#however.. my laptop screen is broken. so I had to push back making art til it’s fixed. I’ll try my best though!!

[amphirrhvx]

I NEARLY FORGOT TO POST THESE HERE!! a bit ago I had an idea for a cageblind mermaid au, and with the help of some of my amazing friends over on twt I managed to make it come to life!!! so here’s chuck and johnny in the mkL mermaid au!! am I still allowed to say happy mermay even if it ends tomorrow? whatever. happy mermay! 🩵

[inthesummerswelter]

recipe for disaster: chapter fourteen

They don’t talk about it, that early morning with Penn lying on the floor and tea spilling out of the quivering cup in her gran’s hands.

There’s more tenderness between them though, with gentle touches on the arm, hands placed comfortingly on shoulders as they soldier on together, the days getting longer as the New Year comes in on tip-toe.

They don’t talk about it, not when their positions are reversed just under a week later, and Penn is screaming into her mobile, asking for emergency services as her legs buckle underneath her at the sight of her gran, fallen and unconscious at the bottom of the stairs, a small pool of blood staining her pure white hair a sickly shade of peach.

Seeing the gurney wheeled in through the front door has her in near hysterics, utter chaos flooding the living room. She nearly forgets to slip on a pair of shoes before locking the door and rushing out into the back of the ambulance, leaving Cardy and Clove frantically dashing around the flat.

They don’t talk about it, not when Penn’s knuckles are the same sort of pale as the inside of the ambulance, a side effect of the sterile, overhead lighting and from clutching the bars of the gurney too hard. The emergency medical technician in the back drapes an arm over her shoulders, just enough to keep her from flying into the walls as the vehicle takes a sharp turn. All of the sounds come muffled, as if someone’s stuffed cotton into her ears, drowning out the wailing sirens with an eerie blanket of nothing.

She calls Zayn again, numbly, after they restrain her from bursting through the heavy swinging doors where they’ve taken her gran in to do further examination on the severity of the head wound. The reception is bad on his end, crackling with fuzz and static, but she knows that he can hear her telling him about the tacky art adorning the whitewashed walls of the waiting room.

They talk about it when Miriam Bunting gets a room to herself, condition having stabilized enough for Penn to go in and see her.

Or, Penn talks about it, really.

Gingerly holding her hand, made trickier with the tubing feeding into her body, Penn talks about it.

“You’re not scared, I know. But I am. I’m ridiculously scared. And I shouldn’t be, I know. It’s just hard. I know all these things. I know that tomorrow the sun will rise, and I know that tomorrow you’ll still love lily-of-the-valley. I know that the restaurant still exists, and that the clams are one of the most popular appetizers. But I don’t know the scariest things. Where will you go? How long will it take for you to get there? Will there be ovens and lawn chairs and Pop?”

Her voice gives out at the end, and she’s silent for a long time.

The slow beep of the heart monitor is the only other sound in the room, along with the constant whir from the air shaft, providing ventilation in the small room.

“I’m scared and I’m worried and I’m so tired. And I love you so much. I just wish we had more time.”

The monotonous drone is broken by the sound of footsteps. A nurse comes in, presumably to complete a cursory check of the patient, and Penn takes that as a cue to leave for a bit.

All the hallways look the same. She doesn’t pay attention to the signs as she wanders around, taking stairs up and down when she can to avoid groups of people clustered about.

Soon, however, she finds herself in the natal ward, standing just opposite a large pane of glass, behind which lies orderly rows of newborn babies in hospital bassinets, the nursery surprisingly busy.

There’s a digital clock right near the front, flashing the time: 12:48 a.m.

They left the flat at quarter ‘til nine in the evening.

Crossing her arms and bracing them on the small ledge in front of the glass, she watches the babies sleep, reading the name cards over and over again until her whole world consists of linking letters together.

It’s a welcome distraction, until someone nudges her shoulder and pushes something into her hand.

Ashton stands beside her, hair sticking up at odd angles, dark thumbprints of exhaustion evident underneath his hazel eyes. He’s got an old flannel on and a pair of sleep trousers, and a carry-out cup of something in his hand.

“It’s really crap tea,” he mumbles before sipping from the rim of the cardboard cup. She barely registers the cup that’s pushed into her hand seconds before, struck dumb by his presence.

How had he known…?

Pausing in the midst of blowing across the surface of the liquid in an attempt to cool it, he turns and looks at her, taking in her wide eyes and open mouth.

