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janiedean · 3 years ago

Note

crack prompt inspired by all the tvd talk on your blog: damon, jaime, tony stark all walk into a bar alone and end up drunk oversharing ~~

(if you wanna include ships in it anything with delena/dalaric/bamon; brienne; pepper/bruce/strange/rhodey is okay lmfao so pretty much anything goes, i just want them being each other's therapist because the timeline collapsed for some time and their universes interacted somehow lmfao)

*spins the wheel* AAAND hello anon we can absolutely try that u__u

ten years on tumblr anniversary prompt post | buy me a coffee | commissions open

Well, now I really did bite off more than I could chew, Tony thinks as he shakes his head and hopes that he and Bruce didn't fuck up the entire fabric of reality.

Well.

He's not in New York and he wasn't in the span of five seconds since they got the machine turned on, but - but well. Bruce isn't here, so hopefully he'll figure out where the fuck he ended up. Maybe we should have been sober when trying to work out that whole different timelines and multiverses thing.

Now, damage control. He should probably try to not go anywhere, but in case he actually just... teleported somewhere, maybe he should just ask where he is. He glances at his back. He's in front of a bar named Mystic Grill, which... okay, shitty name, but he could be anywhere in fuck-all-middle-of-nowhere Idaho for all he knows. He takes out his cellphone, and there is zero reception.

Bad news.

He sees a blonde kid with a police badge coming up the road, so he clears his throat and stops him.

"Uh, officer?"

"Hello," the kid says, "I don't remember seeing you around here."

Yeah, because I'm not from this world, most likely. "Eh," Tony lies, "I was driving my car but it broke down outside town and the way I got in, there wasn't a sign. Would you mind telling me where exactly I ended up?"

"Mystic Falls," the guy says, "I didn't know the damned State of Virginia now took us off the maps, too." That was sarcastic, Tony can hear it, but.

He's sure that there is no such place where he comes from.

"Right," Tony says, "I'll, uh, be out to find a mechanic then."

The kid gives him instructions to reach one, Tony thanks him and lets him go. Well, he can't certainly go anywhere now, but at least it seems like they fucked up just his -

"What the fuck," he hears from his left side -

Just in time to see a blonde guy wearing a white armor and a white cloak fall through a portal just the same as his own, that disappears a moment later. The blonde guy has green eyes, Tony notices, is lacking a right hand because he has a rather heavy golden prothesis on it that looks tacky also for his own tastes and looks completely out of his depth as he moves to his feet.

"Uh," Tony says, "I imagine you aren't from... here."

"Certainly not," the guy says, sounding... near hysterical, as he takes the surroundings. "What - what are those things anyway?" Cars. Oh fuck, he's looking at cars. "How are you dressed? What - what are these houses?"

"Er," Tony says, "humor me a moment. What's your name and where do you come from?"

The guy rolls his eyes. "Jaime Lannister, and I come from Westeros, thank you very much, now where the hell am I?"

... Great, Tony thinks, now it's not even someplace where the USA exist. "Er," Tony says, "in another world. Listen, it's my fault, I, uh, sort of caused it, and my colleague will most likely fix it, but it's really better we don't go anywhere so he can locate us more easily. Tell you what, can I buy you a drink while we wait?"

"Another world?" The guy blurts, and then - then he stares at Tony, then at his surroundings, then rolls his eyes again.

"You know what," he says, "I've had a shit long day. What can this be on top of fucking undead Catelyn Stark? Buy me the fucking drink."

I'm not doing drunk science anymore, Tony vows to himself as they walk inside the place, and he really hopes he can spin some story as to why the guy with him is wearing bonafide armor -

"And who the fuck are the two of you now?"

So: Tony had not taken into account that there would be just one person in the bar and that this person would be of course not human because no one human could pin the two of them to the wall in a split second and hold them there with such strength, and that's how he finds out that pretty guy with blue eyes, dark hair, pale skin and homicidal face is a damned vampire.

Except that the moment Tony explains it - Jaime or whoever he is is just keeping his mouth shut, wisely - the guy stares at them, and then more, and then -

"With everything I've seen in the last years," he says, "honestly, that's not even the most fucking stupid. So, you just want to lounge around until your friend shows up to fix whatever the fuck you did?"

"Er, yes?"

"Whatever. I'm Damon. I can cover your drinks and compel the bartender to forget your face. I sorely fucking need some myself."

He lets them go, but then - "Get that armor off," he tells Jaime, "this isn't New York City."

"I can't just leave my armor around!"

"Just leave it in the bathroom and take it back later," Damon shrugs, and then nods towards what's most likely the bathroom.

Jaime shrugs and goes, muttering something about maybe having drank too much milk of the poppy, and Tony doesn't want to know whatever the hell that is.

"Listen," Jaime says later, wearing an attire that's still obviously Middle-Ages-like but at least doesn't stand out too much, sipping at the bourbon Damon shoved at them, "I'm choosing to think I'm making this all up, but if I'm not, how long will it be before I can go back where I come from? Because you dragged me away from a rather fucking delicate situation."

"No idea," Tony shrugs, "but he's good at his job. And he was less drunk than me. We might get you back at the point you left."

"And what would that delicate situation be?" Damon asks. "Entertain me."

"And why should I tell you?"

"First, I bought you that alcohol and you're definitely enjoying it. Second, this is my town and I could tear your throat open if I wanted to." Fuck. He just showed fangs at the both of them. What the fuck. "Also, my murderous former girlfriend who is the cause of all my problems just finally fucked off this planet for good after possessing my current girlfriend who looks like her but really is the whole contrary and my best friend just came back to life after being dead for a whole lot of time and it's a complicated situation and I need a distraction or ten."

"That... sounds like something," Tony mutters, sipping at his alcohol. It's good, at least.

"Believe me, it is. So, what's the poison from Middle Ages here?"

"Ah, fuck that," Jaime says, takes a drink, and starts talking.

Half an hour later, Tony thinks that he and Damon are equally staring at the guy with the same disbelieving face.

"... Was that the undead woman that got you like this?" Jaime asks, blinking. "Considering that he seems like he's some kind of living dead, that's a tad hypocritical."

"No," Damon says, "that's the least of my problems. How haven't you frenched this Brienne person already?"

"I frenched?"

"Dude, he's from the Middle Ages," Tony takes pity on him. "He means put your tongue in her mouth."

"I - what - she's not - I'm not -"

"Listen," Damon cuts him, "I've been there. I mean, thinking I couldn't live without an arse who didn't give a fuck about me, which you admitted. But you do realize you spent at least five minutes of your charming tale describing us exactly how this Brienne of yours is ripped and has pretty eyes and was about to die for you?"

"Yeah, uh," Tony says, "let it come from someone who had the right people in front of him for ages and didn't let himself go for it, you really don't wanna drag it any longer."

"That's - she's a knight, that's not -"

"Oh, sure, all knights are shit where you come from, you said that, but suddenly someone would rather hang than kill you and you're here jittering because you got sucked here while she's dealing with a zombie that wanted you dead but I have to think you don't wanna french her?" Damon rolls his eyes again, pours himself another drink and honestly, Tony has cut down on the alcohol lately but he's gonna just make a damned exception. "Please."

"He's right," Tony says, "and also, let it come from someone whose dad was loaded on money and fairly shitty and still way better than yours, whatever he said about you is wrong."

"How do you know -" Jaime starts, half-blanching.

"Told you," Tony shrugs, "loaded on money, shitty father, at least I missed out on the shit sister. Honestly, man, just fucking drop her like hot coal and follow your gut. And let it come from someone who's fucked around a lot to get distracted, if you wanted to bone her in that bath then you're into her."

"I -" Jaime goes red in the face, finishes the drink, "it's not like it ever happened with anyone else before, it was a mistake, most likely -"

Damon gives him a look that looks halfway worried.

Tony thinks he just matched it, except even more worried.

"My vampire friend," he says, "are you thinking what I am thinking?"

"I'm afraid so," Damon says, and then looks back at Jaime. "Newsflash," he goes on, "if you get hard looking at a naked woman most likely you find her attractive. Also, you can find more than one person attractive in your life. And let it come from someone who's been there in the sense that I thought I could only love fucking Katherine, you really don't want to keep on doing it."

"I didn't say I wasn't done with Cersei," Jaime replies, somewhat weakly.

"Good," the two of them reply at the same time, and Tony has to snort.

"Look at that," he says, "for once I'm the one with the healthiest relationship history sitting at a table. Who'd have thought?"

"Fuck this," Damon says, "I'm getting more bourbon."

"Please," Jaime says, and - well. Seems like when Bruce comes to collect him, Tony won't be sober.

"Wait," Jaime says, "wait, wait, wait, she possessed your girlfriend?"

"Yeah, well, as if," Damon shrugs, "honestly, sometimes I think I should have just run away to New York after deserting."

"You deserted what?" Tony asks.

"The fucking confederacy," Damon shrugs. "Well, what are you staring about? I'm a vampire, I've been around ages, I'm from fucking middleofnowhere Virginia, you think I got drafted with the unionists? But I disagreed and I hated it and I never wanted to go, so I fucking deserted. I hope you aren't here judging me, or -"

"Please, I used to build weapons for the army and stopped when I realized it wasn't what I wanted to be, and honestly, that just means you have a conscience, so -"

"Wait, you did what," Jaime says.

"Deserted. An army. Back in the day. Risked my neck for it, and I came back and met Katherine and honestly I should have just gone North, but -"

"Hm," Jaime says, drinking, and then - "you don't regret it?"

"No," Damon says at once, "best decision I ever took. Why, you want to do that, too?"

"Sure he wants to," Tony says when Jaime doesn't immediately reply. "Let me guess, not just your army. You want to desert the whole shebang, don't you?"

"I don't know what a fucking shebang is, but yes. So what?"

"Well, if you want my been there done that advice, do that," Damon shrugs. "From what it sounds like, your entire world is collapsing because of zombies anyway, what do you have to lose? Your sister? You're better fucking off without."

Jaime stares down at the glass, then knocks it down. "Can I have another?"

"Sure," Damon says, and generously tips it.

"So what," Tony says, "now that your best friend you had a thing with while your girlfriend was with your brother is back to life you're having trouble adjusting?"

"She also hadn't been possessed by my murderous ex until then," Damon shrugs.

Jaime just looks at them, then drinks some more. "Who am I to judge on that anyway," he says, "but that sounds like a lot of work."

"You wouldn't believe," Damon shrugs, knocking down some more of his bourbon. "Never mind that Stefan won't get over brooding instead of fessing up to the girl he is in love with now, but it's not like I hadn't expected it."

"Tell him to," Jaime says at once. "I let my father fuck things up for my brother once and I hate that I ever did, just - don't."

"This is getting fucking eerie," Damon says.

Tony, who is currently feeling very thankful he doesn't have siblings, takes another sip. Then -

"Man, if it's complicated just date the both of them. If they both like you and aren't the kind of super monogamous people that can't handle a threesome once in a while, they won't have a problem."

"... And what do you know?"

He shrug. "Well," he says, "my steady girlfriend was in front of my eyes for years. Took us a while to get over ourselves. The guy I was doing drunk science with, well. Was an instant hit and I didn't let myself drag it in the centuries and guess what, we have a nice lovely arrangement where I'm with both of them, they commiserate about how much of an idiot I can be and sometimes we all occasionally have sex. It's grand. You should try it."

And I really hope Bruce shows up soon.

"Huh," Damon says, "maybe it has merit. For me. Not for you."

Jaime sputters. "I said nothing!"

"You shouldn't even think about threesomes. I can see it in your face you're not the type. And certainly not including your sister."

"Fuck you," Jaime replies without meaning it, "I was not considering that." Huh. Now he sounds offended Damon implied it. Maybe he really will fess up to the other one when he's back.

"Then it means this enlightening talk has enlightened you," Tony grins. "Mind telling us more about that hand?"

"And why?"

Tony shrugs. It's not like he doesn't have time to waste. "What if I could help you with that thing?" He says, nodding towards Jaime's stump, and then - well. Time to test if he can summon the armor here, too.

"God," Damon says a while later, "I'll have to compel that poor bartender so hard, but fuck this is something."

Sure it is, Tony grins. "Hey, I managed to fuck with quantum reality, I'm not the first idiot that passes by."

"Seven Hells," Jaime says, "I have no idea what it is you're putting on me but if it works half as well as that thing you have, I'm going to show back up in King's Landing just to show my sister who has the useless hand now. If she didn't get herself killed."

"Well, now that is one reason I could approve of," Tony laughs, "and don't fucking move."

Sure, building a prothesis from the rests of whatever nonfunctioning electronics the bartender had lying around is... somewhat a challenge, but as stated, he has time to waste and it's not like he's wanted anywhere soon.

"By the way," Damon says as he watches him tinker around with the toolkit he found him in the backroom, "do you need advice in the whole I fucked up and want my brother to forgive me department?"

"What if I do?" Jaime replies through his teeth. "Because now that would distract me from how much this entire thing is fucking hurting."

The more they talk while he tinkers, the more Tony decides he's absolutely glad he was an only child and that his father only fucked one son up.

"You're doing this while not even being fucking sober?" Damon knocks back more bourbon. "You sure you don't wanna stay here and turn into an immortal? You'd be useful."

"Thanks but I like my life as it is," Tony snorts. "But if you need tech tinkered with, you can ask while I'm here."

Jaime is just staring at the steel-colored hand coming to life while Tony puts piece after piece together, his throat working up and down.

He drinks some more. "Fuck, if only I had such a thing when I realized what the fuck Aerys had turned into."

"Wait, who's Aerys now?" Damon asks.

He hadn't told them that part in detail.

When he's done and Tony is at the fourth finger, he kind of wants to hurl, but mostly -

"Do we really have to stay here," Damon says, "or you think we could sneak him to a VA? I can compel them to just hear that he's talking about Vietnam or something."

"He's not old enough for Vietnam, but you know what, I think we could risk that."

"What in the Seven Hells is a VA?"

"Someone I really could have used in the nineteenth century," Damon sighs, and then just as Tony moves to the last finger -

"Tony, what the hell is this?"

Turns out, where Bruce comes from it took him two days to figure this out. He also immediately spots three different improvements Tony could do to that hand, and when he hears the entire shebang he raises his hands and says that he can send Jaime right back when he left at any point and he and Tony, too, but he supposes that if they want to compel the VA before they leave it's not like he's in a hurry, and wait, vampires?

Damon ends up asking him if the threesome thing is really working out as well as Tony says.

While he does, Tony manages the finishing touches on the sort-of-steel-and-iron-hand he cobbled up together, and thank fuck Bruce showed up because he had been the one studying how Barnes's arm worked, back in the day, and gave Tony the pointer he needed to make sure the entire thing was... well, connected to the nervous system without needing to rip Jaime's wrist open.

"Right," he says, "try to move the fingers."

Jaime holds them in a fist.

It works.

"Seven fucking hells -"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a genius. Just keep it out of too many lines of fire, but if you're from the middle ages it should withstand most stuff. You're welcome. And go french that knight of yours instead of waiting, really."

"I think in between him and you, you've made a case. Uh, thank you, I -"

"Nonsense, I was the reason you're here, I might as well have helped out. Hey," he says, "so, what about a last round before we drag him to the VA and Bruce here settles everything?"

"I'm so down for it," Damon says.

"Do I even have a choice," Bruce groans, but then he does sit down at the same table and lets Tony fill his glass.

"Oh, don't look like that," Tony says, "after all I didn't destroy the universe and made some friends, it could have gone worse."

"Wouldn't know about that, but I could have done worse, too," Damon says, and orders more bourbon.

"I sure as the fucking Seven Hells will never manage to explain this to anyone," Jaime says, "but I guess I'm not too disappointed, either."

"Tony," Bruce groans, "did you manage to somehow end up with two people with - never mind. Of course you did. We're never doing drunk science again, hear me?"

"Maybe so," Tony agrees, though... well.

Maybe he will want to check on them, once in a while.

But he can think about how to convince Bruce to make sure they can later.

For now, he'll enjoy his last round.

#tony stark #jaime lannister #damon salvatore #ten years anniversary promptfest #... this was LONG #jaime x brienne for ts #my fic #god idk what happened anon but i hope you enjoyed this mess #tvd for ts #anti jaime x cersei #only slightly less toxic than chernobyl's ruins #anti katherine pierce #my stuff

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kjack89 · 4 years ago

Text

closure

Sequel to ‘tis the damn season (Tumblr | AO3) and gold rush (Tumblr | AO3).

ExR, modern AU, former relationship. What are happy endings?

Enjolras couldn’t sleep.

He lay in his childhood bed, staring up at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom, surrounded by the graveyard of his childhood accomplishments. Why his parents had insisted on holding onto every trophy, medal and certificate he’d ever received, he’d never understand. His first grade perfect attendance certificate just seemed like some kind of cruel mockery in light of more recent failures thrown into sharp relief over this holiday weekend.

He sighed and shifted in bed, knowing damn well that the reason he couldn’t sleep had precious little to do with the participation medal he’d gotten for park district soccer in the third grade, and far more to do with the discussion he’d had with Grantaire.

With the reality that nothing in Enjolras’s life was what he had envisioned a decade past, when he and Grantaire had lain in this very same bed, dreaming of a future that had never come to pass.

And with the knowledge that the only reason it hadn’t was because of him.

Groaning, Enjolras flopped over onto his stomach, burying his face in his pillow, as if the down filling could drown out the echoes of his conversation with Grantaire earlier that evening, or else the awful realization that he’d completely failed at being a remotely good boyfriend to the only man he’d ever really loved. But the pillow held no such relief, just dampening the ambient noise and leaving Enjolras more alone with his thoughts than ever.

He was tempted to stay that way, as it seemed a fitting punishment to lie there and obsess over everything that had gone wrong over the past decade.

Still, while brooding was good for keeping him up all hours of the night, Enjolras had never really been one for moping, always preferring action to the alternative, and even though it would be hours yet before the sun crept over the horizon, he couldn’t help but feel like he needed to get up and do something.

He rolled over and grabbed his phone, figuring he might as well doomscroll through Twitter just to give his fingers something to do. But then he paused, and almost without knowing what he was doing, he clicked on Google instead of Twitter, and a moment later, he had the Amtrak website pulled up.

Grantaire had said that he had an early train to catch. A quick scan through the departures listed on the Amtrak website told Enjolras that the earliest train was set to depart at 4:30am, which was… Even though the time was listed on the phone screen he had been squinting at, Enjolras still rolled over in bed to check the clock on his nightstand, just to be sure.

Its glowing orange numbers told him that it was 4:03am, and Enjolras managed a small, sharp smile.

Just enough time to get to the train station.

----------

Enjolras didn’t exactly have a plan in mind for what he was going to say to Grantaire when he found him at the train station, but thankfully, he was saved by the fact that Grantaire did not show up for the 4:30 train. Or the 5:05, the 5:26 express, the 5:50 flyer, or the 6:30 train.

But five trains and three cups of coffee were still not enough, since the moment Enjolras saw Grantaire in the train station, a few minutes after 7, any words he might’ve half-strewn together in his mind fled, leaving him tongue-tied as Grantaire spotted him, one dark eyebrow arching. “Please tell me I don’t need to get a restraining order,” Grantaire said as he approached, but with enough of a teasing edge to his voice that Enjolras relaxed, just slightly.

“I promise this is the end of any incidental stalking,” Enjolras told him, and Grantaire laughed.

“Well, that is somewhat reassuring,” he said, setting his duffel bag down on a nearby bench and stretching. “But I still have a bad feeling about why you’re here at ass o’clock in the morning.”

Enjolras snorted. “Ass o’clock in the morning was when the first train left at 4:30,” he said before yawning so widely that his jaw audibly cracked, and Grantaire raised both eyebrows.

“Judging by the fact that you look like you haven’t slept, I’ll assume that means you were here at 4:30?”

Enjolras shrugged, suddenly feeling acutely embarrassed by that decision. “I, uh, I didn’t know which train you were taking,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

A smile twitched at the corners of Grantaire’s mouth. “I suppose it’s my fault for not specifying how early my early train was,” he mused, sitting down on the bench next to his bag.

Frowning slightly, Enjolras sat as well. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m not entirely surprised to see you here,” Grantaire said. “And, since I figured you were going to show up, I probably should have been a little more specific about when my train was leaving.”

Enjolras opened his mouth and promptly closed it again. “You figured I was going to show up?” he asked, slightly higher-pitched than he intended, and Grantaire had the audacity to not look even remotely abashed. “How? I didn’t even decide to come until this morning.”

Grantaire shrugged. “You never did like to let arguments go without finishing them,” he said simply.

Enjolras shook his head but didn’t bother trying to deny it. Instead, he changed tacks. “I wasn’t aware that we were having an argument.”

“Hasn’t it always been an argument between us?” Grantaire asked, a little wistfully. Enjolras didn’t have a response to that, but thankfully, the question seemed more rhetorical than anything, and after a moment, Grantaire shook his head as if clearing his thoughts before glancing back at Enjolras. “So,” he said, looking at Enjolras expectantly.

Enjolras frowned. “So what?”

“So, since you’ve been here for a few hours now, how about you get to whatever point you’re so desperate to make?”

Enjolras took a deep breath. “I just…” he started, feeling tongue-tied again, in the way that only Grantaire had ever been able to make him. “Well, like you said, I don’t think we really finished things yesterday, argument or otherwise.”

Grantaire nodded slowly. “So you have more you want to say?” he asked mildly, picking at invisible lint on his jeans.

“No.”

Grantaire looked up, startled. “No?” he repeated.

Enjolras shook his head. “No,” he said again. “I don’t think it’s me who has more that I need to say. I think you do.”

Grantaire started to speak but stopped, looking away, his expression unreadable. “Don’t you think if I had more to say, I would’ve taken the time to say it last night?” he asked finally.

“No,” Enjolras said. “Because I think that you thought I wasn’t ready to hear what you had to say. But I am.”

He said it as defiantly as he was able, but Grantaire just laughed, a dry, humorless laugh. “Sure, you’re ready to hear it,” Grantaire scoffed. “And I’m ready to be king of France, but alas—”

“I’m serious,” Enjolras insisted.

Grantaire met his eyes and Enjolras was surprised to see something dark in his expression. “So am I,” Grantaire said, his voice low. “I don’t know what you think this is about—”

“It’s about the fact that when I miss who I was when I was with you.”

Grantaire stared at him. “What?”

Enjolras could feel himself flush, and ducked his head before barrelling forward. “When you and I were together were...I don’t want to say they were the best years of my life, because it was high school, and I never wanted to be that person. But you always made me better, made me strive to be better. And I just thought…” He trailed off. “I don’t know. But us meeting like this...I don’t think this is a coincidence.”

“Since when have you believed in fate?” Grantaire asked softly.

Enjolras made a face. “I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it fate, but seeing you again – I want to try to be that again. And then maybe…” He trailed off and took a deep breath before telling Grantaire, as honest as he had ever been, “Then maybe we could try again. But better this time.”

Grantaire barked what could charitably called a laugh, scrubbing a hand across his mouth. “Are you serious?” he asked, incredulous. “You want to get back to the person who you were when we were together?”

“Well, maybe not quite like that—”

“Enjolras, I hated who I was when we were dating.” Enjolras froze, staring at him. “The thought of going back to that…”

“Not exactly back to it,” Enjolras said quickly. “Better than what we were—”

“No.”

“No what?” Enjolras asked, feeling like his stomach had dropped to somewhere around his knees.

“No, we can’t go back to that,” Grantaire said loudly, and Enjolras glanced over his shoulder, afraid that someone would overhear. But it was still just the two of them alone in the train station. “I don’t want that. I’m not that person anymore, and whatever you want to call how you used to feel about the person I used to be, you sure as shit wouldn’t feel it for the person I am now.”

Enjolras shook his head, feeling like Grantaire was missing his point. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he started, but Grantaire cut him off.

“Let me rephrase what I was trying to say earlier,” he said, his tone clipped. “I don’t know what you think this is about for me. I get what this is about for you. But just like our entire relationship, if you even want to call it that, that has nothing to do with me.”

“Grantaire—”

“I can’t give you closure, Enjolras, if that’s what you’re looking for, or forgiveness, or whatever. Mainly because you’ve never needed it, but also because you’ve never asked. Not really, and certainly not now.” Grantaire shook his head. “I can’t fix this. I can’t fix you.”

Enjolras swallowed. “I’m not asking you to,” he said, his voice low.

“Aren’t you?”

Grantaire didn’t wait for an answer, standing up and grabbing his duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder as he told Enjolras, “I spent the last ten years of my life figuring out who I was without you and building a life for myself that didn’t involve you, and I’m not going to throw it all away just because you’re not happy with the life you’ve built for yourself.”

Enjolras hurried to stand as well. “That’s not—”

“Yeah, it is.” Grantaire glanced over his shoulder at the train station clock before looking back at Enjolras, something so sad in his expression that Enjolras felt the breath catch in his throat. “I love you, Enjolras – or at least, there’s a part of me that will always love a part of you. But I’m not who I was ten years ago, and you’re not who I fell in love with either. And I’m not saying that I’m disappointed in who you’ve become, or telling you that you need to change, or whatever, because I know better than anyone that that’s not how this works.” He paused, searching Enjolras’s expression for a long moment before continuing, “I am in love with a version of you that has lived in my head for ten years, and I don’t want closure on that. But you’re not him. And I don’t think you’re the version of you that’s been living in your head for the last ten years, either. But it’s up to you to figure out who that is and if that’s who you actually want to be.”

“Then give me a chance to do so,” Enjolras said, the words coming out as more of a plea than he intended.

“I am,” Grantaire said, taking a step backwards. “I just can’t be a part of it.” He glanced over his shoulder again, and when he looked back at Enjolras, his expression was resigned. “And now I have to go.”

“Wait,” Enjolras said, and Grantaire paused, halfway through turning around to walk away. “Where does that leave us?”

