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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Note

My third and final prompt I promise: Wen Zhuliu. WEN ZHULIU. What if instead of being Wen Chao's babysitter/bodyguard he was a different young master's? Picturing him heaving a long suffering sigh at Huisang or Zixuan's antics is hilarious to me. I just want to see all the different interactions with the Core Melting Hand!

I apologize in advance for writing a fic that technically fulfils your prompt but also is...not quite about what you asked for

That Bitter Draught (ao3)

It wasn’t that Su She was entirely unaware of what he was like.

He was a man almost entirely consumed by bitterness and envy, his eyes so firmly fixed on what his neighbors had that he couldn’t appreciate the blessings in his own life. He was selfish and ungrateful, and hated the ones he admired the most, hated all of the ones who were better off than him, even the ones who pretended to be fair and equitable about it.

Especially those.

He’d been born to an ordinary family, not cultivators at all – a feeder family doing agriculture for the sake of the great Lan sect, who never much thought nor cared about where their vegetables came from. He waded knee-deep through the muck and the mire for the first six years of his life before some passing Lan cultivator had discovered he had a bit of potential, and next thing he knew his parents had handed him off to be someone’s servant, taking him away from everyone he’d ever known – from his parents and his animals and his siblings and his brother – and he was supposed to be grateful for it.

There wasn’t anything wrong with being a servant, Su She supposed. It was a livelihood like anyone else’s, and maybe he wouldn’t be so bitter about it if he’d stayed that way, the way he was supposed to, as a servant with just enough skill at cultivating to not disturb the tranquil and thoughtful atmosphere of the Cloud Recesses as he rushed around doing all the things that were necessary.

(The Cloud Recesses – so pretty and clean and pure, except there was muck here, too, and no amount of pretending by the sect disciples that their shit didn’t stink the way everyone else’s did would change that.)

Maybe Su She would have been fine with being a servant, though he suspected he wouldn’t – in the darkness of the middle of the night he sometimes thought that his ability to be content had been taken away when he had, that the black gaping hole in his heart that had once held his family would always be a yawning pit that always wanted more than he had, forever incapable of getting the one thing that would fill it up again – but he didn’t stay that way.

No, see, Su She was good at cultivating. He was really good - not quite a genius, but his hard work paid off and he got better and better at what he was doing even though they barely gave him any time to do it in.

After all, someone had to make sure that everything was ready for the sect disciples when they woke up at the start of the mao hour, and that meant he had to be hard at work by yin, and of course the fact that they went to sleep at the end of the xu hour only meant that his work stretched well into hai, but despite all the disadvantages they loaded him down with he cultivated like a madman at every free hour, squeezing it in between work and even more degrading work. He got better and better and better, and eventually, finally, someone noticed him again.

This time they made him a disciple.

They expected him to be grateful for that, too. As if he hadn’t bought the chance with his own sweat and tears and blood, and all to be one of the blessed ones, one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who could – if they were meritorious enough – get a pass to leave the sect to go where they liked.

(Moling was too far to reach by foot, not even for the New Year, and he didn’t make enough money to buy a horse. But once he had a sword, gifted to him from the sect, once he could fly – once he was old enough – once he was trusted enough –)

Being a disciple meant that he woke up at mao hour and went to sleep at xu, that his chamber-pot disappeared in the morning as if by magic, that his food was brought to his table instead of being stuffed into his mouth in the crowded staff room right off the kitchen in the brief reprieves he had between duties…all things he had to adjust to, things that were strange and felt almost unnatural.

Now that he was a disciple, he had all the same rights as all the others, the ones who had been born to it instead of raised up from a lower level for it.

It was supposed to mean that they were all equal, all Lan disciples the same, except that all the arrogant young masters looked down their noses at the former servant who’d stepped above his station. They ridiculed him for it: for being ambitious, for being envious, for thinking too highly of himself, for not knowing the things they’d had a chance to learn and he hadn’t, for smelling like the shit no matter how clean he kept his clothing or how much he washed.

Equal – hah!

The worst, though…the worst was the Twin Jades.

Lan Xichen was powerful, yet kind and generous to the point of selflessness, a proper gentleman; Lan Wangji, equally gifted, always did the right thing, no matter the circumstances, his expression solemn and serious, his reputation famous for his righteousness.

Su She hated them. He wanted to be them, wanted to be Lan Wangji so bad it made his blood boil, but he also hated them – hated him.

The Twin Jades. They didn’t deserve to be called that, not with the three year age difference between them and at least four points of difference on their face, if you were looking; not when Su She’s brother had been born so soon before him that he’d been born clutching his ankle as they left the womb together. Not when the only difference, the only difference, between them was that fucking Lan cultivator’s comment that he only had enough room in his cart to take one of them with him.

A servant, even with cultivation potential, was worth less than a bag of bok choy meant to serve as a side dish on a trueborn Lan disciple’s plate, and so his brother was stuck in the muck back at home while Su She fought his way through the muck that was the Lan sect’s glorious principles and discipline.

He didn’t even know for sure if his brother was still alive.

Oh, Su She had the sect’s permission to write them letters, but what would it help? No one in his village could read, he certainly hadn’t been able to before he’d been forcefully taught so that Lan sect elders could pass him notes instead of condescending enough to speak to him, and the cost of paying a scholar to read it to them would be a waste of the money he faithfully sent them out of his wages every month.

So yes, Su She was bitter. Su She hated. Su She envied, and envied Lan Wangji most of all. After all, he was handsome, but not as handsome; he was talented, but not as talented; he was smart, but not as smart; he was powerful, but not as powerful; he was a twin, but no one cared about him and his brother the way they cared about Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen – Lan Wangji, who got to have his older brother with him any time he liked, but spent the entire time standing there stone-faced and driving him away.

And, of course, Lan Wangji also had – him.

Yu Zhuliu was the sort of guest disciple that was really a servant and not a proper Lan disciple, although his cultivation was high enough to rank alongside some of the shining stars of the Lan sect – even more so than most, given his cultivation of the unique ability that had made him renowned throughout the cultivation world as the Core Melting Hand. It was only that he had been too old, at the time the Lan sect had rescued him from some misfortune that Su She had never heard specified, to learn their ways properly, and for some reason the elders resisted allowing him into the sect properly.

Perhaps it was because he was what was termed an ‘inconvenient child’ of Meishan Yu, the bastard child of a daughter of the clan; a liability that could neither be killed nor kept.

Perhaps it was because his ability was truly too terrifying, attacking as it did the golden core that all cultivators strove so hard and so long to form.

Or perhaps it was simply that he made a very convenient servant.

Yu Zhuliu was, to put a point on it, Lan Wangji’s servant, acting as both bodyguard and attendant.

He was a deputy to help Lan Wangji with whatever he needed, big or small. The Lan sect prided itself on discipline and humility, but only to a certain extent – only to the extent it looked good or was pure – and of course they were desperate to keep their precious young jade safe from the growing predations of Qishan Wen; it was not so strange that they assigned him a bodyguard, and of course if he was already doing that he might as well do the rest.

After all, who could expect a proper young gentleman to care for himself?

Su She hadn’t taken much notice of Yu Zhuliu at first, other than a brief stabbing feeling of pity when he heard of the man’s circumstances. But then one day he’d noticed him rolling his eyes as Lan Wangji stiffly recited the rules in advance of yet another punishment he was inflicting over something minor – no one loved the rules as much as Lan Wangji did. There was a reason nobody talked to him, perfect disciple that he was, and of course unlike the lowly Su She who, despite himself, longed for the company and recognition of his peers, Lan Wangji rose above it all, was above it all. And while no one could claim that his distribution of punishments wasn’t as fair and equitable as might be asked, it was evident to Su She that he only did it that way because it was the subject of yet another rule.

But no one ever seem to notice or care, no one ever thought it as stupid as Su She did, right up until that moment when he’d seen Yu Zhuliu making a long-suffering face like that where Lan Wangji couldn’t see, and Su She couldn’t help but smile a little, heart suddenly warm with a feeling of fellowship.

Yu Zhuliu had seen him smiling, caught his eyes, and rolled his eyes again, this time more pointedly – a gesture aimed just at him, a shared joke – and that was it; Su She was lost.

Su She was in Lan Wangji’s age group, even if they weren’t close (no one was close to Lan Wangji), so it wasn’t hard to find time to go over and talk to Yu Zhuliu.

The conversations were mostly one-sided to start with, which Su She had expected. Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man, and of course there was always that master-servant divide lying between them like a gulf. Still, Su She had been a servant once, which Yu Zhuliu knew – everyone knew – and in time Su She got him to ease up a little, talk back, commiserate.

Su She told him about his family, the little he remembered of them after all these years; in return, Yu Zhuliu unbent enough to tell him a little about his own background: the mother that hated him as the living sign of her disgrace, the constant accusations that he didn’t deserve to bear the Yu surname.

“Have you ever considered changing it?” Su She asked, helping him fold Lan Wangji’s laundry. It wasn’t something he’d ever have permitted himself to do under other circumstances, knowing how important it was to distance himself from all things relating to servants, but he was willing to make some compromises if it meant getting to spend a little more time with Yu Zhuliu. “Obviously if you want to keep it, it’s yours; they can’t deprive you of your birthright like that. But it doesn’t seem like you particularly want it.”

Yu Zhuliu was quiet for a long moment. “Once,” he said, his eyes distant. “I considered it once, before I joined the Lan sect. I wasn’t yet sure who had been the one to – well. Suffice it to say that I was seriously considering an offer I had received to join a different sect, and they offered to allow me to adopt the main clan’s surname as my own if I performed well.”

Su She shuddered in automatic revulsion at the thought.

Yu Zhuliu saw it, of course, and chuckled. “It would have been a great honor,” he reminded him. “Especially for someone like me – to be able to shed my old name would have been enough, but to replace it with a name that was even more powerful..?”

“Gratifying,” Su She agreed, a little begrudgingly. The idea of giving away his identity like that, giving in to the arrogant young masters’ lies that they were better than him just because they had a fancier surname, revolted him, but he could, he supposed, see a little of the spiteful appeal of it. “Like – stamping on their faces with it, showing them what they’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you take that offer, then?” They both knew the Lan sect would never in a million years extend a similar offer, even though there were plenty of branch families surnamed Lan and another one more or less wouldn’t much matter. It wasn’t proper, though, and no one cared more about propriety than the Lan sect. “With the clan surname, they would have had to make you a proper disciple.”

Su She would never agree to such an offer himself. He might want, in the darkest parts of his heart, to be Lan Wangjii, to be something better than he was, might occasionally daydream of what his life might have been life if they’d been born swapped in place, but he didn’t – he wouldn’t sell his surname for it.

(He wouldn’t sell his brother for it, even if all he had of his brother was a surname and some swiftly fading memories.)

But Yu Zhuliu hated his surname and all it represented. He wasn’t like Su She, always thinking of the past and the might-have-beens and growing fat on all his resentment and grievances; if Yu Zhuliu could shed his skin like a cicada, emerge somewhere else a brand-new person, he would do it in a heartbeat.

“It was the Lan sect that saved me,” he said simply. “And so I owed it to them to come here, no matter what the Wen sect offered me.”

The Wen sect. Wow. That was sure some offer to turn down; they commanded the loyalty of over a third of the smaller sects, maybe even close to half, and Yu Zhuliu could have gotten their surname.

Of course, the Wen sect offered that out much more readily than other sects did, but still.

On the other hand, if Yu Zhuliu had accepted, if he’d become Wen Zhuliu, then Su She would never have had the chance to meet him, or would have only met him under bad circumstances.

Maybe he wouldn’t have liked Wen Zhuliu that much at all.

“Your loyalty is admirable,” he finally said, after wracking his brain for something appropriately neutral to say.

That got him another chuckle. “Did you know that lies make you look like you’ve tasted something sour?”

“I,” Su She said with dignity, “am a great liar. You just haven’t noticed it yet.”

Yu Zhuliu was silent for a moment, maybe reviewing things he knew about Su She. “I suppose you probably are,” he said thoughtfully. “Which means it’s the Lan sect that you don’t like.”

Su She shrugged. “I don’t think I’d like any sect,” he confessed, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

Yu Zhuliu’s overwhelming trait was his loyalty, after all – he’d sell Su She out in a heartbeat if he thought the Lan sect deemed it necessary. Su She was mostly just counting on being so pointless and insignificant that Yu Zhuliu wouldn’t think it was worth telling anyone about him.

It probably wasn’t, either. Why would the Lan sect care about someone like Su She one way or another? He wasn’t anything to them, not really; even as a disciple, his only purpose was to act as an adornment, to bring honor and glory that would reflect upwards onto the great clan surnamed Lan.

“Why?” Yu Zhuliu asked. He sounded honestly curious – honestly interested, interested in Su She for something other than being an extra body in a formation or another cannon fodder to throw to the dogs when a night-hunt went badly.

Su She wanted to tell him everything.

But Yu Zhuliu was loyal, always loyal, and Su She may not be as smart as Lan Wangji but he wasn’t stupid.

“They’re all the same in the end, full of arrogant young masters,” he said breezily. “I mean, did you see the group of disasters at Teacher Lan’s lectures?”

Perhaps that was a harsh assessment, but he’d humiliated himself in front of them all on that night-hunt that went wrong against the Waterborne Abyss, with his still-shaky control over his sword, trying as always to live up to Lan Wangji’s example the way they kept always telling him he should and then being looked down upon as an idiot for even trying – why would he do something so stupid obviously he can never match Lan Wangji always aiming above his station and thinks too highly of himself still a servant after all obviously he’ll never be good enough – and the mere thought of them tasted like bile and hatred in his mouth.

“The head disciple from the Jiang sect seemed fairly smart,” Yu Zhuliu said, and Su She scoffed.

“He’s very smart, very smart indeed,” he said scathingly. “So smart that he’s forgotten who he is and where he came from. Eventually someone’s going to remember that he’s a servant’s son, not a proper young master at all, and he’ll pay for it in blood and tears – if he’s lucky.”

“Do you think so?”

“The Jiang heir has an inferiority complex as deep as the ocean –” Su She knew what one looked like; after all, he saw one every day in the mirror. “– and eventually the time will come when he has to be sect leader in his father’s place. On that day, all those pretty words about how wonderful Wei Wuxian is, how smart, how talented, what a credit to his sect, they’ll all fall onto Jiang Wanyin’s ears like a lash on his back. And when the time comes that he has to sacrifice something, well, we’ll see how much being smart helps Wei Wuxian then.”

“An interesting perspective,” Yu Zhuliu remarked.

“An accurate one,” Su She retorted. “He was raised as a proper young master, not a servant, and so he won’t even know to see the danger when it comes. None of them would.”

“No, I suppose not. It’s always the things you don’t know you don’t know that can harm you the most.” Yu Zhuliu straightened up – the laundry was done; they’d finished it ages ago. “We will have to continue this discussion another time, Su-gongzi –”

“Su She, please. Su Minshan, if you must.”

“Su Minshan, then. I look forward to speaking with you again.”

When Yu Zhuliu let, Su She hugged himself in glee, allowing himself a moment of triumph at a successful conversation with the person he liked, then went to wash himself clean again. He wasn’t dirty, and it was the middle of the day, but he wanted to make sure no one could smell the bleaching herbs they put in the laundry on him. He didn’t want to risk any more mockery, and anyway, it had gotten to be a habit.

As he went to the baths, he saw Lan Wangji standing on a nearby pathway, looking up at the sky as if deep in thought. He must be on his rounds again, even though it wasn’t his day for it, or even the right time; he’d taken to haunting the routine work of it as if it were the only thing keeping him grounded.

Whatever. It wasn’t Su She’s business.

Except maybe it was, because Lan Wangji kept – looking at him, over the next few days. Which was weird, because Lan Wangji never looked at anybody, his nose firmly stuck up in the sky where mortals dared not tread, and it was starting to make Su She nervous.

Surely Lan Wangji couldn’t tell – about him. He’d never been able to before, why would he start now?

And yet…what if he could?

What if Lan Wangji had figured him out? Figured out Su She’s rebellious heart, how he wasn’t grateful at all not matter nice a face he put on, how he hated the stupid Lan sect rules and the stupid Lan sect disciples and the stupid Lan sect arrogance, how he secretly schemed to learn everything he could and transcribe everything he couldn’t memorize so that he could take it back home to Moling one day and show his brother everything he’d learned, how he despised them all for their arrogance –

“Will you be attending the archery competition?” Lan Wangji asked stiffly. He did everything stiffy, like he was actually a statute carved out of jade and only just pretending to be human. “At the Nightless City?”

“Naturally,” Su She said, not bothering to look up from the verses he was copying. Not the most polite, not as kiss-ass as he ought to be when faced with the glory that was the second jade of the Lan sect, but he’d found that as long as he kept his tone as formal and humble as possible, he could get away with a little. “It may be nothing like yours, Lan-er-gongzi, but I do have some skill at it, you know.”

Not that most people thought so. They would be travelling to Qishan in three groups, for easier and more secure travel – one for the adults, one led by the Twin Jades to represent the shining hope of their sect, and the last of everyone else making up the numbers. He was in the last group, of course, even though his talent for musical cultivation was one of the strongest in the junior generation and his swordplay good enough to only lose to Lan Wangji three times out of every five – better results than a good half of the group of well-born Lan clansman being sent out as the representatives of their sect.

Was he bitter about it? Yes.

Lan Wangji hesitated for a long moment, and even shifted from one leg to the other – a sign of nervousness in most people, maybe. In Lan Wangji? Who even knew.

After a while, he said, “My group has an extra place,” sounding almost like it was an offer, and the entire thing was so bizarre that Su She immediately became suspicious.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Lan Wangji blinked at him.

“He who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding bad intentions, Lan-er-gongzi,” Su She clarified, glaring up at him and unable to keep his mouth from twisting as though he’d bitten something sour. He knew he often looked like that, and it made the female cultivators downrate his handsomeness, but he’d been the subject of too many jokes to stop himself from being so bitterly defensive. “You don’t know me, you don’t like me, and you don’t go out of your way to offer a better place to anyone, even if there’s no official rule against it. So what is it you want?”

Lan Wangji shook his head.

“If you don’t want anything, why offer?” Su She sneered. It would be just like Lan Wangji to have decided to recognize a promising disciple that deserve a chance to shine – he was perfect like that, after all, always thinking of others, always a true gentleman. Well, Su She had endured a lifetime of being seen as promising by gentlemen, being recognized as a talent without once being thought of as a person, having to humiliate himself in front of them like a dancing monkey and worst of all of having to be grateful to them for allowing him to do it, and he was sick and tired of swallowing down that bitter draught.

He didn’t need the better spot, not this time – he would be going one way or the other – and he wasn’t willing to give Lan Wangji of all people the satisfaction of doing him a favor he didn’t even want.

Lan Wangji shifted from one side to the other again, waiting a long time before he spoke again. Maybe it was nervousness.

“Yu Zhuliu is in my party,” he finally said.

At first Su She didn’t understand the point Lan Wangji was making, terse and oblique as the other man habitually was, and then he understood it far too well.

He saw red.

“What business is that of yours?” he shouted, dropping his brush and jumping to his feet, forgetting all of his good intentions to try to keep his head down and his tone at least plausibly polite. “So what if I spend some time with him when he’s free? Not every waking hour of his is yours!”

Lan Wangji’s eyes darted from side to side. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean –”

“You didn’t mean what?!”

“You like him.” A meaningful pause. “Very much.”

“Yes, I do,” Su She said, his cheeks flushed red. “So what? So I cut my sleeve sometimes, big deal. It’s not against any of your stupid rules – every attempt to introduce such a restriction formally has been rejected, I checked. This isn’t something you can punish me for!”

He could, of course. No one would question Lan Wangji issuing yet another punishment – he could say it was due to Su She’s noise, no shouting in the Cloud Recesses – and of course not every type of punishment was the sort that got meted out in the Punishment Hall. There were other types, more insidious – isolation, ostracization, missing out on opportunities for advancement, resources…even merely sentencing him to write lines could be used to deny him his coveted spot at the Nightless City.

Lan Wangji wouldn’t do that, though.

Somehow that just made Su She angrier. Who told Lan Wangji to be so fucking perfect?

“You can add it to your list of achievements,” he adds bitterly. “Everyone knows you’re better than me - better at manners, better at cultivation, better at everything, and now better in this way, too, because I’m a cutsleeve and you’re not –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Su She’s jaw dropped in shock. “You are?”

Lan Wangji’s features weren’t exactly easy to ready for anyone except Lan Xichen, but at the moment it was plain enough that even Su She could figure out that he was miserable.

“For who?!” A terrible thought slipped into his mind. “It had better not be Yu Zhuliu!”

“No!” Lan Wangji said hastily. “No – no. Not at all.”

“Good,” Su She said fiercely. “Because he’s mine. Or, well, not mine, we haven’t agreed on anything, I haven’t even said anything, but I’m trying and – well, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean.”

He wasn’t actually sure Lan Wangji did. He wasn’t sure he knew what he meant.

But Lan Wangji nodded, as if his confused rambling had been as clear as a Lan sect rule.

“I thought you might like to spend more time with him,” he said, and – oh. His offer. The Nightless City.

“…I would,” Su She said begrudgingly. “Thanks.”

For Yu Zhuliu, he’d even put up Lan Wangji’s charity.

“Who is it for you, anyway?” he asked, unable to resist and wanting to take advantage of this strange intimacy, this momentary breach of etiquette undoubtedly never to be repeated, but Lan Wangji shook his head, refusing to share. “Fine. Have it your way.”

It wasn’t that he cared, anyway.

Not about Lan Wangji’s mysterious lover, and not about Lan Wangji himself – this wasn’t a charming little flaw that made the whole seem more relatable, wasn’t something that generated fellow feeling, the way Yu Zhuliu’s gentle mockery had. So what if both of them were secretly cutsleeves in a sect that most assuredly did not approve of such things? That didn’t mean anything. It didn’t give them anything in common. They still weren’t the same, not at all, not with Lan Wangji was nobly bearing the burden of it while Su She had given in to temptation almost at once…

No, this was just more of the same.

More of Lan Wangji being, despite all of Su She’s efforts to the contrary, Su She’s idol, his ideal. The person who he hated most because he envied him the most, the person who made him hate himself as being nothing but the lesser copy, the person he despised for making him sometimes feel as if maybe Lan Wangji’s better birth really did entitle him to be better.

So no. He didn’t care.

(It wasn’t that Lan Wangji had seen him, recognized him as something the same. As a person, worthy of recognition, even if not of respect. It wasn’t.)

Maybe he cared a little bit.

He must have cared, or else he would have just run away when the Wen sect descended on the Lan sect with flame and sword instead of being a stupid idiot and going to look for him.

(He told himself it was because Yu Zhuliu would undoubtedly be wherever Lan Wangji was, and it was a pretty decent lie, except that he went to the Library Pavilion and Yu Zhuliu wasn’t there. So he told himself that Yu Zhuliu would have wanted him to protect Lan Wangji, and that lie worked better.)

Of course, once he got there, the stupid noble gentlemanly fucker wouldn’t even listen to him and run.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the important one?” Su She bellowed. This was clearly not the time for manners, and anyway Lan Wangji had already seen beneath his mask once; another time wouldn’t hurt. “Yu Zhuliu’s out there fighting to keep you alive and you’re wasting all his efforts, you’re just standing here, waiting for them to come get you –”

“It is necessary,” Lan Wangji said, solemn as ever. “Someone must keep their attention here, instead of following my brother.”

“Oh fuck you,” Su She said, and took out his sword. Lan Wangji just had to play the fucking brother card, didn’t he?

Yu Zhuliu would want me to do this, he told himself as he tried to fight. He was pretty decent, but he was just a disciple, not a soldier, and as a Lan sect disciple he’d never killed anything before. After a while, he ended up shouting for Lan Wangji to throw him his guqin – the one Su She favored was rented from the sect, lacking as he did the money to purchase her in full, and so he didn’t have it with him – and he attacked with that instead for a while, being better at music than he was at the sword.

The lash of his music was less powerful than Lan Wangji’s single-note waves of power, but Su She was also sneakier about it, and a few unexpected distractions during a battle were much more helpful to Lan Wangji’s defense than any amount of getting himself killed waving a sword around would have.

In the end, unsurprisingly, they were defeated. Su She ended up surrendering in fairly dramatic manner, knowing that the Wen sect might preserve Lan Wangji’s life as a useful hostage but that they couldn’t give a damn about his own and, as always, humiliation was the path to survival; he bet Lan Wangji was already judging him for it, for his weakness, for how pathetic he was when he was sniveling at Wen Xu’s feet as they beat him black and blue to make a point to Lan Wangji, but he didn’t care because he bowed his head and lived while the disciple next to him that didn’t died.

Lan Wangji didn’t bow his head either, but they just broke his leg before throwing them both in a carriage headed to the Nightless City.

The worst of it was, he didn’t even have Yu Zhuliu around to comfort him.

“I ordered him to go with my brother,” Lan Wangji said in belated explanation. “To protect him.”

“You could have said,” Su She said, curled up in the corner of the carriage and feeling sick to his stomach. He should have just run away. He could be in Moling right now if he’d just run away, and who would have known? Of course, then he would have to have left behind all the things he’d prepared, and Yu Zhuliu, too… “Maybe I’d rather have been on that team. Why’d he run, anyway? I bet he had a great reason.”

“He took the key books of our sect –”

Su She rolled his eyes. Of course there was a good nice selfless noble reason for Lan Xichen having fled, leaving his younger brother behind as a sacrifice to cover his tracks – proper young masters never did anything without one of those. It was like they thought that admitting that they were afraid for their lives would be worse than actually dying.

“He took what he could,” Lan Wangji said, his eyes cast down. He wasn’t really talking to Su She. “But so much was still lost.”

Su She thought about all the copies of the books he’d been making, all the knowledge he’d been slowly siphoning away over the course of years, and how they were hidden far away from the main buildings of the Lan sect. He’d probably have more than they did, when this was all said and done, assuming he survived. Wouldn’t that just drive them all up the wall? All those stiff smug elders who thought they were better than him would have to come and beg him to give them the books –

Lan Wangji would, too. Those books were probably his only friends, just as they were Su She’s.

“…maybe not all lost,” he said begrudgingly, and curled up tighter, cursing himself as an idiot.

He might be feeling all warm and fuzzy towards Lan Wangji over something as stupid as a single moment of shared misery, but just because he had feelings about it didn’t mean Lan Wangji did. More than likely, when it came down to it, Lan Wangji would put aside all his noble manners and sell Su She out in a heartbeat, and probably not even count it as a betrayal. After all, in the end, Su She was still just a servant that had temporarily made good, still just cannon fodder, meant to be used and sacrificed for the sake of his better-born master.

At least Lan Wangji had probably given up on expecting him to be grateful about it, given the despicable personality he’d already seen Su She display.

It irritated him how much that mattered.

“There’s always copies, after all,” he added. “And before you say anything, I know it’s not the same as having the original, but it’s worth something, isn’t it?”

He was worth something, even if he was only Lan Wangji’s copy.

“That’s true,” Lan Wangji said. He was quiet for a long while after that, long enough that Su She started seriously considering going to sleep because unconsciousness was preferable to worrying about what was going to happen to them once they got to the Nightless City, and then he said, “You are unhappy.”

Su She turned to goggle at him. “Of course I’m unhappy! The Cloud Recesses was lit on fire, we’re prisoners, we’re probably going to die painfully –”

“Not now. Before.” A pause. “With the sect.”

Su She shut his mouth and glared suspiciously.

“I won’t say anything,” Lan Wangji promised. “I only want to know.”

Su She shook his head stubbornly. “You won’t understand,” he said, a little helplessly, when Lan Wangji continued to look at him, wanting an explanation. “It’s not – something you would understand. You’ve always had everything, all your life.”

Lan Wangji frowned a little, clearly thinking it over, clearly taking it seriously, and for a moment there Su She kind of hated Yu Zhuliu for making him actually like Lan Wangji a little bit. “Not – everything,” he finally said. “My family…”

He trailed off, probably thinking about where they were now. A father locked away in seclusion was different from one on the verge of death; a missing brother, an injured uncle…

Su She huffed and turned his head away, refusing to feel sympathetic. “At least you had them,” he said bitterly. “I haven’t seen my family since they sold me to your sect, and at this point I’m too scared to go visit them.”

“…the Lan sect does not keep slaves.”

“No, of course not,” Su She said. “You just offer people more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives if they’ll hand over their six-year-old son to be properly trained as a servant, because it’s better to get them while they’re young – teach them to be quiet and inobtrusive and grateful for how much better it is to spend their life cleaning up the shit that sticks to your boots. And the worst part is, you are grateful for it, no matter how bad it is, no matter how much you miss your home or your family or your brother, because the buyer could have picked him instead of you and then you’d be the one stuck on some farm somewhere doing nothing with your life, just waiting to see if he’ll come back one day.”

The difference with Su She was that he’d figured out pretty quick that going back wasn’t enough.

When he’d realized how important it was to cultivate a golden core at a young age, he’d saved up every bit of money he could on top of what he sent his family every month, volunteered for every job that paid and even bit his tongue and took out extravagant loans from the sect that he would be paying off for years to come, and he’d hired a rogue cultivator to go teach his brother the basics of cultivation.

He hoped that was enough to make up for all the years he’d been gone, even though he doubted it; he wouldn’t think it was enough, himself, and surely his brother was like him. He was still too young to go outside the sect by himself – he would have to apply for a token, and agree to take someone with him, and he didn’t want to take anyone with him except maybe Yu Zhuliu, who wasn’t an option.

He didn’t want anyone to know if his return home went as badly as he feared it would. If his brother turned out to be as bitter as he was, and turned that bitterness against him –

“You have a brother?” Lan Wangji asked, because of course he’d noticed the important part.

