#she is when things freeze and “sleep” and ahe is when things thaw and come alive again

[ahollowgrave]

Why shouldn't I have another ice based character

[edenbrookcelestial]

cold as you || [ethan ramsey x mc]

summary: love doesn’t always burn. sometimes, it freezes.

warnings: angst, harsh ethan.

author’s notes: song title from taylor swift’s cold as you, story inspired by it.

word count: 2327

you have a way of coming easily to me and when you take, you take the very best of me so i start a fight 'cause i need to feel something and you do what you want 'cause i’m not what you wanted

“ ethan, please. ”

ethan touched a hand to his forehead, as though to soothe an ache building there. “ avalon. i don’t know what you want from me. ”

avalon stared for a moment, incredulous. “ what i want? ethan, i want something. anything. any sign that you’re willing to commit to this, to us, to me. ”

the man closed his eyes and turned toward the window of his office, gazing out at the city buzzing below. “ does everything have to be such a drama with you? ” he mused aloud, driving yet another knife deeper into the younger doctor’s heart.

she gritted her teeth and blinked away the tears threatening to spill; no, she would not give him the satisfaction. “ one moment you say you want to be with me. the next, you’re telling me you can’t see a future.”

“ that’s not what i said, ” ethan murmured, a heavy sigh accompanying the words. ‘’ i said no one can know what the future holds.”

“ so you make a choice, ” she countered, voice like thunder. “ you choose to commit to a person, despite the fact that you don’t know what’s coming. ”

ethan’s mind wandered to the stack of paperwork currently cluttering up his desk. he moved to sit behind it and selected a pen, never once glancing up at avalon. “ i don’t have time for this.”

avalon watched as he began to fill in forms, the top of his fancy fountain pen tapping against his lower lip. she let out a humourless chuckle and clenched her fists, moving her gaze to her feet. “ no. you never do.”

ethan didn’t look up until after the door had swished open and shut, until avalon was long gone down the hallway.

oh, what a shame, what a rainy ending given to a perfect day just walk away, no use defending words that you will never say and now that i’m sitting here thinking it through i’ve never been anywhere cold as you

the streets were slick with rain. thick clouds sagged and poured water down across the city, avalon’s thin grey hoodie a poor deterrent to the weather. by the time she’d made it three blocks away from the hospital, she was soaked to the bone. at least the rain covered her tears. how could she possibly have ended up here? aching for a man who shut her out more often than he ever let her in? she thought back to her first interaction with ethan; how cold and stand-offish he’d been. as she reflected on all the months that had passed since, she realised, that coldness had never quite thawed. his edges were still sharp enough to cut if one were to get too close. and every time she believed there’d been a breakthrough, she’d blink and find herself left outside in the rain all over again.

you put up walls and paint them all a shade of gray and i stood there loving you and wished them all away and you come away with a great little story of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you

they say that insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. avalon had been fighting ethan’s defences since the moment they first met. over a year later and not a dent was to be found. at work, she threw herself into case after case, diagnosing the impossible, gaining respect and admiration from every coworker by her side. as great as it felt to be on top of her game professionally, nothing could help the drop she experienced once she clocked out. her friends dragged her to donahughes nightly, buying beers and betting on games of pool. she tried her best to enjoy herself, to show her friends that she appreciated their efforts. one night, a couple of weeks after their arguement in his office, avalon spotted ethan at the bar. he was out with several of the more senior doctors, harper emory, baz mirani, june hirata, even naveen. they hadn’t spoken much in a personal capacity in days. aurora, elijah, jackie, sienna, and bryce were all too aware of what was distracting the blonde junior doctor.

excusing herself to head to the bathroom, avalon kept her head down as she moved through the crowd. unfortunately, she’d have to pass ethan’s table to get to her destination, and she prayed fiercely to slip by unnoticed. however, once she was a mere few feet away, her name was spoken by harper, causing her to stall.

“ summers is doing very well, wouldn’t you say? ”

june shrugged, a glass of wine in her hand. “ she’s capable of the job. ’

baz rolled his eyes at his co-worker. “ she’s fantastic. she sees things the rest of us can’t, she’s diagnosed more patients this month than we have in a long time. you made a good call, boss. ” he nodded to naveen, who smiled serenely. his gaze flitted to ethan, his face carefully neutral.

“ and you, ethan? what do you think? ”

avalon held her breath, she shouldn’t really be listening in, but then again... they were discussing her. she strained to hear ethan’s words over the buzz of the crowd and the music playing from the jukebox across the way.

“ she’s capable. she works hard. ”

well, there were worse things he could have said.

june smirked over the rim of her glass. red wine swirling like blood. ‘’ that all you have to say about your favourite resident? ‘’ she bared her teeth in a wicked smile. “ we all know she follows you around like a lost little puppy dog. ” ethan smiled too, slightly strained.

“ ah, june. you know what residents are like. they get an idea in their head, they run with it. nothing more than idle gossip, and i would have thought you to be above listening to that. ”

avalon felt her heart shatter in all the places it once glowed under ethan’s remarks. without a word, she turned from the table and pushed through the crowd again, this time aiming for the door. her friends hadn’t noticed, still believing avalon to be in the bathroom. she was thankful for this, the tears pouring down her face making her distress obvious. but she didn’t want to talk about it. she was done talking about it, about him. she was just done.

you never did give a damn thing, honey, but i cried, cried for you and i know you wouldn't have told nobody if i died, died for you, died for you

how cliché was it possible for one person to get? not only had avalon fallen for her boss, now here she was, tissue box by her knees, sniffling through heartbroken tears. a half-eaten bar of chocolate in one hand, her phone in the other. in her earphones, my chemical romance soothed her ache. the muffled sounds of knocking at her bedroom door lifted her attention. she flung a pillow in that direction, which landed just short of the doorframe with a pathetic thwump. she rolled onto her side, taking another bite of her chocolate. like everything in her life these days, it was dark and bittersweet, and when she opened her mouth to yawn she tasted salt on her lips. she clenched her fists, crumpling the wrapper with a crinkle. when the night grew into early morning, she ventured from her room to wash her face and grab a drink. elijah was by the fridge when she got to the kitchen, his expression in the dim room one of concern. “ hey, av,” he greeted softly, wheeling over to the kitchen counter. “ hey, eli. ” she cleared her throat, hoarse from lack of use. “ early shift today? ” he shook his head. “ just couldn’t sleep. ” she nodded, understanding the feeling.

“ i know things haven’t been easy for you, lately, av… ” the breath hitched in her throat. he reached for her hand, warm and soft. “ i just want you to know, you deserve better. ” his voice was so earnest, his words so genuine. she meet his gaze, red-rimmed emerald on soft, caring brown. “ you deserve so much more than this. you deserve so much better. ” avalon blinked, more tears slipping down her face. elijah’s heart ached, at the sight of his friend so distraught. he loved her deeply, she was like a sister to him. and to see her broken-down and aching because of a guy? it killed him.

he squeezed her hand, tight, and she sat heavily on one of their wooden stools. her head found a resting spot on elijah’s shoulder. she sobbed, and he brought his arms around her, holding her to his chest “ i’m sorry, eli, i’m sorry. ” he hushed her gently. murmuring to her as he rubbed her shoulders in soothing circles.

“ you have nothing to be sorry for. it’s not your fault. ”

they sat like that for more than hour, until the barest hint of sunshine streamed in through a chink in the blinds.

oh, what a shame, what a rainy ending given to a perfect day every smile you fake is so condescending counting all the scars you made

“ doctor summers? ”

her stomach twisted in on itself. ethan’s voice was nothing but professional, yet her nerves sprang to the edge when she heard it. leaving a patient’s chart by the nurse’s station, she turned to meet his icy blue gaze. “ a word? ” he asked, as casual as you like. avalon nodded and followed him silently to his office. the automatic doors slid shut with a gentle hiss.

he turned to face her, expression unreadable. “ i just wanted to check in. ” she replayed the words in her head, remaining silent as she processed. “ avalon? ”

she moved her eyes over his face. looking for some hint of what he wanted, what he really meant. he stepped closer and tilted his head, a tinge of worry seeping onto his face. “ it’s been a while since we spoke, ” he said, reaching to brush her wrist with his fingertips. she jolted at the gentle touch, and he stilled, his eyes meeting hers.

“ we don’t need to talk. ”

avalon’s voice was stronger than she had expected it to be. ethan was taken by surprise at her words, raising an eyebrow. “ i’m sorry? ”

she shook her head, a solemn expression on her face. “ no, you’re not, ” she whispered, and straightened her shoulders, meeting his gaze straight on. “ we don’t need to talk outside of work. okay? we talk about patients, and treatment, and strategy. other than that… i have nothing else to say to you. ”

ethan’s blue eyes widened, his lips opening in a silent oh. he seemed frozen to the spot, unable to move or speak.

“ we - there is no we. ” avalon decided. “ we are colleages. we work together. we don’t see each other outside of it. we don’t… i deserve better, ” she said, defiantly. “ the way you have treated me… i don’t deserve it. ” to her own surprise, she didn’t feel like crying. no, she felt better and better as she went on, finally standing up for herself. “ and i get it, you have issues, you have baggage, well, newsflash. we all do. and i should have walked away, before now, i should have. but i didn’t. and i - i’m sorry, ethan. i’m sorry that you would rather be alone than be loved. than let yourself love. i’m not a freakin’ rehab clinic. it’s not my job to fix you. it’s my job to fix our patients. ” she paused a moment, gauging ethan’s reaction. just shock, it seemed.

she sighed, sad and deep, and slightly relieved. “ i can’t do this anymore. so you need to stop. you don’t get to decide that you want me one minute, and then don’t want me the next. if you can’t respect someone else, regardless of your own trust issues, you really shouldn’t be in a relationship. ” she swallowed, hard, and felt the tension in the room swell as she finished her monologue. she didn’t exactly regret it, but did she wish she had picked a better place? yeah, maybe. but it wasn’t like she had even planned on saying any of it. it was just all too much. the weeks of crying herself to sleep, of watching ethan ignore her. elijah’s words of encouragement had echoed deep in her heart and her mind. and avalon finally knew that she respected herself too much to stay as ethan ramsey’s emotional punching bag.

ethan finally nodded, slowly. “ i hear you. i understand. ” his voice is monotone, lacking any trace of emotion. nothing really new there. avalon regarded him with caution. “ i mean it, ” she said, slowly, emphasising the words. ethan broke his gaze away, looking toward his desk. he nodded stiffly, and stuck his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. avalon backed up until she heard the hiss of the door. with one foot in the hallway, ethan spoke again, softer, the slightest note of regret in it. “ you’re right, you know. you do deserve better. ”

when she looks back over her shoulder, he’s resting his hands on his desk. his head turned to the side, watching her leave. blue eyes warm, but wet. her throat tightened and for a moment, her resolve faltered. there was a moment of heartwrenching vulnerability, just about visible.

it was too late. avalon put her hand on the doorframe, leaning against it. “ you deserve better, too, ethan. ” ethan watched her walk away, each receding footstep another crack to his heart. he closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing. it was over. he lost her.

she was gone.

and now that i’m sitting here thinking it through i’ve never been anywhere cold as you

[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

Camping

Fandom: The Witcher Pairing: Jaskier x Reader Word Count: 1,310 Rating: G Prompt: “I’ll keep you warm.” “I care about you.” “I wouldn’t change a thing about you.” a/n: Going in a bit of a different direction with this one to stretch my non-smut muscles. This post (still Jaskier x Reader because, I mean, come on) is a lost in the woods camping drabble featuring these phrases:

Deep down you knew it wasn’t Jaskier’s fault that you were lost in the woods. You had both grown reliant on Geralt’s skill of always seeming to know where he is or where he’s going and what little you’d learned about map reading has fallen by the wayside in your travels. But you had split your small party with plans to meet up the next night as Geralt handed a solo mission (Jaskier’s money was on that being code for Yennefer) and the two of you had ended up horribly lost. The more concerned you grew the more Jaskier tried to lighten the mood by telling jokes and while this usually would have worked, you usually had a backup plan. You were trying not to be curt with the bard but as the sun set the woods grew darker and sinister and you were deeply aware that you carried very little in the way of supplies to get you through a night even in the best of cases where you weren’t attacked.

You very rarely faced the best cases.

“D’you think we should, you know, set up camp?” Jaskier ventures cautiously as you stare at the sky trying to remember what you’d been taught about navigating by the stars.

“I suppose we might as well,” you concede. “Where do you think that should be?”

Jaskier seems surprised by the question and takes a moment looking around the clearing you’d stumbled onto.

“This seems as camp-able as anything. Not as many rocks, that’s always nice,” he says, giving you an encouraging smile that falters slightly when he sees the uneasy look on your face.

“We should have a fire. Or wait – will that attract bears?” “Bears?” Jaskier echoes.

“Yes, there are bears, right? Or could be? Maybe we should just try and stay quiet and hidden tonight,” you suggest.

“I’ve been known to enjoy a toasty fire but if you really feel it’s best…” his voice trails off as you begin to lay out your bedroll, your movements efficient and nearly mechanical. You haven’t been traveling together for very long but Jaskier has picked up some of your tells. When you’re stressed, you get grumpy. When you’re scared, you get borderline militant. When he sees you spend a good five minutes trying to perfectly spread out the bedroll so there are no wrinkles he knows it’s time to intervene.

“They speak of a maiden fair Fearful of naught but a bear And I should know for I was there The night she faced it down….”

You turn and give him a withering look which only encourages him. He kneels dramatically by your bedroll and works quickly to come up with a second verse.

“She warned that we must not make a sound She knew the creature would be around Her keen eyes seeking tracks on the ground Brave maiden on the hunt…”

“Jaskier what are you doing?” you ask, a hint of a smile playing about the corner of your mouth.

“The creature rose up with a loud grunt But the maiden was there to confront It should not have been such a – ah – well – hmm….”

“It falls apart a little there, but I will perfect it and soon all of Posada will hear of your courageous deeds this night,” he says, putting the lute aside.

“Oh Jaskier,” you say, shaking your head. It’s a tone he’s heard too many times to count. Next would come a complaint or an entreaty for him to be quiet.

“I suppose me singing isn’t exactly helping us stay quiet and hidden,” he murmurs.

“Certainly not,” you say, biting back a smile he cannot see.

“It’s just that silence is so very… well it’s so very loud in a way I suppose. Do you know what I mean? Likely not. No matter, I can try again to be quiet, for you, but I can’t make any promises about it. Geralt’s been trying to shut me up for years and it hasn’t worked yet. Then again, I haven’t really wanted to give him the satisfaction of shutting up but I would happily satisfy you. I mean, that is…”

“You babble when you’re nervous,” you say. He sighs and looks up at you, swinging his head back in a roguish, defiant posturing.

“Well at least if I am a poor traveling companion, I am at the very least a consistent one,” he says. “Jaskier,” you say, reaching out to give his hand a little squeeze. He looks down at your hand on his and stiffens slightly. “Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”

He looks up to meet your eyes, genuine surprise on his face as he takes in the words.

“Really?” It hurts your heart to see the usually over-confident bard be so vulnerable and uncertain and you clutch his hand tighter, wishing you could do more to convey how much he means to you.

“Truly. I care about you,” you say, emphasizing the words in the hopes they will etch themselves into his brain and that he will never look at you with so much surprise over such an obvious fact.

“I care about you too,” he says. You think his eyes glance down at your lips but before you can think on it more he stands up.

“Alright, well it’s going to be a cold night, so I suggest we place our bedrolls closer together,” he says, assuming an air of command. Another deflection but one you’re willing to go along with.

You try to burrow into the bedroll as deeply as you can but the night air seeps through with every shift and movement. You’re daydreaming about a bear coming around, wondering if there are any tricks to befriend bears and make them let you sleep tucked against their warm fuzzy bodies when Jaskier speaks.

“Are you alright over there?” he asks.

“F-f-fine,” you answer, stuttering the words out and tasting the icy air with each syllable. You hear shuffling behind you but can’t bring yourself to turn around and see what’s going on. Suddenly a second blanket is thrown on top of you and you look over in surprise.

“Jaskier what are you doing? You’ll freeze to death, get back under that,” you demand.

“I have an idea,” he says.

“Jaskier I’m very flattered but this really doesn’t seem like the time to live up to your courtly reputation,” you reply. He laughs and you can see the cloud of air his breath makes.

“Alas, I will not be seducing you this night. But I’ll keep you warm,” he says.

“How?” you ask.

In response he lays down next do you, slipping beneath the layer blankets, and gently pull you into his arms. You’re too cold and tired and intrigued to fight him so you let him wrap a long arm around your waist, the other around your head as he positions it beneath his chin. You’re pressed up as tightly as possible, his heart beating a staccato rhythm beneath your ear. You lay in silence for a few minutes, his arms never loosening, the only sounds your shared breathing and the beating of his heart.

“Better?” he asks after a while. You can feel yourself thawing in his arms from your shared warmth and you allow yourself to melt further into him, his lean but taut arms anchoring you in place.

“Mmhmm. You?” you ask, your eyelids growing heavier.

“Never more so,” he says. He could have just been shifting around but you’re almost positive he kisses the top of your head and then, before you can say anything more, he begins to sing in a low, soothing tone. The sound of his voice and the warmth of his embrace are the last things you register as you drift into a deep, peaceful sleep.

[janetbrown711]

"Magica?" Poe looked at her curiously, "you look uh-"

"Like a rotting corpse?!" She picked him up and squeezed against him, her eye accidentally falling out as she did so.

"Woah.. that uh-... that fell right out there," he commented. Magica growled.

"Something has happened," she sneered, picking up her eye and putting it back.

"Yep," poe just nodded.

"I knew it! I could feel the dark shadow forces stirring," she began to pace her small skull island.

"I'm not suprised because i saw her! The princess Webbigail!"

Magica paused.

"Webbigail... alive...?" Her eye twitched.

"That Vanderquack brat?!" She threw Poe against a wall.

"Uh- yes..? I guess she got a kick in the head- the curse just isn't what it used to be," he shrugged.

"That's why im stuck here in limbo!!!" She realized furiously. "My curse is unfulfilled!" She flung her arms out, her hand flying clean off with the rest of her arm length glove. She sat and cried dramatically.

"Oh Poe... look at me," she flung herself on a rock. "I'm falling apart."

"Oh no Magica," Poe said as he brought over her hand. "Considering how long you've been dead, you look pretty good."

"Bah..." she pushed it away as Poe put back on her hand.

"Magica, you do! You do!" He tried to convince.

"Really?" She sniffled.

"Is this the face of a crow who would lie to you?" He smiled innocently. "Come on, for a minute there you had your old spark back!"

"Before I had lost the gift from the dark spirits," she hissed and sat up. "And the key to my powers!"

"What? You mean this old thing," he lifted up the purple gemstone. Magica gasped.

"Where did you find this?" She inquired.

"Oh i found it-"

"Give it to me!" She snatched it.

"Wha-"

"My old friend-"

"Brother-"

"Friend, together again," she had been talking to the stone. She picked it up and embraced it to her cheek.

"Now my dark purpose can be fulfilled!" She laughed. "And the last of the Vanderquacks will die!!!"

"Where is that wind coming from?" Poe looked around, but lightning quickly flashed and shot him out of his seat.

"Come forth my minions!!!" she called, dark shadows swirling out of the purple gen like a massive hurricanes.

"It is time to fulfill your purpose one last time!!! Go!! Fly!!! And kill Princess Webbigail!!!"

.o0o.

Louie was the last one of the three (well four, if you counted the dog- which he didnt) to sit down, and when he tried to sit next to his uncle, Lena had sat down right there and growled at him. Louie rolled his eyes and sat next to Webby.

"Mut gets the window seat," he muttered under his breath. Donald rolled his eyes and continued forging the fake documents for Webby. Webby fiddled with her necklace.

"Hey- you know that's not very ladylike, right? You're a Grand Duchess" Louie asked. Webby harumphed and slumped over.

"How is it you know what a Grand Duchess' is even like?" She said.

"I make it my business to know," he smirked.

"Oh," she gave up and kept playing with the necklace. Louie sighed.

"Look, Webby, i'm just trying to help," he teased. Donald side eyed him. Webby sat up.

"Louie, do you really think im royalty?" She asked.

"You know I do," he said.

"Oh yeah? Then stop bossing me around!" She spat, slouching over and playing with the necklace once again.

Donald chuckled. "She certainly has a mind of her own."

"I hate that in a woman," he growled. Webby stuck out her tongue at him before returning to face the window.

Donald chuckled and marked off "Webby- 24" and "Louie- 3" on a spare piece of paper. He was having fun. There was a long stretch of silence, Webby got out a book (Louie didn't even know if she could actually read, but it appeared so), and Donald excused himself for a moment.

"Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot," Louie sighed.

"Good, I agree," she snarked. "But i accept your apology."

"Apology? Who said I was sorry?" Louie gawked.

"I still accept it," she smiled cheekily and went back to her book. She paused a second.

"Are you gonna miss it?" She asked.

"Miss what?" Louie asked.

"Russia," Webby stared out the window.

"No," Louie said flatly.

"But... it was your home," Webby said.

"It was a place... that I lived in... end of story." he closed his eyes and sighed.

"Well then you must plan on staying and making Paris your home, huh?" Webby asked.

"What is with you a-and home?" He threw his arms in the air.

"Well- for one, its something every normal person wants," she huffed, "and for another thing, its just- ugh. Forget it," she climbed out of the train booth just as Donald appeared with Lena once more.

"Oh thank goodness you are here- get him out of my sight," Webby scowled before leaving.

"Louie, what did you do?" Donald sighed.

"Me?! I-it's her! Won't stop talking about home and stuff..." he crossed his arms and sat back down.

"Louie, it's not her fault. She doesn't know," Donald sat by him.

"Yeah, yeah," he blew it off. Donald sighed and went back to his paperwork.

"I'm... i'm gonna get some fresh air," Louie went out of the cabin.

"And i'll be here," Donald shook his head slowly.

Little did they know, a swarm of dark shadows were flying speedily not too far away.

But for now, it was time for their papers to be checked. As Donald waited in line he overheard a conversation.

"I cannot believe i had to delay this trip for a week because they changed the papers from blue to red! It's outrageous!"

"Blue.. to red?" Donald looked down.

Their papers were blue.

Donald dashed his way out of line and back to Louie, who went back to the cabin not too long ago.

"Something wrong?" Louie asked.

"One thing i hate about this government is that everything is in red," he explained. Louie rubbed his face.

"Hoh boy," Louie rubbed his face and started packing their things.

"I suggest we move to the baggage cart," Donald said.

"On it," Louie nodded. He nudged the sleeping Webby in the corner, who punched him square in the face. He fell back in his seat.

"Oh i'm so- oh it was you. Nevermind," she relaxed. Louie rolled his eyes.

"C'mon, we gotta go," he took her hand.

"Wha- where are we going?" She asked. Louie didn't explain.

"Men are such babies," she muttered under her breath, following him anyway.

"Ah, yes. This'll do nicely," Louie nodded.

"She'll freeze in here," donald rubbed his arms from the cold.

"She'll thaw in Paris," Louie rolled his eyes.

"What are we doing in the baggage car?" Webby asked. Both men shrugged with giant grins on their faces. "There wouldn't be anything wrong with our papers, would there?"

"Of course not, you grace," Louie mocked lightly, "it is just that I hate to see you with all those commonfolk." He spat the words like they were poison. Webby scoffed.

"Funny," she rolled her eyes and sat on a bag, before noticing that Lena wouldn't stop barking at a door.

"Lena? What's wrong?" She asked.

"She's a mutt, that's what," Louie said. Webby shot him a look and only that. As Donald went to investigate, the cart flung and all three of them fell to the ground, the cart somehow separating from the rest of the train. Donald stood up again and noticed that the engine room was on fire like mad.

"I think someone messed with the engine," Donald shouted over the wind. Louie huffed, took off his jacket and went to see for himself, instructing the others to stay there. Louie successfully got in after climbing over the coal cart, but it was too hot see anything and coals and hot pieces of rock were flying everywhere. He tried to look at the speedometer, but the fire grew and practically burned his feet, forcing him back.

"We're going way too fast!" Webby cried out. Louie quickly came back.

"Nobody is driving this train," he explained, "we're gonna have to jump." Webby and Donald nodded. Together they all opened a door they could all jump through but say they were far above the ground, and jumping would be impossible.

"We'll disconnect the car," Louie said, going outside to do it. He put his foot on it, but somehow it had melted.

"C'mon! I need a wrench- an axe- anything!" He called for his uncle, who handed him a hammer.

Lena's continuous barking distracted Webby from her search for something useful.

"What's the matter with you today?" Webby out her hands on her hips and Lena lowered her head to the box she was standing on labeled "explosives".

"Lena! You're a genius!" Webby picked up a stick of dynamite. It was good timing too because not long after, Louie's hammer broke.

"Ugh! C'mon! There's gotta be something in there better than this!" He held his hand out and Webby placed the lit stick of dynamite. Louie blinked and looked at it.

"Well that'll work," he lodged it in it's place. "Go Go Go!" Everyone scrambled to the back of the cart, as the dynamite exploded.

"Well! Now we got plenty of track so we'll wait til it comes to a stop!" Louie said. He jinxed it though, as a swarm of black shadow demons could be seen destroying the larger bridge up ahead.

"You were saying?" Webby blinked. Louie growled, saw a massive chain and hook on the ground and got another idea.

"I need your help donald. Would ya give me a hand?" Louie asked. Just as he did though, Donald fell backward into a giant crate so Webby took her own liberty and decided to fill in.

"Hand me the chain," Louie had climbed down and was using all his strength to connect with the train from the bottom. Webby started to hand it to him when he stopped her.

"Not you!"

"Donald's busy. Wanna die or not?!" She gave him the chain. He took it and secured it to the bottom of the train. Then, a pipe broke loose and almost killed him, but Webby helped pull him up just in time. Their eyes met and he gazed into them for a long moment, but their look snapped when they saw a branch get destroyed.

"And to think it coulda been you," she teased a little, smirking. Louie cleared his throat and she helped him back inside.

"If we get through this... remind me to thank you," he shook his head, trying to get the flushed feeling out of his face.

"Here goes nothing," him and Webby pushed the chain off, and it connected to the track, but jerked the trainso it went off the rails but stilm showed no sign of slowing.

"Well boys, guess this is our stop!" Webby called as the men readied themselves. Soon, they linked arms.

"One... two... three!" They jumped off and into the snow. In the distance they saw the massive explosion the engine and baggage cart left and sighed breaths of relief.

"I... hate trains," Louie panted, collapsing in the snow.

"Me too," Webby groaned.

"Welp... gotta get going sometime. C'mon," Donald helped the two up and they headed off to find a town.

.o0o.

"No!!!" Magica slammed her fists on the table. She had been watching the whole thing with her magic.

"Woah, take it easy there," Poe said. Magica glared at him.

"How could they let her escape?!" She threw and shattered a skull into the ground.

