#i might even be named in a really boring museum piece somewhere. if i remembered to fill out that form correctly

[snapewife-divorce-lawyer]

do you like math? whats your favourite scientific field?

i think math is pretty :) i like watching and reading about like higher dimensional geometry and quantum physics but i do not know what they are talking about haha. i am not good at math. its like when you see people geeking about a show you dont care about but its fun to see because they are cute.

the only math i think i really do ever is like statistical analysis and like logic. but those don’t really count i dont think. i do a little bit of coding but like not a lot and it usually doesnt take that much math from me.

i like anthropology :) i like people. i like that people get remembered. i like the mundane and ordinary made extraordinary. all the stupid sci fi i write has me going on and on about like how the aliens prepare their food or what they do with their trash

[prurientpuddlejumper]

Being Fake Soulmates with Dr. Chilton (Part 6)

<- Part 5

Frederick Chilton x Reader | The Good Place crossover

Final chapter! Warning: The Good Place spoilers, and a timeline that makes perfect sense because Jeremy Bearimy, baby. 

2,800 words

“No way. It’s too dangerous!”

“I thought you said we were in this together?” Chilton quirked a brow, eliciting a petulant grumble. You crossed your arms.

“Or maybe you think I’m expendable, so you’re willing to take risks with my life. Afterlife. Whatever.”

Frederick Chilton, who was not, as originally advertised, your soulmate, nonetheless clasped your hand with gentle tenderness. I would never do anything to hurt you is what a normal person would say in that moment, and perhaps his eyes said it, somewhere deep in their searching pools of green. But Dr. Chilton had a repressed way about him, tending toward overly clinical just stating the facts (or the sarcasm). Anything but genuine, vulnerable, sentimentality.

He guided you by your hand to sit down beside him on the baroque loveseat in one of his many living rooms, studies, and salons. After you settled yourself on the velvet cushion, he leaned his shoulder against yours in that quiet way he showed affection.

“After reviewing the town records,” he said, “I believe we may be the only two humans in the neighborhood. Some of the residents are far too dull—Chidi Anagonye, the moral philosophy professor who spent his life writing a single manuscript, Jianyu the silent monk—while others are too perfect—Glen, that one who is constantly volunteering, Tahani, the philanthropist. Real people have flaws, secrets, hobbies. I can only be certain of myself and you.”

“How’d you figure out I’m real?”

“I didn’t. I simply refuse to accept the alternative,” he said with a sad smile, and you began to think Dr. Chilton was sentimental after all.

***

Their voices were muffled even with your ear pressed to the door of Michael’s office—not that it mattered much what they were talking about. You were just waiting for the signal, and at that moment, it came. Their footsteps and voices grew louder as Frederick and Michael approached, and the door handle clicked.

“—which is why cannibalism loses more good-person points than defenestration but fewer than chewing loudly on a crowded bus.”

“Fascinating. I never thought about it that way,” said Chilton, looking genuinely disturbed.

You flattened yourself against the wall next to the door, thinking thin thoughts as the pair exited the office. A tall houseplant barely disguised your presence, and if Michael had any kind of peripheral vision, he would see you standing there plain as day.

But Dr. Chilton spoke animatedly, fixing him with a challenging laser-stare as he asked a probing follow-up question. Locked in Chilton’s eyes, Michael failed to notice the movement just behind his left shoulder as you slipped through the closing door before it could latch shut.

Safe.

Michael’s office was quiet and filled you with serenity in much the same way a teddy bear is filled with stuffing: forcefully and by no will of your own. Like the welcome room with its happy green plants and happy green words on the wall assuring you everything is fine, the office peeled your defenses away. Cream-colored walls yawned out around the perimeter, punctuated with bright windows, a portrait of Doug Forcett (a stoner from the 1970s who guessed, on a mushroom trip, how the afterlife really worked), and various artifacts of humanity enshrined like museum pieces, despite seeming perfectly mundane.

At the top of the room was a large mahogany desk.

Yesterday, Chilton watched Michael put away files in the desk that he wouldn’t let him look at. Chilton was certain they were the key to unraveling the mystery, so he suggested working together—he would distract Michael while you sneaked in to find the files. It was risky, but it might have been your only chance of discovering what was going on, and if there was a way to escape.

You began poking through the desk and found stacks of papers in an unreadable alphabet. The only thing you could read were lyrics to a genuinely terrible song Michael was writing titled “Love Train to the Cosmos.”

The last drawer wouldn’t budge.

Yanking the handle didn’t work. Banging on the side with your fist failed to unstick it. It was locked. Locked drawers were suspicious. The answers had to be in there.

You eyed a mountain of paperclips lovingly displayed on a pedestal labeled “Human Things.” Snatching two off the top, you unbent and re-bent the stiff metal wire, and inserted it into the lock. Faint clicks sounded as you turned and finessed the paperclip, feeling each pin in the tumbler slide into place. Then you gently turned it, and—pop. The drawer opened.

A single manila folder stamped TOP SECRET in threatening red letters rested inside, as if waiting to be found. You picked it up and opened it, and your breath caught. They were reports on “The Good Place.” The Good Place in quotation marks. Reports about you.

A pleasant bing sounded.

Janet materialized in front of the desk. For once, she was not wearing a cheery smile.

***

Frederick Chilton had always been a selfish man. Any opportunity that could advance his career and put him in the spotlight, he would take it no matter who it hurt. “Unorthodox therapy,” he called it in his private chats with Dr. Lecter. They bonded over their shared interest in unorthodox research before he learned Dr. Lecter was a cannibal. That would have been a clue to anybody else that it was time to change his ways, but Dr. Chilton spent the rest of his years just as selfish and petty—more so, even, as his disfiguring injuries gave him more reason for spite.

He could never accept himself as he was.

By the time he died, Chilton was an intolerable asshole who paid back the world’s cruelty with his chronic foul moods and acerbic sarcasm. He kept everyone at a distance.

And yet, here, in death, he found himself worrying over someone else.

The sun was shining in the ever-blue sky, dappled by lush green foliage before reaching the two men as they strolled the neighborhood below. Michael was built like a sapling with longer legs than he knew what to do with, making Chilton nearly jog to keep pace. He had a warm smile and an outgoing demeanor—always flattering Chilton’s ego and asking for his guidance. But something malignant hid behind those smiling eyes, and Chilton’s mind kept rushing back to you, hoping you were OK.

He hoped that you were safe. Not that the plan was going smoothly. That you were safe.

There was a difference, and Dr. Chilton noticed right away that his twitchy nervousness was not wrought of self-preservation. It was a new type of panic—worse than fear for himself, which he never thought possible considering the amount of terror he had experienced on his own behalf.

To distract himself, Chilton threw himself into the role of Michael’s assistant, focusing on his task of supposedly identifying psychological issues causing problems with the neighborhood.

“Our interviews should go in alphabetical order, under the pretense of a survey—a sort of afterlife census—to avoid suspicion. It should be feasible, with only three hundred residents—”

“We know,” Michael said coolly. His voice dropped from the usual friendly, flattering demeanor, slipping off like a mask.

“You know how you are going to handle the interviews? It is imperative the subjects do not suspect they are being studied.” Chilton swallowed, knowing full well that he was talking to the real Michael for the first time.

“Don’t play dumb.” Michael smiled an entirely different type of smile, twisted and clever with no warmth in it. “We’ve been watching you, Dr. Chilton. We knew you would figure it out eventually. It was only a matter of time before you saw through a psychiatric study.”

Chilton’s interest piqued at the same time his blood went cold. He wet his lips. “Is that what all this is, then?”

The pair came to a stone bridge that arched gracefully over a reflection pool. Michael stopped midway across, leaned one of his long, pointed elbows on the railing, and cocked his head at Chilton.

“You haven’t figured it all out yet? That’s disappointing. You humans really are so dense.” His tone was so mean that Chilton took an unconscious step back. Michael only laughed and told him there was no point in running away. “But I think you’ll want to hear what I have to offer,” he promised.

Most of what you had been told about the afterlife was true, Michael explained. There was a real good place, and there was a real bad place where bad people were tortured for all eternity. But the bad place had a problem: it was boring! Humans get used to physical pain after the first few centuries, no matter how creative the punishment.

“Once you’ve flattened a thousand penises, you’ve flattened them all. I’m trying to do something new here. Innovate!” said Michael with an energetic swoop of his hand. “Emotional torture can cause the same level of discomfort, but in a more sustainable and (more importantly) entertaining way. That’s what this neighborhood is for—to study you humans and find out what makes you miserable.”

And then he offered Dr. Chilton something that grabbed his attention. The opportunity to design bad place neighborhoods.

“You are asking me to help implement psychological torture?” Chilton turned over each word cautiously.

“Oh,” Michael scoffed, “Don’t tell me you’re concerned about the ethics? Doctor, I’ve read your file.”

Chilton winced. He had done truly amoral things in the name of discovery—things it made him sick to be reminded of. Strange, though. In the past, he would have been proud to be treated as a peer by a psychopath. Not ashamed.

“Think of it, the glory, the prestige. You would be designing the afterlife for billions of souls. You will be remembered throughout eternity as the man who reformed the bad place!”

“And my soulmate?”

Chilton blurted it without thinking. It sounded so childish and naive, and sure enough, Michael shook his head and had a long chuckle at his expense.

“There’s no such thing! I thought you knew,” Michael slapped his knee. “I made it up so you would torture each other! But once again, I underestimated the human libido. You people all think with your genitals, it’s—it’s gross. Humans are gross.” He made a face. “That’s why I need your help to design a better system. With your understanding of the human mind, we can make condemned souls miserable for thousands of years.”

Chilton couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for this plan, and Michael frowned.

“If it makes you feel any better, consider this the humane option. The alternative is going back to scooping eyeballs out with melon ballers and replacing them with live bees. What do you say, doctor? Join my team.” Michael extended a hand, and Chilton eyeballed it.

“Can my soulmate—”

“Not a soulmate.”

“—come with me?”

“This offer is only open to you.”

“So they will be tortured? Alone? For eternity? In a system I help design?”

“Nothing you can do will change that. They are going to be tortured—the only person you can save is yourself, if you decide to help me.”

Frederick’s brow knit together. He thought about refusing. He really did. Abandoning you seemed unthinkable, especially after your promise to each other to stick together. But he was a selfish creature, and choosing to be punished wouldn’t protect you. If he was lucky, by teaming up with Michael, he could design a more comfortable torture for you one day.

“Maybe this will help make up your mind,” Michael said. “Hannibal Lecter.”

“Lecter?”

“He’s here. In the bad place. So far, he has been especially resistant to traditional torture. I thought you might have a personal interest in taking a crack at him?”

***

On a floating, room-sized projection screen, Frederick Chilton shook Michael’s hand. Your head fell forward, shoulders slumping. The screen flicked off and dissipated into the office air.

“This is the 764th time he has failed,” said Janet, giving a sympathetic simulation of a sigh. “We were sure he was going to make the right decision this time.”

You shook your head. “Fame and glory? Revenge? He’ll never refuse those. Trust me—he died because of them and still never learned his lesson.”

“That is what we’re afraid of. Some people never pass their tests. Fun fact!” she perked up, “Hannibal Lecter’s test is working at a Burger King where he can only cook Impossible Whoppers, and his 19-year-old manager calls him pee-paw. He gets reset every time he eats a customer. His longest record is twelve hours.”

When Janet found you snooping in Michael’s desk, you expected to be dragged away, never to see Frederick again. Instead, she explained everything to you—the truth.

A long time ago, the bad place was exactly how Michael described it—a place where souls were sent to have their orifices filled with spiders for eternity. Then he decided to try something new. Originally, he paired you with Dr. Chilton hoping you would drive each other crazy. But no matter what happened, you kept falling in love. You kept supporting each other, and taking care of each other. The same happened with his other human test subjects—they kept improving and becoming better people than they were on Earth. Eventually, Michael changed, too.

He redesigned the bad place to be a test—a chance for human souls to earn their way into the good place. At the end of each test, you either pass and go to the good place, or your memories are erased and you start over again.

“So, what happens to me now?”

“You passed. You can go to the good place now, and spend the rest of eternity in paradise. The real one.”

“And Frederick? He’ll be alone?”

Janet nodded.

“Put me back in. Reset me, and make me his soulmate again.”

“Are you sure?” Janet asked.

“I’m not going without him.”

“He would leave you behind. You just saw that.”

“That wasn’t fair. Anyone would accept that deal. I would accept that deal!”

“No. You wouldn’t,” Janet said. “You passed your test a long time ago.”

For a while, a heavy silence fell between you as you processed this. Finally, you thought of the only question worth asking. “How many times have we had this conversation?”

“762.”

“Well then,” you said. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“I do. But you retain a vague sense of your memories from previous tests. At a subconscious level, you might realize you’re tired of this.”

You smiled. A big, genuine one that balled your cheeks and creased the corners of your eyes. “That’s not how I feel at all. I think I love him more every time.”

Janet nodded, but gave one last warning before erasing your memories again. “If he never passes, you could be stuck here forever.”

“Stuck falling in love with that insecure jerk over and over again for thousands of years? Sounds like heaven to me.”

“I thought you might say that.”

***

The first day, you really wanted to punch his pretentious snobby face for thinking he was so much better than you.

The first time you laid eyes on Dr. Frederick Chilton, he was waiting behind a mahogany desk with an ancient hardcover book in his hands. Not reading it—waiting, posed deliberately to be discovered that way, and give the impression of intellectualism.

“This is your soulmate,” said Michael, introducing you.

Chilton took a step back after shaking your hand and looked you up and down critically, as if he were appraising livestock. And right away, you knew there had been a terrible mistake. Who the fork did he think he—

Fork. Fork! Why couldn’t you say fork?!

***

Bright light streamed in through the open bedroom window. The weather was always perfect here, except when some glitch made it rain caviar and jelly beans. Or that time Frederick had a vivid nightmare, and organs began falling from the sky. Every day, something horrible seemed to go wrong in the good place. Things that challenged you and pushed your soulmate to his limits.

But most mornings were like this. Quiet. A time just for the two of you.

Your fingers lightly stroked his chest, delving into the soft hairs that rose and fell with his steady breathing. You pressed a soft kiss to his skin, then another, tracing a line of them lower, over a jagged, raised line down his abdomen. His scars let you know he was waking up. This was the good place—he didn’t have to let them show. Usually, he chose to appear as a younger version of himself, before all the indelible trauma. But on peaceful mornings like this, he would let them show just so you could soothe them. He never thought he would be that comfortable with anyone. That he could trust anyone so much.

Every day, you both knew you could overcome anything, so long as you were together.

[punkpoemprose]

Single Bells- A Kristanna Oneshot

Rating: G (General Audiences) Universe: Modern AU, Librarian Anna, Single Dad/ Firefighter Kristoff Length: 8239 Words

A/N: Merry (day late) Christmas Val! @val-2201 I’m sorry I got a little bit behind. As per the usual the word count got away from me a bit so I ended up needing a little time to finish, haha. You said you enjoy single parent AUs so I hope you enjoy this little piece about single Dad Kristoff needing to solicit assistance from a very nice red headed librarian!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday and that your New Year will be full of joy!

Anna wasn’t supposed to still be at work, but if there was one thing she couldn’t say no to, it was a kid with a research project. Especially a first grader with beautiful blonde ringlets dragging her frazzled looking father to the information and research desk that Anna had been staffing for the day. Normally she worked only as the children’s librarian, but since two different librarians were out on maternity leave, she’d been willing to shift gears and wear many hats.

They’d come to her desk within the last five minutes of her shift, but Anna hadn’t mentioned it. It was two weeks from the last day of school for the winter holiday, and if her suspicions were correct, the father and daughter were working on a particular project for which she’d assisted four other families in the last few days.

Teachers loved to assign festive work before the holidays, but sometimes she wondered if they really thought through the fact that heavily parent involved projects were sometimes more stress than they were fun. She'd helped quite a few families try to determine what their ancestral traditions had been. Some, she was happy to report, did have legitimate plans to include them in their celebrations after the project conclusion. That at least made her feel like some good was coming out of the stress.

“I have a presentation to do!” the little girl announced with a smile that revealed a missing front tooth.

She was dressed in the brightest green coat she'd ever seen and her little hat, that she'd already pulled away to reveal static filled curls, was made to look like a reindeer. She couldn't help but feel that this was going to be another kid who insisted upon celebrating a newfound tradition. If she was, in fact, working on that project.

Anna grinned in return, noting the child’s enthusiasm for the project she was in the library to work on. She’d said it perhaps a bit too loudly for some of the other librarians’ tastes, but for Anna there was nothing like the boisterousness of young children. She supposed there was a reason that her office and the children’s area in general had been relegated to the basement. Being upstairs still felt strange.

“That’s due tomorrow,” the father said, sounding a bit miserable but looking mostly defeated.

He had a bit of scruff to his chin, and the bags under his eyes told Anna that he probably hadn’t slept well in weeks. It was a common sight with parents around the holidays, exhaustion and uncharacteristic scruffiness. Not that she really knew whether his scruffiness was uncharacteristic, having never seen him before in his life.

“Uh oh!” Anna said, directing her attention at the child rather than the father, knowing that she was much better at working with kids than adults, “We’ve got to work fast then, huh? What’s the presentation about?”

The little girl nodded, “It’s about Christmas traditions! I told Daddy on Monday that we needed to do it, but he forgot.”

When Anna looked toward the father out of the corner of her eye, she saw him flush. It was Thursday, so she imagined that they’d had some time to complete it. She wouldn’t judge him for the timing of course, she barely could keep herself on a schedule somedays, let alone a six-year-old. She also made a conscious effort to not judge any of her patrons, even the ones who came in asking about unique topics.

She’d once had a woman come in asking for an entire book on just Guinea pig costumes, and she wasn’t sure whether she should be more concerned for her guinea pig or that the library system had not one, but six books on guinea pig costuming. Last minute project fell somewhere toward the bottom of the judgement list.

“I didn’t forget,” the dad said, sounding very tired, but not particularly upset, “I’ve just been busy, and I didn’t realize it was Thursday.”

Anna smiled and then looked at the dad, “It happens to all of us. Can you two narrow down the kind of Christmas traditions you’re looking for?”

The dad looked embarrassed again.

“She needs to pick a specific country to look up traditions from and she wants to pick the one my family’s from.”

“Oh, that’s easy enough,” Anna said with a nod, “Where is your family from, and we’ll go from there!”

“That’s kind of the problem,” the man said with a sigh, “I don’t know.”

***

They were in the children’s area, on one of the library’s iPads at one of the kid sized tables. The little girl, Ivy, was in her glory. She’d spent more time commenting on the posters on the walls and snowflakes on the ceiling than she had focusing on the task at hand, but Anna didn’t really mind. It was easy enough for her to hold a conversation with both the girl and her father as she searched for clues about the man’s heritage. Really all they had to go on was his last name.

  Bjorgman. Kristoff Bjorgman.

“I think that my parents were maybe immigrants. I was adopted when I was just a little older than Ivy, but I’d been in the system since I was maybe two or three? I don’t remember them, and I was never given any records. My birth certificate was created when I entered the system, so it doesn’t have either of their names on it. Just mine, and that was just because it had been pinned to my shirt when someone dropped me off.”

Anna couldn’t help but feel as though that was terribly sad, but the man, Kristoff, and his daughter didn’t seem phased by it. It was just another detail of life for them she supposed, but she couldn’t imagine not remembering her parents. All she had of them now was memories, and a few knick-knacks that had managed to be saved after the house fire.

She tried not to think about that though, and it was easy enough to direct her attention back to the man sitting across from her.

He was much too large for the table, and he made the child’s chair he sat in look comically small. He was handsome, and by Anna’s estimation, not much older than she was. He was maybe 26, tops, and she couldn’t imagine having a kid of her own.

“Your adoptive parents don’t know anything?”

He shook his head, “No more than I do. The information just doesn’t exist I guess.”

“She didn’t want to do her Mom’s family’s traditions?” she asked, fishing only a little bit. 

She thought that maybe given the level of flustered he seemed to be exuding might be indicative of him being a single dad. She hoped not on the one hand because that was such a difficult position to be in, but also he was the first cute dad she’d run into that wasn’t significantly older than her. So she wanted to make sure if she was ogling him in the chair it was something that she could do with a clear conscience.  

“No, and even if she did, we don’t really know anything about hers either. She’s passed on. It’s just us.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry…”

He shook his head, “It’s alright.”

He looked over at his daughter then, smiling at her softly as she pushed her little chair back and walked over to the bookshelf to grab something out of the easy reader bin. She’d looked bored for a little while and was now clearly determining that this was grown up work that she didn’t want anything to do with and therefore was free to explore.

Anna couldn’t help but grin when she saw her pluck out a Mercy Watson book. She loved those. She must be reading a little beyond her age group to be reading it for fun.

Turning her attention back to the ipad, and away from the little girl who was eagerly plopping herself into a beanbag, she looked at the search results she pulled up with his last name. The information on the screen was pretty much what they already knew. His first and last name were Nordic of some kind.

“So we’re looking at Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, or Iceland. We can make an educated guess based on where you lived when you were a kid based on the census data from that area as most immigrant families move to areas with other people from the same country, or where there’s a strong presence of the culture they’re familiar with.”

“Well… I was born here, I think. Or at least this is where I got put into the system, which is why I moved back here a few years back.”

 Anna lit up, she didn’t have to do any more searching. Any vaguely Nordic last name in their town generally meant one thing.

“I can say then, with 90% certainty, you’re Norwegian. Not that it helps right now, but have you ever thought about taking a DNA test? Kids tend to just have more heritage questions as they get older and if you both take one it can help with any genealogy research."

"That's a lot of certainty for just a last name and a town," he said, looking surprised as he met her eye.

"Oh, well I mean Arendale was named for the Arendelle family and was founded by Norwegian immigrants so most of the population is descended from Norwegian families. Most immigrant families from Norway still settle here when they come over from the states. I mean there’s a little Norway downtown." 

"Oh," he said, "You just knew that? I guess it's probably something that comes up often…"

"Yes, but well also I'm an Arendelle. It's been drilled into me since I was born. We turned the family manor into a museum a few years ago. I used to give tours when I was in my master's program."

"That's…"

"Extremely boring,” she interrupted, not wanting him to trouble himself to find something nice to say, “Except on field trip days. Which is how I decided working with kids was for me. Adults, eh. No offense of course."

"None taken,” he replied, grinning, “Why do you work at the research desk then?"

"I'm actually a children's librarian," she said happily, glancing over at his daughter who had looked up over her book at them with interest as they talked about information valuable to her project again. Anna motioned with her hands like she was opening a book and then gave her a thumbs up which the girl returned with a grin.

"I'm just helping out because a few of the librarians are out on maternity. If you want to see what I usually do you should come for my ornament making sessions. I'm doing them every day after school and then in the mornings on the weekends until the day before Christmas Eve."

He looked almost impressed.

"Daddy! We have to!"

"Now she's tuning in," he said with a sort of shy smile that was quickly accompanied by a shrug. "Come here sweetheart, you have to pick a tradition. We're pretty sure I'm Norwegian."

"And I know so many traditions!" Anna told the girl brightly, "we don't even have to search!"

“Hooray!” she said with a grin, carefully sliding the book’s ribbon bookmark into the page she had marked with her thumb before running over to where her father was seated.

She crawled up on his lap, book still in hand.

“Can we pick one that talks about food?”

He laughed and as he tucked the little curly head under his chin he mouthed, ‘bottomless pit’.

Anna couldn’t help but feel that before she left for the evening, she’d be processing a minor and adult card sign up and checking out a Mercy Watson book and perhaps even a Norwegian cookbook.

“No! Wait! One about ornaments! I love ornaments!”

Maybe, she thought, a craft book too.

The dad rolled his eyes playfully from up above where his daughter could see and Anna did her best to stifle a giggle. These were the moments where she loved her job most.

***

They'd come for her craft time the next day, and Ivy had told her how well she'd done at her presentation and how she'd been proud to already know a bunch of the other Norwegian traditions other kids had shared.

Now though she was busying herself with playing with the other kids, the usuals that Anna had introduced to her by name.

Her blonde head was bobbing along in a conversation as the kids built a large block tower together, and she could see her dark little eyes gleaming with mischief as they discussed knocking it down when they were all done. Anna had never in her life been more grateful that they had foam instead of wooden blocks.

“She looks just like you."

Her hair was just a little lighter than his, and her eyes a little darker, but there was something in her features, her expressions that was an identical copy to her fathers. Even only having met them the day before, she could tell that she definitely took after him.

“I hear that a lot, and it’s funny… Not like really funny, I mean, it’s just interesting because Ivy’s not mine,” he said quietly as the little girl played with the other children.

Most of the other parents had been content to talk amongst themselves. They were regulars and they were comfortable together, being mostly moms. Anna noticed that they were occasionally glancing back and forth between the two of them surreptitiously. Or at least as close to sneaky as a group of nosy 30-something women could be.

“I usually don’t tell people that. I don’t know why I told you that.”

“It’s par for the course for librarians. We’re like bartenders, just with books,” She replied a bit too quickly.

He looked down at his feet for a moment then met Anna’s eye again, smiling a bit nervously, like he’d worked something out in his head, and then took a deep breath.

“I mean legally speaking she is mine, just so you don’t think I stole a kid. After her mother died, I adopted her. Genetically she’s got another Dad out there somewhere, but her mom, Evelyn, she never mentioned him. I don’t think he was ever involved.”

“Oh,” Anna said, feeling her face grow hot at the misconception, “I’m sorry. So Evelyn was your…?”

She knew she was probably just digging herself a deeper hole, but she felt a warmth flutter to life in her heart. He’d mentioned before that Ivy’s mom had passed on, but she’d assumed that he was her biological father and that was why she called him Dad. That he’d been adopted, and then he’d adopted a child after meant a lot. That made her realize that her interest in him, regardless of how new and how impossible, was rooted in more than looks.

“Neighbor,” he said quickly, like he was afraid of her saying anything else.

She stared at him, surprised by the answer, watching him blush under her gaze.

“Sorry, I’m just used to people thinking we were… you know, together. She was just… she was so young. I wouldn’t have been with her like that, she was just a neighbor and a friend. I think she had a rough life. She didn’t talk about it much, but when she moved in next door to me she was working a bunch of odd jobs with crazy hours and Ivy was two. Evie was eighteen. I think her parents might have kicked them out or something, so I would watch Ivy on my days off because Evie didn’t have anyone and it was just me and my dog anyway, so I had plenty of free time."

He took a breath. Before Anna could find the words to say, he kind of sighed and shrugged, deciding to say more. Anna just focused on his eyes while he talked. There was a deep love there and she could tell it was for Ivy.

"I started taking extra days off here and there with my vacation time because Evelyn started to not feel well and she would go to the clinic a lot. Sometimes she would wait for hours for someone to tell her she was stressed or whatever. When they found out it was cancer it was too late. It was less than a year before she was gone. When no family came forward for Ivy, I did. She was three then. I’m the only dad she knows. The only parent she knows really. I didn’t have many pictures of her mom, because she was my neighbor and I didn’t think to take some when we found out she was sick, but we talk about her.”

Anna thought she might cry.

She was no stranger to loss, but she’d never heard of anyone doing anything like that before. She tried to step up for strangers and community members a little but each day. She donated to charity and worked with the economically disadvantaged, but she’d never changed her life forever just to help someone else. She’d never been able to see herself stepping up that far.

“You adopted your neighbor’s kid.”

She let her eyes tear up, her throat felt tight.

She could certainly see that beneath the sort of gruff exterior he first offered, there was a kindness that ran through him. She could see it now, as she had before when he’d been focusing on helping his daughter. He had a lot of love in him, and it was obvious when he glanced back over to where Ivy was playing and smiled.

 “Well I fostered her first, but yeah. I mean my parents did it for me, and I guess I didn’t want to roll the dice and hope that someone else would be as kind when I had the means… at least financially. I’m three years in and still working out the rest. I just feel lucky everyday they let me adopt her with my work schedule and everything.”

“I think,” she said quietly, trying not to cry, “I think most parents are. Even the ones who’ve had their kids from the start.”

“Thank you for saying that. I don’t know many other parents, so it’s always a guessing game about whether I’m doing the right thing.”

 He looked back from Ivy and caught a glimpse of Anna’s expression. She saw him frown and look genuinely concerned. She wanted to tell him not to worry, but he found the words quicker than she did.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, sorry. I’m not great with people.”

He held a hand out to her, paused for a moment like he was wondering what he should do, and then rubbed the back of his neck with it.

Anna shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, giving the moms staring at her openly her best and most polite look of “it’s fine, but also mind your own business”. They seemed to get the picture well enough, returning to their own conversations with only a mildly mischievous and conspiratorial gaze at each other. Anna was sure she’d have plenty of texts later from the library mom chat asking what she and the “hot dad” had been talking about.

“No, you’re fine. I’m kind of an emotional person. I’m just happy for you two. She loves you so much, I can tell. She deserves to have someone who loves her just as much.”

He smiled softly and then nodded, putting his hand back down at his side and appearing to relax slightly now that the topic was back to just Ivy. He still looked as tired as he had the day before, especially now after she’d accidentally worried him.

“She’s a special kid. She’s not like me very much, even though I’m raising her. She’s so optimistic and brave and sort of stubborn… which I suppose she could have gotten from me, but really she’s great and I’ve been so lucky to have her."