“A twin,” Su She whispered, and turned his face away.

They did not speak again until the Nightless City, and even then it was limited to necessary things, neither of them wanting to risk the fury of their Wen sect guards. After a while, it was announced that the Wen sect would be holding a camp for all young masters, meant to indoctrinate them into righteous conduct, and that they would be attending whether they wanted to or not. They had probably assumed that Su She was well-born because of the fine clothing and fancy hairpiece he wore, and never knew that they were loaned to him by a sect that liked to surround itself with pretty things even if it had to pay for the clothing itself, and Su She had never been happier to be counted among his supposed peers.

Still, when the indoctrination camp began, and Wen Chao – accompanied by three bodyguards at all times, because he was even more of an arrogant snot than even Su She had previously imagined an arrogant young master could be – began lording it over them all, Su She drifted over to Lan Wangji’s side again.

Mostly because no one else would, other than maybe that troublemaker from Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian.

“I know some curses,” he told Lan Wangji, pretending to be casual about it as if he hadn’t accused Lan Wangji’s sect of various awful things. “Really nasty ones. Want me to try one on Wen Chao? I can be subtle.”

“He’d figure out it was you when he checked us all for the inevitable backlash marks,” Wei Wuxian put in. “Then he’d just kill you to get rid of it. Stupid idea.”

“Depends on how quick-acting the curse was,” Su She said peevishly. He hadn’t even been talking to Wei Wuxian, and he hadn’t forgotten who it was that had charged in like a hero from a play to rescue him when he’d overreached himself fighting the Waterborne Abyss even if he doubted Wei Wuxian remembered him in return. “Also, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere drawing fire onto the Jiang sect?”

“What? No,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not –”

“I mean, I certainly can’t think of any other reasons for your actions, Wei-gongzi,” Su She said, his voice set at its most simpering. It wasn’t like there were any Lan sect elders here to punish him for being disrespectful, after all, and he figured that helping defend the Library Pavilion with Lan Wangji probably earned him a little space to be himself for once. “Aggravating Wen-gonzi, making light of everything, galivanting around flirting with girls – one might almost feel as if you’re on vacation. Surely your Jiang sect will not have to pay for any of that, politically speaking; it’s not as if the Wen sect thinks of them as one of their greatest rivals and is looking for any chance to cut them down…but no, surely it’s my misunderstanding. I’m sure Wei-gongzi has a thoughtful plan, being such a good servant to his sect.”

Wei Wuxian frowned at him. “But that’s not what I’m doing,” he said, but his voice came out a little weaker this time. “That’s not it at all, I was just…hm. Hey, Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng, I have a question for you…”

Su She watched him leave with satisfaction, then turned back to Lan Wangji, who was looking at him again.

“Why do you dislike him?” he asked before Su She could change the subject.

“I don’t dislike him,” Su She said. “I envy him, sometimes. The rest of the time, I pity him.”

“You think Jiang Wanyin will cast him aside, one day,” Lan Wangji said, and Su She thought back to that conversation he’d had with Yu Zhuliu. Lan Wangji had clearly heard more of it than he’d let on.

“Well, yes,” he conceded, because he did. He’d seen how close they were, which was only going to make it worse for them both when it inevitably happened.

“Would you tell me why? In your own words?”

Su She frowned at Lan Wangji, who raised his hands as if in surrender. “Please.”

Well, if he was going to ask nicely…

Su She decided to pretend that he was talking to Yu Zhuliu.

“Fine. You want my opinion? Whoever raised Wei Wuxian ruined him,” he said bluntly. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t act like a servant – he doesn’t even act like a second son. He acts like a master. He acts like he’s the next heir to the Jiang sect, not Jiang Wanyin; you’ve seen how he’s always bossing him around and refusing to listen to him even when he tells him to behave.”

“He’s his shixiong,” Lan Wangji objected, but mildly.

“For now. Do you really think Wei Wuxian’s going to suddenly learn how to be obedient the second Jiang Wanyin gets instated as sect leader? Or do you think he’ll continue to run rampant, doing just as he likes the way he always has, with Jiang Wanyin bending to his every whim the way he always has? What do you think the cultivation world will think of that?”

Lan Wangji was frowning deeper now, thoughtful.

“The cultivation world isn’t kind to servants who forget their place. If he keeps acting the way he has been, the time will come when he does something so outrages that Jiang Wanyin will have no choice but to throw him away,” Su She concluded. “A servant’s son, however precious, is nothing when weighed against the duty owed to the sect inherited by your ancestors. I mean, even your brother put that first and foremost, and he’s your blood.”

“…I agreed with Brother’s decision.”

“Sure. But did he ask you first?”

Lan Wangji remained quiet.

“If it makes you feel better, there’s always a chance that it won’t become an issue,” Su She continued, mostly to avoid having to listen to Lan Wangji’s injured sort of silence. “Maybe they’ll luck out and instead something will happen to remind Wei Wuxian that he’s a servant and that his job is to throw himself into the abyss to save Jiang Wanyin, probably without even getting thanked for it.”

Lan Wangji looked at him sidelong. After a long few moments of contemplation – Su She really couldn’t stand the way Lan Wangji looked at him, as if he was trying to figure out an interesting puzzle, but he also couldn’t get enough of it, it was horrible – he said, “It will not be that way, with Yu Zhuliu.”

Caught, Su She glared at him.

“How would you solve it?” Lan Wangji asked.

“What?”

“You were a servant, once,” Lan Wangji pointed out. “You are no Yu Zhuliu, no Wei Wuxian, to sacrifice yourself for the Lan sect, and it pains you to pretend to humble yourself before us. What is your solution? You are too clever not to have one.”

Su She wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he didn’t enjoy being called clever as much as he did. It didn’t sound condescending when Lan Wangji said it, the way it did when the Lan sect’s teachers did – like praising a well-performing pet that they’d raised themselves, patting themselves on the back for doing such a good job in training him. He sounded almost as if he resented Su She for being smart enough to see the messy contradiction that was Wei Wuxian’s life, and for being the only person he could ask to shed some light on the subject.

Su She didn’t mind resentment, not even aimed at him. On the contrary, it made it feel real.

Why wouldn’t Lan Wangji resent having to respect someone like him?

“I’m leaving, eventually,” he confessed. “I’m going to start my own sect, or try, anyway, if I can get the money for it from somewhere. Back at home in Moling. Maybe, if I’m very lucky, I’ll be able to convince Yu Zhuliu to come with me, notwithstanding the stupid debt of loyalty he feels he owes your sect.”

Lan Wangji looked contemplative again, surprised but not displeased, as if Su She had suggested something he’d never even considered possible. “What cultivation style will you use?”

“Yours, of course,” Su She said, rolling his eyes at him. “What am I supposed to do, come up with a new one of my own? In what free time, exactly?”

“People will say you’re copying the Lan sect.”

“People have said I’m a copy all my life,” Su She pointed out. “Let the cultivation world sneer and the Lan sect break its rule against gossiping to look down their noses at me – I’ll still be sitting by myself as a sect leader in my own right while they’re just disciples. I’ll make my own rules, admit anyone into the sect that I want, and that’ll be worth all of their disdain.”

He hoped it would be, anyway. He suspected he’d end up being bitter about it, but then again he was always bitter, and anyway, what could he do about it?

If life had taught him one thing, it was that there was no way to make people stop talking, stop mocking, because no matter if he took three baths a day and scrubbed until the blood ran red he would still underneath it all be a servant, a farmer’s son. But he was more than that, he knew he was more than that, and the only alternative – to stay in the Lan sect as a second-class barely-better-than-a-servant for the rest of his life – just wasn’t tolerable.

He’d do what he could and figure out the rest when he came to it.

“You think Wei Wuxian will do the same?”

“Probably?” Su She said and shrugged. “I mean, he has the reputation for being an unorthodox genius, so maybe he’ll come up with his own cultivation style to go with it – you can do things like that when you’re rich and have the time – but as for whether he will form a new sect…how would I know? Maybe he’ll go be a rogue cultivator instead, the way his father did when he got tired of being stuck in the Jiang sect’s shadow. Depends on how many people go with him.”

Lan Wangji hummed thoughtfully. “A rogue cultivator has only to concern himself with his own wellbeing,” he said slowly, as if feeling something out. “A sect – with others.”

“I mean, you could try to take a family around as a rogue cultivator, but I think Wei Wuxian is a walking illustration of why you don’t do that.”

A small flinch. Why were all these well-born sons of the nobility so delicate? It was only loss.

“But you are certain he will go.”

“Well, yes. Either he figures out that he needs to shut up and listen to someone else for once or he leaves, and I don’t think he knows how to listen.” Su She shrugged again. “Why do you care, anyway? He’s Jiang sect. It’s not any of our business.”

Lan Wangji was silent, but somehow it came across as a meaningful silence. An almost pointed silence.

An embarrassed silence.

“…him, really?” Su She said, twisting around to gawk a little at where Wei Wuxian was having a furious whispered conversation with Jiang Cheng that involved a lot of gestures and even more suspicious looks from the nearby Wen sect guards. “I mean, sure, he’s attractive, no one’s going to deny that – he’s not rated fourth for nothing – but…really? Him? He’s not exactly the quiet-and-thoughtful Lan sect type I thought you’d go for, you know?”

Lan Wangji, with all the great grace and dignity and pomp of a proper young master of high birth and proper breeding, buried his face into his hands.

Su She covered his mouth with his sleeve to keep from laughing at him. It wasn’t exactly nice to laugh at someone who was clearly all too aware of their evidently terrible taste in men.

From the way Lan Wangji glared through his fingers, he wasn’t doing a very good job of muffling his snickers.

It was a good laugh, which was nice because it was the last thing Su She had to laugh about for long while.

The “indoctrination camp” was frankly awful. It wasn’t that he thought being forced to do servant’s work like tilling fields or doing laundry was the worst thing in the world (although he did resent that they didn’t bother paying them for it), and memorizing useless maxims was more or less what the Lan sect excelled at the most, but the constant air of vicious supervision, the threat of punishment, of having the swords they had all worked so hard to obtain taken away from them…

And that was all before they were forced to act as bait in Wen Chao’s night hunt.

“I’m serious,” Su She muttered to Lan Wangji. “I know so many good curses.”

Lan Wangji condescended to elbow him in the side to get him to shut up.

“I miss Yu Zhuliu,” Su She complained instead. “He’s much better company than you are.”

“No one is better company than Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian piped up. He was hanging out by them – not quite with them, but nearby – again.

“I thought the Core-Melting Hand was terrifying,” Jiang Cheng opined. He was following Wei Wuxian, as always, and sticking as close as his shadow, as if he was afraid of losing him. Maybe he was. “All silent and stoic and looming.”

“He doesn’t loom. He’s just tall.”

“All tall people loom. Look at Chifeng-zun, he looms even when he’s sitting down.”

Chifeng-zun, who was the leader of the Nie sect, was, in fact, unreasonably tall and, yes, loomed quite a bit.

“Well, Yu Zhuliu doesn’t,” Sue She said. And then, because he didn’t actually like either of the Jiang sect’s young masters no matter what Lan Wangji might think of them, he added, “Not that you of all people have the place to say anything, Jiang-gongzi. Family shame should not be spread in public.”

He thought that would make an impact, remind them of their manners, but instead all three of them – Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and even Lan Wangji – looked at him in confusion.

“What?” he said, staring at them back. “I know Jiang-gongzi’s maternal family is Meishan Yu…isn’t it?”

“It is,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding baffled. “But what does…wait. Yu Zhuliu – his Yu is Meishan Yu?”

“Yes?” Su She said, looking between them. Yu Zhuliu had said it was no secret, but the junior generation was treating this as if the information had hit them like a sudden landslide: Jiang Cheng had gone white, Wei Wuxian’s jaw was hanging open, and even Lan Wangji’s eyes were as wide and round as the moon. “You didn’t know?”

“I assumed it was another Yu,” Jiang Cheng croaked.

“Meishan Yu probably doesn’t want to admit that one of their own went to work as a servant for another sect after they kicked him out,” Su She concluded. It seemed relatively reasonable to him, but somehow that made all of them look even more upset. “What’s the matter?”

They all just shook their heads and made their way away, looking stunned to a man, and Su She was left to roll his eyes and wonder what in the world made young masters act like that. Something in the water, maybe?

He would curse himself later for making the joke, because there was something in the water of the cave they went to, and that something was, apparently, a corrupted Xuanwu.

(Lan Wangji was still glaring at him for trying to pull the girl out when Wen Chao’s whore demanded it, but it wasn’t his life on the line if the Wen sect went through with their threat to start slaughtering disciples left and right if they couldn’t get to her. Anyway, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to cut her in a way that let out a bit of blood but left her the mobility she might need to escape – she was a cultivator, too! What did it matter that she was a woman?)

Wei Wuxian was holding the Xuanwu’s attention with a fire talisman, and Jiang Cheng was leading the disciples to the pool with the water, which Lan Wangji had identified as containing an exit…as usual, all the young masters were showing their stuff. In a burst of resentful fury, the sort he hadn’t had in weeks, Su She leaned down and grabbed a bow and some arrows. If he shot the Xuanwu’s eye, he might be able to –

A hand fell on his shoulder, and Su She turned to look.

Lan Wangji shook his head. He didn’t seem angry about the girl anymore.

“Keep them,” he said, nodding at the arrows. “There will be Wen sect soldiers waiting for us outside.”

“You don’t think I can make the shot,” Su She accused, feeling obscurely betrayed. “You scored so high in the archery competition – I bet you think you could do better, is that it? You want –”

“If you miss, you may anger it further,” Lan Wangji said. “And I have promised Yu Zhuliu that I would see you safe.”

Su She’s anger was extinguished as quickly as a candle blowing out. “You – did? He asked about me?”

“Before he left with my brother.”

“You should’ve said something,” Su She grumbled, but he let himself be lured into allowing Lan Wangji to use him as a crutch as they waded into the water. At the last moment, Wei Wuxian threw the fire talisman into the air and ran after them, causing the Xuanwu to go crazy and chase, and then there was a bit of frantic swimming – it felt more like drowning, even with Wei Wuxian leading the way for them both – before they got to the other side.

“I’m going to be sick,” Su She groaned, spitting up water, and then he still had to sit up and shoot an arrow back at one of the Wen sect guards that, as Lan Wangji had predicted, were out there.

Of course, a few seconds later the Xuanwu came bursting out of the side of cave, so they all had a whole different set of problems to deal with.

At least the Wen sect mostly ran away.

(Not all of them. A few of them stuck around to shoot some arrows at them – every bad thing Su She had ever thought about any young master, he thought twice for the Wen sect.)

“Next time we deal with this inside the cave,” Su She shouted, running for cover. He was able to get the arrow into the Xuanwu’s eye the way he had planned to in the cave when he finally had a little time to stand and aim – admittedly, he might’ve missed in the cave, he never shot half as well when he was angry – and in the end Lan Wangji shouted something about Chord Assassination and Wei Wuxian had a brilliant-stupid idea about using it like a spider web to make a net and Jiang Cheng swam like a fish to lure it through the right spot and all together with a bunch of the others they ended up chopping the Xuawnu’s head off.

Well, chopping was the wrong word. More like a shichen or more or wretched sawing using Chord Assassination as a garotte, relying mostly on Lan Wangji’s arm strength – Su She and the few other Lan disciples that knew the trick were holding the strings down with burning bleeding fingers, an essential part of the process but ultimately only a prop to help Lan Wangji do what he needed – and by the time it was done their robes were more red and crusted brown than white no matter how many bleaching herbs and special arrays had been used.

“All right, the threat is gone,” Su She said, feeling bitter again as he scanned the treeline. He didn’t even know what the bitterness was about this time. “Can we go already?”

“You can come to Yunmeng,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s closest.”

No one disagreed.

More or less the second after they arrived, just as soon as they’d had baths and a change of clothing, Lan Wangji wanted to go back to the Cloud Recesses or to travel around looking for Lan Xichen. He looked strange in borrowed Yunmeng purple, even if they’d politely given him the lightest and bluest shade they had – really it was at best a pale lavender at best – but that sure didn’t seem to bother Wei Wuxian from the way he kept gawking at Lan Wangji when he thought Lan Wangji wasn’t looking.

“If you don’t trust your brother, trust Yu Zhuliu,” Su She told Lan Wangji irritably after yet another request that was swiftly denied. He’d made a half-hearted effort to remember his manners after the stress of the moment had passed, but Lan Wangji seemed unhappy any time he did so now he was back at being a bit more of his awful actual self. Of course, Lan Wangji liked Wei Wuxian so maybe he just had a kink for rude people? “Do you really think he’d take him anywhere you could find him?”

“Then I should be at the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “To help rebuild –”

“To help make them a target again, you mean?” Su She said scathingly. “Did you forget, somehow, that you’re still a valuable hostage? That they’ll be expecting you to go back? Or is it just that all that nobility is starting to make your brain rot, you stupid fucker?”

Lan Wangji glared at him, tight-lipped, and stalked away, which meant that Su She’s point had probably been taken and they could have at least a little rest before having to start running again.

Before the war started. War, which terrorized the common people…

He needed to go to Moling to check on his family. Even if his brother rejected him, as he feared, he had to go – better rejected than bereaved, surely..?

Consumed with dark thoughts, Su She didn’t notice that he wasn’t alone until he walked straight into Wei Wuxian’s chest.

(Why were they all so tall?)

Wei Wuxian was glaring at him. “Listen,” he said, sounding angry. “Listen, whatever your name is, you can’t talk to Lan Zhan like that –”

Su She punched him in the face.

Wei Wuxian stared up at him in shock from where he’d fallen on his ass on the ground, but Su She didn’t care; he turned on his heel and stormed off, his face hot with rage and shame and bitterness.

“On second thought, we can leave right now,” he spat at a shocked-looking Lan Wangji. “I’m not staying here one more fucking second.”

Whatever your name is.

Like they hadn’t just gone through life and death together, hadn’t fought side by side, like he hadn’t risked his life on Wei Wuxian’s stupid plan, none of that mattered; he wasn’t important enough for Wei Wuxian to remember his name. People like him really were nothing but side characters to people like Wei Wuxian, weren’t they? Their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their bitterness – all irrelevant. An aside at best, mere marginalia, a splash of color to liven up the background.

Su She would bet money that Wei Wuxian knew the names of all the rich young masters that had attended classes with them, whether he liked them or he didn’t. He even knew the name of that little Wen clan member that he’d so bravely stood up for during the archery competition. But not Su She’s name, no, even though he’d been so graciously suffering all of the stupid back-and-forth pining Wei Wuxian had been doing with Lan Wangji, even though he’d let himself foolishly believe that because he and Lan Wangji had something in common that they might be something like friends or at least companions, that he might be treated as an equal –

No, these stupid rich young masters were all the same. He’d been right the first time.

Actually, now that he thought about it, why was he even here? Did he really think Lan Wangji would take his side over Wei Wuxian, who wasn’t only his peer in every sense of the word but also his beloved?

What a waste of time.

Su She left again. He wasn’t stupid enough to try to walk away just as he was, no matter how furious; how far would he get with no money, no food, and even his sword back in Wen custody? Instead he made his way down to the kitchens to ask for travel rations that could last for a while, and planned to visit the armory to borrow a sword after that. He’d need to pack lightly, but comprehensively: who knew how far the Wen sect’s influence spread? He might not be able to risk going into the cities and towns on the way to get supplies, not even wearing borrowed Yunmeng robes – even if he hid the incredibly obvious white forehead ribbon with a hat, he still walked like someone from the Lan sect, something he’d only really noticed once he was surrounded by people who slouched and bent and took large ground-eating steps instead of the sedate pace that he couldn’t quite break the habit of using.

“Su She,” Lan Wangji said from the door to the room they’d been given. Su She didn’t look at him or stop stuffing the travel rations and the spare robes he’d obtained into a qiangkun pouch.

“If you’re coming here to scold me about hitting Wei-gongzi, spare me,” Su She said stiffly. “We’re not in the Cloud Recesses; you don’t have any role over discipline here –”

“The silencing spell would have been more effective.”

Su She blinked, surprised by the apparent non-sequitur, and turned to look at him. “What?”

“To silence him,” Lan Wangji clarified, meaning Wei Wuxian.

As if that was the problem with what Su She had done.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng piped up – Su She hadn’t seen him standing by Lan Wangji’s side. “Hitting doesn’t work, he just pops right back up again. Please ignore him in the future; he’s an idiot.”

Well, Su She couldn’t disagree with that.

“You have a guest,” Jiang Cheng added. He looked almost – nervous? “Could – would you introduce us? Properly, this time.”

Su She couldn’t think of anyone he knew that Lan Wangji didn’t also know. Why would they ask him? The only person –

He stiffened abruptly, hope welling in his stomach. “Yu Zhuliu? He’s here?”

“Brother sent him to check on me,” Lan Wangji said. “And to tell me to stay where I am. You were right.”

It was – immensely gratifying to hear that.

“He and Mother are having tea,” Jiang Cheng added, looking impressed. “She insisted. It’s so weird.”

Yu Zhuliu looked the same as he always did, when Su She finally got to see him: tall and broad-shouldered, steady as a mountain, untroubled by wind or rain. There were a few points of similarity between his face and Madame Yu’s, if you looked for them, and he seemed pleased by her surprisingly gracious reception – when they spoke about it later, it turned out that he greatly admired her, the famous (or infamous) Violet Spider who had made a name for herself as a fierce warrior and top-grade cultivator, and who had never looked down at him for his birth when they’d both been younger.

Wei Wuxian didn’t apologize at any point, though he also didn’t call Su She out as the cause for his black eye. Instead, he opted to act as though their earlier confrontation had never happened, bounding into the room Su She shared with Lan Wangji – no one else rose at the same hour they did – and insisting on taking them around to see the sights of the Lotus Pier, to spend a day on a boat, another picking lotus seeds, and yet another shooting down kites.

Su She refused to go shoot down kites, not wanting to risk humiliation at something he was actually pretty decent at by competing at archery against Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji, and spent the day with Yu Zhuliu instead.

“I missed you,” he blurted out instead of saying something reasonable. “I mean – not that I wanted you to be there and suffering, it was pretty awful, and who knows what the Wen sect might have tried to get you to do, it’s just – you know – ”

Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man who did not speak much. He put his hand on Su She’s and said only, “I know.”

Su She swallowed, and stared down at the hand that rested on him. It was a good hand, to his mind: broad in the palm, with short fingers that were the exact opposite of the long graceful ones favored by the Lan sect, but it did its vicious work well enough that the whole cultivation world knew about it – the whole cultivation world feared it.

Su She had never once worried about it. That probably made him a fool.

“Yu Zhuliu,” he said, very cautiously, even though he knew he shouldn’t speak; it was him being a fool again, except only this time he was a fool a hundred times over. “I know – I know that the Lan sect is very important to you. They rescued you at a bad moment in your life, and you owe them your loyalty; I understand that. But…do you think...maybe – one day in the future…”

Yu Zhuliu was looking at him steadily. He didn’t pull back his hand.

Su She gathered up his courage. “I’m going to go home to Moling, someday. Maybe even someday soon. And when I do, I’m not – I’m not going to go back to the Lan sect afterwards. I’m going to start my own sect, if I can manage it. When I do, would you – consider coming with me?”

He waited for Yu Zhuliu’s response with bated breath.

Yu Zhuliu looked serious and thoughtful, and he opened his mouth to respond –

There was a giant clatter from outside their door. “Wen sect!” someone shouted. “They’re here!”

Su She and Yu Zhuliu looked at each other, alarmed, and rushed out.

Unfortunately, that just meant they got a front row seat to the travesty that happened next.

Su She felt sick to his stomach: he’d predicted long ago that Wei Wuxian would one day rediscover that the Jiang sect saw him as only a servant, as something that could be sacrificed for the good of the sect, but each sizzle and snap of Zidian on Wei Wuxian’s back made him feel worse and worse. Su She’d been beaten plenty of times before, even whipped on occasion, but then again he’d never really taken the Lan sect to heart as his family – it wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that he’d been so badly raised, tricked into thinking that they loved him like one of their own, into acting like a proud and arrogant young master who had a family that would hold up the world for him no matter what he did.

“She’s pulling the blows,” Yu Zhuliu murmured in his ear, too low for anyone else to hear, and that helped, a little. But not that much, since it was clear that Jiang Cheng, horrified, couldn’t tell, when it wasn’t clear if Wei Wuxian could, and then in the end it turned out to be all for nothing because Wang Lingjiao still demanded his hand.

Worse: he wasn’t sure if it was that, or the casual mention of a supervisory office, that was the step too far for Madame Yu.

Su She did not especially appreciate Madame Yu’s comments about Wang Lingjiao’s status as a servant, unsurprising and almost expected though they might be – although in a moment of horror-stricken hysteria he noticed that her words made Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji simultaneously flinch and glance over at him in concern, apparently all to a one forgetting the circumstances they were all in out of fear of his sharp tongue – but seeing her beat up the disgusting Wang Lingjiao was oddly gratifying.

Right up until the Wen sect guards she had brought with her started attacking from the inside, while from outside the sound of bombardment began – Wen sect’s armies had been lying in wait.

“Kill them!” Wang Lingjiao screeched the second she was free to do so, lunging forward with claws extended at Madame Yu’s face. “Kill them all –”

She never got that far.

Yu Zhuliu’s palm caught her dead in the belly, the force of it throwing her backwards into the arms of one of her guards, who quickly scurried away with her.

“A waste,” Madame Yu said, straightening her clothing. “Of your abilities, primarily. Did she even have enough of a golden core to justify melting?”

Yu Zhuliu didn’t bother responding, drawing his sword, and the next thing Su She knew they were all being given swords from dead Wen sect guards and heading out into the battlefield.

“Oh, I really hate this,” Su She said, looking down at the one he was given. As a Wen sect blade, it wouldn’t have any pity on him, and he didn’t think he was good enough to avoid getting skewered the first second he got angry and stopped paying attention to all of his weak spots. “Doesn’t anyone have a spare guqin I can use instead? I know some really good attack songs.”

“I think I have one in my room, actually,” Wei Wuxian said, and led him away from the others, limping only a little. Madame Yu really must have been pulling her strikes – not that Su She hadn’t believe Yu Zhuliu, of course, but still.

“You play?” Su She asked as they hurried through the hallways. “I thought you used a dizi.”

“I – considered picking it up. Briefly.”

“Just kiss him already,” Su She advised, deciding to try to be nice for once. “It’ll be faster, and your reception will be warm.”

“Kiss…who?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of genius?” Su She growled, and took the never-used guqin. It had been impossible to use anything more than the most straightforward sound attacks when they’d been fighting at the Cloud Recesses, given how many Lan sect disciples and even servants cultivated with music, but here at the Jiang sect where just about everyone was a swordsman first, musician later, and only Lan Wangji to compete with, Su She had a bit more freedom to go find a nice safe spot near the walls to play.

He wasn’t a guqin player on Lan Wangji’s standard – it still burned to admit it even if he maybe didn’t hate him as much as he used to – but he’d spent an awful lot of time in the library looking for things he could use when he was building his own sect and, well, he’d always liked the weird stuff.

“Wait, are you playing ‘Banish Evil’?” Jiang Cheng asked at one point, hopping over a wall to get near enough to ask.

“What? No. Are you deaf? They barely sound alike,” Su She said. “Now get out of range already before it you’re affected.”

Not long after, the effect started to show, with Wen sect cultivators falling left and right out of the sky above his head once their qi started locking up in response to his music.

Had he looked up a method to lock someone’s qi through music just because it reminded him of Yu Zhuliu? No, but it sure did help motivate him in learning the abstruse and needlessly complicated finger-work for something that, yes, okay, maybe sounded a little bit like ‘Banish Evil’, but not enough for people not to immediately call him out on what would otherwise sound like an incredibly bad rendition of that song.

“Once formed, your sect will be immensely unpopular,” Lan Wangji informed him as he flew by on his sword, his own musical cultivation acting as a shield to allow him to fight unaffected by Su She’s music.

Su She grinned down at the guqin and thought to himself that he’d be keeping this one. They could consider it payment for having made him have to put up with Wei Wuxian.

At some point in the battle, Sect Leader Jiang returned and ended up fighting back to back with his wife, which – once the battle was over – turned into a shouting match.

Yu Zhuliu, when he arrived, took one look and his eyebrows went up. “Perhaps we should assist with clean-up on the pier,” he said, delicately enough that Su She immediately figured out what he was implying.

“Yeah,” he said, covering up his smirk with his sleeve. “Let’s go quickly.”

“Don’t you two worry about our feelings getting hurt by it,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding amused, as Jiang Cheng nodded along. “We’re more than used to them fighting.”

“Is that what you call it in the Jiang sect?” Su She sniggered, unable to resist, and both of them paled.

“How would you even know about that?” Jiang Cheng eventually recovered enough to volley back. “Being from the Lan sect and all – I’m amazed it isn’t against one of your rules.”

“Su She is starting his own sect,” Lan Wangji, appearing from who-knows-where, interjected. “With fewer rules.”

“Wait, really?” Jiang Cheng asked, looking – he looked impressed, actually. “A sect of your own? That’s amazing!”

Su She flushed, his face hot and red at once. No one had ever said anything positive about his idea before. “Not anytime soon,” he demurred. “I mean, even a small cultivation sect has to have money enough to buy a house – pay for swords, musical instruments, things like that – and I’m broke.”

“Oh, money,” Wei Wuxian said, in a tone of someone who’d never had to do without, and Su She was already starting to secretly plan his murder – yes, he was aware that Wei Wuxian had reputedly spent some time on the streets as an orphaned child and no, he did not care – when he added, carelessly, “You helped save our home, the least we can do is give you something to help start yours.”

Su She stopped dead. “Are you serious?”

