#the fic I wrote on this a while ago is sitting in my endless pile of unpublished fics

[zaachknight]

what if I said satanist zach and catholic jon discussing their beliefs, what then????????

[blueskrugs]

Tim McGraw | Brock Boeser

ahhhh! this is the first fic of the swift series! I can’t believe I am actually going to try and pull this off for the next five months. I hope you guys like it and big shoutout to @broadstbroskis for being my sounding board throughout all this fic planning and then beta-ing this!

length: 1.6k words

But when you think Tim McGraw,  I hope you think my favorite song

Falling in love with Brock was easy. 

It was the summer before your sophomore year of college, on the precipice of both your lives changing, though neither of you knew it at the time. 

Time seemed to move slower that summer, long sunny days blending into bonfire nights out by the lake, September nothing more than a distant day on the calendar. You watched as Brock’s hair turned more blond and his shoulders turned more tan, hours outside in the sun doing their job. 

You remembered the first time Brock kissed you; you weren’t sure it was something you’d ever forget. You’d spent weeks dancing around each other, learning each other, had spent an entire Fourth of July party practically glued to each other’s sides. It seemed more than inevitable by the time it finally happened.

He called you late one night, woke you up and begged you to meet him down at the lakefront. You went, because of course you did, met him down at the dock, where he was waiting with a pile of blankets in the speedboat his family used. He tossed you one of his UND hoodies with a grin before helping you onto the boat. You settled into the nest of blankets in the prow as Brock carefully steered the boat out from the dock and into the middle of the lake. 

It was a clear night, the stars and the full moon shining brightly against the still, dark lake, and a quiet one. The only sounds filling the air were the quiet hum of the boat’s motor and Brock’s country playlist playing quietly from his phone, neither quite loud enough to drown out the constant buzz of the cicadas. 

Brock cut the motor and came to sit behind you. You rested your head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around your waist. He was warm and solid behind you, and you were both quiet for a moment, just listening to the music.

“This is one of my favorite songs,” you murmured, as Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind” started filtering through the speakers.

“I know,” Brock said simply. You didn’t remember telling him that. You could hear his heartbeat beneath your ear, steady and calm. 

You were caught up in trying to remember when you’d told Brock your favorite song when he shifted a little behind you. You twisted in his arms to see what was the matter, but then he was kissing you, softly in the moonlight, and you didn’t get the chance.

“Wanted to do that for a while,” he admitted after he pulled away, resting his forehead against yours. His breath fanned across your face when he breathed out a sigh. Tim McGraw was still playing somewhere behind you.

“I would’ve let you,” you said back.

Brock breathed out a laugh and kissed you again, one hand tangled in your hair, the other still wrapped around your waist.

And I was right there beside him all summer long,  And then the time we woke up to find that summer gone

For all that that summer seemed endless while it was happening, it ended abruptly, shattering the peaceful love you and Brock had been building out on the lake. 

You snuck out one last time, both of you dressed in something other than a swimsuit for once, spent the night in each other’s arms with your bare feet dangling in the lake off the dock, the stars and the moon lighting your way once again.

You weren’t sure you’d ever look at the summer stars the same way when you were older.

Brock went back to UND. Your family moved away from Minnesota. Summer romances were never meant to last, you told yourself, as you left yours in the dust.

Brock promised he would keep in touch, pressed a green UND hoodie into your hands and a goodbye kiss to your lips. You smiled at him, because you knew it would never last, and it didn’t. Brock had other things to focus on, hockey and his future. It was only a matter of time until he forgot you. 

You spent a lot of time wearing that hoodie he gave you in the beginning, more time than you cared to admit. You spent more time crying than you cared to admit, too. You kept wearing it long after it stopped smelling like Brock and summer, until it was almost nothing to you and the comfort of it was gone. Almost.

Brock’s texts trickled to a stop before Christmas, but you couldn’t blame him. You’d always had a feeling that this– whatever this had been– had meant more to you than it had to him.

You couldn’t bring yourself to stop following him, though, not even when your friends and family gave you pitying looks, not when UND got booted out of the championship tournament. “He’s just a boy,” they’d say, but they also say you never forget your first love, don’t they? You watched his first NHL game, at home in Minnesota, his first NHL goal, too. And if you cried a little, well, at least there was no else around to see it. 

Years passed, and, slowly, you moved on. Brock’s sweatshirt made its way to the back of your closet. You fell in love again, fell out of love. Stopped loving Brock. You graduated college. You never did go back to the lake, wondered if Brock ever had. If he’d waited for you, or if he’d moved in and found another girl to spend the summer with. For the most part, you forgot about Brock. Forgot about his laugh, about the way he’d roll his eyes when you teased him. How he knew your favorite songs. You did your best to, at least. It was easier said than done for a long time.

But in a box beneath my bed, there’s a letter that you never read from three summers back It’s hard not to find it all a little bittersweet...

You were cleaning out your old bedroom at your parents’ house when you found it. It was a letter you’d written to Brock after that summer, when you were confused and lonely, filled with all the things that you didn’t have the courage to say to his face. It was in an envelope, addressed and stamped, but you’d never planned on sending it. In all the chaos of moving that fall, it had gotten thrown in a box and shoved under your bed to be forgotten. 

You remembered every word you’d written, but you carefully pulled it out anyway. You read that letter again and again over the next few days, always pausing on the last words you wrote before you signed your name: “I love you.”

It was another several days before you pulled out a clean sheet of paper and a pen, wrote a continuation to that letter. You’d loved Brock once, yes, but you didn’t anymore, not in the same way. There were no tears left in this story. He’d always be your first love, and you’d always want the best for him. You just no longer felt your heart break every time you thought of him, and you hadn’t for a long time. 

You hoped that he was happy out there in Vancouver, living his dream.

And there’s a letter left on your doorstep, And the first thing that you’ll read...

“Brock, there’s a letter for you!” his mom called through the house.

“Who sends letters anymore?” he asked, which earned him a smack with the envelope. He took it from his mom anyway. The return address was unfamiliar, out-of-state, and there was no name, but he felt like he’d seen the handwriting somewhere before. He took the envelope out on the back deck with Coolie, carefully slid his thumb under the flap and opened it.

A picture slid out from in-between two folded pieces of paper when he tugged them out. It took only a quick glance at it to tell him exactly who had sent him this letter. It was a picture of the two of you at that Fourth of July party you’d spent together all those summers ago. Brock had spent the entire day trying not to kiss you right there in front of everyone.

Brock smiled at the picture for a moment. His arms were wrapped around your shoulders, your hands reaching up to grasp his. You were both laughing at some joke long forgotten. He didn’t even remember anyone taking the picture. He carefully set it aside to turn his attention to the letter. He read in silence as the afternoon sun slowly dipped lower in the sky. Coolie was off somewhere in the grass, having found a stick to chew on.

Brock read the letter, then again. He stared at your name on the bottom of each page for a minute before carefully refolding them. He whistled once for Coolie, who came running, still carrying the stick. 

“Where are you off to?” his mom asked as he made his way back into the house and grabbed his car keys.

“For a drive.”

When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think of me

The letter was tossed in his glovebox. Brock plugged in his aux, pulled up Spotify, and scrolled all the way down to his country playlist. There was a song on there he didn’t listen to very often, could never really explain why he always skipped it, but right now he clicked on it and turned the volume up.

“Always stay humble and kind,” sang Tim McGraw as he put his car and drive and allowed himself to remember, just this once.

[painless-innit-colourful]

‘Would You Cry If I Died, Would You Remember My Name?’ - a Ranbutler Fic

Remember how much you loved Ranbutler during the first half of the Masquerade stream? Me too! Everytime Billiam said something about punishing him I wrote it down. Here’s 1700 words of an unnamed character suffering :)

tw for starvation, Egg manipulation, implied beating.

“As a bonus,” Sir Billiam joked with a kind of triumphant smile. “If we die down here, they’ll never find our bodies!” He laughed voraciously, and Karl soon joined him.

---

The Butler didn’t think it was very funny.  There were crimson tendrils at the edge of his vision, like bloody hands trying to ensnare him. They were red, like anger and violence and pain. So much pain. Billiam had laughed at him earlier that day. Invited him to talk over an afternoon tea in the library. None of which he would be getting. The Butler swore he’d seen his employers eyes turn red, like the Devil himself was sitting across from him. It couldn’t be though, because the Devil seeks out the greedy. He just wanted something to eat.

He just wanted something to eat.

Another wave of dizziness swept over him, and it was a battle to stay on his feet. He was bent double, leaning hard against the rough wall of the secret passage, one hand gripping grooves in the wood with the tips of his fingers to hold him upright, while his other arm was wrapped tightly around his midsection, squeezing as if it could somehow counteract the pain. Despite his frigid surroundings, he didn’t shiver: he couldn’t feel it. He could’ve been submerged in the aquarium and drowned without realising. He was empty, stomach growling, demanding food, but there was nothing he could do. He felt his grip on the wall slipping, and he bit through his tongue with the effort to stay upright. If he sat down, he feared he’d never get up again.

Domed dinner plates, silver serving trays and deep-dish bowls piled high and poised precariously danced through his subconscious. Sweet and savoury pies, delicate canapes, a roasted round of venison, sautéed mushrooms. He’d made all those, some with assistance from Hubert, for a dinner party Billiam had thrown over a week and a half ago. He’d slaved away for hours prior to his master’s gathering of rich friends and richer acquaintances, preparing four courses, organising the alcohol, cleaning the dining room and ballroom, pressing tablecloths and watering the potted plants (some of a more reddish hue than normal). His intention was to make too much food: then he’d be scolded with no follow-through and get to retreat to the kitchen to finish the leftovers. It was a perfect plan.

But Fortune did not smile upon him; she glowered angrily as she often liked to do. From the moment he’d turned the corner from the dining room to the hall, time seemed to slow, and he watched with detached horror and a muted resignation as he collided with Lord James, and the wine he’d been carrying splashed all over the newly-divorced gentleman’s dinner jacket. The gent’s formerly suave cream blazer now bore a closer resemblance to the coat of a fallen soldier. The Butler wanted the ground to swallow him whole as his master came marching out of the ballroom to berate him, the guests exchanging smug looks and glances that filled him toe to top with shame.

“James I am so sorry, I’ll lend you a dinner jacket - there’s a rather fine one in the second guest bedroom’s wardrobe. Please, I invite you to clean yourself while I deal with him,” He shot the Butler a glare that sank his heart with dread, “And I’ll replace your jacket tomorrow. Hubert!” Billiam’s other butler immediately stepped out of the nearest extraneous doorway. “Show James to the second guest room and help him clean up.”

“And as for you,” The Butler shrunk back involuntarily as Billiam loomed over him, leaning closer to his ear. “Twenty lashes, no food for two weeks and the cost of his jacket comes out of your wages.” It felt like the air had been ripped out of his lungs, but the Butler held his tongue. Often Billiam would make empty threats he’d forget about hours later, so long as the Butler remained well-behaved and/or invisible. “Now get out of my sight.” He didn’t have to be told twice before he retreated upstairs, stuffing himself into a small cubbyhole where no guest would find him by accident. He would be left alone for the remainder of the party, when he’d leave and get something to eat without being seen or heard. He’d be fine. He’d be fine.

The kitchen doors were locked though when he tried to silently open them in the early hours of the morning, and when he turned away he was met with the sight of Hubert holding a candle in one hand and a cane in the other. A cold sweat formed on his brow like condensation on a chilly window pane.

“Hubert?” “Take off your shirt.” “But-” “Take off your shirt and step outside, please.” Hubert’s icy-grey eyes showed no sympathy as the two of them walked through a side door and stepped out onto the grounds of the estate. The Butler heard him set down the candle by the door as he shrugged off his waistcoat and undid the buttons of his shirt, trembling. Hubert took them out of his hands and cast them aside as he raised the cane, looking the Butler in the eyes as he tensed all the muscles in his body in anticipation. “No hard feelings.” “Right.” He murmured, shutting his eyes.

At least the agonising pains of starvation had distracted him from the raw ache of his back as it made contact with the wall behind him. He’d lost the fight to stay upright and was now huddled on the floor in the dank passage, tasting the blood in his mouth from where he’d bit through his tongue. It was better than nothing, he would only admit in this state. The tips of his fingers played with the canteen of water on the floor beside him: his only hope of surviving. This wasn’t the first time Billiam had withheld food from him, and he’d learnt that if he drank enough, he could about sustain himself through achingly empty days and endless torturous nights. Still, it did nothing to relieve his torment. It had been eleven days since the dinner party, and though the Butler knew he could survive this, the throbbing pain in his belly felt like Death consuming him from the inside out, withering him away in the secret passage. He was safe in there from his master at least, but what about his fellow servant? Did Hubert know about this hidey-hole?

If he died in here, would anyone find him? Would anyone care?

He titled his head back and let out a low moan as another wave of dizziness clouded his thoughts and senses. No one would care if he was gone. Not even his master, Billiam, would pay it any mind: Hubert was more than capable of running the show on his own. He never incurred Billiam’s wrath; he was never locked out of the kitchen or taken outside to be beaten or scolded for simply existing. Billiam and Hubert had conversations; the Butler was denied speech at all times. The Butler wasn’t even permitted his own name in Billiam’s establishment: he whispered it to himself while he was alone at night so he wouldn’t forget it. The memories of being called by his name grew dim in his mind, wasting away with no one else to value them. No one to value him.

The next time he was swept with a wave of nausea and weakness, the red tendrils returned to his vision, and this time they didn’t leave. “Oh Butler, or should I say, John...” “How… How do you know my name..?” He whispered back, without considering the source of the voice intruding into his mind. “You poor mortal soul, suffering alone with no one to care.” “How- How do you know that? Who are you?” The Butler’s voice was weak as he rasped questions to the darkness. “What is it that you want, hm? More than anything in the world, what is it that your heart desires?” “Are you Satan?” “No, child.” Somehow that pronouncement scared him more. “Please- I don’t want anything…” “Oh but you do!” The voice then fell silent, leaving the Butler alone with his thoughts for a long moment. The presence remained, but without the voice to distract him, the Butler once again whimpered aloud from the pain of his hunger pangs. “I- I guess- I guess I’d like something to eat.” He admitted, his voice a soft whisper as he basked in the shame he felt. “Yes, child, and that I can give to you, and so much more. I can grant you everything you’ve ever desired. Food, so much you’ll never go hungry again, rich and filling like what you serve to your master and his guests. You may have Billiam’s approval… He may even call you by your name.” The Butler’s vision was swimming. “H-How.” He mumbled, barely finding the will to whisper the words.

“Come. Come to me. In the library, behind the second painting. Then, lowly mortal, I will make sure you never starve again.” He tried, searching inside himself for the last of his resolve, tried to find the willpower to hold out against the pull of whatever demon was beckoning to him. His parents, were they alive, would never approve. Billiam would never approve.

But they didn’t matter. His parents were dead. And Billiam was the reason he was too weak to resist in the first place. His willpower shrivelled up and died as he dragged himself across the floor towards the rickety ladder upstairs. If just trying to survive made him a sinner, then he hoped at least that Hell would be warm.

---

“Karl,” He stared down the peculiarly-dressed stranger. “I’m going to have to ask you to go back inside.” He watched as the man hesitantly stepped under his arm where he held back the painting, his eyes darting between him and his master at the far end of the room, standing proud next to the Egg. He listened to him give Karl a small speech without hearing any of the words as he retrieved the scabbard from behind the other painting, then himself stepping through the hole in the wall.

As he reappeared, Billiam smiled and folded his hands before him. “Oh, the Egg is hungry.” The Butler unsheathed the wicked-sharp blade, stained with the blood of the Egg’s previous victims. As he looked at the last of the night’s targets in the eyes, he had only one thought.

‘So am I.’

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic  during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Dreamshaper

Dreamshaper has 54 stories at Gossamer. Her stories often feature Mulder and Scully exploring their feelings in ways you really, really wish you could’ve seen on the show. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Found in Memory, Just By Existing, Purpose, and Promise. Big thanks to Dreamshaper for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I'm not at all surprised people are still reading X-Files fanfic! There's a deep catalogue of good and interesting fiction there, and the X-Files still has cultural significance. And of course there were the recent seasons to bring it back to mind. I think if you had asked me in 2000, I might not have supposed that it had this kind of staying power. So now I'm thinking of this interview as a time capsule--what will my answer be in 2040?

My own fic was not designed to have staying power. If anyone is reading it now, bless them, they are kind and patient. I would only recommend probably reading the first and last things I posted just to see what kind of growth is possible. The first time I ever posted fic, someone told me to never write again. I was a teenager. I was crushed but I went on writing anyway, and I worked hard to improve.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I think of two things. As for the show itself, I still think of Mulder/Scully as the ultimate in romance. I can still picture certain moments from the episodes, from the movie. I look for pairings with tension that reminds me of theirs--an almost-regency level of UST, but with a modern element of danger.

As for the fandom itself, I grew up in it. My entire online life and the core of how I participate in fandom was formed here. I was 17 or so when I started writing and posting MSR. I was 18 or 19 when I started meeting fans in real life. I was fortunate enough to fall in with people who were equal parts gracious and nerdy, and while my own nerdiness is innate, I remember and emulate the kindness which was shown to me.

I have an entire side post to this question about how strongly I disagree with the current age stratification in fandom--this idea of not interacting across artificial age divides is tragic to me.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

ATXC, and mailing lists. I don't actually remember the names of all the mailing lists! I can picture myself sitting in my kitchen on my computer, and what the emails looked like--the font, the signature lines--but not the names. I can even remember specific conversations we had! One of them must have been Scullyfic, because I remember the first meetup being planned. Is that right? Was it the Scullyfic meetup? [Lilydale note: Probably was Scullyfic. There was a big email flurry when the first Scullyfic mailing list meetup was being planned.] My mind was absolutely blown by the idea of a fan con. Now I've led panels at a dozen of them.

I remember some of the arguments, too. It's funny that some of them are the same arguments I still see here and there, like whether or not criticism of a fanwork is valid. Real Person Fic being this unbelievably shameful thing you had to ask to be shown, and the doyennes of the fandom would have given you the cut direct at Almack's if they'd found out, you know?

This was also the era of AIM and ICQ. mIRC too, right? I spent a lot of time in channels. I absolutely loved when people started to be more open about themselves in chats. I was always so interested in how fandom fit into people's lives. Some people I talked to were moms, college students, people who had interesting careers, and they all just found ways to make fandom work for them. They had a need and were meeting it, despite the pressures of their offline life.

I don't know how to explain the impression that made on me, but--it normalized fandom. That seems obvious, maybe, but I hadn't known this was something you could integrate into your everyday life.

It also normalized the idea of women taking their own needs as primary, in a way that went beyond what I was exposed to in my home life, or through the feminism of the 1990s. There was this wild intersection of the--the domestic and intellectual life of women, and the playful life of women, just making itself known to me in a way I'd never seen before. That was enormous. Absolutely a foundational experience for me.

My experience was that ATXC and email lists were like, these surface-level interactions where people figured out, roughly, if your mind ran on a similar track to theirs, and then you were invited to make deeper relationships in more private corners of the internet. Social media filled both functions at once, I think, for a while. But the privacy was missing. I'm not surprised that Slack and Discord are starting to fill that private corner gap--everything old becomes new, etc.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

UST and monsters. This is still an unbeatable combination for me!

