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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

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Delight in Misery (ao3) - part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8 (interlude)

The Lotus Pier was a free and unrestrained place in comparison with the Cloud Recesses, and there was no similar prohibition on raising pets. This was a good thing, largely because Lan Wangji had recently started to think of his little found family primarily in animal metaphors.

It was, he concluded, because of the way Mo Xuanyu followed Jiang Cheng around like an imprinted duckling, with stars in his eyes and an unfortunate tendency to try to emulate his actions while possessing exactly none of the temperament required to pull any of it off.

Indeed, watching him wheezing his way through a threat to break Jin Ling’s legs was a sight worth seeing, especially with Lan Sizhui patting him on the back and encouraging him when he temporarily got stuck stuttering on the word ‘legs’.

Jiang Cheng, for all his faults and imperfections, could be terrifying when he wished to be, the blood of the battlefields of the Sunshot Campaign forever impressed upon his bones; with Zidian to hand, he could look commanding and fearsome, decisive and harsh, and with his sharp looks and sharper scowl, he cut a fine picture - even if Lan Wangji knew the truth, that behind all that sharpness was the soul of a grumpy marshmallow.

Mo Xuanyu, with his wild thatch-like hair that couldn’t be controlled no matter their joint efforts and even wilder and far more questionable taste in appearance, couldn’t hope to match him, and really ought to stop trying.

Naturally, Jin Ling looked about as convinced about the threats as he ever was when Jiang Cheng said it, meaning of course that he didn’t care one whit, but despite their initial concerns, he took to Mo Xuanyu quite well. Lan Wangji was initially puzzled by it, given their conflicting personalities, but Jiang Cheng insightfully (for once) pointed out that it was most likely that Jin Ling was willing to forgive quite a lot in exchange for having another person dressed in Lanling Jin gold around to make him feel less awkward about it.

The two of them together were two little goldfinches strutting around in a sea of purple – or, perhaps more accurately, two golden roly-poly puppies bounding around, tails wagging, trying to befriend the Jiang sect’s army of sleek haughty purple cats. They were accompanied, of course, by a small, gentle crane with a most un-Lan-like taste for spicy fish with radishes and absolutely no head for water travel.

(They were working with Lan Sizhui on that. He lived in the Jiang sect now; he couldn’t spend his whole life being seasick!)

“What does that make you, then?” Jiang Cheng asked when Lan Wangji – after incessant prodding – mentioned his thoughts on the subject of their growing nest. “Master Rabbit?”

Lan Wangji glared, but didn’t object to the characterization; regardless of his personality, there was good reason to make the association. This was largely because Lan Xichen had recently embarked on a mission to capture the rabbits Lan Wangji had been – not raising, precisely, because pets were forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, but feeding on occasion when he had the time. He had brought them to Lan Wangji’s new “residence” at the Lotus Pier as a housewarming gift.

(Lan Wangji had no intention of moving out of Wei Wuxian’s bedroom, of course, but Jiang Cheng had long ago exercised his authority as sect leader to clear out the rooms just beyond it to create a small additional courtyard for him, in which he could exercise and meditate without being too far from the main quarters of the Jiang sect leader. As a result, the only change involved in his new, public, and above-board decision to reside in the Louts Pier was adding a new entranceway to make it appear as though they lived in separate albeit adjoining houses rather than living together in just one. Of course, it being the Lotus Pier, the new entranceway involved constructing not only a gate but a new bridge…)

“What exactly are we supposed to do with a bunch of rabbits?” Jiang Cheng had demanded at the time, staring down at them - there were rather more than Lan Wangji had remembered there being, but he supposed that was the nature of rabbits.

“I have no idea,” Lan Xichen had replied, smiling broadly. “But Wangji likes them.”

Lan Wangji had pretended that neither of them existed, and also that he was urgently needed elsewhere.

Later, Jiang Cheng had cornered him, demanding an explanation or else the rabbits would be sent down to the kitchens to be repurposed, and Lan Wangji had reluctantly confessed that they were from the burrow first established by the two wild rabbits Wei Wuxian had caught for him all those years ago.

Naturally there was no more talk of repurposing after that, and three sets of rabbit coops – far more than the rabbits Lan Wangji actually possessed required – mysteriously appeared in his small courtyard the next day.

“Wouldn’t want the stupid things to drown,” Jiang Cheng had grumbled when confronted with the evidence of his sentimentality. “If they attacked your garden and tried to burrow down they’d only hit water, and then where would we be? Awash in bunny corpses, that’s where, and that’s just unsanitary. I have a duty as sect leader to preserve the public health, you know.”

Lan Wangji had initially had some difficulty determining what type of animal Jiang Cheng was. He was as prickly as a porcupine, as standoffish as a hedgehog, as fickle as a cat, as graceful and vicious as an angry goose…

Recently, however, Lan Wangji had met a merchant from the south who had been selling a type of bird he called zishuiji, or purple swamphens – the merchant claimed that they were descended from the famous zhanniao, the poisonfeather zhen bird noted for their purple bellies, scarlet beaks, and deadly venom. Although Lan Wangji was moderately certain that the man was exaggerating for the sake of a sale, he had found himself compelled to purchase several sets to house in one of the empty rabbit coops, now moved to be placed in the main courtyard, nominally to be nearer to the waterways but mostly so that they’d be easily accessible to everyone - and, of course, to subtly harass Jiang Cheng.

It turned out that zishuiji could apparently be treated in much the same way as chickens. They were highly adaptable, but thrived best near water; they were generally shy around humans, but vicious in defending their territory, capable of biting and mobbing when provoked; and they preferred to raise their eggs with company –

Truly, he had found the right bird for Jiang Cheng.

(Not to mention the euphonious imagery of a purple hen strutting around with its purple lighting, zishuiji with zidian...truly, a picture meant for the ages. Lan Wangji determined at once to make a painting of it and insist Jiang Cheng hang it on some wall. Maybe even one of the ones in the main hall, where strangers could see.)

“Some of these are getting used for food,” Jiang Cheng insisted with a glare. “Some of the rabbits, too. There are no rules against the killing of livestock here, you hear me?”

Mo Xuanyu fell in love with them immediately – Jiang Cheng’s theory was that he was entranced by their iridescent feathers, while Lan Wangji’s view was that he recognized the innate Jiang Cheng-ness of them – and quickly took charge of their care, although Lan Sizhui and Jin Ling routinely assisted in collecting eggs.

Jiang Cheng reluctantly admitted, after some time, that the purchase had been a good one, if only because it served to settle their little awkward duckling into place, finally allowing Mo Xuanyu some sense of stability, as if having some type of small duty for which he was responsible was all he needed to believe that he wouldn’t be forced back to Lanling or to Mo village, his original place of origin, which he somehow feared even more than the backstabbing snakepit of Koi Tower.

(“You need to stop calling him a duckling,” Jiang Cheng said, quivering with laughter. “Do you know that could also mean…no, I’m not saying it. Anyway, he’s such an impressionable brat. Did you see what he did with that make-up he bought? He really does look a bit...”

From this, Lan Wangji inferred that the nickname was both extremely apt, extremely unfortunate, and had permanently stuck.)

In fact, despite initial concerns, it had been surprisingly comfortable to bring Mo Xuanyu into their lives at the Lotus Pier.

He was grateful and happy to be there, which helped; Lan Sizhui was welcoming, and Jin Ling somewhat reluctantly accepting, each for their own reasons, which helped more.

Best of all, he was at just the right age to be a regular disciple, and the current Jiang sect was especially welcoming to outsiders, having been cobbled together from a wide range of previously rogue cultivators and the small handful of survivors of the previous sect’s massacres. It improved Mo Xuanyu’s mood tremendously to be around boys and girls his own age, doing the same thing as them, without the weight of Lanling Jin’s expectations on his shoulders even if he sometimes wore their colors.

“He’s never going to be the most martially inclined,” Jiang Cheng opined after a small period of observation. “But he might make a decent administrator.”

Lan Wangji glanced at him sidelong in silent question, since Mo Xuanyu had not displayed any especially notable scholastic talents either. He had started cultivating fairly late, although obviously not as late as Jin Guangyao, but he lacked the other man’s genius for organization and management. Moreover, while his studies did admittedly exceeded the low bar set in Lan Wangji’s mind by Nie Huaisang’s miserable performance, that was a very low bar indeed.

(Nie Huaisang wasn’t stupid, he reminded himself once again. He was in fact extremely clever. And yet, even knowing what he knew, it was so easy to forget…)

“He’s kind and thoughtful of the well-being of others,” Jiang Cheng said, averting his gaze and pretending his cheeks weren’t tinting red. “Calligraphy and math, people skills, that can all be learned, but at least he has the important part down…I told you to stop doing that.”

Lan Wangji ignored him and continued to smile.

“Freak,” Jiang Cheng muttered, then shook his head. “I can’t believe anyone actually listens to you. Least of all me!”

Lan Wangji rolled his eyes. That part was Jiang Cheng’s own fault – he’d been using Lan Wangji as a sounding board more or less from the beginning, and started making him do some of his paperwork as soon as he’d been regularly awake for more than a shichen at a time under the barely plausible claim that it was good for him to exercise his hands. Now that Lan Wangji was officially out of seclusion, Jiang Cheng had promptly shoveled even more work at him – despite the fact that they were supposedly at each other’s throats.

The Jiang disciples that had not been in the loop – most of them, to Lan Wangji’s mild surprise – adjusted quickly, especially after they noticed the long-suffering expressions on the faces of Jiang Cheng’s immediate deputies. They had remained wary for a while, possibly expecting Lan Wangji to seek to implement the Lan sect rules at any moment, but after a time he had managed to win their confidence through his efficient administration and respect for their customs.

He did…rather a lot, actually. He reviewed the sect’s accounts along with Jiang Cheng, managed certain negotiations, oversaw the continuing reconstruction efforts, reviewed submitted proposals –

All things that the Lan sect did as well, but which had never come to him before. Lan Wangji suspected that in many cases, they did not even come to his brother or his uncle, who were nominally in charge of such things; the Lan sect disdained such worldly affairs, while the Jiang sect embraced them.

Although while he was on the subject of being above worldly affairs, it occured to him that he had not had an opportunity to take Bichen out recently, and it would be good to do so. He would need to come up with some excuse to insist on Jiang Cheng accompanying him for a night hunt sometime soon, some reason that would stand up to scrutiny from the outside.

As for convincing Jiang Cheng himself, however, that would be no problem.

“We are going night-hunting soon,” he informed Jiang Cheng, who looked appalled by the very thought.

“You’re joking, right?” he demanded. “Do you know how much work we have to do? The yearly update with the dyer’s guild is –”

“Not for another two months, and preparation typically takes only two weeks.”

“Reconstruction –”

“Does not require constant supervision at this stage.”

“The – there’s training –”

Lan Wangji attempted to convey his feelings on the validity of that excuse entirely through his facial expression, and it must have worked because Jiang Cheng crumbled at once, grumbling to himself.

“Who’ll we leave the children with?” he tried. “Especially with Xuanyu being so new – oh, all right. It’s weak and I know it, you don’t have to give me that judgmental look of yours.”

“If Jiang Wanyin believes that his skills have gotten so rusty that he would be unable to keep up…”

“I’m going to break your legs,” Jiang Cheng hissed at him. “I’m going to – to – oh, wait, actually, there is a reason we can’t go just yet. We’re expecting honored guests!”

Lan Wangji arched his eyebrows.

“You wouldn’t have seen the report yet, it’s still on our desk,” Jiang Cheng said. “You know of the Baixue Temple, right?”

Lan Wangji looked askance, indicating that he had of course heard of the temple, a renowned place of learning, but that he presumed that that was not what Jiang Cheng meant and also that perhaps Jiang Cheng would like to get to the point at some time before their deaths from old age.

“Fuck you too,” Jiang Cheng said conversationally, having learned the nuances of Lan Wangji’s expressions by now. “It was attacked recently, and rumor has it that it was Xue Yang that did it. Yes, the same Xue Yang who did the Chang clan massacre, the one the Jin sect was protecting before they washed their hands of him.”

Lan Wangji frowned.

“They made it through with relatively minimal casualties,” Jiang Cheng assured him. “Out of luck, mostly – when Xue Yang disappeared before his trial, the Nie sect made sure word got out everywhere, and Lianfeng-zun, who might’ve quashed it, even helped spread them, instead. From what I understand, Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen returned to Baixue Temple to make sure it wouldn’t be attacked over their part in Xue Yang’s initial arrest, as it later turned out to be - truly, evil is mundane and predictable. They led the defensive efforts and saved many lives.”

Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen –

Lan Wangji had heard Jiang Cheng speak of them before, of course. Rogue cultivators of considerable fame, who had refused all offers to join any of the sects, major or minor, but instead professed a desire to start a cultivation school of the old-fashioned sort, valuing affinity and merit over blood relation.

Not that that was what had caught the attention of Lan Wangj, or of Jiang Cheng for that matter.

Rather, it was said that Xiao Xingchen was a disciple of Baoshan Sanren, the famous immortal that lived secluded on the mountain. That made him Wei Wuxian’s martial uncle, and both of them were shamelessly interested in all things relating even tangentially to Wei Wuxian, however indirectly.

Jiang Cheng had sent several invitations for a visit back when the Chang clan disaster had happened. None had been accepted, which was probably all for the best – he had had to stop inviting them on account of how they’d angered the Jin sect over the matter.

(It had caused Jiang Cheng no end of nightmares, the feeling of complicity in a massacre just like the one that had destroyed his own sect sending him into a spiral of self-hatred, questioning his own morality and righteousness, wondering if his ancestors were judging him and finding him wanting, wondering if Wei Wuxian was –

It had not been a good time, a thankfully temporary reversion back to the bad days closer to the start. But Jiang Cheng was better now.)

“Why accept an invitation now?” Lan Wangji asked.

“They’re planning on hunting him down, I think, and having learned a little bit from last time, they want to get as many allies on board as possible in advance,” Jiang Cheng said, and shook his head at the depressing need to account for worldly politics when seeking to live a righteous life. A lesson hard-learned, for both of them. “They wrote to me first, this time. In return, I plan to indicate that they are welcome to come to the Lotus Pier to try to convince me – we’ll agree to help them, of course, but it’ll be nice to share a meal with them. Maybe some stories.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said. “And entertainment, of course.”

Jiang Cheng looked at him.

“We should take them night-hunting,” Lan Wangji elaborated, and Jiang Cheng scowled at him.

“There are oxen less stubborn than you! Donkeys! Geese!”

Lan Wangji was not a goose. A crane, perhaps, like Lan Sizhui – gentle and graceful and well-educated, with a sharp beak that most people overlooked.

He suspected Jiang Cheng would argue instead for the goose.

“I will write to my brother,” he said, opting to change the subject. “Xue Yang is a sensitive subject for his sworn brothers, as you know. It would be best to prepare him should they resume their fight with each other.”

“Oh, that’s just what we need,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. “Lianfeng-zun and Chifeng-zun at each other’s throats again…did I tell you about the series of small but extremely irritating disasters that happened that time I was at Koi Tower? The room flooding, the too-thick incense, the – the thing with the cat –”

“I also recall you coming back from a night-hunt with Chifeng-zun with an expression suggesting that someone had put the fear of death into you, yes,” Lan Wangji said.

“It’s Chifeng-zun. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you avoiding any circumstances where he could have the same talk with you!”

Lan Wangji did not deny it. As he was not a sect leader, he could avoid such things with much greater ease than poor Jiang Cheng – who was glaring again.

“You should try harder to get along with him,” he remarked, and Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrowed even further. “You have many things in common –”

“Lan Wangji. You are, as A-Yuan’s father, permitted to set up as many playdates for him as you’d like. You are not permitted to do the same for me.”

Lan Wangji nodded, indicating that would give that all the consideration it deserved, namely none.

Jiang Cheng made a sound not unlike the whistling of a boiling pot.

Lan Wangji decided that a triumphant but timely retreat was appropriate.

#mdzs #lan wangji #jiang cheng #mo xuanyu #my fic #my fics #delight in misery

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mrsjadecurtiss · 4 years ago

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Hello! I would like to add to the Roose-Worse-Than-Ramsay? discussion that Roose says no tales are ever told of him. A very good metaphor I saw used by nobodysuspectsthebutterfly is that Ramsay is a serial killer who terrifies a town for a summer, while Roose is the serial killer who has decades of bodies below his basement and in his backyard. Remember what Roose did to Pretty Pia and other women in Harranhal, building stocks for their rape.

Hi, thank you for the question! :)

"A very good metaphor I saw used by nobodysuspectsthebutterfly is that Ramsay is a serial killer who terrifies a town for a summer, while Roose is the serial killer who has decades of bodies below his basement and in his backyard."

The metaphor I tend to go for is that, while Ramsay is the serial killer that terrorizes the town for a summer, Roose is the CEO that abuses and exploits his workers and commits countless crimes from tax fraud to rape and worse that he never gets arrested for because of his wealth and power (who also lets said serial killer run rampant because of nepotism).

Roose is a critique of the inherent corruption of the ruling class, and just because his crimes arent as flashy as Ramsay's does not make him a better person - in a way he is worse than Ramsay because if it wasn't for him upsetting his status quo with the red wedding, he would have probably never been "found out"/brought to justice. He mirrors people commonly found in the real world to this day.

However, Ramsay's crimes need to be "worse than Roose' crimes", as in, more vile and extreme and horrifyingly gory, because in terms of story he is needed to expose the inherent flaws in Roose' conduct and way of life.

Roose is written as a foil to Ned Stark. Ned is known for his honorable conduct and a solid good heart, which shapes his legacy even beyond his death, and his rule creates a land of people who are generally satisfied and peaceful. Roose, on the surface, tries to achieve the same thing, and in the best case it looks as though he succeeds:

"A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule." - Reek III, aDwD

The difference lies in the way they achieve this. Roose is amoral, commits heinous crimes, and acts in selfish ways, and tries to cover his wrongdoings up or hide them away, achieving a surface-level peace.

"She told me that when her dead husband's brother saw those eyes, he beat her bloody and drove her from the mill. That annoyed me, so I gave her the mill and had the brother's tongue cut out, to make certain he did not go running to Winterfell with tales that might disturb Lord Rickard. Each year I sent the woman some piglets and chickens and a bag of stars, on the understanding that she was never to tell the boy who had fathered him. " - Reek III, aDwD

Now, if everyone involved acts the way Roose wants it, this works out, and he can live in peace. If Ramsay had an amiable personality like Roose' son Domeric had, or was at worst just a younger version of his father, Roose wouldn't have any problems, and the way he leads his life would be seen as a "success" by him.

