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dwlrmoon · 4 years ago

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Astrological Analysis: I.M "Duality"

An astrological analysis of I.M's solo album "Duality" & how his astrological placements manifest through the songs. Changkyun said that he poured his entire soul into this album, so I thought it'll be really cool to dissect the songs in the astrological lens because I'm in love with his artistry.

REMINDER

Observed & analyzed through western tropical astrology; we are missing information due to lack of confirmed birth time, so I can only deliver using the traditional 7 planets (mainly the personal chart) without a house system.

DUALITY

Having the album entitled "Duality" with songs expressing this topic (esp. the title track) reminds me of his Aquarius placements, mainly the Sun. I.M has his Sun in detriment, meaning that his Sun is "weak" or uncomfortable in that sign. As the sister sign of Leo, Aquarius symbolizes celebrities, fame, the star in tarot, as well as hopes & dreams. Aquarius can represent notoriety & infamy while simultaneously having the stereotype of the loner or outsider, not wanting to be perceived or "understood."

Using traditional rulership, Aquarius is ruled by Saturn who also rules Capricorn. If Capricorn rules authorities & conformities, Aquarius is the rebellious younger sibling refusing to conform & rather revolt, deviating from the norm. I.M placed his artistry in precedence; convincing SSE to use God Damn as the title track despite the profanity requiring him to release this album digitally in addition to him creating the tracks in his own style that may or may not be in line with k-pop or Monsta X.

GOD DAMN

In true I.M fashion the song & MV are very concupiscent, & since I already talked about the duality that is expressed through this song, let's talk about the MV specifically. Pisces rules escapism & addiction & his Pisces Venus was very on brand to go with alcohol as the imagery of getting high to hide from his frustrations. This piece is highly self-reflective & he encourages listeners to read between the lines, it's quite Saturnian in nature. I also love how the lyrics have that duality of hating & loving whoever/whatever that is ruining/comforting him—I really associate this with his Martian Moon (him assigning Misbehave as the song that represents him is so... Aries Moon).

HOWLIN'

No more taming 'bout my color I swing 'till I get, what’s the problem? Problem I ain't follow simply what I see I go follow what I need 'Cause I see that I'm loyal Imma go on my speed, even I'm slow

The 1st verse reminds me a lot of his Saturnian + Martian energy—no more wanting to be someone he's not, doing his own thing without care of what others may think. However, the last 2 lines really highlight the fixed modality of his Aquarius: I love that he says he's loyal even if he goes on his speed which can be slow; he doesn't care as long as he gets there.

I don't celebrate 'till I make it till the end Ain't time for the 'hol up' You want me be a shade but I'm made for a big wave Ain't time for the 'hol up'

This song has a lot of Saturnian themes esp. the chorus. It reminds us that Saturn rules time—he doesn't succumb to the challenges & distractions or "hold ups," rather focusing on his goal & only celebrating once he reaches the mountaintop. Saturn is karmic, it takes its sweet time to give you your rewards that you must work laboriously for. He knows he's made for something bigger (Aquarius), & with his perseverance (fixed), determination & passion (Aquarius Mars + Aries Moon), he will be rewarded despite all the struggles (Saturn).

Don't call me, I'm drivin' I just wanna keep on ballin’ Even though when you are hatin’ Woah Grab me when I'm fallin’ 'Cause I make myself so lonely You know that I'm howlin'

However, Saturn can be extremely isolating & Aquarius is akin to the underdog. Of course we don't know where his placements are, but his Pisces Venus contributes to that isolation. He feels lonely & he knows that, but he inevitable makes himself lonely which Aquarius natives can do when they develop that mentality of me v.s. the world sometimes. Keep in mind that Aquarius rules community yet the outsider, showcasing that wanting to be alone while wanting someone to be there for him. Saturn is burden & he's a lone wolf used to being alone carrying all that burden himself.

BURN

The night has become cold and now it's a meaningless fight I don't wanna waste my time on the past time Endless shot, let me head to the top I don't wanna waste my time on the past time Burn the accumulated emotions, burn Burn everything without leaving anything, burn

An Aries Moon anthem? I find that Aries placements love having fire/burning imagery if not in their songs then in their MVs. Aries is Martian, cardinal & fire by nature, which means that Aries Moons may get irritated fairly quickly—a quick temper? But they get over it super quickly, kind of like blowing off steam & then letting it go right after. The Moon rules our emotions, & I think the lyrics speak for itself here. The allusion to the fight is very Martian as well.

I'm mixed and complex, yeah I don't know myself well, eh Yesterday I couldn't empty it out, yeah I'd rather burn it, yeah The tears that fell are oil Make the flame burn higher Pour it out, no more regrets Burn it all up and high, yeah

I really enjoy I.M's introspective & intrapersonal nature; he always says he doesn't know himself well & accepts that rather than fighting it. He accepts all facets of himself, & that's very refreshing. The 2nd verse made me chuckle a little bit because the first 2 lines look Aquarius while the rest is Aries. Not to mention he has an Aquarius Mars conjunct Sun, so, more Martian energy there. Cardinal + Martian give me that attitude he portrays very well in this song—throw some more oil, let it burn more so that there'll be no regrets. Another Aries placement who wrote something like this? Yoongi.

HAPPY TO DIE

I could die right now, yeah I can never lie, yeah You bring me to sky Let me be yours till I die When you say goodbye, yeah Bury me on your heart, yeah Don't you say that word Could you keep it till I die? You brought me back to the real love I wanna get lost here forever

There is so much to unpack in this little song... The chorus is a mixture of Saturnian commitment & Aries headstrong, passionate reckless energy motivated by his romanticist Pisces Venus. The title itself, the whole concept of this song, is fundamentally Pisces (his DSC would be really cool to talk about here, if we had the birth time, but we don't, so).

We're childish like we were when we used to play back then I let go of rationality as if I'm drawn by the wind I don't know what this feeling is Even if I try to pretend I don't know, everything seems to be obvious, yeah I don't know, I like it the way it is I don't know me well, I don't know I guess it's not a lie that I really like you I'm happy to die right now

Verse 1 truly has my heart in a grip. He has a rational & intellectually-minded Saturnian Mercury & Sun, yet once he's in love he gets enamoured & childish, rendered completely irrational. It's giving me Aries meets Pisces—of the moment, idealistic, just overwhelming emotions taking control of his Saturnian mind, which I find funny because he has Moon square Mercury.

Things of mine might go away and shape Will just change, but don't you change When I'm low, could you make me not alone? I could die right now if we were just this crazy about each other

Pisces is sentimental & can represent past lives, that feeling of being stuck in the past? Pisces Venus is visionary & idealistic, they're more in love with the idea of love than love itself sometimes. Here we see that theme of isolation again, his Aquarius could play a role here, but his Pisces placements are also desperate to be loved. The last line, like said before, is utterly Pisces because Romeo & Juliet is known to be a Pisces type of relationship, plus with that Aries Moon... it just makes sense since Aries Moons love the rush & passion.

시든 꽃 FLOWER-ED

Somehow I have no strength to resist I stay right where I am It's not like I'm longing for someone But I'm standing there

Personally loving how his songs gradually grow more & more Piscean? The overwhelming emotion of yearning with no one to long for is so Pisces/Jupiterian Venus in general. Like I said, they're idealistic & in love with the idea of love more than anything—not the happy kind of love either. I notice that Jupiterian Venuses play with the theme of wanting a lot, mainly because they are ruled by the planet of expansion. Distance is a huge theme in Jupiterian signs, & they idealize that.

When you step on me like it's nothing I desperately want you to come back and hug mе I deeply remember your smilе that laughed at me While I was being illuminated by you

Because Pisces placements love the idea of love & the feeling of longing for someone they can get into the habit of sacrificing themselves, hence their association with the hanged man in tarot. They are too focused on the fantasy of love to take off their rose tinted glasses.

I don't really blame you I know your days by my side Have faded away Please don't disappear, oh

The hand that held me, the eyes that captured me are all blind The scattered hands, the shining eyes are gone

I don't know what else to say here, like, I think you guys understand how these verses really depicts his Pisces Venus very well... With a Venus conjunct Saturn it can really emphasize isolation & rejection as well—this aspect feels like they are deprived of love, so they crave it desperately even if it hurts them which is a theme of Pisces. Him titling this track "withered flower" in Korean is so Pisces Venus of him overall.

#i.m #changkyun #im changkyun #monsta x #kpop astrology #monsta x astrology #changkyun scenarios #monsta x scenarios

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prettiestvulcan · 4 years ago

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pairing: enji todoroki x oc

rating: explicit

wc:

summary: a summer getaway gets heated, in more ways than one.

warnings: none

a/n: part of @delirieum's hot milf summer collab!

She’s always had a dislike for summer. The sticky, humid heat. The influx of tourists, which meant more crime. The increase in her number of patrols. Summer meant more work in near unbearable conditions.

There is one plus to summer, though. It means the kids are out of school, so she gets to spend more time with them. Sure, during the day she’s always on patrol, but then she gets to pick them up from her parents’ house and take them to pick out dinner. They don’t have to be in bed for school, so she can introduce them to her favorite childhood movies.

This summer is different, though. Her parents are taking their grandkids on a vacation and she can’t go with them. Work is having their own week-long mandatory ‘vacation’, which involves flying out to an island for team-building exercises disguised as fun. It’s the first time the agency has done something like this, but her guess as to why is as good as anyone else’s.

“Mommy, do you have to go?” Her youngest asks. She kneels before him, giving him a soft smile.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, but mommy has to go because of work.” He pouts, crossing his arms with a frown.

“I don’t want you to go.” Isaac looks close to tears. “I don’t want to go with Nanny and Pappy. I want to go with Mommy.”

“Isaac,” she brushes tears from his cheeks with a thumb. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Mommy will be back. And I’ll call every night before bedtime.”

“Promise?” He sniffles. She nods, holding out her pinky. He grins, wrapping his much smaller pinky around hers.

“I pinky-promise,” she answers. His tears have started to dry up.

“Okay,” he finally relents. “I’ll go with Nanny and Pappy.”

“That’s my boy,” she ruffles his hair, the curls catching occasionally. He doesn’t seem to notice.

He runs off towards the front door, giggling the whole way. She stands, watching him go with a smile. He’s always been a cheerful kid, willing to do as she asks. She’s grateful for it. However, her eldest isn’t as agreeable. Perhaps being close to ten, she’s just going through a face. She was a fussy baby, though, so something tells her she just takes too much after her father.

“Why do I have to go?” Hazel starts. “I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

“Hazel,” she reproaches. “I don’t have time to find you a babysitter. Nanny and Pappy already agreed to take you somewhere fun.”

“Ugh,” she groans. “Whatever, mom.” Hazel storms off without another word. She frowns, watching her go. If only there was some way she could make both of them happy. She hadn’t lied, though; the trip for work was very sudden and she didn’t have time to look for a babysitter. It was only through luck that her parents had agreed to take them on vacation with them this year. Perhaps because they were both old enough not to need as much supervision and constant care.

With a sigh, she grabs her suitcase once more and climbs into the taxi. She really wishes she could have given Hazel a goodbye hug, but she knows her daughter well enough to know that wouldn’t have gone down easily. There would have been a lot of yelling and pushing, possibly some kicking. She really hopes Hazel doesn’t regret not saying goodbye.

The taxi drops her off outside the entrance of the airport. She takes her suitcase from the trunk before heading inside. The layout is huge, but everything is clearly marked and mapped. She has no issues finding the check-in for the airline. Finding the gate is even easier, since each gate is in a specific order. She sits down to wait for their boarding time, taking her phone out to make sure there are no calls or texts from her parents. Thankfully, there are none so everything must be alright.

She decides to look around the area from her seat, spotting several familiar faces in the seats around her. They all seem absorbed in their own activities, so she leaves them be. She was never really familiar with any of the other sidekicks, anyway. Being a single parent meant she didn’t have much time for get-togethers, so she was always turning down invites after patrols. They’re always friendly towards her, however, so she thinks they’re all on good terms. They probably understand her hesitance to leave her kids at home with the babysitter longer than needed.

After a while, it’s time to board the plane. It’s her first time flying since before Isaac was born, but she still remembers the drill. Show your boarding pass, get it scanned, find your seat. It’s very straightforward. Everything about the trip so far has been, which is something she’s grateful for. She’s not a huge fan of surprises. Never has been. Although she supposes Isaac and Hazel are two surprises she absolutely couldn’t live without.

Soon, the pre-flight announcements are beginning. She’s surprised to see no one in the seat beside her. It’s nearly a full plane, though she’s not going to complain. It just means she has more room to stretch out. She listens to the pre-flight announcements, turning off her phone as instructed. She takes her in-flight bag off the floor, putting it in the empty seat beside her. She couldn’t quite reach the overhead bin and had been too embarrassed to ask for help.

The plane takes off, bringing with it a slew of emotions. She’s excited to be going somewhere, even if it’s for work, but she’s going to miss her kids. Not being able to see them for an entire week? It’s an entirely new experience for her. She’s been home with them basically since they were each born. She’s been there to kiss ouchies better, to read them stories before bed, tuck them in with a kiss on their foreheads. She’s been there to wipe their tears, to make them smile and laugh. Being away from them will be a new experience for all of them, but at least they won’t be completely alone. She trusts her parents to take care of them, just like they cared for her as a child.

She takes comfort in that thought, relaxing back against the seat. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been the whole time, but once she relaxes the soreness of her muscles makes itself known. She rubs at her thigh, trying to soothe some of the pain. It works, to some degree. She’ll just have to remind herself to relax and take something for the pain once the plane lands.

She rests her head against the headrest, closing her eyes. Nothing wrong with a nap on the flight. Just as long as the turbulence of landing wakes her, she’ll be fine. She feels herself slipping into unconsciousness….

The island is beyond anything she could have imagined. It’s lush and tropical, palm trees dotted everywhere. The air smells like salt from the sea, but somehow still refreshing compared to city air. Even the hotel is magnificent. There’s an indoor spa! She’s never stayed anywhere with its own spa.

They arrive late the first day, so they’re told to find their rooms and get settled in. They’ll receive instructions the next day, according to Burnin who is giving the orders. She wonders if Endeavor will show or if this whole event is being organized by Burnin. She’s certainly capable of doing it.

She spends the first night unpacking and familiarizing herself with the hotel. There’s so many extra amenities and she hopes she has time to try out some of them. She takes photos of the view from her hotel window, sending it to her parents so they can show Isaac and Hazel. When she’s finished exploring, she retires to her room and makes the promised call.

Everyone is doing great, of course. They also made it to their hotel, which Isaac excitedly informs her has an indoor pool. Hazel is much less talkative, but seems to be in high spirits even if she doesn’t outright say it. She’s glad they’re enjoying their trip so far and hopes they keep up the momentum. When they finish swapping stories, she wishes them goodnight and tells them she’ll talk more tomorrow.

The next day, they all have breakfast in the hotel’s café before convening outside. It’s more upscale dining than what she’d have expected. Once outside, Burnin gathers everyone close before speaking.

“Hello, everyone!” Her voice easily carries across the crowd. “I hope you’re ready for a fun week!”

There are cheers from the other sidekicks.

“Well, have I got a surprise for all of you.” She’s close enough to see Burnin grin. “There’s no agenda for this week, aside from getting out there and having fun together!”

No agenda? She’s a little surprised by that. She thought this was a mandatory team-building trip, not just a vacation. She feels conflicted. On one hand, she’s glad for the opportunity. On the other, she had fully expected the week to be planned out for her so now she’s at a loss.

What does one even do on vacation? It’s been eighteen years since she’s done anything by herself. Sure, she’s taken weekend trips with Hazel and Isaac but never alone. And never somewhere so opulent or tropical. She doesn’t know what to do with herself now.

“Now get out there and have fun!” She snaps back to reality at the sound of everyone’s cheers, before shuffling back inside the hotel. Whatever she wants to do, huh?

She changes into something more comfortable, having expected there to be training. Thankfully, she had thought ahead and packed extra clothes on the off-chance there was any free time. It looks like her foresight had come in handy, as she takes out her bathing suit and coverup. Nothing like a trip to the beach.

She’s surprised that there’s no rigorous training. Endeavor is known for running a tight ship, so this whole trip seems out of character. Then again, ever since his last major fight, something had changed. He’s still just as strict, but he seems almost approachable now. A little more lenient. She’s certainly not as terrified of being called to his office anymore.

She wonders if he’s come on this trip, as well, or if he’s staying back at the office. He could use the trip, she feels. He’s always working so hard. Besides, she swears she saw his youngest in the crowd. If his son is here, surely he would’ve come as well.

Someone clears their throat behind her and she startles, realizing she’s just been staring at the open elevator doors. She shakes her head, murmuring an apology, and enters the elevator. The figure behind her enters, as well, and as she turns her eyes go wide.

“Endeavor, sir,” she hurries to greets, giving a polite bow. “Thank you for this opportunity.”

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her with a grimace. She wonders if she’s said something wrong before he grumbles something under his breath, inclining his head in acknowledgment. He doesn’t say anything else, but she’s shocked to see him. She wants to comment on it, but the elevator arrives at the ground floor before she can figure it out.

“Ah, Endeavor, sir,” she calls out without thinking.

“Please call me Enji.” She can’t help the eyebrow that raises. “We’re on vacation. I’m not your boss right now.”

“Of course, Enji, sir.” He doesn’t look pleased with the added ‘sir’ so she tries again. “Alright. Enji.” It feels awkward coming out of her mouth. He’s been her boss for the better part of a decade and never once called him by name.

He seems pleased by the amendment on her part, though it’s hard to tell with him. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, trying to figure out why she even called out to him. He waits, turquoise eyes trained on her.

“Would you like to come to the beach with me?” She almost smacks herself with how bold she’s being. Sure, he’s been nice to her over the past few months, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be friendly.

He looks just as surprised by the offer, one eyebrow raised. She purses her lips to keep from saying anything more, waiting on an answer. Her heart pounds in her chest. Finally, he speaks.

“You’re going to the beach?” She nods. “I’ll accompany you. I was headed there regardless.”

She takes in his appearance for the first time, noting the swim shorts. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, a towel slung over his shoulders. She nods to show she understands, eyes moving back up his hulking frame, to find his eyes also looking over her.

Had she just been caught checking out her boss?

Had she just caught her boss checking her out?

The thought brings warmth to her cheeks. She ducks her head down, though she’s sure he’s already seen her blush. She decides to take the lead, brushing past him towards the door. She can feel him follow, after a few tense seconds.

She feels a little silly. She’s too old to be checking out other men, let alone her boss. It doesn’t matter if he’s older; he has his own family. She knows he has at least three kids, though she’s never heard about their mother. He has to be married, though. There’s no way a man like him hasn’t been snatched up.

She tries to push those thoughts aside, instead focusing on walking down to the beach. It’s not far from the hotel; might as well consider it the backyard. The closer they get, the more of the ocean she can smell. She’s not sure it’s an entirely pleasant scent.

There isn’t much in the way of conversation. For her, it’s just too awkward to start one and he’s not exactly known for being chatty. She’s sure he doesn’t find it awkward at all, the silence. But she does.

As she scrambles to come up with something to say, they finally arrive at the beach. There’s a few others on the beach, rainbow color of towels spread along the sand. She tries to find a spot some distance from the main crowd, not wanting to interrupt or intrude.

She expects him to part once they reach the beach, but he keeps pace with her easily. She did invite him to come with, but she hadn’t actually expected him to follow through. Sure, they talk at work about work. But conversations about patrols are entirely different from conversations about life and the weather.

They lay their towels out, red and blue side by side. It’s a little closer than she’d been expecting, but still a respectable distance apart. She hesitates a brief moment before pulling her coverup off, folding it and setting it aside. She has nothing to be embarrassed about.

Hero work has been good to her. Even after two kids, her physique is still desirable. She’s not exactly slim, but she’s muscular enough to hide the chub from two kids. She has very few major scars, the most notable being the faded white scar on her right leg from a piece of metal out of a falling building. She’s lucky it didn’t take her entire leg.

“I’m going to swim,” she announces to her company. He inclines his head, again not saying anything. She leaves him where he’s reclining on his towel, heading down to the water.

She feels more comfortable in the water. It’s cool and refreshing, compared to the sticky heat on the beach. She takes her time in the water, swimming around and floating. She even rides a few waves to the shore before swimming back out. When she’s had enough, she returns to her towel.

Endeavor—Enji, she corrects herself. He’s still laid out on his towel, but his eyes open when he hears her approach. She flops down onto her towel, feeling energized after her swim. She turns her head to face Enji, having felt his eyes on her.

He’s wearing an inscrutable expression. He’s not exactly easy to read, but it looks as if he’s taking extra care not to express any emotion. She offers him a smile, not sure what to do or say. He doesn’t return it, but he does finally look away.

She peers up at the clear blue sky, wondering what kind of exchange that was. She rests her arms behind her head, closing her eyes. It’s a vacation. She’s going to get in as many naps as possible….

She wakes sometimes later, having been shaken awake. She blinks a few times to clear the sleep from her vision.

“The tide is coming in,” Enji tells her. She nods to show her understanding before sitting up. She stretches with a yawn. “Dinner?”

She’s not sure if it’s a question or a demand.

“Sure,” she agrees. “I could go for something to eat.” She stands, grabbing her towel. She shakes off as much sand as possible before slipping her coverup back on.

“We should change at the hotel,” he says.

“Good idea.” She looks down at herself. “A quick shower might be good, too.” She gives him a crooked smile. He nods and she swears she sees the ghost of a smile on his lips.

She feels significantly less uncomfortable on the walk back, perhaps because he’s actually not that scary. He’s just not very talkative. And if she doesn’t think about how he’s her boss, it’s almost like hanging out with a friend. A very new friend. Okay, maybe it’s still a little awkward.

Dinner is a quick and quiet affair. He doesn’t say much and she isn’t sure what to say. When they finish, they bid each other a good night and go their separate ways. She takes the time to call her parents so she can speak with Isaac and Hazel. They tell her all about their trip so far and she shares hers.

“You spoke with Mr. Endeavor?” Isaac seems in awe.

“Yeah, sweetie. I spoke with Mr. Endeavor.”

“Can you get his autograph for me?” She can hear the excitement in his voice.

“His autograph?” She repeats.

“Yes!” Isaac is definitely bouncing on the other end. “I saw him on the TV! He’s my new favorite Hero!” She chuckles.

“Sure thing, sweetie. I’ll get his autograph for you.” It shouldn’t be too difficult. He is her boss and she’s sure he’s used to being asked for it.

“You’re the best, Mommy!” She smiles at that.

“Love you, too, sweetie.”

“Okay, I’m gonna give the phone to Hazel now.” There’s a shuffling noise before she hears Hazel’s voice.

“How are things going, Mom?”

“They’re going well,” she answers. “How are you doing?”

“It’s okay.” She hears Hazel shrug. “Nanny took me to the museum, so I guess it’s alright.”

“The museum?” She prompts. “Which one?”

“The Hero Museum,” there’s a smile in her voice. “It was pretty cool.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” She really is. Hazel is a difficult child sometimes, but her interests aren’t outside the realm of any other ten-year-old. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“Love you too, Mom,” Hazel huffs. “I’m giving you back to Nanny now.” More noise as the phone is swapped to another.

She talks to her mom for a few more minutes, just to be sure the kids are behaving. Her mom assures her that everything is fine and to enjoy her own vacation.

The next day is spent much the same: at the beach with her boss. Enji. She keeps having to remind herself. She does manage to get his autograph, explaining it’s for her youngest. He asks about him, and she’s more than happy to talk about her kids.

He speaks about his own children, much older than her own, but there’s pride in his voice as he speaks about them. She can’t help but smile, her laughter coming freely when he tells embarrassing stories about them. It feels like she’s getting to know him and she can’t help but like what she’s seeing.

It’s hard not to find him physically attractive, but she’s old enough to not be distracted by a pretty body. She’s worked for his agency for nearly ten years; she’s long gotten used to the way he looks. But something about their conversations has her reassessing him.

The third day on the island, something feels different between them. He feels warmer, somehow. It isn’t exactly anything particular he does. It’s in the way they lean towards each other when they speak, the way they keep bumping into each other, the way they keep finding ways to spend time together. It’s a combination of all these things that has her heart pounding when she sees him.

She decides to make a move. Either he ignores it or he reciprocates. Either way, there’s no harm done. They’re on vacation. Perhaps she’s feeling a little risky because of it. Away from work, away from her kids, she’s feeling a little more brave than usual.

It’s been years since she last was with anyone. After Isaac’s father left, she swore off dating and catching feelings in general. It was just too much of a hassle. Why now, after all these years, she isn’t sure. Something about it just feels different. Feels right.

They go out for dinner as usual, but she invites him to the hotel bar afterwards. She doesn’t fully expect him to agree, so when he does she’s feeling more confident. They sit next to each other at the near empty hotel bar, drinks in hand.

When she makes a joke, laughing at it while he gives a slight grin, she reaches out to put her hand on his arm. He looks surprised by it at first, eyes going slightly wider. She wonders for a brief moment if she’s overstepped, pulling her hand back, but he quickly grabs it before she can withdraw.

They stare at one another, neither saying anything. It’s like he’s waiting for a signal. She nods. He moves into action, pulling her up from her seat. He keeps their fingers entwined, tugging her along to the elevator.

It’s actually happening, she realizes, as she leads him to her hotel room. She didn’t think this would ever actually happen.

