#i too would follow him across the world on a whim and twirl my ass off side stage

[yrsonpurpose]

Nicholas Galitzine as Hayes Campbell The Idea of You (2024)

[panipahr]

Hide the High Heart

(cw: violence, abuse, trauma. sexual assault is alluded to, but not directly depicted.)

To her surprise, Linawren realized that she quite likes the Beehive.

She’s not insensible to the charms of the performers themselves, of course. Bonded citizens like her are hardly their intended audience, of course-- everything that happens in the Beehive (much like everything that happens in Eulmore in general) is for the benefit of well-heeled free citizens. But gourmet cooking is more filling than meol whether or not it’s leftovers from some decadent feast for ladies and gentlemen of quality. So when Shai-Hann comes into the Beehive with Linawren on his arm-- to enjoy refined conversation, show her off to his friends, to be seen in public with a beautiful woman ornamenting his table-- Linawren is still going to take the opportunity to listen to the music, enjoy an atmosphere carefully cultivated to feel a thousand malms away from all the world’s horrors, and admire the dancers.

Especially to admire the dancers, if she’s being honest with herself.

But she also just appreciates the sort of fellowship that seemed to exist between the Honeybees. She wasn’t a Honeybee herself, obviously, but she was in more or less the same line of work, and couldn’t help but envy the sort of solidarity they enjoyed, and the way that gave them just a little bit of control over their own destinies, made them a little less at the mercy of a single patron’s whims (only a little less, granted; this was still Eulmore, after all). They looked out for one another-- and Linawren fancied that they looked after her, too, whenever she happened to be around. She spent less time worrying about Shai-Hann or one of his shitty friends taking liberties with her. She could feel confident she wouldn’t be given the truly demeaning things that might be asked of her at more private engagements.

Tonight, the Beehive is quiet. It’s late enough that most of the guests have already filtered out. Someone is lazily playing a piano, more just to set a certain tone than perform a recognizable piece of music. Linawren’s reciting a poem for Shai-Hann and a couple of his friends-- Harald, a hume, a childhood friend of Hann’s who’s grown up to be every bit as coldhearted and spoiled as Hann himself and a lanky elf she didn’t recognize but whose name, apparently, was Godwyn. All three men are watching her intently, rapt with attention.

The poem in question-- Ode to the Night Sky-- is supposedly a relic of whatever far-flung land-- long since devoured by the Light-- Linawren’s distant ancestors came from before they arrived in Voeburt. Actually, though, it’s her own composition. Free citizens like feeling that they’re in on a secret, though, so Linawren puts as much effort into the tales of where her tales come from as she does into the tales themselves. All she really knows about her supposed homeland comes from her own fading memories of her mother and father, and all they had to work with was second-hand accounts of their grandparents’ childhood memories: A song or two. A few basic dance-steps. A scattering of contextless words of a language irretrievably lost. But when Hann became her patron, he was under the impression that he now possessed the world’s sole practitioner of an exotic cultural tradition scoured from the world by the Flood of Light. Linawren wasn’t about to disabuse him of this notion-- selling him that fantasy was part of what kept her from being sent back into a shack in Gatetown with nothing to look forward to but just enough meol to starve more slowly.

Anyway, she likes writing. She was particularly proud of Ode to the Night Sky-- trying to vividly evoke a world she’d never seen for herself was a fascinating challenge. When she closed her eyes, though, she could practically see it-- a wide and wild void, openness itself, decorated with a thousand thousand pinpricks of light, cradling the pale circle of the moon. Writing was transportive-- a chance to project herself into a time or a place better than the one she lived in, even if in the end she had to attribute her work to some long-dead and mostly fictitious ancestor.

When she finally finishes, the whole table fell silent for a few moments. Godwyn is moved to tears-- Linawren isn’t sure if he was actually that affected by her words, or if he just sees some advantage in appearing to be of sufficiently sensitive temperament to be so moved by poetry, but she doesn’t particularly care-- either possibility meant she’s earning her keep. Harald, as usual, is just trying to look down her top, but at least he’s not actually talking to her. Hann affects cool nonchalance, as if to say this is the sort of artistry I take for granted, but he has enough of an air of smugness for Linawren to know he was pleased.

Hann breaks the silence. “Beautiful as always, my treasure.”

She takes a bow, pointedly ignoring how carefully Harald’s eyes track her movement. She smiles warmly at the men. Learning how to smile the right way is a skill every bit as important to Linawren as singing, dancing, or writing. Free citizens can spot a fake smile that doesn’t reach one’s eyes from malms away, and they feel insulted by it-- they want you to be genuinely grateful to be in their presence. So she smiles-- encouragingly to Godwyn, coquettishly to Harald, knowingly to Hann.

“So!” Godwyn says, “Shall we call it a night, gentlemen?”

Harald groans. “Do we have to? Waiting for your eyes to adjust once you go out into the light after spending so long in here is quite disagreeable, and frankly I’d rather put it off as long as possible.”

“Not like we’ve got anywhere to be,” Hann says, laughing, “Why don’t we prolong the night’s festivities with a bit of friendly wagering, eh? Hide the High Heart, maybe?”

Linawren doesn’t actually look longingly at the bar-- her smile never falters-- but she does so in spirit. She’s going to be stuck here for hours, probably. Whenever Hann gambles, he expects Linawren to perform-- to distract his opponents enough to keep them off-balance enough for Hann to get the upper hand, but not so much they realize that’s what she’s doing.

So while Hann pulls out a deck of cards and shuffles it, Linawren does a few stretches. When he deals the first hand, she begins to dance, an enticing twirl of flowing silks and lean muscles.

***

It is hours later-- if the sun could still be discerned through the thick soup of light blotting out the sky, Linawren supposes it would have long since risen.

It has been a disastrous night for Shai-Hann. Maybe it’s because Godwyn is an unfamiliar opponent-- Hann hadn’t taken his measure yet, hadn’t learned his tells. Maybe it’s because Harald is sick of being cleaned out every time the cards come out. Or maybe it was just plain bad luck. Whatever the reason, though, the mystel gentlemen has been hemorrhaging money in hand after hand. He quickly burns through the sack of gil he’d set aside for gambling, followed by the rest of the gil he’d brought along, and then anything else of value he had on his person— his lucky Voeburtite goldpiece. An electrum pocket-watch. The elven rapier he always wore at his hip.

