#the first time i tried to copy-paste the words the whole screen glitched

[piratekane]

one month.

It’s Ava who insists on a dinner schedule, citing the need for sharing responsibilities evenly. Beatrice is fine cooking. She finds the rote motion of the knife relaxing, the way the blade rocks back and forth as it dices onions and chops carrots. It gives her a way to clear her mind after a particularly grueling day of classes.

After a month of Beatrice cooking and a few nights where Ava convinces her to try new restaurants, ones she wouldn’t usually explore, Ava comes home from class and declares that Beatrice needs to teach her how to cook.

She would be annoyed that she’s being interrupted in the middle of watching a supplementary video on Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, but the movie itself was problematic. That and Ava has on a top with a polar bear wearing a pair of star sunglasses that she’s cut the bottom off of, so she gets distracted just long enough for Ava to capitalize on her silence.

“Think about it. You teach me to cook, I make us delicious foods.” Ava beams. “Win-win situation, right?”

Beatrice swallows, then frowns. “You don’t know how to cook?”

Ava drops her backpack down near the door, half in front of it so that if they needed to exit in case of an emergency, Beatrice would trip over the bag. She thinks about telling her to fix it. But Ava is already moving on, dropping her shoes just far enough from the shoe rack that they’re a nuisance if she tries to vacuum. Beatrice can’t find it in herself to be annoyed by either of these things.

It’s unchecked chaos in the world of order she’s created for herself, but Beatrice finds that her care for it is relaxing slightly. She still empties the sink at the end of the night, still adjusts the blankets on the couch after Ava has wandered off sleepily to bed, still piles up the recycling to take down in the next morning. She just also finds herself letting a pillow stay out of place overnight, or letting her coat drape over the back of the couch for a few hours before she hangs it up.

Ava doesn’t round the couch all the way before she’s dropping onto the cushion, using the arm of it as a slide down. Beatrice watches the way her legs and arms twist into complicated shapes before she finds a position she likes. Her shirt rides up just slightly. Beatrice’s finger skips on the play button and the video comes back to life before she pauses it again.

“I mean, no,” Ava admits. “There weren't a lot of opportunities for me to try.”

Right, Beatrice thinks. Ava had to fend for herself in ways that were different from Beatrice. 

“I think I could be really good. I have a good palette.”

Beatrice falters for a second. Last week, Ava thought mixing sugared marshmallow ducks and soda was a good idea. The thought of it made Beatrice’s stomach turn.

Ava must see her hesitation. “Okay, I could be good at it with a good teacher. And I think you’d be a great one.”

Beatrice feels herself blush. “I doubt it.”

Ava is already shaking her head like she knows what Beatrice was going to say. “No, I think you would be. You’re patient - more patient with me than anyone I’ve ever met, and I know I’m frustrating.” There’s a slight self-deprecating smile on her face that Beatrice wants to wipe away. “If anyone is going to be able to tolerate the thousand questions I have, it’s you.”

There’s something about knowing what Ava thinks about her that makes Beatrice feel like she’s doing something right. That makes her feel warm in a way she’s never felt before. It’s curious how quickly this feeling has rushed over her and taken up every corner of space in her mind. She can’t put words to it, her vocabulary suddenly shrinking in the face of Ava’s smile.

“I suppose…” she starts slowly.

Ava’s smile is quicker. “Yes!” She sits forward, elbows digging into her jean-clad knees. “Where do we start? Beef Bourguignon? Coq au Vin? Lobster Thermidor? Ratatouille? I really liked that movie.”

Beatrice shakes her head, her smile soft. “No. I don’t think I could even make most of that. Why don’t we start with something simple?”

Ava looks slightly let down, but shrugs off whatever conversation she’s having in her head. “Fine. We’ll work up to the Julia Child recipes.”

“How kind of you.”

“How about we make your favorite food instead?” Ava stands up and makes the slow walk across the apartment to where Beatrice is sitting, her laptop and notebook taking up most of the counter. Ava sinks into the seat next to her, her knee nearly touching Beatrice’s outer thigh. She drops her chin into her hand, propped up in the empty space. “What is it?”

Beatrice blinks. “My favorite food?”

Ava picks up her pen and idly doodles on an envelope she unearths from the small pile of mail Beatrice has been stacking up. Bills to pay. Beatrice watches her sketch out a flower with a wide stalk. “Yeah, your favorite food. We can do that.”

Her favorite food. She pauses a moment. What is her favorite food? What is the one thing she would pick every time?

The first thing that comes to mind is Marie, one of her family’s personal chefs. Beatrice can picture her in their large, sterile kitchen, a chef’s coat with her name stitched on the breast. She hadn’t minded Beatrice being in the kitchen like Tilda had, hadn’t chased her out like Jaques. She had poured Beatrice a cup of tea and asked about her day. It was a reprieve from the long silences that filled every other space in the house.

Beatrice had learned the difference between onions and shallots sitting on that kitchen table. She had tested the weight of different knives, something she was sure no other ten-year-old had ever done. Marie talked to her about the balance of salt and heat and acid. She let Beatrice peel potatoes, scrub carrots, prune the first layer of leaves on brussel sprouts. She taught Beatrice how to make her first knife cut and the importance of even dicing.

Beatrice carried those skills with her long after Marie was dismissed by her family. At twelve, it had felt like the end of the world. Her replacement, a brusque Russian man named Turov, hadn’t cared much for her presence and Beatrice didn’t care much for his okroshka. She stayed out of the kitchen after that.

Ava waits for an answer patiently - always patient, even as Beatrice stretches out silences as she struggles to find words no one has ever asked her for before now.

Beatrice thinks of Marie, thinks of sizzling pans and layered sauces and opens her mouth.

“Stir-fry.”

“Stir-fry,” Ava echoes. “You haven’t made that before.”

No, she supposes she hasn’t. “My family’s chef-” She stops herself. Ava doesn’t want to know her complicated history with her family’s chefs. 

But Ava nods encouragingly.

Beatrice takes a breath. “My family’s chef when I was younger. Her name was Marie. She taught me how to make stir-fry. Of course, she didn’t serve it to my parents. It was a meal for us.” She smiles a little, thinking about the way Marie would plate the dish for her - just like it was a five-star restaurant. “But I loved it.”

Ava's hand flutters in the air like she might reach out and touch Beatrice’s. Her stomach tightens at the thought. But then Ava merely pulls it into her lap and smiles.

“Do we need to go grocery shopping?”

“We’re doing this now?”

Ava looks at the clock on the microwave. “I’m starving.”

Beatrice can’t help but laugh. “It’s mid-afternoon.”

“Can’t we have a snack? I had a long day.”

She laughs again. “Ava, you had one class today.”

Ava pushes out her bottom lip miserably. “But it was with Soro and he’s a tyrant.”

Beatrice is already starting to stack her things into neat piles. “He teaches world literature. He’s hardly a tyrant.”

“He’s, like, a low-key tyrant. Not as bad as Sumbal, last semester. But still up there.” Ava hands Beatrice a highlighter.

“I never had Sumbal.”

Ava groans. “You’re lucky. He once took points off because I cited something from this century as a reference.” She passes Beatrice a stack of sticky notes and Beatrice takes them, tucking them carefully into her pencil pouch for later. “The point is, Soro was boring, I’m hungry, and you need a break from studying.”

Beatrice can’t help but be amused. Ava exaggerates, but in a way that she doesn’t find annoying. Just in simple ways. And usually to get what she wants. Beatrice finds, no matter how short of a time they’ve known each other, she wants to give what Ava is asking for. But then she’s never had a best friend like Ava before, someone who always seems to know her limits and stops just short of them, who only ever asks what she’s willing to give. 

And besides, she’s right; it is an important life skill.

So Bea puts away her study materials, despite only being an hour into a self-imposed two hour session. She’s already mentally calculating what they have in their refrigerator.

“We have things here, I think. Stir-fry is versatile. You can make it out of most anything.” Beatrice stacks her things against the wall, over the mail. “We should have some staples.”

“Do we have baby corn?” Ava asks hopefully. “They’re funny-looking.”

Beatrice opens one of the cabinets where they keep canned items. She pulls down one of them. “Baby corn.” She has to shuffle a few more around, until she finds the sliced water chestnuts too.

Ava jumps off her seat, pulling open the refrigerator. “What do we need from here?”

She focuses on finding the things she needs for the sauce. “Check the vegetable drawer. Pick whatever you’d like.”

While she collects the soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, oyster sauce and sesame oil, she listens to Ava hum something she doesn’t recognize. She likes the way it fills the silence - not that it’s an awkward one, the way it was with Gina. Speaking with Gina had always felt like a chore, and Beatrice did it the way she did all her chores: efficiently and with relief when it was over. Silence with Ava feels nice. Comforting, even. Knowing she doesn’t always have to be on in order to be interesting is relieving and addicting.

The vegetable drawer must have had more in it than Beatrice thought. Ava has onions, carrots, a bell pepper, broccoli, and sugar peas stacked on the counter. She grins at Beatrice.

“This enough?”

“More than.” She starts taking down bowls and pulls a wok out from the bottom shelf. Ava already has a cutting board out by the time she stands up. “Protein?”

Ava opens the refrigerator again. “Does chicken work?”

She was saving the chicken for baked chicken tonight, but that’s fine. She busies herself with opening the knife drawer and looking at the two chef’s knives she has. She wants a sharp blade, any chef’s best tool.

Beatrice carefully places the knife on the edge of the cutting board, blade angled away from Ava. It’s not that she doesn’t want to teach Ava; it’s just that last night Ava dropped a slice of bread from her hand and she tried to catch it with her foot. It’s just that a butter knife fell off the counter three days ago and Ava caught the blade in her hand.

Ava is, in a word, clumsy. 

In two words, she’s charmingly clumsy.

Ava seems to read her mind. She stills her whole body - Beatrice hardly noticed the way she was vibrating with excitement, so used to Ava’s normal state - and takes a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

“Have you handled a chef’s knife?”

“Nope.” Ava pops the p. “But I’m a quick learner.”

She is. She mastered rock climbing almost before anyone else. And she catalogs everything Beatrice tells her with lightning speed, repeating it back to her days later. But facts on religious artifacts can’t send you to the hospital. 

Rock climbing can, she reminds herself. And Ava did that okay.

“Fine.” Beatrice starts to roll up her sleeves. “First things first. Wash your-”

“Hands,” Ava finishes. She’s already turning on the water. “Happy birthday to you,” she sings quietly under her breath as she scrubs. When she finishes a second round of it, she smiles brightly as she turns to face Beatrice. “Next?”

Beatrice hands her a mixing bowl. “We’re going to make our sauce.”

She walks Ava through combining the different ingredients, hiding a wince when she adds a little too much soy sauce and correcting it by giving her a touch more sugar to mix in. Ava’s forearm muscles flex as she whisks the sauces together in sharp, quick, circular motions. Beatrice watches the way she moves. She is a quick learner, her hands adjusting to grip the bowl and wrapping around the whisk.

There’s something about Ava’s hands that Beatrice can never look away from. They move almost restlessly, always reaching out to touch something, to feel different things under the pads of her fingertips. She knows what Ava has told her. About the years where people touched her and she remained unable to do the same. She seems to be making up for lost time, Beatrice thinks. Ava’s always running her hands over the pillows on the couch, running her fingers around the handles of coffee mugs, twirling pens between her knuckles.

She’s always reaching and feeling and one day, Beatrice was struck with the strangest thought: what might happen if Ava reached out to touch her?

The thought had put a pause on the world. It was something she had never thought about before. Her friends touched her. Camila loved hugs hello and goodbye. Shannon always brushed a hand against her shoulder. Mary was known to give her an affectionate pat on the head every once in a while. Even Lilith, despite the look on her face whenever anyone seemed to get within five inches of her, was known to give a hug or two under dire circumstances. 

But Beatrice went so long without any kind of physical interaction that she had to learn what it felt like to have someone’s arms on her shoulders, someone’s arms around her body. She had to learn to be comfortable with the bottom of Camila’s feet pressed to her thigh during movie nights. She had to learn to be comfortable with Lilith falling asleep on her shoulder during all-nighters.

She had to spend all her time learning to accept physical affection that she never quite put a lot of thought into giving it. 

But watching Ava give it so freely - returning Camila’s hugs, knocking shoulders with Shannon and elbows with Mary, and the one time she pulled Lilith into a hug with the sole intention of, Ava’s words, unsettling her - Beatrice wondered what it might be like to give the same way.

And Ava. She wondered what it might be like to give it to Ava.

Ava didn’t touch her as easily as she seemed to touch everyone else. She reached out and always seemed to stop herself. Beatrice wondered what that meant. Did Ava not want to touch her? Was there something wrong with her? Did Ava see the same things in her that her parents saw? It’s a small voice, a whisper, but whispers always seem loud in empty corners of rooms.

The rooms aren’t as empty now, aren’t as quiet. Whispers aren’t as loud any more. Ava seems to fill the spaces more easily than Beatrice ever did. 

And so she tries to make herself be someone Ava might want to reach out to.

Ava puts down the bowl with a smile. “Sauce, mixed.”

Beatrice nods towards the cutting board. “Then the vegetables.”

Ava frowns. “Not the chicken?”

“Protein last, unless you plan on using multiple cutting boards. And since you used our second one for your chemistry class experiment-”

Ava winces. “Yeah. I’m going to replace that,” she says, just like she said last week and the week before that one. She smiles again. “So, protein last. Vegetables first.” She picks up the carrots and reaches for the knife.

Beatrice stops her, a hand hovering out in front of her. “There’s knife safety we need to talk about.”

She thinks for a moment that Ava will be annoyed with her. Knife safety doesn’t have an adventurous ring to it. It sounds boring, technical. But Marie taught her the importance of knowing a tool and the dangers it carries.

Ava pulls her hand back, clasping them gently in front of her. She smiles patiently. “Go ahead.”

Beatrice blinks back her surprise. “Oh. Okay.” She clears her throat. “The first rule of knives is that they can cause serious injury if not used properly. Knives should be kept sharp enough to cut through a piece of paper - they’ll cut through your skin just as easily.” She scales it back a little bit, dulling the tone in her voice but Ava’s smile hasn’t flickered. “We’re always going to cut away from ourselves, not towards.”

“Do I need to write this down?” Ava looks serious, like she’s taking in every word Beatrice says.

“No. No, I’ll remind you as we go.”

Relief uncoils Ava’s shoulders. “Good. I was worried there was going to be a test, or something.” She says it without malice, like a joke that Beatrice is in on.

Beatrice smiles a little before she remembers one of the most important parts of knife safety. “Never, never catch a falling knife. Not with your hand or with your foot. We can clean a knife off. We cannot put stitches in your hand or your foot.”

Ava’s cheeks flush. “One time.”

“Twice,” Beatrice reminds her. “So, if the knife slips, just let it.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Ava bounces, some of that frenetic energy back. “What else?”

“Always make sure your cutting board is on a flat, even surface so that it - or your knife - doesn’t slide.” Beatrice gestures at the cutting board on the counter. “Make sure nothing is under it.”

Ava waits in the silence for a moment before she blinks expectantly. “Is that it?”

Beatrice thinks for a moment. “For now, yes.”

“Great. Let’s get started.” She rocks forward, hands a little slower as they reach for the knife. She looks at Beatrice, waiting for a nod before she picks up the chef’s knife. She taps the blade experimentally against the cutting board.

“You can start with the carrots,” Beatrice suggests. “You don’t need to dice them.” She leans against the counter and watches as Ava examines a carrot critically, before she puts it down on the cutting board and grips it, fingertips out, as she raises the knife.

Beatrice shoots forward, hand curling tightly around Ava’s fingers on the knife, careful to hold on so Ava doesn’t drop it in surprise. “Not like that,” she murmurs. Her body follows her arm, putting her close enough to Ava to breathe in the slight tang of the pineapple shampoo she bought by accident.

Ava turns, eyes wide. “Sorry.”

“You’ll cut your fingers off,” Beatrice continues quietly. She carefully lowers Ava’s hand back down to the cutting board. “You need to-” She squeezes Ava’s hand once until it loosens under her palm. She feels the tension radiating through Ava’s arm slacken. “You need to curl your fingers in.”

Ava blinks at her. “I need to what?”

Beatrice lets go of Ava’s knife hand, placing it down gently. “Hold on. Can I-”

Ava shifts slightly, opening up her side. “Yes.”

Beatrice nods shortly and steps in, her hand settling around the one holding the carrot. Her fingertips press back against Ava’s fingernails until they curl back and it’s the flat of her knuckles showing. “Like this. Curl your fingers in or you’ll cut them off.”

She doesn’t realize she’s holding Ava’s hand in her own until Ava turns her head and they’re a whisper apart from each other. She nearly lets go, but Ava is staring at her and waiting for her next instruction. Beatrice swallows heavily. Ava’s hand flexes in hers, the carrot under it scratching against the cutting board.

This is what it feels like to touch Ava. To feel the warmth of her skin against the palm of her hand. Beatrice can feel the ridges of her knuckles, the sharp bone under her callouses. It’s warmer than she thought it might be. Drier. She can feel her own palm growing hot in return and she nearly pulls away, afraid of catching fire.

Ava only meets her eyes, tips her head to one side, and smiles. “Like this?”

She has to clear her throat twice and then gives in, just nodding.

Ava doesn’t pull away. She leaves Beatrice’s hand where it is as she readjusts her grip on the carrot, holding it as steadily as possible between her fingers while the flats of their knuckles face out. She looks at Beatrice and waits for another nod before she picks up the knife. She pauses, looking expectantly at Beatrice.

Beatrice doesn’t understand. She looks back, unsure of what to say. The circuitry between her brain and the rest of her body is flickering in and out. And Ava is waiting so patiently, asking a silent question that Beatrice can’t understand. She nearly scowls; she’s behind something she can’t define and she doesn’t like it.

“Help me?” Ava finally asks.

“Oh.” Beatrice’s free hand twitches and Ava nods encouragingly as she extends it, reaching across Ava until her hand is wrapping around Ava’s knife hand.

She stands here, both arms stretched across Ava’s body in a slightly odd angle and thinks: Oh.

Her heart starts to beat, loud enough that she’s sure Ava can hear it, and her cheeks flush. Oh, this is what it feels like to touch someone and want to set the world on fire. Oh, this is what it feels like to want more of something so desperately, she’d be willing to stay stuck here until it’s taken away from her. Oh, this is what it feels like to be so overwhelmed that her whole world dials down to the places where she stops and Ava begins.

Ava carefully brings the knife down over the carrot and they watch as it slides through it gracefully. She feels the flex of Ava’s hands under hers and thinks oh, oh, oh.

This is love.

Now that she knows what it feels like to touch Ava, the last fraying thread holding back her tidal wave of feelings - ones she’s held dormant - snaps like the core of a carrot as the knife slices into it again. It’s like this was the last line of defense. It comes crashing down the way a house of cards folds. All of the things she’s learned about Ava - the years in the orphanage, the way she dunks her french fries into ketchup and then mayo, the nights she pretends not to cry herself to sleep, the stretch of her smile that matches the way she stretches across the couch - burst forward from a tight knot in Beatrice’s chest and overwhelm her.

Once, she thought she was in love. Once, she had written Mrs. Penelope Marshall, the first girl who broke her heart, in the margins of her notebook while her Latin teacher droned on about derivatives, and Beatrice had thought that it was the best thing she could ever be.

But Ava looks sideways at her and smiles as their hands move together, and Beatrice thinks that if what she felt then was love, there’s no word in any language that can describe what this is now.

“You’re a good teacher,” Ava says, rocking the knife on the cutting board. “I knew it.”

Beatrice inhales, the scent of pineapple in her nose. “You’re a good student.”

Ava preens for a second. “I knew I would be.”

Their hands still. Beatrice doesn’t let go. Now that she knows what it’s like to touch, she never wants to let go. But her palms start to sweat, and she knows that Ava will be able to feel it. She takes a step back, putting an ocean between them again, and nods encouragingly as she tries to keep herself steady.

“You try.”

“Without you?” Ava pouts slightly, but recovers quickly. “Okay. Stand back, chef. Watch me.”

Beatrice watches. She’s always watching. She’s been watching since the moment Ava crashed into her table, spilling the entire contents of her to-go mug onto her notes. She’s been watching since Ava moved the last box into their apartment, declaring herself moved in. She’s been watching and watching and never touching because touch is reserved for the moments that really matter.

Because touch is the last puzzle piece holding her together, but now she doesn’t even have that.

Ava slices another round off the carrot and grins. “Totally easy.” She looks back over her shoulder and winks. “I knew I would- ow!”

Beatrice frowns, blinking at the sudden change in pitch and volume. It takes her a moment to realize that Ava has nicked her finger, and blood is starting to run down it as she holds it up into the air. Beatrice stares at the bright red bead as it slides across warm, dry skin she was just touching for a beat too long. By the time she moves, Ava is already turned away, turning on the tap.

“Shit,” Ava hisses as the water rushes over the cut. 

Beatrice snaps to attention, grabbing a dishcloth from the cabinet next to the refrigerator. She pulls Ava’s hand out of the water and examines the cut. It starts to bleed again. “It’s small. Hold still.”

Ava stops wriggling. “Don’t-”

Beatrice tightens her grip, pressing firmly on the cut. Ava hisses. “I’m sorry,” she says gently. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

Ava’s face softens. “Of course not, Bea.” Her free hand rests on Beatrice’s wrist. “You didn’t tell me first aid was included in this lesson.”

“You won’t need stitches.”

“Bea.”

“I have a first aid kit in the bathroom.”

“Bea.” A hand drops to her waist and she shivers. The hand drops away. “Honestly, it’s fine. It just caught me by surprise.”

Beatrice still doesn’t look up from the cut. “Dull knives are worse. They require more force to get through food, so when it slips and cuts into your hand, the cut is usually deeper.”

“Good thing you keep these things sharp enough to cut steel,” Ava jokes.

Beatrice slowly unwraps the dishcloth from the cut and examines it. Blood still trickles down, but much slower. Good. She needs a first aid kit, so she can wash it and then dress it. It shouldn’t require much work. The cut looked simple enough.

She takes a step away but Ava grabs her wrist, pulling her to a stop.

Oh.

“We can still cook, right? You’ll still teach me?” Ava smiles hopefully.

There’s that check-in, again. Ava always asking what she’s willing to give. Even if now, that limit has expanded a thousand miles in the span of time it took to slice half a carrot. Beatrice knows - has known - she can’t say no, and now she is acutely aware of why. 

“Of course. We’ll just be more careful.” She takes a step away and Ava’s hand slowly drops from her wrist. She feels the loss of it like a limb that’s been cut off.

“You’re the best, Bea,” Ava calls as she slips into the bathroom in search of the kit.

Beatrice stands in front of the window above the sink, studying herself in its reflection. She doesn’t look different now that she knows that she’s fallen in love with Ava. Nothing on the outside has changed, but everything on the inside has toppled over and formed new shapes that feel strange. She wasn’t looking to be in love, wasn’t expecting it to happen to her any time soon, or all. But she’s learning that most things with Ava are big and unexpected and exactly what she’s looking for, no matter that she didn’t know that.

