.”

“She won’t go alone,” Bill told them. “I’ll send a human agent down with her.”

“Oh, thanks, I feel so much better now,” Eric replied sarcastically.

“I’ll be fine,” Brooke repeated. “I can read minds, remember? I’ll be out of there before she can say Bibidi-Bobidi-Boo.”

“You think she shares the same spell book as the fat fairy from Snow-White? It’s too dangerous.”

Brooklynne couldn’t help but laugh. “First of all, it’s the fairy godmother from Cinderella. Second of all, I’m not asking for you permission.”

“She brought a bird back to life, she’s not gonna give you a makeover for any ball. You could get seriously hurt.”

“Actually,” Bill cleared his throat. “The bird was only alive for a few seconds before it died again. I doubt Marnie is any threat to a mortal.”

“Your doubts aren’t good enough.”

“Eric,” Brooklynne sighed. “I’m going. I’ll be fine. Okay?”

He paused. He was not happy, he was not happy at all. But most of their missions started that way. They argued about how dangerous it was for her, but she always ended up doing it anyway.

“She gets paid double the usual, for the risk.”

Bill scoffed. “Yeah, for the risk.”

The King of Louisiana gestured a heavily armed agent, all dressed in black and bullet proof uniform, face hidden by a black helmet, to join them in the room.

“Like I said. She won’t go alone.”

 ***

 The cells in the basement were all camera protected and Bill and Eric watched carefully on the computer screen as Brooklynne and agent 14 entered Marnie’s cells. All the rooms in the basement shared the same poor yellow lighting which Brooklynne hated. It was a pitiful attempt to produce fake sunlight and it gave her a headache more than anything else.

The witch was lying on the bed of the small room, and she stood up hastily as she heard the door open. She had long messy hair, a lost look on her face, and was dressed in a discolored light blue long sleeves shirt and a long green skirt which wiped the floor every time she moved. She looked like a witch, alright. An old and lonely lady whose gifts had marginalized her from the world her entire life.

“Good evening,” Brooklynne said with a smile as to not alarm her. “Marnie, is it?” she asked, but the witch just stared at her with confusion.

“A human? They sent a human. What does she want, what is this?”

Brooke escaped the witch’s confused mind as quickly as she had entered it.

“My name is Brooklynne Stackhouse. I work for the King of Louisiana. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“You work for those… vampires?”

“I do,” Brooklynne nodded, keeping a pretty smile on despite Marnie’s visible disgust. “I just have a few questions for you, if that’s okay?”

“She can’t glamour me, why did they send her, why not a vampire…”

“Recently, a vampire entered the Moongoddess Emporium, your shop, right? He seems to have forgotten who he is. Was that your doing?”

“He attacked us!” she replied with an angered tone. “We started chanting and he left.”

“So you cast a spell on him?”

“It was a… a non-specific protection incantation,” she stuttered. “I barely remember what I said because he took a chunk out of my neck!”

“Vampires tend to do that.”

“We had assembled peacefully to practice our religion!”

“Do you know how to reverse the spell?”

“I told you… I don’t know what I said!”

“Help me. Oh, I need you. Where are you? Help me. Please, help me.”

“But now you know his memory is gone. Don’t you know how to fix it?”

“I have no idea… I’m… I’m sorry.”

And she meant it. She had not lied, not once. She was a pretty incompetent witch, and Brooke wondered if Bill’s concern wasn’t misplaced.

“Thank you, Marnie,” Brooke said before she turned around to leave.

“W-wait! Wh-… Can I leave now?”

“I apologize. It’s not my decision to make.”

 ***

 “Are you sure?” Bill insisted. “She’s no threat to us?”

“She’s kinda insane,” Brooke said. “She kept asking for someone to help her… a… a witch, a dead witch. Apparently, she’s the one who cast the spell on your sick vampire.”

“Did she mention any name?”

“No, sorry.”

“Well… thank you, anyway.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

“You’ve done enough.”

“Can we go now?” Eric complained.

“Of course. Thanks again, for your help.”

Eric handed his hand to her which she quickly took, and he pretty much dragged her out of Bill’s office. As they stepped out, Bill’s cellphone started ringing and Eric rolled his eyes as he heard the vampire call for his human.

“Brooklynne, didn’t you say Jason was missing?”

“He’s not missing,” she corrected him.

“Well, Jessica just texted me. She found him badly hurt on the side of the road, right outside of Bon Temps.”

“What?”

“She and Hoyt dropped him off at his house. I thought you’d like to know.”

“Thanks Bill!”

“Of course.”

“I need to call Sookie,” Brooklynne told Eric. “I have to go. Now!”

 ***

 Eric had left Brooklynne and Sookie at Jason’s house where they found Hoyt and Jessica waiting for them.

“Thank you for staying with him,” Sookie said as she joined them in the kitchen, behind the counter. “Is he okay?”

“I gave him my blood,” Jessica replied. “He should be fine.”

“Did he say what happened?”

“He hasn’t talked to us,” Hoyt shook his head. “He’s pretty freaked out, though. He… he looked like he fought with a bear or something.”

“A bear?” Sookie repeated with a dumb look on her face.

“We’ll let you take care of him now,” Jessica said as she slid her hand in Hoyt’s. “You can count on us if you need anything.”

“Thanks so much, Jess,” Brooklynne nodded.

“He’s in his bedroom,” Hoyt told them.

“I know,” both sisters replied in unison.

The usual awkward moment followed and passed quickly as Jessica dragged Hoyt out of the house. Once they were alone, the two sisters made their way to their brother’s bedroom where they found him pacing around shirtless.

“Jason?” Sookie called quietly. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he whined. “I don’t know. No,” he mumbled as he ran a hand through his hair.

“What happened? Hoyt said you were in pretty bad shape.”

“I… remember Crystal?”

“Your crazy ex-girlfriend?” Brooke asked with a raised eyebrow. “Sure.”

“She kidnapped me!” he said so loud it startled his sisters. “She… with her family… and they… they bit me!”

“They bit you?” Sookie frowned.

“And they scratched me!”

“I told you they were insane, but you never listened to me,” Brooke shrugged. “File a police report, get them arrested.”

“I… no I don’t care about that!”

“You don’t want to press charges?” Sookie asked. “I’ll do it for you. I’m not gonna let them get away with this!”

“No, you’re not listening to me!” he yelled. “They bit me!”

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Jason,” Sookie said.

“I’m not embarrassed! They bit me!” he repeated. “Oh, I’m so screwed,” he sighed as he let himself fall on his bed.

Sookie and Brooke looked at each other and shared the same thought.

“Maybe we should take you to the hospital? Did you hit your head?” Sookie asked.

“I’m fine!” he quickly replied as he sat up. “No,” he shook his head, “I’m not fine, I’m gonna turn into a werepanther!”

“A what?” Brooke breathed out.

“I’m getting the car,” Sookie said, ready to exit the room.

“I’m not crazy!” Jason stopped her. “My ex-girlfriend, she did this to me! And her werepanther tribe… they bit me! And they said I would turn into one of them on the full moon!”

“Oh!” Brooklynne realized. “That’s what it was about. I knew they were weird but I thought it was just because they’re father’s also their brother.”

Brooklynne had never met Crystal or any of her family, but she had seen them a few times around, and had always found their thoughts to be extremely bizarre. She just thought it was because they were poor kids raised between meth and V, who could barely read and knew nothing but their deranged family.

“Yeah, they want to make more werepanthers so they keep it in the family!”

“Gross,” Sookie grimaced. “Damn it, werepanthers? How does that even happen?”

“The same way shapeshifters and werewolves happened, I suppose,” Brooklynne said.

“But can you even become a werewolf, or a werepanther? Don’t you have to be born one?”

