#like i did read the summary and i think the moral is doing ballet and liking pink are good and okay things for boys

[fantasiavii]

I can’t believe I’ve been writing this ballet AU ft. homophobia in the dance community for months and didn’t know that fucking Disney made a short film about two Chinese (American?) boys, one of whom does ballet, that addresses toxic masculinity??? I’m??? Disney???????

[dobbyjen]

Tiny Dancer

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales x F!Reader 

Rating: M

Word Count: 1900

Warnings: some swearing, kisses, a tad of drinking, cute dad Frankie 

Summary: Frankie comes home just in time for his daughter’s dance recital

A/N: So I’ve never written a fic before so this is my first one. Grammar and all that crap is probably wrong but whatever. I am no writer at all. If anyone does read it please be nice. It was just a cute little idea that popped into my head because the world needs more dad Frankie fics. Might write something else in the future in this universe if anyone reads this. 

__________________________________________________________

“Mommy when daddy come?” your 3 year old pouts as you help her into her ballet outfit. You sigh and grab the 2 fuzzy yellow scrunchies off the bathroom counter and start parting her hair into two.

“I’m not sure Franny.” she frowns even more and wiggles are head out of your hands.

“I wike daddy do hair!” she screams and stomps her foot onto the bathroom tiles. You groan as you look into her teary big brown eyes. Frankie’s eyes. Frankie has been gone for 6 days and it was getting alot harder to deal with the mini Frankie. Francesca Morales was the splitting image of her father. Looks and personality wise. And she was the BIGGEST daddy’s girl. She’d been wrapped around his finger the second she came out. 

“Daddy should be home soon and then you can show him pictures of how beautiful you look today.” her frown gets a tad smaller and she scoots back in between your legs for you to do her hair. “Maybe if you do your pretty toes so well we can get a treat after the recital?” you barely have time to tighten the last scrunchie as she whips around and crushes your neck into a hug.

“Yay mommy! Get pupcakes?! I so good at pwetty toes!” she skips around the bathroom practicing her pretty toes as you finish packing her little purple dinosaur backpack.

“Of course princess. Let’s get going before we’re late.”

__________________________________________________________

“Frankie you said you were done with this shit! I’m going to personality kick Pope’s ass.” you huff as you plop down on the bed. Frankie sighs and comes over, bending between you legs.

“It will be 3 days...max babe. We need the money. I’m doing this for you and Francesca.”

“Frankie...i swear to god if you don’t come home...i...i don’t know...”

“Hey hey hey everything is gonna be okay. Pope said there’s no way this can go wrong. It’s go in, get the money and we’re out home free. I promise.”

__________________________________________________________

“Do you want me to wait here in case she throws you out?” Pope snickers as he pulls up outside the Morales house. Frankie glares at Pope and smacks his hat off his head.

“Fuck off. If anything she’s gonna kick your ass.” Frankie mumbles as he gets out of the truck and runs up the front porch. He twists the doorknob and whacks his head on the door as he realizes its locked. “What the....” Frankie panics for a minute wondering why its locked. They only just moved into the house 2 months ago and hadn’t gotten around to getting a spare key hidden. Frankie wracks his brain for why you wouldn’t be home. There’s no way you left with Francesca was there? “Hey what day is it?” Frankie yells back to Pope who is still sitting in his truck.

“Uhhhh...Sunday June 12th?” Pope yells back and Frankie feels like he just got slapped in the face.

“FUCK!” Frankie yells and runs back into Pope’s truck. “Drop me off at the civic centre NOW.”

“What why? They’re not home?” Pope sputters as he rips the truck into drive.

“Today is Franny’s first dance recital and i think it already started. Fuck she’s defiantly gonna kill me now.”

__________________________________________________________

Pope doesn’t even have time to put the truck into park before Frankie is jumping out and running through the doors of the civic centre. He stops as he reads the sign looking for the room with the dance recital. Auditorium 5. He runs down the hallway and stops when he sees a table selling flowers.

“How much for all of them.” Frankie huffs as he grabs outs his wallet. The young boy stares at Frankie with a gaping mouth.

“Uhhhh.....they're’ a-a dollar a-a fl-flower sir.” Frankie nods and throws him a 10. The boy swallows his nerves and hands Frankie a bouquet of rainbow roses. Frankie murmurs a thanks and sneaks into auditorium 5. There’s no seats available so he just stands against the back wall. There’s a group of 2 year olds on stage at the moment attempting a hip hop routine and Frankie chuckles to himself thinking of how Franny would look hopping around to the upbeat music. He looks down at the program and sees that her group is next.

The hip hop group run off the stage and the crowd cheers for them. Two young girls come out and take away the previous props and set out 8 pairs of yellow pom poms. Walking on Sunshine starts to play as the 8 little girls coming skipping out to find their spots. Frankie’s face begins to hurt from smiling so much as he spots Francesca. Wearing her yellow dance onesie and yellow tutu with her hair up in two messy pigtails. She does the little 2 minute routine so well Frankie can feel his eyes welling up with tears. Fuck he’s proud of her. This is why he needed to get home. He couldn’t fathom missing another experience like this. You and Francesca were the reason he kept pushing though the hard days. You both were his entire world.

__________________________________________________________

The recital comes to an end and all the parents wait around in the main foyer waiting for their little dancer to come out. 

Frankie fidgets with the bouquet of flowers in his hands as he looks around the crowd for a glimpse of you. He looks down at his watch and panics that he missed you guys and you went home, until......

“DADDY?!!!” You look up startled by your daughter’s random outburst and Frankie spins around as he hears his little girl screaming. He drops to his knees as Francesca comes flying into his arms. Frankie wraps his one arm around her small body and cradles her head with his hand and holds her close to him. The flowers drop to the ground long forgotten.

“Hi princess. I missed you so much. You did so good with all your twirls.” he whispered to her, smothering her head with kisses. She giggles uncontrollably and moves her head to kiss Frankie’s face all over as well. Making sure she kissed away the couple of tears away that snuck out. “These flowers are for you Fran.” Frankie smiles and puts the giant bouquet in her tiny arms.

“Woooow!! Mommy look!” Franny squeals and Frankie finally looks up and is met with your tear filled eyes. He stands with Franny in his arms and walks over to you.

“Hi.” he whispers. You gasp as you wrap your arms around the both of them. Frankie sighs as he buries his face into you hair, breathing in your scent. Fuck he missed this.

“W-when did you get back?” you sniffle and pull back to look into his brown eyes. Francesca looked between her parents confused and pawed at both their faces to dry their tears. Frankie chuckled at her gesture and tickled her side a bit making his favourite sound ring through his ears. A very high pitched giggle.

“Uhh...like 2 hours ago? I stopped at home first and then realized what day it was. I won’t miss this day for the world.”

“You shaved.” You said as you rubbed your hands over his bare jaw. You don’t think you’ve ever seen his face this bare before. You loved his patchy beard so dearly but you could probably get used to this face as well.

“Daddy no more pokey.” Franny scrunched up her face and placed a sloppy kiss to his cheek. You both laugh.

“Do you like it love?” Frankie questions.

“As long as your home and safe that���s all that matters to me.” you whisper as you lean in to kiss his lips.

“Ew yucky kisses!!” Franny squeals as she pushes your faces apart. Frankie chuckles as he moves his kisses to all over his daughter face. “Mommy we get pupcakes now?”

“Mommy promised you cupcakes?” Franny nods her head and Frankie looks towards his wife.

“Well i guess you did do an amazing job princess and i did promise this morning. She barely let me do her hair. Wanted you to do it.” you said rolling your eyes at Frankie. Frankie chuckled as you all walked out to the parking lot. 

“I mean i would have done a way better job.” you rolled your eyes yet again and smacked his shoulder lightly as you unlocked Frankie’s truck. Frankie buckled Franny into her car seat and then shut the door. He turned and grabbed you in a bone crushing hug. “I’m so sorry it took so long love. Nothing went as planned and we didn’t even get the money. And I-I dont...”

“Frankie stop. You don’t have to talk about it right now. Let’s go get our little ballerina a cupcake k?” Frankie smiles and captures your lips in one last kiss. “I love you to the moon and back.”

“I love you to the moon and back even more.”

__________________________________________________________

“I think she finally crashed” Frankie says as he grabs a beer from the fridge and plops down next to you on the couch taking a big swig.

“I swear to god if she doesn’t sleep through the night again I’m gonna...ugghh” You mumble into your wine glass. 

Frankie turns towards you and raises an eyebrow. “She hasn’t been sleeping?”

“Umm not since you’ve left. She wakes up around 2:30 every night crying for you. So i bring her into bed and she sleeps on your pillow with one of your shirts. It soothes her back to sleep. She also naps with one of shirts.” You sigh and look away from him, blinking back the tears. Frankie frowns, puts his beer on the coffee table and grabs your wine glass too. 

“Cmere.....i’m so sorry i left babe. I didn’t mean for it to be so hard for you. I’m never leaving again.” You cry into his side as he rubs his hand through your hair.

“What-what happened Frankie....I know you’re not okay. You don’t just disappear off the face of the earth for a week. Pope said it was going to be okay....I wouldn’t have let you go if...”

Frankie shudders and looks up at the ceiling trying to blink the tears away. You sit up and grab his face gently in your hands, forcing him to look at you.

“I’ve got you honey. Whenever you want to talk i’m here.” you give a small reassuring smile and wipe the silent tears falling down his face. That breaks Frankie. He begins to sob and explain the terrible events of the last week. You hold him and listen. 

When he’s finished you both just lay on the couch holding each other.

“When- when we lost Tom....all i thought about was you and Francesca and how I needed to get home. I swear to god I am never doing anything like that again. Pope said the money should free up by Wednesday so we’ll be good for a while. Will and I were thinking of opening up a shop, keep is busy for a while. I’m never leaving you guys ever again. We can take Franny to the shelter next week and she can pick out her dog finally.”

You giggle at the dog comment. That little girl has been asking for a dog the second she could talk and Uncle Benny put that idea into her head. “She’d really like that. And i’m also still kicking Pope’s ass next time I see him.”

Frankie laughs and kisses you head “Oh babe I’ve already warned him.”

__________________________________________________________

[eilonwiiy]

Bookends ; A Witchlands AU

Chapter 9

An innocent trip to the library takes an unexpected turn.

Summary: Iseult det Midenzi never expected to go to a top university, so when her mother falls ill and she is forced to drop out to make ends meet, life has never seemed so unfair. But when she starts working at the local library and is unexpectedly assigned in the Children’s Room, a certain monosyllabic man and his thrice-damned demon child start showing up and Iseult begins to wonder if the threads of fate have a plan for her after all.

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Ships: Iseult/Aeduan, Safi/Merik, and more… stay tuned!

Tags: modern AU, college setting, family, friendship, humor, fluff, slow-burn, romance, eventual smut

Read on AO3: here

Tag list: (please let me know if you’d like to be added!) @lseultdetmidenzi @twilightlegacy13

*   .   *   .   *   .   *   .

When Iseult woke up the next morning, she thought maybe she had dreamed the previous night.  But no.  Aeduan had texted her.  Twice.  First, with an all too unsatisfying Ok while she was still at work.  Then, again a whole hour later as she was getting ready for bed telling her that he’d be coming to the library tomorrow.  Which was now today.  The gap between texts - the “lost hour” as Iseult was now referring to it - was doing an exemplary job of keeping her busy.  She thought about it all through her shower.  While brushing her teeth.  There was a brief pause while she picked out an outfit (sweater, suede skirt, ballet flats), but then it was right back to obsessing over those missing 60 minutes.  

What had happened to cause Aeduan to go from monosyllabic man to someone with a firm grasp of the English language?  Had it been a full moon?

The ruckus of the usual morning hustle and bustle could be heard from Jitters as Iseult descended the stairs, coat already on and a messenger bag slung over her shoulder.  When she brushed through the divider curtain, the sight that met her brought her to a full stop.

“Wow.  Someone woke up in project mode,” she said, taking in Safi - awake and fully dressed on her morning off - and the stacks of books and magazines spread across multiple tables pushed together.

“Yes,” Safi agreed, looking proud.  “I thought I’d finally try turning that weird corner no one likes to sit in into that book nook we’ve always talked about.”  

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Iseult stared at Safi, expression flat.  

“Safi?”

“Hm?” she replied, flipping breezily through a page in her magazine.

“What are you doing?”

Safi didn’t look up.  “I told you.  I’m making the book nook.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.  But see, it’s 8:30 in the morning.”

“And?”

“And,” Iseult continued, slowly approaching her mini fortress of books, “there’s a perfectly useful bed upstairs wondering where you are.”

“Well, tell it it might get lucky and see me tonight.”

“Safi,” Iseult said bluntly.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?  And if you say ‘book nook’ one more time I’ll kill you.”

Safi said nothing.

“Spill,” Iseult ordered.

Safi sighed and made a face.  “Is it so hard to believe that I actually wanted to do a good thing and get moving on this project that you’ve been talking my ear off about for months?”

“It is when it’s 8:30 on your morning off.”  Iseult eyed the nearly full mug of coffee on the table.  “Is that your first cup of coffee?”

“Maybe.”  Safi’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “Why?”

“Nothing.  Just a concerned citizen, that’s all.”  Iseult pulled up a chair and lowered herself onto the seat, clapping her hands on her knees.  “Look, as tempting as the prospect of playing 20 Questions with you this early in the morning without caffeine in my system is, can we maybe skip to the end of this conversation where you tell me the truth about why you’re really up so I’m not late for work?”

Safi pursed her lips like she didn’t want to talk.  Then, she grabbed a massive tome off the top of one of the piles and held it up in the air.  

“I tripped over this.”

“Ok…” Iseult said slowly, eyeing the book.  “Are you okay?”

“Physically, yes.  Spiritually?  That remains to be seen.”

Iseult sighed.  “Safi, did you miss the part where I said I don’t want to be late for work?”