She holds her hands up in front of her face, turning them over. She expects to see Ava’s fingerprints burned into her skin, but they look just the same as they did minutes earlier when she was just Beatrice. They don’t burn; they don’t glow. They only ache. To go back out there and touch again, a need she thinks may never be sated.

Beatrice meets her eyes in the window and looks at this new person staring back at her. 

Touch is a love language, she knows. She just didn’t know it was one of hers.

~

two months.

There's poetry in swimming. A grace in the way arms cut through still water, propelling forward. It cuts away on either side of her and she glides through it like she’s exhaling. The world feels weightless in the water, like she could float away contentedly.

It’s the smell that begs the question of why Beatrice agreed to this.

The school pool smells over-chlorinated and it sticks to the inside of her nose. She resists the urge to sneeze and clear it, focusing instead on dipping her toe into the water, testing it.

Warm.

She frowns, turned off by the idea of bathwater. Whatever bacteria is being fed by the warm water, they’re trying to shock away with chlorine. Why is she paying so much in tuition for warm, bacteria-infested water?

“You’re on scholarship,” Ava reminds her.

She blinks, unaware she spoke out loud. Ava laughs and bumps a nearly-bare shoulder into her arm gently. Her frown ebbs away like the water lapping at the side of the pool. Ava’s skin is already damp from the humidity in the air and Beatrice marvels at the idea that this is what it must be like when Ava steps out of the shower and wraps a thick towel around her body, shoulders and neck still exposed. She flushes.

Ava bounces lightly, careful of the slick floor. “At least we have the place to ourselves.”

That might be another problem. Because they are alone, the pool empty in the middle of the day. There’s no one here to see the way Beatrice can’t quite look Ava in the eye or the way her hands shake a little as she grips her towel a little too tightly. At least at tomorrow’s Color Run, there will be crowds of people and chaos surrounding them, reminding Beatrice to curb that impulse to touch, to keep her hands to herself. 

Here, alone, Beatrice has no buffer, just her and Ava and her heart lay bare. 

This touch thing has been a bit of a nuisance. It consumes her. It’s been a couple weeks since the world shifted on its axis and now she wants to be touching Ava all the time. Sometimes it’s small - a brush of a hand as they pass a spatula back and forth at dinner or trade the television remote. Sometimes it’s bigger - pulling Ava into a hug after a long day of classes where her back has tightened up to the point of pain and willing it away. She limits herself, though. Sometimes per day, sometimes per instance. She never takes too much, always gives Ava her space. 

She doesn’t want to push. Everyone has taken so much from Ava. She’s not going to be a name added to that list.

Some nights, she still feels like she takes too much. She touches the back of Ava’s hand or she pokes delicately at her ankle bone as Ava stretches her feet into her lap or she leans into the way Ava seems to always be leaning in towards her. Those nights, she stays in bed and stares at the ceiling and thinks about what would happen if she went into Ava’s room and curled around her. Would she survive that? Would they?

“Thank goodness,” Ava admits. She’s a little breathless. “I was kind of worried about that.”

All of Beatrice’s reservations fade away at her words. Ava is what’s important here. She turns, meeting Ava head-on. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I do,” she says quickly. Her eyes cut nervously to the deep end of the pool. It’s 8 feet down to the bottom. “I’ve been wanting to do this.”

Beatrice reaches down and curls her fingers over Ava’s wrist, feeling the thudding pulse under her fingertips. 

“Ava,” she says softly. Ava looks back at her, a tremulous smile on her face. “We can come back another day. Or just sit on the edge with our feet in the water.”

Something stretches Ava’s spine straight. “No. I’ve waited long enough. I’m going to swim.”

“You’re going to learn,” Beatrice stresses. “Actual swimming might not happen today.”

“Sure, sure,” Ava says dismissively. “Cannonballs by the hour’s end.” 

Her wrist slides out of Beatrice’s grip as she moves towards a long, sweating wooden bench lining the wall. Ava drops her towel - a large pink thing with a flamingo in an inner tube on it - and slides out of the flip flops she wore, tucking them under the bench. She turns, hands on her hips, and surveys the pool.

Beatrice inhales sharply, feeling that chlorine burning in her nose again as she takes in the sight of Ava.

She saw the bathing suit when Ava bought it, of course. Ava held it up in front of her, going on about how she picked red because every movie she saw with a lifeguard in it had a red swimsuit on. It’s funny, Bea, she explained at Beatrice’s blank look. The girl who can’t swim playing pretend as someone who rescues people in the water? She wasn’t deterred by Beatrice’s silence. She shrugged and ordered Thai.

But seeing Ava holding it up in front of her, separated from her skin by a pair of electric pink soft cotton shorts and a bright yellow tank top - a combination that seemed like some kind of criminal offense, even to her - was entirely different than seeing it on her.

Because on Ava, the swimsuit seemed impossibly smaller than it had before. It did things she had only read about in books: hugged curves, fit like a second skin. She’d never experienced the kind of feeling romance novel protagonists talked of, but the words suddenly made sense to her. She blushed whenever her eyes roamed anywhere past Ava’s shoulders.

She swallows now, as Ava stretches her arms above her head and sighs contently. Ava turns and Beatrice looks away quickly, eyeing the shallow end.

She hears Ava’s bare feet padding through the small puddles where the floor is uneven. Two hands fall to her waist from behind and squeeze slightly. Another sharp inhale; she tastes the chlorine in her throat.

“You’re not going to wear that in the water, are you?” Hot fingers pluck along her side at the perfectly respectable cover shirt she’s wearing. “Because that’s not fair.”

Beatrice forces herself to breathe out, grateful for Ava being at her back. Having Ava’s touch so close, she wants to just… lean into it. She finds she’s always seeking it out, that simple reminder that Ava is alive and next to her. Since the floodgates opened, since she experienced what it was like to touch and to be touched, she finds she’s reaching into every corner hoping to come up with some part of Ava between her fingers.

But she knows Ava’s casual touches don’t mean what she wants them to mean. She knows she shouldn’t read into them.

“Of course not,” she says almost to herself.

Cool air rushes across her neck where Ava exhales. “Oh, good. Because I’m wondering what kind of bathing suit might be under there.” She winks when Beatrice glances back.

Despite the balmy air, Beatrice shivers. 

Ava doesn’t seem to notice, stepping away and surveying the pool. “So, where do we start?”

“We won’t cover much today,” she says as she starts to take her shirt off, folding it neatly and placing it next to Ava’s towel. “We’ll practice floating, I think.”

When she turns, Ava is staring at her. “There is a body underneath that shirt.” 

Beatrice feels her cheeks redden. “Ava.”

“And it’s not made up of wires, either.” Ava shakes her head. “It’s a crime, hiding that under a polyester-cotton blend.”

She sighs. “Ava.”

Ava grins and holds up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, Beatrice. You’re denying the people.”

Am I denying you?

She blinks rapidly at the thought. It feels blasphemous to think such a thing. She’s grown more comfortable with those thoughts lately. But never in the same room as Ava. Never when she’s standing five feet away in a bathing suit as bright red as she’s sure her face is right now. 

So she shoves it down for now and thinks instead about the different things she’ll teach Ava. Thinks about the lessons she read online: the importance of starting with floating, and staying calm in the water, and maintaining contact with an instructor during a first lesson, and - oh no. I need to touch her.

“Wait. You’ve done this before, right?” Ava asks suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. 

Beatrice wets her bottom lip, tasting chlorine. “I looked up how to begin swimming.”

Ava’s eyes narrow. “On a swimming website for babies?”

“For children,” she admits. She rushes to add, “But not babies. Small children.” She pauses for a moment. “The same size as you, actually.”

“Beatrice,” Ava gasps. She presses a hand to her chest. Beatrice pointedly ignores it. “You’re just a few inches taller than I am, you know. And I can still ride amusement rides.”

She ignores Ava. “The first step is getting into the water. There are different ways to enter a pool. The ladder, of course. Or you can sit on the edge and swivel in.”

Ava bites down on her bottom lip, eyes back on the pool as she weighs her options. “How’re you getting in?”

“I was going to sit and swivel, if you’d like to.” Ava is silent. “I find that sometimes sliding in is the best option. The stairs give me too much time to change my mind.”

Ava considers this. She’s bouncing lightly, eyes darting back towards the deep end every few seconds. 

She’s nervous. Beatrice steps forward, hand finding its natural place on Ava’s wrist. She squeezes until Ava meets her eyes. They’re ringed with worry. It’s not that Beatrice didn’t know Ava was hesitant around large bodies of water; she just didn’t understand how much.

“I promise I will not let you drown. I will not let anything happen to you.” She says it firmly, hoping Ava knows she means it. 

“It’s not you I’m worried about.” Ava takes a shuddering breath. “It’s the drain at the bottom of the pool. What if it sucks me in?”

“The… the drain?”

Ava nods, staring at it now. “Yeah. I saw a movie once, one that an older boy snuck in. This girl - she was annoying, but still - she went swimming and the pool drain just… sucked her in.”

She wants to laugh. It’s ridiculous, that Ava could even fit in the pool drain, or that it would do something like start to suck out water in the middle of the day. But the fear in Ava’s eyes is real, and her heart aches instead. She turns Ava gently, holding her gaze.

“We are not going in the deep end. We’ll be 50 meters away from the pool drain. You certainly wouldn’t fit in it if, for some reason, the pool did start draining.” Beatrice smiles softly and squeezes her hand. “And more importantly, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Ava’s eyes search hers. “Okay,” she says after a minute and squeezes back. “I trust you.”

Beatrice swallows under the weight of the words. She smiles softly and releases Ava’s hand, taking a slight step back. Her toes splash in the pockets of the floor as she walks to the edge of the pool.

Ava follows her lead. “Okay, so sit and swivel?”

Beatrice takes a deep breath and smiles tightly. “Sit and swivel.” She slowly lowers herself into the shallow end of the pool. The water laps at the back of her thighs, soaking her bathing suit. She looks up when Ava hesitates. “I’ll go in first, then you can.”

Ava nods jerkily. “Sure. Totally cool.” 

Ava lowers herself to the tiles and scoots forward gently so her feet slide into the water. Beatrice watches carefully, making sure to angle herself so that if Ava slips, she can catch her. But Ava moves slowly until she’s mirroring Beatrice. Water splashes against her knees.

“Perfect.” Beatrice smiles and turns her body, sliding the rest of the way into the water. It comes up to her waist. “Now it’s your turn.”

Ava seems like she’s breathing a little easier. She slides into the pool, splashing a little. The water hits her hips, waving up around her as she stands an arm’s length away from Beatrice. “I did it.”

“You did it.” 

They’ll have to go a little deeper to teach Ava anything. And the distance might help Beatrice’s pounding heart a little too. Beatrice then takes a large step back, towards the deep end, until the water comes up just below her chest. 

“Now, we need to go out a little further to-”

“You said shallow end.”

“You can’t build confidence in the water if it’s at your belly button.” Ava eyes her warily and Beatrice ebbs back towards her, careful not to touch her. “I told you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“Okay,” Ava says softly after a minute. She takes a short step forward. Beatrice slides back another. “Bea.”

“I’m right here.” 

Ava is looking at her now, eyeing the distance between them. They’re in the middle of the pool now, nothing to hold onto and that nervousness is back in Ava’s eyes. Beatrice changes tactics.

“How about we practice treading water?” she suggests. She cuts past Ava back to the side of the pool and grips the edge. “You can hold on and we can practice here.”

Ava seems relieved. “Sure. That works for me.” She takes a step closer to the deep end, the water rising to her shoulders now. She takes it with confidence, the kind she usually carries. “So I just…”

“Hold on. And let yourself drop a little bit. Treading water is about conserving energy while staying afloat.” Beatrice lowers herself into the water, letting it come up to her neck. She kicks her feet a little. “See how I’m staying up?”

“You’re holding on,” Ava points out.

Beatrice resists the urge to roll her eyes and lets go. She holds her arms out, perpendicular to body. She kicks her feet again and bobs in the water. “By nature, we float. So as long as there is air in your lungs, you’ll be fine. Your arms and feet just add to the buoyancy.” 

She straightens up, feet flat on the bottom of the pool.  When she stands, the temperature change between the air and the water makes her shiver. “See, it only comes up to my neck,” she reassures. “You try it.”

Ava grips the edge of the pool and lowers herself slightly. The water brushes up against her chin and Beatrice sees her eyes widen. But then she kicks her feet a little and she bobs back up, bouncing on the surface of the water.

Beatrice smiles. “See?”

Ava beams. “Treading water? Check.”

“Well, not quite,” Beatrice laughs. “You need to let go next.”

“Cool. Cool, cool.” Ava let's go with one hand and her body dips down. She quickly grabs it again. “Not cool.”

Beatrice laughs a little and drifts forward. “Come on,” she beckons. “I’ll be right here.”

She expects Ava to argue, to convince her they can go sit in the shallow end and talk instead of swimming. She expects Ava to say, “this isn’t for me. I really wanted to learn, but it’s just not in the cards right now.” Or even that she’s a bad teacher and she’s going to ask Shannon - who’s been a summer lifeguard since she was fifteen and has far more experience than Beatrice - for lessons.

What she doesn’t expect is for Ava to take a deep breath, blow out her cheeks, and leap forward into her arms.

Beatrice is nearly knocked back by the force of Ava’s jump. Her feet slide against the slick pool bottom and she swallows a mouthful of chlorine. She can’t focus on it. There are hands. There’s skin. Ava’s hands glide over her shoulders, fingernails trying to find purchase in the straps of her swimsuit as their bodies crash together. 

Her hands ghost along Ava’s ribs and oh. Ava’s swimsuit has an open back. She can feel the scarring along Ava’s spine, could count each of them if she ran her fingers up and down. Her fingernails scratch against skin she’s only ever imagined under her hands. She wants to map each inch she can touch, commit it to memory.

Ava’s hands finally find a place, locking around the back of her neck as she tries to hold on tighter.

Everything in her seizes. Her legs, tangled smoothly against Ava’s, freeze and lock into place. Her arms go slack against Ava’s back. She feels the water come up over her mouth again. A knee digs into her stomach and she gasps, swallowing the warm water again. Something sharp scratches against her shoulder as she starts to go under. She feels a heel dig into her thigh and then she’s being pulled sideways through the water.

She bumps against the side of the pool and then a hand winds itself into the strap of her swimsuit, pulling her up and out of the water. She gasps for air as her shoulders crest the surface.

“I thought you said people float!” Ava shouts, the words so loud in Beatrice’s ear.

Beatrice has to shake her head, blinking rapidly.

“Oh, god.” Ava’s hands flutter around her face, tipping her head back to study her face. “I’m sorry. I just thought- I thought you’d catch me.”

Beatrice sucks in a ragged breath. “I did.” The pool wall is cool against her back. She leans her head back against the edge, sucking humid air into her lungs.

The world comes back into sharp focus and she goes still again.

Ava is crowding her against the side of the pool, one hand tangled in her bun as it comes undone and the other brushing the rolling drops of water off her cheek. Their legs are tangled again, Ava’s toes skimming along her shin. Ava’s eyes are almost wild, darting back and forth as they search her face.

“Jesus, Bea,” she exhales. One of her legs hooks around Beatrice’s and it pulls her closer. “Are you okay?”

No. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They flutter in the water, fingers clenching around nothing. She knows where she wants to put them: right where they were a minute ago, sliding across Ava’s sides to her back. She knows that she wants to dig her fingertips into Ava’s skin and leave them there so Ava can feel them even after she pulls away.

Pull it together. She swallows heavily.

“I’m fine.”

Ava’s body is still moving with the water, still ebbing in and out against her. The hand at her cheek goes to the pool’s edge and it drips water down on Beatrice’s shoulder, drops rolling off her skin. “I thought people float,” Ava breathes, her words hot against Beatrice’s face. “You said they did.” 

Beatrice finally touches down, thumbs stroking against Ava’s ribs involuntarily. Ava jumps a little. “They do. When they’re not being jumped on.”

Ava looks sheepish now. “I just… I thought that I would just go for it, you know? That maybe I was a natural swimmer and I’d just…”

“Stay afloat,” Beatrice finishes.

“Yes. And if I couldn’t, you’d rescue me. I just-” Her hand scratches lightly against the back of Beatrice’s neck. “I was a little enthusiastic, I think.”

She loves Ava’s enthusiasm - not when it’s trying to sink her, of course. But generally, she loves it. She finds it intoxicating, contagious. She wants to let her sweep her up almost all the time.

Her thumbs count Ava’s ribs. One, two, three…

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Worry winds around every word and Ava’s hand slides along her jaw to her chin, titling her face up. “You swallowed a lot of water.”

She can see small beads of water running down the long line of Ava’s neck, disappearing into the surface of the water. She watches the race down over smooth skin and she wants to track it with her fingertip. 

Pull it together.

“I’ll have a stomach ache later, maybe. And I need to brush my teeth.” She doesn’t even want to think about the chlorine anymore. “But maybe we should-”

“Try another day?” Ava nods. “Yeah, we should try another day. I owe you, like, tons of coffee. And take out, definitely. Your choice. No spending limit.”

She smiles softly. “I meant, maybe we should, um…” She looks down between their bodies.

Ava looks down and startles. “Oh! I’m sorry, I was-” She starts to pull away, her hand getting caught in Beatrice’s hair. “I’ll just-”

“It’s okay.” Beatrice doesn’t pull her hand back right away. “I’m fine.”

“No, this is your space and I’m just- dammit.” She finally works her hand out of Beatrice’s hair and her leg slides across Beatrice’s hip as she grips the edge with both hands and pulls herself around Beatrice’s body.

The water feels cold as it rushes into the spaces where Ava’s body had just been. She has to blink a few times, trying to pull her head together. That was more than just a brush of a hand or a fleeting kiss to the top of her head as Ava rushed to get to class. This was her hand against Ava’s side, long enough to feel Ava’s ribs under her fingers. This was her legs sliding against Ava’s. This was Ava’s hands in her hair and fingers at her jaw and and and. 

Ava pulls herself up and out of the pool, sitting on the edge of it, legs still in the water. They still brush against Beatrice’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Beatrice stares at the other side of the pool, going through breathing exercises until she can turn and smile and mean it. “Don’t be. I should have prepared you better for this.”

Ava smiles. “It’s not your fault. I’m the one who flung myself into your arms.”

Do it again.

She blinks. “Next time, I’ll be ready to catch you.”

Ava’s smile stretches. “Next time, huh? Careful, Beatrice. You’ll make a girl swoon, telling her she can run into your arms at any time.”

Her cheeks flush. She knows it. Ava always gets this look in her eyes when she’s successfully made Beatrice blush. “Yes, well.” She clears her throat. “Maybe we could be done for the day?”

“Of course, Bea.” Ava pats her gently on the shoulder. “I was serious. Coffee and take out on me. We’ll even watch one of your documentaries, if you want. Anything you want. Nothing too small.”

It's not a date. It's just friends getting coffee and eating out. Friends do that all the time. It's not a date unless they say it's a date and that's not what they're saying. Beatrice can't remember the last time she went out on a date and Ava hasn't since they met. But if they did go out together on a date - a thought she's had before that always seems to make her heart stick a little - she'd want it to be more than coffee and take out. 

But, she's not going to think about that. She's going to just stay in a bubble where neither of them are going on dates and spending all their time together. 

That can be enough.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s the least I can do. I nearly drowned you.”

She almost rolls her eyes. “I would have been fine. I just needed another moment to get my bearings.”

“Still,” Ava says brightly. “You had a near-death experience. Let me take care of you.” She doesn’t wait for an answer. She leans down, brushes her lips against her chlorine-soaked hair, and stands up. Beatrice can hear her padding through puddles towards the towels.

She takes another minute to get out, letting herself bob in the water as she tries to let it wash away the feel of Ava’s body. 

She doesn’t think she’s going to ever forget.

~

three months.

Beatrice likes to think that she’s more than capable of reading Ava’s moods. She can separate out mad from frustrated, happy from content, sad from melancholy. Maybe it’s from living in such close quarters; from the fact that she spends an average of 18 hours a day with her and it’s hard not to know someone so well after all that time.

The point is: Ava comes home from class and she is not just mad. She’s angry.

The kind of angry Beatrice saw last week when Ava declared she was willing to face incarceration for Beatrice, if it meant that her parents would never hurt her again. The kind of angry that took Ava hours and a movie night with their friends to come down from.

She throws the door behind her, catching it at just the last moment so it doesn’t slam shut. Beatrice appreciates it. Her neighbors are nice. And one of them has a baby that’s just gotten onto a sleep schedule; she doesn’t want to be responsible for waking it up. Especially since a sleep schedule means it’s not up half the night crying.

But Ava comes crashing through it all the same. She throws her backpack down, cheeks red and forehead pinched. It slides a little across the floor into the coat rack, but doesn’t knock it over. She doesn’t even kick off her shoes, stomping around the couch and past the breakfast bar where Beatrice is set up between classes, right to the refrigerator that she pulls open and thrusts her hand into. She comes up with one of Mary’s beers, left behind after a movie night earlier in the week.

Beatrice is up around rounding the bar before she even thinks about it, plucking the bottle from Ava’s hand.

Ava turns and nearly growls before she seems to recognize Beatrice. Her face smooths out.

“I can make you some tea.”

She’s expecting a bit of a fight, but Ava just sighs and nods miserably, sagging back against the counter.

Beatrice busies herself with putting the beer back and turning on the kettle. She moves around Ava, careful not to touch her. It’s not that she’s scared of touching her. It’s just that everything has changed between them. Knowing she’s the most important person in Ava’s life, that she always will be, hasn’t just tinted every interaction they’ve had in the last week. It’s changed everything. It’s changed her. 

The entire situation has her on her back foot, a place she despises. For the first time in her life, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, or how to act. How does she move them forward from that without losing what makes them them? 

She can start with tea. She finds Ava’s mug, the one with Dog Dad written in blocky letters on it. She can take care of Ava the way Ava takes care of her. She can listen. She can show Ava how important she is in return.

It isn’t until she’s pulling down a tea bag that she feels slim fingers encircle her wrist and pull her to a stop.

“Sorry,” Ava grumbles.

Beatrice smiles patiently. “Tough day?”

“You know Francesca, in my history class?”

Beatrice tries to shuffle through the various characters Ava tells her about. She doesn’t remember a Francesca off the top of her head. Francis in her feminist lit class, yes. But Francesca…

Ava takes her silence as the no that it is. “She’s the one I told you about who had the crappy boyfriend?”

Vaguely, Beatrice pulls to mind a time when Ava came home complaining about some guy who interrupted their class to yell at girlfriend. Francesca, apparently. 

“Well, guess who showed up when we were headed to get some coffee after class?” Beatrice doesn’t have to. “Yeah, he just ambushed us on our walk. Totally embarrassed her in front of our whole study group. And you want to know the worst part?”

