#my writing muscles are so rusty; it's been years since i wrote anything

[manonblaqkbeak]

Scaling in the Moonlight

Hello everyone!!! Long time no see!!! It's been eleven months!!!!! since I last wrote anything. I hated the fact that I missed last years rowaelin month and was determined to write something for this years rowaelin month (and a special thank you to @goddess-aelin for her lovely note saying she missed my work <3)

And thanks to the lovely people that run rowaelin month!!! you are all amazing!!! @rowaelinscourt

Apologies in advance if my writing and grammar and characterisation is a little rusty, like I said, it's been eleven months since I last wrote anything and I'm slowly getting through my ToG re-read (which has really opened my eyes to how traumatised Aelin is as a person/character).

Words: 800+. CW: none, I don't think.

Day 18- Aelin and Rowan's hawk form.

It was two AM and Aelin was out, wondering the dark city streets of Orynth, looking for the right building.

Instead of using the castle's obstacle course like most sane people would, Aelin decided that she needed to do this the way she was trained too—by scaling the side of buildings, using every muscle in her body to pull herself up to reach the top of the building, to run across the rooftops to get closer to her target.

She needed the reminder that she could—and that she hadn't lost her edge.

Although, she was sure she had lost it. She did still train, from magic to weapons to hand-to-hand combat, she did whichever she was in the mood for with what free time she had, but as Queen and mother to five children, she had no need to scale buildings and jump from rooftop to rooftop.

So she had decided, as she ate her dinner with her family, she was going to relive her past life; if only for a couple of hours.

Aelin walked through one more street before she found a good starting point—a shoe store that she did frequent with Rowan and their children. It was two storeys tall and she knew that no one occupied the apartment above the shop so no one would see her.

Hopefully no one would hear her either.

Stretching before climbing, Aelin told herself that it would be fine. She had given birth to five children, all without pain relieving herbs, she could—would—scale this building with ease.

Finding her footing was easy enough, so Aelin started her trek—and thankfully didn't fall off, although she did slid time a few times and had to grit her teeth to stop her cursing from echoing around town.

The burning in her muscles took her back to how she used to be, how she used to be able to demand any contract and fat coin purse she desired.

She didn't miss that life, not at all, but it was part of who she was and she was not ashamed of it.

Taking one last gulping breath, Aelin hoisted herself over the roofs ledge and let the accomplishment rush through her.

So determined she was in proving herself that she could still do this, she hadn't been aware that she had a follower.

A follower that now clicked his beak at her.

Aelin's head snapped upwards, taking in her mate's large hawk-form as he perched on the chimney.

“You were asleep when I left,” was all Aelin could think of to say.

Rowan clicked his beak again, as if to say And now I'm awake.

“Clearly,” Aelin said, “how'd I go from your end?”

She waited for him to shift back but he didn't. He wasn't mad at her, she knew that much, but she didn't want anyone to see her talking to her mate like this—it felt too intimate to be like this in public, but after two decades together, Aelin could converse with Rowan in his hawk form as easily as she could talk to him in his Fae form.

Rowan didn't say anything but flew to the building next to her. He clicked his beak. You can climb well enough, let's see how you can jump.

Aelin moved to the ledge, looking down to the ground, if she didn't make it, she wouldn't die, but she'd probably be bruised all over.

She looked at Rowan, who was waiting patiently. “Will you nurse me back to health if I fall?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at her husband, who rolled his eyes.

“That better be a yes,” she said and moved back to take a running jump.

Gods, if she fell, she'd never get over the embarrassment.

Aelin ran and jumped—and just made it. She hit her chin hard enough that when she made it over the ledge of the building, she laid down and stared at the open night sky.

A flash of light brighter than the moon came and went, and then there was Rowan, taking her in.

“Fireheart,” he said, his voice deep and concerned. “Are you alright?”

“I'm fine,” Aelin said, her chin sore but she would live. She eyed her mate up and down, however, and said, “But I would still appreciate being nursed back to health—especially if you take your shirt off.”

Rowan rolled his eyes again, but obliged her, his shirt coming off in one easy movement that had her contemplate making a sixth baby.

“Where does it hurt, milady?” her king-consort asked, his rough fingers moving across her collarbone.

“Here,” she said, pointing to her chin, and soon she was better, especially as she chased Rowan around in his hawk form, easily jumping from roof to roof as the hours went by.

[crushcandles]

2022 AO3 word count: 39,469

I didn't set any word count goals for 2022, which was the right choice this year. Sometimes it feels good to stretch in that way but it was good to focus on other things this turn around the sun.

2022 goals in review:

do something with this Witcher A/B/O - ✅ – 5k and counting, baby

do something with this old stucky fic - ❌ – if it's been waiting since 2014 it can wait a little longer, I guess

ask for, and fill, 10 fic snippet requests - ✅ – 13 done and posted

write something totally weird and gross-hot - semi-✅  – I didn't do anything totally weird, whatever that means, but wrote some dub-con, some DP, some fuck or die, some jewelry kink

write more femslash - semi- ❌ – I have written some ronance but nothing in sharing-shape

look for opportunities to beta - ❌ – I didn't actively pursue this at all, for shame

be a brave little toaster and do at least one fannish event -  ❌ – I expected an event to fall into my lap, despite knowing that's not at all how fandom works in 2022

just start picking things and reading them - semi-✅ – I am very slowly getting my reading and commenting muscles back in shape

Writing more, shorter things was a great success this year. I loved getting to touch so many interesting ideas and write for people. I had a lot (too much) time by myself this year for different reasons than 2020-2021 and was a different kind of lonely. Writing snippets and ficlets for people turned into a really wonderful way to connect with people and make something of the too much time on my hands.

Speaking of connect with people, I had the best time with so many people this year. We shared pictures and posts, watched things together, laughed, sighed, shared opinions and theories, gay gasped, and encouraged each other and it was everything to me. So much love and thanks to @zambonirider, @candybarrnerd, @yolki-palki, @samstree, @likecastle, @greyduckgreygoose, @storm-and-starlight, @ex0rin, @kushielsmercy, @major-trouble, anyone else I was lucky enough to interact with this year, and my incredible anons.

2023 goals:

Finish this witcher A/B/O before S3 hits – Love a mystery premiere date for me. There's no way this will go wrong AT ALL.

Finish one of two ronance ideas – if I can half-see both of them then I'm sure I can finish one of them

Beta for someone – if you want one, hit me up! I'm rusty but I've got the skills in storage

Write some horror

Make 5 bookmarks on AO3 – really low-ball but I need to change my AO3 ways to remember what I've read

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

Sometimes you just gotta write a story about a really particularly satisfying D&D session

“Guys. Something stinks about this place,” the half-drow muttered to his travelling companions, cutting his eyes left and right around the sparsely-populated tavern. “Have you noticed it’s all humans around here? Ever since we got into town, nothing but humans.”

The members of the ragtag party that had managed to make it down from their rooms, a nobly-dressed tiefling and an armored dwarf, nodded. “I’m starting to feel a tad...noticed,” the tiefling lady admitted. It was true, the barkeep was looking at them somewhat askance as she washed a glass past the point where it really needed it.

“All except the street kids. Even the kids in the orphanage were all human,” Errikas the dwarf pointed out.

“And no sign of Lorsan in either,” frowned Meteora the tiefling. They’d come across the little elf girl while traveling and convinced her to come with them, but on the way to Vercon she’d either run away or been taken--and neither option appealed to Meteora, whose smallest foster sisters reminded her very much of Lorsan. Their attempts to find her so far had been fruitless, but had turned up some interesting ripples in the world of the thieves’ guild and given them a name to look into.

“Well. Maybe the innkeeper can help us out,” Mattias the drow said, putting up his hood, squaring his shoulders, and taking a seat at the bar. Being half-human, when his ears were hidden, he could nearly pass for full. To the woman whose glass was now cleaner than it’d ever been in its life, he said, “I was wondering if you might answer a few questions for us?”

The human visibly startled, but she recovered well and responded, “If I can, sure, what do you want to know?”

The dwarf took his seat next to the drow, with the tiefling claiming a stool a safe distance away, past a stuffy-looking human man who was nursing a light amber glass of something.

“Have you heard of a man called Veren Zehra?”

The innkeeper blinked thoughtfully. “The family name is familiar, I’ve definitely known someone by that name, but I don’t know much.”

“Do you know if he’s a trustworthy sort?” the drow pressed.

“Can’t say that I do.” Her voice began to get a bit frosty, and she fixed him with a suspicious eye. “You aren’t from around here, are you? You don’t look...local.”

A few seats down, Meteora tensed, silently pulling her hood over her horns. Nothing could hide her dull reddish skin, though, and she felt dreadfully vulnerable in this place.

“No, we’re just passing through,” sidestepped Mattias airily. “Lots of humans around here, aren’t there? Do you know why that is, or where the non-humans go?”

“I’m--I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman stammered, face flushing a bit. “I think maybe you should g--”

“BARKEEP!” roared Errikas in a thick dwarven accent he didn’t normally sport, slapping his hand on the wooden bar. “A PINT OF YOUR FINEST DWARVEN ALE, IF YOU PLEASE!”

The innkeeper jumped back a step, concentration broken, but nodded professionally and drew a pint of something from a barrel nearby. She slid it to the dwarf, who took a healthy draught, then frowned into his tankard. “This isn’t dwarven ale.”

“I do apologize, we don’t have anything like that here--only local cider. It’s a specialty, though!”

The dwarf harrumphed, but drained his pint in one mighty gulp and asked for another, beard a tad soggy. The human next to him sniffed disdainfully.

“Whatsa matter, lad, got a cold?” Errikas asked, starting on his next pint.

“How disgusting and uncivilized,” the man sneered at him.

Errikas threw his head back and laughed heartily and long. “Aye, lad, certainly! You’re lucky I’m wearing pants, what with my lack of civilization! Barkeep, a pint of--what was it, cider? A cider for my friend here!”

He was still laughing as the man made a squawk of dismay and fled the bar. The party finished their drinks and made to leave, only to be met at the door by the flustered human man, with two city guards following.

“There he is, sirs! The ruffian who threatened to take his pants off and flash me!” he accused.

“I wh--I did no such thing!” Errikas protested indignantly. “In fact, I offered this man a drink, we’re friends now!”

The guards looked not a bit convinced. Sensing trouble, Meteora swept in between them all velvet and lace and serenity, and murmured in her best picture of a refined noble, “Now now good sirs, no need for such unpleasantness. You see, this man has had a bit to drink and gotten a tad excited, we’ll get him up to his room where he can compose himself.”

Still sputtering, the man insisted, “No! Arrest them!”

The guards looked from one party to the other uncertainly. One suggested to his friend, “We should have the captain straighten this one out.” 

The other nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”

Casting a glance at her companions, Meteora inclined her head gracefully and put her hand out as if expecting to be escorted down a grand staircase. The closer guard gulped and offered his arm with an almost reluctant air--but offer he did, and down they went to the guard station.

It wasn’t a far walk, and soon Meteora’s escort was calling, “Captain, we have a dispute that needs settling!”

The captain of the guard was a tall, broad-shouldered fellow in armor, with long hair and good features that furrowed wearily as he saw their accuser. “Not you again,” he groaned. “What is it this time?”

Meteora again took point, smoothly explaining as she had before, “I do apologize, my companion meant no harm--he’s merely had a pint or two and got...overexcited, and I believe he’s managed to offend this gentleman.”

The walk over had, if possible, only worked said gentleman more into a frenzy. “This--creature slammed his fist on the bar and frightened that poor woman! And then threatened to flash me! And that one was harassing her with all kinds of impertinent questions--”

The captain cut him off with a gesture. “I see no reason to arrest anyone here, honestly. Please leave, I’ll speak to these three and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” He nodded to a subordinate, who took the still-raving man firmly by the arm and led him to the door.

To the tiefling, drow, and dwarf, he said, “Come with me, back here,” and led them to a back room.

As they fell into step, Mattias muttered to the other two, “Think we can trust this guy?”

Meteora immediately nodded her confirmation--the man had treated them with none of the ill-disguised contempt or stifled fear of nearly everyone else in town--while Errikas scrutinized his back intently, then shrugged. “Don’t see that we have much choice.”

The captain closed the door behind them, then let out a long sigh. “Right then, we can speak freely. What are the three of you doing here? Clearly you’re not from Vercon.”

Meteora smiled enchantingly, the fully opaque picture of innocence. “We escorted a pair of merchants here and thought we might stay for the festival. We’ve been told it’s something we simply must see.”

The captain raised an eyebrow skeptically. “I see. Well, it is that. But why are you really here?”

Mattias appraised the other man, deciding to tactically lay some of their cards on the table. “Something isn’t...right here, is it? We’ve hardly seen anyone but humans in this town, except for the street kids. What’s happened to their families? Where is everyone?”

He nodded, considering the three carefully and apparently finding them acceptable. “We have had some...disappearances, lately. A lot, in fact. I know the Thieves’ Guild is trying their best to take care of the children, and they’ve turned to petty theft.” He rubbed his brow. “A large part has to do with the lord’s recent crackdown on crime.”

“Oh?”

“The order he’s given is that any crime, no matter how small or petty or even imagined, must be cause for...re-education. He’s repurposed a temple nearby for the process, and I haven’t seen a lot of people return from it. Those who do are...changed, skittish and afraid of their own shadows.”

“Are most of the arrested non-human?” Mattias asked, already knowing the answer.

“Nearly all.” The captain turned away from them and spoke to the wall. “I myself am in a...precarious situation. I’m, well...I’m confined to these barracks until such a time that I...” His voice went bitterly sarcastic. “Until I choose to comply with our lord’s directives.”

“That’s some bullshit,” the drow said bluntly.

The captain snorted a laugh and moved back to face them, not noticing Meteora’s gaze suddenly piercing him. She studied his features but wasn’t entirely sure she was seeing what she was seeing. She caught Mattias’s eye and cut hers at the captain--casually placing a hand to her ear, tilting her head inquisitively.

Comprehending her signs after a moment, Mattias slowly and deliberately lowered his hood, tucking his hair behind slightly pointed ears. Meteora, with only the slightest hesitation, followed suit, revealing delicate horns peeking out of her blonde curls.

The captain froze a moment, then relaxed--and ruffled his long hair and smoothed it, confirming their suspicions with elf-pointed ears. He cleared his throat and asked, “Now that you know the score--how long do you intend to stay in the city?” The unspoken implication hung heavy in the air: how long did a party of nonhumans mean to gamble their safety and sanity in a city clearly hostile to them?

There was only one possible answer.

Meteora took a breath, resolutely met the captain’s gaze, and spoke, knowing she spoke for all of them. “As long as it takes,” was all she said, her words a vow unbreakable.

He let out a long, slow sigh. “As long as it takes,” he repeated almost wonderingly as understanding dawned. “Okay.” He scrutinized each of them in turn and nodded approvingly. “So then. Tell me what you need from me.”

[hockeyboysiguess]

sunflowers | m. tkachuk

a/n: today, i offer a humble too long matthew tkachuk fic, full of angst and thoughts about love.

i would like to thank @nolypats​, for having a dream that i wrote a fic about? that dream looks nothing like this fic, but that was the og inspiration, and for being so supportive during the writing of this monster. also, @jasondickinsons​ and @slapshot-to-the-heart​ for freaking out every time i sent you a preview. never would’ve finished it without these three. 

word count: 20K

warnings: swearing, and a ton of angst.

wine pairing recommendation: a full bodied cabernet sauvignon, because this fic is full bodied.

You ran a hand through your hair as you looked at Matthew across your apartment. The mug in your hands felt heavy and the tea inside had gone cold. The look on Matthew’s face when he walked in the front door had made you set it aside and forget about it entirely. He had been nervous, hesitant, his movements almost delayed, like there was too many thoughts swimming in his head for the signals to get down to his muscles at the correct timing. You drummed your nails on the cool ceramic, your fingertips tracing the outline of the sunflower on the mug, as you let out a long breath. 

“We literally just-”

“I know,” Matthew cut you off. He stumbled through the next six words, but they stung all the same. “I think this was a mistake.” 

It was as if he picked the words right out of your deepest vault of insecurities, sharpened them, then tossed them in your general direction careless, but still wasn’t surprised when they hit their mark. Your shoulders caved in, your body reacting to the weight of the insecurities you had tied to those words in your mind hitting you in the chest. You set your mug on the counter with shaky hands. 

“Matthew,” you tried to start, but he just set his blue eyes to the ceiling instead of trying to look at you.

You pressed harder, this time, irritation in his inability to communicate with you boiling over, “You can’t just say something like that then not look at me.” 

“Fine.” 

His eyes were dead when they rolled back to yours, lifeless, emotionless, almost completely devoid of the person you knew so well that was usually behind them. He looked nothing like the friend you had for the past two years, nothing like the boy who you kissing on his birthday a few months before this terrible moment you were being forced to inhabit, and nothing like the boyfriend you had since that night. He was unrecognizable from the boy you loved, the set in his jaw unsettling you. Matthew had not come over to have a discussion. You could see that now. He was resolved to end this relationship when he walked through your front door. When Matthew Tkachuk’s mind was made up, you had yet to find anything that could redirect his course. You knew you wouldn’t be the first tonight. 

“I think we can work on this, if you’ll just talk to me about it.” 

The laugh that comes out of his mouth in response to your words made you instantly wish you had never tried. The part of you that had told you to just swallow the breakup he clearly wanted was screaming, “I told you so,” at the top of its lungs. There was no resolution to be had. This relationship was over before he walked in the door, before he walked in the building, before he had gotten in his car. It was over the minute he texted you, curtly informing you he was coming over. Now that your mind was ruminating, the tone of his text felt rough and succinct, like he just wanted to get through it to get to this. 

“I think that there’s nothing to work on,” Matthew told you, his tone flat. “I think we were friends, are friends, good friends, and we just starting having feelings because we thought we couldn’t have each other. That whole forbidden fruit thing, right? And we got all mixed up. Sex was great, is great, don’t get me wrong, that kind of chemistry isn’t the problem, but I just don’t think we’re supposed to be together. I think we just got our wires crossed and mixed the chemistry and the friendship up to mean that we’re in love when I just don’t think we are. At best, I think we just had middle school crushes gone off the rails. I don’t think I really have feelings for you and I don’t think you have them for me either. I think that’s why we fight a lot. There’s nothing really here, in all reality, and I think we can both sense it. You know I’m right. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Get. Out.” 

You spat the words out with all the venom and anger you felt. It wasn’t until the door shut behind him, not another word spoken in the tense moments it took to cross your kitchen to it, that you felt the pain in your chest. The anger, and the adrenaline that came with it, had disguised it while he was still here. Now, it was just you, in your empty apartment, realizing you not only had to deal with the pieces of yourself left over after Matthew just shattered you, underneath that was the agony of losing a friend. A friend you had come to know so well over coffees and sheet pizzas and margarita pitchers, in parties and houses and parks and arenas. He left with your now ex-boyfriend, because they were one and the same. 

All you had was the now tainted memories of him and an even colder cup of tea.

------

You shuffled around your kitchen island, skipping the tea kettle in favor of your trusty slightly rusty coffee pot. This wasn’t a morning tea could handle. None of the mornings since Matthew told you that, in essence, your entire relationship was built on false pretenses and was doomed to fail from the start, had been tea mornings. They’d all be coffee caliber mornings. 

Just as the coffee started to drip into the pot, your phone lit up on the counter. It was either your mom or another friend checking on you for what had to be the hundredth time. Your friends had be rotating who would check on you and who would bring you food. They were genuinely worried this break up was making you a bit of a recluse. The problem was, the person that had gotten you out of ever breakup funk you had over the past two years, every bad date, every ghosted text, was the person that caused this one. Your mind unwillingly brought you back to a memory you had been trying to avoid for the last four weeks.

There was a knock on your door. You pulled your sweatshirt sleeves over your hands to wipe your nose and eyes. You would have thought that after two weeks, a whole fourteen days, you would have cried everything out by now. Your body apparently had other ideas and was content to continue to produce tears until you felt better. When that would be? Who could say. 

Matthew Tkachuk was trying to have a say about it when he was on the other side of the door you opened. You sighed. You weren’t in the mood for him and his persistence in getting his way.

“I brought donuts, Legally Blonde because my sister said to, and my sparkling personality and I’m not leaving until you smile, eat at least two donuts, and take a shower.” 

He pushed his way into your apartment effortlessly. You didn’t consider yourself particularly weak, but there really wasn’t much you could do against Matthew Tkachuk with his mind made up on his side. He kicked his shoes off on the way to your coffee table, dropping the donuts on it before grabbing the TV remote. 

“I said I brought Legally Blonde. I meant that I brought my intent to watch it with you. We both know I’m just gonna rent it on your TV for you. I don’t own a DVD player and neither do you,” Matthew said to you as he started pulling up the movie. “Also, I have no idea how to log in to my stuff on this thing because you have a Fire TV instead of an Apple TV like a loser, so I’m just going to Venmo you $3.99 for the rental.” 

“Matthew,” you sighed, running a hand through your unwashed hair.

“Yeah, you can’t physically remove me from your couch, so I will not be leaving this apartment,” he informed you. “Watching Legally Blonde on your couch without you and stuffing my face with donuts I’m not supposed to have feels like it would be a pretty low point in my life. Unless you come watch with me and save me from half of these donuts.”

You saved him from half the donuts. He saved your hair from a record eighth day without washing it. You saved him from actually watching the sequel. He saved you from your torturous thought spirals and your tendency to look entirely for mistakes you made and flaws within yourself in lieu of acknowledging that relationships always take two people. He saved you from becoming a recluse that time, pulling you out of your apartment for dinner with him the next day. It was just Chipotle. He said he chose the environment for low social stress, high food volume ratio. You had hit him in the chest and he’d squeezed your hand softly, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss the back of it softly. 

“You know he didn’t deserve you, right?” he told you as you waiting in line. “You can and will do a hell of a lot better than him someday, probably sooner than you think.”

“Thanks, Matty.” 

Looking back on that memory, you couldn’t find any fondness for it. It just made the dull ache in your chest that had become a permanent resident over the last month transform temporarily in a sharp, stabbing one, before returning to its original form. You poured your coffee, each movement it required felt exhausting. You felt absolutely spent constantly because you were spending all of your energy trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Relationships were a two way street, but you could never drive down the other side, only your own. Matthew’s side, his view of it all, would always be foreign to you, but you could analyze every word, every movement, and every piece of Matthew’s reaction to all of your actions to find what you had done, what you had done to contribute to the car wreck that had caused the pain in your chest. Did you veer too close to him? Did you veer too far? What did you do? 

When you get together with a friend, after years of mutual pinning, it’s supposed to work out. Every book, movie, and hell, every other couple you had ever seen that had been great friends first, then started dating, worked out. It always had a happy, romantic comedy kind of ending to it all. Everything was supposed to fall into place the second Matthew kissed you for the first time because friends falling in love felt inevitable in the kind of way that made you believe in predestination, in fated futures. You had come to the conclusion that fate either didn’t exist, or she was a fucking bitch. 

“Come here!” Matthew shouted to you across the party when you were less than two steps into his front door. “I want a birthday hug!”

“I literally just got here!” you shouted back, your voice dropping in volume as you got closer to him, bumping your way through the party to get to him in the kitchen. “You couldn’t wait two minutes for me to like, put your gift down and take off my coat? Needy.” 

“Ah!” Matthew raised a finger to you and shook it slightly. “It’s not needy when I’m the birthday boy. Hug. Now.” 

You rolled your eyes, but tucking yourself willingly into Matthew’s broad chest. He was so warm all the time, but particularly now that he was definitely a few drinks deep and very much enjoying himself here at his party. Matthew always smelled the same, like the slightly too strong laundry detergent scent boosters his mom made him use and spearmint toothpaste. You couldn’t stand the combination at first, but now, pressed into his chest, you felt calm, the stress of the day washing away when you enveloped in him. He pressed a sloppy kiss to the top of your head and gave you an extra squeeze before letting you go. 

“Also, you’re late,” he pointed out as he grabbed you a beer from the sink he’d filled with ice in lieu of people going in his fridge.

You took the beer from him after he slammed the top off on the edge of the counter. You chugged about a quarter of it before scrunching your face up and stopping. The first few sips were always the worst, before any of the wondrous affects of alcohol actually kicked in. 

“Work,” you told him with a shrug.

Matthew rolled his eyes at you, a common occurrence, and you rolled yours back, and even more common occurrence. He laughed a little at your routine, before he tapped his beer suddenly on the top of yours, making foam rise rapidly, overflowing the bottle. You cursed and shifted your hand over the sink so the foam covered his makeshift cooler instead of the counter, but your hand was a lost cause. 

“Matthew,” you groaned, your displeasure heavy in your voice as you shook your hand free of the foam. 