“I don’t know, if they went through all this trouble to make Jason into one of them maybe they know what they’re doing?”

“Guys!” Jason interrupted them. “When’s the full moon?”

“The full moon?” Brooke repeated. “That’s tomorrow night.”

Jason whined again as he dropped on his bed. “God help me.”

 ***

 Eric had first thought Brooklynne was messing with him when she told him about Jason’s situation. But he came to realize that unlike what he had thought, he didn’t know all there was to know about the world, despite having been alive for over a thousand years. The vampire had agreed to help them watch over Jason, just in case he did turn into a werepanther, but Bill called as soon as the sun was set, and Eric had to leave for an emergency meeting. All the sheriffs of Louisiana met at least once a month at Bill’s, but this meeting came too early and it could only be about Marnie. “Bill worries too much,” Eric had said, and so far, Brooklynne couldn’t really disagree with that statement.

Left alone in the cool night, Brooklynne met with her siblings at her former parents’ house. Sookie was armed with a shotgun, at Jason’s request.

“The second I start sprouting fur, I want you to shoot me right in the head.”

“I’m not gonna shoot you,” Sookie chuckled.

They were sitting between two trees, on the old patio chairs that had been through many summers and winters outside and were probably a heavy weight away from breaking.

“But you promised!”

“We promised we’d take care of you,” Brooklynne reminded him.

“What do you think that meant?” he yelled. “Change my kitty litter? Guys, I’m gonna have claws and big fucking teeth! I could rip you to pieces.”

“So can vampires and we’ve survived this long,” Brooke said. “Besides, what makes you think you won’t be able to control yourself once in… panther form?”

“I don’t know! And you don’t know either! I ain’t never been good at controlling my impulses! Come on!”

“You’re still our brother, even if you are a were…” Sookie paused, she couldn’t say it, it was already hard not to laugh when she heard it.

“Panther,” Jason sighed.

“Right,” she rolled her eyes. “Every time I get my head wrapped around one kind of supe… new ones come along. Werepanthers… witches…”

“Kinda makes you wonder what else there is out there… Maenads… mermaids… Gods…”

“Mermaids are real?” both Sookie and Jason asked in unison.

“I don’t know,” Brooke shrugged. “But would it surprise you?”

“No, not really,” Sookie sighed as she laid back in her chair.

“Bright side, you won’t be alone,” Brooke told her brother.

“I barely know any regular humans anymore,” Sookie realized.

“Hoyt, Tara, Arlene, Terry, Lafayette…” Jason started to count them on his fingers.

“Lafayette’s a witch too,” Brooke told them. “Or some kind of magic creepy stuff.”

“How do you know?” Sookie asked.

“Holly told me.”

“Holly? The waitress?”

“Yeah,” Brooke chuckled. “She’s a wicca too. But witches are just humans using magic. Anyone can do it. Some people like Lafayette just have special gifts is all.”

“Right,” Sookie said, “so we know four people who aren’t supernatural.”

“Well, I like being a regular, old, all-American human,” Jason told them. “I don’t wanna be some freak of nature.”

“Like us?” Brooke said, laying back in her chair.

“No, that… that ain’t what I meant.”

“I know.”

“It’s okay,” Brooke shrugged.

“Most of my life, when I’d say my prayers at night, I’d wish to God to be normal. Then I realized there ain’t no such thing as normal,” she scoffed. “Everybody’s got something in them they’re ashamed of or… can just do without even trying.”

“Yeah, like I’m extra good at sex? And shooting?”

“Uh-uh,” Sookie nodded. Brooke silently chuckled. “But those ain’t the things that make us who we are. It’s what we do with them that really matters. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah…” he nodded, then shook his head. “Uh, no, not exactly.”

“You can’t run from what’s inside you,” she explained. “But it might be a blessing if you let it. And I’ll be happy to help you… we’ll be happy to help, right Brooke?”

“Of course! Dude… you may be able to turn into a panther, at will! That’s awesome!”

“You… you think so?”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah? … Yeah!”

It was easy enough to put any sorts of ideas in Jason’s head, even without using any of her powers.

“Are you guys hungry?” Jason asked.

“I can fix us some steaks,” Sookie said.

“Yeah, and… can you grab me a fresh one?” he asked, giving his empty can of beer to Brooklynne.

“Coming right up!”

Both sisters got into the house, leaving their brother alone for no more than two minutes, but when Brooklynne got back with a cold can of beer, she found nothing but three empty chairs.

“Motherfucker.”

 ***

 “What are we gonna say when someone sees us walking through the woods with a shotgun?” Brooklynne asked.

“Why would we have to say anything? It’s Bon Temps, after all. And who’s gonna be walking through the woods at this time of night?”

“You mean on a full moon? Oh, I don’t know, werewolves, werepanthers…”

“Not funny.”

“Didn’t say it was…”

“Jason!” Sookie started calling again. “Jason! Please, just come home! We’ll deal with this!”

“Shh,” Brooklynne stopped, putting a hand on her sister’s arm.

“What?”

“Listen.”

For a moment of silence, all that could be heard were the usual forest noises from the wind in the leaves and the birds in the trees. But then, they heard something else. Something that sounded a little like footsteps.

“Sook,” Brooke whispered.

Sookie raised the weapon as she put a finger on the trigger and started aiming it at the bush where the sound was coming from.

“Jason?”

Someone came out from the other side of the bush, but it wasn’t Jason. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a white shirt underneath her black leather jacket.

“Debbie?”

“Hey Sookie,” the werewolf greeted. “Brooklynne.”

“What are you doing here, Debbie?” Sookie asked, not lowering the gun down.

“She’s with me.”

As soon as Alcide appeared before her, Sookie relaxed, and put the shotgun away.

“We’re on our way to a meeting with our new pack,” he said.

“See, told ya,” Brooke smirked. Sookie merely rolled her eyes.

“You guys really shouldn’t be wandering around like this,” Debbie said. “Full moon and all, never know what could be out here tonight.”

“No kidding,” Sookie replied dryly.

Brooke frowned as she realized her sister was fuming. Was it… jealousy? She smiled.

“You hunting something?” Alcide asked, gesturing at the weapon.

“Kinda,” Brooke half shrugged, half nodded.

“Hey!” Sookie breathed out as she realized they could actually be really helpful to them. “Werepanthers, they’re basically like werewolves, right, except cats?”

“Please tell me she did not just compare us to cats,” Debbie said angrily.

“Oh, she didn’t mean it as an insult,” Brooke told her. “She’s genuinely asking.”

“Sorry,” Sookie said. “It’s hard keeping track of which of y’all hate each other.”

“We tend to stick with our own species,” Alcide explained. “But most weres have got more in common with each other than they like to admit. Why you asking?”

“How does somebody become a were… whatever?”

“They don’t,” Debbie answered. “Unless one of their parents or both of them are full-blooded.”

“So if I got bit…” she started to say but then saw worry take over Alcide’s face and corrected herself, “uh, not me, per se, but if somebody I knew got bit…”

“There’s no way to turn a human into a were, if that’s what you’re asking,” Alcide told her. “It’s hereditary. Not a virus.”

“You sure about that?”

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“You’ve already helped a lot, Alcide, thanks,” Brooke said. “Wanna tell me why we didn’t just call him first? Would’ve saved us a lot of trouble.”

“I didn’t think about it…” she shrugged. “And neither did you, so don’t start!”

“Well, thank you anyway,” Brooke thanked the werewolves again.

“Go shift, kill stuff,” Sookie told them. “Do whatever werewolves do. We got this,” she said as she grabbed her sister by the arm and dragged her back into the dark forest.

“Have fun with your new pack!” Brooke waved at them before she disappeared behind the thick bushes.

