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falcon-eye · 4 years ago

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So I’ve been writing on my phone and this one almost made me lose my shit because when initially hitting “copy” I accidentally hit “paste” and deleted the entire fucking thing. Thank GOD gmail keeps a copy of your notes. Holy shit.

Again made for @inexplicifics Accidental Warlord AU

Veko and Eloise’s domestic adventures continue! I’m so happy people actually like them! I’ve grown so close to them both. This will be part of their bigger story, because since I’ve been writing on my phone they’ve been really small and when I expound on them I want to add more details before all this, like about Veko and Hamra and all that. So consider these teasers I guess? That’s why the endings feel so abrupt. Or that’s the excuse I keep telling myself. I don’t know. But when I finally post everything it will be on AO3, and I may put these little ficlets on AO3 as a fic as well.

Anyway hope you enjoy this one! Veko and Eloise return!

——————

The next time Veko saw Eloise was just as bizarre as the first. Except this time, she ended up helping him as opposed to him saving her father again. It was, somehow, even more awkward.

It was a few weeks of a full year later. What was supposed to just be one kikimora turned into a while nest, and despite this, the alderman barely wanted to pay him what he said he would for the one kill, let alone a whole cluster of them. He wouldn’t even let Veko inside. Luckily it had almost literally just stopped raining. But it was getting to the point where Veko was having to take a few calming breaths between the arguing; the alderman was a miserable prick, but Veko didn’t want to snap on the guy.

“You take what I give ye an’ be done with it!” the alderman shouted, reaching for the dagger at his belt. “Or you’ll get no coin and—“

“Husband!” a woman’s voice rang out. Veko and the alderman jumped; fucking rain and yelling, making Veko’s senses dull. A small force practically ran into him from the side and wrapped a hand around his elbow. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Uh—“

“Eloise!” the alderman exclaimed. Oh shit, that’s where Veko knew her from! “Nothing t’ worry about, this Witcher was jus’ leaving.”

Eloise turned to Veko, pressing closer. “You were?” she asked, faking concern to apparently Veko’s ears only. “But darling, you just got here!”

Veko’s mind went totally blank. “Hello?” he said dumbly.

The alderman’s eyes narrowed. “What?” he hissed. “Eloise, this man—“

“Is my beloved,” Eloise cut in. The alderman’s mouth shut with an audible click. “Last year, don’t you remember? The Witcher that saved my father from those drowners!”

Veko continued to stare at her.

“But—“ the alderman stammered.

“Now what’s with all this shouting over here?” Eloise barreled on.

“I sent this Witcher here to kill the kikimora roamin’ about,” the alderman said.

Eloise gave Veko’s arm a little shake to snap him back into the conversation. “I, uh,” he stammered. “It wasn’t just one. There was a whole nest.”

Eloise clapped a hand over her mouth and gasped dramatically. “A whole nest!” she exclaimed, drawing the attention of the townspeople nearby. “My goodness! I’m so glad it’s been taken care of! Oh, Lennart, I don’t know what we would have done had a whole nest of those beasts descended upon the town!”

People were starting to whisper. The alderman—Lennart’s heart rate sped up. “Oh, well yes, I, eh, was good indeed.” He looked like he was trying to both glare at Veko and keep the shock of Eloise’s outburst off his face at the same time—and failing.

Eloise finally let go of Veko and took the alderman’s hands. “Do you need help with the coin?” she asked innocently. “For the additional kikimora? I know things have been difficult since Nora left—“

“I can handle it!” Lennart exclaimed, eyes darting around at the growing mass of people who’d come to hear about the monsters. The alderman patted Eloise’s hands and laughed nervously. “I mean, that’s alright dear! I-I’ve plenty of coin for the Witcher here! Let me—I’ll go get it.”

Lennart raced back into his house and the crowd of people began to disperse, clearly boring of the now dwindling conversation. Veko was still not sure what the fuck just happened. But before he could ask, the alderman burst back outside and practically threw a pretty hefty sack of coin into Veko’s hands.

“Splendid!” Eloise exclaimed, and then turned to Veko one more. “Shall we go, darling?”

Veko nodded, letting himself be led away, once again, by this bizarre woman. But just before Lennart went back inside, Veko turned to him, held up the bag of coin, and winked. Lennart turned an ugly red and slammed the door behind him.

“Fucking weaselly prick,” Eloise hissed. Veko guffawed.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Where did you even come from? How did you find me? What—what the hell was that?!”

Eloise held up a hand and ticked answers off her fingers. “I was in town putting an order for paints in, saw your horse tied to a tree near the edge of town, and Lennart is a right prick but easy to exploit because of it. His wife Nora left a few weeks ago with some adventurer who came through town. She knew he’d been trying to bed any girl in sight and rightfully left.”

Veko pocketed the bag of coin. “Well I’m not going to complain,” he said.

Eloise tucked her hand into the crook of his arm again. “Are you planning on staying?” she asked. “Papa says it’s supposed to rain; he can feel it in his knees, he says.”

Veko started itching at his burns. “I, uh—“

“Right, coming with me then.”

Veko laughed again and Eloise guide the way.

——————————————————

For having apparently acquired Eloise and her home, this was the first time Veko had actually been inside. It was cozy, the walls painted a pale pink and yellow. The kitchen was warm and smelled amazing, Eloise having apparently left something cooking while she’d been out.

Peering into the next room, the apparent main room of the house, Veko found bottles of paints and an assortment of brushes set up at an easel against the far window (splattered in paint); blank canvases were piled behind it. But actually giving the room a look-around, his attention was immediately drawn to the walls lined floor to ceiling with the most beautiful paintings Veko had ever seen.

Landscapes of what Veko recognized as the local stream and the goat paddock out back, faces he didn’t recognize but could have started up a conversation with him with how real they looked, random assortments of everyday items put together to make some interesting structure—there was art everywhere.

Veko didn’t realize he was gaping until he heard Eloise chuckle. “Like what you see?” she asked.

“They’re amazing,” Veko replied, reaching towards a painting of a young boy.

“Don’t touch!” Eloise snapped; Veko jumped. “Sorry, sorry, they’re just—when they dry the colors fade of you touch them.”

“Sorry,” Veko said, shoving his hand into his pocket.

Eloise shook her head. “It’s always been a dream of mine to be a famous painter. Sometimes I get commissions or sell some in Oxenfurt. There’s a man who comes by to take them to market every now and then. Anyway, apparently my father went to bed early,” she said. “Stew?” Eloise chuckled. “I can paint a delicious meal but actually cooking it, eh...”

Now it was Veko’s turn to laugh. “I’d love some, whatever it tastes like,” he said. “And—thank you, for that shit with the alderman.”

Eloise waved him off. “Honestly? Bringing you up has been doing wonders around here,” she said.

As Veko sat down at the table, he remembered: “Did you call me husband?”

“How long ago was that and you’re just realizing that now?”

“In my defense, you came out of nowhere!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be this great warrior with heightened senses?”

Instead of answering, Veko leaned forward and smirked. “You think I’m great?”

Eloise stared at him for a moment before scoffing and shoveling a spoonful of soup into her mouth. “A great pain in my arse,” she said, “and you’ve only been here five minutes.”

“Might I remind you that you’re the one who dragged me here.”

“Yeah, because you looked like a bloody kicked puppy when I asked!”

“Kitten.”

Eloise blinked. “What?”

Veko tapped his medallion. “I’m from the School of the Cat, so I’d be a kitten.”

There was a moment of silence before Eloise let out a ‘PFFFT!’ and burst out laughing. “Did you really just—“

“I can leave right now!” Veko exclaimed, but there was no heat behind it. Eloise’s laugh was loud and hoarse, hardly ladylike or cute, but for some reason Veko liked hearing it. He wanted to hear it again.

Eloise wiped tears from her eyes. “Just eat your stew, Witcher,” she said.

“Veko,” Veko said. “My name is Veko.”

“Veko,” Eloise repeated, like she was getting used to how it sounded. “Nice to officially meet you, husband.”

Veko started scratching his burns. “Oh gods.”

Eloise smacked his hand like she’d done last year. “Stop doing that,” she snapped. “You’re going to make it worse.”

“I’ve had it for fifteen years; I don’t think it’s going to get worse.”

Eloise was quiet. “How—? Never mind.”

“No, it’s ok,” Veko reassured her. “My brother and I got into a fight. Or something. I can’t remember. But it was an accident, either way.”

“Is your brother also a Witcher?”

Veko nodded, having just stuffed his face with stew again. “Yah,” he said, his mouth full. He swallowed. “Identical twins, actually. Though my hair’s longer and he’s a bit bulkier than I am. His name’s Hamra.”

“Veko and Hamra,” Eloise said, “twin Cat Witchers, huh?”

“Yes ma’am,” Veko replied. Over the course of the meal, Veko explained the basics about the Cats and their caravan, how they worked and why they occasionally split up. Eloise, for her part, only asking questions when he’d finished a story and let him talk most of the conversation. Normally, talking is what Veko was used to, but both times he’d been with this woman she’d shocked him into silence. It was nice to be comfortable again.

Night settled quickly and when they finished their respective meals, Eloise took both their bowls to wash. “I’m going to set a cot up for you,” she said over her shoulder.

“What, no bed?” Veko teased.

“Other than my father's bed, there’s only one other and it’s mine,” Eloise replied.

“Not enough room for husband and wife?”

Eloise suddenly turned serious. Without even turning to him she said, “I’ll not bed you, Witcher.”

Veko held his hands up in surrender, even though her back was still turned. “Ok,” he said softly. “Just messing around, sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you, truly.”

Eloise sighed deeply and finally turned to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just. I don’t want that. From anyone, ever. It’s—it’s hard to explain. Just thinking about... that... makes me... extremely uncomfortable.”

Veko nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I mean, I don’t, but I respect that.”

Eloise smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

“Is that why me being your husband is useful?” Veko asked; Eloise’s heart rate sped up. “I don’t have a problem with that!” he quickly assured her. “It’s just, last year you said something to that effect.”

Eloise looked him in the eye for a moment, maybe trying to assess if he was telling the truth? And then nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s no problem here,” Veko said. “Gods know I only really come through this area once a year. I could swing by to keep up appearances.”

“And I could help you bleed Lennart dry of all his coin.”

Veko smirked. “I like the way you think.”

Eloise smirked back. “I think this is going to be a very successful partnership.”

#the witcher #witcher oc #accidental warlord au #inexplicifics #falcon writes

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scriptaed · 5 years ago

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ink nemesis. 06

Genre: Angst/Fluff || paparazzi!au; fake dating!au;

Pairing: Reader x Yoongi

Length: 5.6k

Synopsis: As an aspiring writer drowning under the public’s radar, a click of the pen is all you need to accept your supervisor’s offer to co-write an article for the SS - Secrets Spilled, a regular section of your company’s weekly tabloid; but fabricated stories and invasive details aren’t all that you write when you discover Min Yoongi’s dirty little secret.

...who?

Yourself and your grotesque reflection that distorts by the second of every day or the daughter born with a silver spoon and your man so tactfully wrapped around her little finger? Whom is it whose influence you had thought to be completely ridden of, despite the endless hours they have managed to thieve from you as they incessantly creep along your conscience even in the darkest of nights? Perhaps, is it a disgraceful force manifested from the wants of your body as it lusts for the warmth of the man who had betrayed your utmost trust?

Who is it whom has left her here, aloof, abandoned, and so pitifully desperate for affirmation that even you would have scorn her had it not been a spitting image of the current you?

You fear the answer; so, instead, the little girl in you ill-advisedly persists to indulge in a cyclical wave of toxicity.

[Anonymous 01:23 AM] Damn how does Ink Nemesis get all of this? She must have worked at Dispatch before haha I love her content but she’s an apologetic asshole

[Anonymous 01:25 AM] To be honest, the CEO’s daughter is so much prettier than his current girlfriend. Yoongi must be regretting his decision.

[User124930 01:26 AM] His current gf isn’t even good looking or wealthy. I wonder what he sees in her?

[Anonymous 01:27 AM] Switching to his new chick was the biggest mistake of his career

[Anonymous 01:29 AM] IN, I loved all of your content up til now, but this was a step too far. You knew he had a girlfriend, so why would you release this picture now? It’s irrelevant. Honestly, fuck you.

On tails, they love you when they need you. On heads, they toss you to the curb when you needed them. Where were all of your supporters in this very moment when you needed them most? Akin to the flip of a coin, loyalty is nothing but an occasional typo on the internet.

It’s a hard pill to swallow but you do it, nonetheless; in fact, you take them, one every scroll and another every comment until you’re lying in bed—cold and numb, chest wrenching, heart twisting, and mind scavenging for an explanation.

What did you do to deserve this?

What could you have done better?

How should you respond to the public?

Should you lash out at them? But what if they condemn you even further? What about your career? Could you survive the fall? Would your dwindling supporters remain by your side? Probably not, considering their silence, right?

Maybe they were right,. Should you not have posted that photo?

Should you not have gotten involved with BTS in the first place?

What could you have done to avoid falling for Yoongi?

“Hello? Is anyone in here?”

A series of hard knocks on the door interrupts your state of panic. Your legs swing over the side of your bed as you propel yourself onto your feet, completely upright and alert at the sudden visit.

Who could it be? One of his fans? How did they get your address? Has their malicious intents transcended from virtual and into reality?

Did they really hate you that much?

Cautiously, you grab your phone and stealthily creep toward the door with a thumb hovered over the emergency dial. The floor barely creeks but the painful pounds of your heart echo in the deafening silence. The blinding blue light of your phone is all that guides you through the pitch black apartment. With red eyes that were sore from hours of scrolling and a mind so physically and mentally drained that you couldn’t even process the potential danger of the situation, you peek into the peephole—not with courage, but rather, with a mind absent of sense.

Fortunately, the woman who stands on the other side of the door is not one requiring the courage of a lion. At least, physically, she is not one you would fear of; mentally, however, she poses an ongoing threat to your state of mind.

Her doll-like physique with those doe-like eyes and red popping lips present unpleasant flashbacks of a particular picture you had spent the entirety of last night staring over.

Her lips on his.

His lips on hers.

Jealousy courses through your veins, serving as your only source of courage to face the victim of your schemes head-on.

“Oh!” the doll jumps backwards once the door swings wide open to reveal a room as dark as the night. “I thought you weren’t home considering…” her sentence is completed by the glimpses she grants around your apartment. “I’m not sure if you know me but allow me to introduce myself. I’m—”

“—I know very well who you are,” your curt interruption catches her off guard. “Why is Yoongi’s girlfriend paying the fake one a visit? How the hell did you even get my address?”

“Actually,” she nibbles the inside of her lower lip, slightly nodding her head in submission, despite retaining a firm lock to your eyes. “Yoongi gave me your address… to clear up some things.”

You quirk a brow at the mention of his name.

Who knew it would actually hurt even more to hear his name than to read it over text?

“I’m…” she struggles to get the words out. “I’m not actually dating Yoongi. Well, I never was. You were the first one he had ever seen. Yoongi made sure I was going to make that clear to you.”

“What… what do you mean?” you frown, clearly distraught by the sudden turn of events. Any information just turned into jumble at this point.

“My father, he’s the CEO of another company that has close ties with BigHit. He wanted to arrange a relationship between myself and Yoongi for publicity purposes, but when Yoongi’s producer explained the plan…” she forces out the remainder of her sentence, “...he objected.”

Oh is the only expression you could make. Had Yoongi not been lying to you after all? Does his omission of the complete truth still anger you so? You’re not completely sure how you feel, even knowing that he had sent her here as an olive branch and to clear the truth. Still, why didn’t he come here to speak these words himself?

“But…” your brows furrow and her glance lifts from the ground. “What about that... photo... that’s been circulating online?”

“Photo?” her eyes widen and her mouth falls agape when she realizes your reference. “Oh, that photo of me and him on the balcony?”

She doesn’t know it was you who posted it. Truthfully, you’ve never felt so two-faced as you do now, omitting the truth as Yoongi had done to you.

Nonetheless, you nod hesitantly.

“I, um,” she breaks eye contact for the first time and gazes off to the side. Her voice becomes hush and you nearly have to lean in to hear her over her mumbles as her cheeks gradually flush beet red. “...I forced that one on him.”

“What?”

“My father and Bang PD still managed to arrange a few dates between us two… and I,” her eyes flicker between you and the door, “I just couldn’t help but notice how great of a guy he is.” She continues in her reverie, gaze hazey with a grin whisked by the thought of someone dreamy. “I really liked him. More than anyone I had ever seen before. He’s nice and caring, quiet but thoughtful. I could tell he would treasure his woman and treat her well when he found the right one; and even if I wasn’t that woman, I still fell for him.”

So that was all there was to that accursed photo.

It takes a full minute for the answer to dawn upon you, the one whom you had feared the most.

“Right,” you say under your breath, completely defeated. “He does have that effect.”

“But I didn’t know you two were dating until the news broke out that night!” she nearly yells, eyes widening with panic. “I’m sorry, I swear I wouldn’t have done it if I had known!”

It seems even she doesn’t know the brittle foundation of your relationship with Yoongi.

“No, no, that’s fine,” you hastily assured because you should be the one apologizing right now if anything. “You should apologize to Yoongi, not me.”

It’s all fake. There’s nothing for her to apologize to you. You want to tell her the truth, but the thought of further ruining his career refrains you from doing so. Why do you want to protect him still? Is it the guilt that plagues you this very moment, now that you know the truth? Or is it the desire to prolong this hoax of a relationship founded upon a delicate lie?

“I did as soon as I found out,” she dips her head low, “I just didn’t have the courage to find you until Yoongi gave me a reason to.”

“So,” your face contorts until a concerned frown, “where is Yoongi? Why didn’t he come here to tell me himself?”

“Oh, I…” she hesitates to explain. “I don’t think he’s in the right... mindset to visit you right now. Did you two get into a fight recently…?”

So he doesn’t want to see you.

“Well—” your screams against his yells from last night still pierce your ears“—yes.”

“Maybe it’s time to make things right again now that you know the truth,” she gives you a soft smile of assurance.

Turns out, the woman you despised the most was all that you needed in the lowest moments of your despair. As if on cue, you absentmindedly nod your head and hurriedly return to your apartment to grab your purse and keys before running out of the musty cave. Holding her hands in yours, your words of gratitude are scrambled by the wind of your haste as you sprinted to the elevator with nothing but him in mind.

Why did you have to upload that photo? How selfish and spiteful could you have become, to the point of hurting the one you had held so dearly? Does he know of your deeds?

He would never love you the same if he were to know if what you had become.

What could you do to make things right?

Could anything make things right?

“Yoongi! Yoongi, I’m sorry,” you manage to blurt out in between your heavy breaths as you burst through the company’s doors and spot Yoongi standing in a circle with the rest of the boys. Your gaze locked with his own stern, unfazed ones before he turns his back on you with no intention to acknowledge your presence. Disgruntled by his welcoming, you storm through the front entrance with your last bit of energy as you tried to conceal any signs that you had sprinted here as if your life depended on it.

Every one of the boys but him stares at you in wariness. The air shifts until it’s painfully stagnant; but no one speaks.

“Yoongi, c’mon. We need to talk. Listen, I’m sorry about last night. Can we please just talk?”

Yoongi remains still, affixed to his stance, eyes looking straight ahead and arms crossing as if it was just a meeting between him and the boys. Even at a standstill, the huffs and silence exchanged between you and him are enough for anyone to see the impending storm.

“Yoongi,” Jimin utters, “you two should really talk it out.”

Yoongi doesn’t answer.

“Yeah, let’s give them some time alone,” Namjoon gives you a slight nod of acknowledgement before directing the others upstairs.

The only people left in the room are the two of you. The longest minute passes by and neither of you manage to one-up the other’s stubbornness until, finally, you grab onto the hook of his elbow and turn him around to force him to look at you for once.

He’s ever-so-silent but his eyes speak more than a thousand words. Fiery, dark, and ablaze, his stern gaze fixate on yours from above. The storm in his eyes brew of the inner turmoil he failed to put into words. You can see your reflection, eyes equally furious as his. You had come here with the intention of apologizing; but now that you've arrived, you realize you were much more than knees-deep into the water.

The hopes of reconciliation were slim yet true; but now, for the first time ever, you’re truly scared of that dimming possibility.

“Can you at least say something?” you brows furrow. “Look, I came all the way here because I wanted to apologize about last night, for yelling at you and not trusting you. I heard about your relationship with… her, and I really fucking hate myself for jumping to conclusions. I had my reasons for my distrust because I gave up so much on the line and I felt like I wasn’t getting the same thing in return.”

He remains silent, eyes still burning.

“Still, you could have at least explained to me. Why were you avoiding my questions? Who were you texting and why you couldn’t tell me? Why did I see her that night in front of my apartment? If nothing was going on, then why couldn’t you tell me—”

“—the photo.”

His words cut like a knife. He speaks slowly, but each and every word demands obedience of its own.

“Did you post that photo?”

Time stops and your heart drops. Every hammering against your chest reverberates with pain that courses through your veins to your extremities. His eyes never leave yours as you mull over your options.

What do you say? Should you be honest? Is there a point in lying if you’re so sure he already knows the truth?

“How…” you frown, shaking your head in denial.

“How do I know?” he reiterates with a twisted snigger, letting out a breath of disbelief. “I wake up with thousands of texts from my company telling me that the internet has been losing their minds over a dumbass picture of me that I never consented to, spend the next hour looking through the SS, only to find an audio of a performance that was only meant to be heard from person I thought I could trust most because — “ he pauses, struggling “ —I really thought she was the one.”

“Yoongi, I’m sorry—”

“—you’re not sorry,” he scorns. “You didn’t come here with the thought of confessing. You came here hoping to apologize because you couldn’t trust me even though I gave you my all. You put my entire career at risk out of spite. You hurt my family, the agency, and the boys because you were too damn selfish.”

“Well,” you snort, “you have to at least admit that I had reasons for not trusting you.”

“You’re right,” he cocks his head with his arms still crossed. “I shouldn’t have avoided your questions. I should have just explained everything to you. Maybe I could have worked on that with you for the sake of our relationship, but there’s nothing to work on now.”

“There’s ‘nothing’ to work on now…?” you repeat in a mutter. “What do you mean…? Are you breaking up with me?”

Yoongi fails to answer, eyes softening in regret even if just the slightest.

Letting out a sharp breath of disbelief, you shake your head in an attempt to prevent the impending waterworks. “Look, I’m sorry. I really do mean it. I fucked up. I fucked up big time. But do you think I wanted to get into this mess? Do you think I wanted to be so publicly exposed in a world like yours? Do you think I would have descended into this fucking madness that I have if it weren’t for you?”

Finally, his gaze shifts off to the side. Your snort in response to his silence is nothing but a coping mechanism because it would be impossible to deny the drop in your chest as the seconds pass by and the reality of the crumbling relationship sinks in.

“You’re really serious about this, huh?” you bite your bottom lip to distract you from the pain within when he turns to give you one last, melancholic gaze.

Stop it, don’t even pretend like this hurts you. You wish you could utter those words to him because it pains you to think that you were the cause of his hurt.

Nodding your head, you lower your head in an attempt to hide the shame plastered across your face. “Alright then, I guess… this is it. I hope you’re well. You deserve it. And I’m sorry… for everything.”

Yoongi doesn’t respond, because what else did he have to say at this point? He probably just wants you out of his life as soon as possible. In fact, you wouldn’t even blame him if he were to glare at you in complete disgust—because even you had done that to yourself in the recent months; and it irks you, pains you, even, to see that lovingly gentle look of his that conveyed to you the strength it’s taking him to hurt you in this way.

Because even if you hate it so, this entire mess was incited by the love you held for him.

But alas, this is for the best; and, so, you slowly stumble backwards until you meet the automatic door and a blaze of wind awakens something within you as you stood there alone in the streets.

Why did he have to figure it out?

Would everything have been fine if you had just covered your tracks better?

Then it dawns upon you: what if someone had told him?

“Y/N?” a familiar voice calls out to you. “Y/N, I told you not to use SS anymore!”

“Solji…” your meek voice fails to register over the motherly scold.

She hastily makes her way to you from across the street, her bright orange locks tousling in the wind—everything in slow motion.

“Y/N, what on Earth were you thinking?! Why did you post that photo of him? You had to have known it would damage his career. Don’t you care about your boyfriend’s career?!” It’s no use. Her voice is completely muffled in the background. It’s almost as if you’re drowning underwater. “Y/N? Y/N, are you listening?!”

