#like i came in and the thing has been upside down and Pinch Detected for hours

[robustcornhusk]

i have spent more time repairing slaw's fancy automated litter box than i have scooping my own cat's litter this week :|

[babbushka]

This request is dumb but I’ve been sitting on it for a while so I’m just gonna throw it out there and see what you think 😂 I love the post you made about Flip being the good husband that he is in doing yard work and stuff. I had a thought of what Flip would think of his Mrs if he came home and found her doing some manual work outside or something. Like, “oh my God, that’s my wife and she looks so hot right now 😍😍😍” Haha! Again, it’s just a silly little idea but I’m just throwing it out there 😂 xx

Anonymous said: Flip throwing his Mrs over his shoulders 😍 I think about it being some sweet chase/play thing sort of like when they play wrestled in another one shot 🥺

1k, no warnings just fluff!

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and Flip is in a good fuckin’ mood. He’s off work early today, something about him workin’ too much last week and needing to balance the overtime, so it’s only a little after one o’clock that he finds himself heading back home to you. Windows rolled down, breeze in his hair, Flip smokes his camel and taps his hand on the leather of the steering wheel along with the beat of the music coming through the radio, humming along in the back of his throat.

If you were here with him, you’d be singing unashamedly, laughing and beaming at him. He doesn’t mind the solitary drive though, not when he knows he’s on his way to you. What a surprise it’s going to be for you, he thinks, he almost always calls before he heads home. Not today though, today he wants to be a little sneaky.

He stopped at the florist on the way home from work, picked up a big bouquet of those flowers you like, knowing that it’ll be a perfect touch to your spring themed dining table. He also picked up something sweet for you from the bakery that’s conveniently next door to the florist, and can’t wait to see your reaction.

In fact, he’s so wrapped up in thinking about you and how lucky he is to have you, that he almost thinks he’s hallucinating when he pulls the Chevy up to the driveway, parks, gets out of the car and gets an eyeful of you, not able to stop the raise of his eyebrow as he blurts out,

“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Philly!” You gasp with joy as you abandon your task, a great big toothy grin splitting your cheeks. Dusting your hands off on the apron you wear, you half run half skip down the driveway, throwing yourself into his arms. “You’re home so early!”

When your bodies collide, Flip’s eyes close as his mouth meets yours. You’re smiling a little too hard to really pucker up properly, but that doesn’t stop Flip. He grabs at your face with his big warm palms while your arms wrap around his thick waist, and he litters your cheeks with wet smacking smooches that have you laughing and laughing.

“Excuse me ma’am, but what the hell are you doing in the dirt like this?” Flip pinches at your nose and gives your face a shake, “You’ve got it all over you.”

You had been doing some digging out in the front of the house before Flip caught you, and when he looks over he can still see your small trowel and little buckets.

“Oh I was just getting some weeding done, I didn’t want the tulips to suffer.” You wave your hand dismissively, and Flip can only smirk.

“They suffer?” He asks, playfully scandalized, and you nod solemnly.

“They suffer.” You tease right back, before cracking up into a laugh again. You knew it was silly, how much you cared for the tulips that grew in the pretty flower beds outside your house, but now that it was Spring you were too excited to not tend to them.

Flip knows this, but even as he sighs dramatically and shifts his old on you so that he’s got one arm slung across your shoulders, letting you lead him into the house, he can’t help but keep teasing.

“Well then you tell me about it, and I’ll do it for you.” He says seriously, “What kinda husband am I, lettin’ his fox of a wife do work out in the hot sun? You’re makin’ me look bad, ketsl.”

You huff out a chuckle – you didn’t have any neighbors for just about a mile in any direction being all the way up in the mountains like you were, no one is around to see.

“Aw it’s not so bad, I’ve got a big pitcher of iced tea and everything. Want a glass?” You bump your hip against his as the two of you walk up the steps of the front porch.

“Nope, you can’t distract me like that,” He shakes his head, “Is this what you do when I’m gone, hm? Toil away in the dirt when you’re supposed to be pamperin’ yourself and relaxing?”

“Flip! It was just for a few minutes I promise – ah!” You’re just about to roll your eyes when suddenly you’re upside down, Flip’s arms having slung you over his shoulder.

He’s strong, your man, and you’ve always been impressed with the way he can so easily lift you up, even if it makes your stomach swoop. You smack against his back and he just chuckles, as he nudges open the front door with his big cowboy boot.

Flip pats at your ass once or twice, before setting you right, your nose crinkled up in a playful scowl. He wishes every day could be like this; coming home early to you, when the sunshine still pours through the open curtains of the windows. You’re not working on dinner yet, Flip can tell by the way the house doesn’t smell savory, but that’s okay – in fact, that’s more than okay. It’s still early, and that gives Flip time to get to work up an appetite with you.

Despite being covered in dirt from the flower boxes, Flip doesn’t want to be anywhere other than right up next to you, so he doesn’t let you get too far before pinching your chin between his fingers.

“You’re my girl?” He asks softly, dipping down to rub his big nose against yours, lips ghosting over one another.

“I’m your girl.” You nod with another one of those heart-melting smiles, kissing the corner of his mouth before asking, “Are you really home for the whole rest of the day?”

“You fuckin’ bet ketsl,” Flip replies, making your whole face brighten up in a way that only has Flip feeling over the fucking moon, before he puts on his detective voice and orders, “Now get your ass upstairs and let me pinch at you in the shower.”

An order to which you happily comply.

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Taggin' some Flip friends :) @mochabucky @sacklerscumrag @artsymaddie @bitchydecisions @direnightshade @reyloaddict55 @thembohux @kylorenswhxre @sunflowersinthesnow @babayagakeanu @safarigirlsp @steeevienicks @materialisthicc @hswritingrecs @han68000 @rosi3ba3z @chapterhappygirl @loverofallthings @groovetoob @bxnnywriting @glassbxttless @angel-bxby3 @smallgirlbigpersonality @lovelyyy-luna @2000andwhat @raddo1975 @cornmousequeen @metsienmenninkainen @caillea @painttheskylineforme @holding-on-to-starwars

[bosspigeon]

maybe they’ll leave you alone, but not me

Pairing: Gen, with Tina Poname & Male Detective Friendship Word Count: 2187 Summary: Tina Poname’s the new kid in a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere, and is learning the hard way that making new friends in a place like Wayhaven is easier said than done. Luckily, she’s got a can-do attitude and a forceful personality to help her befriend even the surliest of loners.

I just think Tina’s such a good character, and I loved trying to write from her point of view, and I love thinking about her friendship with the Detective. Especially with my boy, Arlo. I also read a bunch of articles trying to put together his infodump on the Satanic Panic fhdasjhgjskahg. Title, of course, taken from “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance. (I like to think I’m Funny)

Tina takes her lunch in the courtyard.

It’s overcast outside, looking like it might rain later, but the courtyard is nice enough, landscaped with flowering plants and rustic stone pathways, though it is kind of small. She’d rather sit inside, just in case it does start pouring, but every table in the cafeteria was full, and the ones that weren’t very quickly became full when she walked past with her lunch bag. She’s learned quickly that small towns like Wayhaven tend to be pretty… insular.

She’s trying not to let it get her down. She’s the new kid, and with time other students will warm up to her, but for now she feels like she’s the ugly duckling set adrift in a little pond, and all the other ducklings think she has the plague or something. The metaphor gets away from her a bit, but her head’s been a bit of a jumble since the last move. But that’s leading towards things she’d rather not think about, so she doesn’t. Simple as that.

Instead she looks around her, taking in the very pretty little courtyard, even if it’s washed in the moody tones of the grey sky overhead, made more moody still by the shade of a tall, gnarled old ash tree in the center. There are a few wooden picnic tables scattered about, all of them empty.

All of them but one.

Tina almost doesn’t see him at first. He’s hunched over at a table directly under the ash tree, his back to her. His long black hair hangs almost to the bottom of his shoulder blades in loose waves, and all she can think is that he’s never seen a boy with hair so pretty before. Every time she sees a boy with long hair, it’s always a frizzy mess, and whenever she brings up that they really shouldn’t use all-in-one shampoo, they get all annoyed with her.

She makes the decision to flounce right over, rounds the table, and wiggles into the bench across from him. “Your hair’s so pretty!” she chirps by way of greeting, unzipping her lunch bag and beaming at him. He looks up at her, and she’s a bit stricken when she sees his face properly. His dark brows are bold slashes scrunching over pale grey eyes lined in smeary black makeup that streaks down his freckled cheeks. He’s got a square jaw and a strong nose, but he still leans more into pretty territory than handsome, and she’s beginning to figure out that the uniform guidelines in the student handbook are taken as more suggestions than law, given that his lip, nose, and ears are pierced.

He doesn’t respond, squinting at her, his mouth twisting into a frown.

“I’m Tina!” she offers cheerily. “I like your makeup!”

He frowns harder, almost snarling, with a bit of teeth showing, like he’s hoping to scare her away. Well, Tina Poname isn’t so easy to scare, and she’s determined not to spend lunch alone. She just smiles right back and starts rooting through her lunch bag, pulling out the neatly packed containers of healthy fruit and veggies and hard boiled eggs to find the yogurt-covered pretzels hidden at the bottom. She crunches on one while she eyes her new tablemate, who seems to have resigned himself to her delightful company and has turned his attention back to a notebook he’s doodling in while absently eating something she thinks is a kind of pretty little spring roll. It looks really good, and she’s a bit jealous.

He staunchly ignores her eyes on him, shifting a bit and tossing the hair hanging in his face over one shoulder, so she can properly see the black enamel inverted cross dangling from his ear. Without thinking, she leans across the table and flicks it.

He flinches away from her and glowers with such ire she’s surprised her clothes aren’t smouldering. She smiles sheepishly, but brushes off the surprise and barrels on. “I can’t imagine you’re too popular wearing those in a quiet little town like this,” she chimes in a teasing sing-song. “Wonder how many old die-hard religious types burst into flames at the sight of you?”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes so hard it gives Tina a headache. But she’s also more than a little pleased she’s gotten a reaction out of him.

She leans into it, figuring she’s found her in. “So, are you a Satanist or what? It’s cool if you are! Just think it must be hell in this place.” She can’t help but cackle at her own joke, slapping the tabletop and wheezing. When she recovers enough to notice, she catches him eyeballing her like he can’t quite figure out exactly what’s wrong with her. It’s a look she knows pretty well at this point.

“I’m not an anything,” he sighs, tapping his fingers on the wooden tabletop. His nails are painted black, but they’re chipping at the tips, and he’s wearing a few really cool rings, a couple of which looks like they might be antiques. “Besides that, the whole inverted cross being a symbol of Satanism is bullshit.” His voice is pretty deep, but not nearly as deep as she expected it to be, and softer besides, with a light, lilting burr to it. Regardless, Tina’s delighted to have gotten anything more than grunts and glares from him at all. She leans forward, crunching another pretzel. “Wait, really? What’s it mean, then?”

“It’s the cross of Saint Peter,” he almost bursts out, and then pinches his lips shut, like even he’s surprised he said anything. He looks at her warily, but she just waves at him to go on. He hesitates for another moment, before he continues haltingly, “When Peter the Apostle was supposedly executed under Nero, he’s said to have requested he be crucified upside-down, because he felt he wasn’t worthy to die the way Jesus did.” His broad, tight shoulders are loosening bit by bit the more he talks. “It’s a symbol of humility. It’s even used in the design for the papal cross, because the Pope is supposed to be the successor of Peter. And because of its mistaken associations with Satanism, now people like to claim the Pope is the antichrist.”

He rolls his eyes again and picks up another spring roll, gesturing at her with it before taking a bite and continuing while he chews. “I’m not sure exactly when people decided turning the cross upside-down suddenly makes it evil, but it can probably be traced back to the whole Satanic Panic debacle that kicked up in the 70s through the 90s. Anton LaVey—fuck that guy, by the way—published The Satanic Bible in ‘69, but most of it was pretty much plagiarized from a lot of other authors who philosophized about self-actualization and whatnot, including Ayn Rand—fuck her too—and then The Exorcist movie came out, and those things combined with the whole Manson cult thing earlier in the 60s and kicked off this sort of pop culture fascination with the occult and macabre. A lot of metal bands and other counter-culture music artists started using them in album art along with other bastardized religious imagery, and it turned into a whole thing with religious pearl-clutchers.”

Tina is astounded. Not just by the subject of the conversation (which is really cool, in kind of a weird way?) but with the way the boy  turns into a completely different person in the blink of an eye. Just a few minutes ago, he was all dour and moody and mean, looking as if he was a second away from biting her head off, and in the space of a few seconds, he’s morphed into someone totally different. His eyes are brighter and more expressive, he’s talking with his hands, and even the kind of monotone voice she’d heard from him before has changed. “Wow,” she says with no small amount of awe.

He seems to regain himself when she speaks, as if he’d forgotten he was talking to another person entirely. She watches him shrink, hunching his shoulders and looking down at the table, scooping up his pen and viciously scribbling a little spiral into the top corner of his notebook.

“No, seriously!” she blurts, standing up and bracing both hands on the table so she can lean into his space. “That’s really cool! How do you know all that?”

He gives her that same wary, hunted look from earlier, and she can’t help but pout. She wants to see what she saw just a second ago, when he looked like he was excited to talk about something. “Just stuff I picked up a while ago, and thought it was cool, I guess.” He shrugs and looks away, tugging at the spiked chain around his neck partially hidden under the crooked collar of his uniform shirt. “There’s this bookstore a couple towns over that kind of specializes in this stuff.” He lifts his hands and wiggles his fingers, mouth cocking in a wry almost-smile. “Plus, there’s always the magic of the internet.”

She laughs brightly, and it takes every ounce of her meager self-restraint not to reach out and try to physically drag that other boy out of him. “Oh, that sounds fun! We should go together sometime!”

He blinks at her, like she’s hit him over the head with her lunch bag. “Wh… what?”

She leans forward harder, until she’s essentially standing on her tip-toes and bouncing. “We should hang out! I’m sure if I ask really nice, my stepmom will drive us out there. It’ll be great!”

He keeps staring at her. She bounces a bit faster, hoping he doesn’t notice the pimple she couldn’t quite cover with foundation before she had to leave this morning. And if he does, she hopes he doesn’t say anything about it, because she doesn’t think trying to fight him will ingratiate her to him overmuch.

“I’ll buy lunch and everything,” she wheedles.

“I…” He looks away, eyebrows all scrunched again, but she can see him wavering. She wants to punch the air. Never doubt Tina Poname! “I guess? But why?”

Her smile falls a little at the genuine confusion in his voice, the way he’s not looking at her anymore, even to glare, the way he’s twisting one of his rings around his finger and almost hiding behind his thick, dark hair. She tilts her head and blinks at him. “Because I think you’re cool? Besides that, this town is kinda weird about new people? And you’re the only person who didn’t put a bag or book on every available seat when I walked by.”

“Mostly because I didn’t see you coming,” he mutters under his breath, and she barks out a laugh.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ambushed potential friends,” she giggles. “Hasn’t failed me yet. Except when it has, but I don’t count those.”

He finally looks at her again, still kind of hidden behind a curtain of hair, but she thinks he’s actually smiling at her. He starts to open his mouth to say something, but flinches instead when the shrill ring of the bell indicating the end of lunch interrupts him. He swears under his breath and starts to gather up his things, and Tina starts shoveling pretzels into her mouth while pushing her untouched plastic containers back into her bag. She’s going to regret eating nothing but pretzels later, but at least they’re more filling than melon or carrot sticks.

“Hey wait!” she exclaims through a mouthful of pretzels as he begins to stand, almost tripping over the bench to block him in before he can leave. She’s staggered, suddenly, when he rises up to his full height and she’s looking very up at him. She’s been taller than most boys all her life, so this is a bit bizarre. He looks down at her with his brows raised, tucking his notebook into a satchel covered in patches and pins. “Wow, you’re tall,” she says astutely, swallowing her pretzels.

“Uh… yeah, I am,” he responds.

She shakes off her shock and backs up enough to let him out of his side of the table, but she blocks his path to the door still. Though she’s not sure she could stop him from going anywhere if he really wanted to get past her, with those long legs of his. “I forgot to ask! What’s your name?”

He hesitates again before he quietly says, “Arlo.”