Matthew threw his head back and laughed as you rinsed off your hand. When his head lifted, eyes finding yours again, he was met with a glare and the displeased shaking of your head. He smiled lazily, his blue eyes crossing your face to take in your expression. 

“You’re cute when you’re pretending to be mad.” His words were a little more connected than they should be, his faint lisp expressing itself more, endearing in a way that cut through your annoyance at him. “I would like to request a birthday, ‘One of my best friend isn’t mad at me anymore,’ pass.” 

You rolled your eyes again at him for the second time in minutes, “You’re going to get real annoying with this birthday thing, aren’t you?” 

Matthew smiled wryly at you, “Comes once a year. Feel like I should get my money’s worth for the twenty-four hours I can, no?” 

You shook your head at him, then took a sip of your beer. You were pretty sure you knew how this night was going to go and after a long day at work, it wasn’t exactly what you had been looking for. But the smile on his face, the curls falling down his forehead, and the fact that you were head over heels for him, meant that even though you hadn’t been looking to get on a rollercoaster today, damn it all to hell if you weren’t going to throw your hands in the air, scream your head off, and enjoy the ride. 

“How about,” Matthew slurred slowly at you, “a birthday dance?” 

“You could just ask me to dance. I’m used to you stepping on my toes and elbowing me in the face,” you threw back at him.

He faked pain, like you shot him in the chest, a large hand clapped over his heart as he winced. You giggled at his expression, before your laugh made him laugh. Matthew extended the hand on his chest out to you. You sighed before clapping your hand into his open one and letting him pull you toward where a few people were dancing. He spun you into his chest with a tug on your hand, purposefully putting your hands on the back of his neck. 

“Odds you step on my toes tonight?” 

Your beer bottle tapped between Matthew’s broad shoulders as he slowly started to sway with you, using his hands on your hips, one hand still with two fingers wrapped around his beer, to guide you. He smiled down at you knowingly. You knew the answer to your question before you’d even asked, but Matthew knew you were just teasing him. 

“Oh, one-hundred percent,” Matthew told you with a smirk pulling up the corner of his lips. “I should get you steel toes for your birthday.” 

“If you can remember when it is,” you laughed as Matthew spun you by your hips, your hands breaking from his neck to allow the spin. 

“Don’t doubt me,” Matthew grabbed your wrists with one hand and pulled them against his chest. “I might have had to make it my phone passcode to be sure I don’t forget, but I definitely am not going to forget it.” 

“That might just be the cutest thing you’ve ever done in your life, Tkachuk.” 

He rolled his eyes and freed your hands, only to wrap his arm around your neck and yank you into his chest where your hands had been moments before. You squealed at the action, which only made him laugh. Matthew was a touchy drunk, but it was the closest you could be to him. These were the moments you could touch him, dance with him, and let yourself feel like the world you lived in was also the world in which he had feelings for you too. But you knew those worlds weren’t the same. The would you lived in was a world full of stolen drunken moments like these and unrequited love. 

“Birthday beer?” he asked you, presenting you with the empty bottle you hadn’t realized he’d finished.

“You are really pushing your luck,” you told him. 

The smile that came across his face when you grabbed the empty bottle made your heart beat heavier in your chest. You smiled back up at him and you could have sworn you saw his eyes glance down at your lips, but you shook off the idea like the intrusive thought it was. It was a self-indulgent misreading of him, your mind projecting a motion you wished Matthew had done, instead of accurately reading the moment for what it was. It might have been a false creation of your mind, but it made your chest hurt all the same. 

You grabbed Matthew his beer. Then you birthday grabbed him a slice of his birthday cake. Then you had to birthday dance with him again. Another birthday hug. It started to wear heavy on your shoulders because tonight all Matthew seemed to want was you glued to his side. Your mind was twisting and turning, running down dark, unlit roads you had blocked off in your mind for your own good, but the combination of alcohol and Matthew’s hand on your hip was allowing your mind to blast through barricades you’d built to protect yourself and you were imagining this being real. Worse, you were wondering if maybe he felt like you did, which was as dangerous as driving down a twisty, forest road in the middle of the night, with your highlights out, and faulty breaks. 

As the last guests trickled out of the party, Matthew said you didn’t count as a guest, he collapsed onto his couch, throwing his arm over the back. He motioned over to you as he polished off his remaining beer. He sighed when you had yet to move, letting his head roll back, curling bouncing at the movement. 

“Come on, birthday cuddle,” he whined softly, gesturing you over to him again.

You groaned and hoped off the counter where you had posted up as everyone else left. Matthew smiled and lifted his head up when he saw you coming, adjusting on the couch to give you a clear spot, right under his arm, right against his side. You climbed onto the couch and slid in, dropping your head onto his chest as his arm dropped around your upper back instead of remaining on the couch. You sighed as you snuggled into his broad chest and Matthew’s chest suddenly rattled beneath you as he laughed.

“Well, make yourself comfortable then,” he laughed softly. 

“You’re comfy and I’m tired,” you mumbled, tucking your face down to try and hide the flush rising in your cheeks.

Yes, you were tired. Yes, Matthew was pretty comfortable. Neither one of those things had anything to do with why you were thrilled to be snuggled into his chest. The smell of spearmint and laundry detergent was mixed with cheap beer, but you found yourself falling more into him, your shoulders relaxing, your mind slowly, but your heart racing. You might be pushing your luck, tipping your hand with how you were openly enjoying this, but Matthew’s hand playing with the ends of your hair and the steadiness of his breathing plus the sheer volume of alcohol he had consumed tonight was giving you hope that even if you were tipping your hand, he wouldn’t be able to recognize the cards. 

“Come here. Birthday hug.” 

“I’m literally snuggling you. Why do you want a hug? Snuggling is an extended hug,” you muttered to him. 

“Hug,” Matthew repeated, a hand patting his thigh. 

You groaned as you lifted your head from your comfortable spot, twisting awkwardly to get your arms around Matthew’s neck. He huffed, clearly not thrilled with your position. His hands found your waist, fingers sliding into your belt loops to pull you onto his lap, situating your legs on either side of his. He wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you tight against him, hugging you to his chest. His face was tucked into your neck, his hot breath fanning out over your skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. 

He mumbled something you couldn’t entirely hear, but you caught the word birthday again and rolled your eyes. You sighed as you pulled back, his arms giving way to let you sit up on his thighs. 

“What did you say?” you asked him softly. 

Matthew swallowed hard, his eyes darting away from your attempted eye contact. His jaw clenched, nerves getting the better of him. You just didn’t know what he had to be particularly nervous about. 

“I want a birthday kiss.”

His words were soft, vulnerability keeping his voice tense, but his volume low. His eyes lifted up, scanning over your face, looking for some sign as to how you received his words. Matthew moved a hand to the back of your neck and gently pulled, ever so slightly, to bring your mouth closer to his. His eyes continued to take in your face, trying to read your expression, but he was clueless, his own feelings clouding his judgment. His tongue darted out, swiping across his bottom lip. 

“You don’t have to, obviously, but fuck, I really hope you want to, ” he breathed out, eyes still trying to find some sign, something to hang onto in your face.

It was clumsy with excitement, but you dipped your head forward and pressed your lips against his. Your heart was beating loudly in your ears as he started to kiss you back, the sound blocking out everything except how you were finally doing this, you were finally kissing Matthew. All you could feel was him, his hands on your body, his lips on yours, his tongue working yours softly. Just him. You pulled back and resting your forehead against his as his fingers tangled themselves in your hair at the back of your neck. 

“Thank god,” Matthew mumbled. “I thought I ruined us for a second there.” 

You shook your head softly and smiled down at him, pressing a quick kiss to his lips again. He was smiling before you even pulled away this time. 

“Fastest my birthday wish has ever come true in my life,” Matthew told you softly, a smile wide on his face as he spoke. “Also, my best birthday wish ever, if I do say so myself.” 

“Wait, what did you wish for?” you laughed, letting a hand run down his chest lightly. 

“You,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I wished for you.”

Everything after that was easy, for a little while. You both had dreamed, fantasized about having each other, so you were both in absolute bliss when everything came together. It felt like two pieces in a puzzle, finally finding each other after being separated by the expanse of the unfinished masterpiece in between if the masterpiece was the world as far as both of you knew. But you never found your place in it together, never locked into the bigger picture. Two pieces floating out in space can’t stay connected forever when hands start trying to smash them into place, hands that wonder if those pieces even belong together at all. 

The hands that ripped you and Matthew apart weren’t from the outside looking in though. They were the same hands that held your hips so tightly on nights between the sheets. The same hands that held yours where you walked through the city after a few too many drinks at the bar together. The same hands that ran through your hair softly when you came over crying about something you couldn’t even remember anymore. 

They were the same hands currently wrapped around a glass at a bar across town. The boy, not man, whose hands they were was running one through his hair hurriedly now. He couldn’t get you out of his mind and he just couldn’t figure out why. 

“Okay, why did you break up with her again?” Johnny pressed Matthew for what had to have been the twentieth time over the last month. “Because you’re fucking miserable all the time. She’s fucking miserable. None of us can get her out of her apartment. So I’m just not getting this one, man. Why aren’t you at her place right now? Why weren’t you there a month ago really, begging for her to take you back?”

Matthew groaned and screwed his eyes shut hard. He had explained this so many times, the words and memories were starting to blur together for him. If you say the same word too many times in a row, your brain begins to question if what you’re saying if even real anymore. Matthew felt the same type of confusion and disassociation with recounting his reasons for breaking up with you. The version of him that had original thought those thoughts, felt those feelings, wasn’t here anymore. It was replaced with a shell of a boy who realized he’d made a terrible mistake. 

“Wait, have you seen her?” 

Johnny rolled his eyes at Matthew, but he answered anyway. 

“No, I didn’t,” he sighed, motioning to the bartender for another beer. “A couple of the girlfriends stopped by, brought her some casseroles or something.” 

“Don’t you bring casseroles when someone dies?” 

Matthew forced the terrible joke and his own laugh in response out, in a poor attempt to disguise the ache in his chest at the thought of you. He could see you so clearly in his mind, pacing holes in the floorboards of your apartment, wearing out your favorite mug, but there was no way on God’s green earth you were wearing your Flames sweatshirt you usually did when you were upset. Hell, Matthew would be amazed if you hadn’t burned it after what he done. He knew you had to hate the casseroles, both based on the fact that you barely considered them an edible type of food, and the fact that they seemed to be an homage to the funeral of your love life. You would’ve made a better joke than him too and he wished he could’ve heard it, but you probably hadn’t made one. Matthew was the person who helped you out of the negative thought spirals that sent you spinning around your apartment. He caused this one instead and he was here, sitting in a bar, doing nothing about it because there was no way you’d even talk to him again, not with what he said.

“I just,” Matthew sighed again and fussed with his beer, lining and unlining it up with the condensation ring on the coaster as he talked, “I got too into my head. We were fighting. It just, it wasn’t good, Johnny.”

“It wasn’t good or you weren’t good?” Johnny pressed, watching carefully as Matthew’s body froze in response to the question, glass frozen mid-movement, eyes fixed on a broken neon sign in front of him. “Chucky, you don’t do anything unless you already know you can do it. You’ve never been in a relationship as an, I don’t want to say adult because that’s not entirely true, but as an adult, so you probably sucked at it.” 

Matthew rolled his eyes before throwing back verbally at him, “Thanks, Johnny. Loving this pep talk. I’ll make sure when Gio retires, you get my recommendation for the C.”

“We both know exactly,” Johnny tapped Matthew on the forearm, “where that C is going next and don’t even lie. But that’s neither here or there right now. The point is that she was your girlfriend. You were supposed to talk to her about being a shitty boyfriend.” 

“I am not in the mood for this,” Matthew groaned, dropping his head to the bar, recoiling when his skin stuck to it, his face scrunching up in disgust. 

“I mean, Johnny’s right,” said Monahan as he slipped up next to Matthew’s other side, making a second groan slide from Matthew’s throat. “You were supposed to talk to her, not break up with her like a dumbass. She was your friend first. She knew you weren’t perfect and that she’s have to put up with some shit because you definitely don’t know the first thing about being someone’s partner. She went all in with you anyway,” 

“Decided the person you could be and the person she could be with you was worth it,” Johnny jumped back in. 

“Good one, Johnny,” Sean nodded appreciatively, tapping his beer bottle against Johnny’s across the bar in front of Matthew. “She gave you a chance, a hell of a good chance. And you decided to throw it all away? Because you fought?”

“Who the fuck are you right now?” Matthew cursed at Sean. “Where did you find all this girl advice, huh? If I wanted this, I would’ve asked your girlfriend.” 

“Fianceé excuse you,” Sean reminded him, a smile pulling at his lips. “She relayed all of this back to me. She saw her a few days ago. This is all straight from the source, man.” 

“Wait, she said that stuff?” Matthew choked a little on his beer. 

“Yeah, she did. Wanna know what else she said?” Sean didn’t give Matthew time, much like Matthew gave you no time during that conversation a month ago, no regard to if Matthew could handle what he was about to say. “She said you weren’t good at communicating or being a boyfriend, but she was okay with it because she loved you. All she wanted was effort. Just a little effort from you, man. And you just left instead of trying.” 

Your words, albeit coming through the probably clumsy filter of Sean, stung in Matthew’s chest. He felt like a coward, a fraud. He tried so hard to be tough, to be the guy that kept pushing, kept grinding, kept giving a shit even when his team was down three goals with five to play. He was the guy everyone counted on to try, even when everything else was screaming to just give up and accept defeat. That’s what he’d done with you. He gave up when the waves of trials started coming, when a storm kicked up. Matthew had taken one look at a swell coming that looked to be the type that could swallow ships whole, took the lifeboat, and ran without a second thought. He left you on a battered boat, full of holes, without even a bucket to bail yourself out. 

To make matters worse, the wave he had been so scared of was either entirely a fabrication of his own mind and he had run from his own twisted imagination. Or worse, he had created the wave himself and ran before it could catch up to him. 

It was catching up to him now though, sitting at a dive bar in Calgary, a warm beer in his hand, and the weight of what he had done sitting heavy on his shoulders. 

“Fuck,” was all he could say.

“Your dream girl, really.” Johnny was twisting the knife now, but Matthew knew he deserved it when Johnny added, “And you fucked it.” 

“Yeah,” Matthew laughed softly, but the sound didn’t reach his eyes that were still staring at a broken and sputtering neon sign, but really seeing something that wasn’t there. 

He was seeing you, in that pretty sundress, the one with the sunflowers on it that Matthew loved on you because you always looked so happy whenever you wore it. Countless memories of you in that dress. You wore it out with friends, the second time Matthew had ever met you. That’s the first time he remembered thinking just how pretty you were, the way your hair fell down on your shoulders, the way your smile formed, the way your nose crinkled when you laughed. Matthew was used to thinking girls where hot, but you? You were beautiful, standing there, laughing at something Johnny had said, in that sunflower sundress. 

He remembered that dress from the first time he almost kissed you, a month later, walking down the street together after dinner, his hoodie around your shoulders because you had gotten cold and Matthew was always warm. It was the first time you wore his clothes and it made Matthew’s heart beat loudly in his ears, so loud he couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t think about anything else, but kissing you. He almost went for it, but then you pulled him back to reality, actually pulled him out of the street he hadn’t noticed he stepped into because he couldn’t hear the cars over his heartbeat. 

That dress starred in his memories of your first date that occurred a week after his birthday, the one where he finally kissed you for the first time, over two years after the first time he almost kissed you. It might have been January in Calgary, but there was that dress again, with tights and a thick coat and knee high boots and socks and a little hole at the bottom hem and it made Matthew want to die. If he died staring at you in that dress, kissing you in that dress, he was pretty sure he would be fine with whatever his obituary looked like. 

Except that dress and all the memories of it were tainted because you had been wearing it when he broke your heart, when he watched you break apart and shatter, all of his own doing. Hell, he probably tainted sunflowers as a whole for you. He’d gotten you so many over the few months you’d been together, even though they had cost far too much money since sunflowers in Calgary in the winter weren’t exactly commonplace. The necklace for your birthday, a sunflower and his number in delicate gold, his sister’s idea. 

Matthew wondered if people could hate certain types of flowers for the same type of reasons people loved them. People loved them because of how they looked and smelled, but also the memories associated with them. His mom loved pink tulips, but was it more because she always had or because his father always bought them for her and now she couldn’t look at them without thinking of his dad and all the times he has surprised her with them? Was the existing love or the associated love the more powerful factor in her love of them? 

Either way, Matthew was just hoping you didn’t hate sunflowers anymore because of him. 

“How do I fix it?”

Matthew’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper now, his hand tense around his glass. Matthew had too many thoughts running through his head, but he needed to make sure you didn’t hate sunflowers now. He just didn’t know how to even get you to talk to him to find out if you did. 

Johnny and Sean looked at each other and Johnny sighed when the silent communication resulted in him being the one to answer. “I don’t think you can, Chucky.”

“No, I have to, I have to fix it, Johnny,” Matthew’s voice cracked. “I just, I have to make sure...”

He didn’t finish the thought because it wouldn’t make sense and they would both probably send him home, thinking he was either too drunk or having a breakdown, more likely both, if he started ranting about sunflowers. 

“I think all you can do is reach out,” Johnny told him softly. “Just let her know that you now realize you made a massive mistake, that you want to be a team this time and work on it, I guess. From there, it’s up to her.”

“Should I bring flowers?” Matthew was asking the universe more than either of the two not so romantics next to him. “Chocolates? Something? Is there anything I can bring or do to fix it?” 

“I don’t think you can fix it, dude,” Sean cut in with a sigh. “You can’t force it. if she even talks to you, she’s going to have to decide you’re worth a second shot and knowing her, she’s not going to just give it to you tonight or tomorrow or whatever. She’s going to want to see real change first. You just tell her that you’re going to try and then fucking try, even if she doesn’t ask you to try. Start working on yourself anyway. Start acting like she’ll give you a second shot.”

“Do you think she will?” 

Matthew’s voice echoed how it sounded earlier, timid, small, a whispered prayer from a boy who knew his only hope was if fate heard him and decided to twist the world in his favor, if fate wasn’t a fucking bitch after all. 

“I mean,” Sean sighed, thinking about himself now, trying to shove his feet into Matthew’s water-logged shoes for a moment to find an answer, “if I was her, I wouldn’t. But she’s a better person than all of us put together, so maybe she will, but I know I wouldn’t.” 

Matthew let out a long, shaky breath, eyes fluttering closed for a moment before opening them to pick his phone off the bar. He knew you wouldn’t answer a phone call. He also knew your voicemail was definitely full at this point. He was always the person who had to tell you to delete the old ones whenever he tried to leave you one and couldn’t, but he wasn’t there to do it, so it would be full by now. He had to settle for a text, which felt like a much shittier version of a handwritten letter, but he had terrible handwriting and spelling, but at least it ranked well above an email in the power ranking of methods of communication. 

Please tell me you don’t hate sunflowers because of me. I really hope I didn’t ruin them for you.

Matthew placed his phone face down on the bar, then nervously flipped it face up even though he knew you wouldn’t have even been able to read his text in the millisecond his phone was face down. He didn’t know if you would answer, or if you would even read it. You would read it, Matthew assured himself. He knew you. You never got a text or a message you didn’t read. Would you say anything to him about it though? Would it be on your phone, nested among texts from people who didn’t break your heart until one day, probably a year from now, you would meet someone else and have no need to remember him anymore, so only then would you finally delete it?

Matthew tried not to think about it, but his eyes glanced down at the screen every thirty seconds even though he was willing them to just give you time. He didn’t even realize it was past one in the morning. You were definitely up, he knew you better than to think you would be asleep, but awake and awake and answering texts were different. He just hoped if you were awake, that you didn’t hate sunflowers, maybe that you didn’t hate him, and that you weren’t crying. 

You were awake though, holding that godforsaken necklace that you had ripped from your neck the morning after he ended it and thrown into the back of your jewelry box. The necklace was in one hand and your phone with Matthew’s text pulled up in the other. You were crying, something Matthew desperately wished you weren’t doing as he drank the last dregs of his beer and headed home with his head hung low, his phone alight in his hand as he ritually checked for a reply from you. You sighed, looking between his text and the necklace, wondering if you hated your favorite flower now. That question hung on another one though, one domino relying on the other to fall. Did you hate Matthew Tkachuk? 

Yes, you did. That was decided the moment the door closed behind him and he left you to deal with the crashing waves of grief all by yourself, without even a bucket to bail you out.  

Did you hate him more than you loved him though? 

You stared at the necklace, the one you hadn’t been able to throw away, and you knew the answer. The delicate golden necklace would be buried deep in a landfill if you really hated him more than you loved him, not in the palm of your hand now. But here you were, staring at it until your eyes went cloudy with tears, before you had to put it back in the box. You couldn’t put it back on, not now, maybe not ever, but you also couldn’t bear getting rid of it, the idea making your heart twist in your chest in a way that made you physically wince. 

You put your phone on your nightstand at the same moment Matthew did across town, both with your minds racing over the unanswered text. Matthew went to bed thinking you would never answer it, forever leaving the question hanging in the wind. You went to bed knowing your answer, but unsure if you were ever going to share it with him. 

------

Matthew groaned when he heard his doorbell ring, followed by cautious knocking. He hated that doorbell. The noise was absolutely piercing, especially to his hungover brain. He hadn’t even drank that much last night, but he was so incredibly hungover. Matthew could only guess that the alcohol had worked in tandem with the ache in his chest after deciding he needed to feel worse to create a hangover this bad from five beers over three hours. He shuffled to the front door, not even caring he hadn’t bothered to find any clothes other than sweats on his way to it. Whoever it was was too goddamn early and they would need to come back another time. 

When Matthew ripped open his front door, a groan falling from his mouth at the effort it took, he was looking at the ceiling, head thrown back in hatred of the exhaustion he was now feeling due to having to actually do something other than lay in bed and be hungover.

“Look, this building better be on fire or-”

Everything stopped when he saw it was you. You looked so small to him, standing there, a tray with two coffees in hand and a brown bag in your other hand. Your sweatshirt was swallowing you up and you looked like you were strongly debating making a break for the stairwell with the way your eyes were shifting to the right. There were dark circles under your reddened, swollen eyes, eyes that only looked like that when you had been doing a lot of crying recently. 

Matthew thought you would have a lot of possible reactions to his text. He never once let himself think you would show up at his front door. 

“I brought bagels,” you finally said, after far too long of both of you assessing the other. 

Matthew looked almost as bad as you did. His hair was unkempt beyond normal, the curls broken and haphazard across his head, hanging into his forehead. His eyes were sunken and absent, vacant like a forgotten home on the outskirts of town. Days old stubble patchily covered his jawline, razor clearly lost among his things again. If you weren’t at his apartment, if you had just passed him on the street instead, you might not have recognized him. There was always a lightness to Matthew, an inability to keep his feet on the ground as he searched for the next adventure he could have, but he seemed rooted in place, held down by some outside force. He was complying with it, the force, but it was clearly under duress and it was exhausting him. The force was absolute agony and it was written all over his face, in his posture, in his every labored movement. 

“And coffee,” you added after no words left Matthew’s mouth long enough for an uncomfortable silence to stretch between you both. 

“You’re here,” Matthew breathed out, words spoke so softly as if he feared if he said them too loudly, you would disappear. 

Matthew’s head was pounding. His mouth tasted awful since he went straight to bed when he got home, not even stopping to brush his teeth. He knew he looked like an absolute mess because there wasn’t a way a person could feel like he did and not look like a mess. He didn’t care about any of it. You were here. You were actually here, with coffee, and bagels, at his front door. 

He didn’t think. He knew it was a mistake after the fact, really as soon as he did it, but he also knew there was a chance you were here just for personal closure, that this might be the last time he ever got to see you again. He reached out and grabbed you by your waist, crushing you into his bare chest. His face pressed into your hair, which always smelled like strawberries to him even though you swore your shampoo wasn’t supposed to smell like strawberries. If you never talked to him again after today, he just wanted to hold you one more time. 

You hugged him back, hesitation evident in your loose arms and your tense shoulders. It was barely a hug, but it almost made Matthew cry. Even just the small response, no matter how cautious it was, made him feel better than he had felt in a month. 

“Go brush your teeth and like, actually wake up,” you told him as you pulled away from him. “I’ll, um, toast the bagels, I guess.” 

Matthew was on autopilot as he walked into his en suite and grabbed his toothbrush. His movements were slow, robotic as he brushed his teeth. There was only one thing on his mind, replaying over and over incessantly, persistently. Why did you show up at his place? Matthew was desperately trying to turn the broken record playing his mind over to the other side, hoping to find the answer, but it was only more of the same. There was no reason, no reason he could understand, why you had shown up at his front door. Why you had shown up with coffee and breakfast for him was so far outside of the realm of things Matthew could understand, he had to eliminate it from his mind. 

Until it all suddenly clicked in place, Sean’s words from last night flowing back into his mind. 

