#saw a post and got incandescently angry again :/

[your3fundamentaltruths]

mousey here. yes sometimes I check to see if there are new posts. no not a creep. shut up. ANYWAY I just saw that ask about the amnesia fic and OMG I THOUGHT THAT WAS JUST AN IDLE BIT OF FUN SPEC, BUT IT'S GOING TO BE REAL!!????!!!!!!

MOUSEY, MOUSEY, HIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!

SOMEDAY it will be real (TBD when). In fact, here's a scene from what I've currently got:

She blinks awake slowly but must close her eyes almost instantly as pain overtakes her. Her head’s never hurt this badly before; it is rather what she imagines a hangover must be like, given what a bear her papa was whenever he experienced one. 

But she did not have a drop to drink last night. Not of that sort. Nothing but lemonade. 

Perhaps it was all the crying. She had given herself horrible headaches her first season, crying over Colin and Marina, over her fight with –

It is no matter. And besides, her head aches far more fiercely now; it takes a few minutes for her to be brave enough to try opening one of her eyes again. 

Slowly, slowly –

“Pen?” says a girlish voice eagerly. “Pen?” She cannot quite place it; it’s not entirely familiar, but nor is it entirely unfamiliar.

But why on earth would someone be in her bedchamber with her?

She opens one eye a crack, then the other, only to find a pretty young lady looming over her, who says her name yet again. 

Well, her nickname that only two people –

“You’re awake!” the other young lady exclaims. She seems so familiar and yet Penelope cannot place her. 

She looks at the other young lady carefully – glossy brown curls, dark blue eyes, fair skin, lovely smile – and tries her hardest to remember, but it is futile. 

She is reminded of Eloise and of Francesca, but mostly, oddly, she is reminded of little Hyacinth.

Good God, can she not stop thinking of the Bridgertons for even a moment?!

Instinctively, she begins to shake her head at herself, but stops at once with a wince as her head begins to pain her again. It’s not worth injuring herself further – why does her head ache so? – by physically dismissing such a silly notion.

But dismiss it she must: Hyacinth is a girl of barely eleven, not a young lady like the stranger sat beside her. And surely it cannot be some heretofore unknown Bridgerton cousin at her side. Certainly not now. The entire clan will want nothing to do with her now that Eloise –

Now that Eloise knows about Whistledown and is so incandescently angry she will surely shout the truth to the whole of London.

She feels sick with fear – and fury.

“It’s all right, Pen,” says the unknown young lady, as if sensing her distress. “Mama is fetching towels and ordering hot water, even though I’m not sure what good that will do for a blow to the head; I rather think cold compresses are the thing for that –”

Who on earth is Mama, she wonders, still contemplating that question rather than the comment about a blow to the head – for that seems a very obvious explanation for the pain – as her companion chatters away. 

She is only half paying attention until her mysterious companion says something that catches her attention.

“Mama is sending for Uncle Nicholas and I’m sure he will be here soon –”

Uncle Nicholas?

But before she can give due consideration to what that says about the young lady’s identity, given the incontrovertible truth that the Bridgertons are in fact in possession of an Uncle Nicholas who is a doctor and who therefore would be a most logical person to seek out when faced with a head injury, the door is thrown open –

To reveal none other than Violet Bridgerton, trailed by two maids, one carrying towels with a cake of soap perched on top of the pile and the other balancing a bucket of steaming water.

“Lady Bridgerton,” she croaks, utterly at a loss.

Lady Bridgerton stares at her, aghast.

Her companion frowns, dark brows snapping together in an altogether too-familiar expression. “You –” She was right, she realizes just before everything goes black.

[llycaons]

atogai pt. 3/4(?). matters are progressing as stupidly as you can imagine, but there's a lot more kissing so ig the author considers that worth it. idk if EYE do bc they're still doing to it maintain their foolish disguises!!!

it's gotten to the point where their horny thoughts for each other are interfering in their internal monologues.

kadou is like almost having a breakdown and evemer is like wow he's so beautiful....I wish I could make out with him and solve all his problems

in many ways it IS very like fanfic. the romantic prose is certainly starting to sound familiar

omg they're doing sleepover questions...

virgin evemer not a surprise. bisexual evemer moreso. nice! rowland broke the stereotype of the stoic intense yearning gayboy

ace melek. hello ace melek!

bi tadek and I don't even mind he's a bit of a slut. I like him even tho he's kind of obnoxious

gay kadouuuu

honestly the fact that they're having this conversation at all is kind of hilarious and very ummm fandomy in the sense that this is something only a modern audience would care about or put labels on, but I don't even mind? I think it's fun. EYE like to know anyway. apparently in this universe they construct attraction the same way! sure!

also I love how evemer's first crush was an incandescently angry 16 year old girl with huge muscles. he's the post that's like 'my type is women who could look like they could beat me up and men who wouldn't stand a chance' I actually relate a lot

it helps that this is such a fantastical setting so you don't feel like it's being ahistorical or disrespectful of an actual region's culture or people. like...it's quite silly and fun and that's the point. no homophobia no misogyny no transphobia

unlike mask of mirrors, there are non-binary people (a lot, judging ny pronouns only, and the author is nb too), but also apparently no trans women or men? that can't be right...you'd think they would mention them at least. with such a culture, trans ppl and transitioning must be supported. I imagine

anyway I knew siranos was a shady fucker!!!!! I CALLED IT!!!! he was party to way too many state secrets for just A Guy who the sultan liked to fuck!! and he interfered in the investigation!!! why was HE there that night huh!!!!

their government is so fragile and inefficient...just the sultan and her heir and her brother. and ONE commander. eozena doesn't have a second in command?

honestly kadou insisting on going out when he's easily identifiable and extremely valuable is so stupid, strategically speaking, and there's no good reason that he should be doing this. it's very contrived. like I know he wants to be doing something but like... dude your wants and mental health are not the most important part of this situation sorry. people are literally dead

initially ppl had to argue w him to get him to even ask for stuff and now he's like um I'm Doing This. but it's stupid!! he's literally one of the only people left who could run the government!!!

not that I care about the maintenance of the monarchy, but THEY clearly do

evemer being a bad kisser is great. virgin bisexual king. it would even be great if he was kind of inexperienced and bad at sex too but idk if that would ruin the romance for ppl. it's kind of fun that kadou is the experienced one even tho he's the shy anxious slightly younger one

damn I wonder if there's age ratings on books. the only one I ever saw was on mdzs. you can't really tell if a book has a sex scene in it just by looking...when I was younger I was all shocked and horrified bc that all scared me but now it's just kind of inconvenient if I want to know and it doesn't say

if we even HAVE a sex scene. if mx. rowland cheats me out of one again AGAIN I'm going to be sooo mad. let it be known that's a good chunk of the reason why I'm even reading this. the context is...well ifyyk

oh and look he got captured

anyway this is stupid. like ppl can recognize him by his HAIR and he has the shittiest diguise...

honestly as soon as that incident happened where he didn't run and instead went back to save evemer a few weeks ago, evemer should have been removed from duty for him. bc that's not safe! having a guard you would die for? that kind of undermines the entire point of having a guard!

also them going out when the mastermind knows both of their faces....god damn this is dumb. OH WELL

oh huh evemer is used to ignoring and working through physical pain and kadou is used to working through mental distress. foils?

the dynamic here between a very loyal guard and a prince he swears to follow is expected, but not really my thing. I was lond of hoping for something more nuanced? alas. at least the issue of power imbalance is a huge theme that gets worked on pretty thoroughly

I am not someone who wants a kneeling knight emoji sorry. can you people get a grip

also. the bad guys KNOW WHERE THE SAFE HOUSE IS. WHY DIDN'T YOU IMMEDIATELY LEAVE...

why tf is kadou lying about evemer being a count. just say 'you're not going to kill me bc the sultan would destroy you for it, well if you kill evemer then EYE will destroy you for it.' like kadou is also a member of the royal family and he doesn't need to lie about that...

in the second half of this book it seems like over-cautiousness has given way to utter carelessness and poor judgement. like damn evemer, you're supposed to be the best!!! why is the princess still in a safe house that siranos knows about!! and you KNOW he knows!!!

also their fellow guard was beaten and imprisoned in a manor for hours bc they were like 'ummm we all have to sleep instead of raiding the manor' like you have NOBODY???

well whatever. they're married now ig. it worked

FINALLY they're making out for realsies in this dungeon they're being held in. aw sweet they're about to fuck

NOOOO WHY DID THEY STOP

MX. ROWLAND KEEPS EDGING MEEEEEEEE

swear to god just let them come....I'm so mad

AND I DON'T GET WHY. what's the harm of them having sex? why do they have to divorce vs. annulling? god this is not being explained properly

oh if they consummate then it would have to be a very ugly and public divorce...jfc it's not like anyone would KNOW

head in my hands

anyway in that sense the marriage served a purpose but I don't think it was THAT necessary? man I just wanted to see them fuck. mx. rowland is so cruel...

so the upshot of them being married is that evemer is now technically of an equal rank with kadou so he (evemer) is able to cross that last little gap between them, insist that kadou listens to what he says, and assures kadou that 1. he's okay and he also wants this 2. he's allowed to disobey orders if he wants to (he got that privilege last night from the sultan) and 3. he can physically disengage and leave if he needs to. which is enough to get kadou to relax his terror of abusing his power on someone of a lower rank than him and hurting evemer

and evemer had to be the one to initiate...honestly I know there's been a lot of kissing going on but I feel like kadou didn't make his own position clear enough that evemer would be confident in making that move. like...he's not wrong abt kadou also wanting it but also you two have known each other for less than two months and kadou has been sp careful and repressed so like.. how do you know...

in many ways the mdzs confession was very silly but having someone externally confirm lwj's feelings did solve the gridlock between lwj and wwx. here they did it on their own but I'm not rly sure how?

anyway their dynamic was never unpleasant, I actually always enjoyed it, but now it's really fun. lighthearted and playful and affectionate and horny. it's a good time. I like them together

I was thinking abt the title and how little it has to do with the actual core story and relationship but the bit with the pins was so neat...I like that

kadou being like 'this can't last' WHY NOT!!! for once can romance protags have some confidence in their love stories damn

oh tenzin is so funny

wait im sorry the hypercompetetent guards have just been SITTING there when they heard the prince had been taken? they didn't raid the shop in question? how useless ARE these people???

anyway they're all back, I kind of assumed they'd know they were together, but um...ig not. because...ohh their positions....they can't...he has to get married to a noble....oof...this does get me

like they know they like each other but they're not officially TOGETHER together. okay yeah that makes sense

evemer talks so much abput self-discipline and all but hmm he doesn't have anything on lan wangji sorreeee

very little left now but this is getting long

[atthebell-moved]

listen i'm not gonna drop the entire essay but i think the fervor around ghostbur is a bit. well. i get why wilbur says he hates the fucker. i know this is kind of irrelevant after the finale already happened but i want to talk about it a bit.

like it feels (to ME. and i think to wilbur as well, both c and cc) like people latched onto this soft, unangry version of wilbur. like his trauma was only valid when he offered other people comfort and spoke gently.

and when the angry, hurt, not-so-nice wilbur came back, people's reactions can't have felt good. to watch people mourn the dead, soft version of you more than the alive one. wilbur never had a funeral. when tommy saw him in limbo he decided he should never come back-- despite that dead, soft version of wilbur saying he wanted that. wilbur came back and everyone was angry with him, and not just because of his actions before his death but because he was replacing a more palatable version of himself.

having poured a lot of himself into his character, watching people mourn the silly little ghost of that character rather than the raw, angry, spiteful one can't have felt good. watching people, for over a year, talk about wanting that version back in a story context that implies that cwilbur would have to die again for that to happen, and implying they want that death to be a repeat of the first (suicide) cannot have felt good.

trying to build out this character who's in desperate need of healing and reparations and having people ask endlessly about that stupid ghost and his cute little sheep cannot have felt good, from a writer's perspective. if i had a whole arc planned out with a character who had that much going on and people asked about his dead version's pet i wouldn't be pleased, particularly when that's all i see all the time.

we poke fun at wilbur for posting his little angst rants on reddit (which are admittedly very funny and im sure in large part that's why he writes them) but i would be posting angsty rants about that damn ghost too if i were him. imagine being so constantly misinterpreted. imagine writing a character meant to show the phantoms people leave behind when they die, and people overtake your entire character with it.

sometimes trauma doesn't make you soft and forgetful. it makes you angry, it makes you worse, it makes you lash out, it makes you ugly-- wilbur was trying to convey that with cwilbur in pogtopia and cwilbur post-revival. i'm not saying ghostbur's way of processing and expressing trauma is wrong; i'm saying people prioritizing it must've been endlessly frustrating.

anyway i don't like ghostbur very much for all the above reasons and because for me i always viewed him as a part of wilbur and not a separate entity. go read my fic if you want to hear about that.