Anna nodded in return, wiping the tears away on her sleeve.

“Yeah, I can see that. And I don’t mean to pry but… you look a little tired. I hope she didn’t make you pull an all-nighter on that project.”

He sort of chuckled at her lame joke, and she appreciated the attempt at acceptance of her levity. She was never particularly good at intentional humor. Most people just laughed when she accidentally tripped over something or had chocolate on her face and didn’t notice.

“No, no all-nighter. I’m just exhausted.”

“I hear parenting does that to a person.”

He nodded and then sighed, giving her a sort of nervous look before looking beyond her to Ivy.

"I don't mean to tell you my life story. Even though, I kind of already did, but… I just feel bad when I can’t give her the world, you know? Like, I finally wanted to do a big at home Christmas for her this year. We were going to go home to see my family like usual, but my Dad just had some pretty serious back surgery and even though he loves the kids my sisters and I agreed not to flood the house while he’s recovering.”

She nodded along some more, knowing that he probably didn’t have anyone to vent this sort of thing to. She wasn’t a parent herself, but working with so many young children meant that she talked with plenty of parents, and she at least comprehended a bit of what it was like. She couldn’t pretend to understand fully, but she didn’t mind listening to parents when they needed to breathe. She particularly didn’t mind listening to Kristoff.

He looked back at her with a sort of exasperation that she was familiar with. He looked like he’d just run a marathon in his head. He looked like her after inventory day.

“You know I never realized how much my mom did for us for the holidays, you know? It’s one more week of school, and then I have to find a babysitter for the days I’m not off during her winter vacation. I barely managed to negotiate for Christmas off at the firehouse as it is, let alone to find all that time. The guys are great and sometimes I can bring her to work if I don’t have anyone to watch her because someone usually stays behind or one of the guys will have their wife or older kid there for a visit, but around the holidays… there’s a lot of fires you know. Not really a place to bring a kid. I have shopping to do, wrapping, we have to get a real tree because she really wants one, and then there’s cookies to bake, and God I’m just glad she hasn’t asked about those elf things because I don’t think I could pull that off too.”

“That seems like a lot.”

“It is, and that’s not even the half of it. We have to get a wreath to bring to her mother’s grave, and it’s so hard to find in the snow because it’s just a small grave marker so it’s really a whole day affair. I don’t mind, but I don’t want to run out of time to do everything else. She wants to go caroling and see santa and make ornaments… which thanks for this by the way, it was nice. She’s very proud of her star. It’s just with work and everything it feels like there’s not enough time.”

Anna nodded. It was a common concern with the other parents, but most of them had more hands to help, less work, and more practice at it.

“I can help.”

She didn’t think before she spoke. She was absolutely shocked by her own words even as she said them. They were practically strangers, and he was venting about his difficulties as a single dad while she was trying not to notice how perfectly chocolate brown his eyes were, or how easy it would be to imagine him in a firefighter’s calendar. Or rather, trying not to let herself wonder whether AFD had plans to put out a firefighter’s calendar this year.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You weren’t,” she said, watching as some of the moms began to get their kids ready to leave, knowing her window of opportunity to get her thoughts out was closing by the moment, “I offered. I’m great at wrapping and I love to shop. If you’re looking for help I’m happy to give it.”

He looked at her for a long moment, until Ivy ran over and pulled on his pant leg.

“Daddy,” she said, “Can I have some candy? Danny’s mom brought candy canes and she said I had to ask you first.”

He looked to Anna for a moment, and she understood the concern in his eyes.

“Oh, you mean Mrs. James! She’s so nice. She brings candy for us all the time. She’s been bringing Danny here for storytime and crafts since he was just a little baby.”

She could understand his concern. She was always a little worried herself when the parents brought things to share, especially if the parents were fairly new. It was one of those fears that was mostly irrational, but one really never knew.

He looked back to his daughter and gave her a stunning smile that made Anna melt on the spot.

“Yeah sweetheart that would be fine. Please and thank you, right?”

“Always!” she said, running off in the direction of Danny’s mom who was waiting with a cheeky smile, staring again at Anna and offering her a wink.

“Were you serious?” Kristoff asked, breaking her concentration as she tried to give Mrs. James a ‘please don’t interfere’ look in return.

Not that it would do her any good.

“About Mrs. James? Of course. I’d never encourage anyone’s kid to take candy from a stranger I couldn’t personally vouch for.”

“No, I…” he was flushed again and Anna realized that she’d missed a point. She was making him ask her, just like she’d said he didn’t have to.

“I meant about the help.”

“Oh, yes! Of course I meant it! I love the holidays and I’ve been working a little more than usual but I still have plenty of time.”

“Your boyfriend wouldn’t mind? I’d hate to take time away that you could be spending together around the holidays.”

“I… I don’t have a boyfriend.”

She was almost certain that there was a look of interest in his eye when she said it, but as quick as it was there, it was gone.

Maybe, she thought, she wasn’t the only one interested.

“Then I’d love the help,” he said with a nod, “For Ivy’s sake.”

***

Anna wasn’t sure she’d ever enjoyed anything so much as she did being Kristoff’s personal Christmas elf. She’d given him her mother’s family recipe for Norwegian butter cookies, an answer to Ivy's now rampant desire to learn about those traditions, and she’d picked up stocking stuffers and amazon packages and bits of this and that. She’d wrapped gifts and brought them to the fire station for safe keeping. Somehow, she’d managed to mostly do so when Kristoff was out on a call, or when he wasn’t working at all.

It was unfortunate as she wanted to see him, so she was pleasantly surprised when five days before Christmas she’d received a text message from Kristoff inviting her to help him and Ivy go tree shopping. She’d seen them at two separate decoration making events before it, so she supposed that it was only right for her to help them select the canvas on which to display Ivy’s beautiful work.

Ivy had, of course, been on a mission during the trip.

“Color, smell, and needle retention,” she’d said in her little, but very certain voice.

Anna had later learned that she didn’t actually know the meaning of the word retention, and that she’d learned her tree picking skills from a YouTube video, but she had been nevertheless impressed.

She’d helped Ivy pick, and then she’d helped, with mixed results, to strap the six-foot tree to Kristoff’s car. He’d mostly brought it inside his apartment himself, but when Anna had turned to leave, Ivy had caught her hand, and Kristoff had shyly offered her some hot chocolate. They'd sung Christmas carols, lead by Ivy and decorated the tree together with some ornaments that his friends from the firehouse had given them and the ones that Ivy had made herself. Anna wished she had her old childhood ornaments. Ivy, she knew, would have loved one.

The rest of the week passed much the same until, two days before Christmas, Anna found herself finishing her last ornament and story session with the kids before the holiday. It was a bittersweet thing, being swept up in the excitement of children looking forward to Christmas but knowing that she wouldn’t see them again for a while after.

Ivy, who had been in attendance, was busy playing with her new friends, and Kristoff, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Anna for the whole session, was speaking with her again.

Anna couldn’t help but note how quickly they were getting to know each other. She couldn’t help but blame the holiday in part. Not only was she doing more story and craft sessions in the evenings than she normally would, but she’d also been helping him make the holidays for Ivy. She supposed it was inevitable that they would talk, and in their conversations get to know each other a bit better.

The topic of conversation now, was a wrapping accident on one of Ivy’s “little” presents, a slime kit. It was from Santa, but Anna had accidentally wrapped it in the paper she’d set aside to wrap gifts from Kristoff in. The tag though, still said “from Santa”.

“So you’re sure you don’t mind,” she said quietly, low enough that they kids couldn’t hear her, “I know some kinds are just really perceptive, so I don’t want her to see that dad and santa have the same paper and realize what happened.”

“If she notices I’m just going to tell her that Santa accidentally ripped the wrapping paper coming down the chimney and had to rewrap it in some of my paper to keep it a secret until Christmas morning.”

She nodded. It was a brilliant plan.

“That’s so smart,” she was thoroughly awed, “I come up with a lot of little fibs around the holidays to keep the magic for the kiddos, but that one’s just genius.”

He laughed and shook his head, “Maybe I’m better at this than I thought.”

“You really should give yourself more credit.”

His smile softened then, “As should you. I can’t believe that you just offered to help a stranger put Christmas on for their kid and then actually followed through with it.”

“Need I remind you that you adopted a neighbor’s child without hesitation? What I did was nothing in comparison.”

He was close to her and stepping closer. She could practically feel the eyes of the moms as they lingered in the room, just to see what was going to happen. Her eyes drifted down to his lips and she felt herself flushing at the thought of kissing him, even though she told herself that they couldn’t, that it wasn’t going to happen. His previous stubble, the ball he’d had to drop to keep his daughter on schedule was now even more pronounced, but in an intentional sort of way. She could imagine how it would scratch against her.

“I wouldn’t call that nothing,” he said quiet, so low that she could barely hear it. “To us, it’s everything. I don’t think I can ever thank you enough.”

She focused for a moment on breathing as she’d realized that she’d been holding her breath ever since he leaned in. It was easy, she thought, to let him take her breath away.

And then the giggling and “goodbyes” of children broke Anna’s focus, and she turned her head to see moms giving her subtle thumbs up, and kids donning coats.

Ivy was skipping towards them, candy cane in one hand and her popsicle stick star in the other. Glitter was flaking off the craft as she bounced towards them, and Anna knew she’d be spending at least the next hour vacuuming. She almost felt bad for the parents who were about to have their houses covered in poorly glued sequins, glitter and foamies.

Almost.

“Ms. Anna!” the little girl said with great excitement, “What are you going to do for Christmas?”

The question caught Anna off guard. The kids had asked her before, but it had never felt like a big deal to tell them the truth. Kids understood more than adults most of the time, and they felt things stronger and they were more open with it, so Anna was more open with them. With Ivy and Kristoff though, just having gotten to know them, and having all sorts of confusing feelings in her chest for him, she wasn’t sure she could take the pitying eyes.

“Well hon,” she said quietly, waving to the other parents and kids as they drifted out as both a politeness and a distraction, “I’m not doing anything. My sister is my only family and she lives far far away.”

“Oh,” the little girl said, looking sad.

Anna couldn’t look at Kristoff, but she could tell he was giving his daughter the soft but chiding look he’d given her a few times in the two weeks she’d known them. The look that said he wasn’t mad at her, but that she’d said too much or her manners were lacking. She thought it was a nice way to remind kids of their behavior and had filed it away for her own use.

“Like Grandma and Grandpa.”

“Yeah,” Anna said in response, “But it’s okay, I’m used to being by myself. I’ll read a book and make myself dinner.”

She knew she didn’t sound particularly believable. She wasn’t even buying it herself. Truth be told her whole apartment was decorated for Christmas, complete with a tree, and she always made herself sad around the holidays thinking about how she’d had so much fun as a kid, but now spent them alone. She always thought that there was an unfairness in showing that to a child though, in showing them that the holiday was anything but magical for some people, so she tried to keep a stiff upper lip.

“That’s okay Ms. Anna,” the little girl said, grinning broadly at her with little tears sparkling in her dark eyes, and stepping close to grab her hand, “You can have Christmas at our house!”

She felt like crying again.

“Oh Ivy that’s so sweet,” she said, her throat feeling tight, “But it’s your family Christmas. You don’t want a stranger there.”

 “You’re not a stranger,” Kristoff said softly, reaching for Ivy’s other hand and giving it a soft squeeze that made the little girl’s smile brighten.

She seemed glad for her dad’s backup.

Anna forced herself to meet his eye, and she found in it a sort of shyness. He looked at her like he was uncertain, but also like he was excited by the prospect. She noted the twinkle in his eyes despite his furrowed brow, the gentle upturn of his lips as he looked at her for an answer.

“I don’t want to intrude…”

“You wouldn’t be. Ivy invited you as her guest. I’d… I’d also like you to come as my guest if you don’t mind. I know you’ve only known us for two weeks, but I think we’d both really like it if you came. Right sweetheart?”

Ivy squeezed Anna’s hand tightly and then nodded, bouncing a bit on her heels as she did so like her whole body was agreeing with her dad.

“Well then,” Anna said quietly, “How can I refuse?”

***

Her arms were full of presents and chocolates when she came to his door, so she had to tap the wood twice with the toe of her boot to knock. She’d been battling herself the entire drive over, trying to decide whether this was the right thing to do and whether she should really be feeling as giddy about the whole thing as she was.

She was basically crashing someone else’s holiday, and she knew that she should feel bad about taking them up on an offer made out of kindness and sympathy, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel bad because she really liked Ivy and wanted to help make Christmas a little more special for her this year. She didn’t feel bad because she really liked Kristoff and even the idea of pretending for a few hours that he felt the same made her heart flutter.

She’d never fallen for a patron before. Nor had she ever been so sure that she loved someone so quickly. She’d had bad luck in the past with similar feelings, but this time she had faith in the rightness of the feelings and the positivity of the situation. Kristoff Bjorgman was a good man, and whether anything more came from it, she was happy to be his friend and to share his Christmas.

She thought maybe if she could have written a letter to Santa though, she would have maybe wished for more. If it wasn’t too much to ask.

She hadn’t so much as put her foot down after tapping the door than Ivy opened the door and ushered her in. Kristoff was watching from just a few feet back, letting her know with a smile that Ivy had been so excited to open the door that she’d been waiting for the knock. She wondered if she’d been waiting for her since she called to let them know she was arriving.

“I waited to open my presents from Santa until you got here Ms. Anna,” the little girl said with zeal, “I wanted you to see!”

Kristoff stepped forward then, helping Anna with her parcels while telling her quietly that she hadn’t needed to bring them. He whispered into her ear about how excited Ivy had been about Santa and how she’d been even more excited to wait for Ms. Anna.

She thought that her heart might pound out of her chest. Less at the thought that Ivy had wanted to wait for her, and more at the fact that Kristoff hadn’t told her not to. That he’d just whispered in her ear, and that he was making it extremely evident that he wanted her there from the very start.

“Ivy that’s so sweet. I can’t wait to see what Santa brought you!”

“I hope I got a Pokémon stuffy!” she said excitedly, running towards the tree that they’d decorated together.

It felt strangely domestic, like she belonged there because her touch was in the tree. Like she was family, and not just a new friend they’d invited to share their holiday.

“You know what?” Anna asked, feigning ignorance, “I don’t know if he did, but I’m sure you’ve been so good this year that you deserve it.”

Kristoff raised a brow at her, and Anna got the message. “Good cover.”

In fact she knew that Ivy had two Pokémon plushies under the tree, one from Santa, one from her Dad, and Anna also knew that there was one more in the box Kristoff had taken from her labeled with the little girls name and Anna’s own.

Being an elf had its perks.

“But first… if you don’t mind, I have a couple special gifts for you two to open.”

“You really didn’t have to,” Kristoff said, giving her a soft, but appreciative look that she knew she would treasure in her memories for as long as she lived.

She knew that she didn’t have to. But they didn’t have to share their Christmas with her either.

And also, she’d already fallen in love a little bit with them both, and she knew that for now presents were a good way to demonstrate that.

“I have a special present for you too Ms. Anna!”

“You do?”

“Yes!”

She looked over at Kristoff, who looked almost as surprised as she did.

“You mean the one we got her at the store yesterday sweetheart?”

“Nope! A special one! I made it, Mrs. James told me how!”

“Huh,” he said with a shrug, “I guess I’ll be as surprised as Ms. Anna then.”

“Would you mind if I gave you yours first?” Anna asked, excited to know what Ivy had made her, but more excited to give the little girl and her father the special gifts she’d gotten them first.

“Okay!” she said excitedly and ran into the apartment proper as Kristoff and Anna managed the process of her removing her outerwear, hanging it up, and him helping her bring in the gifts and treats.

Once Ivy and Kristoff had settled themselves on the small loveseat near the tree, and Anna had brought them their gifts, she settled into the well worn high back chair that served as the only other Livingroom seating.

“Okay. I have some other presents for you guys too, but these are the most important ones, so I want you to open them first, alright?”

Ivy was already tearing into the paper on the box. Not needing to be told twice.

She held up a little soft ornament, and then held it to her chest.

“It’s Mama,” she said in the quietest littlest voice she had ever heard her manage, and Kristoff quickly looked between Anna and the ornament.

It had been easy enough really, to look up Evelyn Taylor. She had a Facebook before she passed, and some friends on the page who mostly lived out of state. There wasn’t much that Anna could find on the page without sending a friend request that she knew, sadly, would never be answered, but there were a handful of photos that she had access to. One of her and Ivy, confirming that she had the right Evelyn Taylor in the first place. The little girl had been two or so at the time the picture had been taken, but her little face had even been then, so strikingly like Kristoff’s. Evelyn even looked a bit like him she thought, like a cousin. The others she’d found included some pictures of the girl with high school friends, a few shots of her looking brave in photos where she’d moved into her apartment, a photo or two of her without hair when she’d been going through chemo.

Anna had gotten them all printed, every single one she could find, and put them in a small box that was under the ornament. The ornament had been a last-minute project. She’d run to the store and picked up printable iron on paper and felt. She printed the photo of Ivy and her mother onto it, ironed it onto the felt, and did her best to channel her mother’s creativity to make a small Scandinavian style embroidered felt plush ornament. It was shaped like a heart, and on one side she’d managed to layer on felt and little stitched snowflakes, while the other held the image on white felt.

She felt a bit bad, of course, about not asking Kristoff if it was okay first, but she thought that the soft look he was giving her may be proof that sometimes it’s better to try for the surprise.

“How…?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said before Ivy could even get to the box below, “You still have a box to open.”

He looked between her and Ivy for a long moment, like he wanted to say something else as the little girl was excitedly hugging her little ornament, but ultimately, he looked down at his own gift.

“Go on,” she said, eager to see if her surprise gift for him would be met with such excitement.

He opened his gift with less speed, but with equal interest.

She held her breath as he pulled out a small box and a small book.

“Is this… is this a DNA test?”

She felt tension return to her body. He didn’t sound upset really, just surprised, and she hoped that she hadn’t just crossed a line.

“I mean… it’s just… you know, if you ever want to. They’re expensive usually so a lot of people don’t do them, but my sister is in business and she happened to know a guy who knew a guy so I was able to get it for you for nothing. So it’s just if you want to dig in and do some research. You know because I’m a librarian and all. One track mind.”

“Anna…”

“I’m sorry if I crossed a line, I just thought…”

“Anna.”

She looked at him and saw he was smiling, a little bit teary eyed.

“Anna, thank you. I was going to buy one after the holidays. That project Ivy did… it made me realize that I want to know where I came from.”

“Oh… good. I’m…” she sighed, letting the tension leave her, “I’m glad, because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

He smiled, and then looked at the book.

“But… uh, what’s Hygge?”

She laughed at that, feeling happy in a way she hadn’t ever remembered feeling outside of work, and she saw Ivy smiling brightly too, hopping down from the couch to go grab something from under the tree.

“Hygge is a Norwegian and Danish concept… it’s just, you know, since I hope you’re Norwegian like me. Hygge is just that cozy mood that we can’t put into words. I think you feel a lot of hygge when you get a moment to breathe when you’re with Ivy, and I thought you’d like the book. There’s another one I ordered you too, but it won’t come in for a while. It’s all Norwegian fairytales. I thought you might like to read them together.”

He grinned broadly and stood from the couch, walking over to her and taking her hand, “Anna this is…”

But Ivy cut him off before he could finish.

“Ms. Anna! I have your present, are you ready?”

“Of course! I’m so excited,” she said, giving Kristoff an apologetic smile and turning her attention towards the child who was holding something behind her back.

The little girl grinned in response and held up a picture she’d drawn in crayon. There were little green leaves and little white berries. It was immediately obvious to Anna what it was meant to be, and depending on how things turned out, she was either going to ban Mrs. James from the library, or send her a fruit basket.

“Is that?” Kristoff started.

“Mistletoe.” Anna finished.

She felt her face go hot, but then when she looked over at Kristoff, his hand still in hers, she saw him clearly doing some internal negotiating.

“May I… may we?” He asked.

“It is a tradition,” she said quietly, looking over at the little girl and giving her a bright, if not a bit embarrassed smile to let her know that she did in fact, love the drawing.

And before she could say anything else he was helping her off the chair and into his arms. She giggled when he kissed her, his stubble, now an almost beard tickling her skin.

Ivy, ever the encouraging an delighted audience, was jumping up and down.

“Santa must have gotten the letter I hid under the cookie plate last night!” she said delighted, “I knew Daddy liked Ms. Anna!”

Kristoff, ended the kiss a bit abruptly to look over to his daughter, a deep blush on his cheeks that Anna was sure was mirrored in her own.

He didn’t release her though, still holding her close, his touch tender but firm.

“Santa didn’t get a letter under the cookie plate last night,” he whispered low into Anna’s ear as Ivy took back off toward the tree, leaving her drawing on Anna’s chair.

Anna couldn’t help but giggle at his bewilderment. She thought that it was most likely that Ivy had simply dreamed writing the letter. Some kids her age had a hard time remembering what they had and hadn’t done when they woke in the morning.

“Well either the big man is more real than we thought, or Mrs. James has more connections than I thought. Or you know, she just dreamt the whole thing.”

He grinned broadly.

“Well someone must have gotten my letter too,” he said, a little louder, “Because Ivy is right. I do like you. I know it’s fast but…”

“I like you too Kristoff,” she said quietly, “And we can take this slower from here, but for now…”

He leaned in again, kissing her gently. She let her hand slide up, her palm cradling his stubbled cheek.

When they broke the kiss, they rested their foreheads together, the sound of tearing paper and Ivy’s excited cheering behind them.

“Merry Christmas Kristoff.”

“Merry Christmas Anna.”

She’d never been so grateful for a reference desk query in her life.

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He will do as he calça kickboxing is told. ‘He will never forgive me,’ she said when first we arrived, but perhaps he will see you and love you, and for your sake he will forgive me,’ Mother was very fond of me, and she always used to kiss me when she said this, and she was very much afraid of going to grandfather. Other new colors being introduced in the commercials include orange yellow Jamaican Sun and Old Bark, a light brown whose name pokes fun at the brand's basset hound mascot.

[shedobewritingtho]

BTS's Jungkook - With you I feel no pain (Soulmates au!)

Hello! I found this idea while scrolling through social media and couldn't keep myself from writing it. This soulmates au sums up the idea of soulmates that can heal each other's injuries. I hope you will enjoy!

Be careful with the soup! Don't eat it if it's too hot. Let me check its temperature." you hear your mother say as she takes spoonful from your bowl. "You can eat." she says, then goes back to the living room to watch TV.

"Thank you!" you scream, making sure that she heard you.

You finished eating soon and went to wash your bowl, but dropped it by mistake. You had to move your right foot to avoid getting hit, enough already that the kitchen was full of little pieces of your broken bowl.

"What happened? Y/n are you hurt somewhere?" you heard your father ask after storming into the kitchen.

"No, I'm not hurt. I just don't know how to get out of here, there are sharp bits everywhere."

"Wait, let me clean this up."

You watched your father collect all the bits of your broken bowl witnessing how he accidentally cut his finger in a piece, but it did not seem to be a problem. He just put his finger under some cold water like nothing ever happened. You were fascinated. What was he feeling? How does that pain feel? You are not allowed to know, not yet.

This was your life since you were born. Everyone is born with a soulmate whose identity is to be discovered. The only thing you know is that only soulmates can heal each other's injuries, so as long as you don't know who your soulmate is, you'd better not get hurt.

Living like this was both hard and easy. You were not allowed to do anything risky; even tasting hot food and accidentally burning yourself could be a burden that will last God knows how long. At the same time, you were not allowed to do much, and when you did anything, your parents had to make sure it was safe. Your life was boring when you looked at your parents having fun and not caring about any type of injury, but you didn't know any other way to live yet.

It's not like you didn't experience any type of pain either. On the contrary, it was exactly because you fell from your bed when you were two years old and since then you have been feeling pain in your left hand. Experiencing this pain for eighteen years was really bad, but you got used to it. You cried a lot while growing up but now it was part of the normal. It bothered you only when you let yourself think of it.

"We've told you before. Do not wash the dishes, we will wash yours too when we wash ours." your mother scolded you as soon as she finished helping your father clean up.

"I know, but I wanted to try. Sorry, I won't do it again."

"Ok, good. Now you can go, it's clean here."

Back into your room, everything you could do was boring and repetitive. You couldn't even cry for too long because your head would hurt from dehydration. You had no escape. Except, your parents let you try and find your soulmate, as it was necessary. You were allowed to go to any place you chose only once a month. You started this process at the age of eighteen and now it is a big part of your life.

So you opened your laptop and went through your list of places to visit. You had to admit it was a little bit weird, you don't know exactly who you are looking for, and you can't afford getting hurt whenever you saw a guy that seemed to be your type, so you would spend those days being happy for your freedom while hoping not to get hurt and maybe meet your soulmate.

You left the house on every 17th of each month. Today is the 15th of August. Two days until you were free to try your luck again. Your destination was planned, only aprox. 100 km away from home, still in your country. You wrote down the address of every place you could visit in 24 hours. Every single place that could have an important number of visitators.

You sighed as you layed in bed, admitting that your optimism was the only thing that kept you sane at this point. The majority of your friends were living their best life, affording to experience any type of pain because their soulmate was right next to them, ready to be their saviours. The thought of meeting someone who practically gave you life was more than beautiful, it was your ultimate goal in life.

Days went by and the day of freedom has come. You double-checked everything and said goodbye to your parents. You could be located anytime by them so if you got hurt and couldn't return until the next day, they knew where they can pick you up from.

More than half of your day went by and almost all the museums, cafeterias, librarias and malls were cut from your list. You were tired and not so optimistic anymore, so you decided that a break would be the best.

You enter a 24-hour store, looking for a big bottle of water. The store was pretty empty, there were no customers except from you and a guy that was about to pay and leave. The cashier looked very bored not taking his eyes off of the TV, except for the times when someone came to pay. You soon found a bottle of water and went to pay. It seemed like the cashier was very cute looking so you were very happy when he slightly hit his hand while scanning your product. Who knows? He might be lucky today. You made sure to touch his hand while taking your change and waited for any kind of reaction. Unfortunately, there wasn't any reaction.. Another guy who wasn't your soulmate, what a shame.

You left the store with a ruined mood, especially because it was almost time for you to return home, which meant another month of this boring and dangerous life. The plan was easy, you had to drink some water and go before your parents went crazy or worse, you went crazy.

You placed the bottle of water between your legs in order to have both of yours hands free to put your wallet back in your backpack. In a second of poor coordination between your members, the big bottle of water fell on your left leg, causing you to fall down in pain. This was a situation without escape, because the impact with the sidewalk brought pain in many other places in your body.

The sharp and pulsing pain was not stopping in any way, so you had been crying for a good few minutes, without anyone noticing you. It was hell, the night was slowly falling all over the city, a sign that everyone will go to sleep and you were going to be left alone and in pain.

You were laying on the sidewalk with your eyes closed and your body crouched, not being able to move or think, when suddenly all the pain dissapeared.

"Hey, sorry. Are you okay?" a stranger's voice and face quickly drove away the thought that you might have died. He took your hand off of you and asked again. "You can hear me, right? Do you remember what happened to you?"

You couldn't answer and not because of any pain. You were in a shock, it was finally happening, you finally met your soulmate. Your eyes scanned him and a big smile showed on your face.

"Are you hurt anywere?" you ask, waiting for him to realize everything.

"What? I'm not." he said raising a brow. "I should be the one asking that, what is hap-"

"Well I'm not hurt anymore so thank you. What's your name?"

"I'm Jungkook and why thank me?" "Oh wait." his eyes widened. "Wait, I don't feel any pain, you're right!" he said while rolling up his right hand's sleeve. You watched him take off a bandage soaked in blood and reveal his skin, completely unharmed. "You.. what's your name?"

"I'm Y/N, nice to meet you." you smiled while reaching out for his hand to do a handshake. "I'm so happy to finally meet you, Jungkook."

"Thank you for finally appearing, Y/N. I needed you."

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 178

Stocks dropped the next day. Nothing detrimental, but even one or two points never felt good. It was hard to explain why, too. And explain you had to, as you and Tony sat in an uncomfortable room with the Board. You weren’t scared of those people, and they couldn’t demand much of either of you. But they wanted to know what was going on. And maybe more importantly, what the two of you were planning on doing about it. If you even could. 

The Senate meeting had ended in your favor, so you’d thought. It was hard to understand why the public had had their confidence shaken. Maybe Wenham was more trouble than you originally thought. But still not a problem you couldn’t overcome, something you told the Board very strongly. And while they had their shortsightedness set on Tony for some reason, as he bore the brunt of their questions despite it being your show at the hearing, you didn’t feel bad at all for… influencing them. Just a little. Just enough to quell the heat. 

Just enough to get them to back off of him and leave feeling like everything was under control. It was, after all. This was certainly nothing you couldn’t overcome. A drop in the bucket. The next move, in fact, was easy enough to determine. If the public at large didn’t like the thought of you or any of the other Avengers being on trial for what had happened, you’d distract them with something else. Something new and exciting and shiny. Something about legacy. Something about improving the world you were still trying to clean up. 

Luckily for you and Tony, you’d just restarted the discussion about scholarships and grants. It was nice to have an easy ace in your back pocket for once. Stark Industries called for a presser three days after the senate hearing. The room was packed. 