She shoves a hand out at him, “Tina Poname, at your service!”

He grants her a shake with his big, ring-laden hand, obviously bemused, but he’s doing that maybe-smile again, so she thinks she’s done pretty well here. “Yeah. Nice to meet you.” He turns and walks a few long steps away, then pauses and turns back towards her, waiting for her scamper to his side.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” she says a little breathlessly, swinging her bag and turning to him with a sly little smile “since you’re the local here, what teachers will let me get away with eating in class?”

[calamityk8]

"My name is Barney Rolfe, and there is something wrong with my brain. I am admitting this to you with the full understanding and acknowledgement that what I am doing is absolutely not going to be fully understood; but perhaps in pieces it can reconcile the most fragmented and deranged parts of my psyche, or at least arrange them in a way that will relieve this incessant pressure that always haunts me. Whatever happens, well, at least I have tried to do something to explain this innate and incessant madness, which is more than most get a chance to do.

Okay, here goes.

Belatedly, I suppose, there were neurons misfiring to account for, some chemical mishap that perforce disengaged my social abilities to adapt and be of use to others. Panic and hysteria have ruled the contours of my experience for longer than this busted-up brain can recall. Looking back, well, I can gauge the horrific aspects of it, in the present. Of course hindsight’s a malignancy at this point. I have become this disease; it as all that I am: a sporadically hebetude-induced corollary on the razor’s edge of sanity’s rusty hook. Saying things like this doesn’t help. I know. It’s just hard to judge oneself from the outer limits of perspective’s gush and flow. Trapped in this insidious circle of discontent and maladjustment, I am oozing the sap of life’s lost lust.

I might have a way to put it, so let me.

Having severe systemic and constant depression and simply “being bummed” are two very distinct and different things. One is a disease; the other is just one of the myriad consequences of being alive. If someone has cancer you don’t tell them to, “buck up and get over it.” We don’t admonish a stroke victim to, “stop lying around, and get up and do something with yourself.” Even our advice for sufferers of the common cold is sympathetic, as cough-and-congestion victims aren’t told they are being “weak” or “soft” and should just “be happy because things could be a lot worse.” But, for some inane reason that is preconditioned into us by years of inhumane pseudoscience, diseases of the mind are linked to some weakness or lassitude of the individual, as if that person who is suffering from a disease such as depression or severe anxiety is somehow inept and is to be blamed for their troubles. As if it is within their control to get better by “just trying a bit harder at it.” It’s really a nonsensical viewpoint to take; but, alas, it is one of many such idiotic theories held by the masses.

Here — there is this too: you’ve got to fight this one alone. Other people can help you, but in the end it comes down to you fighting for your life all by your lonesome. This is a difficult thing to internalize, but once you do, in some wary way, a strand of hope will spring from this, as finagled and shoddy with trepidation as it may be. There will be a surge of selfhood guiding you, a reliance on the one person you can always count on: yourself. It is a scary thing, but like most scary things one finds as obstacles on the wayward path of one’s existence, extremely worthwhile to conquer. Just like any other terminal disease, depression kills; suicide is merely its mechanism.

This shouting in my head, it never seems to cease.

I am nervous and concise around others. I only laugh when it’s expected. Being alone has become my only comfort, though it too is getting to be unendurable. To guide me I take some small salvation in the long history of human endeavor to fight through the gnashing teeth of internal strife. According to Lecky’s History of European Morals, “A melancholy leading to desperation, and known to theologians under the name of ‘acedia,’ was not uncommon in monasteries, and most of the recorded instances of medieval suicides in Catholicism were by monks.” I dream through these trials and tribulations of ancients, attempting to stem the tide of my own demise with less troubling thoughts than the ones I’ve come to own: I am the angular distance of a star below the horizon; the dusty truth of eons of suffering through a terrible weight’s pressing down; sunken and lost; in old, forgotten times what they once called grevoushede. Grevoushede. Acedia. I breathe the words and balance the syllables on my tongue, unable to savor their taste or texture. I am a weightless pin pricked in the skein of an upside-down world I’ll never get close enough to know.

Who could ever fall in love with this raggedy bag of afflictions?

I trek through the ruins of my obsession, draped in sorrow’s mask, leaning on tiny tics and safe places to guide me. The cracking of my toes, one by one. Snapping all of my fingers back and forth. Clicking my tongue on the roof my mouth. Blinking an even number of times with one eye and then an odd number with the other. Popping my ears with my jaw. Smoothing my eyebrows down with my fingertips. An innumerable array of distractions that ease the arrhythmic pulse of thoughts that come but never go, blurring out my sight, and leaving me trembling, all filled-up with static but as empty inside as an ice cream shop in the freezing rain.

Woe is my middle name.

All of these little vacancies in my head surface and fill into the most chronic of all conditions. Possibilities go awry with suspicious and judgmental looks. Maybe I’ll put on some Dolly Parton and fall in love with a bookmark. These are thoughts that calm the deliriousness at it swarms. Exceptional circumstances to bow down to in this glut of terrors, this amassing of torturous routines: the bath mat must be lined up perfectly with the tiles, the showerhead at just the right angle, the curtain stretched just so, and the shower water, the god-damn shower water…always and forever just a touch too hot or too cold. The chores of being me, they never end.

The human senses can somehow even detect whether a television set is off or just on mute without looking. And everyone can tell the difference between boiling and room-temperature water being poured in much the same manner. But it is when these senses go astray, when they slip and frazzle and get pinched, that’s when one comes to know the real intensity of those senses’ powers. A daily trauma that haunts me wherever I go, my brain stuffed with the lint of leftover churning, dizzy and lopsided and playing alive, I ignore the impossibilities of being able to maintain a normal existence for as long as this sapped torpidity allows. The courage I need to muster just to leave my place and walk to get groceries is at most times an insurmountable obstacle, and so I stay in and worry and worry and worry about everything. Every object grows too precious to disturb as I put it on the pedestal of the postponed quenching of my desires. There is nothing I can do or think that will snap this spell of disenchantment that grips me tighter as it deepens this hole I am eternally residing in. Just making it home from the grocery store with a few shopping bags of food sometimes feels like the greatest accomplishment in the world. I should be doing other things with my time, I know: concentrating my efforts on more grand pleasures and goals. But these things of consequence, they are not for me. I lose so much more than I gain in these battles. Small, inconsequential, pyrrhic victories are the only ones I’ve known.

Hope is a bestial thing with daggers and fangs; I make up a thousand reasons to not have any of it bombard me as this disease attacks relentlessly. There are honestly times when I cannot even bring myself to lift a finger to scratch an itch. I’ve been prescribed a list of medications too long to register properly in the catacombs of my lingering doubt about the chemical cohesion of my wherewithal: Abilify, clomipramine, Lexapro, bupropion, Celexa, Cymbalta, Lithium, Xanax, Paxil, amitriptyline, Lamictal, and that grand old sturdy classic Prozac. Etcetetra. It seems that I am only etceteras: more and more of less and less. It’s all a wash. It was a messy chorus of boos from the cheap seats as I struggled through side effects and listened to the growing drone of a singularly horrible voice that wasn’t quite my own resounding in my skull: “You’re no good. You’re a lost cause. Stop whining; start winning. You’re no good. You are just no good,” over and over; nauseated at all times; woozy, delirious, insomnia-plagued and diarrhea-bound; garbling my words when forced to speak, fumbling through life like a doped-up zombie with no appetites, every little thing so impossibly far away.

The window washers will not sing for me. The faucets around here all look like dead swans. I sweep. I litter. I am unable to know for sure if anyone else ever feels the way I always do. I am ill with this ravenous beast that pesters and claws at and drapes itself over me, leaving me with the gumption of soon-to-be-roadkill sluggishly slouching across a busy highway. I yawn instead of moan. I burst into tears in the dark of crowded movie theaters just before the feature starts. I am normal. Really. I am sane — maybe even too much so. I do wish I could just go insane, but, sadly, I cannot quite contemplate how to accurately achieve this feat. My brain will not assuage nor relent with its ceaseless cracked and mangled disturbances.

The boring by-rote recitation of symptoms rattled off to every doctor who’d listen. They don’t know who I am, what I’ve suffered through, how I came to be this way that I am; and there’s no device by which I can properly explain it to them. It’s not like they can run a test, take some blood, or do a biopsy, and then figure out what’s wrong with me. It’s a hidden thing, deep within the walls of my pain, not on or off any scale they’ve ever invented. I am my own example. There are no answers to any of this. They used to take out parts of people’s brains, thinking it would relieve their suffering. But it just left folks lobotomized to a dull, vegetable state, unable to form words or dress themselves. Perhaps they were happy, though. Perhaps they were thankful for the big, empty space that now occupied what they’d formerly called living. Perhaps there was no person behind those dead eyes left to care. The disease wins yet again, as it always does.

Clinical diagnoses follow me with heavy clomps. “Heavy dysthymia with a robust anxiety level. Somatic cross-cutting, serious signs of high Altman-scale mania, repetitive and troubling thoughts bordering on multiple phobias and generalized panic. Personality Trait Facet Scores high on rigid perfectionism/grandiosity/anhedonia type, though scores lower across board than patient believes. Unusual and abnormal, but not psychotic at all.” As you can see, the weather inside my head is rather frightful, to say the least. I trudge through the murky terrain of my past with great regularity. I am muddy with it, soaked through from the storm of my memories, which are remembering themselves over and over and over again and again and again, until I do not rightly know what has happened or what is happening now. Who am I but this box of disturbing thoughts?

Madness in the family. A quirk in the genes being passed down just like Huntington’s or any other inherited affliction. This one’s just as deep in the bones, though not as noticeable, not as prominent in the makeup of one’s persona. My father was a brazen raver whose depression put the business end of a rifle under his chin to finally wreck its one final havoc on him as pulled the trigger in defeat; his father before him too came to an early funeral, though his disease’s weapons of choice were gasoline and matches, as he lay in immolation by the pumps of an empty gas station in the wee hours of his final night on earth. This dreary thing, it just goes and goes right on down the line. Shelter from it is inconstant at best. It is as if I am in hiding from my inheritance, from my own true self — a hibernation of sorts: falling in and out of a troubled sleep, groggy and drooling through another afternoon, I become obsessed with trifles. I organize the cups and plates on my shelves until they all perfectly line up. I become tempestuous at a single hair being out of place. I talk to myself constantly, mostly demeaning phrases and freshly coined derogatory slurs aimed at myself. I have been parked too long in my heart’s handicap spot. There is very little “me” left here to notice.

So, do not look at me lightly, with deferential judgement or pity’s hidden ire. My sorrows are so much smaller than you’d suppose. My shoes come untied just as much as yours do. I can be as brave and also as craven as most. I eat blackberries and put salted butter on my toast. There are no cures, only temporary stopgaps for relief of symptoms. I am not in control of the way that I feel. I will try. I do try. None of this is less than extremely difficult. I do not need nor crave your sympathy; I just want understanding. Perhaps, even after all this exegesis and other inexplicable explanatory notions are through, this is still too much to ask. In the end, casting aside whatever ideas anyone might get to having about me and my plight, I only return right back to where I began: my name is Barney Rolfe, and there is something wrong with my brain."

[monchikyun]

12. late night thoughts

Gavin can’t decide whether he wants to punch the captain’s face or hug him till his bones are turned into powder. He truly has the cruellest, most amazing ideas for punishment.

Okay, so it’s a mandatory thing and not an evil scheme to make him behave, but still, no one can tell him that the fact Fowler has specifically chosen him to accompany the android is anything but arbitrary.

And so now he and the most infuriating machine in the world are on their way to attend a fucking seminar on healthy android-human relations in the police force or some nonsense like that.

It’s not that he hates Connor, he absolutely despises his stupid beautiful face and his annoying charm. He doesn’t know what to do with that energy that overwhelms him every time they’re in each other’s proximity, which means his workdays are most often something to be dreaded and not his favourite part of life like it always used to be. Nothing can guarantee him that one day he won’t do something utterly irresponsible that would make him lose the small amount of sanity he possesses, just to get rid of that impossible restlessness. He can’t trust himself with someone who gives him such a hard time, who looks at him like they want to devour him whole. Because the sentiment is pretty mutual.

It has started the first time Connor stood up for himself, the day when he came back to work after the revolution. Gavin was getting bored at that point, not having a half-decent bully target on hand, so understandably the android’s arrival made him quite ecstatic. He didn’t really care about what kind of fun he’d have with him, just that there would be something else to fill his breaks with other than the vapid chatting and small talk he so detests. No one in the precinct takes his bullshit behaviour anymore, and when he discovered that his vileness doesn’t work on Connor and that the android is strong enough to snap him in two if he so decided, his spirits have sunk the lowest they’ve been in years. The charged conversations they have together at least once a day aren’t enough to release the tension that’s been piling up since the moment he has set his eyes on that handsome pest. It has been driving him mad to the point of thinking that he either has to quit his job or show the machine just how much he makes Gavin crazy.

This trip - there is no way it could ever end well.

They have been annoying each other to kill the boredom during the endless hours in the car, so far so normal. He just doesn’t know how long this equilibrium can possibly last, especially since it’s a two-day excursion. Not that he expects they’ll see each other much throughout the night. (And he definitely doesn’t hope they might!)

-

“Can you check again?” That miserly old man, he might have assumed his captain from hell would pull something like this.

“Still just one room booked under the name of Mr. Reed. I’d offer you an alternative, but unfortunately, there are no more vacancies.” The android receptionist made suspicious eye contact with Connor and he would make sure to question that later if it didn’t make him secretly excited.

“What a phcking joke, we’re at a pro-android event like this and still you’re being treated like a pet.” He grumbles as they walk inside the presentation hall.

“Didn’t think you’d mind, detective.” The way that the remorseless android addresses him sends shivers down his spine, which he absolutely doesn’t enjoy, not a bit.

“I don’t.” He hopes the blood in his face isn’t as visible, but knowing that observant prick, he’s noticed it even before Gavin has.

“You’re cute when you’re in denial.”

Gavin swears he’s going to murder him the second they’re alone.

-

The seminar itself is duller than plain pasta and he would put himself to sleep if it weren’t for the incessant text messages coming from the one and only. Connor’s method of surviving this lethal tedium is by sending Gavin every single meme he’s come upon in his computer brain, apparently. It’s clearly not their fault that this place provides free wi-fi that covers every inch of the grounds. It takes his everything not to burst in laughter thanks to Connor’s adorable idiocy.

His heart has been doing some weird things since this morning, which is only getting worse the more time they stay this close. This scary part is it doesn’t bother him, quite the opposite. Maybe he should follow this feeling, see how much it wrecks their tenuous relationship. After like three litres of alcohol in his system.

“We’re on duty, detective.”

Fucking figured. His guardian android won’t let him have any fun tonight. Okay, that is not entirely true, because the need for liquid drugs has gone away since they’ve started talking freely without the strain of the work environment.  Sitting in a bar like a pair of old friends, having a nice time just chatting about everything and nothing. No reason to get freakishly nervous. Fine, maybe he has been staring at Connor’s lips for an inappropriate amount of time and realising it might have flipped his stomach upside down, but other than that he’s doing swell.

When the time to leave to take a rest in their room comes, he’s so out of it that all his inhibitions have abandoned him in shame. He enters quite confidently until he notices the glaring issue they’ll have to face tonight.

“You gotta be phcking kidding me!”

One bed big enough to host two people. He pinches his cheek to make sure this isn’t one of his wet nightmares.

“I don’t need to sleep, or lie down for that matter.”

“So you’re gonna stand in a corner like a creepy mannequin?  Not happening.”

“I can go outside if…”

“We’ll solve this later. I need to take a shower.”

A cold one, ideally.

As the freezing water dances on his skin, something inside of him snaps. He thinks about today and all the other time he wished to feel this… wonderfully heavy with someone. Like he wanted to bestow the weight that has been making him behave like a madman to the person that would be able to hold it. And who else is the strongest, most menacing motherfucker in his vicinity than the sweet, caring Connor. Maybe he should steal him away before someone else has the same idea as him.

Being assaulted by the image of the said android dressed in a short-sleeved t-shirt right when he leaves the bathroom only reaffirms this plan. He has to jump straight to the bed and hide his telling body under a blanket, so this doesn’t turn into an irreversible disaster. Not that he doesn’t hope for just that.

