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faejilly · 1 year ago

Note

it can be a fic or meta, but if you're feeling inclined i would love to know more about your opinions for how alec's family gifts in your headcanon would present with even more eldritch elements to it?

oh, I have so many feelings, thank you lovely. Pls enjoy my version of bb!Alec (who is still much too old for his age because he's Alec)

Alec hasn’t even been Marked, still technically a fledgling rather than a Shadowhunter, when he learns that most nephilim can’t hear their weapons sing.

There’s a man come to see his parents, an important man, a dangerous man. But not just in the way nephilim are supposed to be dangerous, though the rhythm of his steps make it clear he can fight as well as any other Shadowhunter Alec knows. There’s something else though, something beyond his skill, something that’s not explained away by the way everyone in the Institute all bow their heads to his titles, Consul and Warrior and Sir.

Alec can hear him, something humming under the man's skin almost like a seraph blade dreaming in its hilt but off-key, a discordant whine that makes Alec want to cover his ears but he knows that wouldn't help; the noise isn’t really a noise, he can feel it in his blood, between his bones, not in his ears at all.

He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know what he should say, or to who, but he can’t let it go, it pushes in the back of his throat and it has to be let out.

He thinks if he tries to speak and it doesn’t work, the pushing will get worse, will hurt, will perhaps not let him stop, not ever again.

If that’s true, (it is true, he doesn’t know why or how, but it is, he knows, knowledge deeper even than the laws and runes he’s memorized from the Grey Book, the ones that make the power under his skin flicker and flare, waiting for the first Mark to settle it), he can’t do what his father would prefer, and tell his parents in private. He can't risk them choosing not to listen.

If he can’t be discreet, he has to go far enough the other way that he’s inevitable.

Luckily, the hum from the man is just enough that his seraph blade doesn’t like it either, hissing to itself in the hilt when it ought to be asleep, and Alec knows he can tell them about that. He’s worked with the Weapons Master, with his father, his favorite chore is tending to the adamas in the Institute's care.

So he waits outside the armory, plants himself in the middle of the hall when the man and his parents approach, makes sure the door to the armory is cracked so Master Amira will hear him too, might even come out and back Alec up, if he’s lucky.

He waits, and he doesn’t step back against the wall, and his mother is lifting a brow and his father’s mouth is too tight, neither of them impressed that he’s just there in the way like a mundane too stupid to move.

Before either of them can do anything, Alec falls forward, prostrating himself before the man, arms spread and forehead pressed to the tile, because there’s no way to say what he’s going to say without it being an insult, and this is the only way he’ll get the whole thing out before he’s in too much trouble to be allowed to continue.

The man’s footsteps don’t slow, and Alec realizes he’s going to just walk right past him, and he’s offended enough his chest burns, and he almost can’t feel the pressure in his throat anymore.

How dare he ignore a sign of supplication like that? He’s got worse manners than Izzy and no excuse for them at all.

“Consul.” He hears his mother’s voice, low but steady, and the footsteps stop.

She’s as offended as he is, Alec can tell, he can taste it in her voice, but no one else can ever taste her moods like he can, so he’s sure no one else knows. Yet.

But he does, and it’s enough. If she knew what he knew, she’d speak, and they’d listen, they’d have to.

So he’ll have to do as well as she would.

“Begging your forgiveness, sir.” Alec projects his voice as well as he can, for all he’s talking to the floor. He can’t raise his head, not even an inch.

The Consul doesn’t say anything, but neither does he move.

“Why do you not care for your blade, sir?”

There’s a shocked silence, and Alec can hear the weapons in the armory startle awake as his father reaches, and he can feel Master Amira’s axe-blades as she joins them in the hallway.

“What seems to be the trouble, sirs?” Master Amira’s voice is smooth and clean and Alec reminds himself to breathe.

“The Lightwoods are about to lose their heir,” the Consul answers, his voice tight and the hum beneath his skin twisting down a half a pitch, sharp and unpleasant, “unless they explain his behavior very quickly, and very well.”

“I do not think so.” His mother’s voice rises, as pure a tone as any Alec has ever heard from adamas and he realizes he has lifted his head to look at her, that everyone is looking at her, the pair of clerks who follow the Consul everywhere, someone in every doorway down the hall, a silhouette behind Master Amira he can’t quite identify; even in the glimpse he can get of the corner of Ops behind his parents, everyone has turned toward the sound of her voice. “You should answer him, Consul.”

The Consul’s eyes widen, and his shoulders go back, and that feeling of danger rises, rises, and then it’s cut off, a sharp clean silence as Alec’s father takes one, single, step, letting the heel of his boot hit the tile just so. “My son is a Lightwood.”

“Recognized and sworn before an Iron Sister, sir.” Amira adds, and Alec blinks, aware now of what the odd visit last year had meant, the woman in white who had laughed as if she wasn’t dressed for mourning, who had shown him her throwing daggers and grinned when he’d hit the target with them, and given him two pure slivers of adamas to keep, one for each boot.

The Consul has gone still, and his expression is unimpressed, but the hum changes pitch again, and his clerks look nervous, eyes moving too quickly for all they’ve kept their bodies still.

“Sir.” Robert speaks into the silence, and his voice is like nothing Alec has heard from him before. He’s still quiet, still deferential and polite in tone, but it’s sharp somehow, the glint of a knife as it is slowly pulled from a sheath, the light of a seraph blade the instant before it materializes. He’s not really asking a question. “Your answer.”

“My blade has been cared for by four generations of the Dieudonné line, his question is an insult to my bloodline that has earned no answer beyond contempt.”

“Then why is it crying?” Alec doesn’t lower his head this time, for all his neck aches from the angle required to look up at the adults surrounding him. “It is awake, sir, and in pain, and you are not soothing it.”

Master Amira makes an odd choked-off noise he’s never heard before, but the rest of the hall is silent, and the silence grows, deeper and thicker, until Alec realizes he’s looking at his mother again, that they’re all looking at his mother again.

“His words are True.” Maryse’s voice is a hiss, barely louder than the blade, yet it carries. Her voice fills the hallway, perhaps through to Ops as well, perhaps beyond; it feels to Alec like the whole Institute can hear it, this one soft note of revelation whispering between them all. Her voice still rings like a bell against something inside him, something he has no name for but recognizes as the weight behind that pressure in his throat, the balance in his blood that hears better than his ears. “You will answer, or you will be foresworn.”

“You cannot-” one of the clerks attempts to speak, but Master Amira snorts and they give up.

“My parents were very traditional.” His mother’s voice sounds normal now, calm and conversational. But it still tastes like copper to Alec, like blood, and the tension in the hallway doesn’t ease. He eases himself back and up until he’s kneeling. Until he’s ready. “When my brother was forsaken, they dedicated me to the Mortal Sword as the new Trueblood heir.” Maryse smiles, and Alec can feel everyone except his father move back, trying to get away from it. “I absolutely can.”

The Consul looks contrite, bows his head in apology, enough that Alec can feel the other adults relax, just a little.