You were here because you were a better person than he was, a far better person. Sean had said you were better than all of them, very much including Matthew, put together and it was true. You were bright and beautiful and good, so incredibly good. You loved people with an honesty and a bravery that made Matthew’s heart ache due to the effort it had to put in to keep up with you when he’d been smart enough to accept your love. You were so much better than he was four months ago when you kissed at his birthday party, so much better than the bedraggled boy looking back at him in the mirror today, and somehow infinitely better than the person he was going to be in fifty years, already. Who you would be in fifty years? You were going to be the kind of person that needed a designated overflow zone at your funeral because too many people were going to want to acknowledge they’d felt your love in front of hundreds of others. 

Matthew never deserved the piece of you he’d gotten. He knew that now as he heard you humming softly to yourself as you dropped the bagels in his toaster. Matthew had never deserved you and it’s why he had ended it because he’d known all along. He knew you were fighting because he wasn’t good enough for you and that he never would be. He would have spent his life running at top speed behind you, trying not to slow you down, trying not to be a drag on your life, trying not to lessen the impact for good you could have on the world. You would have never let him go, slowing yourself, stunting yourself in order to accommodate him.

But here you were, looping the train of your life to run back through the temporary station of your relationship with him that was in complete shambles, and Matthew let himself dream it was because you were ready to hold his hand and fix it up brick by brick, piece by piece because you were so good it hurt. Matthew knew the right thing to do would be to make sure your train left the station today, unencumbered by any damage from him, and more importantly, without him. But Matthew Tkachuk was three things that made that impossible. He was competitive, problematically so, always wanting to get better, always wanting to win. Damn it all to hell if he couldn’t spend the rest of his life running to keep up with you because one day, he just might actually catch up if he could figure out how to run fast enough. Matthew Tkachuk was also incredibly selfish and incredibly in love with you, one a personality flaw and the other the purest part of him that had ever existed. He had to figure out how to catch up because he couldn’t let you go.

Matthew stepped out of the bathroom with resolve settling into his clenched jaw. He knew asking you to take him back without any proof he could improve was a hopeless avenue. He couldn’t ask you for that; him asking for anything was already unfair, he needed to try to at least ask for the least he could. Any plan he had formed was tossed out the window of his high rise the second he saw you, sweatshirt hanging off your shoulder, hair piled on top of your head, humming softly to yourself as you spread cream cheese on his and your bagels, barefoot in his kitchen. For a moment, that moment Matthew held his breath so you wouldn’t hear him standing in the kitchen doorway, it was like the last month hadn’t happened and you were still his. Matthew hung in the moment as long as his lungs would allow, soaking it in case he never got to see it again. 

“You going to keep staring or are you going to come get your bagel?” 

Your words pulled him out of his thoughts violently, head shaking off the ideas that had been swirling, pulling him down that whirlpool of you and him that might just kill him. He yanked the nearest bar stool out, dropping down into it unceremoniously, before graciously taking the bagel and the coffee you’d brought for him. 

“Why did you ask me that?” you finally said, words slicing like knives through the palpable tension in the air. “The sunflowers. Why that? After a whole month? That?” 

You said a few extra words then you’d meant to say. You were trying to keep everything short and brief, just here in a quest for the peace you needed and nothing more. More words meant more feelings and more feelings meant the idea of peace slipped further away with each expressed word. 

“I just,” Matthew ran a hand aggressively through his curls before starting over, “I just wanted to make sure that after everything I did, I didn’t ruin one of your favorite things for you.” 

You sighed, debating if you wanted get into this or not with him. What could it hurt? It was just a story.

“I like them because my mom does,” you told him softly. “She always had them growing by our house when I was little. She always had them in a vase by the front door, and she had these sunflower earrings, these little golden ones. They’d kind of like the necklace-” 

Your fingers touched the bare skin where the necklace he gave you had sat until a month ago, fingers finding nothing to touch to. Matthew’s eyes had followed your movement, saddening when he saw you weren’t wearing it even though he hadn’t expected you to be. 

You cleared your throat before continuing, “Anyway, she lost them a while ago. But I guess they just remind me of home. That’s why I got that dress. I got it when I first moved here. I saw it walking around downtown in a window and just took it as a sign that everything was going to be alright, you know?”

Matthew nodded softly as he continued to listen and mindless pick at his bagel. 

“And then when we started dating and you figured out they were my favorite flowers and started getting me dozens of them all the time, I guess you and us started creeping in as part of those reasons I love them. It kind of sucks because they make me sad now and I can’t wear that dress anymore.”

The words were tumbling out of your mouth now, practically on top of each other. You weren’t sure where you’re going, but more words meant more expressed and acknowledged feelings and you were saying a lot of words. Matthew was trying to keep up, trying to take time to process and read between the lines. You always said so much whenever you spoke, half of it jammed in between sentences in pregnant pauses and shifting eyes. He was trying to take it all in, trying to figure out how you were actually feeling, but you weren’t resting in any one emotion long enough for Matthew to identify it. 

“But no,” you sighed. “I don’t hate sunflowers. They’re sadder now. It used to just be missing home, but now they make me miss us. But I don’t hate them. I don’t think you can fully hate something that reminds you of so many people and places and times that you loved. I don’t hate them because I don’t hate you, Matty.” 

He didn’t ruin one of your favorite things for you and you didn’t hate him. In full honesty, Matthew didn’t think you hated him. He knew one of your flaws, but also your best quality, the one that made Matthew feel so lucky to have been with you, was your capacity for love. It got you in trouble sometimes, kept you with people you shouldn’t have been, made you believe in fake friends’ false pretenses, but it also the only reason you didn’t hate him now and the only possible reason you would ever accept any sort of olive branch Matthew could clumsily extend. 

“I fucked up,” Matthew said suddenly. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t filtering. He should have taken his time, picked his words carefully, but it was you and you didn’t hate him and Matthew was painfully awful at this sort of thing and he was overwhelmed with the idea he might just have an opening back into the warmth that was you. “I’m so fucking sorry. I totally get if you can’t trust me again. I know I’m a shit boyfriend. But fuck, I love you. I know I do. I’m just so bad at showing it. I want to fix that. I want to fix it with you. I want you and I want to show you I’m not a fuck up and that I do love you. I won’t need a second chance ever again, just some patience. Please.”

Matthew let out a long, shaky breath when the final begging word left his lips. He knew he’d been pleading with you with each and every word, hoping something he could say might hit you in just the right away, might have just the right effect to get the result he so desperately craved. You. Back in his arms. Back in his bed. Back in his jersey at his games. Back with him, where he wanted you more than he had wanted anything in an embarrassingly long time. 

“Is any of that even true?”

Your question stopped Matthew in his tracks. It felt like a punch to his chest, right over his already aching heart. How could you doubt that? No, Matthew knew how you could doubt it. You could doubt it because you could doubt every single thing about him if you damn well pleased. He deserved every bit of doubt and caution you presented. He had broken you because he refused to take his seat at the adults’ table and talk about how he felt, how he was feeling insecure, how he felt like a bad partner, and how he felt worse about all of that because he felt like he couldn’t fix any of it. He attributed the two of you not working out to you two not being a match, instead of acknowledging his own flaws and what they were doing to both of you. In retrospect, all of that probably would have been far better to say to you than what he had actually said, but words couldn’t be stuffed back in his mouth. They were now in your mind, in your memory, and Matthew would just have to live with another mistake on the laundry list of things he had done wrong regarding you.

“Every single word is true,” Matthew told you softly. “I have so many other ones too, if you want to hear them.” 

You breathed out hard, shoving the air forcefully out of your lungs as you ran a hand through your hair, “You don’t get to say those kinds of things to me, Matthew. You don’t have the right to that.” 

“I know,” Matthew grimaced in reaction to your words.

He should’ve held his tongue, but he had so much he needed to say to you. But there he was again. Thinking about himself, only himself. He wasn’t considering you, wasn’t communicating with you. He just vomited all of his thoughts and feelings up without even bothering to see if you were actually open to receiving them. Saying you didn’t hate him didn’t even correlate to being open to the conversation Matthew had forced into your hands, unaware he had even pried your fists open to put it there. 

“I shouldn’t have forced that all on you,” Matthew admitted softly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just, I have so much I want to say to you.” 

“Matthew,” you sighed. You had been doing a lot of sighing lately. “I don’t think-”

“I don’t want you to take me back,” Matthew cut you off. “At least, not right away. I don’t deserve that. I know that. I’m not asking for that.” 

You crossed your arms over your chest, eyes scanning over his face to try and figured out where he was going. You thought he would ask you to take him back, something you weren’t going to do without a sign from him that it would actually be different this time instead of exactly the same, with a shorter honeymoon period. Another two months with him, only to suffer the same heartbreak wasn’t enough time to make you take a blind chance it would be different. You needed something to hang your hat on, something to make you feel like he wanted to be your partner this time around. You needed to see him try, try in the long nights apart, try in the close nights together, try in the afternoon dates, and try in the stolen morning moments. You needed to see Matthew try and be your partner, and not just some emotional, freeloading friend with benefits version of a boyfriend who would spin you around a dance floor, then into his bed, then leave whenever you asked for more.

“Then what are you asking for?” 

Your words were quieter than you expected, confusion ringing heavy in each syllable. Matthew ran a hand through his hair, frustration evident in how his fingers tugged on his curls at the end. He didn’t really know what he wanted. He just wanted a shot to prove to you he was worth your time, that he could be the partner you deserved. He wasn’t even sure he could be, which was part of the reason he was struggling to speak to you now, feeling like he was trying to row up a rushing creek made of his current feelings and his past failures without any sort of paddle or even a life vest, about to drown at any possible second.

“I just, I want to show you that I’m worth a real shot again.” Matthew was begging now, figuring that if you said no, at least you would know how badly he wanted you. He couldn’t get more pathetic than asking you if he’d ruined your favorite flowers because it had somehow said everything without saying anything at all. “Just, let me be around, let me earn a second chance. Let me show you I’m trying, trying to get better, trying to communicate better, trying to be someone who is good enough to deserve half of you. Let me show you I can try and that I’ll keep on trying forever, if that’s what you want from me. If you want to watch me try for five fucking years before giving me another shot, that’s fine. If you want to watch me try to five fucking years and then not give me another shot, that’s fine, at least I spent five years trying for someone who is so goddamn worth it, it hurts.” 

“So, you want what exactly?” you pressed, a defensive laugh edging at your voice. “You want to just, what? To be around all the time? To be together all of the time? That’s just being friends, Matthew, and you were always a great friend, but you were a shitty fucking boyfriend. You want to spend all day with me, showing me that you’re trying to be better, then do whatever you want when you’re not around me?” 

“No, I, fuck,” Matthew groaned, hands digging into his hair, head dropping to the cold granite counter in dismay at the mess he had made. 

“Here’s your first communication test then,” you told him, letting the passive aggressive biting words you held at the back of your tongue roll off the front of it instead. “Tell me what you mean.”

“I don’t want anyone else.” Matthew banged his forehead on the counter with each word, frustration getting the better of him now. “I don’t even think this is going to make sense, but let me be your boyfriend even though you won’t be my girlfriend. That sounds so fucking stupid now that I said it out loud, but I guess I’m just trying to say I’m going to be one hundred-percent, all gas no brakes, full throttle about you and trying to actually change for you and show you I’m changing, but you can do whatever you damn well please because even letting me try is a fuck load more than I deserve.” 

Matthew let out a breath to try and steady himself before continuing, “I know I’m still asking for a lot, both of your time and of your ability to at least sort of try to look at me not like the guy who said all of that shit a month ago. But I promise, I’ll be worth it. You do whatever you want, no strings, no jealousy, nothing. Let me be around and prove I’m worth a real second shot, please. You can send me packing whenever you want and I won’t bother you. You’re just too fucking incredible for me not to ask to try, even though I don’t have any right to ask.” 

You breathed out hard, forcing all of the air out of your lungs. Matthew was asking, begging, for an opportunity to prove himself, to prove he could do what you wanted all along, just for him to try. Standing in his kitchen, bare feet cold on his hard wood floor, the idea of giving him that opportunity made your heart pick up in your chest, but made pain radiate through it at the same time. The romantic in you, the part of you that wondered if maybe Matthew Tkachuk was actually worth it, the part of you that loved sunflowers even though the memories attached to them were so incredibly mixed now, wanted to give him a chance. The other part of you, an equal part of you, was screaming, demanding that you be protective of yourself, of your happiness, from the people you let into your life, especially ones who had already proven then had no problem burning the life you were building for yourself and leaving before the ashes started to fall. 

But did you even have a happiness you needed to protect? If you didn’t, then the answer was simple. If there was nothing to protect, there was extremely limited risk. You were already in a variation of hell of his own creation, sponsored by the feeling of someone you love deciding you weren’t worth an ounce of effort. What could it do to you if he failed? It would just affirm what you already experienced as a perennial fact instead of a potentially annual moment. 

But the romantic inside pushed back, hard. Would you always wonder what would have happened if you gave him a chance? Would you always carry a torch for him? Would there always be an empty room, with a light left on, for him, in the house of the life you ended up making for yourself? 

Romanticism versus realism. That was the question at hand. You knew both sides of the argument, the angel and devil on your shoulder both just facets of you, screaming at each other, both trying to decide what was best for you. They were just extensions of you though, so if you didn’t know, they didn’t know. But you did know two things though. 

You knew you still loved sunflowers and you still loved Matthew Tkachuk. 

And that was enough to convince you punch him a round-trip, one month ticket on the train of your every moving, ever developing life. You would be directing the path, choosing which tracks you would take, making all the moves, and he would have to figure out how to be your co-director. You weren’t going to stop or simplify anything for him. You were just going to continue on. In a month, the train would loop back to the station and you would decide to punch him another ticket, offer him the seat next to you, or leave him stranded there, alone at a run down train station probably in the pouring rain like in all the movies, before he would leave and watch as the station crumbled to dust upon his exit along with the idea of you and him. 

“Okay.” 

You settled into your answer as you gave it, trying to get it to settle over your body in a way that made you feel warmer rather than colder. Matthew’s eyes were staring into yours and he looked like he was teetering on the edge of crying, like he wanted to tell you everything that single thing that word made him feel, but he bit his lip and held his tongue. He was listening instead of talking, a welcome change, a welcome first attempt. 

“You get one month,” you told him, your voice shaking as you tried to force it to be level. “One month of being around, I guess we can call it that. You figure out how you want to prove it to me. I’m not here to help you out. You hurt me. This is me, unlocking the front door for you. You have to figure out how to open it all on your own, okay? After a month, I guess we can talk and see where we’re at.” 

“Thank you,” is all Matthew can figure out how to say for a moment. One month to try and show you he was worth another maybe, or if he let himself dream for a second, one month until you might want to be with him again. “I’d take anything, so thank you.” 

“Take your fucking breakfast,” you smiled softly, trying to break the tension as much as one joke can. “And your coffee is cold now but that’s going to be a you problem.” 

“Is your coffee cold?” Matthew asked you. He just wanted to fix something, even something as small as a too cold cup of coffee. “I can fix it.” 

“Well, it’s iced coffee,” you informed him, a genuine laugh in your voice this time as you reached behind you to grab your drink on the opposite counter, giving the cup a little shake, ice rattling, as you showed it to him. “So, I sure hope you’re not going to try and warm it up.” 

“No, no,” Matthew laughed softly, hands fiddling with the collar on his now room temperature at best coffee. “Probably should’ve asked what you were drinking first.” 

You nodded softly, “Your heart was in the right place.” 

Matthew smiled softly as you and your heart picked up in your chest again. God, that smile. It cut through everything, through the dull ache in your chest, through the deafening noise in your head of your own thoughts, and hit you right in the room in your heart that was reserved for him. It was vacant now, but the lights shone brighter for a moment and the furniture in the basement that used to be in there for him rattled, drawers and cabinet doors smashing, a reminder that everything you felt for him was still there. It might be covered in drop clothes and an inch of dust, but it was there. Part of you was already ready for him, but it wasn’t most of you. Maybe one day it would be. Or maybe this was one of the worst things you’d allowed in a long time under the impression that he simply couldn’t make things worse for you, which was almost a challenge to that fucking bitch fate at this point. Your insecurity and shaky foundation got the best of you for a moment and a sentence like a child’s prayer slipped out of your mouth. 

“Matthew, please don’t waste my time.” 

“I won’t,” Matthew’s words followed yours without a second of hesitation. “I promise. I won’t.” 

The romantic in you hoped he was right, that this would be worth how difficult it would be, how difficult it would be to look at him over and over again with his past words playing like a broken record stuck on a broken record player in your mind. If he truly did try, then enduring the torturous reminder of the past would be more than worth it because you were pretty certain that if Matthew Tkachuk could figure out how to be everything you knew he could be, he would be the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. But could he get there? You didn’t know, but sometimes people take risks, people bend until they almost break in search of love, like sunflowers bend towards the sunlight, in search of a new and brighter day.

------

You woke up the next day after breakfast at Matthew’s, after ducking out for a planned series of activities, lunch with a friend, and errands to run. You had tried to fill your day after Matthew’s to give yourself an out if it went poorly and a break from Matthew to process everything if it turned out positive. Part of you was wondering if what had happened was really positive or not, but you felt better today than you had over the last month, able to get out of bed and get the coffee pot started with too much extra effort. The bags under your eyes looked better than they had in weeks.

A knock on your front door, eerily reminiscent of the one you’d delivered on Matthew’s door the day before, brought you and your freshly poured cup of coffee in hand to the door. You opened the door and were greeted with an unfamiliar face with a very familiar expression, one far too cheery for the hour in the day. The smile plastered on her face didn’t falter as she read your name and address off her list to confirm who you were and that she was in the right place. You nodded as confirmation, which just made her smile impossibly wider. 

“Great! These are for you then!” 

Her voice was somehow worse than the fact that she was downright euphoric before nine in the morning. No one who could be this excited about life before nine could be trusted. She practically shoved a bouquet into your hands, turned on her heels, then seemed to skip down the hallway and out of your building. You shook your head as if to shake off the memory of the world’s cheeriest delivery person from your mind, before turning back into your apartment, kicking the door closed on your way to the kitchen table. 

Of course, they were sunflowers. Matthew’s consistency with flowers was never in doubt. You grabbed the card, smiling at the words printed on the small card.

If you don’t hate sunflowers yet, give me a month. You’re going to get so many, you’ll be sick of them. Lunch today? - Matty

You tapped the card in your hand, taking deep steady breathes as you walked over to the counter where your phone was. You were really doing this. You were really giving him a chance to show you he could be better than your downright awful four months full of casual disagreements, fights, and near constant miscommunication had shown you. There were people in your life you didn’t think would approve. No, you knew they wouldn’t approve. That’s why you hadn’t told a single soul about yesterday, but this wasn’t about anyone else. It wasn’t about the opinions they would be bound to have. It wasn’t about what they thought was best. This was you and Matthew and everything that was still there. It wasn’t for other people; relationships never were. 

You texted him, accepting his invitation for lunch. He texted back immediately even though it was way too early for him usually. If Matthew had practice at ten, he wasn’t out of bed until a quarter past nine and he lived fifteen minutes from the arena. Your mind wondered if he had been awake, just waiting for your text, but you pushed the thought of side as you headed to take a shower. He wouldn’t get up before nine unless his building was on fire. 

Across town, a curly-haired boy who had woken up two hours earlier than he usually did, just to see if the girl he loved had gotten her sunflowers, smiled when he saw her text.

She had gotten them, thankfully. Matthew got to go to practice with a smile on his face, wondering how she’d smiled when she had seen the flowers arrive, and with the knowledge he’d get to see her smile in person after practice. Well, if he played his cards right, he’d probably be able to con a smile or two out of her. He felt damn near giddy, like a kid at a county fair who had too much cotton candy and who has just accidentally won the biggest prize the fair had to offer, even though he hadn’t even come close to winning you back yet. Getting to be around you again was his win, and it was so much more than he thought he would ever get, he could feel like a little kid for the morning if he wanted to.

He could and did feel like a little kid the entire time he waived for you at the restaurant. Matthew arrived fifteen minutes early. Being late had been his specialty the first time around, not necessarily a problem often within itself, but compounded upon everything else Matthew didn’t do then, a list that seemed to grow longer the more he picked apart the past from your point of view, showing up early carried more weight. The shock on your face when you saw him already waiting at the table when the hostess brought you around was proof enough that every effort Matthew made, every single thing he took notice of from the past and changed, would make a difference. 

“Hey, how was practice?” you said as you dropped down into the seat opposite him. 

Matthew had the smallest sliver of hope that the sunflower dress would have reappeared, but he knew he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to see you look like you had when he had gotten the opportunity to take you out the first time, to do this right the first time. If he hadn’t screwed everything up with his stubbornness and his general inability to be a boyfriend, he wouldn’t be wishing for that dress right now. He could be in your apartment, holding you, face in your neck, arms around your waist, decompressing from practice and life in general. But he was here, sitting four feet apart, in the middle of a restaurant, knowing he wouldn’t even get to hold your hand on the walk to his car later because you hadn’t even driven together. 

“Um, practice was good,” Matthew told you, his mind still running through a seemingly endless list of things he could be doing with you right now if he hadn’t given up before ever really getting in the game. “How was your morning?”

“Good. Didn’t do much since I didn’t have work.” 

Matthew nodded, taking a sip of his water before doing what he would need to do over and over again, if he really did want to get the chance to love you to you again. He tried again.

“So, um, how’s your mom doing?” Matthew asked, hands trying to find a resting spot on the table, his lap, somewhere.

“Fine.”

The distance across the table felt wider with each passing second to Matthew, like you were somehow slipping further away from him with each clipped answer you gave. It was painfully obvious that the sunflowers had only gotten you to show up. The magic of them had worn off the second you sat face to face with him and had to claw through all of the emotional shrapnel that was heavy in your chest and in your mind that Matthew had caused to sit across a table from him. Just sitting across the table from him, all you had was your past with him on your mind. You had too much time to think, to remember. Matthew needed to find some way to overcome it, to make you see the him from the present and not the past when you looked at him. It wasn’t going to happen in this restaurant with nothing but time for you to get hopelessly lost in the past.

“Okay, nope,” Matthew sighed, tossing his napkin and menu onto the table. “We’re not doing lunch here.”

“You picked it,” your brows furrowed down in confusion as Matthew stood from the table. “Do you not like see anything you like?” 

“I see you,” Matthew slid in with a playful smile on his face and just for a moment, you remembered why it had been so easy to fall for him what felt like a lifetime ago. “But no, this just isn’t working. Let’s get out of here.” 

Matthew threw far too much money on the table considering the only thing you had ordered was water, but he felt bad for wasting the wait staff’s time, and started putting on his coat. You slowly rose from your seat to do the same, confusion pulling your brows together. A patented Matthew Tkachuk date was a meal and that was pretty much it. A change of venue mid-date? Multi part dates? Definitely not in his wheelhouse. Especially when you considered you hadn’t even ordered an appetizer yet.

“Where are we going?” you asked him as he gestured for you to lead the two of you out of the restaurant. 

“Honestly,” Matthew sighed as he pulled the door open for you, waiting for both of you to exit before continuing, “I don’t really have a plan. That just felt stuffy? Weird? I don’t know. It didn’t feel like us.” 

“What does us feel like, Matthew?” you sighed, tucking your hair behind your ear, a nervous habit that would never die and never stop making Matthew want to die since he thought it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, every single time. 

“I know what it used to feel like when it was good,” he told you. “We could talk for hours about anything. We used to be able to anyway. I know it might be awhile before we can do that again, but that wasn’t like the good parts of us and you know it.”

You sighed again, something you knew you would probably be doing a lot as you tried to give Matthew the space to just try, but the part of you, a large part of you, the part couldn’t stand not being the line leader in kindergarten, was screaming at you to do something, anything. Kiss him, which would have been the worst idea you might have ever had, slap him, also not advisable, get in your car and leave, not a great suggestion either. Just something, anything other than just standing in the street, looking at him and remembering how much it all hurt, how much it hurt to love someone who always seemed to have one foot firmly planted somewhere that wasn’t with you.

“Come on. I know a better place,” Matthew told you, pulling you out of your spiraling thoughts before you could fall too deep into them.

It took everything in him not to offer you his hand. He was pretty sure holding your hand might make him cry, which wouldn’t be the best look for him, but he was pretty sure it would feel like heaven. But no pearly gates were going to open for him today. He’d have to settle for standing next to you with the knowledge that maybe heaven did exist after all.

You walked side by side with him as he weaved through the streets of downtown, staying close, but far enough apart so you couldn’t accidentally brush his hand with yours. You stayed in step with him into a nearby coffee shop, the warmer more comfortable atmosphere already sinking into you and Matthew, loosening your shoulders, the tension softening. The restaurant had been cold somehow, harsh, and considering your love for him was pretty frozen in permafrost, this was much better. 