Godwyn keeps his head above water and calls it quits after he’d turned a tidy profit-- he didn’t want to stay this late anyway, so he had no reason not to just take his windfall of gil and go. Harald, though, smells blood. He’s amassed a veritable treasury of Hann’s possessions on his table, coins and jewelry and golden bric-a-brac glittering in the lamplight. The two gamblers are locked in a death struggle-- the more Hann loses, the more urgently he tries to win it all back, the more recklessly he bets. Harald extracts the deed to Hann’s private airship berth, then the airship itself, then a series of promissory notes for increasingly astronomical sums.

“You should probably just cut your losses at this point, Hann,” Harald says, watching intently as Hann signs yet another check and slides it across the card table.

“One more hand,” Hann says, insistent.

“What, so you can write me some more bloody I.O.U.s?” Harald scoffs, “Past a certain point, gil’s just a number in a ledger somewhere. I don’t really feel the need to stake any of this on the possibility of that number getting a bit higher. At this point, I feel like some sort of… mercy rule, or what have you, ought to be invoked. To save you from yourself.”

Linawren is still performing half-heartedly, but she can tell neither man is paying much attention to her at this point. She gives her patron an appraising look; she can practically see the gears turning in his head as he works out what he could still bet that a.) wouldn’t run the risk of actually putting a dent in his obscene wealth compared with the vast majority of people in Norvrandt, but more importantly, b.) actually entice Harald into playing another hand.

To Linawren’s surprise, Hann meets her gaze. The look in his eyes is cold and calculating, even by Shai-Hann standards. He then directs that baleful gaze towards Harald, but Harald barely seems to notice-- his own attention seems to be fixed firmly on Linawren’s ass.

“I’ll bet Linawren,” Hann says, finally.

Linawren stops dancing mid-step. Through a superhuman effort, she manages to keep her face arranged into a pleasant expression-- she’s a professional, after all-- but she’s still visibly stunned.

“What?” Harald says, laughing.

“I know you’ve taken a liking to her ever since I took her on,” Hann says, “So if you stake the pot, I’ll stake her. I win, I get my things back. You win, I sign over the papers and she’s your bonded citizen.”

“Deal!” Harald says brightly, not hesitating a bit.

“Are… are you sure about this, Hann?” Linawren murmurs into Hann’s ear.

“Shut up,” he hisses, sweat beading on his forehead, “You’re distracting me.”

Harald winks at her.

As Hann deals the cards, Linawren can feel a cold, dead weight settling in the pit of her stomach. By the time Hann and Harald are ready to flip their last card, she’s standing stock-still, her heart is pounding. She felt as if all her scales were about to just vibrate off her body.

Hann flips first. It’s the ten of hearts-- a fairly respectable draw, all-in-all. Hearts trump the other suits in Hide the High Heart, so unless Harald has a hearts face card, the hand goes to Hann.

So of course Harald flips over the Lord of Hearts.

Like most decks of cards designed and printed in Eulmore, the Lord of Hearts is rendered in the image of the city’s honored leader, patron of patrons, Vauthry. Whatever bonded illustrator drew this tried so hard to flatter Vauthry with their likeness that it barely resembled the man himself-- he was an avenging angel with flowing golden locks, flanked by docile sin eaters in the form of semi-nude women with alabaster skin and golden blindfolds. With one hand, he’s dispensing a cornucopia of meol to the huddled masses of Kholusia. In the other, he’s plunging a spear of pure light into an allegorical figure representing the forces of darkness who would destroy the concord between man and sin eater which made all of Eulmore’s wonders possible. But the angel was still recognizable as Vauthry because it had the same insufferably smug air about him.

Linawren stares at the table. Vauthry’s awful smug fucking face stares back at her.

“Well,” Harald says, leaning back in his chair, “Suppose that’s that, then.”

Hann sulkily begins to gather up the scattered cards. “That’s that,” he says.

Linawren takes a stumbling step backwards, eyes casting about the Beehive, looking for-- help? Sympathy? Anything, really. But no one present-- not even the Honeybees-- deigns to even meet her eye.

“I’ll need to dig out her papers to make it official,” Hann says, “The Bureau of Registration will pitch a fit otherwise.”

“Fair,” says Harald, magnanimous in victory, “Remember that time I forgot to let them know I’d turfed out-- what’s his name, that fellow who did those little engravings of seascapes-- and within a day half the guard was out looking for him in case he was lurking in the bowels of the Understory, a rebel or an assassin or whatever. I can pick her up tomorrow morning, if you’d like?”

“All right,” Hann mumbles.

“One last night with her, eh?” Harald says, “Since you’ve been such a good sport about this.”

“Wow,” says Hann, unimpressed, “Thanks.”

***

Shai-Hann’s suite, perched atop the loftiest heights the Canopy has to offer, was decorated with the same gaudy abandon everything else in Eulmore was. Every table, every chair, every embroidered cushion and silk bedsheet, every porcelain plate and silver fork was a concrete manifestation of the blood, sweat, and tears of the bonded citizens upon whose backs Eulmore was built.

Hann was sitting at his desk (built by a bonded carpenter), dipping an ornate fountain pen (forged by a bonded silversmith) into a dainty-looking bottle of ink (made by a bonded glassblower) as he looked over the pile of forms and papers (filled out by a squadron of bonded clerks) which constituted the legal existence of Linawren, dancer, singer, and poet, bonded citizen of Eulmore.

He notices that Linawren is standing behind him, fidgeting apprehensively. He rises from his seat, turning to face her. The dazzling light pouring in from the window behind him throws his features into sharp relief-- the tufts of hair on his ears, his bright silver eyes, his classically handsome face. His tail swished this way and that in agitation.

“You know I wish I didn’t have to do this, my treasure,” he says, sadly.