"Ah, you're right, it is very upsetting," he acknowledged. "Guess this relic is broken," he threw it, but Magica scrambled to catch it, so much so her elbow fell off and her muscles streched to catch it.

"You IDIOT!" she growled.

"Now- master I-"

"I sold my soul for this!!!" She picked him up and squeezed him tightly.

"My very existence depends on it!!! And you almost shattered it!!!!" She threw him against a wall, harder than she had before.

"Yeah yeah, blame me, i'm an easy target," he coughed and muttered.

"What are you muttering about?" She looked at him.

"Oh just Webbigail. Wishing I could do the job for you Magica. I'd kill her nice and quick," he saluted.

"You are a crow and an imbecile," she rubbed her forehead, but then laughed to herself. He looked at her puzzled but she patted his head.

"No, no my dear Poe. I have something else in mind. Something a lot more... sinister to finish the job." She cackled, lightning flashing behind her.

"Uh- and what would that be?" He asked.

"Poe... where's the fun in telling you that?"

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

[lovehelpmewrite]

A Very Bad Day

Title: A Bad Day

Pairing: Gwil x OFC!Ella

Word Count: 3.7k

Summary: Ella is having a... less than amazing day. It turns out Gwilym is just what she needed to turn it around though.

Warnings: underage drinking i know bad dont do it im sorry

[A/N]: Okay so I know this is technically before Macarons and Spoiled Surprises but it’s been bothering me for months that I never wrote the middle step between our first date and us doing... y’know, you’ve read it i hope. So yeah, this is that middle step. Half inspired by an actual shit day I had, half inspired by my better half having had a bad day the day I wrote this. Enjoy and feedback is always welcome!! Also thank you thank you thank you to my best fren Mic @o-holynight​ for making me another amazing header just for this fic you’re so good to me and if you haven’t yet go through her masterlist because it slaps 

It was a crappy day. It was pouring, which normally I wouldn't mind—in fact I loved a good rainy day—but I had opened my window the night before and woken up to find my desk soaked in rain water and one of my notebooks with it.

"Ahhh shit," I muttered to myself as I woke up and climbed out of bed at the sound of the rain hitting the desk. I quickly latched the thing closed and looked down at the crinkling wet paper that was my notebook, picking it up by a corner and watching the water slide off the cover and off the pages. "Shhhhhit," I repeated, feeling my heart sink when I opened the cover and noticed the ink either bleeding into the other pages or sliding off along with the water. At least I didn't really use it, I thought. It was still sad to see something that I'd paid for just... Fall apart like this though.

I dropped it into the trash bin with a sigh and vowed to start getting ready to go out and buy a new one. Right after I have breakfast, I thought. As it turns out, there was no breakfast. No cereal, no pancake mix or frozen waffles. It was grocery day and Michaela had just left saying she was going to grab Joe so they could do the shopping for both at once. 

Okay so I'll go out for breakfast, I decided.

Except the coffee shop was closed. Again, no big deal but... It was another block in the freezing rain to the nearest cafe. It was too close to drive, especially because there was no parking down by it. Walking it is then. The sidewalk was slick with the freezing rain and the leftovers from the last snow so I tried my best to watch my steps and still maintain a quick pace. 

Needless to say I almost slipped—I didn't thankfully—but I caught myself at the last second in such a way that my umbrella swung out to the side and in an instant I felt drenched to the bone. I walked in looking like a half-drowned rat, ordered a muffin to go and tried to calm my anxious heart at the stares I was getting from the other patrons. In case you were wondering, yes, it's possible to angrily eat a muffin.

After I made it back to my car I drove to the nearest Staples and practically moaned as the warm rush of air hit my chilled face and body. I picked out a cute notebook—for sixteen fucking dollars, jesus Staples, cost more yeah?—and slapped it on the counter. The younger looking kid checking me out started at the noise but just smiled and asked if I wanted to join their rewards program. 

And then I was stood under the edge of the Staples sign trying to desperately shove the notebook in my jacket against my chest because what was once pouring rain had turned into a torrential downpour. It was like a sheet of water coming down at once while thunder boomed in the distance. I held an arm across my coat-covered-notebook and took a deep breath, readying myself for the sheer force of it to pound against the top of my umbrella.

By the time I got back to the dorm my legs up to my knees were soaked even despite my rain boots, as was the back of my coat and my umbrella. The notebook somehow survived the trip thankfully. As I was pulling it out of my jacket my phone buzzed in my coat pocket. A text from Mic.

Hey, over at the boys' and groceries are all put away

Is Gwil home? I might head over in a bit. Having a shit day :(

Aw im sorry :( he is tho I think. I'll ask

I waited a few seconds and then waited for the three dots while she typed.

He isn't but he's coming home in like half an hour from a reading

"Nice," I whispered to myself. Finally, something good today.

Im gonna shower. When he gets home tell him I'm coming?

Yeah ofc

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, glad to finally have something to look forward to. I took off my jacket and hung it on my door to dry before walking into the bathroom and peeling off my soaked jeans and socks, letting them sit on the floor while I turned the shower to scalding hot. I hissed as it hit my back but quickly adjusted to it, letting the water pooling at the bottom thaw my toes. I picked up my razor with a little indecision. He wasn't even going to see my legs or my armpits as far as I was planning, let alone anywhere near my underwear... I shaved anyway. As a way to pass time in the warm water at the least, and at the most it would make my sheets feel nice later. 

I got dressed in some loose sweats and a tank top, foregoing a bra with the assumption I was the only one home but when I came out of my room Sarah was back from her class eating at the table.

"Hey!" She said with a smile.

"Hey," I said back quietly, walking to the cupboard and pulling down a bag of chips. "How was class?"

"Ugh, don't even get me started. That dude was still trying to argue with the professor the entire class," she explained, rolling her eyes.

"Someone should keep a tally of every time he says something and then at the end of class take that many points off his latest paper or something," I offered with a small grin.

"We should, oh my god," she laughed back. "Hey, are you okay? Mic said you were having a crappy day."

I nodded, shrugging. "Yeah, I dont know it's just... A lot of little shit adding up, y'know?"

She nodded with a sad smile.

I took a deep breath and tried to stay positive though. "Good news though, I'm heading over to see the boys in a little bit. Did you wanna come with?"

"Ah, I'm going to meet Ben for lunch after his class gets out in like half an hour."

"Ah," I said in confirmation. "Okay, I'll see you later tonight? We need another girls night in, it's been too long."

She smiled, nodding in agreement. "Yeah, I'll see if I can pick up some stuff beforehand. It's your turn to pick right?" 

I nodded, "yeah." 

"Okay, cool. Nothing scary please? I like sleeping without nightmares."

I laughed, carrying the chips with me back to my room. "I'll do my best to let you keep your beauty sleep," I said over my shoulder before closing the door. 

I sat down on my bed with a sigh, dropping the chips next to me and reaching for my phone.

Gwil just got home, he's in the shower rn tho

Okay tell him im omw and I dont mind waiting or something

I made sure to pull on a sports bra and a sweatshirt before I left, as well as a pair of fuzzy socks inside my rain boots. I was nearly jogging across the street to the apartment, buzzing with excitement to see Gwil. 

We haven't been out on any dates since our second when he kissed me, but we had a lot of days where we walked each other to class or we'd get lunch together. Sadly, we hadn't kissed much since then but we made up for it with a lot of hand holding, or his palm on my back, or my hand on his knee and honestly... it was kind of nice just like that. Still, a day like today deserved some serious hugs at the very least. 

My frozen fingers shook as I pressed the buzzer and I exhaled in relief when it buzzed again and the lock clicked open, allowing me to rush into the warm elevator and ride up to the apartment. When I got up to the door though, I hesitated. 

Do I knock? Do I just walk in? Do I knock and then walk in anyways? 

I pulled out my phone and texted Mic.

Im outside the door

Come in lol?

Come open it I feel weird 

Between the previous cold and my embarrassment I'm sure my cheeks were tomato-red. She just smiled upon seeing me, waiting for me to take off my dripping boots and then motioning her head toward the couch.

"Gwil's probably getting out soon, you can wait with me and Joe on the couch," she explained, sitting back down next to Joe to watch whatever movie they had playing on the TV. I perched awkwardly on the edge of the cushion, trying—and failing—to control my bouncing knee while I waited for Gwil. 

"Hey."

I almost jumped at the soft greeting, springing off the couch and turning to him. My heart was thumping in my chest nervously.

He was just in sweats and a t-shirt but something about it was just so… hot. I hadn't noticed how shaggy his hair was getting until now, still dripping wet and hanging over his forehead a little. I almost missed when he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 

"Do you wanna… my room?" He asked awkwardly.

I nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah- sure yeah."

I followed quietly behind him as he walked down the hall, stepping into the room and waiting for him to close the door. Then I was stuck just watching while he moved to sit on the edge of his bed with a bounce. I pressed my lips together to suppress an awkward smile, looking around his room. He had different playbills taped up on his wall above his bed, and his desk was covered in papers and packets and textbooks.

"So…" I started, bringing my eyes back to face him.

"So…" he mimicked back, a gentle smile growing on his face.

I breathed out a little laugh and moved to sit next to him on the edge of his mattress, copying his bounce from before and then bumping my shoulder into his.

"So how was your reading? How did it go?" I asked lightly, trying to start some sort of conversation, any conversation.

"Good! It was good," he answered back.

And then more quiet.

"Okay this is awful," I admitted before I could stop the words from coming out of my mouth.

Gwil's eyebrows shot up in surprise, like he couldn't believe I was saying it.

"Can we just like… I don't know, can we just watch something on your laptop or something? I just…" I blew out a quick breath and started to feel my eyes burn with tears I'd been holding in. "I've had a really shitty day and I was so excited to come over and see you and I don’t want it to be all... weird like it is."

He was quiet for a second, which gave me some time to calm back down a little and not actually shed tears.

"You're right," he sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "Okay, why don't we… Do you have something in mind to watch?" 

It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. "I mean I… what do you normally watch? What's your favorite show?"

It seemed to do the trick, the tension slowly released its grip on the room and we even managed to move back on his bed so he was positioned laying against his pillows and I was tucked neatly under his arm, half laying on his stomach. We'd agreed on Criminal Minds and somehow watched our way through two entire episodes before we forgot it all together and started talking… and then, well, kissing.

It started off innocent enough. I'd turned my head to joke about Spencer's hair in this season but instead found Gwil already looking at me with a soft smile.

"What?" I laughed.

He just gave a full smile and shook his head. "Nothing."

We were both quiet for a second, and then he leaned in and gave me a peck on the lips.

Oh.

I smiled back and leaned back into him, pressing my lips to his again but longer this time, slower, lingering…

We pulled back slowly, eyes still half closed. And then I felt the slightest squeeze of his hand on my waist and he surged forward again, lips firmly against mine, his tongue teasing across my bottom lip before biting gently.

Oh. 

I hummed in appreciation, leaning further against him until my leg hooked in between his and his hand was sliding up my back into my hair and grabbing lightly. 

My heart was racing in my chest. Was this it? Was I going to fuck him not 50 feet from our friends? Why am i even thinking that? Calm the hell down. 

I practically had to force myself to pull away, my fist still twisted in his shirt, still breathing heavily and close enough to be tempted to go back but I made myself stop.

"We have to… we should just slow down a little," I said quietly.

Gwil nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Yeah you're right we should just… take it easy for a bit."

I nodded back. 

Still, we somehow gravitated towards each other again until we were kissing again, albeit softer this time. Somehow we managed to keep it slow. Calm. Instead of dipping back into... dangerous territory. It was just… nice. 

It was comforting and reassured a lot of doubts I had. It was almost like a little dance, like a conversation. He'd lean forward and catch my lip with his teeth and in return I'd slide my tongue against his lip. It was jarring when suddenly everything went quiet and we both pulled apart in question only to see Netflix asking if we were still watching.

I laughed a little which seemed to make Gwil laugh which made me laugh more and snort and then he laughed more until we were both clutching our stomachs gasping for air in between laughs. Once we'd finally calm down we were left just staring at each other, not waiting for the other to talk, just looking at each other's faces and smiles and eyes.

"Y'know I was having a pretty crappy day and you made it a hell of a lot more bearable," I said honestly.

"I'm happy I could make your day better," he answered back, his smile wide.

I paused for a minute, contemplating saying anything. "Is it… is it weird if I really like making out with you?"

He shook his head quickly, "no! No of course not. I'm glad my skills were… put to good use." His smile turned smug.

I shoved his chest jokingly, turning in his grasp like I was going to roll away. I grinned when his hand fell to my hip and pulled me back in against him so his mouth was slotted against mine.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To find someone with better lines I guess," I laughed.

"Are you saying you don't like my pick up lines?" He fake pouted, lips puckered out and all.

I gave him a quick kiss. "That's exactly what I'm saying." I laughed again when he dramatically flopped against the bed like he couldn't believe it. I kissed his jaw sweetly, turning it into a raspberry which made him laugh.

"Careful there, I don't need any weirdly placed hickies," he warned with a grin.

"So just for clarification, you don't want a big hickey on your cheek?" I asked, pretending to get ready to mark his cheek.

"Definitely not."

"Hmm," I hummed in mock disappointment. "And I had such plans too."

"Yeah, I'm sure," he said back, turning his head to face me and tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. He slowly leaned in and gave me another peck on the lips, and then another… and then one more. "You know, I'm really glad you came over."

I smiled back at him. "Me too."

We were quiet once again, just staring at each other again, every once in a while saying some small comment or joke or compliment but otherwise quiet. After a little bit, just when I was starting to feel sleepy, there was a quiet knock on the door.

"Come in," Gwil answered.

Michaela poked her head in after a second with a small smile. "Hey, I was just going to head back, it's almost six," she said softly.

"Oh Jesus, is it really?" I asked in surprise, picking up my phone to see texts from Sarah asking when I'd be back home. "Damn," I laughed slightly.

"Yeah, Sarah said you wanted to do a night in so do you wanna go to the store before home?"

I nodded, slowly untangling myself from Gwil and sitting up, stretching out my muscles. "Yeah, I'll be out in a few minutes, I gotta get the feeling back in my legs," I chuckled.

"Okay, I'll go pull on my shoes."

I stretched out each of my arms and legs, turning awkwardly to stretch my spine before I sighed, turning back to face a very tired looking Gwilym. "Hi."

"Hi," he grinned back, briefly stretching his back before relaxing back against his pillows. "Before you go, come here."

I grinned and leaned back in, our lips connecting for a long, sweet kiss. "Was that all?" I asked after it ended.

"No, one more," he smirked, pulling me back in for another peck. "Okay one more," and then another peck, "just one more-"

"Gwil," I laughed in between kisses. "I- gotta- go- you big dork-"

He gave a big dramatic sigh after the last kiss when I stood up away from him. "Fine, if you must."

"I must," I grinned. "Sorry bub."

"No it's okay," he relented with a smile. "I'll see you on Saturday, right? You're still coming over to hang out?"

I nodded. "Of course, I can't wait." I was reluctant to leave him, looking so soft and inviting and ready for a nap… I forced myself to walk out and close the door behind me, walking out to the living room to find Mic pulling on her shoes while Joe stood by.

"Hey," I announced, making her look up at me after she had both boots on.

"Hey, ready?" 

"Yep, lets go get drunk," I affirmed.

"Woah woah woah," Joe interjected, making me turn to him.

"Sorry dad, was I not supposed to tell you that?" I laughed.

"No drinking and driving young lady, be responsible," he said, pointing a faux serious finger at each of us.

"Sure, yeah, whatever you say," I dismissed with a grin. I turned to Mic, "want anything particular? I was planning on wine and some candy."

She shrugged. "Sounds good to me. Grab me some of the uhh the sour patch watermelon things though? Oh! And Reece's pieces," she grinned at the last second as I was walking out the door.

"You already know," I grinned back, shaking my head and closing the door to let her and Joe do their own little goodbyes.

When I made it back down to the front door, ready to open my umbrella and sprint to my car, I noticed it had stopped raining. It was still wet everywhere and puddles took up half the sidewalk but the once black sky was lightened to a pale gray. Michaela beat me back to the dorm, unsurprisingly and I walked in with full arms, happy to be greeted by Sarah and Mic pulling things out of my hands and already opening things.

"Yesss you got the good shit Ella," Sarah said gratefully, pulling out a bag of m&m's.

"Always," I smiled, pulling out a plastic container of cotton candy for myself.

"Okay so what are we watching?" Sarah asked, already transporting stuff to the couches. 

It was obvious the two of them had moved everything for optimal TV viewing.

"I was thinking Umbrella Academy if that's cool?"

They both nodded, mouths already full of candy. 

I laughed. "Okay, Umbrella Academy it is then. I'll grab the wine."

Somewhere between the third and fourth episode we'd finished the first bottle of wine and went to open the second only to find it impossible.

"Just… open it," Sarah laughed, watching me trying to use the wine bottle opener to grab the cork and failing.

"I'm trying!" I laughed back, pulling out pieces of cork instead of the entire thing. "Dammit! Mic come help us!" I called.

The TV paused as she came over and looked over the destroyed cork, pushed nearly all the way into the bottle. "Dude what did you even do?!" She chuckled.

"I tried to open it, what do you think!" I laughed back.

"Okay, gimme a spoon, I'll shove it into the bottle."

"What? No take it out!" Sarah laughed.

"I can't! This one-" Mic laughed, pointing at me, "destroyed the cork and now its not gonna come out!"

I was wheezing from laughing so hard, practically laying across the counter. "I'm sorry!"

Sarah laughed at my reaction in response, squatting next to the counter trying to catch her breath as well.

"Fine I'll find a spoon myself!" Mic declared, still laughing while she tried to push down on the cork. "Ahah!" She yelled in triumph making us laugh even harder at the pop of it dropping into the wine.

We ate our way through almost all of the candy and the two bottles of wine over five episodes before we decided to call it a night (or well, early morning but same thing). 

It was nice, to go to bed feeling warm and loved and like a crap day had turned good. I fell asleep easily and without resistance, the opposite to how I'd woken up. It was a good day, I decided.

- - -

feedback is always appreciated and thank you for reading lovelies!!

[vcepsis]

I+9 with Klance, pleeeasse?

Thanks so much for the request! Sorry it took so long!

Taken from this ask meme (fever + camping). Since I’ve done one similar to this, I hope you forgive me for doing something a little different this time. Shout out as always to @feverflushed​ for the lovely beta work

—–

Lance groaned softly, his face buried in his pillow as he tried in vain to pull the blanket around himself tighter. He was absolutely freezing, even though he knew it was the fever talking. Another shiver ran through him, making his bones almost ache. He was tired and cold and completely miserable.

But most of all, he was lonely. God, he was so lonely. Growing up with all his siblings and cousins living practically on top of each other had its downsides, for sure, like never fully understanding the definition of privacy. But after living with them for so long, it just meant he was never alone.

For someone like Lance, being surrounded by people he loved was the best thing he could have asked for. And when he would get sick, his baby cousins would pile his bed with their favourite stuffed animals and blankets. His mom would make him soup that would clear his head and warm him up from his inside. His father would move their portable heater from the living room into his bedroom. It never failed to lift his spirits, no matter what awful plague he’d contract.

Now, living who knows how many lightyears away from them, Lance had never felt so alone.

He’d come down with this whatever-it-was alien virus a few days before, and at first, he was scared. Scratch that: he’d been terrified. It was the first time any of them had fallen ill since their impromptu recruitment into a ten thousand year space war, and Lance had been sure he’d picked up some deadly alien sickness that would kill him. But as the days passed, it mostly resembled an Earth-like flu.

Lance sniffled pathetically, burrowing as deep as he could get into the soft Altean blankets on his bed. Shiro and Coran had swiftly sequestered him in his room once they confirmed he wasn’t in any real danger, and since the pods weren’t designed to deal with illness, he was left to tough it out the old fashioned way. And while the others were around to get him whatever he needed, they mostly left him alone to wallow in his misery.

Maybe he was supposed to be more appreciative. Coran had thrown around words like quarantine and isolation until Shiro had convinced him that having Lance in his room would be equally effective. But still, Lance couldn’t help the immense wave of sadness being alone caused. Especially being alone and sick. He’d do anything for his brother’s stuffed alpaca, or the smell of his mother’s cooking. He missed them all so much…

Just as the tears started building, there was a soft, tentative knock on his door.

The noise jolted Lance out of his downward spiral, and he turned on his side to wait for whoever it was to come in. There was a beat of silence before they knocked again, a little louder this time.

“Yeah?” Lance called, clearing his throat when the sound came out rough and scratchy.

“Um…” The voice on the other side was hesitant. “It’s Keith.”

Keith?

Lance’s eyes widened in surprise. What the hell did Keith want?

Slowly, Lance sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He pulled the blanket with him as he stood, wrapping it securely around his shoulders and stumbling his way to the door. It opened with a swoosh.

Keith was standing on the other side, dressed in his usual attire, but without the jacket. He frowned as he looked Lance over. “Hey, uh…are you ok?”

Lance blinked, and belatedly realized there were still tears stuck to his eyelashes. He wiped them away quickly, flushing from embarrassment. This was just great. It was bad enough that Keith saw him looking like a mess, but he had to see him cry too…?

But Keith didn’t comment on it any further. “How are you feeling?” he asked instead. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”

Rolling his eyes, Lance scoffed, only to turn away and muffle the subsequent coughing fit into the blanket still around his shoulders. His chest burned in the aftermath.

“Ah, sorry,” Keith said quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Lance looked back over to see Keith fidgeting with the end of his shirt. It was a small thing, but it was something so distinctly un-Keith that Lance couldn’t help but notice.

Was he…..nervous?

He sighed, looking back up at Lance. “Look, I….I know you’re probably feeling like shit, and tired, but I wanted to do….something.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Something?” he repeated hoarsely, his voice cracking halfway through the single word.

“Yeah….something.” Keith sighed, frustrated. “Look, I don’t want it to be weird or anything, but I don’t know how to describe it without showing you.”

“I hate to break it to you, buddy,” Lance rasped, “but it’s already weird.”

Keith shoved his hands into his pocket. “I know, I know,” he sighed again, defeated. “Are you up for coming with me to the rec room? It’ll be easier to show you.”

Lance frowned. What the hell was Keith up to? Lance’s first instinct was suspicion, but he was so desperate for some kind of contact, so he nodded. Keith slumped in relief.

“I’m keeping the blanket, though,” Lance said as he stepped out of his room, the door closing automatically behind him. Keith shrugged in acceptance.

It was quiet in the castle as they made their way to the rec room. “Where is everyone?” Lance asked, absently rubbing his aching throat.

“We stopped outside a planet yesterday. Distress call, pretty standard.” Keith had slowed his pace to match Lance’s, who was wobbling slightly as he walked. Staying upright was harder than he expected. “Apparently they’re just wrapping things up now. Getting supplies and medicine.”

“Medicine?” Lance repeated dumbly.

Keith frowned. “Well….yeah? You’re sick. They’re hoping the people on the planet can help, since we helped them.”

Lance couldn’t help the way his breath hitched at Keith’s words, stopping suddenly. The others wanted to help. He might be a burden on the team, but they wanted to help. The tears from earlier suddenly returned, the fever making his emotions run wild, and he had to blink quickly to keep them at bay.

“Hey….” Keith had stopped when Lance did, and he put a gentle hand on his arm. “Lance? What’s wrong? Do you need to sit down or something?”

“I….” The hand on his arm was so warm, and Lance felt the ice inside him thaw a bit. “I thought….I mean, everyone left me alone….and Coran wanted to quarantine me…I thought…”

“What?” Keith’s tone was genuinely confused. “We left you alone because we didn’t want to bother you. Shiro had to keep telling Hunk and Pidge to let you sleep.” 

“Oh….” Lance pulled the blanket around himself tighter, shivering from emotion and the freezing ice that was still in his veins. 

Keith sighed, but it didn’t sound annoyed. “Let’s just…keep going, alright? We’re almost there, and then you can rest again.”

Lance nodded silently, trailing after Keith, trying to make sense of what he was feeling.

Before he knew it, though, they had made their way to the rec room.

Or at least, what Lance thought was the rec room.

The room had been transformed into a giant, ridiculously elaborate blanket fort.

Lance gasped as he took it all in, and the memory of building blanket forts with his siblings flashed through his mind. They would steal all the pillows and blankets from all around the house to make a giant enclosure that would get more and more complicated every time they built it. Then they would all sit with the lights off, using flashlights to play cards or board games and telling dumb, scary stories.

And now he was staring at a blanket fort easily three times the size of anything they’d ever managed to make, yet it still had a cozy, inviting feel to it. The number of pillows and blankets here must have been easily five times the amount they’d ever used back home. The blankets were strung up along the walls and just below the ceiling, with more pillows than Lance could count lining the floors. The blankets in the center drooped slightly, and that slight imperfection made it feel like home.

Keith cleared his throat softly next to him. Lance turned to him, still in shock.

“Coran helped me build it,” he said slowly, trying to gauge Lance’s reaction. “Pidge and Hunk mentioned doing this with their families…..and I know you have a big family at home, so….”

There was a distinctly red flush across Keith’s cheeks, and he refused to meet Lance’s eyes. “Did you…did you do this for me?” Lance asked softly.

The flush deepened, and Keith crossed his arms tightly. “Um….I mean…I know you’re probably not feeling very good, so if you don’t like it or you wanna go back to your room, just tell me, it’s fine.”

The tears made another return, except this time one or two escaped and trailed down Lance’s cheeks. 

Finally looking up, Keith’s eyes widened when he saw the tears. Lance shook his head quickly, smiling softly. 

“Keith….” How could he even begin to describe how he felt? How the loneliness had been eating him from the inside, how he desperately yearned for something from home? And somehow, Keith had known. 

So he settled for smiling at Keith, emotions still running wild. “Thank you.”

The flush was back, and Keith ducked his head. “Y-yeah….don’t worry about it.”

Lance grinned. The obvious embarrassment on Keith’s face was almost cute.

Shuffling over to the fort, he eased himself down onto one of the many mounds of pillows strewn inside it, groaning in relief as he rested his aching joints. Seeming to shake himself out of his trance, Keith joined him, sitting stiff and cross-legged on his own mountain of pillows.

“The others will be here when they’re done,” Keith said, pulling out even more blankets that were buried somewhere in the sea of pillows, making sure they were within reach. “Hopefully they’ll have something for your fever, too.”

“Does Allura know about this?” Lance asked.

“Uh,” Keith said hesitantly, “she will when she gets back.”

Lance barked a laugh, happiness surging through him even though it made him cough. “You gonna convince Shiro to get in on the fun too?”

Keith grinned. “Absolutely. Hunk will make us soup. Pidge will probably have some games we can play. It’ll be great.”

“Like a sleepover,” Lance remarked, nestling into the pillows.

Keith shrugged. “I guess?”

“Have you never had a sleepover before?” Lance asked, incredulous.