[mamabearcat]

Proposal fic + hair (braiding/brushing) InuKag

Ooh thanks Nonny 😘

Okay, I'm gonna revive an AU I've never actually written but it's been loitering around in the back of my head forever. I may even write it one day if I feel like doing a longer AU full of comedy fluff. The first bit was posted on Tumblr forever ago, but now it gets to be continued!

Inuyasha wasn’t quite sure how he fell into it; who would have thought you could make a career out of being a model for romance covers for fuck’s sake?! Apparently his half-demon heritage that had blessed him with his father's long thick white hair, amber eyes that glowed in the darkness and pointed dog ears gave him an edgy look, whatever that meant. His ability to retain a lean muscular build no matter what he ate didn't hurt either.

But, the money was very good, even if he had to fight off the occasional stalker, and hide from screaming female fans trying to stuff underwear in his pockets when he went out to buy milk.

His manager Miroku was a total letch, and Sango had been slacking on security - waking up to find a strange woman in his kitchen making coffee in nothing but an apron was more than a little surprising. He actually had more than a sneaking suspicion that something was going on between those two.

But the best part of being a model was Kagome. His photographer, his best friend. He'd known her for years now, and there was no one he trusted more.

Their first photo shoot three years ago had been memorable. He’d accidentally called her Kikyo, and she'd exploded at him. How was he to know? They looked kinda the same, and they were both photographers. It did kinda suck that her cousin Kikyo had possibly ruined her chances of having a serious career in photo journalism, but this gig she was doin’ paid the bills right?

Why did she have to be so serious anyway? He’d abandoned any thoughts of self respect long ago. When you knew what it was like at the very bottom, didn’t know where your next meal was coming from, you understood that self respect was a luxury.

Ah, but Kagome. He couldn't help but love her. Even though this wasn't what she wanted to be doing, she put her whole heart and soul into her work, wanting it to be the best. He knew all her little mannerisms by heart - the way she blew upwards into her fringe when she was feeling frustrated, the way she jiggled her legs under the table when she was feeling fidgety, the way her eyes lit up when she got a good idea for a shot.

He'd always said he'd do anything for her, would gladly take a bullet for her. He'd already blocked a knife attack for her, that had to count for something, right? He'd never been more terrified when she'd been threatened, and the thought of what might had happened if he'd left just a little earlier still broke him out in a cold sweat sometimes.

They'd been closer after her life was threatened, so much closer. He'd been hopeful, but pretty sure she still only saw him as a friend. I mean, how cliche was it for a model to fall for a photographer? He was pretty sure she'd think he was joking, and laugh right in his face. And then on the steps after the trial against that stalker she'd kissed him. And it had been like the heavens had opened and angels had sung.

Kagome had always wanted to be a photo journalist. She'd dreamed of it since high school, starting her career with the local paper, gaining notice when she won a world renowned travel photography competition. That was the chance that should have got her a job with a top magazine, the chance that should have made her career. But it had been stolen by her cousin Kikyo.

Kikyo, who had been her flatmate when they finished high school, so they could share their passion for photography and help support each other in their move to New York as they tried to achieve their dreams. Kikyo, who had taken the message about the year long internship she had been offered after they saw her winning photo. Kikyo, whose features were similar enough to her own that they were often mistaken for each other, if you didn't know both of them that well. Kikyo, who had turned up for that internship and somehow convinced them that she'd used a different name for the competition.

Her cousin had milked that experience for everything it was worth. And now she was the one working for a world renowned magazine, and Kagome was paying rent doing cover photos for romance novels. She may be the best one in her field, but it wasn't quite what she'd dreamed of. It's not like she'd wished upon a star when she was five and asked if she could be the one to discover the next Fabio.

The best thing about her work was spending time with Inuyasha. She'd been so angry at him the first day they'd met all those years ago. Fresh from a weekend at a family event where she'd had to hear once again that Kikyo couldn't make it because she was overseas, doing some big story, and they were all so proud of her. And he'd called her Kikyo, because he'd seen some article recently and mistakenly thought she was her cousin. After she'd calmed down, she couldn't really fault him. They had the same last name, same initial, even looked similar enough.

But he'd grown on her. And it wasn't just his good looks - he had those in abundance, but he didn't really seem to care about that. He was rough around the edges, a little rude, definitely obnoxious, but very funny, charming, brave, and also... kind of sweet?

That day she'd had that terrible cold but had still come to work because they'd had a deadline, he'd given her his jacket and then rushed out to the supermarket at lunch time so he could make her a sure fire cold remedy his mother had taught him. It had tasted absolutely feral, but surprisingly, she'd felt a lot better the next day.

Just a few weeks ago, they had finalised the court case with Inuyasha's stalker. For some reason, Jakotsu, one of Inuyasha's most ardent fans, had bizarrely seen Kagome as a threat, even though it was obvious they were only friends.

At first it was just strange letters delivered to her workplace, which she'd ignored totally. She'd only begun to be worried when weird notes appeared in her own letter box at her apartment. And then the late night phone calls had started.

She'd managed to keep it from Inuyasha until Jakotsu had slashed her tyres, and then he'd been furious. Angry at her for not telling him what was happening, and incandescent with rage at the stalker.

After that he'd been there for her whenever she'd been afraid, so protective and caring. When Jakotsu had snuck up on her late one night in the parking lot, he'd blocked the attack, stepping in front of her in the nick of time, taking a slash to his arm that was originally aimed at her face, then knocking out Jakotsu and holding him until the police arrived.

He'd been the one injured, with nearly 20 stitches in his forearm, but he'd been worried about her. Thank goodness for swift youkai healing. She'd been devastated that he'd been injured, but he'd just shrugged it off, telling her he was glad it was him and not her.

After that, she'd finally admitted to herself that her feelings for him were more than just friendly. Had been for such a long time now. He was gorgeous, but she wasn't the kind of girl that slept around. She needed to be friends first, be comfortable, and there was no one she was more comfortable around than Inuyasha. He was her first thought in the morning and her last at night. But wasn't that a little cliche, a photographer falling for a model? She'd thought he'd probably think she was joking and laugh in her face.

But that moment after the trial and they'd been standing out in the sunlight, she hadn't been able to help herself. She was just so happy, so grateful that he hadn't been injured worse. So she'd practically crash tackled him and kissed him. No tentative pecks. No warning. She couldn't bear to let another day pass without him knowing how she felt. And when he'd kissed her back, with Miroku and Sango cat calling in the background, yelling at them to get a room, it had felt like heaven.

"Where's Yura this morning?" asked Inuyasha, glancing around the make up room, as if she would suddenly appear out of nowhere with her ever present combs and scissors.

"She's called in sick, so you've got me on double duty today. Aren't you lucky?" Kagome teased, poking her tongue out at him.

"So, you gonna model with me too?" he grinned, wrapping his arm around her waist and holding her close to rub his nose softly againt hers. "Who's gonna take the happy snaps?"

"You wish. It's a new model today, Tuva, we haven't met her before. This is for the viking one, so we needed someone with fair hair and pale skin. The photos in her online portfolio are gorgeous. And the agency recommended her, so she should be fine."

Kagome gave him a quick peck on the cheek, laughing at his pouting face, then patted the chair in front of the mirror. "Sit down already will you? I called her earlier to let her know what was going on and she offered to get her own hair and makeup done at the studio there, so now I've just got to do you."

Inuyasha couldn't help the flutter down low in his stomach at her statement, even though he knew she'd meant it innocently enough. She began by brushing his long hair and he closed his eyes, feeling the regular pull of the brush on his scalp, her fingers gently protecting his ears from the rough bristles.

Damn that felt good. If he were a cat he'd be purring, and it took every inch of self control to not let out a deep rumbling growl of pleasure when she ran her hands through his hair, pulling the top back and securing it in a rough pompadour with a ponytail behind his head.

Then her nimble fingers were making small cornrow braids near his temples, adding little leather thongs and silver charms. The gentle tugging of his scalp felt so good. He squirmed in his seat a little, keeping his eyes closed.

"Sorry, am I pulling too hard?"

"Nah, feels so damn good. You're a natural at this. Wanna change careers and become my hairdresser?"

She pretended to think a moment, then giggled.

"Maybe. You're hair is fun to play with. It's much prettier than mine."

He opened his eyes, watching her as her deft fingers twisted his hair together.

"Nope. Untrue. Have you ever seen your hair in the sunlight Kagome? The way it shimmers almost blue? It's beautiful."

Her cheeks pinked, and she glanced at the mirror, her eyes fluttering downwards again when he caught her eyes.

"Stop. You're the one that's the freaking model, Inuyasha. Let me concentrate on this or we'll be behind schedule."

"So Ms. Higurashi can take a compliment about her photography skills but not her person? That's kinda weird don't you think? Especially when you're so pretty."

"Inuuuu..."

"C'mere", he said, tugging on her arm to move her into his lap, ignoring her squawk of protest. "Why can't my pretty girl take a compliment from me, huh?"

"I can! But we're at work right now Inuyasha!"

"Alright, prove it. Look in the mirror and say what I say, and then I'll let you go." She squirmed but he tightened his arm around her waist, pinning him close to her. "Gotta do what I say Higurashi. Gotta keep the talent happy!" She smacked his arm, still trying to wriggle out of his hold, doing her best to hold in her smile, but failing miserably.

"So, how should I keep the talent happy Inuyasha?" she smirked. "You were pretty happy when I left your apartment last night."

He moved his head to rest on her shoulder, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

"Ah, but that's where you're very wrong pretty girl." Kagome's face fell.

"You didn't enjoy last night?"

"Oh I did. Very much", he grinned, bucking his hips underneath her, then kissing a path down the arch of her neck onto her shoulder. "But then you left. And I was in that big empty bed all alone, with no one to keep me company."

"Oh, poor you. You know why I left Inuyasha. You needed to have a good night's sleep before the shoot today, and you know what would have happened if I'd stayed longer. There wouldn't have been much sleeping going on."

He nuzzled into her neck. "Maybe not, but this talent would have been much much happier. I don't want you to leave anymore." Kagome froze.

"You... you want me to move in with you?"

"I want you to move in", he said, his teasing face now serious. "I want you to be with me always. I know we've only been going out for a month Kagome, but I love you. I've loved you for years. And that's not going to change."

She turned on his lap so they were now facing each other, cradling his cheeks in her palms. "I love you too", she whispered. "So much."

"Would it be crazy if... if I said I wanted even more than that?" he asked softly, his eyes searching hers. "Would it be crazy if I said I want to be more than just your boyfriend, that I want more than you moving in. That I want us to belong to each other? And tell the whole world about it?"

Kagome's eyes widened, and her heart began beating wildly in her chest.

"That sounds an awful lot like a marriage proposal Inuyasha."

"That's because, maybe it is. We wasted so much time Kagome. I don't wanna waste another second. Please say yes."

"How could I say no to those puppy dog eyes of yours?" she giggled wetly, her eyes filling with happy tears.

[waywardwrestlewritingwaif]

Raise the Stakes, Part 10

Hope you've enjoyed the pic/ inspiration spam I've ben posting! Here's the next section. YOu can find previous sections on the Master List.

Do I have an ending for this coming up? No. I have about 6 and I haven't decided which direction I'm going to go in. I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to be able to "pick" an ending until after they have their match at Resurgence next week. But please feel free to message me and tell me what should happen. In the meantime...

Pairing: David Finlay x OFC x Jay White

Word count: 1,943

Content advisory: nothing really, although I guess there's some behavior that could be interpreted as creepy

You’re dimly aware of someone lifting you and carrying you and by the time you get backstage, you’re more or less fully conscious.

“Are you ok?” one of the production assistants comes running over.

“Yeah, I just haven’t had a lot to eat today,” you mumble. “I’m not hurt or anything.”

“I know it’s hot out there with the lights and everything.”

“Really, it’s ok, I just got a bit dizzy.”

The security guard looming over you, the man who brought you back here, looks a little skeptical.

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

“No, I mean, what happened with the show? I saw that… Switchblade showed up.” You chuckle a little. “Did the other guys beat him up or are they all together?”

The production assistant smiles. “It was pretty cool. They kind of stared down but before anything happened, Juice and David went running out, so them and Callihan cleared the ring.”

“Nice.” You very much like the sound of that. “The good guys got one back.”

“Yeah, I mean Jay hit David and took him out at the end but it was pretty positive.”

“He what?”

“Yeah, after they’d driven everyone off, Jay jumped back in and did his blade runner thing on David. Looked pretty cool.”

Panic sets in.

“Is David ok?”

“I’m sure he is. Maybe his ego’s a bit bruised.”