“Solji…” you mumble, eyes looking straight ahead at the red light that had just turned green. “...were you the one who told him?”

“What?” she furrows her brows. “Told who what?”

You turn to glare at her, “did you tell Yoongi that I wrote for the SS?”

“What?” she narrows her eyes at you, agasp. “Why would I ever tell him that?”

“Then how did he figure out?” you continue to drill, voice rising by the second. “Why are you here outside of BigHit’s building? Why are you always so worried about what I do with SS?!”

“First of all, I don’t know how he found out. I didn’t even know he found out until you told me. Second, I’m here because our boss sent me to settle any lawsuits against defamation that your actions might instigate. Lastly, I’m worried because I’m worried for you, Y/N. I don’t care what you do with SS. I built it up from the ground up but your mental health is my priority,” she sighs in disbelief. “After all that I’ve done for you, do you really think I would do that to you?”

“I don’t know who to trust at this point, Solji,” your voice ascends into a shrill. “I don’t fucking know!”

“I’m disappointed in you, Y/N,” she shakes her head, backing away toward the building. “Take a break and reflect on yourself, because I’m the last one you should be accusing right now.”

“If it’s not you, then who the hell was it?!” your yells fall on deaf ears as her silhouette fades off into the distance and cold tears stream down your cheeks.

Your hands begin to fumble as they pull out your phone in a hurry. Dialing another familiar number, you start cursing under your breath.

[Dialing Xiao Lin]

“Pick up the phone, hurry up and pick up the fucking phone,” your mutters intermix with the chattering of your teeth.

“Hey girl, what’s—”

“—did you fucking tell Yoongi I wrote for the SS?”

“No…?” she pauses. “Why would I?’

“Look, I don’t know why you would. Maybe this gives you something to write for your own tabloid. Maybe you hate seeing me happy and wanted to ruin my relationship. I don’t fucking know, but you’re the only one who knows the true identity behind Ink Nemesis!”

“I have absolutely no reason to do any of that,” she firmly states, slowly but surely. “I promised you I wouldn’t tell anyone. Can you not trust a friend—”

“—you’re not my friend. We work for fucking tabloids, Lin! Our friendship and our secrecy is based off of a damn picture that just keeps coming back to haunt me.”

“Well, alright then,” a snort of offence travels through the line. “You’re being incredibly unstable. One second, you beg me not to release the picture. Me being the foolish person I am in having a friend like you, wager my job in order to protect your relationship. And now, the next second, you’re releasing the picture yourself.”

“That’s none of your business—”

“—it’s not because turns out we aren’t friends. All I wanted was to befriend someone and you seemed like—no, you were—someone I could trust. I don’t know what happened to her, but I would rather have no friends in this industry if it means having friends like you.”

“Xiao Lin, don’t twist this into my fault—fuck!”

The phone falls helplessly to your sides. Cars zoom by, throwing a gust of wind into the air in every which way. Your already disheveled hair tousles mercifully. Your heart beats but remains still, untouched by the winter chill. Cars honk into the bustling streets, but your ears drown out the life of the outside world.

Affixed to your spot for seemingly perpetual hours, you begin to wonder who could slay the immortal being on BOT Street?

“...that’s Y/N.

“Isn’t that it?”

“It looks just like the picture.”

“I feel bad for them but I also kind of hate them. Must feel bad for being the last resort. I wonder why he picked her.”

A group of whom you could only presume to be fans had gathered outside the company, forming a line across the entrance to the sidewalk where a lavish black van parked. They whisper amongst themselves, discerning over the subject matter that receives nothing but disgust, as if the subject were a beast in itself.

“Oh my God! Look, they’re coming out!”

The entire swarm of girls turn in one swift, synchronized motion before their screams were all that were heard within the proximity of a dozen blocks. Seven boys exit the entrance, face much more covered than this morning which seems like an eternity ago. One by one, you gradually catch your eyes hunting for one particular man…

...but when you finally find him, all air escapes your lungs and somehow you’ve forgotten how to breathe.

You want to hide. You’re ashamed. You’re pitiful. You’re everything that Yoongi did not fall for and you would do anything for him to immortalize that perfect image of you that he did come to love and know. He can’t see you like this in your lowest state.

Security guards begin ushering the encroaching crowd back into the already tightening circumference of a bubble as the boys make their way through the narrowed pathway. Cameras were flashing in every direction, questions were being yelled and unanswered into the air, and fans were crying out their woes to the sudden news of Yoongi’s supposed affair. Pulling the collars of your coat over the lower half of your face, you continue to observe from afar, careful to conceal your identity from further instigating trouble for the boys.

One by one, you watch as they board their ride. One by one, you let out a sigh of relief when they fail to recognize you amongst the crowd of swarming fans. Alas, it doesn’t take very long for you to notice the last member to board the van. You’ve gotten to know every habit of Yoongi’s over the course of your relationship to know that he has never been the type to stall. In fact, he’s never been the last one of the group in anything, especially in public; but when his eyes skim through the crowd and cross yours for a brief moment before returning to lock eyes with the woman he had caught, you—fully dressed, covered, and aloof in the corner—stand there stunned, a chill running down your back.

He recognizes you even in a mass of hundreds.

Even the most brief of hesitance incites confusion from the crowd, for some of them recall your presence and begin to turn toward the direction of his gaze.

“I forgot that she was here.”

“What is she still doing here?”

“Is that her? Are they still dating?”

Panic settles into your pumping veins as you try to conceal your identity even further when, suddenly, Yoongi curses loudly—a habit you’ve come to adore, but a habit he has made a conscious effort to keep hidden from the public.

With the order of a simple word, he manages to recapture the attention of the crowd.

“Suga! Did you hurt yourself?!”

“Please be careful!”

“I will protect you no matter what!”

“I love you more than anything!”

It would be ignorant of anyone to deny that he had every individual wrapped around his finger, including you, for silence ensued from the previously mass hysteria when he feigns a trip and a few stumbles toward the van, whirls around, and clears his throat.

“I’ll be alright, guys,” he raises his hand to rest the impending screams. “Just make sure to take care of yourself and love yourself first before you try and help others, okay?”

Maybe it’s just you and every other person in this crowd, but it’s almost as if he’s speaking to you.

Would it be foolish of you to think so? To hope so?

You had thought your breakup with Yoongi earlier in the morning would have been the last you would see of him. The chaos that ensued, your mental breakdown, Solji’s disappointment, and Xiao Lin’s scolding left you all alone. You thought Xiao Lin would be the least to abandon you. It doesn’t occur to you until this very moment, as he gazes at you with those doting, bittersweet eyes of his for the shortest of seconds before he speaks and boards the van, that you realize...

“I’ll miss you.”

...he’s the last one to abandon you.

i say semi because this isn’t my last announcement and it doesn’t explain the reasons as to why i’m “leaving.”

yes, as you’ve probably seen from all the messages scattered throughout my blog, i am indeed ink nemesis. i need a mental break to reflect on everything i’ve done. I’m sorry for disappointing you. i plan to take a break, a leave, whatever the future entails for it to be from here. the decision was cemented just a few days ago, but the thought was one that plagued me for many months on end.

due to the possibility of plagiarism while i’m gone or less active to remain vigilant over my works, i’ve taken down all of the fics i have on my masterlist. i apologize if there were any works you wanted to reread or works that you’ve been wanting to read but never got to. it truly bums me out that i have to be wary of plagiarists and ruin the fun for you guys.

as of this moment, i plan on taking a temporary semi-hiatus from this blog. i will still be here to answer messages, maybe drop a few random posts about my life, possibly even drop a few random fics (probably my usual crack/fluff drabbles) here and there, but i probably won’t be doing much other than responding to messages.

bygones of the sun will be completed, but i’m setting it aside for now until inspiration sparks some motivation in me. i want to write for me, for those who see me as a human being who happens to write for fun, and i want to find the love i once had for this niche of mine. if inspiration strikes me in the middle of my hiatus, then so be it! an update will be dropped sporadically if that were to happen, so what a nice bonus for those who decide to stay, eh?

i will, however, be completing my last series before my hiatus officially begins. the reasons for my departure will all be laid out there in full detail. so for those of you interested in that, see you then.

and for those who aren’t, thank you for staying up ‘til now. i hope to things to return to the way things were, even if it’s foolish for me to hope so. i will try once again to find the path that allows my ink to do all that is good.

signing out for one last time, xoxo ink nemesis.

[Posted 11:35 AM]

Papers flipping under the mercy of its filer, journalists scribbling viciously against its pitiful victims that is paper, and printers reviving with a huff only to be used to its death once again, cabinets squeaking open in pain, whispers in the breakroom now gossiping over your recent dismissal at work, and the mocking tick of the clock that takes you back to a time you had thought would have been your worst case scenario—if only the past you could have seen the substantially worse circumstances you have to face now.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Your writing blog, the one world of solace you thought could eternally replace reality, has somehow become the very source of sorrow and self-hate in the recent months. You thought the world would end if you were to disconnect from your one passion in life; and yet, here you are: alive, breathing, seeing, hearing, and lifted from the burden of a mere site, all from the simple click of a button.

There it is. The truth is out there in the world for everyone to see. The identity of Ink Nemesis has been unveiled and you could no longer hide behind the mask of a pen name. To ruin your reputation and destroy the blog you had so tirelessly worked hours on end to build was the last action you wanted to take; but if this could somewhat atone for the troubles you’ve brought upon your loved ones, then it was a necessary one.

Heaving a loud sigh, you lay your head back into your chair, eyes staring straight up at the mundane gray ceiling lined by cold white lights and feet swiping across the floor to swivel you in an endless cycle around and around the comforts of your soon-to-be empty cubicle.

The SS is discontinued and your own writing blog is down. Now, truly and surely, it’s just you.

And for now?

That’s enough.

Boxes in hand filled with piles of scribbled paper, stacks of pens emptied of ink, and countess drafts of works that would never see the light of day, you hustle to the elevator and out the door of a company you had grown to love yet hate in the past years. You paid no attention to the whispers and glares of your colleagues. You were used to that at this point.

After severing the trust of the only person who could truly understand you in this universe, who could hurt you worse than yourself?

Perhaps it’s the reality of being fired that’s finally settling in, but the winter chill hits you harsher than it ever has before. Your hair momentarily shrouds your view of the bustling streets as the wind pays you a brief albeit impactful visit. As your locks return to settle into place, a freezing droplet of water drips onto the tip of your nose as if to beckon for your gaze upward.

Tilting your head back and craning your neck for a full, uncloaked display of the sky’s vast expanses, the universe’s gray puffs echo your latest sentiment.

Ah, so even the sky can hear your cries of pain?

One drip, two drip. The sky cries along with you.

Three drip, four drip. You can’t even decipher between its cold tears and the warmth of your own.

The drizzling quickens its pace into an endless stream of droplets that rain upon you like a shower head cleansing you of dirt. Your shoes fill with water and your skin shivers in the waves of an ocean that never ceases to end.

Updates. Hatred. Expectations. Obligations. Work. Yoongi. Love. Friends. Solji. Xiao Lin. Yourself.

Drip by drip, a burdensome weight melts from your shoulder and flows into the drains of the city sewer; because when you finally return home, toss your purse onto your bed, and glimpse into the mirror, you meet a pleasant surprise of a friend whom you had falsely presumed to have long bidden farewell to.

With a wet collared white shirt stuck to reveal the flesh of your skin, hair dripping in the wake of the sky’s calling, and mascara running down your flushed cheeks, you smile because at long last...

you are finally clean.

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ardent-musings · 4 years ago

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The Girl Who Vanished (Part 1)

Chapter 8: “Take Them, Blondie”

Getting thrown into a wall by a teacher might've been the most beneficial beating Ana had ever received, because the twins never bothered her once. She was surprised; she figured they would have gone harder on her since her guard was down. But anytime the twins had ever given her a speck of attention, all they did was give her a cheeky wink and point to their wrists, signifying that she was on borrowed time. She'd take what she was given.

With the weight lifted off her shoulder she was able to focus on things that she had been neglecting. She had been spending more time with Professor Sprout in the greenhouses and even had seen Professor Snape about a few of the spells she read about in the book she borrowed. Of course Alex and Calista weren't going to know about the latter; they would have given her a hard time about being so invested in the book. Snape wasn't the most cheery person to talk about, but even Ana had to admit that the man knew what he was doing when it came to defense against the dark arts.

But one of the biggest events that Ana was able to focus on was the Slytherin vs. Ravenclaw match that Lucian had ben hounding her for days on. The last game Ravenclaw played resulted in the loss of one of their players, the boy that Ana say in the hospital. She got released far before the injured boy did, and from what she could see of his damage, he wasn't going to be leaving the infirmary anytime soon. Because of that, the stand in for their keeper was rumored to be pretty terrible on the broom.

"I've seen this kid before!" Lucian hollered in excitement as he scrapped at the bacon and eggs on his plate. "First year, he could hardly stay on his broom and now he's the alternate? We've got this game in the bag. And when we win, we'll be in the finals!"

The boy took a big gulp of his pumpkin juice looking awfully proud of himself. But none of the girls were convinced. It wasn't like him to be bragging about winning a match, especially before the match even begun.

"Lucian, you need to cool it or else your big head is going to cost you the game," Alex laughed at him. Calista and Ana exchanged similar looks, meanwhile Lucian glared at his sister.

"Look, I'm just excited," he justified, his excitement dwindling to zero so he began to take it out on his food. His knife was nearly cracking the plate in half as he was attacking his breakfast with a sudden burst of irritation. "You guys would be too if you knew you were about to win a game."

Alex and Calista huffed loudly at the boy, which didn't make his expression falter. If anything he looked more upset. Ana remained quiet though; whatever high Lucian was on was bound to end one way or another.

"Just, don't try to jinx it," Calista brought to his attention while she took a spoonful of her extremely sugary cereal. "We want you to be excited, but not conceited. Sure, the Ravenclaw player may not be good, but you can't guarantee a win."

Lucian's downtrodden look only got worse as he got up from his seat, leaving his meal half eaten. With a sad glance at his friends, he left them alone without another word, stomping loudly out the Great Hall. Ana, Alex, and Calista all looked at each other guiltily. Ana hated seeing the usually upbeat and cheery boy look so dejected.

"Guys, I'm gonna go talk to him," Alex said as she grabbed her waffle in her bare hands and began to stand from her seat. "I don't want him going into the game upset."

Both the girls agreed, knowing that Alex would probably be the best person to talk him down from his high horse. That or she'd make it worse by instigating him even more. Either option seemed possible at the moment. All Ana knew was that she hated seeing Lucian so upset; what they said was honest but she understood why he took it to heart. "Want us to come with you?"

The girl shook her head, "No. I can handle this. Make sure you save me a seat though!"

And with that, the younger Bole sprinted out of the room. Then there were two.

Calista began twirling at her twists; she had taken out her extensions to give her hair a break and Ana found Calista's new look so fun.

"Do you think I was too harsh?" she asked Ana with a saddened look.

"What do you think, Kane?" Aeron said as he slid next to Ana. He had the most incredible ability to pop into their business whenever he wanted. She couldn't help but shift a few inches to the side in order to put distance between her and the boy. "You saw his face, of course you were too harsh on him."

Ana hated to admit it, but Aeron was right. Anyone could see that their reaction bothered the boy and it pained her that he was off somewhere pouting in the castle. "Cal, unfortunately, he's right."

He looked at her disapprovingly, "Unfortunately?"

She gave him a half smile, hoping he would look over her comment, it was habit for her to be a bit snarky with him. He had been rude for the longest time, so if he took her reply as rude, she wouldn't lose any sleep over it. "We've got to make it up to him somehow."

"Like what?"

"Well no matter what you birds choose, you guys better hope Slytherin wins the game. Or else he'll be in an even worse mood." Aeron warned them as he slid away from the girls and bounded out of the Great Hall looking as stern as ever.

Ana and Calista's faces reflected one another; they were concerned. And their only saving grace was in Alex's hands. The incoming sound of owls hooting filled the room, distracting them from their current problem. Packages were falling, nearly hitting some kids in the head, but thankfully the post that came for Ana was just a tiny envelope. She took a bite out of her cinnamon roll and tore open the letter. Her favorite little guy had sent her a letter.

Dear Ana,

I can't wait for when your holiday break starts! The manor has been so boring without you. And quiet. I miss hearing you bump into things and then yelling at them for hurting you. Dobby says "hi" by the way. He wanted me to tell you that. I miss you a lot. Halloween wasn't the same without you baking brownies with Mum. She tried, but she didn't put little sprinkles on them like you do. Either way, have fun the rest of this term!

- Draco :)

Ana glowed as she read the letter from Draco. She was missing her little brother terribly. He was a clingy pain in her side, but he was her best friend. The manor was dull and quiet, but he was always the silver lining. There was life because of him. And it had been months since she had seen him last. She wondered if he got any taller, of if he was still a little ball of energy and eye rolls.

"What's got you so happy all of a sudden?" Calista asked, offering her a half smile; she felt too upset to give Ana anything peppier.

"It's just Draco," Ana sighed happily while she held the card up to her chest, as if that would bring her any closer to her brother who was cooped up in the manor. It didn't, but it felt right to do in Ana's mind.

Calista simply nodded at her friend, as she went about poking her cereal. Neither of them were super hungry anymore. The game was going to start soon.

Ana and Calista were standing outside the pitch waiting for Alex to return from speaking to Lucian. It had been radio silent from Alex's end and the two of them were beginning to worry. Both of the girls were shaking uncontrollably, not only because it was freezing, but because their nerves were getting to them.

"And what are you two snakes doing out here?" A familiar voice shouted from behind the girls. They turned around to see Fred and George giving them identical smirks. It was almost scary how perfect the twins mimicked one another. They were all snuggled in their matching monogrammed knit sweaters, their long Gryffindor scarves, and fluffy mittens. Ana momentarily wished she had one of those sweaters as another blast of cold ran through her. Her winter robes were stylish due to the Malfoy need to be in only the finest looking clothes, but they were terrible at keeping out the wind and the snow.

"We're waiting for our third snake," Ana replied with a challenging smirk. "Why aren't you two cubs in the stands yet?"

Calista was snickering behind Ana, as she watched one of the twins and Ana stare each other down. She looked over at the other twin who appeared to be entertained just by observing Ana and his older brother.

"Just wanted to root on the Slytherin team as they came from the changing room," Fred joked with a twinkle in his eye. "Ya know, being a good fellow Quidditch player. It's in the name of sportsmanship."

Ana rolled her eyes at his ridiculousness and she took a step closer to the red heads. Fred always had something to say. "And what exactly do you mean when you say you're going to 'root them on'?"

"They mean absolutely nothing, right boys?" Charlie Weasley turned from around a corner to grab at the shoulders of his younger brothers. Despite him being a seventh year, their older brother was not much taller than the twins, but he was far broader and stronger than they were. Ana assumed that if he went against the Hogwarts Express, the train would tip over on its side before the boy even noticed he'd been hit.

"What possibly-"

"-do you mean?" George finished his brother's sentence.

Calista chuckled at the two twins folding under their older brother's mere presence, and by Charlie's white knuckles, he was probably putting the boys in a little bit of pain. They never backed down from anything, but Charlie seemed to hold more power than the quiet boy let on.

"Oh, it's alright," Ana chuckled, as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She was freezing and the game didn't even start yet, but she was not going to turn down the opportunity to give the twins a hard time. And it seemed like Charlie was game, "I can handle these boys."

Charlie looked down at the tiny blonde girl who was shaking like a leaf and couldn't help but laugh softly. But when her eyes laser focused on him, he could tell that she was dead serious. "You know what, kid. I believe you."

Ana smirked at the boy's admission and the twins groaned in frustration.

From around the corner, Alex finally met the group but she was heaving so hard that Ana thought the girl would cough up a lung. She began blubbering, trying to talk through her labored breaths, but nothing coherent was coming out.

"I'm going to take her to the stands," Calista told Ana as she wrapped her hand around Alex's arm, dragging the gasping girl away from the Weasleys.

When she turned back, the boy's faces were redder than they usually were and she wondered if it was from the cold or their embarrassment. Charlie was putting them in their place without even having to try that hard.

"Let's get to the stands. Yeah, boys?" Charlie began squeezing their shoulders which made the boys twist in even more pain. All the while Charlie was grinning charmingly at the young girl. The twins squatted in order to escape their brother's vice grip which made Ana chuckle.

"Okay, fine. Merlin, Charlie you didn't have to grab our shoulders like a damn snitch!" Fred hollered at his brother while George laughed at them. George conceded and began to follow his older brother who had begun walking closer to the pitch and away from Ana.

"Ya coming, Freddie boy?" Charlie nagged, quirking an eyebrow which had a scar that ran through it. Ana wondered if he got the scar from being tough and wild like the boys or clumsy like her.

"I'll be right there," Fred replied, not looking as smug as he did before. The older Weasley and his twin turned and left the two of them alone. He brought his full attention back to Ana who was cradling herself in her own arms, trying to preserve as much heat as possible. The boy's face quickly turned serious as he peered down at her, "How are you feeling?"

Ana's eyes widened at the quick change in tone.

"I'm cold," she hoped that would be a good enough answer.

"No," he took in a deep breath. "You know what I mean, Malfoy."

Fred was not joking anymore. He was waiting patiently for her answer with a gentle curiosity. It wasn't off putting, she just wasn't sure why he was so concerned.

"How much of that night did you see?" Ana mumbled quietly, taking a few glances to make sure no one was watching them.

His eyes suddenly turned from a warm honey shade to almost looking black, "I saw enough to know that your head and shoulders are probably killing you, right about now."

She looked down at the ground. The idea of him seeing her in such a situation didn't sit well with her. Being roughed up was not new to her, but Ana found herself hating the sorry looks everyone gave her when she injured or hurt at school. She wasn't used to receiving pity, "Well, I feel perfectly fine."

Fred scoffed at the shivering girl, "Yeah, okay. You feel perfectly fine? Even after what Trelawney said to you?"

The boy's laugh wasn't meant to mock her. But he knew that any person who was slammed into a wall and screamed at by a nearly demonic teacher would not be feeling the best. She may be hard to read, but she wasn't impossible.

But the more Fred pushed her, Ana's heart sank further and further, "Oh, fantastic. You heard that, too." She chuckled dryly as her teeth started to chatter a bit as she hopped up and down.

"Yeah, I heard that," Fred confirmed. "But I'm sure she was just put in a trance or something. Charlie has said that she often blurts out random stuff all the time."

She offered him a weak smile, but Fred could tell that she was unnerved by the whole thing. He also couldn't stand that she looked like she was about to freeze on the spot, so he ripped off his mittens and offered them to the girl.

Before she could hide it behind her trembling hands, Ana's face broke out in a tiny smile. If Fred wasn't looking so hard he would have definitely missed it. But he saw it. Clear as day.

"Take them, blondie," he ordered, as he waved them in front of her, like a steak to a dog. "C'mon snake, take the mittens"

"Alright! Alright, fine," Ana blurted out as she took the offering and covered her frigid hands.

Fred nodded approvingly, "See? There's no need to be difficult."

"Oh, says the most difficult person I know." Ana scoffed.

"You know you could just say thank you and be on your way." The boy crossed his arms over his chest as he waited for the girl to come back at him with some snide comment like the smart aleck she was.

"I could," she giggled as she rubbed her newly clothed hands together.

Fred turned from the girl with a smirk as he followed the direction his brothers went. Godric, she was so stubborn, but it wasn't something that he entirely hated.

"Fred!" She called after the redhead.

He whipped his head back so fast at the sound of her voice, his body was half out the door.

"Thank you," Ana dipped her head as she waltzed past the boy and began heading where Calista and Alex went. Fred smiled as he watched Ana walk away from him; his hands were cold, but he couldn't care less.

"You're welcome, Bibi," he whispered when she was out of his sight.

"LUCIAN! LUCIAN! LUCIAN!" The three girls were all sitting in the stands cheering on their favorite beater, who kept his focus on the game. That was what he was supposed to do, but it hurt the girls to know that he wouldn't even look at them.

"I ran around the whole bloody castle!" Alex wailed over the sound of the heavy winds, "A whole hour, I ran trying to find him! He just disappeared."

The three girls were cuddling together underneath a blanket Alex brought to the game, which Ana was incredibly grateful for. Why Alex didn't think about bringing one was beyond her. Ana thought it was cold before when she was standing outside the pitch, but being outside and against the winds was a whole other story. The rain mixed with the frosty winds made her hair turn into little icicles; if she were to bend her locks she'd predict they'd chip off.