Safi let the book drop from her hand with an obnoxious thud that shook the table.    

“As you know, I worked until close at The Cleaved Man last night.  When I got home at 1 o’clock, per usual, I tripped and fell over this,” she said, giving the offending book a scathing look.  

The smallest of frowns formed on Iseult’s otherwise smooth face.  “How is that even possible?  That’s my freshmen geology textbook.  I’m not exactly reading up on pyrite in my spare time.”

“Oh, well, I knocked into the bookshelf while I was fumbling through the dark trying to find the light switch.”

“So really you tripped over the bookshelf.”

Safi gawped at Iseult.  “You’re not taking this seriously.”

“I would if I knew what the heck this has to do with you waking up and deciding today’s the day you’re going to be a carpenter!”

“That apartment is too small!” Safi burst, gesticulating wildly to the ceiling above.

“Safi,” shushed Iseult, glancing around at the early bird customers who were now looking curiously at them.

“No!  That place is too small and I’m so tired of barely having enough room to breathe let alone walk through the door without having to map out some sort of detour route to avoid collision!”  She shook her head.  “The books had to go!”

Iseult grabbed for Safi’s hand before she could point a rude gesture at the ceiling and covered it with her own.  “Look I know we got our hopes up for the apartment,” Iseult said, careful to leave out Chiseled Cheater’s name or supervillain moniker, “but you need to let this go.”

“I don’t want to,” pouted Safi, pronouncing each word defiantly.

“I know.  But you’re driving yourself crazy and me by extension.”  She paused.  “Our shoebox does have its perks.”

“Like?”  The word dripped with incredulity.

“Like,” Iseult ventured, “we don’t have to walk far to get to work.  We can even open the bakery in our pajamas.”

Safi’s face remained unchanging.  Iseult went on.

“We don’t have to deal with some seedy landlord.”

Nothing.

“Late snacks are a flight of stairs away.”

Still nothing.

“And there’s always an endless supply of free coffee on hand.”

“Except for that time we forgot to place the order and we went a whole three days having to tell customers we didn’t have coffee,” Safi pointed out.

Iseult shuddered from the memory.  “I thought Mathew and Habim were going to kick us out.”

“Maybe they’d have done us a favor if they had,” Safi muttered.

Iseult made a face at her and, for a moment, they held each other’s gaze.  Then, finally, she folded.

“I’m sorry,” Safi moaned, flopping back in her chair and looking at the stacks of books dejectedly.  “It just kills me that he’s living in our dream apartment while we’re stuck smelling like coffee for the rest of our lives.”

“It won’t be for the rest of our lives.  And besides,” Iseult added as an afterthought, “think of how much money we save living here.  I doubt I would have been able to afford that place now anyway.”

From the way Safi immediately sobered, Iseult knew she had driven the point home.  After all, it wasn’t Safi who couldn’t afford to live wherever she wanted.  She could leave their shoebox apartment anytime she wanted.  But she stayed for Iseult.  

Iseult fiddled with her hands and dropped her gaze, not wanting to look at the somber expression on Safi’s face.  She almost looked ashamed.  

“I’m sorry,” Safi apologized again.  She waved to the piles of books.  “Obviously, I lost my mind.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to build the book nook?”

Safi’s expression stiffened and Iseult saw a flicker of hesitation in her eyes.  

“No, I’m going to do it,” she eventually said, sounding resigned to the prospect, but determined.  “You’ve been bugging me about it long enough.”

“You said you liked the idea!”

“Yeah, but that was before I ordered those damned bookshelves,” argued Safi, nodding to the back office.  “Honestly, those assembly instructions are in a different language.  How can they expect the average person to put them together without a contractor?”

“Or an interpreter.”

“Exactly.  It’s all a bunch of gibberish made to con you into hiring a professional to assemble it for you.  It’s a money making scam.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Safi stewing.  Iseult side-eyed Safi.  She didn’t want to break the happy truce they had just struck, but...  

“You know who would be great at putting together those shelves?” she asked.  “The C-word.”

Safi gave a most unlady-like snort of disbelief.  “Cam can barely hold an entire tray of cookies without toppling over let alone a plank of wood.”

“I’m not talking about Cam and you know it.”

Safi shot her a piercing look.  “I am not calling Caden.”  She paused.  “I’ll call Leopold.”

“For what?” Iseult laughed.  “Moral support?”

“Hey, your boyfriend’s more handy than you think.”

Iseult’s stomach flipped.  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Safi rolled her eyes in exasperation.  “You’re right.  He’s not, but he could be!  If you would stop avoiding him.”

Iseult’s stomach vaulted again, but this time for an entirely different reason.  “Did he say that?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“That you’re avoiding him?  No, but I can tell by the way he asks about you.”  Safi studied Iseult for a moment.  “Do you like him?”

“I…” Iseult didn't know what to say.  She didn’t know what she felt.  While she had spent a good deal of time telling herself that Leopold’s flirtatious advances towards her were a figment of her imagination - I mean, look at the guy.  He basically waltzed right out of a Disney movie - she knew in her gut that they were real.  She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about what it would be like to date him.  To kiss him.  Would she burst into a puff of smoke when his lips touched hers and reappear a beautiful princess?  It all seemed so ridiculous to her.  They were like night and day.  But even so, there was no denying that they shared a bond.  She trusted him.  With him, she felt safe.

With that thought in mind, she ended lamely, “I don’t know.”

Safi nodded, eyes soft and understanding.  “That’s fair… Maybe seeing him tonight will help,” she said encouragingly.

Right.  Tonight.  Vaness’ little shindig.  Iseult hadn’t exactly been crossing off the days on her calendar in anticipation.  

Safi’s face went serious again.  She hesitated.  “Hey, so Alma called while you were in the shower.”

Shit.  “She did?” Iseult asked, trying to keep her voice light.  It wasn’t like this was the third time Alma had called this week and she hadn’t gotten back to her or anything.

“Yeah.  I picked up…” said Safi, sounding apologetic.  “I figured it could be about something important.”

“I’m assuming if you’re just telling me now that it wasn’t?”

Safi shook her head.  “No.  Just asked if you could call her back.”

“Ok… Thanks.  I will.”  Iseult swallowed the lie and let her eyes wander to the mess around them.  “I take it this means you’re not reading the book for the book club?”  She picked up a copy of Sisters of Sight from the top of one of the nearby stacks.  

“No,” Safi was quick to say, snatching the book away from Iseult and holding it to her chest possessively.  “I added that to the pile by mistake.”

“Of course,” Iseult said without much confidence.  Sierra, one of the baristas working the morning shift, came over and offered a steaming to-go cup of coffee and a paper bag that, judging by the heavenly smell, was her favorite cinnamon crunch bagel.

“Such service” she commended, taking them from Sierra and thanking her.

“This place ain’t half-bad,” Safi chimed in, watching with approval.

“Not half-bad at all,” Iseult agreed, then took a sip of her coffee.  She made a face as she swallowed.  “Well, the coffee definitely falls into the half-bad category.  Real Marstoki coffee my you-know-what,” she grumbled under her breath.

“You can say ‘ass’ in front of me,” Safi goaded, smirking.  “I won’t tell anyone.”

Iseult shook her head and stood up from her chair.  She was officially running late now.  “Well, thank you for an eventful morning.  Your neuroses never fail to entertain.  I’m only working a half-shift, so I’ll be back this afternoon.  Try to be nice to Cam before I get here,” she added with what she hoped was a convincingly stern look.

“Remind me again why we hired him?” Safi asked, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair.

“Because we’re all about helping the little guy,” answered Iseult as she wrapped her scarf around her neck.

“I didn’t realize we meant that literally.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You broke our no high schoolers policy.  I hate high schoolers.”

“Cam’s different.”

“He has no work experience.”

“Everyone has to get their start somewhere.  We didn’t exactly have much work experience when Mathew and Habim hired us.  Besides,” Iseult added, looking around and gesturing to the cafe, “this isn’t exactly a high-stakes operation.  I think Cam can handle pouring coffee.  Just be patient.  Not everyone learns at the same pace.”  She tugged on her beret cap and picked up her coffee and bagel.  “Well, I can’t wait to see you and the book nook when I get back.”

Safi’s face tightened and her smile froze in place.  “Me too,” she said as one of the book piles toppled over.  “Me too…”

*   .   *   .   *   .   *   .

Aeduan was not having a good morning.  

The news that they would be making a trip to the library that day was not received with warm reception from the four-year-old.  At first, Owl just frowned, not understanding why they were going if they weren’t going to see Evrane.  The concept of the library existing even when they weren’t there was a shock to Owl - an unpleasant one judging by the horrified look on her face - and Aeduan did his best to explain that the library was open to more than just the two of them, and that they were welcome to visit any time they wished, even when they weren’t meeting with Evrane.  He thought this would clear up the matter and put to rest Owl’s apparently very serious concerns about the library.  He was so incredibly wrong.

Owl had been possessed by the devil - Aeduan was sure of it.  

The nightmare started with her bath.  Aeduan could have skipped his shower if he had known how wet Owl would get him with all her thrashing, suddenly violently adverse to water.  By the end of it, there was more water on him than in the tub.  He’d had to change - but only after he managed to wrangle Owl into her own clothes (another Olympic feat).  At breakfast, she threw her Cheerios on the floor and the moment Aeduan finished picking up every last O, she spilled her orange juice.  By the time they left the house, Aeduan was so preoccupied with Owl squirming in his arms, he didn’t notice Blueberry sauntering across the porch and he tripped over the damned thing, sending himself - and Owl - toppling into a snow pile.  She’d started sobbing then.  Not for herself or for Aeduan, whose hip was throbbing in pain.  No, no, no.  She was upset that he may have hurt the cat.  It took 20 minutes for him to assure her that Blueberry was ok, another 20 minutes searching for the little cretin when it became clear she needed physical proof of the fact (he was hiding under the porch wedged behind the recycling bin), and by the time her sobs had turned into sniffles, he was so discombobulated that he didn’t even bother to go back inside and change out of his now soaking wet pants.  Again.  He was too worried he’d never get Owl out of the house again if he did.  He wasn’t taking any chances.  He skipped the car altogether, even though it had just snowed and the sidewalks probably weren’t all cleared yet.  Barring performing an exorcism, getting Owl to sit still long enough for him to fasten her into her carseat seemed inconceivable and - with his ears still ringing with her last screaming meltdown - he wasn’t looking for an encore.

Owl was deathly quiet by the time they reached the library.  Maybe she had run out of tears.  Aeduan certainly hoped so.  He wasn’t sure what he’d do if Owl fell apart while they were inside the building.  Possibly breakdown and cry himself.  Evrane would love that.

Shit.  Evrane.  In all the chaos, Aeduan hadn’t even thought about what he’d say if they happened to run into her.  He hastily ran through some quick excuses in his head while he crossed the library’s main hall, eyes darting around the open space for a splash of white hair and listening for the tell-tale sound of clattering of silver… which was precisely the moment he ran into Iseult.  Or rather, Iseult’s book cart.

The cart went toppling over, taking Iseult along with it, and crashed to the floor with a bone-rattling BOOM.  The sound echoed unforgivingly through the voluminous hall.  Aeduan stared at Iseult sprawled out on the floor covered in books, stunned, then snapped into action.  

“Are you alright?” he asked, hastily depositing Owl on the ground and kneeling down beside Iseult.  She looked shocked, eyes frozen wide, like she didn’t know how she had ended up on the floor.  He hastily began pulling books off her.

“You should be more careful,” Aeduan admonished gruffly.  He gathered and stacked the fly-away books into a pile off to the side while Iseult just sat there, silent.  Annoyed, he opened his mouth again when he picked up a tattered volume off her leg.  

His movement stuttered and his eyes locked on a jagged rip in her tights.  The pale skin shone like a tear in the night sky.  He swallowed thickly and he tore his eyes away.  

“Someone could have gotten hurt.”  He got up, leaving Iseult on the floor, and walked over the fallen cart.  He pulled it upright, the wood groaning with the motion.  He braced his hands on either end and gave it a firm jostle.  It seemed sturdy enough, despite its obvious wear.  Satisfied that it was safe, he started transferring the books back on its shelves.  

A strange sort of hiccup from behind him caused Aeduan’s head to snap up.  He’d had enough tears that morning.  This whole day could fuck off into the void if Iseult was going to start crying too.  He jerked around, not sure what he would do if he saw a single tear on her face, then stared.  

Iseult was laughing.  He’d never heard her laugh.  Or truly seen her smile.  It transformed her whole face that was always so emotionless.  Even as confusion shot through him, he couldn’t help but appreciate the sight.

He offered a hand to her.

“Are you alright?”  The question came out more reserved this time.  Less like an accusation.

Iseult nodded, her soft laughter fading to nothing, and accepted his help.  Her hand was cold against his.  She let go when she was back on her feet and offered him a small smile in appreciation.

Aeduan pointed to the tear at her knee, if only to distract himself from the feeling she’d left in his empty hand.  “That looks like it hurts.”

Iseult ducked her head and gave her leg a quick once-over.  Aeduan found himself looking too, but when his gaze began to roam to other places, he quickly looked away.  

“N-no, it’s fine,” Iseult stammered.  “I’m just out a pair of tights.”  

Aeduan frowned, not sure what to say to that.  Iseult bit the inside of her cheek and shrugged.  “I-I have a hundred pairs, so it’s f-fine.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Aeduan asked for a third time.  The tremble in her voice was making him uneasy.

“Mhmm,” was all she responded with, nodding her head.  She fidgeted with the cuffs of her sweater.  “I’m sorry I almost ran you two over.”

Two?  Oh, right!  Owl.

Aeduan looked down at Owl next to him.  The look she was giving them was downright murderous, if that was possible.  Owl had proven on more than one occasion that she was capable of extraordinary things - even if she was only four.

