#it’s chrysi chrysi chrysi that’s all he cares abt!!

[chryzure-archive]

btw, juno was right abt saying azure was grey aro because his behavior can only be explained by him finding the exception to his romantic orientation and clinging to her throughout all his different lives

[chryzuree]

could’ve sworn i’d posted this thought before, but apparently i didn’t so!! what iffff gavriel managed to convince scarlett to change someone’s emotions at their core via threat to her bby sister??? and what if said person was jacks instead of julian??? and what if it was for her to change jacks’s love for chrysi into hatred??????? jst so gavriel could finally wrest control of chrysi’s fate from her??? so he can finally claim jacks as his fate, part of his pantheon, even though he wasn’t the one to create jacks????? what then????

[liltedrose]

oh, we’ve talked abt jacks getting drugged w an aphrodisiac, but what abt azure??? he’s too proud to admit that he’s growing harder by the second, and too ashamed by it to fidget. he tries to keep the feeling at bay, but chrysi being in the room doesn’t help in the slightest, and all he can think about is her pinning him to the bed with her hand tight on his throat and her grinding down hard on his erection. and thinking about that doesn’t help anything at all.

eventually it gets to be too much and azure can’t even fathom being able to hide it. he’s trying to subtly adjust himself, but it just makes him shudder with need. he feels like he’s about to combust. he’s biting down on his tongue in hopes that the pain will make the unbearable friction in his pants go away, but it doesn’t. not at all.

once chrysi notices, azure’s too far gone to care about how embarrassed he should be. he feels so miserably understimulated and overstimulated at the same time. if she had waited five minutes longer, he probably would’ve asked her to take him right on the spot.

she doesn’t say anything. doesn’t need to. one look at the strain in his eyes (and the strain in his pants), and she knows what he needs from her.

so she straddles him wordlessly, lovingly wraps her arms around the back of his neck, and starts grinding down on him. he replies in kind, pressing hard against her, holding onto her waist for dear life.

it doesn’t take long for him to have her on top of the desk, her legs around him, as he presses into her, shuddering and kissing her collarbones hard enough to leave bruises.

[chryzuree]

something abt how jacks is chrysi’s childhood friend, her closest friend, and how he could’ve been the one to know her best, better than even azure, if he, for one goddamn second, stopped being enamoured with his own self-absorption.

[chryzuree]

also obligatory plot point where chrysi moves away from the baskerville manor and gil doesn’t see her again until they’re grown up + she’s a lot more elegant and refined now and gil doesn’t recognize her until vincent’s like, “wasn’t she that girl that strung you up to the tree and laughed at you for half an hour before she finally let you down?” well. apparently it IS that girl, but gil defs didn’t realize that when he’d been talking to her earlier!!!

[chryzure-archive]

“it’s not like you killed anybody. it’s not like i’d care if you did, anyway.” so obsessed w azure and his approach to something that would incite a moral panic in anybody else.

[chryzure-archive]

chrysigil is also very fascinating because this is probably… the only situation chrysi’s been in where she is not The most important person to her s/o. she probably doesn’t even realize that she’s accustomed to being the center of attention—and with gil, she tries to ignore how much that throws her off (and tbh, upsets her to some degree) by making her relationship with him some sort of game. she’s just lost the person that means the most to her in the world (and the person that literally viewed her as The Person For Him. azure would give up his soul if it meant chrysi was happy), so with gil, she’s just distracting herself. having fun. flirting with him and making him blush. it’s fine that she’s never going to have a deep relationship with him—it’s fine, really. she doesn’t mind. everything is lighthearted and fun!

but the thing is, gil starts caring for her genuinely (oz is helping because of course the only way gil realizes he cares is via oz…) and suddenly it’s really hard for chrysi to make this lighthearted. it scares her. she doesn’t want this—because above all else, she doesn’t want to lose it. if she never has it in the first place, then she can’t be anxious about gil putting oz above her or losing gil entirely. she tries to make it clear to gil that she’s not someone to worry about (acknowledging oz is always going to be gil’s priority), she’s incredibly independent (she’s not going to let gil in because she doesn’t want to deal with any additional heartache), and, most importantly, she’s already tried out “true love” and it burned her—why bother with trying to be a couple with gil officially? (he won’t ever be azure for her).

i mean, i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: how does chrysi fall in love again—try someone new—after having been with azure? the whole new dynamic is hard for her.

[chryzure-archive]

azure rage is so important to me because it breaks down all the barriers and walls he’s built up around himself. and you know what? he does deserve to punch jacks in the face.

[chryzuree]

What's the preferred love languages of chryzure? What's some goofy stuff the two of them do together? My babysitter's a vampire au, does chrysi convince her vampire boyfriend to do dumb shit with his abilities?

chryzure love language is absolutely physical touch and quality time… also teasing each other endlessly and always helping their partner by committing to the bit…. azure’s serious expression always makes chrysi’s ridiculous jokes and lies seem more grounded than they truly are. and then reading their own separate books while cuddling is peaakkkk chryzure love language. maybe they’ll kiss a little bit! why not!!!

most of the goofy stuff consists of chrysi climbing up somewhere and then getting stuck and azure has to help her down…. catgirl gf real… i also rlly like thinking abt chrysi saying something completely wild and untrue and then it cute to azure nodding solemnly. she’s soooooo right to say that. who cares if it breaks the laws of nature??

whenever azure’s wine-drunk, he gets a little silly.. always flirting w chrysi by nipping at her ear or something like that. once he woke up to find that they’d put lipstick on in the evening & chrysi had kiss marks all over her face. she didn’t wash them off because she thought it was cute 🥰 and also azure looked vvvv pretty w lipstick on. you should wear it more often, bunny!!