“They supposedly, according to Benny, have the best blueberry scones in the city,” Matthew said softly.

“You know me,” you smiled softly. 

“Love a good baked good.” 

You and Matthew spoke in unison, bringing a laugh over both of you, tension continuing to loosen with each passing moment. Matthew asked you what you wanted and ordered for you, mostly so he could pay without hearing a fight from you about how you didn’t need him to pay for you. You sat down with your scone and your coffee at a table Matthew dwarfed, but he didn’t seem to mind too much as he looked at you. 

“So, take two,” he joked. “Is this better by the way? You just didn’t seem happy at all there. It seems like this is more your speed.” 

To say you were stunned that he was actually checking on you, trying to tune into your emotions, would be an understatement. He had showed up early and was asking about how you felt, genuinely. His blue eyes, long standing one of your favorite features of his, bounced across your face, trying to take in every micro expression before you could even answer the question.

“Yeah, Matty,” the older nickname sliding out, “this is better.” 

“Okay, good,” he smiled softly and this one made its way to his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. 

He asked you about work, desperate to catch up on the office drama he had missed. You asked for updates on the team, the things the media would never and could never find out about. He asked about your mom again and you actually told him. Sliding back into old ways, it didn’t feel like your relationship in the coffee shop. It felt like your old friendship. The world felt like it felt when you fell in love with him in secret originally. Matthew was actively listening to you the entire time, something he deeply struggled with because did he ever have the tendency to talk too much, but he was trying. He apologized for cutting you off once to tell his own story and you almost got whiplash when he sank back into his chair and verbally gave you the floor. He was making space for you, fully and honestly, and trying to appreciate you inhabiting the space he was making for you in the conversation and in his life. He talked too much, but there was a peace he found in listening to the best person he had ever had the privilege of knowing tell him stories, tell him about her life like she wanted to give him part of it and god, did he ever want part of your life. 

Matthew went home that day and was damn near clinical about the whole thing, breaking apart everything he could remember about how you reacted to what he said, what you seemed to appreciate and what you didn’t. He treated his memories of it all like game tape, reviewing what he considered to be a win after a rough first period showing, looking to areas of success and areas of possible improvement and man, he was finding a lot of areas to improve. He kept getting stuck on your smile, the few true ones in the coffee shop, where you looked like the girl he fell in love with instead of the hollow one he created with his own words. Matthew let himself sit with those moments for a couple of steady breaths. You were worth the effort, he reminded himself again. You were. 

The next morning you were thankfully already milling about, halfway through your coffee and halfway through getting dressed when the knock came to your front door. You had a suspicion based on the knock which somehow itself was cheery that you were going to open the door to the same delivery person as yesterday. There she was when your door swung open, ponytail swinging, smile tattooed on her face, unable to fall. This time though, she shoved a bouquet of a dozen red roses into your hands, much to your confusion. You almost asked her if she’d given you the wrong flowers, but she had already vanished who you looked up from the flowers, off to curse the next person with her cheeriness. 

When you placed them on your side table next to your sofa, the spot on the kitchen table still inhabited by the sunflowers from the day before, you at least knew she’d given you the right bouquet. 

Can’t always get you sunflowers, sweetheart. Got to keep you on your toes. :) - Matty

You immediately pulled your phone out of your pajamas pants pocket and shot off the first thing that crossed your mind to him. 

Variety is NOT the spice of life, Tkachuk. Stick to the status quo.

You got a text back shortly after exchanging your comfortable pajama bottoms for the confines of work appropriate pants. You checked your phone seven times on your walk to your car, feeling like a version of yourself you thought you left behind in middle school. You had dealt with unrequited feelings for Matthew so long, fell in love with him in secret, that when you had the chance to love him out loud, you jumped at it and so did he. It might have been the only time you had ever been completely on the same page together. Before that, you had been fast friends, falling into friendship without any effort really by either of you. This was something else. Matthew Tkachuk was putting in more effort than you saw him put into anything besides his career. The effort was making you feel like you should be back in a plaid skirt, shoving a binder into your locker, and whispering about the cute curly-haired boy from your science class, a kid with a crush who had no idea what was yet to come.

But you could only wish you had no idea of what was to come. It had already come, running you over faster than you could ask, your heart shattering under Matthew’s feet due to his carelessness. One sentence from the speech he so carelessly used to break your heart felt like this moment. At best, I think we just had middle school crushes gone off the rails. The amount of times you had fallen in and out of crushes in middle school was too high to even attempt to count. Was what you were feeling just a recurrence, a temporary realignment of the train on the tracks? Was Matthew putting in all this effort for fleeting feelings? Was he right this whole time? 

------

Matthew Tkachuk was working against himself with you, fighting the mess he’d made of you and him a month ago. He created the situation that made you build the walls he was trying to surmount with an army of sunflowers and his poor excuse for love. Matthew was good at a few things, hockey, being a pest, and creating chaos. Righting the chaos he made had never been a task that was asked of him before and now, three days after that first day in the coffee shop, he was struggling to figure out where to go from here. He wanted to make the right decision, systematically work through the heartbreak he’d caused, taking leaps each time he saw you until maybe he’d be close enough to wrap you up in his arms and never let you go again. He might have to settle for a baby step today though since you were at work, slammed with a new project from your boss, with no time to see him

He sent you lunch at work instead, from your favorite burger place you always went together. You swore you could have cried when you realized he included both sweet potato fries and regular fries, your mind pulled back to the first time you went together, back when you were just friends. 

“Should I get the sweet potato fries or regular?” you asked him. 

“Get the sweet potato ones,” Matthew told you, running a hand to push his curls out of his face. “You always get regular fries and complain about how you should’ve gotten sweet potato whenever we all go out to eat together.” 

You agreed with his suggestion, letting the conversation fall comfortably back over the two of you as you waited for your food. You hadn’t even realized time had passed when the waitress dropped off your food. Spending time with Matthew melted away stress and your perception of the passage of time, letting you live in the moment, unencumbered by the stressful comings and goings of your day to day life. 

The sweet potato fries had been a good choice. They had a honey drizzle on them and you were more than pleased with your selection. But Matthew’s regular potato fries appeared to have some sort of special seasoning on them and you were itching to try one, but Matthew wasn’t big on sharing in general, let alone when it came to food. He saw you staring at them and groaned. 

“You’re the worst,” but he flipped his plate around so the fries faced you anyway. “Don’t say I never do things for you.”

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Tkachuk.” 

You frequented that same burger joint with him throughout the years of your friendship that came after, and during your short relationship. The burgers you ordered changed, but never the fries. You got sweet potato. Matthew got regular. He let you steal as many of his as you wanted without a single complaint sliding between his lips despite dozens of repeat visits to the restaurant.

In your office, holding a container of sweet potato fries and a container of regular in opposite hands, you thought it was a little ridiculous that french fries were making tears well up in your eyes. He hadn’t forgotten. You shook your head to shake off the desperate thoughts that were swirling, the ones that were tying emotional weight to french fries of all things, and shot him off a quick text to thank him for lunch before getting wrapped back up in your day. You didn’t see his reply text until you had already kicked your heels off at home too many hours later. 

Would never forget to get my girl her whole meal :) 

Sometimes, love wasn’t big gestures. Oftentimes, it wasn’t even gestures that would make much sense to relay to other people. Two kinds of french fries wasn’t something you could explain to anyone else because it would just seem childish, but you felt cared for. Above all, you felt remembered when you’d opened that bag. You felt like Matthew Tkachuk had seen you almost two years ago in a restaurant and remembered exactly who you were in that moment and still knew who you were today. The french fries would go untold to anyone else, but they made you smile more than the roses on your coffee table when you fell asleep that night. 

The next month felt like it happened all at once. There were enough sunflowers to create your own you-pick patch of them, rose and tulips and whatever other kinds of flowers Matthew knew the names of interspersed, just to keep you on your toes. Movies nights at his place, complete with half-burnt, half-unpopped popcorn courtesy of Matthew’s non-existent culinary skills. Nights out, full of laughter and storytelling that made you feel like nothing had ever changed, like you had flipped over an extra month in the calendar, skipping one entirely, the month you’d been apart, and moved on without it. He felt like your friend again, something that had lapsed when you’d started dating. You both tried so hard, arguably too hard, to change your relationship into a romantic one that you didn’t leave space for friendship, booting it out without anything solid to fulfill its previously occupied space. The relationship collapsed without a solid core, the frail coverings of romance too heavy for the hollow center to bear. 

Matthew wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He still talked over you, parts of his brain running faster than others. He still forgot to talk to you on road trips sometimes. He still forgot your sister’s birthday. He still resisted emotional responses from you, physically pulling back and trying to dodge conversations that would bring discomfort. The gestures were there, hundreds of them in the form of your favorite flowers, but was it enough? Did you truly believe you two were hand in hand, putting the train station of your relationship back together, or was this just an attractive paint job hiding the cracks for a few months until they became exposed again because of time? Was the effort a permanent fixture? Or was it just a passing small town station that Matthew had created to attract you, pulling you into town with the promise of nice accommodations and restaurants always being available, only to abandon them as soon as the train left the station and your life got on without you, leaving you stranded, trapped in a small forgotten town forever?

As you walked into your favorite coffee shop, you cut the line, heading right to the front like you had become accustomed to doing. Matthew had called your order in and paid for it over the phone every work day before you got there since that first day after he sent you lunch. He knew what time you usually got to your favorite shop, and worked it out with the staff that they had your order ready for you now like clockwork every day. You had been able to gain twenty minutes of sleep from it, but you were wondering now if this would all stop if you took him back or not. Really, the coffee order ceasing would be more than fine. Love wasn’t in monetary gestures like this one technically was, but what else would disappear with it? Would Matthew trying to verbally and physically make space for you in his life disappear too? Would him genuinely trying to, even if it’s hard and he’s pretty shitty at it, understand your emotions fade away? Would all the effort fragment into sporadic moments, slowly growing further and further apart until they stopped happening all together and you wasted years of your life giving Matthew Tkachuk your love and not getting enough back? 

You didn’t know the answer, which is why you were thrilled you were having dinner with some of your closest, non-Matthew related friends after work. You had been keeping Matthew a bit of a secret. Actually, a complete secret. You knew your friends wouldn’t approve at the start, so you hadn’t told them a thing. They would have told you he didn’t deserve any semblance of a second shot, that the things he had said in the past could never be overwritten by future good actions, that you weren’t supposed to give people who break your heart second chances. But now, you were at a crossroads. 

You could give Matthew more time, maintain the status quo until inevitably your heart gave out. You could open your arms to love him again, knowing full well that you would never be one hundred percent sure or not. You could brush him aside, thanking him for his temporary effort that would never be enough for you. Three clear options left you further from a solution than you thought possible. You needed advice. You needed opinions from people who only had stake in you in this relationship. You needed to be more selfish than you knew how to be, so you were passing the task off to your friends. 

While they were usually quick to pass judgment, they were silent as you went through every painstaking detail of your past month, starting with that fated text about sunflowers, through every dinner, every movie, every moment until the text you got before you sat down in this chair at dinner with them. You were exhausted by the time you got through everything, emotionally and verbally spent, feeling no closer to your answer. You had hoped retelling everything would pull you in one direction or the other, with no such luck. Your friends, however, weren’t undecided in the slightest. 

“So, you’re ending this experiment, right?” 

You were shocked, almost spitting out your drink at the harshness of the words that spilled out of your best friend’s mouth. She shrugged off your shocked expression. 

“I mean, it was a nice experiment, I guess, but a total waste of your time,” another friend added. “There isn’t any way to prove this is a permanent change and I, for one, will never tell you to take that kind of a risk. You’re too good to put up with a guy who very well could end up not being worth it.” 

Your friends were talking a mile a minute, all at you, but really at each other in their bubble of agreement, agreement that Matthew Tkachuk was not worth your time. He could buy you flowers, coffee, as many lunches as he wanted to. He could make promises about listening and trying and making an effort, but he was on trial during it all. He was under a performance review. It was a manufactured situation as far as they were all concerned, entirely unrepresentative of who he would be outside of it. When there wasn’t a close date, a date he could begin to slack off again according to your friends, and you demanded engagement and effort from him every single day without any relief from that pressure, he would fail. He would fail every single time. 

How had you not seen that? You created a situation with a time limit, a window in time he would have to be a different person than he was, with a definitive end date. Was anything he had done representative of actual change, or was it just a temporary side step towards being closer to what you needed, only to return back to his original spot when you took him back? There was no way to know if anything he had done over the last month was real or some elaborate farce.

The farce, this charade of a month, it swept the both of you up with returning feelings of seemingly endless longing from when you loved each other in secret. You were pretty sure Matthew had gotten swept up right along with you by the fantasy of fate and love being something unbreakable that would always pull people back together. This effort wasn’t real, even if Matthew believed it was. It was all part of some twisted game fate was playing by telling the both of you that you were meant to be. Two puzzle pieces that aren’t supposed to go together don’t go together, even if one tries to bend their corners until they can. Matthew thought he was cutting corners off, not just bending them, making permanent changes to fit with you, but it would never matter. The picture the two pieces that were you and Matthew created together would never be correct. You were shades of blue, like the sky on a Sunday morning as you remembered it as a child full of wonder, like the ocean, powerful and unstoppable. Matthew was red, like the deepest tones of a fading sunset, like the feeling of sitting by a fireplace on Christmas morning. Both pieces individually were beautiful and important to the larger picture, but they didn’t belong anywhere near each other. There were no transition colors. It was blue and red, black and white. They couldn’t mix. They just had to fit. And you two just didn’t fit. You didn't create a picture together. It was just two pieces trying desperately to create something you couldn't because red was your favorite color and blue was Matthew's and fate was a fucking bitch.

You were crying as you walked into your apartment building and pulled out your phone. You typed out a text that echoed one you’d received two months ago without even meaning to do it. 

We need to talk. Come over? 

It was identical to the one Matthew had sent before he set all of this in motion and you were about to mirror him even more closely. Before he came over, you had to have your words collected. You knew he would push back, try and argue that your friends didn’t know the two of you, that they didn’t know what you both felt. But feelings were fickle and often told lies and it was telling you and Matthew the same one right now, that this would work if you tried hard enough even though it would just hurt a thousand times worse when the lie became undeniable six months down the road. 

You almost didn’t notice the small package on your doorstep, eyes too clouded with tears to successfully unlock your door on the first three tries. You snatched it off the doorstep, a sob breaking through your chest when you realized it was from Matthew, no address on the package, just your name scribbled on the top in his horrendous handwriting. He had dropped this off himself and somehow that made it all feel more heartbreaking in your chest. You shuffled inside, the fourth attempt being the charm today, and tore into the package as you kicked the door shut behind you. The wrapping was even his handiwork, too much tape, not enough but somehow too much paper, and you were ruining it with tears dripping on and staining the paper. 

You sat down on the floor, back against your front door. The lid of the box slid off easily and you tossed it aside. You were greeted with a picture of your mother, one you had framed on your front table, mere feet from where you had collapsed on the floor. It was your favorite picture of her, something you had definitely told and retold to Matthew one too many times. You flipped it over in search of some reason for it’s inclusion, finding more of Matthew’s handwriting on the back. 

Hey sunflower, 

Hope work was good today :) If it wasn’t, I’m sorry and call me and we’ll talk about it. They switched our flights around for this roadie so I’m on a plane right now, but I wanted you to have these before I left. 

You told me your mom was a big part of the reason you loved sunflowers and that she had these sunflower earrings you loved growing up, but that they were lost. I saw your mom was wearing them in this picture, so I took it to a jeweler and well, they aren’t the ones your mom wore, but I hope you like them anyway. 

I know you probably aren’t ready to hear it from me, feel free to skip to the end if you aren’t, but I love you and the past month has made me realize just how much I do and how stupid I was in the past. I’m going to keep trying to get a little better every single day and maybe, if I try hard enough, I might become someone who deserves you. 

- Matty  

Your hands shook as you slowly set the picture on the ground next to you and pulled back the tissue paper. Nestled safely in the box were two golden sunflower earrings, delicate golden wire bending to make up their shape. They were identical to the pair your mother had worn almost every single day of every summer of your childhood. Except these were yours. And they were made for you by a boy who loved you who was trying really hard to become a man who loved you and deserved to be loved back by you.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter. Your judgmental friends didn’t matter. Your negative thought spirals that tried to ruin everything good you ever had that was risky because the best things in life were always inherently risky didn’t matter. Fate and whether or not she was on your side or not didn’t matter. Matthew Tkachuk mattered. His effort was real and raw and pure and the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for you and it mattered. And all Matthew needed for all of his effort to matter was exactly one single act of effort from you. It would have to be a continuous act, a constantly, daily task, but all he needed was your patience with him. And as you sat on the floor, tears staining your cheeks, holding a pair of sunflower earrings you knew Matthew Tkachuk was worth your patience, that he was worth your love, and that you didn’t hate sunflowers at all, not even a little bit.

People weren’t puzzle pieces. You and Matthew Tkachuk didn’t fit together seamlessly to create one image because that’s not how people work. Puzzle pieces are stagnant, fixed, unchangeable. People are supposed to flex and grow and change, be mutable over time, with contact from others. You were blue now, but there was no reason to say throughout your life, from touching other people and their beautiful lives, that you would always be the same shade of blue you were now. Tomorrow, maybe you’d meet the most yellow person you had ever met in your life, and you’d be a little more green for it. Matthew Tkachuk was red and just maybe, purple was supposed to be your favorite color. 

You pulled out your phone and deleted six words and two punctuation marks you had typed walking into your apartment building, but never sent. You replaced that text with a picture of the earrings in your lap, and simple red heart emoji because you knew words would fail you and any words that came to you, you wanted to say to his face when he got back from his trip. He texted you back almost instantly, just a simple red heart emoji. Matthew had started the red hearts. When you were friends, he’d send every other color except red. But when when you started dating, he would send a red heart whenever he wanted to kiss you but couldn’t, when he was on the road and wouldn’t see you for a while, when he was across the table from you at dinner with his parents. It was one of your little quirks, little things that neither of you had forgotten, an old habit that never worked its way out of your behavior. You didn’t send red hearts to anyone else anymore, and neither did he. But you sent one to him now. 

Matthew Tkachuk sat on a plane that night, wishing he could driven across town fast enough to deserve to get pulled over and kissed you instead of sending you a stupid fucking emoji. He fell asleep that night, letting himself remember what it felt like to kiss you, something he had kept in the back of his mind for the last month because the thought of never being able to do it again made his knees pull up into his chest to try and block off pain that was unfortunately coming from inside himself. But tonight, tonight he let himself remember it, let himself pretend that you were thinking of the same thing, let himself remember what it was all like with you because you wanted to kiss him too. He fell asleep with a smile on his face for the first time in months and woke up the next morning with it too, still thinking about you and getting back home to you to finally get to kiss you again. 

------

Matthew didn’t even think twice when his feet touched the tarmac a few days and two road wins later. He knew where he needed to go. He got to his car and tossed his tie into the passenger seat before starting to drive way too fast to your apartment. He didn’t hit a single red light, which made him think about fate again for a brief moment, but then he remembered this wasn’t about her or anyone else. Everything was just about you, you and your love affair with big yellow flowers and hopefully, him again. He took the stairs two at a time after parking incredibly poorly in front of your apartment, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to kiss his best friend, the girl whose heart he broke, the girl that somehow didn’t hate him or sunflowers, the girl that just might love his undeserving self in spite of it all. 

He barely got two knocks on your front door before you yanked it open and Matthew could swear he wanted to die. There you were, a lightness in your eyes he hadn’t seen for months returned to you. Your hair was pulled back, the earrings he had made for you on display. His eyes drifted down, taking in the familiar golden chain around your neck, the one that had been missing for two months now, the one that held a small sunflower and the number nineteen at its base. But Matthew Tkachuk swore his heart almost gave out when he saw the familiar white neckline of that damn sunflower dress. You hadn’t worn it in the past two months, unable to take it out of your closet without crying, but you put it on today and it made you smile. 

“Hi,” he breathed out. 

Driving over with the intent to kiss you was as far as he’d gotten and you in that sunflower dress was making it impossible to think of anything other than that one word he had managed to say.

“Hi,” you breathed back, a genuine smile pulling up the corners of your mouth.

Matthew cleared his throat, letting his eyes close for a second so maybe he could try and think about something other than how you looked right now. He let his head fall back, taking in a deep breath, giving his head a shake in a vain attempt to shake off some nervousness from his mind to clear his thoughts. It worked well enough so one thought could slip through as he let his head fall forward and opened his eyes into your gaze again.

“Do I, um, get another month?” Matthew asked you, his voice timid and frail, on the edge of breaking. “Today is a month.” 

You looked up at him, eyes taking him in. The parting of his lips, the happiness that finally reached his beautiful blue eyes, the curls falling on his forehead, the wrinkled game day suit sans tie that you knew was probably crumpled in the passenger seat of his car. He was on a tightrope, ready to fall to either side with your answer. One side was absolute heartbreak, the kind he was pretty sure would taint the concept of love for him for most of this life, and the other was joy and love and happiness and everything he ever wanted. He was ready to fall with your words, giving you all the control to push him to one side or the other. 

“No, Matthew,” you told him softly.

Matthew’s face started to fall instantly and he felt like his heart dropped into his stomach where his own body started to eat away at it immediately. The dress, the earrings, the red heart, everything, he thought he had finally broken through to you. More than that, he had thought he finally was loving you in a way you wanted, in a way that you deserved. He thought he finally had enough of the pieces of what you needed, wanted, and liked together in himself to be someone you wanted to give your love to. He knew a month wasn’t a lot of time, but he’d loved for over two years now. He loved you as a friend. He loved you when he thought there were only unrequited feelings. He loved you when he was your lover. He loved you when he broke your heart out of sheer stupidity, when he thought fighting meant you would never work together, that somehow he was wrong to love you. He loved you the entire month he didn’t see you. He loved you this past month he spent desperately trying to show you he could love you through actions, not just in his own head and chest, that he could love you like a partner, like you deserved to be loved. 

“You don’t get another month,” you continued, each syllable twisting the knife deeper into Matthew’s chest. “You don’t get another month because you don’t have anything else to prove to me, Matthew.” 

Matthew willed his eyes to find yours again, hoping the hope that had just alit itself in his chest wasn’t misguided. You were calm, your eyes steady, keeping contact with his. Matthew almost dared to feel reassured for a moment, like maybe the hope he felt when you said he had nothing left to prove was correct. But if he was wrong, which he so often was in general, but especially with emotions, yours in particular, it would just serve as an additional twist of the knife. When it was already in so deep, did it really matter anymore? 

“You’re not on trial. No more tests,” you said to him, letting your love for him you had tried to store away pour out. “I want you, Matthew. I want you and me. I want to see if purple is my favorite color.” 

The purple part was beyond Matthew and he made a mental note to ask you about it in a minute, but he needed to kiss you right now. He reached out and you leaned into his touch for the first time in a long time. His hands cupped your face and you rocked up on your toes as he pressed his lips to yours. Your hands came up to rest on his chest as he kissed you so softly, tenderly. He wanted to crush you into him, but that wasn’t what this moment was. This was hopefully the end of the longest period of his life he’d ever have to go without kissing you again. He wasn’t going to rush this, his second chance with the girl who loved him for some reason and sunflowers for much more obvious reasons. 

Matthew was slow as he pulled away and tilted his head down to rest his forehead against yours. One of his thumbs shifted to ghost over your lips, his blue eyes staring into yours, but really past your eyes, and into you, seeing you better than anyone else did. He loved you without the rose colored glasses. He saw you and loved you, it had just taken him almost too long to figure out how to show it. It had almost taken him too long to figure out that love wasn’t just something you could feel and ride the feelings to bliss. Love was daily effort, trying and retrying and sometimes he would fail, but it was constantly showing up anyway. Love was hard, but holding your face in his hands, he knew you were worth the effort he planned on putting in every single day for the rest of his life. 

“I love you, sunflower,” Matthew whispered, the words left raw and unpolished by how real the feelings he injected into them were. 

“I love you too.”

[jackest-jack]

I would very much like to hear about your spooky scary Sirens, pretty please 🥺

AJKSJAKISJAJAJF Ok so I almost had a heart attack when I saw you were following me because YOU’RE SO COOL so thank you

I already wrote about my spooky scary sirens over here, and they have pictures and I would be willing to write a short thing with them later but for right now I’m gonna pick a different thing and blab about it.

The most fleshed out and cohesive thing I have is the vampire band nerd slasheresque story with a police chase followup as well as a separate zombie apocalypse thing, so ig I’ll go with that. More under cut and warning for like a lot of gore and death and angst. I’m also only doing the first part of that because this is taking a long ass time

I came up with this in junior high, and I was in band, and I noticed that each instrument section had different personalities sort of, so I made characters around that and put them in a horror plot where they all die horribly, because what else are you gonna do? This is gonna be a plot rundown and it might get real long. (It is no longer a rundown. Its just unedited word vomit.)

anyways a bunch of friends, who I’m just gonna call by their instrument names, go camping in the woods for a couple weeks. They all take one car and set up in the middle of fuckin nowhere.