Grantaire didn’t turn back. “There is no us, Enjolras. I don’t know that there ever was.” He squared his shoulders and Enjolras was certain that he was going to walk away and leave it at that, but after a moment that felt more like a century, Grantaire looked back at him. “Take care of yourself, Enjolras,” he said quietly. “And, again...you know how to get in touch. If you want to.”

With that, he headed toward the waiting train, and Enjolras watched Grantaire walk away for the third time in as many days.

He stayed that way for a long time, long after the train had pulled out of the station, carrying Grantaire and the few other sleepy passengers off to their destinations. Eventually, the chill roused him when nothing else would, and Enjolras reached out automatically to wipe his cheeks roughly with the heel of his palm.

Then it was his turn to walk away, trudging out of the train station and back to the car he had borrowed from his parents, his mind full of arguments he had wanted to make but now never could, his heart as numb as his fingers.

It was by sheer happenstance alone that on his way, he happened to glance at the departures board, looking automatically at the train that Grantaire had taken. 7:26 EXPRESS, the board told him, along with a note that it was still boarding, which clearly was an error.

But what made him stop in his tracks was when he saw the destination station listed.

It was his city.

Which meant...there was really only one explanation, and Enjolras reached out automatically to steady himself.

Grantaire lived in the same city as him.

All this time, he had just assumed that Grantaire lived hours away, and for all Enjolras knew, he lived only a few miles away, or less.

For what felt like the first time in days, Enjolras felt just a little bit like his old self as he stared at the departures board, determination overpowering everything else he had been feeling.

Maybe this wasn’t an ending, after all.

Maybe this was just the beginning.

#exr #enjolras x grantaire #enjoltaire #enjolras #grantaire #les miserables #fanfiction #modern au #former relationship #light angst #i don't want your closure

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sadachmesarthim · 4 years ago

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peter learns to shut the fuck up challenge

oh my god hi okay i’m (kind of) freshly back to tumblr and haven’t written content like this in over half a decade please be nice to me i am a broken 21 year old who can’t take criticism for shit

marvel cinematic universe: peter!centric, eventually starker

content: graphic depictions of violence, extremis!flash, selective mutism, brief talks of dying but it’s not that bad tbh, slightly aged up peter (he’s 18), use of slurs and derogatory terms, both in reference to self and someone else

summary: peter’s taken enough shit in his life. he lost his parents, he lost ben, he’s dealt with the number of shitty men may brought home - flash was like the cherry on top of the shit sundae. after a particularly bad day of taunting, peter is fed up, and decides to teach flash a lesson - but our baby boy is in for a big surprise when he discovers he isn’t the only freak kid at midtown tech.

............................................................................................................................

Peter'd been categorized as a loudmouth for years - by May, his friends at school, the Avengers he fought (and fought beside) in Berlin.

Never able to stop his nervous ramblings, his mouth tended to run away with him. He somehow never developed a filter, often getting himself into quite a bit of trouble. Usually his pretty face and quick thinking kept him from any real repercussions.

But there was one such instance he... couldn’t exactly get out of.

He'd been struggling with Flash's bullying for years. He'd called Peter names, hurled slurs, spat out indecencies - normally, Peter could take it. But after the bite... they all landed so much harder.

Peter didn't understand it - spiders didn't have emotions, did they?? Even if they did, that doesn't explain why he's so sensitive. If anything, you'd think the bite would make him aggressive, or argumentative, or angry - spiders were predators, not pussies. What was his problem?

He'd finally had enough one day at the end of his senior year. Flash was being particularly snide - excitement from graduation pushing his normal antics into overdrive.

"Oh come on, Penis. You gonna fight back one of these days or are you just gonna keep hanging your sad faggot head around town?" Flash followed him out of the school building, laughing at his own "joke".

What he wasn't prepared for was an actual answer to his question.

"Yeah, actually. I will."

Peter turned around, grabbing Flash by the straps of his backpack. He glanced around, checking for spectators, before shoving his bully into a secluded alley just ahead of them.

Flash, surprised (but not entirely put off), worked himself free of the backpack and slid behind the smaller boy. Sure, Peter was enhanced, but Flash still had a good head on him height wise.

"Finally decide to manhandle me back, huh Parker? That's so cute." Flash smirked, looking him up and down as he crowded Peter into the corner. "If you're feeling so big and brave, go ahead."

Peter looked up, confusion warping his soft features. Flash... wanted Peter to hit him? Why?

Before he could actually ask, he found himself collapsing on the ground, gasping for air. Flash drew his fist back, shaking off the punch he'd just thrown into Peter's side. He snatched his bag off the ground, tossing it away from Peter & beside a nearby dumpster.

"Christ, you look so pathetic down there! I almost forgot how small you were for a second," he laughed, taking a second to gloat. "Come on, Parker. What happened to finally fighting back?"

Peter'd always been a bit overzealous - I mean, c’mon, the kid grew up listening to stories about Steve Rogers for fucks sake, how could he not develop an underdog complex? He'd spent his childhood defending his family name, his teens protecting May from overzealous asshole boyfriends, and the most recent few watching over all of Queens.

So yeah, of course Peter was going to take this opportunity to kick some ass if he could.

He struggled to his feet and stumbled forward, regaining his balance and breath as he met Flash's eyes. The tiny success was short lived, though, as he felt himself flying backward and up into the brick wall behind him. What the actual fuck?

Peter's senses never failed him - and yet, they just had, twice in the last five minutes! What the fuck? How was Flash able to hit him without warning? How was Flash able to throw him?

The confusion must've been all over his face - Flash laughed as Peter crumpled & didn't attempt to get up again. He crowded into Peter's space, getting close to the little spider's ear.

"You really think you're the only special one in Queens, don't you Penis? You think you're the only one that can break a grown man in half?" Peter groaned, wincing at the pain behind his eyes. "Newsflash, freak. You're not special, you're not important, and you're not leaving this alley alive."

It was then, as Peter glanced back up, that Flash's eyes were glowing a sick green-grey unlike anything he'd ever seem. The senses that'd previously failed him so tragically now did a full 180, sending a wave of cortisol through his system. The need to runclimbswingescapego washed over him, the spider inside completely overriding the human.

As if he'd read Peter's mind, Flash quickly grabbed him by the throat, cutting off both his airway and any potential escape route. He squeezed hard, dragging Peter up the wall until they could look each other in the eye. He crowded closer, setting Peter's skin on fire in the worst way possible.

Peter was choking, clawing at the hand on his throat and trying to kick the monster in front of him away. Flash, annoyed, tightened his grip until Peter's hands dropped and his face turned purple.

Flash chuckled, dropping a now barely conscious Peter into a puddle on the rocky ground. He opted to trade his hands for the steel toed boots he'd so carefully laced up that morning, lips curling as the idea took shape in his head.

The first kicks landed on Peter's stomach, forcing air and blood from his mouth. The next were more stomps than anything, not aimed with any thought or finesse. Each landed heavier than the first, quickly pushing Peter toward a complete blackout. The spider was still screaming, but Peter couldn't do jack shit about it.

He lay back, resigned to his fate. I'm going to die here, he thought, desperately wishing he'd just kept his fucking mouth shut. A little bit of bullying was so much better than dying a week before graduation.

But, somehow, he didn't. Sure, Flash beat him all to shit - May had the hospital bill and the new grey hairs to prove it. But Peter lived.

It took Flash a while to get it all out of his system. The more pain he inflicted, the brighter his eyes got, slowly taking over any illusion of empathy his once brown irises had. He did, eventually, tire, and grow bored of kicking the same stunned spider. When he’d had his fill, he reached down for his backpack, hooking it onto his shoulder and smiling to himself.

Before leaving, though, he turned back to Peter, crouching down and settling mere inches from his face.

“Looks like I got Peter Parker to finally shut the fuck up.” Flash looked down at him as he rose, spitting on Peter’s face as a last hurrah before ditching him and the alley completely.

Peter crawled his way out of the alley after Flash left, blood soaking his shirt and face so swollen he was nearly unrecognizable. He dragged himself to the nearest shop, the kind (and very distraught) owner calling an ambulance the second she'd seen him.

............................................................................................................................

6 weeks later he was back to 100%, diploma in hand, ready to get the fuck out of Queens and up to Cambridge. He'd spent enough time being coddled, people hovering over him and tending to wounds he knew would take care of themselves. These took significantly longer, the extent of the damage worse than anyone thought - but he still healed, and was ready to stretch all eight of his metaphorical legs and get back to school.

The only problem? He couldn't speak.

Okay okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic - his vocal cords and tongue and everything still worked perfectly fine. But every time Peter opened his mouth, words failed him.

It was like Flash's hand was back around his throat, forcing air out of him and the words back inside. How the fuck was he supposed to go to school if he was effectively mute? Peter’d learned Italian in school, not ASL (a choice he was quickly regretting), but even if he had, he wasn't sure his hands would be willing to speak for him either. All forms of effective communication were stolen from him.

He had less than a month before he was supposed to be in the MIT dorms and starting class. 90% of his prereqs required group discussion and verbal participation, so Peter was well and truly fucked if he couldn't figure this out.

Besides, what superhero couldn't talk? How lame was that? Half of his whole schtick was sassy one-liners. At this point, Spiderman was becoming synonymous with snark!

His first night back in May's apartment, he cried himself to sleep thinking about it. This sudden feeling - all grief and loss and shattered expectations he didn't even know he had... his whole world was suddenly gone, and he didn't know what the fuck to do.

The worst part?

He didn't even have the words to ask for help.

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fanficflaneuse · 4 years ago

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One Day - Part 5

A/N: Hello magical tumblr friends! I hope you’re all doing alright. So...we’ve reached the middle of this series! I can’t believe I work four chapters in a week. Goodness! I feel on fire right now. I hope you like it. What’s about to come is just plain, simple, absolute drama.

For this chapter, I drew a bit of inspiration of a series called The Arrangement by @fandomsfeelsandfanfics. It’s not plagiarism or anything, but I did have it in mind as I wrote. All of this to say you should check it out if you haven’t, it’s an amazing series and I’m waiting for an update lol.

Finally, thanks for all your love and support

Here we go:

Draco x reader (she/her pronouns) Word count: 2607 (oops...I did it again! (lol) I’m sorry it’s so long. I think this will be the longest chapter of the series). Summary: One day AU. Post-war. Since The Battle of Hogwarts, Draco and y/n meet one day a year.

Masterlist

3 May, 2002

“(Y/N), you cannot lock yourself in your library forever.”

“That’s rich coming from you, Hermione,” she said, her voice hoarse.

The brown-haired Gryffindor rolled her eyes, trying to be playful, but there was a hint of concern she couldn’t hide. (Y/N) had been working nonstop. Headmistress McGonagall had offered her a position at Hogwarts. Without a second thought, she quitted at the Ministry and now spent a lot of time in her library, revising every book on DADA and making her best to create a study plan that was challenging and fun. She was also writing again. (Y/N) felt her life was heading in an interesting direction.

“Listen, (Y/N/N), I love you. We all do,” Ginny said as she dragged (Y/N) to her room, Hermione trailing behind them, “And we support every single one of your choices. But you cannot keep waiting for Malfoy to appear at your doorway and magically revive what you had.”

“Besides, he’s bad news, (Y/N). You’ve seen what they write about him in the papers. Not someone a respectable Hogwarts professor, like yourself, should be associated with,” Hermione pointed out, using what they now called her ‘ministry voice’.

“He is a good –“

“We know, we know, love. We know he can be a good person. He is – or was? – our friend as well. Not as close as he was to you,” Ginny raised an eyebrow playfully at this, warranting an annoyed eyeroll from (Y/N), “But we did help save him from Azkaban, didn’t we? So yes, we know he can actually be a good person. You just can’t go around saving him forever, dear. Don’t you realize most of his friends have stopped talking to him because of his behaviour? Merlin! Even Parkinson and Zabini are friendlier to us now than he is.”

“He’s chosen a path, (Y/N/N). He’s not trying to change. And even if he was, he’s not here. It’s time for you to move on,” Hermione reasoned.

(Y/N) sighed. She missed Draco way too much. Sometimes she wondered if he missed her. He hadn’t contacted her in a while. No owls, no visits, no cuddles. It had started out small, a bit of extra drinking during the week, an increasing amount of partying. Then every time she saw him, Draco was nursing a drink. Then the visits started to spread out. He’d always have a party to attend, an invitation somewhere and some sort of alcohol running in his veins. His letters stopped coming shortly after. As she got busier, (Y/N) ceased reaching out for him, tired of his excuses and self-destructive behaviours. She started mourning their friendship and her love for him.

At that point, the infamous articles were already a thing. Draco’s drunken antics had warranted him the moniker of “enfant terrible” and his misadventures were fuel for Rita Skeeter’s sensationalist quill. He always made the front page for the worst of reasons. Everyone had tried to talk some sense into him, to no avail.

“I can’t move on from something that never happened,” she declared in defeat.

“Well, more reasons for you to put this gorgeous dress on and enjoy your date with Ernie,” Ginny pressed on as she threw a blue dress over her shoulder.

“We’ll be waiting for your every detail,” Hermione added as she started working on your hair.

Ernie McMillan asked (Y/N) out at least five times before she accepted. In the end, she did because of her friends’ insistence. Everyone agreed she needed to go out. (Y/N) hadn’t been on a date for such a long time, even she admitted to herself the idea sounded tempting. She wasn’t particularly attracted to Ernie (she wasn’t particularly attracted to anyone whose name wasn’t Draco Malfoy), but she found him very sweet and patient. As the day approached, (Y/N) was getting excited about it.

Then, just the day before her date, she was invited for tea at Malfoy Manor. The affair had been so nerve-wrecking that (Y/N) came back home and cried her eyes out. She spent all night in her library, curled up in a ball. That’s where Ginny and Hermione found her. She had puffy eyes and seemed tired. They didn’t need to think too hard to guess what was the reason for her sorrow. It had been the same for a couple of months now. That’s what made them push harder for her to go out.

As Ginny helped her with her makeup, (Y/N) could only think about her visit to Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy. The only time she had been in their lavish mansion, she had been tortured and put in a cellar with her friends. As she stood in front of the gates, she felt her hands clammy and her whole body shaking. Every fibre of her being was begging her to turn around and run. She felt the tentacles of her fear and trauma engulfing her again, trying to drag her down, reduce her to tears and panic.

“Are you alright?” said a voice she’d recognize anywhere: Lucius Malfoy himself had come to greet her. She saw a lot of Draco in his father. The striking grey eyes were almost too painful to look at. Lucius’ eyes didn’t hold for her the same affection Draco’s did, but she could recognize a mixture of respect and also a bit of fear. Was he afraid of her? Or was that concern? Did she look that frightened?

“Yes, sir. I was just…”

“Remembering?” he offered, an apologetic expression settling on his aristocratic features.

(Y/N) nodded in response. She tried to smile at him.

“I am glad you could come, Miss (Y/L/N). My wife and I have not had the pleasure of your company since the trials. We never got the chance to thank you for everything you did for us,” he said, motioning her to walk with him.

They strolled through some beautiful gardens. The flowers were blooming and the peacocks showed their beautiful feathers. As they entered the house, (Y/N) felt shivers down her spine. She had to stop for a second and take a deep breath. Lucius waited for her patiently. The walked up the stairs and move through different halls.

“We well be having tea at our living quarters. Narcissa is recovering from that hippogriff virus. Fortunately, it is under control, but my wife is still very delicate and needs her rest,” he explained as he opened the door to the room.

Narcissa Malfoy greeted them. She was seating up on the bed, her back pressed to a mountain of fluffy pillows. She wore an embroidered nightgown and her silky bedspread covered her up to her waist. She was a vision; even in the comfort of her bed, Narcissa looked like a queen. Her whole demeanour, even her seemingly informal attire, made (Y/N) feel underdressed.

As soon as (Y/N) was close to the bed, Narcissa grabbed both of her hands affectionately. It took (Y/N) less than five minutes in front of that majestic woman to decide that even if Draco was physically a copy of Lucius, everything else was absolutely Narcissa: his mannerisms, his smile, his way with words.

“I am so happy to see you, (Y/N),” she said, offering her a smile so wide that reminded her of Draco.

As Lucius brought her a chair and left to fetch the tea, (Y/N) felt really out of place. It was not only the looming idea that she was intruding, but also the way in which such domesticity seemed so strange to her. Draco had told her about his life growing up, how he had a seemingly happy childhood, even if his parents were – to an extent – emotionally distant. The Manor was huge for him alone, but his parents dotted on him and cared for him. (Y/N) imagined that this scene, three people sitting close by in the middle of a huge room, was a constant in Draco’s childhood.

As minutes went by and both women engaged in small talk, (Y/N) let go the idea that Draco would barge through the door at any moment. She then concentrated in her current situation, trying to figure out why would they, of all people, invite her over for tea. Narcissa noticed this and pursed her lips.

“I am going to be direct with you, (Y/N). I know it must be very strange, our invitation, I mean. I do wish we had done it sooner, for I have a lot to thank you. The matter at hand, though, is not a joyous one,” she explained, carefully, “we are very worried for our son”.

(Y/N) gulped. She was about to respond when Lucius came back, balancing three cups and a teapot. As he made his way to them. He served the three cups with effortless elegance.

“I hope you like jasmine tea, Miss (Y/L/N) ,” he said as he offered her a cup.

“Yes, it is excellent,” she answered, trying to adopt a posher inflection in her voice.

Lucius and Narcissa shared a meaningful look. “I was just telling (Y/N) how we are worried about Draco,” she explained, almost as a though it was a nuisance.

“Worried?” Lucius scoffed dramatically, “I am not worried. If anything, I am mad and disappointed. He is tarnishing the family name with his stupidity.”

“He is worried,” Narcissa decided. Lucius sighed and nodded in response.

They talked for a while about how he had gotten into drinking. It had started with a glass of firewhiskey every other day, then he was drinking every night, going to bars and partying until very odd hours. The conversation flowed between Narcissa and (Y/N), with Lucius adding his somewhat scathing remarks. They talked about the articles in the Daily Prophet and the stupid moniker.

“I have not talked to him in a long time, Mrs. And Mr. Malfoy,” she said at some point. Her vision got a bit blurry with tears, but she was determined not to cry in front of them. She tried to blink them away to no avail. She looked away. Lucius took her cup from her trembling hands and Narcissa enveloped her in a hug. (Y/N) started crying on her shoulder.

“I wish there was something I could do. I tried. I really tried,” she sobbed.

(Y/N) felt really stupid for how she was behaving. But both Narcissa and Lucius were surprisingly nice about it.

“Dear, we did not invite you here to ask you to do something. We know if anyone has tried to help our son, it has been you. I was really sick, you know? As a matter of fact, I almost died. If you ever get that hippogriff virus, please do take it seriously. When I was delirious, only two things truly worried me, (Y/N): one was leaving Lucius behind and the other one was Draco. My son’s life is an utter chaos as it is. And I know my husband and I have a very big responsibility and a lot of blame for his bad decisions, but I also know the kind of person I gave birth to. And he is a good person. I know you saw something in him. Something good. And as I started getting a little better, my heart was suddenly set on one thing. I needed to know you. I needed to know that someone out there genuinely cares for my son and sees him for who he is, (Y/N).”

(Y/N) felt her heart heavy with longing. She took Narcissa’s hands. “I love your son,” she said and immediately felt her face getting hot, “a –as a friend, I mean. It’s no secret we haven’t talked much in the last year…but I still care for him. I think I will always care for him.”

Narcissa squeezed her hands and smiled at her. “Thank you, (Y/N).”

As Lucius was escorting (Y/N) out of the manor, they bumped into Draco himself. He could barely stand on his own. He reeked of alcohol. His eyes were glossy and an easy smile was set on his face. Lucius frowned. The sight, however, broke (Y/N)’s heart.

“Hellooooo, father,” he slurred.

“Draco, where were you?” Lucius countered, trying to be as patient as possible.

“Around,” Draco said.

“You have been around for three days now. Your mother was very worried.”

(Y/N) winced. Draco took notice of her. At first, he didn’t recognize her (or maybe he didn’t want to recognize her), once he was sure it was her, he tried to stand up a little straighter. He gave her what he thought was a charming smile, but his mind was so hazy it was actually pitiful.

“Hello, Dray,” (Y/N) whispered, trying to keep her emotions in check. As she said this, though, Draco lunged forward clumsily and gave her a hug that felt almost like he was slumping onto her. (Y/N) held him in place, almost collapsing under his weight.

“I’ve missed you so so so so so so so so so much, (Y/N/N). I promise I’ll write more. I miss you,” he said, covering her face with kisses. His breath also stank of alcohol. Although his words were a consolation, his deplorable state made her very sad.

“Behave, boy. I thought I had raised you better,” said Lucius in annoyance.

He grabbed Draco by his shirt and pushed him away from (Y/N). Uncoordinated as he was, he fell on his bum. He searched for (Y/N)’s face, teary eyed. As they made eye contact, (Y/N) was reminded of a very small child. She wanted to cradle him in her arms again and reassure him that everything was going to be alright. (Y/N) knew that wasn’t the best idea. Her thoughts were echoed by Lucius, who, as kindly as possible, asked her to leave.

(Y/N) kneeled in front of Draco, who looked at her with a bit of sorrow and a great deal of confusion. She kissed his cheek and he smiled.

“Take care, Draco,” she said very softly.

Just thinking about that now, as Ginny blended her eyeshadow, gave her enough reasons to want to apparate in Malfoy Manor. She knew her friends were right; she couldn’t save Draco forever. She couldn’t change him either.

As Hermione and Ginny pushed her in front of her mirror, (Y/N)’s heart was shattered. She looked beautiful. The dress fit perfectly. Her makeup was incredible and her hair was twisted in a delicate braid. Somehow, even like that, she felt like hiding herself under her bedspread. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her doorbell.

Ernie had arrived.

…

“I can’t believe I’m going out with a published author,” Ernie said with a cheeky smile.

“Oh, it’s just a couple of short stories in The Hogsmeade Review. It’s not a big deal,” she answered before taking a sip of her wine.

“The Hogsmeade Review is a big deal, (Y/N/N),” he countered, “it’s where most big shot writers started. I believe Newt Scammander published his first essays there as well. Can you imagine your novels becoming standard Hogwarts readings?”

Ernie had a very articulated opinion on everything. At times during the date, (Y/N) would let him talk and talk and talk, until he seemed to exhaust his information on whatever they were now discussing. Did it bore her? To infinity and beyond. She couldn’t deny, though, that his enthusiasm was a bit infectious as well and she needed something like that at the moment. And, surprisingly, she wasn’t having a bad time.

So, when he asked her out for a second date, she bit the inside of her cheek and accepted.

tags: @naomi02hook @okaydraco @fandomscombine @iliketoast23

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immortalcoelacanth · 4 years ago

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PTA: Science Team (HLVRAI Fic 1/3)

*pulls dusty story out of garage and drops it into Tumblr*

I have been trying to finish the first chapter for AGES, and I finally got it done! I crave PTA AU content due to the wholesomeness and angst, and I just had to work on one short fic for this fandom. So, welcome to the first chapter out of three!

Word count: 1788

Summary: PTA meetings are a sham and no one hates them more than Gordon, but upon being forced to miss a “mandatory” meeting because of work, Benrey comes up with a brilliant idea to deal with this problem.

Chapter 1: Hostile Arrangements Require Equally Hostile Solutions

“Fuck! Shit! Okay-okay, I’ll just-motherfucker she did what?!”

Cursing was in Gordon’s nature. He often used it as a way to express his angry, dismay, shock, and all sorts of other negative emotions. As such it was not unusual to see pacing about and spitting insults left and right.

What was unusual, however, was the fact that he was cursing in his own home. He had a strict swearing free zone in effect as a way to stop Joshua from picking up on any foul language, including a swear jar that tended to fill up whenever Bubby visited. It was quite fortunate that Joshua was currently being distracted by Benrey as the pair had been playing video games together for the past hour or so.

Or they had been until, in a surprising display of stealth, Benrey crept out of the young boy’s room and slowly approached the frustrated Gordon.

Gordon, who was currently continuing to quietly yell into his cell phone.

“Are you kidding me?! I was scheduled for a meeting on the weekend! I have work tonight! How in the FUCK did she-”

“psssst, hey, hey feetman. you might wanna chill out there and, uh, stuff. turn down the volume.” Benrey cut in while pointing the tv remote at Gordon and clicking the volume button. “don’t wanna be a bad boy and teach joshie any naughty words.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Gordon sighed, no real anger in his voice before redirecting his attention back to the phone call. “No, not you Natasha, it was just Benrey-”

“tell tasha her cookies are baller.”

“Wha-baller? Who the fuck says baller anymore?!”

“c’moooooooon man, be a bro.”

“Natasha I am so sorry-tell her that yourself!”

“i can’t feeman, you know i don’t have a phone.”

“YOU WERE THE ONE WHO STUCK IT IN THE MICROWAVE!”

“i-i was just chagrin’ the battery with those radio waves, man. ads… they never lie.”

Laughter could be heard coming from the phone in response to the conversation going on between the two men. It was enough to snap Gordon out of his somewhat enraged state and refocus on whatever it was that Natasha was telling him. He gestured for Benrey to leave and only succeeded in shooing the ex-guard to the kitchen so he could have some peace.

Not that the peace lasted long based on the muttered cursing and general sounds of Gordon stomping around.

About ten minutes later, the frustrated physicist joined him in the kitchen, quickly making himself a cup of coffee and grumbling under his breath. Welp, looked like this was the perfect moment for some interrogation.

“soooooo, wha was that about?” Benrey asked as he took another bite of the block of cheese he had been digging into. If you asked him, he’d say it tasted pretty gouda.

Damn, he needed to torment Gordon with more puns again.

“Fucking-” Gordon exhaled sharply and ran a hand through his messy hair, too angry to noticed how Benrey reached out and gently pulled at some of the locks, watching them bounce and resume their previously curly shape. “Linda.”

Well, there went his good mood.