“Certainly,” Jiang Cheng said, and fuck, they were being serious. That was the Jiang sect heir saying he would give him money, not a servant, someone whose words could plausibly be held to be binding on the rest of his sect. “Do you have a plan for what cultivation style you’ll teach new disciples?”

“Uh,” Su She said. His mind was blank. “I was just planning on using the Lan sect techniques.”

Wei Wuxian looped an arm over his shoulder. “With some innovations, thought, right? That qi-locking music was pretty nice, and I’ve never seen it used before.”

Su She puffed up a little. It was pretty nice, good of Wei Wuxian to recognize that – and he hadn’t even seen the teleportation talisman Su She had been painstakingly teaching himself how to use!

“Nor I,” Lan Wangji said, and looked pointedly at Su She. “I suspect it comes from the forbidden section of our library.”

“No, it isn’t,” Su She said immediately, holding up his hands. He knew what the punishment was for going in there without permission. “Not the forbidden, but the forgotten – I was one of the people assigned to sort through old inheritances. Books from abroad, obscure books no one ever bothered categorizing, that sort of thing. The big jumble in the basement of the secondary library…you know, the fire hazard. The one that blew up in the Wen sect’s faces when they tried to light it.”

“You remember enough of them to make it work?” Jiang Cheng asked, now looking even more impressed.

“Well, no,” Su She admitted. “But I made copies of everything that looked interesting and hid them in an abandoned root cellar halfway down the road to Caiyi Town, so they should still be intact.”

Lan Wangji lit up, which for him was a slight bit of color to his cheeks, a slight arch to his eyebrows, a faint curve to his eyes – in other words, he was positively glowing. “Would you permit copies to be made of your copies? We would gladly pay for the privilege.”

“And if you put that together with our money, and you should definitely have enough to fund a sect,” Wei Wuxian said enthusiastically. “And we can come visit!”

“Sooner rather than later, actually,” Jiang Cheng said, rubbing the back of his head. “Before the yelling started, Mother and Father agreed that we younger generation should lie low somewhere for a few weeks somewhere obscure to avoid any immediate reprisals from the Wen sect – and once they’ve lost the trail, we go out to recruit new sects to join the war.”

“That would be in line with what Brother requested that I do,” Lan Wangji observed, voice carefully neutral as always. “I would not object to spending some time in Moling, courting a newly formed sect.”

Su She didn’t know what to say, his mouth moving open and closed. It was almost everything he’d ever wanted, and he only need to reach out and grasp it – his own sect, his brother, the respect of the arrogant young masters…

Nothing could be better.

A hand fell on his shoulder, the warmth of it lighting him up inside.

“Our sect would be happy to host you,” Yu Zhuliu said.

Su She was wrong.

Now

it was perfect.

#mdzs #su she #wen zhuliu #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #my fic #my fics #VERY LONG #rainbowrites

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mayfriend-archive · 3 years

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Totally understand if you're not up for it and fully recognize the ronald mcdonald dom/sub anon vibes which is an AMAZING post btw but like...now i'm curious, what the hell did Lord of the Flies anon DO that got him blocked for the discourse? like...i just can't wrap my head around high school lit being...uh...that inflammatory i guess?

Okay so, I'll start by saying I've had a new anon from apparently the same anon saying they are NOT the person I blocked, just a rando making the same points, but I'll answer your question anyway just to set out why this person in particular got blocked, out of the several thousand who reblogged/commented on that very successful addition to the LoTF post I made.

First off, I added the 'real life Lord of the Flies' story because I thought it was a good story. I had read about it only a couple days beforehand in Humankind and, after reading out the entire chapter to my parents who weren't very interested, I was excited that there was not only a post where it would be relevant to post, but that I wouldn't be hijacking it, as it was already rejecting the widespread interpretation taught in many schools, that humanity is inherently savage.

When making the addition, I a) did not think it would get more than a couple reblogs, because the post was already at 50k notes and I figured anyone that might be interested would already have seen it, and b) I did not know the very specific context that prompted William Golding to write the book; all I knew was that he had been a teacher at a public school (basically, the poshest schools in the country - think Eton, Harrow, very 'old money' places that pump out Conservative politicians by the bucket-load 🤢) who hated his job and the boys he taught (which, valid), and new information I'd been given in Humankind - that Golding had said to his wife one day, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?" - which had no mention of The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, which I have since learned was the text that Golding loathed enough to write an entire novel in refutation of - and included what I considered a very telling letter from Golding to his publisher, in which Golding wrote of his belief that 'even if we start with a clean slate, our nature compels us to make a muck of it.' Another Golding quote that I believe portrays his belief in humanity's 'innate savagery' is that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

Obviously, the author of a book putting forward the case for humanity's inherent goodness was going to oppose Golding's hypothesis; Bregman not only noted Golding's literary accomplishments and beliefs, but his personal life.

When I began delving into the author's life, I learned what an unhappy individual he'd been. An alcoholic. Prone to depression. A man who, as a teacher, once divided his pupils into gangs and encouraged them to attack each other. "I have always understood the Nazis," Golding confessed, "because I am of that sort by nature." (Humankind by Rutger Bregman, p. 24-25)

I have bolded the part about him as a teacher, because it is incredibly relevant to the original post that I commented on, which begins with a comic of a teacher locking her class in to see them 'recreate' Lord of the Flies, something which the follow up comments before mine staunchly reject as both misunderstanding the point of the book, and the fact that it took the kids in Lord of the Flies a significant amount of time without adult supervision to go 'savage'. This misreading of the text is widespread enough that when Golding won the Nobel Prize for Lord of the Flies, the Swedish Nobel committee wrote that his book 'illuminate[s] the human condition in the world of today'. Whether or not they misread it is beyond my expertise - they do at least mention the factors of the outside world neglected by many when analysing the book, but still seem to believe it says something about human nature as a whole rather than just, to quote thedarkbutbeige 'British kids being rat bastards' - but Golding quite happily took his Nobel prize on this basis. Which, in fairness, I would too. It's a fucking Nobel prize.

It was with this knowledge, and this knowledge alone, that I stated in my now very, very widely read comment that Golding 'wrote the book to be a dick', in response to the tags of the person I reblogged from. As I said, I now know that Golding did not write the book (solely) because he hated the kids he taught, but as a response to The Coral Island and the general idea that clearly the British were inherently civilsed, whilst the people they colonised and enslaved were inherently savage. So. That's the background.

The anon - or rather, the person I thought was anon - was the sole exception out of dozens of replies, who instead of telling me about The Coral Island politely decided it was time to go ALL CAPS and regurgitate points already made by thespaceshipoftheseus, and implied that the only reason that the real life Tongan castaways didn't go all Lord of the Flies was because they weren't British. Not because they weren't surrounded by violence like the boys in Lord of the Flies, or there wasn't a World War ongoing, or that they weren't the upper, upper, upper crust of a class-obsessed society like Britain - but because they weren't British. A complete inversion of the concept that Golding was trying to get across - now, instead of all of humanity being equally prone to savagery in the right conditions, it was solely nationality that determined it. As in, the British were inherently savage, but nobody else was.

I, trying for humour, made the terrible mistake of replying to them.

I won't lie, I was absolutely blown away that this was real life. What I think they were trying to do was be that Cool Tumblr Person who, after somebody's been shitty on a post, goes to their blog and sees something Damning in their about/description. In an ideal world, I imagine I'd have gone nuts or done something Unforgiveable. In what I can only call the rant that followed, they stated several times that I needed to go back to high school to get some 'proper literary analysis' skills and that the story of the Tongan castaways was completely unrelated to the point at hand which. I mean, I disagree, considering that I made the addition, but I couldn't get my head around how commenting on a post that was already rejecting the thesis that the 'point' of Lord of the Flies was that humanity was inherently savage and was, in fact, about how kids - British or otherwise - learn how to function from the adults around them, and that traumatised, terrified children aren't going to create a mini-Utopia, and put forward a real life example of how without the key additions of an ongoing world war, a colonial Empire and the subsequent mindset of thinking you are 'inherently civilised' and therefore can't do anything wrong, actually, people just want to take care of each other.

A friend has since asked me why I even have 'england' in my description. To be honest, it's a timezone thing - I talk to a lot of people online who don't share my timezone, and it generally makes me feel like if I don't reply immediately because it's 3am, they have the tools to see that I'm not in their timezone and not just ignoring them. I did consider changing it to 'british' or 'uk' after it was... 'used against me', I guess, simply because I didn't want to deal with it, but you know what. No. Not gonna do that. I am from England, and I have never hid that fact. I have a tag called 'uk politics', during Eurovision I refer to the UK's act as 'us' (even if I really, really don't want to. Because James Newman slaughtered that song and it was downright embarrassing), I regularly post stuff in my personal tag about where I live (and mostly complain about this piece of shit government). If people really think my nationality makes every point I make null and void, then they don't have to follow me or interact with my posts; tumblr is big, and I am one medium-small blog very easily passed over.

I did reply to them, trying to explain the above, but their next response really just doubled down. Because I used the word British instead of English - foolishly because the posts above mine focused on Britishness, and also because although Golding was English and taught English kids, the pro-Imperialism author of The Coral Island, R. M. Bannatyne was actually Scottish so, ding ding ding, falls into the 'British' category - they then decided that I was somehow trying to pretend I wasn't English and made all the same points, before ending with this doozy:

At this point, I knew there was nothing to be gained from replying, because if we're whipping out conditions like they're pokemon cards then there's no actual conversation anymore, and I'm not going to start mudslinging like an identity politician. They made up their mind, and I figured there could be no harm in letting them think that they 'won' by blocking them instead of replying.

Until the ask. INNATE ENGLISH SAVAGERY did, I'll admit, make me think it was them, back again. I even thought up a really good response approximately 12 hours after I replied, I was that sure. Until the second message came in, and said they were just someone who came from the post and made the same point by chance. So the saga draws to a close... for now.

It may have been them, it may not have been - the anon feature makes it impossible to be sure, but as the second message I got said, we're in a heatwave. It's too hot to argue. And I've just written a goddamn essay about a book I dislike anyway.

My pasty English ass is going to go melt. If there's Disk Horse, do not tell me. I am Done™

#emily speaks #asks #anon #lord of the flies #this is long. this is so long. why is this so long #i literally got out humankind so i could quote directly. how is this my life

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softths · 4 years

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can you do something with #39 ?? love ur writing

Prompt #39 : ‘Harry, I said I don’t want a fucking drink!’

word count: 1,622

a/n : angst, sorry in advance :( & a bit of swearing!!

Harry was a special man in your life, and because of that, he was the only man in your life. You and H had been friends since preschool when he threatened to tell on the kid who took your crayon and the rest was pretty much history.

When you turned 10, Harry slaved over a cake, explaining how being double digits was a huge milestone.

When you turned 13, Harry congratulated you on getting your first job as a paper round. And he was also the one to bring you your favourite pizza when you left your first job as a paper round.

When you turned 15, Harry insisted on trying your first alcoholic drink with you after he had snuck away some of his dad’s whiskey that he kept in the cupboard. He was also there to hold your hair back as you gagged and threw up at the taste.

But when you turned 17, Harry was no longer about.

Harry had auditioned for the X Factor as both you and Anne had pushed him to, and when he got through you were buzzing. You sat and watched the live shows with his family and facetimed him every week while he was down in London, winning the hearts of the country. Until it all just stopped.

He became busier, the facetimes turned into calls, and the calls turned into texts. When he came third, you were heartbroken for him. But it didn’t last long. His career took off and he seemingly never looked back.

You kept up with him as much as you could, keeping up to date with the boy’s most recent releases and always congratulating him on his success. He replied to begin with but soon enough, your number became one that he forgot about. You wish you could say you grew angrier with him as time went on but you didn’t, you just became more proud.

Anne insisted Harry still remembered you when you visited her and promised to bring you up in conversation next time he was home, but it came as no surprise when he didn’t call or text. You stayed in Holmes Chapel, running your own business, fairly successfully but your love life was a different question entirely. Having the infamous Harry Styles as your ex-best friend was a tough expectation for any man to meet. Nobody was ever going to be as considerate as Harry was. Nobody was going to care for you the way Harry did. No man was Harry, except Harry.

Even after the band split and he began his solo career, he still managed to hold a grip on you, a grip that you couldn’t shift as easily as he had. So when you picked up your mail after returning from the office one evening and finding a handwritten letter in his handwriting, you couldn’t quite believe it. You tore it open without a second thought, quickly scanning over the note.

“Y/N,

I’m sorry it’s taken me, what, eight years to reach out to you again. Part of me wished I had a good reason for my absence in your life, but the truth is I don’t. I was going to come and speak to you myself but you know firsthand just how much of a pussy I am when it comes to this kind of thing.

I’m having a small get together with all my closest friends and family, before the release of my second album and I would really love to see you there. I know we have a lot to talk about, and it’s not for another six weeks yet, but I remember how anxious you get about things like this, and not knowing all the details.

I was hoping we could potentially meet before, in the next few days, I’m sure we have a lot to catch up on. It would be amazing to be able to see you again but I completely understand if you don’t want to meet or attend the party.

It would just be great to see you again, and explain. I also hope your address hasn’t changed since you last told my mum but please, call me.

xxx-xxx-xxxx

Still yours forever,

H x”

You couldn’t help but let out a sigh, when you finished reading it but you didn’t know whether you were sad, angry or simply overwhelmed by it all. Without giving yourself a chance to overthink it, you messaged Harry telling him to meet you at your local bar tomorrow evening after work, knowing there was no way in hell you were going to get through that without a drink.

—

When you walked into the bar, it was fairly empty and you automatically looked for Harry. He had told you he would be there and he was looking forward to seeing you but you didn’t give him the benefit of replying. You were so anxious, you could feel your pulse quicken as you tried your best not throw up the minute your eyes landed on him. He was sitting in the corner, away from the main tables, sipping on what looked like a simple pint. His hair was shorter and a lot less curly than you remember but it wasn’t too much of a shock as you couldn’t escape the pictures that were spread of him everywhere.

You ordered yourself a drink as he spotted you standing at the bar. He didn’t know what to do and hesitated before standing up and walking over to you. You offer a tenner to the woman but Harry quickly tells her to add it to the tab. His voice was deep, and it shocked you. You didn’t want his money, not now, “Sorry can you just cancel that actually. I’m good for now.” You say with a quick smile to the barmaid before walking away, Harry following quickly behind.

“Let me get you a drink.” He said as you sat down, still not having the courage to meet his eyes with your own. You shake your head, as he continues, ‘Please just let me get you a drink, it’s the least I could do.’ You snap your head up to look at him as you reply, ‘Harry, I said I don’t want a fucking drink!’ He was taken back by your sudden outburst and simply nodded before sitting down.

‘It’s nice to see you.’ He smiles at you and you feel yourself immediately lose it. ‘It’s nice to see me? You have to be shitting me Harry seriously? You haven’t reached out to me in over eight years, until one day out of the blue you decide you want me back in your life, that you can come pick up where we left as if nothing had happened and tell me it’s nice to see me? ‘It’s nice to see you’ is what people say when they haven’t seen a friend for a few weeks, not when you abandoned your best friend without a word eight years ago.’

Harry sits and just stares as you continue. ‘Do you know how long I waited for that phone to ring, or for the knock at the door? We were more than friends Harry, we were family and it really fucking hurt that you felt you could just drop me out of nowhere like that.’ You breathed as you began to slow, no longer feeling the need to yell and scream. Your lap became incredibly interesting as Harry sat, nodding lightly, knowing he deserved that and a hell of a lot more.

‘Do you not think it killed me?’ He asked, finally. ‘What?’ He shook his head as he reached to hold your hand. ‘Do you not think that it killed me, having to push you away like that? Every milestone I wanted to share with you, every number one we got, I wanted to call you but I couldn’t, I couldn’t let you get mucked up in this life. It’s fucked up you know, fame? It’s not all as amazing as it seemed and I knew it was only time, no matter what I did, that it would all just become too much for you.’

‘That wasn’t your call to make for me Harry.’ You look at him and see the sadness in his eyes, matching yours. ‘I wouldn’t have cared about anything as long as I had you by my side.’ You say honestly and he moves closer to hug you as you begin to cry. You give in to him as your body leans on him, and it feels right. You can’t remember the last time he held you like this, you were only kids, and now you were both grown up adults, yet he was there to hold you, like you had always wanted him to be.

‘I love you Y/n, I didn’t mean to cause you so much pain I just thought- I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and I didn’t know what to do.’ You pull up from his chest, to look at him and catch the tear from his eye on your finger. ‘I’m in love with you Y/n, I always have been in love with you and that’s why I had to make sure I was never going to lose you, not like that.’ You shake your head, ‘But you did lose me Harry. You pushed me away to the point where I am no longer yours and you are no longer mine. I love you Harry, I always will and always have but this is goodbye. I’m sorry, you made that decision eight years ago for me. Good luck with everything H.’ You kissed him lightly on the head before walking away, out of the bar and out of his life, forever.

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the-lady-writes-what · 4 years

Text

for @ladycallian

I’m sorry, but I didn’t know if you wanted SFW or NSFW. I’ll post one that’s SFW for now and come back latter with a different version. That’s not to say this will be G-rated.

Prompt: #1 “You’re mine, Doll.”

Content: stalking, knife play, forced kissing

16+

Yandere Prompt List

Your heels clicked down the sidewalk. Your feet moved faster despite your heels almost breaking your ankles when you sped up. One hand guarded your purse while the other carried your bright yellow umbrella. The city carried a distinct smell mixing with the rain. It has been pouring on and off all day, but that wasn’t the reason why you were rushing home. Your heart pounded inside you chest with every second you weren’t inside the safe confines of your home. The only way you’d feel safe is if you locked and bolted yourself inside.

It began simple enough. A bouquet of flowers, a letter, and someone dropping money into your bank account. The first could be excused as a mistake, but when all the other gifts started piling up there was no way you could call it a ‘shipping mishap’ or ‘wrong address.’ Co-workers who noticed pointed out that all those things were clearly meant for you and you alone. The gifts became more personalized with your initials engraved in gold or gift wrap printed in your favorite color. You would find your favorite flowers waiting for you on your desk every Friday on the dot. With each day, your paranoia grew worse.

You stood beneath a shop’s canopy to catch your breath. You looked up and down the street, your heart constricting inside your chest. With a bone-shaking thought, you wondered which one of the pedestrians passing you by was your anonymous secret admirer.

“Super villain, Deku, was last spotted in...Police are...The public is advised to steer clear...Deku is con-- ed armed...dangerous.” The news anchor on the television in the shop window kept buzzing in and out.

A shiver ran up your spine. Deku. The name came with so many memories, some of which you weren’t fond of. Deku had been Izuku Midoriya once upon a time. A smart, observant kid who was mercilessly picked on for being born without a quirk in a school overpopulated by them. You shared in his predicament but there was no way for you to predict how he would end up. Something happened during middle school. The boy disappeared one day and no one knew what happened until he was robbing banks and blowing up government buildings. You felt anger boil inside of you, and yet, there was a glimmer of pity for the boy who might still be hiding underneath all of Deku’s rage. You quickly moved on and continued your way home.

You hadn’t reached two blocks from the shop window when a hooded figure appeared in the corner of your eye. Nothing about them was visible except for the flash of silver they used to cut through the leather strap of your purse. Once it was severed, your purse fell right into their hands. Dumb as it was, you followed your instinct and chased after them. The hooded figure ducked into an alley with you on their tail. You ditched your shoes to be able to run faster. Soiled stockings be damned! That purse contained all of your personal information and you weren’t about to let some hooded creep get away with snatching it from you.

When there was no more alley, he disappeared. You stood in the rain, umbrella discarded somewhere behind you but you couldn’t see it. Your feet sunk into a pile of muck, which you hoped was mud. You whipped around to find them again, just to make a fool of yourself.

“Dammit!” You cried. The rain started to soak through your shirt and into your bra.

“Looking for this?”

You turned on your heels. Deku held up a musty hoodie and your purse. Frozen to the spot, you couldn’t move. Couldn't breathe.

“I’m sorry,” said he. “You must not remember me. I’m Izuku Midoriya. Although I’m sure you know that I go by a different name now.”

Deku threw the hoodie on top of a pile of garbage. Your eyes flickered to him then to your purse dangled in his hand.

“C-Can I have it back now?”

“I...don’t think so.” The smile that grew on his face sent a shiver down your spine.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think you’ll be needing it where you’re going,” said Deku.

The blood drained from your face. Your flesh turned to ice. You tried to back away only for him to follow you.

“I remember you from school. You tried to stand up for me against Kacchan. He goes by Ground Zero now, doesn’t he? A hero. Who would have guessed?”

“L-Listen, Midoriya, I...I would love to catch up, however--”

With the speed and strength you didn’t know he could ever possess, Deku pinned you to the wall behind at your back. The flash of silver you saw before, the one that slice your purse strap, was at your throat. The cold metal was pressed against your neck.

“Catch up? Why would I just want to catch up? I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks! But you always seemed to think that it was all practical joke or wrong address! Why is that?” Deku snarled in your face like you just insulted his mother.

“Please, I didn’t know! Don’t kill me!”

A look of puzzlement came over his face. Deku pulled away the knife a bit. He cocked his head to the side like a puppy.

“Why would I...? Why do you think I would kill you?” Deku’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Your eyes flashed to the knife still in his hand.

“Oh ho-ho, this? No, no, no. I would never kill you. What would be the point of killing you? The girl--no. The woman I love.”

You’d rather have him slit your throat then and there in that alley among the garbage. Tears mingled with sweat beading down your brow and raindrops falling from the sky.

“I’m going to take such good care of you, love. So, why don’t you show me your appreciation and give me a kiss?”

You didn’t want to. You would still rather have him kill you. You shuddered in disbelief. You glanced down the alley in the vain hope that someone would see and help you. At least call the police or a hero. Anyone!

“Nobody’s going to come and save you. They’re all just too wrapped up in their own pathetic lives to care about one little stray lamb!” Deku pushed you back into the wall, bruising your shoulders against the brick. His knife was pressed against your skin. You felt the sting of the blade sinking a bit deeper and almost break the skin. “Now, kiss me like you mean it.”

You didn’t have any choice. You pressed your lips against his. Both of your faces were wet from the rain, but only Deku’s was warm to the touch. He was blushing like a schoolboy in love although he held a dangerous blade against your throat. You kissed him until you couldn’t breathe. Deku pressed his knee between your legs and snaked his free hand around your waist to pull you close to him. He never let go of the knife while licking your mouth and nibbling on your bottom lip. His tongue ravaged your mouth like a starving man.

“Now,” Deku whispered in your ear. “There is one more thing I need you to say.”

“W-What is it?” Your legs could have buckled underneath but with Deku’s leg pushed between your knees, he would catch you.

“Tell me that you’re mine, Doll. I want to hear you say it.”

Your lips were swollen from his kisses. You shivered in the cold and the rain and the fear controlling you. You tried to think back to a time when Deku was just Izuku Midoriya, the boy next door. Everything faded around you. The sounds and smells of the city, the pitter-patter of rain against your face. Only two things you couldn’t escape from: the knife at your throat and Deku’s piercing eyes. They narrowed like a viper’s glare as he waited for the fated words to fall from your lips.

“I...I-I’m yours.”

#my hero academia #my hero academia fanfiction #yandere content #Yandere prompt 1 #reader fic #fem!reader #villain! au #Villain!Deku #Yandere!Deku #16+ only

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krisseycrystal · 5 years

Photo

rated: t

fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

prompt: “I’ve Got Your Fower, Babe” w/ Ed/Ling

requested by: @greecllings

my next fluff bingo prompt!!! THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE AH bless made me realize how much i need to write more of these two. damn they’re so fun. hope u enjoy !!

also feel free to request anything you see open on my fluff bingo! card!!

- o - o - o -

Your Fool [Read on AO3]

Or, five times Ling held Ed’s proverbial flower while he threw himself headfirst into a fight, and one time Ed returned the favor.

- o - o - o -

The first time it happens, Ling isn’t prepared for the red jacket unceremoniously dumped in his arms. He is hardly prepared for the sight of Edward rolling his flesh shoulder, either, swearing up a storm as he strolls up to a stranger, shouting, “Hey! You wanna go? Yeah! Then let’s fucking go, bastard!”

This is why you let me be in charge, sneers the voice in his head. You clearly can’t control him.

“I don’t want to control him,” Ling confesses quietly, mesmerized as he watches Edward suplex a fellow automail wearer two or three times his size. “I wouldn’t get to see this happen.”

Whatever chaotic majesty of mud-wrestling the shit out of a random nobody this is.

Why was Edward fighting this guy again?

Greed doesn’t answer until the brawl is nearly finished. Ling can practically hear a smug, knowing grin in his voice. Why, your highness…enjoying what you see?

Ling smiles.

Despite what the homunculus likes to pride himself on, Greed hasn’t managed to know Ling inside and out yet if he thinks he’s going to get a rise out of him with that kind of poking-and-prodding.

“Of course I am,” he hums as he watches Ed once again drop the giant boulder of an ex-soldier into the dirt with a squelch. Ed is covered with the brown muck; it soils the golden shine of his braided hair and smears pale bronze of his sun-warm skin. It sticks the white button-up he wears close to his form. But the toothy grin the alchemist sends the prince’s way over his shoulder afterwards is still, somehow, pearly white.

Ling’s fingers dig into the scarlet red of Ed’s jacket.

“Wow,” Greed and Ling say at the same time, but for entirely different reasons.

- o - o - o -

It’s funny to watch the ones who underestimate Edward. Sometimes, it’s the alchemist’s height that throws people off. The fools pick a fight because they think it’s an easy win. They say something uncalled for and Ed, inevitably, rises to the bait.

Ling’s favorites are the ones that assume Ed is weak or slow because of his automail.

They are hunkering on the outside of an already-pretty-outskirt town up north that’s not north enough to be covered with snow year-round, but north enough to be hilly and craggly and with one of those neighborhoods that’s considered “historical” or some shit like that. It’s Greed and Ling’s turn for a supply run but Greed never does any actual chores so it’s Ling that sets out after guilting a sour-faced Ed to follow him as the pair of arms that will carry their bags back to camp.

Except it’s somewhere along the way from the pharmacy to the grocery that Ling realizes he’s lost Ed and he’s not entirely sure how or why until he finds him in an alleyway between two dilapidated glasswork buildings. His flesh shoulder is pressed to the wall. Three burly men surround him.

The bag of medicine is held loosely in his hand.

“Well?” one of the idiots presses. The ringleader, if Ling had to guess.

Ling half-wonders if he should wait but then thinks what Ed would say if he knew he just stood there, so he puts a flat hand to the side of his mouth. “Yo, Ed! I’m open!”

“What?”

The muggers’ split-second of confusion ends the instant the white plastic pharmacy bag lands in Ling’s open hands and Ed’s metal fist collides with the jaw of the one pinning him to the wall.

The fight is, rather unfortunately, over in a matter of seconds.

“Bastards.” Ed rings the wrist of his flesh hand with cool, metal fingers as he stands above them.

“H-how…?” the one now missing a tooth and eating snow to pay for it, rasps. “The hell’s a kid with automail so fast…?”

“You haven’t ever actually met someone with automail, have you?” The frown on Ed’s face is heavy and thick. Disapproving.

There’s something about the silence of the shamed privileged that Ling, who is undoubtedly yes, another privileged, will never tire of.

Ling’s chest is warm with pride. There’s a thousand and one more words he thinks he’d like to say to thumb-tack on to the end of this conversation. Something that will nail the idea into these thick knuckleheads that they are fools to have ever thought people who go through something like automail surgery are weak prey.

But the words never make themselves out of his mouth because he must have a pretty dumb look on his face.

Ed’s giving him a weird stare. “What?”

“What?”

“Why’re you looking at me like that?”

Play it cool. Play it cool. “Like what?”

Ed’s nose scrunches up. He shakes his head. The ends of his golden tail dance against his shoulder-blades. “Whatever. We’ve got groceries to get, right?”

“Right.”

- o - o - o -

They reach the slums of Kanema and for the first time in who-knows-how-long, Edward sees his father, which is precisely when Ling prompts Greed to stick out their arm.

Ling can feel the question on Greed’s tongue that doesn’t surface. Maybe he’s already figured out the answer, because for the first time ever, the homunculus listens to him and outstretches one hand. Nearly immediately, the sleeping roll Edward had tucked under his arm flies into it as Ed flies at his father.

Oooo. Nice sucker punch. And at his old man, too.

He’s holding back, Ling hums.

It’s perhaps the only time Greed has ever willingly held something not his own.

- o - o - o -

For as many strengths as Edward Elric has, he has just as many weaknesses. Chief among them is his prioritization of Alphonse at the cost of anything and everything else, especially of his person. Though Ling supposes these faults are a given when said younger brother was the reason Edward had, for so many years, only one arm.

There is a period of time in between the Promised Day and when Ling ought to return to Xing that both Elrics are hospitalized as their bodies recover from their selective transformations. It is during these days that Edward, just as Ling predicts he will, doesn’t leave Alphonse’s side.

Ling, in turn, for some reason, though he tells himself over and over again it’s not because he misses the constant company of the damn voice in his head, hardly leaves Ed’s.

Riza Hawkeye convinces Ed to step away once Alphonse has gotten used to sleeping. The boy falls to slumber at odd, random moments, but he loves every minute of it. Edward, as Riza points out, can’t make water boil any faster by watching it.

So Ling oh-so-generously follows on Ed’s heels to the cafeteria because if there’s one thing Ed could be productive at while his brother is resting, it’s feeding himself and the future Emperor of Xing who really should be halfway across the desert by now but who’s keeping track.