Clarinets a vampire pretending to be a high schooler for kicks, because she was 15 when she turned 5 years ago and got dragged away to the magic underworld (basically a series of safehouses and towns for the supernatural) and she wants a letterman goddamnit.

She gets adopted into a friendgroup despite her best efforts, and gets dragged along on the camping trip in the small car and close quarters with a buddy system and she hasn’t eaten anything substantial in like two months and its proving to be a problem when she starts thinking of her friends as snacks instead of people.

one night, percussionist gets up to go on a 3 am lake walk. But, the buddy system. So he takes Clarinet, who never seems to sleep anyways, with him.

They’re on the edge of a lake littered with huge old chunks of driftwood, looking out over the water, when Percussionist steps on something sharp. It went straight through his sandal and he pulls it out without much trouble, but “that nail looks kind of rusty and I’m Pretty Sure I’m bleeding a little bit, oh I hope I don’t need a shot-“

she falls on him like a cat on a wounded songbird. She has enough of her mind left to cover his mouth and stop the screams as he slowly loses blood.

He tries to fight back. He does. he jams the nail deep into her throat and twists away, but she catches his wrist and slams him backward, a sharp stick going through his stomach, sticking him bloody at the base of an old driftwood branch still attached to its old tree.

She stops draining just before he dies. And she waits, and waits, and waits. Finally, hours later, the corpse takes a deep gasp and its eyes fly open. It begins the excruciating process of pulling itself off the tree.

his wound is closed less than a minute later.

he comes to and sees her sobbing on the ground, bloody streaks under her eyes from where she tried to wipe away her tears with hands soaked from putting pressure on his stomach in a feeble attempt to save him.

“Vampires, huh?” He says, half joking, half looking for an explanation.

—-—

they’re sitting around a small campfire, and Clarinet tells him that he’s a vampire, he needs blood, he cant go back to camp or he will eat his friends. She leaves to find him something substantial before he loses it.

back at the original camp, its around sunrise. Flute notices a small trail of smoke not far off, realizes that Percussionist is missing, and gets French Horn to help him look for their idiot friend (and maybe put out a small fire.)

They make it about 3/4th of the way to the smoke when flute trips on a tree root and scrapes his knee. About a mile away, Percussionists head perks up.

He distantly realizes that he just left the campfire that he’s supposed to stay at, but he can‘t seem to care. The hunger doesn’t gnaw at him or hollow him out. Its not like looking for a fix either. Its an itch in his whole body, a near unavoidable function of his being. The hunt is as natural as a cough, a spasm of muscles to take away the awful itch.

He moves faster than he ever could before, and just to see if he can, he jumps up and begins running across the branches of trees. Its slower, but sneakier; his prey won’t see him coming.

Finally, he reaches them. He jumps on the smaller one, sending it crashing to the ground. It’s blood is what brought him here. He sinks his hollow teeth into its neck and begins feeding.

There is a scream and a crash as the taller one runs away. Thats ok. He only needs one.

———

French horn, for her part, is freaking the fuck out. The sun had just peaked over the horizon and orange light was streaming through the trees when everything went to shit.

The pale thing had fallen on Flute, and the noise he made… she was almost certain he was dead now.

She kept running. If she could make it back to camp, then maybe she could get help, or maybe leave before the rest of them died too.

She charges through a thicket, sharp thorns scraping and tearing every inch of her as she shoves her way through. She shuts her eyes as she goes, to avoid the thorns poking them out.

When she comes out the other side, she feels her gut sink.

She doesn’t recognize the trees or bushes around her. She doesn’t see a path.

She’s lost.

She wants to break down, to scream and cry the injustice to the heavens, to kick and punch and fight the thing that killed her friend, to sit down and rest and have a moment to breathe, to be home-

She picks a direction and runs.

———

Percussionist stops draining Flute just before he‘s dead, following the instinct that drove him to where he is.

He wants to be horrified. He does, really. But he was so hungry, and the itch is still there, waiting beneath his skin to pounce on him again. But for now, its gone, and he can think clearly. He can move without the instinct tainting his every twitch.

He turns to look at the person he drained and sees-

He sees his friend. And it hits him all at once.

He killed a person, a person he knew, a person he cared for, and he had been powerless to stop it. He didn’t even know- he didn’t realize- he would never have done it if he-

but he knew he would have. Even if he knew. He would’ve killed Flute, and he hates himself for that.

So he sits by the body of his dead friend, maybe in solace, maybe because some instinctive tick tells him to. He doesn’t want to know. He refuses to.

When Flute sat up and gasped, Percussionist could‘ve sworn he had a heart attack (even without a functioning heart.)

To Flutes credit, he made it through Percussionists halting and confused explanation before letting himself ask about the smell.

”what smell?” Percussionist asked, and lifted his nose to the air.

He got his answer. The smell of blood, salty and sweet and with a coppery tinge to it drifted through the air, leaving a hunger and odd comfort sitting in his gut. It reminded him of smelling baking cookies from the kitchen as a kid.

A leaf crunched, and he snapped out of his trance. Flute had stood up and broken into a run, faster than any human could’ve gone. After the person that had been with him.

After his friend.

Percussionist sprinted after him.

——

He had the chance to notice how fast he was really going, now that he could think through the hunger. He practically flew through the forest, leaping over a fallen log half his size that blocked his way. He ducked and dodged branches that threatened to slash his face, and if he were running for something else he may have threw his head back and laughed.

As it was, he was following the occasional red flash of a windbreaker that he could barely keep up with without being hit by a tree.

He could heal now right? Did he really even need to be worried about being hit by trees?

He let one slap his face just to test, and he felt the stinging pain all across his face as a deep cut opened across his nose and eyes. He faltered as his vision went red with blood. A second later, it was gone, and he could see again. ….And he‘d lost flute. Great.

He sniffed the air, remembering how he’d been able to smell the blood, and tried to look for his friend.

He could smell the whole forest. Sap and pine and rotting leaves, rotten flesh and mushrooms and a skunk miles and miles off, the sweet sting of honey and dew and campfire smoke, and over it all, the most lovely smell-

Well, looks like he couldn’t find him that way. He thought for a moment, and groaned. He could just follow French Horn and get to her first!

He began running again.

———

Clarinet had just made it back to the campsite, a live deer kicking around over her shoulder. She would’ve killed it, but she couldn’t quite figure out how without losing any of its blood, and since she drained and seriously injured Percussionist he would need a lot of blood-

and the campfire had a suspicious lack of vampires around it. Great. She could only hope that no one had cut themselves-

She stopped as the scent of blood hit her nose. She cursed and took off running, dropping the deer as she did.

——

French Horn thought she was going to die when she heard a bush rustle and snap behind her. She had stopped for a rest, thinking she was safe (if very lost). She was braced for her death when Percussionist crashed through the bushes.

”Oh, good, you’re still alive. We need to go like right now.”

Before she could protest, he grabbed her wrist and began pulling her away. With his very cold, very pale hand.

”Wait. Was it you?” She said, planting her feet.

”Yes.” his voice was solemn, and his eyes downcast. “But unless you want Flute to get you, we need to go”

She tore her wrist out of his grasp.

“Flutes dead. Flute’s dead and you killed him!”

And Flute hit her from the side. He sank his teeth deep into her neck, but only for a moment. Then he pulled back, looking horrified and ran away.

French Horn stands up dazedly. “That was…”

”Yeah.”

she lifts a hand to her bleeding neck where the bite is still gushing blood.

A rustle of trees comes from the side, and Clarinet skids to a stop in front of them. She takes in the situation and drops to her knees, tearing loose a piece of her shirt and holding it to the holes in French Horn’s neck.

”Wheres the third?”

French horn points to the copse of trees he disappeared into.

”I think we might actually be jinxed.” A pause, then “That was supposed to be a joke. Go after him. He’s heading towards the camp, and chances are he won’t be able to stop himself a second time.”

Percussionist nods, and then stops. “How do I get there?”

”just run straight! GO!”

and he does.

———

Clarinet gently explains to French Horn that vampires are real, and that she is one. When asked why she isn’t bloodthirsty, Clarinet answers that she has a lot of blood left in her still, and that she’s not all the way changed, and that the change will, in her words, “Stink. Its kind of the worst thing you’ll have to go through, and it’ll take way longer since you have blood, and you may not notice at first.“

French Horn pursed her lips. “Theres no way to stop it?”

Clarinet shook her head.

”Okay. Okay, shouln’t we help Percussionist?”

Clarinet swore. “You won’t be much help in the state you’re in, but I can drop you off by the camp. Pack our things and be ready to go.”

Clarinet scooped French Horn up and took off into the woods.

———

Percussionist got there just as Tuba was ripping Flute off of his neck.

Despite Flute being the smallest out of all of them, and Tuba being the strongest, he was struggling to keep the scrabbling, biting Flute away.

So, Percussionist did the only logical thing and full body tackled Flute, trying to hold him down. It worked, sort of. Long enough for Tuba to start running. Long enough for Sax and Trombone to see what the ruckus was.

Flute burst out of Percussionists grip, grabbed Trombone and ran.

Sax sprinted after them, and percussionist was left in the dust, standing dumbstruck as they all dashed off. He snapped out of it when Trumpet pressed an axe to his shoulder and told him to not move.

———

Flute knows this: he is very hungry. He also knows that blood tastes very good.

His last two meals escaped. He thinks he let the first go, but he can’t seem to remember why. The second was ripped away from him by someone like him, which was rather rude.

But this one won’t get away. He is far to hungry to let that happen.

He feeds as he runs, draining the squirming thing dry, pinning its flailing limbs against his chest. It stops wailing eventually.

He slows as he becomes able to think clearly again. He holds the body in his arms and revels in the fact he is no longer hungry. Then, he looks at the thing he drained.

And it’s his friend. He feels his stomach drop, and a hollow pit grow in his chest. His friend is dead, and it’s his fault. He tells himself there’s nothing to do but run, so he does.

Really, though, he just doesn’t want to see what she’ll become.

———

“What did you do to them.” Said Trumpet, each word slow and dangerous. She lifted the axe off his shoulder, and he felt relief before he realized she was lining up to take off his head.

He may be able to heal, but he did not want to see how far that ability stretched. Not like this, at least.

He swallowed his fear and asked, ”What makes you think I did something?“

She barked out a harsh laugh. “You go missing in the middle of the night with Clarinet, who still isn’t back. Flute and French Horn go to look for you and have mysteriously disappeared. Tuba came running from this direction, bleeding like a stuck pig. And here I find you, in the center of it all.”

Ah. He was fucked. Time to implement the worst plan ever, considering how fast Trumpet was.

”that’s- that sure is some pretty overwhelming evidence that I did something. I swear I didn’t, though but I know you won’t believe me so I’m just gonna RUN!”

He ducked under the axe she swung at his head, and took off running into the trees. He glanced behind him to see her struggling to keep up, and grinned. He was actually getting away with his head, and beating Trumpet in a footrace for once-

He turned back around just in time to see the tree that crumpled his skull.

———

He wished he could say he didn’t feel every excruciating twitch of his skull righting itself as he laid there. As it was, it was painful enough he was functionally passed out.

Which is why he was surprised to see trumpet dragging him by his feet deep into the woods.

Not half as surprised as trumpet, who dropped his feet and swore when he sat up and gasped.

”What the hell? You were dead! that killed you!” She yelled.

Percussionist was still reeling from how much growing his skull back sucked, and latched on to the first thing he noticed.

”Did you steal my shoes?”

”what are you?” She asked in a tone that was decidedly horrified.

He fiddled with a piece of grass somewhere to his left. “A vampire, as of yesterday. Really though, why do you have my shoes?”

“Not important. What do you mean as of yesterday?”

”Last night, really. Me and Clarinet-“

”Clarinet and I.” She said.

”Whatever. We went on a walk and turns out she’s always been a vampire, and then she did the vampire thing, and now I’m a vampire, and things have just been spiraling from there-”

”That explains a lot, actually. Who else is a vampire?”

Percussionist, feeling slightly more alive, realized they weren’t by the camp anymore.

”Where are we? Why do you have my shoes, and why are you so calm about this?”

”oh.” She said. “I may have made an action plan for something like this. You know, in case of murderers, or if supernatural stuff was real.”

”thats cool. Why steal my shoes?“

”I was framing you for murder.”

an awkward silence settled over them.

”We should get back to camp. Stop more people from getting vampired and all.”

”Yeah. Lets do that.“

———

Sax skidded to a stop in front of Trombones body. She was limp, and pale, and by all accounts dead. He whipped out his phone to call anyone, anyone at all, and pitched it into a tree when it read no service.

He sat, and he cried by his best friend, who always made the shittiest puns, who was the worst at sports, who thought anything with soulmates was stupid but still read all the stuff he suggested her. Who was dead.

He was still crying when she sat up and latched onto his neck, draining him dry.

———

French Horn and Clarinet ran across Tuba, who was holding gauze to his neck where he had been bit. French Horn was starting to feel slightly feverish, but otherwise okay.

”Guys! Are you okay? The weirdest thing just happened.” He said.

”We need to leave.” Said Clarinet. “Now.”

”No argument here. Have you guys seen Flute? He was with you last time I saw him.“

French Horn and Clarinet shared a look.

“I’ll go find him. You two pack. we leave before dusk.”

They watched as she disappeared into the leaves.

”Whats going on?” Asked tuba, a hint of worry in his voice.

French Horn took a deep breath in before saying “Vampires are real.”

Tuba burst out laughing.

“Oh. You’re serious.” He said as he hefted a tent into the back of the van.

”you don’t believe me.”

“How could I? I haven’t seen any proof that they exist.”

She threw a bag of trash in the van with more force than nessecary.

“What attacked you then?”

At this he paused. “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a vampire.”

———

Percussionist and Trumpet made it to where Trombone was crying over Sax, the late afternoon sun reflecting off of their now pale skin.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. He’ll be alright.”

Trombone looked up at him and snarled, all teeth and rage, and Percussionist jumped back.

”He’ll end up like me, won’t he.”

Percussionist nodded.

”I don’t know what world you’re living in, but this isn’t fucking alright!”

Trumpet walked over and knelt in front of Trombone. She held out her hand, and Trombone scrambled away.

”I don’t believe you would hurt me. Not right now. I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

”so what?” She scoffed. “I still did it. Should I just go on existing as whatever I am now? Just kill people so I can live?”

”Actually,“ Percussionist said, “we can live off of different types of blood.”

Trumpet looked back and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Shut up you twatwaffle, can’t you see this is a delicate moment?”

”just figured it would be some good information to have.“ he said.

“Are you seriously telling me my angst fest was for nothing?” She asked.

Percussionist leaned against a tree. “Oh, don‘t worry.” He said. “Theres still plenty of angst about the immortality.”

“Sax did always say he wanted to be sixteen forever.”

Trumpet rolled her eyes. “Lets go home.”

Trombone reached out to take Trumpets hand, and Sax shot up and clamped his jaws around her throat. Trombone grabbed Trumpets wrist and pulled her away as Percussionist peeled Sax away.

”Let him.“ choked out Trumpet. “I‘ll be one of you either way.”

”Absolutely not!” Said Percussionist. “Trombone, go find literally anything else with blood.” Sax kicked and snarled in his grip. “Hurry! I’m not sure how much longer I can hold him.”

———

“Flute!” Yelled Clarinet. She had been looking for him for an hour now, and still couldn’t find him.

She was walking along an old trail that went out of use years ago when she almost tripped over him. He was curled up in the shade of a tree, hiding away in a hollow.

“What do you want.”

”I want to take you home.” She said.

he laughed. “Something like me doesn’t deserve a home. I killed people, and I knew there was another way, but I did it anyway. Just leave me here to rot.”

She remembered when she’d been like this. She had forgotten to eat, had slipped up. Its not a hard thing to do. When you’re a vampire, you brain tricks you into feeling fine by your old standards until you‘re so hungry you can’t stop it.

She believed it was all her fault, though. The only way someone had gotten through to her was something they had called twisting the knife. She had always called it shitty.

She sighed. “I wanted to say sorry.”

He poked his head out a little, peering up at her. “You didn’t do anything.”

”But I did.” She said. “I drained percussionist dry last night, and then I left him to find you. I watched while you attacked your friends, and now, I’m giving you a chance to fix the harm we caused. What will you do with it?”

”You made me like this?” He asked.

”Yes.”

he lunged at her face, fingers clawing for her eyes. She turned around and ran for the campsite, making sure he was behind her, and praying that he would forgive her for the stunt she just pulled.

———

The campsite was packed, and Percussionist and Trombone had made a game of who could catch the best songbird for Sax. Sax was less murderously inclined, though it was hard to tell if it was because the blood he had consumed or trumpets growing nonhumanness.

After the third or fourth time of watching Sax suck down a bird or squirrel like a juice box, Tuba was forced to admit that maybe vampires were a little real.

(He noticed his neck wound had already scabbed over and was halfway gone. He was afraid to ask if he was becoming one.)

The sun was slipping behind the tops of the trees when Clarinet charged out of the forest, leapt over the van, And yelled “Flutes trying to kill me!”

Flute burst into the clearing and lunged at Clarinet. Percussionist stepped in the way.

”What happened?“

”She did this in purpose! She said she dropped you in the woods to kill us!”

Percussionists blinked. “No she didn’t. She told me to stay where I was while she got something for me to eat.”

he stopped yelling. Now, he just looked confused. “But she turned you.”

”Yeah? It was an accident. She obviously regretted it.”

Percussionist backed off, and Flute looked at clarinet.

”why did you say all that then?”

“You were’t gonna come with me if I didn’t. Besides, you were spiraling and this was the easiest way to stop that.”

”Sounds like the shittiest way to stop it, too.” Scoffed Tuba.

She sighed. “Yeah. It was.”

”Hey,” asked sax. “Are any of us still human? I know me, Percussionist, and Trombone aren’t-“

”Percussionist, Trombone, and I.” Said Trumpet.

”-And I saw you two jump over my van, but whats up with the rest of you?”

”Basically,” said Clarinet, “anyone who was bit is or will become a vampire, depending on how much blood they had left in them after the bite. Was there anyone who wasn’t bit?”

everyone was silent as they all glanced at each other, looking for anyone who could say yes. It quickly became awkward, and was broken by Clarinet muttering “Fuck.” quietly under her breath.

”Who all, um, died today?”

Flute, Sax, and Trombone slowly raised their hands. Clarinet squinted at Percussionist, which prompted him to say “What? I died last night.”

French Horn yelled “past twenty four hours, dingus.”

He rolled his eyes and raised his hand.

”Alright. You three,” -she made a sweeping gesture towards the three with their hands down- “Are going to have the worst couple weeks of your life. Take a few days off of everything. Don’t go to the hospital. Stay isolated. Call me when the pain’s mostly over.”

Tuba’s lips pursed. “What, exactly, is going to happen to us?”

”The way it was explained to me was that your body slowly cannibalizes itself. It sucks.”

”hm.” He said. He looked very troubled.

They got in the van and drove through the night.

For now, they rest. A short break, before they have to figure out the rest of their lives.

[liibrii]

Chapter 2: Tattered 

Ojiro Aran x fem!reader

Series Masterpost || Ch. 1

wc: 3.2k

warnings: swearing, internalised guilt and shame, intrusive thoughts, self doubt, depression.

a/n: I don’t really have anything to say other than I’m enjoying writing for Aran so much. if you wanna be tagged in future chapters lemme know, and as always feedback is greatly appreciated! 

Aran knows people don't always mean what they say.  Even he had done it before and it destroyed a few of his relationships. Knowing that doesn't make your words hurt any less.

He tries to convince himself you didn't really mean it, still a part of him wonders if that's how you really feel. How you've always felt. For all those years he was assured of your friendship and now you've pulled the rug from under his feet. None of your words align with the image in his head. Perhaps you've never been the person he remembers. The you in his mind is just that, a memory, a perfect picture he created from bits and pieces he chose. Has he truly always seen only what he wanted to see?

Thoughts of you run through his mind as he stands on the back line. One more serve before he wraps up. Bam.

To always see good in people is what he was thought growing up and what he still tries to do to this day, even if years had thought him people aren't only their good sides. He always thought of you only at your best and failed to even get to know you properly. What kind of friend does that? You're in pain and he can't help because he has no idea where the wounds are. He has no idea where to look for them because he refused to see. 

Perhaps he is a terrible friend after all.

Bam. The ball gets caught in the net and falls. Aran watches it roll away before picking up another. He breathes deeply. It's all about focus, he reminds himself, even when his mind wants to slip he has to remain focused.

All of his teammates have left already. Home, to their partners, their families. What will he return home to? An empty apartment with take-out he'll eat on the couch. Alone. Maybe he should get a pet. But when will he have time to care for it?

Bam.

He should call home. Check on his friends. Maybe if he had checked on you more often then-

Bam.

What use is pondering over what could've been? With each serve his palm aches more, his muscles already sore from practice but he doesn't want to stop yet. One more.

“There's a difference between training hard and overdoing it, you know?“

Perhaps life is just memories of days long gone sipping into present.

When he turns to face you uneasiness rises in him. Any other time he'd be elated to see you. Now even words to greet you with escape him. You come closer, shoes softly squeaking on the gym's floor. “Doorman let me in. After a little bit of convincing.“

“Really?“

“No, I slipped past while his back was turned. How long are you planning on staying? I saw all of your teammates leave already.“

Aran turns the ball in his hands. It's becoming slippery from all the sweat. He can't bring himself to look you in the eyes. “My serves are gettin' sloppy. I need more practice.“

Bam.

You stay where you are, watching and fiddling with the strap of your bag, until you can't bear the silence anymore and speak up. “Aran, I actually wanted to talk to you. About you know... what I said.“

“T's okay. I know ya didn't mean it.“

“I did.“ Your voice eerily echoes in the otherwise empty gym. “As shitty as it is, it's how I felt.“ You're eyes stay fixed on the floor. “I'm sorry.“

Aran catches the ball he just threw in the air for another jump serve. When he looks over at you you're still intently focused on your shoelaces, gripping the strap of the bag so tight your knuckles turned white. Why are you beating yourself up so much? If you feel something, you feel it. What reason for it do you need to have? Knowing how you felt hurts, that much he can't deny. And yet he can't hold it against you.

He puts the ball on the top of your head, just like boys used to do back in high school to annoy you. “If ya really insist on apologisin' then I guess I have no other choice but to forgive ya.”

As his words sink in you shyly glance at him. “You sure?“

“'Course I am,“ smiles Aran, balancing the ball so it doesn't roll from the top of your head.

“You're not angry? At me?“

He takes the ball and starts throwing it from one hand to another. “Not really. Very surprised. A little hurt.“

“I'm sorry-“

“Yeah, yeah, I know,“ he cuts you off. “Set for me and we'll call it even.”

“Aran, my sets are in no way near the level you're used to.“

“So?“ he asks already walking over to fetch the ball cart. “Ya still remember where to stand, right?“ he teases, cackling softly when you roll your eyes and take off your bag and jacket, all while trying to hide a smile creeping on your lips.

It takes a few tries for you to remember how to make an overhand set. Aran's filled with giddy warmth when you manage to send the ball in the right position for him to spike it over the net. Perhaps all those lessons with Atsumu years ago didn't go to waste after all. Your little victory jump makes him burst into laughter and he rewards you with a high five.

It really is an echo of history.

Your skills are rusty, something that makes you apologise profusely every time you mess up, even after he reassures you he doesn't mind, and ruffles your hair.

With each set you relax more, till every smile and laugh seem sincere. Only now Aran realises how he missed this carefree side of you. Time always flies too fast when you're around and soon enough, out of breath and wiping the drops of sweat from your forehead, you call an end of this individual practice.

He hurries with showering and changing into fresh clothes, not wanting to leave you waiting for too long, especially since you have morning lessons tomorrow. He buys you a drink from the vending machine. It's not much, but staying hydrated is important, he tells you when you tease him about it.

“You know, that brought back a lot of memories,“ you say while walking to the train station, then poke his shoulder. “Thanks.“ The smile dancing over your lips makes his cheeks warm up. You glance over to the sky hiding behind a golden halo that city lights cast over the rooftops. “Do you ever miss Hyogo?“

“Sometimes.“

“I miss the stars.“ You kick a small stone from your path. “You've become quite a star too you know. With all the fans and attention I really wonder, do you get lonely?”

Your question catches him off guard. “I'm too busy to get lonely,“ he lies.

“I get lonely sometimes,“ your eyes still search for a glimmer of a distant star. “And tired. Some days I just want to sleep all day. Do you ever get the urge to do that? Skip practice and stay in bed?“

“No. If I skipped practice how will I become better?”