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I loved romance novels--I read so many of them. Somehow, before we even had a computer at home, I started to tell myself romance novel stories with Mulder and Scully as the lead characters. This was how I talked myself to sleep--I wasn't a good sleeper. Then when I got online and did whatever search led me to ATXC, I was just shocked. Shocked! Can't do the surprise justice, in this era where fanfic is relatively mainstream. Other people had also independently invented this thing I loved! But they wrote their ideas down! I jumped on the bandwagon immediately.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

It's like my relationship to my childhood, frankly. Foundational, but I don't think about it all that much on a daily basis, right? I smile and reblog gif sets. I get nostalgic. I get embarrassed by social mistakes I made. I feel the way many of us do about memories from our teenage years. I wouldn't be who I was without it, but I'm not still in it.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I was. I've spent 20 years in fandom! I did some beta work for someone who'd started writing slash--The Sentinel. The actual Sentinel, not just an endless loop of Sentinel AUs based on Sentinel AUs based on etc. I had some idea at the time that I was queer, but this was my first real exposure to romances that weren't straight. So I tore my way through the early 2000s slash fandoms as they developed: The Sentinel, Due South, Stargate Atlantis. Popslash, where a mix of good writing and absurdity ruled. Bandom, where I met my wife. Since then, many smaller fandoms.

It's hard to compare any of these things to each other, let alone to the X-Files. In each one, I was lucky enough to find a circle of women who were strong beta readers and good friends. I never wrote as much or for as long as I did in the X-Files.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I watched the new episodes. I've shown friends important episodes--I remember that a few years ago, another friend and I tried to hook a third friend on the show by binging some favorites--mostly shippy MOTW, so it was like, Arcadia, Triangle, Bad Blood. Fun stuff!

We finish watching and I'm like, well? And? And she says, that was fine, but I'm more of a man-pain, secret babies kind of person? I'll never forget it. She had no idea but she'd hit the nail on the head! We were wheezing with laughter. We went back and watched mytharc episodes, which was much less fun for me, but much more interesting to her.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don't read X-Files fic often. I look at new things sometimes, and I've reread a few old classics, but my reading taste has changed so much. I still love straight romance, but it needs to be fast and sharp in a way that is hard to find.

I read fic in other fandoms when I have time. In the past few years, I've finished a degree, had a daughter, renovated a small Victorian and then sold it and bought another one during this pandemic--so time has been short. Currently I read some Untamed fic, some Good Omens fic, Magicians, Schitt's Creek...a sampler. Whatever friends are writing, whatever they recommend.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I never have a favorite of my own fics. I'm never satisfied. The second I post something, I'm always full of regrets. I've written fics that did very well and still hated them a month later. People have asked me over the years to move more of my stuff off Livejournal and onto ao3, but I do it really reluctantly and only by specific request. Everything's ephemeral! Let the old works diminish, and go into the West!

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I have no oldies to dust off. I do periodically think of X-Files stories I would tell, but I don't have enough time for current interests--and so it goes.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do. I was most recently writing in The Magicians fandom. I posted a couple new stories in an old fandom last year--I'd written Good Omens fic fifteen years ago, and then again for the Amazon adaptation. I have a pile of original novels in various stages of completion, but I'm never happy with them. One day I'll figure myself out, perhaps, or I'll just keep writing myself this and that and leaving it all in a drawer.

What's the story behind your pen name?

So AOL had a character limit for user names--I think it was 10. I was a teenager at the time I was coming up with the one I'd use for fandom, so I went with Dreamshaper. It was kind of literal, in the sense that I was going to share the stories I'd been telling myself to help me sleep. But the character limit meant I went with Dreamshpr, which I later liked because of the alternate reading of Dream*shipper*. A reminder to the younger fans that we were the original shippers!

I would also come up with new pen names when I wanted to experiment with a fic that didn't fit my usual style. I don't remember any of them. I probably did that a dozen times, so, sorry to those poor completely abandoned stories.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Giddygeek on tumblr and ao3. I'm most active on twitter, but largely about my domestic life with dips into fandoms or original writing; message me on tumblr if you're an old friend who'd like to reconnect elsewhere.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Just gratitude--I'm so glad that I found people to share an obsession with, and that they were good people, at a time in my life where that made a significant difference to me. I don't know where I'd be now without my time and my growth in this fandom!

(Posted by Lilydale on December 22, 2020)

[kittasune]

“winter warmth”

“WINTER WARMTH”

“WINTER WARMTH”

📘┊pairing. akaashi keiji x gn!reader

🔖┊tags. post-time skip, fluff, co-worker friends to lovers, mutual pinning, holidays, seasons abloom

📚┊wc. 4.3k

📖┊note. I wrote this for akaashi’s birthday but i’ve been meaning to write this fic for a long time now. well, here’s my first fic posted on tumblr! feel free to message me your thoughts! i plan to make this an on-going series of small one-shots so… please expect more in the future.

The biting cold that accompanies the change in seasons looms over the metropolitan city of Tokyo, the city where Akaasji Keiji was born, where his career is, and most importantly; where the love of his life is – the International Library of Children’s Literature. Literature has always been one of Akaashi’s passions to pursue as it opens endless doors of opportunities that could grant him success in the future. The majority of his stress stems from his work,

“Having a job and a stable career makes you successful!”

“You should have a steady income first before you pursue your passions so you have a stable foundation to fall back on just in case things don’t work out, Akaashi-san.”

He can hear the string of back-handed compliments and empty advice he’s received from co-workers and relatives alike echo in the back of his mind, clouding his thoughts and possible future realities he wishes to envision. Literature is one of his hobbies that became his career due to his love that caused him to become attached. Manga, novels, plays, poetry, and even textbooks sometimes caught Akaashi’s attention and he couldn’t help but consume the knowledge and navigate the uncharted waters that flow through the pages in inky waves. The beautiful thought of literature that had once been untouched and pure in Akaashi’s child-like wondrous mind has now become something as lifeless as house-hold chores to check off a list.

Now, as he sits at his desk in his office cubicle eying the unsurmountable manga panels that consume more than half of his desk with their shiny patent ink and crisp lines framing the edges of each page – he can’t help but sigh.

“You know, I’ve always been told that it’s bad luck to sigh.” Akaashi perked up at the sound of ceramic hitting the surface of his white acrylic desk. He looks up to see you holding a matching mug brimming with the café nectar that he so desperately needs. 

“Is that so? You sound so sure of yourself considering that your break ended 5 minutes ago.” Akaashi hid his face in his hands to mask the upturned corners of his lips pulling into a smirk.

“Thank you for the coffee, I know that I’ll need it considering that Hide x Seek’s 100th Chapter is going to be released in this edition of Shonen Jump.”

“I heard that from Udai-san, he seemed so excited that he wanted to make this chapter special by making it holiday-themed with all the holidays being piled all together at the end of the year.” You said with a look of contemplation as you sipped the burning liquid in your mug.

“Have you read Hide x Seek before?” Akaashi leans back in his office chair and sets his gaze upon you while placing the cup next to his lips, the creaky sound apparent from the quality of wornness and evidence of sleepless nights he’s spent hunched over reviewing and editing the work assigned to him.

“I think I’ve read it once before, it’s the one where the high school students hide from an intruder but they don’t know who’s the intruder… but it ends up being the ghost of a former student that seeks to kill out of revenge and spite the higher-ups who have wronged her, right?” You said while fixating your gaze to the edge of his desk as if to recall the synopsis from memory, your coffee mug was left forgotten on Akaashi’s desk as you appear lost in your thoughts.

“Not quite, you just said the plot summary of Peek-a-boo? not Hide x Seek.”

Akaashi said while looking pointedly at your mug on his desk that would surely leave a faint circle as he knows you tend to haphazardly spill its contents as you “vigorously” stir your coffee to ensure that all additives are well-mixed. He recalls asking as to why making a vortex in a cup smaller than his hand is necessary, to which, you responded,

“I need everyone to get along harmoniously and seamlessly blend with one another, imagine drinking a cup of coffee that you’ve prepared and longed for only for it to have lumps and chunks at the bottom, no-thank-you!”

The dim grimace on your face spoke volumes of a less-than-happy experience you must have gone through and as a result, the chaotic meticulousness of your coffee shenanigans intrigued Akaashi to befriend you.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice you flush red at the realization that you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of your co-worker, friend, and “potential suitor” as your friend lightly put as a shallow jab at your private love-life *hint – it’s practically non-existent.

You sigh. “Maybe I’ll give Hide x Seek a read during a vacation or something.” You mumble the words, cursing yourself for looking like a fool in front of your longtime friend, Akaashi Keiji.

The image of you grumbling and lamenting in front of Akaashi mirrors a panel sitting on his desk that has him fondly reminiscing the same image of you from last spring about how you had no one to accompany you to the Hanami Festival and so, he acquiesced to your invitation thus, establishing a tradition in your friendly relationship.

“I think it would be best to return to your desk, y/n, wouldn’t want to lose the privilege of seeing you every day and being the object of your admiration.” Akaashi propped himself up on his desk, resting his head on his forearms in a lazy slouch peering up at you with one eyebrow raised and a ghost of a smile playing upon his lips.

“You should really stop flirting with me at work, Akaashi. One of these days I might get the wrong idea and think you’re into me or something…” You chastise him while walking back to your desk which is conveniently next to Akaashi’s.

“I’m hopelessly enamored at the thought of you and it frightens me to think of a day where you’ll be missing from my side…”  Akaashi thought as he proceeded to leaf through the panels laid out strategically on his desk. He looked over at you as you started to situate yourself with your work and said, “I wouldn’t sigh if I were you, I heard that if you sigh it brings you bad luck.”

“Stop mocking me and go do your work!”

          ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The clock struck at 5:00 P.M., then at 6:00 P.M., just right before the clock struck at 7:00 P.M. you blearily glance at the time blaring in the corner of your monitor and drift your eyes to the decorative hourglass sitting on your desk. The intricate gold timepiece hid tucked away in the corner of your desk hiding behind a framed picture of you and Akaashi posed in front of a bookstore where a work-related event took place. A faint memory surfaces from the back of your subconscious from earlier this year.

“Akaashi, why do you have a plastic apple on your desk?” You glare at the object as a red plastic apple seems so peculiar to associate with Akaashi, in your mind at least, so you questioned its purpose. Is it for sentimental reasons? Are apples his favorite type of fruit? Do apples have an artistic appeal or is it just a trend?

“It’s a tomato.” He responded, not once looking up to acknowledge your effort to engage in conversation. As Akaashi is seemingly focused on the task at hand, you further prodded with your innocent questions wanting his attention so you could lose yourself in the oceans that reside in his deep blue eyes.

“Then, why do you have a tomato on your desk?”

“Keeps me focused on the task at hand. Have you heard of the Pomodoro technique before, y/n?” Akaashi still focused on his work while you continued questioning.

“The time management one, right? I think I’ve read about it somewhere before if I’m being honest…” You lose yourself in your thoughts as you attempted to recall the correct definition from an online blog you briefly glanced at.

“Then you should know about how it helps you complete your work in a timely manner while balancing the efficacy and quality of the work produced.” Akaashi stopped in his ministrations and averts his attention to the now glaringly pointless object occupying space on his desk that was a prize Bokuto won at the Momiji-gari festival they attended together last October.

“Yes, that’s the time management aspect after all.”

“If I may then, why is it you stress about not having enough seconds in a minute, enough minutes in an hour, and not enough hours in a day to complete your work and yet have all the time to talk to me well over your allotted break time?” he swivels around in his chair to face you, steel blue eyes locked in a heated rage-ridden gaze with yours.

Too stunned to talk from the blunt harshness of his words, you reply, “Quite snappy today are we? At least I know now you pay attention when I mindlessly make a fuss about my workload.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you with my statement, I was going for light-hearted banter at best… I guess I can blame it on the weather. The heatwave must be getting the better of me.” Akaashi said while pulling at his necktie, an excuse to keep his hands preoccupied and mind distracted in avoidance from the awkward silence beginning to build between the two of you.

“Tell me about it, I never really liked summer as a season or the heat.” You crinkle your upturned nose in an act of disdain as you face the glass windows doing nothing to shield you from the overbearing sunlight pouring into the office.

“With summer comes the sun, with the sun comes light, and with light comes warmth,” Akaashi says so matter-of-factly that makes you wonder what’s his favorite holiday. He interrupts your train of thought by asking, “What’s your favorite holiday, y/n- san?”

“Winter, I like the snow. Or more of what snow symbolizes…” you trail off towards the end of your sentence deep in thought.

“Usually people like winter because of the holidays and spending time with their loved ones under a kotatsu. What’s so enchanting about snow? When you touch it, it just melts… not to mention it’s cold.” Akaashi looks over at you inquisitively that could almost be mistaken for scrutiny if a stranger were to eavesdrop between you two.

“If you are out in the first snowfall of the season with someone you like, true love will blossom between you.” You recite from memory what the old woman who owned the corner store grocery near your place told you during your times as a highschooler.

“Besides love, if you make a wish when the first snow blankets the city your wish will come true.” You swing your legs to-and-fro underneath your desk covered from the public’s eye but Akaashi can tell it’s one of your habits you do when you’re excited. The sparkle in your eye accompanied by the ecstatic hand gestures would also giveaway your feelings of excitement but Akaashi knows better. You stop in your motions and jerk towards him almost like you’ve had an epiphany, the sparkle in your eye flashed again mimicking that of a light-bulb going off.

“Snow also signifies that all lies will be forgotten, isn’t that refreshing? The thought of new beginnings with the first snow sounds so romantic! I wish I had someone to enjoy it with…” You take a chance and glance at Akaashi to gauge his reaction to your statement, he already beat your intentions by turning back to face his desk at lightning speed so you wouldn’t see the faint flush of red on his cheeks that bloomed after your profession of love for snow. He didn’t want you to know he was flustered because of the way you turned to him and uttered the words ‘besides love,’ to his face, and the realization that he was going to respond with a simple, ‘hm?’ had him leaning further into his desk in embarrassment.  

“Akaashi, what’s your favorite season? You know mine and my reason now.”

“Same as you, I like winter.”

“Why?”

“The holidays.”

“Boring!”

            ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

You shake your head in strong efforts to clear the fog that clouded your mind during that flashback.

“Nodding off so soon?” Akaashi’s voice startled you back to reality as you whip your head towards him.

“It’s almost 7:00, we were supposed to get off work an hour ago like someone said..” you fix your steely gaze on his figure hoping he could feel the mock-resentment radiating off you in waves. “I hope we get overtime pay for this as this isn’t the first time this has happened.” You lean against the back of your chair raising your arms above your head in a half-stretch with valiant efforts to hear the satisfying pop of your back.

“I made no promises, I was going to tell you this when we got off but Udai-san said we have the day-off tomorrow. The reason behind it ‘to reward you guys for your dedication to the company’ were his exact words.” Akaashi said as he began to clear his desk wanting to get to his apartment as soon as possible to sleep. This week took more of a toll on him than he would like to admit, the endless piles of work, deadlines to meet, and the cold that accompanied the winter months were taking a toll on him. The holiday season’s cold seeped into the bitterness of Akaashi’s hidden emotions, like an ice pick scratching the surface of Akaashi’s lonesome facade he tried to hide under cool indifference. In stark contrast, you acted as sunshine that brought the warmth that he desired to thaw his endless winters.  

“Done with your work, too? Let’s go home.” His sunshine that spread light and illuminated the darkness that clouds his mind.

            ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The walk from the subway station to the shared apartment complex was only a 10-minute walk but tonight it seemed never-ending to Akaashi. The time was almost 8:00 and the streets seemed less deserted than usual. The city lights glimmer looked dim in comparison to past nights and the mood almost felt too solemn with the holidays around the corner. Akaashi was lost in his thoughts that he failed to notice the crosswalk light flickered to red signaling the oncoming traffic to cross the road, if it wasn’t for you pulling him by the back of his jacket… he ignores the thought that briefly filters across his mind.

“Akaashi, are you alright? I wasn’t going to mention it but you’ve seemed more aloof than usual.” You said while gripping onto the back of his jacket tightly almost grasping him in a silent plea.

“I’m fine.” He responds curtly while maneuvering his tall frame in an off-handed demeanor that cues for you to let-go. This action only fuels your act of defiance to pull him harder in your direction causing your bodies to collide clumsily disrupting the systematic ebb-and-flow that is pedestrian traffic. As you and Akaashi apologize and wait for the crosswalk sign to turn green, you can’t help but laugh which makes Akaashi let-out a small chuckle as he realizes what a commotion your exchange must have looked like.

“We make for entertaining crowd spectacles,” He spoke softly through a genuine small smile that washed over his handsome features that could have rivaled ‘any top celebrity that calls themselves a pretty boy,’ in your words, not his. The cold weather combined with the hotness radiating from his silent chuckles caused a light layer of condensation to form on his glasses’ lenses. As the haze rendered him sightless, he took off his glasses, pulled out his handkerchief he kept tucked away in his inner jacket pocket, and proceeded to clean his square frames. You took this opportunity to admire the man before you. His brown hair fell gracefully in a light tousled manner as a result of his hands raking through them from stress. Your gaze shifted to his hands, his hands easily engulfed the metal frames balancing delicately in between his slender fingers that looked natural holding the awkward position for prolonged periods of time. Your eyes flit over his face that was normally impassive and difficult to read, now his cool indifference shifted to a look of frustration. The furrow of his thick brows and the faint vertical lines creasing in the center of his eyebrows almost made Akaashi look younger.

‘He looks like a petulant child being told what to do’ you mused to yourself. When he felt content with the cleanliness of his glasses, Akaashi scanned his surroundings to see where you led him to. He realizes that you stopped right in front of the steps to his favorite place in all of Tokyo – the International Library of Children’s Literature. Even with the library being closed as evident by the lack of people and dimmed lights, he still found this place breathtaking.

“The architecture of this library looks similar to the Palace of Versailles don’t you think so, Akaashi? That was one of my first impressions when you first brought me here, I just forgot about it but remembered after seeing this place again” You said as you stared in awe at the smooth concrete walls and tall glass windows with lattice fixtures intricately lining the tall double doors that greeted over 1,000 visitors each day.

“The International Library of Children’s Literature, originally called the Imperial Library, was constructed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government under the Meiji era in 1906. The artistic movement that inspired the architect was the Renaissance movement which explains the Western-like elements incorporated into the building’s design.” Akaashi recited from memory and turned to you after he finished his statement only to find you already facing him, eyes widened and mouth agape in surprise. After seeing your reaction he turns back to the building and says in a soft whisper, “This place brings back fond memories,” while unconsciously playing with his hands, fingers intertwining with one another in a playful open and close. He can feel your gaze openly assessing his figure standing awkwardly in the library’s pathway, he knows that you want the answers as to why he’s acting less like his “usual” self. You find yourself confused by Akaashi’s paradoxical behavior, sometimes he’s willing to let small cracks appear in his otherwise smooth facade of coolness, and other times he shrugs you off in efforts to maintain his cool indifference. His true emotions are caught and given to you in minuscule pieces and this frustrates you as you wish to be with the man that’s always beside you and occupies your mind all the time.

Akaashi can’t help but feel the subtle self-conscious feeling starting to arise after pondering how out of place you and him look at the moment, two people standing alone in front of a closed library engaged in a heated silent exchange. His heart sank when he realized that you two could almost be mistaken as a couple with the way the both of you look now, he wishes for this to be real, his wish is to be with you. Akaashi wishes for you to know his true feelings and declare his love for you and yet, he finds himself biting his lips to silence himself in spite of his friends saying he has a chance of being with you.

The shuffling of feet is heard as you shift your weight from right-to-left and your avoidance of all eye-contact are all tall tale signs of your unsureness, your actions break Akaashi from his own thoughts as he raises his head to see you standing closer to him than earlier.

‘You’re so close I could kiss you right now.’ He wants to say, even in a playful manner but is too afraid to be caught expressing his true feelings even through teasing comments.