“You don’t, though--” Linawren says. She hates how much she sounds as if she’s pleading, but she hates the idea of being sent into Harald’s household more. “Can’t you just-- you know-- call off the bet? I don’t think bets made at the Beehive at four in the morning whilst extraordinarily inebriated are legally enforceable--”

“If word gets around I don’t pay my debts, no gambling table this side of the Sea of Light’ll have me. So, as much as I really do value your company, as much as I’ve genuinely treasured our time together, I can’t back out of a bet just because I really want to.”

“If you value me so much,” Linawren says, trying her hardest to keep any anger from seeping into her voice, “why did you bet me in a hand of Hide the High Heart?”

Hann shrugs. “Ah, my treasure… you can’t gamble without gambling,” he says, as if this explains everything.

“Harald is clearly a boor,” Linawren says, changing tack, “Do you really think he’d appreciate me like you do? You’re a man of culture, of refinement, an appreciator of literature and the arts. His interests are considerably more… base. I--”

Hann stiffens. “Watch your tone. Whatever my opinion of the man, he’s a gentleman of quality and a free citizen of good standing. Someone like you has no right to refer to him like that.”

Linawren takes a step towards her patron, hands balled into fists so tightly that the fingernails digging into her palms draw blood.

“Remember that your presence in this city is a privilege which has been graciously extended to you by the free citizenry,” says Hann, fangs bared, his tone venomous. Behind him, the pitiless sky continued to blaze with light. “In return, your responsibility is to do whatever is required of you without question. Or would you like to go back to Gatetown?”

Linawren freezes in place. She feels her immediate surroundings slough away; Hann’s voice is nothing but a murmur of white noise. She’s somewhere else entirely. She feels the sharp terror of eaters swooping down from the sky, the grinding pain of constant hunger no meager ration of meol could banish. She sees her mother, hears her last words as she pressed a dagger into her daughter’s trembling hands. She feels the weight of decades with nothing to hope for but this bearing down on her. She--

The world snaps back into focus-- an opulent study, a bay window with a splendid prospect of Kholusia’s white cliffs, a stack of papers authorizing a man to trade her away like a bird in a gilded cage, and the man about to do it. “If Harald wants you to lick his boots, you should do it and feel grateful for the opportunity to earn your keep. If he asks you to lick something else, you—”

Linawren shoulder-checks him into the window. She’s stronger than she looks, with a dancer’s speed and a dancer’s grace.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he says, flailing as Linawren presses him against the glass, “Let go of me, you crazy bitch—”

The window shatters. Its fine glass and slim panes were built to look pretty, not stand up to sustained force; it had been a century since a storm last marred Kholusia’s brilliant sky.

Hann, desperate now, grabs hold of Linawren. He kicks and screams. He sinks his teeth into Linawren’s bared shoulder. She knees him in the groin and suddenly his hands have nowhere to gain purchase but empty air.

The highest levels of the Canopy to the choppy seas below is a long, long way to fall; a sharp cry fades into silence, punctuated by a quiet splash.

Linawren stares out the broken window, aghast. Her eyes are wide and she’s shaking like a leaf. The pale blue speck that used to be Shai-Hann, free citizen of Eulmore is caught in the riptide and swept out to sea.

Linawren exhales sharply. She sinks onto the ground; she realizes too late that she’s kneeling in the broken glass littering the parquet floor, but by this point the pain barely registers.

I just killed someone, she thinks.

I just killed my patron, she thinks.

She scrambles towards the window on all fours, leans over the edge, and throws up.

***

Darkness.

A dark room-- impossibly dark-- lit only by a paper lantern. A drahn woman sits-- no, kneels-- at a low desk. She’s writing something with a brush in an elegant, vertical script Linawren can’t read. The woman turns towards the lamp and her features are illuminated by a soft, warm light. She has Linawren’s face.

Brightness-- not the choking light of the skies Linawren knows, but a wide blue expanse punctuated by fluffy white clouds. The landscape below is endless rolling green steppes, continuing as far as the eye can see. Endless-- receding into the horizon, with no great wall of Nothing constricting it. She sees the drahn woman again, her red silk robe billowing in the wind, wielding a thin, curved blade. The expression on her face is impossibly confident. Across from her stands another drahn. She has dark skin, close-cropped white hair, black scales and horns, an improbably large greatsword in her hands.The women move towards one another, swords flashing in the sunlight. They look to be fighting a duel, but both thoroughly enjoying themselves. Eventually, the other woman knocks Linawren’s twin to the ground, and gently-- tenderly, almost-- places her boot on her face. They both burst out laughing.

A steel cell in a steel fortress. The woman who looks like Linawren is sitting cross-legged in one corner. Her expression is blank, but her eyes defiant. The door flies open. The corpse of a soldier in black armor clatters onto the metal floor. The woman with the pale hair strides into the corridor, her sword slick with blood. The woman in the cell grins ear to ear.

An impossibly huge city. The stars above echoed by a constellation of lights below. Linawren-- or whoever she is-- is standing on a high, arched bridge in a garden. The duel’s victor approaches, a swaddled infant in her arms. They both look a little older, now.

They’re standing on the deck of a ship. Linawren’s holding the child, this time. She now has a long, thin scar cutting through the scales on the side of her face and neck. Her companion is next to her, a hand on Linawren’s shoulder. The familiar silhouette of the spires of Eulmore looms over the horizon, but they’re somehow more austere-looking, more severe. The decks on the lower levels are bustling-- even from this distance, dozens of ships seem to be coming and going. Soldiers in red uniforms are crowding around the side of the ship, excited for their first glimpse of home in months--

The color red. The color blue. The color black. The color gold.

***

Linawren opens her eyes, groggy and disoriented. She looks up at Shai-Hann’s antique clock-- she’s lost an hour or so, somehow. The shining sky framed by broken panes and shattered glass betrays no sign of time passing.

For the first time since she was ushered out of Gatetown and into Eulmore, she doesn’t know what her life will look like a month from now.

Or a week from now.

A day, an hour.

But what she does know is that if she sticks around here, the question of what happens in the rest of her life will be moot.

Unsteadily, she gets to her feet and slips out the door.