 ***

 Sookie and Brooklynne never found Jason, though after filling his voicemail with messages and having walked through the woods for hours, both sisters decided to go home, knowing Jason wouldn’t be turning into a giant cat after all.

Brooklynne collapsed on the couch and it was moment like this she wished Eric was around so he could give her an energizing amount of his blood. Sookie had gotten into the shower, and Brooklynne was about to reach the stairs when the front door slammed opened, startling her.

She jumped, but quickly relaxed as she saw it was only Eric. However, her worry came back just as fast when she saw his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Turns out the witch means business.”

“What happened?”

“Luis is dead, he tried to kill Bill,” he said as he closed the door before making his way to the living room.

“Luis? The sheriff of area 3?” she asked as she followed him. “What got into him?”

“The witch. She’s a necromancer, she can control the dead.”

“Marnie made him attack Bill?”

“Not Marnie. She’s being possessed by another witch, a dead one. Her name is Antonia. She hates vampires, she’s already killed a lot of us back when she was alive. She made them rise during the day. Bill thinks she’s going to try it again, tomorrow.”

“What? She wants to make you meet the sun?”

“I’m gonna need your help,” he said as he took her face in his hands.

“Of course, what can I do?”

“I need you to silver me downstairs. No matter what happened, do not let me out of the chains.”

She nodded as she put her hands over his. “I know. I won’t.”

**********

Tags: @thepoet1975 @nerdysandwichqueen @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @raegan-hale @colie87 @heavenly1927​ @abbey7103

[pkmnsdarkqueen]

The Children group as their dnd class and race

From this

that helped inspire all of this

(used hero forge )

-some edits to original design-

Team name: Second Gen

How they got the name: It started with Janine and Silver who's adventure revolved around parents and kept running into folks with more parent issues so it kinda worked

other teams:

Elite (Kanjo)

Rainbow (Villain squad)

Dropouts (main group)

Janine-Yaun-Ti, Monk: Shadow

Look at her, she’s a young independent snake ready to take on the world ya’ll and I love her. She’s a monk like her dad, but has gone full force on trying to be sneaky. At her side she has a vile of poison as her father always taught her to carry. Her staff isn’t as weathered as her father’s but the craftsmanship is still there. Also it may not be the toughest of looks but she’s proud of her pink detail especially cause she thinks it compliments her scales. She’s excited to find her dad again, and show off how strong she is cause....well she can’t think about the possibility if he really has died somewhere. 

Silver-Mountain Lion shifter, Rouge: Theif

He’s been out of the mafia game even longer than his father, but still has some tricks from it. After all he’s been doing fairly decent for himself trying to fix his father’s mistakes. Granted his first go at fixing them has quickly gotten him involved with some yaun-ti girl named Janine. Anyways he’s got the mountain lion genetics from his father, and no visible signs from his mother leaving even him clueless as to what his mother was. He has a backpack since somehow he’s the most responsible one in the party, and dual knifes since he doesn’t like to fight as brutishly as his father. Janine’s smoke helps him get his sneak attacks in as well. Also as explained on his dad’s all Ex Rocket members have armor shoulder pads to show they’re part of the group. He hates wearing them, but sometimes when they need information....well pretending to be part of the club is helpful so he puts them on as needed. 

Marnie-Feral Tie-fling, Sorcerer-Shadow

Does she dye her horns, yes yes she does. Also those horns fit her hair color super well. Essentially what separates feral tie-fling from regular is well hooves for feet, and wings along with usually more dramatic horns. When it comes to her beat up looks it’s due to all of her time exploring trying to find her missing brother who randomly left his bard college, that and well hey she makes the ripped up look work. She fight with a brutal spear, but also her shadow magic is pretty good getting along great with the shadow monk Janine and the rouge Silver since they all deal with concealment. Despite her amulet being dipped in the evil color scheme it was the last thing her father gave her before disappearing. She isn’t involved in the BBEG but her father is. 

N-Earth Genasi, Druid: Circle of the Shepard

First of all I know he just looks pale but he’s supposed to be granite skin it just didn’t paint well unfortunately. His hair is emerald though which is why it is mow-hawk style thus jutting from his body. Instead of his little saturn necklace he has a ring of the appropriately colored stones, and still has the little gold cube at his side to play with. He has a bow and arrows when he fights preferring to stay away from hand to hand combat and use spirits that the Shepard subclass allows that way he can give support to the team. He does has a stone staff that he copied from his father’s look to help focus the magic energy. Also plants surround him along with little animals since he can always talk to animals. 

Gladion-Aassmir, Barbarian: Berserker

Now one maybe wondering why angel boy looks.....like this. Well he was adopted by bug bear man and really enjoyed the bone armor look the goblins had along with the idea of using rage to punch harder with magic. So he’s heavily stylized after him. As for his wings they are still on the small size cause child,a nd behind his feet is the mantle of a paladin his mother wanted for him, notice the green hue on the wing area with the evil colors. However he rejected this and I can’t wait for his mom to see him later. Also like his sister, his halo is still gold since he hasn’t fully grown into one like his mother’s which is made of light.

Lillie-Aasmir, Cleric: Unity

She’s very wholesome and I love her. She has a mix of what her mother put her in such as the leather skirt but in her transformation of becoming her own person has cut some of it to allow for more mobility. On her wings it is more easily seen that she has blue tipped wings like her brother. Their mother’s ice powers seeming their way genetically into her children having frost colored wings on the tips. She is a heavy user of a shield having decided to be the one trying o keep her family safe whether they need protection, or healing. 

 Bede- Unicorn Centaur, Ranger: Horizon Walker

Not in the original story but I decided to add him in as an NPC that this party would adopt. Basically he’d be talking about how his abilities allow him to teleport about, since I think that ties in the psychic lean well, and how there was a loxodon who he saw as a father figure for awhile until realizing that he was truthfully more interested in the concept of a unicorn centaur and the seemingly limitless magic flowing from him. Despite how much this hurt at the time a kindly satyr woman named Opal has helped him harness his skills. However that conversation had him wondering about if there was such a thing as unicorn centaurs, and realizing certain races seemed to simply pop up in the world and he wants to know where his race and other’s truly came from. This is later revealed that many races that randomly appeared are due to this god’s meddling in merging planes of existences. 

[sleepydew-valley]

Quarantined Shane Day: 2

Day 1

Here is a continuation of my story of Shane in quarantine. The first part can be read in the link above. Again pretty long. I don’t know what the standard is on tumblr, but I’m not good a writing short stories so here we are

Day 2:

Nico wiped the sweat of his forehead. Even though it was still early spring, it was definitely starting to get warmer and that meant it would be a bit harder working outside. Of course, he had gotten used to the farm work, but working outside had its up and downs. Like when the weather is this good, why was he working instead of enjoying the sun in the forest or on the beach?

His work was interrupted when his phone started ringing. It was almost noon and Nico wondered who would be calling him at this time. He noticed it was number he hadn’t added to his contact yet, but still opted for answering it without any hesitation.

“Hallo?”

“Nico, hi.”

Nico felt his body stiffen. “Shane?”

He should have recognized the number, or at least saved it to his contacts from yesterday. Maybe Shane would call more often now. Or maybe he was calling to ask if Nico could bring by Jas again. Shane probably missed his niece.

“Yeah, uh it’s Shane. I’m not interrupting anything, right?” Shane said, sounding less confident with each word.

“No, no, not at all.” Nico said and looked down at his hoe, his work was luckily something that could be postponed for a little while. “What’s up?”

There was a short silence before Shane spoke up.

“Well I saved your number from yesterday and uh- I’m calling today because uhm… I wanted to thank you.”

