#like i had only two pages sketched out before wednesday

[tblsomedoodles]

Donnie's Visions (apocalypse Seer Twins comic) Part 5 (complete!)

Start - Previous

I should wait until tomorrow to post this so i can make sure i didn't miss anything. But i don't particularly want to wait. It's the last part and i just really want this to be fully complete (post and all.)

anyways, i hope you enjoyed this comic! I am very glad to get to check one thing off my to-do list.

[kazbrekkerscrutches]

Xavier Thorpe - Believe Me

Warnings: Threatening Thing (JUSTICE FOR THING), mention of reader being hurt (no gore, no b!ood), overall just love and tension (ENJOY!)

Words: 1.4 k

SHE/HER PRONOUNS

Context/Trope: Reader sneaks into Xavier’s room to find out about Rowan, he catches her. Basically, reader is an Addams (not like Wednesday) and with modified storyline with cheesiness.  

I saw Xavier coming back from his run, hair wet, skin dewy, earbuds in his ears, his sweaty shirt clinging to his chest.

Dear, what a sight for my sore eyes.

He walked back into his room, slamming the door behind him; Thing slipped into his room before the door was closed. I heard another door slam; probably his bathroom door, which means; perfect timing for me to go find out all of his secrets.

I opened the door silently, shutting it quietly behind me.

His room looked like a normal boy’s room. Poster/paintings/drawings on his wall. An artist has to show their talent somehow. Thing looked for anything that could lead me to find out if there was anything about his dear ex-roommate, Rowan.

The one who tried to kill me two times.

[Flashback]

I got out of the infirmary, after that humiliating fencing experience, only to find out that it was raining.

Wonderful. I mean truly, this is quite uplifting.

I opened my umbrella, walked toward my room when I heard a vibration coming over me. I looked up only to find the statue of a gargoyle being tipped to fall on top of me.

This a peaceful death, I thought.

“Y/N!” I heard the familiar sound of a boy taking me by my waist and pushing me to the ground.

Everything was black after that.

[Xavier’s POV]

“Y/N!” I saw Rowan using his telekinesis to try and kill her. I took her by her waist just in time before the gargoyle hit the ground.

I had placed one of my hand under her head, hoping she didn’t break anything. I was almost on top of her, my heart beating out of my chest, tears prickling my eyes.

Please don’t let her be dead, I thought.

“Y/N?” Can you hear me?” I took her face in my hand, placing her gently in my lap.

No reaction.

I gently pressed my ear to her chest, hoping to hear something.

A heartbeat, another one. Thank God, thank whoever is out there.

I picked her up delicately and led her once again to the infirmary. The nurses told me she was okay, that she would’ve been killed if it wouldn’t have been for me.

“Please be okay, Y/N” I whispered. “I can’t lose you. You’re all I have.” I sighted, reassuring myself that she was okay. She will be okay.

She woke up minutes after my words.

“Y/N. Take it easy.” She sat up slowly from the bed, looking straight at me.

“That thing was about to fall on me, correct?” I nodded; she touched her head slightly with her hand.

God she is so beautiful. Her long Y/H/C hair that covered her face slightly, her pale yet sometimes rosy complexion. Her dark clothing, yet fits her so right. God, I am totally in love with her.

“Thank you, Xavier. For not letting me die.” She smiled at me.

No way. I’d never thought I’d see the day when Y/N Addams would smile at me.

“Anytime.” I offered a warm smile back, and we kept talking for a little while, still with my heart beating out of my chest, but in a good way this time.

[Present time, Y/N’s POV]

I looked around the place, finding an empty bed.

Rowan’s, I thought.

I looked under the mattress, not finding anything. His desk, empty. Everything was gone. Not even a single hair was on the mattress or the pillow that was left behind.

I switched my sight over to Xavier’s side.

Maybe there’s something that Rowan hid in there, I thought.

I looked on his desk where colored pencils and pens were spread out on the table.

His sketch book was the also, his initials carved on the leather cover.

X.T.

Such pretty details. I opened it, finding drawings of raven, spiders, sharply detailed drawings.

A cello appeared too. My face was the next page. All my features were correct, as if he drew this with me two inches from his face.

Another drawing of me, sleeping in the infirmary had me shocked.

Was he obsessed with me? Is he like Rowan? My thoughts were rattling through my head.

I was so in my space that when I turned around, I was face to face to the boy in question.

“Hi, what are you doing here?” He was very close to me; hair dripping wet, a hoodie on top of him and pyjama pants hanging on his hips.

I tried to get a logic and sane explanation out, but the stupidest thing came out instead.

“I came here because I thought Rowan might’ve hidden something that could’ve led to him to try to kill me.” I nervously fidgeted with my fingers behind my back, which is something I never, ever do.

“I don’t think there’s anything in my sketch book that might help you, Y/N.” I could practically smell what soap he used to clean his body, wash his hair.

“Right. I should go.” I tried to go but he trapped me by his desk with both of his arms on the desk.

“Tell me the truth, Y/N.” He tilted his head so that he was leveling with mine.

“I did tell you the truth.” I could feel my heart beating out of my chest.

“No, I think you’re here because you have something to tell me. Something that isn’t about Rowan, or the Nightshade or of what Thing found out.” Thing crawled out to be in Xavier’s sight.

He bent down to my ear, whispering slowly in it.

“Are you here to tell me that you like me?” He pulled back, still trapping me by his arms.

I could fell my cheeks heat up, my legs felt shaky and everything about me wanted to scream yes to him. To make him kiss me, touch me with his hands, to embrace me into his scent and make me his.

“That is in your dreams, Xavier. Or shall I say in your drawings too.” His face broke out into a smirk.

“What if I said that I liked you too, Y/N.” My eyes widened up, every part of me that was filled with anxiety left my body.

“I wouldn’t believe you.” I lied.

He bent down to tilt my head up to look up at him. He came closer to me, his lashes practically brushing my cheek.

“You don’t believe me? I’ll guess I’ll just have to prove it to you.”

His lips met mine, a fire exploded in my heart, my brain, my everything. His lips were soft yet so passionate and kind. His damp hair tickled my cheek as I wrapped one of my hands by his neck, the other one in his hair. His other hand traveled down the valley of my back, caressing my upper back down to my waist. He pulled me closer to him, feeling the softness of his shirt yet the hardness of his body underneath.

We both pulled away to breathe and look at each other.

“Do you believe me now, princess?” I nodded repeatedly.

He smiled and leaned his forehead against mine, I lifted my head up to kiss him again and he gladly accepted. I pulled back and looked at him.

“I’m sorry I barged in your room. I should’ve just asked you.” He rubbed his hands down my back.

“Do it again. I don’t mind.” I laughed a little, he did too.

I checked the time only to notice that I had to go meet Enid in our room.

“I have to go. Enid emergency.” I still looked in his eyes. Beautiful green eyes.

“Manis for her and Thing, got it.” He kissed me once again on the lips before we both pulled away from each other.

“So, you like me right, like this isn’t to get information out of me?” He asked, half joking.

“Yes, I like you, Xavier. Though I could still get information out of you anytime I want.” I winked, leaving his room as he was smiling and I walked back to my room.

Thing followed me from behind, all excited about his manicure.

“If you tell anyone what happened, I will rip out your nails.” I snarked, he shook slightly in fear before swearing he wouldn’t say anything.

I guess I did not fall in love with a psychopath.

[thebest-medicine]

Day 18: Magic

Tickletober 2023 - The Owl House - implied lee!Luz lee!Eda and lee!Amity

[see my other tickletober 2023 fics]

A/N: A bit of a different style with this one. Luz discovers a tickle glyph by accident, she details the event in her notes.

[ao3 link]

Words: 500

—

From the journal notes of Luz’ Noceda: 

“Glyph Combination Attempt #73”

Description: 

Effect: causes a tingling, spark-like sensation of tickling, causing the person in range to laugh uncontrollably for the duration of the effect

Appearance: three rings of concentric circles, light glyph on the right of the outer ring as well as the bottom of the inner ring, plant along the bottom of the middle ring with fire on the top, two fire glyphs on either side of the outer ring light glyph

Possible uses:

Incapacitate the enemy with laughter!

Fighting without damage or causing pain!

Distraction!

Fun prank!

…Amity?

Warnings!!!:

Do not accidentally stand too close when activated!

Be careful how big the glyph is drawn (size and intensity seem to influence how long the effects last)

Experience:

First-Hand Account #1:

I decided to reserve Wednesday afternoon in my schedule to test out new glyph combinations and see what other types of useful combinations we could come up with to help in the fight against Belos. With the Day of Unity coming up, we could use any extra tricks up our sleeves we could get. 

I stumbled upon an interesting combination today by accident, when I tried to activate this glyph (see attached sketch on the next page) it had an instantaneous effect. I couldn’t believe it… it, well, it tickled!!!! SO much - OMG! Lucky for me, it was only a minute or two before it wore off. It feel like a hundred fingers and tingly shocks all over all my ticklish spots! I just crumpled to the ground. (I’m glad nobody else was around to see that!) I’ll have to test it out further (ALONE! Or maybe on someone else?) and see what its capabilities are.

First-Hand Account #2:

It’s been two days since I accidentally hit myself with the ‘tickle glyph’. I have carefully drawn up another and decided to enlist Eda to help me test it today. 

…

It went hilariously spectacular having Eda try the glyph! She crumpled onto the couch cackling and even tried pulling off her own feet — that didn’t seem to help her though. This one was drawn on a bigger piece of paper and I think it went on a little longer than when I first stumbled on the glyph, but it was a little hard for me to tell how long it was exactly. Eda said she’s going to feed me to the Wumplerampus but I think she’s just bluffing. It was good to see her laugh. I do think, in retrospect now, that perhaps it was not my best idea to teach her this glyph combination…

I’ve decided to create a small stockpile for myself in order to prepare for the worst. And, also, maybe to test them out a bit more with Amity and with the rest of our friends.

[nanistar]

do you think we could get a sneak peak of saltburn's clan production? like the scripts or the sketches? (of pages already posted of course) i really like seeing how different people approach the comic making process

sure thing!

so i usually post the next 2 sketches on my patreon for the $1+ tiers on tuesday or wednesday, so they get an advanced little view of it before hand. so the ones here are all gonna be older pages.

my entire script and notes i keep in one long google doc. and i send myself feverish notes on discord to be copy/pasta'd into the doc later. i also have a rough estimation of my progress in the story and how much longer i have per chapters, since im trying to keep it to about 30-36 per chapter. i don;t want to spend longer than 2 years on this comic (though im not gonna speedrun it or anything if it ends up going long, im just hoping it stays shorter lol).

i don't script things line-by-line or like a stageplay. i tried doing it early on but i found i made too many deviations depending on how i placed panels and looking back at the script was really annoying.

earliest script i have^

i tend to do dialogue on the fly when actually sketching out the pages, because i know what i'm looking for, so unless i have the specific dialogue that i want to remember to add, i don't write any of that down. although sometimes i get on a roll writing and dialogue flows, so i write it down and change it as needed. i have scenes in my head rather than pages, and i translate those notes later when i need to work on that scene. i very rarely get actual page ideas in my head, but i will say today's update with saltburn flying thru the air and recalling some memories i;ve had in my head for months, along with the one where salt sees the angel i had planned for a while. (i'd LOVE to be able to get a ton of pages sketched at once so i can not worry about it, but the nature of the way that i work is that i just can't think in that much detail far ahead of me. so i can only really do 2 at a time)

^so it tends to look more like this, fast back and forth dialogue to get my point across that i will make fit their voices later on. also i don't use linebreaks or anything just because im lazy so my notes are a fuckin disaster

my god.

as for the actual drawing of the pages, i literally just do it i dont know how to explain it. i sketch things as fast and loose as possible , i try not to have the same size boxes next to each other unless i'm showing the passage of time or a very minor detail change between panels. large panels for establishing shots. ect. sometimes if needed i will do a secondary sketch to figure stuff out, like i needed to do a bunch when working out the first few coyote drawings since ive never drawn dogs in action before. but usually i just whip it out

nightmarish.

this one is still my favorite, and despite looking much better than my normal sketches i did whip it out like normal (i just looked at refs for the other critters so it looks nicer lol)

additionally, i do every single page in the chapter on the same canvas because i love it when procreate crashes. i do all my panel boxes, and any "weird" shaped speech bubbles by hand. i only have one layer for flats, one for BGs, merge them together and do one overlay layer. if i need some extra definition i will add an additional shading layer but i dont like to. once im done with all the art i merge every layer together, send the page to myself on discord, and open it up on my 'puter and do the remaining text and normal speech bubbles in clip studio.

oh yeah people sometimes ask why i do 2 pages instead of one per update, or just do a bunch and upload it less often and the answer is because i don't want to be working on this comic for a very long time, and 2 pages gets me thru faster. if i spend too long working on a scene it starts getting boring for me and im more likely to cheese it which i dont like doing, but if i do two at once i can get stuff done faster. additionally, i cant just do a bunch and upload them all at once because i like the feedback, and it's better for readers to have consistent updates. i have the deadly autism/adhd combo, and my life is literally scheduled week by week and i have to stay consistent or i will die.

but yeah. my process is nightmarish and fast (despite spending like 4-8 hours per page) and loose and crazy but it works for me and keeps me engaged.

[not-krys]

[Repost] Do Not Disturb - Miri

Part of this set of WIP Wednesdays

Been wanting to do something like this scene for a while. Did a sketch of it a while ago, but now I'm putting it in writing form!

Raw, unedited writing. Takes inspo from Lesson 30-1 of the OG game. Miri showing signs of illness is meant for foreshadowing for later lessons (her powers are starting to get a little too much for her to handle and this is about where it starts happening)

-----

"And that was how the Great Celestial War ended-!"

The library had grown suspiciously quiet. No quiet scratching of pens or page flipping. No whispered questions from Luke to Simeon, or even of Miri's foot that had been swinging and sliding on the rug previously. Satan lowered his textbook in his hand, only to be greeted by twin soft snores and Simeon's apologetic grin.

Satan sighed.

"Really?"

"It was a lot to take in for the two of them."

"It's all on the exam! How do they expect to-" Satan sighed again, giving up.

"They tried their best to keep up and that's the most important part." Simeon pointed to the pages of notes the other two had kept while listening to Satan's lecture. Luke's was relatively neat and organized, as was expected of the younger angel. And while her handwriting wasn't exactly neat, Satan smiled at spying some little doodles alongside Miri's notes, like a bunch of trees in the section about the Devildom's beginnings, and a three-legged crow in the margins. Simeon chuckled, catching Satan's attention.

"What? Did you think of something funny?"

"Hmm… how do I explain it?" Simeon looked skyward. "As I was listening to your lecture, I couldn't help thinking…"

"About what?"

"Our history is so violent and bloody. Yet now we're able to gather in peace and study it together like this… it really is amazing."

Simeon then looked fondly at Miri and Luke, both with their heads in the arms on the table, happily in their private dream lands.

"Did you ever imagine we would get to this point?"

Satan shook his head with a smile.

"Hmm… can't say I did, no."

He watched Miri more closely, seeing her breathe in and out gently. Her pink curls cascaded over her shoulders and on the table, reminding him of cotton candy. Satan also couldn't help but notice she was paler than usual, almost to a sickly quality. It was the first he'd seen of it. Had the stress of the exams been getting to her and he never noticed?

He did, however, notice that there was something in Miri's hair that wasn't there before and frowned.

"Hey," he said pointedly at Simeon, "what are you doing?" 

"What do you mean," Simeon said innocently, "I was just stroking her hair."

"Don't get so touchy-feely with her."

"Why?"

"Just.. don't, okay?"

"Why? Are you jealous?" Simeon smiled.

"It's nothing like that, but don't touch her."

"Ah, you're just being her protective big brother, then?"

"You're still touching her."

"Her hair is quite soft," Simeon teased, "You should try it once you get the chance."

Satan glared, wanting to pull the angel's hand off of Miri, but didn't want to disturb her rest.

"She… hasn't been feeling well lately, has she?" Simeon asked as Satan's eyes widened.

"How did you-?"

"She feels warm, more than normal." Simeon took off one of his gloves and touched two fingers against her forehead, then her cheek, then her throat.

"Is she sick?"

"Not exactly, at least not yet."

"Maybe the stress of the exams are getting to her? Like you said, it's a lot to take on if it's all new to you."

"Possibly."

Satan then remember when they had all went to the Carnival before the exams started. When Beel had been throwing his food temper tantrum and he, Lucifer, and the others had been drawn into the fight. Miri had looked upset (naturally, they were all being idiots at the time), the pact marks on her body started to glow, somehow escaping her notice. Next thing he knew, she was yelling at all of them to stop fighting and he landed on the ground, hard, unable to move a muscle. Painful groans from his brothers told him they suffered the same fate, five more bodies accompanying him on the floor.