But the hum beneath Dieudonné’s skin has turned into a scream, his seraph blade wails in grief and fury, and Alec is moving before he realizes it, one hand in each boot, a flick of each wrist, and two slivers of adamas go through the Consul’s throat before he can speak.

Shock holds them all still, the scream rises into a shriek, twists and throbs and fades, at last, though Alec can’t hold in the shudder while it lingers. The Consul’s eyes are still open, but darker than they were, than they should be, and blood is dripping from them as well as his throat, and his ears, and his nose.

He stays standing for too long, still and stiff, and then a drop of blood hits the floor, one, then another, and finally he sways, and falls. His mouth opens as he hits the ground, and a dark cloud rises from it, smelling of sulfur and steel and something green that Alec will recognize five years later the first time he handles angelbane.

The former Consul jerks, his joints moving wrong in his death-throws, something too sharp to each convulsion, something other.

“Fuck,” someone Alec doesn’t know breaks the silence two long heartbeats after the body stops moving. It’s only then that he sees the rune that has now appeared, a Circle just like Hodge’s, broken by twin spears of adamas piercing through it, one on each side.

No one moves for yet another heartbeat, and Alec can’t look away from the man on the ground, the man who clearly wasn’t just a nephilim, not anymore, not like the rest of them. The man he’d killed. He’d killed the Consul of the Clave, in front of witnesses, in the middle of the Institute, before his parents…

He can feel a shared look over his head more than he can see it, and then his mother’s hand is on his shoulder and his father is calling out orders and she’s leading him away and his footsteps are running to Ops and an alert alarm is sounding, one Alec can’t hear properly through the blood rushing through his ears, and he’s relieved when his mother takes them both to his room, and tucks him into bed, and shields his door with her personal rune as well as every warding rune he’s ever seen. He smiles at her in thanks, and lets himself go.

She’s there again when he wakes, and at first he can’t remember anything. He starts to move, and feels the tug of an IV, the rattle of the stand next to his bed shifting with his movement. He blinks, and his mother sighs. It sounds like relief, and he blinks again even as she moves close, reaches out and brushes his hair off his forehead.

“It’s been a long time since an heir manifested two blood gifts at once, especially before receiving his first Mark.”

Alec had opened his mouth to… he wasn’t sure, probably apologize for being lazy after committing murder and then not even cleaning the ensuing mess up himself, but that stops him. He shuts his mouth, swallows, blinks for a third time, trying to get his thoughts to line up into something more coherent than what?

“Is that what I did?”

His mother smiles, and it’s as far as possible from her expression in the hallway, warm and soothing and grateful. “That’s what you did.”

“Oh.”

He lets that sink in, lets the implications and conclusions and possibilities trickle their way through his thoughts. “Does that mean I’m not gonna be buried at a crossroads for killing the Consul?”

His mother winces, leans forward until her forehead rests against his, and he feels dizzy and lightheaded with something almost like joy as he recognizes what she’s doing as comforting, for both of them. “Oh baby, no.”

He closes his eyes and lets himself feel the weight of his mother being his mother before anything and everything else, and doesn’t even fight it when he feels his eyes getting wet and his skin flushing with relief and confusion and love and who knows what else.

“You will never be in trouble for what you did to Malachi.” That chime was back in his mother’s voice as she whispered against his skin, and it soothed him in a way nothing else could, resonating against his worries until they faded. “You saved the entire Clave from whatever he would have done in the Circle’s name, whatever he could have done to our Institute with the Curse Valentine had put in him when he was discovered. The Inquisitor is going through the entire Council, soul by soul, to make sure she finds them all, and it’s only because of you that she has the power to do it.”

Oh.

Eventually she lifts her head, and her eyes are damp too, he can see it when she blinks. “But you will have to go to the City of Bones and meet a Silent Brother and the Soul-Sword.” Her smile quirks, and he realizes there’s pride there in her expression, on top of a complex mix of emotions that don’t make any more sense than his own. “Though that might be less scary for you than it was for me at your age, if you can hear the Soul-Sword as well as you hear seraph blades.”

“I can hear all the weapons in the armory.” Alec corrects before he can think about it. “You can’t?”

His mother laughs, short and damp and beautiful. “Even your father can’t, and he’s the only Lightwood left who can call his weapons to him. You’ve got a stronger Blood-Gift than he does.”

“I do?”

His mother nods. “Your father asked me to tell you he’s sorry he didn’t tell you so earlier. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, either.”

What.

This entire conversation is so far outside of anything he’s ever felt before, and his bones feel too light-weight under his skin and he doesn’t understand. “Why?”

“Did you consider telling me or your father about what you heard from Malachi’s blade?”

Alec frowns, and his mother lifts a hand, palm facing him, stopping him before he can protest the change of topic. “I promise I’m answering your question, please.”

His parents apologized, and his mother said please to him, like she meant it.

He shook his head from side-to-side. “I knew you’d want me to, but.” He stops. He doesn’t know how to explain that feeling, that pressure that he still suspected would have broken him if he’d tried to speak the truth and been told to keep quiet. His mother’s fingers brush against the line of his throat, and his eyes widen as he stares up at her, as he sees a tear overflow and slowly slide down her cheek as she nods, just a little, and he realizes she knows exactly what he’s not saying.

“We taught you we couldn’t be trusted, so you had to act alone.” There’s that chime again, and another tear falling. “But that’s all going to change now.”

It’s a promise, he knows, he can feel it. “What is that?”

“That is the Trueblood gift. My father could make any vow magically binding just by witnessing it, and his father could tell when someone stated something untrue, even if they believed it themselves.” Her mouth quirked. “He called it tasting lies.”

“Can you do that?”

“No.” She closes her eyes, too slowly to be just a blink, and this time when she sighs he can feel the weight behind it. “I can hear Truth sometimes, ride it, verify it, make sure everyone else believes it.”

She opens her eyes, and there’s guilt now, and grief, dark and deep and endless. “Valentine recruited your father and I personally, and I believed everything he told me about what he was doing, and why, and because I believed him, because there was a Trueblood supporting him, a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise have let him be… let him get away with, well. Everything.”

Alec goes still. He can tell she’s telling the Truth still, and he doesn’t want to know that, doesn’t want to feel it, but he can, he does, and he’s never ever going to be able to forget what this feels like, this truth that turned his whole life into a lie that he’d never known he was telling.

He swallows down the nausea, the outrage, and waits.

“But when your father told me what he learned about what Valentine was really like, I couldn’t believe the lies any more. We turned ourselves into the Clave, and they only let us back because I rode the Truth when I vowed that we would be loyal to the Council, when I vowed on my bloodline, back to my parents and.” Her voice drops, lower and softer. “And down to my son, who is a Trueblood too.”

“And then you lied to me about it.”

“The Council forbid anyone from talking about the Circle.”

He gives her the look that line deserves.

She’s almost trembling, her hands held too tightly by her sides. “We didn’t want you to have to bear the weight of our mistakes.”

“But I do.” He looks at her, really looks at her, in the same way he looks at the weapons in the armory, and the hilts strapped to the side of visiting nephilim, and the way he’d listened to Malachi and heard Valentine’s Curse in his blood.