“You didn’t,” Aeduan replied, looking away from her and back at Iseult.  “I should have been paying attention.  I’m sorry.”  He didn’t know where the words were coming from, but they were out of his mouth before he could give them any thought.  They seemed to be the right thing to say, though, because Iseult’s face relaxed and he thought he caught a faint smile.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, looking up at him shyly.

Aeduan swallowed, heart stuck in his throat.  “You…. are?”

“Mmm,” Iseult confirmed.  She wet her lips, the pink tip of her tongue darting out and capturing Aeduan’s attention fully and wholly.  “I was just about to drop these off and get my things to go.  I have your book.  One of the other librarians would have been able to get it for you, but…”  She trailed off, ducking her head and looking down at her feet.

But, what?  Aeduan thought frantically.  He’d never felt more desperate for someone to finish a sentence.

Instead, she abruptly announced: “I’ll go get it now,” then pivoted on her heel and glided away from him.  He watched her go, eyes carefully trained on the manner of her gait.  If she was hurting, she hid it well.  Every stride of her legs was poised and measured, much like her personality.  However, when she was about ten feet away from him she paused and turned around.  Aeduan noticed how she hesitated when she saw him watching her, but, subtly, she squared her shoulders, and proceeded to make the short trek back to where him and Owl stood by the book cart.  

Oh.  The book cart.

Aeduan made no comment when Iseult reached them nor did she.  She simply rotated the cart on its wheels and ushered it away.  The rickety contraception left a trail of unwelcomed noise, earning her several annoyed looks from nearby patrons.  As if it was Iseult’s fault that that ancient piece of craftsmanship made such an infernal racket.

Aeduan glared at them.

It didn’t take Iseult long to return.  When she appeared, she was buttoned up in a coat and wore an old-timey looking beret on her head.  On anyone else it probably would have looked childish, but on her it was cute.  Aeduan shrugged the observation off by focusing on the book in her hand.  

“I hope you don’t mind that I looked up your account to check it out,” she said as she handed Elmer and the Dragon to him.  A boy in a red and white striped shirt and blue cap playing a flute to a circle of yellow birds looked up at him from the cover.  “We’re not supposed to do that without the patron present, but... well... I figured you’d probably want to get in and get out.”

Aeduan looked up with the faintest of frowns.  “Why do you say that?”

Iseult blinked, and though nothing else moved out of place on her face, Aeduan could tell she was surprised.  “Well,” she said slowly, “whenever you come in you always seem like… like you don’t want to be here.”

Aeduan tensed.  That wasn’t true.  Maybe it had been before, but now… now he wasn’t so sure.

He assessed the facts.  Today was Friday.  He’d defied all logic and come in on a day he wasn’t obligated to.  He’d triggered the second coming of Judas just to be here by facing off with an irritable 4-year-old and a demonic cat.  He’d even risked Evrane’s unsolicited judgement.  All that he had done to pick up Owl’s book.  To make Owl happy.  The wet jeans frozen to his ass were proof of that.  

“I wanted to be here today,” he said, tucking the book under his arm.  The truth of that statement almost distracted him from the pink blush that rose on the apples of Iseult’s cheeks.  Almost.  

She cast her gaze down to her hands and busied herself with pulling on her gloves.  “I have to go to my next job.”  Her voice was muffled somewhat by the thick scarf wrapped so high around her neck it obscured some of her chin.

“The coffee shop?”

“The coffee shop.”  She let her hand fall to her sides - gloves secured - and with nothing left to keep her occupied, she looked at him.  

“Well...” she began.  The suggestion of her departure was obvious in her tone, but Aeduan interrupted her.  

“We were planning on heading there after.  After coming here.”

“You were going to go to Jitters?”  Iseult’s eyebrow actually bounced and Aeduan relished the satisfaction of getting a reaction out of her.  It was becoming something of a game between them - though, he wasn’t sure she was aware she was a player.

“Yeah.  It’s what we do on Fridays.”

Iseult peered from Aeduan to Owl.  Unconvinced maybe.  “You go to Jitters every Friday?”

“Well,” Aeduan backtracked, feeling his insides freeze up a bit, “we have been for the last month.  It’s… a new tradition.”

He hoped that didn’t sound weird.  Iseult was still staring at him with that blank stare of hers, her eyebrows having recovered from their brief surprise.  It was all so maddening.  He never knew what she was going to say.  It made everything he said all the more nerve wracking… and exciting.  

He realized something then, something that made the corner of his mouth curl up.  Just like that, he wasn’t afraid of what to say next.

“Shall we?”

*   .   *   .   *   .   *   .

Iseult was getting coffee with Aeduan.

Scratch that.  Iseult was getting coffee for Aeduan.  Or at least, she would be once they got to Jitters.  

They were walking.  Outside, Aeduan had apologized and muttered something about not being able to use the car in the morning.  He did that a lot.  Mutter.  But Iseult didn’t mind.  Especially when there was an apology buried in there - which, there had been that day.  Twice.  That wasn’t so bad either.  (Not that she was keeping track, of course.)

The sidewalks were icy, and several times, Iseult nearly slipped.  Each time she noticed the way Aeduan’s hand shot out to grab her out of the corner of her eye - but only just.  He never quite made it to touching her.  His hand would hover in the air - she could practically feel it - waiting for her to recover, and after, it would fall back to his side, wrist rolling.

The three of them walked side by side, Aeduan in between Iseult and Owl.  There was no way of knowing for sure, but Iseult suspected that he had put himself in the middle to act as some sort of buffer.  The contempt radiating off of Owl back at the library hadn’t gone unnoticed by Iseult.  She could have imagined it, but she thought she even saw a smidgen of smugness on the child’s face after she had fallen.  While Iseult admired Aeduan for fighting for custody of the child, there was no ignoring it: Owl was strange.

Aeduan held on tight to Owl’s hand, setting the pace for the three of them.  Unlike Iseult, she hadn’t slipped once.  So strange.

Nothing was said for the first ten minutes of their trek.  Eventually, Iseult worked up the nerve and broke the ice in a way that didn’t involve falling on her ass.

“You said you started coming to Jitters every Friday?” she asked, giving Aeduan a side-long look.  He nodded, keeping his eyes ahead of him.  

“Before we pick up my sisters from school.”

Sisters.  Interesting.  Iseult instantly latched onto the topic.  “Do they live around here?”

Aeduan shook his head.  “Arithuania.”  

“That’s not too far,” Iseult commented conversationally.  “How old are they?”

“Lisbet’s 12 and Cora’s 8… They're my half-sisters.”

“Oh.”  Iseult mulled over that.  It was a seemingly small detail, but it invited a whole host of questions about his family.  Lisbet and Cora were younger than him, so that meant he had a stepmother… which meant something had happened to his real mother.  The desire to not to lose momentum of the conversation almost pushed Iseult to ask… but then she thought about Gretchya.  If the roles were reversed and Aeduan had asked about her mom, she wouldn’t have wanted to answer.  Her mom was about the furthest thing away from what she would want to talk about, now or ever.

So instead she said, “I don’t have any siblings.  But I have Safi.”

Aeduan’s head turned to her.  “Who’s Safi?”

“My best friend.”  Iseult’s face broke out into a smile like it always did when she thought about Safi.  “She’s the closest thing I have to a sister.”

“That… must be nice.”

Iseult nodded in agreement.  “We live together.”

A pause.  “Do you get along?”

“Most of the time.  But even when we disagree, we’re always in sync.  We’re always on each other’s side.  It’s... hard to explain.”

“Hn.”  That was all Aeduan had to say to that and then silence fell between.  Iseult really felt like it was his turn to pick up the conversation.  She’d done a decent enough job carrying it so far; a two minute run was pretty good, she thought.  A record, maybe, for Aeduan.  But now it was his turn.  Or so she thought.  Because the silence stretched.  And stretched and stretched.  She even heard Owl sigh at one point.  She wouldn’t be surprised if she fell asleep by the time they made it to Jitters.  

“Do you live around here?” she finally asked, then groaned inwardly.  What a stupid question.  Of course, he lived around here.  They walked to the library all the time, dumby.  

“Yes.”

The single word struck a match on Iseult’s nerves.  She might as well have said nothing at all if that all she was going to get back in return.  She wasn’t great at making conversation on a good day, but Aeduan - Aeduan was like a monolith.  There was no breaking through to him.  He just stood there like a constipated brick, not saying a word, with those ridiculously blue eyes and ridiculously long lashes, and just glared at her making her feel like a complete idiot for even trying to talk to him, like she was the one with the problem!  

Well, she silently seethed, it was no secret to the Moon Mother that she was ripe with issues, but she was not the problem here.  She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye, and the white winter sunlight caught on the lobe of Aeduan’s ear.  

“Why do you wear that thing?” she blurted.  

Aeduan’s head whipped to her, his eyes slightly widened, like he’d only just realized she was there.  Before, Iseult might have been scared as to how he would react to such a brazen question.  But her fears had nothing on the deep satisfaction of seeing the crimson blush that fanned out high on his cheeks and crawled to the tips of his ears.  She half expected him to trip over himself for how long he gaped at her.      

“Why do you care?” he snarled - he actually snarled!  

Iseult stood her ground.  In that, she kept walking, head held high.

“I didn’t say I cared,” she said smoothly.  “I’m just curious.  You don’t see a lot of guys walking around wearing gemstones in their ears.  It says alot about a person.”  

Aeduan’s jaw locked so tightly it looked like it might never unhinge ever again - which, Iseult supposed, wouldn’t make much of a difference seeing as he never said anything worthwhile anyway.

But then he did something that surprised her.  He came to a full stop.  He swiveled to face her directly, and when Iseult looked into his eyes, some of the fear she’d pushed aside rushed back.

“This gemstone,” Aeduan said venomously, pointing a sharp finger to his ear, “belonged to my mother.”  He glared at Iseult and she swore she heard her heart stop entirely.  Strangers milled about around them on the sidewalk, but in that moment nothing else existed outside of her and Aeduan.  All she saw were his eyes.  Cold as ice, yet burning with hatred... and grief.  Even though Iseult was petrified of what he might say next, she realized that she felt like she was seeing him for the first time.

“I wear this to remember her.”  Aeduan’s chest heaved.  Icy air puffed from his lips with every labored breath, and Iseult suddenly noticed how close he was to her.  Just another step and their noses would be touching.  And their lips…

“If you’d ever lost a mother, you’d want to feel close to her too.”

This time Iseult’s heart did stop.  With a disgusted look, Aeduan swung away from her and left her standing alone on the sidewalk, staring at the empty space where he used to be.

“I don’t think I would.”  

Aeduan froze and looked over his shoulder.  Iseult stood rooted to the spot.  

“I-I d-don’t know if that’s t-true.”  She shook her head, not sure where the words were coming from.  Not sure how her heart could be beating so fast and not feel like it was working at the same time.  Like it was malfunctioning and pumping out thoughts she would otherwise never say aloud.  Not to anyone.  Maybe not even Safi.  

“My m-mother is sick and I d-don’t call her,” she stammered.  “I never see her.  I make excuses all the time about why I can’t visit her or why I don’t return her calls and even though I know I’m being a horrible daughter, I just can’t stop.  I can’t bring myself to be better for her.  I don’t know who your mother was or what she was like, but I do know mine.  I don’t know what I’d do without her, I’ve never not had a mother, but… I don’t know if I’d want to feel close to her b-because I don’t feel c-close to her now.  I… I don’t know if I’d miss her.”

The weight of everything she just admitted lifted off Iseult and she was able to breathe again, heartbeat retreating under the cool blanket of stasis she kept shrouded around her at all times.  Pumping blood, not feelings, doing its job.  She took a gulp of cold air.  Her limbs felt foreign to her, the tension she always carried ebbing away, and a fierce exhaustion hit her with the force of a speeding train.  She didn’t think she could bring herself to look at Aeduan after everything she just confessed… but she did anyway.

His expression was painstakingly emotionless.  Not even a scrap of red tinged his cheeks.  During her speech she hadn’t really registered him there.  Even Owl at his side was looking at Iseult with something different.  There was no repulsion, not judgement.  Just… curiosity.

Iseult took another deep breath of air.  It didn’t matter what Aeduan thought of her now.  She needed to go to work.  She needed to move forward.  Her eyelids fluttered close briefly.

Stasis, Iseult.  Stasis.  Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.

When she opened her eyes, she was moving.  She was brushing past his shoulder.  And then-

Something stopped her.

Iseult looked down at the hand firmly gripped on the strap of her book bag, then slowly, tipped her chin up to look at Aeduan.  The white winter sun behind him was a halo around his head.

“Can I buy you a muffin?”

*   .   *   .   *   .   *   .

Somehow Iseult ended up on the green couch at Jitters.  There had been scant elsewhere for the three of them to comfortably sit, so while Iseult had made a beeline for the couch before anyone else could snatch it out from under them, Aeduan headed to the counter to fetch them some coffee.  Caffeine was probably the last thing Iseult needed right now - not after what had transpired on their walk - but when Aeduan had asked her how she took her coffee, she couldn’t find it in herself to refuse him.

There was an air of relaxed cheerfulness about the shop, the place bustling with people getting a jumpstart on their weekend, college students done with classes for the week.  When Iseult spotted Cam alone scrambling behind the counter and Safi nowhere in sight, her first instinct was to rush over and give him a hand, but the second Aeduan stepped into her line of sight and instructed her to find a seat, she’d forgotten all about him.

It felt strange sitting and being waited on in her own coffee shop.  It was like being served in her living room.  She sat spine rod straight on the edge of the couch with her hands absently twisting her gloves in her lap.  She hadn’t even bothered to take off her coat or scarf.  They felt like protective armor now, like needing a blanket to fall asleep regardless of whether it’s cold or not.  Right now, it was admittedly too hot, what with the fireplace crackling by the couch.  She could feel herself growing uncomfortably warm.  She resolved to loosen her scarf, but only a little bit.  