He also remembered hearing a soft something hitting the floor, his eyes trailing to see Miri's new zombie iguana plush she had gotten at the carnival fallen from her grasp. Looking up further, he saw the look of horror on her face, both hands covering her mouth. The ghost waiters surrounded her, praising and applauding her happily, but she took no notice of it, only staring as the six of them laid pinned to the ground.

"Maybe… something else is affecting her?"

"Hm?"

"She's been scared to use the pacts ever since that fight at the Ghost Café. It was such a powerful force that none of us could escape from."

"I remember hearing about that. Solomon said the first time he tried commanding multiple demons at once, his body ached for a while afterwards."

"She didn't look like she was hurting after the fact." All of his brothers definitely were, he remembered that part clearly, but not Miri. "She was just really quiet, not really talking to any of us after the fact. Lucifer kept staring at her, too. It was weird."

"Hmm…" Simeon put his glove back on, lost in thought.

[nomoreusername]

Silent Coffee Dates (Part 1)

Pairing:Sonya x female reader

Summary:When you go to return Sonya's book, you end up staying the night.

The routine hasn't changed for two years. Every Saturday morning at six I show up at Camila's Coffee, ordering every meal there as well, before coming back at seven in the evening. Approximately eight hours after me Sonya shows up. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I come here at four in the afternoon. She shows up around an hour later. After that I'm here any moment I can for the rest of the days knowing she won't be making an appearance.

That routine didn't stop today either. I was sitting at our booth in the very corner with my headphones in and sketch pad out. Beside me was a cup of hot chocolate. After all, I'm here for the peace. Not to taste a bitter drink.

Eventually, I only started showing up because she did. She sat across from me with either her book or her homework out and whatever drink she had decided to pick for the day. While she focused on that I lightly sketched her features. Occasionally, I would turn to other drawings and ideas that I had abandoned. Most of the time though it was her face I had on my paper since we were only together for a few hours. That isn't a lot of time for realism, but by now I'm sure I could draw her with my eyes closed.

As the sun started setting in the horizon she sighed before packing up her things. I just remained seated as I fixed the way I had drawn her hair just a little too dark. Without so much as a goodbye or see you later she was out the door. That was what was expected though. Despite being in our own little bubble at this place it was always popped when she left.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As the already almost vacant shop completely filed out I packed my things. Once I slid out of the booth I saw a red book with no cover on the front. Giving into my curiosity I picked it up. The spine was cracked as if someone constantly folds it while reading. It also has that old book smell. The one that seems to be a mix of dust and ink.

Deciding that maybe I could discover the owner of I took a look I opened it and peaked inside. Written on the front was the name Sonya.

Now even though we've never exchanged any words I knew her name. I've seen her write it on paper, and now that I think about it I do recall her bending the spines when she reads. At least, she doesn't dog ear the pages. That would be a true tragedy.

One other thing I knew about her was where she lived. Before you assume anything I'm not a stalker. While we live in opposite sides of town I used to ride her bus when I would babysit this little kid. He's in middle school now, but I suppose that's unrelated to the story.

Thinking it through for a moment I slipped it in my bag and headed out the door. Seeing as it's growing dark and I'm a teenage girl I should really hurry up. If I'm going to give it to her I'd prefer not getting kidnapped along the way.

Getting on my old bike with its creaky wheels and rusted bell I slung my bag over my back. Putting up the kickstand I pushed off.

As the evening, autumn air brushed past my face I resisted the urge to burry myself in my old sweater. For one, I like being able to see. Second, I'm still in a hurry. Besides, if I hesitate to do this I may not do it at all.

While normally I would give it to her the next time I see her she brings this one with her every time. Clearly, it must have some meaning to her. Even if it doesn't she has to carry it with her for a reason. After all, my sketchbook goes everywhere with me. If I lost it I would tear my entire apartment apart until it was safe in my hands. If it wasn't there I'd go through every inch of my school, neighborhood, and everywhere else you can think. To sum it up I won't let her be worried that something happened to the item she's so attached to. Our silent coffee meetups indirectly meant we were friends. It just so happens we don't actually communicate.

It's better than nothing though. I'm much too used to having nobody. It doesn't seem like Sonya's leaving though, and that means a lot to me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As I was in her neighborhood I really took in the difference between ours. Before you make any assumptions I don't live in the ghetto. Not that I judge people who do. Some people are just in unfortunate situations.

To put it lightly my family's pretty broke so being back in this area that was hardly one step below a gated community is sort of like a culture shock.

As I carefully started walking my bike alongside me in fear of accidentally running into someone I heard quick shuffling and an irritated hmph. I turned around to see an older woman glaring at me. With a sigh and an eye roll I kept walking. How dare I walk in her big, fancy neighborhood when my clothes aren't all nice and ironed. My black hoodie obviously means I'm a criminal mastermind.

People like her really need to get a life. It doesn't seem healthy to be so worried about strangers. As I stated earlier I'm a teenage girl. What could she possibly be thinking that I'm capable of?

As I rounded a corner I spotted someone I hadn't seen in a while. While his hair was still in unruly curls, and he was as happy as I remembered, he had grown a significant amount.

"Hey Chuck,"I called. He snapped his head towards me before his eyes lit up.

"Hi Y/N,"He excitedly waved. Deciding it couldn't hurt I headed over and put my kickstand down.

"What have you been up to? How's middle school treating you?"I asked.

"It's alright,"He shrugged. "I kind of miss you getting to babysit me though,"He admitted, putting babysit in air quotes. He was a good kid so I basically just made dinner, made sure he was got to bed on time (which was negotiable on weekends) and made sure he didn't do anything dangerous. Sometimes, it felt more like hanging out with a friend.

"You're twelve now. You don't need me to look after you,"I reminded him, ruffling his hair. He swatted at my hand while still wearing his bright grin.

"I'm not twelve. I'm twelve and a half,"He defended.

"Of course Chuck. I'm sorry for forgetting,"I chuckled.

"What are you doing here anyway?"He asked, cocking his head to the side.

"I'm returning something to my friend,"I explained.

"Can I come?"He quickly asked, almost bouncing on his heels.

"It's getting late, Chuck."

"Please. It's a Friday."

"I just don't want you to be out after dark,"I explained.

"But I'm chivalrous, and I'll listen to you,"He promised.

"If your mom says so then I guess I'll let you come,"I gave in. He sprinted to his house before yelling though the door.

"Can I go walk around the neighborhood with Y/N?! Please!"He begged. After a moment she came outside and looked for where I was. When she spotted me she walked over and hugged me.

"You've grown so much. Look at you. You're almost taller than me,"She exclaimed, pulling away. If I'm being honest she's sort of like a second mom to me. They're pretty much my other family. This place was my home away from home. Even though I don't work for them anymore I know they wouldn't mind having me over. Not that I would ask though. Requesting things from someone isn't something I do.

"Where are you going? Especially, when it's getting late. You don't exactly live a short walk away,"She pointed out.

"I'm just returning something to a friend,"I explained. "And Chuck was asking if he could go with."

She looked at me before looking back at her son who was still practically begging. With a nervous sigh she shook her head.

"Not tonight, but if you'd like we'd love it if you stopped by after. Even better, I could drive you?"She offered.

"Thank you, but I'm alright. I'll come over another time though,"I promised.

"Are you sure? It's not a problem,"She reassured me. Knowing that she meant her words I still had to decline.

"Okay dear. Be safe, and if something happens you know where we are."

"I know. Goodnight Chuck. Be good."

"I will,"He responded, a hint of disappointment in his tone. After repeating that I would stay for dinner another day, I got back to my original goal.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When I approached her house the streetlights were already on. Despite this place being safe I was quick to get to her door. Ignoring the chills running down my spine I rang the bell. I just enjoy being able to do that since we don't have one.

The sound of a dog barking and muffled talking sounded through the thick wood before someone finally opened it. Instead of it being Sonya or even her parents it was her brother. He eyed me up and down before looking at me in a curious way. I suppose that's valid since I generally don't interact with many people.

"Sonya left her book,"I explained, pulling it out of my bag. Just as I handed it to him she appeared from behind him with a big, white dog trailing behind her.

"Y/N?"She asked.

"Yeah. I gave Newt your stuff. You left it at the shop,"I repeated.

"It's pretty late. Did someone drive you?"She asked, seeming more concerned about me than relieved about her returned item.

"I biked. Anyways, I'll get out of here now."

"It's dark out. Why don't you stay?"She offered, holding her dog back from bolting out the door. Why is everyone trying to do things for me today?

"No. It's honestly fine."

"So you're going to go all the way to your home but yourself? It takes me twenty minutes just to get out of my neighborhood. Being all alone at night is not a good idea,"She pointed out. I just shrugged as I kept my hands in my pockets.

"At least, call your parents and wait for them."

"I don't have a phone,"I admitted.

"Then, use ours,"She suggested. Tired of the way she was so persistent on helping me out I finally accepted as Newt awkwardly gestured for me to come in.

"Do you know the number?"She asked.

"Yeah. Where's your landline?"

"Our what?"Newt asked, speaking his very first words to me.

"Your landline. You know? The home phone connected to the wall?"

"We don't have one, but you can use my cellphone,"She said, unlocking it and handing it to me. After mumbling a thanks I typed in our number.

It rang once then twice before a beep was heard. Despite that usually mean somebody answered I still waited to see if it really was that.

When not even the hint of breathing was in the other end I knew it was just malfunctioning. I hung up before handing it to her.

"No luck so I guess I'll just bike home,"I shrugged.

"Just stay the night. We have the room,"She assured me. That wasn't the problem though. Accepting help isn't something I know how to do.

"I don't have any extra clothes,"I explained. While that didn't really matter I was looking for an excuse.

"You can burrow mine."

"I don't have a toothbrush."

"We have an extra."

"I don't have-"

"Anything you're worried about we have. Just stay until morning,"She repeated.

"But your parents-"

"Aren't home and wouldn't mind. Besides, you really want to go out there alone on a Friday night?"She pointed out.

"I guess not,"I mumbled.

"So?"She asked.

"So I'm staying the night,"I gave in.

All I wanted to do was return a book. Now I think I really should have waited until Monday.

Sonya's P.O.V

I showed Y/N to the bathroom so she could shower before going to find some clean night clothes for her. While digging through my drawers Newt quietly entered my room and expectantly looked at me.

"Why do you know Y/N?"He asked.

"We hang out at the same spot,"I vaguely explained, pulling out a pair of black sweatpants and a plain top.

"Is that why you're gone all those days?"

"Maybe. Does it matter?"

"If it's her then yeah,"He whispered.

"There's nothing wrong with her,"I defended.

"Really? Come on Sonya. We've all heard the stories. Everyone knows her name. She skips school to do who knows what-"

"Which isn't anyone's business. They're just rumors, and even if they're true we don't know the full story,"I pointed out.

"What good reason is there for that?"

"I don't know, and I'm not going to ask. Whatever she does she has her reasons, but she's not a bad person Newt. Don't judge her when you've barely heard her voice,"I sighed.

Just as he was about to reply the water turned off. Quickly shooing him out of my room I knocked on my bathroom door. She held her hand out through a small crack, and I handed her the clothes.

Taking a seat on my bed I pulled out the book she had returned while I waited for her. Coming all this way to return it was an odd decision to say the least. Especially, if she had to get here in foot. Still, it's a sweet gesture.

"I'm dressed,"She said, walking out of the bathroom and twisting her damp hair into a loose ponytail. She shivered in the tank top subtly rubbing her hands together.

"Hold on one second,"I instructed, going to my closet. Glancing around, I looked for something warm but not too tight or completely unfit for bed. After a moment I found a plain, purple sweater. Running my hands over the fabric, I was relieved when it was a soft texture.

I headed back out of my room and handed it to her. Without a word she slipped it over her head. Thankfully, it fit like a charm.

"Thank you,"She mumbled, her voice seeming naturally soft. Hearing her speak was different but in a good way. It is a bit unusual that she seems less shy when she's not speaking, but it doesn't matter. Honestly, I'm just glad that she's staying the night.

"We should still have leftovers. Are you hungry?"I asked.

"No,"She answered quickly. Before I could respond her stomach growled, showing the exact opposite.

"Okay. A little bit,"She admitted.

"You should have told me. Come on Y/N. Let's get you something to eat."

"Yeah. Okay,"She agreed, following me down the stairs.

All Parts

This is seriously the girl people say is trouble? Yeah right, and even if she is there's always a reason people are the way they are. All I care about is that she has a kind soul, and she definitely does.

Next Chapter

[itsnotnov]

WEEK 23

16th April Tuesday

New project hand and eye

Making publication with out the text, using only two colours. Its quite challenging, as theres a lot of things to experiment before the finalization.

In the lecture after the briefing, we had to draw the daily object we brought from home, but in a really short time. We had to stop drawing when the bell rang in 2 minutes or 5 minutes, and also woth the frame called viewfinder. Finding the composition with the viewfinder and draw by following the order.

The order was about: Record the scene through line only, don’t take your drawing tool off page, 5 MINS

solid shapes, no outlines.Use a drawing material that makes a wide mark, 5 MINS

angrily,

nervously, 3 mins

passionately, 3 mins

Texture: Rhythm and Pattern, Density and Weight, Softness and Hardness, 10 mins

After drawing, I bound all those drawings with the rubber band.

Rushing to catch the details and the characteristics of the object was quite challenging. I learned that I need to experiment more with quick ugly drawings.

17th Wednesday

I went to the library to read some books about illustration, especially micro-narratives. I found interest while looking at E.H. Shepard's drawings, in the point that he showed the figure very well by using simple lines. This represents how well he understood the animals and human figures, in my opinion. I started to make short stories, inspired by him.

18th Thursday

Today was the day for the independent study, but there was a quest for us to go to a given place record it, and make a visual diary.

I went to Horniman Museum and Garden out of 5 locations. I don't have a lot of photos taken in this place, by sketching and observing.

I brought small papers also, so I can try different styles with other materials, and colours.

This place inspired me a lot, with the complicated grasses and the beautiful atmosphere, which is very hard to capture. I would say I want to visit one more time and practice quick drawing, this time was that impressive for me.

19th April Friday

I got feedback to make the time shorter spending on one drawing. I agree with that opinion, so I will try to draw more faster and do not afraid to draw ugly.

20th April Saturday

I went to Barbican Museum to see exhibition

I know taking photos is not allowed in a visual diary, so I took a photo just for the blog. As you can see in the drawing, I just stood in this place and tried to capture it.

It seems like I am using blue and green a lot, I need to try other warm colours.

I think I need some more drawings to choose the story, and how am I going to add some unique points, how am I going to communicate with the audience.

[thebloggerbloggerfun]

Based on something @wanderingcas and I briefly chatted about in the only tumblr group chat I lasted longer than a day in

In Castiel’s defense, he’d been in the middle of telling Dean that he probably shouldn’t touch the glowing metal object that had fallen out of a crammed closet in a less-explored room in the bunker when he’d gone ahead and done it anyway. 

“Ha, it’s one of those old ear-trumpet things.” Dean said, picking it up and holding it to his ear.

“- and glowing is rarely a good sign.” Castiel finished, but not before the trumpet flashed even brighter, and then stopped glowing altogether. 

Dean pulled it away from his ear and frowned at it. 

“Are you... alright?” Castiel asked, but there didn’t seem to be any outward signs of any harm done to him. 

Dean said nothing, but his frown deepened as he glanced around, squinting enough that Castiel could tell something wasn’t quite right. 

“Dean?”

“Uh, I think -” Dean stopped abruptly and blinked. “Hello? Hello?”

Castiel stepped forward in concern, snatching the object out of Dean’s hands before it could do any more harm and he could almost feel the curse oozing off of it. 

“I’m still here, Dean. What’s wrong?”

“I can’t -” Dean started tapping at his own ears, then patting them, “I can’t hear anything!”

Dean looked up at Castiel, a panicked tone in his voice and written on every line of his face and Castiel bit back the retort about how if he’d only waited just a few seconds - 

“It’s alright,” Castiel said, slowly, methodically, so that Dean would be able to read his lips. “Don’t panic. The curse doesn’t feel strong.”

“Oh, fuck me - I really can’t hear!” Dean said again, and definitely panicking. 

Castiel waved his hands in front of Dean’s face until he received his full and undivided attention, and mimed deep breaths until Dean followed suit, eyes still wide, but no longer frantic. 

“You’re okay,” Castiel said, holding up his hand in the universal ‘OK’ symbol, “We can fix this. I don’t think it’s permanent.”

Dean swallowed and nodded, running a hand through his hair with a shaky sigh. 

“Dammit, I shouldn’t have touched that stupid thing.”

“That’s what I said.” Castiel muttered. 

“What?” Dean said. 

Castiel waved a hand dismissively. 

“Nothing. We’ll talk to Sam when he gets home and see if we can do any research on it. It was cursed, but it didn’t feel like it was a dangerous one.”

Dean stared at him and blinked once.

“What?”

Castiel gave him a thumbs-up.

