#quite a few things have fallen through the cracks and it's paralyzing. anyways

[laquilasse]

i LOVE your art so much!!! been following since early 2020 because of your ace attorney art and its still such a joy to see new art from you of any kind, i love how expressive you draw characters!! also i love your mob psycho 100 art, i really like the way you draw ritsu!!

awwaaaa thank you so much <333 things have been really really rough for me lately, but it's genuinely uplifting to remember messages like this

[willadisastercry]

Space godzilla meets Keith and Pidge bonding moment

tw: depiction of paralyzation of the body and of throat/mouth

Of the list of terrifyingly dangerous alien monsters they’d come across, this one is near the top. After crash landing on an unfamiliar planet, the pair find themselves getting well acquainted with the local wildlife on their unexpected sojourn. They also get better acquainted with each other as they struggle against this beast and with the injuries from the battle that just keep getting more terrifying.

(((Keith and Pidge sharing emotional intimacy while one of them is hurt or both are is an ELITE trope and you cannot tell me otherwise)))

“GAH!”

“Are you sure you don’t need assistance?! I can probably get a hold of it’s tale with my bayard...”

“I’m good, just... this thing is relentless. It doesn’t have a single weakness except I don’t think it can hear well, that’s the only reason it hasn’t tried to eat you again.”

“Good to know? But let me help, Keith, you’re hurt too.”

“I’m still standing, am I not?”

“Your back is like shredded bud, it’s called adrenaline, ever heard of it?”

He opened his mouth as if to respond but didn’t get the chance to before he was launching himself over the swooping arc of the stinging tale that threatened to take his legs out from under him. His body stretched as he jumped and contracted almost as quickly to send himself tumbling forward, a stiff gasp escaping his lips when the stingers already at home in his back shifted and reduced him to a crouch while he rode the waves of agony that followed.

“That’s it...”

Pidge activated her bayard and sent it forward just as the tale of the oversized killer iguana was going back for seconds while Keith was still down, its struggle only aided the momentum of the grappling hook as it wrapped around the deadly appendage.

That bit was pretty seamless. What wasn’t seamless was when the creature started fighting her hold, a counter measure she hadn’t really planned for and wasn’t at all equipped to combat given she was very much reduced to sitting on her butt.

“Uh, Keith?” Pidge asked in a shriller voice than she intended as she dug one heel into the rocky soil beneath her.

“I know you’re like not doing great at the moment, but right about now would be a good time to, I don’t know, do the thing... that you do, ya know?”

The creature reared around as best it could with its tale entrapped and began yanking. Digging both heels into the ground was now all Pidge could do to keep from going flying. She couldn’t even hold back her screech when her torn muscles and slashed tendons protested that, the gash in her thigh squishing and swelling with another spurt of blood, whatever clotting that had been achieved entirely lost.

She almost cried out with relief she when heard Keith grunting and saw as he pulled himself up to his feet despite the burning twinge across the entire expanse of his back as well as his arms and shoulders, because Pidge was right, he did need to do the thing he does and end this.

“That’s a start, now I’m pretty sure what happens next is it gets more mad and seeing as i’m attached to my bayard still—“

But he didn’t need her to explain her predicament, he saw the danger immediately and lunged at the beast while it was still focused on attempting to wriggle free.

He knew aiming at its exposed underbelly was useless, the skin was too tough, but he also knew he couldn’t get close enough to go for a limb without risking getting sliced to ribbons by its claws. They had both found that one out the hard way.

So, with the beast temporarily distracted by Pidge he resolved to make a break for the underbelly anyway, the thing was huge but it’s limbs were short and set so far apart that if he could just slide under it and—

The next few moments happened in a blur. He did the thing without so much as a second thought, like he quite literally acted in whatever fashion his brain first thought of, too sluggish and dazed to afford waiting for something other than his instincts to come through.

The creature let out a horrible screech and bucked against Pidge’s grasp on its tale, she let out a strangled yelp as she was pulled forward and off the ground for a moment before landing back down hard. She heard Keith gagging as bright yellow acid oozed nearly onto his face from where his sword had pierced the only place he could think would be soft enough to bypass, clutching his nose at the acrid sizzling as it spluttered onto the dirt next to him.

“Pidge! On three retract your bayard, okay? One, two—“

“What? No, I can’t. It’ll—“

“Three!”

Keith picked his feet up as he hung on the sword stuck in what he assumed was the creatures gullet. It came away with even more acid blood as he dropped to his knees and tried to get out from under the stream, the top of his forearms being spared only by his armor as it disintegrated in a sickening hiss before his eyes. He managed to be vaguely concerned about wether it would stop at his armor before all of his worry went to avoiding being crushed to death as the beast took off.

Keith opened his eyes only when the thumping of the creatures claws began to notably shrink in the distance. He was curled up protectively on his side and too exhausted to move just yet.

“Huh, if only we had listened to Pidge earlier...” she mused teasingly as she pulled herself into a more comfortable sitting position.

“Shut up, are you alright? How’s the leg?”

“The leg is relatively the same, slightly more numb, started bleeding again, but still attached so that’s all that matters.”

She glanced back at the concerningly large puddle she’d left behind and the newly forming one underneath her. The blood loss wasn’t yet dangerous but she knew that could change rapidly if they didn’t get to Green soon. And for that she would need a functional Keith because she was fairly certain she couldn’t walk.

“Don’t think you can just deflect onto me, how’s your back you idiot?”

He thought deeply for a second, forcing himself to push past the impending haze as the steady stream of adrenaline coursing through his body began to taper off.

“Feels weird... the tingling and burning is starting to travel. Probably safe to say that the stingers have some sort of poison or irritant I guess... and it’s—oh my god it’s blood is—wait, crap!”

He wasn’t really mindful that he was rambling but grateful that it reminded him of the acid eating away at his armor and scrambled to detach what was left of it, scrubbing away what had just started making its way through his undersuit.

“It’s blood is WHAT?! Did it get on you?!”

“Yeah. Well no, I’m good,” he sighed and rolled around to sit up as painlessly as he could manage to.

“It ate my armor and I think my the hair on my forearm is gone, but my skin is in tact, well most of it. Sit tight though, I’m coming over there.”

“Kay, not going anywhere...”

Keith made his way slowly. His legs were leaden with excertion and whatever lovely substances the overgrown demon lizard stung and scratched him with seemed to only make it worse.

“Well you look awful.”

“Thanks, you too,” he said as he sat down heavily, his muscles screaming at the effort walking even a couple feet took and his head swimming for a moment.

“Rude, but turn around and let me see,” Pidge’s order was final but Keith’s body was slow, not really listening to what he wanted that well.

“Keith, I will slap you, stop trying to be a tough guy.”

He only managed to swivel sideways and lean the rest of the way to expose enough of his battered back to quell her chastisements.

“Hmm, the space-godzilla got you good,” she muttered as she pulled him closer to examine the bleeding gashes from the creatue’s claws and swollen welts from the barbs of its hellish tail.

Various bits of their armor had been knocked off by its claws and tail during the attack. For Keith, his chest plate had cracked after several blows and fallen off, which is why he was so bad off now.

There were three slashes starting from his left shoulder blade that made their way down to the middle of his back, all wide and jagged with blood leaking steadily from them, the skin around the wounds just as irritated as the welts from the stingers that trailed along in several lines up and down his back.

The skin around the gash on Pidge’s thigh fared the same though her symptoms had progressed more, the majority of her thigh swollen and blotchy with a tingling sensation that spread from her toes to her hips.

“Some of the stinger things are still lodged in your back... I think I should pull them out so ya know, no more of the toxin is released, that good with you?”

“Yeah whatever, just be qui—Oooh, okay—OH, ouch!”

Keith’s entire body tensed as she yanked the remaining stingers out, summoning another surge of blood from his scratch wounds.

“All done, sorry! I didn’t realize they were serated.”

“S’ okay,” he breathed through gritted teeth as blood began to trickle from the welts Pidge had just de-stingered.

“We’ve gotta get to our lions and contact the rest of the team before we start feeling the full affects of the toxin, do you think you can walk if I help you?” Keith asked as he was getting to his knees.

“My leg is pretty much entirely numb... I don’t know if it’s from the damage of the wound itself or what was coating the claw, but I can try.”

Keith got his feet under him and reached down to hook his arms under her armpits.

“Ready?”

Pidge nodded and he lifted her to her feet. She fought to stifle her groan when the skin around the wound was pulled and then tried to put her weight on it but it immediately buckled.

“Shit, okay. We can work something else out.”

“Sorry, I can probably hobble...”

“No hobbling when I have a spot just for you on my one remaining shoulder.”

“Huh? Wait, no!”

Pidge protested but Keith had no energy for it as he hoisted her up and over his good shoulder, her own mind not as hazy as his apparently because he now had a sense of humor. Keith never made jokes, but now he couldn’t stop. And it was freaking weird.

“Ugh, put me down!”

“Nope, sorry. Friendly reminder for passengers: please keep all hands and feet within the—“

“Oh my god, you’re delirious.”

“...maybe slightly, but you’re bleeding out so checkmate.”

Pidge wanted to slap him because that’s not how chess works, but grumbled instead and went to nudge him in the stomach with her knee but the movement jostled her thigh causing her keen at the way it burned, the torn everything that lay beneath pulling visciously.

She felt Keith’s hesitant hand hover over the back of her injured thigh before making his mind up and pressing it down against his stomach. She wailed because she couldn’t help it but was somehow able to rationalize his decision and be thankful.

Pressure, that was smart of him. Even in a state of literal delirium he had the presence of mind to do that because he was right, she was bleeding out. It hadn’t severed an artery but it likely nicked one with the way it had gushed initially.

“Th-thanks, hurts like a bitch, but thanks.”

“Anything for you, Pidge.”

She could almost laugh at how soft Keith was being, how open and lighthearted he was. The posion was admittedly closer to his heart and his brain which was probably why Pidge was more coherent though partially paralyzed.

Both injuries weren’t any better or worse than the other though. Pidge was very much in danger of losing too much blood and Keith was very much in danger of succumbing to adverse affects of the posion.

But she could hardly feel Green which meant they had a way to go still, it was less than ideal but of all people that would be able to get them there under such unfortunate circumstances, she was glad it was Keith with her. He was just as impossibly stubborn as she was and Pidge had no doubt that he’d do whatever he could to make it there in time.

“You know where you’re going right?”

“Yeah,” he huffed, already winded “crashed on the other side of this ridge... ha, course it’s up a hill, of course...”

“Stop as much as you need to if you need a break—“

“Nah, if I stop I don’t know if I’ll be able to start again.”

Pidge worried at her bottom lip, the skin already raw.

“Just let me know how you’re doing every now and then... since you’re so dead set on being my personal transport.”

He grunted at that and Pidge accepted it was as much of an answer as she was going to get. He walked for a while, the bounce of his gait and unrelenting pressure on her leg sufficiently shorting her dulled nerves for their tolerance for pain.

She could still feel the wound and how mangled the inside workings of her leg were, not even the numbing of the poison could take it away, but the tingling had traveled to her hip now and slowly made its way up her side. The feeling of Keith’s hand on the back of her thigh diminishing by the minute.

Pidge could only imagine how Keith was fairing with the numbness of the poison, she wondered if he could even feel her weight on his shoulder with how many pricks he’d received from the monster.

“Almost halfway up... this goddamned hill... can-can you feel Green yet?”

“Yeah, stronger than before at least. We’re getting closer. How do you feel?”

“Feel fine... i’m good,” he answered quickly, but his words were sloshing together somewhat, his pronunciation becoming lazier.

“Well, I can’t feel anything on my right side anymore except for my arm, so that’s lovely.”

“Hm, yeah... my back’s numb... scratches don’t hurt much anymore.”

“That’s probably for the best right now.”

“Yeah...”

The next few minutes passed slowly. Keith’s breathing getting heavier with the continued effort but no matter how much Pidge urged him he refused to even slow down for a minute let alone stop altogether to catch his breath.

So freaking stubborn, but she couldn’t blame him. She was the same way.

As they made their journey she found it more and more difficult to tear her mind away from worrying about the poison, what it could do to their bodies, if it was even curable. It could be lethal to humans and their efforts could very well be for nothing and they’d have no idea.

“Hey... you okay?” Keith asked, his voice gentle.

“Huh?”

“You’re breathing funny... wait, are you—don’t cry... we’re-we’re going to be fine, Pidge. Stop thinking about it...”

“I’m just scared,” her voice was meek, her chest shuddering as more tears slid silently down her face.

“I know... me too... but we’ll be okay... won’t let anything happen to you...”

“Okay...” she breathed shakily, her mind still working over her worries but also over the fact that she was so emotional, paranoid even, finally resolving it was probably another side affect of the poison.

She hoped that Keith didn’t get anxious like her, he’d gotten a stronger dose of the toxin and so she feared what paranoia would look like on him since he was already pretty delirious.

“Hey, Keith?”

He hummed, talking wasted too much energy and he didn’t much left to waste.

“I can feel Green a lot now, can almost hear what she’s trying to say. She’s stronger than when we left her, scared for me I think.”

“S’good... s’really good.”

They were nearing the top of the hill. Pidge could feel the elevation changing as the steep incline lessened and Keith straightened up with her, his breathing leveling and the muscles under her relaxing slightly, no longer straining to balance her while leaned forward.

“See her... see Green,” he spat with some effort. Words came a lot harder now, his mouth as dry as if it was full of cotton.

“She’s really worried... I can feel how scared she is...”

“Tell her... s’okay...”

“I will—hey slow down, we’re here, don’t waste more energy.”

“Can’ sl-slow...” he slurred like his tongue had stopped working. The dryness in his mouth extended down his throat and when he inhaled too sharply trying to articulate himself and choked, ragged coughs shaking his tiring frame.

“Oh, okay, don’t talk then. Just keep walking, you can rest soon.”

He only grunted this time, his breaths becoming as strained as they were when they were coming up the hill. He surged forward dazedly, his vision blurring slightly but he ignored it. They were so close, just a couple more yards and they’d be safe. Just a little further and—

“-eith, Keith! Do you hear that? Godzilla’s back and he brought friends!”

Keith hadn’t realized he’d zoned out in his intense concentration to get to Green before he succumbed to the numbness that seemed to cover every square inch of his body, weighing on his chest like a heavy cloud.

He heard it now though, the rumble of taloned appendages and the whipping of barbed tails.

Shit.

“How far are we from Green? Because our buddy from before and his friends are about a mile out, but they seem to be moving a tad faster than we are...?”

He didn’t answer, his legs moving faster than he knew he could manage with how nonexistent they felt, carrying them forward with reckless abandon as black dots danced across the quickly shrinking space between him and Green’s open jaws.

He couldn’t feel his feet hitting the ground, he didn’t even know he was running, he just felt the burn in his chest and the twinge on the skin of his back as he moved.

Pidge was saying something but he couldn’t hear her, he couldn’t hear much of anything anymore aside from the splitting ringing in his ears and pulse of his own heart as it pounded in his chest.

The alien beasts descended on them quickly, he was later told, and Pidge screamed her throat raw the entire time urging him to get them inside Green before they became dinner.

He wasn’t sure when he’d made it over the threshold of the lion or when he’d dropped to his knees to let Pidge down softly before falling forward in a heap.

“Damnit Keith, Green go! C’mon girl, I can’t fly-I can’t even move and Keith needs help...”

Once the pain in her leg died down from him abruptly releasing the pressure that was keeping the wound stabilized, she turned to her struggling friend, pushing away the fear that spiked as her own numbness encroached further.

He’d collapsed onto his front bonelessly and was wheezing like he’d just run a marathon with a punctured lung. It didn’t sound good and he didn’t look much better. The wounds on his back were angry, the skin puffy with hives and bleeding still.

If she didn’t know better she’d have thought he was having an allergic reaction and going into anaphylactic shock, but her wound looked the same.

“Keith?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t even look like he’d heard her.

Pidge grunted in frustration when she couldn’t get her legs to bring her much closer to him, relying on her arms to physically move them as she awkwardly scooted.

She vaguely wondered how long it would be until she couldn’t sit up on her own as she lowered herself down to eye level and moved the damp locks that had fallen in front of his face away so she could see his eyes. They were bloodshot and unfocused as they darted about rapidly, his pupils blown entirely.