[artificialqueens]

intents wicked or charitable (trixya) 2/10 - beanierose

AN: thanks as always to validation station, you ladies are my sun, moon and stars and i love you dearly. and thank you stutter for looking this over for me and gently coaxing my two brain cells into actually functioning. you have my heart in your hands and there’s no one i’d trust with it more.

(read on ao3) | (find me at katiehoughton)

[one.]

a practical magic au for the spooky season. there’s a curse on any man who dares love you? love a woman, instead. | 5,443 words

In Los Angeles, Trixie had been a night owl. She had to be — sometimes service at the restaurant wasn’t over until nearly two in the morning — but it doesn’t come naturally to her. Since she moved here, she’s been ruled largely by a circadian rhythm that makes her start yawning almost as soon as the sun goes down. It feels like she ought to be going to bed, but she doesn’t need to yet. There’s time.

She gathers up her spoils in both hands and brings everything through to the bathroom, sets it all carefully down on the countertop. Trixie strips out of her jeans and washes her face, ties her hair back. Every day the thought of cutting it all off seems more and more appealing.

The little tub of aloe lotion has the Verbena logo on the lid and Trixie smoothes her thumb over it. It’s adorable. Everything in the whole store was adorable, including (especially) Katya. Trixie scoops a little of the lotion out of the jar and dots it over her skin, takes her time working it in with the pads of her fingers. Her face feels instantly cooler and she hums a small noise, gets an inquisitive head tilt from Dolly.

In bed, Trixie slides her sock feet back and forth beneath the sheets and tries very hard not to squirm. She’s propped the card with Katya’s telephone number against the base of the phone on her nightstand. It’s not quite eight and she feels good, sleepy and soft but not tired yet. She wants to talk to Katya, and the longer she’s been out here alone in this house the more accustomed she’s become to giving herself whatever she wants.

The line rings five times and Trixie is just beginning to resign herself to the fact that Katya might not pick up when she does, breathless. Trixie closes her eyes, can’t quite look that in the face just yet. Katya says her own name, her surname a flash of consonants and vowels all jostling for attention.

“Hi. It’s Trixie. From earlier today.”

“Trixie!” Katya sounds so thrilled, like there is nobody else in the whole world she’d rather be hearing from. “Hello. I was thinking you weren’t going to call.”

Trixie offers up the truth, knowing that it sounds like a lie. “I’ve had a busy afternoon.”

She gets a little noncommittal noise right into her ear for that. Trixie’s fingers are tight around the phone and she twirls the cord in her other hand, stretching it taut and then letting it spring back into a coil again over and over.

“Did you have any more customers?”

“One or two,” Katya says. She doesn’t sound resigned about it. Her voice has the same calm loveliness that she had the whole time Trixie was at Verbena, even when they were cleaning egg off of the windows together. “It’s the Saturday lull.”

Trixie snorts. “The Saturday lull. Right. And you have what, the Wednesday morning rush?”

“It is not up to me to dictate the whims of the good folk of this town, Tracy.”

It’s amazing how she can do that. Call them good folk even though they make their distaste for her readily apparent. Trixie isn’t like that. She likes to think that she’s a good person, but she certainly isn’t nice. Not in the way that Katya is, like it doesn’t cost her anything.

“Sure.”

“People do buy things. I’m not about to go down, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

A retort about how much she would love Katya to go down dies on the tip of Trixie’s tongue. She is making no pretences about how hot she thinks Katya is, not even to her own self, but after everything with Bob she feels raw and exposed as a split fig. It’s not a good idea to get into something now.

“Thank you again. For the stuff.” It seems like a safe thing to say. Trixie lets herself slip down against the pillows a bit more until she’s lying nearly flat. She turns onto her side and brings her knees up so that the parenthetical of her body is angled towards the telephone on the nightstand.

Katya chuckles low in her throat and Trixie has to press her thighs together. “Mama, you are welcome to help yourself to my stuff any time.”

Her face is getting hot again. Trixie turns out the light beside the bed and plunges the room into darkness. It’s overcast tonight and the moon is like a streetlamp burning through the mist.

“Do you live close to town?” Trixie asks. Do you see this same moon?

There are noises in the background like stirring. It seems a little late for dinner, but Trixie likes the thought of Katya standing at the stove with her sweater pushed up past her elbows again, or maybe stripped off over her head so that her hair is even funkier and more staticky.

“I sure do. I’m out on Long Point. I can see the store across the cove.”

Trixie indulges herself in a long moment of imagining Katya standing on the cliff’s edge, the wind whipping her hair and skirt out sideways from her body. She thinks of her keeping watch for the incandescent lick of fire into the night’s dark mouth. It’s maudlin and not at all appropriate for what she knows of Katya so far, but she has found herself drawn to melancholy lately.

They chat for a little while longer. When Trixie hangs up the phone she feels the grip of Katya’s hands in her chest, tugging her open to peer inside. And she finds that she learned almost nothing about Katya. She agreed to come back to the store on Monday without stopping to consider what that might mean.

When she rolls over Dolly is watching her with her long snout resting on both paws. She has a wise face; that was the reason Trixie was drawn to her at the shelter, the reason she brought her home the very next day. Bob never liked her all that much, used to say that it freaked her out that Dolly looks like she understands exactly how hard it is to be a person. Trixie kisses the velvet fur between the dog’s eyes and gets a lick to the chin in response. The candle Katya gave her is on the nightstand and it makes her bedroom smell like the store.

In the morning she doesn’t remember falling asleep and her body aches from disuse. She’s still on her stomach and she groans, rolls over onto her back. It’s like she hasn’t moved an inch all night and neither has Dolly; the spots where she and the dog have been lying are an archipelago of warm patches in the cool sheets. Trixie uses the bathroom and washes her hands, lifts her eyes to see herself in the mirror over the sink.

For the first time since she moved here, all of the redness is gone from her skin. Her face is smooth and pale, dotted with freckles across the bridge of her nose. She makes a little mental note to say thank you to Katya again. She looks five years younger, and her hands are much softer too.