���Zayn,” Ashton says, shrugging his shoulders and turning away, causing the plaid pattern of the flannel to stretch and warp momentarily across the broad plane of his back. “Called me up, told me what’s been going on. Y’know, since you’ve decided to keep me out of the loop and all.”

“I -”

“Told me that I shouldn’t be coming onto private property uninvited? I know you’re hurting, Penn, but that’s no reason to push me away.”

He doesn’t look at her, staring instead through the glass at the little bassinets, one now with waving fists, an apparently unhappy occupant. They watch as a nurse bustles in and takes the newborn in hand, cradling it to her chest and swaying around in loose circle before its cries wake up the other residents.

She didn’t mean it, not really.

He had stopped by on an especially bad afternoon, and she had just, well, snapped.

“I…,” she tries again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me. It’s just me.”

“I fucking know it’s you, Penn, okay?”

Startled at the vehemence in his voice, she accidentally spills a bit of her tea, splattering the pristine tiles.

“Don’t do this to me again. You didn’t answer my calls or my texts. I may not understand exactly what you’re going through, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be there with you, helping you!”

Penn closes her eyes and gently leans over until her head hits his shoulder. It’s shaking.

“I’m so sorry. I’ve fucked everything up.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you have.”

They stand there in the hallway, waiting for nothing in particular.

Everything is quiet now, blanketed with the stillness that only after-midnight hours bring. So quiet that Penn thinks she can hear the thud of their hearts, beating together in a syncopated rhythm.

All that’s missing is a change of scenery, a change of situation. Something that’s not so utterly grim and tinged with a sort of low-budget desperation that washes out all characters on the screen into pale facsimiles of themselves.

Ashton huffs out a sigh, fingers curling into the cool metal of the ledge before finally swinging his head to look at her from underneath honeyed eyelashes.

“Hold this a sec for me?” He gestures to his cup of tepid tea, placing it in her other hand when she nods.

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting him to do - probably bend down to retie his shoe or nip off quickly to the loo, something inane like that - but she knows that it’s not this.

This being him taking three decisive steps forward, until her back hits the drywall just to the side of the large window, liquid in the cups sloshing dangerously close to the rims.

This being him bringing large hands oh so delicately up to slip a lock of hair that had escaped its pin back into place and then back down to cradle the slight curve of her waist and cup the line of her jaw, stroking the skin just behind her ear gently with a calloused fingertip.

This being him using his arms to pull her forward into his front, his chest warm and comfortingly solid.

This being him leaning forward to whisper, his lips a hairsbreadth away from touching the curve of her ear.

“It’s going to be alright. I promise. You just have to be strong a little bit longer.”

He retracts after a moment of hesitation, and, after a moment more, presses a kiss to her forehead, echoing the one on the landing between their flats that seemed like eons ago.

Taking his cup, he mumbles something about needing to see if they’re done in the room and picks up a duffel she hadn’t even noticed off the floor, trudging away back towards her gran’s wing.

Her legs give out seconds later, and she slides down the wall until she’s sitting, all folded up against the wall.

God, what is she even doing any more?

  Less than an hour later, in the dark of her gran’s room, she shifts her head on the coarse canvas of his backpack, nestling further into the nest of spare blankets the nurse on duty had given them. Penn had fallen into a sort of drowsy reverie a lot faster than she initially had thought, and consequently feels just about half-asleep right now.

Her spine bumps up against the long line of his leg, the clacking of the keys on his laptop as he types trailing off.

“‘M still a little pissed with you,” he sighs out, seconds before she feels a hand stroke the side of her head slowly.

The typing picks up again, as Ashton works to finish up a paper, the liquid-crystal of the display casting a glow onto his face for hours after.

They leave the hospital later that next day, in the sun-soaked afternoon.

Ashton comes over and makes up proper tea while Penn touches the pots and pans for what feels like the first time in ages.

   “C’mon, Gran, we’re going to be late for your appointment!”

Penn bustles around the flat, gathering up all the things that they’ll need for their routine visit to the doctor. She’s steeling herself for the day when Dr. Stamford tells them that they should just stay at the hospital until the end, that the cancer has almost completed its goal.

“We’re not going, Penelope.”

Sitting in the rocking chair positioned just close enough to the window to catch the beams of afternoon sun that stream through, Miriam Bunting watches the traffic flood by across the busy fareway.

She stops mid-stride, hand outstretched to grab her keys off the hook by the door.

“What?”

Her gran shrugs. “There’s no point to wasting time with that sort of nonsense. I’ve already phoned up the office and told them. I want to die at home.”