“I need you to breathe steadier for me okay? We’re in Green and we’re on our way back to the castle... you just need to hold on a little longer...”

Keith could see Pidge’s mouth moving and her hand on his head, but her words were lost on him and so was her touch. It felt like she was shouting across a void, like he was underwater and everything was garbled. He didn’t know why he couldn’t hear her, why he couldn’t feel anything.

He just knew he couldn’t breathe and that his head was going to explode.

“Catch your breath and calm down, we’re gonna be okay...”

Taking in air was a chore, like he was trying to fill up a balloon that had already popped. He couldn’t really feel his body beneath him as he struggled, he thought he could feel his throat closing though with how tight it grew.

“We’re gonna be fine... just keep breathing, Keith... even if it hurts... we’ll be okay...”

Pidge was saying these things mostly for herself now, Keith hadn’t answered her once since they’d made it to Green and she couldn’t even be sure he was conscious now. The numbness had spread to her middle, the muscles in her back and hips failing, reducing her to laying on her back.

For a while it had felt like it had stopped there until she tried to check on Keith and found her neck was immobile now too.

“No, no, no—fuck!”

That was when she’d started crying again. She was paralyzed. Her muscles were entirely lax, completely unresponsive to anything she tried to tell them to do. But her ears were unaffected. She would be able to hear when Keith stopped breathing next to her.

The poison had likely attacked his pulmonary system with the proximity of the wounds to his lungs, the claws maybe even knicked one. For Pidge it attacked her nervous system from the extensive damage to about a dozen crucial nerves in her leg.

She tried to curse pitifully again but the muscles in her face were tingling, managing nothing more than a nose wrinkle before she lost all control. The tears fell freely now. All she hoped for was a crackle over the coms from her friends when they got close enough to the castle to receive one.

Keith continued to wheeze, soon falling into an almost dream state as he struggled against the increasing paralysis in his mouth and throat, the decreased oxygen to his brain likely playing a hand in it.

He saw his home in the dessert except his father was there. He saw flashes of red and orange like fire and sand. They swirled around him threateningly, like they were taunting them. His father looked like he was saying something to him, but the sand whirred deafeningly.

“What?!” he thought he heard himself calling out through the wall of flames that seperated them. The blaze was tantalizingly close and gaining ground each second.

“Dad, what are you saying?”

The fire raged stronger now, the heat and lack of oxygen in the air around them as the flames licked it up bringing his father to his knees.

“No, no—Dad!”

Keith started toward the flames that were now receding, drawing toward his father who was still trying to tell him something.

But it was too late.

The flames circled him, closing in and swallowing him up.

Keith felt like he was the one burning as he saw his father taken away from him once more before darkness enveloped him.

“Dad...” he whispered in defeat.

The static that sounded from the coms device brought another surge of tears down Pidge’s face once Keith had stopped calling out and finally relaxed, his breaths choppy and sporadic but less erratic.

He was calling for his father, it was the first intelligent word she’d gathered from him once he’d started up. He sounded like he was crying too.

“-dge...-th...in...-idge-Keith...come in...guys? Please report.”

It was Shiro. He sounded scared.

“Pidge? Keith? Please tell us you’re okay...”

Hunk. Gosh, hearing him so worried hurt.

“Green has the other lions flipping their shit,”Lance remarked, trying to infuse some levity into his voice.

“Red is like actually wailing—wait, Coran sees you guys on the radar...”

She wanted to sob so badly, but her body refused. They were so close to being safe, to not feeling so wrong. She wanted to tell Keith it was going to be okay, that his father was gone but that he would be proud of him. That it’d be okay because he had his friends. And that she needed a hug as soon as he could breathe and as soon as she could stand.

But she just let her eyes flutter closed while Green landed them with a shudder that she didn’t feel. Everyone was on them in a second, worried voices pulling her from the darkness as equally worried faces hovered over her, poking at her leg.

“Pidge?! Pidge can you hear me?” Shiro was waving his hand in front of her but her face was entirely numb, her eyelids heavy and uncooperative but still functioning for now.

“That’s a lot of blood and—oh my god is that bone, aw god...” Hunk deadpanned before excusing himself to go hurl.

“What the heck? Her eyes are open and responsive but she’s not talking,” Lance noted as his mind worked over the strange scene.

Keith was still out of it, mumbling incoherently and breathing hoarsely. Coran was examining his back and figuring out a way to transport him without angering the wounds.

“I think I have an idea of what happened...” he offered once he’d inspected the swollen dots from the barbs and relayed his hypothesis to the rest of the team.

“Oh my god, so she’s like... paralyzed?” Lance questioned in horror.

Hot tears spilled down her face once more at their realization, Hunk appearing next to them and Allura coming into view as well.

“Pidge?” she asked softly, “er, blink twice if you can hear me?”

Blinking was difficult but possible, snapping her eyes back quickly each time just in case.

“Oh, Pidge...” she gushed sadly, taking her face in the palm of her hand.

“That must’ve been hell—I-I’m so sorry,” Hunk choked as he fought back a sob.

“We should’ve gone with you guys, I should’ve gone with you guys...” Lance griped defeatedly.

“No, I never should’ve sent you... it was too dangerous—“

“Er, Shiro? Could I get some assistance with Keith? Holding him like this seems to aggravate his breathing...” Coran interrupted as he sat with Keith against his chest after trying to carry him over his shoulder like he’d done with Pidge.

“Of course.”

“Rest now, Pidge. You’ve done more than enough,” Allura soothed, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

That was all the command she needed as she let the heaviness close her eyes for good. She felt herself become weightless before the tingling subsided into a pleasant nothingness.

The next thing she knew she was tumbling forward into warm arms, a familiar voice sounding not nearly as wrecked as it once had. She blinked back the haze from cryosleep only to realize that she just couldn’t see.

“These might help.”

She blinked with clarity once someone had put her glasses on for her, making her feel less disoriented now that she could actually see.

Keith stared down at her warmly.

“Hey there.”

“UGH!” she grumbled as she scrambled up and threw her arms around him, squeezing like she wanted to shatter his bones.

It wasn’t long before she was fighting the hysteria in her voice.

“Don’t scare me like that ever again! It was horrible! You-you were getting worse and I couldn’t m-move, I th-thought I’d have to hear... hear you...”

“Hey,” he said as softly as he spoke to her on that stupid planet, rubbing her back in an effort to quell the stuttering of her chest.

“I didn’t. We’re okay, just like you said we’d be...”

“O-okay,” she managed through sobs now that she could actually cry.

They stayed like that for a while which was surprising when she thought about it but she didn’t care to consider it in depth, that he was letting her hug him so long, that he was comforting her.

“How long were we out?” she asked after some time. It was probably night judging by the dim lights and lack of swarming that occurred. Keith was stubborn so she could imagine him refusing to let her wake up without greeting her first or some noble shit like that.

“Well I was out for like a day, not much to fix I guess. The slashes weren’t deep, not heavy duty work or anything. The poison paralyzing my throat however... was a slight issue. The pod stopped it before I like stopped breathing or whatever, but Coran said he had a plan for if that happened.”

Keith readjusted so that he held most of her weight more comfortably as she calmed down.

“You on the other hand, were in for three days, almost four.”

Pidge sat back from her home against his chest and underneath his arms to look at him with an amusingly bewildered face, needing to know every detail now temporarily overriding her sadness.

“Three days?! Why?”

“Well you did almost bleed out... and then there were the several muscles sliced clean in half as well as a few snapped tendons from said severed muscles... oh and the full body paralysis from a toxin that had to be flushed out... so yeah, took a hot second. And you’re not allowed to say I scared you because you scared me pretty well too.”

“Oh... sorry for scaring you.”

He pulled her back into his arms and she closed her eyes against the steady rise and fall of his chest, a much welcomed change.

“Your... your dad would be proud of you, ya know?”

She felt Keith stiffen against her for a moment at the mention of her father.

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s just—you were calling out for him... and I couldn’t comfort you, tell you that it’d be okay or that... well he’s not here, but we are...”

Pidge took a shaky breath ans Keith tightened his arms around her, his body no longer tense as she struggled to articulate her words through the hitches in her breath.

“It just hurt hearing you call for him like that and not be able to do anything... made me want my dad... I-I miss him too...”

She thought she heard his breathing pick up, felt him moving his hands to his face as he continued to rub her back. She didn’t care, just hugged tighter.

“Thanks... for that,” he said finally.

“Thanks for not dying before you saved us.”

“Ha, checkmate I guess.”

She laughed because that’s just once again not how that works and nestled herself somehow further against the warmth of Keith’s chest because... they were okay.

[yilingradishfairy]

Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jīn Líng | Jīn Rúlán & Lán Jǐngyí, Jīn Líng | Jīn Rúlán/Lán Jǐngyí, Jīn Líng | Jīn Rúlán & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Characters: Jīn Líng | Jīn Rúlán, Lán Jǐngyí Additional Tags: Don't worry, WangXian is coming, we've got some setup to do first, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Alternate Universe - Wizards, Alternate Universe - The Princess and the Frog (2009) Fusion, or rather, the book that movie was based on, Untamed Spring Fest 2020 Summary:

Jin Rulan had no idea how this happened. Really. He should in no way be blamed for the events that transpired to get him here. Running for his life. Or rather … hopping. He couldn't believe his first real life-or-death situation is at the threat of an average garden reptile. Oh yes. The very real threat to his life was a freaking garter snake. Harmless to him normally, wouldn't have even bothered him as recently as two hours ago, but things have changed. He has changed. Rulan spared a moment to glare again at his new frog body with distaste. "Come on!" Jingyi urged, hopping in front of him. Rulan directed his scowl toward the other enchanted boy. "This is all your fault," he panted, turning his ire on Jingyi. "No, it's not!" He returned indignantly, even as he helped Rulan hop over a fallen log. "The witch said a kiss from a royal would turn me back. You're royal, and you kissed me, so I don't know what went wrong." ( Or, the Frog Princess AU no one asked for.)

A/N: The prompt for Untamed Spring Fest 2020 – Day 19 was Journey. I was reading (fic) and having lots of feels about Jin Ling’s bracelet and suddenly had the –cursed– brilliant idea to mash it up with E.D. Baker’s Frog Princess (which is the book series that heavily defined much of my childhood and also inspired the Disney movie Princess and the Frog). So, this fic is set in the world of Frog Princess. Functionally, a royal AU plus witches. For example, WWX spends his days tinkering with talismans in Lotus Pier as the resident Guardian Mage, or something. But he and some others are going to be the closest things to Cultivators in this AU. Everybody else is just going to be regular old royals. So partially because it's AU and mostly because I personally mix up Jin Ling and Jingyi when I'm reading too fast, I'll be using courtesy names mostly. So that means JL = Rulan and JC = Wanyin. 

Jin Rulan has no idea how this happened. Really. He should in no way be blamed for the events that transpired to get him here. Running for his life. Or rather … hopping. He couldn't believe his first real life-or-death situation is at the threat of an average garden reptile.

Oh yes. The very real threat to his life was a freaking garter snake. Harmless to him normally, wouldn't have even bothered him as recently as two hours ago, but things have changed. He has changed. Rulan spared a moment to glare again at his new frog body with distaste.

"Come on!" Jingyi urged, hopping in front of him. Ah yes, the frog who had started this whole mess. He directed his scowl toward the other enchanted boy.

"This is all your fault," he panted, turning all his ire on Jingyi.

"No, it's not!" He returned indignantly, even as he helped Rulan hop over a fallen log. "The witch said a kiss from a royal would turn me back. You're royal, and you kissed me, so I don't know what went wrong."

They hopped frantically for a few more seconds, narrowly escaping some of the snake’s lightning-quick strikes, before Jingyi wondered aloud, "Maybe you kissed me wrong?"

Rulan almost face-planted at that. "Do we have to talk about that now?" He yelped.

Jingyi pouted as they hopped. "You brought it up," he muttered as if he couldn't hear him.

Suddenly, the snake struck again, nearly nabbing the distracted Jingyi. Rulan impulsively pushed him out of the way, sending him sprawling. The snake turned enterprising eyes on Rulan and sunk its fangs into his flank. Rulan's panicked flailing slowed as the neurotoxin spread through his bloodstream. "Jingyi," he gasped out.

"Rulan!" Jingyi shouted, scrambling back toward him. He reached out toward Rulan, but the snake grasped its paralyzed prey in its jaws and shot off toward the water. Rulan thrashed frantically, but his valiant attempts at escape did not loose his enemy's jaw.

They splashed into the water, and the snake began to unhinge its jaw, slowly enveloping Rulan's amphibious body. He jerked, trying to wiggle out to no avail.

"Spread your legs!" He heard Jingyi shout. He drew his eyebrows together in confusion - or at least he would have if he had eyebrows to draw and control over his body. "Keep your legs wide open! That'll keep it from swallowing you."

Rulan turned his attention to keeping his front legs spread wide. The snake maneuvered his body against a rock to try and leverage his body into its mouth. Suddenly, a green blur dropped down onto its head, and the impact sent Rulan flying. "Swim!" Jingyi yelled, tugging him along down the river. They swiftly swam downstream for several minutes until they felt confident they were out of danger.

"We should make camp for the night," Jingyi suggested, slowing his pace. Exhausted, Rulan could only vaguely nod his head and follow along. He trailed behind Jingyi as they crawled up the bank and around the edge of the forest until Jingyi found an acceptably empty tree hollow. Rulan slumped down as soon he clambered inside, stretching his aching unfamiliar muscles.

"Well, uh," Jingyi started awkwardly. "Good night."

"G'night, Jingyi," Rulan sighed, eager for this day to just be over.

Silence reigned. Well, not really silence. The forest floor was alive with noise. Bug chatter, leaf rustles, and whatnot. But the only thing that could be heard here, in this tiny tree hollow with just them, was the sound of their exhausted breathing. Rulan was listening to his breaths even out and his heartbeat slow (has his heart ever beat that slow?! This is safe, right? It's just because he's a frog now?), when he heard the whisper.

"Rulan?" he heard Jingyi start tentatively. Rulan stubbornly refused to answer. This was the -boy- frog that had turned him into this slimy green thing and endangered his life with a freaking garter snake. What could he possibly have to say?

He heard Jingyi sigh, sounding a bit sad and alone. "Thanks for saving me," he said, which is ridiculous. Rulan didn't save him. He just wasn't quite in control of his limbs yet. Yeah. Totally a freak accident that he had knocked Jingyi out of the way of the snake's attack, Rulan reasoned. And anyway, Jingyi saved me more, he reminded himself petulantly. Telling me how to keep from being swallowed and knocking me from the snake’s mouth and tugging me along with him down the stream.

"I'm glad you didn't die," Jingyi declared quietly. He then turned over and apparently went to sleep.

Rulan wanted to scream. All he had wanted to do was sleep, but now his brain was awake and thinking things.

He regretted it, he told himself firmly. He regretted it terribly.

He wished he had never kissed Jingyi. He wished he had never even met the brutally honest frog who had begged for kisses and yet made him feel more seen than anyone else, outside of his family. He wished he had never bargained to help him, even if he’d had no way to think it would turn out like this. He wished to take it all back. Right?

Rulan cracked open an eye to scrutinize at his companion's sleeping form. Is that where he went wrong? he wondered. Maybe he should have listened to xiao-jiujiu about not spending all day in the swamp. But it’s his favorite place in all of Lotus Pier’s, as it was his mother’s.

The swamp is Rulan’s favorite because it reminds him of home, of his mother’s Lotus Pavilion. (Ironically, his father had built that Pavilion to remind her of that lotus swamp from her home.) But both places reminded Rulan of the times when he and his parents were able to forget the pretentious behavior of their station. Koi Castle was so stuffy and suffocating. Rulan would rather spend his whole day in the Lotus Pavilion. He liked to dig his toes into the mud. He liked to listen to his mom regale him with tales of her unruly childhood with his wild uncles. He liked to wheedle his parents into water fights where they would all laugh and his dad would try to catch his mom when she slipped and he would fall instead and then Grandma Jin would yell at all of them. But Lotus Pier is just as good. He liked to swim with his da-jiujiu and shoot arrows with his xiao-jiujiu and watch them cry over his mother’s soup. He liked to feel his face stretch with a smile he could never wear at home.

He missed his mother. He missed his father. He even missed his shushu. He doesn’t know why they bundled him off so quickly to his uncles in Lotus Pier only for both of them to leave him too.