Benrey’s eyes immediately narrowed, becoming nothing more than glowing slits in his shadowy face, as a disgruntled frown replaced his previous smile. Even the cheese in his hand seemed to start burning, smoke wafting off it as it began to melt in response to the sheer anger that name invoked in him.

Linda Smith, the scourge of the neighborhood and one of the most uptight, pieces of shit that Benrey had ever encountered. A narcissist with a massive superiority complex, she constantly put down everyone around her who she thought of as being inferior.

Which was just a cover for how much of a racist shitwad she was, plus there were the various comments she made about fags invading the neighborhood.

An obvious insult aimed at not just Gordon and Benrey, but the other “not normal” couples that lived here and there. Poor Joshua had overheard some of the insults on multiple occasions, and she had called the kid a mutt to his face-

“Benrey? You wanna calm down before you poke holes in the ceiling again?”

Fortunately, Gordon’s exasperated voice snapped Benrey out of his enraged state before he accidentally inflicted more damage to the kitchen. A place that had seen many, many small explosions and fires. At this point, he towered over the other man as sharpened, boney spikes poked out of his back and scrapped the ceiling. Plaster fell and dusted the countertop.

“oops, s-sorry dude.” Benrey awkwardly shrugged, flesh dripping from his arms and face in a rather gruesome display, not that Gordon was bothered by this. He was used to how… horrific his partner could become.

Especially when someone mentioned Joshua being hurt or insulted in any way. It was actually quite wholesome thinking about how much Benrey cared about the young boy and how much their friendship had bloomed since they first met.

“I get it.” Gordon sighed. “She’s such a bitch she’d make anyone Hulk out.”

“ten points for the ref there, feetman.”

The physicist somewhat seriously flipped Benrey off, making him laugh, before continuing to rant about the purpose of the now finished phone call.

“I still can’t believe that stupid school listened to her, and I’m not the only one getting fucked over here!” He spat. “I can’t just drop out-”

It was at this moment that the source of Gordon’s rage dawned on Benrey, and the ex-guard spoke up. “wait, the school thingy?”

“You mean meeting?”

“ya.”

Gordon groaned and hid his face in his hands. “The MEETING! Linda fucked up my schedule! I don’t know what she said to the administrator, but they canceled the weekend meeting I was booked for and rescheduled me for tonight. When I have WORK!”

Benrey winced in sympathy and reached out to pat Gordon’s shoulder with his not cheese coated hand. “damn, th-that’s a real cringe move. can’t you get, uh, joshie’s mom to take care of it? s...shea?”

“I can’t,” Gordon muttered, face muffled by his hands. “Shea’s been on a business trip for some conference and she gets back in five days.”

“oooooh, that’s why you’ve had little josh bro for so long?”

Rather than respond, the physicist just continued to groan and hide his face in his hands as he tried to figure out how to fix the mess he had been caught up in.

Joshua’s school had a very… specific structure to how it was run. Standard funding and where it would be directed was determined by the staff, however, sometimes the school would receive donations or raise large amounts of money through fairs and other events.

And it was how this extra funding would be spent that the local community had the chance to weigh in on. Determining if it should be used to get more sports supplies, help fund after school programs, or be used to help make the school more accessible.

The ramp that had been added two years ago was one such example of the potential good that these extra funds had, however there was one problem with this process.

All parents were required to attend a meeting and voice their thoughts. This was a rather new development that had been added after a small group of disgruntled parents, ones who had objected to using the extra funds to improve the school and arguing that it should go towards planning fun trips instead, had tried to sue the school board.

Of course, the case had immediately been thrown out and dismissed, but it had set a dangerous precedent. A precedent that now made it mandatory for all parents to attend one meeting to determine their opinions on where the funding should be used and write it down so they could not claim their voices had not been heard.

Honestly, it was such a stupid arrangement in Gordon’s opinion. Why not just send out an email? Or forms that kids could take home to their parents. It was so… disruptive and annoying, especially for single parents who had to work long hours.

Like him.

His hands tensed, nails nearly dug into his skin before Benrey carefully moved them, holding them. As Gordon looked up, the ex-guard sent him an awkward yet warm smile. An attempt at reassuring him that things would turn out alright.

“hey... you-you gotta chillax feetman, things’ll be okay-”

“How the hell am I supposed to chillax in this situation?!” Gordon barked as he removed his hands from Benrey’s, shoved himself out of his seat, and began pacing around, furiously staring at the floor.

“I’ve been fucked over by some racist bitch! Joshua needs someone there and it has to be someone who has some kind of guardianship over him for that stupid funding bullshit!”

As his partner raged on about the unfairness and overall stupidity of the situation, Benrey decided that it was time to think. To think, and plot, and come up with something that would hopefully calm Gordon down while solving the problem that Linda had caused.

Simply put, Joshua needed someone who had designated guardianship over him to be present during the meeting to act in his best interests. Not surprisingly, Benrey did not have this title due as both he and Gordon had agreed that it would not be the best idea due to both his inhumane nature and the potential destruction he might cause.

But, that did not mean that only Shea and Gordon were listed as the young boy’s guardians. There was one other who had been granted the title in case of an emergency, although his presence had never been needed up until this point, which was probably why Gordon had forgotten about him in his stressed out state.

Dr. Coomer, one of Joshua’s “grandpas”.

And, of course, if one member of the Science Team went somewhere, then the rest had to follow. The Science Team stuck together through thick and thin, no matter the strife or struggle and always left chaos in their wake.

Hostile arrangements required equally hostile solutions, after all.

“this is gonna be baller.” Benrey chuckled, his eyes flashing brightly at the brilliance of his plan. Now all he had to do was get Gordon to agree to it.

“pssst, yo, xen to gaydon.”

There was something about the tone that Benrey’s voice took on that snapped Gordon out of his ranting. How calm and collected he sounded, the coherency and confidence in his words. Somewhat concerned, the physicist turned around and saw the scheming look in the ex-guard’s glowing eyes as his fingers drummed on the table.

“feetman, i got a plan.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I would like to make it clear that no offense is intended towards anyone named Linda, aside from the one racist Linda I know that she was named after who will never, ever read this so my sins will forever remain unknown :>

#my story #fanfiction #hlvrai #hlvrai gordon #hlvrai benrey #pta au #humor #quick warning that a racist and homophobic character is mentioned #and as such her crimes of using slurs are used #chapter one of three

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averyonelovesjack · 4 years ago

Text

north & south IV ~ zach herron

requested: yep

summary: zach and y/n juggle their relationship immediately after zach’s mother kicks them out.

warning(s): cursing, as usual

word count: 1244

taglist: so here’s the thing i had a taglist but ya know i haven’t posted in like well over a year so idk how many of the peeps on the taglist are still around on wdw tumblr or if they really want to be tagged in this so i guess if you want to be on a taglist lmk??

author’s note: lollll so this is my first story in about a year and a half. hope someone actually reads it lmao. hoping to be posting more frequently?? we’ll see how that goes lol i just like to write and it’s nice that some people like to read what i like lol

also read these first: part I part II part III

i didn’t bother waiting in the car any longer. it’s so frustrating to go through so much with a person and then just have them switch everything on you because of one person. and granted, i know it’s his mom and i know she is way more important than i am, and i get that. but it’s frustrating to spend so much time getting to know someone and getting to like someone and then to find out months later that they don’t trust their own feelings over that of their mother.

i unbuckled and opened the door quickly, grabbing my bag from the floor. zach was frozen still after he had muttered those last three words. it’s dallas at night, so the neighborhood streets that were filled with kids on bikes just a few hours earlier were completely empty. just my thoughts, myself, and zach’s quietly running car were left to be heard.

maybe this wouldn’t hurt so bad if zach had expressed any signs of unhappiness. if maybe he said something about wanting to take a break or if he had any kind of body language that showed he wasn’t ready to commit or he didn’t like me as much as i thought. but when i think back to every minute we spent together the past few months, i couldn’t think of anything that expressed feelings of wanting to stop. he just was happy. we were happy.

i probably should be less shocked than i am. we knew going into this whole thing that our mothers would be a problem. that’s why we were a secret in the first place, but part of me, the hopeful part, thought that they would find out and be angry, but they would see us. they would see our happiness. did mrs. herron not see our happiness? or were we really not that happy?

“y/n.” i hear as i wander down fourth street, a place i’d never been before, trying to find my way home. i ignore him. “y/n, come on. you don’t know where you are. let me take you home.”

“i’m not getting back in the car with you.” i can’t turn around and look at him. i know if i do i’ll break. “you’re better off just leaving. it’s either now or in five minutes when you get home and your mom deletes my number off your phone.”

“can we just talk?”

“we’ve talked.” i express, still walking. i underestimated zach’s speed, though, because he caught up to me pretty quickly.

i didn’t expect it to feel so different when he tapped my shoulder, but it did. almost like an electricity went through me that made me incapable of ignoring him.

“y/n, i love you too.” he says and everything in me stops. i’m angry. i am. but i’m also relieved. and excited. and i feel safe. i don’t know why standing in the middle of fourth street at 7pm on a friday night with my boyfriend who i just fought with felt as safe as it did. but it just did.

i turned to face him and at first, i couldn’t say anything. i stared into his eyes, lost in the words he’d just muttered to me. i finally broke myself out of his gaze and let my eyes wander the street, regaining my anger. “shut up. you’re just saying that to fuck with me even more.”

“how can you say that?”

“how can i say that? how can you say that? you just spent the last ten minutes yelling to me about how we’re stupid seventeen year olds who have no idea what we want. you told me we should listen to our drama obsessed mothers who know nothing about our relationship. and then five minutes later you want to tell me you love me?” i cross my arms over my chest, which gives me enough confidence to stare into his eyes.

“fuck, i don’t know.” zach says. “i don’t know what i think or what i want to do or who i should listen to, okay? but i know that i love you, y/n.”

“i don’t know any of that shit either, zach, but i’m not out here giving up on our relationship.”

“well i don’t want to either.” zach tells me. “i know i just said we had to and i know i’m the one who got all angry, and i’m sorry about that. but i don’t want to give you up either. there is so much i love about you. i love the way you couldn’t give two shits about what the whole town would think about our relationship. i love how you excited you get when we make plans. i love how you make me feel, y/n. i’m not ready to give that up.”

“okay.” i say, giving in. i stood in my footsteps, not sure what to do next. apparently zach did, though, because he took a few seconds to process before his arms snaked their way around my waist and his head rested on my shoulder. he pulled me closer to him and i wrapped my arms around his back.

we stood like that for probably five minutes. we didn’t move, just held each other in our arms. there was a comfortable silence between us, with the dallas streetlights shining dimly on us and the sounds of distant traffic filling the air.

“what do we do next?” i ask, letting zach finally release me and leaving both of us standing.

“i have absolutely no idea.” zach admits. “but i’m willing to figure it out with you. as long as i’m with you.”

zach looks at me and then walks towards the curb of the street. he takes a seat and then looks back at me, waiting for me to sit beside him.

as i take a seat next to him, he reaches his hand out palm up and lets me take it in his. the dallas stars shone brightly as the two of us looked up for a few seconds in the peacefulness.

“why should we care anymore?” i say. “who gives a fuck about this dumb debate between north and south district? our parents? your mom knows and it’s only a matter of time before mine does.”

“we shouldn’t.” zach simply agreed. “fuck what everyone else thinks is right. i don’t care what anyone says, a couple miles doesn’t make a person evil or good.”

“keeping it a secret at this point is so stupid.” i say. “because i know my friends will be a little confused, but probably not surprised at this point. the only person who will actually be mad is my mom, and she’s gonna have to get over that.”

“you want to meet my mom?” zach asks randomly.

“zach, i know she probably will try to forget about me, but i’ve met your mom like ten times.” i tell him.

“no. do you want to meet my mom? i want her to know you, y/n, not the you who lives on south side and goes to private school. you are an incredible person and i want her to know you.” zach says. “because i know how much she cares about her little town feud, but i also know how much she cares about me. and how once she knows you, she’ll value us over a stupid town problem.”

“i would love to, zach.” i smile.

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theastrophilearchitect · 3 years ago

Text

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Writing journey #4.

15/05/2021 07.22 My break has officially been over for five days, and i have done some writing, but it’s been incredibly inconsistent, so I decided to start this blog post over. Bay Tree has been archived, and though FSB isn’t done, I’ve realised I need to take a step back. It’s why writers leave weeks at a time between drafts--so when they return, they’re in a different mindset, and can improve their work.

For this same reason, I need to take a step back before I finish my outline. My thought process is becoming monotonous, which means I’m losing my excitement. When you start a project, you have the idea in your head as perfect, and when those ‘vibes’ become tangible, it is less exciting. That’s unavoidable. But I just need to take a step back, so when I return, I have fresh ideas, and the plot becomes more exciting to me.

So today, I’m going to start brainstorming a new idea I had, which I don’t have an alias for yet, and I have an idea to essentially bind every project I have together, but not in Grishaverse- or Shadowhunters-style where you need to read ten books just to read the one you want. Just a nod to anyone who does read multiple, like when Aelin falls through worlds and sees Rhys and Feyre for a split second.

So. Let’s brainstorm.

My plan, I think, is to alternate weekly. This week, I’ll work on the new one, next week I’ll do FSB. I could just take this new idea and apply it to FSB, except I just don’t see how that would work. I have different worlds in mind, and this new one is a fantasy where FSB is sci-fi(/fantasy. It’s kinda both).

16/05/2021 07.07 I really wish I was a pantser. Even though I haven’t got to the editing stage, my favourite part of writing is implementing new ideas and making changes, but I’m just not a pantser. I need to know where each part is going. Instead, I have to sit here, brainstorming, for days, to figure everything out.

18/05/2021 07.06 I did a lot of work on the 16th, but I was busy yesterday, and didn’t get any writing done, because, when I was free, I was just reading. So, I’ve decided I’m going to at least write before I leave the house, which gives me about 45 minutes this morning.

23/05/2021 18.30 Based on the fact it has been five days, I think you can tell how good I’ve been about keeping writing. The problem is that I don’t actually have much past a concept for my new project, so I’m trying to figure out how, precisely, I could merge the two projects. FSB is interesting, but doesn’t have a huge amount of depth, which adding the characters from the new project would absolutely do, while the new project is lacking plot, which FSB (at least the first book I’ve planned) does. So, I’m going to start a new Scrivener project, and consider how I can merge the two concepts while implementing both plots.

Is it too much? I have only two main characters in FSB, but five in the newer one, which gives me seven main characters, divided into three groups. And do I want to write a book with so many separate storylines? I know readers (myself included) always end up favouring one storyline over another, getting annoyed when certain POVs come up. I don’t know what to do.

I could keep the new project, but implement FSB? Hold up. New Project (NP) has two protagonists who could undergo a similar development to the protagonists of FSB... I had a plan for the male protagonist of FSB, his arc, which wouldn’t work for NP’s male protagonist, but would work perfectly for its female protagonist...

Tumblr’s glitching. It wouldn’t let me reblog a post earlier, and now it won’t let me save this draft. Please, no.

Okay, so I had to copy what I’d written for today, disconnect and reconnect to the Wi-Fi, then wait for my drafts to load to paste it. Going great!

21.00 So I didn’t get a huge amount done, because I caught up doing ~evening things~, but I at least have a plan going forward, which is an accomplishment

30/05/2021 09.29 I’ve spent the last couple weeks doing everything I can to avoid writing, but i now have an insane amount of free time, so I have no excuse. I want to use this time in a productive way, and, for me, that means writing.

03/06/2021 10.31 I swear to god, I’ve had ‘writing’ on my to-do list every single day, except not doing it is probably my own fault, because it’s been so far down on the list. Also, I’m doing a buddy read, but am also unfortunately descending into a reading slump, so even reading 50 pages takes me about 90 minutes--they’re not even long pages.

I actually went back onto my old Wattpad account earlier, where I found a load of old, unfinished stuff, but none of it was as bad as I thought it would be, and the ideas weren’t bad. I just really have no idea what it is I’m writing right now, and I hate trying to figure it out.

11.30 There are so many Ss in the word ‘assassin’ this is not okay.

This is actually going so well. I have two storylines in my head, a complex cast of characters, and I’m so looking forward to plotting this.

04/06/2021 08.04 Look at me, two days in a row. Anyways, I’m thinking I ought to name these characters ASAP, because it’ll be easier to shape them to their names than it will be to find a name which fits them once they’ve been shaped.

14.41 Here’s what I’m realising: I like to pants plots, but I can’t do that while I’m actually drafting, so I think my plan is actually to bullet point everything that happens, then revise that, then start drafting, so the story is basically set in the first draft.

I’ve actually gone through a lot of stuff--I have workable plot material!

17.16 So, me being me, I’ve semi-outlined (I say semi-, it’s more like a tenth) a trilogy, meaning I have ideas for three books following this storyline, and it... makes sense. It’s the kind of story where I can follow multiple arcs, a few at a time, instead of several overarching ones, or maybe it’s just that I’m letting myself.

07/06/2021 16.44 I don’t have a damn clue what I’ve spent the day doing. I haven’t done anything in a couple days because it was the weekend and I was busy, but I’m back now. The thing is, I haven’t spent the day reading, watching, drawing, or doing anything, really--it’s escaped me. But, at the very least, I’ve relaxed, so who cares?

I’m not applying story structure to the ideas I’m having quite yet--rather, I’m just developing them to see how they bloom on their own, then I’ll fit it in; it just seems like a more natural and effective way to develop.

Yeah, no. It’s too late in the day for this. I have zero motivation.

08/06/2021 09.49 Maybe I’ll accomplish something today; who knows? Certainly not me.

I’m now applying the 3-act structure, but I’m realising I have way too many details worked out for this--switching to more acts.

22.20 Why am I doing this to myself? I wish I could say I’m not entirely sure, but it’s because I can’t sleep, because this project, and my character Lihan, are the only things I can think about, so here I am. I don’t want to be a night writer, but que sera sera (I wish I could type accents on an English keyboard).

23.22 I accomplished more in the last hour on this project than I have in the last four days.

09/06/2021 - 1,115 words 09.29 I really hope I don’t prove today that night-writing is my sweet spot--I don’t want it to be. Can the world just let me have a functional sleep schedule??

Anyways, so, as I’ve mentioned before, I use Scrivener, which enables me to sort which documents are part of the manuscript from the ones that aren’t. I’ve been working outside of the manuscript, but I think I’m going to move them into it--I have a plan I believe will be more effective for my own drafting. I think I very much need the events to be set in stone before I begin writing in actual prose, so how can I do that? Especially when I also enjoy pantsing, but not in prose?

Here’s the plan: I plot out the main events, then bullet point everything in very high detail, similar to what many people call a zero draft, in which they draft a book in short form. I’ll sort the bullet points into chapters (but not scenes, because as I discovered with Bay Tree, I find scene-blocking makes the narrative less natural), leave it alone a while, then revise, so I can have my plot more-or-less set in stone before I work on prose.

As a result, I’m going to shift my plotting into the manuscript section, because it is, essentially, an early draft, and also I want a word count as a progress metre.

13/06/2021 - 1,611 words 8.18 Alas, I have been busy the last few days, but I’m here now.

9.20 The amount of secrets and who-knows-what in this story is genuinely absurd, but I’m sure I’ll clean it up eventually.

14.01 A few days ago, I came across a post about balancing large casts, which is exactly what I have, and the first thing it mentioned was the two-trait rule, in which every character has two traits completely unique to them, to help both reader and writer differentiate. Which I’m now going to implement.

14.42 I have these two characters, and I know exactly what I want their dynamic to be, except I can’t decide who should be which part of it.

I have made my decision. It probably works better now, but it does alter their roles, so I need to fix that.

I literally swapped them round solely because I decided one was taller than the other and thought it would be more interesting if the short one was the sadist. Why do I make my own life so difficult?

14/06/2021 - 1,574 words 11.08 I didn’t make an enormous amount of progress yesterday, but I did make some, and made notes of ideas for relationship arcs last night, so I count that a victory (forced optimism--surprisingly effective). I’m currently just working through bullet-pointing book one, while making notes of events I want in the rest of the series (I’m projecting three books, and telling myself I will finish them). I’m currently fiddling with one of my storylines to see how I can mould it to FSB’s and OH MY GOODNESS I JUST HAD A GREAT IDEA must take notes, one moment pleaseeee.

Okay, so I have four bullet points for relationship arcs and an idea to adjust one of the storylines--I’d say I have six main characters, two of whom are really the protagonists, two of which are my favourites, and the other two are fun, but in need of development. They’re split into a group of four and a pair, and I’m definitely more into the storyline of the four, mostly because the four contains my two favourites, and it’s more developed than that of the pair.

I’ve been keeping a list of things to add: motivations, loose plot threads, plot points I want to include--I really need to re-organise it.

On another note, I am so glad I named the characters as early as I did. I’m debating having two of the characters swap names, but I don’t think I will, because I will absolutely mix them up, and one of them is part of the perfect ship name.

My mouse isn’t working. I changed the batteries, but it’s not working, so now I get the joy of trying to figure out if the batteries I put in are just old or if the mouse no longer works, which would suck.

Yes, I’m going to describe this. Mostly because when I changed the batteries the first time, it took a minute to stop working, and this will waste a minute. So, first set of batteries, which we’ll call set 1, don’t work. I don’t know if it’s both or just one, but if it’s one, I don’t want to throw away both. I take out set 1, I put in set 2. Set 2 works perfectly. So it’s not the mouse. Now I take out battery 2B, and replace it with 1A, so I have 1A and 2A in here. I know 2A works, but I’m not sure about 1A, but the mouse works, so 1A is fine. Let’s replace 1A with 1B.

Yep. 1B is the problem child. 1A works fine, but 1B doesn’t. Lovely. Crisis averted. It would’ve really sucked it I had to get a new mouse. And back to writing!

12.13 I’m bouncing between documents as I organise, which means my word count is actually decreasing, so I feel like I’m making significantly less progress than I am.

I just realised my two protagonists are cousins. I’ve had it in my head that one’s father was the brother of the other’s father, but somehow I didn’t realise that makes them cousins.

I’m about to delete a list because I’ve reformatted it--my word count is currently at 1,958, but is really about to drop.

AND NOW WE’RE AT 1,572. My session word count is -32. Minus thirty-two. I hate it here, but it’s fine, because we’re ~developing~.

15/06/2021 - 2,113 words 09.39 It’s not even technically summer yet, but it’s too hot, and I hate it here. All the windows are open, so everything’s cool, there’s a nice breeze, and lots of light, but the birds are so loud, and I have to keep all the doors closed because the open windows send them swaying and slamming. You know when you close a door when all the windows are open and it slams? Yep. Not into it.

I feel like every day I try a new way to organise my plotting. I’m unsure as to whether that’s helping me or holding me back, because it forces me to review what I have, which usually sparks new ideas, but I’m not convinced I’ll ever get to the end as long as I keep doing this.

21/06/2021 13.40 I spent the latter half of last week with zero motivation, then I was busy at the weekend, but I’m here now. I’ve been trying to make myself write basically all day--I have a plan, and a list of things I’ve come up with the last few days, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. I’m not in a good mood, but maybe this will help.

I have, however, just reminded myself that I need to prepare this week’s post, because I sincerely doubt either this or my ongoing Recent reads will be ready for Friday. Actually, if I do quite a bit of writing this week, this post might be, but I’m not willing to bet on it.

And oh, crap, now I just want to write a blog post.

No. No I don’t. I started looking at the list of ideas I had, and now I’m just not feeling it. I’m pretty sure when I open my document for this project I’ll lose all motivation too, but it’s worth a shot.

There’s a specific relationship in an anime I recently watched that I want to pull apart--there’s this ship, and the author of the manga has called the two characters ‘soulmates’. There’s just this huge amount of tension between the two, and I want to re-watch the show because I love it, but also so I can take notes to figure out what was so effective about it.

13.53 I’ve been doing this for 13 minutes, but I do think I need to leave this project/outline alone for a bit, give it an opportunity to ruminate, to evolve. In truth, I may not even come back to it until I’ve re-watched the anime I was talking about so I can tear that ship to pieces.

17.33 So I just learned brainstorming is apparently significantly easier on paper. Hm. I’ve just worked out so damn much, stuff I’ve been struggling with.

18.00 I have successfully tied up so many plot threads, simply by working with pen and paper. This is revolutionary. (I know, not really, but it is for me, someone adamant about working with a keyboard and monitor)

22/06/2021 09.42 Seriously, why did I never try actually working on paper before? Something about holding a pen to paper and scribbling and drawing a mindmap--it just works. I’ve been obstinate about avoiding working on paper because I hate physically writing, yet here we are.

25/06/2021 11.09 I’m really not managing much reading at the moment--since I started reading manga, my attention span has just gone down the drain. I’m currently reading Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater, and I don’t think it helped that I had to stop less than a third of the way in to do a buddy read, but I just don’t have much motivation to read it, though I do so want to. I haven’t been listening much to audiobooks lately either, because when I’d usually listen--when I’m getting dressed, waking up, going to bed etc.--I just want to listen to music, because I also recently fell down the well of k-pop, and the group whose discography I’m getting to know at the moment is BTS. Basic, but they’re the fifth group I’m doing, and they have so many songs. Which would happen after eight years, but still.

I want to read so, so badly, but I just don’t feel like reading Mister Impossible. But I do want to finish it before reading anything else. I think I’ll finish my current audiobook, then if I’m still feeling stagnated in Mister Impossible, I’ll switch to the audiobook of that, then just take a break from reading until I’m ready to actually read.

But this post is for writing, not reading. I did write on the 23rd, but I just didn’t update this post. The 24th I was busy, but my wall is now covered in post-it notes of world-building, characters, gods, plot points, and a whole load of other stuff.

Also, I had an idea for a book title this morning--not for this one, just in general--and when I went to add it to my list, I found a title that would so suit this project. I don’t want to say it, but let’s just say this project will be called ItLotG--or not. That’s a hideous combination of letters. I promise it is actually a good title.

