#shoshi writes

[shoshiwrites]

I shall join you in the trash can my dear. For Jo & Bucky from the NSFW prompts (because I am unhinged about this):

[ UNZIP ] sender unzips/unbuttons receiver’s dress/shirt - s l o w l y 🫠

Emaaaaa! Thank you so much for this prompt, and for entertaining my Jo/Bucky ramblings at any time of day. It means so much that you're in the trash can with me on board. This was......... supposed to be a smut prompt and we ended up with............3200 words of Scenes I Really Needed To Write For Them Actually, comma mildly spicy 🙈 Bucky Egan x War correspondent OC. Also on Ao3!

leading with my heart again

She’s read the same page three times.

The coffee’s drained, and the cup of tea, and maybe she ought to stop now, now that her hand is shaking a bit holding the pencil, from the caffeine or everything she hardly knows. 

A hotel bar with a hole in it. When she blinks she can still see the smoke. A few stragglers at the end of the night. Even though the nights don’t end here, they haven’t for years. Local drinkers. Society usuals. A handful of correspondents. Al Stern, a friend of Marian’s. She’d broken out a fresh bottle of gin in his honor. Blanche Aurand, narrowly escaped from Marseilles, her photographer friend. Salim? Jo’s met them all. 

You’re scared, she wants to say. Like it’s not her own self sitting here, the ticking of the clock and the tap of her foot, her toes in her shoes. She reaches up to fidget with the tiny gold hoop in her ear.

The bar is gone now, and so are they.

She hasn’t heard much by way of Thorpe Abbotts lately. She’s trying not to let that bother her. 

If Kay were here, she'd tell her to sit up straight and quit looking like a gargoyle. If-

“Thought I’d find you here.”

His voice is a momentary shock, and still familiar, like a sun-drenched room. He leans against the bar, nods at the man polishing glasses to let him know about an order — the bartender who looks too similar to the last. If she closes her eyes, she sees a white jacket covered in brick-dust, or blood. 

She smells the major’s aftershave, through the smoke of the bar and the bitter coffee. 

He dips his head, an explanation to what she imagines is her still-bewildered face. “Rang your office.”

She really does try to sit up straight, now. Suddenly ashamed, or something like it, of herself next to his freshly-cleaned uniform. Her slacks with a broken crease, a blouse with a wrinkle or two. Her hair’s a mess, or feels like it. “Oh.”

She blinks again, sees that he’s holding a metal tin in his hand — barley sweets, nestled in waxed paper — and a small bunch of torn green stems attached to white-petaled flowers. 

“No cherry,” he says. He looks fondly annoyed, almost. “I told them a few packs of smokes oughta change their tune, but I think they were really out.” 

He surveys the space in front of her, the rings of coffee and the scattered pages and the folded newspaper, the front splash of the dead. Her people, his people, their people. Everyone belonging to someone. She hears him clear his throat. Like he already knows the answer to the question, the one he doesn’t ask. Did you know them? Yes. 

The barkeep’s looking at the two of them expectantly. “What can I get for you?”

She replaces the cup on its saucer, places the little spoon next to it and slides the whole operation towards him. “I’m alright, thanks, Louie.”

The major orders a whiskey, doesn’t let her put it on her tab. He’s not too insulted about it though, he knows her. The question’s silent again, when he’s got his glass, the nod of his chin. Who’re we drinking to tonight?

But she knows now, she knows you don’t ask. His eyes are dark here, in the fading light. The mask-marks, the circles under his eyes. The stray curl always out of place.

“So,” he says, gathering himself, setting the glass back on the bar with a dull thud. “How much time do you need?”

“Time?”

“To get all…” he gestures with his hand. “Unless you’d rather we sit around here all night.”

She taps her fingers on the bar, watches her watch and chain catch the light. Looks up at Major Egan standing there, wondering just how much Kay will kill her if she walks back out of this hotel in a plain black dress. “Depends if you like a girl’s hair with only a few knots or none.”

He makes a noise of dismissal. “I hope Kay won’t be too sore about me whisking you away.”

A remark about Captain Demarco takes shape on her tongue, but she swallows it. “Make it twenty, but I’ll be quick.” 

Upstairs, she does what she can with her curls, washes her face and tries to shape her brows, reapplies her lipstick. The deep cherry color is hardly forgiving, and she has to concentrate to be careful enough with the lines of her cupid’s bow. For a brief moment she thinks of it smudged, on her teeth, on his mouth.

The dress she’d brought over is indeed black, cocktail-length, collared, with a little piped pocket, a bit of detailing. Maybe it’s a little dated, she’ll acknowledge that, but she’s tried to keep it tailored to the current style, fitted, hemmed shorter. Kay would try to send her out in something bright, rose-colored or teal, never mind that it’s October in London. She admires Kay’s boldness. Loves it, in fact, but it’s not for her. 

The bracelet stays, the watch, her earrings, her mother’s medallion beneath the collar of the dress. Heels with thin ties wrapped ‘round her ankles, and her coat. 

Hastily, she’d put the flowers in an empty bottle of Fernet-Branca, figuring Kay wouldn’t mind. He’d had less of an explanation for them than the tin of sweets, something about passing them on his way, something like a boyish smile.  Just as quickly she plucks one, laces it into the back of her updo. It’s already been cut, anyway. She wonders where he’d got them, wonders if she’ll ask. She remembers the florist down the street from her apartment in Philadelphia, the spring flowers outside Pittsburgh. She can’t see it, but he will, standing above her. 

Back down in the lobby, the tips of her fingers brush his shoulder at the low armchair, the last of his drink still in front of him. 

“Now, aren’t you a sight.” It’s not the same voice as usual — quieter. Like he’s drinking her in, like the whiskey at the bottom of the glass. “Too pretty to be out with me, that’s for damn sure.”  

She smiles, and she doesn’t even have to try, sure that her cheeks are a little pink. “Kay won’t be sore about me leaving, but she might have my head about this dress.”

He looks truly confused. “Why?”

Her hand gestures without thinking at the simple sweep of the skirt; she’s suddenly very aware of her legs. “Too boring.”

He makes a face. “Hell with that.” A small sniff, as he reconsiders. “Sorry.”

For the first time, she laughs. “I won’t tell her you said that.”

“Tell her whatever you want, you still look too good to be true.”

Now she’s really blushing. “A sight for sore eyes, huh?” The pendant rests in the dip of her collarbone, beneath the neckline of her dress. She feels it, feels the clasp at the back of her neck and the chain. 

“You don’t know the half of it.” He stands, taking the glass, polishes the last sip of his drink.

She lets herself put a hand on his jacket. “Let me buy your next one?”

He reaches for her hand, for her wrist under the sleeve of her coat. “Now, I’ll have no more of that talk, Josephine.” 

The streets are dark outside, an excuse to stay close to him. A door materializes, a small place with small tables, glowing candles and bottles of liquor and wine. It’s all very respectable, the twirl they take around the floor, and then the next, his hands at her waist, hers up around his neck. A bead of sweat works its way down the back of her neck, between her shoulderblades. He dips his head to ask if she’d like to sit, his temple damp and tacky before her mouth, in the warm room. They do, after another dance, sit and watch the couples sway from a table on the side, listen to the jukebox. I need no soft lights to enchant me- 

She lets him buy her one drink, and then two, the dark rum color catching the candlelight at the bottom of the glass. She doesn’t feel under watch here like she does at the base. Though, there’d been plenty of moments there that maybe they shouldn’t have been allowed. They. She doesn’t know what that means, here in this war. You dance one night and find an empty space the next. Or someone else. His ankle nestles against hers under the table. She wants to kiss him.

What’s stopping her?

His eyes are so blue, and she knows she’s staring. “Got something for you. If- if you want it.” It snaps her out of it a moment, her brow furrowing as he reaches into his pocket. A small gold pin in his palm, the Air Corps insignia. The kind he wears on his collar. “Since I made off with that scarf of yours.”  

The white one, he means, with flowers and Swiss dots. She’d worn it up. He’d taken it as a joke afterwards, smiling, a crack about it being prettier than the one he’d got, but not as pretty as Major Cleven’s. Buck’s. A joke, or so she’d thought. Her mistake to think a pilot’s lucky charms weren’t the most deadly serious things of all. She knows, now. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to think he meant it. 

She could wear it, here in London. His pin. A person would know she had someone. Someone. She doesn’t know how to explain him, for all her words. Brave, like all of them. Brave and funny and flirting, the fiery death or the pretty girl. A heart she wants to curl up inside of. And he’s here in front of her, fidgeting, waiting for her to say something. Here, hands and shoulders and knees. It hurts to think of anything else. She would know who she had.

“See,” she says softly, meeting his eyes. She feels like a schoolgirl, watching him. “Knew what I was doing, wearing black and gold.” She reaches to touch his palm, about to take it and pin it on. He moves to do it himself, leaning forward. She shivers, the touch of his fingers at her throat, under the collar of her dress.

If you would only grant me the right-To hold you ever so tight-

Maybe it’s the light, or the drinks, or the music, or the fact that staying ten minutes past last call could have put her on the front page of that newspaper too. Every mission, the odds go down.

Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at her, like he’s hoping she’ll ask him for something he can give. 

He’s so close to her now. Maybe-

“Mmph-” He tastes like spice and alcohol, the sweat of his upper lip pressed to hers. He releases the pinch of fabric in his hands, the pin now fastened to her lapel. It hardly takes a second for his hands to find her jaw. His touch loosens the tension of her shoulders, sparks warm and firelit in her belly. She stays, lets the kiss grow sloppier until her tongue is pressing against his teeth.

They only stop because she needs a second to catch her breath, to watch him smile at her like she’s somehow surprised him.

“Why are you smiling?”

He doesn’t stop. “I’ll give you one guess, Josephine.”