Beatrice pours hot water into Ava’s mug. “What?”

“He grabbed her. In broad daylight. Grabbed her by the wrist and tried to pull her away from us. I had to jump in and-”

“Are you okay?” Beatrice abandons the kettle and grabs Ava’s hand, gesticulating wildly between them. She turns it over like she was the one who was grabbed. “Is Francesca?”

Ava sighs but doesn’t pull away from her as Beatrice brushes her fingertips over a pulse point. “Yeah. I mean, I had to hit him with my backpack a few times before he took off.”

“You what?”

“And we sent Francesca home with Juan,” Ava says over her. “He promised he’d stay with her the rest of the day. But that douche knows where she lives and there’s no chance he doesn’t go back to try and bother her.”

“Ava.”

Ava looks at her, face red again. “You just can’t come up to someone and grab someone like that, you know? It’s assault, at least. She was totally spooked. And I don’t blame her!”

Beatrice abandons Ava’s hand and grabs her shoulders, holding her steady. “Ava.”

“If I see him again, I’m going to hit him with more than just my backpack. I’m going to take my fist and punch him right in the-”

“Ava,” Beatrice says sharply.

Ava blinks. “What?”

“Are you alright?”

“Oh.” Ava looks a little sheepish now. “Yeah, I’m totally fine. The bagel I was saving you is probably squished and I’m sure I have cream cheese all over my history textbook so I won’t get my money back, but I’m-” She reaches up, loops a few fingers around Beatrice’s wrist and tugs gently until her hand is curled up against Ava’s chest. “I’m fine.”

Beatrice exhales a thin stream of air. She turns her hand in Ava’s until their palms are pressed together. 

She feels like she’s attached to Ava here. Like a thread pulls her in, staring at Ava’s lifeline and tugging until her calloused palms are pressed to Ava’s smooth ones. She doesn’t fight it, she lets it consume her. And she keeps the feel of it long after she’s separated from Ava.

“Okay,” she says, more a reassurance to herself than anything. “And Francesca?”

“Like I said, embarrassed. And I think her wrist hurts, but she wouldn’t tell us that.” Ava looks sad now. “He was such an ass. Going on about how she can’t leave him. Honestly, he was embarrassing himself. I told her to file a report. He’s a big guy, he could go right through Juan.”

As long as it isn’t right through you.

“But it got me thinking about something,” Ava continues. “I couldn’t do anything to, like, help her. He just grabbed her and we all stood there. Sure, my backpack doubles as a small weapon-”

“Only because you refuse to take anything out of it.”

“But,” Ava stresses, rolling her eyes. “It wasn’t enough. I needed him to go away on the first hit. It took, like, six tries before he finally let go. I need to do better. So, you need to help me.”

Beatrice frowns. “I need to help you, what? Hit someone with a backpack?”

Ava pauses. “Well, no. Though, I should start coming to the gym with you, I think. That backpack is really heavy. Maybe Mary could make up a workout plan and I can learn to push one of those heavy bags across the gym. That’s very sexy, I think.” She narrows her eyes. “Can you do that?”

Beatrice swallows, a little hot under her collar. “No, I don’t believe so.”

“Damn.” Ava pouts. She looks off to the middle distance, eyes clouding over for a moment, then blinks and looks back at her. “Right.” She smiles crookedly. “I need your help fighting someone.”

“Fighting someone,” Beatrice repeats. “I’m not going to help you fight someone.”

Fighting someone isn't the answer. It's not even the question. 

Beatrice can appreciate what it means, the way that Ava is willing to step up for her friends and help them. One of the things she loves about Ava is the way she seems to want to do what she can for everyone. She's the first person Mary calls when she needs to go left off some steam. She's the first text when one of their friends needs a study buddy - even if Ava isn't too sure on the material. But it’s not just their circle of friends. Ava is someone everyone can count on. Someone who cares enough to help everyone around her. In the moments where Beatrice lets herself think she's a good person, she thinks Ava is someone a lot like her, just a little bit more impulsive.

But the last thing she wants to do is encourage Ava to put herself in harm’s way.

“Pleaseeeee.” Ava pushes out her bottom lip and blinks up at Beatrice through her lashes. “You’re already a great teacher. And you’re, like, a celebrated fighter. You’ve won trophies, Bea. That means more than one. You could show me how to kick someone’s ass and then the next time that douchebag shows up, I’ll-”

“Next time, you just walk away,” Beatrice interrupts. “You don’t fight a man as tall as a mountain.”

“Okay, he wasn’t as tall as a mountain. More like, as tall as Lilith.” Ava starts to walk her other hand across Bea’s arm, looping gently just below her elbow. “But it’s going to happen again. He’s like a parasite. A cockroach. And when he does come back, I want to be able to put him flat on his back. Bruce Lee style.”

Beatrice is shaking her head before Ava even finishes. “I’m not teaching you how to fight someone. And you shouldn’t be wanting to fight someone either. You’re very small.”

“I’m not-” Ava huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Wouldn’t that make me a better fighter? Because I could duck and weave and kick someone directly in the kneecap?”

There’s some logic to Ava’s thought process. Being small has its advantages. A lower center of gravity. Typically more movement than a man built like a brick house. But Ava is not a fighter by nature and a man built like a large rhinoceros would break her in half like a rotted out piece of pine board. No. She can’t teach Ava to fight.

“No.”

“Bea,” Ava sighs, frustration licking at the corners of her name. “I don’t need to know, like, all the steps it takes to become a black belt. I just need to know how to scare him off.” She steps closer and Beatrice feels the air between their bodies leave the room. “Come on. Show me a couple of things. You know I’m a good learner.”

“Cooking, yes. But the last time I tried to teach you how to do something physical…”

“Yes, I tried to drown you. That was once and I was panicking. And the next time we went swimming, I did a lot better.”

Beatrice shakes her head. “Fighting is a situation where you will panic. I still panic every time I get into a fight.”

“Okay, what if I make you a deal?”

Beatrice eyes her warily. “What kind of deal?” 

The last time they made a deal, Beatrice ended up in the observatory after hours, hiding from campus security while Ava tried to escape the locked tower. They finally had to call for Mary to come and pick the lock.

 “You teach me a few things about fighting and I’ll go with you to that conservatory luncheon conversation thing. The one about religious texts in modern media.” Ava thrusts her hand forward in a handshake. “Deal?”

Beatrice wasn’t planning on going to that. She could probably learn more from the supplementary texts her professor provided last class. But Ava is looking at her with soft eyes and her fingers are brushing against the inside of Beatrice’s elbow and Beatrice feels her resolve falling like her attempt at making a souffle, another one of Ava’s ambitious ideas. She can’t say no. She’s never been able to say no.

But also, a small part of her thinks, it’s an opportunity. There are times when Beatrice thinks that maybe Ava feels this too. Maybe she touches Beatrice because she wants to, just as much as Beatrice wants to touch her in return. And this is a chance to touch Ava, to explore what that feels like.

“Okay,” she sighs. She shakes Ava’s hand shortly. “But you have to promise you will not get into any fights until I say you’re ready for that.”

Ava cheers loudly, wiggling around. Beatrice winces and pulls her hand away before it gets tangled up in whatever complicated motion Ava is doing. “Thank you, thank you. Where do we start? Leg sweeps? Wrist breaks?”

Beatrice can’t help but smile at Ava’s enthusiasm. Lilith calls her soft when she thinks Beatrice can’t hear her. She doesn’t try to tell her off, because she knows it’s the truth. It’s not just that she can’t say no. It’s that she also can’t bring herself to be mad about it.

“Not wrist breaks.” Ava pouts again and Beatrice has the nearly irresistible urge to brush her thumb against Ava’s bottom lip and smooth it away. “But I can teach you how to throw a punch.”

“As long as it’s not the only thing you teach me,” Ava negotiates. “I want to know more than that.”

“We’ll start with a punch.” Beatrice is going to hold firm on this. “It’s the foundation for a lot of other things.”

Ava considers that for a moment. “Like treading water.”

“Just like treading water.”

“I’m very good at that now, you know.” Ava practically preens, lifting her chin into the air.

“You are,” Beatrice says dutifully. “Your breast stroke is also very good. Don’t laugh because I said ‘breast’,” she warns Ava, who is already smirking.

“Pretty soon, I’ll be making a run for the Olympic team.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t doubt me, Beatrice.”

Beatrice means it when she says, “I would never.”

Something on Ava’s face softens and she ducks her head. Beatrice might also say she looked shy, if she had to name the emotion on her face. But she doesn’t, because no one is asking, and because she doesn’t want to.

“I can settle for a punch, sure.” Ava finally breaks their connection, sliding out of her hold. Her fingers graze Beatrice’s arm as she steps back. “So, show me.”

“What? Right now?”

“Whatever you’re doing-”

“Biochemistry.”

“-can wait.” Ava makes a face. “Biochem? Yuck. Wouldn’t spending time with me be more fun than that?”

Of course it would be. She knows that. Ava knows that. It’s why she’s had to pull all-nighters more in the last three months than she ever has in her educational career. She’d rather spend all her time with Ava, completely addicted to the way she laughs and the way she smiles and the way she always seems to rest her hand on the closest part of Beatrice she can reach.

She especially wants to spend her time doing that.

“Fine. Fine.” Beatrice abandons her biochemistry homework without a second thought. She’ll need to make it up eventually and she knows Ava will sit at the table with her later and tell her funny jokes she reads online while Beatrice tries to focus on equations.

Ava beams. “We’ll be quick.”

“We will not be if we do it correctly.”

“Then we’ll be correct and not worry about the time it takes because form is important,” Ava amends. She waits for Beatrice to nod in agreement before she thrusts her hand into the air and clenches it into a fist.

Beatrice hums. Ava looks at her expectantly, a hopeful smile on her face. It starts to fade the longer Beatrice looks. After a minute, she meets Ava’s eyes.

“May I?” She gestures towards Ava’s fist. Ava nods. “First of all, you’re holding your first too tightly.”

Ava immediately loosens it and her fingers fall apart. 

Beatrice laughs. “No, not like that.” 

She doesn’t hesitate now. Before, she might have paused, might have stopped herself from reaching out and manipulating Ava’s hand into the shape she wants it to be. But that was Beatrice months ago. Beatrice now, so used to touch, to Ava’s touch and the way it fits so neatly into her life, just reaches out.

Ava’s hand is pliant under her fingers. She softens her wrist, lets her fingers relax. Beatrice works them back into a fist, keeping firm pressure across her fingers. She taps Ava’s wrist into place, smiling softly when she sees the look of concentration on Ava’s face.

“Your fist can be your biggest weapon, if you wield it properly.” Beatrice runs her fingernails over the ridges of Ava’s knuckles. “But it comes down to the proper mechanics. Because the person you hurt might be yourself.”

“I want to hurt Eduardo.”

Beatrice wrinkles her nose at the name. She knew an Eduardo once. He was a terrible child, one of her parent’s political friend’s children. He once pushed her down and stomped on her new dress. Her mother had been furious. Suddenly, she wants Ava to hurt Eduardo too.

“Then you need to make sure you’re using the proper form.” She stands in front of Ava, studying her fist. “First, your thumb.”

“Inside, right?”

“Outside,” Beatrice corrects. She gently places Ava’s thumb on the outside of her fist. “If you leave it inside, you run the risk of breaking it.”

“Would I get a cool cast?” Beatrice glances at her and Ava grins widely. “Would you sign it? Dear Ava, you’re an idiot. Affectionately, Beatrice.”

“That wouldn’t fit on a thumb splint.”

Ava’s smile doesn’t waver. “You could figure it out.”

Beatrice sighs, the sound laced with the kind of fondness she’s found she reserves for Ava. Her hand pulses over Ava’s, reminding her of what she’s doing. She curls her fingers around Ava’s wrist and holds her other hand up flat so that the flat of Ava’s knuckles press against her palm.

“Keep your fist straight. Like this.” She puts a little force behind her palm, feeling the resistance of Ava’s fist. “When you punch, the flatter your knuckles are, the more surface area you cover. The more even the distribution is.”

“So if I’m punching Eduardo in the mouth…”

Beatrice rolls her eyes, smiling still. “If you keep your fist flat, you could break several teeth instead of one.”

There’s a look in Ava’s eyes that tells her she shouldn’t have said that. She can see the wheels churning in Ava’s mind.  

“More teeth,” Ava agrees. “I can totally remember that.”

Beatrice thinks about correcting her, about telling her that she should not go out with the intention of punching a man built like a woolly mammoth. She should make sure that Ava understands this is for self-defense and not to go on the offensive. But Ava is studying the shape of her hand intently and she thinks Ava knows that, in the very back of her mind, that she shouldn’t go out swinging at a man built like a steam engine train.

“More importantly, you won’t break your first two fingers,” Beatrice says, drawing back Ava’s attention. "It’s easy to want to punch with your index finger like this.” She makes a fist out of her own hand, clenching her index finger tightly so that it bubbles out and the knuckle leads away from her fist. 

“Watch.” Beatrice tightens her grip on Ava’s wrist and pushes her hand into her palm with her index finger leading. “See how it impacts right against these fingers?” She’s close to Ava now, her voice quieter as she steps in. “But if you flatten your knuckles…” She smooths out Ava’s hand and presses against. “It distributes more evenly. Saves you from breaking your first two fingers.”

Ava nods, head bobbing up and down. “Uh, okay.” She smiles a little crookedly. “The hardships I’m willing to endure for friends, huh?” she jokes. “Next, we should teach Juan.”

“He doesn’t know how to throw a punch?”

Ava snorts. “He’s too busy being in love with Francesca to do anything but try not to trip over his own feet.”

In love, she thinks. Is Ava in love with Francesca, if she’s willing to fight off this Eduardo? The thought is traitorous but there.

“But that’s what we do, right?” Ava’s hand shifts a little in her hold but Beatrice hardly feels it. “When we- Like, your parents. I’d fight them in an instant, to protect you. Juan and I have that in common.”

Beatrice feels a ripple of affection rush through her before it’s swallowed up by the overwhelming thought that no one has ever so vehemently and blindly defended her before. It nearly pushes her back a step, but she’s still holding onto Ava and she doesn’t want to break their connection.

She doesn’t want to let her go. She wants to touch, to stay in this moment. She wants… more. She doesn’t know if she should take it.

But Ava hasn’t shied away from her yet. Hasn’t pulled away. She’s leaned into Beatrice. She’s let Beatrice stand close and shape her.

Would she allow Beatrice to be a little closer?

She pulls her attention back to the task at hand. Ava is still standing there, waiting for instruction. “Make sure your hands are up, to protect your face if your opponent decides to throw a punch back.”

Ava scoffs. “I’m a one-and-done kind of fighter. I get one in, they’re done.”

Beatrice slowly motions a punch towards Ava who blocks it just a second too late, throwing her hands up above her head. “Hands up.”

“Fine, fine. Hands up.” She takes the carelessness out of her words with the look on her face as she brings her hands back into a resting position, one situated at her chin.

“Your form isn’t terrible.” Beatrice ignores Ava’s small cheer. “You’re right-handed, so this is your power hand.” She taps Ava’s hand. “Throw a cross punch.”

Ava pushes her hand forward, twisting naturally in a way that Beatrice knows is hard to teach. She frowns, though, walking around Ava in a small circle as she studies her.

“You’re punching from the shoulders.” She carefully touches the top of Ava’s shoulder. “You need to watch your extension. Beginners always punch from their shoulders.” She finishes her circle around Ava and rests her hand on her shoulder blade. Ava looks back at her, face pinched in concentration. “Most people think that punching is all arms, especially when you twist.” She pushes a little, leading Ava into a small twist.

“But your real power comes from your hips.” She drops Ava’s shoulders to brush her hips. “You twist your hips with enough torque, you generate enough power to make an impactful punch because you are putting your entire body behind it.” 

She pushes Ava’s hips to twist to demonstrate. Ava moves easily with the motion.

“Blunt force trauma, baby,” Ava sings. She looks up abruptly and twists a little to meet Beatrice’s eyes. “I need a superhero name.”

Beatrice smiles despite herself. “You’re just learning how to punch.”

Ava doesn’t hear her. “The Halo.”

“The Halo.”

Ava grins. “Yeah, remember that Snapchat filter with the blue and purple background that makes me look like I’m bisexual Jesus?”

“Ava,” she scolds.

“That could be my official superhero artwork.”

“Do you want to know how to throw a punch or not?”

Ava snaps to attention. “Yes, ma’am.” She thrusts her fist back into place and turns back around to face forward. “You were saying something about hips,” she says over her shoulder.

Beatrice gulps. She was. She just got distracted by the way it felt so easy to have Ava moving under her hands. Still, she needs to focus. Ava is. She can too.

Her eyes trail down from Ava’s shoulders to those hips and down to her feet. “Can The Halo take off her shoes, please?”

Ava looks down, cheeks flushing. “Oh, sorry.” She hurriedly kicks them off, sending them across the living room. 

It almost makes her laugh. Their first week living together, Beatrice would have followed after Ava until she put them in their proper place by the door. Now she doesn’t miss a beat, just continuing on and knowing that Ava will take care of it when they’re done. 

“It’s just that I need to see your footwork and I can’t if you’re wearing sneakers. Footwork is important to your legwork.” Beatrice points at Ava’s hip. “When you turn, turn sharply. Your core strength builds from there.”

Ava hesitates for a second, long enough that Beatrice catches it and frowns. “Uh, do you think…” Ava bounces a little on her toes. She’s nervous. It takes her another minute to get it out and Beatrice waits as she always does when it comes to Ava: patient and willingly. 

“Do you think that my back affects my power?”

“Oh,” Beatrice says softly. She takes a step closer, her hand already reaching out to wrap around Ava’s arm. Just to give her a touchpoint. 

“Well, a lot of your power does come from being able to rotate your core, of which your back is a part of. But you can compensate by strengthening the oblique muscles in your abs. The majority of your power though comes from your stance. Drawing power from your legs and transitioning to your upper body. Lift with your legs, right? You’ll still feel it through your body, of course, because things like boxing and mixed martial arts are whole-body practices.” 

She smooths her fingers over the sleeve of Ava’s cropped cutoff - a Baba Yaga on roller skates - and hopes Ava feels the intention in her touch. 

“But for a part-time superhero who remembers to use their legs, a few punches will be okay. You just need to learn and keep your form.”

Ava’s face clears. “Okay. So…” She grins. “How’s my form?”

“We need to fix your stance. Start with your weight evenly distributed. You also want to square up your feet. Lead foot forward but toes still pointing forward.”

Ava pitches to one side.

“No, no, wait. You’re leaning back on one leg too much. You’re giving me 70, 30 distribution. You can stand like that when we are ready to teach kicks. But for now, for just punching, I need 50, 50. Make it equal.” 

Ava turns, confused. “Can you just show me?”

Beatrice immediately steps back, hands fall away. “You want me to demonstrate?”

“No, I mean- Can you just… move my feet where they need to go?” 

There’s a hint of frustration in Ava’s words, like she’s getting upset that it doesn’t make sense the first time. They both have that in common. Ava just tends to be a bit more vocal about it. 

“Show you…”

Ava nods. “Just move my feet. I know, feet are gross. I promise they’re clean.” She waits. “I washed them two days ago.”

Beatrice knows for a fact that Ava washed her feet yesterday, because she likes to sing to her toes when she gets out of the shower. That’s not what’s making her pause. Her hesitation comes from knowing exactly what it will mean to move Ava’s body this way. She’s going to have to get even closer, cross an invisible line that only she can see. 

But Ava wants to learn and Beatrice isn’t going to let her get her information from someone at the Student Center who doesn’t know the difference between a jab and a cross punch. So she takes a halting step towards Ava, rests her hand against the small of Ava’s back, and stretches her leg out between Ava’s.

“This foot here,” she instructs. Ava’s ankle bone rubs against hers. She feels like the male lead in a Victorian novel; feeling Ava’s ankle has her heart racing. “And that foot- Yes. There.”

She looks down to check on both sides and eyes her work. It could be better. Ava is still leaning one way a little heavier than the other, but she seems to be swaying back and forth and it could work to her advantage. Satisfied, she looks up and realizes exactly how close Ava’s face is to hers. Ava grins and Beatrice’s heart shudders into place.

She tries to focus and steps behind Ava. “Now I want you to bend your knees a little like you’re going to squat.” 

She doesn’t wait to be asked this time. Her hands flutter down to Ava’s waist, fingers curling into the dip of her hip bones. She feels Ava’s body go taut and she nearly lets go, but it relaxes just as quickly and Ava is loose under her hands. 

“You want to create a stable base, so that means keeping your center of gravity low. That way when you punch, you can draw all that power from your legs.” She keeps her voice clear despite the way she feels like she’s trembling.

“Power in the legs, got it.” Ava looks down at her feet.

“When you’re low, there’s somewhere to go. That momentum can add to that force when you twist and throw that cross,” Beatrice’s hand pinches at Ava’s hip gently. “It starts down here.”

“Okay, so stay low.”

Beatrice nods. “The muscle groups you need to pay attention to are your quadriceps and your glutes.” 

Ava is still staring at her feet. “The what?”

Spurred on by a need she can’t quite fully articulate - to protect Ava the way Ava protects her, maybe. To make sure that Ava can always defend herself, surely - she runs a hand down the outside and top of Ava’s thigh. She feels a surprising amount of muscle there, pulled tight.

“These are your quads,” she says quietly. “If you’re not engaging them properly then I can just… push.” 

Beatrice gently pushes Ava forward. Ava has to take a slight step to avoid falling. Beatrice pulls her back up right and back into the cradle of her hips. “Focus on it. Engage it. And this time…” She leaves her hand pressed to Ava’s thigh and pushes with her other hand. Ava barely sways.

Ava looks back over her shoulder, eyes cutting down to where Beatrice’s hand is. “So engage my thighs.”

“Yes, front and back. Quads and glutes,” Beatrice corrects. “Your glutes especially. They’re your strongest muscle group.” 

“So what you’re saying is,” Ava starts slowly, grinning. “My ass is my strongest muscle.”

Beatrice sighs, suffering already. “Take this seriously. If you’re not doing it correctly, you can get hurt.” 

“I am,” Ava says quickly. She’s still smiling a little. “Totally am.”

She slides her hand back up to Ava’s hips, swallowing heavily when Ava looks away. “Once you’re there, you want to focus on your hips. Turn them sharply.”

“Butter knife sharp or-”

“Chef’s knife sharp.” Beatrice slides one hand a little further around Ava’s front, enough to get a slightly better grip so she can turn Ava’s hip back. “The sharper, the harder your punch is.”

There’s nearly nothing between them now. A piece of paper would wrinkle. And Beatrice feels alive. She feels like the air is cleaner. The lights are brighter. She could be glowing warm yellow light and levitating off the ground and she wouldn’t know because Ava is thisclose and she’s forgotten to buy different shampoo so it still smells like pineapple and caramel from her coffee and every single one of Beatrice’s senses is electrified. 