All of Sunday she is jittery and impatient. It makes her more curt with the animals than she likes. She’s snippish with Cash and Guthrie when she has to coax them down from the bed of the truck again. The previous owners of the house warned her that they — like all goats — enjoy being on top of the highest thing in their immediate surroundings. It isn’t the first time they’ve managed to get up onto Trixie’s car. She spots Cash with his two front hooves up on the roof of the cab and she hurries outside to pull him down, has to herd the both of them back into their pen.

Dolly can sense the nervous energy rolling off of Trixie in waves. She follows her around all day and when Trixie settles in for the evening with a book Dolly climbs right into her lap on the couch. She props her glasses up on top of her head and leans down to fuss over the dog.

“Sorry, baby. Mama’s a little strung out today, huh?”

No one is here, so Trixie lets the dog lick her face, and she peppers kisses all over her snout and sniffs her paws and scratches her belly until her legs kick. Trixie puts them both to bed and lies for a long time in a wonderfully tender ecstasy of anticipation. She gets to see Katya tomorrow. After only two conversations, she is looking forward to it so much.

Maybe she’s projecting some things. She has been achingly lonely these last few weeks, now that the novelty of her solitude is beginning to wear off. Katya’s has been the first kind face that she’s seen in months. When she first saw her, when their eyes met, some small part of her came awake. She’s felt an instant connection with a couple of people in her life before, like Kim, but never quite like this.

She is to be at the store for one o’clock in the afternoon, so that she can spend Katya’s lunch hour with her, and she spends the entire morning in a paroxysm of self-doubt. She wears a pair of russet jodhpurs because they have a high waist and she likes the way it makes the fabric pull taut around the curve of her ass. For a while she wanders around the bedroom in just her bra and then settles on a long sleeved tee in her favourite soft pink. She is preening for Katya, absolutely she is, but she’s doing her best not to look like it.

For the drive, Trixie keeps the windows rolled all the way up. She would like to whoop and holler out of them, because she’s driving into town to see a pretty girl who likes her and she feels sixteen and like she has pulled off the impossible. It’s not worth the risk to her hair, which she is wearing down in loose curls that are made static by her scarf. Trixie parks right outside of Verbena this time, in the spot Katya assured her would be open.

Katya is waiting at the counter and when she sees Trixie she hops up and down a couple of times like a sparrow and waves. Trixie jumps down from the cab of the truck without using the step and enjoys the little zap of awareness that shoots up through her thighs and into her pelvis when both of her feet hit the hard ground.

“Hi, good morning, good afternoon, hello,” Katya says when Trixie comes inside. She reaches around Trixie to flip the sign hanging on the door from open to closed, and flip the lock as well. The solid thunk of the snib sliding home makes Trixie’s stomach roll over. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I’m starving.”

“I’m always hungry.” Trixie unwinds her scarf and puts it into Katya’s waiting hands.

It gets hung carefully on the coat stand and then Katya reaches for her hand to bring Trixie into the tiny break room with her. Everywhere their skin touches is crackling. Trixie wishes she could see Katya interacting with somebody else, so that she could know whether this is just a Katya thing or whether it’s because she wants to be touching Trixie, specifically.

Katya has sandwiches for them both and she opens a bag of chips and peels it right down the middle so she can lay it out flat between them. The table back here is tiny and there’s only one chair, which Katya insisted that Trixie have. She’s sitting on an overturned crate and it puts her much lower down so that her chin is almost resting on the tabletop.

Their knees keep bumping together in the tight space. Katya talks with her mouth full and takes much longer than Trixie to be finished eating. Once she is she gathers up all of their trash and puts it in the garbage can, turns back around to look at Trixie with her hands on her hips.

“Oh!” Her face cracks apart around a grin and she disappears into the store, apparently assuming that Trixie will follow. Which she does, of course. Katya is rummaging in her enormous, hideous purse and she pulls a small container out and crows in triumph. “Here. For when your back is hurting.”

On the phone on Saturday night, Trixie had rolled over awkwardly and made a small, accidental noise of discontent. It had been humiliating and her cheeks had burned crimson as Katya had babied her over the line, asking her to say where it hurts the most.

“How much?” Trixie pulls her wallet out and thumbs through the handful of bills inside. There’s silence, and when she looks up again Katya is chewing on her bottom lip and getting red all over her teeth.

“It doesn’t have a price. I don’t sell it. I, uh…made it specially. For you.”

Trixie sucks in a breath and feels her cheeks hollowing out around it. People don’t do these sorts of things. Not for her. She is curmudgeonly so much of the time, knows that she can be ornery. Often in the kitchen she would find herself shouting at her sous-chef and the busboys and anybody who came near her. Bob was the only one ever brave enough to shout right back. That was a big part of the reason why Trixie let Bob back her up against the prep counter after close and unbutton each of the six buttons of her whites one at a time like shucking oysters.

“Please let me pay you.”

Katya wrinkles her nose. “I can’t. If you pay me then it becomes a crime.”

“Shut up!” Trixie squawks, and shoves on Katya’s shoulder. She’s laughing too, pleased with herself, and she pushes the little tub into Trixie’s hands. “It’s not a crime, I never solicited you.”

“Pour half a cup into the stream of the water when you’re drawing your bath, and soak for at least twenty minutes,” Katya says sternly. She pokes her finger into Trixie’s chest and Trixie’s whole self unravels around that one point of contact.

Trixie holds the container in both hands and smooths her thumb over the logo on the lid. “I’m still not convinced you’re not trying to kill me.”

“I like my victims to present a challenge. You’re way too easy. Just taking whatever I give you.”

“I never professed not to be a bottom,” Trixie shrugs.

It makes Katya choke out a delighted guffaw and she shakes both fists in the air. She is so cute that Trixie hardly knows what to do with herself. They never made plans past lunch, but she wants to stay here. She’s going to stay here, going to make Katya kick her out.

There’s a little stool behind the register and Trixie settles herself on it, prim and proper and legs crossed at the knee. Katya busies herself reorganising the shelves and sweeping the floor, but she keeps darting these little glances at Trixie and doesn’t seem to care at all that Trixie catches her at it each time.

