#some people give crystal glassware too

[terrasu]

I have zero idea how it works (bc my mom does it), but look up the free cycle or buy nothing project where you live. In my area, people give everything from lasagna noodles to lawn furniture to mattresses to fresh basil to professional clothes to (etc) out to people for free. A downside is that you need to be able to go to the person's house and pick it up, but if it's not ice cream, they will usually leave it out all day. (Usually. Sometimes, people will drop it on your porch.)

[sardonic-the-writer]

—the forge

SUMMARY | (Y/n) just came to give Phil his diamond armor. They didn't plan on meeting Father Fragrance today

PAIRING | c!schlatt x reader

WORD COUNT | 2k+

REQUESTED | no

WARNINGS | n/a

AUTHORS NOTES | We collectively need more osmp content in the world

🕷 Masterlist 🕷 Navigation 🕷 Rules 🕷

Somewhere, in a place that no one has ever heard of, there lies a small town in the heart of a fair, open country. It lays along the glittering sealine where people of all shapes and sizes eventually end up.

Phil had picked a nice place to meet.

It was a small ledge that seemed to invite you to sit on it. A stretch of grass acting as a pillow that overlooked the entire valley, so high up it felt as if your head could graze the clouds if you jumped.

Gusts of wind would tickle your face and rustle the grass. It reminded (Y/n) a lot of their forge a few miles back. Quiet. A place to go and be yourself without fear of any unwanted neighbors or prying eyes. Baren, but filled with so much nature at the same time.

The diamond armor that had bounced against (Y/n)'s hip through their entire walk out there now lay spread out next to them as they sat on the ground in a criss cross position. They were careful not to get any mud or dirt on it, too self concious of exactly how long it had taken to make the set.

Phil had flown out to commission the protective layer not long ago—being one of the only people who knew where they resided. Minus Tommy. (Y/n) still had no idea how he had found them, but were fine with it as long as he didn't go around shouting their adress. Which he hadn't yet; as far as they knew.

The request from Phil had been an interesting one to work on. Diamond armor light enough to fly while wearing, but thick enough to stop any sharp objects from imbedding themself in ones gut. Netherite would have been the preferred materal to protect oneself in, but Phil had learned early on that flying with it on was quite literally impossible. The same would have gone for dimond as well, but thankfully he had gone to (Y/n). Widely regarded as the best blacksmith around. Or the only blacksmith really. Not many takers for the job. A shocker concidering the demand for weapons and other items.

Sometimes it seemed like they could spin magic from their very own hands. Some might have chalked it up to (Y/n)'s iron golem genes/hybrid, others speculating they might be part blaze, (which was definitely wrong concidering that if that was true they wouldn't be able to leave the neather) but (Y/n) knew better.

They simply cared for things more. Stuff got broken all the time on the server. Smashed, shattered, snapped, chipped. You name it, they've probably been asked to repair it. But never once had it been an item of their own. To them, every piece of furniture glassware and clothing had a soul. Individual qualities that held them seperate from any other. Ruining someones hand crafted work felt like ruining someone's legacy to (Y/n). Needless to say they were always very careful with the things they owned. And in turn, the things they made.

Footsteps snapped (Y/n) out of their peaceful trance of looking at the crystal blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds. Gathering their things, they stood in preparation to meet with the very man that had organized this entire thing.

"Oh. Hello Techno." (Y/n) was surprised to see not one but two people facing them, the aforementioned bunny hybrid standing aside a slightly shorter man—although everyone seemed shorter in comparison to Technoblade.

He held a basket of carrots in one hand, the other awkwardly scratching the back of his neck as he shifted his weight from foot to foot every so often. Anyone else would have misread his body language as that of someone that had been forced to tag along. But (Y/n) knew better to know that if he didn't want to be here, he wouldn't. Simple as that.

A small wave was offered in their direction as his greeting, lightly glaring at Phil next to him when the green cloaked man rolled his eyes with a snicker.

"You could have just sent me with the carrots instead of showing up if you wanted to mate." Phil snickered. Techno deadpanned in his direction, the pink bunny ears on his head twitching.

"Ehhh it's nicer to give em in person. Needed some more gold while I was out anyways." He grumbled lowly, talking as if (Y/n) wasn't right across from him. They didn't mind though.

Phil let out the signature cackle of his, elbowing Techno as he went to shove his hands in the messenger bag hanging around his neck.

"Here. For the armor." Two handfuls of various minerals were presented to (Y/n) ceremoniously. They spotted a few red and green stones somewhere in there, causing them to shake their head at the expense Phil was spending on them.

"I told you when you asked for it—its free. Concider it me paying you back after so many favors." (Y/n) inhaled. They placed a hand on their hip daring Phil to retort. Unfortunately he had never really been one to back down in these situations.

"Favors? What, like me shooing Tommy off your roof that one time?" A laugh. "That doesn't count mate. Just take them. I know you don't like receiving gifts and all, but you're getting some today anyway whether you like it or not." Phil referred back to the wooden basket of carrots hanging around Technos wrist.

"A thank ya for tha' garden set you made me last month. 'Member you eyeing my carrot patch and thought you might like a few." Techno blew a few strands of long pink hair out of his face as he spoke, quickly butting into the conversation as to clarify why he was there. (Y/n) allowed themself a happy smile at his words, resisting the urge to make grabby hands at the food. It was known far and wide Techno's garden yealded only the best, as well as the fact he didn't share it with just anyone. So this was the ultimate prize.

Exchanges of items and food alike were swapped, chatter flowing along with it as the group of three ignored their aching feet to carry a conversation. It might have gone on untill the sun dipped beyond the horizon and his lady the moon rose with all her glory, if not for a pair of rapidly approaching footsteps, bringing along a sense of chaos with it. (Y/n) felt it before they heard it.

"Okay, who the FUCK is trespassing."

Three sets of eyes turned to connect with a disheviled figure.

Ram horns curled from the sides of his face, the beginnings of them covered with unruly brown tresses. They were a deep cream colored and looked sharp to the touch. Sort of like the rest of him. Sharp to the touch, akin the thorns in a prickle bush. Probably annoying as such too concidering his dramatic entrance.

(Y/n) blinked once as they surveyed his outfit (a collection of rich purples robes with a cross on it), trying to decide whether they should be annoyed or confused. They settled on both.

"Oh heyyy Schlatt." Phils wings stretched out when he drew out the y, nearly knocking Techno over with a "bruh".

"Don't you hey Schlatt me bitch!" The newcomer now known as Schlatt fumed. "What the hell are you doing conducting business on my terf!" His hands gestured all over the place, and (Y/n) had to blink once to make sure they weren't seeing things. It had looked for a second like he had eight arms, a set of inky black pincers protruding from his mouth. But they were gone as soon as they came, dispelling (Y/n)'s interest with them.

Phil held his hands up in a sign of peace at the yelling. He attempted to reason with the angry man who was stomping closer, robes ruffling in the wind. Technos arms flexed at the sight of someone so angry approaching the avian, but relaxed when Schlatt stopped a few feet away from his friend.

"Who's this clown." (Y/n) figured it was safe enough to talk to Techno in a wisper now that the other two people were engaged in a conversation. They didn't take their eyes off of Phil and his companion all the while, not managing to catch the upward quirk of Technos lips when they resorted to calling Schlatt a clown.

"Jschlatt, but he keeps tryna get people to call him Father Fragrance." He whispered back to them. (Y/n) looked at him with an expression like they had just smelled something bad, only getting a shrug in return.

"He can make you smell stuff."

"Gee thanks Tech. Would've had a hard time figuring out that one without you."

Techno wheezed a little bit, eyes scruntching up along with (Y/n)'s own smile.

"—and you!"

A finger was now being pointed harshly into (Y/n)'s chest, a piercing gaze accompanying it. And with plenty malic to spare I should add—which ruined the moment they were having with Techno.

"You of all people have the nerve to sell on Father Frangrences land?" Schlatt cackled and threw his head back while (Y/n) got the feeling they missed the better part of this conversation. "I think not!"

(Y/n) stood for a moment before letting a little giggle slip loose. Something that made the man currently towering over them falter.

"Right. Father Fragrance, referring to himself in the third person while wearing wannabe jesus robes and having a name that sounds like a sneeze." They exhaled our of their nose in a laugh. "I'm very scared right now, oh trust me."

"Are they sassing me—are you sassing me!?" He had first looked to Phil for an answer before gathering himself and leaning closer to (Y/n).

"I don't know. Did the seventies just call and ask for their mutton chops back?"

One of his hands came up to touch his facial hair, the skin surrounding it growing red as his jaw clenched with embarrassment and fury. That didn't last long though as the one sided screamed matched was snipped short.

"It was nice seeing you again, Phil. Techno." (Y/n) pushed past the sputtering Schlatt to gather their things, now full-on ignoring him as they got ready to leave. The closest they got to acknowledging him was nearly breaking character when they caught Techno's eye, swallowing down laugher.

"Adios." They saluted the group like an actor taking their final bow before dissapearing into the treeline. It wasn't untill the noise of their travel had completely gone mute did anyone speak.

"Who the actually fuck was that!" Schlatt growled, throwing his hands up as he resisted the urge to spit poison at the nearby trees.

"That my friend—" Phil laughed as he clapped a hand down on the self proclaimed priest shoulder. "—was you finally meeting your match."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[inkofamethyst]

July 10, 2023

Both my undergrad and grad uni subreddits were a bit of a mess after the affirmative action ruling.  As a somewhat high-performing (I would say “slighty-above-average” but I think that says more about the company I keep and the circles I find myself in than how I actually compare to most people) underrepresented minority from a “middle class” background... I feel weird about it all.  Really weird.  Idk.  Responsible reparations would fix a lot of the issue (albeit slowly) but what do I know.

DECOR SHOPPING HAS COMMENCED.  I’ve got a mini globe, I’ve got wisteria (might get more), I’ve got an Enterprise-D model on the way, I’ve got several craft ideas of varying difficulty, from printing out maps on beige paper and painting thrifted glassware into terracotta vases to creating mossy crystal mini terrariums and a crocheted granny square blanket (which I may wait to make until I get into the new place, so I’ll have far too much time to plan it to perfection).  Speaking of crafting, I have to organize my crafty things and pick my favorites to come with me.  May and June were months of rest.  July and August are to be months of craft.

I feel a bit calmer about spending since I have a TA check coming in a few weeks to offset some of it.

Somewhat related to crafting, I’ve wanted to try ginger braids for a few months now, and I may be able to incorporate them into an Ariel halloween costume.  The only other thing I’d really need to make from scratch would be some black outer piece (swiss waist/vest/corset).  This is a big deal because this could be my first year with a full-fledged costume.

I started looking for star trek things to print out and hang on the wall, and I’ve found, well, a lot, including an entire technical manual??  I don’t have enough pieces of cardstock to print all of them, but there are several things in here that I love and cannot wait to hang.  I’m also looking for poetry and quotes, but the only one I’m for sure going to put up is Harlem just as a kind of reminder.  

I’m just really leaning into the whole idea of romanticizing my life, is all.

But back to hair, all the black girlies on tiktok have decided that this is mini twist summer, so I did my first ever set of mini twists!  They took eight hours to do (normal twists take ~6) + washing/conditioning + banding overnight to minimize shrinkage (I still woke up with damp hair though so I just gave up on that tbh).  I didn’t really worry about proper parting except at the very top, and I didn’t put in gel at the roots, though I probably should’ve done that anyway to give them that fresh style look for a couple weeks.  I also tried out some new techniques this wash day (ten twisted sections instead of six bunned ones, washing my whole head but not taking out the twists (waaay more scalp access with smaller sections), a fantastic new deep conditioner, using one of those flexible detangling brushes in small sections) which I think helped everything go smoothly.  While I love the uber feminine braided look, it is nice to be done with my hair in 24 hours including breaks instead of a week-long endeavor.  And I’m kind of into the mini twist look!  They’re giving microlock vibes, but they’re frizzier, less shiny, and a bit less bouncy/voluminous than I’d anticipated, unfortunately.  Overall, I can see myself doing them again (of course, I’ll have to see how long they last).

Last thing: it’s a little difficult for me to empathize with people who don’t have a passion for learning who actively see learning as a chore.  I know in my mind that a degree is a necessary evil for some people, I know in my mind that not everyone has the luxury of making school their full time job.  But, still, I have to actively stop myself from snapping at students who are trying everything they can to express their distaste for being in a classroom they signed up for.  I know, no one takes a three-week course because they have a burning passion for bioanth.  I know this.  But.  I’m not going to let that kind of attitude shake me.  I’m going to bring my enthusiasm and hope that it drives me and everyone else to the end of this class.

Today I’m thankful for the movie Easy A.  It was cute, a little wacky, and it made me laugh.  

I’m also just kind of thankful in a more general sense?  Like, six-ish months ago I had my first TA day and momentarily felt with a scarily immense amount of conviction that I would be admitted to my top choice graduate school [Choice E].  And today I set up a meeting with my advisor from that very school.  It’s... it’s a little surreal.  And only seven months ago I was petrified because I had no idea what the end of this year would look like.  And, I mean I guess I still don’t know for sure, but I’ve got a better idea and it feels lovely.

[edit, a few moments later: also also thankful that my cello-friend found a job!!!  He’s been on the hunt for ages and I’m really happy for him!!!  And on another friend-note, my dnd-friend finished her certification exams and I’m so proud of her, I just know she’s going to be a light in her profession]

[perthvintagelimousinesblog]

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[odisomii]

The 6 Best Dinnerware Sets To Add Some Class To Your Kitchen

When it comes to , there are many questions and debates that still need to be addressed dinnerware sets 24 piece.

Dinnerware is one of those things you may not think about too often, but it’s an important part of any kitchen. Not only does it add style and class, but it can also make mealtime a bit more enjoyable. Which dinnerware set is right for you? In this article, we will outline the six best dinnerware sets to help you find the perfect set for your kitchen. From bone china to modern glassware, read on to learn more about each option and decide which set is right for you.

The different types of dinnerware sets

There are many different types of dinnerware sets available on the market, and it can be hard to decide which set is right for you. Here are some of the most common types of dinnerware sets and their key features: Serving Plates: Serving plates are usually large and have a flat bottom so they can sit comfortably on a table. They often have a raised border around the edge to make them look more elegant. Someserving plates come with matching bowls or cups, while others are sold separately. Casserole dishes: Casserole dishes are designed to be placed in the oven or on the stovetop. They are usually oval-shaped and have a deep well in the center so food can cook evenly. Some casserole dishes also have handles so they can be easily picked up and carried to the table. Portion control bowls: Portion control bowls are perfect for people who want to eat healthy but still enjoy a good meal. These bowls allow you to customize your portion size by dividing it into four equal parts. They also come in different sizes and shapes so you can find one that matches your needs perfectly. Decorative bread plates: Bread plates not only look stylish, but they're also great for controlling how much bread you eat. This type of plate has indentations on one side that hold slices of bread upright, making it easy to avoid overeating. If you're looking for a stylish way to add some class to

Which dinnerware set is right for you?

If you're looking for a dinnerware set that will add some class to your kitchen, consider purchasing a set from Royal Doulton. This prestigious brand is known for its high-quality porcelain pieces, and their dinnerware sets are no exception. Some of the brands that Royal Doulton competes with in the dinnerware market include Spode and Wedgwood. While all three provide excellent options, it's important to consider what type of personality you want your kitchen to have before making a purchase. If you're drawn to traditional styles and prefer heavy dishes, then a set from Spode or Wedgwood might be best for you. If, on the other hand, you favor more modern designs and prefer lighter fare, then a set from Royal Doulton may be more appropriate. Regardless of which set you select, it's important to keep in mind that each piece is designed specifically for use in the kitchen. Therefore, if your primary concern is functionality rather than aesthetics, there are plenty of other options available at lower prices that won't disappoint.

Conclusion

When it comes to dinnerware, it can be tough to find something that both looks good and fits the bill. Luckily, we have found the perfect sets of dinnerware to add some class to your kitchen without breaking the bank. From china to crystal, our sets are sure to make your dining experience special. Give them a try and see for yourself how great they look in your home!

[giftofwonder]

Cirque de Yuuie - MHA Various x f!Reader

A/N: Hey guys! So this is going to be a multi-part series of one shots. Each part will be a different character. There might be smut, we’ll see what happens. This is the introduction to the plot and characters. Some characters might have multiple parts as well. Let me know if you want anyone specific and also if you’d like to be added to their tag list! Also, let me know what you think! Feedback is always appreciated.

Intro

Your eyes cracked open, taking in the deep midnight hues that were cast over your room. Pale moonlight bathed everything in a faint glow.

You shifted, rolling to look at the clock on your bedside table. You groaned, pushing yourself up to sit on the edge of your bed and turned toward your open window. You could hear the boisterous chatter from the streets below. A cool breeze swept in and danced along your heated skin, and you welcomed it with closed eyes and a soft sigh.

Each night you found yourself waking up restless and antsy, unsettled. You’d sit in the confines of your room, and then dress and make your way to the tavern across the road. Tonight was no different.

Your tired limbs trudged across the cobblestone, pushing through drunken bodies that reeked of liquor and sweat.

You grunted as you pushed open the heavy oak door, finding it just as congested as outside. Bodies littered the room heavily, the music and laughter so loud it left your ears ringing. You weaved through the empty spaces and took a seat on a stool by the bar.

“The usual?” You heard a voice called out.