Aeduan wasn’t alone when he reappeared carrying two mismatched mugs of coffee.  Cam followed behind him, his face pinched in concentration, moving with caution as he balanced three small plates of pastries perilously along his spindly arms.  Iseult tried not to make a show of watching him as he approached, but she held her breath, praying for him not to fumble.  It would be exactly the kind of thing he would do, the poor kid.  The second hand embarrassment alone would cause Iseult to combust.  

The second the plates made contact with the low coffee table, she was able to breathe freely.

“Cam,” Iseult said, peering over the back of the couch and looking around the shop, “where’s Safi?”

Cam put down the last of the plates and wiped off his brow, relief evident on his face.  “She ran out to the corner store.  The delivery guys must be running late and we ran out of creamer.”

“That’s the second time this month,” Iseult muttered more to herself than to Cam.  She sighed.  “I’ll have Safi give them an earful when they get here.”

“Aye aye, sir.”  Cam gave her a dutiful salute.  He made to turn away, then stopped as if only just realizing that he had just served pastries to her.  “You are working today, right?  Safi seemed to think you were.”

“In another half hour,” said Iseult, checking the clock on the wall for good measure.  “Don’t worry, I’ll be on by the time you need to leave.  You won’t be late for your Big Brother meeting.”

Cam’s cheeks went a little pink and he rubbed the back of his neck.  “Ok, thanks,” he said sheepishly.  “I’m really sorry he called last week.  I told him it wasn’t your fault, I swear.”

A memory of Safi hunched over the desk in their cramped office in the storeroom, red-faced, holding the phone to her ear flashed across her eyes.  Safi’d endured a very heated discussion with some guy that claimed to be Cam’s Big Brother - didn’t even bother to properly introduce himself, the loser - and accused them of letting Cam off his shift late so that he was late for their meeting.  Judging by the 30 minutes hate-rant that followed after she’d hung up the phone, it had not been a productive conversation.

“I believe you, Cam.  It really wasn't a big deal,” she lied.  It had taken forty bucks worth of take-out and a bottle of wine to convince Safi not to fire him on the spot.  

“Ok,” Cam said again, shoulders relaxing.  He surveyed the spread on their coffee table and glanced at Aeduan and Owl seated next to her.  “I just wasn’t sure what this was.”

“Oh ah…” Iseult glanced at Aeduan who was helping Owl peel the paper wrapping off her muffin, not paying the least bit of attention to their conversation.  “We’re just having some lunch.”

“Alright,” Cam said, eyeing Aeduan skeptically, if not fearfully.  But he didn’t pry further.  “Well, I’ll see you in a bit then.  Enjoy your, uh, lunch.”

“Thanks,” Iseult said, watching him leave.  Stealing herself, she shifted in her seat to face lunch.  

Aeduan hadn’t touched his food.  He was too busy fussing over Owl.  She sat between them, contentedly munching on a muffin that was almost as big as her head.  Much like before when they had been walking together, she felt like Owl was acting as some sort of barrier now, like Aeduan had put her there to keep some space between them.  Iseult wondered if she should read into it.  Maybe he was trying to tell her that this wasn’t anything special.  Just two people having coffee.  Nothing put the lid on romance faster than a four-year-old who, as far as Iseult could tell, hated her.  And then there was the issue of the 6 months worth of guilt she’d word vomited all over the sidewalk just 10 minutes ago.

“Is everything alright?” Aeduan asked as he put down Owl’s juice box on the coffee table and picked at his own muffin.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Iseult said, almost breathless.  “Just a problem with our delivery guys.  I��ll have Safi handle it when she gets back.”

Aeduan popped a piece of muffin in his mouth and chewed methodically as he studied her.  He swallowed.  “No, I meant with you.  Your face.  It’s all red and splotchy.”

“Oh,” Iseult breathed, hands flying to her cheeks.  The skin burned under her fingers.  “I… I’m just a little warm, I guess.  The fire…” Aeduan continued to stare and she looked down helplessly at her coat.  “I suppose I can take this off,” she mumbled, reaching for the buttons and beginning to undo them.  She tried to steady her fingers as she continued down the line.  She shrugged the peacoat off and her entire body seemed to sigh with relief at the feeling of being able to breath again.  She chanced another glance at Aeduan as she unwound her scarf, noticing that he had already taken his jacket.  How she hadn’t noticed until was a mystery.  The white t-shirt stretched across his chest made it devastatingly clear that he didn’t need any protective armor for their not-date.  

Iseult had always been so preoccupied with what was going on inside Aeduan’s head that she never really wondered what went on with the rest of him.  His signature leather jacket masked how lean he truly was, but it also hid everything else.  Everything else being, well, everything.  And boy, there was so much to see.

Not being much of a fashion guru, Iseult had never considered what was so special about the plain white tee.  That singular item of clothing had transcended decades of trends despite being, as its title suggested, plain.  Now, however, its reason for persevering was evident.  Embellishment would only distract from the main attraction.  The attraction being, the person who wore it.

Aeduan was, for lack of a better word, stacked.

The shirt left nothing to the imagination.  Iseult could see the contours of his muscles, starting with the hard plane of his chest, traveling all the way down to map the outline of his abs.  His arms were on full display in all their glory, pale and strong looking and - oh my gosh - was that a tattoo peeking out from underneath the hem of his sleeve??  There was nothing unsightly about him.  He was built in a way that told her that he must be well-acquainted with the benefits of hitting the genetic lottery.  This wasn't the work of protein powder.  Somehow he had fallen into Moon Mother’s good graces.  He looked healthy and strong and 100% out of Iseult’s league… It wasn’t until now that she’d ever even considered joining a league.  

She didn’t own a bat.  

She didn’t own a ball.  

She’d never made it to first base before, nevermind hit a homerun.  

She was so woefully unequipped in every way for the living Michaelangelo statue sitting across from her that it suddenly hit her that no wonder he didn’t talk much.  Who needed words when you had a body like that to do all the talking?

Except Aeduan was talking for once.  Now, in fact.

“Are you going to leave that on?” Iseult barely heard him ask.

“What?  Oh-” She followed his line of sight to the beret on top of her head.  She hastily peeled it off and awkwardly tried to smooth out her hair.  She was uncomfortably aware of Aeduan’s eyes on her.  She wished she hadn’t worn the silly thing.  It had been a gift from Leopold a couple Christmases back.  He had insisted that it was chic and retro and, no, it wouldn’t make her look like Mary from The Secret Garden, but now she would have liked nothing more than to toss it into the fire and watch it shrivel up into a pile of ash.

“Thanks,” she forced herself to say as she reached for the mug on the table.  “For the coffee and- oh.”  She examined the muffin beside it, then tilted her head questioningly at Aeduan.  “Did you know cinnamon was my favorite?”

Aeduan, who was mid-sip, paused.  Iseult caught the corner of his mouth curled up behind his mug.  Then he tipped his coffee back and it was gone.  “Lucky guess.”

Iseult allowed herself to smile, a little one, before ducking her down.  She began to break apart her muffin… but there was only so much eating and drinking she could do before there would need to be some exchange of words.  She decided to take a stab at it.  

“You said you come here every Friday?”

“Pretty much,” Aeduan said, reaching for a napkin and dabbing a smear of what looked like blueberry off Owl’s cheek.  She looked like she wanted to resist but didn’t.

“You do know there’s a Starbucks right around the corner, right?”

“So?”

“Well, why come here when you could go there?”

Aeduan thought about it, then shrugged.  “I like the coffee.”

Iseult snorted into her mug, sending a couple errant droplets of coffee flying.  Both Aeduan and Owl stared at her.  Iseult surreptitiously wiped her mouth, but when she noticed that they were still staring, Aeduan clearly confused by her reaction, she sent the same nonplussed look right back.

“Are you serious?” Iseult asked deadpanned.

“I believe I am,” Aeduan replied, a little defensive, which made Iseult want to laugh again.

“It’s not actually real Marstoki coffee,” she said, gesturing to his mug.  “You know that, right?”

Aeduan peered into the contents of his mug.  “It’s not?”

“Not even a little.”  Iseult gave him a bemused look, enjoying the curious way he was examining his mug, almost indignant.  Eventually he accepted the truth and put it down.

“You said hazelnut makes it better.  I guess you were right.”

Iseult’s heart skipped a beat.  He ordered his coffee that way she had brewed it for him the first time she saw him in the shop?  She didn’t know why that made her feel all gooey inside but it did.

A soft chime sounded and Aeduan reached into his back pocket.  The movement stretched his already too tight shirt even tighter across his chest and Iseult launched into an aggressive excavation of her muffin as to avoid ogling him.  When she eventually got a grip and looked back up, Aeduan was frowning at his phone.  

“Something wrong?” Iseult asked, hoping that he didn’t have to leave.

He shook his head.  “It’s nothing.”  He started to put it away, then stopped.  “Well,” - he shifted again and slid it back out - “do you know what this means?”

He leaned across Owl and showed the screen to Iseult.

“My sister likes to send me these… things,” he explained, watching Iseult carefully as she looked at the picture on his phone.  “I never know what the heck she’s talking about.”

“Oh!” Iseult exclaimed with a laugh.  “It’s a meme.  See, that’s Kermit the Frog.  Kermit is-”

“I know who Kermit the Frog is,” Aeduan ground out like it pained him to say the goofy green muppet’s name out loud.  “But what does he have to do with her trying to decide whether or not she wants to sign up for the school’s annual spelling bee?”

“Well,” Iseult began and boldly took the phone from his hand and pointed to the Kermit hooded in a black cloak.  “That’s Kermit’s evil persona.  He’s like the devil on his shoulder whispering in his ear and egging him on.  Your sister-”

“Lisbet,” provided Aeduan.

“-Lisbet said she doesn’t want to sign up because she has too many other extracurriculars going on right now and doesn’t want to overload herself.  But she also wants the satisfaction of wiping the floor with her peers’ asses because she knows she’ll win.”

Aeduan frowned at her.

“My words, not hers,” she clarified.  She handed the phone back to him.  “She was using that picture of Kermit talking to his sinister self to emphasize her evil instincts.”

“I wouldn't exactly classify competing in a spelling bee as evil,” Aeduan said, studying the meme again.

Iseult plunked a bit of muffin in her mouth and chewed.  “Sounds like she's a pretty outgoing kid.”

“She is,” Aeduan said, clicking his phone off and tucking it away.  “But she’s quiet about it… Humble in a way the most overachieving 12-year-olds aren’t.  To her it’s not overachieving, it’s just her being her.”

Iseult watched the faint smile that spread across his lips, warming his usually cold face.  “Cora,” he continued without prompting, “is a lot like her, but sillier.  She’s younger, of course, but she’s always been a little more mellow than Lisbet.  More carefree.  I don’t think school means the same to her as it does to Lisbet, but she’s a good girl.”

“They both sound like they’re good girls,” Iseult said.  

“They are,” Aeduan nodded.  “They are.”

A comfortable silence passed between them in which they both indulged in a few bites of their muffins.

“So what are your plans for this weekend?” Iseult asked.  

Aeduan stiffened, looking slightly uncomfortable.  “Uh, sorry, but I’m busy.  I have the girls all weekend.”

She blinked.  “Right, I know... what are your plans with them?”

“You weren’t...?”  Aeduan’s face went red and he absently tugged at his pieced lobe.  “Oh.  Well.  Uh…” He tried to mask his embarrassment with a cough.  “Nothing special.  Lisbet likes to get her homework out of the way on Fridays and Cora likes to do what Lisbet does, so we usually spend the rest of the afternoon doing school work.  Saturdays are a mixed bag.  Lisbet’s does a lot of extracurriculars, so depending on what she has going on, Saturday is our day to just hang out and relax.”

Iseult had a hard time picturing Aeduan “hanging out” and wondered what that would entail.  Before she could ask, a noise sprouted between them and they both looked down.  Owl sipped on her straw like she was sucking the life out of her juice box.  Aeduan gingerly pulled it out of her mouth and placed the exsanguinated carton on the coffee table.  

“What about you?” Aeduan asked, like nothing had happened.  “Do you have any fun plans?”  It sounded like he struggled to say the word ‘fun’.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call my plans fun.  Or call them plans at all,” Iseult confessed, tucking her hair behind her ear.  “I mostly work.  And read.”

“And hang out with Safi.”

Iseult smiled, nodding.  “And hang out with Safi.”

It took her a full 5 seconds to realize that Aeduan was smiling back at her.  Not just with his mouth but with the little dimple that winked out from his cheek.  It was the most brilliant thing she’d ever seen.  

“Actually,” she spoke, looking down at her hands, “we’re hanging out tonight.  Our friend Vaness is having a little get-together with some people.”

“Vaness?”

Iseult’s ears perked up, catching the sharp familiarity in the way he spoke her name.  “Yeah.  Do you know her?”

Aeduan opened his mouth to respond, his smile and the dimple noticeably missing, but at that moment, the bells over the entrance door jingled and in walked Safi.  

“Iseult,” she breathed, nose and cheeks rosy from the cold.  A paper bag was clutched to her chest with what Iseult guessed was creamer.

At the sound of her name, Aeduan’s head instinctively turned to look over the back of the couch.  Safi froze as the door closed behind her.

“S-Safi,” Iseult exclaimed, taken aback by the stutter over her best friend’s name.  That was a first.  But Safi didn’t seem to notice.  Her feet seemed glued to the floor with her stare pinned on Aeduan.

“This is Aeduan and - oh!” - Owl was turning in her seat and pulling herself up with the back of the couch to see what the fuss was about - “this is Owl.”

Owl gave Safi a shrewd look that lasted all of 5 seconds before sinking back down onto the cushion and returning to her muffin.  Clearly, she was unimpressed by Iseult’s choice in best friend.

“Aeduan, this is Safi,” Iseult told him, nearly choking on Safi’s name when she saw the frosty look he was giving Safi.

Neither of them said anything.