11.52 I’m having another crisis over these two characters. I’m thinking it would make more sense to have L’s betrayal ‘arc’ initiated before the catalyst, or rather have it be the catalyst, except the problem there is that they’re not in the city they need to be in to receive that offer.

UNLESS,,,, what if this point happens just while they’re in the capital.... I’ve got it.

17.16 I’ve been taking notes this whole time of everything I want to happen in books 2 and 3, and I have so much now i think they’ll be so much easier to plot than this one.

The downside of working mostly on paper is that my plans on Scrivener have been refined to one document, which is now only 878 words.

Right now, there’s a glaring hole between the midpoint and the ending, but my climax is one of those where the climax itself is a very small part of a bigger event, so if I figure out what I want to happen in this big event which is essentially the whole of the third act, I should be able to fill in the rest of Act Two with the setup for that.

So I’m leaving it there for both today and this post. In the last month or so, I decided to start over and mash two projects together, which created a whole new storyline I love, and now I’m mostly done with the first outline. I want to treat outlines as more than just preparation for drafts, because I find notes so much easier to edit than actual prose, and I hate writing without a clear idea of where I’m going.

I think I’m going to call these ‘runs’--an outline is a run through, a draft a run through, so I’m nearly done with my first run, and I’m very proud of that, so go, go write the idea you have, drink some water, take a nap if you need one, eat if you haven’t eaten in a few hours, and I’ll be back with another writing update innnnnnn probably august, honestly.

Go write that idea!

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zambie-trashart · 4 years ago

Text

Flirting With Disaster pt2

Phanfics masterlist

Remember to pic the winner over here on tumblr otherwise the peps over on ao3 are going to have all the say in who wins.

...........................................

... and that's pretty much how it went," Julie finished explaining and Alex just stared at her in shock.

"My own friends turned my anxiety into a game," Alex said arms flailing wildly not wanting to believe it. "You don't think Willie would actually..." Julie stood up shaking her head.

"He would never agree to that stupid idea, there's no way," Julie said trying to comfort Alex who had begun pacing around her room.

"We have to stop this game," Alex said his eyes narrowing.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Julie said pulling her phone out smiling at Alex who had begun to get nervous again. "She should be here any minute." Alex spent the next hour learning how to act if Reggie or Luke tried anything. Alex still had the lingering feeling that he was missing something but pushed it down exhausted from working hard on himself he poofed down to the studio and fell asleep on the couch wanting these next three days to be done as soon as possible.

Willie stood outside the studio holding his hand up to knock on the door but it slid open before his hand could even touch it. Luke and Reggie stood inside with wide smiles splayed across their faces, Willie went to speak but the other two quickly put their fingers to their lips shushing him and Willie soon understood why, there was a sleeping Alex in front of him. Alex looked, dare he say, beautiful sleeping, his lips slightly parted, bangs over his eyes, on his back left arm under his head and right flung across his waist. Did his lips look pinker? There was definitely something different about him.

"This is the perfect time to fluster him," Luke said rubbing his hands together.

"Aww, he looks so peaceful," Reggie said looking down at his sleeping friend. The three stepped closer.

"Who's going first?" Luke asked and Reggie stepped forward. He kneeled down next to his friend placing a hand on the back of his neck and other hand on his jawline using his thumb to trace an outline of his lips before blowing on his ear thinking that that would do it but Alex just groaned turning over. Luke grabbed Reggie's shoulders yanking him up.

"Thirty seconds are up Reg, better luck next time," Luke said and Reggie just sighed crossing his arms as Luke took his place leaning over Alex left hand on the couch next to Alex's hip left hand gliding through his hair Alex shifted eyes squeezing tight and Luke grabbed his hair pulling a little.

"Time," Reggie said and Luke pulled his hands back and Alex just shifted back left leg curling up on top of his right. Willie stepped forward hands unclenching from fists at his sides, he looked down at Alex sighing he grabbed the side of his face and placed a hand on Alex's upper thigh. Alex shifted a little and Willie squeezed his hand on Alex's thigh and Alex sat up gasping eyes wide open the three players poofed out as quickly as possible looking through the window of the studio doors at Alex who's face was bright red.

"That's a blush," Reggie said and Alex jumped up walking back and forth in front of the coffee table. "Oh, and a pace, nice combo," Reggie added.

"Yeah but it's only a matter of time before we catch up," Luke said opening the doors to see that Alex wasn't there anymore.

"Where did he go?" Reggie asked and Luke's eyes went wide and he shook his head, no need to give Willie more points.

Alex knocked on Julie's door before walking in growling.

"Someone's angry," Julie said and Flynn just laughed beside her friend.

"Someone touched my butt, there were three people in that room, that means that Willie's playing. I really didn't want Willie to play, I thought he would have had more respect for me than that," Alex said flopping down on Julie's bed.

"We're going to need more help," Julie said and Flynn nodded picking up her phone texting someone.

"I hope you're ready to be unflusterable, she said she'd do it," Flynn said and Julie got up excited.

If there was one thing that Carrie wasn't expecting, it was having to give a ghost makeover at eight in the morning on a Sunday, but hey, free makeover. Alex was tall but he looked like he wanted to shrink in on himself, she would have to fix that, she'd also have to fix his hoodie fixation, that ripped jacket had to go too, and the cargo pants. She was going to have to start from scratch.

"So what you're saying is he just has to out-fluster the guys who are trying to fluster him?" Carrie asked Julie and Flynn looking Alex up and down.

"Pretty much, we figured who better to help him than the girl who can have confidence in everything she does," Julie said and Carrie smiled at her quickly before turning back to Alex.

"We're going to need new clothes, something similar to what the boys he's trying to fluster wear so it's like he's wearing their clothes, we could swoop his hair to the side, and a touch of makeup," Carrie said pulling some stuff out. Black tank top, high waisted jeans, high tops, hair brushed off to the left, pink and black flannel over his shoulders, light pink lip stick, and a bit of mascara. "My creation is ready," Carrie said opening up the curtain and Flynn and Julie's jaws dropped.

"Wow," Julie said just staring and Flynn's mouth opened and closed a few times before she just started clapping.

"I am impressed," Flynn managed to get out and Carrie just bowed.

"All we need is to work on his behavior, he needs to be more confident," Carrie said sitting down, this was going to take a while.

Reggie, Luke, and Willie were bored and Alex was nowhere to be seen.

"This day is a bust, Julie's not even around," Luke said and the door swung open and Julie walked in with Flynn.

"... it's totally going to work. Oh, hey guys," Julie said and they just waved at her.

"Have you seen Alex?" Reggie asked and someone tapped on his shoulder. Reggie looked behind him and fell out of his seat shrieking.

"Reggie what," Luke looked up on front of him at Alex who brushed a hand through his hair. "Oh my God," Luke's voice went up and octave turning bright red and Willie next to him didn't seem to be taking it much better and poofed out. Alex held his hands out next to him and Julie and Flynn gave him a high five each.

"Something up Luke?" Alex asked head tilting to the side smiling at his friend. Reggie got up.

"Not at all," Luke said smiling back at Alex walking up to him placing a hand on his shoulder and crawling up to his face cupping his cheek. Alex couldn't help his face turning pink, Julie glared at Luke, if he wanted to play this game, he was going to lose. Alex swatted Luke’s hand off on his face and Flynn grabbed his arm pulling him out of the studio. Julie stood arms crossed glaring at Luke and Reggie.

“You boys wanna play a game, fine, let’s play,” Julie said walking up to them poking them in their chests. Luke and Reggie stepped back composing themselves.

“Game on Julie,” Luke said smiling at Julie who just continued glaring before spinning on her heel walking out of the studio.

“We’re going to need to up our game,” Reggie said and Luke’s eyes lit up getting an idea.

“Well, we’re already trying to get Willie out of the game so why not let them spend a little time together just taking points away from each other and then when they least expect it, one of us will win and Alex will spend more time with the band again,” Luke said and Reggie nodded in agreement.

“Perfect but how will we get points?” Reggie asked confused on that part of the plan.

“Easy, in our alone time with Alex, we make him as uncomfortable as possible, make eye contact with him as much as possible, touch him, do anything. If we can get him to blush a bunch, poof out at least once a day, and get him to yell at least twice, we’ll beat Willie, and we don’t have to worry about Alex,” Luke said brushing off the idea that Alex would be able to pull another fast one on them.

“Let’s win this thing,” Reggie said holding his hand out for Luke to high-five.

Alex sat on Julie’s bed knee bobbing up and down.

“Those idiots want to play hardball then we’re going to need to fight back harder,” Julie said walking into the room. ”Flynn, call Carrie tonight we’re going to perfect this gameplan. There’s no way we’re going to lose cause if we do lose, this just proves that flirts can win a game that no one else is playing,” Julie said and Carrie picked up the phone.

“So what, we’re just going to prove that flirts are bad by having me flirt?” Alex asked and Julie opened her mouth then shut it opening it again but Carrie spoke up.

“Who says that he even has to say anything?” Carrie asked smirking on the other side of the phone and the girls seemed to get the message.

“Right, you don’t even have to open your mouth,” Flynn said rubbing her hands together.

“Ok, you guys are scaring me,” Alex said feeling a little left out of the plan.

“Oh don’t you worry your pretty little head about any of this, these next two days are going to be a breeze,” Julie said sitting Alex back down.

“Total breeze,” Alex said relaxing a little.

Willie hit his head back against a wall in a random alley. “I’ve really done it now haven’t I?” Willie asked looking up at the sky which was turning pink as the sun set. “I’m so sorry Alex,” Willie said closing his eyes.

“Why are you sorry?” Alex asked making Willie almost fall over scaring him.

“Nothing, I was just thinking about when Caleb put his stamps on you and I know that you don’t want me to think about it but I can’t stop thinking about what would happen if I lost you,” Willie said walking over to Alex holding his face in his hands feeling Alex blush before feeling Alex’s hands on his shoulder.

“It’s in the past Willie, you shouldn’t think too much about it. I hate it when you put yourself down, I care about you,” Alex said and Willie’s eyes went wide and his face went warm. Score.

Alex stayed with Willie for a few more hours forgetting about the game, no blushing, pacing, yelling, or poofing. Alex poofed back to Julie’s room around nine pm falling back onto her bed.

“Have fun?” Julie asked putting her phone aside wanting to hear about all of his accomplishments.

“I got a blush and he’s probably pacing right now, what would that count as?” Alex asked.

“I overheard the boys talking about their point system you’ve got three just from tonight, you got a poof earlier which is four and blush from Luke so in total you’ve got eight which is pretty good. Luke has four, Reggie has three, and Willie has four too right, he didn’t get anything out of you tonight did he?” Julie asked and Alex sighed.

“One blush but that’s it I swear,” Alex said and Julie sighed.

“So Willie’s got five, we should keep track,” Julie wrote the first initial from each of their names on a chalkboard on her wall adding the proper amount of tally marks.

“We’re in the lead,” Alex said smiling.

“Let’s keep it that way,” Julie said and Alex poofed back down to the studio to go to bed for the night thinking of what tomorrow would bring, he had so many plans but little did he know that the other three players had a plan too. Game on.

#Alex (Julie and the Phantoms)#alex x reggie #alex x luke #willie x alex #carrie wilson #flynn (Julie and the Phantoms)#julie and the phantoms #willie (Julie and the Phantoms)#Reggie (Julie and the Phantoms)#julie molina #luke patterson #who will win #it's your choice #posted from ao3

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starrybethany · 5 years ago

Text

William Nylander: Part 1

Word count: 2082

Just a quick warning- this story does involve an abusive relationship so if you think that might effect you in some way you might not want to read this story.

I approach the reception desk confidently, my heels clicking on the marble floor. The receptionist looks up as I stop in front of her desk, calmly pushing my sunglasses on top of my head and resting my hand on the wooden countertop.

“Cute watch!” I exclaim, pointing to the silver decorating her wrist. “Is that Cartier?”

“No, it’s Gucci,” she corrects shyly, twisting the jewelry nervously.

“Ugh, I used to have a Gucci watch,” I exclaim, slapping onto the countertop in exasperation. “Unfortunately I lost it while moving. That’s actually why I’m here, I wanted to check my apartment and see if I left it here by accident- oh my gosh!”

I fake gasp, slapping a manicured hand over my mouth. The girl gives me a shocked look.

“I forgot my key,” I wail. “I can’t believe I forgot the one thing I need to get into my apartment, ugh, silly me. Hey, is there any way you can give me the apartment building’s copy? Pretty please, just for fifteen minutes, it won’t take long I swear.”

“Um, sure, but I’d need to check your ID and match it with the resident’s identity,” the receptionist agrees.

I rest my elbows on the counter, laying my head in my hands with a painful groan. “And I forgot my ID too, what is with me? It’s just so hard remembering everything with jetting between Toronto and Dubai and LA-””You know what, ma’am, I’m sure it’s fine,” the girl interrupts, opening the cabinet with the keys. “What unit?”

“Unit 406.”

She pulls out the key with a shaky hand and passes it to me.

“Thank you, sweetie,” I give her a red-lipped smile. “I’ll be sure to give a good word to your boss.”

I roll my eyes as the elevator lifts me up to the fourth floor. Young receptionists fall for it everytime, but I have no problem with that. The easier they make it for me, the better. As long as I’m able to break into a luxury apartment and steal some valuables, I’ve done my job, as bad as my job may be.

I bite my lip in anxiety at the thought of what would happen if I got caught or if the person spent all of their money on the apartment and not their objects. I shouldn’t get caught, since it’s noon and most of the people living in this building are businessmen, but I am worried about the person not having anything valuable.

I guess I’ll just have to see.

I walk down to unit 406, pulling out the key the receptionist gave me and stick it in the lock. I have it twisted and I’m about to open the door when the elevator dings. I mentally swear to myself but do what I’ve done the last couple of times I’ve been caught in this position, look up at the person and flash them an embarrassed smile.

The blush on my cheeks isn’t only to add to the embarrassed look, it’s because this guy is probably the most attractive guy I’ve ever seen.

His golden locks are long and pushed back, like he runs his hands through it every time he thinks and he thinks often. The scruff on his face is darker than his hair but it suits him well.

I feel like anything would suit him well.

What really catches my interest, though, is the blue eyes. They sparkle and shimmer and I can just tell by staring into them that he has many stories to tell. Those beautiful eyes have seen a lot of things.

He flashes me a quick smile and then it turns into a curious expression as he sees the predicament I’m in.

“The key’s a little sticky,” I answer his unasked question.

“Well I hope so, that’s my apartment,” he jokes.

My face turns pale at the realization that this man literally just caught me trying to break into his apartment. I don’t think he’s figured that part out yet, so I still have time to save myself.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I exclaim, subtly turning the key back over to lock the door and pull it out of the lock. “I just moved in and I thought this was my apartment! Can you believe that?”

I let out a sweet giggle and he joins in the laughter, flashing me a smile. There’s nothing a little flirting can’t get you out of.

“Well, this building is hard to navigate,” he admits, grinning at me.

He’s lying, he’s just trying to make me feel better. This is one of the easiest buildings to navigate- the floors go in order of one to eight, the amount of floors there are, and the even numbered units are on the left side while the odd numbered units are on the right.

It’s a typical building.

“That is true,” I agree, shyly smiling back.

“Do you need help finding your apartment?” He offers. “I probably won’t be much help but I can try.”

“Oh no, I don’t want to burden you like that,” I deny, reaching out and gently touching his shoulder. “Thank you for the offer, though.”

He blushes at the physical contact, simply nodding while clearing his throat.

“It was nice to meet you,” I wait for his name while I press the button for the elevator.

“William Nylander,” he answers as I step into the elevator. “And you are?”

“Bye William,” I act like I didn’t hear his question as the doors close behind me.

“It wasn’t there,” I let out a fake huff as I set the key back on the counter. “It’s probably at my LA apartment, now that I think about it. Thank you for your help, Ramona!”

I open the door and the smell of weed hits me in the face like a brick wall. I hold back a cough, knowing Mills and his friends would make fun of me if I were to do so, and close the door behind me.

“Did you get anything good?” Mills asks through a puff from the joint.

“No,” I sigh, “The homeowner caught me before I could even open the door.”

“And you got away?” He raises his eyebrows.

“There’s nothing a little flirting can’t solve,” I smirk at him, stepping into the living room just to be overwhelmed by the scent.

“Have sex with him and he’d probably give you a necklace we could pawn off,” Mills suggests.

I ignore him though the suggestion burns. Even though Mills and I aren’t dating, we are involved romantically. We never put any labels on that because that’s not the type of people we are- we don’t like to confine to social standards and put labels on our relationship just because other people want us to.

Though neither of us have titles and ownership that tie us to each other, we do some things like a couple would do, like have sex and once and a while he’ll steal roses from the grocery store for me.

“Maybe,” I sigh, my eyes resting upon Dagger who is usually never seen without his wife, Indigo. “Dagger, is Indigo here?”

“She’s in your room, probably watching some porn,” he answers, taking a swig from the Jack Daniels bottle.

I turn towards the room Mills and I share, rolling my eyes to myself as I approach the door.

“If you guys are having sex just remember to record it!” One of the guys calls after me, causing them all to laugh.

“Dagger told me you were watching porn in here,” I repeat to Indigo, shutting the door behind me and laying down beside her on my bed.

She rolls her eyes, scrolling down the Tumblr tab on her laptop. “Dagger’s a dumbass.”

“Aren’t they all?”

She laughs, reblogging something. “You didn’t feel like getting drunk or high tonight?”

“No,” I shake my head, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. “You didn’t either?”

She agrees with my conclusion silently.

I lay next to the pink haired beauty in silence, trying my best to stay focused on my next burglary plan but my mind keeps getting drawn back to the man I saw today.

William Nylander. I wonder what nationality that is. It sounds very interesting, but in a good way. And that’s exactly how I feel about the way he looks.

Sure, Mills is attractive and all, but William takes my breath away. William makes me want to smile and go back to college for eight years just to make him proud of me.

How can a guy I’ve had less than a five minute conversation with do that to me?

“What happened on your visit?” Indigo inquires.

“Why do you ask?”

“You have this look on your face,” she snickers, “It’s like the first time you saw Mills.”

“Okay,” I sit up on my elbow, giving her a serious expression. “You cannot tell Mills.”

“Oh shit, it’s that serious,” she gasps.

“Indigo!” I whine.

“Okay, I’ll even pinky promise on it,” she agrees, holding out her pinky.

I shake it with mine, taking a deep breath before I begin this conversation. “I met a boy.”

“Is that it?” She gives me an unimpressed look.

“You don’t understand, Indigo!” I exclaim, laying back down on the bed. “He’s the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.”

“Is that proper grammar?” She asks herself.

“He has these gorgeous, long gold locks that I could just imagine pulling during sex or putting up in a manbun while he does his business stuff on the computer. And he has these blue eyes that I could swim in for hours.”

I blush in embarrassment once I realize that I went off on my own little tangent, looking over to see Indigo watching me carefully.

“Sounds nice,” she says simply.

“Is that all you’re going to say? Aren’t you going to scold me for having interest in another man when I’m with Mills?”

“Hey, you’re playing the field, I don’t blame you, girl. I wish I could be doing that too but I signed a legally binding contract.” She makes a face, sitting up and pulling her laptop over her crossed legs.

“I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“What’s his name?” She asks.

“William Nylander. Isn’t it perfect?” I question dreamily.

“Hey, don’t go all soft on me. Your job is to steal shit,” she warns, typing on her computer.

“What are you doing?” I ask, sitting up and watching over her shoulder.

All of the news relating to him shows up on her Google screen and we gasp at the sight of his biography.

“Bro he’s famous,” I state quietly.

“And rich. Oh shit, he has six names, that’s how you know he’s rich.”

I nod in agreement, skimming over the rest of his information. “Damn, besides the six names look at that contract. He’s fucking rich rich, Indigo.”

“I got it,” she declares, shutting the laptop and turning her full attention to me. “You go back to whatever apartment he lives in, convince him to sleep with you, become pregnant, and sue him for child support.”

“I don’t want to have kids,” I complain.

Indigo scrunches her face up in agony. “But the money, Y/N!”

“But the crying and the feeding and, ugh, I can feel the exhaustion already,” I cry out, throwing myself back on the bed.

She opens her laptop back up, peering at me curiously. “He’s Swedish.”

“I love the Swedes.” I’m back over her shoulder looking at the screen.

We go through his information for about ten more minutes before we end up just staring at a picture of him. He is attractive, no one can deny that.

“I bet he lays it down thick,” Indigo states seriously.

“Hell yeah he does,” I agree, tilting my head while looking at the picture. “Sex on the first date kinda guy?”

“Sex before the first date kinda guy, then cancels the dinner at the fancy restaurant to order Chinese food and go for another round,” she corrects me.

“That sounds nice.” I close my eyes, suddenly feeling really sleepy. “Too bad it would never happen.”

“What do you mean it would never happen?”

“Indigo, when would I see him again? I can’t go back to the apartment building I tried to rob,” I emphasis.

“I guess you’re right. That sucks, you could’ve had a sugar daddy,” she pouts.

“I’m going to sleep. Goodnight, Indigo.”

“Night, Y/N.”

#nhl imagines #william nylander imagine #nhl story #nhl preferences #nhl imagine story

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stone-man-warrior · 4 years ago

Text

February 13, 2021: 3:00 pm:

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

I have a example of Gnosis that was presented to Los Angeles Unified School District students in the early 1970′s.

This Gnosis inclusion in printed required reading material may be possible to find and study further, was a “Life or Death” sort of a COVID Test in the 1970′s where a book report could get a elementary student killed if they say the wrong thing in the report.

The assignment was to read Lord of the Flies by British Author William Golding, then to write a book report about the events that those young stranded people faced while trapped on a deserted island after their airplane crashed there.

I think it’s last final chapter in the book (is) where the Gnosis shows up, and, it could prove to be that entire novel is a work of Gnosis for weeding out non-paratrooper Canadian terror soldiers who landed in great number in San Fernando Valley California in 1970 - 1971.

That last chapter included that at least two people on parachutes had come out of the shy (sky) and landed on the island where Lord of the Flies took place. The parachuting people did not land, but fell, is the way I remember it, and they had gas masks on when the children found them there, as they had hoped some help had come, it was some other thing, not help, and the children spent some time trying to determine who the dead parachuting guests were.

So, the way I did the report, is I read the book twice, then I decided that the part where those people came parachuting out of the sky was a mistake made at the printer, and I approached my book report as if that chapter belonged in a different book, not Lord of the Flies, was a mistake, and that I had somehow managed to pick up a defective book to do the report with. So, my report stopped abruptly at the close of the chapter before the one when those parachute wearing, gas mask donning intruders had come to the island.

The teacher asked about that, why I stopped without including the last part of the book, and my response was that the book was wrong, my book was defective and contained parts of a different book, so, I wrote about the other parts of the book. I got an A on the report. I lived. Others at the school began to vanish, all of my friends were said to have moved away to other places.

Some things to consider about the usefulness of such Gnosis, rely’s on real knowledge, only those who know that thousands of paratrooper terror soldiers landed in Southern California in the 1970′s will understand or be willing to consider why Lord of the Flies is only one of many ways for the terror leadership to reach the terror army that landed there. The paratroopers in Southern California came in tandem, two per parachute, one adult male, and one child on each parachute. The children ranged in age from about 8 years old to about 12 years old. The children started attending Los Angeles Unified School District Schools. Some of the paratroopers did not land safely. Some got hung up on power lines, some of the parachutes failed to open, and some were injured simply because it was dangerous event.

That report assignment based on a book where the premise is about a crashed airplane filled with children on a deserted island where a “Pig” is used as a religious figure head among the stranded group, and so many other details, all serve as fodder for a child terror soldier to say details about their presence, while writing a book report to a terror teacher substitute while the real teachers are away at a educational enrichment “inservice” day somewhere else. That book report gave opportunity to write something about who made it alive, and who did not. If there were injured terror soldiers, that book report was a way to say who and where the injured, or dead ones, were at, and about where parachutes could have been lodged in trees or power lines or other places where they got hung up on the way down.

I once found one of the parachute harnesses, not the chute. That one I found in a remote place at the east end of DeSoto Ave where there is a very old dam structure made of rocks at Browns Canyon Road where the 118 freeway overpass is at, in 1978, about seven years after the paratroopers landed. I’ll describe the harness when I get an interview from US national security personnel.

Think about that Lord of the Flies Gnosis assignment, and all of the simplified details I provided for you here, to see how Gnosis is bad for Freedom, and serves the terror pirates.

I have a lot to say about my youth in Southern California, but no one to say it to.

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

4:03 pm:

Do a Bing search for “Map of Quebec”:

It brings up this image:

Wait about three to five seconds, and the internet terror pirates put an overlay on top of the map you want to look at, the overlay erases the word “Quebec” and it happens live, as you are looking at it.

Later, when the information is shared, like I am doing, Justin Trudeau will go hide under his house in the basement and call his national Canadian Security forces to say that the information showing that the word Quebec has been erased was done because the person who presented the information is planning to explode Justin Trudeau, in Quebec, and that is why he is hiding in the basement under his house.

If the overlay is put on my view of a search result to cover up the word “Quebec” then it will happen to anyone who has drawn the attention of global terrorists such as Justin Trudeau.

For the record, I don‘t have any desire to explode Justin Trudeau or Quebec. That is not my job. I do think the world would be far safer if Quebec and Justin Trudeau exploded, either on their own or by actions taken by Global Security Forces. But like I said, that is not my job, others are in charge of that kind of thing. I am only an elderly disabled man who is a Medicare beneficiary, so, I can’t be expected to do that level of Global housekeeping, others who better equipped, and in better health are responsible for ridding the world of places like Quebec.

This is also a place of interest, the whole thing with exception of some parts of Ireland is the way it looks. I used to say Scotland was not of interest, but that changed, it’s all bad news over there for far too long... where is my eraser?

This has always been a big problem for the whole world. It’s a boat, sink it.