-

Sam tapped on the page of the book and flipped it around for Castiel to clearly see a picture of a sketched ear-trumpet.

“Yep - it’s in their inventory. Apparently it was designed as a last resort for battling against oceanic sirens, but it looks like they never needed it.” Sam shrugged his shoulders and glanced over at Dean, who was snapping his fingers in front of his ears and looking increasingly more frustrated with the results. “It’s just for seventy-two hours. He’ll be fine on Friday.”

“What?” Dean said from across the table. 

Castiel pushed the book towards him and tapped on the sentence that included “seventy-two hours” in it. 

“Goddammit.” Dean said, shoving the book back angrily in Castiel’s direction. “What the hell am I supposed to do until then, huh? Lock myself in my room and live like a hermit?”

“Plenty of people live without their hearing, Dean.” Castiel said, folding his arms against his chest. “And it’s just for three days. You’ll do just fine if you don’t make this into a bigger deal than it is.”

Dean frowned. 

“What?”

- 

By Wednesday, Castiel had heard Dean list all of the things that he couldn’t do without his hearing at least fifteen times. 

“And I can’t even listen to Led Zepplin! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve gone this long without listening to Zep? Since the womb, Cas. The womb.” Dean rambled as he leaned over the engine of the Impala. 

Castiel flipped a page in the mystery novel he was skimming in the corner of the garage and nodded.

“A true tragedy.” Castiel said.

“What?”

Castiel let out a long breath, stood up and walked over to Dean, and pointed at his lips. 

Dean jumped as he turned to reach for an oily rag. 

“Jesus - I can’t go through this again, Cas. You don’t even have your wings and it’s happening again you sneaky motherfu -”

“Can. You. Read. My. Lips.” Castiel said, slowly and methodically. 

Dean’s eyes flicked down to Castiel’s lips, then immediately flicked away as Dean quickly turned around to face the car’s engine again.

“Nope. That’s not gonna work.”

Castiel frowned, but he supposed it would be a lot of work to have to stare so intently at his lips as he tried to decipher what shapes his mouth was forming. 

“Have it your way, then.” Castiel said, knowing he might as well be saying it to the Impala, and went back to his mystery novel. 

- 

Castiel sat himself down at the table in the kitchen as Dean stirred at something in a large skillet, whistling to himself off-key as he did so. 

He had on Claire's birthday gift - an apron with “Culinary Badass” written in bold lettering on the front - and was swinging his hips from side to side as his whistling turned into humming. 

Castiel smiled fondly as he watched, falling into the pit of endearment that he often found himself at the bottom of. He wiped the smile from his face before letting it tug at the corners of his lips again - the smile was safe as long as Dean wasn’t looking. 

There were a lot of things that could be safe right now. 

Dean was adorable.

And not listening. 

“You’re adorable.” Castiel whispered, staring at the back of Dean’s head. 

The humming continued with no reaction from Dean. 

“You’re adorable.” Castiel repeated, louder this time - it felt good to say out loud. “Even when you’re being dramatic.”

Dean tapped on the oven with the spoon he’d been using to stir to add rhythm to his humming, not saying a word in response. 

Castiel’s smile grew a little wider. 

-

“Every day I hope I get to see you smile.” Castiel said after Dean handed him a beer and turned away.

-

“Your soul shines brighter than you can imagine.” Castiel said, his face hidden behind a load of laundry he was handing to Dean.

-

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you in my life.” Castiel said as he climbed into the passenger’s side of the Impala to go on a grocery run with Dean.

-

“I love you.” Castiel said as the two of them watched a subtitled television show that Castiel had long since stopped paying attention to in Dean’s TV room. “I really do.”

Dean’s head slowly turned away from the television, and towards Castiel. 

“What?”

Castiel just waved a hand. 

Nothing. He mouthed, and shrugged his shoulders, hoping Dean would just let it go. He usually did now that explaining became a big situation. 

“You... love me?”

A chill shot down Castiel’s spine as he tensed, and mentally counted the hours in his head - yes it was about seventy-two hours now. Had he not been paying close enough attention? 

No, of course he hadn’t. 

He’d been happily confessing things to Dean while there would be no consequences like a fool. 

Castiel shouldn’t have let himself get comfortable in that.

“Y-you’re hearing -”

“...just came back, yeah.” Dean said slowly, hesitantly, like he was regretting the admission. 

He was probably wishing he was still under the effects of the curse and Castiel didn’t blame him one iota. 

“I’m - Dean I’m so sorry. I thought you were still - I didn’t - “

“Do you mean it?” 

Castiel’s stuttering died in his throat as he stared back at Dean, eyes wide. 

“I- I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.” He whispered. 

There was a long silence between them as they simply stared at each other, and the sound of the television still played in the background. 

“This is The Good Place finale,” Dean said, pointing at the TV, “So, we have to finish watching it - but after that we’re gonna make-out, okay? Like a lot. And then probably talk about shit.” 

Castiel blinked. 

“What?” 

Dean smiled in the special way that made Castiel’s heart stop. 

“You heard me.”

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Sculptor

Chapter 3 - Of Wives and Men

[Masterpost] [AO3]

-/-

Lan Wangji, to Wei Wuxian’s immense surprise, actually comes back. He isn’t sure why he’s so shocked considering they’ve only known each other a day and Lan Wangji is already clearly a very steady and reliable sort of person, but still. He spent all last night thinking about the way Lan Wangji had gotten so flustered just thinking about undressing for him at some amorphous point in the future and he’d thought for sure that he wouldn’t see the man again, even in passing.

“You’re back!” is the incredibly smooth and not-at-all-rude exclamation that slips out of his mouth when Lan Wangji lets himself into the studio at 9:30am on the dot Wednesday morning, as promised, and Lan Wangji stops in the middle of removing his hat to blink at him.

“Should I not be?”

“No no no, that’s not what I meant!” Wei Wuxian laughs to force the butterflies to quit rattling around in his stomach. “I just - ah never mind, you’re here and I’m happy about it. Get comfortable, Lan Wangji, we’ve got another long day of sketching ahead of us!”

Lan Wangji looks at him dubiously for another moment before he continues taking off all the outer layers that make him look so buttoned up and Wei Wuxian watches rather shamelessly when he shrugs out of his suit jacket - dove gray today - and pulls his long, jet-dark hair free of his collar with a graceful swish of it across his shoulders to fall down his back. He’s forgone the waistcoat and suspenders today and his shirt seems like it’s a slightly looser fit, Wei Wuxian thinks as he watches him roll the sleeves up just as neatly as he’d done the day before.

“How do you feel about laying down for a bit today?” he asks when Lan Wangji is more comfortably underdressed and heading for the bench again. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I’m still just working on getting a sense of you more than the commission, but just keep it in mind okay?”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji settles in on the bench again, though thankfully not in such a rigid posture as he’d started out with yesterday. Wei Wuxian had sketched him quite a few times like that, sometimes focusing on details - like the mostly-hidden contours of his muscles or the way his hair falls so perfectly behind his shoulders - and sometimes on him as a whole, all the lovely perfect lines of him creating such an elegant figure. But he’d like a little more movement today. More visual interest.

(More reasons to look.)

Wei Wuxian quickly falls into the familiar, business-like pattern of sketching though, Lan Wangji’s beauty not quite enough to distract him completely once he gets into his flow, eyes flickering between his model sitting so still he might as well be a statue already and the loose sketches of him coming alive under Wei Wuxian’s hands. They don’t talk as he works, and Wei Wuxian finds he doesn’t mind. The silence is companionable at least as far as he can tell, and he already knows Lan Wangji is a man of few words even when they’re having a conversation. He amuses himself for a little while thinking of how Lan Wangji’s lectures must be - does he sit at the front of the room and stare his poor students down with those hawk eyes of his? Does he drone on in a monotone that would put even the only slightly-drowsy to sleep? Does he come alive with passion for his subject, gesturing with his beautiful hands as he translates the great classics?

Wei Wuxian gets lost in thought as he sketches Lan Wangji’s hand poised just in front of his face, the tip of his index finger pressed soft as a whisper against the plush curve of his bottom lip, the rest of his fingers curled in relaxed and loose towards his palm. He’s still sitting upright but he’s leaning ever so slightly, elbow propped up on the arm of the bench and hand posed so temptingly, so delicately in front of his mouth…

When Wei Wuxian shakes himself out of the almost-trance he typically falls into when he draws he’s startled to find that he’s filled two entire pages of nothing but Lan Wangji’s hand and his mouth, his other features occasionally making it into the sketches but the focus always right there, centered on that damned featherlight touch against his lip.

“Lunch?” Wei Wuxian offers after a delicate clearing of his throat and he suddenly finds his throat is dry. He ignores the way Lan Wangji judges him with those incredible eyebrows of his when he takes a swig of water from a nearby jar covered in dried paint - it’s one of his painting jars, yes, but it’s not paint water yet so he’s not going to be persnickety about it.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji hums after a beat. “My wife prepared enough food for both of us, if you would like.”

Wei Wuxian very firmly, very absolutely, very strongly does not let his heart break on the word ‘wife’. In this day and age, in this quaint suburban town, what handsome man wouldn’t have a wife? Well, Wei Wuxian doesn’t but that’s because he doesn’t want one, for what he feels are painfully obvious reasons (as do many other people in town, it’s a whole Thing. He tries not to think about it). But of course someone as stunning and put-together as Lan Wangji has a wife. God. Wei Wuxian’s luck is somehow both incredible and the worst in the world, and both sides of that coin somehow dealt him Lan Wangji.

“That sounds great,” he says with a smile to mask his disappointment. He tucks the morning’s sketches into his ‘in progress’ folder and sets the easel up with a fresh sheet for after their break before he washes his hands clean of graphite dust. Once they’re ready he follows Lan Wangji outside to head for the park a couple blocks over, a cloth-wrapped lunchbox dangling from Lan Wangji’s hand between them.

“So - your wife, huh?” Wei Wuxian can’t resist asking, like poking at a sore tooth with the tip of his tongue.

“Mn. She is a professor as well.”

“No kidding? That’s great,” Wei Wuxian says, and he really means it! He’s all for that, it’s the part where she’s Lan Wangji’s wife that gets a little…sticky. He reminds himself that he’s only known the man for less than 24 hours and he’s being ridiculous, which is a lot easier to keep in mind when he’s facing forward, watching cars pass them by and people going about their normal lives. It’s a lot harder to remember when he glances at Lan Wangji beside him and realizes he’s still as stoically handsome as ever.

“I was told to impress upon you very firmly that this is not an everyday occurrence,” Lan Wangji intones once they’ve picked a bench near the pond and he’s balanced the parcel in his lap to begin carefully unpicking the knot he’d hooked his fingers under to carry it. “She was preparing meals to deliver to her brother and had enough left over to pack this for us.”

“Well that’s still nice of her anyway,” Wei Wuxian says with a laugh that’s only slightly jittery. He sits on his hands to keep them from doing something weird, like shaking as he watches Lan Wangji unwrap the layered wooden container with those careful, elegant hands of his (he bets they never shake, not even when Lan Wangji is flustered). “Tell her I appreciate the trouble, I’d hate for her to think I’m some ungrateful heathen. Is she as polite and put-together as you?”

Lan Wangji looks at him out of the corner of his eye and Wei Wuxian could swear he looks amused. “I have it on good authority that she is…intimidating.”

“So that’s a yes, then,” Wei Wuxian laughs. “Ah, it sounds like you’re a good match! Unfortunately for you, I’m not so easily intimidated by you stuffy academic types.”

Lan Wangji glances at him again curiously, but the expression is gone before Wei Wuxian can ask him what he said to cause it. He tugs one of his hands out from under his thigh to accept the shallow dish of rice and sauteed vegetables Lan Wangji passes to him - and then has to tug the other one free too to juggle his half of the meal as well as the chopsticks Lan Wangji hands him next.

“I do not wish to intimidate you,” Lan Wangji reassures him before he settles in with his own food to eat in peaceable silence.

It’s pretty plain fare, as far as Wei Wuxian is concerned - but it’s homemade, which is always a bonus, and clearly well-made even if a bit bland. Plus, of course, he’s never one to turn his nose up at free food. And it was nice of Lan Wangji’s wife to make enough for him to have as well. Not that he’s in any hurry to meet the woman, but if he does he’ll make sure to be extra nice.

He can behave normally about this. Just because it’s the 70’s and they live in a (relatively) free-thinking area doesn’t mean that any man willing to walk into another man’s studio to pose naked for him is there for what Wei Wuxian would like him to be there for - in a very non-professional way. He can manage his own expectations just fine.

They finish eating and Wei Wuxian stands up to stretch his arms above his head first and then behind his back while Lan Wangji gets the empty container all squared away again for the walk back to the studio.

“Want to lay down for me now?” Wei Wuxian asks as he putters over behind the easel again, ruffling his hair up into a sloppy ponytail to get it out of his way. Lan Wangji pauses where he’s returning the lunch box to his satchel beside the door, but after a moment he nods with his typical, “Mn.” that Wei Wuxian is already becoming inordinately fond of.

Lan Wangji returns to the bench and rearranges the pillows to his liking before he lays down carefully - flat on his back, fingers linked on his chest, and looking for all the world like a princess waiting for her knight in shining armor to come kiss her awake.

“You sure that’s comfortable enough to hold for a while?” he can’t resist checking, amused. Lan Wangji turns his head enough to give him the same raised eyebrow as the previous day.

“It is how I sleep. I will be fine.”

Wei Wuxian raises his hands in surrender but can’t stop the smile that creeps across his lips. Lan Wangji is, he is very quickly realizing, a supremely fussy sort of person. Wei Wuxian likes it more than he probably should.

“Alright, alright. You lie however you’d like, sleeping beauty, and I’ll just do my sketching.”

Lan Wangji frowns at him in confusion but doesn’t ask him to clarify, instead just turning his gaze back up to the ceiling and going nice and still for him.

Wei Wuxian loses himself in sketching again easily enough, and he thinks as he does so that married or not, Lan Wangji is nice to have around for both aesthetic and entertainment value at least. He won’t hate looking at a pretty face for three months even if that face is off-limits. Most men are, Lan Wangji isn’t really so different from any of Wei Wuxian’s other fleeting crushes. He can practically hear Nie Huaisang chastising him for getting attracted to anyone he finds outside of the usual crowd at the gay bar out on the edge of town - at least there he knows the men are interested, and safe to crush on for a few hours, so why bother getting his heart broken outside of it?

He’ll keep this professional, and at the end of the summer he’ll send Lan Wangji on his way with a perfectly polite ‘thank you for your time’. He can do that. Definitely.

[mcwriting]

Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!

In which the reader is the musical guest at Saturday Night Live the same week Tom Holland is hosting.

Ship: Reader x Tom Holland

Word Count: 5747 (what in the heck?? my longest piece ever lol)

Warnings: Mild alcohol consumption

Rating: K

Preface: I mention the NBC page program, which is like an intense internship/fellowship with the company where college grads work with at least 3 parts of the company over a year to get job exposure. A lot of famous actors and actresses were pages!

***

Walking into 30 Rockefeller Center on Wednesday afternoon was a surreal experience for sure. As a young NBC page led you through hallways and up to studio 8H, you were getting butterflies.

On one side of the hall was a sign for studio 8G, which hosted Late Night with Seth Meyers, but the page turned the other way, guiding you through doors to the Saturday Night Live studio.

There was hustle and bustle all around you as she took you to your green room, which had a sign printed with your name on it over an NYC skyline. You almost pinched yourself.

You had known for about a month that you’d be performing as the musical guest for SNL the upcoming weekend, but now that you were here for your first rehearsal, things were getting real. 

When your manager had asked if you wanted to play the show, she’d been met by your enthusiastic “YES! Are you kidding me?!” It was even better when she mentioned who the host would be:

Tom Holland.

You’d watched every season of SNL since you were probably in middle school. You could easily name off every cast member but would have to remember to keep your cool until after Saturday.

Another thing you’d need to stay cool about was Spiderman himself. You had the biggest crush on him, but who your age didn’t? He was charming and British, disregarding physical features. You were most nervous to meet him. 

The page let you put your things down and took you to Lorne Michael’s office where he and some of the production team wanted to talk to you about your set. You’d only get two songs, but one of the writers also asked if you’d want to be in a couple sketches, too.

Later that evening would be the normal pitch meeting, where writers who’d spent all Tuesday afternoon and night into the early hours of Wednesday writing finally got to show the host and cast their ideas. They’d narrow it down to eight, so you were surprised they wanted you in not one, but two sketches.

It wasn’t difficult to say yes to that. You wouldn’t be present for the pitch meeting, however, because in just a few short hours you’d be heading down to studio 6B to film a segment for Jimmy Fallon’s show. 

Your management team stayed behind at the hotel to work on details for a couple concerts you had and were planning to head up to the studio before your interview.