OH, whenever chrysi’s taking a little catnap while listening to music, azure always opens up her phone and queues up axel f by crazy frog or temporary secretary by paul mccartney. then he sits and waits for her to bolt up wide awake like, “I TRUSTED YOU.” your mistake! azure is not to be trusted ever!!!! his sense of humor will sneak up on you..

he’s also dropped an ice cube down her shirt more than once. we all talk abt mischievous chrysi, but mischievous azure is literally RIGHT THERE. the WHOLE TIME.

YESSS, she made him test out many of those cursed mirror urban legends, since he doesn’t have a reflection & she’s curious abt the outcome. most of the time, nothing happens. except for, you know, the time he got dragged into the mirror dimension and the entity there stole his face and tried to escape by kissing chrysi with tongue. azure was having a very bad day.

mostly, chrysi jst uses azure as her little vampire guinea pig. she wants to see if he can get away w things, since he can’t show up on camera. answer: he can! unforeseen outcome: he still trips up alarms and now chrysi, azure, and jacks are running from the cops. again. azure spirits chrysi away w his vampire speed and they leave jacks behind to be caught by the cops AGAIN. he’s so mad abt this..

[chryzuree]

god. thinking abt daeshim adopting an older brother persona around chrysi before he becomes a fate, then clinging to it after he becomes a fate…. she is the one bright spot in gavriel’s pantheon and daeshim adores her for it (in that distant way of immortals, since he can no longer love properly).

but then he’s sent back in time by gavriel for the first time and he finds… chrysi. again. she’s younger, so maybe he jst accidentally went back in time in this current timeline. it’s confusing, but he’s sweet to her, and she’s incredibly kind back.

he returns and everything’s normal at home. he asks chrysi if she’d ever met him before. she looks at him blankly.

he goes back in time again. meeting chrysi in that timeline is not so pleasant. he comes back and asks chrysi if they’ve ever met before, seriously. she’s jst as adamant when she says she met all the fates for the first time when her sister dropped her off on gavriel’s doorstep.

daeshim goes back and forward over and over and over again. different timelines. different worlds.

chrysi’s always there. always, always, always. and daeshim begins to understand that his little sister has something wrong with her. sometimes, in these other worlds, she knows him, but more importantly, she seems to think he’s lost his mind. he can’t fathom why. she cares abt him either way.

finally, he arrives in a timeline where chrysi dies. it was bound to happen. it’s a tragedy, daeshim knows that many deaths are. he hates that he’s lost even this version of chrysi, but there’s still the chrysi at home. (he tells himself this, but it doesn’t ease the pain, not entirely.)

then he goes forward in time, as requested by gavriel.

chrysi is alive again.

daeshim knows that cannot be. that is not right. all those different timelines had different chrysis, sure, but the same timeline having two?

eventually, he finds out about the reincarnation curse. that is when his mind finally begins to crack under the pressure of knowing all the different timelines. not because of the variation, but rather because he loses chrysi. he loses chrysi every single time, and he can’t stop it, and it breaks his heart because he has a heart to break now, because he cares enough to revoke immortality, and he knows that his immortality has been the only thing protecting him from the madness of traveling through time and universes, and he can’t save her no matter how much he wants to.

what’s your tale of woe? tella asks, on chrysi’s 798th life.

none of your fucking business, daeshim answers.

one of these lives, he’s going to save his sister. he swears on it.

[chryzuree]

okay so i was rewatching the kill counts for happy death day + happy death day 2u because i think it’s a really good series and i LOVE time loop scenarios, so my question for you is… what would it be like if chrysijacks were in that situation? where one of them is constantly getting killed and waking up after they die to relive the same day + the other one is trying to help get them out of it while also having to be reminded of the whole time loop thing every time it’s reset? i hope this makes sense <3 (also i’m sorry you’ve been feeling sad— this month has been rough for me too so ik how it feels but just know i’m here for you, and at the very least i hope you can find some comfort in the fact that you’re not alone in feeling this way 🫂)

PERFECT, SHOWSTOPPING, SPECTACULAR, ALSO HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT I REWATCH THOSE KILL COUNTS AND THINK RLLY HARD ABOUT CHRYSIJACKS EVERY SINGLE TIME… our minds….

i feel like jacks is theee perfect person to be in tree’s shoes, since he’s also a supposedly shallow blonde that’s trying to run from his grief in his past 🫶🏻 it adds to the fun once i add the layer of chrysi being his ex-friend from childhood & he keeps resetting in her room.. first time he wakes up, he’s like “whoaaaaa, crazy night last night… MY FUCKING CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND????”

but then after that, there’s the added depth of jacks trying to mend their damaged relationship while also trying to stop himself from dying over and over and over again. it’s fun to imagine him trying to apologize and heal the hurts he caused all in one day OVER AND OVER AGAIN. obvi chrysi’s skeptical. lots of mean & funny dialogue here.

but!!! they were still childhood friends!!! chrysi will believe jacks if he tells her that he’s trapped in a time loop. she’ll help you, but it’s not like she’ll be HAPPY abt it :|| jacks is not sure how he feels abt this.