It was clear Shane felt awkward. He cleared his throat before he continued. Nico felt the need to say he didn’t have to thank him, but he worried he would ruin the conversation and Shane would hang up on him.

“Uh, I didn’t think I would get the chance to explain the situation to Jas this soon and also I know I’m going to miss her a ton and I wasn’t sure when I would see her, because Marnie decided to let her live elsewhere in the meantime, and didn’t specify if she was planning on bringing Jas over or if I was just going to- anyway, I’m rambling, I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for bringing her over. I mean even Marnie hadn’t thought to bring her outside my window and you don’t owe me anything but you still did this.”

“It’s not problem.” Nico said. His heart was pounding loudly in his chest. He felt the sweat in his palms, but he knew it wasn’t because of the weather this time. “I-I can bring her by again, whenever you need me to.”

“I really appreciate you doing this.”

Nico nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say next. He had been in Pelican Town for a year now, but in that time, he hadn’t had many conversations with Shane and much fewer friendly conversations with Shane. The first few interactions were Shane wondering why Nico even bothered approaching a stranger. But Shane warmed up a bit, or at least stopped being rude when he saw Nico being friendly with Jas. For some reason Nico found it easier to socialize with the kids. They were easy to impress and if he had anything, they deemed cool, they opened up to him right away. Vincent had even said he was one of the cooler adults and Jas also complimented his playing skills. He probably shouldn’t feel proud of that, but for some reason he did.

But this was different. Shane was being nice to him. Nico had expected him to be grateful, but not to call like this. Had he secretly hoped something like this would happen? No way. Not a chance. It was only for Jas.

There was a lull in the conversation and Nico wondered if the conversation was about to end here. Maybe Shane would hang up once he found the right words for saying goodbye.

“Oh uhm, that reminds that I should thank you as well.” Nico said. He should just let the conversation die here but he didn’t want to.

“For what?” Shane asked confused.

“The repair on the heater, it went really well because of your instructions. It works perfectly now… well I mean- it does its job like it should.” Nico said.

“Oh no need to thank me for that.” Shane said dismissively. “That’s just part of my job.”

“Your job? You actually work for Marnie?”

“Well I help out when I can. Obviously not that often because of my job at JojaMart… but if Marnie is not there and I’m available, we have an agreement I don’t leave the customer hanging.” Shane said. “And it’s also me who take care of the chickens, so it’s also kind of my responsibilities to know how things like the heater work.”

“Oh, so you’re the chicken man?” Nico immediately regretted the words coming out of his mouth. They were being friendly towards each other and now Nico decided it was appropriate to call Shane the chicken man, he was surely going to hate Nico from now. He wished the earth would open and swallow him.

But Shane didn’t snap at Nico, no instead he chuckled. “That’s not official title, but yes if you need help with the chickens, I’m definitely your guy.”

Nico felt the tension leave his body. Still, he felt something tug in his heart again. Also, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the sound of Shane chuckling.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Nico said. “I’m still a bit new to the chicken care… so I’ll probably call with some questions, if that’s okay?”

“It’s not a problem.”

His heart jumped. It actually felt like his heart made a tiny leap in his chest. He had to calm down. This was just a normal conversation between two people. It was no big deal.

“So uh- besides chicken care, how are you spending your time? I mean – well how is quarantine going so far?” Normal. No big deal.

“So far I’ve been playing video games to pass time and honestly – I spend the entire time yesterday playing the games I have in my room and the thought of doing that for the next two weeks – it makes me want to throw the TV out the window.”

“I guess it’s hard being isolated by yourself.” Nico said. “you should try to find a new hobby or at least something new to do.”

He nervously playing with his nails. This was the longest interactions they ever had before.

“yeah but it’s not like I have many options in my room.”

“I guess that’s true… but if-if you need someone to talk to when you’re, you know, too bored – you’re always welcome to call me.” Nico wanted to dig a hole for himself and just disappear from the world. This was the opposite of smooth. Shane might feel like Nico was coming on too strong. But Nico wasn’t coming on or anything. He wasn’t trying to get closer to Shane. He was just offering his help. That’s all it was.

“Thanks. I might take you up on that.”

And Nico felt incredibly happy that his help was received positively by Shane, maybe a tad bit happier than one without any kind of feelings for Shane should be feeling, but this was completely normal he told himself. Normal. Not a big deal. Yet his heart still pounded loudly.

**********

Nico had talked with Shane much longer than he ever could have hoped for. It was probably because Shane was bored and there was no one at the ranch to entertain him. But even so, he still seemed interested in talking with Nico. At first, he had feared he had talked about the farm too much because of all the topics Nico could talk about, his new farm life was one he couldn’t shut up about. He talked about all the things he had renovated at the farm and improved since he moved in. He talked about how much work he was still missing and how it seemed endless. He was a bit worried he had scared Shane off with all his talk about the farm. Maybe he seemed like much less interesting person now. In fact, when Nico thought back to the conversation Shane hadn’t talked much about himself. The only thing he said was he had never been to the farm since Nico moved in (which made Nico almost invite him over after the quarantine, but he was quick to stop himself from doing something embarrassing).

Maybe Shane didn’t like talking about himself. Or maybe Nico hadn’t let him say anything about himself? Nico worried he might seem too self-absorbed to Shane now. What if this was their last call together, where it wouldn’t be Shane asking to see Jas? Or what if he didn’t even want to ask for Jas because he didn’t even want to talk to Nico?

He took a deep breath. He shouldn’t be overthinking it like this. Tomorrow would be a new day and maybe he would have chance to talk to Shane again.

He checked the time to see it was already 8 o’clock. Usually he wouldn’t finish this late but the call with Shane had slowed down his routines. He rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t mind talking with Shane, but he had to learn how to multitask better.

He was headed for the shower when he heard a knock on the door. He wondered who would come this late in the day. When he opened the door, he saw Jas on the other side.

She was wearing a light jacket and had a small backpack on.

Nico looked around her to see if someone else was accompanying her, but as he feared no one else was outside besides her.

She looked up at him with a hopeful smile.

“Jas, what are you doing here?” He asked incredulously.

She smiled vanished at his question and she looked down at her feet. Her right foot scraped against the wooden board on the patio.

“Come inside, and we can talk.” Nico said and guided her with his hand on her back.

She walked inside and he closed the door behind her. He knelt down beside her and she looked him in the eyes.

“Did you come here alone?”

“Mayor Lewis didn’t want to take me see Shane, and he didn’t want to call him either. He was so mean and he said Shane was sick – and then Marnie came and I asked her to take me there but she wouldn’t either. And they don’t have a phone to call him with.” She finished her ramble with a pout. But then she looked away from Nico. “you said you would take me to see him whenever I needed to…”

“So that’s why you came here?”

She nodded as she looked down at her hands. Nico sighed and he pulled out his phone. He opted for video chatting Shane this time, as Jas would probably appreciate seeing her Uncle’s face.

“Hey, why are you calling-“

“Jas is here.” Nico interrupted Shane’s greeting. “She snuck out of Mayor Lewis house and came here. She was hoping I would take her to see you.”

Shane closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Nico angled the camera towards Jas when Shane asked if he could speak with her. He put his hand on Jas shoulder, silently hoping Shane wouldn’t scold her too much. At least not enough to make her sad because he wasn’t sure how he would comfort her and he didn’t want to see her sad either.

But Shane put on a small smile when he saw his niece. “Hey Pumpkin.” He said with a soothing tone.

Jas’ face lit up when she heard Shane. “Uncle Shane-“

“I know you miss me and it’s hard for you, but you can’t sneak out like this. Did you tell Marnie you were going there?”

There was no doubt about the answer. Marnie would never have let her go out alone in evening. Jas also knew she couldn’t lie and instead dropped her head and mumbled a no.