“We were just eating lunch,” Iseult explained, grappling for words.  She looked from Safi to Aeduan waiting for someone to explain why on earth she’d been transported to the arctic tundra.  They seemed to be locked in some sort of Vulcan mind meld; she had a feeling her limited knowledge of Star Trek trivia wasn’t going to do much to break it.

Thankfully, Aeduan was the one to do the deed.  He sent a downward jerk of his head to Safi in acknowledgment that might as well have been a punch to the face for all the friendliness it had, then turned to Iseult.

“We need to get going,” he said, his voice carrying none of the warmth or depth it had had in their conversation moments ago.

“S-sure,” Iseult faltered.  She was unable to ignore the sinking disappointment buoying in the pit of her stomach.  “I w-wouldn’t want to keep Lisbet and Cora waiting.”

Wordlessly, he pulled on his jacket and helped Owl into hers, then bundled her up in her hat, scarf, and gloves.  He started to stack the mugs and plates.

“You don’t have to-” Iseult tried to stop him, but he continued anyway.

“I got it,” was all he gruffed out.  When everything was piled up, he stepped around the coffee table and transported it all to the counter by the waste bin.  When he came back he held out his hand to Owl, who slid off the couch and placed her fuzzy mittened hand in his, then glanced at Iseult.  She couldn’t read his expression, but she didn’t have much time because the next second he was turning his back on her and leaving.

Safi, who hadn’t budged, didn’t say a word as he sidestepped around her and pushed through the door.  The second it rattled shut, her head whipped to Iseult.  She whizzed over to the couch like time had stopped and was suddenly speeding to catch up.  She threw herself down where Aeduan had been sitting and carelessly let the paper bag drop to the floor, barely giving it any mind.  Disbelief was written all over her face.  Iseult was glad that her expression was finally readable, but was still very much bewildered as to the reason behind it.

“What was that all about?  Are you crazy?” Safi whisper-hissed.

Iseult blinked rapidfire in response.  “What are you talking about?”

“Him!” Safi exclaimed, shooting a look over her shoulder.  “That guy!  Why on Earth would you hang out with him?!”

Iseult was so confused.  She was barely able to form words.  “He’s just a patron at the library.  We’re friends.”

Safi gave her a flabbergasted look.  “He’s not just a patron.  Iseult,” - she leaned forward and brought her head close to hers - “do you seriously not recognize who he is or do you not remember anything from that night?”  She pinned her with a stare, eyebrows high, as though waiting for a response, but Iseult shook her head smally, her mouth clamped shut.  Nothing Safi was saying was making any sense and it was making her more and more nervous.  

Safi sucked in a breath through her nose and her hand covered Iseult’s in her lap.  She squeezed it bracingly.  All it did was send another shot of fear through Iseult.  She stared into Safi’s blue eyes.

“Iseult,” she said in a low voice, “that’s the chief of police’s son... the cop that crashed Vaness’ end-of-the-year party.”

*   .   *   .   *   .   *   .

The moment Aeduan stepped outside, he felt like he could breathe again.  It had become too hot in there.  And then when Safi walked in…

Of course - of course - Iseult’s best friend had to be the impossible barista.  But she wasn’t just that.  Because just before she’d interrupted them, something that had been out of place had slid home and he’d realized something: he knew Iseult.

A memory of a hot summer night that started with a noise complaint rushed back to him.  Being in the Domestic Violence Unit, it wasn’t something his squad typically covered, but staff was stretched thin that night, what with the non-stop partying shaking up the college city, and Aeduan didn’t have much choice to turn his back on the call.  It had been one of the last runs he’d made before turning in his badge.

Iseult probably didn’t even remember it.  But he did.

Owl tugged at Aeduan’s hand and felt her curl into his leg.  He peered down at her questioningly.

She lifted a mittened hand out in front of her.  “Dog,” she said.

Aeduan looked to where she pointed and, sure enough, there was a dog leashed to a lamppost, most likely waiting for his owner to return from getting a coffee.  At the sight of the two of them, he lifted his shaggy head from his front paws, attention piqued.

Annoyance tugged at Aeduan’s gut.  He hated when dog owners just left their pets tied up unattended.  It was just notch below leaving them in the car.

Owl let go of his hand and clutched herself to him, hiding behind his leg.  Wide brown eyes peeked out from behind him at the dog, who looked cold and miserable.

“Tail not moving,” she said, her words muffled by the fabric of his jeans.  Aeduan nodded and gave the dog a pitying look.

“That’s right,” he told her.  “He’s probably not happy being left out in the snow by his master.”

Owl tucked herself even closer to him and a small whimper bubbled out of her.  Aeduan moved to sidestep away from her to show her the dog wouldn’t hurt her, but she only whimpered again, more loudly.

“It’s ok,” Aeduan shushed her, gently extricating her from his leg and lifting her up in the air like she weighed nothing.  “I got you.”  

Her arms wrapped around his neck the moment she connected with his chest and the warmth of her enveloped him, anchoring him, pushing thoughts of his old life his mind.  He held her close, humming soft comforting words to her and rocking her gently.  

From the snow-covered sidewalk, the shivering dog’s watery, mournful eyes watched him and Aeduan stared back.  He thought about Iseult and her sick mother.  He thought about Owl’s tear-stained face from that morning and her arms around him now.  And then he thought about what it would take to lose a child and what it would feel like to not be missed.

[shinahbee]

October Favorites 2020!

Hello!

i'm going to start bringing these favorites of the month from my deviantart to here on tumblr. Hopefully you will find something good out of the things that I have been liking recently, please leave in the comments anything that you have been liking this month ( books, manga, anime, tv shows...etc) I have been a little uninspired for a while, but I'm still working on a few new digital art pieces as well as continuing my painting hobby, so there's a lot of content on the way!

okay so on to the things that I've been liking this month.

So if you've seen my latest digital art " who's baby is it?" I have been delving into web toons which I have not read other than mo dao zu shi since I watched the anime and It just suddenly stopped after season 2. I thought reading the web toon would answer some of those questions  i had. It lead me to reading a bunch of webtoons all in the shounen ai category for some reason...lol. and I've been really liking some of the stories, Until this point web toons never really interested me since I've been reading manga since I was younger , so i've been used to just seeing the black and white pages of art, since web toons have coloured pages, it makes me appreciate the effort they used to colour every panel, so a lot of work went into these so i appreciate it for what it is even if the story inst great.

let me preface by saying that even though i'm delving into BL, i've been exposed to yaoi ever since I was in high school by one of my best friends, she lent me her favorite anime which was " gravitation" and all remember was wanting a man that was like yuki...lol. don't we all?

since then I have been reading some yaoi manga...only ones that are NOT predicated on sexual violence and abuse, which I know is prevalent in this category, I just don't like it and the message it sends, so i avoid that all together.

unless of course it has a particular message it wants to convey, not glorifying it. if that makes sense.

okay so here are my recommendations, i'll give a very brief summary of each of them

Manga/Manhwa:

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Who's baby is it? 

- “a man named yi yun wanted to be an actor and is part of an acting company for several years and still was not successful, apparently it was because he was born with really bad luck, so to change his life perspective he decided that he wanted to be a surrogate father and donate his sperm to a surrogate mother in order to have a child that is his blood. So he and his child were living happily together through yi yuns work periods and suddenly there is a man that claims he is the child's actual blood related father and wanted to take the child into his custody.”

please read the summary I have in my fan art, I've wrote my thoughts on this manhwa.

To be or not to be

-  “A company president diagnosed with cancer and died has been transmigrated into his favorite novel, where he was reborn as the antagonistic emperor that the main character defeats in the end, on top of which the main lead is currently the captive of said emperor, so in order to survive he will do anything to protect the protagonist and make sure he stays alive inside the novels universe.”

oh to be or not to be that is the question...lol. it really is. currently is is one of my favorites, I like how modern day people  can look at the acts of history and modify certain things so that it would less likey repeat itself for the worse, we need this sort of mentality at this moment...

Social temperature

- “Song Yuan is indifferent when dealing with people he is an elite student at T- university as a science major, one day his friend started to question his sexuality and set him up with a month trial dating app as a joke, as soon as he went to delete the app on his phone, he was suddenly matched with a boy named "Mu", who turns out to be his classmate/ rival in his science program, his named is Xaio Mu , he is an exchange student abroad and got into this elite science program, hoping to meet new friends he approached song yuan and proceed to converse with him only to be ridiculed by him saying that he wears too much perfume and it made him sick so then he became the class social outcast.But after using the app to converse with "Mu"...song yuan became curious as to what he is actually like...using the fake name and bio of " Andrew " they start to get to know each other more.”

omg , this is triggering for me, since Mu is basically me a few years ago when I was also in a medical science program minus the talking on tinder thing lol, I felt as though everyone in that program was in it for themselves and I didn't not like the how people think they are entitled to everything...that's why i'm not in it no more.lol. there are a few plot holes in the story that I don't really get but other than that I really like this story I read the chapters that are out so far like 3 times cause I'm waiting for the rest to be translated. I also actually read the Novel by the same author of the manhua called " social outcast" so if you just want to read it in text format please read that novel instead, I like the novel up to a point and then it didn't really make sense after wards..lol.

so i can't say that i recommended it completely. Also Mu's character design I really like, thus i'm going to make a fan art of him soon...omg he's so beautiful, i'm in love lol.

Salad Days  ( tang liu zang) 

- “This is the story between a young innocent ballet boy and a passionate, determined boxing boy. The two met at the children’s palace, and since then, they have grown up together supporting each other. May there be hardships, may there be obstacles, yet they never stopped pursuing their dreams. The beauty of the salad days is the sweat from the hard work and the bonding of friendship. Although they have completely different paths set up for them, what never changes is their beautiful friendship.”

wow this story so far is really beautiful, I was in ballet for 3  years so it was slightly relatable to me, I feel like the over all message is that people sacrifice a lot for their dreams and if you are very passionate about it, there's no on that can really stop you, the only one that can stop you is you. I can't wait to see this story progress further  

K-dramas:

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it okay to not be okay - this probably has been mentioned as everyone's favorite, but rightfully so, I really like ko mun young's character as a person who seems like an assertive and powerful woman, but is suffering from a social disorder. and how moon gang tae has to not only deal with mental patients at his job but also his older brother being autistic, he himself is suffering from mental illness. this drama is  something not a lot of dramas portray in dealing with mental illness and how the patients/ loved ones  are feeling when watching them go through it all. I liked the story and the message  and it made me cry in every episode, so fair warning...have tissues beside you as you watch.

itaewon class- I was not going to watch this because of the mixed reviews but I did any ways, and it was really good, a really good depiction of how money and power isn't the end all be all , and being happy  is really the best revenge you can get, it also addresses racism and prejudice on one character and sexism on a trans-gendered woman. I also think this is a story that protrays something that really hasn't been exposed to in k-dramas specifically. It depends on your morals and what you understand so far in your life wether you would like this drama or not, so i understand the mixed reviews that it gets, but for me it was a really good story.

Anime/ TV shows:

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

I don't have any anime recommendations this month mainly cause I have not been watching any, but there are some that i might watch soon  so I will list those below, let mew know if any of you have seen them and should I be watching them.

- Nobelese

-yasha hime ( inuyasha  new series)

-Haikyuu  new season

-heavens official blessing ( same author of mo dao zushi) - just started watching

-scum bag saving system- just started watching

Music :

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

so I have just been listening to a lot of OSTs,

I really recommend the itaewon class soundtrack, all the songs are so good!

my favorite on is " crush- No words "

also my friend has been sending me NCT  and super M practice  videos so I've been listening to their music as well, please listen to make a wish by NCT U, it has been stuck in my head and I cant get it out...lol.

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

that's all for this October faves summary. please comment below if anything interested you for the month of October, I would also like to read your recommendations as well, please also take care of yourselves especially now with all that's escalating in the world.

take care!

sheena

[undreaming-fanfiction]

A night to remember: The Gifts

Fandom: Cats the musical Rating: T Pairing: multiple in future chapters, Tuggoffelees, Victoria/Plato, Demeter/Munkustrap etc. Category: magical circus AU, slow burn Chapter number: 2 Chapter summary: Before he became the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees, he had been Quaxo. Before she became Victoria, she had been "the mute" or "white-hair". And both of them had a "gift".

The previous chapter: Prologue

Before he became the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees, he had been Quaxo, a short, pale and dark-haired boy with eyes too old for his age. He didn't really like being Quaxo in the first place, but it was definitely better than being nobody. And being a nobody, while unimaginable for some people, was frighteningly close to Quaxo and his sister's reality. 

Of course, she probably wasn't his real sister, but he could never be sure, could never verify or disprove their genetic relation. Some days he thought about it and always came to the same conclusion - that even if he could find out, it wouldn't matter. They probably had a much better relationship than most siblings anyway. They had never learned who their parents were, why they were abandoned or if their original families still lived, and perhaps they only met in one of the shelters in which they occasionally spent the night. All that Quaxo knew was that she had been appearing in his earliest memories and he had very few of those without her. He believed it was the same for her. 

Victoria hadn't always been Victoria either - they usually called her "white-hair" (although it was only pale blond, Quaxo thought angrily, she wasn't old or anything, why would they call her that?!) or "the mute" - but she was luckier than Quaxo. One particularly cold day, they were trying to survive the night outside and the sharp autumn wind brought in a page from a newspaper, probably something on an exposition about Queen Victoria (Quaxo never knew what exactly the article was because both of them had only been learning to read, here and there, when the adults felt generous and they helped them with some work in exchange). Not-yet-Victoria caught the page and her tired eyes lit up with excitement that Quaxo had never seen before. She shoved the page in front of his eyes and proceeded to point to the name and to herself, looking at him anxiously, as if she needed the assurance that this could be her, that what she wanted mattered. His teeth were chattering with cold, but he still managed to smile and nod. "Of course," he managed to stutter out. "Anything, anyone you want to be, Victoria." 