After the meeting, you were shown around to familiarize yourself with the studio and stage before starting your first rehearsal. For one song, it would be just you and a piano, but the other song would have a band playing while you sang and did some limited choreography. 

You sat in front of the keys of a beautiful grand piano, stretching your fingers. Someone requested you play one of your songs, so you looked around, as if asking for permission. Everyone in the room nodded for you to play, so you began the tune of your favorite song from your album.

Your voice wasn’t warm and there wasn’t a mic on you, but you got lost in the lyrics and chords like you always did. By the song’s end, you’d drawn a small crowd. They clapped and you blushed when you finished, closing the lid and standing to do a sheepish curtsy. 

Most of the small crowd dissipated and you were talking to some crew about stage setup when someone interrupted you.

“Sorry to bother, but that was incredible. Can’t wait to hear how good you’ll be this weekend,” said a male voice with a distinct London accent. You turned to find Tom Holland right in front of you. 

“Oh, well, thank you! I- I uh, didn’t expect to meet you so soon,” you stuttered, thrusting out a hand. “Y/n y/l/n.”

He gripped your hand firmly and shook it, nodding his head once, too.

“Tom Holland. You know I was excited when I heard you’d be performing the same week I host. The last film I did, we listened to your music like, all the time. You could say I’m a fan.”

Was this real? Tom Holland was a fan of you!? You chuckled.

“I could definitely say the same for you. I love your movies. ‘Been a fan for years.”

You both smiled happily and Tom was about to respond when the page who’d been showing you around the whole time came up.

“Sorry to interrupt, but Miss y/l/n, they’ve asked to get your measurements in costuming if that’s okay.”

“Oh! Yes of course!” you said to her, then turned to Tom. “Sorry. It was nice meeting you! See you around?”

“Of course! Nice meeting you also!”

As the young girl led you away again, you missed where a younger brother of Tom said to him,

“Think you’re in love yet?”

***

After an eventful visit at the Tonight Show that included you and Jimmy playing box of lies and performing one of your songs for the audience, you headed back up to 8H alone. 

You’d remembered leaving something in your dressing room and had let your team go on back to the hotel without you. You’d felt confident that you could sneak back to your hotel safely without causing a big ruckus. It was only a few blocks away.

You were digging in your bag for your phone when you bumped into someone. Each of you said a quick “oh, sorry!” before looking to see who the other was.

It was Tom again.

You hadn’t realized before, but his room was the one right next to yours. It made sense, both of you being guests and all, but you were still caught off guard. 

“Headed out?” he asked. You felt yourself blushing a little.

“Yeah, well. I just finished at Fallon’s and they don’t need me back here until tomorrow so I’m heading back to my hotel to order pizza for my whole team and then crash,” you laughed. 

“Oh yeah? That sounds about like what we’re doing,” Tom gestured back to his brother and best friend, who you shook hands with gladly. 

You talked as you wound through the halls and quickly realized you were all staying at the same place.

“That’s crazy! We were just going to get a cab if you want to just come with us. I’m already paying for it, so...” he offered. You were surprised.

“What? No, no, I couldn’t just ride on your coattails like that,” you started.

“No seriously, y/n. It’s fine! We’re literally all going to the same place and no one can bother us from a taxi cab. You don’t even have to talk to us if you don’t want to.”

You looked at the other two boys questioningly and they nodded, encouragingly nodding for you to accept the offer. 

“Okay, okay! If all of you are fine with it, I’ll come.”

They cheered and you continued in happy conversation as you headed downstairs. A doorman called a cab for you and you piled in. Harry took the front and you offered to take the middle, sandwiched between Harrison and Tom.

Never in a million years had you expected to be in such close proximity to one, much less all, of them. It was a short drive and the driver took you to a back entrance, the place celebrities usually entered.

You still weren’t quite used to the star life. Up until you’d hit it big, it was normal for you to do pretty much everything yourself and stay in relatively cheap hotels like any other person.

Now, your management team handled most things and you were staying in five star places with secret celebrity entrances and prices that would probably make your grandmother faint.

Inside, you’d also realized you were on the same floor, both of you staying in large suites used by many elites over the years. You parted ways, anticipating seeing each other in the morning for rehearsals and later that evening when you’d be doing Seth Meyers’ show together.

***

The studio was buzzing when you entered Thursday morning. Your small team headed straight for the dressing room as you were taken away to a sketch read. Both sketches the writers had asked you about had been greenlit, so you were excited to work on them

“Morning, y/n. How was the pizza?” Tom asked cheekily when you first walked in. A couple of people passing by gave strange looks but said nothing.

“Well, who doesn’t love a good New York slice, huh? I’d say it was pretty darn good. And you?”

“We ended up getting room service, but pizza’s definitely next on my list,” he joked before you were handed scripts and asked to review them. The writers and cast were trying to figure out some basic spacing as you looked over your lines and cues.

You finally got to work rehearsing the two sketches. You broke a couple times when Kate landed a punchline and when Beck accidentally tripped. 

When they decided to move on from those, you where whisked away to wardrobe and makeup to shoot "bumper” stills and videos, the photos and clips between sketches and commercial breaks. 

You were excited to see how they envisioned your style and personality and would bring it to life. The photographer collaborated with you and shot some really incredible photos, both serious and goofy.

Next you were back in music rehearsals figuring out more about the staging and running some diagnostic sound checks. Once lunchtime came around, your stomach was growling.

You just barely caught Tom as you went for lunch, he was finishing up as you built your plate. As it always seemed, you only got a few words in with each other before someone was dragging Tom off for his own photoshoot.

You got to talk to Harry and Harrison for a little bit, too, until your manager asked to have a quick meeting about your schedule. Once you were free, you were taken to costuming to try a few things on and figure out hair styles that would fit the show.

There were more music rehearsals and you read the new scripts (as they had already been rewritten twice now). You were pretty tired by the time someone asked you to head across the hall to prepare for Late Night.

You grabbed a quick bite to eat on your way out of 8H and finished is by the time you were in the doors of 8G and a page led you to your green room, once again located next to Tom’s. 

Since you were both doing SNL together, you and Tom were going to be interviewed together, but you also had the added bonus of being the musical guest again. 

You only needed to rehearse a couple times to get the sound down (it’s not like it’s live, so you could easily restart if something went wrong). Once you were finished, they brought in the studio audience and you got a chance to go back to your green room and chill for a little while. 

Seth had a couple other guests, so while you were waiting, you knocked on Tom’s door to greet him and discuss the talking points each of your management had given Seth.

As the in-house band was warming up, Seth came into the room.

“Well I didn’t expect to see both of you in here,” he joked, shaking both of you hands. Tom had been on the show before, but this was your first time meeting the host. 

After a couple minutes, Seth was informed of the time and made his leave, going out to meet his audience and begin taping. After his monologue and the first guest, you and Tom were called to the stage.

“Now for our nexts guests we have both the host and musical guest of this weekend’s Saturday Night Live, Tom Holland and y/n y/l/n! Come on out here!”

Tom gestured for you to go ahead of him, so you walked out, waving to the cheering crowd. You took the seat nearest to Seth’s desk. 

“Well hello, there. Good to see you two,” he greeted as you settled in. “Welcome back, Tom, and welcome for the first time, y/n.”

“Wait this is your first time here?” Tom asked incredulously. You laughed.

“Yeah! Up until a few months ago like, no one knew who I was. Not even Seth!” you poked right back. Seth jokingly agreed. 

The interview went well, both of you telling some funny stories and explaining how the week was going. Finally, you cut for a commercial.

“Alright we’ll return with y/n and Tom after this short break!”

You were right back to the interview after the commercial “break.” Towards the end of it, you all got off on the subject of alcohol.

“You are 21, right?” Tom asked you. You rolled your eyes and gave an exaggerated hair flip.

“Yes, I am of the legal age. You should know as well as anyone what it’s like to have a baby face,” you roasted, causing the audience to go “ohh!” and Tom and Seth to raise their eyebrows.

“Wow looks like we’ve got a little rivalry now. The real question is who can handle their alcohol better. I think we oughta bring you two back for my day drinking segment to settle this!”

Both of you overconfidently pointed at yourselves when Seth asked who was better with alcohol.

“Now that’s an idea I can get behind!” you exclaimed before the interview finally wrapped up and you got ready to go sing. Tom and Seth stayed at the desk while you performed, which thankfully only took one shot.

As you wrapped up the show, you gave final waves to the audience and then headed offstage. You and Tom walked through the halls together and Seth caught up with you after finishing his outro.

He thanked you both for being on the show, you took a few pictures, then talked for a while. Seth was eventually called away to look at something, so you said your goodbyes to him and continued towards the green rooms.

“You were great tonight. Your voice is phenomenal,” Tom said to you. “and honestly I can’t believe you haven’t been doing talkshows that long. You’re a natural.”

“I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I love to talk about myself,” you quipped. “But seriously, thank you. Everything leading up to now has happened so fast, it’s hard to really gauge if things are going well or not.”

“I can relate to that. It’s hard, but having my family and brothers helps keep me grounded, you know? Harrison, too. They know that they can call me out and, yeah, I might get mad at first, but I understand that they’re keeping me from getting a big head.”

“Yeah I can’t imagine how overnight it must have been for you. My family and friends definitely don’t miss the chance to poke a little fun here and there to keep my ego down, too. You know, it’s nice talking to someone who understands for once. I love them, but unfortunately they’ll never fully get what it’s like, but you do,” you smiled.

You talked a little more, then spilt off to actually go to get ready to leave the building for the night. The upcoming Friday was going to be a long one.

Once again, you let your manager and assistant and everyone leave ahead of you. Regardless of whether you would hitch a ride with Tom again, you could find your way around easily.

You waited by the door until you heard their voices nearing and the boys came into the hallway.

“Oh y/n, you’re still here, too,” Harry said.

“Yeah, I was trying to decide what to do for dinner tonight before I head back to the hotel.”

“Well we’re going to grab some pizza if you want to join us,” Harrison offered happily, causing Tom to look at him funny. 

“Y/n probably doesn’t want to be bothered by us all day every day and plus, she had pizza last night, I’m sure she doesn’t want it again. Sorry, y/n, don’t feel pressured by this div,” Tom said apologetically.

“Honestly, I could eat pizza everyday, so that’s not an issue, and I honestly love hanging out with you guys. You remind me of my friends back home. If y’all want to eat together, I seriously would not mind.”

“Really?” Tom asked incredulously, then recomposed himself. “Well, yeah, sure. We were gonna head back to the hotel to change clothes and then figure things out from there, is that okay?”

“That sounds perfect, except I’m paying the cab fare this time.”

***

In most situations, a group of guys you’d only known a couple of days asking you into their hotel room would be a major red flag, and it probably still should have been, but you threw caution to the wind and went to Tom’s suite anyways.

Harry answered the door and let you in, and inside you found Tom and Harrison on the floor of the living space drinking beers. They both raised their cans up to you as you came in.

All three of the boys were in simple sweats and t-shirts, similar to you in your leggings and sweatshirt. It wasn’t much later that Harry went to the lobby to retrieve the pizzas they’d ordered and you were all digging in, seated around the coffee table talking.

You all discussed random things, poking fun at each other like you were old friends. It was like they’d already accepted you as one of their own.

“How you think this weekend’s gonna go, y/n?” Tom asked between swigs of his ale.

“I’d say pretty good. I’m hella nervous though. SNL is like its own universe.”

“You can say that again. This is like nothing I’ve ever done before.”

“Oh, come on. You two are both going to do great Saturday. Don’t think too much about it and just have fun,” Harrison encouraged as you continued eating.

Throughout the evening, you couldn’t help but pick up on the way you and Tom kept making eye contact. It was brief, but it was different than how you and Harry or Harrison looked at each other. There was something else there.

Your stomach fluttered. Who else could say that they spent an evening drinking with their biggest celebrity crush? And then continually exchange flirty looks?

At one point Tom even tossed a wink at you after cracking a joke, causing your heartbeat to quicken momentarily. 

After getting lost in conversation with the boys, you realized the time and prepared to excuse yourself back to your own room. The coming morning was going to be an early one, after all. 

“Oh man, I better head out. We’ve got a long day ahead of us,” you commented, stretching as you stood up. The boys followed suit.

“Wow I didn’t even realize how long we’ve been sitting here,” Tom added.

“Yeah. Thanks again for letting me come over tonight. I haven’t gotten to do something like this in a while so it’s nice to just spend time with people who I don’t pay to hang around me all day, you know?”

“I understand and definitely can agree, since these divs are kind of paid to hang around me.”

You all laughed as Tom walked you to the door. 

“Well. See you bright and early...” you trailed.

“Yeah, see you then,” Tom answered, awkwardly sticking out his arms for a hug. You obliged, squeezing your arms around his neck as his held your waist.

And goodness did he give good hugs.

***

You were definitely tired walking into 8H Friday morning. The caffeinated drink in hand helped a little, but late night beers paired with waking up early didn’t quite go hand in hand.

It wasn’t really a hangover either, since you hadn’t been fully drunk, but it didn’t help the exhaustion from traveling, working the past two days, and a lack of sleep.

The first thing you had to do was rehearse your songs for Saturday as the set team worked on transporting and putting together large set pieces that had been made at the navy yard in Brooklyn.

Tom and the cast weren’t far away, figuring the live show with costuming and quick changes along with doing some pre-filmed sketches. The writers were continually making adjustments and figuring out how things would be done. 

They eventually called you over, too, to rehearse your sketches and film one of them. You had to get used to the costumes and cue cards and blocking of each. There had been some minor changes as well, so you had to be quick on your feet.

By lunchtime, all the cast took a well deserved break to sit and have a bite. The writers were having to shuffle around while they tried to eat as you and Tom sat down to talk some more.

“Hey, sorry to bug you, but do you guys mind if I take a picture or two for the SNL social media accounts?” a page asked while you were munching on sandwiches.

You and Tom looked at each other and shrugged.

“Fine with me,” you answered, Tom giving a similar reply. The two of you leaned in next to each other, holding up your sandwiches and laughing.

A few photos were snapped and you and Tom approved of them to be posted online. You thought nothing of it as you went to more rehearsals, working through the show’s order and trying to get down timing before Saturday’s dress rehearsal and show.

You couldn’t help but laugh watching the sketches, as this was your first time seeing the ones you weren’t a part of. Tom’s comedic timing and dry British humor paired well with the material he was given.

When the day came to an end, you were looking through instagram and gathering your things. You went to SNL’s page and put the post of you and Tom together onto your story, adding the text “Can’t wait for everyone to see my favorite sandwich partner host the show tomorrow!”

As before, you thought nothing of it and posted the story, heading out the door to ride back with Tom and the boys.

***

At the hotel, you and Tom had decided to not hang out for the evening since you’d be having a late, late night Saturday and wanted to get some sleep. You opened up social media as you laid in bed to wind down.

You decided to look at the picture of you and Tom from lunch again and read some comments, hoping there would be some funny ones and whatnot.

Instead, you found hundreds of comments saying “omg ship” and “my two faves together” and “this couple would be everything!!” 

You were honestly shocked to see people saying that about you, especially since you had never heard of your fans indicating that they wanted to see you two together.

Twitter was also buzzing over you and Tom’s picture, some fan pages just talking about either one of you, while others also talked about shipping you.

In your heart, you kind of enjoyed it, since you were hardcore crushing on Tom now, but you had no idea how he felt.

Did he like you back? Did he just think of you as just a friend or acquaintance? Was he secretly dating someone and you were just reading too much into it? 

It was much to think about, so instead you closed your phone and fell into a deep slumber.

***

You didn’t have to be in the studio as early as the past days since dress rehearsal wasn’t until 8pm and the show started at 11:30. You felt better rested than the day before, but butterflies were constantly erupting in your stomach.

You and Tom caught each other at the building’s entrance and went up the elevators together.

“Ready for tonight?” you asked, tapping a foot anxiously.

“Absolutely not. You?”

“Same here. Not only is it going to be watched by millions, but some of the most important people in my life are coming and I’m freaking out a little.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked softly. “And who would that be?”

“Well, my parents and some friends from home. I can sing in front of sold out stadiums but I still get nervous if I know they’re in a crowd. It’s stupid, I know.”

“No I totally get it. My parents and brothers will all be here, too, and my heart races when they watch my work. The best advice ever given to me, though was ‘turn nerves into excitement,’ and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

You nodded and smiled up at him.

“That is pretty good. Thanks,” you replied as the elevator doors opened. 

The halls were bustling with what seemed like every employee as you headed to your green room. It wasn’t long before you were being thrown updated scripts and rehearsing again.

Finally as dusk turned to night, the dress rehearsal audience seats began filling up. You were bouncing nervously in the hall as you watched the cast begin the cold open on a monitor.

“Nervous?” a male voice asked quietly next to you. It was Tom, of course. You bobbed your head from side to side.

“Excited,” you replied cheekily. He smiled and was about to say something else when a crew member came by to lead him to his starting place for the monologue. He gave a quick wave before heading backstage, instead. 