“What’s the time?” Even this simple question feels awkward somehow.

“It’s midnight.”

A perfect time to change someone’s life.

“So should I leave or…”

“Don’t you dare. I’m freezing.” He prays the look he gives Connor is enough for him to understand his intentions.

“Okay,” Connor whispers and turns off the lights, which makes Gavin shiver with more than just cold.

Then the mattress dips and he’s being enveloped by two warm hands, tentatively so and unbelievably real. His overworked heart takes control of him, pressing their bodies together so there’s no space between them.

“I was thinking when you were in the shower and... I came to the conclusion that I want to try this with you.”

Before he has a chance to react Connor moves their foreheads together. The artificial breath tickles his face and all his remaining reserves are about to evaporate into thin air. He can see the fire in Connor’s eyes, feels that they’re equally screwed, and all that is making him never want to let this lovely menace go.

“But only if you consent, det-“

Gavin kisses those cheeky lips before they can finish saying that dangerous word. They are inhumanly soft and he tries to treat them with the utmost care, like he’s afraid to damage them. In reality, he just doesn’t see the need to rush things, they have the whole night to torment each other, after all.

@convinseptember they did the unspeakable that night xD

[bbrandy2002]

My Love

Chapter Four-Please Remember

Book: TRH

Pairing: Liam and Riley

A/N: Thank you @burnsoslow who edited the hell out of this and did so masterfully and just for all your support with everything. Also, @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore and @romanticatheart-posts I stole your words from your comments on the previous chapter. It was just two sentences but wanted to give credit where it was due. Keep your comments coming and you two will have this thing written for me..lol. And lastly, @dcbbw who sent me the perfect song for inspiration found here:

 https://youtu.be/3Ru1euNUN2s

Warning: Physical altercation and MC death mentioned.

-------------------

Silence fell on Liam’s lips as he held in his hand the first missing piece to Riley’s death. It had been exactly 12 hours since she departed this earth and his life,  taking with her the best parts of himself. Every second since had felt like thousands of painful stings throughout his entire body that he wanted nothing more than to numb.  Would this report provide him with all the answers he sought to why her life was taken from her? Would it make his heart hurt any less knowing what happened? Or would it simply open Pandora’s box, leaving him with more questions?  He knew it wouldn’t heal the pain he felt, but perhaps it would clue him into why she was gone.

Ignoring Bastien’s suggestion to sit, he turned away from his head guard and pinched the clasp of the manila envelope. With his heart thundering in his chest, he reached inside and slid the report from its enclosure. Pacing nervously, his eyes scrutinized every single word, line by line, from her name to how the exam was conducted. Nothing was abnormal.

He licked his thumb and turned to the second page. His eyes immediately caught sight of the bold type at the bottom of the page, and he couldn’t help but skip straight to it.

The cause of death is acute respiratory distress from potassium cyanide-induced histotoxic hypoxia. 

Manner of death: Homicide.

Liam read those words over and over again, unsure he really believed them. His stomach wrenched as thoughts of his own mother's murder began to haunt him; how could this happen again?  Riley, his love, the one who made him complete, who turned his world upside-down in the very best ways possible, succumbed to the same death his mother had over 20 years ago. Poisoned.

He had spent the last several hours contemplating whether he had done something to hurt her, thinking perhaps she hadn't been physically ready to be intimate the prior evening. As ominous as that thought was, knowing now that she was murdered, that he risked her life to marry for love after his father warned him of the pain of losing Liam’s mother, made him feel every bit as culpable of her demise. It was why he hadn’t chosen her at his coronation; he knew she was set up, but he had to protect her, even if it meant they couldn’t be together. 

Liam turned to Bastien with a remorseful look. “I killed her, Bas.”

“Sir, you did no such thing.”

He held up the report. “Then explain this … he warned me, Bastien; my father told me my love for her made me weak, that I put everyone at risk by choosing her. He was right.”

“Your Majesty, regardless of what the late King said, the same poison that killed your mother was found in the Queen. We need to proceed with an investigation and find out who really committed this atrocious act.”

Liam ran a hand down his face. “Yes, we need another damn investigation that will take you 20 years to figure out-except you didn’t figure out who killed my mother! my friends and I did that!” he spat.

“Sir, with all due respect, I wasn’t the Head Guard when your mother passed.”

Liam yanks Bastien by the collar, nearly nose to nose with him. “YOU ARE FOR THIS ONE!”

The guard attempted to loosen the grip, feeling the weight of his King’s words. “Please, sir. I understand the anger directed at me …”

“Oh, I don’t believe you can even begin to understand the anger I have for you, Mr. Lykel.” Liam stepped back. “You are charged with protecting my family, and so far two members of the royal family have been murdered on your watch:my father and my wife..So help me God, if I find out you could have prevented this and failed again …”

“What’s going on?” Drake asked, having heard the commotion and stepped around the corner to make sure everything was okay.

Liam continued to eye Bastien with a steely glare. “Drake, can you stay with Ellie while I take care of some business? I need someone I can trust to actually protect her.”

__________

In the lowest reaches of the palace, Liam placed two cold hands on the cell bars of the former Duke of Karlington. Godfrey had been imprisoned for the last six weeks, awaiting trial for his part in Eleanor’s death. The elderly man was lying down on his cot, stewing in boredom and oppressive thoughts, when he heard the familiar sound of keys clanking and the creaking of the door swinging open. Before he had time to lower the arm that rested over his eyes, he was jerked from his peaceful doldrums on the bed and brought to his feet. His aging body was thrust against the icy concrete of his prison walls, causing him to bounce off and stumble harshly to the ground.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Liam crouched down beside him, grabbing a fistful of Godfrey’s silver mane in one hand and his feeble neck with the other. “You son of a bitch. I will give you one chance and one chance only to rectify your miserable life before I strangle you with my bare hands!"

"This is preposterous," he gagged slightly as Liam's hand constricted tighter around his neck. Godfrey instinctively began tugging on the King's arm, desperate for breath.

"Did you kill my wife?" His tone became sharper.

The Duke gasped for air after the grasp on his neck was loosened. He furrowed his brows as he stared straight into the unforgiving eyes of his captor, unsure whether the lack of oxygen caused him to misunderstand.

"Did I hear you correctly? The Queen … is dead?"

Liam released his hold on Karlington's neck but kept the other bound to the back of his hair. "Did.you.do.it?'' he seethed.

"I haven't the faintest idea what the bloody hell you speak of!'' he replied contemptuously. "I'm facing death for what happened to Eleanor; what possible reason would I have for harming the Queen now?"

"Because you have a track record, Your Grace. The same poison you used to end my mother’s life was found in Riley’s body. I don’t believe this is just some coincidence.  You had nothing to lose."

"I would have nothing to gain either," he replied succinctly.

Liam let out a heavy sigh and stood, towering over the man whose deception and thirst for power had cost him years of anguish and emotional turmoil as a child. He searched Godfrey’s malevolent face for any indication of guilt or responsibility, yet none was detected. Feeling overcome by mental and physical exhaustion, he turned and walked toward the prison doors, where a guard stood nearby watching the encounter. “I’m ready.”

The guard pulled his keys from the clip on his belt and opened the door. As he exited and the lock was secured behind him, Godfrey pushed himself up from the ground and called out to him.

“Your Majesty!”

Liam stopped just out of view but did not face him. "What is it, Godfrey?"

Godfrey grabbed the bars of his cell and pressed his withered face against them.

“Sometimes we have no one to blame but ourselves. Are you really surprised this has happened, considering that from the moment you announced your engagement to the puckish American, our country has suffered one attack after another? Perhaps you’ll think wisely when choosing your next queen, because this lies squarely on your shoulders, Rhys."

Liam hung his head low Godfrey’s words were doing exactly what he intended them to do, getting under his skin and inside his heart. He did blame himself; he knew he always would. The guilt was eating him up inside because he thought the two of them together were unstoppable. They had encountered every possible danger together and always came out victoriously, but somehow he failed her this time. He turned on his heels, motioning for the guard to reopen Godfrey’s cell door.

“Take care of him.”

The guard nodded and lifted the pommel of his club from the holster at his side.

_____________

That evening, Hana would return to Valtoria. She had offered to stay, but Liam insisted he and Ellie would be fine. Maxwell and Bertrand returned to Ramsford soon after, and Drake retired to his room.

Liam stood just outside his bedroom after putting Ellie in her crib for the night. Fear of being in their room without Riley, sleeping in their bed alone for the first time and knowing that was the last place he saw her alive, prevented him from stepping inside. He placed his hand on the doorknob and slowly turned it, then let go. 

With the baby monitor still in his hand, he headed back downstairs and stepped out onto the balcony just off the living room. Liam placed both hands on the balcony railing and leaned into it. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, allowing the cool, spring wind that carried just a hint of honeysuckle to refresh his mind and relax his worn and weary body. 

“My love,” he began, peering down towards the entrance of the hedge maze. “I keep expecting to wake up and see that beautiful face of yours looking back at me, telling me this has all been just one horrible nightmare.” His throat began to tighten as his emotions started to resurface. “I have all of our wonderful friends, I have Ellie, but I don’t have you … and I’m so lonely, Riley,” he choked out. “I’m so lonely.”

Liam swiped away the tears that began to surface and roll down his cheeks like a torrential downpour. “Everyone keeps telling me that we will find out who did this to you - and I swear I will - but in the end, it won’t bring you back to me ... and our little girl will never know her mother, Ri. How do I even begin to tell her about you?... about us?” 

Liam pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and washed it over his teary face. His gaze turned to a small apple tree that he and Riley planted just outside the hedge maze shortly after finding out they were expecting a baby. Liam recalled she wanted something to represent the three of them: her being from the Big Apple, him being from the Land of Apples and their baby referred to by the people of Cordonia as “the Little Apple.” A thought crossed his mind, and he knew it was the right decision.  “Love, if it’s okay, I would like to lay you to rest under that tree.” He sniffles, “I think you would have wanted that.”

Feeling his eyelids growing heavier than he could withstand any longer, he said a quick good night, hoping it reached the heavens, before returning to the warmth of the indoors. 

Liam walked back upstairs and grabbed two blankets and a pillow from a hall closet. He entered Ellie’s room. Even with a guest bedroom, he didn’t want to be alone tonight, opting to sleep on the floor next to his daughter’s crib. 

______________

It had been one week since Riley died, and there were no leads, no suspects, no evidence other than the cyanide found in her body. No one who had spoken with or saw her in the days prior to the tragedy noticed anything that suggested she was sick. Cyanide poisoning kills quickly, though, and Liam, as the last person to see her alive, couldn’t explain how she ingested it. Their quarters had been swept, and no traces of suspicious activity was found anywhere. As frustrating as all of this was to Liam, he had something else on his mind today.

It had taken him three days to finally re-enter his bedroom, yet he still slept in Ellie’s nursery where the staff prepared a small bed for him there. He knew it was nonsensical, but he just couldn’t bring himself to be alone in bed without Riley.

Today, all businesses were closed, flags lined the streets of the Capital, and a frenzy of press and people were already gathering along the funeral procession route to pay homage to their beloved queen. At the palace, Liam stood before the vanity, adjusting his tie, smoothing out his suit jacket, and locking the emerald  cufflinks Riley gave him in place. He glanced over himself once more in the mirror before peeking down at Ellie, who was sitting in a bouncer on the vanity beside him, watching his every move. 

“All right, Princess, this is where your mother would tell me my tie is crooked or I have a hair standing up in the back. It’s up to you now; what’s the verdict?”

Ellie’s lips curved into a large smile, completely enamored by the attention she was getting from her father. “I will take that to mean the Princess approves,” he smiled back.

Liam gathered a baby cloth and slung it over his shoulder then lifted the baby from her bouncer. With a kiss to her forehead, he moved downstairs, where Bertrand and Maxwell were waiting for him at the door. Both brothers’ grim faces perked up at the sight of the approaching baby, who was almost a mirror image of Riley. Miss Talbert, who had served as Riley’s personal assistant, agreed to stay on as Ellie’s nanny, having helped care for her in one way or another since her birth.

“Amanda, she’s been changed and fed recently and will most likely take a nap within the hour.”

“Come here, sweetheart.” Amanda took Ellie from Liam’s arms. “We’ll be fine, Your Majesty; I’ll take good care of this little peanut.”

Liam kissed his daughter on the cheek. “Daddy loves you, sweet girl; I’ll be home soon.”

He looked down at his watch and then to Bertrand and Maxwell. “We should probably go.”

Stepping outside the front doors of the Palace, Liam took a deep breath and prepared himself mentally for what he thought would be some of the most difficult hours of his life. The eyes of the world would be watching his every move, every expression, and every shed tear. It wasn’t fair that he had to be strong; he detested the expectations he was burdened with on today of all days, yet it was what was conventional of a monarch during a time like this. Any sign of weakness could be detrimental to his country, or so he had been led to believe. He wondered why grieving the loss of your wife, your best friend, could be misconstrued as a sign of vulnerability ... but then, perhaps, today, he was vulnerable.

The sun was high, and the warmth it rained down was quite welcoming. With Maxwell on Liam’s left side and Bertrand on his right, they stopped at the end of the cobblestone walkway that led to the drive in front of the palace, and there they waited. The silence that commenced for the next minute was finally broken by the advancing sound of a horse’s trot. 

Drake was riding Maribelle’s Dream and pulled a wooden caisson bearing the casket of Riley Brooks. Draped over her coffin were the flags of Valtoria, Cordonia, and Ramsford, as well as a bouquet of her favorite flower, purple lilies perched in the center.

Maxwell lost all control of his emotions as she passed by, while Liam and Bertrand bowed their heads in deference. Once the carriage had cleared, the three men stepped forward and followed behind on foot, out the gates and to the cathedral. 

The service was a traditional, royal funeral. Liam wasn’t sure she would have liked it, considering she was anything but traditional. Sitting in the front row, he maintained his stoic facade as everyone around him wept and sniffled, yet inside, he was completely destroyed. He was devastated in his grief and the realization that the last time he was in this building, he was beginning his life with her; now, one year later, he was here once again, for its ending.

“King Liam of Cordonia, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you vow to love her, comfort her, and cherish her, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in times of joy and times of trial, til death do you part?”

“I do.”

At the conclusion of the ceremony and after all guests in the cathedral had exited, Liam, Drake, Hana, Maxwell, and Bertrand each gathered around Riley with heavy hearts. It had been decided they would each place a sentimental item with her and say their final goodbyes, away from rolling cameras and the eyes of the public. This would be their final time together as “The Gang” and wasn’t something they wanted to share with anyone else. 

Bertrand, never one for words, gave her a copy of the bill for the Applewood dress she never returned, knowing she would have found it hilarious and so perfectly him. His throat tight with emotion.  “Goodbye, Lady Riley, until we meet again.”

Hana stepped forward. “Riley, you gave me the confidence to be me, to follow my own path, to have fun, to laugh, to be wild and free. You’ve always been there for me, and I will never forget you.” She gave Riley the recipe for her hot cocoa that they had spent so much time bonding over. It reminded her of all their best times together. She placed a hand on her friend’s cheek.

Maxwell held out a small white box and placed it next to her. “I wanted to give you a box of cronuts because it was one of the funnest nights I ever remember with you … I assume you would appreciate the fact that I’ve already eaten half of them.” he chuckled through tears. “I’ll never forget you, Riley … I … I … I can’t do this.” Maxwell turned and fell into Bertrand and Hana’s embrace.

Drake inhaled deeply. “Uh … hey, Brooks. You already know what I got you.” He slipped a bag of marshmallows inside. “I can hear you laughing now and telling me how gooey I am on the inside. I like to think you had a little something to do that with, but don’t go getting all boastful about it.” He sighed heavily, running his fingers through his hair. “Damn, this hurts, Brooks … but I want you to know, I’ll take care of Liam and Ellie and … maybe you can save me a seat at that bar in heaven.” He smirked, “Yeah, my heaven has a bar, and all the whiskey I can drink.”

The four friends stood back, their arms around each other as Liam prepared to say goodbye. His thumb caressed her temple as he looked down at the face of his angel.