You glanced up, locking eyes with the bar tender as you gave a faint smile and nod.

A glass was slid in your direction a few seconds later, and you wondered if he’d already had it ready for you. You figured that must be the case, it was routine at this point.

“No luck sleeping again, huh?” He said, leaning across the counter as you nursed your drink.

“Afraid not, seems like this is becoming my normal.” You gave a dry laugh, trying to offer up something lighthearted.

“Seems like it. Something troubling you?” His head cocked to the side.

“Just the usual, nothing too bad.” You said, shifting your glass around in your hand.

“Come on now, you waltz in here every night and drink, people with problems that aren’t too bad don’t find themselves perched on one of my stools this often.” He whispered, his gaze intense as he inched across the counter toward you. His hushed voice was lost in the roars of the crowd around you, but you could hear him clear as day.

He wasn’t wrong. You had to give him that. The cluster of people surrounding you dispersed as groups made their way to exit back to the street.

Mummers still resounded around the room, but in the now much quieter atmosphere, you felt yourself relaxing. You leaned forward, propping your elbows against the chipped counter and braced your cheek in your palm.

“I just feel...I don’t know...an overwhelming amount of disinterest in my life. I wake up, I work hard and long days, I come home, eat and bathe and sleep. It’s a never-ending cycle that I’m doomed to repeat each and every day. It all just feels so lackluster.” You said, your voice soft as your eyes gazed at nothing.

“Well, that is quite the conundrum. Might I ask, why don’t you just do something else?” He quipped back with a grin.

“If only it were that easy.” You sighed, eyes slowly drifting back to him.

“Isn’t it, though?” He asked, a mischievous gleam in his eye.

“Is it?” You asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

“Hear me out, I’m no stranger to a hard days work by any means, but I like what I do.” He shrugged.

“Making drinks?” You pressed.

“No, I watch people. Get to know them, help them sometimes. You work in a pub and you meet a lot of people, hear a lot of stories. People get a bit of alcohol in them and suddenly their lips become uncontrollably loose.” He chuckled.

“So you’re nosy, then?” You spat back, a smile turning the corners of your lips.

“I prefer curious, it sounds much more pleasant.” He offered.

He turned and grabbed an envelope from behind him and slid it across the counter to you. It was unmarked, other than the intricate wax seal holding it closed.

“What’s this?” You asked, taking it and inspecting the “CdY” ingrained in the seal.

“A chance to escape.” He shrugged, and then leaned back abruptly, hands grasping glassware and a towel to polish the crystals surface.

“What do I owe you?” You asked, standing and grabbing your coin purse.

“Nothing. This ones on me.” He waved his hand.

“Well, thank you. I appreciate it. By the way, what is your name?” You asked, tucking the envelope into your pocket.

“Shinso, now get out of here and go off to do whatever it is you do when you stumble out of here each night.” He called, waving his rag at you. You smiled at the mirth lighting his eyes, offering a wave as you turned and made your exit.

______________________________________

You plopped onto your small wicker chair, it’s grooves lining up with your back perfectly, molded to your body after the countless hours you had spent hunched over in this seat.

Calloused fingertips reached to caress a fine silk that you’d never be able to afford. You pulled it to you, laying it across the table ahead and dug the patterns for a dress from the chest beside you at your feet.

You were a seamstress, and a fairly popular one. Women and men from both high and low society sought you out to tailor and craft their garments.

You had stitched an amazing collection of clothing, from simple gowns to the most intricate of pieces. Your customers had often boasted about your work, that you were able to create anything.

Until recently, you had been doing fairly well for yourself. You had purchased a home of your own, a massive feat for an unwed woman, especially one in her early twenties.

In the last six months, that had changed though. There had been civil unrest, looting and fighting at the capital. The local government had pushed back, increasing taxes heavily. With that blow came another, a new tailoring business on the other side of town. It offered cheap labor, using children from the orphanage as virtually free hands. The turn around was quick, much faster than the length of time it took you to produce a garment. But the quality was terrible. They used cheap labor and cheaper materials.

The first time you had seen their work, you had laughed till tears brimmed your eyes. However, the quick production and cheap cost had ended up hitting you hard. While the wealthy had no issue having you fashion something for them, most everyone else had flocked to them. It wasn’t terribly hard to do a simple stitch. To take in a gown or a suit. Suddenly, you found yourself praying for work as the jobs got fewer and fewer.

Meanwhile the heightened taxes left your coin purse extremely light. You hadn’t struggled like this in a very long time.

You finished the silken garment, folding it delicately over your arm as you took it over to the rack to hang.

Once hung, you patted off your apron and felt the crinkling of the forgotten envelope tucked in your pocket. You pulled it out, fingers dipping into the paper to tear it open. The red of the invitation was so bright, a high quality velvet lined in gold trim. You then wondered the status of your friendly barkeep, but chalked it up to his large amount of connections. Surely, a drunken man could be persuaded into giving an invitation in exchange for a free round.

Your eyes scanned along the paper, reading the fancy script that outlined the details of the event. You scoffed as you made your way back to your chair, shaking your head as the invitation was tossed onto your table.

A few moments passed before you picked it back up and read over the card again.

______________________________________

Your heels clicked against the pavement as you approached the large gate before you. You were in a state of awe at the lights and music making the night feel alive.

You stopped at the ticket booth, met with a disgruntled employee who looked half asleep. His thick yellow quilt was pulled taunt around his body and his hollow eyes stared at you with something akin to annoyance.

“Welcome to “Cirque de Yuuie”, admission is ¥220.” His bored voice stated monotonously.

“Oh...I actually have an invitation.” You said, giving a weak smile.

He held your gaze for a moment before he quirked a brow, his eyes scanning over you before he gave a sigh and a shrug.

“Alright, give it here.” He held out his pale hand, and you gently placed the invite in his palm.

He quickly pressed a stamp to your hand and shooed you away, so you turned and entered in through the gate.

______________________________________

You had wandered around the grounds for a while, but saw no familiar faces. It was odd, not even children were present. The cost had been rather high to enter, perhaps it was an adults only event.

After you had completed your lap, you were not too far from the entrance to the large tent in the center of the area. Red and white fabrics were draped beautifully, tied off with an intricately woven gold banding.

As you went to step forward, a large wooden pole cut in front of you, you gasped, your head shooting up to find a cheerful looking clown above.

“Whoops! S’cues me miss! Almost stepped on ya there!” He laughed, his painted lips opening to reveal his bright smile.

“Oh, no I’m sorry! I was enthralled by everything and wasn’t paying attention.” You waved him off.

“Ah don’t worry about it, it’s a beautiful night, and the tent looks great! I’ve been distracted by it myself! The names Mirio, by the way.”

“Y/N, it’s nice to meet you.”

He nodded and stepped to make his way off back into the crowd.

“HEY WAIT!” You heard a loud voice call out, and not a moment later, two more clowns turned the corner. One with green hair raced along side a blonde with large sunglasses and a lightening-shaped black streak in his hair. They were tailed by a very awkward and scared looking mime who ran behind them silently looking like he was going to be sick.

“Come on, Amajiki! Hurry up!” The blonde clown yelled behind him, causing the mime to flinch and pick up the pace. You laughed at their antics, they were definitely a good source of entertainment.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THIS IS YOUR ANNOUNCER: PRESENT MIC, PLEASE GATHER TO THE MAIN TENT AS THE FESTIVITIES ARE ABOUT TO BEGIN.....YEAAAHHH!!!!” A loud voice blared through the speakers overhead.

You pushed through the gathering crowd, entering through the fabric doorway. The ceilings were vaulted, and you were amazed by how large it seemed inside.

Chatter broke out amongst those around you as you passed a sign that read “Yuuie’s Spectacular Freak Show!”

You followed the corridor, peering in the labeled rooms as you passed by.

“Strongest Men Alive! All Might and Red Riot!” Inside the room were two muscular men. The blonde man was tall, looming over the crowd as he smiled and flex. The redhead was laying on a bed of nails, and a crazed looking woman with pink hair walked across him while he looked on unfazed.

“One Body- Two Men! Twice!” A man sat, arguing with himself, the crowd would call out questions and he’d answer two opposing ways, often breaking out into an argument. The crowd giggled and taunted as he yelled seemingly to himself.

“The Vampire: Toga!” Your stomach twisted as you watch the girl give a cat-like grin and chug a vial of blood. Shackles held her to her spot but she called out to the audience, telling them to come closer and let her have a drink.

“Invisible Girl: Toru!” You blinked at the empty room, rolling your eyes as you pushed past to the next stall.

“Frog Woman: Tsuyu!” A girl in a green dress crouched in a pool, her long tongue falling from her mouth as her large hand gave a wave. You couldn’t help but notice her webbed fingers and the faint croaks.

“Worlds Largest Woman: Mt Lady!” An insanely large woman sat on her knees, smiling and chatting with the audience. She was beautiful, but had to be at least 9’ tall.

“World’s Largest Man: Fatgum!” A very large man sat in the center of the room smiling and waving as he let children drift into his stall and eat from the various sweets lining the table beside him. Though the adults around you spoke insults quietly, you couldn’t help but think the man looked very kind. You smiled softly at the sight of a child hugging him in thanks before returning to their mothers side.

“Bird-Man: Hawks!” A young man laughed loudly, his beautiful red wings flapping as he gave a slight show to those who watched. Many looked on in awe and wonder, and women swooned at his charm. His feathers seemed to almost sparkle and while you noticed something mischievous in his gaze, you were mesmerized nonetheless.

“Dabi the Dragon and the Indestructible Bakugou!” This room was larger, and smoke poured out. You were curious about this one, as there was no crowd gathered out front. You only saw one person, a rather attractive but angry looking man, growling as he noticed you. He rolled his eyes as he lit off explosives in his hands.

Your hands shot up to cover your eyes, before peering out to see the man looked fine, bored even.

“That was amazing!” You exclaimed.

“Course it was!” He sneered.

Suddenly, the curtain behind him rustled and another man emerged from the darkness. He was shirtless, his body scared in burns that wrapped around his torso, arms and face. His black hair spiked wildly, just like the blonde beside him. He smirked at you, sauntering toward you before lifting your chin with his index finger.

“Want me to put on a show for you, doll face?” He whispered. You nodded mutely, feeling much like the mime you had saw earlier that night. He chucked and stepped back. His hand grasped a bottle and he turned his back toward you, taking a large swig from the drink.

He abruptly turned back, and blue flames shot from his mouth and filled the room. You could immediately feel the immense heat and no longer wondered how his scars came to be.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, giving a small cough before grinning at you.

“Well, what’d ya think, princess?”

“It was amazing! Does it hurt?” You asked.

“Hmm? Nah, not really. Just burns a little.” He snickered at his joke while Bakugou rolled his eyes in the background.

“I also do a bit of sword swallowing.” He added, stepping in close to you.

“Oh, yeah? That’s a neat talent to have.” You spat back awkwardly.

“I could teach you, after the show that is. I’ve got a good one for you to practice on.” His deep voice said in a hushed tone, hot breath hitting you as his hand gripped the crotch of his pants.

You stumbled back quickly, mumbling about needing to find a seat, and then ran off to the main room of the tent.

Your heart was pounding as you took an empty seat in the front row that had your invitation number on it.

The lights around you dimmed and the seats behind began filling quickly. People chatted amongst themselves until the music changed and the curtains at the far side of the tent were drawn.

A pale looking man with light blue hair and red eyes slowly walked out, taking center stage.

“Welcome. I’m so glad all of you came to join us for the show.” His hoarse voice spoke out loudly. His eyes dragged along the audience, taking in those around him.

“My name is Shigaraki and I’ll be your host tonight. You’ll see things that you never imagined, acts of wonder put on display before you. Prepare to be in awe and amazed.” He cheered, giving and eerie grin.

______________________________________

Halfway through the show, they called for an intermission. The lights brightened as people stood and flocked outside to grab drinks and food.

You stayed put, reflecting on the show so far. There had been an amazing act with tightrope walking, acrobats and aerial silks. They had been called “Children of the Sky” by those sat around you. Aoyama, Mina, Uraraka and Nejire were their names.

Then there had been the father and son act of fire performance. Enji and Shouto Todoroki. They danced with fire and spun batons and hoops that were blazing. Their act would have been more enjoyable if the father had been quiet, but instead every few moments he’d call out to his son correcting his posture and moves. Mid performance, Dabi had joined them on stage. His blue flames shining brightly in contrast. He had quickly noticed you and his eyes lit up as your stomach filled with dread.

He marched over, pulling you from your seat as gasps and whispers of his damaged skin rang through the crowd. He didn’t seem to notice. Or didn’t care. He had spun you around, dancing as his azure fire lit his arms. You were worried you’d be burned, but the fire never touched your skin. He brushed his arms with his hands, extinguishing the flame, as the music had haunted. You watched the smoke rise from his skin as you frowned, but he simply took your hand and pressed a chaste kiss to the back of it before walking away.

You heard a voice rasp out “fucking show off” before seeing the angry blonde, Bakugou, take off after him.

Now you sat, watching a small man with balls on his head. He wore a jesters outfit and juggled before those left seated in the crowd. Slowly he made his way to you.

“Hey, how do you know Dabi?” He asked bluntly, wonder in his eyes.

“Oh, I don’t. Not really. I saw him in the freak show. That’s all.” You said, uncomfortable with the small mans leering.

“You actually watched him?” He asked dumbfounded. “No wonder he’s all over you.”

“What do you mean?” You asked perplexed.

“Uh hello, he’s gross looking. Definitely not as attractive as someone like me.” He beamed at you. You stayed quiet, unsure of how to respond and afraid to break the poor guys dilution.

“Hey I also do puppet stuff, you wanna see?” He asked, tone chipper.

“Oh, no that’s okay-“

“Okay cool, watch this!” He cut you off, pulling a small puppet from his suit. He dropped it and it limply hit the ground, the string much too long for him. The puppet dragged around weirdly as the jester spoke in a high pitch, giving the wooden body a voice.

You blinked, watching the train wreck as the doll slid through the dirt, getting jerked around by the man before you. He picked up the puppet and threw it at you, it landing in your lap. Then he pulled the string and yanked it back to the ground. You abruptly stood and walked away, hearing him call after you, but you only quickened your pace.

Once outside in the fresh air, a loud bellowing laugh burst from your lips. That was the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to deal with and you had been holding in laughing in the strange boys face.

“Seems like you’re enjoying the show.” A voice cut in.

Your head quickly spun, meeting the red eyes of the ring leader.

“Yeah! It’s nice, you guys are doing an amazing job!” You scratched your neck, feeling the hairs on your arms standing at the sudden tension as the mans smile fell.

“You weren’t invited here.” He stated.

“I...well I was given an invitation.” You replied.

“It wasn’t yours though. It wasn’t meant for you.” He said, eyes blank as his head cocked to the side.

“No, it wasn’t. I don’t know who it belonged to. A bartender gave it to me.” You explained.

“Hmm, is that so? Well, do enjoy the show then. But do me a favor, sit in a different seat when you go back in.” He sneered, and then he was gone as quickly as he had appeared.

You headed back inside, choosing a different seat in the front row that had been unclaimed earlier.

The music roared again as the clowns, Midoriya, Kaminari and Mirio, put on a show. Kaminari was being shocked while Midoriya rode around on a unicycle. Mirio stayed on his stilts and walked around the stage dancing and doing tricks. The trio was truly fun to watch, and then the mime, Amajiki, was shoved forward. A spotlight hit him as he stood frozen in fear.

“Come on buddy, you can do it!” Mirio whispered loudly in support.

Amajiki took in a big breath and lifted his arms, hands shaking as he formed an invisible wall in front of himself when a box hit him in the head and a drunken man “booed”. Amajiki immediately rushed to the shadows, pressing his face into the wall of the tent as an air of dread surrounded him.

“Uhhh...look over here!” Midoriya yelled out, pulling the attention of the crowd as he gave a large shock to Kaminari. Kaminari then “beeped” and “booped” and drooled as he wobbled around. The audience cheered and laughed.

Finally it was time for the final act of the night, the mysterious and powerful Mr. Compress.

A spotlight roamed the stage, and in a cloud of smoke he appeared. He wore a mask, top hat and yellow overcoat. His cane tapped against the floor with each step he took.

“Tonight, I will make you question everything you know about the world. Everything you believe to be real!” He called, and the crowd went wild, hooting and hollering.

He started with a few jokes, one about how he wasn’t the type to pull a rabbit from his hat, but then his hat shifted and he took it off. He pulled out the first rabbit, and then another, and then two more. You laughed at his seeming confusion. Finally, he plopped his hat back on his head and called out Bakugou to the stage. Bakugou marched to him, stomping his feet and crossing his arms as he came to a stop beside the magician.

Mr. Compress draped a large piece of fabric over the man, and then quickly pulled the cloth back to reveal a confused looking Shouto.

“I was just over there.” Shouto said, pointing to the other side of the tent.

“Yes! And now you’re over here!” Compress smiled, giving a grand wave of his arm.

“Aren’t I the one doing the magic then?” Shouto said blandly while Compress laughed.

“Alright then, do another trick for us.” Mr. Compress said, his tone amused. Shouto stood there silently, expression blank.

“I’m-“

“YOUR FIRE! USE YOUR FIRE SHOUTO!” His father yelled from off stage. Shouto glanced behind him, annoyance radiating from him.

“No. Nevermind. Just put me back where i was.” He said to Compress. Not a second later, the cloth was thrown over him and pulled off to reveal what looked like 100 butterflies.