He had just wanted someone to talk to. Not any of the simpering, back-stabbing idiots he had to bring with him. Not even any of the disciples at Lotus Pier (even though they were markedly more sincere and kind to him). Just someone who would get him. As a person, not a status.

Is that where he went wrong?

Okay, maybe making friends with a frog hadn’t his smartest move. But really, who could it have hurt? The frog may have had the most contrary personality he had ever met (that he hadn't been related to). Yet, underneath the savage honesty and incessant requests for kisses, Jingyi was surprisingly insightful. He seemed to understand Rulan, even if he rarely agreed with him. Rulan had met plenty of people who wanted something from him. Practically everybody not related to him only talked to him if they wanted something. But no one had ever been like Jingyi. He would request a kiss, then immediately insult his clothing or his hairstyle or his bracelet. But he was never malicious about it. Rulan had heard some much nicer things said (by his shushu or once even his mother) that had cut down the target more cruelly than any insult ever could have. Jingyi’s insults seemed … careless? Ignorant, certainly, but usually insignificant. Jingyi just couldn’t keep his thoughts inside of his head, rude or not.

Rulan had wanted to help. Jingyi seemed so distraught, and he didn’t really deserve this. (Okay, actually Rulan has spent more than an hour with Jingyi. Jingyi had probably deserved it. But he’s sorry now! And if Rulan could help him out of this predicament, shouldn’t he help? Isn’t that his princely duty?) Rulan had planned to take him to see his da-jiujiu once everyone comes back. He only vaguely knew the curse-breaking spree of the cultivation world that da-jiujiu had been on for much of Rulan’s childhood, then suddenly given up on a few years ago. (Nobody would give him any details.) But Rulan knew that Wei Wuxian was the person he would want to talk to about breaking this kind of curse. He said as much to Jingyi. But his family was taking so long coming back, and no one would tell him anything, and Rulan felt so helpless. Surely a kiss wouldn’t hurt. Right? So, he had kissed Jingyi anyway.

Is that where he went wrong?

Or maybe he did kiss him wrong. With that distressing thought, Rulan fell asleep, his dreams full of kisses, green slimy skin, and Jingyi.

Next scene should be up later today. Still in editing stages.

Everybody, stay safe and wash your hands!

[thicctails]

Cretaeam belua ex Terra

Chapter 1 The End of one Story is the Beginning of another

Meredith coughed, shivering slightly. She glanced over at the makeshift nest beside her, gazing sadly at the tiny form laying within. Her only son, Peter, lay there, unmoving save for his shallow but steady breaths. She ran a thin hand over his small stomach, feeling the ribs that were becoming way too obvious. They stuck out like roots just lightly buried in dirt. She needed to feed him more, or feed him something better, but neither were an option right now. Her baby boy, her precious Star Lord, only 3 years old, would unfortunately probably not make it to his next birthday, unless she somehow managed to miraculously beat the horrid disease wracking her body.

But she knew that wouldn't happen. She could feel it. It crawled through her, destroying anything in its path. It was only a matter of time before her strength gave out, leaving her son alone, destined to a slow death. It made tears well up in her eyes just thinking about it. If only they'd been human, she could have found someone to care for Peter.

'If only they'd been human...'

Meredith pushed herself up, wandering slowly deeper into the cave they were living in. A pile of books sat near a small candle. Laying down, she coughed before reaching for a book near the bottom of the pile. She flipped through its worn pages, looking for a certain page. She paused upon finding, thinking about what she was doing. If she did this, she would be sapped of all her strength, and Peter would finally have to face the inevitable, that she would be gone, and he would be alone. But if she didn't do this, Peter would be alone anyways with no chance of being cared for. At least this way, he would have a fighting chance at having a life.

Summoning her remaining strength, Meredith hauled the heavy book up off the ground and walked over to Peter's bed. Gently, she shook him awake.

"Peter. Peter sweetie wake up." She whispered, fighting back another rib cage rattling cough.

Peter stirred slowly, his thin, bat-like wings stretching out as he roused from slumber. The small, white spots that Meredith always thought looked like stars were just barely visible in the dim light. His large blue eyes blinked owlishly at her.

"Momma? Waah?" He groaned quietly, rubbing his eyes.

"Get up sweetheart, I need to tell you something. Something very important."

Peter sat up at that, trying desperately to rub the sleep from his eyes. He crawled over and flopped into his mother's lap. Meredith smiled and stroked his downy soft hair.

"Do you remember that talk we had? The one where I told you that I wouldn't always be here to take care of you?"

Peter nodded slowly, his face beginning to show mild distress.

"Well... that time has come. But there's something I need to do first, and I need you to promise me something."

Her son's eyes were leaking tears now. He let out a sob and buried his face into his mothers' stomach, not nearly awake or emotionally stable to deal with the information he was being given. He didn't know much, but he knew what his mother's words meant. It meant she would be leaving him alone. Forever.

His mother let him cry. After all, how do you tell a child who has just learned that he is going to lose the only loving figure he's ever known to stop crying?

"Momma, please don't go!" Peter sobbed, his voice shaking. Meredith pet her son's hair, tears dripping down her face.

"Shhh. Hush my child. It'll be okay. I'm going to make sure you aren't left alone." She whispered, before placing her palm flat on Peter's head. His eyes flashed white for a moment, before he collapsed onto her. She could hear bones crack as the spell worked its way through her son's body, changing his appearance. Meredith fell back onto the cave floor, her strength gone. Slowly, she reached over and grabbed her unconscious son's hand, feeling, and smelling, slick blood. She squeezed it gently, before moving to the back of the cave and laying down, closing her eyes for the last time.

Yondu stepped of his M-Ship, breathing in the damp night air. It was chilly out, so his breath was visible as he strode through the grassy field. He had been given some coordinates as to the boy's general location was, although they seemed rather odd. The coordinates led to a thick, dark forest, filled with tall evergreens. It was dark enough that Yondu had trouble seeing where he was going, cursing a few times along the way when he stubbed his toe or tripped. How did a Terran live in this mess? It was all brambles and branches.

Yondu paused as a familiar, iron tinged scent struck his nose. He flicked open the holster of his arrow just in case things got bad. He crept closer to the entrance of a cave, but paused when he saw what was in front of him. It was a small child, small enough that Yondu instinctively looked around for other Terrans. But he found none, only a thin, crumpled heap next to the boy's unconscious form. Blood surrounded the child, seeping through his clothes and staining the ground. Yondu closed the distance and knelt down, searching for a pulse. He found one, strong and quick despite the child's appearance. As gently as he could, Yondu picked the boy up, and let out a surprised curse when he felt how light the child was. Had his mother been starving the kid? Where was his mother?

Looking beyond where the child had been laying, Yondu could see a still, crumpled form that reeked of blood and sickness. Not a single wisp of movement could be sensed from her form. Yondu didn't bother going over to check her pulse. He slid a small satchel off of his shoulder and packed a few items into it. Some blankets, a book on Terran biology he found near the back of the cave, and finally, a small contraption that the child had on his person. A sort of headpiece attached to some kind if electronic.

Readjusting the sleeping child in his arms as gently as he could, he began to walk back to his M-Ship. But before he could reach the tree line, a low growl sounded out. Tensing, he spun on one foot to look behind him. 3 pairs of glowing green eyes stared straight at Yondu from the shadows of the forest. No, not at him, but at the kid in his arms. More growls began to rumble out, and large, clawed paws began to appear from the shadows. Yondu narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, ready to whistle a tune that would send his Yaka arrow straight through these beasts' hearts, when the growling stopped. The creatures backed away as their eyes widened. They disappeared from sight moments later. Yondu cocked his head slightly. It wasn't unusual for animals to be afraid of his arrow, but he had never seen anyone who didn't know him personally recognize what his whistle meant.

Shaking it off, Yondu made his way back through the forest and to his ship. The ship activated its tractor beam, and within seconds he was back on the main part of the ship, near the pilot's chairs. Kraglin was sleeping soundly in the co-pilot chair. Yondu smacked the Xandarian on the back of the head as he passed. Kraglin snorted and blinked, glancing over at the Captain. He sucked in a breath when he saw the small thing clinging to Yondu's coat.

"Cap'n! Is that the cargo?!" He exclaimed, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.

"Yeah. You got a problem wit that Kraglin?" Yondu asked, starting up the engines.

"No, but Cap'n... he's so little." Kraglin said quietly.

"You going soft on me Krags?" The Captain growled.

Kraglin shook his head, but he kept sneaking glances at the sleeping boy the whole trip back to the Eclector. When they arrived, some of the crew had come to greet them.

Horuz cocked an eye at the sight of his captain holding a small bundle of clothing tucked up against his chest. It was only when the bundle move did he realise what Yondu was holding.

Now, being small and underfed was nothing new when it came to Ego's children, but Horuz could not remember the last time he had seen a child look so... skeletal. The child looked barely alive, breaths coming in slow and shallow, and exiting with a soft wheeze. He showed no signs of stirring as Yondu handed the child to his first mate, nor when Kraglin clumsily readjusted him in his arms. So, it came as a surprise when the child bolted awake when Yondu placed the translator onto his head.

The Terran froze, seemingly paralyzed by fear. Wide, fearful eyes darted around at the strange new people. He was shaking now, completely overwhelmed by all the new sights and faces, not to mention the complete lack of familiar faces. Horuz felt sorry for the young boy, most children they had picked up had been at least 3 years older than... Peter, was it? He couldn't quite remember exactly what the file had said, only that his mother had fallen ill, and that the child's name was Peter.

Skyyar, a particularly nasty V'tyana, sniffed at the child. Peter, deciding that Kraglin was a far more comforting presence than Skyyar, whimpered and hid his face in the Ravager's jacket, curling up into an even smaller ball.

"Hrmmm. Thisss one sssmellsss of weaknessesss. Perhapssss we should jussst eat him inssstead." The green, snake-like creature hissed, sticking out his forked tongue. Yondu growled.

"You say that EVERY DAMN TIME SKYYAR! For the last time, we DON'T eat cargo!" The captain snapped. The reptilian humanoid bowed his head, but flicked his gaze back towards Peter, discreetly wetting the scales around his mouth.

Yondu turned his attention to the boy curled into his first mate's chest, placing a hand on the quaking child's back. Peter flinched and his gaze snapped to Yondu, his pupils like pinpricks as he stared at the Captain. The child had begun to silently sob, fear gripping his heart in it's crushing grip.

"Easy there Petey. Skyyar's jus' bee'n a as-er, jerk. Ain't nobody gonna eat ch'a." He soothed. Yondu was tempted to threaten to eat the boy himself, but he had a feeling, with how young and truly afraid Peter was, that doing so could only end very, very badly. He glared at the rest of the present crew. "And can I trust that my crew can make that a well-known fact?" He asked, already knowing the answer, but looking for confirmation anyways.

Horuz and the other crewmates nodded immediately, while Skyyar hesitated, only briefly, before nodding as well. Kraglin narrowed his eyes at the V'tyana but said nothing. Instead, he jerked his head towards the ceiling. Yondu nodded and handed him the satchel. Kraglin slid it onto his shoulder and headed further into the Elector, missing the hungry eyes that followed the child in his arms.

O.O whats this? A GotG fic, on my good Transformers blog? Its more likely than you think. 👀👀👀

[magicalicefairy]

You might like it (Arthur Morgan x Reader)

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x Reader

Warnings: fluff, super fluff

Word Count: 3.2k (sorry, not sorry)

You entered the General Store in Valentine and looked around. The store was packed with food and other useful things. You walked along a shelf and discovered canned vegetables, salmon and sweets. Neatly prepared and clean.

"Miss?" You heard a voice behind you.

You looked a firmer man in the face. You came closer to the counter and put your hands on it .

"Um, hello, I'm looking for some perfume, lavender perfume, to be exact, do you have something like that in your Store?" You asked and looked at him hopefully.

"Perfume?" he laughed. "No, no, not really Miss. We don't have such things here.

"Oh, thanks anyway." You nodded and left the store

"But if you need supplies, you're welcome any time" he said before you closed the Store door behind you.

You were not surprised that you couldn't find a decent perfume in Valentine, but still you were a little disappointed. The sun blinds you and you pulled your hat further into your forehead.

"And found what you were looking for?" Arthur asked.

I really wanted a lavender perfume, but he doesn't have things like that in his assortment." You tried to imitate the shopkeeper.

Arthur laughed, put his hands to one side and shook his head.

"What?" you asked him.

"Lavender perfume seriously? What are you? One of those fancy ladies of Saint Denis?" he said, still laughing.

He was right, you were not a fancy lady of Saint Denis. You were an Outlaw. You didn't like skirts or even dresses. You usually wore jeans and a shirt, a scarf or collar. You looked like you wanted to rob the next stagecoach. But you still had the right to smell good.

"Yeah, you're right." you admitted, but quite disappointing.

Arthur looked at you. "Come on, you don't smell that bad"

"Thank you Arthur, how nice." Now you were the one who laughed.

"Come on, Miss, her noble steed is waiting for you" he said with a slight bow and led you back to your horse. Together you rode back to the camp.

  "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Arthur asked as he fumbled the lower street with his binoculars. "The stagecoach should be right here!"

What?, yes, I just wanted to pick some flowers, these ones, they're called "busy lizzy" and they are just beautiful, they only grow in the summer." you couldn't take your eyes off the flowers. The pink just looked beautiful."

What do you want with Flowers in a robbery of a stagecoach?" he asked, looking at you. "Stick the flowers in the nose of the driver so that he smothers?

"Oh my god Arthur, no, we'll kill him, of course, well if we have to." you said as he stared at you with a raised eyebrow.

You could hear clatter of hooves in the distance. The carriage was on the way.

"Come on hurry and cover your face!" Arthur already pulled the bandana over his nose. In a hurry you picked some flowers and put them in the saddlebag of your horse. With a jump you sat on the back of your black Arabian and your face was covered.

"Ready?" Arthur asked

You nodded and spurred your horse. "Let's go boy!"

You could feel the wind in your hair and your eyes were fixed on the carriage in front of you. Arthur led his Mustang stallion past the coach and pulled his revolver."Hands up, Gentleman that's a robbery!" he yelled at the carriage driver. His passenger was just about to draw his own weapon when you held your gun in his back.

"Not so fast my friend," you said.

The man raised both hands in the air. You stretched out and reached for his revolver.

"Thank you, sir," you said while looking at your newly acquired weapon.

"Open the coach! Now!" Arhur prepared his weapon ready for firing.

The man was almost crying and shaking all over. "I can't Sir, we have no key for it Sir."

"Dammit" escaped your mouth. If we don't hurry up, The law will show up here!"

Arthur didn't take his eyes off the two men."

Looks like we have to blow it up." He took out some dynamite and threw it to you.

"What's with them?" you said pointing with your gun at the two men."

Oh please, Sir, Miss, don't kill us, we have family to look after." said the man that still had your gun in his back.

"Agh damn, I'll tell you one now, you're getting off, get lost and not telling anyone what happened here! Understood?" Arthur let dismounted the coachman and his companion the coach

"Thank you Sir, Miss," both thanked you.

"Go on and get lost i said!" Arthur barked, aiming his weapon at both men.

"S-Sure" the coachman said and both ran up the hill and disappeared.

"I just hope they both shut their mouth Arthur, otherwise it will look quite different here in a few minutes." You said to him while you got off your horse.

You started to liberate the horses from their bridles and gave both of them a clap. Both horses rushed away and had disappeared like the two men before.

"Okay, let's get it done" you said to Arthur.

He nodded. "It's going to be pretty loud, i guess someone will notice it." You ignite the fuse and threw the stick of dynamite in the direction of the carriage. You both took a big step backwards and not 5 seconds later there was a deafening bang.

"Oh, shit" you screamed "Arthur! It worked!" You enthusiastically lifted your fist in the air.

"Come on" and you were already on the way to the cracked carriage door. Arthur climbed into the carriage and you handed him a bag to transpot your loot.

"Oh we have the checkpot!" you heared Arthur calling from the coach?

"Seriously?" You tried to catch a glimpse into the coach.

"Yes, yes, jewelry and money!" Arthur could barely hide his pleasure."

Then go faster and pack everything in the bag!" you pushed Arthur and your eyes were on the street, looking for the law .And then you heard it. Hooves pounding on the floor.