Alec can almost see the pattern of the fragile scaffolding of his mother’s emotions, suppressed down under her skin, forced to only exist between the fine lines of her plans, of her will and desire and ambition and pain, all constraining her gift into something so much smaller than it could have been. The foundation of that scaffolding seems shaken, it feels fragile. But it hasn’t moved, hasn’t fallen. She regrets how he feels, sincerely means to change, but she hasn’t, not yet. It’s all still there.

“Every single one of them has been put on my shoulders, and because you hid them from me I thought all that weight was mine, was me, that I deserved every harsh word and mistrustful look, and every single one of them was about you.”

Maryse rears back, but they both hear the Truth in his voice, the sound that resonates between his bones, that builds and forces its way out, that refuses to be silenced. That he is never ever going to try and silence. “You can go.”

She opens her mouth. He lifts his chin, and she concedes. “Amira will take my place with you until the next medic visit.”

He almost frowns, wondering what she means. “You burned through almost all your angelic energy.” She tilts her chin and he glances sideways at the IV bag, half full of something that isn’t just saline, judging by the color of the label. “And you’ve been asleep for almost three days.”

Three? he mouths, more to himself than her, but she sees it, understands it, nods.

There are circles under her eyes, and he can hear the exhaustion she'd been trying to hide when she speaks again. “Let us try and take care of you this time.”

He nods, accepting her peace offering for what it is, and she leaves.

He settles, waits until the door opens again to let Master Amira in.

Only then does he close his eyes, knowing he’s safe, knowing she’s there for him. He knows he’ll forgive his parents when they come back, knows that if they try at all he’ll let them be his parents again. But he’s not sure if they’ll ever earn back his trust.

But he can trust Master Amira, and he’ll make sure to tell Izzy the truth, make sure she knows exactly which consequences are hers, and which are not. He’ll do the same for Max once he’s old enough to talk, and they’ll never have to bear the weight of their parents’ mistakes the way he did, never be expected to fix everything the Clave and Circle broke just because they were offered the mercy of living.

He smiles to himself, pleased with that decision. He can hear Master Amira settling down into the chair next to his desk as he lets himself relax, can hear the soft sweet chime of his adamas slivers being returned, can feel the familiar low rhythm of her axes. He’s always thought they seem like contented cats, purring as they rest against their chosen partner, but today it’s like they’re purring for him, too, soothing him back to sleep.

#alexanderlightweight #jilly writes #shadowhunters #alec lightwood #maryse lightwood #robert lightwood #malachi dieudonné #valentine morgenstern plotting even in absentia!#jilly answers #tangential tuesday #eldritch angels #make very weird nephilim #just saying #not on ao3

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magpiefngrl · 7 months ago

Text

Create

@microficmay

Day 1: Create (I'm late, sorry!)

Unbetaed.

'It's a great idea,' Godric said, eyes closed. He was spread under an ancient oak, bare-limbed and languid, his brown mane glossy on the green carpet of the forest.

'Rowena says she's found the ideal location for it.' Salazar couldn't take his eyes off Godric. The dappled sun threw pleasing shapes across his young, warrior's body.

Godric raised his head enough to give him a sly look. 'You don't need me, though, do you? Rowena and Helga have got the academic side covered. And you, you are more scholar than I am. I am simply the sword by your side.'

Salazar didn't say what he wanted to. Nothing of what he'd felt, not a sliver of the intensity of feelings that threatened to swallow him when Godric slithered to his bedroll late at night, after some mead, or when he was lonely. He said instead, inadequately, 'You're more than that.'

*******

2. Resplendent

#This was written on my phone #Be gentle #Four founders #Salazar x godric fic #Is there a ship name?#microficmay2024 #my microfics #not on AO3

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shamy-fanatic · 22 days ago

Text

Hello!!

Considering I promised a fic for Halloween yet ended up not finding a way to finish it, it'll be a treat for my little group of Tumblr friends! This fic doesn't really have an end, so I suppose it's my first offense as an evil author. Whoops!

Enjoy!!

That cool wisp in the air is enough to make Sheldon turn up the thermostat. Amy walks out of her son's room, carrying said child along with her.

“Wow, turning on the heat?” She glances over his shoulder. 73° Fahrenheit. “It seems so. This is my descent into madness.” He glances at Leonard and the pile of costumes in Amy's arms. “What do you have?”

Amy smiles widely at the question, answering enthusiastically. “These are our costumes for this year! Aren't you excited?”

He bristles at the reply. “I thought we were going as Hulk and She-Hulk.”

“Well, we aren't and you're going to wear your costume.”

“But-”

“Don't argue.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Amy smiles, bouncing Leonard in her arms. “Good. Now, here's your costume. Go hang it up in your closet, keep it safe.”

Sheldon takes the metallic costume in his hands, admiring the shiny armor. “A knight's uniform?” He looks up at Amy, “Is it enlightenment or dark ages?”

She hesitates, the right answer on the tip of her tongue. “Enlightenment. . .?”

He pauses before smiling. “I love you,” he declares before heading to the bedroom to safely store away his costume.

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

“Honey, I'm home!”

Amy comes into the house, struggling to carry two big pumpkins and one small face pumpkin, as well as some paints and carving supplies.

She calls out to Sheldon, “Come help? Please?”

Sheldon walks over to help just in time to see a big pumpkin fall and break open all over the floor.

“Why'd you do that?”

Amy sighs, handing him a pumpkin, “I didn't mean to. Now, set that on the counter. Get newspapers and the tablecloth with stains while I get another pumpkin. And pick up that mess?”

“Why? It's your mess.” After Amy gives him a glare, clearly not in the mood, he takes the supplies from her and cleans up.

An hour later, Amy returns with a new pumpkin, almost slipping in the old pumpkin's left remnants.

“I thought you cleaned this up?” She grumbles, stepping over the pumpkin guts.

“I tried to, but I don't know where any supplies are.”

“Under the sink. You clean the windows and mirrors, you know this.”

“Oh. I mean, I didn't want to.”

She sighs, setting down the pumpkin. She bends down, rummaging in the drawer, then handing him paper towels and cleaning solution.

"Wipe it up and then we can have fun carving pumpkins.”

He frowns, though reluctantly cleans up the sticky half-dried pumpkin guts.

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

Leonard's only two. He can't handle knives for carving pumpkins. Yet, he still has more confidence than Sheldon to take out the pumpkin insides for him.

“Thank you, Leonard.” He gratefully pats his head before gently tracing a design on his pumpkin.

“I can't believe you won't touch the insides.”

“It's ooey and gooey, the two things I won't touch.”

She smiles, pouring out paints for Leonard's small fake pumpkin. “Well, I won't force you, then.”

Carving pumpkins is quite the event for Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. She has to carve her own pumpkin of course, but she also has to supervise the two babies in the room. Leonard has to be restrained before he consumes finger paints and Sheldon has to be tended to when he cuts himself with the carving knife and gets his pumpkin stained red.

"And. . . Done!”

Amy steps back, admiring her work. She glances at Sheldon’s pumpkin, giggling at his jagged eyes and random stabs of fury from cutting his thumb. “Quite the work, Dr. Cooper.”