The crowed oohed and awed in response, and you felt your eyes widen in amazement as well. It was so quick, you were trying to understand the trick, but could hardly wrap your head around it. This guy was good.

He went through a few more tricks, each a little better than the last. Finally he called for a volunteer from the audience.

Many hands shot into the air, while yours meekly raised. You weren’t one who gravitated to the spotlight, in fact, you had no desire to go onto the stage and have everyone’s eyes on you. But, you had promised yourself you’d let go for tonight and do as the bartender recommended. Escape.

Perhaps he could sense your distress, or maybe it was just because you were the closest to him, but he slowly walked toward you and extended his hand.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love it if you could assist me madam.”

You smiled, cursing inwardly at yourself, as you took his hand and let him pull you to your feet and lead you to the stage.

Red Riot ran over holding a heavy wooden chair, one you might find used as a throne.

Compress lifted the bottom of his mask and pressed a kiss to the back of your hand, much like Dabi did, before directing you to take a seat. You did as you were asked, feeling the heat of the light on you, thankful that it’s blinding light prevented you from being able to see the crowd.

Mr. Compress started his speech about defying nature, and the use of powerful magic.

“Do not look away for a second, it is imperative you see your reality bent before you. With the help of my beautiful assistant, I will show you that the limitations we set for ourselves are often just an illusion. Anything you can think of is possible!”

He turned toward you, pulling the yellow coat from his body and leaving himself in his black vest and pants, the orange shirt beneath now visible. He pushed up his sleeves and held his hands outstretched toward you. You felt the chair jerk and sucked in a breath. It lurched again, and soon you were floating above the ground. You kicked your feet and smiled, trying your hardest not to shift in the chair.

Then the lights flickered, and a spotlight fell from the ceiling, crashing into the empty seat that had been assigned to your invitation.

In the moment of chaos, the chair dropped harshly, cracking against the ground as the impact tossed you to the side. You grunted, the wind knocked from your lungs and your eyes unfocused after smacking your head in the fall.

Screams were heard as the crowd panicked and scattered, the roars of animals following after them.

A harsh tug lifted you back onto your feet, and in the darkness you could see nothing, but allowed the person to drag you from the tent as your head spun.

Your mind was trying to process as you were pulled into a trailer, and as your body met the cot inside, you fell unconscious.

[godesssiri]

10 Thrifting tips

I scored big yesterday wanted to share some tips. These will be homeware tips as I don’t thrift a lot of clothes - it’s my Mum and Best Friend who have exploding wardrobes. I hope this post will be helpful for anyone setting up a home or wanting to inject some vintage personality into their home.

1) Go often. I can not emphasize this enough. I hit my favorite store at least once, if not twice, a week - it has really high turnover. My second favorite store I hit at least every other week, not so high turn over so it’s okay to go less often. Learn the stores in your area that have high stock turnover and go to them as often as you can.

2) Never go to the thrift store looking specifically for a trash can or a pet bowl etc. Go with an open mind and look for something that may not be designed for the thing you need but it can serve that purpose. I have an umbrella stand that serves as a trash can and candy dishes to feed my cats from - they have a punch bowl for water at the back door since that’s the bowl I always forget to fill so I just leave them a huge bowl and don’t need to fill it as often. You can often find something that works even better than a purpose designed object and it just looks cooler.

3) Use the fancy glass and crystal. The clear glass shelves are always packed because people think it’s fancy and never use it. You can pick it up for a couple of dollars. I eat noodles out of fancy glass bowls, I feed my cats from them, I use them for soap dishes, I store earrings and lipsticks in them on my dresser, I use them as drip dishes under pot plants. Glass is durable and easy to clean.

4) Look for new in the original packaging. Yesterday I picked up $125 of brand new un-used bed linen for $30. How do I know how much it was worth? It still had the original prices on it (I don’t know who buys a $75 pure cotton quilted valance and never even takes it out of the packaging but I’m not gonna complain). You often see full sets of stemware or other glassware in their boxes. Gift boxes full of unused toiletries, scented candles that have never been burned. Don’t buy something just because it’s new in the box - that way lies having cupboards full of as-seen-on-tv crap. But if it’s something you’ll use then grab it.

5) Baking equipment. Thrift stores always have plenty of baking equipment. I’d never buy cookie sheets, muffin tins, cake tins, cooling racks or rolling pins new. I know I can always find these things at thrift stores and often better quality than I can afford new. If you’re really into baking then you’ll occasionally come across specialty tins that you couldn’t really justify buying new (how often are you actually going to bake madeleines or friands?) but there’s no guilt picking them up from a thrift store.

6) Trade up. Especially when you’re starting out you may not be able to afford good quality stuff so you just have to make do with whatever you can afford. I can’t say that you absolutely will walk into a thrift store and find something top of the line but, if you go often, eventually you will come across something that’s better quality than the one you own. You may not be able to justify buying a brand new chef quality frying pan when you have a perfectly good pan at home, but you can absolutely justify buying a chef quality pan when you find one at the thrift store. And donate your perfectly good one - someone else will need it.

7) Collect something. When I’m in a thrift store I have my eyes peeled for pink Arcoroc glassware, mini peacock chairs to sit my plants on, 80s pastel ceramic plant pots, anything seashell. Building up a collection of thrifted items is loads of fun. It’s the thrill of the hunt and the rush when you find the perfect thing to add to your collection. Having a few fun collections of vintage stuff scattered around your home gives it individuality - no one else is going to have that exact collection.

8) Solid wood furniture. Don’t look at the color of a piece, that’s the easiest thing in the world to change. Look at how sturdy it is, and believe me solid wood is sturdy. If you’re considering a piece of furniture rock it, give it a good shake, if it wobbles forget it unless you have some woodworking skills. Look for soft spots or lots of little holes that would indicate rot or borer/woodworm. If it has borer is there a lot? It’s fairly easy to treat with an injection spray if there’s not too much. Solid wood will last a lifetime, it’s easy to make over if you get sick of it, it will survive house-moving and general wear and tear way better than flat pack. And you end up with a house full of unique pieces, not the same Ikea look as everyone else.

9) Can it be cleaned? Inevitably some things from thrift stores are gonna be a bit yuck. There is no point buying something if you are not confident you can clean it. I’ll sometimes do a spot clean, just by rubbing it with my finger wetted from my water-bottle, to see if the grime will come off. I keep an old toothbrush specifically for the seashells and mini peacock chairs I collect because they tend to come covered in the dust of ages and the best way to clean them is with a dry brush followed by a rinse. Barkeepers Friend is wonderful stuff for getting tarnish off metal or cloudiness from glass. Dishwasher powder is great for cleaning out any vessel that you can’t scrub the inside, 1 part powder to 2 parts water and swirl it around. If you find something you love but you’re not sure you can clean it, Google it! Honestly I find it incredibly satisfying to buy something really grimy (and cheap because it’s grimy), get it home and clean it up to sparkling new.

10) Share the love. I have my eyes peeled for things I collect but also I’m on the lookout for things my friends and family collect. I’m looking for blue hand-made pottery for my Mum, peach lustre glass for my best friend, swans for my cousin, lovely old copies of classic girl’s books (Anne of Green Gables, Little Women etc) for my friend’s daughter. It’s as much of a thrill as finding the things I collect but there’s that extra good feeling of knowing I’ll make someone’s day by finding them that awesome vintage piece.

[ihaveonlymydreams]

So I had this idea to use the Inktober prompts as topics for ficlets so I could explore my characters and setting for the inklings challenge. I'm definitely not going to do all of them, by a long stretch, but today's prompt was crystal and I started thinking about it and... I think I now have some characters and rough idea of the narrative style I want! The characters have no names yet, though I feel like Ponytail might be a Julie?

If you read this (and you feel like it), can you do me a favor and tell me 1 (one) thing you like and 1 (one) thing you feel could use improvement? I have no objections at all to constructive criticism and it's been far too long since I've tried writing fiction!

Crystal

"Did you know that crystal glassware isn't actually crystalline in structure? It's really just glass. They used to make it with lead, but now they use something else, 'cause lead is poisonous."

Two teens stand on a cobblestoned street in a city in Italy. They're clearly Americans, in sneakers and backpacks, staring in through the window of the shop. The one who was speaking has light brown hair caught up in a ponytail. Her face is turned away from the bright glow of the afternoon sun.

"So what do they use instead of lead?"

Her friend has darker brown hair in a messy bob, glasses, and freckles, and she's staring around the street with the puppy-like curiosity of a first time tourist.

"I don't remember exactly."

Bobbed hair gives her an incredulous look, and ponytail raises her hands in mock appeasance. Her nails are painted black, chipped. The tone of her skin, seen in the sun, is warm. "Hey, I wrote that paper last quarter, give me a break!" She turns from the shop, meandering down the street, kicking a pebble. It rattles over the cobblestones and stops just as her shadow catches up to it. "But anyway can you imagine drinking out of this perfect crystal glass and not knowing it was slowly poisoning you?"

Bob is trotting after her, giving one last glance over her shoulder at the display of glassware in the window. Her smaller shadow joins the first one.

"Would it really poison you? I feel like a lot of people in history would have died from it in that case."

Ponytail's shrug is nearly Italian in its expressiveness, but the way she sticks her hands in her pockets is all American.

"I dunno, maybe it's like that wallpaper with arsenic in it, you just wasted away slowly and nobody knew what you died from."

Bob stops to readjust her backpack. It's a bright cerulean, almost the color of the coastal sea under a summer sky. She's fiddling with the straps. "You know, you watch way too many weird history videos on YouTube."

"No such thing. History is cool." Ponytail stops a few steps further ahead, turns around. She has strong bones, a mobile mouth and expressively quirked eyebrows. "It's so awesome how people just keep making horrible decisions over and over again and never learning from them."

"That's not true." Bob grunts and tries the backpack on again.

It sags, and Ponytail reaches out, twirls her around in a practiced way, and begins tightening straps. "Oh yeah? Prove it."

"I mean, we don't make crystal out of lead anymore, right?" Bob grins over her shoulder and Ponytail swats her lightly on the head. The warm clear light of the afternoon pools around them, over their smiling faces, filling the narrow cobblestoned street, flooding up the sides of the houses and spilling over the gables. It tries to fill them up, too, but their shadows remain solid and impenetrable. Undeterred, the light refracts from them, breaking into vivid hues: rich golden brown, cerulean, pink and rose, dark green, bursting most triumphantly in dazzling pure white. But some of the light is caught, absorbed, hidden away into the absolute mystery that is black, transformed into pure heat.

Such wonders happen daily on the streets, not just in Italy, not just to teenage girls. The two of them are used to it, squinting their eyes against it, turning to follow their solid and reliable shadows down the street.

"So why did they use lead in it in the first place?" Bob asks idly, looking around for the next interesting thing.

"It makes the crystal clearer, or something. Like, you know, the way it glitters when they cut it, like diamonds."

[rohad93]

Moonlit Masquerade: Ch 1

Because I couldn't help myself. This was inspired by a piece of fanart i saw. This is also on AO3

After the events of the last week it felt strange to just go back to school like she hadn’t gone up against Belos and everyone hadn't seen her rescue Eda and escape from the Emperor's coven and petrification. 

It was weird, to say the least, but then again, there was never a day in the Boiling Isles that wasn't weird in some form or fashion if she were honest, she'd gotten pretty used to rolling with the punches in the last month though if she did say so herself. 

This was a little different of course.

Gus and Willow had come by the very next day to check on them and get the rest of the story they’d missed after they’d gone to get Eda.

She could tell that her friends were disappointed that she hadn't come to them or even talked to them about it before throwing herself headlong into danger as she had been want to do as of late, but she had already dragged them into this mess with her once and she’d decided that was to many times, especially now that she had a better idea of what kind of real danger the Emperor posed.

She'd managed to pull one over on him and prove he wasn't invincible, but she also knew he was just messing with her, despite her giving it her all and pulling some rather dangerous stunts to boot.

She couldn’t decide if she was becoming more reckless or if she always had been and the Isles just really brought it out in her what with all the… well, dangerous stuff. 

Eh, unimportant right now.

They decided it was probably better for Eda and Lillith to lay low for a while and stay inside the house for now, not draw any attention to themselves, difficult as that was for Eda. Lilith would help keep her wrangled, and maybe King.

Though he was just as likely to egg her on as anything else.

Since they weren’t leaving the house Eda couldn’t take her to school on Owlbert, so it was just her and her trusty legs walking to school that morning. She was a little nervous at the prospect of facing… well, everyone.

Everyone had seen her and as the only human on the Isles she wasn’t exactly hard to miss on a regular day much less when being broadcast by crystal ball to everyone.  

Her fingers played with the strap of her bag nervously. 

She met up with Willow halfway and some of her fears were temporarily relieved as they walked the rest of the way, chatting animatedly. She almost completely forgot about her worries until the school came into view and she could see all the students moving about outside and on the front steps. 

Her grip on her bag tightened again and her shoulders bunched up around her ears. 

“You ok?” Willow seemed to quickly pick up on her tenseness. 

“Yeah…,” she started slowly, eyes darting around the field out front of the school, no one seemed to even be looking at her, anymore than usual that is, even as they walked right up to the school steps where Gus was waiting for them, waving. “I guess I just thought… I dunno, that after what happened more people would be… talking about me?” She wasn’t really sure what she had been expecting.

“Well, you had your cloak up the entire time and the Emperor did say the titan told him to free Eda, so you’d be included in that.” Gus shrugged. 

"Gus and I recognized you, but we're together all the time too," Willow added.

“Yeah, I guess…” She wouldn’t say she was disappointed by the lack of attention, it was just so, anticlimactic she supposed. Luz didn’t mind being in the spotlight, but she didn’t actively seek it either. 

The bell screamed its first warning toll and all the kids roaming around outside the school began making their way inside.

“See you guys later!” Luz waved as Gus and Willow headed off to their perspective classes, waving to her over their shoulders as they disappeared in the crowd of students.

Tapping a finger against her cheek she had to think for a moment to remember what track classes she had today. There wasn’t enough time in the day for her to take all nine tracks a day so it had to be split over the five weekdays. 

It was Monday, so she had beast keeping and potions. She grinned at the thought. She loved learning about all the tracks, but beast keeping was especially fun.

She never got to practice manticore taming or griffin riding back home after all!

She paused mid-step.

Home

The thought made her frown but she tried to shake off the heavy feeling that had settled over her, there was no point in moping about it right now. She did what she had to do, for the good of everyone… and it was her fault that they had been put in that situation to start with, it was only right that she fix it.

Eda was already looking into it but there were other things going on that needed her attention to, and that was fine! Luz knew what she was doing when she’d done it. 

She guessed these were just the consequences of her actions catching up to her that her mom had always been warning her about. Maybe now she’d start learning to look before she leaped.  

She had started back toward the steps only to be stopped again.

“Luz!?” 

She immediately recognized that voice as she turned around to come face to face with Amity as she jogged up to the steps, her abomination trailing behind her as it carried her books. She stopped a few feet from her. 

“Hey Amity! You're out of your cast!” Luz grinned at the sight of her friend finally out of bed and back at school.

“Huh? Oh, yea, a few days ago.” She seemed to fidget as she tucked a stray strand of mint colored hair behind her ear. “Forget about that though!” she seemed to focus again, looking at Luz with a frown, face set in a stern look. “What happened?!” she demanded.

Luz frowned, fingers twitching over the rough canvas strap of her bag, she didn’t need to ask what Amity was talking about, she could only mean the whole petrification, escape from the emperor’s coven thing that had been broadcast across all of the Boiling Isles, she’d no doubt seen it.

“Ah well, it’s kind of a long story…” she rubbed her arm and laughed nervously. Amity did not look at all impressed by that answer. “If you want to meet at the library after school I can explain it all,” she offered. She felt bad that out of all her friends Amity was the only one completely in the dark since she didn’t even know about Eda’s curse or had gone with them on the trip to the Emperor’s castle.

Amity didn’t look satisfied with the answer but just as she opened her mouth to speak the bell screamed again, it’s last call for students to get to class before they were tardy and if Luz knew anything at all about Amity, it was that she loved Azura and was never late.

“Alright, I’ll meet you there,” she agreed, though she still didn't look happy about it. 

Amity quickly hurried off to class with her abomination, leaving Luz standing there before she smacked herself in the forehead with her palm.

"I'm gonna be late!" She helped before taking off in the direction of beast keeping 101.

~ ~ ~

The day seemed to fly by after she actually made it to class. 

It was nice to have something else to occupy her mind other than impending doom in one form or another. 

Potions always took all her concentration, unless she wanted to accidentally turn a potion for curing mild rashes into a literal bomb.

...It had happened before...

It had only been a small explosion and her teacher had quickly put out the fire though.

Now that she thought about it, that would have been so much more useful last week.

She pondered the merits of magical bombs in convenient, throwable glassware as she walked quickly through the Bonesborough market toward the library.

She'd been a little slow cleaning up after her potions class and had ended up staying a little long. Amity would probably be waiting on her already, she was punctual to a fault.

She skipped up the library steps two at a time and quickly snuck by the librarian at the front counter when he wasn’t looking. 

After the time she had gotten kicked out with the Blight twins, she wasn’t sure she was exactly welcome in the library, so it was better to just not let the librarian see her really. 

She snuck quietly through the halls to the romance section. It was devoid of people as it typically was.