She thinks better of a retort, lets her cheeks go red and leans forward again, a noisy kiss against his mouth. 

A voice in the back of her head sounds a warning, something distorted, through the sound of the music and the smoky haze. The singer’s own shines through, the brassy big band music that always makes her think of him. There I go, leading with my heart again- She ought to head back to the hotel now, before the night calls for another bar, another drink or three, a bed. And there I go, acting not-so-smart again-

She stands, smooths her skirt, adjusts the soles of her feet inside her shoes. “One more spin?” 

Something falls out of his eyes; he looks like he wants to argue with her, but he doesn’t. A few seconds before he answers. “Early morning?”

She nods, and it feels like the worst lie. Even though it isn’t, she’s got a briefing with the Ministry of Information tomorrow, and plans to meet another source for coffee. Probably more drinks, she thinks. It would hardly be the first time someone showed up for a meeting hungover.

But though it’s unwise, I can’t disguise my love-

Afterwards, they walk back out into the cold night, the smell of his aftershave still in her nose. He touches the flower at the back of her hair. “You got your last dance, can I get a last kiss?”

It surprises her, the forlorn note in her voice. “Where did I use the word last, Major?”

He sighs, or something like it. “Don’t have to, it’s written all over your face.”

Her fingertips find his lapels, the top of her head nuzzled under his chin. “I would hope I’m less readable than that.”

A laugh escapes him, though it’s hardly full of humor. “You’re really not.”

Like you, right? “A shitty pokerface, remember?” 

“‘Cept this time it’s not about the coffee.”

“What’s it about, then?”

He doesn’t answer, leans down and kisses her and steadies her with his hands, what she imagines is her own lipstick tacky against the sides of her mouth. He doesn’t stop, and neither does she. His hand burrows between her coat and her dress, hugging her waist. She presses against it.

They should be walking, or ducked under an eave, not out here like this after dark. This corner. 

Her back automatically straightens when they hear a bicyclist go past, a little huff from his lips and hers as she breaks away. 

“I can still bring you back-” he says belatedly, “if-”

He’s offering her this. Maybe she can admit it to herself now, wanting it too much to refuse.

She shakes her head. “It’s alright, John.”

There’s something in his eyes at that, no Major, just John. “I’m glad.” His voice is heavy when he answers her. Low. His fingertips press against her waist. “I’ve been thinking about this damn dress all night.”

“The dress?”

He smiles, the scratch of his mustache against her cheek. “Alright, the zipper.” He laughs softly, what he imagines her face must look like in the dark, under the cloud-filled sky. “Just bein’ honest.”

Her mouth hovers at the corner of his jaw. “I’d expect nothing less.”

“What else do you expect?” Her chest feels like it’s full of butterflies, when he asks.

“That…you won’t stop talking.” She kisses the spot under his ear. “Please.”

He snorts. Maybe she’s imagining it, the slightest breathiness to his voice. “Now tell me what you really think of me, Josephine.”

Can I? she thinks. “Well, what do you expect?”

He pauses, considering. “That you’ll keep kissing me. Makin’ me blush.”

“I make you blush?”

“Like a tomato, Josephine. ‘Least it feels like it. One flash of those knees and-” She smacks him lightly across the lapel. “Hey.”

“I guess I told you not to stop talking.”

“Yes, you did. Now where was I-”

“My knees.”

“Right.”

A few more couples make their way outside, swirls of perfume and rum and sweat, almost bumping into them. She knows what she’s asking, now. “Maybe we should, uh-”

“Maybe you’re right.”

His hotel is closer, they’d walked by it on the way. She tries not to duck her head in the lobby. He kisses her on the landing of the stairs and again outside the door, forehead lingering against hers.

It’s a large room, larger than she expected, certainly not the little thing she and Kay share at the Highgate, the wallpaper peeling by the radiator. There’s not much of him here besides a bed that’s half-made, a garment bag by the front leg of the desk.

“It’s a nice room,” she says, trying to banish the wobble in her stomach. 

He makes a noise that sounds almost like a laugh. “They know how to charge officers around here.”

“Still.” She reaches back to fidget with the clasp of her necklace. “I uh-”

“Something wrong?”

No. “It’s been-” She’s suddenly embarrassed, left ignorant as to how this is supposed to go. Not ignorant, just-

“Can I get you a drink? We could get something sent up.”

“No, thank you.” It’s probably too late, anyway. He takes off his jacket, drapes it over the back of the small chair at the desk. She takes a deep breath. “I suppose you should kiss me again.”

He smiles, deep and wolfish. “You suppose, huh?”

“Yes.” He does, lets her thread her fingers in his hair. “Suppose I should let you sit, too,” she says. 

“However you want, sweetheart.”

She wants to slap herself for what comes out next. “Really?” 

He looks at her like she’s a little bit crazy. His eyes are gleaming in the low light, dulled against the closed curtains. “You say jump, I say how high.”

She shakes her head before she can stop herself. Her voice is small, and wanting, and she feels suddenly like she’ll fall apart if he doesn’t keep holding her. “Please, just kiss me.” 

Don’t make me think. Let me forget everything except you. 

“Just say the word,” he says, but he’s already got his mouth on hers. 

She’d stopped caring about her lipstick hours ago, and to hell with everything else now. She’s in his lap, here in a locked room, his hand high up her thigh and her own pressed on top of it.

Soon, her dress is around her hips, and he’s got his hands on the top of the zipper, stopping when it catches. He presses a sloppy kiss to her neck, the dip of her collarbone, exposed. She helps him open the rest of the dress, awkwardly, twisting an elbow. He stops, and looks at her with a hazy stare; two kisses, one above each breast, and one to St. Christopher between them. She undoes his tie, not quite an easy task when he’s lavishing kisses on her shoulders. Keeping his promise. She ought to, too. She presses her mouth to the freckles dotting his chest, and one for his crucifix, another for the medallion. Maybe, she thinks, they should use the rest of the bed.

“I’m glad I stopped by,” he says, quiet and rasping and a little bit breathless, his cheeks a shade of coral in the light. 

“You found me,” she says, and it sounds like thank you.

He seems to consider this, his hands stilled under her dress. She can feel him, underneath her. It sends a rush of sparks through her chest, her stomach, her hips. “I did.”

“You did.”

I trust you, she wants to say. But she doesn’t, doesn’t know what to say next. Only brings a hand to his cheek, and his curls, only kisses him again.

[shoshimakesstuff]

Even worse is the bottle of elderberry liqueur Chuck hands him, heavy black lettering and colored glass. Too floral. Floyd never liked the taste. But it's what they have here in Austria, words he can't read but can guess all the same. It tastes like a church bake sale, reminds him of flower-print dresses and his hand halfway up Sadie Workman's thigh.  Chuck looks like he's holding back a grimace, like he's wishing for something else. Tab would tease him, ask if he's secretly thinking of England's lukewarm beer or the apple brandy they'd found in Normandy, mud-soaked and exhausted, but he doesn't.

hollowed-out pianos in the dark (tab/chuck, rated e)

[upontherisers]

"second-nature" for mahalia and bucky because she maybe needs her hands in his curls — @shoshiwrites

you sent this forever ago but i knew i needed to find just the right scene and you said 'reincarnation AU' last week and it reset my brain so how could i not!

She’s quiet after, wordlessly rising from his arms and swinging her leg over the side of the bed to put on her brace. He wants to reach out and trace the line of her spine, get some of her lost warmth back, but his arm stays flush with her pillow and misses her like hell. After securing the final strap across her thigh, he watches her hand linger for a moment on his discarded shirt, tenuous fingers tracing over the folds in the polycotton until they move to her hoodie and pick it up. The mattress creaks as she stands and the light changes in a blink from the white of her IKEA lamp to incandescence, the warm glow of a bulb on its last legs.

He’ll stop at the hardware store after work tomorrow and see if they can’t get it changed before they go to the pictures. The new Hitchcock starring Grant and Bergman — Mahalia can’t pass that up.

He blinks again and it’s back to the cool LED. Sitting up, he sniffs and wipes at his nose before reaching for his water — he’s got to stop letting Mahalia pick 50s movies when he comes over. But then it comes to him that Notorious came out in 1946 and he knows if he Googles it, he’ll be right. He’s also got to stop knowing things without knowing them.

The toilet flushes in the bathroom and he gets up as the sink turns on. He finds his sweatpants and makes sure they stay sweatpants as he pulls a leg through and then the other. Last week, they were brown-green wool for a moment and dark, paint-stained denim yesterday when he got out of the shower. She was there both times, but that’s just a coincidence. It has to be a coincidence.

She’s brushing her teeth in the dark when he walks into the bathroom, squinting as he flicks on the light and wrap his arms around her middle. It’s silent except for the buzz of her toothbrush, and she’s warm and without complaint about his fingers being cold or him being too hot. He’s allowed to hold her as she rinses and spits and stands back up so that she’s resting against his chest, one of her hands playing with his absentmindedly, her eyes drawn to their reflection in the mirror.

Sometimes, he imagines she can see it too. There are moments when she’s looking at him, through him, and past him at the same time, and he hopes that he’s not alone in this and going crazy, that she can also remember box scores from when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and mornings when they did nothing but kiss each other until the baby cried and pulled them into the nursery.

And sometimes he hopes she doesn’t see any of it, that this is the only life she has to struggle through. He’s only seen it once, but if everything else is real then so is the fall and the stiffness in her knee and miles and miles in the snow, those fucking Germans not letting her ride on a cart until she collapsed. 

He has to kiss her and does, pressing his lips to her cheek before tucking his head into her shoulder where she smells like her good lotion, shea butter and a bit of coconut.

“You should go,” she says, but her hand comes up to tangle in his hair, her nails gently scraping over his scalp and making his nerves spark all the way down his back. Second-nature, he guesses.