He presses her against the hotel door, mouth hot and heavy on hers. She grasps at his arms, his shirt, anything she can reach to keep herself afloat. She’s quickly giving in, sinking further into his desires. She doesn’t think she wants to fight them anymore.

His mouth moves down to her neck, biting and kissing. She can’t help the sounds spilling from her and just hopes no one in the rooms around can hear her. His hands—big, so big—tug at her dress until she’s slipping the straps from her shoulders and letting it fall to the ground.

His bright turquoise eyes stare at her, wearing nothing more than a pair of lacy underwear. She feels intimidated by that heavy gaze, feels the urge to cover herself.

“Don’t,” he growls as he grabs her hands, pulling them away. “Let me see you.”

She lets her hands fall to the side, trying not to feel so self-conscious. She tries not to think of all the stretch marks across her belly and thighs, on the tops of her breasts. She tries to remind herself that they wouldn’t be here if he didn’t see something desirable about her body.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, cupping a breast. It fits perfectly in his hand, his thumb rubbing circles against her nipple. She squirms, a moan slipping from her parted lips.

“You too,” she tosses back. “I want to see you, too.” He grins, something crooked and slightly menacing. But he pulls away from her, tugging off his shirt and shorts. She reaches for the last piece separating them from each other, pulling them down.

She can’t help but stare. She knew he was a large man, but it couldn’t have prepared her for how proportionate that made him. Long and thick, red at the head. She wraps her hand around him as best she can, giving a few short tugs, and hears him groan. Will it even fit?

She doesn’t have much more room for thought as he pulls her in for another kiss, tugging her towards the bed. She goes willingly, wanting nothing more than to feel him against her. He nibbles at her bottom lip and she licks at his; soon their tongues tangle together. It’s been so long since she’s been with anyone like this. She hopes she can make it as good for him as it feels for her.

She lays on the bed, situating herself against the pillows. She beckons him, wanting to close the distance between them. He lays himself atop her, balanced by his hands on either side of her hips. He kisses her, sweeter this time. Not as desperate.

He kisses a path down her neck, across her shoulder, before dipping to take a nipple into his mouth. She shudders, pleasure welling within her. She runs a hand through his hair, red strands tickling between her fingers. He hums, licking and sucking her nipples.

“Enji,” she whines, pushing on his head. He chuckles, moving lower. He plants kisses across her stomach, still a little pudgy from her last pregnancy nearly eight years ago. She feels self-conscious about it, but the way he worships her body makes it a little better.

Finally, he’s exactly where she wants him. He wastes no time, diving right into his task. Her head knocks against the headboard, but the brief bloom of pain is nothing compared to the sensation between her legs.

He eats her out like a man starved. A little uncoordinated, but enthusiastic. His tongue circles her clit before flicking it, a single thick finger toying with her hole. She grips the blankets beneath them, unable to stop the noises slipping out of her kiss-swollen lips.

He slips a single finger in finally. It’s as thick as two of her own, but she knows she’s going to need the preparation if he’s going inside of her. She squirms, wanting to clamp her legs shut, but his shoulders keep her spread. She has no choice but to give in to the onslaught of sensations.

And give in she does. Head thrown back, mouth open and spilling profanity with his name mixed in. She couldn’t keep quiet if she wanted to and she can tell he definitely doesn’t want her to keep quiet. That single finger pumps in and out, stretching her, before he adds a second.

It’s almost too much, but she forces her body to relax. She’s soaking, giving him plenty to work with. His spit and her fluids ease the way for that second finger. She moans, pressing down against him. She feels his laughter, a gentle vibration through her cunt.

“Please,” she begs. “Want you inside.”

She’s ready for it. She can handle it. He pulls off, looking up at her, and she can’t help but flush at the sight of him. His chin is wet with her juices, his lips swollen. He shifts up, towering above her, and reaches down to line himself up.

Her mouth opens on a silent moan as he pushes in, stretching her beyond what she thought she was capable of. It’s painful at first, but as she has time to adjust it morphs into pleasure.

“Finally,” his voice rumbles through her. “Been wanting to do this.”

She whines, pushing her hips down and against him. She needs him to move already. It’s been ages since she last got fucked and she’s eager for it. She wants him to pound her into the mattress until she forgets who she is.

He delivers on those fantasies. He fucks into her roughly and with abandon, until she’s moaning his name and his name only. He shoves two of his fingers into her mouth and she sucks on them, drool seeping from the corner of her mouth. She doesn’t even care, too busy with the feel of him.

She doesn’t even care anymore when things changed between them. The only thing she cares about in that moment is coming around his cock. She can worry about feelings and emotions later. Right now, she’s only focused on reaching that high.

He reaches between them to roll his thumb against her clit and she can feel her eyes roll to the back of her head. Just a few circles and she’s cumming hard around his cock. He fucks her through it, fingers shoved deep in her mouth.

When she comes down, she takes a moment to appreciate the fucked out look on his face. The squinting of his eyes as he concentrates, the sweat beading on his temples, and the slack-jawed grunts and groans spilling from his lips.

“Inside,” she tells him. “Come inside me.” It’s a risky request, but she wants it. He does, too, judging by the way his thrusts speed up until he growls and spills inside of her.

When he pulls up, she feels his semen trickle down the inside of her thighs. He collapses onto the bed beside her, but searches for her hand among the sheets. He laces their fingers together and she smiles up at the ceiling.

The mood is ruined by the sound of her ringtone, however. She’s tempted not to answer, but it might be her parents calling about the kids. With a sigh and a silent promise to return, she gets out of the bed to answer.

“Mommy!” Her son, Isaac, shouts from the other side. “Are you coming home yet?”

“Not yet, sweetie,” she laughs. “In a few more days.”

“Awww,” he pouts. “You’re with Mr. Endeavor, right, mommy?”

“Yeah,” her voice is soft with affection as she gazes towards the bed, where Enji is lounging.

“Did you get his autograph for me?” She chuckles, but confirms she did.. “Yay! You’re the best, mommy!”

Isaac hands the phone off to her mother, who updates her on her eldest who refuses to come to the phone. It’s just like Hazel to be so stubborn. They’re doing fine, her mother assures her, and tells her to enjoy her only vacation in eight years. She just laughs, but promises to have as much fun as possible.

When she’s finished, she sets her phone back down on the desk and wanders back to the bed. Enji greets her with open arms and she rests her head on his chest. She listens to his heartbeat, letting it lull her to sleep.

Best getaway ever, is her final thought before she falls asleep.

#🖖🏻.writes #bnha #endeavor x oc

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lalainajanes · 4 years ago

Text

For klarosummer bingo, this completes my first row! The prompt was “swimsuit model.”

Fortune Favors

“Bekah, these are amazing,” Caroline gushes. She 100% means it, but she’s laying it on a little thick. She’s seen pictures, mock-ups, and was fitted with prototypes. Now, with the line entirely constructed, all the details finished, Caroline’s impressed.

Rebekah, however, seems frazzled, her usual rock-solid confidence nowhere to be found.

Totally understandable. It’s a big day for her.

Rebekah’s working on launching a swimwear line, is funding a big chunk of it herself. Caroline would have agreed to help out even if she didn’t owe Rebekah a favor. Caroline continues flipping through the garments until she finds the tag with her name on it.

She pulls the first hanger off the rack to look at the suit more closely. It’s a white one-piece with a deep-v neck, a belt slim black belt, and ruffled straps. Rebekah fidgets, “We’re styling this one with red lips and heels, a big hat. We’re going to try to shoot this one on the rocks.”

“Sounds good to me.” The shoot seems far more professional from the ones they’d managed to pull together for school projects. They’d done the best they could with the facilities available to students, but the house they’re using today is by far the nicest one Caroline’s ever been inside of. It backs onto a private beach which seems unnecessary considering the freaking gorgeous pool in the backyard. “Who’s the photographer?”

Rebekah grins, clearly pleased with herself. “I managed to convince my brother to donate his services.”

Well. Now Caroline’s nervous. “Your brother Klaus?” she asks, kind of hoping she’s wrong. Klaus Mikaelson is a big deal. He’s shot major covers, A-list celebrities, million-dollar international campaigns.

He’s used to models who know what they’re doing, and Caroline’s definitely an amateur.

“Yes, Klaus. I’ve forbidden Kol from coming within a five-mile radius. Can’t have him harassing the models. And Elijah’s been a gem, but his expertise lies more in negotiating with suppliers and nagging me to mind the expenses.”

Caroline takes a deep breath, tells herself it’ll be fine.

She studies her next look, a sleek black bikini and a sheer black robe covered in floral details. “Love the appliqués. Did you bead this yourself?”

“Till my fingers were bloody. But I think it’ll photograph well.”

Caroline hums in agreement. “Is this one on the beach too?”

“No, by the pool. Chaise lounge, martini glass, one of the male models in the background. Think rich divorcee seducing the help.”

Caroline hopes it’s a real martini. She might need it.

She flips to the next hanger and has to bite back a distressed groan. Rebekah’s concept leans retro, so the yellow polka dot bikini in her hand is skimpier than Caroline had anticipated.

“Probably should have skipped breakfast,” she mutters.

Rebekah scoffs, “None of that. You’ll look smashing in it. I have impeccable taste.”

Caroline’s distracted by male laughter, a new person slipping into the tent. “So you’ve insisted your whole life. I distinctly recall you sneaking into the family albums and burning most of the photographic evidence of the unfortunate style choices you made in years 7 through 9.”

Ordinarily, Caroline would exploit the opportunity to get a little dirt on Rebekah, but she’s annoyingly tongue-tied and intimidated. She’s pasted on a polite smile, more out of habit than anything.

She may have google stalked Rebekah once upon a time, way back when they’d been rivals at school. And if during Caroline’s research, she’d read several articles and poured over dozens of pictures of Rebekah’s very talented and successful fashion photographer brother, that was her business.

Know thy enemy and all that, she couldn’t have known that rivalry would shift to friendly competition, then to actual friendship.

She’d noted he was attractive, of course, as anyone with eyes and sense would have. Most people don’t manage to live up to photos taken by professionals.

Klaus Mikaelson does, and it’s not helping her insecurities.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Nik.”

He walks further in, offering Caroline his hand. “You must be Caroline. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Klaus Mikaelson.

She swallows, is relieved when her voice sounds normal. “You too. I’m excited for today. I love your work.”

He nods, appearing pleased. “It’s been ages since I’ve done this kind of shoot, but you must know how Rebekah can be. Wouldn’t stop haranguing me until I agreed.”

Rebekah glares, piqued, and Caroline presses her lips together to hold in a laugh that threatens, knowing it would not be appreciated. “I can’t blame her for doing what needed to be done to ensure the desired outcome. It’s only good business.”

Rebekah nods firmly, “Exactly. Thank you, Caroline. At least someone here appreciates me.” She picks up the last hanger that had been in Caroline’s section and hands it over. “This one’s first since the set-up is the simplest. Bonnie should arrive while you’re shooting. We’ll do her first look while you go back into beauty, then rotate throughout the day. Put this on. I’ll send hair in first.”

She knocks into Klaus’ shoulder when she leaves, hard enough to have him swaying. “That’s why you’re not allowed in my house!” he calls to her retreating form. “Just had the floor redone,” he tells Caroline. “Can’t have her stomping all over them if she has a tantrum.”

“She’s stressed. You might want to be nicer.” Caroline regrets the words immediately, glances away under the pretense of studying the bikini in her hand. He’s donating his time and apparently his house. Their family squabbles really aren’t her business.

But Klaus isn’t offended, “Perhaps you have a point, though Rebekah’s never more productive than she is when she’s angry. Failure’s not an option when she’s fueled by spite.”

Hmm. Caroline has similar ideals. Maybe that’s why she and Rebekah came to understand each other.

She realizes she’s been twisting the bikini top’s strap, hurriedly straightens it out. “I feel like I should warn you, my modeling experience is limited to pitching in with other student’s shoots at school. So, I’m far from a professional.”

He shrugs. “You have nothing to be worried about.”

That startles a laugh from her. “You only say that because you don’t know me. I am a world-class worrier.”

He takes the suit away from her, setting it aside. His knees bend, until their eyes are level. “Caroline. You’re beautiful. Rebekah’s created lovely things. I’m very good at my job. I have every confidence the final product will be spectacular, and I’ll be able to enjoy reminding Rebekah that she owes me a favor down the line.”

Caroline blinks at him in surprise, some of her nerves having drifted away when faced with his absolute and unwavering confidence. “That’s… actually very reassuring.”

“Was it? I confess that’s not a strength of mine.”

She’s not sure if he’s joking or not, but she picks up her first outfit again. It’s another bikini, a tropical print on a pink background with a halter top and a high waisted bottom. “I should change,” she says. “Something tells me Rebekah won’t appreciate it if we fall behind schedule.”

Klaus nods, rocking back a step. “Of course. I just wanted to introduce myself. Please feel free to let me know if you need or want anything at all.”

She thanks him again, and he lets himself out of the tent.

Caroline takes one more deep breath and then ducks behind the screen in the corner and strips out of her sundress.

Once she’s dressed in Rebekah’s design, she begins to feel like everything might just go okay. The suit fits like a dream, propping up her breasts and perfectly hugging the curve of her hips. By the time hair and makeup work their magic, leaving her curls full and her lips slicked bubblegum pink, she feels freaking fantastic.

When she steps out onto the set, Klaus’ eyes widen when he spots her, lingering in a way that’s slightly unprofessional but not at all unwelcome.

He walks over, paying not the slightest bit of attention to anyone on the crew, even when an assistant tries to wave him over. Klaus offers his arm to help steady her as she steps into the matching pink pumps, leans in close, and tells her she looks incredible, his lips brushing her ear and sending a pleasant shiver down her spine.

She might be in trouble.

Will Rebekah kill Caroline if she flirts with Klaus? Probably.

Caroline thinks she’s willing to risk it.

#klarosummerbingo #klaroline #klaroline fanfiction

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bentforkent · 5 years ago

Text

coconut rum

emily prentiss x jennifer ‘jj’ jareau

content warnings: allusion to sex/hookup, !!!alcohol mentions!!, fluff, angst

word count: 3,308

college roommate au

in which emily and jj are best friends and roommates who accidentally hook up

----

emily prentiss is fucked. that’s her first thought when she wakes up in a bed that’s not her own. emily prentiss is so, astronomically fucked. that’s her second thought. that one comes when she turns to the source of the soft, sleepy puffs of breath beside her and is met with the very gentle and very naked frame of her best friend.

jj’s hair is splayed around her head in a halo. she’s sleeping on her back, the white downy comforter tangled in her legs. her head lolls to the side facing emily, like she’d fallen asleep mid-pillowtalk. emily trails a finger down the bridge of her nose with a feather-like touch. her fingers dance along jj’s collarbone, lingering there. jj’s soft skin is littered with deep red-purple bruises. hickeys, emily’s groggy brain registers. they’re almost grotesque, like a crime scene in a safe suburban neighborhood, and emily feels a little guilty looking at them even though she’s definitely the culprit. the room is comfortable and golden; a sort of divinity settling over the two of them as if they were two gods who’d created a universe the night before. emily looks at jj once again. no, they weren’t both gods. jj is far more celestial in this moment than emily could ever dream of being.

jj stirs with a twitch of her nose, letting her eyes flutter open. she rubs them until emily, who’s staring at her with intent adoration, comes into focus. “hi, em,” she murmurs, voice croaky.

“hi,” emily responds quietly, absolutely unable to hide the fondness in her voice. yeah, she’s fucked. she desperately wants to press a kiss to jj’s swollen lips, but she doesn’t know where they stand while sober. emily debates for a second, and after getting no hints from jj’s sleepy face, she takes a chance. slowly, emily kisses jj.

jj jerks away with a disapproving hum, and the bubble of bliss emily had created and made a home in pops. emily deflates, her shoulders curling in on themselves. there’s no words exchanged, but jj closes her eyes as if trying to shut out emily, shut out the night before, shut out that one incredibly uncomfortable kiss. emily gets the hint.

“alright, jj, shit,” emily says through a sigh, swinging her legs over the bed. her feet land in a sticky puddle that smells strongly of coconut rum. it’s disgusting, but she peels her feet up and pads out of jj’s room and to her own, leaving tropical footprints in her wake.

how stupid do you have to be to sleep with your best friend?, emily thinks, staring at herself in the tiny round mirror on her wall. her face looks sunken in, her eyes ringed with dark shadows. how stupid do you have to be to sleep with your roommate? she lets out a mirthless laugh. no big deal! no big deal. (but it is. emily just has a poor habit of pretending she has no emotions.) she rubs her face harshly, trying to get herself to wake up. once it burns, she stops, revelling in the redness of her face.

emily and jj have been roommates since they were freshmen. jj walked into their dorm room timidly, anxious to meet the girl she’d be sleeping across from for the year. emily greeted her with a toothy grin, and all of jj’s nerves were eased before they even spoke. from that moment on, they’ve been inseparable.

jj cheered emily up with a loving hand rubbing her back in circles when emily accidentally cut her own bangs too short freshman year. when jj cried after failing her first college exam, emily was there to hug her tightly and tell her that it would be okay. (they made flashcards for the next one.) after emily had her first hookup, jj was the one to discover her hickeys, and they gushed about the lucky girl through giggles. and jj called emily literally immediately after the cute guy in her organic chemistry class finally asked her out.

needless to say, the pair is close. there are hardly any moments in the past few years that emily remembers being without jj. emily could say she was surprised that they had accidentally hooked up last night, but she wasn’t. they had definitely shared some memories that screamed, “hey emily, you’re in love with your best friend,” but emily never paid them any mind until now.

maybe it’s the soft kiss that they share every single time they get drunk. or maybe it’s the pit that settled in emily’s stomach when she sent jj off on that organic chemistry date. or maybe, just maybe, it was the way jj would crawl into emily’s tiny twin bed and hold her after a bad day. maybe.

----

it’s about a month after the awkward hook-up that jj brings jason home. the tension in their apartment has been incredible, thick enough that emily feels like she’s swimming through it. it gets worse when the stupid frat guy walks in, arm slung around jj’s waist, looking like he’s been carved from marble. emily feels sick seeing him.

of course he’s beautiful, and blonde, and a man. he’s perfect for jj. jason sticks around for a while, and each time emily sees him she feels bile rise in her throat. for as much as he hangs around jj, he might as well be emily’s second roommate. she makes this comparison bitterly to herself, and immediately regrets it as soon as he decides to walk around the living room in only his underwear. she feels she manifested that, and makes a solemn promise to the universe to not put any more energy into jason.

she can’t keep that promise.

“your boyfriend didn’t put the toilet seat down again,” emily remarks, stirring creamer into her coffee. they haven’t spoken in weeks.

“i’ll talk to him,” jj replies flatly. her back is turned to emily as she rummages through their crowded refrigerator.

emily keeps her eyes trained on the curve of jj’s spine. “and there was piss in the toilet,” she says.

“okay,” jj repeats, “i’ll talk to him.”

“and---” emily starts, but is startled into silence by a bark of jj’s voice. the blonde woman whips around, ponytail swinging, and steels her gaze on emily’s seated figure.

“enough, emily,” she says harshly. she speaks slowly, as if emily was a toddler. “i will talk to him.” emily can’t control her face contorting at the tone jj has taken with her. her lip snarls up, her eyes narrow, her eyebrows furrow. but before she can come up with a sufficiently disgusted rebuttal, jj is gone, leaving nothing but a faint scent of vanilla in her wake.

as much as emily wants to stalk the other way, dragging her feet dramatically, there’s nowhere to go except to trail behind jj. their rooms are next to each other, something that they’d always valued. now, it makes emily’s stomach twist. she slams the door to her room and queues a playlist filled with angsty guitars. when her bluetooth speaker is loud enough to sufficiently shake the walls, she nods to no one in particular and flops back onto her bed.

she stares at her ceiling fan whirring; blades going ‘round, ‘round, ‘round. the tears in her eyes come from the cool air, she tells herself. they sit on her lower lashline, perched like tiny uncut gems situated in a wedding band. don’t let them fall, she thinks. then, at the recognition of her repressed emotions, she breaks, and the gemstone tears spill over and roll down her cheeks rapidly, their jagged edges leaving tiny cuts against her smooth skin.

“fuck,” emily mutters, but through her clenched teeth the word is just an exhale that bounces around the room. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck, and then emily’s crying harder. caught up in emotion, she tugs a photo of her and jj off of the wall.

it’s the one from their first nights out together. in the picture, emily’s arm is swung around jj’s neck, an alcoholic drink she was definitely too young to have in her hand. she’s smiling so wide at the camera, her eyes squint. jj is looking up at her like she hung the stars.

emily feels sick. everything seems to be mocking her. the picture, the blank wall where it used to hang, the left over sticky-tac there, even the sound of the ceiling fan. i have got to get out of here.

she flings herself at her desk, trying very hard to maintain balance as the desk chair nearly rolls out from beneath her. she opens her laptop, wiping away her tears with the heel of her hand.

there’s banging on the wall her and jj share, and a male voice shouts. “can you turn down your music?”

emily tosses the nearest textbook to her---one about the italian renaissance--- at the wall and turns the volume up two notches.

a week later, emily has an appointment with a real estate agent to go look at a new apartment. it’s a one bedroom, and hopefully not too scrappy considering her price range. she puts on her most professional looking skirt for the tour--- she’s an adult now for god’s sake.

as she grabs her keys off of the hook next to the front door, emily sees jj for the second time since their tiff. (the first was when emily had answered the door for a pizza delivery man. she locked eyes with jj, who was tangled up with her boyfriend on the couch, on her way back to her room.) jj clears her throat, more so to garner confidence than to get emily’s attention. “i like your skirt,” she says, leaning against the hallway entrance.

“thank you,” emily says, hand on the front doorknob. she pauses and looks down. “now that you say that, i think it’s your skirt.”

and for the first time in what feels like forever, they laugh together. jj fills with warmth seeing emily’s eyes light up. she missed their glint. but as soon as the moment is there, it’s gone, emily closing the door behind her.

-----

“i really, really want this apartment,” emily says with much more enthusiasm than she expected to have. the studio is tiny, yes, but maximizes its space well. as soon as she walked in, the wheels in emily’s head began turning. she would put a rug here, hang the tv there. the ceilings are low, and suspiciously discolored in some places, but emily looks past that to see the apartment’s potential.

the tour was quick, considering the space, and emily is convinced by the end of the 20 minutes that this is the place for her. “i love the windows,” she says, running her fingertips across the windowpane. “i love this apartment.”

“i’m so glad, emily,” the real estate agent, rachel, says sincerely. her head is tilted in amusement as she watches emily drink in the space. there’s a pause, where emily is looking out of the window, unaware of rachel’s eyes trained on her. emily turns and gives her a small, shy smile.

rachel shakes her head as if to clear her mind. “i can draw up the papers,” she says.

at her words, emily is snapped back into reality. her only thought is jj. emily can’t sign these papers right now. she has to make things right with jj first, then she’ll sign for the apartment. she can’t explain why it’s so important to her to have this talk with jj all of a sudden, but the tiny voice in the back of her head says it starts with an l and ends with an o-v-e.

emily relays this information to rachel, albeit more casually (“let me let my roommate know i’m planning on moving, first.”), then promises to call her later with an answer and a plan for when they can meet again to finalize the sale.

rachel sends emily off with a business card and a hug. when emily gets in her car, she feels icky and wishes they had opted for a handshake instead. she tells herself that a handshake would have just been more professional, but emily doesn’t care too much about professionalism. simply, she just felt weird hugging someone other than jj. this realization doesn’t surprise her, but it weighs heavily on her shoulders. how stupid do you have to be to fall in love with your best friend?

emily trudges through the front door of the apartment, footsteps slow with the anxiety of having to talk things out with jj. she pushes the door to jj’s room open, but is met with a perfectly made bed. jj’s not home. emily is relieved to an extent, but the anxiety creeps up over her when she realizes she’ll have to sit and wait for jj to get home to talk to her. how humiliating. emily tosses her shoes next to the front door with a bit more force than necessary, taking pride in the two thuds that follow. her phone feels heavy in her skirt pocket, like a mocking symbol of having to call a real estate agent later. a mocking symbol of having to leave this apartment. leave this life. leave jj.

emily can’t have the stupid phone on her anymore. she places it on the kitchen counter and promptly leaves the room, the laughing taunts of the “call” button becoming quieter as she slams her bedroom door and promptly falls asleep.

an hour later, jj trudges through the front door of the apartment, the emotional toll of the day catching up with her. tears stain her cheeks, but she has no more energy to continue to cry. her piece-of-shit boyfriend had been such a dick when she broke up with him earlier in the morning. his homophobic comments about her and emily ring through her ears, taking up immense space in her brain. jj is drained from arguing with him, her throat raw from screaming. any man she has to defend her (oddly homoerotic) friendship with emily from is no man for her. she wishes she’d realized that sooner, because now she feels she might have lost emily forever.

jj is fixing herself a glass of ice water cold enough to hurt her sensitive teeth when emily’s phone starts buzzing on the counter next to her. jj hadn’t even noticed it was there. “rachel,” the phone screen reads, and jj is struck with a lightning bolt of envy. who is rachel? her eyes train intently on the phone until it stops ringing and a voicemail notification pops up. in a rash, out-of-character motion, she clicks the green “listen” button and lets the voice mail play aloud.