“Akaashi, what are you thinking about right now?” You ask in a futile attempt for him to confide in you what thoughts occupy his brain that’s causing him to both distance himself from you emotionally.

Just as Akaashi begins to open his mouth he’s interrupted by an abrupt shout that causes the both of you to stop all conversation.

“Look mom, it’s snowing!”

Childlike excitement blanketed the distanced onlookers frolicking the crosswalks as snowflakes kissed the cherry red noses of daily commuters and people doing last-minute gift shopping. You and Akaashi fix your gazes up to the dark depths of the night sky now obstructed by the white flurries of snow clouds now hovering over all of Tokyo.

‘It’s now or never,” Akaashi thinks to himself, ‘if I can’t do it now, when will I ever get the chance again?’ Akaashi takes a deep inhale and closes his eyes to bask in the brisk coolness the winter air has brought with the changing of seasons.

“I think about how seasons shift out in a cycle of four and I find myself not being able to cope with each change.” He breathes out finally and continues, you stare at him in silent apprehension while anticipating each word.

“Seasons change, people change, and yet I find myself coming back to you… meeting in the same place where we first met each other. Fate has a funny way of telling us that we’re supposed to be together. Coincidence has a hand in pushing us together hinting that we’re meant to be. Destiny is telling me that you’re the one but, choice whispers it’s harsh words of reality only permissible when conditions are met that echoes in my thoughtless mind every sleepless night.” Akaashi locks your eyes in a steady gaze, your eyes widened in shock while his eyes portray a deep-rooted passion now surfacing after being hidden for so long.

“Our love is blossoming like the sakura trees in the spring, a love that mirrors the perennial endless summer hydrangeas in the courtyard in front of our apartment building. A love in which I catch myself falling for you like the leaves during the autumnal months. A love that engulfs me in the warmth of the fire, with its ember flicks illuminating your faint silhouette as we embrace each other in the moonlight. Falling in love with you was experiencing a life I have not lived before, for the first time I welcomed the uncertainty, my fears, my doubts never once clouded my mind. You are my moonlight that illuminates my path in the inky depths of nightfall. My starlight when I look to the sky brimming with untold stories in your constellations that guide me back to you. I want to be with you during the first snowfall of each winter. I want to experience each change of the seasons with you, I want you by my side to accompany me as we live our lives – I wish to be together with you.”

Akaashi finishes his confession of true feelings for you and a sense of relief washes over him as a weight has been lifted from his chest. Akaashi starts fiddling with a loose thread in his pockets starting to feel anxious at the sight of you as he begins to anticipate your response since you haven’t spoken since it started snowing. The feeling of temporary relief was now replaced with a sense of dread fueled by his self-doubts and the thought of rejection, he averts his gaze downward to avoid meeting your eyes.

Akaashi stayed cemented in his place with no signs of moving, so you decided to close the distance between you two. Feeling bolder after Akaashi’s profession as you were reeling from the excitement of seeing snow paired with your feelings being returned by the one you love, you grab his jacket sleeve to signal for him to remove his hand from his pocket and slowly begin to intertwine hands. He shifts his gaze from your interlocked hands to look at you, as he scans your face to gauge your reaction, he finds himself surprised by the beaming smile matching your bright energy and warmth that rivals the sun during the summer months. Your actions and the bright reaction is all the confirmation he needs to know if you reciprocate his feelings so he steers you, hands intertwined, in the direction of your shared apartment complex.

“What about your wish, did it come true?” Akaashi asks while he notices you started to swing your joined hands unconsciously, ‘probably out of habit,’ he thinks to himself silently while a smile threatens to breach his lips. You stop him and take his other-hand so now he’s facing you, you want his full attention as now, it’s your turn to confess.

“My wish was always to be with you, you’re my happiness and the reason for me to continue to live and grow. When I’m with you I’m at my happiest and your constant presence has always been comforting. The sureness in your voice and actions speak volumes about your reliability and the love you have for others. My wish was for you to see the light in yourself and for you to realize that you are loved and needed, not just I think this way but your friends Bokuto, Kuroo, Kenma, and everyone else you’ve met and encountered will agree with me on this point I’m trying to make. I love you, Akaashi Keiji and I wish to be with you… if you’d let me.”

Compared to the shuffling of footsteps and avoidance of eye-contact from earlier that hinted towards your unsureness, Akaashi can see the confidence in your stance and actions as you grasp onto his hands, the unwavering sureness you exude while maintaining eye-contact has Akaashi falling in love with you over again. The brightness in your eyes and cheery playfulness reminds him of the reasons he fell for you in the first place and he senses that he will keep finding reasons to fall in love with you over and over again.

“Let’s go home now, sunshine. I’m afraid that your warmth will melt the winter snow.”

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Softer Than Silence

Read here on AO3!

(Takes place right after this fic which I wrote like a year ago and only now got to making a sequel for whoops.)

Summary:

“Your larynx was severed. It was a pretty nasty injury and Leslie did everything she could, but your vocal cords...they weren’t salvageable. I’m...I’m so sorry, Tim.”

Tim lets that sink in. Severed larynx. Unsalvageable vocal cords.

Oh, god.

Tim doesn’t know how much time has passed when he wakes up. He’s not even sure how he’s waking up. A slit throat in any universe should be a certain one-way ticket to the afterlife—don’t pass go, don’t collect two hundred dollars. Dead. Maybe Tim is dreaming. Or maybe he’s dying right now and this is just his brain flashing forward to the future he could have had, “Owl Creek Bridge”-style. His ears feel like they’re packed with pillows, but voices make their way through his warped awareness like pencils poking through aluminum foil. “I say we should draw straws.” “Really, Jay? That’s your suggestion?” “You got a better idea, Dickface?” Someone clicks their tongue. “You’re both cowards. Let me be the one to tell him and I’ll have it done in less than a minute.” “I can’t even tell you all of the reasons I’m not letting you do that.” “Yeah, kid, your bedside manner fucking sucks.” “It’s better than yours!” “Will you both shut up?” Tim would feign sleep and listen longer, but the drug-induced haze is fading faster than he can keep up with. His throat burns with a fiery vengeance, flames creeping up his windpipe. He shifts, a hand instinctively grappling for his throat. Someone stops him. “Tim? You awake?” He opens his eyes. Dick is beside him, lowering Tim’s wrist back to the bed. They’re in the medical area of the Batcave; he can tell by the dank air and a sliver of rock peeking through the gap in the curtain surrounding them. Jason and Damian stand off to the side, their expressions unreadable. Tim opens his mouth to ask them what happened, but before he can utter a vowel, Dick is squeezing his hand. “Don’t try to talk,” he says. Tim obediently settles back, wariness rising in his gut. He reaches up with the hand not in Dick’s grasp and discovers a thick bandage plastered over his neck. That can’t be good. “Do you remember what happened?” The man flicks Tim’s blood off of his sword. “I would love to continue this riveting visit of ours, but it seems like my mission is complete. Have a pleasant night, Mr. Drake.” Tim nods with a wince. “You were lucky,” Dick says. “Conner found you and brought you here just in time. You lost a lot of blood and Leslie had you in surgery for a while, but she was able to fix most of the damage.” Tim doesn’t miss the most, and Dick grimaces when he catches it as well. Tim arches one eyebrow—a clear, What aren’t you telling me? “Looks like that’s our cue to duck out,” Jason says. He grabs Damian by the shoulder and ignores the raccoon-like hands smacking him away. “Glad you didn’t die, Tim.” He ushers Damian out and they disappear, leaving Tim’s stomach curdling. He looks to Dick for an explanation. “There...there was a lot of damage, Tim. You’re lucky to be breathing right now.” That should be good, right? Tim is alive. There’s no tube in his neck so he can breathe on his own, and aside from some residual soreness under the buzz of the drugs, he feels fine. This is a monumental victory. So why does Dick look like he’s delivering a death sentence? Tim wants to ask, but he physically can’t do that. Dick doesn’t seem to be able to either. “Your larynx was severed. It was a pretty nasty injury and Leslie did everything she could, but your vocal cords...they weren’t salvageable. I’m...I’m so sorry, Tim.” Tim lets that sink in. Severed larynx. Unsalvageable vocal cords. Oh, god. The utter horror on Tim’s face must be unmistakable because Dick is rushing to comfort him. “It’s okay, Tim. You’re going to get through this.” But Dick’s voice is muffled by the ringing in Tim’s ears. He can’t lose his voice. He can’t. This isn’t happening. Tim scrambles to sit up, his breathing becoming ragged. He sucks in a deep breath, opens his mouth, and tries, tries to make a noise. Tries to make a single sound, but all that comes out is a rush of air. He’s shaking. He tries to speak, to yell, to scream, and there are tears running down his cheeks and his gasps are empty and his throat hurts but he doesn’t stop. Dick’s hand is on his back. “Hey, hey, it’s going to be okay. We’ll figure this out.” Tim hates that he doesn’t even have the ability to argue, to tell Dick that there’s nothing to figure out. Tim can’t speak and meaningless encouragement isn’t going to change that. Nothing will change it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s an adjustment, to say the least. The first day, Tim holds out a flicker of hope that this is all some dream and any minute he’ll wake up again in the med bay, throat repaired and vocal cords intact. He can’t believe this is happening to him. In his entire life Tim never once considered what it would be like to lose his voice, never prepared himself for the possibility. He’s watched Cass trudge through reading assignments from Barbara and struggle to find the right words in a conversation, but it never occurred to him just how much Tim relied on his ability to speak. He took it for granted. His first day out of the med bay he finds himself slipping up again and again, opening his mouth in response to a question only to remember that that’s no longer an option. He doesn’t know enough sign language to partake in a conversation, so he avoids them altogether. He hears Alfred humming along to an opera album down the hall and is filled with a vicious, panging envy. Never again will Tim hum, sing, laugh. It’s all gone. Everyone keeps giving him the same droll sermons. He’ll get through this. It could have been worse; he could be dead. Cass manages just fine with sign language, and Tim can too. He should count himself lucky that the damage wasn’t more severe. But is he lucky? Is he really? Tim has already lost so much: his parents, his friends, his Robin career, Bruce. And now his voice. Life just doesn’t know when to stop taking from him. Maybe it will never stop taking, not until he’s an empty husk. Conner left for Smallville just a few days after Tim awoke. He never said why, but Tim knows it’s because he feels guilty. Tim wants to reassure him that this isn’t his fault, that Tim would be dead if Conner hadn’t saved him, but it would take too long to write down. Bruce taught Tim basic ASL shortly after he began his Robin training, sticking to the most rudimentary of phrases that one would need for crime-fighting. Yes. No. Please. Thank you. Help. Safe. Danger. Steph offered to learn sign language with him and Alfred left a sneaky pile of ASL books on Tim’s desk, but he hasn’t touched them. He instead relies on a whiteboard and marker to communicate, rarely as he does. His search for Bruce has been put on hold, not of his own volition. He supposes it’s fair. After all, Tim can’t even order a hamburger anymore without the help of his whiteboard. Not that he leaves the manor much, anyway. The bandage on his neck draws too much unwanted attention. He’d hate to see what Gotham’s press would conspirize about a Wayne son with a mysteriously slit throat. Tim’s days are spent in his room, working on cases out of the action. That’s what he does now, sitting on his bed with his laptop, music blasting through his headphones. Dick pokes his head in without knocking. They still haven’t devised a system for that yet. “Hey, you got a second?” Tim flicks his fingers in Dick’s direction: his way of acknowledging people these days. He pauses his music. “Damian and I are heading out on patrol now.” Tim says nothing. Obviously. “Alfred told me you didn’t eat dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast.” Tim rifles through the papers sprawled around his knees and holds up a crumpled pink post-it. Throat hurts. “That excuse again?” Tim shrugs. “Look, I know you’re frustrated, but what you’re doing isn’t healthy. You know that, right?” Tim twirls a finger in the air. Whoop-dee-doo. “That’s real mature.” Of all the things I have to worry about right now, I’d say maturity is pretty low on the list. Not that Tim says any of that. He doesn’t know the signs and he let his whiteboard fall off the bed somewhere to his left hours ago. He doesn’t bother reaching for it. Dick comes closer to the bed and stops. “Can I sit?” Tim shrugs and goes back to his laptop. Dick sits on the edge by Tim’s knee and reaches over to close the computer. Tim flips him one of the few ASL signs he does know. “You have a right to be angry about this, but you can’t project that anger onto us. Me, Damian, Alfred—we’re not the ones you’re mad at. And we all want to help you, but we can’t do that if you don’t let us. So start letting us.” Easy for him to say. But Tim knows he’s right, as infuriating as it is, which is the only reason he doesn’t turn his music back on and shut down for another week. Sighing, Tim opens the laptop. He pulls up a blank word document and types for a moment. He turns the computer around to show Dick. Speech for Neon Knights foundation in a couple days. Already written. Just need someone to deliver it. Dick nods, smiling. “Sure. I can take care of that. And it’s okay if you need more time to work through this, but I want you to remember that I’m here if you ever want to talk. Or, well—you know what I mean. Just remember you’re not alone in this.” Tim wishes he could tell Dick the truth. That Tim does appreciate everything he’s trying to do—really, he does. Tim doesn’t know where he’d even be if he didn’t have Dick by his side, making the world a brighter place just by existing in it with his endless patience and unfaltering optimism. If only he had the voice to tell him. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason wouldn’t call himself a particularly caring individual. That sort of legacy is better left to the real heroes, like Bruce and Roy and Dick-fucking-Grayson. It’s for this reason that Jason didn’t stick around for a hot second when Tim got hurt, nor did he return for the aftermath. Tim is dealing with enough shit right now. He doesn’t need his asshole older brother getting involved and making him feel worse. Jason can’t imagine what it would be like to be in Tim’s situation. For starters, it would utterly butcher his knack for smartass remarks. Plus, there’s no finer euphoria than screaming obscenities at a blubbering criminal right before he puts a bullet through their skull. Losing his voice would be losing half of what makes him the Red Hood. Red Robin, on the other hand...he’s always been quiet. Not like Cass, but getting there. He relies on shadows and ninja-like swiftness to get the point across that this is goddamn Red Robin and you should be wetting your pants in his wake. But Jason’s smart enough to know that the silent schtick is done by choice. It’s a maneuver and a learned behavior rolled into one. He can only imagine how torturous it must be to be silenced by force—to be muzzled by something completely out of his control. (Fine, so Jason cares about the kid a little. Sue him.) He goes into the Batburger restaurant (Jesus shit, whoever came up with the idea of a Batman-themed restaurant should be shot in the head. Or maybe thrown a parade. He can’t decide) and scouts for black hair and pale skin. He spots Tim in a booth all the way at the back and heads over, sliding into the seat across from him. “Hey, kid.” Tim picks his head up from where he was engrossed in a game of Solitaire on his phone and gives a two-fingered salute. A notepad and Superman pen sit on the table in front of him. “Did you order yet?” Tim points to the scar on his neck and Jason mentally slaps himself in the forehead. “Right.” Tim picks up the pen and scribbles for a minute. “What,” Jason says, “no whiteboard today?” Tim turns the pad around to show Jason. Too bulky. People notice. Below that: Nuggets, fries & grape zesti. “Magic words?” Tim rolls his eyes. He tears out the page and bounces it off Jason’s forehead. However, he does lift his right hand and rotate it in front of his chest, palm flat: the ASL sign for “please.” Jason recognizes it from his minimal knowledge accumulated from Robin training and conversations with Cass. “Attaboy. For a minute there I was worried Alf failed in making a decent person out of you.” Tim sticks his tongue out, which makes Jason chuckle. He goes to the counter and relays Tim’s order, along with his own. While he waits he dares a look back and finds Tim back to staring down at his phone, shirt collar pulled as high as it’ll go. What must it be like, going from Gotham’s favorite billionaire playboy-in-training to a silent teenager who can’t go to a restaurant without people staring at the killer scar across his throat? Jason’s seen the gossip magazines. Some speculate a failed assassination, while others are sure it was a suicide attempt gone wrong. At least Jason’s scars can be covered by a t-shirt. Tim can’t hide his without a turtleneck, but it’s summer now. He’s forced to endure the speculated theories and pitiful glances, meanwhile Jason has the benefit of being legally dead on his side. He doesn’t have to worry about people remembering him. Losing one’s voice only months after losing his second father figure is tough shit for a seventeen-year-old. For anyone. He doesn’t know how Tim does it. Jason goes back to the table and finds Tim doodling a stick figure on the notepad. It’s got thick, narrowed eyebrows and pointed teeth. “That supposed to be me?” Tim’s mouth quirks. He fingerspells, Damian. His sleeve falls down an inch, exposing a med-alert bracelet. Alfred must have made him start wearing it. What with his asplenia and nasty habit of fainting in places when he forgets to eat, it makes sense that Tim would need it. If something were to happen, it’s not like he can inform paramedics of the deal. “You really captured the evil in his eyes.” Jason takes a bite of his cheeseburger while Tim busies himself with arranging his fries in size order, the little weirdo. “So how are things at home?” Good, Tim signs, his movements clunky and unpracticed. Dick… He frowns and scribbles on the pad. Helicopter parenting. “Same old, same old, right?” Tim levels an unimpressed look. “What? It can’t be that bad.” Benched indefinitely. It sucks. “Can you blame him? I wouldn’t want you in the field like this yet either.” Cass, Tim writes, and leaves it at that. “But she’s been functioning without speech for her whole life. She doesn’t need it to be understood. You’ve only been doing it for two weeks.” And a half, Tim writes. “You know what I mean. ‘s not like you can call for help if you get gutted in an alley.” Never thought I’d see the day when you’d take Dick’s side. “Yeah, well, sometimes the fucker has a point.” He takes a sip of his soda. “You know, I talked to Babs yesterday. Said she’s working on tech that’ll let you use morse code over the comms. If she finishes it on schedule, you can be back out there in less than a month.” Tim just nods, eyes dimmed. It’s weird seeing the kid so quiet. The real trick used to be getting Tim to shut up. He used to spend hours rambling on and on about whatever science kick he was on at the moment. For as quiet as Red Robin could be, Tim Drake never ran out of things to say. Jason misses it. He throws a sesame seed at Tim. “Hey. I’m trying to have a conversation here.” Tim makes a gesture that Jason doesn’t recognize. At Jay’s confused look, Tim writes on the notepad, Fuck off. “Cassie teach you that one?” Steph. Wanted to learn curse words first. “Of course you did. You know, you should hit up Jericho. He knows exactly what you’re going through, and I’m pretty sure he was able to teach Dick sign language in less than a year.” You’re the fifth person to say that. “I’m a fucking genius, we know this. But seriously. It might be useful to have someone in your corner who knows how to cope with this kind of thing.” I’m coping fine. “By listening to shitty emo music all day in your room? Yeah, because that’s super healthy.” Tim twiddles the pen between his fingers, glaring at Jason. Finally, he puts it to paper. I keep calling my cell phone to listen to the voicemail. Jason blinks. “Why?” Don’t want to forget what my voice sounds like. “You won’t.” Forgot my mom’s after a year. Starting to forget my dad’s. Tim pauses before adding, He yelled a lot though, so I think he’s got a lead. Jason has no fucking idea what to say to that, thanks for asking. He gives it a shot anyway. “Then...then I’ll remember it enough for the both of us. It's kind of hard to forget that annoying-ass nasally voice babbling about Star Wars for hours anyway.” Wow, thanks, Tim signs with an eye roll. No problem, Jason signs back. That makes Tim smile for the first time since Jason sat down. Maybe this kid will be all right, after all.

