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buck-buck-boose · 3 years ago

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I'll Love You 'Til I Die

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Summary: A Brooklyn schoolgirl fell in love with James Buchanan Barnes at the tender age of nine. With this love she made a vow, promising to love him until her very last breath.

Pairing: Bucky x OFC

Warnings: Language, mild violence

Word Count: 4.6k

Author's Note: Big things are happening y'all

Chapter Twenty-One: The Super Soldier

March 19, 1943

Dawn crept up on Camp Lehigh in a thick haze of fog, the chirp of crickets its only whispered greeting. A late-winter frost bloomed across what little grass remained, the majority having been trampled underfoot by platoon after platoon of soldiers. Winter was quickly fading, giving way to a promising spring, but the bitter chill still latched onto those dewy mornings to remind Camp Lehigh’s inhabitants of the cold season they’d just nearly escaped.

Although sessions of training were not due to begin for hours, warm bodies were stirred from slumber in their barracks, meeting the cold, stale air of their poorly-insulated lodgings. The nurse’s barracks was lit by a lamp's dim glow, which splayed a flush of golden light across the room. Five women quietly and nimbly dressed, none of them wishing to break the silence that balanced among them; the early morning was sacred to them, as it seemed to be the only time apart from nighttime in which one could be alone with one’s thoughts.

Lottie deftly pinned her mousy curls beneath her white cap, caring little for their arrangement or appearance. Once upon a time, she’d tamed her curls with gentle finger waves and carefully pinned back strands, desperate to look the part of a fair woman like Ginger Rogers. It was a quieter, more joyful time in which she had the time and desire to put ample effort into her appearance. How simpler life in Brooklyn seemed, in retrospect. She only had to care for Steve or Bucky’s wounds, usually from some street brawl instigated by Steve and ended by Bucky; now she had soldiers to care for. Soldiers who would one day be covered in great, gaping wounds, some so deeply ingrained within their souls that neither the highest of morphine dosages nor the strongest suture could soothe them.

Lottie made swift work of fastening her blue cape around her neck, situating it so that the inner red lining wasn’t peeking out. In her peripherals, Mary smoothed a hand down her white skirt in a weak attempt at combatting its wrinkles while Betty gave her face a once-over in a battered compact that she always seemed to have on her person. Lottie was downright envious of her ever-red lip and sultry gaze, they seemed to turn the heads of all the young privates on base, which earned them more than a few reprimands. It was only a few weeks ago that Betty had explained her reasoning for putting such effort into her physical charm, even in the middle of the war.

“Nurses are supposed to provide comfort, care, right?” She sat across from Lottie at their table in the mess hall, smoke curling from a freshly lit cigarette resting between her fingers. She puffed on the cigarette for a moment and slowly exhaled the smoke, “Well these boys have been stuck in a war for over a year now and they probably haven’t seen a pretty face in a while. They’re probably missing their sweethearts, fiancées, you name it. Either way, they’ve gotta be awful lonely out there, so what’s the harm in being that girl with the pretty face that can make them a little less lonesome?”

Before anyone could raise a question, she continued, “I’m not talking affairs or anything illicit, sometimes they just need a pretty face and a nice voice to remind ‘em of home, to ease that loneliness.”

Betty’s little sermon drew Lottie’s thoughts to Bucky. He was a fiercely loyal man who would stop at nothing to protect or care for his closest companions. For his own sake, Lottie hoped that he’d found a sort of comradery with his fellow soldiers, a bond to strengthen him while they were separated by an ocean. He’d always had a habit of flashing her his trademark grin and ruffling her hair, all while declaring something silly like “You ‘n Steve are all I need, Little Lottie. It’s always gonna be the three of us, ‘til the end of the line.” Lottie could only hope that Bucky had found a bond like theirs with his fellow soldiers as a source of comfort and a respite from loneliness.

“Lottie dear, Dr. Erskine’s waiting for us.”

It seemed that the other nurses had filtered out of the barracks as Lottie was lost in thought. Only Gladys remained, waiting for her expectantly at the doorway. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun, with her white cap nestled daintily atop her head, held in place with a handful of pins.

“Apologies, Gladys, I’m coming.” Gladys gave her a small smile as she caught up, nerves keeping her from forming her true toothy grin. All the nurses were nervous, to be truthful, as it was a significant day. Their serum was finally being put to use; they had found their first Super Soldier in Steve Rogers.

When Lottie had received the news of his selection to receive the serum, she’d nearly fainted with shock. Steve was a man with a heart of gold, she’d always known that, but it only served to heighten her self-doubt with regards to the serum’s efficacy. If the serum went awry as it did with Schmidt, Lottie wasn’t sure how she would be able to live with herself.

Dr. Erskine and Colonel Phillips’ debriefing as to why Steve had been chosen to become America’s first Super Soldier was a source of comfort, though. The two men had cornered the five nurses outside their barracks right as they were heading inside to turn in for the night.

The scientist had been the first to speak, “Ladies, we wanted to catch you as soon as possible. Colonel Phillips and I have decided upon our candidate for the serum. Private Steve Rogers will report to our facility in Brooklyn promptly at ten hundred hours tomorrow. We will need to depart camp at six hundred hours so we have abundant time to become accustomed to the equipment that will be in use. Mr. Stark will be joining us there.”

Lottie was sure there’d been spots in her vision, the announcement had nearly knocked all the wind out of her.

“I expect you ladies to uphold the same sense of secrecy and vigilance that you’ve had up until this point,” Colonel Phillips interjected, “This is only the beginning of our mission. We must continue to protect Project Rebirth, no matter how hopeless it may seem.” His voice was laced with bitterness, obviously doubtful of Steve’s abilities.

Nancy furrowed her brow, “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Private Rogers the ninety-pound asthmatic? Why him and not someone more… reliable, like Private Hodge?”

Lottie bristled slightly, as she did not take kindly to critical remarks regarding her friends.

“Need I remind you that the serum is not focused only on the physical?” Dr. Erskine fixed Nancy with a level gaze, “He is not the most well-built soldier, I admit that. But as you have seen yourself, the serum is capable of incredible cellular change that will only strengthen him. It will also amplify the qualities that he already has inside of himself. He has proven himself to be a good soldier and a worthy recipient of the serum.” Lottie glanced at Colonel Phillips, whose face was twisted into an awkward grimace, though he did not comment.

“During training today, he exhibited qualities of strength and humility that I have yet to see in any other soldiers thus far. Would Private Hodge throw himself over a grenade to protect his fellow soldiers? He showed me today that he would not, but Private Rogers would.”

Colonel Phillips muttered something along the lines of, “Still skinny,” though the bitterness seemed to fade. All of the nurses came to accept the news, trading in their expressions of shock and concern for ones of uncertainty and anxiety. It seemed that reality had hit for all five of the nurses at once; their work had finally come to fruition, making the road ahead even more daunting than before.

There was little conversation in the nurse’s compartment on the train to Brooklyn. There were moments of brief chatter among the women, but they were all too lost in their thoughts to carry on a proper conversation. Lottie shifted in her seat every few minutes, the poorly-cushioned seat providing little comfort during the duration of the train ride. Beside her, Gladys flicked through a stack of paper, which she’d pulled out of a manila folder that had been stamped with the word “Confidential” in large red letters. Ever the levelheaded academic of the group, she’d decided to look over their notes on the serum and its activation procedure one last time.

Across from her, Mary and Nancy were busying themselves with embroidery, an activity that a few of the nurses had picked up to improve their abilities with stitching. Lottie pictured a frayed handkerchief in her mind’s eye, a tattered old thing covered in clumsy pink flowers with a “JBB” monogram stitched carefully onto its corner. She wondered if Bucky had taken it with him overseas. He’d always kept it on his person back in Brooklyn, “Never know when a dame’s gonna go all misty eyed on me,” he’d say, humor in his eyes. There wouldn’t be many women for him to comfort overseas, but maybe he’d need it for his tears someday.

Betty sat to the right of Gladys, scanning the pages of a battered copy of Gone With the Wind. She’d never struck Lottie as a bookworm, but more often than not, she was the last of the women to fall asleep at night, usually engrossed in a novel for an hour or two past lights-out.

Two hours passed uneventfully; its monotony was only interrupted by the transferring from one train to another. Lottie’s heart seemed to pound in her ears as they approached Brooklyn, the tall buildings in her window becoming more and more familiar to her. Her heart swelled at the sight of it; she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the city until she returned after all that time. Of course, she’d been gone from the city for longer while she was in nursing school, but it tugged at her heartstrings even more than before because a damn war was what kept her from her beloved borough.

It wasn’t long before the train had arrived, initiating a flurry of movement out of the train car and toward a car that sat at the curb, waiting for them. All five nurses clambered inside, with Dr. Erskine following behind in his car. The car ride was a short one, though Lottie took the time to observe her surroundings; she wanted so desperately to drink in the familiar alleys and side streets before she had to return to Camp Lehigh, to war.

Their car stopped abruptly in front of a cozy antique shop; one she’d never paid much attention to. Dr. Erskine’s car had arrived just a few moments before theirs, so they followed him inside. Once inside, they were faced with an aged woman, who greeted them with a casual question, though her eyes betrayed a deeper glimmer of suspicion, “Wonderful weather this morning, isn't it?”

Dr. Erskine responded promptly, “Yes, but I always carry an umbrella.”

They were quickly led through a false bookcase, which hid a vast laboratory full of all that was needed to complete the transformation that would occur in a few hours. There were dozens of monitors and gauges, all for measuring Steve’s vitals and the Vita-Rays that were intended to activate the serum within his cells. In the center of it all, there was a bed on which Steve would lie, and when injected with the serum, the bed would be surrounded by a chamber while the Vita-Rays were projected into him.

Lottie and her peers stood at the top of the stairs, taking it all in, while Dr. Erskine descended the steps toward a control panel. He glanced back at them briefly, “Shall we all get accustomed to this now, ladies?”

Over the past few hours, Lottie had tired herself by calibrating various instruments, readying the equipment, and arranging several vials of serum within the transformation chamber. Throughout that time, doctors, higher-ranking soldiers, and members of the SSR slowly filtered into the room, some even gathering in the observation booth that looked down on them from above. She knew that Steve was due to arrive with Agent Carter at any moment. Frankly, she was terrified— mortified, even.

Howard Stark flitted about the laboratory, checking up on the various devices that would be used throughout the process. The Vita-Ray chamber was his brainchild, so a majority of his morning was spent double and triple-checking its minute parts and its stability.

At precisely 10 o’clock in the morning, Agent Carter and Steve stepped into the laboratory, two metal doors held open by guards for their entrance. Silence quickly descended upon the scientists and personnel who had been moving about the room in a sort of organized chaos. Lottie knew that most of them were looking at Steve in confusion, and in some cases dismay, but she made sure to send her best friend a reassuring smile. Even if the bullheaded scientists in the room were doubtful of his abilities, Lottie was with him. She believed in him. Her only doubts were in her abilities.

The staff quickly returned to their business as Agent Carter and Steve descended the steps and approached the center of the laboratory to meet with Dr. Erskine. They shared a brief greeting before Steve was ordered to remove his hat, tie, and shirt; Mary waited beside him with a kind smile, accepting his shed clothing. Agent Carter stood a few feet behind Steve, respectfully averting her gaze as he partially disrobed. Lottie took a special interest in their interactions, examining the way in which she treated Steve. She didn’t ignore or belittle him as some women did, she treated him with more dignity and respect. For that, Lottie was grateful.

Lottie busied herself with sterilizing several glass syringes as she impatiently awaited the initiation of the transformation. She could just barely make out a conversation that Dr. Erskine and Steve had shared about schnapps, but before she could quite figure out what was said, the scientist turned to the inventor beside him, “Mr. Stark, how are your levels?”

“Levels at one hundred percent. We may dim half the lights in Brooklyn, but we are ready as we’ll ever be.” Mr. Stark stood in front of the chamber where Steve now lay, projecting an air of confidence despite an uncomfortable look in his eye.

Agent Carter was dismissed to the booth to join Colonel Phillips, who was seated with several other seemingly important men that Lottie didn’t care to know. Dr. Erskine addressed the crowd in the booth using a microphone, explaining the purpose of Project Rebirth. Meanwhile, Lottie and her fellow nurses prepared the Vita-Ray chamber; she’d just situated the paddles on his chest when his gaze met hers. They’d been in a similar position so many times before. There were countless times over the past decade when she and Bucky had shown up at his apartment, soup and medicine in hand, to make him feel better during his latest bout of sickness. Bucky would always sit on one side of the bed, leaning on the mattress as he tried to distract Steve with idle conversation. She always kept vigil on the opposite side of the bed from Bucky, pulling Steve’s sheets up to his chin no matter how much he complained of the heat. She would never have to do that again, Lottie realized, as the serum would (hopefully) strengthen his immune system to the point that it would nearly be impossible to get sick. He wouldn’t need her or Bucky to look after him anymore. It pained her only slightly; she was overjoyed that he would be strengthened and healed by the serum, but it felt like the end of an era for her. She wasn’t truly needed anymore.

When the scientist’s speech to the booth had concluded, Lottie disinfected Steve’s shoulder and injected a syringe of penicillin into it; beforehand, she gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, warning him for the pain of the jab. She felt him sigh in relief, “That wasn’t so bad.”

Lottie bit back a giggle while Dr. Erskine looked down at Steve with a furrowed brow, “That was penicillin.” The scientist gave her a look and without missing a beat, began the countdown.

Five

The doctors and scientists that were scattered around the laboratory rushed to their control panels, monitoring Steve’s vitals and the Vita-Ray levels that would soon be harnessed for the serum’s activation.

Four

Those that were observing from the booth looked at the scene below with bated breath; they either anticipated either a predictable failure or an unlikely success.

Three

The five nurses gathered around the Vita-Ray chamber, monitoring the serum infusion. Two mechanical arms latched onto Steve’s biceps and embedded several syringes deep into his muscle.

