#the hair cut has been an argument for weeks now its very bizarre

[tvdfan23]

The doctor I work for and the manager went together to my sister's school to get his hair cut 🤦‍♀️. If I wasn't so weirded out this would feel like a weird sitcom.

[lumiereswig]

What if plumette left the castle shortly before the curse, and then returned after everyone was cursed? (Yeah I saw you wanted to write that)

i did want to write it, ive wanted to write it for years, i’ve never had the balls to write it because it was such a fabulous concept to play with. but here what the hell, why not here it is:

it’s pre-curse times and plumette gets a message from her sister, peregrine, that she NEEDS to be the godmother of her baby and thus has to haul ass to the christening. this is awesome but also fuckkkkkk because her sister lives in Sweden like FUCK thats SO far away in eighteenth century times

so she hops on a plane—an eighteenth century style plane—so that’s a rowboat—and waves goodbye to lumiere and douche canoe prince and mrs. p and all the rest, and she bippity-bops her way up to scandinavia to snack on some lutefisk and hold her first little itty-bitty niece. This being Sweden everything takes ages, like first the baby has to be born and then they have to plan the baby shower and then they have to do all this other stuff, so it’s months and months, all of which Plumette spends sending letters to Lumiere and eagerly waiting to hear back from him.

“mon cherie today the prince spent the entire day taking portraits off the wall and throwing them across the room because the painting style was apparently too ‘swishy’! And now Cogsworth has banned me from every serving him sangria at three in the morning ever again. Please be back soon mon ange, my heart cannot beat without you. Lumiere”

“mon chou today there was a fuss in the village, the prince has raised taxes again, I know, quelle horror!,  Mrs. Potts says a person can’t even afford jam anymore if you haven’t got a steady job! but i really doubt that, I mean how much does a jar of jam even cost, ten dollars? please hurry back mon amour, my breath fades so I can’t hear it, waiting for you to come into the light. Lumiere”

“mon coeur we are holding such a ball tonight! every eligible princess and countess will be there—as well as Chapeau’s little sister, we’re slipping her in with a borrowed old dress of the Queen’s—the lights will glitter and every taper will shine, but none as bright as you. Are you coming home yet? I cannot stand the waiting—I shall go quite still without you to dance with. I wait, eternally yours. Lumiere”

And then silence. Silence for a long, long time.

She writes letters, first funny— “what has happened? has Cogsworth run away with you at last?”—then alarmed, then jealous, then furious. “Why so silent, mon amour? have your hands fallen off entirely, do I count so little to your heart?” But she doesn’t get a response, even though she waits, she waits in the same place for weeks just so the letter will not miss her. but a month passes, and no note. Not even Chapeau responds, nor Cogsworth. she throws her hands in the air and stays on longer, just to show him; if he can’t bother to write, what’s a year? What’s two years?

She doesn’t make it quite two years; her heart throbs with missing him, despite her anger, despite her hurt. she gets on the boat, waves goodbye to little Plume nestled safe in Peregrine’s arms, and arrives back in France so, so long after she left.

The ride to Villeneuve is long. She breathes in the heady air, enjoying France’s roses; she forgot how much she missed this sort of spring! she cannot wait to be home, and hug them all close again. she can make peace with lumiere at last. perhaps some other accident prevented him sending her letters.

villeneuve looks disused, when she hops off the carriage; the taxes must have gone up again, she thinks, but doesn’t worry all too much. She doesn’t like riding, so she walks through the woods, ordering for her luggage to be left at the tavern to be called for later. She’s surprised how overgrown the ordinary road to the palace is. She’s surprised how the people in Villeneuve looked at her.

She’s extremely surprised when she starts walking through snow.

Her little satin slippers are drenched by the time she gets to the palace, and her hair is slipping out of her little summer straw hat, and she’s clutching her arms to keep from freezing in the gray, deep snow. Her teeth chatter as she climbs up the steps. Her little hand can barely push open the door.

She sinks in, with relief, and leaps up again when she realizes the marble is covered in a thin, deadly mirror of ice. The tapers are not lit. Not a sound comes out of the silent hall, but faraway up the stairs she thinks she hears a low, long grumble, like someone pushing a heavy chair across a stone-paved floor.

“Hello?” she calls. “Hello?”

Have they all left? Is it the plague again? she wonders. She tip-toes in, calling, and picks up a candle on the table to light her way. Into the drawing room, into the music room. A new harpsichord in the corner. The dining room sits empty, cobwebs on the chairs.

“Is anyone here left for me?”

“Mon amour,” whispers a voice, too too close, and the candelabra burns scathing in her hand.

she leaps back, clutching her hand, the candle on the floor righting itself and dusting itself off and murmuring soothing nothings, like she stepped on its foot at a ball or accidentally stole a sip from its wine glass instead of hers. It is talking, quite ordinarily, and calling in other furniture, and a hulking harpsicord is coming in and a squeaking tea tray and a hatstand with hammers for hands, and they gather round Plumette to gape and stare and cut off her escape, they don’t stop from crowding toward her until she screams “Lumiere, help!” and then it’s very, very silent in the dining room.

“Mon ange? You do not recognize me?” says the candle from the floor, and she comes close to fainting and then she is, the last thing she sees before falling into the swoon being Lumiere’s face, too little and too close, blazing gold, with hard yellow eyes creased in concern.

she wakes to cold, her hands draped in water, somebody kind laying a cool, wet handkerchief across her face. she relaxes, for a moment, then remembers the nightmare. the yellow eyes, where blue should be. the voice in the last place she expected it.

“look at me slow, now, dearie,” says Mrs. Potts, just beyond where she can see her. Another cold compress is laid on her hands. “I turned away from mirrors plenty of times before I got used to it. Slow, now, and breathe in—in through the mouth and out through the nose, that’s the way I used to tell Chip to do it.”

She looks, slowly, and then realizes turning slowly only adds to the horror of it, and she looks quick and bites back the scream before Mrs. Potts can quite pretend she hasn’t heard it. They both recover, fast, and look away. Mrs. Potts busies herself pouring hot water into a dish, and nudging the dish to Plumette’s fingertips until she can smell the lavender wafting gently up.

“Soothing,” Mrs. Potts murmurs, but Plumette notices she doesn’t look at her again.

It takes a long time to explain it. They all do it, in stages—Mrs. Potts, and then Cogsworth, so funny with his little clock face staring up at her, Cuisinier with a rattle and bang and Chapeau with tidy words, sparse but clean, painting a picture of the hag’s hand stretching toward them, the spell hovering on her fingertips. But Lumiere does not come to explain. He does not want to frighten her. He does not want to cause the pain.

Only when she can look at them evenly does she let him come in. He comes slowly, shyly, and her heart breaks—her Lumiere, shy! Her Lumiere, heavy and slow, his golden feet dragging him along, his candles barely flickering. He’s hot and ashamed and brave, looking her up in the face, love pouring out of him as he whispers, “you have not changed a day.”

they are frightened to show her the Beast, but they have to; he knows she’s there, his was the deep and wounded growl she heard from the first, echoing down the halls from his hiding place behind the stairs. She thinks she will be terrified, but then she sees him and oh!

the prince is terrified of her—of seeing his face reflected in the eyes of someone who knew him in his pride. terrified of seeing that someone shriek and run away in fear.

She reaches out and strokes the matted fur. “Do you know,” she says to him, “you have blonde hairs here, right in the pattern of the sun blaze I used to paint on you for special occasions.”

“I tried to do it myself that night,” he rumbles, the sound coming from deep in his chest through what sounds like miles of hair and thorn and tusks and teeth. “I didn’t do as good a job as you do, though.”

She brushes the fur with her hand and smiles at him, the curls descending down her cheeks, her battered straw hat still trickling snow.

She stays with them for days before they mention anything about her choice. She busies herself with tidying, in attempting to bring order to the darkness—“If only one of you could fly, we could get that dust out of the topmost chandelier,” she complains—and spends time with Lumiere, tentatively finding him out again, catching herself laughing at his bizarre jokes. She almost thinks he’s really there when he comes into a room behind her, and she looks up to the wall and sees that human-sized shadow drawing up....and then the disappointment when she turns, and he’s only there in soul, so tiny behind her she has to crouch to catch his face.

But the days cannot wear on forever, and soon she notes the looks the servants give her, and one night as she climbs up to bed she hears the stark sounds of an argument ringing up from the kitchen below. The next day, they corner her—much as they did her first day, but now she knows the names to match the faces, even the new ones she never knew before, like kind Madame de Garderobe and finicky Mr. Cadenza.

“Why so serious?” she teases Cogsworth. His hands tic-tic gloomily across his face, and his eyes search the room, and her eyes follow. Lumiere isn’t here. Cadenza paces near the door.

“It’s just...well, we don’t know how long it’s been on the outside,” says Mrs. Potts. “But here inside the palace, we’ve kept careful track of the days, and it’s been like to ten years. Not quite, you understand, but it’s been ten years almost to the dot. And we’re not figuring she’s ever going to come.”

“Who?”

“In the curse, when she laid the curse, the witch mentioned true love for the Prince,” says Cogsworth. “Reckoning, I suppose, that a parade of eligible young ladies would come lining up to the palace every morning looking to play croquet with the unfortunate Master. Well, there hasn’t been a one. Not even enough to invite in for a glass of water and a game of piquet. And if it goes on much longer like this I don’t fancy we shan’t become antiques.”

“What do you mean, antiques?”

“Never mind about that now, dear.” Mrs. Potts nudges Cogsworth aside and went on. “What he’s trying to get at, I think, is that we’re worried there won’t be anyone for the Prince. No young ladies have really stopped by once it snowed.”

“And if it goes on like this,” moans Cadenza, “I will never see my wife again. The spell will be complete. I’ll go kaput, coda, to resting beat; the symphony ends, no one applauds. The rose sits in silence. The diva, likewise.”

“This is—what will happen to all of you?”

“We’ll fade,” says Chapeau. “We don’t know what that’s like, exactly; it’s not quite death, but it isn’t living.”

“And why are you telling me this? So I can go get help?”

“There isn’t time,” says Mrs. Potts, gently. “There’s only a few petals left on the rose. We need...we need you to do something else.”

And then Plumette realizes why Lumiere isn’t allowed in the room.

She lies in her bed that night, cradled in the spot in the mattress where he used to sleep—his slippers still sit right next to the bed, covered in cobwebs, the gold brocade barely blinking out from the dust. She stuck her foot in one of them when she first arrived, but took it out in a hurry; the webs felt cold on her toes.

I have to fall in love with the Beast. She could hear them telling it to her, over and over, and she’d retold herself the same story so many times she could hear it in each of their voices, whether or not they had truly said so. “If you don’t fall in love with him, dear, Chip will remain a cup forever. My dear, that is my son.” “You’re the only eligible young lady we’ve had, Plumette, though I doubt the Prince will care much for your rank; but we can scrape up a baronetcy for you, it shouldn’t be too difficult, and then add some ranks and qualifications once you’ve married—” “Plumette, I know it’s hard. But help isn’t coming anytime soon. You’re the only hope we have.”

Fall in love with the Beast. Fall in love with the Prince. Fall in love not to love him, but to save every friend that had ever counted for her, every person who had ever treated her as family. Fall in love, and not with Lumiere.

Fall in love, to save Lumiere.

[incoherentbabblings]

An Endless Hope (2/9)

After a horrendous blizzard falls over Gotham, Tim undergoes a sharp change in character before disappearing. Upon discovering what has become of him, Stephanie sets off on a solo journey in a magic realm to bring him home, meeting some faces which seems awfully familiar along the way.

Archive Of Our Own Link Click Click!

“Our tires have gone. Cracked and popped.” Red Robin reported, switching the interior car lights on, as Stephanie pulled out a small laptop tablet, switching to checking satellite views of the city. Tim peered at his dashboard, noting, “GPS says we’re down by Stagg Enterprises and the Trigate bridge but honestly… it’s reached whiteout. We can get out and –”

“No.” Batman interrupted. “Stay put. If your tires have frozen up it’s too cold for our suits for any trek across the city. I’m not far in my car. Signal, Robin, what did you find?”

“Mr. Freeze is a dead end.” Duke said over the commlink. “He made the valid point of this not doing much for his research. He was worried about the power outage.”

Red Robin and Batgirl, sat in Tim’s redbird car, watched the snow fly around them, heating blasting out hot air to keep the car and them from freezing. Tim peered out the windscreen, whiteout leaving them blind to the world. They could leave, but it was approaching minus thirty. Their regular suits were good… but not that good. For the moment, they were stranded, waiting for Bruce and his tank of a Batmobile to come to the rescue.