“hey emily,” rachel’s crackly voice starts through the speaker. jj is biting her nails. “i know you said you’d call me after you sorted things out, but demand for the apartment has gone up and it’s probably going to be gone within the next few hours.” there’s a pause.

an apartment?, jj thinks. a new apartment?

“anyways, i enjoyed hanging out with you today and showing you around the place…” rachel trails off, then her voice returns. “so i just wanted to let you know that you’ll most likely need to sign within the next hour if you want it. alright, emily. goodbye.”

without regard for emily’s naptime or for the consequences of literally snooping through emily’s phone, jj barges into emily’s room. though she thought she could no longer cry, tears well up in her eyes. “emily,” she says loudly.

“what the fuck, jj,” emily says, jolting awake and sitting up.

“you’re moving? with rachel?” logically, jj had pieced together the fact that rachel is just the real estate agent, but she’s searching for things to be mad about, desperate to get a reaction out of emily.

emily lets out a short laugh at the ridiculousness of the confrontation. “can you calm down? we can talk about it, but not if you’re literally shaking with anger.”

jj looks down at her hands. sure enough, they’re shaking. that’s enough of a reality check as she needs. she sits on the edge of emily’s bed, and her fury morphs into sadness.

after a long pause, jj speaks. “we’ve never not lived together,” she says softly, looking down at the floor. her socked feet swing.

“i signed a lease to live with you,” emily says. “but you freaked out on me and brought a shitty ass boyfriend home, and i don’t want to live with him.”

jj is quiet. the cats on her socks appear to be dancing when she wiggles her toes. “we broke up this morning.”

“yeah?” emily says softly, keeping her eyes locked on jj, who still won’t look up. “i’m sorry.”

jj shrugs. “i broke up with him. it’s...it’s okay.”

emily puts her hand on jj’s arm. “look at me, jj.”

jj shakes her head in response.

“why not?” emily asks, tilting her head.

after a deep breath, jj looks up at emily, finally, eyes ringed in red. “i’m scared,” she whispers, voice cracking.

one good thing about being so close with jj is that emily never has to ask for clarification on anything. emily can read jj like a children’s book, from the way she takes her breaths to the way she forms her words. she knows that jj’s lip quirks up when she’s trying to be coy, and her eyebrows furrow when she’s annoyed. she knows that her shoulders hunch over when she’s relaxed, and her posture is straight and rigid when she’s anxious. with all of that, there’s no need to ask why jj is scared. emily knows.

emily places her hand against jj’s cheek, rubbing softly with her thumb. for a second, emily is transported back to the morning so long ago, when it was just her and jj and spilt coconut rum; the morning where jj was a divine being and emily was a mere mortal. in this moment, they’re equals. emily likes this better.

jj’s the one to initiate this kiss this time, a small detail that makes flowers bloom in emily’s chest. their lips lock slowly, hesitantly. jj peeks one eye open at emily, just to see her, and smiles into the kiss. jj deepens the kiss, and emily snakes her hands into her hair. she tugs gently, and jj lets out a tiny whimper.

emily pulls away with a wide smile, letting her hands rest at the base of jj’s skull. “move in with me.”

jj shakes her head, chuckling. “you know how much money it will cost for both of us to break our lease? no, thank you.”

emily pouts, and presses another soft kiss to jj’s lips. “this apartment is so cute though, jj.” she pauses, letting her eyes scan jj’s features. there’s no way she’s leaving her. “i’ll pay to break the lease and i’ll pay your half of the rent for a month if you come.”

“you can’t afford that!” jj says, correctly, and turns to press kisses against emily’s jawbone.

“i would rather be broke and with you than rich and without you,” emily replies. she’s running her fingers through jj’s hair, a motion she’s practiced many times before. this time is different. more tender.

-----

jennifer jareau is in love. that’s her first thought when she wakes up in a bed that’s still slightly unfamiliar. jennifer jareau is so, astronomically in love. that’s her second thought. that one comes when she turns to the source of the tiny snores beside her and is met with the very gentle and very naked frame of her best friend. jj kisses emily’s shoulder softly and sinks deeper into their new bed. the low ceilings of their new studio apartment envelop her like a warm hug.

#jemily #jennifer jareau x emily prentiss #jj x emily #emily prentiss x jennifer jareau #jemily fanfiction #jemily au #criminal minds fanfiction #jemily headcanons #jemily angst #jemily fluff #jemily smut #idk how to tag jemily so this is about as good as it's gonna get #my writing #tw alcohol #tw alchohol mention

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kookicat · 4 years ago

Text

The Price of Peace

He gives in, in the end, to the doc's increasingly worried questions, coupled with concerned looks from the team and lets the man drive him to the hospital. Maybe he’s more blasé about injuries than the rest of the team, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. He knows his body well enough to know when to worry, and while he’s pretty sure there’s no need now, he’s no longer responsible for just himself. He has a team who relies on him now, and that’s enough motivation to accept the offer.

Nate herds Hardison and Parker back to the hotel and Eliot expects Sophie to go with them, but she follows him to the doctor's truck. His zip through hoodie is in her hands and she offers it to him, because the night air is taking on a chill and his skin and hair is still damp from the exertion. He slips it on, keeps his eyes averted from her as he eases his left arm into the sleeve, biting back a curse because moving hurts. It’s been a while since he did any real wrestling and the muscles in his back and thighs are letting him know they’re not happy about it.

The doc unlocks the truck doors and climbs into the driver's seat, cell phone in hand as he makes quiet arrangements. Eliot tucks himself in the back seat next to Sophie with a groan he can't quite stifle. There's a nasty throb starting in his left shoulder and his left eye has started to swell closed. The gloves have worked to mostly protect his hands but his knees and elbows are already sore. It's nothing that he hasn't been through before, but he's not used to anyone looking out for him, more used to retreating to that week's safehouse and bunkering down until the worst injuries heal and he can take his next job. Having a team to care about -for- him is new, and he'd be lying to himself if he said he's totally comfortable with it.

Sophie wordlessly hands him an instant ice pack and he presses it to his cheek, leaning back against the seat and letting his good eye close. His head aches, a sharper pain wrapping around his cheekbone and down through his jaw. The ibuprofen he'd swallowed back in the gym aren't doing anything but making him feel vaguely sick. The truck is chilly despite the hoodie and the ice pack isn't helping. He shivers once, a quick quake working through his body.

"Here," Sophie says quietly and shakes out one of her giant scarfs so it mostly covers him. The silk is cool on his skin at first but it warms quickly. It smells like Sophie- jasmine and musk and some hint of spice that he’s never quite figured out. It helps, blocking some of the cold sir and he feels himself relax, just a little, which helps his tight muscles.

He has to swallow twice before he can answer and even then, his voice isn't quite as steady as he would have liked. "Thanks." He forces his good eye open and rolls his head so he can look at her.

It's just dark enough to hide the expression on her face, but he thinks that she's frowning. "We could have found another way, you know," she says, softly. "No-one would have thought less of you."

Something in his jaw clicks when he starts to speak. "How long would that have taken? We did the right thing." He shifts, fingers clenching under the scarf as his battered ribs join in the chorus of hurts playing on his body. "The Howorths are safe now, and Rucker can't try the same trick on anyone else."

"Damn hard," the doctor says, "watching you taking that battering. Never seen anyone do that before." The doctor glances at them in the mirror, then turns his eyes back to the road.

"It's what he does," Sophie says, with a tone in her voice Eliot can't quite figure out, because he’s exhausted and hurting and still feels vaguely sick. There's reluctant admiration in it, coupled with worry, because they all know there's only so much damage a body can take before something breaks beyond repair.

It's not something he wants to think about, at least not while he's battered and bleeding. He closes his eyes again, leaning back against the seat, and lets himself doze, just a little, knowing it's a risk but doing it anyway. Trust has to start somewhere, and this is that place.

"Eliot," Sophie calls softly as they pull into the hospital parking lot. He's quiet and still on the seat next to her, enough to worry her if it wasn't for the steady rise and fall of his chest. There’s a little blood on the corner of his lip, more caked in his hairline and the sight of it makes something fierce clench in her chest. We should have found another way, she thinks, even though she knows it would have taken too long, left the family they were trying to protect defenceless. As much as she hates it, he’d been right.

He blinks awake, muscles in his jaw clenching as the pain hits again, sending measured breaths through his teeth until he gets it back under control. "Fuck," he breathes, fingers flexing in a way that makes her want to take his hand. He catches something in her expression and smiles, softly. “I’m okay,” he says and hands the scarf back to her.

“Eliot, you’re bleeding,” Sophie replies, and hears the doctor chuckle dryly at her tone. He is though, a slow trickle threading through his hair. His face is lined with pain and she hadn't missed the slight shake in his hands when he passed the scarf back.

He shakes his head, lost for words, and twists to open the truck door, bracing himself as he swings his legs out. Moving is a bad idea, because the slow, sluggish nausea that’s been plaguing him suddenly becomes much more acute, and he has to close his eyes, leaning back against the truck until the worst of it passes and he can breathe again.

Cool fingers find his wrist, and he startles a little, twitching his arm away. “Sorry,” Sophie says, and reaches for his arm again. “May I try something?”

He squints at her, then nods, once, and regrets it as a galaxy of stars filters through his brain. It’s all part and parcel of a concussion, and while he’s lived through it before, he’s not too thrilled to be living through it now.

She presses her fingers against his wrist, feeling for the right spot, knowing she's found it when some of the tension in his jaw fades. "I learned this on a cruise. The ship had some wonderful art I was going to relocate, but we got hit by a tropical storm and I spent three days throwing up until one of the stewards took pity on me."

It helps, as does her warmth as she leans against the truck, close but not quite touching him. "Let me tell you, when he showed me this, I wanted to kiss him and kick him at the same time."

He huffs a quiet laugh at that and starts walking, gently disengaging her fingers. They follow the doc towards the hospital doors and Eliot wonders why in hell he let himself be talked into this. He has no love for hospitals, has spent more time than he'd like inside of them, and he already can't wait to be walking back out of this one.

It's a handsome redbrick building, newer than he'd expected. The doc leads them straight into the ER and points to an open bay, where there’s already a nurse waiting. Eliot stops, thinking about walking back out to the truck, going back to the hotel and sleeping for at least twelve hours. A quick glance at Sophie’s face dissuades him of that idea; she’s frowning, clearly worried, and her eyes keep darting from the blooming bruise on his cheekbone to the still oozing cut on his hairline.

“Eliot?” she says, and the frown deepens. “What’s the matter?” Her hand drifts to his elbow and he draws in a soft breath because the contact hurts. He's pretty sure that come the morning, he's going to be covered in nasty dark bruises.

“Nothing,” he says, and resigns himself to god knows how much poking and prodding, taking a seat on the bed, idly rubbing his thumb over one aching knee. “Can we get this over with?” he asks the nurse, with the best smile he can muster and sighs.

----

He walks out again four hours later, after enough scans and xrays to make him feel like he's glowing, a bag of prescription meds dangling from one hand, a pretty good buzz running through his veins and ten stitches in the cut in his scalp. All he wants is to find a vaguely horizontal place to occupy and sleep for at least eight hours. His limbs feel like they're made from lead, heavy and stiff and vaguely achy. His back aches too, each step jarring through him like he's in a car with a blown suspension. His left shoulder is taped, supporting a torn muscle, and he's starting to wish he'd accepted the offer of a sling.

Sophie is sitting in the waiting area, silk scarf wrapped around her. She looks exhausted and he pauses, feeling a wave of fondness wash over him at the sight. She has nasty oily coffee from the ancient vending machine and she offers him the cup when he walks up to her.

The smell makes his stomach roll and he shakes his head. "I'm good, thanks," he says, voice just a little hoarse, and thinks about sitting down. He's pretty sure he won't get back up any time soon if he does so he rests his hip on the row of chairs instead.

He can see the question in her eyes just waiting to escape, and while she's not frowning any more he's got to know her well enough to know that she's still worried. "I'm fine. Nothing major," he says, carefully avoiding mentioning the hairline fracture in his cheekbone. "Worst of it is a couple of broken ribs and a damned concussion."

She presses her lips together, a mix of anger and concern drawing her brows into a frown. "Just a couple of broken ribs," she mutters and shakes her head.

"Soph," he says, fighting back a yawn. She looks up at the nickname, head tilting just a bit. "I'm fine. I've lived through worse. It'll suck for a couple weeks, that's all." He keeps his tone gentle, knows the anger in her is coming from a place of worry, knows she's probably blaming herself, because he knows for damn sure that's what he'd be doing if their positions were reversed. He'll tell Nate everything in the morning, because you don't hide injuries from your commanding officer, but Sophie doesn't need to know everything. It's just more weight to bear and God knows they're all already carrying enough.

The doc breaks the moment by ambling over, Eliot's chart tucked under his arm. He offers it to the other man. "Figured you wouldn't want a record of your visit leaving here," he says and pulls his keys out of his pocket. "Can I interest anyone in a lift back to their hotel?"

----

The gentle motion of the truck is soothing and he leans on the door, bruised temple resting against the cool glass and lets his mind drift. His eyes don't want to focus, turning the passing street lights into a pleasing blur. He's not sure if it's the concussion, the exhaustion, the drugs, or a combination of all three but he's content to just watch the darkened streets go by. He blinks heavy a couple of times, realising that he's dozing again and they're almost back at the hotel.

The doc swings the truck into the parking lot and drives up to the door, pulling to a gentle stop. Eliot knows he should thank the man but he can't find the energy and settles for an exhausted nod as he opens the door and practically falls out of the vehicle. He desperately needs sleep, preferably before the painkillers start to wear off.

Sophie waves the doc goodbye and comes to stand at Eliot's side, one hand raised like she wants to help but isn't sure how. He digs deep, trawling reserves of energy he rarely ever uses, and forces his legs to move. They stumble into the waiting lift and he leans against the wall with his good shoulder, all the words he wants to say jumbled on his tongue.

She reads something of it in his expression and nods, once; message received and understood.

The lift stops and they walk out. He expects Sophie to head to the girls' room but she doesn't, pulling out a key card and leading the way to the third room they'd hired, the one Hardison had dubbed the control centre. "The doc said someone should keep an eye on you tonight. He listed a few gruesome ways in which you could come to peril," she says dryly and pushes the door open. "Besides, Parker snores. I hope you don't."

"No one has ever complained," he says and limps into the room, heading to the recliner, glad he's got running shoes on that he can just toe off unlike his usual boots. He's pretty sure he's going to have enough trouble getting up in the morning and the bed just seems like tempting fate. "I'm fine here," he tells her and eases down into the soft leather, tapping the button to raise the leg support. It takes him a second to get vaguely comfortable but he's honestly so exhausted that he's not sure comfort is really going to matter.

Sophie shakes a blanket out over him, watching him fight to keep his eyes open. There's something oddly endearing about it that makes her smile. "Go to sleep," she says softly and with a sigh, he does.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28907364/chapters/70920525 part two is posted here too. 😊

#leverage #whump #eliot spencer #fanfic #hurt/comfort #sophie devereaux #the tap out job #A little what if #episode tag

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theloneliestshipper · 4 years ago

Note

oooh AU prompt - trapped on a deserted island! Anything from Castaway to Gilligan's to Blue Lagoon, writer's choice.

AO3 Link

“Are you ready to begin?”

There was no response from Boba Fett. That wasn’t surprising. He hadn’t said a single word since boarding Home One. Lando was prepared to be patient. He’d brought a thermos of caf and a book. If the bounty hunter wanted to sit at the interview table all night, then Lando could wait him out.

He did have one trick up his sleeve, however.

“She’s pregnant.”

Fett closed his eyes briefly and then dropped his face into the palm of his hand. “Fierfek.”

He didn’t look too bad for a man who had spent the better part of a year on a deserted island. “Mildly undernourished,” was the med droid’s appraisal. The armor he usually wore wasn’t much use to him in a tropical climate and his skin was bronzed from the sun. His black hair was long and curling, still damp from the shower.

“She said it was okay to tell you. She said some other stuff too. I promised I would pass it along...if you’re ready to talk?”

Fett ran his fingers back through his hair and straightened with a resigned sigh. He motioned to the recorder on the table, and Lando turned it on. “Okay, so this is the official statement of Boba Fett, as told to Lando Calrissian. It’s oh-seven hundred hours and fifty-two minutes standard time. This statement was recorded in detention block C of Home One. Go ahead.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Start with the island. Do you know where you were?”

“The Forbidden Islands. Donadda.”

“Right. It’s a series of islands in the easternmost part of the Gesar archipelago. The inhabitants of Donadda avoid them due to the belief that they are cursed. How did you end up there?”

“I stopped for fuel. She stowed away on my ship.”

“Who did?”

“Leia.” Fett sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “She put a blaster under my helmet and told me to land. Said as long as I unloaded Solo and left them both at Bayhold, she wouldn’t kill me.”

“But you never made it to Bayhold.”

“I didn’t agree to her terms. Solo was mine, and I had a contract to bring him to Jabba the Hutt. We fought. I lost control of the ship.”

“And you managed to land on the island.”

“The ship was damaged during the crash. I took off for the beach to see if I could hail a passing ship. When I left, she was unconscious.” Fett grimaced at the memory. “By the time I got back she had raided the weapons cache and she wasn’t about to let me get close. So I went back to the beach. That’s how it was for the first couple of weeks. She held the ship and I kept my distance.”

“Then what happened?”

“She ran out of food.”

“And you had food?”

“By then I had walked the island. It’s not that big. I had rigged up a couple of fishing traps and she tried to steal from one of them. I defended it. Told her if she wanted my food, she had to trade for it. So we started bartering. I brought her food and water, she gave me tools from the ship. No weapons, though. She was too smart for that.”

He said it with a grudging respect that Lando didn’t miss. “But you were living together when you were found.”

“There was a storm. It wiped out my camp at the beach and she said we might as well work together until we could escape.”

“Did you try to fix the ship?”

“Of course I tried.” Fett gave him a look that suggested he found the question ridiculous. “Firesprays aren’t like your Coreillian trash ships. They need power support.”

“That’s why it’s always handy to have a droid around.”

“I didn’t have a droid.”

“You had a block of carbonite with an internal power supply.”

The bounty hunter looked even more annoyed. “And a princess who would have fucking killed me.”

“Han’s fine by the way. He’s got a wicked case of hibernation sickness, but they expect him to make a full recovery.” Lando paused, but he didn’t really expect a response. “He’ll have a lot to catch up on. Obviously you and Leia got...close.”

Fett looked away.

“Look, I get it. It was convenient.”

“It was a game.” The words were spoken abruptly and almost harshly.

“What was a game?”

The bounty hunter shifted in his seat. “I found a box of stuff I confiscated from prisoners. We started rolling chance cubes for sips of alcohol and when we ran out of alcohol we started rolling for other things.”

“You had a really lucky night, I take it.”

“It was her roll.”

Lando sat up a little. “Tell me about the rescue.”

“The locals won’t go near the islands, but we thought we might be able to hail offworld ships bound for Bayhold. We collected whatever wood we could find and filled the center with grass and leaves so it would smoke. Took us days.”

“And that’s how you were able to signal The Resilient?”

“Eventually.”

“How many times did you try this?”

Fett’s eyes drifted to the ceiling as he silently counted. “Fourteen.”

“Wow.” Lando shook his head. “Leia didn’t mention that. She didn’t seem to know anything about the power supply in the carbonite either. You really never considered siphoning off the life support?”

“Isn’t Solo your friend?”

“He is, and I’m very grateful that he’s alive. I just don’t understand why you’re so reluctant to take credit for doing something noble and good for once. Unless...you did it for her."

The bounty hunter leaned back with a scowl. “Where’s my ship?”

“On the repair deck. It should be fixed by morning.” Lando collected his things as he spoke. “For the record, Leia also said that it was her roll. She said it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but she doesn’t regret it. She plans to have the baby, but if you want to walk away from all of this, you can. She won’t hold it against you.” He stood and tilted his head. “But c’mon. We both know you’re not going anywhere.”

There was another long pause, but this time it was because there was nothing that needed to be said. Fett cleared his throat. “Can I see her?”

“Sure you can. By the way, this-” he held the recorder aloft “-is a transmitter. So you don’t need to have this whole awkward conversation again with Leia."

#boba fett/princess leia #prompt fic #desert island trope #rebelbounty #boba/leia #my fic #idk why Lando got pulled into this #I just enjoy writing him #Anonymous

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

Text

Modern Love, 1/12 (Branjie/Scyvie/Ninex) - Ortega

fic summary: Brooke Lynn is a 23 year old graduate writing boring, uninspired pieces for the fashion department of a newspaper and living in a city all her friends have moved away from. Silky is living at her parents’ house and spends her days applying for jobs she’s promptly rejected for. Nina and Monet are struggling through their first year as teachers whilst being sickeningly adorable girlfriends. Akeria is pursuing her dream of being a badass lawyer, even if her master’s degree is slowly crushing her soul. Plastique is acting like the second coming of Paris Hilton, so nothing there has changed. Scarlet is overworked and Yvie is underpaid and their relationship isn’t all it appears from the outside.

And Vanessa? Vanessa is nowhere to be seen.

(A story about a holiday, a breakup, friendships and relationships in a post-graduate world, careers, navigating life after university, figuring out what it means to be an adult, and coming to terms with the fact that we really are not nineteen forever.)

a/n: welcome to the sequel to Not Nineteen Forever!!! i should say it’s not *~ mandatory ~* to have read the original before this but it’s encouraged huehue xo hope u enjoy and please feel free to reblog, like and send love!!

***

Brooke felt the all-encompassing sense of dread wash over her as her alarm went off, the sounds of the radio that were gradually fading in doing nothing to make the experience of waking up for another day of work any more palatable. She groaned loudly as she stretched, her arms flying out to the side and hitting the edge of the double bed. Brooke starfished a little, stretching her legs out as long as they would go and trying to put off getting up and showered for as long as she could.

Rolling over in bed she reached for her phone and stopped when she saw the rose-gold rectangular frame beside her on the bedside table. It caught her by surprise every day, almost a sort of routine in itself. A picture of her and Vanessa from when they first moved in, standing at the doorway having just popped a bottle of champagne. Brooke’s face was in a funny contorted sort of smile as she yanked the cork out of the bottle and Vanessa was clapping her hands in excitement, a brilliant white moonbeam painted across her face. Brooke remembered the day well. Monet had taken the photo with Nina beside her, both of them still in their work clothes after they’d visited straight from a hard day full of teaching. Akeria, Silky, Plastique, Scarlet and Yvie had all been inside, shuffling through the huge variety of Domino’s pizza boxes that had just arrived at their door like a deck of cards. That night had been so special. Whatever had happened since then, Brooke would probably treasure that memory forever.

In spite of herself she smiled as she looked at the photograph, then turned her attention to her phone screen.

No notifications. She didn’t know why she expected anything more.

With a cloud over her head that matched the ones in the uncharacteristically grey June sky, Brooke brushed her teeth and peeled her pyjamas off before stepping into the shower and adjusting the dial to somewhere between tepid and warm. Vanessa’s shower gel sat in the corner, the tropical fruit and mint one with little tiny sloths all over the front. Brooke found herself hurting as she looked at it, still loath to use it as she took her own from the opposite side and splatted a huge dollop into her shower puff. Sometimes she used it indulgently, like a secret she shared with herself. She didn’t know whether she’d buy more when it ran out. That was something she still needed to think about.

Once she was clean Brooke briskly dried herself with a towel, sitting on the edge of the bed wrapped in it as she carefully blow-dried out her hair. She picked out her outfit: smart black work trousers with a fabric belt that pulled her in at the waist, a black and white patterned shirt, black stiletto heels. As she painted some minimal makeup on her face in the hope it would make her look less like a sleep-deprived zombie and more like she had her life together in some way, Brooke checked the clock and cursed as she realised she was running behind.

Leaving lipstick for the moment, she grabbed her bag, shoved her feet in a pair of black pumps, and left hurriedly for the train. Breakfast wasn’t a priority; she knew she could grab an iced coffee and a croissant from the cafe in the station in between changing trains, as it took her two to get into work. It was times such as these that she wished she knew how to drive like Monet, Plastique and Akeria, or had learned since uni like Nina or Scarlet. But then again, cafe food for breakfast was one of the very few perks of public transport.

Brooke eventually arrived at the huge concrete block with windows that held her offices, taking the elevator up to the fifth floor, clocking in, shooting a lacklustre “hi” to the girls she sometimes chatted to and settling herself in at her desk. As office positions went, Brooke supposed it wasn’t awful- it was beside the window looking out onto the streets of the city below and it provided some much-needed light to her day. Logging on to her work laptop, she checked her emails (one from her boss about the article due for Friday, and one from Cheryl about money for flowers for somebody going on maternity leave that she’d never met or heard of and might not even have worked there).

Her working day had started.

University hadn’t prepared Brooke for graduate life. It hadn’t prepared her for the fact that friends moved away for jobs and houses and flats, internships and apprenticeships and postgrads and masters. It hadn’t prepared her for the fact that her group chat, once flooded with about a hundred messages if she so much as left it for five minutes, gathered dust as everyone’s lives took over. It hadn’t prepared Brooke for the feeling of missing out on something…Christ knows what. Perhaps living, making memories instead of simply swiping through ones already made on a Saturday night spent alone in bed with a bottle of wine to herself. It hadn’t prepared her for the yearning, the regret at having taken those days for granted when they were the happiest of her life and she hadn’t even realised it. If Brooke had known how soul-crushingly boring her life would be once she got that rolled-up piece of paper in a little tube she would’ve been dragging the girls out every single night. The all-encompassing sadness and longing for something better hit her harder on days like these, sepia ones with big clouds that hung ominously in the sky but never gave her the satisfaction of raining. She supposed that feeling had only been exacerbated by…

She didn’t need to remind herself of that.