However, Ramsay is vile and evil, impulsive, unbelievably violent, and his father despairs of him:

Roose made a face, as if the ale he was sipping had suddenly gone sour. "There are times you make me wonder if you truly are my seed. My forebears were many things, but never fools." - Reek III, aDwD

This shows the limit of Roose' code of conduct, and that the way he acts is wrong and will never be sustainable. If he had acted as morally correct as Ned did all his life, he would have never fathered Ramsay, never made the miller's wife hate him and sow the desire to be heir in Ramsay, never have the first Reek corrupt Ramsay. Ramsay ruining Roose' life appears textually as a symbol of all of his past wrongdoings coming back to haunt him, a metaphor of his crimes against the smallfolk made flesh.

Ramsay shows the limits of Roose' selfish and morally wrong rule, as his framework does not account for someone as depraved as Ramsay; he cannot weasel himself out of this situation, as he is too weak/selfish to banish or kill Ramsay, and does not possess the moral tools/wisdom to mold Ramsay into a person that can work in this society. Roose' conduct worked out for him because he himself is restrained/lowkey enough, but it does not provide a framework for someone like Ramsay to understand why the way he is acting is wrong.

"No tales were ever told of me. Do you think I would be sitting here if it were otherwise? Your amusements are your own, I will not chide you on that count, but you must be more discreet. A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours." - Reek III, aDwD

His code of conduct is a selfish one: He does not provide moral reasons for actions, instead he preaches people to act in a way that benefits their selfish desires the most. So when Roose' desire for a peaceful land and a good reputation clashes with Ramsay's desire for violence and for people to fear him, his code of conduct does not offer a guideline for Ramsay to understand /why/; beyond that it is merely Roose' own desire. There are no rules in Roose' life beyond that everything should ideally go the way that benefits Roose the most. According to Roose, Ramsay's amusements arent bad for moral reasons, they are bad because they are inconvenient to Roose' desire for a stable rule; so if Ramsay does not agree with this desire, there is no reason for him to stop.

Ned's strong moral code provides himself and his children with a framework to act that is consistent; abiding by it both when it is favourable and when it is inconvenient. An inconvenience is accepted with the knowledge that it brings a net good through the idea of justice and fairness.

Roose' code is inconsistent, and oriented around eliminating inconvenience as often as possible. This brings no framework to act around, and thus allows a man as vile as Ramsay to exist and thrive within this system, exposing its flaws; since an act that is bad in one situation can be good in another as long as the result is beneficial, Ramsay's disturbing acts are given a loophole to exist. Ramsay being more openly extreme and crassly violent than his father lays this open for all the world to see, as his bad behaviour harms Roose' plans and does great political damage.

So Ramsay's purpose is twofold, demonstrating the failure of Roose' way of life both in showing the consequences of Roose' own bad actions, as well as showing that his way of life cannot provide a sustainable framework for someone else to act on.

"Remember what Roose did to Pretty Pia and other women in Harranhal, building stocks for their rape."

The sad thing about this is that this is not anything unique to Roose - look at what Tywin did to Tysha, his father’s mistress, or the Castameres... This type of crime is emblematic of the corruption of the rich and powerful. Roose isnt bad because he is somehow uniquely evil where merely getting rid of him specifically would solve all the problems, he is bad because as long as the system that molded, raised, and benefitted him is in place, there always are and will be people like him.

#asoiaf #roose bolton #asoiaf meta #ramsay bolton #asks #Anonymous

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lovelypeasantjellyfish · 4 years ago

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“I know it’s not your birthday or anything, but I got you a present.” - Wilhemina Venable x Reader

This is the first complete (Lord knows I’ve got a bunch of WIP and vague ideas swirling around in my head and laptop) fanfiction I’ve ever written for AHS. I got the idea from the fluff, hurt/comfort prompt list made by rookie-ramsey, link here.

Constructive criticism is always welcome!

Pairing: Wilhemina Venable x Reader (Reader’s gender is not specified but they are wearing a skirt in this fic)

Trigger Warning(s): Several mentions of smut and NSFW activities.

1914 Words

The moment you saw that jar of candy-coated violets in the shop window, you immediately thought of Mina; although to be honest, anything purple you saw made you think of her. But these violets were somehow different, they brought up images of how it would look like when sweet treats swirled around in her mouth, coating her tongue and throat as she savoured them. You stood there for a second, dry-mouthed as your mind wandered to the redhead who always took your breath away with her monochrome outfits, stern voice, and gentle touches.

The shopkeeper knocked on the shop window, startling you. Your face flushed when you spotted their raised brow. They were, without a doubt, silently judging the red-faced stranger that had been standing in front of the shop window for much longer than necessary. Giving them a weak smile, you kept your head down and entered the store, pushing down the embarrassment of being caught. The candies were much more important than what some shopkeeper thought, Mina was more important.

Your experience in the store wasn’t much smoother either and only served to embarrass you even further. The cashier stifled a laugh as you marched into the store and made a beeline for the candies with a determined look on your face, exchanging an amused look with the shopkeeper, who was watching you like you were the most interesting thing that had happened to them so far that day. Their supposedly silent judgment became audible when you almost tripped over your own feet when walking to the register, both letting out a short laugh and clearing their throats.

“For someone special?” The cashier asked as they bagged the item. You nodded silently, not trusting yourself to speak. Wilhelmina was definitely special.

With the small jar now tucked safely in your bag, you made your way home to your apartment. Plans had been made on the day before to have dinner at your place, and Mina had called earlier to say that she would be late, grumbling about a meeting and imbeciles. You had chuckled softly at that, loving the way her voice sounded when she cursed.

Now that the sun was setting, you only had an hour or so before Mina showed up at your door, no doubt dressed in her signature purple with a tired expression on her face. You hurried home, feet falling quickly into place as you took to the road you knew so well. You stayed in your work clothes as you began to prepare the food, the precious jar still safe at the bottom of your bag. Dinner was simple enough, roast chicken with mashed potatoes and sautéed veggies. It was a meal that you'd prepared many times before, mostly because it was the one sort of fancy meal that you were confident in.

The sound of Mina's cane outside your apartment door met your ears just as you finished setting the table, each utensil placed perfectly parallel to each other, just the way Mina liked. You hurriedly wiped your hands on your skirt as Mina knocked, the sound sharp and resonating. You opened the door, a smile immediately dancing across your face as your eyes met those of Mina's.

Stepping aside, you let Mina into your space. She handed you her handbag, which you took as you greeted her, gently depositing it on the end table where your own bag sat. Your gaze drifted to the small lump protruding from the canvas fabric, another smile found your mouth as your mind wandered to how Mina's face would light up when you presented the jar to her.

"You're in a good mood today." Mina's voice sounded from directly behind you, her hot breath tickling the tip of your ear. You squeaked in surprise and turned to face her, her hand grasped your right hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh.

"I guess I'm just happy to see you." You replied, grinning at her amused face. A light blush coated her cheeks as you looked up to meet her eyes, the smile never leaving your face. The two of you stayed there for a few seconds, enjoying the expression on each other's face and the comfortable silence. Mina's hand left your hip to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear, her fingers tracing along your jaw and lingering there. Your face was definitely redder than hers now, judging from the glint in her eyes as she continued to stare at you. Unable to take the rush of emotions under her gaze, you broke eye contact, face flushed, mumbling something about dinner. You didn't, however, miss the smirk on Mina's face when she won the staring contest.

Chuckling softly, Mina took your hand and led you to the perfectly set table. You pulled out the chair for her, making sure she was comfortable before heading over to the fridge, getting out a pitcher of iced water for yourself and wine for Mina. You carefully poured the wine into the waiting glass, Mina's tongue darting out to lick her lips as she eyed the red liquid, gently swirling the glass when you were done.

"How was your day Mina?" You began, taking your seat and filling your glass. "Better now" she replied, gracefully bringing up a forkful of chicken to her lips. You hummed in agreement, eyes once again flickering to your bag. Mina watched you, she knew you were definitely up to something. Usually, you would not be able to take your eyes off her, given that the two of you did not spend that much time together. You’d been together for almost a year now, but because of the long hours of your respective jobs, occasional weekday dinners and weekends were the only time the both of you could devote to each other. Luckily for Wilhemina, it was a Friday, meaning that she had two whole days to pry whatever it was that you were hiding out of you.

A smirk tugged at her lips as she thought of the ways she could get you to confess, the methods she could use to get the words to spill out of your pretty little mouth, needless to say, a lot of it involved situations that left her feeling that oh so familiar tingle. You continued eating your dinner, unaware that Mina was eyeing you like a predator to prey. It was only when you were reaching for your glass that you noticed Mina’s plate was a lot fuller than your own. “Is everything okay? Is there something wrong with the food?” You asked, noting Mina’s slightly flushed face. The food tasted fine to you, but then again, you had made and eaten this meal many times before, maybe it was too salty or bland for Mina’s liking. Or maybe her back was hurting, or maybe her day was worse than she had let on.

Wilhelmina snapped out of her fantasies at the sound of your voice, blinking at your worried eyes. “No, sweetheart. I was thinking of something else, that’s all.”. She took a bite of the potatoes, they were slightly warm, coating her tongue as she swallowed.

“Oh, okay. What were you thinking about?”

“Nothing in particular.” She evaded your question, knowing that if she had asked right at that moment, you would have confessed immediately, but if she waited until she got you to the bedroom, your surprising bratty side would show if she played her cards right. Then, oh then, she’d have a fun night ahead of her.

“Mina, is everything really alright?” Your voice was softer this time, you’d watched her more closely after what had happened, and Mina’s fork had stopped at the side of her plate again.

“Everything is fine sweetheart, don’t worry about it.” Wilhelmina kept her tone even, not wanting to spoil her plans for tonight. She would have snapped at you to drop it in the past, when the two of you were unfamiliar and both had walls up. She would never admit it out loud, but you made her want to take them down, just so that she could be closer to you. Even then, your constant smiles directed at her and the way your face would scrunch up trying not to laugh whenever she cursed sent her metaphorical walls crumbling bit by bit.

You were planning to wait until after dinner to present the little jar of candies to Mina, almost as if the candies would be dessert, but seeing her like this made your heart break a little. She was being distant, or at least that was what her efforts to keep her plans for later tonight secret seemed like to you. The two of you had taken your relationship slow, mainly because the two of you were afraid to get hurt or even worse, hurt each other. Thus it was understandable that you had misread her, even if you didn't know it yet.

"Well, I have something that might cheer you up," you declared, deciding that if your little gift was going to make Mina feel better, you were going to give it to her as soon as possible. You walked over to your bag, gently cradling the jar in your arms as you headed back towards the table. "I know it's not your birthday or anything, but I got you a present." You slowly placed the jar on the table in front of Mina, just as her eyes widened in surprise.

If her walls were crumbling before, they were definitely completely reduced to dust now.

Wilhemina stared at the jar in front of her, breath hitching as she noticed how the sugar coating each purple petal shined as they reflected the light; they reminded her of how your eyes twinkled whenever you looked at her. This was the first gift you'd given her in the course of your relationship, with your birthdays coincidentally falling in the same month.

She looked up at you, you had been watching her expression, but quickly looked away when her eyes met yours, looking at the kitchen wall like it was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. You were naturally a shy person, even more so in situations like this, when you didn't know how the other person would react. "Thank you, sweetheart, they look absolutely divine" Mina breathed, smiling softly.

You met her eyes at the sound of Mina's words, noticing the smile on her lips as a similar one tugged at your lips and your heart swelled at the sight. "You're welcome Mina.".

The rest of the dinner went on as they normally did, except for Mina's more frequent and softer glances at you and the jar in front of her. Once both of your plates were empty, you did the dishes while Mina remained at the table, watching your back as you hummed a somewhat familiar tune and made sure that every single piece of cutlery was clean.

Both of you spent the next three days together, lazing around the apartment as the jar slowly emptied, the sweet taste lingering on both of your lips.

Epilogue: When you stopped by Mina's workplace to drop off a forgotten file (you'd convinced her to stay in bed for five more minutes after a particularly intense night, which resulted in the uncharacteristic forgetfulness), you noticed the empty jar sitting on her desk, next to the crystal ball. You fell even deeper in love with Wilhemina Venable.

#Wilhemina Venable x Reader #wilhemina venable #american horror story #soft!mina

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koteosa · 4 years ago

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I'm sorry to hear you're having a bad brain day. Those are the worst. If it helps at all, do you have any HCs about how the Arcana LIs celebrate their birthdays once they're with your apprentices?

thank you my brain was beating me up bad today U___U spending time writing gets me really focused and helps a lot. here’s some headcanons for all my LI/Apprentice ships

Kamui x Asra

Kamui really wants to spoil the everloving fuck out of his lover(s). He doesn’t want to completely control their entire day (unless they want him to) though the urge is definitely there to plan something very elaborate. He has a lot of love in his heart and it makes him feel like he’s gotta do something Big to properly express how he feels

Gives Asra a lot of options for things they could do together and lets Asra decide, based on however he feels at the time. They could go to a spa and relax. Go on a picnic in the woods. Do something mischievous and potentially illegal. Or just stay in bed all day talking, eating food Kamui prepares for them with the Highest Quality Ingredients and care put into them, and get a little, a little, a little hands on

He wants to take care of Asra the entire day like he’s royalty. His birthday is such an excuse to get to do these sorts of things and Kamui is going to take full advantage. Brush his hair and they’ll take a bath together where Kamui washes him and does his makeup and nails and they dress up cozy and spend all day together. Kamui worries about pressuring Asra into something when he might have other plans but Asra’s plans begin and end with Kamui being there so. Kinda hard for him to be dissatisfied

Asra is the type to respond to “what do you want for your birthday” with “you”

Though Kamui doesn’t need to ask because he already knows exactly what he’s getting Asra and it probably involves something pretty Asra can wear, some good food, maybe something practical for his magic or something for Faust since it’s also her birthday too and it’s important that she doesn’t get left out. This is to say there won’t be just one gift there’s gonna be a lot of them and he’s a little embarrassed by how many things he ended up with and he’s going to blush when he presents them

But Asra does the same exact shit when it’s Kamui’s birthday. They’re both romantic idiots who are the type to be like “I saw this and thought of you and so I bought it for you” for lots and lots of things

Kamui’s not good at making things outside of like, food. So most of his gifts were bought, but for Kamui’s birthday Asra spends time making a lot of different things with every creative skill he has. Knitting him red scarves and making him little woodwork statues of cats etc.

Kamui x Julian

Something tells me Julian doesn’t do much to celebrate his own birthday and never drops hints about it but Kamui will find out and be like Listen You Fuck I Will Celebrate The Ever Loving Shit Out Of You. You Cannot Stop Me

Wakes him up in the morning very sweetly and makes him breakfast. He has plans because he knows Julian was just going to work all day and maybe go to the Raven that night as a treat and that is Not Acceptable

Julian probably cries at some point just a little bit because Kamui dresses up very nice and then does Julian’s makeup and hair and takes him on a walk before they sneak into that one abandoned garden from Julian’s Lovers chapter and have a picnic and Kamui pushes him down and kisses him and tells him how beautiful he is and then just starts reciting some poetry he wrote about Julian and There Are Limits He Cannot TAKE This!!! Somehow Kamui found a beautiful metaphor to describe Julian’s eyes and it’s illegal. How dare he

Lots of laughing and running around getting into trouble and Kamui tugs him into an alley every now and then to kiss him and get him all riled up

Kamui goes out of his way to be gentlemanly before Julian can do it first and Julian’s blushing like how do I cope--

Gifts include a book of poetry Kamui wrote about Julian and general gay yearning (and he’s extremely embarrassed about it because he’s not so sure any of it is any good but Julian Loves It. It’s A Masterpiece), a bunch of other books he thought Julian would like to drown out the embarrassing love poetry, some cool knives, expensive wine, magic charms he made himself (lots of stuff to protect against nightmares), and like. the sexy stuff. A ruby-adorned choker and black lingerie. Hello Julian your boyfriend has money

After getting into trouble all day, Kamui takes him stargazing and then they go to the shop where Kamui set up candles and rose petals and whatnot so they could take a fancy bubble bath and drink wine before they spend all night in bed together if you know what I

Kamui x Muriel

Had to pry his birth date out of Asra because Muriel won’t acknowledge his own birthday. He does not deserve to be celebrated. Kamui begs to differ

Muriel just knows Kamui’s birthday by default because Asra would talk about it in the past so he doesn’t have to ask. After they start dating, once November 14th rolls around he’s got a bunch of gifts prepared. Very simple, like, some stuff he carved, a nice meal, a wildflower bouquet, maybe some sort of lotion or perfume he made with Asra’s help. And Kamui cries about it because it’s just so sweet and heartfelt and AHHHH-

Kamui knows Muriel doesn’t like all the fancy stuff he does, but he still wants Muriel to feel really special. It’ll take some convincing but he’d like to take Muriel to a nice spa where he assures him it’s very quiet and they won’t be bothered. A hot spring, mud bath, that sort of thing.

They can go on a walk through the woods and forage for stuff to make a meal with, then they cook together and Kamui tries to hand feed him but Muriel is so embarrassed it doesn’t go very far. Still Kamui will sit in his lap afterwards and they’ll just bask in the peace of nature for awhile. Maybe Kamui will talk a little, quietly, and about nothing of consequence so Muriel doesn’t even need to listen to the words, he’s just lulled by the sound of his voice

Gifts! A lot of stuff for Inanna and the chickens to take the pressure off of Muriel having to receive a lot of things directly (though they all make him happy just the same). For Muriel directly, Kamui gets him stuff to make his life more comfortable; a soft teal blanket, pretty silk ties for his hair, homemade lotions/salves to make his scars hurt a bit less. Charms for protection and restful sleep.

Lots of kissing and praise throughout the day. More than usual, that is. Muriel NEEDS to know he is loved and appreciated and Kamui is very glad that he was born.

Very low energy, Kamui wants to do things to help him relax, turn his brain off, feel loose, good, loved. A very slow day without too much in it.