Their trays of food are in their hands when they catch wind of a joke from a nearby table. Something about the amount of food on someone’s tray and that “twig kid” who could probably use it and oh, speaking of which, have you seen that guy? Supposed to be one of those amazing alchemists Mustang likes? He looks like something out of a horror movie--

--and Ling takes Edward’s tray out of his left hand without Ed even needing to ask.

Briefly, Ling wonders if it’s any use warning Ed he shouldn’t be using the arm still in its sling, but then he sees the look of terror on the military visitors’ faces and he doesn’t think of it again.

- o - o - o -

After months of separation and penned “I miss you’s” scribbled out to be replaced with, “How’s the winter in Creta?” Edward finally finishes his westward travels and returns home. And after he’s in Resembool for a month, or maybe it’s two, he relents to Ling’s persistent, annoying letters and agrees to visit Xing.

Alphonse warns Ling over and over again that Edward will be grumpy when he arrives.

“He wasn’t kidding,” the young man says with earnest eyes that look so much like his brother’s, “when he said the reason he wasn’t going to travel east was because of his automail. It’s not going to be easy for him to cross that desert.”

Ling promises it will be fine. He will arrange for every comfort; Ed will want for nothing and know no pain during his journey.

Edward arrives on Ling’s palatial front doorstep with burns up his left thigh and a crick in his back and two sun-bitten ears and with a new straw hat Ling has never seen him wear before clenched tight in his hand. The instant Ed sees Ling, he launches into a train of expletives about the abysmal care that had been afforded to him and if Ling really wanted to see him so bad how come he didn’t give him a car instead of a horse and damn it he’s thirsty.

One of the horsemen handling his luggage mumbles something Ling doesn’t hear and immediately, Ed is on him.

It is second nature to grab the crumpled straw hat as it flies through the air.

Alphonse makes a strangled noise of distress, exhaustion, and maybe a little of, “I don’t know what I was expecting.” He launches himself down the steps at Edward to pull him off the attendant. “Brother!”

Ling has never seen anything more wonderful in his life.

He plops the straw hat on his head and smiles.

- o - o - o -

It shouldn’t have to be said that an emperor does not fight.

It is assumed and understood that an emperor has trained assassins and warriors for a reason: that they handle his battles for him. He does not throw down his gauntlet or undo his robe. He is above the dirtying of his hands. He should not have to stoop to irrational, emotional displays. He is detached. His will is executed, while he can remain unchallenged.

But before he is an emperor, Ling is Ling.

And Ling is a lover.

And there comes the day he and Edward share a secret kiss behind the orchid tree in his palatial gardens and their fingers intertwine and that is the day that changes everything.

Edward has changed over the years.

So has Ling.

But Ling cannot and will not change his loyalty.

They are walking in the gardens together, again, as they have found that they like to do after they changed from two “I’s” to a together “we.” Ling idly spins an orchid they had found fallen on the stone pathway. Edward walks at his side, hands folded behind his back. Ling looks to him and smiles and thinks how badly Edward would hate to hear how much he looks like his father, now.

Then they hear the murmurings of a handful of court scholars who are also, at this early afternoon hour, taking refuge in the gardens.

They hear Edward’s name.

It’s either “fucking ex-alchemist” or “fucking an ex-alchemist” and “for what?” in the same breath but Ling doesn’t want to nor need to hear the rest.

Edward’s dark scowl is replaced with confusion at the orchid dropped in the center of his palm. When he sees Ling’s face, however, even that melts away into a handsome, devilish smirk that Ling would hungrily press against his mouth if his hands weren't busy rolling up his robe sleeves.

“All right,” Ed says and twirls the orchid stem in between fingers that were once metal. “I’ve got your flower, babe.”

Ling does not round the hedge corner as an emperor.

#fullmetal alchemist #fma #edling #edward elric #ling #krissey writes a thing #fluff bingo!#have maor #i've got your flower babe #and all that other fun stuff #fanfic

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kennyisscrewy · 4 years

Text

Playing Hard to Want II Webgott

Thank you to @speirtons aka Lily for organizing this #bobtogether fic writing event, and kicking a healthy dose of inspiration into me! You’re seriously a GIFT to this community

W/C: 5076

Prompt: There was only one bed

David was already not looking forward to seeing Joe again once he was finally let out of the hospital. Every day that he spent lying on that bed felt like a new nail added to his coffin, yet another tiny spike in Liebgott’s hatred of him. And truthfully Joe had hated David before he’d even done anything wrong, so now that he had… He shuddered at the thought. The street sign boasting Haganeu blared in his peripheral like a neon warning sign. Bitterly, he mulled over the unfairness that his one motivator as he was healing up (returning back to the 101st) was now something of a cold dread in his stomach. His friendship with Joe, too, had been shot in the dirt before he’d even gotten the chance to try.

The icy ball continued to roll around in David’s stomach as he called out to George Luz, so very relieved to see a friendly face that wasn’t frowning and somber and pitying, only to have the usually animated man respond tiredly. And it just got worse, and worse, and worse. He couldn’t seem to stop his big, fat mouth from opening; asking where’s Hoobler? How’s about Toye or Wild Bill? Where’d that cheeky little Julien kid get off to now? Nobody said a word, and it spoke miles. Finally Foley and Martin ground out something about how thin 2nd platoon had become, and David was shooed away like a buzzing gnat.

He swore under his breath as he walked up to the next Jeep and was instantly pinned in place by mean, dark eyes. The second Joe recognized him as more than just “anonymous annoyance”, he was rolling those glittering eyes, and David resented him for looking so pretty while doing it. It felt surreal to finally take in those near-black eyes that shone in the foggy french sunlight like pebbles in person once more, rather than just using his best memory to muse over them in his hospital bed.

David has had a long time to mull over those eyes that narrowed into repulsed little slits as some unfamiliar face finally yanked David up into the remaining empty space. Four months, according to that red sneering mouth, which was news to him. In the first month, he’d kept count, anxious to get back to his platoon and his friends (and Lieb, of course). But around the second time that the nurses had none-too gently told him that if he left, the infection would kill him before he got another chance to play hero, David had become disheartened enough that he just let the days and weeks roll by sluggishly. Joe’s pissy remark: “Must’ve like that hospital.” almost made him collapse into hysterical laughter.

That hospital room was never ending purgatory; solitary confinement. He lay there in his soaked through clothes and waited to die a meaningless, empty death. Dozens of times he’d pictured his father's reaction upon receiving the letter. Dull, bloodshot eyes would scan over the words: “died of his wounds”, and “taken off the frontline due to his own lack of awareness” and his father would chuckle meanly. Mutter how he’d been right to tell David he’d never make it out there, and “oh I hate to speak ill of the dead and say I told ya so!” The peeling off-white wallpaper and fleshy toned curtains plagued his nightmares still; Normandy felt like a tropical getaway in comparison. He opened his mouth to tell Joe that, and see that shit eating smirk slide off his pale face with satisfaction, but looking at him gave David pause.

Beneath those pretty, glinting eyes were heavy bags so purple they could’ve been mistaken for bruises at first glance. His O.D.s and face were dirty-which was nothing new- but seeing Joe’s hair a stringy, careless mess sent something of a shock through David. Kind of like Perconte’s dental fixation, David has always been able to spot Liebgott from a mile away simply because it was clear that, even as his bloody bandages soaked through, the man took a few moments each day to make sure his thick, dark hair was still soft and touchable looking.

...Alright, so maybe David was just projecting there.

Regardless, he looked like HELL. Which felt oh, so wrong. David has always admired how unaffected he’d seemed by the war, both physically and mentally, and his guts twisted as he watched those long, oddly dainty fingers bring a cigarette to his lips. They were shaking . And it’s not like it was exactly cold out.

Feeling nauseous, his gaze moved unabidden to Heffron. Unkept, ruddy stubble dotted the usually chipper replacement’s thin face, and the shine appeared to have left his bright eyes. Dirty bandaged fingertips poked out of olive gloves that looked like the kid had torn the fingers off of himself. And he was quiet; so fucking quiet.If there was one thing David knew about Philly boys, it was that you could never get them to stop yapping even if krauts were peppering them in an empty field. He was unsettled by not hearing Babe’s squeaking, weird little giggles or Bill’s cartoonish cackling carrying on the wind. Honest to God, it didn’t even feel much like Easy anymore. No Luz attempting what had to be the worst British accent he’d ever heard or Toye bitching about whatever new thing had popped into his head. None of Muck trying out an hour's worth of garish standup while Penkala and Malarkey giggled like prepubescent hyenas. Just empty uniforms and the stench of stale cigarette smoke remained.

Tracking down Lipton was a welcome distraction, as were the multiple near-death experiences on his way to the abandoned house he was posted up in. Something downright neurotic in him took comfort in the return of the bone rattling violence. Even as he was forced to dive away from a near-direct hit, which sent stabbing hot pains through his thigh, his heart soared with a sick kind of glee at the taste of dirt in his mouth. This solidified that he was really, truly back in the fight; it was as terrifying as it was liberating.

Lt. Speirs previously from Dog Company and Lipton signed David’s execution by reconfirming that, yes, he was being reassigned to 2nd platoon. And, as a bonus, he’d acquired a squeaky clean West Pointer to babysit! Oh joy. Well, at least by comparison, David no longer felt so much like a replacement. The moment he’d laid eyes on that fancy graduation ring, he was filled with a perverse sense of relief. Oh, the toccoa boys are sure gonna have a field day with you, Lieutenant Jones. David felt like a little kid who’d desperately joined in on hazing the new kid, all in the vain hopes that the other boys might pick on him a little less.

Any sort of relief David was feeling vanished as he faced down his former friend’s critical gazes, bitterness radiating off them in thick, rolling waves. Wordlessly, he tossed his bag unto an empty upper bunk, and took a deep breath before turning back to the men.

“This seat taken?”

For some reason, that had Ramirez chuckling and had Chuck swearing and rolling his eyes. Everyone in the little huddle swung their gazes over to Liebgott, who seemingly always had something to say, especially for Webster. He fidgeted anxiously as Joe took his sweet time sucking on his Lucky Strike like a popsicle, blowing a stream of smoke out of pursed, cherry lips so slowly that David dug his nails into his uninjured thigh.

“They’re all fuckin taken, Web. This look like a fuckin presidential fuckin suite to you? I know you’re so used to yer cushy hospital digs what with big canned nurses shaking their tits in your face-“

He walked away before he’d even heard the end of Joe’s rant, dripping with acidic hatred that made the blood in David’s ears ring. He knew if he stood around any longer that he’d punch Joe right in his handsome, artfully carved goddamned face. And as badly as Joe wanted it, he wasn’t the enemy right now.

Far fucking from it actually.

****

David could feel drying blood underneath his fingernails as he stumbled back into the dilapidated house, wondering if it were Kraut blood or Jackson’s. His head leant against the side of his/not his bunk with a dull thud that didn’t even register. Mentally, he was still kneeling by Jackson’s side, framing the sides of the boy’s head with his fingers as he pleaded for the kid to calm down. He’d told Jackson it was gonna be okay, that everything would be fine once Doc showed up. But jokes on them; Doc had shown up and Jackson was dead, dead, dead.

He repeated it aloud when they were quietly asked about the mission’s “success”. The mission’s fucking SUCCESS; god David had to laugh. Two German prisoners captured sure, but it felt like a monumental fucking loss from where he was standing. 20 fucking years old…

“Yeah we heard.”

Came Joe’s voice, breaking through the haze of blood and shouting and gunpowder. It was surprisingly gentle, softer than he could ever recall hearing him speak before. And for some reason that is what nearly made David crumple. Not watching a kid begging to live, not listening to McClung tearfully screaming and pointing a shaking sidearm at the German’s heads, just Joe Fucking Liebgott not treating him like a smear on the treads of his government issued boots for once. Quietly, David excuses himself, walked casually to the ransacked bathroom, and violently puked up bile until he couldn’t even feel the muscles in his throat.

A few hours of shaking and vomiting later, and he shuffled in the pitch black room towards the bunk beds. Blindly, he made sure to step as lightly as possible (which was quite a feat for the heavy-footed man), and reached out with searching fingers for his bed. The moment fingertips made contact with scratchy, piling sheets, David hauled his weary body on to the mattress, only to be met by the sensation of something sharp digging into his side. For one crazed moment, he thought he’d stabbed himself with a bayonet that wasn’t on his person, and his hand trembled as he flickered his lighter on expecting to see crimson staining through his jacket. Honestly, he’d have preferred the sight of him slowly bleeding out to what he did see bathed in the orangey dim light.

Half moon eyelashes so dark and thick they looked like ink blots curved against moonbeam cheekbones. Thin, dark eyebrows not scrunched down in irritation for once, and a smooth forehead oddly absent of worry lines. And of course, chapped but also sinfully flushed-looking lips, thin but shapely, barely parted and emitting sweet sighs. Liebgott, with his ridiculously bony elbows jabbing into his ribs he was so close, looking like a goddamned Rembrandt. Too stunned to speak (or even breathe), he gently grasped Joe’s elbow (“ Christ, so fragile; felt like it might snap if he wasn’t careful”) with the intention of putting some space between them. Cherubic, slumbering Lieb had other ideas, apparently, because the second David started to apply pressure, skinny little fingers were suddenly clutching his bicep and hauling David closer. Mary, Mother of Jesus , it took everything in him not to scream as the unconscious bane of his existence wrapped himself around David with all four of his sinewy limbs.

He whipped his head to the side fearfully as sleeping Joe wedged his thigh between David’s with such a kittenish little sigh it made David’s face flush neon. Small mercies, all of the other men were slumbering, albeit restlessly. Upon second glance, actually, David was relieved to see he wasn’t the only one sharing a bunk. Heffron lay curled up small and sad on Chuck’s big, barrel chest, but there was something distinctly platonic about the pair somehow. Unlike the little wriggling motions that Joe was using to systematically ensure David’s early grave.

He double, then triple checked that the slighter man was actually asleep and not fucking with David’s head in the most goddamned insane fashion imaginable as bony, calloused fingers knot themselves into his dog tags with a white-knuckled grip. This had to be a joke, or a hallucination. Maybe he’d been hit by some wayward shrapnel and he was actually bleeding out on the bank like that kraut.

David couldn’t have imagined this even in his four-month stockpile of wet dreams, which Joe had increasingly intruded upon (read: starred in). In those, it was never this based in reality. Usually it was just snapshots: a long, arcing throat with rather specific scarring; the sharpest and deepest Cupid’s bow lips he’d ever seen wrapping themselves around an insult (amongst other things). Dark, bottomless eyes half lidded and digging all the way to David’s core. A scratchy, hissing drawl: “And whattaya gonna do about it, Web?”

Actually feeling the faint press of those lips through the fabric of his t-shirt and those gorgeous, dark waves tickling the side of his throat made his head spin in a feverish haze. Not to mention the thin, surprisingly-muscular thigh that was occasionally flexing right up against David’s crotch. For the first time, he was thankful for the sharp stinging of his still-tender wound, as he was sure it was the only thing keeping his body from betraying him. Though, again, the downright coquettish way Liebgott was sighing in his ear was trying awful hard to overcome that hurdle. Blue eyes stared their own makeshift skylights into the slatted roof above their heads as David tried to freeze every muscle in his body completely. After the disaster of a patrol, he’d been pretty certain he wouldn’t be sleeping that night. But this little unconscious stunt of Joe’s had absolutely guaranteed that.

David woke up the next morning half expecting rust coating the back of his throat as Joe shoved his bayonet down it, or perhaps to the sight of the tendons in those skinny arms flexing as he strung David up from the nearest tree. Instead, David woke up shivering in an empty bed feeling oddly lonely. For 24 years, he had woken up in a bed by himself, but this is the first time it had felt wrong.

Carefully, he shifted himself into a sitting position and tried to shake the feeling of phantom knuckles brushing against his chest, and warm, moist air wetting his throat from lips that were no longer there. Christ, what was happening to him? Still feeling half asleep, he turned his head and was pinned in place by a bewildering sight:

"C'est bon, mon garçon, ça va. C'était un accident ... juste un accident."

Had he not had such a distinctive, thick accent, David would’ve found it hard to believe that was Doc pressed so close to Heffron. Sleep-hazy eyes watched, transfixed, as cracked, pale lips pressed sweet french notions into the crown of Babe’s trembling, red-brown hair. Babe’s gangly, long-limbed body was curled up impressively small, with what appeared like all of his weight pressing down on Gene’s chest. The medic, for all of his scrawny stature, hardly seemed to mind having his back flattened to the mattress by his fellow paratrooper. Dark blue eyes shone with so much love, it rattled David to his core. Did the two of them not know David was still in here with them? Weren’t they terrified of being court marshalled, or worse? His skin tingled, feeling starved for the ghost of Liebgott’s skin on his, as his gaze tracked Roe’s fingers carding through Babe’s thin locks. The two men were so tightly pressed together from chest to toes that they melded into one being. And just when David felt like his reality couldn’t resemble more of a fever dream, something impossible happened.

“Regarde-moi, ange.” Doc rumbled in a low, sleep-scratchy voice before slowly moving one palm up to cup Babe’s chin. And then, as though it were nothing, suddenly they were kissing. And the way the duo kissed, searching and deep….that didn’t look like the first time they’d done that before. His cheeks flushed when a soft, sweet little moan slid out of those pressing lips-he wasn’t sure which. Okay, so now David was almost positive Doc hadn’t spotted his sleeping form across from Babe’s bunk. He decided to take pity on the guys; this was obviously a very private moment that David had no business seeing. Shifting his weight and clearing his throat, he sat up very gingerly so as not to startle the men too badly. In spite of his best efforts, he felt like a real bastard as he watched all the muscles in Babe’s back stiffen, the redhead ducking his face fearfully into the side of Gene’s neck. “For a grown man, Heffron was weirdly adorable.” David thought to himself absently, unable to connect the small, fragile boy with the sharpshooting killer on the battlefield.

Gene slowly turned to regard David with a calm, unaffected aire that confused and frightened the groggy young man. The stony faced medic shushed Babe’s faint fretting while those strong, capable hands rubbed paths through fluffy, auburn hair and down the other man’s back. Those dark-washed denim eyes continued to pierce David’s gaze all the while, as though threatening David to open his big, stupid mouth. Of course, David intended to do no such thing (his nighttime activities from last night really gave him no grounds to) and he tried his best to silently convey that in his face. His mother had always told him “his face said everything for him”, so hopefully he’d be able to recall that skillset. Something must’ve clicked, because he watched the icy stare thaw and soften ever so slightly. And then, then: the smug bastard had the gall to wink at him. Well, that certainly went to show David just how threatening Doc Roe found him!

Once he’d scrambled out of the house with still-wrinkled ODs and a truly wild look in his blue eyes, David had been kind of counting on Joe not being anywhere near him. In his mind’s eye, he imagined the slighter man brooding in some distant alleyway all by his lonesome, smoking like a coal train with that patented scowl on his face. ‘ Probably brainstorming how best to kill me slowly and painfully…’ He thought stormily, feeling his stomach twisting yet again. He wasn’t sure why the thought bothered him so much; it’s not like that would be out-of-character or even unlikely that Joe had not been doing that from the minute they’d met. But somehow...after what they’d shared last night… the thought stung something fierce. This was what was swirling through David’s head as he clomped through Haganeu, startled out of his thoughts by bumping roughly into Martin.

“Webster, you gotta be pullin’ my leg. After that shit you pulled the other day?” The shorter man looked-okay, well, he always looked pissed, but this was a special brand of vinegar that made him itch to immediately cry uncle.

“Aw, Christ, sir. I’m terribly sorry, honestly, sir. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going…”

“Clearly,” Johnny scoffed, but to David’s surprise, his tone softened as he mumbled, “Well, I’m guessing you probably didn’t get much sleep last night. I...I didn’t sleep a wink.”

He blinked dumbly at Martin’s abrupt change of heart. Sympathetic words from virtually anybody (but especially Srg. Martin) were so unfamiliar to him that they almost didn’t register to him. Tears threatened to prickle ludicrously at what might’ve been the only show of kindness David had yet to receive since he’d been cleared to go back, and he shook them off so he could offer Martin a respectful nod.

“I mean, if I said yes, that’d mean I was disobeying Major Winter’s direct orders.” He smiled cheekily, also feeling a bit of a rush addressing Dick by his new title. Inside, he wriggled and preened like a puppy when Martin replied with a faint grin of his own. With a faux-exasperated huff, Johnny reached up and rustled David’s mop of wavy, bed-messy hair before moving past him with a shake of his head.

The brief interaction made David feel a bit lighter, no longer feeling so weighed down by what he knew was coming: a complete and utter shitstorm. Just then, a nasally, california drawl spiked his eardrums; as if his thoughts had summoned the bastard!

“No, no, see, Bobby COULD get with any chick ‘e wanted to, but he’s a lil bitch!”

Oh goodie; Joe appeared to be in yet another scintillating conversation. David couldn’t quite make out Chuck’s reply, but he most definitely heard Joe’s:

“You daydrinkin’ or somethin’, Chuckie?! Iceman’s like, the most badass one! Cyclops is just posturing! He’s a goddamned nerd!”

Okay, so maybe David was struck slightly that Liebgott even knew what the word ‘posturing’ meant. And that surprise must’ve registered in his face as he did his best to inch past the cluster of 2nd platoon boys, because Ramirez suddenly called out:

“Somethin’ wrong, Webster?” with a mean, little smirk that had Grant rolling his eyes. David had always appreciated how little Srg. Grant tolerated the rest of his platoon’s relentless pestering of David. Not enough to speak up on his behalf, of course. After all, David was pretty sure that Joe was his best friend aside from maybe Talbert.

Liebgott’s eyes slowly swung over to acknowledge his presence, and David flinched in preparation for the barrage of insults he was sure were heading his way. Both parties had stopped walking, everyone apart from David and Joe shifting in slight discomfort as the staredown continued.

“You look like shit, Harvard.” Joe offered finally before bodily knocking his shoulder with David’s. And this one was purposeful.

The group marched on, gravel crunching beneath their feet in the silence while David stood frozen in the same spot. W-what? That was it? Joe wasn’t even going to-to acknowledge what they’d done?? No, fuck that, what JOE had done to HIM! It wasn’t exactly like David had crawled into Joe’s bunk and-and….

Oh.

Well, it was kind of like that. But, still! He’d been more than willing to leave and sleep on the frigid basement flooring, but then Joe had started rubbing and sighing and had latched onto David’s arm! Yeah...held him captive...with his slumber-sweet breath and surprisingly petal-soft skin. Jesus Christ, what was he kidding himself? Truth was, they were both at fault here, but only one of them had done so consciously. Did Liebgott think he was some sort of perverted creep now? God, he really wished that Joe had at least made some mention as to his feelings on the situation. Perhaps if he could manage to get the stubborn guy alone.

David saw his chances and took it after Dick had informed them that they wouldn’t have to do a second patrol that night, snagging Joe by that sharp, little elbow on his way out the door. He ignored the look of unfiltered disgust on Joe’s face for the time being, swallowing his nerve before he had a fucking heart attack.

“Joe, can we talk? Please?

He pleaded softly, ignoring how Babe was openly staring at them both as he brushed past them. The tips of his ears and high planes of his cheeks flushed at the sudden reminder that Babe knew . What made it worse was Joe’s gaze tracking the color as it spread across David’s face; he seemed unaware that he was even doing it.

“Why should I listen to anything you have to say, Web?” The question came out choked up, and obviously not as vicious as intended.

Rather than replying, he simply tugged on Joe’s arm and ushered him away from where Nixon and Winters were still idly watching the interaction. The pair shuffled into a nearby alleyway, and David bit his lip, struggling not to comment on how easily he was able to move Joe around. That undoubtedly would set him off, and cause Joe to storm off before they’d even had a chance to talk.

Instead, he let go of Joe’s arm hastily, and shifted so that his weight was pressing along the brick wall opposite him. Something on Joe’s face shuttered for a half-second, but his expression smoothed over into what he probably thought looked like apathy. Again, David fought off a smile; Joe’s face was always like an open book, and the older man never seemed to not be smouldering over some little thing. Maybe he was going insane, but David had always found it weirdly cute. If he wanted to really ensure his death, he might’ve even gone ahead and referred to it as a pout. That’s what it was really; Liebgott was never not pouting .

“The fuck ‘r you smilin’ for?”

Oops, guess he’d failed. He wiped the grin off bodily with his palm and tried affecting an air of seriousness. Clearing his throat, his sky blue eyes rolled heavenwards as he searched for the right phrasing:

“I wanted to...apologize, for my actions the other night. It was inappropriate of me-”

Joe prickled instantly: “Jesus- don’t you talk to me like I’m some skirt, Webster! I-you, it’s not like you took my innocence or-”

He seemed to register the words he was saying and his mouth shut with an audible clack. And David watched in fascination as Joe Liebgott blushed like an embarrassed little boy, shuffling his feet and looking away from him. He’d always thought a healthy flush looked particularly fetching on pale skin, the rosy color bloomed oh so beautifully, in his opinion at least. He continued to watch in baffled silence as Joe began to babble to fill the quiet:

“Not that- I’m not- and you, you didn’t… we didn’t- Look, nothing happened! Okay?”

His ears got much redder than the rest of his face, and David let himself think it freely now. Cute . It was fucking endearing, the way Joe continued to huff and puff, brown eyes fluttering around the dirty alley. He felt a surge of warmth in his chest, feeling perhaps a little gluttonous as he soaked in the way dark brown locks shone in the dimming sunlight. With Joe refusing to acknowledge David’s existence, he was free to admire the man to his heart's content, appreciative that he was here in the flesh.

A sharp, defined collarbone peeked out of Joe’s jacket where the hem had gone askew, and long, pretty fingers toyed with his dog tags subconsciously. His memory recalled how those fingers felt: not rough, like he’d expect of a man so used to heavy artillery, but soft as silk. David recognized, obviously, that Joe was plenty manly. He acted with far too much aggression and seemed to compulsively throw his weight around (not that he had much to speak of). But physically, there seemed to be a disconnect. Joseph Liebgott had been sculpted into a thin, delicate form that clashed harshly with his mean attitude and meaner words. Call a spade a spade, but Joe was pretty . Handsome, sure, but pretty was more accurate. Pretty evoked images of sculptures and artwork to David; something finely crafted and meant to be….

To be appreciated.

“Do you have any memory…? Of anything you did last night?” Anger quickly bled into concern across Liebgott’s delicate features, much to David’s confusion:

“Do? Shit, David, I...I didn’t do somethin’ stupid, did I? ‘S that what’s got you all upset?”

Wait, what? Now Joe thought he’d-ugh- taken David’s innocence?!? Any fondness he had for the shorter faded into irritation. God, he could be thick sometimes! He fought the urge to shake Joe, less inclined to fall through with this now that he knew how easily he could push Joe around. Hypothetically, of course. Although…

“Wha- I’m not upset, Joe!”

“The fuck you’re not!”

“But, really, I’m not-”

“You’re shoutin’ in my face, Webster! Clearly, something’s got yer panties in a bunch!”

He could feel his face heating up as his anger built, ticking upwards the more they shouted at one another:

“My p- You know what? Fine, yes, I am upset! Because you refuse to talk to me about what happened!”

“NOTHIN’-”

“WE SHARED A FUCKING BED, JOE!”

Joe surged forward anxiously and covered David’s mouth with his palm, and oh, touching was so much worse. In his haste, Joe’s body was pressing into his own from chest to thigh, and David tasted the acrid nicotine tang and salt of his fingers. As Joe hissed in a tense, barely-audible voice, their noses nearly brushed.

“Are you trying to get us both shot?? Shut the fuck up with that shit!”

He waited patiently until Joe finally removed his hand before saying: “So, you do acknowledge that something happened.”

He practically felt Joe holding himself back from smacking him, but David didn’t back down. Once more leaning his head back against the bricks, he stuck out his chin pointedly and kept his lips pressed together. Quick, clever eyes took in the picture of defiance he made, and something shifted in Joe. They landed on his lips heavily, blatantly, and David felt the backs of his knees starting to sweat. A sly, wide smirk stretched across Joe’s full mouth that made David feel small somehow, but he couldn’t tell if he hated that as much as he ought to. They were already so close, but Joe shifted his weight so that both sides were pressing him back into the rough, dirty wall rather than just the one. He could only follow along helplessly as he watched Joe’s hand come up to cage him in on the sides of his head, and what the holy hell was going on??

“So, what if we did? Hm, David? Would that upset you, if I did remember?”

He scoffed but it sounded weak even to his own ears, “Yeah right, Lieb. You were asleep.”

Joe hummed, pressing impossibly closer, until he could feel just the barest scrape of chapped lips up against his own, near-black eyes boring holes into David that shone with a delicious mischievousness that had him shivering:

“Guess you’ll never know!” He said brightly, pulling away like he hadn’t pasted himself to David’s whole body with ease, and with a wink, he was gone.

#bobtogether #bobfic2020 #webgott #band of brothers fanfic #...can yall tell just how badly I simp for Lieb istg #also COUNT how my frickin times i refer to him as DELICATE i hate meself #emma writes

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lokilickedme · 5 years

Text

True Story Time

Did I ever tell you guys about the time I gave Ronald Reagan the finger in front of 228 people?

In 1984 when I was in 10th grade, Reagan sent a team of “Presidential Aides” around to the schools in my state on the premise of observing small-town procedure and getting a feel for how the southern educational system was working out. It wasn’t. I had just moved from a suburban junior high of 8000 kids in a big city to a country school with 212 students total. Kindergarten through 12th grade all in one building. We had 11 classrooms, 9 teachers, and no funding. We ate lunch outside and the bus driver doubled as the History teacher (and sometimes Science and Math...occasionally Home Ec). The English teacher was the janitor. There was no PE teacher, we just went outside and ran around the block (sometimes we came back, sometimes we didn’t) and in the hot months the Shop teacher brought his tools and took the doors off the building in lieu of air conditioning. We went through five Principals in a two-year span of time and male students regularly just didn’t show up for two weeks during each semester because it was time to harvest something. Female students regularly quit showing up halfway into 11th grade because they either got married or were too pregnant to fit into the desks anymore. We were pretty much the school system that time forgot in a town that was more of a punchline than an actual place.