She scanned the shelves before smiling as her eyes settled on a book. ‘The Lone Witch and the Secret Room.’

She pulled the book out and shoved it back in, there was a loud click as the shelf slid away to reveal Amity’s secret room. 

Amity was already waiting inside for her, curled up in the corner on some cushions, a book splayed across her lap as she stepped in, letting the shelf slide back into place behind her.

“Hey” She held up a hand in greeting. “Sorry it took me a little longer than normal. I had to clean up after potions.” 

“It’s alright, Luz.” She closed her book and motioned to the other cushion several feet away. Luz dropped her bag and plopped onto the floor,crossing her legs as she looked up at the youngest Blight and smiled.

Gold eyes flitted away and cheeks took on a rosy hue. Luz wondered if Amity was hot, it wasn’t bad in here but some people ran warmer and colder than others. 

“So…,” Luz started, unsure. 

Amity seemed to jolt as her eyes were once again on the human and her expression morphing into one of serious expectancy. 

"What happened last week?" 

Straight to the point then. Luz nodded as she started with Eda's curse and the field trip to the Emperor's castle.

Amity's face seemed to shift through a myriad of emotions over the course of the story, especially when Luz talked about how Lilith had kidnapped her and tried to kill her.

The horror on her friend's face and those intense gold eyes focussed on her made Luz self conscious and she pulled her knees up to her chest but didn't stop her tale. She squeezed her legs as she got lost in thinking about it. 

Amity wasn't the only one experiencing a lot of emotions right now.

The fear as Eda sucame to her curse and later the rage she felt anytime someone so much as uttered Lilith's name or she saw one of those dumb posters made her whole body shake, and finally the helplessness and sorrow as she'd handed over the portal and then had to burn her world away in a flash of fire. All of it came back to her so easily, still fresh on her mind even as she tried not to think about it too hard. 

"So, you can't go home?" Amity finally asked quietly after a brief silence following Luz’s explanation of everything that had happened. 

She shook her head sadly, eyes downcast and quiet.

Amity hesitated a second before reaching over to set a hand on one of Luz's, resting on her knees and making her look up, brown meeting gold. 

"I'm sorry, Luz…" She squeezed gently.

The small touch and the look on her friend's face caused a comforting flash of heat in Luz's chest.

"Thanks… Eda's working on it so…" She shrugged. 

Eda who was also without magic, which Amity knew now.

“I’ve seen the owl lady do some pretty impressive things, I’m sure she’ll figure something out.”  Amity gave a final squeeze before pulling back, trying to will away the touch of pink on her cheeks, now wasn’t the time for it and she scolded herself for the automatic response.

“Yeah…” Luz nodded to herself, a small smile managing to pull at her lips, which made Amity smile in turn.

“I can’t believe how selfless you are sometimes… destroying the portal to save Eda…,” Amity said, fiddling with her hands now sitting folded in her lap.

“It was my fault she got caught in the first place, I had to fix my mistake…” Luz shrugged, a little flustered by praise she hardly deserved. “She didn’t leave me… I couldn’t leave her.” 

“Most people wouldn’t have done that, even if it was their fault,” the young witch insisted. 

“Maybe…” Luz shrugged again but couldn’t help the widening of her smile.

Amity glanced at the clock on the wall, her smile turned into a grimace, they had been here longer then she had planned. 

“I need to head home…” Amity stood and Luz followed suit as they headed out of the secret room, checking quickly to make sure no one was around to see them as they headed out.

“I have abominations and illusions tomorrow, so I guess I’ll see you in class.” Luz smiled as they stepped outside the library.  

“Of course…” Amity nodded but she seemed distracted as they paused at the top of the library steps. 

“Amity?” Luz called and again she was focussed on her, but the look on her face was one Luz had seen before, she was thinking.

She hesitated a second, looking around the empty area outside the library before closing the two feet of distance between them.

Luz could only blink as Amity's arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace, chin tucked into her neck, mint green filling the latina's vision. 

"I'm so glad you're okay."

It was said so quietly she almost missed it, hardly a whisper, breathed against her neck. 

Warmth immediately flooded her chest at the quiet murmur. 

Before Luz could reach up to return the embrace Amity was already pulling away.

“See you tomorrow, Luz.” she called as she hurried down the library steps, never looking back and leaving Luz standing there, stunned, in her wake. 

“Bye…” she held up a hand in farewell at the retreating witch’s back.

Why was her face so warm?

Shaking it off, Luz adjusted her bag as she hurried back to the owl house before Eda could wonder where she was.

The heat in her face faded quickly but the warmth in her chest lingered all night. 

~ 

The minute Amity set her things down on her desk she caught sight of the Emperor’s coven poster, with Lilith Clawthorne staring back at her with a smug smile. 

With a frown Amity ripped the poster from the wall and stuffed it into the trash can next to her desk.   

[docholligay]

A THING YOU MUST AT SOME POINT DO: Michiru and Zoisite encountering each other in high society.

There was something rather annoying in the fact that the bulk of her class was exactly as oblivious as she had ever assumed. Play the correct notes, in a semblance of order, and above all else, assure that one is properly dressed for the stage, and not a one among them questions the instrument. 

To know that those who shared genetic material could fall for such a farce was all at once appalling and completely expected. 

“Zoi, such an unusual name, do you not find?” She pointedly looked across the small limousine at her siblings. 

Ryuji looked up at her and arched an eyebrow in a way that resembled Michiru’s own so closely it turned her stomach. 

“Our second names are unusual in Tokyo.” he looked back down at his notepad, “Kaioh Michiru Adrienne du Cayard.” 

“Yes,” she smiled, “and for all the use it gets outside of a French government form, it is allowed to be so, Ryuji Léonard du Cayard Kaioh.” 

“I think Zoi is Greek!” Naoko leaned forward, ever attempted to play peacemaker between the two of them, with nothing more than a pair of sneers to show for it. 

“There you are Michiru, you should know this, being so enamored of the continent.” Ryuji chuckled. 

“Well, we cannot both be the self-styled emperor of Japan, and I am afraid I must take the world that is left to me.” She turned to Naoko, “In any case, Zoi is a Greek girl’s name, you silly thing. And additionally, Zoi Sato, to have such an unusual name against such a plain one?”

Ryuji sighed. “To what point and purpose is this line of inquiry, my darling sister?” 

“I was only considering, my dearest brother, that perhaps we are greater fools all to question nothing about his sudden appearance and seeming generosity.” She inclined her head, “A man comes out of nowhere, has seemingly endless resources and yet, it seems, little free cash, knows the finer points and graces of our class, but has no pedigree we can name. The man is a parvenu at best.” She gave a chuckle. “It seems I am the only proper aristocrat in Tokyo.” 

Ryuji considered a moment. He and his youngest sister thought little of each other, but there was a shrewdness in her that he was careful never to deny or discount. 

“It is odd that we do not know his people, I suppose.” The car stopped. “Michiru, I leave you to your suspicions, but I will also leave Sato Zoi to his affairs as well.” 

“Michiru,” Naoko asked cautiously as Ryuji straightened his suit and went to the door, “What do you think Mr. Sato wants?” 

“Of this I have no earthly idea,” she took the hand of the driver and delicately stepped out, “But I shall make it my business to discover it.”

The gala was richly decorated, and it might have been impressive to Michiru if she had not lived all her life in such a gilded cage. Crystal chandeliers sparkled, the finest array of hors d'oeuvres from both Japan and the larger world were served from waiters bearing silver trays,  champagne flowed into cut and polished glassware. None of this so much as piqued the interest or impress of Michiru Kaioh, whose eyes swept around the room looking for someone in particular. 

It was blessing, then, that Haruka had been unable to attend. She was eager and loving and so very brave, but one this Haruka was not, was canny. She had been built for many things, and absolutely none of the were subterfuge. If she had let spill her suspicions about Zoi to Haruka, Haruka would have him cornered in an instant, interrogated hi8m, and been swiftly thrown out of the gala altogether, while learning nothing and giving up her advantage. 

Later, Rei would say something along the lines of sensing an evil energy coming from Zoi, and perhaps that would be true, but Michiru had not needed any sort of Sight to tell that the man was up to no good. It was true, perhaps, that the Sight later tipped her to the idea that it could be Usagi he was after, but on the other hand, Michiru might reason there was no other cause to speak to Mamoru Chiba. 

But Zoi was, of course. Mamoru had been in his sights for the last few gatherings, a man with more money than sense. The only saving grace that might be have been given to him was that the majority of his money was held in trust, still, and Mamoru would not gain access to it until he graduated college. Michiru had always wondered how long the Chiba money would hold out, after that occasion. It was perhaps ungenerous to blame Mamoru’s parents for dying, leaving him with no one who seemed to teach the boy a good bit of sense or how best to manage his investments, and so he had grown into an awkward thing, accepted mostly on the quality of his name and the shine of his coin, but Michiru blamed them nonetheless. It seemed careless. 

“Chiba,” she gave a delicate bow, “How lovely to see you, as always.” 

He responded immediately, and it gave Michiru a slight thrill of pleasure to see his own bow was deeper than her own. He knew his place, at the least. Michiru was imposing, she admitted, in her way, a queenly bearing her mother had taught her from birth. She could bow and look as if she had the upper hand, and the draped-back gown in green satin only accentuated the nobility of her. 

“An honor to have you, grace us, Michiru.” Mamoru had never quite figured out the line between his role as Sailor Moon’s paramour and Mamoru Chiba. In a Moon sense, he outranked Michiru or was at least her equal. In a life sense, he would never dare. “Kaioh Michiru, may I please present Mr. Sato.” 

“Zoi to you, I would hope, madame.” He bowed and kissed her hand. ‘Or mademoiselle, if I should be so hopeful?” 

“Do you often hope of mademoiselles? I had not considered it your manner, but I often find that life is all the more exciting for the things upon which my intuition misleads me.” 

He raised and smiled coyly, still holding on to her hand. “I hope of nothing but a rich life and a happy ending.” 

“It was been my experience that people often mistake that for a life with riches in it, leading their end to be the happiest for others most of all.” 

They stood there a moment, simply looking at each other. Something passed between them in that moment, something Michiru experienced little in her life, and last remembered the first time she met Minako Aino. There is an electricity, when one finds a rival whose skill meets one’s own. 

“You are clever.” He laughed, finally “Not the first to say so, I’m certain.” 

“Michiru is known for her wit, in these circles.” Mamoru nodded, too deeply. He was making himself look obsequious, and Michiru refused to pity him with a glance. 

“Razor sharp, I am sure.” His eyes still locked hers. 

“Careful my dagger, Zoi,” she smiled her small smile, “for it may yet kill again.” 

“Oh! Michiru!” 

It was, there turned out, a worse companion than Haruka in this effort, and Mcihiru could hear her voice echoing off the stone, the click of her too-anxious heels on the marble, the woosh of her dress selected for the way it made her feel a princess and not its seasonable fashion. Michiru clenched her teeth beneath her smile. 

“You look so beautiful!!” Usagi was next to her in an instant, a giggling cream puff swatched in an off the shoulder pink gown with too large a skirt and too many ruffles. “But you always look beautiful, of course, is Haruka here? I have extra snacks! I bet she looks beautiful too. ” 

Usagi offered the plate, containing an indelicate amount of blinis with caviar and lobster toasts. 

“I’m afraid she is not, Usagi, but she will be so pleased to know you asked after her.” She looked to the two of them, “Perhaps you and Mamoru should dance, I know not how long the music will going. The night is waning fast.” 

“Oh, but we’ve only just begun!” Zoi stepped forward, a look in his eyes lean and hungry as he looked to Usagi. “And who might this captivating woman be?” 

At that moment, Michiru could not have told you that Zoi was going to attempt to take Usagi’s silver crystal. She might have felt a prickling of his malice toward the senshi, if she had concentrated, but in this moment she had not. Michiru did not know that there would be quite the battle between ehr and Zoi, in the end. 

But what she did know, was that he sensed something in Usagi, and that he desired her not in the way a man desires a woman, but in the way a starved dog desires a steak. He would consume her bones and all, and she knew that intensely in this moment. 

“This is my...my significant other,” Mamoru tripped, “Tsukino Usagi.” 

“Hi!!” Usagi gave a graceless bow, still smiling brightly, “I see you met Michiru! She’s like a real princess, I think, but she’s nice too!” 

Michiru nearly laughed. She had never been nice a day in her life. Pleasant perhaps, and cordial most certainly, but it was an overabundance of grace in Usagi’s own nature that would cause her to ever call Michiru nice. Chiba was either a perfect idiot or a perfect weakling, and Michiru was not certain wich answer she wished to supply. How could he fail to see the way he looked at her? He was a wolf to a lamb, and he was none the wiser. 

It was another facet of Michiru’s personal tragedy, that she had clever foes and foolish allies. 

“Oh,” Zoi lowered his voice, “But look at you, so like a princess. A perfect mouthful of cotton candy. Don’t you simply melt with sweetness?” 

“Usagi,” Michiru grasped her hand, “I am missing Haruka terribly, and I am so very fond of this piece. WOuld you be so kind as to dance with me? It is a waltz, and very simple, I assure you, so there is no need for shyness.”

Zoi glared at her. “I was hoping--” 

“Yes,” she looked at him. “You were.” 

She swept Usagi off to the dance floor, putting herself in the perfect position, soldier leading her queen. It was very nearly pointless to warn Usagi off of someone she thought to be kind, and to be flirtatious. She would assume only the best of him, and she would witness the gold of his tongue, the jewels of his cleverness, and never suspect them to be so much gilt and paste. It was foolishness, to attempt to warn her. 

But, as she took Usagi into the dance, she knew she had to try.

[emospritelet]

#45 — “This should warm you up.” For the continuation of the Original Sin verse, please!

It’s Christmas Eve, and Belle just gave demon!Gold the news that she’s pregnant. Please see AO3 for tags as there are weird consent issues running throughout this series, despite Gold’s honesty with Belle about what he is. 

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [AO3]

x

Belle waited for the outburst. She had expected shock, disbelief, even anger. On the journey up from New York, she had mentally run through his likely reactions to her news, and had considered the best response to each of them. She had thought she was ready for all of those emotions, and had braced herself for the onslaught. What she didn’t expect was his usual thin smile.

“Well,” he said. “It seems that you and I need to have a conversation. Would you care for some tea?”

Belle blinked.

“What?”

“Tea,” he said patiently. “I have a rather nice Earl Grey. Or there’s peppermint, if you prefer.”

She shook her head.

“Did - did you hear what I just said?”

“Of course.”

“I’m pregnant,” she repeated. “Pregnant. With your baby.”

“Yes,” he said slowly and carefully. “I heard you the first time.”

Belle felt her brow crease in confusion.

“You - you don’t seem surprised.”

“Surprised?”

“Yeah, surprised.” She gestured to her belly. “I’m having a baby. Our baby. You’re gonna be a father.”

“Yes.” He was looking as confused as she felt. “Are you telling me you were surprised?”

“Well, yeah!” Belle threw up her hands and let them drop.

“But we talked about children,” he said. “About you becoming a mother. You said it was what you wanted.”

“Yes, at some point, I meant!” she said. “At some point in the future, when I was married and settled with the love of my life! Not after a - a one-night-stand with an antique dealer!”

Gold winced.

“Ouch.” He shook his head. “Then why did you agree to go to bed with me?”

Belle put her hands on her hips.

“Seriously?” she remarked. “You’re putting this all on me?”

“I’m not putting anything on you,” he said, looking bewildered. “I’m delighted that you’re having my child.”

“So am I!” she blurted, and snapped her mouth shut with an audible click of her teeth.

Gold sighed, looking down at where his fingers were poised on the counter top.

“Belle, I have to confess I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re angry with me about.”

“I’m not angry, I’m just…” She faltered, trying to find the words. “I guess I’m confused. I thought you’d be mad.”

“Why?” he said, looking every bit as confused as she felt.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly planned, was it?” she said impatiently. “Given that I was taking birth control!”

“Birth control?”

If anything he looked even more confused, and she felt like picking up his present and hitting him over the head with it.

“Yes, Damien, birth control!” she snapped. “You know, the pills that people take to stop them getting pregnant?”

“Ah.” His fingers drummed slowly on the counter. “Well, I’ve heard of them, of course. You were taking those?”

“Yes!”

He shrugged. “They weren’t working.”

“Well, I know that now!” she said sarcastically. “Blame Roni and her cupcake supplier with his activated charcoal fixation!”

Gold closed his eyes, then shook his head before glancing at her again.

“I have no idea what you just said, but let’s get back to the matter at hand,” he said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know you were - trying not to be pregnant. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” She folded her arms and leaned on the counter with a sigh. “I guess we didn’t really talk about contraception, did we? I was too desperate to get in your pants.”

Gold grinned.

“Oh, I assure you the feeling was mutual,” he said. “Now. How about that tea?”

“You’re taking this very calmly,” she remarked, and he shrugged.

“As I said, I’m delighted at the news,” he said, and gestured to the side, where a pattern curtain hung across a doorway. “Please, come on through to the back room. I’ll lock up, so we can have some privacy.”

Belle gave him a long look, wanting to shake her head. No one’s this calm. Not about stuff like this. What is his deal?

“Well, I guess it’s pretty cold out there,” she said eventually. “Tea would be great.”

x

The back room of the shop turned out to be a cluttered sanctuary of antiques, with shelves filled with old books, assorted glassware, and boxes of what she assumed was china wrapped in newspaper. There were two large wooden workbenches, one with pieces of what looked like a brass scientific instrument laid out on black velvet. A single bed was tucked into a corner, covered in a dark red blanket, and she wondered if he ever slept at the shop.