“It’s bizarre.” Batgirl said, scrolling through data. “Weather doesn’t work like this. The storm is just over Gotham. That’s not…that’s not physically possible. Blizzards are usually hundreds of miles wide. Not thirty and constricted to a bay. It came out of nowhere. There’s no way the air could grow cold that fast to freeze all that water naturally. And the wind is at eighty miles per hour. Normally it’s around forty.”

“The Flash has a weather themed villain.” Robin supplied.

“I checked.” Cassandra’s quiet voice, barely audible over the storm she was standing in, came over the speakers. The screaming wind cut off when she got inside, the door of wherever she was slamming shut. “He’s in Iron Heights. It’s not him.”

Stephanie continued to look through local news, in and outside of the city, desperate for someone over social media to have spotted something manmade about the phenomena. Tim jolted next to her violently, hands flailing over the steering wheel.

“Someone walk over your grave?”

“What?”

Stephanie put down the tablet and leaned over, staring at the white surrounding them. “Or did you see something?”

“You’d think I was crazy.”

“I’ve learned not to doubt gut instincts, Red Robin. They’re there for a reason. Especially yours.” Unable to spot anything but white, she looked back at him. Like her, his cowl was down, his nose red, skin very white. He looked frightened and instantly Stephanie became alarmed. “What is it? Did you see something?”

She whirled back around, hair falling around her shoulders and back. It really was too long at this point, but Tim reached up and tangled his fingers into it. Something to hold onto. He tried not to tug on her too hard.

“I just think someone’s watching us... me.”

“What? Who? Bad guy?”

“I think I’m seeing things.”

Stephanie hummed, slowly retreating into her seat.

“I’ll bop ‘em if they hurt you.”

Colour returned to Tim’s cheeks, and he smiled. “I know.”

The sound of roaring engines became audible over the car’s heating, and a little too close for comfort, the black Batmobile emerged, parking directly in front.

“Get in you two. I can’t drag the car with your tires gone. Lock it down, Red Robin. When the storm lessens, we’ll retrieve it.”

“Go ahead Batgirl. Locking it down will take a second.”

“’Kay.” She kicked her way out, fighting against the wind. Her cape, weighted so it wouldn’t fly up and around her face in such conditions, billowed out behind her, but her hair flew up and around her face. It made her stumble a little ungraciously as she felt her way around the car, opening the door enough to slide in the back.

“Jesus.” She breathed. Batman was looking over his shoulder, checking she was unharmed.

“I told you to cut your hair.”

“Yeah, yeah. I braided it but the wind…”

Bruce grunted. “We can’t do anything. We give it two more hours to show signs of passing. If not –”

“Call in the League?”

Batman’s face indicated he was not happy with the idea, but it was still the best solution. They were trained for street level crime, not climate change.

Tim tumbled in a moment later, shaking from the cold, slapping the ice and snow that had collected on his costume. Reaching across, Stephanie took off her gloves and placed her warm fingers on his cheeks, hissing at the cold. Tim sighed and closed his eyes, shivering.

“Where’s the others?” Stephanie asked, watching Tim’s shudders lessen as he warmed up again.

Bruce set off, heading back to Bristol.

“In the city tunnels. A lot of people are taking shelter there. They’ll be heading back now. We just have to wait it out for now.”

Stephanie did not miss the loathing in his tone at such an inaction.

“We can’t do anything for the time being.” Tim stated. “But when it passes –”

“If it passes.” Batman grumbled.

“–Then we’ll work overtime to help with recovery.”

Stephanie nodded emphatically in agreement.

“It’s not good enough.” Bruce muttered.

Stephanie went to remove her hands from Tim but to her shock he actually reached up and snatched her wrists, pulling her back. Damn, he really was cold. Usually he wasn’t that grabby.

“Sometimes ‘not good enough’ is all we can do.” Tim bit back.

Holding her breath, noting the tension in the car rising with the steady hot air being blasted, Stephanie pinched Tim’s nose, desperate to break the potential argument. Tim looked at her, a little outraged. Stephanie ignored him, speaking to Batman,

“Whoever did this – if it is a who – we’ll hold them to account.”

It really wasn’t good enough, and Bruce did not respond. The drive back was odd, Bruce relying on technology to navigate through the city. As soon as they cleared the bridge however, visibility resumed. It was a blizzard – a bad one – but nothing compared to what seemed to be only growing in intensity over the three main islands of Gotham.

When they arrived back at the cave, Stephanie asked Alfred to take a look at Tim, worried about his body temperature. She snuggled up to him, arms wrapped around his waist, cheek to cheek, as she tried to erase his shivering.

“Honey, why are you so cold? We weren’t exposed long.”

“Just feel cold. Like in my bones.”

She rubbed his back, trying to friction up some heat.

“Cuddle away then.”

“You’re like a furnace. It’s nice.” He sighed.

Alfred came over, took one look at Tim and shrugged off any major concern.

“Just a chill.” He confirmed after taking Tim’s temperature. “Take a warm – not hot – shower.”

“Sure Alfred.”

He went to walk off, hand around Stephanie’s, but she dug her feet in.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m gonna wait for the others to come back safe.”

Tim blinked, then looked down at his grip. She wasn’t showing it, but with a dropping sensation in his stomach, he realised how tightly he was squeezing her. Mechanically, finger by finger, he let go.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll be a little bit.”

She smiled, worry leaking through, and he dashed off. She flexed her wrist, hissing a little at its stiffness. Tim was just spooked by the weather, she told herself. Nothing more.

The others returned soon enough, following the city sewer systems back to the cave entrance. Tim eventually came back too, in warmer clothes, dry hair and a calmer disposition, and everyone sat by the computer, and waited.

*****

“How certain are you of this lead?” Tim asked three mornings later.

Bruce ran a hand across his face. It had been a long three days, Wayne Enterprises was going to be funding quite a number of building sites and repairs to basic utilities over the coming weeks, but for now, the weather had calmed enough for people to emerge from the lockdown. The streets were now filled with people enjoying the snow, to which Tim couldn’t blame them. There was something beautiful about freshly fallen snow and a horizon which blurred the line between sky and ground.

“Not very,” Bruce admitted, approaching the piano. “Hence why I’m only taking Robin with me.”

Damian’s little chest puffed out – proud to be the chosen one to accompany his father. Bruce looked at Stephanie, Tim, Duke and Cassandra as he spoke, deliberately holding their gaze to convey the importance he held their task.

“You four are remaining in Gotham. I’m trusting you to look after it until we get back. There shouldn’t be any major operations. The river is frozen, and many roads are blocked still with up to six feet of snow. But still, do what you can.”

“Be safe.” Cassandra urged.

Stephanie gave a tiny wave to Damian, who’s hand twitched to return the goodbye, but thought better of it, and he tutted and turned to follow.

Uncomfortable silence filled the house as the clock closed behind the two, leaving the four remaining members of the family stood awkwardly.

“Now what?” Steph asked, pushing back the heavy curtains to peer outside. “College is cancelled, no schools, no work… At least the snow has stopped. Should we monitor for problems or take a break… just for an afternoon.”

She looked back to smile at Duke, Cass and Tim, tilting her jaw outside. Cassandra clapped her hands in joy. “I saw on the tv people playing in the snow. I never have before.”

Duke gave an encouraging noise. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Snowball fight.”

Tim looked reluctant, until Stephanie elbowed him in the gut and agreed with Duke, saying, “Yeah. Sounds good. Need a bit of levity right now, huh?”

She raised her eyebrows, and Tim got the message.

“Oh! Yes. Sounds good!”

His tone was forcibly cheery, but he would warm up to the idea when actually outside, Stephanie thought.

Alfred, with the hearing of a bat, poked his head around a door frame. “Please wrap up warm, and shower when you are finished to bring your body temperature back up.”

“Can we have coco, Alfred?” Cassandra pled, eyes big as dinner plates.

“Yes, sounds a lovely idea. Try to get some joy from the terrible weather please, all of you.”

Cassandra burst off to get wrapped up, the other three trailing behind.

Stephanie laughed at Cassandra’s exuberance, trying to get her shoes on quicker. The Manor, built on the hill in the way it was, meant that the five feet of snowfall hadn’t reached the back door and steps. It did mean though, after some shoving by Cassandra, the door heaved open. She ran out, throwing herself down the stairs and onto a hug pile of freshly laid snow. She faceplanted with a shriek of joy, quickly creating snow angels. Stephanie trotted after her, calling,

“Cassie, have you ever made a snowman before?”

“No!”

“Me either. Help me?”

Tim watched for a little while as the girls – for a lack of a better term – frolicked in the white snow. Cassandra stood out more against the white, dressed from head to toe in black, Stephanie in that blinding white, purple and green jacket blended in a little more with the landscape. He was quite content to just sit on the salted steps and watch, but a solid smack to the back of his neck, snow and ice sneaking down his collar, made him squeal.

Duke laughed, “Bad form, dude! Gotta keep your eyes peeled!”

“Jesus!” Tim choked out, reflexively grabbing a pile of snow and flinging it back weakly. A snowball fight ensued.

Alfred watched the four from the kitchen window, more than a little delighted at the childish screams of joy that made their way across the Estate. At least some people were finding joy in such miserable weather. As an adult, snow only meant pain.

Transport difficulties, concerns about plumbing and electricity, would the roof cope? What if there’s flooding? Need to clear the sidewalks and drives and roads. Is there enough food to keep us going long enough for the storm to pass?

So many worries.

For children, it only meant wrapping up warmer, maybe missing a week of school, and games outside.

Never mind, let them enjoy it for a little while longer.

Alfred noted that flurries of snow had begun to fall, though immediately he could tell they snow was larger and slower falling than the other night. Still, the four had been outside for a couple of hours by this point, perhaps it was time for them to come in.

He moved away from the stove, turning off the heat on the milk, and making his way to the door to call them back in to warm up.

He managed to get the door open only to be met with a violent shriek from Tim, his body falling to the floor and curling up in a ball.

Instantly the frivolity stopped, and Stephanie burst across the snow. She wrapped around him, pushing his hand away from his eye. Cassandra and Duke hovered around, nervous and unsure.

“It wasn’t me.” Duke begged, “He was looking up, I didn’t throw anything at him.”

Stephanie cooed, trying to see the damage.

“What happened? Is it your eye? Did something get in your eye?”

“Get him inside so we can take a better look,” Alfred urged. “I worry the weather is only going to deteriorate.”

Alfred quickly put on the fire in one of the sitting areas and sat Tim down on the rug. He still had the heel of his palm pressed to his left eye socket. Cassandra and Duke continued to hover, nervous at the damage. Stephanie came through from the kitchen with a cold compact in case there was any swelling. She knelt in front of Tim.

“Can I see?”

Tim gave her a suspicious look, which she didn’t understand. Reaching him, she went to peel his hand away, and he flinched back. Her outreached hand froze in mid-air.

“Does it really hurt?” She asked. “Do we need to get to the hospital somehow?”

“No. I don’t want you touching me.”

She shook her head, reaching for him again. She tried to gently tease, “We can’t fix it if we can’t see what’s wrong. It’ll just take a second.”

Stephanie pushed back his hair from his forehead, as she always did to comfort him. She heard Cassandra gasp before she realised what happened, but Tim recoiled at the touch and – even worse – slapped her hand away from his face.

“I mean it. Don’t.”

It had been a while since he had directed such a sharp rebuke towards her. Her palm stung with the force he had smacked her with. Immediately, she entered a panic.

“You… Okay. I won’t. Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

His sneering look did not fade, and it made Stephanie get up off the floor. She passed the cold press to Alfred, who Tim, still looking supremely uncomfortable, allowed to examine the damage.

She left the room and the manor, sitting on the steps to try and calm down. Weird how one sharp word could make her feel like she was five years old again. The falling snow muffled the sounds of the Estate, and everything was eerily quiet, save the sound of her panicked breathing.

Immediately Cassandra came out and joined her, wrapping her up in a hug.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him.” Stephanie whined.

“I know.”

Stephanie leaned down, forehead resting on Cassandra’s bony arms. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise to me. He’ll feel bad later, and you can talk it out.”

Stephanie nodded, knowing Cassandra was right. In the meantime, she flexed her hand, the one Tim had hit so sharply.

“He’s yelled at me before…”

“But never looked at you like that?”

“No.” Stephanie’s lip quivered. “I’m overthinking it.”

“You aren’t yourself when you’re in pain.”

Stephanie nodded fervently and frantically. “Right, right.”

They sat still for a while, listening to the silence. Then the door opened once more. It was Tim. Immediately Stephanie was on her feet. His eye looked fine, not even bloodshot or swollen.

“Are you okay?” She asked. He looked at her, suspicion gone but now a little bored and pouty.