And here Ronald Reagan was, sending his representatives into our midst to “see how we’re doing”.

We weren’t doing so hot. But if there’s one thing people in small country towns have going for them, it’s a fierce and intense pride in their own self sufficiency, and nobody - nobody - was happy about that rich bastard sticking his nose in our business. And I, being from somewhere else and knowing what a real actual honest to god school system should be like, was pretty disgusted that this place couldn’t even get enough money to fix the roof that the last tornado had nearly taken off. Odds were good the building was going to fall in on us before I could graduate.

So during lunch on the day of The Event I sneaked back into the school while everyone was outside eating. The teachers were conferring with the Principal about the Big Presidential Visitation, and while they argued about which students they should hurriedly send home before the Very Important People got there, I ran through the school and wrote in 3 foot letters on every chalkboard in every classroom:

WE DON’T WANT THE PRESIDENT’S AIDS

I thought it was pretty clever, given Reagan’s shameful handling of the ongoing AIDS crisis. Also I was a kid and it was the era when “you’ve got AIDS!!” was a commonly flung insult among idiot teenagers. And the Reagan Administration’s other policies certainly hadn’t “trickled down” to our little town or school system, so twisting his disgusting neglect of one group while putting on a show of caring about another into a slyly juvenile joke seemed appropriate. He was sending a highly publicized suited battallion into our economically/socially/progressively depressed town to “check on our progress” without any intention of doing anything about whatever report they might bring back. We were a diversionary tactic to make him look good and it was obvious...well, it was obvious to me anyway. I felt like it was a slap in the face since our area of the country had been pretty much completely left out and forgotten. The children were the future, right? Unfortunately the grownups in power didn’t seem to care much about that when there wasn’t a lot of money to be made or fame to be raked from it. So we didn’t want them coming in with their clipboards and asking us questions and mucking up our day of state-sanctioned goofing around just to fuck off back to Washington and forget about us. We had meth to be made during science class, we didn’t have time for this.

So the big black car arrived while everyone was filing back into the building and the President’s Aides entered the school just as the Principal was noticing the written vandalism in the science lab. I saw him come running out and he spotted me at the other end of the single long hallway. He knew it was me - he’d had trouble with me before, but that’s a story for another day - and as he was raising his hand to point at me with that STOP RIGHT THERE look on his face that school principals are known for, an outburst started in the math room.

It was followed by random outbursts from other classrooms as they filled with returning students. And since the teachers were always a good five to ten minutes late to every class after lunch because there were cigs to be smoked and why the hell not, the chalkboard diatribes were still intact as the President’s representatives entered the rooms.

I didn’t even bother denying anything. I had chalk handprints on my jeans.

It was a glorious day.

None of the students understood the double meaning of my graffiti, they just assumed I was making a crude joke about the President having AIDS because hurr durr, funny AIDS joke. The English teacher chastised me for incorrectly spelling “Aides” (she obviously didn’t get it either). The art teacher gave me an A for originality and artistic style (she wasn’t from there). I was told that at least two of the five Aides laughed. The Principal, who wasn’t from there either, shot me a sternly halfhearted threatening look the next morning but never issued any consequences. He was outta there two weeks later anyway, replaced by yet another in a long line of people from somewhere else who thought they could turn our school around.

I forgot to mention that a camera crew arrived with the Aides and videotaped the whole thing. I don’t know if any clips ever aired anywhere, or if it ended up in someone’s report, or if it was just taped over later and forgotten. Maybe it was stored in Reagan’s Presidential Library. I’d like to think it was shown to him at some point, though. And if he did see it, I sure as hell hope he got my finely crafted middle finger embedded in six chalked words on eleven blackboards in a tiny ramshackle school in a town he likely had no clue ever existed.

Or maybe he just didn’t get it, and assumed it was just another AIDS joke.

#true stories from a small town #Reagan era bullshittery #look I had to do something to keep from losing my mind in that tiny town #there sure as hell wasn't anything else to do

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cywscross · 5 years

Note

got any f/f fic recs?

Okay so apparently not Final Fantasy but femslash. I’m stupid, sorry. Uhh I don’t read that many femslash compared to slash but I can name some:

NARUTO

Sing as their bones go marching in again by felinedetached (Sakura/Ino)

Instead, it goes like this: Haruno Sakura is the daughter of two civilians, from civilian families. She is nothing and no one—smart, yes, top kunoichi, yes, but she will never be on par with clan kids. She is teammates to an orphan powerhouse from a dead clan and the last remaining Uchiha.

Haruno Sakura is nothing and nobody, but she breathes and grows and thrives and the forest thrives with her.

(She opens her eyes to wood, grown from nothing, and Hatake Kakashi stares in disbelief at the tree where his student used to be.)

Or, Haruno Sakura should have had the goddamn Mokuton and this author is mad.

No one there to shame me for my youth by felinedetached (Sakura/Ino)

What she hadn’t expected was to be what is apparently next in line for Kakashi’s position—although, she supposes it was inevitable—or for the nurses at the hospital to look at her with such adoration.

Sakura’s not complaining, she just hadn’t expected it.

(She’s the medic on a team of powerhouses, the backline fighter to Naruto and Sasuke’s brilliance, and she never thought it would be her people looked at like this.)

But it is her; and as she gets glances and propositions from both civilian and ninja, from male and female alike, she wonders.

The Fair Maiden by Tozette (Sakura/Ino)

Basically: Princess Ino has been kidnapped by the terrible dragon Sakura! Brave knights Chouji and Shikamaru must rescue her from the fearsome beast. It... does not go entirely as expected.

The Shinobi version of Pride by grit (Sakura/Hinata/Karin)

The coffee sways dangerously.

“Why,” Sakura interrupts, before the chaos can get any worse, “are you in my kitchen?”

every fire is a lesson learned by blackkat (Konan/Sakura)

Just when Konan has lost hope, she meets a hero.

three birds watch and the fourth flies by grit (Minato!Sakura/Kushina)

There's a legend in her hands like clay, so she must work hard to be formidable, to be everything he was and she isn't, because what if she screws up the future, selfish enough to make space for her own?

She pours over heaps of sealing scrolls and tries not to think too hard on what happens if she fails.

Or: Timid Minato but this time around, she's Sakura.

throw it my way (all the love you keep) by amako (Sakura/Ino)

The crux of the matter is: they don't have a Hokage, the one that could be Hokage is sharing a Moment with his soulmate or whatever, and when asked to take the mantle again, Tsunade had broken a few bones. Not hers, obviously.

will to live by justdoityoufucker (Sakura/Ino)

Sakura joins the ANBU. The entire world seems a little tilted after that, but they all adapt.

Bumpy Future by Dovey (Sakura/Hinata)

It's her last year at the academy when Sakura hits her head. When she wakes up, she has a little trouble matching memories to the people in them- but she'll have to get it right eventually, yeah?

in which sakura pairs vague associations with the wrong people, and everyone is much happier because of it (Except Iruka-sensei).

the Rebel ‘verse by felinedetached (Sakura/Ino)

(Three things come after that:

The moment of realisation. The moment she realises Sasuke’s left the village, gone off to do who knows what with Orochimaru-

Her memory returns to her - she was useless against her teammate; taken down by a pressure point and unable to do anything to prevent him from getting at it.

Inner rages, throws herself around, cursing and screaming until finally, finally she calms and she says Uchiha Sasuke is a traitor.)

In which Sakura gets the character development she deserved.

shattered dreams into rhapsodies by blackkat (Kushina/Mikoto)

For the prompt "I’m a monster/guardian that the local village give sacrifices too and you’re the new sacrifice but don’t worry I won’t eat you, I’m kinda lonely"

-0-

HARRY POTTER

Four Walls (And the Right People) by blackkat (Lily/Narcissa)

“Is coming in there going to make me lose my will to live?” Lily calls, amused.

“No!” Harry protests, wounded, like she and Narcissa haven’t previously walked in on structural damage, fires, flooding, and mysteriously conjured cat-sized dragons. Sirius has been a terrible influence on them.

the girl who lived (again) by dirgewithoutmusic (trans!Harry/Ginny)

Molly tried her best. When Harry had told them, Arthur had asked excitedly, "is this a Muggle thing?" Hermione had hurried out a "no!" and a frantic history of gender diversity in the wizarding world.

"It's just that I'm a girl," Harry had said, and Arthur had nodded and asked her about how telephone booths worked. He would call her by the right pronouns until the day he died at the respectable old age of one hundred and thirty three, and he would make it seem easy.

But Molly had to try. Hermione explained things faster and higher-pitched every time Molly messed up a pronoun. Molly frowned and muttered and put extra potatoes on Harry's plate at breakfast. Harry slept in Ron's room, which didn't bother either of them but which made Hermione scowl.

Harry got boxes of sweets and warm hugs, as Molly chewed things over. For her fifteenth Christmas, the Weasley sweater she would receive would be a bright, friendly, terrible pink.

The next time Harry visited, Molly put her on Ginny's floor to sleep-- for some definition of sleep that involved Hermione hissing threats at three in the morning if Harry and Ginny didn't "shut up about Wronski feints, do you know what time it is."

-0-

GAME OF THRONES

When Warp Is Fire And Weft Is Ice by afterandalasia (Dany/Sansa)

People tell many stories about them, the Mother of Dragons and the Queen in the North.

Some of them even have a grain of truth in them.

a strangeness of sunlight by musicforswimming (Dany/Sansa)

Someone calls Sansa home, and sets her free in doing so.

Ivory and Dragonglass by madeinessos (Rhaenys/Sansa)

For the valar-morekinks prompt on livejournal: "Rhaeneys follows in her father's footsteps when she and Sansa run away together to the free cities so they can be with each other . Both ladies left a letter to their families so that their absence wouldn't spark the embers of another rebellion."

Sansa in Dorne by sear (Arianne/Sansa)

Alayne Stone wakes confused, in the body of the young maid she once was. She has returned to Winterfell, before everything went wrong. All she wants now is to be free, to never be hurt again. Dorne will give her that.

Mirror of the sun by myrish_lace (Dany/Sansa)

Daenerys arrives at Winterfell to attempt to treat with Jon Snow. She's immediately side-tracked by her fascination with Sansa Stark, and the two grow closer. Told from Daenerys's point of view.

-0-0-

And these are genderswap femslash, in case you’re not a fan:

TEEN WOLF

Utterly Appropriate by wynnebat (Peter/Stiles)

There's only one person whom Stiles would marry, and whoever has asked for her hand isn't on that list.

Spin a Web of Silk by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids) (Peter/Stiles)

“Darling, will you marry me?”

Stiles stared into the eyes of the light of her life, the one who held her heart- her love.

And then she looked back at the man who had asked the question.

“Yes.”

Sugar Babies Not Sugar Vaginas by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids) (Peter/Stiles)

Stiles is a copywriter working for a service that's been contacted by a company that sells something called Passion Dust. It's so much worse than it sounds.

Free Birth Control by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids) (Peter/Stiles)

“I can’t believe they haven’t fixed the footbridge yet,” Peter said, disgruntled as she toweled off her feet, getting all the muck from the creek off of them.

“I can,” Talia said absently as she shelled peas on the front porch. “The only people who use that bridge are you, Stilinski, and Stilinski’s clients. And Stilinski does her best to avoid clients. Did you hear what she did to the woman who took out the bridge?” Talia settled further back into her chair. Peter immediately recognized it as Gossip Position, and leaned in eagerly.

“No, tell me everything.”

Ain't No Stranger (Been This Way Before) by pibroch (littleblackdog) (Peter/Stiles)

Stiles loved orgasms, and she really loved the shuddery, mind-numbing orgasms Peter had spent months meticulously and enthusiastically learning to coax out of her. She also loved the relief from cramps she’d get from a good climax or four, and Peter had no complaints about blood. Definitely a win-win, all around. - Stiles has a period from hell, and Peter has a surprise.

On The Loose by SmartKIN (Peter/Stiles)

Stiles has a job to do; Hot Lady Sniper almost ruins it for her.

The Same Damn Hunger by Twisted_Mind (Allison/Stiles)

There’s no soft jazz, no flower petals or candles, because that’s not what this is.

-0-

MARVEL

Mightier Than The Sword by aloneintherain (Johnny/Peter)

Janey Storm freezes in the doorway.

Pen is half naked. Her boney, freckled shoulders and the faded sports bra she’s had since high school are on display. Bruises from this morning’s encounter with the Scorpion haven’t had time to heal yet—purples and sickly greens tesselate over her ribs and toned stomach.

Janey can see every unedited part of Pen: her open knuckles, blood a sharp red against her pale skin; her unbrushed hair, grown out past Pen’s jaw like a tangle of weeds; her loose jeans, slung low on her hips, with fraying ends and ripped knees. Janey stands there and sees Pen Parker, a half naked, wide-eyed girl choking on her heart.

“It’s occupied,” Pen manages.

Or: a universe where Johnny and Peter were born girls.

-0-

YOWAMUSHI PEDAL

One For The Road by Atropa Belladonna (WorldsJunk) (Onoda/Arakita)

Fuck her entire life on a cactus she’s a fucking loser. Not because Onoda’s boobs are bigger than her’s - ok, they’ve always been. Actually, everyone has bigger tits than she does, she is flat as hell and she likes it. Why the hell would she want a couple of Shinkai-style jugs waving around in the wind when she’s riding for fucks’s sakes, that’s impractical as all fuck. No, Arakita is a loser because now she can’t stop thinking about Onoda-chan’s tits and no way she is perving like this on an innocent girl that is all around too good for the likes of her.

#Naruto #Teen Wolf #Marvel #Yowamushi Pedal #Harry Potter #Game of Thrones #Naruto Fanfic Rec #Teen Wolf Fanfic Rec #Misc Fanfic Rec #Harry Potter Fanfic Rec #Marvel and DC Fanfic Rec #Femslash

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neshabeingchildish · 5 years

Link

So, I didn’t feel like reformatting this for Tumblr, so I included the link with the bold/italicized etc. Otherwise, I may or may not get to doing the Tumblr post text, eventually (so the confessions, letters, etc, will all appear the same since Tumblr undoes everything that I type in docs by the time that I paste it here. SO, for the proper way, the ff.net link, but the words are still here, too... Just not formatted.

@chenoahchantel @adorkable-blackgirl @henry-p-fart @up-the-tube

Dear Charlotte

She told Jasper to go get the letters and meet them at the table, and he was still doing that when Henry came off of the elevator. She approached her second guy and folded her arms, but only sighed, “So… You snapped at Jasper?” She asked it, and sounded genuinely puzzled. This wasn’t an accusation and she didn’t seem to be fussing at him, so he was grateful for that.

“That’s why I sent an apology. I didn’t mean to snap at him, but with the tone that I took, I’m sure that it bothered him, because of how I used to talk to him whenever I was lashing out about everything.” He bit his lip and looked at his shoes.

“I think that he probably has a mild trauma response to some of the emotional danger that may have been inflicted upon him.”

“Definitely, that.” Henry looked up at her and her arms were still folded, but she still didn’t seem angry. “I’ve tried to speak with him about my emotional abuse towards him, but he brushed it off and changed the subject. I don’t want to keep bringing it up and stir up his responses, but I also don’t want him so settled in it that if I raise my voice a little, he has a panic attack, even if it’s a little one.”

“Well, maybe we need to sort through the emotional distress he was in while being with you. I’m going to have to sort through some of mine…” She said and as though on cue, Jasper came in with the letters and began setting them in the stacks on the table. “We’re going to get to the bottom of all of the stuff that we were feeling and try to figure out what to do with all of that.” Henry looked indescribably grateful. She whispered, “You need to start by opening up to him the same way that you opened up to me on that elevator.”

“Won’t that sound like me making excuses?” “No. Open up about who you were at that time, what you’re aware of, what you did to him and then go from there. I’ll be right here…” She realized that it was super quiet and they turned to see Jasper, standing next to the table, wondering what they were whispering about. She smiled and came to him, “Hey. You feeling better?”

“Yeah. I just needed you to validate me,” he said it cooly and shrugged his shoulders, but he meant that down to his core. She kissed him on the cheek and took a seat at the table.

Henry came up next and Jasper frowned, but Henry opened his arms and asked, “Is it okay if we hug this out?” Charlotte cleared her throat and smiled. Jasper gave Henry a buddy hug, with a shoulder pat and sat next to Charlotte. She flared her nostrils. She’d told Henry where to start. And it wasn’t any damn hug!

Now, Henry began his talk to Jasper. He kneeled between he and Charlotte, but was looking at Jasper, who looked a little bit confused, but was paying attention. “Jasper. I want to make up for so much of what I did to you, and I realize that not only back then, but every lingering bit of fear or sadness that you have because of that is my responsibility to tend to and make it up to you.” Jasper furrowed his eyebrows, but his shoulders relaxed and both Henry and Charlotte noticed that small gesture. “I know that I’ve mentioned this before and you weren’t really interested in talking about it, but I definitely emotionally abused you when we were together. I gaslit you. I manipulated you. I lashed out at you. Sometimes, I was very conscious of my lies and my games, and sometimes, those toxic parts of me just came out naturally and unfortunately, you were the closest person to me and the most frequent target of rage and sorrow that had nothing to do with you. I’m so sorry that I did those things and that it’s still bothering you, to this day.” THIS would have been the time to ask for the hug, Charlotte sighted. She took that time to reach over on the table and take Jasper’s hand. He intertwined their fingers, but hadn’t taken his eyes off of Henry.

“SO, I’m going to use the best of my ability to try to help you to heal from my harm, if you’ll let me. But, I need you to know and to believe that I am not doing this because of Charlotte. I’ve meant what I said, and I feel what I feel for both of you, whether or not that gets reciprocated.” He reached out and cupped Jasper’s face and Jasper tilted his head, slightly, rubbing closer to it. Jasper’s eyes closed and he experienced this gentleness for a moment, something that he had wished for, for a long time. Henry glanced at Charlotte and she puckered up her lips and gestured. He looked confused, but moved forward, and stopped just at Jasper’s face. Jasper’s eyes quickly opened as he recognized how close Henry was to him and Henry’s eyes were closed now, but he was moving forward and Charlotte let go of Jasper’s hand for this moment that he supposed she approved of.

And it was everything that he remembered it was, but not as cold. It was like true love’s kiss, finally, from someone he had long since thought was his soul mate. He barely wanted it to end, but when it did, Henry simply leaned back and stared into his eyes, cupping his face. Jasper took a swallow. His mouth was dry and his hands were sweaty. He gently removed Henry’s hands from his face and reached for Charlotte’s again, hoping that she would accept it; that he hadn’t misread her silence. She intertwined their fingers, smiled softly at him and stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. For a moment, he didn’t think about Henry’s lips or how gingerly he touched him. For a moment, he was looking at his true love, his soul mate.

When Henry stood up to go to the other seat at the table, Jasper watched him. There it was again. The same butterflies, the same heart eyes. He didn’t know how it was possible to feel so strongly and deeply for more than one person, but he did. Both of these loves were true, and nobody would ever be able to convince him otherwise.

Charlotte said, “Okay… I love what you’ve done here. I think I’m ready to dive right in. The stacks can serve as a bit of trigger warning, but I think that I’ll read them in order, if that doesn’t make you feel like you worked on organizing for nothing.”

“No! Do whatever you need to do.” He shuffled his chair closer to her so that he could hold her free hand, and also have his arm around her. She’d told him numerous times that his big arms made her feel safe. He peppered her temple with kisses accordingly, through her reading and Henry sat, bouncing his leg and waiting for moments to answer questions, or fetch water, or whatever Jasper and Charlotte would ask or demand of him.

(Day 1) Dear Charlotte,

Okay… My thoughts are kinda all over the place, at the moment. It's’s taken me a long time to figure out what I need to say and I still don’t feel like it came out right or like I’ve earned the right to even say anything to you. Less than 24 hours, and you seemed to have obliterated me from your life, and I get it. I promise, I do. I don’t believe that it's forever, and I hope that it isn’t for long. You and I were building a life, and I was the one who came through and bulldozed it down by talking to other women and behaving like a down low hoe… I still promise you - I’ve never touched anyone else. I never would have. It shouldn’t have been so much fun to me to talk dirty and exchange photos and fantasize. My love for you should have been enough to tide me over, just like you said, whether or not I was in any danger. But… you’re my goddess, Charlotte. I never had faith in much, but I’ve always had faith in you. I don’t know how I will ever survive without you. You keep me whole and balanced and safe. Please, if you can’t forgive me, can you have mercy on me? You have no idea what I went through when I was in that place. Scratch that. I’m sorry. What I meant to say was I went through something and I don’t think that I’ll be okay if I can’t have you here with me to help me recover. You don’t owe me, not after what I did, but please. I’m begging you, Char. Please, don’t forsake me right now. Please, just save me this once more and I’ll never ask anything of you again. I’ll offer you every sacrifice. I’ll dedicate my entire life to this. Please. Please… don’t have actually abandoned me. Please, be coming back, at least to call me stupid and tell me off. I can’t handle this silence. I can’t handle this darkness. I’m so sorry. I promise, I love you. I’m sorry that I didn’t do it right in the dark.

Love, Henry.

P.S. I will never do anything to risk us again. I promise. Even if you won’t take me back. I need my friend for what is haunting my mind right now.

Charlotte slapped that one face down and almost started crying. “You wanna stop?” Jasper asked, concerned.

She shook her head and looked up at Henry. He looked like he was in pain. Even though she read it to herself, he had pretty much memorized those letters. He looked over them all of the time. He’d used them for key points to focus on whenever he went to therapy. He knew that she knew what he’d been going through now, and he wished that he hadn’t sprung that on her in the elevator. She whimpered, “Does Jasper know? What was in your head at the time?”

Henry shook his head, fighting off tears. This was his muck. He couldn’t cry right now. “I didn’t want to open up to Jasper about it. I was subconsciously worried that if I talked to anybody but you about it, you’d feel betrayed again.”

“So… He still doesn’t know?” She asked, incredulously.

“Whenever I said it to you in the elevator, that was the first time that I said it out loud to anybody but Ray. That was the first time I admitted it to someone who wasn’t there when it happened.” Charlotte reached for the second letter and Henry wondered, “Should I tell him now?” She looked at Jasper.

Jasper shook his head, “I don’t want to hear anything that might distract me from taking care of Char right now, unless I need to know it TO take care of her.”

“Later, then,” she said and already felt exhausted as she read on, letter after letter of the same thing in different ways. The handwriting got increasingly bad for a bit, like he was too emotional to really get the words properly. After a few days, there were more mistakes, some letters were written in pencil and the erase marks caused holes in the paper. Many of them were slightly ruined by tear stains. He always apologized for the condition of less than pristine letters, but his tone was everchanging. He was becoming very angry about things. His moods swinging, even in the process of writing, from being angry, to being apologetic and pointing out that he knew he didn’t have a right to feel that way.

Day 17, Dear Charlotte,

I tell you that I love you everyday, but you never get to read it or hear it. I don’t know if I send up a prayer, will you somehow know? They told me that you’ve moved out of state. They’ve told me that you SAID TO THEM that you didn’t want to be near me, see me, talk to me, or have to ever even run into me. You don’t think that’s harsh? You don’t think that even though I GROSSLY messed up and did something very, VERY wrong that remorse and repentance should be at least discussed? All of the years that we were friends and all of the years that we were lovers, I honestly didn’t earn any leeway for doing something wrong?

“Ugh… You didn’t just do something WRONG, what you did was selfish, destructive, a violation of my trust, and of the stability and integrity of the relationship! You write these letters like I somehow did something TO YOU because of how I responded to what you did TO ME!” She fussed, as she read. He knew that she wasn’t looking for feedback. She had done similar things throughout this reading project.

All of those years, I thought that no matter what we ever did to each other, that neither of us would ever do something like this. If you had done this, I would have forgiven you. Maybe, you might think that we both know that you would never do something like this, but we don’t know that for sure and you don’t know how hard it is for me. My responsibilities started at a very early age. I’ve had to always man up and take care of everybody around me. In my mind… I thought that I deserved more from you. I hate to say that. Now, I know that I was mistaken, by the simple fact that everyday you’ve been gone feels like dying. I feel like I agree with what you said that night… I should have died…

“I NEVER said that you should have died!” She shrieked and sniffled and pushed the letter away from her, not even wanting to read the rest of it. “That’s not what I said! What I said was bad and I’m sorry, but if that was what you thought I said all these years, I…” she stood up and tried to catch her breath.

Jasper jumped up and collected her from the table. “I think we’re done for tonight,” He told Henry. He cuffed her closely to himself and escorted her to her bedroom. After a while, he came back out and sat in his seat. He sighed and shook his head, “It was unfair of us to make her feel like she had to read any of this. She shouldn’t be crying herself to sleep for reacting in anger to something infuriating that you did to her.”

“I know. I agree.”

“What do we do? She asked me to not even sleep in her room tonight. She never wants me gone when she’s asleep.” He rested his face on his fists and Henry came around the table and rubbed his back, then laid on it and rubbed his arms. Jasper allowed it for a while, but then he shook him off and shook his head. “I wanna be available, if she needs me,” he said. He got up, left the table and made himself a little pallet outside of her room to lay down, charge his phone and get a little bit of rest.

Eventually, she came out of the room. Jasper was asleep on the floor and she immediately felt bad. For some reason, she thought that maybe he and Henry would spend the night together, but she might have known that as her official boyfriend, he would have felt obligated to try to be there for her. She leaned down and shook him a little, “Jasper,” she whispered. He was a pretty deep sleeper. She’d joke that she hoped nobody ever broke in, because they’d make it out with everything and might even be able to kill her while he slept. He declared that if he heard her in danger, he’d definitely most likely be woken up by that.

She tried in vain to get him to wake him up back she barely even got him to budge. Charlotte sighed, grabbed her fuzzy blanket and laid right next to him. If you can't beat them, join them. Where was Henry?

Charlotte found him still at the table, staring at the letters across from him. Whenever she appeared, he stood quickly to come to her. "Are you doing okay?"

She hugged herself and cleared her throat, “Jasper fell asleep on the floor and I can’t wake him up to get him into bed.” He nodded and moved quickly to help her out.

Jasper woke up as Henry tried to hoist him. “What are you doing?” He asked groggily.

“Char wants you in bed,” Henry said.

Suddenly, Jasper was more alert. “Char! You okay, Babe?” He found his footing and she nodded and took his hand, leading him into the room. Henry stayed at the door. Jasper was speaking softly to her. Henry couldn’t hear, but he turned to leave and Charlotte caught his hand. Jasper was climbing into bed.

“I didn’t say that,” Charlotte said, softly. “I was very angry and very hurt, but I didn’t say what you wrote I said. I wouldn’t say that to anybody, not even you at my angriest!” She sniffled. “I… was really mad at my dad. Whenever he left my mom, I felt like I needed to try to be there for her and she was like, ‘No, go be with Henry. You’ve already planned to move out…”

“My mom was alone in the house for years. My dad left and I moved in with Henry and she was there dealing with an empty nest and a failed marriage. He was in and out of her life and I was only checking in part time, because I had so many things I was trying to build. But, I thought those things were worth it, to maybe not be able to put as much energy into her as she might have needed at that point.

For me, I was leaving her behind, but I rationalized, because she told me to do what would make me happy, and I thought that was Henry…

Then this happened and I just couldn’t believe that I’d left my mom behind for someone who would do this to me. Somebody that I felt was obviously just like my father. So… I was definitely mad at Henry, but I felt like I was reliving a lot of my rage towards my dad and I guess that I melded the two in my brain and I snapped that night.”

“I left my mom alone during the hardest part of her life, so that I could build a life with you. It just… I was hurt and angry, but that’s not what I said and it’s important that you process this.” He nodded his head and moved a few tendrils of hair from her face. She sniffled again and he offered a semi smile. No matter what, Charlotte hated crying in front of people. She loved crying. Scientifically, she knew that if the body was doing so, it needed that emotional release, but she didn't like the misfortune of someone witnessing it. That made her feel exposed. She was fine to roam around completely naked in front of someone, but crying? That was just too intimate. Henry realized at that moment, even for him.

"You wanna come in?" She wondered. He nodded and when she closed the door after him, he got into her bed and offered her an embrace that she gladly came into.

Jasper was next to him, eyes open and just musing. Henry spoke. "I was done with them, that night. I knew before you even found out that I needed to distance myself from anything that might take my attention off of you. I talk about it in a letter, too. How I was ready to come home safe and MARRY you after the days that Ray and I had on that mission. I was gonna cut out Bianca, Chloe and every other girl that I was talking to at that time. I was gonna ask Jasper to start helping me look for rings. I just wanted to know that no matter what I did… particularly… what I had to do to make sure that I got back home to you… I needed to know that you could still love me."

"You had to kill someone to get back home to me."

"I did," he cleared his throat and said, "I didn't quite get over it. I'm still working through it. It doesn't happen frequently, but has happened since. It's never okay and I never even have an excuse anymore. So… I just deal with it." He shrugged his shoulders and Jasper sat up and moved in behind Char to hug her from behind and rest his head on her shoulder, pulling Henry closer to both of them and strumming his hair. "How are Jasper's hugs still the very best thing in the world, even from a person away?" Henry asked.

"Because he's Jasper," Charlotte said, like that explained it all. Jasper was happy to see that between the other two, it honestly seemed to.