She’s been in love with Ava for a while now and each time they touch, she sinks a little further into the feeling. She lets it envelope her. She drowns in it. She lets it consume her most of her waking moments and all of her sleeping ones too.

She’s very dramatic. But she also loves Ava Silva more than she’s loved anything in her entire life and sometimes, dramatics are necessary.

“So,” Ava breathes out. “Just… twist my hips.”

Beatrice pulls her back again to her starting position. She can feel the muscle of Ava’s hamstring against her thigh. She keeps her voice steady, a feat harder than anything she’s ever done before. 

“Twist. Like this.” She spins Ava’s hip again. “Transfer your weight onto the ball of your foot when you twist. That’s the only time that your heel should lift off the ground.” She touches the back of Ava’s knee, pressing in a little. “Bend here more to lift as you twist up.”

Ava swallows, jaw clicking loud between them. “And my arm goes out at the same time.”

“Yes.” Beatrice uses one hand to guide Ava’s arm forward. “Put it all together to get that power. Bend, twist, punch.”

Ava lets herself be spun out again, a bend of her knee and a sharp twist of her hips. 

“Good. Now reset.” She lets Ava set her feet. “Don’t forget to breathe this time. Exhale with your punch. It’ll loosen your muscles and create a more explosive force behind your punch. Now again.”

Beatrice hears Ava exhale with her punch. It echoes in her ears like a church bell - haunting and beautiful and ringing in her chest so loudly it sends small ripples through her body and into her hands. They shake on Ava’s waist as she tries to hold them still. She breathes in through her nose - pineapple and caramel and promise - and exhales against the back of Ava’s neck. 

Ava pulls back to a starting position almost immediately, already catching on to the rhythm.

“Again. Together.” she says, reduced to single words as Ava’s body moves under her hand back again. “Bend, twist, punch, hold.”

Beatrice turns with her this time– bends her knee, twists her hip, punches out beneath Ava’s arm. They stay poised like that, an arm outstretched and molded against Ava’s back. She thinks she’s trembling - it can’t be Ava. She can’t be feeling what Beatrice is feeling. This feeling is hers and hers alone.

But Ava isn’t breathing. Beatrice starts to pull away but Ava steps back into her. Beatrice feels her breath catch and she rushes to cover it with a cough. That gets stuck in her throat too, and she’s suspended weightless, her hands and arms and chest burning where they touch Ava.

Her hand slides down along the curve of Ava’s leg where it presses back into her. Touch, a voice in her mind whispers like silk. The hem of Ava’s too-short shorts catches on her fingernails. She can feel Ava’s back pocket against her palm and she knows the imprint it leaves might never go away even when it isn’t visible anymore. She nearly tucks the tips of her finger into it, a slight flicker of possession that almost overtakes her.

Ava steps away, the heat of her body gone as she puts space between them.

Beatrice feels her stomach tighten as Ava stands suspended in front of her, back facing Beatrice. She went too far. She took too much. But before she has too much time to think about it, Ava turns and clears her throat.

“What about when I fight your parents? Should I put power into that?”

The tension breaks. Beatrice breathes out a laugh.

A thrill still shoots up through her every time Ava makes some kind of casual threat regarding her parents. She doesn’t wish them harm. She doesn’t wish them anything at all. But there’s a certain niggling wonderment in the way Ava doesn’t hesitate to declare she’d go to war for Beatrice. It makes her feel wanted in the best way.

Beatrice exhales. “Yes, you should always put power into your punches.”

Ava seems to need a minute, something complicated crossing her face before it clears. “Maybe I’ll take up boxing.”

Beatrice leans into the subject change, needing to distance herself for a moment too. “Mary has a friend at the campus gym. Mateo. He’s a good teacher.”

“As good as you?” Ava shakes out her arms and legs. “Because I want the best.”

So you certainly wouldn’t want me, a voice not unlike her mother’s whispers. She smiles despite it. “Other people are far better teachers than I am.”

“But you’re my favorite.” Ava grins and rests her hands on Beatrice’s shoulders as she leans up and gently headbutts her. Beatrice frowns. “I saw a cat do that once. Means I like you.”

“Better than pulling my hair, I suppose. Or kicking me down on the playground,” Beatrice murmurs. Ava doesn’t hear her, already moving back to the counter where the hot water for their tea has gone tepid.

Ava busies herself with pulling down another mug and dumping out her own, turning the kettle back on. “I want to watch a kung fu movie.”

“I have homework,” Beatrice sighs.

Ava shrugs it off. “So we’ll do homework first and then watch a Bruce Lee movie. You can correct his form.”

Beatrice snorts. “He’s Bruce Lee. His form is impeccable. And we practice drastically different forms of martial arts.” She sighs at the look on Ava’s face. “But I’ll let you tell me what you think he should be doing, if you’d like.”

“It’s like you know me so well.” Ava leans back against the counter and crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re my favorite person in the whole world, you know that? I’d punch Eduardo in the face for you, if you wanted me to.”

Beatrice does know. And it’s what makes everything so confusing. But it doesn’t stop her from loving the way it makes her feel any less.

“I’m quite certain I could punch Eduardo myself,” Beatrice says softly. “But that’s nice that you’re offering to punch a man I’ve never met.”

Ava shrugs. “So long as you know I’d fight anyone for you.” She puffs out her chest, resting her hands in the spaces where Beatrice’s had just been. She pitches her voice low. “The Halo will rescue any damsel in distress.”

“The Halo needs to maybe empty her backpack before the cream cheese in it goes bad.”

Ava’s face flushes and she darts for her backpack. Beatrice watches her openly and thinks, one day, I’ll let you rescue me. And I’ll hold on tightly if you let me.

–

It takes another hour before she’s done with her homework. Ava finishes in half that time but doesn’t rush her, passing her a highlighter when it rolls away from her and refilling her tea for her when she finishes it. And Ava puts away her shoes without the reminder, tucking them neatly on the shoe rack next to Beatrice’s running sneakers. 

Ava never rushes her, always lets her make her way through things the way she wants to. For someone who rushes through so much, her patience is another testament to the ways Ava has changed for her.

“Alright, so it’s between Enter the Dragon or Fist of Fury Part Two.”

Beatrice wrinkles her nose. “What about Fist of Fury Part One?”

“Can’t find that one.” Ava immediately slides towards her when Beatrice sits down, the sharp point of her knees digging into Beatrice’s thigh. She barely feels them. “So maybe Enter the Dragon? He’s hunting down a drug king who killed his sister.”

“Sure.” Beatrice doesn’t care what the movie is about. Not with the way that Ava is arranging herself so that she’s pressed in closer to Beatrice.

Ava is too busy selecting the movie to see the way that Beatrice is controlling the way she breathes, using all her training to keep it even. So busy that when she reaches out and takes Beatrice’s hand, dropping it onto her thigh, she doesn’t notice the way Beatrice fails spectacularly at the only thing she’s focused on doing.

Ava’s thigh is still muscled, still warm and smooth. Beatrice’s fingers curl over the skin, molding to her leg. There’s nothing between them, no denim shorts. Just Beatrice’s palm, sure to sweat in a minute, and Ava’s skin. 

She inhales one controlled breath, letting it out in a hot, quiet exhale. Ava looks at her and Beatrice forces a smile, hoping it doesn’t shake like she feels every nerve ending in her is. She must be succeeding; Ava smiles back at her and wiggles down towards her a little more. 

Touch is her newest love language. She’s still growing into it, still trying to understand it as well as Ava does. So maybe she didn’t go too far. Maybe she didn’t push too much. If she had, Ava wouldn’t be seeking her out, would she? She would be sitting across the couch, a cushion like an ocean between them. She wouldn’t be here, pressed into Beatrice’s side with her hand on top of hers. Maybe - as Ava smiles and scratches her fingernails against the back of her hand gently - Ava is trying to tell her that they’re thinking the same thing; they’re on the same page.

But she still doesn’t know for sure. She doesn’t have any more answers than she did before.

She thinks about the words Shannon told her, right after Ava’s coffee date with JC. “Be honest. Be direct. Tell her how you feel. If you never say anything, you’ll never know and you might just miss your chance.”

Ava has many love languages. Beatrice wants to love Ava in every one. 

“Just use your words, Beatrice.”

Maybe she just needs to adopt a new one.

[onestepbackwards]

Hello first time here! Really like your work! Can I ask for a request for self aware Ingo and Emmet sees you sad lately from everything in life and tries desperately everything in their power to see you smile and laugh again?

Sure thing Anon! I hope you enjoy some Ingo and Emmet! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o Summary: After a rough week from work, Ingo and Emmet, who (Unknown to you) have become self aware in your game, decide to try and cheer you up. CW: Self aware characters Word Count: 2634 Words! - You sighed as you pushed yourself through your front door, wincing when the door slammed shut behind you. God, your head hurt. Dumping your things on a chair in your living room, you sighed, and slumped towards your room. You needed to change clothes, and relax. When you finally put on a comfy pair of clothes, you flopped onto your bed with another sigh. Today had been a crap day at work. Not just today, not really, but the whole week has been awful. Your manager had been up your ass, asking you to do things waaaay outside your paygrade, let alone outside your contract. You haven’t found a new job yet, so you were stuck being overworked at this one. You hated it. Rolling onto your back, you reached towards your bedside table, and patted the small table until you felt your 3DS. Grabbing it, you pulled it to you and unplugged the charger. “At least I can take my mind off things for a while…” You mumbled, before opening up your small console. Immediately, you were greeted with the familiar intro of Pokemon Black 2. You smiled. Despite all the crap going on in your life, you at least had your games. It had been a rather great find. You had played Pokemon Legends Arceus not too long ago, and had fallen in love with the Subway Boss Ingo all over again. So much so, that you wanted to replay your copy of Black 2. You played it when you were younger when it first came out. You didn’t remember too much, but you did remember Ingo and Emmet. When you played the game at the time, you distinctly remember challenging the Battle Subway a lot. It was one of your favorite past times in this game. You adored making a special team just to take on the subway, making it your mission to beat Ingo and Emmet as often as possible. You thought they were cute, and adored their little habits. You remember loving both dearly. They were some of the few things of this game you remembered, and you wanted to revisit them. So, you dug out your DS and game, and began playing. It took a while to get anywhere in the game, you deciding to take some time to level your team. The game was just how you remembered it, at least at first. Then some strange things you couldn’t recall in the story began happening. On one of the days you were playing, right before challenging Roxy, you had a small incident. It had been raining out, and had been a pretty dreary day overall. Thankfully you had managed to stay home from work, and focused on stuff around the house, and your game. You played most of the morning, before leaving the DS to charge while going to make a small meal. You kept your DS on and open, not really paying attention. This way you could occasionally do a battle, and still listen to the town music while moving around the kitchen. The rain outside had quickly crept into a thunderstorm over the past hour. You didn’t mind too much, glad to get some rain. However, you didn’t really anticipate said storm causing some sort of electrical overload when a bolt of lightning hit a set of power lines nearby. You let out a few curses, turning off your stove. So much for cooking. You are a little surprised when there is a single light in your kitchen. Your DS was still on. Slightly panicked, you noticed a slight bit of static over the screen, and the screen glitched slightly whenever you moved your character. Terrified your game and DS had been corrupted, you shut the system down. It wouldn’t be a huge loss, you had just recently saved. If the game and DS were fine, then there would be nothing to worry about. You just hoped nothing had damaged your device. When you turned the system back on, you let out a slight sigh of relief when you didn’t notice anything wrong. So far so good. When you turned your game on, you felt like a weight was lifted off your shoulders. Everything seemed okay. Your little character was fine, the static was gone, and the sprites looked normal. Decided to close the game and wait out the storm, you let your heart rest, thankful your game had seemingly been okay. At least, you first thought. Unknown to you, Ingo and Emmet shared a look, considerably confused. A look of horror dawning on both their faces as they stood in Gear Station. They weren’t real. They weren’t real. When the game was off, everything was almost normal, but when the code appeared, it was as if everyone was on a script, a schedule that no one but them could move against. They felt the code shift and change as they moved on their own, and that’s when they noticed it. You. The player character. You moved differently. You followed the code, sure, but at the same time, your movements weren’t set in stone like everyone else’s. That’s when they dug a little deeper, and another realization hit them. The player character was being controlled by another being, an entity of sorts that lived outside of their plain of reality. At first, they were slightly afraid. What did this mean for them? How could they face their friends and coworkers, knowing that they aren’t real? They are just numbers in a game? They start distancing themselves from everything after that, only focusing on work. However, Emmet gets bored one day, and after fiddling with the code, finds your camera and microphone. Curious, he enables both, and sees you. He sees and hears who has been controlling the player, who has yet to even reach Nimbasa. He’s enamored immediately. You were so cute! The way you would dance around your kitchen while cooking, or hum while doing chores. He shares what he learned with Ingo, and Ingo is at first extremely wary, and a bit upset with his twin for doing something so reckless. However, after Emmet shows him this, he quickly warms up to you. You were just so… alive. It sounded odd, and weird, he was sure, but… You were real. Alive. A living, breathing person. He was also beginning to see why Emmet liked you so much. From the little things, to the way you acted around others. You were very kind, and a hard worker. Ingo felt his heart beat faster every time he saw you through the screen. He was falling hard, and falling fast. When you had reached Nimbasa, both were surprised when you had gotten excited seeing them. You liked them? Knew them? Ingo had to reel Emmet in from going against the code, at least at first. He also wanted to talk to you, but he didn’t want to scare you away. However, his brother couldn’t resist. “Hello! I am Emmet! It’s nice to finally meet you!” You blink, though give him a smile after a moment. “It’s nice to meet you too, Emmet!” you respond back, obviously not expecting any other responses. Ingo reigns Emmet in from responding. When you talk to Ingo, he decides it wouldn’t hurt to introduce himself a little differently. “Hello! I’m Ingo! It’s nice to meet you as well!” A little different than what he was supposed to say, but you didn’t seem to notice. In fact, you smiled softly at him, and greeted him as well. Ingo was glad you couldn’t see him blush. After that, well, they just couldn’t help themselves. They started popping up every so often. And you were beginning to notice. You were sure Ingo and Emmet never left the station. Sure, they were extremely popular characters, but you were positive they weren’t supposed to leave. At least, you don’t remember either of them wandering around Unova. However, you didn’t seem to mind. In fact, you seemed giddy whenever the two would show up. It didn’t happen often, you would just be in a town or a route, and one or both would be there. They would greet you, ask about your day, and challenge you to a battle. You don’t remember this, but you enjoy seeing both of them. You wondered why you hadn’t seen any gifs of them appearing in these places online, but shrugged it off. You were just happy to see them. Emmet feels himself yearning for you. You were perfect. He wanted to make you happy. So, Emmet brings up telling you about their awareness to Ingo. At first, he’s adamantly against it. What if you get scared? Leave them forever? Even if he wanted to talk to you too, get to know you, maybe even get close with you… Emmet urges him on. You won’t be here forever, and once you beat the game, you probably won’t play again for a long time. Ingo hates that Emmet is probably right. This was a game to you. Eventually, you would beat it, and move on. If they missed their chance, who knows how long it would be till they saw you again? What if you didn’t even keep the game, and threw it away, or sold it? They had to do something soon. That’s when they noticed your attitude shift one day. You seemed really down, and you looked incredibly exhausted. You didn’t even say anything when starting the game, just began playing. You didn’t even seem to have your usual energy. You didn’t dance, or hum. You just laid on your bed, bundled up, and played. You didn’t even visit Gear Station! They didn’t blame you of course, if you were feeling unwell. You at least seemed to cheer up some every time one of them showed up to speak to you. Otherwise, you practically just droned on, until you were too tired to play anymore. It broke their hearts. They became worried for your health and happiness the fourth day in a row this happened. Something must be upsetting you, and they couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. So today, when you came back from a crappy day from work, and turned on the game, you were confused when your Xtansceiver rang. Your character automatically answered it, and you nearly choked when you saw Ingo and Emmet staring back at you. Fully animated sprites and all. This… This was definitely not in the game. You know that the internet would have said if they had a phone call appearance. You would have remembered seeing it too. “Hello! Are you doing alright?” Ingo asked. Instead of your character answering, a text box appeared on the bottom screen. You stared, jaw dropped. Finally, you hesitantly began to type. ‘Not really, but thank you for asking.’ Emmet frowned on his screen, and you blinked. “Well, we’re sorry you had a rough day! Would you like to hang out with us?” Emmet asked, and after a few moments, you hit yes. “Excellent! Meet us at Gear Station! We’ll see you there!” Ingo said, and both said goodbye, before hanging up. You wondered what the fuck just happened. Morbidly curious, you immediately fly over, and enter the station. When you enter, Ingo and Emmet spot you with a little ‘!’ appearing over their heads. They walk over to you and greet you. Turns out, they wanted to follow you, and join you hunting and battling pokemon. You were awestruck. Both of them followed behind your player character around the city, and when you went to leave, they followed right behind you! This was definitely not in the base game. You briefly wondered if you had some sort of hacked copy of the game. That wouldn’t make much sense though, this had been an official retail copy. Sure, you lent this copy to a friend once, but you know for a fact they don’t know how to hack a game cartridge, especially over a decade ago. What the hell was going on with your game? Despite your confusion, you couldn’t help but admit, you were having fun. Whenever you entered a battle, you would end up in a 3v3, something that was rarely seen in this gen, if you remembered correctly. You especially loved the sprite animations for Ingo and Emmet throwing the pokeballs on the field from the players point of view. You were in awe, if you were being honest. You didn’t think this was possible. Perhaps you really did get a hacked copy, your parents lying when they gave it to you for your birthday all those years ago? But you haven’t exactly seen such a detailed hack before, especially since it would have had to have been done in a short amount of time… Regardless, you were having a ball. Occasionally Ingo and Emmet would speak up about something, and you absorbed every word. Whatever they said would make you smile, and a few times, even made you laugh. It was as if you were talking to actual people. When you would go up and talk to one of them, they would ask if you wanted them to leave. Each time, you would hit no. They seemed delighted you wanted them with you. It was also a little strange. The whole time they are with you, the wild pokemon you encountered were a higher lever, much higher than originally. You supposed it made sense. 3 high level pokemon vs 3 low level seemed like overkill. Now it was at least a challenge. Another odd thing, was that you were encountering all sorts of pokemon, pokemon that shouldn’t even be in the areas you were in. If you didn’t have a pokemon you encountered, one of them would even ask if you wanted to catch it instead. It was… Odd, but charming. It was such a small detail, but it made you happy that they cared. You were having so much fun, you didn’t realize how much time had passed, until you felt your stomach growl. Looking over, it was nearly 12 AM. You were so glad you didn’t have work in the morning. Getting up, you grabbed your DS, and made a meal, still engrossed by the two twins following you around, with little speech bubbles occasionally popping up when they had something to say. By the time you finished your food, you weighed in your options. You wanted to play some more, but you had to go to bed. If you stayed up, you risked ruining your schedule, and you didn’t want to ruin it, only to get 3 hours of sleep next time you had a shift. You thought about just closing the DS, but hesitated. It didn’t feel right to just close the console. You had your character talk to Ingo, and he asked the same question. “Would you like us to leave?” It left a small pang in your heart, but you hit ‘yes’. His sprite nodded at you, and Emmet walked to his side. “Very well then. Thank you for hanging out with us. It was verrry fun!” Emmet spoke. “Indeed! Thank you for the fun time! We’ll talk to you later!” Ingo chimed in afterward. Both then walked off the screen, in whatever direction Nimbasa happened to be in. You stared at your screen for a few minutes, wondering if that all really happened, or if you fell asleep when you first got home. Closing the console, and crawling into bed, you snuggled into the covers. Even if you weren’t sure what was happening to your game, you seriously hoped they would want to follow you around again. By the time you fell asleep, you had completely forgotten about the rough day at work you had.

[junkworldusa]

Raudive Voices

(process post for TV comic)

i’ve been really into william burroughs the past month & haven’t had a chance to make much art until now. i decided when i had free time my first project would be a cut-up comic: i would divide pre-written dialogue into small sections and pull random images to go with each section. then i would faithfully copy these down & translate them into the form of a comic.  in other words, the dialogue would be transcribed exactly as written, while the images that went along with it would be random (first sign of cowardice; if i  was going all-in i should have mixed up the dialogue too).

burroughs described reading poetry with the TV on in the background and making notes of what he was reading when certain images were on screen. that’s the vibe i wanted, hence the TV frame (also a coward’s move-- ANYTHING can be on TV, no narrative framing necessary!). i wish i had had the randomness of TV but the internet sufficed.

[ask me about my collection of portentous jeopardy answers]

first i wrote a draft of dialogue to get a sense of the pacing. i printed it out, chopped it up into 20 "panels" and glued these to index cards (i ended up adding 7 more panels throughout the process). these were flipped over, labeled 1 through 20, & set aside.

i spent a day compiling screencaps of movies, commercials, TV shows, cartoons, news segments, etc. i tried not to think too hard about what these were in-context, but i did choose a couple movies for their thematic relevance (zero dark thirty, dr. strangelove, the day the earth stood still.) i printed the ones i liked best, cut them up, & numbered the backs. there ended up being 65 of these.

[ambien ad i liked but didn’t end up using]

the next day i laid out the 20 index cards & the 65 images face-down & pulled up two random number generators: one set to 1-20 and one 1-65. i began generating pairs and matching the corresponding images to their cards. i kept everything face-down the whole time b/c it felt fun and dramatic to get to flip them all at the end.

finally i began flipping over the cards & their images in sequential order, one card at a time. if a card had multiple images, i flipped the one that was generated first & only looked at more if i felt unsatisfied. this meant there was some kiana selection involved, as most dialogue cards had at least 2 images to choose from, but over half of the images in the comic are the first ones flipped (including some of my favorites). i fiddled around w/ pacing for a while, adding 7 new panels & generating images for them with a similar method. then it was time 2 make the comic

[what my desk looked like. the pencils are in blue so they’re barely visible, but they were finished at this point.]

i was really satisfied with the results of this experiment. there are strange & interesting juxtapositions of word & image that i couldn’t reach just by sitting around and brainstorming.

“Thousands of people dreamed about 9/11″ generated Neo waking up from the Matrix (welcome to the Desert of the Real). “I’ve always been an obsessive guy” returned Ripley holding jones the cat close to her chest. “Lots of demonic influence out there” generated an alien spaceship: a significant number of christians think aliens are demons sent here to deceive us, including my mom. some pairs i was unsure or dismissive of at first but soon grew on me, like the simpsons at thanksgiving dinner praying as the atomic bomb hits.

even after the exciting part was over & the significantly harder work of “making” the comic began, i was still finding new meanings/patterns (for example the successive trio of Ash/Neo/Max Renn only dawned on me once i started inking-- all men, all covered in fluid [milk/amniotic/blood], all interfacing with machinery).  at one point photoshop crashed and made glitch art-- that’s cut-up too.

if this process seems anathema to stuff i’ve written about comics in the past, that’s because it is. its also (obviously) stylistically different from brush and ink cartoon dogs. reason:

that being said, the inking took forever (5 days) at which point my enthusiasm had considerably waned (“FUCK IT, WE’LL DO IT LIVE!”) so i dont think i’ll work like this again. but i’m happy with the end product-- cold, eerie. america seen through multiple screens. or should i say...through a scanner darkly????? *shot*

thanks for reading!