Two

Dr. Erskine placed a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Lottie met Steve’s gaze once more, she was that little girl at his bedside, sitting her vigil for one last time.

One

A switch was flipped and several syringes of the serum were injected into Steve’s system. Lottie could already see the strain it was putting on his body, his face contorted and he grunted in pain as he felt the serum begin its work in his body.

When given his signal, Mr. Stark flipped a lever to encase Steve in the Vita-Ray chamber, which maneuvered Steve into a vertical position before he was completely locked into the machine. Dr. Erskine knocked on the metal, “Steven? Can you hear me?”

A muffled response came from within the metal, “It’s probably too late to go to the bathroom, right?” Lottie snorted, only Steve would make a terrible joke at a time like that.

The scientist faced Mr. Stark, “We will proceed.” Below him, Mr. Stark slowly turned a dial and donned a pair of goggles. Lottie and her peers followed suit, as the luminosity of the Vita-Rays would cause vision damage if their eyes were left uncovered.

Lottie worried her lip as Mr. Stark slowly increased the radiation levels by turning a wheel that was mounted on the control panel. Next to him, a doctor carefully monitored Steve’s vitals; he reported that they were all normal, which calmed Lottie a tad.

At around the seventy percent mark, cries began to ring out from within the Vita-Ray chamber. It was as if screams were being torn from Steve’s throat, they were so hoarse and raw. Dr. Erskine rushed to the chamber while Peggy quickly descended from the booth, urging the personnel to cease the radiation. Lottie stood in shock, stuck in an internal impasse. She worried deeply for Steve’s safety, she always had and always would. Simultaneously, she needed to trust in the years’ worth of work she’d put into Project Rebirth. She and her fellow nurses had worked day after day, slaving over the Super Soldier Serum and Vita-Ray theories to develop the perfect transformation method. If she couldn’t trust her abilities and research, what could she trust?

But when Steve’s cries seemed to echo throughout the laboratory, she knew that his safety superseded whatever pride she had in her research. Lottie had just opened her mouth to call for an end to it when Steve insisted from within the Vita-Ray chamber, “Don’t! I can do this!”

A burst of warmth bloomed in Lottie’s chest; Steve trusted their work and he was fighting to see it through. Mr. Stark continued to raise the radiation levels until they had reached one hundred percent. The staff and observers from the booth could only look on in shock and wonder as the light from within the chamber continued to glow brighter and it began to give off a steady humming noise.

Without warning, sparks began to spray out from the control panels as a result of the copious amounts of electricity being funneled into the transformation. Lottie cried out, ducking down with Mary to avoid the sparks that showered down on them from overhead. Across from them, Nancy, Gladys, and Betty assumed similar positions, clutching their white caps as they attempted to shield themselves from the onslaught.

As quickly as it started, the sparks ceased, as did the humming of the Vita-Ray chamber. The laboratory was far dimmer than it was earlier, with the light from the radiation gone, and nearly half the bulbs in the laboratory having been blown out.

All eyes were on the Vita-Ray chamber as they all awaited the final result of Project Rebirth. The chamber hissed open and released a gust of air, revealing an exhausted-looking Steve.

Lottie could barely believe it, not only was he exhausted-looking, but it seemed as if he’d gained nearly 8 inches of height and a few dozen pounds of muscle. Gone was that scrawny blond boy who’d gotten lost in crowds far too easily, here was a man— a Super Soldier —who was perfectly enhanced on a cellular level.

The SSR agents and politicians who were previously gathered in the booth rushed to meet with Steve, barely able to contain their excitement. They clambered over each other, all of them desperate to be the first one to speak with America’s first Super Soldier.

In all the chaos, Betty had sidled up to her, her jaw nearly touching the floor, “Hot damn, Lottie Green. Hot damn.” She ogled at Steve as she took in his new physique. Lottie rolled her eyes, “Just because he’s got more muscle doesn’t mean he’ll be able to talk to you any better. Or that he won’t step on your toes if you get him to dance.”

Steve stood in the middle of a crowd of men, though Agent Carter stood in front of him, attempting to look at anything but his chest.

“I think you might want this, Stevie,” Lottie moved in to stand beside Agent Carter and offered him a shirt, which he accepted gratefully. He smiled down at her gratefully, murmuring a quiet, “Thank you, Lottie.”

How odd it was to be looking up at him. It was certainly something that Lottie wasn’t used to, she’d gotten quite used to looking down at him, in fact. By age sixteen, she’d gained about two inches on him, and though he was loath to admit it, she knew it pained him to be the shortest of the three of them. Luckily for him, his new height delegated her as the most diminutive of the Brooklyn trio by far.

Amid the jubilation following Project Rebirth’s success, grave mistakes were made. Gladys had left her manila folder of notes— all the notes that the nurses had ever taken during their research —on one of the control panels closest to the stairway, just close enough to the exit to be snatched up by a discreet hand. An extra vial of Super Soldier serum sat in its case, at the ready for its eventual use; it stood unguarded and unwatched.

The once-unassuming Fred Clemson hung back from the crowd, a lighter in hand. Dr. Erskine was the first to notice his position apart from everyone else; the scientist opened his mouth as if to say something, but before he could form a sentence, Clemson had flicked open the lighter and triggered an explosion from the observation booth.

Screams rang out from the middle of the laboratory as glass rained down on them. Sparks even worse than before began assaulting them and left stinging burns in their wake. Lottie grunted as she felt minuscule shards of glass tear at and become embedded in her skin; it would surely be a pain to treat such small cuts and remove the pieces of glass later on. It was shocking, really, how quickly the mood of the room had shifted. Just moments before, she’d been looking at Steve in awe, fully processing all that the serum had accomplished. Her sentiments of excitement and pride quickly evaporated, replaced by a growing sense of panic and dread.

The force of the explosion had thrown Lottie and some of the other nurses to the ground, so she scrambled to her feet in an attempt to take action against the man. It was all in vain, for as soon as she regained her footing, all she saw was the bespectacled man diving through the crowd to grab the last vial of Super Soldier serum and the thick manila envelope that Gladys had brought with her. Lottie’s stomach dropped in terror; she opened her mouth to cry out for backup, but Dr. Erskine was one step ahead of her. He commanded the man to stop, but the only response he received was several gunshots in the chest.

Deep red stains formed across the front of his shirt and seeped into his lab coat, his vibrant blood was a sickening contrast to the crisp white color of his lab coat. The scientist fell to the ground, his legs sprawled out before him and his arms at his side. Lottie knew that there was no hope for him— there were no exit wounds and she was more than certain that at least one of his lungs had been punctured. His breathing was labored, his chest heaving with every inhale and exhale. Lottie didn’t need to perform an examination to know that the wounds would be fatal. There was no time for an examination anyway, gunshots continued to ring out across the laboratory, and Agent Carter was in hot pursuit of the offender.

Mary looked at Lottie for some sort of reassurance of direction, her mouth agape, “Lottie, he's— he’s gonna die if we don’t do somethin’. C’mon, we’ve gotta help him.” Her voice came out in a whimper and her hands shook as she searched the floor for any fallen bandages. She took Mary’s trembling hands into her clammy ones, “Mary, look at his breathing. You know there’s nothing we can do for him now.”

She knew it was a heartbreaking thing to say, but Mary was a brilliant nurse; she already knew all the signs of a punctured lung. Lottie knew that she was having a hard time processing the information due to the shock that was no doubt obscuring her senses and rational thought. What Mary needed was a calm voice to guide her back from the brink of hysteria, a friend to bring her back to reality.

The nurses learned a jarring lesson about reality’s harsh nature that day; they learned of its cycle of gains and losses, successes and failures. The five nurses of Project Rebirth had achieved all that they’d been dreaming of for more than a year, they’d proven themselves to be reliable and even stellar researchers in their field. It had all been ripped away from them in a matter of moments, with the loss of their notes and serum, as well as the brutal death of Dr. Erskine. All they could do was clutch each other helplessly as they watched Steve follow the man in hot pursuit— the man who had stolen everything from them. Lottie, Mary, Betty, Nancy, and Gladys had certainly entered a new era in their careers as nurses, an era of uncertainty. With nothing left from Project Rebirth besides the Super Soldier himself, their futures were left in limbo until the Strategic Scientific Reserve could figure out what to do with them next.

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writethehousedown · 4 years ago

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Things Are Really Cool (In Nazareth) (Ninex)- Ortega

a/n: wow hi, welcome to whatever the hell this is? this is a sort of a kind of a n19f verse/masp verse crossover set some years after the originals take place (but you don’t need to have read either to read this), borne out of the semi-autobiographical experience of my last few weeks at work trying to teach five year olds mid-pandemic. basically Nina’s a stressed primary teacher and Monet is her primary teacher girlfriend. this is fulfilling the prompt “Nice” only ten days late and also probably has one million and one typos in my haste to get it out in time for at least Christmas xo regardless, i hope u all enjoy and in the words of boyband JLS, “mewwy cwistmas”.

disclaimer: there are a couple of lines i’ve yoinked out of tv shows here- “lesbian having a panic attack” is adapted from Kimmy Schmidt and the “what are you, forty?” ones are from Always Sunny. leave me alone i’m too tired to be funny at this time of year xo

fic summary: When Nina’s headteacher asks her to pull a Nativity play out of thin air with only a week to organise it, Nina is simply too nice to say no. As a consequence, she is blindly oblivious to what her girlfriend Monet is planning, with useless lesbian results.

Nina knew she was a people pleaser. Always had been, always would be. She was simply too nice to say no to anyone. She had never been one to say no to anything.

She’d never taken the last remaining teabag for herself way back at uni; she’d always elected to leave it for Brooke or Yvie, knowing that Brooke would be grumpy all day if she didn’t have her morning cup of tea and not wanting to deal with the caffeine crash Yvie would experience if she made coffee as a substitute.

It had even started way further back in her life than her twenties. The most rebellious thing she’d ever done in high school was to pull out one of the cables of her German teacher’s computer at the back so she’d spend the whole lesson fixing it instead of teaching their class. In Primary, she was the stereotypical, insufferable goody-two-shoes: didn’t ever lose a minute of Golden Time, finished both her set tasks and the extension work that accompanied them perfectly, and was the worst kind of tell-tale.

(At the time, she thought her teachers loved that- the fact that she acted as their five-year-old corporate spy, ready to report any wrongdoings to headquarters. Contrarily, now that she was a teacher to five year olds, Nina thought that if she heard one more story about who skipped who in the line she would climb very slowly and very carefully into the staffroom microwave and blow herself into fifty million partially-heated bits.)

So when her headteacher ducked her head into her classroom on a cold, wet, rainy Wednesday after all the kids had been dispatched home, Nina panicked. Her eyes darted up to the displays on her walls. Fuck, there were still Halloween pumpkins blu-tacked up there. There was, so far, nothing on her December learning journey wall. And there were still Very Hungry Caterpillars made from bottle tops pushed into dollops of paint stuck to bright green backing paper which had been there since the kids’ first week at school back in August.

Well. Red and green were Christmassy colours. Right?

But Mrs Del Rio didn’t seem all that interested in the state of her wall displays. She’d come to ask Nina if she could film a Nativity play with her class.

“It’s for the parents really,” Bianca had rolled her eyes, folding her arms in her usual no-nonsense way. “Just something they can watch and share with the families since we can’t do a real Nativity. It doesn’t need to be anything big- just a few songs…one, two…say four. And then just have the kids in their costumes with a couple of lines. With a backdrop, y’know, there doesn’t need to be props. Just the baby Jesus…the gifts for the three Kings….maybe a couple of no vacancy signs for the innkeepers…that sort of thing. Just for before we finish up term. Maybe if it could be done by next Friday. That okay?”

And Nina, because she was a people pleaser, had nodded and said yes! and of course! and Bianca had nodded curtly at her in the frostiest thank-you the world had ever seen before leaving.

It had only taken the time in which Bianca’s heels had slowly disappeared from hearing distance for the reality of the situation to sink in for Nina. She’d just agreed to do a whole Nativity play, with songs, and costumes, and props, in the space of eight days.

She was going to be sick like little Jack had done that day he’d come into class and projectile-vomited halfway onto the carpet and halfway into Nina’s outstretched hands.

Nina was so consumed by the all-encompassing panic that she didn’t even flinch when there was a loud, jaunty knock at her classroom door.

“High Court Enforcement,” came a loud, brash voice, Nina finally turning to see who was there with glazed eyes. Willam leant against the doorframe, her messy blonde waves falling over the shoulders of her dark blue jumper like curly vines. She was the only teacher who could match the sass levels of the Year 6s and was a colleague that Nina both loved and feared. Loved because she was straight-talking and blunt and altogether hilarious, but feared because her girlfriend was the deputy head of the school and anything Nina said to her would definitely be reported back as gossip.

Also because she was, for all intents and purposes, a pint-pot riot.

“Nina. Nina. Nina,” Willam said repeatedly, her voice monotone and her persistence irritating. Nina mumbled something out.

“What?”

Nina raked her hands through her shock of frizzy blonde curls and sighed, her stress levels already rising. “I said I’m a lesbian having a panic attack.”

“Oh, that’s a mood. I was sent round to do the collection for the support staff but I’ve already spent forty minutes chatting to Alyssa instead of doing what I was asked. Got a grand total of a fiver so far,” Willam shrugged blithely, coming into Nina’s classroom and perching on one of the tiny munchkin-sized tables. “What’s up?”

The pressure-cooker that her mind was rapidly becoming told Nina to throw caution to the wind and vent, so she told Willam everything in a series of babbles barely comprehensible in the English language.

“So you’ve just agreed to doing a full Nativity video in the space of a week?” Willam cocked her head, pulling a confused face. “Why didn’t you just tell Bianca to fuck off?”

Nina paused, feeling all her panic momentarily leave her body as she fixed Willam with a glare. “Are you expecting me to answer that?”