Sae x Nadia

“What’s that? It’s your day of birth and you have WORK scheduled? Don’t think so. I told everyone to go fuck themselves and had the chef bring us breakfast in bed. Once you’re finished I will braid your hair and use this oil I made to administer a full body massage. My very genius plan. Praise me”

They dress very comfortably because if anyone has a fucking PROBLEM then Sae will flay them alive from the inside out and Nadia considers that a wee bit of a turn-on. It’s cozy day bay bee. They drink tea out on the veranda with no shoes on (!!) and spend the entire day indulging

Sae puts on a magic show for Nadia (and no one else) at night that’s very mesmerizing and beautiful. Nadia responds by pulling Sae into her lap and kissing her dizzy and then Sae’s like “S-So did you like it then--”

Sae doesn’t exactly have plans so much as she hisses like a feral cat at anyone who tries to make Nadia do Work thus allowing Nadia to do whatever she wants, and Sae is at her disposal

Not much in the way of gifts because Sae doesn’t see the point in providing material possessions so much as providing An Experience

Sae doesn’t really Get birthdays because hers were never celebrated so it’s a learning experience for her. All she thinks is that this seems like the right time to spoil Nadia, and that’s, like, enough, right?

Whispers in Nadia’s ear that she’s wearing lingerie under her outfit but then won’t let Nadia unwrap that present until later. Probably won’t wait very long though they’ll be very busy all day if you know what I

Sae x Portia

Sae doesn’t have to do much but provide her presence. Portia knows what she wants to do, although she’d be delighted to let Sae plan a day for them once in awhile. There’s a lot of things Portia’s thought about doing but no time to do them, and her birthday is the perfect time for that. Nadia would let her take time off easy.

In this instance, Sae would arrive with like a bag of handmade chocolates or a decorated mason jar with some jam or something in it and present it to her arms out turned away blushing furiously and Portia can’t stop giggling at how cute she is. She kisses her and holds the gift lovingly against her chest, they’ll share it on the picnic they’re about to go on together!

Cozy clothes they aren’t afraid to get dirty in, laid out on a gingham blanket and talking, holding hands, feeding each other, kissing. Spoiling Pepi who comes over to hang out.

They go into the palace for hijinks. Sae follows along not knowing where they’re going or who they’re talking to or what they’re doing but Portia is so fun and she knows it’ll be good. Sae teaches her some magic along the way to make everything even more exciting, they can play some pranks where Sae teaches her a spell and Portia uses it for shenanigans

Sae can pay for them to go out into the town and eat at a nice bakery, and then she holds Portia’s hand and leads her to some stray cats she found recently. After that she can show Portia some magic stuff in the woods or maybe they can plan to travel somewhere adventurous where Sae can watch Portia swing around a huge sword maybe. They try out a bunch of fun stuff fit for a magician, stuff Sae’s pretty used to but it makes Portia’s face light up with wonder and Sae just stares at her. Heart eyes

#the arcana #asra alnazar #julian devorak #muriel #portia devorak #nadia satrinava #the apprentice #oc apprentice #fan apprentice #oc:kamui #oc:saekamui #text #writing #Anonymous #headcanon #the arcana writing

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catsafarithewriter · 5 years ago

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“I want to say it was worth it. For a while, it was.” I think it’s cute of how Haru is now grown from a girl who couldn’t dance with Baron from a girl who could fight and make remarks better than baron. I just imagine how Haru is either in a situation where she dances with Baron for both of them to get out of a dangerous situation and both get carried away with the dancing cause it reminds them of their first dance. Sorry I just love fluffs and Haru is just so amazing in your stories.

A/N: I’ll be honest, the line itself is so beautifully tragic that using it for fluff stumped me for a good while, until I eventually remembered the music box scene out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that I loved as a child, so I’m stealing that concept for this.

Also, this is set in a timeline when Haru and Baron have finished dancing around each other (metaphorically) and are adorable together.

The plan had been simple.

The plan had been simple and flawless and brilliant and definitely hadn’t involved Baron getting kidnapped by a mechanically-obsessed monarch.

The execution of aforementioned plan... had left some things to be desired.

“Hey, Chicky, I really don’t think this suits me...”

Haru tugged the rough tweed jacket around Muta’s broad shoulders and slapped the flat cap between his ears. “Yes, well you should have thought of that before you let Baron get kidnapped by a crazy king.” She paused, recalling her own first encounter with the Bureau, and snorted. “Not that the Bureau has a stellar record when it comes to that.”

“The birdbrain also lost him, and he’s on escape duty.”

“Toto’s on escape duty because he’s very, very good at it.” She finished fiddling with the cap. “So unless you want to be dancing instead, you’re filling the role of toy-maker extraordinaire. Honestly, Muta, it doesn’t look that bad.”

“I look like I should be yodelling from the nearest mountain.”

Haru snorted and gestured loosely to her own outfit - a white blouse layered over by a blue pinafore, with a yellow apron tied around the waist. “All I need is a shepherd’s crook, and I’d be ready to join you. Now, help me up into this box before I chicken out.”

Muta did so, and he didn’t miss the way Haru tensed as she stepped up. “Yer gonna be okay in there, Chicky?”

“Fine. Dandy. I’m just getting boxed up like some sort of twisted Christmas present so we can sneak into the palace for this royal celebration, then I’m going to have to dance like a wind up music box, and hope nobody spots the fact that I’m very much not a wind up music box until we get Baron back, and then escape without the kind of mishap that we are oh so well known for.” She grinned, far too brightly, at Muta. “I don’t know why you’d think I’d be worried.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Just... be careful wheeling me up to the palace.”

“Gotcha. Run over every pothole and speed-bump I find, roger that.”

Haru laughed and bunched up her skirts. “Thanks, Muta.” Somewhere, a clock tower began to boom. “Alright, it’s time. Box me up.”

Baron had been mistaken for many things in his long lifetime. Some more flattering than others - there had been at least once incident where a Bible had been thrown at him - but being mistaken for a mechanical toy was fairly unusual, even for him.

He sat in the seat he’d been assigned, head drooped, shoulders gently slumped, and hands tucked neatly on his lap, and tried, for all the world, to look like a clockwork creature wound down. At first, he had tried to convince the king that he was no mechanical toy, but a living, breathing individual, but that had only incited the monarch’s greed more and he had proclaimed the ‘unique, unrivalled design’ of the newest addition to his collection for all to hear.

Somehow, Baron had suspected that if the king learnt of Creations, he would just become an even more valued part of the collection.

So he had decided to play along. Eventually, the king’s interest would wane and he would be able to escape while attention was grabbed by the next new toy. Especially since he had feigned ‘winding down;’ sinking into a seat and refusing to move, and nobody had been able to work out how to wind him back up again.

Even so, the king had still seated him along the royal table, like a prized pet for display, and it seemed escape would have to delay a little longer.

He kept his eyes dulled, his breathing shallow, and wondered how long this farce was going to go on for. He listened as three of the entertainers’ acts were deemed unsatisfactory by the king and his short attention span - citing each one as nowhere near as impressive as the mechanical figure beside him - and sent packing.

“Whoever’s next better make it good!” the king roared, and Baron nearly smirked, reminded of another monarch with a very similar outcry. Now, if he wasn’t the one captured, this would have been the perfect time for a dramatic entrance-

“Your Majesty, I can make the toy dance.”

It took everything in Baron to not immediately look up at Muta.

“Impossible,” the king grunted. “My finest toy-makers have examined the toy and have produced nothing-”

Surprisingly quick for one of his girth - at least to those who didn’t know him - Muta made his way around the royal table and set to examining the ‘toy’. Baron felt his head tilted back, and was treated to the unexpected image of Muta in a tweed suit and flat cap. He felt his eye twitch at the attempt not to laugh.

He suspected Muta saw it regardless, for he was dropped back to his original position rather harshly. “Yeah, see this is part of a set, so once it’s wound down, it ain’t gonna work again until it’s reunited with its partner.”

‘What are you playing at?’ Baron wondered. His head dropped down, he could only listen as Muta paraded back across the room to what Baron had briefly glimpsed as a large red box.

“And you have found this partner?” the king asked, his scepticism only outweighed by his hope.

“Course I have. I made ‘em both.” There was the sound of Muta opening something, followed by awed muttering from the royal guests. Baron caught a few strains of “well, they don’t look the same,” from a couple of onlookers, and dearly wished Muta had left his head at a more convenient tilt.

“So how does this work?” the king asked. “Do you have to wind them both up or...?”

“Nah, it’s... uh, wireless winding,” Muta bluffed.”Look, just wait and see.”

Baron wondered whether that was Muta-speak for: no idea how this is going to pan out, so let’s not make any promises. All the same, he could have done with a better indication of what Muta had planned. As things went, he could only listen as there was a mechanical whirring, and then a strain of music box melody. A few delighted gasps.

He raised his head and saw Haru.

She was poised on a red stand, the interior of the box opened out into a trifold mirror that reflected back on her still form. As the music fell into a familiar tune, her head snapped up. It ticked from side to side in time with the music, searching, searching, until her eyes settled on him.

Then, with precise movements, she stepped down from the box and made her clockwork way to the royal table. Her path wasn’t direct - the steps were that of a waltz, a shifting box step - but there was little surprise in him when she halted before him. A single sure hand rested between them.

“Would you care to dance?” her eyes asked.

Mechanical toys did not smile, he reminded himself as he took the hand.

Still, he knew his eyes replied, “Always.”

Around the table he was led and he found himself surprised when Haru’s eyes were level with his. He shouldn’t have been, he noted; they had adventured much together in the ensuing years and she had not grown since her return to the Bureau, and yet...

His mind went, unbidden, to a dance under similar circumstances a good decade ago, only he had been the rescuer and she the rescued then. How the tables had turned. How things had changed as, with a confidence that had only been a foundation all that time ago, she guided his hand to her waist and laid her own on his shoulder. She leant in.

“I suppose this makes you the damsel in distress then, huh?” she breathed, a teasing smile ghosting her lips.

“I could get used to it with such a fetching knight in shining armour,” he returned.

“Oh shush. If I blush, I’ll blow my cover.”

With a flick of his wrist, she spun, her skirts swaying and her steps sure, and when she was swept back into his arms, it was not awe, but calculations that lit her eyes. Her gaze slid past him and across the room.

“I take it you have a plan?” he asked, drawing her close to hide the telltale flicker of lips.

“Of course I do. Unlike some, I don’t rush in without an exit strategy.”

“You did, however, stop for a costume change.”

He heard the quick intake of breath, a laugh smothered. “I needed to look the part, and combat boots and trench coat don’t exactly match the music box aesthetic.”

“It looks lovely on you.”

“I want to say it was worth it. For a while, it was.” She wiggled her eyebrows, their faces so close that no onlookers would catch the discrepancy. “But this dress has like a hundred layers to shape it properly and I’m melting like a snowball in summer right now. Be glad I love you enough to suffer through this.”

“Be careful, Haru; keep proclaiming your love for me and I’ll have no choice but to kiss you and that’ll definitely blow your cover.”

“Oh, just shut up and dance with me.” She twirled away as if to remove the temptation, but when she settled back into his arms they were closer than ever. “Kiss me when this is all over and I’m not melting into a puddle.”

“Is that a request?”

“It’s a promise.”

Somewhere along the way they had both forgone their mechanical deceit and their movements had smoothed into an intimate duet that sent Haru spinning again, head tilting back in unshed laughter that nearly broke through as she was gathered back into his arms and dipped.

“That wasn’t part of the dance I remember, Mr Gikkingen,” she admonished. Her hair, which had been so carefully pinned back into a doll’s bob, had now begun to lose its way, and wayward strands curled about her face.

“Things change,” Baron whispered back, and he resisted the urge to tuck her hair away.

Another sudden breath, another laugh hidden away, and Haru dropped her head back, knowing full well that if she stared into those emerald green eyes any longer she was definitely going to do something to give the game away. She let her gaze drift across the grand hall, across the king and his royal entourage, across the amassed guests, across Muta furiously gesturing--

“Shoot,” Haru muttered. She shifted her weight, signalling to Baron to pull her out of the recklessly romantic dip. “Okay, I think we’ve just been rumbled.”

“Why?”

“The music box ran down a good thirty seconds ago.”

The king slammed to his feet with a sound like a gunshot. “You’re not a toy! Guards, seize her!”

“Ah,” Baron said. “Would now be a good time for your exit strategy?”

“Yeah. Run.”

#Anon #the cat returns #replies #I felt like some fluff is needed after TBF #also effs sake it keeps effing up the keep reading line #i'm so sorry fokls #excuse me vvhile i go beat up tumblr #everything said and done though that was an adorable prompt to get #also i now have both 'truly scrumptious' and 'doll on a music box' stuck in my head #lowkey slain by the understated romance of Potts singing about how much he loves Truly while he's meant to be on rescue duty #like that's just meant to be their disguises #ya didn't have to go so hard with the romance #and yet here we are #the cat queues #cat writes

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hopeisour4letteredword · 5 years ago

Text

look through your textbook (cause i’m history) ch2

Content warnings: implied/referenced domestic violence

Summary: After dropping out, Yuri’s life is a haze of working and trying not to lose his damn mind. Then he meets Estelle.

Read it here or check the notes for the link to AO3.

Estelle spends a whole morning huddled down in front of Yuri’s clunky old laptop. He doesn’t have internet at his apartment right now, so they bring it over to the community center. Hanks helps her for a while, but soon the morning crowd trickles in, and duty calls him away. Yuri is banned from helping, on the grounds that he has no business advising anyone on how to interact with the police. He wishes he could do something for her, aside from repeatedly confirm that yes, he’ll be a block away the whole time; yes, she can still stay with him afterwards; yes, he will break into the station and whisk her away to safety if the police try any bullshit.

“I thought I told you to get away from her and not give any advice,” Hanks says, smacking Yuri away from Estelle’s side with the soft end of a broom.

“It’s not advice,” Yuri protests. “It’s reassurance.”

"Do n’t you listen to a damn thing that boy tells you,” Hanks tells Estelle, sternly. Estelle smiles nervously at both of them, eyes crinkled up despite the dark bags underneath them. She didn’t sleep much last night, according to Yuri’s creaky old box springs. That or nightmares, the way she was tossing and turning. It doesn’t make a difference which it was, really. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

What she’s doing is reading a lot of advice blogs and mumbling to herself about her rights. Just watching her raises the metaphorical hackles of Yuri’s protective instincts. Hanks has a point, though. The less Yuri is involved, the better. He keeps himself busy in the kitchen for the rest of the morning. At least he can be sure the chicken stock won’t try to coerce Estelle into returning to an abusive household.

After lunch, they pack up Yuri’s laptop and get ready to go. Hanks unexpectedly flags them down before they make it out the door.

“Be careful, you two. Yuri, you’re on your best God damned behavior, you hear me?”

“Sir yes sir,” Yuri says, dryly.

“Young lady, you take this.”

“Huh?” Estelle fumbles with the solid object he drops into her hands. “Your—your phone? But—“

“I turned off the password lock,” Hanks says. “And Yuri’s name is plainly labeled in the contacts. That should stop him getting antsy and bursting in because he thinks it’s taking too long. I imagine it’ll make you feel a smidge better, too.”

“Thanks, Hanks,” Yuri says. He doesn’t have the heart to brush this one off. It really does make him feel a fuck of a lot better to know Estelle will be able to reach him even if she can’t get out of the building.

“Mind you, I want that back, of course,” Hanks says, patting Estelle on the shoulder. She clutches the phone to her chest, wide-eyed.

“Thank you so much...!”

Yuri flippantly salutes Hanks, reaching for the door. “Alright, boss, I’m clocking out for now.”

“No, you aren’t; community escorts are on the clock. Same as it would be if you were taking her to a clinic. Don’t argue with me, son. You need to pay for that gas somehow. Get a move on.”

“A clinic?” Estelle asks, as Yuri shepherds her out the door and into his car.

“Planned Parenthood, usually,” Yuri says. He turns the key and the car rumbles angrily at him, put out that he continues to expect it to function. He gives the dashboard a consoling pat. “Or other reproductive health clinics. Anywhere you can get an ob-gyn. Family planning services. You get the picture.”

“I think I do.” Estelle endearingly turns with Yuri to check behind the car as they reverse, then pull out of the parking lot. Even his shitty car seems to be a novelty to her sometimes. “You do an awful lot for the community center, don’t you?”

“Mm. Yeah. No more than they’ve done for me, though.”

There’s a moment of silence where Estelle fidgets with the sleeve cuffs of Hanks’s jacket. Yuri keeps an eye on her in the corner of his vision, but he can’t get a very good look at her expression. He needs to focus on the road. The last thing they need right now is for him to break a traffic law or cause an accident and get pulled over.

“Can... can you keep talking?”

“Sure. Any requests?”

“Ah... tell me a story about you and Flynn?”

Yuri ends up telling her the story of Repede’s blind eye. It’s not too gruesome if he plays it right, and he’s got a bit of practice at that from curious kids at the center. Yuri was her age at the time—God, that was a weird thought—and he’d been new to dog-ownership. Repede broke out of the hovel he and Flynn called an apartment overnight. After hours of searching in the dark, Hanks had hauled them both inside by their ears and forced them to rest. Repede turned up on the doorstep the next morning, face horribly scratched and howling for all his tiny little lungs were worth. Yuri was terrified to so much as wipe him off, in case he made the wound worse. All he could do was bundle Repede up in the cleanest towel he could find. He didn’t have the car yet, so Hanks called them a cab and Flynn, stuttering with panic, had asked to be taken to the vet their Coach used to take Repede and Lambert to.

“So you’ve got these two scruffy, sleep-deprived teenage boys obviously losing our minds while trying to keep a grip on this bloody puppy that was just—I know it sounds wrong, for a dog, but really the only way to describe it is screaming,” Yuri says. He flicks his turn signal on. They’re getting close to the police station. “And the poor receptionist was trying to ask for Repede’s info, but we didn’t know what to tell her, because we hadn’t taken Repede to the vet before—don’t look at me like that, we’d only had him two months or something, it’s not like we skipped out—and all the sudden the vet comes out to see what all the noise is about, and he takes one look at us and he goes, ‘that’s Lambert’s pup.’”

“Lambert?”

“Repede’s dad. He was our fencing coach’s dog. Apparently the vet worked with Coach at ZU back in the day, although we didn’t know that until later. Anyway, he whisked Repede into the back and told us to wait in the lobby, ‘cause it wasn’t going to be pretty. I was flipping my shit, because, you know, we’d only been taking care of Repede for a little while, and the wound looked so bad I had convinced myself he was going to die.”

“Oh, Yuri.”