[writingithink]

Tangled Timelines Chapter 3 Rated: T Chapter Word Count: 5,010 Chapter Summary: The Doctor and Rose try to track down some ghosts. Notes: Hey look! It's an update!! Hopefully they'll be happening more regularly now. I'm semi doing NaNoWriMo, and by that I mean that I'm attempting to write 50,000 words this month spread across any project (including this one). I'm starting to find my groove with this fic, so *fingers crossed*

As always, many hugs and thanks for @hey-there-juliet , my lovely beta. && all mistakes are mine.

READ IT ON AO3 [copy/paste link]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686090/chapters/67268401

<-- Ch2

Ch 4 -->

As soon as he entered his ship, the Doctor collapsed onto the jumpseat and stared blankly at the time rotor for a few moments. And then he glared at it.

“I somehow manage to happen upon the exact coordinates for the beginning of an invasion, and for some reason you’ve put me smack dab in the middle of it?!”

The answering hum was … frustrated.

He furrowed his brows, frowning. It would be exceedingly bad, incredibly bad, astonishingly bad bad bad if something else was influencing the TARDIS. The Doctor sprang to his feet and immediately sonicked open the grating, taking a moment to place a temporary barrier around his panic before he could worry Rose.

Back at the flat, she was having tea with her mother. She’d only just managed to get Jackie to stop complaining about his apparent need to ‘make everything about aliens’, and they were now talking about the wedding. Apparently she’d found a baker who said they’d make up cake samples that all somehow incorporated bananas. Best news he’d heard (well, technically) all day, and he couldn’t properly appreciate the sentiment when he desperately needed to check his ship and parse out exactly what he was going to do about these ‘ghosts’.

First things first, he needed to make sure that the TARDIS was physically fine. That she was healthy. And actually, it wasn’t so bad. There were some minor repairs he should take care of before they next left Earth, but nothing he couldn’t leave until after they’d saved the planet. The Doctor pulled himself out from under the console and bounced over to the navigational matrix, pulling a screen with him as he went.

His mouth dropped as he looked at the recording of their last flight path. A time track seemed to just- just pop into existence, pushing them months away. His ship had immediately landed due to the unexpected error. It literally looked like a glitch in the Vortex - but there were no such thing as glitches in the Time Vortex. A whole dimension doesn’t glitch - not without some outside force acting on it.

And any outside force meddling with time was even more dangerous than whatever these ‘ghosts’ were.

One bloody thing at a time, though.

The Doctor pushed himself away from the console and began pacing.

Ghosts ghosts ghosts ghosts ghosts.

Not really ghosts. Getting stronger from the psychic energy of the entire human race. Incredibly unpleasant when one walks through you - really do feel dead. Worse than dead. Likely nothing good, and all over the world.

But they appear in shifts. There’s shifts.

So someone had to be in charge of that. Probably multiple someones. But still, there would be a central location connected to them, giving them whatever help they need to press themselves onto the Earth from wherever they really are. To do that, all around the world, they would have to have an incredibly strong signal.

An incredibly strong, traceable signal.

“Alright then!”

Headfirst into danger was just what it was going to have to be.

The Doctor sonicked open a different panel and began rummaging around for the equipment he’d need. It wasn’t long before he heard the TARDIS' door open.

“According to the paper,” his wife announced, “they’ve elected a ghost as MP for Leeds. Now tell me about this plan you’re tryin’ so hard to keep secret.”

He popped out of the grating with a backpack full of equipment.

“Who you gonna call?” he joked.

“Ghostbusters!” Rose laughed, more amused by the voice he was using than his shockingly similar looking technology.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” the Doctor finished with a little jig before dashing out of the TARDIS.

“My mum’s on her way down,” she informed him as he looked around the playground for the best area to set up the cones. Actually, should do nicely right where they were.

“Oh?” He turned on his heel and went back into their ship, pleased that she’d seen fit to set out the rest of the equipment they would need. “Let’s get these outside.”

“Doctor,” his bondmate huffed, even as she took a cone. I don’t think we should tell her yet. About the lifespan thing. Not until after we’ve gotten rid of the ghosts. Like, way after. Next trip back.

That’s fine, he agreed as he sat down his roll of wire and cone and began plugging everything in.

“We’ll still have to stay for awhile, though. Because we said we would.”

The Doctor paused what he was doing, dramatically raising his eyes skyward. It was quite a nice day, really. You’d think, with London having nice weather for once, that he’d be able to enjoy it. He opened his mouth, planning to vocalize his many complaints, but as soon as he turned back towards Rose, he saw Jackie walking up.

After the ghosts, yes. Sometime during this trip, though, please . 

He wasn’t ashamed to beg. Well … a little ashamed.

“Why’d you park all the way over here?” Jackie asked as he began plugging the wires into the cone Rose had placed.

“Got tired of the alley. Bit dingy,” he quipped. It was a lie, but better than telling his mother-in-law that not only had the flight gone wrong time-wise, but also slightly by location.

His wife shot him a worried look as she caught the thought.

Later, he promised, rushing back into the TARDIS for the final cone. He would worry about all of that later - they had important things to do.

“When’s the next shift?” he asked as he sat the cone down.

“Quarter to,” Jackie answered, “but don’t go causing trouble. What’s that lot do?”

“Triangulates their point of origin.”

“I don’t suppose it’s the Gelth?” Rose asked, visions of their spectral forms playing across their bond for a moment.

“Nah,” the Doctor responded, and she quickly shrugged off the idea. “They were just coming through one little rift. This lot are transposing themselves over the whole planet. Like tracing paper.”

With the final cone plugged in, he ran over to make sure they were all in the proper position.

“You’re always doing this,” Jackie complained. “Reducing it to science. Why can’t it be real? Just think of it, though. All the people we’ve lost. Our families coming back home. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

He paused to give his mother-in-law an honest answer. 

“I think it’s horrific.” 

And then the Doctor bounced back into motion, unrolling the cable that would connect the triangulation devices to the TARDIS console. They were on a time crunch, after all. “Rose, give us a hand, love.”

His bondmate sighed before following him into the ship.

She’s so upset.

The Doctor remained silent, aware that the thought wasn’t really meant for him and even more aware that there wasn’t anything he could say that would help. He plugged in the cable and turned to Rose, aware that her mother had followed them inside. This is how they could help.

“As soon as the cones activate,” he explained quickly, pointing to the monitor, “if that line goes red, press that button there. If it doesn’t stop,” he continued, reaching into his jacket to pull out the sonic screwdriver, “setting 15-B. Hold it against the port, eight seconds and stop.”

“15-B, eight seconds,” she confirmed.

“If it goes into the blue, activate the deep scan on the left.”

“Uhm … oh!” His wife leaned over the console, which he found much more provocative than the situation really called for. “This button there?”

“Hmm close.”

And he’d really, sincerely intended to send her a mental image of the correct button, but some wires must have gotten crossed there. Instead what he sent was a memory of their return to the TARDIS right after the Rhibelini festival. Eh. Oops?

“That one?” Rose smirked, pointing to another button that was definitely not close, while sending some very, uhm, creative suggestions that, unfortunately, weren’t actually feasible.

“Eehh, now you’ve just killed us,” the Doctor told her with a theatrical grimace.

With the button, or- ?

They both laughed, but only for a moment.

“Er, that one.” She confidently pointed to the correct button, telepathically informing him that she knew the whole time.

“Yeah!” he smiled before turning to Jackie. “Now, what’ve we got? Two minutes to go?”

Jackie looked down at her watch, and the Doctor was glad that she didn’t realize that he was just trying to make her feel needed. That he was a Time Lord and didn’t need her help to check the time. Because his wife had to be right - there’s no way her mum actually enjoys the act of doing laundry. She enjoys being a mum.

You like her, Rose teased over the bond.

Shush.

He gave her a peck on the cheek before exiting the ship to do the final prep work on the triangulation cones. It was go time. The Doctor raced around, calibrating each one.

“What’s the line doing?” he shouted through the door.

“It’s alright,” came his wife’s answering shout, though she really didn’t need to with his superior hearing. She could whisper and he’d be able to hear her from this short of a distance. “It’s holding!”

“You even look like him,” Jackie said to Rose, and he could hear her just fine. Not that he understood what that was supposed to mean.

“How do you mean? I suppose I do, yeah,” his wife responded, sounding pleased, though he still didn’t know what it meant. Rose didn’t look at all like him. What a strange thing to say. He tried to refocus on the triangulation equipment.

“You’ve changed so much,” Jackie sighed. “All grown up and married to an alien, living in a spaceship.”

The Doctor almost said something to Rose about her mother acknowledging that they were, in fact, already married, but then caught himself. If she didn’t already know that he was eavesdropping, no need to make it obvious. Not that it would matter either way. He wasn’t going to stuff cotton in his ears just because the humans in his life couldn’t be bothered to remember all of his biological differences.

“For the better,” his wife replied with confidence. “We have an amazing life, and we’re in love.”

“I suppose. It’s just barmy. Seeing you two like this in this box of his. Makes it hard to pretend everything’s even a little normal.”

He wondered what exactly Jackie imagined their life was like when they weren’t around. Things had actually gotten shockingly domestic lately, though it would still probably be too alien for his mother-in-law.

“Mum, I used to work in a shop.”

“I’ve worked in shops. What’s wrong with that?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Rose sighed.

Once again the Doctor made himself refocus on the task at hand, all the while hoping that they weren’t about to have a row.

“I know what you meant. What happens when I’m gone?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Rose ordered, distress flooding their connection, making it nearly impossible for him to pay attention to the cones.

How exactly was he supposed to save the Earth with these working conditions?

There was a smug voice in his head, with a distinct Northern accent, very pleased to point out how they were right about avoiding domestics.

“No, but really. When I’m dead and buried, you won’t have any reason to come back home. What happens then?” Jackie asked her.

“I don’t know,” Rose mumbled, as she tried and failed to imagine their future life without her mother in it.

The Doctor frowned, realizing that he couldn’t quite picture it either.

“Do you think you’ll ever settle down?” her mother continued.

Their connection was now awash with all sorts of negative emotions, and he could tell that his bondmate was near tears, which was completely unacceptable. He turned away from the cones, ready to march back on board before stopping himself.

“The Doctor never will, so I can’t,” Rose told her. “Wouldn’t want to. We’ll just keep traveling.”

“And you’ll keep on changing. And in forty years time, fifty, there’ll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles from Earth. But she’s not Rose Tyler. Not anymore. She’s not even human.”

Their bond somehow managed to pulse mauve.

It’s going to be okay, love, he tried to comfort her, fighting to send soothing, positive thoughts over their connection just as he finished up the calibrations. A distraction, that’s what she needed! It was certainly what he needed.

“Here we go!” he shouted.

“The scanner’s working!” Rose called out. “It says Delta-One-Six!”

“Come on then, you beauty!” the Doctor laughed, firmly resolved on drowning out all of the pain present in their shared mental space with adrenaline fueled glee. After all, he had always wanted to use these cones - they were state of the art!

He watched with wide eyes as the cones connected, immediately trapping one of the so-called ‘ghosts’ within their quasi-electric field. And then he reached into his pocket, carefully blocking their bond as he pulled out and put on a pair of 3D glasses - this was the part of his speculations that he really would rather not worry his bondmate with. At least, not yet. Not until he absolutely had to.

The ghost … thing he’d just trapped was absolutely riddled with Void particles. Completely covered, blurry head to blurry toe. Blimey.

The Doctor knelt down, adjusting the controls in order to get a more accurate read. If he was lucky, he would be able to figure out which parallel world these creatures were trying to come from. Likely a parallel Earth, but which one?

It began writhing, though nothing about the triangulation device should cause a living thing pain.

“Don’t like that much, do you?” he couldn’t help commenting. “Who are you? Where are you coming from? Woah!” He jumped back as the ‘ghost’ attempted to break out of the containment field. “That’s more like it! Not so friendly now, are you?”

He looked on as the creature faded away and the cones deactivated. While some more time would have been helpful, the Doctor had enough information to get started. After quickly picking up all of the cones, he ran back inside. Once he’d dumped them all out of the way, he raced up to the console, shrugging out of his coat and tossing it onto the railing.

“I said so!” he exclaimed. “Those ghosts have been forced into existence from one specific point, and I can track down the source. Allons-y!”

With that, he slammed the dematerialization lever, the coordinates having been inputted by the triangulation device. So handy! Finally got to use it.

The TARDIS shook violently.

Well, maybe he could make some improvements ... if he ever got the chance to use it again. The Doctor sprung to his feet and stabilized the flight.

Things seemed abnormally silent in the console room and over their bond. He was uncertain as to why, but still gave over to his natural inclination to fill the silence.

“I like that,” he told his wife as he moved around the console. “Allons-y. I should say allons-y more often. Allons-y. Watch out, Rose Tyler. Allons-y. And then, it would be really brilliant if I met someone called Alonso, because then I could say, ‘Allons-y Alonso’ every time.” He finally reached Rose and wrapped his arms around her before pausing. “You’re staring at me.”

“My mum’s still on board,” she whispered, squeezing his arms.

The Doctor looked up to see Jackie Tyler sitting on one of the platforms.

It was terrifying.

“If we end up on Mars, I’m going to kill you.”

Absolutely, bone-chillingly terrifying.

Stop being a drama queen, his bondmate chastised.

Oh, the domestics of it all! Worse than living in a house! Traveling with his mother-in-law?!

You’ll be fine, it’s hardly traveling . We’re in the same city, in the same time, Rose reassured him, rolling her eyes before giving him a proper hug.

What was he supposed to do now, though?! Bring Jackie with them? Leave her in the TARDIS? It would likely be dangerous wherever they ended up, invasion and all. The alternative was having her stay in their home to snoop around and get up to who knows what. There was no winning!

“Welcome aboard, Jackie!” he said with a wave, his smile showing a bit too much teeth.

“Where exactly are we going, anyway?” her mother asked.

“Come down, mum. You can watch the landing on the view screen with us,” Rose encouraged, releasing him so that she could meet her halfway. “We’re gonna land at wherever they’re controlling the ghosts. Are you fine to stay on board? There’s a pool, you could have a nice swim. Or watch telly in the media room. We’ll be back before you know it.”

“I’m just supposed to hang out in this weird ship of his while you’re off trying to get yourselves killed?”

“We do stuff like this all the time,” the Doctor piped in, trying to reassure her. “Only this time you’re on the TARDIS instead of at home in your flat. Which, really, is much better, when you think about it. Best ship in the Universe.”

Jackie still didn’t look thrilled as they all gathered around the view screen. She looked even less thrilled as they watched the TARDIS land in a hanger before immediately being surrounded by armed gunmen.

“Oh, well, there goes the advantage of surprise,” he sighed. “Still, cuts to the chase.”

Now he was going to have to deal with soldiers. Really, every time he thought that the day couldn’t possibly get worse. The Doctor turned to his mother-in-law as he made his way around the console.

“Jackie, stay inside. Doors shut. They can’t get in.”

“I’m not staying here! Take me home!”

“It’s too late for that,” he told her. “Shouldn’t have come aboard if you didn’t fancy a trip.”

“I was kidnapped!”

He rolled his eyes, deciding not to dignify that with a response as he took Rose’s hand. She pulled him to a stop before they reached the door.

“Doctor, they’ve got guns.”

The Doctor mentally reminded his wife that they’d been surrounded by much, much worse. Daleks couldn’t help but come to mind. 21 st century Earth guns were really the least of his concerns at the moment. Jackie Tyler accidentally breaking his precious timeship was more of a worry than guns. Whatever these creatures had planned, definitely more of a worry than guns.

“And we haven’t,” he delightfully informed her. “Which makes us the better people, don’t you think? They can shoot us dead, but the moral high ground is ours.”

With that, he tugged her out of the TARDIS behind him and closed the door as casually as he could manage.

Honestly, with all of the emergency programs he had installed, why couldn’t he have made one to deal with this scenario? A program that would immediately take Jackie home and then bring the TARDIS right back - now that would be nifty.

 They barely had a chance to look around before the soldiers surrounding them cocked their guns. He and Rose quickly raised their hands to prove they were unarmed.

Y’know what this reminds me of?, his wife casually asked across their connection.

What?

Utah, 2012.

The Doctor’s eyes swept the area as much as he could without moving his head. He could see her point.

Do you think they’d fire if I knocked on wood right now?, he asked her, just as a blonde woman in a suit rushed into the hanger.

“Oh! Oh, how marvelous!” she exclaimed, clapping.

I think she may’ve gone ‘round the bend, Rose laughed in his head as she fought back a confused smile.

The soldiers slowly began to lower their weapons as they joined in on the … clapping? Really, why were they clapping?

“Oh, very good. Superb. Happy day!”

Really, the Doctor felt inclined to agree with his bondmate on this one. Still, now that guns weren’t being pointed at them he was inclined to just go with it.

“Uhm, thanks. Nice to meet you,” he greeted. “I’m the Doctor, and this is my-”

Probably not the time to introduce me as your wife.

“- this is Rose.”

“Hello,” his wife waved with a wide grin that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Oh, I should say! Hurray!”

And there they went again with the clapping. Honestly, what the bloody hell was going on?

Think you’ve got more fans, Rose teased.

“You- you’ve heard of me, then?”

Really, where had his ship landed them?

“Well of course we have,” the overly enthusiastic woman replied. “And I have to say, if it wasn’t for you, none of us would be here! The Doctor and the TARDIS.” 

Everyone started clapping yet again. He was starting to get used to it, actually. It was kind of nice.

“And his companion, of course,” the woman continued.

Okay, not as nice. Then again, Rose was the one who didn’t want him to say she was his wife. Which was probably the smart thing to do, mid-invasion, but still. Just … didn’t feel right. As it was, she had had to cover her mouth with her hands in order to keep herself from laughing - out loud. Their bond was awash with her amusement. The Doctor found himself fighting the urge himself as he tried to politely make them stop.

“And- and- and you are?” he asked as the noise died down.

“Oh, plenty of time for that,” she evaded. Huh.

I think she thinks she’s the boss of you, his bondmate informed him.

She also thinks that I’m the boss ofyou, the Doctor couldn’t help but point out.

Bless.

“Aaaaaaanyway lead on, allons-y. Will there be nibbles?”

He fought the urge to take Rose’s hand as they followed the woman away from the TARDIS, surrounded by armed guards, stuffing his fists into his pockets. A moment later she tugged on his sleeve. The Doctor glanced over, taking out his hand when she rolled her eyes. Their fingers slotted together, perfect fit, as always.

We’ve been holding hands since the moment we met, she mentally chastised. Memories played across their bond.

She certainly wasn’t wrong.

Sorry, he told her, squeezing her hand. Not sure how to pretend to not be married, I guess.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Rose smirk.

Well, I took off my ring. Think all we’ve got to do now is not say it outright.

Before he could properly respond, something on the tip of his tongue (or whatever the telepathic equivalent of that idiom might be) about how he could do a much better job than that, the mystery woman started talking.

“It was only a matter of time until you found us, and at last you’ve made it,” she said. “I’d like to welcome you, Doctor. Welcome to Torchwood.”

With that, she flung open the doors and they entered a massive warehouse. A massive warehouse that was full of alien technology. And since this definitely wasn’t UNIT, this was very, very not good.

Blimey , he told his wife, you’re right. This really is frighteningly similar to that bunker in Utah.

Gonna nip over to that crate and knock on wood?, Rose asked, only partially teasing.

He really was considering it, actually, but … (he peeked behind him at the armed soldiers following uncomfortably close) better not. Instead he focused on the spacecraft in front of them.

“That’s a Jathar Sunglider,” he realized.

“Came down to Earth off the Shetland Islands ten years ago,” the woman explained.

“What, did it crash?”

“No, we shot it down,” she stated. “It violated our airspace. Then we stripped it bare.” 

Oh, this was really not good. The Doctor tried to sense the timelines, but they were all still so jumbled and wrong that he couldn’t make out the consequences of it, this technology that Earth really shouldn’t have right now. Not yet.

“The weapon that destroyed the Sycorax on Christmas day?” the woman continued with pride, “That was us. Now, if you’d like to come with me.”

That’s what Harriet said, Rose realized, replaying the memory over the bond, Torchwood. I didn’t even think about it, though.

No, me either, he agreed as they were led further into the warehouse. Why hadn’t he noticed anything off before? He should have felt it. On Christmas, maybe not - he’d just regenerated. But apparently this organization has been active for at least a decade, if not longer.

“The Torchwood Institute has a motto - ‘If it’s alien, it’s ours’,” their ‘captor’ slash ‘tour guide’ explained. “Anything that comes from the sky, we strip it down and we use it for the good of the British Empire.”

“Excuse me, the what?” Rose interrupted.

“The British Empire,” the woman repeated, turning around and looking his bondmate up and down, sizing her up.

“There hasn’t been a British Empire in ages,” Rose informed her, and she wasn’t wrong.

“We’ll see,” their hostess replied, a little too condescending for his liking. “Ah, excuse me,” she continued as a soldier handed her a particle gun?! “Now if you wouldn’t mind. Do you recognize this, Doctor?”

“That’s a particle gun.”

Now that he was here, now that this had his full attention, the Doctor could feel the strain on the timelines. This whole building was a threat to the entire causal nexus. His wife held his hand tighter when he showed her just a smidge of it over their connection.

“Good, isn’t it?” the woman smiled, unaware of the impending disaster that he wasn’t yet sure how to fix. “Took us eight years to get it to work.”

“It’s the 21st century,” he calmly tried to explain. “You can’t have particle guns.”

“We must defend our border against the alien,” she replied, as if that somehow gave them a free pass.

The Doctor didn’t know what to say to that, which apparently was fine, as their guide wasn’t really paying attention anyway as she handed back the gun.

“Thank you, Sebastian, isn’t it?”

I think it’s best if we just, you know, let her talk, he told Rose, studiously not looking directly at her - and really, there was a lot to take in, the warehouse was packed with advanced tech. Much too advanced.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Think she’ll give us an evil monologue?

Well, I don’t think she’s evil, he admitted. I think she’s … some sort of, I don’t know, business woman? I think she truly believes that what they’re doing here is good . Which makes them even more dangerous.

It would also make stopping them even more difficult.

“Thank you, Sebastian.”

He refocused as she turned back to them.

“I think it’s very important to know everyone by name,” she said. “Torchwood is a very modern organization. People skills. That’s what it’s all about these days. I’m a people person.”

Well that’s … nice?, Rose commented across the bond as she gave the woman a very forced grin.

“Have you got anyone called Alonso?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“No, I don’t think so. Is that important?”