"The hardest letters were the ones where I had to admit and apologize for being a shitty person. The threesome with the Woods Girls, some of my more detailed examples of rudeness to Jasper… and somehow the easiest ones were ones that I was having a full out mental breakdown while writing. It's like Char and Jasp could sense how distraught I was and they felt bad for me. We're working our way to the last of them. With every single one, I feel like I get a little bit lighter and like we get a little bit closer and that was ultimately what I wanted the most.

It gives a doorway for Charlotte to ask me things that she didn't know that she cared to know about and for me to explain things to Jasper that I wasn't man enough to admit to him back then. I feel like they have newfound respect for me, or at least they like being around me again and I'm just… Piper told me that my smiles look real again."

"I'm surrounded by fake people all of the time. I know a real smile when I see one."

(Caption) Piper Hart, Public Figure, Media Influencer, Founder of Pay the Piper Enterprises, Henry is Her Brother, She’s not “Henry’s Sister.”

Henry was in his office for a really long time, lately. Charlotte noticed it first, because she was attentive and suspicious by nature. Plus, Jasper spent the first part of most days asleep. She had fully recovered and went back to work at the lounge, but her hours weren’t as hectic as Jasper’s were. She went in for evenings to waitress and left before people got too drunk, unless she was singing, in which she closed the place on stage.

A typical day for her was to wake up for yoga and the sunrise, which the guys met her on the balcony for… They would talk while it occured, not even watching it sometimes, whenever they had a nice chat going. Besides, nobody there thought that anything was more beautiful than seeing the others’ features come to life by the light of that rising sun. Henry would tend to plants and he and Jasper would hit the gym and have brunch. Jasper would come home and go to sleep while Henry would get washed up and go into his office, and Charlotte would do various things around the house to make sure the vibe felt good for everyone, then either get out and get some sunlight, stay in and write music or read books, or go the the Man Cave and work on her project.

She spent a few days inside, so she noticed that Henry was spending way more time in his office than usual. She asked Jasper if he knew what that was about. “Maybe he’s taken in more clients to support you,” Jasper said. He said it casually and innocently, but Charlotte felt some kind of way about it.

“I’ve never asked Henry for anything and yes, I got really comfortable being in his space and using his things, but that was mostly because he OFFERS things. He says, “I’ll cook you something.” He asks, “Want me to order whatever you need?” He custom made a bedroom for me years before we even spoke to each other. So, for Jasper to say that to me, like I was some kind of additional burden on Henry or something was hurtful, but I didn’t dwell on it.” *Folds her arms.

Charlotte waited in the living room, in a pantsuit, with a book, and whenever Henry came out of his office, he paused. “Is something wrong?” He wondered. “What is it?”

She put her bookmark that she’d created of the dried yellow rose petals in her book and shut it, then sat it down and stood up. “Is it Jasper?” He wondered.

Charlotte approached, glanced at his office door and folded her arms, “Did you not have a client?”

“No. I had some other work to do. I usually just do all of my work in my office.”

“What other work did you have to do?” She asked.

“A few things concerning the show with the production team. Getting some of the house affairs reorganized with my assistant…”

“Like, everyday?” She wondered.

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Yeah, until I get it all sorted out. Is something the matter?”

“You’re lying to me,” she said, point blank. “And, I thought that we were beyond that. But, if we aren’t, I don’t see any reason to waste either of our time.” She reached for her book, and he reached for her wrist. She gasped when he touched her, flashing back to that night, even though this was completely different. This was gentle and warm and just as reflexive, but he wasn’t angry or upset, and she wasn’t as angry or upset. “Henry…”

He let go, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put my hands on you. I just… It’s a surprise, for you and Jasper. Okay? Sorry I lied. I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to hide stuff from you and I should have thought about the fact that I’m not the easiest person to trust. But, I’m never going to do anything to hurt either of you, again. I promise you that and hopefully, one day you’ll see that I’m telling the truth about it.”

“I don’t really like surprises,” she said.

“I know… but it isn’t like a SURPRISE surprise. It’s more like, I’m putting some things in motion that I hope everyone will appreciate, okay?” She studied his body language, facial expression, the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes. She believed him.

“Okay.” She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll tell me if I’m putting you out by being here, right?”

“I want you here. I want both of you here, for as long as you’ll stay. Don’t worry about putting me out. You know what kind of money superheroes make?” He smiled.

“Day 467. Dear Charlotte,

Jasper told me that it’s our 1 year anniversary. Well, no… He told me “Happy One Year Anniversary,” and got me some nice gifts. I don’t know how you can actually count and pinpoint an exact date to something that began as a Friends with Benefits arrangement. Like… At what point did it become something to count the days and at what point was it decided that a year was significant?

Like, a few months back whenever he said that since he’s been here for like a year, like everyday, he should just apply to be added to the lease, it sounded like a convenience thing. Why wouldn’t he say something like, “I’m your boyfriend and I’m here everyday, so we should move in together”? We’re best friends, but we also have sex and that makes things kinda murky. Now, he’s talking anniversaries and gifts and you know what, Charlotte?

Part of me is like, Rubberduck it. He’s good to me. He’s a complete GOD in the sack. Nice to look at. His hugs are like awesomely great and he will talk to you and listen to you about just about anything…”

“I agree with all of that,” Charlotte said and reached for Jasper’s hand, kissed it and kept going.

“The other part of me is like… Sure, he’s all of that, but you’ve been torn since day 1 and it is now… I just did the math on my phone and it has been 467 days since you left and I began writing these letters. I think… Maybe, it's about time that I stop. You will likely never return. I’ll likely never see you again. You’ll likely never read these and never know just how loved you actually were. You’ll probably always think that you were only loved until the point that you were betrayed and that maybe, I never actually loved you anyway. Because, who does things like that to somebody that they love? Maybe somebody that wasn’t properly taught to love, or wasn’t shown the healthiest of examples of it. It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is this…

When I got home that night, all I wanted was you. And, if you ever see this, I know that I’ll still feel the same. I’ll always love you more than life itself. But, it’s my anniversary, apparently and I have to try to love somebody else too. I have to try to move on. I have to try to be better in the future. I have a wonderful best friend who still wants me, even though I’m kinda highkey trash. I have to at least try to make it up to him, having been here to see me through getting over you. It didn’t work, but I won’t write again. I’ll have to just live with all of this. But, if we meet again, know that I’ll want you. Know that I’ll love you. Know that I’ll need you. I won’t ever find rest without you. I’m sorry that I caused this.

Goodbye, Charlotte.”

Jasper took a deep breath. “I can’t believe that we finally got to the end.”

“There’s another one,” she said, and picked up a heavy letter.

“No, there wasn’t. I opened all of them and sorted the whole first half before you came on board with reading, and I’ve been right here for the rest of the readings, too. That wasn’t part of it,” Jasper said.

Henry cleared his throat and said, “It’s new.”

Jasper frowned, “You wrote another one? Like… since we’ve been here?”

“Yeah,” Henry said. After the reading of that last one, Jasper didn’t know if he wanted to hear another one.

Charlotte slid it across the table and said, “You read it to us.” Henry took a swallow, nodded his head and opened it. He definitely stumbled along the way and he knew that he paraphrased a few things. Reading right off of the page wasn’t exactly his best gift, but he knew the heart and soul of what he’d written there for them.

“Day One. Dear Charlotte and Jasper,

It’s so silly to call this day one, but I feel like we’ve now all come to a point where whatever lies in the future, it can be a new start for the three of us. I messed up with both of you, one way more than the other and in a way, I messed up longer and harder with one of you, because I was still holding on where I had been told to let go. I didn’t really respect either of you, upon further self examination. What I thought was love was tainted in a variety of ways and whenever I did good and nice things, I had begun to treat you both like I treat my obligations - doing it for the sake of being able to say that I did something nice or good. Which, at the end of the day is self-serving and underhanded.

I had to lose every good thing that I had to realize that even if I could accumulate fine things, expensive things, high quality things, have every sexual exploit that my eyes desired and my mind could create and live what I would say has to be my best life… my life still wouldn’t be fruitful and I’d have zero joy, because I never knew love after you two were gone, and having both of you back in my life has been the hardest thing to process and the best joy that I have ever had.

I love both of you so much and I really am willing to spend the rest of my life, my time, my energy, my money, my moments… just giving back to you as much as I can for all of the love that you each gave me when I didn’t know how to handle it in a healthy way. I’m so much better now, and you two are a big part of that. I never would have went to therapy if I hadn’t hurt the ones that I thought I cared so much about. I never would have unpacked my problems and toxicity. I hate that it turned out the way that it did between us, but I have hope that what will turn out from here on out will be harmonious and beautiful. The three of us, on one accord, for as long as you both are willing to have me, if you’re willing to have me…” He came around the table and Charlotte was tense. Jasper was close to tears. Henry got down on one knee, in between the two of them.

“What are you doing?” Charlotte wondered, suspiciously and kind of terrified.

He slid two rings out of the envelope and Jasper started crying. Henry said, “I know that legally we can’t really… commit to each other the way that I would want us to, but I felt the need to do something important and have a show of how significant you both are…” Jasper offered his hand and Henry slid one of the two rings onto his finger. Charlotte chewed on her lip and stared at the other ring in Henry’s hand. “It’s either the three of us, or I leave both of you alone. I won’t try to come in between you two.”

“It’s not that,” she said, trying not to cry. She hated that shit SO MUCH. The crying shit. “What if you find that I don’t fit into this? That it can’t be the three of us? What if I’m the one that winds up… It’s just that I worked really hard, and I keep having nothing to show for it. Not because I’m not good at things, but because I probably need to be… easier to deal with and I don’t know to do that. Everybody eventually catches on.” She wiped her face and started crying harder, angry that she was crying more than the initial fear of being the one in this group that messes up the emotional/romantic flow of this union.

“We’re not gonna go it without you!” Jasper told her trying to make eye contact with her and taking her hands. “We won’t force you, but what you’re worried about, I promise you, I’m not letting it happen. You read those letters. You know what I’m willing to put up with and we both know that you’d never ever be able to manage that level of being hard to love. You’re amazing. You aren’t difficult at all. You have standards and you deserve them, and we’re gonna try to meet them, and if they get to be too hard to meet, we’ll talk to you about it. But, I’m never letting you go, if I can ever help it!”

Henry pulled her closer to him and strummed her face, searching her eyes for a moment and said, “If I ever hurt you again, whatever I don’t do to punish myself, Jasper definitely wi-”

“I’ll beat the living shit out of him,” Jasper said before Henry’s declaration could be completed. Shakily, Charlotte offered her hand for Henry to put a ring on it. And she closed her eyes, cried, and leaned forward to give Henry the first real kiss that she had given him in a long time.

#Poly Wanna #Nesha HD Fics #henry danger #henry hart #charlotte page #jasper dunlop #hd ot3

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demonicpiano · 5 years

Text

Cold-Blooded

RusCan Sprite AU

Everything is just a normal human AU except these guys called sprites are running around. Snow sprites manipulate the cold, heat sprites do well in the hot weather...yadda yadda. Our boy Canada isn’t doing so well. He keeps shivering but gets nauseous if he tries to warm himself up. Maybe it’s just a second onslaught of puberty. Either way, he’s not the only one.

Check it out on my AO3!

~.~

"It's a little chilly, eh?"

"It's winter, yeah."

Matthew gave his coworker at the next desk over a long look. No acknowledgement. He turned back to his own computer screen with a light sigh, flexing his stiff fingers before going back to compiling these ungrateful bastards'—oops, lovely reporters'—findings into a somewhat presentable column. He wore a thick turtleneck. He still shivered.

A glimpse around the cramped clumps of desks and lost souls bent over in their seats foretold nothing of sharing his blight. That guy was wearing goddamn shorts in the middle of winter. Matthew gave him a subtle shake of the head, although the tough guy wouldn't notice - he was too worried about bending over some newcomer's work and shaking his buttocks at her.

Matthew whispered to his adjacent sufferer-in-arms, "I'm going to get something warm to drink. I'll be right back, in case one of the bosses comes by."

No reply.

Matthew rolled his eyes, saved his work, then pushed from his chair. The only reason there were cocoa packets for the taking in the break room was because they were leftovers from a manager's party, and nobody wanted cocoa without marshmallows. And milk. Water would (very unfortunately) have to do. It was something warm.

Chilly hands clutched a cheap Styrofoam cup, shaking and sloshing around cocoa powdered-flavored water as Matthew slowly lifted it to his face. Instead of a nice wash of steam opening his nostrils, a slap of sweaty, undesirable muck came over him. He jerked away, waggling his tongue at the sink tempting him to dump the rest of the watery abomination out, but he decided to take it back to his desk and use it as a hot pack.

Matthew set the cup down, curling and uncurling his fingers. The cocoa's spell backfired; instead of relieving numbness, his fingers turned into noodles. At least those were supposed to soak in hot water. Not cocoa. Yes, this ruined the whole point of a steamy beverage. He was raised with standards. At least for hot chocolate. And men.

His shivering lessened to a nauseous quivering. Matthew crammed a lump back down his throat before tacking on his keyboard. He tossed more cocoa back as he started to get toasty under his sweater, regretting doing so as the taste washed over his tongue, but persevered through the rest of the dull day.

On the walk back home, Matthew tried to remember what he did for eight hours, but could not think of anything besides white walls of text. The snow banks seemed to give extra cold to the air, like Canada was a giant refrigerator and God just turned down the temperature dial.

Matthew eyed their grayed, gravel-infested lumps along the sidewalk, imagining too easily how the cold drifted and curled over his skin. Even under three thick layers, it was as if the cold was inside of him, posing as miniature ice cubes in his veins.

An uneventful walk, an uneventful handful of hours before bedtime. His flat was quiet. He kept the TV set low as news reporters poured over anything wrong with the world. Oh, and a local puppy adoption. Hey, puppies were the best.

Matthew violently shivered on the couch. He sent a weird look to the thermostat before relenting and hobbling over to give it a nudge for warmth. Back to the couch. Shivering. Thermostat again.

Oops, too warm now. Matthew shed his blanket and turned down the temperature a little. Back to the couch. Blanket intact. Weather time. It was going to be cold all week. Then a snow storm by the weekend. He bet the school kids were excited at the sound of that. He would muster up a smile at the thought of pretty sparkling flakes before relentless feet stomped it to pity if he weren't shaking in some kind of fit.

Matthew decided to keep the thermostat down, as he could always add more layers and more blankets, as opposed to shedding his skin when it got too warm. Under five blankets—yes, five thick comforters—he shivered. Of course he shivered. As if the blankets weren't going their job. Or he wasn't giving them warmth to give it back to him. Huh.

Matthew glared in the direction of his bedroom wall, twitching and shaking and quaking so much his darn muscles started to get sore. He plucked his cell phone from the nightstand, trying for the weather again, but this was so damn ridiculous, especially without his glasses, and the screen was just a blur of light jumping back and forth. He slammed the device back on his nightstand and flipped himself over with a growl.

He couldn't shiver all night. Eventually, he would pass out.

~.~

"Agh! Ow, oh, what...?" Matthew pulled his hands from the covers, gawking at his bone-white fingers. He was white, but not that white. He whipped his blankets away, putting his icicles-for-legs to the floor and hobbled around his room like the cold from the floor seeped into his feet.

"Ooh, man, this is bad," he spat between trembling teeth. "Just how freaking cold is it? This is starting to get ridiculous."

Matthew grabbed for a pot for tea or even more damn cocoa-water, something warm! Okay, he managed to fetch some milk from the fridge, hissing at the cold coming from there, like there wasn't enough in the world. He stared at the milk gently steam like an insane person would, tempted to stick his fingers in the flames below.

Hey, there was a good idea. Matthew lifted his hands, holding them a little ways to the fire warming his milk. He smiled and nodded to himself as the almost-non-metaphorical sheet of ice against his skin started to melt. Then it burned. He yelped and jerked away.

Matthew was not even close to the stove. Not that close. He twisted the knob to lower the heat, grumbling at his own stupidity. He had a roof over his head; he'd warm himself with his heating bill, not the stove top, for crying out loud.

~.~

However, Matthew did not get warm. He got ready for work with stiff fingers. Ate some doughnuts with hands made of ice instead of muscles and what not. Shivered some more. Sometimes the quiet flat was too quiet, but not in a suspicious-spy movie way. It was quiet in a 'damn, I need a boyfriend or a dog in here' kind of way. The teeth chattering filled the silence and rattled his nerves.

Surprise, surprise! It was a cold walk to work, too.

Matthew has been cold many times in his life. Sometimes it was fun. Other times, the snow or freezing rain soaked his socks, and that wasn't as fun. But he never, ever got freaking sore from shaking so much. He wondered how much of a workout was shivering. Maybe he burned (or froze off) plenty of calories from those two donuts he ate that morning.

"Oh, Mister Williams!" A middle-aged 'Can I speak to the manager' woman strode to his desk with too bright lipstick for the sorrow in her eyes. "Hey!" She nasally brayed, "How's the column going? Did you get my e-mail?"

"Um...the one about the cat pictures? Yeah..."

"Yeah?" She smiled, parting the sea of pink that shouldn't be on someone's face. "You like it? Don't lie, I can see that you do. Everyone's gonna love it. They all love cats. They better, anyway, providing you do your little keyboard magic, and move everything just right...!"

Matthew just blinked as this lady went on and on how one of the previous programmers left a stray code in the middle of her article last quarter, and they received a bunch of angry letters from people that had nothing better to do than complain that they saw 'greater than' and 'lesser than' symbols outside of a school classroom. He let out a shaky exhale, trying not to bite a chunk of his tongue off from his teeth trying to rattle up a band.

"Oh, honey!" The lady cried in a decibel that would make dogs whine. "You look so pale! Are you sick or something? Oh!" She pulled her scarf over her mouth. "I hope you don't give me anything!"

"Mm, n-n-no, I d-don't think s-s-so."

"I'll see about turning up the heat a bit for you, okay? Just...make sure you cough into your sleeve! I'll come by again to see how things are working out! I can't wait to see those kitties on the front page!"

That was new. Asking how Matthew felt. Usually the quick, 'Hey, how's it going?' did not warrant an actual response. Yet if he didn't toss a fast, 'Fine, thanks,' then he would seem rude. What a cruel world.

Matthew managed a stiff nod. Words were improbable.

His neighbor gave him a long side-eye, like the chills were contagious. Were they? Matthew didn't know. He almost started to type in the search bar, but his hand quaked as it hovered over the keyboard. A jumble of letters. He could hardly get himself to press the proper keys.

"Ugh," Matthew bemoaned his blight. He sat in his chair, glaring down his keyboard as his glasses slid down his nose. If only the keys would tell him they had everything and not to worry about his work; they got it. Another shudder grabbed a hold of him, and he squeezed his eyes shut to stay sane through its hold.

"Uh...hey," his neighbor leaned forward to eye him up. "Are you...going to be okay?"

"No."

"I think you should go home."

"I just got here."

A long look.

Matthew wanted to say his colleague didn't want to get sick, that's all. He twisted, planting his heels flat to the ground before pushing himself from his chair. A slap of heat came over him. He grunted, and a sticky sheen of dampness poured from his, well, pores. The world and the bewildered faces of journalists swirled around and around and around. "Oh, maple."

The carpet came for him in a flash of ugly stained blue.

~.~

Murmuring. Beeping. Constant beeping. Brightness. Matthew groaned at it all as his head lolled to the side of a...pillow. He was lying down. His eyes flew open.

"Oh...fuck!" He spat to himself in a hospital. A damn hospital. "No, no, come on..."

Matthew was surely sick, but not that sick. Jeez, those reporters are so dramatic. They probably clutched their pearls and flapped their hands in front of their faces at the sight of him passing out. He had to have passed out. How would he have gotten there?

"Oh, God, oh, no," Matthew warbled as a strong shudder griped his body. His teeth snapped together, and he let out a furious hiss of breath. "Damn it with the shivering!"

A pretty nurse came into the room, poking around, and tossed a glance toward him looking and feeling miserable on the bed. "Oh, you're awake!" She sang. "Hi! How you feeling?"

"Cold."

"I bet!" The nurse had her best service smile on, but her eyes screamed terror. "Your body temperature was down to thirty-five! Everyone's amazed how you were still up and about like that! So...just take it easy, and the doctor will be right in to...ahem, discuss things with you."

She left in a hurry. Matthew gawked at the ceiling as his insides were shivering now, too. "Thirty-fucking-five degrees."

(Ninety-five for Americans.)

"It's getting colder," he let out a whimper. Grown adult or not, he hurt. He was freezing from the inside out like someone stuffed ice packs under his skin when he wasn't looking. Maybe they did. Those bastards.

The vent in the ceiling kicked to life, slapping his face with a wave of heat. He moaned, squirming to get away without getting anywhere. "No, no, no, turn that off, please-!" Another sickening quake grabbed him and would not let go. He doubled over and gagged. The warmth kept coming.

Matthew drew in a sharp breath, snapping, and yelled in annoyance, pain, anger, anything cold-blooded inside of him, it needed to come out. A noise from the side of his bed crinkled. Then the IV bag leading to his arm burst, raining icicles on the floor. He lifted his arm up to gawk at the tube flailing uselessly from his skin.

Okay, kids, nobody is supposed to do this, yet everybody in movies does - however, instead of ripping it out like some kind of grunting barbarian, Matthew slowly wiggled the needle out of his arm with a little 'Ooh!' and 'Ouch, ouch!'

The tube started to fog in his grip, and he went to peel and detach anything between him and the monitors. Then he was free. Now Matthew could panic.

"Agh!" He ran to the window and smacked his palms to the glass. It was snowing. Wait, snow wasn't called for days. How long was he out?

"Mr. Williams?!"

"Sir, sir! We're going to need you to come back to bed right now!"

Matthew gazed at frost etching from his fingertips, fanning icicles into crystal white designs along the glass.

Nurses approached, "Mister Williams?"

One grabbed his shoulder. The man immediately recoiled with a cry of pain, grabbing his arm as his fingers throbbed against blue-purple skin.

Matthew slowly turned around, arms held up as ice peeked from his pores, running freezing water down to his elbows and dripping to the floor. The entourage of medical staff gawked with wide eyes, breath catching in warm puffs of fog as they met the chilly air. "I think I know what the problem is," he started as the window behind him crackled with frosty intrusion. "I'm made out of ice."

A moment before the window shattered, pouring over the sill as the winter wind flung itself into the hospital room. The staff screamed, throwing their arms over their faces and ducking for cover. Matthew turned to the gray sky, to the white mercilessly pelting the streets. The ice encasing his arms reveled in contact with the biting wind. He was so cold.

"We need the E.R. team in here, stat! Mister Williams?!"

Matthew stepped toward the window. His feet crunched on the glass shards, poking harmlessly against the thickness edging along his skin.

"Mister Williams!" The nurses screeched as he pulled himself through the window, and let himself be blown into the breeze.

~.~

"I can't find the coffee stirrers. Over."

Bssch, "They're in the upper cabinet, left hand side. Over."

A man sat at a desk, in a room completely to himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose before snatching the radio off his desk. "Toris! Eduard! The intercom system is for important calls and emergencies, not your personal hand-helds!"

A voice murmured from one side, "But it was important..."

"Hush!" One of the men hissed. His voice grew closer, "Uh...sorry, D-Detective Braginsky."

Ivan slammed his radio back on his desk, giving his head a shake before flicking a page of his magazine.

Various murmurs resonated through the radio, calls from around the city. He turned the dial down by a smidge. Just a smidge.

"A stray dog..."

"...my leg got stuck in a snow embankment...in front of the woman I was supposed to be writing a ticket to..."

"Not to sound stereotypical, but I could go with some doughnuts right now."

Static.

"...at the hospital. Some kind of, uh...icy intrusion."

Ivan picked up his head from his magazine.

He turned the dial back up in time to hear another cop relaying, "Yeah, like, some kind of artic blast busted into the medical center. A couple of people have frostbite and cuts from the shards."

"I hear you," Ivan said. "Wait, I'm on my way."

"Detective?"

"Yes. Hold on."

"Oh, the head detective's coming with us?"

Ivan threw on a thick wool coat and stormed out of his office. Various men and women hovering over desks and pouring over bulletin boards hunched and skittered away from his path. Their eyes pricked his broad backside on the way out.

A snow storm was well underway. Two cops popped their heads over their cruiser at his approach. "Sir! You, uh-"

"Move," Ivan said. "I'm driving."

"Uh, yes, sir! The keys are already in the ignition."

Ivan gave him a stupid look, as the vehicle was already rumbling with life and sputtering hot fumes into the air. Once situated, the pair gave each other mirroring looks of shock through the bars blocking the back seats. Worried murmurs and static came from the radio, but other than that, it was a short but extremely thick silence to the medical center.

Another cruiser and private cars haphazardly parked before the entrance, and as soon as the keys left the ignition, Ivan stormed the place just as icily as the building storm outside.

Medical staff bustled around, trying to help confused patients that crept from their rooms to investigate the disturbance. A frail old lady held up a shaky hand to a nurse and complained, "Dear, it's so cold! Won't you turn up the heat?"

Ivan pressed against a wall and snuck around the pair.

"Oh! Is that the police?! Oh, oh! What are they doing here?"

"Ma'am, please, calm down, there was just a mild disturbance..."

Another officer jerked his head to a certain room. "Over here!"

Ivan followed.

Glass decorated the tiled floor, blowing from the grand window lining the furthest wall. Warm breath came from his teammates' faces as their wide eyes scanned the perimeter. One asked, "What could have done this?"

"Who?"

A weird look.

"I spoke to the witnesses. They said a man by the name...Williams approached the window, and it burs into icy shards."

Ivan asked, "Are you sure of that?"

The officer gave him a good gawk. "Based on witness accounts! The nurses that weren't injured by the flying glass."

"And this Mister Williams escaped?"

"Yes, sir, they said he jumped right out this window."

"Well, there's no body there."

"Yes, sir. He ran off."

"He ran off? After jumping out a window?"

"Apparently."

"So you're implying he is responsible for the window shattering?"

"And injuring the staff members, yes."

Ivan curtly turned away. "Stay here and get the full story."

"Sir?"

"I'm going to bring this Mister Williams into custody." His fellow officers trailed after him. He barked, "Alone!"

"But there's a storm on its way!"

"I won't be long."

Another officer hushed, "Just...let him go. He's the only one that can handle-"

Ivan was already down the hall. Of course, the eyes of medical staff and patients hooked onto the scarf flapping against his back, waving goodbye to the place when he wouldn't. A gust of cold air and snow pellets slapped his face, pulling his coat from his legs as soon as he stepped outside. Dusk was approaching. He needed to be quick.

Shoe-marks stamped the light dusting of snow in the parking lot. Ivan paced until he lined himself below the shattered window. Glass crunched under his boot. His eyes followed down the side of the building, a two story drop, and across the parking lot. The streetlights shimmered against clumps of ice leading across the car pack.

Further, toward the street, the icy dimples morphed into foot-prints. A shallow snow bank, but someone must have fell into it and struggled to get up. The steps led down the sidewalk. Ivan darted down the road, eyes steady on the distant field still covered from the previous snowfall.

The field remained virtually untouched, except when Ivan plowed himself through the ever-deepening sea of white the further out he went. He slowed as struggling leg divots in the snow intersected with older trails until he finally stopped, glancing around sparse trees and a metal baseball cage some distance away.

Before Ivan could step forward, something snagged one of the tail ends of his beige scarf. It tightened against his throat, and he let out a quiet gasp. He twisted around to snatch the cloth away, but icy claws protruded from the snow and kept a firm hold.

"Mister Williams?"

The snow shifted.

A snow-caked head of what should be blond hair emerged. A bone-white face. Wide, hallow lilac eyes. Ivan felt his own face try to pucker into distaste. Pale lips cracked open, and the man hoarsely whispered, "What are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same thing. Are you Mister Williams?"

The man was deathly still - a statue frozen to the ground. Until he barely moved to answer, "Yes."

"Mister Williams," Ivan started, fishing a badge from his coat. "I'm the head detective for this town's police department. I'm going to get you out of this storm and get you warmed up, but I need to ask you a few questions-"

"No, oh, no, no!" Mister Williams released Ivan's scarf, but his arm stayed stunted into the air, claws of ice wide apart and poised to the darkening sky. "No, no, I'm in trouble, aren't I?" His voice stretched thin as ice grasped his throat, "I hurt those people! Oh, no, no!"

"Mister Williams-"

"I'm a monster! You need to get away. B-b-before I hurt you, too!"

Ivan's eyebrows fell. Less enthusiastically, "Mister Williams, you are not a monster. Do not say that. We just want to-"

"I said...get away!" A hiss of strenuous pain, and a roar of wind poured upon Ivan's head. He threw up his arms as a fury of snow burst from the ground, swathing him in cold, unforgiving white. He shook the clumps off his coat, and Mister Williams' backside peeked from his hospital gown as he clumsily scrambled amongst thick plows of snow.

Ivan sighed, flexed his fingers, and rolled his head. "Okay, then. Hard way it is."

He swooped to the ground, planting his palms into the snow. Mister Williams had not gotten too far, lunging about in a straight line. Icicles shot over the embankments and under his hands and knees. He yelped as his nails scratched onto the sudden layer of slick, and he fell forward, rump going into the air.

Ivan straightened and approached with slight urgency.

Mister Williams pushed himself up with a delirious shake of his head, tossing a frightened glance over his shoulder, and yipped. It was a short warning before he smacked a hand to the ground, and spikes of ice lurched for Ivan's face.

Ivan's arms cut through the night air, and a sheet of iced-over snow emerged from the embankment to catch his assault.

"What the..." Mister Williams cried in shock and fright as everything crumbled to the ground. "You're...you're...!"

"Mister Williams," Ivan dully sang as he came closer. The carpet of ice withered beneath his boots, "You should try to make this as easy for yourself as possible."