“I was also running on like two hours of sleep at the time, which may have contributed. Anyway, Flynn had to sit there for like an hour, literally holding my hand, telling me that Repede was going to be fine and everything would be okay. He was freaking out too, but he still babysat me while I lost my min d . It was fucking heroic. And we were covered in blood that whole time. I mean, the receptionist took us to a sink where we could clean up a little bit, but some shit is just there to stay unless you change clothes.”

“Ew.”

“Uh-huh. But after a while the vet popped back out and he was like, ‘your dog is fine, come see him.’ They had knocked him out and stitched him up all pretty. Funny in retrospect—I wish I had a picture. Repede was boneless. Puppy puddle.”

“Maybe Flynn has a picture?”

“I don’t think so. We were both too busy being relieved.” Yuri pulls over in front of the police station. Estelle is a rigid line of tension in the passenger seat. “Alright, princess. You’ll just have to get this over with and hurry back out to get the rest of the story.”

Estelle’s lower lip wobbles. “You’ll have your phone on the whole time?”

“Max volume. Texts and calls.”

“And I don’t have to go back. I can—I can still stay with you.”

“Long as you need.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“You’re gonna be A-okay,” Yuri says, firmly, “Just like Repede was. Look, you’ve got the beat-up face and everything. You have to be okay. It’s just cinematic parallels at this point.”

Estelle smiles, even though it doesn’t reach her eyes, as she clicks open the car door. “Where are you going to be parked?”

“You see over at that corner?” Yuri points down the block, through the windshield. “I’ll be at that convenience store. I’ll go in and buy a snack at some point so they can’t boot me out, since I’m a paying customer.”

“I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

“Sure thing.” Yuri holds his hand up to her. She stares at it blankly. “What? Come on. High five for good luck.”

Estelle slowly presses her palm against his and holds it there for a beat, looking at him dubiously. Yuri snorts.

“Okay, we’ll work on that one later.”

“Is this not—?”

“Nope, nuh-uh, this is a problem for post-police Estelle. Out you get.”

She puts Hanks’s phone into her pocket and slides out of the car. She gives Yuri another halfhearted smile as she closes the door, mouthing bye through the window. See you, Yuri mouths back. He doesn’t pull away from the curb until she’s all the way inside. When he does, he’s muttering curses under his breath.

Dammit. She’s going to be fine. Cinematic parallels. Estelle is a smart cookie, and she spent all morning preparing. She has Hanks’s phone. She’s a legal adult.

Yuri wishes he had brought Repede along. But there was a toddler read-along today at the community center, and Repede likes to lounge on the carpet between all the kids, soaking up their attention while he naps. It’s not like there’s anyplace close to the station where Yuri could be exercising with him, which is the only way he could justify it. If Repede isn’t getting a workout either way, he might as well do the one he likes better. Yuri’s the human here. He can suck it up.

He pulls into the lot of the convenience store and cranks the parking brake into place with more force than necessary. His forehead thuds against the top of the steering wheel, well away from the horn. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Estelle a Flynn story. Now he just fucking misses Flynn. He always does, has for the last few years, but now it’s sharp and immediate. He misses knowing that Flynn could take Repede out between classes when Yuri was too busy. He misses having his best friend there to tell him shit’s going to be alright. He misses Flynn being able to cheer him up just by being there, misses Flynn helping him do school shit even if it was too simple for him when it was stupidly hard for Yuri.

The problem is that it’s so easy to talk to Estelle about Flynn. Everybody at the community center drives him up the freaking wall treading on eggshells about it. They’re always watching him when Flynn comes up in conversation, waiting for him to snap and get mad. They only know scattered fragments of why Yuri and Flynn aren’t the same unit they used to be, but they know enough to be wary of bringing it up. Estelle, though. Estelle doesn’t know any of it. It’s bizarre to Yuri. They nearly physically fought the last time they saw each other, and Flynn told Estelle that Yuri is his best friend. Estelle will go, one time Flynn—and Yuri can go, yeah, that’s Flynn alright, did he tell you about this other time? And there’s no secret second conversation about whether Yuri’s about to go completely unhinged. It makes him run his mouth more than he should. He didn’t even tell Hanks that Flynn held his hand in the vet lobby while Repede had surgery. He doesn’t think anybody but Raven knows about that, if Raven even remembers.

If he doesn’t get a grip, Estelle is going to figure out a lot more about how he feels about Flynn than he wants her to. She’s not an idiot. Worse, she’s a romantic. She’ll connect the dots.

...Now he’s worrying about Estelle and missing Flynn and kicking himself over his shitty feelings again. Great. Fantastic. This afternoon is going just swell.

Yuri lets himself out of the damn car and goes into the convenience store to buy chocolate or something. He needs it.

Yuri is used to his friends just opening the door and hopping back in the car, so when Estelle taps on the window, he jumps about a foot in the air and almost hits his head.

“Sorry,” Estelle says, cracking the door open to peer in at him. “Can I—?”

“Yeah, get in,” Yuri says. She climbs into her seat and draws her knees up so she can wrap her arms around them, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Yuri watches her for a moment, then reaches past her to get into the glove compartment. “Hey. Here. Got you something.”

“Huh?” Estelle sniffles a little. Her eyes go big when she sees what Yuri is offering her. “Oh, you didn’t have to—“

“It’s convenience store chocolate,” Yuri says. He pokes her in the arm with it until she frees a hand to take it from him. “Not exactly a crazy luxury gift. I got the receipt if you want a different flavor, though.”

“No, this is good,” Estelle mumbles. She unwraps it, sniffling some more. “’M—‘m sorry. I know c-crying makes you uncomfortable.”

“That’s my problem. You worry about yourself.” Yuri crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat to watch her. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Th-they wanted me to go back.” She scrubs at her eyes. “I knew they would. It’s okay. I expected it. You were right, they couldn’t force me to do anything because I’m eighteen.”

“Still shitty, though.”

“Y-yeah.”

“They give you any other problems?”

“I had to argue with them about n-not telling my guardian where I was staying. But they said they would officially delist me as missing. That’s what—what matters.”

Yuri nods, slowly. “You just tell me if there’s anyone I should be running off the property if I catch them near the apartment, alright?”

“Ah. Okay.” She nibbles at the chocolate. “...Will you, um, tell me the rest of the story about Repede?”

“Sure. Lemme pull out first.” When they’re both seat-belted and Yuri has managed to exit the parking lot without running anyone over, he drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “Where was I?”

“P-puppy puddle.”

Yuri huffs out a laugh. “That’s right. Poor Repede. Raven—that’s our vet—he gave us a bunch of antibiotics to give Repede, and talked us through what to expect during Repede’s recovery until he woke up. Once he was conscious they got the cone of shame on him. Only time he’s ever needed one, while we had him. Think he had one when he got fixed, too, but that was before we took him in.”

Estelle giggles wetly. “P-poor thing. Borzoi pups are all—all skinny, aren’t they? He must’ve been falling over with the heavy cone on his head.”

“God, you would think so, but Repede was a big boy when he was a puppy. Solid chunk of dog. He was like that even when Coach had him, so it wasn’t our fault for overfeeding him or anything . Probably the German Shepherd blood. They’re a little thicker than Borzoi pups. I definitely do have pictures of puppy Repede, I’ll find them for you when I get home from work tonight.” Yuri sifts through the memories and snorts fondly. “Didn’t help much with the cone, though. I don’t think losing one of his eyes was doing him any favors either. The first few nights after the surgery were terrible. He would wake up and try to get some kibble or water, and he’d knock over damn near everything in the apartment, so of course that would wake us up, too. Even if we managed to sleep through that, he would get frustrated and start crying. ”

“But you were already so tired!”

“Like I said, rough couple of nights. We ended up having to coordinate a schedule of who got up to deal with it at what times on what nights. Hanks kept telling us it was a practice run for having kids someday.”

Estelle cocks her head, more alert. “Kids? For you two, together? Flynn didn’t tell me—”

“No.” Yuri grips the steering wheel tighter and prays his cheeks aren’t red. “No, not together. Just in general. It was a bad joke either way—I’d make a crummy dad .”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You’re very nice to say so, but you’re also very wrong.”

Estelle gives him a thoughtful look. Yuri hurries on with the story.

“Anyway, giving him the antibiotics was probably the worst part. Raven gave them to us in a syringe at first, to squirt into his mouth, but Repede would lose his mind when we tried to open his mouth to give it to him. It was hard to hold his head still without aggravating the wound. So we tried switching to pill form and mixing them into his food, but the little brat would just pick them out and we’d find a little pile of them in his empty bowl after he ate.”

“What did you do?”

Yuri grins nostalgically. “Wrapped ‘em in bits of deli turkey.”

“Yuri!”

“Yeah, Flynn yelled at me too. He damn near killed me the first time I did it. Still, it was the only thing that worked, and we were too exhausted to fight over it. Repede would be so excited to eat the turkey, he wouldn’t realize there was a pill until it was too late. Flynn did get to say ‘I told you so’ a lot afterwards, though, because I’ve never been able to keep deli turkey in the house since. Repede is convinced it’s for him.”

“Can’t you just keep it away from him?”

“Nope. He’s a dog on a mission.”

Estelle smiles, small but real. Some of the tension has left her posture. Good.

“That whole ordeal is probably why Repede hates the vet, now, anyway,” Yuri says. He mentally plots their route back to the community center. He should have enough time before bartending to drop Estelle off and take Repede for a run.

“Maybe if you switched vets...?”

“Nah—I don’t think it’s just Raven, since he’s not very happy to see any of the vet techs, either. I guess it could be the location itself. Best vet within a convenient distance, though—if you ever meet Raven, don’t tell him I said that, okay? He’d be fucking insufferable about it. But he did us... a lot of favors, back then. Had to guide me through a lot of stupid first-time dog-owner stuff. Least I can do is give him my business.”

Estelle’s been looking out the passenger-side window, but now her head lolls against the headrest to face Yuri. “Hey, Yuri?”

“Hm?”

“Why do you talk about Repede like he was yours and Flynn’s when he was a puppy, but just yours now?”

“...Flynn’s pretty busy with school these days.” Too busy to be wasting time on some stupid drop-out. “I’ve got more free time, so I took Repede. He hasn’t seen Flynn in a long time. I don’t know if he would remember Flynn now.”

“You don’t have very much free time at all, though.”

Yuri cocks a smile with as much conviction as he can muster. “Yeah, because I’ve filled it all with Repede. It doesn’t really look like free time any more. It just looks like Repede time.”

Estelle is quiet for a moment. Just when Yuri starts to hope that she’ll drop it, she says, “You miss him.”

Yuri brakes maybe a little too sharply at a stop sign. Their seatbelts snap taught. Estelle yelps.

“Sorry,” Yuri mutters. “Noticed the sign a little late. Miss who, Repede? It’s true, I do miss Repede when I have to leave him for more than five minutes— ”

“Flynn. You miss Flynn, don’t you?”

Yuri tries to fast forward through all the different ways this conversation could play out in his head. What’s the answer least likely to swamp him with a discussion of his feelings and his current relationship with Flynn? If he tries to say no, Estelle might tell him why she thought he did, and he doesn’t want to deal with that kind of self-awareness. The truth is probably safer. “...Yeah.”

“Why don’t you call him?”

“He got a new number at some point since I last saw him in person.”

“Wh—oh.” Estelle frowns a bit. “I think I remember when that happened. He didn’t give you the new number?”

“Nope. Probably didn’t have mine memorized, or something.” Or he just figured it was as good an excuse as any to move on to better social circles, and leave the squalor of his past behind. That’s what Yuri’s been betting on.

At least, it was until Estelle showe d up and started saying weird shit about how Flynn still talks about him.

“I could give you his new number!”

Somehow, that catches Yuri completely off guard. He glances over at her. “You have his number memorized? Wow, princess. I didn’t realize you were that into him.”

“I’m—“ Estelle splutters at him, red-faced. Yuri grins despite himself as he turns back to the road. “I am not! It’s not like that! I forgot I didn’t have my phone—”

“Uh-huh. I’ll start working on my speech for your wedding.”

“Yuri! I don’t like him that way! And that’s not even—Flynn doesn’t even like g—“

Girls. Estelle slaps a hand over her own mouth before the rest of the word can slip out. She looks at Yuri, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. Yuri considers messing with her some more, but decides to have some pity.

“Relax. I already knew Flynn was gay. I’m just screwing around.”

“Oh, good,” Estelle breathes, slumping back in her seat.

“Anyway, speaking of your phone, maybe we should figure out a plan to rescue some of your shit.”

Estelle wrings her hands. “...I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a good way to get into my old home without having to talk to...”

“ Don’t you worry,” Yuri says, cheerfully. He was just trying to find a way to divert the conversation away from Flynn, but he’s quickly warming to the idea. He doesn’t have bartending too late tonight. “I’ll take care of that. Just wait and see. You didn’t have any plans for tonight, did you?”

“This is illegal!” Estelle hisses. Yuri, halfway through the action of pulling himself over a brick wall, gives her an incredulous look. She’s been trying to dissuade him since they came within a few blocks of the property. Apparently Estelle is willing to stand up when people try to steamroll past her. She just picks her battles.

“How? I’m pretty sure you technically still live here, legally.”

“It’s still breaking and entering! And theft! ”

“Oh, wah wah wah. It’s not like we’re really stealing. It’s all your stuff.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works!”

Yuri snorts and pulls himself the rest of the way up, perched on the top. “Are you coming, or do you want to wait here?”

“I—I don’t want to start my new life with a criminal record!”

“So wait.”

“Yuri!”

“Relax, I’ve got this under control. Which floor is your room on?”

Estelle makes a high-pitched sound of aggravation and tries to scramble up the wall after him. She almost topples back down halfway up, and Yuri has to reach down to haul her up by the collar of Hanks’s jacket. The jitters probably aren’t doing her coordination any favors.

“What happened to not wanting a criminal record?”

“If I come with you so you know where to go, everything will be faster, and we can be done and leave sooner.”

“You can tell me where to go from here, you don’t have to be involved.”

Estelle gives him a sulky, anxious look. “I don’t want to—to just wait alone in the dark. What if someone comes by?”

“Hide in a bush.”

“Flynn and Hanks were right, you are a troublemaker.”

“I can’t tell you how flattered and alarmed I am that it’s taken you like a week and a half to figure that out.”

Yuri did sort of count on Estelle staying behind, although he gets why she doesn’t want to now that she mentions it. There’s no car in the driveway right now. What if her guardian comes back while Yuri is inside? Still, now he has to factor her into his entry and exit strategy. Damn. He should have just made her give him an address, left her at home and winged it from there.

“Okay,” Yuri mutters. He swings his legs over the other side of the wall and starts his descent. “Just... do what I do, alright? I’ll try not to do anything too crazy. Lemme know if you can’t keep up and I’ll figure something else out.”

“A-alright.” Estelle tentatively lowers her leg over the edge of the wall, searching for the uneven bricks Yuri used to get down. Yuri hops down the last few feet and gets under her, spotting her in case of a fall. It seems to help with the mental side of things, at least. Estelle stops trembling so much and plants her feet more confidently. Yuri whisks her off the wall when she gets as far down as he jumped from.

“I don’t suppose you know whether there’s any security cameras?”

“Ah—yes, but—but we’ll be able to see them, there’s a little light when they’re on.”

“You sure they’re not motion-activated?”

“Y...yes?”

Well, there’s only one way to figure out for sure.

They creep around the perimeter of the property. Estelle murmurs directions and notes about the layout of the property. Here’s the garden; there’s the shed, but that definitely has a security camera, so don’t go that way. The greenhouse doesn’t have a camera, but it’s locked. Estelle thinks it will be, anyway, and Yuri’s not going to stick his fingerprints on every random surface just for funsies. Back door to the kitchen is a no go, too. There’s a chance the housekeeper might be around. Obviously they’re not going through the front door.

“I...” Estelle looks at him sideways, wringing her hands. They’re crouched in the shadows of the small orchard on the far side of the house. “I never locked my balcony door? But it’s on the second floor. There’s a tree, but no branches until higher up—I don’t know if it’s...”

“Oh, princess,” Yuri says. “Have some faith. I will make it climbable.”

“M-maybe for you!”

But she still helps guide Yuri back around the house and points out the window. It’s dark, which isn’t surprising. Estelle hasn’t been in her room for at least a week and a half. They’re too close to the ground floor windows now to risk talking, even whispering, so Yuri just pats her on the back and hoists himself up on the nearest decorative garden statue. From the top, he leaps to grab a tree branch hanging ten feet off the ground. It’s a solid jump, there’s no getting around it. Estelle’s wide eyes gleam in the moonlight as she clambers up the statue after him. Yuri hastily climbs up to straddle the branch. If she gets a bad grip, he’s going to want to be stable enough to catch her.

She wobbles at the top of the statue and casts a fretful look at Yuri. Yuri’s not feeling so hot about this himself, really, but at this point all he can do is flash her a thumbs-up and lean forward, body pressed to the branch to extend his reach below it.

She jumps.

The tree shu dders violently. Estelle gasps. Yuri hisses through his teeth, straining to keep his grip on Estelle’s free hand. She managed to get one hand onto the branch, at least, but she’s scrabbling not to lose her hold. The longer this goes on, the less likely someone inside will be willing to write it off as a bird or a raccoon or something—honestly, though, with her fingertips sliding over bark, it seems more likely that she’ll plummet to the ground and break something.

But right as Yuri starts to seriously consider freaking out, she grits her teeth, stretches up with Yuri’s help to get a second hand on the branch, and somehow, somehow works her way up to sit beside him. It’s fucking impressive. Yuri didn’t know she had that kind of arm strength. She really is a determined little monster when she puts her mind to it.

From there, it’s not easy, but it’s easier. The tree is good for climbing once you’re on it. Estelle shadows Yuri’s footwork, even with her second-hand sneakers slipping where the traction has worn down. Yuri helps her swing out of the branches and onto the balcony. He reaches for the door. Estelle catches his wrist, shaking her head, and opens it herself.

Of course. Estelle leaving fingerprints won’t alarm anybody if someone investigates the break-in. Yuri should have thought of that.

Estelle’s room is cast in odd angles of shadow, but Yuri can still tell that it’s exactly as frilly as he expected. Gauzy pink drapes surround the bed. The sheets gleam like satin. The moonlight makes the carpet look snow-white. It’s horrifyingly clean, too. Yuri has never seen a carpet that looked less walked-upon than this one. For fuck’s sake, did they steam-press her carpet the second she left the house, or does it always look like this?

He glances at Estelle. She stares at the room like she’s never seen it before.

No, wait. She doesn’t look like she’s seeing it at all. Shit. Yuri didn’t think this through. He should have been ready for the chance that coming back here would make Estelle dissociate.

