#sometimes you get a writing idea so viciously it feels like getting struck by a bolt of lightning

[starstruckodysseys]

knock knock did someone say summer camp carshall? no? too bad i’m writing it anyway

[vvitchering]

32. “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.” for bobadin?

This is my first time writing for this ship and my second time writing Boba so I am FEAR (TM) but I think I actually like the way this came out?????

~ It’s been a month and a half since the beroya had come to stay at the palace. Six since the loss of his child and his creed. Boba doesn’t like to think about what Din had been doing to himself in the time between handing his son over to the jetii and when Boba had finally managed to track him down halfway across the galaxy. He hadn’t known Din long at that point, but anyone could have seen the defeat and hopelessness in his posture and demeanor. 

If Boba had taken any longer to find him, he isn’t sure there would have been much left to find.

Given purpose once again as a hunter and personal guard for the usurper king of Tattooine, Din is flourishing. Now, Boba counts on him almost as much as he does on Shand. She may be his right hand, but Din is as close to clan, aliit, as either of them are going to get and that means something to Boba. They’re both orphans, survivors from a scattered culture; and in every word of mando’a they speak to each other, every nostalgic smile, every instance of innate understanding, they grow a little closer. 

Things have been going well, possibly too well, suspiciously well. So while it isn’t a complete shock when Din begins to pull away again, it still hurts. They haven’t shared a meal in days. The mats laid out for combat practice have gone unused. Din hovers at the edge of Boba’s vision when he absolutely must make an appearance and he all but evaporates like a desert breeze the second he’s no longer needed. 

Din begins to stay out on hunts for longer stretches of time. He reports the relevant details on his return and disappears again until he’s summoned. His absence burns like acid but Boba tries to give him his space. He doesn’t know what he’s done to offend the man, but it’s clear there’s been a shift in their relationship and if he doesn’t want to lose the wayward beroya yet again, he’s going to have to do something soon.

He gets his chance one afternoon after he’s yelled at his court to disperse and he’s made his way to the chambers they use for exercise and weapon storage. Din is already there, moving through his forms, beskar spear in hand. His movements grow stiff and unnatural the moment he realizes he has company and Boba feels the last of his restraint snap.

“Do you have some issue with me all of a sudden?” he asks. Din flinches like he’s been struck. 

“Have I offended you in some way? Made you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome?”

Din fidgets with the spear and shifts his weight from foot to foot as if he’s debating making a break for it. Boba frowns. He’s never pressured Din to go helmetless, he knows he finds a certain kind of comfort and familiarity in keeping that part of himself intact, but he finds himself wishing for the umpteenth time that Din trusted him enough to remove it in his company. 

Right now, it feels like just another impenetrable barrier between them.

“No, it’s not that.” Din finally responds, tilting his head as he speaks in that curious way of his.

Boba moves closer, motioning for Din to continue. They’re having this discussion, no matter how much Din looks like he’d rather take off running. Whatever he’s hiding, it’s hurting them both and Boba can’t, won’t, stand for it any longer. He’s come to value Din’s companionship in a way he’s quickly realizing is frighteningly irreplaceable. The thought of losing it permanently sends cold shivers up and down his spine in a way nothing else ever has. 

Boba sets his jaw. Despite the avoidance techniques Din has been favoring lately, he is still Mandalorian, as is Boba. They will clean the air as their kind have done for centuries. 

Boba lunges. 

The attack catches Din completely off guard and they fall to the mat covered floor with a muffled clatter. Din loses his grip on the spear and it rolls away out of his reach. He struggles under Boba’s weight in a weak attempt to avoid being pinned down, but Boba has him just where he wants him. He leans almost his full weight onto Din’s chest, keeping him down, and presses his forearm into Din’s throat. He takes care not to press too hard; he wants to subdue and restrain, not hurt. 

Din inhales raggedly but goes obligingly limp, unwilling to fight back. It’s like the fire that they’ve both worked so hard to kindle has left him again. Cold fear zings through Boba, mingling with the adrenaline from their short lived tussle and he feels sick to his stomach as he realizes this might be the last time he’s allowed this close to Din. 

“Tell me. Please.” He begs. And it is begging. How far the mighty Boba Fett has fallen, pleading with a no-name beroya from some backwater covert for forgiveness for some unknown slight. He’d fall even further if it meant he could keep Din by his side just a little longer. 

He can’t see Din’s eyes behind the dark of his visor, but he can feel the strength of his gaze. He can feel him tense again beneath him as he registers Boba’s pathetic pleading. There’s a moment of complete stillness before the world tilts and Boba gasps for breath as Din manages to swap their positions and slams him into the ground. It’s not gentle. There’s force in his movements, real intent, and Boba would sigh in relief if he hadn’t just had the air mercilessly knocked from his lungs.

“I have lost everything in my life that mattered to me,” Din begins, and his normally calm voice is edged in steel. “My home. My family, twice over. Everything I had left fit inside a storage locker in my ship and that’s gone, too.” 

“You’re not the only one who’s lost things, Din.” Boba reminds him gently.

Din laughs miserably. He’s shaking slightly, Boba can feel the tremors where Din is pressed against him. 

“Sometimes I think I’m cursed.” Din says quietly. “I never get to keep anything important. My creed, my ship, the kid, everything I loved...” He trails off, viciously biting off what sounds like the beginning of a sob.

Din’s hold on Boba loosens significantly as he falls apart and Boba takes the opportunity to grasp at Din’s wrists, gripping them lightly but securely. He’s not great with words and even less so with comfort, but he can do this at least. He can anchor Din, help him weather the storm he’s fighting through, and see him safely back to shore.

“I pulled away because I thought if I ended this myself before it turned into anything it might hurt less than waiting for something to come along and end it for me. Cut something out of my life on my own terms for once, you know? Couldn’t do it, though.”

“Din--”

“Ne’johaa, I’m not finished.”

Boba swallows his interruption and stares up at Din pointedly. 

Go on. Get to the point of all this. 

Din takes a measured breath and then lets it go. 

“I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified. I don’t want you to be another thing I lose. I won’t survive it. Not again.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

“Is that all...Boba--”

“Now it’s your turn to shut up. C’mere.”

Boba shifts his grip to hold Din by the forearm with one hand while the other slides up over Din’s shoulder to pull him down by neck. Their helmets clink together at their foreheads and the sound echoes through the chamber. Din makes a short shocked sound and throws his free hand down beside Boba’s head to support himself but makes no attempt to pull away. 

“I’ve lived through far more than my fair share of hardship in this life. You don’t get to look like I do without having survived some absolute shit situations.”

They’re separated by the metal of their helmets, but Boba would swear he can feel Din’s warmth seeping through.

“If this is something you want to pursue,” he continues, “I’m amenable to that. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere any time soon, verd’ika.”  

Din makes a strange wheezing noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh and sniffs loudly before collapsing slowly on top of Boba in an exhausted but relieved heap. 

“Not that I’m not enjoying you sprawled out on top of me like this, but do you think we could relocate to a more comfortable surface? A training mat isn’t exactly an ideal place for a cuddle.” 

“Trying to get me into bed already? You’re shameless.” Din laughs, clear and true, and it’s the sweetest sound Boba has heard in a long time.

--

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, do a writer a favor and reblog! Likes are nice, but they don’t get this story out there for more people to see. I’m also toying with the idea of putting this one up on my ao3. Thoughts?

mando’a words beroya - hunter Ne’johaa - shut up verd’ika - literally “little soldier”, used here as an affectionately insulting term of endearment as its usually used for little kids

(I really like Mando’a as a language, I think its fascinating, and writing a ship that consists of two Mandalorians gives me the perfect excuse to WAY over use it because I barely ever get to. I apologize for NOTHING. I wasn’t expecting this to be so long. I’m fully planning on coming back to this when I have fresh eyes and revising and editing some parts where the pacing feels a little off!)

[lemonietrinket]

Love ||| Wayv x Reader

Summary: Everyone needs to be taken care of sometimes, no matter how strong they are. And so when you come home from an awful day in the outside world, you are blessed to have several people come and pick you up again, setting you back on your feet. Though, not everything is as a clear cut as you perhaps once thought.

Genre: Angst, but then lots of Fluff to make up for it!! and Humour too bc i think im funny

Warning(s): Detailed description of big crying, no mention of reasons why, just left as a very bad day; single sentence description of a mild bruise; a bit of arguing but it’s mild and there as so to highlight something

Word Count: 20,314 jesus christ

Theme Song: The Flower (feat. Maximilian Hecker) - Leo; Heart Flutter - W24; Only Love Can Hurt Like This - Paloma Faith 