“There's a reason I'm not the type of doctor with medicine. This is why.” He looks over at Leonard's mess of a foam pumpkin. “And his is better than mine. I want a redo.”

She chuckles, picking up Leonard to wash his hands off. “I think we all deserve gold stars. We can put out our pumpkins tonight before trick-or-treating,” She washes his hands gently, “And no, before you ask, nobody will smash our pumpkins or egg-slash-toilet-paper our house while we're gone. You'll be fine to spare a moment to go trick-or-treating with your son.”

He sighs, resigning. “Fine. But I'll let you know that next year I plan on going as my own character.”

“I can allow that.”

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

#shamy fanfic #amy farrah fowler #sheldon cooper #shamy #big bang theory #tbbt #my fanfiction #fanfiction #tumblr fanfic #Not on ao3

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this-is-krikkit · 7 months ago

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Hii! If you're taking prompts then can you plz do some levihan on this:

'I've been born in the wrong timeline and the wrong gender!'

'And you realized that after sixteen years?'

hello! you're the first anon i don't feel i have to apologize to for taking too long to reply to a prompt lmao, hope you'll enjoy this!

of swords and crushes (1.4k words)

tags: levihan, modern AU (coffee shop AU if you squint), game of thrones references but you don't need to be a big fan to get em, GOT-typical violence mentioned

divider source

“I’m telling you, I was born in the wrong timeline and the wrong sex!” Hange exclaims, trading their branded apron for their civilian coat and giving a last minute check to the coffee shop for any obvious task they might have forgotten.

Levi clicks his tongue at them, not for the first time that day, and gestures for them to leave out the front door with him.

“And you only realized that after sixteen years, while watching a blockbuster series about sword fights and magic?”

“Yes! No? I don’t know, I just know I want to be a knight!” they whine, using the tone they know their coworker can hardly stand.

“You want to be a knight, or you want to do one of them?”

“Levi! How dare you put your dirty thoughts into my pure and innocent mind!”

“I may not watch that shit show myself, shitty glasses, but I’ve seen enough screen caps and memes to know no one innocent watches it. Not with those casting choices anyway.”

Hange’s glasses reflect the setting sun and hide their eyes even as they grin devilishly at him, and he groans at his own slip up.

“Oh, you’ve seen enough screen caps to have an opinion then? Tell me, which one strikes your fancy, Neat Freak? The sadist bastard who tortures people into becoming his slaves, or the annoyingly rich golden boy who had three kids with his own sister?”

He just stares at them for a minute, then shakes his head as he locks the front door.

“I swear this show gets worse every time I hear about it,” he mumbles under his breath. “Either way, the one I like best has green eyes, and I think his father was in Lord of The Rings or something?”

“Oh… You mean, Robb Stark?”

Levi glares their way, because how the fuck would he know, again? But Hange, as always immune to his stink eye, just pulls their phone out and hands it over after a quick search.

“Here, is that him? Oh my God, you’re blushing, it’s totally him!” they squeal before Levi can even confirm it with words.

“Shut up and help me pull this down,” he requests, gesturing to the iron shutter they have to secure before leaving. “He is cute,” he still feels the need to argue defensively as Hange complies.

They chuckle and bump their shoulder to his when they squat down to help him with the heavy padlock that secures the system in place.

“He is,” they agree with a reassuring smile, before letting a sigh out. “Shame that he dies in season three though.”

“What? I thought he was, like, the main character!”

“Well, he is, until, you know... he gets his throat slit at his cousin’s wedding, right after he sees his pregnant wife getting stabbed straight into her belly.”

Levi picks up his jaw from the floor and turns to face his coworker, waiting to see if there’s any chance they could be trying to pull one on him —they don’t usually have a strong enough poker face to actually trick him, but they’ve surprised him before in the year they’ve been sharing shifts on this shitty part time job.

“She dies too, of course! Along with everyone who was with them then,” Hange adds right away, like that’s somehow reassuring.

“Why the fuck do you watch this shit, Four Eyes?” he asks, genuinely confused about it all.

“Ah, sorry, I know you’re weird about this stuff. We can talk about something else if you want,” they offer with a sheepish smile, scratching the back of their neck in discomfort.

“I’m not weird about it,” Levi corrects, dismissing their concern with a wave of his hand, “and it’s fine to discuss. I just don’t like violence for the sake of violence, or for shock value. Feels lazy to me.”

“That’s not all there is to it!”

He gives them a pointed glance, and Hange has the decency to blush a little.

“Okay, it’s probably a big part of it… But the plot does justify it most of the time so far, and some characters are really interesting and fun to try to figure out, I think you’d enjoy it! Besides, the fighting scenes are so badass, Levi!”

They launch into a mock choreography of what he can only assume is one of those scenes, and Levi doesn’t bother holding back a chuckle as he walks alongside them. He ignores the puzzled looks from people who pass them by, throwing a glare or two whenever someone dares to stare for too long with judging eyes.

“How do you have so much energy after the shift you just pulled on top of a day in class, for fuck's sake? I really feel like I’m the older one here sometimes.”

And alright, Levi does have another, early and demanding job to go to while other kids his age are in school, which might explain his own state of tiredness. But Hange truly is something else, stamina-wise.

“That’s because you’re an old soul, Levi, whereas I’m brand new and enthusiastic about what the world has to offer! And about swords!”

“Yeah, right. Why don’t you sign up to fencing lessons and get it out of your system for good?”

“Sure, let me give up this side job I only took for the fun of it, ask my imaginary butler to fetch my thousand dollars allowance from my billionaire parents and I’ll do just that!”

He bites the inside of his cheek to prevent his smile from stretching too wide, even though he knows Hange will be able to tell they got him with that one anyway.

“Point taken,” he gives in.

The walk back to their subway station is silent, a little less comfortable than usual when they’re both painfully aware that Hange’s now thinking about their own financial issues —the unfortunate reason they even took this job and met Levi in the first place.

He looks around the industrial neighborhood they’re walking, and spots two long rusty metal pipes hanging out from a bin nearby. In a fit of renewed energy he didn’t suspect he could have, he rushes over there, grabs them —heavier than they look, but he knows they can both handle it— and throws one at Hange’s feet.

“Here you go, Sir Hange Zoë,” he declares, feeling absolutely ridiculous as he stands in what he hopes looks like a sword fighting position —he sure hopes Hange will give him a break, it’s not like he has a wide frame of reference for this. “Fight me.”

They chortle, the sound immediately brightening the mood —and Levi’s day.

“You don’t have to do this, Levi. You were right, it’s kind of childish.”

He frowns and charges, hitting their shin lightly with his shabby weapon. Hange’s eyebrows shoot up on their forehead, and he can tell they’re slowly giving in.

“Levi! You can’t attack a defenseless maiden, that’s not gentleman-y at all!”

“You’re not a maiden, dumbass. And who said I’m a gentleman?”

Next time he lunges, they block the blow thanks to their own pipe and send him stumbling back —with a force that would surprise anyone else considering how lanky they look in their baggy clothes, and a fire in their eyes that would no doubt freak them out too. Levi, however, has known for months now that the tall nerdy weirdo look is only a mask hiding a fierce, passionate kid who might just be the strongest person he’s ever met —in more ways than one.