You purse your lips and nod. “That's why you're a professional athlete and I'm just trying to figure out why I have to separate blue and red laundry.“

“Those are two very different things.“

“Both are just some pieces of cloth. Why do I have to separate them? If they got problems with each other they should grow up and talk it out.” 

That’s not what he meant, but your slight annoyance over technicalities of doing laundry still makes him laugh.

In the coming days Aran checks his phone every chance he gets, just to see if you already wrote back. No matter what you talk about he wants to hear it; be it about your day or the delivery man being late with your order. His teammates notice and tease him about it yet he denies you're anything more than just a friend, and they exchange knowing looks when his back is turned. Even if his entire body heats up at the sole mention of your name Aran isn't ready to admit to himself, let alone others, he wants you to be more.

Not when he isn't sure if his feelings for you are being muddled by his memories.

That Tuesday you grab a dinner together that turns into a late night walk through the streets. It's not a date, Aran keeps reminding himself. It's just two friends hanging out as you've done a thousand times before. So why is his heart threatening to thump it's way out of his chest?

After that night weekly hanging out with you becomes a regular occurrence. Sometimes you go out to eat, sometimes you drag him along when you go shopping, saying he has a good eye for colour combinations. It has nothing to do with the fact he buys you ice cream every time. Some days you come to his place to play video games or watch movies. Seeing his favourite series making you laugh warms his heart.

As you become more comfortable around him your facade slowly, bit by bit, starts to crumble. He's scared to see what lies beneath yet at the same time he wishes it would break already. He can't help you if he doesn't know, can he?

Whatever is troubling you he wishes you'd trust him enough to confide in him. In the back of his mind lingers the question he's too scared too ask.

Does Kita know what's on your mind? Do you still talk to him?

You used to be close to the team. The one they relied on. The one who so lovingly tapped their fingers before each game. Do they know your eyes are puffy? Do they know every sleepless night that goes by makes the dark circles under your eyes harder to hide? Do they know his heart breaks every time he sees the tremble of your lips when you force a smile?

No matter how bad he wants to hold you, tell you it's going to be okay, the mere thought of reaching out paralyses him.

What if you don't want his help?

If you did, you would've asked already, right? Not even practice can stop him from thinking about you. His disappointment grows a little when he sees no new messages. Perhaps you don't want to talk to him after all.

He's just leaving the gym when his phone lights up and seeing it's your name makes his heart flutter. He eagerly picks up. “Hi!“

“H-hey.“ Already in the first word the strain in your voice is apparent. “Um, am I interrupting you?“

“No, of course not. I just finished with practice. What's up?“

“I-“ He hears you take a deep breath. “Um, I don't, I don't feel so good...“ Your next words are almost a whisper. “Could I come over?“

“'Course ya can come over. I'll be home in about an hour.“

By the time he arrives you're already there, standing by the entrance nervously stepping from one leg to another. You give a shy wave when he approaches. He noticed you've been acting weirdly sheepish around him and he's not used to it. You're friends. What's making you so nervous?

You trail behind him, hands tucked deep in your pockets. You don't even pull them out when taking your shoes off.

“Tea?“ he offers when you make your way towards the sofa.

“Sure,“ you nod, sitting and tightly hugging a pillow. “Sorry about that,“ you say when he joins you with two cups of tea, “I just... bad day, you know? Didn't want to be alone.“

With a smile he assures you it's no problem. You're welcome to come by whenever you want.

You tell him about college, about work. “Boss is a shit bag,“ you complain. The working hours make you late for your lessons and even professors are getting fed up with you always being late. Not to mention your classmates aren't keen on lending you notes to copy.

It's all too much, you say, work, college, the pressure of everyone's expectations. Your fellow students give you funny looks sometimes, you tell him. It's only a few years but you're still older than them, at the age where your parents are asking when you are going to settle down. Have children. Get a stable job. Well how could you when you haven't even gotten your degree yet? It all makes you feel like a failure.

And yet something tells Aran that's not why you're here. Maybe it's the nervous fumbling with the hem of your clothes. Maybe it's because you don't look at him at all. A silence falls on you as you sip your tea. Aran considers asking out right but you gather the courage before he does.

“Shin called.“  

“Ah.“ That's all he manages to say.

“He's doing good, in case you're wondering. He asked if we have any plans on visiting any time soon.“ Your eyes skim over his face. “That would be nice, don't you think?“

Aran forces a smile. “Sounds great.“ Once again your words threaten to shake the ground he stands on. All he hears is 'seeing Shin would be nice'. His grip on the cup tightens and he puts it away before he'd crack it.

“Do ya miss him?“ he asks, words coming out more choked up than he intended. He clears his throat when he leans back on the couch's backrest.

You think over his question. “I miss my best friend.“

He asks. Even if he doesn't want to know the answer, he asks. “Will you get back with him?“

“No.“ Your answer is quiet, but firm. You readjust yourself to lean on the backrest, facing him, the pillow still tightly squeezed in your grip. “Shin is a great guy just... not the right for me. Wasn't easy to accept but that's how it is.“ You fumble with the thread sticking out from the stitch. “I wasn't good for him, you know?“ you quietly continue. “He protected me since we were kids but at some point it all just... fizzled I guess. I was so used of always being by his side the thought of living without him terrified me. He was that stability I craved. For a long time I believed he would give me a goal in life, or something similar.“ You chuckle. “Try getting through seventeen-year-old-me's head that's not how relationships work. I knew we wouldn't work out. But I stayed because I was selfish and stupid... and scared. I think he knew. And it started to take a toll on him. So I left before he'd break.“ Tears start forming in your eyes. “Shin could never understand why I'm so sad without a reason... Maybe if I left sooner... well, it doesn't matter now.“

“Ya can still go back,“ hearing his own words shatters Aran's heart, “once ya feel better.“

The brief laugh you give almost sounds like a sob. “Can I?“ You forcefully wipe the tears away. “Even if I could it wouldn't be the same as I remember now. It's hard to explain but somehow, what’s in your memories is always better than reality. Know what I mean?“

He knows. Memory is the thief of future.

The lump in his throat grows larger, heavier as he watches you try to hide tears starting to run down your cheeks. He's lost, not knowing what else to do but to pull you closer, tucking your head under his chin. He hugs you and softly caresses your back. “It's alright,“ he whispers when you apologise through sobs and tears. He keeps repeating, it's alright. What else could he possibly say?

You relax in his arms and your sobs slowly turn to muffled sniffles. Aran only wishes you feel safe in his arms, your head leaning on his shoulder, your arms shyly wrapping around his middle. It's not the most comfortable position but he's to scared to readjust. He hears your hitched breathing sync with his own as he runs his hands up and down your back and, exhausted from your crying, you're soon fast asleep.

Perhaps for the first time in his life Aran's starting to really understand you. It pains him, knowing your struggles. You, who were always so full of light, you who were the pillar, tall and unyielding, one he could always lean onto. How memories managed to muddle his perception of you so much is beyond him. The only thing he can do is promise himself to never let them deceive him again. After all, who needs memories?

He messages you more frequently. Not too frequently, he doesn't want to appear nosy or pushy. Just often enough to let you know he's there for you if you need him.

You've been busier with college lately, so weekly hang outs turn to late night phone calls. Hearing your voice feels like a refreshing cool breeze on these hot summer nights.

He collapses in his bed, only half listening to your rambling on about one of the professors. He didn't catch her name.

“Aran? You still there?“

“Yeah, I'm still here. T's been a long day, t's all.“

He hears you hum and he can imagine the way you lean your head to the side. “Coach in a bad mood?“

“Not really. I'm just not feelin' my best. Couldn't sync with Aritsura's sets. But ya know, more practice 's all we need. How was your day?“ he asks, forgetting you just told him a few minutes ago.

“It was alright,“ you say instead of repeating what you already told him. “Actually, I wanted to apologise. About last time. I shouldn't have dumped all my problems on you.“

“How many times do I need to repeat it's okay. I'm here for ya.“

“Still. I'm sorry. It was a lot. I... I don't want to be a burden.“

His brows furrow. How many times does he have to repeat it? Why don't you get it? “Yer not.“ Your low chuckle makes him irritated . “I mean it. If ya ever need to talk just say, alright?“

“Yeah, yeah I will... Thank you. It's just that... I don't want to ruin this friendship too. That's all. Tell me when I become too much. Please.“

What are you talking about? “Whatever is on yer mind I promise I can handle it.“

“Can you? So you not being able to play your best has nothing to do with me dumping all my problems on you?“

Something in the way you say those words pushes the wrong button. He's only trying to be here for you, why can't you see that? “I don't care enough to let it impact me.“ Fuck. Even before the final word leaves his mouth he knows it came out wrong. “I'm sorry, fuck, y/n, I didn't mean it like that-“

“It's okay,“ you interrupt. “You're right.“

“I'm-“

“Get some sleep Aran. You have practice tomorrow. G' night.“ You end the call before he gets the chance to say goodbye.

Fuck.

Ch. 3: In the light, your name

Tags: @rosecaffelatte, @aonenthusiast

[meta-squash]

i’ve been so fucking restless all day, nowt to do with xmas since i really haven’t celebrated it or any other holiday really in years it probably has more to do with quarantine and generally pnw induced depression and also my adhd and stuff and i don’t know. but i’ve been super restless and i’ve already rambled about it in my notebook but my brain won’t shut up and i type faster than i write (or at least when i type fast it’s still legible and the same cannot be said for my shite handwriting). i took a walk today for an hour and a half and when i got home after i’d sat around for like an hour i just wanted to be out walking but like in the summer before i got top surgery i would walk the same 2.5 mile walk every day and now i just can’t it’s so boring but i don’t really know where to go. i’ve just been wandering but i’m sick of staring at my bedroom walls and getting no inspiration. i don’t know i’m so restless and it’s so annoying because basically i get this thing that’s like the desire to create, the desire to make things but no ideas or inspirations for what to actually do. it’s been like this for years. every so often i get flashes of solid inspiration but mostly it’s like a “i want to create” feeling but then i sit there in front of the paper or the collage stuff or the canvas or whatever and nothing comes. i don’t know if it’s a block due to my own i don’t know like need for control or whatever or if it’s a depression and/or adhd based plastered up wall. maybe it’s both. i don’t know. but just get this scribble in my stomach and this scratching like in my muscles or something i don’t know but it’s like this weird restlessness but there’s nothing to put out there. and i don’t know maybe if it wasn’t the middle of winter i could like drive down to oregon and sleep in my car and then drive back just for a change of scenery but it’s literally the middle of winter and also there’s a fucking pandemic and i’m trying to quarantine as best as possible because i’m paranoid as fuck. but i don’t know it’s just frustrating. first of all it’s bizarre because i found a notebook of mine from 6 years ago and i was having the same fucking blank-brain-can’t-think problems then as i’m having now. so yeah it’s probably unmedicated adhd but like ugh. but also it’s frustrating because all my favorite things, all my hyperfixations and points of inspiration are so intellectual and creative. like the les mis fandom or the manics or libertines bands themselves and fandoms as well and things like that and it’s frustrating to have so much inspiring shit right in front of me and desiring to make as well but nothing comes out because of whatever this stupid block is. and yeah i think a big part of it is adhd but also i just wonder if part of it is my brain desperately wanting control or something i don’t know. but i’m just so restless and i just want to create but i don’t have any ideas and i don’t know i should probably do some doodles or something. i used have this doodle system my friend and i came up with where you close your eyes and make marks on paper with a pencil and then you connect them with cross-hatch marks into whatever rough weird images you might see and it was always really interesting i should do that again. but even more than that i wish i could write. i don’t know i think the most truly creative and original thing i’ve written in a long time is (amusingly, ironically) a fucking manics fanfiction thing because the ending of that stupid richard book pissed me off so much. and that was like 3 years ago or something. 4 years i just checked. i don’t know, i miss writing creatively in ways that aren’t tv show/book fanfiction because yes that’s fun but that’s different. but my brain won’t cooperate even when i want to write. i mean i wrote a poem last night for the first time in like 2 years but then i look at it and it’s terrible. and i know it’s probably because i’m rusty and i need to get the hell over myself but idk. it’s like i want to express myself in my head in one way but then it never comes out that way on paper. collage is easier, less thought or at least less intense thought more aesthetic thought but i miss intellectual thought and i miss making words do cool things. but it’s this fucking adhd brain fog this inability to get my brain to have more than half a second of sharp focus even if i want to do something. and again getting properly into the libertines is pulling this out and hell even getting back into the les mis fandom is as well. with the les mis fandom it’s more about my rusty critical thinking and analysis skills because i haven’t been in university for like 5 years and i feel like everyone has much better observational skills and analytical writing skills than me. and then with the libs and manics fandom it’s more about the creative writing and creating in general because it’s like my room is covered in inspiration i’ve got pictures and things on all the walls and i have materials for pretty much any type of artistic creation so i could very easily be incredibly prolific and make a lot and have lots of ideas but there’s just nothing there. the urge is there but not the content. and it’s a problem i’ve had for so long. and it’s goddamn frustrating. i don’t know maybe if i was medicated i could make stuff better? but even then i have no idea. i have no idea. it’s so funny like i’m so fucking restless it’s 5 am and i have so much thrumming in my stomach and i could get up and go for a walk even though it’s like 33 degrees outside and i want to make stuff my skin wants to make stuff but like that shit’s not translating into actually making anything because nothing fucking comes forward. urge without content is empty and stupid and mute.

[calleo-bricriu]

Sometimes I start to think I might read a little too much.

So, I found this particular Muggle author in one of those, "It looked weird on the shelf and why not?" sort of ways that I often find books in Muggle shops.

Did a little bit of digging in to the author, William Lee Howard; apparently he was a fairly widely disrespected doctor that most other doctors viewed as a joke but that people who were not doctors thought was somehow brilliant.

Off to a good start.

The majority of the guy's books have to do with--not so much medical things but more, "Why everything is your wife's fault, trust me, I'm a doctor,” and by occasionally shouting in text about how he’s not a quack.

There were also two aimed at teenagers and I found a few chapter names completely self aware in one of them:

"Self-Abuse--How to Stop it--The Quacks" - Written as though he wasn't one.

"Environments and Diseases Which Rust Brain-Tools" - I'm going to start using Brain-Tools, I don't care that it's ridiculous. I like it because it's ridiculous.

Anyway, onto the book I'm mostly through.

It's the only one he published that wasn't--well, probably wasn't--intended to be some kind of medical book and it's the first one he had published.

No, it’s a story. A rambling, poorly written story.

The Perverts, 1901.

It's a bit difficult to read, not because it's as shocking as claimed but, because this guy just...rambles in a horribly disjointed manner that makes it difficult to follow what the hell is going on in his little story.

But, fine, I've read worse, just needs more focus; about halfway through, I stopped because it struck me that I've read this before.

Not this book specifically, the story, the entire plot, only the version I've read, while still written by a prose-y, rambling whackjob, was coherent and had much better flow to it.

Also, you could pretty easily follow the plot, as flimsy as it was.

In fairness, that one also probably could have been accurately titled The Perverts but there's always been a lot of unnecessary filler and prose in de Sade's writing (and he was at least self aware to the point that the last page of one of them essentially invites you to throw the book into the fire if you found reading it unenjoyable; tempting, but it's a heavy book and makes a good paperweight).

This man clearly read Justine (or The Misfortunes of Virtue) at some point; some similarities between bizarre things like that are bound to happen, pun intended given the topic, but this? This was very close to being the exact same book, just with renamed characters and a different time period setting.

de Sade wrote his in two weeks while in prison (and it shows) and this idiot somehow made it worse in terms of readability.

Oh, and the dedication? "To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe as a tribute to his genius, and in recognition of his struggles with a psychic incubus."

Okay.

I'm most amused by the fact that his last book was a book on "how to live long" and he died before he was 60. Must not be very good advice in that book.

And then I started skimming his other books and this has got to be one of the most unintentionally funny things I've read in awhile, "It has been my fortune――for so I consider it――to have been brought into intimate relations with men who are failures."

Good way to start.

"Many of these despondent and useless men have been guided into places where they fit." He's stopped using his brain-tools and it's not even chapter 8, which is where he talks about not letting your brain-tools get rusty.

(( Just a warning, there’s a short excerpt from the book that has some very literally, direct, and violent homophobia in there. ))

"teachers forced much useful and also useless stuff into unwilling brain cells" - I'm not entirely sure a man who blatantly ripped off one of de Sade's shortest works should be speaking poorly of teachers.

"How frequently have I heard the remark, after explaining to a young man who came to me a complete failure: “Why didn’t my father see all this?”" - You know, at this point, I'm almost certain that the only patients he'd ever seen were ones he made up or, more likely, ripped off from other case files and just changed the names.

"THE OUTSIDE LUNGS――THE SKIN" ...no.

He seems to think the skin does the same thing as the liver? What in the hell kind of medical school did this man attend?

"If a healthy boy should have his body――up to his neck――wrapped in tin foil, or any similar substance which would completely close the pores of the skin, he would soon have headache. This would become very severe, followed by loss of consciousness and finally convulsions――fits followed by death. Now this would occur even if he were in the open air. You can see by this fact that the lungs cannot alone cast off the poisons in the body" - First, weirdly specific scenario. Second, what he's describing is heat stroke not poisoning.

If people were listening to ridiculousness like this and taking it as valid health advice, no wonder so many died before they hit 30. I just went through an entire chapter of this idiot explaining how the skin is the body's main detox organ with only passing mention to things like, you know, your liver and kidneys, and that everything is caused by your dumb ass poisoning yourself by not bathing three times a day, constantly drinking water, then "exercising violently".

"Now it may sound funny to you, but the truth is, that if the boys in the past had really known as much as the chipmunks, we should have very few asylums for the insane or hospitals for the horrible diseases." - At this point I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually reading this or if I'm hallucinating it.

"About fourteen years of age you may feel a gradual soreness in the nipples. This will increase and sometimes be a little annoying. Now don’t become frightened and try to recall some blow you have received there." - This feels like a very, very specific panic that I'm pretty sure only happened to the author.

"Of course the HABIT of self-abuse means ruin to both brain and body. It is degrading to your true self, causes a loss of self-respect and makes a coward of every boy and man." - I get the feeling, by this point, that everything this person writes is just projecting.

"[...] bubbling spring of manly life." No.

"So never sleep with a man, except your father." - How is that less weird?

And we go from, go ahead and sleep with your dad to, "If you should be so situated that you find yourself in bed with a man, keep awake with your eyes on something you can hit him with. At the slightest word or act out of the way, HIT him; hit him so hard that he will carry the scar for life."

Just sleep on the floor if you're that damn paranoid.

"Keep your goat by and in you always." ...what? There are no circumstances whatsoever that would result in me wanting any part of a goat in me.

"CHAPTER VIII ENVIRONMENTS AND DISEASES WHICH RUST BRAIN-TOOLS" - I'm definitely stealing brain-tools. Based on everything else, I'm pretty sure mine are considered rusty somehow.

I don't think I'd take advice about brain-tools from someone who spent entire paragraphs talking about how he thinks people who live in far Northern climates hibernate.

What else have we got here? Dance hall women will ruin your life, you might be a man but you'll be a MAN in big letters if you go into the navy somehow, the navy should be bigger so it can consume more lower case men--I guess that makes sense as this was written in 1911.

"Don’t think that you know more than your mother about what is best for you. You don’t." - Wow, okay.

"I saw the girl, or rather woman, when she was twenty-four years of age, and recognized her by the peculiar conformation of her face. It was the face of a girl giggler. Her facial muscles had become so developed by her uncontrolled girlish habit that nothing could be done for her. " - What on earth is the "face of a giggler"?

"Don’t kiss anyone but your mother and father." - ???

"Don’t use arsenic in any form for your complexion or to give your face a plump appearance. Some of you will tell me of a girl you know who has a nice plump face from the use of arsenic wafers." - Maybe don't eat rat poison. Eating rat poison seems like a bad idea just in general.

Apart from don't giggle, don't kiss anyone, and don't take arsenic what is wrong with you? The entire book aimed at women seems to be a lot of, "For the love of everything don't touch ANYTHING without wearing gloves and also maybe burn your gloves every night and just use new ones the next day, the world is made of filth and full of diseased people. Try to stay outside in the sun without touching anything instead."

Interesting to read in the context of not having vaccinations available for all of the diseases mentioned; I don't know why it bothers me to see tuberculosis written as consumption though but I DO know why it bothers me that this idiot keeps saying sunlight will cure all of those diseases.

It really won't, you'll just die in a brightly lit room instead of a dark one.

"Don’t try to keep awake either by mental effort or that injurious resort of drinking coffee." - Well, I've been failing at that since I was about 15.

"Sleep always alone. Sleeping with another person is unsanitary." - ...uh huh.

"The hair should be washed frequently in water with a little powdered borax, but remember you wash the hair only to clean the scalp, nothing should be applied to the hair directly."  - Borax is corrosive, and how in the hell do you clean your scalp without also getting something on your hair, you can't just remove your hair and put it back later.

"Cold baths will keep your flesh firm and hard; will take off fat if you are too fat, and put on flesh if you are too lean." - Cold baths just sound unpleasant. There was also this whole section where he talked about how women specifically sweat fat out through their hands. I don’t have much for formal medical training but I’m confident that that’s not a thing that happens.

Speaking of, I particularly like that, in the book aimed at women, he's very adamant about daily bathing and in the book aimed at men it's more, "Eh, once per week is probably fine."

"EAT PICKLES AND CANDY IF YOU CRAVE THEM." - Unnecessarily aggressive sounding there, "Doctor". All I can picture is this quack screaming that in someone's face.

I guess it's kind of good to know that I have more extensive and accurate medical knowledge than someone who somehow got through school and earned the title of Doctor.

Oh, and I'm most amused by the fact that his last book was a book on "how to live long" and he died before he was 60. Must not be very good advice in that book.

Kind of want to read that one next.

[caspian-skye]

I wrote a little thing from Alexandra’s point of view. It’s the morning after she joins Twilight Crusade, written in a diary a week later. Is this fluff? I don’t think I’ve ever written fluff, everything I write is angsty as hell with some comedy sprinkled in it.

August 23rd

It’s been a week since I joined Twilight Crusade.

I don’t know why I did it. Scratch that, actually. I joined them because I’m tired of being alone, tired of wondering when I wake up on any given day if it’ll be my last. But still, I agreed to live with, and work with, 8 people I had no idea existed just a few days earlier. Something inside me told me to do it, but I’m not sure what.

I’m getting used to these guys. Azure, Dustyn, Rusty, and Ezelia are all super friendly, but they get weirder in that order. Not a bad weird. They’re honestly fun to be around. Raven isn’t stuck up like I thought, she’s just too shy to talk to me. If I initiate conversation, and if Rusty’s there too, she breaks out of her shell a bit, and she’s actually really nice as well. Greyson is interesting. He’s probably a nice person just like (most of) his friends, but he’s a little scary. I know he was the one who invited me to Twilight Crusade after I scared them all half to death, but he always has that pissed off look on his face, and barely talks unless it’s to Azure or about Twilight Crusade things. I’ve decided to keep away from Ember for now. She scares me, and though I don’t think she dislikes me, she’s been pretty cold and curt all the times I’ve talked to her. How is she such good friends with Raven, of all people?

And of course, that leaves Kita. I can’t let anyone, especially her, find out that I already have a huge crush on her.

The morning after I joined Twilight Crusade, I woke up at the brink of dawn. I took the liberty of checking Raven’s scroll to see the time, and it was just after 6 in the morning. The tent was unbearably hot and stuffy from the 4 people who crammed into it for the night, so I quietly climbed over them to get outside. Six is about the time of day I wake up in late Summer anyway. It’s bright outside, but not searing hot just yet. It’s the perfect time to move and find a town, or someplace with water.

On my way to the camp bathrooms, I noticed Kita was already awake as well. She paid me little notice apart from a side-eyed glance, as she was deep in what looked to be sword training. She slowly performed a series of several strikes, then reset and repeated them faster as I passed.

When I returned, I hadn’t the slightest clue of what to do. I knew Twilight Crusade wasn’t used to a nomadic life in the desert, so they probably wouldn’t be up for a while. I could’ve explored the campgrounds we currently live in, and I considered it for several moments as I sat at the table, twirling a surprisingly flexible twig from one of the campground’s trees in my fingers.

I noticed Kita beginning to approach, but I didn’t dare grant her much more than a quick glance and polite smile. Of course she seemed nice enough when we first met (she called my eyes BEAUTIFUL!), but since, she hadn’t said a single word. She’s always just... there. In the shadows barely beyond where you can see. And when you can see her, she has that blank, intense-as-hell stare.

That’s exactly why my heart skipped a couple of beats when, after a quick stop at the cooler, she took a seat at the table across from me.

“Good morning, Alexandra,” Kita said, bowing her head slightly.

My voice caught in my throat and I forgot how to speak. I think I managed to bid her good morning too.