AN: original was a request from @idont-knowapil. I hope yall enjoy the rewrite. It’s pretty different in some places, but now there’s actually a lot of foundations for what is to come. Fem!Reader 

 ~~~

It had taken all of your strength to not cry on the way home on the bus. There were too many people around for you to let the tears fall, but you’d bitten your lip so hard it bled and had held your breath until you were heaving, for it to all prove to be little use.

You tried your best, turning your head into the glass and staring into the darkness outside, praying that no one turned to look back at you or your reflection.

As soon as you got off at your stop, unable to utter a ‘thank you’ to the driver which made you feel even worse (if that were even possible) your defences began to break down. 

Tears streamed down your face in the frozen evening air, merging with the rain and slipping between your trembling lips, the salt tingling on the tip of your tongue. Your nose ran viciously because of the wind, which also mussed up your hair causing you even more frustration as you tried to hold it out of your face, only for it to cover eyes uncomfortably again.

Your voice seeped into your breath as you tried to remain silent, strained whines at the effort it took to not openly weep as you needed to, whilst you prayed endlessly that no one would pass you by on the street and see the mess you were in.

Fumbling with your keys, just inches from being inside and away from the world, almost sent you over the edge. The key had got caught in one of the keyrings and with your shivering fingers and blurry vision, it seemed the world was kicking you while you were down. 

A cry rose in your throat, and you forced it down as best you could, until finally you crashed into the house, bags toppled by the oven across the room. You were home at last. Slamming the backdoor behind you with a strength you didn’t realise you had left, you took merely a single step inside before you tripped over an abandoned pair of shoes and fell to the floor with a thud and a sob so hard no noise came from your body. 

Today was not your day.

Your chest constricted upon itself, ribs very nearly bruising your lungs and heart, until you finally caught some air and howled.

You were ashamed of how you must have looked, sprawled on the kitchen floor, weeping hysterically, no doubt with a muddied coat and a bruised knee and hands pressed into wet footprints upon the linoleum floor. 

If you’d been told to write the worst day you could have, today took that itinerary and then dragged it through hell. 

You didn’t have the energy to stand, even if the puddles from outside that your shoes had dragged inside were being soaked up by your socks, unrolled at your heels and stained from their pristine white. Lethargically, you began to lift yourself out of the doorway as best you could, and to your feet. Your success was tainted however as you accidentally knocked your elbow against the counter ledge, and fresh tears immediately sprung to your eyes. It was the final straw for you, as you leant over the countertop and wept. Your fingers gripped the wood roughly, your forehead coming to rest against the cupboard as ‘what if’s swirled around your head. What if you’d been more polite to her. What if you’d done your printing the day before. What if you’d taken your lunch break elsewhere.

You knew rationally that nothing was your fault, but the rational part of your brain was far surpassed by raw emotion of emptiness that the uncaring world had showed you that day. 

Your ears just about caught the footsteps outside before the door opened. When it did, you flicked your head towards the man out of reflex, your muscles tensed and breath shallowed.

“Y/N?”

The door closed, and the man came to a stop a few feet from you. The light flickered on suddenly—you hadn’t noticed his hand reach to the corner and turn on the switch—and the two of you suddenly reached a realisation as quickly as you were bathed in light.

It was Kun, a sight that you unfortunately greeted with creased features and tear-stricken face.

He responded to yours with a sharp inhale. His voice was hushed and filled with concern however, as he shrugged off his bag and immediately made the rest of the way to you, “Y/N…”

The man’s palms hovered beside you, unsure of what the situation was and what to do about it.

You opened your mouth to speak, but a broken cry was the only sound you could make.

“Y/N, are you ok?” he exclaimed, lightly brushing the hair from your face to try and understand what was wrong. “What’s wrong love? P-please, I don’t…” 

At the first touch of his fingertips against your damp cheeks, you shook your head, instead slumping into his chest. You clung to him, fear gone as you cried openly into his jumper, speckled with rain. Kun was very nearly speechless, his hands eventually settling upon your back. Though of course you were still in your coat and the weather had left it sodden.

“Oh, love, oh…” he trailed off, unable to find the words. Seeing you like this hurt him beyond explanation, and he had no idea how he could even convey what he needed to do. Slipping off his shoes as quickly as he could and discarding them by the door, he reached his arms between you. “Come on, love, let’s get you out of this coat. You’ll catch a cold.”

A pang of hurt struck your heart briefly as he somewhat unceremoniously pushed you off him, but before you could begin to wallow again he’d slipped the coat off your shoulders and hooked it by the door, speaking once again, “You can get your shoes, right?”

You nodded sullenly, reaching down to undo your laces, meanwhile Kun rested his hand upon your back to hold you steady. His touch was surprisingly warm for someone who had only just come inside from the cold, however the chill of the room was creeping into your bones as your shirt provided you little warmth in the barely-heated house.

One shoe was off without a problem, however as you lifted your leg to take off the other, a twinge of pain ricocheted through your knee. You had clearly fallen harder than you had first imagined.

“Love? Did you hurt yourself?” he enquired, as his mind finally connected the dots as to what had happened, roughly. 

“I…” you began, swallowing thickly, before you realised you didn’t exactly have enough energy to finish what you had started. 

“It’s alright, I’ve got it.” And without hesitation, Kun crouched down to remove the shoe for you. 

You felt pathetic to say the least. Like a child who had thrown a tantrum but had a parent who spoiled her nonetheless. You’d only hurt your knee, too. How could you possibly need someone else to remove your own shoe?

Truth be told, Kun felt like he wasn’t doing anywhere near enough, and had leapt at the chance to help you in absolutely any way possible. 

Besides, before you could really do anything about it he’d placed your shoes neatly on the rack and returned to your side. “Alright, you’re good to walk?”

You nodded after a moment of hesitation, making his concern worsen. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Your voice was shaky, but possessed enough certainty to convince him at least.

“Ok, that’s good. Where does it hurt?” 

“Just… my knee…”

“Cut? Bruise?” His eyes dropped down instinctively to check, to only find a few muddy splotches upon your trousers.

You sighed, trying to work up the effort to explain. “I o-only tripped… hit it on the… the floor—stupid shoes.”

He was mildly startled by the sudden venom in your voice, glancing back to try and see whose shoes it had been. A wave of panic rushed to his chest as he spotted his overturned shoes in the middle of the doorway.

“Love… I’m so sorry, they’re mine. They must have fallen, I’m sorry—” 

Your heart crashed to the pit of your stomach as you heard his words, and suddenly you felt terrible for even speaking. 

“I-I’m sorry, I’m ok, it’s ok, I’m not mad, it—it…” Your teeth sank into your lip as you desperately tried to quell the overwhelming urge to cry again.

“Hey, it’s alright! I…” Kun’s eyes flew wide open as he attempted to ease the situation. He quickly changed tact. “Love, why don’t you go get changed? You’ll get cold otherwise. I’ll get an ice pack for your knee, and everything will be alright… yeah?”

You swallowed, mouthing a ‘thank you’ that you had intended to give a voice to, but it did not come. Deciding he had the right idea as you shivered, you edged your way out of the kitchen and up the stairs to your room, clutching to the banister as you went. 

.

.

.

Stumbling into your bedroom, you set yourself down on your bed with a sigh, disgruntledly throwing some the clothes you’d discarded on the covers that morning out of the way onto the floor beside the end of your bed. 

You haphazardly removed your clothes, your elbow crying out in pain now too as you stretched a bit too far, leading you to whimper. Even after changing into a warmer set of pyjamas, you remained cold.

As you began to shift your legs to attempt to remove your dirty socks, Kun knocked on the door.

You really wanted to reply with a ���come in’, but all that really came out was an awkward hum.

He got the message however, slipping his body through a tiny crack in the door as if he didn’t want to disturb the room. He’d put himself into a more comfortable hoodie to keep himself warm before he’d come to you, a pack of cold peas in his hand.

“Honestly, you’d think we’d have specific ice packs in this household but, no,” he chuckled sheepishly, “all we have is cold peas. For some reason. Who here even likes peas?”

Had you been bright as you normally were you would have pressed the charge, accusing him of being the pea lover, since he was the dad of the house, obviously. You lamented the fact that you weren’t able to really muster even the melancholic humour it at the very least required.

In the period of time you’d been zoned out, the man was by your side, eyes searching your face. “Are you sure you’re doing fine?” He handed you the peas as you nodded slowly, accepting them with an empty face.

While you grimaced, feeling the ice cut deep into your bones, Kun found himself unable to watch, turning his attention elsewhere. He couldn’t help but note that whenever the slightest bit of pain touched you, whether it was physical or emotional, he couldn’t stand it. It was as if his entire chest contorted into a cage, the bones of his ribs becoming iron bars and just… crushing.

He found himself scooping up your dishevelled clothes from the floor and folding them neatly, before stacking them on your desk chair. Except the dirty ones, he’d looped those over his arm. 

“Hey, I’ll just go put these in the wash real quick, ok?” His eyes carefully moved to look over to you again. He found your own gazing at the trousers upon his arm, glistening.

Before he could mention any comfort, they’d slipped to the pitiful state of your socks, as you choked an apology. It seemed so irrational to you to get so upset about socks, but they had been so clean and you’d just messed them up and you couldn’t help but blame yourself. 

Kun however wasn’t letting you descend again.

He came to your side, shushing you gently. His fingers reached your head, stroking your hair with a gentle care you’d never felt from him before. “Love, sweetheart, it’s ok! It’s ok, it’s not your fault.”

He cursed himself in his head. If it was anyone’s fault in this scenario, it was his. He didn’t want to upset you further by mentioning that though, and so managed to keep it to himself. 

“Let's just get you out of these, so they can be washed and all clean again, yeah?” He gave you a reassuring squeeze on your shoulder. “Do you need any help?”

You really didn’t want to accept that you did. To try and prove that, you slipped your left sock off with an issue, to which Kun took off your hands swiftly and added to his looped pile. However, even with the added angles from your bed, the makeshift ice pack prevented you from really removing the second one without pain.

Kun wordlessly took to his knees so he could help. 

His kindness was tugging at your heart, smashing it to pieces in your vulnerable state, only to pull it all back together again. You didn’t feel worthy of his care, but on the other hand all you wanted was him to stay and never leave you.

In seconds the sock was gone and your foot cool. You expected him to stand again, but he remained on the carpet.

You peered down at him. “K-Kun?”

He was looking at the peas. “Love, can I see your knee?” He glanced upwards, soft eyes meeting your own for a brief moment before slipping away. “I just want to make sure it’s not too bad.”

Lifting the ice pack away from your knee cautiously, you helped him ease the cloth of your pyjamas up over your knee. 

He hissed at the sight of the bruise you found there, as if the pain were his own. “Oh, love that looks painful.”

“D-does it?” The sight of the pinkish circle only startled you in the sense that it didn’t look that bad. 

“It must hurt a lot,” he reiterated, “be careful around it. Don’t want you getting hurt more.”

“Oh… ok…” 

The rough pads of his fingers left your skin, as you shifted the cloth back over your leg, all while goosebumps began to speckle across your arms.

Kun noticed immediately, eyes darting around the room as he got to his feet. Eventually he settled on the blanket balled up somewhat at the foot of your bed. Unravelling it, he brandished it around you like a cape, before wrapping you up in it.

“There.” He seemed pretty proud of his work, a smile finally adorning his handsome features. “Feel a little more comfortable?” 

You pulled your eyes up to meet his gaze, and attempted to give a smile. It didn’t work. You settled on another nod.

“Well, that’s a success.” He laughed softly. You always liked the sound of his happiness, he always sounded so warm. “I’m going to head back downstairs, you want to come or stay up here?”

“I’ll…” you took a deep breath, “I’ll come.”

“Yeah? Great!” Your answer made his face light up even further, eyes actually turning into beautiful crescents. His sudden excitement reflected in his actions too, as he outstretched his hand to you, to help you up.

You took it as quickly as you could manage for how tired you still were, and the thought of how nice it felt to be holding his hand crossed your mind without a single hindrance. In fact it worried you, for reasons you were too exhausted to try and determine. And so you decided to drop it, fast. 

It was surely nothing after all. 

.

.

.

After leading you downstairs in a comfortable silence, you were eventually on the centre of the sofa, all the remotes beside you, with Kun by the entrance to the kitchen.

 “I’ll make you some food? Ramyun will be good right?” he hesitated, feeling the corners of his lips twitch at the sight of you, encompassed by the blanket like a burrito. It wasn’t fair how adorable you were.  “Or grab you some more blankets, anything you need.”

You hummed sadly, trying to draw your lips together to speak.

“Yes, love?”

He was so patient.

“I…” you swallowed, hands tiredly lifting away from your body and towards him, as outstretched as you could manage, “can I have… have a… hug? Please…?”

His features softened even further, if that were even possible, his eyes regarding you carefully as his lips curled into a smile.

Before he could answer—and make no joke, his answer would have been to take a seat beside you and instantly take you into his arms—there was a clatter, as the back door opened. Several voices swarmed over one another, littered with giggles and whoops as they bickered in the falling darkness.

Kun’s head turned to the kitchen, and he nodded as he saw what you presumed was the face of one of the members through the doorway. “I think you can get a really big one, now,” he remarked, a tinge of sadness in his voice.

Not quite understanding the situation, you merely pouted, feeling the burn in your heart. 

Kun was extremely aware of how your face fell so drastically “I can’t leave them in charge of cooking can I?” Kun explained with a chuckle, worry tinging his voice. “Please don’t be sad, love. I-I’ll hug you later I promise.”

“Promise?” you asserted.

“With my whole heart.”

His words threw your own through a loop. 

Kun meanwhile called out to the others, “Welcome home! You’re late, but I’ll let it slide if you come here and help me.”

There were a couple of confused ‘eh’s until a few familiar faces came into the room, shrugging off their coats. 

You almost broke into fresh tears as you saw Xuxi’s bright, sunny smile drop from his face when he laid eyes on you.

“Y/N?!” he exclaimed, glancing at Kun for an explanation.

At the sound of his deep-set shout, Sicheng leant out from behind the giant puppy’s shoulders to see what Xuxi was so upset about.

He too went from quietly happy to extremely concerned at the sight of your reddened cheeks.

You quickly became very embarrassed. You hadn’t been cute crying, exactly, and you figured you still looked like a dazed, tear-stained mess. 

That was when Ten slipped past the two of them abruptly, running over to you before you could even cry in surprise. 

“No no, no…!” he cooed, perching very carefully on the edge of the sofa, his body turned completely towards you as he extended his hands to your face. He dabbed at your mottled cheeks rather frantically, the coolness of his fingers making you shiver, as they were chilled the winter, whilst your skin had been made hot by tension and stress.

“No, baby, are you ok? What’s wrong? What happened?” He glanced back at Kun who was heading through into the kitchen. “Kun, is it just my hands or is she running a fever?” Before you could answer he continued, eyes shining, “Are you hurt? Sick? Did someone hurt you?”

“They better not have hurt you!” Xuxi interjected, leaning over the back of the sofa. “If they did then you tell me their names, Y/N,” he said diligently, “I’ll make sure they never even look at you again I swear—!”

Sicheng rolled his eyes, a light scoff drifting from his lips as he patted Xuxi's shoulder, before heading round to the chair opposite you. “It’s ok guys, she’s not dying.”

He’d said it with a joking lilt and a gentle tone, but Ten’s mouth hung open as he shot him a look. “I know she’s not, but she’s upset and I’m not having that!”

“Neither will I!” 

“Xuxi, you couldn’t hurt anyone even if you tried,” Ten returned, turning his full attention back to you. “Now, if my girl is not sick, and not physically hurt, then I know exactly what she needs, don’t I?”

As soon as he grinned at you, you couldn’t help but let the corners of your own lips lift. And, much like a chain reaction, as soon as he saw you brighten, even if only slightly, his smile grew into a beam.

“My girl wants hugs, doesn’t she?” he murmured, giddily tapping his finger against the tip of your nose.

You couldn’t avoid emitting a squeak at the contact—his fingers were too cold—but rationale had also left you in some parts, perhaps, as you nodded eagerly, dragging your arms up and throwing them out to welcome him in.

Ten slipped back on the sofa, pulling you into his chest protectively. He was careful to place his hands where they wouldn’t touch your skin, but also where you would know he was there, and so he nestled one into your waist and the other upon the back of your head. 

Adjusting your position only slightly to lessen the pressure off the bridge of your nose, you settled your face in the nook of his neck, fingers laced in his shirt, as you took in the scent of his cologne. He must have several varieties but this one was easily your favourite—whatever it was. It was light, but deep and welcoming, with the openness of a spring day but the independence of a lucid dream, which was kind of how you felt held so close to his heart. You could feel it beating against your arm, seeping through your sleeves and sinking into your skin, through to your own heart, which skipped as soon as the thought of it all struck your conscious mind. You very nearly forgot about the others around you, though as soon as you’d been dipped into the waters of serenity, you’d been pulled out by your own awareness.

Ten was stroking your hair gently, though his touch was shallow to avoid both knots and making you shiver.

Kun was instructing someone about something, words just out of reach for you to piece together, but no sooner than he’d finished, a loud voice that could only be recognised as Xuxi’s, yelled, “group hug!” and a figure then bounded around the sofa.

You couldn’t see Sicheng, so had no idea what he was doing, but you heard a chuckle that sounded like his. 

And a second after you’d questioned the reasoning behind his amusement, you felt a weight crash behind you on the couch.

Ten snapped up out of surprise, indicating he perhaps hadn’t seen in coming either, and with his hand leaving your head, you pressed yourself up slightly to try and get a better look at what happened.

“Hm—?”

It was no use however, because you were knocked back against Ten with a yelp from both of you, as the newcomer practically slammed his weight against your back.

Ten hauled you up as best he could so you weren’t stuck in a folded position but what you had ended up in nonetheless was still not overly comfortable. As you glanced at him you could see his lips wavering, formulating a sentence to most likely scold whoever had pushed the sudden attack with.

But there was no need, as you felt a pair of much longer arms encircle you and pull you more upright, a chin coming to rest surprisingly neatly on your shoulder.

“Hi, Y/N!” Xuxi sang, tapering off into a giggle as he gave you a tiny squeeze.

You laughed bemusedly, relieved to be alive, but also welcoming the warmth from the other side. Xuxi was in fact much warmer, to the point he could be described as an actual radiator, and with him smushed against your back you felt as if you were truly at home.

After a few seconds of his eyes evaluating the sight that he could see and you could not, it seemed that Ten appeared to accept it eventually too. Even with you practically stolen from his arms, he laughed it off, identifying that he could be perfectly comfortable laying into you rather the other way round.

With roles reversed, he slipped a hand up to your collarbone, resting his head just above the other, and seeking the opportunity to wrap one of his legs over yours, which was jutting out over the side of the sofa. Now you could see the room more clearly, and, with a tired laugh, you waved at Sicheng who was watching the borderline catastrophe with a confused but delighted grin on his features. There was a shade to his eyes though, something that you couldn’t quite place. 

Peering over Ten’s head, you could see Kun leaning against the doorway, smiling proudly, as if the whole thing had been his doing.

Though thinking back to Xuxi’s sudden, but most likely inevitable, surprise attack, it maybe had been.

“Hi…!” You waved at him too, leading him to chuckle.

“Hello,” he replied, “you look better already.”

And with a brief scrunch of his nose, he was pushing himself off the wall’s edge and heading into the kitchen. 

You pressed your chin into the crown of Ten’s hair, smiling tightly as quiet settled over the room.

You loved all of them, you honestly did, and you would never do without their bickering and yelling and screeching laughter. But it was relieving to hear peace every once in a while, with the only sound being the sound of steadied breaths—two pairs of which had become more-or-less synonymous with your own. 

“You sure you don’t want to join us, Chengie?”

It was Xuxi that spoke.

You could have bet a million with certainty that it would be him that broke the silence. Man could never stay quiet for long, which was often one of the most endearing parts about him, as it often led him to some extraordinary lengths to find something, anything to say, crafting absolutely wonderful results. A lot of what Xuxi had to say ended up being enshrined as legendary tales that got passed down the long line of units until everyone had heard some form of what he’d said, and if not, they were plastered all over social media at the very least. At least half of them were your doing as well, in the sense that you were the prime messenger, relaying it to Johnny when you next video called him just to hear him one-up your story with one that originated from Mark, or Jungwoo whenever he visited.

The thought of how long he’d been missing for washed over you like sinking into a silent lake. He was back now, and you had been elated when you’d heard the news, waking up to a call from a no doubt bleary-eyed Jungwoo. But the pain of the near radio-silence at some points or his hiatus had been particularly tough to bear. And you hadn’t been the only one suffering.

You glanced back as best you could to the man who had spoken, his words on this occasion unfortunately not sparking much interest, as you waited for a response.

“No.” Sicheng shook his head once, voice neither amused nor melancholic, continuing, “But thank you.”

“Oh, ok! More space for us!” Xuxi’s responses were always bright and cheerful. You felt your heart lurch at the memory of the few times when they hadn’t been.  

Meanwhile the man in question punctuated his words with another, tighter squeeze, which made you cry out in mildly strained laughter as you were brought back to the real world.

“Hey!”

“Dear lord…” Ten sighed, rolling his body-weight to allow his voice to carry into the kitchen. “Kun?!”

There were a few moments of silence, besides the sound of a knife meeting a chopping board from the kitchen. As you knocked your head back, Xuxi fingers digging into your sides, Ten proceeded, desperately trying to avoid your jolting legs, “When are the kids—ow!—when are the kids getting back?! Xu—xi!—is getting boisterous again!”

You freed one of your arms to poke your assailant’s side, making him jump and momentarily loosen his grip with a yelp—an opportunity you took without halt, shifting yourself out of his arms so you could tackle him head on. 

“Ten, play nice!” you asserted gently, catching Xuxi’s hands and pushing against them as hard as you could with a laugh. You knew that if he was genuinely trying he would own you in an instant but you appreciated his instincts telling him to go easy on you. At least for now.

“I could say the same about you, actually!” Ten huffed, curled up on the furthest corner of the sofa and feeling rather discarded. 

He watched the two of you wrestle, giggling through puffs of worn-out breaths, and couldn’t quite stop the corners of his lips twitching into a smile. He did find it endearing how you cared for the others, and how bouncy you could really get. 

Though it was clear to say you were quickly tiring, and couldn’t keep up the chase as much as was perhaps needed. And so, he came to the rescue.

“Y/N! I’m cooooold…!” Ten whined.

Just because he was second oldest didn’t mean he was above whinging to get what he wanted.

Regretting how you’d unceremoniously shoved Ten off you, and accidentally somewhat kicked him, and then forgotten about the poor guy, you just about managed to slink your hands out of Xuxi’s with a quick exhale, swiftly backing off and sweeping your hands out of his reach as he tried to catch them again.

“Xuxi, no,” you murmured very softly, as if you were talking to a puppy, which  to be honest it could be argued that you were, “Ten’s sad I gotta go.”

“Awh…”

“I’m also tired…”

“But what if I’m sad?”

Behold. There it was. The legendary Xuxi pout. Irresistible to those without prior training.

You shook your head, laying back to recline in Ten’s open arms. He immediately curled into you, cheek nuzzling your hair as he smiled victoriously.

Meanwhile Xuxi’s eyes widened further, glistening like clear gemstones in the evening light. 

You held out your own hands, inviting him to come to you, however. “You can come and cuddle again though.”

He accepted that point, albeit a little sulkily, as he leant down, placing his head in your lap and a hand in yours as he arranged his unimaginably large frame into a ball to fit on the sofa, with room to spare.

It always confused you how someone so big could be so small.

Both their grips were a little firmer once they’d reestablished them; Ten’s now warmer hand had found its place upon the bare skin below the hem of your shirt, shielding it from the chill of the room while simultaneously making your heart beat just that little bit quicker, and Xuxi’s rested neatly around your thigh.

You were comfortable though, at last.

.

.

.

The kids, as they had been dubbed, arrived not long after, just as the delicious scent of Kun’s famous cooking began to fill the whole room to the brim. They stepped into a delightfully warm house, the tips of their noses and clouds of their cheeks blushed pink from the cold outside, and immediately they were stripping themselves free of their coats, as the temperature difference made them feel too hot to cope.

You’d rested in peace upon the sofa, kept warm but not too much so between the combined body heat of Ten and Xuxi. Sicheng meanwhile had taken out his phone a while ago, occasionally showing you funny memes and pictures he found. You didn’t really understand some of them, and he had to explain them, but you enjoyed it nonetheless, even if that same shadow tinted his eyes again as he did it. 

As he entered the living room, Xiaojun regarded the sight of the three of you piled on the couch with curiosity to say the least, brows furrowing as he let the two behind him pass.

Yangyang barely scraped a glance at you, until he came back and saw it properly, smirking. “What is this?” 

“Y/N was feeling sad, so we had to come and cheer her up!” Xuxi jumped in, shifting his weight upwards so his head was resting upon your stomach and where he could just about see the new arrivals.

“By… piling on the sofa?” 

“What’s wrong Yangyang?” Ten snickered, before cooing, “Do you feel left out that I’m not babying you too?”

The youngest narrowed his eyes defiantly at the elder, who merely stuck his tongue out.

“Hey, you can join us if you want,” you interrupted cleanly, the wobble in your voice long gone. 

“Can I?!” Hendery called from behind the two stood in the walkway, slipping through to poke his head around Xiaojun where you could see him. His lips were curved into a tiny little smile, eyes wide and clear and glimmering in hope for a ‘yes’.

“Of course!” you replied, hand leaving Ten’s arm and beckoning both of them over. 

“I don’t think there’s any room,” Xiaojun remarked, exhaling amusedly as he hung up his bag round the banister, “you might have to take it in turns.”

At this, you felt both pairs of hands’ grips tighten, as if in reflex. 

“But...!” Xuxi stuttered in his defence. “But I’m—!”

Ten meanwhile snorted in disapproval. “No, I’m comfy. You’ll have to drag me off yourself.”

“Not sure that’s a wise idea,” Sicheng said, barely looking up from his phone, “you’re the lightest one here, you know.”

As the two chaotic forces glanced at one another, grins affirming their idea before snapping back to begin stepping over to the smallest link in the chain, Kun’s voice rose above them all. 

“Dinner’s ready! Come get it! The later you are, the less dumplings you get!” 

It was as if it was a survival zone, as everyone barrelled to the kitchen. 

Xuxi, no matter how loyal he could be, was always swayed by food, and so you had anticipated his sudden departure. However you could never have claimed to have expected the brief placement of his lips to the skin of your temple.

It was so quick and sudden and barely there that you couldn’t even begin to rationalise it. In fact, you only ended up conceiving that it hadn’t been a kiss at all. Perhaps it had never even been. You could have so easily imagined it, his lips grazing the air that surrounded you, muttering something instead. He could have so easily done, as you hadn’t really been listening. 

Either way he slipped out of your hands, leaving you wrapped in Ten’s arms.

He—not that you could see due to the angle you were resting at—sent a glare to the retreating man as he made his way to the kitchen. He couldn’t help but do it, and he stopped as soon as he realised his features had become twisted in such a way. 

He remained pressed against your back, unwilling to leave as he was not affected as severely by the thought of dinner, his hands remaining in their places in proof. 

“Can’t we stay here and eat dinner?” he mumbled against your ear.

“I don’t think Kun would ever allow that.” You giggled. “Not after last time.”

“You never know until you try…” Without much warning, Ten tilted his head towards where Hendery had just exited from and shouted, “Kun?! Can Y/N eat her food on the sofa?!”

The man’s response was immediate. “No! Definitely not—! Not after last time!”

“See,” you snorted, patting his knee in consolation, “told you.”

The man rolled his eyes, sitting up reluctantly with you following suit, as he stretched his arms and back. “Fine. Come on, let’s eat.”

.

.

Dinner was a ruckus, as usual.

You cram eight people around a table and it will always be noisy, but if you then make half of those people crackheads and the other half happy to allow them to be crackheads, then you’ve got yourself a table of absolute chaos.

With the conversation flitting every few seconds, words bouncing from one side of the room to the other to a rhythm of laughter, many would probably have arranged to sit in their rooms to eat but you would never dream of doing such a thing. 

Hearing the banter, weekly in-jokes and teasing was necessary, as it always lifted your spirits—as long as you weren’t upset at the time they picked on you. Luckily the previous cuddling had worked, and you were back to feeling ok, your problems not seeming so impossible anymore. 

However, ‘ok’ was not good enough for these guys, and you knew they wouldn’t leave you at just that. They’d already given you some of their own dumplings (except Xuxi who had kept his to himself with a muffled apology) to you. And besides, you had a promise to keep to the two youngest.

As soon as you spotted the natural lull in conversation, you piped up, “Hey, do you guys want to watch a film tonight?”

Your suggestion was met with a flourish of agreement, only that two faces also fell.

One tried to hide it somewhat valiantly, no doubt to protect you from feeling bad. The other didn’t possess the finesse for this as such, and more-or-less openly sulked at the dining table.

You looked at the two of them. “Ten? Xuxi?”

“SuperM,” Ten remarked, voice monotonous, “meeting on tour dates.”

You let out a small ‘ah’ in understanding. You attempted to look on the brighter side. “There’s always next week…!”

Xuxi nodded sadly, while Ten huffed, earning him a side-eye from Kun. 

“In my defence,” he began, holding up a finger to the eldest in a request for him to wait,  “they’ve worked out all the dates that don’t clash for us. It’s 127 they’re having trouble with, and the managers there can’t seem to do basic maths, because they’ve confirmed two lots of dates that don’t actually work. It must be driving Taeyong mad over in Korea.”

“Why do you need to be there, then?” Yangyang asked.

“We don’t,” Xuxi emphasised.

Ten sighed. “No, I think we do. Even if we’ve outlined our schedules a hundred times, we still need to be in the room while they set the dates, for legal reasons. It’s just irritating that we have to sit there for hours on end, barely able to do anything to help, and if we do have any suggestions, that a—jerk of a—what is he? A producer? Executive? I don’t even know—he won’t let us speak half the time, because of his strange superiority complex that basically means he won’t allow us to ever speak, the absolute f—”

“Ten.” Kun’s voice was hard as stone, his eyes carved into a warning stare. 

He sighed, standing and offering to take the others’ empty bowls and plates. “The point is, this shouldn’t be going on for any longer than it already has, and so tonight won’t be very peaceful, but it’ll be worse if we don’t leave soon.” As he leant over the table to collect your bowl, he whispered, “I’ll be here pretty much all tomorrow though. You?”

You nodded, eyes fallen at the sound of the mess he’d been drawn into. Everyone was so tired, him and Xuxi especially with their extra schedules, and so being dragged through that was only going to stress them out even more. They needed the movie night more than perhaps the others did. 

Noticing the downturn in the energy of the room, as well as how crestfallen you appeared to be at his plight, Ten offered you a wink in response. It took a lot of energy to try to slow the tempo of your heart after that.

Xuxi collected the remaining utensils in one hand, giving everyone a big wave with the other. “We will return!” he announced.

“What are you going to do?” Xiaojun enquired. “About the ‘guy’, I mean?”

Ten shrugged, tilting his head to the side melodramatically. “Guess if he tries anything this time, he’ll face the pure wrath of this bad bitch.”

“Ten!” you cried in faux shock, a gasp quilting the air. “What have we said about swearing in front of the child!”

Laughter erupted as everyone synchronously looked at Yangyang, who was sending you an exaggerated scowling pout. “Not cool Y/N! I’m not a child!”

“Oh yes that’s right, you’re not a child, Yangyang,” Kun interjected plainly, leading the table to hush as each person accepted his words as an instruction to quieten.

Except everyone was wrong. 

Kun glanced at you with a surprisingly sly smile, and then at Ten, then round the entire table, before looking Yangyang dead in the eye, and uttering the words, “You’re baby.”

A plume of cheers erupted round the room as Hendery shrieked with laughter, Xuxi dropping a spoon out of pure joy, leaving Yangyang to merely accept his fate as burned.

.

.

.

You bid both Ten and Xuxi farewell from your place in the armchair closest to the kitchen, soon enough hearing them slip out of the backdoor and into the night. But you barely caught Kun as he seemed to follow them.

After performing a near-comical double-take, mind ticking and realising that the person who had silently swept through in their wake was Kun, you very nearly leapt into the kitchen, the clunk of a car door slam piercing the darkness as your eyes searched for the leader. 

“Kun?”

The man jumped nearly out of his skin, just outside in the cold, halting his motion to shut the door as you poked your head into sight. “Oh, Y/N. Is everything ok?”

You nodded, humming. As you stepped forward, you pulled your shirt further up to your chin to try and retain some heat so as to combat the flurry of new, cold air. “Where are you going?”

His eyes were transfixed upon your face, not that you could make that out in the dim light. All while he could distinguish yours much more clearly, the chalk platter face of the moon granting you a celestial glow from where it rose above the neighbouring buildings. “Oh, giving them a lift, so they don’t have to walk, since it’s so dark out,” he sheepishly apologised, “I should have mentioned it, sorry. But you can start the film without me, I don’t mind!”

“Oh, ok,” you mumbled. You had been about to say you’d make sure everyone waited for him, as you were aware the drive wouldn’t be long, but his words had stopped you in your tracks. 

There was no way for him to avoid the dip in the glimmer of your eyes at what he had said, but he couldn’t push his departure any longer. “I’ll see you in a bit, Y/N. I promise I won’t be long.”

You tried to lift your arms in time to request that hug he owed you, but the door had closed before he could have accepted. 

You couldn’t help but wallow a little bit in your thoughts for a moment. You’d wanted to have as many people in as possible, as those were always the best times. And you understood you couldn’t have Ten and Xuxi, so why couldn’t you have Kun to make up for it…?

He was helping them, however, and going by how freezing it was out there, you had to acknowledge you would have scolded him for not offering to drive them the pretty long distance to the executive building somewhat on the other side of town. It made you kind of hypocritical, and you couldn’t quite shake that thought off.

At that moment, there was a slosh of water that made your ears prick up, leading you to turn towards the sink.

You hadn’t even noticed Xiaojun there, doing the washing up as he’d been elected to by Kun as he left the table. You felt bad for a bit but it was surprisingly dark in the room, and in your defence, he’d been basically silent the entire time. 

“You alright, Y/N?” he enquired, adding more hot water to the bowl.

“I could ask the same about you?” you glanced around the room, looking for the lightswitch. “Has the bulb gone again?”

“No, the light’s fine.”

“Oh, well…” You made your way over to the switch.

“Don’t turn it on,” he announced, tipping his head over his shoulder. The lights from the next room crystalised in his eyes, azure-gold and tracing a diamond upon his cheek. It illuminated the curve of his lips, as he spoke again, quieter this time, “Come here.”

You did what he asked, brushing his shoulder with yours as you came to his side.

You tried to meet his gaze, looking up to his face and drawing across his features, only to get distracted by the shine of his silver hair, tracing down his skin and curling round the shell of his ear so neatly. Plush lips parted as he spoke and you raised your eyes to meet his, only to have him turn away at the last second.

You were left with no choice but to follow where his stare was facing. 

“Look, out there,” he whispered, gently placing a plate at the bottom of the bowl.

You peered into the garden, dimly lit by the light from the living room dancing beyond you, the faint silver of the moon, next door’s garden light, and nothing more—the sky starless and as dark and thick as ink. You couldn’t see a single shape, or even determine the colour of the grass, and it disheartened you to have to explain it to Xiaojun, who was clearly much more excited than you were.

“Jun? I can’t see anything,” you murmured, but he hushed you suddenly, leaving you to slam your lips shut, heart pinched.

After a few seconds he spoke again, voice barely above a whisper, “We have to be really quiet. And no sudden movements. She’ll appear very soon, I know she will.”

You frowned, glancing through the dark window, confronted by the hazy grass of the garden meeting the grey tile of the patio, and then your own musty reflection as your eyes switched focus.

You couldn’t see much of Xiaojun in the glass, the shadow engulfing much of his mirrored-self. However, you could see one half of his face, shaded as if through clouds, his crown crudely lit like a halo from the auburn behind. 

A sigh very nearly left your lips as you stole another glance at his real face, his brow furrowing while his eyes narrowed into the darkness outside, teeth ever-so-slightly teasing his bottom lip as he peacefully waited.

It wasn’t fair how ethereal he was sometimes.

Suddenly he perked up, eyes widening, and leaning into you as he carefully pointed with a soap-sud painted finger into the black. “Look! There!”

You leant forward on the edge of the counter, eyes desperately scouring the garden until you spotted what he was waiting for.

A small bundle, tapered with jagged edges upon its top, snuffling through the shadows. A moment’s thought, and you finally put an understanding to the creature.

A tiny hedgehog, on the search for food.

As she came closer, you could just about make out the twitching of a nose, while she made a somewhat beeline for the fence on the left hand side of the garden. There you could just about make out a weathered blue pet-bowl, filled with some food of sorts.

“There she is,” Xiaojun sighed, whispering a laugh sheepishly. “I was beginning to worry there for a bit, I’ll be honest.”

A wide smile rose to your face, overtaken by the purity of an animal that small just... shuffling through the cold to find food which had been placed in the back garden—and just for her too.

“Did you…?”

“Yeah, the dog food was me,” he replied. “She only comes when it’s quiet here, which isn’t often but it does happen after dinner, as the others get quiet. That’s why I offer to do the work here, so I can check up on her.”

You couldn’t glance away from the hedgehog, especially when she finally reached the bowl and began to tuck in. Though it was in the shade and it was very hard to see anything besides the bowl by that point, made to stand out against the night by the brightness of its sides.

“She’ll eat it all no doubt, she didn’t come yesterday. Unless she has somewhere else and is just running rings around me,” he chuckled, picking up the plate. 

“Why didn’t she turn up?” you asked, wrenching your eyes away to look at Xiaojun again.

The corners of his eyes rose as he wrinkled his nose briefly. “Xuxi’s euphoria last night?” 

You stood confused for a second, trying to retrace your memory, until you finally struck gold. “Oh yea! Jungwoo’s message! I think it was everyone’s euphoria to be honest,” you sighed, laughter at how over-the-top-bubbly Xuxi had been at the sight of his groupmate just texting him ‘hello’ dwindling, “I’d been worried sick about him. No matter how many times anyone assured me he was ok, I knew I wouldn’t settle until I heard it from him himself.”

“It’s alright, I understand that. And I’m pretty sure the others do too.”

As your eyes fell, remembering the anxiety you had about his condition, Xiaojun’s finally settled back on you. 

“You’re extremely kind Y/N, you almost care too much,” he said, “I know Jungwoo can’t wait to see you again, too.”

You finally met his gaze, letting a small smile rise to your lips as you did so. He was just so beautiful, you couldn’t actually look away even if by some bizarre curse you wanted to.

“Thank you, Junnie.”

“I mean it though, Y/N,” he insisted softly, eyes alight with a sudden certainty, “I worry sometimes you care too much about others, and though we appreciate it very much, I don’t…” His voice faltered, as if he’d spoken too much. “We don’t want you to hurt yourself in the process, and forget to care for yourself. We all love looking after you, but we also don’t want you to be hurt at all, if we can help it. So if something hurts you, let us know immediately, so we can support you… yeah?”

You nodded, swallowing as you felt your throat clench. His words were so kind—too kind. It made your heart wrench. Blinking quickly, you looked back into the garden, spotting the hedgehog making her way back to the hedgerow.

At that moment, a voice rose from the living room. “Y/N! What film do you want to watch?”

Somewhat grateful for the distraction, you felt the urge to cry dissipate as you took another glance at Xiaojun. He hadn’t looked away from you this time, it seemed, but you didn’t focus upon that for your own sanity. “I’d better go,” you said, “thank you for showing me the hedgehog. She’s really cute, I’m glad you feed her.”

“No problem, I’ll let you do it tomorrow, if you have time and would like to?”

“That sounds great!” You sent him a grin, covering any sadness you had felt a few moments before. Laying your hand on his shoulder for a second before you passed as a small farewell, you made your way to the living room to go help Yangyang. 

As you reached the archway though, you turned back around to ask one more thing, the thought suddenly preoccupying you to a stop. “Oh, Xiaojun?”

“Yes?” He finished washing a plate and placed it on the draining board, peering over his shoulder at you once again. 

“Does she have a name? The hedgehog?”

In the shadows of the kitchen, you thought you saw him falter, his lip waver in an attempt to formulate a sound, a shape, a word. Brash to the silence, you heard a stutter in his answer.

“Actually, no, I didn’t think... I just call her ‘hedgehog’.”

You spluttered at his seeming inhumanity. How could he possibly not name the poor little thing?

Your disappointment in him was obvious too, and so he hastily added, “Maybe you could come up with one?”

You reasoned with the suggestion, but it didn’t take long before you responded happily with a nod. “I’ll see what I can come up with. See you in a bit!” 

After you left the room, however, he let out a sigh of relief.

He was glad you’d fallen for that excuse, especially since it was so far from the truth. The first thing that he had done, once he realised the hedgehog was a regular, was give her a name. And since she was adorable, with her little nose and love for food, he decided to name her after the first adorable thing he thought of.

He hadn’t foreseen the issue that would occur if he showed her to the person of which he’d secretly named the hedgehog after. 

.

.

.

You spun round the door-frame, willing your thoughts to clear and dissipate. You clapped your hands against your cheeks to try and cool them from the raging pink they had flushed from your previous conversation. Being so close to him had hit a nerve within you somewhere, though what it was, you couldn’t quite comprehend. 

As you passed through, Hendery slipped round the other corner and collided into you.

His sudden appearance made you jump, a rather pathetic yelp uttered past your lips as you quickly found yourself losing your balance after an effort to haphazardly make distance between the sudden newcomer.

Luckily for you, Hendery’s reactions were faster than your falling. He grasped your shoulder firmly, though in such a manner it made you wonder if he wanted to touch you at all—you were at arm's length, his fingers fanned out to rest upon your shoulder blades, his touch barely there, yet very much present. 

You were quick to slot back onto your feet as you staggered to accommodate for his reflex. Only to push yourself further into his arms. You felt as if your luck couldn’t get any worse, face burning up once again as you almost butted Hendery’s head with your own. It was almost as if you were in some cliche skit where you had temporarily become a hapless staggering damsel for the day, and you weren’t going to have that for any longer.

You freed yourself from the sudden proximity with Hendery, refusing to make eye contact as you moved from staring at his exposed collarbone and instead the floor as you rooted yourself to it, folding your arms and huffing. 

He watched you attempt to reclaim your pride, exhaling in relief as you seemed to grow in confidence once again. He had to admit, he understood well that you’d had a bad day, but he couldn’t help but find it odd how flushed your soft cheeks were and how on edge you appeared.

Meanwhile, his face had been a picture, lips pursed into an ‘o’ of moderate horror as he’d almost knocked you to the ground, which then spread into a wide smile as he giggled sheepishly. His eyes were clear as glass, dark and glinting and rueful, as you finally worked up the courage to meet them again.

“Sorry Y/N!” he said, mischief lacing his words.

You scoffed, staring him down, though feeling more of a rush flood through your chest. “Y-yeah, you will be!”

He laughed at your response, quickly dropping the issue entirely. You were grateful for that, you didn’t want to admit that he’d spooked that much. “We need to choose a film, so… what one do you want to watch?”

“I don’t…” you shrugged, “I don’t really know.”

You were glad that you didn’t need to look at him now that he had shifted to your side. You could feel his stare on you however, and it made you want to shiver.

He nodded, interlinking his arm with yours. “Shall we go have a look, my lady?”

Before you could let any words slip through your lips in bemused amusement, he pulled himself closer to you, arm interlocking with yours, and then led you through to the corridor with the shelves stacked with movies.

Slipping through the archway, thanking any deities that were listening that there was no reason for Hendery to be able to hear the heightened tempo of your heart, you found Yangyang already there. He was squinting up at the top row as you reached the rack, fingers running across each box like a small child reading the letters of their first book.

Hendery extended his free arm towards the shelving, bowing his head, “Your moving pictures, my lady.”

You snorted, taking in the sight of the stockpile of films. He was always so extra. In fact, it made it hard for you to focus upon the selection, barely registering the fonts of the titles and colours of the boxes, as you were hit by a sudden spring of sentimentality. 

They’d been ordered alphabetically by title, and you remember the day starkly that you’d sat down with Xuxi to organise them. 

He wouldn’t have been your first choice to help order things, since his attention span normally lasted around that of a cocker spaniel with a new toy, but he’d been the only one in the house at the time, and he was the only one tall enough to reach the very top shelf regardless (you still didn’t understand why that top shelf had been installed and even being used, because if Xuxi wasn’t around—which did occur often due to his new schedules—then it was a real safety hazard to get a film down from there, seeing that no one else in the group managed to grow anywhere near 6″). 

On this occasion though, he’d been uncharacteristically focused, listening to your instructions carefully, his dazzling grin a sight to behold as he had cocked his head to one side whilst he thought—you could have seen the letters wafting across his thoughts as he counted them. He’d been very calm and rational, as if the bounce had been temporarily quelled, and he’d made jokes about how short everyone else was only a couple of times, too. 

In fact, he’d been a very big help, and the afternoon had also proved useful in the sense that you weren’t the only one with a better idea of where all the movies were. Even if they were organised well, the two of you could still find them faster than the others usually could, simply due to the fact you could remember where you’d placed them on the shelves in the first place. 

Kun had been extremely happy with the end result as well, which was always a bonus. Meanwhile Ten still didn’t believe you’d managed to get Xuxi to sit down and do it with you. You didn’t blame his disbelief. You could barely believe it yourself. But there he had been, clear as day, settling himself on the carpet without you even inclining to ask him to.

However, you did admonish the system you’d used now though. Perhaps taking the extra time to organise them into genres would have been better, as after all, you rarely knew a specific movie you wanted to watch.

You suddenly became very aware of Hendery’s presence. He’d inched forwards, his lips pursing out of the corner of your eye as he narrowed his sights on the possibilities for the night.

His movement had snapped you out of your thoughts, though it took a lot of effort to avoid getting caught upon the sight of his lips, beautifully curved and the perfect shade of rose—

You forced yourself to scour your eyes over the titles, eventually straightening to join Yangyang in peering up at the very top row, where the box-sets were kept.

“Whatcha looking at?” you asked Yangyang, a giggle thinly veiled. His thoughtful little frown was adorable, and it was clear he was thinking very hard about something.

“Did we watch the final part of The Lord of the Rings?” he answered.

You and Hendery both nodded. 

“Oh... well there goes that suggestion then.” He shifted down from tiptoe and came to lean against the table beside the shelving, sending you a sweet smile. “Y/N, what type of movie would you like?”

Eased, you sent him a quick smile before glancing down at the films at the lower rungs. “I’m not sure, really. Nothing too heavy, and nothing that will make me cry.”

He hummed. “So, a comedy then?”

Hendery’s eyes went wide, a look of genuine fear playing on his features. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Our senses of humour in this house, when it comes to films can…” he paused, silk voice tentative, “…vary, a lot.”

You nodded in agreement. “Remember what happened over that Robin Hood film?” You shook your head very firmly. “Bad times, my dudes.” 

Yangyang cocked his head to one side in thought, frowning at seemingly nothing. “Fair enough…” Suddenly, he perked up, showing a grin you knew well. “I’ve had an idea. What if we watch a really bad movie, one that’s so bad, it’s actually kind of good?”