Shaking his head, Keith looked away. “Never really had the chance.”

“Well then,” Lance said, tossing one of the blankets toward Keith. “That’s something we’ll have to fix, huh?”

Keith took the blanket and wrapped it around himself. He looked up, giving Lance a soft smile. Lance returned it without thinking.

[scriptingpenguin]

A Traveling Companion

A little short story featuring Yuumi and some friends

A cold and seeming lifeless tundra sat still. Roads were empty since it was a trade route rarely used from it’s harsh temperatures. Even the sun’s scorching rays did nothing to slightly warm the land. The calm land appeared to be disturbed. The air around started to shift and it looked as if was being pulled around. Light concentrated to one point and created a swir, and from the light, a blue furred cat was spat out with a large book following it.

“Book you brought us to Freljord again! Is Master nearby?!” The blue cat looked around to see nothing but open land.

The magical talking cat opened up the book and began speaking to it, “What do you mean you don’t know?! You’re the one who teleport us from that delicious looking fish! I think her name was Ami?”

The book would move around as if it were shaking its head. The feline looked puzzled as the book corrected her, “Nyami? Oh Nami! Yea it was that one!” The winds began to blow fierce and the warm looking fur on her body was now cold as ice. As quickly as possible, she ran over to the book and clung on to it tightly, “Book! Please tell me you have some heating magic or something! Freljord is a lot colder than I remembered…”

The book seemingly shivered while the cold winds of the tundra pelted the two. They looked around for warmth and found nothing with their efforts. “Come on book, we have to find something or I’ll be a catsickle and you’ll a cold read.”

The cat would hop on the book as it opened it’s pages and they both hovered over the ground. The empty land provided nothing to help keep them warm, not even an animal in sight. She began to whimper as she curled up on top of the book.

Then as if the gods were being merciful, they heard a familiar voice. “Ah, little kitty and magical book! My good friends!” A warm and inviting greeting flew into the cat’s ears, almost thawing her out of her cold prison.

She turned to see a large and muscular man, a smile was on his mustached face as she began to run over to him and pounce, “Braum! Thank goodness you are here, I was about to freeze!” She would nuzzle up to the large man. He gave a hearty chuckle, reaching down to pick up the small feline, “Yuumi my little companion hello! I have not seen you since you disappeared in that village we were fishing in.”

“Yea sorry about that! Book here just likes to teleport us randomly if they find a trace of our master.” She apologized while perched on the giant’s shoulder. Braum stood at 7 feet tall, probably even taller. The man had a warmth to him, one that came from his kind and gentle heart. But it was underneath all the brawn and muscle that helps him wield the unbreakable magic door.

The Braum would continue to his destination with Yuumi perched up on his shoulder, the two began to talk the adventure Yuumi has been since their last meeting. Braum let out a soulful laugh as he petted the small feline, “Ho ho, sounds like a very large adventure for such a small and powerful kitty!”

Yuumi giggled and purred while the Freljord giant affectionately kept her warm. “Where are you heading? On another big important job? Saving some village?”

Braum nodded as their destination was reached, a tall mountain. From the moment they stepped foot near it, they could both hear a loud strange howling. “The people of a nearby village told me there has been strange noises and a sighting of a snow monster.” Braum’s voice turned serious as he looked around and found large footsteps. He made his way over as he placed his hands over it and noticed it was a fresh track.

“Prepare yourself Yuumi, we might be in for a dangerous one.” He spoke while crouched and following the path of footsteps. Yuumi hopped on the book to let Braum do his thing. She looked around as she followed and noticed the cave they were heading to. Then they were ambushed, a large monstrous yeti jumped out onto Braum.

“BRAUM NO!” Yuumi screamed as she went to shield the man.

“Stay back! This one is too strong for your magics.” Braum and the yeti wrestled in the snow, a fierce and scary sight for Yuumi. She felt helpless, wanting to protect and assist Braum who has saved her twice. She noticed the yeti was not trying to hurt Braum, but play with him?

“Wait, is he-?” Yuumi’s question was interrupted by the voice of a child.

“Willump! You I know you want to play with people but it looks like you are attacking!” The boy called out as the yeti stopped and ran over to him almost like a pet. He was smiling and the boy was patting him all over. Soon the boy’s eyes sparkled when he saw Braum.

“Wait, your Braum! My momma told me so many of your stories! I can't believe you are real! And so huge!” The boy looked at him in awe while the yeti known as Willump rolled in the snow.

“Oh oh, where are my manners! I am Nunu, this is Willump. His is my best friend and the best traveling companion anyone could ask for!” Nunu introduced himself and ran over to Willump who was stood up and made conforming noise. Braum stood up and dusted off the snow from his body and made a large grin.

“Ohoho, looks like these were our culprits! Little one and big protecting yeti! I was sent up here because nearby village heard noises and saw a yeti! You must be careful, not everyone is as kind and understanding as Braum.” The giant lectured as he then called over Yuumi and she perched back on his shoulder. “This is Braum’s travel companion for this adventure. She is Yuumi.”

Yuumi raised a paw to wave and the book did an equivalent. “Oh and this is book! He’s my companion! We’re looking for our master Norra!”

Nunu scratched his head and looked over to Willump, “I don’t think I’ve heard that name before, sorry.” He then jolted his head quickly, the thought of the cat talking now registering in his head. “Wait, your a talking cat! And that's a magical book! Wow!” Nunu amazed by the people he was meeting ran over and started to pet Yuumi while she purred and rubbed against his hand.

“Little one, do you stay out here?” Braum asked with a hint of curiosity.

“Yea me and Willump just sleep wherever we can find a nice spot! He’s really comfy!” Nunu giggled as Yuumi licked at his hand.

“Come. We will find you and Willump a nice warm farm to stay in for the night.” Braum led as the others followed.

After returning to the village the villagers were surprised to find out that it was a child and a friendly yeti causing all the noise. For a job well done, they prepared a feast for them. They even offer Nunu and Willump a place for the night. While Yuumi was getting her hands on some fish, book opened up and started to pull her in.

“No no no, why is it always with fish! Come on book!” Yuumi yelled as both her and book disappeared.

“What just happened mister Braum?! They disappeared!” Nunu exclaimed.

“Seems as our furry companion and her book found a new hint for their master.” Braum chuckled hearthfully.

The night was sent away with feasts and celebrations, but there were whispers of a hooded yordle passing through.

[owletstarlet]

Ooh I can't wait for these! 11 for tanunatsu please??

#11 from this list: “I almost lost you” kiss 

Established relationship because I damn well said so

“Wake up.”

The plea tumbles from Kaname’s lips and it’s soft but it feels manic. His hands are shaking where they hover above Natsume’s chest; he’s barely breathing and his pulse is thready but he’s alive, he’s alive he’s alive he’s alive—

Kaname’s afraid to touch, now; as much as every instinct is telling him to gather Natsume into his arms and never let go, he can’t tell if he’s injured. He doesn’t look it, mostly he just looks cold; the pallor of his face under the clear brightness of a winter moon, lips gone blue, and actual patches of frost spangled across his damp pajamas. But he’s so still, and there’s blackened blood under his nose, trailing halfway down his cheek on one side before it had dried, and Kaname thinks he might be sick.

“I need you to wake up.” His voice splinters halfway through, and he takes Natsume’s face in his hands, so carefully. “Please.” And god, his skin is a temperature that skin should never ever be. His thumbs trace the dark divots below his eyes. He wants to grab his shoulders, shake him, yell and scream until he opens his eyes and calmly tells Kaname the blatant and oft-repeated lie that everything is just fine here.

He can’t see Ponta, he’s not changed back to a visible form but he can feel the wall of warmth at his back. He turns towards that warmth, now, where he can make out a mass of translucent white right in front of his nose, and this close to it he can barely see the trees beyond.

“He won’t wake up,” Kaname says, and it sounds so obvious, childish.

Then, a part of that white mass moves in close just beside his shoulder, where he would more or less imagine Ponta’s head to be. A gust of air, warm and strong, passes over Kaname’s hands and ruffles Natsume’s hair.

He doesn’t stir.

Kaname hears a faint sound, almost like a deep harrumph, before a white burst of smoke erupts around him. Then Ponta is there, a cat once more, just by Kaname’s knee. “No need to be so delicate,” he says, testily. “You won’t break him. He’s just sleeping. Could’ve picked a better place to do it.”

Kaname could’ve sobbed from relief. His hands shift down to Natsume’s shoulders. “What happened?”

Ponta scoffs. “That yuki-onna is what happened.”

“Where—”

“Gone, now, I’d say. And good riddance. Oi,” he adds, waddling up to the side of Natsume’s head and batting him on the nose. “Don’t nap here, moron. Let’s go already.”

Taking Ponta’s lead, Kaname shakes Natsume’s shoulders himself; tentatively, at first, then much harder, because Ponta’s right, he can’t stay out here any longer. But Natsume’s head just lolls back onto the underbrush, and Kaname bites the inside of his cheek. “Come on, come back,” he says, loud as he can through the panic still threatening to snuff out his voice altogether. “You can come sleep in my bed again, okay? It’s so cold out here.”

When that garners no response, Ponta’s eyes narrow. “This is taking too long.” Then, without warning and in a move that should’ve been altogether impossible, he spins right around and launches a sharp kick right at Natsume’s face, with enough force behind it to knock his whole head to one side.

“Don’t—”

But it’s only then Natsume’s eyelids flutter.

“Mnn…ow.”

The noise that escapes Kaname’s throat then is very much like a sob. He cradles Natsume’s face between his hands once more and leans in close, chest constricting. Natsume’s own eyes are half-mast and dull, an uncomprehending gaze drifting over his surroundings and right over Kaname, not focusing on any one thing. That is, until Ponta wriggles in between him and Kaname, putting himself nose-to-nose with Natsume and glaring.

“Idiot,” he snaps. “This is what you get for letting a snow demon possess you. You’re damned lucky Tanuma woke up in time to see you were gone or you’d have been long dead by morning.”

Natsume doesn’t seem to really register a word of that, but his eyes become a little bit clearer at the sound of Ponta’s biting tone. He squints a bit, frowns.

“Sensei…?” And, after a moment, gaze shifting upwards, “…Tanuma?”

Ponta ducks out of the way then, with a huff, and Kaname leans in close. “Yeah.” The single word feels like a burst of relief. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Natsume echoes, vaguely, giving Kaname a tiny smile.

After a moment, his forehead scrunches up, and beside him his fingers twitch in the dirt and shriveled leaves. “What—a-are we outside?”

Kaname just nods, tightly, not at all having it in him to elaborate if Natsume doesn’t remember.

“Oh…you’re crying.” And that vagueness in his voice and eyes is quickly replacing itself with distress when he takes in Kaname’s face.

Kaname just nods again, swallows hard; now is not the time for a breakdown, it’s not, he can do that later when Natsume is warm and safe and not watching it happen.

“Well, of course he is,” Ponta mutters. “A minute ago he thought he just found your corpse.”

“…oh.” The realization in his wide eyes shifts to something more like horror, then shame. “Tanuma, I’m sor—”

But the words are lost because Kaname’s kissing him, then. It’s a fierce, desperate thing, faces mashed together, his fingers curling in Natsume’s hair like he’ll evaporate into the January night if Kaname can’t hold him tight enough, every muscle in his own body rigid with residual terror.

Natsume remains motionless beneath him, cold mouth perfectly still. It feels as though he’s holding his breath.

But it’s just enough like kissing some lifeless thing, that that thought alone is enough to send him reeling back.

When he looks down, though, Natsume’s just watching him, eyes clear and soft and very, very worried.

Kaname blows out a long breath before he can trust himself to speak. “Your lips are freezing,” he says, with a little chuckle that doesn’t at all sound right. “And god, there’s ice in your hair…” His fingers comb back Natsume’s fringe.

“I’m okay,” Natsume starts, and Ponta promptly snorts. “Ah. I mean,” he amends, softly, “I don’t feel cold. Just…sleepy, kind of.”

“No sleeping.” The words come out louder than he’d meant them to, sharp and frightened. “Not until we get you back and warmed up,” he adds, forcing a calmer tone. He bends down, quickly presses his lips to the frigid skin of Natsume’s forehead, then shrugs off his jacket to drape across Natsume’s chest.

When he looks again, some of the trepidation has bled out of Natsume’s eyes, replaced with something a little warmer, drowsier. Trusting.

Kaname cups his cheek, tries to ignore the tremble in his fingers. “Let’s go home.”

***

Natsume’s recollection of the incident, of how he’d ended up half frozen in the forest, comes back to him soon enough. Kaname makes him tell it, in order to keep him awake while he’s getting him into the tub to thaw him out.

The yuki-onna had come to him initially just a few days prior, just as school was ending and the New Year’s break began. She was lost, and very weak, and Ponta had dispassionately noted how odd it was for her to have not vanished altogether. She’d strayed so far south of the more common haunts of yuki-onna, where the winters were so mild and snow so rare. Natsume never found out why she’d come, she claimed to not quite recall, but she hadn’t come alone; her sister had been by her side. But the two had become separated, apparently, on a windy night. She’d been frantic, her sister was hardly stronger than she was, but she’d heard tell from a few of the local youkai that if she were in trouble, she ought to seek out Natsume-sama for help. Ponta hadn’t been especially fond of the idea, given the particular penchant of her whole kind for killing off humans in creative ways, and skeptical about the gaps in her memory—which needless to say had left Kaname nice and anxious, as well as Taki when she’d heard. But Ponta had conceded that she was clearly frail, just on the brink of fading away entirely if she couldn’t find someone or something to possess, and he genuinely hadn’t believed that she could do Natsume any real physical harm by simply hitching a ride in his body until her sister was found. She wouldn’t dare, when endangering him would be endangering herself.

And that had seemed to be the truth, at first. The New Year’s season had always necessitated a lot of travel for Dad, and with Natsume having planned to stay over most of the nights that Dad would be away, Kaname had had plenty of time to observe him, to make sure he was as fine as he claimed to be. But he’d looked to be perfectly well, not even a bit pale or fatigued or any of the general red flags Kaname had come to associate with youkai involvement. If anything, he was livelier and better-rested now that school was out and he was free to spend his days doing nothing of consequence, though he had confided that he was worried for the yuki-onna—he could barely sense her presence, he’d said, and most of the time she seemed to be asleep anyhow. Which was going to make tracking down her sister a tall order, if she couldn’t stay awake long enough to help at all, to tell them what they should even be looking for.

Up until tonight, of course. Kaname supposes in retrospect that he should’ve realized something was off when they’d settled in for bed, when he’d pulled Natsume close against his chest and frowned, realizing just how cool his skin felt all over. But Natsume waved it off when he asked, seeming for all the world to be perfectly content and sleepy, merely yawning and burrowing his face deeper against Kaname’s pajama shirt as Kaname tugged an extra blanket over them both.

When Kaname started awake, hours later, it was to a freezing room, an open window and an empty bed. And Ponta, clearly just arrived back from an evening of New Year’s revelry, asking just where the hell Natsume had gotten off to.

None of them are completely sure what changed, the coming-together of factors that finally allowed the yuki-onna to awaken, and to carry Natsume’s body away so deep into the forest that when he finally regained his senses he couldn’t find his way back again. Ponta’s best guess was that it was simply a matter of the temperature dropping in the night, enough for the ground to properly freeze for the first time in weeks. Enough to rouse the missing sister, to draw her out of wherever she had secluded herself to preserve her own strength, to start her back on her own search. And, as Natsume understood it from his own hazy recollection, she’d passed close enough by Kaname’s house in this search that her sister had sensed it, mustered what bit of energy she’d regained from resting within Natsume, and managed to well and truly take him over, enough to leave the house and give chase. The sister had fled, not realizing the possession and fearing that she was being pursued by an exorcist, until her limited strength failed her and Natsume’s body had caught up.

It was a happy ending, for the two of them, as far as Natsume knew, though admittedly they’d said little more to him than their thanks before vanishing into the night together. And in doing so, had left Natsume stranded and barefoot in his pajamas, in an unfamiliar part of the forest.

And to be fair, they wouldn’t necessarily have had any reason to know he was unfamiliar with it, or that he couldn’t just go back the way he came—after all, when they’d found him he hadn’t been that far away, he could only have gotten so far on foot. But Kaname doesn’t feel quite so forgiving on the matter, especially when Natsume told what happened next.

Because he’d scarcely begun to realize just how lost he was when he’d become drowsy, and dizzy. Not cold, he’d said; not really, and in no discernible pain, but after a few minutes he’d ended up on his hands and knees in the underbrush, his head reeling. And the next thing he’d known, Ponta was kicking him in the face.

At the very least, Kaname supposes he’s grateful that Natsume truly didn’t seem to feel the cold. Not until halfway through his bath, anyways, when the shivering set in, but by then he was well on his way to being a normal human temperature once more. And that’s the other thing Kaname can’t quite forgive, that both yuki-onna had been so apparently blind to the fact that they’d nearly frozen him to death. Natsume for his part genuinely hadn’t noticed; he’d been surprised when Kaname pointed out the ice on his clothes and in his hair. And, as Ponta had (reasonably) pointed out, yuki-onna in general were not known for any dealings with a human that a human ever walked away from, so it was likely they had no idea the kind of unintentional damage they’d inflicted. But regardless, if Ponta had found him any later than he had, it unquestionably would’ve been too late.

He’s back in bed, now, bath finished, swaddled up in every extra blanket that Kaname could find. He had been very reluctant to leave the room even for the two or so minutes it took to locate said blankets, the fact that Ponta was literally sitting perched on top of Natsume’s chest when he’d left (and sending Kaname off with a longsuffering “just go already, I won’t let him wander off again”) notwithstanding. He had tried not to visibly rush back to the bed when he returned, but the panic must’ve been a little too obvious in his eyes, because Natsume immediately tried to prop himself up on his elbows, giving him a smile that was surely meant to be reassuring but far too weary around the edges to be so. Kaname had just laid him back down, wordlessly, with a quick kiss to the forehead before he began situating the blankets. Ponta had given up his spot on Natsume’s chest in favor of settling down instead near his thigh.

“Okay,” he says, once he’s finished fussing with the bedding. “How cold are you?” Which might be an idiotic question, if Kaname’s lips on his skin just now were anything to go by, the answer is still very. But he’s learned by now, when asking after Natsume’s wellbeing, to phrase it so as not to allow him the out of merely saying he’s fine when he obviously isn’t, otherwise he’d be claiming he was just fine up to his dying breath.

And to Natsume’s credit, he does try to be more honest about it, nowadays, to Kaname, to their friends and to the Fujiwaras, though it’s so visibly difficult for him to try to relearn every instinct he has just to let on that he’s unwell.

“I’m…it’s not so bad anymore.” His voice is a little muffled; he’s buried up to the nose in soft fleece. “I don’t want to move, though.”

“You shouldn’t be moving around so much anyways, with your feet in that state,” Kaname says, mouth twisting. Natsume hadn’t really been aware of it until they’d gotten back, but taking off through the woods at top speed had torn up his skin pretty thoroughly, cuts and scratches up to the ankle that had bled in the bathwater, and the nail on one foot had been ripped clean off. Kaname had done what he could with a first aid kit, Natsume’s blood on his fingertips enough to set his stomach churning but knowing his aversion to hospital trips.

“Are you gonna just carry me everywhere, then?” Natsume’s voice is soft and sleepy.

“If you need me to,” he says, his returning smile sitting brittle on his lips, sliding his fingers through Natsume’s still-damp hair and wondering if he dried it well enough. “But it’d be better for you to just stay in bed.”

Natsume blinks up at him; he can’t seem to keep his eyes open all the way. “You know…I’m sorry about the circumstances, but it is pretty fun when you carry me.” An honest-to-god delirious giggle, then. “You’re strong.”

“I’m not that strong.” An easy counter. “You’re not that heavy.” He pauses, realizing he’d been hovering in an awkward half-crouch beside the bed that’s making his thighs ache, and sits on the edge of the mattress. Ponta shoots him a brief exasperated look, make up your mind already. “Do your feet hurt a lot? I can find you medicine if it’d help you sleep.”

“Mm…no, they’ll be alright…” he frowns a little, and Kaname feels a movement by his hip, and realizes that Natsume’s trying to work his hand free of the many blankets tucked tight around him. Kaname tugs them loose, only to have pale fingers catch his sleeve.

“Don’t you want to lie down?”

No, Kaname thinks, and if he wasn’t sitting he’s pretty sure he’d be pacing. But there’s a quiet apprehension in Natsume’s words, so Kaname gives a constrained nod instead. “Let me just get the lights.”

It doesn’t actually help his nerves any, lying in the exact same position they’d fallen asleep in earlier that night; the chilly tip of Natsume’s nose brushing against his breastbone and Kaname’s arm draped over his shoulders. When the occasional shiver comes, he rubs Natsume’s back, and Kaname does appreciate that much, it means he can feel him breathing better. Natsume always seems to migrate into this same position; it means he’s comfortable and Kaname’s glad for that but he certainly can’t say the same. Even Ponta keeping a lookout only helps so much with that; every muscle and nerve in him feels like a taut rubber band twisted over and over on itself, acid churning in an empty stomach. He starts at every little sound, every slight creak of the aging house settling around them. There’s no real noise from outside; the night is still, no wind, no forest creatures making any sound this deep into the winter. Objectively that silence should be better; but it’s not, really, it just feels all the more ominous. Kaname’s wound so tightly, ears pricked for every sound, that all it takes is for Ponta to speak out of the blue to startle him so badly that it wakes Natsume back up.

“Calm down, brat.” He pokes at Kaname’s ankle with a single paw. “I was just going to say it’s actually safe for you to go to sleep, hard as that is for you to believe, apparently.”

“I know,” Kaname murmurs, watching Natsume’s forehead scrunch up as his awareness returns. “Sorry. I’m trying.”

“Are you, though?” Ponta drawls, and Kaname sends a tired glare in his general direction.

“Hm…mm?” Natsume frowns, eyes sliding slowly into focus, reflecting the light of the single lamp Kaname had left on beside the bed.

Kaname smooths back his hair with one hand. “It’s alright.” He tries to sound surer than he feels, on that point. “Go back to sleep.”

“What’s…” His frown deepens, both his hands sliding up to the sides of Kaname’s chest under the covers. “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

“That’s because been busy picturing all the different ways you could possibly prance off and die the second he takes his eyes off you,” Ponta says flatly, and Kaname winces.

“…Oh.” He lets out a slow breath. Then, looking resolute, he inches himself upward, wriggling out from under the mass of bedclothes piled on top of him until he’s nose-to-nose with Kaname, his cheek squashed against the pillow. He’s panting a little from the effort, gripping Kaname’s shirt with both hands, but his eyes are steady. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be.” Kaname reaches up, traces the pad of his thumb across Natsume’s cheekbone, the skin cool but no longer cold to the touch. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were being kind, not reckless. You even talked to me about it first.” The significance of that had not been lost on Kaname, either, that Natsume had come to him with this before coming to a decision, even when all evidence pointed to it being a fairly benign situation to involve himself in. At the time Kaname thought his heart might just have grown too full to ever fit properly in his chest again. And yet here Natsume is now, trying to apologize for it. “We didn’t know this would happen,” Kaname adds, gently. He’s not certain he can be reassuring when his pulse is still hammering away like it is under Natsume’s hands, when there’s a current of nausea beneath the tight smile he offers. But he can try, because Natsume deserves as much.

But then it’s Natsume who’s taking Kaname’s face into his own hands, and closing the distance between their lips. It’s as tender as it is deliberate, Natsume cupping his face and holding him there, as if Kaname’s the one that’s ephemeral, precious, who might slip away so easily. His lips are still rough and cracked from the cold, but his lashes tickle Kaname’s skin like moths’ wings.

“No, we didn’t know,” Natsume breathes, eventually, into the scant space between them. Their foreheads are pressed together still; his fingers have slid up and back into Kaname’s hair. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt you, too.” He pulls back a little, then, eyes searching. But Kaname doesn’t know what to say to that, so he stays quiet, his chest tight.

“Thank you,” Natsume says. “For finding me.”

I didn’t find you, Kaname thinks, Ponta found you. But those words don’t come. What he says, instead, half-blurted, half-choked, is: “I love you.”

…oh.

“Oh,” Natsume echoes, softly, eyes widening into twin moons in the lamplight, and Kaname fleetingly thinks of sinking through the mattress and vanishing then and there. That…he had not meant to say that, just now. But he can’t (won’t) take it back, either. He forces himself to meet Natsume’s eyes, hopes to god he says something more because Kaname’s words are utterly spent.

“You’ve never said that, before,” Natsume adds, at long last. He chuckles, the sound of it breathy and stilted. “I guess I should get lost in the woods more often, huh.”

But Kaname can only stare, tongue-tied, through eyes that have begun to sting. Natsume pauses, taking in Kaname’s face before his brows scrunch together in apparent distress. “I’m sorry, that was a cruel thing to say, wasn’t it.” Gentle thumbs brush below Kaname’s eyes, swiping away the building moisture. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

It’s too late for that, Kaname thinks with some distant degree of frustration at himself. Natsume should definitely, definitely be resting right now. Not dealing with Kaname’s apparent inability to get a handle on himself, or some ill-timed confession. But here they are, and now Kaname’s the one clinging onto Natsume’s pajamas like a terrified child, face buried deep in his shoulder and shaking. And Natsume’s rubbing his back, so gently, kissing his hair and whispering to him to breathe, it’s alright, just breathe.

It’s ridiculous, really, that he can’t calm himself down until he’s practically cried himself inside out. His chest hurts, his head is buzzing and he’s soaked through the flannel on Natsume’s shoulder with tears and snot and spit—but the words I thought you were dead, I saw you and I thought you were dead have been playing on some awful loop in his brain for the past two hours and it’s all he can do not to repeat them now—if he does he’ll just lose it again.

Once his breathing has evened out to a semi-reasonable pace, the warm weight near his ankle shifts a bit, and he hears a sardonic, “Are you finished?”

“Sensei.” Natsume angles a slight kick in the cat’s general direction, but between Kaname’s own legs in the way and the swathes of bandages and blankets packed around them it doesn’t make it very far. “He does care,” Natsume mutters, and Kaname raises his head to see Natsume scowling at the foot of the bed. “He’s just being rude.”

“Of course I care.” Ponta blinks back at them, wholly unbothered. “He promised to make gratin tomorrow. He can’t do that if he’s cried himself to death, now can he.”

Natsume pointedly ignores that, before propping himself up on a trembling elbow just far enough to reach for the water bottle on Kaname’s dresser. “Here,” he says, his gentle smile incongruent with the way he almost drops the bottle between them. “You’ll get a headache.”

And Kaname can’t contest that, really. He can already feel the pressure mounting between his temples. He accepts it and winds up downing about half of it in two gulps. When he offers it back to Natsume to take his own drink he keeps his own hands over Natsume’s unsteady ones, but Kaname’s the one whose fingers have grown cold now.