“Please, take a seat,” said Gold from behind her, and she set her bag on the workbench and slid onto one of the wooden stools, taking off her scarf and gloves.

She watched as he made tea, boiling water in a kettle, spooning tea into a pot and setting out two china cups and saucers. Steam rose as he poured boiling water into the pot and stirred it. She could smell the tea, a pleasant, tannin-laced bitterness in the air. A small fridge tucked behind an old painted screen held milk, and once the tea was poured, Gold added a dash to each cup, setting them in saucers and carrying them to the bench.

“Here,” he said. “This should warm you up.”

“Thank you.”

The tea was steaming gently, so she left it to cool for a moment. The cup was white, with a blue pattern on one side, the saucer rimmed in gold. She wondered if it was part of a collection that he was planning on selling, or whether it was his own.

“So many things in here,” she said, glancing around the room. “You could probably open another shop.”

“This one keeps me busy enough,” he said.

“You don’t want to expand?” asked Belle. “I’d love to, if the bookstore was more successful.”

“Oh, I know your ambitions,” he said, as he put the milk back in the fridge. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance there.”

“I think any ambitions I had will have to take a back seat for a while,” she said. “I’ll need to find someone to run the store while I’m looking after the baby, for a start. It won’t leave much spare money to think about restocking, never mind expanding.”

Gold turned to face her, leaning back against the wooden counter. His eyes were gleaming at her, hints of gold in their dark depths.

“Well, let’s talk about that,” he said. “Firstly there’s your welfare, and the child’s. Are you well?”

“I - yeah, I’m fine. We’re both fine.”

“In order to ensure that continues, please allow me to pay for any medical insurance or expenses you might need.”

“I have insurance,” she said immediately. “Of course, it doesn’t cover everything, but—”

“I’ll make sure you want for nothing,” he said. “You mentioned getting help in to run the shop? Employing someone? I can pay for that.”

“Oh,” she said, shifting on the stool. “Well, that’s very kind, but you don’t have to. I didn’t come here looking for money as such, it was more…”

“More what?” he asked softly, and Belle licked her lips.

“I suppose I wanted to see whether you were interested in being a part of this child’s life,” she said. Of our lives.

“And so I am,” he said briskly. “I want to ensure this child knows where it comes from and is fully prepared for its future. And I’m prepared to compensate you very well for the sacrifice you’re making.”

“Sacrifice?” said Belle, confused. “I - I don’t understand.”

He had turned away, taking a piece of paper from the nearest workbench and a pen from the pot on the counter. She listened to him scribble briefly on the paper.

“I’m aware that bearing this child will be a burden on you, physically and emotionally,” he said. “I want to help as much as I can. So I want to give you this.”

He turned, holding out the piece of paper. There was a figure written on it, next to a dollar sign. Belle read it once, blinked, then read it again.

“Is this a joke?” 

Gold’s mouth twitched.

“I never joke,” he said quietly. “It’s one aspect of human nature I never quite managed to grasp.”

“This is a fortune,” she said, and he shrugged.

“You could buy that loft apartment,” he said. “Open that chain of bookshops. It’s what you wanted, correct?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t expecting you to buy it for me!”

“In exchange for what you’re giving me, the price seems more than fair.”

Belle stared at him, but he kept the same steady expression. After a moment she shook her head, trying to understand what was happening.

“Okay, for now let’s leave aside this - uh - offer, and talk about what we’re gonna do about the baby,” she said, and Gold pursed his lips, nodding.

“Alright.”

“You - you want to pay me a huge sum of money for looking after this child,” she said, in a flat tone. “But you also want to be a part of its life. So - what are we talking about here? Some sort of child support arrangement where you turn up once a fortnight and take it for fast food and a movie?”

Gold shook his head emphatically.

“Oh no,” he said. “I want to bond with my child, but I don’t feel that noisy human entertainment is conducive to that.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, and he took the stool across from her, knees parted and hands folded loosely in his lap.

“I’d like to share responsibility for teaching the child to read,” he added. “I want to take it out to the woods, introduce it to the natural world, teach it to identify herbs and fungi and poisonous plants. And when it gets older there are runes and crystals. Latin will be essential, of course, but there are other ancient languages which I’ve found very useful over the years.”

Belle opened her mouth, realised she had no idea how to respond, and closed it again, picking up her tea to take a drink in order to collect her thoughts.

“Of course, as soon as the child turns five, I expect you’ll want me to take it,” he added.

Belle almost choked on her tea, and set it down, wiping drops of hot liquid from her chin.

“What?” she exclaimed. “Why would I want that? I want to raise this child myself! I mean if you want to be involved, that’s great, but I can’t think of any reason why I would ever hand it over to you for good!”

“Oh, it’s just that as they get older, our children tend to do better with their own kind,” he said helpfully. “That’s not a criticism of you or your parenting abilities, it’s just a fact.”

Belle shook her head, as though by doing so she could have his words make sense.

“What do you mean, ‘their own kind’?” she asked, puzzled. “Do you have some sort of hereditary condition? Why do you think that would matter to me?”

“I mean demons,” he said lightly, lifting one hand and spreading his fingers. “Incubi. Succubi. Whichever our child turns out to be. There are those that shift in between, of course, but it’s rare that one of those is produced. I’d say not in twenty years, to my knowledge. At least not that I’ve heard. Given that I’ve been tucked away in this town for decades there are probably a great many things going on that have passed me by.”

Belle stared at him.

“What?” she snapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Gold sat back on his stool, knees parting further in their fine wool pants, that tiny smile back on his face.

“I’m just letting you know that since the child is mine it will be different to a regular human child, that’s all,” he said patiently. “I can’t predict how those differences will manifest, and it’s possible that you may find them difficult to deal with. My own mother abandoned me in an alehouse when I was barely old enough to walk. I’ve had to make my own way in the world, and I certainly don’t want my child to do the same.”

“I - that’s terrible, but I don’t…” Belle shook her head. “Look, I realise that my hormones are doing weird things right now, but it sounded like you were saying that you’re a demon, and so is our child.”

Gold looked puzzled.

“Well, I am.”

Belle glared at him.

“Would you stop making fun of me?” she demanded. “This is serious!”

“I’m being serious!” he insisted. “I told you what I was before you went to bed with me.”

“Yeah, as a joke!”

Gold sighed heavily.

“Belle, I wasn’t joking,” he said patiently. “I told you, I don’t joke. Everything I told you was the absolute truth.”

Belle ran her hands over her face, letting out a deep, shuddering breath. I should have known it was too good to be true. No one’s that calm when they get a bombshell dropped on them.

“Look, I think maybe we should both take a little time to process this,” she said, through her fingers. “It’s clear this has been as much of a shock to you as it was to me.”

“I’m not shocked,” he said. “I told you. I look forward to meeting our child.”

“Let’s take a little time,” she repeated. “Sleep on it. Think about what this means for both of us. For all of us.”

“Thinking about it won’t change my mind.”

“You can’t know that,” she snapped. “Anyhow, I’m staying at the inn, so - uh - why don’t we both talk again after we’ve had some rest? It was kind of a long journey and I'm not convinced I didn't fall asleep on the bus and dream this whole encounter.”

He was gazing at her with an unreadable look on his face.

“Alright.”

“Great.” She pushed to her feet. “Thanks for the tea. And for not yelling about the baby. I don’t handle raised voices all that well. Especially now.”

“As I said.” His tone was almost a whisper. “I’m delighted at the news.”

“Right.”

She wound her scarf around her neck, and snatched her gloves up from the workbench, pulling them on. She could feel Gold’s eyes on her, running over her skin like spectral fingers, as though he could touch her without moving from his seat. It made her shiver, but the sensation was far from unpleasant.

“Right,” she said again. “I’ll - um - see you tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” he said quietly.

Belle nodded, and took a step past him, that sensation of being touched with his eyes making her skin hum and her pulse throb in her throat. Her pace quickened as she entered the shop, and she reached the door without stopping, the bell tinkling as she wrenched it open and stepped out into the frigid night air. A plume of white billowed out into the air as she let out the breath she had been holding. Well. That’s one reaction I definitely didn’t predict.

[antialianalysis]

S01E01: “Pilot”

In the pilot episode of the show, we meet Walter White, a fifty-year-old chemistry teacher, as he is diagnosed with lung cancer and decides to start cooking crystal meth with his former student Jesse Pinkman.

(This is an ongoing commentary on all of Breaking Bad. Follow this blog to keep up with future posts!)

As I mentioned in a previous ask response, I did not know much about this show when I first watched it with my husband in the summer of 2013. (That means we watched it late in the gap between the first and second halves of season five - when we'd finished our binging, "Blood Money" was maybe a week away.) It was supposedly good, apparently there was discourse about whether some guy was a bad guy and exactly when he'd become a bad guy, and I was really confused by the title. I wasn't super-interested in it; I'm pretty sure my husband just downloaded it at random to have a new show to watch.

However, it didn't take long for it to hook me in, because the opening of the pilot episode is magnificent. Pants flying through the air, middle-aged man in his underwear frantically driving an RV on a desert road, unconscious guy in a gas mask in the passenger seat, what seems to be two dead bodies sliding around in the back alongside breaking glassware, sirens blaring as he crashes the car - if you ever saw an in media res opening and wanted to know how on earth we got there, it's this one. The combination of enticing intensity and mystery with the bits that are just utterly baffling is perfect.

The precise moment when I was really sold on this show was when Walt stumbled out of the crashed RV, just freaking out. This wasn't some stone-cold criminal badass; this was a terrified half-naked guy, helplessly out of his depth and with no idea how to deal with any of this. (I like that sort of thing.) Then he made a cryptic but heartfelt video to his family and walked out to stand in the middle of the road, still pantsless, raising a gun towards the approaching sirens as if preparing for some kind of hopeless, suicidal last stand against the police and anyone who would stand against him. What had driven him to this point? What had happened? Why was he in his underwear? I wanted to know, and I was pretty sure the answers were going to be delightful.

...And I thought that was the entire show. Like, I assumed the opening was a teaser for the series finale. Maybe the first season finale, at the earliest. It was actually from later in this very episode. One of the first things that really struck me about Breaking Bad was just how much stuff somehow managed to happen per episode - somehow this show was setting up A's and B's that couldn't seem further apart and then still believably getting us there in the space of less than an hour. (In hindsight, I was probably too used to episodic shows, where there isn't a lot of plot development in each episode.)

On my first time through, the cold open made me expect to really like Walt - this very ordinary-seeming man who's somehow landed himself in a terrifying situation he has no idea how to handle. But on a rewatch there are already telling signs here of who Walt is at his core and who he will become. When he's filming the video to his family and starts to get choked up, he blocks the camera, mortified at the thought of actually crying on video even as he's trying to tell his family he loves them for possibly the last time - he cannot show true vulnerability.

And - right now, in this situation, having (he assumes) killed two people - Walt is fully intending to fight. He could give himself up to the police and confess honestly - but he refuses to do that. This is not an admission of guilt. The video sounds like a suicide note - but he didn’t make it because he was going to turn the gun on himself. Here, in this rush of adrenaline, he's planning to go out in a blaze, taking with him anyone he can. For just this moment, he feels as if he's living out this heroic macho fantasy, and dying a criminal badass in a blaze of glory seems actually kind of enticing - certainly better than dying of lung cancer. And in that moment, as his heart pounds, even though he just made that video for his family - it doesn't matter so much to him how much pain that would inevitably cause them. He'll finally be someone, even if that someone is a meth-cooking murderer. And really that sums up Walt's entire character right there.

Three weeks earlier

After the intro, though, we flash back to how this all began, and we get a look at who Walt was before all this. Perhaps my favorite part of this is the silent shot of an award hanging on his wall, establishing that he contributed to Nobel Prize-winning research... in 1985. Walt never utters a word about how he feels about his life, but as the episode unfolds with his daily life we see how this man who clearly did some brilliant stuff when he was younger is stuck in a dull, uninteresting existence, trying to teach his subject to kids who don't care in between polishing their cars at his second job. He's just vaguely uncomfortable at his surprise birthday party, smiling politely as his macho cop brother-in-law chuckles at the very idea of him holding a gun. His son thinks Hank is so much cooler than him, and Hank sits there boasting about taking down meth labs, and Walt just stands there, faintly boggling at the money involved. He's numb. You can feel a hint of disappointment and bitterness and humiliation, but they're dulled with time - he's more or less resigned himself to the idea that this is all there is for him.

In these early scenes, pre-cancer diagnosis, Walt's meek, quiet and unassuming. At the breakfast table on his fiftieth birthday, Skyler's trying to talk a spine into him - his boss has been making him work late, and Walt's been silently putting up with it. (This will go on to be convenient for the meth-cooking, but I enjoy a lot how it also serves the purpose of illustrating something about his character - practically everything in Breaking Bad serves multiple purposes, tying the narrative together.) Hank makes jabs at his manhood at the birthday party, and he stands by and takes it. And I was amused and delighted on this rewatch to realize that we learn right here at the very beginning about how Walt hasn't been very motivated to do work around the house - the broken water heater is established in the breakfast conversation, and later, during the World's Most Awkward Birthday Handjob, Skyler asks him about some painting he was going to do but hasn't been doing. Seems like innocuous filler talk here, but put a pin in this; it will be coming back.

Another interesting bit, though: Walt Jr. is disabled, and Walt's used to accommodating him and is broadly a considerate parent to him (as far as my abled self can tell) - but when Walt is driving alone, just after being mocked by some of his students when they saw him washing their car, he makes a point of removing the disability sign from the car window. Which is obviously the proper, reasonable thing to do - but we're being shown this right here for a reason, and I'm pretty sure it's because Walt resents the idea someone might assume he's disabled - just a tiny hint of that bubbling sense of pride lurking underneath, coming out here, when he's alone.

I'm sure practically everyone has remarked on this, but in Walt's chemistry class, he introduces it as the study of change, being about growth, decay, then transformation - which is also what the show is about: how Walt changes, grows and decays and transforms. (I've got to nitpick, though: right after this he tells the class to turn to chapter six, on ionic bonds. Why is he giving an intro on what chemistry is if they're already up to chapter six in the textbook and talking about ionic bonds?!)

When Walt's collapsed at the car wash, in the ambulance, he lengthily insists that he's fine - that it's just this bug that's been going around. Partly this is bound to be out of a practical concern about American medical bills, but there is also definitely an element of Walt's running insistence that he doesn't need anyone's help. He's self-sufficient; he can provide. He's fine.

But then, of course, he's diagnosed with lung cancer.

His first reaction is pretty typical of how his mind works these days - he just kind of numbly zones out and becomes fixated on a mustard stain on the doctor's shirt instead of the fact he's just been told he has maybe a couple of years left to live (a great scene). But then it starts to sink in, to erode that layer of dull acceptance that's been smothering his life for all this time. He snaps at his boss and quits his job; "Fuck you! And your eyebrows!" is literally the first expression of actual emotion that he musters (another great scene). And then, without even telling Skyler about the diagnosis, he sits bitterly by his pool, burning up matches, each lit for a moment and then simply crumbled and gone, wasted. His family is already struggling a bit financially, and him having cancer is not going to help. Hank is always busting meth labs and finding huge sums of money - money that these lowlifes earned from simple chemistry that Walt could do blindfolded. And underlying it all there's that resentment, the knowledge that he should have been so much more, and now he's dying without ever accomplishing any of what he's capable of.

So he makes a decision. He has nothing to lose. He's just going to cook up some meth and make some money so he can pay for his treatment and leave something to his family before he dies. He can do that. Get a little excitement in his life, even, like Hank suggested when offering to let him come on a ride-along while they busted a meth lab. The cancer gives him a deadline and a purpose, something he hasn't had for years. Walt is motivated again. And on some level, that's actually good for him.

Partnering up

So Walt calls up Hank to take him up on the ride-along offer. On the way there, Hank explains that if you mix meth wrong, you get mustard gas. Walt corrects him - phosphine gas - but then adds, "I think", still compulsively meek even though obviously he knows perfectly well that he's right on this. Initially, Walt's there hoping to get to go inside and see what the lab looks like. But spotting one of his former students tumbling half-naked off a roof (what an entrance), clearly one of the meth cooks, he gets an idea in his head. After all, while he knows the chemistry backwards and forwards, he knows nothing about the drug trade and wouldn't quite have known how to go about selling meth. Here's this kid who does - and Walt's got leverage on him.

In hindsight, perhaps the first instance of true darkness in Walt is the fact that he blackmails Jesse into becoming his cooking partner. He doesn't just propose it; he threatens to turn him in if he doesn't agree. And make no mistake, this is calculated; Walt says it coolly, obviously having planned this before he came. (He probably wouldn't have come if he hadn't had this leverage.) Sure, Jesse's already involved in the drug trade - Walt's by no means corrupting an innocent here - and although we don't see it it doesn't seem like he put up too much resistance. But it's pretty clear that Walt considers Jesse beneath him. He's deeply condescending even in their very first interaction: "I never thought you'd amount to much, but methamphetamine?". And Walt certainly doesn't seem to be losing any sleep over the idea of coercing this kid into working with him on this. As far as he's concerned, Jesse is a lowlife junkie, he's made his own bed, so using him in this way seems justifiable, maybe even just.