The music is turned way up and everything is weird and a lot of it is in a language Trixie assumes to be Russian. Katya sings along sometimes, loud and off-key but so enthusiastic that Trixie wishes she knew the words too and could join in. Nobody comes in to the store all afternoon. Plenty of people walk by, and at one point a little kid presses their face up against the window with their tongue out. Trixie thinks of the egg residue on the glass and huffs a little laugh of vindication on Katya’s behalf.

It gets dark right as Katya is closing the store. All afternoon they’ve been talking and laughing, and Trixie has even made herself useful and run the duster along the shelves that are too high for Katya to reach easily. She stretched up on tiptoe to do it even though there really wasn’t any need for that, and she felt Katya’s gaze on her the entire time.

“I absolutely understand if the answer is no, but would you like to come have dinner with me?” Katya is chewing anxiously on her bottom lip again, and Trixie can’t fathom how her lipstick ever makes it through the day.

She says yes immediately, without thinking, and then has to backpedal. “Or, well. I would like to. But I have to go home.”

“The animals.” Katya snaps her fingers, leaves her fist hovering in the air for a long moment. “Right. Damn.”

The bones of Trixie’s butt are numb when she hops down from her stool. It’s making her hyper aware of everything between her knees and her waist. She smoothes her palms down the lengths of her thighs to iron out any creases. Dolly will be aching to go out and use the bathroom by now, and the whole cacophonous lot of them are going to want to be fed.

“You could come home with me? I can feed you.”

“You’re gonna feed me?” Katya rakes her eyes up and down Trixie’s frame. She is suddenly so aware of all the places that she isn’t wiry and slender, all of the curves of her that spill out all over. Katya’s mouth isn’t smiling but her eyes are.

Trixie shrieks and shoves on Katya’s shoulder. “You know I cook, you dumb whore. I told you I’m a chef.”

“You told me you ran away from being a chef,” Katya says flatly.

Trixie manages a strangled noise of affront, but Katya is already swanning away from her. She ducks into the break room for her coat and hat and comes back out struggling her way into them. Her elbow cracks against the doorframe so loudly that Trixie feels it in the roots of her teeth, but Katya doesn’t even react. She takes Trixie’s scarf from where it’s hanging on the coat stand and loops it around her neck, holding on to both of the ends.

Their faces are so close together that Trixie can smell Katya’s gum. She lets her eyes flutter slowly closed, waiting for Katya to use her grip on the two ends of the scarf to tug Trixie in and kiss her. Her heart is a thing with feathers flitting up from her chest into her throat.

Katya doesn’t do it. Instead, she lets go of the scarf completely and takes a step back from Trixie, jams both hands down into the pockets of her coat. Her shoulders are rounded, up in defence.

They don’t talk much on the drive to the house. Katya keeps fiddling with all of the knobs on the dash, flicking through the radio stations without actually pausing to hear what any of them are playing. She’s pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged, which Trixie finds peculiar to do in a car, but she enjoys the crest of Katya’s knee in her periphery whenever she turns to check her blind spots.

Trixie jogs up the steps with her keys in her fist and unlocks the back door, lets Dolly come barrelling out. The dog disappears off around the side of the house, because she hates to be watched while she pees, which Trixie can relate to. She dumps her coat and scarf inside on the bench and comes back out to see Katya down on her knees in the earth.

“Trixie, this is amazing. You live here?”

“Shh! No. Don’t let them hear you.” She turns to look over her shoulder, up at the second floor windows. “They haven’t caught me yet. I think they think I’m a cryptid.”

When she turns back around Katya’s cheeks are pink with barely-suppressed amusement. She’s got her fingers buried in the dirt of Trixie’s vegetable beds and she sifts through it, brings a handful up to her face to smell. Trixie hovers awkwardly next to her, unenthusiastic about getting down on the ground but not wanting to move away from Katya, either.

“What are you growing?”

“Aside from annoyed?” Trixie lifts both eyebrows. “Carrots, zucchini. I’d love parsnips but they’re difficult.”

Katya brings her hands out of the earth and brushes them together, but doesn’t seem too bothered by the soil beneath her fingernails and up past her wrists like tide marks. “Everything’s pretty phallic, mama. You compensating for something?”

“Oh, Katya, my dick is so small,” Trixie sighs, and presses the back of her hand to her forehead like she’s standing at a dock watching a ship draw out of port and she could begin wailing at any moment.

It earns her the exact screaming, staccato burst of laughter from Katya that she’d been hoping for. She gets to her feet and shakes herself off a bit but leaves the dirt staining her bare knees. She’s wearing a dress today that has sleeves but leaves most of her toned, pale legs on show. All day, Trixie has found herself looking, over and over. Has found herself unable to stop.

Inside, Trixie has to turn on the faucet for Katya so she doesn’t get dirt on it. They wash their hands side by side at the kitchen sink, jostling with each other for space beneath the stream of the water. Katya shucked her ankle boots at the door (they are black with stars and moons embroidered all over them in gold thread and Trixie is obsessed) and she’s padding around the kitchen in her red wool socks now, suddenly another inch or so shorter than Trixie.

She insists on making herself useful. Trixie sets her to work chopping all of the vegetables. She’s made nervous by Katya’s lax attitude towards the knife, the way she gesticulates wildly with it while she talks. Dolly hovers around their feet hoping for scraps and Katya keeps stopping to scratch her behind the ears. It’s definitely a hygiene violation, and Trixie keeps having to remind herself that this is not a professional kitchen. This is her home, and Katya is in it.

“About your tiny dick,” Katya gestures out of the window with the knife. Trixie grunts and takes it from her, dumps it into the sink to wash later. “I have a fertilizer mix that I use. I could bring some over for you? Well, you’d have to come and get it. I don’t drive.”

“You want to fertilise my garden?” Trixie keeps her voice carefully flat, even though her hips are twitching and she’s curling her toes inside of her too-big socks.

Katya either misses the innuendo entirely, or is gracious enough not to acknowledge how Trixie is fumbling with it in both hands. “Yeah! I don’t grow veggies, mostly just houseplants, but I think it’ll still be good.”

“Okay. Yeah. That’d be great.”