“I’ll take you to see Shane in the daytime, okay?” Nico said, trying to cheer her up.

But she didn’t raise her head. “I don’t like Mayor Lewis. He doesn’t want to play with me. And he made broccoli soup for dinner and I don’t like broccoli.”

Shane looked at her sympathetically. It was clear he was at lost for words on how to comfort her.

That’s when Nico thought of an idea. He wasn’t sure if it was good or if Shane would even like the idea, but this time it really was just for Jas.

“Maybe she could stay here instead?” He suggested.

Finally, Jas looked up and turned her head towards Nico. She had a wide smile on her face, clearly excited about the idea. “Really? Can I?” She then turned towards the phone again, “can I, Uncle Shane? Please, can I?” She added a prolonged please at the end.

Shane scratched his beard thoughtfully. Nico hadn’t noticed until now that it was becoming more pronounced than usual. Shane was only a few days away from having actual beard, as opposed to the scruff. Nico had to admit it looked good on him.

Shane interrupted his thoughts when he asked: “Are you sure you’re okay with this, Nico?”

“Yeah, of course. Jas can stay as long as needed and she can just ask me whenever she needs to talk to you.” Nico said. “At least I think she should stay with someone who at the very least have a phone.”

Mayor Lewis thought he didn’t need one because he could walk everywhere in Pelican Town and if everyone was in walking distance why would you need a phone? Nico had wanted to suggest that the “walk” was several kilometres long and seemed innocuous when just asking for small matters. But he had quickly learned Mayor Lewis didn’t take suggestions easily.

“I guess it seems better than having her sneak out like this. And I don’t want her to be miserable either.” Shane conceded. “It’s fine as long as Marnie is okay with it.”

Jas jumped slightly of joy. She took off her backpack, but Shane was quick to interrupt her.

“You still need to go see Marnie. I’m sure she’s worried, so you better go quickly.” Shane said. “Also, if she says no then I’m sorry Jas but there is nothing I can do.”

“Really?”

Shane looked to the side, “I mean of course I’ll try to talk to her, but you also have to listen to your Aunt, okay?”

Nico smiled. He had a feeling Jas could make Shane doing anything for her.

“Come on, Jas, let’s go see Marnie.”

He stood up and took her hand. They said their goodbyes to Shane and started the walk towards the town. These are times where Nico would have appreciated Mayor Lewis having a phone. Marnie at least had a landline, but it did no good when she wasn’t there to pick up the phone.

“Do you think she’ll be angry with me?”

Nico would do anything for Marnie not to be angry with Jas. She already looked so sad and Nico didn’t want to see her scolded. Although he knew she had done wrong, he also understood why she had done it. But it wasn’t his job to parent her and he couldn’t interfere with how Marnie chose to handle the situation. He also realized he wasn’t that different from Shane and he would probably do anything for her.

“I think she’s worried and you know what you did what wrong, but I also think she’ll understand.” Nico said and hoped he was right.

As they neared the town and made the walk towards Mayor Lewis house, Nico looked around him just to make sure they didn’t miss Marnie or Lewis on the way to the house. It could be they were outside looking for Jas. Luckily for them though, when they knocked on the door to the house, Marnie was the one to open it.

“Jas!” She exclaimed as soon as she saw the little girl. She quickly enveloped her into a hug.

Lewis stood behind Marnie and although not nearly as excited as Marnie to see Jas, he looked incredibly relieved.

“She came to my house, hoping to get a chance to talk to Shane.” Nico explained. “We talked with Shane earlier… and I guess she came to me hoping for the same thing to happen again.”

Marnie’s face softened when she heard that. She leaned out of the hug and caressed Jas’ hair.

“I’m sorry, Jas. I know you miss him.”

“It’s not fair that he has to be all alone.”

Well Marnie would be at the ranch – but that’s when Nico noticed Marnie was in her nightgown. She had intended to sleep here with Jas. Now he really felt sorry for Shane.

“We actually have an idea.” Nico said. “And I already talked to Shane about it… but I suggested maybe Jas could stay at my house, while Shane is quarantined. That way I can call Shane whenever she needs to talk with him… and we avoid incidents like this.”

Marnie looked up at Nico, and he instantly wondered if this was a horrible idea and she was about to tell him off for even suggesting it.

“Shane said as long as you’re good with it, he doesn’t mind.” Nico quickly clarified.

Marnie looked back at Mayor Lewis who only shrugged.

“Well I don’t want to come between you and Uncle Shane.” Marnie said. She didn’t sound too keen on the idea, but at least she was on board. “and I can come by and check up on your once in awhile.”

Jas beamed at the words. She ran into the bedroom, presumably to get all of her things.

“I promise to take good care of her.”

Marnie just nodded with smile before she went to the bedroom to help Jas pack her things.

[morepokemonimagines]

Starved lanky boy anon here!! From the fluff of please!!

Sure thing! Not even gonna lie, I’m starved for the lanky emo boi too. I just wanna snuggle him! (and do other less wholesome things)

L ove Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?: (So many different things this could mean… I’ll probably do more than one scenario for this one.) While I wanna say he does it by singing some cheesy love song he spent weeks or even months on at a show he was unusually insistent that his love interest attend, I’m not sure he’d actually have the confidence for that. If it were done on stage, it would be a spur of the moment thing. He’d be running on pure adrenaline from the crowd’s energy, which boosts his confidence immeasurably, when he sees someone getting too handsy with them while they’re looking SUUUUUPER uncomfortable and trying to get away. He’d see red and stop mid-song to be all “Oi, wanker! Hands off my girl/man!” He’d start to blush the second he realizes what he just said, but the train’s already left the station, so he might as well blow the whistle. He’ll go off on a tirade about how disrespectful they were being to his love interest and that they’ve got another thing coming if they think he’s letting them get away with it. He’d then have the offending person removed from Spikemuth entirely (something he rarely does) while Team Yell keeps anyone else from getting too close to his love interest. He finishes his set while looking directly at them, though he does look away from time to time to give them a chance to slip away if they so choose; he’s happy but nervous when they don’t. After the set is finished, he hops off of the stage rather than walking off to the side like normal and asks his love interest if he can talk to them. He’s takes their hand and pulls them to a more secluded area so they can talk in private; he’s probably a bit more forceful than intended when leading them to said area because he really wants to get it all out before the last of his adrenaline and endorphin high can wear off since he’s kinda banking on it to help him through this. He’d take a deep breath and tell them how much he likes them and why: they’re nice, funny, interesting, easy on the eyes and he just feels more relaxed around them than most others outside of Marnie. He’d then ask them how they feel about him and his feelings about them. If he gets a positive response, he will ask them to be his s/o.

He could also do it in a less abrupt manner, but it would take A LOT longer to happen because the poor guy gets so down on himself all the time that he’d be convinced that his love interest could never actually return his feelings. They would likely have had to have formed some sort of friendship-type bond before this as well. Marnie will have to put her foot down and give him a pep-talk/lecture to get him to stop pining from afar and take the leap already. In this situation, he’d invite them to come hang out at his and Marnie’s place to watch a movie or some show they have a mutual interest in, something that they’ve done dozens of times before so they have no idea that anything is different this time around. Marnie won’t be there, but that’s normal since she’s busy with gym leader duties. At some point, he would either pause the movie or wait for a commercial to ask them if he can talk to them. From there, it goes about the same as the first scenario.

Now, as far as saying “I love you” to them, it would probably be a spur of the moment thing. They’ll do something that just makes his heart feel like it’s going to burst and he’ll think “Arceus, I love you so much….” Yeah, that wasn’t in his head like he thought it was…..