“Where is he?”

You and David aren’t “out” as anything, you’re not even sure if you are anything, but you don’t care what anyone makes of it because you need to see him.

“I think he’s with the doctor,” the PA answers confusedly.

You’re immediately on your feet, all of your faculties returned, running for the medic’s office. When you get there, Juice tries to grab your arm but you dodge him and go skidding into the room where David is seated on the examination table. He looks at you like he’s surprised to see you.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Fine. Are you? I sort of fainted and… I heard you got hurt.”

He gives you a wink. “Nothing I haven’t felt before. This is just a precaution because I wasn’t expecting the…” He stares at you hard before addressing himself to the doctor. “Could you give us a minute?’

“No problem,” she sighs. “You look fine.”

David thrusts his chin out at Juice to tell him that he should back off too. His partner looks a little unsure but steps back a few paces.

Once you’re alone, David raises his arm, inviting you to come closer. When you’re within reach, he pulls you against him.

“I didn’t know,” you croak. “I had no idea about any of this, you have to believe me, I wouldn’t-”

“Hey,” he says softly, touching your cheek, “if you say you didn’t know then I believe you.”

“This is my fault, though. I made it worse.”

“Stop that. Jay’s an asshole. He always has to be angry about something. I beat him in Japan and you ditched him to come here.”

“For you,” you remind him.

He gives you a sweet kiss and runs his finger along the shell of your ear. “What do you mean, you fainted?”

“I just got dizzy. I haven’t really eaten.”

“Well let’s fix that. I’ll just finish up with the doc and we can go get something to eat.”

“You mean it?” It’s such a relief that he still wants to spend time with you that you feel like you’re going to pass out again.

“Yeah I mean it.” He grins and calls out for the doctor to come back in. She does a quick final check and determines that he can go.

He slips off the table and, as you go to leave, slips his arm around you. You respond in kind and it feels like your body is glowing.

Until you get into the hallway. There he is, talking to some of the guys, laughing away, the arrogance just rolling off him. He glances at the two of you with a sinister expression, his eyes locking onto yours until you turn your head away.

“You should kick his ass right here,” you growl.

David looks at you and shakes his head. “Not worth the trouble.” He gives you a squeeze before continuing, “Now what do you feel like eating?”

“At this point, anything that doesn’t eat me first.”

“I never did get my cheat pizza.”

“I think you deserve it,” you grin.

“So let’s go pick up some pizza. Then we can go back to your place and you can take care of me.”

A broad smile spreads across your face. “You aren’t getting sick of me yet?”

“Not even a little bit.”

He pulls you in front of him and kisses you full on, not wildly but enough to make it clear to anyone who sees you what’s going on. He chuckles when he lets you go and glances down the hallway where Jay is still holding court with his hangers-on.

“Jay,” he calls, waiting until he’s sure he has his enemy’s attention, “you lose.”

*

When you arrive at work on Monday, it’s with a considerable level of anxiety. Things have definitely gotten more complicated. Jay is, after all, a New Japan performer, and as the liaison between New Japan and US promotions, that means you’re supposed to work with him. Even the idea of being in the same room with him makes you shake a little. You and David finally spent a night apart so that he wouldn’t have to get up early when you did, but you’d still been texting until you both fell asleep. Truthfully, Jay hadn’t been on your mind as long as you were with David but now you can’t avoid thinking about him.

What you have with David feels amazing but it’s also new and fragile, a tiny shoot rising up from the soil, still trying to grow and lay down roots at the same time. You want to protect it and you know that Jay wants to kill it off because no one embarrasses him the way the two of you have. You don’t know what he’s planning to do, you just know you have to be wary of it.

For the first part of the day, it’s just backstage people and the production team going through what’s needed for the day’s tapings. Talent will arrive in the afternoon, followed by a small audience. You make your notes on who needs to be where and making sure it lines up with what Tokyo tells you they’re expecting. Some of them have to fly to California to do shows there and you need to make sure the tapings happening in the next few days aren’t going to interfere with any of those plans.

“Did you get it out of your system?”

He pounces on you out of nowhere, crowding you against the wall, eyes incandescent with anger. It’s hours before any of the performers are supposed to be here, which makes it a perfect time for him to ambush you.

“Get what out of my system, Jay?” you gasp, trying to hide how much he’s scared you.

“Don’t be coy,” he hisses. “This little romantic excursion you decided to send yourself on.”

“I told you, I felt like I’d accomplished all I could in the job and so I decided to grab this new opportunity-”

“I know exactly what you did and not because you told me anything. I got your cute little note. Blocking me on social media and everything was an especially nice touch. After everything we’d been through, everything I’d done for you, you didn’t even have the guts to say any of that bullshit to my face.”

“Ok, I should have done that. I owed you that. I apologize and I hope it didn’t cause you any…”

You look into his eyes and just freeze. He’s so sickeningly beautiful and frightening at that moment that there’s nothing you can do, not appease him, not flatter him, not reject him. You were right when you said you needed to get away from him to get over him, you just didn’t expect that he’d refuse to give you the chance.

“Aren’t you cute with your little prepared business speech. ‘I’m so sorry, Jay, I hope you found another person to do my job because that’s all that was going on, just me being your secretary.’ How long have you been memorizing that for when you finally had to see me again?

“You’ve had your fun, your laughs at my expense, but it ends now.”

“How fucking dare you!” Now you’ve found your voice and your strength. “You think you get to order me around like I’m something you own? I don’t work for you anymore. My job is here now. My life is here now.”

Jay straightens up to his full height, regarding you with a smirk. “Your life? Is that what you’re calling him now?”

“I meant just… everything.”

“Aw, David must feel so happy thinking this is where it ends.”

“As far as you and I are concerned, it has ended.” You glare at him. “I love him.”

The soft laugh he gives you is utterly unnerving. “You love me. You’ve loved me for years. Nothing’s changed. You ran off here because you got it in your head that you could make yourself love him, because you wanted to get back at me for whatever it is you think I’ve done to you. And you couldn’t even be around me and convince yourself at the same time that you really want him.”

“You arrogant prick. What the hell do you know about what I want?”

He laughs a little and captures your face with one hand, pressing his lips close to your ear.

“I love how angry you get when you know I’m right. And I love having you trapped like this.”

“Trapped how? I’m going to walk away from you and it’s going to be like this never happened. I’m going to have fun imagining David wiping that condescending look off your face for a few weeks until I finally get to see him do it.”

“Do you seriously think anyone in New Japan is going to think twice about dumping him if I tell them that I won’t work with him?”

“Whatever. He’s doing fine here.”

“Oh yes, he’s doing so well in Impact, the company that’s riding a wave of popularity because they’re working with other, bigger companies. I’m sure they’d stand up for him against all of their partners. I’m sure he’s so much more important to them than being able to work with me or any other real stars.”

He chuckles a little, pressing his face against yours.

“That’s the funny thing about forbidden doors. When they close, they all close at once.”

“Oh, so you’re threatening to get him shut out of every wrestling company just because you’re annoyed he stole your assistant.”

“You sell yourself short. But if you want to put it that way, yes.”

“You don’t have the attention span. You’ll get distracted by someone else you think has wronged you by the end of the week.”

“If that’s how you want to approach this, go right ahead. If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t like your odds of being right but I already know you’re going to do what you want.”

He grips your head firmly and plants a hard kiss on your forehead before backing off and sauntering down the hall as if nothing’s happened.

You were right when you told David he should stay away from you. This is bad.

[kurowrites]

Anytime

So, I saw this post and @sarah-yyy‘s tags, and since I’m a dumb person with the attention span of a goldfish, I completely forgot about all my other projects and wrote this instead.

So have Wei Ying owning a car, and Lan Zhan being very, very weak for that smile. Enjoy.

---

The first time it happened, it was… not necessary, perhaps, but certainly welcome.

Lan Zhan stood just outside the large central entrance of the library, barely shielded from the downpour by its projecting roof. The weather broadcast this morning hadn’t announced rain, so Lan Zhan had rode his bicycle to university as he usually would. While he had been studying in the library, however, the weather had changed from partially sunny to what some might be tempted to call the precursor to the apocalypse, and he had missed his chance to return home unscathed. The library would close soon; returning inside wasn’t an option. Neither was riding his bicycle home in this deluge. He could only wait, and maybe call his brother if the bad weather persisted.

He had just made peace with the thought that he would be standing there for a while when someone bumped into his side. Taken by surprise by the sudden physical contact, he swung around, stepping back, but what he found... was Wei Ying, smiling up at him with his usual incandescent grin.

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying had shared exactly one class in their first year of university, but ever since then, Lan Zhan had been unable to escape the acquaintance. Had eventually given up trying to escape the acquaintance, submitting to the inevitable.

It didn’t help that Wei Ying’s happy smile always made his knees weak. Wei Ying was loud and obnoxious, but Lan Zhan would gladly take that loud and obnoxious if it came in combination with that smile. The one that Wei Ying always used on him.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying exclaimed happily. “Fancy meeting you here! Are you going home?”

“Hn,” Lan Zhan agreed.

When he didn’t move, but simply kept staring out at the falling rain (in an attempt not to stare at Wei Ying for too long), Wei Ying’s smile turned into a frown.

“Ah,” he said, concern now tingeing his voice. “You forgot your umbrella, huh? Not that it will help you much today. It might break in this weather before you’ve made it as far as the next building.”

Lan Zhan had expected Wei Ying to leave after he’d made his customary greeting, but a moment later, he bumped into Lan Zhan again.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan. Want me to give you a ride? I have a car!”

Lan Zhan opened his mouth to decline politely, but Wei Ying was already pulling on his arm.

“Look!” He pointed through the heavy rain, though Lan Zhan couldn’t see what he was pointing at. “My car is right over there. If we run, we can make it!”

And with that, he ran out into the rain, pulling Lan Zhan after him.

It was a mad scramble to reach the car relatively unscathed, and Lan Zhan was panicking about the contents of his bag all the while, but eventually they made it, only halfway drenched. They jumped into the car and slammed the doors shut as fast as they could, not caring about anything but getting out of the rain. For a moment, they just sat there in the front seats, breathing heavily as the rain kept pounding onto the windshield. Suddenly, Wei Ying laughed, shook himself, and inserted the key into the ignition.

“That was something, huh, Lan Zhan?” he asked between his laughter. “Look at us, two rats drowned in a storm.”

He shot a look at Lan Zhan.

“You still look as handsome as ever though. That’s so unfair. Do you ever suffer from the phenomenon known as human condition?”

Lan Zhan didn’t bother to reply to that, but privately, he thought that Wei Ying too looked as handsome as ever. The wet hair and drenched jeans added something to his look. It was... Lan Zhan quickly averted his eyes.

“Come on, Lan Zhan, tell me something fun,” Wei Ying continued, not cowed by Lan Zhan’s unresponsiveness. “Is there a time of the day where you don’t look perfectly put together? I’m asking out of scientific interest.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said in warning.

Wei Ying laughed again, more quietly this time, put the car in reverse, and skilfully manoeuvred out of his parking spot.

“You can’t blame me for my curiosity, Lan Zhan. Can’t you help a fellow man out?”

“There is nothing for me to help out,” Lan Zhan replied. It was, after all, the truth. Wei Ying was already handsome enough. Beautiful enough. Attractive enough. Bewitching enough. There was nothing that Lan Zhan could do to improve that.

“Ouch, Lan Zhan, that stings!” Wei Ying said dramatically. “I know I am a scruffy, feeble man, but do you have to say it like that?”

That was certainly not what Lan Zhan had meant. He opened his mouth to reply, but Wei Ying shot him a teasing look.

“Careful, Lan Zhan,” he warned him with more laughter in his voice. “If you aren’t nice to me, I’ll leave you on the roadside, drowned rat or not. See if someone else will pick you up in this weather.”

Wei Ying would never do that, Lan Zhan knew, but he didn’t want to risk insulting Wei Ying by accident a second time. He kept his silence.

“Honestly, Lan Zhan, I had figured you’d own a car. Your family is certainly rich enough for it. “

“Unnecessary,” Lan Zhan replied. “Uncle is strict about protecting the environment.”

“Ah, I see, I’m an evil polluter then,” Wei Ying laughed, shifting gears. “Sorry. I swear the car is necessary, or I’d never make it to university.”

“It was not a judgement.”

“I know that, Lan Zhan, I know that.”

He quickly patted Lan Zhan’s knee, probably to express that he wasn’t angry, but the gentle touch robbed Lan Zhan of his breath. Wei Ying had touched him again. This was the fourth time tonight.

Not that he was counting.

Silence settled over the car, only interrupted by the unceasing sound of pounding rain, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. Being with Wei Ying was never uncomfortable, unless one considered Lan Zhan’s inappropriate feelings.