“Tony and I are pleased to announce the initiative stages of our new grant under the banner of the September Foundation. We are looking to help bolster the dreams of students who want a better and brighter future not only for themselves but for the world. We’re targeting promising young students who have been curtailed by poor budget restrictions from public schools. Kids who need help the most and often don’t get it. Kids who are boxed out of getting scholarships that they desperately need because they’re not from a connected background or not athletically inclined. 

Kids who then have to turn to predatory loan systems that keep them bogged down in messes so great, their dreams of the future often get put on hold while they dig themselves out of debt. Stark Industries is aiming to help shape the future through kids just like that. We are in the beginning phases right now, and invite you to take a look on our website for more information. In addition to this, the pilot program for our detailed internships was an astounding success, and we’re looking to expand that program again. We’ll be looking for well qualified individuals with a taste for businesses and sciences who want hands-on experience in multiple fields. 

Tony and I will take a few questions.”

Probably a mistake. Usually always a mistake, to take any sort of questions at any sort of media event. But you had to do it for this one. And while most reporters kept their questions centered and focused on this exciting new thing Stark Industries was promoting, a few skewed towards recent events. Telling them that you’d already made a statement- several in fact- wasn’t enough for them. And you knew if you didn’t cut the meeting, it’d devolve completely into Sokovia and Avengers and Senate hearing talks. So you thanked them for their time, and tried to leave. 

It would have been smart  to disappear upstairs where no one could bother the both of you. But you had places to be immediately after. So down onto the front steps the both of you descended, while other news outlets were littered out along the sidewalk, waiting for this exact appearance. Happy was waiting with the car door open, Tony had his arm around you, the other one waving off microphones shoved in either of your direction. 

It was also a mistake- so many made today- to let Tony escort you into the back seat first. Because he was two seconds from getting in so the both of you could leave, and a question from a feisty reporter really hit its mark- “Mr. Stark! Can you comment on the public’s fear of the Hulk? Where is Bruce Banner now? Do you think he should be imprisoned for being so dangerous?” 

Uselessly you reached up to try and get a hold of his arm, but he’d already turned towards the crowd. A fire had lit up inside him. “A comment? My comment is that those concerns are baseless and wholly irresponsible. You’re talking about an esteemed member of the scientific community- and a hero. Bruce Banner has made it a mission to save lives. Usually at the risk of his own. Anyone willing to try and cut him down to help their own narrow-minded view of the world isn’t even worth the ink you’re going to use to print this headline.” 

A real gotcha moment. Tony had realized it too little too late. But more realistically, he probably didn’t care. After saying his piece, after defending his friend, he did what he always did. Mugged for the cameras flashing in his face to show just how much that hadn’t affected him. Threw up a peace sign. And then got into the car. Happy was quick pulling off the sidewalk. 

You reached over, uncurling Tony’s fingers from their tight fisted hold. He relaxed, but only slightly. It was a stupid question to ask, but there was only one reason he’d blow up like that over a question that was at this point standard. Shouted constantly. “No hits on Bruce yet?” 

His head dropped in a small shake. “Got some on identical wreckage. Banda Sea. If Hulk went down there, he had to swim somewhere. We just don’t know where yet.” Tony would never give this up. No matter what happiness the two of you were trying to earn, in quiet moments alone you knew he was still looking for Bruce. 

The information was so scattered. Hulk had taken off in the Quinjet for some reason. And now Tony thought he’d crashed it? Maybe more likely it had run out of fuel and just went down. But if that was the case, Bruce had surely survived. It seemed like the Hulk was almost immortal, sometimes… you had high hopes that he’d found his way to whatever area was nearest. Maybe had turned back into Bruce… You soothed your fingers over Tony’s palm. “We’ll find him.” 

“Depends on how much he wants to stay gone.” There was a sure defeat etched in Tony’s heart about this. He and Bruce had always been close. This was a tough loss to swallow. 

“At least we know he’s alive.” You were sure about this. Tony nodded, so he must have agreed. “Alive and…” He sighed slowly. “Out there. Somewhere.” 

“He’ll come back.” Reaching up, you touched the side of Tony’s face, turning him your way. Gently you removed his tinted lenses, just looking at him for a long time. “He might just need time to himself. You know how he is.” 

“He’ll think himself into a hole.” Tony understood this because… he was the same way. 

“I know. But when he’s ready for help getting out of it, he’ll go to you.” This you knew in your heart. When Bruce had come to his senses and realized he wasn’t getting anywhere by himself, he’d come back to Tony. One of the only people on this planet that had treated him with such care and kindness and with such humanity from the moment they’d met. You’d like to think yourself as close, but you knew Tony and Bruce had a special bond. 

Your reassurances eased his heart a little. “You really think so?” 

“I do.” Bruce would come back. You knew this. It just might not have been for a very long time. “Until then… telling reporters off is one way of lighting the way home for him.” Giving your okay for little spats here and there. It mattered little anyway, Tony would defend Bruce as often as he had to. 

But with your blessing, he smiled. “Glad to see we’re on the same page.” 

Yep. Exactly as you’d thought. No plans to stop telling off the press. 

Because it was Bruce… that was fine. 

                                                                --- 

On July 18th, Steve’s updated, new and improved, museum exhibit was set to be live the moment the doors open that morning. But, as you checked the press docket, he wasn’t expected to show up until three, to see the exhibit for himself. Take pictures with guests. And maybe answer some questions- about the exhibit. And nothing else. But you knew better than that. 

Steve might not have. 

Which was why it wasn’t a surprise when you arrived, fifteen minutes after three PM that day, walking through the Met and its storied pieces, waiting at the back of the crowd with everyone else, finding Steve overwhelmed completely with everything going on around him. Girls were asking for selfies. Boys wanted autographs and arm wrestling matches. Press had questions he didn’t want to answer. Things he struggled to talk about- 

Even things that he should have practiced the night before. Things about the exhibit, even. It was a question by a reporter on the left, who asked something about the Howling Commandos- who asked something about James Barnes- 

It not only sparked some sense of hurt in Steve, but prompted recognition from you. That missing piece of the puzzle. Something had changed between New York and Sokovia. And its name was Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier. The one that had nearly killed you- and beaten the life out of Steve. Bucky. His old friend who had died and been reborn as some Hydra experiment. 

That’s what had changed. Steve had gone out looking for him, and as far as you remembered, had come back empty handed. 

But how did that translate into his current attitude problems? You were still missing something. 

Either way, you finally took pity on Steve and parted the crowd, drawing your arm around his as cameras furiously started flashing as soon as your presence was at the forefront of the crowd. You gave them a little wave, ignoring Steve’s dual surprise and relief. You were there to save him. It couldn’t be any more obvious. “I think we should let Steve enjoy his own exhibit, shall we? He’ll be around later for more autographs, if you’d like. Let’s say around four PM.” 

Questions started coming your way- What were you doing here? What did you think of the exhibit? What’s it like fighting alongside a piece of American history? ...is there any relief expected by way of the American government for the Sokovians? You remained collected. “Let’s not take this day away from Captain America.” And promptly after that told them, “No more questions.” Drawing Steve a little tighter in your hold, and urging him away from the questions, the cameras, and all his adoring fans that he seemed to have no idea about. 

Flexing your power of persuasion (or perhaps more your status in the world) you easily got staff to keep everyone away and empty out the Cantor Roof Garden. One semi-uncomfortable elevator ride all the way up and you and Steve were allowed a big open space with no one save the people servicing the bar. “How about a drink?” 

He wasn’t frowning, but he wasn’t smiling, either. “Sure.” And he didn’t waste any time once you put an order in for two glasses of wine. “What are you doing here?” 

“Checking on you. I know these things can be overwhelming.” After dropping a hefty tip for the bartenders, you took hold of your glass and lifted the other one up Steve’s way. 

“I appreciate it.” Even this was hesitant. And as the two of you moved away to lounge at the edge of the roof, looking at the city, he continued. “That’s not all though.” 

“No.” Agreeing with him, taking a sip of liquid courage. “I thought we should talk.” 

“We’ve been doing a lot of that, for someone who’s supposed to be retired.” Finally he found a little humor, smiling around the rim of his glass. Though it disappeared as he made a face. Clearly not a fan of his drink. 

“You know me,” sighed out as you rested your elbow on the railing. “Can’t help myself.” You’d had so much you wanted to say, but… now that you were here, you didn’t know how. Or what it was supposed to sound like. 

As quick as it came, Steve’s smile warped into something nervous. Apprehension took hold of him. “Why does it feel like I’m in trouble?” 

“Look, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna say it.” 

“Okay.” 

The both of you were looking at each other. You’d thought you knew how you were going to do this. But there was no good way. “What’s your problem with Tony?” 

“What?” Both his brows shot straight up. “Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” 

It wasn’t fair to him, but you stayed focused. Watching him. Looking beyond the image he was presenting. “I feel like I missed every opportunity to address it, but something changed between you two. And I want to know what it is.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He went just slightly defensive, and wasn’t very good at hiding it. Turning away. Expression going just short of stony. “This is ridiculous. You came all the way here to ask me that?” 

You tried to be fair to him. You’d quite literally backed him into a corner. Without your protection he’d have to go back downstairs to the rabid mob that wanted to pick him apart. Yet… you had him on the rooftop doing the exact same thing. It made sense for him to be a little more than upset. “I came here because it’s bugging me. And I need to put it to bed.” 

“So do that. I don’t have a problem with Stark. I don’t know where you’re gettin’ that from.” 

“Every time you could, you put the blame on him for everything. I don’t know what you two argued about at Barton’s ranch, but I know it was bad. After the hearing you went straight for him. And you- Steve you hurled your shield at him. You remember that he’s just a regular person right?” 

“It wasn’t at him.”

 “Yes it was. I was there.” “So was I. And I think I know what I was doing better than you do.” Just like that the two of you had started arguing. It wasn’t with loud voices, but the pain was all the same. Steve shook his head. “Besides, Stark can take a little bit of heat- and he should have, considering Ultron was his fault.” 

“He was my fault, too. And Bruce’s. But you picked on Tony the most about it-”

“What now- I’m some schoolyard bully?” 

“Are you?” You finally raised your voice to ask this, edge sharp. The two of you were left staring at one another. Guilt wracked him heavily. “Steve, I don’t know what happened- but stop lying to me. You know I can tell, right?” His eyes dropped, and he set his glass down so he could cross his arms tightly. A storm was consuming him. “You left- to go find Bucky- things were okay then. Then you came back- you told me you had no luck- and suddenly everything was different. Why?” 

His heart squeezed, his stomach dropped. These feelings so heavy they penetrated you without much probing. But he was shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about- and- even if I did- what does it matter? You two left.” There was a certain pain here. 

...some sense of betrayal that he’d either hidden very well or hadn’t had time to think about when you’d said you were going. Had he just been stewing this whole time? Was that it? But none of this helped you get to the bottom of what was going on with him. 

“We’re still here. I’m still looking out for the team. For you. I still care about you.” 

“Right.” He scoffed this out, looking up at you again. “That’s why you came here. Because you care about me.” This kind of smacked you broadside. “You came here to yell at me over Stark. If he has a problem with me he knows where to find me.” 

“He doesn’t. In fact, he didn’t want me to come talk to you at all. I do. I have a problem. I don’t like the way you’ve been treating Tony. You’ve changed and I want to know why- I need to know why, Steve, because you’re in charge of a team that needs your guidance. You’re a good man, I’m not questioning that. I don’t think I ever will. I just want to know what’s wrong.” Attacking him wasn’t helping anything. You cared about Steve, and giving him the impression you were picking favorites was not doing you any favors. You were careful as you reached out, putting a hand on his arm. He looked at the connection first and then at you. “Steve. Please. You know I care about you. I love you. You’re my family. Whatever happened, you can tell me.” 

If he needed help you would get him help. If he just needed to talk, you would spend hours talking until he was all talked out. Whatever he needed you would get for him. But he had to tell you. 

“I-” He was right there. On the edge. He was holding on to something. Something terrible. You felt it now. Only because it was bubbling to the surface now with your pressing. You held your breath. Something awful had happened to Steve when he’d left. Something that was making him act out. Maybe Tony was right. Maybe it had nothing to do with him, and Steve had just picked an easy target to vent his frustrations. “-Buck- he was in there. For just a few seconds. I put the shield down. I let him beat me. Because I knew he was in there. He could’ve killed me. But he saved my life.” 

Steve turned away, away from your touch. He settled his arms on the railing, looking out onto the city. You stayed standing in place, though you did hold your arms together. Trying to keep your balance. Steve was very suddenly bleeding emotionally. He needed to talk this out. 

So you had to let him. 

His head lowered. “He dragged me out of that river. And I spent months trying to get a lead on him. I found all his files. From- ...what Hydra was making him do.” Something clutched in his throat. You watched carefully but impassively. “And I- ...I-...” He stopped himself. Anxiety- dread hit a fever pitch inside him. But perhaps he sensed you were going to ask him to go on, so he pushed through to keep you from doing so. “-Buck is the only family I’ve got left. Except Peggy. And every time I go there… she remembers, and then she doesn’t. She gets startled. My being there hurts her every time. So really it’s just Bucky. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe you’re right. Maybe something has changed. It’s frustrating, not knowing where he is.” 

“Steve…” This wasn’t satisfying. You hadn’t come there assuming it would be. But this was… so much less than what you’d been hoping for. “We’re your family, too.” 

“Yeah. Sure. But. That part of me. Only he carries that. Only he understands me. I appreciate you- everything you’ve done- you mean a lot to me. But Buck is one of the last pieces of that life I’ll ever have. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m taking something out on Tony that I shouldn’t be. I’m sure he’s not holding his breath for an apology.” 

You felt your nose wrinkling, your lips pursing. This wasn’t everything. He was holding back. But this was… something. “Does he remind you of Howard or something?” Did that make sense? Steve had one foot in the past and one foot in the present- or the future, to him at least. Maybe where he had lost Bucky and had been unable to retrieve him, where he was lamenting Peggy’s failing faculties- 

Tony reminded him of a part of his life that he was grasping at. 

A chill swept across him that startled you. His eyes closed. He linked his hands together, and squeezed. It felt like you were holding your breath again. Something dark was swirling inside of Steve. And every part of you rejected it. “Maybe he does. If I’ve been careless- or even aggressive, I’m sorry.” 

This was not even close to good enough. He was holding on to something- something important. You knew it now. “No. This is not good enough.” 

This surprised him, though, and he looked up suddenly, turning towards you. “What?” 

“You’re a bad liar- and omission is still lying. What is it? Just talk to me!” 

He got angry again. “I thought that’s what we were doing. I’m sorry what I’m going through isn’t good enough for you.” 

“That’s not what I meant. And I can’t ever know what that’s like. And I’m sorry. But there’s something else going on. And if you’re not gonna tell me what it is- I’m going to find out.” 

Steve had left to find Bucky. Fine. The last piece of that part of his life. Fine. He’d been unsuccessful and it was hurting him. Fine. But something he’d done while he was out doing that- something he’d seen or come across- He was hiding something. 

He squared up to you, facing you completely. Waiting. A small pause while his gaze stayed with yours. “Nothing else is going on.” 

Lie. Guilt. 

 He continued, even through your hard-eyed stare. “And anything else that is- ...it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or Stark. Not everything does, sorry to say..”

He was never going to give whatever this was up. Never. You knew it now. Maybe it was something deeply personal. Maybe you had no right to it. For all you knew, maybe he’d found Bucky. Gotten into a fight with him. Murdered him by accident. Who even knew? Who knew anymore? You thought you knew Steve but clearly… clearly that had stopped being the case right around the time Bucky had reappeared. Steve was even saying as much right now. To your face. 

“That better be true.” 

“Or what?” 

Was threatening him the right move? Especially if it was something personal to him. Maybe you were going about this the wrong way. You’d wanted to talk to Steve. To tell him to clean up. You’d… sort of done that. Now this had warped into something else. And you weren’t exactly handling it well. “Or I’ll never trust you again.” 

You didn’t have to say it, as the both of you stared each other down. He seemed pained again. Hurt that you’d say something like that. Hurt that you didn’t trust him even now. 

But. Finally, “Well it is true. So I don’t know what else to tell you.” 

                                                               ---

Tony looked up from the couch as you came in. You stepped out of your heels by the front elevator and walked over to him, falling in a heap, stretching out, putting your head in his lap. He stopped what he was working on, tossing his tablet away to the other end of the couch and ran his fingers through your hair. “Good talk, huh?” 

“Oh. Great.” You let out a slow sigh, eyes fluttering closed. “He apologized for the way he was acting, at least.”

 “All his sins are forgiven, I’m sure.”

 “Mn.” You started drifting just a little with those gentle massages at your scalp.

Tony waited, letting you enjoy yourself for just a little while. But, finally, “What’s your verdict?” 

Even now you hadn’t gathered your thoughts. They weren’t anything good, anyway. Blinking up at him, your eyes found his. He waited. Patiently. And eventually… “Steve is having some internal struggles about which life he’d like to live. And as long as Bucky Barnes is at large, they’re never gonna get better.” That was the one thing that was clearest. That was the one thing that made sense. 

“...but?” But Tony knew better. Tony knew you. He knew what you’d walked in with- some large, dark cloud. He could feel your hesitation. Your uncertainty. 

You just had no idea what to do with it. “That’s not all, I don’t think, but… Steve promised me that was it. Or at the very least he went pretty hard on the idea that it’s none of our business- and has nothing to do with either of us. So. For now I have to believe him.” 

Steve wouldn’t open up. There was nothing you could do but take him at his word. 

Tony’s head dropped a little in a light nod. “You okay with that?” He reached into his pocket with a small bit of a shuffle, but then settled, taking hold of your left hand so he could slide your engagement ring back into its rightful place.

Did you really trust Steve? Were you going to be able to let this issue rest? That’s what was really being asked of you. 

What more could you do? You let yourself be distracted by the fullness of being home with Tony, safe, sound and happy. In the blissful stupor you were tired of grasping for, you made up your mind. “Yeah. I’m okay with that.” 

Hopefully that would be the end of it. 

[ofieugogyshz]

i cant have brain to write with tonight so instead have bullet points of ideas of things bc i got accosted by ideas when i finally got to lilycove again after like fifteen years and now i want a revisit trip but it’d be like several years ago not anything in current time lol. a lot of it is selfish/one-sided trip but you know what it’s whatever okay there’s a reason why it’s bullet points and not a whole ass fic lol. [along with brain. brainstorming but without a brain]

i promise there’s a read more but sometimes tumblr says fuck you when you try to make some

Going to the cove lily motel a year or two after marriage idk

walking around the city, holding hands, going around with maybe a few people nodding/greeting us as we walk by

going towards the beach and lighthouse, watching the waves and people play in the water from the land/cliff overlooking the sea/beach

watching the wailmer play/do tricks in the sea by the cove

the old couple who've been married for 60 years nearby, noticing us and commenting/greeting us.

Old man asks how long we've been married, we admit just a few years' anniversary trip;

“But we've known each other for a lot longer than that!”

the wife (and husband?) chuckles, and “I'll let you two in on a little secret, [if you want to listen/hear it]” look at each other confused/uncertain, but nod at them. “It was 60 years ago that my husband proposed to me.” she turns to look at the sea. “The sea remains as beautiful as ever, [as it did back then]”

awe by me and “you guys look young/not that old!” “Even as we grow old and wrinkled, the sea remains forever young with the vivid brilliance of life” by the husband, whose gaze followed his wife's. He turns to look at us. “You two look as in love as we did at that age. Shoot, we still feel that way about each other, after all these years! The youthfulness that love makes you feel.... if you've got the right partner, that feeling will never fade.”

cue both of us blushing even though the feelings/observation is spot on for us.

Burying face/boring hole into ground bc i'm so embarrassed

husband takes note of this and politely offers an escape (“Thank you for your time. Sarah, didn't you say that there was a contest hall nearby? Did you want to take a look?”)

passing by the contest fan club; mentions of lisia/”lissi” and “ari” and looking at who the current contest stars are.

“Ah! I remember back when Wallace was the big name for contests. I think the new girl is his... cousin? Niece? I remember hearing that he had a younger relative that he was tutoring before I left Hoenn.”

watching recordings at the fan club of the new contest stars. Stars in eyes and a desire to participate all over again. Look at husband for permission/if we can go check the contest hall and see when there is one again.

Contest hall

“wow, they really have changed the design of them since I was travelling. I remember that they were changing up how the halls work-- or that they were changing them to battle halls. I noticed slateport's changed first when I was taking a ship out of the region, and I went to try it out and...” makes face “I didn't really like it. I missed seeing it as a contest hall. I'm hoping the public or at least the contest community got them to change it back, even if that sounds bad...”

The lilycove art museum

“oh nooo, they took down the pieces someone made of my pokemon back when we were doing contests!! I wonder if I can ask them if they're in storage somewhere so we can take them...”

talk to the curator, he explains that they gave them back to the original artist, but if I wanted, I could contact them to see if they were interested in giving them to me.

Dept store

the different levels, loto id

lance half-jokingly pondering if they sell capes [me; no! No capes   him: okay, no tarot decks or plush dolls   me: ….fine but only an eye for an eye.    Him: you have a weird way of saying things, you know this yes?     Me: and who made that decision to marry me, hmmmmmmm?

“this is like celadon's, but I always liked their selection more. Now I remember why”

secret base dolls aaaaaaa the secret base stuff in general

“oh!!! I wonder if my secret base is still here.... Probably not. Oh, right, I made sure I took everything out before I left, but I still wonder what it looks like now. It was a pretty popular spot.”

squealing over all the cute plushies and themed cushions and carpets/mats and tables

“I miss having a secret base ;~; “

being told to come back on saturday for the sale extravaganza.

Us both looking thru the tm shop, looking to see what the local tm collection is now, what we might need/are missing (esp since most of our collection is from before technology created more stable/unbreakable TMs, so finding modern replicas of the rarer stuff is hard still)

me; thinks about buying one for him as a gift, but not sure which one yet

go to the lighthouse, idk why, it just became tradition to check out a region's lighthouse after visiting olivine's

check out the beach/nearby cave and see what's become of it since destruction of local gang's base

[anxiously-unsatisfied-world]

It Takes Two to Tango - Ch. 6

Pairing: eventual Prinxiety & Logicality Word Count: 2170 Warnings: food mention

A/N: So not much really happens this chapter but it’s our boys spending time with each other so enjoy! I’ll see you Saturday for chapter seven! :D