“No, no. Shit, wouldn’t it have been amazing if you had, though? What d’you think would’ve happened? Maybe she’d’ve shouted so loud at you her lungs would’ve just exploded.”

Nina couldn’t help but blurt out a small laugh. “That’s way too dramatic. She wouldn’t even fire me on the spot because that would mean management having to go in and cover my class tomorrow while they tried to find my replacement.”

Nina regretted the small barb at their management team as soon as it was out, but Willam seemed nonplussed.

“Yeah. Court’s way too impatient to deal with your lil’ rugrats.”

“I’m too impatient to deal with them. I’m too impatient to deal with them on a day to day basis. How I’m going to teach them four Christmas songs in the space of a week, fuck knows.”

Willam cocked her head again, her smile becoming patient. “Well if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

Willam’s words were a small source of comfort to Nina. Suddenly everything seemed doable. She matched her colleague’s smile, glad she’d arrived in that moment. “Thanks, Willam.”

As soon as her words were out, she saw the small, playful twinkle in Willam’s eye. “Because nobody else would’ve been mad enough to agree to the damn thing.”

***

Getting her class sorted and organised for the day couldn’t really be likened to herding cats. No, this process was far more chaotic than that. At half past nine each day what could only be described as a minor tsunami of children hit Nina’s classroom: throwing their jackets into the designated tubs with wild abandon and subsequently knocking anything and everything off her adjacent desk, unloading every possible snack in their lunchboxes into their trays and Nina’s pleas for them to only take one snack out falling on deaf ears, spilling their water bottles and getting the zips on their jackets stuck and wanting to tell Nina a billion and one things that seemed to have happened in the 18 hours they had spent outwith her care.

During the month of December this chaos only intensified. Hats, scarves and gloves littered the classroom floor as they fell off the kids like baubles off a dead Christmas tree, shrieks filled the air as they discovered a new chocolate in the advent calendar, and at least half the class surrounded Nina like festive zombies as they all battled to win the competition of “Who can tell Miss West about what their elf on the shelf had got up to overnight the loudest”.

Nina hammered the little bell she kept on her desk with the palm of her hand, stress levels already rising. “Okay, Reception! Jackets in tubs, snacks in trays and bums on carpet!”

As her class giggled about their teacher’s use of the word “bum”, Nina sat down in her wheely chair and waited for them all to join her on the little strip of carpet in front of her smartboard. It was moments like these where she’d be hit with a sort of out of body experience; she was someone’s teacher, she was this class’ first teacher. She was sitting in front of her class waiting to take the register and start their day. It was slightly overwhelming, even though she’d been doing the job for a number of years now.

Eventually her kids were all organised and she’d taken the register and made sure they all had a lunch to eat that day. Nina made sure to put on her best excited face as she prepared to tell them about the Nativity.

“Right, Reception!” she said, injecting lots of mystery into her voice like a storyteller. “I have got some very exciting news for you all today!”

Their little faces all grew equally excited as they were expectant, and Nina’s heart almost popped. Just then, Harry, a boy with enough gel in his hair to single-handedly keep Brylcreem in business for a year and huge bottle-top glasses’ hand went up.

“Yes, Harry?”

The boy bounced on the carpet, incredibly eager. “Can I tell you what my elf did last night?”

Ten more hands immediately shot up, and Nina’s heart sank. Great.

But she was still teaching four and five year olds and this was truly the most important thing in their little lives, so she fixed a bright smile on her face and tilted her head inquisitively. “What did your elf do?”

Harry was now sitting on his knees, towering over the other children and threatening to knock himself over with every passing second as he swayed in the nonexistent breeze. “He did a poop in my Dad’s shoes!”

The rest of the class shrieked with laughter in response. Internally, Nina was rapidly reaching her wit’s end. Love it. A bit of toilet humour to start off the Nativity rehearsals. Great. Exactly what’s needed. “Oh my goodness! What a cheeky elf!”

“He did three poops! And you know what else? They were cola jellybeans! I ate them!”

Sophie, a girl with long ginger hair in a low ponytail and a gap in her smile where two baby teeth once lived, gasped in horror. “You ate the elf’s poop?!”

The rest of the class fell about laughing. Nina had to get control back of the situation.

“Well thank you very much for sharing, Harry! Okay everyone, let’s pop our hands down.”

There were still ten hands waving proudly in the air like rebellious flags.

“We can do more elf stories at the end of the day if there’s time!” Nina lied. There would not be time. There was never time. But it placated most of her class enough for them to follow the instruction. There was, however, one remaining hand up which belonged to Jason, a boy with hair so platinum blonde it seemed otherworldly.

“It’s not an elf story! I’ve got a question,” he insisted, shouting out despite the fact his hand was already up. Nina relented, just in case he did have something important to ask. Maybe he was about to pee himself. Highly likely with the Reception kids.

Jason, pleased as punch that Nina was allowing him to speak, put his hand down. “Can I tell you a rhyming word I’ve just thought of?”

Nina’s smile grew all the more gritted, and the muscles in her face all the more tense. This was going to be the longest week she had experienced in living memory.

***

Nina would never get tired of living with Monet. The sound of her singing as the shower provided a backing track, the unholy racket she seemed to make when she cooked (a symphony of swearing, the banging of kitchen utensils, and the clattering of saucepans and baking trays). The smell of the Dior Sauvage she used instead of perfume and the Cantu hair custard she combed through her hair after she washed it. The fact that Nina could get a cuddle from her any time she wanted and the soft squash of her arms around her.

But living with Monet was best at Christmastime. The endless arguments they got into about their Christmas decorations and what looked best where, both stemming from a fierce loyalty to their own family traditions. The way they’d write their Christmas cards to their friends with a Christmas film playing in the background, and the way Monet would tease her about having such picture-perfect, font-like, primary-teacher handwriting. The way Monet would get too excited in the supermarket and load party food into Nina’s shopping basket like a child trying to sneak chocolate.

Even though Nina was completely exhausted, she still felt herself smile as she turned her key in the lock and heard her girlfriend loudly singing along with Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, paired with the blast of the extractor fan.

“Hello?” Nina sing-songed as she closed the door shut, shedding her heavy jacket and her scuffed trainers and her backpack full of jotters that had been haphazardly stuffed in as she left work.

“Hello!” Monet chirped back, in what had become their tradition since moving in together all those years ago. “Your timing’s perfect, I just finished dinner.”

“Ooh. What is for dinner?”

Monet gestured to the pile of grated cheese, pan of bubbling baked beans, and loaf of white bread. “Beans on toast.”

Nina snorted and leaned against the counter. “Wow, don’t I have the most perfect domestic housewife! That must’ve taken, what…two hours?”

Monet reached over and squeezed her side, eliciting a yelp that would probably give their downstairs neighbours the wrong idea. “Shady bitch. It’s this or two rice cakes that’ve been in the cupboard for so long I swear they’re turning fossilised.”

“No, I’m kidding. Of course I’m hungry, thanks hun. I’ll make dinner tomorrow,” Nina promised, sliding into one of their second-hand wooden dining chairs as Monet plated up.

“No you won’t,” Monet frowned. “You look dead. What’re your kids doing to you, beating you with their tiny little chairs?”

“The fucking Nativity,” Nina sighed, pausing to thank Monet as she placed two slices of golden toast covered with beans and flakes of grated cheese down in front of her. Admittedly it did look like absolute heaven.

“Have you told Bianca to piss off yet?” Monet scowled, stabbing her toast so hard she threatened to break the plate in two.

“What kind of fantasy-land school do you work at where you can tell your headteacher to piss off and she actually listens?” Nina cocked an eyebrow at her, and Monet shrugged in agreement as she chewed a mouthful. “No, of course not. I’m going to make it happen, though, even if it kills me. We started learning the songs today, which you would think was a simple enough endeavour. Except my class, who usually can’t shut up if their lives depend on it, have all the singing volume and skill of one of Yvie and Scarlet’s cat’s chew toys. They don’t even sound like cats being strangled, that’d probably be louder. It’s like trying to have a sing-song with a room full of laryngitis patients. Except it’s not a room, because apparently we’re not allowed to sing inside because of covid. But I can teach Phonics and the kids can all make the ‘p’ sound at me until their hearts’ content and shower me with their spit like the world’s shittiest production of Singin’ In The Rain? Anyway, we have to rehearse outside. In December. I think my feet actually fell off.”

As Nina finally finished what had unintentionally become a fully-fledged rant, Monet attempted to compose herself as she wiped away a small tear of laughter from her eye and clutched at her belly. Nina watched as her girlfriend took a few deep breaths, then fixed her with a humoured grin. “But apart from all that, how was your day?”

Nina stuck her tongue out at her in response. “Shut up. How was yours?”

Monet rolled her eyes as she speared a bean. “Awful. Tried to assess time with my class today. God I love them, Neens, but they’re so bad, how can they be that bad?”

“If anyone can help them progress, it’s you,” Nina smiled encouragingly, only getting a shaken head in reply.

“No, I can’t. Nobody can. They’re beyond help. Some of the answers I got today wouldn’t even be believable if they were part of some TV comedy show. What month is Christmas in? ‘Santa’. The kid answered Santa. How many months are there in a year? ‘Sixty six’. How many days are there in a week? ‘Two’. TWO!” Monet cried, outraged. Nina couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up in her throat, and Monet pointed warningly at her in response. “Don’t you dare laugh. This is my reality.”

“Hey, you laughed at my Nativity nightmare!” Nina giggled, to which Monet chuckled guiltily. Nina paused to swipe a bit of toast around the plate with her fork, mopping up any stray tomato sauce. When she looked up from her plate, she saw Monet tapping at her phone. Nina frowned disapprovingly. “Hey. No phones at the table.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Monet apologised quickly, though didn’t put her phone down yet. “Monique’s just sent me a screenshot of her friend that’s getting engaged. Look at the damn size of this ring.”

Monet turned her phone to show Nina. Pictured was a diamond the size of a small Pacific nation and a band encrusted with tiny gems on the finger of somebody she’d never met. Nina couldn’t help the way she screwed her face up, which made Monet blurt a laugh in response. “Not a fan, then?”

Nina pulled a face in thought. She was sure that kind of ring made some girls happy, but to her it just seemed tacky and over-the-top, not to mention heavy. “I’m sure she likes it, but I wouldn’t want something that huge. Imagine working in a Reception class with that?! Play-dough stuck in all the little crevices. And Jesus, what if you lost it? Nah, it would stress me out owning that. I would just want one simple little gold band and one singular tiny diamond. Much less of a burden.”

Monet snorted a laugh as she finished her last mouthful of dinner. “You are the only girl I’ve ever met that would consider an engagement ring a burden. Christ on a crucifix.”

“Well!” Nina protested, before realising she didn’t really have anything else to defend herself with. Then, she narrowed her eyes at her girlfriend playfully, kicking her under the table. “Why’re you so interested in my engagement ring opinions, anyway? You asking?”

Monet chuckled as she put her phone face-down on the table. “Bold of you to assume I can afford council tax, never mind a diamond.”

Nina smiled, shrugging in agreement. “Yeah, fair. What should we do tonight? I have Maths jotters to mark but then that’s me done.”

Monet tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. “I would say fucking our shit days out but I don’t even have the energy to operate a vibrator.”

Nina almost choked on her food as she laughed. “Christ, that’s a mood. Finish dinner, pyjamas, rewatch The Office for the ninety billionth time then bed at 7pm?”

“Sounds good, babe,” Monet smiled, lifting her glass of water up to cheers with as if it was sparkling wine.

***

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh McFun it is to ride in a waffle sofen sleigh, HEY! Jingle bells, Jin-”

“Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah,” Nina cut in, waving her hands frantically and stopping the twenty-three five and four year olds that had previously been singing their little kidney bean-sized lungs out. “What are the words?”

Her class stared back at her as if she’d just asked her what twenty-eight times thirteen was. Although Jeremiah, who was already working at Year 5 level, could probably have worked that out given enough time.

“Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh,” Nina said, rhythmically and clearly. “You try.”

The children all parroted it back to her in their little voices, word-perfect. Thank God, thought Nina. Jingle Bells seemed to be the only song they recognised, so if they turned out to not know it after all then Nina would very probably need an inhaler despite the fact she wasn’t at all asthmatic.

“Let’s try it with the music!” Nina said cheerfully, making sure the bluetooth speaker she’d brought outside was still on.

“Miss West,” a small voice piped up belonging to Amber, the human embodiment of a whine. “I’m cold!”

“We’ll get inside soon!” Nina replied patiently. “Just let’s practise it one more time!”

“I’m cold too,” piped up Joshua, Amber’s male counterpart.

“I’m freezing,” Amber offered again.

“I know, it’s very cold outside!” Nina smiled sympathetically, even though her teeth were gritted. “But we can’t do our singing inside because of the virus!”

“Why not?” Amber pouted.

Nina didn’t really know. The answer was because of the care inspectorate guidelines, but that was incredibly far beyond the realms of a five-year-old’s comprehension. Just then, an idea struck her.

“Well we need to sing our songs outside so that Santa can hear them when he’s taking his sleigh out for a test drive!” she said animatedly. The wide eyes and ohhhh-s she received in reply made her feel like a genius. Move over, Steven Hawking. “Okay, one more time with Jingle Bells. Nice and loud for Santa!”

“Miss West?”

Nina blinked slowly and heavily, taking a small breath before answering the newest child that demanded her attention. “Yes, Sophie?”

“I’m cold.”

“I’m cold!! We’re all cold!!” Nina replied quickly, just that shade away from snapping so that her class knew she meant business. “We’re doing the song one more time and then we’re going inside! So nice big smiles, nice loud voices, and here…we…go!”

Nina pressed play on the song before any more children could regale her with tales of how their body temperatures had dropped to that of a snowman’s.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!” they all enthusiastically sang. “Oh McFun it is to ride in a waffle sofen sleigh!”