Eh, oh well. It was kind of nice, though, having her asking a question for once.

“No, I suppose not,” the Doctor replied, just as he noticed a crate of Magnaclamps. He’d always wanted some, hadn’t gotten around to it, though. “What was your name?”

“Yvonne,” she told them (finally). “Yvonne Hartman.”

He let go of his wife’s hand, giving into the urge to inspect a clamp.

“Ah, yes,” Yvonne said with a smile. “Now, we’re very fond of these. The Magnaclamp. Found in a spaceship buried at the base of Mount Snowdon. Attach this to an object and it cancels the mass,” she explained, as if he didn’t already know. “I could use it to lift two tonnes of weight with a single hand. That’s an imperial ton, by the way. Torchwood refuses to go metric.”

Of course they do, Rose scoffed over the bond. British Empire, I mean really.

“Well, that’s handy,” is what she said aloud as he tossed the clamp back into the crate, wandering away to try to get a better idea of all of the other alien technology they’d managed to scavenge, commandeer or steal. His wife wandered in the opposite direction, giving him a second set of eyes even if she didn’t know what everything was. It really was a devastating amount, and the Doctor had to assume that this wasn’t all of it.

Really, it was about time they got back on track.

“So, what about the ghosts?” he asked.

“Ah, yes, the ghosts. They’re, er, what you might call a side effect,” Yvonne admitted.

“Of what?”

“All in good time, Doctor. There is an itinerary, trust me.”

Ugh, of all the things to add to this no-good-very-bad-day, he was stuck on a tour. With an itinerary.

It was his personal hell, really.

And to make it even worse, there went the TARDIS on the back of a lorry.

“An itinerary?” Rose scoffed. “And what are you lot doing with the TARDIS?!” My mum’s in there!

Oh, seriously?! He’d just managed to forget that they’d left Jackie Tyler unsupervised on the ship. Really, truly, worst day ever.

Seriously? Could you just grow up and get some perspective?, his wife snarled over their connection.

“If it’s alien, it’s ours,” Yvonne replied confidently.

“You’ll never get inside it,” he told her with just as much confidence, if not more.

“Hmm, et cetera.”

Once she turned away, they both glanced back at their ship to see Rose’s mum peek out through the doors - which he distinctly remembered telling her to keep shut.

Really, why did no one ever listen? He didn’t understand it.

With a sigh, and all of his unflattering thoughts about his mother-in-law safely behind a barrier, the Doctor turned away to continue their ‘tour’. At least the ghosts were on the itinerary. So this day had to turn ‘round at some point … right?

[radramblog]

Game of the Year 2020...?

Ive scrolled the list of games that came out this year to see what my GOTY ended up being, but turns out the only game I played in 2020 that released that year was, uh…….

Fucking good game but like I’m not gonna hand it GOTY by default (That goes to Hades, based solely impressions from other people). Actually, I’m not handing out any awards, really. So I guess I’m just gonna go over a bunch of the other games I did play last year, regardless of whether or not they came out then.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition

A mate got me this for my birthday in December 2019, and unlike the other games I got then (Kirby Star Allies which I burned through that month and Octopath which I still haven’t played) I spent a fair few hours playing it last year. This was before the sequel was announced, and also a little bit after the fact- figured I should try and finish one before playing the other. Unfortunately, I have yet to purchase Age of Calamity nor finish Definitive Edition, because the former is expensive and the latter is expansive. Holy shit there’s so much fucking content in this game. I don’t think I ever will finish it to be honest, though despite the repetitiveness it never really felt boring to me. It’s the only Warriors/Musou game I’ve played, and I’d be interested in trying others based on the experience.

(I’m not playing Fire Emblem Warriors though fuck that)

Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC: The Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra

Sword and Shield felt somewhat lacking on release, and while the DLCs released this year did much to try and fix this its still a bit shit that it required an extra paycheck out of you to get the full game- outside of outsourced mobile games like Go and Shuffle, or services such as Bank or Home, Pokemon has never actually had DLC/microtransactions, so this was a little disappointing. I’d argue that it absolutely wasn’t worth it when Isle was released, as fun as the content was it was again, lacking. Crown Tundra I would argue exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations, however- the new and returning mons are cool and welcome (I despised Calyrex’s design on first reveal but their behaviour in story redeemed it more than enough), and the Max Lair Adventure offered a surprisingly replayable romp that has been great to just try and grind out with friends. I can’t say I’d recommend the DLC pack though- only if because you’ve probably made up your mind already as to whether or not you’re getting it, or this doesn’t apply to you at all. I could also put basically every main series Pokemon game on here, seeing as I’m pretty sure I nuzlocked every region at some point during the year, but I don’t want to make this *that* long. 

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Expansion Pass

Smash is still Smash. I don’t find myself playing it much on my own, and even in Perth get-togethers weren’t super common last year. As neat as the DLC characters released this year are for the franchise as a whole, none of them convinced me to play significantly more than usual, and I can’t wrap my head around half of them, so.

Also, I’m still salty about Byleth, and I actually really liked Three Houses, it was my first FE game. Why the fuck wasn’t it Claude????

Rivals of Aether

On the other hand, in the last few months I’ve found myself grinding match after match of Rivals with one of my best mates and the game is a fucking blast, holy shit. I still haven’t bought it for myself, but its basically 100% of the reason I have played 0 smash for the last few months since we’re too busy mashing Orcane vs Ranno over and over and not really getting tired of it. It requires a specific type of person to get into it, but if you’re in that group then its just an excellent game.

VA-11 Hall-A

I first played VA-11 Hall-A (Vallhalla, since typing that is a pain) by pirating it and playing it on my laptop in the dead of night.

It quickly became one of my favourite games of all time.

When the Switch port dropped, I felt obliged to actually pay for it this time around, since the developers had more than earned my money. And then I replayed it again, playing it on my switch in the dead of night (At least this time I had the excuse of being a nightshift worker). With the sequel unfortunately delayed into 2021, it might be time to run it back once more or drag more of my mates into Glitch City since I already forcibly exposed a few of em to it.

The post-credits title screen is still my phone background.

Fallout: New Vegas

I don’t really have much to say about FNV that hasn’t been said already, especially considering HBomberguy’s recently released video, but it is also on my top 5 list and I only got around to playing Lonesome Road and Dead Money this year. Also went out of my way to 100% achievement complete the game on Steam, which I believe is the first time I’ve done that for a game.

Zero Escape Series (Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Virtue’s Last Reward, Zero Time Dilemma)

The Danganronpa series’ less colourful sibling, Zero Escape was a series I finally got around to finishing after having borrowed a friend’s copy of VLR back in high school and playing it wrong due to not deleting his save file (oops,). I think VLR remains my favourite, and I really hope the series continues at some point (unlikely as it seems now) considering how ZTD missed the mark pretty hard. The first 2 games are still excellent mystery games and a lot of fun, though you do need somewhat of a tolerance for words.

A Hat in Time

Oh god this game is so fucking cute. Also, just an excellent platformer. Is the DLC still on sale? I should buy that.

Fallout 4

Its just not New Vegas. It just isn’t. I really tried with this game, I really did. The gunplay is great, modding and building shit is fun, but its just not the same.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

A couple years ago I bought a SNES Mini, but until 2020 I didn’t really have a convenient way of playing it seeing as my monitor didn’t have an HDMI port. But now I do have one with one, so I got to start playing this classic! And then stopped because of uni. Should finish that, probably.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon

Shit Keara I still have your copy sorry I’ll get back to it :<

Pokemon Stadium

I also managed to get my N64 up and running, and despite being the wrong region for most of the games available in local shops, I somehow managed to get Stadium for a great price. Got to dig out my old Red cartridge and anything. Fuck me though, this game is brutal. Seriously, Gen 1 battle mechanics are tough to deal with at the best of times, having to do battle after battle with said mechanics without losing is just nuts. I still haven’t managed to get Round 2 unlocked.

God, fuck you Blaine. Goddamn fire spin Rapidash motherfucker.

Super Mario 64 Speaking of, I managed to pick up a Japanese cartridge of SM64, complete with BLJ glitches and 3 entire save files. After much effort, I managed to actually get it working, and spent most of the night of Christmas getting smashed and trying to beat Bowser in the Fire Sea. I played a lot of the DS remake as a kid, and I feel like an idiot for struggling as much I did with the original.

This is all of course a buildup to the fact that I was lying about not assigning a GOTY. Because there is only one N64 game in my small collection deserving of Game of the Year, because its deserving of Game of the Year every year since its 1999 release.

BEETLE ADVENTURE RACING MOTHERFUCKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER

[melissatreglia]

Did You Miss Me?: Darkiplier in 2018

For the most part, 2018 was a quiet year. In contrast with 2017, where we were gratified to see Dark's monochromatic visage throughout the year, 2018 carried playful hints and teasing of the elusive entity's presence but no confirmation. There were thumbnails and quick flashes that indicated He was continuing to pull strings, ensuring that His presence was felt but His face never really seen.

Throughout 2017, He'd show up during what us mere mortals consider major holidays or important events. Valentine's Day. Easter. Even Cinco de Mayo got a nod. And of course, the infamous Friday the 13th late in the year.

But 2018? He apparently decided to stay home in the void during our days of revelry, with the possible (though not confirmed) exception of the decidedly strange Fall in Love with Markiplier video for Valentine's Day. And for the TWO Friday the 13ths in 2018? He was a no-show. In 2017, He'd returned to shake things up in our safe little lives... and in 2018, He left us wanting more, like the skilled manipulative seducer He is.

Getting Over It, Part 8 included a thumbnail with Mark's dour expression and a suspiciously familiar colour scheme. The thumbnail for WATCH OUT!! had Mark reaching for us in a state of panic (which belied the contents of the video itself). 

Try Not to Smile Challenge #3, while the smile-free serial killer laugh is creepy, it's not a Darkiplier moment. Though, him joking near the end of the video that people who didn’t smile at some point during the video are "soulless demons" does seem to be a Darkiplier reference of some kind (or maybe a Devilplier reference, since the Cuphead song was released just two months later)?

In Madison, when his game character watches a television that glitches and fades to static, Mark fearfully squeaks, "Darkiplier, is that You?!" While in the description for End My Suffering, just ten days later, Mark wailed, "What malevolent being did I piss off to be cursed like this!"

Brother Wake Up promised "I’ll try to help in whatever way I can but you have to wake up!" Which, while it fit perfectly with the title of the game, the description also fit pretty damn well into the channel lore too. And Umfend's description was likewise ominous: "You shouldn't have forgotten about me... I'll make you remember..."

Meanwhile, the title for the video of Welcome The The Game 2.0 doubles as a callback to an earlier Darkiplier moment: "Don't Play This Game". Horns of Fear did it one better, with the thumbnail featuring many eyes staring out at the viewer (again with an all-too-familiar colour scheme), while the title warned us "DON'T LOOK AWAY..."

In the Warframe playthrough late in the year, Mark's camera briefly freezes. But in 3 Scary Games #9, his camera freezes repeatedly before glitching back to normal, and he implies that "there's something else" messing with the camera. In 5 Nostalgic Games, when Mark gives the definition of ubiquitous and bares his teeth while saying "We're learning today!", the video suddenly glitches. 

The thumbnail for Markiplier has fled the country had Mark lunging at the camera, his face completely darkened by shadow. And the thumbnail for 3.75 Scary Games blatantly toyed with the fandom with text shouting "DARKIPLIER?"

And the fanbaiting didn't stop there. More thumbnails that hinted at Dark included a hand bathed in blue light reaching out to the viewer for the fittingly titled The Devil Haunts Me, and a cartoon of Mark cowering away from Dark's furious glare for You're Perfect.  

Markiplier's Tour: The Movie featured the improv teacher stating that Markiplier wasn't at the shows. "I don't know who that guy was, but it wasn't him." Even the Markiplier Animated short I've Got Boobs?! features a brief scene of a shadowy Darkiplier rising from a well and whispering something unintelligible.

For the most part however, the teasing came directly from out of Mark’s mouth.

In 3 Scary Games #5, Mark jokes that a ghost (clad in the classic white sheet and glitching somewhat) is Darkiplier. 3 Scary Games #13, the first (jokey) game called "Death Trips" features RGB text and Mark narrating in an echoing voice. In Midnight Shift, a game where Mark is memorably being chased by mannequins, he jokes that an RGB poster on a wall is "expricitly [sic] Darkiplier". In SCP Containment Breach #57, Mark jokes when he sees the intro screen of a pretty lady in 3D with an open third eye, "Look at this Darkiplier ass thing... it's like Celine, straight out of [Who Killed Markiplier?]". 

In 3 FNAF Fan Games, he even chortles that the game has “Darkiplier letters.” In Devil Daggers, he scoffs, “A high-pitched ringing in the darkness. That’s always good.”

[Image captured by me, on June 3, 2018.] 

Just before midsummer, I received a pleasant surprise. In Imscared: Steam Edition, Mark says "I gotta go get back into the Shadow Realm, the Upside Down." Which, personally, made me very happy at the time. Since I first became active on Tumblr in July 2017, I've been referring to Dark's void dimension as the Shadow Realm, while Mark has referred to it in the past as the Upside Down, making the link fairly clear in this statement. (Somehow, whether by happy accident or serendipity, my terminology and its proper context made its way to Mark. As a fan, I can't describe how pleased that made me, to know he might have actually seen something I’ve made.)

(But enough about me. I’m just an obsessive Darkiplier fangirl. So let’s get back to cataloging all the hinty goodness!)

By this point, you’re probably wondering, “Okay, so all those hints are decent. But where the hell is Dark in all of this?!” But that’s the point, my friends: He was there the whole time. In brief flashes of imagery, in hints and innuendo. Unseen, but his presence clearly felt as our expectations were played with by our channel host.

We expected a wild ride at the beginning, when Mark made two brief livestreams on January 5th, wandering through the theatre he was slated to play for the You’re Welcome Tour. 

The first of the two, “What’s Going In?!”, he showed us the back area of the Paramount Theatre, using only improvised narration and acting to build an atmosphere of dread. He claimed the theatre was haunted, and that he could smell “the scent of death”, ultimately vowing to protect those who would be visiting the theatre to see him that night. He also declares the EXIT a trap, before being pursued by an unseen entity.

The drama continued with “...” (a title that is impossible to find using Youtube’s search options), that begins with an eerie quiet. Tyler eventually finds Mark’s dropped phone. He asks the viewers where Mark is, before going on a search. He’s eventually attacked from behind and the stream cuts off, leaving those who weren’t at the show that night to wonder how the matter resolved.

In Simulacra, there's a brief flash of Mark in his Big Mood outfit with text saying "WAKE UP". When the simulacra changes the colour of the cellphone's display and begins to speak in a calm, creepy voice, Mark reflexively responds, "Darkiplier?" and sounding unnerved at the mention of "behind your black mirrors", then being stunned as the screen appears to crack.

At the end of Simulacra, he gives an uncharacteristically downbeat speech, declaring that "We're all just digital copies of ourselves, idealized in a digital form. And maybe that's the way that life is just supposed to be. Maybe we should all just roll over and accept it, because there's nothing that we can do to change our fates, after all. And who's to say that it's not better for us just to wear the masks that are our digital personas, and live our lives as those? Maybe that is for the best."

The How To Make Slime video goes from harmlessly silly and takes a twist for the stabby. Mark declares "In order to appease the Dark Gods..." then he instructs the viewer to slice their palm and "whisper the words of power." The words in question? "They shall rise. They shall consume. All will be lost when they rise from the darkness of the ocean. Madness opens up to everything." When the making of the slime is concluded, he adds that "We all get to enjoy three years of peace before the Dark Gods consume us all."

I have no idea what that means, but I’m pretty sure it may involve Cthulhu chomping on my kidneys. (Then again, Darkiplier is a Lovecraftian monstrosity Himself. So, if it’s Him who’s one of the Dark Gods? He can have a kidney from me if He’s really that hungry. Kidneys are a redundant system anyway, so you really only need one.)

April Fool’s Day brought us the gag gift of The Official Markiplier Rock, with a suspiciously deep voice informing us that the rock is available in white. Additionally, the video warned to alert the SCP Foundation if the rock appears to start talking! (What? My rock has been talking to me since I got it, and there’s nothing wrong with me!)

Baldi’s Basics: Secret Ending featured an explanation about attaining the secret ending, with Mark’s otherwise normal voice echoing slightly with subtle white noise effects. (Hmmm...)

In December, for the charity livestream and archived in a video called Santa Spills The Tea, a Santa Claus that sounded suspiciously like Wilford Warfstache declared that Dark, the master manipulator and Big Bad of Mark’s channel, was a “sweetheart! He shouts a lot, but he’s just a big ol’ pussy. He can’t even possibly… he didn’t hurt anybody! He didn’t kill one person! If there’s anybody who’s on my naughty li— uh, on my list of people who’ve been bad, he’s the only one not on it.” (And mind you, in 2017′s Markiplier TV, Wilford sang a little ditty about how he killed Santa Claus and the kids wouldn’t be getting any presents that year. And Dark still convinced us to shoot someone in A Date With Markiplier, while apparently feigning regret. But heck, use your own judgement.)

Mark also dropped one heck of a hint of things to come in, of all places, Markiplier Tries Korean Beauty Products. There, the descriptive intro to the following year’s DAMIEN animated feature can be heard at one point. “Snow blankets the field, a pristine meadow of untouched white. No animals call. No birds cry. Only the steady rustling of wind through dead trees accented by the impact of his axe. A crack-like thunder rings out as the ancient pine finally succumbs to his murderous assault. The old giant crashes into the ground. Dami-”

Wilford Motherloving Warfstache was, of course, focused on the mustachioed entity. But there were elements to the short film that felt like Darkiplier was watching along with us. Particularly the VHS-style glitch at the end of the film.

Of course, there were only three videos that year that potentially contained Darkiplier himself.

One candidate is Fall in Love with Markiplier. Yes, the name on the title is Mark’s... but is it really him? The entirety of the film is a fourteen minute staring contest with Mark, as he lovingly (and somehow also creepily) gazes at the viewer in different settings -- by the ocean, at a dog park, and in a bubble bath. The only spoken words are in the intro, over the strains of the music from A Date with Markiplier: “It’s scientifically proven that you can fall in love with someone simply by maintaining eye-contact for an extended period of time. So now, you can fall in love with Markiplier all over again in these three locations. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The second candidate is World’s 5th Quietest Let’s Play, released just 5 days prior to the Let’s Have a Romantic Staring Contest video. Unlike the previously mentioned video, there’s more going on this time around. The game to be played quietly this time around is Bennett Foddy’s infamous rage-inducing creation “Getting Over It”. 

He threatens the developer with the words, “You will see the inside of your entrails, when I drag them out of your abdomen and show them to you.” (Ah, how romantic.) He goes even further than that, saying soon after, “This is a representation of My sins... You will be purged in the fires of absolution, along with all of your ilk. I will burn the heretics that you are harbouring inside of your soul... I will destroy you.” (Now there’s the smite-happy Hellgod we all love!)

But He doesn’t stop there, snarling under His breath, “You will burn in the fires of My own hell! And I will choose your pain to last eternity!” However, He is ultimately defeated by the game, departing our company with  “Alas, I leave you now, to slumber amongst the ancients.” (Aww, poor guy needs a hug. And I know just who’s ready to snuggle with Him...)

But the last of the video to potentially contain Darkiplier is... the four-hour long play through of Hearts & Heroes. Is it canon Dark? No, probably not. It’s a fan game, though the words of dialogue are acted out by Mark himself. But rather than simply recounting key phrases for you, here’s the Boss Battle between Mark’s team and Dark, edited by the lovely icedpinkpeebles (Mark’s goofy character names and all!):

So, what does all of this ultimately mean? Why did Darkiplier fade into the background in 2018? And, most importantly, what is He up to now?

The truth is I don’t know any more than you do. I can only guess.

But I can tell you this: We don’t know Darkiplier as well as we all think we do. Many of us (including me) fully expected Dark to raise hell following the events of the jokey Darkiplier vs Antisepticeye video in 2017 (because He did mention how He hates being mocked!). And while we did get more Dark at the end of that year, it was in the form of an origin story.

Whatever Dark’s planning, we’re not going to see it coming. Because He’s playing a long game. And when you’re immortal like He is, you have all the time in the world to get what you want. Be it for love or revenge, Darkiplier remains a force to be reckoned with.

But here we are, in the eye of the storm. Only time will tell before the final wrath of the hurricane makes landfall.

[thewhiterabbit42]

Full Circle: Part 3

Full Circle Masterlist

Pairings: Gabriel x Reader

Warnings/Tags: Winchester sister!reader, more angst, more swearing, elements of panic attacks

Word Count: 10,337 

Summary: As you try to put the past to rest, you find some things refuse to stay buried.

Author’s note:  It wasn’t until I rewrote this chapter that I realized how many elements of panic attacks and ways to cope with them I’d written in (hence the tag this time).  It wasn’t my original head canon but given the reader’s history, it would make sense.

Special thanks to my wonderful beta @sumara62​ who is so much more than just the editor of my fics.   Same goes for @blondecoffeecake​, my other partner in crime and wonderful ray of sunshine whose encouragement and sense of humor gets me through the day erry day. 

***Please do not repost or copy my work to any other site without my written permission.  Giving credit does NOT count.  Reblogging is ok.***  

<<Prev Chapter     Part 3     Next Chapter>>

You knew the moment you stepped through the door that something was off.  

Everything was alive in a way you’d never experienced before.  Particles floated across the air, vibrating with a distant, albeit distinct energy.  Instead of the room feeling charged, however, it resonated with an eerie calm, as if the entire world stood still around you.  

You cautiously swept your flashlight along the far wall, searching.  For what, you still weren’t sure.  The first thing you noticed was how different it was compared to the rest of the hotel.  The floor wasn’t littered with glass, debris, or dirt.  The ceiling fixtures appeared to be intact.  Not a single window had been broken, allowing soft rays of moonlight to filter in through the darkness.  

Wait, when had it become night?

You pulled out your phone, attempting to check the time when the screen flickered.  The display glitched, culminating in a scrambled mix of half letters, half numbers.  Your heart beat a little faster as they continued to jumble themselves every few seconds.

You suddenly wished you had called Bobby back, if for no reason other than so someone had your last known location.  

You glanced up uneasily, slipping your phone back into your pocket.  As your eyes adjusted to the dimness once more, you noticed something out of the corner of your eye.  You had missed it coming in, too caught up in scanning the large space to take a look at the immediate area on the floor just off to your right. 

As you focused on the object, you suddenly found it didn’t matter how much daylight should have been left outside.  

Please don’t be a body.  Please don’t be a body.  

You swung the beam downwards and winced.  

Yeah.  That was definitely a body.  Normally you didn’t have a problem handling those.  Normally, they didn’t come with their identity handed to you on a silver platter, or in this case, a name tag.

You had no idea what to do considering the name written across it clearly read Baldur.  

Correction: you knew exactly what to do, which was to stay the hell away from it. 