It was ten o’clock in the morning and Brooke was staring out of the small office window stupefied with boredom when her phone vibrated. She jumped, pouncing on it as she always did whenever a notification went off. Her phone hadn’t been on silent for a full month. It hadn’t been the person she’d wanted or expected, but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

Silk: HEY GIRL LONG TIME NO SPEAK! I’M GONNA BE IN TOWN THIS AFTERNOON FOR AN INTERVIEW BUT I’LL BE FREE AFTER AND I’VE GOT A COUPLE HOURS TO KICK ABOUT UNTIL MY TRAIN. YOU WANNA GRAB DINNER? XXXXXXXXX

Brooke frantically made plans as if she was under a time limit, as if the moment would slip through her fingers like sand in an hourglass. She suggested some restaurants that she knew wouldn’t eat into either of their fragile graduate salaries and they settled on an Italian in the city centre, where the portions were big and the meals were tasty.

Brooke spent the rest of the day looking forward to meeting her friend. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Silky. Maybe it had been as long ago as New Year. Brooke smiled as she remembered the occasion; all of them cramming into Scarlet and Yvie’s flat to see in the year. Silky and Akeria had got too drunk off prosecco and screamed along to JLS, Scarlet and Yvie had both made a buffet to rival a hotel’s, and Nina, Monet, Vanessa and Brooke had all been tangled up in an almost relationship-ruining game of Articulate. Plastique had brought her new girlfriend Naomi to introduce to everyone and the girl had looked ever so slightly alarmed by the sheer chaos of everyone put together, but she’d laughed and joined in all the same.

That had been another happy memory. Those seemed to be hard to come by these days.

Work dragged. It always did. Brooke managed to write three sub-par articles that she sent to her editor at the end of the day anyway because hell, it was their job to turn carbon into diamonds. So when she hopped on the train back into the city, Brooke felt a little buzz in her veins that she hadn’t felt in a while.

It took her until she saw Silky standing outside the restaurant- hair in a bun full of flyaways, eyebrows still Sharpied on, in a pair of smart trousers and a floaty top- that Brooke realised that part of the reason she was so excited was because she’d been so lonely for such a long time. Well, only really a month, but it felt like a year. It had taken her living on her own to realise just how boring her life was without all her friends so constantly part of it, and now they all had their own lives and schedules it only served to show Brooke how empty her own was without…

Well. Without her.

As soon as Silky looked up from her phone and spotted Brooke her face lit up, and she fixed her with a smile and a screech that Brooke never thought she would have missed hearing but by God, she had.

“BROOKE LYNN!” she screamed, followed by lots of squealing and babbling as she wrapped the taller girl in a tight hug and refused to let go for at least twenty seconds. Brooke didn’t mind and she found herself clinging back, Silky suddenly the loudest anchor she’d never known she needed. When Silky finally pulled away she grabbed Brooke by both wrists, shaking her back and forth a little. “Oh my God, BITCH! Oh my God. FUCK! It’s so good to see you. How the fuck are you?”

Brooke appreciated that- Silky asking how she was. Yvie tiptoed around Brooke’s feelings when they texted and Brooke tiptoed around her and Scarlet’s perfect domestic bliss, both of the subjects too touchy for Brooke and the pair of them instead choosing to communicate via meme. Nina barely had time to breathe these days let alone text back, and Plastique…well, Plastique wouldn’t get it.

None of them would, she supposed.

“I’m…I’m surviving! I’m being an adult, I guess, and this is what life is now. How’re you?” Brooke swiftly moved the conversation on, and Silky took the hint and dropped both her wrists, pushing open the door.

“I’m on cloud fuckin’ nine girl. C’mon, let’s get some vino an’ I’ll catch you up on the world of Ms. Ganache! Think of it as a free episode of the reality TV show that is my life.”

“Let’s be real, Silk. If anyone’s life’s like a reality TV show right now, it’s mine,” Brooke raised her eyebrows, not quite committing to her own attempt at being lighthearted and instead couldn’t have sounded more bitter if she’d eaten an entire lemon with its rind on.

Silky, for her part, shrugged and let out a small sigh. “You ain’t wrong, girl, you ain’t wrong. But the offer of wine still stands, so let’s get sat. Where the damn hell is a waiter?”

They eventually got shown to their table and the conversation flowed frantically and excitedly, mirroring the wine. Silky filled Brooke in on every last detail of her life- most importantly, Brooke thought, was that Silky’s parents who she was back living with had adopted a cocker spaniel puppy called Pooch. Graduate life had been tough on Silky; she still hadn’t managed to get a job and so therefore couldn’t afford to rent a flat, so she’d moved back to her sleepy and uninspiring hometown. Living with her parents, she’d groaned, was beginning to chip away at her; the constant pressure they put on Silky to find a job, move out, get a boyfriend, and lose weight was beginning to grow wearing in the extreme, and Brooke didn’t blame her for being fed up.

“You know you’re always welcome to come chill at mine, you know. If it’s getting particularly rough,” Brooke suggested not-quite-casually, glad of the fact that loneliness didn’t have a scent because if it did she’d be reeking of it.

Silky gave a bashful smile, looking down at her half-eaten plate of spaghetti bolognaise in front of her. “You’re a doll, B, but you know I can’t do an hour on the train any time my Mama tuts at me buying a size XL of anything. In fact therapy’s probably cheaper than a train ticket here but realistically I don’t got the money for either, so…thanks, but in the words of Simon Cowell, issa no from me.”

“That’s okay. I get it, Mums are simultaneously the worst and the best people,” Brooke pulled a face. Thinking about her Mum made her wonder when the last time she texted her was. She felt a little ashamed for not knowing off the top of her head. “But hey, at least you got that interview, right? How did it go?”

“Alright,” Silky muttered in a non-committal way. It was the most un-Silky response Brooke thought she’d ever seen her friend give. It was weird and unpleasant; the Silky from uni would’ve yelled the place down about how she’d aced it, how they’d make her the chief editor right there and then, how she could write an article for them entirely in Wingdings and it’d still be the best thing they’d read all day.

Seemingly picking up on Brooke’s discomfort, Silky gave a small laugh. “I don’ know, boo…I used to be so sure of myself, I used to be so set in the fact that writing was somethin’ I was good at. When I was a kid I used to write these fuckin’ huge stories…pages an’ pages long that my teachers would pull big overexaggerated smiley faces at an’ squeal over an’ put big glittery star stickers on. I thought I was somethin’ special. An’ then uni, y’know…I was a small fish in a big pond- hell, a big fish in a big pond- but I still thought I was the shit even when I got bad grades. I thought my markers just didn’t get it, that they were the ones that were wrong. But now it’s like…”

Silky heaved a sigh and put her fork and spoon together neatly on top of her half-full plate. “…I can’t even get a job at a fuckin’ local rag, so why the hell am I even tryin’ with the big city offices?”

There was something about it all that made Brooke’s heart break all over again, the way that life after uni had worn Silky down to the extent where she didn’t even know if she was good at anything any more, didn’t have much visible self-worth left. Silky had always been the heart and soul of their group; she, Akeria and Vanessa, and in the time it had taken between now and graduation Akeria had become the polar opposite of Silky- so completely embroiled in her quest to become a barrister that she barely had time to reply to any of them any more.

And Vanessa…well. She knew where Vanessa was. Or rather, she didn’t.

Greece was a big country.

“You’re trying because you’re Big Silky Nutmeg Motherfucking Ganache,” Brooke said with a determination she’d not felt in a while. “Come on Silk, you’re you. If grad life has broken you then what the fuck hope is there for any of us?”

( Any of us sounded better than me , Brooke thought.)

“Kiki’s doin’ okay for herself,” Silky shrugged, her downtrodden tone counteracted by the way she picked up her fork again and twirled a single strand of spaghetti around it, eating it once she was finished speaking.

“Kiki’s vagina-deep in a hellish and all-consuming masters degree that’s probably eating her up from the inside out just as much as everybody else’s jobs are. I mean, are any of us doing anything we actually like?”

“Nina an’ Monet? They’da quit by now if they hated teaching so much.”

“Nina West would join the fucking scientologists and stick it out just so she could say she didn’t give up. She’s the final boss of the term mama didn’t raise a quitter . They’re having a hard time, Silk. We all are. It’s just tough because we’re all so busy and shit at keeping in touch that everybody thinks each others’ lives are perfect but…they’re really not.”

“Yvie and Scarlet seem pretty happy.”

Brooke’s face took on an involuntary look of distaste, so irritated and bitter was she at the image of them and their perfect flat and their perfect jobs and their perfect coupley life. “They’ll have something up, nobody’s life is that perfect. Maybe their relationship’s secretly falling apart or…something, fuck, I don’t know.”

There was a beat of silence in which Brooke finished the last little pocket of tortellini she’d ordered and Silky twirled another mouthful of spaghetti around her fork. She chewed, then shrugged thoughtfully, her head tilting a little. “Y’know we should go on holiday. Fuck all this shit off for a week, get away from it all.”

Brooke’s eyebrows raised in appreciation of the idea. She and the girls had never been away together before and the prospect of lying on a beach doing absolutely nothing under the blazing sun was an inviting one. “What, a girls’ trip? Like in Sex and The City?”

“Mhm. ‘Cept we go on an all-inclusive to the Med ‘stead of Mexico ‘cause ain’t none of us can afford that shit.”

“Except Plastique.”

“True. Fuck that bitch. She could prolly buy Mexico.”

Brooke laughed and for the first time in a good few months she felt a little flicker of excitement lick at her heart, so much so that she could see her pulse race at her wrist. She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. “Oh my God. I’m so in. Let’s do it.”

“We have to get all the girls on board, though. Otherwise there ain’t no point.”

“Definitely. Where should we go? Spain’s always good.”

Silky had her phone out and was typing furiously. She paused as something presumably loaded, then her face lit up. “If we go the week after Nina an’ Monet finish up school for Summer we can get flights to Crete for £20 return.”

“Twenty, what the fuck? That can’t be right,” Brooke screwed up her face in disbelief, and Silky cocked an eyebrow at her as she showed her the proof on her screen. Conceding, Brooke shrugged. “That’s so good. I don’t want to know what that plane’s like though. They probably just stuff you all into a tin can and ping you into the air with a giant rubber band.”

Silky howled with laughter and thumped the table so hard that the wine sloshed about in their glasses, little tiny red tsunamis. As Brooke snorted in response purely to Silky’s own mirth, a small thought set off a little drip of dread that threatened to put out the excitement that had only just begun to burn in her chest.

“Where is Crete again?”

Silky let out an unimpressed breath from her nose. “Bitch, you got all the geography skills of a Love Island contestant. It’s just off the Greek coast. Kinda near Turkey too, but it’s Greece.”

Brooke felt her heart drop, Alton Towers Oblivion all over again. She blinked quickly, tried to hide her discomfort. “Well, we’re not going there.”

Silky gave a small sigh, a little hint of resignation or long-suffering to it that Brooke didn’t appreciate. But when she reached over the table and patted her hand on top of Brooke’s, she felt a little bit more understood, a little bit more validated.

“B, Greece is a big place.”

It was the exact same thing Brooke herself had thought earlier, except now it didn’t seem true. Now, with the prospect of going there, it seemed like the tiniest microcosm of society. The world was simultaneously too big and too small, and Brooke felt the cold drip in her heart get worse. “Silky…”

“Look. We ain’t exactly gonna pick the same place she’s at, are we?”

Brooke put her head in her hands and sighed. “She’s not there anymore.”

“What?”

“I phoned the hotel a week ago to try and speak to her. I was going to fly out, try and talk to her and fix things. They said she didn’t work there anymore. So I don’t even know where she is at all.”

Silky huffed, frowning and concerned. “I’m sorry, Brooke, this shit must’ve been hell.”

“You’ve got no idea.”

There was a pause as Silky pushed her food around her plate. “Crete’s small, but it ain’t that small. We still got a one in a million chance of bumpin’ into her if we go.”

“That’s still too small for my liking. Both the island and the chances.”

“Aight, one in a billion. Trillion. Point is, it ain’t gonna happen. An’ besides…” Silky waggled her eyebrows, flashing her phone screen at Brooke again. “Twenty pounds for the first week of the school holidays. This shit’s like gold dust.”

Brooke smiled slowly in spite of herself. Maybe Silky was right. And maybe it would be fun to swan around Greece, eat seafood and pretend to be in some knockoff version of Mamma Mia. Scratch that, it would be fun. She’d get to spend a week surrounded by her friends in the sun, which was what she badly needed at the moment.

Brooke was nodding before she knew it. “Okay, fine. Crete it is.”

“YES, bitch!” Silky cheered, loud enough to be heard by the entire restaurant and possibly the chefs in the kitchen too. “Now let’s get dessert. All this wine needs soaked up by a big slice of sticky toffee puddin’.”

It was easy to feel optimistic with Silky back being her loud and just-the-right-side-of-obnoxious self, and with a plate of tiramisu in front of her. But after they’d finished up, paid their bill and she’d hugged Silky goodbye at the train station, Brooke found the endorphins wearing off as she got back to her dark flat and into her cold bed. Maybe it was because she was finally coming down from the high of meeting up with a beloved friend, maybe it was because she knew she had another monotonous, greyscale day of work to get through tomorrow.

Or perhaps, Brooke thought as she turned over in bed, caught sight of the familiar rose-gold frame and blew it a kiss, she was simply missing her girlfriend.

If she could even call Vanessa that any more.

#rpdr fanfiction #s11 #modern love #ortega #n19f #branjie #background scyvie #background ninex #lesbian au #angst #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #silky nutmeg ganache

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justfangstvdto · 4 years ago

Text

Open Coffin 2 | Chapter 04 “Word travels fast among the Damned”

Disclaimer: This is a sequel! Find Part 1 here. For some context, I´d advise you to watch The Originals to understand some occurrences.

Chapter warnings: typical TO violence and fighting, a dash of ptsd, glimpse into messed up childhood, oh and some new spells and practices, also this took so extremely long so please feel free to wait until more chapter are here

Word count: 6664

Tags & Author Note at the bottom. Feedback is my lifeblood and keeps the writing coming (eventually...lol)

Your name: submit What is this?

At certain times in life, there is this premonition, a sense of knowing that something is coming. It is felt in the air in every passing breeze, and there is nothing one can do to stop it. It blows from the environment to throw its opponent off balance. Could be a monster with sharp claws, a bullet, a virus or bacteria. Or, in your case, a wooden and deadly staff handled with ancient vampire strength.

The attack came from the left side, poignant and with precision. The wood colliding with the carved stick in your hands send vibrations through your arms, that travelled to your shoulders. Strike blocked. Another attack came swiftly, this time from below in an upwards angle calculated just right to throw you off balance. Blocked again. You could see it in Mikael´s face; he was growing frustrated by every passing round of attack. He threw his weight behind his next attack, that edged closer to your face. Pain erupted from the point of impact as it sliced through the skin just above your cheekbone. Mikael doubled up again and brought the staff to your knees, swiftly knocking you off balance. You fell backwards like a sack of wood but caught yourself midair before landing on your stomach.

He's good.

He forced you down with the edge of the staff, burying your face in the dirt. He could kill you with a push of his weight, but he relented. You heard his feet cracking the ground beneath him as he turned his back and walked away as the champion.

Or so he thought.

You pushed yourself up with your dirt-covered hands, using your vampire speed and the element of surprise to your advantage. Holding the staff in a horizontal line, you went after him. He let out a huffed gurgle when you pulled back on the wood you pressured against his neck, pulling him against your torso. Mikael reacted swiftly and brought his weight forward to overthrow your chokehold like a bull trying to buckle of its rider. You let yourself fall over his back with your hand around the staff, nearing the ground with your backside, only to switch to your front as you easily grasped the staff out if his hands. Swiftly and without hesitation you plunged the staff into his face before you brought it down to his feet to trip him over. He landed into the dirt as you did before, face red with anger.

“I told Klaus already," You said, pointing the end towards his heart, while the Mikaelson family runic crest buried itself into the flesh of your hands "never turn your back on a Salvatore. Especially not me. ”

He was hurt in his pride, that much was evident, but there was a glimmer of surprise in his eyes that made you proud. You've beaten the vampire that hunts vampires. Granted, he had lost his touch over the years on the other side, but he still had centuries on you. It was a cause for celebration, or at least it was something to hold over him if you needed to.

Mikael scrambled to his feet, dusting off his dirt-covered clothes tainting the afternoon sun with dust particles "You fight well.“

"That's what happens when you grow up with two brothers that constantly had to one-up each other. You learn to fight if you're the one in the middle.” You said, sparing a thought to how you´d find Stefan and Damon in front of your house, fighting each other with their bare hands or loose wood from the barn a few ways down from the front door. You would always see them through the smudged window in the housekeeping room where your mother used to teach you what a girl should learn to become a proper woman. But you never cared for it. Instead, you would run outside your dress dragging in the dirt as you pushed your brothers apart even onto the dirt if you had to.

You pushed that memory aside, and you bend over to grab the staff on the floor, your fingers gliding over the ornate wood once more “The crest.” You continued “What does it mean?”

Mikael seemed surprised by your interest, even if it was covered with a loud sigh of contentment. Yet, he complied and drew the crest in the dirt beneath him “Long ago this was the Norse alphabet rune “Gebu”. It´s meaning varied from spear to gift but has been used to refer to Odin's spear Gungnir. It was believed that it had been given to Odin by Loki and is known for always hitting its mark, no matter the obstacle.”

“Always hitting bullseye no matter what? Yeah, that describes your family pretty well.” You shared a quick look with him before you turned away, heading for the cabin. You always wondered if Mikael missed his northern home - his true north so to speak- or if rage consumed him entirely without leaving a trace of the Wikingr he once was. And if the same thing will happen to you if the seething anger you developed over the last 3 years, triumphs over your sanity. Only time and its unrelenting grasp knew.

Glancing into the window beside the door you stopped to check your phone that was still outside since last night. You turned it over and unlocked it with a click, groaning when you saw the notification. Twenty-eight missed calls. Most of them were Klaus, a few from Marcel and then…

No way.

Stefan's name glared at you through the screen and with it a little icon next to him. He left a voicemail. What gravely thing had to occur for him to call you after years of silence? Did Mystic Fall finally burn down to ashes? Perhaps someone scarier than Klaus rolled into town and he just needed help? Whatever it was, the feeling of impending doom lingered in the air when you locked your phone and left it on the table outside. There was no time to linger in what-if scenarios.

No unnecessary attachments. No distractions - That's how you get things done.

Opening the cabin door a swift of charcoaled sage penetrated your senses, pungent with every step you took. Kaleb stood near a table, an unbuttoned shirt hugging his frame as if he was about to embark on a tropical cruise. He had the table decked out in front of him with elongated squares of stone which looked like they were engraved with runic symbols.

You closed the door behind you, the remnant of your late-night drinking session from the night before, collided together with the door´s vibration against the brittle wood. Last night you sparsely told Kaleb why you brought Mikael back, but your conversation quickly dissolved to more than just small talk. The alcohol loosened your tongue to a comfortable degree. It was strange to be unburdened by the fear of judgment. There wasn't any lasting damage that you had to fear, nothing you had to be ashamed of when looking him in the eyes and nothing you had to live with forever. Maybe the prospect of dying and not be burdened by anything that lasted had its advantages after all. It was easier at least.

When you stepped further into the room, Kaleb looked up from the bowl he had in his hand. Passing him, you discarded the sheer jacket that was stained with the particles of your meeting with the dirt floor outside. You flipped open the cooler filled with the blood bags, taking inventory of how many remained. Two. Great. Hunger was plaguing you more than it ever had. The cooler was full yesterday.

You jumped when Kaleb’s fingers gently wrapped when he turned your shoulder towards him to inspect the damage that had already healed, the only reminder of it a sheer layer of red. You pushed his hand away, regretting your action within a second after witnessing the guilty look on his face.

He shuffled back to where he was standing previously and cleared his throat before he spoke: “I don't think sparring with him is a good idea.”

“What, do you think he'd kill me? I´m a dead vamp walking no matter what, so who cares?”

“Don't you mean an undead dead vampire?” He joked before his face contorted into a questioning gaze “Wait…” He laughed. When you returned his laughter with a chuckle, he seemed proud, face beaming with a sense of accomplishment.

So he likes to make people laugh. Noted.

Kalebs gaze lingered for another moment, then he glanced out of the window to watch Mikael train with nothing but the wind as his opponent." You´ve told me how you brought him back, but not why." He continued, a worried tone now coating his voice "I assume it is more than just as a sparring partner?"

You shook your head “You should know as little as possible. They will come after you if they find out you know something. ”

“You're still not the trusting sort.” He noted, “And I thought we've bonded.”

The truth was you had bonded to a certain degree, and you were wary of the developing attachment.

“Well, do you trust me?” You questioned.

“Are you slicked? Those sad eyes might fool some people, but not me. I know what you're after.” Stoic and calculated he stared you down before his mouth contorted into a lighthearted smile “You've got a lecherous heart, Y/N! I won't be used, not for my body, nor my magic!”

You turned your head to hide a smile, but he caught on and lid up with pride. "Speaking of magic.” You nodded towards the table next to him “How's all this supposed to work anyway?"

“This-” He stepped closer, pointing with his fingers to the runes surrounded by a salt and ash circle “Is an ancient runic foretelling. Like a, uh, prophecy.”

“So like a fancy version of tarot cards?” You said bluntly, “How is that gonna help?”

“Depending on what runes appear, we will have a vague indication of what's causing the bleeding; Spell, curse, your vampire body rejecting magic… whatever it may be. If we know what it is, we can reverse it. “

You looked at him and wondered how someone like him came across a spell this old and what atrocities he had to commit to get a hold of it. Magic like this was not given out to anybody without affiliating to one of the more eclectic covens. You should know, that's what you´ve been doing for the past years.

You were about to litter him with questions, but the opening of the screeching cabin door made you pause, and all questions washed away.

“What have we here?" Mikael said from the doorway before stepping closer to examine Kaleb’s spell. " I have not seen this kind of magic in centuries.“ He looked at him with questioning eyes, observing his reaction as an indication as to end him or not. “How did you come to this knowledge?”

“Well, I've read a lot. You pick up a few things over the years.” He shrugged, and it was clear he had no intention of answering any questions “For example, this is based on a Viking age foretelling where they cut off a branch and sliced it into strips and marked them with different signs and threw them at random onto a cloth. Whatever stripes they picked up was the works of the gods. This is just a more definitive version.”

“Sounds easy enough. What do you need me to do?”

“I just need your blood” Kaleb replied.

Ah, blood. The ingredient that was most dangerous in combination with magic. It was used for curses, binding spells and all sorts of nasty spells. Could you say you trusted someone you barely know with an ingredient like this? No. But Shank´s research from two days ago was fruitless besides revealing Kaleb's last name, so you had nothing to go on but your gut feeling.

You bit into the thick flesh of your hand, and your blood pooled in your palm, ready to be used “Where do you want it?”

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The minutes dragged on with slow intent, waiting for them to die and move on to the next. The spell brewed, Mikael had left to an adjoining back room to rest and prepare for an uncomfortable fight he claimed to feel in the air. One would write off this premonition as ramblings of a crazy old man, but you can feel it too. Eyes somewhere distant, watching your every move. Claws ready to rupture skin. The question was, whose claws would draw blood first. The list of people that want to execute lethal force upon you had gotten embarrassingly long over the years, and guessing who was on top of that list equals a horse race with bets running high at all times.

You used the waiting time and tried to decode the unlinking spell you had been working on for the last year. But the advanced incantations and spellwork scribbled on the dusty pages were more than you were capable of understanding. Still, you had to try. Not to kill Klaus, but to ensure your brothers and everyone in his sire line was safe if his enemies decide to multiply further. Knowing Klaus, he will trample on everyone's sandcastle like a toddler to prove his point and make enemies out of everyone if he had to.

You glanced over to where Kaleb was chanting with his eyes closed, entirely concentrated on the whispered spell that´s supposed to reveal what the hell was wrong with you. You´ve been trying to find that out for centuries, so you did not hold out hope for a spell like this to work.

Out of nowhere, your senses alerted you of a rustle in the bushes, very soft steps were coming from behind. So faint, it was almost mistakable as the wind. Your ears twitched. Two-legged. Not an animal then.

Kaleb picked up on the sudden change of stature and paused the chanting and shared a look of alertness. "You think it's him? The original?”

“Probably. Or about a thousand other people that want me dead, take your pick. You know of all the places to die this didn't make my list. Where is the blaze of glory and a badass backing track?”

Stepping outside into the cooling night air you kept your eyes on the treeline beyond where the sound came from, but it was clear without sparing too many seconds that there was only one person who would chase you here despite all spoken cautions. And that one wouldn't hide in the bushes. He would instead break a window in or kick the door down rather than hide like some common thief. So why was he silent? Something wasn't right.

"Hey, I'll get some wood for the stove." You stated at high volume, masking your approach to whoever was out there. Wrapping your hands around the axe that penetrated a tree stump, you stepped into the open.