And this is the main source of all of the problems on earth.

It’s just a little tiny place, see below:

This is all it is, and it’s destroying everything else:

It’s a book, burn it.

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

4:57 pm:

Revisit this just for a minute. This is really too depressing to really do an the in depth report and decode that is warranted here, so, I’ll give you a head start, something to look at as a place of basis for your own decode work.

youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ReU6IGACo

First, some background is necessary:

(when i do strikethrough that is example of Christian terror at Centurylink changing the text I wright to a “The” for “Theology” means “God”. There are thousands of places where “That” gets changed to “The” by the terror army operatives at Centurylink, Google, and Tumblr terror cells. It’s the same as if the Pope came to piss on the things I wright while trying to get some help)

To see what is happening here, you have to know the (that) when a citizen is awarded a disability status, that event is called “Award of Disability” and beneficiaries receive an “Award Letter” to inform them that Social Security Administration has finished doing their assessment on the application process that people have to go through, it takes more than two years to complete the process, and EVERYONE is denied in the first round, to discourage those who may be trying to deceive the application process. Once “Awarded”, the person becomes a Medicare Beneficiary, and begins to receive a nominal amount of income based on the amount of Social Security Monthly Premiums that person paid, automatically, as it was deducted from their paycheck throughout their lifetime. There is a maximum to the income amount, it’s not enough to survive on for most people. During the first fifteen years of Disability Award Status, those people are subject to the whims of the SSA, if they feel like a reassessment is necessary, the person is called in to a hearing, and must PROVE that they still should be considered as a Disabled Citizen. It turns out that other neighbors are often a threat to such people, and will go out of their way to make life more difficult for disabled people, and will call the SSA to tell them that their neighbor claims to be disabled, but does not look disabled. That means that the neighbor, who is not a doctor, works at McDonald’s as hostess, can make a problem for the disabled persons. You might say that should no problem if the disability is real, just prove it, again. What you don’t understand about that is the lack of control, the threat of having to pay back all of the income that was received before the neighbor called SSA to say stuff they know nothing about, the worry, extra expense, and most of all the time that is required to focus all of your life’s efforts on proving once again that an Award is to be continued. Every other thing a person may have going on, has to stop, all focus shifts on maintaining what is already in place. It’s like you are out at sea, and the information is such that someone is going to take your boat while you are ten miles out in the water. You have to stop everything to save the boat.

Then, for purpose of that video, after fifteen years passes, disability award citizens are no longer subject to any kind of interference from SSA for review no matter what any one says. So, the disabled person will never again be called in and forced to prove anything after fifteen years passes. That is what Jeff Kiesel is talking about in that video after he introduces the “Dotted Line” where a design patent contract is a protective measure. He is pointing out that it is not likely that anyone will be looking at, or interested in disabled people after fifteen years of awarded disability status, and that fact makes them good targets for the long haul where the victims income can easily be maintained after Jeff Kiesel signs the dotted line where the Guitoligist, Brad, does the dirty deed, Gain Cheap, on the Clean Channel.

Contract; Protection; Design.

Those are among the key statement jargon, where “design” is in reference to subjects suitable for surgical experimentation. If not experiment subjects, then such people can be held captive by someone who claims to be a son or daughter or other relation to the victim, and used for things like taking to a SAG friendly doctor so that Jeff Kiesel and Brad the Guitologist can get high on the captive patients pain medicine that is prescribed after a fall down the stairs, or a “gardening accident” in the yard, while those patients never get the medicine they are prescribed. Hear Jeff Kiesel say the phrase “One Leg” to get an idea of the horror of being held in captivity by drug addict SAG members.

Refer to the 6:34 mark in video to get to the heart of the coded message.

It’s coded. You decode it yourself, to keep your parents and grandparents free of captivity, and yourself, because you never know when that freight train is going to run you over until after the train goes by.

All of that is talked about openly on Google/YouTube.

You watch this video and then argue that Google is not in the snuff movie business, I double dog dare you to.

They even know and mark the video with a warning, so, I’ll warn you also: You cannot Un-See this video. Once you have seen it, it will stay with you forever, like a heroin addiction is to a SAG member.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZYDc_yR0qA&bpctr=1613268727

This video worked and was playable here on tumblr for a few hours, someone had to manually see that it’s here, then put the age restriction on the Google Snuff movie service. I recommend using someone else’s computer to view the video, as Google has turned it into a controlled environment where they can trace your address, so, use a police computer or one at the local church for viewing Google Snuff Movie Service Productions whenever possible. If you click the link, they will assume you read this account, if that happens, you will be marked as someone who knows the truth about Google and the Vatican, and they will hunt you down, take you captive, torture you so you will give them addresses of your family, especially small children, and your banking and asset access information. Then, they will put you into a commercial grade Chipper/Shredder, and grind you up into a liquid, add some water, and some seeds, and spray you onto the roadside as Erosion Abatement for profit because the Department of Transportation pays the contractors for the service of doing Erosion Abatement work on the roadsides, so that the road won‘t wash away in the rainy season. That, is the Christian Way. You can‘t see it through so many daisy’s is part of the problem with that. Orange poppy seeds are most popular in Or/egon for the Human Erosion Abatement Program. The mixture starts out as “V-8″ they call it, then when the seeds are added, at the time of the spraying, they call it “Red Hydroseed” and that is what the State is billed for by the contractors. no, I am not joking, does it sound like a joke?.

youtube

The reason that video exists and is presented on Google/YouTube, along with other similar ones, and movies of animal torture, is create a market for them. The existence of such movies available mainstream makes a “custom order” situation available through YouTube and it’s all approved and signed off by Sundar Pichai, and the Pope with use of a warning label, and the added benefit of that SAG Media “Color Announcer” who calls the action like a little league umpire calls an infield fly rule. Those who are really in the know, knows that the snuff movie presented, is about young boys and young girls because of the “Infield Fly Rule” that is presented in the approved Google snuff production there. “Infield Fly Rule” at a little league game is far more difficult to call as a umpire, than that snuff movie Color Announcer does with a train.

Boy Scouts of America

Eagle Scouts

Girl Scouts

Brownie’s

Little League Baseball

Pop-Warner Football

Gymnastics

Any and all extra curricular sports activities where SAG members can sign up to be a coach or a mentor, all inclusive, is what the train video is truly about, and is what Google is truly about.

Learn to read terror comm.

Turn off the fucking television, there is nothing real presented on it.

Stop the terror take over of USA. Preserve USA by restoring the Freedom that was lost to the Christian terror pirates.

Expose them, remove their fake Corona Masks.

Make arrests. Take them all to Easter Island and drop them off there. There will be way too many to put into the prisons.

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

6:46 pm:

Local Conditions:

About 40 degrees F. Absence of wind, high overcast sky.

I saw lights moving around in my front yard as dusk settled in at the close of that Boy Scouts entry above.

I took a walk to the mailbox.

I hesitated momentarily at the front door, opened and closed it a couple of times knowing that the terror bastards are triggered into action with listen device they put beneath my house at the entry.

I stepped out and a car moved south on Russell Road, as is usual at this time of day when I step outside, I am a little early with walk today because of those lights I saw in the front.

There were no lights on at the 376 Jackpine unit B as I stepped over to the driveway, there is a odor of death there, is faint, smells as if a dead creature or persons is in wooded area over there near the Offensive Monroe Surveillance Travel Trailer. I continued to the road, as I passed by the Monroe’s camara area pointed at my gate, there was the sound of jet ... I looked all over the sky to see the jet, but there was no sign of airplane, the sound went north, then west, then north again, then south, it was not a jet, it was a terror soldier’s nitrous gas tank ignited by my Bic Lighter and the sound of a launched terror soldier.

There was one item at my driveway entrance that was out of place, someone had moved a thing that I don‘t think could have moved on it’s own.

The people at 445 Jackpine have all of the house lights off tonight, is totally dark in contrast to last night when the place was lit up brightly. I could see that one of the vehicles there is a pick-up truck, looks medium grey color, but it’s too dark outside to know more, or it could be blue color.

There was nothing in the mailbox.

That Mazda, or other similar looking car was at 520 Jackpine again, parked in front, there was a dog in the yard, and someone was hiding behind a wood fence there along the road watching as I looked for my mail in the box.

I went over that way, there should have been some trash cans brought to the corner by now, in anticipation of Monday Trash Day, but there were no trashcans out on a Saturday, is unusual but not unheard of.

As I looked around at the corner, another terror soldier ignited at 520 and must have taken off very quickly, that man hiding by the fence came out and got into that Mazda, and drove away while I was still walking on the road. He used a flashlight to light me up, so, I returned the light back to him, with a bigger, more powerful light.

I was concerned for a moment he might try to run me over, but I just stayed my course, and went to my driveway. I think the man in the Mazda thought I was the Jet I heard, his accomplice terror assassin, or maybe the other one that was standing right next to the Mazda and launched away quick. I think that one landed at 535 Jackpine at Freeberg terror cell, as I did hear a “Thud” sound from that direction.

It looked to me that the Mazda went to 376 Jackpine to Chartrand terror cell. I did not stay close enough to know for sure though.

There is a possibility that the car was brought to Chartrand by remote control, that is not uncommon, and all of the automatic transmission cars are fitted with remote control operation so that in event that the gas wielding terror soldiers are ignited and burst, the cars can be driven remotely to a controlled place to clean the guts, piss, and shit that gets spattered all on the interior of the cars when that happens. The Myers car from 560 has had dozens of Bursted terror soldiers explode in it over many years.

The lights at 376 Jackpine unit B came on at the front entry there as I walked back to my house.

Conclusion is that all four of the 445 Jackpine assassins are all dead now, and as I thought, were working with the people at 376, and, 376 is the Mazda that has been bringing dogs to the 520 address on occasion for staging attacks at my house with help from many terror cells from near and far.

I’ll take another walk later on to see if Mazda Man wants to dance with me...

Here kitty, kitty, kitty .... Ohhh Mazda Man... Let’s Dance!

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

7:27 pm:

In event that nsa is watching, wondering, learning, be advised of the VKA follow up work I did earlier today.

Can’t say more.

also: 928-249-3186 Kingman AZ Jeremy is of interest, sent him the 1 2 3 in return for A B C he sent last week about a “SpringBoard”. I could use some help with dealing with Jeremy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQtPzo-7AHs

youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQtPzo-7AHs

Possibly Jeremy Barns. A former renter of one of my houses many years ago, associated with Marc & Kayla Cobb who are members of the Tucker’s Barber Shop on 6th St. at Village Square Shopping Center, a “Hawaii 5-O“ terror cell controlled by “Greens of Olde Three Ply” Vatican Choir high command at Kauai Ranch. Jerremy Barns is also loosely affiliated with Joanne St. Cyr of Quebec Canada, and she is part of many things, Jazz Airline is one of them, a Air Canada regional commuter airline serving the Quebec/Montreal area.

Jeremy Barns, The Cobb terror cell, Todd & Alicia Wright and Micheal & Mercedes Wright terror cells are all Safari terror cell members, the Wright’s are actual Lion Handlers, and the Wrights are family of Richard Wright of Pink Floyd, who is one of the Green’s of Olde Three Ply Vatican Choir terror high command at Kauai Ranch.

I suppose all of tonight’s walk to the mailbox is just for personal documentation so I can remember things as they occurred, since no one is interested in preserving USA, or restoring lost Freedom enough to ask me a question about this account of terrorism on Tumblr.

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

9:49 pm:

I am tired, I don‘t want to do the decoding, but you can.

Here, this man runs down all of the necessary ingredients to say: “Last in Line”. a Ronnie James Dio song that is deep, but partly is about a entertainment event where terror soldiers go to the back of the line at the entrance, they have swords, a lot of protection from event staff at a concert, baseball, football, any kind of event where the venue has a “Grey Area”, a median place between the seating area and the entrance to the venue such as the concessions area at a baseball stadium is where you present your ticket to an usher before the event begins. The terror soldiers “Hold their swords horizontally, and move forward” through the crowd that is lined up in such a “Grey” area. The audience is killed before the show begins, three percent of the total show audience is taken, ID’s are processed, and replacement look-a-likes are arranged to go live at the victims homes, ultimately, to vote for SAG Shills on ballots such as are all of the people who are featured at the fake impeachment hearings. He says everything but “Horizontal” in coded language.

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1360677045139869702

Here, Twitter covered that missing “Horizontal” twice with trending Letterman bullshit. Here, he “Roasts” Lindsey Lohan to a point of tears, she must have said or done something to gain attention to the ways of the Screen Actor Guild and was punished for saying whatever she had said, maybe some research can find what Lindsey revealed.

She is wearing “Upholstery”, basically is donned in a sofa. So, the Upholstery outfit could possibly be enough to piss David Letterman off, and Roast her.

Upholstery = “There must be some kind of hold up” in SAG terror language, is a Universally used term, many uses. She may be using it as a “USA is being hijacked” sort of holdup. So, they are sending her to Rehab, where she becomes the “Horizontal” member of the impeachment asshole above who is saying “Last in line” and it’s also a “Sloppy Seconds” statement.

https://twitter.com/davejorgenson/status/1360783863887376390

This at the end is a place where Dave threatens Cher (who does not look exactly the same as I recall she looks in that interview) and that video clip makes the horizontal part of the impeachment Last in Line happen twice, with a “Sloppy Seconds” at the end of the show.

It’s complicated, but not impossible to decode David Letterman, besides, he’s been dead for about five years, his head was put into the mailboxes on Jackpine after the show was over.

https://twitter.com/Squidwardsnose8/status/1360696495708778504

One of the more important things to keep in mind is that Twitter made all of that click together, with use of “Twitter Trends”. The content of the Tweets from Letterman are all contained in the vast archive of Twitters digital storage capacity, and Twitter is Google, so arranging all of that stored archive to produce desired results is what Google is all about, it’s what they do, they categorize information.

So, once you do the decode, then you need to see why the decode opertunity presented itself there for you to see. It was Twitter that arranged all of that so it would be there to use as a language, a graphic based language that says more than the individual pieces of video clip when combined, and with a host from the fake impeachment to guide the reader to the message.

The message is about a mass murder at a venue, where there are women who will be punished, captured and killed after plenty of raping is done by David Letterman and Jay Leno, who you know is waiting to share a garage with Dave nearby.

My read is a personal one, that includes much other communication on Google products, in the music industry email promotions, and in my neighborhood, where the message spells out a Rush at my house on Sunday morning by men with swords, and with horses, equestrian snuff at my house, with a draw and quarter featured at the end of the show.

I can hardly wait.

Draw & Quarter: It’s been about fifteen years since the last time I saw someone being drawn & quartered. Usual is done with two horses, where some ropes and shackles are attached to a victims arms and legs, and the other end is tied to the saddle of the horses. They prefer to use four horses, but one will work if horses are in short supply, just tie the other end of the rope to a tree and the result is almost the same. The horses slowly pull the victim into pieces.

The Draw & Quarter events are very unpleasant to see, even worse to be the star of the show.

Best guess is Adrian Witcherly will supply the horses. She is a bank manager at the Midland St. Branch of JP Morgan Chase Bank in Grants Pass, corner of 7th St. not far from OR State Police Field Office which next to the Seventh Day Adventist Church on 9th St.

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

11:00 pm:

This man is said to be the most powerful man on earth, surely he will save me, and prevent the event from happening, given that all of information necessary for prevention has been provided.

I am confidant that the US President will do what ever is necessary to prevent tragedy when he has opportunity in advance to do so.

Certainly he will realize the horrible threat to USA, to Freedom, and the threat to mankind that is presented to the world by Google, and will everything in his vast power to stop Google and Twitter from murdering more US citizens forever.

Joe Biden will do the right thing, he has been informed of the danger.

https://twitter.com/POTUS

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

11:33 pm:

I just now sent this cry for help to the White House.

2-13-2021 at about 11:27 pm Oregon time.

Take note that I specified to read the information in the links provided, and that 911 Emergency phone service will produce assassins at my house if I use that. I have much other documentation of failure at FBI.Tips.Gov too. It does not work, only assassins come in response to reports of terror mass murder in Oregon.

“Please send help. The state of Oregon has been hijacked by terror army from Canada, they use poison gasses to overpower victims, capture and torture them, then kill & replace them with imposters. There are many hundreds of thousands of them, and they have been murdering the population for more than twenty years. There are more than 800 pages of explanations at the link provided, eye-witness accounts of actual terror mass murder happening in Oregon and all over the west coast of USA. Please study the information carefully, as the terror is very sophisticated. 911 Emergency phone service is not available, it's controlled and operated by the terror army, they only send assassins when people call for help. Please send US Military. https://stone-man-warrior.tumblr.com https://stone-man-warrior.tumblr.com/archive”

They will call the local sheriff.

The local sheriff will send assassins.

That is what happened each time I sent a request for help to a US President.

Obama.

Trump.

Biden.

They have all been informed. none have stopped the terrorism, mass murders, kidnapping, or US takeover.

They all have sent assassins.

Joe Biden started sending assassins before he took office.

If I disappear, Joe Biden’s people did it.

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

11:46 pm:

Here is the BBC UK news response to my letter to Joe Biden at WhiteHouse.gov:

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1360856008969621507

This is the part where Reuters UK (SIS MI6) makes the order to change the contact information I included with the note to Joe Biden at WhiteHouse.gov. This effectively will result in the death of investigative persons sent to the wrong places, because that Tweet says to make “Variant Modifications” and is directed at what I posted regarding the note asking for help.

I used the correct contact information on the form at WhiteHouse.gov. Part of the terrorism includes that the phones don‘t reach the people I need to reach, only approved terror cells can be reached with a telephone, and only terror cells call my phone number.

It’s should not be difficult to see where I live to contact me by reading the information at the links included, to this account. The problem with that is the investigative persons are not provided with the source information and have no idea that this account exists at all, they just go where the leadership tells them to go do investigative work, but the leadership is all SAG Shills, are all terror army operatives, and they send the investigative people into traps intentionally. Reuters UK is making sure that investigative persons go to Bullhead City Arizona, instead of Oregon where I am at, and where I can help them help me to help everyone, and restore the freedom that was lost so long ago.

https://twitter.com/ReutersUK/status/1360857587453988866

February 14, 2021: 10:05 am:

February 14, 2021: 10:38 pm:

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1360990937606983691

Biden effectively says: “Fuck you minion”

Then turns to his Canadian SDA terror soldiers and commands: “Grab your rakes and pitchforks, let’s get to work”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BniO017oeTM

youtube

The President of the United States of America, Joe Biden.

It’s St. Valentines Day today, I forgot, he’s busy ... today is a bad day for doing anti-terror work.

1 note · View note

ahtohallan-calling · 5 years ago

Text

chapter 8 of don’t read the last page is here!

[kristanna / m / multichap / modern au with actress!anna and vetstudent!kristoff]

this is another chapter where you gotta click through to ao3 to see the whole thing ;), but here on tumblr it’s all t-rated

“People who are fine don’t sort out other people’s kitchens at three in the morning.”

“I just wanted to help,” she said, her voice small, and a little frown appeared on his forehead.

chapter 8: firsts

Anna was getting antsy.

Filming had wrapped way back at the beginning of July; there was a lull now until the trailer would be released at the beginning of October, and then slowly interviews would trickle in, talk show appearances if she was lucky; then the movie would drop, and if it went well she’d probably get offers of other jobs or at minimum asked to be on more shows, and if it failed-- well. She’d taken a good, hard look at her options back in May after the tampon commercial had first come out, when she’d had to wonder if going semi-viral on Twitter was the height of her stardom. The company wanted her back, wanted to make a whole series of ads featuring her and capitalizing on the traction the first commercial had gotten, but she had her limits.

She’d asked Sven semi-casually what it took to be a bank teller and quickly scratched that off her list; she’d never had a head for numbers. The only math classes she’d ever done well in were the ones in high school where she got to sit beside Kristoff and pass him notes asking for help, so that ruled out most of the jobs Google said were easy to get into. She could go back for a master’s in teaching and try to be a drama teacher, but while she’d played a very good Anna Leonowens in a community theater production of The King and I, she’d never really had a knack for actual teaching of any kind. There was always starting from scratch in college, but even the thought sent a shudder down her spine.

She’d waitressed her way through college and done well enough at it; maybe she’d do the opposite of the old stereotype and be an actress before waiting tables.

As much as she’d tried to hide her worries from her sister, Elsa had taken notice of the fact that Anna’s room-- and, in fact, the whole apartment-- was suddenly much cleaner than normal. “You don’t have to hang around here all day,” Elsa had said one night as they sat down to dinner together. “And you know you can talk to me if you’re feeling stressed, right?”

“But I don’t hang around here all day,” Anna protested, and it was true. It was just that there was so much time to fill now that Kristoff was at school or work most of the time, and Honey was working on two different sets at once, and Elsa and Sven had real grown-up jobs, and her friends from college in the area had, by and large, moved on to 9-to-5s as well. So she spent her mornings tidying the apartment, scrolling through casting calls, going on long runs, checking the audition postings once again just in case-- and then she’d look at the clock and see it was only eleven and feel a sense of dread rising in her, settling a little more heavily on her heart every day.

She tried not to burden Kristoff with it; she’d taken the once-seemingly endless days full of pillow talk and lazy kisses and picnics on the living room floor for granted, and now when she saw him he was usually only awake for a couple of hours at a time, and even then he was always studying or trying to catch up on errands or just too exhausted to do anything but hold her.

He’d tried to apologize for it once at the beginning when he’d accidentally dozed off mid-conversation as they sat together on the sofa, but Anna had shaken her head and shushed him before he could even finish saying “sorry”.

“Look at me, Kris,” she’d said, cupping his jaw in her hands. “I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to apologize to me for working hard.”

“I just feel bad,” he had replied, eyebrows pulling together in a frown. “I want to take you out and stuff like you deserve, but here I am falling asleep before you can even finish telling me about your day. I’m really sorry, Anna, you deserve better and--”

She had leaned in and kissed him, not pulling away until he relaxed against her. “Don’t say that, baby,” she’d said, and he’d sucked in a little breath; she hadn’t called him that before. “You’re the best thing in my life.”

And I love you, she’d been tempted to add, especially when he’d tugged her onto his lap and started kissing his way up her neck, the way that made her clutch at his shirt and moan his name every time, but then he’d reached her mouth, and she figured maybe she’d just show him instead of saying it out loud.

But by the end of September, with the trailer’s release only a week away, she was beginning to reach a breaking point; it wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own for picking such a useless job with so much downtime when you weren’t good enough at it to stay booked, which she apparently wasn’t. It was a Saturday night, and Kristoff had a rare day off on Sunday, and they’d made plans to go out for brunch in the morning before driving up to a stretch of coastline Kristoff had assured her was deserted, with a crooked little smile that sent shivers up her spine.

He was asleep next to her now in his bed; she had been nestled against him, her nose buried in the crook of his neck, but no matter how many deep breaths she took, sleep continued to evade her, and so she had rolled away, careful not to disturb him.

She was tempted to reach out and trace her fingers over the lines of his face, set her palm on his cheek and lean in to kiss him, but he looked so peaceful, without even the trace of a frown for the first time in weeks, that it made something in her chest ache, and so she slipped out of bed and tiptoed into the hall.

She wasn’t sure what she was going to do at first; Sven was away at some conference, so at least she didn’t have to worry about waking him. She considered flicking the TV on and watching late-night cop shows on mute and making up her own dialogues the way she and Elsa had done when they were kids first learning to rebel in their own little ways. But she’d been doing stupid, inane things like that for so long, just trying to pass the time; she felt utterly useless, so much so that she was starting to feel an itch deep in her bones, a desperation to do something, anything that made her feel like she was contributing to the world around her.

Her eyes lighted on the kitchen, an idea sparking in her mind; she knew Sven and Kristoff both liked to cook, so the cabinets were overflowing, but neither of them really had much patience for organization, and so half the time they spent in the kitchen was wasted shuffling through drawers and shelves and making an even bigger mess. Maybe she was a washed up has-been (more like never-was) at twenty-four and maybe her boyfriend was a hero who would save tons of baby animals someday, but by god, at least she could do this.

She started with the bottom shelves in the cabinets, thinking maybe she’d just straighten those out and crawl back into bed, but then she realized that being taller than five foot three meant you could actually make use of the rest of the space, and so she crawled onto the counter and started pulling everything out; if she was going to do this, she should at least do it well.

She had the top two shelves alphabetized in both cabinets and was working on the lower ones— that was the hard part, these she had sorted by usefulness and had had to consider what someone who actually knew how to cook would use— when he heard footsteps coming up the hall.

She kept her focus on the little piles around her, hoping Kristoff would just go to the bathroom and crawl back to bed; he’d been exhausted enough that he probably wouldn’t even notice she wasn’t there with him.

She realized it was fruitless when she heard his footsteps on the linoleum and heard a heavy sigh. “Anna, what the hell are you doing?”

She slipped the rosemary next to the garlic salt; probably those got used in the same thing anyway. Right? “Couldn’t sleep. Figured I might as well start pulling my weight around here since I basically live here half the time.”

“Come back to bed.”

She bit her lip and ignored him, turning back to the trickiest little pile: one of them— Sven, most likely— apparently had a penchant for collecting different colors of salt, and she had no idea what any of them did.

“Anna.”

He had come up behind her now and put his hand on her back; she turned at last to look at him and met his confused gaze for only a moment before ducking away again. “I‘ll redo it if you don’t like it.”

He just stood there for a long moment, wearing only his boxers and his glasses; they hung just barely lopsided, one of the arms caught up on a little snarl in his sleep-mussed hair. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Well, I really didn’t do anything all day, so—“

“Anna. You need to sleep. You’re going to be too tired to do anything tomorrow, and we’ve been planning this all week.”

“I’m fine,” she huffed out a little more forcefully than she had meant to and turned quickly back to the cabinet to hide the tears of shame that sprung up almost immediately in her eyes.

“Fine,” he said after a stunned moment of silence. “Fine. Then I’ll wait up for you until you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on.”