These were the times you really wish you still had backup.  There was no way you were checking it out, not without some proper God-ganking materials.  There was also no way you were just going to leave it there to potentially reanimate in your absence and wreak havoc on the nearby towns.  

Which left you in quite the pickle.

The hair along your arms rose, drawing your focus.  Something had snuck in around the edge of the silence, something that had tiny shockwaves rippling through that sea of calm.  It echoed along the fringe of your awareness, not quite close enough for your senses to grasp, but too close for them to ignore.  You didn’t know what made you turn, but as you shifted, so did your light, and what it illuminated had your heart lurching to a stop.  

A final memory, one you tried so hard to keep out, erupted, spilling over into the present and causing your throat to constrict.  

It was clear by the look on everyone’s face as you came waltzing in after Lucifer that none of you had a plan.  Not that winging it was anything out of the ordinary.  The amount of tension and terror electrifying the air, however, that was new and a touch unsettling.  

It was another reminder of just how much you were up against, and how well above your paygrade this whole thing was.  

Gabriel took advantage of your surprise entrance, catching his brother off guard as he blasted the devil away from a woman on the floor.  He moved immediately to her side, hand grasping her arm as he pulled her to her feet.  

“God damn it, Gabriel!” Dean hissed, and the frantic gleam within green suggested he was on the verge of losing it on the wrong archangel as his eyes bounced between the two of you.

“Get her out of here,” Gabriel commanded, handing the woman off to your brothers, though as he spoke his eyes landed squarely on you.  Your brothers didn’t hesitate.  They hurried the woman toward you, and Sam shoved her unceremoniously through the door as Dean stopped to grab you.  

“No,” you told him, shrugging free from his grasp.  

“We gotta go,” Dean insisted, and when his hand closed around your arm again, it was so tight there was no breaking free this time.  Not that it stopped you from trying.  He anticipated your shove, his hands taking hold of your jacket and using it to swing you sideways.  You lost your balance, stumbling closer to the exit.

You may not have had a plan, but you thought the part where you all got out alive together had been implied.  

“God damn it, Gabriel!” You shouted and the phrase sounded far, far different coming from your mouth than it had Dean’s.  Alarm sparked through your words, igniting in your eyes and stretching across the gap between you and the angel.  It reflected in his features, drawing forth that sad smile he’d given you earlier, though gold took on a glow that was fierce, bright, and unlike anything you had ever seen before.  

“Come on!” Dean growled, voice rising with his mounting panic as you both watched Lucifer stand up, those icy eyes landing on the two of you before his lips also pulled up at the edges.  

There was nothing soft about this smile.  Nothing remotely human lay beneath it, only the promise of everything unpleasant in existence.

Fear tightened your chest, stilling your movements enough for Dean to gain control.  He almost had you out the door before one final burst of desperation had your hands gripping the doorframe, preventing you from being pulled through it.

Gabriel’s voice sounded so rich and clear within your mind it was as if he was murmuring into your ear.

“Catch you on the flip side, sweetheart.”  

His energy blew over you like a warm breeze, unlocking your fingers and breaking your grasp just before the doors slammed shut in your face.   

Cas had shown you and your brothers his wings once.  You remembered staring up at them in wonder, the ethereal blackness towering over you as it sprouted up behind the angel. If you had thought those were mighty, the ones you were staring at were simply immense.  

Only these were no longer attached to anything.  

You tried to swallow around the overwhelming sea of sentiments pushing their way up past your throat.  When you refused to let them float any higher, they seized around your lungs, forcing your breath to still.  It was hard to stay grounded when it felt like everything, from the air around you to the blood in your veins, had frozen.

The riptide continued to pull you under, the flurry of emotions squeezing so tightly you thought you might actually be having a heart attack from the amount of pressure sitting on your ribcage.  It registered as a harsh contradiction to the awe that bled through the backdrop of pain as you stared down at the mighty spread of ash.  It spanned the length of the room, and you could easily see this pair of wings dwarfing your giant of a brother when fully extended.    

No wonder Gabriel’s presence had always seemed so large.  

It was one you were never going to feel again.

A sob tore free, caught somewhere between your heart and mind.  You clamped a hand over your mouth, trying to keep it from escaping completely.  You never should have left him there.

You rocked forward, knees hitting the tiled floor hard, though the pain never registered through crushing weight that forced you down.  You should have told him he was more than just the giant dick of a screw-up that everyone said he was - that you knew he believed himself to be.   

The thin barrier keeping your feelings at bay burst, freeing them from your body in a slow, steady keen you were unable to choke back.  He deserved better.  From you.  From everyone.  

And you had left him to die alone.

You blinked, vision blurring, as tears slipped out from beneath your lashes.  The noise in your throat faded, your sorrow and regret suffocating even that, until you began to grow dizzy as nothing passed in or out of your airways.  You knew what was happening, you recognized the panic that coiled tightly around your system, but you had already sunk too far beneath dark waters to be able to resurface in time.  

A lifeline appeared in the form of a familiar, chaotic hum.  It tentatively buzzed across your senses before washing over you completely, and for a moment you wondered if your mind was playing tricks.  The only other explanation was that somehow, some residual energy remained trapped within this place, because there was no way Gabriel was really there, not when the evidence lay scattered across the floor in front of you.  

Either way, it didn’t matter.  What you sensed was so strong it was almost tangible, so much stronger than that lingering essence floating along the periphery of existence.  This was the realest thing you’d felt since that night, and the difference between this and that faint echo broke your heart all over again.

Because you knew this moment, like all the others, was fleeting and would slip through your fingers no differently than before.

Something shifted in the air surrounding you, a slow, steady progression of a new kind of energy sweeping in behind the original one.  It was warm, reassuring in the way it wrapped around you, like having a familiar blanket draped over your shoulders after sitting out in the cold for far too long.  It brought with it that touch of comfort you only experienced in those rare moments where someone actually noticed the train wreck you were beneath the surface and reached out to try and quell it.  

The heaviness in your chest began to recede, as did the tide of emotion that had ripped steady shores out from beneath you.  Your head slowly broke surface once more, and you had enough focus to begin to regroup.  Your knees ached in a way you knew meant there would be bruising, and you could feel the chill from the floor seeping through the thin fabric of your pant suit.  What was more telling was what you couldn’t feel.  

Your heart thumped steadily away instead of hammering against your ribs.  Your breath remained even, not the ragged gasps you would expect after breaking down.  It was just another confounding piece to an ever growing puzzle.  

You gave a quick sniffle to clear your nose, pulling your sleeve across your face in an attempt to erase the lingering signs of your grief.  More than just your knees protested as you went to stand, and you were only halfway up before black spots splashed across your vision.  Your exhaustion hit full force, your emotions having consumed most of your energy, forcing you to tap into your reserves.  

Your legs buckled, sending you back down when you felt the briefest flutter along your side.  Your skin jolted at the contact in a way that was unmistakable, distinct, and absolutely impossible.  Your mind reeled, shock hitting even harder when you realized just how gently you ended up back on the floor.

Your eyes flashed up to the empty space in front of you, and you did your best to quell the hope that briefly blossomed.  You didn’t dare to let it catch hold of anything, not after what had just happened, and certainly not after all you had been through.  

It couldn’t be him.  Yet, you found yourself calling out anyway.  

“Gabriel?”

The air around you stood still again, or perhaps you were just losing your ability to take it in anymore.  You didn’t really expect a response.  You expected to find yourself alone, and when the door swung open behind you, you froze.

Too tall you realized as you watched a figure step through the entrance from the corner of your eye.   Instincts seized control, your fingers tightening around the weapon at your side as you turned.  You didn’t have time to feel disappointed, or notice the way that small ember immediately faded back out of existence.

You whirled, gun and flashlight raised in tandem toward the intruder as you shot to your feet.  You ignored the dizzying vertigo, doing your best to blink the world back into focus as your light hit the figure in the face, forcing them to pause.  A large hand came up to shield your onslaught, and you swept your beam down across a broad chest where the letters Randolph County Sheriff were sewn in bright yellow lettering.  

The adrenaline coursing through you had your hands shaking as you immediately lowered your weapon.

“That’s a good way to get yourself shot,” you told him, tone clipped.  The last thing you needed was to take out the head of the local law enforcement.  Mostly because Dean would never let you live it down.  

You could see it now.  Any reference to Indiana would have him bursting into song, and listening to him sing was its own special form of torture.  The fact that it would be I Shot the Sheriff would only double the punishment.  He’d be such a smartass about it, too, slipping it onto a random mixed tape to catch you by surprise.  Hey, isn’t this your jam? He’d say when it drifted through the speakers before cranking it up.  

At least that’s what he would do if he were still around.  

“Agent Stark?” Recognition eased some of the tension that marked the man’s features, but there was no mistaking the undercurrent of apprehension in his voice, and you wondered how much of the unnatural energy the man sensed.  “How did you get in here?”

“They, uh, teach us to be pretty resourceful at the bureau,” you told him, tucking your gun back at your side.  It wasn’t the smoothest lie, but it certainly sounded better than divine intervention.   You couldn’t tell if he bought your response or was too distracted as his flashlight immediately dropped to the body on the floor.

Clearly one of you had been through actual law enforcement training.

A small surge of sympathy crested as you watched him pale.  The weariness, however, that settled along the lines of his face was what had your empathy stirring.  The man had probably seen more bodies in this building alone than most officers did in their entire career.    

You watched him check for a pulse.  When he received nothing, he looked as if nothing would make him happier than if this place burned to the ground.

At least the two of you had that in common.  

You wondered if there might be anything else you shared.  Maybe you could find out once you figured this whole mess out, provided it didn’t scare him away in the first place.

“Did you call it in?” He asked, glancing up at you.  

“Hadn’t had a chance to yet,” you replied just as the body gave a shudder.  Shit.

“Sheriff,” you warned, instinctively taking a step back.  The body’s chest expanded slightly as if taking in air.  Shit shit shit shit shit.  You’d left everything remotely useful back in the car.  Not that you were completely certain what was useful for undead Gods.  You drew your weapon, hoping a little lead might at least slow it down.

“Oh my God, he’s still alive!”  Said no survivor of the horror show that was your life.  Ever.

Sheriff,” you tried again, but he was already dropping to his knees and attempting to help it.

The body arched slightly, chest expanding further.  Only it never exhaled.  It never opened its eyes.  If anything, it sounded as if something was blowing air into it.

“Sir, can you hear me?” The sheriff asked, gently easing up the thing’s eyelids and testing for a response with his light.  You quickly moved toward him, hand coming down on his shoulder as you tried to get his attention.  The corpse arched some more, it’s skin making an odd sound as it began to grow taught, especially around its stomach.

“Uh, sheriff,” you said dumbly, your intuition tingling with the feeling that nothing good was about to happen.  Only what would you say?  You couldn’t just tell him he was hovering over an ancient Norse god… could you?  No, no, you couldn’t.  It would only distract him as he tried to figure out whether or not to call you in instead, and he would still end up dead.  

Thankfully, the man wasn’t completely oblivious to the signs that maybe, just maybe, this was a little out of the ordinary.  It probably helped that the thing continued expanding, its back rounded unnaturally as the rest of it remained stiff, or maybe it was the odd noise it began to make.  The sound was familiar, tugging at something in the back of your mind that you couldn’t immediately place.  

Summer.  Children.  An exhilarating rush as you and Dean raced out of a store, stolen goods jammed into your pockets.   Furtive whispers and hushed excitement as you unloaded your haul while Sam was still asleep.  The lightheadedness of too little sleep and far too little breath.  The sound as Dean roughly handled the balloon in his mouth, the latex clearly in the process of being stretched far too thin.

Your eyes widened.  Oh shit.  

A loud pop thundered through the room as the body burst, sending up a spray in every direction.  Your reflexes had you twisting at the last moment, doing your best to keep whatever bits you could from flying up into your face.  Only you never got drenched with the expected spray of liquid.  There were no dull spatters of soft, fleshy things hitting you anywhere.  There was only the slightest tickling as dozens of tiny somethings brushed along the side side of your neck and hairline where you hadn’t been able to shield yourself along with a residual ringing in your ears as you were left in silence once again.

Slowly, you lowered your arms, hesitantly bringing your flashlight back over to where the sheriff sat.  He’d fallen back on his haunches, a dazed look blanketing his face.  Bright colors lazily sparkled across the beam of light,  blinking back at you in various hues of reds, purples, greens, and… neon pink?

You reached out, allowing a few of the small pieces to land in your hand.  You could only stare for a moment in disbelief.  Was that what you thought it was?  

“Agent?”  

You glanced back up, the back of your hand immediately flying to your mouth as laughter threatened to bubble out from inside you.  You weren’t sure what was more hysterical: the look on the sheriff’s face as he realized just what he was covered in, or the fact that he had just taken a lot of rainbow colored dick to the face.  

Either Baldur was filled with a whole lot of fabulous, or something was messing with you.  

You noticed the sheriff was looking toward you for guidance, a sign that this was real, some indication on how he should be taking the sudden turn of events.  He was looking to the wrong Winchester for that.  

Unfortunately, you were the only one in supply.

“Huh.”  You cleared your throat, trying to pull yourself together into some semblance of a professional.  “That’s - that’s different.”

“Different?” He demanded, voice inching higher with a touch of hysteria.  “I’d hate to see what you consider strange.”

You’re not kidding, cowboy.  

On a scale of one to certifiable, this didn’t even hit a three.

It was clearly beginning to break his scale, however, as evidenced by the panic in his gaze

“Maybe we should get some air,” you told him, hoping to douse the sentiment before anything really caught and you were battling a wildfire on your own.  You walked over to him, offering your hand.

“Come on,” you told him, voice softening as he reached up and accepted your help.  

The tension was palpable as you both made your way out in silence.  Now that your mind was more present, you could pick up on the lurking presence in the building.  Death did have a way of doing that, though usually only when the souls stuck around.  Did gods and goddesses even have souls that could do that?

You shuddered.  Those were ghosts you never wanted to meet.  Likely, you wouldn’t either.  At least, not here.  Dick shaped confetti wasn’t exactly part of the standard spirit arsenal.  A certain archangel’s however…

No.  Your teeth clenched down, irritation growing at your continued insistence to leap to the most irrational conclusion.  It struck against the hope that threatened to spill back over into your consciousness, forcing it back into resignation.

You needed to stop doing this to yourself. Gabriel was gone.  Dean was with Lisa.  Sam was in the cage, and Bobby hadn’t a clue where you were, so you needed to hold it together and figure out what the hell was going on.  

A chill brushed your cheeks as you stepped out into the cool December air.  A spotlight shone bright and artificial from the top of the sheriff’s vehicle, illuminating the front of the hotel.  You watched him walk toward it, unsure if you should follow as he slumped against the side of the SUV.  He, at least, seemed relieved to be outside.  

Relieved, yet deeply disturbed.

You licked your lips, breath releasing in a fragile white puff in front of you as you considered where to even begin.

“You alright?” You asked.

“Should I be?” He shot back before grimacing.  “Sorry.  I just… did that really happen?”

You took a moment to regard him, mulling over the brief moments of interaction you’d had with him.  Given his history with the “FBI” and the amount of bullshit he’s likely to have heard, you imagined honesty might actually be the best policy in this case.  

Structured, carefully fed honesty.  

“Which brand of crazy do you prefer?  The one where I say yes and there’s no logical explanation or the one where it’s all in your head?”  You couldn’t help the dryness from entering your tone.  Sober deliveries had never been your forte anyway, but with the amount of ridiculousness you’d just experienced, the last thing this man probably needed was a straight face and even straighter demeanor.

“Touche, agent,” wryness touched the corner of his lips suggesting the man had a healthy sense of humor somewhere beneath that tough exterior.  It quickly sank beneath the surface, however, as he briefly ran a hand over his face.  His eyes turned toward the sky as if, ironically, asking for some divine intervention.  

“How do I even call this in…”

“You don’t.”  A simple statement of a simple truth that you hope relayed just how complicated this entire thing did not have to be.

He simply looked at you like that was the craziest thing that had happened all evening

“Hear me out,” you began, but you could tell by the skeptical look he gave you there wasn’t much he was going to hear; not yet anyway.  “... Over drinks.”

By the way his brows shot up there was no doubt he was listening now.

You hadn’t meant to proposition him.  Normally, you didn’t even try to pick up uniforms considering how messy that could make things, whether or not the case was resolved.  Now that it had happened, however, you found you were surprisingly less opposed to the thought.  

You knew you needed a drink (when didn't you these days) but you hadn’t realized how much more was missing.  You’d grown accustomed to the lonely ache you carried with you, but fully facing Gabriel’s fate caused you to feel your brothers’ absence more keenly than you had in months.  

The thought of returning to an empty motel room was more daunting than facing down any supernatural being on your own.

“You can’t tell me you don’t need one,” you continued when you caught the hesitation on his face.  You couldn’t blame him.  If he was smart, he would be weighing how likely it was you took a side of crazy with your meals, or maybe why someone like you would even be looking at someone with ten years on them.  

Whatever conclusion he came to was the one you needed.  

“Why the hell not,” he muttered, raking his hand through his hair and adding a touch of manic to his nearly unshakable demeanor.  “You know where Harry’s is?”

You nodded.  You made it a point to know where you could get your alcohol.  This happened to be the hole in the wall around the corner from your hotel.  

“I get off in an hour.  I’ll meet you there after,” he decided.  

“See you there in an hour,” you agreed, turning to head toward your car.  

“And agent?”  You turned back toward him, brows drawing curiously when you saw how much uncertainty had crept into his gaze.  “You should probably know that power surge of yours came from here.”

Well that certainly explained what he was doing there after laying down the law back at the station.  

You hoped that wasn’t all he was good at laying.  

“So you decided to check it out yourself with contacting me?”  You quirked a brow at him.  

“Never got your number back at the station,” he reminded.  He had the decency to look contrite at how quickly he’d brushed you off.  

You reached into your pocket, pulling out a card before walking it over to him.

“See you in an hour, sheriff.”  You hoped the smile you gave was flirtatious and not pulling from the sheer desperation of a dry spell that had you as parched as the Sahara.  

His eyes fell on you, as if there was more he wanted to discuss.  You weren’t going to give him that chance.  Not yet.  Not when you could feel the weight of the evening creeping back over you, making you feel tired and even more terribly under-inebriated.

You turned away, heading back toward your car.  You heard the sound of his door opening and closing a few moments before his engine roared to life.  He didn’t take off as most people did after such an encounter.  He even took the time to swivel the spotlight in your direction, lighting up your car far better than the soft glow of the moon.  

Clearly chivalry hadn't died, just taken refuge in a small, unassuming county in Indiana.  

You weren’t accustomed to people being thoughtful.  You were used to them knowing you could fend for yourself and letting you.  Normally, it irritated the shit out of you.  Tonight, it was touching, and had a small smile blooming on your face.

You hesitated as you approached the driver’s side, eyes glancing back up the length of the building.  The soft sentiment on your face faded, the small flare of brightness extinguishing beneath the weight of your frown.  Disappointment spilled in with the shadows and confusion pulled your lips down even further.  You’d gotten what you came for.  So why did everything feel so much worse?

Maybe burning the place down wasn't such a bad idea after all.

“I never asked,” the sheriff’s voice drew your attention and you looked over to find him with the window down, leaning out of the side of his vehicle.  “Are you alright, Agent Stark?”

You weren’t.  Not by a long shot, and things were going to get messy real quick if you didn’t have a distraction, no matter how much you drank.  

“Meet me for that drink, sheriff, and I will be,” you told him before pulling open the door and climbing into your car.

***

He was gone.  

These words became the mantra you repeated on your drive back.

It began with the shock of finding out you had managed to spend over three hours in a building it wouldn’t even take you five minutes to walk from end to end.  He was gone.  Though something powerful was here.  He was gone.  Something with a sense of humor -- but he was gone -- and you were doing your best to remember that Gabriel was not the only trickster in the universe.   

He had died in that God forsaken building nearly a year ago.  All the proof was there.  What really sealed the deal, however, was how believing any differently would tarnish your image of the archangel and make Sam’s sacrifice completely unnecessary.  

There were a lot of things you could endure.  That was not one of them.

It was the only way you reminded yourself, desperate to derail that train of thought.  

Thankfully, your phone leapt to life, giving you some reprieve.  You pulled it out just as it stopped, and a notification popped up informing you that you had seven missed calls.  Not surprisingly, they were all from Bobby.

You decided you’d call him when you got back to the hotel.  Who you really wanted to hear from right now was Dean.  You missed his company.  You missed his ability to keep you grounded, even when he had no idea he was doing it.  You even missed his stupid jokes and snark.  

You could just hear him now.  Shall we stop by the local nut house and pick you up a new jacket?  Because all signs point to Gabriel owning a retirement condo over in the Great Beyond.  

You leaned over, hand fumbling for the glove compartment, searching for the flask you’d stashed earlier.  You couldn’t get the damn thing open fast enough, and the trail of fire the contents left in its wake felt more familiar and comforting than you wanted to admit.  This sensation, however, was not only tangible, but real, and it helped you reel yourself back in and tether yourself back to the present.

One hour.  You just had to live with yourself for one more hour and then you’d have someone else to focus on.  

Time continued to warp around you, and you had a feeling this had more to do with your internal state than any external influence.  The drive back didn’t take very long, but there were pockets where each second seemed to hang in the balance, as if your existence were crawling to a halt.  Maybe it really was.

Then again, maybe this is what it felt like to finally step too far onto the wrong side of sane.

You made it back to your room, and the first thing you did was reach for your phone.  You winced when you noticed he’d gone so far as to text you.  The only thing that man hated more than texting was being hung up on without explanation.

You were in so much trouble.  

“About damn time,” he answered on the first ring and he didn’t even give you a moment to prepare before lighting into you.  “You better be knee deep in bodies or missing all your digits, because I don’t see any other reason you couldn’t have called back to let me know you weren’t dead.”

Leave it to Bobby to bypass the jugular and go for something even worse: guilt.

“I’m sorry,” you told him.  He was even using the voice that shall not be named, dubbed as such after you got tired of arguing over it.  Dean insisted it was the uncle voice, because the three of you had a father.  You argued it was the father voice, mostly because you really didn't.  

It was all semantics, as far as you were concerned.  Bobby had and always would be more of a father to you.  Maybe not to Dean.  Maybe not even with Sam, but Bobby was the one to build you up whenever John had a snide remark.  When Dean hit nine out of ten bullseyes, it was all Congratulations, you’ve lived through nine cases and died on your tenth.  When you hit ten for ten, it was Do it again and this time it better be dead center because no werewolf is gonna sit still for you, let alone give you anything to aim for.

It also helped every now and then Bobby would tell John where to shove it when he was being particularly harder on you than the boys.  

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, kid,” Bobby shot back.  “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

“I know,” you said quietly, about to explain when something tickled along the edge of your senses.  You froze, half-expecting to see the walls closing in around you because something was spilling into the room, filling the space around you to the brim.  A familiar energy began to rise, the air positively buzzing as it wafted over your skin.  