“Better?” Natsume asks afterwards, voice still infinitely kind and patient but Kaname can practically see the fatigue etched into his face. Kaname just nods, sheepish. He should never have woken him.

“Um,” Natsume continues, less sure, “I’d ask if you wanted to talk about it right now, but…”

“N-no, thank you.” His voice comes out low and wrecked, and clearing his throat doesn’t make it any better. “You should rest.”

“Okay.” A pause, and Natsume gives him a long look, making no move to get settled back down under the covers just yet.

“What’s wrong?” Kaname asks, with some trepidation. Natsume’s eyes are wide, solemn but luminous.

“I love you too.”

…oh.

“Oh.” Kaname’s mouth feels very dry, suddenly. There’s a bubble of unbelievable warmth, of hope, rising in his chest, but anxiety follows fast behind. Natsume’s face looks so open right now, the kind of transparent expression that doesn’t often come easily for him and he’s waiting, waiting and Kaname has to say something and—

“You don’t have to say it just ‘cause I said it,” is what comes out, eventually. His voice still sounds rather like he swallowed a toad, and he clears his throat in vain, gaze dropping to some spot on the rumpled coverlet between them. “You don’t owe it to me or anything. You might not even remember any of this in the morning, anyways.”

He raises his eyes again when he feels cool fingers light on his chin. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s true, and you should know it.” Exhaustion notwithstanding, his voice is clear, and his eyes are so warm Kaname couldn’t look away again if he tried. “I love you, okay? I love you.”

Kaname just nods, he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry again or hyperventilate or possibly all three but then Natsume’s reaching for him and kissing him and kissing him, lips, forehead, eyelids, nose and cheeks, and Kaname doesn’t have to say anything at all. It’s all slow, feather-light and lingering; Natsume’s too tired for anything more but Kaname’s content to lie there and let himself be kissed, his mind resonating with it: I love you too, I love you, I love you…

“Sorry I scared you,” Natsume murmurs, eventually. His fingertips skim a lazy circle on Kaname’s shoulder, their noses nearly touching still. “I’ll do my best to not get lost again.”

“Not without me.”

Natsume’s lips twitch. “Okay. Not without you.”

***

Thanks for reading! I’ll take one more prompt from this list before starting the next part of Never Felt Like Any Blessing if anyone would like to submit one! 

[tempestaurora]

WHUMPVEMBER #11: HYPOTHERMIA

i hope we’re all impressed that i’m still doing this and haven’t given up yet. This is because I’m thinking about Civil War again. AO3

Blue. Everything was tinged with blue.

Like sunlight on ice-

 The glint off the metal arm, the sunshine reflected in vibranium.

 -like the outfit of the superhero. The saviour. America’s answer to injustice and danger. Captain America. There was always ice where that man was concerned. Always cold, a separation, the inability to break through and see the real picture.

Or maybe he’d thawed the ice, just not for Tony. Just not for the world and their safety.

But for—

 He’s my friend. (So was I.)

 Captain America crashing into the water, into the ice and freezing there for seventy years. Father, Father, Father – Howard Stark searching and searching, telling tales to a young Tony, too wide-eyed to know what would become of the man in the ice and how his story would loop around his, inexplicable and inextricable.

There was a slither of Tony’s being that wished to go back in time and tell his younger self that he could hate Captain America all he wanted; he should use it as his very own shield, heft it high and carry it always, so when the good Rogers himself swung a punch, Tony would already be deflecting it.

There was ice in the story of Sergeant Barnes too; falling to his death – not death, not death, not death – off the side of a train, snow burying his body, arm torn from his torso. Was it snowing that night he killed Tony Stark’s parents? Mid December, country roads away from the city, Tony sitting by himself on Christmas day, alone, alone, alone.

Captain America and ice. And the way he was found in a block of it, melting and still alive. And the way they took down the Hydra base, covered in snow, where they met the twins and Ultron was born at last; finally possible, finally probable – oh look, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Murdering JARVIS, tearing his coding apart. Not Captain America’s fault, but Tony remembered the judgement there.

Then this. Then the way his suit was the only thing keeping his heart beating, sending out distress signals because there was nothing else to do but die.

 A shield, cracking through the arc reactor, the suit losing all power.

 It had to happen in the ice, too. In the place where the sun shone off it in blue; blue like Cap’s clothing, blue like the way he felt that Christmas morning, blue like the Tesseract and the glow of Loki’s sceptre as aliens poured out of the wormhole – oh, that was blue, too.

Blue like Tony’s lips, fingertips; like the way shivering felt. Blue like the spots that were forming behind his eyes, like the walls and the ground, like the sky – though that was more grey, now the clouds had banded together to cover the sun, finally realising that today was not a day for sun; there was nothing good about it.

He was in and out. There and not. The suit had emergency power to send out the calls, one after another. Vision. Rhodey. Happy. Pepper. Pepper. Pepper. Where was she? Oh, right – they were on a break and she’d never come for him in fucking Siberia.

It was his fault, likely, that she’d gone. He was supposed to stop making suits, was supposed to reinvest himself in their relationship, in the company – but there was always another threat around the corner, and this time it came in the form of Steve fucking Rogers, who’d shared meals with him, and lived with him, and had more than once been drunk by his side and so incredibly giddy-

He wasn’t supposed to be making suits still, but he had been, and Pepper had left and now he was falling asleep amid the ice of Siberia, a shield he didn’t even fucking want sitting by his side.

 My dad made that shield!

 He didn’t want anything his father had ever touched, including himself, including Steve Rogers, including the Avengers that had decided that Barnes was more important that the public-

No, scratch that. He wanted one thing. He wanted his Aunt Peggy, but she was six foot under and he hadn’t even gone to the funeral. He’d been trying to clean up Rogers’ mess, and Rogers was right there, carrying her coffin down the aisle and not at all wondering where Tony Stark, godson to the wonder woman of Peggy Carter, was.

He was in and out, still. There and not. One minute blinking into the cloud-covered sky and the next he was in a slumber he couldn’t help but awake from. He shot out of it each time; a shield ramming into his chest.

 I thought it was going to be my head.

 There was a figure, above him, red in hue and all he could think was thank god it’s not blue. It carried him, they carried him, his head tilting back, eyes drooping – then, he’d shudder. The Winter Soldier strangling the life from his mother. Captain America fighting with everything he had.

Tony hadn’t used half of his weapons. He’d gone fucking easy and he was the one left in the ice. Maybe he should’ve frozen there, been left there, been thawed out in a hundred years and been the new man out of time, but maybe there wouldn’t be another hundred years, because there was always something coming for Earth-

There was an endgame, a monster lurking in shadows, waiting to tear them apart for all they were worth.

And the Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes, were fractured, were split.

Tony had just wanted to bring them in quietly, save them from the hit squad that wouldn’t hesitate to shoot them dead. He’d just wanted to trust the people around him – and he had, until Natasha Romanoff showed she was still a double agent, no matter how she acted. No matter the long nights of insomnia they spent side by side, or the morning cups of coffee they inexplicably shared.

No matter what Tony gave them, or what he said, they were all waiting to turn on him.

 -

 He awoke with a start, the shield crashing into the arc reactor all over again behind his eyes. He was in a medbay; a heart monitor beeping somewhat steadily behind him. The door to his room was open and no one sat by his side.

Tony blinked through the sleep and sat up, hissing at the pain in his left arm – it was always the left arm – and reaching out to grab the chart sitting on his bedside table.

Half the words were in German, so he could guess where he’d been shipped back to – but the ones in English listed minor injuries, one after the other, then hypothermia. Tony huffed. That made sense, too, in its own stupid way.

That Captain America could leave him for dead in the tundra and all he would get is hypothermia and nightmare fuel to last a lifetime.

There was the sound of chattering from outside his room and Tony looked up, searching for it. This was likely a private hospital, or maybe part of a government building, so why did it sound like there was a child walking the halls?

Ah. Him. Tony watched Happy usher Peter Parker, the Spiderling, through the hall, the older man looking weary and worn. Peter was talking, rushed and happy, about something or other, when they looked over to see Tony sitting there in his bed.

Both fell to a stop outside the door, and Tony could see the worry in Happy’s eyes and the confusion in Peter’s. Most of all, he could see the hesitance in stepping into the room.

For some reason, Tony made the decision for him. “Hey, kid.”

Peter’s face changed expression, just slightly. “Hey, Mr Stark!” he said, entering. Happy rolled his eyes, following him in, and immediately taking the chart from Tony’s hands to have a look over it, as if he hadn’t already read it a hundred times. “Are you feeling better? Happy said you got a bit injured.”

“Yeah, yeah I’m alright now. What about you? That was a hell of a fight you put up.” He didn’t know why he was even talking to the kid, let alone starting up a real conversation. Maybe he was starved of positive attention. Maybe his girlfriend, the love of his life, had left him, and maybe his only friends had all betrayed him, and maybe his best friend in the world had fallen and lost the use of his legs-

Maybe there was only a handful of people on the face of the planet who could’ve provided Tony with positive attention, and all of them had left him bar the ones in this room. And Happy was being silent, regretful, maybe – but Peter.

Peter didn’t know half the shit that weighed Tony down daily. He was still looking at Tony Stark like he was a superhero, not a failure of a boyfriend and an Avenger.

“Oh, I’m good. I had a few bruised bones or something, but they’re all healed up now.” Tony raised his eyebrows at that and Peter elaborated: “Enhanced healing. I’ve got this one on my jaw, still, but otherwise I’m good.” Peter tilted his head and Tony saw the purple mark, already mostly healed before nodding, satisfied.

“That’s good, kid. Thanks for the help out there the other day.”

“It’s no problem, Mr Stark! I mean I fought with the Avengers! How cool is that? And the suit’s amazing, Mr Stark – it’s so much better than what I used to wear, and-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said with a smile, waving him off. The fact he was smiling at all was a miracle, in Tony’s opinion. “Glad you like it. Hey, Hap, are we heading back to the States soon?”

“I was gonna stick the kid on the private jet in about an hour, yeah.”

Tony nodded. “I’d rather be anywhere but here.”

Happy nodded like he understood and excused himself to find the doctor who would discharge Tony with enough pestering. Peter glanced nervously at Happy’s retreating back before looking over to Tony.

“How old are you again?” Tony asked, noticing how young he looked.

“Fourteen,” Peter replied. “But I’m almost fifteen.”

Tony nodded, blowing out a breath. “You don’t tell your hot Aunt about this, okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mr Stark – I’m not gonna tell her about Spiderman. She’d ground me for a century and force me to eat her cooking for the rest of my life.” He cracked a smile and Tony exhaled one of his own.

“That Walnut and Date Loaf was not great.”

Peter pulled a face. “I keep trying to tell her but she won’t listen. The other day she got so excited because she hadn’t burned dinner and when we started eating we realised she hadn’t burned it because the chicken was still raw.”

Peter wasn’t blue, part of Tony’s subconscious realised. He may have had blue walls in his bedroom, that blue jacket with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows – but he was not blue. He was not Captain America. He wasn’t Iron Man, either, despite the red focal points of his suit. (Tony wondered what it meant, absently, that the Spiderman suit was coloured both Iron Man red and Captain America blue – would it mean he’d fall into the same traps both of them had triggered, or would he dodge them and become greater than them both? He hoped for the latter.)

But Peter wasn’t blue, so Tony felt himself smiling despite the hypothermia, despite the pain in his left arm, despite the way he couldn’t stop seeing the shield swooping down to catch him in the throat – no, the chest. Would Cap have ever gone for the kill?

They took the private jet back to the States, concocted a lie on Peter’s camera to serve as an alibi, and Tony let the warmth of Peter’s nervous chatter slowly push the bad thoughts out of his mind. When his head was clearer, he could see solutions, unfolding in front of him. He could see Spiderman protecting Queens, could see fixes to the Accords and a set of high-tech braces for Rhodey’s legs. Could see a way to keep tabs on the missing Avengers, a way to keep the press at bay, a way to maybe win Pepper back and never let her go again.

Peter chattered, as not-blue as a person could be, and Tony closed his eyes against it. There was darkness, behind his eyelids; a backdrop for whatever horrors his subconscious wanted to send him in his sleep.

Tony didn’t have a lot of things to be thankful for in that moment, but he had two for sure: the constant chatter of a kid who didn’t know any better, and the knowledge that there was no ice in Manhattan.

[windy-wooo]

“Oh my Stars! Come in, come in!!”

Yasuo was soaked almost from head to toe, shivering under his coat and trying not to chatter his teeth so much. The thing about snow? It’s just frozen water. Trudging through miles of it over the course of a whole day wasn’t his best idea yet. Staying at someone’s home became necessary.

“Th-thank you, lady...” he mumbled between trembling breaths, thankful he’d knocked on the door of an older woman. For once luck was on his side. “‘bout to f-freeze out th-there...”

“Well look at you! Such a fine coat, soaked to the lining! Come come come, sit by the fire before you collapse in my doorway! I’ll make you some tea.”

Luck or pure chance someone was willing to take in a stranger on a cold evening. Once he peeled off his wet coat and as much of his clothes as he felt comfortable with (though she gave him a blanket to warm up with), Yasuo sat in front of her fire and grunted as the pain prickled from his seized and frozen limbs. His legs felt ready to cramp from the pace he’d kept, sometimes having to dig through a foot or more of powder in spots on the road. Gods, he wished he could have waited til spring...

“Drink it slowly, sir” the woman cautioned him as she placed a hot cup of tea beside him. “Don’t want to shock your stomach! What’s your name?”

“Hayate...” he breathed out, trying to calm his insides as well. “And you, lady?”

“Oh ho ho... You can just call me Gūmā Oha. Everyone around here does.”

“Gūmā?” he quirked a brow, “You don’t look old enough for a title like that, if I might say.”

The woman laughed sheepishly, like a young girl being flattered for the first time in her life. “Careful now, young man! I’m a widow, you know?”

“Ah. Forgive me.”

“What if I choose not to?” she laughed again, “It’s alright. You couldn’t know... He was a good man, my husband. But since the war... everyone has a story like that these days, hm?”

“Mmh... I suppose you’re right.”

“If I saw you wearing red I might have slammed the door right in your face, Stars forgive me! But those... Nokshins haven’t really come this far north, eh? We’re pretty lucky. But we trade it with all this snow every winter!”

The auntie went on talking for what felt like the better part of an hour, rambling about the weather and the mountains and her late husband and the children she never got to have. Looking around her humble home he could see she lived a very small and simple life. Corners were crowded with memories; little charms and knick-knacks and worn papers with unfamiliar script written on them. Probably temple mantras or funeral writs. Paper ribbons with little tears and faded colors and wool yarn that sat in a basket. Perhaps she dabbled in making small clothes for a living? Waxen wool was good for the cold and wet weather.

“Such a thick coat will take all night to dry anyway...” she finally noted, pinching and rubbing the fabric between her practiced fingers. “You’ve been to the villages near the mountain? I recognize the work.”

“Mmh. Just passing through.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t stay there until things thawed out! You young people are just too crazy, you think you’ll live forever!”

“Heh... Maybe so. But then I wouldn’t enjoy your hospitality, Gūmā Oha.”

“Oh, you!~” she gently slapped the nape of his neck as she passed him, setting up a space for him to sleep already. “As long as you don’t cause a real fuss, you’re welcome to stay awhile. It’ll be nice having a man around the house.”

“I won’t burden you for long” he promised, “I have to head further south as soon as I can.”

“Eh? What’s your hurry?” Clearly, she sounded disappointed.

“To get away from the cold, for one thing” he chuckled. “Otherwise... I’m hoping to meet with a friend.”

“Mmmh... I swear, youth is wasted on the young” she whined a little - but it was good-natured. “Well, if you change your mind it’s no trouble to me. There isn’t much to do out here when the weather’s like this. But I’ll insist on making you a boxed lunch before you go.”

He chuckled. Now he knew why everyone called her Gūmā.

[tysonrunningfox]

Bickering Brothers

ROLF IS HERE.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  ROLF IS HERE AND I WOULD DIE FOR HIM.  (No really, he’s my unexpected fave who came from the back of the pack and stole my heart)

There’s like some feret too and arvelia drama but whatevs, it’s about Rolf for me.

Tumblr | AO3 (Will update these in a bit)

The sun continues to rise and set.  Snow continues to pile up and a handful of wild dragons trickle in from the West, skinny and crowding around feeding stations.  Aurelia continues to sneak in late at night and I hear it better because I don’t sleep and when I do, it’s not well.  

The chief holds Mom’s hand at breakfast.  She laughs at his jokes, looking at me out of the corner of her eye like she’s worried I’m going to hit him.  I would if I thought it would matter, even if I just thought it might make me feel better, but honestly, the face centered horror I used to feel when I looked at the chief is dimmer than ever because we look less alike than we ever have.  I don’t think I’m capable of smiling that much and that means no one is going to confuse us any time soon.  

They’re sharing a bedroom again except in the morning, Mom doesn’t look pissed off.  She doesn’t look any different than she used to, back in a smaller house with a bigger breakfast table.  

There’s almost a week that’s so frighteningly routine, I’m actually scared I just dropped into some permanent, stable existence that obviously shouldn’t have anything to do with me.  I’m almost relieved when Aurelia stomps in before dinner one night, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and avoiding eye contact with the chief, who looks up from a treaty as soon as the door slams open.  

“What’s wrong?”  He asks, and it’s like he actually thinks she’ll tell him.  

“Nothing,” she pauses in front of the fire, warming hands that look so cold they’re almost blue for a second before turning towards the stairs.  

“Doesn’t look like nothing.” The chief looks at me for help and I stand up, holding my arms out and testing to see if she’ll accept a hug or if she’ll shove me off for trying.  I’m almost taken aback when she lets me hug her, pressing a freezing face into my chest for a second and making a low, frustrated sound that’s more growl than sob.  

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?”  I set my hands on her shoulders and take a step back so that I can see her face.  “Also, you’re frozen solid, will you please stay by the fire until I know you get to keep all your fingers?”  

“Now I know it’s serious,” the chief chuckles like he’s trying to break the tension and I glare at him, “Eret said please.”  

“Arvid and I just had a stupid fight,” she blurts it out and sniffs again, wiping her face on her shirt and avoiding looking at the chief.  “I—I don’t know why that just happened.”  

“Uh,” I take a blanket off of the stack by the hearth, busying myself with tucking it around her shoulders.  She’s shivering and Bang is concerned but hanging back the few feet he’s learned to do with her.  “That’s no fun.”  

“He wouldn’t just, you know, bring up whatever was upsetting him in the moment.  He had to let it build up over days and days and—he’s so stubborn, why’s he have to be so fucking stubborn?”  She rants for a second before her teeth start chattering too hard to talk through.  

“It’s a Hofferson thing,” the chief just has to jump in and say something and now that he’s surrounded by the sadness proof armor of Mom’s renewed affection for him, my glare appears to do absolutely nothing.  

“This is a private conversation,” I snap.  

“I’m just trying to help—”

“It’s like once he decided that some bone-headed thing was the truth, nothing I said even mattered!” Aurelia sits down so quickly it’s more of a fall, like her legs thawed enough to move and suddenly couldn’t hold her weight anymore.  “And I didn’t know it was coming!  I thought everything was fine and then he was all pissed off at the world—”

“Hey, it’s ok,” I sit down beside her and put my arm over her shoulders, glaring at the chief again when he moves like he’s going to walk over here instead of melting into the floor where he would be gone and actually maybe helping the situation.  “Did you walk all the way back over here?  It’s freezing outside, I don’t care how mad he was, he should have flown you back over.”  

“I didn’t want him to.” She wipes her nose on the blanket.

“Not like I’m going to sleep with that one later, but ok.”  

“Not while he was looking at me like that.”  She glowers at the chief like she didn’t realize he was still listening and I try to gesture him towards the bedroom.  

“You can talk to me—” The chief tries and I talk over him.

“Probably not worth freezing to death over,” I rub her arm as another wave of shivering passes through her, “just for future reference.”  

“He’d feel really guilty about it, I’d bet.”  She snorts and it’s miserable and the chief is still just staring at us like if we’d just let his infinite wisdom in, all of our problems would disappear.  

“Can I ask what the fight was about?”  The chief turns his chair to give us his full attention and I’m rethinking that thing about hitting him not making me feel better.  

“Sure,” Aurelia chirps, more furious than sad for a split second.  “Doesn’t mean I’ll tell you.”  

“I’m just trying to help.”

“I don’t want your help, I don’t want your ‘I told you so’—”

“I wasn’t going to say ‘I told you so’.”  The chief smiles and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he actually looks kind of empathetic. “I didn’t tell you so, you’d have to talk to me for there to be things that I’d told you.”  

“You’ve never liked him.”

“I like Eret’s beautiful face and the two have been mutually exclusive in the past,” the chief doesn’t usually direct this at her, this eager to please persona that drives me straight up the nearest wall, but I can feel Aurelia giving into it slightly. Maybe she’s already tired from fighting once today or maybe she just can’t quite say no to the idea of her dad trying with her.  Either way, I want to tell him where to shove his sudden interest.  

“Don’t make me blush.” I roll my eyes, willing Aurelia to stay strong against undoubtedly bad fatherly advice.  

“But if you like him enough to be this upset about fighting with him, all I’m going to say is that after you cool down—and warm up, ironically, and Eret is right about freezing to death, I don’t know how you go outside without a dragon—”

“It’s called wool,” I cut him off, “Bang isn’t fire breathing and I do just fine.”  

“Anyway.  If you’re this upset about fighting with him, you should go back and talk to him.  And keep talking to him until you figure it out.”  The chief waits for a second for her to respond and Aurelia stares at her hands for a minute, spinning the silver ring she wanted me to fix last summer and proving once and for all that all her fingers still work.  

“I didn’t ask for your advice.”  She’s not as mad as I want her to be.  

“I’m your dad, you don’t have to.”  He sighs, “and another un-prompted tidbit.  Don’t wait a couple of decades to do it.”  

Aurelia snorts.  The chief looks really satisfied with himself and this is just another interaction I don’t want to get used to.  

00000

Aurelia goes back to her old kind of absence, so I assume she and Arvid must talk it out.  I don’t ask and I don’t think the chief asks, but he’s a little nicer to her.  Or at least they don’t fight in the next week, they just sort of peacefully exist next to each other.  It’s weirder than Mom and the chief sitting next to each other and talking in low, happy voices.  Weirder than the fact Mom hasn’t noticed that I’m not really talking to her or if she has, she’s assuming it’s something I should work out on my own.  

I finally get that free afternoon that I promised Rolf almost three weeks after I promised it and I leave Bang with Stoick, who is almost constantly whining about dragon selection being delayed, even though he wouldn’t be old enough this year even if it weren’t.  I’ve got the weird feeling that if I leave Bang at the house, it’s like another set of eyes keeping track of things there and it’s not like he minds Stoick using him as a jungle gym.  

I know that Rolf was building his house just south of the Ingerman house, but I’ve never actually been there.  I wasn’t exactly part of his ideal house-warming committee and that makes it stranger that I’m going over there now, by myself, with an intent almost completely opposite to familial obligation. But at the same time, if Rolf agrees with me about anything, that means I’ve still got a shot for other people to agree with me about the dragons. Well, other people than Fuse and kind of Smitelout and my siblings.  

It’s almost annoying when Hotgut flies above me, coming from the vague direction of the Thorston house and Fuse lands her beside me.  

“Are you actually reading my mind?”  I laugh, “because I think of you and you magically appear.”  

She blinks at me just long enough that I feel like I can’t even comprehend what an idiot she thinks I am.

“You were thinking of me?”

“Yeah, I’m just uh…as weird as it sounds, I’m going to Rolf’s place to help him catalog some stuff about the dragons we’re seeing less of and it made me think that if I can convince him I might know some things, I should be able to convince people other than you now.”  

“Oh.”  She clucks and Hotgut starts walking beside me, pausing just long enough to snuffle against my pockets for treats.  “Don’t give her anything, I’ve got something volatile cooking in there.”  

“I don’t have anything,” I scratch her knobby cheek, “unless she can’t have love.”  

“She can have love, that won’t affect her stomach contents.”  Fuse sounds like she almost knows how hilarious that is and I look at her to try and see whether she’s joking or not.  She stares at me another weird second before clearing her throat. “I was starting to think you were hiding from me again, I haven’t seen you around like at all.”  

“Ah, yeah,” I rest my hand on Hotgut’s head, scratching idly, “I guess I’ve kind of dusted off my whole, Eret the Absentee Hermit routine.”  

“That doesn’t sound real.”

“I mean, I don’t have it written down but it’s a familiar set of…you know, antics.”  I feel weird looking at her while talking, like she’s going to mention out loud how stupid I sound and like I really can’t take that sort of commentary right now.  “I keep telling myself that I’m going to whine to you less, but in the interest of you not hating me for being even more annoying than normal, I…my parents are back together.”  

“What?”  She sounds like it’s actually news and I look back at her, “as in your Mom and Dad?  Not the chief or…”  

“No, oh Gods no, I’m not that…” I pause myself before I say lucky, because there’s no way that could feasibly happen while I’m still…alive.  Or a concept, in general, really.  “I don’t have anything that wild to report.  My Mom and the chief are—to quote Aurelia, it’s no longer a political sham marriage.”  

“I mean…that’s convenient.” She’s not quite as blunt as normal and I wonder what about how I’m standing made her think she couldn’t be. She’s right, of course, I probably would have cried on her or something, but I still don’t necessarily like her knowing it without me telling her.  

“What?”  

“Given that they’re already married, it’s a convenient decision on their parts.”  

“Yeah, really efficient.” I gesture behind us at the great hall, “really saving the village another fancy feast.  I’m sure they’re doing it for economical reasons.”  I laugh, “you want to know the worst part?”

“I figure you’re going to tell me even if I don’t.”  It’s Fuse level teasing and she’s still looking at me and I know that she doesn’t waste focus, so I take it as a joke.  

“You know me so well.” I laugh and she blushes a weird, patchy blush that makes me wonder if she’s just cold.  “Arvid guessed it.  Weeks ago, apparently.  How the Hel did he know?”  

“I have no idea.”  

“Me neither.  It’s dumb.”  I see what must be Rolf’s house ahead and pause, “that’s my brother’s house, right?  I’ve never actually been.”  

“Yeah,” she shrugs, “you’ve really got to talk to him today?”  

“I told him I’d come by when I had a free afternoon and that hasn’t happened since.  Why?”  

“I’m on the way to test that baffle out again on a little island I found up North and I guess it’d be more…informative if you came.”  She’s still patchy looking and I almost offer her my coat.  She’s not small like Aurelia and she has a dragon but still, flying over the water isn’t warm in summer, let alone now.  

“How could I make it more informative?  I don’t know anything about anything.”

“That’s not true,” she frowns slightly, “and you make it easier for me to put things together. You make them make sense in reality and not just in my head.”  

“That’s a compliment.” I step a little closer to her, leaning on Hotgut’s shoulder and looking around for the baffle. “And where is that giant hunk of iron?”  