The rustling sound of bushes was persistent, dominating over the deafening sound of crickets near the body of water down the way. They moved from the left to the right, your eyes impulsively trained to pinpoint their movement.

He watched as you disappeared into the bushes, only to appear seconds later, dragging someone behind you in the dirt.

“Got him,” You said, hurling the unconscious stranger over your shoulder.

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Minutes easily passed waiting for the stranger to wake from his scare. But he had no intention of cutting the wait short. His head was hanging low, almost touching his knees. Softly breathing he sat there, while you waited for any sign of movement.

“How is he still unconscious?” You sighed.

"You gave him quite the scare, I'm sure."

"To be fair, that guy looks like he would be scared by a kitten." You said, eying him with pity "I think a nice wakeup call is in order."

"What are you thinking? Fire?" Kaleb chimed in.

"You do know all of this is made out of wood, right?" You asked, pointing on the wooden interiors.

"Don't tell me you don't like to set things ablaze."

"I'm not one for setting anything on fire these days." You muttered, pushing the rush of guilt that enveloped you down where it belonged. Only thinking about the smell of fire, the embers that sprinkle into the air and the blasting heat that melted skin from bones, was enough to wish that you could dig a hole and be swallowed into the earth without abandon.

But there was no time for it now. Perhaps there never will be.

"You know let's not go the magic route." You continued "Sometimes all you need is a good slap in the face to get the day started."

"Sure, who needs caffeine if a slap in the face will do." Kaleb chuckled.

You closed in on the stranger and slapped him in the face with gusto, stirring him awake like an unexpected thunder. Realisation dawned on him when he blinked through his tired eyelids and saw your face

“Oh shit, you're Y/N.” He tried to make a run for the door, but you pushed him back where he came from “Oh God, I'm so dead.”

“See?" You looked over your shoulder gesturing your hands toward the tied up stranger "That is how they usually react. With fear. Not all cocky and all-knowing like you were.”

“Well, I find your intimidation charming.” Kaleb grinned.

"Sure, because me being scary is such an admirable quality."

"You know numerous ways to kill a man. It's hot." He shrugged unapologetically.

“Uh... "The stranger uttered, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "You know I´m still here, right? Not that I don't condone this flirting but-”

"I'm not flirting." You defended adamantly.

"Maybe. But he is, clearly not successfully.” The stranger let out a chuckle and immediately regretted it by the way Kalebs face delved into anger.

Was that how people saw your early partnership with Kaleb? Did they assume you'd just fall into the arms of somebody else that quickly? If a stranger saw it, everyone else would too. You could already hear them talk behind your back, laughing at your broken promises and weak composure. What if those rumors were the only thing Kol would hear when he'd walk the earth again when you were dead and gone? You could not are the thought. However useful Kaleb was maybe you had to get rid of him after all.

“Listen," You continued "If you tell me who sent you, I might let you live. Spoiler alert, probably not.”

"He said to look out for any sign of trouble, that's it. I'm- I don't want any trouble.”

“Who sent you. I want a name.” You asked again, all the while trying to think of who would send an amateur like him after you. These days everyone knew that he'd be gutted if he crossed your path.

Following his continued silence you lowered yourself to his seated level, and with your fingers grazing his clothed chest you said “I wonder if you´ve ever had your chest opened before? Or do you prefer something more magical like boiling from the inside? I don't have much time to spare. So If you don´t talk, you´ll find out.”

“Marcel, okay?!”The stranger spoke with hurry, “He was worried about you hanging out with this guy.” He nodded towards the door. You looked over your shoulder where Kaleb rolled his eyes so hard you swore they'd pop out any second. Eying the stranger again you took notice of his swooped dark hair, overly nervous yet intrigued inquisitive nature and his questionable taste in overly printed dress shirts. It dawned on you that this must be Marcel's friend he had been talking about endlessly.

“Oh, you're his buddy. Josh!” You retreated your hand from his chest and stepped out of his personal space “Sorry for the well, unwelcoming welcome.”

"Yeah, it's becoming kind of a thing with everyone that hangs out with Count Dracula."

You grimaced at his words. "Do I look like I hang out with Klaus in my free time?"

Josh considered for a moment, then shook his head "Yeah… probably not. From what I've heard you're more the stabbing him in the back type." His face fell when you raised an eyebrow and he added "Not that he didn't deserve it."

Ah, that word again. Deserve. Nobody deserves anything. Often neither happiness nor grievances come to those who truly deserve them. It comes to those who consume them if they're entitled to them or not. The ones that persevere and push themselves up by kneeling others into the dirt. Those are the ones that take the good parts while the ones that truly deserve it shoulder the rest. That's the way of the world. Especially the supernatural one. And Klaus was both kneeling in the dirt and pushing others in it. You were unsure if he truly deserved what failed assassination attempt you brought upon him. You were not so sure you were worthy of being the judge, jury and executioner all on your own. Not anymore, and you had no idea if that was a good or bad thing.

“So uh.” Josh looked around the room awkwardly, an unspoken question written over his face. It was nothing new, they all had one if they dared to speak it out loud.

“Ask what you want to ask.” You sighed.

“The stories about you. Are they true?” He asked. Kaleb was interested too as his head snapped towards you in interest

“Most of them.” You shrugged as you leaned against the table's edge behind you. You're not really in the mood to play interview with a vampire "And I think the worst is yet to come so better hurry back and tell Marcel to call off his protectors. I can handle myself. ”

“Yeah, I'd say. You're scary.” Josh headed for the door and dipped to the right only to appear a second later “Uh, I have no idea where I am. "

“I assume you left your car near the church?” You asked and Josh nodded “It's about 20 miles northeast from here. Cell service is fickle, so just follow the trodden path.”

"North East. Yeah right okay." He turned on his heels and headed outside again looking left and right to determine where to go.

"That way." You pointed in the right direction and he thanked you with a round of finger gun before he disappeared. How Marcel has not gotten rid of him yet was beyond you.

“Why does everybody keep saying that?" You returned to Kaleb side "Am I that scary?”

“Terrifying. In the best way.” He smiled and his gaze drifted to the floor before snapping back to your face. There was an intensity in his stare, unwavering and unrelenting in a way that kept your focus longer than it should have.

When Kaleb's fingers drifted over your hand his breath hitched and grew still, and you had no intention of moving away. His calloused fingers grazed over your skin and had it not been for the immortal-ish aspects of you, your hands would be as callused, if not worse.

When you slowly lifted your head to look at him he was so focused on his hand on yours that he did not seem to notice your shifted gaze. Your eyes drifted over his shadowed face, trying to pinpoint what about him it was that kept your attention. There was something familiar about him. The way he held himself, this unwavering confidence and charm that revelled in his authenticity. Perhaps you've met him before when grief had its hold on you, or during one of the anger engulfed moments or perhaps just passed by him on the streets.

He felt familiar in a way that was comforting. Like a song you heard in passing that resurfaced with questionable intention and you´re left wondering why it felt as if you´ve heard it before. He felt like bonding on public transport travelling with the same people day in and day out, only to miss them when they take a different route. Or the passing by someone on the streets wondering if it was a ghost of the past or someone that's just bearing a similar face.

Reality hit soon after your wondering thought and unwavering guilt crushed you under its weight. You drew your hand away and Kaleb jumped at your sudden movement.

Get a grip. What the fuck are you doing?

No attachments. No distractions.

“So, uh... “You cleared your throat, putting some distance between you. “The rune thing. You find anything?”

“Let´s see.” He burdened a smile and returned to the table to find that etched lines have appeared on the bare stone tablets.

“Interesting. These two are next to each other, almost connecting."He said, pointing at the first two stones. The first one symbolises strength. You're bound to an unmatched power, yet no that can't be right.”

“What is it?”

“This rune," He said and pointed to the second one "It symbolises power but as an outside force. You´re not tied to your own power."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"You're bound to something powerful and that power depletes your own when it is being used. Like a battery of sorts."

"Too much power for me to handle, huh? Explains the nosebleeds, I guess. But what is it?"

"Whatever it is it's unlike anything I've seen." Kaleb's further words drifted out of focus when a shower of calculated noises drenched the room. There was someone outside yet again.

You interrupted his foretelling, holding a finger to your lips "We have another visitor. Stay here and don't come out."

Kaleb reached for your upper arm when you turned away from him and said "Don't go out there."

You snapped out of his grasp swiftly glaring at him as you said; "You don't tell me what to do." It was a low blow, sure, but perhaps he would keep his distance or disappear before things got even more complicated. Perhaps acting like this will cast him away.

Turning the corner on the far side of the cabin you were met with a suave demeanour full of torment and rage and a newly found hopelessness you had yet to pinpoint its location.

“Oh good, you're here. Want a drink?” You offered a swig of the bottle on the table outside.

“I'm in no mood to socialize,” Klaus declined sternly, the darkness parting for his body as he stepped onto the splintering wooden walkway.

“When are you ever?" You deadpanned, but Klaus was far from being amused. You tried to lighten the mood, but it was of no use. He was furious. No doubt Esther or her bootlicker of a son spilt the beans about the white oak. Handling matters delicately was never their strong suit.

"I can tell by the look on your face that you're here to kill me.” You said, trying to soothe the oncoming onslaught of judgement that was heading your way “I assume I deserve it, but can you tell me why this time? Just so I can keep track. ”

Klaus dragged his tongue over his parsed lips letting out a pitiful hushed laugh before he sat next to you, staring ahead. “I was simply minding my own business - ruling, killing my enemies and what not - and low and behold what do I hear? The white oak stake has resurfaced in the hands of my mother. My my, word does travel fast among the damned, now doesn't it?“

“Well, I'm sorry the world isn't arranging itself for your schedule.” You peered back at his expectant face. Anger was flaring through your blood, an amplified sensation whenever Klaus was near. “But I don't see why this is my problem?”

“Don´t be coy with me. This has your name written all over. Disruption the order of long-established rules of battle for your twisted little schemes." He trickled his fingers against the wind as if he was holding strings attached to a marionette to control at his will. No doubt, he viewed you as a puppeteer master these days. High praise indeed, especially coming from someone as wicked as him.

“I want to know why." His voice was quieter, soft almost, as he spoke into the wind "Why did you defy me when I gave you nothing but trust?” The way he stared holes in the floor uttering these words rattled a rush of guilt that you never expected to be directed at Klaus of all people. Klaus was confident with threats and violence, but bearing himself open was something he barely had the courage for.

“Let's not pretend that we trust each other just because we shared a sentimental moment. Once.”

“You know, I find it fascinating that you believe you are invincible to my wrath.” He continued harsher, covering his vulnerability “Our agreement has been made null and void by your actions, and you don't seem to care. More so you seem to enjoy it. Why is that?”

“You´re the master schemer here, tell me, what do you think I'm doing?” You leaned forward, eager to know what he had to say. No doubt he´d see right through the parts you wanted him to see. The question was if he had any idea beyond that. He was the mighty Klaus after all, and more so he was smart.

“I'd say you're playing both sides, though the recent events convinced me of something else entirely. You're bold, fearless; striking without weighing the consequences. Suspicious, isn't it? Unless you have the upper hand.” He turned his head again, observing your reaction like a hawk. “Is this charade your grand plan? Aiding my mother in her endeavors by handing over the only weapon that could kill my family? I must say, I'm not impressed.”

“You think that's the only part? Just another revenge fantasy? And here I thought you finally learned not to underestimate me.”

“It is because I do not underestimate you that I came here.” He said. It was high praise indeed coming from him, even if it came with a trickle of insult to be compared to the likes of the big bad Klaus.

“Good call, not sending Elijah then. He'd kill me just for ruining his shoes in this terrain. But if this is the only reason you came then you can go right back to your castle and rule your kingdom because Esther doesn't have the real white oak. It's s copy.”

Klaus cocked his head to the side, the lamps fire now perfectly reflecting in his eyes. The look of distrust was written over his face, yet there was no doubt that he was intrigued by the information you laid out.

“See? I´m not trying to play games here. I give you my word.” You added with the hope that at least your word had not lost its ´s value when everything else had.

He paused, dragging his tongue over his bottom lips swiftly, weighing his responses. “Your word means nothing until you live up to it.” You nodded, a silent promise you had no idea if you could uphold. Who were you kidding, of course, there wasn’t any way you would not place his head on the chopping block if it came to it. This whole thing was nothing but polite stakeouts as a way to keep up with the other´s schemes. Problem was, Klaus would offer you up just the same without blinking.

The old Klaus anyway.

If you would listen to the things circulating about him as of late, you'd think he had lost his old tyrannic ways. Found some way to soothe his grudge with the world and became a better person. It was laughable. People don´t change, you found that they mask themselves, sculpting a new life out what the fires left behind. They don´t change, they overpaint. And it was time that the ones whispering about Klaus alleged newly-found compassion, learned that lesson too or they´d head for disappointment. Either way, they'd wake up.

Shuffling from inside averted your attention to the cabin where Mikael and Kaleb were still hidden. Klaus' interest was peaked when your eyes slanted over to the side and remained there for a moment.

“What is it?” He questioned.

You forced your eyes forward, despite the impending doom running through your veins. “Thought I heard something. Probably just an animal somewhere. Or someone who wants to kill me. Take your guess. These days I'm almost as unpopular as you.” You laughed, quickly glancing through the window again.

Klaus followed your gaze again but saw nothing but an empty cabin. He turned and walked across the porch to look into the other window and although he could not see anything, Mikael was inside with his hands around Kaleb´s throat demanding him to grant his release from your boundary spell. Klaus knew that dealing with witches- even a half witch like you- did not mean that what was in front of your eyes was necessarily what was truly there.

“Well here's to living up to my promises.” You said as you made your way to the door. I guess I'll see you back in town, yeah?” You tried to get rid of him, but it was too late. Klaus' paranoia had already sounded the alarm in his head and snapped the door closed with a push of his hand.

"Who is with you?" His voice was dangerously low and calm, which only predicted the worst.

"No one. You know I don't do well in team scenarios." You waved him off. You had to get rid of him or this whole plan will go to hell. Plus your new friend in there would suffocate if kept fighting Mikael.

Without being aware, you took a step back on the brittle flooring denting it enough to let the staff that was still leaning near the door fall from his resting place. It rolled on the angled flooring right towards Klaus’ feet. At first, he glanced at it, but at the second look, his eyes grew wide. He'd recognize the bearing crest anywhere. Within the next heartbeat, he dragged his eyes from the floor and you were granted a look that put hellfire to shame.

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Your heartbeat beat so loudly it seemed to want to escape your chest, to flee the oncoming slaughter. You were not one to run, to hide and cower in fear. But this was different. Klaus knew you brought his hateful father back to life and he was right outside a spelt door, ready to burn this place down if he had to. There was no reprieve. You knew that the beating of your heart was numbered, counting down to your own demise.

You could´ve made him bleed, unconscious or writhe in pain, but it would not hold him down forever. Nothing could. So you headed for the door which gave you the luxury of a few more minutes before he would skin you alive. Distance was all that mattered, even if that distance was a brittle door that if not for the magic seal would break in two by the way Klaus was hammering against it.

“If you want to fight me, why are you running?” Klaus yelled and paraded on the porch like a lion in a cage that was ready to end his captors. You turned your back towards the rattling door, your attention now focused on Mikael who still had Kaleb in his grasp.

“Release me or I will end him!” Mikael said, his fingers digging into Kaleb´s neck, cutting off his air supply, ready to snap his neck like a twig if he had to.

You balled your hand to a fist forcing Mikael to his knees to bear the pain of your magic “You think you're in any position to make demands?” You shared a look with a heavy breathing Kaleb and he nodded while grasping his neck, signalling he was fine, though hurt in his pride.

“Enough games, Y/N!” You jumped at Klaus´s voice which invaded through the cracks in the walls. “Let's finish this. Is this not why you brought him for? I'm not afraid.”

You opened the door with a flick of your free hand while Mikael was kept in place with the other.

If you cannot fight them on your own, let them fight each other.

There you stood between the devil and the deep blue sea, one decision worse than the next, one would bring hellfire while the other would leave you stranded on the bottom of the ocean. There was- without a doubt- no silver lining at the crossroads you arrived at. If you released Mikael and held up your end of the bargain Mikael would slay Klaus and with him his entire line. Your brothers would die. You would die sooner than expected and thousands of vampires would die by your hand. Your chance of getting Kol his life back would slip through your hands like sand in an hourglass.

However letting Klaus in to fight his father would either result in the same outcome or he'd kill Mikael and with it every bargaining chip - and if necessary threat- you had hidden in your hold. Either way, you were backed into a corner, and an animal in a corner always fought back.

You took a breath that was loaded with thought. The men in the room picked up on your hesitation and Klaus was the first that dared to speak. “Let him go. I can't wait to stand over his burning corpse. Only this time, I intend to enjoy it more. ”

He knew what was on the line for you if you let them fight. He knew. And something in his face told of nothing but victory. So you let them go and chase each other to death. Hatred was useful in a fight and Klaus had more than anyone. He will win. He had to.

Right?

Kaleb watched from behind as you drew the curtain open to and surely enough there in the distance, beyond the scarce line of trees you saw them fight. They managed to disrupt each of their blows but even from afar you saw Mikael had the upper hand. He kicked Klaus onto the ground and knocked him flat on his back towering over him.

"And you're going storm after them right about…" Kaleb counted on his wrist as if checking an imaginary clock. Now."

You shot him a glare with the doorknob already in your grasp. You exited with Kaleb only a few steps behind. You were already vamp speeding away when Kaleb collided with the boundary spell

"Of course." He sighed and took in the room he was now trapped in "I guess it's time to set this thing on fire."

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A/N: I know it has been....months. 2020 y´all. Shit´s crazy. In all seriousness, my life did a 360 this year - as it did with everyone- so please excuse my absolute snail speed with writing these days.But thank you to everyone that´s here right now at the end of yet another chapter. Please let me know if you have any thoughts!!

Also I was proud of my little sneak sentence when she talks about Klaus being hopeless. Because you know, he´s without Hope. I rather liked that.

Open Coffin Series Taglist: (message me if you want on or off this list!)

@shadyladyperfection @akshi8278 @thegoddessofvampire @newurleans @originalbish98 @acourtofhopeanddreams @bonniebird @imnoaingeal @cherryblossomllama @relmi-llorrac @piercethepottorff @maliae14 @5-seconds-of-animals @the-geeky-engineer @rock-n-magick @flymeawayworld @givemesomehybrid @mikealsonlover @nuteller28 @fandoms-fandoms-everywhere99 @drkplum @fandooomqueenforyou @free-the-fangirl @clockworkballerina @twisted1ginger @superwholocksociopath474 @pacifyprincessxo @mustachio1616 @thealyana @sandyclaws @unicorntrooper @buckysummers @sanity-is-overratedxp @lunna-star-8 @graysonmalfoy @woodworthti666 @elenavaldez02 @lilulo-12 @selmasemlan @thelostallycat @characterobsessed @cococola-cocaine @crazyinternetgirl @codenamewitcher @-thatgirloverthere- @alwxadria345 @trymexo @mizzezm @willieshakesqueer @spunky-89 @putyourherohaironstefan @xxdragonagequeenxx @thegingerthatwaited @shootingstarsaretearsofheaven @hinata7346 @controloffandoms @sabrielflowers

#kol mikaelson #the originals #the originals imagine #kol mikaelson imagine #the originals fanfic #open coffin

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mevekagvain · 4 years ago

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Chapter 121 - I hope none of the birds affected by the sleeping gas died from falling from a height, especially if they fell on concrete. I don't think the gas itself would affect the birds but it also very well might since they can't handle as much due to being much smaller animals or from not being able to handle the chemicals used.

Chapter 122 - Shark's expressions are so hideous 🤢

- At least Raizel knows how to be nice by sharing food lmao. Frankenstein beaming like a proud father of a 2-year-old who's doing that is definitely not praxis though.

Chapter 124 - Shark being astounded that nobles care about innocents is amusing. I suppose that aside from the Elders, the Union members think nobles consider other species to be inferior or like cockroaches or toys.

- Although I do find Frankenstein plotting to teach Seira cooking so she can cook for Raizel when he can't extremely funny, I do also find it somewhat disturbing. He's essentially making a teen girl do child labour. Yes she and Regis are imposing on him and I do think they should be doing some manner of chores, but making her cook lavish meals? I also know she's doing it willingly but it still makes me cringe since something being one's choice doesn't negate it being bad. And yes technically she's 'of age' since she's 217, whatever that means since she's still obviously a teen compared to Raizel who actually is an adult going to school with children (which is a whole other can of worms), but aside from her position as clan leader she's very obviously not viewed as an adult by most.

Chapter 125 - On one hand I'd love to get a front row seat to the internal drama within the DA-5 lile M-21 but otoh I don't want to die a painful death or get beaten up.

- So like obviously Seira knows that Raizel and Frankenstein aren't ordinary humans unlike Regis but it is hilarious to think she just told the truth to two men she thinks are frail innocent humans.

Chapter 127 - You'd really think that the Union would be investing more into memory altering drugs but nah. The only ones they have will also fuck your brain up. Really not a good idea when most of your agents/experiments obviously have been administered aforementioned drugs. If it was only used sparingly on civilians I'd get it but it's quite widespread so...

Chapter 128 - As much as Frankenstein complains about the mess the kids make, he enjoys having them over as much as Raizel does. Soft hearted bastard.

Chapter 130 - The girls bandaging M-21 up even as Regis fights has them being smarter than like 90% of other characters in media. They're the real reason he didn't hit the dust immediately smh.

Chapter 132 - I still think the coming of age ceremony has a 50% chance of actually being them ingesting drugs that are the equivalent of stat boosting items in games but also ya know, real world drugs that fuck you up. The other 50% is just them getting much stronger after they turn 200 because their bodies are just like that and it truly is purely ceremonial and a fun tradition like children's day or girl's day or birthdays rather than something that actually affects them.

- Lol Kranz, Regis won't be leaving a corpse if he dies. Purebloods are just special like that. Can you imagine if they did see a pureblood dying? They'd regret killing them so bad.

Chapter 133 - Raizel commanding Frankenstein to stop his experiments is definitely something, like bro maybe he was figuring out electrolysis, not like you know what he was doing. Plus it's not like Frankenstein listened completely. Man has a lab under his house and it wasn't built after Raizel woke. I guess he only stopped modification experiements on others and only did checkups on himself but didn't stop experimenting for other stuff like idk, better fertiliser.

- Kinda amazing Takeo didn't get stabbed in the heart.

Chapter 137 - I know it's just because Gejutel likely explained the lord's powers to him but the idea that Regis knows what a blood field is because Raskreia does demonstrations to entertain little kids is making me giggle.

Chapter 140 - So the Union only came upon Frankenstein's research 540 years ago... that's only 40 years before Raskreia became lord. Interesting.

- Ah yes... the classic joke of Tao not teaching Takeo korean properly. It's also very amusing envisioning Tao teaching the DA-5 members korean.

- ARIS ARIS ARIS. God she looks adorbs. Also I love her referring to DA-5 as 'my children' and 'my babies'. Aris >>> all other scientists. Amd hi Yuri :)

Chapter 141 - Yuri listening to Aris insulting Crombel repeatedly,,, he probably enjoys every aspect of it from knowing she's not aware he's his underling to being able to hear someone insult Crombel.

- Once again union members don't know jack shit. They think werewolves are extinct while Maduke and Lunark are literally Elders 😭🤡😭

- Werewolves having a small population never made sense to me even with the whole thing about them not having mind control and thus keeping away from humans secretly since even civilians are stronger than humans on average but like why tf would wolves have such a low reproduction rate? And that's why I hc that 90% of them are just homosexual.

Chapter 142 - D doesn't consume your lifeforce bro. That's just the drugs causing heavy strain on the body, etc etc. The rest of your explanation was fine but talking about lifeforce or vitality makes no sense.

- We all know Yuri's smart but the fact that he tries to get Frankenstein as a subject by scouting him first is very clever. It's believable too since Frankenstein is supposed to be quite handsome.

Chapter 144 - Well we don't know of Crombel microchips his Assassination Squad but Aris canonically microchips her experiments 🤣

Chapter 147 - Okay but this panel... she's hot. I'd let her dissect me <3

- If this was some other media I'd talk about the symbolism of the attack looking like a rapier and go on for a paragraph but this is Noblesse so it's obviously just a coincidence lmao.

- "A living robot" so like... a cyborg.

Chapter 148 - Yuri getting pissed at being attacked and retaliating but pretending it was him being loyal to Aris... Love it. Also he must be really confused as to who tf Frankenstein is since as one of Crombel's most important lackeys he'd definitely know about such a powerful experiment under him if they existed and thus unlike Aris knows that he's not been sent by Crombel.

Chapter 149 - Yup def confused, especially when he realises Frankenstein's power is like Crombel's.

Chapter 150 - Girlboss,,, also it's been years and I'm still wondering... why is her outfit like that? Neon genesis evangelion girlboss does have a ring to it though.

- Ah yes, Taivra time.

Chapter 151 - Okay yeah I feel so bad for Takeo but also Aris is so good at manipulating him and and and iwi. The fact that she can cry on command though... impressive.

- "From the beginning you were an only child. That's why I got you to experiment on." Okay cool time to ignore that again for my own amusement of having all of noblesse's named modified human women be related to Takeo.

- Okay I'm obsessed with strawberry milk myself but strawberries do not taste anywhere near that good. Not even the sweet ones.