M arriage - Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?: It’s not really something he thought about much before; it just never really crossed his mind. But, after being with his s/o for a while, he’ll find himself thinking about it more and more. Sure, getting the government involved in one’s love life is weird when you really stop to think about it, but having the title of husband instead of boyfriend and them having the title of wife/husband instead of just girlfriend/boyfriend just starts to feel more and more special to him. He’ll talk to his s/o about his feelings on the matter and get their opinion on it. When he feels like his intentions and their feelings are clearly known, he’ll make his move. THIS is where the cheesy love song at the end of his set would come in. He already knows that they love him, and he knows their feelings on the subject of marriage, so he’s confident as hell and is chomping at the bit. Once the song is over, he’d pull them up on stage and pop the question. 

Depending on what he knows about them, he may present them with a ring or (as he would prefer) a choker that matches his; the chokers are a family thing, after all, and they would officially be family at that point. If he had gotten them a ring, it would either be a simple band with some sort of phrase that is special to them engraved in it, or a flashier ring with either a round cut or heart cut. The center stone would be his s/o’s favorite stone because it would be more personal and shows that he pays attention to that sort of thing, and because diamonds are a literal scam and everyone knows it (he may allow a few small diamonds to be used as accent stones if it looks better, but that’s for aesthetics and not because the ring is “supposed” to have diamonds in it). If he were to get a ring for himself as a symbol of their union, it would be a simple gold band with a special phrase and/or his s/o’s name engraved in it. While silver would match with his usual style far better, he would want the ring to clash because that would make it stand out more. He’d let his s/o pick what they want for their wedding ring if they choose to have one. Something that would appeal to him would be the idea of wedding ring tattoos instead of traditional rings. They’re more permanent, they’re less cumbersome, and they just fit his style more.

The wedding would mostly be up to his partner’s taste, but he would have a few requirements. 1) Marnie is the flower girl. 2) Obstagoon is the ring bearer if they use physical rings. If they get the tattoo rings, then they’ll just get the tattoos beforehand and kiss the other’s ring tattoo when they would normally exchange rings; Obstagoon will be his best pokeman in this case. 3) Team Yell is invited, but they’ve had the fear of Arceus put in them by him, so they’ll be on their best behavior. 4) No media. This is their night and no one other than the ones they want to have there have any right to be there. 5) He is absolutely going to want to have a say in the music that is played.

Bonus!  N icknames - What do they call their s/o?: He sticks almost exclusively with “love” as a nickname, but will give them other endearing nicknames that allude to some funny/embarrassing situation or inside joke over time, but he uses these more sparingly.  (Example: my grandma calls my grandpa (both on my dad’s side) “Bunny Butt” because once while camping she got drunk and pantsed him, and my mom said he had a “cute little bunny butt” because he’s a thin dude and I’m sure that particular area has never seen the sun in the 60 some odd years that the man has been alive so it had to be whiter than a real full moon.)

O n Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?: This pasty mofo can’t hide his blush to save his damn life! When he’s in love, he’s blushing constantly whenever his love interest is around, or sometimes if they’re even just mentioned. When talking to them, he may stutter quite a bit too, which is something he never has trouble with otherwise. Also, he’s tugging on the ring on his choker constantly and avoiding eye contact. In short, he basically becomes a flustered pre-teen and you’d have to be dense not to know. His main way of showing his feelings is by paying really close attention to the things they say and do in order to find their likes, dislikes, things they need, things they’re going through and so on. He will use this information to make sure that any gifts he gives them (normal expected gifts like birthdays and holidays) are special and so that he can help them whenever he can. It will become pretty apparent that’s what he’s doing because why the hell else would he remember an offhanded remark about some random thing they said more than three months ago?

[wendystales]

Memories -lrh (Chapter Two)

Memories (also on Wattpad)

Chapter One ※※※※※ Chapter Three

I open my eyes having my vision blur for a little. I blink a few times, getting a better look at the room I was in. Room? It was very bright, I look at the window and guess it must be around seven in the morning.

I glance around the room, seeing my mother lying on a two-seater sofa. I see my broken arm and the heart monitor wires attached to my chest.

“What the...?” I let the confusion in my voice die, for my dry throat. I see no cell phone near me to confirm the time or date, how long have I slept? I carefully seat down on the bed, so as not to hurt my arm, and call my mother, who doesn't hear me at first, making me raise my voice more, scratching my throat.

She gets up startled and, as soon as she sees me awake, comes quickly to my side. Her hands quickly grasp my face and she distributes several kisses across my cheeks.

“Thank God, you're awake! How are you? Do you need anything?” the bombardment of questions leaves me lost. “ I'll call the nurse.” she leaves the room before I can say anything.

God, I just wanted a glass of water and to understand what happened.

She returned with a nurse who came in smiling sympathetically. My mother held my hand, reassuring and comforting me.

“Hello, Miss McGonagall. I'm glad you're awake. How are you feeling?” she asks as she writes something down on her clipboard.

“Thirsty.” I announce, desperate for a glass of water.

“Oh, of course!” my mother takes a bottle of water from the small table next to the sofa and helps me to take a sip. Finally.

I turn my attention back to the nurse, now more relieved by the water.

“I am fine. A little sleepy and confused. And my arm is sore.”

“That's normal.” she continues writing down some things and fiddling with the equipment. I decide to end the mystery.

“I suffered a car accident, didn't I?” I ask, alternating my gaze between my mother and the nurse, who both look relieved.

“Yes, a drunk driver drove through the traffic light and crashed into your car. You only broke your arm and twisted your foot, besides some bruises.” the nurse explains, killing my curiosity.

Car accident. I remember being in the car, stopped at the light, but I don't remember the impact. Thank God I had survived and without many sequels.

“We thought that you might also have suffered a lost of memory, but that apparently wasn't the case.” my mother had a huge smile on her face.

“Still, we need to ask you some questions.” I turn my attention back to the nurse. “What is your full name?”

“Marnie Elizabeth McGonagall.” I answer immediately.

“Your birthday date?”

“October 17th, 1996.” I answer after thinking for a few seconds. Their smiles widen with each answer.

“How old are you then?”

“Twenty years old.” that's when the smile disappeared, but they didn't say anything.

“You slept for two days. What day is it today?” she asked attentively.

“Two days... I think today is day six.”

“What month and what year, dear?” This time, my mother asks the question.

“March 2017.” I arch my eyebrows, as if it were obvious. But from the look on their faces, I was wrong. I stare at my mother, seeing her with teary eyes.

“Mrs. Williams, please wait outside. I will pass the information to the doctor so that you can talk.”

I see my mother leave crying and get desperate. What is happening?

“Did I lose my memory?” I ask fearfully.

“We don't know yet. You just woke up, we need to take some time and see what happens. You will probably be going through some tests in a few minutes, so you need to be fasting still. After that I'll call a nurse to help you take a shower.”

She leaves and I find myself alone. Now more awake and aware, I notice near the window some vases of flowers, cards, and two happy-face balloons. I smile, feeling comforted by the affection.

A few minutes later, a nurse came in, taking me to the examination. It would be an MRI scan to see which areas of my brain were affected. I feel completely sick; what if I really had lost my memory? How many years have I lost?

However, before the examination, I would take a blood sample. So I went into a room and they sat me down in a very comfortable armchair. I hate blood test, just the sight of the needle makes me want to throw up. When this torturous part was over, they asked me if I preferred to go through the procedure sedated and I said no, I may not like to be in closed places, but to be pierced again is just too much.

I lay down on the gurney and they fixed me up with headphones so the noise wouldn't bother me, a blanket because it was so cold, and they put something like a mask over my head, only taller, like a cap, but hollowed out. At the same moment that the stretcher starts going into that hole, I close my eyes.