[latibvles]

like a movie i've seen before.

once again i dont know how this happened but i am left... very fragile. the one in which ron is a ghost from the 40s haunting daisy's grandmother's house, and at one point was believed to be an imaginary friend known affectionately as Sparky. this is sad. i am administering so many apologies. there will also likely be multiple parts to this because I am not normal. also we got the title from this so have fun with that. its part soulmate au, part ghost au, and 100% left me laid out on my bed in shambles.

Either this is a real thing, or she needs to talk to her doctor about switching her anxiety meds. She has half a mind to check to see if she’s taken the wrong amount and that this is the start of a very bad trip.

Nana’s house was… special, in its own way. A small thing built in 18-thirty-something for a batch of Clarkes fresh off a ship Daisy couldn’t remember the name of. As ancient as the engagement ring that sat untouched on her dresser at home in her apartment.

From mother to daughter as most things went, or in this case, grandmother to granddaughter.

It was more pragmatic to sell the old house anyway, once they were done packing the boxes of personal relics — the photo albums and the one-of-a-kind cutlery, salvaging the hand sewn blankets before the moths could get to them.

It’s what she came here to do, it’s what she’s been doing all of yesterday, before the chill creeped in that night and she found herself sleeping in her old bedroom — because sleeping in Nana’s bed didn’t feel right.

She reaches up to touch her head, and the shimmering apparition across from her smiles.

“You got big,” He observes, looking her up and down. “Taller.”

She shifts in her spot. He’s still the same, Sparky, in that same well-pressed dress uniform, his hair neatly combed, stern brows but kind eyes, pins up to the collar signifying a bunch of achievements she didn’t understand at the time.

“You…” Daisy feels like she’s scrambling for words, questions, but coming up empty. “Sparky, right? Is that still…”

“That’s what you picked, yeah,” He nods, taking a step forward, and it’s like his body seems to shimmer from the light streaming in from the windows. “Ron works too. Ronald.”

“…Ron…” Daisy tests out, slowly. Her heart still pounds in her chest, and part of her thinks this is still a part of a bad trip or a concussion suffered without her knowledge. “I thought you were imaginary.”

The sun makes him more… transparent. But she can make out the way his lip curls in amusement and her cheeks burn with newfound embarrassment.

“It was a little funny.”

She’d burst into tears once, when she was five, because her dad sat in Sparky’s seat at breakfast one Easter Sunday. And she remembers his hand on her shoulder, as real as the stack of waffles in front of her. He couldn’t wipe her tears back then, though.

And there’d been the times where he’d flick James’ ears when they were kids — when her brother would tease her to the point of distress. Or he’d move her toys around, the dolls and the plastic tea cups. She’d talk her mother’s ear off about all the things she and “Sparky” got up to during her weekends at Nana’s.

And then she told him to go away, one summer, and she never saw him again.

“I think you scarred James for life.” He chuckles, rolls his eyes.

“Kids have active imaginations.”

“Not me, apparently,” Daisy wants to reach out, to try and run her hand down his jacket, but the thought of her hand going through is too much for her to take. “I see dead people.”

“Still pretty active, Princess Cordelia.” Daisy laughs, partially out of surprise — most of her childhood games are a blur of colors and sound now.

She figures for someone who's lived as long as him — the whole thing must be a 4K movie. What else is there to do, but remember?

She takes her lip between her teeth for a moment.

“So… when I told you to leave, did you leave leave or just…” She’s pretty sure he’s frowning, the strange shadows on his face indicating as much, how the light bends as it shines through him.

“I was still there. You just couldn’t see me anymore.” He explains, and Daisy begins to pick at her nails.

She didn’t have a good grasp of breakups or lost friends when she was that young, but it had to feel something like that. You gotta go away, Sparky. I’m too big for you now. He’d smiled, fond, a chilled hand caressing her hair. There was no goodbye. No proper one.

She watched him fizzle away in her bedroom and was upset over the whole thing for three days. Her school counselor said that was normal, apparently — that weird imaginary friend grief.

“Christ, don’t beat yourself up over something you said when you were nine.” Snapped from her thoughts, she notices that he’s stepped closer, out of the sunlight, the chill’s gotten a bit more prominent. She can make out some actual lines of his face beyond the mouth and the eyes and hints of a nose.

“Don’t tell me ghosts can read minds now too.” She states with a huff. He arches a brow, then shakes his head.

“No, not that. You two just make the same faces. It’s not hard to put two-and-two together.” He keeps it blunt, accompanied with a look over her face that makes her feel especially exposed. Which is a little ironic since she can see through him in the most literal sense, but that’s neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things.

“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” She watches, as he makes a motion with his hand and one of the cardboard boxes slides forward, the flaps popping open. She narrows her eyes. “Okay, no mind reading powers but you can move shit around? Where were you when I was packing all that up?”

His lips press into a line, brows furrowing — like he’s having some sort of internal debate, before coming to some kind of agreement with himself.

“Deciding whether or not to show up again,” he states, and as she opens her mouth to press forward, he quickly goes “Blue album, gold piping. Fifth page.” He jerks his head towards the box again. Something in her tells her that this isn’t the time to press, so she gets on her knees, rummaging through the box, until she finds the aforementioned album.

Opening it up, it’s a lot of old, grainy photos. Not nearly as old as the house itself, but definitely up there — seeing as it’s all grayscale with no dates in the corners to indicate when they were taken. Boys with hairstyles similar to the one Ron wears now, girls in skirts and Mary-Janes with those short bouncy curls. His hand comes into sight, pointing to one photo.

The woman, she vaguely recognizes, from time spent skimming the old albums as a kid. Nana’s aunt, in a lacy white gown and a veil with a big bouquet in her hands. She’s smiling up at the man next to her — the groom, Nana’s uncle.

It takes her a moment, but she recognizes that man on her opposing side. Looking at her, rather than at the camera. Ron’s smile is… wider than hers, eyes crinkling at the corners. Daisy looks up at him and although his face is impassive, the room feels a little more dreary, like the air around them shifts with his disposition.

“You’re a lot alike. Same name too,” That she knew about. It was cute at the time, naming the kids after her great grandfather and greataunt — but she’s pretty sure that after the divorce it’s one of her mother’s biggest regrets (one of many, it isn’t hard to imagine Irene spitting the words out like venom). He reaches out, as though he can touch the photo. “Walked her down the aisle. Gave her away. We sort of… fell out of contact after that.” He doesn’t smile, necessarily, but she watches as he almost zoned out — like he’s in a different time.

“I didn’t know you knew her.” Is all she can surmise. Then, he cracks a bit, with a sort of distant smile she watched her Nana get in her old age, as she reminisced on the past. It ages his face in a way — no longer a twenty-something year old, more like the hundred year old apparition that he is.

“She was my best friend,” There’s an almost uncharacteristic softness to the way he says it. She looks down at the woman in the photograph, how the smile isn’t exactly reaching her eyes, but Ron’s is. “She loved this house. I was right across the street.”

“Then how’d you fall out?” She watches as he sits opposite her, criss-cross they used to sit in her room during tea parties.

“I was career military. I moved around a lot for work. Makes it hard to stay in contact with anyone, really.” He says it simply, like he’s resigned himself to that fact, but it leaves a foul taste in her mouth. She bites the inside of her cheek for a moment.

“You must’ve missed her a lot then. If you’re… here and not there.” She doesn’t know who lives there, she’s never met them. She’s got no clue how they would take to ghosts hanging around, either.

“That’s probably it,” his gaze lingers on the photo a moment longer, before clearing his throat, and were it not for the solemn resignation that flashed on his face she would’ve laughed at the thought of ghosts actually having phlegm. “Anyway you’re… a lot like her. You wear things on your face. That’s how I knew. No mind reading.” Ron rises to his feet again, averting his gaze.

Whatever wall that started to crumble as they stared at this old photo is being promptly rebuilt. Scrambling, she lets the album drop to the floor with less care than she should’ve given it.

“Wait, Ron, did you…” He looks at her, the last part of the sentence caught in her throat. Deep in her gut, she knows the answer to the question, because people don’t look at people like that without something behind it. And if anyone should be hanging around this place, missing her, it should’ve logically been her husband.

But her husband isn’t here, and Ron is, and has been for as long as Daisy could remember.

“You have lunch with Ginny today, right? Have fun with that.” She doesn’t know if pushing further will send him away. And Daisy doesn’t want him to go away, so she lets the question fizzle out before she can finish it, nodding as she packs the album away.

“Yeah just… be here when I get back.” Is what she settles on, and that gets the smallest of smiles out of him.

“Always am.”

[thoughpoppiesblow]

okay, i'm here with some thoughts. @shoshiwrites sent me this ask the other day, and it got me thinking about miss jackie broussard, and what might she listen to?

the answer is jazz. not dave brubeck "posh" jazz, but messy, loud, new orleans jazz. think second line, rebirth brass band, and wynton marsalis. however, i think jackie 10000% has clora bryant on vinyl - she's a wicked good trumpeter and vocalist from the swing age, and i feel like jackie just eats that up. like she heard the album gal with a horn and went "i need to listen to this until i die"

[writingwithcolor]

Jews (and Muslims) in space! AKA fun with halakhic hypotheticals

@whiteraven13 asked:

Hi, I'm writing a sci-fi book that involves a long spaceflight before arriving on a new planet. How would being in space affect things like Shabbat (since no sundown) and praying towards Mecca? I want people's faiths to be important in the book because it always drives me up the wall when sci-fi stories are like "In the future people will be enlightened and won't need religion any more." Thank you!

Oh boy are you in luck, because this is actually something we talk about all the time! An astronaut in our current world doesn’t have the option of taking a full 25 hours off work, but they have in fact marked the beginning of shabbat by lighting electronic shabbat candles. Jewish astronauts have generally observed the shabbat times of their point of takeoff; lighting shabbat candles in orbit therefore has a set precedent. 