You clicked your fingers, before shooting him finger-guns, “Now that is a good idea!”

The three of you turned towards the mountain of films. It wasn’t long before your attention was drawn from them once again, as Hendery gently lent upon your shoulder, letting his fingers just brush the jumper at your shoulder. Once again you were convinced he wasn’t perhaps focused on the films.

“Ok… bad… films…” Yangyang murmured, pulling out a blue box to read its description on the back. You didn’t even gather what he’d picked out, as your eyes had been drawn back to Hendery’s as if magnetised. 

As it turned out, he was a lot closer than you had previously thought. This time, it was his eyes that formulated the centre of gravity, and you immediately found yourself held in them, glistening mahogany so dark the tints stowed away in the shadows of the curtains of his fringe.

You sent him a smile, awkward and most likely faltering out of no reason other than mild shock at just how well poised his features could be, enquiring with a stutter, “Do you have any ideas?”

He smushed his lips together, as he usually did when he was thinking, something of which that always made your heart simper, and let his eyes wander away from you and up to the penultimate top shelf. 

“’Azure Shadow’?” he said, reaching up and grabbing the box, his arm shifting lending his hand to consequently rest around the curve of your shoulder, fingers grasping ever so tenderly as if you were an artifact he wasn’t supposed to touch. You couldn’t help but freeze up at it, all while he didn’t even seem to notice, his voice as clear as a cloudless, spring day sky. “I heard it was pretty bad—hey The CP Times gave it 4 stars!”

Yangyang pointed victoriously, as he quickly realised a point he’d made long ago was now finally proven. “See! I told you guys you should never trust the CP Times!”

You were grateful for his interruption, as it drew potential attention away from you, stuck in your emotionally stumbling mess. You felt his grip tighten lightly, fingertips rubbing ever so slightly against your shoulder blade as laughter seeped into Hendery’s voice. “What? What problem do you have with the CP Times? I…?”

“Oh come off it, Hendery, you know! That awful article they posted about—!”

“Oh…! I see where your allegiances lie, Yangyang the Traitor!”

“I—what does that mean?!”

“They published a lovely one about my favourite—”

The hand finally left you, your shoulder falling into the grips of a surprising cold, but your mind began to pull itself finally out of its trance. 

“And? They were horrible to mine!”

“They didn’t mention her though!”

To be frank, you had no clue what their little squabble was about, and it didn’t help that they kept interrupting one another. You shivered as you regained your sensibility, tiptoeing forward to urge yourself to enter the fray.

“Exactly!”

“She was on hiatus at the time!” Hendery countered, eyes bright in contrast to Yangyang’s wilder ones. “You’re just too in love with her, that’s what.”

Yangyang had no words for that. His mouth hung open like a guppy fish, as he scrambled for something to retort back. But he was panicked, and it showed on his face, as colour seemed to simultaneously drain from it but also rush to his cheeks. 

“I am not in love with her?!” Yangyang was scowling, his voice jagged and incredulous and harsh. You winced at the unexpected sound, leading his eyes to quickly flicker to you. Any strength that had once been in them vanished before your own, as all fighting energy left his body limper. His voice was much quieter as he echoed himself, glancing away from you and staring at the floor instead,  “I am not in love with her…” 

All the while Hendery just laughed it off, as if everything that had just happened had been a ruse to rile the youngest up all along. “Yeah, yeah, of course. I got you.”

You decided it would be wise to intervene before their bickering ended in a tussle again.  

“Well… maybe this film isn’t bad enough,” you remarked, earning a nod from Hendery and leading him to put it back on the shelf.

Yangyang remained silent for a while, even as Hendery suggested some other movies. His gaze was uncharacteristically vacant, while his presence had grown rather small.

You wanted to go over to him, to make sure he was ok, but there were many contradicting messages going on in the room, and you couldn’t really tell if it was that serious or not. One was behaving as if it was, the other as if it was not. Besides, Yangyang was neither super cuddly nor super solitary, so it was more of a case by case thing as to whether he wanted attention to help him calm down and cheer up or not.

“What about ‘The Man of Blade’?” he measured suddenly out of the blue, scoffing weakly as he retrieved it, “this one doesn’t even show its ratings, it must be awful!”

You skipped over to him, now given an inclination that he wanted to socialise. You really didn’t want to leave him, even if you didn’t know what the hell had just happened. And so you took hearing him talk as an invitation for you.

Placing your hand on his shoulder, you ducked your head in carefully. You wanted to see the description, but you also wanted to offer him some comfort, thus your cheek just barely brushed the cloth of his hoodie.

You had expected Yangyang to read it out, but feeling him shift his weight, perhaps just to accommodate for you, but you expected it was more out of sudden nerves, so you decided to take the role up instead.

As you cleared your throat in order to begin reading it dramatically to keep Hendery on side, Yangyang turned the box at an angle so you could read it better. You snuck a glimpse at him, to find a smile already filtering back onto his face. The signs of there being no lasting impact boosted your confidence as you found courage in reaching success.

“’A man makes a wish to a genie’,” you began, the corners of your mouth twitching already as you attempted to keep your tone serious, “‘to become the most powerful man to ever live so he could face God in a one-to-one’ battle to the death—”

“I’m sorry what?” Yangyang was back in business, ripples of his laughter seeping through his chest to where you could feel it, lending you further chance to rest your head fully against his shoulder. 

All the while Hendery merely laughed.

You tried to hold it together. “—a-and restore not only his pride but his… his…”

“Oh no, what?” 

Laughter bubbled in your throat as you forced the final sentence from your lips. “His valiant steed’s honour—yo, what the actual—?!”

Yangyang cackled as he began hastily opening the box. “It’s decided! We’re watching ‘The Man of Blade’! And we can all suffer together!”

Hendery snickered, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but why the hell is that even here?! Who bought it?”

“It must be a present?” you insisted. “Surely! No one in this house would buy this in their right mind otherwise—”

“I bought it.”

Three heads simultaneously whipped in the direction of the living room. 

There, standing in the archway, was Sicheng.

A moment of silence passed as the three of you stared at him, mouths agape and words lost, until you exclaimed, in more fear than you had perhaps originally anticipated, “Chengie, no!”

“Look,” he projected, before the other two could add to the confusion, “it was supposed to be dumb gift for Ten, something that I could hide his actual present behind, and so I decided to hide it plain sight until his birthday.”

A chorus arose. “Ohhh.”

“But, does that mean we can’t use it then?” Hendery questioned. 

“Oh, yeah, damn,” Yangyang said, closing the box, “it’s ok Sicheng, we’ll put it back.”

“Actually,” you began, eyes flickering from each man, and finally resting on the box, “Ten isn’t here, so as long as no one tells…”

“We can still watch it!” Hendery finished, clapping his hands and motioning for the box. “Let’s start it up, I want to see the menu page!”

As the two fought over who got to put the disc in the player, their squabbling much more harmless this time, you made a mental note to ask someone about the debacle later, turning your attention currently to Sicheng instead.

His eyes, dark caramel and hidden from the light, were down-turned and avoiding your gaze. They seemed to graze across your cheeks instead, flickering up to your own only occasionally.

You offered him a smile, small and soft, and then walked over to him. “Hey, thanks for the film! It sounds perfect for tonight.”

“It’s no problem, I’m curious to watch it too,” he grinned back, before easing you out of the way of the two bundles of energy that bounded through into the living room, “I really hope it’s as bad as it sounds.”

“Oh it’s got to be!” you assured, feeling warmth settle back into your system, slowly, but surely, as you laughed. Relief felt good after all. “Come on, Chengie, help me get some snacks?”

“Of course.” He stepped backwards, letting you past to lead the way. 

Back in the kitchen, you began to scavenge for all the food you could find, layering Sicheng’s arms with bags upon bags of snacks. You weren’t exactly paying attention to the number you’d piled, however, until you swung all the cupboards closed and aimed to place a final packet on top, only to find that you’d crafted a tiny mountain, and Sicheng’s face was practically completely obscured by its silhouette.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry Chengie, I didn’t notice how much…”

“It’s alright,” he answered brightly, peeking carefully round the precarious pile, “I got it!”

His smile was glimmeringly bright, and you couldn’t help but be stunned by it, since a bright smile like that wasn’t exactly common for him, even in the dorms. He stepped forward carefully to request the final snack be crowned upon the summit above his eyeline, and with caution, you obliged, balancing it on top as best you could.

“Now all we have to do is get you into the living room without dropping them—are you sure you don’t want me to take half? It’s not hard at all for me to do so…!”

He turned so he could see you. “It’s ok, you’re already doing too much by organising this. I can carry a pile of snacks, don't worry! Just… warn me if I get too close to an obstacle.”

You nodded, peering over his shoulder to see his way. “I can try and do that. I can promise I can help you avoid a chair, but I must warn you Sicheng, I can’t guarantee I can help you avoid other ones such as Hendery and Yangyang.”

You heard a laugh from behind the snack pillar, and felt your heart leap with pride as a response. It wasn’t that Sicheng was boring—no, far from it—it was just he wasn’t on the verge of being a giggling mess all the time like the others were. You’d guessed it came with maturity. Then you remembered how much of a dork some of the older members could be in general, and then admitted to yourself that you had to more or less discount that theory. 

“Moving obstacles are always the worst,” he agreed, shifting his hands slowly to keep a firmer grasp on the mountain as he turned to make his way back into the living room. “But I appreciate your effort nonetheless. You ready?”

You hummed in affirmation, and the two of you began your careful trundle into the living room.

.

.

.

With snacks arranged on the coffee table, you slumped on the sofa, taking care to mind your feet as you went—you didn’t want to knock all your hard work on the carpet, as then you would have to vacuum it all up and unless you had someone to make the pain more bearable, it wasn’t fun in the slightest. 

You watched as Hendery emerged victorious over the disc and scampered over to the TV, fiddling with the DVD player.

Yangyang, pouting from the sidelines, perked up once he realised that he now had a crucial advantage. 

He bounded over to you, barely choosing a side and instead practically flung himself onto the sofa too. He threw his arms open to encase you as he went, and once his back hit the cushions, he pulled you into him. 

Shrieking in surprise and glee, you shuffled yourself round so you could rest your head more comfortably on his chest. 

“There,” he murmured proudly, a hand coming to pat your hair softly, “comfy?”

“Very.” Your voice was muffled against his hoodie. 

Hendery glanced back over his shoulder at the sight, and hurried himself. You couldn’t see, and even if you could have, you wouldn’t have been able to notice the brief pang that hit Hendery’s heart at the sight of you snuggled closely into his warmth.

You would have been able to witness Yangyang’s smirk that he sent him as he began to make his way over.

All of this knowledge of course was obsolete to you, as you could see nothing at all, enveloped in warmth and seeing nothing but darkness with your eyes closed, your ear pressed against Yangyang’s heart.

Its beat was wild.

Sicheng meanwhile took a seat where he had been previously, spinning the chair around so he would be able to see the screen.

You heard it creak and peaked out from beneath Yangyang’s arms to catch a glimpse of him.

“Hey,” you called softly, causing him to swivel a bit further round to see you, “you sure you don’t want to come sit over here? It’s comfier than that desk chair.”

“But it is a spinny ch—” You hushed Yangyang before he could finish. 

Sicheng smiled, the dim in his eyes growing as he shook his head. “No, it’s ok, I’m good here.”

“You sure?” You couldn’t deny it to yourself: you really did want him to sit over there with you. You didn’t know why, or what you wanted to do with him had he come over when you beckoned, because he wouldn’t have been comfortably with you draped over him in any shape or form, which you respected, but you also wanted to touch him in some way. You hated seeing that grey hue in his eyes that forced him to turn them away from you, you reasoned.

There was probably something more to it all too, but as per usual, your ramblings were interrupted by his response.

It was a nod, and the very gradual spin of his chair as he pushed himself back to face the TV subtly.

You tried not to take it personally, but you couldn’t hide the falter in your smile. It was hard to get all your feelings together sometimes after all.

Yangyang couldn’t quite see it at his angle, but Hendery could, and it led to him pouting at you as he waddled over.

“Y/N?” His voice was soft, as if he didn’t want the others to hear. You were thankful for that, if it was the case, as it wasn't that big of an issue, and you didn’t want to worry anyone else.

“I’m ok, don’t worry!” you declared. “Just tired, is all.” 

Your response had been too fast, and it was just your luck that of course both Hendery and now Yangyang had noticed. You cursed your accidental volume, sending them both an eye roll as you played it down. 

“It’s been a real long day, but you guys worry too much,” you jested, poking the arm beside your head. 

You received a little huff from above you in a wordless reply, whilst Hendery quickly settled down beside you, inclining into your sloped body as he held your hand tightly, fingers laced with your own. They were a little clammy but then again so were yours, and you never cared.

‘Attention whore,’ you thought to yourself, a chuckle seeping into reality. Yangyang frowned at the random burst of humour, since no one had done anything as you did. He wondered what was going in your head. It was a merciless thing to chase, since no one would know, and he’d never really understand—that’s kind of how brains worked after all—but he loved hearing what you had to say about everything. He shifted his weight to bring you just a little bit closer, as if it would make a difference, let him understand why you were laughing.

He didn’t have long to consider much at all, with the film menu loading up and sending everyone in the room into a bout of horrified laughter.

“What even is that?!” Yangyang yelled above you.

“That, dear Yangyang, is an actual, colourised depiction of hell,” you countered, lips twisted in terror as you sat up instinctively. Yangyang too was tense—it was as if the atrocity had immediately set off fight-or-flight responses of every single person in the room. 

Hendery flicked his head over to you. “In the shape of a horse?!” 

“It’s never going to leave my head,” Sicheng murmured. “There it is. Emblazoned into the insides of my skull. Behind my eyes. I’ll never escape it. Set me free from this torment—”

“What’s going on?”

Xiaojun had come through from the kitchen, drying his hands on a tea towel and striding through into the living room as if he’d been summoned. 

Everyone silently and simultaneously pointed at the TV, depicting the single-shot menu screen of an abominable CGI horse crowding the entire screen.

“I don’t—mother of sweet jesus—” 

“I know right?” Yangyang exclaimed. “It’s horrifying. I hate it!”

“It’s actually cursed,” Xiaojun stated, unable to draw his eyes away from the savagery of art he’d been presented with. His mouth was agape as he leant on his hands, placed on the back of the sofa. “Obscene!”

Winwin’s voice was still low, but you could just about hear it over the whoops and cries of the others; “My sleep paralysis demon.”

“Is this what we’re watching?” Xiaojun asked, deep eyes wide and begging for the answer to be any cognate of ‘no’.

“Yep.”

He turned to look down to you, his expression torn in misery. “This crime to humanity?”

“One hundred percent.”

Xiaojun stared at the screen, eyes alight with the tacky flames of the anathema displayed before him. Eventually he snapped out of his cursed gaze and headed back into the kitchen. “Dear lord—don’t start without me!”

As the laughter died down, you settled back into Yangyang’s embrace, ushering Hendery to come closer too so you could have him near too.

He looked over to you, feeling the tug on his hand. With only a momentary pause to check if you were sure, he flopped down onto your stomach, exhaling happily with an arm stretched.

“You feel happier now, right Y/N?” Yangyang suddenly asked, voice low, and just below a whisper. 

You were surprised, but nodded nonetheless. “Yeah, I’m feeling much better than I did before. Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure?” He cleared his throat, shifting his balance to support the extra wait Hendery brought to the table. “You’re certain we don’t need to enact special measures?”

You frowned, tilting your head up to come to look at his jaw, as he quickly looked back up to somewhere else in the room—or at least, anywhere besides the TV, for clearly very rational reasons. Bemusedly, you asked about his supposed ‘special measures’, but won little response. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, before he glanced down at you, eyes flickering across each paradigm of your face with his lips pressed plush as he thought. 

He parted them eventually, ebbing with air and possible words, until you felt the rise of his chest as he inhaled and readied himself to speak.

Only then did Xiaojun enter the room and take the final spot at the end of the sofa, patting Hendery’s legs to get them to move. 

“Ok, I’m back, we can start now!” he announced.

The ball of conversation was knocked from its ledge and rolled in a different direction to what you’d hoped. 

“Who has the remotes?” Hendery piped up, feet repositioned but this time on top of Xiaojun’s legs. The elder of the two wasn't impressed by it all though, and instead shoved them off by flicking his toes. 

“I do,” Sicheng replied, already frowning at the buttons. “Can someone get the lights?”

“Sure.”

Yangyang stretched up behind him, hand awkwardly sliding up the wall as he sought for the switch. Eventually his fingers struck gold, and the room snapped dark.

And then the menu finally disappeared as the horror of a film began. 

.

.

.

And by no surprises, it was utter garbage. 

But it lived up to expectations in that sense, and it was thus absolutely hilarious.

You’d spent the first hour shrieking with laughter, and then you proceeded to tear each scene and every piece of dialogue apart as a five-piece.

The entire film was in itself a curse, a sin, blasphemous.

Hendery was slapping criticism on the plot left, right and centre to the point it made you wonder why he was here at all and not a movie critic. Meanwhile, Xiaojun just snorted at everything he said.

The two had come to an unspoken truce, after squabbling over where Hendery could put his feet. They were now situated on Xiaojun’s thighs, and swinging every now and again, especially when the owner got particularly pent up and passionate about a piece of dialogue or plot hole. 

You felt your heart burn at how adorable it was, though also suffered the pain of the jerks that Hendery made every time he had the sole of his feet poked or tickled, which Xiaojun seemed to enjoy doing too much.

You stroked Hendery’s hair gently, lightly pressing his fringe out of his eyes where his head rested on your stomach, whilst you peered around to Sicheng to check if he was alright, having not heard a peep from him in half an hour or so.

What you found was borderline horrifying. He was completely engrossed in the movie, with a  grin plastered on his face as the lights of the terrible CGI glowed in his irises and fashioned him into a cult leader in a fantasy movie, watching something demonic burn.

You hushed a chuckle behind your hand, as you leant back to turn your attention to Yangyang. 

He’d been the forerunner of the jokes, cackling at every little thing and turning it into pure comedy gold for the rest of the people in the room, which you were very grateful for. The movie would have been brain-soup without him.

He’d re-positioned himself slightly so you were higher up on his body, head much closer to be of an equal height to his. This way you could press your temple against his cheek, if you wanted. 

However, it was him that had his head nuzzled against you, his cheek resting in your hair. 

He eventually quietened down as he grew more drowsy, instead taking in the scent of you, sweet and calming. It only lulled him into more peace. 

With you in his arms he felt complete, in a way. As if he had a duty of sorts and when you were there he was completing it. Not that he’d ever tell you as such.

But he wasn’t sure what this meant to him, and he didn’t want to think about it too much.

A part of him deep down knew that it would cause some pain, somewhere along the line. And so he didn’t spare those thoughts the chance. 

However, he couldn’t still the beating of his heart whenever you moved against him, whenever you looked at him and smiled.

As the credits rolled, there were several sighs of relief, but otherwise it was complete utter silence as the room tried to comprehend what abomination you’d just witnessed.

You glanced over at everyone to see if they were just as confused as you were. Seeing you were in firm company in your bemusement, you announced, “The Oscars are clearly rigged for this not to win.”

Yangyang snorted. “Of course!”

“Best film ever! Y/N couldn’t make a better one even if she tried.”

Xiaojun flicked Hendery’s toe for that one.

“Oh of course, honey.” You leant over slightly, arms gently squeezing the boy in your lap, giving him a squeeze. “And you couldn’t make a worse one.”

Hendery seemed to take it as more of a compliment as he grinned, nose scrunching as he headbutted you softly.

You tickled his sides briefly, seeking joy in the squeal that it earnt you, and let Xiaojun take the fall as he got kicked in the arm. You sent him an apologetic pout, not that you deep down meant it wholeheartedly. 

“Ow! Y/N!” he exaggerated, “And to think I defended you!”

“Karma,” you responded simply, much to his chagrin.

“For what?!”

“For all the headbutts I got in the stomach?” you asserted

Xiaojun shrugged, admitting his faults and hence, defeat. “Yeah, that’s fair—” 

It was Sicheng that interrupted. “Oh.”

His voice was disappointed, and where his melancholy suddenly procured from confused you, since you couldn’t see any possible origin anywhere. Had someone done something? Said something to dismiss him? More likely ignored him. You hoped for the others’ sake they hadn’t. He’d been so sunny during the movie. 

You looked over to him, trying to veil your concern in its entirety, but still show care. “Chengie?”

“The time,” he said, holding up his phone.

It was nearly midnight. 

“How long was the movie?” Yangyang exclaimed.

Sicheng answered, “Longer than you’d expect.”

“Well over two hours?” Xiaojun suggested. “But that time included the credits.”

“Haven’t you guys got to be up like, stupid-early tomorrow?” you asked, voice timid, fearing the ‘yes’ that you knew would follow.

A moan of irritation ricocheted across the room. 

Xiaojun confirmed it for you. “Yeah, we do.”

“I don’t want to go…” Yangyang whined.

“I’m sorry but you gotta,” you encouraged sadly, “you need sleep.”

“And so do you,” Hendery added, kicking his legs off the sofa and stretching as he stood. 

It was your day off tomorrow, though you couldn’t deny you were pretty tired. You decided not to protest. “I guess so.”

“Yeah, come on, otherwise Kun will be mad at us,” Xiaojun chuckled, “not sending you to bed at a responsible time, you know.”

You snickered, slowly shifting yourself out of Yangyang’s arms. 

His hands seemed resistant to the idea, catching on your shirt as you moved away.

Eventually though, he was freed from any of the ‘constraints’ he had—and thus all of his possible excuses as to why he wouldn’t head upstairs too—and was ordered by you to head to his room. “Come on, Yangyang. You gotta go.”

He pouted at you, in a last bid attempt to get you to have mercy and stay just a bit longer.

“I’m sorry sweetheart, but I can withstand even the strongest Xuxi pout,” you explained. From behind you heard someone, the identity of which you could not tell, whisper that that was a lie, but you ignored it and continued, “I’m sorry, but you’ve still got some training to do before you can win me over like that,” 

“Yeah, ok, I’m going,” Yangyang reluctantly nodded his head, mumbling,  “Worth a try…”

Hendery followed second, waving to you as he went with that Prince Charming smile almost knocking you off-guard again. It hadn’t, but of course something else was going to succeed in its stead. That ‘something’ took the form of Xiaojun, bidding you goodnight with a chaste kiss on your cheek. You were startled to say the least, it had been so brief, but felt like it had also lasted for minutes. His lips were warm, soft, but you hadn't been able to hold onto much tangibility to them, as no sooner had they met your skin, they were whisked away again. Like the touch of a spirit, afraid of the rapidly rising sun. It seemed no one else noticed due to the darkness of the living room and the fact that most of them were already halfway up the stairs or gone.

You remained in the living room a bit after they went, pretending that you needed to stretch on the sofa for a bit before getting up. It was a lie, though, and you knew that well, and you felt your fingers tracing over the curves of the invisible imprint he’d left there.

“You need to head up too.”

Sicheng’s voice was light and airy, like the shadows had engulfed it. You barely heard him, but he made you jump nonetheless. With one hand at your kiss-embroidered cheek, you threw one down to your chest where you wished the weight of your hand would somehow slow the sudden spike in your heart rate.

“I know,” you assured just as quietly, “I’m just… taking my time.”

You could just about trace the lines of his smile in the dim light after he turned the TV off. His presence was faint, but what you could feel was warm and gentle.

He whispered something that this time you didn’t catch. But you felt the tethered urge to know what it was.

“Sicheng?”

“Don’t worry.”

You swallowed, knowing that you weren’t going to get it out of him, much to your disappointment. He had just said what sounded like a collection of random syllables, but together they had carried something heavy, something with depth, something that had been patient for quite a time.

He sighed, getting to his feet. You heard the crinkling of wrappers and the clatter of bowls as he began to tidy up. 

“Here, I’ll help,” you began.

But as you sat up, you felt a hand press firmly against your shoulder.

“There’s no need, it’s ok.”

You frowned into the dark. He wasn’t looking at you, which was why his voice sounded distant. You could make out his silhouette, broad and proportioned as if he was drawn. He was like an artist's unknown creation, stood in the background of their studio, overlooked by many but appreciated much more than any by the few that knew him.

You worked up the courage to enquire about the occurrences earlier. “Why wouldn’t you come over and sit with us? Like, during the movie or before.” Feeling intrusive, you hurriedly added: “I mean, I don’t mind of course, just… you know?”

That caused him to look at you, dead in the eye, but he remained silent for the longest time. 

You reasoned that maybe this was why he never made eye contact with you. Because when he did, it was like he was peering much deeper than just your eyes. His stare was the definition of eyes being the gateways to the soul. You briefly considered if this one worked both ways when he finally replied, eyes dipping away once again.

“I didn’t want to get in your way,” he cleared his throat, scooping up an unopened snack bag under an arm, “besides, you were already quite busy with the others, so… I didn’t want to overwhelm you with anything more.”

Your features softened at his words, a pang in your heart. “I appreciate that, Chengie. But please remember that you won’t overwhelm me or get in my way. I like hanging out with you just as much as the others.”

You could make out the smile on his face, small and sweet, before he ushered himself away towards the kitchen. “You need to head to bed, Y/N, you need some sleep.”

He was right, but you were convinced you weren’t going to leave until you got one thing. If you'd calculated everything right, he wouldn’t have a problem. In fact, it may just be what he specifically wanted.

You headed to the entrance into the kitchen and waited for Sicheng to come back. Upon his return, he almost bumped into you, but caught himself just in time.

Your eyes met in the darkness, lit by the streetlamp from outside the window far behind you. His hair glimmered with the golden haze, crowning him surreptitiously, as he wordlessly questioned why you were there.

“I know, I’m heading up I promise,” you answered for him. “But… I just... can I have a hug first? Please?”

With his lips pressed into a small ‘o’, he looked shocked by your request to say the least. You worried for a moment that you’d misjudged, and was asking for too much of him.

Before you could backtrack and hurriedly explain that it didn’t matter if he said no, you’d be fine and wouldn’t think any different of him, that delicately crafted yet stoic face melted right before your eyes into the softest smile you could have imagined. “Of course.”

The silhouettes of his hands rose in the dark, barely touching your body as he brushed them along the slopes of your shoulders. He was gentle, but they moved with a certain affirmity, as if they took a mind of their own, following an old familiar road throughout their long-left hometown.

You found your own fingers gracing his collarbones, before shifting up, your arms coming flush against his bare, smooth neck, and finally interlocking gradually behind him. Sicheng meanwhile rounded the curves of your upper arms, eventually spiralling around to make the jump to your waist, where they wasted no time in nestling into the nook of your lower back.

He held you delicately, but firmly against him. It was reassuring, despite the lack of time you spent there pressed into his warmth, as you felt your breath slow, and your eyes close.

He felt so… tender? Vulnerable? It felt like he really meant whatever he was trying to convey through his actions. You just felt at such a loss because you couldn’t figure out what it was.

As his head came to a gentle rest against yours, his hands secure at the small of your back tightening as if instinctively, it occurred to you awfully suddenly. 

It was if he was hugging you like he was never going to get the chance to do so again.

.

.

.

Once you’d reached your room, you’d breathed a sigh heavy with a boiling froth of emotions.

In a cruel sense of irony, chasing after comfort had only succeeded for so long, as you were drawn back into the realms of stress once again.

It was of course something you could handle, you imagined at least—you’d gotten through the day of hell, you imagined you could handle a cornucopia of thoughts. Though you had to admit to yourself that there was a lot of string to unravel. 

You couldn’t help but remember the thrum of your heart as Sicheng had placed his thumb against the cusp of your jaw while he gradually pulled himself away, encouraging you to go to bed. His palm had barely touched your neck, the contact was so brief it felt like the breath of a ghost, but you had found yourself barely able to use your lungs regardless.

For a brief moment there had been a light in his eyes, that despite the dark shone so brightly. And then he’d pulled himself away, and that grey from prior had returned, like clouds pushed by a November gale.

What did it mean?

Oh please. You knew, didn’t you? Deep down the understanding was there, not that you could perhaps believe it.

What you were rather dealing with was the question of what it meant to you.

You decided to watch Youtube for a while to calm yourself down a bit after… whatever had just happened, and consequently ended up staying up long enough for the others to return.

The sound of the door opening and the joyous cacophony of Xuxi’s laughter—instantly answered with incessant hushing from not just Ten but also synonymously Kun—reminded you of one of the no doubt many reasons why you were unable to settle.

Kun had promised to return quickly, but he had been gone all night.

You wanted to ask about it, desperately. However, this coincided with the fact it was very late indeed. And how comfortable you were in bed. But it was also going to drive you crazy all night if you didn’t find out why. Kun was a man of his word. He would never just… break a promise like that. Would he?

After a few minutes, once Ten and Xuxi had retired to their rooms, your disgruntled prayers were answered as Kun knocked on your door, face peaking through the gap.

You stared up at him, eyes big and expectant with your lips pursed. He had explaining to do after all. It appeared he was aware of this fact too, with guilt written over his face.

“Hey, Y/N, I’m sorry,” he began, “can I come in?”

You pretended to think about it for a few moments, even though you both knew the answer. He waited though, and it was only when you gave him a ‘yes’ did he come inside.

He sidled over to your bed, eyes sweeping the shapes formed by your bed covers, to make sure that when he eventually perched on the side, he didn’t accidentally sit on your feet interlocked beneath the blankets.

“I’m sorry, I promised I would come back but the other two swore it wouldn’t be long, and it would be more rational to stay,” he explained, “but then it took longer than they thought, but I couldn’t risk coming home only to then head out again and… I don’t know why I listened to Xuxi about it to be honest, it’s not an overly rational thing to do.”

“Did he pout at you?”

“No! I am above falling to such… charms…”

“Sure you are.” You arched an eyebrow. “Did Ten tell you to stay?”

He nodded, his eyes surprisingly big. He wasn’t really one to pull the ‘kicked-puppy’ image to try and gain mercy, but here he was.

“Well, I’ll let you off then,” you let the faux scowl fall from your face and giggled instead, “we know how persuasive he can be.”

Kun paused, eyes flitting to yours. “So you’re not mad?”

You scoffed. “Kun, I wasn’t even that mad to begin with, I promise! I can’t be mad at you for long anyhow. You’re just too—”

You’d let your mouth talk without your brain, and it suddenly occurred to you what you were saying. As your voice faltered, you weren’t sure what was supposed to follow. 

Kind? Sweet? Cute? Handsome? 

Kun was waiting for you to finish, and unfortunately, you panicked a bit.

“Kun.”

He frowned bemusedly. “I’m too ‘Kun’?”

You nodded awkwardly, while you interrogated your own intelligence in your head. “…To be mad at for long, yes.” 

He cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowed towards but not quite at your bedside table. “Well, I mean, I prefer that to you being mad at me.” He exhaled, clearly relieved, looking straight at you instead. “Did you enjoy the film?”

“Oh it was awful!” you exclaimed. As you saw his eyes widen again, you laughed. “We enjoyed it so much.”

He was clearly very confused, and his lips wavered as he didn’t know how to respond. 

You took some delight in his confusion, you couldn’t deny. “Well,” you propositioned coyly, “you’d understand if you’d been there.”

“I’m sorry!” he reiterated, eyes wide and searching yours for any sign of relent.

Normally, you would have perhaps kept up the teasing for a little while longer. However, sleep was lodged beneath your eyes, encouraging them to close. 

“Ok, I’m sorry, I’ll stop now,” you laughed, though you felt a little bit guilty and sighed, sending him a small sweet smile. It still, however, occurred to you that he still owed you. “But… there would be something that would make it all up to me—”

To your surprise, Kun interrupted you, already one step ahead, “I know. Here.”

He shuffled along the bed so he was much closer to your body, arms held out for you. And you didn’t hesitate, much to his gratitude, levering yourself up with a temporary, newfound energy and straight into his embrace.

His warmth enveloped you, strong hands holding your upper back firmly, gently pulling you even closer. He didn’t even hesitate, nestling his nose into your neck, much similar to how you’d buried yourself into him.

Tender and tranquil, Kun seeped solace no matter the mood of the room. Some would perhaps identify this as a negative, but they would be wrong—very much so. He was needed to balance everyone else’s volume, brashness, fire. And you probably had very much needed him all day. Things could not be changed however, and the world kept turning even if you had previously wished it to. You wished for it to stop turning this time too, although for different reasons. 

His fingers drew art upon your back, much to your soothed delight. It wasn’t something he did super often, but it was a characteristic of his: whenever someone needed comforting, he caressed characters into their back. They were often straight lines, as you’d found over the time you’d spent living with them, decorated with divots and curves.

His head tipped into yours, his voice a deep murmur, “I’ve been waiting hours to do this.”

Your heart skipped a beat. You couldn’t even help it, though you shook it off as best you could. You’d been all over the place that day, emotionally, so of course you were going to be reacting all fuzzily over general acts of kindness. Well, that’s what you told yourself. Besides, he was just stating facts.

However, you were distracted by a small epiphany that hit you somewhat out of the blue. The calligraphy he traced between your shoulder blades felt so foreign to you, and it took no shape you recognised. This wasn’t something new to you, admittedly. You’d felt these moments of tenderness before. And since you could assemble no familiarity, you normally led yourself to just move on. But with silence in the room, the pure stillness that so rarely occurred, you were able to pay a fresh attention to the patterns, to the weight of his hands. It occurred to you that his ministrations were not random. In fact, his fingers drew the same code into your shirt, over and over. It was a long line, three consecutive dots, another line—was it lipped?—horizontal, then swooping, then flat, finalised by two curves. And subsequently, it repeated. 

You had barely an idea of what it was, but whether your scrap of a theory was right or not didn’t matter to you, as you were curious and were going to ask him nonetheless. He still owed you, you rationalised

“Me too,” you finally answered, frowned absentmindedly into his shoulder as you asked, “Kun, are you drawing something?”

“Hm?” He paused, confused by your words out of context.

“Into my back.” You shifted your face further into his hoodie, as if to hide yourself. Though it would be from him, which was slightly counter-productive. “You often draw as you hold me.”

“Do I?” Quickly though, his tact moved away from feigning ignorance, as he sighed, “Oh, that. I’m not really drawing, it’s more writing, actually.”

“Oh?”

“I-I do it to the others too…! Whenever they really need it. Though I’ll admit that’s not often,” he explained, his fingers halting as he spoke, “It sounds odd but… well actually quite silly actually…” he laughed breathily, awkwardness seeping into the corners of his eyes as he peered down at you. It was rare for Kun to get this anxious. “I write Mandarin kind of… without realising it,” he finished, “it helps the others and gives them some familiarity I guess? I figured subconsciously, I suppose, that it would help you a bit too? I don’t know really.”

He seemed pretty worried about what you thought—groundless, as you found his habit extremely endearing, actually, to the point you felt your heart swell. “Kun, that’s so sweet! Is it always the same thing for everyone?”

“No,” he answered after a moment’s thought, “I think I kind of write a specific one for each, but I can’t be sure now I think about it. To be honest, I don’t really pay—”

Your curiosity was not sated, and unfortunately for Kun, you couldn’t stop your nosey self from asking the question that this prompted. “Really? What do you write for them?”

“Well, like I said I don’t really pay attention to what I’m doing,” he responded sheepishly, “but… Ten gets ‘strength’, I know that one for sure, because I feel that’s what he has more of than he realises. Sicheng would get ‘ān’—you know, calm, content—because he is, but I've never had the chance to, as you, well, you know why. Lucas is lucky, he gets two characters because he’s ‘puppy’—”

“Obviously.”

He continued with a laugh that reverberated through to your chest. “—A-and I couldn’t honestly tell you what the others get. One of them I gave ‘loud’ because I think that’s what he needs to work on but—”

“I thought Lucas was ‘puppy’?” you snickered.

“Yeah, well,” Kun trailed off, “maybe it was him… I don’t know, I can’t remember.”

You smiled, releasing one of your hands from behind him to nestle instead amongst his hoodie as it had grown cold. You took this moment to work up the courage to enquire about the part that you couldn’t deny your interest was invested in the most. “What… what about me?”

He pulled away from you gradually, his hands coming to rest upon your upper shoulders, so very close to the sensitive parts of your neck. He studied your face, his own twisting into an expression of concern. “You really need to sleep,” he said, “your eyes are constantly closing.”

You pursed your lips at him. What did he have to hide about it? Was it something rude? It better not have been. “Hey!”

He cocked his head to one side. “What? They are. And you’ve had a tough day, you really should get some sleep.”

It was evident that it wasn’t him deflecting or avoiding your question—tiredness had seeped so far into your body that your voice had been barely audible, especially muffled by his clothes.

Hence you acknowledged his remarks reluctantly with a lethargic nod, before shifting yourself out of his grip, billowing the blankets out so as to allow yourself to lie down beneath them. Kun had stood to allow you more space, thus letting you curl up to conserve warmth properly.

He gazed down at you with particularly softened features. It was only in the dim golden light that you noticed how rouge his lips were naturally tinted, and how they curved into a smile as they opened to speak. Or how soft his cheeks were, as a long, slender dimple appeared as he did.

“You got everything you need?” Voice as light as silk, he leant over to catch your eyes behind the bundled blanket. 

You affirmed with a simple nod, feeling your body give into the approaching heaviness. 

You were barely able to work up the effort to speak anymore. The tiredness swept over you suddenly, but you didn’t fight it. Your body was crying for sleep, and your mind very nearly relented. But there was one more thing you had to clear up in some capacity before he left.

“Wait, Kun.”

The man turned back swiftly from where he’d gotten, heading towards the door. “Yes, love?”

You hummed, working up the words. “Something happened while you were out.” Upon seeing his face turn stony in concern again you proceeded before he worried too much. “Nothing bad! Just… Hendery and Yangyang had a bit of a bicker earlier. Over a newspaper? The CP Times? I think? Hendery really seemed to have struck a nerve though.”

Kun nodded, eyebrows furrowing in familiarity. “What happened specifically?”

“Well,” you sighed, propping yourself up on your elbow, as if it would help you think any clearer in your dozy state, “I think it had posted something mean about someone. Or excluded them from something when Yangyang thought they should have been included?”

“Yeah, that’d be the one.” 

Confused, you frowned at him, silently requesting him to continue. 

Kun winced as he drew forward a bit, in fear that the person in question would overhear from down the hall, “The CP Times wrote an article about YFCN—you know, the girl group?”

“Ohhh…” you drawled, things clicking into place a bit more.

“Yeah, one of the members was on hiatus at the time because she was ill, if I remember correctly, but the journalist wrote as if everyone was present and basically ignored her existence entirely. Lili I think her name was?”

You hummed in confirmation, “Does he like Lili a lot?”

Kun waggled his head slightly. “I guess you could say he’s a fan. Why?”

You shrugged, sinking back down onto your pillow, your arm struggling to keep you upright for any longer. “Hendery teased him about liking her, and Yangyang just… got all red and exclaimed ‘I am not in love with her.’ It really did come out of nowhere—and he did back down into himself after. He was totally fine once it had passed, though.”

Glancing back over to Kun, you saw his shoulders slumped ever so slightly, his eyes narrowed in pained thought at instead your blankets. His energy seemed to drop and disperse, just as though he had something he needed to mull over. 

In fact he was suddenly thinking over what you’d told him very carefully. “Did he say it like you said it to me?”

Your eyes trailed away from him as you nodded, fiddling with the covers of your blankets. “Why, do you think he was lying?”

His head flicked up to you at hearing your interpretation. He couldn’t believe you had ignored the emphasis in Yangyang’s words; you were usually so in touch and intuitive with the group’s tones. He excused it though, and waved it off as nothing to further worry about—you’d had a long day, the intricacies of Yangyang’s secrets were not exactly your top priority that evening.

However, this did leave him with a dastardly tantalising opportunity. He could take control of part of the narrative. He could curb some of the risks, even manoeuvre himself into a better position. It disturbed him how big of a part of him actually wanted to seize the chance and bathe in the possible outcomes.

Luckily, his morality immediately crushed those considerations, coupled with a healthy dose of realism. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone, especially you. And that was not the sort of person he wanted to be. Ever. 

Meanwhile you had your own subtle pain to fret over. Its origins were difficult to distinguish, as they always appeared to be that day. If Yangyang had a crush on Lili then it made perfect sense. She was gorgeous and strong—you were familiar with her group’s music, and you could never say you didn’t approve of his choice. She was the lead rapper, and an absolute badass with her own neon-punk style that contrasted so drastically but also gelled so well with the others in her group. It was no surprise he liked her—hell, if you had to choose a bias yourself you would choose her—and so you shouldn’t have been surprised. And, in all degrees, you weren’t. 

No. Instead you were stuck with this uncomfortable pit in your stomach. A swollen stone that weighed just a bit too much for you to dismiss.

“I don’t know,” Kun finally finished, almost making you question yourself if he’d spoken without you even realising, caught up in your own head. He hadn’t, but it made you realise how correct he was in suggesting you go to sleep.

Watching your eyes anxiously wander about the room, he added hastily, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. You know how weird those two are sometimes.”

You chuckled softly, and Kun found himself inclining towards you, just to catch a better glimpse of the beautiful sound; only for him to stop himself just before his movement became noticeable.

“Anyway,” he sheepishly started, never intending to ever finish.

You echoed him, before letting yourself take in his face one more time for the night. No matter where or what the lighting was, he was incredibly handsome. 

Settling into your pillow at last, your subconscious finally quelled itself, agreeing at last that it was maybe time to give into that small, tired voice that begged you for rest.

Kun was grateful you were calming down, and as soon as he spotted his relief he felt the fangs of guilt bit into his neck. He didn’t want to leave you in any distress, and so he wanted to stay with you for as long as possible. But he also had his own emotions that were now deciding to not remain in check. And he hated it, but he had to acknowledge that he inevitably needed to be left alone to have his epiphany, and motivate himself into a game plan.

He nodded absentmindedly, straightening up and heading for the lamp on your bedside table. As his fingers flipped the switch and the room was plunged into darkness save for the blade of silver from the hall, his brain stuttered.

He’d wanted to do something for a very long time, and this was the perfect opportunity to do it. In fact it would be a way to get ahead of everything, perhaps. And it wasn’t like there was no evidence for his wishes. You’d already been desperate for a hug from him and him specifically.

But it was if his words were stolen, his movements forced to a halt. 

Was it fair to do anything after all?

He wasn’t sure. 

And so the lights went out, and he felt his feet moving by themselves towards the doorway, arm outstretched instinctively towards the handle, but too early to catch it—away from where he truly wanted it. 

“Goodnight, Kun,” you called after him, watching his retreating silhouette carve a shadow in the light from the hall. He looked so tall and impending all the way over there. It was rare for him to be so tense—in fact, you couldn’t name a single instance where he was this pent up, and the other members could be a real hassle when they wanted to be.

As you began to worry in your sleep-deprived state for him, he reached the door and held it open. His head turned, and he stole a long, gradual glance into the darkness to take in a glimpse of your face. You already had your eyes half closed, cheeks sweet and squished against your pillow as you squinted over to him, waiting for his next move. You looked so adorable wrapped up and surrounded in warmth, and with your hair crowning you, gifting you a makeshift halo, your temple was left exposed and waiting.

But Kun, as he cursed himself numerous times in his head, was a coward.

“Goodnight, love.”

And with that he left the room, leaving the door ajar just how you liked it.

As he trundled to his room not far down the corridor, his knuckles reached up to his chin, and then his lips, where they rubbed uncomfortably hard. 

There would be another time. Surely? He prayed that there would be, and that it was him alone who got the opportunity. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. 

Hearing the click of a door from further down, he desperately slipped himself into his room, narrowly failing to avoid Ten’s omniscient eyes as he exited his bedroom.

He didn’t know where the younger was going, and he didn’t want to know, his brain was too preoccupied with other things.

Yet he knew that he knew too much. Ten knew everything. Kun didn’t have any proof, or know for sure, but he had a feeling that the guy thrived off knowledge, things he could perhaps perhaps spin.

No. That was too far. This was all just a strange bout of paranoia.

But he couldn’t deny his disbelief at how all the members never chose Ten as the member they were most afraid of on variety shows. Maybe it was the age dynamic. 

“And there’s no evidence to show that Ten would ever do anything low like that,” he murmured to himself as he closed his bedroom door, “pull yourself together, Kun.”

He let himself exhale all the air that had built up in his lungs.

The conversation overall for him had been around a solid 4 out of 10 in terms of success. Not ideal.

He guessed he had to count his blessings though, that you didn’t apprehend his deflection prior over the characters. The idiot he was. Tracing ‘love’ into your back without even realising.

He was entirely lovesick.

And now he knew he wasn’t the only one, too. Of course he wasn’t. Why he hadn’t realised it sooner was a real challenge to his personally-perceived trait of ‘aware’ that he often took pride in.

It was him, and Yangyang. But was it just those two? His thoughts flipped like a switch, as if the vintage slideshow in his head had changed and had confronted him with nothing more than the purely angelic moving picture of you. Giggling when he had bought you ice cream at the beach, eyes gazing wide up into the grey skies as you’d been caught in a downpour and huddled under his tiny umbrella, the peace upon your features that he had just witnessed. 

He had to come to the conclusion that it was most definitely not just him and Yangyang.

Xuxi? Of course. The kid couldn’t hide anything, and he had seen the way he stared at you 24/7. The optimist in him had just dismissed it because he didn’t want it to be true. There wasn’t a lot he had on the guy. It was purely down to your preference, as he lamented to himself, because there was no way he could compete with Xuxi’s face, his humour, his doting, puppy-love affection. 

The qualities Kun did have were somewhat echoed in Sicheng though, he decided. And was it him too? He was always willing to help you. And just because he kept to himself more… Kun resolved he couldn’t count him out.

And Xiaojun? God, he wasn’t sure, but would he explain to him what he named the hedgehog after? No.

The leader cursed under his breath. He was in trouble to say the least. 

Again, he questioned himself why he was so surprised. You’d been living with them for a while, for efficacy to begin with. And then you’d chosen to stay. It was practically inevitable that since he’d fallen so quick and hard that the others would obviously do so too.

He was left to establish Ten’s involvement, and the diagnostics were hardly in his favour there either.

As he contemplated everything, sitting on his bed with his phone discarded in his hands, the man in question meanwhile barely let himself look away from where the retreating shadow of his leader had stolen away to, so guilty-like. Ten’s gaze was only snatched away by the image of your passed-out face that he caught a peek of through the gap in the door. 

Your beauty glimmered in his mind, a fuzzy image hazed with holy pink. And then he was silently taking the stairs, his mind becoming stuck on the picture of Kun’s eyes that he’d briefly seen before his head ducked away, and now covered his thoughts of you. They were glazed over, his real priorities tucked elsewhere. And as he noted where he’d just come from, and the context for the entire day, it wasn’t difficult for Ten to connect the dots.

He knew.