One day, he would learn better than that.

One day.

From time to time, Lan Zhan gave the necessary directions, and before long, they arrived at their destination. The rain had grown slightly weaker by now, though definitely still not enough to risk going home by bicycle.

“Thank you, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said into the silence of the car as it idled at the side of the road. “I’ll see you at university.”

“Anytime, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying folded his arms and leaned on the steering wheel as he smiled at Lan Zhan, a Cheshire grin as if he was letting him in on a secret. “I’m always happy to drive you around.”

Lan Zhan didn’t know what to say or where to look, so he simply bowed his head once before he opened the door and dashed to the entrance of his apartment building, his bag of papers clutched to his chest to shield it from the rain.

That had been the first time Wei Ying drove Lan Zhan home, and, Lan Zhan assumed, the last time, as well.

He was wrong about that.

 ---

It wasn’t a big difference to take public transportation to university the next morning, though Lan Zhan missed his customary bike ride. The public transport took longer and he’d never particularly liked being surrounded by so many people at once. Still, he arrived at the university in good time and went on with his day as he usually would.

He didn’t see Wei Ying that day and returned with his own bicycle in the evening. He banned all thoughts of Wei Ying and moved on. It was useless to dwell on it. It had been a favour, and Wei Ying was simply a good person for making sure Lan Zhan made it home safely in a rainstorm.

Three days later, when he was leaving the library, someone bumped into him again. This time, he didn’t startle, but simply turned around, and there he was: Wei Ying. He looked good in his usual black leather jacket and high ponytail, smiling up at Lan Zhan with that particular smile of his that seemed fine-tuned to make him weak.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying greeted, repeating his words from last time. “Fancy meeting you here! Are you going home?”

“Hn,” Lan Zhan replied.

“Well, in that case, let me give you a ride again, okay? You were such a good customer last time.”

And just like last time, Wei Ying took his hand and led him over to the parking area, and Lan Zhan, smitten fool that he was, followed without complaint.

During the drive home, Wei Ying chattered on about his day, about his siblings, about the horrible dog he had seen the other day; about anything his brain would settle on for a moment, it seemed. Lan Zhan enjoyed the chatter, offering quiet, encouraging noises for him to continue from time to time. Before he knew it, they were already home.

“Thank you again, Wei Ying,” he said when Wei Ying stopped the car.

“Anytime, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying replied with a smile.

Lan Zhan’s bicycle had been left at university again, but that didn’t matter. Not when he had found a way to spend time with Wei Ying, just the two of them on their own.

 ---

The next day, Lan Zhan found a notice from the university tacked onto his bike to not leave it at university at night, or it would be towed.

We-ll, he thought to himself, this was a sign that he should stop accepting rides from Wei Ying.

And yet, when Wei Ying asked him the next time, he let himself be guided to the parked car by Wei Ying’s hand, and he sat next to Wei Ying during the ride thinking to himself that he had to go back and pick up his bike later on. It was a waste of time, and yet he found himself incapable of rejecting Wei Ying’s offer.

“Lan Zhan, my neighbour got pet rabbits,” Wei Ying excitedly told him. “They are so cute, I tell you. I could eat them, they are so cute.”

Lan Zhan frowned. “Not food.”

“I know, I know. Have you never seen anything so cute that you’ve wanted to eat it?”

You.

The thought came unbidden, and it startled him. He felt his ears burn at the thought, but luckily, Wei Ying kept his eyes on the road.

This time, he stifled a sigh of relief when they finally arrived at their destination. He felt like he was losing his mind. Wei Ying was too much.

“Thank you again, Wei Ying,” he said out loud.

“Anytime, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying replied with a smile.

Returning to university to pick up his bicycle was a waste of time, but he had to do it.

It was also so, so worth it.

 ---

Lan Zhan’s new habit of letting Wei Ying drive him home, returning to university, and driving home again continued for a while. It was fine, he told himself. He wasn’t hurting anyone with it. Except for himself. Keeping his desperate hope up that Wei Ying could ever see him as more than the person he sometimes drove home after seeing him at the library.

It was fine.

Like all good things, however, it had to end at some point. The end came unexpected.

Wei Ying had driven him home that day as usual, talking about his neighbour’s rabbits and how much they had grown since they had first arrived. As usual, Lan Zhan had thanked Wei Ying before he’d gotten out of the car, and Wei Ying had replied, “Anytime.”

As usual, he had returned to university to pick up his bike. Before he could pick it up at the parking area, however, he had run straight into Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying exclaimed with surprise. “Didn’t I just drop you off at home? Did you forget something? Do you want me to drive you back?”

“I– Wei Ying is still at university?” Lan Zhan asked, confused.

“Ahahaha yeah, funny story that, I forgot I still had a meeting to go to!”

Was it just him, or did Wei Ying seem strangely nervous?

“Forget, my ass, you’re just trying to avoid your responsibilities,” Jiang Cheng groused.

“Hey! I had important stuff to do!”

“Oh yeah? What’s the oh-so important stuff you had to do? Every Thursday, you say you have important stuff to do and end up being late, but you evade answering what that ‘important stuff’ is.”

Wei Ying’s eyes flickered over to Lan Zhan for a moment, before they settled on Jiang Cheng again, teasing whim while simultaneously trying to appease him without actually answering the question.

Something stuck in Lan Zhan’s mind. Thursday.

Thursday was generally the day that Wei Ying would catch him at the library and drive him home. Thursday was apparently also they day on which Wei Ying had meetings which he was late for regularly.

Wei Ying shot him another look, his cheeks tinged red. He looked… panicked.

Lan Wangji closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“I came to pick up my bicycle,” he said.

In a moment, Jiang Cheng was forgotten. Wei Ying’s attention was all on Lan Zhan.

“Lan Zhan! You commute by bicycle? I didn’t know!”

“You never asked.”

“Oooh, shit, you are right! Oh man, I’m so sorry! You were too nice to say anything! I feel so bad now!”

“I did not mind.”

Wei Ying stopped and looked at him with big eyes.

“I did not mind… Wei Ying driving me home.”

There was a punctuated moment of silence between them. Lan Zhan was quite sure Jiang Cheng was frowning somewhere in the background, but he could not attend to that now.

Slowly, understanding dawned in Wei Ying’s eyes.

He took one step ahead.

Then another one.

Then he latched onto Lan Zhan’s wrist.

Squeezed once, and smiled when Lan Zhan’s hand turned around to hold onto Wei Ying’s wrist, too. They were almost holding hands.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying quietly said, looking at their hands and then up at Lan Zhan’s face. Looking at their hands again, holding onto each other. “Next time… let me pick you up in the morning.”

“Hn,” Lan Zhan agreed. His ears burned, but he wouldn’t let go now.

(“Not with me in the car!” Jiang Cheng shouted from somewhere behind them. But Lan Zhan couldn’t be bothered, because he was currently faced with something far more devastating. Wei Ying’s smile, while he had thought it impossible, had just managed to grow so impossibly bright he had to close his eyes. He couldn’t look, or he might go blind by the sheer force of it. Still, he looked. The damage was worth it, he thought. That smile was sure to burn itself onto his soul, and he could not find it inside himself to regret that the slightest bit.)

[onlyfangz]

Due to the new Pokemon game

Since Scottish people and culture seems to be coming into the spotlight recently, here’s a few things you should know (Alternative title: Facts About Scotland):

- We are “Scots”, with one ‘t’, not two, and we’re definitely not “Scotch”, which is considered rude to call someone in most parts, and in others are considered a slur. Scotch refers to Scottish products. See: Scotch Wiskey, Scotch Tablet, etc., Singular is “Scot”. So, “He is a Scot.”

- You don’t need to tell us that you don’t understand our language. It’d be like if I saw a post wrote in Italian and I said, “Lol what does this say”. Like obviously, I don’t speak Italian, no need to comment on it.

- You also don’t need to tell us that you do understand our language. Again, it’d be like me reading a post in German (let’s pretend I can speak more than a few words in German for a sec) and I said, “Oh wow! I understand this!” 

- Don’t try and write or speak in our language. Chances are no-one will have any clue of what you’re talking about.

- We don’t say “fockin”. Nobody says fockin.

- Or “fookin”.

- It’s just fucking. Fuckin’ if you must.

- Scots has a lot of intricate rules. Sometimes two words or variations means the same thing, but can only be used in certain contexts. “Ye” and “Ya” mean “You”, but where “Ye cannae dae that, ya dobberhied,” makes sense, “Ya cannae dae that, ye dobberhied” does not.

- We are not brash, rude, crass, uncivilized, barbaric, constantly drunk, angry, unintelligent, etc.,

- Yes we do have TV, it was a Scottish person who invented it.

- In fact, you’ve got Scottish people to thank for for: pedal bikes, the pneumatic tyre, the steam engine, penicillin, the pemalis wave energy converter, the hot blast oven, hollow pipe drainage, the telephone, postage stamps, postcards, universal time, the first ever english book on surgery, sherlock holmes, peter pan, modern economics, modern sociology, hypnotism, modern geology, the discovery of saturn’s rings, the decimal point, the Gregorian telescope, the discoveries of the properties of carbon dioxide, the pyroscope, identifying the nucleus in cells, the ground work for the incandescent lightbulb (thought thomas edison did that on his own, did you?), criminal fingerprinting, the very first cloned mammal, the world’s first tractor beam, the shot put, the hammer throw, curling, ice hockey, the saline drip, the hypodermic syringe, understanding transplant rejection, using the ultrasound to diagnose, identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria, the typhoid vaccine, discovering insulin, the HPV vaccine, fire engines, the discovery of TB treatment, the development of beta-blocker drugs, the glasgow coma scale, the glasgow anxiety scale, the glasgow depression scale, the fridge, the toaster, flushing toilets, the waterproof macintosh jackets, the kaleidoscope, the lawnmower, the electric clock, the bank of england and france, the game grand theft auto, forbes magazine, the new york herald, and paintball.

- So the question isn’t does Scotland have (x), it’s do you?

- Glasgow is pronounced “Glass-go” or “Glaz-go”, not “Glass-cow”.

- Edinburgh is pronounced “Ed-in-bruh”.

- Loch is pronounced with a soft “ck” noise, not with a hard “ck.” (It’s not “Lock”.)

- No I haven’t seen the Loch Ness Monster, I don’t even live near Loch Ness.

- Nessie isn’t the only Loch Monster. She has a sister, Morag.

- Now for a round of “Is it true?”

- “Does Scotland hate England?” A lot of us do, some of us don’t.

- “Does Scotland hate Ireland?” A lot of us don’t. I haven’t met anyone who does.

- “Are Scotland and Ireland the same?” No.

- “Do Scottish people type in their accents?” No, we type in our language.

- “Does Haggis taste good?” Depends who you ask. My personal answer - yes, I like it. Chances are you won’t.

- “Is Haggis made out of sheep guts?” No. It’s made out of sheep liver, heart, and lungs. It’s not disgusting, it’s just animal product and you need to chill out about it.

- “Are Celts Scottish?” Celts are Scottish, and also Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Manx.

- Celtic and Celtic are two different things in Scotland. One has a hard “Ck” noise at the beginning of it, but the other has a “S” noise (Sell-tic). K-ell-tic refers to people, Sell-tic refers to a football club.

- Not all of Scotland is rough. A lot of it is actually quite nice.

- The Highlands are not mystical. It’s nice scenery if you like a bunch of mountains, but there’s not much going on up there.

- If someone is the King/Queen of Scotland, it means that they’re King/Queen of the land, but if someone is the King/Queen of Scots, it means they’re King/Queen of Scottish People. It’s a very hard distinction, and the reason why you’ll hear “Mary, Queen of Scots”, “Robert The Bruce, King of Scots”, but not “Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Scots”.

- A lot of people don’t like the monarchy, so don’t ask us if we’ve ever had tea with the Queen or whatever you like to ask.

- Even though we’re working on it, we are still British. So if a Scottish person tells you they’re British they know what they’re talking about and do not need you to “correct” them. Britain refers to the four nations: Scotland, England, Wales, and N. Ireland.

- Britain has no culture. You’re thinking of English culture.

- There is a British accent. 43 of them to be exact. None of them are more British than the other.

- The North of England gets treated as badly as all of Scotland by the South of England.

- Scotland did not vote for Brexit, but if all of Scotland voted against something, and all of London voted for something, London would win by an estimated 3 million margin. (And that’s off population alone, numbers would vary due to voter eligibility.)

- Scotland is heavily liberal, with free college, free health care, is the only country in the world to give free sanitary products in schools and other public places, and is the only country in the world where LGBTI+ education is mandatory and part of the curriculum. (Other countries do give LGBTI+ education, but in no country is it mandatory.)