Sadly, they’re also much more —how did they put it again? Oh, right— enthusiastic about the whole fighting thing than he’d foreseen, and he soon finds himself having an actual hard time holding them off. One of their well placed hits shatters the pipe he was holding in his hold, and he thanks his lucky star that the combat has to end as he puts both hands up.

“Alright, I yield! You’re right, Four Eyes, you would have made a great knight.”

“Thank you!” they reply with a wink and a graceless curtsy.

Hange throws their pipe back into the trash can, before holding out their hand to ask for the some of the hand gel Levi’s already rubbing on his palms. He throws them a disapproving look, more for show than anything else, and gives them some —really, he’s kind of excited that they’re finally getting some of his neat freak habits, as they always call them.

“So, I won, right?” they ask him when they start walking again.

“Tch, I guess you did,” he grants them, not up to point out how questionable that statement is when really, breaking your opponent’s weapon has to be against the rules, right?

“Then my prize is... that you have to watch the next season with me!”

He spends the rest of the walk and the three subway stations they share trying to get out of that commitment.

(He fails.)

#levihan fanfiction #levihan #snk fanfiction #shingeki no kyojin #snk #aot #aot fanfiction #attack on titan #anon asks #asks #my stuff #do i need to tag this as got spoilers??#it's been a solid decade so let's not mmkay #not on ao3

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girlscoutbrownies · 1 year ago

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Fandom: School Bus Graveyard

Word Count: 1241

Summary:

What do people say again? Time flies when you’re having fun? They’d be right, except he’s not really having fun right now.

He’s not really having much of anything. He’s just… there.

Additional Notes + Content Warnings: Descriptions of disassociation, mild forest horror. Aiden is very much an unreliable narrator here.

This is not posted on ao3.

—

Aiden Clark does this thing where time flies sometimes.

That’s not really the right word for it, though, because saying that time is flying implies that he knows that it’s moving. He really doesn’t.

He blinks and he’s lost hours. He loses time. Yes, yeah, yeah - losing time. That’s the term.

( Actually, he’s been told that it’s disassociation. He doesn’t really care for those big words, though. )

Something’s off, he thinks, the first time.

His room is dark. It’s always dark in his room. Very, very dark. Dark, so that he doesn’t have to see the empty cans on his table and the stacks of cup ramen.

It gives off, automatically, the sense of someone is sleeping here, but they’re not living.

And maybe that’s corny, but is he alive?

He doesn’t feel alive right now. Alive people feel the mattress under their feet and the blanket over their legs.

God, his inner monologue is always kind of depressing. Seasonal depression, maybe? It is winter.

It’s always winter, though.

Maybe the seasons are changing, and he doesn’t know, because the sky outside of his window is dreary and sad and depressing and he’s not quite sure when the cold stops and the warm begins, because he doesn’t know what warm is like.

The monitor is dark, too. He thinks that sometimes, all he does is watch himself lay in bed, from inside some inner world where nothing can hurt him, the childhood monsters-in-his-closet latching onto him like some fucked up koala. No, koalas aren’t the ones that latch. Those are sloths.

He’s alive, actually. That’s kind of sad. Wait, no, it’s not. No, no, no, Aiden. Being alive is good.

( Sometimes he wonders what it’s like to die. It’s not in a suicidal way, though. Not really. )

He wonders if dead people still need to eat and live and breathe and order things at restaurants, except he’s seen enough movies and read enough books to know that the only dead people that do that are the zombies.

He wonders if zombies have to make eye contact and ask for consent before they bite people. But only alive people do that, because alive people know what it’s like to feel bad. Corpses don’t make eye contact.

Corpses don’t feel anything at all.

( If he thinks ahead, outside of this memory, he wonders if all of his intentional eye contact is just a weird way of him scrounging up whatever sense of identity he has left, a way of saying I am here and alive and you will have to look at me, or if it’s just another byproduct of never interacting with other people his age, not until Ben. Maybe it’s both, actually. )

He is alive. He feels his heart beating sometimes, a steady familiar song that he knows the exact tune to. You’re not supposed to hear your heartbeat, though, are you? Not unless you’re in a hospital, strapped to wires and stripped to the bone like a weird fucking mannequin on display.

That’s funny.

Well, it’d be funny, except he’s not laughing. That’s typically the baseline for something considered humorous.

He’s not doing much of anything. Right, what was he doing again? The blanket. It’s there. He feels the blanket, bunching it up in his hands. It feels fake, but he knows it’s real. The world isn’t advanced enough for something like that, not yet at least. It feels like something sheared too quickly and never processed and rough and it’s a disgusting horrible shade of gray and—

Right, what was he doing again?

Five senses. He can feel his veins twisting underneath his skin and blood flowing in an unending path to his heart to keep him alive. That’s not quite how you phrase it, he thinks.

He turns his hand. It’s pale and the blue lines stand out prominently, not faintly like a normal person’s would be. They snake under his bones like vines in a forest, grabbing hold of his bones and muscle because he can’t have anything, he’s surrendered it to rot in this room and he’s suddenly sharply thrusted out of this shitty memory—

( He doesn’t really like the forest. Maybe he did, once before, but a long, long time ago, he’d been told that bad parents send their children to the woods to die and that really, he should be grateful he has a house and a place to stay in.

The forest swallows up everything. It’s a wonder humanity hasn’t burned it all to the ground, honestly. Setting ablaze to his nightmares, the ones he has when it’s getting particularly bad and he sits in a dark clearing and watches nature reclaim its score. This was never their place to live.

It gets worse after the phantom dimension. Pillars of rock soaring into the sky, something that shouldn’t be possible because of the “laws of nature,” but nature follows its own set of rules, doesn’t it? It doesn’t care about us. He’d envisioned, the night after, when he’d finally managed to drift off, the forest grabbing onto Tyler and never letting go. Sinking into mud and dirt and decaying to the bone.

He doesn’t really like the forest. )

Right, he was doing… something…

Oh, he’s in bed. He’s in bed and the shutters have been pulled wide open, bright sunlight filtering through the glass. Wasn’t it just dark out?

“Aiden?”

His eyes snap towards the voice blocking the doorway. No, that’s not right. The voice near the doorway. His therapist told him to stop treating everyone like video game obstacles. Oh, well. Who was she kidding? It’s not like he told her anything, anyways.

Ashlyn is standing there, looking worried enough that he almost feels warmed by the concern. Almost.

They make eye contact, too prolonged and too vivid. He thinks he’s making her uncomfortable. That’s a shame.

Five senses. He can’t feel the blanket. It’s soft, isn’t it? He combs through his memories, knowing what it’s supposed to feel like. It’s silk or something, or maybe it’s fleece. He doesn’t know which one this is; they’re all the same colour, and he can’t feel. The texture is wrong.

It doesn’t feel like anything. He’s supposed to feel things. That’s his whole—pardon his redundancy—but that’s his whole thing. He’s the bouncy one, up and alive and too many feelings, to compensate for when the others are down.

Off topic. He’s getting off topic again. This isn’t a lecture, though; he’s not following a lesson plan. He’s just here.