“But you worked all day, you’re—“

“I’m fine,” he said, and though he didn’t raise his voice, the words still stung. Wasn’t that why she was doing this, trying to make his life a little bit easier, and here she was just—

No, a nasty, stubborn little voice whispered in the back of her mind. He doesn’t mean it. He’ll sit up for a minute and then go back to bed, and then in the morning he’ll thank you for helping him out so much, tell you he’s relieved you finally fucking did something, you useless sack of shit.

She turned back to her shelving with renewed vigor, lining each cap up nearly until the cabinets were filled with perfectly organized, colorful rows of plastic and glass, as cheerful as any supermarket display.

But somehow, she didn’t feel any better.

She dared to peek over her shoulder; Kristoff was still there, sitting on the couch and watching infomercials in a bid to stay awake. As she watched, his head began to loll to the side; he suddenly pinched his own wrist and jolted upright again.

Suddenly she couldn’t get down and back over to him fast enough. She started to clamber onto his lap out of habit, but then he turned and looked to her with such exhaustion in her eyes she sat next to him instead, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tightly.

“You need sleep, Kris,” she said, doing her best to keep that stupid little wobble out of her voice.

“Not as much as I need to know you’re okay.”

The words nearly knocked the wind out of her. “I— I— really, I’m fine.”

“People who are fine don’t sort out other people’s kitchens at three in the morning.”

“I just wanted to help,” she said, her voice small, and a little frown appeared on his forehead.

“Help with...what?”

“Just— stuff. I’m— I’m sorry I woke you up, really, but I promise it’s not important, we can talk about it in the morning if you—“

“Anna, baby, I’m not even gonna be able to sleep until I know what the fuck is going on. You’re scaring me,” he said, and suddenly she was crying and he was leaning over and pulling her into his arms and rocking her like she was a child as she sobbed into his bare shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to start a fight with you,” she choked out.

“Is this a fight?” he asked, sounding genuinely worried.

“I don’t know. I don’t want it to be.”

“Okay,” he said, kissing her forehead, “it’s not a fight. But please, please just tell me what’s wrong.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I— I just feel so useless, I just— since I finished the movie I just sit around all day waiting for something to happen while you’re working so hard at school and the café, and Elsa works too and so does everyone else, and you’re all good at what you do and— and you help people, and like you’re gonna take care of animals and stuff and meanwhile my job is just standing around saying the same thing over and over again in front of a camera and I just— I just…”

She trailed off, struggling to put it all into words in a way that didn’t make her feel even more pathetic. “I just...I couldn’t sleep because I felt so useless. I wanted to do something to help you instead of just wasting even more time, because you work so hard and you’re so exhausted and— and now I’m just making everything worse, and I’m so, so sorry.”

He was quiet for a long time, long enough that the tears on her cheeks had dried; still he held her close. She had shifted to sit beside him, her legs thrown over his lap as she leaned against his shoulder; he had one arm thrown over her, keeping her tucked against him, and she held his other hand in both of her own, endlessly tracing the lines of his palm.

“Have I done anything,” he asked at last, his voice unsure, “to make you feel like this?”

“No. Never. None of you, it’s— it’s just me being stupid.”

He was quiet again for a moment. When he spoke again it was slowly, like he was terrified he would say the wrong thing.

“You’re not stupid, Anna. Or useless. This is just— this is part of life sometimes. The, like, in between shit. I don’t know. And I don’t— I don’t know what I can do to make it better. But I...care about you, whether you’ve got a part you’re doing at the moment or not. And if you decide this is too much and you wanna try another job, then I’m here for you. And if you stick with it, then I’m here for you, too. I just— I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t think any of that even helped.”

“It did,” she said quickly, tears threatening to spill over again. “It does— I’m so sorry, Kris, really, that I woke you up for this.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you did if it meant getting it out of your system. Just— do me a favor?”

“Anything. God, I owe you lots of them, I feel like I’m always the one having a crisis and you’re—“

He put a gentle finger over her lips. “Two favors. One, stop being so hard on yourself, okay? You’ve been going through a lot of new stuff this year. It’s okay to freak out about it sometimes. And two—“

He kissed the tip of her nose, the way that always made her crack a smile, even now. “Please just tell me next time something is upsetting you instead of holding it in. Preferably at a reasonable hour of the day, yeah?”

She nodded sheepishly. “I will. I promise. Will you— will you please go back to bed now? I’m worried about you.”

“Will you go with me?”

She nodded again, and then suddenly he was scooping her up bridal style and carrying her back to bed. He laid her down gently and pulled the sheets over her shoulders before crawling in himself, pulling her back against his chest and draping his arm over her waist.

“Good night, Kris,” she whispered, lacing her fingers through his.

“Good night, Anna.”

---

They decided to forgo going out for brunch; neither of them really felt like talking to other people today, even for a moment. She had nearly forgotten what it felt like to have a whole day to just themselves, hour and hours at a stretch to be spent holding and being held and trading little whispered secrets and promises and praise, each sweet word paired with a kiss or caress or little silly sigh. She was drunk on Kristoff and the dark of his eyes and the heat of his hands and the press of his lips, soaked in love as if it were honey, so much so that she felt heavy with it sometimes, like all of it was constantly on the verge of spilling out and sweeping her away, and god, still every day it kept growing in her, filling her chest with so much warmth it felt like she had swallowed a star; she wondered sometimes if people could see it, if they knew. Kristoff had to, she thought, had to see it in her eyes and know she adored him, could probably see it now as she came into the kitchen and perched on the edge of the counter as had become her habit, swinging her legs and watching him make a batch of pancakes with those quick, clever hands that always knew exactly how she needed to be touched.

He smiled softly in greeting as he poured batter into the pan and came over to her the moment he was finished, wrapping his arms around her waist and tucking his chin over her shoulder. Her heart did a funny little flip when she noticed the ends of his hair were still damp, falling into slight curls; she ran her hands through them, feeling a sudden deep sense of contentment.

“You know,” Kristoff said playfully, his arms tightening slightly around her middle, “it was a lot easier to mix these up now that I knew where to find the vanilla.”

“I love you,” she said, the words popping out in response like they just couldn’t be kept in any more. “Kind of a lot, actually.”

His fingers had been tracing idle circles on her back, but they stilled suddenly; she heard him suck in a breath and hold it. She bit her lip, too nervous to break the silence, as if she stood on some great precipice and even the carelessly blown breath of a misspoken word might be enough to send her tumbling over the edge.

“Say it again,” he whispered, his fingers curling into the back of her shirt-- his shirt, really, another one she’d stolen from his drawer, coveting any opportunity to be close to him even in the smallest of ways.

Anna turned her head and kissed his temple. “I love you, Kristoff Bjorgman. And I think that pancake is going to burn.”

“Forget the pancake,” he breathed, pulling back so he could look at her, wonder in his eyes. “I-- you-- do you mean it?”

She nodded, feeling her heart begin to pound, so hard she could have sworn she could hear it, and he let out a sudden whoop of joy, surging forward to hug her again and pull her close to his chest, lifting her straight off the counter. Anna let out a gasp of surprise and fisted her hands in his shirt instinctively, her legs wrapping around his waist just in time.

“I love you, too,” he said, and she was suddenly glad he was holding her because otherwise she might have fainted and fallen to the floor at the sound of it. “I love you so much, Anna, I-- I just--”

The smoke alarm began to go off. He turned quickly to the stove and then froze, unsure what to do with his hands otherwise occupied; Anna, luckily, had the sense to snatch the handle of the pan and slide it over into the sink, which, thanks to Kristoff’s habit of washing as he cooked, was already full of soapy water.

The incessant beeping stopped after a moment, and they both let out a sigh of relief; Kristoff’s arms loosened around her, though he still held her close to his chest, and Anna realized he had been holding on to her so tightly it was starting to hurt, as if his first instinct in a moment of potential danger had been to protect her in whatever way he could. She cupped his jaw in her hands and leaned down to kiss his forehead.

“That’s not how I really imagined that would go,” he muttered, a flush beginning to creep over his cheeks. “The, uh, the making you breakfast thing. And the telling you I loved you part, too.”

Anna laughed and patted his shoulder as he set her back on the ground. “We can say it again and pretend it’s the first time.”

“No,” he said with a lopsided grin, “no, I-- I was so worried about saying it first and whether or not you’d say it back or whatever, and now...I guess it’s a relief to know I can tell you whenever I want.”

“Tell me what?” she said sweetly, batting her eyelashes.

“That I love you. So much. And that I’m so glad you love me, even when I burn your breakfast.”

“And I’m glad you love me even when I ransack your kitchen at three in the morning.”

He leaned down and kissed her then, his fingers just barely cupping her cheek, and his lips were so tender against hers she almost thought she would cry, but instead she kissed him back, knowing that this would be a moment she would treasure for a long, long time.

They broke apart only when her stomach growled in protest; Kristoff blushed again as he looked down at her. “Oh, fuck, I really am sorry about breakfast.”

“That’s okay. There’s always McDonald’s.”

Anna had just opened her mouth to ask if he still loved McGriddles even though they were disgusting when her phone went off on the table behind her. Kristoff recognized the ringtone by now, the one that she hadn’t been hearing enough lately. “It’s your agent— get it, I’ll grab our stuff.”

She scrambled for the phone. “Hey Sam— yeah— good morning to you too. What’s going on?”

She listened to his hurried explanation in stunned silence, feeling her breath speed up with every word. When at last Sam asked what she thought, she hardly knew where to begin.

“I— you’re serious, they want me?”

“Yes. They’ve been looking everywhere, heard about the Netflix movie, pulled some strings and saw the first edit and called me this morning insisting they want to see you by the end of the week.”

“I— and it’s seriously for, like— for—“

“Seriously, Anna,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Come by my office tomorrow, and I’ll get you everything you need for the audition, okay? Proud of you, kid. I know you’ll nail it.”

She set the phone down, her mind reeling. “Is everything okay?” Kristoff asked, sounding suddenly far away.

She turned to face him, her voice unsteady. “I— I don’t have it yet— but they— they want me for a part, Kris. A big one.”

#there is.....a lot in this chapter lol #and i still had to cut stuff lmfao #(it's only 4kish words but still like. whew)#my fics #drtlp

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dvp95 · 5 years ago

Text

is that as good as it gets?

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: teen & up

warnings: none

tags: memory loss, amnesia, fluff, introspection, established relationship, some gender-y discussion

word count: 9,101

sequel to still the best, more or less (which you can read on ao3 or here on tumblr) and so easy to come back into you (on ao3 and tumblr) and written for the lovely @intoapuddle <33333 happy belated birthday pal!

read on ao3 or here!

Phil loves his parents. He always has, even in the worst of the puberty-fuelled rebellion. Well, alright, 'rebellion'. There were a lot of long nights spent with a book and torch or his GameBoy under the covers, heart pounding in his ears as he listened for any sign of his parents coming to check on him, but he doesn't think that counts.

Even when things were at their hardest, he still loved his parents. He loved them when his dad kept asking after girls with absolutely no inclination that there were other things he could be asking in order to know his son better. He loved them when his mum pulled him aside and said his new hairstyle made him look 'a little girly, love'. He loved them when he was grieving for a friend and they didn't know what to say, how to help.

Right now, he loves them. Beneath the fear and the guilt and the anxiety and the frustration that's been his whole weekend, there is a solid bedrock of love and trust that will never crack.

"They keep treating me like I'm twenty," Phil complains, quiet because he isn't sure how thin the walls are in this new house.

"You kind of are. Like, in a way."

Dan's voice is so comforting, even with the swirling mix of emotions that Phil is dealing with right now. It helps to ground him, that soft, posh, sleepy voice.

"Yeah," Phil says. He rolls over, stretches out, because even a double bed feels too big without a second set of too-long limbs. "But it's like, they're not even acting like I'm an adult. Mum's been asking how I'm feeling every twenty minutes and dad called me 'kiddo' at dinner."

"They're doing their best," says Dan. He's five hundred kilometers away, on a different island entirely, but if Phil closes his eyes he can pretend they're just murmuring across the distance between their pillows.

"I know they're doing their best, babe," Phil sighs. "It's just that this was so easy for you."

Dan laughs. He doesn't have to be quiet the same way Phil does, nobody trying to sleep on the other side of his headboard, but he matches Phil's volume anyway.

"I'm sorry," says Dan. "Did you just say this has been easy for me? I'll have to refer you to my therapist."

Somehow, Phil smiles. He doesn't feel like smiling at all, so exhausted by the role he's been playing with his family, but Dan always seems to have that effect on him. "I mean, you just treated me like a regular person right out the gate. They're acting like I'm gonna break."

"Maybe you will. I've seen how you stumble on those cliffs."

Phil chuckles, low, and then sighs into the phone. He's getting more comfortable with having the flat rectangle between his ear and shoulder. "I miss you."

"Mm," Dan hums. It sounds like he's smiling. Phil has never wanted to be somewhere so desperately. "Miss you, stupid."

"Are we always this bad when one of us is away?" Phil asks. He wishes he was talking on an old landline, wants to twirl the cord through his fingers while he and Dan whisper to each other. It's better than what his fingers are doing now, which is reaching out on reflex for a warm, citrus-and-mint body that isn't there.

"Yeah," Dan says with unabashed simplicity.

"I'm glad," says Phil. He feels a slight itch under his skin, unsettling him, but he fights it down by repeating, "I'm really glad. Like... I'm glad I'll still feel this way about you ten years from now."

"You're such a sap," Dan says, fondness seeping out of every word. "Normally you just call me a rat and ask if I'm eating."

"Are you eating, rat?"

The loud bark of laughter down the line makes Phil's toes curl with happiness. He loves that sound, loves making Dan laugh in such an unrestrained way. "Yes, Phil, I'm eating. Probably not as good as you are, I'm sure mum's got you eating like a king."

It's still so strange to hear someone else call Phil's parents 'mum' and 'dad' - someone who isn't Martyn, obviously. From everything that Phil has learned about Dan over the past two and a half months and every tiny detail he's remembered, Phil is certain that the titles were something his parents insisted on. He doubts Dan would have just started saying them on his own, even with all the social grace he sometimes lacks.

That makes him feel warm, too. He's never exactly thought his parents would hate him for who he is, but. He hasn't been a hundred percent sure.

Phil doesn't think that anybody is a hundred percent sure that their parents will love them the exact same way if they bring home someone who's the same gender. He loves his parents, he trusts them, and he's still been terrified about letting them in on the life he was living at uni.

They know Dan, though. They ask after him every time they talk to Phil, call him whenever Phil doesn't answer his phone, tell him to think of them as 'mum' and 'dad'. Like he's part of the family. Like it's all the same to them what Dan is, as long as he's making Phil happy.

"You're sure you don't want to come up?" Phil asks, fully aware of how needy he sounds.

"Positive. It's important for you and your parents to get to know each other, like, as you are now. I'm afraid I'd just distract all of you with my wit and charm."

That's probably true. Phil huffs another sigh, anyway. He pulls a pillow closer to him, wraps an arm around it. "But I miss you."

"Christ, Phil," Dan says lightly. "You been drinking or something?"

"Am I not allowed to miss you?" Phil grumbles.

"Course you can miss me," says Dan. "I miss you when you're in another fucking room of the apartment, sometimes. I just haven't heard you say it so much since we first started dating."

Phil thinks that's a little unfair. It still feels like they are in that honeymoon stage of their relationship, to him.

He wonders how long it's going to take before his slow trickle of memories and natural progression of time team up to make him as settled in their relationship as Dan is. It's almost disheartening, knowing that Dan doesn't want him as desperately as he wants Dan. It's a different kind of want, of affection, and it's a kind that Phil has never experienced before. He's almost afraid to reach that point.

"I'll be quieter about it, then."

"Don't you dare," Dan says, and Phil laughs. The knot in his chest starts to ease.

"Should sleep," says Phil. "Mum wants to go for a walk before we eat breakfast, what the hell. Who walks?"

Dan laughs. "Be grateful Martyn isn't there, or the walk would turn into a hike before you could say," he makes a dramatic wheezing noise instead of finishing with a word, and Phil has to cover his mouth with a hand to contain giggles.

"You're so annoying," he whispers. He wonders if Dan can hear the emotion behind the words, the same way Phil has figured out that when Dan calls him stupid, it means 'I love you'.

"Yeah," Dan agrees warmly. Phil thinks, yeah. He can hear it. "Go to sleep, Lester."

"Oh, honey, you remember Mrs. Oliver, down the street?" his mum asks, bustling around the kitchen and waving Phil away anytime he tries to jump in and help. It's starting to get to him, a bit. He's not an invalid.

"No, mum," says Phil. He wonders if he sounds as annoyed as he feels. "I don't know any of your neighbours. I don't even know mine."

If he does sound annoyed, his mum breezes past it. "Right, of course. That's probably a good thing, to be honest with you, love - she's a right witch. Just last week..."

Phil zones out almost immediately. He loves his parents so, so much, but they have no idea how to act around him. His mum has been plying him with cakes and giving him neighbourhood gossip, doting like he's sick, and his dad has been watching him like he's a ticking time bomb.

That might actually be true. Phil had only clung to his composure by a thread when they decided to tell him, conversationally, about his dad's health issues. Just dropped the C word with no hesitation.

Being with his parents is nice, but he wishes he had Dan at his side. Even Martyn would be better than nothing. He needs something to dilute the smothering worry and death bombshells they've been putting in Phil's lap all weekend.

Phil has been counting down the hours until he can be back in the noise and bustle of London, far away from all this anxiety. He has never exactly been outdoorsy, and as much as he appreciates the beautiful views here, as much as he appreciates his lovely parents, he just wants to go home.

It's strange. By all intents and purposes, he should feel more comfortable around his parents than he does around Dan. He's known them his whole life, and twelve years isn't nearly enough to erase everything they know and love about each other. He hadn't known a single thing about Dan when he woke up in their shared kitchen, but. That doesn't seem to matter.

London isn't the only thing that feels like home to Phil. It isn't just the rolling hills and the sound of the sea making him unsettled, it's the lack of a big hand on the small of his back, guiding him away from a tripping hazard.

The itch hasn't gone away. Phil keeps expecting it to fade, the more he and Dan get to know each other as they are now, but it's still there. Persistent.

Growing up, Phil never expected to be someone that was scared of commitment. He'd always wanted what his parents had, after all, even after he came to terms with the fact that he might never be able to be married the way they were. Then, he actually started to try and date boys.

Phil doesn't fancy himself an expert on gay culture. He didn't join the society at uni or anything, has never read a queer theory book in his life. So he has no idea if this is, like, typical, but it turned out that gay boys - at Phil's university, in any case - weren't interested in dates. They only really cared about hooking up.

Honestly, Phil has never wanted anything more than he wanted to go on a proper date with someone he wasn't pretending to be attracted to, but it's always been easier to just act like those desires aren't there.

The idea of getting married, now, is terrifying instead of a pipe dream. He isn't sure when that happened.

Somehow, he'd become one of those boys who'd hurt him in the beginning, who called him the wrong name unapologetically or reminded him not to wake up their flatmates on his way out. He'd finally understood the appeal - he couldn't get hurt again if he didn't care again.

He doesn't want to hurt Dan, though. This self-built fear is his to deal with, something he's positive that 2019 Phil has long since gotten over.

"Mum," he says, cutting into whatever she's been saying about her neighbour while he sulks.

She doesn't seem very bothered by the interruption. She gives him a quizzical sort of smile as she mixes flour and eggs together. As if they need more bloody cakes in this house. "Yes, dear?"

"You like Dan, right?" he asks.

It feels like a pointless question. He knows the answer already.

Still, his mum doesn't laugh at him for asking. She smiles, more warmly, and leans her hip against the breakfast bar he's sat at. Phil's damaged brain supplies him with a hundred moments just like this one, watching his mum bake up a storm for no reason besides keeping her boys fed and happy.

"We love Dan," she assures him. Phil notices the 'we' statement, so caught up in the way Dan uses them as he's been. "He's a lovely boy."

"Even though he swears a lot?" Phil jokes weakly. He can't bring himself to ask the question he really wants to.

His mum gives him a look, like she knows exactly what he isn't saying. It's uncanny, how she's always been able to see through him. She'd had a blind spot, sure, but Phil can't put that on her shoulders when he'd done all he could to keep it under wraps.

"Daniel is lovely," she repeats, turning back to her mixing bowl. "He's a good man who takes care of you, dear, what else could we ask for? Besides, he's no worse than your brother."

Phil doesn't think that's true, exactly, as he's heard Dan come out with curses that Martyn probably doesn't know exist, but he isn't about to argue the point with her. Not when he hears the words she isn't saying.

They really don't mind. His mum and dad are happy for him, they have Dan calling them 'mum' and 'dad', after all. His brother doesn't bat an eye when his partner kisses him at the dinner table. They don't just tolerate this part of Phil's life - they embrace it. They embrace Dan, the man Phil had fallen in love with.

He doesn't think he's quite there. Not yet. He's never been in love before, so he's sure he'll notice when his feelings tumble into that.

"I miss him," he tells his mum's back, because he can say things like that to her now. That's not something he's going to take for granted, no matter how stressed they've been making him.

"You'll be home soon, love," she hums.

Home. Also known as the space where he slots his knees into the backs of Dan's and buries his nose against Dan's soft curls. He'll be there soon.

"How are you feeling, actually?"

Phil's dad looks up from the malfunctioning radiator and gives Phil a thin smile. "How are you feeling, actually?"

"Touché," Phil mumbles. He's not helping with the repairs so much as he's sitting on the cold cement floor and passing tools to his dad when he asks for them. He wonders who's going to do this sort of thing when he and Dan buy a home.

Great, now that itch is back. All he wanted was to know if this is something he should be learning how to do. They've probably got enough money to pay someone else to do it, Phil supposes.

Dan still hasn't let him look at his bank account or their joint account, which would bother Phil if he had any idea of how to handle money at all. His parents have taught him the basics of budgeting and investing, sure, but he doubts that they've properly prepared him at this scale. He's happy to leave all that to Dan for now.

"I'm feeling good, actually," his dad says. "Still kicking, and all."

"Same," says Phil. Neither of them laugh.

A quiet falls over them again as his dad works. Phil leans against the wall and tries not to get frustrated by the little glances his dad keeps sending his way.

He understands that they're worried. He'd be going out of his mind if this had happened to someone he loves. It's really starting to get to him, though, the undivided attention on his health when he is already so anxious about it to begin with. Don't they know that he's doing the best he can?

"Does it bother you that I don't know how to do this?" Phil asks. He wonders if he will ever be able to say what he means to the people he loves the most, to ask what is on his mind instead of layering it under something innocuous.

Being with Dan has been helping him with that, he thinks, but something about being around his parents always makes him revert back to a shy, uncertain teenager.

His dad hums thoughtfully and shakes his head. "No, you were never much into this sort of thing."

"And that doesn't... I dunno, disappoint you?"

"I could never be disappointed with you, kid," his dad says, almost incredulous with it. Like this is something Phil should already know. Like he's said it a million times. Phil can't speak for the past twelve years, but he knows damn well that he hadn't heard that enough, growing up.

"I'm just not," says Phil, scuffing at the floor with his socked foot. "Dunno. Not much of a man, I guess. I'm in my thirties, aren't I? I should be a man by now."

"You are a man, Philip," his dad says. "There's no right way to be a man."

It takes a lot to make him cry, but this conversation is getting to Phil in a spot he forgot was sore.

"Yeah," he says instead. "Need the torch?"

His dad lets the topic drop almost gratefully. Phil isn't sure if he's happy for that or not.

The frustration has been climbing up his spine all weekend. It's not exactly fair of him to be getting mildly annoyed by everything they've said, not when they're only trying to help. He takes a few deep breaths - in for four, hold for seven, out for eight, just like Dan taught him - and tries to pull a good mood back around him. For his dad's sake, if nothing else.

Phil has to get out of the house for a bit on his own, despite the chilly winds coming in like the waves and the lack of good cell signal.

He walks the same path he'd gone down with his parents that morning, pulling the fleece jacket tighter around his body. It's one of Dan's, something he'd smuggled into his bag and hoped Dan wouldn't miss.

The view here is unparalleled, really. Phil finds his breath catching several times, and only some of those are from exertion. He takes photos with his phone, because he's still clumsy with most of the controls, but he's figured out this one easily enough.

His phone doesn't have any social media apps on it, which he's not about to try and correct. Dan deleted them for a reason. So Phil opens his texts and sends a couple of the better photos to Dan.

The signal fails. The pictures don't go through. Phil wants to go home.

"This feels familiar," Phil says, grinning at his shoddy laptop camera.

"Does it?" Dan's voice is a bit distorted, his face more pixelated than Phil would like, but he's smiling so wide that Phil can't find it in himself to mind.

"Yeah," Phil says simply.

The sofa isn't very comfortable compared to the bed upstairs, but Phil had figured this would be better to not wake his parents up. He folds one leg under himself to try and find a position that doesn't make him feel hunched over his laptop like he's still a student.

Even through the mediocre quality of the webcam and internet connection, Dan looks good. He's wearing a wide-necked jumper and his curls are still soft and pushed off his face, like he hasn't bothered to do anything with them today. Phil wants to reach through the screen and run his fingers through them.

"Wonder why," Dan says in that teasing way he does when he knows something Phil doesn't.

Some days, that tone gets to Phil. When he's feeling anxious and frustrated with himself about all the things he can't remember, the last thing he needs is that tone.

Today, though, it makes him grin. He fiddles with the wireless earphones he's still getting the hang of and murmurs, "Tell me why."

"We used to do this for hours when I lived with my parents," says Dan. He messes with his curls to make them fall with more purpose, probably looking at himself in the screen instead of at Phil. "For, like, almost the whole first year we knew each other."

"You look fine, you dork," Phil says. He's watching Dan with an absent smile that, when he glimpses it in the corner of his screen, makes his breath catch. He's never seen that look on his own face before, doesn't even know what he'd label it as. Dan huffs a laugh, and Phil turns his attention back to him instead.