“Estelle,” Yuri hisses, as quietly as he possibly can. It’s rough. He’s not built for low volumes. He touches her elbow. “Estelle, stick with me.”

Estelle looks down at his hand, blinking sightlessly. Yuri jostles her a bit. That snaps her out of it. She shakes herself out, jaw clenching. Yuri passes her one of the drawstring backpacks he brought with him.

“What do I grab?” she whispers.

“Whatever you want.”

“But...”

“Irreplaceable family shit. Books. Any clothes you really like.” He holds up the other bag. “Just point me to what you want and I’ll grab it for you.”

Estelle’s face falls. “I can’t fit all of my books.”

“That’s what the library is for, princess.”

“I don’t have a library card.”

“I have some great news for you about public libraries, but we’ll save that for later. Come on, let’s hurry up.”

Estelle’s wardrobe is baffling to Yuri. Almost everything in it is nicer than the value of all of his clothes put together. To get to the clothes she wants, she has to shove aside a whole row of hangers with fancy dresses on them. Thank God she doesn’t seem to want to take those ones with her. She points him to her bookshelf, whispering, “As many as possible!” and tiptoes off toward an ensuite bathroom. The floor doesn’t creak a peep. Yuri’s not sure he’s ever been in a room where it was possible to move this quietly.

He gives Estelle’s personal library his full consideration, which is to say he stares at each title for about two seconds and tries to picture it in the Lower Quarter’s public library. If he can’t, he grabs it. Most of the fiction gets left behind this way, but he figures Estelle will forgive him once they get her a library card. It’s gonna be awkward if she’s no longer interested in hardcover nonfiction novels about the history of European mythology or what the fuck ever, though.

Estelle emerges from the bathroom again, clutching her bag to her chest. On her way back to Yuri, she stoops to retrieve a pair of sneakers from under the bed. They’re fucking pristine. Yuri has seen shoes in shoe commercials that looked more used. She peers at what’s left on the bookshelf. Yuri allows her to double-check his work with as much patience as he can muster, but it’s not long before he nudges her insistently again. She huffs but obliges, crossing over to her desk. She retrieves several notebooks, then hesitates. Yuri peeks around her. Her hand hovers over her phone.

“It’s your call,” he says. “But I wouldn’t put money on that not being tracked.”

“I know,” Estelle says, miserably. She reaches down to turn it on and Yuri winces away from the sudden illumination of the screen. “Oh, no... I knew everyone might worry, but this is...”

“Maybe they’ll figure it out when the posters go down.” Or they’ll think she was found dead in a ditch, but Yuri probably shouldn’t say that to Estelle. Oh, hell, maybe Flynn thinks she’s dead in a ditch. Yuri is intimately acquainted with how badly Flynn copes with grief. Maybe they should be looking into secret, safe venues of contact. It won’t be from Estelle’s old phone, though, because she gives it one last wistful caress and leaves it on the desk.

Somehow, Yuri gets them both back out the window, down the tree and off the property without making too much of a ruckus. They sprint back to the edge of campus where Yuri left his car. For a few minutes, Estelle is too busy wheezing to say anything, and Yuri is more than happy to drive them through quiet streets bathed in yellow lamplight in silence. He likes the cover of night. It feels safe. He appreciates that, after the luxuriousness of Estelle’s house up close showed him that he was in way, way deeper than he’d thought.

“Oh, drat,” Estelle says, abruptly. Yuri side-eyes her.

“What now?”

“I ought to have at least gotten my contacts out of my old phone. I wanted to get Flynn’s number for you.”

“Christ’s sake, Estelle. Don’t do that to me. I thought we needed to go back for something important.”

“No! No. That was—this is enough. More than enough. You shouldn’t have—and I mean you really, actually shouldn’t have. I can’t believe you made me into a criminal!”

“I don’t see how it’s breaking and entering and stealing if I escort a lady back into her old house to pick up her own shit,” Yuri says, rolling his eyes. He does, in a clean-cut legal way, but it’s a stupid case to make in the first place. Everything they took was Estelle’s. Honestly, none of it seems to be worth much by itself. With a little luck, Estelle’s guardian or whoever won’t even notice that anything is missing until it’s way too late.

“It was extremely illegal!”

Yuri drops his voice several octaves to drone, blandly, “Your honor, the defendant is responsible for the theft of her own fucking notebooks, which have absolutely no commercial value and are basically useless to literally anyone else.”

Estelle laughs, once, sharp like she can’t help herself. She pushes at Yuri’s shoulder with almost no real force. “You’re awful.”

“Hey, no hitting the driver.”

“You didn’t even flinch!”

“I let you hit me, someday you’ll do it while Ted’s watching, suddenly Ted thinks he’s allowed to hit me and then we’ll all die in a fiery car crash.”

“You’re absurd.”

Yuri snorts. “You sound like Flynn.”

“I probably sound like everybody who knows you!”

“Absurd? Nah, that one’s all Flynn. Most people stick with ‘dumbass.’”

“Well,” Estelle says, primly, “I can’t imagine why.”

“Ouch,” Yuri laughs. He pulls into his apartment’s parking lot. “Right in the heart. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover.”

They’re still sniping at each other when they exit the car and head inside. The banter keeps up all the way to Yuri’s door, but Estelle is definitely sagging before they’re halfway up the stairs. She drags her feet on her way across the threshold, dropping her bag of rescued possessions on the couch before she collapses in a pile on the floor, next to Repede. Repede lifts his head enough to sniff at her suspiciously. When she offers her hand, he licks it, then unexpectedly leans over to lick her on the nose. Estelle half-laughs, half-yelps.

“Yuck! Repede!”

“Aw,” Yuri says. He kicks off his shoes and leaves the bag of Estelle’s books with her other shit before throwing himself down next to her and Repede. Repede quickly turns to plop his head into Yuri’s lap, tail wagging. Yuri strokes his back. “You’re getting used to her, aren’t you, bud?”

“He’s a good boy,” Estelle says. She pats Repede’s belly. He huffs a little, but allows it. “Repede, Yuri told me all about what a brave puppy you were today.”

She traces her fingers across his muzzle to touch the scarred side of his face. He doesn’t react much—he never has, not since it finished healing.

“I wish I was as brave as you,” Estelle whispers.

“I told you,” Yuri says, uncomfortably. “Cinematic parallels. You pulled through, just like him. I didn’t even have to force-feed you your antibiotics.” To Repede, he adds, dryly, “Unlike someone.”

Repede, who is a dog and has no clue Yuri is shit-talking him, yawns widely.

“I wish I could be strong,” Estelle mumbles. Her eyelids are drooping. Her whole body is drooping, actually. She wobbles unsteadily, even sitting down. “I wish I could... could go back and talk to my friends and not be so scared. That I could just knock on the door and ask to pick up my things. I’m such a baby.”

“Estelle,” Yuri says, around the lump in his throat. He reaches out and catches her by the shoulders as she sways forward, then eases her down so her head rests on Repede’s side. She sniffles a bit. “Being afraid of an abuser doesn’t make you a baby. Sometimes running away is the brave thing to do.”

“It’s not like he hit me that often.” Her fingers curl into Repede’s fur. He whuffles anxiously. Yuri strokes his head, trying to give Repede the comfort he wishes he knew how to give Estelle. “I should have stayed. I overreacted. I’m so stupid. And now I’m causing you trouble, and...”

“Estelle, c’mon.”

“It’s not fair.”

“No,” Yuri says. He rubs her back. “It’s not. But it’s not your fault.”

“I should have...”

“You should get some sleep is what you should do,” Yuri says. He heaves himself to his feet, then crouches again to scoop Estelle into his arms. She buries her face against his shoulder as he lifts her. Shit, she’s heavier than she looks. He grunts with the effort. “Okay, princess? Let’s get you to bed. In the morning we’ll eat a good breakfast and go talk to Hanks, and you’ll feel better. It’s gonna be alright.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

He carries her to the bedroom and dumps her on the bed. She clings to his shirt when he tries to pull away.

“I d-don’t want to be alone—”

“Okay,” Yuri says. “Then let’s get you into some pajamas, and I can sleep on the floor in here for tonight.”

“I’m s-sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I took you someplace that was shitty for you tonight. Of course you’re upset.”

Estelle changes while he brushes his teeth. Once he’s got on his own soft sleep shirt and old shorts, he flops down in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. Repede curls up behind his knees.

“Thank you, Yuri,” Estelle mumbles, from under the comforter.

“It’s no problem. Wake me up if you need anything, alright? Anything at all.”

“...Okay.”

Yuri wakes up to smoke.

“The fuck?” he croaks. Repede sticks his head in through the open bedroom door, whining quietly. Yuri kicks his way out of the blanket cocoon he’s tangled in and staggers into the kitchen.

Ah. Estelle.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, wide-eyed and near to tears in front of a blackened skillet of what possibly used to be eggs. “I just wanted to—“

“Windows first, apologies later,” Yuri says. He yanks open the living room window, then grabs a magazine off the coffee table to wave uselessly through the smoke. Estelle coughs. “Damn. I forgot to change the batteries in the smoke detector.”

“A-are we going to—?”

“It’s fine, we’re fine. Go open the window in the bedroom, will you?”

Estelle hurries to obey while Yuri opens the kitchen window. The smoke isn’t as bad as it could be, given the apparent death of the detector. Seems like it’s already clearing out a bit. He picks up the spatula Estelle abandoned to prod at the lump of charcoal in his skillet.

“I wanted to make breakfast,” Estelle says, miserably, from somewhere behind him. “To thank you. But I messed it up.”

“Of course you did,” Yuri says. He scrapes at the skillet a little. It spreads charcoal around. “You haven’t ever cooked before, have you?”

“No...”

“You should have gotten me up. I could teach you.”

“But it wouldn’t be thanking you if I made you work more!”

“Yet here we are,” Yuri says. “Besides, I don’t need to be thanked, Christ. Open the trash for me.”

Estelle dutifully opens the cupboard the trash bin is stashed inside. Yuri pushes the less stubborn bits of charcoal into the bin, kicks the cupboard closed, then dumps the pan into the sink to soak.

“You do need to be thanked,” Estelle says. Yuri gives her an exasperated look over his shoulder; when he opens his mouth, she adds, hurriedly, “I want to thank you.”

“Well stop it,” Yuri grumbles. He goes into the cupboard for a new pan. At least the smoke is clearing out relatively fast. “Are there still eggs?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Alright. We’re going to give the smoke another minute to disperse, and in the meantime you can get a small bowl down for me and take the eggs back out.”

Yuri fucks off to find batteries. When he returns to the kitchen, Estelle is waiting anxiously with a small bowl and the egg carton. The air is only faintly smokey. Yuri grabs a chair and shoves it under the smoke detector.

“Crack the eggs into the bowl,” he says, as he clicks the cover off. “I’ll watch from here.”

“How many eggs?”

“Four.”

“You eat four eggs at once?”

“What are you going to have for breakfast?”

Estelle gives him a baffled look, like it hadn’t even occurred to her that she could make her own breakfast too. “I—I guess eggs?”

“If we have four eggs left, do four. If we don’t, I’ll just split whatever we have with you. We’ve got bread. We can have toast or something too.” Yuri sighs as he slides the new batteries into place. “I guess we need to go to the store. Shit.”

“I only used two eggs before,” Estelle blurts out. “We’ve still got five eggs.”

“Yeah, but I was gonna make shakshuka tomorrow.” Yuri puts the cover back on the smoke detector. Estelle finally, hesitantly removes an egg from the carton. She taps it lightly against the side of the bowl.

“Harder than that.”

“I’ll get egg everywhere!”

“You won’t.” Yuri climbs down from the chair. “You need a clean break to pull it apart, or you’ll get bits of shell in everything. Here, I’ll show you one.”

Yuri dumps the dead batteries into the garbage along with the still-faintly-smoking wreckage of the burnt eggs, then washes his hands. Estelle watches raptly as he plucks an egg out of the carton and snaps it against the edge of the bowl before pulling it cleanly apart.

“Like that. Now you—yeah, okay, that was a lot better. Now the next two.”

Estelle furrows her brow and does as instructed. She still gets a piece of eggshell in the mix, but nothing Yuri can’t fish out with his fingers. “Why are we using a bowl? Can’t it just go straight in the pan?”

“It can if you know what you’re doing.” Yuri shrugs, leaning his hip against the counter as he monitors Estelle’s dismemberment of the final egg. “For a beginner, though, it’s easier to make sure all of the eggs will go in the pan at the same time. Are we doing sunny-side up, or scrambled?”

“Uh—scrambled?”

“Okay. Let’s both wash the raw egg off our hands, then you’re gonna get the milk out.” Yuri towels off his own hands as Estelle opens the fridge, then reaches into the silverware drawer for a fork. “Just dump in a little bit.”

“How much?”

“A little bit. Like I said.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Well, I just eyeball it. Here, I’ll do it the first time so you can see. Just—this much, about. A glug.”

“A glug,” Estelle echoes, side-eyeing him dubiously.

“A very precise measurement,” Yuri says. He flashes her a grin and hands the milk back. “Put this away.”

Salt and pepper to taste and whisking the yolks into the whites, at least, Estelle seems comfortable with. While she does that, he dumps some cooking oil into the new pan and turns on the heat.

“You’re a good teacher,” Estelle tells him, as she carefully pours the beaten eggs into the skillet. “You should teach classes.”

Yuri snorts. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don’t have the patience for teaching as a job.”

“But you do!”

“I’ve taught stuff for the community center occasionally. I know I’m not cut out to do it full-time. You’re an angel of a student compared to most people, princess.”

Estelle tries not to visibly preen at the praise and mostly fails. Yuri laughs. “Here, grab the spatula. What you want to do now is—“

“You could’ve gotten her in a lot of trouble.”

“I told her she could stay behind.”

“Yuri.”

Yuri sighs. Estelle is on the other side of the community center, helping some of the kids with their homework. Yuri has to leave for the bar in ten minutes, and he was starting to think he might escape without the lecture, but no such luck. “Hanks.”

“Boy, what am I going to do with you?” Hanks sighs too, leaning back in his chair. “I thought you would have grown out of this by now.”

“Sorry,” Yuri says, snippy and insincere. “Really shitty of me to want her to have some of her own stuff that she likes again.”

“You know that’s not what the issue is, son.” Hanks rubs his temples. “You’re too impulsive. What if you had been caught? Forget Estellise. What do you think would have happened if someone had caught you?”

Yuri shrugs. “Nothing good.”

“And you still did it?”

“It was a calculated risk.”

“Your damn calculations are off.” Hanks scrubs a hand through his beard and fixes Yuri with a tired look. “I wish your old coach was still here. You were always better behaved for him.”

Yuri’s stomach drops. Hanks seems to realize his mistake as soon as he makes it, hastily opening his mouth again, but it’s too late for that now. Yuri is already shoving his chair back, the legs screeching on the floor. Estelle looks up from the other side of the room; Yuri sees her in his periphery before he turns to the door.

“Yuri?”

“I’m going to work,” Yuri gets out, through gritted teeth.

“Yuri, come on—“ Hanks tries. Yuri strides away without looking back. He shoves his way out the community center’s doors. There’s a quick patter of footsteps behind him, but it’s not Hanks’s gait, so Yuri forces himself not to lash out when someone catches him by the arm before he can get in his car. Estelle blinks up at him with her big green eyes.

“I thought you had a few more minutes.”

“I’m leaving early.”

She chews on her lower lip. A little guiltily, she admits, “I told the children you would do a knife trick for them if they finished their homework.”

Against all odds, that punches a short bark of laughter out of Yuri. He feels a little of the tension go with it, but the damn ache in his chest doesn’t go anywhere. “They’ll have to do their homework tomorrow, too, then. Tell them I’ll do two knife tricks to make up for it.”

Estelle beams at him. Her hand is still resting gently on his arm.

“Are you...” The smile slides off her face. “Are you upset? When you left, it seemed like...”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Yuri says, too sharply. Estelle’s face falls further. God dammit. Estelle is the last person who deserves Yuri’s ire. Trying to speak more softly, he adds, “Hanks chewed me out and I got mad because I’m secretly twelve. That’s all.”

“It didn’t look like you were mad about being lectured,” Estelle presses. Yuri swallows down a bitter sigh. He doesn’t want to talk about Coach in the middle of the community center’s parking lot when he has to drive to work in five minutes. He doesn’t want to talk about Coach at all, really. Estelle has enough baggage of her own without trying to unpack Yuri’s.

“I don’t really want to get into it right now.”

Estelle still looks a little hurt, but she nods. Her hand drops from Yuri’s arm as she steps back.

“Hang on.” Yuri digs into his pocket and fiddles with his keyring, then holds a fist out to Estelle. “Here. Gimme your hand.”

Estelle complies, her wounded expression melting into curiosity. Yuri presses a set of keys into her open palm.

“Take these. You can just go straight back to the apartment instead of having to wait for me to finish up at the bar.”

Estelle stands up a little straighter, with her mouth a little o of shock. “Are you sure? Is that really okay?”

“Sure. What’re you gonna do, rob me?”

“Well, I—I could! Hypothetically!”

Yuri rolls his eyes. “Right. Just take Repede for a long walk in the evening before you steal all of my shit, then. And I’m gonna need you to let me in or leave the door unlocked when I get home.”

“Okay!” Before Yuri can do much except fight down the reflex to throw her across the parking lot, Estelle launches herself forward to wrap Yuri in a hug. Yuri grunts in surprise, arms trapped. “Thank you so much!”

“It’s your apartment too, for now,” Yuri says. He manages to wriggle a hand free to pat her on the head. “We’ll get a second key tomorrow or something. I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you!”

Yuri waves as he drives off. It’s—an odd feeling, almost distracting enough that he stops feeling so nauseated. He’s taken on down-on-their-luck guests before, but he’s never given them his fucking keys.

Well. That’s the power of Estelle, he guesses.