"Flint is racing towards the Ravenclaw goal and," Lee paused as the play was going on before him. "And Slytherin makes the point! That brings the score to 110 to 80."

Despite Lucian being in a horrible mood, he was zooming across the stadium like nothing ever happened. Ana hoped that his good performance wasn't because of his anger, because she didn't want to see him upset like that again.

Every twist and dip Lucian made on his broom made Alex holler in support. At one point Lucian did look over, and his scowl softened a bit. Ana tried her hardest to focus, but the heavy snow and winds made her want to dip her head in the blanket and burrow away. When she looked up she saw Fred and George from across the pitch. The two boys waved their hands tauntingly, showcasing how one of them was without their mittens. Ana's face heated up and she tore her focus away from them and back to the game.

After a grueling three hours in the snow and the wind, Slytherin defeated the Ravenclaw team 260 to 130, securing their place in the finals. Even though Slytherin won, the boy who stood in for the injured keeper proved himself to be a pretty good player. It was amazing how well he stayed on his broom even with the harsh weather. And because of that, before the teams got off the pitch, Lucian gave the boy a handshake, giving him the respect he deserved.

#fred weasley #fred weasley smut #fred weasley fanfic #fred weasley x oc #bibiana malfoy #the girl who vanished #tgwv #tgwv 1-8 #enemies to friends to lovers

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your-world-with-nct · 5 years ago

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𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫 — 𝐥𝐦𝐤

➵ pairing: mark x female reader

➵ genre: angst, suggestive, underground rapper au

➵ warnings: cursing, alcohol consumption, unhealthy relationship themes

➵ word count: 6.1k

➵ summary: you didn’t know what you and Mark were; you weren’t enemies nor friends, you weren’t exes nor lovers. but what you did know was that you still loved Mark, and you never stopped loving him.

➵ a/n: happy belated birthday mark !! this is a part two to this blurb, and is inspired by the lyrics to billie eilish’s ‘party favor’. this is my first full fic, so i hope you all enjoy it and feel free to leave some feedback too!

August 2 - the significance of the date was written in the scars of your heart, forever known as, one: Mark’s birthday, and, two: what would’ve been yours and Mark’s two year anniversary. Ahh, Mark Lee.

The boy that became all of your firsts, kisses and the like; the boy that harnessed the musical talent of a professional or a prodigy, despite his small, underground career; the boy that was just a shy bean beneath his tough, street-wise exterior; the boy that knew your darkest secrets and told you his; the boy that promised you happiness till the end. But he was also that same boy that took advantage of you and lied to you; the boy who stole your heart, and never gave it back; the boy who was better at lyrics than love. He was such a mystery to you, like a code you couldn’t quite seem to decipher.

Even after the abrupt ending of your relationship, Mark was always there, with you, as if nothing had happened between you two. From the evenings where he was out cold after a long night at the bar, calling you to pick him up, to the early hours of the morning where he needed some feedback for his newly produced tracks, he somehow managed to keep you in his life, relying on him the way you relied on oxygen. Mark had you wrapped around his little finger - you would do anything just to get close to him again - and you both knew it.

There was one slight issue, though, which was the fact that you didn’t exactly know what you two were to each other. Yes, there may have been some occasions where Mark was drunk out of his mind, and you would both end up naked in his bed the next morning, like lovers.

But there were also times where he would ignore you for weeks on end, the only updates you received from him were Instagram posts with his rapper friends, paired with cryptic captions that were clearly targeting you, like exes.

However, no matter what Mark did, you would always come crawling back to him and his addictive love, because you were trapped in his trance, and didn’t want to be released from it either.

Once again, you were stuck in that limbo of Mark not acknowledging your existence for another month - or so you thought.

As you mindlessly shoved spoonfuls of Cheerios (your failed attempt at a healthy breakfast) into your mouth, you stared at the cursed date on your lockscreen, when, all of a sudden, your phone began ringing, the default tone echoing throughout your empty apartment. The name that flashed on the screen touched a nerve deep within you, as if your senses had been awakened; one of those senses being your infatuation with Mark, which was rekindling and creating sparks in your stomach as you hesitantly answered the call and put it on speakerphone.

“H-hello?” You hated the way your throat closed up and your voice dwindled into nothing whenever you spoke to him after eternities of no contact whatsoever.

“Oh, hey, Y/N! How’ve you been? I’ve not spoken to you in, like, what, I don’t know, it’s been, like, ages now, hasn’t it?” Mark leaped right into the conversation, starting it off strangely welcoming, too comfortable for your liking. You nodded slightly in response to his question, before quickly realising that he couldn’t see you right now.

“Uhh, yeah, it’s definitely been a while now,” you let out a timid squeak, which was originally meant to be a polite laugh, except the mere thought of Mark clouded your thoughts and refrained you from thinking straight, or acting normal.

Trying to distract yourself from your awkwardness, you absentmindedly started playing with your spoon, stirring it in the bowl- which now only contained some milk and tiny specks of Cheerios - while listening intently to the boy’s next words.

“So, you know how it’s my birthday today, right?” he paused to let you answer, to which you hummed a small ‘happy birthday’ in response, “Ahh, thanks, well, if you’re free tonight, I managed to privately this really cool nightclub from 9pm onwards and I was wondering if you wanted to join us?”

You’d be lying if you said that Mark’s invitation didn’t cause you to almost have a heart attack, so it took you awhile to process the information he had just thrown at you and come up with a decent reply, “Okay, first, of course I can come, I wouldn’t miss it for the world! Who do you think I am - it’s summer, I have no friends, and I think I’ve watched ‘Love, Simon’ one too many times this summer,” you joked.

Before you could continue, the Canadian boy’s bubbly giggles cut you off, as he sighed, saying, “Wow, you really haven’t changed that habit, I see.” The steady beat of your heart suddenly accelerated, the fact that your ex remembered your only hobby, an unusual one at that, which he found out about almost two years ago, sent shockwaves through your entire body.

“Mhm, yeah, that movie never gets old,” you joined in with his laughter, then carried on with what you were going to say once you heard the contagious chuckles quieten, “Also, where’s the nightclub? And who do you mean by ‘us’? I’m just curious, you know?”

You tried your best to not sound intimidated by the potential answers to your questions, but, with your knowledge of who Mark liked to surround himself with now, you couldn’t help but feel out of place around them.

“The nightclub is called ‘Sun and Moon’, it’s owned by one of my older friends, Taeil, and, it’s near the, uhhh, I think it’s close to that one shopping centre? But I can send you directions later, even if you can’t find it, you won’t miss it, it’s covered in neon lights and it’s massive! And, did I mention that Taeil hyung makes the best cocktails? I can’t wait for tonight!”

The boy seemed ultimately fascinated with the place from the way he spoke about it, and your lips curved into a small smile at his excitement. ‘Damn it,’ you thought to yourself, ‘why is he so cute? About things like this? Ughhh, I love him.’

Mark’s endless chatter continued while you pondered over how adorable he probably looked right now, “And, as for who’s coming, it’s only a small group of friends - the Dream boys, my best mate Yukhei and his Chinese buddies from uni, oh, and Chaeyoung and her non-celeb friends are coming too!”

The first few guests he listed were absolutely fine - Yukhei was your best friend, also a mutual friend of yours, and was the one that introduced you to Mark; his friends were strange, but bearable though; while the Dream boys were a group of young artists Mark had the opportunity to join, who were soon going to debut as rappers with him - however, your brows furrowed at the unfamiliar name, confusion written all over your face.

You weren’t jealous, no, just… curious as to who exactly this ‘Chaeyoung’ was, “Oh! Okay, that’s great! But, uhhh, who’s Chaeyoung? I’ve never heard that name before?” The boy let out a dreamy sigh, as if he was enchanted by the mere thought of this person, “Son Chaeyoung is a senior from our record label, better known as Beastie Babe, that’s her stage name.”

Despite his explanation, you were still baffled since you had no idea who she was. The weird, subconscious ‘huh?’ you let out told Mark that you still didn’t understand, so he elaborated on the matter, “I shit you not, she is the most talented, influential rapper of our generation! Her debut single ‘BDZ’ literally dominated both national and Western music charts and her recent collaboration with Cardi B helped skyrocket her to fame, and I’m under the same company as her? Like, I still can’t believe that that’s what we have the potential to become. She’s just so amazing-”

A greedy feeling engulfed your chest and your heart began thumping uncontrollably as Mark’s words of admiration filled your ears. Somehow, out of anger or whatnot, you had managed to throw your spoon across the kitchen, grunting quietly as he failed to stop rubbing in your face the fact that he was talking to other girls now.

“-the moment I walked into her recording studio instead of the Dreamies’ was the best moment of my entire life! We’ve actually been spending a lot of time with each other since then, and, you know what, Y/N? I used to have a huge fanboy crush on her but, uhhh, now that I actually know her, I think that I-I like her? Do you think I should say something tonight? Drunk Mark is definitely better with the ladies than Sober Mark,” he joked, stopping right after he heard silence on the other end of the phone.

You almost screamed at his last statement - “Drunk Mark is definitely better with the ladies than Sober Mark” - well, of fucking course he would say that, that’s exactly how he ended up asking you out on his birthday two years ago, while he was drunk.

‘How insensitive can that shitbag be! That’s our story, not yours and Chaeyoung’s!’ you internally yelled at him, as you refrained from hanging up without another word. Luckily, your self-control got the better of you and you said through gritted teeth, “Haha, defo, I’ll see you tonight then, Mark, good luck with that.”

And with that, you slammed your finger on the red button, aggressively hurling your phone at the couch and cursing Mark under your breath. “Just fuck around with my feelings then, why don’t you? While you’re at it, you may as well shove your successful love life into my face and ruin the smallest fragments of our relationship that we have left,” you mumbled, trudging over to your sofa to collect your phone.

Once you unlocked it, you went straight to Youtube, searching the name ‘Beastie Babe’ and playing her discography as you washed your limited amount of dishes. It crushed your already low self-esteem as you listened to the girl’s unique music, and you realised why Mark looked up to her so much and wanted to date her, she was so much better than you, more gorgeous, more gifted, she was the ultimate upgrade from you.

Those thoughts resurfaced once again as you stood in front of your full body mirror hours later, Chaeyoung’s catchy songs playing in the background, as you couldn’t help but binge all of her music videos to try and gage the chance you had against her when it came to Mark. Turns out you had zero chance.

That girl was literally world-famous, her albums were sold out everywhere, and she had designer brands chasing after her, desperate for celebrity endorsement. Her self-produced music was mesmerising, something you had never heard of before, and her rapping was rhythmic and fluid, while her vocals were beautifully melodic.

Not to mention, Chaeyoung was stunning - like her stage name suggested, she did have the facial structure of a ‘baby beast’ as her fans say, and her hair looked gorgeous no matter what style it was in, her chiseled cheekbones were always the main point of her look, along with her infamous, enticing caramel eyes.

Then, there was you. A college dropout who was surviving solely off of your parents’ riches until they could find a job for you in their expanding business, you were the ‘rich kid’ that everybody shamed.

You didn’t have anything like music in your blood, and you weren’t particularly talented at anything, unless pessimism was considered a talent. And you definitely weren’t gorgeous, you weren’t anything close to it, which was justified as you scrutinised your outfit in the mirror, that made you look even worse than usual.

Initially, what you had chosen for yourself and laid out on your bed looked ideal, the black and white checkered skirt complemented the tight, white off-the-shoulder top and the black, knee-length high heeled boots, while the baby pink leather jacket tied the whole thing together, adding a splash of colour to it.

Now that it was on you, you appeared like you were trying way too hard - your exaggerated makeup looked disgustingly dark, the top showed off all of your curves and rolls, the skirt was a little too short for your liking and portrayed a slutty image that you weren’t going for, and the boots were chunky and big, and didn’t seem to match the rest of the outfit as well as it did prior to when you put it on.

You looked horrendous and you knew it, but this was the only thing in your closet that was even close to what those other girls would be wearing, the only thing that made you at least look like you could fit in with them.

Before you could change anything about it, you glanced at the alarm clock perched on your bedside table, showing exactly ‘21:00’, which you decided was the perfect time to leave.

Usually, with events, you would either plan way ahead of time, and arrive punctual and prepared, or you’d turn up almost an hour late, with a half-assed outfit and an empty stomach.

This time, however, you didn’t know where you were headed, so you should’ve left early, but you got too paranoid, thinking up random instances where you would end up getting there before anyone else was, which would make you look like you were trying harder than ever to get Mark’s attention.

The car ride to Sun and Moon was a daunting one - not only because you were twisting and turning down unfamiliar roads, relying solely on Google Maps, but, because you were jittery with nerves and anxiety.

Just thinking of walking all alone into the club to see a clique of popular musicians and their wealthy friends made you shiver in your seat, and the fact that you were extremely anti-social and very much intimidated by most of the party’s attendees made it even worse.

Lights of almost every colour of the spectrum struck you as you parked your car by Sun and Moon, which was one of the most appealing and exciting clubs you had ever seen, not that you had been to many anyways. You braced yourself as you entered the place, breathing quickly and heavily, before pushing the door open to the booming, electrifying atmosphere.

You were immediately drawn to Mark’s alluring figure on the dance floor, jokingly grinding against one of his group members, Donghyuck, and you assumed that the both of them had some pre-party drinks already.

Mark’s black, patterned dress-shirt flowed down his upper body, the loose fabric of it accentuating the shape of his chest.

His wrists and neck were adorned in expensive brands of jewellery, his fingers laden with various silver rings, the golden glints of his watch twinkling under the bright, fluorescent lights - and his ebony locks were styled to exaggerate his forehead.

The matching black skinny jeans he wore made his legs look heavenly, it made it so hard for you to look away from him.

You shook your head, trying to rid yourself of the amorous thoughts flooding your mind, directing your eyes away from the attractive birthday boy to the rest of the room.

It seemed as if you were the last one to turn up, despite your worries, since you spotted Yukhei and his friends attacking the bar, and who you managed to identify as Chaeyoung and her friends surrounding and blatantly flirting with the Dreamies.

She was even more breathtaking in person - her platinum blonde bob framed her effortless makeup, which consisted of fuschia lips, long, luscious lashes, shimmery eyeshadow, and sparkling highlight, and her striking outfit, a lime green and black patterned tube top and matching bootleg pants, made her look magnificent.

If she wasn’t your ex-boyfriend’s current crush, she would’ve been yours, because, damn, she was hot.

You were broken from your daze when one of Yukhei’s best friends, Hendery, hollered your name and gestured for you to join them, after he noticed you standing blank and confused by the entrance of the club.

“Yoooo, Y/N!! It’s been ages since I last saw you and you look great, boo! Come here, you gorgeous little bitch,” Yukhei’s obnoxiously deafening voice reached you from the opposite side of the room, calling for you even though Hendery had already grasped your attention in the first place, causing you to shyly scurry towards his friend group, the heavy stares of almost everyone in the room following you.

As you made your way over to them, your best friend engulfed you into a bone-crushing hug, his long limbs entangling themselves around you, not letting you get a word in first. When he finally pulled away, it was then that you caught a full look at him.

“Thanks, Yukhei, I really wasn’t sure about this but I’m glad you like it. Also, you look absolutely amazing!! Like, it’s only been 3 months but I feel like you’ve gotten even taller,” you exclaimed, proceeding to compliment your friend’s stylish outfit.

The plain black-on-black aesthetic he was going for may have seemed boring, but he pulled it off so well - the tight-fitted, black long sleeve was paired with black leather pants and decorative chains hanging from his belt loops, and his newly dyed navy blue hair was slicked back to reveal his forehead.

He let out a squeaky laugh, one that only you managed to get from him, as he rested his arm on your head, commenting, “Yeah, I think I actually have gotten taller.” You rolled your eyes at his teasing, before interacting with Yukhei’s friends, who were a lot more welcoming than you expected.

You had only ever spoke to Hendery before, but Xiaojun, Yangyang, and Sicheng were all polite to you, contrary to their appearance and their reputation.

Yes, Yukhei and his mates were the typical rich playboys that you had previously assumed only existed in movies, with the designer loafers and belts they were wearing today.

But, they were just playful dumbasses who looked appealing to their classmates, and, to be honest, you enjoyed hanging out with them during the party, instead of lurking around the club, solitary and sombre, pining after Mark.

Oh yeah, Mark - the boys had been distracting you so well that you had forgotten about your ex that stood just four feet away from you, freestyle rapping with Jaemin and Jeno.

Surprisingly, you didn’t really mind your lack of interaction with him throughout the night. It had only been two hours and you thought that you would be so desperate to just talk to him and fix things with him, but, in reality, you were having a blast with Yukhei’s friends, listening to their uni gossip and discussing your favourite music at the moment, they made you feel comfortable and welcome, something that Mark and his friends always failed to do with you.

As you decided to have yet another cocktail, you approached the bartender, but, before you could even open your mouth, you felt a tap on your shoulder.

Although you hadn’t even seen the person, you knew exactly who it was, by the calloused fingers, from countless plucking of guitar strings, that grazed your skin, and the embarrassed clearing of his throat to gain your attention, you just sensed that Mark was stood right behind you.

Tentatively, you turned around to face the boy you dreaded to see, your cheeks flaming with rouge as he scratched his nape and locked eye contact with you. Your pulse quickened and you felt your stomach churning in your stomach, maybe it was just the drinks, or maybe it was his mere presence that excited and aroused you.

The scent of alcohol lingered on his body, and you could tell that it had already took a toll on him, by the wild twinkle in his eyes and the unsteadiness in his voice.

Despite that, Mark looked absolutely ineffable at that exact moment, the beads of sweat on his forehead sparkled underneath the colourful lights, and made him look ethereal and idyllic.

You panicked, creating multiple, unrealistic reasons as to why Mark wanted to talk to you right now, so the first thing your disoriented, intoxicated mind barfed up for you to say was, “Sincerely, happy birthday!”

The god-like creation that stood before you sniggered at your outburst, “Thanks, and thanks for coming too! I just wanted to ask if you could hold my watch for a bit?”

You almost choked at the simple request he had given you, clearly, he had other priorities, ones that didn’t include facing you and everything that had occured between you two since you had last spoken, excluding this morning, “Oh, oh yeah, uhhh, yeah, sure? How come?”

“Ahhh, Dahyun just challenged Jisung to a dance-off and he almost flipped in excitement, he dragged me and the rest of the Dreamies with him to go against Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu, and it’s already pretty hardcore, just look.”

Mark vaguely gestured to the dance floor, where Jeno was b-boying and Chenle was screeching to hype him up (even though the younger of the two was sober, he was still as energetic as ever) while Tzuyu was aggressively booing him and Chaeyoung was comically cracking her knuckles in preparation, “this is a Rolex Submariner and I do not wanna ruin it ‘cause of a dance-off, y’know?”

You laughed along with him, admiring the way he delicately removed the watch from his wrist, “Of course, I’ll keep it with me while you, uhhh, do that. By the way, where’d you get this? It looks pretty good quality.”

He tossed a glance at Yukhei, then back at you, “Xuxi got me this, he gave it to me last night so that I could wear it today! Did you think I bought it? I could never afford this on my own, ha!”

His drunken giggles were the only thing you heard and you couldn’t help but sigh in disappointment due to Mark’s casual manner around you.

You never thought that it would cross your mind, but you were beginning to wonder if he was completely and utterly over you this time.

“I’ll be back soon, just give it to me once we’re done,” he added, before making his way back to the dance floor where Renjun was doing some eccentric moves you had never seen before.

Even from afar, Yukhei noticed the dim aura that surrounded you, so he approached you, while you were ordering your new drink.

“What was that about? What did he say to you?” he questioned you, handing you the shot glass that the bartender had just placed on the surface. Accepting it, you took a swift swig of the drink, letting the liquid ease down your throat and settle in your stomach before answering, “He literally just wanted me to hold his watch, that’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Yup, and I told him ‘happy birthday’, but, besides from that he just kinda, you know, avoided everything that I wanted to talk about, and ran away to them,” you nodded your head towards Mark, who was now freestyling against Chaeyoung, a knowing smirk plastered on his face.

Your best friend wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you close to his chest in a comforting way, to which you plainly let him do so, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Y/N, as much as I love Mark, he’s been such a dick to you this entire time. I wish he would’ve listened to me when I told him to choose to either stop stringing you on or to pick up where you two left off.

“But, instead, he’s broken your heart time and time again, making you think that he still wants you, and needs you, when, in reality, Chaeyoung had him under her control the moment he met her, which was literally two weeks after you broke up, by the way. I wish that you’d look past that image Mark had built of himself in your head and heart, and see the real him.”

It was shocking to hear these wise words come from your currently drunk friend, as those weren’t the types of things he would usually say when he was clear-headed.

You wiggled out of his endearing embrace, audibly exhaling in frustration as your head was invaded with sudden realisations and epiphanies, “You’re right, surprisingly, I’ll try and talk to him later, maybe when I hand him his watch back. But, hopefully, this’ll be the last time I have to even look that boy in the eyes, I don’t think I can keep doing this any longer.”

The curves of Yukhei’s lips turned upwards into a proud smile, “That’s my girl! Now, how about you play this one drinking game that Sicheng found with us? Will that make you feel better?”

It did make you feel better, a lot better, and you were enjoying yourself so much that you had missed the fact that the impromptu dance battle had come to an end and its participants were carelessly swaying with one another, too exhausted to move their bodies properly.

You noticed that there were two specific people missing, however; it seemed that Mark and Chaeyoung had slipped out while you were playing with Yukhei, Sicheng, Hendery, Xiaojun, and Yangyang.

Only then did you recall that Mark’s exorbitant watch was still in the pocket of the pink jacket you had removed and left unattended on a chair. You excused yourself from the boys and ran to your jacket, retrieved the Rolex and proceeded to search for Mark to return it to him, and talk to him.

You had examined each and every bit of the club closely, yet Mark was nowhere to be seen, so you decided to explore the exterior, perhaps he needed to get something from his car, or something?

It was difficult to convince yourself that he hadn’t left to get some ‘alone time’ with Chaeyoung, which is what he had told his friends when he had done the same with you two years prior, but the idea of it kept recurring to you as you ventured out into the cold night.

The similarities of your current situation and the time you had run away from Mark’s underground performance a week after your breakup were disturbingly accurate - except this time you were running towards him, instead of away from him, you were stronger now and wanted to face him, not cower away from him.

He was making your confrontation pretty hard, though, because, at the moment, you couldn’t even find Mark, so you came to the conclusion of trying to call him. Multiple times. And, yet, he still didn’t answer, and you hadn’t advanced any further with it. You still didn’t give up, as you pressed his name in your phone again, and wandered down the street, glancing side to side every so often, just in case you had missed him.

“Hey, this is Mark, I’m busy at the moment but I’ll be back! Leave a message while you’re at it, I guess, haha,” Mark’s recorded voice echoed from the speakerphone yet again, you had heard it so many times that you had pretty much memorised his awkward little ramble. You sighed as the tone beeped for the sixth time in the past few minutes.

A disgruntled growl left you as you proceeded to search for the unreachable boy, your phone clutched in one hand while his watch was still in the other.

It was extremely tempting to just take it home with you and return it to him the following day - but if you were really going to permanently detach yourself from Mark like you promised yourself you would, you had to avoid anything and everything to do with him, or else you would give up and let yourself be pulled back into his trance.

After seeing the way he acted around Chaeyoung throughout the night, however, it wasn’t very likely that you’d come crawling back to him any time soon.

You pressed the contact name once again, holding your phone up to your ear hopefully, awaiting a response. Turning the corner as you neared your car, you laid eyes on a sight you wish you never had done, and you swore you almost dropped your mobile along with your jaw right there on the sidewalk.

There he was: pinned up against the graffitied wall of the narrow alleyway, arms coiled all over Chaeyoung’s waist, hips, and ass, lips locked with her swollen, red ones.

You couldn’t even gasp at the horrific scene, you were in another state of shock, and your entire body was quivering and recoiling in utter pain and heartbreak.

Tears pricked at your eyes the longer they lingered on the moaning mess that was Mark, but you couldn’t rip them away from him. “Shit, Chae, I think I love you,” he breathed out, as she left open-mouthed kisses from his jaw to his collarbone, her hands threading through his velvety locks.

That used to be you, kissing all down his neck; that used to be you, making his heart race and limbs melt into jelly; that used to be you, the one he said ‘I love you’ to.

“Hey, this is Mark, I’m busy at the moment but I’ll be back! Leave a message while you’re at it, I guess, haha,” the tone played again, making you jump out of your skin, ‘perfect timing, Y/N, what if he heard it, right now, coming from your phone!’ you huffed, dropping Mark’s watch on the ground near the alleyway, bolting away from the couple, towards your car, grabbing the handle and pulling it open as soon as you reached it.