when chrysi dies in one of the time loops, jacks is SO quick to let himself die too. doesn’t matter if his body is slowly degrading with each loop… doesn’t matter if he wound up in the hospital literally that morning from all his previous deaths… he WILL NOT live without his childhood best friend. next morning, he immediately pulls her into a hug and she’s like “?!?!?!?!?!????!?!?!!?!!!!!” but, i mean, hey, it helps him prove he still cares abt her.. sobsob. they end up dating after all that :>

for happy death day 2 u, it would b really funny for jacks to get beamed into what he considers an alt reality, but rlly.. it’s jst a normal modern universe where chrysi and azure are dating. nobody told you?? they’re literally soulmates?? it’s not a fucked up alt reality, ummm. this is part of the universe’s big plan. sorry, man. i KNOW he’s screaming and crying and throwing up rn.

first order of business when he returns to his reality is to kiss chrysi w tongue and also be like, “you’d never ever leave me for a hot tall black-haired french photographer, right??? 🥺” and chrysi’s like, “this is weirdly fucking specific. no?” and then that one agency curious abt experimenting w time loops shows up and ummm. oh. this is awkward. azure is working with them. jacks is screaming and crying and throwing up AGAIN.

[chryzuree]

hi for the love of god hello 😩 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, aaaand 15 for the chrysi caraval universe questions? (feel free to just pick whichever ones you wanna answer most if you don’t wanna do them all :3)

2. when in canon does your self insert come in? do you have a scene in mind for your entrance?

she comes in before everything <333 she is the catalyst for allllll of jacks’s baggage. and anyway, she shows up post-finale like ohhh. yeah. sorry abt that guys. i’m the one that gave him the cursed kiss and everything <333 teehee!!

the actual scene i have in mind (well, i have two—the first is a fake-out, where scarlett doesn’t know that the girl she’s been looking for is the girl that she’s currently talking to—chrysi calls herself di, so i understand the confusion) is at some sort of gala/trap for eris, where scarlett and julian and jacks are locked in there w chrysi and azure. chrysi’s like oh!!! hey honey!!!!!!! now if you’ll excuse me, my husband is taking care of our reincarnation curse.

3. how do the other characters generally feel about your self insert?

they all think she’s soooo cool and also soooooo fucked up. they all come to her for advice and are always surprised by the fact that chrysi’s advice involves murder, curses, or curse-murders. why would you expect otherwise? also, everyone comes to a consensus that she’s hot and they want to impress her rlly rlly badly.

4. would you be considered a main character, side character, villain, or something else?

she’s the main quest prize in my version of a spin-off (first book), then…. the protagonist, but not the main character, according to my quick double check of lit rules. shes the main reason the plot progresses, on account of her then trying to break the reincarnation curse (book two), then settling for getting azure back so they can have a few more years of happiness before tragedy hits. sometimes i swap those last two bits, but ultimately, she’s THEE point of the whole story. even in canon. jacks’s main motivation 😘

5. does your self insert have any special powers or abilities?

indeed!! she has her witchy set, which is ghost/death related, w some necromancy straight up thrown in, then her half-star set, which includes creating fates, and control via fear (she WAS supposed to be in charge of fear AND love, but when she created jacks, she accidentally cleaved her power in two… he has been fashioned into her soulmate on accident… sorry… (he does NOT care. is he allowed to kiss her now??))

11. what kind of outfit(s) does your self insert wear?

i have so many silhouettes that i’d want to hit with my fantasy world beam, purely so i can (apparently) have chrysi scandalize the whole caraval universe. the whole time, a girl didn’t wear pants. not ONCE.

chrysi shows up in this and it’s all over for them:

for every day, she’d mostly wear something like this:

then an actual dress, you know her. she’s wearing this:

12. how would the fandom view your character?

i think people would hate her, cause of how murdery and mean she can be. and also bc she’d take jacks from the others & nobody can face the reality that jacks would want a bitch to keep him in his place. god forbid girls have personalities outside of being innocent girls!!

[chryzuree]

been obsessively thinking abt labyrinth au where jacks is in the position of hoggle & gives chrysi a cursed apple that puts her in a cursed sleep, but consider ALSO.. chrysijacks CHILDHOOD FRIENDS!!! still there!!!!! but he got taken in the labyrinth while trying to get back somebody he cares abt & when he “won”, gavriel turned him into his little pet fate (along w all the other fates there. he’s a collector, what can i say?) and erased everyone’s memory of him in the real world AND erased jacks’s memories of the real world… except chrysi had jst confessed her feelings for him (finally went w the 7th grade & onwards romance !!) and so she KNOWS she’s lost something… she can’t figure out what for YEARS. since she was 12 to now ….. until her niece gets taken into the labyrinth by gavriel and she goes in to save her. then gavriel sends jacks to distract chrysi from getting to emery in time but UNFORTUNATELY!!! chrysijacks vaguely recall each other… and jacks starts to become human again….

anyway, in chrysi’s poison apple dreams, she sees the human ver of jacks as he would’ve been if they’d been able to be together and she’s so sad and she doesn’t know why… 🥺🤧

[chryzure-archive]

break is literally chrysi’s older brother btw??? he says he’s not, that he doesn’t care abt chrysi at all, but he’ll follow her whenever she’s on her dates so he can decide if the boy is worth it!!! he crashed all her dates w jacks because he cannot fucking STAND jacks.