~~~

AN: here it is. The final piece. look out for the coming Endings!

Also, all film names were randomly generated on a title generator. If they are actually the names of films then they weren’t intended to be.

Ending One - Kun Ending Two - Ten Ending Three - Sicheng Ending Four - Lucas Ending Five - Xiaojun Ending Six - Hendery  Ending Seven - Yangyang

Masterlist

[fuzzballsheltiepants]

The Sparrow

Green light filtered through the window. It made the room feel like it was under water, or on some foreign planet. Andrew dropped his arm over his eyes trying to block it out, trying to will himself back to sleep for another hour. Or three. Nobody was counting.

A sharp pip sounded from somewhere outside. A minute passed, and it sounded again. And again. Andrew dropped his arm and glared out into the greenish dawn. A little bird hung from one of the branches of the giant vine that clung to the side of the house. It stared at him, cocking its head to the side, bright eyes considering. Pip!

“You’re an asshole.”

The bird gave a self-satisfied pip and flew off. Bastard. Just what he needed, an alarm clock with a mind of its own.

He yawned and stretched, taking inventory of what hurt. Knees. Left thumb. Right hip. Better than yesterday. He left his cane where it was, leaning against the wall.

Going down the narrow stairs that his physical therapist had assured him were a terrible idea, he entered the tiny kitchen and grumbled at the landscape of boxes he could see stacked in the living room. The coffee maker was the one thing he had set up yesterday, and he listened to the gurgling sounds as the water dripped through while he looked over the boxes. Finding the one labeled Dishes, he dug through and pulled out a bowl and a mug.

He took his meager breakfast out onto the patio. The cracked concrete was shot through with weeds; the abandoned furniture peeling and rusted. The little pipping bird was back to sitting in the vines. He couldn’t figure out why it was there; other than the vines that were assaulting the house and a few coarse weeds, the yard was bare dirt, hard and unwelcoming and littered with junk. It was ugly as hell, but Andrew didn’t really care. All he had to do was lift his head, and the view was spectacular: rolling mountains, the caps slowly baring themselves to the spring sun, the slopes a mix of trees and green expanses that he knew from photographs were covered with flowers. Someday, he’d walk there. Someday, he’d reach the top.

Scoffing at himself, at his stupid impossible dreams, he creaked to his feet and went in to take his medications.

~

Andrew’s house was full of strangers. If he hadn’t just bought the thing two days ago, it would’ve been tempting to set it on fire.

They weren’t technically strangers, as Allison had pointed out, given that he worked with them. But when Renee had said she’d be stopping by to help him unpack, he would’ve preferred it if she’d mentioned she’d be bringing half the town. He glared across the room at Renee, who pretended not to notice while she helped her girlfriend unpack cooking supplies. There was banging overhead where Kevin and Matt were putting together his bed. On the one hand, he was glad he was going to be able to stop sleeping on his mattress on the floor. On the other hand…

Movement outside caught this eye, a flash of reddish brown in his front yard. “What—”

Renee paused in her silverware sorting and followed his eyes. “Oh good! Neil came.”

“What, you hadn’t brought enough people?”

His words were punctuated by a crash from upstairs, followed by Matt’s voice calling a strained, “Everything’s okay!”

“Neil’s a gardener,” Allison said, as if that should have been obvious.

“Great.” More help he didn’t want. He made his way outside, but Neil had disappeared. Grumbling, he walked around the house, only stumbling twice. A slender man stood at the edge of his backyard, facing the mountains. Andrew tried to pretend that the man didn’t improve the view considerably, and stepped up to his side.

The man gave him a slashing glance, then a matching smile. “You must be Andrew.” He held out his hand, shrugging when Andrew didn’t take it. “Neil. I’m a friend of Allison’s.”

“What fresh hell do you have in store for me?”

Neil laughed easily. “Depends on what you want. Clean all this trash up to start; after that it’s up to you.”

“Up to me.” So far not a damn thing had been up to him, despite Renee’s lip service. “In that case, can you get rid of the assholes who have taken over my house?”

“Sorry, no,” Neil said, grinning. Andrew couldn’t take his eyes off of him, and he cursed himself for his weakness. “You know how it is. Once you’re in Renee’s clutches, you will help people and you will like it.”

“I most definitely will not.”

Neil laughed again and turned back to the yard, picking up one of the discarded plastic buckets that littered the space. “I better get started.”

It was rapidly becoming familiar, getting dismissed in his own house. He would have stayed just to watch Neil work, but Dan called his name and he headed back inside to prevent a book-arranging disaster.

~

The rumble of a truck pulled Andrew out of the mental cocoon he went into whenever he started working on his book. The week had been blessedly quiet, save for his avian alarm clock, but it appeared that was at an end. Grumbling, he forced himself to his feet, leaving his cane leaning against the couch.

Neil was standing on his front walkway, rubbing a hand sheepishly through his hair. “Morning.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m here to figure out what we’re doing with your yard. Didn’t Allison tell you?”

Andrew thought of Allison’s parting words on Friday. “You’re welcome!” He hadn’t known what she meant and hadn’t cared. Evidently he should have. “Why?”

Neil looked at him, nonplussed. “Because having that yard basically being a wasteland of dirt is criminal?”

“Hey, it’s my wasteland of dirt.”

That damn smile made a reappearance. “You deserve more than that.”

“That’s such bullshit. Nobody deserves anything.”

Neil cocked his head to one side. “Do you really believe that?”

Andrew studied his face, the faded scarring across his cheeks, the stubborn set to his jaw that made the smile a lie. “How much is Allison paying you?”

He looked genuinely startled at that. “Nothing. I volunteered.”

“Why? What do you get out of this?”

Neil looked away, color staining his cheeks like a sunrise. “Everyone deserves a little beauty in their lives.”

Andrew wondered what it was like, going through life with the evidence of other people’s viciousness on your face, and believing in beauty anyway.

~

Slowly the garden took shape, each Sunday adding a little more. When Andrew greeted him the third Sunday leaning on his cane, the truckload of gravel went back to where it came from without a word. The next week, he came outside to find Neil laying out paving stones in a sunburst pattern where the concrete had once been.

Neil was interesting and unpredictable, some days working for hours in silence, others chattering at length about plants and birds, on this continent and others. Sometimes Andrew helped, raking the dirt in the raised beds, then setting the native perennials Neil had picked out gently into the sun-warmed soil. Sometimes his hands wouldn’t close on the tools, and he sat in the shade of the house and talked or read aloud from the book he was writing. Once he stopped, uncertain if Neil was even listening; his friend raised his head from where he was setting out a bird bath. “Is that it?” Neil asked, disappointment coloring his voice, and Andrew bit back his smile as he turned back to his book.

Neil arranged shrubs around the house and planted a couple of flowering trees for shade. Soon Andrew’s little pipping bird had friends of his own, and he woke to a melodic cacophony each morning. One afternoon, they sat in silence on the new furniture Andrew had ordered, sipping lemonade and watching fat bumblebees tumble in and out of hot pink flowers. The garden was almost done; the summer had already passed its peak. Andrew looked at Neil, at his summer-sky eyes and his autumn hair, and he swallowed back the grief as he realized these Sundays were drawing to a close.

~

The singing was not enough to stir him. He heard it, dimly, through the haze of pain, but he closed his eyes and drifted back into the darkness.

~

“Andrew?”

He knew that voice; it wrapped itself around his heart and pulled, forcing him into consciousness. Stifling his groan was impossible, and Neil was at his side in a flash. “How can I help?”

“I need to take my meds.” His voice sounded like gravel, and he tried to clear his throat but it was too dry to make a difference.

“Bathroom?”

Andrew hummed, and Neil disappeared, only to reappear in a second with his pill case and a glass of water. “Can I?” Neil asked, hovering an arm over Andrew’s shoulders. Nodding didn’t hurt, at least, and Neil slipped an arm gently behind him and coaxed him into a sitting position against the headboard. He held the glass so Andrew could suck some water through the straw, then handed him the pills, one at a time. When he was done, they sat there like that for a while, Andrew avoiding Neil’s eyes. He hated this, hated that Neil found him like this. Hated that this was the new reality of his life, where he could be going along okay and then suddenly be incapacitated by pain.

It hadn’t struck him down like this since he first got sick; he would never forget that panic, being alone and unable to move without screaming, having to drag himself to the bathroom. Then the weeks of doctor’s visits and tests, the medications that helped the pain but messed him up otherwise, until they finally found a cocktail that worked, more or less beating his immune system into submission. He had moved here out of sheer stubbornness; maybe he should call it stupidity. But he needed this. He needed the mountains out there, calling to him. He needed to believe that one day he would climb up there.

“Why are you here?” he asked, shattering the silence.

“It’s Sunday.”

But the garden is finished, he wanted to say; you are wasting your time with me.

Neil reached out like he was going to touch his hand, but refrained when he saw the red, swollen joints. “Did you think I was just coming for the garden?”

“Why else would you bother?”

“Andrew…I could have finished that garden in two weeks, if I’d wanted to. That was my plan, at first.” He laughed, shaking his head as if at himself. “But then you wouldn’t let me cut down that damn vine because that sparrow likes it…”

Andrew closed his eyes, hearing the unspoken words behind Neil’s soft tone. “I will never be more than this, Neil.”

“You’re Andrew. What more do you need to be?”

~

There was music in the trees. A symphony composed of wind through tree boughs, of the singing of birds, the chattering of squirrels, the baseline of leaves crunching underfoot. Andrew paused for breath, gulping down some water. The early springtime air traced cool fingers through his hair, and goosebumps erupted down his arms.

Recapping his water, he followed the sound of footsteps in front of him. His walking stick was worn smooth where his hand rested, and he rubbed his thumb in the glossy spot as he negotiated his way over some roots.

“It’s just up ahead,” Neil’s voice called from somewhere out of sight. Andrew took his time, even though he knew he would follow that voice anywhere. He had waited a year for this; he could wait a few minutes longer.

The trees finally opened up to a scene out of a movie. Flowers, blue and purple and white and yellow, all bowed before the wind that tore across the meadow. Neil stood on a little rise, one hand shielding his eyes, staring west. Andrew climbed up to stand next to him. He could see their house from here, the windows glinting in the sun. When he squinted, he could discern the blossoms on the flowering cherry Neil had planted near the bedroom. The tree was still small, barely taller than they were, but it bloomed with reckless abandon. Warmth crept through him that had nothing to do with the springtime sunshine as he thought of their tiny tree, and the nest the sparrows were building in its branches.

Neil bent down and kissed him, soft and lingering. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Andrew nodded, looking at the riot of color all around him. Up above, he could see the peak of the mountain looming white; once, he had longed to reach the very summit. Once, he had thought he would never set foot in the woods again. His free hand found Neil’s, tracing the familiar calluses and scars. “Beautiful.”

[alarawriting]

52 Project #5: Rosetta Stone

When Triala was twelve, a transmute spoke to her.

She'd never told anyone else the story.  One of the defining characteristics of transmutes was that they didn't speak.  And she had only been a child, and had come within a hair of being killed.  People would say she had hallucinated.  They might even take her to the Magicians, suspecting a traumatized mind.  But she knew what she'd heard.  And the transmute hadn't killed her.

She and the other children in her age group were going to the Magicians to be tested for Magic aptitude.  Already Triala had known that she didn't want to be a Magician.  She feared the transmutes, like everyone on Majer, but she felt a powerful fascination with them as well.  She had to be a Ranger, because only the Rangers got to see transmutes on a regular basis.  Even if it was only to kill them.  Unfortunately, if you had Magician aptitude, you became a Magician whether you liked it or not, and Triala had a deep and disquieting suspicion that she had it. She heard things, and remembered things that couldn't possibly have happened to her.  So she was very tense that day, fearing the interview with the Magicians.

A local Lifeliner brought her and the rest of the locality's 12-year-olds to the huge tree that housed the Magicians' testing center.  They were all made to wait in the outer rim, while the Lifeliner, a woman of clan Ringart, talked to the Magicians.  Then the testers came out, and called for the children one by one, in the order of their birthdates.

As one of the youngest of the twelves, Triala had a while to wait.  So she sat while child after child returned, known now to have no Magic within them-- or did not return, taken away to the training places.  The wait was driving her crazy with dread.  Magicians never deliberately encountered transmutes; close contact with the creatures generally drove them insane.  And Triala wanted to see transmutes.

She got her wish.  When there were four children left, one of the wooden chairs exploded out, the color draining from it as it melted into gelatin.  Triala sat frozen, shock and horror and fascinated excitement paralyzing her, as the gelatin recomposed itself into an evor, a stationary swamp animal with tentacles.  The tentacles lashed out, only seconds after the chair's melting, and caught the Lifeliner in the gun hand before she could get her weapon aimed.  She dropped the gun and screamed as the tentacle dragged her in.  "Kids! Get help!"

The door was blasted open, and three Magicians charged into the room. They tried to form a triangle around the transmute, which changed again, pulling itself in, and leapt.  A huge mouth with devouring teeth flew at one Magician before he could focus his power, and it ripped his head off and swallowed it.

The two other Magicians began to chant, trying to pen the transmute into a protective box as it charged for the entrance.  But without a third, all they could do was keep it in a corridor, and before they could narrow the corridor and crush the transmute, it had reached the first protective door, which it yanked open.

On the other side of the protective hall, the second door came down and transmutes swarmed inside.  Probably there were only five or six, but to Triala it seemed like thousands.  More Magicians arrived to fight.  A slender young man, no older than an eighteen, tried to get Triala and the other three children to safety.  A transmute smashed in his skull, and then tore a little boy apart for good measure.

Jesee and Marin, the other surviving children, clung to each other under a table, trembling and crying.  Triala was trembling too, but she didn't feel it.  She felt numb, strangely aloof.  Despite the blood and the viciousness of the battle, she couldn't quite make herself believe that the transmutes might kill her.

She glanced at the inner door that led deeper into the complex.  It had been sealed off with a metal safety door, protecting the rest of the complex from the transmutes, and essentially writing off the children in the waiting room.  Unless the Rangers showed up in time to rescue them, there would be no help for them-- the complex couldn't be endangered any further for the sake of three children.  The Lifeliner, Marin's mother, was dead, her body strewn in chewed pieces all over the floor.  All the Magicians were dead.  There were also dead transmutes virtually everywhere.

But there was still at least one alive.

The transmute approached.  Jesee and Marin scrambled back, yelling, "Triala, it's coming!"  But Triala was frozen.  The transmute held a vaguely humanoid shape, with huge, luminescent eyes that trapped Triala in fascination.  She couldn't move.  She didn't really want to.

The transmute was so beautiful.

Its skin was pearly luminescent, and the light from the overhead algaelamp made colors dance on it.  Its body was fluidity and grace incarnate.  A human shape made of gelatin, flowing in and out as it moved forward.  It hadn't manifested a mouth, or any other threatening appendage, and its eyes were pools of silver ocean water.  Triala had been out of the swamps just once to visit the ocean, but she had never forgotten how ocean water sparkled, so clear.  

It told her that she had been tested already.

There were no words.  But she knew the transmute had spoken.  Not in language, even the language of mental speech.  Pure thought, with no words.

Behind her, Jesee and Marin screamed.  Triala spun.  They had both been caught by a wounded transmute-- tentacles were wrapped around both their necks.  As she watched, they slumped.

"Let them go!"  she screamed at the transmute.

She heard it say that they would not die.  The thought that she interpreted as "death"  carried overtones of other concepts-- the extinguishing of an annoying light, the squashing of a bug.  Then it gave her to understand that humanity would believe she had been tested already, and had no magic.  Only, what it seemed to be saying was that she had no fearsome human power, and that this was somehow true.  Or perhaps that she could make it true, if she wanted.