Nina rubbed so hard at her tired eyes that she thought they might disappear into her skull. She was momentarily glad of the fact that she didn’t have a teaching assistant to help her, as to have any other adult witness this would be embarrassing in the extreme.

Just then she noticed around five parents queued up at the nursery adjacent to the playground, watching with wry smiles on their faces as they waited for their children.

“One more time!” Nina cried, as she stopped the music with freezing cold hands.

***

“So Nina, when you gonna wife your girlfriend?”

Nina very nearly spat out her tea, a horrifying milky brown hurricane only just avoided. She hadn’t been expecting to answer deep, meaningful life questions in the staffroom during a lunch hour, but Willam was the human incarnation of petrol on a campfire and with her around things were always in danger of going from zero to a hundred very quickly. To Nina’s relief Courtney was also in the staffroom, and she whipped around from the countertop and gave her girlfriend daggers.

“Willam!” Courtney chastised her in a hiss that Nina wasn’t quite sure was meant to be audible. Willam only gave her an incredulous glare, affronted that she seemed to be the voice of reason in the conversational chaos.

“What?! Just askin’. I mean you’re what…twenty-nine? Twenty eight?”

“Twenty-six,” Nina replied. She was now at the age where being assumed she was older than she was was a curse, not a blessing. (If she’d told seventeen-year-old Nina that one day she would be disappointed at no longer being ID’d for wine at Sainsburys she’d have laughed in her face.)

“Exactly. That’s wifeing age. Mid to late twenties.”

“Hey, I passed that stage long ago, where the hell’s my ring?“ Courtney asked Willam, stirring the coffee she’d poured into one of the many, many “World’s Best Teacher!” mugs that littered the staffroom cupboards. Willam responded by turning around in her chair and positioning her pencil skirt-clad ass in the air.

“Right here, bitch!”

“Christ Almighty,” Courtney turned away from her, rolling her eyes so hard they looked like little spheric dice. As Willam gave her best impression of a seal on laughing gas, Nina cast her eyes over to Sasha who was sitting at the other end of the staffroom. As they caught each others’ eyes they shared a long-suffering smile that mourned the death of peace and quiet.

Nina was glad the conversation had been diverted from the subject of her perceived lack of marriage plans. Until Sasha opened her mouth, that is.

“I wouldn’t worry, Nina. Me and Shea haven’t had that conversation either. I mean we’d both love to, but there’s more important stuff for us right now, you know? We’re saving for a house and I think we’d rather live in a place we’ve chosen for the foreseeable future than just having one singular big lavish day.”

“It’s all about what you want to do with the person you love the most, isn’t it? Not just doing what society wants you to do,” Courtney chipped in, her voice warm and kind. “Like me and Willam used to be total party girls before we got our shit together. And now, like…there’s nothing I’d rather do of a weekend than curl up with her on the sofa and get all cosy with a film and a blanket and a cup of tea.”

Willam scoffed affectionately. “That’s your ideal weekend plan? What are you, forty?”

“Yes? As are you?” Courtney replied incredulously. Nina heard Sasha snort in her chair. As she turned her gaze back to the other two girls she realised that Willam was still looking at her expectantly. Nina sank back into her seat, a little reserved.

“It’s not really something we’ve spoken about? Well…no, we have spoken about it, obviously,” she babbled, watching as Willam took on the look of someone witnessing a victim of cardiac arrest. “Like we both want to get married. To each other, of course. But teaching is just such a busy job all the time and…you know, we only bought our flat last Summer and…I don’t know, it’s nice not to have everything happen all at once, right?”

Courtney nodded emphatically in agreement. “Of course! And I mean, if she asked, you’d say yes, right?”

Nina had to stop herself from pulling a face. How am I having this conversation with my boss? “Well, yeah. God, I couldn’t imagine life without her at all.”

Willam pretended to gag, which Nina thought was pretty rich from the woman who had begun the entire conversation. Courtney seemed to pick up on her girlfriend’s distaste.

“I don’t think Willam has ever said anything that cute about me!”

Willam turned around to look at her girlfriend, disbelief on her face. “Yeah, I only left my damn husband for you. Fuck me, right?”

Nina’s eyes widened as Sasha gave a yelp from across the staffroom. That was a small piece of workplace gossip she hadn’t expected to learn today. As Courtney’s face turned red and she shot Willam a warning glare, she turned to Nina once more.

“Nina, how’s the Nativity going?” Courtney beamed artificially at her, moving the conversation along with all the grace and decorum of a one-wheeled snow plow.

Considering the question, Nina thought that she’d rather be discussing marriage plans with her boss and colleagues again. “It’s going.”

“That’s a ringing endorsement. I’m sure that was on the poster of Titanic too,” Willam chipped in.

“It wouldn’t be any less disastrous than the actual fate of the Titanic, at least the passengers could’ve probably remembered the words to fucking Jingle Bells,” Nina deadpanned, causing Willam to break into fits of clubbed seal laughter.

Sasha pouted sympathetically from the other side of the room. “It’s those cute bits that the parents love, though, isn’t it? They won’t mind if they get the words wrong.”

“I’m sure there needs to be a foundation of at least an audible tune though, Sash,” Nina smiled resignedly back at her.

“If Bianca wants a Nativity so bad, just tell her to come teach your class,” Willam half-suggested, half-yelled. “Or get Court to teach them! They prolly don’t need to be in tune anyway!”

Courtney’s expression appeared to be the same as Nina’s after her morning’s rehearsal. “Do you ever stop talking shit?”

“You think I’m bad? That bell is going to go for the Comp’s lunch break in five minutes, Bob is gonna arrive, an’ then it’s RIP our eardrums,” Willam said, pointing to the staffroom door for dramatic effect.

“At least Bob has never presented his clothed arsehole to his partner in front of his colleagues,” Courtney cut in at once, her tone deadpan and making Nina splutter a laugh.

“Aw, c’mon Court! That’s just banter. These girls don’t mind.”

“It’s unprofessional!” Courtney clutched her chest. Willam only snorted in response.

“Unprofessional? What are you, forty?”

“We’re the same age!!” Courtney cried in response, her incredulous tone only setting Nina off in a further fit of laughter.

It was only later on that night once she had driven back home, parked, and approached her and Monet’s flat that Nina remembered the staffroom conversation. She cast her gaze up to their first-floor window in their red brick building, almost being able to feel the way her heart gave a swell at the sight of their Christmas tree framed proudly within the glass. And as she got in through the front door, Monet greeted her with a hug and a takeaway leaflet.

“We’ve got nothing in the fridge, so I thought we could get noodles? This came through the door today and I think-” Monet raises her eyebrows, slapped the leaflet into the palm of her hand decisively. “- it’s a sign from God.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Nina laughed, shrugging off her coat and feeling grateful for not having to cook.

It was only when they were both curled up on the couch, empty pad thai containers in front of them, that Nina turned to Monet and saw the lights on the tree reflected in her eyes. She turned to her girlfriend, threw an arm round her and snuggled in to her side.

“What’s up?” Monet asked, her voice soft and sleepy and a little concerned.

“Nothing,” Nina sighed. It was true. There wasn’t really anything up, and she was the happiest she’d ever been. But she still turned to Monet, tilting her head up inquisitively. “You don’t feel under any pressure at all, do you?”

Monet snorted. “I feel under pressure to get fifteen children who can’t write the word cat on their own to magically be able to write a sentence by the end of the year, yeah.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “No! I mean, like…in life. You didn’t just…buy this flat with me because you felt you had to, right? You wouldn’t do anything because you felt obliged to?”

Monet raised a single eyebrow back at her. “Yeah, I decided to piss my life savings away on a deposit for a flat because I felt I had to. Jesus Christ, Neens.”

“No, no, I know,” Nina chuckled, realising how silly the whole thing now sounded. “But I just mean…in life, like milestones and stuff. You’d never do stuff because you felt you had to keep up, in some way? Reach some goal by a certain age?”

Monet brought an arm around Nina and cuddled her closer, kissing her hair and resting her chin on top of her head. “Everything I do in life, I do because I want to. Especially when it comes to you. Promise.”

Nina gave her girlfriend a squeeze, happy. She took a deep breath, smelt the fabric softener on Monet’s jumper that they both used but just seemed to smell better and feel softer on everything Monet wore.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

***

Nina sat in a child-sized chair with her knees practically up to her chest, a crumpled, printed-out script on her lap that she’d hastily typed up on her work iPad’s notes app the following evening. Her class sat behind her in costumes pulled on over their school uniforms, with books and pens and pieces of paper with botched photocopying on the back under strict instructions not to talk until the whole thing was filmed.

“Okay, Amber!” she smiled breezily at the small girl whose school blouse was sticking out under her angel costume. “You’re kicking off the video. So your line is two thousand years ago, an angel came to a woman called Mary. Practise it for me?”

Amber gripped the hem of her taffeta skirt in two tiny white-knucked fists. “I don’t want to.”

Nina bit her lip. Great start. Fantastic. “We can give it a try together?”

Reluctantly, Amber parroted the words in tandem with her. So far so good.

“Okay. Now do you want to go up against the backdrop and I can film you doing it?”

Amber’s ponytail full of flyaways swung wildly as she shook her head. Nina thought for a moment. Then her eyes came to rest on Hazel- the class’ Mary and, coincidentally, Amber’s best friend.

“What about if Hazel stands with you?”

That seemed to change things and, only slightly hesitantly, both girls got up in front of the hastily staple-gunned silver tinsel.

“Okay Amber. Two thousand years ago, an angel came to a woman called Mary. Ready?”

A nod in reply.

“Go!”

Amber took a deep, shaky breath in. “Two thousand years ago….a woman called Mary.”

Nina stopped filming, fixed the girl with a kind smile. “An angel came to a woman called Mary. Try again?”

The iPad was back in filming mode, and Amber went again. “Two thousand years ago, a…a…a little cute angel came to Mary.”

Nina stopped filming, fixed Amber with two thumbs up. That’ll do.

Things seemed to be going well as Hazel and Oliver (or, Mary and Angel Gabriel) got through their lines without too many bumps in the road. Then, it was time for Amber to take to the stage (or blue curtain with a tinsel border) once more.

“Okay Amber, so your line this time is…Mary told her husband Joseph. Want to practise?”

“Mary told her husband Joseph,” Amber repeated, with all the enthusiasm of a patient about to undergo a colonoscopy. With two days til the deadline, this would have to suffice.

“Perfect! Ready? Three…two…one…go!” Nina smiled encouragingly, as she hit record.

Amber stood beside Mary and Joseph, a little grin on her own face. “Mary told her husband Joyce.”

“…Joseph,” Nina reminded her. Where the fuck had Joyce come from? She hit record again.

“Three…two…one…go!”

“Mary told her husband Joyce.”

Nina couldn’t stop herself from bursting out laughing. “Joseph, Amber!”

The little girl nodded earnestly. “Joseph Amber.”

Nina spluttered. “No…Amber is your name. Joseph is Mary’s husband.”

“Ohhhhhh.”

Nina shook her head, amused. This was what she loved about teaching. None of the other girls working from home could say that they got to spend their day feeling like they were stuck in an episode of You’ve Been Framed.

“Go again. Mary told her husband Joseph. Three…two…one…”

“Mary told…em…um…I can’t remember,” Amber giggled. Nina could feel her own giggles bubbling up inside herself, but she had to stop otherwise it would set her whole class off.

“Mary told her husband Joseph,” Nina repeated, both Amber and Hazel now giggling to each other. “Shh shh! Okay…three…two…one…”

Amber composed herself, took a deep breath. “Mary told her husband Joyce.”

Christ Alive. Nina gasped incredulously, unable to help herself from laughing now. The whole class, Amber herself, and Nina was pretty sure God, were all doing the same. She put her head in her hands, her whole body now shaking with laughter. “Joseph!!”

She already couldn’t wait to tell everybody she knew this story. Not least so she could cement in her mind that it was something that actually happened to her, and not just simply the script of a comedy show she’d dreamed up. Miraculously, mercifully, she managed to get the rest of her class settled down and for Amber to say the correct line on film, even if Nina could be faintly heard frantically mouthing “Joseph!” in the background.

Eventually they reached the innkeepers. Easy enough, in theory.

“Okay, Carter,” Nina smiled encouragingly at the first innkeeper. “When Mary and Joseph ask for a room, you say ‘no, sorry!’. Okay?”

Carter nodded, half a finger stuck up his nose. Nina gestured to him to put his hands down, then began filming. As directed, Mary and Joseph asked if there was any room at the inn.

“YES,” the little boy shouted. The whole class burst out laughing. Nina did not.

Just then, Willam walked past the open door with her class. She gave her a look of inquisition, shooting her a tentative, questioning thumbs up.

Nina put her head in her hands in reply.

***

By some miracle of nature (although it could also have been Nina giving up on work that afternoon) Nina had made it back to the flat before five o’clock. This never happened- five pm was usually the time she left work, but a day full of recording Nativity clips and then putting them together on iMovie while her class played (read; caused havoc) had been tiring and she needed Monet, chocolate, and Merlot.

Only the first thing she heard when she opened the door to her flat wasn’t Monet singing, or the hum of the extractor fan. It was the grainy crackle of a Zoom call and an incredibly distinctive voice.

“So when you doin’ it? Do it tonight. Do it when she gets home from work.”

Monet’s voice- humoured, long-suffering. “I’m not doing it then, Vanj, she’ll be exhausted.”

“That was honestly your best suggestion? When she gets home from work?” Brooke’s voice. “Aren’t you the pinnacle of romance!”

Nina had realised that Monet was on a Zoom call with all the girls, from the way Vanessa had obviously kissed Brooke on camera was being met with half a dozen cries in protest from the others. She excitedly shrugged off her coat and unwrapped herself from her scarf, eager to see her friends again. Part of her was intrigued, though. Why were they all calling each other without her?

“My question is how you’re going to do it,” Akeria’s voice came, as questioning as always. “It needs to be good but it better not be too damn cheesy.”