As you slumped into the driver’s seat, you realised that you had accidentally pressed the voicemail button with your shaking finger, instead of the ‘end call’ button.

“Fuck, no, I don’t wanna record a voicemail to Mark,” you thought aloud, until a voice in your head suggested, ‘but won’t this be the last time you’ll ever speak to him?’

It was with that thought that the gears in your head began turning - it was right, this would be your last time talking to him, you could finally tell him all of the things on your mind, the emotions he made you feel, the burdens he put on you, and he didn’t even have to respond.

You could simply block him forever - because he wouldn’t care, right? You didn’t even need a response or an apology, all you wanted was for him to know what he put you through, what you had to suffer through because of him.

And it’s not like that would upset him, he didn’t care about you the way you cared about him, he didn’t need you the way you used to need him, since he had his (possibly) new girlfriend instead of you. So you decided to record your last message to him.

“Uhhh, okay, this is really weird but I’ll just get it over and done with. So, Mark, this is Y/N and by the time you get this, your number’ll probably be blocked, this is the last thing you’ll hear from me.

“I’m guessing you’re kinda confused right now, because you’re probably listening to this while you’re either drunk as fuck or hungover, but, long story short, I’m fucking done with you.

“Let me just remind you of what happened tonight, or last night, depending on when you’re hearing this. You invited me to your little celebration after, what, a month of not contacting me? And then, proceeded to tell me that your crush would be here, even though you knew all too well that we had too many loose ends that we hadn’t tied yet.

“Then, I get here, and suddenly you don’t even greet me, or acknowledge me, just like you had been doing for the past few weeks, while, of course, you’re glued to Chaeyoung’s side.

“Meanwhile, I was there, waiting to see you, since we hadn’t hung out normally since the break-up 3 months ago, and I knew, well, at least I thought I knew, that there was still a connection between us, or something.

“But, instead, I spent the entire night following Yukhei around and talking to his friends, and having the oh-so-great opportunity of watching you eye-fuck Chaeyoung the whole time. And, finally, when you do eventually notice me, you ask me to hold your Rolex? Really, Mark? I didn’t even get the chance to say anything more than ‘happy birthday’ to you.

“Now, I don’t know how you’re feeling about this whole thing, because, apparently, you’re now Chaeyoung’s newest boy toy, but, did you ever stop and think about how this has affected me? How this whole thing has affected me?

“Because, if you really didn’t notice Mark, I was still fucking in love with you - even after you left me - and I never knew why you gave up on us. Personally, I thought we were amazing together, I thought you were my soulmate, you were the only person that made me feel loved, the only person I loved, but, you didn’t seem to think so.

“Maybe it’s because you’re my first love, Mark, but I wasn’t yours; maybe it’s because I thought that nobody else could replace you; maybe it’s because of your web of lies that I got caught in - but I felt like it wasn’t over yet. It couldn’t be, we would find each other after a while and resume what we had, and we’d be together forever, wow, I know that’s cheesy, I think the alcohol’s getting to me now.

“Speaking of alcohol though, there was another reason why I thought that we could pick up where we left off.

“Don’t you remember all of those nights where you needed me to get you from the bar or the club, and drive you home? When you were so incapable of processing our history together that you just gave in, and let me fall in love with you all over again?

“Yeah, those nights gave me hope, hope that it wasn’t the drinks speaking for you the previous nights, it was you, and hope that you would realise what you were missing and come back to me.

“But, hoping is no good. You’ve actually gotta follow through with your hopes and make them come true. Yet, I couldn’t do that, since you always left me. You always disappeared without a trace, and then, suddenly, after three weeks or so, you’d be right back.

“But, you know, I see it now, I see the truth. You never really loved me, you weren’t lying when you said that, you loved the idea of me, the idea of having someone to rely on, the idea of someone else cleaning up your messes, the idea of someone to hook up with whenever you wanted.

“I saw that all throughout today, when you looked into Chaeyoung’s eyes, she pulled you in and you were lost in a swirl of lust, but whenever you looked into my eyes, you were so disconnected from me, and there was never any emotion.

“Mark, I’m not just your property, you can’t do whatever you want with me! I’m not your party favor, a mere birthday gift that gets thrown away after its purpose has been served.

“I’m Y/N and I’m not yours, Mark Lee, and I’m ashamed to say I ever was. If there’s one thing you were right about, though, it’s that ‘happiness is a lie, and it was only found in your trance’, but that’s because you didn’t make me feel true happiness.

“True happiness isn’t being manipulated into thinking that you make someone feel good and that it’s the only thing that makes them feel good, and that they needed you - true happiness is being free from the people that do that to you.

“I’m sorry, that I didn’t do what you wanted me to, I’m not blinded by your fake love anymore so you won’t be using me any time soon. Goodbye, Mark.”

And, with a few swift movements of your finger, Mark was gone from your phone, and from your life. He was nothing to you now, and you were no longer his - and, wow, you never knew that you would feel so proud to be able to say that.

189 notes · View notes

lady-harrowhark · 5 years ago

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A Spoonful of Sugar

Happy Royai Day everyone! A special update in honor of the occasion! Thanks to everyone who has been reading and sending such kind comments and reviews. I’m still baffled and thrilled that people enjoy and are excited for my little daydream world! Summary: Since her father’s death several years ago, Riza has dedicated herself to keeping Hawkeye Bakery afloat. When Roy Mustang opens a coffee shop next door, Riza finds herself getting more than just a caffeine fix. They’ve got their hands full managing custom cupcake orders, exploding espresso machines, and eccentric employees, but this new partnership just might be the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them.

Chapter Three: Vanilla Latte

Word count: 2691

first chapter | read on ao3

“They want to have it when?” Riza asked incredulously.

“Tuesday morning,” Olivier said without a single trace of apology in her voice. “I’ve let them know what an awful inconvenience this is for you,” she drawled sarcastically. “And money’s no object here. You can charge whatever you want. Tasting fee, appointment fee, short notice fee, booking deposit.” Riza could almost see Olivier waving her hand dismissively on the other end of the line. “You would not believe the budget we’re working with.” I definitely would, Riza thought to herself, knowing the kind of clientele Olivier had cultivated.

Riza thumbed through her planner, pages thin and crinkled, finally landing on the upcoming week. “I literally cannot do before eleven if they want a full tasting.” She tucked the phone against her shoulder and pulled down a worn binder from the shelf. She flipped through the pages, each with a different cake recipe. “What are you thinking?”

“Bride says she wants something exotic but will end up going with almond. Tell her it’s “French Amaretto” or something and she’ll be completely on board. Do a couple of more out-there flavors to satisfy her and then your regular wedding selection.”

“Have you discussed decorations?”

Olivier scoffed. “Have I discussed it with the bride? No, but I drew up a diagram of what we’re doing and it’s in your email already.”

Riza shook her head, still amazed after all these years at how Olivier’s imperious demeanor hadn’t landed her in hot water yet. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her no-nonsense attitude and uncompromising nature ensured her weddings were always the height of taste and class, and her services were in high demand. And with that demand, came a steep price tag. “I’ll look at it in a few hours. Will I need anything unusual for it?

“No, florist is doing most of it. Not your problem.”

“That is my favorite design.” Riza pulled a sheet of paper from the tray of a printer perched precariously atop the bookshelf that served as the bakery’s “office.” Binders and folders of various paperwork filled the shelves, and a file cabinet with tax and employee information sat next to it. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a system that worked. She shifted a few papers, looking for a pen. Snagging one from beneath a stack of delivery receipts, she started jotting down a few flavor ideas. “Any flavors completely off the table?”

“No lemon. It’s ‘common.’” Riza quickly scratched out ‘lemon lavender.’ Nevermind.

There was a muffled shout in the background, and Olivier made a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl. “I’ve got to go, but just as a heads up, the groom’s mother will be accompanying them. Expect a bloodbath.”

The line went dead. Riza stared at the handset for a moment before returning it to the cradle. She’d figure out what that meant later.

With several events happening in town that weekend, the store had been exceptionally busy, and customers had been exceptionally cranky. It was barely early afternoon and Riza was already concerned at their dwindling supply of baked goods. That is, when she had a moment to think about it, between constantly refilling the displays and switching out batches from the oven. She’d enlisted Jean’s help to crank out some more single-serve products - muffins, cupcakes, cookies - while Falman continued to prep for the next day. Seeing the register total climb higher and higher each hour was a temporary balm for her nerves, though that was rather cancelled out by the frenetic pace of the day. It would be a long day, and so would the next, now that she had to prepare a custom tasting for Olivier’s couple (and the soon-to-be mother-in-law).

Out front, Sciezka had been running herself ragged, serving customers, manning the register, cleaning tables. Busy days were especially hard on the young woman, a natural introvert who, given the choice, would prefer to spend her weekends at her university’s library rather than working food service to afford her student loan payments. They had made it through the post-lunch rush, and color was high in Sciezka’s cheeks, her normally messy hair in even more disarray than usual. But for the moment, the shop was blissfully empty.

Riza grabbed a rag and began wiping down the front counter. “Why don’t you go take your lunch, Sciezka? I’ll handle any customers for now.”

“Thank you thank you thank you thank you.” Sciezka was already untying her apron, hurrying towards the back room. She scooped a creased paperback and a granola bar out of her backpack and jogged outside to one of the two small cafe tables. Riza was always fascinated to see how quickly the girl could lose herself in a book - she wished she could switch gears like that, although part of her suspected that Sciezka never fully disengaged from her fictional worlds either.

Riza got to work swiftly cleaning down the countertops, refilling napkin dispensers, and sweeping crumbs from beneath the tables. After a morning spent making messes in the kitchen, there was something satisfying about cleaning them in the front.

Just then, a clatter rang out from the kitchen. Riza squeezed her eyes shut, imagining all the different catastrophes that could have made that sound. “What was that?” she called.

Jean’s disembodied voice responded. “I’m going to clean it up!”

She sighed. “That’s not what I asked.”

Jean strode into view, his broad chest blocking the doorway to the kitchen. “I know. But I figured you’d like that better than the real answer.” He braced his hands against the doorframe, barring her from peering around him. Riza cocked her head, her mouth a firm line as she fixed her eyes on his. He winced. “Fine, it was the cupcake tins, and yes, it went everywhere. BUT one tray survived and they’re going in the oven before I can destroy them AND I was just about to mop anyway. So it’s fine, actually, and you should just stay out here until I’m done mopping.”

Riza eyed the mess splattered across the bottom of his apron and remembered the four trays of yellow cupcake batter she’d left on the table for when the current batch came out of the oven. “For everyone’s sake,” she said levelly, “I am not going back there right now, but I will when Sciezka gets off her break, and at that point the floor will be spotless.”

Jean nodded solemnly before backing around the corner. Riza heard water running in the mop sink and the squeak of the plastic mop bucket wheels. I need a drink, she thought, then stopped herself. Things weren’t that bleak. Maybe just a cupcake when they’re ready, she amended. She pushed a hand back through her short hair and inhaled deeply, eyes closed. She exhaled and reached for the broom again.

A moment later, the phone rang. Riza glanced at the caller ID, praying she wouldn’t see Olivier’s number twice in the same day. Relieved to see a number she didn’t recognize, she answered.

“Hawkeye Bakery, this is Riza. How may I help you?”

“Oh good, Riza. Hi.” Despite having spoken to him only twice before, Riza recognized his voice. “This is Roy from next door.”

“I know.” Riza cringed, aware of how that must sound. She didn’t normally blurt things out like that.

Roy chuckled on the other end. “Did it come up on caller ID?”

“No,” she admitted after a brief hesitation. “I just recognized your voice.” She leaned her hip against the counter, gazing out the window towards the street outside. Sciezka was still reading at the table, and the shadows were just beginning to lengthen.

“Oh.” He sounded somewhat bemused. “The reason I called was that we’ve got our equipment up and running and most of our stock in, and I’m hitting kind of an afternoon slump. I thought you might be too. What’s your drink?”

She definitely was hitting an afternoon slump, but she wasn’t sure how to answer him. “My drink?”

“Yeah. Like, what do you order when you get a coffee?”

Riza glanced at the coffeemaker on the back counter, which had just an inch or two of coffee left in the decaf pot. “Well… when I make coffee for myself here, I take it with milk and sugar. I don’t really order coffee anywhere else.”

“Hmm, okay. Tell you what, I can bring you just a coffee with milk and sugar, or I can take my best guess and make you something else, and if you don’t like it, I’ll try again tomorrow. What do you think?”

“You don’t have to make anything fancy for me, really.” Riza imagined Roy analyzing her, attempting to craft the perfect beverage using some mystical barista divination. The thought was endearing but made her feel incredibly self-conscious for reasons she couldn’t quite name.

“First of all, making fancy coffee is literally my job.” Riza laughed. She did have to concede that point. “And second of all, I owe you for all the pastries and things you brought over the other day. So if it’s okay with you, I’ll be over in a few minutes, hopefully with something you don’t hate.”

Outside, Riza could see Sciezka closing her book. As soon as she got off the phone, she was going to have to make good on her ultimatum about the backroom floor.

Reluctantly, she responded. “It is okay with me, but really, don’t feel obligated.”

The satisfaction was evident in his voice. “I’ll be over in a few!”

Riza was attempting to diffuse an irate older woman when Roy slipped in the door.

“I don’t want cupcakes,” the woman said slowly, as if Riza were having trouble understanding her. “I need a full size cake for a birthday. Is there another bakery nearby that DOES carry cakes?”

Riza shook her head. “The only other bakeries I know of close early on Sundays. The supermarket bakery section would have some though.”

“I don’t like cake from the grocer’s. If I wanted that I would have gone there already.” The expression on the woman’s face clearly showed that she thought she was being extremely patient with a ridiculous situation. Sciezka stood just a step behind Riza, watching with saucer eyes.

“I’m sorry ma’am. If you’d like to place an order for the morning, I can give you a discount, but I won’t be able to have a cake ready for you today.” Riza’s lips pressed together tightly, signaling the end of the discussion.

The woman slung her handbag over her shoulder and leaned in towards the counter. “This is not the kind of support I expect from local businesses. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my family.” She turned on her heel and hustled out the door.

Riza pursed her lips, watching as the door swung shut. “Happy Sunday, everyone.” She reached out, touching Sciezka’s arm lightly. “If she comes back, I’ll take care of her. I don’t want you to have to deal with that again.”

Catching Riza’s eye, Roy lifted the mug in his hand. “Looks like you could use this.”

“I really, really could. Thank you.”

After brokering introductions between Roy and Sciezka, Riza gestured for Roy to follow her into the back. Jean leaned back from the sink at the other end of the room long enough to nod a greeting before returning to rinsing dishes, and Vato called both a greeting to Roy and a goodbye to Riza as he left for the day.

Roy’s gaze wandered around the kitchen. Space was at a premium, but at this point in the day, everything was mostly clean, and the floors were indeed spotless. “Are you guys open for much longer?”

She shook her head. “Just until four thirty. I don’t normally stay ‘til close on Sundays but we’ve been so busy…”

“Hopefully this helps a little.” He held out his offering: a wide, heavy mug on a saucer. It was filled with something creamier than her usual coffee, and topped with a swirl of foam reminiscent of something floral.

Riza took the mug and lifted it towards her, inhaling the scent. “What is it?” she asked.

“Just a vanilla latte.”

She was acutely aware of his eyes on her, scrutinizing her reaction, as she took the first sip, pausing a moment to appreciate the flavor. “It’s really good.” She took another sip.

“I figure it’s a good starting point until you figure out what you really like.”

“I think I like it just like this.” She smiled and lifted the cup to her lips again as if to prove her point.

“You flatter me. You can check out the full menu next time you’re over.” Riza was surprised to find how good it felt for him to assume there would be a next time. Despite the newness of their acquaintance, there was an easy rhythm between them, a casualness that she so rarely felt with others, and rarer still so quickly. “How long have you had this place?”

Riza made a vague hand gesture. “Technically about seven years. But I’ve always worked here. My father started it so I grew up here, and when he died, it became mine.”

She knew it was coming before he said it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize about your father.”

A small smile flickered across Riza’s face, more in acknowledgement of his obligatory condolences than anything else. “Thank you, but it’s been a long time now. This was place was everything to him.” Sometimes she felt him here more than she would admit, could sense his disapproval at sloppy kneading and overbaked loaves, his pride in the structure of a perfect croissant. And other days, like today, he didn’t even cross her mind. Those days felt good and bad all at once, and Riza wasn’t sure how much she wanted to prod that particular hornet’s nest today. “Hawkeye Bakery’s been around longer than I have, that’s for sure. Almost thirty years now.”

Roy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Thirty years? That’s incredible. I can’t even imagine how much you guys have put into this place.”

He probably can’t, Riza thought. She grew up in this very store, standing on overturned crates to see over the table, working before and after school when she was old enough. “But what about you? Have you always been a… coffee person?” She sipped from her mug, an eyebrow raised at him.

“Yes and no… I grew up a few towns over, came here for college and worked in a coffee shop the whole time for beer money. Poli-sci, thought I was going to go to law school. And I did, for a year. And I hated it and spent every second wishing I was back in that casual little shop, making coffee and hanging out with our regulars. So I left. Spent a couple of years working my way up into management at another place and I finally decided I’d rather be my own boss and start my own place. So here I am.”

From law school to food service. She’s sure he’s heard it all about that particular choice, so she doesn’t ask. “Here you are,” she repeated.

He shrugged. “I don’t usually tell people I’m a law school dropout. They’ve always got something to say about it, but,” he gestured around them at their current surroundings, “I figured you’d get it. I’m sure you could be doing anything, if you wanted, and here you are as well.”

Riza looked down at the cup in her hands, rotating it slowly. “Now it’s my turn to be flattered. This is all I’ve ever known.” And besides, she thought, the time for that had passed long ago.

Looking back up at Roy’s easy grin, though, the tension she’d been holding from this hectic day was starting to drain away. The looming thought of staying until closing didn’t seem so daunting. Today was just another day in the bakery, just like the years and years before it, but somehow, with his arrival, it didn’t feel like the days she’d always known.

It all felt brand new.

Notes: I’ve been asked to start a taglist by @heavymetalhauswife :) If you are interested in being added to the taglist, please message me. You can also follow on ao3 (linked above) to receive email alerts when i post new content. Also, I’ve been posting here and on ao3, but do many of you use ff? If so, I can look into starting to post there as well, but I figured I’d ask before I added another step. Let me know!

#royaiweek19 #roy mustang #riza hawkeye #royai #royai ASoS #fanfiction #my writing

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adavenhobbit · 7 years ago

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Watching There And Back Again: Down The Rabbit Hole

Hey everyone! You know I think I’m just going to post this story here as well.

Summary:

During their trip through Mirkwood, the company finds themselves falling down a cliff. Only to appear in a strange room with a strange voice telling them they are going to see something to help change the future. Characters watch the movie type of fic because I love them and there are very few in this fandom.

I hope you enjoy!

Bilbo was tired, hungry, and absolutely done with this accursed forest. They had been traveling on the narrow, twisting path for what seemed like ages, though Bilbo really didn’t know how long it had actually been. The forest was always dark, with creatures looming in the branches. The night was worse, with the haunting eyes glowing with unknown light, the darkness so thick he couldn’t even see his hand when touching his nose. Bilbo hadn’t thought he was capable of such complete and utter loathing, and he was sure only this forest would ever be able to garner such a reaction from him. Tripping over yet another tree root that jutted up from the ground, Bilbo winced as he fell into Bofur. The miner turned his head, blinking slowly before he realized it had been Bilbo who fell into him.

“Alright there?” He asked as Bilbo straightened. Nodding quickly, Bofur turned back and continued to follow the procession. Bilbo heard the dwarves muttering but he tried to pay them little mind, busying himself with watching his feet and his own temper. However, when he ran into Bofur’s back again, this time because the dwarf had stopped abruptly, he couldn’t help but look up in exasperation

“What’s happening?” Oin called from farther forwards

“Keep moving. Nori, why have we stopped?” Thorin demanded and Bilbo could hear the barely suppressed ire in his voice, having been on the wrong end of it too many times before. Bilbo wanted to tell him they should rest, exhaustion weighing heavily on his body, but Thorin would never agree to such a thing. Maybe Nori had the same notion. The idea was quickly replaced with dread as Nori spoke up.

“The path...it’s disappeared!” Of all the advice they had been given, leaving the path and drinking the water had been the two biggest things not to do. This day just kept getting better and better.

“What’s going on?” Dwalin demanded, pushing past Bilbo towards the front.

“We’ve lost the path!” Oin said as everyone moved forward to stand on the edge of the cliff they now found themselves on. Bilbo couldn’t see the bottom, the deep chasm had a thick layer of fog. Even so, the drop made his stomach churn uncomfortably, bringing back memories of the Misty Mountains and nearly falling to his death. If it hadn’t been for a certain brooding, rude, arrogant, handsome, no! Bilbo shook his head to dispel those thoughts. Thorin would certainly never think of him in that way, he barely even considered them friends. Besides Thorin was to be a king and he was nothing more than a foolish hobbit. Bilbo sighed as he turned to look at the gathered dwarves, wondering what they were to do now. Thorin was staring angrily down into the chasm as if it personally had offended him and his entire family.

“Find it. All of you look. Look for the path!” He ordered, turning away from the cliff. As he stepped away a tremor shook the ground. Bilbo was the first to notice it, the dwarves picking up on it as the shaking intensified. There were shouts of fear and surprise as the entire company tried to scramble away from the cliff as the rocks began to crumble. A resounding crack echoed through the dense trees and Bilbo could feel the rock beneath his feet coming loose. He tried to jump back. The ground was too loose. A shout of panic was all Bilbo could let out before he was sliding. For a second he felt weightless and then he was falling, down, down, down, into the chasm.

“Bilbo!” He heard someone shout, and it had to have been his imagination playing tricks on him because the voice sounded very much like Thorin’s. But everything was drowned out by wind and the screams of the dwarves as they too fell, all of them being engulfed in the dark fog.

Bilbo wasn’t exactly sure when he stopped falling. His whole body tingled and his head felt too light. Groaning, Bilbo sat up slowly and looked around. He was in, well it seemed to be a room but he had never seen a room quite like it before. Three of the walls were covered with black cloth, while the other was white. The floor was covered in a dark, soft carpet and the only furniture in the room was a long empty table along with several couches and chairs. He heard groans and noticed his dwarves were also laying scattered around the room. They were also starting to sit up, looking at the unfamiliar surroundings. Dwalin was reaching for his weapons, his roar of anger when he found them missing rousing everyone.

“Everyone, up!” Thorin ordered, his voice far closer then Bilbo had been expecting. Bilbo felt himself being pulled to his feet, his back pressed against a very strong, and very warm, chest as the company circled up around him.

“Where are my knives?”

“Where’re me axes?” Bilbo wanted to cover his ears at the cacophony of noise around him but the thick arm across his chest prevented him from doing anything.

“No harm will come to you within these halls.” A voice said, though there was no one to accompany it.

“Who are you? Where have you taken us?” Thorin demanded staring up at the ceiling.

“Who I am is unimportant, but know I mean to help. As for where you are, you are in my theater to see something I think you will find most interesting.” The voice almost seemed amused. Thorin, however, was the exact opposite at the vague response.

“I command you-”

“You cannot command me to do anything Thorin Oakenshield. The time you spend arguing with me only prolongs your sentence here. If you and your company desire there is food on the table that you may help yourselves to. I have removed the forest’s affects on you, but if you are too tired I can provide blankets and pillows and we can start the viewing in the morning.” As the voice spoke, Bilbo heard the gasps of the dwarves and he struggled against the arm to see. The appendage relented and Bilbo turned to see it had been Thorin who had grabbed him. Swallowing thickly Bilbo tried to calm how his heart raced knowing how close they had been. He instead preoccupied himself with what had captured everyone else’s interest. The once empty table was now filled with all sorts of food. It reminded him a great deal of how his table in Bag End had looked all those months ago when he first met the company. After days of little food, the sight nearly made him cry with relief. He knew he wasn’t the only one.

“And what is it you will be showing us?” Thorin asked coming to stand in front of the company, even as he glared up at the ceiling.

“Your journey so far, along with a few additional bit of information. I believe such a thing will aid you greatly on your path to come.” There were murmurs at the voice’s words. Whatever being had brought them here must have been very powerful, Bilbo wasn’t sure even Gandalf could do such a thing. But how could showing them what had already happened possibly help them? Bilbo sighed and he wondered if all wizards were as mad as Gandalf. Radagast, and now this person, were only furthering his conclusion that they were.