And as a first-time viewer, it's easy to nod along with this. Yeah, this kid is a random junkie, one who makes meth spiked with chilli powder, calls himself "Cap'n Cook", has a vanity license plate referencing his meth cook name, should have been caught by the DEA earlier and only wasn't by a stroke of luck, and might I remind you, was introduced tumbling half-naked off a roof. He feels like the comic relief, the druggie buffoon to Walt's competent genius - not exactly hugely sympathetic next to the terminal cancer patient that we've spent the past half hour getting to know and rooting for, right? So it's easy to pretty much just cheer for Walt's cleverness here and not notice the ruthlessness brewing in him, the first time around.

It's Jesse who suggests getting an RV to cook in - he refuses to do it at his aunt's house (though he's not telling Walt about his aunt yet - Walt found in the filing system that the place is owned by his aunt, but Jesse just says "I own it"), and obviously Walt can't do it at his. Though he reacted to the initial proposal with disbelieving laughter, and is pretty hostile towards Walt and makes a point of reminding him this wasn't his idea, he seems actually sort of tickled by the idea of actually doing this - it means he has a new partner to replace Emilio, but here, initially, it also probably seems sort of validating that his old condescending chemistry teacher needs his help, and he has something to teach him.

But in bringing Jesse into the fold, Walt also finds an unexpected catharsis. He's spent so much of his life being meek, and wasting his considerable talent and intellect - but now, working with this naïve kid who has no idea about chemistry, he feels this satisfying sense of superiority in correcting him, berating him for his amateurishness. (Delightful early Walt-Jesse interaction: "Did you learn nothing from my chemistry class?" "No! You flunked me, remember?" "No wonder." "Prick.") At least for now, consciously Walt's probably just experiencing this as frustration with Jesse's incompetence. But the egotistical satisfaction that Walt gets out of cooking pretty soon becomes the main reason he keeps doing it - and whether he realizes it or not, this is a significant part of why it makes him feel that way.

Jesse tells Walt he knows someone looking to sell an RV for $85,000; Walt hands him less than $7000 and tells him to "negotiate". (Jesse: "You are not how I remember you from class. I mean, like, not at all.") Jesse tries to ask why Walt's doing this, because if he's gone mad or something, that affects Jesse; Walt cryptically answers "I am awake" and leaves. And... wow. Exactly how is Jesse supposed to just 'negotiate' a price down from $85k to $7k? Here we skip past how Jesse actually magically gets this done, but we're going to learn later that it's by blowing most of the $7k on strippers and champagne and then pretty much being about to attempt to bolt and leave town when his friend steals the keys to his parents' RV and sells it to Jesse for what remains of the money. It's amazing Walt thought this would work, and that he trusted Jesse with his $7k at all, but either way he's leaving Jesse with the responsibility of somehow negotiating a price down by 92%, alone, under blackmail, with no suggestion of what they might do if he can't get that done. This is not only alarmingly shortsighted but also just a colossal dick move, Walt.

Immediately following this, still high on the rush of the fact he's actually doing this and how easily he assumed power over Jesse, already feeling more powerful and in control than he's probably felt for decades if ever, Walt's with his family at a clothing store when some kids start mocking Walt Jr., and... Walt stops Skyler from giving them a talking-to and instead physically assaults them. Again, he does it in a calculated, not impulsive, way: he leaves the store out the back and then walks in through the front door, catching them off guard where they're not looking. He uses macho language to taunt them: "What are you waiting for, your girlfriends?" This is another bit where it's fairly easy to cheer Walt on watching this for the first time - these kids are obviously assholes, and he probably successfully stops them ever messing with his son again - but it's also all pretty telling of what's actually happening in Walt's head with the whole meth-cooking thing: this sense of power, of masculinity, of finding an outlet for long-bottled-up resentment and aggression.

Jesse

The first time I watched these first episodes, I didn't like Jesse at all, which is a hilarious thought now, but not exactly unjustified. Walt was complex and intriguing and easy to root for; meanwhile Jesse was there saying Walt can "dress up like a faggot if you want" and calling him "maybe only the world's second-biggest homo", which was not exactly endearing. And, well, even aside from that, he just seemed like kind of a buffoon. His interactions with Walt were probably going to be entertaining, but him, as a person, by himself? Nah. I have a distinct memory, hilarious in hindsight, of when Shadey was testing the subtitles he'd downloaded for season two (we were both pretty into this show after the pilot and pumped to binge the whole thing), and he happened to skip to a moment where Jesse was talking about things having happened to him that were very my kind of thing, and I thought "Oh, that sounds fun, but too bad it's that guy, I don't care about him."

But on a rewatch, he does have some good Jesse moments. He thinks of cooking meth as art, which originally just struck me as kind of pretentious and eye-roll-worthy, but considering Jesse is actually an artist, someone who used to love to draw and make stuff with his hands, it's actually pretty cute that he'd choose to think of this as a kind of art - and of course, his thinking of it that way serves to make him genuinely impressed by Walt's meth, inspiring him to actually look up to him (everything serves multiple purposes). Later in the episode, Krazy-8 also calls Walt an artist - I wonder if originally Krazy-8 was just Jesse's dealer, and then one day he started talking about how cooking good meth was an art, and that played a part in how Jesse got interested in getting into it for himself.

My favorite bit of Jesse in the pilot now is when he goes to Krazy-8's house with the meth that he made with Walt, acting all cool and awesome and like he totally knows what he's doing and like they're pals, which it quickly becomes clear they really aren't - and he's really freaked out by the aggressive dog, so he tries to make it less scary by asking for the dog's name... and then goes, "Yeah, I had a dog like that once, except maybe twice as big," and starts trying to give him dog training advice. Oh my god, Jesse. He's trying so hard to be the kind of cool tough guy these dudes are and so obviously way out of his depth, and once Emilio's there, out on bail, and they get threatening, he's visibly terrified. He doesn't feel great about telling them about Walt, but he's just fearing for his life at this point, and Walt did blackmail him. Once they're at the cooking site and Emilio realizes Walt was at the DEA raid, he panics and tries to bolt, yelling at Walt to run too. Unfortunately, then he... immediately trips and falls on a rock and is simply out cold for all of the climax of the episode. What a waste! (I understand why, obviously; we need to see Walt get the focus here, and they had to get Jesse out of the way somehow. One more tick to the buffoonishness meter, I guess.) But good thing there's lots of Jesse to come to make up for it!

The climax

Emilio suggests killing both of them straight away, but Krazy-8 stops to say Walt's an artist and it'll be a damn shame - and with that, as his mind races, Walt gets an idea. He's a smart guy, and coming up with ingenious ways out of sticky situations is what he does, but this is the first time we see it happen, when we establish what appears to be the premise of the show - this middle-aged chemist uses his chemistry expertise to get ahead by unconventional means in the drug world - and this first time doesn't disappoint.

So he tells the drug dealers that he'll teach them to cook meth like him, if they let him and Jesse live. He's no fool, of course; if he teaches them his recipe, they'll have no reason to keep them alive anymore. Instead, he just trusts that they think he's just that much of a fool, and uses teaching them the recipe as an excuse to take them into the RV and start mixing chemicals - creating the previously-foreshadowed phosphine gas (everything serves multiple purposes!). He's obviously terrified as he slowly goes through the motions, unsure exactly how much Krazy-8 and Emilio understand of the process, whether they'll recognize what he's doing. When Emilio touches his gun to his ear, he flinches. But then, he takes a deep breath, pours the red phosphorus onto the skillet, runs out of the RV in the confusion as the contents explode, and then desperately holds the door closed as K8 and Emilio choke on the fumes and shoot holes in the door, until they stop. He's scared out of his wits - but he's survived. And he's killed two people.

Also, the grass outside is on fire after Emilio dropped his cigarette in it. Walt's day is not going great.

For all of Walt's condescension towards Jesse, and the fact Jesse technically just ratted him out to a couple of murderous criminals, it never crosses his mind to leave Jesse behind here - he runs to untie and fetch him the moment K8 and Emilio stop struggling and he has to duck away to breathe. It's basic human decency but also a certain sense of responsibility for him - a sort of reawakened teacher-student relationship plus the fact he was, after all, the one who roped Jesse into this. He puts gas masks on them both, places Jesse in the passenger seat, and frantically drives the RV away from the spreading wildfire. We're back at the opening of the episode. What a ride it has been!

From a black screen, we zoom out of the muzzle of the gun that he's holding up towards the oncoming road. For a few seconds, he stands there, like we saw him in the opening, determined to make his last stand.

And then, under the still-distant noise of the sirens, as that brief adrenaline spike wears off... his hand starts to shake. His expression changes, his lip trembles. He's not that guy, not yet - and now that we've seen what led up to this, that seems pretty inevitable.

I think my single favorite scene in the pilot episode is this bit right here. Walt lowers his gun, closes his eyes, starting to cry again. He can't do this. Who am I kidding? What have I done? A flicker of expressions passes across his features as he listens to the sirens - what's he going to do now? Get arrested for two murders? Go to jail? See Skyler and Walt Jr.'s faces, expecting him to explain this to them? How could he ever begin to explain that he's a murderer? - and his face tightens with something angry and self-loathing, a new spike of emotion, the realization that this is it, it's over, he should just end it. And abruptly, he jams the gun under his chin and pulls the trigger - with a choked gasp as the gun doesn't fire. He's failed even at this. He's the world's most pathetic criminal.

(It's because the safety was on.)

He realizes this, and disables it, and immediately accidentally discharges it. But he doesn't try again. He sort of limply starts to raise the gun again, but he can't. Walter Hartwell White, "not an admission of guilt", stands there, half-crying, with his arms spread in defeat, waiting for the cops to take him.

Except it isn't the cops. It's the fire department, about that wildfire. And Walt awkwardly hides the gun behind his back, mouth hanging open, as they drive right past him. Of course they don't know about him. Nobody knows what just happened. Someone just spotted the smoke from the fire. Why would they give this RV and the pantsless guy standing next to it a second thought? They're not after him at all. He's gotten away with it.

And that's when Jesse regains consciousness, stumbles out of the RV, and asks him what happened and what he did to Krazy-8 and Emilio. Walt, still in a numb shock, faintly explains the gas, then throws up on the ground. As Jesse stands there silently, trying to process the fact his high school chemistry teacher just murdered two people he knew and he's actually kind of relieved about it, Walt recovers his composure and awkwardly goes, "We gotta clean this up" - probably dealing better than anyone should.

When Walt arrives at home, he's lightheaded with this new thrill of power and criminality and getting away with something like this. With a round in the dryer, Krazy-8's money is his, easily covering what he lost on the 'RV'. He's done it. And it all comes out in a raw burst of sudden sexual energy as Skyler's telling him that the worst thing he can do is shut her out. She's incredibly right, but for now, keeping this from her is probably an extra thrill, too, an exciting secret to keep.

Walt is a criminal now - and he's still dying of cancer, but he feels more alive than he has in a long, long time.

[xxsovereignsarayaxx]

Elizabeth Mikaelson - What If? Chapter 16

Authors Note: Sorry for such a long wait, I lost my original draft and Iv’e had to re-write it to the best I can remember. As always thank you for continuing to love Elizabeth’s journey! 💜 And if you love the story and want to be notified when the next chapter is released join my Lizzie-Lijah Stag Tag. Lizzie-Lijah Stag Tag: @skeletoresinthebasement​ @sparrowsparrow​

I swallowed and playfully raised my eyebrow. “Don’t think it’s the right time for that sort of thing is it Elijah?” 

Clearing his throat. “I won’t ask again, the truth.” Elijah replied to you. 

“Alright, no need to get handsy although if you make the offer later tonight I’ll definitely change my mind.”  I said with a chuckle. 

Elijah took a step back, eyeing me while sorting out his tie. “It’s your mother Elijah I don’t trust her.” I admitted. 

“Why didn’t you come to me? You know you can always confide in me.” Elijah asked. 

“You just had your mother return from the dead after all these years, I didn’t think you would believe me.” I said softly. 

“I will always listen to you, you have my word.” Elijah replied cupping my cheek. 

Leaning into his touch I smiled at him. “Mother wishes to speak with Elena, I’m going to ask her in hope that we still can rely on her to find out what she says.” Elijah says. 

“I was going to see if I could speak with Esther myself, try and make out that she can trust me in whatever she could be planning.” I whispered. 

“Be careful please Elizabeth.” Elijah asked. 

“Of course, I’ll find you shortly.” I said reassuring him. 

We shared a simple kiss and then parted ways, I went to find Esther. I knew that I was doing was dangerous if Esther figured out I was just trying to get an idea of she could be doing I could be in serious danger. But my instincts were never short so I knew I was onto something and with the burning of sage I smelt the previous night and even now as I approached the door everything was adding up. Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves I knocked on the door. I was met with Finn, he didn’t look thrilled to see me and how he opened the door only slightly so he could fit part way through blocking my view into the room. 

“Elizabeth? Something the matter?” He asked. 

“Is your mother available to talk? I would like to speak with her. Its a topic that she knows strongly about.” I said to my oldest brother in law. 

“Mother, Elizabeth wishes to speak with you.” He said. 

“Let her in Finn.” Esther replied from inside the room. 

“Very well.” Finn said out loud and opened the door fully allowing me to walk inside. 

As I walking inside the saw items and object spread out on the large table in the room, a large bowl, stained paper and the remains of the smoldering sage.

“How can I help Elizabeth?” She asked softly offering me a seat at the table she was sat at. 

“There have been things that have happened recently.” I started. 

“Things you can’t explain?” 

I nodded my head as I smoothed the skirt to my gown and took my seat opposite her, resting my elbow. “I can help you with that, I can explain everything to you, even teach you a new thing or two.” Esther added. 

I said nothing and just eyed her up and down, whilst quickly looking past her to keep and eye on her eldest son. 

“Nature demands balance, and already that balance has been altered because of Niklaus. I’m ashamed with what I had done however I now must live and accept that. But your something very different and yet so similar to my son. Elizabeth my dear your a hybrid of your own.” Esther explained. 

I chuckled at her remark. “I’m a vampire Esther there’s no changing that.” 

“Have you ever heard of a siphon?” She asked. 

I shook my head. “A siphon is a witch unable to cast magic on their own. They must rely on magical objects or beings to absorb. Some call them abominations but that is what you were before you died.” 

“And what would you call them?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Special.”

“Just because I was a siphon then doesn’t mean I am now.” I told her. 

“No your right, your something a little more now. Your a heretic vampire. A siphon now stuck with a vampire body, with an endless amount of supernatural energy to absorb. Help me and I will teach you everything I know.” Esther added. 

“Help you?” I questioned. 

“Yes, you could become so powerful and yet bring the balance back to nature.” She replied, trying to entice me to her cause. 

“Your plotting something.” I said abruptly. 

Seeing as I had already cottoned onto her scheme she let out a sigh. “I am merely fixing my mistakes.”  

“The ball its a cover! It makes sense for all your children to be under the same roof along with the doppelganger. You want me to help you murder my family?! The people who took me in. You just want to end it all? What about Elijah? You said you were happy that he had found someone and settled down!” I ranted. 

“In another lifetime you pair would have made a perfect couple.” Esther admitted. I got up from my chair and made a bee-line for the door to where Finn sped over and intercepted my way of escape. 

“Finn out of my way.” I growled, flashing my eyes and veins. Getting up from her own chair Esther made her way over, cautiously I stepped backwards I turned to face Esther, I was out numbered and seriously overwhelmed. And Esther knew that, I was a fool to come alone. But to make sure I would no longer be a threat with a simple flick of her wrist my neck snapped and my body tumbled to the floor. 

Fluttering my eyes open, I squinted at the light, I sat up as I had been placed on the sofa in the room. Inhaling I smelt a chance, I recognized the scent anywhere it was Elena she had been in the room. Seeing that I had awoken Esther and Finn turned to look at me as I got up and stood on my feet. “You had Elena in here haven't you.” I mumbled. 

“She just left and so should you, Elijah will be concerned.” Esther replied. 

Picking up the skirt to my dress I wobbled towards the door once more. “One more thing, I can’t have you telling Elijah our little secret.” Esther added. 

“Finn would you please, make sure Elizabeth doesn’t remember anything about our plan.” She asked her son. 

“Yes mother.” He replied. 

I tried to make my way to the door before Finn got to me, but he was too fast. He held onto me I tried to avert my eyes but it was impossible I was drawn to them. “You will not remember the details of mothers plan, you only spoke about your history.” His eyes bore into my own as his pupils dilated. 

“I will not remember the details of Esther’s plan, we spoke only about my family history.” I repeated plainly. 

“Go enjoy the ball Elizabeth.” Esther said, encouraging me to leave. 

Unsure why the back of my neck ached I left the room and made my way back down the hallway and down the stairs. Spotting Elijah I headed over to speak with him. As I carefully made my way down the stairs I saw he was speaking with Elena. 

“She just wanted to apologize for trying to have me killed.” She told him. 

“So it’s true, then? She's forgiven Klaus?” Elijah asked. 

“Seems that way.” Elena replied. 

Hearing from Elena that Esther had forgiven Niklaus I had hope that we could all live together happy as a family. But as each step I took towards Elijah and Elena I could help but feel something in my memory was missing. But seeing as I left Esther she was happy and explained what I was I shook off the feeling and returned to Elijah.

“Where did you get to?” He whispered. 

“The talk with your mother lasted a little longer than expected, I’m sorry if you worried. She knew a lot about me.” I told him. 