“An’ you better make sure she got her nails done, she might say no if she ain’t got her nails done!” Silky came shouting through Monet’s Macbook speakers.

“Yeah, you better make it as romantic as you can, Mo,” Scarlet added, making Nina wonder what the hell it was they were all talking about. Before she could wonder any further, she heard Yvie’s distinctive snort of a laugh.

“You are in no position to speak about romance, I mean, need I remind you how you asked me?”

“Shut up,” Scarlet replied, her tone a little bashful as the other girls laughed.

“Monet I could hire you a plane if you really wanted,” Plastique offered, making Nina snort despite the fact she had no idea what the conversation was about.

“Shut up, bitch,” Nina could practically hear the roll of Akeria’s eyes.

Nina toed her shoes off and finally padded through to the kitchen, where Monet’s eyes grew wide when she saw her, her body visibly flinching.

“Hey, babe!” she smiled, looking a little startled. “You’re home earlier than usual!”

“Oh sorry, am I interrupting your Zoom call with all your side chicks?” Nina deadpanned, forcing her way onto Monet’s lap to see her friends on the screen.

“Ninaaa!!!” Vanessa’s face popped up first, her friend waving excitedly as she sat on her sofa in Brooke’s arms. “How are you, girl?”

“Shattered,” Nina sighed, rubbing her eyes harshly. “Just filmed the whole Nativity with the rugrats today. Think it took ten years off my lifespan. How’re you?”

“Good,” Brooke smiled back through the screen. “We ordered our Christmas food today. Trying to convince this one that we don’t need twelve pigs in blankets between two people.”

Vanessa scowled back at her from their position on the sofa. “Uh, yes the hell we do!”

“Twelve pigs in blankets as well as the turkey, stuffing, and all the veg? Y’all are gonna explode,” Akeria said disapprovingly.

“Kiki! How are you?” Nina cried with delight, seeing her friend’s tired but smiling face appear on screen.

“Good. Don’t stop work for a while yet, but it’s fine. Still flat hunting.”

“How’s Pri?” Nina asked, heartened by the way Akeria looked down, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

“Yeah, she’s good. Still batshit crazy. Horny all the time.”

“The ideal girlfriend, really,” Yvie said, a wry smile on her face.

“Nina!” Silky suddenly cut in, yelling. “Did you hear any of what we were talkin’ about before?”

Nina frowned, shook her head. “Something about planes and nails. And cheese. I’m too exhausted to have paid enough attention. Why, were you having a mad bitchfest about me?”

“Trying to ask the girls how best to dump you,” Monet deadpanned. Nina shot Monet a look and squeezed her leg, resulting in her girlfriend yelping and cracking her knee off the table.

Whatever the previous conversation was was soon forgotten about as excited catchups took over. Silky was excited as she was interviewing some singer that Nina had never heard of and wanted the girls to help her work out what questions she was going to ask her. Yvie and Scarlet were lamenting the fact they had to host both of their families for Christmas and had bought a turkey so big Scarlet wasn’t sure it would fit in their oven, and Plastique was telling them the weirdest things she’d been gifted by companies desperate for her to endorse them on Instagram.

“I got a box of sex toys from LoveHoney. That was probably the most random. Me and Naomi had a wild fucking night that night.”

“STOP BEIN’ GROSS,” Silky had yelled down the line, causing Nina to hammer Monet’s volume down button.

Eventually the call came to an end, but not before lots of promises to catch up soon once the situation across the world was better than the shitshow it was currently. As Monet closed her laptop, Nina threw her arms around her neck and nuzzled into her side.

“I miss them,” she sighed, and Monet patter her back comfortingly.

“I know, babe. I miss them too.”

There was a moment of pensive silence, and then Nina spoke again, the Nativity never too far away from her mind.

“I can’t export this video.”

“What?”

“The Nativity video. I can’t export it,” Nina muttered pitifully against her girlfriend’s shoulder.

Monet kissed her hair, making to stand up. “You get a cup of tea. I’ll fix your video.”

“You’re the best,” Nina sighed gratefully, walking over to the kettle.

It was only after she’d sat down with a cup of tea and Monet had promised she’d sorted her video that Nina thought about the conversation she’d walked in on earlier.

She had a strange feeling that it had something to do with her.

***

When Nina arrived at work that morning, she could tell something was…a little different. She couldn’t really tell what it was. It started with the slightly knowing smile Tatianna shot her from across the corridor.

“Congrats, Nina!” she shouted down to her before she ducked into her own classroom.

“Uh…thanks,” she replied a little too late. Okay, the Nativity process had been stressful, but did she really need congratulated?

She supposed she appreciated it. It had been a whirlwind of a process, after all.

Only the odd thing was, it continued. The congratulations came pouring in; Alaska, Ivy from the Nursery school, Alyssa had cooed and gushed for ages about how exciting it was and how happy she was for her.

Nina had only blinked in reply, a little bewildered. “Thanks, Alyssa. It was a stress, but they managed to pull it off in the end.”

Alyssa gave her a funny look, then realisation seemed to dawn on her. “Oh…they’re non-binary! You know I never knew that, sorry sugar. Well congratulations to you both.”

With that, Alyssa hurried away only leaving Nina more confused than ever.

What in the fuck?

When the bell rang and Nina went to collect her class from the line, things only got weirder. Before she could hurry her class inside, Harry’s Mum waved at her from behind the school gate, beckoning her over. Nina’s heart began to sink- she was going to ask her why Harry was only a shepherd, wasn’t she, or why he didn’t get a solo during Little Donkey, or some-other-bullshit-like-that.

To Nina’s surprise, she held up a sparkly gift bag.

“Hi, sorry for bothering you!” she beamed at her. This was already unheard of- a parent apologising for taking up her time? Nina was beginning to question if she had slipped through a crack in the fabric of reality while she’d been sleeping when Harry’s Mum spoke again. “Me and the other parents had a quick whipround and got you a couple of things and a little card to say congratulations! We thought it was the least we could do given your lovely news.”

It was only after Nina had thanked her profusely, taken the bag and led her children into class that her words sank in. What lovely news was she on about?

Nina taught that morning in a daze. Well, ‘taught’ was pushing it; the last few days of term were always movie days or games days, and today was the former. Nina had decided to inject a bit of an educational element to it by showing her class Nativity and then asking them if they thought the film’s play was better than the one they’d put on. Despite it being one of her favourite Christmas films, though, she still wondered why everyone had been congratulating her today. Maybe her Nativity video had really been so amazingly good that people just had to comment on it. Nina decided that this was the only plausible explanation, and so was feeling particularly spirited as it reached breaktime and she sent the kids out to play.

She was sitting in her classroom reading all the messages she’d missed on her group chat when Willam practically crashed through her door.

“Oh my God!” she yelled, practically vibrating with excitement. “Congratulations, you lucky fucker! That’s gotta be the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. I mean Bianca probably wants your head on a plate for keeping it in, but still! How’re you celebrating? Should we go to the shop at lunchtime and get prosecco? I mean it’s the last few days of term, I’m sure drinking on the job’s allowed. Court wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Willam was talking with such speed that it took a few seconds for Nina to register everything she’d said. “Why…would Bianca want my head on a plate?”

Willam snorted. “I mean it’s kinda obvious. You don’t think she’s gonna be pissed about it? Then again, maybe she won’t. I don’t know, I can’t get inside her head. I’m not on that Honey I Shrunk The Kids kinda bullshit.”

Nina felt her head was so clouded that even if she possessed the brightest fog lights in the world she still couldn’t see what Willam was trying to say.

“Willam,” she asked, slowly and carefully as she rested her head in her hands. “What the hell are you talking about?”

There was a pause as Willam froze, then as her eyes became huge and wide as she slowly raised a finger to point at Nina. “Jesus Harvey Christ. You…you don’t know, do you?”

Nina frowned, bewildered. “Know what?”

“Oh my God. You don’t know. This is the best thing ever. You don’t even know!” Willam howled with laughter, then, before Nina could ask what she was meant to not know, Willam had dashed out of her classroom and had begun yelling into the hall. “Courtney! Court! She doesn’t know!”

Nina began to feel her heart beat in heavy thuds as the bell went to signal the end of playtime. What didn’t she know?

Eventually Nina managed to reach the end of the day. How, she didn’t know. She was so confused by all the different odd events of the day that she felt she didn’t properly make sense at any point to her class, but that probably didn’t matter as they were all so wrapped up in Christmas nonsense that Nina could’ve left the classroom and they wouldn’t have given a shit.

She was just getting ready to leave work for the weekend when Bianca stuck her head into her classroom and made her almost jump fifty feet in the air.

“Nina,” she began, in her own blunt, abrasive way. She didn’t wait for Nina to greet her as she continued. “I know you must be wandering around with your head in the clouds at the moment, but next time do you think you could maybe just run the video by me first? I mean you’re very lucky that the parents took that well. I mean it’s really about the kids, y’know?”

Nina could only blink at her wide-eyed like a deer in the headlights, getting into trouble but not entirely sure what for. Loath to say anything in response, she simply nodded.

“I mean you should’ve really kept it out,” Bianca frowned. She let the awkward, tense silence hang in the air for a few moments before a humoured smile appeared on her face. “But congratulations. I’m very happy for you.”

Without stopping for Nina to reply, Bianca had turned on her heel and left her classroom. Nina could only look at the space she’d previously been standing in. Maybe all of this was a dream. A fever dream. She’d probably contracted some sort of illness and was experiencing some hallucinogenic vision.

She didn’t know how she made it home without causing a crash, but she managed, and as soon as she was through the door she began to vent to the person she loved most.

“Monet!” she called through to the kitchen, hanging her belongings up. “I’ve had the weirdest fucking day in living memory. So first all the teachers were congratulating me…then I got a present from the parents…then Willam was screaming about me not knowing something…and then Bianca gave me a row at the end of the day…but I still don’t know exactly why…but then she said congratulations to me too?”

It was only when Nina stopped and walked through to the kitchen that she saw the kitchen table all done up with candles and laid beautifully, Nina’s favourite meal (slow cooker beef and buttery mash) on two plates, and Monet sitting at the table with her makeup done, dressed in a backless blue bodycon that Nina had once very nearly broke the zip of trying to rip it off her one weekend away.

“Uh…” Nina frowned, more confused than ever. Slowly, as a smile spread across Monet’s face, she began to connect all the dots of weird and the picture it presented illustrated that somehow her girlfriend had to be behind it all. “Okay, what’s going on?”

Monet got up and leant against the kitchen counter. She very gently took both of Nina’s hands in hers. “You didn’t watch the whole video once I exported it, did you?”

Something like dread crossed with excitement began to pool in Nina’s gut. She narrowed her eyes. “Monet…what did you do?”

Wordlessly, Monet reached back across to the table where she picked up her phone and loaded up the Nativity video. Skipping to the end, she got past the end of Jingle Bells and showed the video to Nina. The screen faded to black, and then, Nina watched as another little title card faded into view.

To the teacher that always gives so much of herself to others, I now want to give all of myself to you.

Miss West, will you marry me?

Love, Monet x

And suddenly everything in Nina felt as if it was made of fire, adrenaline and jet fuel. Her eyes flew open, her hand smacked against her shocked, gaping mouth. Her pulse raced and her heart hammered and all of her limbs turned to jelly to the extent she wasn’t sure she was able to stand any more. When she took her eyes off her phone screen and looked at Monet, her girlfriend was down on their kitchen floor, down on one knee like in every princess movie Nina had ever seen, her hair soft and curled and loose on her shoulders and a bright smile on her painted taupe lips. Gemstone tears brimmed in her dark eyes and hung from her lashes like icicles, and there, in her outstretched hands, was an open navy box.

Inside was a ring - gold band, one small diamond - and it was when Nina saw it that she gave a sob, her own tears springing from her eyes like a broken fountain, uncontrollable and erratic.

“Oh, baby, c’mere,” Monet gave a small laugh, shaking her head and immediately rising from the floor to wrap her arms around her in a hug. Nina took a few shaky, shallow breaths, pawing at Monet’s chest to release herself from her grip and look her in the eyes.

“You! You knew…all this time, and you…you put it in the video, oh my GOD, Monet, I could’ve got in so much trouble…I did get in so much trouble, oh my God…and you didn’t even tell me-”

“I thought you’d at least watch the damn thing through before you uploaded it!” Monet burst out laughing through her tears, and Nina joined in in a lightheaded, giddy way.

“I can’t believe this is real. Fuck. My whole body feels like that time we did poppers in Crete. Oh my God. Is this happening? You want to marry me?”

“Well, I would love to marry you, but I’m waiting on an answer,” Monet smiled bashfully, bringing her arm out from around Nina’s waist and holding the ring up so Nina could see it.

The diamond only seemed to glisten more when she saw it through the tears in her own eyes, and the gold shone warm like the brightest star. It was an engagement ring- her engagement ring- and it was real, and it was surreal, but Monet was in front of her waiting for an answer with tears in her eyes and hope in her heart that matched her own.

And Nina had never been one to say no to anything.

#rpdr fanfiction #ninex #background witney #monet x change #nina west #willam belli #courtney act #things are really cool in nazareth #ortega #fluff #kidfic #proposal fic #ficmas 2020 #day 14: nice #tw: coronavirus reference #submission

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ledomas · 2 years ago

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Happy birthday Katie!!

thank you sweet pea 💖

#ask #maxbegone #schmidt voice: twenty nine!