“Fine. Listen, can we go home now?”

“Home?”

“To the apartment.” Tim shuffled in place, looking disgruntled. “I’d drive myself but Alfred won’t let me. My eye is fine.”

Confused, but deciding to not make a scene until they were alone, Stephanie nodded. “I’ll have to go slow. I don’t know how much of the roads have been cleared.

“Whatever.” He murmured, looking distracted.

Cassandra gave Stephanie a look which was a little unreadable. Stephanie gave her thanks to Alfred, and waved goodbye to Duke.

The drive back was painful in every possible way. Stephanie’s little purple car was sturdy, but she still went much slower than normal. Tim curled up in his seat next to her, head pressed to his knees. She could see that with one hand he was aggressively clawing at the centre of his chest, near his heart. Neither spoke for the duration of the drive.

When they got parked up, he slowly and stiffly got up and out. Stephanie grabbed her phone and messaged Duke that they had survived the journey.

She arrived in the apartment after Tim, finding him looking around the space with his lip curled. He didn’t look impressed with the place, as if it wasn’t his own home that he had decorated and lived in.

She sat her bag down by the door, and walked over to him.

“Sweetie, are you sure you’re okay? I hurt you earlier.”

“No. You didn’t.” He said, moving through to the kitchen. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t to be found, and he migrated upstairs to their bedroom. She followed, anxious about leaving him alone.

“Can I see your eye? I’d feel better taking a look myself.”

He sighed like she had asked the world of him and plopped himself at the foot of their bed.

“Hurry up, then.”

She approached him like she would a rabid dog, turning on the overhead light so she could properly see. Gently, she rested her fingertips on his cheek and brow bone.

Like he said, there was nothing amiss.

“What happened?” She breathed. “If nothing hurt you –”

“You’re really warm.” He interrupted. His disinterested look became hungry, and Stephanie dropped her hands, only for Tim to catch her wrists. His fingers were frozen, which should not have been the case after a car ride where the heating had been keeping them toasty. Stephanie felt a lump of ice form in her gut.

“Tim, stop it. What’s going on?”

“Cold.” He murmured. He squeezed her wrists tighter, tight enough to make her twist out of his grip in fear. Immediately he stood up and wrapped his arms around her waist, nuzzling into to her. Stephanie became stiff, listening to him licking his lips and mutter, “You’re warm. Hot. Need…”

Backing off just enough to look her in the eye, his expression twitched, and naked panic appeared for just a moment. Trying to maintain a poker face, Stephanie released herself from his grip, unnerved. Removed from her warmth his apathy returned, and the tenseness in his posture fled.

Confused, Stephanie massaged her wrists, and tried to buy herself some time.

“Go take a nap and warm up. Okay? Just… Just go take a nap.”

He smiled at her, but not warmly. It was mocking. “Yes, mother.”

The feeling of dread only rose and spread. She felt like there was a permanent clump in her throat. Finding there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t result in an argument, she just turned and left, leaving Tim’s sardonic smirk behind.

He had never made her uncomfortable before. Never. He had been angry with her. He had argued with her. He had yelled at her, belittled her, and once or twice in moments they never spoke about, he had been physically violent with her (the unspoken excuse was, both times, he didn’t actually know it was her… as if that made it acceptable). But never had she been made to feel unsafe. Tim was predictable in his moods. Whatever was going on frightened her. She shouldn’t have come back alone with him.

Maybe she could message Cass or Duke…they could get here in around an hour and…

While her mind raced, she resolved to make some comfort food for dinner. She opened the fridge, finding casserole beef that would be out of date in two days, an onion, a carrot, and three potatoes.

“Good enough.” She muttered and set to work.

Two hours later, as the stew continued to cook slowly in the oven and she was washing the dishes, Tim came downstairs quietly. He made his way over to Stephanie, finding it a little amusing how she tensed up when he wrapped his arms around her waist.

Stephanie managed to not gasp out loud when he pulled her long hair out of the way and pressed kisses to her neck, but she couldn’t help the involuntary goosebumps and risen fine hairs. He was frigid.

“How are you feeling?” Stephanie asked.

“Had a nap.” He rested his sharp chin on her shoulder. “I made you worry, didn’t I?”

She said nothing at his patronising tone, not sure what to say. Yes, and you still are. What the hell is wrong with you right now? But no, she was trying to be good and not respond and set off an argument.

“My eye’s fine.” He continued.

“That’s good.” She said, slowly leaning back so she could take off the rubber gloves. The moment she did, one of his hands snaked down to intertwine with her own. That did make her gasp, and flinch, but his grip on her waist tightened.

“What are you making?”

“Some stew to warm you up.” She replied, voice aggressively chipper.

Tim looked over to the oven, unimpressed.

“It stinks.”

Somehow that was the breaking point for Steph, who threw her arms back and moved away.

“What is your problem, huh?”

He looked back, almost gleeful. “You’re upset.”

“No shit I’m upset! Something’s wrong! You got something in your eye that made you fall to the ground in pain and now it’s nothing? You are physically cold as ice and you’re just being a pain and mean and childish and –”

“Childish. Childish?” He looked to the side as if he had a bright idea and moved away, back into the living room. “I thought you wanted that.”

“God, Tim, what are you blathering on abo—”

She cut herself off as he stood next to the windowsill with the flowers. It had been a couple of weeks since they had brought them home, and they were doing well, even with the general lack of sunlight. Tim stared at them like they were weeds, with nothing notable or pleasant about them, then he smiled maniacally.

With a carelessness comparable to a toddler throwing a tantrum, Tim pulled his red roses off the windowsill, the pot crashing and soil flying everywhere. Stephanie couldn’t help it, she screamed, stuck in place by the kitchen.

“Tim, no! No! Why would you… No don’t! Please don’t!”

His hand was hovering over her lilac flowers. His awful smile froze, then fell away, leaving an equally awful emptiness. His hand trembled, and his fingers instead stroked the petals. Stephanie twitched, half ready to body slam him if he threw her plant on the ground.

His hand fell away, and Stephanie – shamefully – began to cry. He had left her roses alone but wrecked his own.

“Why would you do that?”

He looked at her like she was stupid for not getting the joke. “They’re so ugly. And I thought it would be funny. Your face.”

“Funny?” She sniffed, eyesight blurry and nose running. She couldn’t bear how bored he sounded, how mean he was being.

“When you get all angry and hot.”

“Tim! You don’t do that to someone you care about!”

“Care about you? Do I?” He blinked, uncomprehending. He had gotten distracted again and was looking out the window at the snow.

She shrieked, feeling like she was talking to a brick wall or an uncaring five-year-old. She rushed over to his wrecked plant, trying to pack the soil together as best she could. Tim watched her for a moment, then kicked the spilt soil and plant. Stephanie flinched away, staring at the scattered dirt. Intentionally or not, he’d hit her hands that were trying to salvage the situation. It was such an unnecessarily spiteful and painful thing to do, that finally she’d had enough. Stephanie got up, and shoved Tim.

“Stop it.”

He didn’t look satisfied with her reaction anymore, and asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

“I want you to stop being so fucking cruel.”

It was like her words were literally going in one ear and out the other. It was like he wasn’t even talking to her, rather he was talking at her. Or he was talking to someone (something) else. “I’ll go then. I’ll go. I’m bored.”

She watched, mystified, as he put his shoes back on. He looked at her once and tilted his head like a confused dog, then moved back towards her. Still crying, she choked out,

“What are you –”

He kissed her, once, desperately. She flinched away, feeling violated for the first time in years. It seemed he was not happy with the kiss either. He looked off to the side, sucking on his tongue, musing the flavour. He shook his head once.

“No good.”

Stephanie stared, heartbroken. Tim just shrugged, like the entire thing was nothing more than a mild conversation about the weather. Grabbing her car keys. He opened the front door, giving a half-hearted farewell. And then he was gone. No coat, no gloves, no scarf. The snow flurries had picked up once more, as had the wind. He was going to very quickly freeze out in the open dressed like that. Even if he did have the car, getting stranded was a real possibility in the storm.

Hating him, but also petrified, Stephanie resolved to drag him back inside. She’d make him sit down, shove the stew she’d made down his stupid throat, then call Batman. She didn’t care what he and Robin were doing at the South Pole, something had gone very wrong back home.

Stephanie grabbed the apartment keys and grabbed her own shoes, running after him. The lights flickered, a power surge apparently occurring due to the storm, and she tripped over their pile of shoes at the front door and she tugged it open.

“You dick!” She screeched to the howling wind. No sign of Tim though, or her car. She jolted, confused at how he could have pulled out of sight that quickly. Already the tire tracks were covered in a fresh layer of snow. Her confusion quickly returned to anger.

Fuck him, she thought spitefully, slamming the door shut and going back inside. Getting back down to see what of his roses had survived his abuse. She cleared space in her own box, hoping that they would take in their temporary home.

She then went to call him, for once being the first to crack after an argument of theirs, only to realise before she clicked his face that his phone was still in his jacket that was hung on the rack.

He really had left the house with nothing on him but the clothes on his back.

She didn’t know what to do. She’d been an idiot during their time at the Manor and had left behind her suit, leaving her stuck inside with nothing warm or secure enough to go hunting for her purple car. As several hours passed, the more her anger made way for pure grief.

That wasn’t Tim. Never in a million years would he be that cruel. Angry yes, spiteful sometimes, but not callous. And he did care about her. She knew that for a fact. More than she believed almost anything else. Even when their relationship was at its worst, he had said, word for word, that he still loved her.

He wouldn’t make fun of her until she cried, he wouldn’t hit and kick her, he wouldn’t wreck a present that he knew was important to her, he wouldn’t be such a self-absorbed brat.

The wind screamed outside, and Stephanie blinked.

Freak storm. Tim’s adverse reaction. The pain in his eye and drastic mood swing.

The whole thing stank of something unnatural.

It was next to nothing to go off, but she had to try and see where that line of thought would lead. First things first though, she needed Tim to come home.

But he didn’t.

Panicking wouldn’t do any good. Tim could look after himself. Even in a storm like last night. Her little car was given to her by Bruce. It was as sturdy as a tank. He would be fine.

But still. Stephanie panicked and did not sleep that night. Instead she sat in the living room, drinking mug of tea after mug of tea, watching her roses and the snow blowing outside through the window. Occasionally she’d burst into tears, not sure what to do or what to say. She could brave the storm, maybe? But Tim didn’t have a key. What if he came home and couldn’t get in? What if he found a phone and called her, would she go to him then? What if, what if, what if?

Stephanie wondered briefly who people coped not knowing where their loved ones were before mobiles became extensions of their arms.

Maybe he’d just left Gotham, gone out of the city and away from the storm. It was minus twenty that night, again unbearably cold. Stephanie sat still, grief stricken, and waited for Tim to come home.

He never did.

Come the morning, she started her hunt, looking at the CCTV footage of Park Row and the neighbouring streets and businesses, but found nothing. The footage blinked, showing Tim exiting the apartment, then he and the car was gone, and it was Stephanie poking her head out to yell.

It was like he had shut the front door behind him and vanished. Or it would have been, if not for the fact that that blip of a power surge had happened at an awfully convenient time.

She messaged Cass and Duke, who confirmed that he did not return to the manor. A quiet enquiry to the Titans showed he had not made his way West either. The storm over Gotham that night was almost as bad as the first. He would have died if he did not find shelter.

The stink of the unnatural grew.

Her grief turned to panic, and two more awful days passed. The three of them took to frantic searching across the city, but a fresh layer snow made tracking her car difficult. Even worse, the GPS system installed by Bruce on her car (a safety precaution to now where she was at any given moment) wasn’t working. It hadn’t since Stephanie and Tim had arrived at the apartment.

Duke checked the different homes the Drake’s had owned just in case he had holed himself up there. The townhouse, the mansion in Bristol, but nothing. Cassandra and Stephanie had checked every safe house in Gotham, but no luck.

Duke wanted to inform Batman. Whatever lead Bruce was chasing, this was doubly important. One of his children had gone missing. Cassandra disputed Duke. Bruce had an entire city to worry about, adding Tim’s disappearance would not make him more urgent. If anything, it would make him sloppier. Nothing made Bruce more irrational than his family in danger. Let him tackle the issue with a clear head. The three of them in Gotham could find Tim.

But three days later, they hadn’t.

So Cassandra conceded, and the awful call to Bruce was made. Stephanie did not speak to him, but judging by Cass’ face after the conversation ended, it had not gone well. She relayed the information that his own search had been a dead end and would be home before the evening came round.

This served to make an anxious bubbling a permanent fixture in Stephanie’s gut. Surely if Bruce was coming home, the problem would be resolved?