"Hurry up, someone's coming," you said to Arthur, pulling on his sleeve. And you could barely remember the next moment. Law men came around the corner on horses. At least eight men with drawn weapons.

"Shit, shit Arthur the law! Come out there and let's leave" you shout

Arthur packed the remaining things and jumped out of the carriage. You whistled for your horse and pulled your revolver, ready for shooting.

"Come here, behind the fallen log!" Arthur grabbed you by the hand and pulled you to cover. The men came riding in a high speed now. You hear a shot hiss through the air and the first rider fell dead from his horse. Arthur had just opened fire without saying anything. You were so shocked that you were paralyzed.

"What are you waiting for?" Arthur screamed. "I could use some help here!"

You shaked your head and pulled your weapon out of the holster. The law tried to encircle you, but Arthur shot the next man off his horse. Another man came riding up to you and not two seconds later you aimed at his head and he fell dead from his horse. Suddenly your Arabian and Arthur's Mustang ran down the hill.

"Go on, get on your horse!" ordered Arthur and you ran to your horses. With a good swing, you sat in the saddle and gave your horse a spur.

"Follow me!" Arthur rode along the path and into a forest. You followed him and tried to avoid the further shots of the law.

"Arthur, they are still behind us!" you shout through the wind. Suddenly you heard a shot and the next moment you felt like the saddle lost it's position and you slip off the horse. One of the law men had made a bad shot to your luck and shot your saddle. You and your horse were unhurt, but your horse ran away scared.

"Shit!" you heared Arthur and watched him turn his horse.

Despite everything, you had ache and gasped for breath when you hit the ground with your saddle.

"The woman is on the ground! Quick!" One of the men was close to you. Damn close. Your vision was blurry and you couln't see that much. You could feel someone over you and realize that it was not Arthur.

"Fuck off!" you mumbled. The man was aiming for you and the next moment the man was knocked out. Arthur had thrown himself on him and shot him a bullet in the head. Arthur had no mercy on the rest of the law. When he was done, he ran to you.

"Everything OK?" he asked as he helped you on your feet.

"Yes, yes, i'm okay, it was just the impact, but otherwise I'm fine." you said to him.

Your gaze wandered to your saddle. The belt was broken and you couldn't use the saddle anymore.

"Great" you mumbled.

Arthur watched your gaze and looked up at the saddle.

"You're lucky that the man was an idiot and didn't hit you or your horse.

"Yes, you're right, but where is he anyway?" your eyes wandered around looking for your stallion. You whistled for him and heard a neighing nearby. Slowly he got dragged.

"I think Charles can fix that" Arthur said distractedly.

Your eyes looked sadly at your saddle when you suddenly saw the saddlebag.

"Oh no, my flowers!" you said and reached for the bag. Too late, the flowers were crushed and the leaves fell off. You flew onto your bag during the impact.

"What a pity!" you said.

Arthur looked at you incredulously and said "Seriously?" He touched his forehead with one hand. "You are worried about the flowers"

You sat by a campfire in the camp. You just took a bowl of Pearson's stew when Jack sat down next to you.

"Hey Auntie, how are you?" Jack asked and sat next to you.

"Hello Jack, I'm fine and you?" you asked him. He was really pure sugar."

All right, I just heard Pa talking to Uncle Arthur, they said you fell off the horse, I just wanted to know if you're okay!" Jack said.

"Aww how nice of you! Thanks Jack" and you stroked his head. Jack looked satisfied with himself.

"Eww, i can't eat that" you said to yourself. Your gaze wandered to Jack. "Ehm, I said I have no appetite anymore."

I know what you mean" he said with a laugh. "I would rather have sweets.

"Oh yes, chocolate wouldn't be bad right now" you looked dreamily in the air.

"Oh yes, chocolate! I haven't had one in a long time!"Jack said with a sweet smile on his face.

"Do you have any auntie?" He asked with big eyes. You shook your head depressed. "Unfortunately not Jack, I'm sorry!"

Jack lowered his head. "Well, eventually there will be chocolate again!He smiled at you and you smile back. "Well, Jack, I have to ask Charles if he fixes my saddle, see you soon! You gave him a kiss on his head and went to Charles tent.

  You sat in front of your tent and were reading a book. The sun was already setting and it started the cozy time in the camp. Charles had promised to repair your saddle and Kieran would take care of your horse, even if your stallion had no injury, he had offered it. He's especially nice to you and also pretty shy when talking to you.

You were just so engrossed in your book when you heard a throat clearing. Your gaze wandered over the book and you saw Kieran, who stood quite nervously in front of your tent. "Kieran?" You ask, looking puzzled.

"Hey" he said and scratched his head nervously.

"I hope I don't disturb you"

"No! No way!" You said and put your book aside. "What's up?"

Kieran looked extremely nervous and he also seemed to hide something behind his back.

"Well, when I heard about the riding accident, I was worried and I know you are fine and thank God, nothing has happened to you!" All this bubbled out of him at a tremendous speed that you could hardly understand.

"Yes, Kieran, I'm fine! I- "you just wanted to say when he interrupted you.

"Here! For you! "He held out a bouquet of Flowers under the nose. Surprised, you looked to the bouquet and then to Kieran. Totally perplexed you didn't know what to say. Kieran seemed desperate with  every second. He thought you didn't like them.

"You don't like them!" He said sadly and a little embarrassed. "I'm an idiot!"

"No" you said. You took the flowers. "They are beautiful! Thank you Kieran" you gave him a smile and he blushed bright red.

"I was just astonished! How did you know?"

"Arthur thought you might like it," he said. "You were with him in the robbery.

"Oh Arthur?" You mumbled.

"Yeah, but good that you like it" He turned to go.

"Well, I'll let you read again in peace, nice that I could make you smile."

"Thank you Kieran!" And you saw him going to the horses.

You looked at the flowers, they were just beautiful. That was really nice of Kieran and Arthur, that he had noticed that. You were looking for a container in which you could put the bouquet and you decided for a simple clay jug. "Perfect! Now they just need water. "You said to yourself and set out to get water. The sun had already set and the campfires seemed to dance in the night. Pearson was already preparing for the stew.

"Mr. Pearson?" Your look went under the table, he was just picking vegetables from a box.

"Miss? you heared from under the table

"I need some water for these flowers" you said.

"Behind the wagon" he grumbled, you thanked him and walked behind Pearson's wagon, where a barrel was already full of water. The jug was filled quickly and you made your way to your tent.

"Hey querido" you heared behind you, you turned around and saw Javier walking towards you, with the usual grin on his face.

"Hello Javier"

He stopped in front of you and took your hand to put a kiss on it. Typical for Javier. He was a ladies man. He knew how to treat a woman.

"I have something for you hermosa" he said, handing you a small package.

"Oh thanks Javier! What is that?" You asked.

"Open it" Javier said with a grin on his face. You set the jug aside and began to open the brown paper. A small box appeared and you opened it carefully. A perfume came to light.

"Oh Javier! You didn't- "

"Ah ah ah no, do not say anything! Try it! " He interrupted.

You pressed the pump and sprayed out a pleasant lavender scent. You could not believe what was happening here.

"Where did you get it from?" you didn't know what to say.

"Oh, Arthur said you might like it and I thought why you should not have it!"

"Oh Javier!" You could not believe it. "Thank you!" You gave him a hug.

"No problem, everything for the beautiful lady" and he bowed. "Come sit by the campfire and I'll play a song!" He said.

"Later, Javier, I would like to bring that into my tent and take care of the flowers," you told him.

"As the lady wishes. You know where to find me! "He winked at you and walked over to the campfire where Sean and Charles were already sitting. You put the jug with the bouquet and the perfume next to your bed. The thought that Arthur was behind all this didn't let you go. He was paying attention. Was he just an attentive person or was there more behind it? You could not say it, because he was not the one who brought the flowers or the perfume. Lost in thought, you did not realize how Jack appeared next to you. Startled, a small shriek escaped you.

"Oh god Jack!" You placed a hand on your chest."

Oh I'm sorry Auntie!" He said excitedly. "I just wanted to give you that!" He handed you a bar of chocolate.

"Jack, where did you get them from?" You asked him.

"Uncle Arthur gave it to me, I'm supposed to share it with you." He said pointing to Arthur, who had meanwhile joined Javier, Sean and Charles.

"What?" Completely perplexed, you let yourself fall on your bed. Jack sat down next to you. He took the chocolate out of your hand and started sharing it. You didn't know what was going on, but now it was obvious there was more. Arthur apparently liked you and you wanted to know what's up.

"One moment Jack, wait here!" You said and stood up.

"But Auntie! The chocolate! "He shouted.

"Eat Jack!" You shouted over your shoulder and you were just walking away towards Arthur.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" You asked Arthur. Everyone was staring at you. Javier was pleased to see you. "Heeey querido, come sit down." Arthur looked at you and nodded. He followed you away from the campfire, just outside the camp.

"How is your back?" Asked Arthur.

"Alright, thanks" you said. "I wanted to ask you something."

"Yes?" He seemed a little nervous"

Kieran gave me flowers today," you said.

"Oh, how nice of him" you heard him say. He looked weirdly wooden.

"Exactly the flowers that I picked shortly before our robbery" you were looking for answers in his face. "And Javier gave me a lavender perfume that I mentioned only to you."

"Oh," he said again. "That's very attentive of you, Arthur," you whispered "That was Javier and Kieran, not me." He said.

He looked nervously in the air.

"But you were attentive and you knew it." You smile at him.

"Why didn't you give it to me?"

"I- I would not have dared ... I don't know how. I don't know what you think about me. I'm much older than you- "he said quickly

"Arthur," you interrupted him. "What are you talking about? Listen to yourself."

You took a step closer. "I don't like my voice that much" he said sarcastically. A soft laugh escaped you.

"Thanks, for your attention," you said and you kissed him on the cheek.

Arthur blushed under his hat.

"Next time come to me," you ordered him sternly.

"Promised, my lady" he bowed slightly and you had to laugh.

You looked into his eyes and you feel like you came closer, how your lips came closer.

"Uncle Arthur! Auntie! "Jack screamed and you jumped apart abruptly."

Jack everything alright?" You asked.

"Yes" he nodded. "But I ate the whole bar of chocolate"

Arthur and you looked at each other and you both laughed out loud.

"Come on, let's get you back to your mother." Arthur pushed Jack toward the camp.

On the way back, you took his hand and he smiled at you.

[caffeinatedtimdrake]

Bright Star

A/N: I know my url has DC roots but Peter Parker is the love of my life (one of many). Here is some Peter x reader fluff in which his confession doesn’t go exactly as planned. 

Peter Parker knows his heart doesn’t stand a chance, not when you’re blinking up at with pleasant surprise written across your features the same way your name is engraved into almost his every thought. A warm blush blossoms across your cheeks. You’re a cute strawberry, but with how heated his cheeks feel, he’s more like an overly-ripe tomato. “Y-yeah, we do. I can…show you the poetry section if you want?” “Oh. Cool. Yeah, please, that would be…cool.” If the ground swallowed him up right now and he could live the rest of his existence wallowing in the New York sewage system, that would also be cool. It’s just his luck that you work part-time at the public library while he tries (and seemingly fails) to gather enough romantic literature to execute his Ultra Romantic Valentine’s Day Confession. This plan, actually quite cowardly in the grand scheme of things, consisted of leaving quotes from your favorite poets in your locker until Valentine’s Day, along with flowers and chocolates, and the cute plush key chains he knows you adore. When Peter told Ned about his plan, he only received a confused frown in response. “So…when are you going to actually tell Y/N you have a major crush on them?” Peter knitted his brow. “Valentine’s Day…probably.” “Unless you totally wimp out and leave 'em wondering for eternity the identity of their secret admirer?” Peter had sighed in resignation. “Yeah. Exactly.” He doesn’t know how long he’s liked you for because he can’t remember a time when you didn’t make him feel like a pathetic puddle of melted puppy love. Everything about you intoxicated him. Your sweet smile and warm eyes, the way you wrinkled your nose or your whole face lit up when you laughed, how his name rolled off your tongue – all of it, all of you, made his chest ache with unadulterated adoration. If he didn’t act upon his feelings soon, he was sure to explode. But he was still too bashful to approach you directly with a confident confession, so he settled for more subtle methods. Peter’s favorite subject certainly wasn’t English, but it was his favorite class because he received his daily dose of Y/N while settled into those uncomfortable wooden chairs. It didn’t even matter that the room was five degrees too hot because you made him feel like he was on fire, anyway. It was in that stuffy room that he learned how enthusiastic you became over poetry from the Romantic period. When you murmured Keats beneath your breath, following along with the teacher, he couldn’t stop himself from stealing sidelong glances in your direction. In short, he was whipped and the only logical way to proceed seemed to exist in the form of his new friend, John Keats, and the public library. He didn’t entertain the possibility that his plan might be foiled by your part-time employment. “Are you looking for anyone in particular?” You ask him quietly, glancing at him shyly as you guide him through. “Uh. Keats.” You turn to him, eyes shining. Your smile is infectious and briefly he thinks he might drop dead right there, between the imposing shelves of a New York public library, all because of his absurdly cute classmate. “Really? Did you like his work that much?” Peter can’t help but smile timidly in return, voice soft. “Yeah. Since class that day…I just can’t seem to get those words out of my head.”

Peter spends much more time in that section of the library than intended. He surprised himself by getting lost in biographies and beautiful words. His stomach grumbles, a sign that he should head home. He grabs a few books to check-out and slowly winds his way back to the front desk. He assumes you’ve gone home already, but he is absolutely wrong.   You crack a playful grin. “Did you have fun back there?” “Too much fun.” He smiles back sheepishly, bringing the books to you. For a few moments, the only sound between you two is the shrill beeping of the barcode scanner. You keep your eyes glued to the books because you know that if you meet his soft gaze, you’ll be paralyzed by those honey brown eyes. “When are you done for the night?” You slide the books back to him. “Right now, actually.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “I can walk you home, if you want.” You lock eyes with him; startled, but not in a bad way. “But, like, no pressure. I-I just thought I’d offer since I’m…here and you’re here and you’re gonna go home anyways and I think we walk in the same direction? Plus, it’s kind of dark outside. Not that I don’t think you can’t hold your own or anything! I know you are strong and independent and – “ “Peter,” You giggle. His mouth is dry. “Yes?” “I’d love for you to walk me home. I can still be strong and independent if a cute boy walks me home.” He exhales deeply, shoulders slumping a little. “Great.” Then he pauses and practically jumps out of his skin. “Wait, what?!” You duck into the back room to grab your belongings, flustered. “Nothing!” You call back, taking extra time to zip up your coat and pull on your gloves. When you emerge, Peter looks like he’s been punched in the gut – in a good way, somehow. His skin is flushed, and his mouth is pulled into a tight line, but his eyes are gentle. As the cold air hits his face, he frets a little. He hopes that he doesn’t trip over his own feet and make a complete fool of himself in front of you, but he also prays that the two of you don’t encounter criminal activity, so he doesn’t have to engage Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman Mode. Most nights, the bright city outshines the stars. Peter feels closer to the stars than most considering his nights spent perched on rooftops, often with only the moon for company. The snow forecasted for tonight leaves no room for shining stars or the glowing moon. Thick flakes fall lazily from the sky, creating a thick layer of glittering snow across the sidewalk. It’s not quite dark outside, rather a gentle, muted lavender. “Do you like the snow?” You ask him, glancing up at the thick clouds hanging peacefully above your heads. He thinks about how many times he’s fallen on his butt due to slush and the uncomfortable sensation of snow caked to his socks after he cleans Aunt May’s car off. And then he looks over at you, some kind of ethereal winter fairy, snowflakes clinging to your hair and lashes, landing on your skin and slowly melting in the same way he seems to melt when you smile at him. You’re smiling at him with your eyes, intrigued by the litany of emotions that dance across his features. “Yeah,” He breathes, snow crunching beneath his feet. “I like the snow.” You glow brighter than the mood and shine more than the stars. His heart is in his throat when he softly recites, “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art,” You turn to look at him so quickly, you nearly get whiplash. You’re a little astonished because this is the sort of thing you daydream about: Peter Parker, the boy you’ve been enamored with for quite some time, reciting poetry to you on a quiet, snowy evening. He’s a little self-conscious that you’re staring at him in such awe, lips slightly parted and soulful eyes wide, but mostly he’s enraptured because really, you are his star. It takes you several long moments to recover – they might be some of the longest in Peter’s life – but eventually, you do. “Not in lone splendor, hung aloft the night,” There are several more moments of silence and staring and Peter can barely remember to breathe before he realizes you’re leaning towards him to press your lips sweetly against the corner of his mouth. “Not to be dramatic, but I think that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” You tell him earnestly, looking like a cute strawberry once more. He gapes, opening and closing his mouth a few times, before he warbles, “Oh my GOD me too I like you so much I think my heart is going to EXPLODE how do you even exist – “ You kiss him again, this time brushing your lips softly against his, to tell him that you like him, too. He doesn’t even have to wait until Valentine’s Day. Ned is gonna flip.  