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etatmagique · 5 years ago

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❝ the simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them. ❞

( alisha boe, genderfluid, they/them ) · for a half-blood/werewolf, i’d call you lucky for not picking a side. why fight for what’s right versus what’s easy when you can just sit down, right claudia samatar ? i mean, a twenty-four year old potioneer knows better than to get involved in political affairs, especially a horned serpent from ilvermorny. didn’t i hear that at school people used to describe you as adroit and secretive. staying neutral is always harder than it initially seems. ( the smell of blooming lilies of the valley in the spring, softly running your fingers through your child’s hair, the calmness of a beautiful and bright starry sky you’re looking up at far away from any big city, refusing to get your eyesight fixed because you love wearing glasses too much, re-reading a book so often yet taking such good care of it that it doesn’t even show in its physical quality & sun rays piercing through the clouds after a rainy day / sam )

— ♡ CHARACTER PARALLELS ( MOST LIKE ) :: Amy Santiago ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine ) + C3PO ( Star Wars ) + Nina Sayer ( Black Swan ) + Temperance Brennan ( Bones ) + Lisa Simpson ( The Simpsons ) + Spencer Hastings ( Pretty Little Liars ) + Burton Guster ( Psych ) + Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow ( Marvel ) + Lois Lane ( DC Comcis ) + Monica Geller ( F.R.I.E.N.D.S. ) !!

— ♡ CHARACTER PARALLELS ( LEAST LIKE ) :: Ash Ketchum ( Pokemon ) - Naruto Uzumaki ( Naruto ) - Titus Andromedon ( The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ) - Phoebe Buffay ( F.R.I.E.N.D.S. ) - Joey Tribbiani ( F.R.I.E.N.D.S. ) - Bart Simpson ( The Simpsons ) - Gina Linetti ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine ) - Olaf ( Frozen ) - Bridget Jones ( Bridget Jones’s Diary ) - Michael Scott ( The Office )

TRIGGER WARNINGS THAT CAN BE FOUND BELOW THE CUT: Pregnancy.

STATS PAGE + CONNECTIONS + PINTEREST BOARD

i’m not including a tldr in this intro bc lazy(tm), but if you want a lil summary, you can just ask me for it and i’ll write one for you !

backstory.

Claudia is the child of a healer and a muggle doctor. Both their parents were very busy whilst they and their younger siblings were growing up, and yet, Claudia’s parents always managed to make time for their children. They were strict, always expecting a lot from Claudia and their siblings, but there was never any doubts that the Samatars loved their children.

All in all, Claudia had a pretty eventless childhood. They were happy, had all they needed, and though there were some rougher patches in their life, especially around puberty, they generally were very happy.

Their extended maternal family was from Montréal, and every summer, Claudia and their siblings spent at least a month there with their grandparents, which Claudia looked forward to every year. Their grandparents got them to travel all around Québec, whilst also discovering Montréal itself, and Claudia loved traveling around the province with them. It was there, when they were thirteen, that Claudia was bitten and turned into a werewolf. They were camping in Mont-Tremblant, and Claudia had made some friends they had figured out were from the wizarding community too (but went to Beauxbâtons because they didn’t speak English). One night, Claudia sneaked out of the camping site with them to explore the woods, and the little group got attacked by a werewolf. They all made it out alive, though two of them were severely hurt, and the other three became werewolves (and were obviously hurt too).

At first, Claudia blamed themself very strongly for what happened to them, yes, but mostly for what happened to their new friends. Sure, they hadn’t been the one to present the idea of going out alone into the forest, but they hadn’t been the voice of reason like they usually were, and they felt extremely bad about that. They kept in touch with the rest of the group after that, and eventually, it was through talking to them that they managed to lessen their feeling of guilt.

Claudia was scared at first, to be honest. They had done a project about werewolf rights at Ilvermorny before they were turned, and truly cared about the rights of werewolves, but they had never considered what would happen to them if they were turned, and it was quite a shock. Mostly, the pain of transformations was the worst bit. After a while, their parents managed to find the right potions to make things better, and knew someone who could make the potion that would make transformations far less dangerous for everyone around, but the first few transformations were very painful, and Claudia had never dealt well with pain.

Luckily for them, they had a good support system, and though it wasn’t easy, they learned to live with their condition. In fact, they even ended up telling their friends at school about it in their last year, knowing fully well that the news would travel as one of the friends they had told couldn’t keep a secret no matter how much she respected Claudia.

In school, Claudia loved Potions class, and they had no hesitations before going into potion work after graduating. Not only did they actually really enjoy making potions, but they also loved the idea of being able to make the potion they needed for their transformations all by themself.

Now a freelance potioneer, Claudia sells most of their potions in various apothecaries and shops, and has a own line of products. It’s not super big yet, but they have a good sense of business, and with the help of their aunt (a well-accomplished businesswoman), they believe they might be able to make it bigger.

Last year, Claudia gave birth to their daughter, Aurora. At the time, Claudia had a serious boyfriend, but they’ve amiably broken up since (this is currently a fulfilled connection). They each have Aurora for a week, and Claudia agreed to let her ex have Aurora on Christmas, as Claudia has never cared much for Christmas, but insists on having her for New Years and Aurora’s birthday.

Claudia was a bit young to have a child, but they quickly got used to the judgmental stares, and only cared about it at the beginning. After all, being a werewolf, Claudia was used to judgmental people, and was quite good at detaching themself from others’ opinions. The only thing they did worry about was if their daughter would resent them for the fact that she’d necessarily inherit some werewolf traits, but Claudia has come to the conclusion that they’ll deal with that in time, if it ever becomes a problem for Aurora.

All in all, Claudia’s a good parent, although she’s obviously constantly learning and makes mistakes, just like all parents. Luckily enough for them, they’re currently living with their aunt in Manhattan, and though Julia (their aunt) doesn’t get involved in the raising of Aurora, she’s been a lot of help in general.

present day.

Claudia is genderfluid, and only realized that about two years ago. They prefer they/them pronouns, and at the moment, they prefer “feminine” nouns like witch, mother, queen, princess, aunt, sister, etc.

Claudia thought about doing something. After all, they want the world to be a safe place for Aurora, and so it would make sense to fight for that. However, they also want to be there for their daughter, and therefore have decided to stay neutral. For now.

personality.

Claudia is very down-to-earth and often finds themself being the voice of reason. They do enjoy having fun, though, although that fun often goes through reading, going to see theatre, older muggle movies, etc. They’re not much of a party person, and though they have a few very good friends, don’t really like spending time in big groups, which is why they work on their own. They do know they might have to hire more people if they want their business to grow, but to them, there’s a difference between employing people and having a billion friends.

To-the-point, Claudia says it how it is, and doesn’t stray from what they want to say very often. They’re very honest, and sometimes maybe a bit too honest. They’ve been working on that, though, as they really don’t mean and/or want to offend/hurt/wound others with their words.

Claudia doesn’t share much about themself, and can even be considered secretive. They keep to themself most of the time, and although they do open up to their few close friends, they never reveal more than what they think is necessary.

#macusahqs.intro #( claudia samatar. )#( claudia samatar | introduction. )#( claudia samatar | character development. )

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ifridiot · 6 years ago

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Maybe

this fic is, uh, something like six years old? I’ve edited it a little for typos but otherwise it’s not revised. posting for the relaunch of the @ask-the-becile-boys blog.

warnings for swearing, violence, and consideration of self-harm

Some things you can only do alone, in private, with a gun in your hand.

They all know you like guns. Hell, they’d have to be blind not to know, and while your family (for lack of better word, for what is blood to those who have none?) is a lot of things, none of them are blind.

So they know you like them, and they’ve got to know you have at least a couple; Father gave you one for Christ’s sake so it’s not like it’s a big secret. And there’s only so much you can do about the stench of gunpowder and burning oil from your little… exercises.

What you don’t think they know is how many of them you’ve collected over the years. The Thompson they all know about (Father’s sneering little gift, a nod of acknowledgment to your being his little assistant, his loathsome pet), and maybe about the neat little Schmidt M1882, since you bought it yourself instead of stealing it, paid a whole thirty bucks in some back-alley bargaining when it was new and have treasured the thing ever since.

But about the others, no, you don’t think they know. Hare might have an idea; the little rat’s full of so many half-baked theories about what everyone else thinks and does that it wouldn’t surprise you if he thought you maybe had one or two more. And you know now that he’s got himself convinced that you’re out shooting people, out there killing for that jackass you call Father or Master.

You let him think it. Just like you’ll let him go forever thinking that you kicked his narrow aft to hell and back without regret, that you don’t hate yourself for almost killing the stupid shit in your rage. It’s easier to let him think what he wants because he’ll never understand anything else.

To date, you have collected twenty-six guns of various firing speeds and size. All but the first two you’ve stolen from passed out drunks in bars or plucked from the hands of trigger happy brawlers looking to plug lead into something they can’t kill. A couple you’ve hustled in dark corners of seedy sub-markets, trading or bullying for something you want more than what you’ve already got.

Some of them are tiny things; they feel like toys in your hands for all that they could end a life with a careless gesture. Others are complicated, none quite as powerful as the Trench Sweeper but still intimidating in your grip. You’re particularly pleased with the Winchester M97, the severe click-snap of the pump-action striking a base chord in your processor that’s very much like pleasure.

It’s never been exactly made subtle that you look threatening. Unsmiling, stiffly postured, you look colder than your brothers, quieter and more insidiously menacing. From all three of you violence is expected; you’re thieves and bullies and thugs, and of the trio, it is from you people expect the most evil, for you are quieter, more restrained, clearly calculating while Hare is all direct action and Jacky is a mad whirligig of untamable, unpredictable energy.

In reality, you don’t care enough about most things, most people, to be calculating anything. Hare’s the ambitious thief, plotting ways to put money in his pocket. For you, you’d rather just watch, just remain in the backdrop. Failing that, you have no problem reinforcing the idea that you’re the measured one, the scary one; you keep your silence, photoreceptors boring into the eyes of anyone stupid enough to start staring at you.

But contrary to the image you project of the clean-cut criminal, you’re not looking for a fight. Hare will willingly scrap with anyone stupid enough to pick a fight with a metal man, but you’d just as soon walk away. And even Hare isn’t out looking for the fights, even Hare, who wants so badly to let out some of the aggression that been ground so deep into him it might as well be hardwired, isn’t going to provoke a fight.

Because the truth of it is, you’re not programmed for it. You’re perfectly capable of lying and cheating and hurting if you have to; it’s not going to break you to break them, but nine times out of ten, a glare can suffice, or a puff of dark smoke – hell, a raised fist if you must, but that’s enough to send most humans scurrying. And at the end of the day, you’re all of you cowards. You don’t have the guts to be killers; you’re pickpockets and hoodlums and low-down societal dirt, yeah, but none of you are killers.

It makes you feel just that much more complete to have a gun in your hand.

To be clear, you have no desire to become some mindless weapon, to be pointed and fired. You do not romanticize or moon over the idea of killing humans. The idea is actually in its own right quite repulsive to you.

With a gun in your hand, though, you are not the same automaton who must do as Master Becile wishes. You are not the bot who has come to the realization that the only way to keep your brothers in any semblance of safety is to pretend to be their enemy. With a gun in your hands, you wouldn’t have to watch your creator mete out punishment, knowing that anything you did against him would only worsen the situation. You could stand up for your brothers, finally be really on their side instead of quietly placating and suggesting and politicking your way through your Father’s moods.

“I would kill you in a second,” you growl, voice low and muttering though there is no one to hear you. Your hand snaps out, sweet little Remington clutched against your palm, the crack of gun fire shattering the silence of the evening. The barrel smokes, the bottle your bullet crashes through seems to explode off the fence. Roughly seventy yards between you and the target, and it’s nothing short of perfect. You feel good, but it’s a dark good, muddied with pent up rage, a sort of budding mania that often overtakes you on these little outings.

Fanning the hammer, shots fire rapidly, the line of rusting cans and glass bottles disappearing as they either burst or fly off the fence. The harsh grind of your voice raises with the thunder from the gun, biting out words buried deep inside yourself. “Shoot you down like a rabid mutt.”

The Remington is only a six shot, and you toss it, not quite carelessly, back down when it’s spent and grab another handgun. Though this little piece of land is quiet, out of the way and inhabited only by the occasional vagrant, you’ve never taken out either shotgun, and especially not the Thompson. Besides, power aside, there’s something so much more personal about the handguns.

It’s something about how they explode in your hand, smoke and thunder and the acrid stench of gunpowder; each pull of the trigger like hooks inside you, dragging out emotions you pretend not to have. All the anger, all the rage, all the built-up bitter hatred, ripped from you and screaming through the air, ripping into metal and glass and dispersing into nothingness.

It becomes rhythmic, automatic. Fire, fire, fire; six shots, gun spent, drop, new gun. Begin again.

Shots tear through the little field, rocketing into the targets you’ve meticulously placed on the surrounding fences; on stumps and hanging from the crooked branches of nearby trees. As you fire, you talk to yourself, voice rising and falling. Growling and shouting.

You curse your Father, the only man you ever expected to give a single fuck about you or your brothers. The more anger you pour into your words, the hotter your furnace burns, until you feel fire spitting from your maw with each word. And still you scream. You call him a bastard, you call him selfish; you tell him (though you’ll never say it to him, never in life) you wish he would die, that you wish you could kill him. Why, and you want to know so badly; why build us if you hate us? Why keep us around if we’re such garbage?

The words spew out of you, a vomit of wasted emotion. All your hate, all your rage, every single negative thing that you’ve turned back in on yourself, twisted in your guts like barbed wire. And that’s exactly how it feels, it hurts exactly that much, like you’re wrenching barbed wire from your guts and out your mouth. But it must go on.

At some point around the time you’re picking up the sixteenth gun (Smith and Wesson .32, for what it matters) you realize that the words aren’t so much coming out as words anymore; just an increasingly harsh yelling. Giving in to that is good; no more words, just the energy tearing through you, all the blackness pouring out like the bullets, like the flames.

In the end, by some mistake or some unconscious fluke, you’ve expended every target and you’re left holding a gun with one bullet. The gun is your favorite, that little honey of a murder machine, the Schmidt M1882.