“Oh, I just took two trips. I stashed it in a cave.”  She laughs even though that’s not a joke.  

“Is that why you look so cold?”  

“What?”  She cocks her head, “I’m not cold.  I’m sitting on a gronckle that’s heating up about half a bushel of spark bomb powder.”  

“Does that make her warm?” I put my hand under Hotgut’s armpit and pull it away almost instantly, my fingers grazing over Fuse’s boot. “Yep, yep it does.  I see why you named her Hotgut.”  

“Why did you think I was cold?”  

“Your face.”  I clear my throat because it’s suddenly dry, probably a side effect of hanging out so close to a dragon that’s boiling all the moisture out of the air.  “It’s kind of red—” She reaches up to touch it and leaves an oily gray smudge across her cheek.  “Well, now it’s not red, it’s soot colored with a touch of saddle grease.”  

She frowns, “you tried to make me do that on purpose, didn’t you?”  

“No, I didn’t,” I take a step back because Hotgut’s hot guts are starting to make my own jacket feel too heavy, “but I’m glad you did.  You never quite look like yourself without something flammable on your face.”  

“I thought you had to go talk to Rolf,” she’s trying to look irritated, I think, but it’s not really sticking because of some combination of the corner of her mouth twitching and a new singed part of the end of her hair.  

“I do.  Have fun testing the baffle,” I step backwards so that she can take off, “and I’m still sorry about forgetting to make it, but don’t forget to tell me how it goes.  Even though that would be fitting revenge.”  

“You having to talk to Rolf is revenge enough.  Drop it with the baffle thing, seriously, I’m over it.”  

“You know Rolf?”  

“He’s married to my cousin,” she says it like it’s obvious and I feel stupid, “I probably deal with him more than you.”  

“I always forget that.”

She waits another moment before taking off and after she does, I shiver, already missing Hotgut’s warmth.  The sudden chill makes it easier to walk the last little bit to Rolf’s house and knock on the door, even though it practically mounts when he opens it, staring at me for a second like he can’t imagine why I’m here.  

“It’s my first free afternoon, I’ve been busy.”  

“Not like I have trail mapping to get done by tomorrow or anything,” he brushes me off, gesturing me into his house.  “And could you at least leave your boots at the door?  They’re filthy and my son is at the age where he puts everything in his mouth.”  

I always forget I’m half an uncle.  Given the frosty welcome, I’m not sure I blame myself, but there’s a distinct sting of realizing there’s another family member that doesn’t want anything to do with me, at least by extension.  

“If today doesn’t work—”

“Since you’re obviously here, I can’t accuse you of forgetting about me, so I have to assume that the chief really is keeping you this busy.”  Rolf sits down at a table covered in scribbled on scraps of parchment and neatly drawn maps.  “Gods know he needs someone helping him run things.  If only he knew the paperwork was part of running things…”  

“I thought I was here to talk about dragons,” I toe out of my boots and shut the door behind me, “but bitching about the chief, I can do that too.”  

I try to think back to the last time we talked. I don’t know if I count that night when everything changed, because he was drunk and Arvid was still trying to protect me.  All of that feels hazy now, part of that life that Mom’s trying so hard to pretend never happened, and I suddenly want to cling to it.  That feeling that Rolf belonged in that old Hofferson house, taking up all the air with his gloom.  

“The boulder class pages are surprisingly up to date, I shouldn’t be shocked given that Fishlegs wrote most of them, but the tidal class pages are abysmal.”  He sets a thick stack of a mix of ancient and new parchment in front of me.  The oldest of it shows evidence of being un-bound, one edge of them coated with glue and stuck slightly together.  The front page shows a slightly inaccurate sketch of a Thunderdrum and a list of qualities that only take up half the second column.  

“Well, to start, the tail is wrong, there’s an additional fin here at the top of the tail—”

“I don’t need to hear it, just start fixing it.”  He pushes a few graphite sticks and a brush and closed ink pot towards me.  “I know you think you know everything but this might take research.”  

“I don’t think I know everything.”  I pick up the paintbrush and dip the end of it in the ink.  Adding the extra little fin feels official and I get a weird shadow of what it would have felt like for Rolf to try with me the way that I want to try with Stoick.

“Whatever.”  

“I know I don’t know a lot of things,” I start tracing a harder line around the drawing.  The old parchment wicks up the ink and it dries quickly, barely smudging when I accidentally brush it.  I used to draw all the time as a kid, or when it was too cold to go outside.  Even more before I got Bang and had more exciting things to do.  

It reminds me of home the way nothing else has and that makes me feel bitter.  Tired.  Like I’m so sick of thinking about everyone else that I can’t take it.  

“I grew up not knowing anything, that kind of thing eventually leaves a mark, even on a skull as thick as mine.”  

“The chief’s life not living up to your lofty expectation?”  

“I don’t have lofty expectations.”  I blow over the dark outlined drawing, “that’s what everyone else has for me. You included, since you seem to think I know enough about dragons to fix all of this.”  

“I know that you’re the only one saying out loud what I know to be true,” he stands up halfway, looking at a map from a couple of feet away before nodding and deeming it good enough, “that something with the dragons is changing and knowledge is always the way to deal with change.”  

“That’s not quite a compliment.”  I cock my head and start reading through the bullet point information on Thunderdrums. About half of it’s wrong.  “Do I cross things out if they’re wrong or—”

“Here,” he slides me a small roll of parchment that’s sticky on one side like someone spread it with monstrous nightmare venom and let it dry gummy.  Not great if there’s a fire, but otherwise, a quick way to hold things together.  “Just paste it over the corrections.  We want to preserve as much old parchment as possible.”  

“That’s a lot of trust here, I could be messing all of this up.”  

“Even I can admit that you’ve never done that on purpose.”  He moves the top map he’s working on off of the stack.  “Trouble just followed you.”  

“Still does.”  I start writing corrections over the new surface, pressing the paler parchment down with careful fingers.  This reminds me of working at the forge, honestly, and I miss it all over again.  “It keeps getting me as I…assess the rubble that was the family we both happened to grow up in that…well, that you don’t really feel like my brother.”  

“That’s because I’m not. I’m your half-brother.”  Rolf looks up at me briefly only to scowl when I meet his eyes, like it’s my fault he got suckered into basic manners.  “And I never really thought of you as a brother.”

“Yeah.  That whole…angry, post-paternity comment about how I didn’t ask to be born still applies.”  

“I don’t really remember that night.”  

“You were drunk.”  I start writing more after correcting what’s there and my handwriting looks right on the page.  It’s older than the chief, kept by someone further back, and I wonder if I’m related to them too.  There’s so much lost to the paperwork, isn’t there?  The paperwork I don’t trust because I’m here where I am now, half a chief half of the time.  “Mom’s back with the chief.”  

“They got married last year, I believe you were there.  Should I not be trusting you?”  

“They weren’t then. It was kind of a political sham. It’s not now.”  

“It was never a political sham.”  He looks at me levelly, in that utterly assholish way that makes me think he’s seeing me now and has always seen me as exactly who I am.  

Half Mom, half the chief, probably worse for both of them.  Not another chief or a last hope or someone destined to be something more.

Here, I’m just a mistake.

“Do you have a drink?”

“You’re not my little brother who I’m going to hand hold through a sloppy rite of passage,” he holds up what he’s working on, “that looks like the North-west coast, right? You’ve probably flown off more than I have.”  

“The point goes a little further out.”  

“I’ll go scout it out tomorrow.”  

“If you want to do a bunch of extra work, sure.”  I shrug and when he glares at me, it feeds into the perverse brand of fun that I’m managing to have right now.  Rolf isn’t afraid to be an asshole to me.  Being one to him doesn’t carry the weight of responsibility.  

I can’t hurt him if he doesn’t care.  And no one has ever cared less.  

“Unlike following the chief around, this is a job that has to be done right the first time.”  

“Likely story,” I hold up the next page of the tidal class section of the book, “scauldrons don’t look like that.  What is this? Half a whale grafted onto a monstrous nightmare neck?”  

“These are older than our history of dragon training, there are bound to be some mistakes.”  

“Like being chief, ok, I get it.”  

“Yes, being chief seems to inevitably end in very loud, very irritating mistakes.”  He glares at me the way he always used to when he knew he was right, even if he wasn’t, and he wasn’t willing to talk about it anymore. Somehow, this feels more like bickering across my childhood dinner table more than anything since it all fell apart.

“Mom keeps giving the chief these…mushy faces.  I don’t like it.  No one else seems to think it’s a problem.”  

“I thought you came here to work,” he extends the point on his map like I told him to, “and that’s disgusting, I didn’t need to know that.”  

“Neither did I.  And my loud, selfish self isn’t very good at swallowing pain to provide for others’ happiness.”  I shrug, “another Haddock trait.”  

He grunts.  We work silently for long enough that I get the scauldron drawing fixed and start on those bullet points.  So much of this seems like common sense and I hate the idea that it might not be soon.  That if dragons don’t start coming back or worse, they keep leaving, suddenly these pages left behind will be the surest evidence that they were ever here.  

“You don’t call him dad.”

“Who?” I look up, swearing when I drip ink onto my sleeve and it soaks in immediately.  It’s a new shirt, but hey, like I said, we’re rich. Or something.  

“Your father.”  

“The chief isn’t my father.” I shrug, “I know that he didn’t get your authorized approval first but…but your dad raised me.  He’s still my dad.”  

“Until you were sixteen.”

“Running the numbers, that’s significant.”

“I have to get this done for tomorrow.”  He gestures at the map again and I sigh.  

“Can I ask you something?”

“No.”  

“Have you ever enjoyed a single, individual thing?  Like ever?” I set the charcoal stick down and lean forward on my elbows.  He glares at me.  It’s irritated and real and the most like a sibling-type stare I’ve felt in a while.

Aurelia feels like she’s trying to catch up to me and it always feels like she’s close.  She feels like a version of me I don’t wholly understand. Stoick feels small and fragile. Arvid is…Ingrid is gone.  Rolf is staring at me like I’m flicking spitballs into his breakfast and I can’t hurt him.  I’m not responsible for him.  He’s not trying to guide me.  

“Of course I’ve enjoyed things,” he scoffs, “just not while I’m trying to work.”  

“Like what kinds of things, specifically?”  

“Nothing in your usual proximity, I’m sure.”  

“Dragon racing?”  I start trying to think of things typically liked by most people.  

“Boring.”  

“Thawfest?”  

“I don’t need to sit around all day watching Ingrid win to know she did it.”  

“Ingrid?”  Saying her name hurts.  She would like this game, she’d jump in along with me, asking things I haven’t thought of.  

“She left.” Rolf, of all people, gets that too.  

“Dessert?”  

“Used to,” he looks miserably at the dusty war hammer hanging on the wall by the door, “until the wife stopped liking how it stuck to me now that I’ve stopped training.”  

“You don’t like fighting?”

“Not when the other person is trying to win.”  

“My beard?  I’m thinking it’s an improvement.”  

He grimaces at me, “that’s on purpose?”  

“So’s the hair.”  

“Ugh.”  

“There’s got to be something you’ll admit to not hating.”  I look at the page in front of me for a second before writing another fact about scauldrons down.  I try to think of something neutral, something generally liked, something harder to hate than dessert or dragon racing.  Or Ingrid, because admittedly, she is an acquired taste and she did leave. “Your house?  Your son?  The concept of being a father?  The family you married into?”  I sit up straight, the thought popping into my head right when it needs to for the second time today.  “Fuse?”

“My house is creaky. My son puts everything in his mouth and I’d really, really hate him to choke.  That and the entire concept of being a father keep me up at night.  I married into a family of crazy people.” He shrugs, “Fuse is a good kid.”  

“She is?  I mean, yeah, she is.”  I nod.    

“She’s one of the only people at an Ingerman-Thorston family dinner who can hold a conversation about anything that deserves to be written down.”  

“I mean, fair, but she’s eighteen now.  I don’t know if you can call her a kid.”  

“Anyone younger than me is a kid, anyone older than me is washed up.”  He snorts to himself and I frown at him.  

“Wait—”

“It seems like that’s all we’ve been doing.  I thought you wanted to help.”  

“I do and I will,” I lean forward slightly, “but was that a kind of Rolf version of a joke?”  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  

“It was funny.”  I nod, “I knew I got it from somewhere.”  

He doesn’t have an answer for that besides an unnecessarily prolonged grunt and I hate that seeing him made me feel better.  I don’t hate feeling better, though, even if it’s temporary.  

[iamwhelmed]

Win One, Have Two: Chapter 8

Hey guys! Just a quick note to let you know that school has started up again for me, and so has an increased workload. I’m concerned about how I’m going to manage my time, but I care a whole lot about this fanfic, and I want you guys to know that, even if I have to skip an update or two until next break, I’m going to do my very best to keep the chapters coming!

On AO3

On Fanfiction.net

“Come on, Red. Give me something to work with, here.”

Isaac bit down on both his lips, a nervous tick, one Hardy picked up on. He was watching him from across the training mat, legs bent, hands at the defensive, and if the grin itching to grow on his face got any bigger, Isaac might have felt somewhat unsettled-- ya know, unless he could use his powers, which he wasn’t about to, especially when this sparring match was going unsupervised.

He’d woken that morning to Hardy shoving his face into the smooth fabric of his nighty, nose jabbing into his stomach uncomfortably close to his belly-button, and an empty space where Clara usually laid at his other side. Her imprint was there, but the arm she’d usually taken governance of was free and belonging entirely to him for the morning. He’d roused Hardy from his beauty sleep and they’d wandered around for a bit, aimlessly. Miss Rose, her mug of coffee, and her cryptic-looking book of the day were also missing from her usual spot at the kitchen counter, and Crawford had locked himself in the library (actually, it might have been an office? Which was worse. He couldn’t tell with the mess of books and loose leaf papers everywhere). The dojo was theirs for the time being, and after they’d scarfed down whatever they could find in the pantry (Hardy took to a package of mini cookies, and Isaac found some rice cakes), Hardy had all but gripped him by the scruff of his shirt and tugged him to the designated sparring floor.

“Just show me what you’ve got!”

“You don’t wanna see what I’ve got.”

Hardy’s demeanor shifted, relaxed, smirk shifting to a toothed purr. His eyebrows raised and fell. “Oh yes I do.”

What? They were talking about sparring, right? Why did he-- oh. His cheeks flushed. “S-sh-shut up! Don’t s-say things like that! Wh-what are you even--?”

“Well maybe I’d shut up if you’d squared up!”

Isaac closed his eyes, stood silent and still and simply breathed. He’d seen Isabel do it in the past, a few times, when a mission got tough, when she had to focus on her drive and not her bloodlust. He took that memory, let it flash before his closed eyes like a guide. He could see her body freeze, tense, fists clench as her aura crackled between the gaps in her fingers. Like fire, like flame, it’d consumed her hands, her arms, acting less like the colorful gas it was, more like a spirit at the edge of unbridled power. He opened his eyes.

Hardy was smiling, like a friend, like they weren’t getting ready to duke it out, then tensed as he had before, clenched hands raised in the defensive. “Now we’re talking. Hit me.” His deep emerald aura circled around his shoulders, but it wasn’t concentrated, not that way Isaac’s was.

He leapt at Hardy, one fist raised, let a small surge of energy collect at the flat of his fist. He was fast-- Hardy was just faster. Isaac blinked and he was gone. Wait, what? His punch fell limp through the air, hit nothing where he should have hit something. His brain didn’t catch up until a small tap to the back of his head sent him stumbling a few feet forward. Isaac squeaked, and twisted around on his heel, shifting his other foot to catch his fall. He raised one hand to his head and set his eyes on Hardy, who was snickering at him from where he’d once stood, hands in his pockets. He looked innocent. “Hey! Was that really necessary?”

“What? It was a love tap!” Hardy winked.

Isaac bit down on what would have probably been an undignified sound, pink cheeks flaring red. “It was an insult to injury!”

Hardy shrugged, then raised one hand to wave him closer. Once more.

Isaac took the invitation and lunged again. This time, he’d focus on watching Hardy, not hitting him. He readied his fist as before, steadying the stream of lightning itching at the tips of his curled fingers. He threw the punch, Hardy ducked, but this time Isaac was prepared to follow. “Gotcha!” He grinned, following Hardy’s step to the side with his other fist-- might not have been quite as powered as the fake-out, but still enough to land a good hit.

Hardy gripped that fist in one hand.

Isaac’s eyes widened, and he raised his knee to Hardy’s side, only to find himself latched on both sides of his body. Their noses brushed. Hardy was grinning at him, wincing all the same, but grinning. Too close, too close, too close--! Isaac, calm down. He’s having a hard time holding you, right? You can break out of this. “Hey, Red.”

“Stop” Isaac’s nose twitched “calling me that!”

“Would you prefer Strawberry?”

“Shut up!”

His other fist wasn’t powered up anymore, wasn’t cracking with electricity, but his aura still collected there, still flared, and Hardy only had two hands-- he just needed to swing. He took his other hand and aimed for the stomach. Don’t dodge! Isaac kept his eyes on Hardy, squinting but never blinking as his other fist came upon its target. Hardy blinked and looked down, not soon enough, and hissed when Isaac’s punch landed-- but he could have been more hurt. I’m weaker for some reason. Why? Their eyes met, and before Isaac knew it, his back was to the floor, and Hardy had a knee at his chest, towering over him. “I’m impressed you managed to land a hit on me.” Isaac tried to move his wrists, but found both pinned by Hardy’s hands. All at once, he was reminded that a fist-fight with Hardy was probably the equivalent of a fist-fight with Ed-- he had more raw power, but they were trained, molded. He was somehow still learning. “You use electricity, huh? That’s pretty cool.”

“Hardy,” he cringed at the strain in his voice. “You’re a- a jerk. H-has anyone… told you that?”

He chuckled. “All the time.”

Then he paused, brows furrowed, and glanced down at his knee, still lodged into Isaac’s abdomen. “Hey, dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you… like, in pain?”

“A great amount, yes.”

“Ah.”

The color drained from Hardy’s face, once wide-toothed, playful grin falling. He moved his leg. Isaac glanced down, trying to see exactly what had caused such a sudden change-- well, blood would certainly do that.

Oh. Oh crap. Blood!

Isaac gaped, body freezing as deep red soaked his shirt, seeping through the seams, dieing the blue stripes an even deeper purple. Hardy’s knee was covered in it, bend of his jeans soaked. Of course he’d been feeling weak earlier… he still hadn’t healed completely. Hardy screeched and jumped up, hands at either side of his head, apologizing and apologizing, eyes wide, moving as if his body had frozen and was thawing under the heat of panic. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I completely forgot about your stitches! Ah!”

Isaac would have sat up, would have told him that, while he was annoyed, he didn’t blame him for forgetting, but his abdomen felt like it was tearing itself apart, which it literally, probably, was. He grunted and raised both arms to cover it, stop the bleeding. It wasn’t as bad as it was when it was fresh, but it sure hurt plenty, more likes a dull knife dragging across his open wound and less like a chainsaw just there all the time.

“What’s all of this racket?”

“Crawford!” Hardy was practically leaping up and down in his frenzy. “I-Isaac! Help Isaac! I didn’t realize--!”

There was a heavy, gruff sigh, and then heavier footsteps against the polished wood of the living room, then the sound of sticky steps as Crawford stepped onto the mat. Isaac yelped as he was hoisted-- yes, hoisted-- over a very broad shoulder, right where the wound was. “Ow!”

“Stop complainin’ or I’ll give you somethin’ to complain about.”

Isaac’s face continued to contort following every degree of pain he was feeling, but he fell silent, crossing his arms indignantly, painfully-- honestly it wasn’t worth the effort, but he did it anyway. Crawford took to the staircase, stopping only to give Hardy a look. What look? Isaac didn’t know. He couldn’t very well see, but Hardy definitely knew the look, and was scared of the look, and snapped into gear with almost military-like rigidness. “Y’lall need to be more careful next time, ya hear me?”

“Yes! Yes sir!”

Crawford was surprisingly good with his hands, for a man of his size and-- Isaac glanced at the size of his bicep-- clear strength. But he handled Isaac’s stitches with kit hands, and on top of it, had him patched up in seconds.  For as painful an injury as it was, for as painful as it was to be reopened, Isaac had been anticipating fix-up to be more straining. Well, that wasn’t to say there was no pain involved, and Crawford had to threaten him a good handful of times, with all the twitching and hissing and jumping he was doing, but it was still not as bad as he’d been expecting it to be. He turned his eyes to the glass-doored cabinet, where Crawford was busying himself scrummaging through the collection of first-aid products. “Clara made a few mistakes the last time she changed your bandages. She used t’ make ‘em too tight, now they’re too dang loose.”

Isaac glanced down at his wound, now open to the world with his blood-soaked shirt discarded somewhere to the side. The stitches were swollen, two lumps of flesh sewn together across the length of his abdomen. It made him uncomfortable looking at it, but morbid curiosity took precedence over disgust. He raised one finger to the blue string weaving in and out of his skin like a hemline, wincing when the feather touch stung.

“Well don’t touch ‘em, ya idiot.”

Isaac smiled awkwardly, apologetically, and Crawford waved him off as he approached the bed, bandages in one hand. “Lift.” Isaac raised his arms, and Crawford bent forward to run the gauze of the wound. It was definitely tighter than when Clara did it, and more uncomfortable, but he could breath, so he wouldn’t complain.

“Where are Miss Rose and Clara?”

“Out picking herbs. I’m gonna teach Clara how t’ make some temp’rary remedies.”

“Wait, you’re the medic?” Crawford cocked an eyebrow, and Isaac laughed-- another nervous tick. “I mean, I guess I just assumed--”

“-- it was Rose? I get that, what with all that nurture bull she pushes,” Crawford tightened the last round of the gauze, reaching to the side for some tape to hold it in place. “But you’d be wrong. She’s a bookworm, not much’ve a field operative.”

“And you are?”

He tapped the scar over his eye, straight down the top lid to the bottom, almost the length of his nose. “One ‘f the best.”

Isaac frowned, reaching up to touch the bandage over his right eye, fingers brushing the edge at the side of his ear. Crawford pulled away and got to cleaning up the mess of the bloodied bandages that’d been tossed to the floor in haste. He was so tense all the time, so on-guard, at least he looked like it. In his time at the boarding school, he’d felt he’d gotten to know everyone, at least to a reasonable degree. He trusted them not to slaughter him in his sleep, and he ate dinner every night with little to no intrusive thoughts about the possibility of the poison and its potential mask as the onion powder dusted over his plate. But Crawford-- Crawford was still a mystery. He kept to himself, kept away from the kids, and scarcely interacted with even Miss Rose. The few times he’d seen him around the school, Crawford was either brooding over a beer in the library (office), preparing dinner with a knife far too sharp to not incite just a bit of fear, or scowling at the occasional sparring match, when Miss Rose had to take a call and wasn’t available. “I just didn’t expect the guy who looks like he stepped straight out of an Old Wild West movie to be the team medic.”

“I learned outta necessity.” Crawford tossed the bloodied bandages in the trash, then twisted the sink on and got to washing his hands, pumping the soap twice.

Isaac frowned. “You’ve been through a lot, huh?”

“You will too, by the time the world’s through with ya.” Isaac turned to the floor, eyeing his hands, running along every scratch, every bite mark, every bit of dry skin that was healing. He’d seen more war, more pain and more power than he’d ever witnessed before in the month he’d been away from home. The spirits in Mayview, they were tame for the most part. Things were quiet. Sure, there was the occasional problem child, but outside the barrier, things were so much worse. He’d been attacked in his sleep by a creature that could shapeshift from one huge claw to a drooling eye with a mouth. He’d seen spirits three times his size swallowed whole and digested like bite-size chocolate bars. And then the monsters-- the one that took that gash out of his stomach, left him bleeding in a city park, nearly made him blind in one eye… he grimaced.

Then, there was a hand at his head, ruffling the spike and mussing his hair until he looked like an unkempt toddler. He blinked, and Crawford was giving him an old-fashioned, country-man grin, having somehow lit a cigar in the time Isaac had been contemplating that sting of fear in his chest. “Just do yourself a favor…” Isaac’s brows furrowed. Crawford’s grin widened. “Make sure the world ain’t done with ya today, or the next if ya can help it!”

He’d lost track of time, lost track of how long he’d been there. A week? He’d stopped counting after Day 14. His wounds were healing… somewhat. His stitches had started to look less like two conjoined clumps and more like blended skin with the tattoo of a string running along pale white. He’d still have to resist pulling on it sometimes, and when he didn’t, Clara would hit him for it. His eye was still bandaged, but Crawford said he’d be clear to remove it in the next week. His food poisoning had long since passed, and he was enjoying the benefit of eating actual meals again-- his muscles and bones had been fading, but he was as healthy and thick at the waistline as he used to be. It helped that Crawford was a good cook.

Miss Rose had trained him a few times, one-on-one; after the sparring incident with Hardy, and a good scolding (complete with parental pointing finger), she elected herself as his partner instead (“Since you kids don’t know how to hold back, yet…”). She was an odd woman, spent most of her time with them instead of musing over spectral artifacts, which was, as he’d understood it, her actual job. Instead, when the three of them managed to wake up in the morning, and somehow manage to carry themselves out of bed after that, Miss Rose was always waiting with some kind of activity for the day-- cryptic-ancient-language translation, spectral shot practice, backyard track running, sprinting, and hurdling, to name a few. And at the end of each day, she’d ride them to brush their teeth and wash their faces. Isaac objected to this the first night, after all, he and Clara were thirteen, and Hardy was sixteen, surely they could manage so much on their own. Miss Rose then gestured avidly to Hardy, and informed him that she’d once thought that, too. With a smile, of course, but Hardy still grew red at his nose and swatted at her.

Hardy was a huge flirt, quick to tease him and poke him and squeeze him half to death if he so happened to feel like it, but he was cool, and nice, and he’d apologized profusely for breaking his wound open. When they were bored, with little else to do, they’d often times lay around on the living room couch, Isaac watching the latest episode of the animes he’d come to miss dearly in his time as a runaway-- felt weird to think that, to acknowledge that was truly what he was, that he matched its definition-- and Hardy lounging back with his feet in Isaac’s lap and his head in Clara’s lap (assuming she didn’t have medical training to attend to) with a magazine in his hands. Not surprisingly, those car-themed magazines had belonged to him.

Clara was a little more like Miss Rose, but not quite. She was headstrong and nosy like their mentor, but she was also bubbly, and a tad ditzy-- she was smart, and just as Hardy was, touchy-feely. When they hung around together, when Hardy was off doing something probably stupid and dangerous, like seeing how many times he could ride the rail down the spiral staircase, he and Clara found time to lay around on their phones together in their joint bedroom. He’d scroll through some fanart and she’d ask him about the show. He’d go for tens or twenties of minutes, just talking avidly about his favorite shows, about the K-Dramas he’d gotten himself invested in somehow. She’d nod along, ask him to repeat names and characters, show her pictures, show her clips. In turn, he’d ask her about her interests, and oddly enough-- she loved superheroes. She had a few favorites, but they were kind of unknown, heroes he’d never really heard of before, but he never told her that. She’d site her favorite comic issues and hand him some of the volumes she owned, stacked not neatly, but organized, on a bookshelf on the wall opposing the bed. She’d watch him read the first few pages until, inevitably, they’d hear a:

THUMP. “Ow!”