As he was crushed in an enthusiastic embrace way too tight for her fragile arms, he felt a rush of happiness and perhaps a slight tinge of envy. If he too could only find out who he wanted to be...

Quaxo never liked to speak out loud, it was against his timid nature, but when the people on the street called her "Mute" again the next day, he straightened his spine and looked them in the eye. "Her name is Victoria. Remember it." 

 ---

Things were never easy for them, but they definitely got more bearable when the siblings found out they could do things. Most people could do at least something well - paint, cook, run or make jokes, those things were normal in Quaxo's book. But he and Victoria were different. The things they could do should not be real and, after asking about them on the street and being disbelieved, laughed at or accused of lying, decided together they would never mention them again. Using them, however, was a completely different matter. 

It happened for Victoria first. Whenever she wanted Quaxo's attention, she would jump, point, clap...pretty much anything she could think of. But one day, a careless driver almost ran Quaxo over. The boy was exhausted from another night spent outside so he wasn't paying attention, clapping wouldn't do any good in the noise of traffic and as Victoria was behind him, she could only grab his arm and pull, as hard as she could. She felt something strange happening at that moment, as if something left her. And it wasn't only her imagination, because her brother stared at her in awe, his mouth agape. "Did you just...shout?" he asked her incredulously. 

She shook her head, pointing to her throat. Her voice had never worked, for as long as she could remember. 

"But...but I heard you!" Quaxo blurted out, grabbing her shoulders and examining her, as if the reason for what he had heard would be written on her face. "I heard you say Watch out! And no one else was around...and it..." he paused for a moment, unable to find the right words, "...it sounded like you. Like I've always thought you would sound..." 

Victoria tried. She tried to speak, whisper, she opened her mouth again and again, but no sound would come out. Eventually, she slumped down in Quaxo's arms. 

Nothing. As I thought, she shrugged in disappointment. 

A sudden embrace "I heard that! I heard your words! That wasn't nothing, Victoria, that was...!" He took a step back, watching her with curiosity. "That wasn't speaking. What exactly did you do?"

After the initial shock, the pair slowly found out what exactly happened. As long as Victoria moved or gesticulated, she could project her thoughts, as if she were speaking. At first, she was terrified, and conveyed with numerous sharp movements how what she does isn't natural, that people would be afraid of her, call her a monster...but Quaxo never shared her point of view. He was in awe and kept repeating that what she could do was amazing, unique, that she should never feel ashamed of it. That helped to ease her worries and finally, let her brother convince her to use her gift. She spent weeks practicing with Quaxo, opening her mouth at the same time with the stream of thoughts she was projecting, looking in the mirror and finally, their efforts paid off. Without meticulous observation, it seemed like she was simply talking, although other people made fun of her exaggerated gestures and constant pacing around when she "spoke". 

It was at this time when Victoria started climbing onto the window sill of the local ballet school, balancing on the narrow beam and imitating the dancers. She had always loved to watch them, she and her brother spent so many evenings peeking through curtains or sneaking into theaters, variety shows and dances for both warmth and entertainment, but he had never seen Victoria so eager to learn the skill before. When Quaxo asked her about it, she explained that dancing made it much easier to convey her thoughts, to project what she really wanted to say. Quaxo only nodded and didn't push the topic any more, but the following Christmas, he managed to surprise Victoria with a small, cheap pocket radio, to help her learn in a safer environment, he said. And if he happened to be there for every single dancing practice and watched her with a content smile, well...that was nobody else's business but his. 

 ---

Quaxo's gift manifested several months later. The seasonal work was scarce those days and he was watching a baker unpacking his stand early in the morning. He saw a loaf of bread, close to the edge, and thought how lucky a coincidence it would be if it were to fall off and thrown away by the baker. Then he could pick it up and he and Victoria would have something to eat. And just as he had finished his thought, there was a strong gust of wind out of nowhere, knocking the loaf off the stand and prompting a stream of swearing from the baker. The man looked around, saw Quaxo and waved at him. "You there. Help me finish unpacking this before more wind messes up the whole place, will you? I can give you the loaf plus a few more defective pieces." 

Quaxo couldn't believe his luck, but in the following days, he found out that it wasn't simply good fortune or series of lucky coincidences. As if things around him only waited for his prompt to fall into places he wanted them to be, a tiny nudge and everything suddenly worked out. It took Quaxo a while to find out the pattern, but after a while, he could confidently say that he had a strange power, just like Victoria. The best way he could describe it was that he could make tiny alterations to reality, not that he would ever dare to attempt larger ones - he could make people notice him or miss his presence altogether, by making them stumble at the right moment, look at his reflection, turn their head...he could also swap objects in two different places, make things look less or more appealing, so many small but intriguing things! He would experiment each day and Victoria would watch, clapping her slender hands in excitement. 

It was around this time that Quaxo started considering using his and Victoria's powers to make more money. Nothing illegal, even though the prospect was tempting, Victoria's high moral standards would never allow it and Quaxo had to admit he didn't feel like becoming the bad guy either. Perhaps through an unconscious use of his powers, perhaps as a true coincidence this time, his gaze fell on a discarded leaflet for a shop with tricks, pranks and would-be magical items. 

He nudged Victoria. "Say, sister," he winked at her with a barely visible smile, "how about becoming performers?" 

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

The next chapter: The Magician and the Dancer

[lostinfic]

4. England, summer

Summary: Travel writer/photojournalist AU, slow burn, mutual pining, angst, fluff and adventures around the world.

Pairing: Alec Hardy x Hannah Baxter Rating: Mature Word count: 1.5k

Prologue  |  Chap. 1  |  2  |  3  | Ao3  

In Covent Garden, the midday sun flared off the glass roof of the market. Hardy shielded his eyes. He hated London in the summer, hated the tourists, hated the heat, hated people playing bloody Frisbee in parks. He glared at a couple sharing an ice cream in front of him on the street, with a huff of impatience, he walked past them.

He reached the red mailbox on the street corner. He pushed a manila envelope through the slot like one rips a band-aid: quickly and holding his breath. Divorce papers, signed and sent. Time to move on. He rubbed a hand over the tightness in his chest. He knew the perfect antidote was work abroad. But until he received a new assignment, the next best thing was Stanford, the travel bookshop.

An enormous map covered the entrance floor of the shop. A memory struck him: Daisy, age six, playing hopscotch on the African countries. He smiled to himself. He would call her again tonight, even if it meant leaving another sappy voice mail. Perhaps she would want to come with him to New York in October. It would be nice to show her around. And, although he wouldn’t tell her that, he hoped she would be impressed by a whole exhibition dedicated to his work. He hoped she would understand he wanted to make the world a better place, for her.

He almost called his daughter right away, but he was in Stanford for a specific reason. Hannah had said her article on the Mahal Kita resort would be out on July 25th. “You were wrong,” she’d bragged in a text message, “they let me write everything.” He’d replied something that came out ruder than he’d intended, and he didn’t hear from her again.

As he headed towards the magazine display, he mentally composed a congratulatory message, “Let’s have drinks to celebrate”. He cringed. She wasn’t interested in him, she only wanted to have sex at the airport because she was bored.

In any case, first, he had to see this article with his own eyes. Part of him still doubted she’d gotten away with it, or had written it at all. He hoped she had. His own attempts at exposing the truth had come to nothing. Two newspapers had picked up the story only to replace it at the last minute with more pressing news. He was disappointed, but not surprised. He wasn’t giving up that easily. He still talked to Ellie and Kadek. He planned on widening the scope of his investigation by looking into other resorts owned by the same company, Group Peregrine. Meanwhile, Hannah’s article could reach readers he wouldn’t. People who directly encouraged these harmful practices in the tourism industry. She could open their eyes to the human cost of their vacations.

He spotted the latest issue of Elite Travelers. The cover featured a picture of the sea in Pulau Kesuma in oversaturated shades of blue. He baulked at the price and found a seat to read it in store instead.

The lede put him on edge right away. With each paragraph, his face grew hotter and his teeth ground harder.

He called Hannah.

“Hey, Alec! How—”

“You bloody liar.”

“What?”

“You said you would tell the truth in your article.”

“I did!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“You know what? It might not be up to your standards of exposing the truth, but it’s not that kind magazine, okay? I did what I could, but the rooms were nice, I had to say it.”

“It’s nothing but praise. Praise for criminals.”

“I get it, you’re a paragon of integrity and I’m a sham.”

“You lied to me. There isn’t a word in there about the environmental impacts or the fishermen.”

“Of course, there is. It’s right there in the lede. And there are at least three more paragraphs about it.”

“I’ve got your article right here, it says: From its unspoiled site to its respect of the environment, the Mahal Kita eco-resort is, simply put, flawless.”

Hannah fell silent. He heard her sniff, and his anger vanished.

“You okay?”

“I didn’t write that… It wasn’t me, that’s not what I wrote.”

“Seriously?”

“Keep reading.”

Hannah slouched down in the hotel armchair, closing her eyes to ward off the dizziness. Hardy kept reading the article. She recognized some of the sentences, but she’d reread the text often enough to identify the missing parts.

She was in Cornwall, covering a music festival, so she hadn’t seen the magazine yet. When Duncan hadn’t asked for revisions, she’d naively thought her article was perfect. No wonder she hadn’t heard back from him about the promotion.

“Baxter?”

“He fucking censored me… You were right.” She laughed, a hollow, bitter sound.

She expected Hardy to gloat, but his voice was gentle when he spoke again, “I really wanted to be wrong.”

He stayed on the line with her, in silence, while she struggled to make sense of this betrayal. She hated Duncan so much right now, she could have ripped his head off.

Hardy told her he’d experienced censorship too. Back when Tony Blair had sided with George W. Bush about the Iraq war. An editor had cropped one of his photographs so as to leave only the angry, armed Iraqi men in the frame and remove the children they were protecting.

“I was furious.”

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I made sure the original photo was published elsewhere.”

“I just… it was important to me, you know? It felt like a big step in my career. Something different…”

“So, what are you gonna do about it?”

“What can I do?”

“You have to get that story out there.”

She could put the uncensored article on her blog and expose Elite Travelers’ dishonesty. But could she afford to antagonize her main source of income? Adios business class and exotic resorts.

“You would want to work for them again after this?” Hardy asked.

“It had never happened before.”

“That you know of.”

The moral decision weighed on her chest, pushing a deep sigh out of her. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. Arctic Monkeys would be on stage in 15 minutes, and she had a VIP pass. All she wanted was put on a flower crown, get drunk and dance with strangers under the sun.

“Would you like to go for coffee. With me. To talk about it,” Hardy said.

“No, thanks. I can’t.”

“Yeah, no, okay. Then—”

“I’ve to go. Bye.”

*

A week later, Hardy received a message from Hannah with a link to her blog called “Secret Diary of a Globe-Trotter”.

Secret? he texted back.

It used to be a place to write anecdotes I couldn’t tell my father ;)

She had posted her original article, nowhere near as scathing as it ought to be, but critical enough to put off some people. She also described the censorship and her investigation on Pulau Kesuma. She even mentioned him, “Alec Hardy, a remarkable photojournalist”. He thrust out his chest slightly.

So what do you think?

You did the right thing, he wrote.

I hope so. Still not sure about that.

With a fresh cup of tea, he sat on the narrow balcony outside his flat. He typed “I’m proud of you”, but changed his mind. He wanted to keep the conversation going.

I can send you some pictures I took, if you want to add them.

Of course! Will you publish them anywhere?

Expo in NY soon.

She sent a thumbs up, and he assumed that was the end of the conversation.

After a moment, Hardy gave in to his curiosity and browsed the rest of her blog. Among the clickbait-y articles (“Five booking hacks you’ll regret not knowing”, “10 sexy airport looks”) and sponsored posts, he found hidden gems: longer texts describing encounters with all sorts of people during her trips. She made these people talk about their countries and favorite, uncharted places. From a churros vendor with a surprisingly profound philosophy on family to an 80 year-old ballet dancer who aimed to dance on every street of Paris, by the end of the interview, they all opened up to her.

Rain enhanced the scent of fresh-cut grass and lulled him into a peaceful state as he read on. He hadn’t meant to spend so much time on her blog, he had work to do, but her words drew him in every time. As someone who used images to get his message across, he admired her use of language. Funny, incisive. Each paragraph a snapshot of humanity.

He felt on the verge of understanding something about Hannah, like a word on the tip of his tongue. An elusive quality that explained why, on principle, he should be more annoyed by her than he was in reality. She kept proving him wrong. In fact, what annoyed him most was how quick he had judged her.

Over the following weeks, he checked her blog every once in a while. He told himself it was to take stock of the responses to the censorship. And if he happened to look at her latest photos at the same time, well, it was purely out of professional courtesy.

This was how he found out she would be in New York around the same time as him.

_______

FYI I'm going on a trip for 3 weeks. I'd love to post another chapter during that time, but I'm not sure it's realistic. I will try. Thank you for your patience :D

ETA: I managed to write another chapter before leaving, and I scheduled it to post about halfway through my trip, on the 27th.

[illogicalbroccoli]

Not OK

Content Warnings:  Discussion of PTSD

Pairings:  None, really

Summary: Tilly is there for everyone.  Who is there for her?

AO3 Link:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/16964904

According to her mother, Sylvia Tilly had a character flaw. Actually, according to her mother, she had many character flaws, ranging from talking too much to choosing to spend her life fiddling with warp coils and matter converters in the depths of empty space. Tilly’s mother had sometimes even implied that Tilly’s allergies must stem from some hidden moral defect, worming its way to the surface as a bronchio-nasal reaction to artificial fibres. But among these flaws was the one that Tilly was thinking about now: Tilly couldn’t pass by anyone who looked sad. 