A problem she had allowed to happen. Letting Tim just waltz out into a blizzard great job Steph.

No-one blamed Stephanie, though she certainly blamed herself. Tim’s roses were not taking to their shared space with Stephanie’s, and it felt like a miserable metaphor of how their relationship was seemingly incompatible.

What the actual hell had happened?

Staring at the roses, and hating herself a little, she decided to go speak to one of the few people in Gotham who maybe would have a clue about what was happening to the natural world.

Poison Ivy had a connection to the Green, whatever that was. It was a shot in the dark, but maybe Pamela would have heard something through the literal grapevine about what was causing the horrendous weather. From there, maybe Stephanie could chase a lead to Tim, and bring him home.

Alive. Preferably.

[silenthillmutual]

For the cliche prompts: Artemy/Daniil 4 or 23 (it could be 4 and 23 if you are feeling like mixing both. Tbh I wasn't able to choose)

(hello this is kind of silly and i’m not confident in its quality, but i am planning on writing a follow-up to this for the other number though it will probably be shorter than this! numbers here)

--

Things have been getting, in a word, ridiculous. The rain hasn’t let up in this section of town in four days, setting the scene nicely for all of Daniil’s drawn-out internal monologues about the futility of fighting fate or nature or whatever. His mind continues to grumble to himself as he sits in the hospital, trying to do research and feeling more and more, as time goes on...ridiculous. There it is again. Like the whole world - or at least the Town, which may as well be a world all its own - is laughing at him.

Burakh has been getting better at sneaking up on him; the only way Daniil knows he’s entered the building is from the gentle click of the front door as it closes again. He wishes the man would announce his arrival instead of using the opportunity to always try and catch Daniil off guard. One of these days he won’t have time to build his composure back up. 

Today, he’s safe; the rain makes the other man’s shoes squeak against the floor and he listens to the low-voice swearing with a smirk on his face. “Not today, you don’t,” he mutters to himself as he turns. He takes a moment, before standing, to admire Burakh’s form, eyes softening as he watches the man’s rain-soaked  hair fall and stick to his forehead, fingers weaving between the strands as he tries to push it back. He never manages to catch Daniil watching him like this, his own eyes taking int he sick strewn all about the hospital. Daniil looks away before Burakh can manage to do so. 

Daniil’s eyes manage to land exactly where he needs them to for a plausible escape. “This one,” he says, skipping the pleasantries his colleague never engages with anyway, “Has no sign of any illness. I suspect he’s merely playing ill to get out of the house.” The man even groans, over-exaggerated, on cue, and Daniil feels a little smug, as if that’s proved his point. Burakh doesn’t respond, or even react as if he’s heard, which chips away at the dam Dankovsky has been building, though at the present he can’t see the scale of the damage or the size of the resulting fracture. He files it as distraction, as even in their arguments, Burakh has never properly ignored him, and he is busy with his vials of tinctures.

He tries to clear his throat amidst its sudden buildup without drawing attention, licking his lips as he thinks for a moment on the cadence of his voice. It’s gone down again; maybe he hadn’t readjusted to it, let his voice go out?

Daniil stands, taking a few breaths as he goes, and starts again, keeping his tone steady as he speaks. “No matter. Now that he’s here and taking up a bed, I suppose he could have caught the Pest - or else be a carrier.” The man on the bed curls up suddenly. What Daniil can see of his eyes have gone wide. “So perhaps we should keep him for observation, if nothing else. Probably a danger to let him out now -”

When he turns back around, he finds his face almost against the other man’s chest, and has to fight back the blush that starts to creep up his neck at how very close they are. Dankovsky’s never warm, but good god, this man - between the heat he radiates and the way he makes Daniil feel, suddenly all feverish and flushed - it’s a small miracle Daniil doesn’t pass out from sudden warmth shocking the system. And now he can’t stop staring either, and he really needs to - stop dawdling, stop with the rapid blinking, and continue his thought already, damn you -

“Are you alright, Burakh?” he ask instead, his voice a horrid squeak, an octave or so higher than when he last spoke.

“Look in my eyes, emshen. I want to make sure you’re not lying when you answer the question I’m about to ask you.” His tone doesn’t demonstrate anger, but he may as well have asked Daniil to change the position of the sun and the moon... Alright, while perhaps not so literally impossible, Dankovsky struggles to maintain eye contact even with people he is not so wildly attracted to that a little more than a week’s worth of interaction incurs a massive internal paradigm shift in him. So this task is not so much less Herculean in nature. Burakh, too, seems to recognize he’s perhaps asked a little too much, as Daniil’s focus falters to those lovely cheekbones and lips, where his eyes follow Burakh mumbling, “Alright, that’s good enough.” He feels rather proud of himself for managing to re-establish the contact in time for Burakh to ask him, “What are you doing with a book on local herbs?” Which is when Daniil feels his stomach plummet and panic set in.

Alright. He needn’t come up with anything elaborate for an answer. “Research,” he says simply, hoping he’s not smiling too anxiously.

It’s hard to tell from the way Burakh is looking at him. He guesses his answer can’t have been too believable, because Burakh presses Daniil. “Research into what?”

“Local herbs, obviously!” Daniil smiles, but he can’t feel his face.

He’s still holding out skepticism about some of the truly bizarre things that people here believe, but a few more shoves in the right direction and he might even start to believe in some form of precognition; there’s nothing specific he can pinpoint in Burakh’s manner or expression to warn him that this answer will not be well-received, and yet he feels it somewhere in his stomach. His chest flips before the scowl sharpens and Burakh speaks. “You don’t trust me,” he accuses.

Daniil is back to rapid blinking - though thankfully this time it’s in confusion, as opposed to flustered cornering. He focuses more clearly on Burakh’s eyes, on his pupils, trying to determine what could have inspired this sudden agitation - though of course, Daniil is far from being am ind-reader. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he says. It’s another chip, another scrape he doesn’t inspect.

“Then why do you keep asking other people about me?”

This, this is probably the suspicious look that Burakh is searching him for. He can imagine his face must have gone pale now, because the heat from earlier is gone. But it’s from a different reason to whatever Burakh is surely thinking, though Daniil is a terrible liar and all he can say is, “Excuse me?”

And not even, Excuse me? like ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ But Excuse me? like ‘I didn’t hear you.’

“Capella says you talk a lot about me. Her brother says you’ve been asking about me, and the culture. And he’s not the only one -” But whatever Burakh says next is cut off in Daniil’s mind by panic. He has not, apparently, been as subtle as he’d thought or else pleasantries as exchanged in the Capital were as lost on everyone else as they were on Burakh. Which would have been excuse enough have  Daniil not waited so long to execute it. Stupid, stupid move, Dankovsky, because now it’ll just look flimsy if you try to say your preoccupation with your colleague was intended to be polite.

Burakh’s stopped speaking now, and Daniil doesn’t know for how many minutes he’s been done. It’s enough that he looks perplexed, and suspicious. Daniil scrambles, mentally, to find a response that’s one-size-fits-all, and lands with blurting out, “I’m just interested.”

“And why couldn’t you just ask me?”

“Because you’re busy,” Daniil says, working a calm facade back in place. “As we all are. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

The look on Burakh’s face is disbelief, but until he says something of note, Daniil can’t possibly judge how much damage has been done. “Because I’m busy.”

“Yes.”

“We’re all busy.”

“Aren’t we?”

He looks genuinely upset now, though. Daniil can’t fathom what in his words could have possibly inspired that look. “Right. You’re so busy asking Yulia for books on panacea and Vlad for resources on local lore you can’t ask me,  your actual colleague about these things. Right.” Oh. Oh dear god no. “I thought perhaps we were friends, oynon, but looking for this without telling me? Asking my friends about me behind my back -”

“I just wanted to know if I could help you,” Daniil says. Which is much more honest than he intended to be, but now that this entire attempt to - what, impress him? Is going up in smoke, Daniil’s starting to realize how very bad at subterfuge he is, and that he never exactly thought this plan through. If he had, he might have come to the conclusion that his shift in priorities and ideology was never going to come without some humility and a significant amount of self-humbling. But now he’s stuck in t his fiasco where Burakh thinks - 

Well, he doesn’t actually know what Burakh thinks outside of there being some sort of betrayal of trust. And he does seem upset about it, so maybe there’s still a way for Daniil to get himself out of this mess. “You suck at lying,” Burakh tells him. “So you may as well tell me the truth. What did you do all that for?”

Right. Right! He can do this. “I changed my mind,” Daniil says evenly. 

“But why would you?”

“You’ve proved your panacea idea has ground to walk on.” Yes. This is going smoothly.

“And what changed your mind on that?”

“I fell in love with you.” 

He hears the words fall out of his mouth and listens to his brain scream afterward. It’s not what he wanted to say, not what he was telling himself to say and he’s not even sure how the words managed to come out against his permission or his knowledge like that. He could have, and should have, just said he’d heard it from Aglaya, or one of the children. There’s complete silence for a moment or two, an entire minute or so, until Artemy starts to ask, “What did you just say?” at the same time Daniil laughs a little too loudly, half shouting the words “Would you look at that, my shift is over!” tripping over himself to run out of the theatre.

[annhellsing]

The Sawhorse.

Notes: this bad boy’s a direct, long-overdue sequel to the drawbridge which you can read right over yonder!!! Rating: she’s still sfw. Pairing: alucard / female reader. Word count: 3,321

“This place is a conspiracy,” you say with a half-glance over your shoulder. Adrian guides you from a decidedly rear position, you walk ahead of him with no idea of where you’re going. 

“In what way?” he asks, you can’t help your smile. He takes everything so seriously, it’s charming. 

“In the way that I don’t know for sure at any given point if the room I’ve just been in will exist once I’ve left it!” you exclaim and to your never ending joy, Adrian joins you in smiling. He seems bashful about the castle’s intricacies, disturbed by its strangeness. You like it here, absolutely, but it’s a learning curve. 

“When I was a child I wondered the same thing. But there are a few, key rooms that always manage to stay in one place.” You slow your steps enough to let him fall in line next to you. Getting close to him in any sense is impossible, but he allows it this time. 

“How polite of them,” you say. It’s honest facetiousness on your part, but you can’t help the little shiver that runs up your spine all the same. 

This place isn’t haunted, he is. Adrian walks with memories of the living and the dead, you hear him whispering to the shadows sometimes. But it never fills you with fear, you’ve found. Only sadness, deep-rooted sadness that you wish you didn’t understand. 

He’s sparse with personal details, but you’ve coaxed from him an admission that the large hole leading from the second floor corridor to the library was caused by a heroic attempt at patricide. 

Adrian’s caught you in a tiny children’s bed room with a hideous bloodstain permanently affixed to the floor. You were apologizing for weeks and the door is now locked. 

His home is largely, however, yours to explore. Despite the odd dissonance between  the mystery of what happened here and the way he seems unwilling to feel things, you could be happy here. 

All you wish for, you suppose, is a chance to help him. 

You’ve never seen him cry but the remnants of redness around his eyes is unmistakable. There’s a monster in your woods and he is so terribly alone. 

Perhaps it’s why you visit as often as you do. Your fascination with his mother’s life’s work is real, gripping you in a way you’re familiar with. But to say that the attraction is purely intellectual would be a blatant lie. 

He has friends, this Adrian. One of them wields a whip and is a Belmont, something you have to learn how to accept. The stories, despite their exaggerated details, run deep. The other friend is a woman, the magic user with the quick hands. You could smell the crackling electricity of her power despite never laying eyes on her. 

How difficult it must be for him to exist in the stillness of her wake with only a head full of too-realistic memories and lightning on the air. 

It isn’t as if you’ve experienced any grand adventures with him. But as you’re taken back to the library you’re reminded that may not be so terrible a thing. 

You watch the gaping hole in the wall. It does not move, never does but you can feel it watching you. You pick up books even still, months after the catastrophic battle and mourn a few, singed pages. 

“Will you stay with me?” You ask when he begins to look uncomfortable in the space that should be home. It’s unfair to ask this him, you know it, but you can’t help but feel an all-consuming urge to give him company. He meditates too much in his father’s empty chair. 

“If that’s what you wish,” he replies, “the filing here has certainly seen better days.” Adrian assumes the role of library catalogue and you don’t have the heart to let that stand.

“I know where things are,” you start, adding in at the last second, “but I wouldn’t rely on that, of course.” You hear a soft exhale behind you, a reserved laugh from your most esteemed companion. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Of course,” Adrian continues, but seems to consider what you’ve said more carefully. He hums, brief and tuneless as if contemplating the options before asking, “What about?” 

“Things,” you say, it isn’t very helpful. You place a book back on a shelf and look at him again. His expression is unsatisfied. “You’re very nearly a patron of my studies but I know almost nothing about you.” 