- In conclusion: don’t be an asshole.

[thatfanficstuff]

Bound - 7 (take 2)

Pairing: Klaus x OC

Warnings: none

A/N: Have this boring photo free post because dumblr flagged my one with the header. Idiots.

***

Several hours passed before we heard from Rebekah. She sent Elijah a text that said Elena and company knew nothing. They were only digging for information.

“Do you believe that?” I asked before I could think better of it.

“Are you suggesting Rebekah would lie to us?” Nik’s voice held an edge I didn’t care for.

“Careful, Niklaus,” Elijah said, his gaze darting between the two of us.

“I’m not suggesting anything, Nik.” I arched a brow as I took him in. “I don’t know her well enough to know if she would lie or not. I do know Elena however and I find it unlikely her and Damon would expose their play unless they were ready to act.”

He closed the distance between us. “My sister swore a vow. She would not betray me. You may think you know everything about our family but you do not. So kindly refrain from commenting on things of which you are no part.”

“Niklaus,” Elijah snapped, but it was too late. The damage was done.

I turned to the elder Original. “If you insist on trying to keep him from self-sabotaging, you face an eternity of disappointment, Elijah.”

I moved to leave the room and Nik’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Where are you going?”

“To visit my uncle. Is there a problem with that?”

He looked as if he wanted to argue but decided against it. “Then I will take you. I don’t like you out alone.”

I brushed his hand away. “I think I’ve got it covered. Besides you should save your worry for those that actually are a part of your family.”

***

I was more frustrated with Nik than I was angry. By now, I was more than used to him saying the wrong thing usually at precisely the wrong time. A couple of hours with Elijah bitching at him for his thoughtlessness should be sufficient punishment. The thought was enough to have me feeling better as I knocked on Ric’s door.

“Come in,” he called.

“I hope you aren’t making a habit of blindly inviting people into your home, Ric. You should no better than that,” I said as I walked in and shut the door behind me.

“Cassidy!” He grinned then glanced around his apartment at the photos scattered on every available surface. “Just…uh…give me a minute,” he stuttered and started to sweep the photos into a hasty pile.

Taking a step to the nearest surface, I grabbed one and looked it over. A white symbol scratched onto a dark wall. It must be the language from the cave Nik mentioned.  “You don’t have to hide this, you know. I already know about the cave.”

“The cave?”

I smiled and took a seat on the couch. “You would think that you might have reached out to the person that’s studied ancient cultures, but whatever.”

Ric sighed and sat beside me, resting his hand on my knee. “Yeah, well, I suggested that. It seems as though Elena and Damon don’t trust you.”

“I’m getting a little fed up with the two of them if I’m honest.”

“Elena’s just a kid.”

“Maybe someone should remind Damon of that fact,” I suggested.

“Come on, Cass. Damon’s not that bad. He’s just a little—”

I cut him off. “Didn’t he kill you not too long ago?”

Ric made a sound of agreement but didn’t say anything else.

“Listen, can I crash on your couch tonight?” I asked after a moment.

It was obvious he wanted to dig deeper but he was a good man. “Actually, you can have the bed. I’m staying with Jenna.”

***

I spent the next day lazing around Ric’s apartment and watching bad sci fi movies in between texting the Mikaelson brothers. I was ready to go home but I was holding out for an apology. He’d been close but hadn’t cracked yet. I just had to be patient.

When my phone dinged again, I picked it up with a smile which fell quickly when I saw the message was from Rebekah. I want to talk to you. Could you come to Stefan’s.

I sat up with a frown. There was no question. I didn’t trust Rebekah. Not in the least. But it was important to Nik that we get along so I supposed I could at least make an effort. I told her I’d be right there then shot a message to Elijah to tell him what was going on. The phone immediately rang.

“Rebekah requested to meet with you?” Elijah’s smooth voice said when I answered.

“That she did.”

“Did she say why?”

“No. I’m hoping Stefan managed to convince her that I’m not that bad. I guess we’ll find out.”

“Be careful, Cassie. As much as I love my sister, it would be remiss of me not to be aware of her more possessive tendencies when it comes to her family.”

“Well, that’s just lovely, Elijah. I’ll keep it in mind.”

***

Elena was the one to answer the door. “Cassidy!” She threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

My hug was a little more restrained. “It’s good to see you, too. Is Rebekah here?”

“Oh, yeah.” She pulled away. “She’s waiting for you in Stefan’s room.”

I kept my gaze on her as I made my way up the stairs. She was acting oddly too. What was going on?

I paused in the doorway of Stefan’s room as my gaze fell on Rebekah. She was dressed in a sleeveless red dress with her hair hanging loose to her shoulders. “Hello, Rebekah. You look great.”

She met my gaze in the mirror and smiled. “Thank you, Cassidy. Stefan said you were sweet.”

“I have my moments.” I glanced around. “Where is Stefan?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Running an errand.”

Well, that was vague. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

She turned to face me and licked her lips. “I want to ask you a question and I’d appreciate it if you were honest with me.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Do you know what happened to my mother?”

That surprised me. “Yes. Do you?” As far as I knew, she still believed Mikael had killed Esther.

“Did Niklaus kill my mother?”

By the way she asked the question I could tell she already knew the answer. I sighed. “Of course, he did Rebekah.”

That got her to her feet. She stopped inches from me. “What do you mean, of course?”

“Your mother was the only source of parental love Nik had. Though, it was tenuous at best. She let Mikael abuse him and belittle him and did nothing to intervene.”

Moisture pooled in her eyes. “What did you expect her to do? She was terrified of my father.”

“She was a witch, Rebekah. If she was strong enough to turn you all into vampires, she was strong enough to stop your father. She chose him over her son.” I was yelling by that point but I didn’t care. “And instead of facing the consequences for her infidelity, she forced that burden on him as well by binding his werewolf side and turning her back on him. Of course, he ripped her heart out. She deserved it.”

My head snapped to the side as Rebekah slapped me. Thankfully, she held back or she very well might have broken something. As it was, I’d be bruised tomorrow. “You, bitch,” she snarled.

Before I could retaliate, Elena stepped into the room and I watched in fascinated horror as she daggered Rebekah in the back. The blonde reached out for me, but I could do little more than catch her to keep her from hitting the floor. I lowered her gently to the ground before turning my full attention to my cousin.

“What the hell are you thinking, Elena?”

“I’m sorry, Cassidy but we can’t let her interfere. She might warn him.”

A chill went up my spine as Damon walked into the room. My gaze moved between the two of them. “Warn who?”

Damon shrugged as he gave me a smirk. “Don’t worry about it, Grimes. Everything will be over before you know it. We just need to borrow you to seal the trap.”

“I’m not doing shit for you, Salvatore.”

He dropped a hand on my shoulder. “I guess it’s a good thing you don’t have your powers anymore then, isn’t it?”

***

I am retagging everyone in this post as well as I don’t know when the other one will be visible. Sorry if you get notifs for both.

Bound: @deadmanwalked @the-doctor-9-10 @kawaiirepublic @xlosttdreamss @tkdgirl2012 @cacti-succulents-andlesbians @killerheelsanddullknives @readeity @kayla-03-blog @star-incandescent  @bookwormstrawberry 

All the Things: @swanky-batman @rissyrapp20 @startrekkingaroundasgard @spooookyscary @taylordrunkonwhiskey @thewolf-and-thesheep 

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] The Fanservice Episode, Frankly

Series: 100% OJ / Suguri Words: 3855 Characters: Suguri, Hime, Kae, Nanako Originally posted: February 27, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: I remember being proud of this when I wrote it; I’m usually better at short stuff, to the extent that longer chapters sap my energy a lot. (A little better at it nowadays, I guess...) Of course, nobody read it. I took the title from a Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid episode. Somewhat risque, and with a hurried ending.