We don’t yet have a precedent for which direction to face while praying; Judaism and Islam treat this issue differently, since in Islam they face toward the actual direction of Mecca, while in Judaism we face due east even in places where Jerusalem is to the West or North of us. My instinct says that on another planet we would face toward planetary East, but on a long spaceflight my thought is that we would likely not worry about what direction the Jewish prayer space faces, since we also have the convention of facing toward whichever wall the torah scrolls are stored on, regardless of which direction it is. Speaking of which, there has been a torah scroll in space, on more than one occasion. 

Judaism has a lot to say about time. We don’t only mark the beginning and end of Shabbat at certain times, we also pray three times a day, at set times, and we observe holidays linked to the seasons--the seasons as they are in Jerusalem, regardless of which hemisphere of the Earth we’re standing on. It might be a jar for characters who have been observing the shabbat times of Houston for years to finally set down on a planet where their sense of time might be completely different--and narrative-wise, that’s not a bad thing: an American Jew stepping off a plane in Australia might have a similar experience.

The question of whether pork products created by a Star Trek style replicator would be kosher is open for constant debate: my gut says that when it came down to it there would be some people who do and some people who don’t accept the kosher status of a replicated pork chop, just as there is now for Impossible or Beyond fake-meat cheeseburgers. 

Thank you for your discomfort with the trope of an enlightened future where the traditions of our ancestors have been eradicated, and for wanting to paint a picture of a better future, one where we are valued and given the resources and freedom to preserve and develop our living cultures. 

- Meir

I agree with Meir - the good news is these are very realistic dilemmas and you will find lots of relevant commentary online; the bad news is, you will find a lot more questions than answers! But that’s also good news, because you can pick and choose the decisions and outcomes that suit your story. The line of reasoning will matter more than the conclusion.

Not much to add except I answered a slightly similar question with some pointers on things to google and why:

Jewish Character Stuck in Time Loop

Thanks for including our religion and culture in a highly technological future world 😊

- Shoshi

[whencyclopedia]

The Pillow Book

The Pillow Book (Makura no Soshi) is a personalised account of life at the Japanese court by Sei Shonagon which she completed c. 1002 CE during the Heian Period. The book is full of humorous observations (okashi) written in the style of a diary, an approach known as zuihitsu-style ('rambling') of which The Pillow Book was the first and greatest example.

Sei Shonagon

Sei Shonagon was a lady of the Japanese imperial court. Her surname is not her actual name but refers to her role, or more likely the role of her husband, as a 'lesser counsellor' or shonagon. Her family name was Kiyohara, her father being Kiyohara no Motosuke (908-990 CE) who was himself a waka poet of some repute and co-author of Gosenshu, an imperial anthology. Her grandfather, Kiyohara no Fukayabu, was an even more renowned poet. Sei Shonagon was born c. 966 CE, was married at least twice and was known to have visited certain Buddhist and Shinto sacred sites and temples.

Sei Shonagon was part of a wider group of literary ladies employed to educate Teishi (976-1001 CE), one of the wives of Emperor Ichijo. Sei Shonagon joined the court in 993 CE, and she describes her early experience there as follows:

When I first went into waiting at Her Majesty's Court, so many different things embarrassed me that I could not even reckon them up and I was always on the verge of tears. As a result I tried to avoid appearing before the Empress except at night, and even then I stayed hidden behind a three-foot curtain of state. (Keene, 413)

One of Shonagon's literary rivals and lady at the second imperial court, that of Shoshi (Akiko), was Murasaki Shikibu, authoress of the classic Tale of Genji. Shikibu was scathing of Shonagon's literary skills in her own diary: "She thought herself so clever, and littered her writings with Chinese characters, but if you examined them closely, they left a great deal to be desired" (Ebrey, 199). Still, Shikibu was not above borrowing images and scenes from The Pillow Book for her own work. It is conceivable that Genji was a response to Shonagon's work given the rivalry between the two royal courts when, unusually, there were two reigning empresses.

Continue reading...

[mercurygray]

hiii friend, could i send "coffee splatters on paper" and/or" the smell of fresh coffee" and/or "empty coffee cup" (basically, any of the coffee ones) 😅 for fred and jo, please? <3 — @shoshiwrites

Shoshi, thank you so much for trusting me again with Jo. She is, as always, a joy and a delight. For those of you who don't know her, Jo Brandt is Shoshi's War Correspondent OC who has made several appearances in the TDS multiverse and appears here by kind permission from her author.

It was easier writing at the Aero Club.

There was always the extra work of bringing her typewriter with her from her room, but the portable was built for outings like this, and, too, there was something…comforting, about writing her column from the middle of things, or at least, as close to the middle of things as Jo was able to get at Thorpe Abbotts without being a security risk. Everyone came to the Red Cross club at some time or another, and the constant stream of chatter in the background made a nice change of pace from the birdsong and quiet tree rustles of the back garden.

And there was the bottomless coffee, of course. And the cat.

"Well hi there, mister, how are you?" Jo asked, as Spark Plug came up to rub against her chair and buff his head against her leg a couple of times. The black and white cat purred for a moment and then took the opportunity to jump up onto the table, narrowly missing Jo's empty coffee cup, and scratched himself against the side of the portable's carriage return a few times. "You're lucky you're cute," Jo said quietly, waiting for the animal to move out of the way before she started typing again. "Usually I charge for spelling errors."

"Excuse me, Miss, is this cat bothering you?"

Jo didn't need to look up at Fred to see that the woman was smiling at her own joke, coffee pot at the ready as she did her rounds of the room. "Yeah, as a matter of fact," she said, sitting back in her chair and holding tightly on to her empty cup before Fred could try filling it. "He was just yowling at me about when I'm going to do that piece about his owner."

The Clubmobile woman deflated a little. "Jo, I'm not -"

"But you are," Jo said, cutting into Fred's excuses about 'not being very newsworthy,' still guarding her cup so Fred wouldn't fill it and run. "You're the one everyone wants to read about! When all those mothers read about their sons they're sitting at home hoping someone's taking care of them -- and that's you."

Fred's smile could best be described as 'flat'. "Interview Mary - or Tatty! They've got much better stories than mine."

"Freda Torvaldsen, from Madison, Wisconsin, is very used to managing rambunctious attitudes," Jo said in a fake newsman's staccato. "Twenty-six years old, she put her career as a kindergarten teacher on hold to go overseas and entertain America's flyboys. From slinging doughnuts to singing tunes, there's nothing Fred, as she's known around base, can't do - and that includes rehabilitating stray animals." She paused for effect.

"You're making me sound like Snow White."

"I'll bet if I asked nicely I could find you seven guys to be dwarves," Jo shot back without missing a beat.

She was serious, and Fred knew it. "Please don't."

"And anyway, she's a brunette," Jo added, for effect. "Thirty minutes. And a picture. With the cat."

"No one wants -"

"Everyone will want a picture with the cat," Jo cut in strongly. "Especially after I tell them where he came from."

Fred got into enough arguments on a daily basis that she could tell when she had lost one, and she sighed (somewhat dramatically) and sat down just as the door opened and a fresh group of flyers rolled in. Most of them gravitated towards the counter and Mary Boyle, but one of them broke away to stand behind Fred's chair as if to look over her shoulder at Jo's typewriter.

"What's this? Fred Torvaldsen is sitting down? On a Tuesday?"

"I'm being interviewed," Fred said, looking up at the pilot with a fondness in her eyes that was hard to hide. Jo bit back a smile and allowed the pair their moment - Clubmobile girls weren't supposed to have favorites, but John Brady was one of Fred's. (If he had his way, he'd be more than a favorite, if Jo was any judge, but she supposed there would be time for that later. Hopefully.)

"Is our trusted correspondent going to write about how we'd all fall apart if you weren't here?" Brady asked, with absolute seriousness.

"I am, Captain Brady, thank you so much for suggesting that," Jo said strongly, before Fred could get a word in edgewise, grinning at him.

"You both are being very mean," Fred said with another one of her exasperated smiles.

"We are," Brady confirmed with a sly smile that did nothing to hide his delight. His hands never left the back of her chair, but there was something in his eyes, too, that was doing a lot of very heavy lifting for his favorite who wasn't supposed to be a favorite.

"There a party here I don't know about?" John Egan's voice came booming from behind Jo. When had he come in?

"I'm being interviewed," Fred cut in, before anyone could say anything else. "Jo's going to add me to her Rogue's Gallery for the Clarion."

"Excellent. Best news we've had all day. You'll make us all look good, Fred. Are you putting in a good word for her, Spark Plug? Are you?" The cat, which had formerly been relaxing next to the typewriter, had stood up as Egan approached, yowling softly for attention and closing his eyes to lean into Egan's large, warm hand and its energetic scritches, the cat's expression perhaps best described as 'pleased'.

Jo looked away to see Fred was watching her with an odd look in her eye and a secretive smile. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," Fred said mildly, sitting back in her chair. "Are we starting this interview now, or what?"

[lostloveletters]

🍓🥤🍬🦴 if u want battie!!

Thank you!

🍓 How did you get into writing fanfiction? I read The Outsiders in middle school and was so upset at the ending I started writing a whole AU in this little notebook I had! And then I came across Quizilla (does anyone remember Quizilla lol)

🥤 Recommend an author or fanfic you love: I'm not even kidding I was just in Shoshi's messages talking about Bucky and Jo but @shoshiwrites song for slow dancing has all Bucky/Jo prompts she's written so far and I love them so much!