The lighting is low in Dan's room - in their room - but Phil can make out the warm colour of his eyes.

"You always think I look fine," says Dan, which doesn't exactly sound like a complaint. He leaves his hair alone, though. "Which is useless, since I know you have no taste."

"Is this about the carpet again?" Phil asks, exasperated.

"I just don't understand why you don't see the value of a good rug anymore," Dan whines. "It took me four years to convince you."

"Hardwood is cold on your feet in the morning and - you know what," says Phil, fighting back a laugh, "I'm not having this conversation again. We can duke it out when it's relevant, we aren't buying a house right now."

Dan grins at him. "I'll win."

Probably. Phil is stubborn, though, and he's not about to take everything Dan says about his changed tastes as fact when he could easily use that to win arguments.

"It's not relevant," Phil repeats. "You know what is relevant? I kind of remember Skyping you."

Dan is still and quiet for so long that Phil thinks he's frozen at first. Then he blinks. "You do?" he asks, voice careful.

"Kind of," Phil says, not wanting to get Dan's hopes up. He pulls a face, scratches at his jaw. "It's hard to explain. I don't remember doing it, I just remember that I have done it. Does that make sense?"

"No," says Dan, blunt as always. He smiles weakly. "Explain it to me?"

It's hard for Dan, Phil knows it is, but he makes such an effort all the time that Phil has, tentatively, attempted to do the same. He's not always comfortable talking about his innermost thoughts, since giving voice to things makes them more real. For Dan, he'll try.

"It's not like a flashback or anything," Phil says slowly. He doesn't want to say the wrong thing, but he also doesn't want to make Dan think he's still holding back. "That's not the way this has worked for me."

"I know," says Dan.

Phil traces shapes on his own knee, wishing he could be touching Dan instead. "It's more like... I just know."

"Right," Dan says, and Phil can hear the way he's holding something back. Disappointment? Excitement? "Kinda like déjà vu?"

"I guess so, except it isn't, like, disorienting. I just saw you on my screen and I was like, yeah, I've done this before." Phil feels like he's explaining this badly, like it's all coming out wrong. "I dunno, babe. I'm sorry it isn't more."

"You're," is all Dan says. He looks offscreen, takes a couple of deep breaths.

Maybe it's the familiarity of this whole thing, or the sound of Dan's shaky breathing in his ears, but Phil has the sudden certainty that he's looking at a Dan who is about to start crying. A Dan who has cried on Skype with him before, Phil knows that, too, somewhere deep in his gut.

"Hey," Phil says softly. "I'm sorry."

"You've got nothing to apologise for," Dan tells him, rather more sharply than Phil thinks it intends to come out. Dan grimaces. "Fuck. Sorry. I'm not - I'm not upset with you, Phil."

"You look upset," says Phil. The physical ache he's been carrying around all weekend has intensified, makes him think he could swim back to Dan if it would shorten the distance quicker. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Dan considers it for a moment. That on its own is a step in the right direction, Dan no longer brushing everything he's feeling off with a joke and a kiss. Phil taps an erratic rhythm against his knee while he waits for Dan to make up his mind. Eventually, he shakes his pretty head. "Not tonight. Can we talk about it when you're home, maybe?"

That's progress. Phil has to remind himself of that every time they make a point to communicate, every time he says or does something that makes Dan freeze up for a moment.

"Of course," Phil says. "Talk to me about hardwood floors some more. You're still wrong, but I'll hear you out."

Dan looks relieved, and Phil doesn't let that get to him. Neither of them are avoiding emotional conversations outright. Phil can remember the way Dan likes his eggs cooked, even though he can't remember learning that. Dan hasn't even eaten eggs in the past couple months, on a vegan kick that Phil doesn't understand, but Phil knows exactly how to cook them to make Dan grin at him across a breakfast bar.

Slow progress is still progress, Dan's therapist says. Phil is inclined to agree with her.

Leaving his parents is bittersweet. Phil always wants to spend more time with them, knows he'll never quite grow out of the momma's boy phase, but they've been getting under his skin all weekend.

Phil does wonder if that's a regular part of being a proper adult, the desire to cling to gained independence, or if it's just him feeling smothered and wistful for Dan.

He gives them tight, lingering hugs anyway, makes them promise to come visit him before Christmas. He'll feel better about that, he thinks. Having Dan around makes it all so much easier that he can't imagine living a life without him, now. He fits into the places where the rest of Phil should be, allows Phil to settle into shape around him.

It's early when Phil gets on the plane, early enough that he gets to watch the sun rise until he's dropped back under the line of clouds that seem to permanently hover over England. The sun still hasn't peeked out by the time Phil unlocks his front door and lets himself in, juggling his bag and keys and wallet and proceeding to drop them all on the floor of the entryway. There aren't any echoing noises from deeper into the flat, so Phil thinks it's safe to assume that Dan is still dead to the world.

Sure enough, he finds Dan spread out in the middle of their bed, his bare back rising and falling steadily with sleep. The blankets are in disarray, half underneath him and half wrapped around his legs.

Phil smiles. It feels like something settles into place inside of him just looking at the expanse of Dan's skin. He undresses to his pants and doesn't bother digging around for something else to wear, not when there's some necessary snuggling to be done. The cool air makes Phil shiver, but only until he's set his glasses aside and crawled into bed, pressing himself along Dan's back with a kiss to his lightly-freckled shoulder.

London is chilly in November, but Dan carries a warmth with him that emanates from his very core, and it drags Phil into sleep easily.

He's home now. He can breathe again.

Phil stirs from hazy dreams when his heat source disappears, and he makes a little whine of a noise to express his deep displeasure. He gets a throaty laugh in response.

"Fucking drama queen," Dan's voice breaks into his half-asleep state. It's soft, just like the kiss that's pressed to Phil's hair. "I'll be right back, I gotta piss."

"Wait," Phil yawns, stretching out his arms in search of Dan. He doesn't want to open his eyes. "Coffee?"

"You little - fuck, fine, yes, I'll make you some fucking coffee. Unbelievable."

Phil must fall back to sleep, because the next time he's coaxed into awareness, it's by the smell of coffee and the feel of a mouth on his jaw.

"Mm," Phil hums, reaching out to blindly pull Dan closer and tilt his head for a kiss.

Dan chuckles, a gust of breath against Phil's face before soft lips find his. Phil runs a hand over Dan's back, sleepy and hesitant, because that's not something he's always allowed to do. This time, Dan makes a pleased sort of noise against Phil's mouth before he pulls back with a low, "Mm, yourself. Good morning."

"Hey," Phil murmurs. He squints up at Dan and grins, loose with the contented feeling of being home. "Missed you, pretty boy."

The laugh he gets in response is more of a honk. Phil is so endeared. "You can't even see me," Dan points out. He's not wrong, but Phil doesn't have to have his glasses on to know how pretty Dan is.

"It's not like I forgot what you look like," Phil says dryly. He lets his hand continue to trace shapes on Dan's bare back, since Dan doesn't seem to mind the contact.

"Maybe I grew a beard."

"Yeah. Because you can totally grow an entire beard overnight."

"Probably couldn't grow a beard if you gave me a month," says Dan. "I missed you, too, stupid."

It feels like Phil has been away for weeks rather than a handful of days. He can't get enough of the bumps and grooves of Dan's back, like he's never touched it before, and his whole being aches to be impossibly closer.

He kisses Dan's temple - at least, he thinks he does, it's a bit of a blur but at least Dan doesn't make a noise as though Phil has accidentally connected with his eyeball - and runs his thumb slowly along the ridges of Dan's spine.

"We don't spend a lot of time apart, do we," says Phil. It isn't a question, really. He knows they don't.

"No," Dan says, simply. "Why should we?"

Phil supposes that there isn't a reason. In the back of his mind there are always niggling fears, worst case scenarios chasing each other around until he's worked himself up, and right now those fears are trying to make themselves known. The codependency of it crawls over Phil's skin, making him itch.

He doesn't want to spend more time away from Dan, that isn't it at all. It just worries him that he doesn't know if he'd even be able to.

The weight of Dan on him is solid, the skin under his fingers so soft and warm, and that helps Phil feel grounded.

"Let me up, baby," says Phil. He needs coffee and maybe some food before he feels fully functional, even though this is his third time waking up this morning. He might have a problem.

Dan huffs - at the pet name or at Phil himself, it's unclear - but flops onto his side next to Phil anyway. He keeps his hand on Phil's thigh through their blanket and gives him a lazy grin. "You're less grumpy today. Happy to be home?"

"You've no idea," Phil says, sitting up against the headboard so he can cradle his mug to his chest and breathe in the aroma. "I love them so much, but it's not the same."

"I've got some idea," Dan says on a yawn. "You bring any cakes home?"

"Of course. What do you take me for?" Phil scoffs. He shoves his glasses unceremoniously onto his face with one hand so he can actually see more than the vague shapes that make up his boyfriend.

Fiancé, he guesses. Technically.

The smile that Dan shoots up at him is sleepy. His eyes are half-lidded and a little red, lashes clumped together by the moisture that wells up every time he yawns. He's just in his pants, like Phil, and he's not self conscious about it in the slightest. Once again, Phil is struck dumb by how beautiful he is.

"What?" Dan asks after a long moment of Phil just looking at him. Hints of dimples are showing around his mouth, like he's holding back a bigger grin.

"Nothing, you're just," says Phil. Adjectives bump against each other at the forefront of his mind, competing to be the most truthful without being ridiculously sappy. He can call Dan pretty or hot without issue, but a flush creeps its way up Phil's neck the moment he wants to say something like 'gorgeous', 'perfect'.

"Just the best thing that's ever happened to you, right?" Dan says, all performative sarcasm.

Yeah, Phil thinks. He doesn't say it. He doesn't think he can.

"Totally," he says instead, dripping his voice in the same irony as Dan's. He refocuses on his coffee, and Dan starts to scroll through his phone.

He leaves his hand on Phil's thigh, though. He's not usually the one initiating contact, always complains jokingly when Phil reaches for him too much, but Phil guesses that Dan has missed him almost as much as Phil has missed Dan.

Phil drinks his coffee and watches Dan's screen scroll through photos of people he doesn't recognise, places he's never been.

The scrolling stops on a face Phil does recognise with a jolt, just long enough for Dan to tap it twice with his thumb and move on. It's so strange to see Anthony Padilla look... old. He's not old, not really - Phil can't remember for sure, but he's fairly certain the Smosh guys are the same age as him - but Phil is so used to seeing him look a specific way. He's got an image in his mind of the way Smosh looks, of the way he looks, and it's like the screens and mirrors are lying to him.

It doesn't help that Phil sees a bit of Dan in the pose, the curly hair, the big sweater. He wonders what came first, wonders which of them looked at the other and saw something they wanted in themselves, or if they even did it consciously. By the time Phil thinks to ask if they know each other or just know of each other, Dan has opened a different application.

Being with Dan is too much, sometimes.

Phil has been very lucky in his life. He knows what it feels like to be loved unconditionally by his parents, his brother, a handful of friends, and how it feels to love them the same. The way that Dan loves him, though, is different. New. Something Phil didn't know could ever be directed at him.

Most days it isn't an issue. Dan loves him, and he's very fond of Dan, and they do all they can to meet each other in the middle of the gaping chasm where a decade used to be.

But there are moments when the itch gets so bad, when Dan's big hands and brown eyes get so intense, that Phil doesn't know how to handle it. Dan loves him so much that he projects it like an aura, enveloping Phil in the gentle warmth he manages to carry with him even when he's shouting obscenities at Phil over a game, and sometimes.

Sometimes, it's overwhelming. When it gets like that, the smallest things can make Phil feel like he's missed a step or five on a staircase he can't see the bottom of. It's not stifling, suffocating, upsetting. It's simply too much.

He doesn't know how to convey that to Dan. How to explain the itch. So he doesn't.

In the days following his return from the Isle, Phil feels it more than he ever has. Something about being apart, even if it was only for three nights, has Dan clinging in a way that Phil hasn't experienced yet. Sure, Dan is cuddly enough, especially when they're curled up together in bed or on the sofa, but this is another level.

Dan has currently plastered himself to Phil's back while he washes the dishes, an arm slung over Phil's shoulder, lips pressed to Phil's jaw, and he's stayed there for nearly fifteen minutes while he chatters on about whatever's on his mind.

It's not the casual brushes of lips and fingers that Phil expects, that they both initiate every day; it's Dan planting his feet and staying in Phil's space like he never wants to leave it again.

That's scary. Never is a scary, overwhelming, too much word.

"Love you," Dan reminds him on his way out of the room, taking the overwhelming warmth of his aura with him. He no longer qualifies the statement with a 'you don't have to say it back'. Phil doesn't know if that's because he wants Phil to say it or because he thinks Phil has probably understood that by now.

The words get choked in Phil's throat the way they do every time. It's reflex, instinct, to say he loves someone when they say it to him. That wouldn't be a fair thing for Phil to slip up with at all.

Phil breathes deeply in the sudden quiet of their big kitchen and tries to calm himself from that missed-step panic.

"What are you doing?"

There's a note to Dan's voice that Phil doesn't recognise, not without turning around to see his face. It's sleepy confusion, mostly, and Phil doesn't think he needs to know what else it is.

"I'm snooping," says Phil. His hands pause in their rifling. "Or organizing, I guess, but snooping makes it sound more fun."

"It's five in the morning," Dan tells him.

Oh. That is a bit startling. Phil doesn't know what time it was when he gave up on sleep and got out of bed, but he's made it through a dresser and a half. He wonders if he's sorting things wrong, if Dan's got a system for the drawers like he does for their hangers.

Phil stares down at his hands, tangled with the loose socks in one of their top drawers. He feels weirdly disconnected from the physical sensation.

"You didn't come to bed," Phil says, the reason behind his earlier restlessness coming back to him.

"No, sorry," says Dan. He doesn't actually sound sorry, but Phil still can't figure out how he does sound. "I got caught up in this thread, I know I've read it before but I, like, forgot enough about it that it still fucked me up? There was this guy and he kept seeing these, I dunno, sticky notes, I fucking guess, in his own writing, and he didn't remember writing them, right, so he -"

"Cool," Phil says, probably too sharp. He isn't sure where that story is going, but he knows that it's hitting a bit too close to home as it is.

There's a beat. "Sorry," Dan says again. This time it seems like he means it.

Phil shrugs. "I'm not upset."

"No, you're not. Will you look at me?"

Honestly, Phil had forgotten about his physical form entirely. He blinks. After a moment, he takes his hands out of the drawer to turn and face Dan.

Dan smiles. He looks exhausted, sitting at the foot of their bed in just an oversized jumper. Probably some pants, as well, but the way his top hangs makes it impossible to tell for sure. His long legs are bare and crossed at the ankles.

"Are you wearing pants?" Phil blurts out, like his thought process is connected directly to his tongue.

He is reminded, ridiculously, of Cordelia Chase, and the way her speech and thoughts mirrored perfectly. Sure, he can't remember the PIN to his own bank card, but he can get a flashback to Earshot like he watched it last week. He wonders if Charisma is happy in 2019.

Phil's thoughts are ping-ponging so much that he almost misses it when Dan laughs and nods, rucking up the front of his jumper to show them off. "Yeah, you fucking pervert, I'm wearing pants."

The sound of Dan's laugh relaxes some of the tension that Phil didn't even realise he was holding in his body, and he gives Dan a tired grin.

"Oh, I'm the pervert?" he teases. He gestures behind himself, indicating the dresser he's half done organizing. "I'm not the one who's got a collection of women's underwear. Unless I am? Am I? You'd tell me if I wore women's underwear, wouldn't you?"

Dan's lips twitch, but he gives Phil a surprisingly stern look. "They're not 'women's underwear'," he says with little air quotes. "They're just underwear."

This seems like one of those things Dan can rant about for hours that Phil doesn't completely understand and has to make discreet Google searches to keep up with, but he's always willing to listen. Or, well, any time but five in the morning, he'd be willing to listen. He's sure Dan can rant about gender roles and normativity when they're both properly awake.

He's curious about this, though. He does his best to make sure that the curiosity is all that comes through, doesn't want to accidentally sound like he's being judgemental when he says, "So they're yours, then."

"Yeah," says Dan, simple.

"Is it a sex thing?" Phil asks, because apparently a distinct lack of sleep makes him tactless. He thinks of Cordelia again.

Dan doesn't seem bothered by the question. He shrugs, pulling idly at the collar of his jumper. "Sometimes. Not always. I dunno, Phil, not everything I own is from the men's section. I just buy things I like and wear them when I want to."

He says it like it isn't a big deal, but Phil isn't stupid. Dan doesn't do anything without overthinking it. Neither of them do, really, although they overthink in different ways - Phil's anxiety is what makes his thoughts race and his palms sweat at any decision he makes, while Dan will sit down in a quiet place and let all his thoughts tumble forward so he can try to sort through them.

It's so easy to picture. Dan in one of those stores Phil is always afraid to touch anything in, flipping through hangers with a bored look on his face. Getting his attention caught by something black and glittery on the opposite wall. Hesitating. Turning to Phil and saying, "Sometimes I wish I was a girl."

Phil realises with a little jolt that it isn't imagination alone. He knows in his gut that the exchange, or something like it, has happened before. He remembers the nervous look on Dan's face all too well.

"It's not weird," Phil says, to the Dan in front of him and the younger Dan in his mind's eye. "I don't fully get it, but that's okay. I shouldn't have said it was weird."

Something flashes across Dan's face, too quick for Phil to decipher.

"I know it isn't," says Dan. "But thanks."

He doesn't think that Dan has always known that. He thinks that there must have been a lot of bravery in the simple action of crossing a store. But it's five in the morning and they're both tired, rough around the edges with it, so Phil holds his tongue.

"In any case, your underwear's been sorted and folded," Phil informs him.

Dan rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. "Folded, sure. I've seen you try to fold shit that's a hell of a lot easier than some of the pants I have."

"There's just not a lot of fabric to some of them," Phil admits. The material hadn't helped, since Phil doesn't think he's ever touched lace that isn't attached to a tablecloth at his grandparents' house. "I did my best."

"I'm sure you did," says Dan. He dimples up at Phil and reaches his hands out in invitation. The missed-step swoop in Phil's stomach doesn't come, so he just smiles back and steps closer, settles himself comfortably on Dan's bare thighs. "So, I was thinking about when you Skyped me."

It takes Phil a moment to try and figure out Dan's train of thought, see where the statement has come from, but he decides that it's useless. Dan could have been waiting to bring it up for days now and a tired Phil with no filter was exactly the opener he needed.

"Yeah," Phil says, tracing the bags under Dan's sleepy eyes with his thumbs. "What about it?"

"I don't think I'm being very fair to you," says Dan. "When you remember things, I mean. It's a good thing, and I was happy, I just."

He pauses, bites his lower lip.

"You just wish it was more," Phil finishes for him. A small pang hits him in the stomach when Dan grimaces and nods. "That's okay, you know. You're allowed to wish I was... him, again."

"You're not separate people," Dan says again, quiet.

"I kind of am," says Phil. "I hope you know that I - I want to be him. For you, and for me, because he seems like he's got a really good handle on this life thing and I've got no bloody idea what I'm doing, but I can't just. I can't make myself him. I can't even, like, guarantee he'll ever fully be here again."

Dan's inhale is shaky. He runs his hands up and down Phil's thighs in a show of comfort, although Phil can't tell which of them it's for.

"That's scary," Dan murmurs. His eyes are so big and warm and vulnerable, Phil almost feels like he shouldn't be seeing him like this. "That's really fucking scary, Phil."

"It's scary for me, too," Phil reminds him. He's got a bit of a tightness in his chest, anxious from the lack of sleep and too-serious conversation, and he tucks his face into Dan's neck to break from the eye contact. "I don't want this to be happening, you know? I kind of hate it. You're so - you're really good, Dan, you like. Deserve to have him back."

The room is quiet for a little while. It's dark in the safety of Dan's neck, and only the feeling of Dan's hands on his thighs keeps Phil grounded to reality.

Eventually, Dan says, "Thanks for saying that, but also, like. We've gotten through a lot together. I'm sure we can handle this if it's permanent. It's just one of those things that... we aren't going to know what we're doing right away."

You're home for me, Phil thinks. You're home, and that's overwhelming sometimes.

"You can tell me what we've all gotten through tomorrow," is what Phil says. He pulls back and presses his lips to Dan's cheek, because he can. "I think we should get some sleep."

"Alright, stupid," Dan hums, squeezing Phil's thighs and dimpling up at him. He's so beautiful that it makes something ache in Phil's chest, some weird combination of pride and want. "You'll have to get off me, first."

"Okay," says Phil.

It takes him another few minutes to actually leave Dan's lap. Luckily, Dan doesn't seem to mind.

Dan still doesn't think that having social media on his phone is a good idea for Phil, too easy to get overwhelmed by, but he's happy to sit back against Phil's chest while they watch tv and scroll through his own feeds. He shows Phil a lot of things that Phil doesn't understand, and most of it is just perplexing.

Some of it is viscerally upsetting, but Phil knows that Dan doesn't mean for it to be. Advances in technology are only cool to hear about until the wheel of worst case scenarios in Phil's head starts to spin. Maybe self-driving cars and robots that talk back are neat to think about in theory, but the reality of them makes Phil so, so anxious.

He hears Dan murmur, "God, she's getting so big."

So he looks. Then, suddenly, he feels like he is going to pass out. All the blood in his body rushes to his head and his eyes start to water, because. What the hell.

The girl in the photo isn't one Phil recognises. She looks younger than twelve - he isn't good at guessing ages, he'd place her between six and nine - so he guesses that's not very surprising. What's making his head spin is the man with her.

"Is that Ian?" Phil asks, blinking a bunch like it'll change the fact right in front of him.

Dan locks his phone immediately and winces, turning in Phil's arms to hold him close. "Yeah, that's Ian and his daughter. Are you okay? I should have warned you, I didn't even think."

"Ian has a daughter?" Repeating it doesn't make it sound any more true. Phil shakes his head. "I just watched him throw up in a girl's purse. Like, he just gave himself a concussion trying to climb out of a ground floor window. He doesn't have a daughter."

"Are you okay?" Dan asks again, softer.

No, Phil isn't okay. The reality is, of course Ian has a daughter. All of Phil's friends and family have lived a life that he no longer has access to. Every memory he has of Ian is so much clearer than the memories Ian must have of him, clouded by time and nostalgia. He wonders if Ian remembers the concussion and then thinks, don't be silly, how could he forget? How could he forget anything about Phil? How could Phil have forgotten anything about him?

"No," he says out loud, because Dan deserves to know the truth. "No, I fucking hate this. I hate it, Dan."

The laugh that's startled out of Dan is wobbly and wet, and Phil really wishes he wouldn't cry. If Dan cries again, Phil will desperately want to comfort him, and he wants this selfish moment of anger for himself.

Dan's voice isn't shaky when he speaks, though, his arms tightening around Phil and their legs all tangled. "Yeah, it really sucks, huh? She's a good kid, if that helps. She likes you."

"I don't know if that helps," Phil says, "but thank you for saying it."

He wonders what Ian thinks of Dan. How does his best friend feel about Phil settling down like this? Was it surprising to him or did it seem organic if you'd lived it?

It doesn't feel organic to Phil. He's getting there, he is, because Dan is wonderful and he wants to be around him all the time, but. Dan feels like home in a way that Phil doesn't think he's earned.

Slow progress is still progress, Phil reminds himself. He knows how to cook Dan eggs he doesn't even eat anymore, knows what Dan looks like when he's about to start crying on Skype, knows a thousand things that he's learned ever since he woke up on the kitchen floor.

It's progress. He has to keep telling himself that or he's going to lose his entire mind.

Dan's voice, quiet and empathetc, breaks into Phil's spiralling frustration. "Do you want to talk about it?"

No, Phil doesn't want to talk about it. He isn't okay and he doesn't want to make a big deal out of it in case everything comes tumbling out at once.

The itch isn't there right this second, but Phil knows how easily it comes on. He wonders if there's a way to get rid of it without Dan ever knowing its existence, wonders how his brother and parents and probably Ian are all so chill about this relationship when Phil himself feels like it's all-consuming.

He can't exactly get frustrated with Dan for not talking about his feelings if he just turns around and does the same thing, though. So.

"No," he says, "but I will anyway."

Despite his worries, Phil's words don't come tumbling out the moment he gives them permission. Instead he has to force them, stammering and avoiding Dan's big brown eyes as he talks about the way it feels to be thrust into a life he doesn't remember making, a life he doesn't feel like he deserves. He talks about the itch under his skin that he'd thought would go away if he just embraced the reality of being in a committed relationship and how it hasn't, really, and sometimes it feels even worse than it had when he first woke up.

Dan lets him talk. He's good at that, Phil thinks. He doesn't try to interject in any of the pauses where Phil forces himself to say things that have been on his mind for almost two entire months.

It isn't until Phil apologises that Dan's large hand is covering his own and squeezing.

"What on earth are you sorry for, stupid?" Dan murmurs. "I'm glad you told me you feel this way, because, like, it isn't the first time."

Phil blinks. He meets Dan's gaze, his heart pounding a bit at the sheer amount of affection behind those eyes. He turns his hand over to link their fingers together, holds tight like Dan is an anchor. "What?"

"I told you," Dan says with a sad little smile. "I know everything about you. Do you really think you never panicked when we first moved in together and a dozen times after that? Do you think I didn't? You're not the only one who was in love for the first time, Lester. I know it's been a few years, but I remember how it feels to be thrown in the deep end of feelings you can't get a fucking grip on."

The sheer relief at being understood washes over Phil, and he laughs.

"Ten years," he says, the same awe as always washing over him as he does. Right in this moment, it doesn't scare him the way it has been.

Dan's smile is still sad, but his eyes are twinkling. "Ten years. There's no part of your bullshit I can't handle by now."