[chryzure-archive]

a century later, and now you ask?

ALT TITLE: somebody take pet names away from gil. he literally has anxiety?

AUTHOR’S NOTE: got a little too serious thinking abt chrysi’s death and the way it makes her think of azure while writing this. suddenly i am thinking abt chryzure instead of chrysigil. on chrysigil day. oh no :((

———

The first time Oz yelled at Gilbert after they reunited was on a lovely spring day, deep into one of Chrysi’s week-long spring cleanings. She’d assigned the three of them—Oz, Alice, and Gilbert—the kitchen, citing that the last time she’d tried to deep clean the kitchen, Gilbert had yelled at her. 

He vaguely recalled the incident—not being able to find anything in the entire kitchen from Chrysi’s relocation of every implement, plate, and spice, for reasons she hadn’t specified—but he had half a mind that Chrysi dramatized the whole incident. 

Either way, it meant that Gilbert wouldn’t have to brave the children’s closets and the dusty mess under their beds. He, himself, had been yelled at by Oz when they’d been children, and he would rather have Chrysi be the one to deal with accidentally throwing away some item of dubious value to Oz than have it be him ever again. 

At least, he had—before the argument. 

Oz slammed down the cast-iron pan with enough force to make Gilbert worry for the granite countertops. 

“What do you mean you don’t call Chrysi by any pet names?” Oz cried. 

Gilbert didn’t know how they’d gotten here. He also didn’t know why it upset Oz so much. It was a bad time for it to come up—when he was looking particularly ridiculous with a polka-dot bandana pushing back his hair (tied with a bow, courtesy of Chrysi), large yellow rubber gloves (well, glove—Gilbert didn’t like wearing the prosthetic after the majority of 100 years spent with one arm), and a blue gingham apron (he didn’t want to comment on this. He’d been gifted it by Chrysi sometime fifty years into their wait, and it held up remarkably—even if now it was only good as a clean-up apron). 

“Now, wait a second,” he started. He held up the scrub brush in his hand as a defense. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Yeah,” Alice chimed in from atop the counter, not helping in the slightest, “what do you mean you don’t have pet names for her?”

Gilbert shot Alice a harried scowl. “You don’t actually care about that.”

Alice smiled wide in that feral, Alice way of hers. “Answer the question, Seaweed Head.”

He opened his mouth, but Oz cut him off before he could say anything. 

“And even if she doesn’t, I do.” He crossed his arms over his chest, face twisted in disapproval. “Why has she even stayed with you for so long?

Heat shot across his face in an old, familiar way that he hadn’t experienced in well over 100 years. 

“We don’t need anything like that between us,” Gilbert protested. 

Oz clicked his tongue in annoyance and rolled his eyes. The cross of his arms tightened in unison with the eye roll. 

“Serious,” he continued, feeling more defensive by the second, and his ears burning hotter still. “She’s never said anything one way or the other. It doesn’t matter.”

Alice sighed noisily from her perch. Gilbert glanced at her to find that she had stretched her hand up to the top shelf to search for the cookie jar he’d hidden up there. 

Catching his look, she narrowed her eyes at him. Daring him to call her out. 

He pursed his lips. With one arm, he didn’t think he could chastise her the way he used to—complete with lifting her entirely off the ground and setting her elsewhere. And besides, he had a rubber glove on. It made his grip less certain. 

Her eyes narrowed further, all the way to slits. Whatever she saw there made her scoff. 

“Useless,” she proclaimed decidedly. 

Gilbert was not going to be insulted by the girl with her hand in the literal cookie jar. “Hey—”

“Indeed,” agreed Oz.

Electricity jolted through him, a hurt he didn’t know he could sustain after so long. He turned to find Oz’s eyes glinting like shards of green glass.

At his attention, Oz lifted his chin, a fearsome jut of his jaw. 

“You said you waited for Alice and I until you guys got married, but who’s to say you’ll even get married when you don’t care enough to give her a pet name?” 

Gilbert bit the inside of his cheek. “What—do you not want us married?” 

The thought made him want to cry. 

Expression darkening further, Oz snapped, “Of course I do! That’s why I’m trying to fix your mistakes!”

The ceramic lid of the cookie jar clattered shut behind them, followed closely by the sound of Alice flopping back into a more comfortable seat than before. 

From his periphery, he could see Alice holding four cookies in hand. In any normal situation, he’d be nagging at her that too many cookies would make her stomach hurt. In this situation, he would’ve nagged at her. 

But then Alice said, “Even that blonde bastard has a nickname for Chrysi already.” She crunched down on a cookie thoughtfully, her normal arrogant expression swapping for a simpler, wide-eyed look at the ceiling. Her mouth twisted to one side. “He calls her Princess.”

Oz recoiled at this information. “Still?” He shot Gilbert a dubious look. “You let him call her that?”

Gilbert shifted, heat collecting under his collar. He’d become a bit more comfortable with Jacks’s presence in recent years. To deny Chrysi’s friendship with him was to abandon her as a lover—though sometimes Jacks made it a little too clear that he’d rather that happen. 

Whatever. He dealt with Jacks’s obsession with Chrysi, and Chrysi dealt with his brother with the same patience. Well—probably with more patience than Gilbert dealt with Jacks. 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he protested. 

Oz stared at him pityingly. 

“100 years didn’t change anything,” he said. “You’re still totally hopeless.”

Alice chomped on her cookie in agreement. 