She had not been tested already.  And if she was understanding mindspeech-- or something like it-- she had to have Magic.  But it could be true, if she said it to her fellow humans, in the human language that the transmutes couldn't speak.  It would become the truth, if she said it was.

It said to tell no one of this.

And then the Rangers arrived, and cut down the remaining transmutes with lasers.  Jesee and Marin had been poisoned by sleep venom, but would recover.  The Rangers told Triala just how lucky she was. "That transmute was about to go for you.  Why didn't you run?"

She didn't know.  It was as if she were waking up from a dream, now.  It struck her suddenly what danger she had been in.  "I-- I-- couldn't..."

"I hear that happens.  You were unbelievably lucky we got here in time.  Another minute, and you and your friends would have been mute meat."

She knew it wasn't true, but she didn't contradict it.  The transmutes had killed and died to talk to her, just to her. How could she explain that? She couldn't understand it herself.

She told everyone she had been tested for Magic, and had none.  No one checked her story.  She was never tested again.

She never spoke of it, ever.

***

In the flit on the way to her first real mission as a Ranger, Triala thought of that.

The situation they were going into was similar.  The transmutes had broken into a school, killed all the Professionals, and-- as far as the Magicians could tell-- hadn't killed the children yet.  No one knew why.  It was unclear whether transmutes understood the concept of "hostages"-- certainly no human had ever held a transmute hostage against another.  More likely, they planned to kill the children and impersonate them, in yet another useless attempt to mimic humans.  Of all the species on Majer, native and starborn both, humans were the only ones that transmutes could not successfully imitate, because humans were the only ones with language.

"So what do they hope to gain?"  Aisander of Korita asked.  She was a slim, pale-skinned redhead who had consistently been at the top of the class-- though never quite as high as Triala, whose grades were outrageously good.

"What do you mean, Korita Recruit?"  Dilman Ranger asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

"I mean-- if they know we won't be fooled, why do they bother?"

"If they don't understand language, what makes you so sure they know we won't be fooled?"  Dilman Ranger asked sharply.  "They might have no idea what keeps tripping them up.  Never assume you know how the transmutes think."

"Besides,"  Dereg of Mattorn said, eager to score points, "kids often don't talk right away after a trauma like that.  If a transmute plays an unconscious kid, it might get back as far as that kid's Treehouse before it gets caught, if the Rangers are careless."

"Good point, Mattorn Recruit.  If we rescue any kids, we make them talk before we take them back."

"Do you really think there'll be any kids to rescue, Ranger?" Triala asked.

Dilman's face darkened.  "Doubt it."

"I heard they sometimes kidnap children,"  Aisander said.

"It happens, yes."  He turned to Triala.  "It happened to you, Morell Recruit, if I remember the dossier on you right."

Triala nodded.  "When I was a small baby.  About 2 or 3. I disappeared for close to a year following a transmute raid, and then turned up again.  No one knows why."

"No one knows why transmutes do anything,"  Dilman said.  He checked the flit comp.  "We're almost there.  Morell-- don't get so fascinated with the transmutes they kill you.  Mattorn-- no heroics.  Neither Morell nor Korita's going to be impressed by stupid stunts. Korita-- don't be soft.  If it looks like a kid but it doesn't talk, we can't take chances."

"What if it's a baby?"  Aisander protested.

"Not that kind of school.  It's for sevens and up.  All the kids will be linguistic.  Any that aren't are transmutes.  Shoot them before they get you."

***

When Triala had been training for her Ranger status, the transmute lack of language had been given as the cause of the war between the two species.

"We probably started it,"  the instructor had said.  "The first humans who came to Majer didn't much care what they destroyed, and the transmutes probably fought to defend themselves.  But there's no way to call a truce.  Their memories seem to be as long as ours, and they're probably as intelligent-- but they don't have language."

"What about mindspeech?"  a student had asked.

"Any Magician that actually manages to get through to a transmute goes crazy.  They go catatonic or aphasic, lose their own language.  Or else they just turn totally psychotic.  Human minds can't connect with transmute minds-- they're too different."

"But they must communicate with each other,"  Triala pointed out.  They were wrong, though she wouldn't say it.  Transmutes could communicate with humans, if the humans were young enough. She remembered.

"Undoubtedly, but no one knows how.  Pheromones, maybe.  Or body language-- something incredibly subtle, that won't be affected when they take different forms.  Maybe some kind of mindspeech.  But whatever it is, it means nothing to us.  And our language means nothing to them."

It was something that nagged at Triala.  In the beginning, she hadn't been able to understand why Magicians couldn't communicate mind-to-mind with transmutes.  Later, a Magician from Farest, on the other side of Majer where they spoke a different tongue, had mindspoken to Triala, and she'd understood the barrier.  It was not as if the Farestina was speaking her language; it was as if, for that brief moment, she understood Faresti.  Mindspeech went through the language centers of the brain.  You couldn't mindspeak to a baby, and so you couldn't mindspeak to a transmute.

But if they couldn't speak to each other...  Triala had fantasies in which it turned out that the transmutes only wanted peace, wanted to negotiate coexistence, and if only the two species could talk...  No one would ever know, though, as long as they couldn't talk.  So they were doomed to kill each other, and there was no hope for peace.

When Triala became a full-fledged Ranger, and had some influence, she planned to push for experiments between captive transmutes and children with Magic.  It had to have been her age, that had enabled the transmute to talk to her.  If another child could be found who could speak to transmutes, perhaps Majer could finally find peace.  Right now, though, she was a green recruit on her first real mission, and she couldn't afford to think about peace.  She had to kill transmutes on sight, or they would kill other humans, such as her.  And Triala of Morell Clan was rather fond of life.

***

The school had been built low, where the major branches interlaced into a canopy over the swamp below.  The outer part of the school was built between two major branches, covering forty-five degrees of the tree's surface.  It was built out a good seventy feet; inside, it would be even bigger, where the builders had bored into the major branches and the tree itself.

One of the walls had been broken down.  Dilman pulled the flit up by it, and pointed it out.  "What's that look like to you recruits?"

"Wood rot,"  Dereg said promptly.  "They'd have injected it in, waited a few weeks for it to rot out the wood, and then just kicked the wall in."

Dilman nodded.  "The school should've kept up with its monthly sprayings.  They could've stopped the rot before it got that far.  Let's go in.  And be careful.  This isn't a sim."

Triala knew it wasn't a sim.  No matter how detailed the sims got, they never quite conveyed full smell and tangency.  The scent of rotting wood, blood and feces wafted from inside the school-- recent death, not long enough to produce rotting meat.  The feel of the uncertain creaking boards beneath her feet, the musty chalkboard smell of the air.  The luminaries, globes of water filled with glowing algae, had been smashed, and dim dying algae lay in stinking puddles across much of the floor.  The light was thus reduced to the dim half-tone that made it through both the forest overhead and the ceiling windows.  In several places, the window plastic had been gouged out, and lay forlornly on the floor underneath a skylight.  Occasionally they encountered an adult's body on the way in, sprawled bloody and torn.  Some of the bodies were remarkably close to intact, with dark bruises on their throats indicating a strangling death.

"I don't like this,"  Dilman muttered.  "Where're the kids?"

Triala felt she was being watched.  She kept twisting around to see, but there was no one.  Not even furniture-- transmutes could imitate wooden furniture, but there wasn't even that.  Just dead bodies.

What prevented transmutes from taking the form of dead bodies?

That was an incredibly paranoid thought.  She'd never heard of transmutes taking the form of dead humans before. But she couldn't see what would stop them-- it would solve the language problem, and a freshly killed body would still be warm, so the transmute wouldn't have to go to the trouble of cooling itself.  Perhaps a bloody, torn body would be too dangerous for them, but a body that had been strangled to death...  Paranoia saved Rangers' lives.  She was on the verge of drawing and shooting the dead when Dereg, on point, called, "Found the kids!"

As the others turned the corner, Triala did shoot the bodies.  They didn't twitch or transform.  They sizzled as her beam cooked them, but that was all.  She was being too paranoid, maybe.  Quickly she ran to join the others.  

There were six living kids, huddled together around the corner.  More dead bodies, of adults and other children, were strewn everywhere.  "Names!"  Dereg barked. Transmutes could imitate crying.

"Don't be so rough!"  Aisander complained.  But the kids knew the drill.  Terrorized as they were, they'd still had it drummed into their heads that they needed to speak, to identify themselves as human.  Each of them choked out a name, some sobbing so hard that the name wasn't recognizable-- but the point was to prove they were human, and human speech was recognizable even if individual words weren't.

Triala felt very nervous.  No transmutes.  There were no transmutes.  Maybe she hadn't been too paranoid.  Raising her gun, she said, "Dilman Ranger, I think the bodies--"

She got no farther.  The corpses shifted, as if they'd somehow understood Triala, jerking to their feet and taking different forms.  Despite the fact that Triala had already started to bring her gun into firing position, Dilman outdrew her and blasted two of the transmutes.  A third took the form of a springing creature and leapt for Dilman, but Triala shot it.  Then transmutes from the deeper recesses of the school poured in.

"Ambush!"  Dilman shouted.  He and Aisander dropped back to protect the kids, leaving Triala and Dereg to find cover and help pick off transmutes in the crossfire.  Assuming they didn't get killed first.  Triala rolled behind a metal room divider and fired, taking out a transmute that was practically on top of Aisander.  One got Dereg, coming up underneath where it had been impersonating a severed torso and dragging him down.  Triala couldn't see what happened after that, because a transmute leapt over the room divider and on top of her.  She twisted and flung it off before it had a chance to bite or sting her.  It came back at her, and she fired, cooking its center-- but at the last second it shifted almost all its mass into tentacles, leaving only a thin membrane to be cooked.  The tentacles shot out at her.  There was nowhere to dodge-- she was trapped by the metal divider.  One tentacle wrapped around her gun hand, numbing it.  The gun went flying.  Another grabbed her leg and yanked her to the floor.

Then the tentacles released her.  Triala didn't question impossible good fortune.  Some sixth sense she had never felt in the sims told her that more transmutes were coming over the divider.  She ran, away from her partners, away from the transmute that had attacked her.  Her gun was being guarded by a small transmute in the shape of a cat.  If she could get back to the flit, there were spare guns.  If she could get back--

The floor, destroyed from within by wood rot, gave under her.  In the split second as it gave, Triala understood that the transmutes had herded her here.  Then she fell, shrieking.  There were no major branches beneath her, no strong branches at all.  Her fall to the swamp 80 feet below was almost unbroken.

***

A large number of people on Majer had dreams that they could fly. They would pull up their legs and throw out their arms and they'd be flying.  Or they'd leap and not come down, or they'd flap their arms.  There were some who speculated that there'd been places on Terre, the world of humanity's origin, where the gravity was light enough that they could fly.  Others dismissed this as nonsense, the fancy of Terre-fantasy writers.

Triala had never dreamed she could fly.  But in her life, she had dreamed frequently of breathing swamp water. She would dream of being in the swamp, feeling the water cool against her body, and having no breathing difficulty at all, as if she had gills.  She would dream of the swamp, not as the dull gray murderous thing it was, but as a magic place full of shifting lights, luminescent fish, and wondrous creatures.

Apparently she was dreaming that again.

At least, she was here under the swamp, floating gently, sinking slowly downward, but she felt no real need to breathe, and no sense of pressure.  So it must be a dream.  And when the transmutes surrounded her in their various beautiful swamp-adapted forms, with long flippered legs, streamlined bodies, and shining big eyes, she felt no fear.  This was a dream, after all.  She made no move to stop the transmutes from catching her arms and tugging her with them, gently drawing her through the swamp water.

She was not afraid, but she was curious.  So she tried to ask, "Where are you taking me?"  But the dream had this much verisimilitude, at least; she couldn't talk underwater.  Her words came out in a gurgle.

The transmutes told her that they couldn't hear her.

It was the same strange not-speech the transmute had spoken to her years ago.  And like that, it was virtually indecipherable.  Do not hear? Cannot hear? Do not understand? Are not listening? The not-words echoed, strange and nonsensical, in her brain, overlaid with so many possible meanings she could not precisely decide which.  There was also a sense of kinship-- that they should be able to hear her, that it was her fault they could not.  But transmutes could never understand humans.

Slowly it dawned on Triala that she was in considerable pain.  The dreamlike absence of sensation ebbed through growing stages of hurt, until it felt as if her chest had been crushed and her legs were broken.  As pain returned, true consciousness did as well, and her senses cleared.  This was not a dream.  She had plunged 80 feet into the swamp, lost consciousness, and awakened, underwater.  Breathing, underwater.  With transmutes taking her someplace.

I hurt, she thought.  Oh, gods, I hurt.  It was the only thing she could think, a repeating litany.  Her brain was too occupied with the gradually increasing pain to notice anything else.  It was strange that she was breathing underwater, but strangeness could wait until she was no longer in pain.  Which, she thought, might be several years.  It was her impact against the water she was feeling.  Triala would be very surprised if any bone in her body was left unbroken.

Of course, she ought to be dead.

One of them told her that she should not be in pain.  Or that they didn't want her to be in pain.  Or that they would take the pain away.  Something like that.  Triala turned toward the transmute on her left, positive it had talked, but what had it said?

Then it manifested a barbed stinger.  Suddenly afraid, Triala tried to pull away-- too late.  A sharp jab in her chest, and then pleasant numbness, spreading through her body once more.

She felt dreamy, but would not succumb to it.  She had to think.  That ambush back at the school-- that had been an ambush, set up by the transmutes to specifically take out Rangers.  They were smart enough to know their primary enemies.  The ones that had engineered that trap had been unusually smart-- Triala had never before heard of transmutes impersonating dead bodies. Why had they used that technique this time? And why hadn't they killed her when they had a chance?

She was breathing underwater.  Transmutes were taking her somewhere.  Talking transmutes.  But they didn't speak in language-- they seemed to be communicating in concepts, in pure thought, the precursor of language.  These pure thoughts, uncontaminated by words-- were they what drove the Magicians mad or aphasic? The greatest difficulty they presented Triala with was that they were vague and hard to understand.  Was it that she was not as sensitive as the Magicians? Or that she was more?

Talking transmutes.  A dream come true.  It refused to add up.  How could she be breathing underwater?

Why is it I can understand transmutes?

They passed through a transmute city.  Triala might have caught her breath in recognition, except that she didn't quite seem to be breathing.  Broken branches, major and minor, tree stumps that didn't rise above the surface of the swamp, honeycombed with cells that held transmutes.  All the ones they passed had eyes, which they kept firmly averted away from Triala and her escort.

She remembered the stories of the kidnapped children, some of whom reappeared.  Of adults who disappeared into the transmutes' catacombs, never to return. Was that what they intended for her?

Then they rose up into a grotto, hollowed out from a tree stump, high enough to rise above the water.  Triala had seen photographs of caves, high in the mountains on the northern part of the world.  This was like a cave.  Enough wood remained to create a sloping floor that rose gently from below the water's surface to about a foot above, and then became a plateau, occasionally dipping back down into a puddle.  There was more wood overhead, a ceiling blocking out the dim sun of the swamp. Triala's three transmute escorts began to glow as they entered the grotto, their bioluminescence providing the only light.

For a second, rising from the water, Triala couldn't breathe.  She choked, feeling something in a band around her neck gape open uselessly.  Then the pressure in her neck eased, and she sucked in a gasping surge of air, musty and swamp-smelling.

The flapping sensation she had felt disturbed her greatly.  She put her hand to her neck.  There was a swelling there, going down as she touched it. Quickly it was gone.

What the hell--?

Her escort tugged her forward, telling her she must come.

Triala stepped forward-- and realized that she had healed.  There were no longer any traces of the injuries she'd suffered when she fell.

And she knew this place.  Her eyes widened.  This cave was in her dreams, her nightmares.  Had she been held captive here when she was a baby, prisoner of the transmutes?

The transmutes gestured her over to a hole in the wood.  A small, square hole.  By the light of the transmutes, she peered inside, and saw--

--a baby's skeleton.

And she knew whose.

Triala jerked to her feet.  "No!"  she screamed at them, the three silent figures.  "No! I'm human! I'm human!"

They could not hear her.  Or did not understand, or whatever they were saying.  They told each other that she hid her thoughts, or disguised them, like the invaders did, the despoilers.  One complained that Triala was a failure, absorbed.  Another protested that she would hear, she would accept, she would understand.

They were trying to tell her she was a transmute.  Human infants had not yet learned to speak.  Transmute infants had not yet learned not to.

Put a transmute baby in a room with a human one.  The human one had to be old enough that it could speak a little bit. Transmutes did in fact know what human speech was, and that it kept them from imitating the invaders.  They couldn't speak it, couldn't imitate it, but they knew it when they heard it.  So take such a baby and pair it with a transmute baby.  Tell the transmute infant-- since you and it are both prelinguistic, since you share thought, not words, it will understand you-- tell it that it must mimic the human.  Lavish care on the human, food, attention.  Praise it and play with it when it speaks.  Ignore the transmute baby except when it is fully human, an exact replica of the human it mimics.  And praise it when it speaks, as well.

Until the baby forgets it was a transmute.  Until its birth-gifts go dormant, as it takes on the identity of the human child.  Then release it back to the humans, who will train it to speak and behave as a human, never imagining that it is not.

Triala of Morell died in infancy, allowed to expire by her transmute captors, when their own infant had replicated her sufficiently.

Triala of Morell's tiny bones lay in a wooden grave, in a transmute grotto.

And a transmute who bore the same name crumpled to the floor in anguish, hands pressed to her face, understanding.  They had watched her all along.  They had known that if she joined the Magicians, she would be lost to them, so they created chaos by killing her testers.  Afterward, she collaborated, telling the humans that she had been tested, and they'd believed her.  The transmute power to change what others perceive, to alter what they believe, channeled through the human power of language.

They'd set a trap for her.  Transmutes had always had the power to impersonate human dead.  They had chosen not to do so for a century or two, keeping it in reserve for when they would truly need it.  They had used it this time, just so they could get her back.

They asked her if she understood.  Or told her that she understood.

And she did understand.  The more she heard in pure thought, the less necessary the translation into language was, and therefore the easier it became to understand.  Consciously she tried to think without words, telling them that she did understand how-- but not why.  What was the reason?

The concept that came back at her was so dense it was difficult to unravel. She would be a boundary/bridge/assassin/spy/diplomat.  In languages, the overtones were mutually contradictory, and she sent a lack of comprehension at them.

They replied that she was a transmute that could imitate humans.  She could teach them how to do it.  One thought she could infiltrate human society and destroy the invaders.  Another felt she could make the humans stop their war against transmutes.  She could speak for the transmutes to humanity, could be the ambassador between the races and bring peace.

Humans would assume that one who claimed to speak to transmutes was insane, she tried to tell them.  If medical science could not reveal what she truly was, they would put her in a madhouse, and if it could, humanity might well kill her in a spasm of superstitious fear. The idea of a transmute that could, in fact, speak like a human, could pass for human so well it itself thought it was human, would terrify most humans.  But she wouldn't destroy humanity for the transmutes' sake, even if she could, which she doubted.  She had always dreamed of ending the war, not of committing genocide.  And she knew nothing of her transmute heritage-- she had grown up a human among humans.  If it came to genocide, she had already chosen sides, when she became a Ranger.

Of course, when she'd chosen sides, she hadn't known what she was.

They reminded her, sharply, that she was thinking in words again, and they couldn't follow.

She sent at them a question.  Why had they brought her here?

They replied it was so she would know what she was.

But I don't know what I am.  If I ever knew what it meant to be a transmute, I've forgotten it.

???

Sighing, she tried to think the idea again, without words this time.

They seemed to understand.  One asked her if she wanted to learn.

Yes.  She couldn't make a decision until she knew what the stakes were, and what weapons she would have to fight with.  She gave them her assent.

They told her to come.  

She followed her guides into the water again, and the gills rose on her neck automatically.  She couldn't consciously change herself-- she couldn't shed her human form-- but that was all right, the others told her.  She would learn.

The only transmute with a name swam off with her new companions.

[princeescaluswords]

A Line Too Far

Yesterday, I had a spirited discussion with some anti-Scott individuals, including a BNF.  One of the things that stuck in my mind in that exchange was how one of them, at least, viewed the Some of Us Are Human speech in Lies of Omission (5x09) as something good.  They tried to defend it by saying that Stiles was praising Scott, setting him up on a pedestal.  

And it mystifies me, because this speech is the primary reason I have serious problems with Stiles on a fundamental level.  I don’t hate the character, but he would never be my favorite simply because when dealing with people he’s supposed to love and care about, he had no boundaries. And I’m not just talking about breaking into their houses, listening in on their phone calls, reading their mail, and making decisions about their lives, I’m talking about when dealing with them in a relationship, there was simply no limit to what he would do to achieve his goals. This particular speech, in my opinion, embodies that, as it is frankly the cruelest speech I can remember one television character giving another television character that they’re supposed to love.  Let me reproduce it for you as reference:

Stiles: Scott? Where did you get that?

Scott: This is yours? Why didn't you tell me?

Stiles: I was going to.

Scott: No, but why didn't you tell me when it happened?

Stiles: I couldn't.

Scott: You killed him? You killed Donovan?

Stiles:  Well, he was going to kill my dad. Huh? Was I supposed to just let him?

Scott: You weren't supposed to do this. None of us are.

Stiles: You think I had a choice?

Scott: There's always a choice.

Stiles: Yeah, well, I can't do what you can, Scott. I know you wouldn't have done it. You probably would've just figured something out, right?

Scott: I'd try.

Stiles: Yeah, because you're Scott McCall! You're the True Alpha! Guess what? All of us can't be True Alphas. Some of us have to make mistakes. Some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes. Some of us are human!

That wasn’t praise; it was sarcasm, Stiles self-proclaimed ‘only defense.’  It wasn’t an acknowledgement that Scott was superior to him, it was an attempt to change the topic from Stiles’s behavior to Scott’s.   It was false, it was strategic, and it was cruel.  Under the jump, I’ll talk about exactly why.

The only way for me to possibly think of this speech as praise would be to extract it from all context and history.  It should be clear from what was happening during the scene that this was an attempt by Stiles to protect himself by attacking Scott in the most vicious way he could imagine – by attacking the basis of their friendship, by arguing that they simply weren’t equals anymore, and that he should be granted leeway because of it.  

While I think the setup was badly handled – in my opinion this scene would have been 20x better for the production and better for the character of Stiles if he had actually beat Donovan to death with a wrench during the attack -- the writing wasn’t awful, mostly because Stiles’s behavior was consistent from previous seaons.    He did something very similar with Lydia in Master Plan (2x12), when he shouted at a grieving girl, “See, that's the problem. You - you don't care about getting hurt. But you know how I'll feel? I'll be devastated. And if you die, I will literally go out of my freakin' mind,” in order to change the topic from what she desired to what he did.  He did something very similar with Derek in The Overlooked (3x10), when he tried to make himself feel better at Derek’s expense, “Are you telling me what to do now? When your psychotic, mass murdering girlfriend... the second one you've dated, by the way...”  in the middle of a highly dangerous situation.   And finally, he did the exact same thing to his father in The Girl Who Knew Too Much (3x09) with “You just don’t believe.  Mom would have believed me.”   Stiles sacrificed this emotional link with his father – his mother’s death – to get his own way.  These are all previous attempts to use cruelty to control people he supposedly cares about.   Stiles lashing out at Scott can’t be seen as anything else but another instance of the same.

And this speech, to me, is extremely cruel, especially when you take the context of their friendship into account.   I can go through it line by line and explain the mechanism of its ruthlessness.

Yeah, because you're Scott McCall! You're the True Alpha.   This is not only cruel, it’s hypocritical.   Who was one of the people who pushed Scott into becoming a True Alpha?  Who said “Look, you have something, Scott. Okay? Whether you want it or not, you can do things that nobody else can do. So that means you don't have a choice anymore. It means you have to do something” to Scott?   This was after Stiles had literally tortured Scott for not doing the right thing.   It was a seminal moment.   For Stiles to turn on Scott after setting him on this path is simply disgusting.  It’s not being delivered as a compliment.  It’s being delivered as an accusation, especially when you see what comes next.

Guess what? All of us can't be True Alphas.  He shouts this at Scott and he knows damn well that Scott’s never demanded anything like that of Stiles before.  In Night School (1x07), in Venomous (2x05), in Battlefield (2x11), in Chaos Rising (3x05), in Silverfinger (3x17), Scott has always been aware of Stiles’s limitations.   I mean, there was this exchange in Battlefield (2x11):

Stiles: It's going to be bad, isn't it? I mean, like people screaming, running for their lives, blood, killing, maiming kind of bad?

Scott: Looks like it.

Stiles: Scott, the other night seeing my dad get hit over the head by Matt, you know, while I'm just lying there and I can't even move, it just - I want to help, you know, but I can't do the things that you can do. I can't –

Scott: It's okay.

Stiles knows that Scott doesn’t expect him to be a True Alpha or even a werewolf.  He never even offered Stiles the Bite until it was possibly the only thing to keep him from dying of frontotemporal dementia.  Scott never expected Stiles to be anything but what he was: a human being.  And expecting a human being to tell the truth and not to murder people isn’t outrageous behavior.

Some of us have to make mistakes.  This is a key line.  Stiles has been there for all of Scott’s mistakes as a werewolf and a leader.  He’s been critical of Scott for his mistakes, in Heart Monitor (1x06), in Formality (1x11), in Frenemy (2x06), in Alpha Pact (3x11), in The Divine Move (3x24), in The Benefactor (4x04), and in Parasomnia (5x02).  Stiles has never hesitated when pointing out when Scott has made a mistake and has often mocked him for it.  So this isn’t praise; it’s sarcasm.

Some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes.  Again, Stiles knows this statement isn’t true.  He was there in Night School (1x07) when Scott confessed that he wanted to kill people, Stiles included.   He was there in Motel California (3x06) when Scott confessed “every time I try to fight back, someone gets hurt.”   He must have been told that Scott held a dying Allison in his arms after leading her into battle in Insatiable (3x23) and he was present when Aiden died trying to fight for his cause in The Divine Move (3x24).   Does anyone think that Stiles didn’t learn about the fight with the rogue hunters in Monstrous (4x10) or Berserker Scott stabbing Kira in Smoke & Mirrors (4x12)?  Or that Scott didn’t talk to him about his failure to save Lucas in Condition Terminal (5x04)? The idea that Scott has never gotten his hands bloody was untrue.  Stiles knew it was untrue, but Stiles was seeking to change the topic from Stiles’s actions to Scott’s beliefs.  

Some of us are human!  And this is the ultimate cruelty.  He knows that Scott’s been afraid of losing his humanity since the night he was bit, a night Stiles played a role in.  He’s been there for every dark moment in Season 1 and for the manifestation of that fear – the shadow alpha -- in Anchors (3x13) and More Bad Than Good (3x14). Does anyone believe that Stiles didn’t interrogate Scott about his dreams in Time of Death (4x08)?  Stiles – as he habitually has with Lydia and Derek and his father – homed into his best friend’s weakness and struck at it with tactical viciousness.  

This was the scene that made me realize my problem with Stiles would unfortunately, never go away. Some people talk about the dog bowl scene or the assault in the hospital and those are all instances of terrible behavior, but all characters make mistakes.  To me, the final line was crossed in this speech.   This wasn’t about Stiles ‘showing love.’  This wasn’t even really about Stiles defending himself.  This was about Stiles’ expectation that he had the right to cross any boundary and Scott would still be his friend, which mostly seemed to consist of Scott doing as he was told.   The line was crossed not just because Stiles said these things, but because all the characters’ response to him saying these things was … nothing.   The characters never mentioned it; the production never mentioned it.  This decision gave tacit approval to Stiles’s terrible behavior.   Oh, that’s just Stiles, the show was saying.  He gets like that when he’s upset.  

Yep.  That was just Stiles.  And that’s my problem.

[at-the-exd-of-everythixg]

Ok uh DND HEADCANONS aka welcome to fantasy queer eye

Ava: A tiefling paladin. Bonar Fidea ("BONER?" "Shut the fuck up Sal.") Is sworn to her mission to protect the group of travellers she's met. Especially when faced with a particular half orc,,,ahem, Bonar is intent on doing good, not for the cost of gold, but to perhaps wipe her hands of bloodshed left over from a suffocating war that she refuses to talk about....just a shame that the rest of her party doesn't agree with the motives.

Mimi: Dwarf fighter named Viet Clearwater ("'Cause she drags her enemies through the fucking mud!"). Dwarf milf -

("wait," Lace squints and Mimi grins. "How is she a milf??" "WELL. You know that thing where a woman gets out of the fire and shakes her head? That's that." Everyone waits for a moment before nodding appreativatevly.)

- who worked in a blacksmiths for many years before meeting Sal's character and ending up joining his kid onto becoming fantasy bounty hunters for a few months before meeting the others. Viet's personal mission is to get a beach day yet each plot ends up derailing her from it each and every time.

Finn: Druid Elf called Roisen-Mae Maylar who worked in fantasy Greggs before Bonar robbed them and Roisen-Mae was the one who was sent after her due to him being "the new guy". Long story short, Roisen-Mae realised he was underpaid and joined Bonar in her avenging for justice, quickly realising that "justice" was conceived of breaking into places and killing people in order to free others. Roisen-Mae kinda wishes he could go back to Fantasy Greggs but...he likes the feeling of adventure in his blood, likes helping people in such a freeing manner.