“Did you hear that, milaya devushka?” Katya is down on her knees on the kitchen floor with Dolly’s head captured between both hands. The dog’s entire body is wagging, thrilled with the attention from a new person. “Your mommy is going to let me fertilise her.”

Okay. Well. She didn’t miss the innuendo, then.

Trixie runs the water in the sink again, her back to Katya, and holds her wrists beneath the cold stream for a moment. Just to stop the insistent pulse of blood in her ears and hands and thighs. When she shuts it off Katya is right beside her, and she’s smiling.

“Do you need help?”

“Not with dinner.”

That makes Katya snort and she gives Trixie a little space, stands with her arms folded neatly in front of her. The picture of obedience, but Trixie can’t stop watching how she’s working her fingers, curling and flexing them against her bicep.

“How can I help you, Tracy?”

She swallows down the knot of electric want in her throat. “Do you wanna feed the chickens?”

Katya lets out an actual yell of delight at the suggestion. She does as she’s told, disappearing off into the mudroom. Trixie calls out instructions and hears Katya opening cabinets, scooping mix into the feeder. She holds it out in the doorway for Trixie to look at and confirm it’s the correct amount, and then the back door opens. Trixie can see her from the kitchen window. The galoshes she’s borrowing from Trixie are a bit too big and she clomps her way around the yard.

The chickens have a bad habit of flapping up into the face of whoever has the misfortune of setting the feeder down among them. Usually Trixie lets the dog outside while she does this so Dolly can herd them, keep them back at least a bit. Katya seems entirely unbothered, even when Faith hops up onto her bent thigh and sticks her beak directly into Katya’s ear.

She turns to see Trixie at the window and grins like a little kid, waves energetically at her. Once dinner is ready Trixie has to go to the back door and call out to her to let her know. She comes inside more dishevelled than before, her hair sticking up in places because Reba likes to pull on it. Trixie hip checks Katya over towards the sink to wash her hands again, leaves her there while she sets two places at the table.

Trixie lights a few candles and doesn’t turn on the overhead lamp, lets the light from the kitchen do most of the work. Outside it is just beginning to rain and Trixie cracks open a couple of the windows in the dining nook so that they’ll be able to hear it. Katya settles across from Trixie at the table and rests her hands either side of her bowl to warm them. Her fingers are red, knuckles cracked and raw like she’s scrubbed too hard trying to get all of the dirt off. She has a tiny streak of it on her cheekbone, but Trixie is not about to point that out to her.

Now that they’re here, eating dinner together with Dolly circling the table, Trixie is beginning to realise that they are sharing a meal for the second time today. It should freak her out, but she thinks Katya is endlessly interesting. Having someone here in the house with her for the very first time is throwing a lot of things into sharp relief. She’s lonely, and she’s pretty certain that Katya is too. There’s nothing wrong with nurturing their friendship, even if Trixie is probably going to spend the rest of eternity marvelling at how hot Katya is whenever she looks at her.

Conversation flows easily between them. Trixie finds herself interrupting a lot, because she is so excited to talk to Katya. And anyway, if she doesn’t derail Katya’s train of thought every once in a while they get so far away from their original topic that Trixie’s anecdotes are no longer relevant.

After dinner they settle on the little couch, and Trixie winds up with the dog sprawled across her lap. A fire is burning in the grate and Katya rolls up the sleeves of her dress. Two days ago, when they’d been cleaning, Trixie had seen the tattoos that decorate Katya’s forearms and she’d gotten very distracted wondering what might be beneath her sweater. They’re harder to see in the lamplight, but she touches her fingers to three tiny circular ones in the crook of Katya’s elbow.

“They’re sigils.” Katya points to each one in turn. “Grounding. Protection. Emotional healing.”

Trixie won’t ask, can’t ask, what it is that Katya might need to heal from. It feels like a terrible invasion of her privacy. The night has drawn thick in around them, the rain coming down much harder now. Trixie is afraid to speak above a whisper, feels like it might spook Katya if she raises her voice.

“I thought the point of being a lesbian is that you don’t need protection,” she says.

Katya is sitting with her back against the arm rest and her knees bent, and she kicks her sock feet out towards Trixie in horror. “Wow. The state of public education in Wisconsin is woefully lacking, huh.”

“You think I went to school?”

The way that joy travels through Katya’s entire body whenever Trixie makes her laugh is so captivating. She’s much quieter than usual, in deference to the intimacy of the evening, but she still wriggles around on the couch like Trixie’s got a hook through her guts.

When Trixie has to hide a yawn in her palm for the fourth time, Katya takes that as her cue. She gets to her feet and folds her body in half, palms flat on the ground and torso pressed against her thighs. She groans and rocks her hips side to side and Trixie looks away, stares right past her and out into the night.

At the car, like she did earlier today outside the store, Katya performs some kind of strange ritual. She circles the truck slowly, muttering something under her breath. She touches each of the wheels, skims her fingertips along the edges of the side panels as she walks around. Clearly, Katya is uncomfortable around vehicles. Trixie is waiting on the porch to shelter from the rain and trying not to watch her. It feels voyeuristic when she’s so vulnerable, but she can’t help it.

“Oh God, not you too,” she calls out.

It startles Katya and she whips around to face her, uses two hands to push her wet bangs back from her forehead. “What?”

“Cash and Guthrie are already obsessed with the truck. I don’t need you at it as well. Please don’t climb onto the roof.”

“Sorry. It’s an old habit. Just- I get nervous around cars.”

Trixie closes the distance between them and opens the passenger door for Katya, gives her an elbow to help boost her up into the seat. Before she closes the door, Trixie pats Katya’s knee in something approximating comfort.

“You don’t have to be sorry. Are you good?”

“Good,” Katya nods.

For the whole drive, she sits with her face pressed to the window and continues her muttering. Trixie leaves her to it, gets the sense that she really doesn’t want to have a conversation right now. And yes, Bob, she is capable of shutting up when she needs to. She gets to go all the way to Katya’s house, gets to see it for the first time.

It is enormous and white and pearly in the darkness, jutting out from the surrounding greenery. Out here there aren’t any streetlights and the trees are patches of richer, more textured darkness. Trixie sits in the idling truck and watches Katya climb the porch steps two at a time and slip inside the house with a last wave in Trixie’s direction. Trixie flashes the headlights in response. She sits there for longer than she probably should, watching lights come on and imagining the way Katya moves through the house, the routine of her evening.