One would think that Penn has cried herself dry by this point, but a flood of tears still rush up unbidden to her eyes.

Illuminated by the shaft of light floating through the window, Miriam looks practically angelic already, pale skin and white housecoat near glowing.

“I’ve made other arrangements for my care for the next days and called for David and Laura. They’re on their way. And, I’ve taken the liberty of going around gathering most of your things. You should go now, Penelope.”

“Wait, what?”

Blindsided doesn’t even begin to describe it right now.

Penn reels at the news. Her gran is dying. Her parents are coming. And she’s supposed to leave her like this?

“You heard me. I don’t want you to see me like...that,” she says, making a gesture off into the air. “I don’t want your last memory of me to be that. Not like how it is with Ichiro. I always felt like we made a mistake, letting you see him in the hospital, but you were so young and so heartbroken…”

“Gran, I’m heartbroken now.”

Facing her granddaughter, there’s steel in Miriam’s eyes, an inner strength completely at odds with her wasted frame.  

“Don’t do this, Penelope. Don’t you dare do this to yourself. You can’t linger and waste your life thinking about this constantly. You have the capacity for great things, and I know you will accomplish them. You can’t linger, can’t waste your life grieving over the inevitable!”

There’s nothing she can do to change her mind, to make her let her stay until the end.

Silently, Penn nods, swiping at her eyes with her fists like a child again.

“I love you, Gran. So much.”

Motioning her closer, she gathers the younger girl in her arms, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“I love you too, Penelope. Never doubt my love for you.”

After a long while, they draw apart, Penn collecting her remaining things and herding the dogs towards the door after they too have said their goodbyes. She turns to look on her gran, one last time, taking the image to memory before she forces herself to close the door.

The heavy wood hits the frame just seconds before tears start falling onto the weave of the throw rug.

Twilight has come.

   It’s déjà vu all over again for him.        

He looks up as the rain paints pictures against the cold glass of the window, and he smiles because he could use a break from the insufferable writing of his poli sci text right now. Well, from that and from all of the second-hand pain of Penn’s that he’s been toting around on his back.

Ashton doesn’t even bother stripping off his shirt this time, a long-sleeved affair with multicolor stripes. Calum likes to tell him that it makes him look like one of the permanent cast members of Sesame Street.

Opening the slider door that leads out onto the shared terrace, he curls his toes in the puddle that’s already forming under the ledge of the entrance. He closes his eyes and tilts his head up, feeling the torrent run across his face, plastering his wavy mop against his forehead.

There’s just something about the rain that’s special to him, always been special to him.

Ashton cups his hands as he strides out into the middle of the downpour, catching and releasing the water just as quickly as it hits his palms, and he heads for the edge of the small greenhouse structure constructed on the terrace. Penn keeps a few small folding chairs there, and they’re just the right material to get drenched without any damage.

Except, as he rounds the corner, it’s not just the chairs that are there.

Penn’s there, too, just standing right at the edge of the roof with a watering can in loosely wilting fingers. No umbrella, no chastising him for a reckless behavior.

Nothing.

And his heart seizes up in his chest as he realizes just how close she is to the drop-off, watches her feet begin to shift, and Ashton dashes towards Penn, feeling like he’s moving through molasses.

The only thing that runs through his mind right now is Penn Penn Penn there’s something wrong with Penn, and vaguely he knows that her gran is a part of it.

(Something’s wrong, something’s terribly wrong.)

Ashton’s arm shoots out and catches her around the waist, dragging her away from the limestone border of the rooftop terrace and pulls her into him, allowing himself one moment of indulgence in the feel of her body in his arms before he lets go and puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Penn! Penn – fuck, you’re freezing – what the fuck, what the fuck is wrong?” He practically shouts this into her face, her face that’s absolutely devoid of any emotion, and he can’t completely keep the note of desperation out of his voice.

Two words come out of her mouth. “She’s gone.”

He knows exactly who she’s talking about, dead-on with his previous assumption. The only she that Penn ever cared for, and, as far as he knows, ever cared for Penn.

Penn’s eyes finally connect with his own, and it feels like he’s been punched in the gut with the utter loss and confusion and desperation that’s there, waiting for someone to notice.

With all of that, Ashton really shouldn’t be surprised at what happens next, but, Jesus Christ, is he ever.  

Something changes in her expression, and she’s suddenly much closer to him that before. Dimly, Ashton registers the sound of the metal watering can clattering against the tiled roof, but right now most of his concentration is being taken up with trying not to stare too blatantly at the wet shirt draping itself over Penn’s chest.