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

~~~~~~~~~~

When they settle on a restaurant, Roman pushes the thoughts of the next day aside, instead deciding to focus on Virgil and the upcoming performance. Those thoughts can wait at least until that’s over with.

They order their food and continue telling each other stories they have about dancing. “And the whole audience was laughing and clapping, they must have thought it was a scripted fall,” Roman says, grinning at the way Virgil’s laughing, looking so carefree and beautiful.

“Oh man! At least they took it well! I remember a dance not going right but the audience wasn’t as receptive as yours. The silence was almost a bit too much, thankfully, it all settled once we continued dancing.” Virgil says, wincing slightly at the memory, Roman mirroring his expression.

“Yikes, that must have been horrible!” Roman says, “They must have settled because they got entranced by your dancing. From last night, I already know you dance beautifully so that must be it.” Roman smiles at Virgil, unknowingly making his heart skip a beat, Virgil’s face growing warm at the compliment.

“Maybe… But I’m sure you’re the more beautiful dancer. Everyone’s eyes were on you last night.” Virgil says with a soft smirk.

Roman’s eyes widen at the compliment and his cheeks turn a soft pink, which makes him even more beautiful in Virgil’s eyes. “You sure about that, Mr. Famous Dancer? I’m sure they were all watching you. Sure, I’m great to look at but you in that outfit from last night? Absolutely captivating.”

Virgil goes still at the compliment, painfully aware of the way his heart is pounding in his chest. The simple fact that Roman thought he looked good in that outfit has thrown him completely off guard. “I-I… Thanks, Princey.” Virgil says, “You also looked great last night. How about we agree they were watching both of us?”

Roman’s lips curl up in a satisfied smile. “That sounds good to me.” Virgil returns the smile and the conversation shifts off to another topic, though both are distinctly aware that the other has thought they looked good before.

Once their food arrives, they both go silent to eat, occasionally meeting eyes with each other and holding that contact for a bit too long before looking away. The rest of the meal goes on with this slight tension, but it quickly fades once they’re out of the restaurant and onto their next destination.

Virgil leads Roman to a tucked-away bookstore, down one of the side streets Roman hadn’t gone down the previous day. He’d mainly spent time on the main streets of the city so he hadn’t even known this was here.

“This is one of my favorite places to just spend time. It’s quiet and not a lot of people are in it any given time so it’s a relaxing place to just chill.” Virgil explains as they step inside, quieting his voice even though this isn’t exactly a library.

Roman smiles at that, finding it sweet how Virgil’s opening up to him. This is more than he expected when he first got the idea to travel back to this time period, but he’s enjoying every second of it.

“What kind of books do you like to read?” Roman asks, smirking before continuing, “Though, given your stage name, I think I already have an idea, Mr. Raven.”

Virgil rolls his eyes at the teasing expression Roman’s giving him, but he has to admit, he’s not too far off from being right. “Okay, Smart Guy, you might be right about my tastes but I bet you live on fairytales. Am I right, Princey?”

Roman huffs and dramatically puts a hand to his chest. “Why ever would you assume such a thing?” He layers on the drama in his voice before snickering, “Actually, yeah, you’re not wrong. I am a sucker for a romance with a happy ending!”

Virgil raises his eyebrows and looks up from the book he had half-heartedly been looking at while Roman was doing his dramatics. “Are you sure we’re reading the same fairytales, Princey? Because the ones I know have way darker undertones.”

Roman’s about to say something about how Disney movies/stories always have happy endings but then he remembers that Virgil would have no idea what that means since Disney movies don’t exactly exist yet.

“Sure, some fairytales do end darkly, Count Gloom. But surely, you can think of a few that end up well for the two love interests.” Roman says and Virgil begrudgingly nods as there are stories that do that, even if they’re not the ones he usually reads.

“Fine, Princey. Maybe you should read some of the fairytales written by the Brothers Grimm sometime. If you could handle a darker twist on your usual fairytales, that is.” Virgil says with an expression that Roman would swear is far too attractive to be so mean-spirited.

“Uh, hate to break your bubble, but I have read them, and I find them to be brilliantly written. But I still prefer things with happier endings.” Roman says and Virgil snickers behind a hand at his reaction being teased like that.

“M’kay, Roman. Now, I actually do want to look around a bit while we’re here. Then we’ll go somewhere else.” Virgil says and Roman nods, both of them silently walking around and looking at books for a little while.

Once Virgil’s purchased a new book, he leads Roman to a nearby museum, which gets a curious but excited expression from Roman. With those eyes looking at him so curiously, Virgil feels compelled to explain why they’re there.

“So, uh, I don’t really have to say what makes a museum enjoyable. But I like other types of art than just dancing so it’s nice to come look around every once in a while.” Virgil says while fidgeting with his hands without thinking.

“I agree. It’s always interesting to see how they portray similar emotions that we do while dancing in a different medium.” Roman sets a hand on top of Virgil’s to still them, causing Virgil to look up and their eyes to meet.

It’s like time freezes for both of them the second their eyes lock, the world around them no longer as important as the person in front of them. Both of them feel like they could stay forever like this and be perfectly happy to do so.

As quickly as the moment starts, it ends. Virgil shakes himself off and offers a shy smile to Roman, who retracts his hand and beams back. They then enter the museum to kill some of their remaining hours until the performance.

“I have to say, Princey. While most people would’ve been bored by the whole thing, you actually had something to say about each piece of artwork.” Virgil says as they’re leaving the museum. “It made that more fun than when I’m by myself.”

Roman grins at that, his cheeks heating up just faintly. “Thanks, Virgil. I’m used to it, my brother loves going to all sorts of museums. It’s a lot easier to bear if you’re not by yourself.”

“I agree with that. Now...I have one more place to take you before we’ll eat dinner and go perform.” Virgil says, feeling a fluttery feeling in his stomach at the idea of taking him to this next place. It’s not like it’s the most personal of the places they’ve been, but something about taking him there feels special enough to make Virgil nervous.

“Alright. Lead the way!” Roman says, offering a bright, encouraging smile when he sees Virgil look a bit nervous. Without thinking, he reaches over and takes Virgil’s hand, squeezing it softly to let the other know that it’s all going to go fine.

Virgil’s eyes widen at the fact that they’re holding hands. But instead of freaking out about it, or goofily grinning like he wants to, he simply smiles back at Roman and starts to lead him, not bothering to let go of his hand.

Part of the way there, Roman realizes that they’re holding hands and has an internal gay panic. This is fine! We’re just two friends holding hands as he leads me somewhere. This is completely normal. It’s not like he’s stupidly attractive or anything. Gah! Roman, get a hold of yourself. You’re leaving this time in the next few days, you can’t get attached! But he knows he’s already attached. (and that’s a problem for later)

The walk itself is quite short and it leads to a gazebo of sorts where a few people are sitting playing various instruments together. Surrounding the gazebo is lush grass that would be perfect to either sit on and listen to the music or dance around on.

Virgil’s shoulders relax as they step onto the grass, unable to help the smile spreading across his face as they step into one of his safe havens in this town. Roman bites his lip at how beautiful Virgil looks smiling so genuinely and knows instantly that he’s screwed. There’s no way back from how much he feels for this dancer now.

“So, I come here often. I usually just sit and listen to the music, but I often come to dance and mess around when I don’t want to do actual practice.” Virgil says, seeming so relaxed and happy at being here.

Something in Roman’s heart catches at how beautiful and serene Virgil looks. It’s obvious that this is one of his favorite places in town from how at peace he’s become just by coming here. “Sounds nice.” Roman says softly, “I can see why you’d love this place.” Roman lets the music wash over him, starting to sway slightly on his feet as the music makes him want to dance.

Virgil hums lightly in response, not even bothering to hide his smile at how the music is affecting Roman. His heart skips a beat to see him looking so contented like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Roman full-on twirls when the music swells and Virgil tries to muffle the surprised laugh that it causes but Roman just grins at him and extends a hand towards him. No words are needed for Virgil to know what he’s asking and thus, he takes Roman’s hand, allowing him to pull him into a somewhat messy dance.

The leader varies from move to move, from Roman dipping Virgil to Virgil spinning Roman around, but neither of them notices. It feels natural for the leader to switch so often when they’re not having to put on a show for an audience. Instead, this is only about them and the person in their arms.

One song shifts to another with neither of them caring about how much time is passing, not really. A small crowd of people gathers to watch them as they’re still using moves that only trained dancers would use even in this more relaxed setting.

Through the dancing, Roman never lets his eyes stray from Virgil’s, evoking an intimacy to the dance. It’s been ages since either of them, particularly Virgil, has felt this drawn to a dance partner, and despite his usual qualms about maintaining eye contact unless necessary, he finds that it’s much easier to hold Roman’s steady gaze, though it’s a bit embarrassing and flustering.

The song melts into a more romantic one that causes the audience to break away, not wanting to intrude now that it feels less like a rehearsed performance. Roman laughs softly when he hears the soft swells in the music, the sound bringing an almost dopey grin to Virgil’s lips.

They draw closer to each other, swaying to the music instead of performing intricate moves. Roman’s hands settle around Virgil’s neck, while Virgil’s wrap around his waist, their hearts beating in sync as Virgil gently rests his forehead against Roman’s.

It’s a bit odd for him as he’s never been the type to grow close to someone this quickly. But, of course, there’s something different about Roman. Normally, people aren’t able to understand his snarky nature, instead preferring his grace when he dances. But Roman… Roman has witty quips to match his own and doesn’t shy away when Virgil gets too snarky. So maybe that’s why he’s already so attached to him.

They stay in that position until the song draws to a close and it’s only then that they realize how long they had been dancing together. Roman offers up a sheepish smile, “So, I guess we should have dinner?”

“Yeah… Come on, I have a place I think you’d like.” Virgil reluctantly draws away from Roman but grabs Roman’s hand to lead him to their destination.

Roman feels his face flush at the fact that it was Virgil who reached for his hand this time, meaning that their feelings have to match at least a little. Right?

The thought alone causes a grin to spread across his face as he trusts Virgil to get them to the restaurant in one piece.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[wickedapollo]

Addison Thompson and the Lightning Theif

Greek Gods and Vampires, Oh My! 1/?

Honestly, If I had the choice between a room with Nancy Bobofit, and this. I would chose that Freckly tea-bag anyday. It's not that Fied trips were bad, no not at all, I just would have much rather have only the one shaperone than two.

But my vote didn't matter, at least not to anyone else. Mosy Yancy Fieldtrips, ask any other student, were torture. I mean, if they wanted us to participate in any actual activities, they should take us somewhere fun. Not a Metropolitan Musuem for Art. Who finds dead things fascinating like that anyways?

The bus jostled over a curb and I was thrown into the back of the seat in front of me. My face plastered to the unclean leather, making my face hot, almost to the burning point. My body was sliding, towards the incredibly disgustingly unclean floor. I panicked, grabbing the back of my seat and trying to heave myself back into the seat.

That failed. I wound up on the floor anyway and now had to get back into my seat discretely without being yelled at. A pretty feesable task if Mrs. Dodds didn't have a sonar radar for every little thing I do. I did my best, pretending I had been laying down and got uncomfortable. She didn't yell though, which I was glad for.

In the seat next to me, which sat my two very Best Friends, sat Percy Jackson and Grover Underwood. Percy was fairly small for our age, but I could bet he'd be tall when we were older, he had a wild head of dark hair, which was always disheveled no matter how you looked at it, and Sea Green eyes that were filled with mischief. Grover didn't seem to get so lucky, his hair was an almost carmel-y color and a curly mess, his eyes were a soulful brown that reminded me of a puppy, his skin was dotted with freckles. Poor boy had an odd Muscular Disease in his legs.

I looked over just in time to watch a red and brownish colored sandwich chunk flop onto the top of grover's head. He tried to shake it out, but it simply made it worse. I frowned, glaring back behind him to see who'd thrown it.

Nancy Bobofit was winding up to throw another junk of Ketchup-Peanut butter sandwich at him. I clenched my teeth, if Mrs. Dodds and Mr. Brunner wouldn't have yelled at me, I gladly would have thrown one of Grover's crutches at her. I think Percy had the same idea, but it didn't really occur to me until she'd lobbed the piece at Grover and he dodged it while trying to calm Percy down.

"That's it." The boy had grumbled, starting to stand before Grover pushed him back into the seat. His head thudded against the seat and he gave Grover a look.

"You're on probation." Grkver hastily reminded him. I shifted in my seat, the idea of Percy actually being expelled mind boggled me. Yes he was troubled, that's what Yancy Academy was for, troubled kids. But Percy had this weird little way of making Grover and I calm that made me wonder why he wasn't friends with everyone. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

"Unless she did something unsavory." I grunted, moving my legs into the isle to face the two. Both boys looked at me like I'd grown two heads.

"I don't sven know what that means." Percy grumbled, turning to look out the window at the dreary, boring New York Landscape. I frowned at him, then I had to remind myself we were in different English Classes.

"It means shady, Percy." Grover grumbled. I perked up as Percy whipped back around to face me. He looked very intriguded by my idea, which honestly wasn't a very good one.

"Miss Thompson, Feet out of the Isle please!" Mr. Brunner called from his seat in the back. I turned immediately and seated myself against the the window. No one sat by me, honestly ptobably because I had no female friends.

...

The high pitched whir of Mr. Brunner's wheelchair as our group walked through the museum was beginning to get on my nerves faster than I wanted it too. The museum was probably a great sight to see if there weren't like thirty of us, but all in all, all of this stuff looked great. I'm not entirely sure why ancient things appeal to me, I mean, sure. It's history and every moment we breath is history in the making, but the idea that something has lasted for so long? Enchanting.

We had gathered around an about thirteen feet tall statue, a stele. I was half listening, mainly because Nancy and her gang were too busy laughing at something. But the chips and scars in the collumn made me sad, a young girl about our age? Young people's funerals made me sad, the idea that they died so young without being able to finish their lives? Utterly a fearful and painful reality some people had to face.

I wasn't paying attention to anything, not really. I was mainly contemplating that poor girl's death, why would someone want to kill a young kid? It made no sense to me at all. I doubt I could hurt a fly without breaking into tears.

There was giggling off to my left and Percy turned to glare at them, trying to focus on Mr. Brunner's speeking. I shifted and stared straight ahead as the giggling just reached an octive higher.

"Will you shut up?" Percy hissed, probably much louder than he intended, because everyone was snickering as Mr. Brunner stopped and stared at us. I felt like one of those frogs in science class, carefully being disected and looked over.

"Mr. Jackson," the teacher sighed and looked over the rest of us. I shifted i place picking at my cuticles and trying to look anywhere but at him. "Did you have a comment?"

Percy's face was redder than a tomato. I guess I expected that though, Percy had a knack for doing things like this. "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner wasn't frowning at us anymore, which I was glad for, but when I turned to look away Mrs. Dodds was there, practically breathing down our necks. I did well in School, I was never late, the lowest Grade I'd ever gotten was a D+, and even then it was because I wasn't there for the lesson. I was started when Mr. Brunner held up a pen and pointed to a picture on the stele.

"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?" I recognized it easy, I mean. Sure, I enjoyed school, to a degree, but Mr. Brunner's class would always be my favorite. I had an A+ in there, and I was not about to loose it because Percy couldn't remember the name of a Titan and his children.

"That's Kronos eating his kids, right?" Percy sounded unsure, and I wanted to thwop him upside the head with something. I understood that I had a very, very wonderful memory. Which is probably why Grover and Percy would practically beg me to study with them before exams. But Percy was probably the most thick skulled kid I had ever met.

"Yes," Mr. Brunner nodded, but his voice sounded strained. Almost like if you were annoyed and trying very hard not to show it. "And he did this because...?"

"Well..." Percy shifted his weight nervously, and he focusing above Mr. Brunner's head. I fought the urge to let my hand shoot up, because Percy had been asked a direct question, it would have been rude. "Kronos was the King god and-"

"Titan." I whisper-hissed quietly, and Mrs. Dodds' eyes narrowed at me. I swear, if she turned out to be half snake I might have cried. I didn't understand what I'd done to make her dislike me so much, but I wish I could take it back.

"God?" Mr. Brunner raised an eyebrow at Percy questioningly.

"Titan," he corrected himself, glanced at me almost in thanks, "And... Uh, he didn't trust his kids, who were gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eeeew!" One of the girl's behind us made a gagging sound and I wanted to hurl the wad of cash in my pocket for the gift shop at them, but that would be wasteful.

" -and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," he continued sounding strained. He looked a little panicked, but I mean I would be too. "And the gods won."

A lot of the kids around us were laughing like giddy school-girls. I wanted to cower behind Percy right then, because I could feel Mrs. Dodds' eyes on me, almost like she was trying to pry something out of my soul.

"Like we're ever going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on aourjob applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.' " Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, rolling her eyes. I agreed whole heartedly, when was this stuff going to be important? Like, yeah maybe, if our parents decided they didn't like us and tried to eat us, we could just feed them rocks? Highly unlikely.

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Mr. Brunner looked pointedly behind us at Nancy's group and flinched when his eyes trailed over us, "To paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover mumbled, the corner of his lips twitching. I smiled, aiming my face at the floor so Mrs. Dodds wouldn't see me.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, looking like shd wanted to claw him to pieces. Her face was bright red, maybe even darker than her hair. I was glad Nancy at least got in trouble in Mr. Burnner's class, Mrs. Dodds seemed to think she was an Angel.

Percy looked like he was contemplating, and our little run in just now probably didn't help. He shrugged one shoulder, and then the other. Then both at once went up and he sighed defeatedly. "I don't know, sir."

"I see, Miss Thompson," I flinched and looked up apologetically. I didn't think I'd done anything wrong, "Do you have an answer?"

"I-I uh..." I swallowed, what was I supposed to say? 'Yeah, if our parents eat us'? "I-It's not like we are going to use it, sir, not unless our parents decide to eat us."

"Very well, half credit to both of you," he sounded disappointed. Like someone had just cancelled his favorite show, and he'd just heard about it. "Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods had been living and growing up comepletely undigested in the titans stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scuthe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds would you lead us back outside?"

"That sounds like a story for family reunions." I whispered to Grover as we began to walk outside. He smiled slightly, like he did find it funny but he wasn't going to say so.

"Mr. Jackson, Miss Thompson." I flinched, and turned to look back at Mr. Brunner sheepishly. I felt like sinking into the floor and hiding, I didn't feel like being yelled at, or weeded out from the group.

"Sir?" Percy asked, I didn't mean to but I stepped closer to him, half hiding behind him and half peeking around like a terrified animal. Grover continued, looking back almost sadly.

"You must learn the answer to my question," he told us, looking both of us over carefully. I shifted and Percy looked a little confused.

"About the Titans?" I asked curiously, practically leaning over Percy's shoulder.

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it." I frowned. Yes it was interesting, but who would use this stuff unless you were an Archeologist. Percy let out a small 'oh' in reply.

"What you learn from me," he said, and took us both by the arm, "Is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from both of you."

I will never understand Mr. Brunner. I get teacher, during the summer I live with two, but Mr. Brunner's class was fun and eventful. He used a sword sometimes, those were the best days. It was always great, he and my father would have gotten along well. My father had owned a patch of land on the Missouri-Arkansas border that had once been a Peach Orchard. It'd been in our family for generations. He'd found a bout of oil under the surface, struck it rich, and finished his history degree in colledge and came up here to New York. I hadn't done well in the public schools here, so he sent me to Yancy. He claimed it'd be easier, but I was so homesick sometimes I thought I could just float back to the little farm house we'd had.

"Of course, sir." I managed, nodding as Percy mumbled out his speel. Mr. Brunner nodded and took a look at the stele. The object put a melancholic feeling in my chest, like my Grandma had just died again. He dismisses us and I felt like running out of there.

...

I never liked thunderstorms. Usually they meant that it flooded the cornfields and meant there was no surplus for that month. We'd managed to get back with Grover, and I felt like pelting Nancy Bobofit eith my apple, she shouldn't steal from people. What if they needed those things? At the beginning of the year she'd given me this little silver bracelet, said I could keep it. Turns out she'd stolen it from our P.E teacher and I got blamed. Of course my father and mother had rushed down immediatley and were not happy. No one would listen to me that I hadn't stolen it. Only Percy and Grover listened, I guess that's how we made friends.

I had found myself sitting beside Grover, more like laying really. The mist from the fountain had dotted my clothes and skin, but I really didn't mind.

I was too busy staring at the sky to really notice Nancy walking towards us. Though I don't know how you can miss her, bright red hair and all. She dumped her half-eaten crustable in his lap.

"Oops." She grinned wickedly, if I had the opportunity to wipe that grin off her face and rub dirt in her mouth? I would have. Maybe even shove her face in a cow pie, that would have been good.

I'm not entirely sure what happened next, because there's not really a logical explanation. It looked like the water formed to snakes and grabbed her by the arms and just tugged her in. I let my mouth drop. How on earth does something like that happen?

"Percy pushed me!" Nancy screamed, suddenly a blubbering mess. Mrs. Dodds practically just appeared next to us, I was far too busy staring at where the water was to care about what was actually happening. I must be going crazy right?

Mrs. Dodds made sure Little Nancy was okay, promising to buy her new clothes from the giftshop. My heartbeat was in my ears, Percy hadn't pushed her. But then she turned on Percy.

"Now, Honey-"

"I know," he grumbled glaring at the ground. I frowned, he hadn't even touched her. "A month erasing workbooks."

"Come with me." She growled, waiting for him to stand up so she could practically eat him alive.

"N- Wait! It was me! I pushed her, Mrs. Dodds." I shakily stood, fidgiting with my fingers. Grover looked possibly ready to start with his excuses. Percy's jaw had fallen open.

"Miss Thompson, I don't believe-"

"I did Mrs. Dodds! I pushed her. Let me make up for it please." I pleaded, wringing my hands togwther nevously. Who was I kidding? Mrs. Dodds would eat me alive and then what would I do? Serve detention? Make my dad shake his head at me?

"Miss Thompson, I do not condone lying."

"I pushed her, Mrs. Dodds." I tried again, she narrowed her eyes at me and I tried my hardest not to change my expression.

"You-will-stay-here." I felt figity, I knew somehow she wouldn't listen. Just a little voice in the back of my mind. I dropped back into my seat beside Grover.

Percy gave us a sympathetic look, more of a 'come save me' look honestly. I felt horrible. How was I supposed to do anything if I couldn't even cover for Percy? Even Percy could come up with a better story than that.

I watched as the two of them disappeared into the Museum. Grover put his hand on my shoulder, trying to be comforting. It kind of was, but when I looked up at him, he wasn't looking at me. His nostrils were flared up angrily, like he smelled something disgusting.

"Not again." He whispered and was out of his seat in seconds, practically running towards Mr. Brunner. I was so caught up in Grover looking frantic that I didn't notice Nancy.

She slammed her hand against the surface of the water, and droplets flew at me. They were cold, freezing in fact. I flinched and looked over at her.

She was absolutely soaked. Her clothes were tightly stuck and she was shivering. I felt kind of bad for her, shivering like that. I was twmpted to gove her my jacket, but it was the only one she hadn't stolen. I also knew if I did I wouldn't get it back.

I looked back and noticed Grover was walking back over. Or at least, to the beat of his ability. He sat between us, and Nancy got up to move. I shivered slightly, hunching over.

A wave of warmth flooded over our little group. Things started shimmering, and I was getting a headache. I shook my head, trying to clear it. There was a split second where everything spun and I felt like my memories were being rewritten. I stuck my hand into the fountain and splashed my face.

"I hope Mrs. Kerr doesn't mess him up too bad." Grover sighed, looking towards the door of the Museum. Wait... What?

"Grover... Who's Mrs. Kerr?" I asked, turning to face him. His mouth opened but he hesitated, looking at me funny. Like he'd come to a realization, like he found out we had a paper due tomorrow, and one that took awhile.

"Addy, Mrs. Kerr, our Pre-Algebra teacher?" He looked slightly startled. Like I'd sprouted a second head. I raised an eyebrow at him, like he was crazy. Which he was, we didn't have a teacher named Mrs. Kerr.

"Grover, our Pre-Algebra teacher was Mrs. Dodds." I wrapped a strand of my dark hair around my finger, frowning at the crimping of the curls.

"No..? We never had a teacher named Mrs. Dodds." He tried to convince me. He really was trying. But Grover was a terrible liar, he hesjtated before he said anything about it and he was looking at me strangely.

We were too busy arguing to notice Percy coming out of the Museum. It was beginning to rain, so most of us gathered around Mr. Brunner's umbrella.

"Addy, there's never even been a Mrs. Dodds. I don't even think there's one in New York."

I am so doneeeee my writing just keeps getting worseeeeeee.

[july-19th-club]

actually i’m not done talking abt true detective s1 i actually have a lot of thoughts about those last several minutes and how important it was that it ends on a relatively hopeful note. do we know where rust’s going? what the heck this man intends to do now that he’s confronted both his most unfinished work and his greatest source of grief? we don’t, but i think we can safely say that he’s not leaving just to go somewhere and die. in his own sour and half-resigned way, it seems like he’s intending to go get some stuff done in his life, to maybe for once make plans that don’t have anything to do with death and i’m going to put my thoughts on that under a cut bc i started writing and it just kind of got away from me and it’s more or less a whole piece of fiction now

he said something about being a painter if his life had gone differently, and i think maybe that’s what he pursues next. he’s in his fifties now, has spent more of his life as an addict than not, and i imagine that the road toward finding some kind of equilibrium is not simple. if he manages to quit drinking, i don’t think he ever manages to quit smoking. it’s a comfort thing for him, as much as he knows that it’ll be that or some other chemical damage that will get him in the end. he has a silent bet on with himself as to which one it will be, when it finally happens, but it hasn’t yet and so he gets what money he’s saved and goes on a road trip. 

it’s experiences he’s after now: he goes to appalachia, he goes to new york city, briefly, doesn’t really enjoy it, goes on toward the great lakes, goes further. he sees wyoming and the dakotas, the redwood forest region, the coast of maine. canada. it occurs to him that he’s spent his whole life on one side or the other of the contiguous states, never paid much attention to what’s in the middle. he explores. he accumulates memories, knowledge, tries to enjoy it and tries to move from one sight to the next quickly enough that the doubt and disinterest can’t creep back in. tries to appreciate things: the rain. the heat coming up from the asphalt when he stops for some lunch. the stretches where he doesn’t talk to another person for days on end. even tries to appreciate the feeling of being anonymous in a crowd, walking among many other people who are focused on anything but him, tries to see it as a natural part of the things that exist to make up the world and not a poorly-designed set for a badly-written story. and around him it continues to happen. the radio continues to play. the road continues to be long. the sky continues to be huge and filled with stars, and when whatever this is has finished Something may continue, and in it he may have the chance to love and be loved. 

maybe he calls his ex-wife, and maybe she immediately assumes that it’s a goodbye call, because it’s been close to twenty years since they last spoke and she has no illusions about the state of mind he was in at the time. she may be surprised he’s lasted this long, but she agrees to meet him. he shows up sunburnt and long-haired and craggy-looking, but with the same wry face she remembers. he shows her his driver’s license photo, in which he is still sporting a weird-old-man mustache, and she makes fun of it. he tells her everything. turns out, her life has gone in an entirely different direction. where he spiraled, she thrived. eventually she decided to become a foster parent, and perhaps she wound up adopting a girl who comes to live with her as a teenager. the girl is a woman now, and has found a nice girl of her own, and the two of them are considering children, when they’ve got the finances for it. the cycle continues. he is terrified of the concept as he would be of being dropped into a parallel world where none of the loss ever happened. there is no rhyme or reason, and he is still learning how to be optimistic about the certain knowledge that even if there is another world, there’s absolutely no plan. he’s afraid. but he is more afraid of being without family, and this knowledge is sudden but he is sure of it. he meets the adopted daughter and the daughter-in-law. the daughter’s a biochemist, daughter-in-law’s a philosophy major, and they all get on like a house on fire. he can talk with the girls for far longer than claire can about the sort of heady, probably pretentious topics they’re interested in. he moves on after a few visits, but he keeps all of their numbers close. 

he travels. he paints fallingwater. he paints the wallowa valley. watercolors - he likes them better than oils or acrylics, likes the way they soften whatever he uses them to illustrate. he paints whatever he gets interested in, sometimes stopping the truck on the verge of the highway to take out his colors and paint the chicory by the side of the road. he visits a museum to study other artists’ work, gets interested in frederic remington or somebody, goes to rodeos and paints the riders and the swirls of dust. he paints mt. mckinley from memory. he paints his own flashbacks, trying to show how the colors bleed into one another, how the images repeat and revolve. he goes back through texas and louisiana, stops in bars and orders iced tea and paints the bikers. he calls his family more frequently. he calls his one friend, asks to stay updated on people’s lives, acts interested in their affairs even when they call him on a bad day and he has to feign it. one day his families meet each other. he arranges it. they have dinner together and he gives everybody paintings and when marty asks if he’d be interested in consulting on a case or two, just when he’s able to, when he’s not busy or he’s bored, he says yes, he might consider it. he is planning to move closer to his own people, but if he does, he may need the money. he thinks of things in terms of time, now. how much of it may remain, if he is smart with it. how much of it he has already used up. there is a dark, miserable center to the thought that he is careful not to get to close to, because it will swallow up everything a man can build if he’s not paying attention.

when the daughter-in-law is pregnant, the girls ask around for name suggestions. they deliberate for nine months and then some, even after the baby is born and he, more afraid than ever, meets it and lets its small hand clutch his finger like it is the only life preserver in a swallowing sea. what can this tiny creature, just-created, with eyes that look around vaguely but don’t stop, know of doubt or fear or the lifelong drowning conviction that nothing exists for a good reason? all the baby knows is what it experiences, and so he holds it as kindly as he can. with luck, it will grow. it will be one, then two years old, it will learn words, it will begin to move around far faster than its parents can keep up, with luck or perhaps un-luck it will become five and then ten years old and develop convictions and interests and then maybe it will someday be as old as he is and it will still enjoy the world. he holds it with as much hope as he can. 