The dress rehearsal went okay, certain jokes and lines being cut and rearranged by the end for time. Thankfully the audience received everything well, for the most part. 

Your own music and sketches felt like a rush, but you were proud. Tom’s advice had really gotten to you, because you were bubbling with excited anticipation for 11:30 broadcast to begin.

There was about an hour between dress and the actual taping, so you scarfed down a few bites of food and tried to shake out some jitters. You also sipped some caffeinated hot tea and did vocal runs to stay in tip top shape. 

Your friends and family stopped by the green room to say hi before they joined the audience, giving you hugs and encouragement for the evening ahead.

As the clock neared 11:30, you were walking down a hall already dressed for your first song when you almost bumped into Tom.

“Oh, hey! Great job at dress! You’re gonna do amazing,” you immediately said, making him beam.

“Thank you! And you too! Your voice is on fire tonight, as if it’s ever not.”

“You haven’t heard me try to sing sick, then. I sound like a diseased animal.” You shook your hands and head to dismiss yourself. “But, uh, earlier I was gonna tell you ‘break a leg’ and then I remembered you used to dance, sooo... merde.”

Tom raised his brows and chuckled. 

“You know that phrase too?” You nodded. “Well then merde to you, too. Oh, and I was wanting to ask if tonig-” 

Tom was cut off by someone once again needing to drag him away to prepare for the show, causing you both to toss waves at each other again. Maybe he’d finish his thought later.

This was it. The real deal. 

You took that as a cue to find your place by the monitors until after Tom’s monologue and the commercial break, when you’d start moving to stand with the band.

The cold open landed well, and you felt chills hearing two of the cast yell,

“And live from New York, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!”

The classic jazz music of SNL played over the intro and Tom made his way down the iconic steps to do his monologue. 

Your heart fluttered seeing him stand on that stage with a wide smile, waving at the crowd. He was dressed in a blue suit and his curls were styled just right. He looked incredible.

The monologue landed well and you felt an even bigger flutter as you heard Tom lead into commercial, saying the iconic line,

“We have a great show for you tonight! Y/n Y/l/n is here! So stick around we’ll be right back!”

With that the camera panned out and cut, and chaos began as the crew moved everyone to set the first live sketch. In the meantime, a prefilmed sketch played, the one you had participated in.

The audience cheered and laughed at your surprise appearance in the sketch, which made you feel really good. You had moved now to a place where you could see the stage in person.

The camera panned in as the audience applauded and the next sketch began. Even after having seen it multiple times that week, you couldn’t help but laugh as the ridiculous character Tom played so well. 

When they cut to another commercial break, it was your time to get ready to sing the first song. 

Your stomach fluttered like it always did before a show, but Tom shot you a thumbs up before the break ended and boosted your confidence. A camera was pointed in his face as he calmly said,

“Ladies and gentlemen, y/n y/l/n,” as he gestured towards you.

The lights came up and you began playing, and you became lost in the music like always. It came and ended quickly, and suddenly you were listening to the cheers of the audience. You waved and bowed in thanks as the cameras panned again.

Up came the weekend update, your favorite part of any Saturday Night Live. The jokes for the segment were typically written on Saturday, so many of them were new to you. 

Tom came and stood next to you during the update with a bowl-cut red wig dressed in khakis and a sweater vest over a button up. You looked him up and down amused.

“Your performance was amazing,” he whispered.

“Thanks. You’re doing great out there. They love you,” you whispered back.

“I sure hope so. Hey I’ve been trying to ask if-” he started, but then was cut off by someone grabbing him and leading him towards stage for the next sketch. Your stomach fluttered again.

What could he possibly want to ask me?

The live sketch transitioned into a prefilm and then you were up again, this song was more energetic and included some choreography, and you felt confident in the shimmering gold bodysuit and boots you were wearing. 

You happily danced and sung after Tom reintroduced you to the crowd and got a large round of applause. There was only one sketch left of the show and you were in it, so the team rushed you into a quickchange booth offstage to put on your costume and a quick wig.

The sketch began and you stood to the side nervously. When your cue came, you burst onto the stage clumsily, as directed by the script. Your character made some inappropriate comments to Tom’s which garnered you many laughs again.

It was satisfying.

Once the sketch ended, all that was left were the goodnights, so you were again rushed off to change into a cute jumpsuit and reaffix your hair. Tom came out in a blue suit with the jacket unbuttoned, a black tee underneath. 

You rushed to take your place next to him as other cast members filed in around you, Lorne standing in the middle of the room watching to make sure everyone came out. The audience applauded as the music played and camera panned.

After they gave the final countdown, Tom began giving thanks to many people, from cast and crew, to family, and to you.

“I want to give a huge thanks to tonight’s musical guest, y/n y/l/n,” he exclaimed, gesturing to you. The crowd cheered and you laughed and waved, giving him a joking elbow. 

“I love you all! Goodnight!” he finally exclaimed. 

With that, the music was brought up and everyone began hugging as the credits rolled. You immediately turned to Tom and he to you, both of you throwing arms wide. 

You wanted to hug him forever, but realized that it would look fishy and there were many people you still wanted to hug and thank.

Both of you pulled back, giving each other a quick “good job!” before turning to others.

***

You were finally offstage and had said quick goodbyes to your family, who wouldn’t be staying for the afterparty. As you headed towards the greenroom for the last time that night, you were stopped by Tom.

“Hey! Y/n,” he said, putting a hand on your shoulder.

“Oh my gosh there you are!” you said, turning to give him another hug, this one more emotional and less performative.

“I’m serious y/n, you were incredible. I know I’ve said it a million times but you have a real gift. Not to mention your acting skills,” he said into the crook of your neck.

You pulled away to look at him, arms still loosely wrapped around him.

“Well thank you, but you were great too. Everyone loved you. I loved you out there.” You paused for a moment, arms sliding from his shoulders as you continued to walk down the hall. “You know I had a lot of fun this week. Doing this and just hanging out. I was really nervous to meet you.” 

“I did too, and yeah, we were all super nervous to meet you, too. Like I told you before, we listen to your music a lot. But, uh, that being said. All night I’ve been trying to ask if you’d like to go to the afterparty with me?”

“Oh yeah that’s perfect! Are the guys coming too?” you asked enthusiastically, not detecting the nervousness in his voice.

“No, no. I mean, yeah they’ll be there but...” he stopped and you followed suit. “I’d like you to go with me with me. And ideally leave with me... alone.” 

Your eyes widened and breath hitched. Now it clicked. He was asking you out.

“Oh! Well then... I’d like that very much.” You smiled.

“Yeah?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah,” you answered.

Let’s just say you were singing a different kind of tune that night once you left to your empty hotel room “with him.”

***

A/N: omg omg omg I started this story forever ago but finally got around to finishing it! No new marriage project chapter this week, I thought I’d just post this to hold y’all over ;) Thanks for reading!

Permanent tag list: @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl

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[meteoratheopposed]

So the Prologue Chapter has concluded!

Honestly, I don't know how to feel. It's been two years since the conception of this idea and as guilty as I feel about the incredibly rocky start I've had, I'm excited about the future.

I've learned a lot from my experiences and it's not only going to be quicker but easier in the future. I'll probably go into my new process in a different post so for now I'll just say progress is already going great. (I've done in just a few days for this chapter what would've took months for the Prologue chapter.)

Personally, the past couple of weeks have been hard. Two of my hamsters died (there's even more chaos and backstabbing involved in that but I probably shouldn't be posting about that on this blog) and my leopard gecko was missing for about four days. Honestly, my creativity was at an all time low. (Hence why I hadn't responded to asks straight away.) But, things should be fine now, I've grieved my losses and my leopard gecko is safe and sound now so now I should bee back on track with the comic.

Of course there's going to be a little haitus. I'm not sure for how long yet but I'll keep everyone updated. The only reason the last few pages came out is because I'd finished them in bulk and queued them so I don't want to risk falling off the now officially planned 6pm (BST) Wednesday schedule. If I'm feeling confident about my page production, I may also upload on a Sunday ut that's not set in stone yet.

Sorry this has been a bit of a messy post (and, well, messy start to the AU) But I can confidently say things will only improve and I truly appreciate the support you guys have given me. I read every comment and tags and I'm so grateful that people enjoy my work.

Like I said in a previous post, I'm still active and I'll get to asks soon, but as usual, it's 2 am so for now, it's bed time.

Oh! Before I go, I'll leave this rough sketch of the next chapter cover, just for you guys!

[edmorrish]

Sound Heap

I’m launching a new podcast and I’m really excited about it. It’s called Sound Heap and the idea is that John-Luke Roberts hosts a selection of clips of the week’s best podcasts. All of these podcasts are, of course, made up. 

https://podfollow.com/1569675977

John-Luke improvised the podcasts with over thirty different comedians, each of whom would do ten-minute excerpts of half a dozen different ideas over the course of an hour on Zoom*. We then took those recordings and whittled them down to just the absolute gold, and put a voiceover over the top to tie it all together and contextualise it. Paddy Gervers and Rob Sell at Torch & Compass wrote us some jingles and a theme (the rest of the music is from the Epidemic music library), and we made it sound like a real podcast - we’ve made the chatcasts sound like chatcasts, the documentaries sound like documentaries, and so on.

What’s exciting is that blend of the loose, spontaneous comedy and the tight, edited production. It’s a best-of-both-worlds, cake-and-eat-it approach that allows funny people - people like Mark Watson, Josie Long, Kevin Eldon, Katherine Parkinson, Bilal Zafar, Sooz Kempner - to just be funny, while also taking out the thinking-out-loud footsteps that are sometimes necessary in improv to get from one good bit to the next.

Podcasting has overtaken Radio 4 as the dominant home of UK audio comedy, in volume at least, but the BBC still sets a benchmark that independent podcasts can struggle to match, for fairly obvious reasons; a Radio 4 comedy with a budget of ten thousand pounds an episode can afford actors and studios and sound designers, of course, but also to pay writers and producers for the time to think and craft the programmes. Few independent productions can match that for resources and cut their cloth accordingly - sitting and chatting with a friend for an hour and cutting out the dull bits doesn’t take as much time, effort, or resource as writing a sitcom or sketch show, rehearsing it, recording it, and editing it. And even the resources that come from the BBC (or Audible) don’t particularly speed up the time it takes to do that, which is why single-authored audio comedy runs in series of four to six episodes every twelve to eighteen months.

Sound Heap attempts to bridge that gap; we asked very little time of our guest comedians, no more than they’d take to do an interview podcast. And they did no prep - we emailed them the titles of the podcasts we were thinking of doing the day before but they were under no obligation to think about it until John-Luke started the “podcast”. But then we did what we’d do for a funded production - whittled and edited and mixed. (We received funding from the lovely people at Auddy which meant that everyone got paid, but we would have done it anyway; it would just have been Paddy and Rob making music when they had time, as a favour, rather than us being able to pay them. And it meant that John-Luke and I were able to fence off time to make it, rather than squeeze it in between paid jobs; as I said, the main thing a budget buys you is time). I think there are lots of very good funny-people-chat podcasts, but they’re not a particularly adventurous form of audio, and having grown up on the produced silliness of The Goon Show and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, it’s been brilliant to find a format that allows for that sort of structure and sound design to be placed on afterwards.

I keep telling people, “I can’t think of anything like this”, and I stand by that. The sheer range of voices means we’re not asking you to suspend disbelief and accept a comedian as two different characters (apart from John-Luke, and we are asking you to suspend your disbelief in other ways...). And that allows us to jump from parody documentary to parody chatcast to parody solocast, with sound design accurate to the genre, in a way that provides maximum variety - it’s a sketch show! - in a way that’s quite rare. But as I was typing this, I was thinking of something Armando Iannucci said to me when I interviewed him for a documentary, about how when he joined the BBC Radio Light Entertainment department**, there was a sort of “set” way of making radio comedy: 

“One or two people went into a room and wrote something - they were probably men - and they would come out with a script, and a producer would say ‘Oh, very nice, very nice’ - I hated that phrase, ‘nice’, in my head that meant ‘not funny’... A studio would be booked for two or three hours, and actors would come in and read out the words from the page, and then sound effects would be added, or indeed played in live, if someone had access to a horse or anything like that nearby. And then if it was a thirty-minute programme, maybe they’d record thirty-one minutes to be on the safe side, and then they’d cut things down.”

 - Armando Iannucci, The Frequency of Laughter, 2014.

That way of making radio comedy is only sustainable with a budget. For people trying to make things without the backing of a commissioner, you need to find ways to do things for, essentially, free. This limits the amount time you have, and the creativity that you have time to apply. And then I remembered what Armando went on to say, immediately after that, in the same show:

“...so On The Hour was a sort of reaction to that. It was a kind of experiment in looking at doing what was fundamentally a sketch show, but seeing if we could do it in a different way so that it didn’t sound like all those sketch shows. So it was about, if we were recording a thing that was meant to sound like a news report, actually recording it like a news report, which is get three or four people to play the parts of different characters, give them the gist of the funny stuff they’re meant to say but ask them to say it in their own words, have someone ask them questions, and so on. So you end up recording about an hour and a half of these three interviews, and then, like any news editor, going away and cutting that hour and half of stuff down to a report that lasted three or four minutes. It was asking, ‘what is the style of the joke we’re trying to tell would it be improved if we did it in that style?’.“

- Armando Iannucci, The Frequency of Laughter, 2014.

So, in trying to create a new production style that straddles the low-fi independent production methods of making original audio in 2021 and the high standards set by the greatest of audio comedy down the years... we’ve ended up copying a Radio 4 show from 1991.

Sound Heap is available wherever you get your podcasts; the first episode is out next Wednesday, 2nd June.

*Actually Cleanfeed, but we used Zoom so they had eye contact.

**My former employers.

[solastia]

Love And Lies | 3

Pairing: Kim Seokjin x F!Reader

Summary: You are a simple maid. When your lady and dearest friend need help escaping an arranged marriage with King Seokjin so they might be together, you do the only thing you can - take her place. 

You followed behind the man who introduced himself as Chancellor Namjoon Kim, listening to him halfheartedly as he explained that while that was his official title, he was more of a Jack-of-all-trades and preferred calling himself the King's right-hand man.

You smooth your hands down your gown, hoping it was grand enough to disguise the commoner wearing it. You’d changed for supper, something that Eleanor had told you was common for people at court. According to her, depending on the person they might even change outfits as many as three or four times a day! The nobility were a ridiculous bunch, you sniffed derisively to yourself. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for the maids that had to care for all that clothing and the laundresses that cleaned them. Two times a day - not counting your sleeping gown - was extravagant enough for the likes of you.

The ensemble that you had now made you feel like a fairy princess of legend. You were a shimmering cloud of pink and white as you glided along the stone floors. The dress was pink velvet lined with white silk, along with white ermine fur on the edges of the sleeves and bottom of the gown. The bust was embroidered with silver thread and decorated with glistening pearls. You were also very happy to note that the top was much more modest this time around, though not by much. Eleanor had let you pick the jewelry yourself, so you’d settled on a simple strand of pearls around your neck and tiny pearl earbobs. Your hair was left loose and free of any painful and tedious styling with the hot iron.

Truthfully, you rather liked this dress. The fabric was soft to the touch and very comfortable. You even liked the little slippers that matched. When you asked Eleanor why she was letting you wear something like this, she had told you that your previous ensemble had been to impress the King, and this one was to appeal to the man. It was an odd statement considering that your goal was to not appeal to him, and she’d seem rather conflicted saying such a thing. You wished you’d had the time to question her further, but the Chancellor had shown up before you could.

In the end, it wouldn’t matter if you looked rather pretty in your outfit because you knew that eventually, he’d move on to the other women. You had literally nothing of interest about you to keep royalty interested. After all, what could you speak to him about beyond stain removal techniques and how to haggle for the best prices at the market?

Chancellor Namjoon opens a door and ushers you inside, seeming to not notice or mind that you hadn’t even been listening to him talk this entire time.

“His Majesty will be with you in a moment.”

He nods and leaves briskly, closing the door behind him. You take the chance to look around, your mouth falling in awe as you take in the rows and rows of scrolls. So this was a library! You had heard of such things but had simply chalked it up to the fancies of nobles, but this was truly amazing. Beyond the scrolls, there were even parchment tied together filled with writing and little sketches. A few were even covered in decorated leather, something that boggled your mind. Books! You had never thought to see one in your life.

You adored the family you worked for, of course, but not a single one of them had any use for reading and writing. Eleanor could write a little, mostly her name and a list of things she needed that looked like badly designed inkblots. Jungkook was a little better but mostly relied on drawing things out. You remembered the departed Duchess had a slanting script that was like beautiful art to your young eyes. She’d taught you how to read and write before she’d passed, but you rarely got a chance to use that knowledge. You never had anyone to write to and the Duke saw no use for books.

Your hand trailed reverently across the hard leather of one of the bound pages, wishing you had the freedom to peer inside.