Mister Williams scrambled backwards against the weakening ice. He gasped as it melted, only to clamp in a frozen lock around his hands, gluing him to the dead grass. "No! I don't want to go back! I'll only hurt more people!"

"Oh? Because you think you're a monster?"

Wriggling intensified. Mister Williams managed to burst one of the clumps of ice around his hands and flail his free arm in the air. "Yes! Look at me! What else would I be?!"

Two waves of snow rose from the ground, but Ivan swished his hands. They harmlessly crumbled into loose sentiment. He fell on top of Mister Williams' legs, much to the other man's horror, and clamped icy fingers over his head.

Mister Williams wreathed and put his own palm to Ivan's face. "What are you doing?!"

Ivan took a deep inhale as cold sank into his skin, freezing his veins, and a smile played with his lips, "You shouldn't say that! Because if you're a monster..."

Spikes of ice protruded from his pale hair, and Mister Williams could only watch as frost etched across the detective's body...

"Then what does that make me?"

A sharp breath to scream, but nothing came as the entirety of ice encasing Mister Williams receded, right into Ivan's pores. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped into the snow. Unmoving, the whiteness to his skin morphed into a slightly more healthier pink.

Ivan released his clutch, and left Williams on the ground to rise to his feet. He tipped his head to the sky, and let out a long sigh, dispelling dragon's breath of ice into the air. The frost against his clothes melted, dripping back into the ground, and he, too, looked unlike a 'monster' anymore.

Ivan dug around his coat for his hand-held. "Unit one, this is Braginsky."

His radio crackled and hissed. He held it from himself until it died down. "Unit one, do you copy?"

Hissing. A disconnected, "Sir?"

"I found Mister Williams. I said, I found Mister Williams!"

"Is he alive, sir?"

"Yes, although unconscious. He will need medical attention right away. I'm bringing him in." Ivan tucked his radio back into his coat without waiting for a reply. "Monster," he mused with a scoff. "Just for shivering and blowing out a window? That is child's play."

It was a cold, nightly walk back to the hospital with Mister Williams in tow.

~.~

Beeping.

Oh, no, heart monitor beeping!

Matthew's eyes flew open.

Just as he shot to sit with a horrified gasp, something clamped onto his chest and shoved him back down. A hospital room. Of course he was back in a hospital room. His wrists were free, however, not tied down like some wretched creature's would be. His fingers gripped the stiff fabric of his cot as he zoned on another man dwarfing a visitor's chair beside him.

"Stay down."

Matthew complied with a skittish gulp. The man's hands seeped cold back into his skin, a moment before he relinquished himself back to his own personal space. "Aren't you with the police?"

"Yes. You remember me?" Almost lightheartedly, although the big man's smile did not meet his eyes, "We had a little bit of a romp in the snow back there."

Matthew awkwardly grunted, gluing his gaze to the ceiling. He was in so much trouble. He was probably going to get life behind bars. If evil science people did not get to poke him with lots of sharp tools, first. Ice picks, probably. He was made of ice. Or at least, it felt like it. A little less. Maybe his veins were filled with slushy ice water instead.

The man raised his strong eyebrows. "Mister Williams? Are you feeling okay?"

Stinging. Tears pooled in Matthew's eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know...I didn't mean for anything bad to happen." He scrunched his nose and turned his face away so he was not bawling in front of this near-stranger, "Ugh, my entire life is ruined. Ugh, it wasn't even impressive in the first place-"

A cold palm eased against the back of his hand. Matthew's fingers twitched against subtle prickles etching along his skin, "You are not a criminal, Mister Williams. You are a troubled man."

"I'm in trouble."

His company retracted his hand again with a sharp sigh. "Let us start over, okay?" He gestured to himself, to his soft cheeks yet cold eyes, "I am Detective Ivan Braginsky from the Police Department. You are in the hospital because you need help. Not because you are a monster. You are not a criminal. You are confused. That is normal. You just shot ice from your fingers. Again, that is normal. I will tell you why. We will help you."

Matthew lolled his head toward Braginsky. "Okay." He probably already was headed to the can. Minus well get answers. In a small voice, "Why?"

Perhaps it was his imagination, but a light clap of chill ghosted Matthew's cheeks as Ivan leaned forward, much less jaded and annoyed with the world. In near wonder, "You are a snow sprite."

"Um, what?"

"They are a species of humans that can manipulate and are manipulated by the cold-"

"I know what a snow sprite is."

Ivan stared.

"I've read up on the different kinds of sprites throughout my life. My brother's a heat sprite."

Ivan's eyebrows crunched together. "Ah. A heat sprite. Yet you...hm, that's odd. Are your parents...?"

"Both are rain sprites."

"Mutts?"

Matthew almost smiled. "Yeah, you can say that. Got a whole bunch of mixed blood in me, I guess."

"And out came the ice instead?"

The cold permeating the room didn't feel so bad. It almost felt warming, but not warm, in a kind sense. Matthew let out a long, easing exhale. "Yeah. Looks like it."

"You never...gave off any indication that you have these sorts of abilities?"

"Nope. Well, my brother always felt too hot to the touch. Like, if he hung on me too long, I would always sweat, and-"

"That's normal for heat sprites."

"Oh."

"Maybe it was simply years' build up. Or a late onslaught of growing up?" Ivan leaned against his chair, dragging his hand over his chin. Then a slight uplift to his lips, "You are an enigma, Mister Williams. When I got that call that some lunatic threw himself out a window in the middle of a snow storm, I was not expecting this."

"You were expecting some crack-addict, were you?"

"In kinder words."

Matthew found his own face pulling to a smile. "Thank you, Mister Braginsky. You're much kinder than the impression your stories give off."

Short lived bliss. Ivan fell solemn. Some haunt behind his eyes, "My stories?"

"I compile reports from around town for the local newspaper. I remember your name popping up a lot." Matthew tapped a finger against the bed, nonchalantly goading for attention, "There was a fire at the nearby quick stop last year. You were there. A generator, I think, overheated, and you...you 'sucked' the cold out of the air, and literally cooled it with your hands. It was amazing reading the reports. What you said about it. I could never imagine being able to do something like that. Amazing."

Ivan dropped his gaze to the hands folded on his lap. "Oh, that."

"Just 'that?'"

"I got into trouble from that. Mostly a slap on the wrist, but people say what they want to say in those kinds of situations. You're not supposed to make a big speculation of your powers around other people. Especially our type." Ivan's prominent nose curled as he hissed the words, "'Public disturbance.'"

Thoughts of getting thrown in a stony jail plagued Matthew's mind again. Scientists, with big, sharp scalpels-

"It's a solitary life," Ivan murmured. "Not enough people know much of anything having to do with us. Not enough people want to know anything. Our touch can and will hurt them. Who would you blame but yourself for your own loneliness?" He blinked, and picked up his head. A slight slap of cool air dusted Matthew's cheeks. There windows were not open. "Ah, that was a little bit too sad, yes?"

Matthew couldn't help a little laugh. "Yeah, that was real freaking sad. We are monsters."

"Now that was sad. I suppose even monsters feel it, too, yes? Does that really make us monsters, compared to those who deny it?"

"Ugh, stop it, you're making my head hurt."

Ivan let out a giggle. A giggle. The grin cracking along his pale face attracted eyes more than that gloom hanging over the room. "It is not all bad news, Mister Williams."

"Really, you can call me Matthew. And what is it?"

"Matthew. Matvey. No, Matthew. Yes. Uh, you're most likely going to get charged with the cost of window repairs."

"I knew that. That's not good news, anyway."

"You also hurt people."

"Detective, I thought you said you had good news."

"You're not going to get arrested, or tossed in some spooky prison."

Matthew's eyes went wide. "What?"

"The hospital is not pressing charges, as long as you cover the damage. Not as a criminal, at least, but there was nothing I could do to dissuade them from seeing it as an onslaught of mental health issues."

Matthew fell back against his pillow. "They probably are, anyway."

"Don't say that."

"Whoops."

Ivan scrunched his face for a moment, before it fell back into a sly grin. His hand breeched the mattress, crinkling the hospital sheet, "You live in a good place. People will take care of you. Maybe...when you come back...if you find yourself without a job, the station is always looking for honest people to share our stories. Journalists. Reporters. Programmers, too. Those are always in demand."

"What?" Matthew gasped, "Mister Braginsky, no. You can't. You shouldn't-"

"I'll put in a good word for you."

"Why?"

"I like your stories." Ivan almost said he liked Mister Williams. That would have been a bit too soon, wouldn't it? He just tackled the guy to the snowy ground and knocked him out, after all. Usually people don't make friends that way. Usually he didn't make friends at all. He decided to go with, "I always read my stories coming back to me, from you."

Matthew's hands curled over his own face. "Oh, no..."

"I think you even called me a 'hero' once-"

"No, no..."

Ivan grinned, "I actually don't live an impressive life, Matthew."

"Says you." A ripple of cold air drifted across the cot. Matthew shot the detective a look that was supposed to be threatening, almost as if goading him to 'Try me.' "I think...what you did...I thought that was impressive."

"Do you mean, what I did a few hours ago, or just in general?"

Matthew lightly smacked Ivan's shoulder, grinning, "Shut up."

Ivan found himself copying the mingling chills in the air. "I'm going to have to ask you a few questions about what happened."

After some thought, "Okay, Mister Detective. Ask away."

It took some guts to reach over and put an icy palm to another.

At the end, Ivan stepped out of Matthew's hospital room, realizing his interrogation was something more of a self-indulgent questionnaire. Snow sprites live solitary lives. Maybe this one didn't have to.

#oh hell yeah my dudes I like me some #RusCan #THE SIN BIN #hetalia au #hetalia fic #hetalia #hws RusCan #hws Russia #hws Canada #my fic

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incarnateirony · 6 years

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Re: 14.14, Ouroboros

So I said I’d write a post about this on Monday but I got more free time today to at least get started on churning out thoughts because, holy shit am I excited. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a modern day hermeticist, I’ve banged pots and pans about the Men of Letters and “Aquarian Star” before, but seeing the Ouroboros pulled up is just Y E S. I went to go find my mountain of serpent jewelry but realized I just woke up and ain’t nobody got time for that.

Anyway rather than writing like I have a stick up my ass I try to make it modern and fun so hopefully this won’t be too agonizing.

Let it be said I don’t think everything I could ever talk about will come up in an episode but Yockey has proven great at manifesting really abstract concepts and I can see how he’s been arranging for something like this.

Okay first point people can gloss off of a wiki article: The sign of the ouroboros is a fairly universal emblem. We find it in Egypt, people have drawn relation to Jormungand, there’s a lot of mesoamerican and related cultures that have their own version, there’s mention of it in Vedic texts, so it’s kind of everywhere, but hermetics and alchemy are probably the most recurrent gong-bangers about it, as well as adjacent thoughts like gnosticism.

More babbling than this is gonna have me put it beyond a cut because, holy crap batman.

OKAY: the shorthand version you probably know is that the Ouroboros of alchemy is a cyclic figure, the serpent eating its own tail endlessly, and the symbol of “all is one.”

“That the first day should make the last, that the tail of the snake should return to its mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind upon the day of their nativity.”

Every beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. *anonface NPC whispers in ear* Wait, that’s a song? *leans into whisper* Oh they used it on the quote board season 13?

Neat.

Anyway, I’m also side-eyeing “The Shadow” now and wondering if they chose that name for Jungian purposes, because Jung also tapped on the ouroboros. Just like alchemists, the thought of consuming yourself was thought to be like

bad gifs aside, in jungian psychology specifically, eating one’s own tail is also consuming the shadow, of which all people have, as a sort of primitive collective subconscious dreaming thing we all bubble up thoughts in and hide away parts of ourselves we don’t want. Or at least don’t want to admit exist or show to the world. (Carl Jung, Collected Works vol 14)

In Jungian thought it’s specifically part of attaining a true Persona, which you may remember me yelling about the psychology of a game series with a similar namesake.

Anyway, we consider this cycle of eating our own tail as somehow bad, but a lot of the symbolism came from, to the common eye, the immortality of serpents. They shed their skin and just kept growing. Obviously we know snakes aren’t truly immortal but that was the symbolism involved in it. The idea that all things cycle, that all things come to a full ring, but that the end of the ring isn’t a bad thing, just a new beginning, powered by the mistakes and advances of the old one.

So on the psychological side of things, the ouroboros is us having parts of ourselves that we don’t want to admit exist, that we take on, master, and start over again on a new journey, reaching the point of our birth to begin with.

Either way, it doesn’t just end at psychology, as one of the key matters of hermetics is “as above, so below.” Or as Gabriel put it in season five, “As it is in heaven, so it must be on earth.” Gabriel, 5.08

Just... and-or the other way around, it puts it into a standard of sort of... relativity, chicken or the egg.

The Ouroboros is just one of several transitioning forms of the alchemical and hermetic serpent, which includes Nehushtan the brazen serpent,

In close association to the crucified serpent, as well as Asclepius and the Caduceus,

Funny we just saw Dean on a cover wearing an Asclepius pendant but OKAY whatever.

Anyway a quick brush over these attributes is that the brazen or crucified serpent is a snake that has broken its cycle and rather than simply consuming itself to exist and ‘grow’, it climbs the tree it would have been staked on. The image of the small idol there is it climbing the qabbalistic tree of life, which has a whole bunch of associations.

Notice the handy dandy traveler’s guide fnear the bottom-centerish of the image that looks like a zig zag or arguably, a sharp snake. Yeah, that thing. Yes, I keep that around my desk. Yes, it’s relevant to me. Yes, my cat has puked on it and I’ve had to clean it up, sorry about that. But the notes all over the page should probably tell you just about the kind of ideas this tree and climbing it considers.

But, still likened to the ouroboros, once the serpent reaches the top of the tree, it descends in the form of a white dove from kether to malkuth, and sort of starts its cycle over again. Similarly, when not specifically the brazen serpent but rather the nailed crucified one, it’s a matter of transmuting the self by mastering the dark serpent, the other self, sort of binding it unto itself. The specific readings on this vary, but think of it like removing unnecessary chemicals that are mucking up an experiment, but not necessarily dividing from the shadow, as even the caduceus -- much less Jungian thought -- recognize the need for the shadow and things we consider not-good a lot of the time. It’s all about balance.

And that ascent to the divine also keeps it from being a stagnant cycle, but takes that whole “growth” part to another level, represented as a spiral, often tapping on the Fibonacci sequence, which is why Tool’s Lateralus album written all over with alchemical and hermetic concepts is sequenced to the Fibonacci spiral.

So I’m going to try to avoid getting into a ten billion page exposition about lengthy qabbalistic thought on the many planes, but you’ll notice one part of the image is its relation to the inner man (bottom right) -- part of that As Above So Below.

Also a lot of the time there are two snakes, that are arguably eating each OTHER to “grow” in their cycle. In this case, one has wings to represent volatile substance (”the bird of hermes is my name, eating my wings to keep me tame.”), while the other has no wings, representing fixed substance. But the creature(s) birth each other, metaphorically-marry, and slay each other in this circle of eternity, perpetual motion, but immobile, yet always in motion, recoiling on itself. It’s creation to order, and back to chaos, it’s the background radiation of the universe, it’s just this weird perfection-in-stasis, and yet, with the psychology aspect attuned, still room for improvement. Even the brazen serpent still has a cycle which basically involves passing go, collecting 200 dollars, and going back down as an enlightened dove to work its way back up this infinity ladder again.

Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

The path of the serpent, and the balanced polarity of the related caduceus, is all about attaining personal perfection and completion, manifest “so below” into the physical world through ideas like the pursuit of gold in the philosopher’s stone, but there’s so much more to it than Just That. It’s about the self, the Best self, but the journey never being over.

youtube

#supernatural adjacent #speculation adjacent #14.14 #steve yockey #my meta #pagan life #serpent #shadow #anima #souls

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simplyshelbs16xoxo · 5 years

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‘Simple Romance’ Chapter 5: Prologue to a New Beginning

thanks y’all for being so patient for the last chapter of Simple Romance! I’m so thrilled I’ve brought joy with this story!

@glitterkitty4ever

Molly sighed happily, snuggling closer to Sherlock in her sleep. He, however, had been awake for the past two hours. It was currently three in the morning, and the two had danced all night at their friends’ wedding reception as if they were the ones who had been married. In four months, they would be husband and wife. Sherlock had proposed to her just four weeks before the wedding, both deciding to keep it under wraps until the Watsons’ return from their honeymoon. He smiled as he thought about how it all happened, according to Molly:

“Sherlock, I can’t seem to find it,” Molly called out from his bedroom.

“Try the nightstand!” he shouted over the running water of the shower.

Molly dug through his nightstand drawer for his best man speech only to come across an envelope with her name on it. Curious, she picked it up, opening the un-glued flap. Upon slipping the letter out of the envelope, a small item slipped out, bouncing off her thigh. It landed on the floor with a light bounce. She picked up the beautiful vintage ring, mouth agape in wonderment. Her eyes flicked back over to the note in her hands written in his scrawl, and began to read.

Dearest Molly,

Over the past two years, I have dreamt of nobody but you. I had not felt so alone before, but only the thought of getting back to you has kept me going. I realise we may not be able to just pick up where we left off, as I’m sure you haven’t put everything on hold until I return, but I hope that your heart is still open to giving me another chance. I’ll be home very soon, darling. I simply can’t wait to see those warm brown eyes of yours again. I’ve forgotten the scent that normally surrounds you; I can’t conjure it up even though I know what it’s made of.

I find myself dreaming of a life together, silly as it may seem. I would have once thought so, but I know now that I no longer want to live a life of isolation. I need you, my love, and I desperately hope you feel the same. I’ve often wondered how your lips would feel on mine; I assume soft and deliciously warm. I digress. What I’m trying to say, Molly, is I would very much like to cohabitate with you. No, that’s not right. It would be a crime in itself if I didn’t confess to you that I would be honoured to call you my wife…if you’ll have me? I love you, darling. I even remember the moment I realised it. I’ve gone and mucked this all up, haven’t I? I hope the next time we meet, you’ll have an answer for me. If not, that’s fine too. I’d wait for you even if it took you until the day before my time here has ended. At least I’d have one day with the only woman I’ve ever truly loved.

Unconditionally yours,

William Sherlock Scott Holmes

“Did you find it?” he asked, opening the door to his bedroom. “I’m sure I put it in—“

“You were going to propose?” Molly asked, choked up from the sob building in her throat.

“Yes,” Sherlock admitted. “I had planned to send it to you through Mycroft a week before I came home. I never gave it to him.”

“Why?” she questioned.

“I was afraid; not only of your rejection, but what danger I might have put you in had you become involved with me.” He ran a hand through his damp curls, sitting himself down beside her on the floor. “I would very much like if you still considered my letter, Molly. I still feel the very same way, if not more in love than before.“

Setting the letter aside, and placing the ring in his palm, she smiled. “Sherlock Holmes.” She said his name with such tenderness, caressing the letters with her voice. Placing both hands aside his face, Molly kissed him gently, and whispered against his lips, “ask me.”

Relieved, he let out a chuckle, noticing for the first time the warmth and love that gleamed in her eyes only for him. “For some reason or other, you’ve chosen me to hold your heart. And I couldn’t feel more honoured than I do in this moment that you are so eager for me to be your husband. I admire your abundant strength and resilient heart, as well as your charm and beautiful mind. You, Molly Hooper, are the most wonderful woman I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, let alone loving. My love, my darling, will you marry me?”

“Oh, Sherlock, yes!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. She kissed every part of his smiling face, saving his lips for last, humming happily against his mouth as he slid the ring on her finger. “I love you.” It was whispered as he nuzzled his nose against hers.

“And I, you.”

Sherlock kissed his love’s bare shoulder, relishing in the feel of her skin against his, remembering how sweetly they had made love those weeks ago.

“Mm,” Molly sounded, opening her eyes to find him pressing kisses in her hair. “Can’t sleep?”

“This time for a good reason,” he replied.

“You know, I was thinking about the signs you pointed out; the ones that confirmed that Mary was pregnant,” Molly mentioned to him. “You’re good at spotting such things, except you missed an important deduction.”

“Oh?” he asked, his curiosity piqued.

“Mhmm.” She turned over to face him, taking his hand in hers, and placed it upon her belly. “I’m pregnant too.” Immediately she knew he had gone into what John described as buffering mode. “Sherlock?” Molly shook him gently. “Darling, please say something out loud. I know you’re probably talking in your head to me, but I need you to snap out of it.”

“Move it up,�� he finally got out. “Molly, we need to move the wedding up.”

“That’s all you have to say?” she laughed.

“Did I just?”

“Yea, I’m afraid you did.” She wasn’t upset by any means; only amused.

“This is wonderful! Darling, I can’t contain myself! You’re sure?” His eyes were alight with excitement.

“Absolutely positive.”

“Oh, God, you and Mary will be going through this together, which means—“ his eyes widened in horror.

“You two will have your hands full, I’m afraid,” she giggled.

“I don’t care; It’s more than worth it.” Sherlock settled his head against her belly, pressing kisses to it, already talking to their unborn child. “Your mummy and daddy will always protect and love you, little one.” It warmed her heart, as did the fact he fell asleep with his arm over her stomach, protecting the life growing inside. He was already becoming such a wonderful father to their baby, and she couldn’t wait for what lie ahead.

Author’s Note: If anyone's trying to figure out the timeline here, the stag night was six weeks before the wedding. The proposal and conception of the baby happened 4 weeks before the wedding for both Sherlolly and Warstan :)

FFN | Ao3

#sherlolly #simple romance #my fanfiction

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aithne · 5 years

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(Illume) Tomika's Letters, 8/23 - 8/28: Odyssey

8/23/1583 Akita, setting sail

Dear Yukiko,

As we were arguing this morning, trying to decide which direction to go, a pair of men--gifted with that handsomeness I am beginning to associate with Thrykreen--approached the ship, bearing between them a wooden box as large as a man. It seemed to be a coffin of some sort. They asked permission to come aboard, which was granted, and as they came aboard they asked for "Lord Tadaki", as well as Haku and Funitsu, all of our Ruling Lords.

They set the box down on the boards of the deck and bowed deeply to Tadaki. They said they had been sent from Lord Takumi to bring us General Takashi, who they had uncovered in their midst. They said that the Demonbane thought that we might like to give him the true source and free him of the spirit. He had been transported in a state of suspended animation that we could undo whenever we pleased.

They also said that he was quite susceptible to questioning. The one who said this had a sly smirk on his face, which I took to mean that the man had been tortured for what he knew.

We thanked the Thrykreen and set about moving the box down to the bowels of the ship, where we usually keep prisoners. after a bit of discussion, Funitsu took on the seeming of the Demonbane, and we woke Takashi. On opening his eyes and seeing the person he thought of as the Demonbane, he blanched and moaned. "Ah, gods, just kill me, please. I've told you everything I know."

Patiently, Funitsu said, "Tell me again what you've said. We need to make sure you aren't contradicting yourself." He held up a pair of thumbscrews (dug up from somewhere; this is, of course, a former Scorpion ship) and turned the wheel with a loud squeaking noise. He muttered, "I must tell the guards to oil these better."

The man turned even paler than he had been, and his story spilled out of him. Interesting points he touched on were these:

1. General Takuma is getting ready to attack the Scorpion Clan headquarters. (I muttered a quick prayer to the kami to keep my adoptive clan safe; my fortunes are now linked with theirs. I am not usually a religious woman, and I found this odd after I had done it.)

2. General Kenshin is in a little village named Nagara, east of Tokyo. He is heading up a project called Odyssey, which, he said, was a project to place the spirit that resides in Arenro into a Warresh. Evidently, the three spirits quickly wear out the human bodies that contain them.

(The mind reels with implications, my Lady. Take care of your Lord, as much as you can.)

Lin, Reiko's granddaughter, is helping him with this. The village is lightly guarded with swords but heavily guarded with Crane magicians.

He knew little else. Gryphon asked if he could dose the general with the true source, and took a vial carefully in one clawed hand. He paused and stared at the vial. "Could someone open it for me? Please?"

That accomplished, the evil sprit was driven out of his body and into Tadaki's orb, and Takashi woke. Panda was fetched (she'd absented herself while the others were threatening him with torture) and she looked through her own orb at the general's true form.

It turned out that he'd been changed into a form more attractive--his original form had been shorter and stockier, with short hair. When he was asked if he'd like to be his usual self, he readily assented.

It took a few tries, but we finally figured out that Reiko could dispel the Polymorph spell on him. She employed her usual method of delivering touch spells, and the man looked startled at the tiny shaman who stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

He was looking at her very strangely, but none of us thought anything of it. It was only long after he departed that I thought that he might recognize Reiko as his lord's daughter.

We sent Takashi, along with the pair of Thrykreen who had accompanied him, back to the Phoenix Clan. After a bit of discussion, we decided that the last thing the world needs is for the Dark Son to be incarnated in a Warresh body, and so it's off to Nagara with us. We'll go north and around Aomori, and then down the eastern coast.

Six days, if the wind is with us. Perhaps four, if Haku sits in the control seat and the ship takes on his characteristics.

Panda's dog brought her a fascinating device this evening. It would be interesting to find out which one of the women on board it belongs to, but nobody is owning up to it quite yet. At least, I assume it belongs to a woman...

To bed with me. Tomorrow is another day, indeed.

Love, Tomika

8/28/1583 eastern coast, near Nagara

The past four days have been relatively uneventful. We sailed around the northern end of the island and south, outpacing the Benevolent by a good distance (they'll catch up with us in a bit).

The only really odd thing I saw was Taura, the formerly male kitsune, standing at the rail, hands clenching it as if she were afraid she were going to fall overboard. Reiko came and led her away, back down into the hold of Shrike, petting her hair and babbling soothingly. That made me wonder--I've barely seen Taura for the past few days. Perhaps something is wrong with her? I am sure the shaman would tell us if there were.

We anchored just off the eastern coast, and began discussing ways to figure out where our enemies were and how to find them. Scrying revealed Lin in a cavern, probably beneath the town, the walls covered with protective runes.

Gryphon became excited about this, and stated that he wanted to bite Lin's fingers and toes off. Reiko said, "Ah, I need to talk to her before you do that, I think."

"Why? She made you sad! Ten toes is an extravagant number! She can lose a few!"

General Kenshin was in two places at once. His body was lying as if dead in a room that had many other runes on the walls, rules for warmth and light and postponement of decomposition. And his soul, evidently, was wandering around in a Warresh body, in a cavern that looks as if it might be near the one Lin was in.

Funitsu volunteered to go scout the town. We were scrying on him with his orb, which he left behind. Soon enough he came to the town, and saw that there were Warresh scattered around it, pretending to be boulders. They're very good at pretending to be boulders, being made out of rock and all.

In the center of town, there was a well with four Warresh around it. Funitsu looked down the well, carefully; about halfway down there was a magical shimmer. Using Air Walk, he went down to look at it, and determined that while nonliving things would pass through the shimmer (so the well was still useful), living things would be transported elsewhere.

He had found the front door into the caverns.

While he was doing this, Reiko went ashore and sat unmoving for a while. Then she began talking to something none of the rest of us could see. This not being unusual behavior for the shaman, we thought nothing of it until she came back and said, "There's a back way into those caverns. It's guarded by a Warresh. Which shouldn't be a problem for the librarian. Right?"

We rested and waited for night. When dusk fell, we and two of the Thrykreen--Jeron and one other, whose name I have not yet learned--made our way into the little village. The hole into the caverns was by the blacksmith's shop, and by his door was a boulder that wasn't a boulder. The librarian ordered it to stand aside. He asked if anyone ever used this entrance, and the Warresh told him that nobody ever did. "This is a thing that you humans would call a 'sewer'. I believe you consider them noisome."

Ugh. Just--ugh. Third in line for the Crane Throne, and I'm crawling through human offal.

Still, the temptation to surprise Lin and Kenshin was great. Greater than our natural aversion to the sewer, evidently. One by one we dropped down into the hole. Funitsu gave the hole a disdainful look and cast Air Walk again, and I convinced him to carry me down with him by the simple expedient of standing on the tops of his feet.

I think that's the closest I've been to my husband since I married him. It was most pleasant. Not quite pleasant enough to make up for the way that the cavern below smelled, though. Reiko gave Funitsu a look and muttered to herself as she waded through the muck, "Damned nobles. Too good to get his boots dirty. Useless."

We followed the flow upstream, and found ourselves eventually at a dead end, beneath what looked like it must have been a communal toileting room. Using a simple expedient of one of the door swords to go about thirteen feet upwards, we emerged in a large tiled room. All of us smelled quite strongly, and we availed ourselves briefly of some water so that approaching enemies would not be warned right away of our presence.

There were barracks attached to the toileting room, and we tiptoed through them, past a pair of sleeping guards. Reiko was leading, as it was her turn to have Detect Magic up, and when we reached a three-way intersection, she pointed down the right fork "There's a magical glow coming from down there, somewhere."

We walked down the corridor, mindful that Kenshin as a Warresh was wandering the halls. We came to a door with many raised sigils on it, and Reiko said that they were definitely Lin's work.

Funitsu called up Kenshin on his scrying orb, which revealed that he was in a three-way intersection, much like the one we had just come through. The shaman pointed out that there was another room on the hallway that didn't have magic on the door, but it did have magic leaking out the edges, as if it contained great energy.

We asked a Thrykreen to open the door, and there was Kenshin's body, just as we'd seen it, still as death. Unwilling to go into the room, Haku simply shot an arrow through the man's head, making his death-like state into real death.

Behind me, Funitsu muttered a very rude word.

The splitting of his orb into two views had collapsed, and the one view was now of Kenshin as a Warresh thundering down the hallway towards us. We could hear him coming, as well as that long, low call that we know is the Warresh call to battle. I heard Reiko say to Jeron, "Don't die, all right?"