"You're so annoying," Phil says. He knows that Dan can hear the emotion behind it, the same way Phil has figured out that being called stupid means 'I love you', but voicing his other feelings has made him brave and stupid with it. "I think - no, I don't think, I'm pretty fucking sure - that I, like, love you."

He's not sure what he expects. His heart is pounding and he waits for Dan to beam at him or cry or something else ridiculous, but Dan just gives him a little shrug.

"I know," he says, grinning. "I know you." He doesn't say it back this time, but that's okay.

Phil knows him, too.

#phanfiction #phanfic #phan #dnp fic #words words words #i'm going to be late to work sjkghjks

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thearvariblues · 4 years ago

Text

The Bard And The Wolf - Chapter Five

(AKA Geraskier in the Metal Band AU you didn’t know you needed)

AKA me desperately trying to catch up my Tumblr with what’s already been posted to AO3. ;)

The masterpost for this fic can be found HERE.

5 – No Firstborns Needed

Even though the food Geralt had brought him certainly helped, it still took Jaskier a significant amount of time to recover from the hangover. He had to admit it to himself – he wasn’t getting any younger. There used to be times when he would drink all night and be completely alright in the morning…

Nah, that was a lie. His hangovers always used to be hell, but this was worse than ever.

He was mostly alright, though, when his phone rang in the afternoon.

He answered it without even looking at the screen.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“Uhm. Erm. Hi,” a girl’s voice replied. “This is… This is Ciri.”

“Ciri!” Jaskier beamed. “How are you? I was gonna call you, I swear, I wanted to thank you for sharing the video, and also for not telling on me to your dad… Oh, no, I mean, I probably shouldn’t be thanking you for lying to your father...”

“Didn’t lie to him. Just didn’t tell him,” Ciri said.

“That’s not making it any better,” Jaskier murmured. “Anyway! You were calling me for a reason, I guess?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to ask… Well, since you’re definitely staying, because the fans really love you, I… I mean… Would you like to go shopping with me?”

“Shopping?” Jaskier blinked. “Oh, you mean for some clothes to fit my new metal singer image?”

“Yes. I know all the good places. Mom takes me with her all the time. I know where they have the best T-shirts and pants and–”

“Yeah, sure, I’d love to go! Wait… Does your father know about it?”

“Does he have to?”

“Well, I’d like to stay alive, so yes, he kind of does.”

“Right. So I’ll… ask him and then call you back?”

“Perfect,” Jaskier smiled. “And what about Renfri? Is she coming too?”

“She said she’d rather cut off her right hand with a pocket knife.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“That’s definitely a no. Right, I’m gonna go and ask dad. Might take a few minutes, though. He’s working, and when he’s working, it takes him a while to start focusing on anything else.”

“That’ fine. Yeah. Right. See you soon. Well, hear you soon.”

“Bye, Jaskier.”

Geralt didn’t mind Ciri going with Jaskier. He even called Jaskier himself to tell him that. (And also to tell him that Ciri is allowed to buy something, too, within reason, and that he would give her his credit card, in case she wanted something she couldn’t afford to buy with her pocket money… Jaskier couldn’t help but think it was incredibly cute.)

So Jaskier went shopping with Ciri.

Two hours later, he had five large bags of clothes and his credit card was weeping silently in his wallet. Oh, dear, he would have to take some new students. At least two. Maybe even three. He didn’t want to, but he would have to.

Who’d have thought black clothes were so damn expensive?! (Except he absolutely didn’t buy only black clothes, quite the opposite, in fact.)

Right, right. So it might not have been absolutely necessary to buy those black leather pants and that leather jacket… But Jaskier had wanted a real leather jacket for a while, okay?

“So, am I now officially ready to take my place in the band?” he asked Ciri. He’d dropped the bags off at his flat and he and the girl were currently walking to Kaer Morhen’s rehearsal. Ciri was carrying a little bag with a black-and-purple striped dress that Jaskier wasn’t sure Geralt would approve of, but Jaskier definitely approved. It looked so good on the girl. It was stylish, but not revealing, a perfect dress for a kid her age…

“You’re more than ready,” Ciri said. “You look great.”

Oh, yes, so Jaskier had definitely found the time to change while he was at home. He was now wearing tight black pants, a dark purple T-shirt and a black brocade vest that, he had to admit, did wonders for his figure. His waist looked slimmer, his shoulders broader… Yeah, he looked great as hell.

“All thanks to you, mylady,” he grinned.

“Hush. You chose most of the clothes yourself. You just needed someone who would make you actually buy them. Like the coat.”

Oh, yes, the coat. The coat that was currently spread on his bed. The coat that had already managed to become one of Jaskier’s most prized possessions.

The beautiful, steel blue, double breasted, clearly Victorian era-inspired thing cost more than half of Jaskier’s monthly income, and it was love at first sight. He tried to be be strong, tried to resist, tried to remind himself that he was saving money so he could buy his own flat instead of renting it… But then Ciri saw him drooling at the coat and said: “Oh my God, you have to try it on!”

And so he did. And he was lost.

“It’s not exactly… what a metal singer should wear, is it? I mean, the color is so… light? Too light,” he had tried to protest, stroking the fabric lovingly.

“Don’t be silly. Female singers wear light colors all the time. Even mum did!”

“Mum?”

“Yennefer? Hello?”

“Yeah. Of course. Of course. Way to win the fans’ hearts, by pretending to be her.”

“Nobody’s gonna think you’re her, stupid. Buy it. I bet dad’s gonna love it. It’s one of his favorite colors.”

“I’ve never seen him wear anything but black.”

“I didn’t say his favorite to wear. He just… likes it.”

And it shouldn’t have been the last impulse Jaskier needed to buy the fucking thing, but it kind of was.

“I still think you should have bought the golden jacket, too.”

“Sorry, sweetie, but even the coat was a bit too much. The jacket? I could never afford that.”

That beautiful, gorgeous, amazing golden jacket with V-shaped stripes on the front. Oh, yes, he would kill for that beauty, but he wasn’t ready to eat dry rice for the next two months.

“Too bad. You looked beautiful in it.”

“I know, Ciri, I know,” Jaskier sighed.

They were nearly at the door. Nearly at the rehearsal room. But then Jaskier heard fast footsteps behind them and he (stupid, stupid, stupid!) decided to turn his head.

“Oh, hello,” said a voice Jaskier never wanted to hear again. “If it isn’t the useless wannabe singer! And who’s that? She’s a little too young to be your girlfriend, isn’t she?”

“Who the hell is he?” Ciri muttered.

“Valdo Marx,” Jaskier growled. “What do you want?”

“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to say hello!” Valdo grinned a crooked grin. “I saw your video. Man, I’ve never seen something so ridiculous. Have you been kicked out, yet? You’d deserve to be kicked out for that shit!”

“Since there was no bitch around who would be horny for my place in the band… Nope, still in, sorry.”

“And what about that terrible song?” Valdo continued, as if Jaskier didn’t say anything. “Toss a coin to your whatever. I’m not surprised Dandelions had to get rid of you! Ugh, appalling.”

“Excuse me?!” Ciri exclaimed and took a step in Valdo’s direction.

“Ciri. No. He’s not worth it,” Jaskier said, stopping her. “Valdo. May I introduce you to Cirilla, Geralt’s daughter and a former fan of Dandelions, now a devoted fan of Kaer Morhen?”

“And a fan of Jaskier,” Ciri added.

“Geralt? As in the singer of Kaer Morhen?” Valdo snorted. “Oh, dear. You really did suck his cock, didn’t you? Since he’s borrowed you his daughter. Has he fucked you yet? You’ve always said he was a moron, I’m sure you’re really desperate for him to fuck you.”

Jaskier’s eyes went wide, and this time he took a step towards the man.

“What did you say you bitch?!” he growled.

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind.

Jaskier turned, kind of expecting to see Geralt there, but no. It was Lambert, a smirk on his lips and murder in his eyes.

“Relax, sweetie,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“And you are?” Valdo asked.

“Lambert. Funny you don’t remember me, because you spent weeks trying to get in my pants when you wanted to sleep your way into Kaer Morhen. I ruined it for you by being so annoyingly and boringly heterosexual. Don’t worry, though, even if I was gay, you’d stand no chance.”

“Burn, baby, burn,” Jaskier smirked.

“Now, Valdo,” Lambert continued, his smirk growing a little wider. “My friend Jaskier here might be ready to cut your throat, but I would never let him.”

“Thank… you?” Valdo blinked.

“And if Geralt heard you were mean to his beloved daughter, well… He’s a calm man, I mean, he tries to be. But I don’t think he would remain calm if he heard. You know what they say, demons run when a good man goes to war.”

“Hey. I understood that reference!” Jaskier blinked.

“Shush. I’m in the middle of threatening here,” Lambert said. “Valdo. Valdo, Valdo, Valdo. Trust me. You wouldn’t like what would happen if Geralt heard about this.”

Valdo visibly paled.

“He… he doesn’t need to know, does he?”

“No, no, of course not,” Lambert nodded. “But then again… There’s still me.”

“You?”

“Me,” Lambert grinned. “My dear Valdo. There’s one thing you need to understand about me. I am not a calm man, I am not a good man, but I am also not someone who would just simply cut your throat. No. If you show your ugly face near our rehearsal room again, I am going to rip off your cock, fuck you with it, and then use it to gag you while I cut you open and remove your organs in alphabetical order. Are we clear?”

Valdo’s face was completely void of blood now. All the guy was able to do was a single short nod.

“Good. I’m glad for that,” Lambert said. “Why are you still here, then?”

With all the dignity he had left (which was, well… none), Valdo Marx turned and power-walked away without another word.

“Wow. That was awesome!” Ciri beamed.

“I had it,” Jaskier growled, looking at Lambert.

“I know. You were absolutely ready to cut his throat. Or… throttle him,” Lambert shrugged. “But Geralt doesn’t like that. He always tells me, use your words first, there’s still time for stabbing later. So I do it. I threaten, and then, if it doesn’t help, I stab.”

“And do you… stab a lot?” Jaskier asked, fearing the answer.

“Nah,” Lambert grinned. “But fist fights and bar brawls, well… Those do tend to happen.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I bet. Everything alright, Ciri?”

“Absolutely,” the girl nodded.

“Now, Jaskier. Saw your video. Did you seriously call me a dick?”

“Well,” Jaskier smirked. “You are kind of a dick.”

“Guilty as charged,” Lambert grinned. “Let’s go in. Eskel hates it when we’re late.”

They weren’t late, but someone else was. Twenty minutes late, to be more precise. And that someone was Geralt.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said in reply to Eskel’s disapproving glance, closing the door behind him. “I was working, forgot time existed.”

“So… as usual?” Renfri smirked.

“Hush, Renfri,” Geralt glared. “It only happens once a month.”

“More like once a week,” Renfri replied.

“Thrice,” Ciri said.

“Did I ask for your opinions?” Geralt growled.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Jaskier peeped, raising his hand. “I don’t wanna sound like an idiot, really, but… What is it that you do? I mean… your job?”

“Oh, dad’s a blacksmith, and a jeweler!” Ciri announced. “He makes those cool iron monsters and wrought iron fences and amazing rings and necklaces and earrings. Look, he made me this!”

She showed Jaskier her necklace – a beautiful swallow made of silver.

“It’s lovely,” Jaskier smiled. “Wow. Really… Wow. Geralt, what do you want for making a cool necklace for me, too? I’m kind of broke now, I have to admit, but I could offer you my firstborn, if you wanted.”

“I’m kind of glad you asked,” Geralt said. “Because that’s precisely the work I got so lost in.”

“Excuse me?”

Geralt reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pendant on a silver chain.

“I made this pendant for every member of the band. A common symbol, you might call it. A white wolf. Well, a silver wolf, really.”

“Like in the logo of Kaer Morhen? Seriously?” Jaskier blinked.

“Seriously,” Geralt smiled. “And this one is yours.”

“Mine?!”

“You are the member of the band, aren’t you?” Geralt said, raising his eyebrow. “Consider this a welcome gift. No firstborns needed.”

Jaskier raised his hand to gently touch the pendant.

“You’re kidding, right? You gotta be kidding me. How many hours did you spend making that?!”

“Not as many as you probably think,” Geralt chuckled. “I mean it. Take it. It’s yours.”

“I… Thanks, Geralt,” Jaskier beamed and took the necklace from Geralt’s hand. “It’s beautiful. But now I’m realizing… Cirilla!”

“Wow. You sounded just like dad,” the girl said. “And yeah. I knew. That’s why I wouldn’t let you buy any kind of necklace. Sorry?”

“You should be ashamed for lying to me like that,” Jaskier smirked, fastening the necklace around his neck. “How do I look?”

“Gorgeous as always,” Renfri smiled. “Welcome to the band, Jaskier. Officially.”

Eskel cleared his throat.

“Yeah, welcome. There are a few rules you need to know about before you start. Rule number one – if we say the rehearsal is starting at… let’s say seven...”

“And here we go,” Lambert smirked. “Relax, Eskel, we’ll begin in a minute. Jaskier! Have you, by chance, managed to finish that stupidly catchy song that’s been stuck in my head for… five hours now?”

“Toss A Coin?” Jaskier beamed. “Well, I have, actually! Turns out horrible hangovers are surprisingly inspirational. Would you like to hear?”

“Oh, yes!” Ciri said.

“Sure thing,” Renfri nodded. “Hey! We could even squeeze it into the setlist for the next gig! Try it out. See how people like it!”

“You think Geralt will be able to learn a song in a week?” Lambert smirked. “Ouch! That really hurt, Geralt!”

“I hope it did,” Geralt growled.

“You realize that you’re expecting me to learn several songs during the very same week?” Jaskier asked.

“Yeah, but you’re… clever,” Lambert smirked. “Ouch! Eskel, tell Geralt to stop hitting me!”

Eskel raised his drumstick.

“If you don’t stop talking so we can start, I’m gonna help him!”

“I feel very unloved right now,” Lambert muttered.

“You are very unloved right now, I think,” Renfri chuckled.

“Play us the song, Jask,” Geralt said. “Quick. I think Eskel is about to have a heart attack. Ow. Fuck you, Eskel, I’m on your side!”

“Shut up, then,” Eskel growled. “Jaskier. Take your guitar and fucking play.”

“You know, nobody ever told me playing in a metal band was so risky,” Jaskier said. “If I knew… No, no, no, don’t hit the poor bard! I’m playing, see? See? Now, how did it… Oh, yes. When a humble bard…”

“So unrealistic,” Lambert whispered, and Geralt chuckled.

“Poetic license,” he muttered.

Jaskier winked and kept on singing.

Oh, how he already loved this band of idiots.

Late that night, already in bed, Jaskier opened his Instagram. He knew he probably shouldn’t. Blue light and all that jazz, right? But he was used to browsing his social media before going to sleep, and hey, he never had any trouble sleeping afterwards. So he opened it, only to find out that he had been tagged in a pic… by Renfri?

He looked at the pic. And blinked. And blinked again.

He hadn’t noticed her even taking the photo, but she must have, somehow.

It was of him and Geralt, face to face, both holding their microphones and apparently singing, eyes closed, faces intense with concentration. It must have been in the second half of the rehearsal, because Geralt had already taken off his jacket. He was only in his absolutely inappropriate tight black T-shirt, and it took all of Jaskier’s willpower not to look at those muscular arms. He scrolled to the caption.

Because it seems that everybody wants to see those two morons on a pic together, I give you: the mighty White Wolf and @jaskierthebard working on Toss a Coin To Your Witcher. And let me tell you – they don’t just look good together, they also sound AMAZING. I can’t wait to play this song live!

#kaermorhen #workinghard #rehearsing #thebardandthewolf

Jaskier rolled his eyes.

The Bard and the Wolf? Seriously?

Yeah, that was never going to catch on…

Continue with Chapter Six

#geraskier #geralt x jaskier #jaskier x geralt #the bard and the wolf #the witcher fanfiction #witcher fanfiction #my fics

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castielslostwings · 5 years ago

Text

All I Want For Christmas (Are Earplugs)

Ficlet: 3k of fluffy, explicit (at the end) Christmas-y DeanCas.

The challenge: "Write something about Cas being stuck in the gas n sip where "All I Want For Christmas is You" plays on an endless loop for 3 months until he's nearly homicidal 😂 ...and then dean shows up and they bang in the storeroom while it's playing and the song is still awful and plays every 45 minutes but at least Cas has a positive memory to associate with it now!"

Read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656614

Or check out this excerpt (cut because Tumblr will eat my smut):

Corporate doesn’t even hold off until Thanksgiving is over to move onto Christmas, not anymore. In the age of instant gratification and having everything a person could possibly want only a finger swipe away, waiting until after Thanksgiving to break out the Christmas theming would render it all relatively pointless. Thus, the day after Halloween, that’s when it starts these days. Castiel doesn’t get it, not really, especially considering the Gas’n’Sip is, well, a gas station. No one is looking to their shelves for holiday sales and the opportunity to grab this season’s hottest items before they sell out. Not unless one considers snack cakes and travel-sized tubes of toothpaste to be the perfect holiday gifts. Not that Castiel’s judging.

It’s just that those realities make the auditory horror Castiel’s subjected to for nearly three months straight all the more baffling. Why he has to suffer so the Gas’n’Sip can claw uselessly at retail relevance is beyond his understanding. It’s not as if they’re succeeding. That little “Last Minute Gifts!” display doesn’t get any sort of play at all until the twenty-third, and even then people have to grimace their way through choosing between cheap shower product sets and crappy mugs with teddy bears holding chocolates stuffed inside them. By November first, Castiel’s already practicing the most tactful ways to interrupt those poor procrastinating saps and suggest simply buying lottery scratch-off tickets.

The thing is, the decorations aren’t so bad. A little tinsel here, a few red glittery signs there, couple of candy-filled endcaps with Santa theming, whatever. Even the little Christmas tree that sits next to the register and Castiel can’t stop knocking into with his elbow every time he goes to make change is more festive than frustrating. None of those things are particularly bothersome at all. In fact, Castiel barely even notices them (aside from diving to catch the tree and keep it from crashing to the ground every ten minutes). And the twinkling, color-changing string lights that Castiel spent the better part of a day stapling around the top of the store, along the windows, and over the register are actually fairly enjoyable to look at. So much so that he strung a set around the shelves of the storeroom for when he’s stuck back there organizing or doing inventory. Very cheery.

But the songs. The songs are the worst. Well, no, that’s not exactly it either. The holiday songs on the corporate-provided CD that loops endlessly on a forty-five minute spiral in the background definitely still play in Castiel’s head long after he’s dumped the coffee, turned out the lights, and locked the gas station doors. They infiltrate his quiet moments in the evening after he’s returned home, dance across his mind obnoxiously when he should be enjoying his free time away. It’s only the beginning of December and already Castiel’s starting to lose his mind. Last night, full of a spectacular dinner and tucked warm and snug in bed with Dean squirming underneath him, Castiel was screwed out of an actual orgasm by the painfully catchy crooning of Mariah Carey relentlessly belting out those high notes in his head.

Because really, at the end of the day, it’s not all the holiday songs, it’s that holiday song. The bane of retail workers everywhere, Castiel’s sure of it, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is single-handedly making his holiday season as un-merry as it could possibly get. A grating earworm that’s starting to feel more “nails on a chalkboard” than singing at all, Castiel’s forced to enjoy it on a repeat cycle every forty-two-point-five minutes of every single workday. And now, it’s messing with his off-time, his intimate evenings with Dean, those relax and reset moments that Castiel counts on to get him through the next day and the one after that. Retail is hard enough on a regular old Tuesday, never mind during the holiday season when everyone’s so desperate to squeeze in as much merriment as possible that they’re willing to steamroll right over people like Castiel to do it.

Most of the time, Castiel doesn’t mind being a faceless cog in the machine, hell, he enjoys it some days. There’s a quiet dignity in his job, in providing food and fuel for weary travelers just trying to get from Point A to Point B. Keeping the coffee pot full, the hot dogs warm, the cigarette cartons stacked. Perhaps other people might look down on him for being satisfied with that type of work, that type of life, but Castiel has no interest in what other people think of him. Well, anyone besides Dean, of course. And Dean loves him, is proud of him, and that’s more than enough to make his days, every single one of them, merry and bright.

So it would be Castiel’s preference that he subsists through the rest of the Christmas season without murdering the one man who makes his existence tolerable, and that fucking song is beginning to threaten that theoretically simple wish.

Today, for instance, it’s four in the afternoon and Castiel is working a double. Which means that since the Gas’n’Sip opened its doors at six AM, Mariah Carey’s syrupy-sweet caroling has set his teeth on edge going on fourteen times. Fourteen. Chinese water torture would be kinder. Two hours and two more rounds of the nightmare in G Major later, Castiel texts Nora, his manager, and begs her to let him change the music. “ Just for the today, just for the rest of my shift”, he pleads, even going so far as to say he’ll tune the radio to their local Christmas music station.

Nora sends back, “ LOL, Castiel you’re so funny”, and Castiel dies a little bit inside. Business is slow and the lackluster trickle of customers comes to a stop completely around ten PM, leaving an entire hour for Castiel to count down the minutes to the next time that awful song is going to play without any kind of distraction. When the bells tied to the doors finally jingle signaling a customer around ten forty-five, relief doesn’t even come close to what Castiel feels. That doubles when the face that appears across his countertop is Dean’s.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says warmly, and he’s not exaggerating when he thinks he may never have been happier to see the man. Although, it’s never unpleasant to see Dean.

“I'll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols,” Dean replies cheekily, leaning across the counter for a kiss which Castiel gladly provides. Not the menthols, though.

“Funny,” he murmurs and then sighs heavily. “Dean, I’m going to lose my mind if I have to put up with this—” Castiel jams his finger in the direction of the ceiling speaker above his head, “ Horror show for another three weeks.”

Dean looks up from where he’s fingering the different flavors of Bubble Yum and slides a pack across the smooth surface, reaching for his wallet to pay. Castiel waves him off, grabs a couple of singles from his own pocket and runs the transaction absently. “It can’t be that bad,” Dean says and Castiel’s fingers halt mid-button-push.

“My ears feel like they’re bleeding, Dean,” he protests with a glare. “Every forty-two-point-five minutes exactly it comes on and I’m in hell.” Clocking Dean’s badly-suppressed smirk, Castiel works his jaw and folds his arms across his chest. “Perhaps I’ll call Bobby and offer him a free month of advertising in the Gas’n’Sip window. All he’ll have to do is play a particular CD on repeat in the auto-repair bay from tomorrow until Christmas.” Satisfied with the way Dean’s face pales and the smirk disappears, Castiel feels absolutely no need to remind him that approving free advertising isn’t remotely in his job description. Honestly, if Dean can’t figure that out from the knowledge that he isn’t so much as allowed to change the store’s chosen music, that’s on him.

“Don’t mess with my classic rock, Cas,” Dean warns him. “Some shit is sacred, you know.” Annoyed again, Castiel raises his hands and gestures around him emphatically. “Alright, alright,” Dean relents. “I see your point, it sucks.” Sucking his lip distractedly in between his teeth, Dean glances around the store. “So, where are your security cameras at?”

Rolling his eyes, Castiel points to several different corners and just above his head behind the register. “There, there, there, and there. Don’t you think if I could have moved them, I would have? Changing their direction sends a notification straight to Nora’s phone.”

“That’s not what I—what about the storeroom? There any cameras there?”

Castiel narrows his eyes and regards Dean curiously. “No… There was one, but it broke weeks ago and Corporate hasn’t yet responded to Nora’s service request.” With a mild hum and another glance around that includes a sweep of the deserted parking lot outside, Dean wanders over to the doors and locks them. “Dean?” Castiel doesn’t protest, just watches as Dean flips the sign that says, “Back in 5 minutes!” Castiel rarely uses it himself, but every so often nature calls and the store has to be locked in the meantime. It’s interesting that Dean remembers that.

“C’mon,” is all Dean says on his pass back through the store, reaching out to grab Castiel’s arm and tug him out from his little alcove and across the floor to the storeroom.

“Dean, what—”

“How long until that song plays again?” Dean asks as he pulls Castiel inside and shuts the door behind them.

Checking his watch, Castiel does some quick mental math as well as cocks his head to listen for whatever song is playing now. “It’s next,” he groans, but Dean just grins.

“Awesome timing,” he replies, grabbing Castiel’s waist and manhandling him around until his back is up against some stable-looking shelving. ��We’re gonna play a game, alright?” Dean’s bright green eyes are sparkling and shining and Castiel definitely knows that face. He also knows he should stop him, should tell Dean no to whatever mischievous thing he’s plotting, but it is only minutes to closing time and hell, Castiel’s day has been pure, undiluted shit.

“What sort of game?” Castiel asks, unable to keep the note of amusement out of his voice as he watches Dean’s eyes dart down to his own lips. Without answering, Dean leans in, kisses Castiel’s bottom lip and then his top, pulls back just far enough to look down and slot their groins together in a way that won’t have anyone’s belts causing unwanted, painful havoc. Then he’s back, tongue poking at the seam of Castiel’s mouth, and despite everything, Castiel recognizes that this is Dean asking for permission. If he really doesn’t want to do this, in his store or at all, he need only close his mouth.

As much as he appreciates the asking, though, Castiel knew what he was getting into when he stepped inside the storeroom. Dean has a bit of an exhibitionist side, and this isn’t their first rodeo in a semi-public space. Though the likelihood of being walked in on is extremely low, there’s still a bit of a thrill Castiel gets over doing something naughty, and maybe he’s more into it than he lets on. The whole concept has him hardening up nicely and Dean’s grinding isn’t hurting either, but just as they’re setting a pretty nice pace, the first notes of The Song come on.

Growling into Dean’s mouth, Castiel reluctantly pushes him back. “I can’t,” he says, frustrated. “I don’t want to associate having sex with you with this demonic lullaby.”

Read the rest on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656614

#destiel #ficlet #christmas #holidays #deancas #my fic #all i want for christmas (are earplugs)#fic rec #castielslostwings

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