And though Gilbert wanted to argue, he couldn’t help but look at himself from the outside view—with his ridiculous bandana headband, a 1950s apron, and his single arm with its single rubber glove—and he, too, wondered why Chrysi was still with him. 

Should he have given her a pet name?

—

“What about lovebug?” Alice offered from her position at Gilbert’s left shoulder, her hand poking from the spot where his left hand once had been. She held a pen aloft in her hand, despite the fact that it wasn’t her dominant hand in the slightest.

Together they sat on the ground—Gilbert in cross-legged front, and Alice kneeling behind him. Oz bent over the paper from his perch on the couch. And Alice’s arm moved in the space that Gilbert’s left arm once took up, one hundred years ago. 

The way her hand moved gave Gilbert the impression that he’d gotten a possessed fifteen-year-old’s arm grafted in the place of his old one. What was that movie Chrysi forced him to go see in the theatres twenty years ago?

…He couldn’t remember. But the hand was possessed, and the way Alice decided she’d play his left arm for the day brought back memories of the cool air of the theatre and Chrysi leaning her face into Gilbert’s shoulder sleepily. 

“Um,” he said.

So far, the brainstorm for pet names hadn’t brought up anything that really caught his eye. Sweetheart sounded too childish for Chrysi, darling too formal, and Gilbert had never really been able to call anybody sunshine, for how absurd the nickname sounded in his voice. 

“Write it down,” Oz said. He eyed Gilbert doubtfully. “We’ll need any help we can get.”

Gilbert frowned up at Oz as Alice dutifully scratched out the letters onto the paper. “I don’t know how many of these really seem like names that Chrysi would like.” 

Like… any of them. Not a single one suited her. 

At least, not coming from him. 

“You don’t know that,” Alice said cheerfully, her face pressed somewhere behind Gilbert’s left shoulder. Her hand scribbled out something else sightlessly. “I think she might like buttercup.”

“Like the girl from The Princess Bride?”

She paused. “The hell’s that?”

Gilbert took a deep breath. 

Oz peered over Alice’s half of the list before Gilbert could chastise Alice.

“Well, you know,” he said, voice breezy, “I don’t think that lice is a very kind pet name.”

“What?” 

After an uncomfortable moment of jostling around Gilbert’s left side—his scars still bothered him at times—Alice poked her head out from under his shoulder. Now it looked like he’d grown a mutant head in addition to a possessed arm. 

He closed his eyes. That wasn’t a very pleasant thought.

The paper crinkled in Alice’s hand.

“No, that says love!” Indignance colored her tone.

Tilting his head, Oz squinted at it. 

“Oh. Never mind. That’s a good suggestion.”

Gilbert eyed the scratchings on the left margins of the page. He still couldn’t quite figure out which one was meant to read as love—or lice, as Oz thought it read. 

Suddenly, Gilbert was exhausted. 

“Is this really such a good idea?” he asked, thinking of the happy moments with Chrysi reading a book aloud and talking to him from her perch on the kitchen island. They’d gotten by just fine.

Oz’s sharp green eyes cut to him and narrowed. 

“Jacks has a nickname for her,” he reminded him. 

Ugh.

“Gil?” Chrysi called from the floor above. 

His head snapped up. That same horrible anxiety he’d thought he’d left behind reared its ugly head in his chest, wrapping about his heart in a stranglehold. 

“Yes?” he called back. Fortunately, the only hint of his inner turmoil was a slight tremor. 

Oz jabbed him in the side.

He bit down on a yelp, but he couldn’t help the spasm that wracked his body. Instinctively, he curved around the electric shock in his side—a delayed attempt to protect himself from Oz’s sudden attack. Instead, he merely crashed onto his side. 

Alice pitched forward onto their page of pet names. The paper protested—it had already been subjected to worse and worser nicknames, scribbled out in both the heavy, non-dominant hand of a fifteen-year-old and the morose hand of a century-old man. 

It took Gilbert a moment, but he managed to flip onto his back to shoot Oz a glare, feeling distinctly like a beetle at the hands of a cruel kid-god.

“Are you going to help with laundry or not?” 

Oz indicated their brainstorming page, crinkled underneath Alice’s scrambling limbs. 

Biting down on a heavy sigh, Gilbert crossed his arm across his chest like a corpse in a sarcophagus. 

“I’ll be right up, dear.”

“Oh.” Chrysi hesitated. “Alright?”

His eyes drifted closed. 

Inwardly, he scratched dear off their list.

—

“Good morning,” Gilbert tried on another day, “darling.”

Chrysi rolled over in the bed to shoot him a narrow-eyed look. 

“What did you do wrong?”

“What?”

“Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction.” She sat up, her eyes still narrowed in the sunlight. “Why’d you let me sleep in so late?”

Gilbert didn’t want to answer, mostly because he was curious about what could’ve possibly happened before he’d been with Chrysi to instill such a strong auto-response that it persisted after a century. 

Well, no matter. 

Clearly darling wasn’t in the cards either.

—

Oz came skittering around the corner before Chrysi did. Though even if it had been Chrysi, Gilbert still would’ve sent the hot pan into the air from the jolt that went through his body.

The pancake he’d been making (caramel M&Ms sprinkled in, because Alice had insisted on using up a packet she’d brought home from school) flew straight up into the air. It hit the ceiling with a hearty thwack. And up there, it stayed. 