Trixie lets her head drop forward until it hits the top edge of the steering wheel. She sees now, why the whole town thinks that Katya is a witch. She lives out here in this big house on the outskirts of town, and she wears whatever she pleases. Earlier today Trixie noticed Katya’s earrings, two tiny doll hands, and elected not to question that. She is eccentric and unabashed about it. And she’s a lesbian. Or into women at the very least.

She feels enormously, furiously protective over her. Katya has shown her more kindness in the last three days than some of the people that have been in her life for three years. It’s not a crush — Trixie is not that careless with her heart — she’s just interested. Katya is compelling and funny and smart and Trixie has been craving intellectual conversation beyond her weekly phone dates with Kim.

There’s nothing wrong with pursuing a friendship. And anyway, Katya could have kissed her in the store today and she did nothing. Since she came out nearly ten years ago, Trixie has had to field questions from well-meaning but deeply ignorant straight friends. She finds it childish and loathsome when people assume that because two women are lesbians, they must automatically want to fuck one another.

Trixie drives home in silence with an ache in her thighs.

[sleepyfan-blog]

Can you do "dance with me" for ds dream and ds ink

Fandom: Dreamswap by @onebizarrekai

Characters and pairing: DS Ink, DS Dream, DS Drink

Warnings: cursing

Word count: 1002

Summary: Dream stops Ink from stealing something, and forces him to dance.

“Ink, I had thought I’d seen you over here.” Dream’s voice called out from directly behind the soulless skeleton.

This caused Ink to freeze up and suppress a curse and a flinch, taking a discreet step backwards. Not because he wanted to be all subtle and whatever, but because the two of them were at a gala, hosted by one of Justice Reigns’ wealthier patrons. He had in fact, been about to try to pickpocket one of the wealthy being’s pockets - he knew that the person he’d been following had either a wallet that was incorrectly stored, or a pocket watch… Which could fetch a pretty price, if he sold it. Or he could take it apart and put it back together again, to see how it worked when he was really bored and by himself. “Is there anything that you need me for, boss?” Dream had been invited to this fancy party, and had decided to drag him with. Why the other had expected him to do anything else, the assassin had no idea.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Dream responded, raising a browbone at the other and moving a little bit closer, a small smirk curling on his face that could mean a number of things- some fun others… Annoying. “The orchestra is about to start playing, and I want you to dance with me.”

“Wait… Hang on… Nooooo! Boss I don’t… I haven’t…” Ink spluttered as the other steered him away from the person he’d been about to steal from. He knew how to dance - Dream had forced him to learn a number of dances in order to be able to infiltrate certain AUs without immediately being spotted as someone not from their world. “Boss I have two left feet and I don’t want to dance.”

“Nonsense, I know for a fact that you can dance quite beautifully when you have a mind for it.” The CEO responded back, the hand that had been at the small of Ink’s back leaving only to grab one of the assassin’s hands. Dream’s other hand rested lightly on one of Ink’s hips, the taller skeleton looking down at him with a fond smile “… Do you know why I brought you here?”

“As some sort of passive-aggressive punishment or to see if I could die of boredom?” Ink groused, leaning in a little closer to his… He wasn’t quite sure how to define their relationship. In public they kept things strictly business… But in the privacy of their own rooms, they were much closer. He liked the private Dream much better. The stick up his ass wasn’t lodged nearly as high, and he could even be mischievous.

“No.” Dream responded, a note of exasperation entering his voice as the two of them started to dance to the lively waltz that was playing. He deftly avoided Ink’s feet - as the other was deliberately trying to step on his feet in petty vengeance “I was asked to bring someone with me to this gala, and I immediately thought of you… I know that this sort of affair is not to your taste… However-”

The CEO stopped himself from speaking as the two of them twirled and almost seemed to… Float across the dance floor. Ink was rather stunned at just how… Elegant he felt in the other’s arms, not even protesting as the other sent him into a twirl, deftly catching him as he leaned into the other’s touch “How… However what?” Ink prompted after he caught his breath.

“However, I couldn’t resist the thought of you dressing up nicely and dancing with me would be the highlight of attending this dull affair. I don’t particularly care for charming this particular group of people.” Dream responded with a sigh, his voice barely more than a whisper “… And I am glad to be able to spend time with you, whenever and however I can. Even if we both are wearing certain… Masks that we can only take off when we are home.”

Ink had to read the other’s lips, the other was speaking so softly - the music covered what he was saying. But, the soulless skeleton knew that the other had spoken so quietly on purpose - as there were ears and eyes everywhere. He felt a light blush warm his cheeks - it was… He liked hearing such things from the other. It made him feel… Loved and wanted. “I… Thanks. I won’t make any promises about not causing a little bit of trouble if you don’t entertain me.”

“I would expect nothing less.” Dream responded, voice at a normal volume now, his golden eye lights shining with amusement and mirth.

If Dream wasn’t so damn tall - or if the angelic-looking skeleton wouldn’t throw a fit if he tried to go for it, Ink would totally lean in for a kiss, if only to wipe off that smug grin off of the other’s face with a kiss. And then promptly cackle and flee the dance floor before the other caught up to him. Instead he continued to dance with the other… “I’m half-surprised that you didn’t force me to wear some sort of ridiculous dress or something. The suit’s nice.”

“I wouldn’t force you to wear something that you didn’t want to purely for my own whims, Ink.” Dream murmured, the smirk dying a little on his lips. “I do care for your wellbeing. You are my personal assistant and someone whom I place a great deal of faith and trust in.”

Oh hell. The other had no right to be so damn flirtatious in such a public place. Ink nearly stumbled a little, falling against the taller skeleton as he pressed a little bit closer to his smirky beloved “I… True… And I of course, trust you a great deal as well.”

“I am glad to hear that, Ink.” Dream responded, his voice all warm and soft in all of the right ways. Jerk. Ridiculously handsome, flirtatious jerk who he couldn’t react in kind too.