Sal: Elvish Bard named Chester. Out here playing the top hits of "I want thy love" and "I was created for loving thee." With the backups of Wulf's character. Realised that he could get more cash and that there was...fuck, there was something magic about his voice that struck the monsters and mysterious assassins often sent after the party for some reason.

("Wait so you're some sort of siren?" Pascal had begun to laugh as Sal sqwuaked in indignation. "No! Its- its magic! Shut up you solar piece of shit!")

Sure, murder wasn't was Chester was expecting. But fuck if it ain't gonna be fun (skksks ngl I'm...half wondering if Sal would let his dnd character be in love like I am with him and me being ace sksk)

Mahogany: No character since they struggle with grasping the game but they usually have someone sitting on their lap while they watch everyone play and suggest actions. Sometimes they're allowed to be monsters but often Mahogany is just there to get some cuddles.

Pascal: Orc rogue named Solgrindr The Rugged. 100% he's here to get jacked and each mission allows him to gain One Ab. His guns are huge but his heart is even huge-er and Solgrindr speaks with a fiery passion to sell his training regime and to collect a million fantasy numbers. Since. U know. Solgrindr has earned these by now.

("So you're a Chad?" Mimi squints and Pascal lifts up a hand in offense before Sal interjects. "YEAH PASCAL YOU AN INCEL?" Pascal cried a minute later. He just wanted to be ripped, was that too much to ask?)

Solgrindr is but a man of his whims and what's a bigger whim than a fiery battle and an even hotter romance? ("His sole goal is to romance Chester." Pascal says, smiling viciously when Sal chokes from across the table.) Its just a shame he hasn't been able to live up to his full power yet...

Edith: A half-orc paladin called Yanag Broifstïgnäh who is...basically a carbon copy of Edith but no one's gonna exactly argue with a 6'something Norse angel who everyone excluding Wulf and Dae, are attracted to her. Yanag fights with the same ire and power anyone else would have done to protect her party entirely. She gets a magical axe that apparently washes her into an entirely new and powerful form only once every game.

(Finn frowns, tilting his head curiously. "You made Edith into a magical girl?"

Doe blinks and for a moment, Finn shudders when his own eyes meet his. "Yeah. Is that what that's called? Coolio.")

Yanag saves and romances a woman with every town they go to, but it raises questions when she seems to deny their affections, just as its suspicious how black tar-like veins seem to spread on her the more she uses this power.

Wulf: A human ranger called Bob Greenson. Your average, typical human man who just so happens to believe in fate and adventure! He shall charm everyone and fight the good battles!

("So." Ava squinted and Edith tried to not smile. "He's playing as himself...but a human man?" Her question seemed to get a rough snort out of Edith and a slight nudge of the shoulders. "Aye, but 'tis what makes the man happy I suppose.")

Of course, Bob is on a strict mission to product review as many weapons as he possibly can for his company, Weap'n'throw, while perhaps finding a few good spots to camp out for the ol' family? How's it goin' neighbour? Sure there are some sale issues, what with everyone wanting to murder Bob, but what sales pitch doesn't come with a bit of haggling, hm? With his mighty band of sales assistants, please speak to Chester on aisle three for magical trumpets!

Adonai: Dungeon Master! It's a relief to be themselves and to still be able to interact with the games and everyone else. Doe was worried at first that they would have been left out while everyone got to be something different. They would have joined, but the idea of yet again forming a whole new identity, trying to find the balance and shifts...it sounded exhausting. They couldn't handle it.

Ava patted them and told Doe that they didn't need to be someone. They could think up the scenarios and risks and Joys. It wasn't often that they got an opportunity to take over and simply have fun with risking Mimi's life or trying to create romantic scenarios between Edith and Ava. Doe takes great pleasure in being the DM and it isn't uncommon for them to modify their body for certain campaigns.

Lace: A half-elf wizard named Elvish Presley (Everyone groans. Mahogany weeps. Edith demotes her Valkyrie ways. Sal becomes a nun.) Elvish is interested in learning all sources of magic and why their world works. Is there anything connecting them all? A reason for them being here? Elvish is determined to find out, no matter what the cost...mostly of himself though.

Whether he admits that he wouldn't allow his team to get hurt or not, that is entirely Elvish's thoughts and feelings alone. Quick! Put that healing spell away! We can't let these people know that we feel and yearn! But little does Elvish Presley know, everyone is aware that he is a giant nerd with a giant heart that weeps when Bonar rescues him from the angry orgre who's wagon dealership they ruined in a quest.

Dae: A dragonborn ranger named Torpa Armani who dreams of becoming a famous writer-

("Th-that's bas-basically what y-you do anywh-anyway." Morde squints as Wulf grins while Dae flushes and shakes his head. It's a weak argument, to hear your clone try and deny the elaborate romance novels he writes about his friends.)

-But! Sometimes you just get whisked away onto wild and heart melting adventures. Its hard to ignore how good it deeps to help other people with their problems. It seems that Torpa may just be finding out that there's more to life than romance or tragedy books for them. Especially if they seem so insistent on carrying a weapon and being willing to put their trust and faith within other people once more after being outcasted for who and what they are.

Peach: A tiefling ranger named Puddles Skipclear. Puddles was once a water nymph, but had been cursed into a more physical form that didn't allow her to touch water. She is bound to dry lands until Puddles is able to break her curse. Unfortunately, Puddles doesn't even seem to know what curse bounds her and changes her for possibly forever.

(Morde is quiet for a moment, not meeting his clone's eyes guilt makes his eyes and body dim and slouch. Dae does the same towards Mordecai and everyone tries to ignore the guilt that isn't there's suddenly shifting around the room.)

She likes the people she has chosen to travel with. They're silly and their quests don't always work out, but they're honest in helping Puddles and she wants to trust in them when they say that they will help her remove her curse. They're all rather different from her water sisters that faded away and slipped out of Puddles' too physical fingers, but she's begun to have high hopes about what this mission could mean for her along the way.

Mordecai: Orc rogue named Vecivus Brogun, who is a well renewed theft despite his size. Parties could only dream of having him upon their sides. It's easy to steal things from countless people, but it's harder to steal the secrets. Especially when such a strange party seems to hold so many of these secrets. Some of them have simple ideas and wants, but others?

Oh, there's mystery to them and contrary to what others believe about orcs, Vec is far more easily aware and shifty than most. If only the others would realise these and help him out with a few gigs...after all, is it so bad to steal from a dragon if said dragon had so many riches that he would have hardly noticed if a few went missing?

[myheroaizawashota]

If requests are still up, may I request Aizawa and his crush, the reader, coming across a child who has a strong mix of their features and who keeps following them and kinda annoying and it's later revealed that this child is their future kid together who has the quirk of being able to teleport to the past. This fact, which only Aizawa learns, prompts him to gain the courage to confess to reader that he loves them.

[this was actually super adorable and fun to write! Admittedly this one is a long one, it took me a while, but hopefully it still came out rather decent and hopefully you still love it! I’m sorry if it’s not the best work I’ve put out, I have t really ever done anything like this but I really enjoyed the challenge!]

Twenty children was where Aizawa drew his line. The maximum capacity of children the man could handle before his patience wore to their absolute thinniest was twenty. Not twenty one. With a set of uninterested eyes, he looked down at the little girl who was now rested happily in his arms, a sigh of irritation passing his lips. Truthfully, he didn’t know where this extra child had come from. When he arrived to his classroom this morning, the small child was stood in the center of his room whimpering and crying. From a glance the child didn’t look to be more than three years of age, which only peeked his curiosutiy. How did a toddler manage to break seemlessly into the most secured school in the area. He tried to see if the child would pass any information his way, but upon realizing this was just a typical child, lost and frightened, he put his quest for answers on hold.

So now here he was, baby sitting a much more calmed toddler, the girl resting contently in his arms. It was strange to him just how relaxed the child seemed in his arms compared to how she reacted with others. Upon discovery of the girl his first instinct was to drop the child in Nezus company, but that plan immediately fell to pieces when the girl refused to released the growingly agitated teachers neck from her hold. Giving a sigh his eyes met with the child’s while his brows furrowed a huff passing his lips, “I can’t carry you around all day kid, I have things I need to do. You’re going to have to sit with someone else while I do them.”

The child gave a grunt of disapproval, her little legs kicking and stretching as she grabbed ahold of the man’s scarf, curling her little fist around it. “No!”

Great, just what he needed. A child with an attitude. He didn’t have the patience for this, not today at least. He needed to find someone to pawn this child off on to. It was clear that she wasn’t acceptant of any of the male teachers he tried to pass her along to, maybe someone with a very maternal instinct would work. Carrying the now fussing and sassy little monster down the hall, he made his way to your classroom giving a hum as his attention fell to the toddler in his arms. “Tantrums aren’t a way of getting what you want.”

His heart clenched when the child gently shoved at his chest, she pulling her lips into the sweetest pout. “No!” He knew that pout, but not from seeing it on this child’s face. Often times when the habitually uninterested man would deny you his attention or his time, you often gave him the same pout. It struck the softer strands of his heart, considering the feelings he’d managed to build for you. Though to no avail, much like when you presented the strict hero the same pout, the child got no where.

Letting his hand knock once at your door before sliding it open, he felt a wave of relief flood his body when he saw you sitting at your desk. Clearing his throat in an attempt to grab your attention, he gave you a gentle hum when your eyes finally meet. His heart jumped, smacking viciously against his chest as he felt the warmth and care they spread take over his body, he all but forgetting how to breathe in that instant. “Hey, shouldn’t you be teaching?” You chuckled, eyes slowly making their way down his side to the child in his arms. “Oh my god Shouta she’s so precious, is this your daughter? You didn’t tell me you had a kid” It hurt your heart a little to entertain the idea of the man having a family already, seeing as to how you managed to develop quite the crush on the stoic and stuffy pro hero. Part of you hoped he’d answer no to your question, but you highly doubted he would considering just how much the small girl resembled him. She had the same cute little nose and her face shared a similar shape. Even her hair fell similarly to his, while it was a different color, it sat and looked a lot like his.

Unable to maintain his feelings, a soft peach began to fuse its way across his typically mute cheeks. Pressing his lips together, he nervously tried to swollow his embarrassment. “No she isn’t mine. What would make you think something crazy like that?”

Relieved to hear, you let a hushed sigh pass your lips as you moved to reach for the child, who for the first time today was eager to leave Aizawas arms. Chuckling at the girls excitement, your heart couldn’t help flutter at the smile she gave, it looking so similar to the man’s in front of you, well when ever he did smile. You grinned and moved to tuck the child, who very instinctively moved to press her head into the side of your neck, against your chest as you gently shifted your weight as you began to rock them softly “I don’t know, the fact she looks just like you was my main thing” you smiled watching as the child’s eyes began to close, a thumb popping into her mouth as she moved closer to you.

Amazed by your motherly instinct, Shouta breath hitched in his throat as he stood unable to tear his eyes off of you. Not only were you incredibly tough, talented and smart, seeing this whole new nurturing side of you really solidified the feelings he had for you. It took his brain a moment to realize he had been staring at you for what some would consider far to long. While he stood gawking at the sight in front of him, he couldn’t help but notice the subtle details of the child’s face that reminded him much more of you then they did himself. “I can see some resemblances, but now that you’re holding her it’s very uncanny just how much she looks like you..”

You gave a snort of disbelief as you looked down at the nearly sleeping child that moved to curl as close as she could against you. “Ha ha, very funny. So if she isn’t you’re child who is she then?”

Flustered by your response, his eyes cast to the ground, fingers crawling across the back of his neck “Thats the thing...I don’t know who she is. I came in this morning and she was standing in the middle of my room. Ive had her since then, she hasn’t let me put her down until now. You’re the first person she’s willing left me for, and the only person she stayed calm in front of. I was hoping you could watch her, just until we figure out what to do with her. 1-A has progress testing for their quirks today, i don’t want her caught in the crossfires. I can come back for her once I’m done.”

The shock pooled in your features as you took in all of the information provided to you. How did such a sweet innocent angel manage to find herself stranded in the center of a U.A high school class. Even if she was left here, who would it be by? It’s not like many people have access in and out of the school. Left with just as much confusion as the other, you gave a hum as you pushed the little girls hair from her face. You supposed you could watch her for a bit while the other attended to his teacherly duties. She was a cute little thing after all, and despite Shouta minor horror story, she seemed like a sweet girl. You gave him a soft smile, your heart pounding when the child in your arms gave a gentle yawn and fluttered those big eyes of hers up at you. It gave you a chill, you could understand what the other meant when he claimed the girl did resemble you just as much as she did him. Tugging the child protectively against your chest you let your chin rest on her head, “I’ll watch her for now...we can figure out who she is and where her parents are when you get back, though if we can’t figure it out she may just have to come home with one of us.” You sighed, finger gently caressing the toddlers cheek as she dozed off.

Nodding in agreement, the 1-A teacher crossed his arm, a heavy sigh rippling past his mouth. “Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. I’ll be back a few hours, if I’m lucky my class will get through these tests manageably and quickly.” Though with how competitive those students could get sometimes, he never held out to much hope.

-

As agreed upon Aizawa returned to your room once his exams were complete, breathing a sigh of relief to see the small child behaving for you as well as she bahaved for him. It was heart warming for him to see just how much of a family the three of you looked like. Admittedly while you and him worked together to find more information on the child, he may have smiled just a bit more than he typically did, his stomach fluttering to see the way you and the child interacted. Seeing him smile made your heart soar just as much.

After hours of searching to both of your disappointments, there seemed to be no trail of who this child was. It looked like the girl would be staying with one of you for the night. It was getting late, the time now about five in the afternoon. Seeing as to how the small girls patience began to run thin, she resorting to tantrums you both dame to the conclusion that it’d be best for the child to stay with him for the night. Sighing, the not so happy erasure hero grabbed the small girl up in his arms, “Lets get you home, your probably starving, huh.” Gathering the child and his things, he gave you a smile thank you for the help today. You gave him a smile in return, a blush poking onto your cheeks when you told him if he needed anything to just call. Appreciative of that aizawa nodded his head. He didn’t think he’d need you, the child seemed fairly attached to him, how bad could it be?...

Assuming the situation was under control was the worst move on Aizawa’s part. Once he’d arrived home and the child realized you would not be joining them, her little mouth didn’t seem to shut. She cried endlessly for what seemed like hours, she sobbing at the top of her lungs. God, Shouta hadn’t heard sobbing this loud since the time Yamada forced him to watch Marley and Me. Panicked, the new step in father covered his ears staring at the child with fear in his eyes “What?! What! Why are you crying please stop!” He pleeded, all but shouting in attempt to speak over her.

The child now crying more, he tried to relax and think rationally about the situation, hands fishing into his pockets to immediately call you. As he listened to the dial tone, he threw the conversation onto speaker so you were sure to get an earful of the same torment he was getting. It wasn’t long before you answered the phone call to the child’s screaming, you not even waiting for the question you both knew was coming. Informing him you’d be there as fast as you could, you hung up the call, not even waiting for his response.

As soon as the phone call dropped, the exhausted and weary man moved to scoop the crying child into his arms. Doing his best to imitate your movements from before, Shouta hushed and rocked the child on his hip, lowering his voice as he spoke “please stop crying now or tell me what you want. I don’t know why you’re crying.”

The small toddler rubbed at her eyes, she still sniffling and whimpering as she managed to choke out “mommy! I wan’ mommy.”

That was strange, the child had been with you and a Shouta all day, but not once had she mentioned her mother or father. Now suddenly when she was left alone with just him she was calling for her mother? Chalking it up to the late hour of the night and the child feeling vulnerable and scared, he gave a sigh and continue to soothe the child until you arrived a half an hour later.

Happy to hear your knock, Shouta swung the door open, relief flooding past his lips as he handed the child your way, he giving the heaviest sigh. “It’s been non stop since after we ate. I tried to get her ready for bed and since then she’s been screaming ceaselessly.” He grunted hands now moving to rub at his temples. “Do something. She seemed responsive to you back in your room.”

Taken aback by the child being hoisted immediately into your arms, you gave a grunt. For some reason hearing this baby scream the way she did really broke your heart. You hated to see the face that reminded you so strongly of Shoutas drenched in tears. Her small little cheeks were no longer the soft pale they were the last time you saw her, they stained red from the crying. Pressing your lips to the top of her head, you twisted your body back and forth hushing the toddler, “shhh shhh it’s okay...you’re safe. I won’t let anything hurt you, your okay...”

It didn’t take more than a minute before the child seemed to stop, she clinging herself to you in a way that was much more demanding than before. The way the child seemed to curl around to your body was almost more than just looking for safety. You seemed to noticed she felt a connection to you, almost similar to the bond a child would have to her mother. Strange, considering you’d never met this girl before in your life.

Blessed to hear the crying had stopped, aizawa let the breath he was holding release, he looking to you with soft eyes. Shortly after calming the girl down it became clear that the child wanted both of you around, not just one. It being the only way to keep the girl in check, the two of you decided that you would spend the night here, just until tomorrow. You and the kid would take the bed while aizawa would rest on the couch, if he decides to sleep at all, which honestly he didn’t think would happen. Even though he was exhausted both physically and mentally he couldn’t sleep. Nothing about the situation was adding up in his head, it making his brain to overworked to shut down. Unable to sleep he stayed up. Setting his computer on his lap, he checked through some assignments he had fallen behind on grading. Since he wasn’t sleeping he may as well work. Though after a few hours of reading papers and grading work sheets, his body managed to fall asleep, his work surrounding him.

When he came to, the first thing he did was check on both you and the child. Though when he opened the bedroom door and peered into the room the only body laying in the bed was yours. His heart stopping in his chest, he scampered around the house frantically like a maniac. He tore the rooms apart to find the child, but there was no signs of her. She was gone. There was no where she could have left the house on her own...was it possibly her quirk? Did she break out exactly the same way she broke into the school? Unlikely. Someone would have noticed her. Nervously gnawing his fingers, the realization of the situation began to hit him. The child’s irrational clinginess to both him and you. The chilling resemblance of both of you in the child’s face. The way the child cried for her mother and stopped the moment you arrived and held her. It was all beginning to make sense now. If his face had color to drain, it would have at the realization aizawa had made. That was his child. Not just his, but your child too. She was a child born from both of you. Not much shocked this man, but right now you could knock him over with a feather. While he was fuzzy on the details of how the child managed to find you two well before being born, he knew one thing for certain. He wanted everything he’d felt yesterday to be a reality. While he’d been busy trying to fight the feelings he had for you, the day you spent with him creating this mock family was all to real for him to hide from. He wanted everything he’d just experienced with you. Affirmed by his feelings, the instant your eyes were open he would admit everything to you. His feelings, his thoughts, everything about how much you mean to him. Though, the small discovery he’d made would remain his little secret. One day you’d find out for yourself what he already knew. Walking quietly back to the bedroom, he stood watching you from the door way, arms crossed as he sighed. He loved you, and when you woke up he couldn’t wait to tell you.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @argento-capitani!

I think I managed to get everything you wanted in here. I didn’t have as much time to go over it as I’d like, being a back-up gift-maker, but I worked really hard on it so I hope I managed create something you’ll enjoy. Sorry I couldn’t fit in any smut, it just felt wrong to write this fluffy sweet turning point to their relationship and immediately slap naughtiness in there lol Hope you like anyway :D

Story Note: For the purpose of this story, Kate didn’t seduce Derek to get to the Hales, she was just some random psycho hunter that wanted the Hales gone. Also I know the TW writers played with Derek’s age so much it’s unrecognisable but he’s only about 2-3 years older than Stiles here.

Read on AO3

******

Out of Darkness

Looking back, Stiles thought he was probably the worst person ever to exist. That night Derek and Laura’s entire world had fallen to pieces, had literally burned down while they watched and Stiles? Stiles could only recall it as his world began again.

Stiles had awoken to voices in the night, had made his way down the stairs in his flannel pyjama pants and worn, too-small Batman t-shirt only to find them standing in his hallway. They carried with them the smell of smoke and tired, lost expressions that made them look even younger than they were, Laura with a blanket round her and Derek with his dad’s deputy jacket too large on his fifteen-year-old shoulders.

At nearly 3 o’clock in the morning, it was well passed the time his dad had originally said he’d be home and his dad looked almost as tired and broken as the teenagers in his front hall. He apologised again to the babysitter Stiles had insisted earlier he was far too old to need and when he closed the front door behind her, he hesitated just for a moment before turning, as if he needed just an extra ounce of strength before tackling the next part of his incredibly long night. He looked up the staircase, to where Stiles stood frozen with the last vestiges of sleep still leaving him and offered him a sad, reassuring smile.

“Stiles? Make up the spare bedroom for Laura and Derek would you? They’re going to be staying with us for a while.”

After doing as he was told, Stiles came back downstairs, only to find his dad had moved to the dining room with Laura. He hesitated on the final step, hearing snatches of their conversation, whispers about hunters and wolfsbane, about unnatural fire and how their uncle got out, how he tore ‘them’ to pieces before he fell into a coma from his wounds.

His father hesitated and Stiles edged round the corner to just glimpse his him reaching across the dining table, no doubt to cover Laura’s hand with his in that familiar comforting gesture. His face was warm and weary as he assured her no one would ever find out.

Stiles’s eyes went wide, his heart skipping a beat as he moved forward, but as he did so, he caught sight of the figure slumped down in a huddle against the wall. Stiles cast a single glance at what was happening inside the dining room and then turned fully toward Derek. His head was tipped back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest and although he was a good couple years older than Stiles he looked impossibly young.

For the first time ever, Stiles ignored the biting pang of curiosity and lowered himself on his haunches in front of the boy who had just lost everything. “Hey,” he said softly, his hand hovering, hesitating before covering Derek’s forearm, which flinched at his touch. It was grimy, covered with soot, dried sweat and soil and Stiles was struck by the idea of horrors clinging to him even now. He still smelled of smoke.

Remembering the way hospital smell had clung to him after his mother had passed, Stiles said softly, “C’mon, let’s get you clean, huh?”

It was like Derek was catatonic, he was dragged far too easily to his feet and guided into the bathroom upstairs, eased down onto the edge of the bath while Stiles soaked a washcloth in warm water in the sink. He hesitated, not even thirteen-years-old and staring down at this strange boy who he only vaguely knew from just being around town, but knowing he just had to help him.

“I’ve uhhh, got a new shirt you can wear? It’s my dad’s so it’s probably gonna be big on you but it’s clean and…” He bit the inside of his lip, then carefully pulled Derek’s filthy shirt off him and tossed it into the empty tub. Still Derek didn’t really react, just let himself be moved while staring vacantly off to the side.

Stiles lifted the washcloth out of the sink and squeezed out the excess before lifting it to dab at Derek’s cheek. As soon as the damp cloth touched his skin Derek snapped. His head wrenched to the side and his eyes glared bright gold, his face morphing into something otherworldly, with fangs bared as he snarled a wordless warning.

Stiles flinched, hand frozen, still clutching the washcloth as he stared, as Derek studied his face with all the fear and pain of a wounded, cornered dog. Just like a beast, the fight was drawn out of those emotions rather than viciousness and when Stiles didn’t move to hurt him his unnaturally furrowed, hairless brow twisted in confusion, his piercing yellow-gold eyes studying Stiles with wary confusion. He stared about him, before looking at Stiles again, whose mind was racing as he struggled to understand what he was seeing.

“What are you?” he breathed, voice quiet and heavy with all the wonder and horrified awe of a child facing something too unearthly for anyone else to believe. He tried to piece together what he had glimpsed of the conversation between Laura and his father but none of it quite made sense. It was like a jigsaw with some pieces missing.

Yet still, whatever Derek was, there was still the glistening light of a scared orphaned boy in his eyes, whatever colour they were.

After a long moment in which neither of them moved but Derek seemed to calm a little, Stiles, with his heart still pounding, reached forward. Derek flinched as the washcloth touched his cheekbone but didn’t pull away when Stiles began to wash the grime from his cheek; ash and soil and God knew what else streaked with dried tears. He watched Stiles with uncertain, distrustful eyes as Stiles cleaned his face and neck, even the worst of the dirt from his hair without a proper shower or bath.

Stiles met his gaze with the raw hopefulness only a child could harbour in the face of danger. Stiles was both afraid and awestruck all at once and by the time he had Derek’s entire upper body clean, his face had morphed back into that of the scared fifteen-year-old he’d first seen downstairs.

“There you are,” Stiles said gently, the same way his mom had done when she’d scrubbed him down in the bath after he’d gotten particularly dirty. He smiled and Derek blinked as if surprised by his gentleness. Before either of them could say another word, there was movement in the hall behind him and Stiles looked up at the doorway to see his dad and Laura standing there.

“Well,” his dad said wearily, swiping a hand over the back of his neck the same way Stiles did. “I guess you’ve got lots of questions, huh, kiddo?”

Slowly, Stiles stood, glancing between the three gathered in the modest sized bathroom. He had never felt so far from the muzzy place of sleep in his entire life. He’d woken up to find not only had his dad come home hours later than he’d intended, but it had apparently been because he was somehow saving these two almost-kids from a horror Stiles couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He didn’t understand but he knew something monumental had happened here.

“What are you?” he asked Laura this time, feeling incredibly young and small with his mussed hair, bare feet and worn pyjamas.

Laura drew in an unsteady, weary breath and moved to her brother’s side. She let her hand slide over his shoulder, which she gripped as if in solidarity or perhaps for strength, Stiles wasn’t sure.

“We’re werewolves.”

Stiles blinked, feeling his dad’s eyes on him and he floundered for a moment in shocked silence before saying simply. “Oh.”

Now he definitely had a lot of questions.

*

When the insurance policy money came through, for the house, for the lives that were lost, Laura and Derek still didn’t leave and Stiles? Stiles hated himself but he was glad for it. He loved his dad, and he was a good dad but he was a good Sheriff’s Deputy too and so sometimes, inevitably, Stiles felt lonely.

Stiles wasn’t lonely with Derek and Laura there. It was so messed up but sharing breakfast and dinner with them and his dad, Laura giving him a lift to school at the same time as Derek and even the hesitant, quiet conversation he managed to coax out of Derek with his constant talking, it all felt good. The house was a little cramped for four, with the basement revamped as a suite for Laura after a time, but it was good. It was family.

He was an awful person, wasn’t he?

Right from the start, Laura had said that he was good for Derek, bringing him out of his shell when his instinct told him to retreat and curl in on himself like a dying leaf. His dad, meanwhile had said the same but in reverse.

Derek was older and ‘cooler’ certainly but since Stiles’s mother had fallen ill, he’d been instilled with this need to care for people. So while he followed Derek around and annoyed the hell out of him with his questions, by chattering and showing him his DC figures and insisting he play Mario Kart with him ‘just one more time,’ he also insisted he eat more and go to bed earlier and that he was always crankiest by the full moon, so he needed to stock up on cookies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

He couldn’t lie, keeping such a momentous secret did make him feel important, but also, the years went by and Derek and Laura still didn’t leave and somewhere along the line the Stilinski house became their house, Laura became like his sister and Derek…he became Stiles’s best friend.

After a time, Laura eventually felt ready to return to college and of course, Derek followed in her footsteps when his time came, still quiet but emboldened by the strength of support he’d found in the home they’d made together. They returned every holiday and when they finished, it was the Stilinski house they came back to, to set up their futures from.

It was when Stiles came home from his first Thanksgiving weekend at college that it all changed.

*

Stiles left his dorm building, head in his backpack as he checked again for his phone charger when the low purr of a familiar car pulled up on the sidewalk in front of him. He blinked and had to double-take at the sight of the Camaro, because he’d told them the Jeep was fine to make the drive home but then the window rolled down and Stiles’s breath caught. Not only was it not Laura at the wheel, but Derek looked…different.

It was ridiculous, it’d only been a few months since they’d last laid eyes on each other but Derek had let a short, stubbly beard grow in across his jaw, his expression intense and older and not the boy Stiles had known but a man. It struck him with the sudden impact of a freight train so that Stiles was frozen in place until Derek caught sight of him and his face just lit up. His Derek was still there, just grown. How had he not realised that had happened? It was logical, wasn’t it? He was almost three years older than Stiles, who would be nineteen in April. They were both older and somehow Stiles hadn’t noticed.

Until now. And judging by the way a few of the last Thanksgiving stragglers had stopped to stare, they’d noticed too.

“Hey,” Derek said as Stiles forced his legs into action, feeling oddly dazed as he reached the passenger door and climbed in. “Thought I’d surprise you.”

“You definitely did,” Stiles managed, if a little breathlessly. Derek cast him a curious, sideways glance but didn’t comment on the little rush of his heartbeat or the charge to the air between them, not on the entire ride home. They talked, they laughed like they always had and Stiles would’ve said that it was like they’d never been apart but it was different, so different and he couldn’t help but sneak glances at Derek as he drove. He licked his dry lips and just tried to be normal.

*

The night was unseasonably warm as Stiles stepped out onto the porch after a traditional Stilinski-Hale Thanksgiving dinner. He still wore a sweatshirt though as he lowered himself onto the step beside Derek, silently handing him a bottle of elderflower soda that Derek preferred to the foul taste of beer which he couldn’t even get a buzz from. Stiles said nothing though, just sitting beside Derek in companionable silence as he nursed his own bottle.

Derek always came out back to think about his family on the holidays, it was as much of a tradition as the turkey, Derek’s way of remembering them and Stiles always seemed to find his way out here beside him. He couldn’t bear the thought of Derek out here alone, even with his skin prickling with the newly discovered charge to their connection, which had been fed with accidental touches and close proximity all evening, but at the same time it felt wrong to speak until Derek invited him to, so he waited, content with their companionable silence.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked eventually, seeming to breathe in and come back to himself, having paid his respects to his family’s memory, so unlike the broken, lost boy he’d been all those years ago in Stiles’s front hall. “You seem wired, more wired than usual.” His lips quirked at the corners and Stiles felt his face heat.