Only that he had a mother who died for what you’re attempting to continue. And his father was Dracula, wasn’t that a nasty shock? 

“Perhaps it’s better that way,” he replies. It’s a dark thing to say, but he delivers it with the air-light tone that accompanies most of his jokes. You grin at him, broadly. 

“I’d like to know you,” you aren’t sure why you decide on that, but it makes him break eye contact quickly. “Can I ask you something?” 

After a short pause, Adrian makes his decision. 

“Yes,” he says and he’s looking at you again. But the smile is gone from his eyes, they’re lukewarm and on the edge of confused. Rather than mill about between ruined stacks of books, you sink into a nearby armchair. 

“What’s your favourite colour?” it’s a safe enough question, the first that popped into your head. Bizarrely, you admit, you want to see that smile in his eyes again. It works with some success. 

“My what?” he puts thought into his answer when you repeat yourself with a childish giggle. The man makes a show out of it, sitting int he armchair perpendicular to yours and resting his chin on his fist. “I’ve never given it much thought. Perhaps burgundy, or purple.” 

You chime in with your agreement on purple just as he turns his head. Windows are scarce in the castle, something you find deeply oppressive, but one is angled perfectly facing the north wall. 

Adrian casts his eyes towards it and says, “Blue, actually. My favourite colour is blue.” 

The daylight outside shines with a benevolence that he’s missed for years. Adrian doesn’t stare at it for very long, looking back to you as if he hopes you didn’t notice a thing.

It calls another question to your mind, one with heavier implications than a favourite colour. The pause makes him uncomfortable as you debate asking, but ultimately decide it’ll do no harm.

“You can walk in the sunlight?” you ask. After another beat, he nods. “Are all dhampir’s so lucky?”

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never met another.” he looks at you with a terrible uncertainty that you want to end. You restrict your questions to surface-level stuff. 

“Blue’s a good colour, it’s very heroic,” you say. You’re not sure why, but that makes him smile again. 

“If you think so,” the conversation lapses into a comfortable silence after that, with books returned to their proper shelves. Every so often you’re distracted by something anatomical. You’re shocked at the sheer volume of manuscripts.

“My whole lifetime’s passed in the space between when some of these textbooks were written,” you say over your shoulder. Adrian hums, but the bridge of his thin nose is stuffed in a book of poems. 

“It’s a shame,” he replies, as if to prove he’s listening.

“Isn’t it just? If there were more arguments about these sorts of things— perhaps a bit less fear of the church—” you’ve picked up a dusty-looking copy of Galen’s On the Natural Faculties and now sneer at the cover. 

A complaint about taboos surrounding the dissection of human bodies for scientific purposes dies on your tongue when you look at Adrian. He’s stiff at the shoulders, no longer reading his book but instead staring at the far wall. 

Something you said’s upset him, clearly. But he presents as otherwise unbothered a few seconds after you noticed. You frown and set Galen aside, ready to antagonize him another day. 

“Adrian?” you ask. There’s a minute flinch when the sound of his name lands on his ears. “Did I—”

The book closes with a hollow thunk, placed on the seat-side table very quickly. You’re almost afraid he’ll stand and leave, leave you without even a parting word. But Adrian looks to you, his head cocked to the side. 

“Did you what?” he asks. But you’re unfazed. Very few things your certain about, but you said something that concerned him. Still, if he doesn’t want to talk about it—

“Never mind,” you say, casting a sorry glance back at all the books. But you have to make up for whatever it is hurt Adrian. You hold out a hand and motion for him to follow you as you leave the room.

“Where are we going?” he’s beside you in a flurry of blond hair and black coat. It’s almost shocking, but you smile up at him and utter nary a gasp. You’re getting good at this. 

The library sets you on edge, you want to say. You do not. 

“Since you’re a daywalker, quite like myself, I thought you might want to walk. In the day, I mean,” you explain. You look at him so fondly, Adrian’s inability to speak for a few, precious seconds couldn’t have anything to do with that, right? 

“You did ask me to stay with you,” he replies. 

“Mhm,” you hum, “and you agreed. It’s too nice a day to be reading, I think I’d like to hunt for herbs.” 

There is no room in the castle identified as belonging to you, but a little alcove on the second floor has become something of a home-away-from-home. Your basket sits there in the late-afternoon sunlight and your battered journal sits within it. 

You take it on one arm and hold the other out for Adrian. That beaming, lovely smile makes him take it. He wants, quietly, not to see that smile fade. 

“Do you get out much?” you ask, walking through the throne room that smells like old dead and dust. “Not a judgement, just a question,” you add. 

“If you asked a handful of years ago, the answer would’ve been yes,” he replies. You’re nearly surprised he does. “It’s less true, now.” 

“All the more reason to walk. The castle is stunning, but—” Adrian cuts you off as he glances at the high-vaulted ceiling. You’re given a quick, casual smirk. 

“It’s as oppressive,” he begins, “as it is wondrous.” 

“I would never say something so insulting about your home,” you reply with an air of faux-offence. Adrian’s nudged gently in the ribs by your elbow, a gesture that brings back sudden memories of a woman in blue robes. “But you have all the right to, I shan’t disagree.”

He recovers, not wanting a repeat of the scene that played out in the library. You walk very close to him, it’s not unpleasant. 

The sunshine greets you when he pushes the heavy door open. It’s chilly, though lovely and you start off down the steps with Adrian in tow. If you were to look back, you’d see his momentary look of shock before it melted into sentiment. 

You’ve done your best to wear a path away from the castle, but you veer off into the woods instead of taking him home. 

You’re made happy by all the things meant to bring humans joy.  There are smiles given to every delicate touch of nature, the singing birds and the rushing river winding onward towards a lake. Adrian’s never been there, you suppose. Perhaps one day you’ll convince him. 

But not today, you tell yourself. This is just a short walk, something of an apology and a way to brighten his dour mood. 

Adrian lets him leave you, in spite of how much he was enjoying your warmth at his side. You rush to the river, journal in hand to compare botanical drawings. 

You left your pen in the alcove on the second floor, he noticed. It’s where you do your writing, the window with the best view to look out on. But, he knows as you skim through the pages of your mother’s medical journal, you’ve run out of space. 

Nothing his father ever did was right, Adrian knows that. But he can still admit that the human tendency to dangle knowledge just out of the reach of those who could do it best is thoughtlessly cruel. 

“Ah!” you exclaim and successfully pull him from his thoughts. Adrian’s not sure what it says about him that he assumes you’ve been hurt. 

You’re on your knees by the riverbed, however, delighting in some plant of intense fascination. You look at him over your shoulder. 

“Lavender bushes, Adrian!” you wave him over. “Not the most exciting thing in the world but exactly what I’ve been running low on.” 

“How interesting,” he says. There’s an unexpected truth to the way he says it, like he might actually be interested. “What do you use it for?” 

“Poultices,” you tell him, “something to ease aches and pains.” 

He hums again, still interested but unwilling to leer over your shoulder. You stand with a fistful of purple buds and look them over very carefully. 

“They’re good for sleep tonics, too,” you continue.

He can pinpoint the exact second another question pops into your head. It’s alarmingly charming.

“Do you sleep?” you ask. Before he can answer, you keep talking. “No,” you pause, before seeming to think the better of it, “what do I know?” 

“More than most,” Adrian admits it easily. He’s smiling though he hasn’t fully noticed he’s doing it. It’s a truly welcome sight. “But I do— sleep, that is. In a sense. I did for a year underneath a city named Gresit.” 

Your eyes widen, just as he expected them to. It’s uncommon he encounters fascination instead of horror. 

Adrian lets the sun warm his face as you ask him the how, the when, the why. 

“My father’s rage was limitless after the death of my mother,” he says. You tilt your head again, that curiosity abating for the sake of decency.

To your credit, you look genuinely sorry for his loss. 

“He lashed out against me when I tried to stop him,” Adrian continues, “I needed time to recuperate.” 

“You needn’t hear again from me how awful that sounds,” you say, “but you know your father was very sick when he hurt you.” 

“Yes,” Adrian says. The light and the warmth and the beauty around him feels very cold all of a sudden. It’s distant, untouchable. Even in the face of happiness, he finds ways to make himself miserable. 

You could read the sorrow on his face for miles, it’s what forces your hand. It makes you reach out, picking up not his arm but his cold hand this time. 

Adrian allows it, though he’s uncertain as to why. His hand is held, palm-up as if expectant of a gift.

You thought once that whatever lived in such a hellish place might demand offerings. Blood, bones, body parts came to mind even though all you carried were petals. But flowers, you find, suffice when you put the prettiest-looking lavender spring in the cup of his palm.

“Beautiful and practical,” you tell him with a knowing smile, “not unlike yourself.” 

Adrian stares at the flower to keep from staring at you. Its short, stiff petals are unbothered by the gentle breeze that’s blowing your hair away from your eyes. 

You’ve never seen Dhampir tears, but for a moment Adrian is terrified that you might. His long fingers close carefully around the little spring, he summons up a thankful smile and swallows the lump pressing at his throat. 

It’s difficult to describe, the way you speak about his father might be misinformed or lenient but they’re near-exactly how Adrian thinks of him. When you speak about a tired, lost, deeply ill man named Dracula it is with the full honesty that you’ve never in your life thought about killing him. 

You never wanted to do him harm, Adrian wonders if something like that could ever belong in such a giving heart. You listen to the breadcrumbs of information he drops about the man who raised him, you pick through the underbrush like a magpie searching for little treasures. 

Adrian misses Trevor every day, Sypha several times every day. But they never thought of his father as something once human. You do. You’re so very sorry. 

“My mother’s name was Lisa,” he says very suddenly. “It occurs to me I never told you the name of the woman who’s body of work you now learn from.” 

“Lisa,” you repeat, willing to let any prior topic lie still in the grass. Poor Adrian, you think. “I couldn’t find any names in the journals, they were all in first person.” 

You reach into your basket, dropping lavender springs too ugly for his hand on top of the leather cover of your hand-me-down journal. But you touch the torn cover so gently, like comforting an old friend. 

“She reminds me so much of the person I wanted to be— when I saw my mother work, that is,” you say. 

“There’s far too much knowledge shut up in Dracula’s castle for it to waste away,” Adrian admits. 

He’s managed to make eye contact again, his hand holding the gift of lavender is carefully placed in his pocket. It retracts, empty.

“I like to think it’s better for it to be read,” you start, “instead of ending up as bedding for the rats.” 

Alistair’s soft, strange laugh rustles like the tree leaves overhead again. You’ve heard it before and tend to when you make jokes more macabre than would be welcome in polite company. You allow yourself to smile alone. 

“It’s not my castle that’s infested,” he says, “but if it is, they likely crawled up from the old Belmont library.” 

You resist the urge to shudder again at the name. You can’t help that you’re most familiar with lies, although Adrian hardly seems to notice your bodily, negative reaction.

“You’re so mean to someone you’re so fond of,” you say, “I hope to meet this Trevor Belmont one day, if only so he can know just how much you care.” 

“And what makes you think I’m fond of him?” Adrian asks. His laugh’s died but his smile’s still there. He shows off two, white fangs without a thought towards scaring you. They never have before. 

In fact, you lean in with your basket of flowers and grin back. No fear in your eyes, it’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. 

“You feel,” you tell him with a delicate huff. You’re moving again, stepping around his curiously tall form. At the last second, your shoulder brushes against him. “I’d have to be blind not to notice it.” 

Adrian doesn’t know if it’s mercy that keeps you from jabbing at the sore spot of his emotions. He was open with Sypha and Trevor, for the most part. But you’re painfully new, potentially not to be trusted. But he doesn’t like the confidence with which you make such a statement, even if it is true. He doesn’t know your intentions. 

You start off without another word, again. It’s becoming a habit, both you walking and him following. You take to the path again, swinging your basket. The half-turn of your head tells him you were at least slightly worried he wouldn’t come. 

That extra smile, the one that makes it look best like you care is a needless addition. It only serves to strike his sternum, to make the inside of his chest thump with a useless heartbeat. 

He’s never had need of it before, Adrian knows. He wanders back to the castle with you.

[swiftlymoniquesblog]

Crossing Parallel Lines- Sam Winchester x Reader: Chapter 5

Chapter 5- Sam’s POV-*Time Skip*

Warnings: Pissed Sam (yes, still) fighting, yelling, cussing, lots of fluff throughout, softie Sammy

Word Count: 1613

A/N: I know everyone is confused as to why Sam is so mad but hang in there! It will all come together soon! As per usual, all feedback is welcomed. Requests are open! 

Tag list requests are open!

Send me an ask! 