Suddenly the intake of air required to keep oxygen on your flames is ragged, your grip on the gun too tight. Your arm is actually shaking from the exertion of the last fifteen minutes’ shooting, or maybe from the weight of the gun in your hand, and you find yourself staring at your hand, willing your fingers to release or at least slacken, but they don’t.

With measured slowness, as if you must be very careful in the action, you lift the gun, turn it, and press the muzzle against your temple. It’s hot; a perfect circle of heat, and you shudder.

Photoreceptors click off, the gun steadies. Why not? What exactly have you got going on that’s so wonderful? Your father is a selfish, moody prick who cares absolutely nothing for you or your brothers; your brothers, one of whom is as close to a drunk as he can be and hates you, and the other who is glitched beyond help and terrified of you. And you care so little for yourself. You’re nothing, a shadow of a man, not particularly successful in your endeavors to protect your brothers and there isn’t one single thing you can think of to redeem the hateful, horrible things you do in your father’s name. You deserve to eat this bullet just for your little meeting with Hare, even if the rat was looking for punishment.

So why not.

Just why the fuck not?

With a sigh, very soft and rasping with embers and soot, you lower the gun, hand finally relaxing as your photoreceptors click back on.

You sit on the grass and pull out the maintenance kit from the bag in which you stash your little collection, fingers glancing fondly over the barrel of your Winchester, still securely folded away in the bottom of the bag. Before you can go, the guns must all be cleaned, oiled, and reloaded; made ready for the next time your anger reaches a point where it might escape in some other way.

As you clean, you do not think about your actions prior; you content yourself with the repetitive action of breaking the guns down, cleaning, oiling, tending to them. You don’t want to go there. You don’t want to think about what you may or may not have done, even though the smell of your overheated system is accosting your olfactory with the reek of burnt oil. It’s better not to go there, not to try facing it. Bury it, throw all the other dark things in on top of it, and shoot it down later.

Because you are a coward, and you are unjustifiable, and you are too low to bother wasting bullets on.

Because you love life even if yours isn’t worth anything.

Because maybe somewhere in that pit of hate and venom, Becile doesn’t hate you. And maybe Hare will understand one day what you try to do, why you’re the bastard that you are.

Because maybe, just maybe, there’s a point to it. You just have to find it.

#becile bots #the skull #the skull becile #neoma writes

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prettylittlelyres · 6 years ago

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Violins and Violets - Second Draft - COMPLETE!

Beta Readers Wanted!

Salzburg, 1785: A musical prodigy has spent her life on the road, touring the courts of Europe with her brother. When her father forbids her to compose, she disguises herself as a man and seeks work at an opera house in Prague… but she can’t stay undercover forever, and it’s only the intervention of a beautiful singer that keeps her from ruin and ridicule.

I finished writing the second draft of Violins and Violets - today, the 13th January 2019 at 19:02 - with 71,629 words across 19 chapters!

I’m so pleased with myself, and I’m really excited to move onto other projects... probably redrafts of Violins and Violets and Curls of Smoke... but also explorations of the other characters’ stories.

But for the moment, I’m seeking beta readers for this draft!

Thank you so much to the wonderful people who’ve beta-read for me already - @thirddraftproblems and @ay-zai-uh-writeblr - your feedback’s helped enormously, and I can’t thank you enough!

If anyone’s interested in beta-reading a historical romance about Sapphic musicians in 18th/19th century Salzburg and Prague, please let me know! I’m putting excerpts from each chapter below the cut, so you can see if it’s the sort of story you’d like to read!

Chapter One “Do you really feel she will be better suited as a housewife than as a concert musician?" asked my mother, "After you have raised her to hope she will be as famous as her brother is? After you have raised her to spend her life travelling, to spend her life on the road, without the prospect of a single fixed home? How is she meant to adapt to the future you are now laying out for her?” “I don’t know, Julia,” said Father, “But it’s the only future she has, and the only one she can expect. She has as much chance on the European stage as you do. A woman can’t compose. What kind of father would I be if I set her up for failure, for ridicule from every corner of the musical world? Do trust me, Julia. I know what’s best for her, and for this family. Hans must seek fame, and Katharina must seek a husband.”

Chapter Two I opened the curtain covering the window closest to me, and settled back into my seat. As the stagecoach rolled through Linz, and then north to Bohemia, I watched the clouds skidding across the sky, and wondered what the weather was like in Salzburg. Had my parents realised yet that I was gone? Had they left me to sleep in, thinking the previous day had broken me? Had there been a search of the house? Was there now a search of the city? Or had Father insisted they simply carry on without me? One less mouth to feed. One less child to worry about. Had he realised my plan, and hired a private carriage to race to Prague and catch me there? I shook my head. I could do nothing now. One day I would write to them, and explain myself. But not before I had reached Prague, not before I had settled there, and not before I had found work. Hans, I would tell, but not Mother, and not Father. Not yet.

Chapter Three “I'd like to enquire about a position in the pit orchestra. Are there any openings?” The conductor sniffed. “There is certainly the budget. As to whether there is room for…” He reached into his breast pocket, donned a pair of spectacles, and peered at me again. “You seem dreadfully young. What training have you had? Or have you come here, having been rejected from the Conservatory?” He raised an eyebrow. “I hope you don’t expect us to take you on if that’s the case. We don’t take chances on upstart throwaways.” I shook my head. “No, Sir… and not so, Sir. If you please, I have spent my entire childhood performing for the courts of Europe, and now I wish to take up a position in an orchestra. It's a more secure profession, Sir. I'm sure you appreciate—” “Of course. What’s your name?”

Chapter Four Fräulein Fialová and I came to greater acquaintance over my first year in Prague. She taught me Czech, and, when the lead soprano left Malá Strana to marry, Herr Benes and I pushed Herr Filipek and Herr Janda to appoint Fräulein Fialová in her place. With joy, I watched her take to the centre of the stage and pour every drop of her soul into performing, dark eyes glittering in the bright light of the stage torches. Every evening, hundreds of people watched, enraptured, as her chin tilted up and her voice soared to the highest, as a woman showed what it meant to be a true artist, to devote herself so completely to her music that it was all she did. I would have liked to invite her to dinner. I would have loved to sing with her. But, of course, I could do neither without revealing my secret, and putting her in the impossible position of keeping it. Instead, I poured my longing for her companionship into my music, writing adagio after allegretto after symphony after concerto with her in the front of my mind. I sold many of my scores to publishers, including those I had recovered upon my arrival in Prague, but never the ones I wrote for her. Those, I placed in a leather case, and that, I hid in a drawer in my parlour.

Chapter Five Herr Havelka stood in the middle of the stage, two sheets of cream-coloured paper pinched between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. “You have been deceived!” he shouted, casting his left index finger over the orchestra, and the various members of the cast that had settled in the auditorium while they waited for the rehearsal proper to begin. I squinted. Those papers… They were not blank, as I had thought them earlier that morning. They were laden with the black ink and scrawling handwriting my brother favoured. Immediately the cravat around my chest began to cut into me even more painfully than usual. “Herr Havelka, Sir, I beg you—” “No!” Herr Havelka screamed, hurling the pages to the floor and kicking them into the orchestra pit. He jumped off the stage after them, and marched towards me, thrusting a sharp finger into my face so that I had to step backwards. “You have lied to everyone!” He put on a terrible German accent, clearly meant to imitate my own, and pranced on the spot, skipping like a child as he mimicked me. ““Ach, hallo, ich bin Herr Sebastien Schmidt from Vienna!”” He scoffed. “Disgusting!”

Chapter Six "I think I’d like to conduct as a woman… as myself.” “Surely you don't mean as Fräulein Schmidt?” She frowned. “I’ve just realised I don't know your true name. I'm so sorry. What would you like me to call you?” “My Christian name is Katharina,” I replied, “But my family calls me Käthe.” I smiled. “Not that anyone’s said it out loud for years. You don’t have to call me Katharina, if you’d feel more comfortable calling me Fräulein Schmidt… or even Herr Schmidt. I won’t mind—” “Oh, but Käthe is such a beautiful name!” exclaimed Fräulein Fialová, “I can’t imagine the agony you must have felt, hiding it.” She stood up, crossed the room, and hugged me again. “And you should call me Magdalena, no more of this “Fräulein Fialová” business. Fräulein Fialová is my aunt!” She went to her wardrobe, and pulled out a gown of navy velvet. “Here, borrow this one. It will bring out your eyes.”

Chapter Seven “Herr Filipek, if you want me to leave, I will understand,” I said, “But I will not know that unless you tell me so.” “Leave?” Herr Filipek repeated, “Leave? Fräulein Schmidt, I cannot ever ask you to leave again. I don’t think I can even allow you to leave.” Finally he met my eye. “I’m sure I’ll have a hard time stopping you, if you’ve made up your mind to go, but… the truth is… we shall all have a hard time surviving here without you.” “Sir?” He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “In the short time that has passed since the final curtain, I have had no less than twenty people demand your name and address so that they might send their children to you for music lessons. Nine more have asked how they might commission you as a composer, and several men have asked for your hand in marriage.”

Chapter Eight Magdalena went to stand in the cabin curve, and reached out to touch the figures painted on the inside of the lid. She pointed to the lyrist, and grinned. “She looks like you, with all that lovely dark hair. Do you know if it's supposed to be anyone in particular?” “I don’t,” I replied, “I suppose the artist painted his friends. As to the characters they’re playing here…” I shook my head, and shrugged. “They could be anyone. Greek muses, perhaps.” “Well, then, there's no reason not to see yourself there, playing that little harp.” She smiled, and wafted her hands through the air, nodding frantically. “Now, won’t you play the harpsichord?” I stretched my hands. “Well, I’m sure you’ll know this one,” I said, playing the first few notes of the princess’ aria from “The Sister’s Tale”. Magdalena giggled, then straightened her back and began to sing. She beamed at me. “Now the lovers’ duet!” she said, clapping, “From the third act! You must sing, too. I’m sure you didn’t grow up as you did without learning to sing.”

Chapter Nine We needed something to accompany our voices when we sang, but Magdalena didn’t have a harpsichord, so we had only ever met at my home. This was the first time I had ever visited her, and her home was nothing like my imagination had suggested. Whenever Magdalena had talked about books she had read, I had pictured her sitting, feet curled at her side, in a high-backed armchair where she could rest her head, and prop up her elbows as she read. In my imagination, she had set up her chair on a rug by a wide window, so that she could look out onto the street whenever she wanted. I had thought of flowers perched on little tables, of lace curtains veiling the view of the carriages and people passing below. But her apartment’s windows were curtained in thick velvet, and a chaise longue reclined in a corner lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, stuffed with libretti and tomes of fine literature Intricately-tiled floors carried the light flowing in from the windows right through the living room, and, in one corner, there was a white marble fireplace, carved with delicate flowers. On the mantelpiece, there was a framed painting of her aunt. But of course she should have had a tiled floor, and mostly-bare walls. She was an opera singer, and her home needed good acoustics. I looked around the main room, and could almost hear echoes of her beautiful voice darting from one wall to the other, and then back again.

Chapter Ten My hands had stiffened, and my fingers felt like the un-oiled joints of a heavy door, or the cogs of a long-unwound clock. I stretched my hands, and tapped them expectantly against the keys, music at the tips of my fingers… But it wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t play. I searched my mind for a piece that might cheer me up, but none came forward. Music had always flowed from me so readily, whether or not I’d wanted to, but now I felt like a carriage stuck in mud, unmoveable. Sighing heavily, I closed the fallboard, and put my head in my hands as tears burned my eyes. I’d lost Magdalena. Now it seemed I was losing my music, too. I became a statue at my instrument, not even shaking to sob. The whole evening, I sat like that, and the whole night, too. I knew efforts to sleep would prove fruitless, and so I didn’t make them.

Chapter Eleven “My dearest!” Magdalena exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. “How I’ve missed you!” She kissed my cheek. “My goodness… It has been too long. Too long.” She squeezed my hand, and, as I stood, staring at her, she stooped to pick up a bouquet of flowers from the top of her trunk. They were violets, heady in scent and vibrant in colour. They smelled of Magdalena, of her embrace, and if she had not been standing right in front of me, I would have burst into tears. But I just smiled, eyes wet, body craving her arms around it. “They’re beautiful,” I whispered. “They’re for you,” she said, “I thought I should bring something after so long without a letter. The truth is… I didn't want to give you false hope. My aunt started speaking again about a month ago now, but I didn't mention it in my last letter, just in case she stopped again. Soon, she was making so much progress so quickly that I didn't trust myself to write to you again without telling you everything.” She beamed. “I decided to come back and surprise you as soon as I could. Aunt Dorota sent me home with a cake yesterday evening. She baked it herself.” I threw myself into her arms, sobbing against her shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re truly here,” I whispered, “I feel as though I’ve been asleep as long as you’ve been gone…” I pulled away, kissed Magdalena's cheek, and breathed in the scent of the flowers, of her. “Thank you,” I said.

Chapter Twelve I went to the hallway. I checked the letterbox. I opened the envelope on the spot, and read the first few lines. No. Please, God, no. With a frantic claw, I snatched up my skirts and raced upstairs to the apartment. “Magdalena!” I screamed, slamming the door behind me, “Magdalena, he’s ill! So terribly ill!” I thrust the letter into her hands and started throwing clothes into a trunk. “He has a dreadful fever—he can’t even stand—and his stomach sticks out—his chest is covered in spots… Mother says he came back from England in perfect health… and then one morning, missed breakfast… and she went to find him in his room… and… and…” I dropped a set of stays on the bed and sobbed into my hands, shaking my head. “I can’t leave him to that, not without a hand to hold, at least!”