“Yeah I…” he swallowed, staring out at the dark yard behind them and the trees beyond where the light from the house couldn’t reach. The moon wasn’t full but it was huge in the sky, its light filling the darkness with a soft pale glow that felt almost warming. It glinted off the treetops and drew Stiles’s eyes in, lulling him into a place of calm as he struggled to put his feelings into words. What were the words for suddenly realising you were attracted to your best friend?

“It just feels different, I guess,” he admitted softly.

“What does?”

Stiles swallowed. “Me and…you.”

Slowly, Derek reached out on the porch between them, letting his fingers slide between Stiles’s on the wood there. He dragged his fingertips along the length of Stiles’s fingers, caressing each tip before tracing down the other side to touch the next. In the end, he let his hand cover Stiles’s completely and squeezed. “Yeah,” he whispered, voice as husky and soft as Stiles’s had been. “It does feel different.”

Just like that, they watched the slow, imperceptible travel of the moon across the dark sky, shifting slightly closer, testing the closeness. After a long silence, Stiles turned his head to the side, eyes searching Derek’s. “Wanna go for a walk?”

Even without the biting cold of the usual weather this time of year, there was still an evening chill as they walked leisurely through the trees. They were thin enough together that Stiles still had a decent enough view of where he was putting his feet just by moonlight, though he knew Derek wouldn’t let him break his leg.

They walked closely together, unselfconscious and Stiles thought of when his dad had been caught at work, unable to take him to see the new Star Wars movie and so Derek had grudgingly volunteered. He’d taken him for ice-cream afterward without even blinking, even though the movie had ended late, even though he’d been older and ‘cooler’ and the waitress had smiled flirtatiously at him and Stiles had been a goofy kid.

They’d walked close together then too, shoulder-checking each other every now and then as they recalled the high points of the movie. Stiles remembered feeling so happy, buzzing with it and he felt the same now, but the buzz was low and constant like a humming heat rather than the erratic, frazzled excitement of a firecracker. Now instead of leaping onto Derek’s back, hyped up from ice-cream and demanding to get a piggyback ride he was far too old for, he felt a giddy, shy sort of current.

Tentatively, he edged his hand sideways to brush his knuckles against Derek’s in a feather-light caress. Derek’s nudged his back in answer, before threading their fingers together. He was so warm, holding onto Stiles, linking them together as easy as breathing.

“I don’t think you know what it was like for me that night,” Derek said softly, tipping his head skyward as he sought out the moon. “I’d lost everything and you just…handled things, like it was so easy for you. You saw me, the wolf in me and you weren’t afraid, you didn’t see a monster. You took care of me, even though I was older.” He hesitated. “You brought me out of myself. Made me feel things again and then I…”

He stopped then, turning his head to look at Stiles. The moonlight caught his eyes with a glistening shine, casting an ethereal light across his face and Stiles’s breath caught.

“And then when I saw you again I realised…” His fingers squeezed a bit tighter around Stiles’s but his gaze didn’t drift for a moment. “…you’re not that kid anymore, you’re…you’re a man and my feelings have become something else.”

Stiles blinked, inhaling shakily as his heart pounded and Derek’s words rushed through his head and instead of struggling through his thoughts for a reply that would utterly fail to match up with Derek’s heartfelt honesty, he leaned in. Their eyes locked, their mouths hesitated a breath apart, like they had both been caught on the lingering thin thread of realisation that things were about to change. Any doubt was blasted away by the perfect sense it all made.

Their lips met, soft, brief, parting enough for them to check each other’s responses, if they had felt the same spark. Stiles couldn’t help the breathy, nervous chuckle that tumbled over his lips unbidden, or the little accompanying smile. Derek gave a little growl of his own fond amusement, before snatching him up and bringing their lips together more ardently.

It was slow but deep, a languid massage of damp lips and searching, coy tongues, vibrating with half-smothered chuckles and soft little moans. It felt like sinking into warm comforting heat and Stiles was melting with it.

When he drew back, giddy with it all and smiling so hard his face hurt, Stiles whispered out, “chase me.”

Derek’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Chase me!” Stiles stole another kiss before bouncing back a few steps, as if to coax Derek into a run.

“We haven’t done that since I was fifteen,” Derek laughed but when Stiles bounced back a few more steps, he advanced and Stiles spun and darted back the makeshift trail they’d travelled down. He was as inelegant and all-limbs when he ran as he had been back then and he felt the same timeless exhilaration. He tore across the soft leaves, hearing Derek behind him and leaping the loose tree roots.

Instead of heading back to the house though, he turned off the trail, his heart pounding hard and fast against his ribcage. The ground gave way to a slight incline and his steps staggered as he struggled to maintain pace and remain upright. A growl sounded behind him and his breath caught, just as he tripped and made a beeline for the floor.

A hard body crashed into his side, dragging him sideways off the path toward the ground until he landed with an “ooof” against the hard body that had saved him from his clumsiness. They rolled slightly down the incline of the ground, scuffing up dirt and leaves and Stiles was laughing again as they did so. Derek answered with an ethereal growl, like an excited beast riled up from the chase and when Stiles stared up at him from the ground, Derek caught his rapid breaths with his tongue.

The kisses were faster now, fuelled by urgency in absence of the tentative newness. Blood was pounding, driving them into a breathless frenzy on the leaf-strewn bed they’d made and Stiles couldn’t help the noise of need he emitted when Derek dragged his voracious kisses down across the point of his chin to his throat.

Stiles let his fingers drag down Derek’s back, let them skitter sideways under the hem of his sweatshirt to scrape his nails across Derek’s side. Derek writhed at the ticklish touch, gasping into Stiles’s open mouth and arching without volition. He hauled Stiles backward with him until he was sitting upright with Stiles astride his hips.

Stiles bent his head to claim Derek’s mouth again, hands cupping his jaw, thumbs brushing the stubble there and enjoying the rasp of it as Derek’s cupped the back of his head. They tightened there, holding him close with shaky strength as if Derek were afraid he would vanish entirely if he let go.

Kiss-bruised and flustered, they were eventually driven back to the house by the inevitable evening chill, that was warm by November standards but still not comfortable enough to be rolling around in the woods. What he didn’t bargain for was Laura waiting for them both on the back porch with a cup of coffee in hand and a Cheshire Cat grin that made Stiles’s face flame. He didn’t dare look at Derek, for fear he would utterly self-combust with mortification but judging by his tense silence, he felt the same.

“Good run boys?” she asked casually as they approached, sipping at her cup.

In all the years they’d shared a house, the werewolf portion of their odd little family had always used their supernatural senses with as much discretion as possible, especially with two teenage boys in the house. Stiles himself had tested their limits with his bizarre affinity for both their skills and his need for masturbating in privacy, but even he couldn’t say exactly how much Laura had heard while they’d been making out in the woods.

“Don’t say a word,” Derek warned but when Stiles did risk a glance at him, he saw the tips of his ears burning red.

Laura raised her perfect brows in mock surprise. “I really don’t know what you mean and I will continue to not know what you mean for exactly forty-eight hours, in which you’ll find time to tell both Noah and I about this new beautiful development so that we can be simultaneously surprised, pleased and congratulate you.”

“Going somewhere?” Derek asked, sounding hopeful.

“Well, I did come out to tell you but found you gone and when I heard…” She winced, “Nevermind. I was going to ask if you wanted to come and visit Peter with me but I’ll let him know you’ll be by tomorrow. He’s been in a good mood since they told him he should be strong enough to move out of assisted living and into his own place soon, so he’ll be lenient with you.”

Derek nodded, lips tight with embarrassment and Laura gave them a final gleeful smirk before turning back into the house. When even Stiles heard the dull sound of the front door opening on the other side of the house and the low purr of the Camaro as Laura pulled out into the street, Stiles lead them inside.

As predicted, his dad was dozing in the armchair and Stiles covered him with the blanket from the back of the couch before turning to see Derek watching him with a fond, if a little flustered expression. Their life was one of countless domestic moments, of supernatural abilities and experiences woven so finely into everyday life that it was their own brand of normal. He’d found every little quirk in Derek’s character, in his species fascinating rather than alarming and Derek, for his part, had somehow come to appreciate Stiles’s less supernatural ones just as much.

They’d shared a home for three years, had helped each other heal from two incredible tragedies and for the first time ever, Stiles felt a little less guilty about finding happiness and solidarity in the boy who’d lost everything that night, because he knew now Derek had found something that night too.

Out of darkness, comes light, or something like that, his mind supplied as he crossed the room soundlessly to slide his fingers between Derek’s, not for the first time that night. It was something he could definitely get used to.

“Walk you to your door?” Derek suggested in a whisper and Stiles had to stifle the laugh that threatened to spill from his lips by pressing them to Derek’s.

[weirdponytail]

“The Lucas Problem” pt 1 (Huntik Fanfiction, SnT drabble)

(A/N: Part one of that Lucas drabble I’ve been bashing out. Everyone is a little OoC, Lucas is a rude and grumpy jerk, and Zhalia sets him straight about toying with the Fears brothers abandonment issues. Dante is just as protective of the brothers as his girlfriend is, and Lok and Sophie take their roles as ‘big happy family don’t mess with us’ quite seriously. Feel free to critique the parts with the Casterwill team, I’m still very shaky on how to write them. :3 cheers!)

THE LUCAS PROBLEM

It was a rather crowded week at the Venice Casterwill Townhouse.

See, there had been a bit of emergency remodeling at Dante’s house. The various attempts by Blood Spirals to break his home defenses had, in a final cosmic act of petty vengeances after their defeat, managed to collapse the shields two weeks after the defeat of the Betrayer.

And it also collapsed part of the plumbing. So until further notice, Dante and Lok were crashing at Sophie’s place.

To make it even more crowded, not to mention slightly awkward for Harrison, Zhalia had appeared with the Fears boys. She had an order from Foundation HQ to move out of her apartment because of multiple threats on her and Harrison’s lives. Due to a few being anonymously sent from what appeared to be low tier Casterwills and even a few Foundation foot soldiers, not to mention the remaining Blood Spirals, the former spy thought it best to take refuge with the actual Casterwill leader.

With Sophie’s influence and protection, Zhalia would actually sleep a little better than in a hotel, knowing that any carried out threats from Casterwills would be met with something they feared worse than death: Excommunication. Harrison would be safe with the team and Zhalia watching him until they found a suitable apartment that would quickly be rendered safely invisible via ‘Does Not Exist’ Foundation blacklisting.

Then Lucas showed up, Dellix and Lane at his heels. “Family time,” he had said. Though honestly, it looked as if one of the other Casterwill elders had pinched his ear and told him to get to know his sister a little better now that they weren’t in danger of being shot at every few minutes. Seeing as Sophie hadn’t heard a word from her brother since the final conflict, it came as quite the surprise.

The team had all groaned a bit when they heard that Lucas was going to be around. Sure, he was a little more tolerable than when they first met, and everyone was quite fine with Dellix and Lane hanging out, but Lucas was still just a tick below insufferable in his high and mighty attitude. Even Sophie was nearly fed up with him by the third day of his visit, biting back some rather unladylike language she had learned from Zhalia whenever her brother sneered or commented on how LeBlanche’s way of cooking wasn’t exactly how a ‘proper Casterwill’ would have done it.

Poor Harrison and Den caught the brunt of the young man’s rudeness. Just bordering the edge of statements that the original Huntik team could justifiably call him out for, Lucas took nearly every opportunity he saw when around the boys to make snide comments about traitors and his team’s successes in hunting down the remaining Blood Spirals. Once he learned that they had grown up in an orphanage, instead of eliciting empathy as someone who had also lost both parents, Lucas seemed to view them with even more disgust than before.

Dellix and Lane, on the other hand, were near perfect houseguests. They helped with meals, joined in on any group activities the Huntik team happened to have going on, and were all around funny and enjoyable to have in the Townhouse.

‘The Lucas Problem,’ as LeBlanche had stiffly called it in a private conversation with Sophie one evening, reached a head by day four.

It was nearly lunchtime, and LeBlanche and Cherit had offered to make a refreshing summer meal for the group. Everyone else was gathered in one of the Townhouse’s split reading and media rooms. Dante and Zhalia were at one of the tables, scrolling through various activity reports and mission offers on their Holotome and Technomicon respectively. The younger two-thirds of the Huntik team was playing low volume video games on the massive TV that graced the wall above the fireplace. Dellix and Lane had taken the last remaining seats at opposite ends of the couch, cheering on whoever struck their fancy as they waited for a chance to swap in.

Lucas had decided to grace everyone with his presence half an hour ago, taking up one of the armchairs that tilted away from the television to read one of the Casterwill manuscripts he had dug up from the library shelves. Lok, ever good natured even to wet towels like Sophie’s brother, had invited Lucas to join them for a round but had been shot down more harshly than even Zhalia had managed before her betrayal. Dellix and Lane had quietly apologized, and soon it was all forgotten as the next match got underway.

Forgotten, that is, until it was time to pick a new game.

After three hours of Left 4 Dead co-op and verses, the play style was getting a little stale. Sophie opened up the cabinet filled to bursting with games for various consoles– all bought after much pestering from Lok and then Den later on– for them to peruse and was immediately mobbed by the Fears brothers.

“Smash Bros Brawl!” Den crowed, snatching the case from the shelf. “This’ll be great!”

Harrison shoulder checked his elder twin to the side, an impressive feat for such a boney boy. “No way! You know all the exploits!” He picked up the battered Game Cube case for the earlier version of the classic game. “Smash Bros Melee!”

Den’s eyes narrowed as he straightened from where Harrison had shoved him. “Brawl.”

Harrison bristled right back. “Melee!”

“Oh dear.” Sophie sighed. Lok grinned widely and patted the empty space on the couch beside him. “Here they go again.” The Casterwill heiress sat beside her boyfriend and leaned against his side. “You’d think they would have let go of this sort of thing after nearly killing each other.”

“Sophie, I gotta tell you.” The mirth was evident in Lok’s voice as the growled stand off between the twins grew to shouting. “When you actually grow up with a sibling…sometimes you don’t ever grow out of this kind of thing.”

“Hey.” Zhalia didn’t even look up from her Technomicon. It was nearly three weeks after the final battle with the Betrayer now, and she had learned to let Den and Harrison settle their differences in whatever way they saw fit. Taking sides or shutting their arguments down just led to miniature replays of the night the two had been separated, and brought up feelings of abandonment and betrayal. Letting the boys duke it out to vent their emotions over the trauma of the previous months ended up being the healthiest option she and Dante had found so far. “Keep it to an unpowered level, guys. I’m not cleaning up another busted window with you two.”

The twins grunted in acknowledgement and had the respect to place their argued game cases in the moderate safety of the cupboard…before launching at each other and ending up in a scrabbling knot of limbs and teeth and nails as they viciously wrestled on the rug in front of the fireplace.

Dellix and Lane had become used to the occasional spat between the two brothers during their visit. They sat back with Lok and Sophie on the couch, watching with amusement as the boys used every dirty trick available to them in attempts to gain the upper hand. The noise level increased exponentially, echoing down the halls and filling the room with mangled hybrid sentences of English and Dutch swearing.

All of a sudden, Lucas’s voice cut through the din.

“If you two don’t be quiet and act like civilized human beings, that woman is going to take you back to where she found you and bloody leave you there! I’m trying to concentrate!”

Lucas looked rather smugly satisfied at the abrupt silence his words had brought.

If he had taken the time to glance up from his musty old book he would have seen what a massive mistake he just made.

Den and Harrison had both frozen in place, wide eyes locked together in a look of shock and deeply ingrained fear of losing their home again. Sophie and Lok were both on their feet, and despite Lok holding Sophie back with a hand on her shoulder as she shook with tight lipped rage, the Lambert boy had blue sparks flicking off his clenched fist.

Dante’s glare was literally as powerful as fire. No one had noticed, but a tiny flame had burst to life on the table, which he had quickly smothered with his palm before turning his smoldering gaze to the elder Casterwill.

Even Dellix and Lane knew that their commander had crossed a line. The dark skinned swordsman subconsciously moved his hand to the sheath that rested against his knee, feeling the tension in the air thicken to a nearly unbearable level. Lane shifted uneasily as her fingers drifted to the amulet at her neck, ready to call Wildwood Druid at a moment’s notice if things seemed out of hand for her larger counterpart.

Zhalia had stopped at the sound of Lucas’s words, finger hovering over the final keycode rune to unlock the database entry she needed. If Dante seemed angry, then the woman across from him was at a level well beyond rage. She was at a point that surpassed any outward betrayal of the emotion, face deadpan as she slowly closed the lid of her Technomicon and stood.

Her voice, low and just barely containing the pure feral wrath that only Dante could feel rolling off her in heart crushing pulses, cut through the heavy silence like a razor bladed knife.

“Lucas. Sparing match. Outside. Now.”

Lucas waved her off, still engrossed in his book. The very idea of fighting Zhalia seemed to bore him. “I’m in the middle of a manuscript. Maybe later.”

The Casterwill elder let out a yell of surprise when an unknown assailant grabbed a fistful of his shirt on each shoulder and roughly yanked him over the back of the armchair, manuscript flipping from his hands and sliding across a nearby table. Dante wrenched the younger man around to bring him eye to eye, moving his grip to clench bunches of fabric so tight under his throat that it forced the Casterwill to lift his chin so he could keep breathing normally.

In an icy wave of realization, Lucas had the distinct feeling that he was looking a very angry, very protective, and very deadly lion in the eye.

And all that anger was focused on him.

“It’s rude to turn down a dance from a lady.” Dante growled. “But at any rate, she wasn’t asking, Lucas.”

A white steel sword suddenly appeared at Dante’s throat. In a flash Zhalia was at her partner’s side, and put herself between the bristling Dellix and seething Dante. Unafraid, she pushed the back of her hand against the flat of the blade, ready to deflect any ill-advised movement against her boyfriend’s neck.

“You had better put this away before I make you eat it, Dellix.” Zhalia’s soft voice held the fine edge of what was very much not an idle threat. “I’ve got nothing against you or Lane. I just want a chance to give your little leader a lesson in manners on the sparring field.”

“Oh, he’ll fight you alright.” The locked together foursome looked over when Sophie cut in. “Lucas, you went too far. This match isn’t a suggestion, it’s an order. From me.” Her green eyes flashed. “Dellix, Lane. Stand down. Zhalia and Lucas, you both have ten minutes to prepare. Meet in the courtyard and we’ll discuss the rules of the match. Dante’s referee.”

At the Casterwill leader’s command, Dellix stepped back and sheathed his blade, though a little reluctantly. Dante kept his gaze on Lucas for a long, tense second before shoving the young man back and letting go of his shirt.

As the Huntik team gathered itself up to head downstairs, Zhalia took a moment to slip past Lucas, getting very much in his personal space.

“I’m going to mop the floor with you, kid.”

Lucas was sure the woman had hissed those words in his ear as she passed, but hadn’t even glimpsed her lips moving. Despite the disturbing finality the statement had, he straightened his shirt and marched off to retrieve his amulets.

He was a Casterwill, after all. And no one would defeat him on his own ground.

(posting this on ff.net tomorrow morning because my eyeball is trying to explode. Friggin migraines, man...)

[ohmytheon]

93 Percent Stardust (Rogue One Daemon AU, 2)

Here’s the second part to my Rogue One Daemons AU. I should’ve taken a nap while my daughter was sleeping, but I’ve really been itching to write. I’m sure I’ll regret it later when she’s waking up every hour to eat. As of right now though, I’m really glad I did this. I had a lot of fun. This is my “me time” and it’s necessary for any parent. She’s waking up now though!

Summary: Cassian’s daemon settles when he is six years-old, almost completely unheard of, and Jyn’s when she is eight. They’re light years apart from one another, souls born of the same loss, but in time, they will come together to do the most extraordinary things in the name of rebellion. (Or, Rogue One with daemons, plus extra backstory scenes.)

Or might the soul clone itself, create a perfect imitation of something yet to be defined? In this way, can a reflection be altered? ― Ellen Hopkins, Identical

When Cassian killed his first man, the explosion of dust that had been the man’s daemon startled him so badly that he actually yelped. One second, they had been in a tense standoff, the man sneering over the idea that a boy thought he had the guts to pull the trigger, and the next Cassian squeezed his index finger and a blaster bolt struck the man right in the chest.

His daemon shattered into the same glittering dust that had been left of his family’s daemons, coating Cassian and floating in the air. Cassian stumbled backwards, coughing and waving a hand in the air to clear his face of dust, and nearly fell on his ass after tripping over a rock. Instead, he fell back against a wall, panting heavily, and opened his eyes to stare forward.

There was the man lying on his belly, a look of surprise on his half-turned face. His daemon was nowhere to be seen. Cassian’s eyes were locked on the golden particles as they gracefully fell to the ground like snow. It reminded him painfully of Fest. He hadn’t been on a planet that had snow in years. He’d started to wonder if maybe Fest was one of the few that did, though that hardly seemed possible in a galaxy so vast. He had never seen jungles before leaving his home planet either, but they certainly existed.

Amaya peeked out from her hiding spot in between a cluster of rocks. “You killed him.”

“He was taunting me,” Cassian pointed out, like that mattered. He grimaced at the words and turned away from her. He hated it when he sounded like the thirteen year-old that he was and tried very hard to be more like the adults that he was surrounded by. Sure, he was the youngest member in the Intelligence unit, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at his job.

Still, he’d never killed anyone before. Shot someone, yes, when he was being shot at, but killed…

“His daemon--” Cassian paused and pressed his lips together. Amaya walked over to him and cocked her head to the side, the look that said she was listening carefully. “That’s what happened to my parents’ daemons. They didn’t just die; they turned into...nothing.”

It felt worse than death. It felt like a complete erasure of their person, just as his memories of them were slowly beginning to fade over time. Seven years had passed since their deaths, longer than he’d known them alive. There were nights when his memories didn’t feel real, as if his mother and father had only existed in a dream and he had only ever known the Rebellion and Amaya.

“Does that scare you?” Amaya asked.

Cassian dropped his eyes and tucked the blaster gun away. “It doesn’t really make me feel anything.” It felt strange to admit that, like there was something wrong with him, but once the shock had worn away, there had been nothing to take its place. He glanced down at her. “Does it scare you?”

“It’s hard to be scared of nothing,” Amaya replied.

He frowned, feeling a hint of resentfulness at her own evasive nature even with him, but then the warmth of her comfort poured over him through their bond and it went away. They were both secretive due to the environment that they had grown up in. Sighing, he let an arm fall to his side so that she could leap onto the sleeve of his jacket and crawl onto his shoulders. She nuzzled the side of his face with her head.

After taking one last look at the man, Cassian slipped through the alleyways in order to link up with the rest of his squad. There were some parts of the mission that he was better equipped to take on than grown men. But that Imperial soldier had been wrong. Cassian wasn’t a mere boy. He hadn’t been a boy for a very long time. His soul had been settled for too long to still be considered one.

*

The words, “Wait here,” came out of Blair’s mouth, and so Jyn trusted them.

Saw might’ve kept things close to the vest, especially when it came to her, but his Blair had never lied to her. She was reticent except when she was angry, which was getting more and more with the passing days, so Jyn had come to listen carefully whenever the lynx daemon did speak. She let Saw do almost all of the talking, even keeping her distance from the other Partisans’ daemons, not as if she was above them but more like she could not afford to open up to them.

A leader had to be one step apart from the rest. She and Saw could not be on the same levels as the other Partisans and still be considered their leader. Even Jyn, who had been with him since she was eight, could not stand on the same pedestal as him.

But Blair indulged Felix in a way that she did not other daemons. She let Felix curl up around her, greeted him almost warmly whenever they arrived back at base camp, and even licked him on the head when they came back covered in dirt and blood. While many of the other Partisans and their daemons were wary of Felix, only because of what he was capable of, she was not. She didn’t see something dangerous or broken. She saw him for his clever mind and usefulness. She liked his fangs.

It was easy to look into the lynx daemon’s eyes and believe her.

“Wait here,” she said, as Saw handed her a blaster.

Jyn nodded her head, but it was Felix that asked the question, “When will you be back?”

“When we can,” Blair replied. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was enough.

Saw and Blair had both taken them in after her mother’s death and father’s disappearance. They hadn’t had to, but they had. Growing up under them and their tutelage had been rough and painful more often than not. Saw wasn’t one for comforting and Blair was aloof. But bits of warmth bled through every now and then and it was hard to begrudge someone that had taught her how to fend for herself. She was stronger than most, fiercer than many, and a force to be reckoned with -- and that was without the threat of Felix’s deadly bite.

It had been eight long years since her family had been ripped apart by the man in white, the same amount of time she had lived with them. She’d forgotten her promise to Felix and herself.

Later, when the bitterness didn’t burn so hotly through their bond, when Felix opened his mouth to speak to another daemon instead of just hissing, Jyn would think about the look on Blair’s face. Had there been any pity? Any sorrow? Any longing? Saw was a cold man. A decent man, she had thought, but cold and unaccustomed to being anything else. Cutting her off like a dying limb had been the logical choice for him concerning the Partisans, even if it hadn’t been an easy one. But Blair? How had she felt? Did she see other snake daemons and think of Felix’s red, yellow, and black bands?

I don’t miss her, Felix would viciously think, but Jyn always knew that it wasn’t true. Felix held onto the memories that she couldn’t bare to take. She locked them away and he took them for her, carried their weight, cradled their grief. Through flashes of hurt and betrayal, he did miss Blair, just as he missed her mother’s Leopold and father’s Evangeline. He missed not being shunned by everyone else but her.

But back in that bunker, Jyn looking up at them, Felix wrapped loosely around her neck, she made the stupid mistake of trusting them. She had sworn that she wouldn’t -- she had promised Felix that she would allow no one else in -- and yet she had. It had been foolish and the days she spent in that bunker would turn her heart cold. Felix alone burned hot while she did everything she could to lock her thoughts and emotions away.

Never again, she promised and Felix agreed. Never again.

*

It started when they were young, as a game, to pass the time and to make life on base more bearable. Whenever people would ask him what his daemon was, he usually told them the truth, but sometimes, he would say something else. To the unsuspecting person, he could pass her off as a binturong or a falanouc, but more often than not, he would list a different type of mongoose. There were so many kinds. No one questioned him.

After all, why would someone lie about what their daemon was? What kind of person would do that?

What a daemon settled as represented who the person was on the inside, or so everyone said. Cassian wasn’t sure why this specific type of mongoose fit him when he had never heard of it before and so it was easy to tell people that she was something else. Amaya reveled in it. She loved the trickery. It was fun when very little was fun on base. She was so straight-faced whenever he lied about what she was, only grinning and snickering after the person had walked away.

Neither one of them expected it to become a part of them.

Cassian was walking through the hanger as he flicked through the pages of the datapad detailing their upcoming mission, his nose buried so deep that it was a wonder he didn’t bump into anyone or anything. He kept a slower pace than normal without thinking as Amaya scampered at his side in a playful, energetic manner. They weaved their way through the expansive room as one despite their extreme different in size.

Slinging his pack further over his shoulder, Cassian finally paused when he found what he was looking for. “You’re going to be a ruddy mongoose this time.” He spun around and sat down on a crate, giving Amaya time to climb her way on top and step on his thigh before showing her the picture on the screen. “Not much of a difference.”

“A bit bigger,” Amaya noted as she peered at the datapad curiously.

“Well, you’ve always been small for your size,” Cassian pointed out with a grin on his face as he slid a hand down her slender back.

Amaya wiggled out from underneath his hand and shot him a glare. “That’s because you’re so scrawny. You haven’t been eating well.”

Cassian shrugged his shoulders. “Rations have been shorter than normal recently.”

“No, you gave some of your ration cards away,” Amaya countered. “I saw you.”

He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t look back at her. It was easy to lie to everyone else -- it just came as second nature to him by now at only eighteen -- but it was downright impossible to lie to his daemon. Not just because she was a part of him, his soul, but because it was her. She had a way of drawing the truth out of people.

“I wasn’t hungry,” Cassian grumbled, thinking of the hollow look in those children’s eyes. He remembered that look well from his time as an orphan on Fest and his first few months with the Alliance. Not many of his memories from that time had lasted throughout the years, but that feeling had. It was overwhelming even now. He hadn’t been able to stomach seeing it on other children’s faces. He wasn’t cold enough yet. “They needed it more.”

“You need to keep up your strength,” Amaya told him, pulling up on her hind legs and pressing a little paw softly against his chest. “It’s important that you look after yourself as well.”

Cassian said nothing in response because there was nothing he could say. Amaya knew how he was. He fought and fought and fought until there was nothing left in him. Old enough to no longer be a child, but still too young to be considered a man, he was still fighting for his place in the Rebellion, even though he’d already established himself very well in the Intelligence division.

He could no longer be considered innocent. That was for sure. Innocence had been burned out of him a long time ago; he’d put the torch to it himself.

When he finally glanced back down at her, Amaya was giving him a sad look, but she kept quiet as well. She knew when to speak and when not to speak. Besides, more often than not, she didn’t have to say anything. Their bond was strong. When she wanted him to know, he could feel everything she was thinking and more through it. Right now, it was as open as could be and he soaked it in.

Sometimes, he forgot what comfort felt like. The Rebellion was not good at it and the two of them had learned to always be as hard and jagged as they had become the moment she had settled when he was six. Every now and then though, he felt it with her and he gathered that warmth in his heart. It was the only thing that could settle him some nights after certain missions.