[virmillion]

Some Kind of Magical - Chapter 2

Chapter 1 / Chapter 3 / Masterpost / ao3

Warnings: Past violence, let me know if you have any more

Words: 4449

    Patton splits off from the other three, carefully using the warmth of their words to build a barrier around his heart. No telling how strong it’ll need to be tonight, but he can obliterate that bridge when he gets there—his dad isn’t supposed to be home quite yet. Picking up the pace, Patton pushes his black and blue glasses higher up his nose, trying to quell the rising terror that always accompanies his walks home.

    The number of wild animals crawling out of bushes to greet him is less than reassuring—at this rate, they’ll follow him all the way back and his dad will use them as target practice. Patton shoes them off with handfuls of dried fruits from his bag, regaining his solitude by the time he reaches the front door. Thankfully, the house appears quiet, an unheard of occasion as of late. It’s a rare day when he isn’t greeted by furious yelling or pointedly aggravated silence—if Patton didn’t know better, he’d swear there was some sadistic being testing his resolve in striving toward pacifism.

    “Please be okay, please be okay, please dear Cethyphyirr be okay,” Patton chants to himself, tripping up the stairs on his untied shoelaces. He ignores the gaping frame where his bedroom door had been just that morning and drops his bag to the floor, fooling himself into thinking it would be enough of a barrier to protect him. Without so much as a glance at the sea of garbage and mess at his feet, Patton wades through the clearest path to his closet door—still attached, praise Ceth. Shoving the shelves and weapons to the side, he removes the poster blocking a shallow hole in the wall to reveal a little cove of various babbling critters.

   Tarasques and shedus and jorogumos alike peer out at Patton, each a different age and each recovering from some injury or another. Patton unrolls a cloth bandage, tearing it in the middle with his teeth and turning to the turtle-like tarasque. He patches up a hole in the shell, using his other hand to scoot aside the baying freybug that’s ventured out of the hole. The jorogumo skitters up his arm with several hairy legs, the face-like markings on its back seeming to wink at him.

   “You guys are lucky this cavity came with a size charm, you know that?” Patton sighs, watching his hand shrink each time it enters the gap to escort out another animal. The shedu’s tail puffs up, consuming a majority of the opening and growing into the space. It blocks Patton’s access to the other creatures until he can nudge the creature back to shrink down again. “Yes, Dad, absolutely I should go into Resolute,” he mutters. “Certainly, my one true calling is taking up arms against the creatures that I want nothing more than to protect. How ever do you do it, figuring out exactly what’s best for me? Even teaching me to solve my problems with my fists, to the point that my friends already know they have to restrain me.” Patton grits his teeth, clenching his hands into fists as his jaw begins to ache. He only stops at the whimpering of the freybug, which backs toward the nest with a wary focus on him. Slowly, his fists relax. “Really, Dad, you truly are a wonder to behold. One to rival the Ejnathryk itself.”

   “Patton Thyrrdyn!” A furious voice bellows from downstairs. Patton holds back a groan, quickly and methodically replacing the poster behind the weapons and shelves. The last creatures vanish just in time, as the name is repeated louder and closer than before.

   “Hey, Dad,” Patton says, descending the stairs to look at the man in the front entryway. “What can I do ya for?” He feels his pulse quicken for the ever-present dread that his dad might find the hidden creatures, but this rage doesn’t look like that of a betrayed father.

    “Care to explain why there’s dirt tracked in here?” The panic recedes, leaving only a slight irritation at such a loud yell for such a trivial complaint.

    “Guess I didn’t notice. Sorry.” Patton turns to head upstairs, to escape before the discussion inevitably turns to TryMyts, but nothing can ever be quite so simple.

    “Did they discuss Trytsu selection today?” The edge in his voice alone is enough to make Patton hesitate. “Don’t worry. I know you’ll pick the right one.” He pauses briefly, watching Patton back away with a nod. “I only want what’s best for you, kiddo. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

    “I know.”

    “So, any ideas for dinner?” A stab at conversation, and a poor one at that.

    “No, but Logan, Roman, and Virgil are supposed to come over later. We were gonna try to get started on planning our TryMyts projects.”

    “Who?” A hollow sigh takes up residence in Patton’s chest, begging to be released in a show of sheer aggravation. His dad has met all three of them several times over, and this is just an act to prolong the dying conversation. This information is the only thing keeping Patton from melting down into a stereotypical heap of groaning teen annoyance.

    “Logan Thylktor, Roman Thyrrak, and Virgil Thriyv. We’ve been to each other’s houses a bunch of times, and you even met Virgil’s mom at orientation for senior year TryMyts stuff, remember?”

    An ugly frown toys with his dad’s mouth. “The adoptive parents that don’t understand their place. Yeah, I remember those two.” It would be so easy for Patton to remark on his own mom’s absence, or how ridiculous it is to be upset that two people would willingly take in someone not related by blood, or how well-functioning the Thriyv household is, but he doesn’t. With thinly pressed lips and a slight dip of his chin, Patton retreats the rest of the way upstairs.

    In his room again, he could easily get a head start on his project, or even on putting a dent in the mess on his floor, but that would be too easy. Instead, he lifts the lid from a glass box of miniature trees and grass, hidden in an unmarked crate beneath a heat lamp in his closet. After a moment, something small and green glides from one of the branches, its mottled red tail streaking behind. Patton allows that same wistful smile to cross his face, twin to the one that always appears when his healing creatures test out their reparations—rehabilitations, as it were. The amphiptere, a little winged serpent, finally comes to a rest at Patton again, concluding its tour of his room by wrapping its tail around his finger. The other hand, resting on the floor at his side, promptly stings with the dull pain of a bite.

    “Hey,” he scolds softly, looking at the little beaked basilisk peeking out from his pile of clothes. In Patton’s defense, sometimes the mess is convenient. The reddish brown scales glow as it makes a muted guttural sound, its eyes barely cracked open. Damaged neurotoxin gland, a difficult fic to be sure, but that doesn’t mean Patton isn’t trying. The eyes, having long since recognized Patton as a protector, rather than a captor, avoid his gaze. Paralyzing its closest acquaintance probably isn’t the best course of action. Patton idly observes the progress of each of his creatures, whiling the time away until his friends can get over and ensure that his dad won’t barge in.

    “Patton? Those Loman and Rogan kids you were talking about are here.”

    He doesn’t bother to correct the names—the flub was probably intentional, anyway. Aimed at getting a rise out of Patton, prompting a reaction, proving he didn’t raise a broken boy that would never belong in Resolute. That what everything’s always been about, is trying to force Patton to stretch the extra three inches to fit in a six-foot mold. “Send them up, please.”

    Of their own volition, the creatures return to their tanks and crates and corners, hiding from the people they don’t know well enough to trust. Only Patton is allowed to be graced with their presence, exclusively due to his persistence in trying to help them.

    “Wish they’d stay out so I could meet them,” Roman comments on his way in, watching the speckled tip of the amphiptere’s tail vanish into the closet.

    “Yeah, well.” Patton shrugs, nudging the door shut with his foot and clearing a path through the rubble of clothes on his floor. “Do we want to wait for Virgil?” Rather than answer, Logan drops his weight in papers to the ground, leaving Roman to carry the conversation on his own. Patton’s eyes track the motions of a few flyaway papers, floating gently like fallen butterflies.

    “His mom said he didn’t come home this afternoon, and his mother was busy with a meeting, so his mom said he might stop by later, thanks for our time, but she really should be getting back to her notes.” Mid-sentence, Roman’s voice shifts up an octave in a remarkable imitation of Virgil’s mom. At least, as remarkable as the imitation of an adult woman can be, given that the imitator is a teenage boy.

    “So basically, we’re on our own without the sarcastically comedic comments?”

    “More or less.” Roman joins Patton and Logan on the floor, bringing his comparably meager supply of books with him. With one last sigh, Patton braces himself for the onslaught of work they have ahead of them. By the time a shadow falls over the small window on the far wall, he’s long since stopped paying attention to the outside world. He blinks, trying to force his hazel eyes to focus on what’s in front of him, to make sense of the endless lists and bullet points.

    “What about this? A battle for glory in a ring of deadly creatures, lit by Cethyphyirr to symbolize your creation of a new existence into the world of an official Trytsu?” A decent suggestion from Logan, which lies in direct conflict with the neat scrawling on the paper he holds up—schematics for a Rehabilitate project. Patton squints at the paper, trying to comprehend Logan’s cramped handwriting—despite his penchant for artistic pursuits, he could certainly stand to improve his legibility. Although the situation might be less than ideal, it’s not the worst idea to circumvent Patton’s dad’s refusal to accept a non-Resolute Trytsu.

    As Logan repeats himself for Roman to scribble the battle idea onto his notepad, Patton copies the written plan down in his own pages. “Hasn’t the whole ‘glory of Cethyphyirr’ thing been done before?” Roman pokes his cheek with an eraser, sticking his tongue out. “Not very original of a TryMyts, no offense.”

    “First off, nothing is original,” Logan says, ticking off the reasons on his fingers. “Second, even if it’s been done, it hasn’t been done by you, which is what would make it stand out. Third, the point of TryMyts is not to be original.” He unfurls his remaining two fingers to gesture with his entire hand at Roman. “Every student might well do the same project, provided the result is worthy of finding a place in their Trytsu, be it that of their parents or a new one. Yours doesn’t have to be special. It just has to be effective.”

    “But originality is what makes people stand out! What would you say if someone told you your work was boring, or had been done before?”

    “In all likelihood, I would embrace the challenge of outdoing a previous accomplishment, though that should hardly be any of your concern.” The sparkle in Logan’s eyes sends a jolt through Patton’s spine, an inevitable debate waiting to ignite. “Suppose, Roman, that you were to do something entirely original. How, precisely, might you intend to pass off such a thing to your parents, if you don’t have the perfect grades to back it up? They will assume you won’t succeed if you haven’t succeeded already. Better yet, if there’s never been a safe trial run of your supposedly ‘original’ TryMyts before, how can you guarantee Pib’s safety when you attempt it?”

    Patton is already on his feet and scurrying out of the room before Roman can come up with a retort, letting Logan’s triumphant debate-mode voice fade behind him. He makes up some excuse about getting snacks, the argument rapidly escalating and drowning out his mumbles. Of course, he already knows there’s no extra food lying around the house, but that’s beside the point. Even some ice to let melt on his tongue would be enough, just something to drown out his racing thoughts over Virgil’s absence. Suffice it to say, Patton was less than thrilled to hear about Virgil not making it home, even more so that he didn’t make it to the study session. He just needs a good distraction, is all.

    Take an injured rabbit for example, on its side mere feet beyond the front door. Patton jumps down the last few stairs, ready to sprint outside and help—until his rescue is interrupted.

    “Hey, kiddo, how’s it goin’?” Eyeing the suspiciously pink glow on his dad’s face, Patton shrugs noncommittally, desperate to keep his gaze off the rabbit. “How can you not know? Any project breakthroughs? Any of your little friends planning to betray their heritage and change Trytsun?”

    “I don’t know, no, I don’t know, gotta go,” Patton says, bouncing between his feet and trying to squeeze past his dad. No dice, as the man has him trapped between the railings at the landing of the stairs.

    “What about that Thriyv kid? Did his parents decide to keep their faux-altruistic ways out of other people’s lives for once?”

    “I really don’t know. He might be over later, but I’m not sure.” For a split second, Patton lets his eyes dart to the door, where the rabbit remains. A pair of eyes gleams back at him in the darkness.

    “Hey, hey, eyes on me, kiddo. Right here.” His dad grabs his shoulder, forcing his attention to snap back. “I just want what’s best for you, you know?”

    “I know.” Ignoring the desire to remark on the peculiar way of showing affection, Patton finally slips under the arm braced against the wall. The eyes outside are closer than before. A dish of water, that’s all he needs, just a few seconds to get to the rabbit and get it hydrated and get it upstairs to safety. An ideal plan, simple enough in its success, if the faucet weren’t so slow, if all the dishes weren’t dirty, if his dad had moved sooner, if the rabbit were still warm. With his dad having disappeared to do Ceth knows what, Patton sinks to his knees beyond the door. The eyes have vanished, leaving only the vague sense of being watched as he carefully cradles the rabbit’s hind leg, snapped beyond a point of reason.

    “I’ll help you, promise,” he murmurs, doing his best not to jostle the poor thing as he takes it to his room. Roman and Logan appear completely unsurprised as he sets about wrapping the rabbit’s leg and dribbling water into its mouth with a straw. The other two carry on with their discussion of possible TryMyts ideas, a relaxing backdrop of sound as he works. For however little it’s worth, the rabbit’s eyes slowly brighten, its body heat returning over the course of far too many minutes.

    “Patton, I think we’re going to head out,” Logan says, jolting him from his concentration. “Our parents will be expecting us soon, and we don’t want to impose.”

    “No problem,” Patton replies, barely taking his eyes off the twitching rabbit. “See you tomorrow.”

    “Tomorrow,” Roman agrees, offering a wave as he follows Logan out through where a door should be and down the stairs. Patton waits for the click of the closing front door, counting the moments that follow. After seven seconds, the inevitable complaints present themselves.

    “Why did they have to stay so long?”

    “Don’t know.”

    “What are you doing?”

    “Homework.”

    “What?”

    “Homework!” An edge of aggravation laces through Patton’s voice. This whole charade is as ridiculous and unnecessary as ever.

    “Okay!” A twin spear of irritation lingers with his father’s response.

    “If you need me to be louder, don’t go off at me for complying,” Patton mutters to himself, wishing he could slam the door shut. Of course, it doesn’t exist anymore, probably burned to high Ceth by now, in the name of his dad’s twisted ideas of what being in Resolute truly means. As the echo of a pitiful excuse for conversation fades, the annoyance on both ends slowly dissipates, the chasm of a closet remaining silent. With a careful parting of the obstacles, Patton places a finger into the charmed gap, watching his fingernail shrink down. The sudden visibility reveals all of his little friends curled up on top of one another, happily dozing away. To the quiet hum of the heat lamp’s whirring, the amphiptere huffs hot air out to match the warmth on its back.

    Patton replaces the mess he’d sifted through earlier to disguise his creatures from sight, pleased at how well the posters and boxes blend in with the whirlwind of clothes and papers and projects. There, on the floor of his closet and slumped against the door, is how the morning sun finds him, an obnoxious beam on his crusted shut eyes. It takes a few slow, exhausted blinks for Patton to gather his bearings, before he jumps to his feet.

    Mutterings of “gonna be late” and “crap crap crap” and “Ceth please lend me your speed” chase Patton around his room as he tugs on the first pair of shoes he can find. The clothes from yesterday will have to do, Patton decides, shouldering his open bag and running out the front door. Granted, the stolen bedroom door is a nuisance as well as an invasion of privacy, but it certainly allows for a conveniently fast exit. Down the sidewalk and onto the pavement, the pale sun overhead offers the smallest modicum of warmth for his shivering arms, coated in goosebumps. Twin birds flock behind him, cawing anxiously for their usual morning treats. Patton obliges, scattering a handful of raisins on the ground behind him as he sprints for the school. The last dregs of students filing into the building that rapidly crowns his horizon forces his legs to beat faster, his heart rate pulsing through every last nerve ending.

    “Ceth, please, just a little faster,” Patton heaves, flinging his body into the building with reckless abandon. He collapses into his usual seat in his classroom—thankfully near the front door—and lets his head loll back as the teacher closes the door behind him.

    “Late start, Thyrrdyn?”