“Eat, and then rest. We will begin when your minds and bodies are ready.” The voice said, before fading away. Despite Thorin demanding more answers, the voice said nothing more. No one quite knew what to do, Thorin was standing stock still and while the voice had assured them the food was safe none of them knew if they should trust it. Apparently, some stomachs were stronger than a dwarf’s suspicion.

“Bombur!” Bofur called out, drawing everyone’s attention. The ginger-haired dwarf, looked up, eyes wide and cheeks stuffed full. He gulped and, when nothing happened to him, the rest of the company descended.

Bilbo couldn’t find it in himself to give even a lick of concern for the dwarves appalling table manners. Food was being thrown merrily back and forth across the table and ale was flowing freely. Bilbo had never been gladder to see a dish of roasted vegetables in his life and he gladly took the entire dish, only sharing a bit with Bifur. He knew none of the other dwarves would appreciate the dish, too busy scarfing down the biggest roasts Bilbo had ever seen. Even Thorin seemed to relax slightly as he ate, the tension melting away. He still looked around with suspicion, but with no harm coming to his men from the food he was hesitant trusting whatever power had brought them here. Bilbo found himself pushed around the table from the dwarves antics, finally tiring of it and moving to sit closer to Thorin. They watched the company feast and laugh and forget, however momentarily the situation they found themselves in.

“What do you think the voice wants us to see?” Bilbo jumped a little as Thorin’s voice rumbled quite close to his ear. The dwarf had leaned towards him so Bilbo could hear his question over the noise. Bilbo’s heart sped up a little but he made sure to stay composed.

“I’m not entirely sure. I cannot see how showing us what we have already experienced will help us. But for anything powerful enough to do all of this, I assume they have knowledge we do not. I think it is best if we go along with what they are asking for now and if the situation turns sour later we can figure out a way to escape. If there even if one.” Bilbo shoved a spoonful of carrots into his mouth to stop his ramblings. Thorin hummed in agreement and sat back, staring down at his plate. He did not speak to Bilbo again for the remainder of the meal, both of them silently eating their meals.

As the food dwindled down, so did their high spirits. Fili and Kili were the first to fall asleep, laying on top of each other, Kili’s face dangerously close to a plate of half-eaten cake. One by one, their full bellies lulled the company to sleep. Even Dwalin, who had been complaining about the mysterious loss of his axes for most of the meal, eventually passed out, leaving only Bilbo and Thorin.

“Go to sleep Burglar, I’ll keep watch,” Thorin said, even as his eyelids drooped. Bilbo was far too tired to respond, merely laying his head down on the table. He idly wondered if perhaps their food had been drugged, but sleep took him before he could come up with an answer.

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the-revisionist · 7 years ago

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the tristan chord, chapter 19

Note: Sorry this took so long!

xix. What time is it in the Milky Way?

her eyes are closer to me than my own honor ~ Anne Carson

“Are you going to put the tofu in the sauce?” Greg asks.

Wooden spoon poised above a pot of tomato sauce, Caroline hesitates. It is Wednesday evening. She is tired. The day—filled with interviews of teaching candidates, meetings, chatty texts from one lover in New York that she largely ignored and morose ones from the other one who was meeting in Halifax this morning with her solicitor about her impending divorce and Caroline sort-of ignored those too, a toddler who wanted and got, thank you very much, Christmas lights put up in the living room, in August—is fit to burst at the seams. Thus she gazes longingly over Greg’s shoulder at the glass of wine abandoned on the dining room table and is damned if she’s going to ruin her perfect Marcella Hazan tomato sauce—the simmering translucent half-onion poaching in a fragrant bloodbath—with crumbly bits of protein that resemble glue paste falling off ancient discarded wallpaper.

Helpless, she prevaricates. “Um.”

“No?” Greg pulls the Labradoodle Pout face.

“Well, Gillian’s coming for dinner and she likes things that are, you know—” Caroline pauses while attempting to find the most innocuous yet accurate term to describe Gillian’s culinary sensibilities, which are as omnivorous as her sexuality: If she’s hungry and it’s not a lot of fuss she’ll have it, even if it gives her indigestion.

But then you are an awful lot of fuss, Caroline reminds herself, and so goes yet another theory.

Greg wastes no time in supplying a descriptor for the woman he takes for thick-headed rube, even though he is too well-bred—and afraid of Gillian—to say in polite company: “Simple?”

“No,” she retorts defensively. “I’d say her tastes are more classic. Pure. She has a very, you know, refined palate.”

Skeptical, he nibbles at a corner of his beard. “Isn’t Gillian the one who ate a chicken kebab she dropped on the kitchen floor?”

“It wasn’t the floor, it was a kitchen chair, and the five-second rule was met.” As a rigorous scientist Caroline knows the five-second rule is absolute bollocks but as an unsparing bitch she will do anything to win an argument. “And, y’know, Alan and mum will be here too, and they aren’t that keen on tofu either.”

“Well it’s just sad, I think.” Greg folds his arms. “That they won’t try new things.”

“Have you ever slept with a man?”

“I fail to see why you keep asking me that question.”

“Just making a point this time. Gillian might try the tofu chips. Especially if she has wine with dinner.” She pauses. “Like, an entire bottle of wine, but yeah, she might.”

“She’ll probably just wrap them up in prosciutto like you do,” he replies morosely.

“It’s a testament to the sturdiness and versatility of the chip.” She smiles brightly, considers this a good save. “Hey, I ate the amaranth porridge this morning.” All the more reason to reward herself with wine tonight. Greg’s penchant for randomly assigning certain foods to days—Tofu Tuesdays, Amaranth Wednesdays, Quinoa Fridays—has only affirmed Caroline’s commitment to a parallel schedule of inevitable alcoholism.

Before walking away, he reverts to the Labradoodle Pout. His courtship of Blackburn Barbie, aka Brigitte, has not been going well and as a result he has been as mopey as Morrissey around the house. In turn Caroline has ramped up efforts to be kind and supportive or, at the very least, less bitchy—for starters, eating amaranth porridge without complaint. In addition, she consented to doing yoga with him on occasion; her motivation here is purely selfish, because she realizes that keeping up sexually with the likes of Gillian Greenwood may require a level of flexibility suitable to a preteen gymnast, or at least as close to that state as her sad-sack, wine-fueled, middle-aged body can attain. The other day during their marathon post-flood shag session she got such horrid back spasms at one point that Gillian leaped out of bed and started getting dressed because she assumed a trip to A&E was imminent. But a back massage, a glass of wine, and a story about a runaway lamb safely recovered during the storm fixed her up just fine.

Or maybe it was the timbre of Gillian’s voice as she relayed the tale of the lamb, floating ethereal as smoke above her as she lay face down on the bed, muscles melting under a vigorous work-over: Poor damned thing, she were afraid of the rushing water, y’see, so I had to cross over to the other side, grab her, and carry her—imagine me, wading through a stream, water up to my knees with a lamb across my shoulders, bloody lucky she’s so tiny and I know that creek bed like the back of my hand. When the spasms and pain finally subsided she rolled over, practically into Gillian’s arms, and stared up into those eyes which, at that moment, were the softened green-gray of the hills on a cold rainy day.

Gillian then smiled and said, better?

In response Caroline squeaked that she would really really really pretty please like to try that position again.

Nah, Gillian said. Can’t send you back to Harrogate all busted up. Besides, I’m rather enjoying you naked, helpless, and on your back—and in the 37 minutes that followed, she made absolutely certain that Caroline enjoyed it too.

But yoga is worth a try, lest she earn a reputation as a pillow queen—and that particular phrase riles up thoughts of Sacha, who is still in New York and whose initial copious outpouring of archly romantic texts at the beginning of the trip has dwindled down to an occasional flurry. Like this morning’s perfunctory check-in: a photo of the sunrise from a penthouse, a snarky recap of a dinner party, asking about Flora and work. Neither texts nor thoughts have led Caroline anywhere closer to a clue on what or whom she really wants. There is a lot to be said for being in the moment, Sacha had once said, and in this particular moment she is making spaghetti sauce and looking forward to seeing Gillian and admitting to herself she has a ways to go before completely fucking everything up, so there is that. For the moment she will settle for occasionally fucking up her back; at this morning’s quickie yoga session her back gave out a mere ten minutes into the routine, prompting Greg to chirp that the first downward dog is always the hardest while clearly under the illusion that his commentary was in some way helpful.

With the sauce at perfect simmer she sprawls in a dining room chair for a moment, drinks wine, smiles at the frosty white glint of the Christmas lights from the living room ceiling that reflect into the hallway, and briefly persuades herself that she is queen of all she surveys when reality so far has only proven that she is nothing more than everyone’s bitch and a pushover for a three-year-old. She knew the moment Greg brought up Christmas plans last night at dinner—a pointless topic of conversation given that she can barely plan an outfit for the following day not to mention that she has her head up her arse about two very different women and if she has to eat quinoa pilaf one more time this month she may go mental—that a seed of holiday longing would be planted in Flora’s attentive, obsessive mind. The child spent the morning relentlessly grilling Caroline about when Christmas would occur and, more urgently, about the appearance of Christmas lights: where lights? when? Which devolved into the terse, repetitive command of lights! as if she were a tiny demented film director.

So she got the lights.

Appeasing a child can be easy enough; a middle-aged sheep farmer a far different matter and especially when you take sex out of the equation. She has no idea what frame of mind Gillian will be in when she arrives for dinner. Her one-liner texts from the morning consisted of bitching about parking in Halifax, the lateness of the solicitor, the bad cup of tea she had at an overpriced shop, and then later, her father’s never-ending critique of her driving as she took him to a doctor’s appointment. Over the course of the day Caroline experienced uneasy moments of doubt, fearing that Gillian might yet again reconsider divorce, might give Robbie yet another go. If nothing else, her hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-husband is expert at mining and manipulating the deep well of Gillian’s remorse to his ultimate advantage—performing an emotionally elegant sleight-of-hand that magically strips away her ragged self-esteem under the guise of stalwart support, convincing her that despite evidence to the contrary she fails at everything and possesses nothing but raw, naked vulnerability. A bizarro world version of the emperor’s new clothes, and gaslighting at its finest. She is certain Robbie does not possess enough self-awareness to know what he does; it is precisely in those who lack it that the most craven impulse outs itself with unerring cruelty.

Meanwhile Lawrence arrives home, glares uncomprehendingly at the living room’s Christmas-in-August décor, and mutters a hit-and-run insult on the way to the refrigerator: “You’ve lost your mind.”

For an infinitesimal moment she regards him, and then raises her glass in a toast. “Probably genetic, so welcome to your future.”

He rolls his eyes, drops a satchel on a chair. “Our future is the shitshow outside.” He guzzles neon-flavored Powerade. “Gran and Alan are in the driveway shouting at Gillian.”

“Right.” Caroline sighs and returns to tending the sauce on the stove, poking at the onion softening slowly under its pearlescent dome.

“Please tell me we’re not eating weird shit tonight,” Lawrence begs.

“Spaghetti.”

“Thank God.”

The dinner guests plow through the doorway unannounced and without knocking. Gillian resembles a weary, wounded fox pursued by two gabbling old hounds—furrowed, scowling, and wincing as sniping cross-conversations pursue her. She wears one of her better flowery dresses and a matching navy blue cardigan sweater. The color-coordinated ensemble indicates that she asked Raff to pick it out, a task he does routinely, as he recently confessed to Caroline, but also reluctantly: This kind of thing will put me right into therapy, I know it will, he had said.

Greetings are, apparently, out of the question as Alan and Celia carry on conversing. “What do you mean, the doctor wants to change your medication?” Celia says.

Alan sighs. “It’s nothing, just a wee uptick in dosage—”

The remainder of the sentence goes unheard because Gillian finally meets her gaze and grins, and Caroline’s besotted brain goes on the blink at this live demonstration of collision theory: The chemical reaction, the charge that always existed between them is different now, the limits of those preexistent bonds are broken and altered into something new and viable and intense, and in the anguished relief and the reliable comfort of mere proximity now runs a strain of undisguised joy.

At any rate, she is pretty certain it’s not just the fact that she offers Gillian a very generous pour of a very good white.

As Gillian gratefully downs the vigonier, Alan sighs. “We’ll talk later,” he says to Celia. “Right now we are discussing Gillian—”

The mere utterance of her name brings about a reversion to a perpetual solid state of anger. Nose buried in the now-empty wineglass, Gillian seeks reprieve; she closes her eyes and inhales deeply, as if she can absorb each and every boozy airborne mote of wine. Then: “No,” she replies edgily. She sits the empty glass on the table and its jarring scrape marks a change in mood. “We’re not.”

“If you agree to settlement—” Alan begins.

“No, I won’t.” Gillian exhales violently, nods at the empty glass. “That’s all right, then,” she drawls, and then sets her lusty sights on Caroline in such a pointedly restrained fashion that a clandestine current of meaning crackles beneath innocuous conversation, and they both know that this combination of glance and tone will be interpreted by clueless observers in multifarious ways—as an in-joke about the wine or a veiled sarcastic commentary on divorce, present company, life as a whole—except the correct one.

At least this is what Caroline hopes, because she notices her mother’s eyebrows arch in a curious fashion.

“Settling would be the easiest solution,” Alan continues, oblivious to how his daughter’s eyes rake over her stepsister.

Caroline looks away, bites her lip, gives the sauce an agitated stir that splatters the stovetop. “Glad you like it,” she replies softly.

“There more?” Gillian asks in an undertone that makes her shiver.

“Oh yeah.” Worrying that her quick assent runs a bit too throatily sensual, she clears her throat in such a larynx-shredding way that she sounds like Rumpole of the Bailey straining on the shitter.

Solicitously Celia fetches her a glass of water.

Alan reaches a point of shouty exasperation with his obstinate offspring. “Are you listening to me?”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Gillian is right there on the summit with him. “Yeah, I am, Dad. But what you don’t get is, is, it’s done. I’m done. I’m not getting back with him, that’s a pipe dream, and I’m not giving him some sort of ‘financial settlement’ either—”

Oh, the finger quotes, Caroline sighs dreamily. How elegantly she employs them.

“—and if you think I’m going to ask Gary for money you’re out of your f-f-bloody mind, he and Felicity already done enough for me. No, the quickest and cheapest way to get out of this bloody mess of my own making is my way.” Then, despite her best efforts, she surrenders a couple f-bombs: “And if it means I have ‘adultery’ written on my fucking divorce petition and ‘whore’ written across my fucking forehead, well then, let’s just leave it, all right?”

This effectively silences nearly everyone but Lawrence. “Wow. Dinner might actually be interesting for once.”

Before Caroline can defuse the tension by offering drinks all around, Gillian seizes her by the wrist and, with a gentle tug, leads her out of the room. “Going to have a chat. Be right back.”

“Here we go again with the girl talk,” Celia says indulgently, as if Caroline and Gillian are teenagers gallivanting off to talk about boys and jewelry and makeup.

“Talk some sense into her, Caroline!” Alan barks.

“Someone stir my sauce!” Caroline shouts back as she is led down the hallway, helpless as Richard III with the kingdom falling down about him, sauce probably ruined and the battle surely lost. Did Richard feel this euphoric as he headed for the fall? At the very end, what did he feel other than sheer relief at the inevitable?

“What is this thing in the sauce?” she hears Celia trill.

Alan is apprehensive. “It’s not the tofu, is it?”

Before she can scream no it’s not the bloody tofu Gillian gently shoves her in the bathroom, slams the door shut, locks it, and before Caroline can eke out a word of concern or affection Gillian claps a hand around the back of her neck and kisses her ruthlessly—that all-consuming kiss that she specializes in, the kiss of Don Juan’s reckless daughter. They pinball around the tiny bathroom, collide against the sink, knock a hand towel off the towel rack, and kick the metallic bin that sounds a scuffling hiss followed up with a booming gong. She nearly trips over her own feet but instead plops down right onto the toilet seat, opting to give Gillian credit for steering her there rather than lust-driven clumsy happenstance, which accurately describes her dance style circa 1989 and usually at its most frenzied to Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round.” Then Gillian is on her lap—kissing her throat, biting her ear, fingernails of one hand etching the border of her scalp while the other eagerly cups her breast. She gathers a fistful of Gillian’s dress, the scratchy-soft fabric binds her knuckles and balls into her palm; self-bondage is the only thing preventing her from clawing bare skin with her nails and sliding her hand between those thighs and that is good because they are too close to fucking and the deep, sweet thrumming that rolls through Gillian’s throat drives her absolutely mad and she’s never been like this with anyone else before, no one, not John, not Kate, not Sacha or even some anonymous bint on the dance floor, no one. She has never been ravenous and reckless like this, never before abandoned her carefully considered plans of what love was or how it should be conducted. Love the abstraction, love the reality, dovetail dangerously into the current moment.

The kisses slow down and in the hunger that lingers between them, like silence seeded into and enriching the adagio of a symphony, Caroline realizes that their burning savor is not from desire or wine alone but running along the familial lines of whiskey. She breathes gentle accusation into Gillian’s willing mouth: “You’ve been drinking.”

It hardly seems unexpected, this pattern typical of Gillian: comfort sought in a bottle or a bloke. Should be glad it was the former and not the latter, Caroline thinks. So far as she knows, anyway, but then she can hardly demand sexual exclusivity when Gillian has given her free reign with Sacha. Their collision, their chemistry, has not completely broken all the bonds, nor recalibrated all the equations and reactions and networks. It has not—and most likely will not—reconfigure this whole complicated mess of molecules known as Gillian Greenwood, and this tempers Caroline’s disappointment.

Gillian pulls away slightly and squints comically, in the hope that playing up the role of lovable drunk will allay any potential Carolinian outbursts that simmer beneath a beautiful breastbone clad in an overpriced, casual linen blouse.

“Did. You. Know,” she drawls, punctuating each word with a soft jab at Caroline’s sternum, “that for the past two and half years, ever since they got married, Dad and your mum have been cruelly, cruelly hoarding a spectacular bottle of single-malt scotch in their little love shack, a bottle they got as a wedding present from the bloody vicar?”

Caroline sighs, groans, buries her face into Gillian’s neck—and inhales the weird manly shower gel that Raff owns and that his mother, out of sheer laziness, uses as well, and it possesses the power of a thousand colognes magnified into one spicy scent, like cheap cinnamon roasting in a toxic gas fire. On an actual man she would find it absolutely repulsive, but on a woman, this woman, it’s an inexplicable turn-on and so she sets to feasting on Gillian’s throat, but careful not to leave a mark. “I did not.”

Distinctly aware that she has offered herself as first course on the dinner menu—at least for the hostess—Gilliam stammers and squirms. “I n-needed to, um, reward myself for today.”

“Speaking of rewards— ” Caroline whispers. She releases the dress around her hand—and herself from the bonds of being good—and slips it between Gillian’s legs, fingers flat along her warm thigh and touching the scrunched elastic boundary of her panties, and then someone pounds on the door with such unbridled fury that Caroline knows immediately that it’s her most troublesome and stroppy child and she is both grateful for and infuriated at the unintentional cuntblock.

From her comfy perch in Caroline’s lap Gillian attempts an elegant, faun-like leap to safety but instead elaborately and drunkenly staggers, kneels, and twists, inadvertently graceful as if she’s attempting an Orthodox Jewish wedding dance—but for the saving grace of frantically latching onto the sink she nearly ends up face down on the tiled floor.

“GREG IS MAKING THE PASTA,” Lawrence booms. “AND HE’S STIRRING THE SAUCE.”

Because Lawrence only pays attention to shouting, Caroline has no recourse to volley back a bellow. Which, given a heightened level of sexual frustration, is easy enough: “TELL HIM NOT TO GET RID OF THE ONION. I HAVE PLANS FOR THE ONION.”

Whilst straightening and smoothing out her dress, Gillian stares at her suspiciously.

“IT’S ALMOST READY AND IF YOU DON’T COME OUT NOW YOU’LL BE EATING TOFU CHIPS ALL NIGHT.”

“ALL RIGHT. WE’LL BE THERE IN A MINUTE.”

“HAVE YOU WASHED MY SHIRTS YET?”

“FUCK OFF, I’M NOT YOUR SERVANT.”

“BOY YOU’RE JUST REALLY MOTHER OF THE YEAR, AREN’T YOU?” She hears him stomps away.

“Mother of the year,” Gillian echoes. Tipsily she giggles, leans against the sink, hugs herself, and Caroline is struck—not for the first time—by the fierce singularity of her solitude, witnessed many a time in crowded pubs, at weddings, during dinners, over cups of tea and glasses of wine, even lying next to her in bed. You cannot fix people. This Caroline now knows. She spent eighteen years indulging John’s fantasy of being saved from himself and those efforts were, in fact, the essence and bedrock of their marriage. But the urge to fix and to save and to make right remains deeply inculcated in her; it is a force that compels and confounds at once.

Wobbly, she gets up. In two steps she’s in front of Gillian and grips the edge of the sink with both hands, thus penning the shepherdess like one of her ewes. Not that she wants to trap Gillian, but rather retain meager control over not only the situation but also her wandering hands. In response Gillian’s fingers tap the buttons of her shirt, drumming out a subversive Morse code, dots and dashes of defiant desire. “You going to tell me what happened today?”

“Didn’t drag you in here to talk,” Gillian says, with a tug on Caroline’s blouse. A kiss, a nip of the lower lip, the sweet shock of pain. “There’s nothing to tell.” The lie is followed by a softer, wetter kiss. “It’s shit. It’s toss. It’ll be over soon.” Gillian pauses and there is a sensual wavering of the moment, as a flag in full furl before the wind dies down, all revealed in the microcosmic flutter of her eyelids. “We can talk later. If you like. After dinner.”

“All right.” Caroline is grateful she’s still holding onto the sink’s edge, because her knees buckle. “You look good. Really good.”

Gillian barks out a laugh and gives her a playful push. “You hate this dress.”

“What? No.” Automatically, Caroline straightens with indignation.

“Called it a peasant dress once, you did.”

“I did not.” Even as she denies it, she can hear herself saying it while in that cabernet-tinted cloud of repressed emotion that she operated in when they first met.

With an eyeroll, Gillian shoves her against the bathroom door, bites her neck, her earlobe, runs a wild, unrepentant tongue along the gentle swell of her throat, and hisses “peasant” at her.

Caroline shivers. “Must’ve been drunk.”

“Or just being a bitch.”

“Or that.” She sighs. “So. Shall we? Once more unto the breach, then?”

While brushing back the bangs from Caroline’s forehead, Gillian smiles with undisguised fondness; it’s unnerving, exhilarating, so much so that Caroline is caught deliriously off guard. “Comb your hair first,” Gillian replies. Then, with an exaggerated look at Caroline’s chest: “And calm your tits.”

As Caroline takes mortified account of over-exuberant nipples, Gillian darts out of the bathroom. She exhales a long breath, brushes her hair, and wills her body into submission.

In the kitchen Greg has taken over. She sets the table. Gillian gets more wine. Alan and Celia seriously debate whether Alan’s doctor resembles Richard Harris “before he started looking like a drunk.” Lawrence ignores everyone and everything except his mobile. Flora runs amok and takes it upon herself to show the Christmas lights in the living room to Gillian, who reacts with the appropriate awe and outlandish questions that make Flora cackle with delight: Did you put those up yourself, love?

Dinner starts out pleasantly enough, if only because everyone sublimates a spectrum of frustrations with pasta. Sacha would approve, Caroline thinks—and quickly quashes that thought as she admires her own plating expertise.

“The sauce is great,” Greg says, and then adds teasingly, “despite the lack of tofu.”

Caroline leans back. “Yeah? Thanks. And thanks for helping.”

“Your own recipe?”

“No. From Marcella Hazan.”

Lawrence, of course, tosses in the first conversational Molotov cocktail. “That another girlfriend?”

Gillian chokes on wine in such an elaborate fashion that it distracts Flora from endlessly twirling—and eventually wearing— the spaghetti on her plate.

As his daughter violently coughs and wheezes into a napkin, Alan shakes his head. “Always eats and drinks like a convict, she does. Gulping down everything.”

“Marcella Hazan was a food writer,” Caroline replies patiently to her idiot son. “And she’s dead.”

“Was she a lesbian?” Lawrence drawls mischievously.

Celia sighs. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Spastic fit over and done, Gillian wags a finger at her wineglass. “That’s, um, really, really powerful stuff, Caz.”