It had started young. One of Tilly’s earliest memories was of herself at age four, walking to ballet lessons with her mother. As they walked, they passed the outdoor tables of a small cafe, where a man sat by himself, reading a PADD with a pained expression. Tilly had stopped, letting her mother march ahead, tapped the man on the knee and asked what was wrong, and if he wanted to hear a joke that would make him smile. She hadn’t had a chance to tell it – her mother, finally noticing that she was alone, had run back and snatched Tilly up, telling her NEVER to talk to strangers like that again.

The lesson didn’t take. At school, Tilly had always been the student who took it on herself to welcome the new kids, showing them where the bathrooms were, which the best swing was, where the biggest puddles formed when it rained. When she saw a kid crying, she would usually rush up to hug them and tell them it was OK. That was how she made her first real friend in school. It was also how she got punched for the first time. From kindergarten onward, her school reports gushed about her empathy, her compassion, her sunny disposition. Her mother would read these outpourings with a tight mouth, and mutter about how her daughter would turn into a pushover.

Tilly knew she was not a pushover. Right now, though, she had to admit that, perhaps, a compulsion to comfort the sad could have its downsides. Not that Tilly had any desire to stop comforting people, but perhaps it would be nice if there weren’t quite as many people to comfort at once. First and foremost, of course, there was Michael. These days, Tilly spent at least one evening in three lying with her arms around Michael, feeling the waves of silent sobs move through her body. As a child, Michael said, she could only remember crying a couple of times. She seemed to be making up for it now.

Then there was Paul. Tilly had known Paul as a sarcastic, persnickety, perfectionist, always ready with a cutting remark; she had known him as a singing, dancing, obsessively joke-making goofball, hopped up on mycelial spores and tardigrade DNA. Nowadays, she was getting to know silent Stamets. In Engineering, Paul worked obsessively, eyes fixed on his screen, speaking only to ask Tilly to check readings or make calculations. She had sat with him at lunch a couple of times. Paul had eaten mostly silently too; Tilly’s attempts to start conversation had been met by shrugs and one-word answers. She dearly wanted to tell him he could talk to her about Hugh, that sharing would help, that it was OK to feel whatever he was feeling. She didn’t dare, though, and not just because he was her boss. He seemed brittle somehow, like too strong a shock might shatter him like a porcelain cup. So she said nothing.

And what about Captain Saru? Or rather Acting Captain Saru, as he insisted on reminding her. Not that she could ever ask Saru about his feelings, but she had served with the Kelpien long enough that she thought she could read him. She could see that Saru was not happy. As the first Kelpien in Starfleet, Saru bore so much. In popular imagination, Kelpiens were a species of cowards, who would turn tail and run at the first sight of danger. Even after everything he had done, Tilly knew that Saru still felt the weight of that stereotype. He had led the Discovery out of a hopeless situation, had held true to the ideals of Starfleet when Starfleet itself had abandoned them, and still, she knew, there were many who expected him to fail. True, they had given him a medal, but they had not given him Discovery. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be back taking orders from someone else; the admiralty was, apparently, not ready to put a cowardly Kelpien in charge of a starship.

And those were only the people she saw regularly. She had lost count of the one-offs, the random people she encountered in the cafeteria, in the recreation room, in the corridors. Like the crewmember she had found sobbing against a bulkhead, whose sister had been on the Buran when Lorca blew it up; the nurse whose hand shook when he tried to take Tilly’s blood during a checkup, and who had explained that he hadn’t slept in three days because whenever he slept he dreamed of Klingons ambushing him with bat’leths and knives… And so many more. Discovery had been, almost literally, to hell and back, and everyone bore scars. Of course, there were psych-trained medics in sickbay. Two of them - for a crew of 130. So Tilly picked up the slack. She listened. She hugged, when people wanted it. Sometimes she gave advice, or just made silly jokes to distract them, for a few minutes, from their pain.

If you had asked Tilly how she was taking it, she’d have said she was fine. That helping people was her thing. That feelings were good, no matter what they were. That making other people happy made her happy too. All of that was true. But, she was starting to have to admit to herself, she wasn’t fine.

The realization had come very suddenly. She had been on the bridge, at her station, doing routine engine diagnostics. Saru had asked her for some statistic, she couldn’t even remember, and she had pulled up the entry and read it out. Saru made one of his clicking noises, and said “Ensign, I do not believe that can be correct.” Tilly had looked, and saw he was right, she had pulled up entirely the wrong menu. And then it hit. Her stomach felt like it had just fallen down a turbolift shaft, her face got terribly hot, and she knew that she was about to cry. Sylvia Tilly’s crying was like everything else she did: it was not subtle. She bit her lip, tried breathing slowly through her nose, counting to twenty, all the other things they had taught her when she was small. It was not going to work.

“Captain Saru?” she said, working hard to keep the waver out of her voice. “Request permission to return to quarters. I’m- I’m unwell.”

Saru tilted his head, and for a moment fixed his pale blue eyes on her.

Please please please please say yes. Please don’t let me start bawling on the bridge.

“Very well, Ensign. Do you need to report to sickbay?”

“No, it’s- no I’ll be fine,” Tilly said.

She walked to the lift doors, step after careful step. She managed to hold it together just until the doors closed.

* * *

The next day found Tilly eating lunch alone. Michael, Paul and Saru were in the ready room, in some sort of holo-meeting with Admiral Terral. Normally, Tilly would have gone and sat with the bridge crew, but after yesterday’s incident, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself around them. So she sat alone, eating her macaroni and cheese, and stared idly out at the ripples and flashes of the warp slipstream.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

Tilly started, banging her knee on the tabletop. Lieutenant Detmer stood by her table, a laden tray in her hands.

Tilly hadn’t talked much to Detmer. If she was honest, she had sort of been avoiding her. Not because of her implants, Tilly would have hastened to add. True, when she first joined Discovery , Tilly had been slightly taken aback by Detmer’s one cold blue eye, by the forking trail of metal along her scalp. But that had faded quickly; now Detmer was just Detmer, and her implants were just another part of her, like her hair or her smile. No, Tilly avoided Detmer because she was tall, slim, and straight-haired; because she didn’t talk much, kept her feelings in check, and projected an air of professionalism at all times. (Almost all times, Tilly corrected, remembering that party all those months ago). Basically, Detmer was everything that Tilly’s mother wished Tilly were. Tilly knew that that was a stupid reason to be nervous of someone, that Detmer seemed perfectly nice, that she was being stupid for letting her mother get in her way like this. Nonetheless, Tilly avoided Detmer.

She realized that she had kept Detmer waiting quite a time while she thought, and said, “Oh, um, yes, of course, sure. I was just- I mean, if you want to. Of course you want to, because you asked, um, yeah.”

SHUT UP SYLVIA , Tilly thought.

“Thanks,” Detmer said, smiled, and sat.

They ate in silence for a moment.

“It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?” Detmer said.

Tilly drew in a breath. She wanted to shout not now! Come back tomorrow, next week, I’ll totally listen to you. But just not today! But she didn’t. Instead she said,

“Did you want to talk about something?”

Detmer held Tilly’s gaze for a moment.

“Actually,” she said, “I was wondering if you did.”

Tilly blinked.

“You left the bridge pretty fast yesterday,” Detmer said. “I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

Tilly opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m OK.”

Detmer took a sip of water.

“Really?”

“No,” Tilly said. “I guess I’m not.”

Detmer smiled.

“I have forty-five minutes until my next shift. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Tilly took a deep breath.

“OK,” she said.

And she did.

[eccacia]

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Summary: Oliver and Felicity's five-year-old daughter knows a secret of Caitlin's that she's not telling, so Barry tries his best to coax it out of her... especially when he finds out that the secret is about him.

Rating: K+

Words: ~3,800

Read on ao3 | ff.net

See the “All You Need Is Love” fic collection

Notes: Inspired by “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” by The Beatles. I've always loved its playful tone, and I wanted to capture that here. Also usually I avoid writing kids because writing them is really tricky for me, but… welp, I tried. As usual, let me know what you think!

.

Barry was helping himself to some food from Oliver’s fridge after a particularly grueling sparring session with him when he heard the frantic patter of small feet in the hall. He smiled to himself, instantly knowing who it was.

Tatiana Queen, Oliver and Felicity’s five-year-old daughter, padded into the dining room, garbed in a glittery blue fairy gown, silver tiara, and blue ballet shoes. From the way she fidgeted with her worn plastic wand, it was obvious that she dying to tell him something.

She cleared her throat. “Hi Uncle Berry.”

Barry pretended to look around him. “Tanya?” he said, feigning confusion. “Hm, for a moment there, I thought I heard her…”

Tanya giggled and twirled around three times before raising her wand in the air.

“Oh, there you are!” Barry said, stooping to smile at her from the stool by Oliver’s bar. “I thought I heard you. Were you being invisible again?”

“Yeah! I forgot to stop being invisible.” She reached to clamber into the stool beside his, and Barry held onto the slice of salami he was eating with his teeth, so he could use his hands to hoist her up the stool. “Being invisible is the best superpower ever!” she continued. “I don’t wanna your speed anymore, Uncle Berry. Or Aunty Cait’s fost. Or Uncle Cisco’s wives.”

“Vibes,” Barry supplied.

“Wives,” she chirped, and Barry just smothered a laugh and let her be. When Cynthia hears this, though, she’d have Cisco’s balls. “Being invisible is better than e-ve-rything.”

Not for the first time, Barry couldn’t help but wonder at how loquacious Tanya was for a five-year-old. Her vocabulary was advanced by at least a year, and she talked more than even he did as a kid. Oliver was quick to attribute his daughter’s verbal prowess to Felicity’s constant chattering around her, and when Felicity protested, Oliver merely said, “Felicity, she knows the word algorithm. I’m pretty sure she didn’t learn that from those books on John and Jane.”

Felicity said that she pronounced it as algoreet, but needless to say, Oliver won that argument.

Still, her language development was a little uneven. For some reason—and he didn’t know if it was intentional or not—Tanya couldn’t pronounce his name properly, among other things. It was a good thing she didn’t have much trouble with her r’s or he’d end up being Uncle Bewy.

“I don’t know, princess,” he said, pretending to mull over what she said. “I still think speed’s the best.”

“Yeah, but being invisible is better,” she said. She crawled into his lap, and knowing that she had a weakness for bread and jam, he broke a piece of the bread he was eating and spread some jam on it for her. He moved her carefully so that she wouldn’t sit on the contents of his pocket. “Betcha speed don’t make people tell secrets.”

“Doesn’t,” he corrected gently. “You’re right. Speed can’t do that. Did someone tell you secrets today?”

She crossed her arms smugly. “‘Course I won’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

“So you are keeping a secret.”

“I know a lotta secrets now,” she said. “People talk really loud when I’m invisible.” She paused to finish off her small piece of bread, and she took out another slice and handed it to him. “More jam.”

“What do you say?”

“I like the stoberry jam.”

“The magic word first, princess.”

“Please, Uncle Berry?” She turned her round blue eyes on him and smiled the smile that brought out the dotted dimples on either side of her mouth.

“Hm, on second thought…” he moved the jam away from her grasping fingers and grinned. “I’ll give you the jam, but you have to tell me the secret you found out today.”

“No. I’m hungry, Uncle Berry.”

“Really? You won’t tell me even a little bit?”

“Aunty Cait said I have to be a good secret keeper, ‘cause if I tell people’s secrets, then everyone will know my superpower. Then no one will say their secrets anymore, ‘cause they’ll think I’m always there.”

“Aunty Cait has a point,” he said. He broke her slice of bread into four squares and spread jam on each. “So Aunty Cait asked you to keep her secret, huh?”

“No,” she said, nibbling on the first square. “Mommy was talking to her. I was invisible so I heard.”

Now Barry was intrigued. “You can tell me. I’m Aunty Cait’s friend, after all.”

“Can’t,” she said, looking sly. “‘Cause it’s about you, Uncle Berry.”

“If it’s a secret about me, princess, don’t you think I have to know?”

She reached for her second square. “Won’t tell.”

Barry tried to hide his smile. It was obvious that she was dying to tell him, because otherwise she wouldn’t be here. But, he had to hand it to her, she was doing a great job of pretending like she really didn’t want to tell him.

He decided to change tactics. “Alright,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Her blue eyes widened in a comical fashion. “You don’t wanna know anymore?”

Some adults were already immune to reverse psychology, but Tanya, being only five years old, fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He felt a little bad for one-upping a five-year-old, but then she started it, dangling the secret in front of him…

…So he was secretly a five-year-old. So what?

He gave a casual shrug. “No, not really. I’ll just wait for Aunty Cait to tell me.” He sighed dramatically. “But if she doesn’t tell me, and I can’t be invisible… Maybe I’ll never know.”

Tanya fidgeted with her wand and squirmed in his lap, food forgotten, and then finally gave in. “Okay. Maybe I’ll tell you a li’l bit of the secret.”

“Are you sure, princess?” he said.

She nodded. “‘Cause you can’t be invisible and all.”

“That’s right.”

She looked around to check if the coast was clear, and then said in a whisper, “Come closer. Closer.”

“Alright, alright.”

She cupped her hand around his ear, and he held her steady in his lap with an arm. “Aunty Cait likes you.”

Barry resisted a smile and feigned surprise. “Really? I like Aunty Cait, too.”

“No, no,” Tanya said, and she cupped her hand again and whispered, “Aunty Cait likes you like my mommy likes my daddy.”

He gasped. “Really? No way.”

Tanya nodded. Encouraged by his reaction, she looked around again to check if the coast was clear, and then continued, in a whisper made louder by her barely concealed excitement, “Aunty Cait told Mommy that she wants to marry you.”

The amusement abruptly faded, and Barry’s throat tightened with emotion. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. She loves you lots. You’re lucky, Uncle Berry, ‘cause Aunty Cait is pretty.”

“Oh, so I’m not handsome enough for her?”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re a li’l handsome, but Aunty Cait is really really pretty.” She paused suddenly in her seat and turned to him, looking solemn. “You like Aunty Cait too, right? You love her lots too?”