🍬 Post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character: Oh man, okay...y'all know I'm a Kay defender forever, but I do think Michael loved Apollonia to an extent (Did he love her well? Was their relationship remotely ethical? Debatable. Did she deserve better? Yes, she was so young and didn't do anything to deserve the fate she got)

🦴 Is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? Yes! The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. It's a collection of short stories and I just aspire to write on her level🖤

🦇 Battie

[maggiecheungs]

speaking of the joys of metafiction, i’m currently re-reading fumiko enchi’s 1965 novel a tale of false fortunes (namamiko monogatari), and it’s so deliciously layered—a precarious bundle of narratives built upon multiple incredibly tenuous sources, tied together by a thread of unreliable narration.

in the introduction, fumiko enchi states that the novel is as an attempt to describe/retell a classical text she claims to have read when she was a child, entirely through her own memory. this book never belonged to her—she borrowed it from the library of a prominent academic—and as an adult she was never able to find any trace of it anywhere else. futhermore, the manuscript she claims to have read was not the orginial; it was probably a copy made several centuries later, and it is apparently impossible to tell the original date of authorship, and whether or not it was intended to be fiction. enchi’s novel switches almost seamlessly back and forth the ‘recollected’ passages and her own commentary on them, thus blurring the line between the 'original' text and her own interpretations.

but that’s not all! this text she is describing (a tale of false fortunes) is a retelling of some of the events described in, and clearly a textual response to, the 11th century japanese classic history text eiga monogatari/a tale of flowering fortunes, which describes the political ascendency of fujiwara no michinaga. this time period can be fairly among historians—not because there’s a lack of sources, but because the sources we have are all so intimately connected to the political figures and powers of the day (which tends to be a problem with most historical sources, alas). essentially, the contemporary historiographical texts that we have are all committed to telling certain, selective narratives. which is to say that eiga monogatari (which was written about events that occurred during the author’s own adulthood, no less!) is very biased.

to add even another layer of intertextual confusion to it all, eiga monogatari itself is something of a composite text—the main author is generally assumed to be akazome emon, a lady-in-waiting to michinaga’s daughter empress shoshi, but there is still some uncertainty as to the extent to which authorship can be attributed to her. this is in large part because emon essentially plagiarised* other first-hand accounts of the events she describes. for example, there’s a section of eiga monogatari which is just copied without alterations or attribution from the diary of murasaki shikibu. so enchi’s book is allegedly based on a classical text, which is based on a different classical text, which in turn is stitched together from a bunch more other texts. it completely destroys any notion we might have had of an ‘original’ or ‘true’ narrative.

and to top it all off, the novel is almost as impossible to find in english as its alleged predecssor was to find in japanese. in fact (despite being a work of fiction by a prominent novelist) the english translation was published by the university of hawai’i press, an academic publisher who exclusively prints nonfiction and has printed a lot of translations of classical japanese historical writings. the publisher lends the narrative an air of credence; if you didn’t know better, you might think that enchi’s text was rooted in real life and literary history.

so in the end, the finished result is a gloriously metafictive romp through the liminal space between fact and fiction, history and memory, originality and replicas. it’s turtles all the way down, and it’s brilliant.

*a word with heavy connotations that might not apply in the same way in this specific historical context, which I won’t go into here

[kiss2012]

tagged by @justinefrischman to post my favourite new listens of 2022 thank youuuu 💓 idk if i fully agree with this because i listened to a lot of albums this year but i definitely loved these ones. also pretend carly’s 2022 album is here too i couldn’t fit it but it is there.

tidal - fiona apple / (what’s the story) morning glory? - oasis / reading writing and arithmetic - the sundays / my love is cool - wolf alice / stories from the city, stories from the sea - pj harvey / fever to tell - the yeah yeah yeahs / paramore - paramore / the runaways - the runaways / third eye blind - third eye blind

tagging umm @yellowwperil @literaturebf @shoshie @oldplum @boymiffy @pinkmoon888 if u want to

[shoshiwrites]

Prompt requested by @kmk1701d, "a kiss while in close proximity." Thank you so much, Katt! A big bouquet to @junojelli for all things backyard garden, and to @basilone for talking me through at least seven different ?!?! moments ♡ Bucky Egan/War correspondent OC, also on Ao3! Warning here for emetophobia [brief, non-graphic].

september song

A package finds her in Norwich, under the September sun. It’s covered in stamps and ink, pressed haphazard over Evie’s careful hand. Jo carries it out to the back garden, a glass in one hand and the stuffed envelope in the crook of her arm, holding a notebook and novel and pencil besides. It’s optimistic, the amount of things she’s carrying, like she won’t just want to sit and laze under the trees, feel the sun on her face, sip her weak tea.

It’s become a place she goes when she needs something like rest, the oasis that’s hardly one if she thinks about it — the Anderson shelter and the squash blossoms and the cabbages. But there’s the sun on the red brick of the house, the little potting shed, the trees bearing russet apples and the ivy and the last lingering clematis, the scent of it like almonds.

In the summer, the June and July evenings, she’d sit out here with whichever correspondent was staying in the room next to hers, or play cards with the land girls down from Manchester and Hull. Kay had brought drinks out from the kitchen, little cocktails in haphazard glassware sweet-talked out of the housekeeper’s care, Kay’s spectator pumps clacking on the flagstone path.

She slides a fingernail under the lip of the envelope, wincing as the paper snags. Nothing inside seems to be damaged, though. There’s a letter, a packet of photos embossed with the name of a Philadelphia studio, a few more tied with a white ribbon. The ones Angelo took, Evie’s letter explains. Evie’s fiancé — husband, Jo mentally corrects now — is a hobbyist photographer, as much as finances and the war allow. There’s a smaller envelope too, with a few flower petals dried and pressed between. White roses, from Evie’s bouquet.

Guilt washes over her — Evie doesn’t know about William, about the whole awful mess. Nobody at home does. Kay knows, she’d had the front seat to the aftermath, the whiskey thrown up in the bathroom and the thumbnails Jo had bit down to the quick. Kay had brought her ginger ale and brushed back her hair and told her the war needed Jo Brandt, not Mrs. William Merrick. Jo had smiled and told her that was hogwash, but nice hogwash, and then promptly thrown up again.

She hadn’t been able to sour a letter home with it, what seemed like such petty personal news.

The photos, of course, are beautiful. The studio shots of Evie and Angelo, Evie in the suit Jo knows is dove-gray gabardine, light enough for summer, and Angelo with the tie pin Evie gave him the last Christmas Jo shared with them stateside. The family posed in front of the altar, and outside the church. Angelo’s shots are of the reception after, and Evie outside on the sidewalk. The sunlight catching her earrings, the beading on her Juliet cap, filtered through her birdcage veil. There are the hydrangeas in vases, and the table set with a small cake and hors d’oeuvres, the homemade wine, the cousins sat on Evie’s lap. Angela and John asked about you of course, Auntie Jo.

Evie steals the camera for a few, Angelo with his jacket off and shirtsleeves rolled up, looking every inch the man in love. Like he hasn’t always looked at her like that, every day of their lives. Jo feels still, all of the sudden, just now hearing the birdsong over the walls, too caught up in the photos and the love that pours from each word of Evie’s letter. I don’t know if it will still be in fashion, she writes, but you’re welcome to the cap and the earrings. They would look so nice with your hair, Jo. You’d be welcome to the suit too, but I know you have something white planned for the family. William’s family, she means.

She swallows.

They hadn’t gotten to the planning, actually. Nothing beyond what was expected — the church, the white dress, the flowers, the reception back at the house with a dinner. There wasn’t a dress hanging in the closet, only the ring that now lived in the back of a drawer in her desk inside the house. The only official stamp was the engagement announcement in a Philadelphia newspaper. The one that ran months ago. She wonders why no one had pressed them to marry before they had both left for England.

She gathers the photos back into the cardboard sleeve, back into the package. Lifts the envelope of rose petals to smell the faintest scent, and then replaces those too. Leans her head back, thinks of fishing her sunglasses from her trouser pocket. She’s got a haphazard outfit on, the loose trousers and sandals and a button-down with the sleeves pushed up, her watch, her hair hastily pulled back. An outfit for a rare day with no appointments, only the scurrying of a reporter trying to finish something to send off. She’d made her edits in the morning, and gone over some of Kay’s contact sheets after her second cup of coffee. Maybe she hadn’t earned the rest, but it’s too nice of a day to not at least sit out around the lunch hour. She’ll be back in London under rainclouds soon enough.

She’s too uneasy to keep her eyes closed for long, thinking of wedding gowns and absent rings, wondering how she became the type of girl who needed a diamond.

Her mother had a silver band that she wore every day that Jo had known her. Jo guesses there were some things even her father wouldn’t have pawned for drinking money.

After she’d gotten up off the bathroom floor, Kay had told her of a cousin who was married for the fourth time last spring. This time to a count, Kay had said. Something in her eyes told Jo she didn’t think it would last. A few of the correspondents they know in London are divorced, or functionally so. Several unmarried, to various degrees.

She wonders how you become the type of person who marries four times. Did it mean you’d given up on a certain kind of love? Maybe they know something we don’t, Jo thinks.

She doesn’t have too much time to ponder the question. At once she hears the noise of the door behind her, the one from the kitchen out to the garden, and footsteps, and poor Muriel the housekeeper’s voice leading someone back out to Jo in her chair.

“- should be right out here-”

“There she is.” It’s half-crowing, affectionate. “Thank you, Muriel.”

How does he even know- She turns, replaces her tea carefully on a stepping stone. “Major Egan.”

Affectionately annoyed, at the title. “How many times do I have to tell you to call me John?”

She’s not surprised he found her through the front of the house, not surprised Muriel’s smiling affectionately at his back as she closes the door, as he walks over to her.

“Force of habit,” she says. A useful one, one to ought to keep if she knows what’s good for her. For any of them. Like they’re not a hundred miles past that by now. “What brings you up here?” She scans around for another chair, wonders if he’s already refused a cup of tea.

“Oh, I need a reason?”