“Then maybe you should stop for the night,” Alan says.

Gillian gives him a disingenuous, snarling smile. “Well, old man,” she begins slowly, “maybe you should—”

“—have dessert!” Caroline interjects as Gillian glares at her, boldly telegraphing a reproach for preventing her from telling her father to fuck off.

Exhausted from an afternoon of father-daughter verbal sniping, Celia jumps in rather desperately: “What is for dessert?”

Beaming proudly, Greg pats his belly to indicate that a culinary delight is headed to the table: “Strawberry banana tofu ice cream.”

The family scatters to the wind: Lawrence scuttles upstairs, Celia murmurs something about biscuits at home that need eating before they go stale and drags her grumbling husband away lest he take up verbal fisticuffs with his surly daughter again, and Greg engages Flora in a game called “A Night at the Races,” where he and Flora run up and down the hallway in a very obvious attempt to tire her out. Briefly Gillian joins in the race until she is reprimanded for running with wine, and then disappears into the living room.

All this happens as Caroline cleans up. Afterward she relieves Greg of parental duty and gets Flora in the bathtub, where she is copiously splashed and anointed with suds in the process. Prelude to bedtime includes more running around upstairs, then the reading of a tale involving pandas playing badminton—the lesson implicit in the story involves good sportsmanship but Caroline’s takeaway is that maybe pandas shouldn’t be playing badminton to begin with. At the end of the tale Flora is still awake and demands more panda adventures. So Caroline improvises a story of a panda chemist who creates a magic potion that turns humans into pandas. As she rattles off ingredients for the imaginary formula—lewisite, calcite, phosgene oxime, titanium, feta cheese, pseudoephedrine, monkey brains, eucalyptus oil, banana farts—Flora falls asleep to the litany and Caroline dismally realizes that all her children are bored silly by her beloved chemistry.

Downstairs she finds Gillian alone, sunk into the couch, shoes kicked off, bare feet on the coffee table and terribly close to a glass of wine. Despite the relaxed pose her restless hands wrestle in the soft, inviting arena of her lap. She stares up at the small, white lights that limn the dimensions of the room and form an unimaginative rectangular constellation around them. Gillian likes starwatching, can rattle off useless facts about the planets, and Caroline swears to God that she heard Gillian say Cassiopeia the other day when they made love—a faint, ardent susurration on her skin. Caroline knows little about stars except that they collapse and break apart and their remnants hold court in the glimmering corridor of a nebula. Perhaps that’s it, Caroline thinks. There is no fixing or handling Gillian—who looks up at her now and smiles. There is nothing to do but gather together her bright broken pieces and keep them safe.

“This is nice,” Gillian says. “With the lights.”

The glow of the room brings her back to the Eddie confession, the two of them sitting on the sofa in Gillian’s home in front of the fire. In the years since they have sat together in silences ranging widely from the amiable to the charged, and so much has happened since that evening: Deaths and births and marriages and divorces and in the midst of it all is this woman whose presence in her life, whose volatility she cannot contain or really even fathom, remains fixed and constant.

Tiredness kicks in, the flow of lust runs sluggish in her veins. That and Gillian looks fairly knackered as well, so she doesn’t have to worry about another barely controlled makeout session. But before attempting any gesture that could be viewed as more than sisterly affection by even the most objective bystander, she glances around. “Where’s Greg?”

Gillian stifles a yawn. “Went out, he asked me to tell you. Meeting his lady friend for a drink.” She snorts and says the woman’s name in a wispy falsetto: “Brigitte.”

Sputtering a laugh, Caroline dives into the couch next to her. “Oh God. He told you about her.”

“Yep. Know everything about her now. Like, for example, she got perfect A levels—”

Caroline snorts derisively. “So did I.”

“’Course you did. I know what kind of wine she likes—”

“What?”

“Fucking chardonnay, Caz.”

“Is that different from regular chardonnay?”

Gillian grins and leans into her. She takes Caroline’s hand in her own, her thumb presses into the fleshy swale of Caroline’s palm, massaging a sweet pressure point that makes Caroline sag contentedly into overstuffed cushions. “Get this, she cried at the end of Titanic. I mean, I cried at the end of Titanic but only because I’d just wasted three hours of my bloody life watching it.”

“I fell asleep during Titanic,” Caroline confesses.

“Smartest decision of your life.”

While Caroline is content to have Gillian’s head resting against her shoulder and her hand massaged and caressed ad infinitum—as such they sit in silence for several long, exquisite minutes—she wonders if the subject of the day in divorce court should be raised. She hadn’t even known about the event until Alan mentioned it yesterday. Gillian has so many layers of unpredictability that sometimes in comparison other people appear almost logical, forthright, and uncomplicated. Of course, the limitations of her emotional intelligence force comparison with Kate—wondering once again if Kate had untold contradictions and complexities of character, or if Caroline was simply too selfish and self-involved to put forth a real effort of discovery. Think we all know the answer to that, twat, she tells herself. If Kate were alive, would she still be blundering through existence with a wife who was largely unknown to her? Has Gillian, through her own desperate needs, somehow inadvertently brought out powers of perception in Caroline that were otherwise dormant?

Sod it, she thinks, and asks cautiously: “Was it bad? Today?”

Gillian groans and, to Caroline’s disappointment, releases her hand and sits up—rather, hunches and hovers nervously over the coffee table. “Same as it ever is. My brilliant history of disappointing everyone. See it on everyone’s face. My dad. Robbie. Even your mum.” She reaches for the wine, stares into the glass. “Maybe someday you’ll look at me like that.” She gulps down the last of it and before Caroline can vigorously deny the claim, plows on. “Let’s begin with the old man, shall we? He cares what people think, my dad does. Remember when Gary gave that interview and ‘outed’ him, so to speak? Well, he’s acting like this is on the same level, it being on ‘public record’ that I’m an adulterer. Like who gives a shit anymore about things like that. Anyone who knows me knows it’s my fault anyway, right? Yeah, I know, you’re gonna say not my fault, shouldn’t have married Robbie, should have embraced a life of lesbianism—”

“I’d never say that,” Caroline replies.

Gillian squints at her accusingly. “Probably thinking it.”

“I think that about every woman, really.”

This, at least, makes Gillian grin for a moment. “But the thing is, I did marry him, I did cheat on him—I did.” She repeats it softly: “I did. And it’s just one more thing I’ve done wrong in a very f-fucking long list and every time he looks at me, I see him ticking off things in that mental list”—her index finger spasms and marks off items in imaginary list written on air—“all the things he knows I’ve done, all the things he suspects, and, Christ, it’s all m-messed up, really messed up—you know why?”

“Why?”

Gillian stares at her with the same sneering incredulousness that, most likely, greeted Robbie when he made the following suggestion: “After all this shit we talked about with the bleeding lawyers today, as I’m leaving he waylays me and says he still wants to get back together. Work it out. He looks at me as if everything about me is wrong, that I am the source of all his misery, and he still wants me. It completely does my head in. Is that what love is supposed to be?” She shakes her head, burrows back into the sofa. “He’s wanted to marry me since he was sixteen—he, he said that to me once. His way of proposing.”

“He’s not sixteen anymore,” Caroline replies. “And neither are you.” She thinks of Robbie—who never set foot outside of the country until his honeymoon, always wears the same shirt-and-tie combo to holiday gatherings, who still owns a Yorkshire rugby team blanket that he bought some thirty-five years ago and always insisted using it as a throw on the marital bed and then got quite cross with Gillian when she used it as bedding for an arthritic old sheep dog.

“Even when I was sixteen, I—Jesus, I didn’t want to marry anyone. I mean, I didn’t know who I was. Couldn’t find my arse with both hands. Still can’t.”

“It’s not love on his part,” Caroline says as she absently tucks hair around Gillian’s ear. “It’s an inability to grow up, move on, let go. He thinks he has some special claim on you, because he was your first—”

Gillian stretches and sits up, moving out of Caroline’s grasp. “He wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t he?” Admittedly Caroline is unsure of details; trying to establish some sort of shagging timeline with regard to Gillian’s romantic past has always seemed a fool’s quest, or at the very least an effort warranting a first-class historian possessing patience and superior spreadsheet skills beyond her own modest capabilities.

“I mean—he, he was the first person I had it off with, but he wasn’t the first person I loved.”

“Eddie, then,” Caroline says. Which makes sense. Gillian has never said as much explicitly, but in her stories about Eddie his magnetism, charm, and good looks were easily envisioned and Caroline vividly imagines the façade of his rough, alluring beauty, as if he were some kind of modern Dorian Gray, that overlaid the monstrous, festering piece of shit that he actually was.

Poised attentively on the couch, Gillian tucks her hands under her thighs. It’s a new trick, Caroline has noticed, a move to prevent her from biting her fingernails. Instead she ends up gnawing her lower lip. “No.”

Caroline pauses. “Oh.” She hopes that she has struck the right note of calm interest and not condescending, snotty-bitch surprise.

“You want to ask, I know.”

“You’ve no obligation to tell me anything,” Caroline says firmly, then continues in a slower, gentler tone: “I can guess, based on things you’ve told me before.”

Gillian says nothing, only frowns and looks away.

“It was one of those women? From Hebden Bridge?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never talked much about them. Or—her.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“You were very young.”

This statement of fact, framed however cautiously, lingers as an accusation and puts Gillian on the defensive. Which Caroline did not mean to do, but there was no other way of putting it out there. She rolls her shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You were fourteen.”

“Fifteen,” Gillian corrects absently. She stills her restless hands, her fingers interlock and lace together tightly over her knee and remind Caroline of a puzzle she had as a child, she thinks it was called a bamboozler, where the challenge is careful dismantling followed by skillful rebuilding. Gillian looks up again at the orderly constellation of white lights that bathe them in a Milky Way of memories. It takes 25,000 light years to travel to the Milky Way, a journey that would be an epic mind-fuck of time’s perpetual collision: future, present, past. What time is it in the Milky Way? Caroline wonders. With increasing distance the past entices, always, and Gillian is no more immune to it than Robbie or anyone else.

“You’re thinking it was wrong,” Gillian says. “That she hurt me, took advantage of me. Maybe that’s all true. Yeah, I guess, I guess maybe it is. But you don’t understand. You don’t know how it felt—how I felt. It was like, like a new world for me and I was the bloody center of it, she made me feel that and—I really, really believed it, all of it.” She pauses. “Including the part where she said she loved me.”

With this crucial piece of the Gillian Greenwood puzzle in place, a design looms large, a pattern discerns itself. Enough so that Caroline requires for the moment no further details, no more components. Even though Gillian adds softly, “And I loved her.”

CHAPTER SOUNDTRACK:

Ella Fitzgerald, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” Cigarettes After Sex, “Apocalypse” The National, “Empire Line” BONUS NONSENSE! Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce recipe.

#last tango in tomato sauce #ltih #Caroline x Gillian

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theguardianangel-fanfiction · 7 years ago

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Once Bitten, Twice Dead

Summary: It’s been two years since the beginning, and only five days since Clementine met them. But somehow, things got so much worse, and Carver was just the beginning. [Season 2 AU/canon divergent. New situations, characters, etc.] Chapter 11: Massacre. Author’s Note: I will be posting 1 chapter a day on Tumblr. Each chapter is already posted on AO3 and Fanfiction. I will resume posting on those 2 websites on October 1st, 2017. [Main Blog] [AO3] [FanFiction.Net]

She’d left over half of the bowl of oatmeal untouched. Despite how little she’d eaten, Clementine’s appetite had almost completely disappeared. One part of her didn’t want to eat this group’s food, even if it was being offered to her. But she didn’t like to waste things - she never could be sure when her next meal was, even if Pete was just talking about dinner.

“If you’re done now, we can just save that for later.” said Luke suddenly. Clementine looked up at him and Pete, then down at her bowl. “If y’want, you can finish it off tomorrow. Or someone else’ll eat it. It’s oatmeal – that stuff lasts a long time.”

But not long enough, Clementine thought. She forced herself to choke down another spoonful of the sticky oats; any joy she’d found in the oatmeal before was completely lost, but she didn’t care for the idea of saving it for the next day instead – and Clementine knew already that a cabin with a group this size had to have a dwindling food supply… she didn’t want to seem wasteful, or ungrateful.

Clementine felt Luke’s gaze linger on her for a moment before he and Pete left her alone in the kitchen. She wondered briefly if he had picked up on the discomfort, or if they simply had something else to do. Her own gaze snapped back up from the bowl when she heard the door open again. In the doorway stood Rebecca, who looked just as annoyed as she looked uncomfortable.

A dark expression crossed Rebecca’s face when she said, “You’re still here.” It wasn’t a question. She made her way to the sink in the kitchen, looking away from Clementine, who simply returned her question with a nod.

“Don’t get comfortable.” the woman continued, leaning over the sink to wash her hands.

“I never do.” Clementine answered, looking up. She shrugged and set her spoon down in the bowl. She knew what Rebecca was insinuating, and Carlos’ words about the woman’s distrust came back to her quickly. “I just needed help, that’s all.”

Looking up from the sink, Rebecca raised an eyebrow. Her eyes quickly narrowed as she let an audible ‘hmm’. “I don’t know who you are, but you got what you came here for,” she snapped suddenly. A hand went to her hip. “Now go.”

Rebecca left quickly, before any response could be said.

Clementine wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. She knew well what Rebecca was afraid of, even if she didn’t know who she was afraid of. But, Clementine wondered, would it kill her to be a tad more civil?

Her thoughts returned to past experiences; maybe, on the other hand, it was better this way. At least Rebecca seemed like the kind of person to stab someone while facing them – not in the back. Clenching her teeth slightly, Clementine tried to will herself to put those thoughts in the back of her mind; this group fed her, cared for a wound – all things they didn’t have to do. So what if Rebecca didn’t trust her? Pete did. Luke did. Even Nick did.

One night, Clementine told herself. I’ll stay for one night.

Getting to sleep was difficult. Though Luke and Pete were outside on watch, Alvin seemed to have been stationed inside. She didn’t ask why, nor did she care to. But what did bother her was that from her place curled up on the couch, could hear every slight movement the man made, and every little noise put her on her guard. The man simply gave her a sympathetic, guilty look whenever he noticed her shifting.

Clementine didn’t find a problem in the light, despite the fact that a few candles – positioned away from the windows, at Pete’s request – still flickered. The light was no problem at all, in actuality. Even Alvin’s presence wasn’t as big of a distraction as the room was. She couldn’t help scanning the room periodically, her eyes snapping open and darting to each of the doors.

Eventually, an unrestful, fitful sleep took her. Only a short time passed before she crashed out of it; pain tore through her chest like a bullet as she took several shallow breaths of the cold air. Hands trembling, Clementine latched onto the fabric on the couch as she attempted to sit up. She ran her hand over her ribs lightly and flinched at the ache.

“You alright?”

Alvin’s voice made her jump; she had forgotten he was still there. She nodded slowly and wordlessly as she looked around the room with caution. Alvin avoided her gaze, a confused look on his face, as he told her flat out where the restroom was. Clementine simply muttered a thanks to him as she held onto the right side of her ribs, the memories of waking up on the riverbank flooding back to her.

The restroom was off to the side of the front door and left of the kitchen door. She could hear Luke and Pete’s voices corresponding back and forth, and while she couldn’t make out their words, she could easily make out their serious tones.

The restroom was small. Only a toilet, a sink, and a mirror filled the tight room, and the brown and yellow walls held hunting paraphernalia. A thick, green candle sat on the side of the white and brown sink, lighting the room up enough to see and casting large, disproportionate shadows along the walls. That’s good, Clementine thought to herself. It was enough light to see.

Clementine knew that the bite from Sam had taken up most of her thoughts about her own physical wellbeing – so much so that her skinned knees and aching ribs from the night before had taken a backseat. Though her stitched up wound stung and ached, it seemed like nothing compared to burning pain in her chest. She pulled her shirt up just enough to expose the skin around her ribs, and watched purple and red bruising come into view.

There were three bruises; two of them were smaller, with one across her stomach, and the other on the left side of her ribs. The third was the largest, taking up space on the right side of her ribs and trailing its way down her stomach.

Clementine repressed the urge to poke the bruises, already in enough pain. She scowled at her reflection and allowed her shirt to cover the bruises again, then looked away from the mirror. A sigh left her as she quietly made her way back to the sitting room and to the couch.

The path to the river was quiet. So far, Clementine hadn’t even so much as seen a walker. Even so, Pete still held his rifle protectively as they waited several feet away from the tree Nick was currently situated behind.

“Clementine,” Pete nodded in the direction of the path, and set off. Clementine followed him, running her right hand against the bandages wrapped around her arm. Once they were a fair few feet away from Nick and the tree, Pete continued. “How’re you holding up? I could hear Rebecca givin’ you a hard time last night… I’m surprised she didn’t go further. Once she gets goin’, there’s no bringin’ ‘er back.”

Clementine trailed behind Pete cautiously and asked, “I know she doesn’t trust me, but what’s her problem?”

Pete looked back over his shoulder with a small huff. “Well, she’s got a lot on her mind lately.” He looked forward, almost uncomfortably so, and scanned the tree line. “Bringin’ a baby into a world like this…”

Clementine pushed back the thoughts about Christa and her baby, and instead focused on keeping up with Pete. She ran forward in order to keep up with him, instead choosing to wonder about how far they would get before Nick caught up with them, among other things.

“How… far are the fish traps?”

“It ain’t much further.” Pete replied, looking down at her.

The sudden movement of him lowering his rifle caught Clementine’s attention. She moved her own attention down to it, thinking back to her own gun that she hadn’t seen since the day before. The old pistol would have looked pitiful next to Pete’s rifle, but she couldn’t complain; it had kept her alive to this point, after all.

Pete looked over to Clementine, seeming to notice her lingering gaze. “Anyone ever teach you how to shoot?” Before she could answer, he hastily added, “By that, I mean ‘taught properly’.” His grip tightened around the rifle and he grimaced. “Any idiot with a finger can shoot.”

“My friend Lee taught me.”

The two stopped for a moment at what looked to be an old, unused electric fence. There was space between two posts, where only one of the three wires remained. Carefully, Pete stepped over the bottom wire, shifting himself between the two posts. Clementine copied the movement.

“That’s good,” Pete replied with a small smile. “It’s important nowadays.” He paused for a minute, scanning the trees again. “Nick was about your age the first time I took him huntin’.” Pete stopped in his tracks as he recounted the story, gesturing to the path in front of him. “Saw this beautiful thirteen-point buck just… standin’ there on the ridgeline.”

Pete suddenly aimed, taking her finger away from the trigger, and exclaimed, “The boy takes the rifle, well, he… lines up the shot just like I taught him, ‘n…” He trailed off for a moment and lowered the rifle, then grimaced. “And then I hear him start whinin’. He turns to me and he says, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t shoot it, Uncle Pete… please don’t make me shoot it.’”

Clementine could imagine it quite easily. It seemed to be exactly something Nick would say. She said nothing in response, instead allowing Pete to finish his story.

But the next line didn’t come. Instead, the next thing she heard was an out of breath voice yelling, “Hey!” Nick made his way through the fence posts and towards them, rifle in hand, looking extremely unamused.

”Why didn’t you wait?” he demanded as an irritable look filled his features.

Pete raised an eyebrow, looking amused. “You want us standin’ around while you piss on a tree? You know where the river is, boy.” He turned back to Clementine, shrugging. “Anyway, so I grabbed the gun outta his hand before the buck runs off when – BANG! The gun fires. Boy nearly gut-shot me! And, of course, the buck gets away –”

“What’re you goin’ and tellin’ her this shit for?”

Pete stopped in his tracks, turning, and shot back, “’cause you nearly blew her face off yesterday. It seems relevant.” He sighed. “I’m tryin’ to let her know it ain’t nothin’ personal with you.”

“He apologized –”

“Why’re you always givin’ me a hard time?”

“’cause you’re always givin’ everyone else a hard time!”

“I apologized to her already! She accepted!”

“Okay, well I didn’t know that.” Pete responded in a softer tone than before.

Feeling uncomfortable between the two, Clementine repeated what she said before to confirm this. “It’s fine! He apologized.” She gave Nick a small smile that he didn’t return or seem to notice.

Instead, he shook his head, glaring daggers at Pete. “You’re always trying to embarrass me!”

“You’re doing a good enough job of that on your own!”

Nick didn’t respond. He pushed past Pete and began along down the path. Pete turned, knitting his eyebrows together, and asked, “Leavin’ us again?”

“I know where the fuckin’ river is.”

Pete didn’t respond, though a mournful expression crossed his features. He didn’t look at Clementine as he said, “I found that buck later that season. Shot it right in the neck.” Clementine was only half-listening at this point as she watched Nick disappear in the distance. “I brought it to my sister’s, thinkin’ she’d wanna freeze some of the meat – Nick didn’t speak to me for weeks. You know, sometimes, you gotta play a role – even if it means people y’love hate you for it.”

Clementine took her gaze away from the direction Nick set off to. Pete looked away, scratching at the back of his head.

“You should tell him that, then.”

Pete was silent, not looking the girl in the face.

Nick’s voice echoed down the path. “UNCLE PETE!”

Without a word, Pete looked down the path like a deer in the headlights, then took off in Nick’s direction. Every possibility ran through Clementine’s mind as she followed him as quickly as she could.

The trees broke into a clearing. Nick stood stock still, frozen, at the edge. His back faced them.

“Nick?”

And then they saw just what Nick was facing. Clementine stopped in her tracks; a sick, panicked feeling filled her chest and stomach as she took in her surroundings. Pete was the only one who seemed to be able to get anything out.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

#twdg #the walking dead game #twdg fanfiction #obtd fanfiction #chapter 11: massacre

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nighttimelights-prompted · 8 years ago

Note

What would you say the big 4 Au skelebros Love languages are?

(i got a sudden spike in messages after that last post, thank you all so much! i love to hear what you think about my responses to these prompts, be it in asks, replies, or simply talking in the tags. i quite liked this one and could squeeze it in time-wise amongst the longer ones i’ve got going, so here’s something shorter on this excellent imagine.)

(more on the love languages here, if you’re interested~. note too that these are just my headcanons for their primary love languages - i imagine most/all of them have close seconds that mean a lot to them as well.)

UT Sans: Acts of Service

“For these people, actions speak louder than words.“

After all he knows/has seen of Resets and related time shenanigans, with the way he guides/follows Frisk through the Underground, with the way he looks after his own brother, Acts of Service is absolutely the best fit for classic Sans. The rest means a lot to him as well, but he’s most inclined to and most affected by actions that show just how much you care about him. Not showy ones, by any means - even little things like taking the time to know his brother better and indulging him in a cookoff, or grabbing him his favorite drink before you come over, or washing his spare hoodie he left at your place with your own laundry because you remembered him saying how much he likes the smell of your detergent mixed with that special thing you always smelled of.

UT Papyrus: Quality Time

“This language is all about giving the other person your undivided attention.“

He’s got so many ideas and interests and passions, and he just wants to be able to share them with you. You don’t necessarily have to agree with all of them, but just show your own interest and participate in them with him as you’re able to. He shows his love the best for you the same way, actively making time for you in his absurdly energetic schedule, keeping in touch even when you’re apart to check in on your day, and wanting to share in the little things he loves with you, even if it’s just to catch up on the latest MTT vlogs with you in his arms, or vice versa if you’d like an enormous skeleton to be your little spoon.

UF Sans (aka Red): Acts of Service

“For these people, actions speak louder than words.“

Underfell lives by the darker twist on what could happen when you shove an entire people indefinitely underground with dwindling resources and high tension after a brutal war. Kill or be killed, or at least certainly appear willing and able enough to do so. Words are more or less empty air, easily manipulated - and even when they get to the Surface, that’s a feeling that’s hard to shake with all the vague political promises. So showing him that he matters to you is what’s most valued for him, just as he’ll do little and big things alike to show he cares about you (even going with you to visit those old friends you feel obligated to see that he doesn’t trust one inch, or perhaps taking care of some shady business behind the scenes in a way you may never know of - because he wouldn’t feel the need to tell you, he’d just do it because it would take care of you). So taking care of the trash after waking up one morning before Edge could see he’d forgotten it, or sneaking Edge recipe tips casually by sharing on social media, or simply bringing him some coffee and passing him tools as he works on his latest project - these things mean the world to him.