Suguri was not, particularly, a fan of the ocean. The raw power of her body was enough to dissuade concerns about breathing, and even the thousands of atmospheres worth of pressure to a certain extent, but she was all too aware that in the Great War, humanity had been rather more focused on how to litter the sea with mines than with how to get them back out again. Even with her abilities, clean up had been a long, dangerous process, and more still might be lurking in the dark, unknown pockets of the deep. There was no way to know. As a result, she wasn't quite as enthused by the idea of a summer beach trip as Hime had been. There were upsides, of course. The sea breeze was one of Suguri's favourite things; part of her believed that she had been a seagull in her past life. She was also partial to the building and subsequent destruction of elaborate sandcastles, to symbolise the artifices of man returning to the bosom of the ocean. There was, however, an additional factor in Suguri's decision to attend the beach day, although she had every intention of denying it when it inevitably came up. A week prior she had spotted Hime sneaking into the house in the earlier hours, armed with a two-piece bikini that was a shade below scandalous but still firmly in the daring category. She hadn't been able to get a good look at it, but she was fairly sure it was frilly, and a Hime with frills was relevant to her interests to say the least. Also relevant to Suguri's interests, in no particular order, were: Hime running barefoot along the sands and giggling; Hime standing waist-deep in the ocean with sunlit golden hair and her beautiful wings reflected against the rolling waves; and hitting watermelons with sticks. (Some pleasures were too simple to be denied). Upon reaching the beach, the pair had retired to the changing rooms, and Suguri had shrugged on her own swimsuit. It wasn't too flattering, although it wasn't as though she had much to flatter; Suguri was built for speed, with lean, defined muscles in her shoulders and her back. Her long hair did, however, mean she could get away with a halter top without anybody staring too much, and all she needed after that was a pair of shorts. Shorts, mercifully, were easy to shop for; usually, shopping for swimwear ranked at number six in the top ten list of Suguri's Biggest Waking Nightmares. She just had very defined tastes, and nobody seemed to appreciate grey swimsuits with a single stripe on them as much as she did. Having changed much faster than Hime (as usual), Suguri looked out at the fine, pale sands and resolved that before the day was over, she would achieve her life's ambition of making a sand castle that she could fit inside. But the day was long, and she was fast; there would be time for castle-building later. Now was the time of garishly striped towels and beach umbrellas that consistently threatened to fall over, and she wasted no time in installing hers in the middle of the beach. By the time the others arrived, Suguri had already acquired flip flops, novelty sunglasses and the beginnings of a tan, and was busy lying face down on her beach towel like a fried egg with a grey, fluffy yolk. “Hey, shortie. You didn't bring your luggage with you?” Suguri tilted her head upwards and saw Nanako, who was hefting a beach bag almost as big as she was. As always, she seemed a touch bitter; Suguri sometimes had problems getting along with her, although Hime was of the opinion that Nana just enjoyed grousing as a way to vent stress, “Ah, you've arrived. If by 'luggage' you meant Hime, she's still changing,” Suguri replied peacefully, looking Nana up and down. The diminutive soldier had gone for a violet one-piece that was more cute than it was dignified, although Suguri guessed that there weren't that many alluring outfits available for somebody of Nanako's size. Some impish part of her decided to push that button a little. “...I was sure you'd be wearing a school swimsuit, though.” “I don't care what you idiots say. I'm not in ninth grade! I am a professional soldier with a number of completed campaigns –” “And a record of losing to me in sword fights.” “– and a record of losing to you in sword fights because you cheat by having such long arms –” “I can't control how long my arms are.” “I can't control how tall I am! I looked everywhere for a nice, mature-looking swimsuit but I got landed with this frilly, cutesy mess while Kae, Kae looks like she's trying to dam the Victoria Falls with a picket fence, just spilling out everywhere and argh!” Nanako threw herself on the sand in frustration, before rolling over and affixing Suguri with a dangerous, steely glare. “You and me, we should form an alliance. Did you know that being short used to make you a sex symbol? It's true! I dug out some old music from before that stupid war you guys had, and all they ever sing about is shorties. 'Shortie, you so hot! Shortie, get low! Shortie got me spending the benjamins!' All stuff like that. We could rule together.” Suguri arranged her face into a peaceful, innocent smile. “I'll form an alliance with you. But you have to accept me as the leader.” “...What would your first order be?” Nanako asked, eyes narrowing. “To go and explain to Kae why, in detail, you've been staring at her chest for long enough to construct similes about it.” “Tch. No dice,” the girl said, and rolled over to face the other way. “I hate arguing with you. It always makes me so tired. I just wanna sit down and relax afterwards.” Suguri sighed, and very gently patted Nanako on the head, expecting her to jerk her head away at any moment. Her hair was surprisingly soft and healthy; evidently she took good care of it. “...Your swimsuit doesn't look awful. Tell me where you got it next time,” Nana said after a while. “Yes, yes.” Perhaps, in an alternative world, the moment would have continued. The sounds of the waves against the shores, of seagulls chattering overhead, would have lulled Nanako into an easy sleep. She would have awoken hours later, sunburnt on the side of her that was peeking out from Suguri's lopsided beach umbrella, and her absolute incandescent rage would have been mollified by memories of Suguri gently fussing with her hair. Alas, this would have had to been an alternative world where Kae did not exist and was not the greatest source of noise on the beach. She charged along, a beach umbrella under one arm, kicking up a stream of flying sand with her footsteps, yelling at the top of her voice – and the top of her voice was taller than some mountains. Suguri took a glance in her direction and immediately regretted it; Nanako had not been joking when she talked about spillage. She looked just long enough to feel vaguely jealous before turning away, which was just as well, because the next thing Kae did was launch herself through the air in a beautiful parabolic arc toward their location. She hit with the force of a small explosive, planting her beach umbrella into the ground like a sword and distributing a fine layer of sand over the face and body of every person in a 100 metre radius. “Safe!” the redhead yelled, flashing a peace signal to her two friends. Suguri, drawing on over 10,000 years of life experience, had wisely made the decision to close her eyes and mouth. Nanako had not, and was in the delicate process of trying to make death threats while excavating roughly a tenth of the beach from her lungs. She was having little success with either, but this made no difference to Kae, who had already thrown herself at Suguri for a full-body hug. After a relatively minor but confusing scuffle, they came to a rest with Kae's warm cheek pressed gently against Suguri's navel. “Ahahahaha! It's been so long since I saw you, Sugi! What are you doing lying around? You should be playing volleyball! Summer is all about friendly competition!” Suguri had come to two conclusions, neither of which was about volleyball. The first was that Kae was part puppy, and had to express that by nuzzling people to death. The second was that Kae's swimsuit had more in common with a coat of paint on a car than with an actual piece of fabric designed for human beings. Bravely extricating herself from Kae's embrace, Suguri put on her responsible adult voice. “Ah... I think if we played volleyball, one of us would have a malfunction.” Kae gave a thumbs up. She often gestured as she spoke, with enough ferocity to put any angry waiter to shame. “Don't worry, don't worry! This body was built to last!” “I'll play volleyball with you, Kae,” Nanako seethed, her eyes flashing pure murderous intent. “But I get to use my bits as well, since you're so tall, and, and, buxom. And if I win, you have to be quiet for one hour for every point I won by.” “Uuuu... That doesn't seem fair. But I don't ever see Nana this fired up. What to do...? Aha! I know! If I win, I get to dress Nana up however I want for the rest of the day!” Both girls looked at Suguri, who sighed and nodded. “Alright. I've witnessed the conditions of the bet. Play fair, you two. Or mostly fair, anyway.” Almost before she had finished speaking the two were away, trading verbal jabs and actual lasers with impunity. Suguri watched them become dots in the sky, and wondered how exactly they intended to play volleyball without a net. It didn't matter, she supposed; Nanako was spoiling for a fight more than anything, and Kae would be more than willing to give her one. “Oh, my. Are those two at it already? I don't know if they get along badly or a bit too well,” a voice remarked from behind Suguri's shoulder. It was warm, cheerful, as clear as song. Hime. “I'm also disappointed in you, Suguri. I look away for mere moments and another woman has captured your belly-button for herself.” Suguri tilted her head back to take a long, upside-down look at Hime and her swimsuit. There were ruffles. There was a black and gold high neck bikini top and a black sarong cut just low enough to show the delicate lines leading down from the hips. There was a dry smile on Hime's face which probably meant Suguri was being a little too obvious. “Aha. Well, you were changing for quite a while,” she said, clearing her throat. “True enough. No matter. I shall just have to win back your heart with delicious ice cream,” Hime replied, leaning down to hand Suguri a scoop. Had she been carrying ice cream cones, Suguri wondered? Her eyes had definitely been elsewhere. “It's a shame that Saki, Iru and Kyoko couldn't make it.” “Mm,” Suguri nodded. Especially since those three were generally much less erratic than Nanako and Kae were. “Well, I was more worried about Nana and Kae in the first place. The others have spread out a little and started to explore, but I don't think those two have found what they really want from this planet yet...” Suguri frowned. This was one of those moments that seemed to demand a sensitive, emotional response, and she didn't have one ready. The words always seemed to elude her, as surely as she eluded bullets and lasers. “We can take care of them for a while longer,” she replied. It wasn't quite the response she had wanted to give, but it was the one she had to settle for. “I suppose I should stop being a mother hen. Speaking of, are you wearing sunscreen?” “Was that why you took so long changing? You were putting on sunscreen?” “Very good! Gold star for Suguri,” Hime said with a grin, and sat down beside her on the sand. “My skin is so pale from being in the spaceship all those years that I have to be careful with it. You didn't answer my question, though.” “I don't really need it. My skin never tans or burns. And I have no intention of leaving this umbrella, anyway.” “Oh, that's ridiculous. I'm sure you'll want to play in the sun at some point. Here, roll over and I'll do your back for you,” Hime said, with an expression of perfect innocence that guaranteed she was up to something. “Don't worry. I can do it myself.” “Oh my, how impressive. How flexible and dexterous you must be!” Hime replied, with a gleam in her eye. “Incidentally, how good are you at rope escape?” Suguri sighed. The answer, of course, was 'not good enough to get out of Binding Chains'. She grunted and rolled over in deference to Hime's passionate advocacy of responsible skincare. With a satisfied giggle, Hime scooted across and sat on her. “Hime? You're sitting on my butt.” “Yes, I'm quite aware.” “Is there any reason?” “You sit on it all the time. It seemed the obvious place.” The logic was flawless, and Suguri couldn't refute it. Instead, she just closed her eyes and appreciated the breeze rolling in from the sea. Hime, meanwhile, busied herself with scooping up armfuls of long, silver hair and moving it away from Suguri's back. “Ooh. Nice definition,” Hime murmured as she began to work damp fingertips around the muscles of Suguri's shoulders. Suguri said nothing, and was trying very hard to think nothing as well; for all her efforts to approximate a plank of wood, she wasn't having much luck. She tried closing her eyes and allowing the sound of the waves to fill her mind. “Hey.” Suguri was surprised to hear her own voice. She hadn't particularly planned to say anything. “Mm?” “Why is this so important to you?” Hime tilted her head a little in thought, but her hands continued to insinuate themselves against Suguri's muscles like the ocean licking at the sands. “Oh, well. A few reasons. It's part of the beach experience, I suppose, to rub sunscreen on somebody's back. Spaceships, in general, are not equipped with beach facilities, and water is a precious resource. We never got sun tans. We never wore swimsuits. Hm... How do I put it? For you, Suguri, this might not be a special occasion, but for me, and for Kae and Nanako as well, it has the taste of a kind of life we were never allowed by circumstance to lead.” “I see.” The sound of the waves seemed to blend with the words and give them a strange, mystical texture. Hime's hands crept down the plains of her back and then returned to her shoulders, in a long, sinuous pattern. “Another reason is that you've been so patient with us, Suguri, and with me in particular. To have had you here to welcome us to this strange, wide-open world has meant more than I can say. Sometimes I just want to spoil you a little in return. This doesn't feel bad, right?” The only response Suguri could conjure was a non-committal but vaguely embarrassed little sound from the back of her throat; Hime met it with a sparkling laugh. “Of course, that's a third reason. You're quite fun to tease, Suguri. You're so very serious all the time, and you always try not to react but do anyway.” “And is that why you tease me so much?” Hime took a moment to to coat her hands with a little more lotion. “Would you prefer a short and fun answer, or a long and serious one?” “Well,” Suguri replied dryly, “Since I'm such a serious person, I'll take the serious answer.” “I thought as much.” Hime's hands had drifted as low as Suguri's waist; her movements were slower, lingering, and her words matched. “I've lived for ten thousand years, Suguri. You know how long that is. But for the vast majority of that time, I've lived in the same, tiny place. The same days, the same faces, endlessly repeating. Oh, Suguri. I used to look at those travellers who we brought to Earth, and I could take apart their faces and say what belonged to their great, great grandfathers, where the family trees had crossed, that kind of thing. In a restricted pool like that, there are only so many genes you can have, you know? Only so many faces, so many combinations.” Suguri said nothing. If there was one thing she was good at, it was that. “Well, at any rate, if you live for too long like that, time starts to... blend together, just a touch. More than a touch. For a long, long while, it felt like I was living the same day over and over. Like time had stopped, for me. Just for me. But then we saw Earth on our horizons, with that horrible man at the helm. The only reason I didn't stop him earlier was because I assumed he would die of old age before he got the chance to do any real damage, but... Anyway. Things started moving again. Now every day is different. There are so many people to meet, with so many faces I've never seen or dreamt of before. This world, this Earth of yours, is constantly spinning. In motion. I feel like that's so important.” “It's your Earth, too. Mm. That feels nice.” Hime was tracing circles with her thumbs across the edges of Suguri's hips; she gave a satisfied little sigh and applied herself to the task with more gusto. “I suppose it is, at that. But, Suguri. Sometimes when I look at you, I feel... I feel like your time stopped somewhere on the way, too. Some days you wake up, and you wear the same face all day. It's... Well, I don't think it's good to do that. And anyway, I'm childish and selfish. I want to see all the different faces you can make, Suguri, not just the one you use all the time. That's why I tease you from time to time. To stop the moments from blending. I'm hoping that one day, I won't even have to tease you; you'll just wake up and smile, and blush, and laugh by yourself instead of keeping that same face.” “And what will you do then?” Suguri asked. Her voice was sleepy. Her body was sleepy. She felt like she was talking in a dream. “Well... I'll probably keep teasing you. But perhaps I won't be joking about it. Your back is done, by the way,” Hime replied, and stood up. “Of course, I could always do your front for you, if you'd like.” Suguri didn't need to look to know that Hime was wearing a devious grin. But she stood up and looked anyway. After all the talk of keeping the same face, she realised that perhaps she hadn't been paying enough attention to Hime's. “If I said yes, would you do it?” Hime blinked, and for a moment a flash of colour spread into her pale cheeks; but it was just for a moment. “You could always take your chances and find out.” “I'll pass.” “Oh, boo. It's rude to raise a lady's hopes and then dash them.” Suguri found, as she had always found, that there were moments in life when it was necessary to trust one's body over one's brain. Decisions could not always be taken with a full set of information on which to base rationale, and anyway, there were sometimes sensations that the brain filtered out of conscious experience but still registered on a smaller level, and those could be as indicative of oncoming danger as any larger portents. She couldn't quite tell what prompted her to move as she did, but in that moment she was absolutely sure that the correct course of action was to launch herself towards Hime, scoop up her friend in her arms, and clear the next six feet of ground as soon as possible. She had cleared the first three feet when Kae and Nanako barrelled out of an empty sky at a speed that beggared belief and crashed into the beach, sending a plume of sand skyward. “One, two, three, four, I win the THUUUMB WAAAAAR!” Kae howled, lifting Nanako into the air by one arm like a referee lifting a boxer's arm in victory. “Hey, hey, Big Sis Hime! Do you think Nana would look better as a punk rocker, or with cat ears?” “Go with whatever your heart tells you, Kae,” Hime said indulgently. “But remember: when it comes to cat ears, proper etiquette demands a tail as well.” Nana, although her eyes were more inclined to look in different directions to one another in that moment in time, still had the wherewithal to look at Hime lounging in Suguri's arms and ask, in a very groggy voice, “Am we... Was I... Is we... Inter'pting somethink?” “Oh, nothing that we can't continue later,” Hime said with a wink, climbing down. “She means 'no, nothing',” Suguri deadpanned. “I don't suppose you two would like to put the beach back where it belongs?” “Nope!” Kae said proudly, conspicuously not looking at giant crater she had left. Suguri sighed. “I suppose we'll pick a different beach next year. It's about time to split the watermelon. Would you go and fetch it?” Kae had vanished before the sentence was finished. Hitting things with sticks was very much a Kae thing, and she dragged Nanako along in her wake. Suguri didn't expect her to come back with one watermelon; rather, she expected to see her juggling three. As the two departed, Hime gave Suguri a nudge. “Next year, hm? I don't recall discussing a second trip.” “Well, it hasn't been a bad day. I want to make a sandcastle next time.” “Oh, yes. There's still things the beach has to offer us. I was planning to bury you up to your neck in the sand and then poke your cheeks.” “...Don't make me change my mind.” A year, Suguri thought, had always been such a short time. That was the problem. Time didn't freeze, as Hime said; it just went faster and faster while you weren't looking, and for all her speed Suguri had never been able to catch up with it. You blinked, and the Earth had come to the same spot again, and all that had changed was the year. But here, today, she blinked: the Earth remained where it was, and the year was the same, but her friends were wearing different expressions. It hadn't been a bad day, here at the beach. It hadn't been a bad day at all.