[you-andthebottlemen]

55 - AU request: Peasant Van part 2

Hi everyone!! New day, new post and it’s a fun one! My first AU in a while. Now today I am frantic as I am flying back home (yaaay love 24hr long haul flights rip) and will be crazy over the next little while with Life Things and getting used to normality after so long away (is this what Van feels like?) so I hope you enjoy this one and that it will tide you over until my next post. For anyone who has sent a request recently: I promise I have gotten them and started working on them. Love you all, hope you’re doing okay xxx 

Based off this request:

i’ve got no clue if this has been asked before but... is peasant van/princess reader part 2 a possibility? where she gets out of that tower and gets her cottage and her kids and her love-filled marriage and everything she’s dreamed of? because to be honest, that’s exactly the kind of story i need right now (your writing is class by the way, and your harry potter au’s might just be the greatest thing aside from this) xx

It is a part two of my medieval ‘peasant Van’ AU I wrote ages ago so definitely read that first if you haven’t, I will link it below. I am so happy someone requested this. The fic is weird and cute and I love it, glad to return to these characters! (Disclaimer: it is also not historically accurate or anything like that, it’s not very logical either or realistic. But it is CUTE so enjoy).

Part 1 can be found here: https://you-andthebottlemen.tumblr.com/post/163965383698/43-au

***********************************************************************

Month’s had rolled by since the night that Van, the scruffy but sweet boy who lived outside the wall, had climbed up the tower and found himself in your bedroom. You weren’t able to see each other much in fear he would get caught. But you found a way to exchange letters; one of the servant boys in the kitchen, Johnny, knew him and would pass them between you for a small reward in return. Van’s letters were poorly written, and you could tell that he probably had trouble reading. It didn’t matter though; the letters became your prized possessions.

You spent your time as always, doing your duties sitting in court by your parents, attending feasts and whatever else. Your ‘spare’ time was filled with embroidery and endless day dreaming. The same routine, day in and day out. Sometimes you were able to visit the town but never alone, always with your silver clad entourage. This made things tedious anyway and even more difficult with Van in the picture now. You’d usually only have stolen glances, maybe the odd conversation where you pretended not to know each other. Regardless, you found ways to make it fun with your secret language made of riddles that only you and he understood.

“Will you be attending the opening of the gardens this week?” you asked him, your tone formal as to not alert the knights to anything suspicious.

“My lady, ‘course I will be. Love them roses,” he smiled, his eyes glinting with mischief.

Your heart felt warm and fuzzy, making you bite your lip to hide a smile. “They’re my favourite,” you replied.

“Specially them peach coloured ones,” Van commented and winked. You blushed wildly and he smirked triumphantly.

“Move along Princess,” one of the knights grunted, staring down at Van menacingly, perhaps remembering him from The Incident a while back.

Van reached out and delicately took your hand in his, bowing and giving it a quick kiss. You hated being treated this way by people, as if you weren’t just the same as them on the inside. But with Van it was sweet and filled you with excitement knowing that it meant something more than anyone realised, and you were doing it right under their noses. You smiled and held eye contact with him as you were guided away, knowing you’d be seeing each other again soon.

……….

Finally, the day had come for another garden opening. It had always been your favourite event at the castle, you loved being able to give some joy to the townsfolk, a distraction from their day to day lives. But now, it was even more special because it was a time you could slip off and be with Van undisturbed, where you could be yourself.

You were sat down in the soft green grass, shoes off and your face pointing up towards the sky so the sun could soak into your skin. You could feel Van just watching you. He’d been telling you that the roses he’d planted at home were in fact, flourishing. He reckoned he had a green thumb. Though from what he’d told you about his father, you could bet that Bernie had been tending to them without Van’s knowledge. They sounded like the sweetest family and you wished you had a relationship like that with yours. Instead, you did whatever you were told without question and it never felt all that loving.

You fluttered your eyelids open and turned to Van. He was laying back on the ground, propped up on his elbows. He quickly averted his gaze when he saw you catching him in his stare. You giggled and he cracked a sheepish grin.

“Whatcha’ thinking about Peaches?”

Him. Always him.

“What’s the story of that gold necklace?” you asked, your eyes landing on the small pendent that peeked out of his tattered shirt.

Van sat up and shuffled towards you; you now sat cross-legged opposite each other, your knees touching.

“Well, it’s been in my family for a while. Dad gave it to mum when she had me, then when I turned 18, they gave it to me. Then I’ll give it to my wife when she has our first-born son and yeah.”

He finished his clunky story with a shrug and placed a hesitant hand on your knee. You looked up and met his eyes; both of you suddenly nervous. Van probably because he knew that he was overstepping a line, and you because you wanted more than just a hand on the knee.

“I love that,” you said, referring to the story of his necklace. “Your wife will be a lucky woman.”

“Will you be my wife?” Van asked, innocently but with conviction.

The soft smile on your lips fell and your jaw dropped in bewilderment.

“What?!”

“I meant it when I said I’d get you out! That we’d run away. Run away with me?”

Van shuffled closer and moved the hand on your knee to your cheek. You were reminded of the conversation on your bed that night, when Van pleaded with you and proposed ideas of escaping to the life you wanted but couldn’t have. You’d not said no to his idea then and you had clung onto it in your daydreams ever since.

“Van…“

Van leant forward close to your face and you could feel his breath, his nose grazing against yours. Your heart rate spiked and you sat stunned and frozen. Taking your stillness as a sign, Van leant in even closer and pressed his lips to yours.

It was a soft and undemanding kiss. Van was testing the waters; he didn’t want to scare you. You pulled away slightly and looked at him in both shock and wonder. You loved that he was brave and bold enough to just kiss a princess.

“Oh, Peaches, I’m sorry, I- “

“Shhh,” you smiled. You grabbed his face in your hands and pulled him into you again. You felt him smile against your lips as you kissed the second time. You had more confidence now and your heart fluttered. It was messy but that was okay.

When you pulled away, Van was wearing the biggest grin you’d ever seen, and that was saying something. You couldn’t help but mirror his expression; you were feeling giddy and dazed and incredibly happy. Your first kiss. It was perfect and with the perfect person.

After a moment, you both burst into laughter. Neither of you could believe what just happened. Van fell back into the grass and covered his face with his hands, still grinning.

“I kissed a princess!” he exclaimed to himself, his voice turning high pitched. You giggled at him and smiled in awe.

When he moved his hands from his face, you lay down on the grass beside him, resting your head on his chest. Van wrapped an arm around your shoulder and held you close. You’d never felt safer and you’d never felt happier, than right there in his arms.

………………

That evening, you floated about the castle without a care in the world. You were so happy; completely on cloud nine. Your kiss with Van and the afternoon as a whole replayed over and over in your mind, filling you with more excitement each time. You felt as though nothing could wipe the smile from your face or the joy from your heart.

However, you were wrong.

“What do you mean I’m getting married?!” you exclaimed, in both rage and shock.

“We’ve found you a suiter y/n!” you mother squeaked excitedly, clasping her hands to her cheeks.

You glared at both your parents who sat in their thrones before you.

“No. I don’t accept. I don’t want to marry someone I don’t know and don’t love.”

“What do you mean ‘no?” your father scoffed. “Marry for love? This isn’t a fantasy!”

“I will not marry him!” you cried with tears streaming down your cheeks.

“You will. It’s decided. The Lord arrives in a week for your first meeting. And you will be wed y/n, it will be of great benefit to our land.”

You tore away from the throne room in a run and escaped back to your tower. Once inside the walls of your bedroom, you collapsed down onto your bed and sobbed until your eyes were bloodshot and sore. You didn’t want to marry whoever this lord was, you didn’t want to move away. You didn’t want any of this. You only wanted Van and the babies and life far away from all of this royalty crap.

Once you’d calmed down and could breathe properly again, you went to look out your window. The sun was going down now and the land around you glowed. You looked out into the distance in the direction Van had told you he lived and wondered what he was doing right now. Was he thinking of you too?

You mulled over his words and promises about running away together. You wanted to drop everything and run so, so badly. To leave it all behind and escape this life that wasn’t meant for you.

Without a second thought, you packed a rucksack with some clothes and your most important possessions, the pile of Van’s letters included. Once the sun had set and the sky was black, you devised a plan on how to escape the castle under the cover of darkness while everyone was asleep. Not an easy task but if Van could break in, you could break out. And you’d never been more determined to do anything in your life.

…………

Wearing the plainest clothing you owned, you followed Johnny through the tunnel under the moat. You felt scared and cold but also couldn’t shake the excitement. Turns out that Van had told Johnny everything; so, he wasn’t too hesitant on helping you escape out the servant’s route to the town. He said he’d take you to Van’s house and you promised that you’d make sure no harm would come to him and also gave him a small pouch of coins for the risk.

“You alright?” he asked.

You nodded but clung to his arm as he led you through the dark. You didn’t dare light a torch in case you were spotted.

Once you reached the end and you could finally see the stars again, Johnny gave you his coat to cover your dress in case anyone was out and about who could recognise you. You were beyond grateful for his help and you wished you could do something proper for him in return. You thought it said a lot about Van that he had such wonderful friends.

Soon, Johnny had led you past the market and through rows of small houses, which were more like huts or cottages. Animals made noises as you passed them by and you winced every time in fear the owners would come out and find you. You dreaded the thought of what would happen if you were to be dragged back to your parents at the castle, caught in the act of running away.

“Okay Princess, it’s that one,” Johnny whispered, pointing out a small mud brick place with a wonky looking rose bush at the side. You couldn’t help but smile.

“Thank you, I can never repay you Johnny, truly I am in debt to you.”

“Not at all Princess,” Jonny said sincerely shook his head. “And call me Bondy.”

“Bondy,” you repeated with a smile and small nod. “Call me y/n.”

He stuck his hand out for a shake but instead you pulled him in for a hug and kiss on the cheek. You could almost feel the shock radiating off him. You gave him back his coat and waved one last time before he descended back off into the dark the way you’d came.

You took a final deep breath; it was now or never and you’d already come this far. There was a soft orange glow from one of the windows, probably a candle, so hopefully you wouldn’t be waking anyone up with your shock arrival. You felt bad turning up like this and hoped that Van had truly meant what he said.

After softly knocking at the door, you heard a shuffle of feet. Your heart was racing. When the door opened you were met by an older man with kind eyes. They were like Van’s but aged, though no less bright. He opened his mouth to speak but before he could get a word out, you heard another echo of footsteps and a familiar voice.

“Who is it?”

Suddenly Van peaked out from behind his father’s shoulder trying to get a look at whoever was there. If you weren’t so nervous, you would have laughed at how nosey he was.

“Peaches?!”

Van eagerly pushed poor Bernie out of the way and bundled you into a hug. You felt instantly relieved and melted right into him. When you pulled away, Van ushered you inside without question, his father close behind. The place was small, smaller than any home you’d ever been in. The whole place was probably the size of your bedroom if a little larger. There was a basic stove in one corner with a stone bench to cook on, a shabby looking table and chairs then two small doorways which you assumed led to bedrooms. It was so basic but somehow felt more homely than the castle despite its size and grandeur.

“Dad this is Peach-… the Princess,” Van said to his dad, stumbling over his words.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Princess,” he smiled warmly.

“You can call me y/n, I’m nothing special,” you replied timidly. “Sorry, for uh, being here Mr McCann,” you said, looking down. Your usual confidence and eloquence escaped you.

You didn’t want to offend the man and you felt really terrible for showing up on his doorstep like this and putting the family in such a position. Hiding you would be considered treason. Treason was punishable by imprisonment or even death.

Bernie’s face softened and he placed a hand on your shoulder. “Van’s told us everything, you’re so welcome here my dear.”

“Thank you. So, so much.”

You looked between Van and Bernie gratefully, some worry lifting off your chest. After a short while Bernie went back to bed where Van’s mother Mary was still sleeping. Van and Bernie both had an inkling she wouldn’t be as happy about this unexpected visit as they were so best to let her have a full night’s sleep. You and Van stayed up longer and talked. You told him everything, about the marriage and the lord arriving in a week. You had to fight off tears just speaking out it.

“I knew things were too good to be true,” you whispered into his chest as he held you tight.

You were upset that this had all happened after the most perfect day together. Your head swam with worries and you didn’t know what on earth you were doing.

“You’re here now and we’ll work it out, yeah?” Van soothed.

He set you up in his bed, insisting on taking the floor. You put up a fight but he was relentless and wouldn’t stop making a fuss until you were laid down and tucked up. The bed was hard and dug into your back, but you didn’t care.

Van kissed you goodnight and then fell asleep quickly despite laying on the cold dirt floor. Everything was uncertain and this was terrifying. But you stared down at the boy with the freckles, bad haircut and blue eyes who would do anything for you and felt a little more at ease. You fell asleep that night calmed with the knowledge that Van McCann, the peasant boy who had taken a bite out of your peach, had also stolen your heart.

…………….

“Van! Close the gate! The goat will get out!” you yelled desperately as you heard him come home.

“Sorry Peaches can’t hear you, the goat got out!” he shouted back.

You sighed and rolled your eyes. You couldn’t help but laugh a little too. Years had passed but Van hadn’t changed at all; you loved it.

Ignoring the ruckus caused by Van trying to herd the goat back into the yard outside, you looked down at the little rosy cheeked baby girl sitting up and smiling at you from her wooden crib. She had Van’s blue eyes and long lashes. Just looking at her made your heart want to burst with love.

“What are we going to do with Daddy?” you asked her, smiling and bending down to her level.

You’d named her Mary after Van’s mother. Little Mary made gurgling sounds at you and stuck her fingers in her mouth. She was the first of what you suspected were many babies to come. You caressed her cheek before getting up to clear the kitchen from breakfast.

You and Van had escaped and eloped. Van’s cousins lived in another village that was in another Kingdom; your parents couldn’t touch you and it was unlikely anyone would recognise you there either. His uncle set him up with a job and he’d worked day in and day out saving up to buy you a wedding ring. As soon as he could afford it, he proposed. After a while, you were able to move from the spare room in one of his cousin’s houses into a tiny cottage of your own. Then before you knew it, Little Mary was on her way. Van’s family had been so kind and supportive; giving you second-hand baby clothes or toys and anything else they could. Life was perfect. You had friends, real friends for the first time in your life. You felt free. No one knew you had escaped the life of royalty and it felt good to be seen for who you were, not the title that hung over your head.

Van was the perfect husband and perfect father. You couldn’t believe that your reality now looked the same as all the things you daydreamed about up in your tower for years. And it was all because of Van. The love of your life. You’d grown up together, his hair cut improved a bit and now you shared a tiny perfect child who so far seemed to be an even combination of the two of you. You wondered what her personality would be like as she grew up. Would she be sweet and mischievous like Van or a level headed dreamer like you?

Van came through the door breathing heavily and his face and clothes smudged in dirt.

“Bloody goat,” he breathed, wiping his forehead.

“Well, I did say not to leave the gate open,” you smirked. “Besides, I like the goat, best not let it escape yeah?”

You walked over and gave Van a kiss, ignoring how bad he smelt. You’d started selling goats milk cheese in the local market, earning your little family some extra money. You’d also started experimenting on making goat milk soaps. That was still a work in progress, though you enjoyed having something of your own to do. Van loved it, thought you were ‘dead smart’.

“Go get washed up,” you instructed as you tried to rub the smudge off his cheek.

Van stopped to give Mary a kiss on top of her head as he walked through to the back where the tub was. She giggled and reached her arms up to him.

“Can’t pick you up love, mum says I need to wash. I smell,” he said to her as if she understood.

Your hand moved unconsciously to the gold chain that now hung on your neck and you fiddled with it as you stared at the two of them, totally besotted.

When Van had finished, he came out to find you and Mary sat out in the garden. You had her sat on your lap and you were showing her the different flowers that had bloomed. Van sat down beside you and reached his arms out for his baby girl. She shrieked when she saw him and was passed over happily. Mary stretched out and touched his face, he just made silly expressions back at her. Van was dirt free and in a clean fabric shirt, his wet hair clung to his forehead and stuck up funnily. He’d lost the baby fat off his cheeks but otherwise looked the same as when you’d first met him really. Though he’d definitely gotten more handsome with age.

“Look how beautiful your mummy is,” he whispered to Mary as he held your gaze, turning her to face you.

You felt a blush rise to your cheeks.

“I got something for you at the market this mornin’,” he said.

He sat Mary down on the grass and raced off. She began to curiously pull blades of grass out of the ground and squish them up between her fingers. When Van came back, he had his hands hidden behind his back.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed. You did what he said.

Van placed something in your hands, it was soft and kind of…furry? When you opened your eyes, you couldn’t contain the grin.

“A peach!” he boasted proudly.

Peaches were ridiculously hard to come by where you lived now. In that moment you were thrown back to your first meeting with Van. The old lady and her granddaughter, Van being chased by knights, you keeping the peach on your windowsill for weeks. Who would have thought that you end up running away to start a family with that very peasant boy? Certainly not you. You felt sad for a minute, thinking about your parents who had no idea where you were. You tried not to think about those things too much. You had everything you’d ever dreamed of.

As if sensing your sudden mood change, Van crouched down closer to you and stroked your cheek.

“Thank you, Van,” you smiled and leant in to kiss him. You handed the peach to Little Mary. She looked at it curiously and rubbed the soft peach fuzz against her cheek.

“Do you think she’d like it?” Van asked you.

You shrugged and he reached out to take the peach. Little Mary’s face screwed up and her lip trembled like she was going to cry because daddy had taken her new toy. Van pulled the skin off the peach to make it easier for her toothless little mouth.

“Careful, don’t let daddy take a bite!” you said to her, giving Van a wink. He just smirked back at you, knowing exactly what memory you were referring to.

Van’s hair had started to dry in soft waves under the sunshine and he looked faultless. He handed the fruit back to Mary and her tiny smile returned. She began to suck on the peach, clearly liking the sweet taste.

Van sat and pulled you into his lap. He held you from behind and buried his face in your neck, giving your skin soft kisses. You squeezed his hands tight, wanting to live in this moment forever.

“I love you, Peaches,” he whispered.

“I love you too Van,” you replied, staring at your blue-eyed baby girl who was now covered in peach juice and loving it.

[creamypudding]

The endless chain of writers-block and its effects on productivity

Heyo!

I just thought I'd give an update as to what's happening in regards to writing projects, for anyone wanting to know.

I have a lot of things going on and not enough attention span to stick to any one particular thing. My To-Do list is 18 projects strong and in the last three months I've worked on 4 things (technically 5 if you wanna include Barbershop Duet which I had only minor tweaks needed in order for me to consider it complete enough to post), trying to complete one, getting stuck or bored or uncertain and then sought refuge in another story, only to get stuck, bored, or uncertain in that one and moving on to the next one, etc.

It's been a bit of a hard slog, TBH.