after a while, they do choose a name, one of his suggestions. miles. as in “to go, before i sleep”.  

[artificialqueens]

your body as a museum of careless gestures (biadore) - dylann

A/N:

Adore’s impulsive, sure.

But she’s more “don’t sober up at all for 36 hours because you’re sad you can’t randomly drop your own responsibilities and fly out to Europe” impulsive than “actually fly out to Europe” impulsive.

(or

Bianca is vulnerable, homesickness is a real bitch, Europe is very far away and plane tickets are unreasonably priced. Also, old patterns are hard to break, especially when you don’t even want to break them.

A reunion fic, everyone. That’s what this is.

Drag names and she/her pronouns for both throughout most of this. Shoutout to Dare for some solid constructive criticism and noticing my missing paragraph breaks.

Content warnings for mentions of weed and alcohol; sex; minor breathplay)

They FaceTime once, in early August, while Bianca’s at an airport somewhere in Europe, and Adore’s shitfaced in Seattle.

She’s home after a local show, still in full makeup, but she’s pulled her wig off and her own hair is piled up at the top of her head in a messy approximation of a bun. Her phone keeps flashing on every couple of minutes, lighting up with various notifications.

Bianca liking a recent Instagram post, or the occasional tweet, or commenting on pictures they’re both tagged in. It’s the clear signs of someone who’s bored and in some sort of situation where they can’t do much besides fuck about on their phone.

Adore knows she shouldn’t text because— well, because she isn’t having the best night anyway, and while talking to Bianca might help at first, it’d probably fuck her up worse in the long run.

She’s stripped down to her underwear and the remnants of a practically destroyed Sex Pistols tank top when her phone buzzes again. It’s another Facebook comment, and she caves.

To Bea 🍹 (3:27:02am) how the fuck bored are you??

Bianca fires back a 😂 almost immediately, and then types a response. The three dots that indicate her thinking pop up a few times, until she settles on

To Adore 🔞 Delano (3:30:03am) Airport. Plane’s delayed.

(3:30:12am) cafe’s not even open, I hate Europe.

Adore mutters “No, you don’t,” to herself as she situates herself in the middle of her bed. Last night’s bowl is still half-packed at the sill of her open window, and she thanks past-Adore for being so considerate as she picks it up and takes a hit. 

And then she remembers Bianca can’t actually hear her.

To Bea 🍹 (3:31:45am) no you dont

(3:31:57am) can i call you???

To Adore 🔞 Delano (3:32:05am) 🙃👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼

Adore props her phone on her nightstand, and tilts the small reading lamp so it hits her face from the right angle. She’s wearing very light sea green contacts, and she knows for a fact her eyes look stunning.

The connection takes a moment and then the black screen lights up to reveal Roy who looks like a parody of an airplane traveller. He’s clearly exhausted and bleary-eyed under the rim of his baseball cap, and he’s wearing a plush fuchsia pink travel pillow around his neck like a goddamn statement piece.

Adore lets out a delighted laugh, and then goes,

“You look horrible.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Roy laughs, giving his camera a long look. “Isn’t it, like, way past your bedtime?”

“Has anyone ever told you you use emoji like a thirteen year old girl with a secret Instagram account?” Adore fires back.

“Are you calling me old?” Roy asks, feigning offense well enough that it makes Adore break and she shoots the camera a shit-eating grin as she nods and lights up her bowl again.

“Call me old one more time and I’ll buy a house somewhere in central Europe, take up farming, and never fucking come back,” Roy threatens lightly.

“No one would miss you here,” Adore says, perhaps a second too late to be funny.

Roy doesn’t answer, which is fine. Adore is usually obsessed with filling silences, like it’s her personal responsibility to make sure everyone’s constantly entertained. Roy’s an exception.

They’ve been silent around each other enough that it hasn’t felt awkward in years. 

“How’s Europe?” she asks eventually.

“Fun. Loud. Really fucking hot,“ Roy shrugs. He reaches up and presses his thumb against the bridge of his nose before rubbing along the outline of his eye socket. It’s rare and unsettling to see him that quiet and clearly drained.

Adore smokes and watches him as she contemplates how okay it’d be to say what’s actually on her mind.

“Hey, Bea?” she says quietly, as she shifts to lie down on her stomach.

“Yeah?”

“You look really tired. But um— I hope you’re just tired? Europe’s not making you, like, sad, is it?” Adore trails off for a second and presses her eyes shut as she refocuses. “That’s dumb. I mean. A continent can’t make you sad, right? I don’t know—“

“I’m fine,” Roy says and his face lights up with a small, fond smile which makes him look more like himself. “How are you doing? You look—“

“Fucking wasted?” Adore supplies. She aims for a joke but it just kind of comes out tired and flat. Plus, selling Roy the whole act is kind of pointless. “Yeah. I had a weird night, I don’t know. The whole album thing is fucking stressing me out.”

“People are gonna love it,” Roy says quickly, earnestly. He seems more awake. “They’re gonna eat that shit up.”

“You’re supposed to say that ‘cause you love me,” Adore whines jokingly, but then he just shrugs and nods in agreement, which makes her soften. “Thanks. Honestly. It’s just so— people wanna hear the old shit, you know? And the new stuff’s so different, I just— what if they don’t wanna hear it?”

“They keep asking for the old stuff ‘cause they haven’t heard your new stuff,” Roy reasons. He’s holding his headphones’ microphone close to his lips and it sort of feels like he’s in the room and talking directly to her if she closes her eyes.

“You’re right. Thanks, Bea,” she sighs, and then bites her lip as she adds softly, “I miss you.”

“Come to Europe,” Roy laughs a little. He can always recognize when she’s on the brink of some sad spiral and can usually pull her right back out. Adore opens her eyes to watch him laugh at the camera.

It’s impossible not to smile back.

“Right, are you gonna fly me out?” she laughs, making a show of pursing her lips at the camera.

“You wish,” Roy grins, and then his eyes drift over to something out of frame. Some sort of airport announcement comes through the speaker of Adore’s phone, entirely too far away and jumbled to be understandable.

“Hey, listen, I gotta go,” Roy says. “I might finally get to make it to a plane.”

“Awesome, fly safe,” Adore nods, scrunching up her nose as she fights off a yawn.

“You get some rest,” Roy adds. “This was fun, let’s—“

“More often. Yeah. I’ll call you.”

Adore smiles, and they say their goodbyes and hang up.

And then they don’t talk again for weeks.

***

The morning after the last FaceTime call, Adore had woken up with a screenshot of her own bank account, and a bunch of screenshots of various potential flights on her phone. Looking at them (and maybe the hangover) had made her sick, and she’d deleted them with her eyes half closed.

Adore’s impulsive, sure.

But she’s more “don’t sober up at all for 36 hours because you’re sad you can’t randomly drop your own responsibilities and fly out to Europe” impulsive than “actually fly out to Europe” impulsive.

It’d been days, maybe weeks, after the call when an ad had popped up on her Instagram feed, quite aggressively advertising Bianca’s upcoming gig on Fire Island.

New York is, in comparison to central Europe, closer.

Closer, easier to get to, slightly more reasonable.

So Adore had called her manager and said she’d do that one interview she had scheduled over the phone, and that she was going to be out of town for a few days. Her manager wasn’t impressed, but it was just a weekend, and she’d already made up her mind.

She doesn’t really call or let anyone else know she’s going.

When she walks into the club, the security guard gives her and her ID a long, curious look, but other than that, it’s dark enough that no one really notices or pays attention to her.

She’s wearing a Bianca t-shirt she’s mercilessly cut up into a douchey tank top tucked into a short, faux leather mini skirt with an unnecessarily chunky zipper in the front. Underneath the tank top, she’s in a lacy black bandeau that only draws attention to the boy chest, which is the exact effect she’s aiming for. The tight fishnet covering her legs culminates in heeled combat boots. Her hair is long and black and just messy enough that from afar, she looks like she could be just another girl here for the show.

It’s great, and she feels kind of incognito, even though she’s not necessarily trying to hide. She’s just not here to put on a show, either.

When she gets a drink, the bartender shoots her a knowing grin and says this one’s on the house, she only smiles back and thanks him and doesn’t argue. There’s being lowkey, and then there’s just being plain stupid.

The club is already pretty full, and it’s crowded by the time Bianca takes the stage to host.

Adore doesn’t quite care for the actual event and she lets herself be distracted watching her even when she’s off to the side, and clearly not supposed to be pulling the focus.

It’s impossible for Bianca not to pull focus. In a bodycon dress that somehow manages to be both leopard and floral and still be incredible, she looks like every wet dream Adore’s ever had. Bianca’s focused and attentive, she watches each performance and laughs along, and her lips are so shiny, and her eyes are so bright, and Adore is so tempted to make her way over to the stage and pull her off now, like she can’t wait another minute.

But the reality is, she’s waited this long and now that she’s here, Adore wants to do this right. So she sits back, accepts a couple more drinks from the bartender, and lives out her groupie fantasy, screaming and howling with laugher as if she’s just there to prove she can be louder than everyone else in the club.

At the end of the show, Bianca performs a number and the crowd goes wild, and Adore wants to be cheering with them, except she’s transfixed, breathless as she watches Bianca in her element.

“It never fucking gets old,” Adore yells at the bartender once Bianca’s left the stage. Her ears are ringing.

“She’s great,” he agrees, sliding another refill across the bar for her.

“She’s the best,” Adore corrects. “Can you send her a large gin backstage? Tell her it’s from a fan who claims to know her.

The bartender laughs and fixes a drink, and Adore, who’s only human, watches the sway of his hips as he walks through an unmarked door behind the bar which presumably leads backstage.

When Bianca comes out (from a different door, off to the side), she scans the club past the faces of people who notice her and either try to flock to her, or take a few steps back in some sort of classical awe. She glances around with a look Adore has come to realize means she’s expecting to see an acquaintance who’s dropped her name in hopes for a drink and a catchup.

Then, Bianca notices her and her entire face shifts.

Adore watches her face go from a public, performative smile through shock, through defeat, all the way to blossoming into a genuine smile within a split second. Bianca mouths something in her direction and heads over, and Adore’s heart is pounding so hard in her chest that it makes her cough.

Then, Bianca’s in front of her and pulling her into a hug, and saying into her ear,

“You motherfucker.”

Adore laughs loudly, pulling back just enough to catch Bianca’s eyes and grin at her.

“You absolute motherfucker,” Bianca repeats. “You could’ve called—“

“I wanted to surprise you,” Adore shrugs, as if it’s that simple, and Bianca softens.

“Well, I am surprised,” she laughs. Her hands are still around Adore’s waist and she’s becoming more aware of that by the second. “But I left my drink in the dressing room so we’re gonna have to continue being surprised there.”

Adore just nods. She picks up her glass and follows Bianca through the crowd. When Bianca reaches back, she slips her hand in hers, and hopes the club is just dark and confusing enough that no one would see.

***

“I can’t believe you just pulled this shit,” Bianca says as they walk into the dressing room, which is cool and only illuminated by the lightbulbs that line the mirror.

She closes her eyes for a split second and Adore watches her stage poise and energy leave her body like air from a recently popped balloon.

“I wanted to see your face,” Adore shrugs, and squeezes her hand as she brings herself closer. “Plus, it’s been a while since I’ve watched you—“

“Tonight wasn’t that good,” Bianca says quietly. “It’s not even technically my show…“

Adore bites her lip, and takes a sip of her drink as she says,

“I wasn’t gonna push but— are you okay? I mean, you seem—“

“I’m okay,”

Bianca pulls her hand away from Adore’s and walks around to sit down on the makeup chair, her back turned to the room. Adore just kind of stands there, swallowing uneasily once they break contact. Bianca is never like this, and witnessing it is terrifying, and Adore’s chest is tight as she attempts to figure out how she’d help the most.

“I just feel like I’ve been away for so long, you know?” Bianca says suddenly. Her voice is barely audible over the dull, unrecognizable bass that filters through the walls. “I’m not even sure if I’m away from— This summer’s just going by so fast. I feel like I’m always catching up with people. Like, tonight, when I stepped out—“

“You looked fucking terrified,” Adore supplies. She’s taken one cautious step towards Bianca’s chair and is hovering there.

“‘cause I was,” Bianca agrees, and it comes out in a shaky laugh. “Fuck, Adore, I was so worried I was gonna have to sit down and have a chat with some local queen I haven’t seen in years and make it look like I’m having the time of my life, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

Years of sharing dressing rooms have taught Adore that usually, Bianca would be out of all of her drag by this point. Now, she’s just sitting there, her eyes distant as she looks into the mirror but not really at herself.

Adore sighs and walks the rest of the distance to the makeup table, planting herself directly behind the chair. She drapes her arms over Bianca’s shoulders and crosses her wrists at her chest. Bianca’s hand comes up to cover her wrist, pressing down just a little, as if she’s afraid Adore might pull back.

Bianca’s nails are a dark shade of greenish gold and they glitter as they catch the mirror light. Adore wants to tell her she’s never looked more beautiful.

“It just gets kinda lonely,” Bianca says, quiet enough that Adore isn’t sure if it’s for her at all. She doesn’t answer.

Instead, she moves her hand just a little underneath Bianca’s, so she can run her thumb along the side of Bianca’s hand. Bianca sighs and closes her eyes again. Her eyelashes cast long shadows down her cheeks.

Adore doesn’t move, just lets Bianca breathe and take in the physical weight of her presence, lets her be quiet until she seems a little bit more grounded. Adore can feel it under her arms when Bianca exhales a long breath and her shoulders relax.

“Well, I’m here now,” Adore says finally, quiet and intimate, and it feels like dipping one toe in cool water.

She hasn’t planned this far in advance, never knows quite where they stand when they’ve been away from each other for so long, only knows that she’s here, and she’s here for Bianca, in whatever capacity Bianca needs her to be.

“Yeah— motherfucker,” Bianca repeats softly, in an almost-laugh. “You’re here.”

Then, she makes the choice for Adore.

Bianca pushes the chair back and stands up, turning around to face Adore in one swift, decisive motion. Adore catches her eyes and when Bianca tilts her chin down in the slightest of nods, it’s enough.

Adore launches herself forward, resting a gentle hand at the curve of Bianca’s neck as she kisses her with all the intent of an innocent death row inmate who’s been granted one last wish. Bianca responds almost immediately, her hands coming to rest at the small of Adore’s back. Adore (who, again, is only human) rolls her hips into the touch, which gets a noise halfway between a groan and a laugh from Bianca. It sounds more like her than anything Adore’s heard from her so far tonight.

“Missed you,” Bianca whispers once she pulls back. Up close, her eyes are so incredibly bright.

“I’m here.”

“You are.”

They exchange reassurances in a terribly familiar rhythm, and something in Adore’s chest twists a little. It must show on her face because Bianca says “Shhh” even though she’s silent, and is then she’s kissing her again.

This one lasts longer. Bianca licks her way past Adore’s dark plum lips and all Adore can do is respond in small, breathless sounds as she drops one hand down to grip the table behind Bianca, essentially trapping Bianca between herself and the tabletop.

A bunch of lipsticks fall down and maybe something rolls off the table, and Adore lets out a careless laugh into Bianca’s mouth. Her world feels lighter than it has in months. She doesn’t want to think about it at all.

Bianca distracts her, luckily, as she drops her hands past her ass to brush her fingers under Adore’s skirt. Underneath the thin layer of fishnet, Adore’s — unsurprisingly — untucked and wearing the tiniest briefs which leave most of her ass bare. Upon making that discovery for herself, Bianca lets out a laugh which is both appreciation and utter defeat.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, Adore Delano,” she hums, pulling back to draw in a very deep breath.

It’s overdramatic but earnest and Adore feels so fucking wanted.

“I dress to impress,” she says sweetly.

“Jesus,” Bianca whispers, and her exasperated smile reaches all the way to her eyes. “Shut up.”

Adore laughs loudly, and it comes from deep in her chest. This is easier than anything else she’s done in so long. She knows Bianca feels the exact same way because she’s still laughing as she kisses her again.

By the time Bianca pulls back again, Adore’s hard and dizzy and the only coherent thought in her head is a vague curiosity about whether the door to the dressing room locks.

“Where are you staying?” Bianca is asking quietly. The outline of her lipliner has blurred and her eyes are dark and bearing so much promise it makes Adore’s head spin.

She grins in response.

She has one bag — a way too expensive designer carryon — that she’d dropped at a friend’s apartment before explaining that no, she didn’t need a place to crash, just storage room, thanks, I’ll see you tomorrow.

She hadn’t bothered with a plan B.

“You bitch,” Bianca laughs fondly. “Yeah. Come on.”

***

Bianca’s hotel room is tiny and taken over almost entirely by the bed in the center. There’s a suitcase half-open in one corner. The lights are off, and the room is instead illuminated by the pale orange glow of street lamps filtering through the (truly hideous) cream tulle curtains.

Adore’s head is swimming. She lets herself fall back onto the mattress, laughing breathlessly as she props herself up on her elbows to look at Bianca who pauses a few steps away to kick off her heels.

“Hold on—“ Bianca starts, heading over to the small table in front of the mirror.

“No, no, no,” Adore says quickly. “No time. Come here—“

Bianca laughs as she stretches to pull the zipper of her own dress down.

“Fine. Just this, then,” she negotiates and Adore nods, and falls silent as she watches her strip and unclip her wig to pull it off.

It’s rare for Bianca to stay in drag when they hook up, but de-dragging takes too long, and Adore is too turned on to survive waiting for her any longer than she absolutely has to.

Plus,

“You look so fucking beautiful,” Adore whispers, lowering herself onto her back as Bianca crawls on top of her. She’s completely naked now and it’s purely instinct when Adore reaches for her cock. Bianca catches her wrist and pulls her hand away, her lips curving in an amused smirk.

“You’re so fucking impatient,” she says quietly and Adore responds with a low groan because Yeah, no shit, aren’t you?

“You’re right,” Bianca agrees, still smirking like some wicked demon of temptation from the depths of Hell when she comes down to catch Adore’s lips in a messy kiss. Adore’s all about hyperbole when it comes to Bianca.

And then Bianca’s grinding her hips down as she licks a hot stripe down the side of Adore’s neck, and literally nothing in Adore’s entire life has ever felt nearly as good.

“That’s cute,” Bianca comments, her lips almost brushing the thin strip of leather. Adore’s wearing a simple one-ring choker, and her face turns a deep shade of pink the second Bianca decides to acknowledge it.

“Told you,” she smirks, and manages to school her voice into an almost challenging singsong. “I dress to impress.”

“Stop talking,” Bianca replies lowly, hooking a finger through the ring to tug Adore up as she kisses her again. Adore’s eyes fall shut and she gasps helplessly into the kiss, and then all she can do is part her lips for Bianca’s tongue.

Adore’s tank top and the lacy bandeau are long gone. She’s still wearing the skirt, and tights, and briefs, and that’s three layers too many, and she’s so uncomfortably hard, and Bianca knows and is ignoring her because apparently, Bianca likes to torture people.

(Which is, on occasion, actually true. And welcomed. Just—)

“Bea,” Adore whines, actually whines, because this is unbearable. “Not right now, Jesus, please.”

“No?”

“No. Come on, I’m done waiting, fuck me now, please,” the last word comes out indignant, as if she’s only saying it to be polite but she doesn’t really want to. It works for Bianca, apparently, because she lets go of the choker and refocuses both of her hands’ attention to unzipping Adore’s skirt.

The zipper goes all the way down and the skirt comes undone.

“You thought this through,” Bianca hums, audibly entertained, and Adore drives her hips up in response because Hurry up, yeah I have, I want this, I’m ready, hurry up.

Bianca peels her tights and her underwear down her legs at the same time and brings them all the way down to her ankles but doesn’t take them off.

“I like the boots,” she explains, breath heavy and hot against the inside of Adore’s thigh. “We’re keeping them on.”

Adore feels filthy, like this part of it is somehow taboo, and her dick is already slick with precome against her stomach. She crosses her ankles and lets her knees fall open to the sides, and Bianca responds with an appreciative groan which makes her twitch.

Adore keeps her eyes closed as she listens to the distant sound of a plastic cap popping open, and then two lubed up fingers are pressing against her and she’s gone.

Bianca preps her quickly, efficiently, because any attempt she makes at slowing down is met by Adore with disjointed sounds of protest and helpless jerks of her hips.

“Now,” she moans eventually as she hovers with her hips pushed off the mattress, desperately trying to get more of Bianca. “Now, I’m ready, come on, fuck me now.”

A moment passes in which Bianca considers making her beg, just to get a rise out of her, but Adore is a picture of uncensored want with her messy hair spilling across the pillows, and her flushed dick, and the small crease in her forehead, and frankly, Bianca’s growing too impatient to tease.

Adore cries out loudly when Bianca pushes into her, sending stars flying behind her closed eyelids. Bianca’s propped a pillow under her hips and the angle is torturous and absolutely fucking perfect. Adore’s thighs shake with tension as Bianca thrusts all the way in, almost too slowly, letting Adore adjust to the sensation. It’s already so much, and yet not nearly enough.

Bianca moves experimentally and it draws a soft whimper from Adore. “Yeah— I’m ready, come on.”

And then, Bianca’s off. She grips Adore’s hips to tilt her up and picks up the pace as her nails dig half-moons into Adore’s ass. Adore is incoherent, meeting each thrust with small moans and broken, disconnected swearwords. Her lips are parted and swollen and glossy with spit, and Bianca stares in admiration for a moment before arching down to kiss her.

Bianca kisses like Adore’s darkest secret is hiding at the back of her mouth and there’s never going to be another way to get to it. It’s disorienting, like walking through darkness. Adore’s ears are ringing. Bianca pulls one hand away from her hips and a second later she’s tugging on Adore’s choker again. This time, she hooks her index finger under the strap and pinches it between the knuckle of her middle finger and her thumb. The leather digs into Adore’s throat and she feels it like fireworks at the back of her skull.

Bianca keeps her lips just out of reach as she tightens her grip on the choker, and it drives Adore to  crane her neck, desperately chasing after a kiss she can’t quite reach. The leather digs into her neck and she coughs right as Bianca thrusts her cock deeper inside of her, at a slightly different angle which makes Adore want to scream.

The sound that comes out is closer to a strangled whine, and Bianca meets it with a low laugh which makes Adore blush. Her chest is so tight she feels like she’s one second, one stray touch, one jerk of Bianca’s hips away from bursting wide open.

“Bea—“ she starts, and it’s barely sound. She gasps, dragging in more air. Bianca’s grip doesn’t falter. “Bea. I’m—“

Adore’s voice breaks a loud moan as Bianca drops her hand to her cock. Bianca laughs quietly, breathlessly, as she tightens her grip and gives her a few experimental strokes. Adore accompanies each stroke with a whimper as Bianca picks up her pace so her hand can match the rhythm of her hips. Adore’s brow is beaded with sweat and her hair is sticking to her face and she looks absolutely gone as she drives her hips up, over and over, in an endless race to meet Bianca halfway.

She comes first, with Bianca’s name in a sharp moan on her lips, cum streaking through Bianca’s fingers and onto her stomach.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Bianca groans quietly, arching down to trace kisses along the red mark lining Adore’s neck as she keeps fucking into her in deep, quick thrusts, chasing her own release.

Adore is shaking, spent and oversensitive and unabashedly loud as each move sends a new wave of aftershocks through her body.

When Bianca comes, she goes perfectly still, perfectly silent, her eyes pressed tightly shut and her lips parted in a soundless scream. Adore, who’s watching her through heavy, hooded eyelids, chokes out a moan instead of her.

Then, the only sound Adore can focus on is her own heartbeat pounding in her ears as Bianca lowers herself down, burrowing her face against Adore’s neck. She doesn’t quite kiss this time, just rests there, her breath warm against the cooling sweat on Adore’s skin.

Adore drifts. It takes a minute, or maybe an hour, she’d never know for sure, and Bianca’s growing soft inside of her but neither of them moves. Adore’s limbs feel heavy, inoperable, and she thinks distractedly that maybe that’s not too big of a deal, maybe she can just be there for the rest of her natural existence and she would be okay with that.

Then Bianca moves. She pulls herself away slowly, carefully, like she doesn’t mean to disturb, and Adore still winces at the loss.

“Gotta get you cleaned up,” Bianca says softly. Her voice sounds raw, spent, and Adore finds herself hoping it’s still like that tomorrow. She wants people to talk to Bianca and know.

The sound of the bathroom sink running and Bianca’s footsteps sound so far away and Adore closes her eyes, lets them lull her into a half-sleep as her body cools down and stops shaking.

Minutes later, perhaps, Bianca returns with a warm, damp towel, and Adore breathes steadily as she cleans her up, too tired and too gone to do much but accept it. Then it’s more footsteps, to the bathroom and back.

Then, Bianca’s hands are working her boots open and pulling them off, along with the mess of fabric tangled around her ankles. It feels private in a new sort of way, as if this is where the moment would usually have to break but Bianca’s not letting that happen. Adore’s chest tightens and she lets out the smallest noise as she swallows dryly.

“You okay?” Bianca asks, all gentle attentiveness, as she climbs up and rests behind her, one arm coming to drape over Adore’s hips, her hand angled up to rest at her sternum.

“Yeah.” Adore’s throat scratches, and she knows she’ll wake up needing water. Bianca makes a sound like she doesn’t quite believe her, so Adore amends, “I’m here.”

Bianca laughs. It’s almost inaudible but Adore feels it against her back.

“Yeah,” Bianca whispers. She presses her lips against Adore’s shoulder and holds them there for a long time. “You are.”

***

A/N: the title is from this poem which you should definitely read, it’s beautiful.

[quietpagan]

TH What Falls and What Grows 11

“But he who dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose.”

― Anne Brontë

 Alexandra spent the rest of the evening, through the night, and into the morning tearing through Kanjigar’s library. It was an incredible collection – as vast and diverse as that of Blinky’s brother’s. There were anthologies of poems and sagas that Kanjigar liked –

- And damn, was it weird to think of Kanjigar in both past and present tense –

- and books of obscure lore; personal diaries of previous Trollhunters; the short, bloody journal of a Gumm-Gumm that ominously cut off in the middle of the page; several incongruous human comics and graphic novels; pages of construction details for pieces of Heartstone Trollmarket that Alex guessed Kanjigar had been helping with; letters from people who needed the Trollhunter’s help, and from others thanking him; Supernatural-esque journals of how to defeat certain creatures; sixteen beautifully illustrated manuscripts, both human and troll; stone tablets covered in swirling carvings and indecipherable runes; the entire Lord of the Rings series and accompanying books; a bunch of rocks delicately carved with notes from a goblin spy; a page from what Alex really, really hoped was a Codex Regius; two books that she knew by smell were bound in human skin, and another that was bound in troll skin, which was as impressive as it was gruesome, because the troll would have had to have been alive at the time of the skin-removal; and a much-annotated list of children suspected stolen to the Darklands (her name wasn’t on it), to name a few. It was heaven.

It was a Library of Alexandria, in a pocket dimension underneath a small California town. In fact, she was sure that one of the scrolls had come from the Library of Alexandria.

Blinky could spit in her face and kick one of her cats right now and she’d forgive him immediately.

She left only once, before getting too deep into anything, to get more lamps and a pot of tea, but as soon as she approached the first shelf she lost all sense of time.

Hopefully Kanjigar wouldn’t mind her digging through his stuff, but if he did, it was too bad. She’d landed a punch on his chest and he was a fucking ghost, so he could deal with her reading his love letters to Draal’s delightfully crude mother.

It was weird. She was looking through the personal items of a dead man, but a dead man who could still berate her for it.

This will be entertaining, Alexandra thought, deliberately setting her tea cup down on a hand-drawn journal of medicinal plants and tapping her feet to one of his Santana records. She got comfortable on Kanjigar’s neatly-made bed, now stacked with disorganized books, and only was pried from the room when Blinky and AAARRRGGHH came to collect her mid-morning, bearing food and apologies.

She was in a good enough mood that Blinky was ‘forgiven’ for the whole Changeling debacle, and they finally put the incident aside and settled in the Forge for a proper training session.

Blinky was convinced that her sword skills, such as they were, would at least allow her to get away from her opponent. So, she was banned from using the sword for the next several sessions. His lessons instead included, but were not limited to: rock climbing, dodging fireballs, being attacked from all sides by larger opponents, being attacked from all sides by smaller opponents, and then archery, which she actually rather liked.

“Where in the hell would I need to know how to climb a damn rock?” “Your fights will not be restricted to only Bular, Master Alexandra! What will you do if confronted, for example, by a hydrabeast? One cut, and you will have a multitude of opponents instead of just one!”

“Then I set it on fire.”

“Where will you get matches,” Blinky said dryly.

Alexandra dodged a rock, caught it, and threw it at his head.

“A hydrabeast has weaknesses under its scaly armor,” Alex said, remembering her texts and making Blinky grin even as he ducked. “Strike when its scales are flared, and then kill it.”

“Excellent, Master Alexandra! Just be sure to – “ Alex didn’t hear his next words, as she was barreled over by a stone arm from behind.

“Ah. Yes. Do not get distracted while trying to think of how to defeat your opponent,” Blinky said.

Alexandra huffed and picked herself up, throwing herself at a large blade as it flew past her. Digging her claws into the rock, she pulled herself to the top of the blade and ran along its flat edge, and then jumped onto a moving level when the blade reached its zenith.

“And…oof! You’ll find all of these opponents in Arcadia?” “Oh, surely not,” said Blinky, as he activated another part of the Death Arena and forced her to dodge a swath of flaming arrows. One nicked the edge of a horn.

I swear if I lose another goddamn eye…

“You’ll be hard-pressed to find a ­­­­rust-troll or Batmugg here, but that does not mean that one may not come, or that you might not be called away to a different locale. As Trollhunter, your protection spreads over the whole of the human and troll worlds, and you most likely will have to travel extensively to fulfill your duties.”

“Your domain stretches farther than Arcadia,” said a whispy voice, one that Alex wasn’t entirely sure was not in her head.

“Not you assholes again,” she hissed,  as the red of the Forge began to dim. She quickly jumped to the main floor and ran over to Blinky, surprising him when she grabbed him by the arms. Surely they wouldn’t grab her and Blinky. The darkness and stars receded as quickly as they had appeared, and after a moment she let go of the other troll, who looked completely stunned.

“You were summoned?”

Alex nodded, still giving the Forge a look-over. When she glanced back at Blinky, he had his hands over his mouth and something suspiciously twinkling in his eyes.

“What?” “The Trollhunters of old – they gave you council?” “In…a manner of speaking,” Alex murmured. In the distance, she heard the tapping of Vendel’s staff. “They mostly insulted me and offered bad advice.”

Blinky rolled his eyes.

“Only you, I believe, would take being summoned by our most esteemed warriors as a session of ‘bad advice’, and refuse another summons.” “I’m busy,” Alex said, and threw her sword across the arena, where it lodged in the side of a stone statue’s head.

“And you are about to become busier.”

Alex and Blinky turned to the bridge, where Vendel was slowly making his way across. AAARRRGGHH was following him, looking unusually glum.

“Ah, Vendel! Perhaps you would like to see how our Trollhunter – “ “I know how she progresses,” interrupted the larger troll, completely ignoring Blinky and standing directly in front of Alexandra. She refused to back down, even though his cataract-sprinkled eyes seemed to bore right through her.

“What I am interested in is how she manages on an actual assignment.” Blinky, not to Alexandra’s surprise, did not argue but instead clutched his hands behind his back. She and he both knew that it was far past time for her to do some actual troll-hunting.

“Your physical training goes well, Trollhunter, but you must be able to assist in any situation. Many will not involve battles or fights, but will be tests of how you deal with people and how sound your judgement may be.”

“What’s the assignment,” Alex asked. Vendel briefly looked over at Blinky.

“The Killahead Bridge, as you may know, was torn apart and scattered, to various locations around the world, some of which even I don’t know about.” “Has something gone wrong,” Blinky asked. Vendel nodded grimly.