    “You could say that.” He lets himself laugh with the other kids, certain the bright pink burn of exertion is spreading rapidly across his face.

    “Well, you sat down before I could shut the door, so I suppose I’ll let it slide. This time.” The telltale wry grin Patton sees toying with the teacher’s lips is enough to know he’s off the hook, with no bad blood to show for it. As the attention of the class reluctantly drifts back to the front of the room, turning minds toward pretending to learn, Patton tunes it out. He can get it all from Logan or Virgil later, rather than strain his willpower to be engaged now. More important of an issue is considering whether his room and reputation are safe, should his dad decide to snoop around while he’s gone.

    The poster was definitely blocking the size-charmed nook, and he almost certainly knocked over the shelves and weapons in his rush to get out. At the very least, the mess should deter any would-be paternal inspectors of that odd spiderweb crack in the wall. There has to be something more, something else he’s forgetting, or he wouldn’t have this lingering sense of dread that something’s missing. Once more through the checklist, the heat lamp was on, the closet door was shut, the mess looked organic, everything important was contained behind closed doors, so everything should be fine.

    “The rabbit!” Patton hisses, rapping the side of his fist on his desk. He darts his eyes around furtively, thanking Ceth that no one seemed to notice his outburst, but one mercy doesn’t solve another. He was helping the rabbit, Logan and Roman left, the mini-interrogation with his dad, and he passed out on the floor. The rabbit was probably long gone by the time Patton woke up—with any luck, it had at least partially healed. With any luck, it would know to hide itself, or get out while it still could.

    With every moment that the teacher discusses whatever it is the class is supposed to care about, Patton feels his pulse pick up. If he could just run home, double check for any incriminating evidence, he could reassure himself and not have to fear his dad’s wrath. The bouncing of his eyes and the tapping of his feet aren’t exactly comforting ways to fidget, not to mention how they seem to agitate the teacher, but Patton can’t particularly find it in himself to care.

    “Patton Thyrrdyn, do you have something you would like to share with the class?” He jolts, eyes wide as they focus on the imposing adult.

    “Um, no, Myjhyrr. Sorry, I didn’t—Sorry.” Patton pulls his lips between his teeth, biting down until they tingle and the color drains away. Prodding the little teeth-shaped indents with his tongue, he smiles sheepishly at the teacher’s wary look. With a glare of warning, the teacher continues the lesson.

    Maybe he could leave at lunch and be back by the next class, if he just sprints a little faster than his lungs would like to allow—but no, no, that wouldn’t work. The higher ranking people in charge of the school started assigning teachers to block off the exits months ago. Patton is well and truly trapped, and there’s nothing he can do about it. If he could just get to the door—

    “Thyrrdyn! You know as well as I do that your record will tolerate very few further complications, and I don’t suppose you desire to toe that line. If you don’t want to repeat this year, I suggest you sit up, face forward, and pay attention.” It’s a bit difficult to discern what, exactly, is so pointed in the teacher’s words, but something in there makes Patton’s blood boil. The worst he’d ever done was give Than a much deserved nosebleed, and that’s hardly any of the teacher’s business to share in front of the whole class. As if they didn’t already know, didn’t already spread rumors to make him sound even worse, like he planned the attack instead of losing his grip on pacifism. At this rate, someone might well end up with a pencil stuck through their arm. Maybe a pen, just to spice things up from last time—which, in Patton’s defense, was an accident. It wasn’t his fault Than set his arm on Virgil’s homework after being asked repeatedly to stop. And besides, Than’s arm wasn’t the only casualty that day—Patton lost a perfectly good pencil.

    At the teacher’s withering glare, Patton lets his eyes fall to his paper, covered in unintelligible doodles and half-hearted notes. Might as well pretend to pay attention now, if only to perfect his acting for when he’ll have to feign innocence at home. No time like the present to start coming up with an alibi. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Patton was forced to be dishonest, anyway. He doesn’t necessarily want to hurt anyone, but if the good of the many outweighs the good of himself, of course he’s going to pursue the former.

    By the time Patton reminds himself that yes, little white lies are okay in a few choice circumstances, the desks around him are empty, save for the kid asleep in the back corner. The teacher comes to a halt in front of Patton, an incessant clicking sound coming from beyond the desk. As the teacher begins to once more reprimand Patton for not paying attention, the clicking solidifies into the recognizable sound of a pen being shuttered and reopened far more rapidly than necessary.

    “Thyrrdyn—” click “—you—” click “—need—” click “—to learn—” click “—to pay—” click “—attention!” Click click click. “I’m going to have to write you up if this continues.”

    “Oh, no, there’s really no need for that,” Patton says, eyes trained on the infernal clicking pen. “Just an off day, you know?”

    Click click. “It better be. Go on to your next class, but one” click “—last thing.” Click click click. “You’re aiming to switch into Rehabilitate, yes?” Click click.

    “Yeah, but how did you—”

   “Not—” click “—important. What is important is that I have a very close connection to the TryMyts advisors, including Myjhyrr Ryhanthyrri. It would be a shame if he were to find out about your poor aptitude for a place in the Rehabilitate Trytsu.” Click click click click.

   “There’s really no need for that,” Patton repeats, wincing at his lack of more extensive protests. “I’ll do better, I swear, I just need to get the ball rolling on this year. Diving headfirst back into school and all, yeah?”

   With a heavy sigh, the teacher’s eyes fly to the ceiling. The conversation needs to end soon, if Patton is to get to his next class on time, and they both know it. By some miracle, the clicking stops. His head hurts. “Look, Thyrrdyn, I just need you to pull your act together, alright? I’ve heard great things about you from other teachers, past violence excluded, and ideally I’d hoped you would keep it up for this final year. I don’t want to have to be the one to hold you back and make you redo your TryMyts, but I will, if that’s what it takes. Get it?”

   “Yep.” Patton is already sidling toward the door halfway through the teacher’s hypocritical lecture, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “I will absolutely work on that in—whoops, sorry!” He dodges a student shoving their way into the room, half-wishing he could take back the apology when he realizes it’s just Than. No, nope, none of that, clean record in front of this teacher from here on out. Patton is nice and friendly and pacifistic and will act accordingly.

   “Don’t disappoint me, Thyrrdyn.” The teacher sighs as Patton darts into the hall, out of earshot before the ominous warning can reach him.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 3 / Masterpost / ao3

[imalwaysaslutforthevoid]

I was hanging out with some friends recently and we had gotten on the topic of the supernatural. If anyone believed in it or had any first hand experiences. When it got around to my turn I confessed that yes I actually believed and yes I had a few experiences. I told them about the boring ones that it seems like everyone has, a weird dream that comes true, a sudden hunch that also comes true, going to an abandoned building and hearing a voice or seeing something move. I didn’t tell them about the event that really makes me believe. It’s not something I enjoy talking about, my last therapist thought it was a hallucination brought on by stress, and most people don’t believe it anyway. It’s not one of those fun “I was chased by a monster”, or became cursed stories that do well online either. By all accounts it’s a pretty boring story. I still can’t seem to forget it or put it far enough behind me though. Anyway here’s what happened (disclaimer: this happened years ago and I don’t remember any names).

 It happened during the summer at a boy scout campout like 9 or 10 years ago. Our troop and another were going to be sharing the location for the week. We were pretty excited because another troop was an opportunity to make some new friends and have a lot more fun than what we were used to. I remember we arrived at the campsite a few hours before the other troop, and we got to setting up our tents, digging a fire pit, and setting up an “axe circle” to safely chop firewood in. Standard scout shit. Anyway we finish up and are all hot and sweaty and ready to go for a swim, there’s always a lake or stream or something to swim in. Over half of us go change and head to the water, as usual the lake is slimy as hell but it still beats staying in the sun. After about an hour, we get word that the other troop has arrived. With that piece of news most of us who were in the lake got out to meet up with the other troop and help them set up camp, you know scout shit. I stayed behind with a few others in the lake, the trudge back didn’t seem that appealing when the new troop was just gonna head over here when they were done anyway. While out practicing my doggy paddle a loud crack sounded from the other side of the lake. I was lucky enough to turn my head in time to see two huge trees collapse unto the forest floor. After that I felt a kind of draw to go check out the trees. After all there weren’t supposed to be any loggers out here, and those didn’t look like the kinds of trees to just collapse. Now I'm a strong swimmer, certainly enough to swim over to the other side of the lake. But no one else wanted to go over there, and the golden rule of the scouts is “never go alone”. I certainly didn’t want to break it with witnesses around, and get lectured for going off on my own again. The commotion in the woods was left for another time pretty quickly, and completely forgotten by the time the other troop showed up to swim. We introduced ourselves, and got right to goofing off. But the woods on the other side of the lake still beckoned and I was still curious as to what felled those trees. I figured I had a week to figure out and got on with the day. 

Now to help set the scene and flesh young me out a bit more let me tell you that I was not popular in my troop or even liked that much. I was and still am a weird, gay (closeted at the time), nerd. I was not interested in being a scout near as much as my father was invested in me being one, and pretty much everyone could tell. But they generally left me to my own devices and I theirs. I did have one actual friend in the troop but even then I still much preferred doing my own thing. Which I hope explains why young me leapt at the opportunity to go off on his own to explore a strange occurrence with no thought as to how this could be a bad thing. I customarily asked my friend if he wanted to accompany me. To which he said “no, not really”. I expected as much and told him not to snitch to which he replied “sure”. And that was that. At about 1pm I began my hike to the other side of the lake. There’s not much to say about the hike there, it was a thin trail winding through this densely wooded area, the sun shone through the canopy leaving a vibrant spotted path towards the other side of the lake and the answer to my question. I made good time, it was only about 45 minutes when I could see the shore where we had been swimming yesterday, perks of having long legs. Now I just had to find the trees. This proved to be a pretty easy task, two 60ft tall oaks don’t fall gracefully it turns out. Making my way to the stumps and picking up a tick or two on the way. I realized that this part of the woods was totally silent. No birds, no squirrels, no cicadas, not even the buzz of a mosquito. Despite being out in the open I suddenly felt very claustrophobic. But I was here on a mission and I could have my panic attack later. I went down to the stumps of these once great trees and saw nothing. The trees hadn’t rotted away, nor was there any sign of a chain saw. It really looked as though the trees had just broken and fallen over. My curiosity sated, I began to make my way back to camp. The silence persisted until I was out of eyeshot of the fallen trees. The return of the forest ambiance hit me like a sack of bricks, never in my life had I been so happy to hear a cricket chirp. As overjoyed as I was though I couldn't help but feel a pit in my stomach. What was causing the animals to avoid that stretch of forest? And more importantly could I find it? A new mission occupying my mind I returned to the campsite hoping I hadn’t been gone long enough to rouse anyone's suspicions. I made sure to head over to the back of the out house, taking precautions to make sure nobody was curious as to why I alone was returning to camp. As it turned out I had no reason to be so paranoid. No one who cared was at the campsite anyway. I returned to my friend and gave him a run down of what I had discovered. He didn’t really care all that much and instead asked if I wanted to have a Pokémon battle... I did.

Day three began like the others, up at dawn, helping to start the fire and then cooking breakfast, saying prayer, then eating and washing out your mess kit, and then going through the day's itinerary. Honestly this alone was exhausting enough to make me want to quit scouts. After the morning routine I began planning out my exploration. I'd be going further than yesterday. It would probably be a good idea to take an additional bottle of water, and a granola bar. After that I made my way out once again. Once again and all of a sudden I was enveloped in silence. This was wrong though “I still wasn’t at the trees, I still had a while before it was like this” i told myself. Desperate for answers I moved forward driven on by nothing but a deep curiosity. Walking along the trail I made my way back to the fallen trees. It seemed that they were much closer than i remembered because it felt like i was back in no time at all. The forest remained utterly still the only sound breaking the otherwise oppressive quiet was that of my footsteps breaking the twigs beneath my feet. As I continued on I began to notice a few strange plants. They were white as paper and scattered sparsely throughout the underbrush. I had read recently about albinism in redwoods, and just thought this was a similar phenomenon. Eager to share my discovery, I picked one of the plants and placed it in my bag. I had discovered something extraordinary but I still felt the need to go forward, the silence all but forgotten. I continued on for what felt like 30 minutes before I saw a deer. Standing alone on the trail it’s body was positioned as though it was just crossing the path but it’s head was turned away from me like something further down the trail was holding its full attention. Stunned by my luck I waited patiently for it to figure out I was there and be on its way. After a minute of waiting I noticed that the dear hadn’t continued on its way or even moved, it stood perfectly still more like a statue than any animal. Thoroughly creeped out still I felt compelled to go forward and see what was wrong with the poor thing. Even as i got within range to touch the doe she didn’t move. I maneuvered around to see her face. Her eyes looked almost cloudy but clear enough that she should still be able to see me, still she didn’t move. I was worried that she had died standing up until I saw her blink. I knew the moment i happened upon this dear that i needed to head back, but i no longer felt that i had control of myself. Whatever lay ahead wanted to be seen, wanted me to see it. The white plants grew in number as I continued further down the path. The further I went the more animals I saw paralyzed to the spot, looking forward transfixed to whatever was ahead. They were no longer my concern. The only thought in my head was the urge to go further. After a while I noticed I had exited the woods and now stood in a small meadow. Those white plants were more numerous here. And interspersed throughout were all sorts of animals standing stock still looking to the center of the meadow where a pile of dirt lay. I could feel the draw stronger than ever and I began to move forward once again towards whatever lie buried there. Under my foot I felt a light crunch. It was different from the sound of a twig, different enough to make me look down and see that the ground was littered with bones. The realization that I was standing in a mass grave was enough to break whatever spell that thing had put me under and I ran from the meadow as fast as I could. I’m not a very fit person but that didn’t matter now my body was fleeing and nothing short of getting shot would stop me from running away from that place. Even after I was beyond the deer and the white plants and could hear the birds sing again my blood still ran cold in my veins. I vomited right there, the exhaustion catching up to me. It was just then I realized that it was evening. It hadn’t felt like I was gone more than two hours but apparently I was gone more than six. My return to camp was met with a lecture, and a scolding, apparently they were about to start a search for me. I didn’t care, I had far too much on my mind at the moment. I tried to sleep that night, but it wasn’t until exhaustion took me that I managed.

I woke up late and more than a bit manic the next day. As terrified as i was of that place i still needed to know what was there. I fully understood that this was assuredly whatever evil influence that drove me to visit that meadow. But it didn’t change my need for closure. After pestering my friend the whole morning, almost on the verge of a breakdown, about how I needed him to come with me. He finally relented, I hadn’t told him what was waiting for us, he was better off not knowing. In the end I think it was the edge in my voice that had convinced him. We began our hike a bit after lunch out of the view of any scout leader who no doubt wanted me stationary for the day. It was my third time out here now, and still the sudden quiet sent a shiver down my spine. Now with my current understanding it stood out as all the more unnatural, even the air was still. It felt more akin to taking your first step into a crypt than it did a walk in the woods. My friend was immediately on edge, he wanted us to go back. “Something just feels wrong,” he said “let’s go back before we get in trouble”. But I wouldn’t be deterred, I had to show someone else. Not even so they’d believe me, more so I’d believe myself. After I forced him to continue with me. I noticed small discrepancies with the day before. The white plants were all gone, and the deer wasn’t there anymore. I no longer felt the drive to continue on that wasn’t my own. I was becoming desperate. I know that I had experienced something here, where was it all? where had it all gone? I was soon to get my answer, when we finally cleared the woods and stumbled into that meadow. It was still strewn with bones and the odd animal corpse. But in the center where that pile of dirt once lay there was now a shallow pit. Only about three feet deep, and totally empty. My friend was desperate to leave this was already gruesome enough without the added effects. Numb, I agreed. We made our way back. It took us two and a half hours, how had I spent well over six on that trail. Desperate for any proof that what I experienced was real I went rummaging through my bag looking for the white plant I had pulled up. It had shriveled and died, now as sad and brown as any dead plant on the forest floor. I once again felt a wave of exhaustion rock my body. I slept till dinner. When i woke up it was to bad news, apparently one of the scouts from the other troop had gone missing. And we were going to search for him. I felt a weight in my stomach drop. I had no proof, as far as I knew my friend and I were the only ones who knew about the meadow and I was the only one who knew the whole truth. But if it could latch onto me like it did, who’s to say it couldn’t latch on to someone else. It was dark and we were all exhausted by the time the search was called off, these woods ran for miles. And we weren’t trained or prepared for a manhunt. The next day the scout leaders were talking to some park rangers about the missing kid. The rangers wanted to know if we had any information about where he could’ve gone or what he was doing before he went missing. My friend gave me a look, but I stayed quiet, I had a feeling deep in my gut that whatever it was that kid had dug up it was better off not being found. After that we packed up and headed home early. I don’t know if that kid was ever found. I don't know where his troop is from to find out, but I don’t really want to know either. Whatever happened on that campout I'm fine leaving as a loose end.