But just to list the four ongoing projects, because I want to get them done in the next 12 months -

The project which took up a lot of my time has been The Anomaly: part 2, which is my Axel is a demon AU. The first part you can currently read on AO3. I've had a very solid plan for that since I first published it a year ago. I wanted to have the story finished for Halloween this year, but the project grew too big. Part 2 is done (but not uploaded), and I have a part 3 and 4 to write now. I got hopelessly stuck on part 3 and moved on to another story, which I'll talk about below. But going back to The Anomaly for a moment - I'm very excited about this story. It's the biggest project I've got going because it has a lot of off-shoot projects attached to it, which I look forward to delving into once I'm done with the main story. And the main story is a beast. I've re-written large parts of part 1 to make it cohesive with the subsequent parts. I added an extra 5000 words to it, bringing the word count up to 40k. I haven't updated the story yet and won't do so until I'm ready to post parts 2, 3 and 4, and I'm not sure when that might be. Part 2 is over 30k, and while I'm not sure about the length of part 3 (esp since I'm so horribly uninspired and stuck on it) but it might be long once I get back into it. I think part 4 will also be quite long as well, as that is the part I’m really looking forward to writing. So you see, it is definitely a project I'm really enjoying... when I'm not stuck on it, and I’m stuck on it because of a POV change. God damn. So I dropped The Anomaly and moved on to this 'short' AkuRoku smut drabble I have to write for a friend, which should be the easiest because it was just supposed to be smut but I got bogged down in backstory and motivations and character drives like I usually do. I got up to a certain point and gave up on it. It feels like I've been working on it for ages but only have like 3000 words of writing to show for it. Also, an added fun bonus (not) of difficulty was a very unexpected crisis I had in regards to writing tense. I had started writing this story in past tense, but then going back to it after spending so much time living and breathing The Anomaly (like I was crazy prolific, writing about 50k in the span of maybe 3 weeks) I couldn't write past tense anymore. I basically rewrote what I had for this AkuRoku story in present tense and continued going with it, until I hit a brick wall and moved on from it.

The project I went on to work on is something I've had sitting on the ‘to be completed’ pile since October 2017. I'm very close to finishing it. Possibly two more chapters, but I am terribly uninspired about writing it too because it's hard. It's a Clack and AkuRoku story, where Cloud and Roxas as brothers (I love that familial relationship). It's also written in past tense, so of course I had a really hard time switching gears from the present tense high I was on from the previous two projects to the past tense this story needed. I thought about re-writing this Combo story but... I had already written too much to warrant the effort of rewriting the whole thing. So I had to stick to past tense and that was insanely hard. It had me in tears. It had me pulling at my hair and doubting that I would ever be able to write anything cohesive and meaningful ever again. Everything I had written felt like crap because I now feel like past tense is too passive. I really enjoy the impact of present tense. So everything I read and wrote felt like swill. 

In the midst of my crisis, I’ve now decided to exclusively write in present tense once I finish the past tense stories. It's also why I haven't gone back to The Anomaly and the AkuRoku story, because I'm scared of getting stuck in present tense mode again. It was really fucking hard to break out of that mindset to write past tense again, so I don't want to relive that experience.

Anyway, predictably, I got stuck on the above project and moved on to the current project which I'm writing. It's pure Clack. I started writing it in September 2017. Back in 2017 I got stuck on this Clack story, moved on to writing the Combo story above, and got stuck on that and started writing what became the behemoth that is The Two Penguins, which consumed two years of my life. But this Clack story is my true passion project. It's the thing I love and cherish the most. It's the thing I've been longing to get back into writing the most. Clack is my OTP, above AkuRoku. It's the pair I fear writing because I feel I can't do it justice; writing Cloud is hard. AkuRoku is my comfort ship. My easy ship. The ship that's as easy to do as breathing. Clack is breathing while climbing Everest, but I love it, and I am determined to finish it (until I get stuck on it and feel tempted to move on to something else 😅). I am three chapters away from finishing this Clack story. I'm having serious concerns about getting stuck after I finish chapter 7 because I think chapter 8 is a POV shift, which (as you may recall was also the thing that made me give up on The Anomaly) is always challenging for me. But God damn, I love Clack. I love this story and I want to finish telling it and exploring really heavy issues around recovery from severe physical and mental trauma (’cause that’s the way I roll). 

Anyway... these are the four projects I've got going at the moment and hope to finish in the next 12 months.

Clack Clack/AkuRoku AkuRoku The Anomaly (I don’t have any solid titles for any of the above stories, bar this one, as I did publish the first part of it, so ship names to identify the stories will have to do)

I want to finish the stories In that order. I'm least excited about the two middle projects, So I figure if I stick The Anomaly at the end it will motivate me to finish the other AkuRoku fic.

If any of you would like to be pre-readers for any of these stories do hit me up. I might need you. When I have people I can talk to and brainstorm with about my current projects, it helps me feel motivated to stick it out and get it done.

Send me asks, chat with me on Twitter or discord. You can find all my handle ID's on my AO3 profile page.

Anyway, I initially came here because I wanted to procrastinate and rave about my Clack project, but I might leave the raving to another day. I've procrastinated enough.

[neo---blue]

These Sheets, Those Shelves, and This Shitty Place (—and Shion)

Shion's warmth is fading from the mattress. Nezumi feels disarmed.

Shion has just finished the Iliad and is going off to look for the Odyssey after Nezumi told him they were related works. What of it?

A loaded exchange between Shion and Nezumi in the library vault on a night before the Manhunt

hello. i finished this after my birthday so of course i wanted to update the shion/nezumi birthday fic, but this finished itself first so... hehe. >:) anyway, here it is. in the manga and novel, they said that the manhunt came "one day, out of the blue" so i just supposed it didn't immediately happen after that chapter nezumi had an episode and danced with shion to make him stop worrying about him, and i supposed that that didn't immediately happen after they ambushed fura. yes. super wordy and introspective, but i really enjoyed writing this. i hope you enjoy reading it as well!

6.6k+ words on ao3 or Keep Reading!

            Nezumi whistles, not looking up from his book, not even when he feels Shion stirring beside him. "You sure about that?"

            "Yeah," Shion answers from the other side of their bed, "I'm sure there was a copy when I organized all our books."

            ‘Our books?’ Nezumi twists himself towards the wall on his side of their bed, away from the rest of their room, having to raise his book slightly to keep his shadow from covering words he hasn't been registering. "Good luck," he mutters as courtesy, not meaning it but earning a response from Shion anyway,

            "I'll go check right now."

            Shion sits up. It's with much effort that he lifts the blanket off of himself, body quick to protest the loss of direct warmth from Nezumi. It's for this sole reason that Shion considers not leaving anymore. But shortly he's able to reason that he already has half of all the books over there in his mental catalog, and he already knows how to maneuver around this general area, knows it like the back of his hand; he won't take too long.

            Shion dangles his legs off the bed, with less effort now, peering down at the floor. He reaches for each of Nezumi's slippers by stretching his legs, using his toes to turn one over and using his heel to drag the other closer. He shifts all of his weight forward and stands, every movement careful not to disturb the mattress nor Nezumi.

            Nezumi doesn't mind it. He just eyes the same line on the same page for the nth time. He comes close to giving up altogether; on top of not having been able to read in silence all evening, Nezumi is becoming thoroughly distracted now that Shion is continuing,

            "I'm just not sure where I categorized it under." Shion's padded towards the shelves, looking through the sections, blinking slowly to connect his rote memory to this overwhelming reality. He has an urge that he holds: the urge to comment, again, for the nth time, on how amazing this place is, by the sheer number of books housed within it; he feels the same immense sense of curiosity now as he did the first time he'd entered here, books piled up high on the bed and the couch and the floor and every other surface in the room. That they're organized now doesn't change how his heart beats with excitement every time he thinks of how many stories there must be here to read and learn about, how much of all of it makes up the boy he saved four years ago. He only goes on now, "Besides, Nezumi..."

            "What?"

            "You wouldn't help me," Shion mumbles, content with skimming his fingers along rough, old spines, each hiding yellowed pages that held words and worlds he's yet to explore. "It's why organizing all the books took longer than I wanted."

            "Don't complain," Nezumi complains, chides, switching his book over to his other hand, "you're the one who volunteered to do it." He's positive they both remember clearly, even if it was several months ago:

            'It'll take a hundred years—' 'I'll do it in a week!’

            "I did," Shion agrees instantly, though it took a week and a day. He shakes the thought off, crouching down to look from the bottom shelf up. "But it would have been nice if you helped me decide whether to catalog them by author, year published, title, or genre—"

            "And? Where would you have put it if I told you I wanted them arranged by author?" Nezumi challenges, "You didn't even know who Homer was yet at that point."

            "Well," Shion replies, still scanning the titles. "I do now—"

            "No you don't," Nezumi cuts in. "I don't even know who Homer is. Actually, no one knows who Homer is."

            "...What’s that mean?"

            "The problem with all these epics is that they're so old no one even knows who the hell actually wrote them or where the hell they actually came from anymore. Was Homer a bard who ran around singing epics for money and fun? Was Homer a bunch of poets coming up with stories off the top of their heads at a symposium? Was Homer an entire country that wanted to decide on an origin story once and for all? And did Homer even exist to begin with? In reality, there's a huge possibility that Homer's epics have been edited a handful of times by different people from different times. And remember, this was ancient, a point in history when they'd just started actually writing stuff down, and by then the story's already been no less than a hundred years old..."

            Shion didn't seem to notice when exactly his gaze drifted away from the books, to fix itself on Nezumi's figure: his untied hair, his steady back, the fingers poised gracefully to hold his book to the wall. All Shion knew was that he was hanging on to every one of Nezumi's words with wonder. See, when Nezumi spoke, nothing else in this room mattered to Shion except him.

            When Nezumi's trailed off for a moment, a thought— several thoughts— wedge themselves in the back of Shion's mind. As he processes the cognitive overload from ideas he's never once imagined in his life, especially having never been exposed to the topic at hand, heavily discouraged from pursuing the arts and humanities in No.6, he's led to a related feeling: annoyance...? or something akin to it.

            Any memory Shion has of anyone talking this much was of the students in his grade of elites— err, the one he was kicked out off for 'poor decision-making skills.' The kids in that class always talked about their own specialties like they knew it all.

            And with No.6's education system, really, it wasn't unlikely that they did know it all. But more than that, they talked like they were the only ones that mattered. Of course they would feel that way as citizens born into a special status that promised them lofty quarters to rest and relax in, endless electronic resources for elaborate self-study, and overall sophisticated houses that fit their lifestyle perfectly. This education, providing for the maximum ideal conditions for growth and development, ensured that students will know it all.

            Shion recollects that even Safu found ways to fit her specific neuroscientific register and vocabulary in everyday conversations. But to him she was never annoying, he never felt spoken over. She was slightly, slightly awkward, a little rough around the edges towards those who made fun of the way she dressed, and she didn't know how to pause for breath when she lectured Shion on hormones and their consequent bodily reactions— but she only ever sounded passionate, never like a know-it-all; she didn't speak just to gloat about how much she knew or boast her special status as the high-class citizen she was.

            Additionally, Safu was actually talented. Shion has been turning it over in his head for a while now since the time he was evicted from Chronos, because it hadn't felt all that different: had he actually been talented himself or did he just luck out getting top scores in his early assessment? Developmental cognitive studies is as far from his own ecology major as emergency medical procedures, but if he were able to perform an impromptu suture-surgery on a bullet wound by memory of one video at age 12, he guessed there was a high chance that he wouldn't be wrong to assume that an aptitude exam taken at age 2 could hardly be reliable especially the older a subject gets.

            In the least, even if Shion weren't talented— and by no means does he have any misgivings coming to terms with this— he was never at risk of flunking out from the special course. Maintaining grades in the special classes wasn't exactly easy, and he saw a handful of other classmates leave for unsatisfactory performance, but if he focused enough it was a breeze. Still not as talented as Safu, though. And besides, he flunked out of the special course regardless, just for his own reasons.

            As he helped his mother pack up their things from Chronos to prepare for the tedious move to Lost Town, Nezumi's words made carved deeper impressions in Shion's mind and gave his feelings a tact that helped him realize how out of place he'd felt all along at the very top with the smartest kids in his grade. His plain, humble times with Karan at Lost Town didn't make him feel any less dignified or any less real.

            And even as he jumped out of the Security Bureau's remote-controlled car and tossed his official citizen ID to keep moving, keep running (and swimming) to find himself here in an underground library vault in West Block, Nezumi's words materialized and Shion could finally fully grasp them:

            'Petri dish elites' was on-point, is exactly what they are, what Shion used to be— brought up and pampered in artificially perfect environments to be reared and controlled exactly as they should.

            But in Lost Town and West Block alike, especially here in this room— in a place that experiences the real impacts of fickle weather and he has to either turn the heater up or scoot closer to Nezumi to make it through the night without his teeth chattering the entire time, in a place where he's free to pursue any book he wants to read on any topic, whether scientific or literary (but mostly literary) and learn about heroes and dramas and tragedies— a place he can call his starting point, Shion realized that human beings needed much less than the luxuries in Chronos and in No.6 in order to live a content life.

            With little to nothing but the clothes on his back, with Nezumi and the library and this bunk they share, Shion feels like he has everything he could ever need.

            Shion wonders how Safu would react if he said that to her.

            It's because I left No.6... He comes up with the words in his mind, as if addressing them to Safu, that I discovered what kind of person he really is, the very reason I didn't get to push through with the special course. That I discovered what kind of person I really am. It's not a walk in the park, but... I don't regret meeting him, or following him, or staying with him. In fact... he's just like you, in a way.

            He could almost hear Safu's voice, pretend-condescending but undeniably sweet, What are you talking about, Shion?

            Shion closes his eyes. What was he talking about?

            Safu and Nezumi may speak on relatively similar levels of enthusiasm when it came to things they're knowledgeable about— whether it's neuroscience or literature— but there's no way Safu and Nezumi are alike, not even at the base level however he cut it.

            Nezumi never spoke warmly, or cheerfully, or looked at Shion like he was the most wonderful part of his life. Nezumi's words were always cold, edged, and quite frankly he looked down on Shion more than anything.

            Shion treasures them both, though. That's about all they may ever have in common. He would do anything to keep them both in his life, protect them at any cost.

            Shion recalls vividly the sensation of Nezumi's fingers interlocked with his, and he's able to calm down the extreme anxiety that rises in his chest with every thought he gets of Safu these days.

            The only way he's able to stand his ground knowing Safu is currently in danger is by Nezumi, the faith he has in the plans they have to go save her themselves. The waiting is just part of the plan. And it's a huge part of the plan— if he breaks by utter tension now, it's all going to be for naught.

            So Shion takes a deep breath for the time being, lends himself to the soothing feeling of being here, falling for Nezumi. He's able to smile as he opens his eyes to look through the old books again, listening not to his haphazard, discomforting, annoying thoughts, but to Nezumi.

            "What I'm trying to say is, authorship for the really old stuff is quite the controversial thing. And from the start, it was a no-go for you to arrange them by year published either. I would suppose that even the greatest libraries still have no clue about everything to this day," Nezumi is explaining. "Hear me, Shion? Get what I mean?"

            "I get it," Shion hums, "somehow. And there's no appeal to having just arranged everything alphabetically, right?"

            "Right, exactly."

            "Right," Shion nods to himself, "exactly."

            "So?" Nezumi prompts again, "Where do you think you would have put the Odyssey?"

            "Well, if I knew everything I know now," Shion starts, sounding a tad bit dramatic as he gets back on his feet, stretching away the strain in his legs from bending his knees for a second too long. "I might've just put it under classics with the Iliad. How would I have known the Odyssey was a sequel?"

            "A spin-off, technically— but fair enough. I don't think there was any way you could've known better before anyhow."

            "Yup," Shion concedes, casually, unafraid to admit he didn't know; he likes to believe that he's entirely past the shame of knowing less than he ought to when it comes to things like this. "Even now, I still hardly know anything about literature. Can you cut me some slack?"

            Nezumi shrugs his shoulders. He folds the page he's been stuck on and sets his book down. He rolls over away from the wall, arm unconsciously falling forward to feel Shion's residual warmth on his side of the bed. He glances at the copy of the Iliad Shion's left behind before finding that Shion's disappeared into the space between the other bookcases. "Since I'm feeling generous," Nezumi simpers into the pillow, "fine."

            While it's a topic close to Nezumi's heart for various reasons, he can't fault Shion for his naivety if it's not about the hideous workings of this world or the nihilistic cruelty of reality. Tonight, there's no need for hostility; he wouldn't let Shion make excuses for anything else.

            "I will cut you some slack."

            "Thanks," Shion answers from a far corner of the library, voice muffled from being absorbed by the volume and volumes of books.

            "I gotta say though, Shion," Nezumi calls, raising his voice if only slightly to reach Shion from the bed and beyond the first shelves across the room, "You finished the Iliad in three days. I'm surprised."

            "I don't know," Shion chuckles sheepishly, voice automatically adjusting as well, "Once I was past all the language in Shakespeare, other things seemed a little easier to digest."

            "Ooh," Nezumi moves onto his back, looking up at the ceiling and picking up Shion's book instead of his own. He raises it above him, makes a show of fanning through the pages elegantly, to no one in particular, perhaps to himself. With his arms outstretched and dust catching in his shirt sleeves, he idly muses that there was always something so calming about flipping through these pages this way. His eyes fall closed in relaxation, lips curling in satisfaction. "I'm impressed. So Your Majesty truly is a fast learner."

            "Why," Shion sings, from another corner of the library, "my most trusted liege Nezumi, was that praise?"

            Nezumi's eyes shoot open at the comment, he freezes— had he really just praised Shion? His fingers are clutching at the book now, and he has to physically stop himself from using it, open and dusty, to cover his face.

            Instead, he feigns plaintiveness despite knowing Shion hadn't seen his reaction, doesn't even turn his head. He closes Shion's book carefully and puts it down beside him, shifting to sit by propping himself up on an arm.

            Shion's warmth is fading from the mattress. Nezumi feels disarmed.

            Several thoughts occupy his mind, faster than any of the words he's given up repeatedly trying to take in all evening, and they're all about Shion.

            Easily, effortlessly, expectedly, all he can think about again is Shion.

            Nezumi licks his lips, trying to decide what to quip about first, which to scoff at and make a snide remark on, to save himself from this disarmed feeling that he absolutely hates: that Shion just sang-song an obvious attempt at a comeback, that the book by his hand lay perfectly flat and even, or that these sheets, those shelves, and this shitty place will never be the same again—

            Shion, his voice, it has a specific quality: genuine-sounding and engaging, modulations mice and children alike have grown fond of listening to for a reason or another. If he just learned to project and animate that pathetic monotone Macbeth wouldn't have to roll over in his grave— that's what Nezumi used to think. But just now, Shion's response, it was sanguine, true to character: a one-liner that undoubtedly matched Nezumi's well-rehearsed effort to play with him this king-vassal ruse.

            Nezumi lets his mind wander in that direction— when did Shion learn to act so well? It was probably a fluke and nothing more, but a part of Nezumi wouldn't put it past Shion to just learn how to do it even if they'd both agreed that he wasn't cut out to play roles he's not suited for in the least. He contemplates what kind of person Shion is, and arrives to some conclusion that if there were any book on theatrics laying around here— not unlikely, by the way— Shion could just practice as soon as he knew the theory, and he could probably do it that way with technically anything.

            Along with Nezumi's mind, his hand wandered, too, seeking more of Shion's warmth before it fled the sheets completely. Finding not nearly enough anymore, his hand settles back on Shion's book, pads of his finger flipping through the corner of the pages. Nezumi's mind settles here, too.

            Shion has tons of quirks but among those that intrigued Nezumi most was how, as he read along, Shion would unfold any dog ears Nezumi's left in the book from whenever long ago he'd read it. Nezumi adored these books but that didn't keep him from vandalizing them, folding pages to mark where he left off, or underlining or encircling or boxing lines he liked to revisit, writing his own footnotes wherever there was space. Shion, though, did none of that— he would turn these pages so gently that even the dust wouldn't shuffle. He wouldn't even use a bookmark, that boy, he would only memorize which page number he was last on, then pick it up from there next time.

            If Shion had extra time, which he always seemed to have on top of meticulously washing Inukashi's rental dogs or shopping for bargains for low-tier groceries for him and Nezumi, he would sit down with his book and read, smooth out the old folds, fix up any tears with some clear tape, and remove those pencil markings while he was at it.