Masterlist here

Previous chapter here

-Monique

 I pace back and forth in my room, trying to come up with any logical explanation as to how in the world Y/N “accidentally” ended up in our world. She was from that other world, the one where there are, as Dean and I call them, the fake us. I mean, technically they are fake us because they play us on a TV show; a TV show! How bizarre is that? People actually find us interesting enough to watch on TV? Why? What about my life has been interesting? Okay, I guess the hunting supernatural beings is kind of interesting but it’s not a joke! This is serious stuff; people get killed. Wait, they don’t show that part, do they? Isn’t there some kind of law that prohibits gruesome material? I groan in frustration before a knock interrupts me. Before I even have a chance to think about answering it, the door flies open and in storms Dean.

“What the hell happened here?” He says, looking around the destroyed room before looking to me.

I shrug, trying not to make a big deal over anything. Although that wasn’t the truth, I didn’t need to lead to anything.

“Okay, then explain why you were being a dick to Y/N.” He says, folding his arms over his chest, eyeing me suspiciously.

“I wasn’t being a dick,” I say, walking over to my desk and sitting in the chair. Trying my absolute hardest to ignore the pressing issue.

“You weren’t? Dude, you practically yelled at her when she said she wasn’t from here! You made her feel horrible. We’re literally the only people she knows from here.” Dean began to lecture me.

“She doesn’t know us,” I say, not looking up from my laptop screen.

“Seriously? Okay no, she doesn’t the real us but she knows of us and that’s all we can give her right now. She has no one, Sammy.” Dean says, trying to plead with me.

“That’s not our problem.” I snap at him.

“Well, we better make it our problem because I sure as hell ain’t letting her leave! And you better not either!” He snaps back.

“Why do you care so much if she stays? How do you know if we can even trust her, Dean? I mean, what if she isn’t who she says she is?”

“So what? At least we knew we did everything we could’ve to help her. And I don’t know for sure if we can trust her but, don’t you think if she was against us in some way, she would’ve already tried something?”

“She could be planning on betraying us somehow.”

“Wow, you really think that low of me?” A third voice said, entering the room; her. Shit. She must’ve heard us. Damnit, Dean left the door open.

“Y/N, sweetheart, you weren’t supposed to hear that.” Dean says, trying to dissolve the issue.

“It doesn’t change the fact he said it.” She says in a cold tone. Wow, she’s pissed. She continued. “Why do you hate me so much? What did I do to you, Sam? Just inconvenience you?”

I kept quiet, which only seemed to piss her and my brother off even more. I knew I didn’t have a valid reason to be this angry but I couldn’t help it. She’s been here for less than two weeks and she’s already taken over the Bunker. It’s not like she had anything with her but Dean told her to buy some things to make the Bunker feel more like home while she’s here. That set me off; another argument with Dean and me. It was as if she was moving in but why? Doesn’t she have a home? People who are out looking for her? She can’t be okay with staying here, can she? Slowly, there were things everywhere that reminded us she was there. For instance, there were pink hand towels she had replaced in one of the bathrooms. Okay, it was her bathroom, we never used it, but still. I would walk by and see the door open and see all the girlie aspects. Then, in the main living area, there are candles that melt wax and it makes the room smell really nice. Actually, that’s not so bad, just different. And she bought this really fuzzy pink blanket that lays on the couch when she’s not using it but she’ll wrap it around herself when we watch something; she looks like a fuzzy burrito. When she walks past me too, she always smells really good, like coconuts or peppermint or something really sweet and sometimes really spicy and it makes me wanna take her and…..

“SAM!” Dean yells, snapping me out of my head.

“What?” I say, looking to Dean, then to Y/N, who didn’t look at me. I huff out a long sigh and walk out of my room.

“Oh no you don’t Winchester, you don’t get to get off that easily!” Y/N’s footsteps could be heard from behind but I ignored her.

“Sam!” She yells, still following me, but I keep walking, eventually heading outside.

“Would you slow the fuck down?!” She yells and I suddenly skid to a stop. I thrash around to look down at her, a startled look on her features.

“Go back inside,” I say harshly.

“No! Not until you tell me why the hell, you’re so fucking mad! What the fuck did I do that made you so angry?!” She is screaming at this point, so I give it right back to her.

“What you did? You wanna know what you did? I’ll tell you what you did, Y/N. You somehow manage to send yourself to another world by saying a thousand-year-old spell in a book of lore and you’ve turned everything on its ass! Everything was already difficult enough; we were dealing with the fucking Apocalypse; again! And then you came along and messed all that up so now, we have to change our focus from saving the world to sending your ass back to the right universe. We didn’t need this, Y/N! Did you even think about that? No, you only think of yourself! You’re exactly like us and it’s annoying. You think you know us because of that show but you know nothing. You have no idea what you’re doing to me.” I say the last part and immediately wish I could take it back.

I was afraid to look at her but I did and she surprised me. I thought she would be scared of me but she wasn’t. She just stared at me, gears turning in her head. The rationale was long gone from my head right now so I do the one thing I’ve wanted to do since I saw her. We stood at the flank of the Bunker, what would be like a backyard if this were a house, and I shove her against the wall behind her. She grunts a bit by my actions but she doesn’t seem hurt. Her eyes wide, she looks up at me with a doe-type expression and for the first time that night, she looked scared. I still tower over her and she almost shrinks back by my force. She can’t move and I don’t want her to; she needs to know. I lean my head down just a bit so my lips were close to her ear and whisper, “you have no idea what you do to me.” She looks at me again, the scared look ever-present, and she remains still. I had one of her arms pinned against the wall behind her and my hand held onto her other arm so she was trapped.

I whisper again, “I can’t think straight having you around. You’ve completely taken over my senses and I don’t know how to shake you.” She looked to the point of tears but then I say one last thing. “I don’t want to shake you.” She opened her mouth to speak but I cut her off by pressing my mouth on hers. She seemed stunned, her hands gripped my arms, and I was afraid she was going to push me away, but then, she lost her grip. Instead, she had melted into the kiss, falling into perfect sync with me. I think both of us knew there was sexual tension built up between us but neither knew what to do about it. Her small hands were gripping my shirt holding onto me for dear life, and I gently push her further back against the wall. There was a ledge against the wall, large enough for someone to sit, so my hands trail down to her thighs, right under her ass, and lift her up to sit on the ledge, allowing a much better access point to her lips; finally, level to me. I push her legs apart so I could stand right between them, standing right in the center of her. I couldn’t really think about anything else besides the taste of her and just like I told her, she was filling up my senses again. When my head starts to throb in pain, I pull back to look at her. She looks disappointed but is panting, trying to catch up with her running breath.

“You have no idea how much I’ve thought of doing that,” I admit, taking some of her hair and tucking it behind her ear softly.

“Oh, trust me, I know.” She says and I raise my eyebrows quizzically. “I’ve been waiting for you to grow a pair and ask me out, or kiss me.”

I let out a throaty chuckle and lean in to kiss her again; short but sweet and very effective.

Forever tag list: @grace15ella @simpleboox @juju-la-tortue @marvelfansworld

Crossing Parallel Lines tag list: @fandom-princess-forevermore @lilulo-12 @hunting-the-grievers

[fanatic-scribe]

A Bottle and Some Cards

Chapter 1/?

Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

Word count: 2,484/2,484

Ao3: Here

Characters: Donatello (main), Casey Jones (main), everyone else

Pairing: Donatello/Casey Jones

Warnings: Aged-Up Character, Drinking Games, Slow Burn (kinda)

Ch 1 / / Ch2 (coming soon) / /

Summary:

Ethanol is the intoxicating part of alcohol and its molecules are so small that they can actually pass into the gaps between brain cells. There it can interfere with the neurotransmitters that enable all the brain’s activities. If you drink fast, alcohol will start to flood the brain. Alcohol affects parts of the brain responsible for self-control. And that is why Donatello did all this dumb shit to himself.

A/N: Just something fun I made for the hell of it. There may be other pairings in this but Idk yet.

This work will be tagged with #B&C tmnt

Chapter 1: Salt and Lime

“Pussy.” Mikey huffed at Casey as the human chugged down his cup of beer. Casey stuck out his middle finger as he drank.

“I’d say sensible,” Donnie chimed in, “the dare said to ‘drink a concoction of whatever the opponent makes using whatever they can find in the kitchen.’”

“Yeah so?” The other’s looked at him dumbfounded. Flashes of Mikey’s bizarre “food” concoctions from when he was a young chief, and them too worried to crush his dreams, flash in their minds.

Taking turns they began to reminisce of his old creations. The ‘Squid Oatmeal Pizza.’ that Raph still swears he saw an eye on. But, as Donnie pointed out at the time, “It could be a raisin. You know, from the the...oatmeal...part?” at least that's what the boys keep telling themselves. They ate the entire pizza that night.

And who could forget the ‘Apple Pizza Pie Suprise’ with ‘All the wonders of both pies together with a twist!’ Poor April, who had not yet tried his creations and was too late to hear the turtle’s warnings, found the twist quickly after chewing on the bite only once. The brother’s had watched helplessly as their best friend’s soul left her body to the depths of hell. The pizza part of this creation was a classic Mikey order that she has seen only once; double anchovies, roasted garlic, chocolate, cappuccino pizza. The only thing that had stopped her from spitting it out before Mikey had walked away was the shock of the taste, it had paralyzed her. All she could do was open her mouth to let the food fall onto her plate and push it directly into the trash next to her. None of the brothers could blame her. She remembers her bite having a certain pop to it that she tried many years to forget.

‘Asian cowboy fusion calzone dude!’ Is what had gotten Karai. By this point, Mikey was a better cook, he would make odd foods for himself all the time still but no one had told Karai. She took a small bite that Mikey offered her but immediately spit it out, much to the turtle’s amusement as he was laughing. She found out later that to Mikey “cowboy” meant beans and s’mores and “Asian” meant teriyaki sauce, ginger, and shrimp. Karai learned an important lesson that day, never trust Mikey’s original cooking.

“And that was all him being nice and trying to cook.” Casey added pouring himself another cup of beer, “This would be him making something bad for my dare.” Everyone shuttered thinking about the horrors that could have been. Except for one bubbly laugh.

“Yeah, you’re right dude.” Mikey took a drink from his cup, “I get creative when I’m drunk so I probably would have killed you.” They all chuckled at this, everyone would have rather drunk.

They loved their weekends together because they got to do this, have fun and laugh. April was in college and spent a lot of time studying, even if she came to the lair at least four times a week. Casey wasn’t in college but he had a job at his local ice arena, he helped teach young kids hockey and did general cleaning and maintenance, that kept him pretty busy. Karai was always busy, over the time she took over the Foot Clan had reclaimed their good name but she was still having to deal with certain people still loyal to Shredder or mob bosses who saw her as an easy hit. Even if they were busy they still would try to gather together every weekend to relax and half fun together. This Friday night, with alcohol already clouding their minds, they were playing Truth, Dare or Drink.

Leaning forward Casey took hold of the bottle and spun it, still leaning forward he plucked up a dare card not looking at the words yet. “Wow, Casey Jones picked dare.” Donnie chaffed, “Did not see that one coming.” Casey smiled cheerfully at the turtle with wide eyes, gap teeth, and a middle finger on both hands. There was a chuckle at their banter, Donnie had become comfortable with it and often looked forward to his time with Casey. They had truly become good friends.

As the sound rolling of glass slowly dulled so did everyone’s voice until both were silent. The neck of the bottle pointing, if a bit vaguely, at Donnie. Mikey oohed with excitement like Casey Mikey enjoyed movement rather than talking so he always preferred dares. Hopefully, this dare won’t be a drink instead.

Dramatically, Casey lifted his arm to point at the turtle, “Donatello! The cards dare you to,” He lifted the card up to read aloud, “do a body shot off your opponent.” There was a chorus of laughs and oos from everyone as Donnie shook his head.

“No, no. I’m not doing that. I’ll drink.” Everyone turned to boo him. “BOOO!” he answered.

“Donnie you haven’t done one dare!”

“Mikey, I’ve only gotten one other dare.”

“AND YOU DIDN’T DO IT!” Mikey was having a hard time trying to understand what Donnie didn’t get about this very simple topic. Just before Donnie could say anything Raph leaned forward from his spot on the couch interjecting their argument.

“Hey come on, it's fine. This is Donnie’s choice.” He paused for a second taking a drink from his cup as everyone looked surprised. He smirked as he pulled the cup away, “And he’s choosing to be a fucking killjoy.” There were a few laughs as Donnie just rolled his eyes, he reached for his cup leaning forward from his spot on the floor.