“Do you feel as if you are settling in well?” Kita inquired.

“Well, kind of...” I admitted. “It’s all just a bit nerve wracking, you know? Like I’m a total outsider, and you guys have known each other for... well, however long you’ve known each other.”

I should take this time to note something. At this point, I was a bit self-conscious about the way I spoke to Kita. She’s so well-spoken. She has a noticeable accent, that even borders on heavy at times (I later found this accent to be from remote Mistral), but she speaks so clearly and calmly that I can always tell what she’s saying. It’s honestly relaxing, hearing her talk to me. Until I have to talk back. That part gets me.

“I understand how you feel,” Kita said. “I have only known them for a handful of moons-- forgive me. Months, I mean.”

“Really?” I asked. “You mentioned the Shrouded Fox yesterday. Were you with them?”

Kita cocked her head, as if considering her reply. “It is complicated,” she began. “I was a member of the tribe, until I was exiled. I joined Greyson after he helped save my people from a prophesied grimm attack which would have brought calamity to my people.”

“Whoa.”

Kita took a sip from the water bottle that sat before her. Her movement brought several things to my attention. First, her muscles. I really, really hope I don’t come across as creepy, but she’s so buff. She’s not built like a bodybuilder or anything, but what mass she does have looks to be entirely rock-hard, toned muscle. Her shoulders are broad, only when compared to her waist. The muscles under her skin rippled with her movement, and for a bit, my train of thought completely derailed.

This is definitely gonna come across as creepy, and I’m sorry. But I’ve seen her abs since this conversation and... wow.

Anyway, the second thing I noticed was her scars. The largest of countless knicks and slashes documented on her skin is on the center of her chest, and it’s about three inches across. It’s perfectly circular, with some strange symbol I’m not even close to recognizing. It looks like a burn. A brand, maybe? God, that must have hurt. The second scar I see is an oblong section of darkened, disfigured skin nearly an inch across on both sides of her forearm. Was that arm shot straight THROUGH?! This girl is a badass!

“I am actually quite curious about this world,” Kita noted. “If it does not bring any unpleasant memories, would you mind sharing a bit about your tribe?”

“Well, Raven actually explained us pretty well yesterday,” I recalled with a nervous laugh. “We of the Inyan were a nomadic tribe, and many of us were dust wielders. We took refuge wherever could support us, and would go into desert towns to sell dust, fabrics, and anything else we could find. All of it was destroyed the night my people were slain. All I could do to support myself, other than hunting for food and finding water, was sell stone sculptures. As you can imagine, they didn’t pay as well as dust and quality fabric.”

Kita cocked her head curiously. “Did you visit villages often?” she asked.

“The Inyan would visit once a week, every week,” I replied. “I visited less than that though. One person takes less feeding than an entire tribe.”

“I cannot imagine what it must have been like, to survive alone for many years,” Kita sympathized. “It was difficult enough to survive my exilation, which lasted nearly a moon. I had far more food and water available than you.”

“It’s not like there were people that would have killed me on sight though, I could go wherever I wanted,” I replied, perhaps a bit too flippantly. “Anyway, if you don’t mind me asking, what was your tribe like?”

“We were completely isolated from society, deep in the mountains of Northern Mistral,” Kita answered. “From a young age, all I knew was war, and worship of the Great Shrouded Fox. We were quite traditional, as well. We had set celebrations for the birth of a child, and ceremonies for those who joined the stars, among many other rituals.”

“You guys were completely isolated?” I questioned curiously.

Kita nodded. “The only times I had ever seen someone not of my tribe, outside of combat, were when outsiders came to investigate us,” she explained. “Raven was one such outsider. I aided her in slaying creatures of grimm. One of my tribemates saw, and I was exiled. Contact with those from the outside is forbidden, as it is thought to be dangerous.”

“Aren’t you even the slightest bit bitter about that? Toward anyone?” I asked.

Kita shook her head gently. “It was purely my choice, and I understood the consequences. Raven had been mistreated by those she called allies, and so I do not fault her either,” she said. “Yet still, it was quite the fall from grace. My family was second most revered, only to the village elder’s bloodline. I was to marry his son when I was of age.”

My blood ran cold. Up until this point I had fooled myself, thinking that I might actually have a chance with this girl. Now, I remembered. She’s straight. Definitely straight.

“Oh, I’m... sorry,” I offered. “I know-- I mean, I can imagine how it would feel to be pulled away from someone you loved.”

Kita cocked her head. “I do not know if I truly loved him,” she admitted. “The Shrouded Fox marries for strength, so our union made sense. I was the strongest unmarried woman of my tribe. Yet he was more than ten years my senior.”

“Do you feel love?” I asked. I covered my mouth, eyes widening as I looked to the ground. What. The. HELL did I just ask? It’s like I asked if she was a robot or something. Which, I mean, she seems like one until you actually talk to her. It’s kind of endearing.

Kita pinched her scarf between thumb and index finger, raising it above her nose to conceal her cheeks.

“Yes. I believe I do.”

[prideandpen]

Sometimes I find myself thinking about my place in the writeblr comminuty these days and about how long it’s been since I last wrote anything or even really talked about writing.

I think, in healing, I personally have had to let go of fiction a bit. For the longest time fiction was my escape even when I didn’t know that that’s what it was. It was my chance to be somewhere else - anywhere else - and experience a different life. A lot of the lives I read were infinitely harder than mine; because I was trying to tell myself I didn’t have it that bad or wanted a different kind of challenge that made more sense to me, I have no idea. I’m not sure it matters. But, it’s been more than a year since I’ve been able to read consistently and not quite as long for writing but getting close to that year mark. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to end up coming back to it, though I hope someday I’m able because I still feel like I have at least one major story in me dying to be brought to life (primarily sky pirates) for my sake and for the sake of anyone who oneday holds that story in their hands either as their escape or as their adventure. Or botth.

And sometimes I miss writing, but I also don’t feel the same passionate draw to it as I used to. I have too much else I need to work on for my health and for my life, and my goals have shifted quite a lot. In some ways I know exactly where I’m headed with my life now and in others I don’t know what happened because that shift pulled me away from writing. For months I contemplated deleting Creating The Write Life before deciding to leave it as is for the time being. I still watch it gain followers, and occasionally the posts gain notes. And I wonder why anyone is bothering when it’s been ages since I posted anything new and even have a hiatus note in the description. I’m happy that people are still finding positivity in those few posts that are there, and that they’re sticking around to see if something new will turn up even though I don’t know when or if ever that’ll happen. I’m sort of rambling on about the thoughts in my head about my connection with writing though I don’t know where this is going. But. I suppose I miss writing a bit, though I don’t know if that’s me missing the delicate spin of an exciting sentance and the mystery of accidental foreshadowing and the spark of an idea to turn everything on it’s head. Or if it’s that I miss the ease of clinging to writing as my one and only goal in life. I know that I can’t go back to it yet because I don’t know quite how to untangle it from the darker phases of my life where I held on to it but I really hope that someday I can write again and see it seprate from those times. And I hope I can read again too - I’ve started a book again recently that I’m hoping to stick with. I suppose I’m saying. I used to be so active in the writeblr community, and I still love watching everyone talk about their stories and play the ask games about their OCs and WIPs. On occassion I even still get a new writeblr following me and I’m torn between the flicker of a thrill at someone else who loves to play with words and the worry that maybe they’ve come to the wrong place. Because am I even still a writer when I don’t write anymore? When I don’t know when I will again, or if I will again? Writing goes through phases, there are blocks sometimes and othertimes it rushes ahead so quickly that my fingers can’t keep up. But when a block isn’t a block, but just an absense it feels different. I know I’ll likely write again someday. I’ll be rusty and have to work out the kinks in my words like the ones in my muscles and it’ll be awful and wonderful at the same time. But wondering when I’ll write for the love of writing again because of all these change leaves just enough room for the disconnect between me and the way I used to write to be uncomfrotable

[renaroo]

Cass and Harper, #4

A Gentle Stroke

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: Bi Butterflies and feeeeelingsRating: TPairings: Cassandra Cain/Harper Row

A/N: Sorry for the wait, this week got crazy but this was fun to write and it’s been a good while since I wrote this ship or even just Harper in general so thank you so much for the prompt! It was a lot of fun!

When it happened, Bluebird was almost certain it had been an accident.

They were celebrating, in the short breathless way that vigilantes of Gotham did after finishing off a particularly dangerous mission together. It had been a long time since Harper Row and donned the suit she once crafted with her own hands and got herself dirty for the sake of the city, but she remembered how these sorts of things went. A wisp of condensed breath in the brittle harbor winds, the easy glances between friends behind masks, smiles of accomplishment hidden underneath labored breaths.

There was a real sense of you did good, kid, hanging between herself and the enigmatic Orphan.

Foundations of friendship, embittered ties tested by a twisted past. They were young women, but they carried the aged old souls of soldiers from their lives.

Harper was never really one who was lost on words so she began to say something in turn toward Cassandra. Ask her how much of her larger perp count came from watching over Harper’s rusty back. But those were words which didn’t come out because the aptly named Orphan was moving in toward her first.

The question of what was in Harper’s throat and she was ready to turn around expectantly for someone they missed coming at her. But there was no time for thought or movement or even response because…

Cassandra’s mask had been lifted, just over to the bridge of her nose, over her chin and her chapped lips.

And then her gloved hand was on Harper’s cheek, presenting the most gentle of caresses while a small but certain smile of thanks matching on Cass’ face.

The other girl had wanted Harper to see her mouth, the slight flush in her cheeks or the way the cold air steamed out from between her teeth. And she wanted the unguarded parts of Harper’s cheeks to feel the roughness of leather wrapped around her fingers and the texture of the stitches which held the glove together.

It was the most gentle of touches, a stroke with the palm of Cassandra’s hand, and it was so tender and warm in the moment that Harper forgot they were behind a warehouse on the Dixon Harbor surrounded by unconscious felons with a penchant for illegal firearms.

And then Cass moved on, probably certain of some alert system or police contact or something that was about to break up the moment between them anyway. It was hard telling with Cass sometimes.

So Harper was left instead, a bit dumbfounded and oblivious. She was taken off guard because there was almost nothing that could be counted as normal with the situation at hand. After all, when had it ever been normal social etiquette to do that let alone then?

Overthinking like it was her third major, Harper considered that Cass’ understanding of social norms was something they were still working on even a few years later and that there was a certain loving nature with the girl that had endeared her to everyone in spite of or even because of the horrors of her past. It wasn’t as if she could just assume what was meant by Cassandra’s caress. It was just a gentle touch, a stroke, a gesture that was going to cause Harper to lose every semblance of sense in her very, very bi mind at that moment.

The dumbfounded nature she was showing was more than a little uncharacteristic and as such, she was quick to snap herself out of it once she glanced up and saw that Cassandra, fully masked again, had actually double backed from her disappearing trick and was looking worriedly toward Harper for having not already followed. A well deserved amount of scrutiny to say the least.

Plus, the police sirens were closing in.

“Keep your shit together, Row,” Harper grimaced, smacking herself in the forehead before jogging toward the very shadows that Cass had already picked for their escape.

Once they left the scene of their triumph, an uncomfortable silence fell between Bluebird and Orphan. The kind where one was not quite sure what to make of the other’s without thinking to break they own vow.

Awkward, Harper’s mind finally decided on. Awkward was the name of their game. And Harper kind of hated it.

One of the things which had most defined their friendship and, in turn, had made Harper the happiest about having gotten Cass in her life, was the fact that there really hadn’t been anything left to get awkward about. The bonds they forged in spite of how the past tried to define them and their relationship had put them beyond those sorts of things.

It was why a retired Harper Row, rusty and sleep deprived from a few semesters of engineering finals, was willing to take a week night and roam streets and rooftops as Bluebird. Because that was just how comfortable that Cassandra, the Orphan, made her.

No one in the world was safer in those days than they were under Cass’ wing.

So why did that same generosity and gentleness make everything so damn awkward back there.

A far enough distance away from their fighting grounds, Harper, already a few strides behind Cass, skidded to a stop and held up her hands as her head shook. “Okay, okay, okay. Stop. Wait. Reverse. We need to go back to a few moments ago.”

Gracefully, Cassandra turned on her heels and faced Harper. Even beneath her face mask, there was a notable sense of confusion.

“What did you… lose? Cass asked, fumbling a bit with the last word from a lack of regular use.

“I didn’t lose anything,” Harper assured her. “We don’t have to, like, physically get back there. I just. Well. I might have to recalibrate some of my meters here.” She knew the analogy was utterly lost on Cassandra, but the girl showed the usual patience of a saint anyway. Harper made a distinct note in her mind to cash in some of her IOU’s built up from Tim and Steph to demand one of them explain the concept of gaydar to their friend.

“Okay?” Cassandra said, shifting her weight on to the balls of her feet then resting back.

Like everything else Cassandra did in her life, each motion was calculated, every muscle restrained. There was purpose in the stretch of every fiber of her being.

Which was the issue or the not issue of the moment because if everything had purpose and meaning then there was a purpose or meaning behind the stroke of a hand and if that happened then, well, Cassandra had done something vey deliberate. But why. Because Harper wasn’t sure if anything Cass meant was what Harper and most people would think was meant and—

She was overthinking again.

“Harper?” Cass asked curiously.

There was caution and control in Cassandra’s voice. She said Harper’s name and not her codename which was also layered in meaning and personalbility not often used in the field. And then there was the simple emotion of the moment, like she didn’t understand what Harper was doing either. Which was bad, because Harper didn’t know what she was doing or why she was so thrown by a moment of intimacy which was…

And that was when Harper’s mind hit pause again and the reason she was so startled was because that touch and that moment felt like something truly intimate and more than anything Harper had shared with another person in a very long time and she—

Her very, very bi brain needed to know if she was misreading things. Because that was what very, very bi brains sometimes did.

“Orphan,” Harper started, but then realized that it was misleadingly formal since the formality ice had been broken by Cass already. “Cassie,” which was way too casual and honestly she couldn’t remember if anyone had ever non-jokingly called Cass that before. There was something very broken about Harper’s incredibly bi brain at that point. “Listen. Cass.”

For her part, Cassandra stood quietly and patiently, head somewhat tilted. She said nothing, but it wasn’t like that was exactly abnormal.

“Cass, you and I. What I mean. Back there,” Harper waved toward the docks and froze because coherency was suddenly far more difficult than her physics homework. “Shit.” And when that made Cassandra’s head tilt in the other direction, Harper’s heartbeat increased almost tenfold. “Uh. Good job?”

That, at least, earned a soft smile and Cass nodded. “You too.”

They stood opposite of each other for a few more moments, awkwardness on top of additional awkwardness.

“So. You like,” Harper paused again and sorted through nerves before motioning to her cheek that still felt a bit warm despite thermodynamics not quite working that way. “You touched me.”

“Yes,” Cass answered back in a sort of very nonchalant way that could have gutted a lesser bisexual immediately.

Harper, by necessity though, was built of stronger stuff. “Was that like… what kind of touch did you think it was?”

Suddenly, Cassandra looked incredibly confused. “… types of… touches?” she tried to clarify.

“Yeah, sorry, this is weird, but I won’t sleep for the next two days already because of that coffee habit I can’t kick and if I’m thinking about this and not, like, exams coming up then I will be an actual bisexual disaster and no one really wants to see that, let’s be real,” Harper chattered on like a deranged woman with blue hair and a taser built like a bazooka strapped to her back.

“Okay?” Cass continued. “Still don’t… really understand?”

“The touch, the hand… thing. I need to know. Why? Is it just… something you do or is it like… offering a hand in marriage? Or… more likely it’s very mild and something in between there?” Harper pressed.

Cass’ chin tilted up and she nodded sagely. “Ah, yes.”

“Yes what? Cass, I’m going to have a breakdown here we need specifics,” Harper nearly hyperventilated.

“I want you to know… you did good. And I’m proud,” Cass explained. “So… showed you.”

And, in that moment, Harper could not have been more deflated. “Oh,” she said. Then, internally, she used very bad words to curse her stupid very, very bi brain for the teases.

“Because I like you?” Cass continued, suddenly adding some of her own awkward by rubbing at her neck. “So… yes?”

Harper’s heart nearly grew three sizes that day as she straightened up and felt her cheek warm up. “Oh! Yes!” Harper laughed, turning to a puddle of feelings as Cass reached over again and stroked her cheek once more. “I knew it the whole time.”

[joeyokay35]

Serendipitous Moments

A/N: I originally wrote this a few months back as a Get Well gift for @notsomolly who has allowed me to tweak it and post it here. I was a little nervous about posting my writing on my own page, especially second person perspective because I’m quite rusty, but I’m practicing so... yeah. Un-beta’d. *Gif not mine.

Martin threw legendary parties, this was common knowledge, and there had been nothing in the world that could’ve stopped you from attending his New Year’s Eve bash, complete with costume. However, if you’d known then that in three days time, you’d be laid up, basically one giant bruise and donning a wrist cast, you my have decided to forego this one.

You’d gone as a female Sherlock – had borrowed Ben’s coat and everything. But upon leaving, the heel of your boot had slipped between the bricks of the sidewalk and you went down. “That should teach you to mock me,” Benedict had joked before realize that you were indeed in need of medical attention. He’d carried you to his Jaguar and taken you straight to A&E. He hadn’t even complained about the bit of blood on the leather from a cut on your chin.

Currently, you were on his front stoop, thanking God that you had a key to his flat as it made things like this so much easier when he was off filming. You were aching, quite literally, for a long soak in a tub and since your place had only a shower, you decided to take advantage of his. The place was dark, so you stepped lightly and carefully through his lounge and up the stairs. Once in his bedroom, you went straight to the loo, stripping off an old hoodie and joggers as you went.

Out of your bag, you retrieved a few candles, bath salts, and a bubble bar – everything needed to make this a most relaxing practice of self-care. After the tub was full, you gingerly lifted one leg over the edge, sighing as the warmth of the water spread up your calf, then the other leg and, finally, into the water. Oh yes, this was exactly what you’d needed.

Your well-loved, old iPod Classic was playing some Regina Spektor and you closed your eyes in bliss, a clean towel rolled beneath your neck. Your mind was quickly swept away, off somewhere else – somewhere tropical with fresh coconuts and cocktails. So, while you were far away from dreary, rainy London, in a place of eternal sunshine and cute cabana boys, you did not hear the front door open downstairs.

“How often do you let yourself into my home when I’m away?” Came Ben’s smooth voice as he stood in the doorway. There was mirth in his tone, causing it to drop an octave that made your skin ripple with gooseflesh despite the hot water. “Relax, I know you’ve had a rough few days – ma maison est ta maison.”

And now, he was speaking French in that delicious, velvety voice of his. Okay, maybe you could admit that you had a bit of a crush on him. But that was Benedict; he could charm a whole room out of their knickers, regardless of gender.

“Merci,” you whispered, meekly, and slunk down into the water. Could he see anything from this distance? Were there enough bubbles to cover your naughty bits? God, you hoped so. “I wasn’t expecting you home. I thought you were in Cardiff this week?” You asked, as he turned and strode into his master bedroom.

You could hear him shuffling around in there, possibly changing or emptying the small bag of belongings he always took with him when filming on site. If you craned your neck around, you could see the faintest outline of his back facing you. He was starting to bulk up again, for yet another role, and you were mesmerized by the way his muscles shifted beneath the fabric of his tee.

“I was supposed to be, but Martin had a family emergency to attend to.”

“Oh, I hope it’s nothing serious…”

“I believe it was a distant cousin who passed. Which is sad nonetheless, but Martin said he barely knew him. So,” he trailed off, until it was quiet again. Your polite chit-chat had lulled you back into the tranquility you’d created. Your eyes had closed and your head had lolled back against your makeshift pillow. “As I was saying, I get to have a few days off while Martin deals with his family issue.”

That voice did not come from the bedroom – that was the first thing your brain recognized. It was louder, clearer… closer. Your breath caught when you opened one eye to see him standing at the sink, dressed similarly to the way you had been when you’d arrived, in a threadbare tee and joggers. If you weren’t totally mortified for the second time that night, you might have noticed how incredible his arse looked in those joggers. But you were too panicked for that to register.

“Ben!” He flinched at your tone, and was about to turn around, “Don’t you dare turn around! I mean, for fuck’s sake, Cumberbatch, I’m naked!”

“I assumed so, darling. Generally, one doesn’t bathe with clothing. Do you not remember that I’ve seen you naked before now?” You were stunned. Your mouth opened and closed a few times as your pain-fogged brain tried to recall. When met with only silence, or sputtered-out nonsense, he filled in the blank. “You came to visit me on set and after we wrapped, Martin had the brilliant idea of getting together for a drink. We were all piss drunk and somehow, we ended up playing strip poker and you, well…”

“I what, Benedict?”

“You don’t have the greatest poker face,” he recounted with a teasing tone and a mischievous glint to his brilliant blue eyes.

“Oh my god,” you whispered. Now it was coming back to you. He was chuckling around his toothbrush, perhaps witnessing, via the mirror, as the crimson color climbed the column of your throat, and scorched your cheeks beneath your wrinkled fingertips. Then something occurred to you, “But Martin…”

“Oh, no – he’d gone off to bed way before then.” Ben assured you. “And, to be fair, you had seen a bit of me.”

“Pants, Benedict. I saw you in your pants.” Your voice was suddenly firm, but panicked. “The whole world has seen your torso. So, what, I’m supposed to feel at ease that I got to see everything but the best bits?”

“Best bits?” He finished rinsing the toothbrush, placing it back in its holder, clearly trying to hold back some more laughter.

“It’s not funny,” you admonished half-heartedly. “You’ve seen all of me and…” You didn’t bother to finish the question as Ben turned to face you. Your left arm immediately dropped over your chest, out of habit alone, you guessed, given this new information. Your right arm, along with the cast adorning your broken wrist, had to stay out of the water. You bit at your bottom lip, worrying it between your teeth, closing your eyes. This was all too disconcerting.

“Hey now,” his voice was smooth and hushed, but you knew he’d come closer to you. At this point, what did it matter if he saw anything? His hand, almost cold against the heat of your inflamed cheeks, cupped your face. And, with his thumb, he gently tugged at your bottom lip. “I did not mean to upset you. What can I do?” You sighed, then shrugged. “Do you want to see the good bits?” You couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped you, which in turn, made Benedict laugh.

“No, that’s okay. But I’ve got an alternative,” you offered.

“Name it, love.”

“I haven’t been able to properly wash my hair in days. Could you…?”

He merely smiled; not a hint of malice or mischief, it was kind and genuine, almost innocent. He disappeared into his bedroom and came back with a tumbler from where he kept his good Scotch and moved to sit on the edge of the tub behind you. He tipped your chin so your head fell back and he used the glass to wet your hair. Then, he grabbed the shampoo, pouring a generous amount into his hand, before working it into a lather.

The honey-scented suds filled your senses, along with the feeling of his long, nimble fingers working your scalp, which elicited a quiet moan. He chuckled, but said nothing, moving down to massage your neck and shoulders for a bit. He then began carefully rinsing, shielding your eyes from the soapy water with one of his large hands. Even after you were surely thoroughly rinsed, he kept up his strong muscle manipulation and there was no way you were about to complain. In fact, your eyes were closed in bliss, enjoying every moment of it, until you could feel what felt like his face close to yours.

You were just about to open your eyes when he politely requested that you not. His perfect manners never ceased, and you couldn’t refuse him for that very reason… and that you were highly curious about where he was going with this. “I feel like it’s my fault that you fell,” he whispered in your left ear, his lips gingerly brushing along bruised temple. “I should have been holding onto you, or… I don’t know, I just know I should have done… something.” He sounded so repentant, and you wanted to reassure him, but when you were about to speak, his lips delicately covered yours.

The unexpected pressure had you releasing a tiny gasp into his mouth. But with his lips encouraging yours, you quickly fell into a rhythm, your right hand coming up to run your fingers through the curls he always sported when filming Sherlock. You loved those curls; they were, without a doubt, one of your favorite things about him.

Though, his lips, which you’d dreamt of kissing many times, surpassed expectations and quickly climbed to the top of the list. His tongue delicately brushing yours had you grasping the nape of his neck. His skin was warm to the touch, in contrast to your bath that was rapidly turning colder. You broke the kiss only to ask, through quick, gasping breaths, that he fetch a towel.

“Oh, right. You’re probably getting a bit chilled.” You watched his kiss-swollen lips as he spoke; they were fuller and pinker and looked even more delectable than before. You snagged one more, briefer kiss before allowing him to stand. He grabbed a towel from the cabinet while you drained the tub, but when you reached for it, he held it from your reach. “Allow me… please?” You smiled and nodded, letting him take your hand to help you up, then wrapped you in the soft cotton. “Let me get you some clothes?”

“That would wonderful.” He came back a few minutes later with another tee and a pair of his boxer briefs. “Thank you, Ben.”