“More than anything.”

“Is that more than lots?”

“Ten times more.” He would say infinity times more, but he wasn’t sure what the extent of Tanya’s knowledge of numbers was.

“Okay.” She nodded. “If you love her ten times lots, maybe it’s okay if you’re just a li’l handsome.”

“Why, you…” Barry flashed to the nearby sofa and tackled her there, while tickling her sides. She squealed. “No! Stop!”

“Not until you tell me I’m handsome. Say it, Tanya. Say Uncle Berry is the handsomest man in the universe…”

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“Tanya, sweetie? What’s wrong?”

The two voices in the doorway made Barry pause. Felicity and Caitlin appeared, probably after hearing Tanya squeal. Despite the wrinkle on her brow, his face unconsciously lifted into a smile when he saw Caitlin. Lord, but she was beautiful today, wearing that sunny floral dress that made her skin glow.

Distracted as he was, Tanya was able to squirm out of his grip and hurtle towards Felicity. “Mommy! Uncle Berry attacked me!”

“I tickle-attacked her,” he clarified.

Felicity and Caitlin exchanged amused looks, and Felicity gathered her daughter into her arms. “Protect me, Mommy,” she said, burrowing her golden head of curls in her mother’s neck. “Or else I gotta say that Uncle Berry is the handsomest man in the universe.”

“I won’t let you get away until you say it, Tanya,” Barry said good-naturedly.

“But Uncle Berry isn’t the handsomest, Mommy,” she said. “Daddy is. Right? Daddy’s the handsomest.”

Felicity was trying to hide her grin. “Yeah, I think Daddy’s the handsomest, too,” she said. “No offense, Barry. As his wife I’m obligated to side with him.”

“None taken,” Barry said. “Ah, poor me,” he continued loudly. “Is no one going to think that I’m the handsomest man in the universe?”

He gave Caitlin a pointed look, and, instead of promptly declaring him the handsomest man in the universe, she merely raised an eyebrow at him.

“Thanks for the moral support, Cait,” he said dryly.

Tanya tapped Caitlin’s shoulder. “Pass,” she said. “Now you gotta say it, Aunty Cait.”

“Me? Can you really just pass that, Tanya?”

“Yeah,” she said resolutely. “You gotta say it or Uncle Berry’s gonna be really sad. And if you love someone lots you don’t want them to be sad, right?”

“Can’t argue with that,” Felicity said, grinning and pressing a kiss to her daughter’s temple. “Go on, Cait.”

“Yeah, go on, Cait,” Barry said. “A five-year-old thinks I’m ugly. I’m dying of a broken heart here. Save me.”

“Is he always this dramatic?” Felicity said.

“He is,” Caitlin said.

“While you’re talking about me, my self-esteem is being blown to smithereens,” Barry said. “Can no one grasp the urgency of the situation?”

Tanya couldn’t follow the exchange, but she must have understood the general concept, because she said, “Say it, Aunty Cait. I think Uncle Berry is sad now. I won’t tell your secrets ever again if you say it.”

“Ever again?” Caitlin gave her goddaughter a stern look. “Have you been spreading my secrets, young lady?”

Tanya’s eyes widened and she burrowed herself further into Felicity. “Only a li’l bit.” And then, when they all heard footsteps down the hall—a light, long step that could only be Oliver’s—Tanya squirmed in Felicity’s arms and said, “Daddy! Daddy! Help! Aunty Cait is gonna feez me!”

“Only a li’l bit, darling,” Caitlin drawled, towering over her goddaughter, “for the little bit of secret you told.”

Once Tanya’s feet were on the ground she shrieked in terror and delight and ran to Oliver.

“Tanya, no running in the—”

They heard a loud scrape of plastic on ceramic.

“Oh, bummer,” Felicity mumbled. “She just scratched an antique vase with her wand. I have to check it out before Moira has my head…”

Barry and Caitlin watched the antics of the Queen family with amusement for a few more moments before they both realized that Tanya wasn’t coming back, distracted as she was by an impromptu piggyback ride on Oliver’s shoulders. Inwardly, Barry thought that no one truly understood the meaning of whipped until they saw Oliver with his daughter.

He turned to Caitlin, who was watching them wistfully, and he moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“So?” Barry said. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, Dr. Snow?”

“Do I?” she said, leaning into his touch.

“You let your boyfriend be bullied by a five-year-old,” he said. “You have some explaining to do.”

“Not my fault if my boyfriend lets himself get bullied,” she teased. “He should be perfectly capable of taking care of himself.”

“I am, but I need someone to defend my honor.”

“Your honor of being the handsomest man in the universe?”

“Everyone prefers Oliver to me,” he said. “Someone has to prefer me, right?”

“The Flash has an adoring fan club back in Central City,” she said. “I’m sure you can find someone there.”

“I don’t want the vote of my adoring fans,” he said, placing a kiss on her neck. “There’s only one vote that matters.”

She turned around to kiss him on the lips, and then pulled away, smiling. “Voting is a very serious process. I’ll have to think about it first.”

“Mmm,” he said. “Maybe I can facilitate that process with a few bribes.”

“Are you suggesting that I can be bribed?”

“Anyone can be bribed for the right price,” he said languidly. “And I also happen to know what your greatest weakness is, Dr. Snow.”

“Oh? Do enlighten me, Mr. Allen.”

“Your greatest weakness,” he said, against her lips, “is a kiss. And,” he said, pulling back abruptly and looking please when she blinked at the loss of him, “not knowing something. Come on, I’m sure you’re dying to know what Tanya told me.”

“Oh,” Caitlin said. “Not particularly.”

“Not even a little bit?”

She smiled. “No.”

Barry blinked. Was she doing reverse psychology on him now? Darn it. “It’s a very important secret of yours.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You know all my secrets anyway.”

“Except this one.”

“Is that so?” she said, still smiling. She pulled back a little and ran her hands down his chest. “That makes us even, then.”

“Even?”

“Mmm. I know that you’ve been keeping a secret from me, too.”

“I don’t have secrets,” he said. “I’m the least secretive person in the world.”

“Then allow me direct your attention to your secret,” she said.

“Mmm,” he said dully, distracted by the touch of her hands on his body. “By all means, Dr. Snow.”

She gave him a sly look, her hands trailing down, down, to the waistband of his jeans, and then—

To the pocket of his pants, to the same place where he’d made sure Tanya didn’t sit on earlier. Through the baggy fabric, she traced the outline of a small box, which she might have guessed—and rightly, at that—contained a wedding ring.

He stiffened, his heart caught in his throat, and then he groaned, burying his face in her neck. “It’s impossible to hide anything from you.”

She laughed and kissed his forehead. Her eyes were bright. “You’re just bad at hiding secrets.”

“I was going to ask you tonight,” he mumbled. “After we have dinner on Oliver’s island. It’d be overlooking the beach, and there’ll be lanterns in the sky, and there’s supposed to be music and—”

“Like I said,” she said, “you’re bad at hiding secrets.”

He laughed. “I ruined the surprise, didn’t I? And I spent three months planning thi—wait a minute.” He gave her a suspicious look. “Just how long have you known my secret?”

She gave him a gentle look. “Within the first week of your planning.”

He groaned again. “Am I that bad?”

“A little, yes.” And then, “Do you want to know a secret, Mr. Allen? Since I know yours, I think it’s fair that you should know mine.”

“I like the sound of that.”

She raised herself on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his ear, her breath tickling the sensitive skin. “Ready?”

He wrapped his arms around her waist, and was inwardly thankful that no one was passing through the dining room just now. “Out with it, Dr. Snow. I’m not a patient man.”

“My answer,” she said, each movement of her lips brushing his skin, “is yes.”

It took a few moments for what she said to sink in, and when it did, his face split into a grin. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

He pulled her close for a long, heated kiss, his hands roaming down her curves through the flimsy fabric of her dress and her hands gripping his shoulders in response, and when she pulled away, to catch her breath, he peppered kisses on her forehead, her eyes, her nose.

“Actually, I don’t think it’s a fair trade,” he said, even as his heart was pounding in his chest. “I already knew that since little fairy told me.”

She laughed. “All right. What do you want to know, Mr. Allen?”

“How long have you known?” he said, grinning. “That you want to marry me.”

“I’ve known for… awhile,” she said.

“How long?” he pressed. “Three months ago?”

“Longer,” she said.

“Six months?” he said playfully, thinking that he himself came to the conclusion that he wanted to marry her at around that time.

“Don’t push your luck, Barry,” she teased, but there was a look on her face that stilled him.

He cupped her face in his hands and looked her in the eye. “Cait? Was it longer than six months ago?”

She smiled, ducked from his gaze, and kissed his jaw. “It was a year and a half ago.”

His breath hitched. “But that was only—”

“Two months after we started dating, I know,” she said softly. “I was already sure then.” And then, with a shrug that conveyed careful nonchalance, she added, “You know me. I’ve always been sure of what I wanted.”

He crushed her into a hug. “God,” he breathed. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.”

“Don’t say that,” she said gently. “I would think the handsomest man in the universe deserves only the best.”

“He doesn’t deserve something that’s worth more than the universe,” he said cheekily, kissing her again. “Nay, not only the universe, but all the universes ever.”

“Multiverse, you mean.”

“Right, that’s what I was trying to say.”

“One would think that you’re not a time- and space-traveling speedster.”

“I don’t care, because haven’t you heard? I’m getting married to the love of my life.”

She laughed. “Sounds like old news, Barry.”

He nuzzled her neck. “You’ll really marry me?”

“Yes.”

“If I ask you again later, will your answer be the same?”

“It’s been the same for a year and a half.”

“If I ask you tomorrow, will your answer be the same?”

Her smile softened. “Barry, my answer will be the same every day for the rest of our lives. I’ll always say yes to you.”

He sighed in contentment, so happy that he could dissolve into a puddle right then and there. “I’d marry you right now if I could. I don’t know why I waited three months to ask.”

“You were under the delusion that you could keep a secret,” she said, patting his cheek. “You’ve only just recovered, so cut yourself some slack.”

He laughed. “Fine, no more secrets from now on.” He held her close. “I love you, Cait. Across the multiverse and back. In all timelines and in all my lifetimes.”

“You are such a sap,” she teased.

“And you’ll have to get used to it,” he said. “You’re stuck with me forever. Imagine the torture, waking up to this gorgeous face every day and being skewered with ‘I love yous’ every ten minutes.”

“Mmm. Guess I’ll have to make do.”

“We’re going to have an absolutely boring existence,” he continued. “You’ll get sick of me one day.”

“I don’t think you can be boring if you tried,” she said dryly. And, with a warm twinkle in her eyes, she whispered, “Besides, I’d be okay with any sort of existence, as long as it’s with you.”

He grinned. “Now who’s the sap?”

“Still you. You’re a bad influence on me.”

“You’re right, I am. In that case, I look forward to thoroughly debauching you.” He left a wet kiss on her throat before blowing on the sensitive skin with his hot breath, and Caitlin let out a small gasp.

“Barry…” she said in warning, “this isn’t our house, and we can’t…”

“Babe, you’re forgetting that I’m a time- and space-traveling speedster,” he purred in her ear before sweeping her into his arms. “I’ll take you back home to debauch you, and we’ll be back before anyone can miss us.”

At the sound of Caitlin’s pleased laughter, Barry thought that despite what Tanya Queen said, speed was definitely the best superpower.

.

Felicity and Tanya were making their way back to the dining room when Felicity overheard snatches of her friends’ conversation. All she had to hear was “marry” and “yes” and she knew that it was best to give them some privacy.

Smiling to herself and thinking that it was about time, she took her daughter’s hand and led her to her playroom instead.

“Uncle Berry is gonna marry Aunty Cait, right?” Tanya said conversationally.

Felicity blinked. She didn’t think that Tanya was listening. “Yes, sweetie,” she said. “They love each other very much, so they’re getting married.”

“No, they’re gonna marry ‘cause of me,” she said smugly. “I told Uncle Berry that Aunty Cait wanted to marry him.”

Felicity smiled and crouched to her daughter’s level. “That’s nice, sweetie, but you shouldn’t go around spilling other people’s secrets. Sometimes you have to wait until people are ready to tell them. How would you feel if you told me a secret and I told everyone else?”

“But I don’t have secrets, Mommy. I just have other people’s.”

“Still. Be more careful with other people’s secrets, okay, sweetie?”

Tanya managed to look properly chastised. “Okay.”

“Tell you what,” Felicity said. “If you can be the very best secret keeper in the world, I’m going to ask Uncle Barry and Aunty Cait if you can be the flower girl at their wedding.”

“Flower girl?”

“Yes, sweetie. It’s an honor to be a flower girl. You have to protect Uncle Barry and Aunty Cait from the Trojans, and since you’re the only one who can be invisible, you’re the only one who can do it.”

In Tanya’s mind, Trojans weren’t the malwares from Felicity’s programming language, but rather invisible black entities that sucked all happiness away. Whenever Tanya was feeling down, she blamed it on a Trojan. In a way, that was how her invisibility had started—she’d wanted to battle the invisible enemies that were making her sad or upsetting her. And with her child’s logic, she deduced that if she was invisible she could see the invisible, too, and if she could see them she could defeat them.

She straightened her back and gave a solemn nod. “Okay, Mommy. I’ll be their flower girl.”

“So you’ll keep secrets from now on?”

“Yeah. Or else no one’s gonna protect Uncle Berry and Aunty Cait from the Trojans.”

Felicity smiled and hugged her daughter tight. “That’s my brave girl.”

Tanya was true to her word. From then on, she became a rather accomplished secret-keeper, and at Barry and Caitlin’s wedding day eight months later, she arrived armed with her battered tiara and plastic wand to hold the Trojans at bay. At the end of it she was pleased to announce that she’d defeated them all, and that Barry and Caitlin were free to live their happily-ever-after.

And sure enough, they did.