And then she kisses him.

It’s hot mouths and clacking teeth, and fingers sewing stitches at the nape of his neck and lacing around the curve of his jaw, and he staggers back, clutching her waist again, but this time for balance.

After a few glorious seconds minutes hours days later, he regains some control on his brain and pulls back his hand that’s somehow made its way to the curve of her arse, detaching his mouth from hers in the same motion.

He wants to dive back in as soon as she gives a little, breathy gasp at the sudden lack of him, but, instead, Ashton begins say, “Penn, no this isn’t the right way of doing th –”

His sentence gets cut off by a groan that makes its way up his throat because she’s somehow got her mouth on a point right under his jaw that makes his toes curl, and he knows that it’s going to be a moot point to argue with her when she’s wrangling with his belt in one hand and tracing a steady pattern on the planes of his back with her other.

  It’s not until much later that she gets the call, all crackling static and interference, and she wants so damn much to not believe it, but the words come through with deadly clarity.

“She’s gone,” says her mother, no prefacing needed.

And Penn calmly takes the receiver away from her ear. Silently, her index finger presses down on the ‘end’ button, and the phone gets set on the counter, because Penn has to go water the plants now.

She’s since changed into a different pair of linen shorts and a tee shirt declaring her property of whatever university Ashton’s enrolled in, and she plucks at it idly, thinking that she maybe should change.

But Penn has to go water the plants now, so she slips on her favorite pair of Birkenstocks and loops her fingers around the can sitting right beside the slider door. Pushing the pane of glass aside, she steps out into a torrential downpour, but she has to go water the plants now. It makes no difference what the weather is.    

She makes it halfway to the greenhouse before she stops, adjacent to the rim of the roof, and the watering can is now held just tenuously.

Penn looks over, looks through the buzz in her brain, the fog in her eyes, to the streets of the city below.

It’s such a long way down for such a short trip. Just a quick step up and over and that’s it. That’s the end.

Her feet begin to move again – she has to go water the plants now - but this time, she’s caught about the waist with strong arms and held tightly to an unyielding chest, a face bursting into view.

It’s Ashton, and Penn thinks that he’s saying her name, and then she realizes that it’s Ashton Ashton will understand Ashton.

Prying her lips open, she manages to speak.

“She’s gone.”

And the look of devastation and concern that crosses his face makes her heart ache, and she just needs a goddamn distraction right now because - who is she fucking kidding - the plants don’t need a goddamn watering right now; it’s fucking pouring.

It’s pouring, and it’s a Tuesday morning, and her grandmother’s dead.

And Ashton’s there, right in front of her, and Penn wanted a distraction, didn’t she?

The watering can clatters on the ground as she loops her arms around his neck and molds her lips to hers, and damn it, he’s going to kiss her back. Penn sucks and licks and nibbles until he gasps, a deep whooshing sound that takes the oxygen from her lungs, and it’s not her leaning over him now, it’s the other way around.

He pushes back, guiding them away from the ledge, all the while responding with a frenzy of soft touches and slick motions, and vaguely she registers his hand on the curve of her arse and, damn, is she ever okay with that.

Penn’s fingers twine in the hair at the nape of his neck and tug, and he gives this deep groan that reverberates in his chest like a rumble, and everything feels so fucking good until he pulls away and starts talking.

No, no. That won’t do at all.

She takes advantage of the moment, pressing her lips against his jawline, leaving flutteringly small kisses, until there’s a gratifying gasp and his hands mouth presence is back, this time sliding under her skin.

Palms press their way up her sides, slowly peeling the wet shirt away from her ribs, and the pads of his fingers set fire to her bones, and what could be so wrong about something that feels this right?

But it’s warm rain cascading down her cheeks now as her grief truly begins to overtake her, and Ashton’s hands turn from fireworks under her skin to soothing, lazy strokes down her spine that remind her of home. Kisses float from intense to gentle pulls at her lips, and he begins to whisper the nonsensical words of a lullaby in her ear as sobs overtake her body.

It’s an implosion, and they both sink to the terrace, his arms cradling her, building her an ark to stay afloat in. Penn’s sure her face looks horrific right now, so she hides it in the shadow of his collarbones, and Ashton rests his chin on the top of her head, fingers rubbing small circles on her back and carding through her soaking wet hair.

It’s just her and him, clutching to rusted anchors from boats long gone out to sea.