“Um… are you… okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says with little hesitation. He thinks to himself that he really doesn’t care for speaking right now, but the familiar words roll off his tongue like…

He’s not that great with analogies. Similes. Whatever.

“You’re still in bed. It’s nearly two in the afternoon.”

Is it? He hadn’t realized time passed so quickly. Or, flew. Disappeared.

“Ben said that you were probably sleeping in, but, well…” She looks over, rather confusedly, at his unmoving form. He’s been sitting here for a while, hasn’t he?

“I’m hungry,” Aiden announces, pushing himself off the mattress. He feels it under his hands, which is good. It’s not the same softness as it should be, but it’s still there. It’s there, and this is real. He’s real.

“Do we have anything to eat?” The wood paneling is hard and cold under his feet. He wishes he’d gotten carpet.

It’s still cold in here.

#sbg #aiden rambles #school bus graveyard #school bus graveyard (webtoon)#aiden clark #tw disassociation #my fics #my writing #not on ao3 #forest horror #ish

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sociallyawkwardseal · 1 year ago

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Prompt: Fictober: "I don't think they will accept this."

Fandom: School Bus Graveyard

Summary: The kids are all going over homework. Tyler has some comments on Ashlyn's handwriting.

Content Warnings: None that I could think of!

Words: 302

Tyler’s eyes looked over the paper at the breakfast table; first, his eyes went over the printed questions from Mr. Walter—they were the same as the other papers that everyone had—then, his eyes went over the scribbled handwriting underneath.

To him, it was all nearly impossible to read.

“So.” He said, flipping the paper over to look at the back of it. “This is your paper…”

“Yeah, what about it?” Ashlyn raised an eyebrow, the bags under her eyes even more noticeable from the morning sunlight that streamed in from the window. “Me, Aiden, and Ben all did the homework this time, if you didn’t and you want to copy off of one of us, then you can.” That’s what we always do, at this point. She tacked on silently. If one of us doesn’t get a chance to do the homework, the others just… Copy and re-word stuff.

“No, Taylor and I did ours.” He shook his head, sliding the paper across the table and towards her. “Your handwriting, though. It’s pretty bad.”

Ashlyn could feel her brow twitch just a bit at the comment. Of course it was bad. Her hands hurt. Her head hurt. She could barely see straight from exhaustion. “Okay, and? You said that about it before. You don't have to say it again.”

“I don’t know if they will accept this, though. It's worse than usual.”

“Hey, my handwriting’s ass, too. Way worse than Ash’s unless I really focus on what I'm writing.” Aiden said, pulling his paper from his backpack. “I bet yours is just as bad.”

“Ben’s got the neatest handwriting out of all of us, I think?” Taylor said, a small smile pulling on her lips. She nudged her brother. “Really. Your handwriting isn’t that neat, either, Ty…”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever…”

#fictober23 #sbg #school bus graveyard #school bus graveyard webcomic #school bus graveyard webtoon #sbg webcomic #sbg webtoon #sbg (webcomic)#sbg (webtoon)#school bus graveyard (webcomic)#school bus graveyard (webtoon)#my fanfics #fanfics #2023 #not on ao3 #i have this v specific headcanon that aiden usually really concentrates on his letters and words unless hes super tired #so his handwriting is usually p neat #and that ashlyn has a similar Autism Scrawl to me before my hand started hurting too much to write w pen/paper #i feel like tyler's would be decently neat until the sleep deprivation/exhaustion hit #but he would always write w a lot of tension so his lead would snap often/his next pages would always carry the previous one's indents/#his wording would be pretty dark and heavy #i feel like taylor's would carry less tension and be a bit more messy than tyler's but overall still pretty neat #i feel like ben would have Really good pen/pencil control and write pretty lightly #esp after picking up art as a way to cope w... everything #before that tho i feel like he would write v heavy handed and dark but still pretty neat #logan. basic but neat. very simply printed letters w comfortable spacing.#able to maintain it decently even when sleep deprived/exhausted/hands aching.

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the-dearest-suffering · 10 months ago

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Hannigram Drabble

Is it worth the lives of all the meals in the future to live by his side? To keep his monster free?

Will can see the ink beneath Hannibal's skin as it seeps and infects him. The deepest black curls up through where they are connected, a simple silver band that Hannibal has just lovingly slid onto his ring finger. A soft kiss on the band speeds the spead of the ink, crawling and dripping up just past his elbow. Will's other hand reaches into his pocket, grasping a smooth and polished black steel band in the same simple style as it's silver twin. He grasps Hannibal's hand and slides it onto his finger, watching as the ink infects his other hand as well. Hannibal clasps their hands together, the softness around his eyes, around his mouth, and in his every touch betraying his emotions, even if Will couldn't see the love in his eyes.

Will's heart twisted in his chest as he marveled at this terrifyingly savage and beautiful monster that he had somehow made fall in love with him. He could feel his own face softening, his eyes meeting the killer's. His hands, still dripping with Hannibal's darkness, smoothing over the ring so lovingly placed on his skin, staining Hannibal's skin with his own darkness. Hannibal stole a hand fron his grasp to cup the side of Will's face. Will leaned into the touch of his soft skin, sighing softly and closing his eyes and dropping his hand, still clasping Hannibal's, to the side.

It was so selfish to place the lives of all those that will become a beautifully plated entree above his and his monster's freedom, but he couldn't care anymore. Not when Hannibal looked at him like that, like he was the only person in the world that mattered to him. Will had been helpless to his own mind, to killers, to Jack, but none of them could compare to how helpless Hannibal made him feel with just a soft touch. Noone, noone had ever looked at him like that, Molly had tried, she had, but Hannibal, Hannibal looked at him like he couldn't bear to tear his eyes away, lokked at him with such possession that he knew that he could never escape. Will couldn't help it, couldn't do anything but love him, let himself be kept, lean in to his possessive, obsessive grasp, let himself be drenched in the ink and gore of his violence, fall into his tight grip and never lea-

"Brangusis?"

Will's eyes snapped back to Hannibal, realizing that his eyes had opened and had been staring into the distance. Hannibal smoothed a thumb over his cheekbone.

"There you are, mangustėli. Where did you go, darling?"

Will leaned into him, stepping forward and breathing in the smell of rich cologne as he was enfolded into Hannibal's arms. Hannibal hummed softly and pet his hair gently.

"Tired, mangustėli? It's been a long day."

A muffled sigh came from Hannibal's shoulder, where Will was resting. Hannibal's lips twitched upwards as he continued to pet his hair. A soft mutter came from the same place.

"Hm? What was that darling?"

"Take me home?"

"Of course, mano meile."

Anything for you, anything anything anyone, say it and it's yours anything just stay here and i'd do anything anything for you, for you.

Yes, it's worth it.