He cleared his throat and reached inside his breast pocket, pulling out several things. “Love … I have a few things to take with you, just some photos of us together and Ellie … and because you know me better than anyone, you would know I spent last night writing this letter to you … you always said I have a letter to write for every occasion. I won’t read it to you, but --” his lips began to quiver and his shoulders shook -- “I wanted you to know how proud I am of you … how proud I’ve always been of you. You possessed a strength I never had and without you, never will. All those dreams we won’t be able to fulfill -  yet we lived every dream we had to the fullest. We sure had one hell of an adventure, didn’t we?” He sobbed passionately, “We just ran out of time.” 

Liam leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Riley’s lips, lingering for just a moment. “I always loved you … I always will.”

With that, “the gang” left together and returned to the gardens of the Palace. They gathered together for a private burial under that apple tree she planted, while the birds soared, the butterflies flew, and the squirrels ran across the lush palace lawn. The five of them held each other, cried and laughed, remembering times and a life they would never know again.

[opalescent-cheetah]

I Don’t Know What To Do (About This Dream And You), 3/5 - Methydoll

Summary: Baseball players and mythical beings are a potent combination. After Crystal catches her eye on the baseball field, Nicky makes a decision that turns her entire world upside down. Meanwhile, Crystal is caught in a mysterious dreamscape, chasing a creature with eyes like liquid gold.

Inspired by these songs: “She’s So High” - Tal Bachman; “Digital Love” - Daft Punk; “Baby” - Francesca Blanchard

Chapter Summary: Nicky meets Crystal first in her dreamscape, and then at a cozy cafe.

A/N: @cobblestaubrey​ I hope you don’t mind being tagged in every chapter sjfgdjfhs. Anyways! Time to board the angst train! I’m sorry in advance lol.

Ao3 // Previous Chapter

Chapter 3 - Nicky

Her dreamscape is quiet, disturbed only by the rustling of leaves in the gentle summer breeze. She reclines in the branches of her favourite tree, letting the cool air wash over her feathers.

This is her nightly retreat; it may merely be in her subconscious, but it’s the only time she is free to be her true self. In fact, she has no choice but to remain in her real form when she’s here, after an entire day of maintaining her human disguise.

Nicky is the present-day incarnation of the mythical caladrius. Centuries ago, when societies still had faith in magic and fable, her ancestors existed as small white birds with the power to detect and heal sickness. The caladrius - and countless other mythical beings - have since evolved to better suit human society, as people’s faith in magic and its power dwindled, and the creatures that were once so useful became redundant. 

Now, these creatures maintain two forms: a human disguise, and their true form, which, over centuries, became more and more human. 

Nicky raises a wing, watching her feathers shiver in the breeze. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to simply be a bird: small and so common, yet still ethereally beautiful. Instead, all she has from her mythical ancestors are their wings, their sunflower eyes, and their powers.

A sudden movement catches her eye. There’s someone nearby, stumbling about beneath her tree.

Stiffening, Nicky realises who it is.

Crystal.

Shit.

How could she forget? Her healing powers came with one complication: the fact that she and whoever she healed would be psychically connected. Nicky mentally kicks herself for omitting such a minor yet crucial detail. After all, she’s lost friends over this, when they realised what a monster she truly was. And isn’t that the reason why you vowed never to heal another person again?

Typical. Of course you’d get so enamoured with a cute girl that you’d forget your lifelong promise to yourself.

She moves to scramble further up the tree, deeper into the leaves, trying not to think about the people who became nothing more than a memory, faces lost into the forests of her dreamscape.

“Hello?” Crystal’s voice rings like bells.

Nicky inwardly curses herself.

“Hello, is someone there?”

No. Nobody is here. Leave.

Her silent command proves fruitless as Crystal steps closer to the tree, peering up into the branches. Nicky curls into herself, knowing full well that her white feathers probably stick out like a sore thumb. 

She can’t stay here.

In a sudden burst of movement, she launches herself out of the canopy and takes off before Crystal can get a good look at her. She hasn’t ever flown like this before: so desperately, as though her life depends on it. Tears sting her eyes, but she can’t tell if they’re from the harshness of the wind or her own regret. 

How could she let this happen? It had been going so well with Crystal. They might have only met twice, but Nicky already had her number. They’d texted that night. Nicky had asked her out for coffee and Crystal had returned with a resounding yes.

She supposes she should just be grateful for the fact that their psyches aren’t connected every night. Otherwise, she’d always be surrounded by the faces of people who won’t even look at her anymore, and Crystal would just be one of several others. 

In fact, if she’d met Crystal here any sooner, she’s sure she wouldn’t have her number, and their coffee date would be nothing more than a figment of her imagination. 

She flies past a copse of trees and sees a familiar face amidst the leaves. It’s her childhood friend, and the first person she ever healed. The memory, though more than a decade old, is still crystalline: he’d stumbled, grazing his knee, and when he started crying, Nicky transformed in front of him, sure that she could help. She’d brushed his knee with the tip of a feather, taking his pain as her own, but instead of thanking her, he’d screamed. She never saw him again in the real world after that; all she remembers are the echoes of an angry voice through the phone, and the way her mother winced, her brows pinching in the centre.

But she still sees him here, every so often, less now that they have grown so distant. He has never looked her in the eye; on the nights his mind pulls him back here, he has no choice but to stay, and Nicky has no choice but to be reminded of her own childhood foolishness.

It often feels like there are more haunted faces here than there really are - it didn’t take a young Nicky long to realise that her meaningful efforts were not wanted, and so she made her promise to herself. But, although she can count those ruined relationships on one hand, it’s enough. It’s enough to break off a little more of her soul every time one of those faces appears in her dreamscape, every time they turn away and disappear into the trees to hide. 

And, whatever happens, Nicky will not let Crystal join them. She beats her wings harder, faster, cresting the wind, letting it carry her farther and farther away. 

Crystal may be stuck here now, but Nicky will never let her find out why. 

~

The air is thick and warm, the sun high in a cloudless sky, but Nicky is shivering with nerves. She is sitting alone at a table in a quiet, homely cafe, waiting for Crystal. What if she doesn’t come? What if she did, in fact, catch a glimpse of Nicky’s true form and thus decide never to speak to her again?

The thought alone makes Nicky ache, and so she shoves it away, forcing herself to stay hopeful. 

“Hey! Nicky!”

The voice makes Nicky snap her head up, and she’s delighted when she meets Crystal’s warm brown eyes. Crystal, looking windswept and a little dazed, smiles nervously before taking a seat across the table. 

“Sorry I’m late. I hate to keep you waiting.”

“It’s not a problem,” Nicky assures her, offering her a gentle smile. “I’m glad to see you.”

Crystal grins, and Nicky ignores the way it makes something in her chest flutter, as soft and delicate as a rose petal. 

They lapse into an easy, lively conversation, giggling like schoolchildren over steaming mugs of coffee and soft pastries. Crystal seems oddly shy without the boisterous company of her teammates, but it still feels so right, being here with her. Maybe it’s the cozy, golden atmosphere of the cafe, or maybe it’s Crystal, but Nicky feels at home. She feels comfortable, like this is where she’s meant to be. 

Wow. You really are just a useless lesbian. She almost rolls her eyes at herself, but something about all this feels too nice for her to scorn. 

Across the table, Crystal is rambling on - something about baseball, Nicky thinks, but she’s not quite listening anymore. Instead, she’s taken this opportunity to admire Crystal, who seems to glow under the warm lights, her eyes shimmering with an ethereal haze. Nicky has to stop herself from openly staring.

“Have you ever played before?”

Nicky startles, jolted from her reverie. “What?”

“Have you ever played? Baseball, I mean.”

“Oh - no. No, I haven’t. I can’t say I’ve ever been too into sports.” As she speaks, she thinks of nights when she takes to the skies, freedom in the windswept gaps between her feathers, but she knows that’s a sport she can never tell Crystal about. 

“Aw, pity. Something tells me you’d be really good.”

“What, at baseball? No way. I have no hand-eye coordination.” 

“Come on, I’m sure you’re just being modest,” Crystal giggles, coyly tilting her head. “We should practice sometime, just you and me. I’ll show you how it’s done.” 

Almost immediately, Nicky’s mind is flooded with images of Crystal, arms encircling her from behind, teaching her how to hold the bat; Crystal, grinning beneath the brim of her hat, her skin shining like bronze in the summer sunlight; Crystal, planting a kiss on her lips at the end of the day… 

Nicky arches her brows, trying not to seem too excited by the offer. 

“Alright. I look forward to it.”

Crystal smiles again, and Nicky’s heart skips a beat when she notices the gentle flush of her cheeks. The tiny, hopeful part of her whispers that maybe, just maybe, Crystal’s mind is running just as wild, that maybe she wants the same things Nicky does. She pushes the thought away immediately, too careful to allow herself to hope so much.

She’s brought back to the present when Crystal places a soft hand on the back of her own. Nicky blinks, surprised to find Crystal staring right into her eyes.

“It’s a date, then,” she says, a playful, brilliant grin painted across her lips.

~

Next Chapter

[penaltybox14]

@dying-redshirt-noises @its-skadi  You could basically title this “feelings are hard” and be done with it.

Every time Jim Reed comes slinking, soft-shouldered, out of the locker room at the end of the night, Mac wants to stop him.  Wants to talk to him.

Listen, he wants to say.  Listen, it's not you.  

Mac wishes he could sit him down without the uniform and the stripes and the years between them and tell him about Pete.  

Sometimes, he does hold Reed up.  Sometimes he says - how're things going?  And Reed nods earnestly and says things are fine, really, Sarge, things are going ok.

Reed's not a bad liar but Mac's seen a lot of eyes in his years and they always give 'em away, even the young men who believe they can't be hurt.  Reed's not stupid, not really - just new, just some yearling who hasn't settled into his stride yet, who wears his badge like a buck wears a new pair of antlers.  He's a good kid.  A fool kid, but a good kid.  

Mac thinks that Pete can see that, too - which is really part of the problem, isn't it?

Mac'd love to have a beer with the kid, and tell him about Pete.  How he laughs and how he drinks.  How he kids but he's honest to the core.  How he loves, and how he's loyal to a fault.  Mac could tell him stories so raw and rowdy they'd take the blue off the sky.  He could tell Reed how Pete was.

But that's just the problem, isn't it.

When the Captain and the Lieutenant had asked him what he thought of assigning Pete a rookie, he was all for it.  He would've set up a full briefing, with color photographs and pull-down charts and diagrams on the chalkboard, about how they couldn't find anyone in the division better, Pete would for sure drag any rookie through the briar but he'd drag him out too, he'd be by his side all the way.  Pete would tease the kid and teach him.  Mac could've told them all about him, but he typed it out in measured sentences, to only say that yes, he would recommend Pete for the job.  

Pete had talked to him about it.  Pete, being Pete, wasn't too sure.  Pete had always had a patient streak, and he liked to get the facts before he made a move.  

Mac had said, what do you mean?  You remember being the rookie, you just be the guy you needed to bring you along.  

And Pete had said, what I needed was to get a clock upside the head.

But he was grinning when he said it, the smile he had that rose into his eyes when he meant mischief.  

Mac had said, and that's why I've got the stripes and you don't, pal.

By the end of the watch, Tommy was bearing Pete's taunts about his hair with reasonable humor.  Tommy was a stolid kid who still had acne under his ears,  a boy with a bad case of bravery but a kind face, and kind hands.  He came out to inspection his first day with his badge on upside-down, and Mac had liked him immediately.

"He's like you," Pete had told him.

Mac had frowned at him - "I don't know how I feel about that."

Pete, grinning, the laugh at the corner of his mouth, said "Me neither, Mac."

Two shifts in and Mac was pretty sure the two of them were plotting to woo every eligible woman in the division, four shifts and there was a fake scorpion in Walters' locker, but Mac couldn't be too mad, because Pete was teaching the kid to be a good cop.  Pete's tongue was a knife some watch-nights, but it was carving a good man out of the raw-boned boy.

It was a good couple of weeks.  So good, that Mac still yearns for the laugh ringing in the locker room, the way a treble note hangs in the rafters of a church, the way a boy's hand remembers the first shy touch of a girl.  They were riding high, Pete and Tommy, faltering sometimes, but falling to each other's shoulders.  The Lieutenant had said, Mac, you were right about him, for sure.  And the Captain had even thanked him for the recommendation - but please, he'd said, creases milding his eyes, keep them out of my office.  

Mac thought he could do that, he said to Pete, the Captain tells me if you give him any more grey hairs he's going to start charging you for the dye job.

"Just me?  What about Tommy?"

"You're the senior man, Pete.  You've got responsibilities now."

"You mean I've got custody."

"That's another way to put it."

"I'll have him in home and in bed by one o'clock."

"Make sure he brushes his teeth."

"You got it, Papa Bear."

Pete was smiling when he left him, and smiling when he swung Tommy out to the parking lot by the shoulder.  Mac had followed them.  It was a cool night,  and a dense fog had lumbered into the basin, and in the drizzle their breath hovered in front of their faces as they got in the car, talking about something.  Probably women, or perhaps where to go for seven.  Maybe where to stash another fake scorpion.  Mac had a cigarette, watching them pull away.  

The smile on Pete's face, and the way the drizzle had collected like stars on Tommy's jacket collar, are fixed in his mind as sure as a snapshot.  

The next time he saw Pete there had been some expression frozen to his face, something Mac had never seen before, and something that scared him back to being twenty with a rifle in his hands.  The look on his face was like an trapped animal, and his teeth, bared and chattering, shone in the damp black night.  

Tommy was dead on the ground out in front a of a very ordinary looking house, a yellow Craftsman with a picket fence, a slate walkway, a neatly trimmed lawn and a wreath of plastic flowers on the door, which was open.  

Tommy's eyes were open, too, halfway, and his mouth, and Mac thought maybe the light from the porch was casting a long shadow from Tommy's sprawled shoulder but it wasn't, it was blood, and the blood was still wet.

Blood and grass was in Pete's hair, on his jacket, on his knuckles.  There was a man mostly in the patrol car and he'd been cuffed and was spitting onto the curb.

Walters had Pete by the arm, both of them tense, Pete a storm and Walters a rowboat tossed on waves.  Walters' face was splashed with porch-light and pale with hollow fear.

There was so much to take in, so much to sort out.  On the back end of it, after the detectives had spit Pete back out and he sat in the locker room half in uniform, Mac had wanted to go to him, like a sergeant would, like a friend would.  But Pete was sitting there in his ruined shirt - the blood had dried in muddy blotches, and Mac thought he could smell it, like meat in the market, or maybe it was just the lockers, just the smell of men's bodies crammed in, joking and sweating and laughing and living.  

Pete just sitting there dumbstruck on the bench, his eyes far-off, looking young and strangely small, as if he'd shrunk a size or two.  Sat there like a kid who'd lost a fight too big to win, waiting on authority to come down on him.

Looking an awful lot like Reed did some nights after watch, an expression pinched with lonesome thoughts, trying to get it right, trying to catch a break, trying so hard he trips over his own feet, his face, his words, his hands.  

Mac isn't sure which of them he wants to grab and throttle more.  Jim, who runs headlong - every damn time - into Pete's wicked tongue or worse his silence, or Pete, too damn stubborn to remember who pulled the trigger.  He wants to shake some sense into the both of them, either of them, whoever runs afoul of him first.  It's a rotten, surly kind of anger, something that makes his chest feel like caving in.

It takes a warehouse bust to finally snap his temper like tinder on a hillside.  Nothing serious, but the kid takes a right-hook to the jaw and a carton of computer parts to the gut.  Reed is writing the report with an bag of ice to his face, when his nose starts bleeding again.  

"Aw, Christ, Reed, wouldya get that fixed?  Look, you're - jesus, you've fucked up your book."

"Sorry, sir," Reed mumbles, fumbling over grabbing a kleenex or shoving the ice-bag into his face.  "Sorry," comes out all muffled.

"Don't be fucking sorry, kid, don't do it!"

In the time he's been Sergeant, Mac has pulled rank less than a hand of times on Pete.  Not because they're friends - but because his friend has never made it necessary.  

"Malloy." He barks, his voice dropping an octave, calling up his service days, and the few officers still around make themselves scarce.

Because they're friends, though, Mac drags him to the locker room and not his office, where the window makes it too easy for the rubberneckers to lurk.

"What in the hell is this about?"

That stubborn kid from the Academy with the smoke-blue eyes is staring back at him with boxer's shoulders cocked.  "What?"