“Do you like to read?”

The voice startled you, and you gasped and turned with your hand on your chest.

“Goodness. I’m...sorry, Your Majesty.”

His smile was kind, but his eyes looked like he was laughing at you. “It’s quite alright. So, do you?”

“Hmm?” You hummed softly, distracted by the way his now silver tunic made him glow like an otherworldly being. “Oh, read?” You smile sheepishly, forcing yourself to focus on the conversation and not on his lips. “I don’t get to very often, but I like stories.”

He seemed pleased with your answer, gesturing towards the book. “We got this one from a visiting Monarch years ago. Livres des merveilles du monde. It’s about a merchant named Marco Polo who was an adventurer for a while and traveled through the Orient. I was certain I was going to grow up and conquer the world someday when I first read this.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Ah, the bane of my existence. Responsibilities,” he says dramatically, obviously trying to make you smile. “You may borrow it if you like. I’m not certain if it will be riveting enough for you, but you’re welcome to it. Or anything else here, during your stay.”

He picked up the book and handed it to you, his grin growing as he watched you cup it in your hands and stare at it in awe. A whole book!

You smile up at him genuinely for the first time, your smile wide and beaming with joy. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m not certain I’ll have time to finish it since I read so very slowly, but I thank you for the chance.”

He nods, his cheeks pinkened slightly. He gestures with a hand towards a table in the corner.

“I have some warm wine and honey pastries if you’d like to join me. I thought we might have a chance to get to know each other a little more before we have the pressure of an entire room watching our every move.”

“Oh...yes, that will be...tense” you gulp and sit as gracefully as you can in the highbacked wooden chair.

His smile is soft and kind as he pours you a drink. “I suppose despite your status you’re not quite used to court life. Your father mentioned you preferred staying home.”

“Yes,” you stuttered nervously. “I found I was more comfortable tutoring at home rather than being fostered out. I’m afraid the one time I tried, I found the group of ladies rather spiteful and begged Papa to come home after only three months.”

Which was a true story. Eleanor had been sent to the Duchesse Aline Villeneuve - the King’s very own aunt - to learn how to run a keep and other “women’s arts” not long after her mother had passed away from a sudden illness. According to Eleanor, she had been horribly bullied by the other ladies in the Duchesse’s care and she “hadn’t cared to make friends with such vain and heartless wenches, anyhow.”

Personally, you had rather fond memories of that summer, as with Eleanor away you’d had the freedom to do as you pleased and you’d even made a new friend for a few months - a village boy with the most annoying laugh you’d ever heard but had been sweet and fun. The two of you had been inseparable for the entire summer until one day he didn’t show up to the stream you often met at. You still thought of that boy from time to time and hoped he was doing well. You never did learn where he disappeared to.

King Seokjin nods in understanding. “Unfortunately, it’s not going to be much better here. Gossip is practically a form of currency, and whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter,” he rolls his eyes and sits back in his chair, bringing up a mug of steaming spiced wine to his lips. He gulps and sighs, setting the cup back on the table.

“And in your case, it will be twice as bad as you are...well…” he coughs lightly, his cheeks blushing once more. “A high contender to be Queen?”

You sputter on the drink of wine you’d just taken, trying to hastily wipe any spilled droplets before he sees them.

“Yes...err, I am...that.”

“So,” he says loudly, slapping his hands onto his thighs. “I mostly wanted to set aside some time right now so you can tell me things you like to do. I’m afraid I have to live my entire life by a set schedule, so if I had some ideas for my courting days with you that would help greatly.” “Oh,” you smile mischievously, “Yes, I imagine it must be difficult trying to balance so many suitors. Romantic sailing on Monday, serenading on Tuesday, kissing in a dark alcove on Wednesday...”

“You have no idea, “ he groans, only to still and gape at you in astonishment. “You’re making fun of me!”

“I would never, Your Majesty,” you drop your eyes to your lap, still smiling despite the way you were internally smacking yourself. This wasn’t home, you had to curb your tongue.

He squints at you suspiciously. “I have a feeling you would and will. You have some spirit hiding under that demure stance, don’t you Lady Eleanor?” He cocks his head and looks at you with an expression of pleased wonder.

“Perhaps, Your Majesty.”

“I think,” he begins softly, his tone making you lift your eyes to meet his. “In private settings like this, you may use my first name.”

Your eyes widen incredulously. “Oh, I couldn’t!”

“I can order you to if I must,” his smile is playful, even while his eyes are staring at you intensely.

“I...alright. Thank you...Seokjin,” you respond quietly and no doubt with crimson cheeks.

“There. That wasn’t so hard. And...I liked hearing it.”

He stands up and offers you his hand. “It’s time to head to supper. I can escort you as far as to the hall, but I have to go to the high table without anyone seeing you with me. Don’t want them to see you entering the dining hall on the King’s arm; that would make you a target for the harpies,” he winks, linking your arm in his. “You can send a list of activities we can do together later.”

The walk down the hall is too short, but you’d enjoyed the feeling of his strong arm encasing yours and the occasional sneaky peeks of his beautiful side profile. He releases you as soon as the noisy dining hall is close enough to hear.

“I must leave you here, but I look forward to speaking with you on the morrow. I’ll have someone bring the book to your room tonight.”

“Thank you, Your M…” you begin, only for him to raise an eyebrow at you daringly. You glance around you for eavesdropping servants and sigh. “Thank you, Seokjin.”

His beaming smile is worth your embarrassment. “Well done, lambkin. Be sure to try the custard tarts, they are the best!”

He waves and strides off, leaving you to find the waiting Jungkook and be escorted to your seat. Something pricked at the back of your mind, however. Lambkin? Why did that seem so familiar? Perhaps you were just overwhelmed. You shake your head and focus on the elegant supper in front of you as you find Jungkook waiting just inside the door, and he gestures for you to walk ahead of him. You can tell from the way his jaw is clenched he’s dying to ask you about the meeting, but there is no way to subtly speak to him at the moment.

The dining hall was brimming with people and you praised Eleanor for being the sort of noble who kept to herself, since the chances of anyone knowing her here were incredibly low. Your seat is incredibly close to the high table - in fact, it was directly above you. A few more steps to your right and His Majesty would be getting crumbs and wine on your head.

You’re not brave enough to look at him yet, though, and decide to look around for your “competition.”

Your table seems to be where they are all located, judging by the way most of the women gathered around you meet your curious gaze with measuring looks of their own. Most of them turn away after a few seconds, obviously dismissing you as not a threat.

One girl that looks similar to Eleanor all the way down to her bouncing curls grins at you playfully and waves at you with the chicken leg in her hand. You nod in answer, adding a slight smile as you decided she seemed nice enough.

A regal brunette meets your eyes with a quirk of her eyebrow, blatantly looking you up and down. Her lips thin and she pointedly turns away with a sneer, clutching her silverware almost threateningly. Alright, she will not be someone you want to know.

Directly across from you is a redhead and you snort, coming to the realization that His Majesty literally has every color of the rainbow to pick from for his bride. Variety is the spice of life, you suppose. This woman seems very disinterested in everything around her, however, focusing on her meal and only interacting with servants to refill her goblet.

At the head of the table and directly at your elbow is the one that you can only assume is the Princess. She is incredibly pretty, you have to admit. Her dark black hair is mostly loose and cascading about her in waves. The sides have been pulled back and secured with a large golden hairpin the size of a dagger with little jeweled flowers adorning it. Her dress is strange yet beautiful. Silk or satin, if you had to guess. The top was lavender and embroidered with flowers and some sort of serpent that vaguely looked like a dragon. The bottom was nearly peach-colored and consisted of the same decorations. Her features were sharp and sculpted, with high cheekbones and a thin nose. She looked exotic and lovely, but it wasn’t until her smile blinded you that you realized she was beautiful. She met your eyes with a twinkle in hers, reaching her delicate hand up to point at herself.

“I am Hosook. You?”

“I am Lady Eleanor Rose D’Aily, Your Highness,” you answer slowly, assuming that the way she was squinting while you spoke was her concentrating on your words. Perhaps she was learning the language still.

“You for him too?” she asked with a wave behind her at the high table.

“Yes, I was brought here for the King. I’m sure you’re a much better choice.”

The Princess smiles her understanding and waves away your compliment. “Too...ugg,” she grunts, obviously failing to find the word she wanted. She chose instead to flap in the general direction of King Seokjin like she was shooing away a fly.

“You...aren’t attracted to His Majesty?” you ask in a hushed voice. How could anyone not find him the most beautiful being to ever walk this earth?

She sticks out her tongue, “Reminds me of Haraboji...uh...Grandfather?”

You sputter a laugh which you know is too loud, but you can’t help yourself as Princess Hosook giggles with you. You feel yourself being watched and glance up to lock eyes with the very man in question. The King looks down at you curiously, his lips tilted in an amused smile as you can’t stop your giggles. Suddenly, he winks at you and you look away quickly as your laughter dies down into a shy smile.

“Oh,” Princess Hosook says slyly, clucking and patting your hand with a grin. “I see now. You nice, make pretty Queen.”

“Goodness, it’s not like that at all. We just met,” you rush to explain, your excuses being waved away yet again.

“I like…” she waves between the King and you. “Nice together. Uh...need more words,” she grumbles quietly, biting her lip.

“I could help, if you like? I helped my Lad...err...my Ladies Maid learn how to read and write.”

Her smile was beaming as she nodded her head in agreement. “Yes. Need be better to deal with them,” she nods her head towards the gaggle of noblewomen surrounding them.

“I understand. I have to wait to hear which days I need to spend with the King, and then we’ll set aside some time for us!” You smile kindly at the Princess, who grins back and attends her meal with much more gusto now that she had something to look forward to. You sigh and quietly thank the powers that be for making some sort of friend to get you through this, and one that you were able to fall back into your natural state of submission with. It would be easier to explain any lapses in your behavior if you were just a mere Duke’s daughter shadowing a Princess, rather than being with the other women who were basically your equals and expected you to be just as much of a spoiled prat as they were.

The meal comes to a close (and you were amazed that you only caught yourself staring at His Majesty less than five times), and Jungkook is back at your elbow to escort you to your rooms. As you accept his helping hand, you feel someone tap on your shoulder. Princess Hosook flicks her eyes up and down Jungkook with an exaggerated waggled of her eyebrows. Her hand goes to her chest and she mouths something that you assume is complimentary. Jungkook’s eyes are huge as he tries to follow what’s happening.

You giggle and slap his arm. “She thinks you’re handsome.”

“TAKEN…” he squeaks, “I’m taken. Sorry..uh...lady...majesty…”

“Always pretty ones,” Princess Hosook sighs and waves goodbye with fluttering fingers, disappearing with her own small army of attendants.

You continue to laugh quietly as Jungkook begs you to stop. You pause just before leaving the hall and catch the King’s eye right before he leaves for his own apartments. He smiles and shallowly bows, and you watch him until his broad shoulders disappear from sight.

“Sis,” Jungkook mutters quietly as he herds you back to your hallway. “You can’t…” he sighs. “I’m sure you think he’s handsome and he seems to be nice to you, but you can’t be with him. You remember that, right? You’re not who he thinks you are and he’d find that out if you were to marry him. I am literally stealing a potential bride from him, and the moment he finds out, he can kill us all.”

“I know, Jungkook. I’m not an imbecile.”

“I know that, but you’ve never been courted before. I forgot about that and now I’m worried that you’re over your head.”

You sigh and loop your arm in his as you walk. “I suppose I forgot that he’d be trying to win me over as much as the rest, at least at first. I might have let the sweet words and smiles affect me, but I promise Jungkook, I’ll remember. Besides, I saw the other potential brides. I am no match for them. The novelty of someone new will fade in a few days, and I pray that we have the deed to the keep no later than a month. Then, I will tell him that I don’t think I’m a good match for the Kingdom and we can be on our merry way.”

He sighs wearily and tugs you close for a quick hug. “I know, I trust you and your judgment, I just got worried. If he does anything that makes you uncomfortable or makes you feel compromised, let me know. I don’t care if he’s the king, I’ll throw down my glove.”

“You’ll not duel the King, Jungkook. Go seek your bed, brother dear,” you say with a tiny smile, pushing him away from you once you reach your room. “Tell Eleanor when she comes back from the kitchens she can go straight to her room. I won’t bother her tonight because I’m so exhausted from all this excitement I’m going to fall asleep the moment my head hits the mattress.”

Jungkook grins, a look you really don’t want to identity lighting his eyes. “Will do. Sweet dreams, sis.” He stomps off and leaves you to close the door to your opulent apartments.

You yawn and observe the room as you undress, leaving the layers of clothing across a chair to be taken care of the next day. The room was spacious and absolutely gorgeous, decorated in lovely shades of robin’s egg blue, white, and gold. There was an entire room just for clothing, one for washing, and yet another whole room for your ladies maid - something that Eleanor had seemed suspiciously excited about. You worried that she was going to try yet again to seduce her love now that she had a new sort of freedom without her father about.

You crawl onto the giant golden bed and arrange the blankets over you as you fight off another yawn. A full belly and an overwhelming day full of excitement seemed to be all your poor body could handle. Another yawn and you drift off to sleep, visions of warm brown eyes and smiling lips filling your dreams.

A/N: 

1. Yes, that is Hoseok. He’s a pretty princess today. 

2. I don’t really like using the term “exotic” but since this is a historical and being done from the viewpoint of a person in the middle ages, it seemed fitting. 

3. Oh, look at that totally huge and obvious hint to the past. Hmmm....

[vargaslovinghours]

Aight well, since I’m pretty sure I’m most of the way out of Vargas brainspace this time around, have some unpublished/unfinished sketches and doodles! Prepare for lots of extremely rough concepts and possibly some walls of text lol

Veryyyy early sketch, the first unfinished one actually! You can tell how early since I hadn’t chilled out on the yarn yet lol. Was looking around for music and while I didn’t add it to the playlist, the male cover of Aishite, Aishite, Aishite is always going to have a special place in the inspiration part of my brain

They be doing homework. I’m so weak to domestic stuff, and every scene with Todd delivers so much, bless him

I threw around a couple card ideas, I’m still undecided as to which one I like better, but I decided pretty early on Jack of Spades and King of Hearts - the King of Hearts is known as the Suicide King which - well. And I’ve always seen the Spade as being like a stabbed version of the Heart lol, and since it’s black it’s the opposite in aesthetic. They both have a pretty dark aesthetic, so if one was going to get red, it seemed right to be Scriabin

A tiny tiny One Way Mirror doodle I didn’t have room for anywhere else. Just turn around!

I have a few iPod scribbles for late-night or early-morning ideas where I couldn’t quickly get to my notebook. This one was right after I woke up from a Vargas dream, pretty much the whole cast was there! This frame in particular stuck out to me because of the composition, it was a fully animated music video and they all had that two-frame back and forth poppy kind of motion, thus all the action lines lol

Don’t trust him with pointy things. I really like how the last one turned out other than his hand

A particularly stupid late-night idea lol

I may or may not have written a kiss scene into the TGWDLM crossover, I swear I didn’t do it on purpose

More of the TGWDLM crossover, you can see I got about 1/4th of the way through this one and then gave up lol. I actually had almost a half page of concept sketches for if Scriabin got Apotheosized - since I use eye colour to signify who’s been hiveminded, how was that supposed to work with Scriabin? Blue scars were pretty prevalent, so how about that? The idea of the two of them being on the same page and actively working together was rather intimidating as well, but it all didn’t go very far since that wasn’t the concept I wanted to explore

The idea of them going to a Cat Cafe popped into my head and I had to quickly scribble it down and then I remembered I don’t know how to draw cats lol. I drew Scriabin freaking out first, a cat among cats lol, and a cat trying to play with the yarn in his hair because cliche

The prospect of them going to the doctor’s just delights me so much. I actually made a little minicomic about it but I never finished it. I’d want to redo it to do it justice because I’m just so excited about them having to deal with this situation lol

An extremely absent-minded doodle lol, I was thinking about Edgar’s watch of all things. I think I did draw this on a Wednesday

Was trying a few pose references to finish digitally and somehow this spaghetti sketch was the best of the three lol. They look like theatre masks

Oh very cursed! Very cursed! Thanks me, how very cursed. I had to tho, this colour is called “Liar’s fave” and it somehow perfectly matches how I’ve been drawing his glasses. I think I prefer the censored version tho haha. Also surprisingly not a TGWDLM reference, I just wanted to draw him with weird coloured eyes

I was thinking about the weird, twisted ways Edgar gets “compliments”, especially from Nny, and the line “Anything in the right context can sound sweet. Isn’t that right, my dear?” accompanied by this pose made it’s way through my head. I didn’t expect the perspective lol

Oh my gosh, a main character, how’d that happen

I wanted to try grawlix swearing and had the idea of Scriabin buying stuff that neither of them would use just to piss off Edgar, so 👏 Also “taking a coat partway off” is one of my favourite kinds of poses and I so rarely draw it! Thanks, Edgar

A combination of thinking about how often they kiss (ironically about how Edgar was Scriabin’s first real kiss After, but this is almost certainly Before?? I dunno) and bruising. I only wanted the second one but my hand was not behaving >:| It did at least give me the image of Edgar’s tears falling through Scriabin’s fingers

He’s never had real eyes before, would he remember to blink if he started focusing really hard? I’ve had eyes my whole life and I forget to blink sometimes

Slowly but surely improving on his wings. I finally realized what they remind me of - hands! I guess that seems obvious lol, demon wings are usually based off bats, aren’t they? Just goes to show how many wings I’ve been basing off arms rather than hands. Probably doesn’t help that I usually draw fingers with two joints instead of three haha. Starting to understand how to keep the silhouette clean while still adding lots and lots of yarn as well, yay

Is he being sarcastic or saying it in earnest? That’s the fun part, you never know! Scriabin being vague on whether he’s being nice or rubbing salt in the wound has appealed to me for quite a good while. I think he less skirts the line and more falls on both sides simultaneously haha

Yet more wings! I liked the idea of each of them having a distinct silhouette but Scriabin still posing behind Edgar, so you can tell his wings are his own but they’re still muddling Edgar’s outline

So that’s most of my unfinished sketches and doodles that I couldn’t figure out where else to put! From early June up through September, what a ride ♪

[thewritewolf]

After the End Chapter 25: Study

First | Previous | Next | Last

@marichatmay

Enjoy!