Pulling me close to him his hand around my waist. When the sound of a crystal piece of glassware being tapped. Looking up to see where the sound had originated from I saw Esther making her way down the staircase and addresses the guests. 

“Good Evening, Ladies and Gentleman. Waiters are coming around with champagne. I invite you all to join me in raising a glass. It provides me with no greater joy then to see my family back together as one. I'd like to thank you all for being part of this spectacular evening. Cheers!” Esther announced. 

While Ester was speaking I noticed that waiters where milling around everyone with trays of champagne selecting two glasses I offered one to Elena. “Too a fresh start.” I offered, giving her a smile to which she reciprocated. 

“Cheers.” The three of use and we all clinked our glasses with one another. We all took a sip of the champagne and I rested my head on Elijah’s shoulder smiling. 

After the toast Elena had gone out to find her companions and myself and Elijah had taken a moment away from the ball to have a walk outside. The bitter cold would have made the humans turn back to the warmth inside but it was refreshing and made me sometimes wish that we are not affected by the change in weather, however Elijah being the gentlemen that he was placed his suit jacket over my shoulders, we walked together hand in hand. 

“How did mother seem to you?” Elijah asked me, coming to a stop.

“She seemed helpful, I was told about my heritage.” I explained. 

“Your heritage?” Elijah asked sounds slightly puzzled. 

“I was a siphon back when I was human all though years ago, but now that I’m a vampire she said I have the ability to cast my own magic. It would explain how the dagger suddenly became too hot when I tried to stop the fighting between you and Niklaus that night.” I replied to him. 

“Well that would clear up that mystery.” Elijah said with a chuckle. 

“Is everything ok? You seem rather unsettled.” I asked as I look up to him. 

“I just find it odd that mother has the ability to forgive Niklaus for everything he has done, are you certain that mother never mentioned anything about him?” Elijah asked. 

I paused for a moment. “We only spoke about me, we didn’t have chance for a change in topic.” I explained. 

“Were you in the room when Elena came to speak with mother?” Elijah asked coming to a halt. “Elena never entered the room, perhaps she spoke with your mother beforehand?” 

“I see, well lets head back inside. Shall we?” Elijah gestured for me to hold his arm as we made our way back inside. Handing Elijah his suit jacket he had put it back on when a commotion was heard just by the balcony. 

“I’ll follow you right in, just give me a moment.” I promised and gave Elijah a kiss on the cheek, stroking his arm for reassurance. Hearing the faint sound of bones being crushed I saw Kol speaking with Matt, the human Rebekah had a soft spot for. 

“Kol, please let go.” I asked joining them both. Matt fell to his knees in agony then Damon appeared helping Matt back to his feet. 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey.” I rushed over to Kol trying to calm him down, not liking that Damon had gotten involved. 

“Easy on the hand, guys a quarterback.” Damon added. Damon and Kol look at each other and in a square off. 

By instinct of knowing both of the vampires in front of me that something bad was going to happen I immediately rushed over to Matt to try and shield him from what is next to come. “Kol! Damon! Now isn’t the time for this.” I pleaded hoping that the two males would maybe see sense. 

But to my dismay Damon rushed at Kol knocking him off the balcony, jumping down to join him, leaving Matt’s side momentarily I looked down to see Damon landed a few punches and then snapped Kol’s neck his body lifeless from the action. I ushered Matt inside to one side and rushed down the small staircase to where I was met with Stefan. “Damon are you crazy?” Stefan had asked his older brother shocked. 

“This will not bode well. What were you thinking?” I scolded. 

Just as I had finished my sentence Elijah, Elena and the rest of my family joined us outside. Damon  looked at me then Elena “Far be it me to cause a problem.”

 Esther cleared her throat. “Finn will you please take your brother to his room, and I think it might be best if you three go home.” Esther suggested. 

“Elijah please see me in my study when you have a moment.” She added.

Within a matter of moments Finn was taking Kol upstairs making sure to not be seen. Damon, Stefan and Elena had left and I had taken the time to check on Matt. 

“How are you feeling Matthew?” I asked. 

“Don’t get called that very often.” He said with a pained chuckle. 

“Might I suggest a trip to the hospital? I heard that you refused vampire blood in the past.”

“Its weird to think most of my friends are vampires.” Matt had said to me. 

“Just remember not all of us are monsters just a select few, most of us have a heart just dependent on who sees it. Rebekah cares for you, so I shall as well.” I told him. But when I had mentioned Rebekah’s name he pulled a face. 

“I appreciate the concern but...” Matt started. 

“But Rebekah is the baby of this family and has a few over-protective siblings? I understand it’s intimidating but she has a heart of gold and she wants to show you it. Head to the hospital Matthew, your adrenaline will fall soon.” I finished giving him a quick smile and headed up to Esther’s study.

I stood in the hallway waiting for Elijah to finish speaking with his mother, I could still smell the scent of sage burning so I couldn’t overhear on the conversation. 

Seeing the door open and then close Elijah walked up to me. 

“You look like you could go for a drink.” I said to try and lighten the mood. 

“I have to deal with my siblings actions but nothing that can be sorted until the morning, how about we retire for the evening?” Elijah stated. 

“Now that, would be perfect. As much as I adore this dress I am very much eager to have it off.” I replied seductively. 

“Something I can help you with my dear.” Elijah whispered into my ear. A smile crept on my features once more as he held me hand leading me to our bedroom. 

[acockius]

dancing on my own.

hello, lovelies! i was really in my feelings yesterday, and this piece kind of just flowed out of me. i’ve never written for rog but really admire all of the lovely people on this site who do. this is purely self-indulgent, so sorry if it’s awful. it also helps to listen to Dancing on My Own by Calum Scott to get you into the feels. 

roger taylor x reader ; 2,052 words ; straight up angst and sadness, swearing, semi-smut 

You fought the cold night air as you took your last few steps towards the door of the pub you worked at. A cigarette dangled from your lips and you stole a long drag from it before stomping it out on the concrete. With all of the bullshit life had been throwing at you as of late, you were actually looking forward to work for a change.

Your coworker, Marcy, emerged from the bar, her arms slung over her chest and hands grasping her elbows to remain warm.

“What, are you crazy?” You started, running your hands down her bare arms. “It’s feckin’ freezing out here, babe. Get inside!”

“I tried to catch you on the telly before you left your flat, but I missed you.” Marcy cut you off. “Ed’s giving you the night off.”

“Don’t be daft. He knows I need the money. You know I need the money…” You narrowed your eyes at your coworker and confidante. “Marc-“

“He’s got a new girl…” Marcy broke the news to you in a sympathetic tone.

If your body wasn’t already tingling from the cold temperature, the news of that made you lose all feeling and sense of self. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did - because you already knew your ex boyfriend better than most.

“‘Course he does… He’s Roger Taylor, after all.” You reminded with a shrug. “Just ‘cause he settled down with me for a couple’a months doesn’t mean that he’s lost his old ways.”

The break up was as amicable as it could’ve been. You weren’t seeing eye-to-eye, and there was no love between the two of you anymore. You’d suspected he wasn’t being loyal, and he was fed up with your accusations. You decided that you’d rather cut ties with him now and give him the benefit of the doubt than catch him in the act that you’d never be able to forgive him for. He didn’t fight to keep you as his, which was all the confirmation you needed to know that the decision was probably for the best. 

You’d met Roger at the pub you worked at. You were a waitress there and he was a drummer for one of the bands who played there quite often. From the first time he’d laid eyes on you, he was determined to make you his. Even if it meant winks while a groupie whispered in his ear or a lustful gaze as you brought him a drink before Smile’s set. He’d spent weeks dazzling you before the two of you finally wound up locked in the women’s bathroom during last call.

“I’m not letting you put yourself through this.” Marcy said with a hand on your shoulder. “I’m giving you my tips from the shift and you’re taking the night off.”

“I’m a big girl.” You were slightly offended that she could think otherwise. “I broke up with him, remember?”

After becoming comfortable with each other, you began to catch him exchanging looks with other girls, much the way he did you when you first met. You’d addressed it, and he blamed it on maintaining the rockstar image. You stopped buying that once you caught his hands skim way too low on a fan’s bum one night. She drunkenly pecked the corner of his mouth and he didn’t stop her - even after he realized you were watching.

“S’all part of the game, love. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Guess I don’t mean anything either.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt….” Marcy’s tone was so sympathetic that it irked you.

“I’m not his to hurt. Not anymore.” You kissed her temple and pushed past her, fighting your way into the pub.

It was packed, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for a Thursday night. Smile was currently performing, and you fought your way behind the bar, removing your leather jacket and scarf. Ed watched you tie an apron around your waist and furrowed his brow.

“Reporting for duty, fearless leader.” You crooned over the crowd, hand over your brow to salute. Ed just grumbled and shook his head. He was a man of few words to begin with.

You’d worked your way out from behind the bar and into the crowd, tending to patrons and collecting dirty glassware. You walked past a booth at the back of the bar and upon realization of who you’d just sauntered passed, your heart sank. It was the usual spot where the girlfriends of the band sat. You just didn’t expect to find someone fill your place so quickly.

She sat sandwiched between Veronica and Mary, with bright eyes as she watched the performance. She was beautiful - stunning, in fact. You’d realized you’d stared too long after Mary had offered a sympathetic smile.

You just quickly looked away and fought to fill your drink orders in a timely manner. You felt a squeeze to your shoulder and a kiss to your hair as Marcy walked past you with a full tray. She’d shagged the band’s lead guitarist but didn’t toy with the idea of doing anything but. Thankfully for her, Brian May was ever the gentleman and never made things awkward for her.

There was a different dynamic between your relationship with Roger and Marcy’s with Brian. You loved Roger, and the four of you knew that. This was just the price you’d have to pay for being so naive. You knew Roger was a playboy, but you fell for him anyway. Marcy and Brian were both two level-headed individuals who didn’t let their past get in the way of existing in the same space. You hoped to be able to reach that point with Roger some day.

You cursed under your breath when Smile’s set ended, the realization that you’d probably have to wrap up the night as the band lingered for the remainder of the evening. The reason why your friend was trying to send you home became more and more apparent as the night unfolded.

The music that replaced the band was lively and the crowd was loving it. It kept most folks there. They kept drinking, and kept tipping, so you kept on working. You’d willingly accept anything to distract yourself from the discomfort your were experiencing.

Your first cringey encounter of the night with a member of Smile was when you’d had to squeeze past Freddie, balancing a full tray of drinks in your hands.

“Looking beautiful as always, love.” He shouted over the music.

The compliment was laced with such pity that it made your stomach churn. Having to distance yourself from the entire band was hard on you because you cared for all of them. You and Freddie were the closest and cutting yourself off from that friendship hurt nearly as much as losing Roger did.

“Thanks, Fred!” You yelled back and kept walking.

You dealt out your tray and returned to the bar with full stacks of glasses to wash. You’d developed quite the talent for finishing this task with ease. However, you hadn’t realized that Brian had appeared in front of you, trying to get your attention with a warm smile.

When you finally caught onto the presence in front of you, you smiled apologetically and slung the bar rag over your shoulder.

“Sorry about that. You know how I get once I get onto a task. What can I do you for?”

“Not to worry,” Brian started. “Hate to bother you, but we’ve done our best to flag Marcy down for a round but she’s swamped at the moment.”

You looked at the spot behind Brian’s shoulder, where the view of their table was visible. The three couples sat in the booth, each preoccupied with something different. But you couldn’t keep your eyes off of your old flame and his one.

His grin lit up the very dark room, his new girl tucked pleasantly against his side. Her mouth peppered kisses against Roger’s jaw and his thumb caressed her cheek. Your own skin felt hot as the feeling of his calloused thumb teased your memory.

You forced a smile and shook your head.

“Never a bother, Bri.” You stated as you began to prep fresh glasses for the table. “The usual?”

Brian nodded, gripping the lip of the bar before speaking up.

“Plus, a lager - for…” Brian started, trying to finish the sentence diplomatically.

“A lager for the lady. And the usual. Coming right up!” You pat Brian’s hand and then shooed him away.

“Thanks. See you in a bit!” Brian lingered, trying to find the words he wanted to follow up with before surrendering and heading back to his table.

You could make the group’s drink order in your sleep by now. Still, you found your hands shaking as you poured their cocktails this time around. A gentle hand came to your wrist and you were met with your coworker’s smile.

“I’ve got it, hon. If you wanna go collect more glasses…” She lovingly caressed your wrist and you waved your hand dismissively.

“Thanks, Crys… But I’ve got this.” You countered in your most convincing tone.

Crystal nodded and begrudgingly left your side as you began to stack the drinks of your tray. You were thankful that your coworkers had banned together to get you through this shitty situation. They’d watched your romance with Roger spark, ignite, and then detonate before their eyes. They were cordial because they had to be, but they were defensive and protective of your feelings otherwise.

The world seemingly slowed as you made your way to Smile’s resident table with their drinks. There were seven occupants at the booth but only five gave you their attention as you approached.

“Hello, lovely!” Mary offered as you dropped her drink on a coaster in front of her. “I love your earrings.”

“Thanks.” You nodded as you continued to pass out the drinks, offering smiles to Deaky and Veronica.

You pretended that you didn’t see one of Roger’s hands hidden under the skirt of his new girlfriend as you placed their drinks of in front of them. Their lips were dancing against each other’s, too busy to thank you for just doing your job.

You almost scoffed when a stack of bills fell upon your tray, waking you from your daze. You placed it back down on the table and narrowed your eyes at Brian.

“No…” You scolded with the point of a finger. “Never.”

Brian sighed and then nodded as he took back the money. “Thank you.”

“Enjoy, folks!” You offered with an awkward wave, before quickly disappearing from their table.

Marcy was on your heels almost immediately, lips near your ear.

“What the actual feckin’ hell?” she asked in a whisper.

“They couldn’t get your attention. So, Brian came to me and ordered for them.” You shrugged, fighting back tears.

“A lager? And you paid for it?” Marcy nearly gagged. “Who orders a -“

“Me! I used to. When I was her.” You replied. “Because I never really drank it anyway. Was too busy getting fingered under the table, honestly.”

“Babe, I’m sorry. I didn’t -“ Marcy stammered.

“I need a cigarette.” You mumbled and pushed your tray into her hands.

You weaved your way through the crowd and snuck out the back entrance, pulling the pack from your waistband and lighting a cigarette immediately. The long initial inhale that you took wasn’t enough to calm your nerves, and you were unfazed by the cold air that danced around your bare arms and legs.

You were startled when the back door jolted open and Roger and his lover shuffled past you. They climbed into the back of the band’s van with a series of giggles and slammed it shut behind them. The loud sound triggered your tears, after working so hard to hold them back all night.

Roger didn’t owe you anything at this point. You were broken up, and everything you had was in the past. However, you hadn’t expected to be completely ignored by him the entire night. It was like you weren’t even there.

Was it always like this for him? When you were with him, did the rest of the world melt away and was the only thing that existed for him you? You’d never know.

[rougespecial-blog]

sweetheart hand // brian may

summary: in 1976, queen celebrate the release of their album a day at the races, which will cement their rise to fame (or notoriety). as it stands, though, you’re an artist who’s never heard of them, dragged along to the launch party by a friend.

a/n: really no warnings for this, some adult themes if you squint. title from tie your mother down. inspired by hearing brian talk about the excitement and excess of the day at the races era, when the boys finally had a bit of money. feedback is nice requests are open etc etc

you’ve barely stepped over the hotel’s threshold when a man in a glittering silver jacket - shoulders wide enough that doorways are giving him trouble - brushes past you. you’ve felt underdressed before, but this borders on ridiculous. three more men are trailing after him, wearing exactly the same thing. one of them holds out a tray towards you and you realise with a slight feeling of dismay that you look more like house staff than the actual waiters. you take a champagne coupe from him, admiring your mysterious host’s taste in glassware if nothing else.

it’s a miracle that you’re here, even plainly dressed in your jeans and white blouse.  you rolled your eyes, initially, when your friend tom called and asked you to be his date to an album release party. he mentioned names you’d never heard - one that had to be made up -  and insisted that this was a once in a lifetime event, that you would forever live in agonising regret if you didn’t go. you told him that you’ve both had your fair share of outrageous parties, thanks very much, that the london art scene isn’t particularly starved for big personalities or expensive vices.

‘i’m telling you - they’re about to explode. this album will be massive. you’ll tell your grandchildren you were at this party. besides, the lead singer - that’s this mercury fellow -  he’s really a stunning entertainer.’

‘i’ve never even heard of them, tom.’

‘well, that doesn’t say much. you’re a philistine when it comes to these things. please leave the canvases alone for a night. they’ll still be there in the morning.’

you pause, biting the inside of your cheek. ‘you’re paying for the cab.’