The procedure lasted about 30 minutes, and during this time I tried to stay calm and remember as many things as possible. Soon after, I was taken back to the room, finding my mother there with a nurse who would help me take a shower, it was what I wanted most.

I open my eyes and feel my body freeze when I see my image in the mirror. Not only because of the scratches, but also because my hair was short and lighter at the ends, I looked like a different person.

Another surprise, was when I saw a tattoo in the middle of my chest, taking the valley of my breasts and going all the way down to the bottom of them.

“Did you let me do this?” I ask my mother, while the nurse washes my hair.

“Marnie, you don't live with me anymore, you are an adult who pays your own bills and has your own life. You don't ask my permission for nothing else.” she laughs at my shocked face. I don't remember my job, or my apartment, I must have forgotten it for many years.

Her cell phone rings and she leaves the bathroom. The nurse continues to teach me how to take care of the cast. I take advantage of the moment alone and investigate my time in the hospital.

“Have many people come to visit me?” I ask as she begins to comb my hair.

“A lot!” she smiles sympathetically. “Yours friends came at all visiting hours and brought lots of balloons and teddy bears. The head nurse sent them home with half of them.” she recalls laughing. I didn't know I had so many friends besides Bethany.

“Did my boyfriend come?” I ask anxiously, after all, I was on my way to see him.

“It was hard to get him to leave. He spent the first 24 hours here, slept in the hallway and everything. You're a lucky girl.” she blinks at me. I feel my heart race. I just want to see him!

Again, I go back to the room and this time I stay. A breakfast arrived and I was starving.

“Porridge?” I ask disappointedly as I see the tray.

“You've been unconscious for two days, you can't want to eat a mountain of pancakes, you have to start slowly.” mom warns.

We’re both in the room, and it’s an awkward, tense silence. I could see a look of relief on my mother's face to see me awake, but deep inside, there was a glint of discomfort. I conclude that this is why she is avoiding looking at me. I finished my coffee against my will and straightened up, in order to get some answers.

“Have I really lost my memory?” I ask in a clear and direct manner. She looks at me with a mixture of indecision and weariness.

“I don't know, dear.” she moves closer to the bed, caressing my face. “You have a wrong date in your head, but the chance of it being temporary is huge, so stay calm and let's wait for the test results. Now, get some rest.” she gives me a kiss on the forehead before leaving the room.

I end up falling asleep after a few minutes of watching TV. I wake up to another nurse calling me, my results are out, and the doctor wanted to talk. She passes me to a wheelchair and takes me to the doctor's office. When the door opens, I see my mother with her eyes red, the doctor with a gentle smile and Luke Hemmings looking at me in affliction.

I don't hide my confusion. Luke Hemmings?! What a famous guy is doing here?!

“Is he the one who hit my car?” I ask readily, I wouldn't be surprised, these famous people drink and think the world is theirs.

Luke clenched his jaw and his gaze seemed lifeless, he was completely uncomfortable. I bet he didn't like the truth. I ignore his unnecessary presence and turn my attention back to the doctor.

“No, Miss McGonagall. I believe Mr. Hemmings is a very close friend.” I can see that the doctor is careful with his words.

Close?

When I look back at him, I see him hugging my mother on the side, who is struggling to hold back her tears.

“What?” I let out in a whisper, alternating my gaze between them and the doctor.

“Miss McGonagall, you suffered a car accident two days ago.” he begins.

“Yes, I suffered it.” I state.

“And as sequels, you broke an arm, twisted a foot, and, unfortunately, lost part of your memory.”

It was like a bomb falling on me. I had no protection or counterattack. The suspicion had evolved into truth, and now, I had nothing to do but feel angry and out of control of my own life.

“But I talked about it being a car accident, before anyone told me. I remember being in the car, I don't remember the impact, but I remember being in the car.” I try to find a way out.

“What were you going to do?” he asks curiously. I force my mind and remember.

“I was going to see my boyfriend.” before the doctor could say anything, a different hopeful voice steals my attention and I see Luke letting go of my mother, approaching both of us.

“ It's true!” He looks at the doctor. How does he know it's true? He doesn't even know me! “We were supposed to meet for lunch.”

What?! Where did this guy come from and how does he have the courage to say something like that? I look behind my mother for help, but she is focused on Luke and the doctor.

“We? I don't know you.” My voice comes out desperate, I was already losing patience with him.

“Marnie, what's your boyfriend's name?” Luke leans one hand on the table and one on my chair, and asks me in a desperate tone, as if his life depends on my answer.

I look deep into his blue eyes, annoyed that he is getting in the middle of my life. I fill my mouth and reply.

“Stephen Maynard! My boyfriend's name is Stephen Maynard.” I raise my eyebrows as if to say ‘happy?’

His jaw locked again, and his eyes watered. He bit his lower lip and left the room, slamming the door.

“What is his problem?” I'll ask my mother and the doctor.

“ I'll go see if he's all right.” mom leaves the room and I stay with the doctor, who doesn't seem to care much about everything that has happened.

“Miss McGonagall, you suffered a car accident two days ago and were unconscious during that time. I know it may be difficult to accept that you have lost some of your memory, but unfortunately that is what happened. Your brain deleted the last three years and maybe even an older part, we have no way of knowing yet. The point is that this amnesia can be momentary and perhaps today you will remember everything, or it can last longer.” he explains calmly.

“Could it last forever?” I ask fearfully.

It was strange to think that I don't remember three years of my life, no matter how hard I try, nothing comes to my mind. I became agonized and curious to know what I was forgetting. I didn't want to do any tests, I wanted to talk to my mom and dad, see Bethany, my best friend and gossip, I wanted to see Stephen, where is he when I need him? The nurse said he didn't leave my side.

The door opens and my mom walks in again, her eyes are still red, but she seems a little more calm. She sits down next to me and holds my hand.

“Yes, it can be permanent, so you shouldn't force anything. After discharge you will go back to your normal routine and maybe something will be a point to remember everything, or at least half of it. These amnesias are often just traumatic and take you back to other traumatic times, like they want to spare you from something.”

“These last three years have been a lot of change for you, dear, that makes total sense. You said you were going to see Stephen, remember for what?” she asks curiously.

“Our anniversary. I was going to drop off his present and celebrate. Where is he anyway? The nurse said he hasn't left my side. Even an annoying celebrity is here!”

“ I'll let you two talk for a while, I think we owe it to Miss McGonagall.” the doctor interrupts before my mother replies. “But, remember, miss, without forcing anything, you'll have plenty of time to find out everything. Excuse me.” he leaves the room, leaving us alone.

“Well?” I ask my mother, who looked totally uncomfortable.

“Honey, on that day that you remember, that last memory, you found Stephen with Bethany, how can I put it? In a not good situation. You broke up.”

I always knew that my parents didn't like Stephen, thought he was a bad influence, but to say that he cheated on me with my best friend bordered on the ridiculous.

“Mom…”

“I swear it's true, I know it hurts, and it really hurt to see you go through this. But honey, you overcame it, you overcame everything and you found a wonderful man who loves you, appreciates you, respects you and cares for you.”

“Such an amazing man who is not here.” I raise my free arm, supporting my argument, showing that only the two of us are in the room.

“My love, he is here, he has been here all the time, he only left last night because everyone insisted.” the look she gives me, wanting me to put all the pieces together makes my stomach turn.

“No!” I laugh, unbelieving what I was imagining, "Luke can't be my boyfriend.”

“Why not?” my mother's displeased tone surprises me, does she approve of him?

“I don't even know him. He's famous and I'm not. Where would we meet?” the pieces just don't fit together.