Read on Ao3

“So is this everything you’ve got from daddio?”

Adrien looked at the mountain of paperwork, spread across folders and binders and ledgers, stacked precariously in his father’s old office, then looked back at his best friend with disbelief.

“Did you want more to go through?”

“Chill, bro. Just tryin’ to get the lay of the land, ya know?”

Alya put a hand on both of their shoulders. “Don’t worry, this is more than enough to work with. Let’s just start going through all this with an eye for detail and see where it takes us.”

“I just don’t know what we’re hoping to find.” Adrien let out an exhausted sigh as he pulled up a seat and grabbed a stack at random. “I’ve been pouring over this stuff for months now. What else could there be to find?”

“Adrien, my chaton, I think the world of you, but you don’t have a deceitful bone in your body.” Marinette took up a spot near him and took a ledger. “Besides, you haven’t exactly been in the best mindset while you’ve been on your own.”

“Having a bunch of extra eyes lookin’ at this stuff is only gonna do us some good. I’d bet my hat on it, bro.”

“I’m hoping you’re right.” Adrien’s eyes went distant for a moment as he frowned at a paper in front of him. “Otherwise, I don’t know how we’re going to tackle the Gentlemen.”

The next hour was spent with each of them pouring over documents from the elder Agreste, from anywhere between fourteen years ago and a month before the battle that ended his life. Despite his fears that it would be another tedious slog like it had been the first time, the off and on conversation with his friends kept things lively. At least, as lively as they could be while they were digging through his dead dad’s stuff.

With Marinette sitting so close to him, he was the first one to realize that something was up. He noticed that she was flipped back and forth between two pages, her nose crinkling in the way that he’d long come to associate with intense focus while she was in the mask.

He craned his neck to look at what she was, but it just looked like some internal memo from a couple years ago. There were vague memories of him looking through it weeks ago but it was just another dreary Agreste communication.

“Something up, m’lady?”

She held up one finger without looking up. By this point the others had started paying attention to her. All three of them waited for her to finish whatever it was she was doing. After a few minutes her eyes widened and she gasped.

“That’s it!” Her eyes locked onto his. “There’s some kind of message hidden here!”

“Wait, are you sure?” Adrien leaned over her shoulder but didn’t see anything out the ordinary.

“Yes!” Marinette pointed out a couple words in the middle of the memo. “There are a couple letters that have been randomly capitalized here.”

“Well, Nathalie was usually pretty overworked so I’m not too-”

“But its not just that! There is a lot more paragraphs than what a tiny memo like this would really need. And if you pull out all the capital letters from each paragraph…”

She sketched some notes on the side. Spaced out like she said and with the letters in place, they almost looked like a small sentence. A sentence with completely jumbled up words, but still.

“Okay…” Adrien felt a spark of excitement. He hadn’t expected to find something so quickly. “What do we do now then? It doesn’t make any sense like it is right now.”

“That’s where we come in.” Alya took the paper from Marinette’s hand. “Nino, M - keep digging through those memos. Adrien, find as many of those as you can to pass to them.” Alya pulled out her phone and began typing furiously. “And can you give me any important words that your father might have used as a cipher?”

After another hour of frantic work, they’d compiled a few whole papers of transcribed secret messages. They’d even pinned down that the only ones with messages were memos on the Wednesdays of each week, for whatever reason. And eventually Alya cracked the code - naturally, the magic word had been ‘Emily.’

Working as a team, they managed to get an entire one sided conversation decoded.

“Any idea where the other half could be?” Adrien said as they finished up.

Alya shrugged. “No clue. But these were internal memos, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So the Gentlemen had to have at least one person on the inside of the company.” Alya frowned and tapped at her chin.

“I’d bet that he also had them respond from the inside then too.”

Nino gave him a confused look. “What makes you say that, bro?”

“He was a control freak. There was no way he’d let it go out into something he couldn’t control, like the newspaper.”

Alya frowned in thought. “You might be onto something there, but we don’t know for sure right. We’ll have to make do with what we have right now.” She looked over at Marinette, who was pouring over the notes that they had made. “So… what’s it all worth, M? Was it worth two hours of our time?”

Marinette nodded slowly and looked up at them with her lips pursed into a thin, pale line. “This was without a doubt worth the effort to get it.”

“Well don’t keep us in suspense, girl! Spill the beans!”

“They’ve been working on this for a while, but basically?” Marinette took a deep breath. “They’ve got pieces of the old Guardian monastery and are using that to turn off kwami powers.”

They exchanged looks with each other.

“You’re… gonna have to explain that to us, girl.”

Marinette rubbed her temples. “Okay, so the Guardians are responsible for taking care of the miraculous, right?”

“Yeah…” Adrien glanced at the other two, who were just nodding along.

“Well, Hawkmoth wasn’t the first time a chosen has gone rogue. So they made their main base out of stuff that was pretty resistant to the powers of the miraculous. Or, well, they enchanted their stained glass and masonry to be that way.” She looked at Adrien. “If you tried to Cataclysm their building at the height of their power, it would have absolutely no effect.”

“But didn’t they get wiped out by an amok?”

“Yes - the powers of an amok, not the miraculous itself.”

“Seems like a pretty big flaw,” Alya said, crossing her arms.

“To be fair to them, those powers are both the hardest to account for, and have the miraculous holders easiest to take out in a one on one fight. After all, the butterfly and peacock miraculous don’t help much in a direct battle - they’re only good for attacks from a distance.”

“So - what?” Nino rubbed his temples. “They nicked some old rocks and that makes ‘em supes powerful?”

“Something like that.”

“Wait.” Adrien held up a hand. “Didn’t the old monastery get restored by the Ladybug cure years ago? Wouldn’t the monastery have resisted that?”

“Apparently the enchantments wore off a lot, and they had to spend years restoring them.” Marinette smiled. “But you’re right - the monastery is back. Which means they won’t be able to get more pieces of it, at least not without fighting a bunch of mystical warrior monks who know this stuff way better than they do.”

“But where does that leave us now?” Alya asked, elbows on her legs as she leaned forward.

“It means two things.” Marinette held up one finger. “First, it means that we know what these… let’s call them lodestones will look like. Old masonry, maybe something glass or jewel-like.”

Adrien’s eyes flew open. “Like that egg the Gentlemen dropped to get out of the alley!”

“Exactly! And two,” she held up a second finger. “Once their current stock is gone, they have no way of getting more. I’m also going to bet that they won’t be keeping all their lodestones in one place - between each one being a huge source of protection, from what I understand of Guardian magic, having them charged like this and too close together would break them. ”

“So… where do we start, then?”

“The lodestones need to be activated to work, and I doubt they’re going to keep them turned on all the time even though we know where they are.” Marinette started pacing. “And we know that since Chat’s transformation didn’t immediately drop that powers active before the lodestones are introduced are unaffected.”

Marinette stopped and grinned at them.

“I have a plan.”

[aloysiavirgata]

In The Gale

Title: In The Gale

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Author's Notes: For @perplexistan, who asked and helped me make it better. This is shortly after settling into the Unremarkable House. I tried making sense of their legal status, but it’s simply impossible and I gave up.

Our heroes quote from Melville, Shakespeare, Sagan, Baudrillard, and (Emily) Dickens.

***

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

***

She recites The Raven to herself on the drive in, lists all the state capitals in alphabetical order, and goes through the periodic table. Her body fizzes like a shaken soda, tiny anxious bubbles rising through her blood. They’ve done so much for this, called in so many favors. Mulder put his book on hold for a month, quizzing her with dog-eared notecards. 

“Immediate treatment of myocardial infarction,” he’d call, and she’d say “MONA TASS.”

She feels a pang for the simplicity of the other life, the hiding one, where she just had to ring up cigarettes and herbal Viagra at gas stations.

***

She’s the new girl at the cafeteria table, awkward and alone. Mulder had prepared her a lunch like it’s the first day of school, and she stares at it, wishing for an appetite.

From the corner of her eye she sees two colleagues - an MRI tech and an obstetrician, she thinks - talking softly and glancing over. Scully thinks she hears “FBI,” and she looks up and smiles, uncertain.

They blink at her, look away.

***

Ybarra comes around the corner, gliding in his cassock like a disapproving ghost. “Dr. Scully,” he says, in his pinched voice.

She smiles thinly. “Father Ybarra.”

“Nurse Mossing was looking for the chart for Mrs. Sullivan. Imagine my surprise when I found it in Room 314 instead of Room 413. That’s a potential HIPAA violation, Dr. Scully. That’s a federal law.”

Scully curls her hand so that her nails dig into her skin. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Father Ybarra, please forg-”

He holds up his palm. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and glides onward.

Scully closes her eyes and leans against the wall. She breathes through her nose until the ringing in her ears stops.

***

She wants to collapse into his arms and cry when she gets home, but that would be giving in. It would be letting them down.

“How’d it go?” he asks. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Knicks shirt, a five o’clock shadow.

She smiles brightly. “It was good. Learning curve, but good. I think Father Ybarra might be a tough nut to crack, is all.”

Mulder rubs his cowlicked hair. “Put your feet up, Scully, since you won’t wear sensible shoes.”

She does, and accepts the glass of wine he holds out. “Thanks. I’ll sleep well tonight, anyway. There are miles of hallways.”

He sits next to her on the couch. “I wrote a few pages,” he says. “I deleted a bunch, but I think there was a multi-paragraph net gain.”

“I’m glad you’re able to stop focusing on my stuff now,” she says. “Both back in the saddle.”

“Go team.”

She clinks her glass against his. She drinks her wine too fast.

***

Ybarra had come in during her rounds that morning and startled her into knocking a metal bedpan onto the floor. Scully thinks the reverberations of that sound will follow her to the grave.

She’s now in the chapel, tucked into a back pew. She’s been staring at the small altar, at the stained glass windows flanking the crucifix. The Blessed Virgin smiles beatifically down at her, a wretched sinner.

Scully laces her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her and bows her head against them. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

***

Mulder wakes her with tea and eggs. “You haven’t been eating,” he says, brow furrowed. 

She rubs her eyes, yawning. “What?”

He sits next to her on the bed, sets the plate and mug on her night table. “You just push your food around your plate, you hardly talk when you get home. What’s going on, Scully?”

She sits up, looking at his worried face. He’s sun-browned and tousled, beautiful, with a mouth that still makes her weak in the knees. “Nothing. It’s just a lot to jump back into.”

“I’m sure it is. And I still want to help you with it.” He pulls the flash cards from his pocket, touches her wrist with his other hand. “Let’s see - causes of upper zone pulmonary fibrosis?”

She looks at the ceiling, back at him. “I don’t need help.”

Mulder blinks, stung. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You just don’t need to hover over me. You have your own things to work on. Work on your book, patch up your henhouse. ” Her voice sounds snappish to her own ears.

His changeable eyes, now mossy green, darken. He chews his bottom lip, nodding slowly. “I thought you were one of my ‘things.’ Sorry to bother you.” He rises, walks downstairs.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

The tea goes down fine. Scully tries to eat the eggs but feels bile rise in her throat. She flushes them down the toilet instead of leaving them behind, because that is love.

***

She arrives at the nurses’ station on the second floor with three dozen donuts and two cardboard boxes of coffee. She deposits them on the desk. “Good morning, Annabel,” she says.

“Anneliese,” the woman says.

Scully nods, walks away.

*** 

He slides his hand up her pajama top, tracing circles on her ribs, sliding his fingers around to her breasts. He kisses the back of her neck. “Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm and ticklish in her ear.

She wants to pretend to wake up, to turn towards him and lose herself in his body. She wants to tell him everything, to be held and loved and petted and reassured. She wants him to remind her that she once stared down Congress, that some backwater priest and his prickly staff should be a joke to her. She wants them to laugh together at these silly, petty people.

But she can’t, she can’t disappoint him. He’s been so proud of her.

Scully stays still, breathes evenly until his hands move away and she’s alone again.

***

Her car rattles over the driveway, through shimmering waves of heat that rise from the crisping grass. It is the kind of late July afternoon where the sun is a hazy white ball in the west, and clouds of gnats are a permanent feature of the landscape. 

Scully parks, avoiding a puddle in which a peacock is standing. Mulder has recently become enamored of yard fowl. She narrows her eyes at it while opening the car door. 

“Good boy, Kevin,” she calls to it, wary.

Scully picks her way over the gravel in her thin heels. The peacock mews an alarm as she approaches, but doesn’t charge. She lets herself inside, shuts the heat and sun and wildlife outside. The house smells of coffee and microwave popcorn.

She walks into Mulder’s office and finds him hunched at his desk, typing. “Hey,” she says, and drops a kiss on his head. There’s a sketch of Baphomet taped to his monitor, her worn flash cards atop a tome about Raëlism.

He turns in his chair. He puts his arms around her hips. “Hey.” 

“Kevin behaved himself,” she offers.

“You two will be friends yet, you’ll see.”

She peers at the computer. “You get a lot done today?”

Mulder shrugs. “Eh, a bit. Waiting on a few emails, and I had to run that tubing to drain the sump down into the woods. Ate up most of the afternoon.”

Scully shakes her head in admiration. “I don’t know how you manage all the multitasking.”

“Well, the book helps me avoid the house, and the house helps me avoid the book. It’s a perfect system. That Ybarra guy still riding your ass?”

She chews her lip. “No,” she lies. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to have to beat up a priest.”

***

Scully gazes at herself in the empty locker room. She looks thin and tired, and her hair is frizzing up, even pulled back like this. All her makeup has sweated off except for smudged crescents of mascara. Her bra is the color of a Band-Aid, her underwear white and sensible. Between the two is the hard white rose of her gunshot scar, like a second navel, an artifact of a second birth. It is numb when she touches it, indifferent. There are no stretch marks from William, a tale missing from the anthology of her skin. She unhooks her bra, lets it slide down to the damp floor. Scully turns to observe her body in profile. The scar is gone this way, the tattoo hidden as well, and she smooths her hands along her ribs. Her breasts seem out of place to her when they are unbound, frivolous somehow. Vestigial. 

She looks away.

***

The hospital is labyrinthine, having been constructed of various additions when funds allowed. There are dead ends, pointless staircases, and a mysterious storage closet filled with old televisions. She makes little maps on notepaper. 

“So where did you work before this?” an orthopedic surgeon asks her.

A diner in Wyoming. 

“I was out West for a while,” she says.

***

A week in, and Mulder has made a cake to celebrate. A bouquet of Kevin’s shed tail feathers ornaments the table.

An offering, Mulder calls it, tickling her chin with one.

A week down, she thinks, and blows out the candle. She wonders when she’ll stop counting the time.

***

Shy, he gives her a chapter to read. It’s good, and she tells him so. It’s very good. She hears his voice in her head when she reads it, his passion. She loves the esoterica tucked into his gyri and sulci.

“Your prose was never this clear in your reports,” she remarks. 

“Hey if you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Scully laughs. “You want to read a few medical reports?”

He looks at her, suddenly serious. “Yeah,” he says. “I would. It would be nice to hear about your day for once.”

She wonders if love is the weapon that lets them wound so casually.

***

“You’re late,” Ybarra says softly. 

She doesn’t explain that she’d somehow ended up at the TV closet again, that the room numbering system in this hospital had been designed by nihilists, that the nursing student had Dermabonded her glove to a patient’s forehead.

She lowers her eyes like she did at Catholic school. She promises to do better.

***

“What’s going on?” Mulder asks her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Talk to me, Scully.”