            'I mark those for reference, you know,' Nezumi had confronted him once, recently, when he caught him fiddling gently with a worn copy of Tristan using an eraser. 'Well, if you ever need a line for anything,' Shion returned, airily tapping his temple with his pointer finger, 'It's in here now. You can just ask me.'

            Nezumi remembers snorting to ask if he was showing off, so this is the brain of an elite, huh? But Shion only chalked it up to mental exercise, said that if he had the Correctional Facility floor plan with its numbers of steps and angles of exposure and vulnerability crammed on its own in his head, he would lose it. And besides, he's done all this since coming here to begin with, earnest in his quest to learn about Nezumi and take him in through these books. So it happened, that every book Shion touched, though visibly aged and still dust-laden, sat nearly as flat and bound to its spine as it was the day it was printed.

            Nezumi straightens his back now.

            He vaguely recounts his grandmother's words, 'Never sigh for anyone.' She also used to tell him all the time, that this chamber had everything he would ever need.

            It was only after she was gone and he'd barely managed to get back here alive that he started to learn that they were loaded words— words that seemed to mean more than they did the last time he thought of them, each time he thought of them.

            Not sighing for others meant fighting for himself and himself alone. It meant doing anything it took to keep himself alive, coming in and out of every ordeal with new ways to survive if only for another week longer, another day. Nezumi was to sink his teeth into his lip and silently prowl anywhere he can fit, steal from the unguarded but never take more than he needed.

            And on days there was absolutely nothing to take from anywhere, places even his mice couldn't loot for the barest minimum, because that's just the kind of place the West Block is, he could retreat into this room.

            This room, dark, quiet, and underground, was secure, a safe haven.

            Not sighing for others meant crying for himself and himself alone. It meant doing anything it took to keep himself sane, and Nezumi, half-delirious from hunger and a fever, would reflect and realize that they were true, his grandmother's words: this place really did have everything he needed.

            Here, he could pick a book, a story, a line to lose himself in, keep starvation at bay by occupying himself with all kinds of tales told on paper. Here, he could practice sighing and soughing, for those characters and their tragedies, but never still for anything or anyone else. Here, he would learn about the simplistic tendencies of the human, their sensibilities, their desires; Nezumi was to smirk and whisper, grant the weak-willed's wishes with choreographed sweet nothings.

            And here, he would learn that which was his sure salvation from cold, hard poverty— Nezumi was to learn how to sing. How to let lyrics flow from his mouth and ride the wind that steals away suffering souls, and how to let scripts live through him to thieve the hearts of other humans by enchantment.

            Nezumi was to never sigh again.

            The thought came over him as he caught himself sitting motionless with baited breath— he was about to sigh again. He's lost count of how many times he's sighed in the last few months, lost count of how many times he's fought and cried but never just for himself or these stories.

            Nezumi can't even remember the last book he finished. He had an extensive, unorganized reading list, and on his off-days from the playhouse he would lay in bed the entire time and bury himself in his mountains of books to read to his mice.

            But now, distracting him from ever finishing another book, someone has stolen his attention— someone who took this place over by reading to the mice, organizing all the bookcases, making this bed every morning, keeping him warm.

            Shion has been like the sun, full of light and life and warmth, and when Nezumi is with him he feels real, and alive— Living people sure are warm.

            When they conversed, even when Nezumi had little to no idea where on earth Shion got what he's saying or how the hell he has the guts to be saying them at all— naive ideals, bare confessions, words of irrefutable hope and love— Nezumi felt real, and alive, so alive, that for the first time in his life he had more than himself and fiction to cling to.

            Whether harsh debates or playful banter, it was accompanied by stale and moldy bread, meat a day away from rotting, water heated in an old kettle— and Macbeth soup, on relatively better days, like either of their paydays from giving dogs baths and putting on shows in the theater— and they've never quite felt like luxuries before, just the bare requirement not to starve to death or completely go insane. But that he had Shion's company over shamefully cheap dinner made him ignore orders from his grandmother never to sigh, and instead Nezumi would agree with her other words, with all his hesitant heart, that this chamber—

            —these sheets, those shelves, this shitty place—

            (—and those ignorant, innocent words, and that light that stubbornly, incessantly shone through— and Shion—)

            —is all Nezumi would ever need.

            And while during these days Nezumi experienced several episodes of emotional unrest, somehow he couldn't help thinking that these have been the most peaceful days of his life. Even if there were less air to breathe in this cramped vault, less room to move on this single-size bed, less surface area of this cheap blanket to put over his scrawny body, there was also less fuel and tinder used up to keep the kerosene heater lit, less nightmares or sleepless nights to be had, and less cold mornings to wake up to.

            Life like this is comfortable.

            That Shion would come back and slip under these sheets after fiddling and twiddling around those shelves to retire with him in this room— as has become routine— is comforting to Nezumi. Life like this, with Shion,  is all Nezumi would ever need.

            But the warmth that spreads through Nezumi's chest at the thought freezes over instantaneously, unnaturally; it becomes a sharp sensation stabbing at his lungs and his heart— these peaceful, comfortable days can't last.

            These sheets, those shelves, and this shitty place—

            —and Shion—

            Nezumi suddenly feels uncertain if he's willing to wager all of this; it's the same feeling he got when he decided by himself to gather information how-many monthly paychecks' worth to get as far as he can without involving Shion and his reckless tendencies, the same feeling of grudge against salty tears forcing their way out of his eyes after clueless, inexperienced lips touched his for the very first time only to kiss him farewell, the same feeling when he held the trembling hand that struck his cheek and he had to swallow any doubts he had and keep them down, for his own sake and Shion's.

            The Manhunt is going to happen soon, so soon Nezumi can feel it in his bones, and however much he wishes to deny that these past few day have felt like he was desperately living out the remainder of this peaceful, comfortable life, it doesn't matter. The reality of the situation is that this waiting it out is part of a plan.

            Nezumi had come up with this plan— a plan with a chance at success so low that this risk shouldn't even be worth considering, even if they've maxed every factor on their side— but he had to continue keeping those doubts down, believe in his own plan, promise they would make things work out, to preserve Shion's sanity, keep his spirit alive, protect his smile.

            Now isn't the time to waver.

            Now isn't the time to waver, Nezumi knows, but even at present, on a nice, friendly night, he's beginning to yearn for these sheets, those shelves, this shitty place, and Shion—

            "Sorry, it's not a tragedy this time. But did you hear that? Nezumi praised me."

            It's hearing this gentle exchange that jolts Nezumi right out of his thoughts and back to reality; he's so startled by Hamlet's chirp and shuffling and Shion's voice that his heart feels like it's on the verge of bursting.

            His hand comes up automatically to soothe his chest but when he sees Shion approaching with a copy of the Odyssey clasped tightly in his fingers, a victorious grin on his face, and the flickering orange tint of the heater in his translucent hair, Nezumi slides his hand further upward to hold his nape in an attempt at nonchalance, poorer than before all of these thoughts.

            Shion glances at him and in his ears Nezumi can hear his heart drumming loudly and erratically to the sensation of his chest tightening, clenching, wrenching— unsoothed, because his palm has gone elsewhere, covering his vitals to make up for the fact that he'd been so disarmed he's left himself exposed again. He could swear Shion must have seen right through him.

            But Shion is only cheerfully treading back towards the bed, and when he's seated on the edge of the mattress toeing off Nezumi's slippers, happily and jokingly mumbling "Even Hamlet couldn't believe that you were praising me," the fickle warmth within Nezumi's chest, or the loss of it, puts the thorns back in his next words:

            "—Praise?" Nezumi just might have; following all the sentiment off the top of his mind just now up to this point, it felt safe to say that tonight was one of those nights that he, full from Macbeth soup, felt gracious enough to take the thorns out of his words to give Shion a real compliment. But when he thought about how this night could probably be their last together, even Nezumi can't fight the bitterness that makes him make haste of taking the praise back: "As if." He means to glare at Shion and his profile, but when he sees Shion turning to him he just rolls his eyes and they land on the flat, dusty copy of the Iliad by his hands. "You're just as good as Paris."

            Shion is blindly pushing the slippers with his heels, fixing them in an orderly fashion against the edge of the bed next to his own shoes. He tilts his head, unfamiliar with the look he caught in Nezumi's gaze before he broke eye contact to click his tongue.

            Shion revisits the words in his short-term memory, unsure of what to make of what Nezumi's just said. But, the tone of his comment was low like his usual scoffs, and the way Nezumi is averting his eyes makes Shion guess the words were meant to offend him, provoke him— yet he finds himself calm and unfazed, neither by Nezumi's words nor by his demeanor.

            It would be a grave insult to Nezumi and his praise, whether he meant it or not, if Shion hasn't learned by now how to react, if he hasn't realized that Nezumi's words are never empty. And if he didn't understand them, Shion didn't have to pry or demand or throw some kind of tantrum— he just had to figure it out on his own. He's used to it.

            Shion's learned as much in this room as Nezumi has. Perhaps even more.

            Less a serious response to what Nezumi said than an offhand answer, he tilts his head, and speaks up amidst the strange tension hanging in the air, "Then you must be Helen?"

            "The face that launched a thousand ships?" The delay in Shion's reply allowed Nezumi to regain his composure, and he's able to bring his hand away from his nape and to his chest, no longer aching, only the tips of his fingers touching the cloth of his shirt in a mock-timid gesture. He even manages a smile, sensual and pretty. "What a great compliment. That's so generous of you to say, your Majesty—"

            "You know it, Nezumi," Shion interjects, eyes lowering for a moment to imagine touching those sensual lips with his, fleetingly, before looking right at Nezumi, "You could easily be the most beautiful—"

            "Shion." Nezumi says this in a tone that warns Shion not to finish that sentence, not to finish that thought. This smile, one he reserved for seduction, worked to derail Shion, but all too well. It's no secret that Nezumi is attractive and that Shion is attracted to him, but if this carries on, Nezumi's not sure he can stay composed. His smile fades along with any emotion in his face and he continues, "Calling you as good as Paris wasn't a compliment."

            Shion gets it. Nezumi doesn't want to hear it. He drops the need to tell Nezumi he's beautiful altogether, despite believing it to be the honest truth. He settles for a noncommittal reply instead, throwing in a shrug. "Didn't think much of it, so it's fine—"

            "I'm telling you to think about it now, Shion." Nezumi picks up the book and hands it to him, lifting his facade to explain, "Paris could get the power to rule over a huge chunk of the world or the intelligence to fight and conquer any other place he wanted— but he chose a girl."

            Shion takes the book and looks to the shelves, deciding by the cold floor and the slippers tucked under the bed that he'll put it back tomorrow. He tosses it gently to the bottom of the bed before pursing his lips as he looks Nezumi over again. "You... You're so cynical."

            Nezumi snorts, "Great, what else is new—?"

            "Paris didn't choose a girl over power and intelligence," Shion continues without missing a beat. "Simply put, wasn't he just not interested in what Athena and Hera had to offer? Aphrodite, on the other hand, didn't promise just a girl—"

            "—the heck are you saying—"

            "—Aphrodite promised him the love of the most beautiful mortal in the world."

            Nezumi's eyebrows draw together and he finds himself scowling, "What did you say?"

            "Paris chose love," Shion repeats, sounding like he had all the confidence in the world to be concluding such a cheesy speech. "Over power or intelligence, Paris chose love—"

            "—And ended up waging war on all of Greece? Over such a pointless thing?" Nezumi could say a thousand things about how rotten and obsolete some values portrayed in literature are, especially in the classics, but he only scoffs: "Pretty dumb if you ask me—"

            "It's not dumb—!" Shion starts to retort, but Nezumi snides,

            "It is!"

            Literature held tens and thousands of stories about humans making dumb decisions, and what good was literature if one didn't look past the entertainment it brought to learn from it? Especially in Nezumi's experience, from being smoked out like a literal rat out of his first home by greed-ridden intelligence and merciless power, to having to live in a literal dumpsite where people struggle everyday to make ends meet— Nezumi knew that it was human nature to just take and take and take, graciously receive anything offered to them that would benefit themselves, or seize that which isn't theirs by force if they were rapacious enough— at the very least No.6 was a prime example of this.

            And then it hits Nezumi, the realization— it's right in front of him. In front of him is Shion, candid, altruistic, simple-minded Shion, who's barely made a dent in learning about the true, hideous nature of No.6— but for sure, for sure, Shion knows that if he had stayed on the other side of the wall, no, if he had never opened that window and taken Nezumi in, he would be well on his way to becoming the elite he was destined to be, apathetic and oblivious and uncaring but ultimately well-off, sleeping in a luxurious bed complete with plush pillows and duvets, reading and writing theses on ecology as his expertise without having to even lift a finger, and living in a completely technologically equipped mansion designed to give him the best life.

            Despite all of that, Shion is right here, in front of him. On these thin, dirty, secondhand sheets, among those dusty, dilapidated, old-fashioned shelves, in this shoddy, dingy excuse of a room. Shion is right here because of him, because Shion was drawn— mind, body, and soul— to Nezumi.

            "Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Someone who had immense power and intelligence for the taking..." The words steadily come forth from Nezumi's mouth lacking bite or any trace of derision. He just sounds like what he's stating is matter-of-fact, "...but he chose to run after love."

            "Ah." Shion understands this fully well.

            He always thinks about the what-if's of having never met Nezumi— when he can't sleep after Nezumi kicks him out of bed or hogs the blanket, when he zones out trying to pick something new to read from hundreds of choices without Nezumi's explicit review and recommendation, or when he's watching the kettle to keep the water warm while he waits for Nezumi to come home. This train of thought always goes through No.6 and living his successful and sheltered and boring life— but it eventually finds its way back to the West Block, living his inconvenient, danger-filled, heart-stopping life with Nezumi.

            "So that's what you meant..."

            "...That's how it is, isn't it." Nezumi lays back down, hair sprawling all over their pillow.

            "Yeah." Shion feels like this should have hurt, like it always does when he has to question everything he ever thought he knew— But there's no questioning here, only a feeling in his core that he can't name, something reassuring.

            Shion feels like Nezumi had finally acknowledged his feelings: yes, like Paris, Shion was ready to wage war against all of No.6, because over intelligence and power in that artificial paradise, that greedy parasite, Shion felt real and alive here, too. Shion had chosen these sheets, those shelves, and this shitty place; Shion had chosen Nezumi, and he had chosen love.

            Oddly fully satisfied by what's just transpired, Shion takes a deep breath that thins out into a smile as he lays back down beside Nezumi, not before Nezumi can grab his own, unread book out of the way. "Well, sorry. I guess I'm just not as cynical as you. It can't be helped. Besides, at least for me, I know it'll all be worth it in the end."

            Can it really not be helped? Nezumi could hear the self-assured smile in Shion's voice, and his first instinct is to attack him for saying such a naive thing— Shion doesn't know enough, he hasn't seen enough, hasn't read enough of this world to be saying he isn't a cynic. He doesn't have enough an idea of what's going to happen from here on out to be saying it was all worth it. In what end?

            If the manhunt really happened tomorrow... would you still be able to smile and say that? Shion?

            But Nezumi only returns to his earlier position when Shion had gone off to look for the Odyssey right after finishing the Iliad, facing the wall. He unconsciously sighs at the relief— Shion's warmth is reaching him again.

            He thinks to tell Shion not to start another book when he hears him open to the first page of the Odyssey. If the Manhunt really happened tomorrow, he might never be able to come back to it.

            Nezumi opens his book. The lines still don't register. He might never be able to come back to it, either. He wills himself not to think of it. He wills himself to say nothing more.

            Tomorrow, Nezumi is going to have hogged the sheets again but Shion will make the bed nevertheless. Nezumi is going to ask about another title to try to read and Shion will guide him through the shelves using his mental catalog. They'll take turns reading their books to the mice, maybe dance again in this room before going out.

            They won't know that it will be the last of these sheets, those shelves, and this shitty place that they'll ever see.

[soft-thrills]

X-Files fic: Philadelphia

Mulder and Scully drive to Philadelphia after her mother’s death. A missing scene for “Home Again.”

Rated R

With thanks, as ever, to @agoldenpalace

*

i walked the avenue ‘til my legs felt like stone

i heard the voice of friends vanished and gone

at night i could hear the blood in my veins

just as black and whispering as the rain

on the streets of Philadelphia

-Bruce Springsteen, “Streets of Philadelphia”

*

“Mulder, let’s drive to Philadelphia,” she says, gripping at his shirt with the same hand that clutches the mystery her mother has left her. Her fingernails work for traction on the slippery material, and she throws her body up against him, half begging and half demanding. “I need to work.”

“No,” he says. “No, no, no.”

“Yes. Right now.”

“No, I get it, Scully, I do. But not right now.”

She remembers, for a moment, the night his mother died. The night he asked her to cut Teena open. No, she had said, no, no, no. But she couldn’t refuse him anything, not even that, when he was so full of raw need. She would have cut herself open to soothe him.

“Mulder, right now,” she says, picking up her briefcase, putting an end to the conversation. “I need to work right now.”

She walks out of the hospital. She doesn’t look back because she knows he will follow. He'd never refuse her anything either.

*

Mulder drives them to Philadelphia in rainy silence.

She doesn’t care for Pennsylvania. When she was younger, a friend was scoping out big affordable homes in quaint towns and Scully told her not to move there. “Too many X-Files per capita,” she’d joked.

Scully doesn’t really have friends anymore. She doesn’t joke anymore.

For a long time, she looked for meaning in the bad things that had happened to her. She believed that she was meant to learn from them, that they were meant to teach her something. She had searched so hard to give them purpose, to understand, even when she came up empty time and time again.

As the tragedies big and small piled up, she wondered if each one was meant to harden her for the next. Her cancer helped her to know how to cope with her infertility. Mulder's disappearance and three-month stint in a coffin — a vision of her worst nightmare, and most awful of all the possible endings to their story—made it easier for her to survive when he left after William was born. From the loss of Emily, she was a bit more weathered to withstand the loss of William.

She began to believe that she had lost so much, been tested so much, because she was meant to know the truth, meant to help people, meant to save the world with Mulder by her side. That was worth suffering for. But then 2012 ended and the world didn’t. So she convinced herself that she had gone through these trials to bring her to Mulder, to bind them together. But then he shut her out and she left the house and she had nothing: not the X-Files, not a master-plan to save the world, not her partner.

Maybe she was like Job. Maybe she’d done nothing to deserve her misfortunes and she’d ultimately learn little from them, other than that God is cruel and cavalier and what he gives he can take away. Naked we came out of our mothers’ wombs and naked we will depart.

Nothing will come from her own womb and she will never see her own mother again. She will never see her son again. She will never forget her mother’s last words, to somebody else, about the son she gave away.

But Mulder is back; he is holding her hand where it rests in the center console of the car, not far from where he keeps his sunflower seeds.

That is something.

*

She feels tense from the moment the skyline rises into their windshield.

Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and the city of her grandest mistakes, at least where sex is concerned. The dingy place where she got her tattoo is probably long out of business, gentrified into a coffee shop. The Russian who wielded the needle is probably gone, too.

Ed Jerse is still in prison. She used to get little postcards when he was up for parole, until they lost track of her on the run. But every couple of years some part of her, the dangerously curious part that missed the FBI while she was a doctor, looks him up. Her tattoo is still on her back, catching her eye sometimes as she moves past a mirror.

She’s not sure she regrets sleeping with Ed, even after how it all ended. She knows she doesn’t regret the tattoo. It reminds her to keep moving, even when she’s fucked something up seemingly beyond repair.

As she and Mulder walk through the lobby of a nicer-than-usual hotel, she feels herself moving like a train on a doomed track, ready to collide with someone. Only this time it's not a stranger and that’s really the problem. It’s been years since she was this unsure of what she and Mulder were to each other. She feels not unlike she did when she was in Philadelphia all those years ago, adrift and alone.