You were losing it.  You had to be.  He was --

“You know, there’s daddy issues, and then there’s daddy issues, and I have to say, hitting on the sheriff?  Definitely the latter,” a voice you never thought you’d hear again broke in.  Your heart leapt back to life, battering against your ribs as if trying to break out because he was standing right there.  

“Bobby I - I gotta call you back,” you breathed, amazed you even managed to get that much out by how badly your mind was reeling.  

“God damn it, kid, wait!”  You were vaguely aware the exclamation was followed by there’s something you need to know but you couldn’t imagine whatever it was being able to trump what was happening right at this moment.  You ended the call, nearly dropping the phone as your arm fell limply to the side.  

“Gabriel?” You asked uncertainty grabbing hold of you once more.  You knew if you turned and found yourself staring at nothing, then that would be it.  Whatever makeshift bandages you were using to keep your world together would come loose and everything from the past five and a half years would come crashing down around you.  

That trademark snap broke the silence and suddenly the angel was right in front of you.  

You blinked once.  Twice.  A third, expecting something to change each time, but nothing did, and for a moment all you could do was stare.  

He looked exactly as you remembered.  Honeyed hair swept back from his face, ending in the slightest curls toward the back of his neck.  Flecks of gold spattered his eyes against a backdrop of green that often became overshadowed in certain lights.  Even in the dim hotel room, they seemed more whiskey colored than anything.  His lips curled into that smug smile of his, the one that not only hinted at mischief, but at an unpredictability that left you wondering what was about to come next.  He was even wearing the same outfit as the last time you saw him.   

You were partially aware you probably looked ridiculous, mouth half-open and poised to let loose a flurry of questions, but your mind still too much in shock to connect it with whatever part of your brain was responsible for language.  

“Are you real?”  You finally asked, afraid that this was somehow a dream and you had never even left your motel room back in Massachusetts.  

He sauntered closer, eyes dancing with amusement.  Before you realized what was happening, he slipped a finger beneath your chin.  Your breath hitched, skin against skin sparking as if he were touching a livewire to you.  The pad of his thumb brushed across your bottom lip, and this time the electricity traveled straight down through all of your nerve endings.  Your mouth began to tingle with something familiar yet somehow completely foreign and the gesture was far more intimate than expected.  

It took you a minute to realize it was just his grace healing you, the lingering cuts and bruises across your body giving that tell tale itch as new cells overtook the ones that were damaged.  Some of your tiredness even receded, leaving you feeling more rejuvenated than you had felt in weeks.  

“Real enough for you?” His smirk widened as he closed your mouth.  The contact lingered longer than necessary, and you found yourself caught in those mirth-filled depths.  Something else began to move across his vision, however, something that placed a varnish over gold, dimming some of its luster.  

A flash streaked across your instinctual radar as you noticed the extra energy vibrating within his gaze and that his pupils were wider than normal.  There was more to it, you couldn’t figure out exactly what yet, only that your intuition was kicking somewhere near your spleen with a warning that this might not be the Gabriel you remembered.  

Just like it hadn’t been the same Dean that had come crawling back from Hell.

Dean.  Your first inclination was to call him, until you realized you couldn’t.  The moment you told him who was there, he’d be out the door and breaking every traffic law to make sure you were ok.  

You wouldn’t be the one to drag him back into this life.

Your emotions crept back up from where you tried to keep them buried, using that aching loneliness of your brother's’ absence to obscure their presence until it was too late to push them back down.  You were once again strapped into the roller coaster, and the constant dips and rises were beginning to take their toll.  The walls that kept you pushing onward, that kept you even standing, were getting battered to the point you weren’t sure how much more they could take before breaking.  

Something about that must have shown.

“You ok, cupcake?”  Gabriel asked, finally releasing you as he took a step back to study your features.  

The one good thing about the surge of emotion was it had shattered the hold your disbelief had over you and elation blossomed down the center of your chest.  It spread outward across familiar ivied tendrils still lined with the thorns of grief and bitterness you’d worn for so long now.  Gabriel was alive.  Somehow he’d made it back, and if you weren’t so overwhelmed, you would have thrown your arms around him.  

All you seemed to be able to do, however was cry.  Again.  

“Fuck,” you mumbled.  You pressed the back of your hand against your mouth, not trusting it to say anything else.  You turned your head, using your hair as a shield to hide the sentiments gathering at your lash line.  

Apparently you were wrong; things were getting messy no matter what happened this evening.

“Sweetheart, don’t - I… shit,” he swore.  You almost laughed, but caught yourself.   You decided it might not be the best reaction when something so terrifyingly powerful sounded about as close to skittish as you imagined he ever got.  

If things were normal, you would have smoothed things over with a good taunt.  The thought of teasing him about knowing how to face the devil but not a crying girl had that tactic fizzling right out.

“How long have you been back?” You wiped the few tears from your cheeks that had fallen before turning back toward him.  You did your best to keep your features neutral, though there was nothing you could do that would keep him from hearing the way your heart picked up a few extra beats.  

Once again, time slowed it’s dance around you, pulling your world to the brink of halting.  Everything hung in the balance as you awaited his answer, and the last time you felt like you faced a threat of this magnitude, you were facing a completely different archangel.

You folded your arms over your chest and one by one your muscles began to tighten beneath the strain of your nerves.  If he told you he had been alive this entire time, you were going to make sure the next angel blade that entered him unquestionably hit its mark.

“Not long,” he admitted, taking in your defensive posture and unreadable stare and drawing the wrong conclusion.  “Look, I get it if you want me to leave.  I just figured…”  That confident air of his faltered again, the darks of his eyes widening further.  That previous energy continued to soar, adding a manic edge to his look that was so palpable it was contagious.  

“So help me, Gabriel, if you disappear without giving me any answers, you will not like what happens when I find you again,” you warned.  There was so much threatening to spill over at him just being there, the thought of him disappearing just as suddenly had anxiety pulsing fast and hard through your veins.  

There wasn’t enough liquor or sheriffs in the state to handle the aftermath should that happen.

“What are you going to do, sick your pet angel on me?” He challenged with a quirk of his brow.  “Give me a new piercing with one of your little toothpicks?”  His eyes dropped to where you kept your knife.  

Just like that, the game resumed.  You reached back into your jacket, finding the hidden sheath you’d sown into the lining before you pulled out an angel blade.  Gabriel’s brow raised even further.

He let out a low whistle.  “Big daddy Cas is keeping you well supplied these days.”

An eloquent, “Uhhh,” escaped your lips, unsure of when exactly Cas had become the focal point of comments for someone other than your brother.  “It was a birthday present from Dean.”  

Technically, it was from Zachariah, but you saw no need to rehash all the sordid details of whose family members killed whom at the moment.  You also didn’t want to deal with getting it back in your coat (newsflash: giant blades were far easier to remove from awkward places than to put back) and settled on tossing it temporarily onto the bed.  

“Speaking of Deana-rino, where is that mirror opposite of yours?” He asked, moving toward the mattress where he threw himself sideways across it.  He picked up your blade, taking a moment to inspect it before casually toying with its tip.  

“He got out,” you answered, unaware of the sadness creasing your lips and pulling them down into a frown.  Gabriel pretended to prick his finger, shaking his hand with a wince before casually sliding the weapon aside.

“Glad someone took my advice and started keeping him leashed,” he glanced up, smirking at his own joke.  “Don’t worry, cupcake.  There’s only so many places here you can find burgers and tail or lumberjack flannel.”

You let out  a breath of a laugh, a powerful discord winding through you as the past once again pushed up against the present.  

“He got out of the life,” you clarified, turning your head to hide the emotions that threatened to make another appearance.  You busied yourself by emptying the pockets of your coat, arranging the items neatly across the dresser.  Badge.  FBI Cell.  Your real cell.  Dean’s backup that still got the occasional case every now and then.  Notepad.  Pencil.  You unclipped the holster from your side, adding your gun to the collection.

“If you had asked me which one of you I thought could actually make it in the regular world, he would not have been my guess,” he marveled.

You really didn’t want to talk about this. If Gabriel, in all his infinite wisdom, hadn’t figured out what happened yet, somebody needed to tell him.  He deserved to know about his family.  

Even if they were all a bunch of manipulative, narrow-minded asshats.

“When did he decide to take the big leap?”  The way he looked at you made you wonder if he was starting to pick up on some of your hesitation.

“Right after Sam, Lucifer, and Michael took one into the cage,” you said, matter-of-factly, shrugging off your jacket and tossing it into a nearby chair.

“What?!” He demanded, shooting up on the bed with surprise.  “Lucifer, Michael, and Sam are in there?”

You fiddled with the belt at your waist, using the feel of cool metal beneath your fingertips to keep you tethered despite the way your nerves were tingling beneath your skin.

“How did you expect us to get your brother back in?  Buy him a drink and ask nicely?”  A sardonic edge entered your tone and your words came out sharper than you intended.

“Honestly?  When I died, I expected half the world to follow and for Lucifer to be purging the other half by now,” he admitted, something close to pride touching his tone as he continued.  “But that was awfully clever of your brother, making Luce ride shotgun while his ass got driven back to Hell.”  

“It was a terrible fucking idea,” you snapped, an explosion of anger igniting across your vision.  Anyone with half a brain could figure out trapping yourself with beings willing to overlook the death of millions over a glorified pissing contest was the worst plan ever.

And it was absolutely, unequivocally, one hundred percent yours.  

This was one subject, you couldn’t touch, past or present, no matter how much liquid courage you had in you.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

You look up to find amber unexpectedly soft, understanding, and it made you question whether he was really that good at connecting the dots or if he simply wasn’t playing fair.  The fact he was even offering to listen, however, was a revelation in and of itself.  

“I’m a Winchester,” you reminded giving him sarcastic smile.  “I drink my problems, but thanks.”

Among other things.

Speaking of other things, you should probably figure out what you were going to do with the sheriff now that Gabriel had crashed the party.  As if on cue, your phone shuddered, vibrations sending it skittering across the bureau in a dull hum.  You turned, catching sight of an unfamiliar number coming up across the caller ID.

“Agent Stark,” you answered

“It’s Sheriff Newbury.”  

You ran a hand through your hair as you realized you hadn’t even bothered to get his name earlier.  You were pretty sure from one to ten on the desperation scale, you may have broken your record and hit a fourteen.

“I just got a call in town I need to check on,” he continued.  

The way your eyes swung to the archangel was purely a reflex, one that was there for a reason as you watched a telltale smirk stretch slowly across his face.  

“Anything I can help with?” You asked and that smirk proceeded to grow a little forced.  You wouldn’t have asked except if Gabriel was involved, chances are you would end up there sooner or later anyway.  

“Sounds like a routine theft.  Nothing to worry about.  I’ll catch up with you after, if it isn’t too late.”

“I - yeah,” you fumbled, the energy levels in the room fluctuating rapidly and drawing your focus away from the conversation to the point you weren’t paying attention to what you were even agreeing to.  

That’s when you noticed, Gabriel was gone.  

Your head whipped around, only to find him snooping around the vanity on the other side of the room.  You sent him a withering look, and he froze.  Like everything about his mannerisms, his facial expression became exaggerated.  His eyes became owlish, his mouth forming an ‘o’ of awkward surprise as he pretended to be caught.  He raised his hands up in surrender, slowly inching away from the area in question.  

Amusement tugged at your lips and you found it even harder to focus on your call.  “Just, uh, call if you run into anything strange.”

“Considering the wide definition that word now carries, if that happens, you better be bringing drinks to me,” he  jested.

“Yeah, sure,” you said absently, eyes never leaving the archangel before you hung up the phone.  You regarded him a moment, brow creeping up curiously.  DId you even want to know what he was up to?

Yes, yes you did.  It was better to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth than to get kicked in the teeth with it later.

“What did you do?” You demanded.

“Why does everyone always assume I’ve done something?” He shot back, his tone a perfect blend of innocent and indignant.  

“It usually saves time?” You fired back, and you found bantering with him was just like slipping on an old coat.  Everything was familiar, comfortable, broken in, to just the right fit.  It carried with it a sense of security you hadn’t felt in quite some time; the same one you felt when piling into the Impala with your brothers, or when you stepped through Bobby’s door and took in the unique smell of canned food, musty books, and drying herbs.

You didn’t realize how badly you needed to feel it until this moment.   

“Relax, sweet cheeks.  Turns out your precious sheriff is a halfway decent guy, so he’ll just be chasing his own tail this evening,” he said with a wink.  “Unless you’re really dead set on your previous plans, in which case, I commend your dedication to community service.  Someone’s gotta spend time with geriatrics…”

Your levity faded, his words answering a lingering question you had yet to ask.  You folded your arms over your chest.  

“So you’re saying it was you back the Elysian Fields?”  Your gaze narrowed pointedly at him.  You’re not sure why you asked.  How else would he have known you’d asked the sheriff out?

“Uh, yeah,” he replied, the attitude behind his words relaying just how ridiculous he even thought the question was.  “Do you know anyone else who would rig a body with rainbow dick confetti?”

“So you’re the one who opened the door for me?”  You had to give yourself credit for how even-keeled you sounded, despite how quickly everything was clamoring inside you to light him on fire before you left town, depending where the rest of this conversation went.

“Yep,” he said.  

That son of a bitch.  You had felt him.

“So, what did you find more amusing?”  You asked, your voice taking on a deadly calm as a rush of heat surged into your cheeks.  “The look on the sheriff’s face when you turned Baldur into an exploding pinata, or the look on mine when I thought you were dead?

Gabriel paused.  It was a brief reaction, one he quickly glossed over with that care-free air.  For him, it was the equivalent of freezing, completely caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Or, in this case, being a complete jerk.

“I can’t help but feel like we’re getting off on the wrong foot here,” he said, throwing his thumb back towards the door.  “Why don’t I go outside, knock, you let me in, and we’ll start over with a touch less tragedy and waaaaay more party favors.”

He snapped his fingers and all you could hear were those obnoxious noisemakers people used on New Year’s Eve (or when testing one’s limits in regards to homicide).  Thankfully, the squawking quickly faded as the ceiling became packed from edge to edge with balloons.  Streamers of all different colors hung down at intervals between them, the shiny material wafting lazily back and forth.  You craned your head to find a giant banner hung on the far wall with the phrase Welcome back Gabriel sprawled across it with (you’re my favorite archangel) beneath it in slightly smaller lettering.  

You squinted.  Were those tiny hearts printed around the border?

“You’re such an ass, you know that?” You grated, determined not to be taken in by his distraction.  Gabriel was a lot of things.  Cocky.  Callous.  Self-centered.  Vain.  Every once in awhile, however, his inner angel would come shining through and he became asshat extraordinaire.

“Look, I get it,” he placatingly put his hands up in front of him, “not my finest moment, I’ll admit, but in my defense, I didn’t just leave you hanging.”

He conjured up a lollipop before sticking it in his mouth, as if that were enough to settle the conversation.

“You let me believe you were dead!”  You hissed.

You blinked and suddenly he was gone again.  Your heart leapt into your throat just as an audible pop sounded beside you.  You turned to find him pulling the sucker out of his mouth.

“And, if you recall, I also took away the pain of it,” he said, waving the piece of candy at you.

Well, that explained the feeling of calm that washed over you after your breakdown.  It did not, however, fix anything, as he seemed to think it did.  You continued to glare, because what he’d done amounted to wrapping gauze over a gaping wound: great in the moment, terrible for long-term care.  

Not to mention the right thing to do in that situation would be to reveal oneself instead of allowing someone to continue grieving.   

Then there was the whole matter of him spying on you.  The only thing you hated more than being lied to (and Gabriel had lied, albeit by omission) was having your privacy invaded.  The only way he could make it worse was admitting that, at any point over the course of this evening, he had intentionally dipped inside your mind.  

You did your best to swallow your anger, however.  From your experience, the finer points of morality regarding any celestial being only ended in headaches and the occasional cracked teeth.

“So the power surge, the time loss, the fact that Baldur hadn’t gotten the memo and was still hanging around the party,” you continued, trying to move on.  

“Yes, yes, and kinda.  The whole process is a bit complicated, rather boring, and, more importantly, not at all related to anything about me,” he drawled, a plate of cookies appearing in his hand.  They looked like your favorite, double chunk with both white and dark chocolate pieces.  He extended the olive branch, all but waving them beneath your nose, an expectant look on his face.

Reluctantly, you accepted, but only because the last time you ate had been around the time the sun came up.  You were pleased to find them still warm, as if fresh out of the oven.  You didn’t know how he always managed to make them the perfect temperature, but it was one of his better qualities.  

You took a bite, groaning when a burst of chocolatey goodness flooded your taste buds.  God, they were amazing.  So warm and soft and bursting with heavenly flavors in ways you could never get any baked good to do.

“Oh lord did I miss these,” you murmured, shoving the rest into your mouth as you went for another one.

“I see how it is.  You missed my cooking, but you didn’t miss me?” He said with mock indignation.  He straightened up, his chest puffing out for good measure.  His nose even raised slightly, and an air of offense swirled around him in a way that made him seem unreal, almost more of a caricature than an actual being.  

Then again, when wasn’t he over-dramatizing something?

I missed you more than you know, Goldilocks.

The thought was unexpected, unbidden, and completely careening across your mind before you knew it.  It was better than tumbling out of your mouth, but you knew on occasion he heard things, even when he wasn’t trying.  

You eyed him for a moment, trying to gauge if this was one of those times.  

“I can’t imagine your special little angel comes bearing the gifts of your favorite baked goods,” he continued, and suddenly he was casual again, if not a little too casual. “Your taste buds must be awfully deprived without me.”

Wait a minute.  You had an angel?

You had to admit, he was good, so much so you almost fell for it.  There was no way you were letting him get you on a tangent so you forgot about the real issues at hand.  To be honest, however, you were simply relieved he didn’t seem to be listening to what was going on in your mind.

“Just shut up and explain what happened,” you ordered, reaching for another cookie.

For once, he did as he was told and clamped his mouth shut.  You stopped mid-chew, giving him a scathing stare that warned your patience was wearing thing.  He held up a finger, mischief dancing across his lips as they turned up in the corners.  

“Sometimes, when something with a lot of energy comes crash landing back in existence, it tends to leave a mark or two,” a chorus of high pitched voices began, and once you realized the source of the explanation was the cookies, complete with beady golden eyes and actual mouths, you nearly dropped the one in your hand.  “Usually, it’s just physical destruction, but sometimes when there’s a lot of mojo involved, it ends up tearing a few holes in the time space continuum.”

Jesus’ holy undergarments.  Were you really being given a lesson in celestial quantum physics from a dessert?

“And as we all know, that is one thing I am never short on,” Gabriel finished normally, just before snagging a cookie off the plate and popping it into his mouth.  Your eyes widened, expecting to hear it screaming in agony on its way down.  He paused or a moment, eyeing you strangely, as you looked down to the one in your hand and found it had gone back to normal again.  

While normal had always been a relative term in your life, you found that the spectrum widened further every time you encountered the archangel.  

“So was Baldur there or not?” You asked, eyeing the treat a few more moments before hesitantly biting into it.  

“The question is, were any of us?”  He posed.  

“I just want to inform you, I’ve gotten really good at playing hide the angel blade.  The question is, is that my only one?” You queried, eyes briefly landing on the weapon in question before jumping back to him.  

“Fine,” he gave an exasperated huff.  “Baldur and you were both there, but it gets a little grey when you try to pin down whether you were in the past or he ended up in the present.  To be honest, I’m surprised you didn't’ stumble across a wormhole or two.  Whatever brought me back was kind of in a rush.”  

Great.  Now you had to worry about the locals potentially stepping out for a nice evening walk and ending up in the wrong century.  

You were definitely burning that place down the first chance you got.  

“Right.  Well…”  You just shook your head, mind racing as you tried processing all the information that had hit you over the last few hours.  “Now that that’s all squared away, can we please grab some real food somewhere where I can also find something tall and strong?”

He leaned forward, his brows giving a playful waggle, “I got something nice and strong for you right here, sweetheart.”

“Sorry, but I’m not certain you meet the height requirements,” you deadpanned, moving around him toward the closet to find something more comfortable to change into.  You opened the door, popping the button on the front of your blazer before slipping out of it.  

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises,” he let out a whistle and you turned, following his gaze to the splash of red that stood out against the light wood of the interior.

“A girls gotta be prepared for all occasions,” you told him, dryness splashing through your words and painting its way across your lips.  

“And here I had you pegged as the little black dress type,” he paused a moment, fingers coming up to stroke his chin.  “Or is that just my own fantasy of you?”  He stared toward the other side of the room as if deep in thought.  

You rolled your eyes, undoing your belt and tossing it inside.  You kicked off your flats, about to pull your bag out when the hair on the back of your arms stood on end.  For a moment, it was as if a vacuum appeared, the room feeling unusually vacant before shockwaves resurfaced, sending ripples of energy scattering in every direction.  You glanced over to find Gabriel hadn’t moved, save to put his back to you, giving you privacy while you changed.  

You reached into your bag, pulling out one of the default outfits you kept for when you didn’t expect to end up splattered in blood.  You  stepped behind the closet door, head poking around the side as you began to undress.

“I never asked how you were doing with, you know.  Everything,” you started talking again, the unusual sensations as unsettling as the silence that followed.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over me, pumpkin.  This guy?” He jerked his thumbs back in his own direction.  “Can handle anything.  Except maybe this wallpaper.  I mean, sheesh, what were they thinking?  Tulips are so passé.  Roses would have been a much better choice.”

He made a horrified face that almost had you put back at ease.  His deflection was as comfortable as the two of you trading quips.  It didn’t mean you bought it.  However, in the interest of you actually making it somewhere, you decided to let it go for now.

“All set,” you announced before pushing the door closed.  He turned, giving your outfit a once over as you knelt down and began to lace up your boots.

“What?”

“Those combat boots?  Really tie the look together,” he teased, finger gesturing in a wide circle.  You looked down the front of you, seeing nothing wrong with the way your long sweater and dark, tight-fitted jeans came together with your footwear.

“These boots have saved my life on more than one occasion,” you informed him.

“Sweetheart, you have me around,” he said giving you a cocky smile.  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Plenty,” you snorted.  

You had no idea how right you were.  

Next Chapter>>

Everything tags:

@girl-next-door-writes @wayward-mirage @sumara62 @fand0maniac @feelmyroarrrr @omgreganlove @jannalionheart @baritonechick, @deaths-maiden @lucifer-in-leather @stone-met   @the-moose-of-baskerville @summer-binging-spn  @blondecoffeecake  @raspberrypuddle @ourloveisforthelovely @deanxfuckingadorablexwinchester @crowley-you-sinnamon-roll

Gabe Squad: @theblackenedsky @bloodstained-porcelain-doll @pepperwoodatnight @lacqueluster @samikitten @ludwigs-a-monster @a-vast-african-plain @onlyanothersocialcasualty @kazosa

Full Circle: @melodyhiddleston