[xivu-arath]

swl got me all nostalgic about the writing I had done for my digimon oc carelessly transplanted into tsw and the last bit is objectively the Best Written if still far back enough that I... still wrote in past tense lmao so

might as well post it, right? right

There were strange pockets of peace, sudden quiet, and the only shadow cast was that of the immense Filth-ridden bird circling high above.

Avari did not expect beauty in Kaidan. The Filth-choked streets, the citizens consumed by dark dreams - she’d expected those, and navigated them with grace and dread. The darkness was deeper, here. Filth cast a shadow over the area, bubbled up in pools and poisoned the soil. It was an unclean place, and she longed for a shower even as she reported back again and again, on a maddened tank pilot, rogue robots and Orochi biting its tail and drawing blood.

But outside the streets, the trees bloomed and the grass was verdant apart from where demons scorched it bare. There were strange pockets of peace, sudden quiet, and the only shadow cast was that of the immense Filth-ridden bird circling high above.

That was an old dream - an old nightmare - cast back into reality. But she hadn’t had to fight it, yet. She knew she would, eventually.

Another was the hiss of static, the voice calling for her - Hiya, Chuck, blind and seeing all too clearly. It wasn’t just instinct that drove her to smash screens, jam a blade into any nearby monitor and gut its circuitry. Paranoia served her well, sometimes.

Trips back to Agartha were a frequent necessity, so that the gentle light could help slough off some of the fear, the distaste that covered her hands like ink, trailed in her footsteps. In some ways, she truly hated Kaidan. It was a pustule of a place, a plague seething against all borders, crawling inside heads and worming its way through a binary ocean. It itched for her to be a vector of infection, and she was grateful for the bees’ blessings a thousandfold, so she could wade through and come away untouched. Relatively, anyways. The nightmares stayed, the pain lingered for a few moments - burning numbness, a bone-deep itch that pleaded to shed such a fragile shell of skin and be incandescent.

But she knew what awaited those who became stars.

Kaidan struggled onwards, and she became well acquainted with its lingering bastions of human contact. She had not expected kindness here, and yet she got it - Akashi learned her order and began to make it every time he saw her walk in, and sometimes Gozen asked for reports of what she had seen on the streets, or politely (and pointedly) offered advice on her bladework. She was not the only agent so treated, and factions were often ignored when a few of them clustered together, in the middle of the night or as the sun was rising, trading stories with the warriors on guard duty.

Sometimes, there were no stories - when she returned from the Fear Nothing Foundation’s headquarters, she found she had no words left for that calculated slaughter. Susano’o’s Diner was too structured, too orderly - she sank herself in the bathhouse instead. It wasn’t a place to go to be purified, but it was loud and crowded and raucous, the exiled oni caught somewhere between mocking superiority and cautious respect for those chosen by Gaia. Avari had to threaten some bodily harm to get a private bath, and had no liking for Inbeda himself, but… as a distraction, it was a good one.

Oni were simple, in the way that all beings from Hell were, so twistedly inhuman that once she established a frame of reference, they became… comfortable. The House In Exile was boisterous and angry and had many edges, for all that Inbeda listened to an ipod and crushed on the Illuminati handler.

That, she was used to.

Perhaps it was irony that the Dragon’s ally in the city was the one that put her most on edge. Daimon Kiyota was not just trouble - he was nigh-prophetic, knowledgeable and erratic all at once. She was afraid of what he might say, what secrets he could peel away by looking at her. So she didn’t lie - not as she would to the oni, mock pride and cool threats and an ease she never truly felt - and she hid little. She played to her strengths, to be blank and uncaring, to show the core of everything she had cast away, and… it worked, to an extent.

He laughed at her, but he laughed at everything, and she watched for that languid movement in the back of his eyes.

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Extraction (15/16)

Summary: Intelligence Agent Belle French has been given her most challenging assignment yet – one that will provide her agency with absolutely vital information on a practically untouchable arms dealer.

In addition to all the usual dangers any assignment carries, Belle also faces the edifying task of convincing Rum Gold to return to help the agency one last time. Agent Gold left the world of international espionage years ago, after an assignment went terribly wrong and ended in his imprisonment and torture, and he vowed never to return, but the agency cannot complete their mission without him…

===

Read the previous chapters here on AO3.

===

Fifteen

Belle couldn’t quite believe that it was over. She was still having trouble processing the fact that not only was she still alive, but that everyone else involved in the case was still alive, and that she was back home a free woman and not rotting somewhere underground in an Avalon prison. Even more astonishing was the fact that Regina was safe and sound as well. Graham was recovering well from his injuries and was back in the safehouse, and although Mal’s message about Daniel had been guarded, Belle got the impression that he was well on the way to making a full recovery as well. They had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat; so much had happened in so few seconds to turn the tables, and now here they were.

Blue, needless to say, was absolutely furious.

“Honestly,” Emma moaned from her desk in the bullpen, laying down her pen and paperwork and resting her head on the desk with a groan. “You’d think that she’d be happy that none of us are dead, at least.”

“Emma, you’ve read the Foresight file,” Belle pointed out. “You know how little respect for human life Blue has. It’s all about the intelligence. Now that Cora’s dead, there’s nothing to be gained. The entire assignment was a huge waste of time and resources in her eyes, and Cora’s now unable to answer for her crimes or stand trial.”

“But she’ll never cause any more trouble again!” Emma exclaimed. “I don’t understand how she can’t think that this is a good thing. If everything had gone off without a hitch and we’d extracted Regina as we’d planned and got all the information out of her during debrief, then it could still have taken years for us actually to bring down Cora, even with the inside source.” She paused, finally lifting her head off her paperwork and detaching the post-it note that had become adhered to her cheek. “I mean, I understand that it’s always bad when lives are lost during an assignment, be they our own people or the other side. I know that we strive to do everything with the minimum of bloodshed, but really, sometimes these things are the only way. Even with Regina’s evidence I don’t think that we could have broken Cora. I think that killing her was the only way to do it.”

“I think it’s more that the decision was taken out of Blue’s hands that’s making her so angry.” Belle leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of her pen as she pondered. It was not unheard of for the agency to order assassinations of marks, but there was a separate team dedicated to those kinds of assignments, the ‘cleaners’ who got all the messy jobs. As it was, the agency had not made that decision. It had been made for them, by a terrified young woman in fear of both her own life and the lives of people she cared about. “And I think that she wanted to get Zelena grilled on some of her torture and interrogation methods so that we can get the human rights lawyers involved. Or use them ourselves, that’s possible.”

Emma glanced over to Blue’s office, the other woman was talking on the phone and looking her usual calm, unruffled self. “More likely, if you ask me,” she muttered darkly. “We completed our objective. We extracted Regina. Why we have to go through so much debrief for an assignment that succeeded…” She threw her squashy duck stress reliever at the wall; it bounced off and hit Blue’s office window, and their superior gave Emma a filthy look. Emma, for her part, merely rolled her eyes and went to retrieve the duck, whilst David Nolan tried and failed to stop himself from bursting out laughing.

“Shut up,” Emma snapped. “Or I’ll throw Floyd at you.”

David did not stop laughing, and he soon found himself under attack from a small duck. It was at that point that Blue finished her phone call and came out of her office.

“Swan! Nolan! You’re in the middle of a complex debrief and I need those reports before the end of the day! There’s no time for you to be acting like children!”

Emma just glowered, going back to her desk and making a show of spreading out all her papers in front of her. Blue’s nostrils flared and she turned to go back into her office.

“French!”

Belle rolled her eyes, suppressed a sigh and gathered up the operation file, following Blue into the claustrophobic room that served as her office. The door had barely swung shut when there came an almighty commotion from outside the bullpen, and the entire team turned in the direction of the door as the raised voices came ever closer.

“Sir, really, you can’t go…” someone was saying frantically, to which a wonderfully familiar Scottish brogue replied.

“Until they lockdown my security access I can go wherever I damn well please.”

Blue went rather pale. “Why does Gold still have security access?” she asked faintly of no-one in particular.

“Because we’re still in debrief,” Belle replied sweetly. “He’s still got access whilst you’re still asking him for reports.”

Blue gave a long-suffering sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose, going to sit back behind her desk. Belle saw her pop a couple of aspirin, and she smiled. The bitch deserved whatever was coming her way, headache included.

There was the electronic clunk of the bullpen door unlocking, and it slammed open with ferocious force. Gold was standing in the frame, sharp suited, cane in one hand, plastic wallet of paperwork clenched almost beyond recognition in the other, and the sight he presented was one of beautifully incandescent rage. It was like the moment in a film where the presumed-dead hero picks himself up and comes striding in to save the day. The junior officer hovering in the door behind him decided it was best to cut her losses and she scampered away. If Gold had clearance to be in this bullpen then she wasn’t going to stop him using it, and she wasn’t going to cross Blue if at all possible.

“Fae!” Gold growled. “Fae, you’d bloody better be in here!”

He strode into the room, a larger than life figure despite his small stature, the healing wounds on his face and neck just lending ever more gravitas and strength to his appearance, and Belle side-stepped to allow him into Blue’s office, closing the door behind them to give the illusion of privacy, although knowing Gold as she did, she was certain that in the confrontation to come, the others outside would be able to hear exactly what was going on.

He slammed the wallet down on the desk and pushed it towards Blue, looming over her across the polished wood. Blue’s hand inched across her desk towards her phone and Gold swept the receiver off his desk with the handle of his cane. For a moment, Belle’s hand twitched, almost going to her service weapon. Gold was fuming, a state that she hadn’t seen him in before, and in that moment, he looked downright dangerous. When he spoke at last, his voice was a sharp whisper, hissed through his teeth.

“You told me she was mine.”

Blue looked from the plastic wallet to Gold, her cool, emotionless eyes meeting his impassioned ones.

“Yes,” she said coldly. “I did.”

Gold took a step back, not sitting down but no longer the looming, predatory figure that he had been before, and Belle’s hand relaxed. He leaned heavily on his cane, as if that initial burst of anger had taken it out of him and he no longer had the will to fight furiously in the face of Blue’s immoveable steel.

“You told me that she was mine because you knew that I would drop everything and go to her,” he growled. “You knew that after what you did to my son, I would jump at the chance to make sure that nothing happened to my daughter. You used me, Blue. You used my son against me before and you used him against me again now!”

“I did what I had to do to make you accept the assignment,” Blue replied. “And nothing you can bluster and shout and threaten me with will make me regret what I did. Although the assignment could have been completed a lot more cleanly,” here she looked at Belle, “it achieved its aim, one that would not have been achieved without your co-operation. Of course I manipulated you. I had a job to do, and in a line of work such as ours, we cannot afford to let emotions get in the way of that. I would have thought that was a lesson you would have learned well after your last assignment in Avalon. Wasn’t it your tender feelings for Cora Mills that got you into this entire mess in the first place?”

“Don’t try to pretend that wasn’t your idea, Blue,” Gold snarled, and he smacked his fist against the plastic wallet again. “You told me that she was mine, you sent me out there to what was almost my death on false pretences. You knew.”

Belle came closer to the table and saw the top sheet of the paperwork in the crumpled wallet. It was Regina’s medical notes from the House, including DNA. It was there in damning black and white; Regina and Gold were not related by blood.

Gold gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You’re a first class bitch, Fae, but then you always were. As long as you get what you want, it doesn’t matter who you screw over.”

“We’re in international intelligence,” Blue replied levelly. “Screwing people over is our job.”

“We don’t screw over our own,” Gold snapped. “We don’t leave our own agents in the hands of sadistic psychopaths for two fucking years because it’s not convenient for us to have them back. We don’t take away everything that one of our own has left and then use that loss to make them do the one thing they promised they would never do again, to send them back to the place that took so much away from them, to send them out to die under false pretences. We don’t do that to our own people.”

Blue’s hard expression was unwavering in the face of Gold’s ire. “We do what we have to in the name of national security,” she said. “Anything that we have to.”

“You and your godforsaken greater good.” Gold picked his security access card out of his jacket pocket and tossed it onto the desk; it skittered across and fell into Blue’s lap. “Since you’ll have my access revoked as soon as I’m out of the building after this little stunt, you might as well have it. I’m done, Fae. Done with your lies, done with you trying to rip me and my family apart in the name of international security. But you’re going to do one thing for me. One last little favour after everything that I’ve done for you.”

“What might that be?” Blue asked.

“Bae. You’re going to give me Bae’s files.”

“They’re locked down, Gold. You can’t just walk out of here with them.”

“I’m not intending to. But I’ll keep reminding you, until you give me what I want. As I’m sure you’ll remember from those good old days, I can be very persuasive.”

He turned on his heel, and gave Belle a polite nod. “Agent French, perhaps you would care to escort me from the building.”