#hannibal #hannigram #gay men #writing #fanfic #Not on ao3 #Sorry :(#the brainrot is real #Still have no idea how to tumblr #Idk if tags even do anything considering how fucked the search is #Oh well #marriage #Very sappy #Very codependent #Written at 10 pm #emotion #lovers #murder husbands #how did i forget

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ravens-words · 1 year ago

Note

Hi hello it's meee 😇 can i plss have prompt 40. “I love you. You enormously stubborn pain in the ass.” for tarlos pls, i have no idea in terms of plot and trust you completely so whatever you come up with I'm already in love with thankssss bestie 🧡

Here you go, bestie-

"Race you to the top?" Carlos stares at his husband like he's grown a second head. "What? It'll be fun!" "Fun?" Carlos asks, incredulous. "TK, that-" he points at the steep path, "-is not fun, it's torture." TK scoffs. "You just don't want to lose." Carlos raises an eyebrow, feels his hackles rising. "Excuse me, I'm not gonna lose." TK walks closer, stands nose to nose with him, and Carlos can't help but draw him close, pressing a fast, bruising kiss to his soft lips. TK humms, getting lost in the kiss. Carlos takes advantage of that. He pulls away, and in the next second, he's running up the hill. "Hey!" He hears TK protest as a laugh escapes him, "cheater." Carlos smiles, heart beating frantically in his chest. He feels alive. . "-ow." "Sit still," Carlos admonishes him as he gently examins his ankle. He winces at the bruising that's already starting to form. "This is your fault," TK tells him playfully. Carlos' jaw drops. "How is it my fault?!" "You cheated!" "You said you wanted to race in the first place." "You're just bitter I won." "And this-" he points at his ankle, "is what you get for gloating." . "Let me carry you," he offers for the upteenth time, hands hovering around TK's body as he walks sideways. TK just glares at him, though there's no real heat in it. "TK-" "No," he answers, the words final. "We don't want to end up with both of us laid up in bed for the rest of this trip." Carlos humms, wraps his arms fully around TK. "That doesn't sound so bad," he mutters. TK laughs, kisses him. "Let me carry you?" TK rolls his eyes. "No." “I love you," he whispers in his ear, then continues, "you enormously stubborn pain in the ass.” . It takes another five minutes, and nearly face planting, for TK to agree to Carlos carrying him. "When you said you wanted to carry me, I did not expect this," TK says, breath fanning across Carlos' neck and making him shiver. TK is spurred on by this, so in the next second, Carlos feels him place a feather light kiss on his shoulder. He tightens his hold on TK's thighs. "Stop that." Another kiss, this one just behind the shell of his ear. "Hmmm?" "TK." The scrape of TK's teeth against the underside of his jaw has him stopping to a halt. Gently, he lets go of one of TK's legs, then the other, turns around. Once he's sure his husband is steady, he leans down and kisses him, hard and unyielding. TK gives as good as he gets, and Carlos hauls him up into his arms, holding him tightly. "You're a menace," Carlos mutters against his lips. TK's grin is smug. Carlos kisses it away before he can get a word out.

#i'm feeling like writing a couple tarlos drabbles #expect a couple more (i hope)#tarlos fic #ejwritestarlos #ejsdrabbles #not on ao3

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platypus-whit-boots · 9 months ago

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I don't know why, but it's 00:47 in the morning and my sleep deprived brain brought back to the surface the memory of this old fanfic I read as a teenager about teen Wolf. And it IS old, like I was still in highschool kinda old.

It was this sterek human AU with both of them as single parents and a touch of found family in the mix.

I read it in Spanish on Wattpad (yeah I know, I have since redeemed my self by moving to ao3) because I ran out of fanfics in Italian about my hiper fixation of the time in said language and had muvet to Spanish. (I have since moved to English and I am starting to run out of content)

It was called "Stiles Stilinsk: sequestrador"

If you want to read it do so at your own risk. It contains: mpreg and adult content, the naughty kind.

#wattpad #fanfic au #fanfic #not on ao3 #we're dead and we love it #how do i tag this #i don't know #idk what tags to use #how do i tag again #dead inside #teen wolf #stiles stilinski #derek x stiles #sterek #derek hale

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rinniiart · 2 years ago

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|Leave your name on my heart|

Date outfit to break Adora's brain.

Not a first date outfit though, Catra isn't cruel.

She has some very important things to say to the blonde over ice cream. That is already going to blow her mind.

#shera #she ra #spop #catradora #Adora #Catra #Rinniiart #artist on tumblr #my art #she ra and the princesses of power #fanart #sapphic art #Leave your Name on my Heart AU #not on ao3 #yet

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imnotleavinherewithoutyou · 5 months ago

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of course i'm writing this instead of like, the stuff i'm supposed to be writing??

ahem.

——

Dean is throwing a bullpen session when the news breaks that Castiel Novak has signed with the Dodgers. He wouldn't have heard about it, except that Garth trotted into the room bubbling with enthusiasm.

"I didn't realize you were such a big fan of him," Dean says when Garth pauses for breath.

"His numbers speak for themselves," Garth says.

Dean settles back in, winds up, and spins a curveball in there for a strike. He flashes a satisfied grin at Garth before saying, "I don't spend much time looking at the numbers."

"Two MVPs," Garth counters.

"Yeah, that's impressive," Dean allows.

"D'you think it'd be too weird if I asked for an autograph when he gets here?" Garth asks.

Dean shrugs. "He's probably used to it."

From what he's heard, Castiel isn't exactly a Chatty Cathy, though that could be because he doesn't speak English. He's always got an interpreter on hand, despite having been in the States six years already. You'd think the guy would've picked up some English by now.

Probably a cold fish.

Meanwhile, Garth says, "Yeah, you're right."

"If you're embarrassed, you could always say it's for a nephew or something," Dean suggests.

"Nah, I couldn't lie to him," Garth says, scandalized.

Dean huffs a laugh at that. "All right, do what you want. Now skedaddle and quit distracting me."

"Yeah, okay. Catch you later, alligator!"

——

The thing is, not many players catch Dean's eye anymore.

He's been in the league for a decade and a half, and he's seen everything. Strange-ass batting stances that somehow still work. A switch pitcher. A sidewinder who dipped so far down on his delivery that his knuckles nearly scraped the fucking mound.

But he's never seen a two-way player like Castiel Novak.

Granted, teams haven't ever really let pitchers hit every day. Hell, it wasn't even possible in the NL until they changed the rules and adopted the DH.

That's why the Dodgers never had a chance at signing Castiel when he was first coming over to the States.

Not that Dean had been paying any attention at the time. He'd been skeptical like most other players, a little curious to see whether this experiment would work out.

But then Castiel had seemed pretty average in his first season—a pretty good batter but an average-ass pitcher—and then he'd gotten sidelined from pitching by an injury, and Dean had put the fabled two-way-player out of mind.

In the last three years, though, Castiel has forced his way to the top of the conversation in baseball, everyone talking about what a unicorn he is for being able to pitch and hit at elite levels, and that amount of praise, of overexposure, has always rubbed Dean the wrong way. Sure, Castiel won MVP two of the three years—and came in second the year he didn't win it—but still. It's a lot of talk, and Dean hasn't really even watched him play.

Mostly, he's just been catching the occasional dumb New Balance commercials, which—he can't really judge, he's done some dumb ads himself because the money was stupid good, but hey, he's never claimed he wasn't hypocritical.