Chapter Thirteen We spent the next few hours searching through every chest in Hansi’s room. There was no music in the trunk he’d brought back from England, but he’d also brought along a tea-chest, with a number of new suits and books given to him by courtiers. In one book, with an oxblood leather cover and thick white pages, there were lines and lines of scribbles, music taken down in black ink. I shrieked with delight, and seized it. “Mother, look!” My mother’s face lit up, and she hugged me. “Oh, Käthe, aren’t you clever?” She turned through the pages of the notebook, stroked Hansi’s writing, and then pressed a kiss to the cover. “You’re both so clever, so, so clever. My wonderful children… You know you have to go back to Prague as soon as you can, don’t you, Katharina? They must miss you so much at the opera house. Your company, your music… your wonderful mind! I’m sure you must have friends there.” “Yes.” I nodded, and smiled sadly. “I have some very dear friends.”

Chapter Fourteen I hooked my fingers through the loop on the knocker, and lifted it, rapping three times. A skinny man in a brown jacket answered. “Yes, may I help you, Madam?” I nodded. “My name’s Katharina Schmidt. I…” I trailed off. Should I—could I—introduce myself as “Herr Schneider’s fiancée” when I didn’t want to be? The man smiled. “Oh, yes, Fräulein Schmidt! Please, do come in.” He ushered me into the house, showing me into the drawing room. “Johann, Katharina is here.” I blinked. I had assumed the man at the door to be the butler or something. A magistrate was rich enough to have a butler. Why would he send someone to answer the door who called him by his first name? Who called me by mine?

Chapter Fifteen However enticing any of these prospects might’ve been alone, they were inseparable from Magdalena’s loss. The bread turned to dust in my mouth as I turned my head, and saw, beside me, not even an empty pillow, but the floorboards, where no bed had been to begin with. I tried to sip water against the dryness of my mouth, but my tongue still felt like sandstone. Mother returned a few minutes later. She took the empty cup away from me and set it down on the table in the corner. Over her arm she carried the ivory-coloured dress she’d worn as a bride, one of faded brocade and brittle-looking lace. I let her dress me first, and then my hair. By the time she’d finished, it was twisted into delicate braids, and laced through with thin, creamy ribbons. The skirt fell in swathes around me, the bodice cinching my waist hard, forcing my back straighter than my own wedding dress had done. In that, I’d wanted to stand straight and tall, proud of my love for Magdalena, and joyous in it, but… this dress… this dress made me want to curl up and blow away like a speck of dust on the wind.

Chapter Sixteen Wilhelm was a quiet man a lot of the time, quite reserved, except when it came to his friendships, and his love for Johann. These he expressed with the brightest fire—as soon as he was sure the front door was closed—and the brightest smile. His laugh rang through the house like church bells across the city, and I could not have hoped for a more dedicated student. Opera after opera, symphony after symphony, he wrote for Johann, and I watched his success with tears of joy in my eyes. His works even played at the Malá Strana Opera House—but then again, of course they did—and Magdalena wrote to me to say how much she loved his work. And this is one of your best friends, Käthe, my love—you’re so lucky to know him, and so wonderfully clever to have taught him all this! Do say you’ll let me write to him! I want him for my friend, too! I couldn’t have stopped her even if I’d wanted to, but how on earth could I ever have wanted to? Everyone needed Wilhelm—or someone like him, but there was no-one like him—in their life. Soon, he had his own of Magdalena’s letters to share in the evenings, and it warmed my heart to see him so happy, just as I could see it warmed Johann’s.

Chapter Seventeen Every winter that passed, every cold he caught, my heart jumped into my throat, and I lived on the edge of a sharp knife until the risk—or the episode, and there were so many of those—passed. The freezing air came again and again every November. But Novembers came and Novembers went, like all the other winter months, and Johann somehow clung on. For twenty-two more years, the three of us lived in that house together. I never did make it to Prague.

Chapter Eighteen Gathering my heavy skirt into clenched fists, I strode back up to my room, making no eye-contact, and locking the door behind me as soon as I was inside. I leaned on my bedposts, still dizzy from the heat, still trying to lean away from the ringing in my ears. My room wasn’t small, but the walls were looming towards me, threatening to suffocate me, or crush me. I clenched my fists around the turned wood of the bed frame, and forced myself to breathe deeply. Things weren’t as dreadful as they seemed. This cramped room, this noisy hotel… they were only steps on a journey back to Prague, back to Magdalena. But I wanted it to be over. I had waited long enough. The idea of waiting any longer made my stomach twist.

Chapter Nineteen “Madam, we are desperate. The conductor we have… I'm sure he tears his own hair out at least as much as we do. He's much better suited to the post of First Violin, and he knows it. He's said as much. He never really wanted to conduct, but there was nobody else to take his place. But, of course, we could not stop Herr Benes retiring, and so we found ourselves in rather a difficult situation. He gave perfectly adequate notice, but we could not find a suitable conductor in that time. Please come to the opera house tomorrow, for your first rehearsal. I'm sure everyone here will be as relieved to have you conduct as you are happy to conduct!” My eyes bulged, and I pressed my lips together, eyebrows lurching up. I hadn’t even asked yet! I couldn’t speak. “Say you’ll do it,” said Herr Jelen, “I beg of you.” The look on his face, in his wide, drooping eyes, was so sad and heart-rending that I couldn’t have said no even if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to.

Let me know!

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hcrris · 6 years ago

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can ….. i come in ????? have been watching unbreakable kimmy schmidt for 3 hours pretending time isnt passing , life isnt real and in fact.. i am dreaming (-: lajdfksl hey <3 im jay im 21 and i love those instagram profiles of hamsters in little clothes ( when they got little purses? ???? dont talk to me im cryin. ) below u will find info about jane harris aka literally the vine of the little kid scribbling hard like his life depended on it. shes a mess ?? but a semi enjoyable mess. a mess with good intentions. if u want to establish some connections, LIKE THIS and i will come annoy u <3 alternatively u can ease my social anxiety and msg me here or through my discord sencha tea#4035 (و ˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و♡

( lily collins, cis female, she/her. ) — jane harris has been a medina complex resident for three years, now. they’re twenty-three years old, and they tend to avoid making eye contact. sometimes when i walk by B06, i hear cherry-coloured funk by cocteau twins playing. lately, i’d say they’re pretty effervescent, but sometimes that’s overwhelmed by the fact that they’re neurotic. i mean, they usually pay their rent on time, though, and that’s most important fact here.

repeatedly fixing the apartment number on the door when it swings down to a nine, a split moment of shadow after the radiance of laughter, carl sagan’s pale blue dot, a life of frequent minor accidents, constant hunger for balance overshadowed by emotional turbulence.

🇧🇦🇨🇰🇬🇷🇴🇺🇳🇩

TW ALCOHOLISM EMOTIONAL ABUSE DEPRESSION & ANXIETY !!!!! ok moving on

her parents met in art school in paris.. her mom is french and studied art history while her dad was an exchange student from california with a skewed artist mentality. it was that saccharine, toxic sort of love. her mom always felt like she needed to be the guardian angel in the relationship who would always hold him up when he was feeling down and he was feeling down….. a lot. because she was putting all that energy to save her relationship, she was drowning too but never enough to walk away. there was a lot of love there but it was twisted and uncomfortable at times

when they found out jane was on the way, it felt like they needed to suddenly grow up. her mom was ready to make changes, adapt to the new lifestyle. her dad, on the other hand, urged they rethink if this is what they want but he didn’t push for abortion.. he understood it was jane’s mothers choice to make and reassured that he would be there for the both of them no. matter. what.

but ??? the reality was he felt trapped by the idea of a child and he struggled to acknowledge and accept how quickly his life was flipping upside down and how he lost all control of it. he wanted to travel around europe ???? soak in nature, daydream and make art . but jane’s mom wanted to settle. instead of embarking on adventures after graduating, they decided to move to california.

things just seemed to fall apart like domino from then on. janes mom was lead astray.. thinking that what california would bring them was stability but instead, it was all chaos. they rushed to get married .. turned out janes father wasnt on good terms with his parents. he was irresponsible financially, put both his parents in huge debt, was blinded by his ego to ever realise his mistakes. lied constantly .. convincing janes mom that there’s light going forward. that once he finds a sponsor for his art .... once he sells his first piece ... once they see in him what he always saw in himself , he was going to make it right. and he reassured he would make it right for jane.

janes mom was so pathetically in love that she pushed through .. living in a sort of imagined world, believing that things were better than they actually were. and her dad was good at persuading that narrative. he would come home with a pocketful of cash and the bills paid. oftentimes, it was all an act. his art wasn’t selling and a lot of what he bragged about was borrowed or stolen. behind the curtain, he was absent and unmotivated. he would come home in the evening claiming that the whisky breath was celebratory but in reality, he was complaining to the barman two blocks away about how his life feels monotone .. like a french black and white movie.

the day of jane’s birth was a whole mess. her father decided to drive her mother to the hospital, knowing he had one too many. they were caught for speeding and while janes dad spent the night at a nearby station for driving under influence, her mom was at the back of a cop car, crying for one too many reasons .. jane decided to hang on for a little while longer and was born at 3am the following night. cradled in her mothers arms and her dads voice humming on the line

jane would only ever hear the romanticised version of this story from her mother. this ??? fucked up sense of security that no matter what, love conquers all. that love means supporting each other, loving each other extra when everything else falls apart. but truth is.. her mother was forced to give up her own dreams, lost all connections to her past, worked days and nights at a nursing home to support her family and pitch in to her husbands alcoholism while she’s at it. making excuses that jane was too young to contradict. all while the only source of happiness for her father was the haziness of his evenings, when he felt like floating and he could barely hold onto to his paintbrush. he was a stranger living in their basement .. more than he was ever a father

growing up, jane watched her mother mask her depression. carry empty bottles out from the basement, trying to hide it from jane .. it brought her shame. she was doing the same thing to jane that he was doing to her for all these years .. consistently expressing a certain attitude, this unwavering satisfaction for the life they are living and so ... it hardens. you start to believe it. except unlike her mother, jane was observant.. she had other lives around her to compare to her own, voices of reason that pierced through the skewed perception her mother drilled into her skull. when jane grew into her skin, she felt so ... disgusted and angry. she tried to pull her mother out of her fantasy but nothing worked.

through her high school years, she felt helpless .. her home life was a nightmare and she made every possible attempt to stay out of it for as long as possible. she took on jobs and extracurriculars .. stayed at her friends’ house until she couldn’t. and she would think.. think so hard, she would start crying. pushing her own problems away .. in her head, she would imagine herself in a different skin, a different place. it was the only way she could calm her breathing. only to have to battle the same thoughts the following morning

after graduating high school, jane went to community college for product management got a job offering after her placement at a big company and moved out shortly after ( and MOVED IN to medina... can i get a yee yee ) .. she got insurance for the first time in her life and eats too many of free pizza slices at work to save up on groceries every week <3

she doesn’t visit her parents bc she no longer feels like her mother is on her team. she’s lived a maddening and terribly draining life and living alone has brought her deserving peace.. although she’d rather keep contact with her mother to a minimum, its obvious that jane is her mothers anchor. if she feels as though her daughter is not fighting for her, she breaks down.. as much as jane wants to run away from her past, it always seems to catch up

if ur still reading literally who are u lafjdkl. ill be done schoon ..... oof

🇨🇭🇦🇷🇦🇨🇹🇪🇷 🇹🇷🇦🇮🇹🇸

if they are friends ... jane. will. talk. ur. ear. off. but probably not for the right reasons lol .. she has never been assessed by a professional, isn’t taking any treatment but she definitely needs it :( shes a chronic overthinker.. the voice in her head keeps chattering away most of the time which gets a little nauseating. she hates silence and feels like she needs to fill it with words. she often says the wrong things .. to the wrong people ... at the WRONG time and she is very aware of it. its the culprit for her self doubt and struggle to open up emotionally to the people shes close to. shes very critical towards herself, she micro analyses everything from the way she acts, the way she looks and what she says. shes also not a fan of confrontation !!!!!!!BUT!!!!!!!!!!!

she is a FIREBALL when she stands up for others. i dont know how she hasnt gotten into a physical fight yet. she would literally rip ur side mirror off ur car if u didnt wait for an old lady to cross the street. is intense in every possible way. if shes angry, shes angry and impulsive and out of control, when she is in love, she feels it in her bones and simultaneously wants to rip her hair out, when she’s passionate about something, she is persistent until she isn’t and when she loses motivation, everything feels bleak .. theres never any emotional balance, even though she fights so hard for it every day

likes sci fi movies .. literally when they are Floating in space ???? SIGN! JANE! THE! FUCK! UP! letterboxd is probably her favorite app. sometimes she will post a review, read it over and over, find something wrong with what she said and then delete it. shes very neurotic. she either has good days where she can comfortably be herself or bad days, when it feels like everyone is judging her every move when in reality. ... it is always .. all in her head.

and she is mostly in her head. she creates fantasies of her life, relationships platonic and romantic and as a result, nothing ever seems to measure up. she feels secure in her fantasies but oftentimes when it hits her that they are just that, fantasies, she ... feels really alone.

will trip over her own feet . has like 5 bruises from washing the dishes </3

she works as a part of a product design team in a big company.. probably has the knowledge to move up the tier but does not have the courage to stand up for herself . she doesnt believe in herself and is kind of a pessimist .......

got high one night and decided she wants to start an uber ....... only for women. but doesnt think its a good ide a (its a good idea. id like to think in 10 years time ... bitch made it)

really weird. likes eating broad beans and frozen strawberries .. will literally eat a lemon.

she will have different interests every week but never seems to be any good at anything ???????????? makes her sad.

claims tidying up with marie kondo changed her life LAKJDSKLDJ

*draws curtains* anybody else tired?

#mediocre.intro #»-.-°-ỽ-⸰-ｓｈｕｔ-ｕｒ-ｔｒａｐ-⸰-ỽ-°-.-«#4 hrs ago : yea ...... i could finish this intro in like 2 hours :) why not. whats gonna stop me ???? writing doesnt take that long.#it takes literally ?? 2 miliseconds. lol .......#im shtupid !!!!! have to take a shower. this is longer than all shakespeare plays combined.#if u read this im manifasting a good year for u.

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