“I have lost communications with one of my contacts in England. She was supposed to send me an updated census of trolls in the United Kingdom, but has not answered my letters or scrying-calls. I want our new Trollhunter to check on her and ensure that both her post and what she guards are secure.”

Alexandra nodded, already gearing herself up for the assignment. “Alright,” she said. “Where in England does she live?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

  I guess this is part of the test.

It certainly was going to be a test, because she and Blinky needed to go to the museum, and Alexandra had no idea if Nomura would be there or not. She hoped to hell that she didn’t have to encounter the other Changeling, especially since Nomura would possibly recognize her.

Blinky wouldn’t be swayed from accompanying her, and when AAARRRGGHH found out that his friend was going he decided that he was coming too, and Alexandra wanted to claw her eyes out. She could run a recon mission, but not with two other trolls, neither of whom was particularly good at being sneaky. She was feeling testy already.

The reason they had to go to the museum was to find some sort of text that hinted at locations of some of the Bridge’s pieces. To prevent discovery or betrayal, there was nobody who actually knew the locations of more than a few pieces; instead, they knew where to find clues to some of the pieces. It was horrendously complicated and convoluted, but effective; in order to put together the bridge someone would have to go through dozens of people and go on hundreds of scavenger hunts. It wasn’t efficient, but Alexandra could appreciate the complexity.

“Why not just smash the pieces,” she muttered later that evening, when night had fallen and she, Blinky, and AAARRRGGHH were scoping out the museum. “Just turn it to dust and scatter it on a beach somewhere. Boom. No need to guard fucking dust.”

“The Killahead Bridge is an object of immense power,” replied Blinky. “Each stone is seeped with magic. One cannot simply destroy it.”

AAARRRGGHH, ineffectively hiding behind a short tree, nodded in agreement of his friend.

“Would if we could,” he rumbled.

“Exactly. Now, should we proceed, Master Alexandra?” Alex kept her eyes on the museum but nodded. She’d had them waiting and watching the place for almost two hours, just to see if anyone came or went, and since no one had shown she really couldn’t put it off for much longer. Her lower hands worried over the loading of the little gun she’d brought, in case she needed to shoot Nomura in the face.

“Come on,” she whispered, stowing it in her back pocket. “And stay quiet.”

She led them around the back of the building. From her pocket she felt a little stone amulet, something Blinky had gotten for her from a shop. It was inscribed with a sigil that meant sight, and then violently chiseled over. Apparently it was supposed to cause any cameras to go dark in its presence, but Alexandra knew it was unnecessary. She’d only been to the museum once, but once had been enough to see that the cameras were not in operation. It was a good thought, though.

She jimmied open a window just barely large enough for her to fit through. She and Blinky had to find a door for AAARRRGGHH, which made her grit her teeth, but she stayed silent about his and Blinky’s presences. Two of the doors were alarmed, but the third, a maintenance door hidden behind an over-crowded archiving room, was not. Together again, Alex led them silently through the halls, her ears strained for any sound. They turned the corner to a hallway under construction, and that’s when the smell hit her.

Goblins.

It was faint – probably from the other end of the museum – but the scent was distinct and put her on edge. She backtracked and took them around another section of the building, going at an almost snail-like pace until they reached a small room dedicated to manuscripts. She shoved Blinky forward and he looked around before silently pointing at a large book under a glass case.

Luckily for them, the museum had been more concerned with architecture than security, and Alex lifted the glass case off without any alarms sounding. Blinky paged through the book, eyes roaming at impressive speeds, and Alex stood guard with AAARRRGGHH at the doorway.

She didn’t like the presence of goblins here. When she first visited the museum over a year ago, they hadn’t been in the museum, or at least she hadn’t smelled any evidence of them. So it was a new development, and Alex wondered what had changed. Whatever it was and whatever Nomura was getting up to, it wouldn’t be good for Trollmarket. Everything seemed to be happening in Arcadia; understandable, since it stood directly above the largest population of trolls in North America, but by Alexandra’s count there were three changelings in the town, as well as goblins, and the son of Gunmar. Wherever Bular was, something important was happening. She knew that they were looking for ways to get the Bridge back together, but had they really found enough pieces to begin building?

The disappearance of Vendel’s contact was an even worse omen if the actual rebuilding of the Bridge was becoming a reality.

A very soft aha drew Alex’s attention away from the deserted hallway. Blinky had found what he needed.

Alex shushed him when he began to explain what he had found, and carefully replaced both the manuscript and the case it was under. The three of them tiptoed through the empty museum again and encountered nothing of concern, until the last hallway before the maintenance door.

The scent of Bular hit her like a brick to the face, and by the way AAARRRGGHH froze behind her she knew that he had recognized it, too.

And he was close.

Alex motioned for the others to stay still, smacking Blinky into submission when he kept gesturing for her to don her armor, and she crept forward into the hall, keeping close to the shadows and the walls. She wanted her armor too, but it was too shiny and it clanked to high hell.

A bright light flashed through a doorway at the end of the hall and Alex hastily beat a retreat, grabbing Blinky and AAARRRGGHH and rushing them as quickly as she could to the maintenance door. There was no was in hell that she was going to risk getting caught for the sake of checking that out. Whatever Bular was up to in the museum would have to be a mystery until Alexandra could come back without two huge liabilities walking around with her.

She refused to let them stop or speak until they were safely inside Trollmarket again, the portal shut behind them. A cold shiver ran through her shoulders even though she knew they had not been followed, and she shook it off with a huff, still creeped-out.

Blinky waited patiently for her to gather herself.

“Yes, Blinky, what did you find?” “Have you ever heard of curse tablets?” Alexandra, jumping down the crystal staircase, pursed her lips.

“No, I can’t say that I have. What are they?” “Well,” Blinky began, climbing down behind her, “They are sheets of metal inscribed with a text, sometimes names, sometimes prayers, sometimes pleas for justice, that are buried or placed in tombs, or even occasionally tossed into wells. They originated in the Greco-Roman age, and the manuscript I found featured illustrations of several of them. One held an untranslated inscription thought to be a form of Celtic language; it is, in fact, Trollish.”

“Ancient troll curse?” asked AAARRRGGHH as they made it to the bottom of the staircase.

“Indeed it was, although not so much as curse as a plea. It was incomplete, but from context I can infer that the words inscribed were ‘may he never rise’. ‘He’, of course, is referring to Gunmar.” They scooted through Trollmarket for a minute, until Alexandra finally asked, “Alright, what the hell does that mean? Where is the stone?”

“The stone, Master Alexandra, is in Somerset, England,” said Blinky triumphantly, walking ahead of her and turning them in the direction of the gyre portal. “In the waters of Sulis, in the valley of the river Avon and the Roman baths built thereupon!”

“Hate gyre,” AAARRRGGHH muttered beside Alex.

  Blinky loved the gyre. Where spars and fights thrilled others he just got tired and grumpy, but the gyre pumped his adrenalin and made him feel like he was flying. He felt a little bad because his friend loathed the experience so much and so he made up for it by not using the device nearly as often as he would have liked, but Alexandra seemed to get some enjoyment out of the turns and flips and immense speeds gained by the machine.

Their foray into the museum had not nearly been as exciting nor as dangerous as he had anticipated; he wished they could have stayed and explored a little longer – so many wonderful artifacts! – but Alexandra had been on edge the entire time and even AAARRRGGHH, who rarely had a problem being above ground, had tensed on the way back. Blinky had only figured out that the smell of strange troll had been Bular’s scent later, when the excitement of figuring out the clue had faded slightly.

The gyre trip was relatively short, from California to Arizona, where they would catch a bridge to London.

The New London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, was the only place where a troll could travel by bridge from North America to Europe. The bridge had originally been built over the Thames river before being sold and relocated to Arizona in the late 1960’s. A new bridge had been built in its place over the Thames, and the two London Bridges shared a magical connection that allowed trolls to move between continents without having to resort to hiding away in a boat or a plane.

The actual crossing of the portal was one of the most interesting experiences Blinky had had in the whole century; the process was a mixture of a typical portal opening using a horngazel and something akin to Platform 9 ¾ from the Harry Potter series, hidden from human sight by use of the tunnels under the bridge. They emerged in the London underground just as night was beginning to fall, and they caught another gyre to the city of Bath in Somerset County. AAARRRGGHH, who had never been to England apart from their initial crossing to the New World, was fascinated by the landscape and architecture they saw when they finally departed their gyre. Alexandra too looked around with interest, and Blinky wondered if she had ever left the United States. He himself had been to England a few times before the migration, but so many things had changed in the hundreds of years since that he recognized nothing.

  They emerged from the underground just as the sun began to rise, which meant that they would have to wait the entire day before they could explore Bath. It was not a popular troll destination and did not have many places to stay the day, so they opted to remain in London until nightfall. Most of the underground was bedding down, but although Blinky found them temporary lodgings Alexandra was more interested in exploring than sleeping. Both Blinky – who had been recognized by several of the stall-keepers in the market that surrounded the portal – and AAARRRGGHH, who spent nearly an hour meeting-and-greeting with people who wanted to have a word with the famed former general, retreated to their rooms for some well-earned sleep. Alexandra watched them from the other side of the market, having ducked away as soon as they’d arrived. Blinky was everything but subtle, and she wanted to have a little time to herself before he outed her as the new Trollhunter.

The market was quite extensive. Built in the troll counterpart of a busy airport, it wasn’t really as homey as Heartstone Trollmarket, but the stalls held a more international selection of cures and curios, and there was an immensely greater variety of trolls meandering about. She actually wandered past a group of her and Blinky’s kin, but as they only spoke Norse and a universal Trollish, she didn’t stay any longer than to say that she was from out of town and no, she wasn’t kin to Edda’s husband Ragnold.

Alexandra – who still didn’t have any money, Trollhunting really didn’t pay well at all – swapped her old, faded (vintage, she called it) sarong for an actual pair of pants, and traded in one of the hairballs she now hoarded for a small history book and the most recent edition of the troll equivalent of a newspaper.

For the first time, Alexandra found herself in the local watering hole, sitting by herself in a corner table with a drink of questionable palatability in a stone cup under her nose. She faintly remembered the foul smell of glog from her Darkland days and did not count herself lucky to have encountered it again, but it seemed like the popular drink of the establishment and she was trying to be popular-ish. Really, her head was pounding and she probably looked even more tired and disheveled than she felt, but hey. Effort. ‘Be nice and a people person’ was penciled into her schedule for the next millennium, or at as long as it took to get a decent reputation.

She probably looked unsociable, sitting alone with a book under her nose, but if she was going to be with these people, performing this role, living this life until she died, it was going to get very tiring to keep up an entirely fake persona, especially when that persona was supposed to be gregarious. When she first entered Trollmarket she had a distinct personality she had assumed, but keeping it up for the next forever was not something she was willing to continue.

She read for an hour or so, only getting up once to refill her disgusting drink. As far as bars went, it was a good one, quiet-ish and atmospheric.

A group of trolls at one of the middle tables kept giving her looks, their gazes moving from her freshly-scarred face up to her horns, down to her arms and the hand she was tapping on one knee. It had been a while since she’d been given a good appreciative glance. She wasn’t sure exactly what passed as attractive for trolls, but since no one here yet knew her as Trollhunter and the group was staring at her biceps, she assumed that she made the bar.

Sorry, boys, Alex thought with a measure of amusement, I don’t have a second of time for you.

She hadn’t had a relationship in a while, but was not in need of one now. Another complication might just kill her.

Did trolls even do sex? She hadn’t actually got to a book that really described the physical process of making whelps yet, a gap in her knowledge that, in relation to current events, was not actually important but seemed glaring anyway. She knew, at least, that there were ‘gronk-nuks’ and a need for some trolls to wear pants or loincloths, so there had to be some useful bits somewhere.

Considering that most trolls were seven feet or taller and nearly as broad, Alex wasn’t quite sure if she really did or really did not want to know. The fact that she herself only wore a vest out of habit, not need, was a stark reminder of how little she knew of even her own anatomy.

Either way, she wouldn’t be finding out from experience anytime soon, so unless she wanted to bug Kanjigar into giving her a horrendously awkward Talk she’d just have to guess.

It might annoy him, though…

Her growing amusement was interrupted by a presence at the end of her table; she looked up to see one of the males from the middle tables grinning at her.

“Enjoying your stay in London, love,” he said in Trollish, standing in a posture that he probably thought was rather roguish.

Oh, Lord, it’s like he looked it up in a book. ‘How to be Creepy and Cliché, 101’.

“Until now,” she replied sweetly, pointedly tapping a finger against the back of her book.

A female from his table egged him on, and he sat down in an unoccupied chair.

“No need to be like that, woman, I’m just trying to be friendly – “ Alexandra tossed down her book, grabbed him by the collar of his vest, and hauled him out of his chair, slamming his face against the table hard enough to cause it to crack. Spilled glog softly dripped on the floor. The bar was quieter, but not silent, clearly accustomed to rowdy patrons. The male’s mouth was bleeding and he tried to pull away, but Alexandra had two extra arms and leverage, and he was pushed down again.

“So am I,” she said in his ear. “But talk to me like that again and you’ll see me be unfriendly.”

He trembled against the table for an instant before she let him go, and as he tumbled to the floor Alex picked up her book, made an apologizing gesture to the annoyed barkeep, and settled back down to read, keeping one eye on the bleeding troll. She silently crowed in triumph as he massaged his jaw and stared at her. He was blushing greatly and Alex realized with a jolt that she had probably just done the troll equivalent of flirting outrageously. He watched her for another moment, his friends at his back shouting for him to try again, but he slowly retreated. Alex watched him down the rest of his drink and leave the bar.

She really was enjoying her stay in London.

Around nine in the morning she dragged herself into the city above, Changing quietly in the shadows before blending in seamlessly with the crowd of the Underground. The problem of money was resolved by pick-pocketing a tourist with a fanny pack, and she got a train to Bath, using the travel time to update her appearance.

The baths were unlike anything she had ever seen before, and part of her wanted to take a flying leap into the green waters. The rising sun was at an angle to perfectly illuminate the yellowed stone walls, casting deep shadows into corners. Outside there was a bit of morning traffic, but in the baths it was quiet, and peaceful, with only a few human voices mingling with the sound of flaming torches and rushing water. A few pigeons cooed as they bathed themselves, and from the top Alex could see a magnificently built cathedral. She felt peaceful – but she couldn’t just perambulate with no rhyme or reason; she had a job to do.

The baths seemed innocuous enough, but she scoured the place for any sign of troll or Changeling activity. She knew there was at least one troll around – Vendel’s contact, who had gone missing – but she didn’t know if the woman stayed in the baths or if she lived elsewhere. There was a faint trollish smell in some of the quieter rooms; the shadowed nooks and rising steam actually made very good cover for any troll working around, especially in the East baths and changing rooms, but whoever Vendel’s friend was, she was good – Alex didn’t see a single trace of troll. Considering that the woman was missing, that could be a very good or very bad thing.

“Gunmar wafa prieklan,” she muttered to herself whenever she passed an employee of the Baths, giving them a knowing look as she did so. Most of them smiled politely and moved on, but the receptionist in the tiny gift shop snapped her eyes on Alex and sharply grinned.

“Gunman wafa prieklan,” she replied, putting down her western romance. Alex briefly allowed her eyes to glow. She’s put on a new face on the train, wrapped in a floral scarf and with pigtails, jeweled glasses, and a small gap painted between her front teeth with ink from a pen she’d eaten, and with a Welsh accent she was the picture of a country-girl touring the city.

“Stricklander sent me,” she said, casting a brief glance to the door before leaning on the counter.

“He is anxious to make sure all loose ends are tied up. Are you sure every troll is accounted for?” The other Changeling nodded, lightly fingering her necklace of beads. Alex noted that several of them looked to be carved out of teeth. Jesus.

“There were only the two,” she said, “And our spy overcame them easily enough. There’s not much you can do against a horde of angry goblins.”

Alex, who had known a horde of angry goblins, nodded in agreement.

“There’s also the matter of the stone…” The other Changeling allowed her eyes to flash in annoyance.

“I’ll find it when I find it,” she said. “There’s only so much information you can get out of a corpse.”

“Which is why I’m here,” said Alexandra. “Stricklander is very insistent about getting the stone as soon as possible.” “What, he can’t be arsed to come and get it himself?” “He’s too important, the bloody twmffat.” They shared a mutual grin. Nobody liked Stricklander, who was more pompous than a peacock and enjoyed pretending that he was the boss. Alex was glad that most Changelings had an immediate comradery, born of being the outcasts of both worlds. They’d happily stab each other in the backs at a moment’s notice when it became necessary, but until then any Changeling was as good as family as soon as they met.

“I’ve got until tonight,” Alexandra said. “Information from one of our spies says that a delegation from Trollmarket will be coming around. They’ve noticed the absence of their contact here.” The Changeling cursed, quietly and fervently.

“I can’t get my information organized that quickly,” she hissed. “Is this someone we can take out?” Alex shook her head.

“They’ve got the general AAARRRGGHH with them,” she said. The Changeling paled. “That’s the only one I know of for sure. There are two or three others.” A pair of tourists came in then, giggling about the taste of the spring’s water. Alex gave them a smile and turned back to her fellow.

“Is there somewhere we can meet for lunch?”

It was nearing nightfall before she got back on the train, her head buzzing with information but her heart heavy with guilt.

She never used to be guilty about killing someone. It was always a necessity, for safety or secrecy – as this murder was as well, but she still felt bad.

In her defense, she had tried. She’d told the Changeling – Emma Anglia – that she was working for the Trollhunter, that Gunmar’s rise would bring nothing toward the improvement of Changelings’ lives, that there was a place for her in Trollmarket.

She had a sizable cut down her breastbone from Anglia’s reaction, and a shoulder that had been wrenched when the woman had thrown her against the wall of an alleyway. The killing looked like a mugging gone wrong; Alex still had the woman’s wallet, but she’d thrown the earrings and necklace into the river. Anglia’s address was in the phone book and Alexandra had taken a look around, but there were only a few bits of paper and keepsakes in the hideaways she’d found.

Anglia’s verbal information, however, was startling. Alex knew that Bular was looking for the pieces of the Killahead Bridge, certainly, but she hadn’t known that they’d gathered enough to start building. And they were building it in Arcadia; no wonder there were so many Changelings about. It was rare to see two or more Changelings in a single state, let alone one town. This was very bad.

Anglia had had a fetch in her apartment, tucked away in a chamber only another Changeling could access. Alexandra spent two hours copying the woman’s handwriting before she sent a message through it, saying that she – Anglia – had received warning of a delegation from Trollmarket coming to investigate the disappearances of the trolls in Bath, and she had to run before she found the stone. It would keep Stricklander from sending anyone else for a while, and Anglia’s lack of communication would not be suspicious.

Alexandra got back to the London trollmarket and her temporary lodgings as night fell, and collapsed on her bed about a half hour before AAARRRGGHH dragged her back out.

“You look quite tired, Master Alexandra,” commented Blinky as she quaffed down an enormous mug of Turkish coffee which had been spiked with what smelled like lighter fluid.

“I’m good,” she replied, although her arms were beginning to shake. “Let’s get going.”

 A/N: Got a few more references to the book in here. I love Blinky in that book; he’s even more verbose than he is in the show, and is delightfully and unintentionally rude, and is just as overdramatic as show!Blinky.

Fuck this was longer than I expected. I researched the shit out of ancient witchcraft and spells and the Roman Baths, which I only picked because I wanted to write about something I’d actually been to so as to make it more realistic, and now I know to how to find the difference between California and London time and more about the London Bridge(s) than I ever needed to know. It’s true, though, that they shipped and rebuilt the bridge from London to Arizona.

The thing about the curse tablets is true; there are many found in the Roman Baths in Bath, England, and a couple of them feature the only examples of written Celtic text, inscribed with Roman letters but in an untranslatable language. For the sake of this story I’m gonna call it Trollish.

The Roman Baths were really cool and we got to drink a little water from one of the springs there and I loved the architecture and the caves.  

I hope you enjoyed the paragraph of library p0rn, because I sure loved writing it.

Going to have to split this up into two chapters, because I’m exhausted and don’t have the brain-space to keep writing for now. Sorry this took so long, but I’ve been a$$-fucked by work and school and there wasn’t room or time to write. Hopefully we’ll be hiring someone soon, so I’ll actually have days off again.

And I hope everybody enjoyed the eclipse! I went upstate to my favorite city and got to see totality! It was cloudy, for the most part, but still really, really cool and special.

[ghostbustermelanieking]

the progression (and regression) of first names

hurt/comfort, mini casefile, msr ust

first in a series of fics accompanying my x files rewatch this summer. (technically this is cheating since i’m already on season 2, but whatever, i wanted to do this.) spoilers for beyond the sea, lazarus, young at heart, darkness falls, and tooms. some of these sequences are partially borrowed from chapters 4 and 5 of half-light, but i liked them so i kept them. (it is not necessary to read half-light to understand this fic.) also dedicated to my recent trip to dc; you haven’t lived til you’ve hobbled around museums and memorials on aching feet from walking too much.

warning for passing mentions of murders/death

Scully spends New Year’s Eve in a hospital room: “Because my life isn’t depressing enough,” she laments to Melissa on the phone, and Missy tries to laugh like it’s funny but it’s not. They are in mourning; their father is dead, their mother is all to pieces, and Charlie didn’t come to the funeral. Bill and Melissa are staying with their mother in Baltimore. They wanted Dana to come too, but Dana has never been one to show emotions around other people. “I need to work,” she’d told Mulder, and it was the truth. The sad thing is that Mulder getting shot has given her the perfect excuse to hide, here in North Carolina where she thought everything would matter less. 

(It doesn’t. Boggs yanked her out of hiding by her ankle, wouldn’t let her rest. She doesn’t go to Boggs’ execution because she’s afraid to believe. She’s afraid of what he’ll tell her. She hides in Mulder’s hospital room because it’s easier, but he won’t let her hide, either. He calls her Dana and touches her shoulder and she shrinks into herself like a crumpled piece of paper. He knows her too well; she is the pathologist, but he would be just as good with a scalpel. He has a way of bringing hidden things to the surface.)

There’s a pathetic TV in Mulder’s room and they watch the ball drop in Times Square on it. Mulder’s on pain medications, which make him goofier; he counts along with the spectators in Times Square with a glazed-over look in his eyes. Scully watches in silence, hands knotting in her lap. She’s had plenty of good New Year’s Eve memories to stock up over the year - she spent the last one with Ethan, tipsy from champagne and giggling hysterically when he kissed her, teeth bumping together - but the only one she can think of now is the first year she was allowed to stay up til midnight, at nine. (She and Missy had snuck out on the back porch minutes away from midnight and sat on the step, watching the stars. She’d tipped her head up to the sky, mittened hands pressing into her knees when she felt the pressure of her father’s hand on her head and turned to look at him. “It’s a new year now, Starbuck,” he’d told her seriously. “It’s your chance to start over, to make your life whatever you want it to be.”) Scully blinks hard to stop the onslaught of tears and reaches for the tissues she’d crumpled in her pocket. 

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says, touching her wrist. “Scully. Are you okay? Are you sad again?”

He’s high as a kite, Scully thinks wryly. “I’m fine,” she says, scraping her fingertips under her eyes. Maybe she should take some time off with Mulder after this case, give herself some time to recover so she won’t be crying all over the place every case. “I just... memories. You know how it is.” And with his sister, he must know. 

Mulder rests his head against her shoulder. “It’s 1994,” he slurs into her jacket. “Anything can happen now, Scully; make a wish.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong holiday,” she tells him. 

He points to the TV where a couple is kissing, confetti falling down on them like rain. “We should do that,” he says, raising his head to look at her. “In honor of the New Year.” 

For a half-second, she considers it. He’s been more affectionate with her over time; something shifted with them, in Alaska. Something had made them stronger. He’s called her Dana three times now. He tried to comfort her. She remembers him kissing that ex-girlfriend, Phoebe. She’s wondered how he kisses before. 

Then she reconsiders. Considers the consequences. She’s broken enough Bureau policy this year, she thinks. She is grieving, not in her right mind, and he’s on pain meds, he might not remember a thing tomorrow. She rolls her eyes and says, “Go find a nurse, Mulder.”

Mulder sighs petulantly, burying his head in her shoulder. “You’re no fun,” he says. 

“Yeah, yeah. Tell it to someone who’ll care,” she teases, or tries to. She pats him on the head. “It’s late, Mulder. Get some sleep; I’ll be back in the morning, okay?” He grumbles something disagreeably, but slides back under the covers. She tucks the blankets around him before standing and heading for the door. 

“Happy 1994, Scully,” Mulder slurs as an afterthought when she’s halfway out of the room.

“Happy 1994, Mulder,” she says over her shoulder. That’s all there is to say, it seems.

She goes back to work a week after they return from North Carolina, rattling around in the lonely office. It feels wrong to be there without Mulder. He calls her every few hours for news, bugging her about cases and she talks because there’s absolutely nothing to do. Mulder’s not a bad conversationalist, he can make anything into a twenty-minute debate. 

Skinner calls her up to his office on her third day back. “I was sorry to hear about Agent Mulder’s injury,” he says, semi-pleasantly. Frankly enough, Scully can’t read the man. “Considering his recovery period, I’m assigning you to a task force led by Agent Tom Colton for the time being. There’s a serial killer in the area, been killing people at memorials.” 

Great, Colton; just what she needs. She swears she used to like him before the Tooms case. “Yes, sir,” she says aloud. 

The case is unusual, even she can see that. All the victims have been found at memorials but the pattern doesn’t make sense - it’s not in any kind of shape or by the years corresponding to the people or events honored by the memorials. And outside of that, something even more unusual: all the witnesses never saw the murderer, not even a glimpse. One victim had been killed in plain sight, just fallen down from stab wounds in the crowd around the Jefferson memorial. Colton is insisting that there’s a pattern somewhere; Scully isn’t so sure. Still, she does the work, goes over the crime scene reports again and again. Four murder so far: one at the construction site of the future Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, one at the Vietnam Memorial, one at the Jefferson Memorial, and one at the Theodore Roosevelt island. The order makes no sense, either chronologically or geographically, and she is frustrated within minutes.

She gets a call that afternoon. When she answers, she’s actually surprised that it’s Mulder. Of course it’s Mulder; who else would be calling her outside of her normal office in the middle of the day? “Thank god I found you,” he teases. “When you didn’t answer the office phone, I thought maybe you’d been beamed up.”

“Cute,” she says sarcastically. “No, actually; Skinner loaned me out to Colton. Another serial killer.”

“The Memorial Murders?” Mulder cracks a sunflower teeth between his teeth. She can recognize the damn sound over the phone now. “I saw it on the news.”

“Any insight? I’m stumped,” says Scully, not really meaning it (she doesn’t expect him to be theorizing about a serial killer when he’s at home with a wounded leg).

“You should bring the file by tonight.”

(Clearly, she read him wrong; she should’ve seen this coming.)

“No, Mulder, you’re resting,” she chides immediately. 

“C’mon, Scully, I’m bored to death here. I’ve watched so much daytime television that my head’s about to explode,” he whines into the phone. “Besides, I have a feeling that this is an X-File.”

“It’s not an X-File,” she says automatically.

“So bring the file over so you can prove me wrong.”

She brings the damn file over. She brings the file and dinner over to his apartment and lets him flip through it from his spot propped up on the couch. “Definitely an X-File,” he says through a mouthful of noodles, self satisfied.

“How did you deduce that?” she says dryly, arms crossed over her chest.

“The fact that witnesses didn’t see the actual crime being committed. That man who was murdered in the public place? Everyone near him swears they didn’t do it and swears they didn’t see a thing.”

“Don’t tell me you suspect the Invisible Man,” Scully groans, and he grins at her in a way that makes her head hurt. “It’s official,” she says, standing. “I’ve seen everything.”

“X-File or not, your real problem is not knowing when the killer will strike again,” Mulder says, taps the file with one finger. “I think I can figure out a pattern.”

“Because you’re oh-so-smarter than all the agents on this case?” she drawls, scowling at him.

“Don’t insult me, Scully, I’m wounded,” he says dramatically, mock-grabbing for his leg. She rolls her eyes. “Just let me try it out, Scully. I have a lot of time on my hands, you know.”

She leaves her copy of the files at his house against her better judgment. He did used to be the Bureau’s star profiler; maybe he’ll come up with something sane-sounding.

She goes over to his house the next two nights and they argue the case over dinner again. (He doesn't manage to convince her it's an invisible man, of course.) On the fourth day (the purported date of the next murder, if they could figure out where it'll be), Scully shows up at his apartment late at night, feeling defeated. "Colton's pissed we couldn't figure it out," she informs him. "He says he's sending details to all the memorials in DC; he wants me to keep going over the files and see what I can find."

"Scully, I found the pattern," Mulder says frantically, trying to sit up on the couch. "I tried to call, you didn't answer. It's not by date of event that the memorial honors, it's by date of when the memorial was established, going backwards with the most recent first, that's why they started with the construction site. That's why the events are out of order."

"What?" She rushes over to the couch.

Mulder shoves a slip of paper at her where he's scribbled the murder sites and corresponding dates. "By this pattern, the Lincoln Memorial would be next," he says. 

She grabs the paper in both hands and scans it quickly. The dates match, he's right. She checks her watch. "We have a half hour left," she mutters. "That's enough time, I can make it."

"Scully?"

She's already halfway across the apartment; she grabs his cell phone and throws it at him. "Call Colton, tell him to meet me there with backup," she says, opening the door.

"Scully, wait!"

The door slams shut behind her and she jogs down the hall and down the stairs, refusing to wait for the elevator. Whoever's next in the cycle doesn't have time for the elevator. Outside, she gets into her car and drives, probably breaking several traffic laws on the way. She parks haphazardly at the memorial and climbs out, pulling her gun as she goes. 

The memorial ground is empty; she's not surprised, considering it's near midnight. She has no idea where Colton's agents are staked out and doesn't have time to go looking for him, she hopes they'll see her and come out to back her up. She draws closer to the memorial, gun held low in front of her. She reaches the bottom of the steps and pauses. "Federal agent," she calls out. "I'm armed. Is anyone on the premises?"