Followed by Crawford yelling or Miss Rose nagging. Then, it was usually dinner time.

He liked it. He liked the flow he was in. He like the people around him. He was happy here. But, as he’d always remind himself-- he didn’t leave Mayview to be happy. He was on a mission, he had a purpose. This was a punishment, and as it was he shouldn’t have dwindled there as long as he already had. There were spirits to help, ghosts to cheer up-- he cringed… monsters to take down. There wasn’t a night that went by that he didn’t dream about it, that he didn’t see the way Spender’s face dropped, or the clench of Dimitri’s teeth, or the uncharacteristic frown on Ed’s lips. He heard Isabel yelling at him, knew everything she was saying was right-- about him being a traitor, about him being hopeless, about the fact that he should have been in that cell with them, that he’d nearly gotten them all killed or worse. He deserved to be an outcast. He deserved to be shunned and cast away. He deserved to meet the bloody end of a monster’s claw.

And then he’d feel Max.

He’d feel his finger jabbing at his chest, smell the metal on him and the rust and the hydrogen peroxide below his band-aids. He’d see his narrowed eyes, the danger in them, the anger and hatred and disgust-- everything he knew he’d practically asked for.

“I’ve never cared less about a person in my life. You think you can read me the way everyone else can read you? We’re not even friends.” Isaac cringed every time. “We never were.”

He was there to suffer. He was there to spend however long he lived pushing himself to the very limit, to make up for all the pain and fear he’d caused. Because even if the club didn’t care about him… he wanted what was best for them.

There was humming, soft, sweet, and yet it wasn’t shy. Isaac paused, peeking around the corner. On the other side of the open door, Clara swayed around the room, folding their freshly-cleaned bedsheets with a lack of grace, and she made it look fun. She was certainly the source of the humming, if the music blaring from her small radio was any indication. He took a moment to process the soft rhythm, the fuzziness of the sound, then felt like a total idiot for not having recognized it sooner. Once Upon a Dream. A took a cautious step into the room, careful not to scare her, because he had a feeling a scared Clara was not a fun Clara to deal with, and he still didn’t know what powers she did or did not have. He coughed into his hand, figuring that was polite and unshocking as any greeting could be, and she turned to him, surprised.

Then, a moment later, she grinned at him, and gripped him by the wrists.

He inhaled sharply and she swung him around in a tight circle, and when he opened his eyes, only then realizing they’d been shut, she’d wrapped two ends of the bedsheet around his throat, like a cape. “Wait--! What--?” She ignored him and his unvoiced question, and instead took to setting one his hands at her waist, then took his other hand in the one she hadn’t set at his shoulder. It was like this that they began to sway.

“I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream~!”

“Wait, why are you leading?”

“Because you obviously don’t know how!”

He snorted, then laughed, and that laugh grew even louder, more obnoxious, and Clara danced him around the bedroom. One moment, they were at a corner near the windowseat and the parted curtains, and the next they were adjacent, by the door to the small bathroom the three of them begrudgingly shared. She was quick, and through all of his laughter, it was hard to keep up. He tried to breath, had to struggle to get a word out. “H-hey, I s-still have stitches, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, and they’re pretty much healed, hush.”

The song carried on, and so did they, twisting and turning around the room, ends of the bedsheet flying with every to and fro, with every step they’d take. Clara fell into a fit of giggles not long after he’d stopped, and then he was right back where he was before, breathless.

The next note, Clara let go of his hand, and for a moment he thought the song was over. But the next, his hand was in another, more callous. He jumped back as Hardy took Clara’s place, gratuitously. He took one look at Isaac’s cape and smiled. “Fancy meeting you here, Prince…?”

“You know my name, you dork.”

“That’s an awfully long name, my lord.”

Isaac groaned and Hardy took the lead where Clara left it, moving faster, but rougher, across the bedroom floor. “Why am I always the one being lead?”

“Because you don’t know how to lead.”

“Where did you learn ballroom dancing?”

“Well,” Hardy snickered. “Maybe I don’t know ballroom dancing--” With a flick of his wrist, Isaac twirled to the side, only one hand latched dangerously to Hardy’s. “--But I know the tango!”

Isaac shook his head clear, laughing to himself.

Max. He had to blink thrice. When he opened his eyes, for a moment, just one fantastic, single moment, it was his hand he was holding. He could feel the tips of his fingers brushing like love against the palm of his hand, touch the square of his wrist. The face, oh he missed that face-- the downturn of his cap and the upturn of his lip when he smiled, when he was happy. He was momentarily breathless, watching the world around him spin as Max tugged him in, caught him in a turn, took him closer-- he could have memorized that pale blue in his eyes.

And then his outstretched hands fell to Hardy’s chest, and he was lost again.

Hardy took one look at him and snorted. “What, did I spin you too hard?”

Isaac batted his eyes-- er, tried to clear his head. “Wh-what? No, why’d you ask?” He took a step back, retracting his hands slowly, so no feelings were hurt. That was unreal. He almost felt stupid, guilty, like he’d been fooled twice and went back for a third round. But he hadn’t. There was nothing there but a memory, or some rose-colored version of it, anyway. He just couldn’t seem to shake how naive, how silly he felt. He must have been-- silly, that is. He was dwindling where he shouldn’t have been.

“You’re red, like, super red, man.”

Clara tittered and pressed a finger to his cheek, which he swatted away with one hand, two when she pressed harder. “You’re so cute! You look like ya ate a handful of beets!”

“Maybe I did!”

“I certainly hope not, we need those for dinner tonight. Otherwise we’d have to use you. Chop you up and throw you in some stew, how’s that sound.”

“Awful.”

“Yeah, well so does eating a handful of raw beets, but apparently you did that.”

The cafe was perfect for a writer, really, so it wasn’t a wonder how Suzy found it. Quaint little place atop a small body of water outside the patio. The tables were small, and round, and metal with a clear glass piece set perfectly within its melded edges. Condensation had begun to leave a small circle of wet around the bottom of his cup, filled halfway with iced tea before a waiter came over and refilled him for him. He was mostly done with his cinnamon roll, but Suzy was yet to touch her salad; this was funny, funny as in odd, considering it’d been her idea to come to her favorite little cafe.

She sat across from him, elbows on the table as she stabbed at salad with her fork. She’d been quiet, for a while now, and it wasn’t just for the duration of their meal. She’d been this way, or the opposite end (louder, more rambunctious, bossier than usual), for a good month now, or a little over. Collin scowled, leaning back in his chair because he knew some explanation was coming, probably. Sure enough, she turned her gaze to him, big eyes looking tired, and dull. Not her, not like her at all. Her lips parted, and he fixed his attention on her-- she had to have his full attention. Anything less, and he’d be sorry. He was sure of it. This was Suzy.

“Hey, Collin?”

“Hmm?” It was coming, the big reveal, the reason she’d been even bossier than normal--

“It’s been two weeks.” She frowned, and looked back to her salad, stabbing, perhaps with more vehemence, at a cherry tomato that’d earlier escaped the wrath of her fork’s pointed ends. “They still haven’t found him.”

Collin sighed. Guess he’d underestimated her tendency to project. Well, if nobody else is gonna sit her down and ask, guess it’s up to me… per usual. He leaned forward, crossing his arms over the table. With one hand, he set his plate and cup to the side. “Hey, Suzy? Ya wanna just tell me what’s actually bothering you?”

She blinked, and for a moment, when their eyes met, she looked scared. But in the next she had covered it up with that look of hers-- the nasty one, the one that scared anybody but him, him and Dimitri. He had a feeling that the salad would have cowered, had it been sentient. “That is what’s bothering me!”

“I mean, yeah, it’s one thing, but it’s not what’s bothering you the most.”

Her hand paused amidst the brutal stabbing of a helpless carrot, coming to a rest at the side of the plate. She was silent again, and that always unnerved him, more than anything. He kept an eye on her, watched the way her hair fell into her face, how she didn’t reach up to fold it behind her ear like always. She looked to him, and frowned, and set both her hands in her lap. The tips of her ears turned red, and though her face read serious, it wasn’t intentionally threatening. In fact, she looked almost… Collin leaned further in. “You are never to repeat what I’m about to say to anybody, do you understand me?”

He raised one hand. “Journalist’s integrity.” Suzy’s cheek blew up. He smiled. “My honor.”

The red of her ears spread to her nose, but she snorted, and smiled, and he knew he’d given her reassurance. Soon enough, she sobered up, she frowned again, and her eyes fell to the hands she’d clasped together in her lap. “It’s Dimitri. I… miss him.” He hummed, brows furrowing, but he nodded for her to go on. “Ever since we found out he was a spectral, it just feels like,” she grew quiet. “It just feels like we never really knew him, you know? Like our entire” she waved one hand around, realized she was stalling, and set it back in her lap “thing was a lie.”

He squinted. “Our friendship?”

“Yeah!”

Collin sighed, and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Oh, Suzy.”

“I mean, the proof is in the pudding! He’s out having adventures with the activity club all the time now!” Her hands parted to wave around frantically; he might have been embarassed had he not been so used to being publicly humiliated-- by Suzy. “He never drops by alone, ya know? It’s like, I don’t know. It’s like he never really let us get to know him to begin with so,” her eyes grew dim again, fingers clutching and kneading one napkin that lay unused between them. “So how could I expect him to, ya know… remember us?”

Perhaps he was momentarily delirious, or maybe she’d simply driven him insane. He’d even entertained the idea that somebody slipped something into his always-dutifully-full iced tea when he wasn’t looking. Whatever happened, it was a lapse in sanity, and he’d do well to avoid another such situation.

He reached over and took her hand in his own, in surprise, she dropped the napkin. Her wide blue eyes were on him, watching him, he felt it, he knew it, so he glanced away, coughed into his free hand. Mayview wasn’t supposed to be getting hotter, was it? They were riding the tail end of fall! How funny that, right then, he felt he needed a fan. “You’re overthinking it.”

“Huh?” Her voice was so small right then, so innocent-sounding, so unlike her. It made his entire body shiver.

“Spectral or no, Dimitri is Dimitri. I’m sure he’s just spending some time catching up with them, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

Why would he even say that. He had no clue. He’d thought the same thing, wondered how Dimitri was doing, how he was doing-- if he planned on ever coming back. They ran into each other often enough, but Isabel (and sometimes Max) were always close behind, like a clique. Suzy was right, he hardly ever came around anymore. Lunchtime (with Isabel and Max) was about the extent of their interactions. Who was he to tell her what was going on in Dimitri Danger’s head? Nobody! Nobody knew! The guy was a legend wrapped up in mystery, all laced together with a pretty bow tied in cryptic knots. He was lying to her! Straight up deceiving her! And for what?

Suzy squeezed his hand, then pulled back, setting the backs of her wrists at the edge of the table, fingers curling in. He hesitated to move his own, fingers twitching, then hiding in his palm.

“If that were true, wouldn’t he… try to stop by the clubroom once in awhile?”

What was he supposed to say? He agreed with her. She was right. For once in Suzy’s life, she was right, logic exceeded stubbornness, and it couldn’t have chosen a worse time.

He fell silent, words left him. All he could do was sit there and mourn with her.

Evening had fallen over the boarding school before he knew it, and sometimes, evenings meant laying back on the windowseat, feet splayed over Clara’s lap while Hardy’s head leaned against the side of his leg. He could hardly read a word of the book Miss Rose lent him (about mediums, mainly, and some other basics he hadn’t caught onto before) in the light of the setting sun, but it was relaxing-- he could fall asleep under an orange hue forever. Clara was taking a quiz, one of the bad ones from the preteen magazines she kept asking Miss Rose for when she went food-shopping. Hardy well--

Isaac winced as the bulky end of the yo-yo came around to smack him in the face. He hissed and glared over the side at Hardy, who was waving an apology and giving him the best sorry-looking face he could probably muster.

Yes. He was too content.

He had to remind himself-- he didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve this. And nobody around him knew what he had done. Sometimes he thought about telling them, and that daydream brought him fear, fear and somehow relief. He could never really understand that part. Maybe it was the burden of keeping a secret, not that he’d been trying, things just happened. Something told him that wasn’t it, though. Maybe he wanted to be outcased, punished, kicked out on the street like he’d planned all along.

He knew he deserved it.

But at the same time, why’d he have to tell them when he could just leave? What good would it do? They’d know they’d nursed a traitor back to health. They’d know they’d saved a person who should have been wiped from the world because he couldn’t tend to his own wounds-- natural selection. No, there really wasn’t a reason to tell them, no reason to burden them with that guilt. He’d just have to wait until his wounds were healed, sneak away in the dark. Teenagers did it all the time in the movies, how bad could it be?

“Ah! Hardy!”

“Sorry!” Clara raised her foot where his yo-yo had nailed her, right at the ball, and gave him a swift, scolding kick to the head. “Ow!”

“Don’t be sorry. Be better!”

“Okay, okay!”

Isaac exhaled through his nose and smiled. Well, maybe I’ll stick around a little longer.

Three knocks, solid and authoritative, came from the front door. Each of them perked up, heads twisting to the bedroom door, which sat ajar. Clara readjusted her glasses. “Well, that’s odd. Nobody visits us unless they’re, ya know, Cousinhood, and we have a secret knock.”

“Well,” Hardy shrugged, sticking his yo-yo in the back pocket of his jeans. “They might be new?”

No, I doubt it. If they’re as secretive as the Consortium was… Isaac frowned and leaned behind Clara, reaching to move the blinds she’d been snuggling under so he could see. “Hey! What the--?”

“Sorry.”

Just a little bit further, a little further, until-- there! He pressed his face to the class, hoping to catch a glimpse of the front door. Who could it be? Some guy who got lost in the woods, maybe? An angry squirrel throwing nuts? He finally got the right angle, could finally see just who was, quite angrily, pounding on the front door to what should have been a small private boarding school.

He wasn’t expecting to see Mister Spender.

He gasped and fell backwards, sliding from the windowseat with no grace. Hardy and Clara watched him with mild interest, mild concern, and he scurried away from the window, climbing to the bedroom door on all fours. Crap, crap, crap, crap! How? How was he here? He did he find him? No, calm down, Isaac. Maybe he’s not here for you. Maybe this is something entirely different. Still. There was a chance, a chance Mister Spender could see him, that he’d want to drag him home-- but he couldn’t go yet. He had to hide.

He came to sit at the top of the staircase, back pressed to the wall just before the second floor ended and the walk to the first floor began. Hopefully Mister Spender couldn’t see the top of the staircase from the front door…

“Isaac?”

“AH!”

He jumped, then covered his mouth with both hands. Clara tilted her head at him, and Hardy moved closer. They’d taken to huddling beside him, pressing their hands to the wall to keep them steady in their crouched positions. Hardy’s nose brushed his hands where they covered his big, unhelpful mouth, so he inched back. “What’s going on?”

He gestured for them to be quiet, and lay low, so they copied him and took to wall-clinging. Isaac glanced around the corner to find see Miss Rose looking out through the peephole, where she undoubtedly was seeing his old history teacher. Isaac swallowed hard. “That guy knocking on the door is Mister Spender, somebody from the Consortium!”

“And why is that a problem?” Clara kept her voice low, even if she didn’t understand, and right then, he couldn’t have been more thankful.

“Because,” he squeezed his hands tight and grinded his teeth. “If he sees me, if Miss Rose tells him I’m here, he’s gonna take me back to Mayview, and--and--!” From down below, he could hear the sound of the door opening, and the high-pitch of a woman’s greeting voice.

To say Rose was surprised to see a Consortium agent behind the door was inaccurate. To say she was surprised to see one so soon, on the other hand…

With the way the kid had been talking, for how long he’d been away from home with no Consortium interference, she hadn’t anticipated a visit for another five months, a year if she was pushing it. For a moment she doubted he was one, an agent. After all, they were in a home in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, perhaps he’d gotten himself lost and was in need of assistance? Well, it hadn’t happened before, but there was a first time for everything.

She glanced him over again; no, this man was different. He was nervous, lips drawn between his teeth, not relieved, not smiling to find someone else. His clothes were too clean, shirt too tucked in the waist of his pants, shoes and pants unmuddied from the slip and fall terrain. No, he’d entered the woods and known exactly where he was going.

Rose cocked an eyebrow, set her hands at her hips, like he was an old friend, like she didn’t know why he was here. “Hello!”

He was glaring at her, but she could tell he was keeping himself level, struggling to, anyway. She could expect a civil conversation, but beneath that was an anger, a righteous anger she’d known scarcely. She straightened up; it was unsettling, but she was no wallflower.

He took a deep breath, but she watched his fists clench at his sides. “Good evening, my name is Richard Spender.” He either didn’t think the Cousinhood knew who he was, or was playing dumb to avoid immediate conflict. She knew who him by name, but by name alone. He was Mayview’s Defender, its own stubborn hero. Anything else, well, anyone in her line of friends had yet to meet him. As always, she’d be the first, she might have felt honored had she taken a moment to let that sink in. Something was important enough that the legend had come to her directly, important enough he’d willingly left his beloved city. Perhaps this visit wasn’t what she thought it’d be. He paused a moment, probably just nervous. Rose didn’t blame him, relations were tight. She crossed her arms, showed him she was listening, so he continued. “A few months ago, one of my students went missing.”

His students? I don’t recall Richard Spender being named a spectral master. Oh. Oh, of course. That made so much sense! That’s why Isaac knew him by name! That’s why he was here, personally. Her eyes widened, but she rid her face of it. Letting an opposing agent read you, it was a mistake, one she couldn’t help but notice he was still making. Either way, the focus of the visit was exactly what she thought it would be.

“My, how unfortunate.”

His eyes narrowed behind his shades, and she gave him a smile. “Yes… you see, the authorities tracked him to the Michitan City area, where he left a trail.” Yeah. Of blood. “But soon after, he somehow disappeared.”

“Get to the point. We both know there’s something you’re not saying.”

Spender blinked, seemingly taken aback. He was an odd man; for someone with so much power, he was gentle, and came off weak. He recovered in a moment, shook himself straight, and she watched him grow stiffer than before. “My… colleagues and I, we traced him to Catriona Barrett’s old residence, which I am aware was confiscated after your people recovered an artifact on the premises.” She straightened up, well aware of where this was going. “If my assumptions are correct, and my student wandered onto Cousinhood property…”

“You think we have your kid.”

His voice lowered, dangerously; the real Richard Spender stood before her. “And he needs to come back home.”

[bakubrattt]

Sleep, pt. 2 (Urie x Saiko)

AN: So I wrote the first part of sleep before chapter 137 came out. So, these steer away from manga and would just take off after chapter 136. Anyway, it’s late and I probably should have proofread more so this probably sucks because I’m tired and just wanted to write something cute and fluffy and sort of steamy. Thank you for reading and please re-blog if you like! Warning that things do get steamy at the end of the chapter.

—

It was the dead of night, start of a cold early morning. The few guests who stayed in this little inn, between the ghouls and drug smugglers were asleep and the building was as quiet as the middle of nowhere it resided in the outskirts of this ward. In one of the rooms were Yonebayashi Saiko and Urie Kuki, finally somewhat asleep after the insomnia they’d done their best to fight off had quieted down in their heads. Despite Saiko being in a heavy snore, leg comfortably draped over Urie as they’d knocked out in an embrace, the young man was not quite as sound. Between tossing and turning and sweating, always somehow finding his way back to Saiko whether it was a touch of her hand or an arm tight around her, Urie’s nightmares would not cease. Every second he spent asleep was in mental agony. If he wasn’t flashing back being swallowed whole by a giant kakuja, he was flashing back to Kuroiwa Sr. being in his arms while being stabbed in the throat by Furuta. The grip around Saiko snaked tighter. The head against her chest gave a random jolt and muffled groan of agony. She was suddenly pulled out of her slumber by fingers that dug into her backside. The bed was too warm. No, not the bed, but whatever was so strongly coiled around her. She twitched a bit between slumber and consciousness, teetering back and forth between the two. Her hand spasmed lightly and she felt the nape of a neck, hot and damp beneath the skin-shave of a hairline. “Nm…Uribo…” She stumbled over one of the several nicknames he had grudgingly allowed her to call him, “Uh…Mm…Huh?” Saiko forced her eyelids open. They were heavy, and her vision was pitch-black as her eyes attempted to adjust. Immediately, she knew Urie was in the middle of one of his night terrors. If it wasn’t her compressed lungs that let her know, it was his face buried against her breasts. That definitely seemed to comfort Urie, she figured. “Ah-…!” She squirmed uncomfortably, trying to loosen his grip around her, “hey…Machy-boy!” No use. The man was deep in his unconsciousness. “You’re hurting Saiko!” She grumbled, wedging her knee between them as she pushed his forehead off of her bosom, “jeez, so sweaty! C’mon, wake up! Stupid muscle-head! URIE!” “AH!” Urie heaved loudly as he threw his head back, his arms immediately falling limp, allowing Saiko to push herself up and over to turn on the lamp. “Holy hell,” She finally breathed easy, coming to face and tend to her frightened friend, “Urie, are you okay? You sca- A-AH!” Saiko came up close and personal with a black sclera and red iris, Urie’s mismatched eyes wide and unfocused at first until they locked onto her glistening orbs. “Fuck!” He panted out, grabbing her hand when she instinctively tried to get away, “relax, Yonebayashi, it’s fine…I’m fine…” Saiko froze there, not knowing whether he was truly alright or not. His eyes said no, a clear no, but his voice said otherwise. “I’m so sorry…(God damn it, you scared her)…” Urie mustered the courage to look at her again, making her momentarily wince away. He cupped his hand over the top of hers, sliding up her arm to form a reassuring hold, “it’s not like that time with Donato Porpora…I swear…I can control myself…” Saiko sighed with relief. She could see Urie crystal clear behind the eyes of what was now a ghoul with completely broken quinx frames. “I figured,” she assured him “it’s just-…new to me, that’s all. At least you don’t look like Saiko’s drawings, heh…” Urie half-smiled at her lighthearted joke, “no? I don’t look like a monster?” “Not all ghouls are monsters…And not all monsters are ghouls.” She was serious again, “I think we know that better than anyone, now, Urie.” “You’re right.” Saiko smiled sweetly, cupping his face in her hand. He hadn’t bothered shifting his eyes back to their normal state, but somehow, that was better. Urie was comfortable with her seeing him this way. He showed her that and Saiko appreciated it. “You’ve…” She lowered her voice into a whisper, eyes hooded halfway, “come so far…I’m glad you can trust me. That means a lot, Kuki-Kun.” “(Huh? She called me by name…)” Urie took a moment to nod, putting his hand over hers on his face. He didn’t really know why he let her do that, much less why he reciprocated the affectionate gesture. Maybe it would make Saiko feel better like it made him feel better. “Thanks. I’m glad you can trust me, after everything (that I’ve put you through).” “Baka,” Saiko teased, “why the hell wouldn’t I?” “(Fucking Yonebayashi, there’s so many answers to that question. Don’t remind me of any of them.”) Urie frowned slightly, shifting his eyes away from her. “I told you already, silly.” She lifted his face, catching his gaze once more, “Saiko loves you, Urie.” Before Urie could grasp any sense of their reality unfolding right before him, he felt a tender kiss placed against his forehead, over his matted down hair. “Uh…” he mumbled in shock, eyes wide and immediately returning to their normal color. Urie sensed an unexpected flush rise to his face as his stomach fluttered on wings. He felt the warmth of his breath beneath her chin as he quietly spoke, “(what the fuck is this?)…I…I love you too, Saiko…(Yonebayashi. YONEBAYASHI.)” “Yonebayashi…” He corrected himself, pulling away to look up at her again. Urie quieted himself into a whisper, realizing he was facing her mouth almost directly, “what do you mean by that, anyway?” “Hmm?” Saiko was already blushing, “ahh..I mean, I don’t want to lose you. I care about you a whole lot and I wanna stay by your side, no matter what. Ummm…Not sure what else I could say, really…” “(What in the actual fuck is this? Why is she so close to my damn face? She hasn’t created any distance by now…Well, I haven’t either…Do I want to? I’m oddly uncomfortable but not, but I don’t exactly want to move from her, either…)” Urie kept pondering to himself by the seemingly perplexing yet obviously simple situation he had found himself in, completely disregarding every word that came out of Saiko’s mouth as she began to ramble on and on. The more she spoke, the more he furrowed his brows as he became less confused and more curious, directing all of his attention and focus to her moving lips until it was all he could see. He wanted her to shut up. No. He wanted to shut her up. Then, Urie finally had an epiphany. “(Oh. I get it now. So that’s what it is, then.)” Urie bridged the gap between their lips as he finally understood what he was feeling. He wanted Saiko to shut the fuck up. Though, more importantly, he wanted to kiss her. “You talk too much,” He mumbled lowly, sleepily into her mouth, “(And I think too much) just be quiet for a second…” Saiko held back a gasp, instead taking a deep breath when Urie’s hand came off of hers and came to hold her by the back of her head. His grip was so gentle, his fingers being careful and considerate as they found their way through her silky, baby-blue hair. She caught herself staring at the unseeing Urie and clamped her eyes shut at the realization that it was rude to have her eyes open during a kiss. “Mm!” Saiko nodded slightly, agreeing to be quiet for him. She was as stiff as a brick, but Urie didn’t mind. This was obviously as new to her as it was to him and never in a million years would she have imagined that Urie Kuki of all people would kiss her, let alone be her first kiss. “Hey,” Urie pulled back momentarily, resisting a laugh as he smiled at her scrunched up face. It was sort of cute. “Don’t forget to breathe. You have a nose, so use it wisely.” Saiko nodded with a brief glance as she took a deep breath and relaxed, allowing him to pull her into a kiss again. Her heart melted. Her body melted. Her next slow, deep breath came naturally this time, almost as if she sighed. Urie reflexively did the same, softly wrapping his arm that remained beneath them around her little waist to bring her closer. Saiko’s heart felt like it had leaped out of her bosom and she mentally reminded herself not to be stiff again at this new exhilaration. Instead of freezing up by the gesture, she allowed it to thaw away her inhibitions and snaked her hand to Urie’s neck, finding his nape where she let her fingertips graze into the tight shave of his hair. Urie felt the same fire in his chest that Saiko did, as every little move lit them hot and burning with rapture. This was all so new and amazing. Their hearts were beating like drums against each other as they somehow found a way to synch in rhythm. “(Holy fuck…)” He mused within his own mind, pressing his fingertips into the small of Saiko’s back while his other hand tightened a grip on her hair, “(How does this feel so…So good?)” Urie bit her lower lip gently, growing impatient to deepen their kiss. He successfully got her to gasp out of her mouth, allowing him entry. He took it slow and steady, reaching the tip of her tongue with his own. He heard Saiko make a quiet noise before he felt her other hand, gripping him by the shirt in a tiny fist. Everything became a chain reaction quicker than either of them could keep up with as their minds flooded with sheer euphoria. The world around them stopped as they continued, neither one of them falling victim to thinking too much or talking too much. Saiko gave more than a nibble in response to his tactic to open her mouth. She passionately bit Urie on the lower lip, soliciting a hungered moan from him in response. It was quite a surprise, really. Urie tended to be a very quiet man. The revelation of this irony pleased Saiko. Without any shame, she bit him again, gaining a loud, sharp inhale from him. “Fuck,” He breathed out huskily, rolling Saiko onto her back before either of them knew it was happening. She yelped in surprise, suddenly finding her wrists pinned above and beside her head. Saiko tried to continue kissing him, but his lips were no longer smothered against hers. She now felt them on the side of her neck, her skin pinched between Urie’s teeth. The sharp sensation on such a sensitive part of her body seemed to wrench a moan from her very soul. “Kuki!” She panted out his first name, catching his attention away from his lust. Urie stopped himself and pushed himself up on his hands to look at Saiko, completely disheveled beneath him. She was sweaty and glowing with a healthy flush, her thick bangs matted to her forehead over her cloudy eyes. Her chest rose and fell as she gasped for air, her wrists weak and fragile within his hands. “Saiko…” He panted equally hard, lifting a hand through the front of his hair to slick it back and out of his fevered face, “oh my God…Saiko…” Saiko grinned halfheartedly at him, breathless as she watched him let his head drop and his neck hang in fatigue. “Hoh-hoh…” She laughed silently, “you like the feeling of pain, don’t you, Uribo?” Urie whipped his head up at her and shut his panting mouth. He was expressionless, almost certainly annoyed at her smug grin. “After being eaten alive, having my face dragged through windows, being stabbed onto the ceiling, fighting you and getting thrown around, getting stabbed through my throat and eaten alive again, I think it’s safe to say pain is all I really know.” He huffed, sitting back on his calves and pulling Saiko up. Saiko wriggled out from between his legs and took the position of sitting on his lap, pinching both sides of his face within her fingertips. “This is different,” she smirked with victory at his irritated face, “you like pain that comes with pleasure. And you’re loud about it too!” “Oh, shut up.” “Make me, blockhead!” The moment Saiko said it, she realized exactly what she asked for when she caught the smirk creep across Urie’s lips in slow-motion. “Awwww, fuck my li-” She whined, once more being silenced by none other than Urie’s mouth.