She stills, suddenly feels her cheeks pink with sun.

“Buck’ll let you write about him,” he says, almost like a non-sequiteur. “Finally agreed.” She’s amused, faintly, by what that agreement might have looked like. He can read it on her face, nods a little along with her. “Just tipped his chin up like this,” he says, on the verge of smiling. “You know.”

“Wonderful,” she says, and there’s not a hint of shadow in it.

He looks at her lap, and her letter, and her book, and her pencil. “I’m sorry, was I interrupting something?”

That almost makes her laugh. Like he’s ever cared about interruption.

“No, I won’t get to a proper reply sitting in this chair,” she says. “Can’t write too well on my legs.”

“Any good news?”

Oh. She can’t lie about it, can she? The photo sleeve still in her hands. “Two dear friends were just married, actually.”

“Fantastic,” he says, the shine out of his voice, but no less sincere. He sounds almost quiet.

Before she knows it, she’s profferring the photo of everyone out on the front steps of the church, Evie squinting beautifully into the sun, Angelo looking at her, his arm around her waist.

“They look happy,” he says.

“Mmm.” She could keep talking, she knows. Maybe she’s afraid of what she’ll say.

He hands the photo back to her, his thumb careful against the edge. “This is a nice place you’ve got here.”

There’s a physical relief she feels, turning to something like the vines and the trees to talk about. Other than the photos. Other than the fact that’s he’s quieter than usual, has been for weeks. When he’s sober, at least. “I just enjoy it,” she says. “Not much help in the garden besides wheeling dirt around.” She can barely keep a window box alive. Her roommates only leave her in the company of plants with their very precise instructions.

“Can the major get a tour?”

She looks up at him, quirks something of a smile, squints over his shoulder in the sun. Like she didn’t just tell him she’s useless in a garden apart from sitting in it. “If I can’t offer you a chair, I probably should.”

He holds out a hand, lets her press heavily down on it as she stands. More than she thought she’d have to. Her things go in the chair where she’s just been sitting, the curve of sun-faded, striped fabric. It’d make a nice picture, Jo thinks. Kay would move a couple of things, maybe take a stray flower and place it to the side for a shot. Her hand feels warm.

She waves a hand over the shelter in self-explanation, watches him nod in seriousness. There’s the little stone path that leads to the back wall, more ivy, the late-season potatoes and heads of cabbage. There’s a rickety little folding chair against the side of the potting shed, and she assesses that maybe she’s the one who belongs in that, and him in the other. He’d have more trouble getting off the ground than she did, though.

There’s a nice slant of shade, too, between the shed and the wall.

“Anything good in there?” He’s nodding towards the shed.

She’s trying not to narrow her eyes. Trying not to think of a hundred things. She’s only ever poked her head in.

Before she can say something — dirt, gardening tools, who the hell knows — he’s taken her hand and ducked under the doorway.

She’s careful not to trip over the step, close to him now inside the tiny shed. There’s a counter bare of seedlings, now that it’s sunny mid-September, a few implements to the side, the back shelf lined with dusty pots and some old glassware, the rich smell of soil.

“Not much to see,” she says, which is a lie too, if you know how to look.

His voice is almost imperceptibly hoarse, and serious. “‘M not really interested in the tour, Josephine. Not anymore, at least.”

Her voice is faint, as his hands find her hips. “Might’ve guessed.” She can’t think about it, the letter or the photos or his voice, the edge of despair, of anger, her own empty hands.

There’s a moment as those own hands find him, the wool of his uniform, as they look at each other in the dim, filtered light. The dirty window. The silent asking, the way she stills, and lets him press his mouth to hers.

She winds back her foot, tries to kick the door shut. The action falls short, just barely, and he huffs a soft laugh against her cheek. Kicks the door back, for real, with his boot. He’s warm, from the sun. She imagines she is, too.

“Did Major Cleven really say we could do a feature-” she starts, and the face he makes is something she’d bottle if she could.

“Start by calling it something else, Josephine,” he says. “You’ll scare him off-”

Now that’s a joke, and she’d smile if she weren’t busy kissing him again, tracing her thumb along his cheek, his jaw, his ear.

Little surface scar-dings against his neck, raised tissue tinged red, and she can’t think about what flak does, how a person can’t be so easily repaired.

He’s pulling her closer, uniform pressed against the thin rayon of her blouse, keeping, she notices belatedly, her hair from a spider’s web behind them.

She tastes the faintest hint of ale in his mouth, against his lip and his mustache, and something else — something sudden and deep and sweet. He’s smiling, and she can see a tiny dark scrap between his teeth. He looks almost sheepish, like a kid caught with chocolate on his face before dinner. “I saw some blackberries on my way over here,” he says. “By the roadside.”

“Bring me any?” She’s smiling.

“Thought you might like to go uh, gather some,” he says, like it’s something he’s trying on for size. Gather. Like this is a novel set in deep summer, and not a war. “Had to see if they were any good.”

Maybe she’s being ridiculous — it’s all for the war, anyway. The squash and the cabbages and the apples and the potting shed revived after a decade and change gathering dust in the back of an old house.

She and her roommates will help Muriel put up the apples soon. Hattie and Nancy, the land girls, had mentioned making pies. Blackberry and apple — it sounds like something her mother would have made.

“Kiss me again,” she says. His mouth is tarter now, the tip of his tongue pressed against her teeth. She half-swallows a yelp as he lifts her to the counter, lets his hands settle back on her hips, trailing his mouth across her jaw. “New calculations, Major?”

“Tactical reassessment.”

A laugh bubbles in her chest, surprisingly heavy. “What’s your objective?”

“Top secret.”

Her fingertips play at the epaulet of one shoulder. “Not too hard to guess.”

“I don’t hear you guessing.”

She pulls him, gently, back to her mouth.

“You needed this,” he says, firm and a question at once. Something in her ribcage sings. “Couldn’t risk you not getting it.”

“Getting what?”

“A good kiss.” She drags her thumbnail gently across the back of his neck, the short hairs there, watches his eyelashes flutter ever so slightly. “Someone else might have, couldn’t risk that, either.”

She leans back a little, still tight in his hold. “Wouldn’t let them,” she says. Breathes, like it’s a secret, like she didn’t just say it out into the quiet.

She wants to stain her fingers picking blackberries with him, his mouth, hers. Hear about the moments he stole as a kid. Share her own. Maybe they can have that here, on a September afternoon.

[buggybugkilo]

anyway now that it’s seven in the morning and i REALLY need to be asleep i’m gonna do a funky funky introduction for an oc i’ve had for about the same amount of time ive been fixating on twst

except he’s just as developed as all my other ocs

(i will actually do a full effort drawing for him..hopefully)

edit: replacing the image ahdhd

anyway so shoshi (name may be changed-im iffy on the name ngl) is based off of shock (nightmare before christmas) i have the other two from the trio and oogie (neon haired guy i’ve drawn a few times) too just need to make a proper intro for them

anyway then his cat familiar z-whos based off of zero

so shoshi is technically supposed to be like white pale but i don’t like it as much so he’s just a normal amount of pale

backstory stuff is a wip but the very base of it is:

shoshi comes from and kind of is (?) a ✨grim reaper family✨ living in halloween town (in which most ghosts will avoid him naturally..dude is almost completely oblivious to that fact)

his childhood wasn’t too bad-growing up he was a rule follower, had good grades, had a few friends-overall good kid so not much happening

the only bad thing being he has a goofy (/j) homophobic and transphobic father who was like hella transphobic

shoshi is trans and slightly fruity-so you can imagine how that went-basically being the bright happy child to being almost cut off from his father-eventually shoshi gave up on trying to get accepted by his father and instead said it was a phase and moved on-this being the main reason he grows his hair out

(when asked about going to nrc he just said he heard it was a good school and tricked them into thinking he was a dude)

anyway back to the being a grim reaper-z was a street cat that shoshi had befriended as a small child basically growing up with z- this cat was also supposed to be the first soul he would help guide-shoshi just didn’t (in a more dramatic way but that’s for me to write when i’m not still figuring everything out) and instead made z his familiar-z is linked to shoshis feelings and it’s rare to see the two having different reactions (so z would have to have a very strong emotion for it to show) which is kind of morbid now that i think about it but i swear it’s more of a in sync kind of thing 😭

the two others from the trick or treater trio are childhood friends

-

in general things

shoshi has very sensitive skin to the point where when going outside he has to use a sun umbrella (hence the being pale) which wasn’t much of a problem with halloween town being very cloudy and dark but now in nrc is quite off putting with the quiet and mildly reserved nature along with the sun umbrella

he often takes the role of being responsible for his other friends often scolding them for reckless behavior

shoshi is most definitely a cat dad kind of dude

he and z will give someone the most judgy look if they do something stupid

..and then cover for their ass five seconds later

definitely into darker fashion styles (so like alt or whatever wearing a bunch of dark colored celestial clothing is)

probably has trust issues ajsjdjdj

his dorm is a funky funky oogie boogie one i have yet to fully make (is vice president of it)

anyway now that it is a whole ass hour later i’m gonna go sleep

[upontherisers]

if you're feeling it, could i please request "playing with each other’s fingers" for an oc of your choice👀 — @shoshiwrites

happy (belated) bday my dear shosh. here is a very very belated prompt to celebrate. this is an AU i've had for years but @loveduringthewar's beautiful West Wing AU inspired me to get some real writing done on it. summary: poet laureate mattie james is dutifully protected by secret service special agent joe toye.

a friday in autumn, 2:19 pm

Joe finds himself in a chair across from Mattie, who’s surrounded by a gaggle of vigilantly curious middle schoolers as she holds his palm and moves his hand around.