A hand reached out and stopped his wrist, he followed the hand up to April who had walked over to him from her seat next to Karai. She was crouched down sitting on her heels, he ninja training with the other girls must be going great, he had not even heard her move. “Look, Donnie,” He’s heard that tone of voice before, “if you don’t want to do this that’s fine but you had two easy dares. Just have fun no one will make fun of you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Did you see us make fun of anyone else?” Thinking back Donnie could remember everyone laughing at crazy antics but then just more celebrating all together. When Leo had to let Raph draw on his face with a sharpie everyone was laughing, even Leo now sporting a lovely penis across his forehead among other drawings.

Donnie sighed, might as well give the people what they want, “Alright fine I’ll do it.” he said throwing his hands up. Before he could even stand up Casey and Mikey had already hoped up and started moving to the kitchen laughing and cheering. As everyone else stood and made their way to the kitchen Casey was sitting on the table, legs dangling over the sides, shrugging off his jacket and throwing it to the side. Bent over the open fridge Mikey was looking for the tequila Casey had brought over with the beer. The salt and lime already in his hands as Mikey grabbed the chilled bottle and placed the items on the table. Soon the rest of the group joined them at the table just as Casey began to pull his shirt over his head.

Donatello couldn’t help but see how the human had really grown into his frame, as a scientist observes an animal grow and mature. His muscles were more defined from when he was a gangly kid, his abdomen had the defined lines of muscle. His hips made a V just before his pants, this was accented further due to a small patch of hair leading from his belly button to bellow his pants. Donnie realized this felt different than observing and animal grow and mature, ‘Must be the alcohol.’ he thought to himself, because what else could it be? A shout from Mikey quickly shook him from his trance. “Dude, what the hell!”

“What?!”

“What the fuck is on your nipples?!”

The turtle’s had seen Casey shirtless before but something had changed. Now there was a visible bar of metal going through each nub where there hadn’t been last time. “Oh yeah,” Casey chuckled looking at his chest, “I got my nipples pierced.”

“Well, that part is obvious!” Shouted Raph, “When did you do this?”

“A little after the tongue at a shop.” Raph had known about the tongue. They had gotten their tongue piercing done together by Slash. Sure it may have been a ‘teenage at home piercing’ but it was straight and healed up just fine, that was almost a solid year and a half ago. Donnie rolled his eyes as he got to work cutting the lime, being very careful as he could feel his body sway.

“It’s just body modification, lots of humans do it.” Even though his words were indifferent his eye’s lingered on Casey’s chest, a slight amount of dark hair contrasted with the sparkling silver rings. There was something fascinating about it that just drew in Donnie’s attention, they suited Casey.

“Dude, it’s so weird looking!” Mikey reached forward and poked at the human’s nipple. Normally Casey was cool with being randomly touched by Mikey, especially in a party situation like this. However, as soon as he pressed down on Casey the turtle had his hand pushed away as Casey scooted away on the table with a nervous hum, laugh. He had reached up to covering his nipple with his hand and other arm held up to keep Mikey at a distance.

“Whoa! Ok!” There was still a chuckle with his words, “Hey Mikey lets not touch my nipples ok.” There was a questioning look in his eyes as well as everyone else, Casey shrugged, “They made my nipple more sensitive than I'm used too.” There was a slight pinkness in his cheeks as everyone briefly discussed this new topic. Donatello could feel his face heat up as well, ‘Must be from the alcohol.’ he thought.

Raph snatched the lime slice Donnie had cut and ran the fruit next to Casey’s belly button and poured salt over it, the crystals clung to the lime juice on his skin. After much debate, the group decided to pour the shot into the dip made by Casey’s pronounced collar bone when he leaned his head back. It wasn’t enough to fit an entire shot and he wasn’t allowed to move or he would pour the tequila but it made the body shot feel more authentic, whatever that means. Casey complained slightly about the cold fruit and liquor but no one really cared enough to change anything, besides it was already too late to change anything. So Casey just sat there, neck stretched back, leaning on one arm with a lime slice in his mouth waiting on a certain purple-clad turtle.

Donnie stepped between the human's legs a bit reluctantly, they looked at each other, well as best they could without Casey moving his head.  Donnie with his arms crossed, he waited for Casey to back out because surely he would by this point. But he just sat there, lime sticking out of his gap teeth surrounded by a shit-eating grin, Donnie couldn’t let that grin win. After a few more still, silent seconds Donnie took a breath and bent down.

Donatello’s rough tongue ran over the area of salt on the human’s stomach, he could feel Casey tense slightly under his tongue, he could feel the soft, warm skin as it contracted against muscle. Donnie ran over the slight dip were his abs were more defined, he couldn’t taste the human over the tart lime and salt but some animalistic part of him wanted to. Some inner part of his brain wanted to bite the human. Vaguely in the distance, he could hear hoots of encouragement but they were drowned out by the sound of hot blood rushing to his head. Still, they pulled him back to the task at hand, already forgetting his primal thought.

As Donnie stood he rested his hands on either side of Casey on the table, he leaned forward and touched his lips to the human’s collar bone and the tequila. Donnie could have sworn he heard Casey’s breath hitch over the chorus of cheers when his tongue lightly ran over the soft alcohol wet skin. With a loud, almost comically, disruptive slurp Donnie had swallowed the alcohol, it burned his throat but the salt helped.

Moving on, he leaned forward to take the lime from the other’s mouth, he bit down and pulled only to be met with resistance. Casey held onto the lime with a smirk forcing Donnie to play a game of tug o’ war for the lime, very annoying.

The turtle looked up to glare at Casey only to find black eyes already looking at him and it felt like time had frozen. Donnie wondered if he had ever looked at Casey’s eyes. Donnie thought that he had eyes like the deepest water, black and bottomless pools of onyx trying to pull the turtle in. For a moment he thought he could explore those eyes for hours trying to find their end and never get tired.

Snapped out of his daze by Casey letting go of the lime causing Donnie to stumble back from his own tugging. This earned a chuckle from the group followed by pats on his shell and congratulations. Smiling and laughing with everyone he couldn’t help but feel his heart beat faster and harder in his chest. He glanced over at Casey and saw him putting his shirt back on and laughing with Raph about how he jumped off the table and almost fall.

Everyone was using this time to talk about what had been happening in the game and to grab more snacks and drinks. Also to pet Ice Cream Kitty, like a lot. A few people cried. Petting Ice Cream Kitty is serious business. Donnie was pouring bags of snacks into different bowls when his eye’s drifted to Casey once or twice, looking for something. He was standing in front of the open freezer having just put whipped cream on the sugary cat, he then tipped his head back to fill his mouth with whipped cream. Donnie watched as his long neck stretched back, Donnie remembered how soft his skin felt against the harsh salt taste. A more animalistic part of his brain said something but it was muffled in the back of his mind.

“Don, you ok?” April’s voice pulled him out of his daze and he realized he has spilled quite a few pretzels.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine just lost focus.” He smiled and worked to clean up the spilled pretzels. Why was he so fascinated by Casey?

‘Must be from the alcohol.’ he thought.

Notes:

Hope you liked it! I know nothing happened yet. Bummer. Well, the next chapter will be coming soon! Sometime next week Maybe

[lunasohma]

phantom menace (under the weather)

[ ao3 / ff.net ]

Kuroko is sick, but he has good friends. 

Momoi places her hand on Kuroko's forehead. He startles and she tsks.

"Tetsu-kun," she starts seriously. Kuroko backs up a little. "I'm going to get Akashi-kun if you don't go to the nurse's office right now."

"Momoi-san, are you my mother?" She raises an eyebrow. Kuroko plows on. "I didn't think so. Now kindly let me get back to practice."

It's Momoi who keeps him from face-planting onto the gym floor. She helps him to the nearest bench and gently lays him down.

"Tetsu-kun, are you... pouting?" Kuroko turns so that his face is acquainted with the slatted surface of the bench and resolutely ignores Momoi's soft laughter.

Kuroko Tetsuya has nothing against winter. But he also has nothing against microbes. His weak constitution was always a large concern of his grandmother's, but now that she's been permanently hospitalized, Kuroko fends for himself.

The winter months bring out the worst in Kuroko because with them usually comes a virulent tempest of sickness. The storm cloud that brews around Kuroko typically goes unnoticed by those around him. No matter how ornery or sickly he becomes, his weak presence masks his angst effectively.

This time, however, is different.

"Tetsu!" Aomine's voice rings out in the empty classroom and does nothing good for Kuroko's sinus pressure. "I've got notes for you!" The taller boy states this proudly, standing before him. He has the enthusiasm of a puppy who's retrieved a stick. Kuroko has to consciously keep himself from pointing this out; the fog of sickness somehow loosens his tongue.

"Aomine-kun," Kuroko looks up at him. "Has notes for me." Does not compute.

"Come on, Tetsu - don't be mean! I pay attention in class sometimes!" Kuroko levels a blank stare at him. "And you were, uh, sleeping through most of it, so I figured you might need 'em," he adds, with a small grin. Kuroko belatedly notices the small puddle of drool on his desk.

"So yeah! Notes!" The chicken scratch is remarkably earnest and thoroughly indecipherable. It was kind, Kuroko thinks.

"Thank you, Aomine-kun." He means it.

Kise is being extra clingy today, probably because it's cold, and Kuroko is having none of it.

"Kurokocchi, are you pinching me?! Owowowow—" Kuroko has no remorse and stamps down on the blond's foot with all the wrath of an angry god. Kise yelps and bounces out of range, looking hurt.

He feels bad (relatively quickly for where Kise is concerned) and apologizes as sincerely as he can with a stuffy nose. The other boy recovers quickly as per usual and they continue walking, Kise talking enough for the both of them.

Massaging his temples, Kuroko closes his eyes and rifles through his pocket for tissues.

"Kurokocchi, do you have a cold?" Kise asks, tilting his head to the side. Kuroko cracks one eye open to look at him.

"Something of the sort," he blows his nose dejectedly, "always happens around this time of year." He waves goodbye to Kise since they've reached the intersection where they part.

"Wait!" Kise frantically scampers after him. Kuroko turns to fix him with a deadpan glare. Being sick usually cuts his glares' effectiveness in half (something about red, rheumy eyes), but he's gonna work with what he's got. However, Kise is doggedly determined.

"I can help!" he says excitedly, "Let's go to the store first - I gotta pick some things up!" He leaves no room for argument and takes a hold of Kuroko's wrist. He has no strength to dig his heels in (damn these cold aches), so he ends up trailing around after the other boy.

Kise pays for everything—

("Model's paycheck!" A signature wink was tossed his way. Kuroko resisted the urge to walk out of the store.)

—and they end up taking it all back to Kuroko's.

"My sisters used to take care of me when I got sick," Kise is explaining as he's deftly slicing vegetables. "And then I took care of them when they finally allowed me near the stove." Kuroko is seated at the table, his appetite actually surfacing for the first time this week. Savory cooking scents fill the kitchen for the first time in a long while. If Kise had noticed the disuse of the place, he didn't voice it.

"They've both moved out now, but they left me some great recipes and I've memorized them all!" He sets the steaming bowl in front of Kuroko with a flourish. He's beaming with pride and it's rightly warranted.

It's really good.

Aomine crouches in front of Kuroko's prone form and neatly rolls the ball out of his limp hands, wiping it off on the front of his shirt. Kuroko, even in his feverish state, can recognize this as unsanitary and says as much. At the same time, Momoi aims a pack of disinfectant wipes at Aomine's head.

The taller boy grins and tells him not to worry. Apparently, he can't get sick. Momoi recounts all the times that Aomine ate dirt as a kid. He's bizarrely proud of the fact ("Must've done something right!") and Momoi shakes with silent laughter behind him.

Kuroko rolls onto his back with a long-suffering sigh, blinking hazily in the too-bright lights of the gym.

"I feel like shit," he utters dully.

That gets Aomine's attention. "What was that, Tetsu?"

"I said," Kuroko grouses, "I feel like shit and I want to die." He rolls back onto his front, soundly ignoring Aomine's howls of laughter and Momoi's expression of horror.

Midorima had gotten wind of Aomine's abysmal notetaking skills and had promptly taken over from him.

"Unexpectedly, Midorima-kun is quite the mother hen," Kuroko deadpanned.

That had gotten Midorima on a passionate rant about academic responsibility, which kind of proved Kuroko's point, but he didn't reiterate it.

Midorima's notes are exceedingly competent and Kuroko feels as though he's been blessed. And no matter how much Aomine and Kise whine, he makes sure they don't get so much as a peek. He even surprises himself. A sick Kuroko can be quite vindictive.

Midorima sews, as it turns out. And knits and crochets - the whole nine yards. Kuroko learns that knitting and crocheting are two very different things after an offhand comment of Aomine's. Kuroko had wisely kept his mouth shut.