Chapter 153 - Yeah no I don't agree that Takeo losing his will to live is an insult to your comrades M-21. You could have said all that in a gentler way. Just because Takeo was luckier than you experiment wise doesn't mean you get to be so rude.

Chapter 154 - M-21 misleading Tao and Takeo to thinking he's being experimented on and then turning around to laugh at them when they find out it's just ramyeon... mood.

- I really do wonder what 12th Elder's military medals are for.

Sidenotes - Hammer being smart <3 I honestly didn't remember that part of him and I'm glad he's not given purely negative traits. He's the only reason Shark lived past 2 chapters tbh.

- Truly, D is one of the worst letters of the alphabet to have named the drugs DA-5 uses. The other bad choice would be P. On the opposite end of the spectrum, T would have been a great choice for the irony. Not that it matters since the inspiration for the drug from name to physical transformation is obviously 🍆

- Nobles being so nonchalant about murder is kinda fucked up like yeah they suck but you can't just kill them??? Lukedonia my beloved your justice system sucks. I do hc they can't just do this in Lukedonia though or to other nobles even if outside of Lukedonia, it's just that the jurisdiction of nobles doesn't apply outside of Lukedonia and they do on some level think of themselves as a superior species so they're fine with just... killing people.

- Aris obsessing over handsome men as experiments and treating them like toys but ignoring women altogether? Not experimenting on women? Gaslight gatekeep girlboss,,, a feministe of our own,,, perhaps even a... lesbienne. But yeah I just love how she acts and I love her and how she interacts with Yuri. And yeah he's cool too.

- Tbh aside from how short the skirts are and the white blazers, the Ye Ran uniform really reminds me of my own school's uniform. The colours are exactly the same. We just didn't have blazers since it was a forever summer tropical country, only jumpers for if it got too cold in the air conditioned rooms. And for some people who grow up in tropical countries... 25°C can be too cold.

#noblesse #raining while reading #volume 2 done

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tagsecretsanta · 4 years ago

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From @Psychoseal

to @avengedbiologist

Secret Santa does not own this work, full credit to the author above! The sun is blazing overhead. Even by tropical island standards it is hot.

“It is too hot to move” Gordon complains from his spot by the pool where he is lying on one of the loungers, wearing nothing but his tiniest speedos. Showing off his perfectly sculpted abs, there is a scar on his chest. A streak of white on his otherwise evenly tanned torso. Virgil has slathered him in sunscreen from head to toe to avoid him getting burned. Partly because he cares about him and mainly because he is cranky and irritable when he is in pain!

“Why don’t you go for a swim?” Kayo asks. She is on the lounger next to him, having just pulled herself up out of the water.

There is a jug of lemonade on the table in between the two loungers and Kayo pours herself a glass before choking on its bitter taste. “Ugh, that is disgusting. Who made it?” she asks.

“Alan” Gordon replies with a shrug.

“What did he put in it?”

“No idea, I wasn’t silly enough to try it” Gordon replies, poking his tongue out at her.

Kayo grins back at him and in one swift movement dumps the left-over lemonade on him before racing back into the house.

Gordon squeaks with indignity, but rather than chasing after her he dives back into the pool. Revenge is the last thing on his mind as he lets his anger wash over him in his happy place, and besides, it is Christmas Eve and he is in too good a mood to let anyone ruin it now.

He stays in the pool until his father comes out to get him. “Come on Squid there is food on the table and you need to have an early night. You know Father Christmas won’t come if you’re still awake!”

“Dad, I am not five years old!” Gordon reminds him.

“Do you want presents?” Jeff threatens with a smile.

Gordon doesn’t respond, instead he jumps up from the pool before grabbing his father and pulling him close for a hug.

“Gordon! You’re soaking” Jeff reminds him.

Gordon shakes the water from his head all over Jeff’s shirt.

“Never change Gords” Jeff says, as he struggles to free himself from his son’s vice like grip.

“Ooh pizza” Gordon announces, when he enters the kitchen ten minutes later, now fully dressed in a pair of light blue pyjamas and no shoes.

On the table are several pizzas neatly cut into slices. Steam rising up from the cheese and Gordon’s mouth is watering in anticipation. Reaching across Virgil, he grabs hold of the nearest pie and pulls it towards him. Taking two slices and mashing them together before shovelling it in whole, bits of stringy cheese are dripping down his chin. “H-h-hot!” he gasps.

“Do you regret that?” Scott asks.

Gordon glares at him, while he gulps down a glass of water. “Nope! Never!” he finally spits out.

Between the boys, Jeff, Grandma, Kayo and Brains the pizza doesn’t last long.

Jeff has no idea what traditions the boys have kept or made anew. “What are we doing now?” he asks Scott. Jeff is so proud of the way Scott stepped up to help raise his brothers after his disappearance and is more than happy to sit back and let him take the lead.

But it is Alan who replies. “Well we are going to have an early night. Eos is looking out for any hints of an emergency so we are going to make sure we are well rested.”

Scott and Virgil burst into laughter.

“Yeah right Al” John says, banging his fist on the table while he chokes on his coffee.

“I am an adult now. A real grown up!” Alan insists, he knows that he can’t reveal his true plans yet. If this works he will finally get the respect he deserves.

Grandma and Jeff break open a bottle of wine, which they take out onto the balcony to watch the sunset. “Do you ever miss Christmas in Kansas?” he asks. His mom gave up her own life to raise her grandchildren and he will never be able to repay her.

Grandma shakes her head. “Miss the sub-zero temperatures and the snow and the ice? No thank you!”

Even in the darkening evening the heat is oppressive and muggy. “I don’t know about you Jeff but it is nicer inside with the air conditioning. You have wrapped the boys presents?”

Jeff nods. “Of course. This is the first time in nine years that I have been able to do this and I am going to make tomorrow special. The whole family is home under one roof. It is a shame Lady Penelope couldn’t make it; I know Gordon is missing her”

“Her family plans couldn’t be rearranged, but I know they are going to meet up for New Year instead.”

The house is silent when they go back in, all five boys having agreed to an early night, so that Father Christmas can deliver their presents in peace. The living room has the look of a tinsel explosion and the main tree is covered in lights and baubles. The morning after the tree had been decorated, they arrived downstairs to find Gordon had replaced the baubles with hundreds of them shaped like his own head. Which even now gives Alan nightmares of a parallel universe where he is haunted by a thousand Gordon’s!

“I am off to bed myself Jeff dear. I will see you in the morning.”

“Night mom” Jeff replies watching her go up the stairs past Virgil’s latest art project and into the comfort of her own suite.

Jeff gets to work as soon as he is alone. Removing a box from the safe and pulling out the bright red suit and long white beard and getting changed into his old outfit. There is a large sack of presents waiting to go under the tree, which are hidden in his room.

Alan waits until he is sure that his father has gone to bed, before he sneaks out of his room and back down the stairs into the living room. Creeping as quietly as a mouse Alan sets up his great plan to catch Father Christmas and prove to Gordon once and for all that he does exist!

“What are you doing?”

Alan turns round to find Gordon staring at him in confusion.

“Catching Father Christmas!” Alan insists. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Getting a glass of water. Do you need any help?”

Alan shakes his head. “No, I have everything I need here. Can you remember the time you trapped Scott in that net and forced him to watch five hours of Into the Unknown?”

Gordons eyes crinkle with the laughter of the memory. “Yeah, fun times!”

“Well that. I am going to use that to catch him.” Alan reveals his plan.

“Good luck. I am going back to bed” Gordon says yawning. “You want a drink?”

“I’m good” Alan replies. Turning his attention back to the trap. He doesn’t go up onto the roof to trap the reindeer, the last thing he would want to do is accidentally cause Rudolph to fall and hurt himself!

Once the net is set up Alan realises that he needs a place to hide, and he knows the perfect spot. The boy’s old fort. To help them adjust to the move, Jeff helped them build a fort in the living room behind his desk. The entrance is hidden by a pair of curtains which used to hang in their mom and dad’s room in Kansas. Inside there are five squashy mismatched armchairs which Grandma helped them decorate. Alan’s is bright red and adorned with pictures of rockets. Here he has the perfect view of the room, as he gets settled in his chosen hiding spot.

He has not been in here for ages and he starts to think about the times he spent in here.

That first night on the Island when he was too frightened to sleep and ended up in here joined by his brothers they all slept in here, snuggled in a bro pile on the soft carpeted floor.

Their first Christmas where they strung fairy lights across the entrance and all stayed in here to open their presents and eat the cold dry turkey Grandma cremated for their dinner.

The night their father disappeared. Alan sought refuge in here, curling up on the floor on his own while he cried himself to sleep. Alan hasn’t slept in his own bed since, preferring the floor. No one else has vanished while he sleeps on the floor.

There is a box next to his chair. A box full of memories. Smiling now, Alan starts to look through the box. there are ticket stubs from movies they went too, old school reports, John’s science fair trophy and Gordon’s Olympic gold medal. Family photos from Kansas and the Island. At the bottom of the box, Alan finds their old flag. Designed and painted by Virgil “Fort Tracy” and tomorrow he is going to put the flag back where it belongs.

Alan sits down on the floor, and before he knows it he is fast asleep.

*TB*

“ARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!” A scream wakes him up nearly an hour later. Alan jumps in shock, and momentarily confused before he realises where he is. He scrambles to his feet and races out the Fort where he finds exactly what he is waiting for.

“YES I CAUGHT YOU!” Alan cries.

“Get me down!” The figure dressed in his red suit calls from above his head.

Realisation that it is his father and not Father Christmas dawns on him, and he releases the net. “DAD?”

“What the hell Alan?” he asks.

“I just wanted to catch Father Christmas” Alan says, there is a deep look of disappointment on his face and tears are threatening.

“Oh Allie” Jeff melts. “You know that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. Come on, help me pop the presents under the tree and then I will make us hot chocolate.”

The disappointment isn’t fading as he helps Jeff place the gifts until he finds ones with his name on. “Hey, look this one is for me!”

“Of course it is. Do you think we would leave you out?” Jeff asks.

“Gordon said…” Alan starts.

“Say no more! Never listen to Gordon” Jeff reminds him with a grin.

Jeff makes the hot chocolate, and the two go back to the Fort. “I haven’t seen you use this for ages” he says while he sits on Scott’s customised chair.

“I think we outgrew it” Alan says, there is a hint of sadness in his voice now.

“Nothing lasts forever Alan, you must know that by now” Jeff says, placing his mug on the floor and giving his youngest son a hug.

“Everything changed when you disappeared dad” Alan admits. “And none of it for the better, I missed you so much” and he finally realises that he knew all along that his father was playing Father Christmas. Since he got back, there has been hope in his life again.

“I missed you too. I missed you all so much but I am back now, and I am never going anywhere like that again” Jeff reassures his youngest son.

“Please don’t” Alan replies resting his head on his father’s shoulder, he can feel himself falling asleep here and he has never felt so safe before.

Jeff is starting to snore when there is a loud thud outside.

“Dad? What was that?” Alan asks, shaking him awake.

“Whaaaa?” Jeff replies sleepily.

“There is something outside” Alan tells him.

“No there isn’t. Go back to sleep” Jeff replies.

“Come on!” Alan says, trying to drag him to his feet.

Jeff knows when he is defeated and allows Alan to lead him from their sanctuary to find out what is going on.

Out by the pool, there is a sleigh parked which is housing eight reindeer. “DAD!” Alan shouts, “LOOK!”

“Hello Alan, you are meant to be in bed!”

“FATHER CHRISTMAS!” Alan exclaims in shock. “How? My brothers said you didn’t exist. But I knew you did, I just knew it!”

“And that Alan Is why your brothers are getting a lump of coal each and your getting a plush model of your thunderbird” Father Christmas replies. “But you have to keep my secret, okay?”

Alan nods. “Anything for you. I promise that I will always keep your secret”

“Good, now go to bed and get some sleep”

Alan is sitting up in his room when Father Christmas leaves, watching the sleigh fly up and away into the night sky with a “Ho ho ho” which he knows he is the only one who can hear.

“Merry Christmas” Alan says to the retreating reindeer before he lies down on his bed, and for the first time in nine years Alan sleeps soundly in his own bed.

*TB*

Christmas morning is a blur of laughter and present opening. Until there is only one gift left.

“Dear Kayo,

Have a lovely Christmas 😉

Love from Gordon”

“Gordon, you are the only person I know who can make have a lovely Christmas sound like a threat!” She tells him as she pulls the ribbon and lifts the lid from the box.

Lemonade explodes all over her.

“GORDON!” She yells running her hand through her sticky hair.

“Gotcha!” Gordon replies with a grin.

“Oh you are lucky it is Christmas!” Kayo tells him laughing. “Truce?”

“Yeah truce” Gordon agrees.

“Excellent, I am going to check on the turkey” Grandma says.

Identical looks of horror flash upon everyone’s faces.

“Merry Christmas boys” Jeff says with a grin. Glad that it doesn’t matter how many years have passed, somethings just never change!

#thunderbirds are go #Thunderbirds 2015 #tag team secret santa #secret santa 2020 #Gordon Tracy #kayo kyrano #alan tracy #jeff tracy #Scott Tracy #John Tracy #Virgil Tracy

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thegreatestofheck · 5 years ago

Text

Do Not Stand { Outer Banks }

word count - 4.8k warnings - death (cancer related), characters dealing with the aftermaths of death, swearing synopsis - One of the Pogues passes away and leaves a message for her friends. Each of them take it a different way. a/n - Here’s another story I have that is similar to one I’ve read. The work Bury A Friend by pogue-writings is amazing and you should check it out! This one was actually inspired by my favorite poem “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” by Mary Elizabeth Frye. I may or may not have cried a few times while writing this. Stay safe, healthy, and groovy, but don’t forget to give the people you love a tight hug. Love you guys.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Kenna knew she was dying. She had known she was dying for a long time. Diagnosed with cancer in her freshman year of high school, she knew that she was living on borrowed time. And there was no way she was going to waste a single second of it.

Partying, fishing, boating, and hanging out with her best friends, Kenna never let a day pass that she wasn’t bound to remember. John B, Pope, JJ, Sarah, and Kie lived it up right along with her, never questioning, never slowing her down.

So, when they saw her lifeless body in the hospital room, it felt so wrong. She was always dancing, always smiling, always cracking jokes, even when she was hooked up to a machine. They had seen her in the hospital bed before, but not like this, never like this.

Kie was already gasping through sobs, tears running down her cheeks. Pope was going to throw up, his face paling and stomach twisting. Sarah clung to the wall for support, her legs unable to keep her standing. John B couldn’t even step inside the room. He had lost too many people to lose her too. JJ, for once in his life, was dead silent. He didn’t know what words to say to make anything better.

Kenna’s parents held tight to her younger sister, trying to stifle tears as their only remaining daughter sobbed uncontrollably.

I am not there, I do not sleep

Kie remembered the last time she saw her friend before the cancer took a turn for the worse. Kenna had been so alive, so fierce, dancing on the HMS Pogue without a single care in the world. Knowing that her best friend was dying was different than living in a world without her in it.

Seeing her body, pale, blue, cold, made Kie shiver. The coffin wasn’t black like one you would expect to see. It was hand carved out of red wood. Kie’s mom and dad helped pay for it. The inside was lined with a jade green, Kenna’s favorite color. She wore her favorite white dress, her nails painted a pretty pink. Hair curled perfectly, cheeks a rosy red, she looked nothing like the girl that Kie knew.

Pope was the first to lay down a flower. He had picked them out. Holding the light purple daisy in his hand, he couldn’t help his trembling body. The preacher had gone silent, the congregation no longer singing. Setting the flower inside his friend’s casket, Pope fought back tears as he remembered the day she made him a daisy chain flower crown, claiming it made him look majestic.

He brushed his hand over hers one last time as he stepped away, shocked by how cold she felt.

JJ walked up with Kie, a hand on her shoulder to keep her steady. They had tried to make Kenna smile, but it looked so fake, so forced. He had seen a thousand fake smiles on her face before as she smiled through the pain, but she somehow always managed to make them look real. He remembered how she used to give him a soft, kind smile whenever he went over to her house after a fight with his dad. How, even though her body was actively trying to kill her, she worked her hardest to make everyone else around her happy.

A tear rolled off of his eyelashes, landing on her cheek.

Sarah hadn’t known Kenna as long as the others and she would regret those lost years for the rest of her life. She hadn’t stopped crying since stepping out of the car that morning. The girl in the coffin had this ability to make Sarah laugh even when she felt like dying on the inside. Sarah wondered if she was ever going to be able to smile again.

Without Kenna, the world was so much darker.

John B was the last to walk away. His flower was crumbling in his tight fist as he watched friend after friend place a purple daisy in the coffin. But John B couldn’t do it. He had lost his mom and then he lost his dad, he couldn’t handle losing his best friend too. He couldn’t walk up and look at her, couldn’t see the lifelessness in her eyes. He just couldn’t do it.

A pair of arms wrapped around his shoulders. He jumped, startled to find JJ’s arms around him. Pope was next, and then Sarah, and then Kie, until they were all standing there, staring at the still open coffin. Everyone else had gone, even her parents and sister. Not a single eye was dry.

When John B finally lay his flower in Kenna’s coffin, she was nearly covered in her favorite flower. The smile on her face looked suddenly real.

I am a thousand winds that blow

“This is for you,” Kenna’s mother said, offering the Pogues a letter as they sat in a small circle back at her house. Tears ran down the woman’s face, dragging her make up along with it. Kie lifted a trembling hand to take the letter. She opened it slowly, all eyes now on her. She coughed, trying to clear the thickness out of her throat.

“My friends,” she read and then coughed again. Sarah put a hand on Kie’s knee, trying to pass on what little strength she had. “My friends, we knew this time was coming. We knew our time was short. Thank you for every memory, every joyous moment. The last few years have been hard, but they would have been impossible without you. Promise me two things; first, look out for each other. Don’t neglect each other. Stick by one another as you have always done. Second, don’t cry for me. My time here was short, but it was sweet and epic and so full of love like a never ending song. Find me in the things you love and I will never leave you. Find me in the simple, mundane things and my memory will live on. I love each one of you. Kiara, Sarah, Pope, JJ, John. I carry your names with me where I’m going, so please, carry mine.”

She didn’t sign her name.

Kie let the paper fall from her hands, dropping to the coffee table like the last leaf fall of autumn. None of them said a single thing, silent tears running from their eyes.

This time, it was Sarah who stood first. She couldn’t take it any more, the heavy weight that pressed against her shoulders, her chest, her stomach. She wanted to scream, to pound her fists into the dirt, to march back to Kenna’s coffin and demand that she wake up.

Stepping out into the cool summer air, Sarah felt a breeze brush against her skin. At first, she wrapped her arms around her stomach to protect herself from the cold. But then the wind blew again, rustling her hair, pulling at the edge of her dress. A quiet wind chime sung from the neighboring house. It sounded like Kenna’s laugh.

The first time Sarah had met Kenna, there was a tropical storm coming on fast. Sarah and her dad were running around trying to board things up so no windows would break when she spotted Kenna riding her bike out in the wind.

“Hey!” She called, running over. Kenna stopped the bike and turned to face Sarah.

“Hi!”

“What are you doing? A storm’s coming in!” Even standing a few feet away from her, Sarah had to shout for her voice to be heard of the gusts.

“Just wanted to go on a bike ride,” Kenna said, a smile on her face.

“Come inside! You’ll get stuck out here.” Sarah gestured for the girl to follow her.

“You sure? I don’t want to impose.”

“Seriously! I doubt you’ll make it anywhere with how fast this wind is coming in.”

“Well, alrighty then.” Kenna rolled her bike after Sarah. By the time they made it back to the house, the rain had started to pour and they were both soaked to the bone.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Kenna said as Sarah led her toward the fireplace.

“I couldn’t leave you out there in that storm.” Sarah picked a blanket off the couch and draped it over Kenna’s shoulders. “What were you doing out there anyway?”

“Oh, you know, we only get so many of these kinds of storms in our life,” Kenna told her with a smile. “Don’t want to miss a single one.”

Astounded, Sarah excused herself to go get a fresh set of clothes for the both of them, plus a few blankets off her bed. They spent the rest of the storm in front of the fire, talking, getting to know one another, drinking hot cocoa. By the time the rain stopped and the wind died down, both girls knew they had just found a new friend.

Now, the wind grazed against Sarah skin and it no longer felt like a cold chill, but a gentle hug from her friend. Wrapping her arms even tighter around herself, Sarah closed her eyes, trying to stifle her sobs. Between the wind rustling the leaves and making the wind chimes sing, Sarah could almost hear Kenna’s voice once again.

I am the diamond glints on snow

Kie had gone to the Mainland only a few times in her life aside from day trips to Chapel Hill. Her parents took her to Minnesota once in the winter for her grandpa’s funeral. Kie didn’t want to go alone, so she took Kenna with her.

It was the only time Kenna ever went to the Mainland. It was the only time Kenna had ever seen the snow.

Kie and Kenna ran throughout the backyard, laughing in their layers and layers of clothes as they threw clumps of wet snow at each other. They made drooping snow men and snow angels. They slid down snow covered hills on pieces of cardboard and went ice skating on the frozen over pond without skates. In a span of only a few days, they must have taken at least a thousand pictures.

Sitting on her bed late that night, Kie was scrolling through those same pictures on her phone, tears rolling down her cheeks. Stuffing her blanket into her mouth was the only way to keep her sobs from carrying.

She tried to remember what Kenna said. Don’t cry for me. That was impossible. She must have known that while writing her letter. How was Kie not supposed to cry for her best friend, her ride or die? How was she supposed to not cry when the ache her chest was burning her alive?

Swiping through the pictures, Kie tried to recall what it was like to see Kenna smile. The smile was there on her phone, but it wasn’t anything like the real thing.

The snow glistened beneath Kenna in one picture as the girl rolled over from laughing so hard. Kie promised this picture of Kenna that she would never take advantage of the snow again. Every new experience that Kie had, she would live for Kenna. No more lounging around doing nothing. Kie was going to take every risk and she was going to take it with a smile on her face. She was going to fight for what she believed in, fight for what she wanted, harder than she ever had before.

And no one was going to stop her.

But despite her new determination, her sobs would not stop. There was a quiet knock at her door and she didn’t have the strength to pretend that she was okay. Her mom peeked the door open. As soon as Mrs. Carrera saw the distress her daughter was in, she walked inside the room and sat beside Kie, pulling her into a hug.

Kie held her phone limply in her hand, the picture of Kenna still smiling up at her as she fell into her mom’s arms. At the sound of her cries, her dad came running in, pulling both Kie and her mom into a solid hug, hoping that he could squeeze the pain right out of his daughter’s heart.

I am the sun on ripened grain

They were supposed to be working, but the music was playing over the speaker and they couldn’t control themselves as they danced to the beat.

JJ had Kenna by her hands, the two of them hopping back and forth, spinning, waving their arms around, whatever they felt the music pulling them to do.

It wasn’t uncommon for Kenna and JJ to find themselves doing odd jobs together. It was kind of their thing. Kenna was usually able to keep JJ on task, but on a warm, sunny day like this, with the fresh, green, Kook grass beneath her feet, even Kenna couldn’t resist taking a break to dance along to the party music.

It was some Kook kid’s 7th birthday. They were all out in the pool, their music blasting for what seemed like miles around. Because the parents were busy doing party things, they left JJ and Kenna to tend to the outside garden.

The sun was beaming down on them from above, the wind just strong enough to keep them cool. Flowers bloomed brighter in the light of the sun, making the garden look more like an oasis.

Once Kenna finally convinced JJ to get back to work, he picked up a hose claiming to go water a tree. Little did she know, as she picked up her watering can, that his intended target wasn’t the tree, but her.

The water was cool against her skin. Welcome, but surprising. With a gasp and a smile, she called out for JJ and their play began again. She chased him around the garden, threatening to shove the hose down his throat or up his ass. He simply laughed as he ran away from her.

By the time their work was finally done, all the flowers were in full bloom. The sunlight glistened off the water droplets, making the entire garden look like a light show. Dropping into the grass, Kenna let her laughter roll through her until it died down. JJ plopped himself onto the ground beside her, laying back to soak up the sun.

JJ couldn’t sleep. His mind was racing at a mile a minute, wondering how he could have let this happen. There must have been something that he could have done to stop this, something that would have saved her life. If he could, he would have taken her place. She didn’t deserve to die, not when so many people cared about her so much.

But he still heard her words in his head like his own thoughts.

“You matter, JJ,” she whispered to him as he paced through the darkness outside. “And you have people who care about you, too. Don’t undermine yourself. Don’t regret something you couldn’t fix.”

JJ slammed a closed fist into a tree before he could stop himself. Once the dam was broken, the flood came rushing out. Again and again he pounded his fists into the same tree, blood running down from his knuckles.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” JJ cried into the night. Pain splintered through his hands, but that didn’t stop him. It wasn’t until his cries of rage dissolved into desperate gasps for air the he actually dropped his hands back to his side. He still didn’t feel the pain.

Dropping to the ground, he brought his knees up to his chest, his shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Ken, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” If she was there, that’s what she would have told him. “I’m right here.”

I am the gentle autumn rain

Pope swept the floor of his dad’s shop, his eyes blurry with tears. He could barely see what he was doing, but doing something was better than doing nothing. He gave up on sweeping and started to pack the deliveries he would have to run tomorrow.