[thelionshoarde]

a fickle thing; pt 1

HAHAHAHAHA no this was not a good idea, I’ll admit that much. Also, I have SO MUCH fic to catch up on in this fandom, *_* You all have been SO BUSY!

“Hm,” Obi frowned. “You must have had bad taste back then.”

Shirayuki jerked where she sat, perched atop a rough-hewn stool. Honestly, she was never going to understand what it was about Obi that managed to pry all of her more youthful, asinine stories from her, but she was determined to put a stop to it if abuse was all she was going to get.

“What! Why would you --”

“Well,” Obi interrupted, grinning. “Only a real idiot would ever think it acceptable to break your heart, Miss.”

Shirayuki subsided; his eyes were impossibly dark and soft in the low light. A comfort with the wind howling sharp and hungry outside.

“What was his name?”

“Do you know,” Shirayuki realized, warm only where her hands were wrapped around a tankard of hot cider, “I’ve forgotten. Though --” Here she pinked slightly, her wind-bitten cheeks prickling with the sudden, sluggish rush of blood. “Ah. Never mind.”

Eager to reach Lyrias before night fell, the two had ridden hard all day until clouds on the horizon had sent them off the main road, toward Vabrit. The horses had only just been settled into the inn’s stable by the time the storm was upon them, the world turning a sudden, vicious white, and Obi had laughed at it, at the biting and clawing wind, and the way the cold had swooped so low and frigid that Shirayuki had felt it freeze her bones, her blood, until she was certain she was crackling with it, about to be shattered by the gusting wind. “Come along, Miss!” he had shouted, grasping her hand in his, ice crunching and giving way as their fingers curled around each other.

He had led them both -- unerringly, Shirayuki thought with some disapproval -- to the nearest tavern.

Now, the snow was little more than a trace of melt, dewed on the wool of Obi’s shoulders and the wind-swept braid of Shirayuki’s hair. He leaned toward her, crying out: “No, no, now you have to tell me, Miss! Come on, don’t hold out. I’ve already told you about the thing with the racoon, it’s only fair!”

Drat, he wasn’t going to let it go. And she couldn’t even blame her loose tongue on the cider.

Exhaustion whirled inside the cold expanse of her body like snow flurries, numbing whatever filter she usually relied on to keep things on the safer side of propriety. The touch of Obi’s knee knocking haphazardly against her own did not help, nor did the soft murmur of patrons and muffled thud of tankard against table. Nostalgia wrapped around her, bringing the memories close to the surface.

Shirayuki glanced side-long at him, resting the rim of her tankard against her bottom lip; spice wafted up, further thawing her. “He moved away soon after,” she admitted, mouth twitching into a smile at Obi’s wide-eyed attention. “Rita was the girl he ended up stepping out with, rather than me. Then I, ah...”

“You what, Miss! Come on, out with it, now.”

Shirayuki’s eyelids fluttered, and she found herself peering up at Obi from beneath her lashes. Her knight had leaned closer, close enough that Shirayuki could see the darkening shadow of his jaw, the rough and rugged bristle strange yet somehow compelling on Obi’s usually smooth face. There was just the faintest hint of gray mixed in with the black stubble, so faint it was hardly noticeable. But it made something strange inside Shirayuki’s chest wobble for a moment, just a little. Shirayuki brushed it aside, focusing on the story.

“I wasn’t, well. I was very busy, you see, and after the, ah, first heartbreak I wasn’t much for dating, exactly. But. I did date her -- Rita -- for the entire summer of my fourteenth year, so...” Shirayuki’s eyebrows matched Obi’s in their steady climb, and she said, unimpressed, “Are you so surprised? She was smart and kind and -- and lovely. We parted amicably, by the way. No broken hearts, just a summer of happy memories.”

“Miss,” Obi breathed, leaning back and raising his tankard toward her. “I wouldn’t have believed you had it in you. Now that is how you get revenge for a broken heart!”

“It wasn’t revenge,” Shirayuki scolded, appalled. “It had been years since we last even spoke to him, and. Well. I mean -- to be honest -- I ended up liking Rita far more than I ever liked, uhm, whoever he was. I didn’t date her out of revenge, Obi. Honestly, this is why I wasn’t going to tell you.”

But Obi only laughed and shook his tankard insistently at her. Cider slopped out, dampening the cuff of his coat. With a sigh, Shirayuki nudged her tankard against his, trying -- and failing -- to fend off an amused grin. It was a little funny how things worked out; she could admit that much, at least.

“Now,” Shirayuki said sternly. “Tell me more about the time you had a rash for days because of a stupid dare and a patch of poison oak, please.”

Obi groaned and hailed the barkeep despairingly for another round.

Shirayuki was eleven when she had her heart broken that very first time.

While his name had long been forgotten, there were other things she remembered: the yeast smell of her gran comforting her; the way her tears had dampened the checkered print of her dress; the heartbreak itself, small but full of impact.

What she did not tell Obi was remembering how it had felt, to think: of course he would like Rita better. Of course. She was just weird little Shirayuki with the outrageous hair, and Rita was the baker’s daughter, sweet and kind, funny and pretty, always eager to laugh. It had been enough to have Shirayuki wrapped around her knees in a nest of blankets and pillows on her bed, her gran smoothing her hair down her back in long, gentle sweeps.

She remembered muttering, the words choked: “He said -- he said he liked me,” and her gran, hand gentle on the nape of Shirayuki’s neck, sighing: “Sweetheart, there is nothing in all the world quite so fickle as the human heart. I am sure he didn’t lie to you when he said he liked you. Just how many times have I told you the story of your mama and papa?”

“A few,” Shirayuki admitted.

With a snort, her gran had given her hair a gentle tug. “A few too many times for you to forget, I think. It wasn’t that your mama didn’t love the noble she was meant to marry -- she did. That’s why she agreed to the engagement. It is only that the heart is able to love many ways, many times. And sometimes you find that the love you thought was enough -- isn’t. Like your mama, when she fell in love with your papa.”

That may have been true.

But it still hurt.

That is what Shirayuki remembered most of all, the small, sick-sad feeling of being cast aside, of being told yes only to be told you’re not enough, after all. But such things had no place in casual conversation, in a shared telling of foolish stories, in the sweet and easy laughter that Obi coaxed from her.

And while Shirayuki might have proven the truth in her gran’s words, at least to some small, adolescent extent, by dating Rita -- by finding that the shape of desire and happiness was different, sharper and sweeter and deeper, than what she had felt for the boy before her -- she was also relieved to know that in all her twenty-two years she had not once been the one to break someone else’s heart.

Not like her’s had been.

Her heart was not a fickle thing; it was adamant and reasonable, moored in logic and patience, with understanding. Later that night, curled tight on the single straw mattress the inn had available, limbs entangled with Obi’s, his heart in her ears, she scrounged up an image of Zen as she had seen him last: shining and handsome even with a bittersweet smile on his face, goodbye on his lips.

It was so easy to love him.

Then Obi’s fingers shifted over her hip, sleepily readjusting his grip. Her image of Zen shattered, broken apart. He grunted, “Miss, what are you --”  before sighing aggressively, pulling her tighter into his embrace. “Go to sleep, already.”

In the last half hour he had shifted from dozing to bleary alertness seven times. Shirayuki was exhausted for him already, her heart a pinched, fluttering thing.

“Sorry," Shirayuki murmured, her lips brushing against the salt of his shoulder where his shirt had slipped. Closing her eyes she tried to let go, to drift. For some reason, it was difficult, a curious tension in her limbs and trembling in her belly keeping her wide-eyed far longer than she expected. But eventually Shirayuki fell asleep to the gentle warmth of Obi wrapped around her, the beat of his heart keeping her steady as the wind tore at the world, burying them in white.

She did not expect to be proven wrong, let alone how quickly.

Zen was -- was incandescent. An anchoring point of light that Shirayuki found herself drawn toward, wishing for nothing more than to give him a safe harbor in exchange. Her love for him was longing, mixed in with the rabbit-fast beat of her pulse, and the desire to be whatever he needed.

It was romance, she had thought often enough, blush staining her cheeks.

She had thought -- this is it. This is the type of love Gran was talking about, the kind of love that made Mama leave her intended for Papa. The is the type of love that changes a world.

And it was, but --

“I think you should get a turtle,” Obi told her.

Her stifled laughter was immediate, and incredulous. “A turtle? Why a turtle?”

They had only been returned from their trip to Sunterhold two weeks, and the memory of the three-day blizzard that had kept them cooped up in dreary, poorly-insulated Vabrit had Shirayuki indulging in the comforts of home as much as possible.

She had been reading a fascinating discourse on the medicinal properties of beeswax, her shoulders slowly loosening as the busy work day slid into an easy evening. Fire crackled in the grate, and Ryuu was dozing at his desk, a form stuck to his cheek with drool. Obi leaned his hip against the arm of the couch beside her. He had come in more quietly than usual, no doubt seeing Ryuu as soon as he eased the door open. Shirayuki hadn’t even noticed his arrival until he had circled around into her peripheral vision, unbuttoning his coat and setting his cowl atop the back of her chair.

Now, his arms were folded loosely across his chest, gaze fond as he watched Ryuu mutter in his sleep. There was a lightness to his posture that Shirayuki enjoyed, the kind that said, I like it here.

“I like turtles.”

“And what, I’m meant to take care of it while you reap the benefits?”

Delighted, Obi grinned at her. “Why, Mistress! What a fine idea! I’m so glad you came up with it.”

“Ha.” Shirayuki leaned more fully back against the soft cushions of their office sofa, rolling her head lazily to pin Obi with her most unimpressed stare. “Unfortunately for you, turtles don’t do well in cold climates.”

The sigh he heaved was dramatic and wistful. With a little push he moved away from her side, stepping over her outstretched legs. “Alas, my dream shall go unfulfilled, once again.” With a grace born of immaculate body control and exceptional training, Obi flopped backward onto the other end of the couch, his booted feet sprawled awkwardly on the floor near her. Shirayuki eyed him, taking her time. He had draped a despondent arm over his eyes, as if to proclaim that this turtle-less world was too much for him to handle.

He looked a particular kind of uncomfortable: wanting to sprawl out but too conscious to do a good job of it. His back was against the arm of the couch, his body twisting at the hips to keep his feet on the ground. It made Shirayuki’s back ache.

“C’mon, take your boots off.”

There was a second’s hesitation. Shirayuki saw it in the way Obi’s arm wavered, as if he were about to move it but then thought better of it. But eventually he did, raising his arm to peer at Shirayuki with eyebrows raised.

“I’ve been in these all day,” he protested, keeping his voice soft so as not to wake Ryuu. “I won’t assault your nose, Miss. I don’t think you’d ever forgive me if you weren’t able to smell the exact difference between peppermint and spearmint anymore.”

Rolling her eyes, Shirayuki refused to be moved. “If you think I am unaccustomed to the male odor, I believe you are much mistaken.” She looked pointedly over at Ryuu, who, though exceptionally fastidious for a teenager, was still a teenager. “And besides,” she waggled her wool-covered feet where they were propped up on the footstool, “I forgot to get my laundry done the other day. I’ve been wearing these socks for three days, now.”

“So that’s what I’ve been smelling.”

Shirayuki narrowed her eyes at Obi’s cheeky grin. “Boots,” she murmured. “Off. We are relaxing. It is a rare moment, and may never come again. We must take advantage where we can, Sir Knight.”

“Well, if the Lady Shirayuki insists.” The words were soft, barely more than an exhale of amusement, but Obi pulled his feet toward him, lifting off the couch and curling his back over his knees to tug at his laces. The breadth of his shoulders and the long curve of his back seemed to take up so much space like this, the dark cloth of his clothing standing out against the softer hues of Shirayuki and Ryuu’s office.

Socks and shoes finally off, Obi slanted a curious glance at her, as if to ask are you sure about this? to which Shirayuki blinked, startled, darting her eyes from his body to his face just in time. She gave a firm smile, nodding. For a moment longer Obi held himself still, arms dangling almost lazily between his knees, his fingertips lingering on the rough weave of his socks where he’d shoved them into the tops of his boots. Shirayuki took a delicate sniff, and was relieved to find the odor wasn’t terrible.

And then Obi flopped back and groaned, the sound a crackling burr, as he stretched his back and pulled his legs up onto the couch, digging his bare toes into the space between the two seat cushions. His arm was back over his face, and he mumbled, “Wake me up when it’s time to carry little Ryuu to bed.”

“Of course,” Shirayuki murmured, somehow startled because --

It hadn’t taken Shirayuki long into their acquaintance to realize that, at best, Obi could fall into a sort of half-aware doze when other people were present. Over time, when it was only Shirayuki, or Shirayuki and Ryuu, it seemed as though he was able to slip a little closer into the throes of true sleep. At the very least, he seemed to rest easier than usual. Even during those three days in Vabrit Obi had managed only small stretches of sleep, the shadows in his face lengthening. Shirayuki had taken to spending her afternoons downstairs, curled up with a book and idly observing the other residents blown in with the storm, just so Obi could manage a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep.

She wondered, sometimes, if he was ever able to actually fall deeply asleep, the kind that had you bleary and soft as you woke. The kind of sleep where all your defenses came down and the world could fall and you wouldn’t even be aware of it. She thought not. There always seemed to be a piece of himself that Obi held tense, alert, ready at a moment’s notice to run.

Having him laid out on her couch like this -- like he was giving his best effort to relax -- was a comfort.

Shirayuki smoothed the page she’d been reading with her palm, glancing back at the words. Staring at Obi now seemed like an imposition. Like a breach of the trust he was showing by lying next to her, so open and vulnerable and still.

But -- this moment of quiet was so rare, and Obi was so near. Just a peek, she thought, just a little one.

She should not have looked.

There was something so soft about him. Both of Obi’s knees were tucked against each other, pressed against the back of the couch, the cushions indented by the weight. The line of his thigh was a gentle swell she could trace her gaze down, to his hip, to the hand resting on his stomach, to the easy rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. All she could see of his face was his scar beneath his fringe and the tip of his nose jutting out beneath the cook of his arm, with his clever mouth turned lush and strange with stillness, shadowed in the corners in a way Shirayuki never saw when he was awake, Obi’s liveliness and mobile expressions chasing them away.

Oh. Oh, she needed --

She needed to look away. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain she would wake him up, and then she would have to explain why it had started beating so dangerously in the first place, and Shirayuki did not know.

Jerking her gaze from the perfect bow of his lip, she looked instead at the safety of his legs.

Despite the cold weather Obi still tended to wear trousers that cuffed just beneath the knee, compensating with tall boots and long, thick socks. A burn scar was splattered across his left shin, shiny where the soft, black curls of hair refused to grow back. Further down on his right leg a series of thin, white scars broke the pattern of his dusky, sun-drenched skin.

As Shirayuki’s gaze lingered along the corded muscle of his calves before sliding slowly down, she realized that this, in fact, had not been a safe choice either.

Delicate was not a word she had ever expected to use to describe Obi, but staring with wide, suddenly wild eyes at the graceful slope of his ankles, chest hurting with the urge to cup her palm over the vulnerable shape of them, Shirayuki did not know how else to describe it: the way all the fine bones of his feet were on display beneath the thin skin, his toes tucked into the space between the cushions. Delicate, with a scar peeking silver-pink around the instep of his left foot, glinting in the dim light. Delicate, with the white press of calcium deposits from broken bones making her wonder if his right foot ached when the weather shifted.

Never, in her wildest imaginings, had she thought she’d be stricken with the urge to take someone else’s feet into her hands and hold them as if they were precious.

Blinking, she wrenched her gaze away.

They were just feet. Feet weren’t a thing to have strange, possibly inappropriate thoughts over. Even if they were Obi’s feet. Even if all Shirayuki wanted was to pull them into her lap, circle the surprisingly fragile slope of his ankle with one hand, and spend the rest of her evening reading with the book awkwardly propped on the arm of the couch, thumb gently sweeping across the paper-thin skin in soothing strokes, to try and lull Obi into true sleep, real rest. To have him know that she was here with him; that she wanted to protect him from all the things that had hurt him, or ever could.

All at once she felt her heart flip over, a fickle thing.

Maybe it was because of their conversation in the midst of the storm. Maybe it was the reminder of the trickery hearts could play. Maybe it was merely that here in Lyrias, in this place where she belonged, Obi looked like he did too. Like there was no other place she would have him but at her side.

It could have been any number of things, a collection of them, a final overflow that swept her up and shook her to her foundation, leaving her open.

Regardless -- her defenses had been down, and when it happened there was no way to brush it aside.

Of course, it didn’t have to mean anything.

Shirayuki pulled out her pocket watch, the one Zen had given her. Her thumb traced the fine engraving, warming the cold metal. It could only be that it had been months since she’d seen him, surely. They wrote letters often, but often for them meant every few weeks, the both of them neck deep in work and responsibility. She missed Zen every day, but she had been glad when the ache had eased into something soft enough that it didn’t stab her. Carrying that kind of emotion around would have been unbearable, would have made her sick.

Shirauiki’s fingers spasmed against the hard edge of the pocket watch, startled as she realized: it had been years since his absence had been a thing capable of crippling her. She had been so proud of that, thinking that it was proof that their love was strong enough to withstand everything.

Her eyes burned with unshed, confused tears.

But -- no. Whatever that had been, the other night, Shirayuki had set it aside easily enough. She’d even managed to read another chapter of her book before rousing Obi to help her carry Ryuu to bed.

And if she refused to think about the way she did it, that was fine. She didn’t need to remember how she’d curled her hand over the top of Obi’s foot, the skin cold beneath the sweep of her thumb, or how he’d jolted at her touch, arm lifting a scant few inches to stare at her, eyes dark and surprised. She didn’t need to remember the way her heart had beat like a drum against the stretched tautness of her skin, didn’t need to remember how familiar that had felt, holding Obi’s gaze and wanting something.

She dashed angrily at the tears trembling on her lashes with the back of her hand.

Everything was fine.

The tenderness she felt for Obi was -- different. Nothing at all like the bubbles and fear that her relationship with Zen gave her. There were no seismic shifts in her destiny, no open paths suddenly illuminated.

Obi was her friend, her constant companion. He was -- he was the thing that had made Lyrias home. He was years of companionship and conversation, of shared looks and exhausted solidarity. He was -- comforting. And that wasn’t romance. That wasn’t being in love. It was simply love.

Wasn’t it?

Agitated, she flicked open the pocket watch, examining the spiderweb of cracks on the crystal of the watch face.

Zen had wanted to replace it for her, but Shirayuki hadn’t been able to let it go. There was so much history spoken in those fine, powdery cracks, and somehow, even as terrible as much of it had been, Shirayuki hadn’t wanted to simply erase it as if it had never been. But after catching Obi looking at Zen’s watch with a dark expression around his eyes, a bristling sort of anger at the memory it brought him, a trip to Pavilion Street had given her the chance to buy a new watch, a sturdy, simple thing that she could drop in dirt and bang against exam tables. Zen’s had been left in her drawer, safe from sight but still close at hand.

Shirayuki wished, desperately, that she knew how to make Obi let Tanbarun go; but then again, the watch was in her palm, the face cracked, because she couldn’t let go of the helpless terror she had felt, seeing Obi crumple onto the floor.

Oh.

Shirayuki sucked a breath in, feeling it burn harshly in her tight throat.

Pulling the watch out was meant to be a reminder of Zen, not of Obi. Damn it. She snapped the watch shut, sliding open a drawer and shutting it in. Everything was -- it would be fine.

Maybe her Gran was right, and the heart could love a hundred different ways. It was up to her to know which one was the right one, the forever one. She knew the answer -- had known the answer months into her acquaintance with Zen. Knew that her love for him was the best she would ever find, the truest path to happiness. She knew the answer.

Didn’t she?

Pressing her palm against her chest, she felt for the beat of her heart. It made a sound like a question, like fear, an underwater lurch of uncertainty. Shirayuki let her breath out in a trembling flow; if she wasn’t sure, then --

Then --

“I’ll figure it out,” she whispered to herself. “One step at a time, I’ll -- I’ll become sure.”

A quick, jaunty knock was all the warning she had. Startled, she jerked her gaze up. The desk in her room was a simple thing that faced the door, and Shirayuki was only partially hidden by the piles of files and forms waiting for her attention. Obi was constantly fussing at her for bringing work home when her office was only a fifteen minute walk away, but now she was glad of it, glad that it could hide the white of her knuckles where her fingers hooked each other and gripped, desperate.

Then Obi had her door swinging open, his lanky form casually leant against her doorjamb as he grinned at her. “Hey, there, Miss. Did you forget we have a date with Suzu and Yuzuri down at the greenhouses? You were supposed to meet me ten minutes ago.”

“Oh,” Shirayuki breathed, trying not to notice the way the muscles in his forearm flexed as he held the door open for her, or how devastatingly well the leather straps of his half-cape framed his chest. “Yes, right, I -- I did forget! Sorry, I’ll, uh, I’ll be right there.”

Obi arched his brows at her, silent for long, agonizing seconds. Shirayuki held her breath, hoping her face bore no clues as to how close she’d come to crying and waited. His bright eyes shuttering with darker thoughts before he blinked them away. Shrugging, Obi said, “Sure thing, Miss. I’ll be out here, all by myself in the boring hallway with nothing to do but harass random passerby. Don’t be too long!”

One last glance and then the door swung safely shut behind him. Shirayuki pressed her palm to her chest, rubbing it irritably.

Did her heart really have to leap like that?

Fine. Fine. Shirayuki could accept this -- that she did not know what her feelings for Obi meant, not entirely. That she did not know if this changed things. And perhaps she could even -- grudgingly -- admit that the startled pace of her heart was nothing new. That whatever she was feeling had been there, just on the edge of her reason, waiting for her to notice. Perhaps her heart had always been a fickle thing, and she had just been too stubborn to admit it.

Fine.

What Shirayuki needed, then, was time and space to understand. Calm, collected, rational -- that was what Shirayuki needed to be so that she could find out. So she could be sure. She owed it to herself and to Zen and to -- to Obi -- to be clear on this, at least, to know without a doubt which way her heart wished to go, and she would be damned if her own fears got in her way.

Rising, she grabbed up her coat from the rack, buttoning it quickly and fetching her mittens and hood, all the while working on gathering her logic and reason about herself, on pushing and pressing her worries and fears and nerves and confusion down, beneath her notice, so that she could function as she needed to.

Still, her heart was pounding as she opened the door.

[annsparksthegmr]

Dangan Thieves AU - Sonia Nevermind

So here’s the lovely Ultimate Princess of the Dangan Thieves AU and… *face plants onto desk* As much as Sonia is a likable character she is more of a pain to write simply because of her “perfect character.” I had to rewrite this like… four times just so it felt like this could possibly be Sonia Nevermind and not somebody else. Why is her character designed to be nearly like a Mary Sue at points? Couldn’t she just have a few more notable ones or did I overlook them?

…

Anyway, Sonia Nevermind position as the main party Support member came from my chat with @shsl-shipper-gamer-fangirl and we came to the conclusion we’d at least have two members taking that role (Being Sonia and Mahiru). As for her Persona, I’d like to thank @killr-cupcake for suggesting ideas for the Persona - and helping me narrow down the list. Though after Sonia I’m going to take a break from characters and work on other things… like possible Palaces and Mementos stuff! Be sure to take tune for that and ENJOY!!!

Sonia Nevermind

Arcana: Empress

Codename: Enchantress

Outfit: A spiked crown rests upon her head as Sonia’s blonde hair is now in a long braided style. Around her neck is a golden dog whistle and it leads into a brown and golden transformer skirt dress. Wearing brown boots underneath, the accessories on her dress are golden roses pinned around her waistline alongside the smaller ones which are pinned to her leather gloves.

Mask: A Kai Ken dog designed mask.

Persona: Hecate. (Greek Goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, the moon, ghosts, and necromancy.) Note: Hecate takes the form of three-headed dog mecha which she can enter and pilot to avoid being targeted by enemies. Upon the second awakening, it is rebirth into a three-headed dog-dragon hybrid mecha and it can now actively use abilities while flying through the sky.

Skillset:

Short Reconnaissance - Can reveal the basic information about enemies after defeating them.

Sparking Justice - Donning the mask itself, she yells words of encouragement. Little apple projections surround the party as they get attack buffs.