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, drops them to her sides. “Nothing,” she says again, frustrating them both. “I’m tired. It’s a hard schedule.”

He places a throw pillow on his lap and pats it. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

She acquiesces, curling on her side with her back to him. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces the Fibonacci spirals of her ear. She wants to relax, to melt into his touch. She indulges in a Mulderesque conspiracy theory that the hospital microdoses the water with tetanus toxin to keep everyone rigid and tense.

Scully gazes at the windows, at the hard white light of summer streaming in. The curtains are blue with an arabesque pattern, and they looked very chic in the store. She wonders now if they seem desperate in this odd little house. She thinks of Meg March, dressed up in borrowed finery at the Moffats’ ball.

***

Scully clomps up the steps to the porch and kicks her rain boots off next to the umbrella stand. It contains four umbrellas and a gnarled hickory limb that Mulder claims is going to be polished into a fine walking stick one of these days. She goes into the house and is dismayed to find it stale and stifling and dark. Dust motes waft in Brownian motion through shafts of sunlight, undirected by fans or air conditioning. 

“Mulder,” she calls, and there is silence.

She twists her hair into a bun as she pads upstairs, old wood satiny under her bare feet. She pushes open the bedroom door, and the air is hot and still. 

“Mulder?” She needs his help with her zipper, but there is no reply.

She wrestles herself out of her silk sheath, sticky and irritating, and lets it puddle on the floor. Her bra follows. She feels guilty, as Mulder has turned out to be a surprisingly diligent housekeeper. His office is filled with perilous stacks of home improvement books and arcane journals about lake monsters, the walls papered with clippings and blurry photographs, but he seems able to quarantine his own entropy.

She is trying to do the same.

Scully pulls on soft cotton pajama shorts, a gray tank top imbued with the compressive powers of Lycra. She uses lotion to rub away the mascara beneath her eyes. She goes downstairs and out the back door, shielding her eyes against the piercing sunlight. A mosquito whines at her ear and she pinches it out of the air.

“Still got those reflexes, kid,” Mulder says from somewhere off to her left. 

She turns and sees him crouched next to the hulking green block of the transformer. “All the lights are off, and the house feels like a rainforest. I take it you’ve had an eventful day?”

He sighs. “Not really. Well, not the event I was hoping for, which is the power coming back on. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm around one and that’s when the electricity blew.”

She sits on the bottom step, knees drawn up. She likes to watch him working, a side of him they’re both still learning about. There was never much call for home maintenance at Hegal Place, or living out of cash-only motels. “You call the power company?”

He huffs. “Yeah, they told me they had no reported outages and the power should be fine. I explained that I was trying to report an outage and that it definitely was not fine and she promised someone would be here between tomorrow and eventually.”

Scully smiles. “And that’s why you’re out here toying with death?”

“Not much else to do, really. Can’t write with the power out.” Mulder sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You, uh, have a good day?”

She hadn’t. “Yep. Starting to feel like part of the team.”

“Good. You need to get your career standards as high as your standards for men,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Oh, well, that’s an obviously unattainable bar.”

“Obviously.” He sits next to her on the step. “You wear that to work? You know I think bras are a tool of the patriarchy and you shouldn’t bother, but I’m just surprised Our Lady of Perpetual Shame takes such a liberal view.”

She laughs a little. “I figured as long as I tossed a lab coat over it, I’d look like a real doctor. It worked when I was a kid.”

“Hey, that’s what I did with my badge half the time. Listen, Scully. The house is pretty tropical. You want to bunk up in a hotel until they get the power sorted out?”

Scully thinks about the convenience it would afford. Maids and room service and maybe a pool, depending. But she is tired of hotels, even nice ones. She is tired of polite signs that remind her that the pillows and towels and hairdryers aren’t hers, the tiny toiletries an indicator of her temporary status. She is tired of living out of suitcases and dressers that made her clothes smell strange, tired of running from her own life.  She wants to be home.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll manage.”

Mulder looks surprised, but doesn’t question it. “I’ll call Lowe’s about getting a generator delivered tomorrow. We ought to have one anyway out here.”

She’d always had a vague idea that Mulder had money - it was the only explanation for his complete disinterest in it. But when they’d come back, when they’d talked to his lawyers, she'd been staggered. The Vineyard house alone explained his casual international jaunts. They can have things now, endless things, and there is something frantic in her that wants to spend the money. Bingeing chocolate bunnies after Lent.

Mulder peels his shirt off, wadding it into a limp ball. He tosses it so that it hooks over the doorknob. “Still got it,” he says. He preens.

“Does the NBA realize the tremendous talent they’re missing out on?” she asks. “Do they even know that, at this very moment, a six foot tall middle aged white man is out here flinging his clothing a distance of several feet?”

He snuggles up to her, wrapping his sweaty arms around her shoulders. 

“Ugh,” she says, and pushes at him. “Mulder, you’re disgusting and it’s a thousand degrees out here.”  

“Hoping that cold, cold heart of yours might cool me off.” She sniffs disdainfully, and he releases her. “Scully, how do you feel about bees?”

“We have a history, bees and I,” she observes, tapping the back of her neck.

Mulder curls his hand over the scar, kneads the muscles there. “Well, these wouldn’t be fancy bees.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’m not inherently opposed. Why do you want bees, Mulder?”

He shrugs. “I’m getting older, and I’ve got to consider funeral plans. The last one didn’t really go as expected, so I thought maybe I’d mellify myself this time.”

She nods. “Makes sense. I mean, of course, there’s no actual proof that mellification actually occurred, but that’s never stopped you.”

“I also like honey,” he adds. “And bees are good for the planet.”

“Honey often contains botulism spores,” she remarks. “Botulinum toxin is the most lethal toxin known, and it’s estimated that as little as 40 grams of it would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” She doesn’t say you shouldn’t give it to babies, that she sweetened her smoothies with dates and maple syrup so that -

“Well, nobody better piss off my bee army and me,” he says darkly. 

“Everybody eventually pisses you off. Mulder, is that old tent in the shed still? We could sleep in that tonight.”

He shakes his head. “Heavy mildew and dry rot, so I threw it out. We could sleep out here if you want, though. We’ve got that big air mattress.”

“Let’s do that,” she says. “We can put it on the porch. Tell you what - you get stuff together, and I’ll even make dinner.” Scully doesn’t like cooking, but she wants to create order, to complete a finite task. She can be domesticated again, like a lost house cat finally returned to a hearth.

“We having eggs or peanut butter?” he asks, smirky.

“I’d hate to spoil the surprise,” she snips, and goes back into their sauna of a house. 

In the kitchen, she stands in front of the open fridge, letting the delicious leftover cold soak into her skin. She’ll deal with the spoiled food later. Eggs had, actually, been her plan but it’s just too hot. The stove doesn’t work, and she doesn’t have the fortitude to turn the grill on. She finds some leftover shrimp pasta that Mulder has made, some vegetables, and assembles it all into a passable salad.

There, she thinks, pleased. I’d pay twelve bucks for that somewhere. She uses her foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf.

Her skin is clammy, hair stringy and damp from sweat. Maybe they should just go to a hotel after all. Perhaps she should stop ascribing symbolism to every damn thing and enjoy herself once in a while. But she thinks of packing, of driving, of unpacking and somehow it’s all too much and her eyes start to fill and her sinuses sting.

Scully pinches her wrist until it passes, feeling weak and hating the weakness in herself. It’s the heat, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the heavy mental load. She considers going outside for a dip in the pond, but suspects the water will be unpleasantly warm. Instead, she drags herself back upstairs for a cold shower.

She sits on the edge of the bed, weary, and stares at a framed picture of a sea turtle on the far wall. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, it looks like it’s swimming. She tips her head back for a better angle, watches it float across her vision. It slips away then, into the black of the deep waters.

***

She startles awake when he touches her shoulder, gasps.

“Jesus,” Mulder says, and sits next to her. “Bad dream?”

Scully sits up, dazed. “What? No, was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out cold for over an hour, but I wanted to make sure you got some food. Water at least, it’s too hot up here.”

She blinks, confused. “I don’t remember,” she says. Peering to her right reveals night outside.

Mulder holds a hand out and she grasps it, letting him pull her to her feet. She wavers and he steadies her, arm about her shoulders. 

“I just need some water,” she says, defensive.

He guides her down the stairs and out the front door onto the porch. The air outside is substantially cooler, a light breeze kissing her face. She settles into a chair, stares deep into the felty dark. She still can’t remember falling asleep. 

Mulder hands her a water bottle from the little table and she rolls it between her palms, the plastic crinkling. “Hey, I thought you were setting up the air mattress out here,” she says.

“No air flow behind the wall,” he replies. “Drink that up like a good girl and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scully obeys and feels better. The water tastes stale, but it’s cool and wet. “Maybe you should have my job,” she says, looking up. “Caring for live people is so much work.”

“Everybody eventually pisses me off,” he reminds her. “Come on, Doc.”

She follows him down the steps and around the side of the house. Their property is vast and feral, pocked with mole burrows and rabbit nests. The floodlights are out with the power, and the house is nearly swallowed up by the vast night. Scully glances up at the Milky Way, at the waxing moon, and marvels again at the sky they have out here. We are star stuff, she thinks.

“Moonstruck?” Mulder asks.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

“As long as you can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” he says, and tugs her along.

She follows him to the back of the house and then stops, smiling. Mulder has hammered some old two-by-fours into a frame, draped the structure in white bedsheets. Inside, the air mattress is piled with sofa pillows. Outside, camping lanterns, candles, and two strands of solar lights make it into a kind of fairy circle.

“Mulder,” she says, delighted. “This is ridiculous.”

“Indian Guide saves the day,” he says.

“Your architecture badge is definitely more impressive than your fire badge,” she says, walking over to the little tent. He’s brought her salad inside, and there is a cooler packed with ice and water bottles. Cans of bug spray sit at the flap. She crawls inside, suddenly ravenous. 

Mulder joins her on the mattress, which bounces in response. “Remember my water bed?”

She laughs, piling food on a plate for each of them. “What a swinging bachelor you were.”

She remembers the water bed fondly, the leather couch and the fish and the postage-stamp bathroom in his apartment. It shouldn’t hurt still, but it does. She knew herself there, her place on the map. She eats her salad, wistful for Chinese food and beer at that battered coffee table.

“Scully,” he says.

“What?”

“Scully.”

“Just middle-aged nostalgia, I suppose,” she murmurs.

He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re scarcely middle aged.”

She smiles, squeezes his fingers. “If you go by life experience, we’re both about two hundred years old.”

“Like those Galapagos tortoises. But you need to tell me what’s going on at work. You won’t disappoint me.”

It can be very disagreeable to live with a profiler.

Scully drops his hand. She bites at the fleshy part of her thumb. This is real, she thinks. This place. It is not down in any map; true places never are. She can only deflect for so long, and her armor is rusting away. “I’m afraid,” she whispers, then chances a look at his face.

His eyes are soft, searching. “Why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, I don’t…” Her sinuses sting again and she presses her palms hard into her eyes. “Please.”

Mulder’s hand on her back, in endless, gentle figure eights. He pulls the elastic from her hair and lets it tumble down to her shoulders. He shifts so that her back is to him, his long legs on either side of her body.

“Mulder, what -”

“Shhhh,” he says, and gathers the hair at the crown of her head. “It’s not a real sleepover if you don’t get your hair French braided.”

Scully blinks. “Since when do you know how to braid hair?”

“Little sister, absent parents. Now stop moving and talk.”

She keeps her head very steady, thinking of her own sister’s deft fingers when their mother was too busy for anything but ponytails. Mulder tugs at another little section of hair. Scully thinks she might be okay if she isn’t looking at him, if she can’t read herself in his eyes.

Moth shadows dance across the white sheet wall, drawn to the flickering candles outside. It fascinates her that they never figure out that fire burns.  “I don’t know how to do this,” she says, and her voice is thick.

“To talk, or to be still?” he says in his Oxford psychologist voice.

She isn’t sure of what she means either. “Yes,” she says, with a hiccupy laugh. “Both.”

“Me too,” he says, slipping his thumb through the strands behind her ear. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She swallows hard. “I just...I’ve always had something to consume me. I had the FBI, we traveled all the time, and then we were running and I thought it was hard but it was so easy to just survive. There were no decisions. I didn’t care about, I don’t know...plates.”

He pauses in his work. “Plates?”

Scully chews at a hangnail, frustrated. “Just things, the things you buy for a house. Long term things. I did with William and then…” she trails off, her chest tight. “I feel like I’m playing a game sometimes, like improv theater. Fox and Dana Build A Home.”

“Fox and Dana?” he repeats. “Surely not.”

“Well, we’re hardly Mulder and Scully anymore, are we?” Her stomach clenches and that’s it, she sees. That’s the fear.

He finishes the braid and fastens the elastic at the end of it. “Of course we are,” he says. “We are who we are.”

She turns to him then, the whispering anxiety back with a roar. “And who is that, Mulder? I was plain old Dana Scully until I met you. And we had this life, this strange and wonderful and terrible life where I was Scully because I was your partner and now that’s over. It’s all nothing.” She’s crying openly now, quietly, and it feels cleansing.

“You’re still my partner,” he says, and his eyes are shining too.

She wipes her nose with a paper napkin. “Am I? At what? I go to work and see patients but I forgot there’s no closure with the living. People get sick and get better and get sick again. It doesn’t end. And this house, the power is always going to go out and the chickens will always be hungry and -“  she stops, feeling hysterical.

“You don’t have to work,” he says softly. “The settlement from the FBI, my inheritance…”

She shakes her head. “You know I have to work.” 

He sighs, rubs her knee. “I know you do. But it doesn’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to drain you.”

He’s right, of course he’s right, but he’s also so terribly wrong that she wonders if he knows her at all. She has to be a doctor for her father, for William. For him. She has to see something through. Scully smooths her hand over the back of her head, feeling the even ridges of the braid. Mulder is so competent with everything he does, so easy with himself. He’ll get his damned bees and become some kind of honey magnate in no time.

“People at the hospital, they ask me what I did before. And I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly answer that question? I just say I was with the government, but that isn’t really the answer, is it?”

Mulder shrugs. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to people. “It’s true.”

Scully stretches out on her stomach across the mattress, chin on the pillows, watching the moths again. They tumble like acrobats, untethered in the thick air. “There’s this number called Graham’s number, used in Ramsey Theory, which is, well, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was in the Guinness Book for being the largest specific number used in a proof at the time. And Mulder, this number is so big that writing out all the digits would exceed the bounds of the known universe.”

“Nobody likes a math nerd, Scully.”

She rolls onto her back to glare at him. “Yes they do, they give them Nobel prizes. Anyway. A whole new notation system, Knuth Notation, had to be developed to express these massive numbers. Graham’s Number, Tree(3), et cetera. And I feel like that at times. That there’s this endless amount of vital, inexpressible information inside of me that is so essential but that I have no way to share.”

She blinks a few times, spent by this unburdening.

Mulder stretches out next to her, propped on his side. “You can express it to me,” he says, massaging her temple with his thumb.

Scully closes her eyes. “I feel like a ghost sometimes. How do you do it, Mulder? How do you just keep moving forward without getting lost?”

He sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have a tendency to compile people into perfect specimens, then measure yourself against that imaginary standard. It’s the precession of simulacra.”

She looks at him, indignant, then realizes he could be right. “Well,” she says. “It’s possible. But Mulder, is that such a bad thing, to want to hold myself to the highest goals?”

He tugs her onto her side so that she’s facing him, nearly nose to nose. Her lips feel tingly. “Yes,” he says, stroking her hair. “When the goal isn’t attainable. And when it puts everyone else on pedestals where we’re ill equipped to balance. And when it puts you in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. No one is perfect. Not even you.”

“I don’t want to be perfect,” she lies. “And I don’t need you to be either.” That part is true, at least.

He laughs in reply. “Apropos of being Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin once said ‘I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’”

“He rode the tortoises,” Scully says, calming. “I can’t defend his methodology.”

“See? You’re better than Charles Darwin.” He kisses her forehead.

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

“Scully, look. You’re not alone here, feeling at sea. I went to the feed store and some guy picked a fight, shoved me pretty hard with his shoulder. And this reflexive part of my brain wanted to grab my badge, stick it in his face, and put him against the wall for assaulting a federal agent. But I ignored it and bought the chicken feed and just headed out. And I felt like, is this who I am now? Some pushover with yard birds and home improvement books?”

“You made a little fast and loose with your authority sometimes,” she says, thinking of Roche. She curves her palm against his cheek, thumbs the fine ridge of his zygomatic bone.

He bumps her nose with his. “You broke into a secret morgue.”

“You made me.” She sniffles, laughs a little. “The good old days.”

“These can be the good days too,” he says. “They can, if we work at it.” He traces her mouth with his finger.

“Okay,” she says. Hope stirs in her, a thing with feathers. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

He kisses her, in their small tent, in their ring of light.