Mulder tells the woman at the front desk that he’d called on the way and been told the hotel had vacancy.

“One room, or two?” she hears the woman ask.

It is the city of brotherly love. As complicated as her feelings for Mulder are, Scully is sure of one thing: they are not fraternal.

“One,” she says, a woman who feels like making a mistake, a woman who probably won’t regret this one, either.

*

She doesn’t want to talk, not yet, so she tries not to give him the time.

She stalks behind him as he places their bags on the luggage rack, and when he turns she’s there, pressing her body into him the way she did a few hours ago in the hospital. But she isn’t crying now. She is staring up, on her tip toes even in her heels, ready to kiss him.

“Scully, I—” he begins, but she knows from his face where he’s going.

“Don’t,” she whispers, unable and unwilling to accept rejection, even if it is well meaning. “Please.”

He hesitates. She watches the conflict play across his face as he tries to chart his course: He doesn’t want to refuse her or make her ask for what she needs (though he’s reveled in making her beg before, she remembers with a flush, it would be uncouth of him to do it now). But he is balancing that with the need to be sure he isn’t doing something she will regret tomorrow, something to make her pain worse. She knows because she has been there, stood in his place and wondered the same thing, how to navigate an emotional minefield and walk away unscathed.

So she tries to explain.

“When your mother died, Mulder, that night, when we were together—I didn’t understand it,” she says, shaking her head. “But I do now. I need… I don’t know.”

She shakes her head softly. His hand finds her face, a thumb strokes her cheek. She wills herself not to cry, afraid it will scare him off.

“Tennessee Williams wrote that desire is the opposite of death,” Mulder says.

She should roll her eyes at him for quoting a play, or at the very least point out that the one he is referencing ends pretty badly. She could think of her last misbegotten trip to Philadelphia and wonder if death — the specter of it lodged between her nose and her brain — was what fueled her desire then. But she does not want to think.

“Yes,” she says instead, because he has managed to sum up the feeling thrumming inside her pretty well.

Mulder nods, a little too solemn for her liking but then he puts a hand in the hair at the nape of her neck and he kisses her, offering himself up to be another distraction from her grief, just like the case would be. He’s more to her than that, and her heart makes her brain promise to tell him so. Later.

They have kissed in a hundred hotel rooms, and if she shuts out her grief, his touch in this place feels nostalgic. There were years of this, fucking in nondescript rooms with weird carpets and boring pictures on the walls. Even the grief inside her isn’t unfamiliar in their history of rented-room romance. She remembers the way he’d kissed her softly and sadly that first night on the run in New Mexico; she remembers the way he’d fucked her after their first real discussion about William had devolved into their first real fight about William.

This is somewhere in between, she thinks as his hands move across her body and she responds on autopilot. He is hitting all his marks: hand in her hair tugging just a little, touching her just demandingly enough to make her melt. He is not gentle but there is no anger in it: he is playing the role she needs him to play right now.

She feels stupidly, deliriously, dangerously alive. Her heart pounds. She doesn’t think about her grief for her mother or her endless doubt and aching sorrow about her son. She doesn’t think about why they’ve started fucking again since they returned to the FBI, or why she didn’t return home once they started fucking. She doesn’t think about what it means or what comes next or what it says about her or him.

She thinks about Mulder, a man who wants her and loves her despite the things she has done that have made it so hard for her to love herself. She thinks about how good it feels to be desired, to desire someone — then she stops thinking about it and just feels it. She is unvarnished and undone, splayed open for him in all the ways a person can be.

This, the two of them together like this, is the only time she has ever been able to shut off the rest of her brain. She feels safe, and whole, and at home in this strange hotel where she’s never been and will never be again.

He is her dark wizard that way.

*

Later, they sit on the bed, their legs spread out and their backs against the headboard, and drink bourbon poured from expensive mini bottles over too-small ice cubes in unimpressive hotel glassware.

She is wearing his t-shirt again, the one she wore on the last case, when his eyes had lit up while talking about monsters and, as soon as his rant was done, had raked appreciatively over her bare legs. They had slept together after that case, a happy and easy thing they did while a no-longer-stray dog scratched at the bedroom door.

She thinks, disjointedly, about her mother's coin and how completely you can think you know someone, only to turn over a new mystery about them when you’re out of time to solve it. She thinks about her mother and her brother, the things big and small that kept them apart from one another for so many years.

“I want to come home,” she says, before she really realizes she’s saying it.

As soon as the words are out of her mouth she regrets it — not because they aren’t true, but because of when she’s said them. Despite his propensity to believe anything, he won’t believe her. He’ll chalk it up to emotion and exhaustion the way she had when he’d told her he loved her after he almost died at sea.

She suppresses her urge to apologize for her admission and watches him consider his response.

“I want that, too,” he says evenly. “But I won’t hold you to anything you say right now, Scully.”

It is the right thing to say to a woman whose mother just died, a woman who is momentarily desperate for some semblance of a family. It is careful of him. He is careful with her lately, the way he was when all this — them— first started. A lot of things feel like they did back then, as they work in the basement and chase monsters and live in separate households and quietly sneak away to bed together now and then. She feels ready to close the circle again.

She thinks of the circle at her back. The circle her mother wore around her neck. The circles her mind will travel to try to understand, before she’ll accept that sometimes your parents aren’t exactly who you want them to be — her mother has always been unassailable to her, but she left behind a son, too, for reasons Dana never really agreed with but never questioned. She’ll have questions her mother will never answer. Her own son will have questions she’ll never answer, questions she’ll probably never even know.

The thoughts leave her off-balance, adrift. But Mulder, despite his eyes being turned ever upward, grounds her.

She wants to tell him that, but she’s not sure how. So she settles for making a promise and deciding to keep it.

“You can hold me to it, Mulder.”

[partytrickparker]

See You Again (Peter Parker x Reader Imagine)

alright so I wrote this fic? This is my first actual piece of fanfiction, so it’s probably super, super crappy, BUT: I was inspired after listening to See You Again by Tyler, the Creator, so I wrote this! Basically, it’s hella angst, and I’m just gonna drop this here,,

Description: Can I get a kiss? And can you make it last forever?

Warnings: Major Character Death Implied, nothing else really,  ANGST THOUGH

Word Count: 1,541

I can only see your face when I close my eyes.

There were many things you expected to see once you drag yourself home from your job, exhausted and covered in french-fry grease. A pile of untouched homework, for instance; a comfy bed you want nothing more to sink into; a desk full of scattered remnants left over from last night’s study session. However, the one thing you could have never foresaw sat in front of you, spinning in your chair, immersed in a book taken off your shelf- and completely oblivious. You cough loudly as Peter’s head whips around to face yours.

“Y/N! You’re back, finally, I’ve been sitting here for ages,” he begins to explain, as his face lights up with the afternoon glow of the city. You lean against the doorway, shooting him an amused look. “Mhm.” “I thought you would never get home, so I came in and waited, but it turned out to be longer than I thought  and I just kind of…. made myself at home?” He offers you a sheepish smile that makes you sigh with exasperation. “I can see that,” you say dryly, before dropping down beside him on the chair, grinning. You reach over to give your boyfriend a peck on the cheek. “Why are you still in your suit? Did you finish patrol early?” You continue to kiss around his face, moving down slowly, all the while leaving a wake of sparks with every press of your lips. “City was quiet today, and Mr.Stark doesn’t need me for training until tomorrow,” he laughs, squirming playfully underneath your assault of smooches. “Well,” you whisper, bringing your forehead to his, “good thing we have all the time in the world.”

His face falls suddenly, prompting you to pull away. Gently putting your hands on his cheeks, you eye him with concern. “Peter? What’s wrong?” He visibly flinches from your touch, and turns his face away. “Y/N… we need to talk,” his voice breaking on your name, looking everywhere but you, his face more distraught and miserable than you ever thought possible. You recoil in fear from that face, from that look, from what it might mean. “ Wh- what is it?” you manage to whisper hoarsely, lump in your throat tightening, before clenching your jaw. You can handle this, you are strong, you think, as you steady your voice. “What do you need to say, P?”

 So can I get a kiss?

He turns toward you, looking directly at you with those shattered eyes; almost like someone carefully reached in, and had stolen every wisp of light inside. Your breath catches again at his expression. You’ve never seen Peter like this: not in all your childhood years of being best friends, not when Flash continued to make his life living hell all through middle school, not when Liz moved away, and not when Peter would come into your room after patrol, bruised and sometimes bleeding from fights. No, this expression was new. This makes him look so, so broken, and so, so vulnerable, that if someone were to blow on him, he would disintegrate entirely and float away, without any resistance at all. But you also notice an old steely fire of determination in his dull eyes.

The clench in his jaw tightens further as he stares at you for what seems like lifetimes, somehow leaving you feeling as exposed as he looks.

Then he rushes toward you while you reach for him all at once, as time slows down and speeds up together simultaneously.

And can you make it last forever?

He holds you tighter and closer than he ever has, almost as if you may disappear any moment in front of him. Your lips crash into his all at once, and you forget his broken eyes, his cracking voice, what he needed to say, only thinking Peter, Peter, Peter. You think of his laugh, his smile, the way his eyes soften when they look into yours, and you think nothing of the crumpled Peter of today. You are surrounded by joy, and so much love for this boy, and yet: you also feel this aching dread and sadness that will never be healed. You lean in even deeper, set on sealing this moment shut forever.

The world melts around you, and you blend into his arms, and still: for a kiss that lasts light years, it’s over far too soon. Reality crashes back against the two of you, roughly washing away the joy and safety you had felt. It’s only when you pul away from each other, gasping and hugging like you’ll never let go, that you realize you’re crying. And as you look at him through blurry eyes, you realize, he is too. 

I said I’m about to go to war,

“Y/N, I can’t- I can’t do this to you, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Peter’s voice shakes harder with every word, squeezing his eyes shut. “I can’t, I can’t, I-” He collapses into your arms, and despite being taller, he buries his head deep into your shoulders, murmuring his chant in muffled sobs against your clothes. You stare down at his heaving back, almost choosing to not comprehend what’s unfolding before you. But after a moments hesitation, you wrap your arms around his folded figure, resting your head atop his as you drip tears onto his hair. This is what your Peter would have done.

You stay like this awhile, smoothing his hair, rubbing his back, softly crooning how it will all be okay when it will never be. The entire time, you close your eyes, and let the water fall down your face, never moving your head from his. 

Soon, your eyes have dried, puffy and swollen. You take a deep breath, and glance down at the boy below you. Peter has stopped sobbing, but still remains curled into you. You slowly unwrap yourself and push him off your chest, leading him over to the edge of your bed. Gently kissing his eyelids, one by one, you cup his cheek and gaze into his red eyes. He looks less ruined than before; still miserable and awful, but the newfound strength is clear in his face.  “Pete, I need…” you stop yourself from breaking down again, knowing that showing your scars will further deepen his. “P,” you say, using your childhood nickname for him, “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

And I don’t know if I will see you again.

Morning rays shine into your bedroom window, grazing the tips of your eyelashes as you slowly open your eyes. You find yourself tangled in each other, you resting on his chest, and one arms pulling you in. The room is still and quiet, matching the hollowness one feels after emptying an overflow of emotions to the very last drop.

 That night, Peter had told you everything, beginning with a steady voice full of fire. He told you how his training tomorrow would be for something bigger than neighborhood bike thieves and bank robbers. He told you about the war that was coming for this world, for everyone, the war to end all wars. He told you how much the team needed him- and how much they wish they didn’t. He told you what could happen, this time with looming dread and sorrow. He broke a little, telling you he could die on the battlefield, joining so many others who fought for freedom. He was a wreck when he said that you may never see him again after this endless war, and if you did- he would never quite be the same. 

The two of you cried, heart-wrenching, earth-shattering tears, along with beautiful smiles of hope and promises. Together, you got through it all, whether in sobbing and never letting go, or in laughing through pain with flutters of old memories and joy long ago. The countless whispers of I love you comforted you both; and also left deeper bruises inside with every one.  But now as you kiss Peter goodbye with his mask for what could be the last time, your heart burns a searing, gaping hole in the middle. You will never be this happy again, you feel deep down. Once you pull away once more, the world seems dimmer and darker, less shimmering and good. Nothing seems to matter half as much, or shine half as bright; not your entire world may disappear forever. And yet, you pull on a bright grin, full of false hope as he leaves, calling out empty promises of see you later, and be safe.  I love you, you had said as you pulled down his mask. As if that alone would bring him back to you.

Your heart continues to burn and ache with this unyielding dread once you shut the window and turn towards your empty room- one that knows, deep down, he’ll leave you one more time, and it will hurt. It will hurt much more than a blow to the face, this hole in your heart, than being killed yourself. 

It will leave more than just Peter broken: it will leave you shattered, wrecked, beyond repair, dust drifting away in the wind. 

So can I get a kiss?

[blacknovelist]

A Place to Be - BNHA Fic (Ch. 2)

Yeah, so, I’m still here. But before anyone asks why I took so long, the reason is I decided I wanted to finish writing all the chapters before I updated. Which also means that yes, this fic is technically finished! Except for the epilogue, but let’s call that technicalities and move on. I’ll be posting once a day until it’s finished (I’d like to go over the two last chapters since I only just did ‘em), so it shouldn’t take longer than half a week at this rate. This chapter was hard tho since it’s like, the bridge between the first chapter and the stuff I actually wanted to write? Honestly, I’m still not sure how I feel about the way I wrote Hisashi, haha. In the end, the plot i went with was different from the original plot I mapped out (as fond as I was of it), so I had to make quite a few changes.

This is for all you guys going into the reviews and yelling at me to come back and finish this already. ;D 

Thank you @curiousbluepencil for helping me out with the first draft, and thanks @guardianlioness for being the wonderful enabler you always are with fics and Dad Might (and for reading over this chapter and the next one too, ahaha)

I did make some changes to the first chapter, mostly towards the end, so you should maybe read it first!! If you haven't already, that is.

[AO3] [ffnet]

[Ch. 1] [Ch. 2] [Ch. 3] [Ch. 4] [Epilogue]

Chapter 2: Event Horizon

A point of no return.

It all started with a knock on the door.

Memories of a surprise cleaning inspection from Aizawa sprang to mind, and everyone flew into panic as Toshinori went to answer it. Iida gathered all the dishes and passed them to Uraraka, who lightly hurled them into the sink where Shouji got to work; Sero yanked a stray rubber chicken off one of the light fixtures while Kaminari and Mineta swept up abandoned papers; Tokoyami and Dark Shadow quickly shoved stray chairs back into order at the table; the rest got out of the way and tried to act as natural as possible.

As a result, when the door swung open to reveal a rather unassuming and unfamiliar man rather than their homeroom teacher, the only thing approaching out of place in the dorm was the duo sitting upside-down on the couches playing video games.

“Why, good afternoon!” The stranger beamed. He bowed, almost too deep for his casual greeting. “I, ah, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Midoriya Hisashi. My son is a student here, and since I’m back in Japan for a bit I thought I should drop by, maybe take a look at the school while I’m at it. I was told he is living here right now?”

Toshinori did an admirable job of repressing his own shock and covering the way Class 1-A collectively froze by returning the bow and replying, in entirely too loud and exuberant a voice, “Hello, Midoriya-san!” Stepping towards his students to allow the man in, he eyed the jacket slung over Hisashi’s arm and the papers sticking out of the pocket. “My name is To- ahem, Yagi Toshinori. You likely knew me as All Might previously but please, call me Yagi. It’s nice to meet you as well.”

“Thank you, Yagi-san.” The smile on Hisashi’s face didn’t change as he came in, shed his shoes, and bowed again. “I apologize for my sudden appearance today, but I was hoping to be a surprise and to perhaps learn a little bit more about what my son’s life at UA is like. I hope that isn’t a problem.”

“Not at all!”

The class shared a look. Towards the back of the room, Kirishima and Iida barely managed to catch Izuku before his legs gave out completely.

Izuku wasn’t really sure how he was supposed to feel about all this.

Lgoically, he knew he should feel something. Anger, maybe, or sadness. Possibly even joy? But as the man claiming to be his father bustled towards him, all he could really muster was unease, confusion, and a deep instinctive wariness honed through a single year of hero training. The “why?"s and "what for?"s piled up, the cumulation of years spent wondering and wondering and wondering. He struggled to breathe normally past the thud of his heart in his throat, and his head felt like it was going to burst.

But there were no tears as Hisashi came to him, no heartfelt reunion hugs, no heavy explanations and promises to try better - there’s just two hands on his shoulders, a brief hug, a glance at his face and a strategic turn to his classmates.

"I’m only here for the afternoon, I’m afraid. It’s not much, but it should ample time to get to know about the school life,” he’d said earlier, a knowing smile on his face. “I’ll give you some time. Don’t worry, my son. Go.”

Izuku was all too ready to take the escape offered and stay out of the way for as long as he could. His friends and Toshinori ‘distracted’ Hisashi until he was ready to come out, and he made a note to treat them later as thanks.

Still, this was something he’d been waiting years for, and Izuku was nothing if not opportunistic when he wanted to be. So, the time not spent thinking was used watching as the man hovered over shoulders like it was his sworn duty, and slowly but surely Izuku’s mental notebook filled with details about his father that he hadn’t gotten from his mother before.

A handful of things Izuku matched up with his own, like the way Hisashi mumbled observations and ideas, fiddled with his hands, had the faintest collection of freckles over his nose, and liked holding his bottom lip whenever deep in thought. A few traits were entirely Hisashi’s own, like the fact that he seemed to have no filter but enough tact to either stop talking or apologize, liked jogging or biking in his free time, and was blindingly good at talking to people.

While interesting, it didn’t really help Izuku get to know his father as a person. Hisashi was a silver tongue - though he seemed to get along with most of the class, questions about his job or hobbies were answered vaguely (what was so special about “fiddle names”? They’d probably never know), and he refused to elaborate on his vanishing act past “business trips”. The deeper questions piled up in Izuku’s head were given the promise of “in private” and “I’ll explain later”, when Izuku finally got the chance to talk to him about it. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought the man had only been gone a few months or a couple years.

“Maybe he isn’t sure how to deal with the fact that he’s here now, so he’s acting like nothing’s changed,” Kaminari suggested after overhearing Izuku’s thoughts. He’d made his escape from Hisashi’s endless curiosity when the man had been distracted by Sato. “I’m pretty sure it’s a psychology thing. He’ll talk to you properly and figure it out eventually.”

“I hope he figures it out soon, because the fact that he keeps talking to us instead of you is getting kind of awkward,” Jirou said, frowning. “ Kouda disappeared the moment your dad turned his way. Bakugou and Todoroki have this look on their faces. Everyone knows why Bakugou’s like that, but nobody wants to find out why Todoroki of all people looks like that too. I don’t know how much more we can take of this.”

The end result was that, by the time Toshinori ushered them towards the gym to meet with Aizawa again, all they knew about Midoriya Hisashi was that he liked ramen, jumped from subject to subject like a gold medalist, and a half dozen other arbitrary details no one knew what to do with. Izuku couldn’t help glancing back at him as they walked, mind still swirling with everything he hadn’t been able to ask earlier.

He wondered if he really wanted to know the answers anymore.

Three hours, six explanations and two-and-a-half battlefield shouting matches later, class 1-A finally dragged themselves back out into the world. Though Aizawa had left them under Toshinori’s supervision an hour ago to finish “important” paperwork, the constant questions and requests for demonstrations lobbed at them had kept them until the sun streaked the clouds and sky a myriad of dusty dark blues and rapidly fading orange-pinks.