Health Reserve - Recovers 5% HP after every battle.

Upgrades to

Health Assistance - Recovers 20% HP after each battle.

Midnight Slip - Taking off one of her slippers, she throws it onto her enemies as it grows in size. Pointing towards the falling slipper, her Persona’s mouths open to reveal missiles that fire to shatter the falling object. While this does minimal damage, it reduces the enemy's Accuracy/Evasion. There are also tons of profanities flying across the battlefield.

Energy Reserve - Recovers 5% SP after every battle.

Upgrade to

Energy Assistance - Recovers 10% SP after each battle.

Royal Decree - Removes all debuffs on the party as Sonia reads a scroll that released a wave of energy.

Bad Apple - Summoning a huge apple with a green aura, she tosses it into the middle of the field, where it falls apart. Allies can gain buffs to the Attack, Defense and/or Accuracy/Evasion and the enemies will suffer debuffs matching the boosts the part received. The buffs will come at random with small changes of getting all of the current buffs.

Bewitching Torch - Has a rare chance to fully recover the HP & SP of an ally.

*All-Out Attack Card: “Bow before your enchantress!” beside the enemies getting roasted by her Persona. Sonia is happily smiling with the catchphrase “Oops. Sorry about that!”

Persona Awakening Dialogue:

Hecate: “You’ve made me wait for so long as you hid behind your title? Do you finally understand now? That using your perfect image of being a princess can no longer protect you from the despair that plagues your soul every day. Everything you love will be robbed anyway if you do nothing… have you given into despair so easily?”

Sonia: “...I… No, I still haven’t lost hope yet. Everyone’s hope being butchered into despair here by a cruel soul… Now I truly believe what they’ve said. If only I had the strength to save them!”

Hecate: “...Your heart is as pure as your intentions may seem to be… there is hope in forging the contract with you. Together, we may yet strike a chance to waver the fate and your destiny into the one desired. The contract itself can be sealed now with your new found hope rekindled. I am thou, thou art I… Let your graceful facade shatter their vision and reveal to all the true passion you crafted!”

Sonia: “Of course. And I shall no longer be a subservient bystander to this madness!! This will end with all my might and it starts today! Time to shine forth! Hecate!”

Quotes:

“All hostiles have been annihilated. Well done everyone!”

“There appears to be a safe room up ahead. I advise that we all rest before continuing.”

“I’ve appeared to have gotten stronger!” (Level Up)

“My magic’s improved!” (Skill Up)

“That shimmering shine… Ace, we’ve got some treasure to get!”

“...Have we been in here longer than we should have? I’m getting some weird readings on my end. Be careful.”

“We are on a roll! Let’s keep going!!”

“Everyone is too badly injured; I suggest we retreat for now and recover Ace.”

“Hostile Shadows up ahead; will we engage or sneak by them?”

“Huh? Did you expose yourself by accident?” or “Look out! Hostiles coming!”

“Don’t waste yourself on these ones.”

“...Shadows up ahead are quite dangerous; perhaps we should sneak by?”

“Something’s amiss here; I suggest safety protocols before proceeding.”

“Congratulations everyone!”

“Our teamwork was on point.”

ENTERING A BATTLE VIA AMBUSH: “The odds are in our favor. Let’s keep it that way okay?”

GETTING AMBUSH: “We’re surrounded!!! Keep your guard up!”

RUSH: “Eliminate them all quickly!”

ENCOUNTERING THE REAPER: “Are you trying to face Death?! Flee at once!”

ATTEMPTING TO ESCAPE FROM BATTLE: “An escape route? I’ll see what I can do.”

PARTY MANAGES TO ESCAPE FROM BATTLE: “Retreat now; I’ve made an opening!”

AN ENEMY FLEES IN A PALACE: “What?! Pursue that Shadow before it raises security!!”

Short Reconnaissance: “I’ve made a record of the Shadow for future reference.”

Sparking Justice: “One morale boost coming up!”

Midnight Slip: “Oops I…” *proceeds to yell out profanities*

Royal Decree: “Cease these debuffs on my party immediately!”

Bad Apple: “Want something refreshing? Here you go!”

Bewitching Torch: “I’m dropping off some aid; who needs it most?”

WHEN SOMEONE’S HEALTH IS LOW: “Watch your health; one more move might end it all if not healed.”

WHEN SOMEONE’S INCAPACITATED: “Oh no! Somebody please help them!”

WHEN SOMEONE’S WEAKNESS IS EXPLOITED: “They found their weakness! Cover for them!”

WHEN SOMEONE MISSES: “Did you forget to aim for the target?! Be careful.”

PERFORMING 3 BATON PASSES IN SUCCESSION: “Excellent! This is just what we needed.”

ANNOUNCING ALL-OUT ATTACK: “Time for some execution!”

Burn: “...Do I smell something burning?!? Somebody put that out now!”

Freeze: “We don’t need a human popsicle! Somebody thaw them out!”

Shock: “They got paralyzed; they won’t be able to do anything until it is removed!”

Forget: “Why did you get this now? Help them to remember their Persona!”

Charm: “...Flirty with the enemy? Is that common in Japanese culture?”

Rage: “What are they doing? I can’t get through to them!?!”

Brainwash: “This isn’t good; they see us as the enemy! Break the sell please!”

Despair: “Somebody fell into Despair; somebody give them a pep talk before they lose it!”

Hunger: “Who forgot to have a snack? Get them some food stat!”

Dizzy: “This isn’t a merry-go-round ride! Get them back to normal quickly!”

Sleep: “Falling asleep on the battlefield? This is no time to take a nap!”

Silence: “Why have they gone silent? Somebody help them!”

Mouse: “Aw~ They look so adorable as a mouse~ I just want to pet and love them~!”

Mementos Chats:

“Not to seem inconsiderate Ace, but you’re driving... well… lacking in some places.”

“I’ve got to say; having a dog mecha as my Persona just like in those historical animations I used to watch is amazing! I wonder if I can find more of them…”

“Using a dog whistle to recollect my Persona is a bit awkward… but I can make do as long as I’m not in the fray.”

“Freeing the hearts of those inflicted by despair… that is what I wish of our accomplishments to amount towards.”

“Never once did I believe that a Dangan Thief would be this engaging. I can safely say that these memories I’ll never forget for the rest of my life!”

Sonia: “I’m impressed at how you’ve managed to make it for so long without somebody having a Persona like myself!”

Hinata: “Um… thanks, I guess?”

Hinata: “...Hold on, haven’t we been here before?”

Sonia: “Perhaps… then again most of this place looks the same to me…”

Sonia: “How peculiar that my Persona manifested so differently that I have to keep a dog whistle to control it… Huh?! What game are you playing?”

Chiaki: “Oh this? It’s one of those games where you take care of pets… just like this dog right here.”

Sonia: “Ah! Are you okay Heartbeat? Why are you laughing so much?”

Mikan: “Ehehe, s-sorry about that. I’m j-just having so much f-fun with e-everyone…”

Nagito: “Dearess Enchantress, your hope has truly been bountiful to our efforts. With your ravenous canine on our side, there is no way despair can stop us.”

Sonia: “Thank you… so much… I guess...”

Sonia: “Owl! I’m so delighted that we are working together. Tell me, are you up hanging out with us girl sometime? We’re planning a baking session.”

Peko: “I’d… like that very much if I have the time.”

Fuyuhiko: “Yo Enchantress, are you sure you know exactly what you’re doing?”

Sonia: “I know very well what I’m doing here Gangster. Thank you for asking.”

Sonia: “...Why is he the only one who I can’t truly identify? Is he hiding something…?”

Imposter: “Did you say something Enchantress?”

Sonia: “Oh nothing! Sorry, I was just thinking if I can make anything else with my powers to help us in the future!”

Sonia: “I’m so grateful to have another thief just like you; we’re sure to make an excellent team!”

Mahiru: “Yeah…  that is if you’re carrying your own weight most of the time.”

[tsvitok]

Emily.

Emily meets Tracer. Hope you all enjoy it in some small way.

Everybody had somebody.

Her best friends, her parents, her sister, her pet cat. Everybody except Emily. It was her own fault, she had been the matchmaker. It hadn’t bothered her before, she was happy being alone until she one day just wasn’t.

Her friends, grateful to her for bringing them their own matrimonial bliss, all tried to help her out. The first one had been… conventional. Smart, funny, sensible.

“So boring?” Emily snarked.

“Just your type.”

Her friends were probably right, Emily wasn’t particularly adventurous. In fact she was so unadventurous she’d never been outside the city of King’s Row.

“Alright…”

The next day she dragged herself down to the cafe on the corner of her street to meet him. It was cold, the winter chill cut through her jacket and mussed up her hair. Sitting inside the air-conditioned cafe was no better, but she could at least unwrap her scarf.

“Emily?”

A man approached her, tall, dark, chiselled. A strong jawline and a thick head of hair, a slight gold amongst the brown. His thin frame straightened, he smiled with sheepish confidence. The tan of his skin was natural, a sparkle of something met her from his green eyes.

“Allen?”

He grinned wider, “Yeah, mind if I join you?”

“Sure,” she sighed, “that’s why we’re here right?”

Emily smiled awkwardly, and straightened herself out as he sat down. He was well dressed, clean shaven, there was a reassuring charm to his grin and sat with a straight back. They spoke for a while about how his friends knew her friends, then a waitress came to take their order. The pretty young girl didn’t even draw his attention, but Emily struggled to look away from the lip-ring as she ordered her coffee.

“So, I heard you’re an architect.”

The hair on the back of her neck bristled and she looked back at Allen, “Yeah, I am. What do you do?”

“Ah, I’m a professor at Exeter.”

“Oh, really?” Emily watched his hands as the waitress returned with their coffee, “What do you teach?”

“Economics.”

She looked down at her own coffee, “So, you teach kids to become bankers and that sort of thing?”

“Yes, sure. Bankers, investors, economists, that sort of thing.”

“That’s… nice.”

He laughed a sweet, deep-chested laugh, “That’s pretty much the reaction I was expecting.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. My job isn’t that exciting.”

It wasn’t that it was dull, “I wouldn’t say mine is too exciting.”

“Are you kidding? It must be so fulfilling to create something, to design buildings.”

She shrugged, and sipped her coffee, “I don’t know about that, it’d be fun as a hobby. I don’t get to do much of the actual designing.”

“Oh, really?”

She nodded, “I sit at a desk for most of the day and check other people’s work.”

“So you don’t like it?”

“No, I love it. I get to see how other people think, what they want to make the world.”

“I guess we’ve got a lot in common then.”

She pondered that, “How so?”

“I’m a teacher, all I do is watch other people go out into the world to make it different.”

“I guess so.”

She was curious about how he taught his students, and he spent a good half an hour talking about that before one of them brought up sports. They didn’t have much in common but it didn’t stop them trying to convince each other who was better. In the end he conceded when his phone rang and he had to go back to work. She got his number before they both left.

Emily arrived home, their was already a dozen messages on her computer asking how it went. She watched television, ate dinner, had a glass of wine and fell asleep on the lounge.

A week passed before she even thought about Allen, and by then her friends had harassed her into another blind date. She sat in the same chair in the same cafe waiting for him, he was twenty minutes late and profusely sorry.

“I’m so sorry, one of my patients had an emergency.”

“Anything serious?”

“Oh, no everything’s fine they were just having a panic attack.”

Sandur, the man sitting down across from her, was a psychiatrist. He too was predictably attractive, dark-skinned, muscular, a warm and charming smile. She kept waiting for a spark that didn’t come up. They spent several hours talking about art. He was a collector while Emily was just an admirer. She had dabbled in art, but found architecture far more enjoyable. And Sandur was fond of architecture as art as well. They were discussing the local Cathedral when the topic of Omnics came up. He shut up fairly quickly when he realised she wasn’t on the same page and they sat in silence, finishing their drinks before leaving.

A dozen more messages waited for her on her computer. She watched an old movie, ate dinner and fell asleep. She woke up to a sharp pain, and saw her cat pawing at her leg.

“Lilly?” Emily tried to shake off the sleep, “what’s wrong with you?”

Lilly, the tiny puffball that she was, bounded across the room and clawed at the balcony door. Emily struggled to her feet and followed them over.

“Oh, I’m sorry girl,” she spotted the food bowl which she could have sworn she had brought in, through the glass door.

She slid open the door and all the warmth of her apartment was sucked out with it, the violent cold made her bones shake and Lilly sprang outside and hopped up onto the railing of the balcony.

“Lilly!” the air left her lungs too quickly to form a scream, “get down from there!”

The young cat mewled and sprang over onto her neighbour’s balcony, perfectly safe.

“Lilly! Don’t you dare move!”

Lilly sat down and Emily rushed into her apartment to grab her keys and go fetch her cat, when as soon as she opened the door a streak of white fluff zipped past her and out the door.

“Lilly!” she clutched at her chest, and rushed off after her cat.

“Come back here!”

Lilly darted down the stairwell, cat-calling and taunting her all the way down three storeys and into the foyer. Emily ended up nearly collapsing at the bottom step as Lilly stood in the middle of the foyer looking out into the street. The front door was open, the winter snow had started to pile up in the street.

“No,” Emily wheezed, “don’t go outside.”

Lilly turned to sit and watch her catch her breath, then stood as Emily approached.

“Come on Lil’,” Emily tried to reason, “let’s go back upstairs and I’ll get you something nice to eat. Okay?”

Lilly mewled and ran outside into the cold.

“No, Lilly!”

She rushed off into the street after Lilly, the cold immediately slowed her, her bones chattered as she went off looking for her cat. Lilly seemed to slow just to taunt her.

“Stupid cat…” Emily shivered, “I never should have bought you.”

Then, she realised, she had left her door open.

“Hey love, you look a bit cold.”

She looked up from her freezing wet socks to the woman in front of her. They smiled, a spark in their bright hazel eyes, dressed in thick winter gear with goggles pulled up onto their forehead making their spiky brown hair stick up like a peacock’s plumage. Lilly stopped to paw at the woman’s snow-boots.

“I-I’m s-sorry, I d-don’t know w-what’s-“

The woman crouched down to pat Lilly and pick her up, “You’re freezing, we better get you two home.”

“I-I-“

The woman handed her Lilly, then took off their jacket and wrapped it around her, “Come on then, let’s get you two home.”

They walked a little down the street, before the woman spoke, “I’m Lena by the way.”

“Emi-i-ly.”

They reached her apartment block, Lena raced ahead to get the elevator. The chill icing up her body started to thaw, the wool-lined brown jacket was surprisingly warm. It became even warmer when Lena wrapped an arm around her and helped her along.

She stared at their reflections in the shiny elevator doors as they rode it up to their floor. Emily hadn’t even noticed the bright blue glow hidden beneath Lena’s shirt, they noticed her staring and crossed her arms over her chest. The door dinged open before she could ask and Lena helped her into her apartment. Door still open, her other cat James sat watching them indignantly as they entered. She put Lilly down and the two cats ran off together. Lena stood at the door.

“Come in, please. Let me um, make you a cup of tea or something.”

They checked their watch, Emily likewise glanced at her clock - it was half-past one. She didn’t feel particularly tired though, and Lena stepped inside and shut the door gently behind her.

“Thanks, love. I could really use a cuppa.”

Emily went into the kitchen, suddenly remembering she was still wrapped up in Lena’s jacket. It had a wonderful smell about it now that the air was still and she could breath deeply again. She glanced back at Lena who was hovering around her coffee table, examining the work she had left there.

Emily snuck a soft sniff of the wool, Lena’s perfume soaked into it - a sweet fragrance somewhere between floral and fruity.

“Are you an architect?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.”

“Wicked.”

She finished making the tea and brought it in to Lena. She gestured for Lena to have a seat and they sat down to drink tea.

“Thanks again for your help.”

“Not a problem, all part of my job.”

“What job is that?”

Lena blushed, brushed back her hair, “Law enforcement.”

“Really?”

Lena didn’t look like an officer, there was a certain firmness about their arms and legs, but… Emily caught herself staring.

“Yeah, catching crooks, stopping crime. Rescuing cats. Usually they’re stuck up trees though.”

Emily smiled, “Sounds exciting.”

“Rescuing cats is very seriously business.”

“I meant-“

Lena smirked, “Someone’s gotta keep the city safe.”

“So are you meant to be working?”

“I was, but it’s quiet tonight. They sent me to look out for a bunch of protestors but they called it off.”

“Oh, what was the protest about?”

Lena held her cup against her chest, covering up the blue glow, “Omnic rights.”

Emily really wasn’t sure she wanted to get into this.

“Can I ask what the blue glow is about?”

Lena glanced down at her own chest, “Oh that’s uh, that’s just to keep me safe if anything happens.”

“I’ve never seen that before, on a police officer I mean.”

“It’s new, I’m in a special unit…” Lena looked around the room suddenly, “we deal with the Omnics.”

The topic came up again, and Emily couldn’t help herself, “Deal with them?”

It annoyed her to think that someone who rescued cats and helped others in from the cold could then go and oppress the Omnics. Someone who seemed so nice, so pretty.

“We gotta look after them-“ Lena’s knuckles whitened against the thick mug, “I look out for ‘em. Keep ‘em safe.”

Their face flushed, body tensed, ready for something. They held themselves… softly, but a hard edge stiffened across their features. Their eyes smouldered against her, ready to burn her down. Emily was already catching on fire, sweating and burning up.

“I… That’s great,” she struggled to make herself sound as sincere as she was, “thank you for looking out for them.”

“You-you think so?”

“Yeah.”

Lena smiled then hopped up, “Thanks for the tea, I should get going.”

“Uh-“ Emily panicked, “Lena… thanks.”

“No worries.”

Lena stood looking at her for a long, long moment, “Can I get my jacket back?”

Emily was shaken from her stupor, “Oh, uh, of course.”

She stood up, and took off Lena’s jacket. She swallowed awkwardly and looked down at the jacket before offering it back. She didn’t know the words she needed to say, or wanted to say… no, she had to say to make it clear. Looking at Lena, watching them put their jacket back on, made a lot of things suddenly make sense.

“Can I, see you again?”

“Sorry?”

Emily tried to straighten herself out, but failed, “Can I see you again, sometime?”

“Uh, sure?”

“I… wait, let me give you my number.”

She scrambled around the room looking for a spare piece of paper and jotted down her number onto it before shoving it into Lena’s hand.

“Wait, you mean…” Lena looked her in the eye, then averted their gaze to the piece of paper in her hand, “Uh, I gotta go.”

Lena raced out the door, Emily shut it behind her and locked it. The pit of her stomach bottomless, until she heard a loud cheer in the hallway. She sat down on the lounge smiling, fell asleep with a grin on her face and woke up thinking about Lena.

A lot suddenly made sense, most of her life. She hadn’t been confused, far from it, she had been absent minded. She’d never bothered to pay attention enough to have noticed anything except in hindsight. It was hard not to notice Lena though.

A few times throughout the week she thought she had seen them amongst the crowds, going to work, at lunch, shopping. It started to worry her when they didn’t call. A week turned into eight days, then nine. Then suddenly sitting at her desk at work her phone rang.

“Heya, Em’, feel like grabbing some lunch?”

“Uh-“ she looked around the office, everyone had already looked back down at their own work, “yeah, I do.”

“Wicked, meet me at the Fox and Bear.”

Emily quietly dismissed herself and snuck out early for lunch. She was a hard worker, so she was sure no-one’d even mind if they caught her. She had to stop herself from running down the street and to the doorstep of the pub. The Fox and Bear was almost entirely comprised of a single bar staffed by an Omnic fellow who greeted her as she stepped inside. It was full up, noisy, and the upstairs area seemed to be in a shouting match with the downstairs. Lena was already there, sitting alone in a booth in the same brown jacket and with the same goofy spiky mop of hair sticking straight up off her head.

“Em’!”

“Hey.”

Emily sat down in the chair opposite Lena, who greeted her with a bright grin.

“Hope you don’t mind, I already ordered drinks.”

“That’s alright, been busy?”

“Yeah, sorry I took so long to call. I’ve had a lot to do lately.”

“It’s alright, you remembered.”

“Well, I’ve got nothing to do today, so I’ve got as long as you do.”

“Oh. Alright.”

They drank before lunch, then after lunch, for hours.

“I used to be a pilot, then I was a soldier. Now I’m keeping the peace.” Lena told her, “I think I like this job the best.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be anything but an architect. A lot of the old buildings didn’t survive the war, and I watched them rebuild them thinking about what it’d be like to do it.”

“But you didn’t become a builder.”

“No… all the builders are Omnics.”

“I know a few that aren’t, they’re a rare breed though.”

When she looked at her watch she realised she’d spent the whole day at the pub. So she might as well keep talking.

Lena asked, “Have you ever seen the Shambali Monasteries?”

“I’ve never been out of London.”

“We should go sometime, they’re amazing.”

“Yeah,” Emily agreed, “I’d like to see them.”

“I hope their leader comes to England again someday, I’d love to meet him in person.”

“You like them?”

“Yeah, I mean, they do great things even if I don’t believe in everything they do. That’s part of life, isn’t it?”

“What don’t you believe, aren’t they about giving Omnic’s rights and spirituality?”

“I mean, I don’t think making a church out of it is the best way to handle it. Like you can’t make people think like you do and expect that to fix it - but a lot of what they say is right. I think maybe, that’s how they understand the problem and maybe I don’t because I’m not Omnic.”

Emily sipped her beer and mused on it but didn’t say anything. You could understand how others felt without being them, that was basic empathy.

“Maybe you’re just missing part of it?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean though, isn’t it. Maybe, I’m missing something because I don’t experience it.”

“It doesn’t make you wrong though.”

“It doesn’t make me right, either. But I like Mondatta, he’s an inspiration for all of us.”

Emily smiled, “I hope you get to meet him some day.”

“Cheers,” Lena finished her beer, “Anyone you want to meet one day?”

“No,” Emily managed to hold a straight face, “I’ve already met you.”

Lena tried to stifle down a laugh, but she eventually burst out laughing. Emily grinned, almost proud of how bad that was. Almost. A small part of her was groaning.

“Well,” Lena leaned in against the table, “Is there anything you want to do then?”

Emily didn’t grasp hold of the obvious, “I’ve always wanted to go skiing.”

“Oh,” Lena nearly hopped in her seat, “I’d love to take you, it’s really fun.”

“You would?”

“Yeah,” their expression was inscrutable, “what are you doing tomorrow?”

“I-I’ve got work.”

“Well,” Lena looked down at her watch, then back up into Emily’s eyes, “that sucks. If something changes, here.”

They took a serviette and wrote down a number on it, Emily wondered idly where they had gotten the pen before she realised what was happening.

“Give me a ring, yeah?”

“Oh-okay.”

Lena slipped from the chair and onto her feet, “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

Emily tucked the serviette into her pocket, she never imagined she’d get a girl’s number. It was almost too easy, like a dream.

It was hard to concentrate, impossible to sleep. Morning came and she found herself staring at her phone as she ate breakfast. Lilly and James watched her watching her phone.

“I wonder if they’ll believe I’m sick.”

James scowled.

“Yeah…”

Emily picked up her phone and dialled work. The nasal tone of her boss’ secretary answered.

“Hey, Ishani, I won’t be at work for the rest of the week.”

“Why?” Ishani whined.

“My uh…” she looked down at her cats, and their contempt, “cousin, Lilly is sick.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear. I’ll tell your manager, and if there is anything we can do to help.”

“I-I’m fine, we’ll be fine. I’d just like to be with her while she recovers. We’re very close.”

Lilly mewled, then trotted off.

“Of course, best wishes.”

Emily hung up, and proceeded to plant her face against the table.

“I’m a bad person,” she turned her head, James was still judging her.

“Don’t give me that look, I work hard. I deserve to do something fun.”

Emily straightened up, and dialled up Lena.

“Hey, Lena? It’s Emily.”

“Heya, Em’. What’s up?”

Emily stood, and made her way over to the fridge to find her half-full bottle of wine, “Oh, I don’t have to work after all.”

Lena laughed, “You’re not chucking a sickie are ya?”

She blushed, “No, I thought I might… take you up on your offer.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Wicked, I’ll be right over!”

“Wait-“

“Huh?”

Emily panicked, “I can’t leave now… I don’t have the equipment.”

“Well yeah, I’ll come over and we can go rent the stuff together.”

“Oh,” Emily eyed the bottle, “alright.”

She took a deep swig.

“I’ll be right over!”

Lena hung up, but not before Emily heard an excited squeal on the other end. She took another deep swig of her wine before pouring herself a glass. Something had to quell the butterflies in her stomach.

Then she started to panic again. She darted about unsure of what she was doing, but she was probably tidying up, getting dressed and then she finished her wine. She turned on the television and then went to answer the door as Lena nearly battered it down knocking on it.

“Emily!”

“He-ey,” Emily unceremoniously slurred.

“You ready? Let’s go!”

“Wai-it, have you had breakfast yet?”

“Yeah.”

“You want a cup of coffee?”

“I… yeah, sure, I’d love one.”

Emily led Lena in, “Make yourself at home.”

She headed into the kitchen to make them both a drink, the kettle boiled and she made them both strong white coffee. She only had instant, which she hoped was alright.

“Aww, bloody hell.”

“What’s wrong?” Emily nearly raced to the lounge-room.

“The roads are blocked… looks like we can’t go.”

“Oh,” Emily was conflicted, “that’s… maybe we can do something else?”

She went back to get the coffee and bring it in.

“Well, I don’t wanna waste your time off.”

“You could never waste my time…” she nearly dropped her coffee.

Lena smirked, trying to hide a giggle.

“I mean-“ Emily brushed a lock of her hair back behind her ear, “-maybe we could go to an art gallery.”

“I’d love to…” Lena leaned forward, “especially if it’s…” Lena’s hands interlocked nervously, “together.”

Emily understood, and, it wasn’t as awkward as she could have imagined, if she had imagined, “Together?”

“Yeah,” Lena turned monochrome, even her bright eyes trembled, “I really like you Em’.”

“You barely even know me… I barely know you.”

Lena looked away, trying to avoid it.

“But, I know you’re nice and you’re caring, and you’re really pretty. And I never really thought about anyone before, but… you’re different.”

“I am?”

Emily nodded, Lena looked her in the eyes and she struggled to hold eye contact, “I never thought I’d want to kiss someone before.”

Lena sighed ecstasy, relief, “Can I, kiss you?”

Emily’s chest swelled, her stomach shrivelled up and she felt the butterflies dissolve into her blood, “Yes.”

Lena slipped over to sit down next to Emily. Emily trembled, anticipation and terror, all the ways it could end wrongly rushed through her head as Lena delicately cupped her cheek and kissed her softly on the lips.

It numbed her mind, the sweet static of Lena’s lips lingering long after the light touch. She had closed her eyes, and her heart stopped. If was time that froze, and with it a shiver escaped down her spine.

“We… we should go to an art gallery sometime.”

Lena smirked, “I’d love to, love.”