The same couldn’t be said for the pan. 

Gilbert leapt back from the stove before the burning metal hit his feet, a colorful curse on his tongue. 

Oz screeched to a halt, his mouth open in an O. “Are you alright?”

Well, as luck would have it, Gilbert was not alright. It was one thing after another, ever since he’d woken that morning to their cat on his face (one hundred years with Chrysi aside, there was still an element of anxiety up close and personal to a cat—especially when said cat was suffocating him under his weight), he’d had to take a call from Glen and set up an out-of-town trip for the end of that very week (annoying, since he’d been actually excited to go to Oz and Alice’s first parent-teacher conference), and he was certain a rainstorm was rolling in (on account of his whole left side set ablaze with agony. The usual.)

He took a deep breath, then exhaled. 

“I’m,” he said, “fine.”

Oz looked unconvinced. Gilbert couldn’t blame him. It took a deep inhale-exhale for him to speak a single word. 

He ached to grab his lighter and his box of cigarettes, but Chrysi’d been trying to keep him from overdoing it most days—and besides, Gilbert didn’t like smoking while he was preparing food. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Gilbert stepped back from the remnants of disaster. 

“I can help?” Oz said, uncertainly. 

“No!”

Oz drew up short. 

“It’s okay,” came Chrysi’s voice around the corner—then she was there, holding a bag of groceries that Gilbert needed to finish their dinner. She smiled when Oz looked guiltily at her, her eyebrow arched. “Unless you’re looking for an excuse to procrastinate on your homework?”

His eyes brightened. “Are you offering?”

“Nope.” Her gaze flashed over the state of the kitchen—pausing on the ceiling. Her eyebrow raised incrementally. 

Gilbert flushed. 

She continued, “But I bet you could finish it in ten minutes, tops. Then you won’t have to worry about it for the rest of the night.”

Oz loitered at the base of the stairs, frowning. 

Chrysi rolled her head in his direction. Her smile dropped in favor of a vaguely amused line at her mouth and an unimpressed heavy-lidded look. “Go on.”

“Fine.” But that didn’t stop his desperate glance at Gilbert, begging him to set him free. 

Gilbert mostly couldn’t stop wondering if and when the pancake would peel off from the ceiling and fall atop his head. It would be the icing on the cake of this miserable, miserable day. 

What was more concerning was that it wasn’t coming off at all. 

Oz tramped up the stairs, footsteps dejected. 

Chrysi waited until he’d reached the top before she turned to Gilbert.

“You’d think I’d doomed him to essay work,” she drawled, “when I know for a fact Mrs. Lee only hands out fill-in-the-blank assignments and a video to go along with it.”

He cracked an anemic smile, then flicked off the burner. No need for the house to go up in flame too. “I think Oz would prefer an essay. He’s too smart for fill-in-the-blank.”

“Good point.” 

Chrysi walked into the kitchen and set down her bag of groceries. Gilbert saw her eyes catch on the pancake again. Her mouth twitched.

“Don’t laugh,” he begged. He didn’t know if he’d laugh with her or cry instead. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She bit her lower lip to battle the hitched corner of her lips. Her eyes remained glued to the ceiling. “Do you think that’s going to come down at any point?”

Gilbert couldn’t say.

“Maybe we could get a chisel,” she suggested, as if he’d answered. “Or Goo-Gone. Do you think Goo-Gone works on something like that?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?”

Chrysi planted her hands on her hips. Her eyes grew thoughtful as she gazed up at the half-cooked pancake. Whatever she saw there made her come to a decision. 

“Yeah, okay,” she said after a beat. “I think I can get a ladder and a sponge and Goo-Gone it away.”

Wait, what?

“Er…” He stared at her worriedly. “Don’t do that. Don’t break your neck, love.”

“I wouldn’t… Huh?” 

Gilbert blinked. “What?”

“What did you call me?”

And that was strike three. 

—

He didn’t even know what he was doing anymore. He’d become tense at the thought of Chrysi coming around the corner, uneasy with the rapidly narrowing list. Lovebug, as suggested by Alice, reminded Chrysi of ladybugs, and he’d spent the rest of the day squinting in the sunlight while Chrysi hunted for them in their garden. Buttercup ended similarly, though then Gilbert had to also help Chrysi with the weeding—and his shoulder ached from the prothstetic he forgot he didn’t like as much as going one-handed about the world. Angel made Chrysi laugh, and sweetpea made her groan so loud that he’d forgotten what his sentence was going to be in the first place. 

His head hurt. 

Just when he was going to call it—Oz would be displeased, but Gilbert truly didn’t want to try and fight Jacks with an equally groan-worthy pet name—Chrysi walked into the living room with a sheaf of papers in her hand. Clearly aggravated, she rubbed her forehead.

“Can you take a look at these, Raven?” she asked. 

Gilbert leapt up, stiff as a board. 

“Absolutely,” he said. Then, unnaturality burning acidic on his tongue, he rushed out, “Honey.”

Hand still tangled in her hair, Chrysi paused to shoot him an odd look. 

He froze. He hadn’t even reached out for the papers. Now they were just staring at each other, the word he’d uttered sitting between them like an awkward child that accidentally ran to the wrong parents. 

Her gaze flickered over him, mouth hitching. In what sort of expression, Gilbert couldn’t say. Anxiety black-spotted his vision—another mainstay of a set of nervous, humiliated emotions he hadn’t felt with Chrysi since last century. 