The island didn’t care if his best friend had died. People still needed their damn groceries.

Kenna danced through his mind; her smile, her laugh, her silly faces, the way she pouted her lips when she fished.

He swallowed a strangled cry as he remembered the day they went on a hike through the woods last fall. The skies were clear when they had started their journey, packs filled with sandwiches and chips and water bottles. They were half way through their hike when the first cloud rolled over them.

“Think we should head back?” Pope asked, watching the cloud above him warily. Kenna laughed, glancing back at him.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“What if it rains?”

“I didn’t realize you were the Wicked Witch of the East, Heyward,” Kenna said in her teasing tone. Pope rolled his eyes, but there was a smile on his face. “A little water never hurt anyone.”

It started to rain not a few minutes later. It wasn’t heavy, large drops like the rains they got in the winter and spring. It was soft, like a thousand petals falling all at once. Kenna didn’t even flinch. She lifted her face to the sky, smile growing wider as the tiny droplets landed against her cheeks. Pope simply watched her.

She started to turn, raising her hands ever so slightly. Pope’s cynical side couldn’t help but think about whether or not this was the last time she would feel rain against her skin and that’s why she relished in it so much. As if sensing his bad vibes, Kenna turned to look at him.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “We’ve got a hike to finish.”

They never had a chance to go on another hike. Her health declined steadily after that day in the autumn rain. Pope couldn’t bring himself to wonder now if that really had been the last time she felt the rain. Thinking about it was too much to bear.

“Son, what are you doing?”

Pope looked up, the sudden sound of his dad’s voice startling him out of his memory. Heyward stood with his keys in his hands. Behind him, the barest hint of dawn peaked over the horizon. Pope had been here all night.

“Just wanted to get ahead on deliveries,” Pope said, conscious of the fact that his voice was breaking. He could feel the tickle of a tear on his cheek, but he fought to keep the others swarming in his eyes at bay.

Heyward let out a heavy sigh and set down his things, walking toward his son. With every step, Pope felt his walls start to crumble a little bit more. Until his dad reached him and enveloped him into a strong hug. Only then did Pope broke completely.

“She’s gone.” His cries were muffled as he buried his face in his dad’s shirt. “She’s actually gone.”

“I know, son,” Heyward said, looking up at the ceiling to keep his own tears in his eyes. “I know.”

When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight

John B didn’t even try to sleep. He sat on the dock the entire night, doing nothing other than watch the horizon and drink a beer. At least, he held the open bottle in his hand and pretended like he was drinking it.

He couldn’t bare to go inside his house, not when she was everywhere he looked. The kitchen still smelled like her turkey sandwiches. The bathroom was still stained from her hair dye that she used to dye her eyebrows.

“I don’t have any hair left, so my eyebrows can be any color I want, right?” she said with a laugh. John B watched her from the bathtub, an amused smile on his face.

The pictures of her still hung on his wall. She was in every crack, every crevice, every squeaky floorboard, every rusted nail.

Kenna had stayed over when Big John went missing. She sat up with John B until he fell asleep, which usually wasn’t until early in the morning. She made him breakfast, no matter how many times he told her he was perfectly capable. She helped him look for his dad, hand made flyers, talked to the police when John B couldn’t stomach it. She was there by his side through it all.

And the morning that Ms. Lana came by the house to tell him what had really happened, Kenna was there too. She stayed up with him, holding him as he cried and emptied his guts. He had always held out hope that Big John was alive. Without him, John B wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do. But every anxiety, every fear, every worry, Kenna quelled just by being there.

When the sun rose in the morning, the rooster crowing and the birds flying between the trees, Kenna was still there, asleep by his side.

John B couldn’t go back inside and sleep because when he woke up, he would expect to see her there and he knew she wouldn’t be. He remembered that morning feeling all too well when he could almost forget that his dad was gone for good. He couldn’t go through that again, not without Kenna there to help him.

So, instead, he stared at the horizon, watching the sun rise higher and higher, flooding the marsh and the Chateau with light. The rooster crowed. The birds flew back and forth between the branches. But Kenna wasn’t there to enjoy it with him.

The dock creaked as someone walked toward him. For half a moment, John B let himself hope that it was her.

But it wasn’t.

JJ sat beside him with a sigh. John B looked down and saw the bruises and cut skin of his knuckles. He didn’t need to ask what happened. He knew well enough. Finally taking a drink of the beer, he looked back out to the marsh.

“I had an idea,” JJ said, his voice gravelly.

“Yeah?”

“We should give her a proper Pogue send off,” JJ said, slipping the beer bottle out of John B’s hand to take a drink from it himself. “Go out on our boards, lay her to rest in the ocean.”

John B’s eyes had been dry the entire night, refusing to accept that she was gone. But hearing JJ’s words made it seem so real. The tears came fast and they came hard. He nearly doubled over as sobs shook his body, pressing the sleeves of his sweatshirt against his mouth.

“Come on,” JJ whispered, putting his arm around his friend and pulling him closer. John B put his arms around his friend. Both of them were grateful for the comfort of another.

The birds started to sing.

I am the soft stars that shine at night

They all met at the beach that night. There was a bonfire, s’mores, music. Kie brought her ukulele. Sarah sang a song, the others mumbling along with her.

“Did you bring it?” JJ asked Kie when the singing died down. She nodded and reached for her backpack. With shaking hands, she pulled out a small, metal box.

“It’s safe for the ocean environments,” she murmured, her lower lip trembling as she looked at it.

“It’s perfect,” Sarah said, reaching out and putting an arm around Kie.

“Everyone bring their thing?” John B asked, poking at the fire with a stick. Each of his friends answered in turn, reaching for pockets and bags to pull out what they had brought for Kenna.

JJ pulled one of his woven bracelets off of his wrist, rolling it between his fingers like a blunt. For half a second, it looked like he was going to toss it into the fire. Instead, he looked up at Kie.

“She made this for me when we were kids,” he said, his voice thick with feeling. “Never took it off.”

“Shouldn’t you keep it? To remember her by?” Kie asked. JJ looked at the bracelet and shook his head with a heavy sigh.

“No. I think she needs it more than I do now.” Without another word, he leaned forward and placed the blue and black bracelet into the metal box.

Sarah held a little ceramic bird in her hand.

“We went thrifting this one time,” she said and gave a small shake of her head. “Kenna and I got these matching birds, but mine broke so she gave me hers.”

Placing the small bird into the metal box, Sarah blinked back a heavy downpour of tears. Kie plucked a guitar pick out of her pocket. She looked at it with a small smile on her face.

“We were gonna make a double album together,” Kie said, her voice breaking as she fought off tears. “We got some stuff recorded but, I guess the rest will just have to come with her spirit.”

She dropped the pick into the metal box and it hit the bottom with clunk.

Pope stood, clearing his throat. He walked over to Kie, who held the box in her hands. He fiddled with something, looking down at it as if he wasn’t ready to part with it quiet yet.

“Ken...she used to held me study. She and I had a bet that I wouldn’t be able to one single pencil until I couldn’t sharpen it anymore and, well-” Pope lifted up the small pencil, barely more than a nub. He looked up the stars above. “Guess I won.”

He put the pencil nub into the box and returned to his seat. John B was next, he knew as much. Kie and Pope watched him carefully, expectant. But JJ and Sarah looked away.

“Kenna told me once that she wanted to be an astronaut,” John B said after a long silence. JJ looked over at him. “She wanted to fly among the stars.”

John B felt tears start to gather in his eyes and so he looked up, met with the beautiful expanse of the universe above. Kie leaned over and put a hand on his knee as it bounced up and down. John B let out a teary gasp as he dropped his head back down, eyes closing.

“We found this once when we were out here,” he said after a while, holding up a small, shiny rock. “She said it looked like a fallen star. Said there was a wish locked inside of it. When my dad went missing, she gave it to me and told me to use it whenever I hit my lowest. So, Kenna?”

He looked up again, closing the rock into his fist.

“I want to wish for you to come back. I want to wish for you to beside us again, beside me again. But I won’t.” He brought the rock to his lips. “I wish that you’re at peace. I wish that you know how much you meant to us. I wish that you know we’re going to be okay. Yeah, we’re gonna be okay.”

John B dropped the rock into the box and Kie closed it shut. JJ stood, plucking his surfboard out of the sand. One by one, the others did the same. Kie held the box close to her chest as they rode out to the water beyond the swells. It was a calm night, the moon watching over them as they floating in the water.

No one said anything as they sat. Kie planted a kiss onto the top of the box and then handed it to Pope, who did the same. Around the circle it went, receiving a small kiss from each of Kenna’s friends. Once it was back in Kie’s hands, she held it over the water, hands still shaking. She was supposed to drop it, to let it sink beneath the water and into the depths below, but she couldn’t do it. Not alone.

John B reached out and took some of the weight. JJ was next, then Sarah, and then Pope, until all of them held onto their last bit of Kenna. They gave no signal, but when Kie let out one, steady breath, they all let go together.

Kenna’s box sunk, disappearing into the dark in moments. Sarah tried to choke back a sob.

Now, every time they surfed these waves, a piece of Kenna would still be there, watching over them.

Do not stay at my grave and cry

They made it back to shore, tears drying on their faces. And they spent the rest of the night reminiscing, laughing, drinking Kenna’s favorite lemonade, eating s’mores in the way she liked best.

Not a single tear more was shed.

The stars twinkled above them, the night owls calling in the distance. Wind blew gentle through the trees, the sand below their feet glinting in the moonlight like snow. Sounds of rain pattered somewhere in the distance, the plants around them rustling.

I am not there; I did not die

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kyber-kisses · 5 years ago

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Toes in the Sand

Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: it be both fluffy and angsty. prepare for feels.

Summary: Dean was always talking about how he wanted to go to the beach with you, Sam, and Cas. But things don’t always go as planned.

A/n:This has been sitting in my drafts for ages and I finally finished it! I hope yall enjoy, and please tell me what you thought!

You never thought in a million years that you would actually make it. That you would get to have an actual vacation. For hunters, that wasn’t usually something that was in the books for them. . . But here you were, toes in the sand and sitting next to your favorite person in the whole world. It almost felt like a dream.

Dean let out a sigh, leaning back on his hands as he stretched his legs out, the heels of his feet digging into the slowly cooling sand. “This nice. I’m glad we decided to do this.”

“Agreed. Are Sam and Eileen still on that scenic hike?”

“Hell if I know.” Dean shrugged, tilting his head back and closing his eyes, soaking in the final rays of the setting sun.

The sky before you was painted a light apricot color, streaks of dusty pink mixing together to form a spectacular sunset as the blazing orange ball of fire began to sink below the palm trees to the west. Somewhere in the distance a band of katydids and crickets struck up a tune, the sound mixing perfectly with the gentle crash of waves hitting the beach. The water itself was a beautiful turquoise blue that put other shades to shame.

For the first time, in a very long time, everyone was relaxed. It was almost eerie in a way. You had gotten so used to the stress of hunting that the feeling was foreign. . . But you welcomed it greatly.

“We should probably start heading back.” You sighed, brushing the sand off your hands as you stood up.

The Winchester besides you let out a groan, grabbing onto the hand that you extended to him so you could pull him up, “Do we have to?”

Letting out a light laugh, you kept your fingers tangled with his, beginning your walk down the shore line, “Yes, we do. We promised we would meet back up with Sam and Eileen for dinner.”

“Right.”

A soft breeze rippled across your skin as you walked, making the loose fabric against you flutter slightly. The tropical printed shirt was about two sizes too big for you, but it worked as an excellent cover up, plus, it was almost an identical match to the one Dean was wearing. Though he would never admit it out loud, you knew he loved it.

“At some point, I’m gonna have to take you surfing.” You smiled, eyes shifting to watch the whitecaps on the horizon.

“You know how to surf?” Dean questioned, turning to look at you with a slightly shocked expression.

“Yeah, when I was younger and living with my aunt for a few months, she taught me. I got good at it pretty quick.” You shrugged, feeling your feet sink into the wet sand as the tide came in, soaking your ankles.

“Okay, but me on a board? That’s just a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, Winchester.”

“Alright. Fine.” Dean smiled, leaning over to plant a soft kiss to your temple.

Up ahead, you watched as a group of sandpipers danced across the sand, their little legs taking them quickly towards the retreating tide. The small shorebirds undoubtedly going in search of food.

“Are you happy, Dean?” You spoke suddenly, tearing your eyes away from the birds to look up at him. When he locked eyes with you, you felt your breath catch in your throat. The usual dullness in his eyes was gone, once again filled with the vibrant green you had missed so much.

He smiled, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he did, “Yeah, yeah I’m happy. Are you?” He breathed, giving your hand another squeeze.

You nodded, finding his smile to be infectious as he looked at you with that oh so familiar soft gaze. It felt like someone was waving sparklers inside your chest. You could feel the white hot stars jumping off of them.

He was happy.

You almost caught him off guard when you stopped in your tracks, moving to the latch your arms around him, pulling him into an earth shattering hug.

“Woah! What’s this for?” He wheezed, not hesitating to wind his arms around your waist, resting his chin in the crook of your neck.

“I just love you. That all.”my mumbled, breathing in the scent of the coconut body wash he had been using, “and I’m glad that you're happy.”

You allowed Dean to pull away after a moment, his jade irises locking onto you with what could only be described as full adoration, and then he was sealing his lips against your own. His arms stayed locked around your waist as he picked you up, spinning you around with a light laugh against your lips.

He seemed so much younger in that moment. Like he hadn’t just lived through a lifetime of pain and monsters. There was something almost childlike to it all.

“Y/n, don’t leave. Not yet. Not like this.” Dean spoke suddenly, setting you back down on the damp sand.

Drawing you eyebrows together, you tilted your head, looking up at him, “What are you talking about? I’m right here-“

And then the landscape flickered.

The apricot sky fizzled out, and the palm trees faded into nothing, drowning you in a starless night sky. The breeze suddenly much cooler. A clap of thunder overhead made you jolt, successfully drowning out the harsh crash of waves momentarily. There was a storm nearby. You could smell it in the air.

It was all so loud, and frightening and nothing like the paradise you were just living in.

You tried moving, but you were suddenly stopped short by a pair of hands gripping your shoulders, “Y/n, I need you to stay still for me, okay?”

Dean.

Through blurred vision, you blinked, trying to take in your surroundings.

“What’s happening? Where are we?” You breathed.

And then you felt it. The pain rippling through your body in dense waves. Slowly, you raised a shaky hand to your abdomen, immediately regretting it when your finger grazed the deep gashes. You let out a sharp yell, head falling back onto the sand.

You were injured. Badly.

“It hurts. God, it hurts so much.” You breathed, unable to fight the pain coursing through your body.

“I know, Sweetheart, I know. Just stay with me.” Deans voice was heavy with panic as he looked down at you. The flannel he had used earlier to try and slow the bleeding was now completely stained crimson.

He should have been more alert. The werewolves had come almost out of nowhere, completely catching you guys off guard.

This was all his fault.

You flinched at the sudden contact of a calloused set of hands cradling your face, Deans silhouette hung over you, his face drawn up in worry.

“Y/n, I need you to stay awake okay? I need you to stay awake for me.”

“Where are we?”

“Ludington, remember? We were hunting a couple of werewolves.” His voice shaky as he tried to explain it to you.

And then it all came flooding back to you, and suddenly you were drowning in memories. You were never on vacation. You, Sam and Dean had gone to work a werewolf case up in north western Michigan. You eventually ended up chasing a couple of them down the beach.

You remembered passing by an empty boardwalk, and an old playground partially lit up by yellow tinted street lamps. There was a slide. The kind that was made of metal and was a nightmare on stilts during the summer. The kind that you looked at and knew that if you slid down it, your shorts and skin would undoubtedly catch fire.

You don’t know why you latched on to that recent memory, but you did.

And then you realized what had happened after that. They were stronger than you had predicted. The claws sharper than you remembered. And the pain worse than ever.

The gashes on your stomach. That’s what they were from. A werewolf.

“Y/n, dammit! I need you to listen to me!” Deans voice cracked again as he lightly slapped your face, pulling your attention towards him.

“Sam. Where is Sam? Is he okay?” You muttered, feeling your body slowly begin to relax. This wasn’t good.

“He went to go get the car. Your losing a lot of blood, y/n. I need you to stay awake.” He demanded, desperately trying to hide the fear in his tone. Even through the darkness and your slowly blurring vision, you could see the panic in his eyes.

“You were so happy.” Your breath coming out shallow as you spoke, mind going back to the paradise you had been residing in.

“What?”

You took a shallow breath, wincing as another wave of pain shot up your body. God, you were tired. You were so tired. And cold. Very, very cold.

“On the beach. You kept holding my hand.” You sighed, your body growing heavier by the minute.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re always talking about how you want to go on a vacation. Somewhere tropical. . .I dreamt about it.” You swallowed slowly, feeling the first tears race down the side of your face to collect on the damp sand. “We were wearing matching Hawaiian shirts. We were happy.”

Dean had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking down in sobs. You were losing so much blood, and he had no clue how long it would be until Sam got here. One of his hands fell from your face, reaching for your hand. The color was beginning to drain out of your features and you had a dazed, yet sad look in your eyes. You were fading quickly, he could feel it in his bones.

He needed to keep you talking, keep you awake. “Tell me more about it.” He breathed, squeezing your hand, which you returned, except with only a quarter of the force.

“Sandpipers. They kept strutting across the sand. You found them amusing. I thought it was adorable.” You smiled weakly, eyelids growing heavy as you looked up at him.

“Sound about right.” He chuckled, his own eyes darting down to the deep gashes torn into your stomach.

With each passing second, he was getting closer and closer to losing you.

“Maybe when I’m better, we can go.” You mumbled. You couldn’t feel the pain anymore. You were just numb now. It almost felt like you were drifting in the waves that were just out of reach from where you lay.

“Yeah, yeah let’s do that. You, me, Sam and Cas. Eileen too. A proper vacation.” Dean nodded, feeling his own tears leave his cheeks to collect on yours. His thumb moving to stroke them away and his breathing quickened, “Toes in the sand, how bout that?”

You opened your mouth to speak, but instead you were taken over by a small fit of coughs, the taste of copper flooding your mouth. You were burning at the very end of your wick now. You weren’t going to make it. But at least you didn’t hurt anymore.

Dean had never known fear like this before as he looked down at you, lips painted crimson as you continued to cough up blood. As gently as he could, he shifted from his position, wrapping his arms underneath you so he could partially pull you into his lap, your head resting in the crook of his elbow.

“It’s okay. I got you. I’m right here.” He swallowed, trying not to let his voice crack as he looked down at you. He needed you to know that you weren’t alone. That he was still with you.

His heart was breaking off in pieces though, as he kept his gaze on you. There was nothing he could do to help you here. He had no clue how long it would be until Sam got here.

Mustering what strength you had left in you, you raised a shaky hand, resting you palm against his cheek, his big green eyes full of pain as he looked down at you.

“Toes in the sand.” You smiled weakly, using the pad of your thumb to wipe away the tears trailing down his cheek.

You took another shallow breath, the air coming out shaky, and your hand slid from his face, and the last bits of his heart that had been breaking shattered.

“No,no,no y/n stay with me! I need you to stay with me!” He breathed, panic seeping into his bones as he went into begging mode, slightly shaking you in his arms. “Just for a little longer, please.” His voice cracked.

But deep down, he knew it was too late. Your breathing had stilled, mouth still partially open as your eyes glazed over, the light in them flickering out.

Dean tried to swallow the lump in his throat as he shook his head in defeat, his forehead coming to rest against you own, “Don’t do this to me. Please don’t do this to me.”

It was ten minutes later that Sam found his brother in that same position, his arms locked around you as he held you against his chest, his lips pressed to your temple as his eyes remained shut, in fear that if he opened them the tears wouldn’t stop falling.

The younger Winchester let his feet carry him quickly across the sand, falling to his knees in front of him, “Dean, is she still ali-“

“No. She gone.” He sighed, moving once more to rest his head against yours.

Sam slid his hand into your limp one, squeezing it lightly he tried to fight back his own tears, “I’m sorry. I tried to get here as fast as possible.”

Dean slowly shook his head, his jaw clenching almost as if it were a shock absorber for his pain. You were supposed to live. You were supposed to be happy and full of life. Not an empty shell in his arms. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Slowly he opened his eyes, looking down at you. He had closed your lids, hoping it would make it look like you were sleeping. . . But it didn’t work. He brushed a stand of loose hair away from your face, fingers skimming over the cool skin.

“I’ll see you on the other side. Toes in the sand.”

The End.

SPN taglist:

@familybusinesswritingbro@a–1–1–3 @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @music-is-all-i-need @agusdoti @callmekda @jordangdelacruz @orphiceseum @andthatsmyworld @marvelfangirllll @fandomnerdespressourself @gladiosamicitias @castielsangelsx @lxstgxrl-ck @tis-i-the-wayward-idgit @amendoise @phoenixuprisingsstuff @ericalynne007 @kaitlaitlaitl @neerness @totallyluciferr @supernaturalenchanted @dolanfivsosxox @horrorstreet @imabtich4jensen

#dean winchester #dean winchester imagine #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester one shot #dean x reader #dean x y/n #SPN #spn x reader #supernatural #supernatural imagine #supernatural one shot #bi-danvers0 #bi-danvers writing

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isakwon · 5 years ago

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Traveling With Junmyeon

A MoodBoard Series

Last Moodboard: Sleeping under the same sky

Junmyeon holds his phone up and arches his neck back to capture every motion of the Tiger Shark swimming above him. He snaps as many photos of the Shark as possible until it swims away, and then starts taking pictures of the other sharks inside the tunnel. Other tourists are respectfully quiet underneath the tunnel since sharks are sensitive to underwater sounds. And you watch Junmyeon become fascinated by the sharks as you’ve never seen him this way before.

Junmyeon doesn’t like Aquariums. He only brought you to an Aquarium because you love them so much. But you noticed the wondrous gleam in his eyes and a smile etched upon his lips. He would usually be bored watching fishes all day, but he seems to be enjoying this exhibit as much as you are. Maybe even a little more. You nudged his shoulder so that he knows you are standing you smiling at him, and he smiles back before snapping a surprise photo of you, making you widen your eyes with surprise.

You roll your eyes, amused, and shook your head as Junmyeon beams. He lowers his phone and watches the sharks again. “This is so cool.”

He whispers.

You wrap an arm around him and hum. “Yeah.”

Aquariums are one of your most favorite places to visit. Earlier this morning, Junmyeon mentioned having a great surprise for you after breakfast, and you were confused because you thought this entire trip was the surprise. He refused to give you hints about the surprise during the ride over. He wouldn’t even give you one tiny little detail when you pleaded.

It wasn’t until you looked outside the cab window and saw a building decorated with starfishes, bubbles, and sea lions, did you know where you are. As soon as you realized where you are, you felt your heart leap inside your chest.

You never thought about visiting an aquarium here, much less knew if there was one nearby.

Both of you had visited an art museum, the science museum, the history museum, and a mummy museum. And although that museum sent chills down your spine, it was fascinating and you loved it. All of them were museums you would love to visit again, and would surely recommend them to anyone who considers visiting the country.

However, once you found out the surprise was an Aquarium, you squealed and hopped off the cab like a little girl at a candy store. As you waited in line, you tugged onto Junmyeon's arm, smiling eye to eye as you tell him about how excited you are to visit an Aquarium after so long.

Junmyeon knew you would be thrilled and was proud of himself for making you feel this way, although it made him feel a little embarrassed. He was hoping for a reaction as such ever since he found this one the night before, so he regrets nothing. Aquariums are a place of nostalgia for Junmyeon too, so he was ready to spend the entire day here with you.

You love Aquariums. Especially the ones which were designed to give off a true under the sea atmosphere. This Aquarium was larger, more dimensional, and much more mesmerizing compared to the ones back home. There was a skeletal display of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling and an outdoor exhibition for Sea Lions, Otters, and Dolphins. The tanks were wide enough for Octopuses, Seahorses, and Globe Crabs to move around. And an outdoor exhibit filled with Reptiles and Tropical birds.

The staff offered you to go snorkeling with sharks, but you politely refused while Junmyeon mustered up his courage and went all in for it. You preferred snorkeling with the sea turtle instead. You fed the birds and recorded a video of Junmyeon having a laughing contest with an Australian Kookaburra. And he took photos of you holding a Boa Constructor around your shoulders with the bravest face you could disguise. It felt silky and scaly and chilly, but you weren't afraid of it lunging towards you since it wasn’t looking towards you.

Once again, this has been the most fun you've had on this trip.

The most unexpected and wonderful surprise of all was seeing African penguins waddle up and down the halls. You were feeding young stingrays when a staff member announced to take caution because penguins were coming. You turned around, and as soon as you saw them, you were floored to the ground. Junmyeon recorded a video of them, smiling, as you were hiding the awed grin behind your hands. When it seemed as though nothing could be able to top that moment, you find the Jellyfishes exhibit.

There was something beautiful about Jellyfishes that had always attracted you. To this day, you could never found out the reasons why they snatch your attention. Maybe it was because of the way they float eloquently like a wedding dress in the water. Maybe it’s because they are calming behaved creatures and yet are one of the most intimidated. Or probably, because they remind you of your favorite childhood book.

For whatever reason, you become transfixed by them every time you see them. You feel wonder filling in your eyes, becoming dazed, and a smile was etching onto you. It was gorgeous. This Aquarium could have as many great descriptions as it does have many species of sea creatures. It was the best surprise yet and has been the most heart-warming thing since the little girl presenting you with a flower. You were having so much fun; a lot of fun.