“See?” she says, angling his fingers toward the fluorescent lights overhead, “it’s too big. So,” she lets his hand down once more and slips her wire work off his finger. “We gotta make it smaller but if we squeeze it—”

“There’ll be a bend, like, a little point.” One of the kids makes a ‘V’ with his hands and Mattie beams. 

“Exactly! Let me show you how to avoid that.” She sits back with the paperclip ring and the circle of kids closes around her once more.

Joe takes a moment to look around for help from any of the other adults in the room, hoping someone else is willing to jump in and play model while he gets back to his very serious job of protecting a representative of the state, but he’s only met with endeared smiles from the teachers and duty-bound refusal from his fellow agents. Bull’s at the door with a sympathetic but ultimately unmoved nod, Bill’s glancing over with a smug, thrilled sneer between chatting to one of the instructors, and Johnny shakes his head before looking at the floor. Joe knows what that means—you made your bed, now lie in it.

Or, as Mattie likes to say, grow a spine.

It’s not like Joe doesn’t have a spine. He spends his days telling people what they can and can’t do, where they can and can’t go, and who they can and can’t speak to, all without getting caught up in their pleas and compromises. This job does not allow for missteps; he’s not a man who takes chances. But this, and but is doing a lot of work here says the Mattie in his brain because she lives there now, this is different.

This is the fourth school they’ve been to this week and it goes the same every time. They arrive to a warm, overenthusiastic welcome from the teachers and an excited-slash-confused-to-borderline-hostile reception from the students. Mattie’s music isn’t necessarily targeted toward the middle grades, her poetry even less so. But she gets up there nonetheless.

Hi, I’m Mattie. I make music and I write poems.

Are you good at it? a kid will ask, always a boy—this one proudly introduced himself as Tyler, always towards the back of the room, always accompanied by giggles.

Mattie shrugs. Some people think I am, some people think I’m trash. And the shock of that admission, from an adult, from a capital-I important adult, breaks the spell of awkwardness and within a few minutes, she’s charmed the whole room. The kids are eating out of her palm. Even the ones who were determined to be difficult have either bought in or are about to.

Joe is now familiar with the mix of admiration and jealousy on a teacher’s face when they realize that Mattie’s nearing a participation rate that Maria Montessori would be jealous of. Johnny leans over to them with a grimace of empathy. It’s not you, it’s her. She’s a magician with this stuff.

Then, her least favorite part. She asks for a volunteer, just for a moment, just for a prompt. We can’t theorize our way into making art. We gotta do it. All the energy that had built up and the excitement on the kids’ faces fizzle. She’ll give it a few seconds and look at the adults in the room rather than the kids, half-pleading, half-resigned, then laugh like that was expected, like she asked them to skydive with no parachute. 

She’ll let off steam about it later, when they’re in the car, when they’re back in her suite at the Library of Congress. How hard is it to set an example? They introduce me like I’m Nelson fucking Mandela but as soon as I ask them to engage for the sake of their kids, crickets.

Mattie, Johnny’ll say, it’s not that—

It’s because they don’t take this seriously. All this talk about how important artistic outlets are, but God forbid you have to do that art yourself. Because that’s not serious, that’s not real. She lets her bag hit the ground harder than necessary and runs her hands over her face before ripping open her beat-up laptop, mumbling to herself. It’s fine. It’s about the kids, it’s about the kids.

Bill’ll send a get a load of this guy eyebrow around to the other three, but Joe usually finds himself nodding in agreement with Mattie. Poet Laureate is quite a title, but it doesn’t mean anything when no one’s listening. People should listen.

So, on this particular Friday as Tyler, who reminds Joe of Bull—well-built and curly blonde—takes the awkward silence to look at him and the rest of the agents rather than his teachers or Mattie, Joe decides that it changes today. He knows the answers to her prompts already—think of a fruit, apple; think of a color that’s not also the color of an apple, purple. A four-man detail has one redundant agent and all entrances and exits have been secured; the other three can spare him for a while.

He pushes off the eastern wall or the room and half-raises a hand before fully raising it when he sees Mattie’s eyes light up upon realizing what he’s doing. He answers her questions only slightly disquieted by the sudden amount of eyes on him, but as she starts her poem building exercise with a thankful wink, he feels pretty good about it. He’s doing the thing, making art instead of theorizing, setting the example.

More like sitting the example. In his two months with Mattie, he forgot that making art could mean… y’know, making it, not just writing it down. It’s the whole point of the exercise, actually. Ten minutes of silent work, discussion, ten minutes of work with light conversation—Mattie’s the queen of light conversation, then presentations from anyone who wants to. The only rules are that you have to make something, whether it be using the poem prompt she walks them through or something from the classroom supplies at your teacher’s discretion.

The kids who wanted to write set off with their paper and pencils and Mattie walks around for a bit before settling into an empty chair and fiddling with the paper clips a girl is using crafts. Tyler wanders by first, then two of his friends, next a few of their friends, and soon, there’s a bundle of 7th graders watching Mattie make a paper clip ring. And of course, they want to make one too and of course, Mattie needs a model for show because if all of the kids are making one and she’s teaching, then who’s driving the boat? And of course Joe gets pulled in because he volunteered so nicely before.

The circle of children parts like the Red Sea and he’s face-to-face with Mattie again as she wraps the ring around his finger, her hands working around his to fit the metal securely. She’s full of focus, eyes locked on where their skin meets, still in her shoulders and steady in her breathing in the way she only ever is when she’s in the zone. He wants to laugh at the dedication to this tiny strip of wire, but he won’t, not in present company; he can’t have them think he’s laughing at her.

Maybe you don’t have to have volunteers, Johnny offers after their third visit with no adult participation.

Mattie sighs. It’s about the principle of the thing.

Oh, Bill snarks, the principle of the thing.

The kids don’t need to follow the teachers, they follow you just fine, Bull says from his spot at the door.

Johnny nods sagely. Yeah, monkey see, monkey do.

Well, Mattie says, tilting her head in sad consideration, maybe I’d hoped there’d be better monkeys.

Joe is being a better monkey, so no laughing. Instead, he looks from her face to their hands, wondering as always what she sees and how she sees it. It’s not just metal and space to her because nothing is ever just anything to her.

Her brain’s wired different than ours, as Bill says. And Johnny says, your brain isn’t wired at all.

He’s sure she’s watching the steel atoms bump into each other or she’s far beyond, watching the solar system spin on its galactic arm, just a blip in the rapidly approaching collision with Andromeda. Or she’s in both places at once, and here with him, too, capable of holding onto every eon and tense and time zone at once. He doesn’t understand it, not yet, where the poet ends and the person begins. 

“There!” Mattie says, sitting back. Joe holds still for what seems like far too long as the kids investigate her handiwork and investigate him. Their inquisitive gazes wander from the ring to his face, some of them leaning in to squint at him, evaluative and unimpressed.

Most of them have figured what he’s doing here, with three other guys who have similar enough haircuts and stand with hands clasped at rest in front of them, plain clothed but suspiciously so. He likes kids, or at least, he’s discovered that he likes them more than he thought he would. They don’t understand that it’s some people’s job to fly under the radar. They meet his gaze as much as they meet Mattie’s instead of politely ignoring him and his fellow agents like adults know to do. And when they do look at him, they don’t care. He has to respect that.

He’s watching Mattie shape a paperclip for a kid when Tyler suddenly fills up his entire field of vision, staring wide-eyed like Joe is a fish in a tank. “Do you have a gun?”

“Okay,” Mattie says, reaching out and clapping Tyler on the shoulder, “it seems like we’re ready for presentations! Let’s take our seats.”

Joe bolts out of his chair and takes his place along the wall again as Mattie wraps up.

He doesn’t realize he still has the heart-shaped ring on until they’re back at the Library of Congress and walking into Mattie’s suite. It’s so light that he forgets he's wearing it and it’s only as she sets her bag down and the flower ring one of the girls gave her catches the sun that he remembers what sits on his finger.

He slips it off and holds it out to her. “Here.”

She takes it gently, turning it over in her decorated hands before flipping it back to him like a coin. “It’s a gift,” she says with a wink, “for being my guinea pig.”

His mouth opens to say something, anything, but the words die in his throat. Taking a moment, he studies it for the first time. It’s a delicate thing, slightly springy if he squeezes the sides, more of a square than a circle, and so very Mattie that he’d pick her if someone had him guess at the maker. The heart has been roughly colored by a red Crayola marker which she’d gotten all over a desk and apologetically wiped up and the imperfections of it—the bends that won’t come out from the original shape, the matte sheen from all the handling—makes it more beautiful. 

He doesn’t know where to put it. It’ll fall right off the chain of his cross, and he can’t wear it and risk it getting snagged on something, but he wants it around. He wants to be able to see it and remember a day that was good, a day when he felt like they made a difference, that he made a difference. He hadn’t had a day like that in a long time.

It ends up in his locker at the D.C. headquarters office. Bringing it home feels too… too close, but this is a good spot, halfway between head and heart. He places it on the little shelf in the back next to his spare sunglasses and his old dog tags. He can’t seem to bring those home, either.

Johnny shakes his head as he passes on the way to his locker.

Joe pauses. “What?”

“You can’t say no to that girl.”

This is what Johnny’s amusement was about earlier in the classroom. There was nothing wrong with Joe stepping up or sitting down for a demonstration—it’s encouraged actually, especially at schools, something about giving the Service a friendlier face. Johnny’s gripe is with who Joe stepped up for and why he did it. 

“No favorites, Joe.”

“You think I’m playing favorites?”

“I think you don’t understand her.”

“And you do?”

Johnny shrugs and shuts his locker. “No, but I don’t try to. You can’t let it go.”

“I think,” Joe starts as he follows the other agent down to check-out, “that if we understand her, we can understand this guy and get him.”