(Odd. I had been under the impression she wasn't speaking to him.)

We engaged with Kenshin, the librarian knocking him down on the first try and Haku holding him in an arm lock. Haku is stronger than he appears, it seems. The rest of us took stabs at the Warresh, and Reiko poured a vial of the true source down his throat.

The soul fled--and evidently took Kenshin's soul with it. The Warresh crumbled to dust.

Suddenly, everything was flame. We turned and there was Lin, who honestly didn't look much like Reiko at all. Perhaps the fact that she had a different body than the one she was born in was to blame. The librarian ordered the Warresh to subdue her, but before they reached her, she dropped a crystal on the ground and stepped on it.

All of the Warresh in the corridor died, falling at her feet.

Lin sneered, "You didn't think I wouldn't have a way to take care of these things, did you? Stupid."

Unfortunately, that moment of gloating cost her life. Haku, who had stuck himself to the ceiling, dropped down on her and forced a vial of the true source down her throat. Gryphon really wanted to start nibbling on her toes, but Reiko asked him to forbear until she had a chance to talk to her. The grypon mantled fiercely but settled, crouching and staring at Lin, making clicking noises with his beak.

Unfortunately, Lin refused to talk to Reiko. Reiko wouldn't let the rest of us either kill or torture her to see if she would talk, which left us at an impasse. We could send her to the Demonbane, but what if that's what he'd want?

Haku solved the problem of Reiko balking quite neatly by borrowing the mirror from Panda and hitting Reiko on the head with it. By the time Reiko got back out of the mirror, Haku had slit Lin's throat and Gryphon was merrily feasting on her corpse.

The kitsune looked quite upset as she saw the bloody scene. I volunteered to make the corpse dance, but as there wasn't much there to make move, I settled for reanimating the head.

From somewhere, the kitsune summoned up the steel to talk to the head of her dead granddaughter. The upshot of their conversation was that the plan to capture Reiko originally, before Lin died the first time, was engineered by the Demonbane, who wanted to lock Reiko up in a room by herself forever. Isolating a kitsune is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on them, after all.

The rest--stealing Reiko's memories, binding her powers--was all ordered by the Demonbane, who Lin was in constant contact with even after she became one of Reiko's spirits.

"And joining Arenro? Was that ordered by him as well?"

It was difficult to see, but some odd expression crossed the corpse's face. "I finally found a way to escape my great-grandfather. He controlled me for almost my entire life--and after my death."

Reiko asked no more questions. I asked her, as the final question, how one would get into her room. Her answer was, "Simple. Just say my grandmother's true name--the one she was given at birth."

We looked at Reiko, eyebrows raised. She sighed, and turned to the door. "Takumi Reiko." The door clicked and swung open.

It should have been an unalloyed victory. We emerged mostly unscathed, with two enemies dust, and the treasures of Lin's room to plunder. And for most of us, it was.

I think, for the kitsune, the day was altogether different. I saw her looking down on the head of her granddaughter, hair soaked with blood, seemingly torn between pain and elation. Lin was, after all, her granddaughter. All things considered, she was not a very good granddaughter, but we love even the reprobates in our families.

I saw, before we destroyed the last of Lin's body, Reiko kneel and take a lock of Lin's hair. Sentimental creatures, kitsune are.

I think that was sentiment, at least.

I hope you're well, Yukiko. Do send a message when you have a chance--we are all anxious about your well-being.

With great affection, Tomika

Quotes:

*squeak squeak squeak* --thumbscrews, as Funitsu subtly threatens Takashi

"Hey, Reiko, we have an extra coffin for the next time you go into battle!" --Gryphon

"You all kitted out, Hiroshi?" "I've got a great bloody sword, that's all I need!" "And a butt flap!" --Panda and Hiroshi

"I am flush with a sense of adventure!" --Panda, about our adventure in the sewers.

"How many times have I come close to death because I went up and played with people?" "Yes, but that was real life." --Ray and Laura

"Witch heads, witch heads, roly poly witch heads..." --Derek

"She has ten toes, right? That's an extravagant number! She won't miss a few." --Gryphon

#so queued #gaming recaps: illume #D&D recap

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

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Life Story Part 76

Even though I was very excited about Sarah’s return, it felt like such a long time since she had been in my life outside of our letters that the idea of her coming back didn't seem real or something that was fathomable enough to get excited about. I mostly just focused on my garden. But the day was coming up where I knew that she was going to be back in Idaho. I was almost embarrassed. What if she didn't like me anymore? Neither she nor I could believe it. It was confusing because her coming back to Idaho in real life almost meant shutting down another kind of communication, being that we wrote letters to one another and expressed our thoughts that way. And that seemed strange.

Early that summer, my father decided to take us on a boating trip. He had his kayak, and there was another one for me he had decided to purchase. He decided to buy another small boat for David to use a flimsy plastic one, and, running out of money for some reason he bought an inflatable boat which I suspect he thought Allison could paddle and withstand the current with. I wasn't so sure, but he assured us all that it was doable. I had paddled in the kayak once before, that previous year around the same time (which I failed to mention), and it had been an interesting experience for me. I had paddled across the Snake River alone. I had been terrified, but I had done it anyway. It was in this area called Buffalo Eddy. It's this part of the river that suddenly is extremely deep, hundreds of feet down. The water there turns into a whirlpool and if boats aren't careful they get sucked right down. And on the other side of the river there is this Native American burial ground. In the 70's, some grave robbers went to the burial grounds at night and decided to steal a bunch of sacred heirlooms out of the burial tombs. My father said he worked out at the same gym as one of the guys. Anyway, on the way back, one of the guys got sucked down. People liked to talk and say it was a curse for having broken into the sacred resting place, which I am not so certain of. But it was hard not to remember or think about that kind of thing.

I had braved that area in the kayak. I didn't take my boat directly to the eddy, but I had to muscle it very hard not to be taken in by the pull of the water. It had been a health experience for me I feel. I felt a lot braver after having gone through it. This next boating experience wasn't going to be like that one. We weren't going to the same place. We were just taking the boats out a little ways from town where my father had one of his vehicles waiting to pick us up. My father headed our boating expedition in the really good kayak, and I followed behind. David was having troubles paddling, but it was Allison I was most worried about. As we were going down the river, it became apparent to me that she was struggling and there was no way this was going to work for her. She couldn't paddle in the inflatable boat – really a glorified pool floaty which instead was spinning in circles. Also, the little boat had a hole in it and it was starting to sink. I tried to go back for her. She had this desperate look on her face and I panicked. I tried to call out to our father who was way ahead of us. He couldn't hear me, so I cried out louder. I tried to call out to Allison, but she wouldn't answer me. While it was true that I was definitely panicking, everyone thought I was having an all out panic attack due to how loud I was trying to yell to get the attention of my father and trying to save Allison. I was worried about her drowning or us getting separated. But David and Allison both thought I was having an attack, and I wasn't. So nobody was answering me, even in the most basic way. I thought she couldn't hear me so I yelled even louder, and to her, fifty feet behind me, she thought I was just getting more insane.

Eventually my father heard us, and he yelled at me to 'knock it off'. I managed to attach Allison's boat to my own as we crossed to the other side and got nearer to the bridge that crossed between Lewiston and Clarkston. Our father went way ahead of us. I think he was pissed off at us. He was mad at me for freaking out, and he was mad at Allison since the flotation device was not something you could take down a river (the label said it was only for pools and recreational areas). We ended up getting to this very reedy marsh area full of slime on the sides of the river, and I realized that we couldn't all get through it. If we all were in our places on the boat, it dragged, but if we took it out farther, there was a current that would suck Allison's boat down. So we all had to get out of the boats and drag them in thick gooey mud, pushing through long grass for nearly two miles. It was quite a work out, and ultimately not a very fun experience on the river. Eventually, we got to the place where my father was waiting. He was on the phone with one of his online girlfriends. He was complaining about what failures we were, and how disappointed he was that he had tried to do something fun with us and we had ruined it. It made me sort of mad, but given that I was finally not pulling the boat anymore and I wasn't pushing through silt and muck I was relieved just to have my legs free. At least he wasn't screaming at us. We rested for a moment, laughed and sang songs from bad music videos we had found on youtube. We loaded the boats and stayed at my mother's for a few days.

This was around the time where my mother and father had it out. I can't remember how it all started. I just remember how it ended. It was at my mother's place. The sun was out and it was a hot early summer day. Lewiston is a very humid and hot place for Idaho. It has a much lower altitude and is more of a desert than anything else. Plus there is both the Clearwater River and the Snake River. I remember my father was in a poor mood. For some reason he felt my mother wasn't living up to some kind of obligation, and he wanted to talk to her about it in they front of the house as he was about to pick us up. He was hours late – as he usually is always hours late. I started getting ready to get into the car, packing my blankets and whatever I was currently working on into the back of the pick up bed. Suddenly my mother and father started yelling at one another. I was in the yard, and I don't even know what prompted this outburst, but my mother got pissed off, and started bitchily dismissing whatever it was that my father was trying to put out there. So then he got mad and they were yelling at one another, once again like it was still 1996. I remember being taken aback.

My mother called my dad some kind of name, was screaming erratically and then slammed the door and told him to leave. But he didn't. Instead, he decided to go right up to the door and start screaming that she was insane and an unstable bitch which was why her older daughters were crazy too (speaking of Roxanne and Maria), and I just sat there looking at him, knowing it was a bad idea, and a perfect example of a cheap move that would backfire, but being unable to say anything to stop it. My mother then flew out of the house like a frenzied wolverine, and picked up this door holding rock with two happy mice on it and the words FRIENDSHIP ROCK on it, and she flew at my father like a maniac attempting to bash his brains in. I belted out to my mother to knock it off! At that point because I didn't want the police to get involved or anyone to actually get hurt. Granted, I sort of saw that whole exchange, and a part of me couldn't blame her. Though I think my father's initial attempts at communication, though dickish had been somewhat understandable, his sticking around the door of her house screaming that she was insane (using mental illness as an insult), had been both a total prick move, and a poorly planned one. He was literally coaxing the wild bear out of her cave. He was on her property, and when someone says leave, you leave.

Anyway, my father avoided the rock. It was very easy to do as my mother is a terrible fighter. He was mostly afraid of accidentally hurting her, and suddenly had to get very real about avoiding getting hit with the FRIENDSHIP rock and restraining her attempts without accidentally causing her to hurt herself. But watching these two numb skulls try to get into each other's brains, my father psychologically, my mother getting straight to the physical brains, it was so pathetic. Though my self esteem left a lot to be desired, I couldn't help but feel that I was meant for better things. I remember in that moment looking over at the house, and just feeling this nothingness, this lack of empathy for the both of them. It was too pathetic for me. I looked up at the bleak ugly hills, and the dumpsters by the road, and I just felt so trashy. I let the fight sort itself out. Eventually my father was yelling obscenities at her, and she was slamming her door. I didn't even feel the need to take a side on that, but I talked with my father first about it since I was in the truck with him. He denied having yelled at her through her door – which was dumb because I was there and so were Allison and David and we all witnessed it – plus I knew him well to not be able to deny himself the last cheap shot word in. He eventually laughed it off. Later talking to my mother, she was more honest about what had happened. She was stupid proud of it actually. We did laugh though, that the rock had had the words FRIENDSHIP on it.

I ended up injuring my leg in the strangest way around this same time. It started with what might have been some kind of altercation between my brother and I. I woke up in the morning hearing David and Allison in some kind of fight. I felt nervous on behalf of Allison, so I went out there to see what was happening. I don't remember what the fuss was about, but I guess I thought I could end it in some fashion, or maybe David had said something that had made me silently furious. I don't really remember. I remember going out into the living room where the action was and everyone's eyes were on me, including my father's. I guess people saw me as some kind of make or break in arguments. They started continuing to say things back and forth to one another, but all eyes were on me. I ended up saying something to David, and he blew up at me, telling me that I always sided with Allison. I retorted that Allison didn't generally devolve to name calling and violence and as I said this, I attempted to sit down and then suddenly my left knee was in pain and I crumpled to the floor out of breath. At first I am sure it looked like I was having one of my attacks, but in reality I was stunned and in pain. My legs are strangely shaped. They aren't deformed per say, but they are very muscular, particularly my calves, and my knees stopped growing when I was young – so I have these really small knees, and they are very twisty. So what happened was my leg was twisted in this direction that didn't work for sitting while I was distracted with arguing with David, and I sat anyway and it tore some kind of tendon that holds your knee cap in place. It would never grow back and it still hurts vaguely at times, but fortunately the muscles in my legs are very strong and they just hold my knee cap in place anyway.

So, I had to hobble around in a leg cast that Carol lent to me for three weeks. It was harder to do things like water my garden, but I figured it out somehow, usually coming in with dirt and leaves clinging to the cast. Right after I fell to the floor, I remember my father gathering that it was a leg injury and asking me questions. It must have been weird, me being myself and then a split second later sitting in the middle of them circled around me confused while I shouted out in pain. I put ice on it, but found I couldn't really walk. Allison kept asking repeatedly if I was okay. 'Are you okay?! Are you okay?! Are you okay?!' When I had been younger, I used to yell and get angry when I was hurt and someone started asking me the obvious repeatedly, but I had recently come to this realization that if a person's heart was in the right place, who was I to chastise them? Anyway David then went after Allison for asking me the same question over and over and told her to 'shut up' and despite the pain, I guess I was incensed enough to tell him to let her say whatever she wanted. Which made him angry, and then the both of them had to go to school. Then I was suddenly in a quiet living room with my father's conservative talk radio playing in the background, as he got out everything he could find to fix my knee.

For a short period of time, my father was talking to a woman on the internet that he met, who ended up not being very mentally stable and became obsessed with him. She posted pictures of herself in her early twenties, and she was nearing her fifties from what I recall. For some reason my father didn't catch that mid seventies vibe off the pictures – though it was comically obvious, and instead decided to believe she was nearly fifty but somehow just looked fresh out of high school. He talked with her for a few weeks. She lived in Tennessee. She seemed to really interested in my father. After awhile though, he started getting weirded out. She claimed everything that he liked, was her favorite as well. She then claimed that she also used to play in a rock band, but then later changed the story so that she had managed one. It was getting weirder. She wouldn't stop making comments that my father was a spitting image of Vin Diesel. It was something that my father soon realized was some kind of obsession. It turned out that she had stalked Vin Diesel a little bit, not person to person, but through letters and trying to contact him, and eventually his people had kind of blocked her from trying as she seemed completely eaten alive by obsession. And she had seen my father's muscly stage pictures from a few years back on MySpace or some dating site or other, and decided to place that obsession on him instead. So after my dad realized what the situation was, he told her that he wasn't interested in talking to her anymore, and he stopped calling. She continued to call though. She began promising him stuff. She told him she had just bought an entire recording studio and was starting her own record company, and she wanted to sign him up. Which was obviously yet another big indicator that she wasn't someone he should be talking to. He eventually stopped picking up the phone, so she would just call over and over again. Eventually she stopped. But it took a few months.

Then my father started talking to this waitress whom he had been very close with in his twenties. He had always admired her but she had a boyfriend. It had been the eighties since he had last seen her – since she had moved out to Seattle. He found her on facebook, some new social media website that I despised because it was really boring and everyone really liked it better than MySpace. Her name was Patricia. She worked for rich and somewhat famous people as a live in nanny and cook. Most of her clients weren't insanely famous, mostly middle of the road television actors and athletes. She catered to very specific rich people meals – where everything about the food has to be perfect, or they would turn their nose up. My father was really excited about her, and about seeing her again after all these years. So after talking on the phone for a month or two, he traveled out to Seattle to visit her. He promised to come back with cool stuff, particularly for me since my twenty-first birthday was coming around.

I don't know all that went on, but I think he felt insecure because she had a very strange living situation with her ex. First of all, there had been a bloody gruesome murder on the property before she owned it, back in the sixties. Then a few years later someone else had committed suicide in the barn – which was still standing. So her house was kind of weird. She owned another house that was on the foot of her property (I think she inherited the property), and after she broke up with her longtime ex, he refused to leave, saying he felt emotionally attached too her property and couldn't imagine himself living anywhere else. So she went to a professional psychic who I guess told her that her ex was the reincarnation of one of the people who had been murdered? So she felt like she owed it to him to keep him living there, and she let him stay in this other house.

My father went into a super unique record store – the kind you mostly would only ever find in a city. I told him I wanted anything related to The Kinks and The Stooges. So he grabbed a bunch of this stuff, with my confirmation that it would be for my birthday. I was excited. But when he got back, he gave almost all of it to David. I don't think it was intentionally sexist. He had completely forgotten. As time was going on, my father's memory was getting worse and worse. So nobody wanted to tell him that he had completely bought the wrong stuff for the wrong people. Both David and I were confused. I could tell that David felt guilty, but he wasn't about to reject the gifts. I think maybe my father was trying to buy David's love. Allison had been given eighty dollars for her birthday. My father spent seven-hundred dollars on David's birthday a few weeks previous (their birthdays are close). Everyone in the house felt weird about it. Allison felt diminished like she didn't matter to my father at all. David felt really weird about what my father had bought him – because it was mostly spent on a four-wheeler. David had never professed to like four-wheelers at all. I think my father wanted to have a boring redneck son like many of his work friends, and it wasn't happening. David didn't really get a thrill from driving around and fast things. Since David's early beginnings, he really was bookish, more interested in collecting toys than he was playing with them. He was born to be an antiquarian. And it almost felt like an insult that my father knew so little about him now that he was getting older that he bought him something he would never use – and couldn't use. Going out and riding around on the four-wheeler would require my father taking the time out to go and do that. I don't even think my father liked four-wheeling come to think of it. The gift was oddly strange and impersonal, reflecting my dad's insecurities almost entirely.

What it came down to, was my mom spoiled David in her own way, and my father was afraid to be outdone by her. He told me himself one night when I was talking about it with him. So he couldn't emotionally control himself. He had to buy buy buy for David, thinking it would make up for something. There was this obsession with David's gender, that he was a male. In my father's mind, I think he felt like David represented him. David in the mean time, despite getting a bunch of stuff that just made him feel weird that he didn't even want – felt even more neglected and isolated by the gifts themselves. It was very dehumanizing. And he had to look at me, in tattered clothing with parents that couldn't even get me a social security card, and Allison who was just flat out forgotten by everyone, and feel really weird about his own place in the family. David felt guilty I think. He was coming to an age, where, despite his emotional and psychological issues, he wanted things to be fair. He had always been coddled compared to us, and fussed and fought over. It had kind of weakened him as a person – as he gained this deep seated sense of controlling entitlement, but at the same time he was feeling unwell about his position, and empathizing with everyone else around him. He wanted things to be justified and fair in the house. He didn't want to openly feel like an entitled little lord.

At the same time, he had mixed issues with me – since I was always approaching his abuses and letting him know they were wrong, and he couldn't control me. He still resented me for having been a terrible sister when I had been a preteen. I really had been awful, and it had deeply hurt him. Furthermore, there was never enough food in the house, and because of my bad eating habits, and my inability to properly know when I was full, because I was depressed and home all the time, and most importantly because my father didn't stalk the cupboards with anything we could ever eat, I ended up eating more food than him. And he resented me for that – saw me as piggish, and indeed there might have been some truth in that. I didn't know he was that hungry. He was getting older, and there wasn't enough food in the house for everyone. He recalls now that he often felt hungry at our father's. And you can't eat a four-wheeler, so.. Tensions had started building between him and my father since my dad had kind of abandoned him to date Trish a year back, but this, if anything, made things worse. It also didn't help that my father had this archaic idea that the father must beat down the son, else the son will surely rise and take his place. Like, every father has to prove to his son that he's more powerful than him, and in my father's limited thinking – this translated into some insecure need to overpower David, if not by buying him things then by demonstrating physical power over David. It was really weird and inappropriate. I mean – I suppose there are some situations where a son feels he must overcome his dad. I am not trying to diminish the universality of that familiar human narrative. But that narrative can take on many forms, in many cases totally symbolic. There doesn't need to be a clashing of swords or fists. David needed was someone to actually try to understand him, not beat him or surround him with trappings of family royalty.

I guess I can understand why my father was confused. His real dad had died when he was three years old, and he had grown up around his older brother Bob who had been a sadistic bully who was especially jealous of my father, and then his stepdad Art had spent a lot of time picking my father to pieces as a child in as cruel a manner as possible, making fun of his body and his face and his voice and everything about him as his mother, my dear Grandma Betty who was a typical meek woman of the fifties just looked down at her food at the dinner table in shame. Eventually Art tried to beat y father up and kicking him out over something very small, and from then on my father was mostly on his own to live among friends and relatives when he was only fifteen. My dad had started using alcohol and weed when he was twelve to cope with the constant bullying. He doesn't talk about this stuff, and doesn't like to define himself by this upbringing and maybe doesn't even see the significance, but I do. The more I grow to understand who my father actually is, the more I realize that he suffers from a very low sense of self worth going all the way back to his early life as a fifties boy who roamed the Lewiston hills chasing behind abusive male figures.

It perhaps isn't an excuse for who he became as a father to us, but it is also very cliché to expect people will just figure things out at a certain age, as if there is some kind of comprehensive guidebook on how to be a person, or what is right. I don't buy into that as much. I think we should always be introspective of our histories and our own psychologies, but not everyone is presented with life events that will cause them to reflect on life. Not everyone has the right brain chemistry to deal with things. So I don't blame him exactly – I mean, I have issues that won't go away, and there are problems but I know why they exist and I know what they are. My father isn't a monster. We all are just giant children, including myself. A person can't think a thought that wouldn't occur to them to think. It's wild what doesn't occur to people. What is common sense to one person is not to another. I was blessed with two broken individuals who probably shouldn't have reproduced for parents. It happens, and I try to make the best of that. They clearly cannot comprehend what they have done. I can see it in their eyes. Their realities and memories are really off, and kind of blank. I think there is a lot of humor to be gained from a rough childhood. It just makes me want to sigh exasperated though.

This all ended up on David's shoulders, as my dad simultaneously took David's gendered existence way too seriously, seemed at times to want David to become the father figure to him, and at other times felt threatened that David would overtake him in some way that went beyond anything that anyone in the house could understand. Anyway, my father's relationship with Patricia didn't go anywhere and she eventually wrote him a letter saying she thought he was a jackass and nonspiritual. He never understood what he had said to offend her, and though I think she was probably a little bit unstable herself, I am sure he must have said something. I can't imagine him not actually.

I was in the Walmart parking lot one day. They had just built a super Walmart in Clarkston, and we went to go get some groceries or tools or something. As we were leaving, there was a woman putting her baby in their car seat in the car next to us, which ultimately prevented me from getting to the front seat of the truck. I waited for a bit until she had sorted things out, and I slid by her carefully and just barely touched her door as I did that. She flew around and started screaming at me that I had slammed her baby's head in, and that I have violently shoved her. She began ranting at me, and coming towards me like she planned on beating me up. I can attest that her child was fine and I had no access to the baby's head. I had slightly touched her door, and I hadn't meant to. I apologized, but she only began screaming at me louder, saying she was going to bust me up and stuff. I mostly felt confused. I barely ever left the house, and this kind of anger has always been really foreign to me. When it comes to most things in life, I have a strong pacifist nature about me, and even though I have a temper it's far more emotionally driven. People I don't care about generally cannot make me angry – with a rare exception. I wasn't about to have it out with this lady. She started calling me ugly and balling her fists up. My father came around the other side of the truck and started trying to defend me, which I realized he did a very silly job of. He just came across as a douchebag. He immediately upon asking her what the issue was, started trying to come up with insults about her meth use and the tattoos on her body. He just kept talking about her tattoos, calling her something very clearly that I remember and can still hear ' Go On You Tattoo Bitch!'

They way he said it almost made me cringe and face palm. It was so Reefer-Madness somehow. He said 'bitch' like he was a little boy who wasn't supposed to say it. It sounded like the sensationalized voice of a man in the fifties narrating about the evils of jazz music on our youth. And his focus on her tattoos was hardly the point. For some reason my father hates tattoos more than anything. In his mind, I had been accosted, not by her, but by the fact that she was a woman who had tattoos. I guess he stuck up for me though, so that's definitely something, else I might have gotten punched in the face. She screamed at us as we drove away. In any case, I had to laugh, and feel lucky she had not succeeded in beaten me up. And I know this is really weird of me to wonder, but sometimes I wonder what ever became of her. I wonder why she was having such a bad day, if she was indeed on meth – if she found help with her anger issue or her drug problem (hopefully), or how her kid is doing now. I doubt she thinks about me much though.

It was early summer and Sarah would be back in Idaho come a few weeks. I remember reading the Joy Luck Club and wanting to eat Chinese food all the time, as there were some in depth details on food in that book that made me hungry. It was probably due to the fresh vegetables and the sun, but I was starting to feel much better.

My father came up and explained to me that while he was in town Billy was going to be coming to the house to fix the back porch from falling in on itself, something that had to be done often with our house – since it seemed that when houses get a certain age, nature wants to take them down. I was supposed to give him a note my father had left for him. I really didn't want to hand deliver anything to Billy whatsoever. I could barely stand the guy, but my father felt it very important to relay the information. Mostly it just made me nervous. I flat out didn't want to see people anymore. It was hard to feel ugly or obese and be around people who had seen me when I was younger. Not that I was ever thin.

And then he added, 'He might bring Zack,' and my entire world busted from it's frame. ZACK WOULD BE AT MY HOUSE WITH ME IN THE HOUSE! This was not supposed to be a thing! I tried not to show it, but my brain had suddenly dropped into my throat and I couldn't breath. I had to sit there trying to remember what normal people look like when they are sitting. Now I really didn't want to be there. I almost wanted to object entirely, but I couldn't. It was literally a small task that had to be done. There was no getting around it and they could mess up the project if I didn't tell them. Billy of course had no phone so there was no way he could be called. This really did mean that I would have to go give the note to Billy. Zack would most likely be there too. I would be seeing Zack again! I really truly from the very bottom of my heart wanted to run and hide. I had written him too many love letters that I never sent for him to be traipsing around my yard or the porches of my house! This literally didn't make sense. I had long given up that we would ever see one another again.

I had some strange ideas about Zack. I remember him talking very prophetically about how someday he would get me and runaway to wherever with me – the land of never-being-an-adult, or whatever. It didn't make any sense, but for years when I had been younger it had all seemed very real, plausible and made a lot of sense to me emotionally. I had staked my heart on it for a long time. And then we had parted ways I had held onto the idea that he would somehow be brought back to me. But then I matured. I looked around me, read a lot, and started to understand that things don't always work that way. People don't always get what they want. Sometimes one small imperfect thing happens and the whole puzzle falls to pieces. There is no way to prove anything had any meaning or significance outside of itself. Not that I didn't enjoy believing it did just the same. Knowing that there was a vast sea of indifference and randomness in the world around me didn't even fully dispel the idea that some things truly might be meant to be. But at some point, I had come to sort of accept that he wasn't going to ever be in my life again. And I was 15% open to the idea that I may ever fall in love again. I wasn't hoping to. I still felt like I was holding onto the whole Zack story. But it was beginning to become just that, a story. I even questioned if I ever truly loved him. He had never done anything for me, and ultimately, I had done nothing for him. It had been us finding each other at school because we were both weird, nothing more nothing less. It had felt like so much more than that. It had felt like a religious experience – but suppose I was wrong. All kinds of people have religious experiences that are actually nothing. Why should I have thought myself any different? We had never actually ever been a couple. He had told me he loved me a million times and there were moments. But in the end it never came to anything at all. It made me sad, but that was what it was, and I was beginning to believe that there was something better out there, though I could scarcely imagine it. I just felt it.

And then he was outside my house, there to dispel the myth. Obviously he was there to do a job. It was strange, but I didn't even feel like he knew I was there, or like, being at my house made him remember anything. I could sort of hear him out there talking to Billy. They both seemed like mangy creepers out there, but they were paid to do a job so I guess they could look however they liked. I was shaking and nervous. I clutched the note in my hand. I looked myself in the mirror to try to solidify the reality of my existence, and I headed on out the door towards the porch. When I opened the door, the two of them stopped talking and looked at me quizzically. I got a quick glimpse of Zack. He was on a ladder. He didn't seem to be really seeing me. I could have been wrong about that but I felt like he was just observing something that was slightly confusing. He didn't seem aware that he had tried to write to me before I left the alternative school stating that I was dear to him or that he loved me or whatever. I knew he knew who I was, but there was something 'hollowed out' about him. He was hollow. I quickly looked down and mumbled what I was out there for. Billy and Zack looked at one another. They both reached out for the note. For some reason I didn't give it to either of them right away. This was the one and only exchange I had had with Zack in what seemed like decades, and I was going to think about it.

I looked down at his hands, which were large and covered in dirt, kind of bony – some strange mixture of a million things. They were the same hands he had had in high school and I loved those hands. I felt a calm certainty when studying his hand casually opening for the letter in my hand. His eyes had changed, and I had to face it, they seemed rather dull. He dressed like a homeless person and he had a beard that I was totally freaked out by. But his hands were the same hands and I trusted them. So I carefully sidestepped Billy who was trying at this point to grab the note from me, and I gave it to Zack instead, who seemed more uncertain of receiving the note. It all was very strange, as Zack just handed the note straight to Billy, and in that moment I zipped back into the house. I ran into my room and shut all the doors in the house. I didn't know if the significance of what I felt was love or not. I knew it had been intense. Enough so, that I questioned if I was actually over Zack or not.

PART 75 - https://tinyurl.com/y9afl9of

PART 74 - https://tinyurl.com/ydfkomx9

PART 73 - https://tinyurl.com/y6vy2jeu

PART 72 - https://tinyurl.com/yaegqs9x

PART 71 - https://tinyurl.com/y6v3ln9a

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-70 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-70

#text #writing #life story

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