“You get dressed while I make us a cuppa,” he said, still slightly out of breath as well, and the blue of eyes darkened with lust. He walked out, but then turned, leaning back in, grasping the doorframe. “And I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but you have the loveliest arse I’ve ever seen. If we keep this up, don’t be surprised if I take a handful of it.” He winked at you and then disappeared.

You laughed at the ridiculousness of the entire situation, but this felt like the beginning of something beyond friendship with Ben. How serendipitous that breaking and entering – sort of – could end in this? But, with the hint of a promise that things would continue, you quickly dressed and went to make yourself comfortable on his bed just as he returned with a bottle of Scotch instead of tea. You quirked a brow in his direction and he gave you a devilish grin. This was turning into quite an interesting evening.

[magpiewords]

Family for the Holidays

@hanukkahprompts​ inspired me to write this idea I’ve had for a while. Basically, all the Avengers are Jewish, but due to miscommunication, assume the others want to celebrate Christmas. So this first prompt fill is mostly set up for that. I promise the rest of the prompt-fills will have more legit Hanukkah content.

Also, fun fact, the menorah ornament I wrote about at the end is something my family and I actually do with our decorations.

“Tony, isn’t it a little early for a tree?” Sam asked, having been bewildered by the massive tree in the Stark Industries lobby at the entrance of the building.

“Well, the next true holiday is Cyber Monday,” The billionaire winked at Jarvis’s nearest camera and Natasha almost choked on her coffee. “but it’s officially the holiday season. Aren’t you excited?”

Falcon tried to smile, he really did. The holidays weren’t all bad. Frost decorated the windows in the morning, everything was peppermint flavor, and families came together. Except for him. Now that he was a full time Avenger, going home in the middle of December to celebrate was out of the question. He tried not to be bitter about it, but years of school holidays then army leave times not matching up with the calendar brought up something Grinch-like inside him. At least he got to visit his mom for Rosh Hashanah this year. And it’s not like Dr. Doom would take a break just because a few bells were jingling.

“Yeah,” He finally said, “holiday season.” He gave Tony a pointed look but the other man just stared at him.

“Uh, yeah. But Christmas is everyone’s favorite, right?” The statement lacked his usual bravado and, for a second, Sam thought Tony might be genuinely asking the question. There was a long silence in the kitchen.

The question went unanswered as the Avengers alarm went off. The Red Room had sent assailants and Natasha cut them down with no remorse. She was always vicious but this was something especially terrifying. The Red Room had taken so much from her, so much she had to claw to take back. Years of studying and laughing with her mother, memories faded from the ruthless training she endured. The second she was free, she relearned every verse, every scrap of her broken faith even if she didn’t believe in it anymore. She reclaimed a small, secret part of herself in the sands east of the Dead Sea, with a rabbi who she met for only moments but would defend with her life.

The way Tony talked about the holidays brought that goofy smile to his face, a smile she would defend with her life too.

When the fighting was over and Sam walked back into the communal floor to see Natasha setting up a small tree next to the couch, he couldn’t really bring himself to be annoyed.

The fight hadn’t needed Bruce to get involved. The doctor would never say he was disappointed not to have hulked out, but he was already grumpy and it would have been nice to let off some steam. He was annoyed at the obnoxious tree in the lobby and more so at the tiny one that had snuck in closer to home. The smell of pine sent him miles and years away, back to the nightmares in a tiny house in Ohio. He doesn’t want to hate winter holidays, but he’d give anything for the smell of candles burning low instead of all this mistletoe garbage.

“That stuff is poisonous, you know.” He grumbled as he walked past Steve setting it up over a doorway.

“I’m told it doesn’t get eaten, it gets kissed under. It sounded fun.” Steve teased, but didn’t push further. He could tell Bruce wasn’t in the best mood, taking his supplies to decorate another part of the Tower.

A few days later, with December barely started, Tony gave everyone red hats with white trim. Bruce had stared at the gift, then looked up to see Tony staring at him. “They sounded fun.” The billionaire had an elf hat, jingling the bell with a tilt of his head.

With a sigh, Bruce put on the the ridiculous hat. He put it on every morning when he woke up, wearing it in the lab, wearing it to meetings and dinners, wearing it because Tony and Steve and even Natasha smiled when they saw him wear it. He’d give anything for those smiles.

The hats had been given out on a Saturday, and Bucky was no where to be found to receive one. No one knew were he went on Saturdays, but no one was bold enough to ask.

Steve had woken up in the 21st century, defrosted then shocked by how the world changed. Bucky woke up like he was still crashing through ice water – maybe that was when he woke up, in the chill of the Potomac as he remembered enough to rescue Steve from drowning under the crashing helicarriers. Even after that, it was endless ice and gasping for breath as he relived the horrors of what he had done. The guilt was overwhelming. He knew breaking away from Hydra was a blessing, but in the darkest days of his recovery, he sometimes missed the empty-headedness of being the Soldier.

The first time he told Steve about this, the blond had looked so lost. Despite being a full foot taller and with at least a hundred more pounds of muscle, his face looked just like the one from that scrawny kid in Brooklyn who had lost his mother right before the holidays. It was that look that told Bucky exactly what to do. Stevie had moved in with the Barnes just a few weeks before Hanukkah that year. Family brought together in the oil lamp light, that had kept Stevie from going over the deep end.

The synagogue three blocks south of the Tower was more than happy to welcome him into their family. The Avengers were becoming his family, but being in a temple with his people, even if it was a people decades younger than him, was the instant family he needed. The instant familiarity of tradition. He taught school on Saturdays, his Hebrew rusty with an accent at first, but it was a language he’d never truly lose. The rabbi was endlessly patient with him. The kids asked him all sorts of questions, from if they had chocolate gelt in the 1940s (they did) to if he had seen the latest Star Wars movie (he hadn’t when they asked, but suggested it for the following Avengers movie night. Finn was his favorite character).

It was their endless chatter about movies that had gave him an idea for how to participate in the Avenger’s holiday decorating. Clint was the first to see it, cackling so hard over the sexy lamp from A Christmas Story that Bucky had to step in to keep the egg nog from boiling over.

“No one in this tower knows the holiday spirit as truly as you do.” Clint said seriously once he regained his breath.

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” Bucky winked at him. None of the kids at temple had known any Hanukkah movies, but every single one of them had tried sticking their tongue to a frozen pole at some point. Bucky was pretty sure he had tried that as a kid too.

Clint wasn’t sure how he had become the egg nog master chef, but it seemed like he was making a batch at least once a day since the first tree had gone up. He didn’t mind, it was delicious and he was waiting to see if any of the team would notice it was kosher, but he was pretty sure he’d never had the drink before this holiday season. It just seemed like the thing to do.

Coulson had never even touched a tree ornament before, but decorating the small thing Natasha had brought in seemed like the right thing to do. He’d found designs featuring all of the Avengers, had gotten different molecules made of metal for the scientifically inclined in the house, and the collection of multi-colored string lights gave the room a homey glow late at night when those who couldn’t sleep ended up in the living room. No one would expect Coulson to care about the commercialized holiday, least of all Coulson, but he hadn’t expected his family of super heroes to care about it either. And if they were happy, he was happy.

“Wait,” Sam had walked in as Coulson was putting up the latest round of ornaments he had bought. Hallmark had a sale on snowflakes and the agent was surrounded by tiny boxes.

Sam had a tiny box of his own and walked right up to the tree. Whatever was inside was placed on a branch right in the front. Stepping back to stand next to Coulson, they looked together at the small clay menorah that decorated the tree.

“Now it’s perfect.” Phil said, doing little to hold back his smile as Sam grinned next to him. Maybe the Avengers didn’t care about being festive, so much as they cared about being festive with each other.

<next>

[oodlyenough]

fic meme: 7, 23, 37!

23. If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

I did this once before ages ago, to my zillion-page HP fic and my general feeling now is that it is a FOOL’S GAME because in a few years I’d probably just want to rewrite it again anyway. Case in point, the “revised” version is now deeply embarrassing to me. So I dunno! I’m pretty happy with most of my longer DW fics or I don’t find the ideas in them to be so good that they’re worth reviving, if that makes sense. There’s always sentences I notice when I reread that I think “wait, why?”, but nothing worth a total rewrite.

37. Talk about your current wips.

The only “wip” I have that is in any way “in progress” is a Tales from the Borderlands fic which currently feels like pulling teeth because of the combo of rusty writing skills & new fandom. It’s been ages since I wrote anything creative or non-work-related so my muscles have atrophied. It is essentially just an excuse for flirty Rhys/Sasha banter, but also a good way for me to try to settle into the characters a little and I really want to finish it because I miss writing fic.

Elsewhere in google docs and untouched for longer is the part 2 of Culture Shock (Harry Potter, Lily Evans gen) – I got about 3 of the 5 other scenarios for part 2 written, and had planned the remaining ones, but I kept falling out of it and was also second guessing the entire premise of part 2, so I dunno. Seems like a waste to leave it unfinished, since I’ve written most of it, but I’m really happy with how part 1 turned out and I don’t want to ruin it.

Also sometimes on the bus I imagine a Matt Murdock/Jessica Jones fic I will definitely never write and is definitely just me preparing for the inevitable disappointment that the Defenders will be.

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Hmm somewhat at random I’ll go with this bit from Cardiovascular (Doctor Who, Cloen/Rose):

There were other differences, too, things he was finding hard to quantify. He was certain this universe had felt… different last time he was here, that there’d been a perceptible not-quite-rightness to it, like an out of tune piano: the right keys in the right place making the wrong sounds. Now it seemed that inherent wrongness was beyond his realm of perception. He was tone deaf.

Possibly that should have been a comfort. It would be awkward to spend the rest of his life feeling out of sync with the universe. At the moment, though, it was disconcerting. He felt like he’d been blindfolded.

This was my 8-years-later contribution to the “immediately post-JE beach scene” fic trend and the fic itself took me like literally four years to write, on and off, but part of why I stuck with it was because for whatever reason I was really pleased with this description of Pete’s World, lol. 

[ladyoftheglaive-blog]

Ignisxreader fanfic chapter 1

So here is my fanfic, I’m definitely nervous to post this just because I haven’t written in many many years, I used to write all the time but I fear I’ve grown rusty so please forgive that. I really do hope you all enjoy and id love some feedback. So this is a FFXV fanfic, and is Ignisxreader, it’s just much more in depth then that. So this fic is really based on all my daydreams I have, I have a very active daydreaming mind and so this character is kind of my OC and her adventures with the Chocobros, so this is incredibly near and dear to my heart since it is a piece of me since I’ve spent many hours and days daydreaming this up. I just wanted to share it all with you, so jump in and enjoy! I welcome any and all feedback! Also help me come up with a title for this fanfic I’m at a lose.

It was early morning and you knew you hadn’t been asleep for long when you heard the clinking coming from the kitchen. You were stiff and your left arm was asleep, that’s what you get for sleeping on the couch. It was so much easier for you to crash at your best friends home then your own, his was much closer to the Glaives headquarters and you had spent the whole day and most of the night training new recruits. You sat up on the couch slowly stretching your arms above your head, your hair falling in your face as you gave a loud yawn. “Ah you’re awake, I’m sorry if I was too loud” he walked out of the kitchen carrying two steaming mugs “I was hoping to let you sleep a bit longer” he sat down next to you handing you the mug, you took a deep breath of the ebony coffee and smiled before taking a long sip. You noticed he was only wearing black lounge pants, and no shirt, whenever you saw his perfectly sculpted body you couldn’t help but stare a little, he has the body of a gymnast but it seemed more like a god to you, hell he even gave Gladio a run for his money in your mind. “No don’t be sorry, I was almost awake already” you lied with a smirk, he knew you well enough to see right through your lie. “Thanks Iggy,” you nodded at the coffee “I’m sorry I crashed here again, it was a stressful day and having to train the newbies right after coming back from fighting daemons, just I was exhausted and didn’t think I’d make it home, hell I almost crashed at HQ” you said with a small laugh trying to hide your exhaustion, your lips going straight back to the coffee. God you loved how perfectly he made your coffee, you always miss it when you leave for missions. “Don’t you be sorry, if I had an issue with you staying I wouldn’t have ever given you a key or offered in the first place” Ignis sighed as he pushed up his glasses with his middle finger giving you a stern look, he was very sick of having this conversation with you. You just nodded and looked away. He broke the silence between you two" How was the mission?“ You sighed and your shoulders sunk down, you could only manage to stare off and put your chin into your hands and give him a quick side stare. He immediately knew this was the wrong thing to ask. “Ignis” you breathed out “I’m so tired of watching my Kingsglaive die” “It was a defeat, they overpowered us with daemons, huge ones I’ve never seen before,” you motioned with your hands “they shot fireballs from their shoulders!” Your eyes got big “and after our retreat the empire just…left” your voice trailed off in defeat. All Ignis could do was sit in silence and listen, once you were done he stood up and took your empty coffee cup and went back to the kitchen and refilled it. “Well,” he walked back handing you your cup of liquid gold “you honestly did all that you could do, I know you and you did everything in your power to protect your Glaive, and succeed” he stared you down with such caring eyes and the feeling you always got in your gut when he gave you that look was indescribable “don’t blame yourself.” you sighed deeply, he always managed to say what you needed to hear and knew how to ground your feelings. You set your cup down on the coffee table and tucked your legs up under you, wanting to change the topic you ask what he’d been up to since you left “oh the normal,” he said nonchalantly “errands, council meetings, tending to the prince. Things haven’t changed but I feel they may soon” He ended his words slightly ominously, you just watched him and in your heart knew exactly what he meant. “Well let me get out of your perfect hair” you said with a laugh standing up and grabbing the pieces of your uniform you had discarded all on the floor the night before and putting them back on. Ignis looked slightly disappointed for a split second but understood you’re a very busy person just as he is. You headed to the door with your typical saunter, and gave a look back at Ignis “stay out of trouble, I’ll text you later” you smiled with a wink. “Same too you, also next time you stay over please don’t sleep on the couch and please wake me and take the bed, I see the kink in your neck, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell you” Ignis smirked behind his hand which were pushing up his glasses again, you just laughed with a wave of your hand and walked out the door closing it behind yourself. You made your way along the busy streets of the Crowned City making very careful to not bump into the people you were rushing past, you needed to get home, take a shower and get into a clean uniform, you didn’t realize how dirty you were and felt a tinge of guilt for sleeping on Ignis’ spotless couch. You walked up some stairs of a rather old apartment complex to your door and pulled out your keys, opened it up and walked inside turning on a light switch. Your apartment was rather basic, considering you were rarely home between commanding the Kingsglaive, training, missions, and spending your free time with your favorite boys, you mainly used your home as a stopping place to sleep and store your belongings but nonetheless it felt very homey and welcoming. You walked to your bathroom and stripped down turning on the hot water and stepping in letting the heat relax your aching muscles. You looked over your arms and legs seeing all the new bruises, cuts, and scrapes you had acquired on your last mission, you knew you’d get a couple new scars to add to your collection. You thought over your last mission, how you had lost so many good men and women, how you needed to write the letters to their families, you felt your heart sink, your job was never easy. You were in a position of high authority, you helped command the Kingsglaive, the kings military, you were right above the lead of captain Titus. You were the Commander but you let Titus take most control of the Glaive for the most part, as you were typically sent to do special missions from the king himself or from his right hands. You did your best to always be by your Glaives side during battle and to lead them showing them you would always be willing to die at their sides and how they meant more to you then just being another soldier, but these times during the war were becoming rarer. The king was sending you on many missions alone to attempt to infiltrate and take plans from the Empire or take out a bass in secret. You were an incredibly skilled fighter and had many a special talent. You tried to keep it secret but most everyone knew, you were very special and rare, a gift from the gods as King Regis put it. You could harness and use magic without the need of the crystal, you could summon your own array of weapons and had your own secret move up your sleeve, one incredibly deadly secret that only the king and his closet confidantes were aware of. You’re only sole purpose on Eos though was to protect the king and his kingdom at all costs, you in essence were a weapon and bodyguard from the gods for the Kings of Lucis. It probably didn’t hurt your cause that you had originally been born in a far off land to a long line of famed daemon hunters. To put it in the best of terms you were a badass, and you knew it. You turned the water of your perfectly temped shower off and stepped out and wrapped a towel around yourself, you walked to your room and got dressed. All you really wanted to do was lay in your cozy bed piled high with blankets and sleep a little but sighed as you knew your day was going to be busy, you knew you needed to write reports to the king, write letters to those poor families, train with the Glaive, catch up with Captian Titus, and to spend some much needed time with your favorite boys at dinner. You left your apartment with just enough time to get to the headquarters, you walked briskly through the crowds of people to busy to notice anything but what was a concern in their own life. You were about to be at headquarters when your phone went off letting you know you got a text, you figured you’d check it later so you wouldn’t be late. But as you got closer your phone went off multiple times. “Must be Prompto spamming me memes again” you thought out loud as you dug your phone from your pocket. You opened the messages to see you had a message from Prompto, Gladio, Titus, and a couple from Ignis. You thought this was rather odd to have them all texting you at once so you opened them and began to read them. “I just saw what happened on the news, are you ok?” Prompto wrote with a sad face emoji “Call me when you are most available to talk” “I hope you’re doing ok” Ignis had sent “I’m sorry. How’s the Glaives taking the news?” Gladio wrote You started to become incredibly worried “I need you at HQ immediately, peace treaters have been signed, bad news for the Glaive, they need you now” Titus had sent You immediately felt your heart sink and face lose all color, you full on sprinted to the Kingsglaive headquarters.

[pauldeckerus]

Guest Blog: Photographer Nicole S. Young (a.k.a. “Nicolesy”)

A little more than six years ago I wrote my first guest blog post here on Scott’s website, and it’s incredible to see both how much has changed, and also how much has stayed the same. Since my last post here I got married, moved five times, adopted two dogs, traveled to eight new countries, checked off a few items on my bucket list, and I’ve also grown my photography education business into a full-time job. While my life looks a little different than it did in 2012, my excitement and passion to grow as a photographer is the same.

One of the things I love best about my job as a photographer is that I get to call all of the shots. I have gone in a solo direction with my work and get to photograph what I want and make books and tutorials that are of my own creation. It’s fulfilling, but it also takes a lot of self-determination and a good work ethic, and I’m constantly forced to stay at my own very high level of expectations. Here I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned during my time as a photographer.

This is a selection of some of the images I created while in high school. I quickly fell in love with photography but worried I would fall out of love with it if I made it my full-time job.

Forge Your Own Path When I was in high school, I can remember wanting to be a sports photographer. I had just taken my first class in photography and joined the yearbook committee as a staff photographer. I found my “thing” and knew that photography was something I wanted to do long term. Then, when I joined the military, I chose a path other than photography. I was worried if photography was my full-time job that I would fall out of love with it.

I began my career in photography by creating and licensing photos for stock photography, just like this image of a utility lineman working on a power line.

Now, a few decades later, I realize that I had nothing to worry about. Because of the Internet and digital photography, I was able to find a way to make photography my career. A path that began as with stock photography has evolved into a career in photography education. I wasn’t following someone else’s path or anything out of a book. I discovered the way on my own.

Each year in Canby, Oregon, the dahlia fields bloom, and with it come the bees, which are very photogenic. I have a lot of fun chasing and photographing both the bees and the flowers.

Whether or not you make photography a business, you’ll likely still go down a certain path with your work. Maybe you enjoy landscapes, architecture, portraits, or flowers. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you enjoy, and don’t be afraid to experiment with new types of photography that may be vastly different than your current photographic interests.

I’m lucky to live in the Pacific Northwest, one of the most beautiful parts of the country. And I’ve fallen in love with landscape photography because of it.

Should you stick to one genre? Maybe. It depends on your goals and what you want to achieve as a photographer. This is a very personal decision and is entirely up to you. Personally, I enjoy photographing almost everything. Many people know me for my food photography, but I also do a lot of landscape, nature, and travel, as well as macro and water-drop photography. I’ve even done some underwater photography as well. And thankfully, with the job I chose, having a diverse set of photographic interests can be beneficial. With a wide genre of photographs in my portfolio I am able to write books and create video training that appeals to a larger audience. And I also love the challenge of learning something new, and sometimes that involves going down a creative path that is completely different from the photography I’ve made in the past.

Sometimes I like to challenge myself to create something that is outside of what I normally would photograph, such as this black-and-white street image in Venice, Italy.

You will probably hear a lot of strong opinions on whether or not you should stick to one niche, along with many other topics relating to photography and business. Maybe they come from an anonymous voice in an online comment, or from a trusted photographer friend. I know I’ve heard my fair share of opinions from photographers who think they know what is best for me and my business. But in the end only you know what’s best for you and your photography. Listen to your gut and don’t let someone else steer you in the wrong direction.

Find The Best Social Network For YOU With social media so prevalent in our digital lives it’s sometimes difficult to keep up. Staying fully engaged on social media can be a full-time job, and very few are able to have a team of people working this job for us. Personally, I’m pretty awful at keeping up with it, so now I’m doing my best to determine which of the current platforms to spend more of my time and energy on.

I also have my own social network, so to speak. One of the best forms of communication I have is my newsletter. While social media is good for sharing photos and other information, so much of it gets swept away only moments after it is posted. With email, however, my messages are going directly into the inboxes of my subscribers. It’s understood that each message I send is about me and my work, which is why people signed up in the first place. And while I offer a lot of free downloads and tutorials to my subscribers, I don’t hesitate to ask for a purchase. In fact, I make nearly all of my income from what I offer my members through the newsletter. It’s my most personal—and profitable—form of communication. It also allows someone to get directly in touch with me, just by replying to one of my emails! That gives me the chance to chat one-on-one with someone, and their message doesn’t end up getting buried by the endless flood of social media streams.

Challenge Yourself Many of the photographic skills I have are from trying to learn and master something new. In fact, I quite enjoy the challenge of seeing whether or not I could really learn how to photograph something on my own, only using books and the Internet as my guide. And I’ve discovered some very enjoyable genres of photography that I will continue to pursue into the foreseeable future.

I taught myself food photography and eventually went on to write two books and one video course. This image of blueberry French toast was created in my KelbyOne course — Food Photography: A Recipe for Savory Success.

Food photography is one example. In my early stock photography days, I decided to give it a try, even though I knew nothing about how to properly photograph food. My initial images were awful, but as time progressed and I learned more about lighting and food styling, my images improved. Eventually I would write two books on food photography—Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots—as well as a video course on the KelbyOne website.

I thought it would be fun to see if I could create some legitimate water drop photos, and I was right! This is now one of my favorite types of photography.

Another good example is with waterdrop photography. In fact, I came across this just by random interest. There is a device I was purchasing—the Pluto Trigger—to use for photographing lightning, and while researching it I saw that they also sell a water drop valve as an accessory. The valve was not too expensive, and I thought it might be fun to try my hand at photographing water drops. After getting the valve and doing some research online, I was able to create some beautiful photos on my first try! It’s now become one of my favorite things to photograph.

Practice, Practice, Practice Whether or not your goal is to become the best photographer you can be, we tend to enjoy something more when we’re good at it. The best way to become good at something is to practice as much as possible. Not only will you help create muscle memory with your camera, you will solidify your technical knowledge about your gear, settings, and even your surroundings and subject matter. And this also applies to processing your photos and using software. I’ve been an avid Photoshop user for a very long time, but even those skills can get rusty! I make sure to create my own personal projects on the side to keep my “Photoshop muscles” fit.

I love experimenting and playing around in Photoshop, which is how I created these double-exposure images.

Even I have had my moments where my camera sat around collecting dust for a little too long, and I remember feeling rusty when I finally picked it up again. If you enjoy photographing landscapes but live somewhere that is lacking in natural beauty, maybe you can experiment with a different type of photography that is not dependent on the environment. Or maybe you could sign up for a 365 challenge, where you create a new photograph each day for an entire year. I attempted this one (and didn’t make it all the way), but it did encourage me to create a handful of good photos that otherwise would not have been created.

There are a lot of other opportunities to encourage you to pick up the camera. If you’re on Flickr, you may find groups that motivate you to get out and use your camera. I even have my own “Nicolesy” group where I run monthly photo challenges (click here to check it out on Flickr). Or maybe you’ve joined a local photo club, a photowalk, or an online forum. Find something that works for you and inspires you to get out and create something.

One of the most thrilling experiences I’ve had was cage diving and photographing great white sharks. It’s an opportunity I may not have had if I were not excited about photography.

Whatever route you end up following, if photography is important to you, the best thing you can do for yourself is to create. While photography is my main focus, I am a fan of creating so many other things and have quite a few hobbies. I love to knit, I’m a big pottery enthusiast, and I also enjoy the process of working on my website and creating books and video training for my business. When I’m creating, I’m happy.

You can see more of Nicole’s work and tutorials on her website, YouTube channel, and Flickr profile, and keep up with her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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