But sometimes, it was like Amaya didn’t even know what to do with it. Cassian couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before she too forgot what comfort was.

*

The first time Jyn’s bond with Felix was truly strained, it hadn’t been of her own doing. Most prisons kept them together, as the taboo surrounding daemons was strong throughout the entire galaxy. Guards didn’t touch any daemon that didn’t belong to them, instead using their daemons to corral the unruly ones. Most of them had large, burly daemons anyways, and troopers almost always had dog daemons large enough to take control.

Wobani was different though. Harsher, colder, much less thoughtful. The first thing they did upon bringing her to the prison planet was tear Felix away from her. It was only then that she knew that she was going to die here.

The shock of having Felix ripped off of her arm by metal claw caused Jyn to stumble backwards into her cell. The door was shut before she could even regain her balance. She landed hard against the wall and bounced forward, throwing herself at the metal bars and reaching out as far as she could. It took her a solid few seconds to realize that the screaming she was hearing was coming from her mouth.

“Give him back, you bastards!” Jyn howled. “Give him back!”

Felix fought hard, his body thrashing wildly in the air, but the metal clamp was tight around his head and neck. It must’ve been built specifically for snake daemons. He couldn’t even open his jaws to scream in return, but she heard him in her mind. His shrieks ricocheted throughout her skull, making her feel dizzy, and she waved her hand frantically through the bars as if she could reach him.

Instead of giving him back to her though, the troopers took him farther and farther away from her, until it felt as if her very being was being ripped apart. Jyn panted heavily, gasping for air, as the stitches that made up her body were torn piece by piece. Her legs buckled underneath her and she slid down to the ground, unable to remain standing. It felt as if someone was physically ripping her heart out of her chest.

“Give him back!” Jyn cried out desperately. “Please!”

Only then did the troopers stop. They looked at one another and then down at Felix, who had gone limp, his body swaying in the air. Jyn was still clawing for him, but her fingers were digging into the metal floor. Sweat covered her entire face. She was surprised that blood hadn’t started pouring out of nose or eyes.

Finally, they brought Felix back to her and she almost cried in relief. Instead she bit her lip hard enough to make it bleed, her eyes focused only on him. They released the metal contraption and he dropped to the ground. In a sluggish, almost drugged manner, Felix slithered back into her hand, but didn’t seem to have the strength to wrap himself around her arm like normal. She jerked him back into the jail cell like they might try to snatch him again and held him tightly against her chest, her heart beat hard and loud enough to cause him to stir.

“Don’t cause anymore problems again, Halik,” the stormtrooper warned her, “or we’ll really see how far your bond can stretch.”

Next to them, their daemons watched silently, their dark eyes equally dull and emotionless. They never seemed to move at the same speed as their humans, like there was some sort of delay. Severed, she couldn’t help but think with a shudder and she smoothed a hand down Felix’s shaking body. Stormtroopers weren’t connected with their daemons like everyone else. Some were surprised that they even had them. To become like them was one of Jyn’s greatest fears.

I’d rather die, Felix said, his voice strong despite the weariness in it.

We will die, Jyn thought and tried hard to squash the feeling before it flittered over to Felix, turning it into rage as quickly as she could.

It was too late though. The moment she had thought it, he had heard it. Nothing escaped either one of them. Their bond was always open, a constant flow of emotion and thoughts. Felix slithered up her neck and pressed his head against her pulse point and she closed his eyes. Already, his heart was steadier than hers. She wished, if only for a moment, that she was as strong as him.

You are though, Felix told her. You always have been.

She couldn’t help but be afraid that, if they were separated in any way, that he would be able to handle it while she would break. She couldn’t let that happen. For once, she couldn’t fight their prison and she hated it. Anger burned brightly in her, but there was nowhere to put it, not in this cage. She longed to lash out again, but the idea of Felix being taken away from her again was too horrifying and stilled her when nothing had before.

*

K-2 was different. Amaya could touch him, but not really touch him.

The droid seemed at a loss with her for many years, flickering between curious, irritated, unconcerned, and even a hint protective at times. Cassian could still remember Amaya’s laugh when Kay had touched her nose and nothing had happened. It was strange -- feeling nothing when the anticipation had caused his heart to race -- but the absence of a reaction was still felt.

She liked to perch himself on his shoulders so that she could see farther, looking as alert as a hawk. He could hear the scrape and click of her claws as she scampered up the metal and then Kay’s long-suffering robotic sigh -- or at least Cassian assumed it was a sigh. Like many droids, Kay had something of a personality of his own, but it did seem stronger than most. He spoke whatever came into his circuits, even if it upset people.

Cassian’s reprogramming of the Imperial security droid had not been his best work, but he had done it quick and under a lot of pressure. He’d been grounded for nearly a month following his reckless behavior, but he knew that it had been worth it, if only because of the delight it caused Amaya. She had always been curious of droids, prodding and sniffing them, much to most of their detriment. Apparently most daemons ignored droids, though no one really knew why. Maybe it was because of their almost-but-not-quite sentient behavior.

However, Kay was unique in his own way. His surly behavior caused Amaya to cackle, every grim statistic making her even worse. Cassian loved it, though he never said anything aloud. It had been a long time since he had seen Amaya like this, so long in fact that he wasn’t sure that his mind had made up the memories. Fest was another lifetime ago. Gone was the boy and unsettled daemon that found their family dead and dust. The Rebellion had carved him into a man and a cold one at that. Seeing Amaya like that with Kay though brought something back to him that he’d nearly lost.

“Don’t you think it strange?” Kay asked him one day while they were flying back to Yavin IV.

Cassian kept his focus on the panel in front of him as he flew the ship. “Think what strange?”

“Daemons,” Kay replied matter-of-factly. “You keep your weaknesses on the outside for everyone to see and yet no one goes for them. It would be easier to take a person out by hurting their daemon.”

“You don’t do that,” Cassian told him, pulling his concentration away from the panel and focusing it on Kay. There was the same neural, robotic expression on the droid’s face and yet somehow it was as if Cassian could pull some sort of emotion out of it. Curiosity today, he thought. “You don’t mess with someone’s daemon.”

“Why? Because of some arbitrary rule?” Kay questioned, like it was the most logical thing in the world.

“You just don’t,” Cassian said in a harder tone. “It’s a taboo, one of the most horrific things a person can do.”

Kay shook his head and went back to checking their flight route. “You’ve done a lot of things that one might consider horrific, Cassian, though they were for the good of the Rebellion.”

They weren’t meant to be harsh or even a bad reflection of him, but Kay’s words cut Cassian right to the bone. He glanced down at Amaya, who was curled in a ball at his feet. She was pretending to be asleep, but he knew that she was awake and listening to the conversation. Daemons slept with their partner’s slept, although Amaya had had him convinced when he was a child that she could do otherwise. He clenched his fist tightly, his blunt nails digging into his palm, and then released it.

However much that Kay’s words had struck him, they weren’t wrong. The droid spoke the truth. Cassian had done a lot of bad things for the Rebellion. The only line he refused to cross was that taboo. A spike of fear that it would one day be asked of him shot through his mind, only to be replaced by Amaya’s soothing touch.

You’re a good man, Cassian, she told him without looking up at him.

He closed his eyes. It had to be enough. She had to be enough.

When Cassian opened his eyes, he turned to face the droid again. “Promise me you’ll never hurt another person’s daemon, Kay.”

“If you insist on civilities,” Kay said in a manner that was as close to huffing in irritation as a droid could get. “But if anyone or anything tries to hurt your daemon, my hand will be forced. Your safety and health is more of a concern than a taboo.”

Cassian smiled very faintly and he heard Amaya chuckle low under her breath. But the fear was still there, hiding in the back of his mind, like a ticking time bomb. Some things were impossible to bury. As a man who had been forced to bury a lot over the years, he knew this all too well unfortunately.

JYN ERSO: coral snake -- Felix, means “lucky” CASSIAN ANDOR: indian grey mongoose -- Amaya, means “the end” GALEN ERSO: spotted salamander -- Evangeline, means “good news” LYRA ERSO: honey badger -- Leopold, means “people, bold, lion” ORSON KRENNIC: barn owl -- Valda, means “power, rule” SAW GERRERA: eurasian lynx -- Blair, means “plain, field, battlefield”

[corellian-smuggler]

I watched Bright Lights shortly after Carrie’s passing (which really was a terrible idea because I was not at all emotionally ready for it) and something that struck me was that more than once she alluded to this idea that fans love LEIA but not necessarily Carrie.

What I’ve been struggling with though is how to explain my conception of the character. Because to me, Leia and Carrie are the same. That’s not to say that I project Leia onto Carrie, because I know she was her own person, and that Leia is not simply Carrie Fisher as a human sent into space. What I mean is that Leia is impossible without Carrie. I’m sure many people would disagree. After all, as I was very anxiously told by a Hollywood Studios employee during my Disney World vacation, “LEIA isn’t dead. Disney really wants us to make that clear. Carrie was the actress but nothing’s happened to Leia.”

I had to work very hard during that conversation not to scowl at the poor girl, who was very clearly parroting sentences she’d been instructed to say if the subject of Carrie’s death were to come up in the store. And while I know that *narratively* Leia is still alive (in the new canon movies that I don’t recognize as Star Wars anyways), I was stunned by the sentiment. Carrie was the actress, but nothing’s happened to Leia. Wrong. Untrue. Cruel and callous words spoken by someone who just didn’t understand, because Carrie Fisher was and IS Leia.

To me it comes down to a few factors. The first is that unlike franchises like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings where the characters existed and were loved by readers long before being adapted to the screen and embodied by actors, the same cannot be said for Star Wars. When we look at Princess Leia, Carrie’s face is the only face there has ever been. Carrie’s mannerisms are source material for the character. Carrie’s voice and Carrie’s expressions and Carrie’s everything else. We do not watch Star Wars and feel that we are seeing an actress’s portrayal of Princess Leia. We simply see Princess Leia, because it was Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia that we all fell in love with. Can anyone conceive of a Leia that is not Carrie Fisher? When reading the novels, does anyone picture anything that’s not Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia? I certainly can’t. Half the time I can’t even properly engage in a Star Wars comic book if the artist’s rendition of Leia doesn’t look enough like Carrie Fisher. It feels like an imposter Leia, not the REAL Leia. Much like the overwhelmingly negative responses to the young Han Solo movie borne of the viciously stubborn and ferociously loyal opinions that only Harrison Ford could ever portray Han, only Carrie Fisher could ever be Princess Leia.

And it’s not just that. It’s not just that Carrie was how we were introduced to Leia and that as a result we had no concept of Leia before or without Carrie. It’s not even just that Carrie deserves a good deal of the credit for our love of the character because it was her acting that brought her to life, her work that we have all come to love. It’s more than that because you can tell that so much of Leia IS Carrie. So much of the nerve, of the bold resistance, of the snark and sass, of the sharp wit, of the caring and vulnerability--so much of what makes Leia LEIA is because of who Carrie Fisher is, of drawing on her own experiences, her own feelings, her own instincts. So much of what we see on screen isn’t just an actress stepping into the shoes of a character and becoming the character, because it’s obvious by reading her writing and listening to her speak and understanding her humor and knowing what was going on behind the scenes during filming that Carrie brought so much of herself into Leia. So much so that any other actress in the role would have reaped a completely different result, unrecognizable from the Leia we know and love.

That’s why I was flabbergasted during that Disney World interaction, so surprised and affronted and of half a mind to march over to some Disney executive and explain that there is no Leia without Carrie.

So when Carrie said that fans love Leia and she herself was just the closest they could get, it made me unspeakably sad, because it’s not that we loved someone else’s creation that she had just happened to give a face to. We love Leia as Carrie made her to be. We love Carrie’s work and Carrie’s spirit and the life that she gave to Leia. We love Princess Leia the character who is embodied by Carrie Fisher. Period. 

I was so saddened to think that Carrie might not have known that. We love Leia, but we also love Carrie for being Leia, for giving us Leia, for embodying Leia as only she could have. For becoming Leia.

And not just that, either! Because we love Princess Leia, but we love Carrie, too! As an aspiring writer myself, I can’t even begin to express how affected I have been by Carrie’s books. She did things with words that shocked me. Her writing was so clever, her humor so brilliant, and her voice in it so apparent that I can recall quite clearly reading Shockaholic and being 1. surprised that she was so good and affronted on her behalf that no one seemed to ever talk about how skilled an author she was 2. delighted to read something so engaging and 3. rather put-out, because I’d always thought I had some decent talent and reading her work I knew that I wasn’t at all of her calibre. And I mean that sincerely, because her writing is not just witty and entertaining. It’s so honest that it’s startling, and it’s so powerful in its honesty and so genuine in its humanity that you really can’t help but to ache. The compassion and empathy her writing evokes is unlike any other writing I’ve ever read. It’s impossible to read her books and not hurt with her, root for her, laugh with her, feel with her. Her writing inspired me. Her talent is commendable. Her honesty is humbling. Her humor is undeniably hilarious, and yet also sometimes heartbreakingly sad.

So I love Carrie for being Princess Leia and I love Leia because of what Carrie made of her. I thoroughly enjoy and am inspired by Carrie’s writing. Maybe because I loved and admired Leia all through my childhood and maybe because I share Carrie’s love of words and language and because I was inspired by her writing, or maybe because so much of her experiences strikes so close to home in me--a young woman with a dysfunctional family and daddy issues and body dysphoria and depression and anxiety and the impression that my life experience is so different from everyone else’s--that other people just don’t seem to feel things like I do--I finished her novels feeling that she was a kindred spirit. I could relate to her. I became very protective of her. I was absolutely devastated when she died.

So many people have commended her for speaking so bravely and truthfully about drug addiction and mental illness, and certainly she should be celebrated for the work she did speaking out about the stigmas surrounding those issues. So many people have celebrated her take-no-shit attitude, her advocation of feminist ideas, her political stances and refusal to keep quiet about the many injustices in our country. I could go on and on about how I admired her for all of that, and how much her bravery meant to me, and how refreshing she was in her individuality. I could talk for days about all the ways she inspired me.

But what I keep coming back to is what she said in Bright Lights and how sad she seemed. Carrie loved Princess Leia. We know that she did and that she didn’t begrudge us for loving Leia, too. But I’ve just been so haunted these months since her death. I hope Carrie knew that it wasn’t just Leia that we loved. Not just Leia who inspired us. I hope she knew that we were inspired by her. I hope she knew that her tenacity, and her honesty, and her refusal to sit down and shut up and be complacent, her intelligence and talent, her acting and her writing and her humanity all made a difference. It made a difference to me, at least. And not only her strength, but her weaknesses, too. Her struggles and her hardships affected me profoundly because I have struggled, too. Yes, I love Leia. Princess Leia is without a doubt the greatest fictional love of my life, the character that no character could ever replace in my heart. But I loved Carrie, too, and I looked up to her in a way that I cannot ever remember looking up to anyone in my young life. Leia is Carrie and Carrie is Leia, and there’s no question about it. I hope that Carrie knew that we knew it. I hope she knew we recognized that she was more than just her custodian. I hope being Leia wasn’t an awful burden to her, and that she knows how much credit she deserved for Princess Leia.

Mostly though I hope that wherever she is, she isn’t sad anymore. I hope she’s aware of the effect she’s had on us all, through Leia and through everything else. I hope she finally feels like she’s gotten to the end of her personality, and is finally lying in the sun.

[topmixtrends]

This piece appears in the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 17,  Comedy

To receive the LARB Quarterly Journal, become a member  or  donate here.

  ¤

     Full disclosure: I was told to write something comedic for this comedy issue.

Full disclosure: I should say I was asked to write something comedic for this comedy issue.

Full disclosure: Surprising myself, I said “yes” immediately. I was in one of those moods where you think it’s good to say “yes” to things.

Full disclosure: But I’m a little out of practice writing prose and to just sort of snap your fingers and write something “funny” isn’t that easy. I’m not regretting saying yes, but yesterday I was. I thought, “Oh, shit, I’m going to have to tell them I couldn’t come up with anything.”

Full disclosure: What I thought I might write about — yesterday — is that sometimes I have feelings for my dog, Fezzik, that verge on the erotic.

But that’s not really accurate. It’s more romantic than erotic.

But one time — in a moment of great admiration and affection for his person and his cute little body — I did brush my hand against his tiny, fur-covered p***s, and I wondered if I would need to bring it up in my analysis.

And would I also have to tell my analyst that more than once when Fezzik has yawned in my face I have wanted, fleetingly, to put my tongue in his mouth?

Full disclosure: So that’s what I thought about writing yesterday, but I didn’t think there was enough there. Not enough story. I love my dog, and one time, and only one time did I touch his genitals. And that one time was almost accidental. Emphasis on almost.

Full disclosure: What happened was this: Fezzik and I had been separated for hours, which is hard on both of us. Often, when I am gone for long stretches, I wonder why I haven’t heard from him. I look at my phone expecting there to be a text. Then I catch myself: “You idiot, he can’t possibly text you!” And yet I’m hurt and bewildered that he hasn’t.

So on the night in question, I came home, eager to be reunited, and Fezzik raced about, stuffing toys in his mouth, which is what he does at his happiest. It’s like he can’t contain himself, his joy, his need, so he has to load up his mouth, which I understand quite well. We all have oral issues. My mother only breast-fed me for two months and I’m still upset about it.

Anyway, after Fezzik exhausted himself dashing about, he hopped onto our bed, I mean my bed, and he lay on his back, put his paws in the air, and exposed his belly for a soothing rub. This is usually phase two of his welcome home to me.

I looked into his eyes, which are quite beautiful, and I’m not the only one to think so. A Lyft driver, who was ferrying Fezzik and me from a friend’s house in Santa Monica, commented on their loveliness. He said, “It’s like they’re ringed with mascara.” I had never considered this, but it was an excellent and astute observation.

So I lowered my hand to rub Fezzik’s belly, but because I was staring moonily into his eyes, my hand went too low and lit upon his little fur-pouch, the tiny speed-bump that encases his p***s.

I knew immediately that a mistake had been made, but I let him my hand linger there one second too long, felt risqué and louche and outré, all things French, and then stroked his belly. But that one second makes all the difference in the world. It’s the membrane between heaven and hell, between sin and virtue.

Full disclosure: I should say I have thought of touching him again. But I think I want to touch it only to do something bad and taboo, and then be forced to tell my analyst about it. So it isn’t so much that I’m compelled to touch it again because I want to touch it again, but, rather, I want to get in trouble. I want to be punished. I’m looking to create a drama for myself. My punitive super-ego hasn’t had much to work with lately. I’m sort of old and well-behaved at the moment.

Full-disclosure: But I’m not sure if my filter is operating properly, which is perhaps one of the reasons — of the myriad — I’m in analysis four times a week for over three years. You see, I had to go for the old-fashioned cure to try to change myself before it was too late. But maybe because of a leaky filter, which still hasn’t been fixed, what I’ve touched on here — literally and otherwise — is most likely illegal, and I should have kept my mouth shut!

Yet I also suspect I am not alone with having inappropriate thoughts about my dog. I mean I’m not saying other people are having inappropriate thoughts about Fezzik, though I could see why they would, like the Lyft driver, but what I meant was that I’m sure there are others out there who have strong feelings for their dogs.

And let’s not forget that sometimes this all goes in the other direction. For example, when I was a young boy, maybe six years old, my uncle’s very large and very hairy English sheep dog, Oliver, in a moment of lust and insanity, pinned me violently to the ground — this was in Pennsylvania — and mounted me, missionary style.

I was wearing shorts, it was summer, and he rubbed his horrifying, slick pink thing — one of nature’s mistakes — between my bare legs, like a piston, bathed my face in hot dog-breath, and bit my shoulder, without breaking the skin.

He was a rough lover, but good about the biting, and I sensed intuitively, despite my youth, that something sexual was happening, and I was terrified and screamed for help. My uncle came running, grabbed Oliver by the scruff of his neck, cursed at him viciously, and threw him off me. After that, the memory goes blank, until about my sophomore year in college.

Full disclosure: But about Fezzik. I’ve had him for six months. He’s a rescue. Maybe two years old. He was abandoned, left chained to a fence. He seems to be a mix of beagle, Chihuahua, and basenji. He has floppy ears, a tan body and a white neck, and his firm, little tail is always up and curled, revealing a discreet and fastidious anus. He weighs about 20 pounds and his fur is soft and lush. He’s loving and kind, introspective and silly, soulful and good. Naturally, we sleep together every night.

I get into bed with a book, and he burrows under the blankets and goes down by my feet, though sometimes in the middle of the night, I find him curled against my lower back for warmth, and I feel lucky not to be alone in the world.

In the morning, he emerges from beneath the blankets and kisses my face and cleans my eyes. Then I make coffee for us — well, for me — and we go to the backyard, and I read Pema Chödrön, whose books I love, and I think about things, like how the path is the goal, my ugliness is my beauty, and that pain is the great teacher.

Meanwhile, Fezzik sniffs the ground for raccoon urine, buries his bones in the dirt, and sometimes sits in my lap, like a sentinel, turning his head to the left and the right, smelling the breeze.

It’s a soft and delicious existence, and I’m a soft citizen in a troubled time, but in these moments with Fezzik, when I quiet myself, I sense the expansiveness of life beyond the confines of my pinched and noisy mind, and I am not without hope.

 Full Disclosure: Yesterday, when it seemed that I couldn’t write this piece about Fezzik, I was rooting around in some ancient files on my laptop, looking to find something I could repurpose, and I came across an essay I had written 12 years ago, but never published. In this essay, I had included a journal entry from 1993. I was struck by the entry as something that the LA Review of Books might like because it’s primarily about writers and literary figures, and so I’m going to add it here.

I know it’s a bit odd to pair it with my Fezzik love story, but what the hell? Why not experiment? It’s sort of like saying “yes,” which is how I got into this mess in the first place, a mess which is probably going to lead to my being arrested by the ASPCA or even the Audubon Society, though their concern is primarily for birds. But I imagine they would want to come to Fezzik’s aid if they get wind of this essay.

Full disclosure: Here’s some background to this diary entry: it was written one night while I worked the door at the old Fez (not short for Fezzik, sadly) night club on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. I was 28 and had published one novel, but had gone back to school, to Columbia, to get a degree so that I could teach.

Being a student, I was always low on money and had many little jobs. In this entry, I talk about “running film” at a boxing match in Madison Square Garden. This was before cameras were digital, and so I was employed by a news service to run the film, between rounds, from the ringside photographers to a make-shift dark room in the bowels of the Garden. The idea was for them to start developing the images right away, but I only had to run one time since it was a first-round knock-out.

I got that job because my girlfriend back then, referred to as H. below, was a photographer for Reuters. I remember being with her when the first attack on the World Trade Center happened, about two weeks after this entry was written. We had been out all night and then slept very late, past noon, in her dark, cave-like apartment. It was February and cold, very little sun, and in overheated New York apartments you could almost sleep through a whole winter. Then her boss called, waking us. They needed her to rush down to Wall Street — someone had attempted to blow up the Twin Towers.

Well, here’s the entry:

        February 10, 1993

     I was hung-over all day, but rallied in the afternoon.  Philip Roth lectured at Columbia today.  I asked him, “Why are we ashamed to be Jews and how can we get over it?”  He didn’t answer, just laughed.  But I was serious.  He said that he was excited by three cities: Newark, Prague, and Jerusalem.  He said that he was intimidated by people with conviction.  Me too.  I don’t have conviction.  He said, “Be ruthless, serve the writing, not the life . . .”

     Last weekend: Friday night I was the bartender and waiter at a private party in Turtle Bay for the former ambassador to England.  Mayor Koch was there, gave me a penetrating look, like he wanted to make love to me.  I heard someone talking about Koch at the party: “He’s a terrible man, dividing the city, I listen to him on the radio still going on about Dinkins abandoning the Jews.”

     Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was there for some reason.  He wanted a whiskey, “One ice cube, mild.”  He still had a thin moustache, his face was jowly but he looked dignified.  I could almost recognize in him the young man he once was; I kept comparing him to the black and white vision of him in my mind from “Gunga Din” . . .

     When I brought him the drink, he said, “Thank you, you’re too kind,” with great dramatic emphasis, like I had saved his life, and then he said, “I’ll put you in my will.”  I said, “I’ll give you my name at the end of the party.”  He smiled at me, his eyes twinkled. 

     When I went up to Mayor Koch to see what he wanted to drink, he extended his hand, he thought I was somebody at the party, I was wearing my blue blazer, but like a good servant I didn’t extend my hand to meet his and said, “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Mayor?” 

     He didn’t want anything, and then this middle-aged reporter started talking to me, and he gave me the same look that Mayor Koch gave me, and he said that young gay men were not as frightened about AIDS, and then he added, “Sex is back in, you know,” and I said, “I never knew it completely went out.”  I was quick with the one-liners that night.  Kept sneaking drinks for myself.

     Saturday night I ran film at Madison Square Garden for Reuters and the Washington Post at the heavyweight championship fight; it was great.  Backstage there were dogs in cages for the dog show the next day, and in the arena there were movie stars, sports stars, gangsters.  Fans chanted “bullshit” after the quick knockout.  Riddick Bowe was amazing: his long beautiful jab tipped at the end with muscle-like curled bright red glove.  Bell tolled ten times for Arthur Ashe. 

     Child star Macaulay Culkin came backstage to see the dogs in their cages.  His hair coiffed, skin pale, very tiny, had private limo, looked at the dogs and smiled like a little boy.  His father had a Hollywood ponytail.  When they got in the car Macaulay sat up front and his parents in back, it was an odd reversal.

     Michael Dokes, the loser, glowering out of the corners of his eyes, in body-length fur coat, leaned on his old handler and went into a limo after Macaulay.

     Went to press conference and watched Bowe with the circus of TV reporters.  Saw MC Hammer and Joe Frazier – not walking too well; old boxers all damaged, their brains and balance loosened in their heads.

     Then Sunday I worked the door here at the Fez for the Neal Cassady memorial radio broadcast, a pathetic sort of tribute with old men trying to recreate lost youth and madness for stylish dead Nineties youth submissive in the audience.  Snuck down a few times.  Ginsberg was up on stage, trim, looking like a reformed congregation rabbi in his blue blazer and flowered tie and grey beard and wise kindly bald dome, reading his poetry about young boys’ hairless chests and buttocks; then Ginsberg’s old lover, drunken Peter Orlovsky showed up, fat, looking like an Archie Bunker crony, baseball hat, blazer, pocket bulging with pens.  “I am a famous international poet,” he said to me, so that I wouldn’t ask him for the cover charge.  His name wasn’t on the comp list.  I said, “I know who you are.  Don’t worry about the money.  But for admission can you tell me about Neal Cassady?” 

     He was happy to talk, drunk, launched into a little monologue, “It was like the sun came into him and gave him energy.  You don’t see that kind of energy any more, his arms, the biceps, the triceps, they were beautiful, strong, his belly was flat, and smiling, he was always smiling, always on, took the energy right from the sun . . . “

     “What about Kerouac?”

     “Too good for words.  He lived to write.  Not for fame and money, just to write, he died in his bathroom and wrote his last poem in his blood.”

     “Him and Elvis in the bathroom.  Is it true that Kerouac screwed Neal over?”

     “No, they loved each other.  It wasn’t a homosexual love.  It was a love of souls.  Man to man.  You see, Jack loved Neal because Neal was a great cocksman and Jack was shy, a gentleman, he was like . . . like Victor Hugo and Neal was Rimbaud . . . and Jack gave Neal life, made him immortal.”

     Well, that’s all to report.  Look forward to being with H. tonight if she still wants to see me.  I’ll bring a bottle of wine.

Full disclosure: So many little things I could mention regarding that entry. Like the time I met Allen Ginsberg in 1986, on Avenue A in the East Village, late at night, and he told me to go to the Naropa Institute to study writing, and so I did, driving some guy’s VW van from New York to Denver, and then taking a bus to Boulder, Colorado, only to discover that the Naropa Institute was really expensive and I couldn’t afford any of the classes. This was before the internet, when you did things like drive cross-country to a school because Allen Ginsberg told you to, not knowing that you couldn’t afford it.

And how years later, I would see Peter Orlovsky, sitting in doorways, in all sorts of weather, always near University Place, and he had completely lost his mind and was quasi-homeless, but somehow, he lived a long time after Ginsberg died. 

And how at that same party where I served Mayor Koch and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., I also served Kurt Vonnegut, and I told him that he was the first writer I had ever loved, and he said it was kind of me to say that. But for some reason, I didn’t put that in the diary entry.

And how the people who threw the party took me under their wing and gave me a spare bedroom in their house to use as an office so that I could work on my second novel, since the room I rented, where I lived, was too small for a desk. And how I would look out the window from my “office” and I’d see Vonnegut, who lived across the street, sitting on his stoop smoking, since his wife wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, and how on that same street was this mysterious high-end brothel, which 20 years later sparked the idea for my most recent book, a thriller where a young girl is saved from such a place.

Well, I guess that’s about it. I’m running out of steam. Been writing for a few hours. And if you were here with me in my little house in Los Angeles, you would have heard me call just now for Fezzik, and you would have seen him come trotting into the room, where he is now sitting by my feet. A little yelp of some sort came out of him and he is looking up at me with his quizzical, beautiful eyes. It’s time to take him for a walk.

¤

Jonathan Ames is the author of Wake Up, Sir!, The Extra Man, and I Pass Like Night. He is also the creator of the TV shows Blunt Talk and Bored to Death. His new book is You Were Never Really Here.

The post Yet Another Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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