Why’d Oz have to bring up something like that?

“Oka-a-ay,” Chrysi replied. She tilted her head. “Thanks, peanut butter.” 

He furrowed his brows. “What?”

She handed him the papers instead of replying. 

“Alice bit another kid at school yesterday. We have a meeting with the teacher.” She paused. “Again.”

And with that cheery note, Chrysi walked from the room.

—

Chrysi still had nightmares sometimes. They both did.

They’d gotten better over time, but… 

Well, Gilbert had no clue what Chrysi went through when she’d died. All he knew was that he was grateful she didn’t stay dead. 

If she had, he thought he might’ve gone insane waiting for Oz and Alice alone. 

That night, Gilbert woke to a suspicious lack of Chrysi in the bed, and he knew precisely what sort of nightmare had struck her this time. She always went wandering whenever she dreamt of that night in the Abyss—before it had returned to the golden-lit dreamscape with Alice’s twin sister, the Intention, and they’d visited regularly with the rest of the Baskerville clan.

Normally, he let her wander. But, with Oz’s fear of Gilbert losing Chrysi, he also found himself wondering if maybe he hadn’t been attentive enough to Chrysi’s needs. 

So he pried himself off the bed and stumbled blearily through the house. No amount of rubbing at his eyes cleared his vision—which was just as well, with the blackness of the house. It wasn’t like he needed to see anything anyway. 

He found Chrysi in the downstairs living room. She hunched over on the edge of the couch, holding a rod with a string and a feather on the other end, only the light of a lamp perched on the set of drawers to see by. 

Half-heartedly flicking the feather, Chrysi looked blindly over the room. 

Gilbert eyed the shadows—but not even their orange tabby showed himself. Odd. 

“What’re you doing?” he whispered. 

“Oh.” She stopped waving the feather around. Slowly, she leaned back in the couch, until she reclined over the armrest, her eyes foggy with sleep still. “Raven. You’re awake.”

He stared down at her, worry tightening in his chest. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t a girl play with shadow cats on her own time without being questioned?”

“What?”

She smiled wryly. “Don’t worry about it. Here.” She scooted a bit on the couch and patted the spot next to her. “Come here.” 

Gilbert obliged—mostly because standing there in the shadows alone unnerved him, just a little. Though Chrysi seemingly wasn’t playing with their cat, he couldn’t be certain Megalomaniac wouldn’t come pouncing out of the shadows to attack his leg. It he did, they’d have a cat flung off into the nothingness and two kids wondering why someone yowled like the damned in the middle of the night. 

Squeezed between Chrysi and the arm rest, Gilbert thought only of the way their shoulders pressed tightly together. Sometimes, only that connection made things manageable. 

He breathed out long and low. He laid his head atop Chrysi’s.

She paused, then leaned her head down slightly, pressed into his shoulder. 

Gilbert’s neck would protest later, but for right now, he didn’t mind.

“What was it tonight?” he asked softly. 

“What is it any night?” she replied. She pressed harder against him. “Just… before.”

Gilbert waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. 

How frequently did she do that? How frequently did Gilbert let her do it?

“Before what?”

Her sadness filled her voice, made distant by her fatigue. “Before everything became something I could handle again.”

Oh. He knew what that meant.

Back when Azure died.

Gilbert didn’t get anxious or jealous anymore. Sometimes, he even wondered if he would’ve gotten along with Chrysi’s dead fiancé, if they’d ever had more than two conversations. He hoped so. At least he knew that, in the last moments of clarity, Azure was happy that Gilbert could be there for Chrysi. 

But he knew what those nightmares did to Chrysi. She’d been the one to find his body and she’d been forced to take the brunt of Azure’s father's rage when she did. He couldn’t even fathom the agony she felt when she realized that it was Mordecai LaFaye who had his own son killed. 

“I’m sorry,” was what he mumbled. 

She sighed and shrugged—something he felt more than he saw. “It’s over now. At least when I’m awake.”

Gilbert frowned. 

He wrapped his arm around her, feeling distinctly useless. This was the best he could do. 

He wished he could do more. 

Chrysi began nodding off, nestled against his shoulder. She pressed into his side. 

The weight and warmth of her felt so familiar that Gilbert wanted to fall asleep here too. The temptation only tempered itself with the knowledge that they’d both wake up sore and uncomfortable. 

What cruel god made it so that a position comfortable enough to fall asleep in would only mean pain upon waking?

“Alright,” Gilbert said, fighting the sleep threatening to overtake him. “Let’s get up, dream girl.”

With a half-asleep, delirious laugh, she stirred against his shoulder. 

“Dream girl?” Her voice lilted like a lullaby, unfiltered from the cleverness that normally trapped her in the daytime hours. “You have never called me that before.” 

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a quick kiss across the lips.

When they pulled away, she looked at him with sleepy, gold-sparkling eyes.

“Where in the world has your head been lately, Gil?” 

Heat colored his cheeks, but Gilbert allowed himself a tiny, sheepish smile.

“Worth a shot?”

“Sure.” She laid her head on his collarbone. 

Gilbert anchored her to him with his arm and stood. With her grip around his neck, he lifted her easily. “Never again?”

Chrysi hummed sleepily against his neck.

“No,” she answered. “Probably not.”

No surprises there. 

Gilbert sighed.