“That was incredibly enlightening,” Hisashi said, appearing just as chipper as when he walked through the heights alliance doors earlier. His lips curled into a grin like he’d solved some incredible puzzle that had been plaguing him the whole week.

He lingered towards the back with Izuku as Toshinori pushed forwards to check on the others, waited as the teacher passed his son with a silent question and a bobbed head, and stepped closer.

“Izuku.” Hisashi watched as Izuku leapt a foot into the air, delirious training mumbles interrupted, and couldn’t hide his chuckles. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. But I was wondering if I could talk to you before we head back.”

Izuku hesitated, tried and failed to ignore the sweat seeping into his shirt, the dull burn of a long workout in his bones, the hesitation. “Not right now. It shouldn’t take long to go back and change,” he said in lieu of the no on his tongue. “Let me run back with everyone to drop my stuff off.”

“I won’t keep you forever. It’s already late, I need to get going soon.”

“Can you just tell me on the way instead? I’d rather not stay in these clothes any longer than I have to.”

“It’s important, yes, but it’s also private,” Hisashi said, a frown making itself known. When he took a step, Izuku matched it with two more. “Come on, my son. I promise it won’t take long at all.”

Neither noticed that they’d stopped walking, that the rest of them were waiting and watching.

“Well, I-”

“Midoriya-san,” Iida spoke up. “I personally assure you it won’t take long at all for us to return to the dorms and make ourselves more presentable, and none of us would dare think of invading your privacy by listening in on your conversation if you chose to speak to him on our way. If you have any concerns you need to share with your son, please don’t let us be in your way!”

Jirou coughed, and nodded.

Uraraka gave a light laugh. “Besides, I bet Deku’s feeling as dead on his feet as we are!”

Hisashi’s frown deepened. “It’s partially my fault for losing track of time, I suppose.” He nodded. “But I’m already pushing my schedule by still being here. I know what a workout feels like, thank you. I’m sure you want to rest and I’m sorry, but this is urgent.”

“Why not come back another day, even just for a bit?” Izuku’s brow furrowed. “If… if it’s that important you tell me this, I mean. I know you’re busy and that’s why you could only spare an afternoon, but I don’t even know if I can stay on my feet for much longer. Better to pay more attention if I need to hear it, right? Or you could call, while you’re still in Japan-”

“It really won’t take so long, and it’s too important for a phone call,” Hisashi bit out. They were all too tired for this back and forth arguing, really. “It can’t wait, so-”

“Hey, you and shitty Deku aren’t the only ones who need to be going somewhere, you know!” Bakugou snarled.

“Curfew will begin soon, and if we need to be out after that with reason, we’re required to stick together,” Todoroki said. A bold-faced lie. “At that point, we wouldn’t really have a choice about privacy. Either tell him on the way, or tell him at the dorms.”

“I don’t have time, and we’re already wasting more of it talking about this.” He stormed forward, and the class surged.

“You’re the one insisting on running off when we could have finished back home already-”

“If you could just reconsider-”

“Midoriya obviously doesn’t want to talk to you right now-”

“You might be his father, but he doesn’t have to go anywhere-”

“Take a hint, you-”

Sparks built up between his teeth, tickling his gums. “He’s my son,” Hisashi snapped. “And I can ask him to talk to me if I want him to, so back off!”

All but one froze at the flames that sprouted from his lips. It chased the dark and chill of night away for only a moment, leaving nothing but moonlight to illuminate the surprised faces of Hisashi Midoriya and Class 1-A.

[shooklynn-blog]

Thrift Shop (Chapter 1)

so this is something I started a while ago (like the actual first fanfic i wrote, i think it’s from the beginning of april) but kind of stopped writing and i’m not sure i like how it turned out very much but I just wanted to put this out there in case anybody ended up liking it, then i’d be happy to write more! i have a chapter 2 totally done and ready, so if you like this, let me know and i’ll put it up and continue to write it (maybe?) but it was just a little thing i wanted to do and, if people like it, it’ll be my first chaptered fic! any feedback is appreciated! oh, it’s also my first AU fic! really hope you enjoy :)

summary (kinda spoilery for the future lol): Dan goes into a thrift shop downtown for the first time and meets the only employee there, a boy named Phil. He makes a fool out of himself and, when cleaning up his mess, talks to Phil. Phil is outgoing and Dan thinks he talks too much and leaves without buying anything, but interactions that take place between them end up giving Phil major self-confidence issues and lead him to develop selective mutism over the year that they’re apart. They meet up again and Dan realizes the effects of his words, and maybe the boy isn’t so bad after all and Dan was all too quick to judge.

au: i wrote this imagining that it took place somewhere in their teenaged years, where they are roughly the same age. also: pastel!Dan and pastel!Phil because i love them so much omg. later there’s gonna be mute!Phil but not in this chapter. 

word count: 1,641

genre: fluff and a little angst

warning: Dan is kind of a jerk lol, rated G for a little bit of gay later

Dan’s POV:

I had no idea why I’d never been to the thrift store downtown. I’d gazed into the windows occasionally before, but it never was a good time to go in. The clothes were tasteful, I’d just never really gone in. I decided that it was time to check the store out, if only to never return again, just so I could say that I went in. Really, it was a cute shop with a nice window display, in an alley just off of the main street.

I walked in and was pleasantly surprised. Unlike most thrift stores, I wasn’t bombarded with the smell of old people and musk, but rather the shop smelled of a sweet cotton candy. Some soft, upbeat music played in the background, a tune I didn’t fully recognize, but that seemed vaguely familiar. I looked around and was frankly shocked by the size of the shop. It was far larger than it had appeared from the outside, filled with seemingly endless racks of clothes. The walls were painted a pastel blue. It was really a beautiful shop.

“Hello! How can I help you?” I heard a voice coming from the back room and turned my head. I jumped a little, not realizing that somebody else was there. It was a boy, a little older than myself, holding boxes of clothes piled almost to his chin. Of course, I assumed they were filled with clothes or something, but it was nearly impossible to tell. I smiled curtly at him and began to sort through one of the racks. It was filled with t-shirts in various sizes, most had been washed so much that the cotton had worn thin. I pulled a faded teal shirt off of its wooden hanger.

“Excuse me, do you have any fitting rooms?” I hated having to bother the clerk, but I really didn’t want to buy the top without knowing if it would fit.

“I’m sorry, we don’t really have one. If you’d like, you could try it on in the back room if you don’t mind all the boxes of donated junk.” I smiled and walked to the small room from where the boy had first emerged. It was small and nearly filled to the ceiling with boxes stacked on top of eachother. There wasn’t a lot of space that I could change in, but I thought it would be rude to walk out after I’d just come in, so I pulled the door shut behind me. I tugged my jumper off and slipped on the t-shirt. It fit pretty nicely and the material was very soft on my skin. I was checking myself out in the mirror when I heard a soft knocking on the door.

“Sorry, I think I left my phone in here,” I opened the door to let the boy in, “Wow! That shirt really suits you. It’s a very nice color. Really brings out your eyes.” I blushed and mumbled thanks while he grabbed his phone and let me be. It wasn’t that I didn’t get complimented, it’s just that a majority of the nice things people said to me came from my relatives or close friends. The opinion of some random thrift shop employee shouldn’t matter so much to me, but I guess sometimes it’s nice to be recognised. Plus, I didn’t really like my eyes. Of all the things anybody could point out, my eyes were generally not the topic of compliments I received. They were plain and brown and boring. They were definitely nothing special.

I tugged the shirt off, apparently a little too excitedly. While I was free from the grip of the teal shirt, pulling it off had cause my elbow to sail into one of the boxes of junk, shoving it away and causing all of the boxes to fall onto me. I groaned. Of course of all things, I’d ruin all of the sorted boxes of donations. The door burst open.

“Oh my, are you alright?” the boy looked down at me, concerned. I laughed half heartedly, “Yeah, I’m great, just, you know, buried in boxes.” He reached his hand out to me and pulled me out of the boxes sitting atop me. At that moment, I realized that I wasn’t wearing a shirt and quickly turned around and looked for my jumper under the boxes. I pulled it over my head and over my torso to cover myself up. My face was flushed, I’d messed up pretty badly.

“I’m really sorry, I’ll help you get everything cleaned up. I’m such a clutz,” I sighed, bending down to put stuff back in the boxes. The boy giggled, “It’s fine, I can clean up here. We don’t get many customers anyhow, now I’ll have something to do for the rest of the day.” I felt so bad for him. It didn’t seem like there were any other workers to help him. It was my mess, it was only fair if I helped him clean up.

“Really, I insist. I’ll be here to help you keep company. I owe you one, I should’ve kept better track of my elbow.” There was that giggle again, the boy’s tongue poking out a little as he smiled at me. It was clear that he was the exact opposite of me, at least personality wise. He seemed very friendly and outgoing, whilst I tended to recoil at the idea of any social interaction. He sure did like to laugh, and, while I was pretty sure he was laughing with me, I still couldn’t help but feel that he was teasing me for knocking everything down. I felt really bad for having inconvenienced him, but he didn’t have to try and make conversation while trying to repack boxes. I just wanted to help him and go.

“So, do you always pull your shirt off so violently?” Did he just wink at me? Maybe he just blinked. Was I seeing things? This boy did love to talk. He told me stories about his mum, who had taken a photo where her hand looked like a claw, and joked about her being a lobster. He said that he worked in the shop every day because his mum owned the place and paid him to help keep it running. While the way he babbled on was undeniably adorable, I didn’t come to the shop to hear his life story. Still, I couldn’t be rude and ask him to shut up, so I just grinned and nodded while he continued to chat. I felt very bad about knocking all of the boxes over, after all. Slowly but steadily, we managed to return everything to its proper box.

“Thanks for helping. This would have taken ages if I were alone. We make a good team, huh?” the boy gave me a small smile. I grinned tightly back at him. I was ready to go back to the safety of my bed where I wouldn’t have to face the social humiliation I had to when I inevitably messed something up because I was a clutz. Honestly, I’d have rather been anywhere else other than that stupid shop with that extroverted employee trying to converse with me.

“Yeah, we sure did make a good team. See you round then,” I made a beeline for the door, not leaving quick enough to avoid seeing the boy’s face fall as I quickly escaped from the shop. Thank god that was over. As I looked back in one last time, I saw the boy sitting at the checkout, looking sadly down at the register. What was his problem? I was just a customer, I was sure he saw loads, right? It wasn’t my job to babysit him while he worked.

Phil’s POV:

What did I do to scare him away? I thought I’d acted more than friendly towards the curly-headed customer. I’d shared some funny anecdotes with him and tried to engage with him. He seemed like a nice guy, a bit reserved, yeah, but he did stay back to help pack up the boxes after he’d knocked them down. I just didn’t understand why he left so abruptly, like he couldn’t even face me. Had I done something wrong?

I knew it was silly, but it got lonely in the shop. We hardly saw any customers at all in the shop, and those we see are usually old people or those donating. I rarely saw anybody my age in and, well, it was nice that the boy made me feel a little less alone. Of course, it was silly. He'd just been shopping downtown and I was just another employee. He stayed back because he was polite. That’s all. I just wish he could have stayed. I couldn’t help but wonder what his life was like, as I’d shared so many parts of mine with him. All things considered, he hardly shared anything at all with me, and I talked most of the time.

I hated how I’d just shoot off at the mouth. That was probably it. That’s why most people tended to avoid me. I was just too clingy and easily attached. I read too much into things. He thought I was gross and obnoxious and arrogant because I talked too much. That made sense. I just wanted to make him feel comfortable, you know? Not everybody was as outgoing as me, and some people just weren’t comfortable sharing their life with a stranger. Oh god. I must have seemed so strange. Why am I so stupid? Of course he didn’t care about my life. He was just polite. Just polite, nothing else. That’s why he stayed. That’s why he smiled and talked a bit with me and left. I just wanted someone to care about me. I just wanted a friend.

[ultcharge-archive]

heya gang i mentioned being a writerman on my about so i wrote a small chapter for the shimada brothers week run by @supershimadabros-inc ....i didn't see anyone else posting in the tag and a non-*ncest week for siblings is pretty cool. the prompt was 'dark days', and i came up with an au (i think i saw it on tumblr before it was pretty interesting) last week......okay that's enough, proper summary and fic under the cut: 

AU in which the Dragons that guard the Shimadas only do so for a price of a decade-annual sacrifice. And it just so happens that Genji is this generation’s lucky kid. 

The old bell reflected the sun as it sunk below the horizon of the city. It shone golden light onto the wooden floor, and onto Hanzo, where he sat on his knees, attempting to clear his mind of all thoughts. He focused on the cool summer air, breathing in and out in time to his counting. He listened to the birds flying through the courtyard, chirping and flapping their wings, flying from trees to the perches of the house. He traced the outlines on the bell with his eyes, each carving and coil as it twisted and turned, each detail on the dragons’ bodies. Hanzo had the same designs on his arm. He knew their design like it was a part of him. The ink felt heavy on his body as he sat, meditating, and trying not to think of what was yet to come. 

It had to happen tonight. He had been told of it weeks in advance, his grandparents and mother leading him into their meeting room after he was supposed to be asleep. They’d explained it all to him, and answered nearly all his questions, except for one: why? Why would he be the one to do it? Why could it not have been his father, or any of his family instead? Why would the Dragon demand such a thing of them? He had always been told it would protect him, and his whole family for the centuries to come. All they had to do was keep it pleased. Hanzo hadn’t known what that meant until he’d been told last month, and now he wished he hadn’t known at all. But there was no backing away from this. He had to be the one to make the sacrifice. 

He had tried to stay away from Genji since he’d woken up this morning, dread and fear filling every inch of his body. He’d spoken only a few words to him when he ate, and had avoided him during training completely. His behaviour shouldn’t have been suspicious to Genji; they’d been disagreeing on more and more things more often, and Hanzo could feel the distance between themselves growing. All that piled atop of what he knew he had to do had been making him feel terrible. The knowing looks his grandparents gave him as he walked through the house today made him feel sick. They did not speak with him either. It had been a silent day. Nearly everyone knew what was to happen. Everyone except for Genji, of whom Hanzo had noticed looking confused for most of the day. He couldn’t tell him. It would just make the task harder to complete.

Hanzo had felt the day coming for a few weeks, now. The dragons that attached themselves to him had been growing weak, disappearing for hours, and becoming unable to use their full power. He knew it was because their master was weak, and would not be sated until it was given what it needed. Hanzo’s family had warned him of completing his task on time, or else all of the dragons attached to each of them would return to their master. There was no telling if they’d come back, or what would happen to the family if the sacrifice was not made. The dragon had guarded their family for centuries, and it had always been given what it needed every ten years. A small price to pay for endless strength and guidance, his grandmother had noted. Where would we be without it?, she’d asked Hanzo. He hadn’t replied.

He’d practiced with his sword for a few hours in training, when Genji was nowhere in sight. Every slice he made into the thin air felt worse, and every step he took made him feel sick. This would be how he would kill him. He wouldn’t make it last longer than it needed to. There would be no fighting. Hanzo hoped it would be over quickly. He couldn’t stand thinking about what he was doing for more than a minute at a time. Even though his life and training had never been perceived as normal, no man should ever have to practice killing his brother. He tried to pretend as if he was practicing for a fight, in which he’d slay his enemies one by one, and return home without any change. It made the training easier, but the thought that the scenario was fake remained in his head. When he had finished, he’d left for his room, and hadn’t come back out until an hour ago. 

The weather was becoming colder as Hanzo stayed sitting by the bell. Sunlight had not yet faded from the sky, and a weak golden glow was still reflecting from the bell. He was alone in the courtyard, his sword lying in front of him, his hair out of its tie and tucked behind his ears. The loose clothing he wore covered his whole body, keeping him from shivering in the summer evening cold. And yet, while he tried to meditate and think about anything other than what had to be done, he could not take his mind away from it. He was going to kill his brother. He had to. It wasn’t a choice. He couldn’t have said no. He couldn’t have refused and saved him, disregarding years of honour and loyalty to his family. It was his duty to them, and to the Dragon. 

The carvings on the gold bell seemed to swim before Hanzo’s eyes. “I am afraid,” he confessed in a whisper, checking to see if anyone had come into the courtyard, and could hear him confessing weakness to the bell. “I know you are weak, and I promise you will not be for any longer…not for much longer…but I am not ready for this.”

The dragons carved into the bell did not reply. All was quiet, the birds even silent in the distance. Hanzo looked at his sword that lay at his feet. It was a gorgeous katana, the blue silver handle shining beautifully in the sunset. Hanzo always cleaned it after a fight so that blood would not stain the blade. He made sure that it always looked presentable and threatening, so that his enemies would not assume he was an untrained killer. Just looking at the clean blade made his stomach turn. 

“Why?” Hanzo asked the dragon bell. “Why do you want to take him? He is still young, still has hope….why couldn’t you have wanted me, instead?” He was met with silence once more. “Why do you want for me to do this?” Hanzo bit down on his lip, so hard he felt a small taste of metal. This would not unravel him any more than it already had, he told himself. He would not let the guilt and the fear destroy him, destroy his exterior. He had to do this. It wasn’t a choice. He was not to question it. Hanzo returned to his silence. The summer air was cold, and the courtyard was fully silent. He closed his eyes. 

Hanzo lost track of the time. He did not move for a long time, afraid of what he had to do once he did. He didn’t even notice the footsteps behind him. “You’re out here?” Genji’s voice asked, and Hanzo’s eyes opened. There was his brother, standing above him, staring in confusion. “I was looking for you.” Hanzo didn’t say anything. He tore his eyes away from him, staring back at the dragons carved into the bell. “Did I interrupt something?” Genji asked quietly. “No,” Hanzo replied, lying. “I was only about to come inside.”

“It’s not really that late. You don’t have to leave just because I interrupted you.” The sun was finally fading behind the horizon. The glow had stopped shining from the bell. Darkness was falling over the courtyard. The handle of Hanzo’s sword glimmered in the last fading light. He could feel the weight on his arm sinking into his skin, almost tearing into him, as if a reminder. “It’s alright. We’ll walk back together.” Hanzo said. He stood, picking up the sword and holding it in his hand. 

“I saw the sunset as I was walking over,” Genji said, looking into the sky behind the two. “It was nice. There hasn’t been one that pretty since all the storms last week.”

“Colours are always better than grey.” Hanzo agreed. He hadn’t gotten the chance to look at the sky behind him while he was meditating. 

As the two walked back from the courtyard, Hanzo tried to memorize what his brother’s face looked like. He tried to memorize the sound of his voice, the way he looked around as they walked, the colour of his eyes. They would not return to the house together. The time had come for the Dragon’s sacrifice to be made. It was too late to say anything, too late to abandon all honour and run away. The sword was so heavy in Hanzo’s hand. He tried to remember the steps he’d practiced that afternoon, slashing and stabbing at air. And he tried to focus on the evening around them, these last few minutes before the Dragon would return to its full strength, and Genji would be gone forever. Hanzo’s mind was so full of all these things, he couldn’t hear a thing Genji was saying to him. It didn’t matter, anyway. He didn’t need to hear it.

As Hanzo returned to the house, the night had turned dark. The first face to greet him as he approached the doorway was his mother, concern in her eyes, her lips pursed and hands folded.

“The Dragon is sated.” Hanzo said, holding the handle of his bloodied sword in his hand. His mother nodded, and went inside the house. Hanzo’s tattooed arm was no longer hurting, and he could feel his dragons still with him. He listened to the empty sounds of the night, biting down on his lip, drawing blood once more. His family would be safe for another ten years. He would be safe and protected by the Dragon for the rest of his life. It was a small price to pay for so much in return.

But Hanzo no longer knew if that price was so small and important anymore.