It’s the one thing that bothers Joe about this case. Lots of people get threats—protecting those people is eighty percent of his job—but there’s something about the ones Mattie gets that doesn’t sit right with him, hasn’t since the beginning. The letters are the one inroad that anyone has to solve this thing and as more show up with diminishing progress from the combined efforts of the Service and the FBI, he thinks it’s time to get a move on. Maybe the missing link is in the protectee and not the thing they’re protecting her from.

What’s the harm in trying? He keeps thinking about where Mattie gets stuck in her job, where she’s given status but no authority, and how she keeps returning to her painted corner with a brave smile, gracious to wait there until she gets called up to do her tricks again. People listen to poetry but they don’t understand it, she says and that’s not fair. When he looks at Mattie, he sees a girl who should be understood as completely as possible, if ever possible.

Johnny flashes his badge at the front desk sensor and looks back at Joe. “It’s not your job to understand. It’s your job to stand there. What if something happened while you were getting your ring sized?”

Joe’s offended. “Sitting down means I’m compromised?”

“Getting involved means you’re compromised.” Johnny’s facing him now that they’re both in the exit lobby, a pensive look on his face as his bag is slung over his shoulder. “Look, Joe, they’re not paying us to think on this one. If you think something’s up, talk to Dick, otherwise, this is not the kind of work you bring home.”

Right, ‘cause Johnny’s a family man now, with a wife and a kid and a baby on the way.

“I didn’t bring it home,” Joe says.

Johnny nods but his eyes are far away. “Yeah, but you thought about it.”

Silence falls for a moment before Johnny sniffs and shoulders his bag. “Who’s on duty tonight?”

“Talbert and Grant,” Joe replies.

Johnny nods. “Make sure they take a look at the cameras, see if they can figure out why they’re down.”

“Yeah,” Joe sighs and heads out with a nod.

The drive home is quiet except for the radio and as he pulls into the parking lot, one of Mattie’s songs comes on the folk station he’s been lurking on. He sits for as long as it takes to play—eyes closed, head rested on his seat—and lets her voice wash over him. She sings like she speaks, brassy and casual, effortless, not having to reach for what she wants, alluring, magnetic in a way that gets under his skin. He listens for anything that could teach him something and he’s so caught up in the mystery of the girl and the thing that goes bump in the night, that he doesn’t listen to the lyrics until the chorus.

But I’m in so deep, she sings, you know I’m such a fool for you. You got me wrapped around your finger, oh. Do you have to let it linger?

“What the hell do you know about The Cranberries?” he asks to the air, smiling softly. 

It ends too soon, but the cool night outside shocks the spell of Mattie’s voice from his system as he enters his dark apartment. His nights off-duty are more and more standard as this assignment goes on; he’ll check in with his older sister as he gets dinner ready—Mom’s arthritis is flaring worse than usual and his niece is deciding between swim and soccer camp, catch the Pirates highlights on ESPN, do the dishes, then do his readings.

He started them on a curious whim, just to see what the hype was about and ended up standing in the aisle of a Brentwood bookstore for fifteen minutes, engrossed, until the attendant asked him if he was going to be making a purchase. He bought three books, none of them very long, but he’s not a book guy so they’ve been a task to get through.

He read Letters from a Convict Child first because it’s the book that put Mattie on the map and wrote a man out of incarceration and he’s not sure that he got all of it—he’s not sure that he got any of it—but he understands her now, at least more than he did two months ago. Each poem that paints a picture of the world paints a picture of the writer, too, and sometimes he wants to look away as Mattie touches her own raw nerves to get the words out. But he stays for her, he stays because people always look away. That’s why she writes.

As of yesterday, he’s officially halfway through reading grow lemon grow poem by poem and as he finds tonight’s selection, he’s struck by the opening lines. 

Wire hurts my hands, makes my fingers stink But I bend another paperclip

He underlines in his shitty pencil and reads the poem over and over again until his eyes start to droop close and he drags himself to bed wondering what Mattie’s night was like, if she offered her dinner to Tab and Chuck like she does he and Johnny, what music she played. It was Nina last week, but she’d spent the morning humming the Lumineers. Did she skip eleven songs before settling on the twelfth, or did she demand silence and curl up on the chair in the corner of her patio, legs tangled together, and write until Tab had to shuffle her to bed?

Did she make them rings despite the way the metal presses lines into the pads of her fingers? What did she say? Did either of them listen? 

He jolts up in the dull gray light of morning, scrambling to shut off his alarm as his chest heaves. In the bathroom, he splashes his face with cold water until the scenes of his dreams—lemon trees, paper clip rings, the shredded and smoking hull of an armored vehicle in the desert, a shadowed figure slipping a letter under Mattie’s door—wash away with the chill. His phone dings.

From B. Guarnere: Ur on coffee duty. Hurry up

[latibvles]

Hiya friend, a big happy fic birthday to you and thank you for this lovely ask meme! For the One Year Inbox Game, I'd love to introduce Jo Brandt. A keen observer with a sharp and thoughtful voice, she heads overseas to cover the war in Europe as a correspondent for a Philadelphia newspaper. Her preference for blending in and letting her subjects lead the story tends to blur into her personal life, at least when we meet her. She grew up with very little, as did her friends, is deeply caring, a terrible liar, and hasn't gotten a good night's sleep since 1937. Her story is in progress, but snippets can be found on @shoshiwrites.

For those of you unaware, I opened up this inbox game in September to celebrate one year of writing my longfic. While I am not taking anymore submissions, one of the submissions in my inbox will be posted every week at 12pm EST! I hope you enjoy reading about all these lovely characters I'm being allowed to play with.

JO!!! JO!!!!! I have a big fat girl crush on her guys, just so we're all clear. Anyways, you can check out more of her here as mentioned by shoshi herself. Now, let me be selfish here for a little while and toss her in the ring with Miss Daisy herself. Because there's something really important about Daisy, who thinks she went by unnoticed, and Jo, with an eye for things. Have some postwar sweetness with the girls, with Daisy quickly learning she's not the only one who remembers:

—

There’s no reason for her to be nervous. Seriously, there’s absolutely no reason. In fact, Ron teased her days prior about it because it was so incredulous. But here she was, nervous, sitting in a coffee shop and warming her hands and staring out the window.

Get a grip, is her sentence of choice when scolding herself internally, it’s Jo, for Christ’s sake.

Okay, so maybe it’s not about the Jo of it but rather the fact that this could go one of two ways — the reopening of old stitches or a trip down memory lane. And either one kind of terrified her, even if it was for a good cause. She’d felt elated on the phone, talking to her, and now that was wearing off and the weight of what she’s doing is settling on her shoulders again.

But someone has to remember everything and she doesn’t mind being that person. She doesn’t mind answering the questions, or trying to write it down so all those women don’t just fall to the wayside. And she knew that Jo had a good pair of eyes. A great pair, even — seeing things that no one else manages to catch and well, hadn’t that been the whole of Daisy’s war? The unseen part, the bloody bandages changed out of frame. Sure, some of them were pretty enough for magazine covers, but it wasn’t like any of them really wanted to talk about what happened after the shot anymore.

They could be forgotten, and there’s a part of Daisy that just can’t let that happen. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right and if the war left her with anyone, at least it imbued her with a sense of urgency at times like this.

Speaking of eyes, her own snap up to meet familiar warm brown irises when the little bell rings and the woman herself walks through the door in a brown houndstooth coat and a folder tucked under one arm like precious cargo. The nerves that were certain to swallow her whole are almost soothed by the fact that it’s Jo, and Jo knows why it matters, and they’re going to bump shoulders the whole trip down memory lane.

It could be terrifying, but it doesn’t have to be.

Impulsively, and maybe just slightly imbued by the sight of her, Daisy straightens up with a smile.

“That’s the jacket!” serves as her hello, and Jo returns the smile.

“You remember that?” she asks, almost rhetorically. There was a story there, about a houndstooth jacket, and about Jo’s skill with a needle — because sometimes normalcy came in the form of talking about the mismatched buttons and stray threads of patches on a uniform coat. 

“Of course I do,” The reply comes out just as easily as her first statement as Jo takes the seat across from her, file placed between them like a spirit board at a children’s slumber party. “Thanks for this, by the way.” Jo gives her a knowing look, a smile that edges on a tease with how it tugs at her lips.

“Third time you’ve thanked me, Clarke.”

“And there’ll be a fourth time too, knowing me,” She doesn’t protest, but she does go to open up the folder, pulling out pictures and spreading them out between them. Daisy can feel a sharp tug at her chest at the sight. She recognizes the faces spread out before her — Ginny sandwiched between two familiar officers, looking every bit like Madame President, even on the side of that beaten dirt path in the Netherlands. Another of Patty with a bright grin, her hand merely a suggestive blur as a result of her reflexive wave. There’s Rita who’s face is contorted in what has to be a scold for the man in front of her.

There’s one of Joe and Daisy herself, where she’s in the midst of messing with his bandages. The fact that they’re pulling the same grumpy face, no doubt sick of the former getting pelted by anything and everything, makes her laugh a little as she points to it, and Jo laughs too.

And then there’s one, so familiar it’s like she’s there. Spina, Roe, herself, and Laura all sat in a circle in Mourmelon, cards between them, cigarette hanging from Eugene’s lips and furling up and into the air. She can still imagine the bite of November cold, and the way Laura’s eyes lit up when she won twice in a row. A lump forms in her throat that she has to swallow.

“Didn’t think anyone noticed all this,” Daisy breathes out, feeling honest and raw but not terrified of the fact. Jo gives her one of those quiet, meaningful looks of hers.

“I did.”

[bitchesoffillory]

Ok so I wrote a whole thing and I finished it. It’s only like 500 words but still! It’s the first thing I’ve ever like, really written. But now I have to edit???? And??? Words??? They have to make sense when you put them together?? But these words.......they just....they just won’t?? They won’t do the thing they are supposed to do???