"You! Reed! You've raked that kid over the coals almost every watch I've seen you two - everything he does right, you give him two things he did wrong."

"You wanted me to teach him."

"Teach him!  Pete, you're grinding him down to a nub, lay off, will you?"

"Lay off, what'll that get him?  A fist in his teeth, like tonight?  I let him get complacent, he's liable to get a bullet in his head."

"I'm not asking you to give him free rein, I'm asking you to be reasonable.  A bloody nose isn't his fault."

"It's his fault for getting it, isn't it?"

"Is it?  Who's his FTO, Pete?  Who's his partner?  Who's supposed to be looking out for him?"

That's the wrong thing to say, and Mac knows it.  Pete's face seals it, that stunned look from eight weeks ago, the hands with the blood on them that wasn't his, and the ruined shirt crumpled on the floor outside the showers.  

He's known him long enough to dodge the hit, and he hasn't been so long off the streets that his body's forgotten how to fight.  

If anybody's thinking about coming to the lockers about now, they'd damn well better think twice.

If anybody sees them, he's going to have to save face, he's going to have to be the sergeant, and he can't do it, can't twist the knife he's already jammed in.

So he pins Pete, like he'd wrestle a perp, and Pete curses him, curses his family, curses Jim, curses God and the world, curses Tommy Parker, and finally, finally, he curses himself.

"Jesus.  Jesus fucking Christ, what'd I do, Mac, what'd I do?  I've thought about it a hundred, a thousand times, what'd I do?  Why didn't I think of it, why didn't I remind him, stay to the side?  Why'd I send him first?  He wasn't ready, Mac, he wasn't."

"If you'd gone, it might be him taking a swing at me right now."

Pete laughs a jolting laugh, like boxcars clanging in the yards.  "Tom couldn't hit the broadside of a barn."

"No.  Wasn't much of a fighter."

Pete breathes in deep, breathes out hard.  But his eyes are softer.  

"Pete," he says, letting him up and letting him stand, man-to-man, against the wall.  "It wasn't your fault."

"That's what everyone says."

"It isn't Reed's fault, either."

Pete looks away.  At the lockers.  At the scuffed floor.  At the ceiling, where one panel is askew, because Brinkman and Parker were relieving their high school glory days with an apple from the breakroom.

"Pete.  It's not his fault."

"Yeah." Pete sighs. "Yeah.  I know."

"Well, could you act like it, then?"

"What do you want me to do, hold his hand?"

"Apologize, for one.  Two, treat him like a person.  And three, get him a new ice pack and a box of kleenex."

Pete's smile is shaky, but it's the most genuine Mac's seen on him in two months.  "You gonna write me up for assaulting an officer?"

"No, but if you ever try anything like it again, I'm staking you out on the beach and dumping french fries on you.  Those Manhattan Beach gulls get hold of you, there won't be anything left to write up."

Pete shrugs. "Fair."  Pete brushes his uniform off.  Tucks the hem of his shirt back into his pants.  "Mac."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

[daemongal]

So... I may have wrote the hiccup thing... :3c 

Synopsis: Dante has the hiccups and they just won’t go away! He thought he’d tried everything until Vergil gives him a new, much better suggestion. NSFW ahead!

Based on this post! 

__________________________

Vergil sighed, watching on in disdain as Dante leaned backwards from his desk, practically inhaling water upside down in an attempt to rid himself of his incessant hiccups. The glass abruptly hit the floor followed by the devil hunter himself, coughing and spluttering, gasping for breath as he groaned.

A few seconds passed as he lay there, eyes darting around the ceiling as if searching, awaiting another convulsion. A smirk spread up his face when nothing happened.

“What’d I tell ya? Knew that would -hic- work.... ahh shit! Curse this frail, part hu – hic – man body of mine!” He flailed his arms in a tantrum of sorts as Vergil pinched the bridge of his nose at the petulant display.  

“What methods have you tried so far?” Dante dropped his arms to his sides before turning to face his brother, chest spasming with another hiccup.

“Well, you tried scaring me which just -hic- ended in me being stabbed, I’ve been stabbed - thought that deserved a –hic- special second mention – I've tried holding my breath so long I practically –hic- passed out and finally I tried drinking from a glass upside down. I’m outta ideas –hic- Verge.” He groaned once more, dramatically wrapping his arms around his waist as if he were suffering.

Vergil huffed and slammed the book in his hand shut, locking eyes with his brothers pained ones.

“So you have yet to try an orgasm?” Silence filled the room for a few seconds, broken only by the sound of hiccupping as Dante studied his brothers face.

“Did you just say –hic- orgasm?” There wasn't a hint of humour detectable in Vergil’s eyes, he was only met with a deadpan serious look.

“Yes, you did not mishear me brother; It was something I read recently in a magazine, recommended by scientists as a way to clear yourself of the wretched ailment. I won’t go into the intricacies since they would be wasted on you.” Dante raised his hand to his chin, a thoughtful expression gracing his features as he lifted himself off the floor in a graceful hop to his feet.

“I do suggest you take action quickly though,” Vergil continued “lest I attempt to pierce a few more holes in you. Eventually one will hit the right spot.” He reached towards his blade as Dante grimaced, raising his arms in surrender.

“Ok, ok. I’ll err –hic- see what I can do about it. Just hold off on any more stabbing alright?” Dante headed upstairs, hand rubbing the back of his neck as he sighed. “Guess this one’s -hic- on me.”  

He pushed the bathroom door open slightly before being hit with moisture and the tantalizing smell of your shampoo. A smirk spread up Dante’s face as he changed direction to your shared bedroom.

“Unless...” When he went downstairs you were still sound asleep, and he had no intention of waking you, not considering how tired you had been the night before. Now that you were awake however, it was fair game.

He placed the back of his hand over his mouth in an attempt to muffle the sounds as he waltzed into the bedroom, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the doorframe. He smiled as he watched you towel dry your hair, his shirt from yesterday concealing your body to your thighs as you hummed a familiar tune, likely one from his jukebox.

“Hey ba-hic-be, shit.” You turned to glance at Dante, a bemused look on your face. You waited a few more seconds to confirm your suspicions as you heard another hiccup escape his chest, followed quickly by a curse. You started to giggle.

“Hiccups? Really? Not a sound I ever imagined you making oh mighty son of Sparda.” Your laughter grew with each spasm of Dante’s chest, as did his annoyance.

“Oh haha, I’m glad you’re enjoying my suffering. I’ve tried every-hic-thing and the damn things won’t stop. Well, not quite everything.” You crossed your legs and arms as you turned to face him.

“Is it safe for me to assume that’s why you’re here? Sorry to say that I don’t think I’ll be very good at scaring you, and I don’t have the strength to properly choke you to make you hold your breath. What else could I possibly do? Surely Vergil would be better suited to help you?” A knowing smirk spread up Dantes cheeks.

“Funny you should -hic- mention Vergil because he was actually the one that suggested another solution to me. Hear me –hic- out; apparently you can get rid of hiccups with... an orgasm.” You held his unwavering eye contact before bursting out into laughter.

“That’s your game? You’re using hiccups in an attempt to get some head?” Dante remaining unflinching aside from the occasional hiccup. “Seriously, you aren’t joking? He actually suggested that?” Dante nodded vigorously before closing the door behind him and making his way over to the bed next to you.

“When has he ever –hic- told a lie, and I’ll be damned if I know what he’d gain out of telling me something like that if –hic- it wasn’t true.” His hand brushed against your leg as he observed the cogs turning in your mind; he almost had you.

“Come on babe; aren’t you curious to see if it actually –hic- works?” His hand worked its way up your thigh before brushing up your side under his shirt. A mischievous grin spread up your face as you grabbed his wrist.  

Jackpot.

“Fine. But,” you removed his hand from under your shirt, placing it on the bed before cupping his face in your palm, “I’ve literally just got out of the shower, so head’ll have to do. If that doesn’t work, well...” you started unbuckling his trousers, much to Dante’s delight, “... I’ll just have to leave you to Vergil. I’m sure he’ll know the best places to put some holes in you to make them go away; like some kind of super fucked up acupuncture.”

Dante inwardly grimaced at the thought, a sigh leaving his lips as you pulled down his zipper and freed his half-hard cock from his trousers, giving it a slight squeeze. He watched you move towards the floor, quickly grabbing your face between his hands and pulling you towards his, kissing you deeply, entwining his tongue with yours in your mouth, cock twitching to attention in your grip.

He tucked your still damp hair behind your ear before pulling away with a hiccup. “You’re the best you know, babe?” You smirked before planting a quick peck on his nose and kneeling down on the floor between his legs.

“Oh I know; but I’ll gladly take a reminder every now and again.” He chuckled at your confidence, watching with eager eyes as you stroked him to full hardness with your hand before running your tongue up his length with half lidded eyes.  

He groaned as you took the tip into your mouth, teasing with your tongue and sucking gently, continuing to stroke his length with your hand. His hand reached towards your hair as you pushed against his chest, forcing him backwards into the mattress.  

You sunk further down on him, taking in as much of him as you could before settling on a rhythm, bobbing up and down, teasing with your tongue and sucking with fervor. Dante rested his feet flat against the floor before daring to raise his hips to meet with your movements, moaning as you took him further down your throat.

You removed your hand from him, instead opting to grip onto his thighs, digging your nails in as he thrusted himself into your throat. He muttered your name over and over, forgetting about everything in that moment, focusing only on the wetness of your mouth as he raced towards his peak.  

“Shit babe, I’m gonna come any second. Fuck.” His mouth dropped open as you scraped your nails down his chest, his hips raising in a final harsh thrust before he burst into your mouth, shooting his seed down your throat. His breaths came out heavy and shaky as his body shook in the aftermath of his orgasm.

He hissed between his teeth as you pulled yourself from him, swallowing every last drop before climbing up over his body, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.

“So..?” You asked, meeting his half-lidded gaze questioningly.

“Hmmm?” Dante responded, still in a slight daze.

“Your hiccups Dante; are they gone?” Dante lay for a moment, his eyes tracing the ceiling waiting for any indication they were still there. He wasn’t going to lie; he had completely forgotten about the blasted things, completely unaware of when they had supposedly stopped. His face lit up slightly at the realization.

“Shit, I guess it worked! Guess I owe Vergil one, and you of course.” His hand raised to run his thumb over your cheek affectionately.  

“Guess I’ll add the ability of ‘hiccup banishing blowjobs’ to my list of skills eh?” Dante quickly wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you down flush against him, a gasp leaving your lips at the sudden action, before he pressed a number of soft kisses to the top of your head.

He quickly decided that maybe hiccups weren’t all that bad.

[timeagainreviews]

Twin Peaks s01e01 “Traces to Nowhere”

Happy New Year, and welcome back to Twin Peaks, friends. Before we dive further into the mystery of Laura Palmer, I would like to tell you about my friend Jason. Jason was a pal of mine in high school. We used to hang out, listen to music, watch TV, and smoke. He lived with his girlfriend at the time who was also my friend. This may sound sappy, but around these two, I genuinely felt like the best version of myself. I miss those days incredibly. Jason also happened to be the first person to ever introduce me to Twin Peaks. One night, he and a friend were watching the movie as I came over to buy a bag. On that day, I discovered what was to become my newest obsession, one of which would stick with me for the next eighteen years of my life. Sadly, Jason and I fell out of contact and we lost track of one another.

I mention this because I recently heard through a mutual friend that Jason died two years ago. I'll not go into the details, suffice it to say, it was too soon. I always wanted to track him down to say hello, and now I'll never get the chance. While my friendship with Jason was immensely rewarding, one of the most persistent things he left me with was a love for Twin Peaks. Much of my personal philosophy comes from Twin Peaks, and it continues to inform the person I am today. If it weren't for Jason, I wouldn't be me. Therefore, I would like to dedicate this article in his memory. To Jason Walton- My friend in the stars.

Thank you for allowing me that moment, friend. Now if you remember, we left off on kind of a spooky note. Through some sort of line of sight, Sarah Palmer was given a vision of a gloved hand retrieving James' half of the heart necklace from where he and Donna had buried it. Dale Cooper, after a long day of detection, has turned in for a night of sleep at the Great Northern hotel, which is exactly where today's episode begins.

I've read in the past that you can tell right away when David Lynch is directing, or in this case, when he isn't directing. This is not a complaint about director Duwayne Dunham's work, but there is a clear departure from the slow wave of emotions that permeates the pilot episode. However, the more straightforward procedural pacing works much to the episode's credit. Being written by David Lynch and Mark Frost, this episode is drenched in Twin Peaks tones and textures. I'd go as far as to say Dunham does a damn fine job following the hard act that is David Lynch.

We start with a pan across Cooper's hotel room. As I've done with my Doctor Who reviews, I found myself trying to see this scene as though it were my first time. You watch Twin Peaks for eighteen years, and you tend to forget just how strange the decor at the Great Northern truly is. Off-camera we can hear Agent Cooper talking to Diane through his recorder. As the camera searches across taxidermied deer hooves holding hunting riffles, and ornate nature paintings, we fall upon Cooper, hanging upside down by a pair of metal hooks around his ankles. It's never explained why he's doing this, but for some reason the late '80s and early '90s had a weird thing about hanging guys upside down as so form of exercise. Michael Keaton did it in Batman, Patrick Bateman had one, and even Dale Cooper. Perhaps it was quick way to indicate both athleticism and eccentricity.

Cooper, hanging about in his hot dad garters and boxers dismounts from his perch with an ease that is both impressive and sexy. Before ending his recording session with Diane, Cooper waxes philosophical about Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys. In a way, this is Lynch and Frost drawing parallels between the deaths of both Monroe and Laura- two blonde women surrounded by powerful men and mystery. It's fitting when you consider that Lynch and Frost's first collaboration was in the form of a Marilyn Monroe biopic which never came into fruition. In many ways, the project laid some of the groundwork for what would become Twin Peaks.

Starting his day right with a balanced hotel breakfast, we're treated to yet another fascinating glimpse into Cooper's diet. As Sheriff Truman says later in the episode, he must have the metabolism of a bumblebee. Cooper orders a breakfast he refers to as "hard on the arteries," which is as hard as he wants his eggs. He wants his bacon super crispy- cremated. It may sound as though I'm exaggerating, but I've always loved watching Cooper order breakfast. He seems to revere food in a way not regularly seen on dramatic television. The morning coffee is more than one of the best, it's "damn fine." People have complained that the way people talk about food in Twin Peaks is weird. Sure, maybe in life creamed corn isn't an allegory to pain and suffering, but we've all been there when someone is having a similar reaction to the stuff. Food is personal, and it's a part of everyone's lives, why wouldn't characters talk about it?

Arriving at the tail end of Cooper's order is Audrey Horne, who has seemingly grown a good six or seven inches of hair overnight. Out of all of the mysteries in Twin Peaks, this was the least perplexing. Somewhere between filming the pilot and the first episode, Sherilyn Fenn grew her hair out, and it looks stunning. Everything about Audrey is stunning. Her eyebrows are stunning. That sweater is stunning. But at the moment, it is she who is stunned by Agent Cooper. Just as charmed by his eccentricities and his slicked black hair, she approaches Agent Cooper and asks to join him. Immediately Cooper sizes up that she finds him attractive, she's not exactly hiding it, and neither is he for that matter. For many fans, this is the moment the ship of Cooper and Audrey set sail. I personally always prefer the version where Cooper does the adult thing and doesn't date a high schooler.

After questioning Audrey, Cooper heads off to the Sheriff Station where they seem to still be having their breakfast as everyone he encounters has a mouthful of donuts. I'd also like to note the weird guy with a welding torch and ladder near the entrance. Twin Peaks is a lived in world filled with these people toiling away. Sheriff Harry Truman, mouth full of donuts, can't get a word in as Cooper flies into the room. After spelling out the itinerary, Cooper disappears to "urinate." This marks the first of many references to Dale Cooper's pee. Much like Tom Hanks, our favourite FBI agent is passionate about pissing. It's one of those life things, like food, that Twin Peaks likes to celebrate. Sometimes it's really nice to have a good piss, therefore sometimes Twin Peaks is about having a really good piss. I'm being completely earnest here.