"Agent Scully!" someone yells at her from behind, just as something slams into her back. Scully tips foward, hitting her head on the stone steps of the memorial as she falls.

The first thing she hears is the crutches clattering on the marble. The ache reverberates through her head, Mulder’s huge palm brushing her forehead as he says her first name. “Dana? Dana, are you okay?”

She groans, the marble and the sky and Mulder spinning above her like a merry-go-round. “Don’t,” she gets out through clenched teeth.

“Don’t what? What is it?” His hand is still brushing her face, pushing back her hair.

Because she’s stubborn, she forces herself to her feet, stumbling a little and swallowing back nausea, using Mulder for balance because there’s no way she could get up otherwise. He shouldn’t be crouching like this, he’s straining his wound, they’re both ridiculous and hurt and ridiculously hurt. She tugs him up with her, handfuls of his t-shirt, and stumbles again with his added weight. “Don’t call me Dana.”

Mulder blinks in surprise at what she tells him. "Scully, sit down. Does your head hurt? Are you dizzy?"

"Yes, my fucking head hurts." They stumble back together, her ass hitting the concrete steps hard; she swallows back a wave of nausea. Mulder lands half on top of her and immediately slides off, his wounded leg sticking out at a strange angle. "What are you doing here? I asked you to call Colton."

"I did; they got here before I did, they called an ambulance. Colton's detail said they saw the man who hit you but he disappeared when they went after him. They're trying to find him now." Mulder scoops her discarded gun off of the ground and holds it protectively on his lap. 

"You shouldn't have come here on your leg." Scully bends over, resting her head between her knees. It does nothing for the resounding pain. 

"You shouldn't have come here without backup," he retorts. "So we're even." She wonders if he is mad about the Dana thing. She wonders why he ran after her, and then realizes she should find that obvious. It's the same reason she gave him her jacket after she'd been shot.

Colton arrests the man and asks her if it's the guy who hit her. Scully replies that she never actually saw him but she supposes it could be, she'd trust the word of the other two agents if she were him. Mulder asks if they really saw him disappear into thin air. "We didn't see him disappear," one of the agents snaps. "We saw him knock Agent Scully down, we got out of the car and he was gone, we ran after him and tracked it down. Why, Spooky, got a theory?"

The murderer glares at them as Colton leads him away. Mulder says, "There's no conclusive proof that he's not a man who can turn invisible," and Scully slugs him in the arm.

Mulder insists on riding in the ambulance with her; whether he's doing it out of concern or just to be annoying, Scully doesn't know. (It's probably the blood running down his leg, she realizes when they get there, and feels guilty.) He also volunteers to be the one who makes sure she stays awake when she's diagnosed with a concussion. "Fine, but I'm putting Agent Scully in charge of keeping you off your feet," the doctor says sternly, staring down the two of them like they’re bruised up school children instead of FBI agents. “You shouldn’t be irritating your wound.”

"Believe me, sir, I'd do it if I knew how," she says, and Mulder pouts at her from across the room.

Her head hurts and she is too tired for this but she goes back to Mulder's apartment with him and sits beside him on the couch and dictates her report to him while Back to the Future plays in the background. Mulder rambles on about time travel X-Files he has in the cabinet. She tries to stay awake but it is hard. Her head lolls on the back of the couch and she lets her eyes slide closed. 

"Hey," Mulder says. He touches her jaw. "You can't fall asleep."

"'M not asleep," she mumbles, opening her eyes. Onscreen, Biff Tannen has just crashed his car into manure. "This movie is ridiculous," she says.

Mulder grins. He looks like some Biblical hero with the light from the lamp haloing his head. "Of course you would think that."

They return to work, begin taking cases again like normal. They fall back into routine, their partnership/friendship going back to its familiar rhythm. He doesn’t call her Dana.

It sounds different in his mouth and she can’t describe how. She knows what it is; it’s a sign of endearment, friendship, comfort. But she likes it that he calls her Scully. Dana and Scully, she thinks, are two separate people, and he only knows the Scully part of her. She doesn’t know which part she likes better, but she likes it when he calls her Scully. It’s their thing, like a friendship bracelet. It sounds dumb but it’s the only way she can rationalize it.

The handcuffs are hard and painful around her wrists and they rattle on the radiator every time she moves her hands. Willis is talking to someone on the phone. Someone from the FBI. Mulder, she thinks. She’d scream at him, give him clues to their location if she didn’t still have her pride and her Quantico training. And besides that, who knows what he and Lula will do if she did? 

“Yeah, sure,” Willis says into the phone, and approaches her. 

She realizes a minute too late that he’s going to let Mulder talk to her and scrambles to find something to say, some clue to give. She comes up with nothing but an uncertain, “Mulder?” Maybe it’s not him, she realizes, and feels embarrassed for assuming. 

“Dana, are you okay?” Mulder asks, frantic.

Relief briefly washes over her. “Don’t-” she starts to warn him (he can’t negotiate, not with them, Jack might still be in there somewhere), but Jack yanks the phone away before she can finish. She can hear Mulder call her first name again, panicked, worry. Maybe she underestimated how much she means to him.

“Okay, that’s it. Goodbye,” Willis says, almost gleefully, before hanging up. 

Her stomach hurts. “It’s not gonna work, Jack,” she says because she refuses to believe he’s gone. He must still be in there somewhere, the man she’d once loved. 

“You don’t think so?”

“Bureau policy prohibits negotiating with kidnappers,” she says - because that’s what he’s done, kidnapped her. No, the Bureau won’t negotiate for her life. But if anyone is going to break protocol, it’s Mulder. 

He comes for her. He finds them. She knows he didn’t do it alone, but he still comes. She’s focused on Jack, on Lula; she wanted to save Jack and she couldn't. “Scully, are you okay?” he asks as he crouches beside her, going to unlock the handcuffs. She can barely hear him over the rush in her ears.

She ignores him, calling for Jack again. The agent checking him shakes his head; he’s dead. Scully feels sick. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

The handcuffs fall from around her chafed wrists and she breathes an involuntary sigh of relief. “Here,” Mulder says, grabbing her hand to help her up. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” He touches the dried blood at the corner of her mouth, tries to put his arms around her.

She steps back; she just wants to be alone, sleep it the fuck off. She can’t stop seeing Jack’s last breaths. She could’ve saved him. She had saved him, once before, and it had doomed him. “I’m going home,” she says firmly, but it comes out all wrong. She sounds scared.

“Okay, Scully, I’ll take you. C’mon.” He motions her towards the door and out to his car.

He drives her home in silence, the motion of the wheels thrumming in her ears. Her wrists throb. Mulder drives without talking, but he can still hear his voice saying Dana.

He pulls up in front of her apartment building. “Thanks for the ride,” Scully murmurs, opening the door.

“Of course,” Mulder says, chewing his lip. He doesn’t look at her. She starts to close the door.

“I was... worried,” he says. He sounds briefly, stunningly vulnerable. “That you would... that I wouldn’t see you again.” He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’m sorry I called you Dana.”

She doesn’t know what to say so she closes the door. It lingers for a minute before pulling away. Scully goes upstairs and crawls into bed.

The next day, she feels bad. Like an asshole. She doesn’t know if the feeling is misplaced or not (she should be allowed to be detached and withdrawn after the ordeal of the day before), but the least she can do is thank him. He stayed up all night with her when she had a concussion; he was the one they called to ransom her; he’s saved her life multiple times. He deserves a thank you, at least. Every time he’s tried to reach out, she shoves him away. Builds the wall back up. Time to knock it down, she tells herself, just a little. A few bricks at a time. She buys him coffee on the way to work. 

Mulder looks up in surprise when she enters the office. “Scully,” he says. “I thought you’d take a few days.”

He should know she uses work as a hiding place. “I’ve missed enough days,” she says instead, and hands him the coffee. “Here. Thanks for the birthday card.”

The side of his mouth quirks up. “You’re thanking me for a trap I set for someone else that was two months early?” he asks, taking the coffee. His fingers brush hers.

“You really don’t know my birthday, do you?” she says. “You were two weeks late. I was testing you.”

He laughs a little and turns the cup around to read what the barista scrawled on there. She had the skinny teenager write Also: thanks for saving my life on it. Mulder doesn’t mention it or say you’re welcome, but the next day, there’s coffee waiting for her that says, Any time. 

Scully has gotten hurt entirely too much in the past two months, alone. Her concussion, getting hit over the head again on the Kindred case (which couldn’t have done anything good for her concussion), her ordeal with Willis, and now this. She is taking a damn vacation. 

The ambulance meant for her has already left with Barnett; they’ve assured her another one will be along shortly. Good, she thinks; her chest hurts and she’s in a terrible mood. She’s not feeling particularly charitable towards John Barnett at the moment, either.

Mulder stumbles out of the concert hall, looking shaken up. “Scully?” he calls. “Scully!” 

“I’m here,” she calls.

He turns and strides across the room towards her, throwing both arms around her and hugging her too tightly. Pain shoots through her chest. “Mulder,” she squeaks into his shoulder. “Too tight.” 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, loosening his arms. He holds on for another second before letting go completely. She almost misses the weight of his arms. God, when’s the last time they actually hugged? Their first case, she suddenly remembers, when she stripped in his goddamn room. God, has it been that long? What kinds of friends are they? They almost die every couple months but they never hug?

“Fuck,” Mulder hisses through his teeth. “I’m sorry for... all this, Scully. I’m an idiot. And an asshole.”

“You did what you had to do,” she says. “I would’ve done the same thing.” 

“Yeah,” he says. “You still could’ve ended up like Reggie, though.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No,” he adds wearily after a minute. “You didn’t.” 

He sits beside her on the step. Their knees brush.

She thinks she hears him call her Dana when she’s under the influence of the mites. She doesn’t really think about it. At the moment, she can’t remember why it seemed like a big deal. 

They’re in quarantine, she’s informed when she wakes up. At least until they heal. Mulder looks at her with soft eyes that follow her movements; he clearly blames himself for this, too. He blames himself for everything.

The only TV in the facility was in his room, something she felt was a travesty. “This is ridiculous,” she tells him on the fifth day, standing in the doorway to his room. “We are both hurt. I deserve a TV just as much as you do.”

He raises an eyebrow at her from his spot on the bed. “Want to switch beds?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mulder,” she says with some disgust - all coming out raspy from the delightful little mites that attacked them. (God, her life has become a bad horror movie.) “Just... scoot over.”

He looks abruptly stunned. “What?”

She walks over to his bed and shoves at his shoulder. “Scoot over.”

He raises an eyebrow at her but complies, scooting over close to the wall. She sits beside him on the edge of the bed and swings her legs around, leaving a few inches of space between them. “What are we watching?” she asks, leaning back against one of the pillows.

“Just some rerun,” Mulder says, turning up the volume a few octaves. It’s I Love Lucy, and its familiar black-and-white shadows and delighted laugh track are comforting. Scully watches and doesn’t say anything else.

A few months ago - a few weeks ago, even - she would’ve chided herself for doing this. It’s against Bureau policy. But in the moment that policy seems ridiculous. They’re in quarantine, and Mulder has the only TV, and he’s her friend. They don’t have a couch, so she’ll sit beside him on the bed; it’s that simple. 

They sit there for over an hour; the nurses come to check on them and leave them there. Mulder yawns suddenly; he’s fiddling absently with the little door on the back of the remote where the batteries go. “I’m sorry I got you into this mess,” he says. 

“It’s not your fault. How were you supposed to know that the men were killed by... mites who would enclose us in cocoons?” she jokes. She starts to laugh but it turns into a cough; watching I Love Lucy seems dangerous on laugh risk alone. Her life is a ridiculous parade of B-movie material.

“I’m used to the risks that come with this job. You’re not. You have a family.”

“You have a family,” she says. He’s mentioned his parents in passing once or twice and somewhere, she hopes, his sister is waiting for him to find her. 

“Let me rephrase, then: you have a family who cares about you.” Mulder coughs, letting his head droop back against the dashboard. 

The bandages over her burns itch; she doesn’t know what to say. “You have people who care about you, too, Mulder,” she replies quietly. “The Gunmen. And me.” 

Mulder ignores her, popping open the little door on the remote again. “You need to stay safe,” he says. He spins the battery under one finger. “You have more in your life than this.”

She doesn’t say anything because she still hasn’t found the right words. They watch the TV. The battery door click-clicks under Mulder’s finger. His breathing slows until she knows he is asleep. His head drops to her shoulder. He breathes like he is dying, even though she knows it’s just the aftereffect of the bugs; her breaths sound the same. 

In this moment of strange intimacy, the guilt over pushing him away comes rushing back. He is her friend, and he keeps trying to reach out to her. She can damn well let him. Friends call each other by their first names; friends can sleep on each other and hug each other and watch movies on the couch while they recover from their injuries. She feels ridiculous; who cares what he calls her? Who cares if he crosses the line from Scully into Dana? (She is starting to feel very much like they are one and the same. Or maybe they have always been that way.)

She climbs off of the bed and lowers him onto a pillow. It’s late, and the nurses will be through to check on them soon. He groans a little when she moves him, but he doesn’t wake up. She tucks the thin blankets around him the way she did in North Carolina. 

“You can call me Dana if you want to,” she whispers. 

Tooms is back and she is going to fight beside him. Bureau policy has gone out the window now; it’s about keeping people safe from the monster that is Eugene Victor Tooms. She doesn’t believe him in much, but she believes him about this. Now she’ll stand with him on the front lines. 

She brings him a sandwich and encourages him to go home. This is about loyalty, about showing him that she has his back. Time to meet in the middle. This is my fight too, Mulder; you of all people should know that.

“They’re out to put an end to the X-Files, Scully,” he says, and she believes him. “I don’t know why, but any excuse will do. Now, I don’t really care about my record, but you’d be in trouble just for sitting in this car and I’d hate to see you to carry an official reprimand in your file because of me."

She sighs. “Fox...” she tries, because this is her apology for pushing him away, this is her attempt to connect.

If she expected anything, it was a question about why she would use his first name when she asked him not to use hers, but he laughs instead.She looks at him in astonishment. “And I... I even made my parents call me Mulder. So... Mulder,” he says, looking away from her. Maybe he’s as bad as emotions at her.

It’s absurd, but she feels some kind of relief. She says, “Mulder, I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anybody but you.”

He looks at her with astonishment. Like he’s not used to hearing those kinds of things from people. And if what he told her in quarantine is true, then he doesn’t. She holds his gaze: I mean it. 

“If there’s an iced tea in that bag...” he says at length, teasing. “... could be love.”

“Must be fate, Mulder,” she says dryly, passing him the bottle. “Root beer.”

He sighs dramatically.

“You’re delirious,” she tells him. “Go home and get some sleep.”

“Here. Take my sandwich, I only had one bite,” he says, passing it to her. “And you’ll call me if anything happens, immediately. I’ll be here.”

She has no doubt that he would. She knows she would come for him if the positions were reversed - they have done this for each other man y times in the past year. (Has it only been a year? She almost can’t believe it, it seems like such a long time.)

“Oh,” he adds as her fingers brush the door handle. “Oh, and 11:30, station 790, Pete Rose Late Night Sports Talk Radio Show.” He grins at her like an idiot, and she smiles back, some sort of half-smirk that she finds endearing before climbing out of the car.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she mutters wryly as she heads back towards her car. She feels like they’ve reached neutral ground, some kind of understanding. He is Mulder and she is Scully and that’s the only sane way to describe their relationship. Partners, friends, the kind who can almost read each other’s mind. They don’t need first names for that.

In the moment, she has never felt more like Scully.

[deehollowaywrites]

run for the Roses

The horse nerds descend on Louisville.

Fillies & Lilies Ball, Equine Foundation. Friday, May 7, 9:06PM.

“You’re smirking,” Adair said, and raised her glass to me, a half-joking salute. The pinot noir inside just about matched her burgundy gown, both shades of red working a marvel on her deep brown skin. She glanced around the airy, open space of the Equine Foundation’s first floor, gaze traveling over all of her colleagues and a fair chunk of mine. “That’s the stabbing smirk, so who’s about to get murdered? Let me guess. Connelly?”

“Marty Connelly done got murdered,” I said. “If you’ll recall race four this afternoon.” I sipped my own cocktail, some overdone themed concoction with way too much pineapple juice and not enough Myers, and slipped my arm through hers. “Just perusing the competition.”

“Do you have competition?” another voice interjected, and part of that competition materialized, Tallis Ansah packing a gin and tonic and a huge grin. She was even shorter than me, all freckled brown skin and drastic biceps, but her afro and platform creepers added a couple of inches. “Like, come on, Felix. This far in, you don’t have to be modest.”

“At any rate,” Adair observed, “the competition or otherwise only matters on the track, right, babe?”

“You know that’s not right.” I nodded to where a couple of jocks imported from California for the big country doin’s were making mistakes at the bar. “McClintock’s on his third beer. Think he’ll be fit to ride tomorrow? I wouldn’t bet on him.”

“You should try to relax,” Adair told the top of my head, her lips teasing loose strands of hair. I leaned into her arm, the warmth of her beneath the silky fabric of her dress. It was tempting, the idea of booking it out of here early with her--stealing my mother’s limo and convincing the driver to take us all the way home to Lexington. “You can’t ride a race ‘til you’re on the horse. Have another drink.”

“Not in the slightest.” That was more responsible than I felt like being, but my head--not to mention my uncle--would thank me tomorrow. “Tallis, what do you think?”

“About?” she piped. The gin in her glass didn’t seem to have budged. Now that I thought about it, she didn’t drink much at all, and maybe she was toting the highball around for show. The younger generation was turning out so low-key it grated. “I don’t think about Kelly McClintock if I don’t have to, you know, he’s not really on my radar. California’s whatever. How many jocks even ride Santa Anita? You know? Like you hear the Pacific Classic just got run and it’s like, who’s the jock, but then you remember there’s McClintock and, like--”

The soft curve of Adair’s side quivered beneath my hand. Tallis was a hoot once you got her going, and that was easy to do. This was her second time going under the Spires on the first Saturday in May and she seemed as excited as she had the year before, just as excited and even more shredded than the last time I’d seen her--a month ago in Miami, flexing all the big-name runners like her livelihood depended on it, which it did. I was glad to have her in Louisville; her penchant for zoot-suit formalwear and unapologetic lady-killing game took some of the heat off me.

“Your odds,” I said, and snickered when McClintock swerved away from the bar, his arm around one of the Louisville bug girls’ shoulders. We weren’t even at the edgy shindig--Fillies and Lilies was strictly for the fascinator crowd, all class and upper-crust at the Equine Foundation’s annual Derby fundraiser--but California jocks could always be counted on to find the party. “How you like ‘em?”

“Odds,” Tallis repeated, her attention on something across the room. I squinted past my parents with a couple of Ohio breeders and Adair’s boss talking to a Lexington news anchor. There was the Hills’ New York trainer, Gwen Taylor… and her daughter. Adair pinched my hip, so I knew we’d had the same thought. Tallis laughed suddenly and stared into her gin. “I like them. I don’t even think about them. If anybody should be thinking about their odds, like, it’s my chill-free homeboy, you know?”

She had a point. No one had expected the second of my uncle’s two Derby runners to turn up with eight-to-five, not a piece of pace-setting speed like Suitcase City. The other of Jimmy’s options--my mount--had followed the more usual trajectory of wow in the autumn, act up in the winter, return to form in the spring. I wasn’t worried… except Joel Canseco knew how to work speed, maybe even better than I did, and Suitcase City’s Arkansas Derby win had rewritten the leaderboard barely two weeks before the main event.

Canseco and Ben Goldfarb were draped across a couple of barstools, nothing between them but tuxes and Miami tans. I was pretty sure they hadn’t looked at anyone but each other since walking in.

“You run with those beach babies,” I said to Tallis, and choked down the rest of my drink. It tasted like a dental bill. “Tell Goldfarb to keep his boyfriend in line.”

Tallis cackled, laughing so hard curls bounced from beneath her porkpie hat and tumbled across her forehead. “Man, I can’t tell Benny shit. Not since he won his Eclipse last year, I mean, talk about high-and-mighty, you’d think nobody ever won one before.” She paused, grinning, her eyes on Jessa Taylor again. “And nobody tells Joelito shit.”

I considered that. Adair’s hand on my hip was getting distracting, and the air in the museum was getting stuffy, and I kind of wanted to be out of there. To be smoking on the patio, maybe, or jammed against a cab’s backseat with Adair’s fingers on my thigh. Somewhere I could mull over the next day and chill, get away from my family, reassure Adair that yes, this was the last one, after this year it was training and none of the hairy stuff, more reliable money, less bodily damage.

“Tallis, where’s your agent?”

Her expression went sideways. “What?”

“Where’s Eddy? If anyone’s gonna remind Canseco not to get ahead of himself--”

“I’m not sure,” she said, totally shifty. “I feel like he went to the bathroom? But that was a while ago. I think he said maybe--like, it’s his job to keep an eye on me, you know, not the other way around. I am not my agent’s keeper.”

“I don’t see Phil either,” Adair said serenely. She smiled at Tallis and then at me, the dimple beneath her mouth deepening. “Don’t look for divine intervention tonight, Felix.”

“You know,” Tallis said, “it’s like, they never go out by themselves. They always got Maribel with them, so I mean…”

“Those two and bathrooms.” I snorted. Parenthood hadn’t cramped Eddy’s style in any meaningful way. “Well, whatever. You don’t need to hang out with the boring olds, Tallis. Go talk to your girl.”

Tallis looked at me, and then at Adair, and her mouth opened like she was going to deny that the only thing she’d noticed all night was Gwen Taylor’s daughter in that outrageous V-neck mini-dress, and then she was gone so fast there might as well have been a cloud of cartoon dust behind her.

Adair’s chuckle pressed her rack more firmly into my shoulder, not that I had any complaints. She gazed down at me, her head angled against the overhead lights so that it looked like she wore a halo atop her buzz cut. “I can’t blame her. Or Eddy and Phil. Tallis is right--Mari’s such a handful now, they have to grab it while they can.” The hand on my hip slid sideways, light and teasing across the low back of my dress, and I shivered despite the overheated room. “Maybe I should grab you while I can.”

Maybe she should. Maybe her brand of Derby luck was exactly what the night called for, and maybe I didn’t give a shit if my mother wanted me to stick around and make nice a little longer. Maybe twenty-nine was too old to hook up in bathrooms or cars, and maybe our bed was calling my name more loudly than any of the press or trainers or track stewards in the museum tonight.

I turned into her arms, my voice coming out muffled against her throat. “You can always grab me.” She made a little questioning noise, and I nodded. “Here or there or everywhere. Long Island. Saratoga. Lexington.”

“Lexington,” she murmured, and I felt her smile, her lips on my forehead. She knew what I meant--she believed me when I said it was time--and right now I believed it too. Whether or not there were roses waiting for me tomorrow, Adair was waiting and had been, and soon it would be time to go home.

Jockeys’ room, Churchill Downs. Saturday, May 8, 3:15PM.

James Hamilton, Junior was the kind of southern white boy who thought he had swagger but was actually a barrel of nerve endings when you got down to brass tacks. He’d come and talked to me about Sacredheart about four times since we’d jogged the colt yesterday morning, even though there were still three hours ‘til the Derby ran. Around the third grilling, I decided it wasn’t the colt he was worried about. It was me.

“It’s like he doesn’t like me, but how could he not? Everyone likes me.” Joel blinked as though my logic was unconvincing. “If he didn’t, shit, he’s got the entire eastern seaboard’s worth of jockeys to choose from.”

“If it makes you feel better, I know his dad doesn’t like me,” Joel said, which was flat-out the stupidest thing I’d heard all week, and you heard a lot of dumb shit in Kentucky during Derby season. “I don’t know why you care whether trainers like you. What matters is that they ride you.”

His logic, like always, was impeccable.

He patted my knee carefully--I’d strained something or other last weekend at Keeneland--and nodded past me. “Guess it runs in the family. If I didn’t know better I’d think Hamilton was eyefucking me.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Felix Hamilton staring at both of us from beneath her tangle of blond hair. She and I were vying for moptop supreme today, her bangs like straw and my curls frizzing in the heat. When I blew her a kiss, she grinned and flipped me off. I looked at Joel again, sticking my tongue out. “How do you know she isn’t?”

“Sure.” His dark eyes got the extra-serious squint they made when he was about to laugh. “She’s too old for me.”

“May-December never killed anyone.” I bumped my good knee against his. “Or is there another issue?”

“I have to go,” he said, his voice quiet beneath the rumble of the jocks’ room. Somewhere someone was singing the University of Kentucky fight song, and someone else had just dropped a rack of weights. He sat there for another minute, his hand on my leg and his gaze somewhere around my mouth, and I wished we had time--to go make out in the hall between the lockers and the clerk of scales, to go over our books together, to just sit. I was always wishing for time lately.

“I know you do,” I said. “Every fuckin’ race, child. Aren’t you perfect?”

“Yep,” Joel said, smiling a little, and then he was gone, leaving me with a view of his legs in pristine white breeches and the stretch of muscle in his shoulders as he pulled on a set of Long Hills silks. Before I could get comfortable watching him, someone grabbed the chair he’d vacated.

“Benny. How’s your boy?”

I batted my eyes at Eddy Ramón, more out of habit than anything else, but Joel and I had agreed that fatherhood suited him spectacularly. We were waiting with bated breath for the day he finally turned into a silver fox. “How is he? He’s fine. He’s great. Look at him, he’s never been happier.”

We looked at Joel, now talking to his agent and one of Gwen Taylor’s assistants. Bits of fast Spanish floated in and out of my ears. Eddy propped his feet on the bench across from us and switched his glance to me. “Claro. How are you?”

“I was made for this,” I said. “What, are you my guru? Go hype up your own jock.”

“Tallis has been here before,” he said, scratching at his beard. “You two ain’t.”

I wanted to keep sassing him, but he wasn’t wrong. Sure, between the two of us Joel and I had won over a thousand races, but none of them was this race. The Kentucky Derby was a race in function only. Everything else about it was singular, a horse-headed hydra wearing the finest millinery and drunk off its ass. I had never encountered this many fans in one place, or the amount of money being wagered, or the fervency with which people online promised to tear me a new asshole if I didn’t ride their preferred horse the way they wanted.

“Fine. You want to soothe my poor nerves, tell me what the hell’s up with your cousin.”

“My cousin,” Eddy repeated, and then chuckled when I pointed to the simulcast screens, where James Hamilton was talking with his assistant. “Jamie’s not blood.”

“You’re all basically related,” I said, restraining a mean crack about bluegrass breeding. “This week’s been fine and now he’s jumpy? He keeps telling me the track’s playing fast. Everyone on the planet knows the track is playing fast. The only thing Bob Costas knows is the track is playing fast.”

Eddy watched me calmly, arms folded across his chest. Every time I saw him he seemed to have another tattoo, the brown skin of his arms disappearing under colorful ink. I looked at Joel again, sudden homesickness wrenching my stomach. He’d kept mentioning tattoos lately, that he wanted one but didn’t know what, and all I wanted right then was to be home in Miami with him, figuring it out. Maybe we’d go see my friend Dario’s new boyfriend at the ink shop in Wynwood. Maybe I’d tease Joel into getting my name in a heart on his bicep.

“It might be that,” Eddy said, and inclined his head when I glared at him. “I don’t mean that, chico. I mean the two of you riding against each other--I never had to deal with that and Felix hated it, but you two.” He studied me for a minute, and when he spoke again his voice was lower, serious. “Sometimes people get ideas, ya sabes, they wonder about your edge.”

“It’s the Kentucky Derby,” I said. “My granny could be out there riding to beat me, blessed be her memory, and I’d pull every trick in the book to win.”

“Jamie don’t need a reason to be jumpy. I’m just providing one you might’ve encountered before.”

“You’re lucky you’re pretty.” It struck me funny sometimes, that I could talk to him like that--him, still one of the most talented riders in US history. But the past couple of years Joel and I had been traveling, and travel was the great equalizer, as far as racing went. You met everyone, every one of your heroes still alive, and sometimes they turned into friends. “Man, how many more times do we have to prove we’re all in?”

Eddy smiled. “It’s racing, Ben. You never stop proving it.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, either. Him and Joel, the two people other than my dad most likely to be on-point at all times. I got up and rummaged in my locker for deodorant. It was almost time to suit up for my next ride. “You sure are getting wise in your old age.”

“Good to hear someone thinks so,” he said. His smile went to the door, where Tallis was leaving with her gear for the scales. “All the women in my life like to remind me of my foolishness on the regular.”

I thought about that, about him and his wife at the Equine Foundation’s party the night before, about how Iona Hamilton still fawned over him, how Felix talked about him like he’d been the first person to ever win a horse race and the text Tallis had sent me when she’d landed Eddy’s book-hustling skills. “Please. You could walk up to Gwen Taylor right now and tell her you wanted a mount and she’d roll out a red carpet.” I kicked his ankle. “You’d probably even weigh in ok.”

He patted his stomach, which still looked plenty flat to me. “I’ll stick to handing out fortune cookies, thanks.”

“Better for all of us,” I said, my voice muffled through fabric as I pulled on my Three Creeks silks. “A Derby without you in it’s a Derby the rest of us have a shot at winning.”

“Go ride,” Eddy said, face straight. “Don’t take any lip off James. Also, in case you didn’t notice, the track’s playing fast.”

I heard him laugh as I went to grab my saddle, but I was grinning too. It was Derby Day and it was the Downs and Joel was out there winning a race right now according to the TV screens, and in three hours either of us might be winning, but the important thing was that we were doing it together. This, all of it, everything we’d ever wanted, and the rest of the industry--the Hamiltons or anyone else--could do with that whatever they wanted.

Main track, Churchill Downs. Saturday, May 8, 6:40PM.

This was definitely the queerest post parade I’d ever been in.

I had a theory about racing where non-straight jockeys were concerned, namely, we were way better at it. This year’s Derby field was beyond stacked, like, to the point where I felt kinda honored just to be included. Eight Eclipse-winning riders, a couple of us repeats, and half of us so gay we should’ve been wearing rainbow silks. One of us was going to murder it. The odds were in our favor.

I wondered when somebody would, in fact, design me some rainbow silks. Whoever that owner turned out to be, I’d be knocking their door down for a mount. I supposed the only thing was to wait for Felix to switch over from riding and inherit the farm, but it was weird to imagine Honeycomb Hills silks as anything other than green and gold. Iona would have a coronary and die before that ever happened, regardless of whose name was on the Jockey Club paperwork.

“Benny,” I called to Ben, a few feet behind me and gossiping with his lead pony’s rider. “Hey, you ever see those pictures of beehives where, like, you know, the ones where the bees got into an M&Ms factory or whatever?”

“The fuck you on about, Tally Ho?”

“Never mind.” I giggled and brushed a hand over my silks, the green and gold that was almost Hills official but not quite, Long Hills diamonds instead of honeycomb. “Tell you later.”