#fluri #Estellise Sidos Heurassein #yuri lowell #tales of vesperia #long post #Feeling Pretty Good About the Trouble That I’m In #still no flynn just yuri Pining

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sebseyesandbuckysthighs · 5 years ago

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Three Soldiers and a Baby | Part Six

summary: Three handsome bachelors find their day to day operations disrupted when an unexpected new roommate (who comes complete with a diaper and a pacifier) shows up at their doorstep. How will they deal with this new and baffling responsibility without losing their minds or killing each other in the process?

pairings: Bucky x Reader (eventual) featuring Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson

warnings: none

a/n: And here we have part 6! Will the boys find out more about the mystery mama? When will Bucky return from his mission? Who knows! Okay, I know, but you will too soon enough! I appreciate y’all for reading this series and for those of you who have enjoyed it, I hope you like this next part and are excited for what comes next! ❤

*warning to mobile users, the “keep reading” tab may not work so apologies in advance*

| previously |

Sam smiled down at his slumbering friend, taking pity on him for having done his fair share of the work with little Ellie. After a handful of seconds he was done taking pity on him, though, and moved to grab Steve by the shoulders and shake him awake.

“Wake your ass up. We’ve still got work to do if this kid is gonna be interrupting our typical daily operations.”

“Thanks, Sam.” Steve said with an unappreciative groan, wiping his hands down his tired face. “Okay, what’s first.”

Sam looked down at his friend then to the cute sleeping baby. He noticed the letter was still open on the coffee table and grabbed it.

“First,” he said. “We gotta find out who the baby mama is and what kind of trouble she’s in.”

———————————————————————

Steve realized it wasn’t going to be easy to find out more about someone who had somehow managed to get into their "highly secured" penthouse level apartment to drop off the baby and then leave without anyone noticing. Though, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. He was a persistent bastard.

“Alright, what do we know about her?” Sam asked, pacing the living room space as Steve remained seated on the recliner. “What’s her name again?”

“It’s Ellie.” Steve said obnoxiously, as though it shouldn’t even be a question at this point. Sam stopped moving and looked to his friend incredulously.

“Not the kid, Steve. The woman! What’s the name of the woman in the letter. Pay attention, man!”

“Oh. Right,” Steve mumbled, a light dusting of pink now covering his cheeks. He knew this would be hard, but he wasn’t expecting to be wiped out this early in the game. In his defense, he thought, it had been a long day. Reaching for the letter slowly so as not to wake the sleeping child, Steve read over it again one more time, just for good measure. This time paying a little more attention to the name signed at the bottom of the page. It was a name Steve couldn’t place no matter how much he tried or how far he looked back in his memory. He spoke your name aloud to Sam to see if maybe he would know. At first, Sam was just as confused as he was. The name didn’t seem to ring any bells for him either.

“Wait!” Sam exclaimed suddenly, and admittedly, startling poor Steve. “That’s it!”

Before Steve could question him or scold him for being loud enough to wake the baby, Sam was off running towards the hallway where their bedrooms were. At this point Steve had risen to his feet as well. His first instinct was to go and follow Sam wherever he went in a rush, but with Ellie sleeping mere feet away, Steve’s more acute instincts told him it would be better to wait here. He just didn’t want to leave her alone.

“Sam!” Steve called out in the loudest whisper he would dare. It was a miracle Sam’s outburst didn’t cause Ellie to stir and Steve wasn’t about to risk it a second time. After an eternity, that really only lasted three minutes, Sam came back and he wasn’t empty handed. It took a moment to process what he was holding and when the realization hit him, Steve was horrified.

“Those are Bucky’s journals!” he said in the same whisper-yell as before. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Sam? How did you even find those?”

Sam waved him off without looking away from the pages he was turning. “I saw him hiding them one day and I tucked that little bit of information away for a rainy day. Today, my friend, is that rainy day.”

Steve looked out the windows and frowned. “But it’s perfectly sunny outside.”

Sam rolled his eyes and growled. “Metaphorically, Cap. I meant that metaphorically. What’s the matter with you?”

Steve blushed again. He was really off his game right now. “Whatever. You know Bucky’s gonna kill you when he finds out you read his stuff.”

“He’s not gonna do a damn thing.” Sam stopped reading to look at Steve with a serious expression. “Not after we’re cleaning up his mess. Besides,” Sam said quietly, “I’m gonna be the one to kill him first for getting us mixed up in this situation in the first place.”

Of course, Steve had heard that last part, but now wasn’t the time to argue as he watched Sam look through the notebooks in his hands. The front covers were titled with dates from when he started the notebook to when he finished it. From where Steve was standing he could make out that these books were all from the beginning of the year before and some time before that. After some quick calculations in his mind, Steve realized that that was around the time that Bucky was seeing that mystery girl. It didn’t take a genius to realize that she was the mother of Ellie.

“No wonder he was so busy last year,” Steve said, looking down at the sleeping baby girl. It was still a wonder to him that his best friend was together with a woman for so long and together they had a baby he didn’t even know about yet.

Sam’s scoff brought his attention back to the man and the journals. “Oh he got busy alright.”

“Sam, please.” Steve was tired enough as it was, he didn’t need Sam’s lude comments. “Just tell me what you can find out from that.”

“You mean from this chicken scratch that Barnes considers penmanship?” Sam asked mockingly before turning back to the pages and skimming through the words as best he could. “Well it looks like Barnes got some ‘splaining to do.” Sam passed the notebook over to Steve and pointed to a specific passage.

“Shit,” Steve swore. “No wonder he wouldn’t introduce her to us. They were never supposed to be involved in the first place,” he said gravelly.

It all started to click in Steve’s mind now, even the name of the woman from the note. She was a civilian from a past mission they all went on together. She was a hostage taken by agents of A.I.M. and used to negotiate with. She ended up taking out the agent holding her for ransom all by herself, not having taken too kindly to being manhandled and used. She even placed a good few swift kicks to that agents groin for good measure. It started to make sense now as to why Bucky stuck around back then to take her in for medical care and incident debriefing afterwards.

Steve kept flipping through the pages of the notebook and found dozens of sketches, all of the same face. First it had freaked him out to realize that his best friend had quite the secret artistic talent. Second was that with this little portrait Steve was instantly able to confirm that the face on the page, the name on the note, all belonged to one woman. The same woman from that mission and the mother of Bucky Barnes’ baby. You.

Being a victim from a past mission complicated things for his best friend, though. There was to be no fraternization between victims and SHIELD agents or Avengers. It was a little bewildering that Steve didn’t pick up on it sooner with the way Bucky had been acting last year. They knew that he was seeing someone, he had confirmed only that much, but they never thought it strange that Bucky never really left the apartment in order to actually meet anyone new. The only time he would ever interact with anyone aside from their teammates and friends was when they were out on missions saving people. That paired with the fact that he was so keen on finding out about the girl who saved herself and if she would be okay being briefed by just any other agent. Steve now remembered that Bucky had even volunteered to do the briefing himself and that they had talked for hours.

“Can’t believe we didn’t notice it back then. He never stuck around for that stuff.” Sam realized.

“I guess so. Dammit.” Steve muttered under his breath. “No wonder he wouldn't introduce us to her. They were never supposed to be involved in the first place.”

As the day went on, Ellie would wake up from her naps only to be fed and to be changed. It wasn’t easy, but both men found themselves falling easily into a routine as the sun went down.

“So this is for real then?” Sam said just as they put Ellie to sleep in her bassinet for hopefully the last time before morning. “This is really happening?”

“Looks that way, pal,” Steve confirmed. “I don’t think anyone is coming to get this little girl.”

Sam nodded solemnly, the full gravity of the situation still bearing it’s burden down on him. “We gotta tell someone, man. We can’t do this ourselves.”

He didn’t even consider thinking about it, Steve was not about to risk anyone else getting involved with this. “We can’t Sam. This is on us. At least for now. When Bucky gets back–”

“He’s a dead man?” Sam interrupted.

“Among other things, yeah pretty much.”

———————————————————————

Feedback is always appreciated, leave it here!

———————————————————————

part five << part six >> part seven

———————————————————————

Series Masterlist

Full Masterlist

———————————————————————

tags:

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #steve rogers #sam wilson #bucky barnes fanfiction #avengers fanfiction #three soldiers and a baby #my writing

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etraytin · 5 years ago

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Quarantine, Day 64

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when it's Quarantine Day 64?

It's May 14, for those of us who are still having a hard time keeping track of the days, which means we are very close to halfway through yet another month. Since April ended sometime in the late Pleistocene Epoch, this is a pretty solid accomplishment, go us! It also marks two weeks of being here in North Carolina instead of home in Virginia. My balcony plants are either super dead or forming their own jungle ecology by now, no middle ground. I'm not even going to contemplate what the milk is doing, because it was already not new before I forgot to throw it away on May 1. Oops.

One of my followers sent me a message today to say they liked my quarantine journal, which is very nice to hear! I have been journaling for an audience off and on since I started my Livejournal in 2001 (I am oooooooold), but Tumblr is not necessarily a natural home for diary blogging. Still, a lot of my internet friends live her, and it's comfortable, and at this point journaling is pretty much the only way I can make sense of what's happening from day to day and week to week. I wrote a few things down during the first couple weeks of quarantine, but it barely seemed real for awhile. My daily journaling began around Day 28 because I had a night where I could no longer smell or taste anything, and it turned out to be allergies but it scared the hell out of me. It suddenly occurred to me that not only would journaling be something interesting to look back on, but it might be a vital part of contact tracing for someone like me whose appointment calendar is written on her hand as often as not. I have not needed to use it for that, thankfully, but I have gotten to tell a lot of stories and work through a lot of stuff in my own brain. If it has entertained anyone else or made anyone else feel less alone, that's even better.

Today was another tiring one. I spent a lot of time trying to learn a bunch of stuff about Medicare on the fly, plus line up consultations with an elder law attorney for my mother in law and fill out the questionnaires we need to have done in advance. Answering those questions is long and tedious, and it often involves unpleasant truths like spelling out every medical problem either of them have, and every potential financial liability. I got six pages into the thirteen page form and called it a day, because even getting that far had involved about two hours of research and signing up for various government and insurance web portals to dig up information. Blech. It's like registering for the bar exam all over again but with less questions on moral turpitude and more disclosures about gifts to grandchildren. (And I shouldn't complain, the bar exam application was closer to 40 pages.)

Things with my mother in law did go better today. I feel like I complain about her all the time on here and it's not really fair because she's a great person and I love her a lot. If I didn't, I wouldn't get so upset if she's not taking care of herself! She and the kiddo had a good time today playing games and reading books, and she was able to get in for a very important medical procedure that she had skipped last month because she had nobody to drive her. Today she got that procedure and as a bonus it meant keeping her leg propped up for hours, so overall it was great and there were no new falls. We also had to sit for quite awhile to do the questionnaire stuff, so that was one side benefit of me banging my head against the metaphorical wall for a few hours. Now that she's sleeping and eating more, she just has a lot more energy, and that's a good and bad thing when she's supposed to take it easy.

Dinner was good today too, my husband decided to make a picnic for the balcony and did up roasted breaded chicken, biscuits with hot honey butter, and spicy potato-bean hash. It sound weird, but it was all very tasty, and the weather today was amazing. It's been very cold all week, but now it really feels springy and perfect. The table umbrella was not working, but I managed to jury-rig it with a bungee cord. Now it won't close but it stays open quite nicely, which beats the opposite. I'm also trying to drink more water, because the air here is super dry and I'm eating a lot of salty food, but results are mixed so far. I need at least another couple cups before bed.

Had another post-bedtime conversation with the kiddo just a few minutes ago, one of the hardest ones yet. He was very sad because he said things are not getting any better, only worse. After teasing that out for a couple of minutes, we dug down to him being very sad about the fact that his Papa is sick and not getting any better, and that he wants to visit him, but it's also horrible because Papa not only doesn't remember their previous visits from day to day, he doesn't always remember the kiddo right away at this point. And fuck, I didn't know what to say at all to that. He cried, and I cried right along with him, and told him that he was right, it's horrible and unfair that this should happen to anybody, but especially to Papa, who has always been so clever and had such good stories. In a lot of our bedtime conversations I can remind him of good things that are happening or things to look forward to, but there is no reason to assume that anything is going to get better in this situation, and every reason to believe that they will be worse soon.

In this case, I figured it was best just to level with him, even though he's only ten. I told him that I remembered having to do this with my grandmother, and that was terrible and sad, and it felt like losing her in tiny pieces. It hurts, and it will hurt to lose Papa, and it's okay if he needs to cry or needs to not go on a visit or needs to talk about it with me or Daddy. But I also told him that I believe that my grandma is in heaven now, and that she doesn't forget anymore, and she's not hurting or confused, and that one day we are going to have so much to talk about, and that helps me to feel better. And I reminded him that for Papa, every moment with him is important because every moment he is living in is the one he remembers best. So when seeing the kiddo makes him happy, he is very, very happy and he doesn't remember feeling sad or scared or angry, even if he was just yelling a minute ago. We can still give Papa lots of good moments, because we love him.

After that, we had to go fix ourselves up because we were both extremely snotty and gross, which gave us the opportunity to make stupid jokes about whether we should waste the extremely valuable toilet paper and whether a Kleenex over one's face counts as appropriate masking. There is definitely something to be said for the period of cathartic humor after a difficult talk. To further that, we went and had some cocoa even though it was already after ten, and I let him have marshmallows and whipped cream. Carbs and sugar, hell yes! It's good for what ails you. Then we watched Micarah Tewers again because silly seamstresses is what makes us both happy these days, and by then he was feeling okay to go to bed again.

He's sleeping now, and I think he's doing all right. He said he likes talking to me like this, and I'm glad. I like talking to him too, though it is a continuing revelation to me the kind of complex inner life he has going on. I mean of course I understand that he is a real person, but internalizing the fact that he has somehow gone from being the extremely demanding wet bag of flour I brought home from the hospital ten years ago to a full-fledged self-determining individual whose thoughts and insights amaze and baffle me is an ongoing process. (He was an extremely cute bag of flour, don't get me wrong, but I swear to god, raising kids is sometimes like suddenly realizing your adorable baby kitten now has opinions on politics and wants you to defend your positions on moral virtue.)

Anyway, it's time for me to get to bed as well, because the only Walmart pickup slot I could get on Monday was for Friday at 7am. At least they're unlikely to be running behind during the first slot of the day, I guess? It's funny because I also made a Walmart pickup order for when I get back to Virginia, and they were offering me same day pickup. It seems like they may be a little bit more back to normal than we are here. I may have to check and see if they have toilet paper and yeast and everything. That would be awesome.

#quarantine #dealing with big feelings #dementia #tw: dementia #tw: end of life

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joeys-piano · 5 years ago

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Header created by @ao3commentoftheday, in where both creators and fans can motivate and appreciate one another for their support, company, and gratitude~

In this Motivation Monday segment, I want to shout-out some peeps that have been motivating me a lot recently and for their endless excitement and support as I’m outlining quite a monster of a story^^ ~~~~~~~~

@feu-eau I’ve already told you this many times in the past, but I’ll keep saying it again because it’s always been true. You’re my favorite person to bounce ideas with, I feel comfortable sharing with you concepts or story directions that I’m planning behind the scenes, and our interesting talks throughout the day have inspired many genuine and very human moments that I’ve written or outlined into my works. Sometimes I like to joke that you’re my muse; but in light of very recent events, I can’t help but think that my little joke may actually be true~

A quality that I really admire and appreciate from you is that you’re able to take in some of the rawest, unedited ideas that run through my head and help me mold them from a simple iron ore into something fantastic, like a royally-engraved sword. Just as some of the strongest, most durable weapons are created from a mix of metals and materials, you’ve blended your thoughts and speculations with mine and a powerful story begins to unfold. Nowadays, whenever I’m working on my outline, I feel like I’m writing the story for both of us. There’s a little bit of me and you blended into the plot lines and it’s been amazing experience seeing it all come together.

Thank you so much for being my friend, Feu. In the nearly two years that we’ve corresponded with each other, I can safely say that my writing improvements can be attributed to all of our late-night conversations about characters, headcanons, meta, and crack ideas~!

@oscmudazai Pinch me softly if I’m wrong or if my memory is not as great as it used to be, but you were one of the first people I ever got to meet and interact with from the BSD fandom~ Although we haven’t spoken very much, I’ve enjoyed your company and getting to know more about the fandom when I didn’t know very much at all! I think my fondest memory that I have with you was the odazai week event that happened a few months ago, and that was the most fun fandom week I ever participated in. It was full of thrills, some heartache, but a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings that I’ll remember for a long time.

Coincidentally, you’ve inspired some of the biggest projects I did over the summer. From meticulously-detailed outlines to some of the strangest ideas that somehow work, you’ve indirectly laid out the breadcrumbs along the road and like a chicken, I dashed, nearly choked, and tripped over my own feet as I pecked at those crumbs. Something that’s been keeping me going in writing and I feel that you relate as well, judging from our most recent conversations, is that we’re both finding things that genuinely interest us and it’s that excitement that keeps us going and motivates us to work through the ideas that are flowing from our hands.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with, and I can’t wait to read some of the ideas that you’ve been brewing~!

@serenity-writer-goddess Out of all the people I’ve talked to and have shared story ideas with, it’s quite refreshing talking about the technical process and strategies with you^^ From outlining formats, to developing character/event arcs, to sharing minute or large changes as scenes are shuffled around, and getting into a little bit of the hardcore discussions around worldbuilding and of the alike have made our conversations pretty invaluable in my eyes.

I know you’ve helped me quite a bit in developing the pseudoscience in my wip and in finding easy, approachable ways to describe difficult and even challenging concepts that are present and prevalent throughout my story. And in much the same way, I think I was able to help you with your worldbuilding and in how to approach some emotionally-charged character arcs in a grounded, human way. It’s often when you work in fiction, you kind of forget how people act in certain situations and follow trends to how someone would act. But it’s especially in fiction, no matter what kind it is or how abstract it is from reality, there is a sense of reality that binds everything together. There is a distinct human-quality behind characters that can allow them to be more approachable or relatable to readers if you to decide to polish that quality and make it visible in a character’s lowest moments and/or in some of the highest moments throughout their arc.

Characters are not caricatures to an idea, but are merely characters inspired from an idea. It’s our goal, as writers, to make our characters more than just what they’re inspired from and to give them a quality that a reader could resonate to. Those are the thoughts that come to my mind in our interactions and writerly talks, and it’s these thoughts that are in the back of my mind as I’ve been working lately.

@schizoidwire From fandom talks to absurd incidents that have occurred in our daily lives, we have a broad and random package of things to talk about. I never know what our next conversation is going to be about, and it’s that pure randomness that makes me excited whenever I see a message from you~!