[infinitelyblue]

earthy when he sings.

words: 6.7k.

etr: 22 min.

cw: none.

His voice isn’t clear and smooth when he sings, like the voices on the radio, the meticulously-fashioned purity of a bell tone. It wavers, at times, uncertain and insecure against guitar strings that buzz occasionally under misplaced fingers. There are notes overreached, others gone flat, and others still that fall but a hair’s breadth shy of their intended frequencies.

Imperfections, all of them, only expected of an amateur musician.

But despite the negative connotations of the word, she finds that imperfect gives his voice, his music, a character lacking in its bell-tone counterparts. Imperfect colors his voice earthy when he sings, textured, like gravel and a sprinkle of his soul crunching beneath her bare feet.

Where the stars stretch for their home in the heavens, whetted to nigh-perfection, he’s right down here, in the sand and the gravel, on the ground. Here, with her.

-

He as a whole, similarly, falls short of that looming pinnacle called masculine perfection. His forehead is large (very large), his eyes set ever so slightly wide in their sockets, only just barely; his eyebrows, bushy and unkempt, angle somewhat downward, almost as if in perpetual disappointment or vague fright. And he’s rather thin, too—all lanky arms and legs and gangling height—with a soft jawline and soft features. He’s no Chris Evans, to be certain, or Henry Cavill, or any of those sculpted men marketed as immaculate deities.

But ah, he’s so very lovely.

His features are gentler, yes, than the standards expected (how ludicrous, anyway) of his sex—but elegantly so. Eyes shaped like rounded almonds, coated in dark chocolate; a strong nose peaked to a graceful pointe; a plush, supple lower lip, crowned with a Cupid’s bow crafted by God Himself.

(How soft, she wonders—how warm—would his mouth be, pressed feverishly to her own.)

There is an awkward grace, too, to the rest of him—to his somewhat slight frame, his willowy limbs, his towering height. Something about his Adam’s apple, the way it casts a soft, rounded shadow against the column of his throat, makes her gut twinge and her heart flutter. Something about the way his hair flops against his forehead—earthy, free, textured like his voice. Something about the way his long, elegant fingers twist the cap off of the vodka bottle.

(Long, slender, graceful. Perfect to entangle with her own fingers. Perfect to warm her hands against the cold mist of a cruel and heartless world, blissfully numb to her pain.)

When those lovely lips part into a winsome smile, chiseling dimples deep into his cheeks, she realizes in full that she has fallen in love.

-

The prickly pear that’s been sitting obstinately in the hollow of her chest rises to stick to the base of her tongue as she takes a single, fateful step forward.

“Hello,” he says pleasantly (mechanically—he’s done this a thousand times before, it’s clear). He doesn’t look up immediately, features concealed by a fringe of artfully-disheveled, earth-toned hair as he fiddles with a button on his shirt. His voice is tight, accent thick and weary on his tongue. He’s exhausted, she can tell.

“Hi,” she replies, not allowing herself even the liberty of a steadying breath before she speaks. Her tone is stable, at least—disinterested, almost. It’s a façade, one that grates against the truth, the way her heart pounds ruthlessly against her breast.

In the short pause that follows, an eon’s worth of imagination tracks across her brain as she envisions how the next several seconds will transpire. What will his reaction be when he looks up, she thinks. Revulsion? Disinterest? Or, nothing at all—an aching emptiness that stings more than hatred itself?

He looks up, barely before her mind can begin running another scenario. Deep ganache meets muddy green, and the world ceases to spin around her. Around them.

She’s paralyzed, drowning in his gaze. Her breath drops from beneath her as she watches his lips part, his long lashes flutter in a half-blink. His eyes, she’s convinced, burn straight through her very soul.

Fuck, she thinks, hardly for the first time (and certainly not the last). The thought echoes hollow in a mind that’s gone suddenly blank. He’s gorgeous.

Whatever spell has bewitched them both passes in an instant, just as abruptly as it had been cast. He blinks, and all at once, sensation comes rushing back to her consciousness as he breaks away from her gaze. “Sorry,” he says crisply, dropping his eyes to the pen he’s resumed twirling between elegant fingers.

Her eyes latch onto his Adam’s apple as it bobs in a nervous swallow. “What?” she says, dumbly. Very dumbly. What an intelligent response.

When he looks back up, his cheeks are flushed a soft rose. The first shadows of his dimples appear as a shy smile dawns on his lips.

“You just...sorry, you’re just...really beautiful.”

-

She enjoys watching him, much in the same respect that she enjoys his voice. Dashing, magnetic good looks aside, he’s simply a delightful person to observe—charismatic and quirky, at times, cool and polished at others.

She watches him, from afar, as he frolics about with his friends, has a laugh with his good mates, all kept close at arm’s length. Watches him smooth unruly locks to one side, revealing one eye, glinting with subdued mirth, and shadowing the other. Watches him toss a tired, carefree smile in the others’ direction, as they vie in a reasonably elegant cacophony for his affections.

Because, of course, her heart is hardly the only one to be captured by his alluring persona (and he’s so lovely, how could it possibly be the only one?). He’s constantly flocked by people, waiting on his right hand and on his left, flanking him back and front. Hoping, each and every one, that perhaps they will be the one he truly allows to attach—the one, the only one, he truly allows to burrow into his soul.

For all his soft words and soft eyes and gentle smiles, it’s an extraordinarily high wall to scale. None of them make the cut; sometimes, she wonders if any ever will. But still, they stay, wined and dined by the flirtatious mirage he offers of a genuine connection. That’s the only reason they stay, in fact. Otherwise, he would have found himself abandoned long ago.

(Perhaps, she thinks, she can be the one to crack his code.)

-

Given where she stands in his social circle—forever stranded at the periphery, behind an invisible but hopelessly insurmountable barrier—she finds, strangely, that she knows him better than most. Better than any of the others at her level, naturally. But better, too, than those who reside further inward, towards the core of his sprawling social system.

There are the obvious things to know, of course, the scraps of history and personality he freely tosses to the winds—his favorite movie, for example (A Silent Voice), or his hometown (Sheffield), or his age and birthdate (23, 5 September 1997). Those who pine for him most ardently lap them up as if dying of thirst, those few and precious details, fitting them together as they would puzzle pieces and hoping—praying—that they will one day form the key to his looming walls.

They are blissfully blind to the futility of their efforts, to the reality that those meticulously-curated details merely skim the surface of deeper, and perhaps darker, waters. Waters whose depths seem visible in full only to her, shadowed in plain sight from the prying eyes of the world.

But perhaps that is simply in her essence—to see, as the others do, and to understand as they do not. Perhaps it is simply in her nature to notice how his battery dies in public, after a point, when he’s wearied of the shallow company his fellow humans offer. His smile always stretches drawn and plastic when it does, and his voice clips to an unforgiving point, words cutting where they should not.

Perhaps it is simply in her nature to notice the distinct pain of a broken family bleeding from his voice, dripping from his eyes—one that’s been spliced and spliced again, but even so remains tattered and frayed. (It’s not so much the sort of pain to be promptly identified as it is the type to be dug up by the root. The type she likens most to a decaying tuber, wedged securely in a rotting wound.)

Perhaps it is simply in her nature to notice, wandering slightly too far into those guarded doe eyes, the jagged splinters of a shattered man, forever denied by his gender the opportunity to take stock of what he’s lost. To acknowledge the damage. To heal.

(Perhaps it is simply in her nature to feel what the others cannot, and what he is not allowed to. To rage in his rage, to laugh in his joy. To cry his tears. To feel his pain.)

-

They’ve never stood quite so close before—so close that the fabric of their trench coats brushes with shallow breaths, so close that she can make out the rough silhouette of a healing razor burn in the shadows on his neck. Close enough that she can smell the edge of his scent against the thick aroma of water in the air.

Even under the shroud of darkness, he’s ethereal, almost—the lights of London life dancing across his features with the shadows of night, figure framed by evening raindrops that flash coppery under the streetlight. He’s so indescribably lovely, without trying at all, that she wonders—even as her heart stutters pathetically in her chest, watching those luscious lips part and those dark lashes flutter in a not-quite-blink—if he’s even real at all.

He bends down, just slightly, face angled in a way it hadn’t been before. An intoxicating cocktail of nerves and hot anticipation rushes to her head like steam, clouding her senses and muffling the world around them. The thin layer of confusion lingering along the top falls away suddenly, and though he doesn’t speak, she understands.

She rises to her tiptoes to meet him halfway, fingers curling into soft, dark locks beneath his beanie, and molds her mouth to his.

A firecracker of sensation erupts across her face at the contact, sparking and popping with every fraction of a movement their lips make against each other. His are everything that she imagined them to be, soft and warm and distantly sweet. He tastes like bourbon and Britain and something else for which she has no words, something she can only describe as uniquely him.

Unexpected tears spring to her eyes then, riding a sudden swell of overwhelming emotion, as he gently works her top lip between his, slow and careful and sweet as if it is his most treasured possession—as if she is his most treasured possession. She feels suddenly drunk on his touch, on the heat that shudders through her as he slides his free hand, the one not suspending the umbrella above them, around to her back, rolling her deeper into him.

In the moment that he sighs into her, gripping her tight and true as she feathers and pulls at that lovely lower lip, she wishes for nothing more than to collapse into him entirely, saturating her senses with him until that’s all there is left to feel of this miserable world.

-

Of those fortunate enough to be members of his elite, his close-cropped inner circle, only a mere few are women. None of them are particularly remarkable to her—except for Karin.

She doesn’t know much about Karin at all (not that there’s much to know, with how generally dull and saltless she is), just that she’s a year or so his junior and that her name isn’t actually Karin. It’s something Dutch, and far too complicated to bother expending the energy to remember. Karin is easier, in part because the one Dutch person she’s met before had been named Karin, and in part because it seems to better suit her.

Karin is madly in love with him, it’s clear—hopelessly infatuated with his voice and his face and his eyes, wholly enamored with even the worst of his flaws. It’s agonizingly obvious, impossible to miss, in everything that she does when they’re together—in the crop top and tight jeans, the layers of makeup, her immaculately faux-blonde beach waves. The lingering gaze and soft smiles, the gentle (and often unnecessary) touches, the quiet giggles that bubble from her lips when any fraction of his attention brushes across her.

In the truest, most visceral sense of the word, it’s pathetic to watch. She’s pathetic to watch.

Perhaps she should feel some semblance of a detached pity, at least, for Karin, her heart lodged firmly in the grip of an indifferent hand. For all his cavalier disinterest in her efforts, he seems to derive an impish pleasure from toying with her heartstrings, weaving and stretching them between his fingers with a practiced dexterity that leaves her a trembling mess in his palm.

It’s an indisputably skilled act, one so artfully convincing that there are times when she wonders if perhaps he is in love with Karin after all. But though he teases the charade to its very brink, he always pulls away before the finish—and though his fingers remain entangled in her yarn, he never pulls her with him, never closer. Only to the edge of an arm’s length, and never further.

Perhaps she should be angry with him, disgusted that he seems to delight in a pastime some might describe as plain cruel. And she should sympathize with Karin, too, sharing with her the pain of an unrequited love and a man who can’t bring himself to care in the slightest. Is that not the human experience, after all? Is that not the life of a woman?

She cannot bring herself to feel bad for Karin (at the expense of an aching conscience), and she cannot bring herself to fault him for how he treats her. She cannot help but to think that in a way, perhaps Karin deserves it. It’s the least karma can trade, after all, for the innate privilege that is irrevocably tied to her flawless Aryan features, and the effortless success that comes with it. And besides, maybe if she weren’t so miserably and blatantly desperate for his affections…

(Perhaps needless to say, she is not incredibly fond of Karin.)

-

It’s a perfect twilight, cloudless and cool after another long and torturous day spent baking beneath the desert sun. Stars are beginning to dot a flawless canvas of ombré blues, interrupted only by the platinum sliver of a waxing crescent that’s sinking steadily to meet the edge of an arid and rocky mountain behind him, the one that the restaurant’s been built into.

He’s quite lovely in the candlelight, face cast from below in a warm glow that flickers in the same evening breeze that tousles his windswept locks (which he’s recently had cropped into a more conservative cut). Though he’s sitting right across from her, his mind is elsewhere, gaze lost to the side, down the barren, sun-scorched slope and out in the distant lights sprawled across the valley below. It’s a good look on him, she thinks—the gentle, faraway expression of unarticulated musings.

The tranquility of his trance is broken only by the waitress’ (no, waiter’s) wordless arrival, whisking away the empty bread basket and replacing it with a fresh one before moving to the next table. He draws his eyes from the city then, lifting his glass to take an effortlessly graceful sip of pinot noir, and turns to link his gaze with hers.

Her heart skips a beat, catches in her windpipe at the contact with shadowed ganache, twinkling with reflections of the candle’s flame. The way she mentally traces the familiar path she’s carved across his features is reflexive, habitual—warm and comforting, in a peculiarly bittersweet sense, like a distant home.

There is something in the moment that her eyes connect with his again—something in the shared ease of the silence between them, the hushed chatter of the other patrons on the patio, and the din of the other diners inside. Something about the quiet strains of one of Saltwater’s newest releases, floating away from mounted speakers into the cool breath of the descending night. Just...something.

The weight of an old and weary tension she’s never realized she’s been carrying bleeds from her shoulders as she slips her hand across the table and into his. Dark eyes crinkle, cheeks dimpling with a smile so impossibly warm and soft that a pang of sudden and overwhelming emotion begins to prick at the corners of her eyes.

She thinks, for the first time in her recoverable memory, that maybe she’ll be okay after all.

-

He’s looking directly at her now, gaze boring dark and unyielding through the glass and the layers and the sadness—straight into her eyes and then further still, deep into the shadowed crannies of her soul.

It isn’t a prying sort of gaze, by any means, the sort that chips relentlessly at her walls, seeking structural imperfections and tender scars to exploit, to leverage. But there is something unmistakably wild to his eyes, an unhinged and clawing abandon that escapes occasionally to stretch his irresistible smile wide and sharp, to infect his mannerisms, the stories he tells, with the uncanny essence of a madman.

The others seem to quite enjoy it, that briny twist of mild insanity—it is only an act, after all, a bit he plays purely for the sake of their entertainment. (Or, so the story goes, at least.) But it is a part played far too well, far too convincingly, to persuade her that there is no truth to be found in that persona.

She thinks she understands. He has been blessed, too, with the curse that afflicts her: the terrible ability, the beautiful power, to feel what the world feels—the agony and the rage, the laughter and the tears, and everything in between. She likens it to incessantly experiencing the sensation of drowning, gasping for oxygen in a deluge of such magnitude that there are times when she cannot differentiate her own suffering from anyone else’s.

Perhaps he does not recognize, yet, the horrible blessing that he has been bestowed. Perhaps that is why the fabric of his sanity frays a bit at the edges, worn in threadbare patches. Perhaps that is why there are days when he truly seems mere steps from the edge of insane.

She lifts her chin, ignoring the chill that rolls down her spine, pinned beneath his eyes (those eyes that see, and understand), and meets his gaze head on.

(If only she could get close enough, perhaps she could find a way to help him.)

-

The interstate dips gently into the valley before them, a dull gleam beneath the sun that stretches straight before curling away into distant mountains. Their destination lies a mere hour from here, sprawled eighty miles ahead along the coastline. If they make good time, perhaps they will reach the hotel before sunset.

He’s awake now; he had been dozing before, head lolling against the window in spotty sleep. (Not that she can fault him—this part of the desert, barren and lonely and largely featureless, does not provide much in the way of visual stimulation.) She peels her eyes from the road to risk a glance at him upon hearing his yawn, tracing his profile with her gaze. Committing it to memory, as if there’s any chance she could ever forget.