Dr Hayward arrives to the sheriff station to report the findings of the post mortem. Unable to carry out the procedure himself, he outsourced the job to a nearby colleague. I've always admired the way Warren Frost plays this scene. His sadness seems to come and go in waves of realisation. There are the same echos from the pilot episode present here. From the report we learn that Laura died from a loss of blood from numerous shallow wounds. She had bite marks on her shoulders and marks on her arms from having been bound. She had also had sex with at least three men the night of her murder. The doctor also concludes that there is no doubt that Ronette was also present. As Dr Hayward relays this grizzly tale, his eyes wander to the photo of Laura. Pangs of sadness wash over his face as he questions who could do such a thing. He was the doctor present at her birth. She was his daughter's best friend. Laura was family to him.

On the other spectrum of family, we join the Johnsons at their incomplete home. Unable to just ask Shelly if she would do his laundry, Leo has to play mind games. He asks her if she did his laundry and chastises her as if catching her in a lie because his bag of nasty truck cabin clothes are still dirty. Eric Da Re is not a great actor, but there's something perfect about that. Leo is a big asshole that gaslights his wife, I don't expect much depth there. The only good thing I say about him is they got rid of his awful perm from the pilot. Even the way he pinches her cheek is controlling and unnatural. There's clearly no love between them, which is why when she discovers a blood-stained shirt in Leo's laundry she hides it. With Laura recently dead, and his behaviour as of late, this could be evidence. When he comes back later in a frenzy to find said shirt, he flies into a rage at its absence.

We're back at the Sheriff Station where we learn James Hurley owned the other half of Laura's necklace. As compared to Bobby's interrogation, James is Mr Manners. He answers all of Agent Cooper's questions with a quiet intensity. He admits to shooting the picnic video, and to owning the other half of the necklace, but not knowing who dug it up. He was also aware Laura was taking drugs but tried to get her to stop. On the night she died, James picked Laura up on his motorcycle. Acting strangely Laura disembarked from his bike, a disagreement ensued, Laura told James she loved him and disappeared into the woods. Cooper seems pleased with this information. We're then shown slow-motion picnic footage of Laura smiling at the camera. A somewhat cheesy "Help me," is played over the sound of wind and haunting music. It's a sort of fourth-wall-breaking that makes Twin Peaks feel as though not only the town, but the show itself is haunted by the late Laura Palmer.

Bobby and Mike, freshly arrested from their fistfight with Ed argue in their holding cells about the money they owe Leo Johnson. After being briefly questioned by Agent Cooper, they're both sent away with a warning not to harm James. James is also released into the custody of Big Ed, who confides that he believes the bartender, Jacques Renault,  slipped a Mickey in his drink. Ed wasn't just meeting Norma that night, he was also staking out Jacques' activities as a suspected drug dealer.

Speaking of Norma, we're given a brief but intense encounter at the general store between her and Nadine. At this point in the show, Nadine is completely bonkers. While I don't feel like she becomes any less touched in the head, we do begin to see more depth to her than just Ed's crazy wife. Wendie Robie is so good as Nadine, that Peggy Lipton only really need to react in kind as Nadine goes on about her drape runners. You can tell there's a quiet rivalry between the two women, both of whom resent one another for what they represent to one another. Norma is the woman Ed loves, and Nadine is the woman that stole him from Norma. When Nadine emphatically mentions the cotton balls that will make her drape runners completely silent, Norma can only stand as if in disbelief. It's the epitome of "weird flex, but ok." It doesn't help that all of this cotton ball talk is nestled into a conversation about Ed being in intensive care. Nadine exits as soon as she entered, leaving poor Norma looking confused and slightly violated.

Speaking of forbidden love, we're given a great scene between Donna Hayward and her mother, Eileen. We learn that despite her grief for Laura, and the guilt it makes her feel, Donna is finding herself loving James. Despite the nightmare that surrounds her, this love for James is like a beautiful dream. Eileen encourages her to invite James over for dinner, which she does. When watching James meet the Haywards I couldn't help but think of Eraserhead. In both, we get two entirely different, albeit very Lynchian "meet the parents," scenes. While James isn't asked to carve any manmade chickens, the awkward politeness permeates both scenes. There’s a sort of wholesomeness that borders on absurdity. Watching James make small talk in his big boy sweater is about the cutest damn thing that you almost forget how violent and terrifying Twin Peaks can be at times. This is something lifted straight out of the Waltons with it's cheesy Americana and good-natured sincerity. Of course, not everyone is as pleased about this new pairing as Mike and Bobby spot James' bike outside Donna's house.

Meanwhile, Dale and Harry find their way at the Martel residence to speak with Josie about her language classes with Laura. Through body language alone, Cooper deduces that the Sheriff and Josie are an item of sorts, as indicated at the end of the pilot episode. Pete is his usual charming self, offering up a cup of Joe to our boys. We're given another Cooperism as he asks for his coffee "black as midnight on a moonless night." That's pure poetry. We don't learn much from Josie here, other than the fact that Laura used to tutor her English and that she seemed distracted the last time they met. The biggest takeaway from the scene is that somehow Pete accidentally brewed a pot of coffee with a fish in the percolator. This is easily one of the most iconic scenes from the original series. Jack Nance was a treasure, and I will never not feel absolute delight when he comes rushing in just a touch too late- they've already tried the coffee.

Josie is called away for a phone call from the ice queen Catherine who informs her that shutting down the mill for the day cost the company more money than it was worth. After hanging up with Josie, we can see Catherine is in a strange motel, sipping champagne with Ben Horne. They're clearly working against Josie, but it's no secret that neither of them trust one another. Everyone is playing the double secret con, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. However, we do learn that the two are on again off again lovers. On the other side of town, Deputy Hawk follows up with Ronette's parents at the hospital. The Pulaskis don't have much information other than the fact that Ronette used to work the perfume counter at Horne's Department Store. As he is leaving, Hawk sees a suspicious one armed man skulking around the morgue. Following his gut instinct he starts tailing this mysterious figure through the dark halls of the hospital. Upon entering a room alight in a trippy dayglo black light, Hawk finds himself alone. Whoever this mystery man was, he disappeared into thin air.

A lot of this episode's theme seems to centre around the relationship between the parents and the high schoolers. Along with her conversation with her own mother, we get a scene between Donna and Sarah Palmer. Sarah, still sick with grief, seems genuinely pleased to see Donna until she sees Laura's face superimposed over Donna's. As she's pulling her closer she gets another vision, this time of a creepy grey-haired man sitting at the edge of Laura's bed. Sarah goes into full-on panic mode in a way only Grace Zabriskie is capable of delivering. Leland rushes in to whisk Donna away from the traumatic experience. In his own home, Bobby is getting a stern lecture from his father, Major Garland Briggs. The Major awkwardly tries to treat Bobby with some tough love, but ultimately misses the mark. Bobby's problems are bigger than anything his poor parents could fathom. The Hornes also experience a bit of domestic turmoil with Ben confronts Audrey about how her conversation with the Norwegians cost their family greatly. But unlike the Briggses, if Ben wanted to understand Audrey's rebellious nature, he only need look in the mirror.

Let's take a moment now to consider Laura Palmer. She was a troubled teenage girl with a drug habit, yes. Add to that being homecoming queen, in Spanish club, tutoring immigrants, caring for Audrey's special needs brother, and even heading Meals on Wheels for the elderly and shut-ins. It's the Meals on Wheels program that brings Cooper and Truman to the Double R Diner, where Laura used to work. We learn that Laura didn't just head the program, she created it. If any fictional characters were gunning for sainthood, Laura would be high on the list. It's easy to see why losing her has wounded the town so completely. The Log Lady approaches Cooper about Laura Palmer informing him that her log saw something the night Laura died. However, Cooper's reluctance to ask the log directly leads to her leaving before relaying the log's message.

Fresh off her shift from the Double R, Shelly returns home to Leo who has just put a bar of soap into a sock. He questions her about the bloody shirt, but she feigns ignorance. He tells her he's going to "teach," her about respecting people's property as he advances toward her with the sock swinging over his head. We can only look on hopelessly as the brutish Leo approaches a cowering Shelly. The scene graciously cuts away, as we know what comes next. The episode concludes in Dr Jacoby's bizarre Hawaii themed office (or maybe apartment, maybe both). Inside a fishtank sits three dried out puffer fish filled with blinking lights like paper lamps. After putting a tape into his stereo he dons a pair of giant headphones revealing a taped conversation from his former secret patient- Laura Palmer. He pulls coconut from a palm tree and settles in to listen to his tape. He opens up the coconut to reveal the other half of Laura's necklace. It appears that Dr Jacoby was the one following James and Donna into the woods.

The contents of the recording are revealing, not just about Laura, but also about Dr Jacoby. Laura's flirtatious nature indicates that we can add one more sexual partner to Laura's list. She mentions how James is sweet but too dumb to talk to her about her problems like Jacoby is capable of doing. But part of the brilliance in the scene is that you can also sense that Laura is acting for Dr Jacoby. Fulfilling the role of a young helpless girl who loves him, so that he may fulfil some role she needs. Whether it be a form of protection or just a soundboard for her problems, she had him wrapped around her finger. So what is this ritual of Jacoby's? Are these the actions of a killer reminiscing over the trophies of his hunt, or a man grieving the real, if not inappropriate relationship he had with a young girl? As the tape continues, we hear Laura talking about a man in a red car who can really light her "F-I-R-E." She continues to make a confession about a mystery man, but the audio drops out, leaving us only the doctor's perplexed face to clue us into what she said. The credits roll as we're left wondering.

Truth be told, I could have written this review without having to rewatch the episode. I try and rewatch Twin Peaks in its entirety at least once every one or two years. However, I am glad I did revisit this one as there are lots of little pieces of minutiae I may have overlooked. More than anything, I was curious to weigh Dunham's directing against David Lynch's, and I have to say, it's not bad. The tone is correct for the series and the emotions are played for real. It's always going to be different because the two directors are different people. But as certain episodes in season two prove, some directors begin to parody Lynch's style, adding weird for the sake of weird. But this early on, it is as though Twin Peaks is a juggernaut of unstoppable creativity. Even the duller storylines take on the energy of the greater mystery. Lynch only directed a handful of the original series episodes, which is why the next episode I'm reviewing is an especially exciting one. Not only is episode two (aka the third episode) directed by David Lynch, but it also begins to introduce some of the more metaphysical elements of the series. You could almost say that Lynch directs the most important episodes, and my god is this next one a doozy.

Well, friends, that's all from the world of Twin Peaks for now. I'll have the next review up soonish, but not before the new Doctor Who review. Speaking of which, it is now less than an hour until it airs! Who else is excited? What a great way to ring in the new year! See you all soon!

[emospritelet]

KOL! Prompt - Gold returns to work but can't get Belle off his mind and is noticeably mentally absent.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12]

AO3 link

Gold still felt a little light-headed and weak during his shift, but two cups of coffee from the canteen helped him get through the morning.  He even treated himself to a Danish, enjoying the brief sugar rush it gave him.  The energy was short-lived; his body felt as though it had been soundly beaten with iron bars by the time midday came, and a tiny voice whispering in the back of his mind told him he had returned to work too soon.  He ignored it, and pushed on, heading to the children’s ward, where seven-year-old Grace Milliner was recovering from her own bout of the flu.  Gold sat down on the edge of her bed with a feeling of relief, and Grace blinked at him, strands of light brown hair curling around her face.

“How are you feeling?” he asked kindly.

“Okay,” she said, in a small voice.  “I can’t find Mr White, though.”

“Mr White?”

Gold racked his brains to think of who that might be, flicking through his mental filing cabinet of staff and patients and drawing a blank.  He reached out to feel Grace’s forehead, nodding approvingly when he detected no fever, and she sighed.

“He’s fluffy and soft and I can’t sleep without him,” she said, looking miserable, and Gold smiled.

“Mr White is your toy rabbit,” he guessed.  “Of course.  Forgive me, but I don’t believe we were ever formally introduced.”

Grace giggled a little at that.

“When I’m all better you can come to a tea party,” she offered.  “Daddy always says you need to get out more.”

“Does he indeed?” remarked Gold.  Bloody Jefferson and his interest in my social life!  “Well, that’s very kind of you, Grace.  I should think you can go home tomorrow, so you can arrange all the parties you want.”

“Mr White always sits at the head of the table,” she added.  “But he’d love for you to come!  If I ever find him, of course.”

She looked upset again, and Gold smiled.

“I suspect he’s just gotten lost in the ward somewhere,” he said gently.  “Why don’t I see if I can find him?”

She beamed at him, and he stood up, swaying a little as he hooked the chart back over the end of her bed.  He managed to get his cane underneath himself, steadying his footing, and walked quickly from the ward before he could fall on his face.  There was a large laundry hamper on its wheeled frame outside the door, and he frowned to himself before bending over it and pawing through the sheets.

“You lost something?”

Dorothy’s cheerful voice made him jump, and he almost fell into the hamper before it started rolling away under the pressure of his body.  She grasped the metal handle, stopping it with a foot behind the wheel so that he could push himself upright.  Dorothy raised an eyebrow, looking amused, and his mouth flattened.

“You doing laundry now?” she asked.  “You know there are plenty of patients to look at, if you’re short of work.”

“I’m looking for Mr White,” he said vaguely, picking up one of the sheets and shaking it.

“Are patients trying to get smuggled out in the laundry hampers?” she remarked.  “Wow.  I had no idea you were so terrifying.  I know you’re kind of strict on people taking their meds, but that is some classic escape plan right there.  Mr White’s my hero.”

“He’s a rabbit,” said Gold impatiently, and balled up the empty sheet, dropping it back in the hamper.

“Mr White is - okay, you lost me.”

Dorothy folded her arms, and Gold sighed, leaning on the hamper again.  His body was screaming at him to lie down.

“Grace’s rabbit,” he explained.  “She can’t sleep without him.  I thought he might have been picked up by accident when the beds were changed.”

“You’re dead on your feet and you’re upside down in a laundry hamper looking for a toy rabbit?” she said flatly.  “Go and sit the hell down, would you?  Like I don’t have enough to do without hauling your ass out of there.”

“You’re as bossy as Belle,” he grumbled, and she raised an eyebrow, pursing her lips.

“I’ll check in the laundry room for the rabbit,” she said.  “Why don’t you finish your rounds and get home.  Before you fall over.”

“I’m fine, I can do it!”

He bent over the hamper again, almost falling in while he rooted around, but his fingers grasped something that felt far softer than the sheets.  Dorothy’s hand grabbed his collar - along with a good chunk of his hair, which made him growl - but she hauled him upright until he was on his feet, and he turned to face her with a scowl.

“You’re freakishly strong!” he snapped, and she shrugged.

“Never get in a fight with a lesbian,” she said.  “Now would you go and get some rest before you kill yourself?”

Gold gave her a smug grin, pulling his arm free from the pile of sheets and brandishing a somewhat bedraggled plush white rabbit.

“Told you I could do it,” he said snidely, well aware he sounded about five years old, and not caring.

He stomped off to the ward again, and Dorothy followed him, which meant that she was there to witness Grace’s face lighting up with excitement as he handed over Mr White.  It also meant that she was there to witness him bending to pick up a patient’s chart and almost falling over.  He grasped at the end of the bed to steady himself, gritting his teeth as he felt the room spin around him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” said Dorothy, looking concerned.  “You don’t seem completely - with it.”

Gold sighed, his knuckles white as they gripped his cane and the bed frame.

“Guess I’m still trying to shift this bloody flu,” he admitted.  “Sorry.  I’m - I’m probably more hindrance than help today.”

“Hey, we’re still short-handed, I’ll take all the help I can get,” she said.  “But you should get home as soon as you’re done with this ward.  As long as Whale doesn’t come down with it too I think we’ll be fine.  Come back tomorrow if you’re better.  But only if you’re better, okay?”

He grunted something that wasn’t quite agreement, picking up the chart he had been reaching for.  He dropped it, the clipboard bouncing end over end before clattering to the floor, and he sighed heavily.

“Go home,” said Dorothy firmly, scooping up the fallen chart.  “You’re gonna make yourself worse, and then who’s gonna look after Belle, hmm?”

“I’m not sure I’m doing all that much better than she is right now,” he said, plucking the chart from her fingers and earning a frustrated hiss from her.  “But you’re right.  I should really check on her.  She looked after me so well, it’s the least I can do.”

“Yes, I’m sure your gratitude is the only reason,” she said quietly, and he glanced up.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing,” she said, and smiled widely.  “How’s Belle doing, anyway?”