‘always, dear. and i’ll pay it twice if you don’t have a good night.’

so, here you are, champagne in hand and tom at your side, jostled by the most colourful variety of people you’ve ever seen. his eyeshadow and latex belt - you had laughed hysterically at him in the taxi - don’t seem so ridiculous now.

tom dutifully stays by your side for all of fifteen minutes. he’s much better at these things than you’ve ever been, rubbing shoulders and drawing people naturally in with his never-ending compliments. and the guests - you see a few artists you recognise from galleries, but even they seem different, less inhibited, in this space. a gramophone in the corner blares a classical overture that people are somehow managing to dance along with. you need another drink, badly. when you turn to tell tom this, he’s already disappeared into the fray.

as you wind through the venue looking for more drinks, you overhear snippets of conversation. people gush about the band, the frontman, the party itself. horrifyingly, you hear more than one person comment about how there just wasn’t enough money left over from the band’s last release to make this a really smashing one. you can’t imagine what they’d have this place looking like with a bigger budget.

by the time you stumble through a door that leads to an empty staff kitchen, you’ve just about had it. with the excess, the gratuity. you know you weren’t exactly choosing an austere or subdued lifestyle in modern art, but the cock-first showiness of these rock ’n’ roll types is really starting to get up your nose. mercifully, the first fridge you open still has a few bottles of champagne in it.

it’s just as you pop the cork, the bottle wedged under your arm and foam starting to run out over your fingers, that the door swings open and someone catches you red-handed. it’s not one of the silver-suited waiters - in fact, he might be the most ordinarily-dressed person here, after you. he’s a tall, lanky thing in jeans and a black shirt. if it weren’t for the mess of brown curls reaching his shoulders, you wouldn’t blink at him in the street.

‘that’s your personal bottle, i suppose?’

you blink at the champagne in your hand, then back to him. you have no idea how serious he’s being. ‘i was sent for,’ you answer coolly.

‘ah,’ he says, with a nod that’s too close to sarcasm for you. ‘by?’

you manage not to roll your eyes, though it’s close. you have no idea who this guy thinks he’s impressing as the personal arbiter of Who’s Allowed to Nick Champagne. ‘the band,’ you lie smoothly, turning away from him to refill your glass. ‘i’m a friend of the guitarist.’

you hear him laugh lightly as he steps all the way into the kitchen and closes the door behind him, reducing the din of the party to a distant hum. ‘well, if it’s on the band,’ he says, ‘can i have a glass?’

this is an improvement. you fetch another crystal glass from an overhead cupboard and fill it to the brim, turning around and handing it to him. he’s leaning back against the counter opposite, giving you a chance to appraise him better as he takes a sip of the champagne. you realise his shirt is fashionably just-too-small, with a wide collar that skirts around his collarbones and the hem resting tightly against his hips.

‘so,’ he says - and you remember yourself, looking very decidedly at his face, not his hips - ‘if you know the band, what are they like?’

you pause, trying to scrutinise his expression. he could be sincere, or he could be anyone - a journalist, a friend of the band playing a trick. to hell with it.

‘you want me to be honest?’

he grins at you, laughter swimming in his dark eyes. ‘please,’ he says. ‘brutally honest.’

‘i think they’re a bunch of tossers, really. just look at the state of this party. it’s fucking excessive. these rockstars - they always want everyone to know how much they have, all the time. i find it exhausting.’

something you said seems to have pleased him enormously, and he raises his glass to you, grinning. ‘you know what - i’ve heard the exact same thing.’

‘so how did you end up here tonight, then?’

‘friend of a friend,’ he shrugs, tracing his fingertip around the rim of his glass.

‘and what do you do? you’re not in the industry, are you?’

he’s silent for a second - he seems reticent to tell you, and you wonder for a moment if he is in the industry you’ve just trashed. but then he clears his throat and smiles softly. ‘i’m a teacher, actually. a maths teacher in brixton.’

you feel your jaw drop involuntarily. ‘a maths teacher who just happens to moonlight with coke-sniffing rockstars on the weekend.’

‘oh, come off it,’ he laughs. ‘i suppose you’ve got some incredibly cosmopolitan career.’

‘i’m an artist,’ you tell him, the second truth you’ve told him. ‘a painter.’

‘right, well, there you go. would i have seen any of your -’

he doesn’t finish his sentence before the door opens and the music and chatter of the party floods into the room again. a blond sticks his head around the door and sighs in exaggerated relief.

‘there you are, bri, we were looking for you fucking everywhere. they want us to play a few songs off the record. fred’s been sat at the piano warming up for the past fifteen minutes.’ it’s then that he notices that you’re there, too, and a slow smile appears on his face. ‘sorry, love. didn’t mean to disturb your alone time.’

before you can clarify that this is definitely not “alone time”, he shuts the door again with one final call of ‘five minutes, brian!’. it’s only the look on your new friend - brian’s - face, like he’s waiting to be scolded, that makes you piece together what just happened.

‘he just - you - some songs off the record - fred! - you’re -’ you can’t finish any of your thoughts as you point at him fiercely, eyes wide.

brian looks halfway between apologising and bursting into laughter at your indignation. ‘you lied first! “i’m a friend of the guitarist”.’

‘and i suppose that’s who i’m looking at now, yeah? not a maths teacher from brixton - honestly, a maths teacher -’

‘that part was true! i only just handed in my resignation.’

as if that makes it any better. you roll your eyes and swallow the rest of your champagne in one mouthful. ‘god, and i called you all tossers.’

‘did you mean it, that stuff about excess?’ he asks, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. ‘or were you lying there, too?’

you cover your eyes with one hand, trying to think before you answer - for once - but he keeps talking before you can.

‘because it was nice, you know. normally everyone i meet at these things wants to blow smoke up my arse about how great we are. making sure they get invited to another one.’

‘and he’s modest, too,’ you smile.

‘oh, come on. listen to a few songs and then you tear me to shreds with your criticism.’

there’s enough clamour in the party that no-one notices the two of you slip out of the kitchen together - you can imagine the rumours. brian finds his bandmates who’ve assembled themselves on the small hotel stage, probably only built for a lounge singer or two. there’s the blond from before perched at the drums, a bass player who leans casually against an amplifier, and ready at the piano sits an exotic-looking thing in a massive fur coat. freddie, you realise, the one you’ve heard the most about. you find a decent vantage point, standing against the wall at the back of the room, sipping a fresh glass of champagne.

you’re sure if you heard these songs on the radio you wouldn’t scramble to write down their names, but there’s something about the energy the band has - a sort of control over the room, an assured confidence in their ridiculousness - that works. when freddie isn’t at the piano he struts around the stage as if it’s an arena - the guests shriek when he sheds his coat dramatically. even brian, the man who you truly believed was only a maths teacher, seems imbued with an infectious bravado, gesturing for people to sing along, putting his shoulders and hips into his playing. and can he play. you don’t know the first thing about the technicalities of guitar, but your hands hurt watching him finish up what must be his sixth solo of the twenty-minute set. and with that, the men give a bow, someone turns the music up again, and they slip offstage.

you finally find tom a half hour after the performance, smoking in the courtyard and chatting with some photographers. he hugs you as if you’ve been separated for years.

‘i told you you’d enjoy yourself, darling. what have you been up to?’

‘nothing special. i was thinking of heading off soon, actually.’

‘oh, come on. it’s barely eleven.’

‘we got here at eleven. it’s almost one!’

he’s just about roped you into sitting down with his new friends - you do sound rather like your own mother, complaining about the time - when you feel a gentle hand on your shoulder.

‘there you are. i was wondering if you’d already left.’

if you didn’t recognise the voice, the look on tom’s face would be revealing enough as his eyes dart, wide, from you to brian before he points at you accusingly. you shrug in answer to his silent question, and turn to face brian.

‘i didn’t - i thought you’d have - you know, band things. i was about to go home, actually.’

‘i was being serious about wanting you to tear me to shreds.’ tom must look alarmed behind you, because he hurriedly adds, ‘with your criticisms, you know. you’ve seen us play now.’

you laugh and duck your head. ‘i don’t have an awful lot.’

‘well, tell me anyway. but not… this, here, it’s a bit -’ he glances around at the din, at couples dancing wildly, drinks being poured. ‘some of us have gone upstairs for a quiet one, if you’d like.’

‘i think -’

‘she would,’ tom pipes up, loudly, from behind you. you kick at him absently, but smile at brian.

upstairs turns out to be a private lounge with a few people scattered around talking amongst themselves and a jazz record playing quietly. among others, you notice the bass player from the band reclining easily with a woman, while a small ring of guests pour themselves whiskey and debate the new rush album. brian falls into a plush armchair and motions for you to do the same in one adjacent. when a waiter pushes past with a trolley of drinks you accept a cold beer, wanting something to ground you but nothing that will make you act more of a fool than you already have. brian does the same, and you sit in companionable silence for a minute as you start drinking.

‘it’s hard to bear, after a while. i always end up escaping like this,’ he says after a moment.

‘oh, i wasn’t too worried about that. i’ve had a few wild nights.’

he raises an eyebrow at you. ‘you painters party often, then?’

‘it’s ridiculous,’ you say, grinning. you prop your legs up on the arm of his chair, crossed at the ankle. ‘not so much now, but i was all over it when i was younger. exposed to all kinds of illicit substances and, ah… sexual confusion.’

he tilts his head back and laughs at that. you watch the line of his throat, the pretty slice of his chest revealed by the shirt. absentmindedly, his hand comes to rest on his chair but instead finds your shin. he taps a long, silver-ringed finger against the cuff of your jeans. ‘tell me about your art, then.’

it feels like minutes pass as you chat, but it must be hours - judging by the way the guests around you are shuffling out or even falling asleep on the various loveseats. you tell him about your painting, and he laughs fondly, bright-eyed, as you stand and gesture wildly to describe the motions of abstract art. you swap story after story - him of life on tour and ridiculous record labels, you of parties and snobbish art collectors. at one point you’re nearly breathless with laughter over his imitations of the kids he used to teach in brixton. the conversation turns more subdued when he tells you about his bandmates. he’s obviously immensely fond of them all, even as he confesses that they drive him up the wall half the time.

‘you promised your criticisms of us, by the way. i haven’t forgotten.’

‘i did no such thing,’ you correct him, ‘but i’ll give them anyway. you’re all very fluid, especially that singer of yours. the way you take up space - i think you wouldn’t be able to carry off the sound any other way. and you - you’re lovely to watch. you look like the composition’s coming right out of you, in the same instant that you’re playing it.’

he gives your leg a gentle squeeze - his hand is so big that it nearly meets around it. ‘you’re thinking like an artist,’ he says. ‘about the way we look. the form.’

you feel suddenly scrutinised, and you’re not sure why. your cheeks are hot. ‘i’m not sure how to think any other way,’ you tell him.

the record has finished and no one’s thought to flip it, either asleep or too caught up in their own conversations. you mumble something about fixing it and stand, smooth out the creases in your shirt. as you walk past brian, he catches you by the hip, softly but just enough to make you stop in your tracks. you look down at him, surprised. hyper-aware of the warmth of his hand even through your jeans. of the eyes looking up at you, expectant and dark enough to fall into.

‘hello,’ he says softly.

there’s nothing else to do but bend down and kiss him. his hand stays at your hip as yours come to his face, the corner of his jaw tense where he’s leaning up to reach you. you forget how simple and wonderful and teenaged a kiss can be. just him and his mouth, obliging under yours. a barely-there scratch of stubble and his curls brushing against your face. the smell and taste of him, beer and cologne and champagne.

your conversation earlier in the kitchen comes rushing back all of a sudden. you pull yourself away, smoothing your hair, leaving him looking flushed and slightly bewildered.

‘this is probably a bit of a novelty, yeah? attain the unattainable.’

‘sorry?’

‘i don’t know,’ you laugh. ‘you talk about all those women saying whatever you like to get you in bed. and the one who says she can’t stand all this rockstar shit, ends up being the one who…’

you trail off, imagining you sound fairly ridiculous, and brian stands. he’s a good head taller than you like this, though the way he carries himself stops it from being intimidating.

‘would you feel the same way if i was really just a maths teacher, then? or one of your artist friends?’

you laugh, taking a swig of your beer. ‘i suppose not.’

‘because without being - ah - presumptuous, i don’t want tonight to wind up some kind of way because of what you think my life is like.’

he perches on the arm of his chair now that you’ve visibly relaxed, and trails a hand down from your elbow to take yours in his. you step closer to him, standing between his legs, your faces almost level.

‘right. and how did you want tonight to wind up?’

he shrugs easily. pulls your hand up to his mouth and presses a kiss to the inside of your wrist. ‘show me some of your work, i suppose. haven’t really gotten a feel for it yet.’

[fromnibelheim]

[[MORE]]

Just had some Big Dreams gonna write it down

It started out with a boyfriend trying to convince me to talk to my ex so we could be on good terms. My ex and I had left on bad terms and there was a lot of bad blood and my new boyfriend felt bad and thought we should talk it out so we could at least not have that animosity and maybe even be friends. The way he put it was really sweet and he was so handsome and well dressed, with chocolate brown loosely curly hair and wearing a nice wool coat, good for dream me. We walked into a sporting goods store, where my ex worked I guess, and went to the elevator to the second floor. My bf was holding my hand and being really sweet and supportive bc i was nervous. We got into the elevator and it was surprisingly huge. Like the size of a room. And i noticed there was a woman at a desk in there who looked rather secretary like and I started to wonder what I was getting myself into.

When we got out of the elevator we were in this VERY fancy mid-century style office building where everything was honey-color stained hardwood and emerald green and gold and looked like it was straight out of the 1920s. I got WAY more nervous bc it was so fancy and everyone was wearing suits and I felt so out of place but my bf went right up to the counter and got a number for us to get called up to state out business or smth I guess. I was like wtf are you doing we cant do this! But he had already gotten the ticket so we sat down in some plush green velvet seats and waited. I realized I had no idea what my ex did but it was way more important than I'd thought. The man at the counter called our number and asked what our business was and I just got so nervous and didnt even know what position my ex had that I would answer him with, so I just said we were still waiting for someone. I think my mom showed up at one point. Eventually I was able to talk to the ex and he was some big hotshot but also a complete ass who acted like he didnt even remember us dating, even when I brought up specific events that happened. He had short blonde hair and just looked like a prick lmao. So we all left knowing it was resolved, maybe not in the best way but still resolved. On our way out we stopped to have tea in a cafe in the fancy office part of the building, and my mom told me that dreams were memories from all the other lives you're living right now. Not past lives, but memories of the universal. I remember she specifically said memories of the universal. Then the dream shifted.

I was in this new place I didnt recognize, lying in the floor covered in heavy ornately decorated blankets in a tiny japanese style room with a big monk sitting across from me chanting and praying to me. And I started shaking and crying bc I didnt know what was going on or why this guy would be praying TO me, and people were talking about remembering their other lives and who they really are and that I was lost and confused bc I didnt remember yet, and I figured that maybe if I could remember all the other lives I'd had and was living then my situation would make more sense, or at least id be more at peace with it.

I was given a letter that didnt really mean much to me bc I couldnt decipher it as it was mostly a series of small images. A group of young people around our age came in, attracted by the letter and all saying how surprised they were to see it and that it was safe and survived, as if it had been through some huge ordeal just to get here. They came right over to me to look at it as I'd laid it out right in front of me, and I pulled one of the blankets I had wrapped around me over the side of my face bc I didnt want them to see me upset. One of them came over and sat down by me. He had beautiful pale hands and I reached out and grabbed his hand and he hugged me tight. I didnt remember who he was but I knew he was important to me and that I had loved him before and I just felt like as long as he was there everything would be alright. After a while though that group left and I was alone in my tiny room, locked in. I remembered a spell someone had told me for finding things and I used it to summon the key to free myself and flew out the window. I jumped out and just started flying. I wasnt sure if I could but I put as much force into it as I could and was able to clumsily fly just above everyone in the little town I was in. The big monk and a couple other people chased after me but I quickly outran them. Then I just focused on flying. I think I was some type of angel or something since i actually had wings, and could feel the air gliding over them as i flew. It felt really nice and refreshing. Then there was another shift.

I ended up in this enormous indoor city, like a mega mall but it never seemed to end. It seemed to go up infinitely high too, and there like three were ornate cathedrals like St Patrick's Cathedral within a couple blocks of each other. I flew around the cathedrals and looked in and listened to the people talking, and inside they were more like luxury restaurants than churches, but anyway. I heard an old woman saying that they had reached their capacity as a race and no one grew old anymore. Because of this they stopped having children and no longer had the desire to give birth, which made sense to me but was surprising. I flew away from the cathedrals into a much more densely populated part of the indoor city which still had the structure of a mall just on a much more massive scale and was more technology advanced. It looked like they were having some kind of parade. I was trying to find someone, probably the people from before, but it was too loud and crowded.

I moved on and came across this group that was having a standoff. They looked like they were in a cyberpunk style gang or something and one of them pulled out a lasergun and was threatening innocent bystanders. I watched them from under the suspended walkway they were on and went from under to try to use magic to freeze them in place, but it wasnt strong enough. They caught onto me and started to chase me.

The rest of the dream was me running from them, dodging laser fire and trying to fly fast enough to put some distance between us. I ducked into shops, chased one of them into a shop at one point, even jumped onto the top of a giant fast moving train to get away, etc.

I tried to fool them at one point and it almost worked, but they came back and caught on. At that point I was wounded and didnt have much energy left to fight but for some reason they didnt kill me. I think we may have had one last battle or they retreated but either way I came out of it alive and finally was free of them and made it back to the group of friends I had been trying to find that entire time. Although at that point I was so hurt I couldnt even stand, let alone fly, so they all helped me along and carried me.

Not much worth noting happened in the dream after that. I got a bit better, we ended up in a really cute shop that had a secret base where you go down this ladder into the next floor down that had a really cute cozy circle bed with plushies on it and string lights that would have been a perfect place for taking insta pics, and then I wandered into a shop that was all dark stained hardwood and cases and cases of antique china and crystal glassware. I went back into the first shop and then woke up.