UF Papyrus (aka Edge): Acts of Service

“For these people, actions speak louder than words.“

For similar reasons to Red regarding the universe they live in, Acts of Service is also the primary love language for Edge. He loves praise, of course, don’t get me (or him) wrong - but when it comes to someone he truly cares about, actions will be the biggest tell for him. The same way he takes on an excess of obvious responsibility and gains renown for both the pride and ability it demonstrates and the safety it affords not only him but Red as well, he’ll work just as hard for your sake without ever vocalizing his ongoing efforts and the reasons behind them. He’ll show up, unannounced, at your place, simply to cook you a meal and appraise the chosen outfit for that Big Thing you have to do. So if you take care of him in turn, showing him more than anything perhaps in the way you set his boots to dry one rainy night when he comes home from a security detail in the early hours of the morning and simply passes out (not that he’d ever admit to overlooking that detail), or in the way you clean up your living area when he comes over because you know the order makes him feel more at ease, or in the way you start teaching yourself how to cook the kinds of savory dishes he prefers… well, that will go over extremely well and be appreciated by him.

US Sans (aka Blue): Words of Affirmation

This language uses words to affirm other people.

Blue’s a little trickier, I’ll admit. He’s incredibly observant, and can pick up on most ways people show their care, and is willing to adapt in a lot of ways himself. In the end, though, I feel that Words of Affirmation just barely wins out in preference. Because he’s so observant, outspoken, and capable, sometimes it’s easy to miss the way that he actively seeks to reaffirm other people in positive ways, and the ways that he, at least internally, hopes to be affirmed. Verbal recognition of his skills and efforts go so incredibly far with Blue. Taking the time to talk through your problems with him affirms his importance in your life to him and your trust in him, and listening and talking through his own troubles - and joys, and more - with him does the same. He’ll happily spend hours talking into the night with you, or meet up over coffee just to share your latest endeavors and experiences.

US Papyrus (aka Stretch): Physical Touch

“To this person, nothing speaks more deeply than appropriate touch.“

Permanence is something Stretch deeply struggles with, his apathy through and after the time shenanigans alongside his chronic anxiety (which he hides well through practice, humor, and an easygoing approach to most people and situations). He’s so tired, though, so just being near someone shows his care, love, and trust - so even if he’s napping (truly napping, not just faking with his eyes closed), he’s near you, and the amount of trust it takes for him to do that around you is staggering by his count - and the same in reverse. Being able to put his arm around you when you’re out, offering a fist bump as a small measure of affirmed support… other small touches to reassure him of your presence, hugs (if you’re really close) when you see him, even just casually sitting on the couch, side-by-side, these little actions show him how much you care… and how much he cares about you.

SF Sans (aka Spike): Physical Touch

“To this person, nothing speaks more deeply than appropriate touch.“

While Spike shares this value with Stretch, it’s for different reasons and under different approaches. Very few people are close in the Swapfell universe, and each person tends to have a nearly-measured value in another’s life. Things relax a little once they make it to the surface, but the same remains true in that outside of generally being on the side of ‘monster’s rights to exist’, monsters only trust and truly value a chosen few. So for Spike, if you’re among those, then that means that him choosing to be in the same room when he doesn’t necessarily have to be (or have some other desired goal or desire in that room) is a clear show of caring. He’ll read or be jotting down notes in the same room as others he cares about, and even if he doesn’t speak to them for hours, he’s very actively showing his care. For those he’s closest with, touch itself is valued to a high level. His few close friends he will touch their shoulder for reassurance, clasp their hand in understanding or even support, or sit side-by-side with them while working out a problem. Behind closed doors and in private, he values hugging as well, adoring when his s/o hugs/kisses him in greeting or goodbye, and spends/enjoys spending a lot of mutual time casually touching his s/o, sitting next to them while working, appreciating when they come behind him and wrap their arms around him in a silent, supportive embrace as he’s sorting through something particularly convoluted. His brother, too, despite his harsh words, receives small touches (hand on the shoulder, a squeeze of the hand, even a hug on occasion) to demonstrate how much Spike cares. And too, of course, his s/o will be able to appreciate (and ideally for Spike, return) a significant amount of intimacy of the decidedly NSFW kind.

As I’ve said previously, his relationship isn’t for the faint of heart, but he does not put up airs to deceive otherwise in the beginning. And again, should you be able and willing to match him wit for wit and will for will in a longlasting and positive way, he will prove to you that it is not a regrettable choice.

SF Papyrus (aka ‘Rus/Russ): Quality Time

“This language is all about giving the other person your undivided attention.“

Intriguingly, Russ is the only one to match UT Papyrus in that his strongest love language is that of quality time. For similar reasons to Underfell of the harsh nature of his home universe, he’s not one to put his greatest stock in words- but neither is he inclined or expecting actions as proof. Instead, with how little he takes for granted (his own life and happiness included), Russ values time spent together the most. This is why he’ll spend time with his brother so frequently even though they don’t always see eye to eye or enjoy all the same activities, because for him he’s expressing his deep care for his brother by spending his time with him regardless. He’s not vocal about this being his love language at all, however - so if you’re his s/o, hopefully you pick up on or naturally match this value of his, because he’ll perceive how much you care for him largely through that aspect of quality time. It’s not a demand for all your time, either, by any means. But spending quiet and busy moments alike with him, listening to him when he decides to share something, taking part in his hobbies (or perhaps more frequently, offering to include him in yours as can apply - especially if you’re able to twist it in a way that better incorporates or acknowledges him), and making the time to spend time alone together… you might as well have just handed him the stars themselves.

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aelysalthea · 8 years ago

Text

Picture Perfect People

Summary: Voltron. A place to seek companionship. Support. The consolation of like-minded people. That was what it was built for. It was what those who signed up for a membership sought. For the so-named paladins of Voltron, it is just that.

Sometimes, the people we need aren't so easily found. Sometimes we need to find them for ourselves and even then we don't realise they're found until everything just... clicks. For a patchwork of sorry people, the friendship of faceless figures was exactly what they needed.

Rating: T

Tags: AU - Modern Setting, Angst, Mutual Support, Overcoming Trials, Wholesomeness, Online Friendships, Bantering

Author’s Note: Hi everyone! I hope you like the new fic I’ve started posting (a little while ago). I’d like to think it’s just a little bit different but I’ll leave it up to you to decide. Anyway, if you’d like to check it out, you can take a look here. Posting takes place at least once a week. Thank you for your time!

Chapter 1: People

01/09 – 07.01 am

PrincessOfAltea: Would anyone like to talk?

PrincessOfAltea: If I talked, would someone listen?

PrincessOfAltea: I don't mind what we talk about. It can be anything you'd like.

PrincessOfAltea: I just want to talk.

PrincessOfAltea: To someone.

PrincessOfAltea: Please.

PrincessOfAltea: I don't like being alone.

1/09 – 03.59pm

PrincessOfAltea: Anyone?

There was no sound beyond the door when he pressed his ear to the wood. He knew there were those who had risen from their beds, but… at that moment, in the hallway there was no one.

Releasing a silent breath, Keith stepped back from the door. Plucking his red and white jacket from the floor, he shrugged the familiar weight onto his shoulders; it was an almost comforting weight despite the relative warmth of the morning. He slipped silently through the door.

No one was in sight, either. With slow steps, Keith crept down the hallway, easing with silent tread down the stairs. It was always better to creep, to not be noticed. If he flew beneath the radar, then there was less chance of a confrontation. Less chance to be poked and prodded. To be seen.

It was never a good idea to be seen. Not by anybody. Not of Keith could help it.

Unfortunately, the room afforded to him was at the far end of the house. The furthest end, as far from the front door as could be. He didn't begrudge it, because any room was good enough. And it was nice. Small, contained. It had a bed, a nightstand, a wardrobe with a sliding door. Even a desk of sorts, though the chair that sat at it was too high to properly tuck in.

Keith liked that it was isolated. He had grown to prefer being alone.

Tiptoeing down to the bottom of the steps, Keith crept on silent feet towards the front door. If he glanced over his shoulder, he would be able to see into kitchen. He would see the dining table where Olly sat, munching through a heaped bowl of Cap'n Crunch as he did for every breakfast. He would see Clyde sitting across from him, tearing the crust off his toast as though he was a child with pickiness issues. He'd maybe even see Sara where she bustled around the kitchen getting the two boys' lunches. Keith's too, maybe, but he wouldn't take it. He would never take it.

Slipping into his boots, Keith considered before sparing a moment to crouch and tie his laces. He could hear the sound of conversation echoing from the kitchen and into the hallway but he didn't listen to their words. He didn't want to listen. They would be talking about school, about Clyde's part-time job and Olly's sports training that afternoon. It was Monday so it would be football, but it changed every day. Keith didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't so much that he disliked talking but just that he simply… wouldn't.

It had been the wrong choice. A bad decision. He shouldn't have paused, shouldn't have crouched to properly tie his boots. Keith should have known it was a bad idea, but he'd grown complacent over the past weeks with little incident. Avoid and evade, act only when necessary. That was the lore he lived by. Why had he chosen to disregard it?

But Peter, Sara's husband, appeared at the head of the stairs, and though his head was bowed over a tablet, the wrinkles on his brow more pronounced in a frown and eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses, he noticed Keith almost immediately. Peter was a kind man, and as it was he met Keith's frozen gaze with an attempt at a warm smile and a nod of greeting. Nothing in his countenance would suggest that Keith hadn't seen him in person in days, let alone talked to him.

"Good morning, Keith. How are you today?"

At the sounds of his words, there was a pause of the conversation in the kitchen. Silenced briefly ensued, and then there was a slight clatter as Sara's voice sounded in exclamation, "Keith? Keith, are you there? Are you awake? Would – would you like some breakfast?"

Keith reflexively glanced towards the kitchen, his eyes the only thing he could move. He saw Sara skirt the table in a bustle of haste to plant herself in the kitchen doorway and adopt an overly-bright smile of greeting, just like her husband. But more than that, over her shoulder Keith saw Clyde. He saw Olly. He saw the older boy pause in picking apart his toast and brow lower in a frown, saw Olly similarly pause with spoon half-raised to his mouth, glance towards Clyde and immediately adopt an identical frown.

Then Keith was gone. With barely a murmur of excuse to Sara's openly hopeful expression, a glance towards Peter, he abandoned the rest of his laces and was out the door. The slam of heavy wood, the click of a lock snapping shut behind him, was resounding and oddly freeing.

Avoid and evade. Confront only when necessary. That was the only way it could be. It was the only way that was safe. Keep his lips closed and interact only when he… needed to?

Red has joined the chatroom.

"Open! I'm open, you – Oh, look at that. We can't rely on your common sense at all, Spaniel."

The so name Spaniel – Sam by birth, but Lance thought he quite resembled a dog, especially when he pouted like that – turned towards him and planted his hands on his hips. "Like you could do any better, Lance."

Lance grinned as he and his makeshift team jogged backwards to the halfway line, Martin dribbling the ball between his feet. "I reckon I could. They don't call me 'The Tailor' for nothing. It's in deference to my weaving abilities."

"I think you're a crock of shit," Martin said from his side, though he and most of the rest of Lance's teammates were laughing good-naturedly. "I've never heard anyone call you that."

"Yeah, well, that's just because no one says it out loud," Lance replied, turning his grin upon him. Then he clapped his hands together and bellowed a resounding, "Alright, let's play some ball already! While we're still young!"

Laughter and enthusiasm met his words as their backyard soccer game flew into action once more. They weren't quite two full teams, but it was enough for a good, solid game with two actual goalies this time. Far better than last week with their minimal numbers. They'd had less then, and odd numbers at that.

Martin kicked off with a firm boot of his foot, sending the ball soaring towards Lance. Lance caught it with his own foot, turned in a defensive circle to defend it from his opponent's attack, and, with a flick out of the way, was dribbling at a run up the field. A pass to Andy, to Spaniel, back to Andy again, and Andy sent it to Lance.

Lance wasn't called the Tailor for no reason, even if it was really only himself who used that nickname. He wove around his opponents. He dodged aside from an attack with a spring of dextrous footwork. He shot and he scored.

Lance's team cried in an enthusiastic outburst of triumph as though they'd just won nationals. Their opponents, good-natured as they were, didn't begrudge them their glory. They never did. It was all in good grace that they played, all for the fun of it. They played because none could play any other way. Just like Lance, they'd missed their chance to be something greater, something bigger.

The opposing team had just scored another goal to the mixed cries of congratulations and light-hearted moans of regret from Lance's team when he saw his little sister arrive. Immediately, Lance felt his smile die on his face and he slowed in step returning towards the halfway line.

Spaniel, at his side and far from persistently indignant for the use of his nickname, slowed alongside him. He noticed Lance's expression almost immediately and raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

Lance only shook his head, turned and jogged towards the side of the field. The soccer field itself was barely even half-sized, and ringed by trees alongside a children's playground. It was hardly ideal, but they would use what they could get. Sometimes, however, Lance wished that it wasn't barely a five minute walk from his home. Just a little distance would be nice.

Mika was bouncing on her toes where she stood, waiting for his arrival with dutiful respect alongside rather than upon the field. Lance loved his little sister, even as incessantly flooded with energy as she was, and she reminded him of himself in a lot of ways. That day, however, he couldn't have wanted to see her less.

Even so, Lance still adopted a smile as he drew alongside her. "Hey, Mika. What's up?"

Mika knew he knew, even though he asked. Lance could see it in the tentative smile she adopted that was a sure sight smaller than that she usually wore. She shifted from foot to foot. "Papá says he needs you at the shop if you could."

Lance found himself shifting on his own feet, struggling against the urge to groan. "Now?" He asked, almost pleadingly.

Mika ducked her head. "Yeah, now."

Lance spared a moment to close his eyes. The good humour he always felt when playing soccer was rapidly dwindling and he could feel the ball growing further and further away from him by the second. Loosing a slow exhalation, he nodded. "Alright. Yeah, alright. Give me twenty minutes. I've just got to duck home to get changed."

Mika nodded. "Okay. I'll tell Papá." Then she turned on her heel and all but fled from him, disappearing homeward at a bounding sprint.

Lance allowed himself a moment longer to close his eyes and regret. Then, to the sound of Andy's calling query, he adopted a bright smile and turned towards his teammates and opponents. "I'm really sorry, guys, but I've got to run."

A communal moan sounded, grumbles from both teams, though Lance knew that none begrudged him. "You heading to your dad's shop?" Spaniel called from where he stood, foot propped atop the soccer ball.

Lance nodded. "Yeah, sorry. I'll see you next week."

Calls of "See you" and "You'd better!" followed Lance as he turned away from the field. He didn't begrudge having to help his dad out. Not really. But sometimes… sometimes he did hope for something different. Sometimes he needed an outlet.

Still, he'd do what he had to. He always did.

Sharpshooter18 has joined the chatroom.

The sound of the door clicking open had Pidge squeaking and leaping from her seat. She felt the same flood of irrational guilt well within her as she did when passing a policeman in the streets; she'd done nothing wrong, but reprimand seemed a surety on the horizon.

Slipping from her room and firmly closing the door behind her – her room was hers and she didn't like anyone coming inside – she hastened to the door and peered out into the hallway of her apartment.

At the far end of the hall, her mom was shrugging out of her jacket, hanging it up with practiced precision on the hook waiting alongside the door. Pidge's mom was always perfectly dressed, always appeared neatly groomed even at the very end of the day; hair in a tidy bun, clothes perfectly pressed as though they'd just been steamed, heels clicking in precise steps. Pidge didn't think she could ever be like her mom. Not in a million years.

Did she want to be? Pidge didn't know. She was still trying to figure that part out.

Swallowing her discomfort, Pidge leaned a little further out the door. She cleared her voice slightly before speaking. "Hi, Mom. You're home early."

Her mom glanced towards her, pausing as she stepped out of her heels and onto stockinged feet. She offered Pidge a small, distracted smile. "Hello, Katie. Did you have a nice day at school?" And then, before Pidge could even reply. "Have you done your homework? I hope you've done your homework before you've started playing games."

Always the reprimand, Pidge thought to herself. Why yes, Mom, if I hadn't done my homework and instead whiled the afternoon playing RPGs, I would most certainly admit it to you. Instead of speaking her thoughts, Pidge simply nodded once more. "Yes, I'm finished."

"Good girl," her mom said before, without another word, she disappeared through the doorway halfway along the hall into the kitchen and living room.

Pidge found herself releasing a sigh of relief. What had she expected? Her mom hadn't truly snapped at her in frustration in… it must have been weeks now. Months? Pidge couldn't remember. She should have confidence in her mom, she really should. Besides, when she got angry, it was always within reason. It wasn't like she would –

"Katie!"

The call echoed from the living room and Pidge flinched. Swallowing tightly once more, she leaned further out of her door. "Yes, Mom?"

"Have you had someone over today?"

Why yes, Mom, I would certainly invite someone over – and a stranger at that – because I know just how much you love people coming into your spotless house. Because you know how riddled with friends my schooling experience is. Of course I'd have every single one of them over. "No, Mom. Why?"

"Whose shoes are these, then? They're not yours."

Pidge felt herself grow cold. Shoes… when had she…? Had she left them…? Struggling to keep her voice steady, Pidge replied with as much nonchalance as she could manage. "Oh, you mean in the lounge? Yes, they're mine."

"They're… yours?"

Please don't question it, please. Really, is it that weird? It's not that weird, is it? "I bought them the other day. I wanted to try something different."

There was a long pause in which Pidge thought her heart stopped and she hardly dared breathe. Was it so bad? Was it so terrible if her mom found out? Pidge didn't need to be logical and a government proclaimed 'exceptional student' to know that it wasn't. That it should be allowed. So why didn't it feel allowed?

"This is unusual for you," her mom finally said. The soft thumps of footsteps bespoke her approach through the living room and Pidge fought to school her expression before she appeared in the hallway once more. When she did, Pidge resolutely met her gaze rather than drawing it to the shoes hooked over her fingers. "But so long as it wasn't a wasted purchase. Make sure you keep your shoes beside the door in future, please."

And just like that, the potential for a storm passed. Pidge's mom dropped the shoes beside the door and, without another glance towards Pidge, disappeared once more.

Pidge sagged at the bannister, closing her eyes as she rested her head against the railing. She shouldn't be so worried. No, she shouldn't be so scared. And yet she was. Against all logic – because she didn't know how her mom would respond – she was starkly terrified. If her brother Matt were here, he would help. He would be able to reassure her.

But he wasn't. And riddled with a mixture of guilt, relief and self-loathing, Pidge all but crawled back into her bedroom. Her room was her sanctuary. Her place. She didn't have to hide anything there. She could be herself, with just her computers for company.

DiffWitch has entered the chatroom.

It was early evening by the time they got home, but that hardly mattered. Hunk was as bright and wide-awake as if he'd just gotten up barely hours before. Which, he would admit, he sort of had. Semi-nocturnal work hours did that to a person.

"I'll set up a better ramp," Hunk said as he and his mom trundled up the footpath along the main road. He turned her chair at their gate to sidle through the fence that skirted their squat little house. "It shouldn't be too hard seeing as there's only two steps, but it'll be better then having to shake you so much when we're on the move. I'm sorry the other one broke; I probably didn't reinforce it well enough. I'll make it better next time."

His mom didn't reply. She didn't turn to look at Hunk over her shoulder as he spoke, as he pushed her wheelchair towards the shallow steps before their front door. But Hunk didn't mind. He didn't need her acknowledgement.

"I bet I could rustle together a whole bunch of ramps, actually," he said, weaving around a piece of… something that he didn't want to think about that lay in the middle of their path. There was always junk thrown into their front lawn; Hunk's dad wasn't a popular person. Or he hadn't been. Despite his complete absence of nearly two years, Hunk was still forced to scrub graffiti from their front windows every so often, to say nothing of the rubbish that was lobbed onto their front lawn every other day.

Hunk ignored that, kept his tone bright as they wheeled the rest of the way up the footpath to the front door. "Larry from down at the shop said he'd be happy to give me some scrap metal and timber if I need it." Hunk turned his mother's chair around as he stopped at the steps before tugging her up after him with a grunt. "You know I," he paused at another grunt, "I think he likes you. He's always had a soft spot for our family but I'm pretty sure it's mostly you."

Still no reply, but Hunk still wasn't expecting one. His mom hadn't spoken a word in nearly a year. Not since the first incident.

The house was empty when Hunk opened the door, propping it wide enough for him to wheel his mom inside. A small house, just large enough for the two of them and his Gran when she came around almost every day, it was a blessing that it was only one level so that Hunk didn't have to struggle with more stairs.

Wheeling his mom into the kitchen, he kicked one of the chairs out from the dining table aside to make room to tuck her in. He paused to read the note in his gran's slanted script, made out the words 'I'll be back by six', before disregarding it and turning towards his mom. "Can I get you something to eat, maybe? I know you had something at the hospital but everyone knows hospital food can barely even be classified as real food." Hunk skirted the table, glancing in his mom's direction before turning away from her blank gaze once more. "Here, I'll bake you up some shortbread. I know you always like my shortbread. You said it was proof that I was an angel when I was little, do you remember? Maybe not, but I do."

Without further ado, Hunk set about throwing together a simple batch of biscuits, chattering to himself and his mom as he did. The familiar sounds of a wooden spoon scraping in the bowl, of trays clanking noisily, of the oven humming to life, were soothing to Hunk. He'd always been a kitchen boy in the brightest sense of the term. He enjoyed cooking. It was no wonder that he found himself there for most of the day when he was home. Larry, his local mechanic, had on numerous occasions asked him to apprentice down at the shop – he said Hunk had a gift for engineering that he shouldn't squander, even if he wasn't going to college – but in a lot of ways Hunk thought working in a kitchen suited him better.

Besides, this way his hours corresponded with those his mom would need him more. It wasn't fair to rely too heavily on his Gran, willing as she claimed to be.

The rich, heady scent of butter flooded the house with warmth, and as Hunk cleaned the kitchen with therapeutically familiar motions, he found himself smiling. Nothing quite lightened the mood like a batch of homemade biscuits. He was still smiling when he took himself to the dining table and dropped into the chair opposite his mom.

"I only made a small batch – only about a dozen – because we'll probably have to hide them all before Gran gets here," Hunk explained, wiping his hands on a tea towel before folding it before him on the table. He dropped his elbows alongside it, resting his chin on a fist and meeting his mom's gaze. "I think she's only having us on, though. I don't think she really disapproves sweet things."

Hunk grinned, fond reminiscence of his Gran turning teasing. His mom didn't reply.

"I asked Pops one time when I was little why she didn't like baking so much when she was such a good cook, and he said it wasn't that she didn't like it but that she liked it too much. He said she liked it so much that when she was younger she was as plump as a well-fed chook and had to stop or else she'd pop." He laughed and spared a glance down for his own belly. "I guess she passed that on to me, at least."

His mom still didn't reply. She didn't smile but simply stared at Hunk blankly, barely even blinking. Hunk swallowed his rising melancholy, that which always arose when he was left with himself for too long, and reaffirmed his smile.

"Did Gran do any baking with you, Mom? I wonder if she stopped before she had you or if it was after."

No reply.

"If I asked Gran to bake with me, do you think she would? She pretends to be a bit so hard, but I know she's as soft as cookie dough. Do you think I could trick her into it? I think it's a great way to bond and all that, working in the kitchen with someone and sharing what you've made.

Still nothing. Nothing but the increasingly strong scent of baking shortbread growing in the air. Hunk stared at his mom to the gradual falling of his smile. Sometimes it was just too hard to maintain.

Sighing, he dropped his chin, gaze falling down to the pockmarked table. There was the mark he'd made when he'd put the oven-hot tray upon it surface when he was six. Over there, the groove made by a wayward knife – and a butterknife at that – when he'd tried to cut through a rock cake that was truly as hard as a rock at ten years old. Scarred and bruised, the table bespoke the centre of Hunk's house and home better than any other piece of furniture did. It held memories, their dining table did.

"Wish you could bake with me again, Mom. I miss our Sunday morning bake-offs."

Hunk was speaking more to himself that to his mom now. On an innate level, he knew that she wouldn't reply. On a level that he didn't and wouldn't acknowledge, he understood that she never would. One stroke was bad luck. Two was horrendous. Three… it was a miracle that his mom was even still alive. No one really expected her to do more than blink for herself ever again.

"I miss that, Mom," Hunk murmured to himself, because he wasn't sure if she'd even hear it. A miracle it might be that his mom was still even here, but sometimes…

Sometimes it did feel incredibly lonely.

Butterfingers has entered the chatroom.

The last thing Shiro recalled was an explosion. A fierce, sharp, booming echo that vibrated to his core, and the smacking impact of a force striking his shoulder, tearing his assault rifle from his hand.