When Castiel first enters the locker room for spring training, everyone's already there. Such a diva move, arriving fashionably late. All eyes turn his way, and he surveys the room, looking almost bored.

"Hello," the man at his elbow says, half a step behind him. Needlessly, he adds, "This is Castiel. Nice to meet you all."

The accent throws Dean off for a second, because he's never heard someone from Enoch speak with a British accent.

Castiel starts moving toward a locker in the corner of the room that has been set aside for him, his new jersey hanging up in front of it, and his interpreter follows him, nodding at the team members that they pass.

Dean's well across the room from Castiel's locker, so he's free to catch Benny's eye after they've passed him by and raise his eyebrows. Benny only grins, tilting his head toward the exit.

Dean finishes doing up his cleats and jogs off toward the tunnel, meeting Benny there.

As they head toward the dugout, Dean says, "Taller than I'd imagined," and Benny chuckles.

——

Castiel is pretty.

Dean hadn't really absorbed that from the TV ads or game footage, more concerned with his windup or his batting stance than his face. And that first glimpse of him had been from across the locker room, so it's not like Dean could've seen how fucking blue his eyes are. Or how his jaw looks so sharp you could cut yourself on it.

It's fucking distracting is what it is, so Dean keeps his distance. He's getting older now, needs to stay sharp and focused to avoid all the fucking speculation about how he might be washed up.

Every mph he loses on his fastball feels like another nail in his coffin, and he really cannot afford distractions.

But whenever Castiel passes through his line of sight, he can't resist the temptation to look, to keep looking. Castiel never looks back—at least, Dean's never caught his eye.

The only time it seems Castiel looks at Dean is when Dean is on the mound. Castiel leans on the fence in the dugout, and even though Dean can't see the blue of his eyes from this far out, he's sure that Castiel's eyes are on him.

Dean's first five outings are good. He gets four wins, one no-decision, doesn't give up more than two earned runs each outing. His strikeout numbers are a little low to start the year, but he's pretty sure he can get them back up to normal by the All Star break.

But his sixth start is an absolute dud. The opposing team is seeing his fastball too well, and for whatever reason, he can't get his curveball in there for a strike.

Bobby pulls him after one out in the fifth, having given up five runs, four earned. Garth enters the game with the bases loaded and manages to strike out the next two batters, and when he comes into the dugout, Dean claps him on the back in thanks.

Dean is filled with dread as he sits down for the postgame press conference, where reporters are gonna ask him stupid-ass roundabout questions that don't outright say he should retire but obviously imply he's past his prime.

"So, what happened out there?" a man from the LA Times asks.

Dean shrugs, tries his best not to sound defensive when he says, "Sometimes you just don't have your stuff."

"What wasn't working today?" LA Times persists.

"Weren't you watching the game?"

The deep voice coming from Dean's left startles him, but there are audible gasps from the gaggle of reporters, and Dean turns, sees Castiel approaching.

Castiel takes the vacant seat at Dean's left and leans over, bending the mic toward him. "You should know he didn't have his curveball today, or is it not your occupation to know the game of baseball?" he continues, eyes blazing.

So he speaks English after all.

Dean stares, because he can’t not. Because this is the closest he’s ever been to Castiel Novak, and his clenched jaw looks even sharper in profile, his nose proud, the corner of his mouth that Dean can see curved down in an expectant frown.

LA Times flounders, says, "Well, I was leading up to—I wanted to know if he's worried at all. See, if his best pitch isn't landing—“

"So much doubt," Castiel interrupts. "Where were all these concerns when I gave up four runs to the A's two days ago?"

Then Castiel's interpreter—Balthazar—is there, grabbing Castiel by the elbow, hissing something inaudible in his ear.

Castiel rolls his eyes, clears his throat, grabs the mic again. "My apologies."

Balthazar leans in, says, “No further questions,” and straightens.

Castiel gets to his feet and looks at Dean, and his cerulean eyes are surprisingly warm. He seems startled to find Dean looking back, and his gaze darts away quickly.

Then they’re out of the room, and a different reporter, this one from the Athletic, pipes up, “So uh, did you know Castiel could speak English?”

“Think Balthazar just put the kibosh on any questions about Castiel,” Dean says.

The Athletic looks disappointed but says, “It’s clear you struggled in the first, but you really settled in for the next three innings. What helped you regain focus?”

The rest of the ordeal goes smoother, everyone on their best behavior after Castiel’s interruption, and Dean has just gotten home when his phone rings.

“Dude. Dude! How could you not tell me that Castiel is your friend? No, how could you not say that he can speak English?”

“We’re not friends, Garth.”

“Bullshit,” Garth says immediately. “He was totally out there to protect you. He never does press if he doesn’t have to. And I think he just outed that he speaks English to do it.”

It’s hard to deny those points, but they aren’t friends.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Dean says. “We’ve never spoken. I’ve only said hi to him, and it was through Balthazar, as usual.”

Garth harrumphs. “I don’t believe you.”

Before Dean can protest, Garth hangs up.

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose, annoyed, before heading to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of whiskey.

He probably should talk to Castiel tomorrow, express some gratitude for his intervention. Dean’s a big boy and can handle himself, but it was unexpectedly nice to have someone stick up for him like that.

——

The next day, Dean waits until the game is about to start before entering the locker room. Predictably, Castiel is one of the few remaining players—he usually cuts it pretty close, has been almost late to several games already.

For once, Balthazar isn’t hovering over Castiel, and Dean heads straight for him, in no mood to beat around the bush.

“Got an off day tomorrow,” Dean says to the back of Castiel’s head.

It takes a moment for Castiel to turn around, face neutral. “Yes,” he says evenly.

“Got any plans?”

“No,” Castiel says.

Dean nods. “Then you’re free to grab a coffee with me?”

“Yes,” Castiel accepts immediately.

“Damn it, Castiel,” says Balthazar from behind Dean, and Castiel’s eye roll is even better when Dean can see it straight-on rather than in profile. “You’re going to put me out of a job.”

Castiel responds in Enochian, and Balthazar barks out a short word that by tone Dean figures is a curse word.

“Give me your phone,” Castiel says to Dean, hand held out, and Dean tugs it out of his pocket, hands it over.

Balthazar lets out an irritated huff and hovers impatiently while Castiel types his number into Dean’s phone.

Dean accepts his phone back, doing his best to ignore the tingle he gets when their fingers brush on the handover, and says, “I’ll text you.”

With a wry twist to his lips, Castiel says, “That’s the idea.”

Then he heads for the dugout, Balthazar trailing behind him, complaining in Enochian.

Dean looks down at his phone and snorts when he sees that Castiel has entered “Unicorn” for his name.

And Dean had thought he didn’t have a sense of humor.

#deancas #my fic #thisiselizaye #baseball au #pitcher!dean #pitcher!cas #batter!cas #cas is a two-way player #not on ao3 #no actual baseball happens in this ficlet #but anyway #hoping this will get it out of my head and i can focus on the other crap #phoneblogging #bc i started writing this on the laptop but had to finish it on my phone #never wrote fic on the mobile app before #feels real weird #ANYWAY #ahem #bye

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