The child-like excitement you developed this morning will soon shrink into gloominess, and you already feel upset just thinking about it. You do not want to go back to the hotel afterward. There is still so much of the day left to be spent and enjoyed. Hopefully, you will be able to visit someplace else.

Junmyeon looks at you adoringly and scoots closer beside you, placing his hand over yours. “Y/N.”

You turn around and Junmyeon leans forward to kiss you. Your breath hitches, eyes flutter shut as you lean into the kiss. His top lip rested over your noggin and you wish it lasted longer when he pulls away. You smile at each other as you intertwine fingers together.

You whispered, “Thank you for this Myeon.”

“You're welcome, babe.” He whispers.

You turn towards the Jellyfishes again without saying anything. It has been a while since you visited an Aquarium and you couldn't believe Junmyeon found one as extravagant as this. He found it while you were showering this morning and was trying to find an alternative after having his original plan be postponed.

“Do you know why I brought you here?” He asks.

You shake your head.

“An Aquarium was where we started talking.” He said.

At first, you don’t understand what he means until you remember a few years back. You raise your eyebrows. “Oh, that’s right we did!”

The last time you've been to an Aquarium was when you met Junmyeon again-the second time. By then, you still didn't have a good impression on him. Sehun and Chanyeol were your mutual friends, and they invited you to hang out with them during the holiday weekend. They invited Junmyeon too without notifying you. Since you already met once, you know his name and face.

The four of you had dinner and drinks at the same restaurant you had seen Junmyeon. You had all gotten bored with the Cinema and thought about which other places you should visit next. The place you suggested was an Aquarium.

“When you said we should go to an aquarium, I thought it was a random suggestion.” He says, “I wasn’t even into aquariums at the time.”

You gasp at him and he goes on. “I thought they smelled awful, and they used to bore me until I'd fall asleep.”

“Babe, you fell asleep on a go-kart ride at an amusement park! Thank goodness you were okay!”

He chuckles down at his feet, embarrassed by how you still remember that. You never forgot about the time he fell asleep on a go-kart and you bring it up anytime he wants to complain about you falling asleep during movie night. You would watch them late at night, and your eyelids would become heavy with sleep. You couldn’t help it, even if a scene was interesting.

“Anyway, while Sehun and Chanyeol agreed on going, I was against it because I disliked them, but I didn’t want to be rude.” He said. “You were excited about it and because I wanted to be nice, I went. I’ll admit though, I thought it was a little weird.”

“I thought you were weird for not liking aquariums. ” You shot back.

He may not be wrong since it was kinda weird of you to consider sleeping on the hotel roof, but then again, Junmyeon was the one who made that plan into action. He thought you were serious and you thought he was crazy for taking your sarcasm seriously. However, you had an amazing evening gazing upon the nightlife and doing the same things you do at home.

Maybe it's best to admit both of you are weird.

“The trip wasn’t bad and then I noticed you disappeared. I didn't know whether or not I should have, but I decided to go look for you that day.” On that day, you had left to use the restroom, and on the way back you found a new animal exhibit. Feeling excited, you searched for that new exhibit and found two new Beluga Whales. You overcome with awe and shortly after Junmyeon found you smiling at them.

He says, “I didn’t mean to scare you by the way.”

“You didn’t scare me Myeon, you scared the living heck out of me!”

Junmyeon was walking up from behind and you didn’t notice until you spot another strange figure along with your reflection. Though you couldn’t tell it was Junmyeon since his reflection was blurry, and your jump scare caused him to flinch in surprise.

He was embarrassed by the way that you shrieked, but mostly from scaring you. When you remembered you were in an Aquarium, you clapped your hands over your mouth and checked to see if anyone heard you. He remembers restraining a giggle when you did that.

“I wasn’t trying to.” He said.

You smirk at him. “Still, I thought you were a stranger trying to squeeze my hip.”

“I was just trying to tap your shoulder.” He said, “Besides, we barely knew each other at the time, so we pretty much were strangers.”

Nowadays, you are the one creeping up behind him and scare him. Only every once in a while in the morning when you need him to wake up.

“It was awkward at first watching the whales with you without saying a thing to each other. And then, you told me Beluga Whales could kiss and I was impressed by how much you knew about them." He says, "I knew you were smart, but you just kept impressing me that day.”

You become flattered. Junmyeon swears you are the intellectual and creative one, but you strongly deny that. He was the one with the wit and ambition in this relationship. And they were also some of the things that attracted you.

“No, babe. It was just me being my nerdy self.” You said.

“It further piqued my interested in you."

You restrain your grin. “Do you remember the whale that had a crush on you?”

The two of you were having a bit of small talk when one of the whales started whirling around and squeaking at Junmyeon. You giggled and teased him by saying the whale had a crush on him, and he decided to see if they really can kiss. It was just him trying to poke your funny bone the way you did with his. Junmyeon squatted down in front of the whale, and puckers his lips, and leaned toward the glass. The Whale approaches him with puckered lips until their lips touch the glass, and they share a kiss through the tank. Junmyeon made the little ‘chu’ sound and the whale started squealing out of glee which made him giggle. You never expected him to do something as heartwarming as kissing an animal, and it was also the first time you've seen Junmyeon smile genuinely.

You noticed how his eyes crinkle when he smiles, and his laugh lines appear as well as a single dimple on his left cheek.

A smile like that looked much better on him than the blank expression he had when you first met.

The whale urges Junmyeon for another kiss and he gladly does it again. The whale squeals once more and Junmyeon giggles before pretending to kiss the tank again. It was the cutest thing you have ever seen. And then suddenly, without thinking, you pulled your phone out and started recording him.

“When I saw you recording me, I got really shy.” He said.

When he mentions that memory, you begin cringing. “I should’ve asked if you would’ve been comfortable with it first. You said, shaking your head. Although it’s a sweet memory, you can’t stop cursing yourself for having made the sudden decision. Since you barely knew each other at the time, you had no idea if he was the type of person who doesn’t like being recorded. He didn’t even take photos of the last time you and your friends went out. When he caught you recording him, you remember thinking you had ruined an adorable moment and considered deleting the video. Until Junmyeon looked at you with that warm earnest smile and asks if you could send it to him.

“Y/N, if you hadn’t been recording me back then, I would’ve never had the chance to ask for your number.”

He asked if you could send him the video for you to switch numbers.

This man knew exactly what would happen when he asked for your number. When he went to look for you in the Aquarium and when he was making you laugh during your time alone. He learned about the deep and personal you rarely show anyone as if you had known each other before. This was the same person you never thought you would develop a personal relationship with. Not romantically or platonically.

If you hadn’t switched numbers on that visit to the Aquarium, you wouldn’t be sitting beside him in this one today. You could’ve erased his number after sending the video, but Junmyeon made you see him in a brighter light you didn’t know he has. You enjoyed your time together and knew you want to see him again. And when he asked if you wanted to hang out again, you said yes.

He could’ve given up and moved on from you for someone else who would give him attention. Except, he didn’t and you are grateful of him for that. You squeeze his hand affectionately.

“Thank you for not holding a grudge against me.” You whisper, looking at him with admiration.

He smiles, “Thank you for giving me a chance.”

Although he still can’t get over the smell, Junmyeon developed a soft spot for Aquariums after spending those brief moments with you. Since then, he knew there was some magnetic connection between you, and he knew he had to see you again. Maybe that was why he considers Aquariums to be romantic.

“So, the moral of the story is that I was right about Aquariums all along.” You tease.

“Yeah, you were right and I’m not gonna argue with you on that.” He laughs,

“Do you wanna stay, or do you wanna see the rest of the Aquarium?”

You shake your head. “No. Let’s just stay a little longer.”

The two of you sit in silence, watching the Jellyfish, and keeping your hands attached. That exact day must be why you consider Aquariums romantic. After the jellyfish, you move on to see the outdoor exhibits and found the Sea Otters and Dolphins. You found a life-sized checkered board game on the playground and played for at least thirty minutes until you won. Before leaving, you browse around the gift shop and try to convince Junmyeon to purchase a matching necklace for both of you to wear. Except, he huffs and turns stern.

“No Y/N, it’s too cheesy. We don’t need stuff like that.”

You sigh, “Ugh, all right.”

As soon as you walk out of the Aquarium, a little girl runs up to you and asks if she could take your photo. She had looked to be about twelve or thirteen years old and seemed to be an aspiring photographer. You both accepted and she steps a few feet away from where you are standing and points her camera at you. Junmyeon hugs you from the back, placing his chin on your shoulder, and you lean your head against his chest and hold onto his arms.

It turns out her camera prints photos as polaroids. She catches the photo before it could drop onto the ground and waved it until the picture clears up.

“Here.” She says, handing you the photo. “Thanks a lot for letting me take a picture. I’ve never seen grown-up twins before, so I wanted to take pictures.”

“We’re not twins.” You both said, bewildered.

The girl becomes shocked. “You’re not?”

“No,” said Junmyeon. “We’re a couple.”

“Oh.” Her expression is frozen. “I thought you were twins since your clothes are the same.”

You and Junmyeon looked up and down at each other and it turns out, you are wearing identical colors. He was wearing a white sweater and a navy beanie with jeans while you are wearing a white top and your blue coat with jeans. The young girl thanks you again and leaves to take more pictures leaving you and Junmyeon to scanning each other’s outfits.

How did neither of you notice until now?

"You're right babe.” You said. “We don’t need a necklace."

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aethelflaedladyofmercia · 5 years ago

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Ectotherm

I’ve known exactly what I was doing for this prompt for a while, though it went in a bit of a different direction. Here’s day 22 of @drawlight‘s advent calendar, and yet another knife to the heart. Shout out to my cousin the herpetologist who has put up with some really weird questions from me the past few months.

22 - Warmth (3,170 words)

Crowley couldn’t get warm.

In twenty-four hours he had been subjected to the inferno of a burning bookshop; the hell-born flames of the dread sigil Odegra enveloping his Bentley; the terrifying freezing-hot-burning-cold presence of Satan himself; and a column of Hellfire intended not for him but for Aziraphale, because the Archangels were determined to destroy the best thing that had ever walked the floor of Heaven.

Well, forget them.

And so, they sat at the Ritz raising their glasses to the world, ready to share a meal and start their life together.

Only Crowley suddenly realized he couldn’t eat. He’d thought he was hungry, but the food just sat in his stomach, heavy and cold. Even the wine seemed to sour, once it was past his tongue.

Just nerves, he thought, and did it really matter? He’d always preferred to watch Aziraphale eat, see the joy bubble across his features. It was enough to know that they could do this every day for eternity if they wished, and right now he certainly wished it.

He felt a little better when the coffee arrived, almost-painful heat radiating out from his stomach.

“My dear, that’s your fourth cup!” Aziraphale protested, as he downed another.

“It’s good! And I didn’t complain when you ordered a second piece of cake.”

“Well, I…I was rather thinking you might like some, too.”

With a rush of giddy emotions, Crowley realized he liked the sound of that very much. He picked up his fork and sliced off a bite of red cake with thick white icing. “What is it?”

“I thought I’d try something different, something a little modern. This is red velvet cake.”

Only Aziraphale would think that a flavor that had been popular for over sixty years was a little modern. Crowley smiled as he tasted it – rich and sweet and strangely light on his tongue. “You know, it’s not bad,” he said, reaching for another bite.

And a little heat rose to his face as he realized that Aziraphale was sitting there with hands folded, smile on his face – watching Crowley eat.

Crowley couldn’t get warm.

They went for a walk after the Ritz, but he found he was very tired. He tried to shrug it off.

“I’ve had a busy week, and I missed my sleeping day,” he explained. “I don’t – I don’t need to sleep, you know, but I still get exhausted. I’ll be fine.”

“You should sleep, then,” Aziraphale said, tone slightly scolding. The angel seemed determined to make sure Crowley took care of himself, as if he hadn’t learned to do that long before the Garden. It turned out, being fussed over wasn’t so bad. “I can walk you back to your place. Or. Er. You can come to the bookshop. I don’t have much to offer, but there’s the sofa, and perhaps we can have a drink…”

“Bookshop sounds lovely.” He always had to fight back a smile when he remembered the many nights they’d sat in the back corner together, sharing wine, sharing stories, complaining about work, just being themselves. Actually, he didn’t have to fight back that smile at all anymore – he could wear it for anyone to see. For Aziraphale to see.

None of that today, though. Crowley was rather embarrassed to find that the moment he stretched out on the sofa, he started falling asleep, and there was nothing he could do to fight it off.

He was dead to the world before Aziraphale had even settled into his armchair, and didn’t wake up until the shop was filled with bright Monday sunlight. A fleecy tartan blanket covered him from shoulder to toe, but he still shivered, and his stomach felt strangely heavy. Too much cake, probably.

Crowley sat up stiffly, running a hand through his hair and blinking around the shop. His eyes landed on a customer, who jumped in surprise, then quickly walked out.

“Ah, you’re awake!” Aziraphale hurried over. “How are you feeling? Better, I trust?”

“A bit.” Crowley rubbed at his face. “Didn’t I have glasses?”

“You took them off before falling asleep.” Aziraphale pulled them out of his pocket. “I was worried you might roll over them in the night. You slept very heavily. Is that normal?”

He shrugged, pushing the dark lenses back onto his face. “Probably. Didn’t wake up, didn’t dream much, seems like a good sleep. Does it have to be so blasted cold, though?”

Aziraphale glanced at the old-fashioned thermostat. “I do keep it a little cool to discourage customers. You scared away three different people just by sleeping there, you know. Perhaps I should get you a permanent bed right in the middle of the floor.”

“Only if you promise to turn the heat up.” Crowley wandered closer to the window, feeling the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. That was better. “I’m…” It wasn’t a word he used often. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

“About the customers? Don’t be, they were trying to touch my first edition Verne novels and I was running out of ways to be inconspicuously rude.”

“No about…falling asleep. I know you had…” Plans? Expectations? They’d never really talked about what Our Side would mean. “…you had hopes, for our first day, you know, free.”

“And every one of them is being fulfilled right now,” Aziraphale said, with such sincerity that Crowley started to smile. “Ah, I lied. Now all of them are being fulfilled.” He took Crowley’s hands in his. “Just standing here, talking to you, not worrying about who might see us, it’s more than I ever thought would be possible. I am perfectly content as we are.” He frowned suddenly. “Except that your hands are freezing.”

Crowley laughed as Aziraphale wrapped his hands around the demon’s, rubbing them, trying to warm them up. It certainly did make him feel better, and not just because his fingers had been a little numb from the way he’d slept.

“I was actually worried…” Aziraphale started again, still staring at their hands. “Oh, I assume you have your own, er, hopes. Since you’ve been thinking about this so much longer than I. We should probably discuss that, but, well, just to warn you, I haven’t thought much about…that is, I’m not sure that I want…ohhh…”

Crowley lifted one hand to tilt Aziraphale’s face up, to look into his eyes. The heat of it was almost unbearable. “I haven’t really thought about it either,” he confessed. “Never thought we’d make it this far. Everything from this point on is just a pleasant surprise.” With his other hand, he squeezed the angel’s fingers gently. “I don’t think I’d say no to more of this, though.”

Aziraphale blushed, the heat of it rushing to fill every space inside Crowley, and his eyes dropped briefly. “Your hand is still freezing,” he finally said, pulling away with a smile. He bustled across the shop to pick up his coat. “I know, let’s go for a walk. It’s a nice, warm day. We can feed the ducks in St. James’s Park…No. Let’s do something different. Something daring.” There was a wild gleam in his eyes as he turned back. “Let’s feed the ducks in Regent’s Park.”

It was indeed a gloriously warm day, and they spent over five hours exploring every path in London’s third-largest park while a small sign sat in the bookshop window reading Out to Lunch – Back in a Jiffy.

Every once in a while, Aziraphale’s hot hand found its way into Crowley’s cold one. Again and again, until it felt completely natural.

Crowley couldn’t get warm.

It had been three weeks since the world had ended and begun again, everything ticking along nicely as Aziraphale liked to stay. Crowley caught himself thinking more like Aziraphale these days, which was both worrying and wonderful.

Except that any time Crowley was indoors, he felt lethargic, cold, a little cranky. Aziraphale had miracled up a thick scarf in grey tartan. It was hideous and embarrassing and he wore it all the time even though it didn’t really help. He knew what the tartan gifts meant.

He turned up the heat in his flat as high as it would go, until even his most tropical plants were struggling to meet his exacting expectations. He took more hot baths than he ever had in his life, including the years he’d spent living in Bath. He tried to sit up and engage his mind, especially at night, when his body screamed to just stretch out and rest. He got angry when he discovered he couldn’t concentrate on a game of chess, or even draughts, and said some things to Aziraphale he really shouldn’t have.

Later, when the angel tried to embrace him and make up…he said some even worse things.

He tried wearing more layers. He tried wearing fewer layers. Eating hot food. Lying under a tree. Lying in direct sunlight.

Finally, there was only one conclusion he could reach.

“I’m cold-blooded.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Aziraphale sniffed. His ego was still somewhat bruised from their last argument, but he was clearly making an effort.

They sat facing each other across the café table, opposite sides. Aziraphale had ordered a slice of warm pie with ice cream melting down the sides. A second fork sat, waiting for Crowley, and the angel kept giving it significant looks, but the demon wouldn’t unwrap his hands from the enormous cup of coffee he’d ordered, the largest they served.

Aziraphale sighed and folded his hands. “Crowley, dear. I know the…transition to our new life hasn’t been as smooth as we hoped, and we’ve both said things we regret, but I’ve never felt that you were –”

“No, Aziraphale.” He took a sip of coffee. It was something American-style, hot and bitter and lacking any particular flavor. He didn’t care. He just needed absurd quantities of near-boiling liquid. “I mean it literally. Somehow, after the Apocalypse, I became cold-blooded. I can’t get warm no matter what I do.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed, as if waiting for the punchline of an unfunny joke. “That’s simply impossible. How many times have you told me off for making those assumptions, just because you used to be a snake? You have a mammal body, and it does…mammal things,” he waved his hands to indicate that he still wasn’t completely caught up on modern science classifications, “including being warm…”

He trailed off as Crowley reached across the table, taking his hand. Even after being wrapped around the hot ceramic mug, it still wouldn’t feel right. “What are you always saying these days?”

“That your hands are freezing.” Aziraphale shook his head. “It can’t be true. That’s not proof…”

Crowley gestured to the plate. “I can’t eat because my stomach is too cold to work. When I do eat, I have to lay down because any extra movement takes away energy I need for digestion.” He tugged at the scarf he always wore. “Extra layers don’t help, because they just insulate me from the warm air. Blankets don’t help because I’m not creating enough heat on my own. Even turning up the heat doesn’t help because this blessed body is made to shed heat, not retain it.” He stared into his mug of coffee. “I can’t move when I’m cold. I can’t move when I’m hot. Sunlight helps for a little while, but the days are getting shorter.” He squeezed Aziraphale’s hand, worried what he was about to say would make the angel pull away. “I…I don’t even know if I like being touched anymore.”

He didn’t fight it when the hand vanished, taking its warmth with it. Crowley just slumped, closing his eyes in defeat.

The squeal of chair legs against hard floor made him glance up. Aziraphale had moved to sit beside him, pulling his chair as close as he could.

Carefully, Crowley leaned his head to the side, resting it on Aziraphale’s shoulder, letting their bodies press together. It was easier this way, a sort of passive contact, unrestrained, letting the heat flow between them.

“Are you…” He could hear the way the breath caught in Aziraphale’s throat. “You seem so certain. Is there any chance you’re wrong? Any other explanation?”

Crowley gently shook his head, letting it wobble back and forth on the angel’s shoulder. “This is how it felt when I was a snake. You don’t forget something like that.”

“At least now you know. Surely what you learned from being a snake can help you navigate…”

“I looked it up,” Crowley muttered. “A snake can handle a range of fifteen, twenty degrees easily. Human body…a little more than one degree. At 35 I’m freezing to death, at 38 I’m burning up from the inside. I don’t even know how I’ve lasted this long.” He pressed himself even closer into Aziraphale’s side. Half of him was still cold, even as his shoulder and his thigh screamed in the heat. It wouldn’t balance properly. “It’s going to kill me.”

He felt the tension all through Aziraphale’s body. “Crowley, no!”

“Fine, it’s going to get me discorporated, and I’ll wake up in Hell, and they’ll kill me.”

“There must be something we can do.”

“Maybe. It’s getting harder to concentrate every day.”

“Then I’ll look for a solution.” He offered his hand and Crowley grabbed it, grateful for the almost-too-hot touch. “I might as well, since I’m responsible.”

“What are you talking about, Angel?”

“Your body was fine, then I used it and…it must be something I did.”

“Don’t say that.” He pulled away enough to meet Aziraphale’s eyes. “This isn’t your fault. I agreed to switch bodies, I knew there was some risk. And I don’t think you could have caused this. Somehow this is Heaven or Hell, still interfering with our lives.”

Aziraphale bit his lip, nodding. Crowley wasn’t sure if he really believed it or not. “Still. If this was done to you, there must be some way to undo it. And if there’s a way, I will find it.” He swallowed, turning to look at their linked hands. “But, in the meantime…It’s probably best if you turn back into a snake.”

“No,” Crowley all but shouted, anger mixing with fear. “No, Aziraphale I won’t. That’s not who I am anymore.”

“Isn’t it better than dying?”

He clenched his jaw, biting back his reply. He honestly wasn’t sure it was. An eternity as a serpent, no driving, no music, no wines, no gardening, no feeding ducks, no holding hands…

Crowley twined his fingers through Aziraphale’s, lifting up the hand clasp between them. “I fought…We fought…so long for this. I can’t just…I won’t give this up. I won’t, Angel.”

“You’re not giving anything up,” Aziraphale insisted. He brushed his lips across Crowley’s fingers and, oh, add something else to the list of things he wasn’t willing to lose. “I will still be here. My feelings for you won’t change at all.”

“They’ll probably change a little,” Crowley pointed out.

“I want to spend every day with you, talk with you, see you happy. And it doesn’t matter if you’re scaled or human or turn into a fish, that’s not going to change.”

“I won’t be happy.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But please. Give me the time I need to save you.”

He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Aziraphale, letting the angel do the same back, even though part of his mind screamed and squirmed to escape the heat of contact. He told himself this wouldn’t be the last time.

Crowley was warm.

He stretched out in his favorite basking spot by the window, feeling the winter sunlight play across his scales, heating him up. Every now and again, the door would open, a customer hoping to browse for a Christmas gift. The rumble of footsteps through his belly woke him, and he reared up his head, tongue flicking out to catch the scent of the blurry shape by the entryway.

Almost every time, the visitor took one look at the enormous red-bellied black snake and vanished soon after.

The hours ticked by, slow and sweet, like drops of honey. Crowley was aware that he should be filling them with fast-paced reckless activities of some form, but he couldn’t quite recall what…just a general sense of dissatisfaction.

Still, whatever he had lost, the best was still here.

When he’d drunk his fill of warmth, he twisted his way through the shop, sliding around stacks of books and potted plants (hissing at the ones that didn’t seem to be growing well enough). There, at the desk, sat the angel.

Aziraphale was rarely anywhere else these days. Bent over old grimoires, reading glasses balanced on his nose, pile of notes beside him. He hadn’t glanced up for any of the customers. Three cups full of cold tea sat beside him. He hadn’t even risen to get a new one in a while.

A pair of folded-up sunglasses sat in one corner of the desk. He never picked them up, but sometimes touched them as he worked.

Crowley twisted around his leg, climbing, finding his way along the chair and across the shoulders until he was draped across Aziraphale, watching him work.

“Hello, my dear. How was your day?”

Crowley hissed dismissively. One day was the same as another for a snake. “Progressss?”

“I’m close. I really think I’m close.” His voice was just a rumble, rising from his chest through Crowley’s belly, distorted, missing half the notes. He couldn’t pick up on the nuance, couldn’t tell if it was a lie or not. Just like he couldn’t see all of Aziraphale’s face at once, just the jaw, the little smile, the rest curving away in the distance.

“Dinner time,” Crowley reminded him. The angel needed lots of reminders.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so. I really want to keep at this a bit longer.”

“Resssst.”

He held up his hands before him, letting Crowley slither from one to the next without trying to grasp. There was something about hands, something important. It was just on the edge of his memory, but snakes don’t have hands. It slipped away.

“No, I can’t rest yet. Not until…no.”

“Pleassssssse.”

“I can take a small break, but no dinner. I’m not hungry, anyway.”

When Crowley was coiled back around his shoulders, Aziraphale stood up, walking across to the little secluded corner of the shop. This was another important area, though Crowley couldn’t exactly remember why. He thought it involved a lot of sitting, drinking…water? Not water. He forgot what he used to drink.

The angel fiddled with his collection of round discs. “How about some Vivaldi, since it’s almost Christmas? You always liked his Seasons.” Crowley nodded.

He couldn’t really hear the music. Noises on the air meant nothing to a snake.

But once Aziraphale was stretched out on the sofa, Crowley made himself comfortable on his chest, and felt the deep thrum of the music as the angel sang along.

Warmth rose from Aziraphale, too, just like from the sun. It was a different kind of heat. Purer. Better.

Whatever else he had lost, Crowley still had that. And he was content.

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