From Hannibal to Bungou Stray Dogs, you’re one of the few mutuals that I can talk to about a variety of shows and fandoms, and that has always been a plus in my book because it adds to the diversity of things that can be pulled from thin-air and spun into a conversation. Although most of the stuff we talk about doesn’t involve fandom and it’s mostly funny posts that float around on the dashboard, I think that’s one of the things I enjoy most about you. You’re a chill person to interact with and with that, I feel comfortable sharing some behind the scenes things about my projects~

@dreaming-of-butterflies Every now and then, I know you’re going to slap me over the head for spoiling things from my wip so that’s why I’m going to keep this response as spoiler-free as possible. No promises, though, for I am human and will inevitably slip up somewhere~! Rather purposely, but that’s beside the point

You are a true wildcard when it comes to sharing snippets or what happens in a story, that I often don’t die know if you’re going to scream at me for sharing something that I shouldn’t have, crying because I somehow broke your heart, or you going to give me this wide-eyed look of excitement and want to hear more. I never knows what’s going to happen, and I think that’s why I’ve kept you in the dark for a while because there are certain things that I can’t share with you, and there are certain things that I do want to share but have no idea how to approach it from a non-spoiler angle. So as I raise my metaphorical chalice into the air, I don’t give a damn and I’m going to spoil for you anyway.

There’s a certain book that’s referenced throughout the story that you may want to pay attention to. This book doesn’t exist in real life, so you don’t need to fret about avoiding its cover and title like the plague. But just keep in mind when that certain book is referenced and what scenes it’s referenced in. For you see, this book holds a lot of answers to questions that are made clear at the beginning of the fic. Although you’ll rarely read any passages from this book that doesn’t exist, it has a profound influence on the first third of the fic and on the characters that are associated with it.

#motivation monday #reader appreciation

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adambethyname-blog · 4 years ago

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Why “The Sopranos” Ending Was An Insult To Fans

Everyone is using the COVID-19 quarantine to get reacquainted with long-running television shows like “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” and most notably “The Sopranos.” Those who are diving into “The Sopranos” again are invariably forced to acknowledge how the show ended with its infuriating “cut-to-black” as Tony Soprano looked up from the diner table.

Some people said it was ingenious.

Some people said it was cruel.

I’m going to tell you why it was cowardly and quite frankly the biggest cop-out in television writing ever.

I won’t say it sucked or is “terrible/awful/horrible.” “The Sopranos” is like pizza: even when it’s crappy, it’s still pretty good (I’m talking to you “Christopher” episode). But the truth is David Chase punked out like a little bitch when he wrote the finale.

Let’s recap how the ending could have gone. There were honestly three possible endings that were plausible considering the show’s plot:

1. Tony dies somehow: Tony gets taken down in a blaze of glory or some mob hit where he’s covered in fake blood and left splattered all over the living room floor or something. This most certainly would have upset the fans who stuck with the Soprano family for 6 drawn out seasons.

2. Tony lives happily ever after somehow: Everyone is dead. “All his enemies are smoked” (to steal a line from Tony). And he goes home to his wife and empty nest. No one would have bought it because how many career criminals with Tony’s body count, not to mention the loose ends he left out there (Carlo comes to mind), walk scot-free and get to live life on their own terms? The FBI wasn’t just going to give up on him and say, “Welp, we tried.”

3. Tony goes to jail: Probably where I would have laid my bet early in season 6. There were too many LEOs in the mix and involved with the war between NY and New Jersey. Someone was going to slip up and roll on Tony. It had happened too many times already (Adrianna, Eugene, Big Pussy, Ray, Jimmy, Carlo). If Tony went to jail, I could see the masses screaming for a “well what happens when he gets OUT?” follow up.

I’m sure a creative mind can think of a lot more possible endings but these were the most likely scenarios. Yes, I’m aware, Tony could have been an alien from outer space or something so save it.

But rather than write a kick-ass episode that uses one of these three end points (all of which would have made perfect sense), David Chase decided to sell out the cast, crew and fans with this ridiculous “cut to black” gimmick. He figured out that if half the fans were going to hate whatever the ending was, he had to write something that incorporated all of the aforementioned finales simultaneously (insiders tell me the “Tony is an alien” finale was rejected early in the creative process, but this is unverified).

So Chase leaves the ending ambiguous, maybe he was shot and killed, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he lived, maybe he died. He came up with an ending that could theoretically please and annoy BOTH sides while giving the film school snobs something to embarrassingly read into and find ridiculous hidden meanings in. I can’t tell you all the dumb theories that come out of the spottily-bearded faces of millennial art grads.

It was an act of cowardice. You spend all these years creating this world of characters and you didn’t have the guts to end it properly. And for what? And why? Because you didn’t want to upset the other side in one capacity or another? A good, properly done ending would have united the Tony Lives/Tony Dies crowd if it was executed (heheh) well. But Chase tried to have it both ways and the result was infuriating. I guess he figured if he pissed everyone off equally, that, in and of itself, is a form of fan base unification.

Personally, the show could have ended at the end of the “Season 6a” (HBO split the final season into 2 halves like it was some Harry Potter movie). Phil was in the hospital. AJ had a girlfriend and a job, Meadow was in California with her boyfriend and Tony sat by the Christmas tree wearing that ridiculous beret that was a gift from Meadow. If anything that was the perfect metaphor for the previous 5 1/2 seasons : “Look at what a guy will do to appease his family.” It’s a thread that we were reminded of over and over again. Tony told Dr. Melfi in “Two Tonys” that what Tony Soprano does to feed his family shouldn’t be confused with Tony the Man as they’re two different people. It was touching to see Tony in his house at Christmas with both his “families.” No ambiguity. No wondering if the power went out. Personally, when I watch my DVDs, I stop right there.

But, alas, Chase chickened out and ended with the infamous cut to black. He’s slipped up and said that, yes, Tony was dead. But who really cares now? He danced around the answer for 17 years and now we’ve moved on. He ruined his own show with his indecisiveness.

#sopranos #hbo #hbogo #hbomax #new jersey #mafia #mob #soprano #tony soprano #carmella #meadow #aj #paulie #david chase #james gandolfini #edie falco #streaming

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elenatria · 7 years ago

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Idk why I don't like thor treating loki like trash. Unless it's a kink of loki's then who am I to kinkshame a god. But thor being unkind to loki and all that name calling is a put off for me. Like treating loki like he's not good enough to love. I like it better when they bicker. Or have consensual hardcore hate sex or thor reverently kisses loki from the tip of his nose to the tip of his toes. What say?

Hi, could you be more specific? Which name calling? You mean in “Ragnarok”, or in people’s fics/posts/headcanons? If you mean mine or other people’s posts, fics and headcanons please anon ask me again about it with details and totally ignore this post. I’ll put it under a cut because it might be off topic, it’s about Thor and Loki’s behaviour in the films.

As for unkind, that’s a looooooong discussion. If you’re interested in hearing Loki’s part in Thor’s behaviour and his responsibilities I can write an essay lol.

If you think Loki is 100% guiltless maybe this is not the post for you, so please don’t read on. You’ve been warned! (that goes to everyone who’s not into that kind of of stuff.)

First of all, I hate to have to compare the two and try to find out “who started it”, “whose fault is it”, or just say “but the other one is being mean too”. Thor is supposedly “the older brother” and “the hero” and for some reason we all expect him to tolerate Loki’s weaknesses (and Loki does have some). Because Thor is “the nice guy”.

Well he isn’t. Not anymore anyway.

Unfortunately that’s how it goes with Thor and Loki, it’s a “which came first the chicken or the egg” thing and it’s endless. Thor was an immature jerk in the first “Thor” so… for some people it was a “good thing that Loki prevented him from becoming king so early”.

Well that wasn’t Loki’s intention, was it? To “make Thor a better ruler”. It was an accident. Loki’s intention was to ruin his brother’s big day because he was jealous all along. What did Thor do to him to cause this jealousy? Well he was being Thor, the favoured son, and Loki was being Loki even BEFORE he knew he was adapted. There’s always rivalry between siblings so there goes the first argument. I’m happy knowing Loki is a trickster by nature and they’re both jerks and that’s that. Besides Loki said it himself, he didn’t want the throne, he wanted to be treated as an equal by their father. Was that Thor’s fault? Dunno. It sure had some grave repercussions on Thor: he lost his brother, literally and metaphorically.

Then we have New York. Some say it was Thanos’ and the Chitauri’s fault, Loki’s torture and the brainwashing. So Loki’s beautiful full-tilt diva act in Stuttgart was none of his doing? All that was just Thanos’ puppeteering? Loki had no involvement in it? How about his desire to be a god, a ruler, to be accepted, to conquer a world? Remember he doesn’t take for granted he’ll have a kingdom to rule (like Thor has Asgard) so he chooses Earth. His allies/tormentors helped him made that choice, but he still had a part in it.

Now see it from a New Yorker’s point of view. I imagine Marvel meant to show the whole New York battle as a kind of comfort for the New York people suffering 9/11. When it happened in 2001 no “New York” song would play on the radio and the Twin Towers were edited out of movies like Tobey Maguire’s “Spiderman”. It was a wound and it was massive and took ages to heal. Fast forward to 2012, 11 years after the attack on the Twin Towers and the wounds of the U.S. citizens were still fresh. So I can only imagine kids who weren’t around to witness 9/11 but heard it from their parents, or even the U.S. citizens themselves, felt some kind of gratification (if only a Hollywood-induced one) that… somewhere, somehow, in some parallel universe the war criminals who attacked their beautiful city, their home, got some kind of retribution: a nice beating from the Hulk, a muzzle and a golden cell in Asgard.

Imagine all those people, all those New Yorkers, represented by one person alone: Jane Foster. Now imagine the man who loves her, Thor, and how he felt about it. So now you understand Jane’s slapping. “That was for New York”? Better “That was for the Twin Towers, bitch.” I’m sure that’s how many people felt although I dislike Jane greatly and hated her slapping Loki because it was bad taste, it looked SO bad, so tacky, so… girly. A stupid butthurt bitchslap.

So when Thor goes to Loki’s cell and “doesn’t let Loki mourn their mother” it’s because he’s still pissed, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing, having his brother locked up. I didn’t like Thor telling Loki “yes I need your help but you’ll go back to your cell after that” but whatever. Thor is cruel sometimes, he’s not perfect.

As for “Ragnarok”, Thor has come to a point where he’s had enough of Loki’s bullshit. Loki has lied to him several times (sometimes for no apparent reason), he has mocked his feelings (”Did you mourn?”) and refuses to remember the past being all fun and games. Sure Thor loved spending that time with his brother but that’s not Loki’s past, that’s not how he remembers it. After doing Thor’s bidding and following his brother in any silly adventure he chose, Loki decided to leave his own mark in the world. It just wasn’t exactly the right path. He destroyed a whole city in the process.

Then of course he faked his own death and let Thor mourn him once more. He banished their father because yeah, he’s Loki, he’s a trickster. And as a ruler he “directed most of his energies into narcissistic self-glorification and not so much time on good governance” (Tom’s words at the SDCC panel).

Now let’s go to Thor’s unkindness and name calling in “Ragnarok”. Thor calling out Loki on his past deeds in that cell was long overdue imho. Thor is done crying for him, putting up with his whims, forgiving him, letting him off the hook. Because every time Thor did that Loki tricked or betrayed him. I cannot blame Loki for faking his death in “The Dark World”, after all this was the only way to escape Thor and that cell. But the rest is all on him I’m afraid. What do I blame? What Loki said, lack of communication between the brothers.

So far the only name-calling I’ve noticed from Thor’s part is him trying to lie about Bruce turning into the Hulk and saying to Valkyrie “There’s no beast, (Loki) is just being stupid”.

Again, I hope this wasn’t off topic. Feel free to ask me again with details!

#loki #thor #thorki #thunderfrost #new york #9/11 #thor ragnarok #the dark world #avengers #thanos #chitauri

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spectrumscribe · 8 years ago

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Your Heart’s Desire

a very late submission to tmntflashfic‘s valentine’s day prompt thing, since it got insanely long, and has to be broken up into parts.

Master Post of Chapters.

————————————————————————————- Chapter Five.

Casey slammed his bag down on the table, and slumped into his seat. His fellow arts student, directly across from him, raised her eyebrow.

“What crawled up your sorry ass and died?” She asked, eyes skimming over the dark circles under his eyes, and the scratches on his arms. “Or better question, what attacked your sorry ass?”

“I went from having one demon, to two demons, to three demons, all of them pissy little assholes-” Casey counted on his fingers quickly. “-in under, like, a week or two or some shit. I don’t even know anymore. Jesus.”

“You got another cat? Cats? Two new cats, plus the first one. Yikes.”

“Yeah. Sure. My cats.”

“Three cats is a lot of cats, Casey. Even for a currently single art student.”

Casey dug out his energy drink, cracked it open, and took a sip before answering. “You’re telling me.”

“So what happened to you last night? The cuts and shit. Your cats turn on you or something?”

“Or something.” Casey grumbled, nursing his drink. Caffeine. Sweet, sweet caffeine. “Two of them got chased off by the other one, and then showed up again in the middle of the night- not even after four AM, god- and proceeded to continue their piss fit in the middle of my living room, trash my kitchen and couch in the process, and bring my neighbor’s wrath down on all of us. Again.”

Two extraordinarily angry demons dropping out of thin air- right onto another demon, who’d finally gone to sleep maybe an hour ago- in the middle of the night hadn’t been fun. Casey had woken up to the loudest racket he’d heard in… probably a few hours. Maybe.

There’d been fire involved. There’d been purple electricity involved. And just for shits and giggles- knowing Mikey- there’d been balls of pure energy launched into the fray that left chunks missing from whatever they hit.

And then April had kicked down his door, broom and water gun in hand, and everything went straight to metaphorical hell.

Not literal hell, thank god, but they certainly were heading that direction for a while there.

Donnie had tried to kill Casey at least twice more. Maybe Mikey too. That being- Mikey maybe trying to kill Casey, and Donnie maybe trying to kill Mikey. At the same time. Casey hadn’t been able to tell for sure if Mikey actually tried to kill him or not, but he had a very deep suspicion of that one stray plasma shot.

April was the only reason anyone actually went to bed afterwards. Casey now had three new words to live by: Witches Kill Bitches. Yikes.

Casey took another long sip of his drink.

He’d gotten electrocuted, beaten, and just a tiny bit burned. Fun night. Maybe one of the wildest he’d had in a while.

Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

“Why don’t you just give two of the cats back? The first one sounded chill enough without the others.”

Casey laughed dryly. “Oh I wish. I really fucking wish.”

If April couldn’t chase the other two off- and damn if she hadn’t tried- then no one could.

Casey’s classmate shook her head sympathetically and despairingly. “Casey, I do not envy your life, nor do I understand it.”

Casey slumped over the table, balancing his already empty drink in his hand. “You and me both. God.”

april

APRIK ANSWER ME

fuck april*

CAPS LOCK STANDS THO

Casey for god’s sake

What is it?

It’s not even three AM yet why are you texting me

I JUST REALIZED RAPH MIGHT ACTUALLY KILL ME

…how is this news?

He threatened your life at least five times the first day you met.

YEAH BUT I JUST REMEMBERED THE SOUL THING

THE SOUL THIGN APRIJG

THESOULTHING

You’re worse than I am at three in the morning.

What ‘soul thing’, Casey.

THE SOUL THING ABOUT HOW IM SIGNING MY SOUL OVER TO HIM FOR WHATEVR STUPID CNTRACT I MADE AND HOW ILL DIE ASSOON AS HE TAKEE IT

Typos galore, and

Yikes.

THIS IS WHY IM SITTING IN MY EMPTY BATH TUB AT THREE AM IM GOING TO FUCING DIE

APRIL HELP IM FUCKED

I FUCKED MYSELF OVER RLLY BADLY THISTME

H E LP

And somehow, I’m betting you still find him ‘hot’.

YES THIS IS PART OF THE ‘FUCKED MYSELY OVER’ BIT

Oh Casey.

Casey, Casey, Casey.

How did you make it to adulthood? Really.

SHUTUP THATS NOT HELPGUL RIGHT NOW

APIL IM SCREAMING

SCREMAING AT THREE AM IN MY FUCKIG BATHTUB

FUCK MY FICKING LIFE OH MY GOD

Raph’s kept you alive this long, he probably won’t kill you.

I’m assuming, at least.

You’re very hard to keep alive, Casey. If he just went and killed you after all this, it’d be a waste of time and effort.

Of course I could be wrong and your demon call boy could just be insane.

SCREAMING APRL

SCRMMING IN A BATHTUB

NOT

HELPING

At this point, you may be beyond help.

Even mine.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ohshit i woke up don

fuc

fuckripme mikes awaketoo fukcv

apl make sure my funeral is a nece one I deserved better ing likfe than this

fkjgb;eiugb;bkbgfjnfgt

Casey?

Good grief. None of us are ever getting a full night’s rest ever again.

I’m getting my gun, Casey. I’ll be there right away.

I just need pants first.

In the end, Casey didn’t ask Raph about the soul thing. He was, in a word that he was never ever going to repeat to anyone, too chicken-shit to do it.

If Raph’s reply was “Yup. When we complete the contract and I take your soul- you die. Tough.” then Casey wasn’t sure how he’d handle that. Better to just avoid the whole awkward “will you kill me or not” conversation for now.

And besides, he didn’t really want to bring up the whole ‘ending the contract’ thing. If he did, that meant they’d have to start working on it again, and Casey… didn’t really want it to end. Not just yet.

He focused instead on surviving the transition into having Donnie as a member of their crowded household, and not dying in the process.

The lanky demon, dark as Raph but with way more hair and way less muscle, was a complete know-it-all. He took every chance he had to lord over Casey the fact that he was just some ‘ignorant human’, Donnie’s words not Casey’s.

He also took every chance he had to hint very unsubtly that Casey didn’t deserve Raph’s presence in his home, and Casey tried not to read deeper into that beyond speciest tendencies Donnie seemed to have.

Mostly though, as long as Donnie was preoccupied by the thick textbooks he kept getting from somewhere, or by Mikey or Raph, he didn’t give Casey much attention at all. Just lounged around Casey’s apartment building, and made snide comments at everyone.

It wasn’t intolerable, seeing as Donnie had gotten over his ‘murder the human’ phase pretty quick. Still annoying for Casey though, trying to make it through his own apartment, only to have a long tail trip him up, or a large wing snap out in his face. Casey retaliated with holy water mixed into Donnie’s food portions, smacking the demon’s protruding appendages with his hockey sticks, and sicking Raph on his brother when all else failed.

Or April, but watching the two of them stare one another down, broom and magic in hand, was a bit hard on Casey’s heart, so. Not so much that option. He liked his apartment intact, thank you.