“You better concentrate,” he hollered at my back. “Get your head on the dirt instead of the clouds, babe.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered, and twisted my reins into a cross as my colt pranced a little beneath me. It wasn’t trash talk, not really, not the way some of the other guys threw it around. Ben and I had been trading off all weekend, second in the Eight Belles for him and third in the Oaks for me, first in the Pat Day for him and second in the Distaff Turf for me, third in the Humana Distaff for him and first in the Woodford Reserve for me. I wondered how pissed Joel was--but then, he’d destroyed the Oaks and the Alysheba on Friday, and won the Churchill Downs today by thirteen lengths, the motherfucker, he really had no reason to be anything but proud, of himself or his boy.

It was sweet, the way his face would look if Ben won the whole shebang about ten minutes from now. He might even smile.

Ben had a fair chance of doing it, I was generously willing to admit, even if Jessa had refused to countenance anything but me glorious and triumphant the night before. She could be real convincing when she wanted to be. By the time she’d slipped out of my hotel room I half-believed I’d already won the Roses. Seeing her was almost as good, whether we were in Louisville or on Long Island. It was always funny to hear her hold forth on horse racing. She started off haughty and holier-than-thou, reminding me of things I already knew, and then she’d end up practically handicapping, betraying that she was always listening when Gwen or I talked, that she knew more about our side of the sport than she probably wanted, that she had opinions about the likely turn-out despite herself.

Sacredheart, she’d said last night, her head propped on her hand and the rest of her spread out beneath my sheets, warm and bare, one leg wound through mine. He never breaks well.

Sacredheart, Ben’s colt, didn’t like the gate--but Ben was good with horses like that, it was sort of his thing, finessing little weirdos who’d managed to make it to three years old without getting used to the big snap-jawed steel monster. I’d been full-on goggling the first time I saw him ride, because I’d known him before that, when he was still stuck in high school and doing grunt work at Gulfstream, scrawny and big-haired--kinda the Jewish-boy version of me, actually--and his personality made me think he’d turn out sort of flashy. Speed freaks, colts with attitude and diva fillies, that kind of thing. Instead he kept turning up with really smart turf rides and patience for horses who needed it, and his grumpy boyfriend was the show-off.

“Quit thinking about it, Tallis!” someone yelled, and I glanced toward the fence. My agent was standing there, forearms propped on the rail and his daughter perched on his shoulders. Phil was next to them, one hand braced on her giant hat and the other waving at me. She looked pretty damn fine, not that I was looking. Felix’s girlfriend was with them, a full head taller than either of them, her beautiful smile aimed right at me. Eddy grinned and called again, “No more time for thinking, mija.”

It was what he always told me, and even though he clearly knew what he was talking about--I mean, hombre was a living legend, and my over-eager ass was lucky to have him--the advice never worked. I couldn’t shut my brain off until the gate opened. I had to run over the odds, the likelies and the longshots, everything I knew about every jock, until the point where thinking became dangerous.

We weren’t there yet. There was plenty of time left for my brain to do what it did best.

The lead ponies peeled off and we picked up into a jog. Sacredheart looked good when he and Ben loped past; Suitcase City, Joel’s baby girl, looked even better. If I was worried about anyone in the field it was them, because Joel had that irritating habit of winning when he wasn’t supposed to, when there should’ve been no way. Canseco and Suitcase City, I counted, Goldfarb and Sacredheart, Hamilton and Fly Pelican, Mensah and Elfshot, Rodowsky and Bluegrass Baby, on and on, twenty of the best runners in the country. Bays and grays and chestnuts, guys I’d never ridden with before and one woman whose style I knew better than my own, all lining up to try and beat the hide off my colt.

“We’ll see,” I told Cain Distilled, and patted his dappled neck as we lined up for the post.

Main track, Churchill Downs. Saturday, May 8. 6:52PM.

Sometimes speed didn’t show up.

The five-sixteenths pole popped up on my periphery and it was like someone had punched a panic button. My brain was a mess, flashing through what Jimmy Hamilton and I had talked about, and then what I’d privately pieced together in case what the trainer wanted didn’t materialize. None of it fit; my first Kentucky Derby, and I was about to embarrass myself, the filly, one of the best trainers in the world, the richest woman in Kentucky, and probably my entire family tree.

Maybe this would be the thing to finally put shame on Ben’s face.

People were going to laugh, I could tell. The comments sections were writing themselves. Pacesetter forgot to leave the gate. Keep fillies where they belong… the breeding shed. So on and so forth. What had any of us been thinking? I shoved that away and focused on Suitcase City. I might not have been Jimmy Hamilton’s favorite person, but he was rarely wrong about horses. If he wanted another Derby filly and thought Suitcase City was the golden ticket, I wasn’t going to the one to prove him wrong.

The rest of the field wanted me to, though.

While I’d been freaking, squeezing a lemon that didn’t have any juice, Felix had crept up on me. She knew what she was doing, and my filly would’ve been better off with her as a rider. Let her have her third Derby win, second distaff duo, by now we were all used to Hills horses and Hills people populating the winners’ circle. It felt like she’d been glaring at me since the Fountain of Youth in February, when Suitcase City had wired the field on a very sloppy day at Gulfstream. Today wasn’t sloppy--but Arkansas Derby Day had been as dry as Jimmy’s sense of humor. His niece was tucked in outside, rock-steady, no sign of doing anything but flanking us like a police escort. She didn’t even glance at me, and Fly Pelican was an automaton, forelegs churning. He wasn’t too impressive-looking, short and a little compact for a Thoroughbred, but he knew what he was for.

I let my mind coast over the rest of the field. Ben and Sacredheart were laying fourth, stalking the pace like I knew James Hamilton had told him to. James had told him everything but the winning lotto numbers, apparently. Tallis was up front, which was weird--which, now that I thought about it, might have thrown everything off. Cain Distilled was a closer from a long line of closers, and nobody had expected early speed from him. His sire had pounded through the Preakness and Belmont in classic deep-from-behind style, and his dam had once won a dirt mile coming up from fourteen lengths back. He himself had knocked out the Florida Derby last-to-first on a track very similar to how the Downs dirt felt today. I couldn’t imagine Gwen Taylor having told Tallis to go, which meant either Tallis had finally gone around the bend--unlikely--or she knew something the rest of us didn’t.

There was Felix, my next-door neighbor, determined to make her uncle happy. All she wanted was what we all wanted. Horse racing was the fairest sport in the world when you got right down to it.

And there was Suitcase City--or actually, there she wasn’t, and that was my problem. I’d ridden her three times since the previous summer, and she was snappy. She liked to run and especially liked a straightaway like the backstretch. She usually knew just what to do with it, even if it was going to burn off once she did. She was so lazy today I might as well have been running the race myself. As we hit the second turn I shut my eyes briefly and forced myself to loosen up. If there was one thing riding with Ben--being with Ben--had done for me, it was that. He had more genuine horse sense than I ever would, didn’t need to get technical with a mount the way I did, was generally more content to let a horse run its race than I was.

It was a vice, I supposed. The best jockeys were the ones the horse didn’t notice. But Suitcase City was going to notice me today.

The field shifted. Mark Mensah and Elfshot started to lag, having set the pace instead of us, and Rodowsky made his move on the rail with Bluegrass Baby. Van Alden was whipping too early, like always. I could practically hear Felix scoff above hoofbeats and lathered breath. I snuggled down into Suitcase City’s withers and kissed to her, drawing the reins a little tighter. We still weren’t where we should have been--Felix was, Fly Pelican being more versatile--but if I could get her into gear, at least we wouldn’t be last.

Van Alden and East Meets West were going to be last. I was pretty sure we were all agreed on that point, at least.

If I couldn’t do it I wanted Ben to, and that was exactly the wrong thought. Horse races weren’t about who deserved to win; most of the time they weren’t even about which horse was fastest. The combination of factors was out of any human’s control after a certain point, and that was what drove me: the idea that maybe, someday, if I did everything exactly right, if I was knowledgeable enough and flexible enough and good enough, that race would run. The race. Ben knew better. Tallis did too--the two of them were some of the best riders I’d known for just… not giving up, but giving in. Felix usually won through sheer force of will. Ben won because he knew how to talk to horses. Tallis won because there was nothing she wanted to be doing besides racing, nothing in her mind but that horse for those two minutes.

When I won, it felt like an accident more often than not.

My whip moved, left-handed, an instinct the source of which I couldn’t pinpoint. It was still too early, really. But Suitcase City’s neck snapped forward, a sudden tension in the reins that I liked. Her stride changed from the dogged gallop I’d chivvied out of her since the gate to something recognizable, something with promise in it. It didn’t matter whether we passed enough horses in the stretch, or if the maneuver Connelly was about to try with Stripesforever succeeded in boxing us in. The filly had been running, and now she was racing.

The important thing, at the end, was that the horse had run its race.

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian one-shot - “Passive, But Still Aggressive” (Rated T)

Sebastian forgets an important anniversary. Kurt doesn't. And Kurt handles it ... well, like Kurt. (2554 words)

Read on AO3.

Sebastian pulls his Porsche into underground parking, rolling in at about five miles below the speed limit. He stays between the lines, conscientiously following the yellow arrows that lead to his assigned spot, taking his time to maneuver his car into the dead center of his space. He’s stalling, and since he’s alone, he won’t bother denying it. He seriously considers sleeping here the seven hours until morning … in his car … underground. He’d wake up with a crick in his neck and a kink in his back, but he’d deserve it.

Kurt had expected Sebastian home hours ago. They were supposed to have dinner together. They eat dinner together most every night, but Kurt had stressed the fact that tonight they needed to have dinner together. He emphasized it not only like it was important, but like Sebastian should know why it was important.

But Sebastian didn’t catch on, even when the universe itself tried to give him clues.

He misplaced his wedding ring twice today. Sebastian never misplaces his wedding ring because he never takes it off. But he had to today twice – once when he accidentally stuck his hand in maple syrup, and the second time when a blue ballpoint pen exploded in his hand. He had to take his ring off both times to clean it, and then promptly misplaced it, but only for a minute – long enough to give his heart a jolt.

That should have been the only clue he needed, but being a rather dense male, it wasn’t.

The wedding party limo that passed him on the highway, decorated with white paper bells and silver tinsel, should have been his second clue. But when Sebastian saw it, he rolled his eyes, thankful that on their wedding day, he and his husband were able to escape the reception for the airport in his Porsche instead of taking the limo that his groomsmen had decorated with hundreds of inflated condoms.

The Heppermyer’s 50th Anniversary celebration, taking place at a table not too far from his during the dinner he should have been sharing with Kurt, should have been the hammer that clobbered him over his thick skull. He even sent a bottle of champagne to the happy couple’s table, and they sent him a piece of their cake – a green tea flavored Japanese inspired confection that he thought for sure that Kurt would enjoy.

But, ironically, it didn’t.

Kurt’s uncharacteristic radio silence after two, “Where are you?” texts didn’t do it, either.

No. Unfortunately it wasn’t until Sebastian left the strip club (girl dancers only so he felt safe entertaining there) and the song “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston came on his iPod over the car’s speakers that it hit him.

When Whitney sang the verse, “I have nothing if I don’t have you,” it hit him hard.

Today (technically yesterday, but Sebastian was leaping over shock and starting in the denial stage), was his and Kurt’s fifth wedding anniversary. The wood anniversary - oddly appropriate since Sebastian Smythe was officially a humongous block head.

But instead of realizing early enough to come home and salvage the night (by the skin of his teeth the way he usually does), it’s after 1:30 a.m. when Sebastian returns home from his new client meeting.

He could have bowed out hours ago; this client in particular wasn’t that important.

Nothing’s as important as his husband.

But Sebastian was having a moment.

He was riding high on scoring a win, so to speak, which came with it a moment of, “Why do I have to answer to anybody?” and, “I’m a grown man, I’ll do what I want.” Both of those moments may have been fueled by adrenaline and alcohol, but they were still significant at the time.

“It’s only the fifth year anniversary,” Sebastian consoles himself, making the decision to leave his car, go up to their penthouse, and face the music. He feels to onset of a mild hangover coming on (mostly from the adrenaline – he only had two beers, and he’d burned those off before he got behind the wheel). Plus, he has to shower. He smells like whiskey and cigarettes, and even though he didn’t order a lap dance, he somehow managed to come home wearing glitter. “How big a deal can someone make over a wood themed anniversary?”

Sebastian apparently forgot for a second who he was married to until he opened the front door and got a great, big, cedar-scented reminder.

Positioned five feet in front of the door, so it would be the first thing Sebastian would see when he got home, sits a round table draped in a white cloth, and covered in gifts. A handful of them are wrapped, but after seeing the ones that aren’t, the ones that are simply set up on display, he’s not sure he wants to see the wrapped ones. The ones he can see are so perfect and sentimental, the wrapped ones must surely be devastating.

In the center of the table is a polished wood vase, carved with Celtic knots, with a bouquet of red paper roses inside. Sebastian knows Kurt made the roses. They’d taken an origami class together at the Museum of Natural History about a year ago. Kurt excelled at it. Every chance he got, he practiced the craft, creating swans and cranes and little nesting boxes every time his hands got bored. Sebastian, however, could only manage a frog. It hopped to the left once, landed sideways, then never hopped again.

Next to the vase, he sees a wooden photo album that has their names and wedding date burned onto the cover, along with a mandala so intricate he can only imagine it took months to create. The album doesn’t close flat, bursting with pages Sebastian knows Kurt scrapbooked himself. Beside that sits a wooden plaque, again with their names burned into it, and on individual slats below that, important dates from their relationship. For most people, it would probably start with “first date”, but Kurt has listed “first fight”, then “first date”, “first I love you”, “first time”, the day Sebastian asked Kurt to marry him, the date they got married, followed by a handful of empty slats, presumably for special dates to come (provided their marriage doesn’t end tonight). He sees a wood wine rack filled with his favorite imported beer; a hand painted sign (in Kurt’s crisp but chaotic writing) that reads – I love you. You annoy me more than I ever thought possible, but I want to spend every irritating minute with you; and a neatly constructed Jenga tower, each block of this version bearing penned words along the side describing something dirty they could do to one another – things they could have been doing to one another all night long if Sebastian hadn’t been such an imbecile.

Sebastian sighs, breathing in and catching a whiff of a final touch that might bring him to tears. While he had been munching on subpar Chicken Alfredo in a hotel restaurant, Kurt had made Sebastian’s favorite – parchment wrapped salmon and burgundy poached pears.

And for Kurt on this special day, Sebastian has only his sad self, smelling like liquor, covered in glitter, with a grand total of nothing planned. He hadn’t even remembered to stop by somewhere to pick up a pathetic apology bouquet.

Of course, he never would have imagined how much he’d have to apologize for.

Oh dear God, Sebastian thinks to himself. I really dropped the ball on this one.

Sebastian has no idea what to do – absolutely no idea. He hasn’t heard Kurt yet. Maybe he’s asleep. That would give Sebastian time to run back out and try to find him … something. But what? Anything that Sebastian could buy at a gas station or a Walmart would be an insult to the exceptional and thoughtful gifts that Kurt had obviously taken months to put together.

He could take a shower, slip into bed, and feign illness – claim that the tuna tartar he ate at lunch gave him an epic case of the shits and he was stuck at the office till just an hour ago. Then he could stay home tomorrow, email his personal shopper and tell her to break the bank, up her commission and just go gaga.

Gaga! Lady Gaga! Kurt’s still head over heels for her. And Sebastian’s heard that if you slip her foundation a couple mill, she’ll come have dinner with you. Before he can jump on his iPhone to check if that’s true, he catches a tired and unhappy Kurt peeking out from their bedroom. Sebastian’s stomach lurches, which he takes as a sign, so he goes with his gut.

“I’m sorry,” he says, rushing past the table of wonderful presents and heading towards his husband with arms outstretched. “I am so, so, so sorry. I …” He was about to say that he completely forgot, but that would be heartbreaking. “I have no excuse,” he goes for instead as Kurt slowly steps out, walking towards Sebastian with red eyes and a wobbly lower lip “I ... it’s just, I brought in a new client at work, and I was so excited, I …”

Kurt walks up to Sebastian with a mixed expression in his eyes. Sebastian doesn’t know what he’s thinking, or what he’s about to do. On one hand, Sebastian expects Kurt to break down and start crying.

On the other hand, he can also see Kurt kicking him in the balls and punching him in the nose.

“It’s been a while since I’ve brought in a new client at work,” Sebastian continues, trying to earn sympathy he doesn’t deserve. He’s telling the truth, but it feels like he’s chumping out, “and I thought …”

Kurt puts delicate fingers to Sebastian’s lips and shushes him. “Sebastian,” Kurt says in a thick voice that’s incredibly even, “I understand.”

Sebastian scrunches his nose, looking at Kurt as if he’s never seen this man before. Where���s the high-pitched wail? Where’s the crossed arms? Where’s the splotchy red cheeks? “You … you do?”

“Yes. I do,” Kurt says, tight smile notwithstanding. “I talked to your secretary. She told me everything. I know this account was important to you. And even though it’s our anniversary, and I must have reminded you that tonight was important a dozen times, it’s alright that you went out and wooed your client instead.”

“It … it is?”

“Yes.” The shadow of a scowl plays on Kurt’s lips as he runs a finger down the slope of Sebastian’s shoulder, picking up traces of glitter and sweeping it away. “It is.”

“So, we’re … we’re cool?”

“Of course, we’re cool. We’ll … just … let it lie for now, and celebrate tonight … right?” It sounds more like a threat than a compromise, but Sebastian is in no position to turn it down.

“Right,” Sebastian says. “Absolutely.” Sebastian takes Kurt’s arms, feeling bolder since Kurt’s being so lenient. “I’ll take you to your favorite restaurant, your favorite nightclub, and we’ll spend the evening living it up. Just you and me. I’ll even rent a limo.” He pulls Kurt in to his embrace and nuzzles his husband’s neck. “We can feed each other strawberries, drink some champagne … we’ll tell the driver to put the partition up, crank the music on high, and we can go for a drive … a nice long drive …”

“Sounds great.” Kurt lets Sebastian kiss him on the lips. Or it will sound great, his tone relays, after I’ve slept, and after you’ve made this up to me.

“I’m gonna go get out of my suit and take a shower,” Sebastian whispers seductively. “You wanna join me?”

“Sure. Why not?” Kurt says it, but he doesn’t sound too happy about it. “Let me just get dinner put away. We can eat it later.” Another threat, but Sebastian’s just happy this is resolving itself painlessly.

It’s a little creepy, but Sebastian’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Kurt pats Sebastian on the arm, then walks past him to the kitchen. Sebastian waits, watches Kurt go before he heads for their bedroom to take off his suit and get his pajamas. Well, that was … interesting, he thinks. He’s tempted to pat himself on the back for that one, revel in getting away from his heinous act without a scratch, but he can’t, because all he can think about is his excited husband putting together that fabulous dinner, setting up that table full of gifts, probably dressing up in one of his gorgeous designer suits, and then waiting all night for his louse of a husband to get home.

And when he didn’t, Kurt got upset. Of course, he got upset. He was livid. He cursed, called Sebastian ever name in the book. Maybe he even considered packing up a bag and going to a hotel.

He definitely cried.

And yet, here they were, preparing to take a shower together, and Sebastian can’t help feeling lucky that they’ve finally gotten to a point where Kurt doesn’t fly off the handle when Sebastian makes a mistake. Because they’re only five years into this. Sebastian’s pretty damned sure that he’s going to make plenty more mistakes.

Thankfully, Sebastian married a fair and even-tempered man.

But …

… it hasn’t always been that way, and Sebastian can’t imagine why the change, the sudden change, especially tonight. And that kind of bothers him. It feels like the calm before the storm.

So, if this is the calm, when’s the storm going to hit?

Sebastian goes to their room. He sheds his suit and hangs it in a bag, trying his best not to rain glitter all over their wood floor. He’s going to have to pay extra to get that glitter out. He sweeps up the detritus so that Kurt won’t have to see it in the morning. Hopefully a good night’s … or morning’s … sleep is all he’ll need to smooth out the rough patches that are still being rubbed raw. But Sebastian has to fix this. He has to think of something that will equal that table full of presents and all the thought that went into them.

He opens his underwear drawer. He’d normally go to sleep naked but tonight that might not be the way to go. When he pulls out a pair of briefs, he discovers that that’s a good call. The storm has hit, and the casualties are numerous.

He grabs a pair of his underwear and heads towards the kitchen. Kurt’s just about finished putting dinner away, piling Tupperware in neat stacks on the middle shelf.

Sebastian clears his throat.

“Yes?” Kurt turns. Sebastian holds up a pair of his briefs … from the hole cut in the crotch.

Kurt doesn’t acknowledge the defiled underwear, just looks straight into Sebastian’s eyes with an eerie calm.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Sebastian asks.

Kurt nods. “I’m sure,” he says, returning to his work.

“Alrighty then. We’re still cool?”

“Still cool.”

“Good,” Sebastian says, tossing his briefs into the trash. “That’s … that’s good.”

Sebastian backs away slowly to get ready for that shower.

And he’ll hide Kurt’s scissors in case anything changes.

[sailorrrvenus]

In Search of Beauty: Discovering My Place in Art as a Photographer

I’ve been taking pictures since I was 10 or 11 years old. A friend of the family noticed the bored expression on my face at the wedding of an extended family member. He was the photographer and he walked over to me, placed a large camera in my hands with a full roll of film, and asked me to help him out. I didn’t know the first thing about cameras, let alone this one. About as much as I could say for it was that it was “nice.”

After the wedding, he gingerly opened up the back of the camera, carefully pulled out the roll of film, placed it in its container and handed it to me. He told me to give it to my mother and that she would be able to print the pictures out. I remember distinctly the excitement at picking up the envelope from the Smith’s 1-hour photo and flipping through the 24 4×6’s the roll had produced.

Most were blurry, none were well-composed, most were either under or over-exposed — but I couldn’t have been happier. It was a new and fascinating experience for me, and I wanted to feel the rush that came with capturing and reproducing the vision I’d had of the event over and over again.

More than 10 years later, you can find me almost every weekend with a camera in-hand. On a usual trip, I have my camera bag loaded up with lenses, camera frames, and various other pieces of equipment — thousands of dollars worth — on some adventure. It doesn’t matter where I am going — up mountains, across oceans, or through deep canyons — the equipment goes with me. It has become almost a part of me. When I’m out, it becomes as vital as proper clothing, food, and water.

My work has come to focus primarily on landscape photography. I’ll shoot a wedding occasionally, or snap portraits of friends when asked, but I feel at my best when I’m outside, experiencing what the world has to offer through the lens of my camera. About two years ago, I began indulging in a narrower genre known as landscape astrophotography, which sets dramatic landscapes against the similarly dramatic night sky.

This particular brand of photography requires me to visit some of the most remote locales in the world. Places where the sting of artificial light won’t affect your vision or pollute the skies. In these places, the human eye will see more than a couple dozen stars, scattered across the jet-black blanket of space. Stars beyond number speckle that dark canvas — a pointillistic panorama of cosmic proportions.

I could sit staring beneath those skies for hours. Honestly, it can be difficult to convince my often-exhausted self — exhaustion aside — to go to bed. “How many people get to see skies like this?” I wonder. Emerson said it best:

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!

At a time when, for most, late-night lighting means dimly-lit apartments and brightly backlit smartphones, we’re so removed from the night sky that, even for someone like myself, it might as well be “one night in a thousand years” that I get to gaze into that breathtaking firmament — thankful to whatever gods may be for the wondrous spectacle—freely available — above my head. Awestruck, I begin to lose myself amongst those stars only to begrudgingly snap back to reality. I’ve got work to do.

I click-click-click away — gathering the photographic data that I need to compose an image. Staying up late is one thing, but often it takes 5-10 minutes per exposure to gather the deep-sky photographic data I need. To make it somewhat more stressful, moonlight has to be absent so as not to drown out the fainter light of surrounding stars. This allows for only a few days each month of good photographing. Add to that the scarcity of the night sky’s most commonly photographed subject, the Milky Way (which only appears 6-8 months out of the year and only during certain times of night), and I’ve got my work cut out for me.

I take that data home and, somewhere between my full-time job, school, social life, and other photographic projects, I spend hours post-processing the material (color corrections, clarity, white balance, exposure adjustments, composite blending, etc.) This is the work few people understand and most never witness firsthand, but in many cases, this is where I have the greatest opportunity to exercise a personal creative flair.

If the editing is done poorly, it doesn’t matter how good the location was or how clear the sky was, I’ll fail to do justice to these places and experiences I so deeply care about. It’s important for me to get it right — not only for me but for those who might look and be moved by the beauty or inspired to get out and explore the wonderful world around them.

From my digital darkroom, I take images and attempt to market them. A well-worded Instagram post with some personal thoughts, a post on Facebook, a link to my website. Logically speaking, the more people that see it, the more likely it is to be successful. If it does really well, I might sell some prints or get featured somewhere online — driving more traffic to my work. Often, however, high hopes lead to disappointment, and I try to remind myself that, ultimately, how I feel about my work is more important even than the lasting legacy of my photographs.

Still, it’s hard to ignore that voice in the back of my head that wants to be known. I already count myself as part of a rich tradition of artists and writers whose aim has always been to inspire by shedding a light on the beauty of the natural world, but I’m not sure yet that they’d count me as one of them.

When I was 17, my AP Art History teacher introduced my class to the “Hudson River School,” a group of artists whose focus was romantic landscape painting. They too were inspired by the likes of Emerson and Thoreau and using paint and canvas, they illustrated the drama of the Catskills and the Adirondacks beneath stirring skies. They wanted to show the wild-ness of wilderness, the mystery, and majesty of unconquerable Mother Earth.

As the movement spread, so did the geographic area it covered. Artists moved beyond the Hudson River and into the American West, painting as they went. Albert Bierstadt was one such artist. Born in Germany but raised in America, Bierstadt sought to bring life to the West through his painting — and he was uniquely qualified to do so. He spent years painting alpine landscapes across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and he reflected their drama in his sublime paintings of the Rockies, the Yosemite Valley, and other areas throughout the western territories. His process bore striking similarities to my own.

He visited a location and gathered raw data (in his case, preliminary sketches), he then returned home and exercised his artistic prowess while painting them on larger canvases. He often tweaked the preliminary sketches to match his vision. He drew on what had inspired him, to manifest the grandeur of a place, in addition to simply replicating its physical appearance. Afterward, he marketed heavily, seeking to spread the word about himself, his work, and the beauty that the West proffered.

Bierstadt was especially successful in his prime. So much so that, in 1863, his painting The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, sold for $25,000 — a record-breaking price.

“The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak”. Albert Bierstadt, 1863.

He experienced widespread success through the 1860s and 70s, inspiring an entire generation of Americans to make their way West in search of the beauty Bierstadt’s paintings inspired them to seek. The land they found was beautiful, but some met only disappointment — failing to see in the landscape itself what Bierstadt had seen and later attempted to portray. He was lambasted by some critics for the inaccuracy of his portrayals — they were too dramatically lit, too idyllic, too beautiful.

That critical reception later in life led to a decline in his popularity. As he grew older, he experienced little success. This misfortune was exacerbated by the untimely loss of his home, studio, and many paintings to a fire. A decade later, he lost his wife. For the last decade of his life, Bierstadt was alone, his work generated little public interest, and he had little to his name. He died in 1902, a broken man.

While his paintings hang in major museums all over the world and he remains an important figure in the history of American art, his contributions as an artist are still sometimes called into question. Sure, his paintings are beautiful, but they’re not real. They’re excessive. Not only that, some argue that Bierstadt built his career upon lies told to the American public. Perhaps, they say, he was successful not because he was an exemplary artist, but because he was a conman. He sold America a vision of the West that didn’t exist.

If those critics are right — if Bierstadt’s paintings don’t offer viewers more than false representation of a seemingly objective visual — why do the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston (the two largest art museums in the U.S.) still place Bierstadt’s paintings in places of prominence in their American collections? Is it enough for great art to be simply beautiful — as Bierstadt’s most certainly is?

I haven’t been out to photograph for a couple months — plagued by this question. Am I an artist — or simply a salesman out to earn a quick buck or some social acclaim? Does my work have value beyond being simply “nice to look at?”

For years, I’ve felt a particular kinship to Bierstadt. We share German heritage, we have a shared appreciation for nature, and we love a lot of the same places. I’ve visited the mountains he studied in Switzerland, and I recently stumbled upon paintings he’d done of the mountains right behind my childhood home. I’ve felt even more closely drawn to him as I’ve attempted to answer my own artistic dilemma by defining my love for his work.

Alps near Konigsee National Park, Austria

Location: Lone Peak, Wasatch Mountains, UT, Albert Bierstadt (Date and Title Unknown)

Somehow able to sense my artistic crisis, a friend asked me recently how I felt about photographing around the “ugly busy-ness” of over-crowded national parks or congested urban metropoles. Another criticized my astrophotography. “Human eyes”, he said, “cannot see what your camera has captured. That scene does not exist.”

Self-portrait beneath Delicate Arch, Moab, UT

It’s true that the sensor of a digital camera is capable of more (in some respects) than the human eye. Why is it then, that even when a picture whose clarity and color exceeds the potential of human senses, I find myself continually urging others to visit the places I photograph for an even greater experience?

It took me aback when I realized the experiences I had with those two friends reflected the criticisms lobbed at Bierstadt all those years ago. I replied simply to the first that the people to whom she referred usually don’t factor into the mental image I have of a particularly beautiful place. My pictures show people exclusively what I want them to see.

Jonathan Swift once said that “vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” In my situation, perhaps vision is the art of not seeing what may be impossible for others to ignore. I create a new reality from the reality that exists. Our romantic friend Emerson said “love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”

Maybe it’s not real. Maybe it’s fiction. But artistic value has always been found in the unique perspective of artists. Just ask Van Gogh or Picasso — who certainly saw things differently. I choose to see Bierstadt in this sense — as an optimist who looked and saw idealized beauty in the wild west. In the meantime, I’ll keep working to solidify my own place in that tradition.

About the author: Matthew Pockrus is a landscape photographer based in Utah and focusing on the American West. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of Pockrus’ work on his website and Instagram.

source https://petapixel.com/2018/10/22/in-search-of-beauty-discovering-my-place-in-art-as-a-photographer/