“Not great,” he said, running a finger over the figures on the chart.  “I left her with iced water, lots of blankets and instructions to stay in bed.”

“She’s - in your bed?” asked Dorothy blandly, and he looked up sharply, to see her grinning at him.

“Of course not!” he snapped.  “I do have spare bedrooms, you know.”

“I just thought, given the power outage, there was the perfect opportunity for some impromptu bed-sharing,” she said innocently, and he wanted to grind his teeth.

“Don’t you bloody start!” he said severely.  “As if I don’t have enough of that from Miss Mills!  I’m sure Miss French wouldn’t appreciate being the subject of gossip anymore than she already has been!”

“Oh, keep your pants on, I’m teasing,” she said, waving a hand.  “I know you’re unfailingly polite and wouldn’t lay a hand on her.  Much to her disappointment, I’m sure.”

“Don’t you have work to do?” he demanded, setting down the chart.

“Yeah, but this is way more important.”  She followed him as he moved to the next bed.  “Besides, I need to keep an eye on you.  You look like you’re gonna fall on your ass.”

“I told you, I’ll be alright.”

He picked up the next chart, sighing as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“By the way, you don’t happen to know if anyone here has property to rent, do you?” he asked absently, and Dorothy snorted.

“Dude, I just bagged the last house-share going in this town,” she said. “Trying to find apartments to rent in Storybrooke is like searching for unicorns.”

Gold grunted.  As he had thought.

“I thought you owned your own place, anyway?” she said.

“Oh, it’s not for me,” he said, checking the patient notes.  “Belle’s looking for somewhere to rent.  She’s living with her father at the moment, which knowing Moe French’s personal habits, can’t be ideal.”

“Hmm.”  Dorothy folded her arms.  “Didn’t you say you had spare bedrooms?”

“Several, but I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”

He put down the chart, moving onto the next bed, and she followed him.

“Really?” she said flatly.  “So Belle is currently living at your house, is looking for a place to stay, you have tons of room, you like each other, and you can’t think of any connection between that set of facts?”

Gold looked up, blinking at her in surprise.

“I - I live alone,” he said, as though that explained everything.

“Not at the moment you don’t.”

“Yes, but this is a - a special situation,” he said impatiently, turning away. “She’s sick.  I could hardly toss her out into the snow.”

“So you agree that offering her a home when she needed it most was a good thing to do?” she pressed, and he sighed.

“This is only for a few days,” he said.  “Once she’s well enough to leave, she can go back to her own home.”

“And you can go back to sitting alone in the evenings being miserable as hell.”

“I’m not miserable!” he snapped.  “And I don’t see that my private life is any of your business!”

“I’m sharing with Astrid and Leroy,” she said bluntly.  “I get more than enough of watching two people dance around one another like they’re not completely in love when I’m at home, thanks.”

“Astrid and - and Leroy?” he said, perplexed.  “They’re together?”

“No,” she said patiently.  “Not yet, anyway, because they’re almost as blind and stupid as you are.  I can see I really have my work cut out as matchmaker in this place.”

“You certainly will,” he remarked.  "I think your aim as Cupid is woefully off target.  I can’t speak for Astrid and Leroy, but I’m not in love with Miss French, and she’s certainly not in love with me.“

“Wow, you really are blind and stupid.”

“Nurse Gale, so help me—”

“I’m serious!”

“What is it with the staff in this hospital trying to interfere in my lack of a personal life?” he demanded.  “If you must know, I’ve been quite happy on my own for decades!”

“And now you could be happy with someone else.”

“Or it could be an unmitigated disaster that doesn’t get beyond the first awkward attempt at a date and she leaves town, never to return.”

“Oh my God!”  She threw up her hands in exasperation.  “If you won’t ask her out would you at least offer her a place to live?”

Gold opened his mouth for an angry retort, but then snapped it shut, smirking as he recalled noticing something.

“Fine,” he said lightly, and turned away, moving to the next bed.

“Fine?” said Dorothy, suspiciously.

“Yes, fine.”  He picked up the chart, grinning to himself, and heard her step closer.

“Fine as in you’ll offer Belle a place to stay?”

“Yes,” he said, glancing around to where she was watching him with narrowed eyes.  “Just as soon as you arrange yourself a date with the lovely Miss Lucas.”

Dorothy’s mouth fell open as a blush rose in her cheeks, and his grin widened.

“I expect something suitably romantic, none of this ‘just as friends’ nonsense,” he added.  “And you’re to text me an update during the evening to let me know how you’re getting along.”

“You’re a bastard,” she said flatly.

“Well, I’m only thinking of your future happiness.”

“But I don’t even know if she likes me!” she protested, and he grinned at her.

“How unfortunate.  I guess you can go back to sitting alone in the evenings being miserable as hell.”

Dorothy glowered at him repeating her own words back to her, but nodded reluctantly.

“Fine,” she grumbled.  “I’ll stop bugging you about your non-existent sex life, and you stop bugging me about mine.  Deal?”

Gold grinned, showing his teeth.

“The deal is struck.”

He put back the final chart and headed for the door of the ward, hoping that his legs wouldn’t give up and pitch him onto the floor.

“If I ever do manage to get a date with Ruby, you and I are revisiting this conversation!” she called after him.

Gold turned slowly on the balls of his feet, and winked at her

“Well, I won’t hold my breath, then.”

x

Gold took his time driving home, the roads treacherous with compacted snow and patches of ice.  His head was aching, his body exhausted, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep for twelve hours.  The house was silent when he entered, and he shrugged out of his coat and made his way up the stairs, knocking quietly on the door of the spare bedroom.  A sleepy voice answered, and he opened the door to peer in at Belle.  She was curled in the bed, blankets pulled up under her chin, dark curls spread out on the pillows and her cheeks flushed, but she sent him a wan smile.  Gold walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking his head at the temperature of her skin.

“You still have a high fever,” he said.  “Have you been drinking plenty of water?”

“I’ve mostly been sleeping,” she said, and he nodded.

“Try to sit up.  You should drink something.”

She pushed up obediently, arms shaking a little, and he stood up and poured her some water, sitting down again and putting a hand on the back of her shoulder to support her as she drank it.  Belle gulped at the water, then lay back down with a heavy sigh.  Her head rolled against the pillows, her eyes flicking up to meet his.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, and he shrugged.

“Better than yesterday,” he said.  “But I’m a terrible doctor.  I managed nothing more technical than finding a little girl’s toy rabbit.”

Belle giggled.

“Well, I’m sure that was very important to her,” she said, and he smiled briefly.

“Perhaps.”

“All those years of medical training may give you lots of knowledge,” she added.  “I’m willing to bet they don’t teach much about how to care for people in the little ways that matter, though.”

“Patient welfare isn’t just about getting the right diagnosis and treatment,” he said, and her smile widened.

“See?  That’s my point.  You care about your patients.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone, I have a reputation to maintain,” he quipped, and Belle’s eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Would you stay with me awhile?” she asked.  “I’ll probably fall asleep again, but it would be nice not to feel alone.”

Gold hesitated, looking down at his suit and tie before glancing to the chair at the dresser.  He was desperately tired, but if she wanted company, perhaps he could sit with her for a moment.  Belle seemed to sense his uncertainty.

“Oh, I didn’t mean for you to sit around like you’re about to go out for dinner,” she said.  “Please, go and change.  Put some PJs on.  There’s enough room on the bed for both of us.”

She patted the blankets beside her, and Gold swallowed hard.  Sleeping beside her had been excruciatingly wonderful, and he had just resigned himself to the fact that it would never happen again.  And now she was sitting there, with wide eyes and flushed cheeks, gazing at him imploringly from beneath the sheets of his spare bed.

“Just for a little while,” she pleaded.  “It’s depressing being alone when you’re sick.”

He hesitated, Dorothy’s words about him sitting alone and miserable echoing around his brain.  Had he really been suffering in his solitude before Belle had turned up on his doorstep?  He didn’t think so, but then perhaps he had just gotten used to an empty, silent house.  He knew that a part of him had wanted it to be a punishment, to shut himself off from the world and wallow in grief and guilt and self-loathing.  When had it become a shield?  When had he started to take comfort in loneliness?

“It’s - it’s okay if you want to be alone.”

Belle’s voice made him jump, jerking him out of self-reflection and back to the present.  She was watching him worriedly.

“I’m sorry,” she went on.  “You’ve been around people all day, you probably need some time to yourself.  Forget I said anything.”

“Right,” he said lamely.

She smiled then, tired and beautiful, her eyes lighting up the room.

“I’ll maybe see you later,” she added.

“Right,” he said again, his brain screaming at him to stay with her, to talk to her.  “I’ll - I’ll bring you some tea.”

She smiled at him, and he stood up, shifting from foot to foot until he managed to move one of them.  He stepped back from the bed, reaching for the door handle, and closed the door behind him as he left the room.

[transienturl]

random m1 macbook things:

you can make the menu bar continue to display itself in the free area beside the notch when you fullscreen content. it's both incredibly convenient (now you have access to control center and every menu bar app ever) and sort of immersion-breaking. well that can be good too; maybe seeing the time reminds you to stop watching youtube and go do something you're supposed to be doing.

be careful not to pinch yourself in the hinge if you like to hold your laptop with your hand there, that thing is sharp

it trackpad too big for it got damn keyboard. if you j/k scroll, the side of your palm may be on the trackpad, but just barely, which presumably makes brushing motions that the palm rejection thinks might be intentional, which can interrupt scroll actions.

mini LED is not a panacea; as with all displays that use full array local dimming, anything small and white on a black background will have obvious haloing, and if the thing moves (mouse cursor on anything black; white UI elements) you'll notice where the actual LEDs are. fullscreen a discord call with the other user's video in portrait and you'll see what I mean. I would actually really like a mode that turns off the FALD or only turns it on when it detects HDR content; it's not like it helps with contrast on things like text. (honestly, being Apple, they could totally detect which regions of the screen are video and only activate local dimming in them. that would be super cool.) honestly, I think this display is interesting to compare to the roughly-similar panels Apple has been using ever since the 2012 rMBP (well, since the iPhone 4 really), insofar as it actually feels less refined. Apple does a great job hiding all of the complexity of a modern high-end display, something that the Windows PC ecosystem does not even attempt let alone succeed at, but the weird edge cases still shine through. I wonder how many years until the first OLED Macbook Pro.

I always thought universal binaries (x86 and arm code in the same .app file) were silly and a waste of disk space, but the one time you care is when you run migration assistant between an x86 mac and an apple silicon mac; since Edge for example uses separate packages, it becomes unopenable once moved to the device that it's the wrong package for. downloading the right one and replacing it does work, it seems, and in the case of Edge you do keep your data (although when I had to do the same thing for Ungoogled Chromium it lost the actual browser settings; the user data like history and open tabs came over fine though).

the ability to charge from the right side can be very nice. it'll be limited to 100w if you have a 5A-certified USB-C cable (they have a chip inside), otherwise it'll be limited to 60w. totally fine still unless you have a drained battery or are doing some soft of intense graphics workload. the fact that my chintzy little cable that's supposed to be for an android phone can charge a laptop at a reasonable clip feels kind of weird.

I have said my piece about this IRL but the fact that you can plug in/out external monitors and change the scaling of your display and it's just instant is so, chef's kiss

I have Macs Fan Control installed to see when the fans spin up. they have been at 0 RPM ever since I got the laptop

honestly the speakers could use less bass, at least when you aren't using the laptop on a table. it sounds a little hollow; I bet the apple audio engineers did most of their optimization with the user seated at a desk, not half-upside-down in bed or whatever. I guess stereotypically that would be the userbase for the rumored soon-upcoming 15" M2 Macbook Air, not the rather workstation-y pro models. (see also: my comment about the hinge.)

it's definitely not the same keyboard; the press action on these is sharper and louder than the pre-butterfly ones. feels nice but I wish it was quieter.

also, not specific to the mac, but automatic wireless shared clipboard that includes copied files is absolutely nuts. also the fact that migration assistant grabs stuff like the history of my terminal windows is just. yeah you don't get stuff like this on windows

(except window arranging. and like 3-4 other things that microsoft does correctly and apple utterly neglects for no apparent reason. but, you know, besides those.)

(also the new macos settings panel that they stole off the ipad is so buggy it counts as a legitimate achievement lmao. good job)

[pizzafishandchips]

16 - This is gonna be so much fun

Fictober day 16. Slowly chugging away at the prompts I’m behind on... I’ll get there. It’s just been a long week for me. 

Fandom: 7KPP Pairing: Clarmont/self-created origin (Jiyel knight) 

Be warned that there are spoilers for week 4 of the extended demo. 

Masterpost

Octavia scratched her head once. Tilted it back to stare at the sky. Ran her hands over her face before heaving a sigh.

Her presence at the summit was never intended as a vacation, but she wasn’t exactly expecting her work to follow her so closely like this. Or perhaps she should have expected it; after all, murder and politics always came hand in hand. She should know this better than anyone.

The dead body of Lord Adalric flitted behind her closed eyelids, her thoughts churning as she worked to make connections like she always did with her cases back home. There were still far too many missing pieces, but at the very least she could maybe piece together a partial picture of how he died.

But before she could get her thoughts in proper order, Octavia heard the soft sounds of a familiar footsteps approaching her. Her eyes peeled open, and she was greeted by an upside down view of Lord Clarmont. The knight couldn’t help but grin.

“Trying to sneak up on me? You know that’s impossible to do.”

“As if I would want to add more stress onto you this week.” Clarmont took a seat next to her, gazing contemplatively at her. Though she was used to being scrutinized, Octavia could never quite get used to the way he did it.

“To what do I owe this pleasure, my lord Clarmont?”

“I was not aware I needed a reason to just stop by and say hello,” he chuckled.

Octavia leaned forward, a smile playing at the edges of her lips. “Oh, I see at least one person at this summit still has a modicum of romance in them.”

“What can I say? I’m old fashioned.”

“You’re very sweet, my dear.”

He smiled. Reaching under him, he pulled out a small basket. Octavia detected a warm fragrance, and her mouth instantly began to water. The look on her face does not escape Clarmont, who laughs and pushes the basket towards the hungry woman.

“Is it common for Jiyellians to consistently forget to take care of themselves? I thought it was a quirk reserved for Duke Lyon, but I’m beginning to think it’s a country-wide phenomenon.” He couldn’t help but laugh at her childish delight as she savored a warm scone.

“What can I say? We’re hardworking.”

“I’m starting to see that.” He leaned forward, the full strength of his gaze turned on her again. Octavia felt her face grow warm seeing the look in his eyes. “You should really learn to relax, though. I worry about you.”

She sighed. “Yes, I know. It’s been...quite hectic, hasn’t it?”

“To have to investigate this all on your own… It’s hardly fair. I can’t imagine the pressure you’re under.”

“No more than when I was home. This is the most I’ve been in my element since I came here,” Octavia admitted. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. Dead bodies were practically my career in Jiyel.”

“I thought you were a knight?”

“A knight can be many things in Jiyel. We are so rarely tied to one specialty. I swore an oath to defend the weak, yes. But that doesn’t mean I am limited to that alone.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. Though it was her work, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t a bit sour about the whole affair. “I’m fine. This whole trial is just going to be fun, fun, fun!”

“It’s...rare to see you complain like this. Not that I’m criticizing. It’s a bit relieving to hear you voice your thoughts every now and then.”

“After the second interview with the matchmaker,” she began in a low tone, “all I wanted was some time to myself. With you. I… I wanted this time to be spent learning more about you, Clarmont. Not learning about the machinations of a murderer roaming free on the isle. That’s just work. It’s always been work. For once I was just hoping for some time to relax and breathe. It’s… It’s just so easy being around you. I just wish I could experience more of that, because I never had many chances in my homeland.”

With slow deliberance, Clarmont gently placed a hand on her cheek. He looked at her as if she held the world in her being, and for the first time that week, Octavia felt the tension bleed from her body.

“We’ll have all the time in the world, my dearest. I promise you that.” 

[yatorihell]

In The Darkness Chapter 43 - The Great Lake

Words: 3,395

Summary: The second task is here. What treasure has been stolen from Yato?

Previous chapter | First chapter

Thank you Gio (@themusicalbookworm) for beta-ing me <3

Happy birthday Ina (@kurisuumakise)!