—

Chrysi finally snapped after a week. Honestly, Gilbert couldn’t blame her for it. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen that particular pet name, besides utter desperation. Even Oz called it a last resort—but they couldn’t have known that Chrysi would have such an aversion to all the other, more acceptable nicknames.

He walked in from the en suite bathroom, toweling his hair dry. Chrysi sat on the bed, reading. Lamplight haloed her curls and gilded the slight furrow to her brow. 

Gilbert couldn’t tell what that meant. Once, it was abject horror in response to step-cousins being reincarnated lovers. Another time, it was delight at a character being blown up in half by gingerbread-scented smoke. Just because Chrysi was an expressive reader didn’t mean that he knew what the expressions meant.

She didn’t look up as he came in. “Are you coming to bed?”

“Yeah, babe.” 

Ugh. Even just saying it, Gilbert wanted to crawl out of his skin. Like all the others, it sounded wrong coming from him.

Lifting her chin, the book in her hands snapped shut. Chrysi tossed it onto the nightstand and sat back, threading her fingers together in her lap. She eyed him seriously.

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

Gilbert hesitated, the towel slipping over one of his eyes. His heart rate kicked up. “What’re you talking about?”

She opened her hand and gestured vaguely. “I have not heard my name from you in over a week. What’s going on?”

The whole week crashed down on him. The nervousness that he hated, that he’d tried to leave behind, and the weird looks Chrysi shot him, and the entirety of Oz bothering him over it. His limbs trembled, weak from coiling and tensing like a wrung-out towel. 

He dropped the towel to the ground and crawled onto the bed.

On instinct, Chrysi opened her arms. 

He gladly took the invitation. 

Gilbert laid his head on her chest, curling his arm around her. Her heart steadily beat under his ear, warm with each breath she took.

Fingers already carding through his hair, Chrysi asked, “So what’s been going on, Gil?”

Shame flushed his cheeks. Somehow, he’d gotten swept into one of Oz’s ridiculous schemes. Things really didn’t change, not even after a century apart. 

But he didn’t want to admit that to Chrysi.

“I feel bad,” he said instead. 

Her hand swept his hair away from his face. “Oh yeah? Why would that be?”

He tilted his head, just so that his ear pressed closer to the thrum of her heartbeat. 

He’d almost lost that once. No, scratch that—he had lost it, once. And still, despite that, he’d never given Chrysi a term of endearment. What was wrong with him?

“Jacks calls you princess,” he mumbled. 

This made her soothing strokes pause.

“Hmm.” The noise vibrated through her chest like a purr.

Gilbert allowed his eyes to close as he settled into it. One hundred years with Chrysi meant a bit of desensitization to his fear of cats. 

“He does,” she agreed. She tapped a thoughtful pattern over his skull. “Does it bother you? ‘Cause I can get him to stop. Easy.”

He shook his head. He wasn’t expressing himself right.

“No, I mean… the pet name… thing.” Ugh. He wished he didn’t have to explain this. Even just speaking it aloud made his face burn. “It’s just… I feel bad.”

“You already said that. I also still don’t know why.”

He wanted to bury himself in Chrysi’s arms and not think about it. The honeys and the sweethearts and the dears, darlings, loves. For some reason, none of them sounded right when he thought about using them in the place of Chrysi’s name.

Gilbert mumbled, “We’ve been together for over one hundred years and I still only call you Chrysi.”

She paused. “Well… yeah.” Her nails scratched lightly at his scalp. “Have you ever considered that I like being called Chrysi?”

He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t, not really. He hadn’t thought about the way he referred to Chrysi in the first place—the first time that it had been brought to his attention was when Oz complained about it. 

She laughed and it warmed Gilbert’s ear. 

“We’ve been together for over a century, Gil. I guarantee you, that’s more than enough time for me to have brought it up, if it really bothered me.”

He shifted. “Really?”

The smile in her voice wrapped around him like another hug. “Of course. Why, did Oz make you feel bad about it?”

He didn’t say anything. 

“Oh, Raven,” Chrysi groaned. “Oz said you needed to propose to me publicly with a diamond ring, remember? That didn’t work out, now did it?”

“Well,” he started.

“He also dressed up like a girl and followed you when you went out with Dahlia to ruin your relationship with her,” she reminded him. 

He grimaced. It wasn’t his best moment. “Oz really wants you as a sister-in-law.”

“And he’s super sweet for that. But he’s already got me as one.” 

Gilbert lifted his head. 

Chrysi’s eyes lingered on the ceiling, lamplight making her eyelashes angelic. Her mouth relaxed into a faint smile.

“Yeah?” he asked, hopeful.

Her eyes flashed down to him, the curve of her mouth twisting uneven. 

“Well, I didn’t stay with you for over a century for no reason. Just call me Chrysi like you always do, and there won’t be any problems.”

He smiled embarrassedly. “It is a bit silly, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Gil.” Chrysi beamed at him. “That’s why I fell for you in the first place.”

[chryzuree]

thinking abt childhood fates au, where chrysi runs away and falls in love w azure during that whole time jacks is looking for her. every time azure dies, chrysi’s jst patiently waiting for him to be reincarnated, whereupon he tracks her down as soon as he remembers her and they date all over again 🫶🏻 but then chrysi ends up in the deck when she finds jacks there, so when azure comes back and tries to find her, he’s heartbroken that she’s trapped :((( it’s okay though!! when paloma takes chrysi’s place, azure’s the one to find her and take care of her until she wakes up 🥰