It had started with the threadbare elbows on Kuroko's coat sleeves; Midorima had zeroed in like a hawk. It only escalated from there. He now has an assortment of homemade goods, ranging from scarves to mittens to a quilt. Soon enough, Kuroko is drowning in yarn.

It's very warm.

It's 9 a.m. on a Saturday (read: too early) and Akashi has the aura of a benevolent monarch, looking quite satisfied with his showing. There is, absurdly, a small moving crew accompanying him, unloading a small van.

"Akashi-kun-"

"Not another word, Kuroko." The red-haired captain is fairly giddy. Kuroko may be hallucinating. "I won't take them back until you're feeling 100% again."

Kuroko glances around at the various items starting to pile up. An assortment of humidifiers and incense diffusers, a space heater, surprisingly technical blankets (apparently they heat up and cool down), numerous baskets of citrus. The list goes on and floor space is shrinking at an alarming rate.

Kuroko opens his mouth again, but he really has no words.

Akashi beams.

Cold rain is pelting the windows and Kuroko is grateful for the fact that he's inside, cocooned in a myriad of blankets. He's working his way through the limited-edition snacks that Murasakibara has been giving him throughout the week, many of which are vanilla-flavored. In moderation, of course.

He hears a knock at the door and he is loath to leave his nest. Since there is no one to hear his petulant stomping, he pads quietly to the door.

"Kuro-chin. Our cat had kittens." Murasakibara is wearing an all-encompassing raincoat, which is also shielding a very small cat. Kuroko hurriedly ushers them in.

In the kitchen, Murasakibara is tending to tea.

The kitten is wading its way through the peaks and valleys of Kuroko's blanket nest, curiously sniffing all the while. Kuroko falls in love (just a bit). It's mostly black but has white-socked paws. It also has startlingly blue eyes.

"It must be fate," Murasakibara says, handing Kuroko a steaming mug.

"I didn't think you believed in that sort of thing too, Murasakibara-kun." The taller boy simply shrugs, joining Kuroko on the floor.

"They always make me feel better when I have a cold."

"I would've thought that snacks and sweets did that." Murasakibara considers this.

"It usually takes both," he replies as he carefully places the kitten in Kuroko's lap.

Akashi is saying something, but Kuroko can't quite make it out. The captain's words are muffled and Kuroko's head is full of fluff. His vision is getting blurry.

"Akashi-kun." The other boy stops. "I think I am going to faint."

He does.

He wakes up in his bed, miracle of miracles. He can hear familiar voices downstairs.

"Breaking and entering," Kuroko accuses, narrowing his eyes from the doorway. He's brought his comforter down.

"Hardly, Kuroko," Akashi looks pleased. "We used your keys."

"Entering, then," he amends, making his way to the last free seat in the kitchen.

Kise's at the stovetop. At this point, he's pretty much memorized the fridge, cabinets, and pantry. Aomine's helping him and he has a knife. Everyone must be getting sick if that had gotten approved.

Kuroo's up on the table. The kitten is alternating between chasing the feather toy Murasakibara's got and the loose yarn of Midorima's latest project. It looks like another scarf.

Momoi gives him a warm smile as he sinks into his chair, sliding over some cold medicine and a glass of water.

"Feeling better, Tetsu-kun?"

Objectively, no. His head is pounding, his nose is stuffed up, and his throat burns, but somehow—

The atmosphere of the room is warm and comforting, the low buzz of conversation and sounds of cooking are soothing.

"Yeah," he says, "I really am."

[thefamilyineverknew]

Turning 47: pt. XV

“Ch-ch-ch-changes”

26 May 2018

“You know, in Sweden they make these perfectly shaped butter knives. They’re just ideal for spreading butter on pancakes,” I say as I wolf down a hot stack. It’s a bright Sunday morning in Evergreen, Colorado at Benny & Kathleen’s. Thankfully, they were home last night and were willing to put me up for the night (kicking their middle child out of his room for me...extra thanks to him). I woke to a family of deer peering in my window from the surrounding forest and the smell of breakfast coming from the kitchen upstairs. How did I deserve all of this? Again, I am overcome by the generosity and warm hospitality of people who I haven’t seen in forever.

“So, how did the meeting at Barnes & Noble go?,” they ask with baited breath. “Well, wow...,” I reply, and proceed to reiterate the details of the story that I have laid down in the previous parts of this tale, showing them the photo of Arla and me in the park. “Oh wow! It’s really undeniable,” they marvel. I am here and present, but also in a bit of a daze. That just happened, and here I am in the home of old college friends on a Sunday morning, eating breakfast before they go off to church. Time is playing ALL KINDS of tricks. Now is then is now is then. Waxing and waning. Kathleen is buzzing around the kitchen, whipping up pancakes in her Sunday best, while Benny and I commisurate over coffee. It’s as if I walked through a wormhole from 1993 to 2018. I feel the same way in their presence as I did when I was 22.

“So, are you going to the reunion?,” Kathleen asks, effervescently as she does. ”I think I have to, seeing as I was professoring there this last term. If I can cobble the funds together; definitely,” I say, and we commence to listing all of our old classmates who we should pester to be there. “Do you think Dan Rauter would come?,” zips Kathleen. ”I’m not sure. I’d love to see him. Just the whole gang. That was one of the best things about being back at Wheaton, being able to see so many people who I hadn’t in so long. It was crazy. Yes, I really need to be there,” I say. Declarations are made, and names dropped. It’s so good. So bizarre. It was crazy to see so many people over the Spring term, slipping in from a faded memory to LIVE, flesh and blood reality, just like sitting here at Kathleen & Benny’s dinner table.

The house is bustling with activity as Kathleen and the kids are bolting out the door to make it to the Episcopal church. Benny and I are engrossed in a light theological conversation, and he asks Kathy to save him a seat as he will catch up soon. Benny has already been to one early morning service this morning, a Catholic mass, and he is explaining to me his slow conversion to Catholicism.

Unbeknownst to me, Benny had grown up in the Evangelical Free Church (a merger of the Norwegian and Swedish Free Churches in America from 1950), just as I had. It turns out we were both at the same Youth National Conference in Denver in 1988. “Did you know Big John?,” he asks. “Wow....there’s someone who I haven’t thought of in decades. Yeah, I even drew a cartoon picture of him,” I confirmed. Neither of us knew much of who Big John was or where he came from, but he was definitely memorable; a man in his 50’s or 60’s, who must have been on the spectrum. Who or which group was he connected with? If it raised any eyebrows at the time, I didn’t hear of it, nor did I hear anything ever happening. Today, I don’t think his presence would be acceptable, just cause, well, you know. But again, it didn’t cross my mind then and there was nothing untoward that happened to my knowledge.

Going to the National Conference was the hilt of summers for me back in high school; 2500 teenagers converging in one place for a week. Half of those were girls, and my hormones were racing around like atoms in the particle accelarator at FermiLab. It was a perfect stage on which to try out all my extroverted show off tricks; breakdancing, skateboarding, or just being able to make people laugh. It was heaven, and the fact that all of these kids were coming from a similar place in the church community meant that I didn’t have to feel awkward or edgy about being a pastor’s kid. And I remember, there was this one person at this very National Conference in Denver who left a massive and lasting impact on me, one which solidified the course I’ve been on to this day. His name was Fred.

Fred was a part of the youth group that came down from Rochester, Minnesota, and, in my opinion, that group was THE coolest bunch of kids I’d ever met in person. They were punk and New Wave, and while I had dabbled in the style a bit, this was the first time I had ever been around people actually like that. I mean, I had seen that style in John Hughes films and on MTV, but never in real life. Where we came from on the Eastside of Des Moines, it was all Classic Rock (when it was just known as Rock); feathered hair, Van Halen, combs in back pockets, and muscle cars. These kids from Rochester were all laid back skaters. There were so many firsts I witnessed coming from that group. I just wanted to hang with them. And in right there in the middle of all of them was this guy Fred.

The thing about Fred that blew me away was that he was plain, and at least physically, NOT cool, but every one of the other cooler-than-Alaska kids deferred to him with respect. Fred was fairly overweight, which where I came from was an instant social death sentence, but if it was something that he ever felt insecure about, it didn’t show. No, he was solid, sitting in their midst like a Buddha, normal as could be; the sun in a solar system set-up. And I thought....if this guy, who by all appearances should be a cast aside (in my limited, teenaged prejudiced opinion), is able to just be, cool with himself as he is and command the respect he does...then...why should I ever give a second thought to what other people think about me? And that set a tone for me, going forward. My early leanings toward non-conformity were absolutely crystalized meeting Fred. I think I may have written him once after that conference, but there was never a correspondence kept up. I don’t even remember his last name, but I do remember the impact he had on me. Thank you, Fred.

So, Benny comes out of the same soil that I did, which is just wild to me. Wilder still, is that his train has switched tracks toward Catholicism. As he explains it to me, it all comes down to doctrine. The Catholic church is less emphasis on one’s individual personal responsibility in attaining and keeping up one’s salvation. It’s already a done deal. Its all in the doctrine and the sacraments , allowing him to just go and worship, without having to strain and stretch to try to receive God’s favor. It’s already been done, he just needs to be present. Kinda like Fred, just being there, content in this space. He makes an appealing argument, and I am very far from being dogmatic about the different flavors of Christendom. “Do you think it’s the Protestant appointment to continually fracture into smaller and smaller shards of belief until it stops meaning anything?;” I ask. How many denominations can there be, each one believing their way and vision is the RIGHT way? Benny says this is part of why he started investigating Catholicism.

I remember back when I was in undergrad at Wheaton, one of the best parts was trying out these different flavors of Christian worship. There was the hippie church, Jesus People (JPUSA), in Chicago. Then there was the generic, big box non-denominational variety, like Wheaton Bible or College Church. And the Presbyterian churches. And the Episcopal churches, like Church of the Resurrection and St. Mark’s (where I had my first communion with REAL wine, not Welch’s Grape Juice). It was a blizzard of experimentation, investigation, and research into the style, views, and formats. Now, at Wheaton, being a college firmly rooted in evangelicalism, going to church was basically expected, which meant that Sunday lunch in the cafeteria was a natural place for assessments on whether or not others had gone to church, based on the clothing people wore. I am more than certain that several stressed out about this to the point where they would dress up for lunch if they hadn’t made it to church. I couldn’t be bothered with that. If there were ever a snide comment like, “Where’d you go to church, Kurt?”, I’d just say I had spent some time in The Word. Not only did it cut the snark, it was 100% true. I called my bed “The Word”, with a big sign on it stating its name. This became a problem for at least one of the underclassmen on my floor when I was an RA, borderline heretical. I do remember, Brendan. 😉

It is easy for me to listen to Benny describe his journey and thinking. We come out of the same place, and I can understand transformation and maturation far more than I can stagnation and samey-sameness. I live in Sweden now, have been for 16 years. True belief in Jesus, or any deity, is highly out of place and foreign; viewed with eye-narrowing suspicion. While Christianity is solidly a part of Sweden’s history and heritage, it has also always been lock and step with the government. For hundreds of years, it was mandatory for the people of Sweden to attend church. The church was in charge of keeping people in line, as well as for the country’s census and population control. It was not optional. Therefore, church in Sweden is not viewed as a place to receive any kind of true belief, but an institutional organism where tradition is upheld; in infant baptism, weddings, and funerals. This underlines my conviction that church and state should always remain separate. Belief should always be a choice, not compusory.

So, I don’t blame Swedes for being narrow-eyed, at all (I half-expect my Swedish friends to be reading this side-eyed, all this church talk, but I’m cool with that. This is my story, this is my song). Moving here was a cultural womp on a multitude of levels, including spiritually. I share this with the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and anyone else I’ve encountered who has moved here with a spiritual belief system from outside. It is a spiritual desert, with a fixation on the sensory and material here-and-now. Belief is dead wood, relegated to tradition or the sole domain of the sciences. But it is good to know, life still does thrive in the desert (if you’ve ever watched David Attenborough), it just looks and behaves differently than, say, a jungle or forest. I have adapted and I feel good about where I am, and I feel good about the people around me. I reject “us vs. them”. It’s just us. If I am viewed as a “them”, whether it’s true or not, so be it.

Benny and I wrap up. I go downstairs to pack, and do a couple “idiot checks” to make sure I am not leaving anything behind. And then we’re out the door, headed to our cars. “Benny! It’s so great to see you. Send me your address. I will send you some Swedish butter knives. You’ll see,” I bark in parting. And we head out, up the drive and onto the winding roads of Evergreen; Benny to join his family at the Episcopal church, and I, through the soaring cathedral of the Rockies and up to Boulder to see if I can meet up with Jolly Northrup.

I text Jolly... “Jolly!”