He looks over to her, sunlight glancing across his iris and melting chocolate into warm gingerbread-caramel. Dimples pit his cheeks as his lips curve upwards into a placid smile, and she stops, mind stalling stubbornly on the image, crystallizing it in time and tucking it away to be seared into her memory, an indelible and beautiful scar.

Her heart stumbles over a beat when he reaches up, taking her by the chin and turning her head to face the highway. “Eyes on the road,” he says, eyes light, tone jovial. “I didn’t come all this way to die in a car accident because you can’t focus on the road.”

His touch lingers, callused at the tips in the way only a string player’s can be, and she feels herself smile.

-

He’s all warm colors, she realizes, watching him in the orange-golds of the sinking sun—all golden skin and frizzed honey-brown highlights, warm dark eyes and warm dark hair. Warm lips, warm hands, a warm smile.

He’s beautiful.

His fingers twitch, entwined in her grasp, as another wave rolls in with the tide, buffeting their ankles with salt water and seaweed. He’s lost at sea, looking into the distant sunset with that expression that settles to shroud his features when he is completely and utterly at ease, when he makes no effort to be or do or act anything other than himself. It’s a deeply sad sort of look, like old wounds that ache in the winter, contemplative of secret things and secret scars.

She looks out, chasing his gaze across the vast waters and into the sun, which hangs old and dim over the horizon. Something in her chest pulls away with its gravity, with the receding wave, and a strange longing descends upon her to walk into the sea with him and forever disappear into that great blue mystery—lost to the depths, never to be seen or heard from again.

(It would feel closer to home, at least, than she ever has here.)

He squeezes her hand then, reeling her back to shore from the hiraeth and the ocean. He’s studying her when she turns to take him in again—loose, fluffy curls, the barest shadow of facial hair, the slightest upward curve of a gentle smile on his lips that grows when she angles herself towards him, rising to her tiptoes and tilting her face upwards in a silent plea.

He makes no sound as he obliges, excepting an amused huff, and releases her hand to cup her jaw, scooping her upward to capture her lips with his. It’s a chaste kiss, warm and dizzyingly tender, smooth and soft like the sand further up the beach, away from the water. Gentle like his touch, like the way he brings his other hand up, buries it in her hair.

She pushes further into him, deep for the briefest of moments, before breaking away to stare into his eyes, burning hotter shades in the sun’s dying reds, weeping blue with that eternal sadness. Her bones ache in her chest, with love, and with that bane of a gift she has been bestowed—with the ability to perceive that pain, and to feel it as her own.

His hair tickles her face when she leans in again, and his laugh, as she peppers fluttery butterfly kisses along his cheekbone, tickles her soul.

-

He lies still with her for the rest of the hour, arm and leg draped across her, and drifts to and fro from a half-sleep as she strokes her fingers through his wild locks. For a short while the room remains quiet and tranquil, save the intermittent hums and clicks of the air conditioner and his soft snores, and the muted, rolling roar of the ocean outside. It’s nearly enough to lull her, too, into a gentle sleep, but her mind races with thoughts of breakfast in the lobby downstairs and the day’s plans to follow, splintering away on unpredictable sidequests in between.

The daylight leaking around the curtains’ edges, tinged pale blue by the western sky, is strong and bright when he stirs at last, roused by the muffled commotion next door of their neighbors’ preparations for the day. His arm flexes to curl around her in some hybrid of a hug and a stretch, and when she shifts her gaze to rest on his features, she finds that he’s watching her sleepily with those almond doe eyes, dark like the earth, soft and sad.

Time stretches rubbery in the moment that they simply remain like that—looking, but allowing the silence to hang, trading a hundred thousand thoughts and feelings, unspoken words that refuse to coalesce into sentences. He blinks, slow and gentle, when she brings her hand forward from earthy waves at the nape of his neck, drawing it in a soft stroke along the coarse stubble on his jawline. The corners of his mouth pull upward, a faint smile that just barely meets his eyes.

Something rises from the pit of her spirit to settle in her windpipe, thick and heavy, that spurs her forward, pressing a kiss to his forehead that is light only in delivery, laden with emotion too obscure, too fathomless, to be expressed in any other way she can conceive.

He draws in a breath through his nose, holding her close to rest the tips of their noses together even after she’s pulled away. Against the edge of her shoulder blade, she can feel his fingers brush her skin, tracing an aimless pattern back and forth, back and forth. “Morning,” he mumbles, voice still draped in sleep. It’s reminiscent of old leather and warm musk, deep and cracked at the edges. Deep in her gut, she feels a nerve thrum upon registering the sound.

She leans in to plant a messy kiss on his top lip, suppressing the giggle that wells up when he smiles into it. “Morning,” she whispers back.

-

“Are you taking requests?”

“Sorry?” His brow is creased in evident confusion when he looks over to her from his elegant fingers, messing about on the fretboard. The sky behind him, a faded turquoise on the horizon through the inky silhouettes of towering conifers, looks cool and distant in contrast to the warm glow of flames on his face.

She smiles cheekily, edging closer to the campfire against a suddenly chilled breeze that rolls from looming granite cliffs. “Are you taking requests?” she repeats, blinking at him coyly. She gestures to his guitar, a well-loved Simon & Patrick Luthier that, he has emphasized on multiple separate occasions, he cherishes over his own life. “Song requests, I mean.”

“Ah.” The grin that he tosses to her in return is roguishly lopsided, pulling further into his right cheek than his left. His eyes sparkle in the dim firelight with a twinkle so mischievously boyish that it’s a genuine effort to resist collapsing pathetically into a giggly heap at his feet. Damn him.

“No,” he says, after a moment’s faux consideration. “No, I don’t think I will.”

She purses her lips in a melodramatically exaggerated pout.

His smile softens, evening into something gentler, and he moves to begin experimenting with the frequency of the D string’s tuning, toying with it by practiced ear. “What do you want me to play?” he asks, tone warm and affectionate, comforting like his guitar’s voice. Something sweet and light blooms in her chest, like a daisy on a sunny spring afternoon.

“Hm,” she hums softly, considering. In the moment, she doesn’t have a particular preference, she supposes—she simply fancies the thought of indulging herself in those mellow, imperfect tones, sitting by the campfire and losing herself to him again and again and again. It would be nice to hear one of his original songs again, perhaps. Or, maybe…

“‘Underground,’” she decides aloud, drawing her eyes back to him from where they had wandered to the neighboring campfire, surrounded by a rowdy throng of college students.

“‘Underground’?” he echoes, staring absently into the night’s shadow and brushing his fingers lightly across a chord—testing a key, she presumes. There is a knowing smile in his eyes when he looks back to her, an airy laugh on his lips when he asks, “‘Underground’ by Cody Fry?”

“Yes,” she affirms, a giggle she cannot successfully quell bubbling into her voice. This is not the first time she has requested this song of him, and they both know it will certainly not be the last. “Please.”

For a short moment he remains silent, plucking at his strings in light thought, and then he shifts, settling the guitar more comfortably against himself. “I gotchu bae,” he says, in a comically terrible mockery of an American accent, and then he begins, voice shifting to texture effortlessly into those flawed earth-tones, that grounding song. A pleasant chill catches in her ribcage as the sound swells to fill her ears, mingling with the crackle of flames, and the mysterious rustle of the forest, and the lazy chirping of crickets.

“I woke up underground

Not a light, not a sound

Threw my voice into the dark

But the dark had no remark

Just repeated what I said…”

-

She buries her face into his chest, inhaling the scents that have soaked into his light sweater—a bit of sweat, a sheer spot of cologne, a wave of him. It’s a vaguely intoxicating combination, one she knows she will never tire of, and peculiarly bittersweet, as if the sadness in his eyes has spread over the years to saturate his very pores.

Or, perhaps it only seems that way now that it’s being torn from her grasp.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she mumbles into his sweater, fingers curling into the fabric around his back. It’s a golden sort of color, like the sun warming them through the windows, hanging low over the western horizon.

He hums, nose buried in her hair, a rumbling vibration in his chest that she can’t hear over the roar of jet engines and airport traffic. He squeezes her tight, just for a moment, and then he’s pulling away, bringing up one hand to rest on her cheek.

In the golden hour’s utopian glow, he suddenly looks more breathtaking, impossibly, than he ever has before—ethereal, as if he never completely belonged to the Earth to begin with. Those brown eyes, that warm skin; that perfect nose, those perfect lips; that carefree, frizzy fringe of browns and caramels and honey-golds.

Her heart, lodged obstinately in the hollow of her throat, wrings pitifully.

“Well, no need to be so dramatic about it,” he quips, caressing his thumb over her cheek in sweeping strokes. He laughs lightly, a deceptively high-pitched giggle so contagious that she finds it impossible to resist the pull of a smile on her lips.

“I’m not being dramatic,” she argues, without heat. On impulse, she reaches up to grip his hand, tilting her face to place a gentle kiss against his palm. His demeanor softens visibly at the gesture. “I just...I don’t want you to leave. I’m gonna miss you so bad—”

He pulls his hand away suddenly, and hers with it, pressing his lips against her wrist as she instinctively reacts to cup his jaw, faintly bristled with day-old stubble. “I’m gonna miss you too,” he says softly, against her skin. Her heart, caged in her windpipe, leaps at the sensation. “But this isn’t the end, right? We’ll see each other again.”

-

She writes to him, fingers slaving over keys until the tendons in her wrists ache, eyes poring over the spidery black of virtual ink against the cottony white of virtual paper until they burn worn and weary in their sockets.

She writes to him about little nothings, the odds and ends that make her days unique in their mundanity. She tells him about her next-door neighbor’s new husband, how he reminds her a bit of him, or the weather as of late, or the Netflix series she had binge-watched the night prior at the expense of assignments due the following morning. Simple things, requiring little investment, that fill the gaps in life, for all their lack of any appreciable impact.

She writes to him, too, about the deeper things, the things that fall closer to the center. Roughly 5000 words, one golden, hazy morning, on the futility of cliques, how deleterious they are for all their vanity; another 500, a couple of afternoons later, on her most recent preceding crush, how he hadn’t been aware of her existence for half a year, and shunned her when he had. An entire essay, quite possibly the longest she’s ever written, on divorce, and men, and that tragically magical thing they call love.

And sometimes, when her walls wear thin and patchy under the fatigue of her own emotion, she writes about him. She writes about his earth-tones, how they draw her in, reflecting in dark hair and golden skin and sad, sad almond doe eyes. Writes about his elegant fingers, his elegant features, the whimsical sophistication to his charmingly boyish smile. Writes about his voice, warm and textured like a country road washed gold in the light of an aging afternoon, and how she loses herself to it—how she loses herself, as a whole, to him.

(She writes because there is not much else that can be done, after all, when months have passed and she loves him no less than she did at the very start.)

-

“Hello,” he says pleasantly (mechanically—he’s done this a thousand times before, it’s clear). He doesn’t look up immediately, features concealed by a fringe of artfully-disheveled, earth-toned hair as he fiddles with a button on his shirt. His voice is tight, accent thick and weary on his tongue. He’s exhausted, she can tell.

“Hi,” she replies, not allowing herself even the liberty of a steadying breath before she speaks. Her tone is stable, at least—disinterested, almost. It’s a façade, one that grates against the truth, the way her heart pounds ruthlessly against her breast.

In the short pause that follows, an eon’s worth of imagination tracks across her brain as she envisions how the next several seconds will transpire. What will his reaction be when he looks up, she thinks. Revulsion? Disinterest? Or, nothing at all—an aching emptiness that stings more than hatred itself?

He looks up, barely before her mind can—

…

A light sparks in his eyes, dull and heavy with palpable fatigue, when she steps forward, putting forth a valiant effort to avoid his gaze but ultimately finding herself unable to contend with his gravity. It’s hardly more than a flicker, so faint and subdued that for a brief moment she deludes herself into believing it had merely been a trick of the eye.

But the way he sits taller, more attentively, is no illusion, nor is the unmistakable brightness to his smile.

“Hello,” he greets her politely, and though his accent rests thick and weary on his tongue with evident exhaustion, his tone harbors a distinct interest it had lacked with the others.

Nerves flutter into her throat, strung taut like rubber bands. “Hello,” she returns, voice deceptively stable, expertly concealing the way her heart slams against her ribcage.

“How are you?” he asks, and she cannot help but to notice the way his Adam’s apple bobs in a fleeting gulp before he speaks, or the way his gaze has hardly strayed from her features since her turn had come—

…

“Hello,” he greets her, clipped and polite, as she steps forward. His voice is tight, accent thick and weary on his tongue with evident exhaustion, but his tone harbors a keen interest that it had lacked in his interactions with the others.

“Hi,” she returns, shyly, though her voice is deceptively stable, expertly concealing the bunch of nerves that flutters into her throat, strung taut like rubber bands.

“How are you?” he asks, and when she finally harvests the courage to lock eyes with him, she sees that his cheeks are flushed a warm rose, smile soft and shy like an autumn dawn. There is a spark in his eyes that had not been present before—faint, but simultaneously and uncharacteristically ardent. Heat pools in her core as she allows him to search her gaze, prying with a curious sort of yearning.

“Nervous,” she replies honestly, once she’s swallowed her surprise—too honestly, perhaps. The laugh that bubbles past her lips is a bit too shrill, a bit too loud, and far too annoying to be considered anything along the vein of attractive. She regrets opening her mouth before it has even died away into the surrounding hubbub.

She’s astonished when he giggles, too, high and deceptively shrill for his voice’s speaking register—

…

“Hello,” he says pleasantly (mechanically—he’s done this a thousand times before, it’s clear). His tone is clipped, polite in the most meticulously-crafted sense, but his voice is tight, accent resting thick and weary on his tongue. He’s exhausted, she can tell.

“Hi,” she replies. The word escapes her mouth too quickly, too loudly (too desperately), and it does nothing to mask the sledgehammer beat her heart pounds into her bones, hard and ruthless and fast. Her body quite nearly betrays her, then, with a visible cringe, but he’s already pressing onward with a conversation so repetitive that it has long been bled of any genuine warmth.

“How are you?” he asks. Something about his inflections sounds incredibly forced, strained far beyond the extent it was designed to ever be.

“Uh—” Nervous, she nearly blurts, but thinks better of it at the last possible instant and manages in a faltering stammer, “I—I’m...I’m pretty good, how, uh, how are you?”

“I’m doing well,” he says, simply. He’s donning that lovely smile, naturally, when she at last brings herself to look him directly in the face, but it is drawn and plastic—cold, in a sense, though it’s clear he tries his best to conceal it with a cheap veneer of warmth. The softness that remains in his eyes is genuine, at least, but it is buried deep, clouded by layers of plastic and apathy and pain, and something hot and sharp that feels much like resentment, sizzling in unyielding opposition against the watery blue of that unending sadness.

She sees then that she does not make the cut.

A violent shudder tears through her as she places the origami heart she had brought onto the table in front of him, fingers twitching as his hand brushes hers in the briefest of strokes when he picks it up, marker poised. Nausea settles into her stomach, cold and dense like stone and horror; the dam restraining an apocalyptic deluge of tears springs a catastrophic leak as callous reality collides with her psyche and she realizes that she will never be anything more than a stranger to him.

Terror, panic, and grief strike in pitiless tandem, and she flees before he can even finish writing, wading through a blur of tears and voices and smells and sounds and perplexed stares until she finds herself in the end stall of a public restroom, pouring wracking sobs into the flimsy embrace of single-ply toilet paper rougher than truth itself.

He does not see her; he does not care. His soul is closed to her, just as it is closed to the others, and just as it always shall be.

Why is she crying? Why is she disappointed? Why does her heart ache, bitter and acrid and sharp against her bones?

(What else could she possibly have been expecting?)

Humiliation burns on the back of her tongue like bile. She hasn’t left any sort of impression on him at all, she thinks dully, pitifully suppressing a hiccup (with only marginal success) when she hears the bathroom door creak open—or if she has, it isn’t a positive one. Hers will be a face that he remembers, perhaps, months down his timeline. But certainly not for any of the reasons she might ever have hoped.

He thinks she is phenomenally pathetic. You are phenomenally pathetic.

She is phenomenally pathetic—to such an absurd degree, in fact, that she cannot even manage to deafen herself entirely to the ludicrous whisper of distorted hope on the edge of her cortex, to the voice that whispers maybe.

Maybe in the next life. ◾