Then nothing. He couldn't remember any pain, no bouts of hysteria in half-consciousness, no struggling to cling to awareness when every inch of his body was fighting to stay awake. There was just nothingness.

That scared Shiro more than anything.

Blinking into wakefulness, Shiro squinted around himself. Brightness. He got a sense of brightness, of light, and the smell of something vaguely sterile. Then the blurriness of his vision faded and the room made itself more clearly apparent.

Not a room. Not quite. A tent, he saw, though an expansive one. A familiar tent, for everyone knew what a field hospital looked like even if they hadn't had to utilise the services of one before. The longer Shiro squinted the less bright it became until, with a final blink to vanquish most of the foggy blurriness, he peered around himself.

Rows of beds lined each side of him. A white, curving ceiling sagged slightly like the tent it was. Fluorescent lights lined the very centre of that ceiling. Turning his head, Shiro could make out the vague shapes of figures in scrubs pulled over their uniforms. Another series of fierce blinking and Shiro realised his head wasn't quite as clear as he'd hoped he'd made it. Grogginess slowed his thoughts, cluttering his mind as if with cotton wool. He had the sense of it stoppering somehow, of numbness, of discomfort thinly veiled behind that softness, but he couldn't make it out.

What… happened?

Maybe he made some noise. Maybe he moved a little more noticeably than before. Shiro wasn't sure, but something must have drawn the attention of the field medics at the far end of the tent because the conversation paused for a moment before one figure detached themselves from the group and hastened to his side. Shiro was afforded a sense of blue, of efficient motions, of a pale face, above said face was leaning over him slightly with a small smile upon her lips. She was a little older than him, it would seem, though Shiro wasn't sure how he knew. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe he was wrong entirely.

"Hello, Shirogane," she said, her voice low and deliberately soothing. "How are you feeling today?"

Shiro blinked slowly before, with a herculean effort and a frown to accompany it, he struggled to push himself upright. The medic reached for him and a gentle touch to his shoulder was all that was needed to erase his feeble efforts. "Don't try and move. You might do yourself further injury. Not to mention that you're heavy medicated at the moment and would be more likely to fall off your bed than to climb."

Injured? It was the only part that made any sense in Shiro's mind. What… what injury? Shiro couldn't remember getting injured. He couldn't recall being carted to the field hospital, but… there had been the explosion.

What had happened? He couldn't remember.

He must have spoken his thoughts because, though he couldn't recall asking, the medic spoke in reply. "You checked in at oh-six-hundred hours two mornings ago in a critical state," she said quietly, softly yet with the edge of formality to her words. "We've had to keep you under until we managed to get you stable."

"What happened to me?" Shiro actually heard himself ask the question this time, blinking up at the medic hazily. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. "What's wrong? What –?" He paused as the thought registered within him with a detached kind of panic. "What about the rest of my – my platoon? Is – my captain, was he -?"

Shiro didn't know what made him think they were in danger because he couldn't remember what had happened. In many ways that was the most distressing part. Why couldn't he remember?

But the medic was touching his shoulder once more, her fingers squeezing gently. "They're fine. No severe casualties other than to yourself, and those that have acquired injuries have already been seen to." She gestured up the length of the tent and Shiro followed her finger to several occupied beds, the soldiers within propped up on their pillows. He couldn't make out who they were, but he was relieved that they seemed alright nonetheless.

"That's… that's good," he said, sinking back onto the thin pillow. "That's alright, then."

The medic offered him another small smile before continuing. "You arrived in a critical condition, Shirogane. We've stabilised you but, given your circumstances, you'll need to transfer to back to base. We'll have our specialists take a further look at you there, but… I'm sorry. There wasn't much we could do."

Her regretful tone was ominous and Shiro stared up at her with growing foreboding. "What… are you talking about? What's wrong?"

The medic gestured towards him, towards his right shoulder that was even then, in spite of his attempts to sit up, still tucked beneath the thin white sheet. "I'm sorry. We couldn't do anything to save it."

In a fumbling scramble, Shiro flipped the sheet down from his shoulder and dropped his gaze. He stared. And stared. And only after it gradually began to make sense did he close his eyes and squeeze them to try to rid himself of the sight he'd seen.

"I'm truly sorry, Shirogane," the medic murmured, all smile absented from her voice. "You have responded bravely and remarkably, but we'll be transferring you as soon as is possible. You should take this time to rest and recuperate. To regroup. There's nothing else that you could have…"

Shiro tuned out the medic's words. He didn't want to hear them. He couldn't let himself hear them anymore. The army was his life, had always been his dream, but now… with his arm like that…

What possible use did he have now? What function could he possibly serve to the army he'd so fought to be a part of?

The thought was horribly depressing and Shiro didn't speak another word before he was transferred out.

08/09 – 09.12pm

BlackLion007 has entered the chatroom.

BlackLion007: Hello, Princess.

BlackLion007: I'd be more than willing to listen to you.

BlackLion007: Although forgive me if I interrupt. I have a tendency to engage in two-way conversations.

PrincessOfAltea: Oh, but of course! What kind of a conversation wouldn't involve the participation of two people?

PrincessOfAltea: Hello, Sir Knight, it's a pleasure to meet you.

BlackLion007: Knight? That seems a little too honourable for me, I'm afraid.

PrincessOfAltea: Not in the least. You spoke to me when I asked and that was what I needed most. But would you prefer something else?

BlackLion007: Something else?

PrincessOfAltea: Warrior? Champion? Paladin, perhaps? I always liked that one.

BlackLion007: That's quite a range of possibilities you've given me there. Tell me, Princess, are you perhaps a walking thesaurus?

PrincessOfAltea: Well, I'm not sure about that, but I do try.

PrincessOfAltea: Do you have a preference?

BlackLion007: Do we need a name?

PrincessOfAltea: But of course we do. How else will we refer to ourselves?

BlackLion007: Well in that case, I wouldn't presume to steal the honour of our naming from you, Princess. You are, after all, the instigator.

PrincessOfAltea: The instigator? Hm… I'll have to consider that.

PrincessOfAltea: But I suppose I'll take this as an opportunity. You will be my paladin. Yes, I think that has a nice ring to it.

BlackLion007: I live to serve, Princess. Your word is my command.

PrincessOfAltea: I don't really have a command. I just want to talk. And listen. Is that alright?

BlackLion007: Of course.

BlackLion007: I think for me that sounds just about perfect.

BlackLion007: Forgive me if I sound dramatic, but I think that's exactly what I need right now.

#Voltron legendary defender #fanfiction #keith x lance #klance #long #angst with happy ending #literally riddled with angst and harship #rating: T #all the voltron character #implied or future Shallura

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weditchthemap · 5 years ago

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Visiting Mardin - A Travel Guide to Southeastern Turkey's Most Beautiful City

Arriving in Mardin, Turkey

Our drive through southeastern Turkey, from Van to Mardin, contained a security check point, which appears to be standard for overland travel in Turkey. Roadside police officers board the vehicle, collect Turkish identity cards from all passengers, run some kind of background check, and then, a few minutes later, return to the bus to distribute the cards. They weren’t interested in collecting our foreign passports, instead a quick glance sufficed. This routine procedure reinforced our feeling that traveling to Mardin is safe.

On the minibus we felt every twist, turn and bump on the 6-hour journey to Mardin. As is customary, the bus made smoke-stops for nicotine depraved passengers (and driver) and one stop for lunch along the route. Pulling into the modern suburb of Yenişehir, our drop-off point just below Mardin, it was possible to see the castle of old city of Mardin sitting regally on the hilltop above. As the highest point on the surrounding Mesopotamian plains, Mardin’s old city dominates the landscape.

We exited the bus, relieved that the long uncomfortable ride was finished, and crossed the street to the dolmuş (minibus) stop where displaced Syrian children hawked water bottles. Moments later we caught a minibus and a pair of 20-something guys, looking at our bulky packs, generously forfeited their seats for us. Once in the old city, our final destination, we dropped our bags off in our airbnb – a traditional (refurbished) stone carved dwelling over 600-years-old (!) - before heading out to dinner. The apartment’s were so thick that the internal temperature was cool despite not having air conditioning.

Our First Tastes of Mardin: Trying Local Specialities

Before dinner, we sat for a cup coffee, of which Mardin is know for a few local varieties. In additional to the standard cup of Turkish coffee we tried dibek coffee which is named for the dibek stone that was once used to grind the beans. The ground coffee is served sweet with a hint of cardamom. We also tried menengic coffee, but this is a misnomer. It isn’t actually coffee at all, it’s a hot drink made from roasted pistachio tree seeds that are ground into a paste and cooked with milk. Scott was a big fan on this un-caffeinated milky beverage.

We ate dinner on a rooftop that overlooked the vast plains onto Syria in the horizon. We sipped on Assyrian wine, which was traditionally homemade by a small community of Christian-Orthodox Assyrians using local grapes. It was never consumed to get drunk, but rather to symbolize the blood of Jesus. Now production has gone commercial and you can find this sweet, unusual wine for sale in a few restaurants and many shops in Mardin.

As we dined, rambunctious children played in the narrow stone lined alleys below and minarets towered overhead. We observed fig saplings growing like weeds between cracks in the stone walls, stray cats slinking about, candy-covered almonds being distributed freely, and stores toting unwieldy piles of homemade soap. We watched the sun set as it saturated the stone houses in a warm golden hue. Only hours after arriving, Mardin had captivated us. In fact, we were so enamored by the city that we decided to extend our stay.

A Background of Mardin, Turkey

Mardin is a city rich in history. For starters, it’s located in what was once known as Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. This region was once the homeland of the Syriacs, “an ancient people who trace their origin to the Akkadian Empire, established in Mesopotamia around 2200 BC. Syriac is a Semitic language directly related to the native tongue of Jesus Christ (https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Mardin).” In the 5th century, Mardin was settled by Assyrian Christians, then Arabs. Later ownership passed from the Turks, to the Kurds, to the Mongols, to the Persians and then to the Ottoman Empire. Today a small group of Assyrian Christians remain in the Mardin area and some of their churches are still intact - you can even visit a few of these historical sites. Continue reading this Mardin travel blog to learn about these ancient sites

Is it Safe to Travel to Mardin?

Upon completing our own extensive research we’ve found that there have been no attacks directed towards tourists for years in the south of Turkey. The prior altercations have been between the Kurdish PKK militia and the Turkish government. If you look at the US State Department, however (as of July 2019), the US advises against travel to Turkey. They rate most of Turkey with a safety risk of 3 out of 4, which means: reconsider your travel plans. They give a blanket rating of 4 (Do Not Travel) to all areas near the Turkey/Iraq and Turkey/Syria border. However, we think this is unfounded. As an American, the sad truth is that your chances of being a victim of a mass shooting are more likely than experiencing a terrorist attack in Turkey. We felt very safe during our 3 months of travel around Turkey, which included visits to Van, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Urfa, Gaziantep, Antakya, Cappadocia, The Lycian Way, Selcuk, The Turquoise Coast, Istanbul, and Antalya. Not only did we not have a single issue regarding our health or safety, but we were also received with warmth from locals in all locations. If you haven’t read our post on the safety of backpacking through Turkey read our article on Turkey Travel Safety 2019.

Exploring Mardin’s Old City

We set out early in the morning to familiarize ourselves with Mardin’s Old City (or Old Town as it is also referred). Getting out as the city awakens is our favorite time of day - it’s still not too hot and energy emanates from the potential of a new day. With no plan in mind we meandered the alleys, too narrow for cars, but not for donkeys (which is consequently, how garbage is collected). The old city, which is not large, is easy enough to explore on foot - if you aren’t bothered by frequent uphill walking and stair climbing that is. The quiet back alleys felt like they were ours explore. Though domestic tourists visit Mardin they don’t venture far from the main street and international tourism hasn’t returned to full force since the Turkey-PKK conflict in the 90’s. We admired old ornate doorways, where the street level has risen over thousands of years to the midpoint of the door - a tangible reminder of just how old this city is.

We tried a variety of fresh breads displayed enticingly in front of bakeries, some fragrant with cinnamon and other spices, then meandered into a back alley bizarre where the dying craft of copper engraving is still showcased by a dwindling number of artisans. Homemade Mardin soap, a centuries old craft, is another locally produced item that can be found everywhere in Mardin. The soaps are special because of their natural, locally derived ingredients like olive oil and pistachio. There’s a soap to cure any skin malady - acne, eczema, wounds, hair loss - or so they say. Actually in need of soap, we purchased a bar for less than a dollar. (For this bargain price, get away from the main street to buy your soap.) The shop owner rang us up while a lit cigarette dangled from his lips. A shocking number of people smoke and there doesn’t seem to be any regulation as to where one can or cannot smoke.

Winding down alleys further away from the main street we passed a man sitting on his stoop. He called after us, “where from?” And shortly after we were beckoned to join him. His daughter brought out a tray with coffee and, through gesturing, inquired if we would like anything to eat. They brought us a tray of fruit and in addition the man extended his spoon and bowl to share his own breakfast of meat and bulgur with us. Using single words, we managed to communicate a bit. At the commotion outside his preteen grandson emerged and excitedly communicated with us using a cellphone and google translate (android / apple). He reassured us that we could ask for anything we wanted from them, and that we should ask “shamelessly.” Curious neighbors walked by and gave waves and smiles. The family pointed out a few Syrian people as they passed – a reminder of the influx of refugees and the war happening not too far away. With amusement they divulged that one of their neighbors has 46 children with his three wives.

At the end of our visit, the grandson communicated that “we are nice,” “ what we are doing is beautiful,” and that he “hoped we liked them.” With these parting words, we were sent us on our way to continue our exploration of the ancient city. Their kindness lingering with us all day.

After covering my head with a scarf, we entered The Grand Mosque. Inside the carpeted prayer hall we noticed two women craning their necks in order to place their face below a glass cabinet. They gestured to us and encouraged us to do the same thing. The cabinet contained a supposed hair from The Prophet Mohammad’s beard. We realized what they were doing - they were smelling the seam of cabinet door hoping for a whiff of the beard hair! Later, in a different mosque housing a supposed footprint of Mohammed, a man opened the glass cabinet, swiped his hand down the footprint, then rubbed his hand onto his beard. It seems like interacting with religious items is full sensory experience here. People aren’t satisfied by only looking; they want to absorb it. (It also seems like doors, signs, and restrictions are headed as more of a “suggestion.”)

On the outskirts of the bazaar we sat down for a cafeteria-style meal. I love these no-frills types of places where all of the options are on display. The atmosphere is simple, the service is prompt, and the food is typically delicious. The best part of eating a meal in Turkey is all of the additional plates of meze, condiments, garnish and/or veggies that come along with it free of charge. After finishing the meal, we headed toward the door and made sure to compliment the owner’s tasty food. In response he handed us a dough-covered fried ball of meat for the road. The Turkish people take great pleasure in feeding us!

Later, Scott got a haircut and shave. He can’t get enough of these barbers’ meticulous skills, make sure to read about his last Turkish haircut. He also spent over an hour being pampered at Emir Hamamı. This hammam (public bath house) had separate hours of entry for women and men. We’ve been looking for a bath house where males and females can attend together, and although it exists in some cities, it’s certainly not traditional and not found in Mardin. To me, the baths seem a bit daunting to take on alone and a tad uncomfortable. Fortunately, Scott was happy to assume the role of guinea pig and reported back his hammam experience.

Historically, hammams were public places for cleansing and relaxation. Scott felt like he stepped back in time when visiting the hammam, back to a time when access to a hot bath wasn’t readily available and one’s hygiene was entrusted to a burly professional. Scott’s hammam experience began in the sauna which he arrived in through a series of marble rooms. The temperature in the sauna climbed steadily from 131 degrees. At 155 degrees, Scott wondered if he’d been forgotten. Sweating, he exited and was lead to a large marble room where a hairy shirtless man, armed with a loofah, throughly scrubbed away layers upon layers of dead skin. Scott reports that the dead skin sloughed off in rolls. The scrubber-man then donned an oven mitt-like glove, lathered it with soap and scrubbed Scott’s entire body. Next he washed off the soap and gave Scott a brief but firm massage. One final rinse and Scott concluded his first trip to a hammam. He really enjoyed it. Next it’s my turn.

Turkish Hospitality - Never Turn Down a Cup of Tea When Offered

Locals took great interest in us and we had the pleasure of meeting quite a few during our stay in Mardin. Our english sparked attention wherever we went, and we were constantly met with friendly curiosity, the ever-present question of, “where are you from?” and invitations for tea. We met the persistent ice cream boy who demanded we stop by for a chat every time we passed his cart (he still texts Scott), we met a group of teenage boys who shared their liter of soda with us while attempting to speak English, and we met a young doctor through the couchsurfing network.

It was refreshing to hear the doctor’s progressive female perspective as we’ve mostly met men. In fact, in many of the Turkish cities we’ve visited it feels like a disproportionate amount of men are visible on the streets, sitting and chatting over cups of cay (tea) while smoking cigarettes. Over a glass of Assyrian wine, she provided some information about Turkey’s history and insights about the political climate. She was educated in the west of Turkey, but because Turkey is a democratic socialist country, she was assigned a year and a half of service in Mardin. Prior to working in Mardin she admitted to having some preconceived notions about the Kurdish people who are densely populated in southeastern Turkey (Kurdistan), a sentiment mirrored by some in western Turkey. But, after working in the southeast, near Turkish Kurdistan, and gaining exposure to this group of people she now has a much different opinion. Based on our experiences in Van and Diyabakir, we have found the Kurdish people to be absolutely delightful, open, and generous despite any existing tension.

On another occasion, as we played with a tiny kitten in an alleyway (we just couldn’t refuse it’s cuteness), an older man watched us from his balcony. Smiling down he called, “madam!” “milk!” We nodded in acknowledgment, not recognizing this exchange as an invitation. Moments later his 20-ish daughter entered the alley and invited us up for tea asking, “cay?” We followed her to the second floor of the building where her father (the older man), her mother, and a few other family members sat watching television. The TV was promptly turned off and everyone gave us a smile and friendly greeting. We were given ayran (a watery salted yogurt drink) and multiple glasses of cay. The older man communicated with a few single words of English but what he couldn’t communicate in words, he communicated with his smile and generosity. We sat through many moment of silence, wishing we could construct any semblance of a sentence in Turkish. Eventually we resorted to typing back and forth on his computer using google translate. We shared our plans for Mardin - he even offered to join us for some of the sights. He gave us some suggestions, then showed us around his home. When it was time for us to leave visible dissapointment crossed his face. Even without a common language this family had taken it upon themselves to personally welcome us to their city and celebrate our presence in Mardin. We were blown away by their willingness to reach out to us as strangers in order to ensure that we felt accepted and comfortable in their hometown.

Extending hospitality is in the Turkish people’s blood. It’s truly at the core of their beings and we’re happy to see that it’s not a dying trait. Hospitality is still very much intact in the younger generation as we observed in our 26-year-old neighbor. Our neighbor, also amused by our antics of caring for the abandoned kitten, invited us into his home for cay, tea. Pouring us tea and offering us cigarettes he used the few English words he knew. With no sense of rush or urgency, he embraced our company, asked us questions and shared information about himself - he works as a solider. He asked us about our plans for Mardin and we admitted we were having difficulty figuring out transit to the archeological site of Dara - a public bus wasn't available and taxis had quoted us unfairly high prices. Immediately wanting to resolve our problem, he offered to go with us so a taxi would charge a fair local rate, and then he took it up a notch by calling a taxi-driver friend to inquire about securing a fair price. We accepted the price, as it was lower than the other offers we received, and we visited Dara 30 minutes laterthat day accompanied by our neighbor; our own local ambassador.

I’ve been thinking about the displays of hospitality and the welcoming nature of the people we met in Mardin. I have some ideas - firstly, they are kind and sincere people, secondly, they take pride in their culture, thirdly it’s a culture that assumes less privacy - people sit outdoors inviting conversation with neighbors, extended family members come and go - it’s like the homes have a revolving door. Sometimes people sit in silence together, just appreciating the company of others, not feeling a need to be entertaining but just cherishing the time spent together. I think the concept of privacy may be more of a western construct, (maybe in response to an overly stimulating life? maybe a result of living in homes larger than our social species was meant for?). For example, large suburban homes isolate individuals from neighbors and some houses are so large you can go hours without seeing family members. I also think that in the States we are plagued by a chronic need for “busy-ness” - if we’re busy, we’re productive and therefore '“useful”. We are a country that values productivity, perhaps sometimes at the expense of other virtues like the connection that can be built through shared idleness. Scott theorizes this phenomenon is one of the several unintentional pitfalls of capitalism.

Now, this tiny little kitten that I’ve mentioned a few times really threw a wrench in our plans, but we couldn’t possibly stay mad at him and his cute lil’ face. We found him alone, stretched out on a stone staircase, with low-energy and a dry, crusty face. The little guy looked like he was in need of some hydration. (Might I add that temperatures reached 105 degrees during our stay in June!) We carried him a short distance to our courtyard where he frantically lapped up water and milk and put away a startling amount of the canned meat we’d just purchased for him. Over the next few days his energy reeved-up and he playfully raced around our rented apartment and courtyard like an adorable little doofus. We were growing quite fond of our pint-sized furry friend. But, he did have a concerning sneeze. We decided we couldn’t possibly return him to the streets and started a search for a new home for our little guy. Unfortunately, taking him with us wasn’t an option. So, Scott reached out to the local couchsurfing community for help.

Our plea was successful and the night before we were to leave Mardin we met with a guy living locally who had an interest in helping animals. We met for tea in the Old City and he told us about himself. He was born in Syria but now lived as a refugee in Turkey. Due to his refugee status he had difficulty finding a job, despite being highly educated in engineering and fluent in English (self-taught). He has not been able to return to Syria for six years. He has not seen his family, his parents, his brothers or sisters in person for six years. He feels a sense of hopelessness and a loss of freedom which is felt even more acutely as he’s less than 20 miles from his family but isn’t permitted to leave Mardin. He vocalized that citizenship is many other countries favors the wealthy and he feels defeated. He currently works as an English teacher. Lately he feels that the Turkish people are becoming increasingly less tolerant of Syrians in their country, commenting that some people are using hashtags on instagram that are hateful toward Syrians. In spite of this, he has a big heart. He put up with our escapade as we corralled the kitten into a box for transport and he continues to send photos and follows-up with us about the kitten. He took the kitten to the vet and paid for injections for an infection the kitten suffered from. We are so touched. He did not have to take on this responsibility on top of his own hardships. We are so thankful that our kitten found a loving home.

Visiting Mardin’s Historical Sites: Dara and Deyrul Zafaran Monastery

Dara Ancient City

Th archeological site of Dara is 30km south of Mardin, 7km from the Syrian border. The city was once a powerful fortress for the Romans in the 6th century. Today there are two major location to explore: the necropolis and the water cistern. We arrive at the necropolis by taxi and spent about 40 minutes walking the grounds. It’s possible to see carved cave tombs and an expansive gallery grave where hundreds of bodies were buried in a massive grave. Peering into the tomb its possible to see countless bone remains beneath a glass floor. Tangible evidence that proves this site served as a cemetery for almost 1,500 years.

A few minutes by car took us to the impressive Dara water cistern, which was accidentally discovered by a farmer in the area. Descending into the cistern, the temperature drops and it’s possible to image the volume of water once contained between the ornate stone arches. Entrance to both sites was free. We encountered only a few tourists at each site. Currently, as of July 2019, there are no busses to Dara so renting a car, hiring a taxi, or taking private tour are your only options too see this marvelous ancient city.

Deyrul Zafaran Monastery (Mor Hananyo Monastery)

The still active Deyrul Zafaran Monastery is located 6km outside of Mardin. Built for the Assyrian Christians in 493AD, this monastery is still one of the most important religious centers for the Assyrian Church. It was built on a hill on what was originally a sun temple and later used a castle by the Romans. A small area is open to the public for a fee. There is no public transit to the monastery, so a taxi is you best option.

Mardin City Museum

Also worth a mention is the lovely Mardin City Museum, it’s small but loaded with interesting historical and cultural information about Mardin with english translations.

A Quick Recap:

What to do in Mardin: shop in the bazaar, stroll through the alleyways of the old city, visit a hammam and get acquainted with the friendly locals

What to buy in Mardin: traditional Mardin soap and Assyrian wine

What to eat and drink in Mardin: sip the local coffee varieties and sit for dinner at a roof top restaurant for some Mardin unique cuisine

What to see in Mardin: Dara Necropolis and Cistern, Mardin City Museum, and Deyrul Zafaran Monastery

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