“Your life has changed a lot, dear, to the point that you meet him and his friends. To the point that you could afford this hospital.” really, my family couldn't afford a private room and all the tests that I would have to do. “Marnie, you have become a model.” I can imagine a bomb exploding in my head.

“That's a lot of information!”I cover my face, trying to take it all in.

“I'm sorry, honey, if I could only pass this whole situation to myself and let you off the hook.” she squeezes my thigh.

“I know, it's just so agonizing not remembering. I mean, did I yell at my 'boyfriend' and tell him I was with another guy? Another who in my mind is still my current one and who I still have feelings for?” I let out a desperate breath. I dry my tears, angry with myself and with the drunk who hit my car.

“Honey, it is only the first hours, calmly, we will tell you everything and you will get used to it, who knows, maybe remembering until everything is in place or close to it? It's not your fault, it's just a consequence! Everything will be fine, I promise you.” she hugs me and I allow myself to cry, her hand caressing my hair, giving me peace. “What matters is that you are alive.”

“What day is it today?” I ask after a few seconds.

“June 13th, 2020.” I feel the second bomb explode, it's very weird.

“Do you and dad like him?” I ask, curious.

“Very much, it was your best choice.” she smiles.

“And Dad, where is he?” her expression becomes distressed.

“Hm, he had to take a trip right on the day of the accident, but he is already trying to get back.”

Three years! That's what I had lost. Apparently my boyfriend, or rather ex-boyfriend, had cheated on me and I was with a world-famous and beloved guy, of whom I knew nothing but his name and that he was in a band, which had the underpants song.

I went back to the room and spent much of the afternoon trying to assimilate everything. I needed more information, to talk to more people. Deep down, I wanted to believe that this was a big theater, but I know that it is impossible. Unfortunately, I have lost my memory and my hands are tied trying to fit everything in and remember something.

The door opened and unlike what I had imagined, Luke came in holding a bouquet of gerberas and a box with a purple bow. He didn't expect me to be awake, and I didn't expect to be alone with him so soon.

“Sorry, I didn't know you were awake.” he says clumsily and a little lost, not knowing what to do with the box and the flowers.

“No problem, you can pretend I'm asleep, I don't want to disturb you.” he nods and I watch his movements.

I watch him exchange the yellow roses in the vase for the gerberas, my favorite flowers, and notice him collecting the cards and giving them in my direction.

“I believe you are very curious to read them.” he won't come close and I feel bad for that, he must hate me.

“Thank you.” I give my best smile, trying to smooth things over. Luke continues to hold the box, not knowing what to do.

“Hm, this... this little box, it's for you!” he extends the box, still away from the bed. ”Your old cell phone broke in the accident, and I bought this new one. Leah and I have already backed it up, it has all the information from the old one.”

“Leah?” I can' t help but question, as I open the little box and look at the brand new cell phone.

“Uh, yes, your best friend, the current one!” He is standing at the foot of the bed and avoids looking at me.

“I don't know the password.” I say as the screen lights up.

Luke approaches, still hesitant, and positions himself beside me. He unlocks the screen and starts to show me where everything is, pictures, videos, messages and contacts. I stop for a moment and pay attention to him, while he is still talking.

With his face very close, I smell his perfume and I like the smell. I notice his long, very light hair, a beard showing signs all over his chin and jaw. Luke is handsome, I'm not impressed that I had a crush on him, but why did he have a crush on me?

I notice that he notices me staring at him, and, before he turns around, I turn my gaze to the cell phone. I feel him analyzing me, maybe trying to find the girl he loved inside me.

I take courage and stare back at him, my heart racing and my stomach churning, but not from happiness or anxiety of wanting something to happen, but from wanting nothing to happen. Even though he was a handsome and caring guy, I couldn't feel something for Luke, at least not before I worked things out with Stephen.

“Sorry about earlier today.” I whisper, not amused by my behavior.

“No need to apologize. You're just going through a very big shock.” He reassures me.

“Still, I want you to know that I'm not like that.” Luke looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “But you already know, of course.” I cover my eyes, wanting to die. Luke lets out a laugh that makes me laugh along with him.

“I know it will be difficult, but I don't mind hearing you tell me all about you again.” I can't sustain the look, it intimidates me. “By the way…” he turns away and goes to a backpack on the sofa and pulls out a book. “I brought it so you would have something to read. You read it last year and said it was so good you wish you could forget to read it again.” as soon as Luke finishes speaking, I can't stand his choice of words and start laughing and he seems to notice, becoming embarrassed.

“That's fine, thank you very much.” I oblige and allow myself to lift my body, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

He turns more red and sits down on the couch, leaving me with my presents. I glance over the novel, reading the synopsis that catches my attention, ‘When It Happens’. I grab my cell phone and go into my social medias, startling myself by seeing my insta full of pictures in Italy, clothing campaigns and some pictures with him. I look up to Luke, who is wearing glasses and reading a book.

It’s strange not to be attracted to him, but to feel peace, as if everything is right. I’m sorry that I don't remember him, since he seemed like such an amazing guy and so kind to me. My mind comes up with a huge list of questions I want to ask him. How did we meet? How long have we been together? Do we fight a lot? But at the same time that I am insanely curious to talk to my boyfriend, his presence intimidates me; after all, he is a famous guy. Faced with this, I keep quiet.

I turn my attention to the thousands of cards on my lap, reading one by one. Many texts wishing me better, saying that if I woke up some would cut the hair, or change the color, among other promises. Leah, Calum, Ashton, Kyleen, Noah, Michael; so many names, but none that I feel familiar with. I need to see Stephen.

“Could you check with the nurse for something I can eat?” I ask timidly, not wanting to get in his way. However, Luke quickly gets up and provides my order.

I take advantage of the moment alone and dial the number I still remembered, after three rings Stephen's voice comes on and for the first time in hours, I feel in control of the situation.

“Hi, it's Marnie!” I feel my heart racing so fast I think about the possibility that I'm going to throw up.

“Wow, this is a call I never thought I would get again.” I don't answer because I feel bad, apparently the ending wasn't good at all. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Hm.” I clear my throat. “I need to see you, to talk, actually. I don't know if you know, but I was in an accident recently.”

“Yes, I read about it.”

“So, the problem is that I lost part of my memory and, well, the last thing I remember is that I was on my way to your house, to celebrate our anniversary.”

“What anniversary?” his voice is curious and cautious.

“The one in 2017.” the line becomes dead silent and I don't wait for an answer. “Look, I am really lost and I need to talk to you and understand everything.”

“Are you sure your parents and your amazing boyfriend haven't already told you everything?” the mocking tone annoys me a little.

“Honestly? I didn't really believe what my mom told me. Would you mind coming to the hospital early tomorrow morning? I'll probably be discharged in the afternoon and well, I know some people won't be happy to see you here.”

“No problem, it would be an honor to tell you the truth. See you tomorrow, Lizzie.”

The affectionate nickname he always used for me makes my stomach turn. Stephen never liked my name and the fact that he didn't know how to make a nickname out of it, so he called me Lizzie.

I don't know if I did the right thing by calling Stephen, but I need answers and to understand everything that had happened between us, until I came into Luke's arms.

Luke...

Where did we bump into each other and intertwine? He is a famous guy, has great friends, could date any famous girl, a fan, someone who knows him well and wants him, why me? The thoughts drown me as I look at another picture of us on his profile.

“Sorry for the long delay, my mom called, she wanted to hear from you.” Luke's cheeks are flushed and the glasses that used to occupy his face are now hanging from the collar of his shirt. “The nurse will bring some soup in a moment.” I wrinkle my nose and mouth. I don’t like soup. “I know, but that's what the doctor ordered.”

It scares me how he knows me and how I know nothing about him, other than that he sings the underwear song and that he sang with One Direction.