So basically, Casey snapped at Donnie and Donnie snapped at him and they both threatened violence until someone pushed them apart. No blood was shed- no more than what was usual lately- and they somehow found a balance of mutual dislike.

In the end, neither of them liked one another, but Donnie had been very clear he wasn’t leaving until Raph did, and Casey had been very clear that he either shove it or shove off.

But no one was dead yet, so. Kudos to both of them.

Now Casey was dealing with a new problem, created another time over with the newest addition to his already too cramped home: feeding them all.

“Why do you guys have to eat so fucking much?” Casey grumbled, shoving the heavy grocery cart along. “God. This is more than I eat in a month.”

“I need power, because you’re a moron who can’t even remember why he summoned me,” Raph answered as he tossed yet another package of food into the cart. “And because Don and Mike are little shits who like to be as annoying as they can.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out,” Casey said sulkily. Accommodating three demons at once was a major hassle, especially when one was liable to set the neighborhood on fire for a laugh, and the other was still in the middle of a silent pissing contest with his neighboring witch. Oh the trials of adulthood. Casey felt like he deserved a vacation.

If it wasn’t for the insane load of cash Donnie had magicked up, Casey knew he would’ve hit broke by now. From where the cash had come from, Donnie wouldn’t say, but looking at all the zeroes in his account, Casey hadn’t felt like questioning its origins.

He had however, questioned why he wasn’t paying some price for the generous donation. Donnie had replied vaguely that his due was being covered by Raph, and then promptly fucked off into the open air; lifting off the ground with sweeps of his wings, and leaving Casey outside the supermarket without a real explanation.

Fucking demons.

Upside of things, Casey had gotten to send his dad and sister a good chunk of cash, and he didn’t have to worry about student loans anymore. Downside, his dad had texted to check if Casey had switched career choices to become a hitman and his sister had texted with the question if escort prices had suddenly gone up.

No faith from his family, honestly. Couldn’t he make money in a legal manner? Casey could totally make that much money if he tried.

Raph came back to the cart with an armful of hotdog and hamburger buns, and dumped them into the already very full cart.

“For the meat,” Raph explained shortly to Casey’s questioning look.

“What meat?” Casey asked.

Before Raph could answer, a shopping cart went racing past their aisle, and Casey caught a glimpse of Mikey riding it and what looked like majority of the raw meat section stacked in with him.

“That meat,” Raph said, pointing after his brother, and Casey could hear semi-maniacal laughter coming from that direction.

Casey sighed, and started to push their cart towards the direction Mikey had gone. “Guess we’re having a barbeque tonight, since no way this is all fitting in the fridge.”

Something crashed on the other side of the store, and Casey started pushing their cart a bit faster.

After they’d wrangled Mikey, magicked away the witnesses memory of the demon’s full-tilt crash into the flower stand, repaired said flower stand, and Donnie had at some point reappeared mysteriously out of thin air to snark at everyone- Casey managed to herd the three demons towards the check out with their purchases.

Again, he got his usual cashier, and the man gave Casey another look for his newest addition to their gaggle. Donnie admittedly stood out even more than Mikey did, in looks at least, being well over six feet. Mikey still had him beat in aura of crazy though.

In comparison to his siblings, one twitching constantly and the other giving everything a calculative and condescending look, Raph was practically normal seeming. Slightly below average height, and just a tinge of surliness to him.

And then Raph hiccupped a smoke ring, and the image was ruined.

Casey paid for their food, and didn’t give the cashier any explanation for his friend group.

Since Casey didn’t technically have a barbecue for barbecue, and neither did April, the task of cooking the meat got passed over to the walking fire pit. They also ended up relocating to the roof, after Raph set Casey’s ceiling on fire.

A pleasantly warm evening wind blew over the roof top, wafting the smell of cooking meat towards Casey. He glanced up to look at the other roof top occupants.

April had brought one of her folding chairs up with her, and was reading a book near her garden. The position was only semi-protective seeming, and everyone was giving her garden a wide birth.

Mikey was busy playing with a cat that’d appeared out of nowhere, despite Casey’s apartment building being pet free. Casey had started to question the cat earlier, but then he’d seen it had deep, bottomless black eyes, and had figured he’d leave well enough alone. At least it seemed more interested in rolling around on the roof with Mikey, rather than causing extra property damage like all the other demons in Casey’s life.

Donnie was the opposite of Mikey, completely lax and silent. He was laid out on a blanket that he’d probably stolen from Casey’s linen closet. Wings out and tail twitching, Donnie seemed intent on catching the last rays of the sun before it went down, slowly paging through yet another thick book he’d pulled out of nowhere. Eventually, he and April were probably going to bond like the condescending smarty-pants assholes they both were, and then everyone else was probably going to die.

Raph was rotating a couple dozen meat products in the air, flames licking around them in helix spirals. It smelt great, and Raph’s intent focus on keeping the food from burning gave Casey the chance to side-eye him a bit.

Admittedly, Casey might’ve been side-eyeing all the demon brothers, because shit- it wasn’t like they weren’t all relatively to very good looking. Even Mikey wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes, as unlikely as it was for Casey to ever risk going for him. Because he liked his extremities intact and not bitten off, and he totally still caught Mikey eyeing him like food sometimes.

Point being- Casey had a lot of very attractive men staying in his apartment at the moment, and wow was he very gay.

He tried to remind himself that A) two out of the three would probably kill him if they got the chance, and B) his focus was on Raph, as impossible to obtain as the demon likely was, and that he shouldn’t get distracted by the demon’s siblings.

And besides, he liked Raph the best anyways. Better personality, even if no one else would probably think that except for Casey.

Casey refocused on the sketchpad in his hands, and did his best to reroute his wandering thoughts. No gay thoughts for him, no siree. Not while he was in the presence of others.

He was in the middle of yet another sketch of a full demon form- this time Donnie’s, because the long swooping tail and wings were fun to draw. He was still trying to get the proper look down, since at the moment it looked too much like a regular dragon, and not a demon.

“Hey Raph,” Casey said, glancing up from his drawing again. “Quick question. How come you all look like dragons? Not very demony.”

“Because that’s what fits this era best,” Raph replied. Which made no sense.

“Elaborate a little more than that?”

Raph gave him a look, but answered anyways. “Our manifesting shapes change depending on the plain of existence we enter, and also with whatever the sentient population will fear best. In this era, it’s apparently big scaly lizards with wings. I’m not complaining, since it’s better than some we’ve gotten.”

“Dragons are cool shit though,” Casey said, twirling his pencil as he watched the meat in the air do the same. “They’re everywhere in media. Not exactly the boogieman.”

“Worked well enough on you,” Raph said, giving Casey a teasing smirk.

Casey scoffed. “Man, whatever. It was morning and I was hung over. ‘scuse me for not being able to keep my cool with a fucking demon in my house.”

Raph gave a warm laugh, and Casey found himself smiling just a tad wider than he usually would.

“Okay, I got another question then,” Casey said, leaning forwards on his crossed legs. “Which one of your ‘manifestations’ has been your favorite? You gotta have one, seein’ as you’re old as shit now.”

“Shut up, I’m young by demon standards,” Raph said, rolling his eyes. “And if you really wanna know, one of them was one I had just a couple hundred years ago. Not on this plain of existence, but it wasn’t too far off in similarity.”

“Yeah? What was it?”

“A turtle,” Raph said, and Casey couldn’t help the startled laugh that came out of him.

“What? No way. How is a turtle scary?” Casey asked in disbelieving amusement. “They’re like- tiny and cute and shit. Slow too.”

Raph shrugged, twirling his wrist so all the meat in the air would too. “I’d show you, but since I’m busy… hey Donnie!”

“What?” Donnie said in a tone that Casey recognized easily from his own sibling.

“Get over here; I want you to show Casey what the turtle manifestation looked like.”

“Ugh, no way. I’m busy right now,” Donnie said, giving them both a grumpy look.

Raph twirled a couple hotdogs threateningly towards Donnie. “Do it, or I use your horns as extra roasting sticks.”

“Raph- come on, don’t be a dick.”

“Don’t be a lazy shit.”

“Raph.”

“Donnie.”

“Fine,” Donnie grumbled, getting up if only because the hotdogs had been getting dangerously close to his seven inch horns.

Casey stood up too, officially and extremely intrigued about what would happen next. He wasn’t alone in that either, since April had set down her book to watch the rest of them, and Mikey and his weird cat had gone still.

Donnie steepled his fingers together, and closed his eyes. For a moment, nothing happened, but then a rune circle appeared under his feet. From the bright purple magic, a wall of water swirled up and around Donnie. The height of the airborne whirlpool grew, and Casey could see that something inside was growing with it.

Then, the water’s surface broke at the bottom, and receded upwards to reveal-

-a giant bipedal turtle.

Casey let out a shocked laugh, and couldn’t believe his eyes.

Donnie had gone from six something to twelve something, now with the addition of a shell, plastron, and dark green scales. A long staff was strapped to his back, held in place by royal purple sashes wrapped around Donnie’s chest and shell. The water receded to pool in the air above Donnie’s head, and it condescend into a sort of reflective disk. Casey mentally compared it to the halos he’d seen on angels in church murals.

Donnie reopened his eyes, which had remained luminous red through the transformation, and looked down Casey with a displeased look. Somehow, even with a beak like mouth, he managed to sneer at Casey.

“Ta da,” Donnie said, giving a half-assed jazz hands. “One turtle reporting for duty. Can I change back now? This itches.”

Casey noted that instead of discordant and harsh, the demon’s words were actually close to lyrical sounding in this form.

“Why’s it itch?” Casey asked, secretly hoping to prolong things so he could memorize the finer details of this form. Shit, this would look amazing in watercolors.

“Because it’s not the right one for this world,” Donnie said in a deeply annoyed tone. “It’s wrong and it feels a bit like wearing a winter coat in summer, I guess.”

“Oh. Neat.” Casey replied vaguely, still busy memorizing.

“You know,” April spoke up. “I wonder if anyone can see the shit you guys do on this roof. I don’t know about you, but it would be weird to see a giant bipedal turtle on my roof if I didn’t know better.”

“I have spells that erase memories of events like this,” Donnie replied smoothly, with only a hint of ‘duh’ in his tone.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure Raph doesn’t, because yesterday a guy at the coffee shop down the way said he saw a really weird ass bird in the sky. About the size of a mini-van? Pointy horns too.”

Everyone looked at Raph, who looked a little embarrassed.

“Raph.” Donnie said in a disapproving tone.

“Sometimes I forget to turn them on, okay?” Raph defended.

“I can’t believe you.”

“Shut up! Do you want dinner or not?”

“I do! We do!” Mikey interjected, waving his cat around in the air like something out of the Lion King. The cat made a long warbling meow, and Casey’s felt goosebumps prickle on his skin.

While the others were distracted, he took the chance to pick up his sketchbook and start a rapid gesture drawing of Donnie. Maybe later, he could get Raph do switch forms too, and draw him as well.

So while Casey hurriedly drew, Donnie got pelted by hotdogs as he kept berating Raph for his carelessness, said hotdogs quickly snatched out of the air by Mikey and his cat and devoured, and April calmly watched the whole show from over the top of her novel.

All in all, a pretty normal evening for them lately.

Casey was about done with being assaulted by demons.

Example: being stalked on the way home from campus, and feeling increasingly evil vibes being aimed at the back of his head.

The first afternoon in days that didn`t involve one or more of his mostly unwanted house guests tagging along- and this happens.

Casey risked a glance over his shoulder.

The man, concealed by his loose black hoodie and blue ball cap, was still following him. He seemed normal enough from first glance, no tail or horns or anything in plain sight, but Casey also knew better by now than to be fooled by that.

Casey thought he saw a flash of icy blue eyes from under the hat brim, and he whipped his eyes back to the sidewalk in front of him.

He was at least a half hour’s walk from his apartment still, and the bus wouldn’t save him now.

Why didn’t demons have cell phones? Raph could probably destroy a small city on his lonesome, but he didn’t have a god damn cell phone.

Casey tugged out his phone, trying to casually speed up his walking as he did.

april help im being stalked by one of raphs crazy relatives pls send help rn

A cold shudder went through Casey, and he knew the guy following him had gotten closer again. On and off as he’d been walking the last five minutes, every time Casey looked back, the guy got closer.

Fear sweat prickled the back of his neck, and Casey swallowed.

He didn’t have a handy bat or hockey stick, and he didn’t have a demon protecting him either. Unless someone got here quickly, he was probably going to end up demon food.

Pretty sick way to go, all things considering, but he’d rather not die on this particular day.

“Respond,” Casey muttered. “Please, god- April, respond already.”

Casey felt a rush of air go past him, and it felt way too fucking cold for this time of year. Something not actually there tried to climb up his spine, and Casey shuddered all the way down to his soul.

He typed an all caps message of ‘HOLY FUCK APRIL IM SERIOUS PLS RESPOND RN’ and started walking even faster.

Wow this was not how he wanted to die right now. Maybe later, maybe a few years down the line, but not right fucking now.

His phone chimed, and Casey gasped out a choked laugh.

Raph’s on his way. ETA should be less than a minute.

Why can’t our lives be normal anymore.

BESNIDELATERIMGONNADIE

What else is new?

Casey would have replied again, but a violent shudder went through him as an ice cold feeling gripped his body. He didn’t want to turn around, really, he didn’t- but he did anyways.

Raph’s brother- probably the elusive Leo- stared Casey dead in the eye, from just a block away. Navy blue eyes froze Casey to his core, and he felt like he was suddenly breathing sub-zero air.

Leo opened his mouth, and something reverberated through the air. The other humans walking down the street around Casey stumbled, and Casey’s knees came close to buckling. He only barely recovered enough to keep standing.

Welp. Time to start running.

Casey bolted fast as he could, and he cursed Raph for bringing this kind of insanity into his life.

Casey might’ve been slacking on his exercise lately- too much demonic influence in his life to even remember- but he could still sprint like the wind. He’d never quite grown out of the skinniness from his teenage years, and he counted his blessing that he hadn’t packed on muscle like he’d hoped he would. Wind whistled past him as he ran, and Casey felt caught between sheer terror and utter excitement.

Nothing like running for your life to kick the old adrenaline into gear.

Casey risked a partial glance over his shoulder, and regretted it as caught sight of Leo still hot on his tail. The demon wasn’t even running, he was just walking- and yet, he was still only a block behind Casey.

Fucking demons. Fucking demon magic. Fucking life.

Casey pushed himself to run faster, and prayed he wouldn’t land on his knee wrong and wipe out. He’d be screwed if he did.

He yelped as the sidewalk ahead of him was suddenly coated in ice, and he had to stop short before he hit it. Casey turned to the left, and darted across the street. A lone car honked at him as he ran, and for a second, the accident that’d fucked his knee over flashed across his eyes.

Then it was gone, and his feet hit the sidewalk across the street. He kept running, lungs heaving as he attempted to give Raph time to show the fuck up and save his ass.

Casey had to change directions again though, as the sidewalk again was covered in ice. This time with jagged points aimed directly at Casey, ones that would impale him clear through if he fell on them.

Casey dodged away from them, and found himself in an alley. An alley with a dead end.

Shit. Clichés. He hated clichés.

Casey whirled to run back out, and found Leo blocking the way. Casey retreated further into the alley, and raised his hands to the calmly advancing demon.

“Okay, so, I dunno if the other two have told you this yet-” Casey swallowed, trying for bravado instead of nervousness. “-but I’m officially off the menu. Just ask Raph, he’ll vouch for me.”

Leo didn’t pay his words any mind, and the air around Casey suddenly went freezing. With a wave of his hand, encircled by blue runes, Leo sent the alley into the deep freeze.

Casey’s airways went dry from the sudden drop, and he glanced around in panic. The walls of the alley were quickly being covered in ice, sharp points growing from both sides like jagged teeth. Casey’s shoes skidded momentarily, as the ice spread across the ground as well.

“I’m serious, Leo,” Casey said, trying to get the demon’s attention by saying his name. “Raph and me are cool. So if you could, like, be a little less literal with the chill, he’ll be here any second now to explain the shit that’s been going on-”

Leo remained quiet, but shut Casey up with a harsh gust of ice wind. Casey inhaled sharply, and coughed at the sheer coldness. It spread through him, and he coughed harder as he struggled to breathe.

Then-

He realized he couldn’t move his feet.

Casey made the mistake of glancing down, and saw that his feet were encased in ice. Ice that was steadily climbing up his legs, and locking him in place.

The dark ice moved quickly, spreading up Casey’s body almost faster than he could register what was happening. It covered his legs, and then spread to his torso, and Casey couldn’t breathe, ice filling his lungs and chilling him through.

His eyes clouded with tears, as ice wind kept whipping around him. He was half blind, more than half frozen, and came to the conclusion he probably was going to die.

He managed one last cough, before the ice spread to his neck, and froze his lungs in place. He felt the ice spreading down his arms, and Casey couldn’t think it was so cold. Everything was burning, the freezing prison wrapping itself around every piece of his body.

Casey felt the ice creep onto his face, his vision blurring as it did, and he couldn’t fight it at all.

The ice covered his nose, and spread over his eyes and head, and then Casey was trapped in the dark. His eyes frozen shut and his lungs frozen in place.

Then-

Something flared, hot and burning, on his chest-

And the ice shattered around his face, around his chest, and Casey could breathe again.

He blinked rapidly, sucking in as much air as he could, and tried to clear the clinging ice crystals to his face. Everything hurt, his hands and feet and legs and every bit of skin on him- they felt like they were still encased in ice. Cold enough that the warmer air was making them burn.

Casey saw something red flicker on his chest again, but he couldn’t see well enough to recognize what it was.

He spotted Leo, who’s calm, blank expression had broken. He was staring at Casey in shock, visibly confused as to why Casey wasn’t a human popsicle.

Then Raph fell out of the sky, right onto Leo, and threw his brother across the alleyway. Casey managed a short laugh at the sudden shift in mood, Leo looking utterly confused and offended by the turn of events, and Raph looking like he wanted to set everything and Leo on fire, the both of them yelling at one another in increasing volumes-

And then Casey’s vision went black, and he felt himself hit the ground.

next part.

#Your Heart's Desire tag #my writing #lmao casey's life is not easy at all #how he suffers #Casey Jones #April O'neil #Donatello #michelangelo #raphael #rasey #*shimmies*#love them cliffhangers #also #nearly all the sibs are together now and we're about halfway done go me #and yet #they still have not kissed #we have to fix that lmao

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