Read on AO3

Yato worked himself into a panic over the next few weeks as the second task drew closer.

He hadn’t slept well since the Yule Ball. Thinking about what the next task would be drove him mad. He knew it would be water, probably in the Great Lake.

But what did they take? And who were ‘they’?

Yato wrote to Sakura to consult, but she hadn’t answered. He worried if the Aurors had found her; their letters were risky, after all. Even if he didn’t know exactly where she was, Coo Phone took care of finding and delivering their correspondence.

Eventually he turned to Kazuma for help, not wanting to bother Suzuha and have Yukine’s smug face smiling at him as they would tease the answers from him slowly, making him work for it. As well as that, they seemed to disappear together a lot of the time. Where they went to, neither he or Hiyori knew.

Yato grumbled under a stack of books Kazuma had told him to collect from practically every shelf in the library. This made it difficult to see where exactly he was going as he made his way back to the already cluttered table where he and Kazuma sat.

The books nearly went flying from his arms as he heard an ‘oof’ and came to a short stop. Yato lowered the books, allowing his eyes and nose to peek out over the top to see who he nearly ran into.

Yukine stumbled out from behind one of the library stacks in front of him, looking behind at someone before back at Yato.

He looked breathless, face flushed down to his neck with a surprised expression on his face. His mouth opened and then shut again as he fiddled with the collar of his shirt, which Yato noticed had become untucked from his jumper. His tie was in no better state, pulled so it hung loosely around his neck and was all but slipping off.

"What are you doing?" Yato asked. He cocked his head curiously and shuffled the books in his arms.

"Stuff..." Yukine said, trying to make it sound as uninteresting as possible.

This failed as a second later Suzuha appeared behind Yukine with a dopey grin and cheeks nearly as red as Yukine's when he spoke.

"I'm stuff," Suzuha said. He leaned an arm on the bookcase and let himself rest against it with a Cheshire-cat like grin whilst Yukine stuttered excuses.

Yato clicked the messy ties, untucked jumpers and Yukine's attempt at hiding his neck.

"Well," Yato said, a grin worked its way onto his face despite his attempt at suppressing it, "I'll let you carry on with your 'stuff.’"

Yukine muttered something under his breath, though Yato was sure it was more aimed at Suzuha as he began pushing him back the way they came.

Yato shook his head, grin still on his face as he crossed the library and dumped the books in front of Kazuma. He ignored the agitated look Kazuma gave him, leaning over to look at the upside-down book that was in front of him.

“Found anything?”

“Not much, going by what you told me,” Kazuma took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose, quietly closing his eyes for a second before he began breaking down what they knew.

“‘Come seek us where our voices sound’, that’s obviously the Great Lake, so you’re going to need something to help you breathe underwater.”

Kazuma opened his eyes and placed his glasses back on his nose, picking up one of the dusty leather books.

Yato cocked an eyebrow. “Oh yes, just let me grow some gills quickly.”

“It is possible.”

Kazuma flipped to a bookmarked page and spun it around to Yato as he sat down opposite him. A plant with pale roots and short green leaves greeted him.

Yato wrinkled his nose. “What’s that?”

“Gillyweed, it makes you breathe underwater,” Kazuma said, “with a few other abilities.”

Yato didn’t ask what this meant – he dreaded to think what it would entail. Maybe he would grow flippers and a dorsal fin. Still, there was one part of the song which had bothered him since he opened the egg in the bathroom.

“‘We've taken what you'll sorely miss’.” Yato propped his chin in his hand. “What did they take? I haven’t missed anything.”

Kazuma shrugged. “Something that was precious to you.”

Yato sighed. “And I only have an hour to search for an unknown item in the massive lake that stretches into the horizon?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Yato dropped his arm on the table and rested his head on it, giving a dramatic sigh. Guess he would have to wait and find out. However, the final lines stuck in his head.

But past an hour, the prospect's black. Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

~

On the bleak grey morning of February 24th, the second task began.

Three stands had been erected in the centre of the Great Lake which was abuzz with activity. Students and teachers had bundled themselves in thick robes and scarves against the near freezing weather, but the four champions had no such luck.

Manabu and Nana stood beside him, bracing the cold in similar attire but in colours respective to their schools – or in Suzuha’s and Yato’s case, house colours.

Wearing only a short jersey vest, long shorts, and no shoes, Yato shuddered as he looked around the central stand. It was so ram packed with officials and teachers and the odd student that Yato couldn’t see anyone he knew.

Kazuma, however, had found him on the lakeshore and given him some Gillyweed which was now stashed in Yato’s sweating hand.

The three headmasters stood behind the champions, as well as Rabo who Yato assumed would act as some sort of lifeguard should the task go awry. The thought of something going wrong underwater, and the steely glare he received from the Auror for staring too long, didn’t fill Yato with much confidence.

Suzuha – who stood on Yato’s right – seemed to be looking around for Yukine. Yato realised that he hadn’t seen him at all, nor Hiyori, since the previous day. He was left with no option but to put his hair into a messy ponytail himself.

At a few minutes to ten o’clock, Yato looked over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps on the wooden platform.

Professor Tenjin had pressed his wand to his throat. His voice boomed across the lake, amplified by whatever spell he was using, and silenced the crowd.

“Our champions are ready for the second task. They will have one hour to recover what has been taken from them.”

Yato still had no idea what he was missing, and from what he could tell, neither did the others. Nevertheless, Professor Tenjin continued.

“On the count of three, the task will begin.”

At this Yato started shoving the Gillyweed in his mouth, chewing the rubbery leaves with haste as the countdown began.

“One… two… three!”

A shrill whistle cut through the air followed by the roaring cheers of the crowd.

Yato barely had time to swallow before he plunged – unceremoniously – into the lake alongside his competitors.

Searing cold water made Yato take an involuntary breath in, water filling his lungs, muffling his choked cry. A stabbing pain ignited his senses as he felt himself sink downwards, away from the filtered light above. Yato kicked his legs uselessly, hands clawing at his neck were the pain grew almost too much to bear, lungs about to burst from a lack of air.

Then it was gone.

Yato took a sharp, panicked breath, limbs falling still as he realised that he was breathing underwater. He dragged his fingers over his neck, just below his ears, finding that two large slits had appeared on either side and were flapping gently.

I have gills… Yato realised. His surprised turned to his hands – and then his feet – when he realised that a translucent webbing covered his fingers, helping him tread as if he was born in the water.

Yato felt a grin spread across his face. Thanks, Kazuma.

With a flip of his legs Yato dived, arms by his side as he squinted through the dark landscape that spread out before him. Unknown creatures scuttled out of his way in the forest of tangled black seaweed, concealed by murky water as they watched him apprehensively.

Silence was the only thing that greeted Yato as he searched for his lost treasure, though his honed senses could detect the smallest cackles of creatures that nipped at his feet before ducking away. Not before Yato could see green eyes and sharp teeth mocking him from a flurry of tentacles – Grindylows.

Small silver fish flitted past him as time dragged on, and Yato’s anxiety grew. He hadn’t seen anyone else, he hadn’t a clue where to look, and time was running out. What if he was going the wrong way?

A snatch of singing made Yato stop, looking in all directions for the source.

“– searching ponder this –”

Yato snapped his head to the left at the voice, not waiting before he took off after the elusive song. He kicked his legs harder, neck craning to follow the gentle voices which grew louder, encouraging him.

It wasn’t until the murkiness subsided that Yato could make out the shape of a stone arch ahead of him. Smaller shapes came into view along with shadows that drifted at the lakes floor. When Yato swam forward he realised the shapes were tethered in position. After a moment the realisation dawned on him that the shapes were bodies. When he got close enough to see their faces his heart faltered.

The first person he recognised was Yukine, golden hair made dull by the dark water that filtered tainted sunlight over his features.

Yato’s heart pounded as he realised that by Yukine’s side was Hiyori, long hair fanning out like a halo.

An hour long you'll have to look, and to recover what we took. But past an hour, the prospect's black, too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

Yato kicked his feet in a frenzy, remembering the threat the song promised. He never considered that his prize would be a person.

Once he was near enough Yato pushed himself upwards so that he was level with the pair. Their eyes were closed in a state of serenity, neither stirring as Yato reached out to them.

He cupped Yukine’s face, then Hiyori’s. Still alive.

Enchanted sleep… Yato realised, some sort of protection spell must be keeping them from drowning. His thumbs brushed across Hiyori’s cheeks, wracking her expression in search for some way to wake her.

Only then did he allow his eyes to slide away to scan the other captives. On the far right, a boy he didn’t know, Yukine and Hiyori, and…

Yato felt the pit in his stomach grow deeper when he realised who was right beside him. Small and peaceful, with soft ink hair fanning her pale face, was Nora.

What’s she doing here? Yato asked himself.

For a moment he lost himself. The solitude of his consciousness in the empty lake, and the four-unconscious people waiting for salvation overwhelmed him.

Who am I meant to save?

There was a sharp movement out of the corner of his eye which brought Yato back to reality, its blurred shape quickly approaching from the dim, greenish water. As if in slow motion Yato spun around, arms splayed out and breath catching in his gills.

A shark, coming straight at him with its jaws – bloody with something it had already killed – opened wide.

Yato let out a startled noise and drew his legs up only inches from where its teeth severed the rope holding the boy. Yato stared in disbelief as the boy was towed up to the surface by the rope which hung from the shark’s jaws…

Only, it wasn’t a shark. Well, it was half shark, half red shorts and short legs – Nana.

Yato looked back at the three remaining prisoners, all of which had some sort of connection to him.

Who am I meant to save?!

He didn’t have time to choose.

A flash of red seared one of the ropes, allowing Yukine to slowly drift upwards, head tilting back. Yato grabbed his shirt and panicked as he felt something graze his arm. Through his bangs Yato saw Suzuha – wand in hand – swim up by his side.

Yato blinked, surprised to see a bubble of air covering Suzuha’s nose and mouth, but Suzuha’s attention was elsewhere.

He was regarding Yukine with worry, dark hair fanning around his face as he reached to touch Yukine’s cheek. Suzuha pushed Yato’s hands away from Yukine’s shirt which he still held tightly, and Yato got the message.

Of course Yukine was for Suzuha.

Yato let himself float back as Suzuha wrapped an arm around Yukine’s middle and began making long strokes back up to the surface.

Only Nora and Hiyori remained – and there was still no sign of Manabu. Even if Yato knew he was meant to save Nora, he refused to leave until he was sure Hiyori was safe, even if it meant he would come last in the competition.

Yato looked around, apprehension growing as the minutes passed and glimpses of phantom shadows moved in the reeds, none of which emerged to be Manabu.

The hour would be up soon, and for whatever reason, Manabu wasn’t coming.

Yato drew his wand from his pocket decisively. He wasn’t going to leave her behind. With a silent spell Yato severed the rope which tethered Hiyori, grabbing her arm and pulling her closer as Yato moved towards Nora.

Before his wand was raised there was a flash of movement below him and a sharp point pressed to his throat. Yato dared not to swallow as he realised that all the shadows he had seen were the castings of mermaids.

But these weren’t the kind of mermaids from fairy tales.

Their skin was grey, face deepest with yellow eyes and broken teeth that bared at him. Seaweed-like hair trailed out behind them, and Yato didn’t have to breath to know that it smelled just as foul. Pebbled necklaces had been strung around their necks, each armed with a spear which they pointed at him threateningly.

Yato held Hiyori’s arm a little bit tighter.

The creature – the one holding Yato still – hissed two words that made his heart sink.

“Only one!”

Without another word the group dispersed back into the depths and Yato was alone once more. His eyes fell back on the two girls, both oblivious to the decision he would have to make:

Hiyori or Nora.

His eyes flitted between the pair. He knew Hiyori wasn’t his, but he couldn’t leave her, nor could he take both of them…

Yato looked at Nora apprehensively. What if this is what Father wants? Why else would she be down here when I barely speak to her?

Yato tortured himself for a moment, but in the end, there was no contest.

Before he could give himself time to doubt his choice, Yato was breaking the surface with his arm wrapped around Hiyori and the final chime of the bell in his ears. Yato took a deep breath of fresh air, treading water as his gills dissolved back into his flesh and webbed digits returned to normal.

Yet Hiyori remained unconscious.

“Hiyori! Hiyori!” Yato called. Why wasn't she waking up?

Treading water and keeping Hiyori from sinking was quickly zapping what remained of his energy. At this rate they would both go under.

Summoning the last of his strength, Yato began kicking furiously until he reached the podium where the crowds were still cheering. Yato caught the ladder rung and held it tightly, one arm still wrapped around Hiyori as she floated limply against him, head on his shoulder.

Wake up, wake up, the silent chant – a prayer almost – rang through Yato’s head as the seconds ticked by.

Bishamon and Kazuma pushed through the swarm of people gathered around him to haul Hiyori out of Yato’s arms and onto the soaked wooden platform. Bishamon rolled Hiyori onto her side and shook her gently, calling her name as Kazuma pulled Yato up onto the deck.

Yato feel to his knees and pressed his head against the ground, panting heavily. He felt a hand rubbing his back and voices asking if he was ok.

Raised his head, Yato vaguely registered Yukine and Suzuha by his side wrapped in towels against the biting wind that whipped through the stand. Kazuma had a tentative hand on his shoulder, but it didn’t register as he saw Hiyori lying beside him.

Yato dragged himself over to her side, trying weakly to push Bishamon away. He leaned over Hiyori and cupped her cheek to wake her, panic rising in his voice as he called her name.

No response.

Yato worriedly pulled her upper body into his lap and wrapped his arm around her damp lifeless frame, frantically shaking her shoulder as he tried to rouse her.

“Hiyori!” Yato said urgently. “Hey! Wake up!”

After what seemed like an eternity, Hiyori’s body shuddered to life and her eyes flew open. Yato hurriedly slapped her on the back as she sat upright, hacking up water.

Hiyori let herself lean heavily against Yato, head resting against the crook of his neck. A shuddering breath escaped her lips that drowned out Yato’s rushed sigh, relief flooding through him at the feeling her hot breath against his skin.

His hand rested on her head, fingers trembling on her soaked hair as fluffy towels were draped around them. Using his own, Yato softly wiped the moisture off of Hiyori’s face and hair as she looked around in a daze.

Yato barely heard Hiyori’s confused mumble of ‘What’s happening?’ as he looked back at the unbroken surface of the lake.

An unmistakable wave of guilt wash over him.

Nora was still down there.

~

As with the previous task, everyone ended up in the infirmary as a precaution.

The matron was less than happy to find out what ‘the poor kids’ had been put through this time, cursing under her breath and occasionally repeating ‘Are they trying to kill them?’ under her breath as she flitted between the beds.

There was no lasting damage, but Yato still sat on Hiyori’s bed quietly hating himself as he looked between Hiyori and Yukine who sat on either side on him.

He had lost points for saving the wrong person but Yato didn’t care. He ended up coming third after Manabu never made it past the Grindylows, which Suzuha said was a good thing before vanishing for a much-needed bath.

But Yato didn’t feel like celebrating.

Nora lay in a bed in the far corner of the ward, curtains drawn after she had been retrieved from the lake following her abandonment. Only when he saw her slip out of the room did Yato realise that she hadn’t been as present in school as before.

I didn’t even notice she wasn’t at the ball…

“Yato?” Hiyori said for the fifth time before he heard her. Yato looked at her, eyes wide and nerves frayed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly, confused when she smiled and Yukine huffed a laugh at Yato’s overprotectiveness.

“Thank you.”

Yato stared at her and then Yukine, lost for words.

“It was my fault this happened,” Yato muttered after a pause. He clenched his fists on the damp hem of his shirt. “If I hadn’t put my name in that Goblet –.”

“Technically,” Yukine butted in, “you weren’t the first person to be chosen. You’re not even meant to be in this competition.”

Yato was quiet. That much was true. Deep down the three of them knew that Father had something to do with the bewitched goblet, but who had done it was beyond them. And more importantly, why would they?

“You both are still getting hurt because of me…” Yato said quietly. He pulled them into a tight sideways hug.

Hiyori put a hand on his back, allowing him to wrap both her and Yukine in a soggy embrace.

Yukine jabbed his finger into Yato’s ribs, voice muffled against his shirt with a hidden smile. “If we’re going to die for you, then you better bloody win.”