“I would be glad to, Agent Gold.”

“French, get back here!” Blue snapped as Belle left her office, gathering up her coat and handbag from her desk and locking up her workstation.

“I’m cashing in my overtime,” Belle called over her shoulder as she swiped Gold out of the bullpen.

Once they were in the elevator going down to the entrance, Gold sagged, leaning heavily on his cane and the lift wall, flexing his bad ankle. The beating he’d taken in Avalon had aggravated old wounds best left unopened, and Belle could tell that the display of force in Blue’s office had really taken it out of him.

“She’s going to make your life hell for this,” he said, looking up at Belle from his slumped position. “Nobody walks out on Fae Blue.”

“It was worth whatever she throws at me,” Belle said.

“I don’t really know what it’s achieved,” Gold said. “Other than the determination to get Bae’s files by any means necessary. It’s information that should have been released to me before, so there’s no reason why I can’t have it now. She’ll try and fudge it in some way, but she’ll have to give up in the end. Patience is a virtue.”

They reached reception and Belle swiped him out of the building entirely, stepping out into the November afternoon after him.

“So what happens now?” she asked him.

“Now I go back to Scotland, and try to forget that all this ever happened.” Gold sighed. “But before then, I have a package to collect, and I was wondering if you would care to accompany me.”

Belle raised an eyebrow. “What kind of package?”

“Regina’s debrief is complete,” Gold replied. “I’m going to collect her from the House and take her home.”

Belle smiled. “In that case, I would love to come.”

They made the drive to the House in silence for the most part, but as they were pulling up to the gates and Belle was showing her credentials to the security guard, she felt that she had to ask the question that had been burning at the back of her mind throughout the journey, ever since the revelation of Regina’s true parentage.

“Did you suspect that Regina wasn’t yours at any point?” she asked as they continued up the driveway towards the complex.

Gold shook his head. “No. Not even when Cora was taunting me. I knew that she just wanted to get under my skin and rile me, and I thought that she was just saying it for my reaction. To be honest, I think it would have been quite hard for her to tell whose child Regina was; I don’t think she knew herself unless she’d got her hands on DNA results. It was only after we got back here that the slight doubt started to creep into my mind. I know what Blue’s like, and I know that this information would have been gold dust to her, no pun intended. All of a sudden, once I was back here, it struck me just how convenient it was that she’d got her hands on this intel just at the time when she needed it. I hadn’t questioned it at the time because I’d always suspected Regina was mine. She just played all the right cards and I played right into her hands, like I always do.” Gold sighed, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel as they crept up the drive. “There’s something about Blue that’s always been able to get under my skin, even before everything happened twenty years ago. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have anyone of her own that she cares about like we care about our loved ones. She doesn’t understand the ferocity of the bonds that we share. She’s married to the service and always has been. It’s not a choice that I can criticise; that’s what she wants to do. But I do think that it affects the way she views other people’s relationships, as if love and companionship is somehow beneath her.”

Belle nodded, she could understand exactly where he was coming from. They reached the House carpark and Gold looked up at the magnificent building with a sigh.

“With any luck, this will be the last time that I see the place. It’s a shame. There are some good memories here in among all the bad ones.”

“Granny said that you and Mal were quite the team when it came to making trouble whilst you were training,” Belle said.

“Oh, we ran her absolutely ragged.” Gold chuckled. “Sometimes she couldn’t believe that we were grown adults rather than teenagers. You’d never think it to look at us now, of course, both the picture of respectability.”

It wasn’t respectability as such, more just the fact that life had caught up with them. After everything that had happened over the past twenty years, neither Mal nor Gold looked like they had been pranksters in their younger days, but sometimes, when Gold smiled, Belle could see the traces of the man that he had once been fight their way through to the surface. He smiled more readily now, she noticed as they moved around the House building to the entrance. Handing in his security clearance and cutting his ties with Blue and the service seemed to have done him the world of good and taken a weight off his mind.

Ruby greeted them as they entered the House. When they had first arrived back with Regina, bruised and battered and barely having made it, the other woman had been unable to let go of Belle for about five minutes, so glad to see her alive and well after everything that had happened.

“It’s all quiet on the western front,” she said. “Mal’s been sending us regular direct updates in addition to the reports she’s sending to Blue. She says that everything’s normal, the police bought the story of Cora’s death and are sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Although everyone over there knew that she was involved in some very suspect activities, they don’t exactly want to advertise it. They’ve got some people sniffing around about Regina’s absence, but nothing they can’t handle. The inquisitors have finished, she was perfectly co-operative and they don’t think that there’s anything more to be gained from mining her for more information now that Cora is out of the picture; her network will have gone underground, but the Avalon office will be ready to pounce on them when they do emerge. Considering what happened, I’d say that it was a very successful assignment, but no doubt Blue feels differently. I’m amazed she let you out of the office, to be honest.”

Belle snorted. She knew that she’d get so much flack when she returned later, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Some things were more important.

“She’s through here.”

Ruby led them out into the quad, a central courtyard that the sprawling house complex was built around, with the main stately home as its front façade and other more modern extensions covering the other three sides. The space was made into a small garden so that those who were under lockdown in the house and not able to leave the building could still enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. Regina was sitting on a bench, her rucksack at her feet. The dye had long since washed out of her hair and it curled around her face where Belle had cut it. She smiled when she saw the two agents coming towards her.

“Ruby says I’m free,” she said. “I guess you’re my escort out of here.”

“That we are.” Gold crossed the quad and sat down beside her. “How’ve they been treating you?”

“Good. I’m not going to lie, I was half-expecting thumbscrews and waterboarding, but we just talked. It’ll be nice to get out of here though, it’s a lovely building but I’m used to the open air. Stupid really, the thing I miss most about home is my horse.” She grinned and turned to Gold. “Mal sent me a message this morning, Daniel’s doing well and they’re going to get him moved over here at the end of next week.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

There was a long pause then, and Belle felt a little awkward, like a third wheel hovering by the doors, and she feigned interest in her phone. This was a moment between two people who had built such a close bond over so few days without really knowing each other, and who had just had the rug pulled out from under their feet.

“Regina,” Gold began presently, his voice gentle, “I’m not quite sure of the most delicate way to put this, but you’ve got to know that I’m not your father.”

Regina nodded. “I know. I’ve always known. Ever since Mama told me about you and I started suspecting that you were, she set the record straight.”

“If you knew, why did you want me to be the one to come and get you?” Gold asked. There was a little edge in his voice now, a hint of steel at the idea that Regina had used his feelings for her in the same way that Blue had.

“Because you were the only person I knew who’d gone up against Cora.”

“I lost,” Gold pointed out. “If you were looking for a stellar example of intelligence operations, that wasn’t one.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I don’t really know what I mean. I mean, she’d screwed you over just like she kept screwing me over. I kind of felt like we were kindred spirits, in a way. And I know it’s stupid but I’d always thought of you more as a father figure than my actual father. I never met either of you, but you were always the one I had in mind when I imagined someone coming to rescue me from the nightmare I was living. My real father was dead, I knew that there was nothing he could do. But you were still out there, you still had the same kind of feelings towards Cora as I did… I felt certain that if anyone would help and want to get some kind of revenge on her, you would.”

There was a long pause, and Gold’s hand closed over Regina’s on the bench beside him.

“The blood of the covenant runs thicker than the water of the womb,” he said. “I don’t regret coming to get you, Regina. I never will. And I promise that I will continue to keep you safe. And Daniel when he gets here, although I’m sure he can do a better job of protecting you than I can. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

Regina picked up her bag and they both got to their feet, coming back towards Belle.

“I’ll stay here a while,” she said, conscious of the fact that she really needed to leave the two of them alone together to get themselves sorted out and work out where their strange little friendship was going. “Ruby can give me a lift back to HQ later.”

This was it, the parting of the ways. She shook hands with Regina, who took a pointed look between the two of them and ducked inside the house to give them some time alone.

“Thank you for everything, Belle,” Gold said. “I could not have hoped for a better, more resilient or more caring partner than you.”

He shook her hand, pressing his lips against her cheek in a gesture of farewell. For a long moment, looking into his eyes as they broke apart, Belle wondered what he was thinking, if he wanted to kiss her as badly as she wanted to kiss him.

“You’re very welcome,” she said eventually.

There was another moment of silence screaming with unsaid words, and then Gold gave her a wan smile and moved into the house. Belle remained standing in the doorway, her fingers pressed against her cheek, feeling the memory of his lips there.

[jeroro456]

Life in Crimson

I wrote this story for a writing scholarship, the results were announced today and I didn’t win so I’m posting it here.

 6 years ago was the last time I saw my grandmother.

I remember the shimmering shirt my grandmother had been wearing that day, deeper blue even than the blue of the vibrant late summer sky up above her garden. It had rained the previous day and the air was bathed with a comfortable humidity. She was hunched over with her fingers plunged deeply into the soil. “Grandma! Grandma!” I burst out, as I ran toward her. Her hands were rough and covered in dirt but, to me, her embrace was pure and soft. The scent of the garden was on her clothes and the sensation of honey and lavender emanated from her and enveloped me. She took my hand and brought me to an old and moss covered wooden bench in the center of her garden, in the shade of an apple tree. There was a riot of color pressed up against the bench, incandescent and wondrous hues of orange and blue and yellow and pink and purple and white. The twilight sun rippled through the leaves of the tree, bouncing off the apples and suffusing the flowers with a gentle glow. There was honeysuckle climbing the fence, reaching endlessly to the sky. Grandma stroked my back and held me close to her  in a comfortable silence that I couldn’t conceive would ever end.

That silence was broken by a harsh cry of pain and I felt Grandma’s arms fall away from me. I looked up to see that her smile had vanished, replaced by an expression that at the time was unfamiliar to me. There was a roar in the driveway and the creaking of a gate. My parents soon arrived and ushered me out. I was crying. I didn’t understand why I had to leave. My parents tried their best to calm me down but nothing would work. As my mom settled me down in the car, though tears were still streaming down my face, I saw that my Grandma had slowly opened the gate that led to the driveway and was hobbling out, wincing with every step, but smiling. She was holding a rose from her garden that was a deep crimson, as though it had caught the crimson sunset in its petals. She handed the rose to me through the open window of the car and I eagerly grabbed it and the thorns of the rose sliced my palm open. The crimson of my blood mirroring the crimson of the rose. Though it hurt, I stopped crying and watched the blood drip and stain my white shorts. My Grandma produced a band-aid and stuck it on my hand with a smile. She then turned and walked away with something in her stance suggesting a pain that completely eclipsed the pain in my hand. As she walked through the gate, she stumbled and my dad caught her before she fell. 

I clutched my rose to my chest through the entire car ride home. I began to nod off but when I did, I remembered the pain in my hand and the pain my Grandma had been feeling and it gave me a melancholy energy that kept me awake all through the night. When we got home, my dad got a crystal vase and held it in the sink for me, as I filled it with warm water. I then gently placed the rose inside. Some of the blood from my hand was caked on the thorns and it came off in the water, swirling around and giving it a faint crimson tinge. 

I kept my rose on a shelf in my room until the funeral. 

6 years ago was the last time I saw my grandmother. 

I was 8, but even then, I had known something was wrong. The grown-ups never told me though. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I learned she had cancer in her bones. I remember feeling bitter and angry that they hadn’t told me. Mom was rarely in the house when my dad and I got home from school. She would always arrive late at night, with her characteristic smile always a little more diminished. One day, her smile was gone and it was then that I knew I would never see my grandma again. 

6 years ago was the last time I saw my grandmother.

All through her funeral, I had my hands wrapped tightly around my rose. Whenever the tears began to come, I thought of my grandmother who had handed me that rose, in spite of the pain that she must surely have been feeling. I wanted to be brave like Grandma, so I dried my tears just as I had back when I last saw her.

Later, when my mother and I paid our respects at my Grandma’s grave, I sat down on the fresh dirt and placed my rose before me. Soon, my mother was speaking. “It’s time to go.” I didn’t want to leave and I began to cry, unable to hold the tears back this time. My mom pulled at my arm, but I dug in, refusing to move. She began to promise me we’d come back soon to see the headstone when it was placed but still I refused to move. Finally, I accepted her pleas and began to turn away. As I did, I watched my rose wilt into the soil, leaving only silence and darkness behind.The void was replaced by the smell of honey and lavender, rising in a crescendo. The shimmering of the twilight sun grew and grew, reaching endlessly down to earth until it seemed to fill the whole world. There was a riot of color on all sides, incandescent and wondrous hues of orange and red and yellow and pink and purple and white and finally, a deep crimson seemed to envelop the whole universe. I felt a pure and soft embrace around me. I smiled. 

That was the last time I saw my Grandma.